The Promised Land

by Barry Maitland

  ‘You didn’t ring her back?’

  ‘No. I get lots of unsolicited calls from authors wanting me to read their stuff. I assumed she’d try again, but she never did. Look, I’ve got to rush, earn a crust. Anything else?’

  Kathy let him go, thinking that he was the sort of man—condescending, full of himself—who would lie without hesitation if it suited him.

  When she got back to the office, she found an email from the psychologist, Alex Nicholson:

  Re: Hampstead homicides

  Hi Kathy,

  I hear it’s all over bar the formalities. Congratulations. Probably irrelevant now, but I attach my preliminary thoughts following our discussion on Monday and in the light of Pettigrew’s arrest. Please let me know if I can help further.

  All best,

  Alex

  Kathy scanned the attached report, most of it a repetition of salient facts. She focused on a list of points towards the end:

  • #1 and #2 had distinctive settings, on the public Heath, in the open air, and next to pools of water. By contrast #3 took place indoors in a private house. I think this could be very significant and needs further study.

  • There was a personal relationship between P and victim #3. Did he know the other two women?

  • Victimology: obvious similarities between #1 & #2 (ethnic, socio-economic, domicile), which are very different from #3.

  Yes, Kathy thought, all true, but it didn’t alter the overwhelming forensic evidence proving that all three murders were carried out by the same man, Charles Pettigrew.

  Brock rang her that evening. He told her he’d heard about her success from Bren Gurney, and was calling to congratulate her. He was interested in all the details, and Kathy thought it was a little sad, as if he couldn’t let go of the job, wanting to savour it by proxy. He asked if she had plans for Christmas, two months away, but she hadn’t thought about it, although she’d been vaguely aware of the first decorations appearing in shop windows. He said he hoped they could catch up.

  6

  Six weeks later, 14 December, towards one pm, Brock came into the shop to see if Suzanne wanted lunch. He saw her assistant Ginny showing a customer a case of Georgian silverware, and he went on through to the back office where he found Suzanne working on her books.

  ‘I was going to call you,’ she said. ‘A woman rang, wanting to speak to you.’

  ‘She rang here?’

  ‘Yes …’ Suzanne searched among her papers for the note. ‘Maggie Ferguson.’

  ‘The barrister?’

  ‘No idea. She didn’t say what it was about. I said I’d give you the message.’ She handed Brock the note with the number.

  He shrugged. ‘Lunch?’

  They had a sandwich at a café further down the high street while Brock searched the name on his phone. ‘She used to be a prosecutor in the CPS. Handled a number of our cases, very smart. I got to know her quite well. But then she went over to the dark side—went into practice as a criminal defence lawyer. The enemy. Last I heard she’d got silk. Yes, here we are … became a QC in 2010. Defended the Khalol brothers, remember them? Got the bastards off. So what the hell does she want?’

  ‘Ask her.’

  He growled doubtfully. ‘Maybe she’s appealing one of my old convictions. Best to steer clear.’

  He munched his sandwich in silence for a while, frowning. Eventually Suzanne said, ‘Go on, ask her. Can’t hurt. You can always say no.’

  He didn’t reply, got up to pay the bill. As they walked back he muttered, ‘Oh damn it,’ and tapped the number into his phone.

  ‘Brock, thanks so much for getting back to me. How are you?’ The barrister’s voice, confident, forceful, brought back memories of when she’d been part of the team.

  ‘Fine thanks, Maggie. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Can you spare me half an hour?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t get up to town much.’

  ‘I can be there by five. Battle, isn’t it?’

  ‘Today? Must be urgent. Not raking over one of my old cases, are you?’

  ‘No, nothing like that. I have a puzzle that I think will interest you. Don’t worry, there’s no conflict of interest. What’s your local?’

  ‘The Abbey Hotel.’

  ‘Who’s the brewer?’

  ‘Shepherd Neame.’

  ‘Excellent. Mine’s a half of Spitfire. See you at five.’

  Brock rang off and raised an eyebrow at Suzanne.

  ‘Pushy, is she?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘Well, you never know, might be interesting. Something to get your brain working again.’

  He arrived exactly at five and found her already there, seated in a quiet corner with two glasses on the table in front of her, a pint and a half-pint. They shook hands and she said, ‘I got the Spitfire Gold, hope that’s all right. I haven’t tried it before. Yours is the pint. I have to drive back.’

  Brock sat down. ‘You’re looking well, Maggie. Defence must be agreeing with you.’

  ‘I always wanted to be a barrister, Brock, a real lawyer fighting it out in open court. The CPS was terrific training.’

  ‘Our loss,’ he said, and picked up the glass of ale. ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Cheers.’ She took a sip. ‘I’m defending Charles Pettigrew.’

  ‘Are you indeed? I hope you haven’t come to talk to me about that.’

  She nodded. ‘I understand. It’s DCI Kolla’s case and you and she were close. But as I said on the phone, there’s no conflict of interest. The police case is overwhelming. There’s no doubt that Pettigrew killed those women. We won’t be challenging that.’

  ‘What’s your defence then?’

  ‘He refuses to plead guilty; seems to genuinely believe he didn’t do it. So the question of his sanity is bound to come up. Pettigrew won’t hear of an insanity defence but it’ll be raised, if not by us then by the judge or jury. And it will be an interesting one, because if he was suffering from a “disease of the mind” under the M’Naghten rules, then that disease is probably dissociative identity disorder, DID, which has rarely been accepted in British courts. This could be a landmark trial, Brock.’

  ‘DID,’ Brock said. ‘Jekyll and Hyde.’

  ‘Exactly. My belief is that he suffered some kind of breakdown in early October, after which he coexisted as two completely contradictory personalities—on the one hand a respectable West End publisher, and on the other a brutal serial murderer of women.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be simpler to assume that he’s lying through his teeth?’

  ‘I’d be very interested to hear your view on that after you’ve met and talked to him.’

  ‘But that’s not going to happen, Maggie.’

  ‘Just hear me out. There’s a subplot that doesn’t affect the facts of the case or the final outcome, but which is annoying both the police and myself because it’s unresolved. The first two murders are pretty clearly opportunistic random attacks on two women walking on Hampstead Heath who were unknown to Pettigrew, but the third was different. He says he knew the victim and admits he invited her to his house on the evening she was killed there. But we still don’t know who she was. Neither the police nor a private detective we’ve hired have been able to establish her identity. Pettigrew has given us a name and said she was an Indian national from Kolkata who came to London expressly to see him, but there’s no record of her ever having entered this country. We have her fingerprints and DNA, but no matches for them. We don’t even know what the poor woman looked like because the damage to her skull was too great to make a reliable reconstruction. We have a CCTV image from a camera in Hampstead of a woman wearing similar clothes, who may or may not have been her, but the face is too blurred to be useful, even with enhancement.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Pettigrew has an elaborate story about his dealings with the woman, which may be pure fantasy. The only pieces of evidence he’s been able to produce to support it is an entry in his diary and a single sheet of p
aper.’

  Ferguson reached into her briefcase and pulled out a thick file from which she retrieved a page and handed it to Brock. He studied it, frowning.

  THE PROMISED LAND

  A novel by Eric Blair

  The Strand Hotel, Rangoon, six in the evening …

  He read to the end, peered at the handwritten paragraph at the top, then set it down. ‘Eric Blair rings a bell.’

  ‘That was George Orwell’s real name. Pettigrew says this woman was trying to sell him a previously unknown novel by one of the greatest authors of the twentieth century.’

  ‘Sounds like a scam.’

  ‘Yes, that’s exactly what he thought at first, but then he wasn’t sure. He claims that she gave him other material that was very convincing, but he’s been unable to produce any of it. And he told no one else about it, neither the other people in his office nor anyone else.’

  ‘Intriguing.’

  ‘Yes, it is, isn’t it? If it’s a delusion, then it might have a bearing on his DID condition. But whatever it is, it’s a missing piece of the jigsaw, and neither I nor the police like going to trial with that.

  ‘So here’s my pitch, Brock. You are the most experienced and expert person I know at interviewing and assessing suspects’ stories. I don’t want you involved with the police investigation in any way. You would not be called as a witness, and you would not appear anywhere in the court documents. All you would do is sit and chat with Pettigrew, listen and assess. If you discovered some hopeless contradiction in his account that might persuade him that his brain really has been playing tricks, that might be useful to me in persuading him to let me prepare an insanity defence. But that’s not the main thing. I just want to know that there isn’t some nasty surprise lurking in there that might upset the apple cart later on.’

  ‘I’m not a private detective, Maggie.’

  ‘No, I’ve got one of those on hand who can follow up any leads you give me. You would be paid on a time basis at top consultants’ rates, and you would give me a report for my eyes only.’

  Brock didn’t reply. He picked up his pint and took a slow drink.

  ‘I think the best thing to help you decide,’ Ferguson said, ‘would be for you to have a preliminary chat with Pettigrew, without commitment, just to get a feel for the man.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘HMP Belmarsh.’

  ‘And Kathy wouldn’t know about this?’

  ‘Absolutely not. Only you and me.’

  ‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘A preliminary chat, no commitment.’

  In her team’s suite in the Box, Kathy finished the Monday morning briefing with a feeling of quiet satisfaction. The mood of these meetings had relaxed noticeably over the past weeks, the success of the Heath murders investigation lifting their confidence in themselves and in her, and she now felt securely in command. She also knew them all individually much better; their quirks, their private lives, their nicknames—‘Wiss’ (Wow I’m So Sexy) for carefully groomed Andy Alfarsi, and ‘Pop’ for Peter Sidonis, her number two, father of many children, who had emerged as a strongly supportive element in the group. Self-possessed and softly spoken, he reminded her of Bren Gurney, another family man, with whom she’d worked for so long in Brock’s team. And then there was the other woman on the team, DS Judy Birch. Her reports were always the most meticulous, her follow-ups the most rigorous, but she was hard to read, reserved and rarely smiled. She was also a taekwondo black belt, fourth dan. Kathy had seen the video clips of bricks and slabs of timber being shattered by Judy’s toes.

  She returned to her office to type up her comments on the defence statement from Pettigrew’s lawyers, passed on to her by Virginia Ashe from the Crown Prosecution Service with the note, Is this a sad concoction of bluster and desperation or what? And it was true—the matters of fact on which the accused takes issue with the prosecution were trivial, the evidence in support of an alibi practically non-existent. Kathy would almost have felt sorry for Maggie Ferguson if she hadn’t suffered under her cross-examination in the Crown Court several times before.

  She looked up at the picture of Charles Pettigrew tacked to the pinboard on the wall, feeling the familiar sense of revulsion at the bland, vaguely bemused mask behind which lurked the poisoned mind of the killer. Others were astonished at the contrast between the physical savagery of the murders and the mild gentlemanly appearance of the accused, but not Kathy. She’d seen it many times before. Didn’t they remember the benign face of Dr Harold Shipman, who had killed at least two hundred and eighteen patients? If there was one thing she’d learned after dozens of homicide investigations, it was that murderers looked just like everyone else, and often hid behind a benevolent manner.

  7

  ‘I’m not sure this is a good idea.’ Suzanne straightened Brock’s tie, checked his suit. It was the first time he’d worn either in months.

  ‘You’re probably right. One meeting. If I don’t like the smell of it, that’s that.’

  ‘She’s a defence barrister, David. You know what they’re like. And it’s Kathy’s big case, for goodness’ sake.’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  She drove him to the station for the train to London Bridge, where Maggie Ferguson was waiting to collect him for the twenty-minute drive out to Belmarsh prison. Heading east, parallel to the river, through Greenwich and Woolwich in pouring rain, they came to Thamesmead. As they turned in from the highway, with Woolwich Crown Court over to the right and Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh up ahead, Brock felt a sense of apprehension. There it lay, dull brown and as discouraging as a bureaucrat’s audit in the streaming rain. What was he doing coming back here, impersonating a real detective? He hoped he wouldn’t meet anyone who’d recognise him.

  Maggie led the way into reception and through the security checks to one of the interview rooms set aside for lawyers’ meetings with clients. As they waited she said, ‘I’ll introduce you to him, then leave you to it. I just want you to have the chance to listen to him and form your own opinion.’

  They got to their feet as Pettigrew was brought in.

  ‘Hello, Charles,’ Maggie said, sounding unnaturally cheery, as one might for a hospital patient. Which was how he looked, Brock thought—pale, withdrawn and passive.

  ‘This is David Brock, the famous Scotland Yard detective we discussed. Everyone just calls him Brock for some reason.’ She smiled encouragingly.

  He nodded, offered his hand. ‘Pettigrew.’

  There’s an intelligent brain in there, Brock thought, looking at the eyes studying him. He shook the hand, which was limp, offering no resistance.

  ‘I’m going to leave you to talk with Brock, Charles. You can be completely frank with him.’

  The door closed behind Maggie, and Pettigrew sank into a chair, regarding Brock with a weary expression. ‘So … Brock. I’m very glad that you were willing to come to see me. I have been interviewed by a great many people recently, but none of them seem interested in hearing the truth. What would you like to know?’

  ‘I’d like to hear about your dealings with Shari Mitra. From your first contact with her.’

  ‘Ah, yes … therein lies the mystery.’

  He spoke softly, rather slowly, and Brock had a sense of all his reactions, his speech, his movements, having slowed down as if to give him time to prepare for any new shock.

  ‘Friday, the sixteenth of October, I left my office in Soho and returned home as usual. There was a hand-delivered A4 envelope waiting in my letterbox.’ He sounded exhausted to be going over it all again. ‘I opened it and found the note from Shari and the accompanying photocopied page. Have you seen those?’

  ‘Yes,’ Brock said. ‘Maggie showed me. What was your reaction?’

  ‘Oh … I was mildly intrigued, I suppose.’

  ‘You didn’t take it seriously?’

  ‘Not at first. I certainly spent some time thinking about it, and after a bit I decided I would have to take a closer look. Eric Bl
air was George Orwell, of course—you know that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes, well, it so happened that when I read that page I was sitting in an armchair that George Orwell had once sat in. My grandfather, who founded Golden Press, was a friend of his in the thirties when Orwell was living in Hampstead—in Pond Street, near the station, then in Parliament Hill, near our house. So, yes, certainly it got my attention.’

  ‘Did you think it might be a forgery?’

  ‘Yes, of course. But then I thought about the date on the note at the top of the sheet, the twelfth of August 1949, right towards the end of Orwell’s life, just five months before he died. He was quite ill at that point, in a clinic in the Cotswolds—at Cranham, as it says in the note—and we know that he did have ideas at that time for a new book about Burma that never transpired. It seemed to me conceivable that he might have typed a page or two of an idea for a novel called The Promised Land, which I’d never heard of. The style seemed right, and the concept of a novel on the same theme as Thomas More’s famous book Utopia and, by the sound of it, with a similar beginning—a man meets a traveller from a far country who tells of an idealistic community in the wilderness—yes, I could imagine Orwell playing with an idea like that. So I thought it might possibly be authentic, a literary curiosity that had got lost along the way.’

  Pettigrew had become more animated now, leaning forward across the table between them, nodding at each point he made.

  Brock asked, ‘Did the name Amar Dasgupta mean anything to you?’

  ‘No, not a thing. I checked a biography of Orwell I had and I couldn’t find any mention of him.’

  ‘What about GOP? What was that?’

  ‘Yes, that was quite interesting. In 1947, for tax reasons, Orwell set up a company, George Orwell Productions Ltd—GOP—to own the copyright on his work and receive his royalties. So it seemed that here he was deliberately excluding this new novel from that arrangement, and intended writing it under his own name, Eric Blair, rather than George Orwell, so that he could give the copyright to Amar Dasgupta. That was rather intriguing. I wondered why he would have done such a thing.’