Dark Side

by Margaret Duffy

  As Patrick had said, the whole flat was filthy and I did not have to be told that the homes of drug addicts and those who drink suicidal amounts of alcohol usually are. Bearing in mind Carrick’s warning about the possible presence of used needles, I wandered into the very large and lofty living room while he tackled the bedrooms.

  At one time the decor must have been at the height of modernist chic, in my view out of place in this setting but nevertheless worth looking at – if you were a man and enjoyed more than slightly pornographic posters of women, that is. Stained from having God knows what thrown at them over the years and with tattered edges they bared just about everything, pouting, from all walls. I could imagine Mallory in here, at night, his ‘music’ blaring, on his own private death slide into oblivion.

  ‘Strobe lights, too,’ James said, pointing towards the ceiling, having come in when I had been contemplating all this rather than searching for far longer than I ought to have done. ‘I can remember being here one night as I wanted to talk to Mallory in connection with the Mrs Pryce murder case and Cooper was here as well and tried to get me drinking. It was like that scene in The Ipcress File where Harry Palmer’s tortured with noise and crazy lights and only holds out by sticking a nail in his palm. As it was I threw up when I managed to get away.’ He added, ‘I’d been drinking too much already you see. My life seemed over after Catherine died.’

  She had been his first wife and had succumbed to a rare form of bone cancer.

  Carefully, we went through the contents of a chest of drawers, some open shelving, a brimming wastepaper basket that contained old newspapers and pornographic magazines, empty drinks bottles and the mouldy remains of convenience meals, including used plastic cutlery. Nothing about the man emerged, nothing but what was in front of our eyes in this room: his drug and drink addiction, his music, his obsession with sex.

  ‘He’s destroyed himself,’ I whispered when we had come across absolutely nothing to give us a lead as to his whereabouts and had had a quick look at the kitchen. ‘There’s nothing left. It’s horrible.’

  ‘I think you’ll find it was Cooper who destroyed him,’ James said soberly. ‘Shall we go?’

  ‘Before we do I’d quite like to talk to Miss Braithewaite who lives in the flat upstairs. Or would that be an unpleasant reminder of her unfortunate connection with Mrs Pryce’s death?’

  ‘We parted the best of friends but I really can’t see that it’ll be of any use,’ Carrick replied. ‘And it’s not every copper who’s had to arrest his English teacher for murder. Thank God it turned out to have been a complete accident.’

  ‘The Serious Organised Crime Agency again!’ exclaimed the lady in response to my introducing myself, having released any number of bolts and chains on her front door in order to open it. ‘Do come in. D’you know Patrick? He finished cleaning my windows for me.’

  It did no harm to tell her that he was my husband.

  ‘Even better. And James, lovely to see you again. I hope you can both stay for a cup of tea.’

  She was immaculately dressed in a lilac linen suit and very sprightly for her years, although obviously getting frail, and the contrast between her home and the one below could not have been more stark. Here were cherished antique furniture, faded Chinese rugs, soft watercolours and embroidered pictures of flowers on the walls, the latter perhaps of her own creation.

  ‘We’re looking for Paul Mallory,’ Carrick said when we had been presented with our tea in fine bone china cups and I was busy munching on a biscuit, having forgotten all about lunch. ‘And in case, Miss Braithewaite, you’re wondering why I’m not wearing my usual suit and tie it’s because I’ve been off work and am not officially on duty again until next week. Ingrid is a friend and I’m giving her a hand.’

  ‘I had noticed,’ said the lady, who had indeed been eyeing his jeans, sweatshirt and trainers. ‘Well, as you know, I had all the floors soundproofed when he started making that ghastly noise but I can just hear it sometimes, especially in the summer if the windows are open. I have to say it was lovely and quiet while he was in prison. But over the past few days it’s gone completely silent again, which made me think he wasn’t there. The police have been asking about him and someone said his car wasn’t parked at the back but I don’t know – I wouldn’t even know which one is his.’

  ‘Have you spoken to him at all? Do you know anything about him that might give us a clue as to where he’s gone?’

  ‘I was asked that. No, I don’t come face-to-face with the man to be able to say anything to him – not even good morning. He does have that friend, Cooper, who I’m sure you know about. I could hear them, or at least someone, having dreadful rows occasionally and I fear drink was involved.’

  ‘He’s not at Cooper’s place,’ Carrick said. The identity of the murder victim had still not been released.

  ‘I fancy he’s not a person to come to a good end, if you see what I mean,’ said Miss Braithewaite tentatively.

  ‘You once told me that you could pick out the children who might go wrong,’ Carrick recollected.

  ‘I said that when we were doing the play? When you were playing Wimsey?’

  ‘That’s right, and the boy you cast as the arch-villain went on to become one in real life.’

  ‘Oh, no, did he? I sincerely hope he didn’t hear me and I gave him the idea.’

  ‘Not a chance.’

  Frowning, Miss Braithewaite said, ‘You know, there’s a place where Mallory might have gone but you simply mustn’t go rushing off there as I’m sure I’m quite wrong. That music that he’s really enthusiastic about was written by Karl Humpleschlacht. I absolutely hate it but can remember listening to a programme once on Radio Three about him and other so-called progressive or fringe composers. I didn’t listen for very long, I have to confess. Apparently he was living in London – this was in the fifties, you understand – went mad and in the end threw himself off a bridge into the Thames. Hammersmith, I think. But he knew he was going mad and used to spend more and more time away from his composing in what he regarded as his sanctuary. If Mallory’s following in his hero’s footsteps …’ She took a breath – more a disapproving sniff, really. ‘It can’t have done him much good, though, can it?’

  ‘I’ve never heard of private asylums,’ James said a little later.

  ‘Think of it as an exclusive clinic,’ I suggested. ‘Asylum isn’t a word that’s used in connection with mental illness these days.’

  We had left the car at the rear of North Terrace for a short while and hunted out a café that had wi-fi to enable me to ask my smart phone about Buckington Hall, Surrey. As the name suggested it had once been a stately home and had belonged to the Heaton family. After the place had to be sold to cover death duties it had variously been a girls’ boarding school, a hospital during the First World War, a military command centre during the Second and lastly, a treatment centre, no doubt vastly expensive, for the titled and wealthy who had drink, drug and/or mental problems. Some really disturbed, and deemed to be dangerous, clients had been permanent residents. There was no further information following its closure in 1961.

  ‘Something tells me I shouldn’t ask Surrey Police to make enquiries,’ Carrick said. ‘It’s just too flimsy.’

  I made no further comments concerning professional pride, saying instead, ‘If we call at the nick you can listen to the radio while I email them through official channels and ask them to contact me on my mobile.’

  Information was forthcoming and I received a call amazingly quickly. I was told that the hall and grounds were now derelict after several attempts by the local historical society to save the property, a venture complicated by lead being stolen from the roof and marble fireplaces, carved panelling and even a staircase ripped out from within. Since then vandals had started fires on several occasions. Efforts were being made to trace the present owner, an eccentric nonagenarian who lived in the United States, with a view to the place being sold to a developer. It was most unlike
ly that anyone could be in the house, the police spokesman continued as, since the attacks by vandals, it had been surrounded by security fencing topped by razor wire.

  I reminded him that the man in question was regarded as desperate and the main suspect in a murder investigation, and finished by asking if someone could check. Apologies followed that nothing could be done in the very near future as they had what he described as a ‘major incident’ on their hands.

  ‘The canteen coffee machine just blew up. And it’s raining,’ Carrick commented dourly.

  I looked at my watch. ‘It’ll be almost dark by the time we get there.’

  My companion registered horror. ‘Hen, you’re not going to set off and go looking for that maniac in a derelict building at night!’

  No, perhaps not.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ James said decidedly.

  He was quite right; it was flimsy and I was grateful to him for being willing to accompany me. Joanna, I knew, would have relished such a venture but in the present circumstances for her to come with me would have been most unwise and I would not have allowed her to. If she was injured … To her credit, she seemed not to mind her husband setting off with me early the next morning on what I was beginning to think was a fool’s errand, a woman clutching at anything to keep herself busy when she ought to be concentrating on writing a novel that had already been far too long in the creating.

  ‘If he’s there, or we think he is, we call out the local cops,’ Carrick said as he got in the Range Rover. ‘Not only that, the place is almost certainly going to be hellishly secured.’

  ‘I do have bolt-cutters,’ I said.

  ‘Why didn’t I know you would?’ he muttered.

  ‘There’s a Smith and Wesson in the safe by your right knee should you want to carry it.’

  ‘Look, I’m not nervous!’ he protested, his Scottish accent a little more pronounced than usual.

  ‘I know you’re not, I’m just telling you it’s there,’ I assured him. He was, a purely temporary state of affairs due to having recently been savagely beaten up.

  ‘Patrick has the Glock?’

  ‘Plus his knife. He always has his knife.’

  And is more dangerous with that than most men armed with a meat cleaver.

  ‘I sincerely hope he’s not going to try to take this Raptor character and his retinue single-handed.’

  ‘The idea’s only to locate him, hopefully somewhere where he’s likely to stay for long enough to enable Patrick to call in and get the Met to arrest him.’

  He gave me a ‘I’ve-heard-that-one-before’ kind of look and then said, ‘I felt I should tell Lynn what we were doing.’

  ‘I’m glad you did.’

  ‘Then they’ll know exactly where to look for us, or rather where our decomposing bodies will be – under tons of fallen masonry,’ he gloomily added.

  ‘James, did you sleep last night?’

  ‘No, I couldn’t get off for some reason.’

  ‘Then for heaven’s sake have a snooze now!’

  He did, sleeping as if dead. I got some breakfast inside him too when we stopped for fuel on the motorway, something else that had not quite happened.

  Buckington Hall was situated near Virginia Water and set among trees, most of which were in Windsor Great Park. It proved to be quite hard to find, even with the satnav, and after bouncing down sundry tracks and unmade roads – yes, it was raining – we ended up in a lane that appeared to be the service road to a golf club. And, suddenly, there it was, the huge gates chained up, warning notices about alarms and guard dogs everywhere and, as we already knew, razor wire.

  ‘I think I watched one of those ghost hunting programmes that was filmed here,’ Carrick said, gazing at what was before us. ‘They said it was a nightmare – it looks like one.’

  I could not blame lack of food and sleep this time because he happened to be right.

  Quickly, James went on to add, ‘It’s Joanna who likes watching them – but I have to sit and hold her hand.’

  Even though the drive was overgrown the house was visible, little more than a blackened ruin with vegetation growing on the chimneys and what remained of the roof. The windows were just rectangular holes and like sightless eyes but still, somehow, looking at us.

  SIXTEEN

  There was no question of entering through the main gates – it was too well secured. I pulled off the lane and parked in a nearby clearing, just off a forest track. Another car was there already, but it wasn’t Mallory’s. We had seen several people either jogging or walking dogs so I was content that our presence was not conspicuous.

  We set off, walking along the lane, following the boundary wall of the house and one-time gardens until we reached its extremity in that direction and underwent a right-angled turn. There we discovered a narrow winding path that branched off the lane, running roughly parallel with the new direction of the wall, well-worn as though the route was regularly used by walkers or deer. Unfortunately, from the point of view of climbing over it, the wall appeared to be in very good condition and in places was swathed in ivy and brambles trying to gain access and other climbers growing on the inside endeavouring to escape. After about ten minutes we came to a door set in it. It was almost invisible due to the vegetation and, I thought, had been intended for the use of garden and estate workers for maintenance purposes. It proved to be well and truly locked and probably bolted as well, so we carried on walking.

  ‘Supposing he’s here,’ Carrick said. ‘Where has he parked his car?’

  ‘There must be at least one other entrance to a place like this,’ I replied. ‘And for all we know he may have been here before, in the footsteps of his hero kind of thing, and be familiar with the layout.’

  ‘Not a bad day for a walk anyway, now the rain’s eased off a bit.’

  ‘I know you don’t think he’s here.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘No, not for one minute. I’m just telling myself we’re eliminating it from enquiries.’

  ‘You’re learning all the jargon.’

  ‘If you were fully fit I’d hit you.’

  We carried on. But for the cooing of pigeons and the occasional sudden burst of birdsong – wrens, I thought – it was quiet, the drone of the endless procession of airliners heading to and leaving Heathrow muffled by the leaf canopy. The path began to curve to the right, away from the wall and, after pausing for a short discussion, we carried on in as straight a line as possible, picking our way through the ferns and long grass. Small fallen branches lying hidden in the leaf litter were a trip hazard but at least there was no obvious reason for us to progress in silent, stealthy fashion.

  After another ten minutes or so we arrived at a second doorway, identical to the first, traces of the original green paint still adhering to it. It was equally well-secured, the thick ivy growing across it as good as several added padlocks. Without comment, we walked on.

  Finally we arrived at the limit of this side of the wall, which predictably turned ninety degrees to the left. After further progress, slower as the trees were farther apart here, the grass much coarser and growing in tall tussocks, we came to another entrance. Through the wrought-iron gates, smaller and less ornate than the ones at the front, the view was of little more than an English jungle, the traces of what must have been a gravelled carriage drive just discernible for a short distance before disappearing into the greenery. On our side of the gates the drive merged with another lane, which, judging by the sound of traffic, then joined a road not far away. A group of cars was parked nearby.

  ‘That’s Mallory’s,’ I said as we approached. ‘The black hatchback.’

  ‘Bravo, Miss Braithewaite,’ said Carrick.

  ‘There are now good grounds for calling out the local force,’ I observed.

  ‘Or SOCA and Avon and Somerset Police could decide not to trouble them due to their doubtless ongoing major incident.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Sure.’

  We high-fived and
then turned our attention to the gates. These were as well secured as just about everything else with, if anything, even more razor wire, so we decided to carry on walking around the boundary wall with a view to climbing over it, somehow, when out of view of the lane and anyone who might return to their cars. This proved to be a good idea as, after passing another of the small side doors, we came to an oak tree growing fairly close to the wall, its branches having grown right over the top.

  ‘I’m not that good in trees,’ I said.

  ‘And I’m thinking I’m not that good right now,’ Carrick muttered.

  ‘You shouldn’t climb it with dodgy ribs,’ I told him.

  ‘Perhaps not, but then again I want Mallory, badly.’ He flexed his shoulders and, going to one side of the tree, went up it like a monkey until he was level with the lowest branch. ‘There are all kinds of holes and bumps you can use as steps,’ he called down.

  I scrambled up, trying not to think about the coming down bit. James moved across and a little higher to a branch that stretched over the wall where he waited for me, holding on to the branch above. Not being all that thick, the one taking his weight swayed and dipped under him and I decided not to add mine to it as well.

  ‘No, you’re all right,’ Carrick said after I had voiced my caution. ‘We could do with it being a bit lower.’

  ‘It might break,’ I fretted.

  ‘No, oak won’t. It’ll only come to rest on the top of the wall.’

  Which it did, surprisingly gently, as I edged along it and we both carefully sat down, feet hanging, to survey the ground about eight feet below us. This appeared to be roughly the same as on the side of the wall we had just come from, long grass and ferns with a gone wild fruit tree of some kind, perhaps a pear, growing against the wall itself.

  ‘I suggest we both drop off simultaneously,’ Carrick said. ‘Otherwise the branch will flip up and possibly unseat who’s still on it.’

  OK, they sometimes failed to sleep or have breakfast but sometimes men can be really, really useful.

  We dropped off and I landed in a heap in a flurry of leaves and bits of twig.