by Greg Keen
I had my script made up and wandered back to Brewer Street like a man in a trance. I put John Coltrane on the turntable and stretched out on the sofa. My phone rang a couple of times and was ignored. In my dream I was a child picking up stones on a deserted beach. My dad asked if he could look in my bucket. The pebbles had turned into tiny yellow fish that we released into the shallows and watched swim away.
I woke at 9.30 p.m., my heart beating like a jackhammer. I concentrated on my breathing until it began to slow down. I had five missed calls. Four were from Odeerie. I pressed Redial and the fat man picked up immediately.
‘You know I wish you’d answer your bloody phone, Kenny,’ he grumbled. ‘It would be nice to know what’s going on from time to time.’
‘Sorry, Odeerie, it’s been a difficult afternoon.’
‘Cork snap in the bottle, did it?’
‘I haven’t been drinking.’
‘What, then?’
I took Odeerie through my appointment with Arbuthnot, including diagnosis, prognosis and relevant statistics. There were a few seconds of silence before he spoke.
‘Christ, Kenny, I’m really sorry. How are you feeling now?’
‘Still getting my head around it.’
‘Yeah, well, that’s only to be expected. Jump in a cab. I’ll cook us something and you can sleep on the sofa bed.’
‘No offence, Odeerie, but I’d prefer to be on my own.’
‘Does your brother know?’
‘I’m about to call him.’
‘Okay, I’ll ring Pam Ridley and say that you can’t continue with the case.’
‘Would you mind if I did that? I’m the one who should let her know.’
‘No problem,’ Odeerie said. ‘Look, if you change your mind about coming round then all you have to do is pitch up. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Yeah, Odeerie,’ I said. ‘I know.’
It was early morning in Hong Kong when I rang my brother. The call went to voicemail. I asked him to call me back when he got the chance. My tone must have indicated something was wrong as his name lit up the screen minutes later.
Malcolm became a copywriter after leaving school. Ten years later he co-founded his own ad agency. Now he’s the major shareholder in one of the country’s largest marketing consultancies. He got where he is through imagination, hard work and pragmatism. Once he’d absorbed my news, the latter quality took over.
He intended to contact Arbuthnot and make sure that my care was the best it could be. If that meant me travelling to the States then that was what would happen. I told him it probably made sense to stay where I was. He rang off, telling me not to worry more than I had to and that he’d call again the following day.
At 10.15, I rang Pam Ridley. I wanted to break the news as soon as possible that I couldn’t carry on looking for her daughter’s killer. She answered sounding groggy, but perked up when she heard my name.
‘You got my message, then?’
‘What message, Pam?’
‘On your phone. About the photographs?’
‘Photographs?’
‘You know . . . the ones Em took out of the album.’
I recalled the spaces in Emily Ridley’s photo album. It felt as though I’d seen it in a different lifetime instead of yesterday morning.
‘Where were they?’ I asked.
‘Stuck in an envelope at the back of her chest of drawers. I found it when I was cleaning all her stuff out for the charity shop.’
‘Are they interesting?’
‘Yeah, they are, as a matter of fact. I reckon you need to come round and take a look at ’em, Kenny.’
‘Actually, that’s why I was calling, Pam. I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to come round because . . .’
Because what? Because I had to spend the next week in bed thinking about having my skull sliced open? At least working on the case would take my mind off of everything. And I wouldn’t be doing anything stressful or overly exerting myself . . .
‘You still there, Kenny?’
‘Yes, Pam,’ I said, ‘Still here.’
‘You were saying you couldn’t come round . . . ?’
‘I’ll be with you at nine.’
‘You sure about that?’ she asked.
‘Positive,’ I replied.
After speaking to Pam I fell into a fitful doze. Had the phone not started buzzing then I may well have spent the rest of the night in the chair. The number was unidentified. Thinking it might be my brother calling back, I answered.
‘Kenny Gabriel?’ a man asked in a digitally synthesised voice.
‘Who’s this?’
‘Castor Greaves.’
I sat bolt upright.
‘I can’t talk long, Kenny, so I’ll get right down to it. You need to end your investigation and you need to stop talking to the press.’
‘Who are you really?’ I asked.
‘Who I say I am.’
‘Where are you calling from?’
‘Nowhere you’re going to find me.’
It flashed through my mind that Danny Abbott might be playing some kind of gotcha prank. Nevertheless, I carried on with the conversation.
‘Did you kill Emily Ridley?’
Castor sighed. ‘That doesn’t matter, Kenny. If you don’t stop what you’re doing then the Road will make another move, and trust me, they won’t fuck up twice.’
‘You took the Golden Road?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I’ve no idea. You could be anyone.’
‘That’s true. And I guess it’s up to you whether you believe me. All I can tell you is that they’ll come for you, Kenny, and there won’t be a thing I can do to help. And you’d better tell the fat guy to watch his step. He’s on the list too.’
After which advice, ‘Castor’ terminated the call.
NINETEEN
Despite the pills, the fuzziness returned to my left eye during the night. While shaving, a shudder of nausea passed through me and I retched a dribble of acidic yellow liquid into the lavatory bowl. The idea of anything solid passing my lips in the opposite direction wasn’t appealing. All this and not a drop of Monarch taken.
I wondered whether my late-night caller really had been Castor Greaves. That he hadn’t tried to convince me of his bona fides suggested it might be, as did my gut reaction at the time. If anything, the caller had seemed keen to get the conversation over with rather than spin me a comprehensive yarn. Set against this was the fact that anyone with my number could have been on the end of the line.
Immediately on waking, I’d checked my phone to see if the conversation had happened at all. Sure enough, a two-minute call at 3.07 a.m. was showing in my Recents. Could I really be sure of its nature, though? I’d had my fair share of mental malfunctions recently.
Under normal circumstances I would have acted on Castor’s advice and quit the case. But these were not normal circumstances. In a few days I might either be dead or wishing I were. If the Golden Road took me out a few days early then perhaps they’d be doing me a favour. And, of course, I’d promised Pam Ridley that I’d continue to search for her daughter’s murderer.
Recent events had caused me to forget that I’d agreed to meet Saskia first thing. Her phone rang for a minute before going to voicemail. I left a message saying that something had come up and that I wouldn’t be able to get to her until later in the day. If she called, then we could arrange a time. The fact that she wasn’t picking up made me wonder if she was busy sleeping off an enthusiastic afternoon’s drinking.
Riding the rail with the nine-to-fivers was out of the question. I eschewed the Northern Line in favour of a cab. Halfway over London Bridge, my vision normalised. Rain coursed down the windows. The Thames looked like a murky python slithering through the city, the buildings like brooding sentinels.
What I needed was an unshakeable belief in a benevolent deity, or the stoic’s acceptance that life was to be endured rather than enjoyed. What I had was a hairbal
l of anxiety and dread in my guts. So much for the everyday wonder of the world.
The weather conditions, or the lure of another story, had entirely dispersed the reporters from outside Pam Ridley’s house. The short walk from the taxi to the front door left me damp and dishevelled. When Pam opened up, her eyes widened slightly.
‘You all right, Kenny?’
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘And you, Pam?’
‘Yeah, I’m okay. Get inside, for God’s sake.’
The gas fire was on full blast and the front room bakery-warm. The TV was tuned to a shopping channel on which a breathy presenter was extolling the benefits of a treadmill. Lying on a worn armchair was The Jumbo Book of Crosswords.
Pam entered the room with two steaming mugs. Also on the tray were a plate of chocolate biscuits and an A5 envelope. She laid the tray on a coffee table in front of the leather sofa. We sat down and she handed me a mug of strong tea.
‘How’s it going, then?’ she asked.
‘Slowly, I’m afraid.’
‘What about all that stuff in the Post about the Golden whatsit having kidnapped Castor and him definitely being the one that murdered Em?’
‘I’m afraid they made that up, Pam.’
‘Yeah, I thought as much,’ she said.
‘On the plus side, Odeerie tracked down Emily’s friend Davina. I’ll be in touch with her today. Have the police told you anything?’
‘Not a lot. I can’t have Em’s body for at least a week ’cos they’ve got to do more tests. I’ve started cleaning out her room for the charity shop, though. When that’s done, I’m going to stay with my sister in Plymouth for a few days.’
‘Are those the photographs?’ I said, nodding at the envelope.
‘Yeah,’ Pam replied. ‘I should probably take them to Shaheen, but I wanted to see what you thought first . . .’
I extracted around twenty photos from the envelope. In the first shot, Dean Allison’s face had been obliterated by a flurry of ballpoint scars that in places penetrated the paper. Were it not for his distinctive haircut, it wouldn’t have been possible to recognise him at all. In the next photo he was sat beside Emily at a table covered with plates of party food. BASTARD had been scrawled across his features.
Not a single photo was unscathed. In a couple, Dean’s face had been removed entirely, and in one his eyes had been burned out by what had probably been the tip of a cigarette.
‘Were any of him left in the albums?’ I asked.
‘They’d all been taken out,’ Pam replied.
‘Did Emily ever say that she was involved with Dean?’
‘Nope. She never mentioned him. Must have been something going on, though. Why would she do that otherwise?’
‘Dean said they were seeing each other before she took up with Cas.’
‘Why didn’t Em tell us?’
‘Perhaps she didn’t perceive the relationship as being significant. And we’ve only got Dean’s word that she was going out with him at all. He could be making the whole thing up.’
‘Then why did she do this to the photos?’ Pam asked.
It was a question to which I had no ready answer. Instead I asked one of my own.
‘Had they accidentally fallen behind the drawers?’
‘No, they were stuck on a ledge at the side,’ Pam said. ‘You had to take the whole drawer out to get them. The police must have overlooked ’em when they searched Em’s room after she went missing.’ She leant forward. ‘Did he kill her, Kenny?’
‘I don’t see how,’ I said. ‘Dean left the building while Emily was still inside, and he couldn’t have returned without someone letting him in. Plus there’s no way he could have avoided being caught re-entering on the CCTV footage.’
‘Maybe he was in league with someone else.’
‘Possibly,’ I said. ‘But God knows who.’
I gathered the pictures together and replaced them in the envelope, minus the shot in which Dean’s eyes had been scorched out. ‘Can you hang on to these for a couple of days before taking them to the police? I’d like to keep this one if I could.’
‘Course you can,’ Pam said. ‘What you going to do with it?’
‘Stick it under Dean Allison’s nose.’
She nodded and took a sip of tea. ‘Are we still all right for money? If you need more, I’ll need to get it out of the bank before I go to Plymouth.’
‘I’ll have a word with Odeerie,’ I said. ‘Although we should be good for a few more days yet, and he can bill you retrospectively. You can pay with a cheque.’
Suddenly assailed with hunger, I wondered whether I’d be able to keep a chocolate digestive down. It’s bad enough having to admit to a client that their case is progressing sluggishly without chundering all over the floor two minutes later.
‘What’s the matter?’ Pam asked. ‘You haven’t touched your tea and you’re staring at those biscuits like they’re gonna jump off the plate and bite you.’
‘I’m not feeling too hot. It’s just a twenty-four-hour bug.’
Pam assessed my face like a referee deciding whether a punchy boxer is sufficiently compos mentis to continue. ‘No, it ain’t,’ was her decision. ‘You don’t have to tell me what it is, but you’ve got more than a touch of Delhi belly.’
‘How d’you know?’
‘See it in your eyes.’
Like all expert interviewers, Pam Ridley knew when to shut up and let silence do the work.
‘I’ve had a health scare,’ I said. ‘It means a big operation. It might go okay, but then again it might not.’
‘Does that mean you could peg it?’ Pam wasn’t the type of woman to draw inferences from significant looks and pregnant pauses.
‘There’s a chance,’ I said.
‘When’s it happening?’
‘In a few days’ time.’
‘What about the case?’
‘It’ll help keep my mind off things.’
The wind had really blown up and rain was battering the window. The guy on the shopping channel had left the treadmill and was doing his best on a mini-trampoline. Pam picked up the remote control and put him out of his misery.
‘Can I give you a bit of advice, Kenny?’
‘Of course.’
‘When Em died it was like the earth had swallowed me up. What stopped it being even worse was that everything was okay between us when it happened.’
‘So, what’s the advice, Pam?’ I asked.
‘If there’s anything you haven’t said or done then sort it out. Just in case.’
Before calling an Uber, I nipped into Kat’s Café on the parade. Three blokes in paint-spattered overalls were discussing something in what may have been Bulgarian. A guy sporting a goatee beard was tapping away at a laptop. He looked vaguely uneasy, like a migratory bird blown off course by freak weather conditions.
My stomach was gurgling like a drain. I ordered a bacon bap and a mug of coffee before settling down at a table strategically close to the gents.
My first call was to Odeerie. Usually the fat man responds with a mordant comment about what a pleasure it is to receive the occasional update. This time his attitude was a model of employerly concern. ‘How are you feeling, Kenny?’
‘Hopefully a lot better when Kat fetches my bacon sarnie.’
‘Has your brother arranged a live-in nurse?’
‘Not exactly. I’m in a greasy spoon round the corner from Pam Ridley’s house. I’ve decided to continue working the case until I go into hospital.’
‘What made you change your mind?’
‘Couple of things. Firstly it’ll give me something to think about other than you-know-what; secondly I had a call from Castor Greaves last night.’
‘What?’
‘Or at least someone pretending to be him. He said that if I didn’t stop poking around and talking to the press then the Golden Road would come after me again, and that this time they wouldn’t make a mistake.’
‘Did it sound like Castor?’
‘He disguised his voice.’
‘Have you told the police?’
‘What’s the point?’
‘Someone’s made a threat against your life, Kenny.’
‘Actually, it wasn’t only my life. He mentioned you as well.’
A long pause in the conversation.
‘By name?’ Odeerie asked in a higher register.
‘Not exactly. He said that the . . . He said you should watch your step.’
‘That’s it, then. We’re off the job.’
‘You’re overreacting, Odeerie. You never set foot outside and you’ve got more locks on the front door than the Bank of England. How will they get to you?’
‘They’re the Golden Road, Kenny!’
‘Or some chancer trying to scare us off.’
‘Either way, you ought to let Shaheen know.’
‘He won’t take it seriously.’
‘Then we should stop. It’s not worth the risk.’
‘What risk? I’ve not exactly got the best chances of making it to Christmas as it is. And if it really was Castor Greaves telling me to lay off then it means that we’re getting close to something. And the other thing . . .’
‘What, Kenny?’
‘The other thing is that this could be the last chance I get to do something meaningful with my life. I’m not passing on it just because some tosser decides to yank my chain at three in the morning pretending to be Cas Greaves.’
There were a few moments of dead air and for a moment I thought Odeerie was going to pursue the matter. He went in a different direction.
‘Why did you visit Pam?’
I told him about the defaced photographs of Dean Allison. ‘Emily didn’t sound like the kind of girl to burn the eyes out of her boyfriend’s photograph because he didn’t notice she’d had her hair done. In addition to which, her parents weren’t aware she went out with him.’
‘Maybe she didn’t,’ Odeerie said.
‘Who knows? Anyway, the order of the day is that I’m going to visit Sweat Dog and see what he has to say. Then I’m going to see Dean. If there’s any time left over and I feel up to it, I’ll use it to see Emily’s friend Davina Jackson. Oh, and I need to put in an appearance with Saskia. She thinks that she’s dug out something interesting from her old files.’
