Hollow Man

by Oliver Harris

  “If you’re willing to talk,” Belsey said.

  “I’m talking. I haven’t talked like this for ages. It feels great.”

  Belsey sat down again. “Have you met him?”

  “Who?”

  “Devereux.”

  “No one’s met him.”

  “What’s he about?”

  “Gaming. Racing. Casinos. I think he wants to have a casino in every city. Not just casinos but resorts. You know what George Bernard Shaw said? Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich.” Gilman gave a sly grin. “Something for nothing.”

  “Crime does that too.”

  “I think Devereux would legalise crime if he could. Gambling’s the closest he can get. He says gambling will be the heroin of the twenty-first century. He reckons by 2030 there will be fifteen Las Vegases, just as big, just as profitable, in all the new deserts of the world. A lot of his gaming websites are run out of Turkmenistan. That’s the base of his empire, but the icing is the tracks. He races horses in deserts at night, across industrial wastelands, around Native American reservations. One of his more eccentric ideas was to race horses through gas pipelines. He films the races and broadcasts them. There was a London project in the works—a big one. A guy called Pierce Buckingham was trying to raise money for a stake. That’s what I heard. That’s the whole of it. He was gathering the right names together.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Pierce? He’s a go-between. A slush puppy. He arranges weddings. You can usually find him at a place called Les Ambassadeurs in Mayfair trying to be a playboy and thinking he’s untouchable. I went to a party at his house once and there were porn stars and a snake charmer. A few years ago he set himself up as the go-to financial adviser for individuals with money wanting a slice of the London pie.”

  “What did you think Pierce Buckingham was raising money for?”

  “I don’t know. But I heard there was a French company coming in. If Pierce couldn’t raise the ante, then the whole thing was going to France. So he hustled. He went to his old friends, the Hong Kong Gaming Consortium—because quite frankly they could sink five billion into mud and not notice it’s gone.”

  “Let’s say I needed to give someone details of Devereux’s project. What sort of thing would I say?”

  “I don’t know. Pierce was being extra cagey about this one.”

  “Why?”

  “Local sensitivities.”

  “Like what?”

  “People. Sober people. Poor people. I don’t know.”

  “Did he get the money together?”

  “The money was already together. It’s called the Hong Kong Gaming Consortium and it’s bottomless. The consortium was bought last year by Prince Faisal bin Abdul Aziz. He operates Saud International Holdings, the main Saudi government investment fund. He gave his wife two fighter jets for her birthday and then built the most expensive house in Riyadh with the change. Buckingham negotiated his purchase of the Dream City Casino on Macao when the prince wanted in on the gambling market. It’s the only place in China where you can gamble. Imagine that. Then Buckingham arranged the takeover of an Italian gaming group called Gioco Digitale. But that was just a stepping-stone. Everyone saw that. It was a foot in the European sector. They’ve got their sights on London. Prince Faisal thinks London is where it’s at. He thinks Pierce Buckingham’s their man because he’s blue-eyed and vicious.”

  “And you have no idea what he was working on with Alexei Devereux?”

  “None at all. I imagined it was something to do with property or sport or a bit of both.”

  “Why aren’t you answering your phone?”

  Gilman groaned and stretched. “How much do you think you can get?”

  “Let’s say you tell me where Pierce Buckingham lives.”

  “That’s easy.” Gilman sat up and scribbled an address on the back of a property magazine. He tore it off and gave it to Belsey. Four Queen’s Gate Mews, a street in SW7. Belsey pocketed the address and walked over to the windows a final time.

  “How much are you looking to score?” Belsey said.

  “Anything. Everything.” He drummed his fingers on the tub.

  “Give me an hour. I’ll see what I can do.” Belsey cast a final glance around the apartment, then left. He pushed the button for the lift. Something said: Get out of London. It said: Look, a mirror deep enough to drown yourself in. Maybe he could become a jockey. He tried to imagine how that would feel, horse racing in the night air of the desert.

  Gilman’s door opened. He leaned out, checked the corridor, then called after Belsey.

  “What about Boudicca, Nick? What is it? Do you know?”

  “I’ve no idea,” Belsey said, without turning.

  “If you find out, will you tell me?”

  “Of course.”

  “If it’s happening? If it’s all good?”

  The lift arrived. Its doors slid open and Belsey stepped inside.

  41

  Belsey made Kensington in forty minutes. Pierce Buckingham kept a bachelor pad on a small, very expensive road close to Kensington Gardens. The little house at number 4 had its lights on, windows fogged. Someone had been taking a hot shower. Belsey knocked on the front door but got no answer. He couldn’t see through the windows. He pressed the door and it opened with a gust of steam.

  The whole place was damp, condensation dripping down the white walls of the hallway. Belsey stepped slowly inside. He trod softly into a living room that had exploded. Someone had slashed the seats, torn up the carpet and emptied all the cupboards into a big pile of designer belongings. An imitation Wurlitzer jukebox lay in pieces on the floor. A projector screen had been pulled down and torn in two. Droplets trickled down the abstract surfaces of metal sculptures and the wall-mounted TV screen.

  It didn’t look like Buckingham was home.

  Belsey stepped over piles of clothes to a steam room and sauna at the back. The shower was on and the sauna door was open and the tiles had been ripped off the walls.

  He climbed the stairs to the bedroom and there was a lot of broken glass and a reek of amyl nitrate. The bed was huge, circular, with black silk sheets on the floor, the mattress against the wall, slit down the side. Belsey found a few long blonde hairs on the pillowcase. The drawers from the bedside table and the cabinet at the side of the bedroom had been tipped onto the floor, spilling condom packets and pharmaceutical bottles. One hardback book lay on the floor beside the bed.

  The Kingdom: A History of the House of Saud. Belsey picked it up. It had an elaborately ornamented cover, inlaid with gold leaf. The pages were wilted and bunched by the steam. A note on the frontispiece said: To our esteemed friend, with blessings for the future. Inserted halfway through was a photograph of a man with his arms around two teenage girls. They sat on a red banquette with an array of glasses and bottles on the table in front of them. It took Belsey a moment to recognise Pierce Buckingham: grinning, shaven, the other side of whatever crisis had set him stalking Belsey in a bulletproof vest. On Buckingham’s right was Jessica Holden in a silver, strapless cocktail dress; the other girl was the blonde friend who’d been crying on TV. She wore something tight and black that stopped short of her thighs. She had one hand on Buckingham’s shoulder. Jessica smiled with her mouth closed. The blonde girl showed teeth.

  Justice will be done, the crime scene flowers had said. Belsey called Miranda Miller from a cordless phone on Buckingham’s bedroom floor.

  “Have you got contact details for Jessica’s friend, the blonde girl?”

  “No. Well, yes, but they get through to an agent.”

  “An agent?”

  “She was trying to hustle for a five-figure deal. Now she’s gone to Sky.”

  “She’s over the shock, then.”

  “There’s something about her, Nick. Other kids at the school don’t remember them being that close. She was in the year above Jessica. Now she’s left the school. I think she’s on the make.”

  42
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  Isha Sharvani saw Belsey at the front of the Forensic Command office and groaned.

  “You’re going to like this,” Belsey said. “I promise. I need image enhancement.”

  Sharvani led the way through her lab to the photographic unit. The unit was two rooms between the toxicology labs and forensic dentistry; one of the rooms had a projector. Sharvani dimmed the lights and scanned the photograph. After a few seconds it appeared on a wall-sized screen, enlarged to fill it and divided into a grid by thin red lines.

  “Is that a waterfall in the background?” Sharvani said.

  “It’s a waterfall.”

  “In a bar?”

  “In a casino. It’s called Les Ambassadeurs.”

  “Nice.” She admired the image. Then her expression became serious.

  “That’s Jessica Holden on the left.”

  “I’d say so,” Belsey said.

  “What is this?”

  “The reason she got shot.”

  Sharvani stood back and folded her arms, casting a professional gaze across the enlarged image.

  “Who’s the man?”

  “He’s called Pierce Buckingham. Zoom in on his glasses.” She zoomed in. There was a lot of glare on the glass; lights from the slot machines.

  “Reflected in them,” Belsey said.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s whoever’s taking the photograph.” She zoomed in further. “You can see the figure?”

  “I can see a shape.”

  “Look, down in the wineglass you can see them as well.”

  She filled the screen with a wineglass. The hazy form of a man raising a camera was clear enough. It didn’t tell you much else.

  “I can enhance it,” Sharvani said. “But I can’t make it show you a face that isn’t there. Who do you reckon it is?”

  “A man called Alexei Devereux. He’s also dead.”

  “Well, this is cheerful.”

  Belsey took out the clipping from Al-Hayat, and replaced the photo with the fragment of newspaper. It appeared on the screen.

  “Same guy,” she said.

  “Yes. Can you tell me anything?”

  “The photograph’s being taken from inside. It’s a large doorway for a church. Maybe a cathedral.”

  “Get closer on the buildings in the background. I want to know where they are.”

  The spire came into focus, set on top of old, blackened stone.

  “Recognise it?” she said.

  “No.”

  He switched the images back to the gaming scene and looked again at the blonde girl, Jessica’s companion, on Buckingham’s other shoulder. If they weren’t close friends at school they certainly seemed to be running a tight operation outside of it. He needed to speak to her, the fourth party in this memento. He didn’t want to get through to an agent. Someone must have information, she’d said to the cameras, in her expensive clothes.

  “Is this computer online?” Belsey asked.

  “Sure.”

  Belsey sat down and searched for the Sweetheart Companionship website. It arrived with its parade of youth for hire. “A girl with you in one hour!” There were a lot of blondes, a lot of girls from small-town Ukraine and Lithuania. All the beauty of the former communist world seemed to be on the game in London. And then there she was: Lucinda, “our English Rose.” Sharvani watched over his shoulder.

  “Are you looking for a date tonight?”

  “I just found one.”

  “That’s the girl.”

  “Looks like her to me.”

  He called Sweetheart on the Forensic Unit’s phone and they answered on the first ring.

  “Good evening, sir. Sweetheart Companionship.”

  “I’ve seen a girl on your site and I’d like to arrange a date with her.”

  “Yes, sir, which one?”

  “Lucinda.”

  “I’m afraid Lucinda’s not available tonight.”

  “I’ll pay good money.”

  “That’s not possible. Can I recommend another girl, very similar?”

  “An English Rose?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Belsey hung up. Then all hell broke loose.

  Engines roared into life down in the parking lot, sirens opening up. Individuals sprinted down the corridor outside. Sharvani took a call and pulled on her jacket, grabbing a murder kit from the desk.

  “What’s going on?” Belsey said.

  “Showtime. I’ve got to go.”

  Belsey stepped out of the office. “What is it?”

  “Another shooting. EC4.”

  Belsey jumped into his car and joined the convoy. He tailed the Response Unit north across London Bridge into the City. They stopped at Monument. He jumped out.

  A silver Audi sat abandoned at the junction of Cannon Street and King William Street, the passenger window smashed, driver’s door open. The burn of a motorbike tyre ran fresh alongside it. Red-and-white police tape entangled the junction. Six City uniforms guarded the scene, one on his radio—“No, no sighting.”

  But it wasn’t the car that attracted the bulk of the attention.

  The action was down in the darkness of St. Clement’s Court, outside the building that had housed AD Development.

  “Move away,” someone shouted.

  Belsey showed his badge and ducked through. Buckingham lay in the alleyway, beside an unmarked door to an empty office. He was still in his expensive overcoat and bulletproof vest. Most of his skull was missing, bone and brain splashed across the tarmac and up the adjacent wall.

  “Someone cover him,” yelled a sergeant from the City Police.

  Belsey walked back to the Audi. He found what was left of Buckingham’s glasses twisted by the pedals. When they get me, I want you to remember you’ll be next. He glanced up at the windows and roofs and ledges. Figures of Industry and Commerce stared down. An air ambulance cast its low growl over the Square Mile. He stepped out of the light and walked back to his unmarked police car.

  43

  Sweetheart. He needed company.

  Belsey drove west into Soho, senses open for his killer and flooded by the general brutality of Saturday night. Two cars collided at the junction of Shaftesbury Avenue and Cambridge Circus and everyone cheered. Glass broke outside a pub and everyone cheered. He never knew what they were cheering: the promise of violence, the physical fact of destruction. Shattered, he thought. It felt like he had shattered and now exhaustion had no place to cling. He had his second wind, pumped with the chaos. People moved loudly between pubs and bars, outrunning closing time; tourists marching to the strip shows, locals edgy with nine hours of drinking. Addicts weaved through the crowd. One woman lay on the pavement, unconscious, flanked by queues for cash machines.

  He was ready to break into the escort agency’s office if necessary. It might have been preferable. But as he approached the building he saw a light from the top-floor window. The front door was open.

  The agency’s receptionist tried to stop Belsey when he reached the top floor.

  “We’re closed.”

  He put a foot in the door. The main lights were off. Light came from under the door to Freddie Garth’s office.

  “You left a light on.”

  He pointed and moved past her as she turned. She ran to the phone and lifted it to put some warning through but was never going to connect in time.

  Belsey opened the door. Garth sat alone, extracting papers from a file.

  “I’m in the middle of something,” Garth said.

  “This will be inconvenient then.” Belsey sat down.

  “What do you want?

  “To speak to Lucinda.”

  “No.”

  Belsey leaned across the desk, picked up the phone, pressed speaker and dialled.

  “Channel Five,” the phone said.

  Belsey leaned over the mike. “It’s Nick Belsey, friend of Miranda Miller. Can you put me through to the news desk?”

  Garth hit the phone and cut them off.
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br />   “She lives in north-west London,” he said. He opened one of the files and read a street address and shut the file again.

  “Thank you for your cooperation,” Belsey said.

  The address was a neat slice of property just west of Highgate Cemetery: a whitewashed home on a gated development. It was eleven o’clock and a new VW Passat was twinkling on the driveway, though the house lights were out. Bedtime. This was going to be fun, Belsey thought.

  He rang the bell and waited, then tried again. After a moment, a man answered in a dressing gown. He had dark hair flecked with grey and looked like he might play a good game of squash.

  “Is there a Lucinda here?”

  “My daughter’s Lucy.”

  “That’ll be the one.”

  “What is this?”

  “Police. It’s nothing to worry about, but I need to speak to her. Is she home?”

  “I think so.”

  “Can I come in?”

  The man led him into a very clean, pale, carpeted home. Belsey saw envelopes on a table in the hall addressed to Dr. Howard Grant. The living room had pink and cream sofas.

  “This is about Jessica,” Grant said.

  “Yes.”

  “Lucy wishes there was more she could do. It’s been very hard for her. For us all.”

  “I know. This must seem cruel. I just want to run one or two new developments by her.”

  Belsey admired the sofas and matching armchairs with their pouffes. There were professional-quality shots of Lucy all over the walls, a copy of the British Journal of Cosmetic Dentistry on the coffee table, a magazine called Smile.

  “Let me see if she’s up.”

  The father went upstairs and came down a few seconds later.

  “She’s in the bathroom.”

  “OK. I’ll wait. Could I get a tea?” Belsey said. “I’ve been on my feet all day.”

  “Of course.”

  Belsey waited for the man to disappear into a newly fitted kitchen and then went upstairs. There was light from under a bathroom door. Beside it was a girl’s bedroom: a wall of photos, A-level textbooks on a shelf, clothes on the floor. He opened the wardrobe, opened the bedside drawer: contraceptive pills, address book, a bottle of diazepam and two brochures for breast augmentation clinics. Belsey flicked through the address book, then put it back.