by Dan Waddell
No reply.
‘Is someone there?’ he repeated, more insistent.
A figure appeared at his right shoulder. Foster struggled to focus on his face. He made out dark hair, and that the figure appeared to be holding something, but he was unable to make out what.
‘Who’s that?’ he moaned, his voice weak.
No answer. Foster repeated his question. Still no reply.
‘What the fuck is this?’ he asked louder, trying to move his arms.
The figure continued to stand by him. Then he spoke, voice clipped, without emotion.
‘This,’ he said slowly, ‘is retribution.’
He strapped some tape over Foster’s mouth.
Foster felt his insides lurch with terror. He tried to spit out the tape, force it off. It was impossible. The man ignored his muffled cries, moved away out of sight. Foster felt him undo the buckle around his right ankle. Instinctively when it was free, his foot kicked out, but he had no strength and no other limb to fight with. The man held down his leg with one firm hand; there was a scraping noise as he pulled something across the floor, another smaller table of some sort. He lifted Foster’s foot so the heel and ankle rested on this new platform; the section of his leg from knee to ankle was unsupported. The man strapped his ankle to its new position.
Foster’s vision became clearer. At last he could make out the man. It was Karl. The instrument he was holding above his head was a sledgehammer; Foster watched as he lifted it high. He began to struggle against his bindings, trying to jerk and twist his body out of the way, but he was too tightly pinioned.
‘No!’ Foster screamed, but the tape blocked all sound.
He knew what was about to happen, but could do nothing except wait for the impact. There was a crack as the hammer came down with sufficient weight to smash both his tibia and fibula. The pain roared up from his shin like fire.
He let out a howl of agony no one could hear. Then slipped out of consciousness.
Nigel stared out of the window of the FRC canteen at the grey morning, silently reproaching himself. Had he checked out the change of name sooner, they might have had a chance to warn Foster. Heather told him to forget it. Foster’s phone records revealed that the call that had lured him away from the family history meeting had been made from a public phone box on Ladbroke Grove just before six p.m., well before Nigel had confirmed Foster was a descendant. Still Nigel blamed himself. He went over all the details he had soaked up over the past week: the newspaper reports, trial transcripts, the endless certificates and census returns he had waded through, searching for some detail that might lead them to Foster and the killer. Nothing came. Time was bleeding away from them. By the end of that day Foster would be killed. He forced himself to think once more.
Heather, face pale and wan, had gone to join the search. Every cop in London was being called in to help, all leave cancelled. Their leads were turning up nothing. During the night word had come that Eke Fairbairn and the killer’s DNA were not a match. Their one hope – that pursuing the descendants of Eke Fairbairn might lead them to Foster’s kidnapper and their serial killer – had been extinguished.
Nigel felt useless, knowing of no way he could help. The last victim in 1879 had been found in a small garden square off Portobello Road. That was being watched. There seemed little more for him to do but wait and see whether half the Metropolitan Police could scour the entire area and find their colleague. For the sake of completeness he had finished tracing Pfizer’s descendants. Foster was the last of the line, the killer’s only choice.
The centre opened, the weekend amateurs filing in to lock away their belongings. Nigel sat watching them come and go, a steady stream of people, a younger crowd than during the week, even a few children among them. Before long the room was filled with people having a coffee, catching up, poring over documents they had collected that morning and planning their day’s research.
Phil, the whistling receptionist, walked in, looking around. He saw Nigel and made his way over.
‘Hello,’ he said in his jovial manner. ‘You been here all night, then?’
Nigel nodded, hoping he hadn’t found him just to make small talk.
‘Have you seen Dave Duckworth anywhere?’
Nigel hadn’t.
‘Strange,’ he said. ‘There’s a group of American tourists at the front desk. He’s supposed to help guide their search. He’s half an hour late.’
Probably caught in traffic, Nigel thought.
‘Not like him, because these people look pretty wealthy,’ Phil added.
‘I haven’t seen him since yesterday,’ Nigel said eventually, remembering the conversation about his client with the rare surname, Kellogg…
The thought struck Nigel so suddenly, he almost jumped. Could it be a coincidence? He needed to get to the newspaper library to find out.
Foster drifted back to consciousness, drenched in sweat; only when he twitched did he feel the coruscating stab of pain from his fractured shin. He knew the break couldn’t be clean. The tape had been removed from his mouth. He turned his head to one side and vomited copiously. Had he passed out through pain or been drugged once more?
He knew Karl was the killer. He knew he was the fifth victim.
‘Why are you doing this?’ he spat out between gasps for air, his body craving oxygen.
‘As I said, retribution.’ The voice remained calm, reasoned. Without malice.
A surge of pain left him speechless. He seemed to lose consciousness for a few more seconds, though it could have been longer. Sweat poured from his brow. He came round again, the last words of his assailant on his mind.
‘Retribution?’ he gasped eventually. ‘What for?’
‘If you were more aware of your family history, you would know.’
Foster tried to concentrate on what Karl was saying, to forget the pain. It took every ounce of effort. ‘What about my family history?’
‘You mean you haven’t guessed yet?’
‘I’m not in the mood for a fucking quiz,’ he hissed, regretting the effort when the pain coursed through him and he vomited once more.
‘It will hurt less if you remain still. The whole ordeal will be less painful if you remain still. And keep quiet, or the tape goes back on.’
Foster, feeling faint, fell silent. The soundproofing on the wall, the tape across his mouth; this must be a place where they might be heard. At some stage he knew he must gather his strength and let out the loudest scream he could muster. He might only get one chance.
‘If you knew your family history, then you would know your great-great-great-grandfather was Detective Henry Pfizer. The crooked German bastard who fitted up Eke Fairbairn to get the press off his back.’
The words came to him through a fog of agony. Finally, they registered. His ancestor?
The judicial murder of Eke Fairbairn was the corpse in his family’s basement.
Consciousness began to ebb away. He could not hear a thing in this tomb. The silence was broken only by the killer’s voice and his own wracked gasps of pain. He tried to fight unconsciousness; next time he might not wake up. To remain alert he focused on the shattered limb, going so far as to move his leg, hoping the awful, searing pain would ward off oblivion.
‘Pfizer was your ancestor,’ Karl said. ‘You’ll be punished for what he did. Just like the descendants of Norwood, Darbyshire, Pearcey and MacDougall were. You already know this, but before he was executed the police decided to try and beat a confession out of him. That could only have taken place with the sanction of your ancestor. They fractured six bones in his body.’
Six, Foster thought. Five more to go. His whole body tightened at the thought. He must find a way to get out, to deter the killer.
‘Why pick me?’ asked Foster. ‘There must have been other descendants of Pfizer.’
‘No. You’re the last one. It all ends with you. And it seems appropriate that you’re also a police officer. Thankfully. I picked the most successful of
all of them. With Darbyshire, Perry, it was always the wealthiest. Call it class envy, if you want.’
Karl walked into Foster’s field of vision on his left, preceded by the smell of stale smoke. Foster remembered the cigarette he’d bummed. Then he knew. That was how the killer ensnared his victims. All were social or committed smokers. Karl found a way to introduce himself, offered them a smoke and that was it – lights out. Inhaling a cigarette doused in GHB would render you helpless in a matter of seconds, reaching the brain quicker than any spiked drink.
‘Now, are you ready?’ Karl asked.
Foster’s mind swam. He thought of his father. The last few moments before he took the cocktail. He had remained resolute and stoical. The look of a man staring at the void and the void looking away. Death came as a release, a balm for someone so eager to escape. Would he be able to face the end of his life with such dignity?
The tape was laid across his mouth. He could taste the plastic. His left arm was unstrapped, laid outwards, wrist facing up, his hand resting on another table. Foster stared straight into the eyes of the killer, not once looking away. Karl did not return his gaze, merely lifted his boot and brought it down swiftly on Foster’s forearm.
This time the break was clean. Compared to the nightmarish pain from his leg, his arm simply went numb. Foster never flinched or once looked away from the killer. He made sure his eyes bored into him the whole time he was at his side.
He waited for him to remove the tape so he could use his anger, all the pain, to let out a roar.
Nothing. The tape remained. He lost consciousness once more. He came round, the tape removed, opened his mouth but the noise was weak. He licked his parched lips. Through the haze he thought of another tactic.
‘This can be done another way,’ Foster whispered hoarsely. ‘I know about Eke Fairbairn. I know about the injustice.’ He stopped to grimace, catch his breath. ‘I know about the beating, Stafford Pearcey’s statement, the knife being planted, the judge’s summing up. What happened was a travesty. But there is such a thing as a pardon. The case can be reopened. Your ancestor’s name can be cleared.’
Karl was back out of sight.
‘Eke Fairbairn is not my ancestor,’ he said.
Nigel headed for the national newspaper library, making it there in less than half an hour. Inside he ordered the 1879 editions of the Kensington News. The story he wanted he’d first seen on Monday, in the issue of The Times on the day following Fairbairn’s conviction. But it was only a few paragraphs. He needed more detail. When the volume arrived he flicked through to the edition for the third week of May, the first following the trial. A report of the events in court shared the front page with the story he was looking for.
MAN SLAYS WIFE AND DAUGHTERS
Yesterday morning, shortly after seven o’clock, Mr Inspector Dodd of Kensington Division received a report from a neighbour of blood washing under the front door of a house on Pamber Street. The abode was the home and business of Segar Kellogg, chandler shop owner.
Inspector Dodd proceeded to Pamber Street to find no little excitement in a neighbourhood already in foment over the appalling exploits of the so-called Kensington Killer. He went to the door and indeed saw what appeared to be blood on the top step.
He knocked and received no answer. Then he tried the door and found it open. To his horror, behind it he found there a boy, unconscious yet still alive.
His body was awash with blood. Behind him was a trail leading to the entrance to the cellar, from where it seemed the stricken boy had dragged his wounded, mutilated frame along the cold wooden floor before passing out. The detective followed the bloody path down to the depths, where he was met with a scene of utter carnage.
The woman was quite dead, her throat carved open. Alongside her he found the cold and rigid bodies of two children. A short distance away, on the floor, was the corpse of a man with a knife protruding from his chest.
On removal of the body the surgeon’s surmises received their confirmation. Mr Kellogg had most likely murdered his wife, stabbed his son in the neck and then smothered his poor little ones before turning his own instrument of murder on himself. No other suspect is being sought.
Neighbours said Mr Kellogg was a devout Christian and abstainer. Detectives have not ruled out the suggestion that he was in the grip of religious mania.
Nigel needed to find Duckworth.
‘Then why?’ Foster asked, straining now to make himself heard. ‘If you have nothing to do with Eke Fairbairn, why are you doing all this?’
There was a sigh.
‘The police arrested an innocent man for a crime he didn’t commit to save themselves from criticism. On the day that Fairbairn was convicted, the real killer, a man named Segar Kellogg, murdered his wife and two of his children. He slit her throat, stabbed his own son in the neck and smothered two seven-year-old girls. If he had been in the dock – if the police, if your ancestor, had done their jobs correctly – then that family would have lived. An evil man would have swung.
‘The son survived. His vocal chords had been severed. He never spoke again. Never recovered from what he had seen. There was some semblance of a life for a short while. He changed his name to Hogg, which has been our family name ever since, got married, had two kids. But it never went away. Eventually he decided he couldn’t live with what had happened, the horror of what he remembered. Before he died, he wrote down everything he had seen but had never been able to speak about. How he had followed his father at night and watched him slaughter two men. How fear of his father had prevented him from telling anyone. His regret at obeying that fear and how he hated the forces of law and order for getting the wrong man.’
‘Have you heard of forgiveness?’ Foster asked.
Hogg ignored him. ‘You don’t know what it’s like living with that mark on you. Knowing those genes course through your veins. That your blood is polluted. The stain has always been with us. I knew that, the day I read the letter written by Esau Hogg. I turned thirty-five in January this year, the same age Segar Hogg was when he murdered his wife and two daughters, and Esau’s age when he decided he couldn’t take living with the pain any more and hanged himself. I knew then that it was time to finish it all. It ends here with me. There is no one to follow.’
‘But what about other members of your family? Presumably they lived a decent life if you’re here today. For God’s sake, we’re more than a bunch of genes; they don’t define us.’
‘Coming from someone who’s merely the latest in a long line of policemen, that’s pretty rich. You’ve never thought there may be something genetic about that?’
Foster clenched his teeth against the pain. He found that if he didn’t move, then it was possible to ignore it; helped, he thought, by whatever drugs were still swimming in his system.
‘My ancestor may have stitched up Fairbairn. But that doesn’t mean the rest of us are bent cops. There is such a thing as free will. These things aren’t preordained.’
‘You heard of psychogeography?’
Foster vaguely remembered Nigel Barnes mentioning it. Some bullshit about how a place affects the way people act.
‘The theory is that the environment in which you live has an impact on people’s emotions and behaviour. I walked the same streets where my ancestor preyed on his victims. I was born a street away from where he slaughtered his family. I learned of what he did and how he escaped justice. How my family has been stained with this ever since.’
‘Sounds like an excuse not an explanation.’
Hogg snorted derisively. ‘I’d expect little else from a policeman. Funny, the very people you would think might pay attention to theories like this, theories that might help explain the behaviour they have to deal with every day, are the most dismissive.’
Foster dry-retched. Composed himself. ‘I don’t go in for theories.’ He drew a deep breath; he felt himself starting to drift, but steeled himself. ‘There are people who live decent lives, there are criminals… and
then there are weak-minded sadists like you.’
Hogg laughed falsely, almost condescendingly. ‘That’s enough conversation for now,’ he said.
Foster heard him pull a line of tape from the roll. He tried to turn his head but couldn’t prevent it being strapped over his mouth. He felt a hand on his chest. He watched as the killer pulled back his fist and slammed it into his side. He felt the air escape from him in a rush, a stabbing pain in his ribs. His body, acting on instinct to protect itself, attempted to twist away, aggravating his other wounds. Another punch landed on the same area as the first. It felt like a hot knife was being thrust between the muscles of his ribs. The area burned.
Make this end, Foster said silently, plaintively to a God in whom he had never believed.
Nigel discovered that Esau Kellogg had changed his surname to Hogg. He’d got married and tried to forge a new life at a house in a notorious slum on the outskirts of Kensington. The couple had two children but, two years after the second was born, Esau ended his life at the end of a rope.
Nigel traced the bloodline, spinning through the generations as fast as possible. The line was weak, but it survived. He reached the present day. Only two descendants remained: a man, who would now be thirty, named Karl Hogg; and a woman of seventy-six named Liza. He had no address for Karl other than the house his parents had been living in when he was born. The last address he could find for Liza was more than forty years old. He would need Heather’s help if he was to track them both down.
Nigel called her to pass on what he’d found. She was on her way to Duckworth’s flat on the border of Islington and Hackney – to see if he was there, and to speak to him about the client he had mentioned, named Kellogg. Heather suggested Nigel meet her there and give her the details.
When Nigel arrived, Heather and Drinkwater, faces taut, were in Duckworth’s small, ordered office. There was no sign of him. Heather was holding an olive-green box file. She threw it down on the table for Nigel to look at. A white tab bore the printed name Kellogg. Nigel opened the crammed file. There was a series of brown paper document holders. The first was labelled with black felt tip: Darbyshire. Inside were original copies of birth, marriage and death certificates, running from the 1870s – the marriage of Ivor Darbyshire, newspaper editor – to the present day. Nigel flicked through to the present. There appeared to be around twenty living descendants. Among their records he found the birth certificate of James Darbyshire.
