by Greg Keen
‘Why not ask Judy?’
‘Because clearly she didn’t want me to find the photographs. Instead I contacted the man who runs the Hibberts alumni society and gave him a story about having found some photos belonging to my deceased father. Matthew was in the same year as Judy and identified George Dent and Peter Timms immediately. We met for lunch and he told me about how, in 1979, some boys were seen running from Highgate Cemetery. Judy was the only boy caught but the other kids in the school knew exactly who had entered the cemetery with him. The headmaster asked that the culprits identify themselves. George Dent and Peter Timms didn’t say a thing. The others you could understand staying quiet, but George and Peter were Judy’s best friends when they were at Hibberts, according to Matthew.’
‘So this is all about revenge for the boys keeping quiet and allowing Judy to be expelled from Hibbert & Saviours?’ I asked.
‘In truth, it was more curiosity to begin with. I did some research and found out that George was a regular at a bar in Camden. I made sure I bumped into him and we became friendly. Or at least, George thought we did.’
I lit another cigarette off the first and ground the butt out on the carpet. What with there being a human head lying on the snooker table and a corpse stretched out on the floor, there didn’t seem much point trying to hunt down an ashtray.
‘I knew from Matthew that Simon Paxton had been obsessed with Alexander Porteus at school and that was why the boys had visited the cemetery,’ Connor continued. ‘I decided to play a few mind games by calling George and pretending to be Porteus delivering a warning from beyond the grave.’
‘How did he react?’ I asked.
‘It terrified him. After a couple of calls he was really freaking out. I asked him over dinner what the matter was and he couldn’t wait to tell me how he’d entered Highgate Cemetery forty years ago and seen the apparition of Alexander Porteus. The story was fascinating. So much so that I began to read the Master’s works.’
‘Including The White Tower?’
‘Indeed, and when I did the scales fell from my eyes, Kenny. Once you fully accept the doctrine of being true to yourself, there’s no need to worry about petty morality. As the Master says, A sated body leads to unity of mind and purpose.’
‘Except that it’s a work of fiction,’ I said. ‘Alexander Porteus died of lung cancer in 1947 and was brought back to England and buried in Highgate Cemetery.’
Connor smiled in the way that certain people do when they’re about to put you right on climate change or why the World Trade Center really went down. I recalled what Judy had said about his tendency to see the world in terms of absolutes.
‘The service was conducted using a weighted coffin,’ he said. ‘The Master was secretly interred in the family vault in 1958 after suffering a heart attack in Madrid.’
‘Even if that’s true, I still don’t understand why you did all this.’
‘Have you read the Tower?’
‘I know what it’s about. A magician’s assistant dispatches his master’s enemies in order to buy his boss an extra—’
And suddenly I knew exactly why Connor Clarke had murdered four people and was about to do the same to me unless I got very lucky in the next ten minutes.
‘All this is for Judy, isn’t it?’
‘Can you think of a more appropriate way to punish the people who ruined her life than by sacrificing them to extend it?’ Connor asked.
‘Which is why you pushed George out of the window?’
‘He was so pissed that he barely knew what was happening. The same went for Peter Timms. In his case, all I had to do was hit him over the head with a scaffolding pole and then collapse the rig on top of him.’
‘How did you access his house? I asked.
Connor chuckled. ‘That’s when I knew the Master was truly guiding my hand. George asked if I was looking for extra gardening work and introduced me to Peter. He was in the office all hours and gave me the back-door key and the alarm code. That night, all I had to do was wait until he came back. Afterwards I hid in the tree house until everyone had left.’
‘Is that what you did after he saw you in the garden?’ I said.
‘Of course. I wondered if Peter might work that out.’
‘What would you have done if he had?’
Connor’s shrug spoke volumes.
‘Did the Master also insist that you wander around dressed up like him?’ I asked.
‘No, I’ll admit that was pure self-indulgence. It scared George so much that I thought I might as well use it on Peter.’
‘But not Blimp?’
‘No point. Baxter isn’t— wasn’t the imaginative type.’
Connor looked sideways at Blimp’s head. For a moment I thought he was about to stretch out a hand and ruffle his hair. Thank Christ that didn’t happen.
‘In Baxter’s case, I had to play the long game and take my chance when it arrived,’ he said. ‘I thought it might be months until that came round. Adesh was with Blimp everywhere he went. And then I recalled a quote from my Latin class at school. “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”’
‘“Who guards the guards?”’
‘I’m impressed, Kenny. The trick wasn’t trying to find a way past Adesh; it was more about how I could work with him to get to Baxter.’
‘Adesh was in on this?’
‘Not knowingly. Adesh was a karate instructor, so I joined his club and got to know him. He told me that the day job was looking after Blimp Baxter. I said I was a huge fan of Elevator Pitch! and was there was any way I could meet him?’
‘Adesh invited you here?’
‘With his boss’s permission. Things weren’t looking too good at River Heights and Blimp was getting paranoid about his impatient Ukrainian investors. He didn’t like going out and he and Adesh played snooker most nights. If the project went under, Blimp intended to skip the country.’
‘Meaning you had to act quickly?’
Connor nodded. ‘It also provided a good scenario for me to kill him without arousing the suspicions of the police. All the surveillance camera will show is a man in a baseball cap with a rucksack on his back whose face can’t be made out. I don’t think they’ll be slow to suspect a professional assassin, probably acting on behalf of the Krev.’
‘And Adesh?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you feel any guilt about him?’
‘Guilt is for the weak and the foolish,’ Connor said in what I was beginning to recognise as his quotation voice. ‘The strong man is untroubled by conscience.’
Connor stretched an ache out of his left arm. The action caused his sleeve to roll up and reveal a familiar-looking gold oblong strapped to his wrist.
‘Where did you get that?’ I asked.
‘The watch? From our mutual friend Sebastian Porteus. The Temple of Selene presented it to the Master in 1928. Rather elegant, don’t you think?’
‘Seb stole it for you?’
‘There were certain things I wanted from his sister’s private collection that she wasn’t likely to sell to me. All of which meant the only alternative was to steal them. Or, better still, have Sebastian steal them on my behalf.’
‘What kind of things?’
‘The Master’s notebooks, primarily. I wanted to possess something that he had written with his own hand. The watch was a bonus.’
‘And Sebastian said no problem, Connor, I’ll nick it for you?’
‘Not quite, although Seb would have done virtually anything for someone who could supply him with a few rocks of crack on a regular basis.’
‘So next it’s Simon and Will?’ I asked.
‘That’s the plan. After taking care of you, of course . . .’
‘Because you think murdering them—’
‘Sacrificing, Kenny.’
‘Because you think sacrificing them will somehow help Judy? Is that how it works? Every time you knock one of them off, she gets another six months?’
‘Of course not. There are complex rites that must b
e observed. But the bottom line is that Judy can use her left hand again and only needs the chair for distances. If you’d known her longer, you’d be amazed.’
‘There’s a reason for that,’ I said.
Connor frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Judy was in St Mick’s when you thought she was visiting her friend Patti. She volunteered for a drug trial there a few months ago.’
Connor grabbed the revolver and took a couple of paces towards me.
‘If this is some kind of strategy, Kenny, it really isn’t going to work. Judy’s recovery has nothing to do with any drug trial.’
‘Then why not call and ask her about it?’
‘Because there’s no point and I don’t have the time.’
‘Connor, listen to me,’ I said. ‘I’m speaking to the person you were before you found the photographs and read the Tower – the person who knows that killing people helps no one, least of all Judy. Put the gun down and we’ll call the police.’
The look in Connor’s eyes faded as though the wattage of his madness had begun to wane. I walked slowly towards him with my hand outstretched. For a moment I thought he would hand the gun over. Then the craziness generator kicked in again.
He grabbed my arm and dragged me towards the snooker table. He bent me over it so that my torso was on the baize and my stomach resting on the cushion. He slotted the plug into the wall and once again ‘My Boy Lollipop’ was on the jukebox, presumably to mask the sound of the discharging gun.
People often say that they’ve looked death full in the face. I was doing it literally. Without tension in the muscles, Blimp’s flesh had sagged, giving him a mournful expression entirely in keeping with events. His tongue had extended a further centimetre from his teeth and turned the colour of a ripe aubergine.
The eye that had been focused on the ceiling had realigned and was staring directly at me. The metallic smell of blood and early putrefaction drifted into my nostrils like the first whiff of mustard gas across the trenches. In a moment Connor would pull the trigger and I would wake up on the wrong side of no-man’s-land.
‘Kill me now and you’ll never know what really happened in the cemetery,’ I shouted over the sound of the heavy bass of the Wurlitzer’s speaker. The song continued for a few seconds and I waited for oblivion.
‘What d’you mean?’ he asked.
‘I saw Simon Paxton a couple of days ago. He said something about Judy and Alexander Porteus that you really need to hear.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Turn the jukebox off first.’
The Wurlitzer was ten feet or so away from the snooker table. Just about the right distance for what was my one and only chance. Connor turned and killed the song.
‘Go on, then,’ he said. ‘What is it?’
‘Catch!’
Blimp’s head sailed through the air. Connor reactively dropped the gun to grab it. I took my chance and ran like hell. The corridor was ten yards long. I had three left to travel when Connor exited the games room. One round shattered the frame containing Billie Holiday’s photograph. Another thudded into the lintel of the door.
In the sitting room I careered into a standard lamp. Its glass shade exploded like a grenade on impact with the floor. All I had to do was make it across the hallway and out the front door to freedom. Except that the bastard lock had re-engaged.
I twisted it left and right but the latch refused to move. Connor trampled over the shards of glass in the sitting room. Reason asserted itself over terror. The button above the handle unlatched the lock. I pressed it down, heard a click, and threw the door open.
Connor’s final shot was his best effort. It whined through the air a few inches from my left ear and shattered the window of a passing night bus. Maybe it had taken out a passenger. Maybe it hadn’t. I wasn’t hanging around to check.
For the second time in a week I raced death down a city street. The best I could manage when my lungs said no more was to drag myself behind a parked Range Rover and wait for the inevitable. Running footsteps approached and slowed.
‘Are you all right?’ I looked up into what I had assumed would be the muzzle of a gun and the raging face of Connor Clarke. Instead I was staring at a man in his mid-twenties wearing a tweed sports jacket and a concerned expression.
‘You dropped this,’ he said.
I accepted the wand as though it were the key to the universe and burst into tears. The guy put a hand on my shoulder and said that everything was going to be okay.
Five minutes later, I heard the first siren.
THIRTY-FOUR
There were eleven marked and four unmarked police vehicles outside Blimp’s house. The exterior was illuminated by three floodlights running off a generator in one of the vans. Crime tape stretched between a pair of squad cars to mark the road as off limits. Photographers prowled like dingoes with telephoto snouts while reporters tried to cajole officers into answering questions. It was organised chaos with the sense that something major had happened hanging in the chill night air.
A medic had wrapped me in the kind of space blanket that you usually see around the shoulders of marathon runners. He had also given me a shot to calm my racing heart. The PC who had been first into the games room had received the same treatment. I suspected a couple of the other officers would be spending the night with a bottle of vodka for company when they came off shift.
DI Paula Samson entered the ambulance. When we’d last met in East Hampstead Police Station she had appeared tired. Now the woman looked positively exhausted.
‘Hello, Mr Gabriel.’
‘Call me Kenny,’ I said.
‘How are you feeling, Kenny?’
‘Not fantastic.’
‘That’s to be expected after what you’ve been through.’
‘All of which could have been avoided.’
Samson’s pallid cheeks coloured. ‘I’m sorry I dismissed your concerns so lightly when you gave your statement,’ she said. ‘It just all seemed a bit out there.’
There was no point in playing kick-the-dog any further. Samson would have enough shit to shovel when the case came under review.
‘You’re sure the man you interrupted was Connor Clarke?’ she continued.
‘Positive.’
‘And this is his address?’ The DI held out her notebook.
‘That’s right. Connor’s father lives in the opposite block. I don’t have the number on me, although you could probably find it easily enough from your records.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Judy Richards.’ Samson looked up. ‘The guy used to be called Ray Clarke,’ I explained. ‘He changed gender a few years ago.’
‘I need a full statement,’ Samson said. ‘I could interview you in hospital but that would take time . . .’
‘He should be taken in,’ the medic muttered.
‘I don’t need to go to hospital,’ I said, to the guy’s visible disapproval.
‘Great,’ Paula Samson said. ‘One of the neighbours is letting us use her kitchen as a temporary incident room. Are you okay being interviewed there?’
‘Has she got anything to drink?’
‘We could ask,’ she said.
‘Then I’m happy,’ I replied.
Paula Samson led me up a set of stone steps into a house that wasn’t as large as Blimp’s but which could still have accommodated a family of nine. She shepherded me into a brightly lit kitchen in which two other officers were working. One was wearing a uniform and sitting at a pine refectory table hunched over a large laptop. The other was leaning against an Aga cooker while talking into his mobile.
Samson introduced me to the uniformed officer and gave her Judy’s address. She nodded and left the room. We sat at the table and Samson produced a pad. She said that, on reflection, alcohol was probably a bad idea as I’d just been medicated for shock. Served me right for swerving a ride with the medic.
Over the next hour, I took Samson through the story of my i
nvolvement with the case, from meeting Peter Timms to the point at which I had dashed from the house of horror, as the tabloids would no doubt soon be calling it. She stopped me a couple of times to ask questions. Of specific interest were the whereabouts of Will and Simon and the precise exchanges I’d had with Connor in the games room. The download from the wand saved time with this. Samson listened with fascination and paused the laptop occasionally to clarify a muffled exchange.
The interview was coming to an end when the female officer returned. She whispered into Samson’s ear. The officer nodded at me as though apologising for the secrecy. Then she scooped up her laptop and left the kitchen.
‘Connor Clarke’s holding Judy Richards hostage,’ Samson said.
‘Christ, what does he want?’ I asked.
‘To talk to you,’ she replied.
It took fifteen minutes to reach the Carbury Estate, sirens screaming and lights flashing. During the journey, Paula Samson liaised with the armed response team. From what I could gather, the police negotiator had made contact with Connor, who had refused to allow Judy to leave the flat until he had spoken to me first.
‘There’s no danger,’ Samson assured me as we pulled on to the access road to the estate. ‘You won’t leave the car and armed officers are in place. The negotiator will tell you how to play things.’ She looked directly into my eyes. ‘Sure you’re okay with this, Kenny? You’ve been through a lot tonight.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘I think so.’
Virtually all the lights in the estate were turned on apart from those on the landing where Judy Richards lived. An officer with a megaphone was instructing residents to remain in their flats until such time as it was safe to leave.
Four cars and a van with heavily tinted windows were parked in a semicircle on the north side of the garden. Five bulky officers stood next to the van, dressed in black with a variety of tools hanging from Kevlar vests. The only one not holding a snub-nosed rifle approached our car. He got into the back seat next to me.
