by Mark Roberts
Hypocrisy is the root of all evil. Our society aborts children in utero by the thousands each year, yet it is unthinkable to use twenty to fifty unwanted children for an essential experiment into the acquisition of language.
‘So Leonard Lawson was basically either a cruel bastard or off his head. Maybe both,’ concluded Hendricks.
‘We need to dig into his medical records. Did he go gaga? Did he get a season ticket for Yates’s Wine Lodge?’ asked Stone. ‘I’ve dipped into his other writing and there’s nothing like this.’ Stone shook his head. ‘Twenty to fifty children brought up in silence with no sensory stimulation?’
‘The mesmeric intellect of the man leading the research? It’s like a line from a funeral elegy. It’s—’ Hendricks was silenced by a sudden, astonishing noise.
In the hall outside the study, the landline telephone rang out.
Hendricks and Stone stood up and headed towards it. The telephone, cream coloured and plastic, looked like it belonged in a junk-shop window. Hendricks picked up the receiver.
Silence. Hendricks listened hard, but there was no background noise. He waited, could hear no breathing or sign of life on the other end. Stone took out his phone, pressed record.
‘DS Bill Hendricks. Can I help you?’
‘Bill Hendricks?’ The voice was androgynous, ageless and without a trace of accent. It caused a coldness to pass through him.
‘Who is this?’ asked Hendricks.
‘Where are you?’
‘Who are you?’
‘I am the Angel of Destruction. With the First Born, I serve Death. There’s a body in the garden. Whose body? Which garden?’
Hendricks looked at the French window. Outside was a small paved yard enclosed by three brick walls.
‘Whose body? Which garden?’ The voice dipped.
‘Name the body. Name the garden.’
The line went dead and the room was completely silent.
Stone stopped recording and played the call back. Even though the hall was flat and rectangular, the voice on the line seemed to echo as if the space was full of invisible curves and crevices.
Hendricks’s phone rang out. On the display: ‘Clay’. He connected.
‘Drop what you’re doing,’ said Clay. We’ve got a prime suspect and an address.’
He hurried to the front door.
‘It’s very near where you are now.’
On the street, he ran towards his car.
‘Eve, we’ve just had a call directly to the Lawsons’ landline. It was from the Angel of Destruction. Where are you?’
35
9.41 am
Four minutes. The time it took DC Cole to locate the only Gabriel Huddersfield in Liverpool on the electoral roll. It took Clay less than five to arrive at the front door of 777 Croxteth Road, a large Victorian family house divided into six self-contained flats.
The bell of Flat 5, 777 Croxteth Road didn’t have a name next to it, just a small picture of an angel, sideways on, playing a slender reed and facing right, its wings dissolving into the blue-whiteness of the celestial sky. Clay recognised it as a supporting player to Jesus from a colour plate in one of Leonard Lawson’s books.
She pointed at the image. ‘Is this how he sees himself? Heaven’s foot soldier? God’s hitman? The Angel of Destruction?’
After the fourth unanswered attempt at that bell, Clay pressed the bell of Flat 1 – ‘Sally’ – and a woman’s gravelly voice came through the intercom.
‘Who is it?’
‘Police! We aren’t looking for you. Open up, please.’
‘K!’
Clay looked up at the second-floor window and hoped Gabriel Huddersfield was sleeping the sleep of the righteous.
‘Come on!’ she said, irritated by the sloth-like lack of action behind the door. ‘Come on! Come on!’
The door finally opened to reveal a painfully thin, purple-and grey-haired woman, who could have been in her thirties or possibly fifties, taking a puff on a hand-rolled cigarette. The smell of weed around her disappointed Clay. Not a reliable witness.
‘Who are you after?’ She blew a trio of smoke rings through her brown-stained fingers and teeth.
‘Gabriel Huddersfield,’ replied Clay. ‘Move aside, please.’
‘I don’t think he’s in,’ she said, allowing Clay inside the wide, gloomy hallway.
Clay headed towards the stairs. ‘If you know enough to know he’s not in, do you know where he is?’
Sally thought about it as Clay ran up the stairs two at a time.
‘There was a commotion in the night and then he was gone. That’s all I know. He might’ve come back. I don’t know.’
At the turn of the first floor, the darkness deepened and Clay noticed there wasn’t a bulb in the ceiling light. An overwhelming smell of damp and the robotic beat of dance music followed her up as she continued to the top floor.
She slowed at the head of the stairs, looked right. Flat 6. And to the left saw Flat 5.
‘Jesus!’
On the door of Flat 5 was painted a more complete version of the image on the bell outside. She processed some of the details as she approached the door. In a cloud of light, Jesus sitting in glory. In heaven. His arms bent at the elbows, right hand pointing up to an unseen Father, left hand pointing down to Creation. Jesus the hinge between the two. It was the upper part of the central panel of Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych, The Last Judgment. She recognised it from one of the professor’s books.
She knocked on the door and called, ‘Gabriel Huddersfield! Police! Open up immediately!’
There was no reply, no sign of life on the other side. She pushed the door, but it remained shut. A rich, smoky smell oozed from Huddersfield’s home. Incense.
Clay raised her arm, felt along the top of the door frame for a key but found only a damp, greasy surface.
‘Is this what you’re looking for?’
Clay turned towards the educated voice. In the doorway of Flat 6 stood a tall, middle-aged black man with a shock of white hair, holding a key in one hand. She showed him her warrant card but withdrew it when she saw the white cast to his eyes. A melancholic Labrador waited beside him. He smiled and tapped the floor with his white stick.
The witnesses were a semi-conscious stoner and a blind man. Bitterness ground its fist into the back of Clay’s skull and she couldn’t help feeling short-changed by Chance.
‘Is Gabriel in trouble?’ asked the neighbour. He handed her the key, his speech and manner respectful.
‘I think so,’ said Clay. ‘My name’s Detective Chief Inspector Eve Clay. Mr...?’
‘Evergreen. Mr Elliot Evergreen. I hold the key for Gabriel.’
‘He trusts you then?’
‘Gabriel says he has no secrets. So a man with no secrets must have no problem allowing the Law inside his home. He went out last night at ten o’clock. He wasn’t alone.’
‘Thank you.’ Clay took the key from Mr Evergreen. ‘Was there trouble in the building last night? A commotion?’
‘There’s always trouble in the building. Commotion follows Gabriel like a pet dog. And when commotion sleeps, Gabriel is as silent as a shadow.’
‘What kind of commotion, Mr Evergreen?’
‘Gabriel has a regular visitor. I don’t ask questions of him. But from what I can hear, he’s the only person apart from me who goes over his threshold. Gabriel doesn’t mind what his other friend sees. Gabriel’s friend was angry, following him down the stairs, bullying him, I’d say.’
‘Did you hear any words?’
‘You have to do it! Do as I say! The rest...?’ Mr Evergreen shrugged.
‘Did he come back to his flat?’
‘Briefly. I was listening to the radio. His door opened as the three o’clock news was finishing.’ He stroked the dog’s ears and Clay could feel the blood pumping inside her head. The blind witness was quickly turning out to be more valuable than seven fully sighted ones.
‘He came back for a few minutes.
He tried to do so discreetly, but I could tell. He couldn’t open his front door, he was breathing like he’d just run a marathon and he was highly agitated. That’s all I can tell you.’
‘Thank you, Mr Evergreen.’
‘You know where I am if you need me. I’m told that the eyes can play tricks. But I know that my ears can never deceive me. Give me your number. I will call you if I hear anything that might be useful to you.’
She reeled off eleven digits and he parroted them back to her. In placing Elliot Evergreen across the landing from Huddersfield, it seemed Chance had done her a favour.
Two floors down, she heard DS Bill Hendricks arrive. As he hurtled up the stairs, Clay stuck the key in the lock of Flat 5. She pushed the door open, calling, ‘Gabriel Huddersfield! Police! We’re coming in!’
36
9.41 am
Close to the top of Brownlow Hill, Riley stepped off the frozen street and through the doors of the grey-tiled Hart Building. She took in the blue shield of the university’s crest, the three cormorants bearing leaves, and the motto ‘Haec Otia Studia Fovent’.
‘Detective Sergeant Riley?’
In the reception area, Riley followed the voice and saw a very tall woman in her twenties wearing a University of Liverpool ID badge on a band round her neck. ‘Justine Elgar?’ she asked, and showed her warrant card. She’d been expecting a raven-haired siren from an old horror film but was faced instead with the blonde captain of the ladies’ basketball team.
Justine nodded. ‘Let’s go to my office,’ she said.
As she followed, Riley asked, ‘Haec Otia Studia Fovent? What does that translate to?’
‘These days of peace foster learning. Peace? Here?’ She laughed.
Justine’s office, a cupboard that wanted to be a room, had a small window overlooking the elegant red-brick buildings across the road. She handed Riley a card file. ‘I copied everything I could find.’
Riley opened the file. The papers were more yellow than white and the musty smell reminded her of her great-grandmother’s parlour.
‘I’ve put it together the way I found it. It’s a jumble.’
‘Did anything leap out at you, Justine?’
‘He kept his head down for decades. There are no disciplinary proceedings, no letters of complaint, no departmental controversies going to mediation.’
Riley stopped at a page of University of Liverpool headed paper. Personnel department. It was a brief letter of thanks issued close to his retirement. ‘That’s quite an achievement,’ she said, showing it to Justine.
‘Yes. Professor Lawson started work here in 1956 and retired in 1986. He didn’t miss a single lecture, seminar or meeting. That kind of dedication doesn’t exist any more.’
Riley turned over a bundle of pages. P60s and wage slips gathered in a thick silver paperclip. Professor Lawson hadn’t bothered to collect them and another strand formed in Riley’s mind. Obsessed with work, head in the clouds.
‘Did he have any enemies?’ she asked, fishing wildly.
‘No. He was a model employee.’
Riley turned the page and came to a letter in an envelope with an American frank and the words ‘Harvard University’ in the top left-hand corner. It was addressed to Professor L Lawson. She took out two pieces of paper, the top one with Harvard University’s coat of arms at the top and dated June 1974. Riley read the letter and let out a long, thin whistle.
She focused on one paragraph.
The lecture tour we would like you to undertake, sponsored by and on behalf of Harvard University, would involve you visiting twenty of the top universities and colleges across the United States of America. We would especially like you to focus your lectures on two areas of your expertise: Dutch art of the fifteenth and sixteenth century, and Egyptian art of antiquity. Your travel and living costs would, of course, be covered by Harvard University and we would pay you $US 200,000 for your services. The lectures would commence in October 1976 and end in December 1976.
‘A carbon copy of his response is on the next sheet,’ said Justine.
Riley turned to it. University of Liverpool headed notepaper.
Dear Professor Pink,
Thank you for your kind and generous offer. I am sorry to say that I will be unable to take you up on this as it would involve taking my daughter out of school. I also have teaching commitments here in the University of Liverpool.
Yours faithfully,
Prof. Leonard Lawson
PROFESSOR LEONARD LAWSON
Riley felt electricity run through her nervous system as she did some sums. ‘How much did Professor Lawson earn in the academic year 1976 to ’77?’
Justine consulted the P60s in the original file. ‘Before tax, £14,000.’
‘And he turned down $200,000 for twenty lectures on subjects he was passionate about.’
‘He could have taken leave of absence. Lots of English academics were on the gold rush to America in the 1970s. The universities there had obscene amounts of money and weren’t afraid to spend it to entice the world’s finest. If Professor Lawson had gone, he’d have been a star. And it could well have turned into a permanent move, on mega-money.’
Riley came to the last piece of paper, a cutting from The Spectator, a lengthy book review. The Sacred Vow by D.L. Noone. A picture of the cover showed a Carthusian monk in a hooded gown, kneeling in front of a vivid image of Christ crucified, the red of the wounds enhanced by the white of the monk’s habit.
Riley scanned the review. Superlatives leapt from the page. Brilliant. Ground-breaking. Imaginative. Mesmeric intellect. Inspirational.
At the bottom of the review were the initials LL.
She showed it to Justine.
‘Reads more like a love letter than a book review,’ said Justine.
‘Why’s it in his file?’
‘He’s either disclosed it in the interests of transparency or someone’s flagged it up as a little bit odd.’
Plates spun in Riley’s mind. ‘Why did he really stay in Liverpool?’ She heard herself speak the thought out loud.
Justine shrugged and Riley double-checked the name on the book review. D.L. Noone. ‘Did Noone work here at Liverpool at the time Professor Lawson was offered all that money?’
‘I can find out,’ replied Justine.
‘Maybe Professor Lawson couldn’t bear to leave that mesmeric intellect behind. Do me a favour, Justine. I desperately need to talk to anyone who knew or worked with Professor Lawson. Can you go through your records and find anyone still alive who fits that bill.’
Justine’s face clouded and Riley read the weather forecast: I’m busy and haven’t I done enough for you already?
‘Justine, I really appreciate the time and effort you’ve put into helping me so far, but I’m going to jump off the bridge here with a piece of confidential information. Can you promise me, and it is a matter of life and death, that you can keep this to yourself?’ She turned what was already public knowledge into the coordinates for the Holy Grail.
Justine nodded. ‘God, yes, of course...’ Her façade crumbled.
‘Within the last twenty-four hours, Leonard Lawson was murdered in his bedroom. We think he knew his killer. Who worked with Professor Leonard Lawson in 1986?’
‘I’ll begin searching immediately.’
Riley stood up. ‘Thank you.’
Outside the Hart Building the air was alive with particles of mist and mean needles of snow. Riley texted Clay and considered Leonard Lawson’s response to Professor Pink and the unnecessary lie that he had committed to paper.
Eve, we need to talk about Leonard Lawson. Gina
37
9.42 am
The hiss and click of a needle hitting the inner edge of a vinyl record was the only sound inside Gabriel Huddersfield’s flat. The corridor that divided the space was narrow, dark, the air infused with stale incense that stung the eyes.
Hiss. Click. Hiss. Click. Hiss. Click.
‘He’s not here,’ sai
d Clay to Hendricks, sensing the hollowness of an empty living space.
There were five doors. Two to the right, two to the left and one at the top of the corridor.
Clay opened the first door to the right. Boxes upon blue plastic boxes were stacked to the back wall and were three-quarters high to the ceiling.
Hendricks opened the door opposite. ‘Same story,’ he said. ‘The room’s not used as a room, just as storage space for boxes. So far, he’s Mr Neat and Tidy, but I suspect he can’t bear to throw anything away. He’s an organised hoarder.’
Clay sniffed the air, caught the edge of something strong and oily under the stale incense. ‘Paint?’ she said. ‘Do you get that?’
She tried the next door, found another neatly ordered collection of boxes and was hit with a much stronger aroma of paint. She turned on the ceiling light and saw art materials through the handle of a box at her eye level.
Hendricks opened the next door. A bathroom. ‘Come look at this, Eve.’
Clay stood in the doorway and felt her breath evaporate.
Mirrors ran from floor to ceiling and all the way across the ceiling itself, rectangles and squares pieced together to create a reflective whole. The shower curtain was pulled all the way round and Clay’s neck tingled when she saw the shape of a man standing behind the semi-transparent fabric. She edged closer. The form behind it was perfectly still.
She took a breath, waited for the dark shape to twitch and then explode into life, jumping at her, seizing her by the throat with hands and teeth.
Another step and the rattling of a pipe caused a light-headedness to transfer to goose bumps right across her skin.
