by Tony Parsons
He stepped closer to the wall.
‘What does it say on their jackets? The Latin just above the crest. I can’t make it out.’
Whitestone closed her notebook. ‘Aut vincere aut mori,’ she said. ‘Their school motto.’
‘Conquer or die,’ Mallory said. ‘Good motto.’
I found my eyes drifting to the boy in the centre. James Sutcliffe. The one without a smile, the one with the hidden eyes. The boy with the marks of self-harm on his arms who folded his clothes neatly and walked into the sea off the Amalfi coast. He was the only one not represented on the wall by a photograph of the man he had become. Dead by his own hand at eighteen. Even more than the pictures of the two murdered men, Sutcliffe’s unsmiling presence made the old school photograph seem heavy with mortality.
These boys are not growing up, I thought. They are rushing to their graves.
The late afternoon light was dying over Highgate Cemetery when the soldier rose from his place on the front row of the crowded chapel, immaculate in the black dress uniform of an officer of the Royal Gurkha Rifles.
Captain Ned King was a big man and he moved slowly to the pulpit, glancing at the large black-and-white photograph of the late Hugo Buck that was placed before his coffin. As Captain King stood in the pulpit, looking at his notes, a bar of the waning light came through the high stained-glass windows and caught him, glinting on the medals he wore on his black jacket and highlighting the white starburst of scar tissue on the left side of his face.
Someone in the packed congregation cleared their throat. Captain King began to speak.
‘Death is nothing at all,’ he said, reading with the clipped, careful delivery of a man accustomed to public speaking. ‘I have only slipped away into the next room. I am I, and you are you.’
My eyes drifted to where he had been sitting. The other three were all there.
Ben King.
Salman Khan.
Guy Philips.
The dead man’s oldest friends, in their places of honour, in the front row with the parents of Hugo Buck and his widow, Natasha, her face hidden by a long black veil. Buck’s parents were in their late sixties but tanned, attractive, looking as though nothing bad had ever happened to them in their lives before now.
Natasha turned her head and stared at me. Behind the veil her face was impassive and showed absolutely no sign of recognition. I had seen her chauffeur when Mallory and I had arrived at the cemetery, sneaking a cigarette out on the street as he waited with the other drivers. Even now he had seemed like her driver rather than her date. I wondered why the hell that even mattered to me.
‘Whatever we were to each other, that we still are,’ Captain King said, his voice rising in the high vaulted chapel. ‘Call me by my old familiar name. Speak to me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference in your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity.’
Mallory leaned his head towards me and his one word was less than a whisper: ‘Look.’
Salman Khan was crying. I could not see his face, but the man’s shoulders were clearly juddering with sobs, and his hands were over his face to hide his grief. I watched as Ben King slowly turned his head, muttered something consoling in Khan’s ear, then turned back to watch his brother. Guy Philips watched the exchange with a kind of cool indifference.
Khan swabbed his face with the palm of one hand. His crying seemed to stop.
‘Life means all that it ever meant,’ said Captain King, and I saw the shadow of a smile flit across his handsome, ruined face. ‘It is the same as it ever was – there is unbroken continuity. Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?’ He paused. ‘I am waiting for you – for an interval – somewhere very near – just round the corner.’ King folded his notes. ‘All is well,’ he said.
I looked at the mourners. Almost all of them were young. Men and women in their thirties, some of them carrying new babies or trying to control toddlers, all of their faces white with shock at the early and brutal death of one of their own generation.
Captain King had returned to his seat. The vicar was talking.
‘Come, ye blessed children of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world.’
Hugo Buck had friends. Many friends. But it was the four men in the front row who flanked his coffin at the end of the service. And now, for the first time, I saw the other three faces clearly.
Salman Khan – a fit, prosperous businessman, in control now but clearly carrying a sadness that pressed on him like a physical weight.
Guy Philips – the top button of his shirt undone, sleepy-eyed, perhaps slightly bored, his face criss-crossed with the broken veins of the hardened drinker. He looked like a sports master from central casting – there was exactly that kind of hearty cruelty about him.
And Ben King – calm, self-contained, an impressive man, his smooth, unmarked face making his brother’s image look like a defaced mirror.
At Ben King’s word, the four men – the brothers at the front, Philips and Khan behind – crouched, linked arms, and stood up as one with the coffin on their shoulders. They began to walk slowly down the aisle, Buck’s parents and his widow behind them.
Music was playing. People were crying. One of them was Salman Khan. With the weight of his dead friend on his left shoulder, grief seemed suddenly to overwhelm him. This time his friends let him weep. All over the chapel, men and women were doing the same. For their friend and for themselves. But Hugo Buck’s widow looked straight ahead, passing by without looking left or right, her green eyes dry and unflinching behind that long black veil.
A youngish blonde woman who looked as though she knew her way around a horse was giving out single red roses at the door to the chapel. Mallory and I held back, letting the crowd go, and by the time we left the chapel the woman and the roses were gone, and the congregation were making their way to the grave.
By special request from the family, Hugo Buck was being buried in the West Cemetery, and it looked like a graveyard in a dream. As we followed the mourners up a steep winding path, we walked between row upon row of massive vaults, giant granite crosses and a host of stone angels whose faces were worn away by the years. A colossal stone dog slept for ever by the resting place of his master. An angel carried a sleeping child to heaven. All of it seemed consumed by nature. Ancient trees had grown between the graves and blotted out the dying sun. Ivy clung to tombs, as if claiming ownership. Everywhere wild flowers bloomed among the dead.
I shuddered as the committal prayer drifted through the trees. You could feel winter coming.
‘Behold, I show you a mystery,’ said the vicar.
‘Corinthians,’ Mallory said, with some approval. ‘The resurrection of the dead. Let’s see if we can get a little closer.’
‘We shall not all sleep – but we shall all be changed. In a moment – in the twinkling of an eye – at the last trumpet.’
We skirted the back of the crowd. The sound of crying was louder now, in the open air at the edge of the freshly dug grave. Small children had joined in the wailing, upset at seeing grown-ups cry for the first time. The red roses were splashes of colour in a sea of black.
‘For the trumpet shall sound – and the dead shall be raised incorruptible – and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption – and this mortal must put on immortality.’
We stopped when we were behind the vicar and directly opposite the mourners at the graveside. I could see the faces of the principal mourners over the shoulders of the crowd. Hugo Buck’s parents were unravelling at the task of burying a child. Ben King stood with his arm around them. The politician had a consoling thought for everyone. Only Natasha Buck seemed drained of all emotion, numbed by the rituals of grief.
‘Death is swallowed up in victory. Oh death, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory?’
There was an electronic buzz as the coffin was automatically lowered.
When the sound stopped, Ned King casua
lly dropped his red rose into the grave. Then they were all dropping their roses. Something inside the parents of the dead man seemed to break as they let go of theirs. They threw them in the grave and turned away, their legs uncertain. Guy Philips was next. Then Salman Khan, composed now. But Ben King paused, and with a gentle smile motioned Natasha to come forward.
‘He stands in the presence of the Lord, the same Jesus who said to the dying man on a cross – Today you shall be with me in Paradise.’
Natasha took a step towards him. I saw her lift her veil, stay a moment with her memories, and then very carefully spit into her husband’s grave.
Almost as an afterthought, she tossed in the rose.
There was a sudden burst of activity at the graveside. I saw Natasha’s head twist towards the red features of Guy Philips, her face suddenly contorted with anger and pain as he expertly did something to her arm and marched her away. Erect and unresisting, Natasha came through the crowd with her hand held by Philips in a grotesque parody of caring, as if she might fall or run away or return once more to the grave of his dead friend.
‘My hand,’ she said. ‘You’re fucking hurting me, Piggy.’
I started forward but was stopped by Mallory’s hand on my arm. I looked at him and he shook his head once. I felt a stab of shame for doing nothing. But we were here to observe. That was all. I nodded briefly, showing Mallory that I understood, and we followed Natasha and Philips down the path to the cemetery gate.
Out on the street, drivers were springing to attention. Philips opened the back door of Natasha’s car. I thought of her as a strong woman, perhaps a hard woman, and it shocked me to see her so passive as he herded her inside.
Philips leaned into the driver’s window and gave some instructions, and I saw the chauffeur’s face torn between alarm and anger, but he nodded with mute obedience and drove her away. Philips watched them go.
Mallory and I walked back to the graveside. Most of the congregation seemed oblivious to what had happened. Heads had turned briefly to watch the overcome widow being helped away by her husband’s friend, but soon they had returned to see the flowers falling on the coffin. Only one mourner had kept his eyes on the ugly little scene – a freakishly tall man in his sixties who had the hooked, unblinking face of a bird of prey. Now he too stared at the open grave, a single rose in his hand.
Mallory and I watched as Guy Philips returned expressionless, and I knew Mallory had seen it too – how efficiently Philips had dispensed with the problem of the woman.
The crowd was forming a queue to offer their condolences to Buck’s parents. Ben King was still by their side, every inch the politician, dispensing handshakes and soft words.
‘No, Natasha’s fine,’ he said. ‘She’s not herself today. Yes, thank you so much.’
He caught my eye and smiled.
Then suddenly it was over. The prayers were all said, the coffin lowered, the roses in the grave. The living mopped their eyes and returned to their cars and their lives, even the mother and father who had buried their son.
But as Mallory and I walked away, I caught a glimpse through the trees of four men still standing at the open grave, wiping dirt from their hands, bound by something so strong that death could not touch it.
Scout cried out in the deep of the night.
Although I believed that I never really slept, I was aware of the sensation of waking, and surprised by it, the abrupt surfacing from a dream I would never remember.
I glanced at the numbers on the clock – 03:10 – and stumbled to her bedroom. She was sitting up in bed, her face wet with wailing, shielding her eyes with the sleeve of her pyjamas.
I put my arms around her, held her for a bit, then placed the back of my hand on her forehead. She felt a little warm.
‘Monsters,’ she said.
‘Angel,’ I said. ‘There are no monsters.’
Stan was awake now, whimpering in the darkness. I let him out of his cage and he padded after me as I returned to Scout’s bedroom. He was up on her bed with one silent bound and she automatically reached out to scratch behind his ears. The dog stemmed her crying in a way I could not. But it didn’t stop completely and I felt the flutter of panic that her tears always made me feel. I was afraid that if she started crying then she would never stop.
‘Why are you crying, Scout?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’
We both knew but neither of us had the words, neither of us knew where to begin. There was a hole in my daughter’s life and no matter how much I loved her, no matter how hard I tried, I would never be able to fill it. The thought clawed at my heart and made me feel like weeping too.
‘Don’t go,’ she said.
I smiled in the darkness.
‘I’m not going anywhere.’
Neither was Stan, who had curled up by her side, seeking the warmth, and I decided to leave him there. Soon they were both sleeping, Scout grasping the dog like a hot-water bottle, the dog letting her.
I looked at Scout’s alarm clock. It was far too early to get up and far too late to go back to bed.
I knew that I would not sleep now. So I sat on the side of Scout’s bed, watching my child and her dog, and I let the night crawl by as I had done so many nights before. But watching my daughter sleep made the small dark hours seem very different tonight. They did not feel wasted.
10
BOB THE BUTCHER had aged thirty years overnight.
His new photograph showed a much older man, the cockiness of youth and the rakish hat both gone, a black pipe stuck into his set mouth in place of the cigarette. In the new photograph Robert Oppenheimer stared straight at the camera, his hair thinning now, his eyes huge and full of a terrible knowledge that had not been there before.
The destroyer of worlds.
The large screen on Mallory’s wall showed Bob the Butcher’s timeline but we stared at our laptops as Gane read the new message.
‘The rich have known sin,’ he said. ‘And this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.’ He sat back in his chair. ‘Kill all pigs. #killallpigs.’
I had already chased down the quote.
‘What Oppenheimer actually said was “the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose”.’ I looked over at Gane. ‘Not the rich, the physicists.’
He nodded briefly. Then cursed.
‘This should be simple. We sent a search warrant to the social network and received an IP audit within twenty-four hours. As I expected, Bob’s got an anonymiser. It’s a proxy server that acts as a privacy shield between the user and the rest of the digital world. Unless he’s a complete idiot – always a possibility – he was bound to have one. He might even have multiple anonymisers. I can usually work around them once I have the IP audit.’ He shook his head. ‘Usually. But Bob’s using some kind of enhanced security architecture. Onion routing, they call it. Tor or something similar, some beefed-up anonymity network that I’ve never seen. It routes data through multiple relays, encrypting and re-encrypting every time. It’s designed to make the web safe for whistleblowers – users reporting corporate or government corruption, and people living in dictatorships. Not serial killers.’
‘What are you telling us?’ Mallory said.
‘He’s gone deeper,’ Gane said. ‘Bob’s digital footprints are exactly like his fingerprints or glove prints.’ He shook his head. ‘Invisible.’
‘Turn it off,’ Whitestone said. ‘I’m sick of these idiots treating him like some kind of hero.’
The Bob the Butcher timeline had exploded with activity as the social network reacted to his message. The screen on Mallory’s wall unrolled a constant stream of fan mail, marriage proposals and slavish compliments. Gane stabbed a key and it was instantly gone from the screen, replaced with the still photograph of the seven boys at Potter’s Field.
‘I don’t know how they can make a hero of him,’ Whitestone said. ‘Someone who kills school friends.’
Mallory almost smiled.<
br />
‘But they don’t think he’s killing school friends,’ he said. ‘They think he’s killing the rich.’
After the morning briefing, Mallory and I walked from Savile Row to Hanover Square, where tall thin young women stood smoking in glamorous packs outside Vogue House.
We were expected at the law firm of Butterfield, Hunt and West, who had their offices on the north side of the great green expanse of Hanover Square. Salman Khan’s PA showed us into his office, then offered us coffee, tea or mineral water, sparkling or still. We were spoilt for choice. But before we could reply, Khan was rising up from behind his desk and telling us how to do our job.
‘But you must do more!’ Khan said, his upper-class English laced with just a trace of India. ‘This is simply not good enough! Two men murdered and no arrest? It’s appalling! I intend to take the matter up with Detective Chief Superintendent Swire, who is a friend of my father. Do I make myself absolutely clear?’
Mallory turned politely to the PA, who was still waiting in the doorway. ‘Tea, please, miss. A dash of milk and two sugars.’
He glanced at me.
‘Coffee, please,’ I said. ‘Short and black.’
She closed the door without making a sound and we turned to look at Salman Khan. He was staring at us with open belligerence. You see that kind of aggression in poorly socialised dogs, I thought. They don’t bark because they are angry. They bark because they are afraid.
He ranted for a minute or so. We let him get it out of his system. A big part of our job was talking to people who were scared. Scared of getting in trouble. Scared of getting hurt. Scared of getting more hurt than they were already. But I had never seen a man quite as scared as Salman Khan. He looked like a man who was scared of having his throat cut.
When Khan paused to catch his breath, Mallory introduced us in his mild-mannered way, and we both showed our warrant cards. Khan slumped back down in his big leather swivel chair as we took a seat opposite him, Mallory making reassuring noises about various leads being pursued while I watched Khan fiddle with an unlit cigarette in his hand. The offices of the law firm Butterfield, Hunt and West were non-smoking, but there was a silver cigarette case on Khan’s desk. He worried the cigarette in his fingers like a set of rosary beads.
