by R. N. Morris
There was a heavy groan from the gallery. Then a flash and the thunderous crack of a gun discharging.
The smell of his own blood was the last thing Willoughby knew.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The crowd in the Great Hall was growing increasingly restive, craving the comfort of their own homes more than the once reassuring proximity of bobbies, whom they were now growing to resent. The decision was made to let people go. The assembly broke up in chaos, with some confusion over whether a statement had been taken from everyone there. But once the tap had been opened and the flow begun, it was impossible to check it.
The detectives would have to hope that nothing significant had been missed, although Quinn knew that in a criminal investigation hope was not a factor to be relied on.
By an unfortunate coincidence, the victim’s body was carried out on a stretcher at the same time as the rush to exit was underway. Dr Emsley and the ambulance men had covered the body in a blanket, or had done their best to. Several hours had now elapsed since the murder and rigor mortis had begun to set in. And so the tented shape presented by the stiffening body beneath the blanket – with forearms extended to play the piano and legs bent in the seated position – created a rather gruesome and upsetting effect, especially as it had been necessary to leave one arm protruding from the side of the blanket. If this admittedly imperfect measure had not been taken, the narrowness of the blanket would have created a gap through which the face of the deceased would have been visible.
Despite these considerations, the sight inspired a degree of horror in those who saw it. And in none more so than Donald Metcalfe, who stood frozen to the spot, his mouth gaping as he struggled to find words for the emotions stirred by the grotesque spectacle. In the end, he had to be satisfied with, ‘No, no … it’s not right.’ Which was perhaps as fair a reaction to what he was seeing as any.
Dr Emsley, his demeanour rather more solemn than before, walked alongside the stretcher with his head bowed. Quinn jogged across the quad to intercept him.
‘Doctor, anything you can tell me that might help my investigations?’
Emsley raised his eyebrows as if he were surprised by the question, although perhaps it was simply the slight air of desperation in Quinn’s voice that he had not expected. ‘You’ll have my report on Monday.’ Emsley gave a wide, wincing smile. ‘But in the meantime, you may be interested to know this detail.’
Quinn nodded for the doctor to go on.
‘I removed the fatal implement, which I naturally surrendered to one of your policemen.’
‘The tuning fork?’
‘It appeared to be a tuning fork, yes. However, the metal handle had been ground to a long, lethal point, reminiscent of the blade of a stiletto.’
It was Quinn’s turn to raise his eyebrows.
The doctor bowed and went on his way, leaving Quinn to take in the implications of this new information.
Just then, one by one, the uniforms who had set out with Willoughby in pursuit of Special Constable Elgar’s attacker began to return, each shaking their heads glumly to signal their failure.
Quinn counted them in and demanded, ‘Where’s DC Willoughby?’ of the last man.
The copper blew out his cheeks and shrugged. ‘We all split up.’
‘Which way did he go?’
‘Turned off down Church Row.’
‘Did you not think to go look for him when the rest of you had drawn a blank?’
Another shrug. ‘I thought he must have come back here.’
The fact that Willoughby had not returned yet could mean one of two things. He had had sight of Elgar’s attacker and was still chasing him down. The second possibility was not something Quinn wished to consider. ‘Macadam!’
‘Sir!’ The steely tension was audible in his sergeant’s reply, hissed through gritted teeth.
‘Leversedge!’ All his doubts about the DI were put aside. He needed his men about him.
‘I’m here!’
Quinn pointed at the shrugging policeman. ‘Show us.’
To Pool: ‘I need some men, as many as you can spare. With torches.’
Quinn drew out his revolver. Somehow there was the feeling that this was what everyone had been waiting for.
The darkness ran at them as much as they ran into it.
The pounding boots of the racing policemen, the half-panicked cries, male-scented aggression wafting on the night breeze, the bobbing beams of light – the night seemed to relish it all, as if it had an infinite appetite for danger and fear. The hoot of an owl perched in one of the spectral trees had a gleeful note to it. It was calling them on to something fateful.
The other two officers of the SCD had taken their cue from their governor: they had their guns drawn as they advanced. The Hampstead bobbies held truncheons in their right hands, torches in their left. The Hampstead CID had not thought to issue themselves revolvers, and so they brandished the small cudgels favoured by detectives.
Whether they were closing in on a helmet tipper or a murderer, they weren’t prepared to take any chances.
They slowed to a trot at the entrance to St John-at-Hampstead. Quinn saw the door to the church was open, a dim rectangle of light indicating that the inner door was open too.
A terse nod was the only command he needed to give. Leversedge took charge of directing the details of the operation, communicating by means of precisely executed arm gestures. Macadam understood himself charged with taking a contingent off to sweep through the churchyard to secure the rear. They duckwalked noiselessly between the tilting gravestones, holding to an unspoken formation as if the knowledge of such manoeuvres was something they held in the marrow of their bones.
Leversedge led a second contingent in a shallow arc behind them, circling round to seal off the front and sides of the building.
Quinn alone walked upright, straight towards the open door.
Quinn alone picked up the scent of death in the cold, sanctified air.
Quinn alone found his constable.
The boy – Willoughby seemed especially boyish now – was lying face up in the aisle, eyes open in wonder, an unvoiced question on his lips. His bowler lay upturned beside him, hat doffed for death.
For there was no doubt that he was dead. No room for hope in that neat red circle in the centre of his forehead. It seemed incredible, outrageous, that such a small wound could undo a life. You could clean that spot with cotton wool and iodine, surely, and set him right on his feet again.
But the darkness that pooled around him, claiming him for its own, made savage mockery of that illusion.
TWENTY-EIGHT
It started in his hands. The cold.
The shivering cold.
The numb, shivering cold.
He couldn’t feel his hands.
The Webley service revolver shivered from his grip and clattered to the floor, like an oath, a blasphemy, a desecration.
Then it spread. The numb, shivering cold spread through his bones, through his veins, through his nerves. He was nothing now but the numb, shivering cold.
And the cause of the numbness, the source of the cold was nothing but the realization that this was his fault.
He had sent this boy to his death.
If he had allowed Macadam to go, as he had wanted to, would Macadam be dead now, or would Macadam’s experience have saved him?
‘I thought I’d lost you once. I’m not ready to go through that again,’ he’d said. And he had sent Willoughby instead. He had sacrificed Willoughby.
Willoughby’s blood was on his hands. His cold, shivering hands. He stooped to retrieve his gun. He had to pull himself together – he owed it to Willoughby to pull himself together. And he couldn’t do that without a gun in his hand.
‘Here, in here.’ His voice cracked.
The blood pounding in his ear beat a jarring counterpoint to the thud of approaching boots.
The world was out of step with itself. And nothing would ever be in step with anything
again.
He couldn’t make sense of it. He couldn’t make sense of anything.
He had been so sure that the murderer was long gone, that the person who had knocked SC Elgar’s helmet from his head was not the killer. That the two events were, in short, unconnected, except by proximity in time and place.
The thudding boots were slowed and stilled and silenced by the scene before them. The blood continued to pound in his ear.
‘Good God.’ It was Leversedge at his shoulder.
Perhaps it was simply shock that gave those two words their edge. Or was there something sharper in his tone? Something recriminatory?
Quinn raised his gun and made a sweeping scan of the church, as if he was casting about for something – or someone – to take a pot shot at.
‘Guv? What shall we do?’
Quinn glanced distractedly towards Leversedge, a frown of irritation in place.
He doubted very much that the killer was still there, but that was what he had thought before, at the school. He had been wrong then and if he was wrong again, it would mean they were all sitting targets for whoever had killed Willoughby. And so, by rights, he should order them all to take cover.
Instead, Quinn stood with his arms outstretched, the revolver now hanging limply in his right hand.
He closed his eyes and waited, keeping his arms horizontal, like some kind of Christ inviting sacrifice.
Genuinely, in that moment, he wished that he had been the one shot and not Willoughby. And if he had believed in prayer, the prayer he would have offered was that God take him instead.
He heard Leversedge take charge – decisive words, clear instructions, a man dispatched to fetch the ME from the school, others dispersed about the church.
Then the heavy footsteps and the warning shouts of police about their duty, stomping up the stairs to the galleries, weaving between the pews, closing down the spaces of the church to squeeze out the presence of any gunman, should there be one there still.
And you had to let them know you were there, and you had to let them know who you were. ‘Police!’ shouted at the top of your lungs, inviting them to take potshots at you, as Willoughby no doubt had, because if you didn’t, heaven help you. The law obliged you to give them the opportunity to surrender, which meant the advantage was always with the criminals. Some would say that Quinn, at certain points in his career, had ridden roughshod over such legal niceties. That was his reputation, certainly. But it was one that he disputed. Decisions made in the heat of the moment. Decisions that could mean the difference between life and death. His life, the other man’s death.
But the other man was supposed to be the villain, not one of his own.
He should have warned the boy. He should have given him fatherly words of advice. Whatever you do, don’t put yourself at risk. Don’t go into an enclosed space where a gunman might be waiting. If you think you have him cornered, wait for support. Use your whistle if necessary. Better to run the risk he gets away than to put your own life in danger. And whatever you do, don’t do this. Don’t go and get yourself killed.
He wanted so much to have said all this that he almost believed that he did.
‘All clear, guv.’ Leversedge’s voice seemed to come to him through some intervening medium, as if the church had filled with a viscous jelly while his eyes were closed.
Quinn’s arms came down slowly, a bird folding its wings. He felt the weight of the revolver like a magnet’s pull.
‘We found this upstairs.’ There was something hopeful in Leversedge’s voice that encouraged Quinn to open his eyes at last and turn towards it.
Leversedge was holding out a brown and somewhat age-worn leather satchel in one gloved hand and a white stick in the other. ‘Looks like our blind man was here.’ His emphasis underlined the scepticism they all felt about the piano tuner’s apparent handicap. ‘The bag’s empty, by the way. In case you were wondering.’
‘It was just a prop,’ said Quinn, unsurprised. ‘Part of the disguise. It might have held the weapon, but that’s all.’
Leversedge nodded and lowered the bag.
It was a valuable find. Quinn knew that he ought to give Leversedge credit. But he found it curiously difficult to do so. Instead, his next observation came out almost as an objection: ‘Constable Elgar said nothing about his assailant having a white stick. Or a bag.’
‘It was dark. He didn’t get a good look at the man.’
‘Even so, he would have noticed a white stick. No, this is not the man who knocked Elgar’s helmet off.’ Quinn looked down at the dead detective. The wonder that he had discerned in his eyes before had settled into a look of mild surprise. ‘Willoughby came looking for a prankster and found a murderer.’
Leversedge nodded and lowered the bag. ‘Well, one thing we can say, it seems even less likely now that the murderer was one of those we had in the Great Hall. Whoever it was must have been hiding here already when poor old Willoughby stumbled in.’ He looked down at Willoughby’s body in silence for some time. ‘Do you want me to tell his folks?’ Leversedge’s voice was strained. This was clearly one responsibility that he would not object to being relieved of.
Quinn holstered his gun and fixed Leversedge with a long stare. ‘No. I’ll do it.’
He filled his lungs with air and turned his back on the altar.
FOURTH MOVEMENT
TWENTY-NINE
He had Macadam drive him.
They were silent in the car. There was nothing to be said. Nothing that could be altered by words.
Macadam was focused on the shifting pool of road picked out by the beams of the car’s headlights. It felt like something unspooling, the flickering image of a strangely monotonous moving picture show.
Quinn saw the tension in Macadam’s shoulders, could sense his jaw clench and grind. He could take a guess at the other man’s thoughts. It would be something to do with the arguments they had had over who should drive. He had finally got his way, he would ruefully, bitterly be thinking. And it would afford him no satisfaction.
Quinn knew his sergeant well enough to bet that he would forego driving ever again if it would bring his fallen comrade back. He could imagine Macadam growing to hate his once-beloved Model T, because each time he drove it would be a reminder that Willoughby was dead instead of him.
They had called in at the Yard on the way, to get the details of Willoughby’s next of kin from his employment file. The file contained a copy of a letter of commendation from Willoughby’s previous commanding officer. The words were warm. They spoke of the young man’s courage and intelligence, of the invaluable contribution he made to the team, and the bright future he no doubt had ahead of him.
They might have provided some comfort to Willoughby’s parents, if they had not been written by DCI Coddington.
Quinn had dropped the letter as if it were contaminated. It lay in the folder, a thin, tawdry thing, devalued and miserable, all the sadder because it must once have been a source of pride. Quinn closed the file on it.
He would find his own words to say to Mr and Mrs Willoughby.
Quinn felt the car’s vibrations in his joints. The engine chugged and rattled unfeelingly, as if they were on an unremarkable journey into a perfectly ordinary darkness. They were going, in fact, to Deptford. But place names had lost their meaning now. There was just this part of the universal darkness – and this part, and this part – each an indistinguishable atom of chaos.
It was some time after eight when he knocked on the door of the terraced house, Macadam shivering uncontrollably at his side. The curtains were drawn, but a faint light showed. The street was quiet. The urgent hammering of the knocker must surely have told those inside the whole story.
A stirring inside. The slow, reluctant surfacing of dread. Footsteps circling. Muted voices, panic-edged.
Somewhere in the distance a drunk began to sing.
The door was opened by a girl aged about sixteen. She looked at them fearfully and pulled a woolle
n shawl tighter across her shoulders. A middle-aged woman, as comfortably round as a dumpling, materialized at her back.
A look of mild concern suddenly hardened into one of pinched grimness.
‘Steve, fetch your pa.’
As she spoke, Quinn knew immediately where Willoughby got his quick, relentless intelligence from. She had taken in the situation immediately. There was no illusion in her eyes. They did not flinch from confronting that which had to be confronted. He sensed she had been bracing herself for this knock at the door for a long time.
A quick slither of boyhood slipped out between them and hotfooted it towards the drunken singing.
Quinn removed his bowler and clutched it in both hands in front of him. He sensed Macadam do the same.
‘Mrs Willoughby, may we come in?’ Quinn did her the honour of meeting her fierce gaze directly.
‘You’d better had,’ she said, and turned her back on them.
She led them into a stuffy, overheated parlour. Red coals glowed cosily, unfeelingly, on the hearth. The room was hung with home-made paper decorations. A Christmas tree stood in one corner, a box of decorations open beside it. Quinn was shocked by this reminder of the coming festivities.
She nodded for them to sit down, and in that nod was acknowledgement of what they had come to say to her. She sat down too, primly, quickly, decisively, as if to say they had better get this over. ‘It’s Martin, isn’t it?’
Her daughter stood watching at the door, her mouth a small circle of fear.
‘I’m afraid so. I’m very sorry, Mrs Willoughby.’ Quinn left it there. It was enough. Enough to say that and continue to meet her gaze. (No, he would not look away. He would not turn from her in her moment of grief.)
The cry in her throat, the flesh of her throat tensed and straining, a grating of flesh, a taut, high, trembling cry. Agony. Agony to hear. Agony given voice. Agony quivering in her throat, finding its voice, feeling its range.
