by Tim Ellis
It was too early to make her way to the cemetery. So she found a cafe with free wifi, ordered a coffee and decided to check out the two people that Jerry Kowalski mentioned in her phone call – Ruby Kerr and Robert George de Lacy.
Ruby Kerr was a part-time prostitute who was murdered in her home at 22 St Paul’s Road in Camden on September 11, 1971. After sex, the man she’d been with, had slit her throat open from ear to ear while she slept and then left. Nothing had been taken from the house and the police were unable to identify a motive for the murder. The investigation quickly ran out of steam, and the case remains unsolved to this day.
Robert George de Lacy had a public school education, and joined the 3rd Lancer Regiment in 1968. He served in the regiment for three years, the last year of which was spent in London, and he left in the rank of Captain in 1971. Whereupon, he became a Labour politician and was elected to Parliament . . . He was now Lord de Lacy, sitting in the House of Lords and Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee.
Did de Lacy kill Ruby Kerr? Was her murder what this was all about? Did the police know about the connection between Kerr and de Lacy? She doubted it. But what was the key for? If Ruby Kerr died on September 11, 1971, then it was unlikely that anything relating to her or her death had been the reason for the D-Notice, the subsequent cover-up and the MI5 cockroaches still being involved.
Oh well! She’d soon find out.
***
‘What the hell’s going on, Inspector?’ DCI Miller said as she burst through the door onto the roof.
He didn’t look at her, and he didn’t bother getting up. ‘He’s dead. My son is dead.’
‘You mean this?’
Something hit him in the darkness. He reached out and felt his son. Only it wasn’t Jack – it was lifelike dummy. ‘Jesus!’
‘Tell me what happened,’ Miller said.
He pushed himself up, sat on the wall and told her what had transpired.
‘You were meant to call me?’
‘She made it perfectly clear what would happen to my son if I did. What would you have done?’
‘We’re not talking about me. So, if your son isn’t on the concrete below, where is he?’
‘She must have taken him with her.’
‘The helicopter pilot was taking a break up here. Where’s he?’
Parish shrugged.
Miller called more people up onto the roof.
They carried out a thorough search and found the pilot dead from a knife wound to the neck.
On a locked cupboard door was a hand-printed note:
UNTIL NEXT TIME
ZACHARY
When they forced open the door they found Jack wrapped in a blanket and fast asleep inside.
‘Oh God!’ Parish said, picking up his son and holding him as if he’d never let him go again.
‘Who’s Zachary?’ DCI Miller asked.
‘It’s a long story.’
‘Which you’ll be telling me before the night has ended, so that I can make a detailed report to the Chief Constable.’
***
She caught the tube from Liverpool Street to Victoria on the Circle Line. It took her thirty minutes. Then, she had to catch an overland train from Victoria to West Norwood, which took her a further thirty minutes. After she left the station, she walked up Knight’s Hill, crossed over the A215 and climbed the metal fence into West Norwood Cemetery. Using the torch she’d bought, and the map of the location of Plot 376, she threaded her way through the dark and eerie cemetery.
The crypt was like a small stone house on Plot 376. It boasted a sloped roof, urns on plinths, Grecian pillars and three steps leading up to a metal door.
There was a keyhole in the door into which she inserted the key, and she wondered why a crypt door needed to be locked. Was it to keep those inside from straying back into the world of the living, or to prevent the living from encroaching on the domain of the dead?
She turned the key, heard a click and the door opened.
Taking a step forward, her foot found fresh air. The torch slipped from her hand, skidded across the floor and blinked out. She stumbled forward into the crypt, unable to stop herself until her hands squelched through what felt like a rotting melon. She was in a crypt, and she had a good idea that it wasn’t a rotting melon. It was a rotting corpse and it stank to high heaven.
There was a small back-up torch in her rucksack. The trouble was, her hands and forearms were covered in slime. After feeling around, she found some material. God only knew what it was, but she was able to wipe the slime from her hands and arms. Then, she shrugged off her rucksack and found the torch.
As soon as she switched the small torch on she felt sick to her stomach. As well as a single stone tomb, which she guessed belonged to George Harbottle – if it belonged to anybody at all – there were also, at the very least, twenty women’s bodies in various states of decomposition in the arched alcoves stacked one on top of the other.
She looked more closely – some of the corpses were fairly recent. And those that she could see clearly had gaping wounds in their throats.
At last the penny dropped. Robert de Lacy was a serial killer who was also a Peer of the Realm, and MI5 had been clearing up after him for five decades. He was one of theirs in a position of power.
George Harbottle, as an undertaker, had been paid to dispose of the bodies, and where better to dispose of dead bodies than in a crypt hiding in plain sight – in the middle of a cemetery. As far as anybody knew these women had simply disappeared year in and year out, and nobody had joined up the dots.
What proof did she have that de Lacy was responsible? A tenuous connection of Ruby Kerr buying a swagger stick for him in 1971.
She looked all round the crypt. The bodies appeared to be stacked seven high, and there were three stacks. She also found a square hole with a Union Jack tea caddy wedged into it. Inside the caddy she found a stack of Polaroid photographs with the names of the women and the date that they’d been raped and murdered written on the back of each photograph. There was also a small Beretta handgun at the bottom of the tin with bullets in the magazine.
After she’d had the Glock taken from her, the Beretta was exactly what she needed. She put the gun in her jacket pocket and the tea caddy full of the photographs in her rucksack. Now she had enough evidence to prove Robert de Lacy was a serial killer.
‘Well, well, well,’ a man said, blocking the doorway of the crypt. ‘What have we got here?’
She nearly collapsed and died where she was standing from the shock.
‘What have we got here?’ Another man’s voice said.
The first man moved to one side to reveal the second man. ‘I think we have an interfering bitch called Bronwyn, or whatever she’s calling herself these days.’
They both wore suits and ties, with the collars of padded jackets pulled up against the freezing wind outside.
The man at the front had a gun, which was considerably bigger than the Beretta she’d just acquired.
‘You said we’d find her here, and here she is.’
‘I’m a fucking genius.’
‘You’re a fucking cockroach,’ Bronwyn clarified for him.
‘She’s not very pleasant, is she?’
‘Not very pleasant at all. What do you think of our little collection of bodies?’ he directed at Bronwyn.
She didn’t say anything, but she moved her hand cautiously up the pocket containing the Beretta.
‘Well, you’re going to have all the time in the world to provide us with a considered opinion.’
She pulled the trigger twice in quick succession.
The first man collapsed and fell forward like a felled tree.
The second man tried desperately to retrieve his gun from beneath the zipped-up padded jacket.
Bronwyn pulled the Beretta out of her pocket, aimed and fired.
The hammer clicked on an empty chamber.
The man smiled.
She dropped to her
knees, grasped the first man’s gun and fired as the second wrenched his gun free.
The smile disappeared, and he crumpled in a heap on the stone floor.
‘Fuck’s sake!’ she said out loud. She was beginning to feel like Lara Croft: Tombraider.
Once her heart had stopped thrashing about, she dragged the two men into the crypt; helped herself to their guns, money and credit cards; took a series of photographs with the camera in her new phone and locked the crypt door on the way out.
She would liked to have gone home to bed, but not only did she not have a home or a bed, she didn’t have the time to sleep either – she wanted to catch the early morning news.
Aftermath
Friday, December 12
‘Is that you?’ Stick said when he opened his eyes at two forty-five in the morning.
‘Of course it’s me. Who else would it be? You’ve got a lot to answer for, Stickamundo.’
‘I know. I’m sorry.’
‘So you should be, putting us through the mangle. What possessed you?’
‘I thought you were following me.’
‘And because of that stupid thought, I’m in deep shit.’
‘I’ll take the blame.’
‘Damned right you will. I’ve already told them it was your fault.’
‘You haven’t, have you? You’ll take the blame and you’re already on a warning from the Chief.’
‘Jenifer is here.’
‘Where?’
‘Sleeping in the chair. She got so fed up of waiting for you to kick the bucket that she decided to grab forty winks. And have you heard her snore? Like a pig that’s found a store of truffles in the forest.’
He reached out his hand and squeezed hers. ‘Thanks for being here.’
‘I was passing.’
‘You’re the best partner I ever had.’
‘Yeah well, don’t go thinking the feeling’s mutual.’
‘I won’t.’
***
She sat up in bed as Ray came in carrying a cup of tea on a saucer. ‘This is an unexpected surprise.’
He threw a newspaper down on the bed. ‘Is that anything to do with you?’
She looked at the front page of the newspaper. There was a full colour photograph of Lord de Lacy, Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee. The headline read:
IS THIS MAN A SERIAL KILLER?
‘I’ve been here with you, darling.’
‘Don’t try and play me like a cheap balalaika. I know this is your doing.’
She pushed the strap of her satin nightdress off her shoulder. ‘I have some time on my hands.’
‘If it wasn’t you, then it was Bronwyn.’
‘I’m sure I don’t know anyone by that name.’
‘They’ve found a crypt in West Norwood Cemetery stuffed to the rafters with female bodies.’
‘How awful.’
‘And they’re saying that MI5 carried out the Baker Street Robbery to steal a key.’
‘A key?’
‘To the crypt.’
‘Oh.’
‘Not only did the crypt contain a mountain of bodies, but there was also a stack of photographs with the names of the victims and the date they were murdered on the back of each photograph in de Lacy’s handwriting and two dead MI5 agents.’
‘Someone made it very easy for the police then.’
‘Someone?’
‘Well, as I said: It was nothing to do with me.’
‘So, I don’t suppose you and your toy boys will be getting Top Student?’
‘Are you sure you don’t want to come to bed?’
‘I’m not very happy, Jerry.’
‘I could change that.’
He stripped off his clothes.
She smiled. She’d soon have him humming like a cheap balalaika.
***
Thursday, January 15
Christmas and New Year had come and gone. Life had returned to normal. If, the life he had, could be called normal.
He’d been suspended during the investigation by Professional Standards. They’d decided that although he’d interfered in an active investigation that wasn’t one of his own, there were mitigating circumstances. As such, he had no case to answer. They’d also found that there was absolutely no proof of any sperm samples belonging to the Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele having been produced, or smuggled into England . . .
‘But you have the original and deciphered documents that prove . . .’
‘I have nothing, Richards. Günter Kappel and his helpers are dead; the M4 Project never existed; and anybody who’s anybody will call the original document a forgery and the deciphered text an elaborate hoax.’
‘But you still have the hospital files from the first four Epsilon experiments.’
‘Yes, but I don’t have the file for Epsilon 5, do I? And that’s the only one that matters.’
She sat down on the chair in the kitchen and screwed up her face. ‘You have nothing, do you?’
‘No. It’s time to let it go now.’
‘But she’s still out there.’
Yes, Zara Roche was still out there, and he knew that one day they’d meet again. But for now there was no proof that Zara Roche was anything other than Israel Voss’ adopted daughter. Doc Riley found no markers to differentiate between the DNA found on the bodies and the samples that he’d provided. The only conclusion to be drawn from that finding was that both belonged to DI Jed Parish. Doc Riley, however, was more circumspect and falsified the post mortem reports to expunge any mention of a DNA match to Parish.
Nobody in the government had any details – or so they said – of the Epsilon Experiments, and there was certainly no evidence linking him to those experiments if such experiments indeed took place, and that was beginning to look more like a fabrication than anything else.
It was just simpler to accept the findings of Professional Standards and move on with his life, because otherwise he would always be known as the son of Josef Mengele, and that was something he couldn’t accept.
So, he was back to work on Monday. Richards would be glad. All she’d been doing was tidying up, completing reports, filling out forms and generally making a nuisance of herself in an empty squad room.
DI Blake had also been suspended during an investigation, and DS Gilbert had been in hospital after being attacked – it was like an epidemic.
Well, normal service would be resumed on Monday.
***
The investigation by Professional Standards found that she had no case to answer. Back-up had arrived before Stick was stabbed by that crazy bitch Paula Milburn. However, it was made clear to her in no uncertain terms that the only reason she wasn’t being strung up naked by her short and curlies and put on display outside the station was that nothing she could or couldn’t have done would have changed the outcome.
PC Hignett had been on hand to save her bacon and DS Gilbert’s life, which would have been the case had she have called for back-up before entering the house. Her continued existence in the police force was due to an accident of timing only, and any further transgressions of a similar nature would be dealt with swiftly and mercilessly.
‘You’re leading a charmed life at the moment, Blake.’
‘Yes, Chief.’ She thought it best to keep her answers brief and to the point. Circumnavigating her way through the fallout of Stick being attacked had been a nightmare of epic proportions. She was glad it was all over, and she was also glad that Stick had come through the ordeal in one piece and would be back at work on Monday.
‘But the wheels have a habit of coming off charmed lives.’
‘I’ve learned my lesson, Chief.’
‘You must think I fell out of a cuckoo’s nest. People like you never learn from your past mistakes. You’ve got away with it once, twice, a dozen times . . . Now, you think you’re invincible. You’re not invincible, Blake. Sooner or later you’re going to kill yourself, your partner or a whole heap of passers-by . . .’
<
br /> ‘No . . .’
‘Yes, Blake. You’re a disaster looking for a place to happen, and I feel as though I’m stuck in a time loop. Nothing seems to change. I keep repeating the same warnings and advice over and over again.’
‘No, this time it’ll be different, Chief.’
‘Get out, Blake. Next time, I’ll be packing your bags and waving you off at the station myself.’
‘I promise, there’ll be no next time, Sir.’
She made her way out.
The Chief’s secretary didn’t look up from the report she was pretending to read.
Fuck! Was she really stuck in the revolving exit door? She had to change her life and change it soon.
####
About the Author
Tim Ellis was born in the bowels of Hammersmith Hospital, London, on a dark and stormy night, and now lives in Cheshire with his wife and three Shitzus. In-between, he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps at eighteen and completed twenty-two years service, leaving in 1993 having achieved the rank of Warrant Officer Class 1 (Regimental Sergeant Major). Since then, he settled in Essex, and worked in secondary education as a senior financial manager, in higher education as an associate lecturer/tutor at Lincoln and Anglia Ruskin Universities, and as a consultant for the National College of School Leadership. His final job, before retiring to write fiction full time in 2009, was as Head and teacher of Behavioural Sciences (Psychology/Sociology) in a secondary school. He has a PhD and an MBA in Educational Management, and an MA in Education.
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