The Big Ben mystery

by Fernando Trujillo

  "Don't worry, I'll get a taxi. But tell me something first. This lawyer of yours, you said his name was Tedd. Is the other one Todd?"

  "How'd you know that?" Aidan asked surprised.

  "Where did you get these two from?"

  "Wilfred. He got them for me, along with the Ferrari," Aidan paused. "How did you know the kid's name?"

  "Kodey Black," Carol was almost breathless. "Yesterday, when we detained him, Lance threatened to lock him up. And Kodey just laughed, saying that he'd been in situations like that before and that his lawyers had always got him out. He mentioned their names then. Tedd and Todd."

  "But… then," Aidan stammered. "This means…"

  "Check it all out first before you do anything stupid. Remember what you promised me. Find out what Fletcher's got while I keep at it. As soon as I find anything out I'll call you."

  "They've played with me for the last time. Wilfred's behind all of this and he's lied to me. When I catch up with him he'll wish the cancer had got him first."

  # # #

  The practice of being a lawyer was exhausting, especially if you put your heart and soul into it like Aston Lowel. And the way he was going he would be remembered as one of the best lawyers that London had ever had.

  He burnt the midnight oil most days in the belief that his work was of supreme importance. Locking up criminals was fulfilling a social duty and he was proud of carrying it out. Of course he was also driven by personal ambition and was often pleased to see his photo in the paper. There was nothing wrong with that. In fact, in his opinion, it was the only way to go about his work. Talent can only carry you so far. Ambition is what takes you all the way.

  Aston was intelligent and it didn't bother him to be putting everything into his work. But what did bother him was finding someone in his office first thing in the morning. He liked to start the day with a cup of coffee alone at his desk.

  "Can't it wait?" Aston asked his assistant, hanging up his coat in an effort to disguise his irritation.

  He didn't like to start the day like this. He went back to his desk and for the first time studied the bundle of nerves before him.

  "I thought you'd want to know as soon as possible," his assistant said.

  "I presume it's not good news then," Aston said more to himself than the other man.

  "They let Aidan Zack out on bail yesterday."

  "That's impossible. I was talking with him yesterday afternoon," Aston said, thinking it through.

  If it was true it was bad news indeed. The legal situation was still the same, but it still bothered him that it had happened so quickly. After being insulted by him in the police station it annoyed him to think that Aidan was free again.

  "I still don't understand it properly, but Judge Emmel authorized the bail."

  "Why wasn't I advised?"

  "I'd already gone home when he was released. It was almost night time."

  It had to be a mistake. Emmel was a judge who did everything correctly. It was impossible that he'd grant bail to a man accused of throwing another off a bridge in the full light of day in front of a crowd of witnesses. It was too dangerous to release someone like that until the case had at least been heard. Anyway, a person accused of what Aidan had done would have to stay at least twenty-four hours under guard and Aidan hadn't been half that time behind bars. It didn't make sense.

  "Check everything to do with the affair," Aston ordered, putting his coat on again. "Get the release order and all the relevant bail documents."

  "I'll get on to it right away."

  "I want it on my desk when I get back. I'm going to talk right now with Judge Emmel about his duties as a judge in this city."

  Aston was determined to overturn the order. He wanted Aidan back in jail with the same speed that he'd been released. He'd take the case to another judge if necessary to put this danger to the public behind bars.

  On leaving the building, he started weaving his way through the metal bases of scaffolding that covered the entire facade of the building. They were restoring the exterior and the pavement had been invaded by a huge spindly skeleton of overhead platforms. Aston was going to cross to the opposite pavement to avoid the construction work, but something unexpected stopped him.

  "You've got to get up, granddad," a young boy sobbed.

  The boy was ten yards ahead trying to lift his grandfather up off the ground. The kid couldn't have been more than ten years old, and the effort of lifting the old man up seemed beyond him.

  Aston covered his head instinctively as he walked under the metal posts, avoiding a black rod that was lying on the ground. He bent down beside the old man and the boy.

  "Don't worry, young fella. I'll help you."

  The old man moved his arms and legs clumsily, unable to get up. The image of a turtle on its back flew through the lawyer's mind. Aston stopped for a second to look at his violet eyes.

  "Did you hear that, Tedd?" the boy said. "This gentleman is going to help us."

  Aston nodded, grabbing the old man and trying to pull him up. But he couldn't budge him. The lawyer stopped again to look at a second pair of violet eyes.

  "I could get up on my own, Todd," Tedd grumbled, shaking his arm so that Aston would let it go. "I only need my walking stick."

  The lawyer smiled approvingly at the show of the old man's pride. He looked around them for the walking stick but couldn't see any. But then he remembered the black rod that he'd almost stepped on when he was approaching them.

  "I'll bring you the walking stick now," Aston said. "Don't move."

  He turned around and saw the black stick a few yards away. He picked it off the ground and turned to bring it back to the strange pair. But they'd gone. They had simply vanished. He'd only turned his back on them for three or four seconds, five at the most. And now there was nobody in sight. Not on the footpath or as far as he could see around him. They couldn't have disappeared that quickly. But there was no one to be seen. Was he going mad? Or could it be…

  A great roar above his head made him look up. But he didn't even have time to scream as the whole structure of scaffolding crashed down upon him.

  # # #

  The peculiar smell of the post-mortem examination room that Lance had detested so much invaded Aidan's nostrils as he walked into the room. Fletcher lifted his head up from a corpse and began to take his gloves off as soon as he saw the detective.

  Aidan Zack looked around the room at the assortment of bodies, his eyes settling on the biggest body there, a body and a face that he would recognize anywhere.

  "That's Earl Black," the pathologist said. "We don't need a post mortem to determine the cause of death. A spear went right through him."

  Aidan nodded in silence. At this stage of the strangest game in town, nothing surprised him. A spear fit perfectly with the collection of medieval weapons that the Blacks and Whites preferred to use.

  Aidan remembered that Wilfred had told him that four identical replicas of Earl existed, two Blacks and two Whites, of which Earl had been the only one still alive.

  "This is the last of his type. Have you discovered anything else?"

  "Nothing that justified his apparent immortality nor their DNA similarities," Fletcher lamented. "I've got a hunch that science won't be able to explain it."

  "They're not immortal or we wouldn't be standing in a morgue talking about them."

  "But you told me that James White survived a blaze and threw himself from a sixth floor window without scratching himself."

  "That's true. But everything would seem to change when a Black's involved. Where's Kodey?"

  "Here," Fletcher said, pointing to a concrete slab. Aidan walked over and studied the corpse, and to his surprise there was nothing unusual about him. Fletcher went on. "It would appear he was killed with something that was very sharp. A long-bladed knife, for example."

  "It wasn't a knife," Aidan said, observing the cut across the chest. "It was a boomerang. And now that I've seen this model, there are onl
y two more to find. Another man and a woman."

  "I've got them right here," the pathologist confirmed. "This is Allan White. As you can see, he's very tall and very thin. They killed him with a sword. And this is Helen Black."

  Aidan froze when he saw the size of the woman. Stretched out on the bench she looked taller than him. But on closer examination, he put her at about the same height as himself. He walked around the corpse, memorizing every detail, just as he had done with Kodey. Fletcher told him what he knew about their deaths, but there were plenty of gaps in the details. The only thing that was more or less clear was that there'd been a battle of sorts in a shopping centre the previous afternoon, and that the fight had continued in different parts of the city.

  "They're cutting through their ranks pretty quick now," Aidan said. "There can't be too many of the original thirty left. I'd better catch up with James White before we find him here alongside these stiffs."

  "Apparently the woman used a bow and arrow," Fletcher informed him. "Remember, three days ago when they brought Earl White in, he had three arrows in his body. I guess it was she who did that."

  "And now another White has put paid to her and we haven't got a clue why? It's a strange business this, with its own rules," Aidan said, running the whole thing through his head one more time. "It seems like there are special moments to fight. Time–"

  "What do you mean by time?"

  "As weird as it might seem to you, there's a connection with Big Ben. And that's just one more scene in the theatre of the absurd. Whites killing Blacks and vice versa and the Big Clock missing a beat each time."

  "There's something else," Fletcher remembered. "The witnesses said there was another woman on a strange wheelchair. According to them, the woman spent half her time walking, with the chair waiting for her next order. Apparently, Earl attacked her with a giant mallet and this beanpole here, Allan, helped out by hurling a spear through Earl's back."

  "Did the woman look like Helen?"

  "No, and what's more, she had brown hair. She wasn't one of them."

  "Are you sure? The fight's getting bigger if that's the case."

  "I'm as sure as I can be about any of this. There were plenty of witnesses there. And that's what they said."

  "I've got to find out who she is," Aidan said, taking his mobile out.

  He called the station and asked for the policeman on duty at the shopping centre the previous day. He found out it was a man he knew, but despite that, he couldn't find out much.

  "Do you know who she is?" Fletcher asked when he'd hung up.

  "No, but he said there were twenty witnesses who confirmed what you told me."

  "Let's hope we find out who she is soon."

  "That's not going to be easy either. All the security cameras stopped working mysteriously during the brawl. We can presume that that was no coincidence."

  "Maybe someone took a photo with their mobile, or even someone with a camera. It's a big place. It's possible."

  Aidan's mobile rang. It was Carol.

  "I've got some news about Tedd."

  "That quickly? You'd make a good detective."

  "That I'm not. When I got back to the newspaper, there was an envelope on my desk with a stack of information about Tedd and Todd."

  "What? Do you know who sent it?"

  "No. I asked around and nobody knows who put it on my desk. Someone wants to help out. Don't ask me why."

  "Nothing surprises me at this stage of the game," Aidan reflected. "Tell me what information you've got."

  "What Kodey told Lance and me was correct. Three years ago, Kodey was accused of the murder of William White. There was a witness, but Kodey walked free. The lawyer was Tedd."

  "I've got no doubt he was guilty."

  "Wait. There's a lot more," Carol said impatiently. "The witness was Dylan Blair."

  "What role has that bastard got in all of this? His name's wrong in the first place."

  "I don't know, but the detail surprised me so I made a few enquiries. Dylan was Mr Nobody when he gave his statement about what happened. Three weeks after that he started his winning streak at the casino."

  "Interesting. This only adds weight to what I was already feeling about him." Aidan paused. "I don't get the connection, though. If I'd known he was involved in all of this that day when I had a fight with him I would have hit him twice as hard. Have you got anything new on Tedd?"

  "Yes. There are strange things that don't have any explanation. He works for a firm in which he's the only lawyer. He was involved, among other things, in all these changes of houses between Blacks and Whites. One day it's in the name of a Black and the next in the name of a White. You can't sell properties that quickly. The paperwork takes time. Nevertheless, it's there for all to see. Everything appears to be legal."

  "Would you say Tedd somehow covers up all this Black–White stuff from everybody else?"

  "That's more or less what I thought," Carol agreed. "From what I've seen, all the transactions should have taken a hundred years to be completed. I simply don't understand how no relevant authority hasn't been made aware of all this. And on top of that, I might add Tedd's business was established in 1858, the same year that Big Ben chimed for the first time."

  Aidan shook his head.

  "It just keeps getting worse."

  "Most of his clients are either Blacks or Whites but now and again someone else shows up on the records."

  "Have you got the list there?"

  "Yes."

  "Have a look and see if there's an Ethan there. It would have to be a while ago. Like around fifty years."

  "Let me have a look. Yes. He's here. There are some entries under the name Ethan Gord about sixty-seven years ago, more or less."

  "That's him, Wilfred's father. Is there any information about what service Tedd offered him?"

  "It's possible that I could find out. But I'll need more time. There's a lot of information here."

  "Do it, please."

  "I want to be with you. I don't want you to be alone."

  "I'm fine. Look, Carol, this information is very important. Ethan came to some agreement with Tedd and Todd nearly seventy years ago that makes him immortal, judging by his appearance. I know you probably think I've lost it. But logic doesn't help us in this case. You yourself said," Aidan said to a laughing Fletcher by his side, "that science alone can't explain these clones or how James White can apparently survive anything. And, Carol, can you explain what Big Ben's got to do with all of this or what Tedd's got to do with Big Ben? Or how come Tedd's been doing all this for a hundred and fifty years? To all intents and purposes, Ethan looks about twenty years old, so this fountain of youth must have something to do with all of this. And what about Dylan Blair? How did he become a millionaire overnight? Just think about all of that and realize that in their strange world anything is possible. Do you get it?"

  No one said anything for a while. Then Fletcher nodded.

  "OK, Aidan," Carol said. I'll find out what I can about Ethan and Tedd."

  "And I'll go and visit Wilfred," Aidan said. "We need to have a long chat. If he's kept something from me he's going to regret it."

  "Promise me you'll keep yourself under control," Carol begged him. "Besides, I'm worried. It's obvious Tedd and Todd want you free for some reason."

  "Don't worry. After seeing what happened with Ethan and Dylan, you can see that anybody connected with them comes out of it well."

  * * * * *

  CHAPTER 24

  "Where's my little stud?" Ann said playfully. She was looking for her husband under the tangle of sheets and blankets on the bed and in one sharp movement she pulled the lot off and finally discovered the nude body of her husband Colin. "At last I've found you."

  "You're a shameless hussy," Colin joked, pretending to be embarrassed, covering his genitals with a towel. "A decent woman doesn't harass a man like this."

  "Shut up!" she ordered, throwing herself upon him. But Colin dodged her quickly and gain
ed the upper hand, holding her down beneath him. Ann couldn't stop laughing. "For once you're behaving like you should–"

  She didn't get to finish her sentence as Colin bit her on the neck and started down her back, leaving a trail of kisses, licks and nibbles that sent shivers of pleasure racing up her spine. She purred through the foreplay, letting herself be carried away by her husband's expert hands.

  This was the morning after a wild night and they were still at it. It seemed they couldn't get enough of each other, twice through the night and again now was proof enough of that. When they'd finished, they lay in bed smoking, staring up at the ceiling absently.

  This was the third time that Collin had invited her to a hotel in the last two years. And the third time she'd been amazed by him breaking all the rules that he so carefully adhered to at home. On the first occasion he'd called her and invited her to come to a hotel in the centre of London. She was very nervous when she arrived and had no idea what this change in their routine meant. She found the room bathed in candlelight when she went upstairs, and her husband soaking in a bubble bath, waiting for her. There had never been a night like that before, neither the first time they'd made love or the wedding night itself, or on any other occasion could she remember anything to compare with that night in the hotel. It was almost as if Colin had done a course in Kama Sutra and had passed with honours and wanted to share his new-found knowledge.

  While Ann relived this scene in her memory, she remembered how surprising his behaviour had been for her. He had been completely different, dominant, aggressive, almost brutal. But what stunned her even more after that night in the hotel was that he went back to being the same man that he'd always been the next day. The fights returned and life got back to being the same boring grind as before. She never forgot what had happened in the hotel, but never dared to ask him why just the same.

  The second time had occurred four months earlier. It had been a different hotel but the purpose was the same. Her heart had skipped a beat when she received his message on her mobile phone. She'd thought it would never happen again and that even the first time had been a product of her imagination. She went to a hairdresser, put on the sexiest dress she had and got to the room ready to relive the first experience. There were variations to the original script, peppered with improvisations and twists that didn't disappoint her in the least. But the next day the same thing as before happened and they withdrew into their customary shells.