Destroy Unopened

by Anabel Donald

  By the time I brought Cairncross his syrupy tea I’d decided. Above all, what I couldn’t afford to waste was time. I needed him out of my office. I needed freedom of movement. If Nick was with the Killer – wrong size and shape and colour as she was – she might, just might, still be alive. She’d gone on Wednesday evening. The shortest time he had kept a victim was three days, Saturday to Tuesday night. The three days weren’t quite up yet.

  So I told my edited story to Cairncross as quickly and dully as I could. I told him about Hilary Lucas, the betrayed widow. I told him about the letters from the mistress and gave him the last letter which mentioned Boy and Bartlett Close. I left out everything else.

  I felt treacherous because as he relaxed, listening to me, he turned into a human being – ‘Call me Andy’. He was sharp enough. He spoke warmly of Eddy, said Eddy had spoken well of me, even made quite good jokes which I had to force myself to laugh at. Under other circumstances we’d have got on, but concealing my involvement in the recent discovery of a murder victim was hardly conducive to a bonding process.

  Eddy had chosen him well. He took the information seriously, made notes, asked intelligent questions, gave me a card and urged me to ring his mobile if I remembered anything else. He’d be back to me, he said, and meanwhile I was to keep my nose out and myself safe.

  Yes, I said, I’d keep away from Bartlett Close. Then he asked me about my work and looked as if he was settling in for, a coffee-sipping, getting-to-know-you chat. Any other time I’d have joined in. Apart from liking him, good contacts in the police are always useful, and I was going to be seriously stuck when Eddy retired.

  But now, I wanted him out, so I pretended breathless interest in the details of the mutilations the Killer inflicted on his victims. He looked surprised, as if he hadn’t pegged me for a ghoul, then disappointed and weary, as if the human capacity for bad behaviour was a weight on his shoulders. He couldn’t get shot of me fast enough.

  I shut the door behind him, looked at the card he’d given me with his mobile phone; number on it, and guiltily promised myself I’d tell him all about finding Fishburn as soon as I could.

  Just moments before, I’d been struggling to disguise the fact that every inch of my body was itching with the imperative need to get rid of him and do something to find Nick. Now I could do something I was appalled by the realization that I didn’t know what to do.

  Yes I did. I needed to look in the workshops at Bartlett Close. Fairfax had kept me away from them earlier that day. They’d be a good place to keep a prisoner: they were isolated, and the noise of the trains would blanket any screaming.

  Lil opened the door, and I jumped.

  ‘Not now, Lil,’ I snapped.

  ‘What’s up?’ she said calmly, sitting down and unwinding her scarves. ‘I’ve come to report about Samantha Eyre. You asked me to check, remember? I went up to Perfect Pizza and she is indeed working there. I saw her. She’d just come off duty and was eating with two young men.’

  ‘What did they look like?’

  She described Fairfax and Jacobs.

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘Half past one,’ she said.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  She waved a notebook at me. ‘I was observing,’ she said. ‘I like pizzas. I stayed to have lunch. I had an American Hot, with added pepperoni, and a cup of cappucino.’ She took a receipt from her pocket and passed it to me.

  ‘Were they still there when you left?’ I said.

  ‘Yes. All three of them were still there when I left, just after half past two.’ She tapped her notebook.

  That made timings for Fishburn’s murder tight, if Fairfax had done it. He could have nipped up to Arthur’s after I left and still been in Notting Hill in time for lunch – but how had he known Arthur was a threat to him? How had he been a threat? And would Fairfax have been able to sit and eat normally?

  ‘How did the blond one seem?’ I said.

  ‘In good spirits. Rather full of himself I didn’t take to him at all. Everything he said was I, I, I.’ She looked at me brightly. ‘Tell me what’s the matter,’ she said. ‘Why are you so jittery?’

  I kept pacing round the room. For a moment, I considered telling her everything. At least I’d hear myself talk and maybe it would make more sense to me. But that would take time, and also I was reluctant to involve anyone else in the danger I’d involved Arthur, and now he was dead.

  ‘When did you say Nick would be back?’

  ‘This afternoon, I think,’ I said as steadily as I could manage. Was she reading my thoughts? ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘I was hoping for a game of Scrabble. We play regularly on Saturday evenings. She’s very good.’

  ‘I’ve really got to go out,’ I said. ‘Urgently.’

  She went on as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘Dermot is next door.’

  ‘The Golden Kid?’

  ‘Yes. Perhaps you could press him further about Nick. Just a thought, because you said you were concerned about his reliability. Shall I get him?’

  My first instinct was to say no, but then it occurred to me: if I was going to poke around the workshops at Bartlett Close, I could take the Kid, not so much for protection as for company. I didn’t think he’d have any moral objections to breaking and entering and he might well have skills I could use.

  ‘Get him,’ I said.

  The Kid sauntered in with Lil chivvying him like a sheepdog.

  ‘What’s all this about Nick, then?’

  ‘She isn’t back yet,’ I said. ‘And she’s left her phone on charge.’

  ‘You found the phone,’ he said. ‘Good. I was going to mention it to you but it slipped my mind.’

  ‘Mention what?’

  ‘She left it by the sink, so I put it away in the cupboard when I locked up, in case the rat knocked it over.’

  ‘The rat?’

  ‘Yeah. I’ve got one too, unless it’s the same rat commuting. Didn’t Nick tell you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She was handling it. The pest control people are due in on Monday—’

  ‘Dermot,’ I interrupted, ‘Why did you lock up?’

  He looked puzzled, fiddled with one of his earrings and looked at himself more closely in the dim mirror Nick had placed in the darkest corner of the room. ‘It gives an illusion of space’, she’d said loftily when I’d pointed out that the mirror was murky and tarnished enough without giving it no light rays to work with.

  ‘She asked me to.’

  ‘Do you often lock up?’

  ‘Only when she asks me to. I’ve got a key, of course, and I check the messages for her sometimes.’

  ‘The messages?’

  ‘Yeah. E-mail. And telephone. If she’s out in the field and I’m here, it’s no big deal, right?’

  ‘So when you saw her on Wednesday evening, where exactly was it, and what exactly did she say? And will you stop squeezing your spots?’

  ‘Lighten up, OK?’ he said reproachfully.

  ‘I’ll make us all a nice cup of tea,’ offered Lil, and went into the back hall.

  I took a deep breath. ‘Sorry, Kid, but I’m tense.’

  ‘Yeah, I see that,’ he said.

  ‘Tell me exactly what happened when you last saw Nick.’

  He gave a martyred sigh. ‘It was maybe six thirty, sevenish. I was next door working on the bike. Nick barged in, pissed off about something but she didn’t say what. She said to tell you she was going out of town to see an old professor, be back Sat’day, she had a minicab waiting, would I lock up and keep checking for messages? So I said yeah, and she went, and I locked up maybe ten minutes later. I’ve told you all this, OK?’

  ‘Did you see the minicab?’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘Do you know why she was taking one?’

  ‘Get real. How would I know that? In a hurry, maybe? Why don’t you ask ’em?’

  ‘Ask who?’

  ‘Them on the corner. The cab company, the Spaniards.’
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  ‘They’re Portuguese,’ I said.

  ‘Whatever.’

  Lil came back with mugs of tea. ‘I’ll go over and ask, shall I?’ she said.

  ‘Please,’ I said, and off she went.

  I was beginning to find the Kid’s easygoing responses reassuring rather than irritating, though I was still strung tighter than piano wire. Maybe Lil would get some useful information from the cab company, though, and I had to wait for that.

  Meanwhile I collected what I thought I’d need. A torch. The mobile phone – might as well use it. Wire-cutters and a chisel, which Nick kept in the bottom drawer of the desk, though I’d been careful never to ask why.

  Lil was back. ‘Not very helpful, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘Nick hired the cab to go to Paddington via the estate down the road. She got the cab to wait outside the estate, then came back and paid it off. He remembered because it was such a cheap fare. He wouldn’t have accepted it if he’d known, and she wouldn’t pay extra for the trouble. She didn’t even tip.’

  That was Nick, all right. ‘Which estate?’ I said, though I was sure I knew.

  ‘Over by St Mark’s Road.’

  That confirmed it.

  I’d just opened my mouth to ask the Kid to come with me to Bartlett Close when he looked out of the window, said, ‘Shit! a warden! Back in a minute,’ and set off at a run down the street.

  I took Lil’s tea and sipped it. I hate tea and this was particularly vile, the kind of metallic orange paint-stripper brew I imagined her dispensing in air-raid shelters in the war.

  Then I heard the noise. A familiar noise. The noise I’d heard outside Fishburn’s house before I discovered the body. A noise I couldn’t believe I hadn’t identified at the time, because it was so familiar now I heard it in context. The deep, rumbling, primitive roar of the Kid’s Harley-Davidson.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I gulped Lil’s tea. The Kid, the Killer. Or the Kid, just Fishburn’s killer.

  It was ludicrous. How could it work?

  But actually, of course, it could. Say the men at Bartlett Close were nothing to do with it. Then we were left with Nick, in pursuit of Sam, who might well have been earmarked by the Killer as his next victim. Say Nick had put two and two together and spotted the Killer If it was the Kid he’d be well placed to get rid of Nick. He could have picked up the message to me from Fishburn and known Fishburn had some information.

  It could be cobbled together, but I didn’t believe it. On the other hand did I not believe it firmly enough to take the Kid with me as back-up? Hardly. Bartlett Close was spooky enough without having to watch your back-up.

  I needed someone else, so I grabbed the phone and rang Peter, Eddy’s son. He’d offered to help, he doesn’t live too far away and he’s reassuringly burly. Also his sexuality is basic and straightforward, and he likes women.

  None of which turned out to be relevant, because only his machine answered. ‘Peter? Peter, are you there? Pick up if you’re there. It’s Alex, I need to speak to you. Do us a favour, pick up.’ No response, only the metallic beeping of the machine, then silence.

  I replaced the receiver without leaving a message. Lil was watching me, her hands wrapped firmly round her mug of tea. ‘Let me help,’ she suggested.

  ‘Not now, Lil,’ I said.

  There was a blessed quiet as the Kid’s engine cut out. He must have ridden the bike into his office. Then he came back in, sat down and drank his tea. He looked just the same as he always did; gangly, spotty, ludicrously perforated and gold studded, harmless. But then the Killer would. If he stalked the streets muttering threats and waving a bloodstained knife the Met would have caught him long ago.

  ‘Got a job for me, then?’ he asked.

  ‘Not today,’ I said. ‘Maybe Monday.’

  ‘Be seein’ ya, then. You going to the fireworks?’

  ‘I am,’ said Lil. ‘I like fireworks.’

  ‘What?’ I said, then remembered. Every year the council gives a bonfire party and firework display in Wormwood Scrubs, hoping to discourage individual displays which so often result in accidents. I’m not mad on fireworks and I dislike parties so I never go, but it’s a big local event. Due to start any time now. ‘Surely the fireworks will be invisible in the fog?’

  ‘I expect they’ll produce an eerie glow,’ said Lil. ‘They can’t possibly cancel now, it’s too late, and I’m going anyway. I hate to miss a party.’

  ‘Me too,’ said the Kid.

  ‘Off you go, then,’ I said.

  One good thing about the fog, I thought as I stood outside the flats at Bartlett Close, was that it’d give me good cover It didn’t look as if anyone was at home: there was one light in the main building, but it was a hall light. Presumably one of them had got round to repairing it since I’d stumbled past the bike on the way to visit Jack Hobbs.

  Only last night, that had been. It seemed further away.

  I could hardly put off moving much longer. I could walk straight past the flats into the yard behind, and then to the workshops. It didn’t look as if there were any cars in the yard, but I couldn’t be sure. Back there, it was out of the street lamps’ reach, and dark as well as foggy.

  I checked the mobile phone to see if I’d get a signal. Yes, quite strong. Then I checked, twice, that I’d switched it off. Bit of a giveaway if it rang mid-burglary.

  The roar of a passing train kick-started me. Now, I thought, walking quickly and purposefully straight past the flats and through the yard to the workshop at the far end.

  Which was unlocked.

  I pulled one of the heavy doors just open enough to slip inside and then pulled it to behind me. Darkness. Smell of oil, and damp. Torch on. Everyday objects, spotlighted in turn: garden tools, tins of paint and anonymous bottles on shelves, cardboard boxes against the walls, a space in the middle where a car was sometimes parked, judging by the patches of oil on the bare concrete floor.

  I went over and looked inside the cardboard boxes. Ordinary junk.

  No Nick. No sign of Nick.

  Out into the yard again, closing the door behind me. The windows of the flats were still black and blank, apart from a glow from the hall light filtering through Hobbs’s living-room windows on the top floor I couldn’t have seen the road from where I was standing even without the fog.

  So far, so good.

  The next door was chained and padlocked. I stuck my chisel through the chain and twisted. It gave way. Nobody could have heard the noise of it breaking, if there had been a noise – a train was passing.

  I went in and closed the door. This time my torch was less tentative. A large old Volvo estate took up most of the space. Two walls were lined with racks holding plenty of plastic storage boxes with electric cables and microphones and plugs. There were some booms and windbaffles and some battered metal Sammy boxes, used for film sound and camera equipment. I looked inside the largest box first: it was easily large enough for a body, even a big body like Nick’s, but it was empty. So were all the rest of them, and so was the car.

  Somebody was a sound recordist. It had to be Russell Jacobs. Perhaps his echolalia was a human version of his working life. I wasn’t happy with the car being there; it evoked his hulking presence and I shivered. He’s out, I told myself firmly. It was very common not to use a car in London. Besides, he had been with Sam Eyre and Fairfax when last seen. I hoped they’d since met Hobbs and were all together in Fairfax’s car, taking a nice drive, preferably to Aberdeen or Exeter, or through the Channel Tunnel and on to Vladivostok.

  Back in the yard, I looped the chain round the handle a few times so the doors looked secure.

  Still no sign of anybody. Maybe I should be searching more thoroughly, looking for more signs of Nick’s past presence as well as her body? Fat chance, burgling with a torch.

  I tried the doors on the last workshop, Hobbs’s studio, and they swung open at my touch. As I shut them behind me I did wonder – surely art studios needed light? There hadn’t been any wind
ows in the other two workshops – would there be any here? And even if there were windows at the back, they wouldn’t have access to much except a view of the underside of the Hammersmith and City line.

  Then the smell hit me. A much more powerful, all-encompassing version of the pungent smell I’d noticed on Hobbs’s hands. I fumbled with the torch. The beam sprang out at random and shone high up on the side wall. On – I couldn’t believe it. The torch slipped through the cold sweat of my fingers until I got a firmer grip and could direct it to the object again.

  It was a dog. Standing on a shelf, ten feet off the ground. A spaniel, like Lil’s Benbow, but unlike Lil’s Benbow, absolutely still and silent.

  A real dog, but it couldn’t be a real dog. Not immobile, not that distance off the ground. At last I worked it out. A stuffed dog.

  A model, for his art? Or, if he was a sculptor, part of his art? I swept the torch round the space.

  It was his art. He was a taxidermist. The workshop was full of groups of animals.

  The smallest I could see were tiny mice, the largest a Great Dane. All the groups were doing human things in human settings: eating Christmas lunch, with crackers and decorations and plates heaped high with model food; watching television on a model sofa with beer and Coke cans and half-eaten pizza. A slender animal I couldn’t name – a ferret maybe – bathing a ferret baby in a ferret-sized bath. Plenty of hamsters and gerbils and guinea pigs and a few white rats sunning themselves in absurd trappings on a crowded holiday beach. A proud squirrel father recording the birth of his child on a tiny camera in a miniature squirrel labour ward.

  I took a deep breath and moved to the back, running the torch from side to side, checking each group separately and looking under the tables that supported them. The place was so cluttered I had to search systematically. Running the full length of the back wall was a working counter with a sink set in it. Hanging on the wall behind were tools, many of them sharp-looking knives. There were also shelves, with bottles and boxes, and a tall fridge.

  Beside the sink was soap, and that was where the smell came from. Camphor. That was it, camphor. Used in the preparation of the skins, presumably. Now I’d identified the source of the smell, I rather liked it.