by R. N. Morris
‘I see you are admiring our African grey.’
‘No,’ said Quinn hastily.
The salesman ignored the denial. ‘Appropriately enough, as she’s called Miranda.’ He smiled at his own wit, a momentary lifting of the sadness that seemed to possess him. ‘She’s a very clever mimic, you know.’
Not quite managing to prove the point, a grotesque, empty parody of human speech came back at them: ‘Mick! Mick! Clever Mick!’
‘I’m looking for something a little quieter. Perhaps a monkey. A macaque, for instance.’ Quinn could not say why he chose to initiate his inquiries in this way. He knew this about himself: when left to his own devices he often resorted to subterfuge, even when there was nothing obvious to be gained. It was second nature, part of his defensive armoury, by which he sought to conceal the uncomfortable truths that shaped his psyche, even from himself. Deceit was his emotional carapace.
That’s not to say the question was an out and out lie. He still had it in mind to buy a gift for Miss Latterly. An idle, absurd fantasy flickered into life in the picture palace of his imagination: the image of him presenting her with a monkey in a cage. Would this be all it took to win her over?
He mistrusted the fantasy profoundly, because in it she smiled at him.
‘A macaque? Is this because of what happened to that young girl?’ The sad-faced salesman regarded Quinn suspiciously, as if to decide whether he was a genuine macaque fancier, or just a ghoulish sensation seeker drawn there by the news of the murder. ‘The papers said that a monkey was involved somehow. And that the police suspect the monkey of her murder. Preposterous. A macaque could never strangle a human. The police are clearly idiots.’
Quinn was surprised to find himself defending Coddington. ‘I think they may have been misrepresented in the press. But, tell me, do you have any? Macaques, that is.’
‘We only have one in store at the moment.’ The remark was made discouragingly, the inference being that one macaque could not possibly be enough to satisfy Quinn’s need for monkeys.
‘May I see him?’ Quinn sensed the salesman’s reluctance. ‘I am looking for a gift. For a lady friend.’
This seemed to win the other man’s confidence. ‘In that case, Shizaru will do very well.’
‘Shizaru?’
‘Shizaru, yes. That’s what we call him . . . Little Shizaru. Though of course, if you purchase him, you may call him whatever you like.’ This was added in a resigned but far from encouraging tone.
‘Shit! Little shit!’ suggested the parrot.
‘No, Shizaru will do very well.’
The salesman cast a look of mild rebuke towards Miranda. ‘He is in fact a very amiable and lively chap. And very dapper, in his little fez! I am sure your lady friend will adore him. Would you like to see him?’
‘Yes, I would like to see him very much.’
‘He’s just here.’ The salesman gestured to a hutch nearby, the largest in a wall of hutches and cages. The smell of urea-dampened sawdust and dung was overpowering. Rodents huddled in the corners of their cages, turning their backs on the blandishments of potential owners.
The salesman peered through the wires of the monkey’s hutch, which at first sight seemed to be empty. ‘That’s unusual.’
‘What is?’
‘Well, he seems to be hiding. He’s not normally so shy.’ He opened the front of the hutch, exposing the creature’s sleeping quarters. Empty. The Menagerie salesman cried out in alarm. ‘No!’
‘Problem?’
‘Shizaru . . . has gone!’
A second sales assistant, a ginger-haired youth of about fifteen years, came hurrying up. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Have you sold him?’
The youth shook his head. ‘No, I have not, Mr Kenning.’
‘Then where is he, Mr Eccles?’
The youthful Mr Eccles made a deliberate show of looking into the empty hutch, as if he might be able to see what his elder colleague could not. ‘He’s not there.’
‘No. He’s not.’
The boy looked at Quinn, as if he suspected him of having something to do with the monkey’s disappearance.
‘When did either of you gentlemen last see him?’ said Quinn.
‘It was a few days ago now,’ said Eccles, his voice cracking with fear.
‘A few days ago! You’re supposed to feed him every day. It’s your duty to feed Shizaru.’
‘But Mr Kenning, I was told that you would be taking over the feeding of Shizaru.’
‘You were told what? By whom?’
The youth’s brows creased in consternation. ‘I can’t remember who told me, but it was somebody.’
‘But it wasn’t me, you fool!’
‘You fool!’ squawked the African grey.
‘Mr Kenning, please. Not in front of Miranda.’
‘You have been neglecting Shizaru and look what has happened! He has been stolen!’
‘He may have escaped?’ suggested Quinn.
‘Impossible!’ said Kenning. ‘Shizaru was quite happy here. He has never shown the slightest inclination to escape.’ Kenning looked disconsolately into the empty hutch. ‘Besides, even if he was able to get out of the hutch – if, say, someone had carelessly left it open . . .’ This was said with an accusatory glare at Eccles. ‘Is it likely that he would be able to close it up behind him?’
‘I didn’t leave it open!’ protested Eccles. ‘I swear I didn’t!’
‘Even so, it was still your responsibility to check on him every day.’
‘I swear, I received instructions that you would be taking over Shizaru’s care.’
‘When it comes to the care of the animals, you take your instructions from me, Mr Eccles. Not from anyone else.’
‘I understand. I’m sorry.’
‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry!’ The parrot’s unfeeling repetition mocked the young man’s apology.
‘Mr Blackley will have to be told. The cost will no doubt come out of your salary.’
Young Eccles hung his head in shame.
‘And as for poor Shizaru . . .’
‘Shit! Shit!’
‘You don’t think he could be the monkey that . . .?’ began Eccles.
‘No! That couldn’t be. Not Shizaru.’
‘You did say he wore a hat?’ said Quinn, picking up on Eccles’s speculation.
‘What of it?’ said Kenning.
‘I believe the monkey that was in the mannequin’s room was seen with a hat on.’
‘Shit! Shit!’
Quinn saw a tear trickle down from Kenning’s eye. The older man was staring into the empty hutch, seemingly willing the monkey to reappear.
Eccles must have noticed the tear too. His face flushed, until it was almost as deep a red as his hair. ‘There, there, Mr Kenning. Shizaru’ll turn up. You’ll see. He’s a clever monkey.’
‘He was part of our original stock, with us in the old Menagerie. One of the few animals who survived the fire.’
‘Fire!’
‘Ah, yes, the fire,’ said Quinn. ‘That must have been terrible for you. A tragedy. To lose so many of the animals in your care.’
‘Yes, it was,’ said Kenning simply.
‘There were rumours that the fire was started deliberately.’
‘Oh, it was arson, all right.’
‘Arse!’
‘But the arsonist was never caught?’ said Quinn.
‘Arse!’
‘That’s right.’
‘And there were no more fires. Almost as if the loss of life shocked even the arsonist.’
‘Arse!’
Quinn frowned. The parrot’s interventions were becoming really quite trying. ‘Perhaps he only intended to hurt Blackley where he would feel it the most – financially, I mean. Perhaps he never intended to kill anyone.’
‘Well, he should have thought of that before he went around setting fires.’
‘Fire! Fire!’
‘But he cannot have imagined it would result i
n such wholesale destruction – so rapidly. I remember the newspaper accounts at the time. They reported that the place burnt to the ground like that.’ Quinn snapped his fingers. ‘It was said that Mr Blackley had ignored fire regulations in arranging the interior of the store and that that contributed to the speed at which the fire spread.’
‘Fire! Fire!’
‘I don’t know anything about that.’
‘And that he has chosen to ignore the same regulations in his reconstruction. Perhaps he has saved money in other ways that could prove to be dangerous. The electrical wiring, for instance. Ah, but at least he moved the Menagerie closer to an exit. That will facilitate getting the animals out in the event of another fire. Strange, isn’t it, how there was a greater public outcry about the deaths of the animals than there was for any of the fire’s human victims.’
‘Fire! Fire!’
It was only now that Quinn noticed a change in the mood of the shoppers flocking through the House of Blackley. He no longer had that sense of a lurid hunger for sensation, the desire to snatch hold of a moment charged with significance. When he had first taken an emotional reading of the crowds around him, he had sensed a certain detachment in their bearing, a belief in their own invulnerability. Their eagerness to be there was only possible because of a confidence that the thing they sought proximity to – death, in other words – could no longer harm them. These were cautious, cowardly people, engaged in a fundamentally vicarious activity; they would not be there if they had thought there was any risk.
Death had already struck, sensationally. And moved on. It was safe now to come and wonder at its wake.
But now, that complacency was gone. Something went through the crowd like an electrical current. It was the sudden realization that death is indiscriminate. That one day it would find them too, and strike them down. And that perhaps that day was today.
Someone had picked up Miranda’s imbecilic cry of ‘Fire!’ and had invested it with an authority it did not merit by repeating it. To hear the word cried out by a human voice, in a building notorious for conflagration, was indeed a chilling experience. Even for Quinn, who knew the source of the panic. For a split second he heard it and believed it to be a genuine alarm.
‘No, no! It’s just the parrot!’ he cried, when he at last understood what was happening.
But his lone voice could not compete with the roaring chorus of catastrophe around him. He heard the cry carry through the crowd, passed from department to department. And then he heard it echo back to them from distant quarters. Departments out of sight of the Menagerie, where there was no inkling of the existence of an evil-eyed parrot, were infected with the terror that that cry inspired.
Formerly the movement of the crowds had been an impatient crush inwards, towards the centre of the store, wherever that might be believed to be. But now the tide turned, and with a vengeance. Impatience became urgency. Crush became stampede. They were running for the exits.
The new Menagerie, of course, was positioned near the Abingdon Road exit. And so it was a conduit for escape. Quinn and the two salesmen were pushed out of the way. Cages toppled and sprang open. Birds flew out. Huddled rodents jumped to life and joined the fleeing tide.
That wasn’t the worst of it.
Quinn was pinned against Miranda’s cage, unable to move by the constant press of bodies that now filled the Menagerie aisles. He could see the door that everyone was making for; and could see, too, that it was blocked by people still trying to get in. In their frustration, and fear, those trying to get out began to physically assault the ones blocking their way. Fists were swung, insults hurled. Umbrella tips jabbed viciously at eyes. Cries of panic were mixed with those of incomprehension.
Then, a scream of an altogether different calibre was heard. It was as if all the fear and panic and hysteria spiralling wildly around that building had suddenly organized itself to form one representative sound. A refractive focusing of terror. High, sharp, piercing.
For a moment, all other sounds were stilled, even the beat of Quinn’s heart. So that the heavy thud that followed it, the thud of something falling from a great height, was clearly audible. And equally so in every corner of the building, he imagined.
More screams – splinters of the original as it shattered in the unseen fall – rose and reverberated. Quinn imagined a vast kettle drum filled with human distress. Hell must be something like this, he thought.
The battle at the door intensified. He saw weaker members of the crowd – the old and the infant – pushed to the ground. A baby’s perambulator was prised away from the mother – what was she thinking, to bring her baby here, today? Quinn watched as the perambulator toppled over. He could not see what happened to the baby. Not directly. But he saw its fate mirrored in the horrific transformations of the mother’s face.
Lessons Learnt
‘Three dead,’ said Sir Edward. His face was hidden from Quinn by a copy of the Evening Standard. ‘And seventeen treated for injuries. One in a critical condition.’
A spasm convulsed Quinn’s mouth but he said nothing. His gaze settled on the green leather of Sir Edward’s desk. He was grateful for its blankness. He had already seen too much that day.
‘One woman threw herself off the third-floor balcony of the Grand Dome. An elderly gentleman suffered a heart attack.’ Sir Edward at last looked up over the top of the paper. ‘And a baby was trampled.’
Still Quinn was unable to speak.
‘Do you have nothing to say, Inspector?’
Quinn curled his hand into a fist and placed it over his mouth. He shook his head.
‘You were there, were you not?’
Images of the melee and its aftermath came back to Quinn. When the crowds eventually eased and the realization struck home that there was no fire, no danger other than the self-generated danger of mass panic, the mood of those remaining turned truly nasty. It was almost as if they felt cheated; that they had expended so much terror for no good reason. They naturally looked for someone to blame and turned on the store. The sly pilfering that had been in evidence earlier turned into open, angry looting. And what couldn’t be taken away easily was vandalized, or so it seemed.
When this second wave of madness was spent, the store was left looking like a hurricane had passed through it. In the midst of the devastation, a mother clasped a tiny, bloody bundle.
‘I was there, yes.’
‘There was no fire?’
‘No. Of course not.’
‘What? Eh? What do you mean, of course not? Something made these people believe in the idea of a fire.’
‘It was . . . it was a parrot.’
Sir Edward let the paper drop. The rise and fall of his eyebrows was more than eloquent; it was devastating. ‘A parrot?’
‘I believe so.’
‘What has led you to this belief?’
‘I was in the Menagerie, questioning a potential witness . . .’
Sir Edward frowned. ‘What witness?’
‘The salesman there. I was trying to find out about the monkey in the victim’s room. I believe it came from the Menagerie at the House of Blackley. It was seen heading back into the store. It may have been trying to find its way back to the Menagerie, which it considers to be its home. A macaque has gone missing from the Menagerie, under unusual – one might even say suspicious – circumstances. The description of the missing macaque matches that of the monkey seen at the mannequin house.’
‘What?’ demanded Sir Edward incredulously.
‘I said . . .’
‘Three dead,’ repeated Sir Edward, cutting Quinn off sharply. ‘And you talk to me of parrots and monkeys!’
Quinn decided that the wisest course was to keep silent until Sir Edward’s rage was spent.
‘This was the first day of your investigation and we have . . .’ Sir Edward picked up the paper, only to throw it across the desk at Quinn. It fell short, which only seemed to add to Sir Edward’s fury. ‘Three dead!’
Quinn flinched. ‘The crowd . . . the crowd was possessed, sir. Like the swine. In the Bible, sir.’
‘I take it that by that you are referring to Luke, chapter eight, verse thirty-three. “Then went the devils out of the man, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the lake, and were choked.”’
‘Yes. That’s the passage I was thinking of.’
‘So that’s your explanation? The crowd was demonically possessed?’
‘Not literally, sir. Obviously. But something took hold of them. If you remember, sir, there was a fire at Blackley’s once before. In which several people, and animals, lost their lives. I imagine that memories of that fuelled the panic. In all honesty, sir, having seen the behaviour of the crowd, I am surprised that the number of dead is so low. It was horrific in there. I have never seen anything like it.’
Sir Edward rubbed his palms against his face wearily. ‘Where do we go from here, Quinn?’
Quinn frowned, unsure what was expected of him. ‘With all respect, what happened has no bearing on the case, sir. The investigation must continue.’
‘Yes, of course. That’s not at issue. What is at issue is your role in the investigation.’
‘I am making progress. I have made good progress today.’
‘You think this has been . . . a good day? A day on which you can use the word good in any context? In any sense?’
‘As far as the case is concerned . . .’
‘You are quite something, Quinn.’ Sir Edward winced, as if at a stab of sharp physical pain.
‘Your wound troubling you, sir?’
‘Never you mind about that.’
The two men were silent for some moments, one simmering in rage, the other in a sense of injustice. ‘I cannot be blamed for this,’ said Quinn at last, quietly. He paused before continuing: ‘I have always believed you to be a fair man, Sir Edward. I remember how you spoke on behalf of your assailant.’
‘There’s no need to bring that up again.’
‘You were able to look with sympathy upon a man who tried to kill you. It’s undeniable that Alfred Bowes was guilty. And yet, here am I, not guilty of anything, at least in respect of these tragic deaths. Not even charged with them. On no evidence whatsoever, purely on the basis that I was there, you have decided that this terrible disaster is my fault. You have already judged me. What happened to Judge not, that ye be not judged?’
