Hell on Earth

by Philip Palmer

  ‘I see where you’re going with this,’ said Dougie, still with his finger on the metaphorical trigger.

  ‘And so,’ Tom resumed, ‘Gogarty spills all, and confesses to the Embalmer murders. But Dougie Randall, with his legendary acumen, sees through all Gogarty’s lies. Not realising that Gogarty’s lies were just a cover for his real lies. And so a bitter reversal follows, an ironical peripeteia that -’

  ‘Speak fucking English!’ Dougie roared.

  ‘Gogarty made a twat of you!’ retorted Tom, taking the man at his word.

  There was a pause. Gina was staring at Tom again, with new respect.

  ‘I could crush you in my fist, you know that?’ Dougie said angrily.

  Gina’s eyes flicked from one to the other; she was the one doing the tennis-match now.

  ‘Duped you, cozened you, bamboozled you –’

  ‘Jesus!’ said Dougie, feebly.

  ‘and all in all taunted you, by making you look like a bloody idiot,’ Tom concluded.

  Dougie took a deep breath.

  ‘Why?’ Dougie asked, suddenly calm.

  ‘Fun?’ Tom suggested.

  Dougie shook his head.

  ‘Why really?’

  ‘Good question. I don’t know. I’m just spitballing here,’ said Tom, belatedly aware he’d just grievously insulted his boss, the toughest and third tallest man in the Metropolitan Police.

  ‘I like the taunting idea,’ said Dougie mildly.

  ‘You do?’ Tom blinked at the praise; usually he got roasted at high heat at around about this stage.

  ‘But of course, Gogarty’s a total egotist. He never thought he’d actually be caught.’ Dougie mulled further. ‘No way would he “let” himself be caught. Who would be that stupid? So scrap that surmise. But “just in case”, I buy that. A just in case taunting scenario. He’s saying, Here I am, not just any old serial killer, but the direct descendent of one of the greats. Good theory. I like it.’

  Tom basked, momentarily, in the praise. Before realising that Dougie had just stolen his idea, then patted him on the head like a dog who’s surrendered a bone.

  Gina nodded at Tom: a ‘fun’s over’ moment. ‘Okay, time to get to work,’ she said briskly. ‘House to house, please, Detective Constable Thomas Arsefluff. Off you go with Fillide. And remember what I said.’

  Tom nodded, dismissed.

  Chapter 23

  ‘Have you done this shit before?’ Fillide asked Tom, as they left the Gogarty house and walked next door to number 15.

  The journalists were still milling on the pavement. There were mass smiles as they spotted Fillide, the ‘sultry Italian detective’ as she was invariably called. The paparazzi went to town taking photographs of her - before they remembered she was invisible to cameras.

  ‘Yes of course,’ Tom said, as they squeezed a path through the disappointed press corps and into next’s door’s front garden. ‘I did the, uh, module. I’m comprehensively trained in interview techniques.’

  Fillide snorted. It was like a horse snorting: a shocking noise.

  ‘You’re straight out of Hendon,’ she accused, as they walked up the driveway.

  Tom reddened. ‘Not quite. I worked in admin for two years. Then two months on the beat in Peckham.’ Even as he said it, he knew how feeble it sounded.

  ‘Everything I know, I learned on the Job,’ Fillide told him. ‘Book learning and courses.’ She snorted again.

  ‘You’re illiterate, aren’t you?’ he said kindly.

  ‘Not any more.’ She was huffy.

  Tom found that charming.

  Tom rang the bell. It was a chime that played a tune. Hall of the Mountain King, by Greig. Very kitsch. A young couple lived here. Sylvia and Richard Donnington.

  Sylvia opened the door. She was wearing a floral dress and had traces of white powder on her hands. Flour rather than cocaine, Tom intuited.

  ‘I’m Detective Constable Derry, this is my colleague RDC Melandroni,’ Tom said.

  ‘It’s about –’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Come in.’

  They went inside. Tom marvelled at the sensory overload created by the rich imperial purple of the walls in the narrow hallway, and the intricately moulded yellow dado rail and pale blue ceiling above.

  ‘My husband –’ said Sylvia. He appeared: a bouncy looking man in his late 20s with horn rim glasses and a diamond-patterned granddad vest of a kind that had been back in vogue in 2018-20, before falling out of fashion again.

  ‘I’m Richard. This is –’

  She mouthed: Police. He nodded.

  ‘Take a seat.’

  They entered the living room, which was equally de trop. The living room wallpaper was an even richer shade of purple embossed with a design that dated, Tom recalled, from Georgian times. The mouldings were Regency in style, and the ceiling was the same shade of pale blue. There were ceiling roses around the two room lights, with modern crystal chandeliers suspended from them, and energy saving bulbs that marred the effect entirely. The dark violet curtains were ruched, on polished brass rails. It was, in Tom’s opinion, overly elaborate for a small terraced house built in an early Victorian vernacular style; yet these two were clearly proud of what they’d achieved here.

  Tom sat on a cream chaise-longue. Fillide remained standing, the lilac and burgundy colours of her gown making her look like part of the decorative scheme. The Donningtons sat side by side on their main sofa - pomegranate velvet to tone with the sunset coloured carpet. They were flushed, not sure which detective to look at.

  ‘Tea?’ That was Sylvia.

  Fillide shook her head. Tom was tempted but didn’t want to break the tableau. ‘Not for me,’ he said, taking out his e-berry and setting it to Record.

  ‘We’ve already –’ Richard began.

  ‘You see we’ve already explained –’ Sylvia continued.

  ‘ – explained everything we know to the other officers. Uniform and CID.’

  ‘ – it all to those other chaps.’

  ‘That was local CID, we’re the Murder Squad,’ said Tom firmly.

  It had a good ring; he enjoyed saying that.

  He had seen the film footage of those previous interviews with the Donningtons on his e-berry at home, before setting out for the Gogarty house. But it was standard in murder cases to ask the same questions over and over again. Truth by attrition, some people called it.

  Tom and Fillide began their rhythm: routine questions leading to specific crime-related questions.

  ‘Richard, tell me about your job.’ That was Tom.

  ‘May I ask you both, how long have you dwelled in this abode?’ That was Fillide.

  ‘Sylvia, anything you’d like to add to what Richard has just said?’

  And so on.

  Richard told them he was a civil engineer, specialising in slum housing. Only it wasn’t called that any more; it was called Social Home Developments.

  Richard was an intense and serious young man who clearly prided himself on having an occasional sense of humour. Tom guessed he was a volunteer for the National Trust, loved long hikes, and never cheated on his taxes.

  Sylvia was nervous and slightly twitchy: the kind who regrets every decision for weeks afterwards. But rather sweet, Tom felt. She was someone you might want to cuddle, if you were the cuddling kind. Which Tom at this stage in his life most certainly was not. She explained with great care that she worked in social services out of genuine commitment, no, really, truly, not just because she couldn’t get a job elsewhere! ‘The caring sector. It’s a cliché, but that’s what it is. What I do really matters,’ she said, as if this were a job interview.

  ‘Yes of course,’ said Tom, glancing at her CV on her e-berry. He saw that Sheila had a lot of experience with battered spouses, and had often testified on their behalf in court. She’d also run a scheme for chipping the homeless, but had eventually asked for a transfer on moral grounds. Now she was administrator of social services for the whole of Bow where
she currently managed sixty-four cases involving abused children and had set up seven halfway houses for alienated teenagers using private money she had sourced herself.

  It dawned on Tom that, despite her unprepossessing manner, this was a seriously remarkable woman.

  ‘How well did you know Mr Bishop?’ Tom asked them; that was Gogarty’s alias at the Ildminster Square address.

  The answers to that question were pretty much the same as in the previous HtoH interviews. ‘Not very well.’ ‘He did keep himself to himself, you see.’ And: ‘What we knew about him, we didn’t much like.’

  ‘How often you see him? Every week? Every month?’ Fillide asked.

  ‘Did you ever observe him being violent?’

  ‘Did Mr Bishop ever hold loud parties?’

  ‘What time do you to work in the morning? And did you ever see Mr Bishop leaving his house at that same hour?’

  ‘Do you remembering seeing any of his visitors?’

  ‘Do you know anything about the history of the Bishop abode, number Thirteen I mean?’ That was Tom again, being verbose.

  ‘Is there anything you have thought about since speaking to our colleagues in uniform, that you wish to mention now?’

  And so on.

  Richard and Sylvia were newly married: this much Tom knew from his e-berry. And very much in love: this much he could see for himself.

  ‘Did he really do what they say?’ Sylvia asked Fillide. ‘I mean, to the bodies. Did he –’

  ‘Answer our questions, please,’ said Fillide in her richly accented English. ‘Not we yours.’

  Sylvia nodded.

  As they sat in the over-decorated room, sipping refined tea, endlessly asking questions and jotting responses, Fillide’s broodingly erotic presence started to become oppressive. It made Tom feel intensely awkward. Like finding yourself naked in bed with a sister or a close female friend: unable to admit to animal lust, yet barely able to control it.

  Richard was even more susceptible, Tom observed. He kept licking his lips, pretending not to look at the Italian Beauty’s cleavage. Sylvia noticed it too. Her eyes narrowed.

  ‘I really didn’t know him very well, I thought I’d said that already,’ Richard said, in response to one of Fillide’s stock questions.

  ‘That’s right. He wasn’t one for mixing –’

  Tom suddenly got it.

  ‘You hated him, didn’t you?’ he said.

  ‘What? Who?’

  ‘Bishop. The person we’re talking about.’

  There was a long pause. Sylvia answered first.

  ‘Well of course we hated him. He’s an evil monster. He –’

  ‘I don’t mean now,’ Tom interrupted. ‘Not now you know he’s a killer. I mean, from the start. For ages. You invited him to tea, didn’t you?’

  There was a startled silence. Fillide looked intrigued at Tom’s sudden guess.

  ‘And you told him about your decorating plans,’ Tom continued, ‘Dadoes and the like. Antique wallpaper. Ceiling roses. Bold colour schemes. Period fittings. And he mocked you, didn’t he?’

  ‘We tried to have the terrace listed,’ said Richard icily. ‘Then the bloody fool had the double glazing installed, and did the pebbledash too. I mean, it’s an abomination. Totally out of character for the neighbourhood.’

  ‘And the 70s wallpaper,’ added Sylvia, accusing. ‘We told him he had to get rid of it. He just laughed and said it reminded him of Gary Glitter. I tried not to take offence, but looking back I think he knew I worked with abused children.’ She swallowed: for her, a scream of rage.

  ‘He did it to spite us,’ Richard confirmed. ‘Invited us to Christmas drinks. And when we walked out of our house – we saw he’d had the pebbledash slapped on his walls. Like seeing a tin of bloody paint thrown over a Rembrandt. And – and –’

  ‘The windows,’ said Sylvia.

  ‘The windows, yes. The original sash windows had been taken out, and he’d had PVC double glazing put in their place. He had the whole thing done on the morning of Christmas Eve. He even put up a plaque saying Welcome to Hell on the front door. And inside, well,’

  ‘Well!’ said Sylvia.

  ‘Yes, that godawful wallpaper. It wasn’t there before, not when Mrs Rogers used to live there, it was rather a nice house then. But he deliberately –’

  ‘Deliberately!’ said Sylvia.

  ‘Deliberately chose to redecorate the house with the vilest – damn - wallpaper he could find, like something from the cover of a glam rock, you know, concept album. And then, to cap it all, the minute we walked into his living room, he played Leader of the Pack on his iPod deck.’

  Tom was cursing himself. His guesses about Gogarty’s indifference to décor had been proved wrong. The wallpaper wasn’t a relic of the past. It was a piece of present-tense spite.

  ‘He was taunting you,’ Tom said.

  ‘Clearly,’ said Richard, bitterly.

  ‘But not ordinary taunting,’ Tom said. ‘It’s more than that. Taunting was part of his criminal MO. Like the Love Chain methodology, you must have read about that in the papers. Bishop aka Gogarty’s modus operandi was killing the person who was most beloved by the person he’d already just killed. That’s how this bastard gets his kicks. He either taunts you; or he murders you. Or both.’

  A silence grew.

  Sylvia and Richard were ashen. It occurred to them now, as it had not before, that they could easily have become victims of Gogarty.

  ‘Yes, that makes sense,’ said Richard.

  Tom was pleased with himself. A minor discovery. Not a clue, exactly, just an insight into the way Gogarty worked.

  The questions continued. Sylvia and Richard concurred that Gogarty was a sour misanthropic man: a ‘loner’. They tried to remember when he’d first built those high fences in his garden to stop neighbours snooping on him. ‘About two years ago’ was the consensus memory. They stressed he was often away for long periods – but this year he’d been around rather a lot. They said that he was bad tempered. They mentioned that he’d once had a dog and often used to leave it in the house on its own. It used to whine and bark all day long. Then one day, the dog was gone.

  They said, frequently, how they couldn’t believe such a thing could happen here, so close to them.

  ‘We know that –’

  ‘Yes - but even so -’

  ‘We never actually thought – so close to home!’

  Fillide snorted.

  ‘Did you see anyone come in or out? Girls at night?’ Tom asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Any smells?’

  ‘What sort of smells?’

  ‘Cooking smells?’

  ‘Well yes, sometimes. Barbecues. He liked his barbecues.’

  ‘And music.’

  ‘That’s two doors down,’ Sylvia corrected. ‘They like to play their music loud. The Bentleys. They have a teenage daughter, she always leaves her bedroom window open.’

  ‘Some people –’

  Fillide snorted: a double-stallion snort.

  ‘There’s not much more we can tell you,’ said Richard, getting back on track.

  ‘We tend to – you know.’

  ‘Once you’re in the privacy of your own home. Shut the windows and –’

  ‘Did you never hear the screaming?’ Fillide asked abruptly.

  Richard and Sylvia looked baffled.

  ‘The screaming,’ insisted Fillide. ‘He lived in that house for seventeen years. Not every one of his victims could have died silently. You must have heard the screaming.’

  They had no evidence that any of the Gogarty victims had actually died in the house, but Tom admired Fillide for her fishing expedition.

  ‘No,’ admitted Sylvia. ‘We heard nothing. Were there many – bodies found?’

  Tom and Fillide did not reply.

  Tom had no appetite for any more questions. He stood up, and so did Fillide.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Tom.

  ‘I hope they shoot him,
’ said Sylvia, with quiet rage. ‘What he did, what that man did. An outrage. He was, he is, a bloody monster. An evil – how could anyone conceive of such a -’ She had to stop speaking; Richard patted her hand, but her hand was a clenched fist.

  ‘You mean the Love Chain,’ said Tom.

  ‘Yes.’

  Sylvia nodded.

  Tom realised that Sheila was thinking it through. Deciding, first of all, who in all the world she loved the most; which of course was Richard. And then agonising about who he - the person she loved the most - loved second-most. Totting up who else might have been on that long chain of dead loved ones, if Gogarty had decided to kill her.

  It was a terrible thought, etched in her face.

  Chapter 24

  Dougie and Gina had spent the last half hour supervising the search teams in Number Thirteen.

  They ripped up walls and floorboards in the two remaining bedrooms. They looked for hidden compartments, or secret corridors. They took all the furniture apart. They dismantled the oven and the fridge. They bagged and tagged every exhibit or speck or possible trace. It was like an archaeological dig.

  Dougie paced around the garage, with its mosaic-tiled breakfast table and Multigym and metal rings with shackles on the bare brick wall. Then he got a beep and looked at his e-berry. Guv, come here. A message from one of the Crime Scene Investigators, Norman Gibson. Dougie typed back Where? And waited.

  First floor landing. We found an attic.

  Dougie hurried up the stairs and saw that the apparently seamless hall ceiling had concealed a trapdoor for an attic space. A metal ladder now joined the hall floor and the attic. Dougie climbed up the ladder, smelling smoke and charred wood above him. He clambered into the attic space, which was so low that he had to stoop. There were no windows. There were two CSIs present. One a broad dark haired woman in her early thirties. The other, a slightly built shaven-headed man of about the same age -that must be Norman Gibson. Gibson was standing at the far end of the attic. He had installed a free-standing halogen bulb for illumination. Dougie looked for an attic light, but saw none.