‘Can I tell people?’
‘That’s up to you.’
He sat in the Audi. Did Mark film something in that room? Try to sell it to the papers? That seemed ungrateful to say the least. Film something and then someone else got their hands on it?
He drove back through north London, stopped at the Gate Lodge in Golders Green. It was a shop-conversion pub, plastic Paddy, with its windows painted over and no sober clientele. He ordered a toastie and a coffee and took a table at the back in time to watch the news on a screen above the bar.
Chloe Burlington was third on the schedule, below terrorism and a hurricane. They showed CCTV of her leaving Loulou’s. Alone. Phone in hand. Rope unclipped, doormen watching her back a little uncertainly as she steps between two parked cars and heads directly for the darkness. They showed her parents crying. That was all.
He watched a report on a factory closing. Then the news ended with Amber. ‘Back in top shape for her wedding.’ Her public life continued, shining, unruffled: Amber beside a poster for the perfume, her face airbrushed out of reality. Amber in a short dress with gold sequins, taking selfies with prizewinners at an awards ceremony. Glossy. Unmurderous. Mobbed by people fighting for their piece of magic.
A lot of questions condensed to a simple one: how did Mark meet Amber? The Retreat Boutique & Wellness Spa seemed unlikely, though not impossible. Selling drugs? Not implausible. How long had they been . . . what? Lovers? Surely not. And if, somehow, they had been, how long could they have kept that secret? You’d run out of suburban leisure parks eventually. Someone would see past the baseball caps and shades.
Was this the secret Chloe Burlington had stumbled across? Was it worth seven hundred and fifty grand?
16
TEN-THIRTY P.M. QUEEN’S CRESCENT AT night was edgy. Men walked fast, alone, hoods up. Most of the local population kept to the high-rises. TV screens flickered in the blocks like pilot lights. Two teenagers assessed Belsey’s mugging potential and cycled on. Someone stumbled out of the Sir Robert Peel, held onto a bus stop, then lowered themselves carefully to the ground.
The lights were on in Maureen Doughty’s home. No Renault Clio parked up. Belsey walked the length of the street and back, but it wasn’t there. He listened at Maureen’s door: no male voice, no suggestion that Mark was at home. Knocked.
Maureen Doughty answered, sleep-dazed, wrapping a cardigan over a nightie.
‘It’s you,’ she said.
‘Can I come in?’
‘Have you found Mark?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Where is he? What’s happened?’
‘Does Mark own a car?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Anywhere he might keep one?’
‘No.’
Maureen felt for the sofa and sat down stiffly. Belsey went upstairs. Mark’s room still stank. But, in light of the Comfort footage, there was something fascinating about its compulsive hoard. As if the very force of Mark’s obsession had burst the membrane between fantasy and reality. Belsey was dealing with the aftermath.
He returned to the living room. Maureen looked frailer, more disorientated than yesterday.
‘Have you eaten?’ Belsey asked.
‘A bit.’
He couldn’t see any new washing-up in the kitchen. He found a tin of soup in the cupboard, cleaned a pan and put it on. He opened the bread he’d bought her yesterday and buttered a slice. Mark and Amber. Two outsiders. Two lonely people. But people on different tracks. He leaned against the rusted sink as the soup heated and savoured the improbable. Had Amber Knight been here?
He brought the food through on a tray and sat down to watch Maureen Doughty eat.
‘Did Mark ever say that he knew Amber Knight?’
‘Knew? Mark has an imagination. His teachers always said . . .’
‘I think he did know her.’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘I’m sure of it, Maureen. Did Mark go anywhere special ever? Anywhere he might have met her?’
‘I don’t know.’
She ate hungrily, dipping her head to the spoon. Dabbing her mouth with a tissue between sips.
‘Tell me about his life since uni. What jobs did he do?’
‘He was a lab technician. At a school. He lost his job.’
‘How did he lose it?’
‘He quit. Then he didn’t leave his room for weeks. Months.’
‘When was that?’
‘A few years ago. Then he started going to the centre.’
‘Which centre?’
‘The one in Islington. It was a way of getting him out of the house. That helped. He got some more work – at a shop, a newsagent’s. On weekends.’
‘When did he start getting interested in celebrities?’
‘Maybe at the shop. Reading the magazines.’
‘And maybe he started going to events with celebrities. Red-carpet things, signings.’
‘Sometimes, if there was a first night of a film. Or a concert. He’s friendly when you get to know him. People think he’s a loner, but he isn’t.’
‘Apparently not.’
Belsey left her to eat, went and sat on Mark’s bed. Had Amber been in it? That was quite a thought. Were the soiled sheets what turned her on?
Mark hadn’t bridged fantasy and reality by accident. Nor by magic. He was clever, that’s what Lee Chester said. How did you do it, Mark?
A police siren opened up a few blocks south. Belsey tweaked the curtains. A black Ford Mondeo was sitting in the middle of the road outside, gleaming like oil under the orange street light. No one got out. A minute later it crawled to the end of the street and turned. Belsey watched the brake lights disappear towards Gospel Oak.
He was being paranoid.
He went downstairs, checked the front door was locked. There was a pile of unopened letters on a ledge by the door. Two were addressed to Mark Doughty. He glanced back at the living room. Maureen was resting, her head back, eyes closed. He slowly tore the post open. ‘Essex Police is committed to making the roads of Essex a safer place for all who use them.’
It was a speeding notice: 9 May 2015. Saturday, 11.43 p.m. Mark Doughty had been camera-flashed going 30mph over the limit. They’d skipped the fine and points and gone straight for a court order. The offence took place on Woodford High Road.
The next letter had been sent on the Monday, courtesy of Epping Forest Council: ‘To the owners(s) of: Renault Clio (blue), vehicle registration: A053 JVU.’ Sunday 10 May, Mark’s car had been found abandoned at the Fatboy Steak House car park, High Road, Epping. ‘Under the terms of the Refuse Disposal Act 1978 it is a criminal offence to abandon a vehicle on public and private land . . .’ They threatened him with a fine of up to £2,500 or three months’ imprisonment. ‘The Council can also claim back the cost of removing and disposing of the vehicle.’
Belsey stepped back into the living room. Nudged Maureen.
‘Any idea what Mark was doing in Epping on the weekend?’
She blinked up at him. ‘No.’
Belsey showed her the letter.
‘Do you think he’s OK?’
Belsey sat down. ‘I hope so.’ He looked at the grease stains up the wall behind Mark’s armchair. Maureen was staring at the letters in his hand. He read them again, then got to his feet.
‘I’ll take a look.’
‘Would you?’
‘Sure. Why not?’
17
LONDON BECAME ESSEX AROUND CHIGWELL. Clusters of habitation with quieter roads between them. The landscape became scattered things looming out of darkness: lorry parks, burger vans, desolate picnic spots. After twenty minutes Belsey was on Woodford High Road, where Mark Doughty had been caught speeding – long and straight, past golf courses and reservoirs. He continued past Chingford onto Epping New Road. The forest began.
He stopped by the turning for an air museum, checked the map, kept going. Trees clustered tightly on either side. Belsey kept an eye ou
t for a steakhouse. Past the Wake Arms Roundabout, signs for Woodridden Hill, one for an equestrian centre. When he started getting signs for the M25, he knew he’d gone too far. He stopped at a petrol station, showed the letter to a cashier. The man pointed him back to the roundabout.
‘The restaurant’s just the other side, back towards Loughton, but it’s shut down.’
The second time round Belsey saw it. He also saw why he’d missed the place originally. It was the only facility on a barren stretch of road; once, no doubt, a beacon of shelter and meat, now a ruin. Lights were off, windows boarded, boards graffitied. Someone had smashed the neon bulbs on the roadside sign, a depiction of Fatboy himself, a red-cheeked man in a chef’s apron. A kids’ play area had accumulated a carpet of empty cider cans. Beyond it was the car park, stretching to the forest itself, a single car in the far corner: Mark Doughty’s Renault. Belsey stopped close to the entrance and walked over.
The back right door was dented; the front left tyre was flat. Nothing to suggest it had been stolen or hotwired, though. The doors were locked. It looked like someone had turned up for a steak one night and the restaurant closed before they could leave.
There was rustling amongst the tightly packed trees. Doggers? That was the local sport, wasn’t it. Liven up the Essex nights.
He approached the trees. A section of branches was broken. Snapped quite recently. The ferns on the ground lay trampled into the mud. Not enough for a regular route. Someone had forged a new path.
Belsey went back to his car and found a small penlight in the glove compartment. He took it into the woods, shone it around. The trail continued.
Twigs scratched his face as he followed it deeper. Brambles scraped his legs. He lifted an arm. Branches flexed and swung back behind him as he forced his way through. After a moment he looked back and couldn’t see the car park. The trees had closed ranks. He listened. There was a low hum a few metres deeper into the darkness, like an electricity pylon, but modulating in pitch. He walked towards the sound. Thirty seconds later a fox bolted past, retinas bright in the torchlight, mouth smeared with blood.
That was the rustling.
Then he smelled the decomposing flesh.
Belsey covered his nose and mouth. A second fox stopped mid-sprint, fronted up like a cornered offender before diving sideways into the undergrowth. He continued into a thickening mist of blowflies. Another twenty seconds and he’d found the epicentre.
A body lay amidst the trees. Its skin rippled. The face and arms were made of skipper flies, which seemed to pour upwards out of the earth. Belsey stepped back. He found his lighter, took a fallen branch with a lot of dead leaves and lit it. He stamped the flames out and smoked some of the insects away. Under the coating of flies was a man, Caucasian, some dark hair, remains of a T-shirt, blue jeans. White jawbone and teeth flashed out. The eye sockets crawled with larvae. Beetles made forays from his nostrils and ears.
No stab wounds that Belsey could see: they would have their own entomological party going on. Belsey felt along the neck, through the insects. It was unbroken. The windpipe was also intact, skull in one piece. He bit the torch so both hands were free then rolled the body. It forced liquid out of the lungs and over his arms. He gagged, then went back to work.
No socks or underwear. Suggesting he’d been killed naked, dressed after death.
The less edible surfaces were more informative. Enough skin remained on his back to see he’d been dragged – brambles wedged into the flesh. Belsey searched the pockets, brought out a handful of bluebottles, no wallet. At the bottom of the left-hand pocket he found a pack of breath-freshening mints and a small piece of paper. A receipt. Flames Mediterranean Restaurant, Comfort Hotel, Finchley. A double of ‘Mediterranean whisky’ had set him back £6.40 – cash payment. 8 May. Last Friday.
It seemed he’d found Mark Doughty.
Belsey allowed himself a moment’s pause – some sympathy for Maureen Doughty, at least. Pity for one more dropout who’d found himself on a bad journey, as glamorous and unexpected as it may have been. Then he traced the path of trampled leaves back to the car park.
He picked up a chunk of broken concrete from the side of the restaurant, smashed a side window of the Renault, reached in, opened the door. The driver’s seat was pulled forward so that his knees hit the wheel when he climbed in. As if someone significantly shorter than Mark Doughty had been driving. The glove compartment was empty. He climbed through to the back seat, lifted the cover of the boot and separated two tangled bedsheets: Egyptian cotton, according to the labels. They were still damp from whatever they’d last enfolded.
Belsey walked out of the car park to the road. Cars sped past every thirty seconds or so. The roadside lamps cast a syrupy yellow light. He flicked two maggots off his jacket. The stink of corpse lingered in his nostrils. He looked down the road. He could see the tall silhouette of a camera a couple of hundred metres away. The court summons sent to Mark Doughty had him snapped by a speed trap at quarter to midnight on Saturday. Woodford High Road, half a mile further south. But it would be the same model: Truvelo D-Cams, digital with wireless comms. They took face-on pictures. They would have a shot of the driver.
He was staring at the camera’s silhouette, wondering what the shot might reveal, when a police car turned the bend.
Belsey stepped back. But there was nowhere to hide. Just him and a corpse and a couple of foxes: the only action for miles around. The car slowed, two men already undoing their seatbelts. It pulled up by the Fatboy sign.
‘Evening, sir,’ the older of the two said as he climbed out, adjusting his radio. His colleague slammed the driver’s door and joined him. Two uniformed male officers; duty sergeant and constable, both in stab vests. They looked wary, heavy with kit.
‘Evening,’ Belsey said. ‘I’ve just found a corpse.’ He didn’t have the energy for convincing dramatics.
‘What did you say?’ The sergeant was moustached, the constable thinly bearded, gangly. Both stared at him.
‘I’ve found a corpse.’ He waved towards the trees. ‘A dead body, in the woods.’
The two men studied his face, then glanced towards the two cars in the car park, and finally the woods themselves.
‘Where, exactly?’
‘About fifty metres into the trees, a straight line from the Renault.’
‘What were you doing there?’
‘I was taking a look at the abandoned car, the Renault. Then I found the corpse. I can show you.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Robert. Robert Peel.’
‘Live around here?’
‘No. Central London.’
The older officer turned away to radio an update. Belsey could feel the younger one scan him up and down for weapons. The sergeant came back, nodded at his colleague, adjusted his protection kit.
‘After you, sir.’
Their police torches were more effective. The beams picked out the corpse just as the smell reached them. The officers took a few steps closer, glanced at each other again, then at Belsey, eyes now sharp with adrenalin.
‘Know what this is about?’
‘No.’
The younger one began sweeping his beam in all directions, as if an assailant might be lurking. Belsey watched the older one make an assessment of the scene’s forensic fragility.
‘We’re going to mess this up if we go any further,’ he said.
They marched back to the car park. The sergeant radioed through for full Homicide response. Belsey could hear two sets of sirens starting up a mile or so away. The constable went back to the squad car, took a roll of tape and began sealing off the area.
The sergeant turned to Belsey. His moustache twitched.
‘Tell me again what you were doing here.’
‘I was actually looking for a friend. It’s his car.’
Belsey unfolded the council notices addressed to Mark Doughty. The sergeant took them and read them through.
‘You think it’s thi
s Mark Doughty?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Do you know what happened?’
‘No.’
‘Is that your car, Robert? The Audi?’
‘Yes.’
The first back-up pulled in. A woman in a grey suit climbed out of a silver Vauxhall Insignia, clearly senior, maybe an inspector. An area-response car containing two more CID suits arrived a few seconds behind.
‘The car was caught speeding,’ Belsey carried on to the sergeant. ‘The cameras along this stretch of road look like new ones. Forward-facing. So it will have taken a shot of the driver.’ The sergeant nodded once, squinted.
‘Who are you exactly?’
‘I was thinking – if Essex Police sent the court order, you’d have the shots. The original photographs.’
The sergeant walked over and consulted the senior officer. A Scene of Crime van rolled up. An exploratory party headed into the woods.
The senior officer took Mark Doughty’s penalty notices and studied them. Then the woods ignited. The white light of a halogen lamp back-lit the trees, throwing their shadows across the gravel. A few minutes later Belsey saw officers huddled around the initial squad car, leaning in to study the dashboard-mounted data screen. He walked over, alone. They’d got the speed-trap shot. Mark’s Renault, going 90mph at 23.43 on Saturday night.
It looked like at least three people in the car. A man driving: glasses, dark hair, jacket zipped up to the neck; hard to see much else. Beside him – Amber. Belsey wouldn’t have recognised her if he hadn’t been looking specifically: dark jacket, black baseball cap. A third person sat in the back, a meaty forearm resting along the edge of the window.
‘Recognise them?’ someone asked, turning to Belsey.
‘Can’t see much, can you,’ Belsey said.
Behind the Renault, driving close for an empty road, was a second vehicle: a grey Peugeot 5008 people carrier. Both front seats were occupied. It looked like a man and a woman, and the woman could just possibly have been Chloe Burlington.
He peered closer. Chloe Burlington? The woman’s face was very faint. She wore a pale cardigan or coat, hair tied back. But he thought he recognised Chloe’s long neck and round face. He didn’t recognise anything about the man beside her: white, clean shaven, possibly a receding hairline.
The House of Fame Page 13
