by Dan Waddell
‘The four others are in there. Including Foster,’ Heather said.
‘He knew.’
‘He found out,’ Heather said. ‘Read this.’
She moved the computer’s mouse, kicking the machine back to life. As the screen brightened, Nigel could see the indexed contents of a folder. The cursor highlighted a document entitled ‘kellogg letter’. It was created on the Wednesday of that week. Heather double-clicked.
Dear Mr Kellogg,
It has been some time since I last heard from you. I draw your attention to my final invoice, which was sent to you with your last batch of research and for which I have yet to receive payment. I trust my work met with your satisfaction.
While on the subject of my research, I think we both know the reason you asked for it. I have been reading the newspapers and have noticed a striking connection between the people you hired me to trace and those who have been victims of the serial killer in Notting Hill. It is not for me to judge how people use the information I provide them with. But, in this case, I think my concern is justified. With that in mind, I think we should perhaps reconsider my fee and seek to increase it sizeably. I have contacts with the police and national newspapers – agencies who would both be interested in getting their hands on the information that I have provided you with. Confidentiality is sacrosanct in my business, and is one tenet to which I strictly adhere. However, in this case, the circumstances are so extraordinary as to test that belief. The ball is in your court.
Sincerely,
Duckworth
Nigel shook his head, unable to believe that Duckworth had attempted to blackmail the killer before approaching the police.
Actually, he could. Presumably the killer knew that, too, and had picked his stooge carefully.
‘We’ve found a post office box address to which he sent the documents. The owner is registered as a Mr Kellogg, 24 Leinster Gardens, W2. There’s a team on the way there now.’
‘Read me that address again,’ Nigel said.
Drinkwater repeated it.
‘Tell your team to turn back. That’s a fake address.’
‘How do you know that?’ Drinkwater said abruptly.
‘Because that’s a fake house.’
‘A fake house?’
‘When they built the Circle Line, they had to demolish a whole load of houses on the route because it was built so near the surface. Most people were paid off and relocated, and their houses were then knocked down. The residents of Leinster Gardens were richer than some of their neighbours and had a bit more clout. They said, with some justification, that a railway track would ruin the line of the street. The Metropolitan Company agreed to build a fake façade to disguise the fact that there was a big gap where numbers 23 and 24 had been.’
‘Shit,’ Heather said, with feeling. Then she asked, ‘How have you got on tracing the Hogg bloodline?’
‘I’ve found two living relatives.’
‘Let’s find them. Quick,’ Heather said. ‘At the moment they’re all we’ve got, and we’re running out of time.’
According to the electoral rolls, Karl Hogg’s last known address was a purpose-built flat nestling at the western end of Oxford Gardens, a blossom-lined street of four- and five-storey Victorian mansions, most of them long since carved up into flats for young professionals.
Nigel and Heather sprinted up to the third floor of a red-brick block that was out of keeping with the stately atmosphere of the rest of the street. They knocked on Hogg’s door. No answer. An elderly woman in a neighbouring flat was in. She confirmed that a Karl lived next door, but she knew him as Karl Keene. Two months ago he had taken away most of his furniture in a van, though he had returned a few times since. When she asked if he’d moved out, he said he was going away but would be around for the next few months.
‘Did he say where his furniture was?’ Heather asked.
She shook her head.
‘Did he work at all?’
‘As far as I know, he worked from home most of the time. He produced his own magazine and a few books, or he used to. He did a lot for the local history group. They’re based in the Methodist church on Lancaster Road. I know he used to give talks and produced things for them.’
They ran the short distance to the church. The history group’s office was tucked around the back of the building, up a flight of stairs. A large woman in a huge pair of brown-rimmed spectacles sat behind a desk in a small room neatly arranged with books and files. She gave them a welcoming grin as they entered.
‘Can I help?’
‘We’re looking for Karl Hogg,’ Heather asked, flourishing her badge.
The woman could not hide her shock. ‘Goodness,’ she said. ‘Karl? We haven’t seen him for a while, I’m afraid.’
‘How long’s a while?’
She took a deep breath and looked out of the window. ‘A few months at least. To be honest, I think he’s got a bit bored with us. He became disillusioned.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Well, we’re just a small local history group. Most of our members are interested in finding out how their relations lived, and a number are interested in the influx of people who emigrated from the Caribbean, the history of Notting Hill Carnival, that sort of thing. Karl’s interests were more, well, idiosyncratic you might say.’
Nigel wandered over to a rotating wire stand featuring a few of the group’s publications. He turned it and saw a thick, bound booklet called ‘The Sound of the Westway’. The author was Karl Hogg. Inside he could see it was self-published; there was little emphasis on design and clarity, page after page of unbroken prose, no illustrations. A labour of love. He scanned the list of contents. The book appeared to be a treatise on the dark underbelly of Notting Hill and the Dale. Stories of the Christie killings on Rillington Place, Jimi Hendrix’s death in a hotel off Ladbroke Grove, the Rachman landlord scandals, the race riots that plagued the area in the 1950s and 60s, the area’s role in the Profumo scandal, the declaration of independence by the residents and squatters of Freston Road, ‘Frestonia’, the spirit of anarchy and independence and otherness that manifested itself in the music of the Clash, who gave the booklet its title.
No mention of the Kensington Killer of 1879.
The woman manning the counter was still explaining why Karl Hogg had drifted away from the group. ‘He became obsessed with something he called psychogeography. I have to say, it went right over the heads of many of our members. He never quite got on to mystical ley lines running beneath the streets, but he was heading that way; it was all-consuming for him, the idea that this area was afflicted – or blessed – with all these past events and would continue to be. He was obsessed.’
Nigel had seen this happen before. Men (usually) traipsing the streets in search of some mythical London soul, convinced that parts of the city had characters and personalities that imprinted themselves on its inhabitants. Nigel had some sympathy for such theories: how else could you explain an area of London like Clerkenwell with its history of agitation and protest? He remembered standing at the site of 10 Rillington Place less than a week before, as the sun drifted down and night followed, yards away from where he had found Nella Perry’s body, and the familiar humbling feeling he knew so well: in the presence of history, on the site of an infamous event, picturing what happened there and how its repercussions still echoed down the years. He had sensed, even then, the killer knew all about the area’s history and notoriety, even revelled in it.
‘Where is he now? Do you know?’ he heard Heather ask.
‘No one’s seen him. Only the other day we were talking about it. How over the last two or three years he became a solitary soul. Before then, you used to see him in the pubs, on the street, walking, talking to everyone: he claimed to be listening to the music of the streets. But then he became withdrawn, odd. He had a few grand dreams and schemes, but they came to nothing.’
‘Any places he used to visit regularly? Local pubs, perhaps?’
&nb
sp; ‘The Kensington Park on the corner of Lancaster Road and Ladbroke Grove. Horrible, grotty pub, but he liked it. John Christie drank in there, he always told us, as if that was going to change anyone’s mind. Other than that, his Aunt Liz lives in a tower block at the top of the Grove. He used to pay her visits.’
‘Thanks,’ Heather said, and turned to leave.
‘I did hear he’d taken a bar job.’
‘Where?’
‘The Prince of Wales.’
Foster came to, the drug wearing off, the pain rushing in, bursting through. He had watched while the killer had injected him. Was this the dose that ended his life? But he regained consciousness, a mixed blessing. He tried to move his shoulder but was met with a burning flash of agony in his right wrist as he flexed his hand. He tried to cry out but the tape was in place.
‘I broke your right wrist and right ankle while you were out of it,’ Hogg’s reedy voice said. ‘You should thank me for sparing you that experience. Keep still. We have only two more breaks, then this is over.’
Foster tried to remember where those wounds would be inflicted by recalling the injuries inflicted on Eke Fairbairn, but his mind, scrambled by pain and narcotics, refused to concentrate on one thing for more than a few seconds. Any notion of time had long since gone.
He seemed to drift once more. When he returned, the tape had been removed. Foster, disoriented, muttered woozily. Each word was an effort. Hogg ignored him.
There was a muffled noise from behind one of the boxes.
‘Everyone is waking up,’ Hogg said.
Foster heard him opening a bottle of some description. From the corner of his eye he watched as he went behind the pile of boxes. He could hear a man groaning, the voice soft and confused. The killer let out a low shushing noise, then re-emerged syringe in hand.
‘Who’s in there?’ Foster said. There had been only five victims in the 1879 case. Was this a sixth?
‘It’s someone who gave me a helping hand over the past few weeks. Unwittingly. Though he did grow to be suspicious. However, I picked him well: rather than running to the police, he demanded money for his silence.’ He smiled. ‘He’ll get his payment later.’
Foster fought to keep conscious. He guessed the fracture to his leg might be compound, the pieces of bone having pierced the skin. Without instant treatment it was probably well on the way to becoming gangrenous. Even if he got out of here, saving it was unlikely. He let his head rest back. Bound and drugged, his body broken and battered, he could see no escape.
‘Did you bring them all here?’ he asked. Foster wanted to know as much as possible. Not that it mattered now.
‘Except Ellis,’ Hogg said, out of sight. ‘I kept him at a place I rented. Cost me an arm and a leg in sedatives but it was worth it, though I got the dosage a bit wrong. Killed him before I had a chance to do it. You live and you learn. For the rest, this place was ideal: you can bring the van in, it’s secure, no prying neighbours and I’ve soundproofed it so no one can hear you scream.’
‘Were they all alive, like this, when you…’
‘Yes. On the same bed. Drugged, but they felt it. I wanted them to.’
Foster felt his gorge rise. The anger gave him strength. There was no way he was going to lie here, tortured and waiting to die.
‘You aren’t killing to avenge anything,’ Foster spat out. ‘Those people were innocent. You’re doing this because you enjoy it, you sadistic bastard. Just because you think you have a reason – and some pseudo-intellectual horseshit about being affected by the air – it doesn’t make you better than your ancestor. In fact, you’re worse.’
He paused there, he had to, the effort too much. As he recovered his breath, summoning the will to goad the killer more, he sensed him at his side.
‘You know what the most painful bone in the body is to break, don’t you?’ the voice whispered directly into his ear.
Foster did not want to hear the answer. ‘Fuck you.’
The killer, face red with anger, reapplied the tape. Then he raised the sledgehammer and brought it down with full force on Foster’s collarbone. He felt it break instantly in midsection; a bolt of fiery pain powered through his neck and shoulder and down his right-hand side.
Foster issued a cry that came from his boots.
As he writhed, the killer went out of view, returning with a syringe, which he stabbed into Foster’s arm.
The light was beginning to drain from the day as Heather and Nigel sped to the Prince of Wales. The staff sketched in the final few minutes before Foster’s disappearance. How he came in search of Karl Hogg, shared a drink with him and collapsed, presumably drunk. A member of staff claimed he appeared woozy when he arrived, though Heather assigned that to exhaustion. When he slumped at the bar, Hogg said he’d overdone it and would take him home. He then took him to his vehicle, a small red van, and drove away. Foster’s car was still where he had left it, parked a short distance from the pub.
Hogg was paid cash; he worked there Friday and Sunday lunchtimes; the only contact they had for him was a mobile-phone number, which was switched off. He was not a registered owner of a vehicle, which closed off one avenue, and he didn’t seem to own a credit card.
‘The last of the bohemians,’ Heather muttered, sardonically.
An address came through for Liza Hogg. Nigel and Heather raced around there, Nigel unable to prevent himself from staring at the digital clock, illuminated on the dash, ticking over. It was ten in the evening when they arrived at Liza Hogg’s flat in a tower block on the eastern side of Ladbroke Grove, looming over the Great Western running in and out of Paddington. Heather knocked at the door. No answer. Heather swore. She knocked again. Silence. Nigel peered through the window beside the door into a dimly lit kitchen, the only colour a pair of yellow rubber gloves draped over the taps.
They were just about to start knocking on the neighbour’s door when the light went on. There was a rattle of chains, and the door opened a fraction.
The worn, pinched face of an elderly woman peeped cautiously through the gap. ‘Yes,’ she muttered, wearily.
‘Mrs Hogg?’
The woman nodded.
Heather flashed her badge. ‘Sorry if we’ve woken you,’ she said softly. ‘We need a quick word, nothing to worry about.’
Liza Hogg invited them in, flicking on light switches as she passed them in her dressing gown and slippers. They followed her through to the sitting room, where three cats had made a bed of the sofa. Liza shooed them away.
They sat down, Nigel and Heather on the small, threadbare sofa decorated with a faded floral pattern. Nigel kept quiet – he felt awkward even being there, but Heather had insisted he came.
Heather apologized for barging in. ‘We’re actually interested in the whereabouts of a relative of yours.’
‘I’ve only one,’ she said slowly, as if still escaping the clutches of sleep. ‘You mean Karl?’
‘Have you seen him recently?’
Liza shook her head. ‘He doesn’t visit me much these days.’
‘He used to?’
‘He used to live with me. After all that happened.’
‘All what happened?’
Liza, more awake it seemed, sighed deeply. ‘Where do you want to start? The poor lad hasn’t had an easy life.’
Heather and Nigel exchanged a glance.
‘Go on,’ Heather urged.
‘His father raised him and his brother for a while. But then he was driving back from work one day when a drink-driver lost control and smashed into him. He died. Karl took it very bad. He was close to his dad. And to his brother. He came to live with me; his brother went to university. They were strange lads, the pair of them. His brother, David, had a lot of problems. He took his own life at university. Hanged himself.’
Nigel had witnessed much of this tragedy while researching the bloodline at the FRC, but it was only here, coming from the mouth of an old woman, that he saw just how bleak it had been. As if their blood had be
en tainted.
‘Karl withdrew completely when he moved in. Sat up here staring at the walls. Didn’t want to do anything with life. The only thing he was interested in was our family’s history. You see, we’ve a rather chequered past.’
‘Yes,’ Heather said. ‘Did Karl know about that?’
Liza nodded. ‘We all knew about that.’
‘You said Karl got interested?’
‘To say the least. All he did was research that. He’d go to the sites of the murders. All day and all night he walked. It was the 1980s; a lot was going on around here. Finally he came out of himself, starting to write about the place, its history. Became obsessed with that, too. At least it stopped him reading and rereading the letter.’
Liza got up and shuffled to a drawer in a bureau at the far side of the room. She opened it and rustled around. Time seemed to stand still. Nigel could not bear it. Come on! he thought to himself, casting an impatient glance at a wooden clock on the mantelpiece. Eventually the old woman emerged with a piece of yellowing paper, neatly folded.
‘This is the letter I showed him.’ She handed it to them. ‘It’s the suicide note written by Segar’s son, Esau. Karl used to read it almost every night.’
Heather opened it up carefully. The paper was fragile, the folds worn almost to the point of disintegration. Nigel leaned in so he could read it too. The writing was a scrawl, though still legible. There was no introduction, no signature, but it looked to Nigel as if it was genuine.
I knew he killed. I cannot relate what it was that drew me to that conclusion. The look in his eye, the hours he began to keep, a sense of awful foreboding. As the police discovered each victim, it became clearer to me that my father was responsible. I could point to no evidence save his night-time excursions and the cold glimmer of hatred in his eyes. He had long since stopped communicating with me. I disappointed him, that was clear. I did all I could to keep out of his path.
