The Cruelty of Morning

by Hilary Bonner

  This time he poured a hefty neat slug of the clear spirit into a tumbler with just a couple of lumps of ice. He gestured with the bottle at her. She shook her head. He took a deep drink and briefly put his head in his hands. Jennifer had never lied to him, he was quite sure of that. He was certain she was being honest with him now, about her own aims and ambitions. He had always been able to trust her, hadn’t he? How much better it would be if there were two of them to share the good and the bad, two of a kind. Anyway, it seemed he may not have a lot of choice.

  He leaned back in his chair, and then he began. He began with the day he killed Irene.

  Jennifer had known it, she really had, but hearing him say it was quite extraordinary. Now it was her turn to get up from the table and walk away because she did not want him to be able to see her face while he talked.

  He told how he had gone home to his flat the second night she had refused to sleep with him and how he had been feeling quite desperate for sex.

  ‘You know, the way I get,’ he said.

  Jennifer knew, all right.

  He told her how Irene had been asleep on the living-room couch, wearing one of his shirts with just a couple of buttons done up, and had woken as he entered the flat, slamming the front door behind him. He had been unable to wait. Within minutes he had his clothes off and was inside her. He came very quickly – but it seemed to bring him no satisfaction, no relief, so he took Irene into the bedroom and had her in every way he could think of. Nothing seemed to do him any good. The second time he couldn’t make himself come at all, whatever he did, and he did almost everything. He knew he was hurting her but he couldn’t stop. Eventually he pushed Irene back over the bed and she ended up with her head and shoulders crushed against the floor while he carried on pumping into her with all his might. She began to cry out for him to stop but he ignored her in his desperation to climax.

  At some stage he heard something crack, he couldn’t be sure when. Eventually he made it. When he rolled off her she slumped in a heap on to the floor. To his horror he realised that her neck was broken and she was quite dead.

  There was a catch in his voice. Was he crying?

  Jennifer did not dare to look round. So he had some feelings left, did he? She doubted it, but yes, he was definitely sobbing.

  ‘I have never been able to tell anyone, so I have never even thought about it, not since it happened,’ he said. ‘Blocked it out. You were right, you see, I am a monster.’

  She did not react. He looked at her imploringly, seeking reassurance. He was gabbling a bit, talking too much, and that was just what she had been hoping for.

  ‘Look,’ he continued. ‘My first thought when I realised Irene was dead was to dial 999 – of course it was. Then I asked myself what good it would do, nobody was going to bring her back to life. So I just concentrated on getting myself out of the whole dreadful mess…’

  And Irene? Did he spare one fleeting thought for poor little Irene, Jennifer wanted to inquire? But she didn’t.

  ‘Why did you go to Bill Turpin?’ she asked instead.

  He let out a big breath. ‘I’ve never known really. I had to get rid of the body. I just sensed he would know what to do. I’d been checking him out, you know I did that. We all wanted to be investigative reporters in those days. I was just one of a long line of would-be Carl Bernsteins to probe into the past of our local mystery man.’

  ‘So you did have something on him?’

  ‘No, but I tried to con him that I did, bloody fool that I was…’

  ‘He went along with it though, didn’t he?’ she responded. ‘He helped you…’

  ‘Yes. I didn’t know why at first, of course. But it suited him – in more ways than one.’

  Marcus told her how he had run across the fields to old Bill’s cottage, and hammered on the door.

  ‘I was in a real state, but I tried to be Joe Cool all the same – true to form, I suppose. I told Bill I needed help right away with something very serious – that I’d put together an exposé of his criminal past, and in return for his help I’d destroy it.’

  Marcus managed a high-pitched giggle. ‘He just smiled at me. Then he said: “You’m not trying to blackmail me, be ’ee boy?” He looked amused, not angry. It all seemed so unreal. I didn’t know what to say. I was frightened out of my mind. I thought I’d blown it altogether.

  ‘But, quite abruptly, he asked me what I had done.

  ‘I told him. Then he made me tell him everything that had happened in the last few days which in any way concerned Irene, anything that could be connected to her death and exactly how she had died.

  ‘I gave him every detail. All about Johnny coming to us after Marjorie Benson was found, everything. He had that sort of effect, you know. You obeyed him. Of course I didn’t realise I was manna from Heaven for him, really. I provided a second murder and even a suspect for the first one. Poor Johnny, asking for it.

  ‘Eventually Turpin put down that blessed pipe of his and said he would sort everything out. He told me to stay where I was, so I did – while he went off in his car. It was some hours before he came back, it seemed like days. He just walked into the cottage, sat down at the kitchen table, got that old pipe working again and then he said: “You can go home now, it’s all clean.”’

  Marcus’s voice sounded distant. He’d gone back in time now, remembering. He explained how the old man had instructed him on exactly what to say to the police: Irene had left home for work and never returned, simple as that. Keep it simple and stick to it.

  ‘Oh, and a word of advice,’ Bill had said, ‘if you ever want to blackmail anyone again, you’m going to have to be a bit more convincing … you young puppy. Go on – get off ’ome now.’

  But as Marcus had reached the cottage door, Bill had called him back. It was the old man’s last words which held the sting in their tail.

  ‘You’ll hear from me – I may want something from you in return.’

  What he had wanted from Marcus was custody of his life.

  From that moment on, Marcus was never again to be entirely his own man.

  ‘Why did Bill Turpin want you under his control?’ she asked.

  Marcus shrugged. ‘He told me he thought I was clever, didn’t have any morals, and had a weakness that would always be with me. The combination made me valuable to him, I suppose. I would have all the help in the world to raise me to positions of great power. All I had to do in return was to be absolutely loyal and always do exactly what I was told. Then I would remain infallible … whatever I did…’

  Jennifer appeared totally shocked.

  ‘Bill Turpin was certainly not what he seemed, was he?’ she remarked mildly.

  ‘In a way he was,’ Marcus replied.

  And he told her what he knew of Bill’s history, his time in the services, the death of his wife and children. Bill had told Marcus that during the war he had met a group of men who were as disillusioned with their country as he was. They shared his bitterness and despair, his anger at the hell they had been thrust into, and felt the world owed them something special after all they had been through. At the time Bill saw himself almost as a kind of Robin Hood, making up for society’s various injustices, inequalities, and cruelties. There were real villains among them, Marcus was sure, but they came from all walks of life and it was only their shared purpose which united them – to be free and powerful, and that had to mean rich as well. Bill’s involvement had initially been political in a way, although he would never have understood that, but had he been a more educated man, he would have channelled his rage against society differently; he might well have joined the communist party, as so many did in the reaction days of the fifties.

  Jennifer interrupted Marcus at that point. He was warming to his theme, arguing around it in the way he was so good at, sounding quite smooth. She was not going to let him prevaricate.

  ‘So what actually was Bill Turpin?’ she asked.

  Marcus shrugged again. ‘Not a man to cross,’ h
e said. ‘In the early days he was top muscle. The old Pelham gossip wasn’t the half of it.

  ‘He was involved in the Lord Lynmouth burglary, at least two other major art robberies, and God knows what else. Arms dealing – one of the great markets of our time. It seemed crazy, a joke when people talked about it back in Pelham, but Bill and his lot knew all about the international arms market from the beginning, from the war. Arms to Korea. To Suez – by fancy routes, of course. And to every African banana state invented. If it still seems far-fetched, think about what is public knowledge now – British firms, legitimate British firms, supplying weapons to the enemy during the Gulf War. Bill and his mates knew what they were about. They knew how to use the stuff they were flogging, for God’s sake – they’d lived through all that.’

  Marcus was sweating. He wiped a silken arm across his forehead. She had been aware that he had been sniffing profusely. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose. He still didn’t stop sniffing. Strange that it had not ever occurred to her until this day that Marcus’s extraordinary energy could sometimes be chemically encouraged. Maybe he read her mind, she’d often felt he’d done that before – within seconds he had the sniffing under control.

  She tried not to look at him. ‘Go on,’ she commanded.

  He did so, quite intently. ‘Bill Turpin once told me how he’d learned during the war that he had one great talent – it was for killing people. Then he laughed as if that was a joke.’

  Jennifer remembered what Todd had told her about the unsolved murder of the Earl of Lynmouth, about the string of fine-art robberies just after the war, and even about illegal arms deals out of Bristol. She had a vision of a small gang of highly trained soldiers, breaking and entering into big houses and galleries, using their army skills, and one of them with a special job for which he had a special talent – to listen, to watch, to wipe out anybody who got in the way. Swiftly. Cleanly. Silently. Bill Turpin. She had not believed what she was saying when she had asked Todd if he thought old Bill was some kind of hitman. It seemed that was more or less what he had been. The puzzle was starting to fit together finally. Marcus was still talking, and all she had to do now was listen.

  Once Marcus began to tell the story, he could not stop, it was as if the floodgates had been opened. He tried to explain his mixed feelings of revulsion and gratitude towards Bill. When Marcus ran to the cottage he wasn’t even sure what he was asking for, he said. It was Bill who had immediately begun an elaborate cover-up operation with a calm efficiency which suggested it was not the first time.

  Bill had always said they were kindred spirits, the two of them, which in the early days had sent shivers down Marcus’s spine. Bill unnerved him because Marcus never understood what he got out of it all. He had always known Bill was a very wealthy man, but he never lived as if he was. He lived exactly the way you would have expected without the other secret side to him. For Bill Turpin the game had all been in the playing. He had talked to Marcus about the perfect murder, enjoying the conversation.

  ‘And Marjorie Benson – it was Turpin who killed her, wasn’t it?’

  Marcus nodded. ‘For sure. Not that he ever put it into words. He wouldn’t, the bugger.’

  ‘And Johnny Cooke?’

  ‘Yes, poor Johnny,’ said Marcus, in a voice which held no sympathy at all. ‘Wrong place, wrong time. Probably his destiny. Suited Turpin though. I had my instructions, all I had to do was give a more or less verbatim account of Johnny Cooke’s midnight visit the day after the murder. It certainly sounded like a confession – and what could make a murderer feel safer than to have another man convicted of his crime?’

  Jennifer kept looking away. With difficulty she kept her voice neutral, pleasant even.

  ‘So why did Bill Turpin kill Marjorie Benson? Who was she, for goodness’ sake?’

  Marcus shook his head. ‘Didn’t the diary tell you?’ he asked.

  Jennifer answered him quickly. ‘Only that Marjorie had to die because she knew too much, because she could destroy everything.’

  Marcus nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She was always the real mystery – not Bill. I never had a clue who she was – but she really did have something on the old man, him and his buddies. That’s all I ever knew really. I had nothing and he helped me – she had everything and he killed her.’

  ‘So did she try to blackmail him too?’

  Marcus shook his head. ‘I don’t know, doesn’t seem likely the way Johnny described her. Bill was in no doubt that she had come to Pelham Bay to get him though, in some way or other.’

  ‘I wonder why he put her body in the sea,’ Jennifer said suddenly.

  ‘How the hell do I know?’ Marcus replied with a question. ‘I don’t suppose he did. I would imagine he rolled her into the river, there where it cuts through the dunes, and she was swept into the estuary.’

  Of course, that would make sense. Out of sight, out of mind, until the tide carried her back the next day. Bill Turpin might have expected it to be longer before she was found. If Jennifer had not swum out so far, the tide would probably have taken the body out to sea again without anyone noticing; it could have been several days before she was discovered. But in the end that turned to Bill Turpin’s advantage. He had something tangible with which to frame poor Johnny Cooke.

  Marcus was carrying on with his story. Jennifer listened carefully. Nobody had troubled him much for some time after Irene’s death; he had been instructed to join the Freemasons, which he did.

  Bill Turpin’s friends were always referred to as just that – ‘The Friends’. At first Marcus had taken the innocent-sounding name for what it was, and not realised the extent of the formal structure involved. Only gradually had he learned just how big and influential The Friends were. They had considerable powers. With his move to London came a phone number, and he told her about his abortive attempts to trace it, always ending with an empty room rented to a non-existent company with an accommodation address. Apart from Bill, he only ever talked to disembodied voices, for many years to a voice that came to him through a voice box, so it sounded like a machine – he couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman.

  But he’d learned that almost everything he wanted he could have, all he had to do was ask.

  ‘And in return you gave them the power of the Recorder, and the influence of your whole business empire, and now your position as a junior minister,’ she said.

  She felt his eyes on her back.

  ‘It’s easy to moralise,’ he said.

  ‘I am not moralising,’ she replied. ‘I am stating the facts. I have no doubts at all that the way in which you have behaved is quite usual in the circles in which you move, and that there are always casualties. I don’t have a problem with that. High finance, big business, politics – all spell corruption to me. I’ve come to believe that if you can’t beat them, you may as well join them.

  ‘I want my slice now.’

  She had swung around to face him again as she spoke. She looked slightly flushed, the way she did when she was having sex. She was excited.

  What a woman, he thought. How could he ever have let her go? He smiled his appreciation.

  ‘You are absolutely right,’ he said. ‘Every government has a hidden agenda. Almost everyone in the government in this country has an ulterior motive for everything that they do.

  ‘Think of what we pay our politicians and the way most of them live. Doesn’t often add up, does it? They nearly all have a lifestyle way above their income.

  ‘And think about the great political coups nowadays. The overthrow of Communism in Russia, for example. All about money, wasn’t it? Do you think Gorbachev did it on his own? Do you think he wasn’t backed? And who keeps that man Yeltsin in power – he’s so far up the Western backside it’s embarrassing.

  ‘Look at the Gulf war. All about money. All about oil. The most powerful governments in the world sent their armed forces into action on the orders of their money men. Everybody knows that �
� and why Saddam was quite deliberately let off the hook. If he had been wiped out, Iran would have ended up with a virtual oil monopoly. Bad economics, that’s all. Even Bosnia is not what it seems. Europe’s money market has been stood on its head by the disruption there – and that suits certain people very well.

  ‘There is always a hidden agenda. Always. And I am just a tiny part of it, of course I am, part of the real motivation behind what happens in the corridors of power.’

  Jennifer found what he was saying frightening yet impressive, and totally convincing. He was telling the truth. She had no doubts about that.

  ‘Did you know that twelve per cent of the world’s revenue is now generated by so-called criminal activity? If you pulled the plug, the economy would really collapse. The Friends are simply a group of people, many in very influential positions, all with something to give, who ensure each other’s wealth and futures by securing information and power.’

  Jennifer shivered.

  ‘Surely the Masons wouldn’t go as far as murder, would they?’ she asked.

  ‘Not as an organisation, of course not,’ Marcus said. ‘The Friends recruit the bad eggs from the Masons and con the good ones. I remember asking Bill how he had got rid of Irene’s body, and how he was so sure my flat was clean. He touched the side of his nose and said not every PC Plod wanted to stay that way. I always assumed that he had called in a couple of tame policemen – and it made sense that they would be Masons.’

  Jennifer imagined Todd’s reaction to that little theory. Good, decent Todd, why couldn’t she have stuck with him?

  She sat down again at the kitchen table. ‘Do you know who runs The Friends, do you know other people involved?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ he replied. ‘I’ve never known. That’s the way it is … Sometimes I have suspected people, but never got any further. The only Friend I have ever definitely known was Bill Turpin. Other than that, they have always just contacted me over the phone.’

  She turned to face him, keeping any expression out of her eyes. ‘And they funded you from the start? Made it possible for you to make even more money?’