The Chalon Heads

by Barry Maitland

  Brock looked back over his shoulder at her and smiled. ‘Oh, I was trying to persuade Superintendent McLarren to let me negotiate personally with Sammy, but he won’t allow it. He’s right, I dare say.’

  Sally frowned. ‘You don’t believe that, though, do you?’

  ‘I think I could persuade Sammy to come out quietly, because I know him. But the superintendent rightly points out that we have experts who are very experienced at this sort of thing, negotiating with . . . with—’

  ‘With what? Lunatics? Mass murderers?’ Sally looked out of the car window at one of the ARVs and saw the men with rifles passing clips of ammunition between themselves. ‘And if they fail, they’ll kill him, won’t they?’

  ‘It won’t come to that, Sally. The point is that he’s probably in a frame of mind where he would welcome that. We have to give him something to want to live for.’

  Sally looked him in the eye, then said, ‘Come on, I’ll talk to your superintendent.’

  Brock raised an eyebrow at Kathy and jumped out after Sally. By the time he caught up with her she was rapping with her rings on McLarren’s car window. He opened the door and stepped out.

  ‘Dear lady . . .’

  ‘I’d like a word, sir, if you don’t mind,’ she said firmly. ‘In the car.’

  He looked at her in astonishment, then at Brock. They got into McLarren’s car.

  ‘Superintendent,’ Sally said, ‘I’ll come straight to the point. I believe you want to know the identity of Raphael, is that right?’

  McLarren suddenly considered her very seriously. ‘Yes, indeed. Can you help us, madam?’

  ‘Yes, I can. I know Raphael’s identity, and I suppose, looking around, there’s not many left that do.’

  ‘Well, now . . .’ McLarren’s face brightened in a rare smile of pure unmitigated joy. ‘I’m absolutely delighted to hear it, Mrs Malone. Please, give me the name.’

  ‘I will tell you, Superintendent, after you have allowed Mr Brock to meet with Sammy and try to bring him and the police officer out of there, but not before.’

  ‘What?’ McLarren’s smile turned to something less pleasant. He looked suspiciously at Brock, who said quickly, ‘Sally, this isn’t the way. If you know who Raphael is, you must tell us.’

  ‘Thank you, Brock,’ McLarren said, through clenched teeth. ‘Come, Mrs Malone . . .’

  No, sorry. That’s my deal. If you don’t agree, I shan’t tell you, not now and not ever.’ She folded her arms determinedly.

  ‘Mrs Malone,’ McLarren said softly, in control again, ‘let me assure you that if I thought for one moment that DCI Brock’s way was best I would leap at it. But it is not. You don’t realise what you’re asking. To let Mr Brock go alone to speak to Sammy at this juncture would be tantamount to serving Brock a death sentence. Sammy would as like kill him, and DS Desai, and then himself.’

  ‘No, he won’t,’ she replied firmly, ‘because Mr Brock won’t be alone. I’ll be with him.’

  ‘What?’ McLarren and Brock spoke simultaneously.

  Sally let them go on for a while, then she lifted a hand and they became quiet.

  ‘There are certain things,’ she said, ‘which I know, and which nobody else knows. They are things that Sammy has to hear. He wants to hear them, because only that way can he start to live again. That’s why I have to go with Mr Brock to speak to him, Superintendent. There’s really no other way.’

  McLarren stared at her, impressed despite himself. ‘What are these things, Mrs Malone?’

  ‘That’s all I’m prepared to say.’ She set her mouth in a firm line.

  At 11.30 p.m., with police marksmen, floodlights and medical team in position, Brock and Sally climb up to the third floor and make their way along the access gallery. They walk carefully and slowly in the dark, for the route is littered with shards of bathroom fittings and glass from the period when the flats were trashed before being sealed up and sold to the developers. When they reach the flat from which the police team has heard the sounds of movement, Brock knocks on the plywood sheet that seals the door. He tries to make it sound neither frighteningly loud, nor timidly soft, but somehow confident and open. It is a lot to expect a knock to communicate, and for a full half-minute they wait in silence. Then he knocks again, and this time speaks. ‘Sammy, it’s David Brock. I have Sally Malone with me. She thought I might find you here. There’s just the two of us on the walkway. The others are keeping their distance, so that we can talk.’

  He says all this with his mouth close to the timber sheet, not sure how much will get through.

  Then there is a sound of scraping, and the door to which the plywood has been nailed swings slowly open. In the darkness beyond, Brock can just make out the nose of a rifle barrel, pointing at his chest. The rifle recedes into the darkness, and Brock and Sally step cautiously inside. It waves them to the right, and they stumble through another doorway into a room.

  ‘This was the living-room,’ Sally whispers, and they hear the sound of the front door shutting and bolts being drawn into place. Then a battery camping light clicks on, filling the space with soft light. It illuminates a bare room, and the figure of Leon Desai crumpled in the corner, wide adhesive tape covering his eyes and mouth and binding his wrists and ankles.

  Starling is standing by the door, covering them with his gun. He says, ‘Sit down on the floor,’ and they hear the agitation in his voice and also a hoarseness, perhaps through lack of fluids.

  They obey, and then Brock says, ‘Thanks for seeing us, Sammy. It’s important that we talk.’

  ‘No!’ the voice is shrill. ‘We’ve got nothing to talk about.’

  ‘I’m your hostage now, Sammy,’ Brock goes on, softly. ‘Let the other fellow go, will you? He’s got nothing—’

  ‘Shut up! ’ Sammy screams, and it is a scream, so harsh and shocking that Brock and Sally flinch and go rigid where they sit. ‘Don’t you say one more word, or I’ll kill you right there. I mean it!’

  Clearly he does. Nobody says a word. It is impossible to tell what shape Desai is in. He is so still that he may be dead, suffocated by the tape, perhaps, or choked on his own vomit, without Starling even aware that he has killed his hostage.

  ‘He wants to trick me, I know!’ Starling goes on, talking to Sally. ‘He steals Eva’s ransom, and now he wants to trick me. I told them he must come with Raphael, but he brings you instead! Why did you come?’

  ‘There were things I had to say to you, Sammy,’ Sally says, very gently. ‘Important things for you to understand.’

  ‘If you’ve come here to soft-soap me, or tell me bad things about Eva . . .’ He turns the gun towards her.

  ‘I want to tell you some hard things, Sammy, some bad things, if you think you can cope with them. Bad things about me, as well as Eva.’

  His mouth sets in a grim little line as he faces her.

  ‘But perhaps I was wrong to come. I didn’t realise how hard all this has been for you. You see, I’m sorry, but I really believed that it must have been you who killed Eva, until Mr Brock here told me I was wrong.’

  Both of them on the floor watch Starling’s face in the torchlight, trying to make out his reaction to this, but it remains inscrutable as ever. Then the light catches a glint of moisture at his eyes.

  ‘I didn’t kill Eva,’ he says eventually.

  ‘I know that, Sammy. I know that now.’

  ‘Go away, Sally,’ he said leadenly. ‘I don’t want to have to kill you too.’

  She sighs, and her gaze moves slowly round the room. ‘It’s easy to imagine, in this light, how it used to be, isn’t it, Sammy? Over there was Dad’s chair, and over there was the table where Mum did her sewing. And where you are was where we kept your little chair. Do you remember that? You probably don’t—you were too young to remember. You do remember our Mum sitting at the window, though, don’t you? I can see her there now, Old Mother Hubbard . . .’

  ‘Stop it, Sally,’ he says, more sad than angry.

&nbs
p; ‘You know, you were her favourite. Oh, I don’t mean like Andy exactly—Mum worshipped Andy. But in another way. And you were my favourite too, my own little brother, my little Sammy China. I was so proud, taking you out with me, Sammy and Sally—I thought our mum had chosen your name special to be like mine. I didn’t realise you already had it when you came.

  ‘Isn’t it funny how a place can bring it all back? That’s why you came here, is it, Sammy? It’s almost as if the memories have soaked into the walls, and when you sit here you can feel them oozing out again. Like you and your stamps—I’d forgotten you were collecting them even then. I can see you now, in your short trousers, at the table by the window, with Mum at one end doing her sewing and you at the other concentrating so hard on your stamps.’

  ‘Andy collected stamps,’ Starling says, in a whisper.

  ‘So he did! That’s how you got started, wasn’t it? He came home on leave and talked you into it—gave you some stamps.’

  ‘American stamps, air mail, with planes, 1941.’

  ‘You do remember!’

  ‘The best stamp in Andy’s collection was a Great Britain 1929 Postal Union Congress, one pound black.’ Starling’s voice is oddly detached, unnaturally pitched, as if it really is a voice from the past, the voice of a small orphan boy. ‘It was a wonderful stamp, big and black, with a picture of St George in armour on a horse killing the dragon with his lance. I loved it so much, I stole it. That was the first thing I ever stole. I couldn’t help it. I don’t know what I thought I would say when Andy came home and found it gone. Only Andy didn’t come home . . .’

  Sally purses her lips, and says softly to Brock, ‘He was in bombers. Shot down over the North Sea.’

  ‘He was a hero,’ Starling says. ‘Then you gave his whole collection to me. For a long time I couldn’t bear to look at it. It was years before I started collecting again.’

  ‘Is that right, Sammy? I never knew that.’

  He looks at her with immense sadness and whispers, ‘Please go now, Sally.’

  ‘Sammy, you said you wanted Mr Brock to bring you Raphael. Well, he didn’t cheat you. I’m sure he’s never cheated you. He did exactly what you asked.’

  ‘What?’ Sammy looks at her, perplexed.

  ‘I am Raphael, Sammy. At least, part of him. Me and Rudi Trakl, together we’re Raphael.’

  Starling looks at Brock as if this is his preposterous idea, but sees the same astonishment as he feels on Brock’s face.

  ‘You feel guilty about Andy’s stamps, Sammy,’ Sally goes on. ‘Well, let me tell you something that I feel guilty about that’s much worse than that. When you threw me out of your home—yes, you did, Sammy, as good as, accusing me of stealing Eva’s jewellery—no!’

  She holds up her index finger and Starling’s attempt to argue this point dies away.

  ‘I couldn’t stay there after that, you knew that very well, and I was angry. I thought, my mum took little Sammy into our home when he was an orphan, and now he kicks me out in my old age without a penny.’

  Starling makes another attempt to protest, but she waves it aside. ‘All right, yes, it was all her doing, but you believed every word she told you, and wouldn’t listen when I tried to warn you, right? Right. Anyway, I came back to this part of town, where we all grew up, and the council gave me a little temporary, like, and I took up again with some old friends who’d stayed hereabouts, like Rudi Trakl, who worked for a time for my dad. Poor Rudi was going blind, cataracts in both eyes, at the wrong end of a long hospital waiting list, and drinking every penny he could get because of it. I looked after him, poor old bugger, and tried to work out how we could get enough money to live better and get his eyes fixed.

  ‘Now, I’d left you my forwarding address, as you know, and one day, bright as a button, who should turn up on my doorstep but Eva. I couldn’t believe the gall of the girl, even less when she got round to telling me what she wanted. She was in a right pickle, she said, going mad with worry. You remember that beautiful gold and emerald necklace you gave her?’

  Starling’s eyes widen and he becomes very still.

  ‘Yes, well, she said she’d been very stupid and lost it, and I knew what that meant, of course—sold it for drug money. She said you’d been asking where it was, and she’d told you it was having the clasp repaired, but sooner or later she knew you were going to find out the truth, unless she could replace it. She’d found another identical one in the shop you bought it from, and she needed ten thousand quid to buy it. Unfortunately she had no cash, but she was sure that I must have squirrelled a bit away over the years, and would I lend it to her?’

  Starling leans back against the wall, looking more ashen than before, but he doesn’t challenge Sally’s story.

  ‘I blew my flippin’ lid, believe me. I told her everything I knew and suspected about her, and told her to eff off in no uncertain terms. She scarpered with a flea in her ear, but later on, when I’d calmed down and was telling Rudi about it, another thought came into my head. I thought, here’s Sammy wants to spend all his money on bloody stamps, and here’s Eva, Rudi and me all needing that money in our different ways. Why can’t we all be happy? Tell the truth, I didn’t care whether Eva was happy or not, but I figured she’d have to be part of it. The key was Rudi. He’d always been a brilliant copier. I remember him in our dad’s shop when I started work there, copying the drawings for the latest fashions so you couldn’t tell the difference between Dior and Hubbard. And he’d told me he’d made copies of etchings for this bent art dealer he knew up West. Only that was before his eyes got bad, and I wasn’t sure he could still do it. But he knew about stamps, and when I told him what was in my mind he said he’d give it a try.

  ‘That first one was the most difficult. We used your book, of course, Sammy. We picked a nice one from your book . . .’

  ‘Nova Scotia, 1853, one penny brown, block of twenty, mint.’ Sammy recites dully.

  ‘I daresay you’re right. Rudi’s a perfectionist, and it was agony to watch him, his nose almost touching the surface of the plate, working away all hours, week after week. But it did take his mind off the booze.

  ‘While he was working at that, I found Walter. We needed someone in the business, see, to make it look convincing. I would have preferred someone else, someone more dependable, who looked more respectable, but Walter was the only one I could find. And that was when we decided that we would have to invent Raphael.

  ‘I didn’t really trust Walter, you see. I knew him of old, and I knew he had a reputation as a grass. I was bothered that he might decide one day to shop us, either to the Old Bill or to you, and so I didn’t want him to know where the stamps would be coming from, and who would really be involved. Raphael was Eva’s idea. She invented him, like one of the characters in those movies she was always going to see. I never thought Walter would swallow it, but she believed in Raphael, and she could make other people believe in him too.

  ‘When the stamps were finished, Eva took them to Walter’s shop in Shepherd’s Row. She told him that she had a rich husband who was mad keen on stamps. She said she also had a lover, a young penniless art student, who was very clever at copying things. She and her lover wanted to steal money from her husband by selling him fake stamps that the lover would make. But they needed a proper stamp dealer to act as middle man, to convince the husband that it was all above board. Was he interested?

  ‘She made it sound like a fairy story, you know the way she could tell you something in that accent of hers, and Walter was fascinated, but of course he wanted nothing to do with it. Not until she’d showed him Rudi’s work. He told her it was so good that he couldn’t believe it wasn’t the real thing, and she told him things about Raphael, about the etchings he had been doing for the art market, and other things. And then he realised that this could be a serious proposition.

  ‘Eva told him that this was the bait, a free sample to get her old man hooked. She would give this to him, and say she had sold one of her necklaces
to buy it for him from this funny little shop she’d found. Then her husband would come to the shop, and they would begin to sell him other high-value stamps that her lover, Raphael, would make for them, and then they would all be rich.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sammy,’ she says, and falls silent.

  ‘He told me they were lovers,’ Sammy whispers, ‘Eva and Raphael. That’s why I cut off his fingers. He told me the name straight away, but I cut them off anyway. I was very upset.’

  ‘Of course you were,’ Sally says consolingly. ‘Considering everything that had happened.’

  ‘Hang on,’ Brock says. ‘What about the murder of Mary Martin?’

  Sally hangs her head. ‘When everything worked so well, Walter wanted to know more about Raphael, and Eva obliged. She created little stories for him, like instalments of a movie serial. As well as Raphael, there was this friend of his that they called The Beast, because he was so scary and nobody knew his name. She invented him to frighten Walter, in case he turned difficult.

  ‘One day Walter told Eva that he’d heard about a new machine that a forger like Raphael would be interested in. He showed her a photocopy of the specifications that he’d come across, and told her some details of when and where it would be kept in London, on its way to a printer up north. He said he’d heard all this on the grapevine. When Eva told us, we all thought what a joke it was that he was taking Raphael so seriously, wanting to help him. Of course, there was no way we could try to steal the machine, although we wished we could.

  ‘Then we read in the papers what had happened to the lady copper in the warehouse, and the joke wasn’t funny any more. But the thing was, it impressed Walter no end. He was convinced Raphael had killed the copper, and from then on he treated Eva with a kind of dread, as if she might set The Beast on him if he didn’t behave. She lapped it up.’

  Brock shakes his head, perplexed. ‘And Walter knew nothing about you and Rudi?’

  ‘Nothing. Eva would take him fresh stamps that Raphael had given her, and collect the money in return. They made up the story of the widow and her family heirloom collection together, she and Walter.’