by M. H. Baylis
He realised Lawrence was chuntering on. ‘She mentioned you – said she was going to give you a bell…’
Rex began to pull out his phone. But he knew it was hopeless. He knew no one had rung.
‘Did you ever meet Dr Kovacs?’ he asked, changing the subject.
‘He did a little talk once at the South Hornsey Con Club. About “Revolutionary Tottenham”.’
‘Revolutionary?’
‘Yes indeedy. Proper hotbed this manor was. That lot who did the Outrage, they were some sort of anarchist cell from the Baltics, trying to raise funds. Then there was a hotchpotch of Bolshie sorts in the 1970s.’
‘Oh yeah - that lot in Stoke Newington… The Angry Brigade?’
Lawrence winced, annoyed at Rex knowing something he was about to tell him. ‘Yes, them and others. Anyway, it wasn’t a great lecture. Or rather, it was just that – a lecture. Went right over most people’s heads.’
‘Particularly the heads of the South Hornsey Con Club, I imagine.’
‘Indeed. Anyhow, he put everyone’s backs up, then refused to stay for a drink at the end.’
‘Kovacs said his book was going to clear up some of the mysteries about the Outrage.’
‘Oh yes?’ Lawrence replied with an air of studied nonchalance.
Rex pressed on. ‘I was wondering if you knew what those mysteries might be?’ Conversations with Lawrence were often like this: him indicating that he had something you might want to know, you having to stroke until he coughed it.
‘Could be what happened to the money. Or that thing in the hopsickle.’ Lawrence had his own, allegedly amusing way of saying certain words.
‘Do you mean the hospital?’
‘Yes. One of the robbers – Helfeld – was shot, but took two weeks to die. One nurse thought he’d said something interesting just before he popped his clogs, but another nurse thought not.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ll dig around for you, iffley likey-doo.’
‘Thanks.’ That was the terrible thing about Lawrence: so annoying, but so useful.
‘And if you want my four penn’orth on Kovacs, I’d say read Murder on the Orient Express. You know what happened in that don’t you?’
‘Everyone did it?’
‘Exactly. Anyhoo, dare I suggest that the first port of call might be the pages of the good doctor’s book?’
‘It’s still with the printers.’
‘And the printers won’t let you see it, even though it might throw light on a recent murder?’
Four recent murders, Rex thought, if his hunch was right. Not to mention an innocent man locked up. Lawrence had a point. Why hadn’t he tried to get hold of the book?
He was rummaging for his phone when Susan appeared in the doorway. ‘Rex,’ she said. ‘Mike Bond on your line.’
Mike Bond was Brenda the Receptionist’s husband – and, until last year, a lifelong policeman at Tottenham nick. After a heart attack he had taken a job in the Coroner’s Office, where he remained an obliging source of information for News North London. He claimed – Rex suspected truthfully – to be writing a memoir called Coronaries to Coroners.
‘How’s Terry?’ was his opening gambit.
‘Just about bearing up,’ Rex said. ‘But bewildered. Have you got any news?’
‘Not on that,’ Bond said. ‘But I thought you’d want to know. The tests on the Bettelheim family just came back. It was cyanide poisoning. They all ingested cyanide.’
‘Ingested it how?’
‘We don’t know. It metabolises very quickly, so it’s hard to tell how it came in. One of their Tupperware boxes had very faint traces, but it had been wiped clean, so we don’t know what else was in it.’
‘So could someone have sneaked something into the food while they were having their picnic?’ Rex said. ‘Or maybe whoever prepared the picnic and wiped the Tupperware out afterwards, presumably the mum…?’
Mike Bond finished it for him. ‘Poisoned herself and her family. Yeah.’
* * *
‘Cut-back bitch! Cut-back bitch. Rabbah bitch! Bitch teef!’
He couldn’t see Bird, but Rex could hear his latest rant from the top of the street. It was familiar stuff, but the location was new. Rex was walking down Langerhans Road, planning to have a look at Terry’s house before going on to pick up the main east-west bus route towards Stamford Hill. It was a quiet street of terraced houses – no Council Offices down here. Perhaps Bird had started to terrorise individuals.
As Rex turned the corner, his suspicions seemed to be confirmed. Bird was sitting on the wall outside the blue door shared by Terry and the late Dr Kovacs, bellowing hoarsely at a slim blonde woman. She appeared to be struggling into a shabby leather jacket. Maybe she worked for the Council. Maybe she was just a woman.
‘Cut. Back. Bitch. Teef. Kurva!’
Like quite a few locals, it seemed Bird had now adopted this universal Polish insult. Shouting it at Council buildings seemed forgivable. Cornering lone women on quiet streets, on the other hand, did not.
‘Pack it in!’ Rex shouted, at the top of his voice, and as he quickened his pace, the two figures, far off at the end of the road, turned. Rex got a flash of a punky, alternative-looking woman – curly, close-cropped hair bleached white, a neckerchief and an old biker jacket – before she turned away again. ‘Leave her alone!’ He half-expected Bird to get off his wall and lumber towards him, but instead it was the woman who moved. Still trying to get her jacket on, fast, in the opposite direction.
Outside number 324 was a large yellow board, inviting people to call Tottenham CID if they’d seen or heard anything. Rex remembered then that there had been a witness. A woman claiming to live over the road had called 999. Could that have been her, the woman with the brassy hair? He could do with talking to her, if he could find out who she was. For now he had to make do with Bird.
A pair of tiny yellow eyes stared at him. He wasn’t sure if the man had any idea where he was. The stench of beer and piss was eye-watering. Rex was surprised. Bird was usually clean. Mad. Drunk. But hygienic, at least.
‘Bird, you’d better move on. There was a murder here, you know.’ Rex pointed towards the house, crime scene tape still around the front door. Bird didn’t move.
‘That bitch, that bitch,’ the old man muttered, before suddenly roaring ‘CUT BACK!’ in Rex’s face, prompting him to step back off the kerb in alarm.
‘All right, fuck off to you too,’ he said, as Bird staggered yeastily away. Alone, Rex stared up at the house – at the window of the room where Kovacs had died, at the front door with its missing corner of coloured glass. If he could just get inside, he might find some answers.
In the films people booted down doors and picked locks as easily as if they were picking their own noses. He knew it didn’t work like that. Once, when his sister-in-law had passed out in the bathroom, he and his wife, Sybille, had spent fifteen minutes trying to smash the door down. Sybille had dislocated her shoulder. He’d broken a toe. At the A&E in the Royal Free Hospital, the nurses had assumed that the three of them had had some sort of alcoholics’ fight.
House-breaking might be out of the question, but there was something he could do now. He took out his phone and looked up local printers. A large, Greek-owned business in Palmer’s Green was the most prominent, and in days of yore, the old Wood Green Gazette had used them for leaflets and inserts. He hoped Dr Kovacs had used them, too.
A well-spoken young man answered. Rex explained his business. The young man said he’d have to ask someone else. Rex hung on to the point where he’d started to wonder if they’d forgotten him, when an older voice came on.
‘I know you. Sat next to you at that Local Business Awards dinner-thing,’ said the new man. Rex didn’t remember the man, or the dinner in question, but it was a useful start. He restated his inquiry. The man tutted.
‘Yes, we’re handling it. As it’s you, ordinarily, I’d say, okay – you could maybe see the typescript or the page-proofs. I mean, I can’t see why not – the guy’s
not coming back, is he? But we can’t find either of them.’
‘You can’t find the book you’re printing for Dr Kovacs?’
The man cleared his throat. ‘We’ve had a break-in. Some of our documents have gone missing.’
‘So someone stole manuscripts from you?’
‘Well – no – someone broke in and made off with all our computers. But yes, some of our open jobs seem to have gone, too.’
‘And you’re sure Dr Kovacs’ book is one of them?’
‘I’m not sure about anything right now,’ the man said. ‘The whole place is a bloody mess. But I certainly remember Dr Kovacs. He refused to supply us with an electronic copy, so we had to scan in every page of his typescript by hand. So if we do find it, or either of the two sets of proofs he rejected, or if our hard drive shows up in a branch of CashExchange, we’ll let you know, Mr Tracey. But don’t hold your breath.’
Rex apologised and hung up. It all sounded rather odd. A break-in at a printer’s. The manuscript of a recently murdered man going missing. A man who had himself witnessed the killing of a young family, mere hours before his own death.
Then again, it was possible the various versions of Kovacs’ manuscript hadn’t gone missing. They might turn up amidst the detritus caused by the break-in. And desperate people were always breaking into all manner of places. He’d reported on a smash and grab at EazyLets the other day: someone had made off with a box of rubber bands. It was right to look for links, wrong to jump to conclusions. Rex decided to call back in a few days’ time, and carried on his way eastwards, towards Stamford Hill.
He wanted more on the Bettelheim family: where they’d lived, how they’d lived, what could possibly have led to the murder by poison of the entire lot of them. He needed only the tiniest lead to get going. But it wasn’t proving easy to procure one. In Mega Glatt Meats, the man who’d earlier been willing to talk to him now seemed terse and inhibited. Across the street, in a religious bookshop smelling delectably of leather and wood, an Arabic-looking old man in monochrome Hasidic garb simply sang, ‘No, no, no,’ putting up a blocking palm as Rex entered the shop, and kept repeating it until he left.
His spirits brightened when he saw Mordecai Hershkovits coming out of the Boots with a bottle of Benylin.
‘My mum always used to say there was a bug going round,’ Rex said, pointing to the medicine. ‘But right now, I think maybe there is.’
Mordecai ignored this. ‘Here for more rechilus, Mr Tracey?’
‘What’s rechilus? Gossip?’ At a nod from Mordecai, Rex went on: ‘I’m here because a lot of people want to know why a quiet, religious, peaceful family was fatally poisoned. I’m also here because on the same day another man was killed – a man who saw the Bettelheims die in the park. And right now an innocent man, my friend, in fact, is in prison for it. So no, I’m not interested in gossip, Mr Hershkovits. I’m interested in the truth.’
At first Rex regretted his outburst, but the little man seemed to be taking it in and pondering it. Then he sighed and said, ‘Maybe they weren’t so peaceful.’
‘What does that mean?’
The short man glanced around and then leaned in close. ‘Some people who live nearby have said it wasn’t a happy house.’
‘Arguments, you mean?’
‘Chaya Bettelheim was…’ He shrugged. ‘I didn’t know her but some people think… I tell you something my mother says. A shotten zaal. A hall of shadows. You know what I mean? There’s a kind of darkness, around some people. Whether they’re sick, or they’re just unhappy, or it’s kind of a curse… It’s what some people think about Chaya Bettelheim.’ He stowed the bottle in his navy Macintosh pocket. ‘And some police seem to think the same thing.’
‘They’ve been asking questions specifically about Chaya Bettelheim?’
‘Yes… Especially one of the detectives who keeps coming down here. Whether she was a good mother, whether she behaved oddly… You would have to be a very stupid man not to see what they were thinking.’
‘Where did they live?’
‘On Riverside.’ Mordecai gestured behind him. ‘A nice road, by the river. I know a lot of people there. Nice people.’
‘Anyone who’d talk to me?’
‘I doubt it, Mr Tracey,’ Mordecai replied, walking off and shaking his head.
Rex decided to ignore this gloomy prediction. He looked up the road up on his A-Z and set off towards it. As he walked up the hill, he wondered whether there’d been some kind of mass injunction on talking to him. Maybe the word had gone out and the shutters come down.
In the window of a shop laconically marked ‘Travel’, he glimpsed a young Hasidic blade. His skullcap was tipped cockily forwards; his feet were on the desk; his unlit cigarette was poised in his lips like a weapon. Somehow that sight tuned him in to many others, into the sheer variety of the place. Some of the men wore white stockings and the sort of buckled, archaic footwear that belonged at the Lord Mayor’s parade. Others looked sharp, like Mordecai, in modern dark suits and fedoras. There were little boys in Batman T-shirts, and then there were long-frocked, wool-stockinged girls straight out of Little House on the Prairie. It was inconceivable that this place could have arrived at a single decision – about him or anything else. Mordecai Hershkovits himself was a walking contradiction, declaring that no one would help Rex at the same time as handing over the latest speculation. This had to be worth pursuing.
He kept going up the hill. ‘Vegetables’. ‘Travel’. There was something Soviet about the way the people around here named their businesses. Something otherworldly at any rate, a stubborn rejection of anything modern like branding or marketing. You just sold something, and the people who wanted it, bought it. He reached ‘Vegetables’ only to find that the place was shut, its grimy blinds pulled down over windows and door, the incongruous little van still parked up outside. The van really didn’t fit. A grim museum piece of a shop, and the sort of vehicle young Shoreditch designers drooled over.
His phone rang. It was a woman. She informed him that he had five minutes to get to Wood Green Town Hall or he’d miss his slot for a Driving Test. Of course, even if he could have made it in five minutes, he now had no car to take the test in, courtesy of Terry’s incarceration. Rex apologised – needlessly, since the woman on the other end of the phone clearly didn’t care whether he lived or died, let alone whether he acquired a driving license – and hung up. He tried to feel something about missing his test – the culmination of three months’ hard work with Terry, and many long years of doubt and questioning and entreaties to a God who ignored him. But there was nothing there. Other things mattered more. Perhaps they always had.
He was about to continue up the hill when a narrow PVC door at the side of ‘Vegetables’ swung open.
‘Rex.’
The woman called Rescha stood there, wearing a long-sleeved burgundy top. She scanned the street, then motioned him to come closer.
‘Not open today?’
She shook her head. ‘He’s sick.’ She rummaged in a pocket of her wide, dark-green skirt. A smell of toast came from the interior of the house. ‘The woman. Chaya Bettelheim. I thought you might want to know.’ She handed him a piece of plastic. ‘She dropped this inside the shop one time.’
It was an entry card for a Travelodge hotel room. Printed on it were the words: ‘And Now Relax’.
‘I meant to give it back to her, but she was never alone. I know what this Travelodge place is,’ she added in a low voice. ‘It’s a hotel.’
‘It’s a chain of hotels. Five hundred of them, I think.’
She frowned. ‘Oh.’ Her skin was very soft, he noticed. And her eyes – had he ever seen sadder eyes? ‘I guess it’s not much use then.’
‘Well, use for what?’ he asked, politely. ‘Yesterday, you said you were sure it could only have been some kind of accident.’
‘Today I’m sure, too,’ she said. ‘But people are starting to say that it was her. Police are saying it, too. That she was
a crazy person and she did it.’
‘And you don’t think that, Mrs, er –?’
She paused as a clutch of children walked by: all olive-skinned Hasidic girls. There was a willowy teenager and a smaller carbon-copy with pigtail. Perched on the teenager’s shoulders was a laughing toddler with the same, almost Uzbek or Tajik features as her sisters, only buffered by baby-fat. Rescha followed them with such hungry eyes as they moved off up the hill. He wondered if she had children.
‘Schild. I’m Rescha Schild,’ Rescha said, returning her attention to him once the children had passed from view. ‘Chaya Bettelheim had tsuris. Problems. She wasn’t happy.’ She looked at him.
‘So you think I should find out why? Who will that help?’
‘I thought it might stop people saying that she did it. Maybe even… I don’t know. Okay, it was a stupid idea.’ She shrugged, and then winced, as if the gesture physically hurt her. Rex sensed there was something she wouldn’t say, something about the card that he was meant to understand, but didn’t. He nodded thanks and put the item in his pocket.
‘Was she your friend?’
She gave a faint smile, as if his question was a joke. ‘She came in the shop. We had things in common.’ She rubbed her shoulder. ‘One of the customers today had your news… email thing on his telephone,’ she added, suddenly. ‘I saw about that man you work with. He was here with you yesterday.’
Terry had gone home by the time Rex came into the shop, which meant Rescha Schild must have been watching them. She and perhaps others. He wondered if she’d been watching him today.
‘My friend didn’t do it either.’
She seemed about to reply when a bell rang from the interior behind her. A hand bell, like something from an old-fashioned primary school. ‘I’m sorry to waste your time,’ she said, awkwardly stepping back into the gloom. The door slammed shut.
He took the little white plastic key card out of his pocket, stared down at it, then up at the blank, gauze-curtained windows above the shop. What had she been trying to tell him?
* * *
