His memory of that afternoon in the kitchen garden was visceral. He could see every step of his construction. The roof struts had been strong; he had designed the width of the tunnel to allow for wide rolling stock. He had made no error in tension or loading. Simon had hijacked the engine and driven it too fast into the tunnel.
Few had known Jack had lost his red steam engine. One of them was Simon. He had made the mistake of confiding in him: he had hoped that if he told Simon a secret it would get him off his back. But Simon was dead; he was off his back. Jack had tried not to be relieved when his father showed him the newspaper cutting, but he had hoped that his bad memories would die too.
As if to reassure himself, Jack went to his desk for the cutting. He shifted his laptop, moved aside his A–Z and the lamp. No cutting. He looked underneath the desk, widening his search to the floor and under the bed. No cutting. He emptied out his treasure box on to the bed, but the cutting wasn’t there, nor had he expected it to be. He remembered leaving it on the desk. Stanley must have taken it. Jack tried to remember if Stella’s dog had visited since he had taken the cutting from his box, but his sense of time since moving to the tower was unreliable. Yesterday seemed years ago. Years ago uncomfortably close.
Jack scratched day-old stubble on his cheek. He didn’t need the cutting to know that Simon was dead. For a long time he had relegated him to a dark unvisited place in his mind. Someone else must know about his red steam engine.
You denied me you knew me. Three times.
His mind was not his own.
The Smiths ‘How Soon Is Now?’ drifted into his head. Jack stuck his fingers in his ears, not expecting it to work since it was inside his head, but it did lessen the sound.
Jack found his phone. ‘Lucie, it’s me.’
‘Of course it is,’ Lucie May crooned. It might be three in the morning, but Lucie was, as he expected, wide awake.
‘Please would you search your files for a mugging in 1998?’
‘Honey, there’s been a few of those!’ She guffawed. ‘Drill down for me, would you?’
‘A teenager called Simon was found dying in Chiswick Cemetery that year.’
‘Why didn’t you say? “Body Found in Graveyard!” Come!’
The line went dead. Jack left the tower.
50
Sunday, 27 October 2013
‘It was mistaken identity.’ Lucie May was eating a carrot, still with a flourish of leaves attached to the end, as she leafed through a bulging file.
A fire burned in the grate, drawn curtains shut out the damp gusty night. Jack sipped the mug of hot milk and honey she had presented him with on arrival and nestled into his corner of her sofa.
‘Proof, if we need it, that life is stranger than fiction.’ She handed Jack a photocopied sheet on which she had scrawled, ‘The Sun, Saturday 24th 1998.’ She took a bite of the carrot. ‘I played a blinder with that story, straight into Fleet Street, it paid for a new boiler. Called myself Lucille to please my mother! God rest her.’
DEAD MAN WALKING
By Lucille May
Two sons. Two futures. One life. Madeleine and Harry Carrington kept vigil for hours by the bedside of the young man they believed was their 20-year-old son Simon until he died.
Found badly beaten in Chiswick Cemetery on 20 October by a woman walking her dog, the man never regained consciousness. The dog owner, Joan Evans, told us she assumed he was a tramp until she saw his ‘nice shoes’. Her neighbours’ son wore an identical pair. His face hugely swollen, he was identified by Harry Carrington for his shoes and light blond hair. Blinded by tears, he signed permission for his only son to have emergency surgery on his internal organs.
The young man battled for his life. His 13-year-old sister read him messages from pals, family and our readers. His mum read articles about bridges and tunnels – Simon was to be a civil engineer after graduating from the University of Sussex. The family played his favourite song, the Smiths’ ‘How Soon Is Now?’ and told Simon they loved him until his heart stopped.
When the pathologist, Dr Peter Singer, was preparing to conduct the post-mortem he noted the medical records. Simon Carrington’s eyes were brown, and he was six feet one inch tall. The body on Singer’s slab had blue eyes and was five foot ten. Simon was missing half a finger on his left hand. The dead man’s fingers were intact.
That night 20-year-old Simon walked through the door, toting his dirty washing, asking, ‘What time’s supper, I’m famished!’
Detective Superintendent Terry Darnell told a crowded press conference, ‘We are overjoyed that Simon is alive. However, someone’s son has been murdered. We must establish his identity so his family can grieve. We will work to bring his killer to justice.’ Asked if the police had any leads, he declined to comment. Darnell dismissed any connection between the man found dying in Chiswick Cemetery and the decomposing body of a man discovered a stone’s throw away, locked in Chiswick Tower, ten years ago almost to the day, in October 1988. That man has never been identified.
‘So how come you missed this?’ Lucie sounded as if she was astounded Jack had not read all her articles.
‘I wasn’t living in the UK,’ Jack said.
‘Fancy.’ Lucie May gave a shrug of mild disapproval.
In 1998, Jack, like Simon, had been twenty years old. Simon wasn’t dead. Jack was supposed to feel relief. He did not. He had told himself that the idea of his mind being invaded was absurd. It was a symptom of tiredness or, as Stella might have said, ‘his overworked imagination’. Simon wasn’t dead. He had never been dead.
Jack marshalled himself. ‘The attack was in Chiswick Cemetery, so why was Terry involved?’ Chiswick Cemetery was opposite Jackie’s house. Stella had been wandering around it a few hours ago. So had someone else.
‘The young man died in Charing Cross Hospital, and the two police divisions cooperated on the case with Terry in charge.’
‘Did ever they identify him or catch his attacker?’ The print swam. Jack put down the article. Simon was alive.
‘A damp squib of a story! The police had the dead kid’s fingerprints on file. He was eighteen. They hadn’t checked because of the kid’s father identifying him as his son. Fancy not remembering your boy had lost a finger! None of the family spotted it. Sounds like my family. I could have sat down to supper with an arm missing and my dad wouldn’t have batted an eye.’ She nibbled the carrot down to the leaves and tossed the clumsy bouquet on to the table. She went on, ‘Shock, he said. His wife looked embarrassed. Unhappy pair. Anyone could see she wished it was him on the slab instead. The dead boy was Ryan Morrison, unemployed, no qualifications, an incompetent petty thief. His prints were all over two houses in Corney Road. The owner of the other house had caught up with Morrison and chased him into the cemetery. He reclaimed his transistor radio and a toaster and smashed Morrison to a pulp. Job done, didn’t think to let the police know!’
Lucie scrambled off the sofa, walked on tiptoe to her drinks cupboard, did a pirouette in her stockinged feet and returned. She was on another of her wagons, Jack concluded.
‘He got a suspended sentence for a disproportionate response. We had sacks of letters in his defence, many saying “good riddance” to Morrison. There are some lovely people out there!’ She gave a corncrake laugh.
Simon hadn’t been interested in tunnels and bridges at school. Jack remembered Simon rolling coins over his fingers, the stump moving like a lever. The coin flashed and danced before his eyes.
If Simon was alive in 1998, it didn’t mean he was alive now. Jack banished the thought. You only got so many wishes that another person was dead before you had to die yourself.
‘So, I hear Terry Darnell’s boy’s been found?’ Lucie May switched on an e-cigarette and regarded it happily.
‘Who told you?’ Jack snapped.
‘Who didn’t! It’s all over Hammersmith Police Station. The Dowager Darnell is swinging from the rooftops, crowing that she’s got her baby back. I was thinking, m
aybe she’d do an exclusive for the paper. It’s a great story!’
‘It’s private.’ Stella would be horrified. Lucie gave short shrift to Suzie, the love of Terry Darnell’s life, at least according to Jackie.
‘If only Terry had lived to see him.’ Lucie was fleetingly pensive. ‘Anyway, darling, what’s your interest in Carrington?’ She puffed on her e-cigarette, eyes bright with news-hound fervour.
Jack told her about the steam engine and the carriages, and about the boy who had tried to be his friend when he was seven.
‘You’re saying this steam engine means that this bloke is telling you he still wants to be your friend twenty-eight years on?’
‘He’s the only one alive who knows what the engine means to me.’ Lucie, like Stella, didn’t have time for semiotics or portents; neither woman would change plans because of a squashed lump of chewing gum shaped like a shark on a pavement. ‘I don’t think he wants to be my friend any more.’
‘Your steam engine was in the papers.’ Lucie scowled as she vaped on the e-cigarette. ‘You had a tantrum in the street cos your dad wouldn’t buy you one. Hardly top secret.’
‘Most people won’t remember. But Simon won’t have forgotten. You’ve put here that he was training to be an engineer: when we were at school he wanted to be an astronaut.’
‘A typical little boy’s ambition. Like wanting to be a train driver, it’s not real. Or not usually.’ She blew steam at him.
Jack didn’t say that when they were boys Simon had shadowed him, copied his gestures, taken out books when he returned them to the library. Had he copied his ambition and made it his own?
‘How would he know where you are and why would he care enough about Stella Darnell to be creeping among graves after her? If the guy’s an engineer, presumably he’s got some engineering to do.’ Lucie puffed out another cloud of steam.
‘If he’s following me, he would know Stella is my friend.’ Jack went cold. Simon had been following Stella. Jack needn’t wonder how he’d found her; the Simon he remembered would have found a way.
‘Here’s my take on this, Jackdaw. Some kid left the engine at the station. A bloke – any woman would have handed it in – is rushing for his train and he dumps it where a driver – you, honeykins – will see it. The parents will have reported it lost if it’s worth a bob or two. Mystery solved!’
‘Passengers aren’t allowed beyond the gate where the monitors are.’
‘Oh and this Simon character would let that bother him?’ Lucie widened her eyes.
Despite him telling Stella they were dealing with the meticulous planning of a ruthless professional, Jack couldn’t see how Simon could know about his shifts: he agreed them at short notice. Simon would have needed access to his rota. A shadow of unease passed over him; again he reassured himself that at least in the tower he was safe.
Lucie batted his arm. ‘Listen up! After you left the other day, I dug out my file on your “One Under”. I texted you, remember?’
‘Oh yes.’
Ring re RF inquest. LM. Some detective, he had forgotten about it.
‘After the inquest, the widow was at it hammer and tongs with Rick Frost’s brother in a side street. You know me, never off the clock, I hid behind a van and watched it all.’
‘They were having sex?’
‘No! Arguing. I couldn’t hear them, but they looked fit to kill. Suddenly they start kissing like two bloody turtle doves, not breaking, but making up. They saw me and sprang apart. I added in a para about them comforting each other and left the rest to the imaginations of our gifted readers. Even so, my soiled nappy of an editor said we couldn’t use it.’
Which brother was Lulu Carr upset about? Another lie. Like Stella, Lucie liked hard evidence. He had hard evidence. Jack gave her the glove Stanley had stolen from Lulu Carr’s house and left in his tower. Handing it to Lucie, his fingers tingled. His intuitions were never wrong.
‘This glove was found in Rick Frost’s house. Did Terry tell you the names of the children whom the police interviewed about their lost gloves? This one has the letter “F” inside the lining. That might be a “W” or maybe a “V”, but it’s smudged.’
‘Now you’re talking!’ Lucie flung down her e-cigarette and, scrambling off the sofa, ran out of the room. He heard her taking the stairs at a faster pace than he imagined her capable of. She returned with another manila file and another carrot. He wouldn’t dampen her resolution with a warning about excess consumption of beta-carotene.
Lucie licked a forefinger and, flicking through the file, drew out a page of lined foolscap covered with what looked like crazed hieroglyphics. Her shorthand was faster than most people’s speech.
‘Terry told me this in confidence – pillow talk! I keep a secret by forgetting I know. If I’m ever hypnotized, governments will fall. Luckily I wrote this down. This is just for you, Jack.’
Jack wasn’t fooled. Lucie claimed to adore him, but she worked alone or, it seemed, with Terry. Anything she shared would be chalked up as a favour to him that one day she would call in. He felt a coil of unease, less about the prospective favour, than because he saw he was right about Lucie’s relationship with Stella’s father. Stella must never find out; it would break her heart.
‘So here’s the list. Alphabetical and look who’s at the top!’
Jack tried to take the sheet of paper from her, but she held on to it and jabbed at it with her carrot. He leant over and read the name she was pointing at. ‘William Frost!’
The first step in a case was to assemble the jigsaw pieces. Only then could you begin to fit them together. They had a lot of pieces.
‘There’s more!’ Lucie was clearly enjoying herself. ‘Not long after Glove Man was found, a boy came into Hammersmith Police Station and reported seeing a man and a woman going up there the year before. The timing fitted, but when a detective went to get his statement, the kiddy did an about-turn and claimed he’d got the location wrong, he’d meant Chiswick House grounds and he couldn’t describe the pair. The policewoman ticked him off for wasting their time. Terry reckoned that the first story was true, so he went to see the boy, who was adamant it was Chiswick House grounds. The parents got antsy, said he had only been trying to help. Terry’s hunch was that the boy had been warned off by someone, but with the mum and dad standing guard, he couldn’t pursue it. So that was that.’ She whacked the sheet of paper with her carrot, her e-cigarette bobbing between her lips. ‘Brace yourself, Jackanory!’
Jack didn’t need to brace himself: his nerves were taut piano wires. Like Lucie’s secrets, he had tried to erase Simon from his mind, but he was alive. Simon was inside his mind.
‘In 1988 the boy was ten. He’d be thirty-five now.’ She clamped a hand on Jack’s leg.
‘Guess what?’
‘What?’ Jack obliged.
‘The boy’s name was Richard Frost!
‘Otherwise known as Rick Frost,’ Jack exclaimed. ‘Yes!’
51
October 1988
‘What did you say?’
Simon eased forward in the deckchair; then, feeling undignified, he struggled out of it and went to the supplies cupboard in corner of the hut. He propped a foot on one of the packing cases that served as seats for foot soldiers. With Simon’s promotion, there was only one foot soldier: the Captain who was now the Private.
The Private lingered in the doorway, his body angled as if he might turn and run, yet the dull lustreless look in his eyes belied this. His angular body was framed by the grey mausoleums, headstones and a manicured yew tree in the cemetery beyond.
‘Come in, Richard!’
The boy flinched as if hearing his real name spoken had hurt. He stepped inside and, in a belated attempt at attention, clicked his heels together.
A shadow fell across the doorway.
‘Who’s there?’ Simon shouted.
‘It’s me, Captain.’ Nicky came in and, giving a sharp salute, fell in beside the boy.
These day
s, it was a proper unit, Simon thought. Justin had never answered the note Simon had put through his door.
Why didn’t you say I was your friend when he asked?
The question presented itself as it had repeatedly over the last year, since they had found Justin by the river.
Letting the others stand there, Simon inwardly reviewed the facts to himself. Justin and Nicky had been his friends and they had betrayed him. Mr Wilson had betrayed him, but he had been punished and, until two weeks ago, Simon had almost forgotten about him.
Simon could find no proper punishment for betrayal. Yet no one could get away with such a terrible crime. His mummy had betrayed him. Simon blinked away this thought.
‘You must be punished,’ he informed them.
‘I did exactly as you told me.’ The boy was pulling at his middle finger the way he used to do when he was imitating Simon. He was frightened, but Simon supposed he was mimicking him and it fuelled the inchoate fury that these days was always gnawing his insides. A sense of injustice was corrosive.
‘I went to the police and told them that when I said I saw a man I had made a mistake.’
‘He did. I went with him,’ Nicky suddenly said.
‘Did I say you could?’
She shook her head, whether in agreement that he hadn’t said she could or because she found him too much, Simon couldn’t be sure. He wanted to trust Nicky. He tried to explain to her, ‘We are an undercover unit. We never show ourselves. Especially not to the police. You shouldn’t have gone too. Neither of you should.’
‘You ordered me to go.’ The boy was distressed.
‘I told you to go and undo the bad you did. You shouldn’t have gone to the police in the first place. This unit stands together. You tried to get me put in jail. You are a traitor!’ Simon fought to stay calm. ‘You must be punished.’
‘How?’ The Captain was perhaps anxious to get the torture over with. ‘I did what you said and I’ve been demoted.’ He looked down at his chest as if to show there was nothing left of him.
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