The Hogarth Conspiracy

by Alex Connor

  “Oh, don’t listen to my gran,” a young man said suddenly, ushering the old woman into the front room and opening the door to Tully. “Malcolm Jenner said someone had been asking around. I was expecting you. Said your name was Sully.”

  “Tully.”

  “Yeah, Tully.”

  Walking into a narrow hallway made even narrower by packing cases, Tully followed Terry Shaw into the back kitchen. A cat sat on the table next to a half-eaten can of sardines.

  “Lunch,” Terry explained.

  “For you or the cat?”

  He smiled, clearly cold in his thin, creased shirt, his bony hands thrust deep into his pockets. Unshaven, his hair greasy and uncombed, a patch of acne on his forehead, Terry Shaw looked as though he hadn’t slept properly for days. And he certainly didn’t look like the kind of man Bernie Freeland would have hired for his cabin crew.

  “You heard about your boss?”

  “Yeah.” He pushed the cat farther along the table and sat down, indicating the seat next to him for Tully.

  “I thought it was too good to last,” he went on, sounding despondent, running his nail along the table edge. “People like me don’t get chances like that every day.”

  “Won’t you go back to Australia?”

  “What for? Mr. Freeland’s dead; all his staff will be laid off.” He stared dreamily ahead. “I wonder what they’ll do with the jet. You think the person who buys it will want to hire me? I know I look a bit skanky now, but I scrub up well. I was proud of that job, that uniform. People envied me when I told them what I did. My girlfriend couldn’t get over it.”

  “Terry, I want you to tell me about the flight.”

  “I’m never going to do another one, am I?” he said as the old lady shuffled into the kitchen and put on the kettle. “It’s okay, Nan; I’ll make the tea.”

  She turned and stared at Tully. “I know you,” she said. “I know your voice.”

  “You don’t, Nan.”

  “I do too,” she said emphatically, “You do adverts on the TV. I know your voice.”

  Amused, Tully nodded. “You’re right, Mrs. Shaw. That is my pleasure.”

  “You an actor?” Terry asked, impressed.

  “Sometimes.”

  Terry frowned. “So why are you doing this?”

  “For money, dear boy. That’s why we all work.”

  The old lady was watching him as though transfixed.

  “Are you queer?”

  Tully shook his head. “No, Mrs. Shaw; sorry to disappoint you.”

  “Then why did you call him ‘dear boy’?”

  “Just a figure of speech.”

  “Oh, I see,” she said seriously. “I just wondered. You know, you hear about actors, and you wonder. So many of them on the television act feminine these days.”

  “Nan.” Terry’s voice was almost a wail. “Go in the front room. I’ll bring you some tea.”

  She ignored her grandson and stared at the newcomer.

  “Say it for me.”

  Tully’s eyebrows rose. “I beg your pardon.”

  “Say the advert for me,” she repeated, humming the jingle tune to herself. “Go on. We don’t get famous people here often. Say it for me.”

  Impatiently, Terry steered his grandmother into the front room. He came back to the kitchen and with a wary expression asked, “Why are you really here, Mr. Tully?” Tully didn’t bother to correct the “mister.” “Malcolm Jenner said you wanted to know about the flight, but I don’t know any more than he does. In fact, he did most of the serving of the food and drinks and I was just helping him, learning how to do it. You know …”

  “You didn’t overhear anything? Any arguments?”

  “Nah.”

  “And you didn’t know the girls before the flight?”

  He flushed. “How would I know them? They were all tarts, and anyway, they were like in the bedroom most of the time.”

  “What happened after you landed in London?”

  “Bernie Freeland and another crew flew on to New York. I stayed here.”

  “When did you hear that Marian Miller was murdered?”

  “Malcolm phoned and told me Mr. Freeland didn’t need me anymore, and then he told me about her. You can imagine how I felt when I heard Freeland had died.” He stared mournfully at the tabletop. “I thought it was too much of a lucky break. I don’t get lucky like that. None of our family is lucky. Not like that. And now I’m stuck here, back living with my mother and grandmother.”

  “Will you really never go back to Australia?”

  “Dunno. Haven’t made up my mind yet.”

  Tully sighed. “So you can’t remember anything strange or suspicious that happened on that flight?”

  “No. It was heaven, something I’ll never forget. Like being a movie star.” He leaned toward Tully. “As for Bernie Freeland … Malcolm said maybe his death was not an accident.

  “What I said to Mr. Jenner was in confidence.”

  “Yeah, well, he told me. But I’m not likely to tell anyone, am I? I mean, what’s to gain? Anyway, it’s just gossip. Malcolm likes a good story to tell over a beer.” He stroked the cat absentmindedly. “Besides, if you ask me, I don’t think there’s anything to it. Just people dramatizing things. People die every day, so why not them?”

  “Marian Miller was murdered.”

  “She was in a dangerous business, wasn’t she?” he said flatly. “I mean, I’m sorry her and Mr. Freeland died, but they just ran out of luck, that’s all.” He looked around the gloomy kitchen. “Happens to everyone.”

  “Can I see the photographs you took on Bernie Freeland’s plane?”

  “They didn’t come out,” Terry said mournfully. “New cell phone too. Maybe I couldn’t work it, maybe I wiped them by mistake, I dunno. But they’re not there now. My girlfriend thinks I made it all up about going on the jet. The photos were proof, but I haven’t even got those. Typical; just my luck. Just my friggin’ luck.”

  Twenty-Four

  VICTOR BALLAM FELT THE BLOOD PUMPING IN HIS EARS AS HE ROLLED over. He stared blearily up at the ceiling and attempted to lift his throbbing head off the floor. It took him several seconds to remember where he was and another moment to remember Annette Dvorski. Using the sofa for support, he levered himself upright, flinching as he became aware of the blood that had seeped into the back of his shirt collar. The winter light in the room was dimming with another fall of snow; the sound of sirens rose morosely from the muffled street below.

  As carefully as he could, Victor stood up, trying to breathe evenly as his eyes adjusted to the lack of light. The French doors were open, letting in freezing air that was chilling the apartment, and he realized that it was the cold that had brought him around. He heard a muffled sound coming from the back of the apartment and picked his way carefully toward the bedroom but realized that the noise was only the sound of a television coming from the neighboring apartment.

  Disconcerted, he entered the deserted kitchen. The sidelights were on, turning the metal surfaces into a fleet of mirrors. Victor looked around and reached for one of the large kitchen knives next to the sink. Feeling more confident with a weapon in his hand, he went to the bathroom, pushed open the door, and looked in.

  “Annette?” he whispered groggily, then, more loudly, “Annette?”

  No answer.

  Closing the door behind him, Victor walked back into the sitting room, then stopped short. The French doors were closed. Someone had been in the apartment. Thoroughly unnerved, he tightened his grip on the knife and looked around, spotting the suitcase by the door and then, from behind the sofa, a bare foot poking out.

  “Oh, Christ.”

  Warily he nudged the foot with his own. There was no response.

  He pushed the sofa aside to reveal a woman’s naked body, her limbs spread-eagled. Blood was still seeping slowly out from between her legs, darkening the carpet beneath her. Around her mouth ulcers bubbled from burned skin and puffed-up lips, and her
face was flecked with bloodied foam. Bending over the woman, her eyes fixed open in death, Victor recoiled from the pungent smell of ammonia bleach that came from her bared lips.

  Bleach had been poured over Annette Dvorski’s breasts and vagina and into her mouth. The corrosive liquid had burned through skin and tissue, tearing into her insides, devouring her flesh. She had been forced to ingest the bleach, and then, as her throat contracted, she had coughed up a spray of blood and foam in her last dying moments, trying to expel the liquid as it reached her lungs and killed her.

  Stepping back, Victor stared in horror at the gruesome sight, his heart hammering wildly. He had to get away. Now. He couldn’t stay there, couldn’t be found in Bernie Freeland’s apartment with a brutally murdered girl. Taking a rug off the sofa, Victor laid it over the remains of Annette Dvorski, getting a sheen of blood on his hand. Hurriedly he wiped it off with a handkerchief, stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket, and tried to calm himself.

  He had found Annette Dvorski too late. And although he hadn’t killed her, it would look as though he had. Whoever had entered and exited by the French doors had locked them, setting him up for her murder. In fact, on a warm night, without the bite of winter cold to slap him back into consciousness, Victor would still be lying on the floor next to the dead girl.

  Realizing that the killer might at that very moment be reporting a disturbance in Bernie Freeland’s apartment, Victor took a deep breath, steadied his nerves, and composed himself. His instinct was to run from the apartment building, but that would look suspicious. He had to blend in, appear as though he belonged there, an occupant of the building. He had to appear so natural and relaxed that even if he passed the police on his way out, he wouldn’t warrant a second glance.

  His gaze fell on Annette’s suitcase by the door. Confused, he considered his options. He couldn’t very well leave the case behind and risk someone finding out who she was and making a connection—however slight—to him, so he’d have to take the suitcase with him. After all, who ever heard of a murderer trying to escape with luggage? Another thought occurred to Victor as he looked around for Annette’s handbag. Finding it on the bed, he tipped out all the contents: makeup, letters, hairbrush, passport, and, to his surprise, her cell phone. When had she had an opportunity to replace it in her bag? he wondered. Or had the killer put it there? He put everything back, then crammed the handbag into the suitcase and closed it. He was hoping that without any means of identification left behind, it might take the New York police a while to find out who the dead girl was. And even longer to discover her connection to Mrs. Fleet, the doomed flight, or Marian Miller’s murder in London.

  Wiping his fingerprints off the knife, off all the surfaces he had touched, and finally off the front door handle, Victor left the apartment with the suitcase. He was finding it difficult to think clearly or move fast because of the blow to his head. Avoiding the back stairs in case that might look suspicious, he made for the elevator. Remembering the bloodstain on his neck, he turned up his coat collar and stood watching the yellow numbers as the elevator traveled up to his floor. Every nerve in Victor’s body was urging him to drop the case and run, but he waited until at last the elevator arrived.

  With relief, he got in—the only passenger—but the doors didn’t close immediately, remaining open as the elevator next to his stopped. They stayed open just long enough for Victor to see two police officers step out. Rigid with fear, he held his breath as they passed. He was standing in plain sight, blood on his clothes, waiting for them to notice him. Then, slowly, agonizingly slowly, the elevator doors closed, sliding together, concealing Victor. Then, equally slowly, the elevator took him down yard by painful yard to the waiting freedom of the street below.

  Twenty-Five

  ONCE OUTSIDE, VICTOR PICKED UP SPEED, PUTTING AS MUCH DISTANCE as he could between himself and Bernie Freeland’s apartment building. He was conscious of the weight of the case in his hand and the pain in the back of his head. What on earth am I doing? he asked himself. He wasn’t a hard man. He’d been in jail certainly—but for fraud, cosseted in a little enclave of similar criminals, hardly coming into contact with the worst prisoners. His so-called crime had been trivial in the light of their excesses. Envy had been his worst enemy; fellow prisoners had mocked him for his culture, his status, his choice of career. Some had enjoyed a certain schadenfreude at his downfall. But Victor had enjoyed no gratification whatsoever for what he had done; he had simply been a white-collar criminal—if indeed he was a criminal at all—and had served his time.

  Now here he was, on a Manhattan street in the snow, fleeing from a murder scene, with the victim’s suitcase and passport in his possession. He was quite alone and seriously out of his depth. Naively, he had thought that the job for Mrs. Fleet would just involve the finding and passing on of information. A quick, reasonable service for a good fee.

  But in truth, he’d been blinded by the idea of getting his hands on the Hogarth painting, so eager to secure his revenge that he had ducked reality. But that reality had come home to him now. It had jolted him as much as the blow to his head and the sight of the dead woman.

  His own stupidity stunned him. He had placed himself at the scene of the crime and managed to set himself up as the main suspect. You bloody fool, he thought. Where will you go now? Annette Dvorski was dead. The police would be after her killer, and the killer was the only person who knew that Victor was innocent. The only reason he hadn’t been killed himself was that he was the scapegoat.

  Victor reached into his pocket, flicked on his cell phone, and called Thomas Harcourt in London.

  “Tully, it’s Victor. Annette Dvorski’s dead.”

  “What?”

  “I found her. It was set up to look like I’d killed her. I’m coming back to London right away. Don’t tell Mrs. Fleet. Don’t say a word.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “What d’you think? I’m in trouble, and I want you to be very careful.”

  “The people you asked me to look at?” Tully said. “The senior pilot’s an ass but clean, and I don’t think Terry Shaw and Malcolm Jenner have the making of killers. I haven’t spoken to the other pilot yet, John Yates, but I’m working on it. The stewards are really cut up about losing their jobs. Working for Bernie Freeland was the best thing in their lives. They wouldn’t want anything to happen to their boss, let alone kill him.”

  “Neither of them had anything to tell you about the flight?”

  “Not a thing. And the photographs Terry Shaw took on the plane he erased by accident. Not exactly a bright spark, our Terry.” Tully could hear the distant sirens on the New York street. “It’s all gotten a bit messy, hasn’t it?”

  “You can say that again. I’m going to the airport now; I’ll get the next flight. Oh, and Tully …”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t talk to anyone. Not until I get back.” Victor paused, his voice low. “This isn’t what I thought it would be. This isn’t one person acting alone; this involves others. Quite a few others. And I’ve just realized something else: Mrs. Fleet didn’t hire me because of my connections in the art world. She played me, Tully, and I fell for it. She knew my history, that I had nothing to lose. She knew I’d take on the case to get my own back, and she hired me because she knew I wasn’t up to it.”

  Still talking, Victor crossed the street, walking swiftly toward a line of yellow cabs. “I tell you, that bitch was relying on me to fuck up. She didn’t hire me to find out what happened; she hired me to fail.”

  Victor Ballam climbed into the first cab on line and leaned back in his seat. He lifted the case onto his lap and stared at it, wondering again if he had done the right thing in keeping it with him. He flicked open the lid. Under the handbag was a woman’s jacket, a skirt, and a pair of evening shoes. Lifting them out, he put them on the seat next to him and then took in a sharp breath.

  Hardly believing his eyes, Victor stared at the baseball bat. The bat Bernie Freeland h
ad persuaded Annette to accept as a gift. Jesus, Victor thought, was he right? Making sure that the bat was concealed from the driver by the upturned suitcase lid, Victor ran his hands over it. Noticing how light it was, he felt around the bound tape at the end of the handle, which was slightly loose. Victor unwound it and pulled out a small, rolled-up canvas. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the car seat. He had the Hogarth painting! A work of art so treacherous that it had already cost three lives. And threatened his own.

  Unrolling the canvas, Victor stared at the painting Hogarth had created over two hundred years before. The picture the artist himself had hidden. It shook in his hands as Polly Gunnell smiled up at him, as he easily recognized the Prince of Wales. Carefully he rolled up the precious canvas and slid it back into the handle of the bat, securing the tape over the end, and placed it back among Annette Dvorski’s clothes. He then closed the case, locked it, and rested his hands on the lid.

  He had no idea what would happen next. All that mattered in the sticky, overdeodorized interior of the cab was that Victor Ballam, late of Long Lartin Prison, was back in the running. He had in his possession what every other dealer around the globe would want. He had the artistic Semtex that could blow the market apart and reestablish him. Nothing would give Victor back his lost status, but the picture could propel him to heights beyond social and moral judgment.

  Weary but ecstatic, he held his arms around the suitcase. In among a whore’s clothes, makeup, and shoes lay a baseball bat: the unedifying but temporary tomb of Hogarth’s masterpiece.

  Twenty-Six

  WITH THE BILL AT THE FRIARS HOSPITAL IN LONDON RUNNING AT eighteen hundred pounds a week, Elizabeth Wilkes was thinking that if her son had had to take an overdose, he certainly had chosen to recover in comfort. After all, even if he was unconscious, his surroundings would matter to him. She smiled loosely at the two people on the opposite side of her son’s bed: a young man of around twenty-five and a girl who looked no more than eighteen. Pale and part Indian, the girl was plainly dressed in black, but when she rested her hands on the bed’s iron railing, her rings clinked against the metal. Hardly that much of a child, Elizabeth thought, mentally assessing the price of the largest opal.