by Adam Baron
But now he had told me. I knew who was in there.
I jogged towards the van, trying to keep in line with the corner, away from the window. I thought about calling Ken Clay, but I wanted this guy for myself. I studied the curtains of the van but they didn’t move. When I’d covered the distance from the wall I stood at the corner of the van and thought how to do it. From inside I could hear the sound of an efficient boom box tuned in to Radio One. Mark Radcliffe was assuring his listeners that he was very sorry indeed that his show was over for another day. I was glad of the noise; it would be a distraction. I waited until the next DJ had come on and assured his listeners of how glad he was to be with them for the next two hours. Still, I waited. Then the DJ announced that the next track would be a huge house-jungle crossover smash and was bound to break into the charts on Sunday. I wasn’t ready to give an opinion on his prophetic statement but there was one thing I did know. The track was loud. I set my bag down on the ground beside me.
I walked round to the side of the caravan, where the door was, keeping my head below the level of the windows. I stood outside the door and reached for the handle. The kid had knocked but opened the door straight after he’d done so. It hadn’t been locked. Was it now? I was about to find out. I pulled the handle.
I was inside the van. He was on the left, lying on a bed. He was propped up on some cushions and was just putting a beer down next to a half-empty litre bottle of cheap vodka on a small, built-in table to the right of the bed. At the foot of the bed, nearer to me than him, was a sawn-off shotgun, presumably the same one he had aimed at my head only a few days previously. In the split second before all hell let loose our eyes met.
He wasn’t wearing a baseball hat now, and it was then that I realized what a perfect disguise his hat had been, why nobody had recognized him from the picture I’d been showing round; why he could know Rollo but Rollo didn’t recognize him. The man was balding, with long, black greasy strands of hair hanging down from the sides of his head and down over his shoulders. On the top of his head, running down from the centre, and making a sharp turn to the left just above the brow, was a scar which dominated not only his head but his whole face. It was like a brand, the scar tissue old but still livid, something your eyes could not avoid, something which seemed to define him. I didn’t know the cause of the scar, whether it was surgical, accidental or given to him on purpose, but I did know that with a hat on he was a different person. His hat was lying on the bed next to him.
He came forward towards the gun but I beat him to it. I was turning it on him when he took hold of the barrel with both of his hands and forced me back. For a split second the gun was pointing straight into his chest but I didn’t pull the trigger. His momentum had taken him up into a standing position on the bed and it forced me backwards as he came off it and on to me. I backed into something, hard, and the gun went off, blowing a hole in the ceiling of the van and sending down a shower of debris. I pulled the trigger again, deliberately this time, blowing out one of the plastic windows. Knowing the gun was empty he released a hand from it and went for a straight right but I managed to get my head out of the way of his fist and it smacked into the plywood behind me. I got the butt of the gun into the side of his face. It straightened him up and before he could swing again I jabbed the end of the gun full into his face with as much of my weight behind it as I could get. It sent him the two feet towards the bed and he tripped backwards, thanks more to the contact with the bed than to what I’d done to him.
His face was pulsing blood. I wasn’t sure how much he could see. He should have taken the count then but he didn’t. He came up at me but before he could get to his feet I used the gun again. He went back further this time and his hand went for the nearest of the two bottles by the side of the bed which, to my relief, was the one that held the Becks. His fingers curled around the green glass and with one last effort he threw it with all his force, coming in after it, screaming like a stuck pig. I was showered with beer but the bottle missed me. I stepped to the side and the man missed me too; he crashed into the plywood which his fist had gone into. I used the gun again. He put his hands out to keep himself upright. I hit him again. Even then there was something left in him. It was like trying to fell a tree. I used the gun again and then one more time and then he didn’t have anything left. I stood back from him and he slid down the wall of the van, settling on to the floor as gently as a lift in a four-star hotel.
The Spice Girls. I’ll never forget that it was the Spice Girls which was all I could hear. I reached over and turned the sound off. I wanted it off because something else was trying to make me hear it. Or see it. I’d expected feelings of relief, even euphoria at finding the man who was now unconscious at my feet but all of a sudden it seemed trivial. There was something else, something bigger. My eyes went towards the unit at the top of the bed. My thoughts were racing ahead of me. The bottle. As he’d gone for the Becks bottle he’d knocked the litre bottle of vodka on to its side. It was still there. Even as he had done so it had started to come to me, though I didn’t know what it was. Now I stared at the bottle. I got an uncomfortable feeling. I felt a racing in my stomach to match that in my head. There was a picture, a picture that I’d missed, something I’d seen but which hadn’t registered. A bottle. A hand, the way it held… The vodka in the litre bottle swayed slightly, looking for equilibrium. It looked gentle, unconcerned. I stared at it.
I saw a man holding a bottle, holding it in a way which at the time had called out to me but I had failed to hear it. His hand on the bottle. Certain, calm, smiling. Holding it like … like he had some sort of affinity with it. I saw a bottle rammed into a young boy’s throat. Other bottles. The pictures were becoming sharper. A boy, a truck driver. I felt the horror that comes from realization and the need to act, now, not wait another second, act before it all went out of focus. I didn’t know how I knew what I did but I did know. I was certain. I knew. I could see it. It was the way he had held that bottle. I’d sat across from him as he smiled at me, and I’d been struck by it at the time but not struck hard enough. But now I knew what I knew and suddenly I knew how I could prove it. All of the inconsistencies, all of the elements which I couldn’t fit into my scenario of what had happened to Edward, all suddenly made sense. Why I wasn’t killed at York Way, why the killer didn’t care about the video, why Teddy was preoccupied, how Dominic had become involved. The knowledge that had just come to me slid into the events easy as Cinderella’s left foot. I snapped my eyes away from the vodka bottle and looked quickly round the caravan.
The man was lying on his side, curled up like he was asleep. Now I knew why he hadn’t killed me; it was because he had never killed anyone. Not him. I searched for his mobile. I knew he’d have one, he was a pimp, wasn’t he, at the very least? I tore the place apart until I finally found it in the pocket of a black leather jacket and used it to call Andy Gold. He wasn’t there so I asked for Ken Clay. He came on the line and I told him that I was in a caravan on old BR land behind King’s Cross.
’If you want the man in the hat,’ I said, ‘you better get here soon. He’s unconscious but I don’t know how long he’ll be out.’
‘Stay there,’ Clay said. ‘Don’t fucking leave him.’
‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘Just get here.’
I was in a hurry. It wasn’t a logical hurry, but it was speeding through me so fast I had to go with it.
‘Just get here,’ I said.
I could hear his protestations as I looked for the button to turn the thing off. I put the phone on the bed and took out my wallet. Andy Gold had given me a card which his bleeper company had issued and which had his number on it. I called it and told the woman the message I would like to leave. She wanted me to read it back to her.
‘Just send the fucking thing!’
I dropped the phone and pushed open the door of the caravan. I grabbed my bag and ran to my car. There was a face in front of my eyes and as I ran I felt that I was running straight into it
, my fists clenched, and I was about to smash a big hole in the confident smile that played on its broad lips.
I didn’t feel the pain in my ribs any more.
* * *
When I got to Andy Gold’s flat in Camden I double-parked and jumped out. He was already there, just getting out of his Astra. He locked it, and walked towards me, digging his flat keys out of his pocket. He looked puzzled.
‘You’ve got the video?’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it’s inside. I never got round to taking it back. But I already gave you the picture.’
‘Come on,’ I said, ‘quickly. I need to see it.’
We went inside. I asked Andy to find the place on the tape where he’d found Teddy, and the man in the hat. It didn’t take him long.
‘I already went through this about…’
I took the remote from him and hit the fast-forward button. I went back and forward over the next section of tape, going fast, and then slowing the tape right down. I couldn’t see anything, but maybe it was because the door of the shop kept closing. I asked Andy to do the same thing with the other tape, the one from the concourse, which had shown Teddy and the man but had been useless due to the man’s baseball cap. Again I hit the forward button, but this time the slow-mo. Andy sat beside me, not particularly engrossed in the screen, not knowing what to look for. The crowd of people inched past like a wave of zombies. Slowly. Slowly. My eyes flicked around them. I watched for five minutes, until I was almost ready to give up. Suddenly it didn’t seem so obvious to me. Maybe I was wrong, maybe I had left the real villain lying unconscious in a caravan behind King’s Cross. Andy started to fidget. Once again he told me that the tape was useless, you couldn’t see enough of him. He wanted to know why I was looking at the time after Teddy and the man had gone by. He made a crack about wasting police time.
And then I saw him.
I hit pause on the remote and a hundred people stopped still. I looked at him, just catching the front of his face as he walked into the frame. No hat. Not a clear picture but a definite one. I stared at him. I’d stopped him, just like he’d stopped at least three people. The fuzzy V-hold on the screen made him shake like a fly caught in a web.
I put my finger on the screen. It took Andy a second to recognize him and another to realize why I was pointing him out. His breath stopped, as his mind processed the myriad objections to what my finger was telling him. He didn’t say anything. He moved closer to the tiny shivering face in the top left corner of the screen. I could see him scouring his mind for a reason, a reason why it couldn’t be him. Another second passed. Then Andy’s eyes moved away from the screen and into space.
Suddenly, he made a grab for the telephone.
* * *
When I got to the airport it was busier than the last time I’d been there but it still wasn’t crowded. I stood amongst the sparsely filled tables of the Pavilion Bar looking at a tall, slim figure who was chopping lemons at the bar. Alex Mitchell had his back to me but he must have felt my eyes on him because he stopped what he was doing and turned round to face me. He smiled but his smile disappeared immediately when he saw that I wasn’t smiling. His face turned to chalk. Almost immediately he moved along the bar and turned to walk away but stopped when he saw Andy Gold blocking his exit. He backed up and hurried to the other end of the bar only to find an airport cop, complete with automatic rifle, standing square on to him, blocking his path that way too. It was then that he looked past me and saw the other six airport cops, all of whom Andy Gold had briefed, surrounding his bar.
Alex Mitchell should have given up then. But he didn’t. He raised the knife he was still carrying high above his head and ran straight at the nearest cop. The bullet hit him almost exactly in the middle of his forehead.
Part Four
Chapter Twenty-Three
The smoking room of the Portman Club was no more crowded than it had been the last time I was there. This much was different though: the man sitting opposite me was no longer a Shadow Minister in Her Majesty’s Opposition and would not even be an MP for that much longer. Sir Peter Morgan had recently announced his intention to stand down at the next election, a decision which was greeted by both the press and his colleagues with a great deal of respect and understanding. The press coverage which his announcement had received was shocking only in its restraint.
I hadn’t wanted to meet Sir Peter at the Portman Club. I’d suggested we go to a cafe somewhere, or to my office, but Sir Peter had insisted and since he was paying me it was up to him. I’d turned down lunch though, not wanting to sit through another hour of small-talk before we got to the real meat. The crème brûlée was tempting but this time I let it pass. I arrived at the club just after two and was immediately shown upstairs and led through the polished mahogany door which swung open silently before me.
Sir Peter Morgan wanted me to tell him about it. He knew, as indeed the whole world knew, that the man who had murdered his brother had been shot dead by the police. He knew the name of that man but he didn’t know a lot else. It was only a couple of days since Alex Mitchell had been confronted at Heathrow airport and the police had not yet revealed any more details about him or how he had committed his crimes. Not even to Sir Peter.
After I had joined the MP a different girl brought us coffee with the same good manners and diligence as her colleague had shown. We sat in the same seats we had used before and we were dressed about the same and there was the same hum of traffic from the street below as well as the same ticking of the grandfather clock which this time I noticed as soon as I entered the room.
Sir Peter looked older than he had done, almost frail. He seemed relaxed enough though but I still couldn’t tell if the slight tension he demonstrated in his posture was due to the circumstances or was just the way he always sat. I’d never met him under what you would call normal conditions so I couldn’t tell. Before he did anything else, Sir Peter reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a chequebook. He took out a fountain pen and scribbled on the cheque before snapping it off and setting it down on the table between us. It was face down so I couldn’t see the amount Sir Peter had written it out for but I wasn’t worried about that. I left the cheque there.
We both took sips from our coffee. A silence hung heavy between us which eventually the MP sought to break.
‘Before you say anything,’ Sir Peter began. ‘I want to thank you.’
I put my cup down. ‘There’s no need.’
‘I know. But…’ He hesitated, his thoughts hovering. ‘I want to thank you,’ he reiterated. He took a deep breath and put his cup down on the table.
‘So,’ he said, clasping his hands together in his lap. ‘So it was the barman who killed all those people.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It was. Alex Mitchell.’
‘He was from Australia I understand.’
‘Manly, I believe. A small district just across the bay from Sydney.’
Sir Peter thought for a second. ‘I’ve never been there, to Australia. Too far away. Have you ever?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘as a matter of fact I have. I went there with my brother, a few years ago.’
‘Oh, I didn’t know you had a brother too.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I do.’
‘So this Mitchell man came over to work and started attacking innocent men?’
‘Well no,’ I said. ‘No actually. He didn’t start here.’ I pulled a piece of paper out of my trouser pocket which I had collected from Andy Gold that morning. It was a fax from a detective with the Sydney PD, listing six names, two with question marks against them and the other four with ticks.
I looked at the fax and then handed it to Sir Peter.
‘These men were all killed in Australia between four and seven years ago. Most were homosexuals and all but two had been murdered after having sex with someone it is believed they had never met before.’
‘And he killed them? The same man killed all these men?’
Morgan was stu
nned. He held on to his glasses as he looked down at the sheet.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘And neither do the police, but they’re looking into it. Each of those men was killed with either a knife or a bottle and Alex Mitchell was resident in Australia at the time. All the killings took place within a hundred-mile radius of where he was working. I think he was probably responsible for some of them.’
‘Christ!’ The MP sat back in his chair. ‘How on earth did they connect them?’
‘I remembered the cases,’ I said, ‘from when I was there. I even remembered them when I was at the airport two weeks ago, interviewing Alex Mitchell. I told Andy Gold about them the day before yesterday. They were all over the Sydney papers as I recall and even when I’m on holiday I tend to notice things like that.’
‘Deformation professionelle.’
‘Sorry?’
‘It’s what the French say when you can’t escape your job even when you’re not doing it. I think you have a bad case of that.’
‘I think you’re right,’ I nodded. ‘I do.’
Sir Peter looked at me and pursed his lips softly.
‘How did you know?’ he asked. ‘That it was Mitchell?’
‘It just came to me,’ I said. ‘I just suddenly knew it was him. I just knew it.’
‘And that was all?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Once I’d realized, when I’d connected the use of the bottles with his job as a barman and the way I’d seen him handle bottles, I went round to DI Gold’s house. We went through the airport videos. The police had only bothered to scrutinize them for the moments before and during the time when Edward actually left the bar. It was natural, I suppose, given that they already had a pretty obvious suspect.’
