Chelsea Mansions

by Barry Maitland

  ‘He began talking about Nancy Haynes, asking if she’d told me that she had visited Chelsea Mansions once before, as a teenager, staying with her parents at my great-aunt’s hotel next door. I said no, she hadn’t mentioned it, and he told me that she had met him at the Russian cathedral the previous Sunday, and told him about the visit. I hardly knew whether to believe him, because Nancy had given no hint of it to us, but then he said that she told him she had also met my father back then, and had developed a bit of a crush on him, and even had a photograph of him. He took it out of his pocket to show me, and though it was too dark for me to make it out, I was inclined to believe him.

  ‘He then started talking about Nancy’s murder, and how unfortunate it would be if further unpleasant consequences were to flow from that tragic event. Well, my ears pricked up at that—from the tone of his voice it sounded like a threat of some kind, and I demanded to know what he meant. Then he told me, as calmly as you please, that he would give me one final chance to sell the hotel to him, and if I refused he had it in his power to arrange things in such a way that the police would have incontrovertible proof that I, assisted by my staff here at the hotel, had murdered Nancy.

  ‘Well, the idea was so preposterous, even for that megalomaniac, that I just laughed and told him he was drunk. I asked him, what would be my motive in killing her? He replied that he would tell the police that Nancy had revealed to him that my father had raped her on that visit, and she was about to make it public. He would also arrange for physical evidence of some kind to link me to the murder. He said that he rather hoped I wouldn’t agree to sell, and that he could watch me being destroyed, and my staff along with me.

  ‘And that’s when I realised that he wasn’t drunk, and that he wasn’t a man to make threats he couldn’t carry out. I also realised just how much he hated me, and that he would carry out his threat whether I agreed or not.’

  Toby sat up a little straighter in his chair and raised his walking stick in both hands. He gave it a twist and a tug, and the handle slid out to reveal a long slender blade. He laid it carefully on the table in front of Brock.

  ‘My grandfather took this with him to the Boer War in 1900 as a young subaltern,’ he said, ‘although I don’t believe he ever had cause to use it. But I like to think that he would have approved of the fact that I did. It was my duty to protect my staff, and as clear a case of self-defence as if Moszynski had held a gun to my head. The man was going to destroy us. I had no choice but to respond in the only way I could.’

  Brock said, ‘You’re admitting to us that you killed Mikhail Moszynski.’

  ‘Yes.’

  It was a spellbinding performance, Kathy thought, all the more disconcerting for his utter coolness. She glanced back at Garry, standing with his back to the door, hands behind him. Was he armed? Was that why Toby seemed so unconcerned?

  ‘When you returned from the garden, were you aware that you were being filmed?’

  ‘Yes, I remembered the camera, so when I got back I asked Garry to fix it.’

  ‘How could he do that?’

  ‘Oh,’ Toby said with a careless gesture of his hand, ‘when my father built the air-raid shelter in the basement he extended it under all three of the properties the family owned. They were interconnected, so that if there were a direct hit on one house, the people would be able to escape through to the basement next door. The openings had been sealed up since then, but I remembered where they were, and we made a way through. Garry simply went into their security centre when the coast was clear, wiped the tape and switched the camera off.’

  ‘What about Freddie Clarke’s confession and Hadden-Vane’s suicide? Do you know anything about that?’

  Toby gave a little smile. ‘It would be nice to think that I in some way encouraged the truth to come out, but I shan’t say any more than that. And it was an excellent outcome, was it not, apart from poor Nancy’s death? Moszynski dead, Hadden-Vane dead, the old witch Marta Moszynski running back to Russia and Freddie Clarke banished to who knows where. The whole damn viper’s nest cleared out, and justice served better than I suspect you would have been able to achieve, Chief Inspector.’

  Kathy saw Brock glance back at Garry, still immobile and silent at the door, then reach into his pocket and take out his phone, but Toby leaned forward and shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘I’m going to call for a car to take us into the station to formally record your statement. You gave it under caution. It’s already valid in a court of law and you are still under arrest.’

  ‘No,’ Toby repeated, apparently quite unperturbed. ‘I don’t think so. I haven’t quite finished yet.’

  ‘There’s more?’

  ‘A little piece of personal history. It’s rather painful to recall, but relevant to our situation. In 1990 I was in Riyadh, a staff officer at British Army headquarters preparing for the first Gulf War, following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.’

  Toby gave an enigmatic smile and, without moving his gaze from Brock’s face, pointed to the wall to his left. ‘Over there was a photograph of my son, Miles, named after my father. He also was in Saudi, an officer with the SAS. Before the main hostilities began we hatched a plan to send some units across the border to pinpoint the mobile Scud missile batteries that we knew the Iraqis were deploying in the desert. Then we got intelligence that a senior Iraqi general, a close relative of Saddam Hussein, was personally supervising the deployment in a certain area, and we had the idea of sending a raiding party to capture or kill this man. It seemed a brilliant idea, like Colonel Keyes’ commando raid to kidnap Rommel in North Africa in 1942. Some on the planning staff urged caution—it would mean penetrating deep into enemy territory, war hadn’t yet been declared and the odds were formidable. But I was gung-ho. I was also responsible for selecting the unit to go, and I wanted my son to command it. It would be the making of his career, I thought, his one great chance for glory. I should have paid more attention to history—Colonel Keyes was killed in the raid on Rommel. And my son was killed in Iraq.

  ‘Now, I want you to put yourself in my shoes, Brock. Imagine yourself as a father, ignoring sensible advice and sending your son to his death for a noble but doomed cause. How do you feel?’

  ‘There’s no point to this . . .’

  Toby suddenly slammed his fist hard on the table, making his stick bounce. Behind her Kathy sensed Garry stir. ‘Bear with me, sir!’ Toby barked. ‘How do you feel?’

  Brock stared at him. ‘Devastated?’

  ‘Devastated—exactly. You would never forgive yourself, would you? Now I put it to you that you are in precisely this same situation.’

  Kathy drew in her breath. Brock was frowning, as if he’d decided that the old soldier was insane.

  ‘No,’ Brock said slowly. ‘I am not.’

  Toby gave a sudden radiant smile. At least his mouth was smiling, but what his eyes were doing behind the black discs Kathy couldn’t tell.

  ‘The day after Nancy was murdered,’ Toby said, ‘a young man called in here at the hotel, looking for a room. I liked him. He reminded me a little of my son, the same enthusiasm, the same mischievous smile, and the same age as Miles was when he died. He was very interested in what had happened to Nancy. I assumed at first that this was just natural curiosity, but then I began to wonder. He went to some trouble to meet with you, Inspector Kolla, and to become involved in the police investigation. There was something about him that struck a chord with me, though I couldn’t quite pin it down. It was as if he were trying to find something he had lost. Then he told us that you were critically ill in hospital, Brock, and that he had gone to visit you, and had waited outside your room for some time, and I thought I understood. I had lost a son, and he had lost a father. I put it to him, and he confessed that it was true. His mother, your wife, left you when she was pregnant, did she not? She went to Canada and refused further contact except, for a while, through her sister. When John learned the truth about his father’s identity he felt compelled to co
me to London to meet him—you—only to discover you were now at death’s door. However, you recovered, and I assumed he would have told you about himself, but apparently he did not. I wonder why?’

  Kathy had watched Brock’s expression freeze. He turned his eyes to her and she bit her lip and nodded. ‘It’s true,’ she said softly.

  ‘Ah, so you knew,’ Toby said to her. ‘Well, to the point. You, Brock, are in the position that I was in, though with rather more certainty about the outcome. You can go ahead and do what you believe to be your duty and arrest me, but if you do so you will know with absolute certainty, as I did not, that you will lose your son.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Kathy made to get up but felt Garry’s hand on her shoulder, pressing her down. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘When he returned here last night, John became rather too inquisitive. He found something he shouldn’t, and I was obliged to take him into my custody. He’s still alive, I should think, but he probably won’t survive another night, which would be a shame. You have no chance of finding him without my help, which I will give you, by phone, two hours after Garry and I drive away from here, and provided you don’t raise the alarm in the meantime. You can trust me on that. I give you my word. What do you say?’

  ‘You can go to hell,’ Brock said.

  ‘Brock, I think we should talk about this,’ Kathy broke in.

  ‘Sensible woman,’ Toby said. ‘Listen to her, Brock. Just two hours. Garry and I will retire to the inner office there to let you discuss this in private, eh? You have three minutes to decide.’ He got to his feet and marched stiffly to the door which Garry held open for him.

  Brock was staring at Kathy. ‘Is it really true?’

  ‘Yes, John told me. I had to let him speak to you first. He was hesitant, uncertain how you’d take it, but we agreed that he’d tell you over dinner last night. Only it didn’t work out for some reason.’

  Brock swore softly under his breath. ‘I think that was my fault. Dear God, Kathy! I had no idea.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry. So what are we going to do?’

  ‘We can’t agree to this. The man’s just admitted to murder. There was no evidence of a struggle, was there? He’s a killer.’

  ‘And ruthless enough to let John die. We can’t allow that, can we?’

  ‘He’s bluffing.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  Brock put both hands to his face.

  ‘Forget he’s your son,’ Kathy said. ‘He’s a member of the public whose safety depends on our giving a self-confessed killer a head start. We have no choice.’

  Brock took a deep breath and sat upright. He was about to speak when they heard the sound of a car starting outside in the street. Kathy ran to the window and saw Toby ease himself into the passenger seat and pull the door shut behind him. The car drew away from the kerb. She turned back to Brock.

  ‘They must have gone out the back way. What do we do?’

  Brock nodded. ‘You’re right, we have no choice.’ He seemed momentarily defeated.

  ‘We could have them followed, but I think it’s too risky. I’ll get Zack to track them with cameras, shall I?’

  She used her mobile to ring Queen Anne’s Gate, speaking urgently down the line, giving them a description of the car and its number, then listened while they got to work.

  ‘They’ve got them crossing the river on Chelsea Bridge,’ she said at last. ‘The roads are clear to the south. What do you think, Gatwick?’

  Then, a minute later, ‘They’re turning west on Battersea Park Road.’

  ‘The heliport?’ Brock roused himself. ‘Come on, we’ve got to find John before they get away.’

  ‘How can we? They could have taken him anywhere.’

  ‘What could he have discovered that forced their hand?’

  Kathy thought. ‘He’d been looking through their old records stored in the attic by his room on the top floor.’

  They hurried out to the front desk, where Kathy grabbed keys from the pigeonholes and they ran to the stairs. When they reached the top floor they opened the door to John’s room. His bag was still there, the bed unmade.

  ‘So he went to bed last night. Then maybe he got up and started searching the attic again.’

  They found the door nearby on the landing, opening into a narrow staircase that doglegged up into a cramped loft laced with rafters and beams. In the pale gloaming from a dusty roof light they made out boxes, piles of old books and several metal-bound trunks. They searched rapidly, peering into the dim recesses, accompanied by the muffled cooing of pigeons on the roof outside, but found no sign of John.

  ‘I wonder,’ Kathy said, trying to suppress a rising feeling of panic, ‘if they made that tape of Freddie Clarke’s confession? Perhaps John found some evidence of it.’

  Her phone interrupted her, and she whipped it out and listened. Toby Beaumont and Garry had abandoned their car outside the London Heliport terminal on Lombard Road and were boarding a waiting helicopter.

  ‘An AgustaWestland AW109,’ Zack said. ‘The registered owner is Mikhail Moszynski’s company, RKF.’

  Brock was thinking about what Kathy had said, the video of Clarke’s confession, the glimpses of old whitewashed brickwork in the background, like the cellar next door. ‘Perhaps they brought Clarke here. We should check the cellar.’

  As they ran downstairs Kathy received another message. The helicopter’s reported route was to Biggin Hill airfield in Kent, a fifteen-minute flight away.

  They found the door to the cellar beneath the stairs in the ground-floor hallway, switched on the light and saw the flight of stone flags leading down. ‘John!’ Kathy called. ‘Are you there?’ There was only a dead silence.

  At the foot of the steps they paused and looked around—a bench, some steel shelving, a box of tools, a bucket, pickaxe and spade. Nothing seemed out of place. Through an arched opening another room was bare, smelling of raw damp. They looked into a third room and a fourth, all empty.

  ‘Nothing,’ Kathy said, feeling panicky.

  ‘Beaumont was enjoying that, upstairs,’ Brock panted, feeling the chill of the place. ‘He was excited, hyped up, alive. He was back in Riyadh, in the war room—gung-ho, as he put it.’

  ‘Let’s hope we can trust him. There’s no sign of John anywhere.’

  ‘Someone’s been down here recently,’ Brock said, pointing to footprints on the dusty floor.

  Another call came in. ‘The helicopter is landing at Biggin Hill. There’s only one plane preparing for take-off at present, a Cessna Citation Sovereign jet, fuelled up, waiting on the tarmac for its final passengers. It’s privately owned. RKF again.’ She listened some more. ‘It has a range of five thousand kilometres. Flight plan to Lagos, Nigeria. Zack is asking if we want flight control to hold it up.’

  Brock frowned. ‘We have no extradition treaty with Nigeria.’ He shook his head and kicked at the shovel in frustration, sending it skidding across the floor. Then he crouched down. Kathy saw that his kick had dislodged a lump of clay from the back of the shovel’s blade. He felt it, damp and sticky.

  He straightened and said, ‘No. Tell them to stop the plane. Put a vehicle on the runway. Don’t let it take off.’

  Kathy stared at him in surprise. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘They’ve been digging,’ he said, ‘like in the cellars next door. But there’s no sign of disturbance in here. So where were they digging?’

  Together they paced rapidly around the other rooms again, scanning the floors and walls, examining the brickwork, but could see nothing. When they returned Kathy took another call from Biggin Hill; the pilot of the Cessna was asking what was going on and the control tower wanted to know what to tell them.

  Brock groaned. ‘Tell them . . .’ he began slowly, and at that moment Kathy’s eyes focused on the steel shelving in front of her. ‘Wait,’ she said. She stepped forward and heaved at the shelving, sending it crashing to the floor. As Brock looked at her in asto
nishment she pointed to the white wall behind the shelving, which wasn’t brickwork but a panel of white board. Together they pulled the board away to reveal a metal door with a steel handle and two heavy bolts. Kathy reached for them, then abruptly stopped, noticing the wires that led from the bolts to a large flat cardboard box which had been taped to the centre of the door.

  ‘They’ve booby-trapped it,’ she said, taking a careful step back. ‘What is he planning to do, blow the whole building up?’

  Brock said, ‘Call the bomb squad, Kathy.’ As she made the call she watched him walk away, looking back to the stair and round again at the wall with the sealed door, scratching his beard. When she hung up he said rapidly, ‘This is the side of the house facing the Moszynskis, right? And Toby told us that he had found a way through to their basement. So we may be able to get into this room from the other side, from the Moszynskis’.’

  They ran up the stairs, along the hall and out into the street, Kathy on her phone again, shouting for back-up. When they arrived, panting, at the Moszynskis’ front porch there was no answer to their urgent pounding on the door.

  ‘The place is empty,’ Brock gasped. ‘They’ve all left.’

  As they waited for help there was another call from the airfield. A Colonel Beaumont had asked for a message to be relayed. Chief Inspector Brock was running out of time, he’d said. The plane must be allowed to take off immediately, or he would not answer for the consequences. Kathy looked at Brock for a response, but he said nothing, staring fixedly down the street from where the sounds of police sirens could be heard.

  Brock shouted at the crew of the first car as they jumped out, and they brought up a ram and began slamming it at the edge of the door. The door was very solidly built, and it seemed to take an age before it finally splintered and burst inward.

  ‘Kathy,’ Brock said, ‘one of us will have to stay at the hotel and take the bomb squad down. I’ll do that. You go with these lads. There’s a door behind the glass lift on the other side of the hall that gives access to a stair to the basement. You’ll find tools down there you may need, pickaxes and sledgehammers. Let me have the Biggin Hill number and I’ll stay in touch with them.’