Chelsea Mansions

by Barry Maitland

  Kathy gave it to him and then led the uniforms, joined now by a second squad, across the hallway. She followed Brock’s directions, running through the cellars, leaping over excavations and piles of debris until they came up against a solid brick wall with no openings. ‘Okay,’ she panted, ‘we need to work our way along this wall, left and right, into the rooms next door, until we come to some sign of a way through.’

  It wasn’t long before they found it, a panel, encrusted with layers of old whitewash. They ripped the panel apart with a crowbar to reveal a heavy steel door beneath, like the one next door, but without a handle. ‘Handle must be on the other side,’ Kathy said.

  A few blows with sledgehammers convinced them that they would never penetrate it that way. ‘We’ll have to go through the wall,’ one of the men said. ‘Stand back!’ and two of them began an assault on the brickwork to one side of the door, sending splinters of brick flying.

  As they worked, Kathy imagined the bomb, just a few yards away from them now, steadily ticking towards whatever deadline Toby Beaumont had set. She turned away from the noise of the sledgehammers and called Brock. The bomb squad had arrived, he said; he was with them now, examining the box with some kind of equipment they’d brought; they could hear the pounding of the hammers, ringing through the brickwork. She turned at the sound of a shout as a blow finally punched a small hole through the wall. ‘Shouldn’t be long now,’ she yelled into her phone.

  They steadily worked at the hole, smashing it larger and larger until it was wide enough for a man to slide through. Then they stopped and looked at Kathy. She called for a torch and stuck her head and shoulders through and turned it on. The beam flashed around the chamber, picking up a mound of soil and bricks, a shovel, but no human figure. Her heart sank. They would be too late now. They would never find him. ‘This isn’t it. He’s not here,’ she cried, and then thought she heard an answering sound, a distant moan. She twisted her head, straining, and called out, ‘Hello!’‚ and there it was again, not much more than a whisper. She pushed her head further in and turned the beam down at the floor, and saw a figure directly beneath her, bound in tape and covered in broken bricks and dust, a mop of dark hair she thought she recognised. ‘Hell!’ she said. ‘We could have killed him.’ She clambered through the hole, swept the debris off him, and began to rip away the tape. At the same moment a door on the other side of the chamber swung open and Brock stood there and the room was flooded with light.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  They stood on the hotel steps and watched the stretcher with John, wrapped in a silver thermal blanket, face covered with an oxygen mask, being wheeled to the ambulance.

  ‘Are you sure it’s true, Kathy?’ Brock said. ‘He wasn’t just shooting you a line, was he?’

  ‘About being your son? No, it’s true all right. I’d bet Moszynski’s millions on it.’

  And it was only then, in the strange aftermath of frenzied action, that the impact of Toby Beaumont’s revelation fully struck him. John Greenslade was his son. It had always been there, in the back of his mind, wondering if this day would come, and how it might happen, but he could hardly have imagined this.

  His mind went back to a nightmarish day in April 1981, the day his wife Alice left him and the day Brixton, down the road, exploded in flaming anarchy. Neither event had really surprised him. It was almost a month after that before he discovered that Alice had gone to Canada to stay with her sister Tess, although even then Tess had been reluctant to admit it. ‘She just wants to be left alone, David,’ Tess had said. ‘She’s terrified.’ But that was absurd, just histrionics, he’d told himself. It was many years before he discovered that Spider Roach had been threatening her. She had left without a word, and he’d had no inkling she was pregnant. It wasn’t until after he had signed the divorce papers Tess passed on to him three years later that she finally let him know that Alice had had a baby boy.

  And now what?

  He reached for the phone and dialled Suzanne’s number. She was astonished, then delighted by his news, and wanted to jump in her car and drive straight up to London to be with him, but there was so much to do now, and he needed time to think, and they agreed in the end that they would get together at the weekend.

  When they finally let them in to see John, he was sitting up in bed, his head bandaged and a drip in his arm, but his expression was alert.

  ‘John, how are you?’ Brock said, going to the side of the bed, and something in his manner must have alerted John because he shot Kathy a quick, uncertain glance, and Brock said, ‘Yes, Kathy told me. You really are Alice’s son?’

  ‘Yes, and yours I believe.’

  Brock was lost for words for a moment, then he growled, ‘Hell of a way to find out.’

  There was an awkward silence, and then they both began to laugh.

  ‘We’ll have time to talk later, but right now you’d better tell us what happened to you.’

  So John told them the story. ‘I really did think I was going to die down there,’ he said finally. ‘It was the skull that really freaked me out. I thought, someone else died here, and now it’s my turn.’

  ‘There’s no skull down there, John. We both had a good look around the cellar before we left, and the sloping plank you mention, that you thought might be for waterboarding, that was there, but no skull and no bones.’

  John looked at Kathy, who nodded in agreement.

  ‘There was a smooth lump of stone among the debris,’ Brock said. ‘Perhaps that’s what you felt.’

  ‘No! Look, I saw it, when they returned and there was light. It was a grinning skull, with eye sockets and a row of rotten teeth.’

  Brock shrugged. ‘Well, the main thing is that you’re alive and reasonably okay. I’d have hated to have to tell your mother that I’d got you killed on our first encounter.’

  John smiled. ‘She’d have said it was only to be expected. But there was a skull, Brock . . . Kathy, don’t you believe me?’

  She shrugged. ‘We’ll get a thorough forensic search made. If there was anything there we’ll find traces.’

  On the way out Brock said, ‘It’s amazing what the human mind comes up with under extreme stress.’

  They decided to wait until the next day to interview Beaumont and his team. There had been four of them on the plane—Toby and Deb, and the two men, Garry and Jacko. There was no sign of the two other women members of their staff, Julie the cook and Destiny the maid, and Brock ordered a search for them. From the bomb squad they learned that the cardboard box had contained nails and a lump of clay, the ‘bomb’ no more than a dummy, presumably intended to delay any possible searchers.

  Brock arranged for the luggage on the plane to be taken to Queen Anne’s Gate and a room cleared for the contents to be laid out and thoroughly searched. Apart from clothes and toiletries, they found a number of those things that people might take with them when leaving for an uncertain future from which they don’t expect to be coming back any time soon. They all had photographs of family and friends; Deb had an embroidered sampler that looked quite old, a locket of what looked like baby’s hair, a collection of letters‚ and a can of mace; Garry and Jacko had both taken pistols and ammunition, and Toby his swordstick. They were all carrying a great assortment of medications.

  Of more pressing interest was a pouch in Toby’s luggage containing fifteen pages of typed notes with bank account details, access codes and balances, together with two copies of a DVD of Freddie Clarke’s interrogation, uncut and almost three hours long.

  And in the middle of Toby’s suitcase, packed between the neatly folded tropical suit, shirts and regimental tie, was a striped plastic beach bag containing one human skull, the bones of two hands and pieces of perished black fabric.

  ‘Oh,’ Brock said.

  Sharpe called him in the following morning. ‘This reads like some kind of bizarre crime novel,’ Sharpe said, tapping his report. ‘You sure you hadn’t been drinking when you wrote it?’

  ‘Un
fortunately not,’ Brock said.

  ‘Amazing. And he really is your son?’

  ‘It seems so.’

  ‘Good grief.’ Sharpe gave a rumbling laugh. ‘Well, I should congratulate you. I’ll have to buy you a cigar.’ He seemed to find the situation highly amusing. ‘So, a very satisfactory result all round . . .’

  That’s what Toby Beaumont said, Brock thought.

  ‘. . . Marta Moszynski persuaded or forced Hadden-Vane to organise the killing of this embarrassing offspring of her dead husband, and Beaumont killed Mikhail Moszynski in a quite unrelated act of retaliation for the Russian’s threatening behaviour.’

  ‘Mm.’ Brock nodded doubtfully.

  ‘Come on, Brock, it may not be exactly what you expected, but it’s an excellent result. No grand conspiracy, no involvement of the FSB. The Foreign Office and MI5 will be delighted. They’ve been keeping a very close eye on us, demanding daily updates. I’ll pass your report by them before we go public on anything.’

  ‘It’s only a preliminary report, sir. We’ll start interviewing Beaumont and his crew this morning, and I’ve ordered a forensic search of the hotel. There are many other details that need following up.’

  ‘Fair enough, but the main thing is that the documents and DVD you found should allow the fraud boys to track down the money. I’m sure everyone’s going to be very happy to hear that.’

  ‘Beaumont was probably able to squeeze other information out of Freddie Clarke. He’d certainly found out how to requisition the company helicopter and jet.’

  ‘Yes. Waterboarding is a horrifying experience, I understand. I imagine Clarke would have told them anything they wanted to know. Is he still alive, do you think?’

  ‘Well, he certainly boarded that Athens flight. My guess is that Toby would have left him access to enough of Moszynski’s cash to keep him quiet for a long time.’

  Sharpe nodded. ‘The only jarring element is these damn bones in Beaumont’s suitcase. What the hell is that all about?’

  ‘We don’t know. I’ll be interested to hear his explanation.’

  ‘Yes, well, until we do find out I think we might take that out of the report.’

  Garry and Jacko refused to speak. Deb said only that she had nothing to add to whatever Toby said.

  ‘Toby has confessed to us that he murdered Mikhail Moszynski,’ Brock said. ‘That puts you in the position of an accessory, Deb, liable to the same punishment as him. You’ve just spent one night in gaol, and it’s going to be like that for the rest of your life. Do you really owe him that much? He’s told us his version, now we’d like to hear yours.’

  She flushed slightly and said, ‘Toby speaks for all of us, Chief Inspector. I have nothing more to say.’

  Toby himself was quite willing to talk. He sat there facing Brock, looking defiant.

  ‘Well, you kept your nerve, Brock, I’ll grant you that, but you put your son in jeopardy. You gambled with his life. How do you feel about that?’

  ‘I did what you did, Toby,’ Brock said.

  ‘Oh no, not the same at all. I gave my son a chance at glory, you just didn’t care.’

  ‘Glory? Not much glory in all this, is there? You stab an unarmed man to death, try to take off with his cash, and end up putting your three loyal companions in gaol for the rest of their lives.’

  Toby flared, his face turning puce. ‘They had nothing to do with this. I did it alone. They are innocent!’

  ‘They were in the plane with you, and now they refuse to talk—they say you speak for them. Only one way a jury’s going to interpret that. They were after the cash, just like you.’

  ‘I couldn’t leave them behind, with no future . . .’

  ‘Well, they certainly haven’t got one now.’

  ‘Perhaps . . . perhaps if I agreed to cooperate fully with you, you might be more sympathetic to their position.’

  ‘I don’t think you’ve got much to negotiate with, but you can start by telling us about the skull and bones in your luggage.’

  ‘Ha!’ Toby sat back with a grim smile, his composure returning. ‘I thought that would set the cat among the pigeons. You’ve probably been wondering about that all night, eh?’

  Brock folded his arms and stared at him. ‘Let’s have it then.’

  ‘My grandfather was an officer in the Fourth Army in the First Battle of the Somme, in the First World War. In July 1916 his company was involved in a frontal attack on the German lines, from which he was the only survivor. He was never quite the same after that. When he next returned home on leave, my grandmother came into the dining room one day and found a centrepiece on the dining table comprising a human head and pair of severed hands. She summoned my grandfather and asked him what it meant, and he explained that it was a souvenir he had brought home from the front, comprising the remaining body parts of a young German infantryman he’d killed.’

  He paused. He was enjoying himself, Brock thought, enjoying the looks on their faces. ‘What happened?’ he asked.

  ‘Grandma instructed their butler to dispose of the remains, and called the family doctor. Grandpa ended up being treated for shell shock at Craiglockhart Hospital in Scotland, and the butler buried the remains in the cellar. This became a family legend, as you can imagine, passed on from generation to generation of children under the covers after lights-out. According to the legend, the ghost of the dead German still haunts number eight, Chelsea Mansions.’ Toby gave them a toothy grin.

  ‘So what was he doing in your bag?’

  ‘You may know that Moszynski was planning to build a swimming pool in his basement, and started digging up his drains. That caused problems with ours, and we had to look at what was going on. That’s when we found Fritz. Up to then I didn’t really believe he existed. Anyway, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with him, but when we had to leave in a hurry I thought I’d better not leave him there. I was planning to give him a decent burial in our new home.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘We hadn’t really decided yet.’

  ‘Hm. You have a long family tradition of service in the army, don’t you, Toby?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Your father?’

  ‘Oh yes. He was with Special Ops during the war. Did amazing things in Greece, behind enemy lines.’

  ‘And after the war?’

  ‘Returned to civvy street, import-export.’

  Brock opened his file. ‘Let’s get back to your little adventure, Toby. I want every detail, every nuance. Begin with the arrival of the Russians in Chelsea Mansions.’

  When they broke for lunch, Bren joined them for sandwiches.

  ‘Heavy going?’ he asked. ‘You look knackered.’

  ‘Beaumont’s going strong,’ Brock said, stretching his shoulders. ‘Only too eager to talk, justify himself. Hasn’t even asked for a lawyer.’

  ‘How does he explain the skull?’

  Brock told him and Bren laughed. ‘What a story, eh?’

  ‘Yes. We’ll have to see if forensics support it. How have you got on, Bren?’

  ‘Mixed. We haven’t been able to find a match for Wayne Everett’s fingerprints at Ferncroft Close yet. We’re still waiting for the DNA results. We have tracked down the two women on Toby’s hotel staff. Destiny, the maid, is on holiday in Morocco with a friend, and Julie the cook is staying with her sister in Nottingham. She’s on her way here, expected about two.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘So Beaumont’s story hangs together then?’ Bren asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Brock reached for a sandwich. ‘It’s consistent. You agree, Kathy?’

  ‘There’s only one major discrepancy that I can see,’ she said. ‘The report from the forensic linguist.’

  ‘John Greenslade?’ Bren said, eyes lighting up. ‘There’s a rumour going round about him, Brock . . .’

  ‘It’s true, Bren. It seems he is my son. We’d never met. Apparently he got himself involved in the investigation so that he could get to meet me.’

>   ‘Blimey. Is it a secret?’

  ‘Obviously not. But, no, Bren, I’m delighted. Of course I’m happy for everyone to know. If anyone’s interested.’

  ‘Oh, they’re interested,’ Bren said with a grin.

  ‘Anyway . . .’ Brock cleared his throat. ‘What about his report, Kathy?’

  ‘He was convinced that the letter to The Times wasn’t composed by Moszynski. If that were true, then presumably it was written by Moszynski’s killer to suggest that the FSB were behind his death. Now we know that Toby could have sent someone—Deb perhaps—into Moszynski’s house to type the letter on his computer, using his letterhead and copying his signature. But if so it means that he didn’t kill Moszynski in a fit of spontaneous anger on the Sunday night—he must have been planning it since at least the Thursday evening.’

  ‘If John is right.’ Brock sighed. ‘It’s not real science, Kathy, it’s intuition, guesswork. It’s too little to turn the case inside out.’

  ‘Well, I think we should press Toby hard on it. His story seems too self-serving to me. Maybe he saw Nancy’s death as an opportunity to mask his murder of Moszynski.’

  They ate for a while, then Brock said, ‘I’d better give Sharpe a ring, bring him up to date. I think we’ll change around this afternoon. Kathy, you talk to the cook when she arrives, find out what you can. Bren, you and I will continue with Beaumont.’

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  ‘So what is this all about?’ Julie said. ‘Everyone’s been so mysterious. They just said it was very urgent.’

  A car had been waiting at St Pancras to pick her up from the Nottingham train and speed her to Queen Anne’s Gate, and she looked flustered and slightly disoriented, but not displeased at this unexpected attention.

  ‘Can you just tell me how you came to be in Nottingham, Julie?’

  ‘Well, when Toby sprung it on us that he was closing Chelsea Mansions and we didn’t have a job any more, I decided to go and stay with my sister for a while.’