by Mark Roberts
‘Prepare yourself,’ said Higson.
Clay slipped on a pair of latex gloves.
‘Do you remember who brought it here?’ asked Clay.
‘Yes, a sly shit in a white van. Laughing Gas, I named him. Brought it here this morning before we opened so I couldn’t let him on site.’
‘Licence plate?’
‘Sorry, didn’t notice it.’
‘But you’ve got CCTV?’
Higson was quiet for a moment. ‘Oh, yes we do.’
‘Can you describe him?’
Clay looked at the small white freezer, the unlikeliest coffin, then turned to the site manager.
‘Yes, but... Long face. Plain blue baseball cap. Ray-Bans over the eyes.’
‘You’d recognise him if you saw him again?’
‘Yes. If he was wearing the same disguise.’
‘Did he speak to you?’
‘Very little. No accent. He said excuse me, but it sounded like fuck off, pardon my French.’
‘French pardoned. How did he strike you?’
‘He spooked me. He had an aura. If I don’t get what I want, I’ll put you in hospital or worse. I told him to leave it outside. I carried it in myself.’
On her iPhone, she pulled up the picture of Gabriel Huddersfield’s face and asked, ‘Could this be him?’
Higson looked at the photo. ‘No, that’s not him.’
Clay stooped, leaned into the car and looked at the graffiti of smears and grease marks on the surface of the freezer. She set her iPhone to camera.
She took the deepest breath and, slowly, opened the door of the freezer.
‘OK!’ she said to herself as she released her breath slowly, then inhaled again.
She counted three separate body parts she guessed were from the same victim and took a succession of pictures, of the three together and each of them separately.
The head was wrapped in a length of rough grey cloth; an old man’s face poked out. The eyelids were stitched to the skin above the sockets to keep the eyes wide open. His eyes looked directly at Clay with a layer of surprise under the glaze of death. Underneath the head were two feet, one flat down on the bottom of the freezer, the other with its toes down but its heel raised against the freezer wall.
A long red feather and a short dark feather sat in a pool of pink water on the bottom of the freezer. The defrosted flesh was wilting, drips rippling the surface of the pool.
‘It’s him again,’ Clay said. She turned to the site manager. ‘David!’ Higson dragged his gaze away from the sky and looked back down at Clay. ‘Where’s your nearest electrical socket?’ She shut the back door, sat in the driver’s seat.
‘The office over there.’
Clay turned on the ignition and drove as close to the office door as possible. She carried the freezer, tilted at an angle, into the hut, and noticed that the head and feet didn’t shift on the short journey from the Audi to the plug socket.
‘Get it away from me!’ the Blonde Conundrum screamed as she limped to the door, followed by her father.
Clay placed the freezer on a small wooden table and thrust the plug into the socket. As a green light came on and the freezer whirred into life, she sighed and speed-dialled DS Karl Stone. After two rings, he picked up.
‘What are you doing, Karl?’
‘I’m in Leonard Lawson’s study, on my laptop just looking up Gabriel Huddersfield on the national police computer—’
‘Can I stop you there, please. I’m at the tip on Otterspool Promenade. We’ve got another victim, another old man. They’ve left the head and the feet inside a freezer. There’s no body. But they’ve staged it like a sick joke. A human being with no body, just a head positioned on a pair of feet, walking. It’s them, it’s got to be.’ Clay fell silent, weighed up the big picture. ‘They’ve had these body parts for God knows how long, frozen to preserve them.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
In spite of the cold, she felt her face flush, the onset of a rise in blood pressure. ‘I want you to come here.’ She looked into the dead man’s eyes. No peace for you, she thought. Eternal wakefulness, that’s what they wished on you. ‘I want you to pull together everything we’ve got.’ She looked at the CCTV camera pointing at the entrance and exit and smiled. ‘Tell Barney Cole you’ll email him the CCTV footage from the tip. We could have our white-van psycho within hours.’
Alone in the office, she looked at the four-screen colour monitor with its crystal-clear view of the front entrance and texted images of the head and feet in the freezer to Hendricks, Riley, Stone and Cole.
Just outside the office, the site manager’s back was turned.
‘Hey, David!’ He didn’t move a muscle. ‘Mr Higson!’ The sound of his sniffs and broken breathing worried her. He turned.
‘I’m sorry.’ His voice wobbled. ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’
42
10.12 am
Five minutes on the telephone was all it took for DS Bill Hendricks to learn that Gabriel Huddersfield was not in the custody of any police station on Merseyside or in the care of any NHS facility.
And with Sefton Park crawling with police officers, Hendricks grew increasingly convinced that the one place Huddersfield wouldn’t be was his regular haunt.
He pulled his car over and took out his phone. He called up the image of The Last Judgment that Huddersfield had painted on to the wall of his flat, and then the photo Clay had sent of the body parts in the freezer at the municipal tip.
He returned to the imitation of the Bosch painting and focused in on the images at the bottom of the central panel. He stopped at the naked man, suspended from a pole just as Leonard Lawson had been, and moved left a little. Beneath the suspended man’s head a foot sat flat on the earth and behind this foot a disembodied head, eyes open, looked up at the suspended man’s face; the head was wrapped in a grey blanket with feathers coming from the back and, underneath, a heel, half on, half off the ground.
Hendricks called Clay, but her line was busy. He texted her instead: Eve, the body parts in the freezer correspond to another detail in Bosch’s The Last Judgment. The head on the feet marching off to hell just behind the Leonard Lawson figure. Check it out. Bill
As he typed, the strongest probability came into Hendricks’s mind. He sent the text and fired his car into life.
Why? he wondered. Why would Huddersfield and his accomplice kill like this? The words ‘religious conviction’ flashed through his mind.
‘They’re convinced that they are right and that God’s on their side.’ He spoke to himself, felt an enlightened smile on his face. The smile disappeared as quickly as it had formed. What did you do, Professor Lawson, to deserve this level of earthly punishment and eternal damnation?
Religious conviction? Hendricks pulled away from the kerb.
If I was Gabriel Huddersfield, where would I go now?
Hendricks picked up speed as he followed the curve of Sefton Park and headed for the nearest exit leading to the edges of Liverpool city centre.
43
10.14 am
For once, The Sanctuary was completely quiet.
‘Where been?’ Abey’s voice leaked from his room on to the landing, where Adam Miller was bleeding air from the radiators.
‘I’ve been to the kitchen department of John Lewis to buy a fucking big knife to skin you alive, you fucking smiling cretin.’ Adam Miller spoke quietly.
There was a pause.
‘Ken, that you?’
Hot water seeped out of the radiator. Adam sealed off the valve. Danielle was out. Gideon was playing games downstairs with the quarter wits.
‘That you, Ken?’
Once, Adam had heard Abey conduct a full-blown conversation with his imaginary friend. He pitched his voice up a few octaves into baby-speak, mimicking the voice he imagined filled Abey’s head.
‘Yeah, it’s me. Ken.’ He walked to Abey’s door, looked through the crack and saw Abey sitting on the edge
of his bed, back to the door, staring out of the window.
‘What just say, Ken? No hear.’
‘I said, don’t move.’ He pushed the door open a little wider, making the crack bigger and Abey fully visible. Abey’s head turned slowly. ‘Uh uh. No. Be a statue.’
Abey froze. ‘Like that?’
‘Just like that, Abey.’
‘I hear you. Outside. Not inside. My head. Just for once.’
‘That’s right, Abey. I was tired of living inside your head, so now I’ve come to live in The Sanctuary. Won’t that be fun?’
‘Yes. But?’
‘But what, Abey?’
‘But... will others... hear you?’
‘No. Only you, Abey.’
‘You want... come in...?’
‘Not now. Later maybe.’
‘But?’
‘But what, Abey?’
‘But... will others see Ken?’
‘Uh uh. No one can see Ken. I said, don’t move.’ Adam’s nerves jangled and his heart picked up pace. ‘Gotta be a good, good boy, Abey.’
‘I be good.’
‘Gotta do what Ken tells you.’
‘Oh what Ken says, I do.’
‘Stand up, Abey!’ Abey stood up. ‘Stand still. Don’t turn around!’ He stood perfectly still. ‘What can you see, Abey?’
‘Window.’
Pleasure and power dried Adam’s mouth and his gut squirmed with pleasure.
‘Walk to the window.’ Abey walked to the window. ‘Lick the glass, Abey!’
‘Why, Ken?’
‘No, Abey, never ask why. If you ask why... why... I’ll have to hurt you.’
‘No ask why! Abey no ask why!’
‘Lick the fucking window, Abey!’ Abey pressed his face to the glass and licked the window. ‘You can stop now!’ Abey stopped, pulled back from the glass. ‘That was fun!’ said Adam. ‘Wasn’t it?’ Abey said nothing. ‘Don’t want to hurt you. That was fun. Wasn’t it?’
‘That was fun.’
‘Ha ha ha, you’re not laughing, Abey...’
‘Ha ha ha, Abey laugh... Abey good boy... Do Ken say...’
‘Sit down on the bed, Abey.’ Abey sat back down. ‘Put your hands on your head.’ Abey placed one hand over the other on his skull. ‘Hold your hands in the air. Higher, higher, higher... Keep it like that.’
Adam watched time passing with the second hand of his watch. After half a minute, Abey said, ‘Ow, ow...’
‘Is it hurting you, Abey?’
‘Abey arms hurting, Ken. Be nice, Ken. Please. Sore now.’
Downstairs, a door opened and Gideon’s voice drifted up the stairs.
‘OK, you can put your arms down now, Abey.’ Abey’s arms dropped. ‘Did that hurt?’
‘Ouch!’
‘That’s nothing to what Ken can do to you. Ken could cut your arms off with the axe in Adam’s shed. If you don’t do what Ken says. Are you going to do exactly what Ken says?’
‘Exactly what Ken says, I do.’
‘Listen, Abey. You’ve got to keep a big secret. No tell anyone Ken has come to live in The Sanctuary. Ken is a secret. Say it. I promise...’
‘I promise.’
‘Listen. Always keep Ken a secret. If you tell anyone at all, Ken will come into your room and stop you breathing. You be as dead as the blackbird you buried in the garden.’
Gideon’s voice came closer to the stairs.
‘Hey, I’ve gotta go now. I gotta sharpen that axe in Adam’s shed. Chop chop. Are you happy Ken’s come to live in The Sanctuary?’
‘Yes, Ken.’
Gideon climbed the stairs.
Moving along the landing to the next radiator to be bled, Adam, back turned to Abey’s door, glanced over his shoulder at Gideon and said, ‘What?’
44
10.18 am
‘The site manager didn’t turn the CCTV on until nine o’clock when the tip opened.’ Stone listened to Clay’s bad news and wanted to swear. ‘I’ve sent some constables on a fishing expedition for CCTV footage from here up to Aigburth Vale and down Riverside Drive into the Albert Dock.’
Sitting on a plastic chair in the office of the municipal tip, Stone looked closely at the surface of the freezer. It was covered in black fingerprint dust. Scientific Support had already lifted all the full and partial prints. He opened the freezer door, looked inside, closed the door again and grimaced at Clay.
He stood up. ‘Another old man. It figures.’
‘Another old man?’
‘The Gospel of Gabriel Huddersfield according to Saint Police National Computer and Blessed Fingerprint Database IDENT1.’
Stone moved a step back, held his hands against the radiator, gathered his thoughts.
‘Huddersfield’s one sick individual. Fourteen years old, he gets done for ABH. Sixteen years old, GBH. Twenty years old, manslaughter. The Crown Prosecution Service couldn’t make murder stick, so he was tried for manslaughter and sentenced to ten years in Strangeways. I phoned them. They were helpful. He found Jesus in jail and went from being a prison warder’s nightmare to being a model prisoner, taking his meds, reading the Bible, hanging round the chapel, praying for everyone 24/7 and writing long letters of apology to all his victims and their families. Then he started having visions and hearing voices, and gentle Jesus meek and mild morphs into this foul-tempered Old Testament prophet of doom and damnation. But he didn’t do anything wrong other than shout at the walls of his cell. Aged twenty-four he was on the receiving end of a knife attack by another prisoner. He called the guy’s wife the whore of Babylon. He was released on parole eight years ago after serving seven and a half years. He’s now thirty-five going on thirty-six years old and since he was released from jail he’s only been on warnings for obstructing the highway and being a pain in the arse in public places.’
‘Psychiatric diagnosis?’ asked Clay.
‘Paranoid schizophrenia. Hold on to your hat and get this. Huddersfield’s ABH victim when he was fourteen, Arthur Bailey, lived in the same street as Gabriel in Walton. Bailey was seventy-two years of age. GBH aged sixteen on Simon Taylor, a complete stranger to Gabriel, in the wrong place at the wrong time on Utting Avenue. How old was Mr Taylor, Eve?’
‘Eighty-five...’ She sighed.
‘Hey, well done. He was actually eighty-six.’
‘Was there any reason why he’d targeted these two old men?’
‘No. In spite of his tender years and mounting mental-health issues, he was tighter than a sphinx’s arsehole. The manslaughter victim was a seventy-eight-year-old man. Gabe’s got it in for old men in a major way.’
‘Thank you, Karl, that’s great work.’
‘Get this. The print on the glass from the back door of Leonard Lawson’s house is a match for Gabriel Huddersfield. Context and forensics, game, set and match.’
Clay’s mind switched to the victim. Hungry to build a bridge between Lawson and Huddersfield, she asked, ‘Did you and Bill manage to look at the manuscript?’
‘Psamtik I. The manuscript itself is all about what’s known as the Forbidden Experiment. Depriving children of language. Two examples, one ancient, one modern. But the thing that’s maddening and the thing that’s probably going to give us some daylight isn’t there. There are twelve pages missing and they’re referred to as the English Experiment. And it was those twelve pages I was looking for when you called me.’
‘Did Lawson let anything personal slip in his writing?’
‘Based on his unpublished manuscript, it seems he thought it was a good thing to condemn unwanted babies to silence and lasting unhappiness.’
‘Did he?’ She immediately pictured her son Philip sitting in a dark room having had no social contact, no love, no language, no touch, no light, no games, no fun, no hope. The light came on and his face twisted as an animalistic groan emerged from his mouth. He rocked back and forth...
She felt the first tug of tears. Pull yourself together, she commanded herself, in the same voice she use
d to remind herself that profound antagonism towards the victim was not helpful.
‘Anything else on Leonard Lawson?’
‘The English Experiment. Leonard was in awe of whoever ran it, if it was ever run. Reading between the lines, he had a crush on him. We need those pages, Eve. But Lawson’s study... Book after book! An expression containing the words sand and desert springs to mind. I think Leonard Lawson was a bad guy.’
His features darkened and she sensed a switch flicking in his mind. ‘What is it, Karl?’
‘This is the phone call we got just as we finished reading the manuscript.’ He took out his phone. ‘Listen to this.’ He pressed play on the recording of the call to Leonard Lawson’s landline and when the caller hung up, Clay repeated, ‘I am the Angel of Destruction. With the First Born, I serve Death. There’s a body in the garden. Whose body? Which garden?’
Mason and Price dug up the flags in Leonard Lawson’s back yard and there was absolutely no sign of anything buried there.
A body. A garden. The words sounded over and over inside Clay’s head. Specific words, in the voice of the Angel of Destruction, that mocked her as they filtered into her subconscious. Another set of wheels began to turn.
45
10.25 am
‘Where are you, Bill?’ asked Clay, shivering as she held her phone in one hand and a mug of tea in the other.
‘Walking towards the Catholic Cathedral, looking for Huddersfield.’
She recalled the old cafe in the basement of the Catholic Cathedral in the early 1980s, the cheese sandwiches shared with Sister Philomena: white bread with a slab of butter on each slice and a thick layer of red cheese. ‘Eve, you do know these are the sandwiches they have for lunch in heaven...’ The memory of Sister Philomena brought a smile to her face.
‘Good thinking. Maybe Huddersfield’s gone there on a guilt trip. Have you got the pictures I sent you of the victim’s head and feet?’
‘I’m looking at them right now. Did you get my text?’
‘Yes,’ replied Clay. ‘The head-footer is the atrocity alongside the Leonard Lawson figure in Bosch’s The Last Judgment.’
