The Fountain in the Forest

by Tony White

  Before going any further, Rex went and took a few photos of the sink and the print, then thought he had better photograph the gauze itself in this half-unrolled state. Of course, it was far too big to fit into a single static shot – at least, it would have been impossible without the widest of wide-angle lenses – so he switched the camera on his phone to panorama and took a steady horizontal scan as best he could. He’d upload them later.

  Rex couldn’t really remember the story, so he googled the text from the print, ‘christus am olberge’, without the umlaut. It was ‘Christ on the Mount of Olives’, a part of the Passion – the events of Christ’s final days – that he remembered from primary school, although, in the versions he had been taught, the location had usually been referred to as the Garden of Gethsemane, rather than the Mount. It was where Christ was betrayed by Judas. That was why only eleven disciples were present, sleeping among the rocks and trees, because Judas was away somewhere cutting his deal with the Romans. Probably at this very moment the traitor would be leading them up the hill to betray his master with a kiss.

  So why had this particular scrim had been abandoned?

  Scrolling down, he also found a whole lot of detailed exegesis about Beethoven’s oratorio on the subject (though Rex wasn’t sure what an oratorio was); his Opus 85. It was all a bit specialist. Talk of non-Lucan this and recitative that, but one thing leaped out at Rex from the page: it wasn’t an angel that Christ was talking to that night while his apostles slept and while he waited to be betrayed by Judas Iscariot – at least, not in Ludwig van Beethoven’s scheme of things. Not an angel, but a seraph.

  Unsure of the difference, Rex returned to more earthly matters. Figured that, since he’d have to write this up, he’d better dot the ‘i’s and cross the ‘t’s, see if there was anything else under the sofa. He got down on all fours and shone his torch in there just to make sure. The only other thing under the sofa was another rat-bait station, no different from the other couple he’d seen, lined up along the skirting. While you’re down here, he thought to himself, and crawled around, cheek to the filthy floor, shining his light under this and that and finally into the dark recess beneath the lowest shelf of the nearest workbench.

  9: MANDRAGORE (MANDRAKE)

  ‘Your mate must have some wedge, then,’ said DS Eddie Webster.

  ‘Eh?’

  Rex hadn’t really been listening to his colleague; he’d been watching the photographer, making sure he got everything: the half-finished painting of Christ on the Mount of Olives that had been folded up and stashed under the sofa, and the weapon that he had found under the workbench. The sofa propped up on a paint pot.

  The gangly photographer had been getting into position to take a shot of the knife, craning his neck to get the right angle, and for a moment Rex thought that he had looked a bit like a heron – or some other long-legged fowl – trying to figure out the best angle to spear a fish.

  Truth be told, before that, while he’d been waiting for everyone to arrive, Rex had also been thinking about Trevor Tennyson, running through the official version of events for the umpteenth time, but there would be plenty of time to think about Tennyson later. The obvious problem was that Rex was not necessarily going to be in control of exactly when that might be.

  He had radioed in this find immediately, and asked for a couple of bodies to help resecure the workshop. Webster had sent a uniform, a couple of Socks and the same photographer who had been here a few days earlier, all of whom had arrived within the hour, DS Eddie Webster himself following shortly after. Far from being in a good mood at this potential upturn in the investigation, Webbo had been furious.

  ‘Your man, Hobbs. Must be minted,’ Webster continued. ‘I mean, supposedly no one’s seen him for months, but the money for this place still gets paid, regular as. Plus the million-pound gaff in Hackney. I mean, he must be worth a fucking bob or two.’

  ‘I doubt the house cost him a million pounds, Eddie,’ said Rex. ‘Far as I know, he’s been in the same place since the late eighties, and you couldn’t raffle a terraced house in Hackney in those days. Probably bought it for thirty or forty grand, tops. Back then that would have seemed like a lot. I don’t know.’

  ‘All paid off, though,’ said Webster.

  ‘Yeah, but he could have done that yonks ago, Ed. What’s your point?’

  Webster ignored the question and then got down on all fours to take a closer look for himself. ‘Nasty!’ he said. ‘D’you think that’s sharp enough to cut off someone’s nose?’

  Rex shrugged. ‘Any idea yet if that was pre-or post-?’

  ‘Mortem?’ said Webster. ‘“Consistent with time of death” was the best they could do. “Thanks for nothing,” I said. “So we don’t know if we’re looking for a torturer or a souvenir-hunter. That narrows it down.” Wankers. What kind of knife is that, anyway?’

  It was something of an oddity, and Webster was right. It did look nasty. Blade and handle combined described a shallow but serpentine ‘S’. The curved wooden handle was so shaped to follow the line of the blade when it was folded, not that this particular knife ever would be folded again. An evil-looking blade; razor-sharp. The brand name ‘Mandragore’ was burned into the handle on one side. Once it had been photographed where it lay, it would be taken out from under the workbench and then bagged up and logged, and swabs would be taken of what looked like dried blood that appeared to have coagulated in and around the collar and handle, pooling on the cobbled floor.

  ‘French brand, isn’t it, Mandragore?’ said Rex. ‘Some kind of billhook? I don’t know. A gardening knife? Looks like the kind of thing my grandad used to keep in his potting shed.’

  There was a pause, then: ‘You haven’t been doing a bit of gardening yourself, Rex, have you?’ Webster asked. ‘Try and divert attention from your mate?’

  It took Rex a second or two to process the question, to register precisely what was being asked. Gardening? Then he nearly blew his top. ‘You fucking think I fucking planted it? Are you fucking joking, Webbo?’

  ‘Just trying to cover the bases,’ said Webster. ‘Wouldn’t be the first—’

  ‘It bloody would for me, mate,’ said Rex, interrupting. ‘What are you trying to say?’

  ‘Would it? Spotless record, have we?’

  ‘I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer, Webbo. Fuck’s sake! What’s got into you?’

  ‘It’s a valid fucking question! All I’m saying, Rex, is if you’ve got someone in mind for this, at least give me the fucking nod before you slap on the darbies, eh?’

  Webster was cross, that much was clear, but he was walking a narrow line here; wafer-thin. Policing should be about light and shade, and no one was perfect. Of course, if it was your job to uphold the law, you occasionally found yourself acting somewhere between the two, between the light and the dark, but Webbo had no grounds for suggesting that Rex was about to set someone up, that he’d – what was it? – ‘got someone in mind’! What did he think? That Rex would identify some random local ruffian or oddball just to get his pal off the hook? It was a ridiculous suggestion and they both knew it.

  So what was this about? Had Webster found out somehow? There was only one thing for it, and that was to push his colleague a bit further; touch a nerve.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Rex. ‘Argue with the Mrs this morning, did we?’

  On the surface, it was an innocuous bit of banter, but Rex knew full well that if Webster did know the truth about Jennifer, then having a pop about Helen would have been enough to tip him over the edge. It was not the most subtle thing that he could have said in the circumstances, admittedly, but he wasn’t going to let Webster get away with questioning his integrity. That was about all you had in this job. Wave farewell to that – or let someone get away with questioning it so casually – and your self-respect might end up going with it. Rex had seen it happen, but he didn’t have to take shit like that from fucking Webster. They were the same rank, for one thing.
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  Webster said nothing, but continued to glower in Rex’s general direction.

  ‘Look, Webbo,’ said Rex eventually, lowering his voice. ‘Think about it for a sec, eh? I haven’t trodden on your fucking toes and I wasn’t trying to fast-track anything. I told you yesterday that I was going to come down and have another look around. I wasn’t expecting—’

  ‘Trying to make me look bad, or something?’ Webster said, suddenly. ‘Suggesting I’m not doing my fucking job?’

  ‘Course I’m not!’

  ‘My eye!’

  So that was the problem, was it? Rex got it now. Webbo had been CSM on this – Crime Scene Manager – and now he was Deputy SIO, in effect running the case for Lollo, who was nominal SIO on all major investigations, and yet he had missed this potentially crucial piece of evidence: not exactly the murder weapon, but a weapon used in the commission of one, no less! No wonder he had the hump. But Rex was confident he hadn’t put the investigation at risk. There had been no risk of loss or contamination. He might have been mooching around, but it was mooching by the book.

  ‘Always the same with you, isn’t it, Rex. Always got to go one better, always so fucking superior.’

  Oh, it gets better, thought Rex. Not just touchy, but chippy too. It was a while since he’d been slagged off for having a degree. Hang on, though.

  ‘“Always”? What exactly are we talking about here, Eddie?’

  ‘You fucking know what I mean. Not being funny, but weren’t you gonna do some asking around about Hobbs too, Kingsy?’ Webster obviously wasn’t about to drop it. ‘Or have you been too busy trying to stitch me up?’

  Webster paused, and in that second or two – presumably realising that he had gone too far – he reined it back in a bit, or loosened his grip at least, which was just as well, since he was in no position to be giving Rex orders. ‘Anyway,’ he offered. ‘Nice find, Kingsy. Anything else under there?’

  Rex didn’t need to rub it in. ‘Don’t know. I just called it in as soon as. I took a couple of pictures of under the sofa and all, but I haven’t looked at them yet. Wasn’t gonna touch anything else once this turned up. So did you get a chance to check if this’ – he nodded at the half-completed biblical scene – ‘was listed in Terry’s Job Book? Like I said on the phone, it could either have been listed as Beethoven Eighty-Five, Christus—’

  ‘I did, as it happens, Rex,’ said Webster. ‘Looks like it was for the Redgrave Theatre in Farnham, got cancelled when the place closed down.’

  ‘What was the last job, out of interest?’

  ‘Electra?’ Webster didn’t sound very sure, but then he was the kind of man who thought it manly not to know certain things. ‘Or Electric. Something like that. For some festival up in Manchester. I gave ’em a bell. Bit timid at first, but I warmed them up. It was delivered back in March, apparently. Everyone very happy, blah blah. It was all, “We love Terry, anything we can do”, et cetera. “Tell him to give me a bell if you see him,” I said. And before that it was something about Galileo for the Barbican or whatnot. Wasn’t he the bloke who decided the earth was—?’

  ‘A sphere? Well, he was persecuted for it, anyway,’ said Rex. ‘Even if he didn’t make the actual discovery. That was the ancient Greeks, speaking of Sophocles. In Galileo’s day, most people just took the path of least resistance and agreed with the Church, but I guess he couldn’t hack it.’

  ‘Alright, Prof,’ said Webster, flapping a hand in front of his open mouth as if stifling a yawn. ‘Jesus fucking Christ! You still on the quiz team?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Pity. Come on, then, let’s have a look.’

  Between them, the two Socks were lifting the sofa by its arms, and gently easing the paint tin out from under it. One of them slid it out of the way with his foot, so they could move the sofa forward three or four feet. As it turned out, there was nothing else on the floor except the bait station, but there was something on the wall, drawn in white chalk. Perhaps even the same white chalk that the strange note on the door had been written with.

  This wasn’t writing, though. It was a scrappily drawn but instantly recognisable cartoon of a bald-headed man with a big nose looking over a wall. Simple enough that anyone could draw it. An image that had circumnavigated the globe during the Second World War, been scribbled on every pontoon bridge and aeroplane, every ammo box and jeep, across the Reich and around the world. It had spread rapidly, appearing pretty much anywhere that US army personnel had set foot, from Oswestry to Okinawa. What would that be called now – a ‘meme’?

  ‘Well, fuck me!’ said Webster.

  ‘Kilroy was here,’ said Rex.

  10: PERSIL (PARSLEY)

  Instead of some top-drawer lunch at The Rock & Sole Plaice with a possible side order of useful intelligence on any recent sightings of Terence Hobbs, Rex had ended up working right through. He’d have to go and talk to Ali and Ahmet tomorrow. He’d been offered and had accepted a lift back to the station from Webster, who obviously wanted to use Rex as a sounding board, since that is what he did for the forty-five minutes plus that they had sat in the car outside the Royal Palace before setting off. Webster gave Rex the full benefit of his opinion on the current status of the investigation: the ins and outs of particular resource-allocation decisions he’d taken, how hard it was not to become immersed in the management functions even when you knew it meant you were losing sight of your investigative role, and why this wasn’t yet a case in need of an MIR, or Major Incident Room. He followed this with a blow-by-blow enumeration of known and as yet unknown features of both victim and offender, working through the standard profiling checklist. It was like old times. Christ, Webster was certainly blowing hot and cold.

  ‘Motivation? We’ve knocked out “Gain” since there’s fuck-all to nick,’ Webster had said. ‘How about “Jealousy”?’ Then: ‘I hear what you say, Rex, but I’m leaving “Sex” on the table.’

  ‘Thanks, Ed,’ Rex had said, seizing an opportunity to lighten the mood, ‘but no thanks.’

  ‘Far as I can see’ – Webster had brushed Rex’s joke aside in favour of restating the obvious – ‘we’re really only left with “Revenge” or “Elimination”, but all we’ve got is the where and the how, Kingsy. It’s the who and the why I’m interested in.’

  As well as hypothesis-building, all of this had also seemed like Webbo’s way of testing in his own mind whether today’s ‘new material’ – a bloodstained knife and a Kilroy cartoon! – was going to force a strategic shift in the direction of the investigation. Luckily, and for all of his faults, Eddie Webster was not ultimately the kind of policeman who would see such a change in direction as an admission of personal failure.

  Rex’s contribution to all this, other than nodding or saying, ‘Yeah, right’, and occasionally doing both at the same time, had been to introduce the idea that the offender may not have been acting alone. Terry Hobbs was still suspect number one – Webbo wasn’t about to concede that – but might he have had help? There was the small matter of self-preservation on the part of the deceased. ‘You’ve got to assume, Eddie,’ Rex had said, ‘that if he was conscious, our victim might have had reason to execrate the prospect of being garrotted and having his nose cut off with a fucking pruning knife. Might have, I don’t know, tried to defend himself a bit. You’re not going to go willingly into that one, are you? You know, “Would you mind awfully just stopping still while I tie this around your neck—”’

  ‘Fucking hell, Rex,’ Webster had said. ‘This morning I had one fucking missing offender to find. Are you telling me that now I’ve got two? Thanks a fucking bunch.’

  As they had turned down into the garage, Webster hadn’t exactly apologised, but he did offer a bridge-building ‘That was useful, mate’, followed by a ‘Thanks for listening’ and finally a ‘You coming to the team meeting?’

  Rex had nodded. Yes, he was. And then, unless otherwise directed, he was going to write up this morning’s mooch, then – while they waited for the DNA
– go through the paperwork thus far and try to get a handle on where both knife and Kilroy might fit into all of this, if they did. Either way, these two new pieces of the puzzle did materially change things. How could they not? For one thing, the team would be checking for any other uses of the Kilroy image as a ‘calling card’ – if indeed that is what it was being used for here – and cross-referencing against all murders where knives had been left at the scene, whether hidden or not. Finally, the possibility of an accomplice gave a new impetus both to the house-to-house enquiries and to the CCTV trawl, which would have to be started again. Cue much groaning at the team debrief. Now they weren’t simply looking for sightings of Terry Hobbs in the thousands of hours of footage, but for linked behaviours between any two or three people.

  After all that, by the time Rex got home there was no choice but to throw together a late pot-luck supper with whatever he’d had in the way of dwindling grocery supplies. What this turned out to be was an unlikely-sounding combination of chips, black pudding and a supermarket own-brand boil-in-the-bag cod steak in parsley sauce. Classy. It was a far cry from The Rock & Sole Plaice – and any self-respecting restaurateur might have died of shame – but, eaten in front of a rerun of Star Trek: The Next Generation, it actually wasn’t so bad. He’d even chucked a few frozen peas into the water while the fish was boiling, which was at least a small step in the right direction. Although, five-a-day-wise, the bottle of Australian Shiraz that he washed it down with would have to do for the other four, unless oven chips counted as a fresh vegetable.