by Mark Furness
Later, while Kate and Alice sat with Hugo in the cubicle, I spoke with the doctor and a police officer in a private room. The doctor said preliminary blood tests, and Hugo’s description, indicated it was chloroform, possibly home-made with bleach and ethanol, that had rendered him unconscious.
With my assistance, Hugo gave a statement to the police officer. The officer said it was not an unusual crime for young people to be lured by predators posing with disguises on the internet. The officer warned me that pictures of Hugo may end up on the internet, but more likely on a private, members-only network on the dark web where paedophiles cloaked themselves. We took Hugo home around midnight.
After everyone else was in their rooms, I lay on my bed and read the note that had been pinned to Hugo’s jacket: Now you are hurting your children. They had me now. It was time to pack it in; the stakes were too high. I would take the note to the police in the morning. I’d try to explain what I thought it meant. I drifted into half-sleep thinking up my lines. I didn’t get much time to work on them. My phone whistled. It was 1:12am.
The screen read: No caller ID, but I answered anyway. I was sick of fucking around.
“Mr Hart?” It was a female voice.
“Yes.”
“Come out to your balcony,” she said. “Stay on your phone.” Her accent sounded transatlantic, an American-Irish salad.
The sky was clear on the roof terrace.
“I’m waving at you,” she said. I saw a dark, slender figure, wearing a hooded top, leaning against the steel tube railing across the road on the beachside of Marine Parade. “Come down.”
“Why?”
“We need to discuss something.”
“Give me a couple of minutes.”
I found a sock in my bedroom drawer, lifted my overcoat off a chair and walked downstairs to the kitchen. I used scissors to cut the toe-end away from the sock and pulled it over my left forearm, making it into a tight sleeve. I tucked a long-bladed butcher’s knife into the sock, wedging it between the fabric and the skin on top of my forearm. I put my coat on and tested that I could reach inside to the knife’s grip with my right hand. I shook my arm and the knife stayed in place. I stepped silently into the hallway and used the internal stairs to pad down to the street.
She was standing directly across the parade on the footpath at the top of a set of concrete stairs which I knew led down, about ten metres, to another road along the edge of the pebble stone beach. As I crossed the road under the yellow glare of the streetlights, she disappeared down the stairs. I stopped when I reached the spot where she had been. I looked back, up at the place where Alice and Hugo were sleeping. Had I been lured away to ease their abduction, or worse? My heart clattered like a boxer’s smacked speed bag. When it settled a little, I followed her down the steps.
At the bottom, she was standing in shadow, her back against the high retaining wall, her hood on, her jacket zipped up to the throat. I scanned the roadway for others. No-one I could see. I wondered how quickly I could rip the knife from my sock and plunge it into her throat. I should have phoned the police but I wanted to hurt someone else for a change - badly.
I stood close by the wall, a few metres from her, and we faced each other. My eyes adjusted to the light. A dark roll-neck sweater inside her hoodie was unfurled so that it covered her mouth and nose to just below her eyes. She wore dark gloves; I guessed latex. I thought of Claire’s attackers in Sydney, and the rose-scented perfume she’d detected in her abductors’ car. All I smelled now was stale fish-and-chip grease and the sea.
“Your phone,” she said. “Show it to me.”
She had a similar frame to the young woman at the Dorchester.
“I didn’t bring it,” I said. My phone was in my coat pocket with its voice recorder running. I’d switched it on coming down the stairs.
“Dee-ya thank I’m a stoopid cont?”
She’d overcooked the Irish brogue. Her dialogue coach would not be impressed. How many tongues was she trained in, I wondered.
I reached into my sleeve with my right hand and locked my fingers on the knife’s handle. I eyed the soft spot under her windpipe, just above the breastplate. How I wanted to stab in there.
She wheeled the brogue back. “Take the battery out and put the pieces on the footpath. I want a private conversation.”
I did what she said. She shuffled close to me, only an arm’s length away, looking down long enough to kick my battery and handset further apart. I squeezed my knife handle, sizing up the back of her neck and spine. She straightened and looked me in the eyes. Hers were elusive under the shadow of her hoodie.
“I have an offer to deliver,” she said.
“From whom?”
“You are upsetting people, Mr Hart, but you can make your troubles go away.”
“How is that?”
She pulled an A4 envelope from inside her jacket, opened the flap and extracted a sheet of paper. She approached me and shone a penlight on the page. She was vulnerable now; both her hands were full. Cocky bitch.
It took me a few seconds to focus. It was a property title: a black-and-white photocopy. It carried an address in a street behind the Halliday’s flat. I read the owner’s name: Edgar Bertram Hart.
“Can we cut the riddles?”
“If you leave well enough alone, Mr Hart, and you answer my calls and do what I say, this document will become real. Just a start. And you and your children will live long and prosperous lives.”
“If not?”
“You’ve seen our capability statements, Mr Hart.”
“So under your plan, I live the rest of my life drinking beer on this beach. Is that it?”
I fingered the knife handle. The beachfront was mostly dark. The only witnesses would be a handful of seagulls that were scrapping over something rotten on the shoreline.
“Oh no, Mr Hart, we want you to stay in your job. Contrary to what you’ve been telling people, we didn’t try to kill you in the Dorchester. You’re more use to us alive; though to be honest, we’re not that fussed. We want you back in the good books with your employer so you can assist your colleagues with fresh logic.”
“What sort of logic?”
“I believe the term red herring is derived from the practice of drawing a strongly scented fish across the trail of hunting dogs to confuse and prevent them from catching a fox. You can manage that, I’m sure. There are millions of other stories you can chase, aren’t there? We can all win.”
“How do I get my job back?”
“You’re a smart man, and you might find that people withdraw complaints that are currently with the police, here and back in your homeland.”
“I need to think this through. I have a funeral.”
“You’re clock is ticking. I’d say it’s not far off midnight before your funeral. Imagine the state of your children then. I’ll be in touch.”
She tucked the promissory property document under her jumper and jogged up the steps like she was weightless. I put my phone back together.
I was breathless by the time I reached the front door of the Halliday’s apartment. I hurried upstairs and looked in on each of Hugo, Alice and Kate. I made sure I heard them breathing before I backed out of their rooms.
I shed my clothes like dead skin beside my bed, looked in the mirror and had a thought: how did she know I’d been telling people they tried to kill me? It wouldn’t take a genius to guess I would say that, but she said it with such confidence, like she was a fly on my walls.
Exhaustion made me question whether I’d actually been across to the beach a few minutes ago, or dreamed it. I drank a glass of water, slipped naked under the doona and curled up with the blurred memories of days of madness, locking my hand on the knife handle under my pillow.
At about 5am my luck changed.
XXVI
I RECOGNISED the +61 dial code from Australia and the phone number of the Tangleton Hotel flashing on my screen.
“Garsy, mate,” said Hughie Jones. “There’s been a
n accident at Moon Hill. Terrible accident. I’m sorry but you need to know. Cops’ll be callin’ ya. I’ve told ‘em you’re in Pommyland.”
“What sort of accident?”
Hughie unloaded, sounding like he’d put a few beers under his belt: “Some stupid prick’s been shot. Dozy bugger was walkin’ round wearin’ your kangaroo mask. Can you fuckin’ believe it?”
My heart faltered. Not Tania and Steve Watson playing Buck and the Bird of Paradise?
“Who was it?” I said.
“Local boys. Lovely boys. They’re in terrible shock. They’ve killed a bloke, fired a slug as big as my thumbnail from a .300 Magnum rifle. It landed smack between his eyes.”
“I don’t mean the shooters, mate. Who was the dead bloke?”
“No-one knew him here. Cops are investigatin’. They found a driver’s licence in his wallet. Funny thing, mate, he was from South Africa; that’s what the boys said. Address on his driver’s licence was in Johannesburg. What the fuck’s he doin’ wanderin’ around the bush at sundown with a kangaroo hat on his fuckin’ head? That’s askin’ to get hit.”
“Very strange,” I said. I crossed my fingers. “Any other ID on him?”
“The mad prick had a knife strapped to his chest and Glock 23 tucked in his belt. It was like he’d turned up for a shootout.”
I whistled down the phone.
“And it gets weirder,” said Hughie. “They found some Australian bloke’s passport in the dead feller’s glove box. I heard the coppers talkin’ on their car radio. The passport matched with another feller who was murdered out at Mascot a couple of weeks ago.”
“Name?” I said.
“Dunno. All our heads were spinnin’ so I didn’t catch it.”
“You’re heaven sent, Hughie. Did you know that?”
“That’s what me old mum used t’ say, mate. But you got a funny idea of good news. Sounds like ya need some shut-eye.”
It sounded like Oscar “Silver Dog” Petersen had collected the head shot. What had he been doing out there, and carrying Bruce Tyson’s passport, by the sound of it? My best guess was that he was going to fit me up for Tyson’s murder by planting evidence. That passport in one of my cabins would have been fun to explain to the cops. Petersen was an A-class weirdo, but why would he roam around the bush in my Buck mask? It didn’t matter now. East would be under fresh and rare pressure, trying to explain the actions of his unorthodox chauffer to the homicide squad.
This development would also have to rattle John K Baker and Ms Hoodie from the beach, when they found out. I’d let the news filter through to them via their own network, although that network now appeared out of sync. What was the point of trying to turn me into one of them in the UK while Petersen was trying to nudge me of a cliff in Australia? The slick, professional circus act I’d experienced to date had dropped one of their simultaneously spinning plates.
I was so tired that the bedroom walls and ceiling seemed to be warping when I lay down, like I was trapped in a living Salvador Dali painting. But no more Valium, nor booze; I needed to consider my response to Ms Hoodie’s recruitment offer with a clear head. I took Hughie Jones’ advice for moments like this and headed for the kitchen to make a cup of hot, milky tea.
XXVII
I WAS making vegemite toast and my third cup of tea when Kate stepped through the kitchen door and handed me a long, thin, brown-paper-wrapped parcel that simply had ‘Gar’ handwritten on it in black felt pen. Kate had found it on the street-side doorstep when she went out for her morning walk. I opened it. It had to be Ms Hoodie who had sent me the backscratcher. It had a telescoping handle and a small, metal chook’s foot on the end of it. A note inside read: “You scratch mine and I’ll...”
After my breakfast, and checking that Hugo and Alice were still asleep, I went for a stroll past some flats in St George’s Street behind the Halliday’s flat and browsed the real estate agents’ windows. I calculated that the pile of bricks and mortar Ms Hoodie said could be mine was worth about three hundred thousand pounds sterling, or about double that in Australian dollars at current exchange rates.
I carried in my pocket the note that was pinned to Hugo’s jacket last night and I weighed the merit of taking it to the police station and explaining how I believed it was linked to my own assault in London. But then, I figured, the Brighton coppers would have to call their London colleagues and Brighton would discover I wasn’t believed about the Dorchester Hotel, and that I was facing narcotics possession charges to boot. My legal troubles in Sydney may also arise. None of that would help Hugo. Jack was sick of me. I needed Tom Steele’s counsel.
I found a café, and seated with a bucket-sized cup of the milky brew the English call a latte, I dialled Australia. Steele’s voice was barely audible inside a cocktail of chatter and thumping music. He walked outside wherever he was. I briefed him on my Dorchester disaster, Hugo’s abduction, and the 1am job and property offer from Ms Hoodie.
“I would have disembowelled her,” he said.
“It crossed my mind.”
“Then again,” he said. “I could use a holiday flat.”
Someone brought Steele’s drink to him in the street, a woman by the sound of it.
“Mm,” he said, running on silent for a few seconds. I guessed he was enjoying the beer or the woman’s lips, maybe both at once. “I’ve now heard,” he resumed, “that Bart Hills was with a woman the night he OD’d. Pretty face, sporty type. Not dark haired though like your little beauty at the Dorch. A blond. People use dye of course, or wigs.”
I told Steele about the hunting accident at Moon Hill. He laughed and it was infectious. When we stopped, he promised to make inquiries of his police sources for more details about Moon Hill.
“Nature abhors a vacuum,” he said. “You get rid of one piece of shit, like at Moon Hill, and another just fills your empty rectum.”
“I love the way you cheer me up,” I said.
“Picking all the hairs off your predicament,” said Steele, “there’s a central conclusion, isn’t there? You need to persuade Jack to give you your job back and turn serious lights on this fucking cockroach nest. You can’t sit out there alone, and if you try to walk away now, they’ll fuck you anyway because you have special knowledge, my friend. You may have heard of the practice of tidying up loose ends. You are, of course, a loose end. As well as a loose cannon. But I rave on - what’s your plan?”
“Malcolm’s funeral first.”
“Video-call me into the wake. I’ll pass on the church service,” said Steele. “In the meantime, I shall toast the budgie where I stand.”
Steele only met Malcolm once. It was love at first sight on a party session that lasted until dawn. Steele immediately nicknamed Malcolm ‘the budgie’ after the small, colourful and excitable Australian bush parrot.
I walked back to Kate’s. There wasn’t much I could do for Malcolm today, apart from take my only suit to the dry cleaner for a super-fast clean to remove the scars of my OD so I could wear it to the big show tomorrow. Trevor, Ryan and Kate were buzzing around the flat organising things when I got back. There would be a wake on the rooftop terrace. Kate had tucked Alice under her wing to help.
I weighed up phoning Jack, to brief him on Ms Hoodie’s job offer and Silver Dog’s seeming demise, but deferred those plans when Hugo emerged from his room. I didn’t have any better ideas for him than a walk along the beach. Hugo threw me off balance by agreeing. We threw pebbles into the sea instead of talking. For the first time in a long while he didn’t have those earphones clamped to his head. He let me put my arm around his shoulder for a bit of the walk home. In the afternoon, Alice, Hugo and I went to the offices of The Morning Sun, where Malcolm’s old colleagues helped us make a DVD of home movies, photos, and a selection of his best page one stories to play at the next day’s church service. We left out John K Baker’s failed Brighton Marina project, but my delving unearthed a photo of Baker standing on the seashore – beside Sarah Kerr. They looked very chu
mmy. Very.
MALCOLM HALLIDAY COULD draw a crowd. As the hearse rolled away to the crematorium after the Anglican service, Kate said that more than three hundred people had signed the Condolence Book. He was farewelled by a priest who answered my prayers and kept it short.
Sarah Kerr came back to the Halliday’s apartment with about a hundred others for the wake. It was a rainless day and most of the crowd milled on the rooftop terrace.
Joanne Crewes arrived with Bill. When he loudly accused Kate Halliday of being a Nazi spy and a Brighton prostitute during World War 2, I helped Joanne escort Bill to their car. Joanne was tender and calm with her raving father. She managed him like I’d once seen Hughie Jones lead a massive bull with a ring in its nose around an agricultural show.
“Want him in the boot?” I said to Joanne when we got to the street.
“I wish,” she said.
As they drove away, I remembered my father’s last days. Good old Bert chose my birthday to pop a bullet in his head. It was instant relief from the monster that was chewing his brain away. Pick’s Disease causes progressive destruction of neurological pathways, the doctors said. It also leads to what they called impaired regulation of social conduct. Sufferers can forget to wash, take their clothes off in public, explode with rage: in short, act like complete pricks. It only helped explain Bert’s last few years. At least he didn’t blow other peoples’ brains out before his own. His neurosurgeon’s voice went all reedy and shaky over the phone when I told him that Bert had a gun and what he’d done with it, particularly when I described what Dad said in his farewell note about what he’d like to do to the neurosurgeon with a knife. I still don’t know how he got hold of his guns - buried one in my garden at home - and made his way to my underground car park for his swan song against my front wheel. I put it down to tenacity and ingenuity, characteristics I hoped I’d inherited but could manage better. Pick’s Disease can be passed on in the genes.
After a couple of hours at the wake, Sarah said she had to return to Bath. I volunteered to accompany her to the train. Of course we had a detour planned.
