The Haunting of Bleeding Heart Yard (Quigg)

by Tim Ellis

  ‘Have you got half an hour?’

  ‘Not at the moment. I’m at a crucial stage in a suspect interview. I just popped out so that he could consider the limited options available to him.’

  ‘Do you want to meet us for lunch in the cafe across the street when you’ve finished?’

  ‘I can do that. What’s it about?’

  ‘Your ex-wife, Caitlin.’

  ‘Oh, okay.’

  ‘Come on, Rodney,’ Erica Holm said as they wandered off. ‘You can buy me lunch.’

  He wondered how Holm had got involved in the search for Caitlin and what Rodney was doing with her. Well, he didn’t have time to dwell on it. He made his way back inside, walked along the corridor, re-entered the interview room and sat down.

  ‘My client will make a full statement,’ Slaughter said

  ‘I’m listening, Mr Brodin?’

  ‘They came to see me . . .’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Two Germans with skinheads and tattoos.’

  ‘Names?’

  ‘They introduced themselves as Hans and Siggy . . .’

  ‘No surnames?’

  ‘No, but they said that they represented the Order of the Black Sun.’

  ‘Okay – go on.’

  ‘They showed me pictures of my wife and children and said that they’d torture and kill each one of them in front of me if I didn’t do exactly as they said.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘I had to get Catherine to tell me about the tattoo she’d removed from her chest.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘What choice did I have? Some of the pictures were of my wife undressing in the bedroom, some of my children out playing in the park and riding their bikes . . .’ He broke down. ‘I had no choice. I gave them Catherine to save my family.’

  ‘I’m sure the jury will take that into account when they sentence you to life imprisonment, Mr Brodin. Carry on.’

  ‘I asked Catherine about the tattoo. She said her father had put it on her himself when she’d been a child, but he wouldn’t tell her what the number meant. When she’d been old enough to make her own decisions, she paid to have it surgically removed.’

  ‘Did her father ever tell her what the number meant?’

  ‘On his deathbed. He told her it was the location of a Nazi treasure, but if it was she couldn’t make head nor tail of it. She put his deathbed revelation down to delirium and forgot all about it.’

  ‘And you told the two men that?’

  ‘Of course, but they weren’t satisfied with that answer. They made me bring her to them. Then they tortured her and made me watch. They said that if I ever said anything, they’d do exactly the same thing to my wife and children.’

  ‘Did she know more than she’d told you?’

  ‘Yes. Before they pulled her arms and legs out of their sockets and ripped her heart out, she remembered the one thing that gave the number her father had tattooed on her chest meaning.’

  ‘And what was that?’

  ‘He had made her repeat something as a young girl until he knew she would always remember, and said that one day it would make sense:

  Five to One

  One to Five

  That made them happy. Straight away they knew they had the answer they’d been searching for.’

  ‘Did they tell you what that answer was?’

  ‘The number was made up of six digits. I can’t remember what it was, but for it to make any sense as a location it needed eight digits. The “5” went in the first place, and the “1” went in the fifth place, and that gave them a location in Germany.’

  ‘Then they dumped the body and left?’

  ‘Nearly. They told me I had to take Catherine’s body to Bleeding Heart Yard and leave it there exactly as they said – it would throw the police off.’

  He stood up. ‘Thank you, Mr Brodin. I’m formally arresting you for conspiracy to murder Catherine Bernado.’ He nodded for the uniformed Constable to take Brodin to a cell.

  ‘You’ll make sure my wife and children are protected?’

  ‘I’ll contact Norwich Constabulary personally and ask them to send an officer round to your house.’

  ‘One officer?’

  ‘What did you expect? I can’t imagine that they’ll be interested in you if they now have the treasure.’

  ‘You don’t know what they’re capable of.’

  ‘I think I have a pretty good idea, Mr Brodin.’ He was thinking about Gatekeeper and his wife and son.

  ‘You’ll put a good word in with the Crown Prosecution Service because he cooperated?’ Slaughter said.

  ‘I’ll mention it, but I don’t think it’ll do much good. He sacrificed his lover to save his wife and children. If he’d sacrificed himself, then that might have swayed a jury.’

  ***

  They knew the others had begun their attack on the Einsatzgruppen’s rear, because there was no fire directed down the tunnel at them, and they could also hear a lot of shouting.

  ‘We should go,’ Emilia said.

  ‘Go? Go where?’

  ‘Into the tunnel.’

  Kline pulled a face. ‘And they think I’m crazy.’

  ‘We can get them in a crossfire.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be a crossfire though, would it? We could kill some of our own people.’

  ‘Yes, they are your people.’

  ‘You know what I mean. We should stay here.’

  ‘We go in.’

  Kline shrugged. Emilia was the boss. ‘Stay behind me then.’

  Emilia laughed. ‘You stay behind me. It does not matter if I get killed, but you are still young. You have a lot to offer Israel.’

  ‘Who said I was going to Israel?’

  ‘I did.’

  They were just about to step into the tunnel when a massive explosion blew rocks, dust and debris towards them.

  Kline pushed Emilia out of the way and covered her with her own body. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

  ‘I will be once you stop crushing my ribcage.’

  They could hardly see.

  Dust was everywhere.

  ‘It doesn’t look as though anybody’s going to get the treasure, after all,’ she said. She stood up and moved into the connecting tunnel, but it was completely blocked with rocks. ‘We can’t go that way. Let’s back up to the entrance.’

  They moved back to the hole and shouted for someone to haul them up, but there didn’t seem to be anyone there.

  ‘Shit!’ she said. ‘This is exactly what I was afraid of.’

  ‘They will come,’ Emilia said.

  ‘If there’s anyone left alive.’

  ***

  Morticia was busy interrogating the computer system.

  She had connected up Gatekeeper’s hard drive to her new laptop, and it wasn’t long before she found what she was looking for. There was a password on the file, but she had a programme for that, which she let loose on it.

  ‘Well, anything?’

  ‘How long have I been here?’

  ‘Five minutes?’

  ‘More like four. I’ll need at least seven.’

  ‘They said you were good.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘They.’

  ‘They like to put me down. I’m much more than good – I’m brilliant.’

  ‘Prove it.’

  ‘There you go.’

  Scrolling down the screen was the decompiled code for the Trojan that had infected her system.

  ‘Fucking hell! Will you look at that code?’

  ‘This is high-level stuff, and the reason you couldn’t decompile it is because it was written in German, which obviously needs a German decompiler.’

  ‘I should have fucking guessed. Do you speak German?’

  ‘Just a bit. Okay with you if I keep a copy of this?’

  ‘Sure. I don’t fucking want it.’

  ‘I’m going to wipe your system and you’ll have to re-load everything back on.’
<
br />   ‘Suits me. I had a load of crap on there anyway.’

  Her laptop beeped.

  She had access to the file. Gatekeeper had decrypted the ten messages:

  Saint Justa and Saint Rufina

  Painter on the Road to Tarascon

  Portrait of Dr Gachet

  Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I

  The boy in the red vest

  Altarpiece of Veit Stoss

  Place de la Concorde

  The Astronomer

  Amber Room

  Madonna of Bruges

  Morticia was looking over her shoulder. ‘Reads like a list of artwork,’ she said.

  ‘This is what Gatekeeper and his family were killed for.’ She typed the first title into the internet search engine and a site at the top of the list was entitled: “The Top Ten Famous Pieces of Art Stolen by the Nazis”:

  Saint Justa and Saint Rufina – Bartolome Estaban Murillo

  Painter on the Road to Tarascon – Vincent Van Gogh

  Portrait of Dr Gachet _ Vincent Van Gogh

  Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I – Gustav Klimt

  The boy in the red vest – Paul Cézanne

  Altarpiece of Veit Stoss – Veit Stoss

  Place de la Concorde – Edgar Degas

  The Astronomer – Johannes Vermeer

  Amber Room – Andreas Schlüter

  Madonna of Bruges - Michelangelo

  ‘So, that’s what it’s all about,’ Lucy said. ‘Those skinhead bastards must have found the treasure.’

  Morticia gripped Lucy’s hair and held a knife to her throat. ‘You’re right, they did find the treasure. Heil Hitler!’

  ***

  He walked across the road to the Woodgrange cafe.

  Even though he was so tired that he wanted to lie down in the middle of the road and let the vehicles run over him, it was turning out to be a good day.

  Before he reached the door, his phone vibrated.

  ‘Quigg.’

  ‘You were right.’

  ‘Now steady on, Perkins. It’s not even close to being my birthday.’

  ‘Very funny. Frank Bernado had a scar under his arm near the armpit – his blood group was AB.’

  ‘Good job. You can bury him again now.’

  ‘You don’t want to know who he used to be then?’

  ‘I didn’t ask you to find out who he was, because I imagined it would have been impossible.’

  ‘Yes, it probably would have been if his Waffen-SS identity card hadn’t been wrapped in a plastic bag and sewn into the lining of his jacket over his heart. He was Sturmbannführer (Major) Josef Drexler, and he was awarded the Knight’s Cross for extreme battlefield bravery.’

  ‘Take photographs of his body, especially the number on his forearm if it’s still legible and the scar where his blood group used to be, and then put copies on my desk together with the ID card.’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘And, hey?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I don’t often say this, Perkins, but good job.’

  ‘Thanks, Sir.’

  He ended the call..

  Holm and Crankshank were already eating when he entered the Woodgrange.

  After ordering a full English and a banana milkshake he said, ‘Okay, what’s going on?’

  Rodney recounted what he’d found out since taking on the case. ‘And then this morning . . . I found everyone at the office dead.’

  ‘That’s why you’re involved?’ he said to Holm.

  ‘Yes. We found one male with a gunshot to the head, and two females tortured and murdered.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘I’ve just had a call from my partner. There’s no such company called Lancer Communications, and yet they clearly exist from what Rodney here has been able to find out. Also, and I’m sorry to have to say this, but he thinks he might have found your ex-wife. Unfortunately, she’s dead, and they had her registered under the name – Sally Tomkins.’ She pulled out her phone. ‘I have a photograph. Will you identify her for me?’

  ‘Go on.’

  He took the phone, peered at the dead body of Caitlin and nodded. ‘That’s her.’

  ‘She was shot in the heart, if you were wondering.’

  ‘Yes. What about my daughter – Phoebe?’

  ‘Nothing yet. Look, I only picked up this case a couple of hours ago, and although we’ve hit the ground running we haven’t really accumulated much in the way of answers yet.’

  ‘I’d say you were doing a good job so far.’

  ‘Mostly down to Rodney.’

  ‘Good work, Rodney.’

  ‘Thanks, Mr Quigg. To be honest though, I wish I’d never met you.’

  ‘I can understand that.’

  Holm took a slurp of her tea, and then put the cup back in the overspill in the saucer. ‘You have absolutely no idea about Lancer Communications?’

  ‘None at all.’

  ‘And you had no idea your wife was called Sally Tomkins, that her parents had been murdered and that she spent her childhood in care?’

  ‘Are you sure about all this, Rodney?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Quigg. There’d never been any family called Hughes living in Fairlight, but the newsagent recognised the photograph you gave me of your wife.’

  ‘I feel as though you’re talking about a stranger.’

  ‘It seems that we are,’ Holm said.

  Holm didn’t seem very impressed with him. A detective who knew next to nothing about his wife. Yes, he’d find it hard to believe as well. And now she was dead. Where was Phoebe? Was she dead as well? Who were Lancer Communications? Had Caitlin really worked for them? Doing what? Why did she have a fabricated past? Who was Sally Tomkins? Why were her parents murdered?

  He just wanted to curl up and go to sleep.

  Aftermath

  He was done in.

  After lunch he went to see the Chief, but he’d booked himself out to attend a meeting at New Scotland Yard all afternoon.

  According to the sign on Miss Tinkley’s desk she had “Gone to Lunch”.

  He left her a note next to the sign: “Case solved. Gone home”. He then stuck his head into the press officer’s office on his way to the car park, asked her to re-arrange the press briefing for ten in the morning, and then drove home with his brain in neutral.

  At Godolphin Road he walked along the corridor to Lucy’s room. ‘Lucy,’ he said, and tapped on her door. ‘Are you there?’

  There was no answer.

  Maybe she’d gone out. Maybe she was asleep.

  ‘I was wondering about the surprise. Are you there? Are you talking to me? Can I come and sleep with you? Am I still getting a surprise?’

  He tried the handle, but the door was locked from inside. He could use the underground tunnel, but he’d promised he would only use that in emergencies. Could he justify this as an emergency? How long had it been since he’d had sex? He wandered up to Duffy’s room and met a well-lived-in woman in the atrium.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

  ‘I live here. Who are you?’

  ‘Ah, you must be Inspector Quigg?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m Janet Thomas the housekeeper.’

  ‘Okay. Keep the noise down, I’m going to sleep.’

  ‘You look like you need to as well.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  He crawled into bed next to Duffy.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Sleeping.’

  ‘Make sure that’s all you’re doing.’

  ‘Have the doctors given you any indication about when you can have sex again?’

  He didn’t hear her say, “Ten years”, because he’d already fallen asleep.

  ***

  Friday August 9

  If anybody asked him, he planned to say that he’d forgotten a couple of files he needed for the weekend, and that’s why he’d come back to the station this late at night.

  He wandered down the stairs. All the night shift wer
e out pounding the beat and fighting off the Friday night drunks. He let himself into the female locker room and switched the florescent lights on.

  When he’d woken up this morning, he padded along the corridor to Lucy’s room. He’d been feeling much better after a full night’s sleep, and thought that maybe she’d let him have his surprise, but she still wasn’t answering, so he’d had to come to work without any surprise. He had the feeling there never had been a surprise, that she’d just used that as a way of getting him to go with her to Gatekeeper’s house.

  The day had been spent briefing the Chief, the press, tying up the loose ends and hoping Kline would turn up, but she hadn’t. Where the hell was she? He hadn’t heard anything more from Holm or Rodney, but guessed he would sooner or later.

  He found the chart on the wall.

  Sure enough, there he was at the bottom of the Inspector list by a good few points. There were five categories numbered from 1 to 5, but no indication of what those categories were made up of. He began rifling through the lockers that he found open, searching through the junk on top of the lockers and in a cupboard. He was about to start prising open the locked lockers when he heard women’s voices outside.

  Shit!

  He dived into a shower cubicle and pulled the curtain across the opening. They’d get changed and be gone soon enough.

  The door opened and closed.

  He heard the lock turn.

  ‘Yeah, you should have seen this guy,’ one woman said. ‘He was running down the road with just his boxers on. You can imagine, it didn’t take us long to catch him.’

  There was laughter from at least two other women. What the hell were they doing in the locker room at this time of night? Why weren’t they out there on the streets of Hammersmith keeping the public safe? He’d have to speak to Nicky about the abuse these women were subjecting her shift system to.

  He didn’t want to, but he couldn’t help himself. He peered through a tiny gap between the wall and the curtain. There were three female officers taking their clothes off. He hoped they weren’t planning on taking a shower.