Mr Frankenstein

by Richard Freeborn

  At the top of the ramp, in the pouring rain of St James’s Square, a police car blocked the exit ramp. People beginning to run or walk hurriedly up the ramps now paused in view of the police presence, or changed to the entrance ramp, or stopped in view of the rain or pushed forward regardless.

  ‘Ah, Mr Falcon,’ Goncharov gasped out. A small silver-plated revolver appeared from under his left arm and he pointed it rather shakily at Joe’s stomach., ‘We pay you, yes? You say it was all mistake. Look, I have…’ he reached quickly into his pocket with his free hand, still trying to catch his breath ‘…dollars, look!’ He held out a wad. ‘We go at once to LA. My wife, she is having baby.’ His eyes, moist like little dots of blue watercolour in the brilliance of the overhead lights, exuded panic far more vividly than the breathy, frightened words. ‘Please, Mr Falcon, please. I was wanting to show our people, you know, future of Russia, our Russia… resurrection… yes, resurrect…’

  By this time a party of uniformed police began coming down the exit ramp, being led by a man in a belted raincoat and broad-rimmed rain hat.

  ‘Could you resurrect Boris Krestovsky?’ Joe muttered.

  The revolver barrel was pressed more firmly into his stomach. ‘What you say?’

  ‘Could Boris Krestovsky be resurrected?’

  ‘What is it you say?’

  ‘And Lenin never had a son, did he?’

  ‘A new Russia, Mr Falcon.’ Goncharov leaned forward. The manner became ingratiating, intimate. ‘You will be famous in Russia. Here, have money. Please.’ The wad of dollars was being thrust at Joe. ‘I must go to private jet.’

  The rain in St James’s had the sound of a waterfall. Vehicles were making their way round the Square with a loud swishing of tyres, while several cars were forming a noisy, hooting queue within the underground car park itself as they tried to climb the exit ramp despite the people.

  ‘You are, sir, a Mr Oleg Goncharov?’ a crisp, officious voice inquired. It was the belted raincoat speaking. He had rainwater running off the rim of his hat. ‘What are you doing with that gun, sir? Are you making a citizen’s arrest?’

  ‘I must go to my private jet! I will call lawyer! No one touch me! No policeman touch me!’

  He fired the revolver upwards. Bullets struck the ceiling of the ramp and a shower of concrete fragments fell indiscriminately on heads and shoulders, almost imitating the rainfall in the Square. He was immediately overpowered.

  ‘The gun, if you please, sir. Thank you, sir.’ The revolver was wrested from him and replaced by handcuffs.

  ‘I need lawyer,’ Goncharov insisted in a shrill, quavering voice. ‘I am not criminal. I need lawyer.’

  ‘In due course, sir. My first duty is to ask whether you are a Mr Oleg Goncharov – is that how your name is pronounced, sir?…’

  The gunfire had simultaneously caused anxiety among those leaving and curiosity among some who stopped and formed a group of onlookers. They were curtly asked to disperse. Meanwhile, more police came down the ramp.

  ‘Are you owner, sir, of a night club,’ the police voice went crisply on, ‘called Scythian Gold. Is that right? I have a request from the Los Angeles Police Department concerning a Mr Oleg Goncharov’s likely implication in a homicide…’

  Whatever he continued saying was lost in a series of shouts and instructions. An ambulance was being summoned. The car park was being cleared. The likelihood of fire from an excess of flammable material was the official excuse. All these things happening simultaneously were a distraction, until Samuel came hobbling up the ramp, flourishing Bakhteen’s revolver, and seemed at once to exercise a mesmerising power over the whole occasion.

  ‘Hey, he’s got the power! He done real good up on that stage!’

  ‘Sir, who are you?’

  ‘I fixed all that in there, that’s who I am! Listen, you guys, I don’t want him detained!’

  ‘No, sir, he’s not being detained.’

  Then Samuel made a loud pronouncement.

  ‘He’s maybe saved the world, Mr Joseph Falcon here. Martha knew he had the power! And if Martha says she’s not goin’ to sell, then Martha’s not goin’ to sell. If she doesn’t get her way, she soon finds ways of turning everything in her favour. And if she says something, she won’t let anyone decide things for her. So she wanted to get rid of old Bob’s invention and she thought she’d do it by making a right idiot of the Russian gentleman who owns this joint here and wants to buy San Jorge from her! No, she won’t sell till she’s good and ready to sell on her own terms! That’s Martha for you!’

  ‘Sam, that’s enough! For sure it is!’ came a sharp woman’s voice with a marked Irish accent.

  Everyone turned to see who had spoken. It was a small woman holding up a green umbrella. Joe recognised her at once as the lady called Violet.

  ‘We know about Martha,’ Violet continued. ‘This is a police matter now, so please let the police do their job.’

  Apparently she was a respected adjunct to the little party of police. The belted raincoat nodded towards her, brushing flakes of cement from his shoulders as he did so. Goncharov was marched away. Sam was being attended to by a couple of paramedics while Joe found himself being escorted up the ramp and into the rain beneath Violet’s umbrella. The rainfall all round them was noisy, spitting up bright silvery darts of water on tarmac and concrete surfaces. The ramps into the car park had emptied. The crowd had rapidly dispersed into St James’s Square and beyond.

  ‘Joe, you done good, as Sam said. And they won’t be detaining you.’

  This was reassuring. Grateful though he was to hear the whispered confidence, he was puzzled by the intimate way she spoke. She placed her arm through his in a quick, rather familiar gesture.

  ‘It’s just a short way along here,’ she confided against the steady drumming of rain on the umbrella’s taut waterproof hood. Again she turned her Irish accent into a form of stage whisper, as if she were speaking softly across a pillow. At the same moment cameras flashed beyond a police cordon. Voices demanded to know what was happening.

  ‘Oh, the naughty fellows! The press has found us! We were trying to keep it all away from them. Head down, Joe, if you can. It’s just a few steps along here.’

  She upped the pace. They slipped through the cordon and she took him a short way very quickly along the pavement beside police vans until she reached what he assumed were glass swing doors to offices that opened smartly the moment she pushed them. A girl immediately locked the doors as soon as they were inside and ushered them out of a small reception area into a waiting room. It was warm, well upholstered and had the chic new air of somewhere used to well-heeled visitors.

  ‘Oh, thank heavens for that!’

  Violet spoke without being at all breathless as she discarded a smart turquoise raincoat on one armchair and indicated another armchair for Joe. A wall mirror became the focus of her attention for a moment as she patted her hair.

  ‘This is as close as I could get …to the back of that Scythian Gold place,’ she explained, sitting down, drawing a neat tartan skirt over her knees. ‘You must be tired, aren’t you?’

  He was glad to flop into an armchair. This was the plan for escape, he supposed, looking down at damp trousers and aware that the shoulders of his jacket had drops of rain on them. ‘Thank you. Yes, I’m tired.’

  She sniffed, slightly wrinkled her nose, found a tissue and asked if he’d like some coffee. He said he’d like coffee and asked in turn what was to happen next.

  ‘Ah, well, now is the best part,’ came her reply as she poured hot coffee from a flask on a little table. ‘Yes, the very best part comes now. Sugar? Cream? Right. So this,’ she said, handing him an artfully shaped plastic cup, ‘is the preliminary bit that I’ve got to tell you. And I speak now rather formally on behalf of our people, your people, the Kremlin. I want to say thank you on their behalf, you see. You are owed thanks and I mean that most sincerely. Because…’

  She lifted her own cup, sipped, wiped her mout
h with a tissue, though bright red marks from her lipstick remained on the cup’s rim when she put it down.

  ‘Because, from the start, when there was that clumsy attack on you in the flat in Courtier Street, we knew you were a target. The people in Scythian Gold here suspected you. Mr Goncharov had put two and two together after seeing you with Leo Kamen and learning about your mother. But then he also knew about Mr Krestovsky. And he very much wanted to find out what those letters were. But we didn’t pick up on you properly until you went to Mrs Billington’s. That was when we got worried, because we knew our representative there had done her bit, had made friends, but wasn’t completely trustworthy.’

  ‘You mean Julie, Julie Schiff?’

  ‘I mean her, yes. So we had to rely on you. And you came up trumps. We couldn’t tell you. The less you knew, the better. That’s what we thought. At the heart of it – I mean what I’m saying – at the heart of it there was that gentleman’s gentleman. He knew both sides. So that was it! Our Mr Goncharov had to be stopped, as I told you, and you’ve stopped him. He’s no Mr Frankenstein. I think it’s what he wanted people to think. Saviour of Russia, able to raise the dead and so on. All that stuff. Now he’s nothing at all. And that’s why… Oh, what is that frightful smell? Where’s it coming from? Dear God – excuse my French – but what’s that stuff on your shoes?’

  He glanced down. There was no hiding the fact that both his shoes glistened with a layer of green slime. The soles were damp from walking in the rain, but the uppers showed clear signs of a thick, oily substance that had run into messy emerald streaks from the laces to the toe-cap tips of the shoes and had also gathered round the heels. It took no time at all for him to recognise what it was.

  ‘It’s the remains.’

  ‘Remains?’ She exchanged a long, rather calculating look with him. ‘You mean?’ Then realization came to her slowly. They both stared down at his shoes, the horror slowly paralyzing him, while she deliberately broke the spell by snapping her fingers. She slowly shook her head. ‘Embalming fluid. I see.’

  They were both completely silent for several moments. It had been on stage, in the darkness, being led by Samuel. He couldn’t remember Samuel’s exact words, but there it was – he had trodden in the smell of death.

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said very quietly, ‘the best thing would be to get rid of the remains, eh? May the poor creature rest in peace. Amen.’ She crossed herself. ‘Here, use my tissues.’

  He did. She found a lidded bin and he tossed the slime-impregnated lumps of tissue into it, after which he insisted on finding somewhere to wash his hands and bathed them, letting cold water flow and flow, mopping any remains off his shoes, letting more water run over his hands with as much force as possible, breathing hard above the basin, scarcely daring to look at his reflection in the mirror above the basin, simply aware he was responsible for causing the death of whatever or whoever had supposedly lived in that casket or been incarcerated in that marble chamber at San Jorge for decade after decade. He, Joseph Richter, was responsible for killing it. It was a truth he would have to confront as long as he lived. He was left with only one choice. He would destroy the likelihood of it ever happening again. He knew what he had to do.

  He looped the cord containing the locket over his head as if removing a chain of office and flung it on the floor. Then he stamped on the locket. Again he stamped. The strong casing did not break. He went on stamping. He stamped until he thought his leg would break. Nothing seemed to have any effect on it. He knew it had been made of a very strong plastic material, but he also knew it had been especially designed to release an extraordinarily strong electric charge. He felt sure the charge would have weakened the casing. By having activated it as he had done, he felt intuitively this was true. He stamped again, more in desperation than hope, and to his astonishment he sensed a cracking, followed by a sound more like a gunshot or controlled explosion. The locket split, broke apart and revealed the shapes of its batteries at the same time as the door of the cloakroom sprang open and Violet rushed in.

  She stared down. All she said was: ‘I see.’ Then she said: ‘I thought…’

  ‘Other remains,’ he said quietly. Sweat was pouring down his face.

  ‘Ah!’

  She stepped over the remains, stopped in front of him and kissed his sweaty cheek. A siren howled out in St James’s, its distant resonance entering the cloakroom like an underlining of her kiss. She smiled warmly at him and he smiled back.

  ‘On behalf of peace, tranquillity and the hope that we’ll be godly and quietly governed, I’m glad it wasn’t what I thought,’ she said. ‘Because, well, I used my phone. Come and see.’

  Come and see what? He used tissue from a dispenser to wipe his face. She went out, leaving the cloakroom door open, and he followed her. So far as he was concerned, he had performed an absolutely necessary exorcism in stamping the locket to pieces. It left him feeling genuinely free. He looked at himself in the cloakroom mirror. Yes, strong chin, wide mouth, but what most struck him were the clear, trusting eyes and the fact shining from them that he would never be able to disguise his feelings completely. He would always leave a minute trail of guilt wherever he was, because he had been branded a cheat and bourgeois filth. That’s what he was, the Joseph Richter he was looking at. Then he switched the light off and felt he had achieved a state of real closure.

  Except for the moment he stepped out of the cloakroom and re-entered the waiting room. The damp shoulders of the raincoat misled him. He thought police. Then he knew he was wrong. The shape of the shoulders and the neat, firm waist told him even before she turned who she was. He hugged her to him as soon as she faced him. If they could have melted into each other, they would have done. It was a miracle. As much of a miracle as the fact, so Violet related in the lilt of Ireland, that Jenny’d actually found a place to park in St James’s of all places, could you believe it! And she’d phoned her up to say Joe was safe. And he knew he was safe, holding Jenny. And Jenny pressed herself against him and kissed him.

  Copyright

  Dynasty Press Ltd

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  www.dynastypress.co.uk

  First published in the UK by Dynasty Press 2015

  Copyright © Richard Freeborn 2015

  Richard Freeborn has asserted his moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publishers.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-1-910050-68-2

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