by Peter May
MacNeil turned into Cranley Place and found a spot to park. Rows of pristine, white-painted terraced town houses stretched off into the night, black wrought-iron balconies supported on pillared doorways. There were a few hotels and guest houses here, empty of course, but mostly these were private homes, great rambling houses divided and subdivided into luxury apartments. Prime real estate, light years removed from the scruffy two-bedroomed lower terrace that MacNeil had been able to afford in Forest Hill. On the far side of the street, on the shuttered windows of Knightsbridge Pianos, beneath a large sign which read BILL POSTERS WILL BE PROSECUTED, some graffiti artist with a sense of humour had sprayed BILL POSTERS IS INNOCENT!
Steel grilles protected the glass in Flight’s door beneath a red and green decorative lintel. There were two bell-pushes on the electronic entry system. One marked STUDIO, the other marked FLIGHT. MacNeil stood back and looked up. Lights were on in the first floor studio. The apartment above it was in darkness. He stepped forward and pressed the STUDIO bell. After a few moments, a rasping electronic hum accompanied a man’s voice issuing from a speaker set into the wall. ‘Yes?’
‘Mr Flight?’
A moment’s pause, and then a voice laden with suspicion. ‘Who wants to know?’
‘Detective Inspector Jack MacNeil, Mr Flight. I’m investigating a murder in Soho tonight.’
‘I’ve been here all evening, Inspector,’ Flight said quickly.
‘Yes, I don’t doubt that, sir. I know you didn’t kill him, but you might have known him. Can I come up?’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Kazinski, Mr Flight,’ MacNeil said. ‘Ronald Kazinski.’ There was another long silence, which MacNeil broke. ‘Can I come up, sir?’ he repeated.
‘Have you had the flu?’
‘No, sir. But I’m protected,’ MacNeil lied.
‘Put a mask on, if you have one. If you haven’t, I’ll give you one. And please wear gloves. I don’t want you touching anything in my studio.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The buzzer went, and MacNeil pushed the door open. A carpeted stairway led up to a first floor landing and a door marked STUDIO. There was a window in it, and Flight appeared on the other side of it, his face almost obscured by a double mask. Even from his side of the door, MacNeil could see that Flight was tall. He had a strangely cadaverous head covered with a steel grey stubble. Blue eyes blinked suspiciously at him through the glass. ‘Let me see your hands,’ Flight said, and MacNeil held up his latex-gloved hands. ‘And your ID.’ Patiently, MacNeil took out his warrant card and opened it up to the glass. Flight scrutinised it carefully, before unlocking the door and stepping away from it. ‘You can’t be too careful these days,’ he said. ‘And please keep your distance.’
MacNeil walked into Flight’s studio. What had once been a polished wooden floor was stained and scarred and littered with the debris of an untidy artistic temperament. It was a large, well-lit space that covered just about the entire area of the gallery below. A dozen works in various stages of completion sat on the floor or on work benches. A grotesquely deformed head, intertwined arms, a mangled torso with breasts and a penis. The walls were covered with sketches. There was a potter’s wheel, and tall cabinets with half-open drawers full of art materials – paints, inks, dyes, sculpting tools, tracing paper. Centre stage was Flight’s work table, and the piece he was currently sculpting. An arm raised on its fingertips, partially fleshed, partially stripped down to the tendons and bone, half a head growing out of the armpit, an exposed brain sectioned through its centre revealing all its folds and colours and interior textures. MacNeil wondered how it remained standing, until he saw the support spike that passed through the upper arm. For all its unnatural distortion, there was an unpleasantly lifelike quality about it. Which was true of all of Flight’s works.
Something of MacNeil’s distaste must have been apparent to Flight. His eyes smiled, supercilious and superior. ‘Don’t you like my work, Inspector?’
‘I prefer a nice picture I can hang on my wall.’
‘Like?’
MacNeil shrugged. ‘Vettriano.’
‘Ah,’ Flight said. ‘The Singing Butler. I’ve often wondered who bought those things.’ He turned towards his work in progress. ‘The brain’s a fascinating subject, don’t you think? Of course, you have to know a little about it. The brachium pontis. The colliculus superior.’ He pointed to lobes and leafs of his sculpted brain. ‘An amazing piece of engineering. It’s extraordinary to think that just anyone can have one. Of course, they come in all models, from a Rolls Royce to a Mini.’
‘And what do you have, Mr Flight?’
‘I like to think I’m probably in the BMW bracket. What about you, Inspector?’
‘Oh, probably a Ford Granada,’ MacNeil said. ‘Solid, reliable, doesn’t need much servicing, and just keeps going till it gets there. So what can you tell me about Ronald Kazinski, sir?’
‘Nothing, I’m afraid.’ Flight began circling his sculpture, casting a thoughtful eye over its curves and planes. MacNeil saw now that he was, indeed, a tall man. Six-six, perhaps, and painfully thin, with long, feminine fingers. He was wearing a three-quarter-length white apron, like a surgeon’s gown. Only it was smeared with clay and paint rather than blood. ‘I’ve never heard of him.’
‘He’d heard of you.’
Flight flicked him a look. ‘Had he? Did he tell you that?’
‘No, Mr Flight. He was dead. Don’t you want to know how he died?’
‘It’s no concern of mine.’
‘He was shot three times in the chest.’
‘How unpleasant for him.’
‘And he had your business card in his wallet.’
‘Did he? Well, you know, there’s probably a few thousand people of whom you could say that.’
‘Most of whom are probably interested in art.’
‘And Mr Kazinski wasn’t?’
‘He was a crematorium worker, Mr Flight. He lived in a slum south of the river.’
‘Then I take your point.’
MacNeil let his eyes wander around the studio, flicking from one obscenity to another. He said, ‘It’s possible, of course, that he picked up your card at the Black Ice Club. Do you know it?’
‘I’ve heard of it, of course. Avante-garde performance art. Shock for the sake of shocking.’
‘Familiar territory for you, I’d have thought.’ Flight cast him a withering look. MacNeil said, ‘You’ve never been, then?’
‘Really, Inspector, credit me with a little taste.’
‘I do,’ MacNeil said. ‘Very little.’ He looked around the studio. ‘Most of it bad.’
Flight’s patience with him was starting to wear thin. ‘If that’s all, Inspector, I’d like to get on, if you don’t mind.’ He nodded towards the arm and head. ‘The hours of darkness are my most creative.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ MacNeil said. There was more than just something of the night about the cadaverous sculptor. He gave MacNeil the creeps. ‘Thank you for your cooperation, sir.’
II.
Pinkie watched MacNeil back his car out into Old Brompton Road and turn towards South Kensington tube station. He waited until the tail lights were gone, and then he got out of the car and walked slowly across the road to the green, grilled door of Flight’s apartment. He hesitated there and looked around. There were lights shining in an atrium conservatory on the other side of Cranley Place, but he couldn’t see anyone moving around. Most of the other windows in the street were black holes, protective curtains drawn tight to shut out a scary world. Pinkie hated wearing a mask, but there was one good thing about it. It hid your face, and nobody thought it was strange. Any witness questioned by the police would always be certain of at least one thing. He was wearing a mask, officer.
He pressed the STUDIO buzzer. And after a moment, Flight’s angry
voice growled through the speaker grille, ‘What is it now?’
‘It’s Pinkie.’ There was a long pause before the buzzer sounded and the electronic lock clicked open. Pinkie stepped inside and flicked up the snib on the lock so that it remained unlocked when the door closed behind him. He hated being locked in. He remembered the cupboard under the stairs where his mother locked him away when she had her visitors. She didn’t want them to know there was a child in the house. But she had made it comfortable for him, with a light, and a drawing book and some games. And a mattress for him to sleep on. It was his little den, secret and safe. He had never minded being shut in there, until the night he heard her screaming.
Flight peered at him through the glass in the studio door, and Pinkie grinned behind his mask and waggled his gloved hands in the air. Flight opened up. ‘What do you want?’ He was careful to keep distance between them.
‘You had a visitor, Jonathan.’
‘A very rude policeman.’
Pinkie shook a finger of admonition at him. ‘Don’t be so judgemental, Jonathan. Poor Mr MacNeil lost his son today.’
Flight was unaffected. ‘Perhaps that explains why he was so rude.’
‘What did he want?’
‘He wanted to know if I knew Ronnie.’
‘And what did you tell him?’
‘That I’d never heard of him, of course.’
‘And he believed you?’
‘Why shouldn’t he?’
‘Why did he think you and Ronnie would be acquainted?’
‘Apparently Ronnie had my business card in his pocket.’
‘Ahhh.’ That explained it. Pinkie wandered across the studio and poked the exposed half of the brain with unashamed curiosity. ‘Is this real?’
‘Don’t touch it!’ Flight snapped at him. Then, ‘Did you kill Ronnie?’
Pinkie smiled. ‘I could do with a drink, Jonathan.’
‘I’m working.’
‘I could do with a drink, Jonathan.’ Pinkie repeated himself as if making the request for the first time.
It had its effect on Flight. He seemed nervous. ‘We’ll have to go upstairs.’
The living room of Flight’s apartment overlooked Old Brompton Road and was what the design magazines would have called minimalist. Bare floorboards, polished and varnished. Naked cream walls. A glass table and six chrome and leather chairs in the window. There were two red leather recliners with footstools, a long, low, black-lacquered sideboard, and a wafer-thin plasma TV screen on a chrome stand. The only art in the room comprised a couple of Flight’s own sculptures raised on tall black plinths. Pinkie looked at them with distaste. ‘I don’t know how you can stand to have that stuff in your home.’
Flight didn’t grace the comment with a response. ‘Whisky?’ He opened up the drinks cupboard in his sideboard.
‘Cognac.’
‘I’ve only got Armagnac.’ Flight sounded annoyed. ‘It’s very expensive.’
‘That’ll have to do, then.’
Flight poured a conservative measure into a single brandy glass.
‘Aren’t you going to join me?’
‘I never drink while I’m working.’
‘Make an exception.’ Pinkie walked to the window and looked down into the street below. He heard Flight sighing and taking out a second glass. The unaccustomed sound of a car engine rose from the street, headlights raked the shuttered shops opposite, and a vehicle pulled up outside the gallery. Pinkie pressed his face against the window to see who it was, and recoiled as if from a blow. MacNeil was stepping out on to the pavement. Pinkie turned quickly towards Flight, who looked up in surprise, his bottle of Armagnac hovering over the lip of the second glass.
‘What is it?’
Pinkie smiled. This was the bit he enjoyed most. ‘Time for you to feature in one of your own sculptures, Jonathan.’
III.
MacNeil glanced up and saw that there were lights on now in both the studio and the apartment. He walked around into Cranley Place and pressed both buzzers. There was no response. He waited nearly thirty seconds before trying again. Still no reply. MacNeil was losing patience. He’d got as far as the King’s Road before the thought struck him. A thought so breathtaking in the scope of its horror that it was almost unthinkable. But he couldn’t stop thinking about it. And so he had felt compelled to return, if only to clear it from his mind. And now Flight was playing games. He raised his hand to bang on the door and shouted, ‘Come on, Flight, open up!’ His voice echoed angrily around the empty street, and the door moved under the beat of his clenched fist. MacNeil froze, his arm still in mid-air. His surprise gave way to an immediate sense of misgiving. The door had locked behind him as he left. He was sure of that. He had pulled it shut. Tentatively he pushed on the door with his fingertips, and it swung in. He stepped into the hallway and saw that the lock had been put on the latch. He inclined his head and peered up the stairs. A light still burned on the first landing.
‘Flight? Mr Flight?’ MacNeil’s voice got soaked up by the carpet and went unanswered. He climbed the stairs slowly to the first landing. The lights of the studio shone brightly through the glass panel in the door, and MacNeil peered inside. There was no sign of Flight. He pushed the door. It opened and he walked in. The arm and head looked just as it had fifteen minutes ago. Flight did not appear to have done any more work on it. MacNeil looked around the other works in the studio with new eyes. A door at the back led to what appeared to be another room. MacNeil crossed the studio and opened it. In fact, it led into a large walk-in, windowless storeroom. There was a long wooden workbench, scored and stained, a huge vice, and all manner of tools hanging from nails in the wall. Knives, saws, several different weights of chopper, of the kind you might find in a butcher’s shop. A tray on the worktop was lined with scalpels of various sizes. There was an autoclave plugged into the rear wall next to an oscillating saw and a row of plastic bottles containing bleach. It was cold in here, the air sharp with the acid scent of disinfectant. And something else that MacNeil couldn’t quite identify.
Several opaque containers lined up along a shelf were labelled SPRAY PLASTIC.
MacNeil had a bad feeling about this place, like the touch of icy fingers on his neck. He shivered, and felt as if he were in the presence of something deeply sinister. There was an odd jolt, and the air was filled with a loud electronic hum and the rattle of glass. He turned, and saw that behind the door stood a huge refrigerator which reached almost all the way up to the ceiling. It was divided in two halves, upper and lower. He opened the upper door, and a light flickered on to reveal shelves full of bottles with glass stoppers. They were filled with various coloured liquids. There was a strangely familiar, if unpleasant, smell in the fridge. MacNeil turned one of the bottles around. Its label read Formalin, and MacNeil knew why it smelled familiar. It was the ever present perfume of the autopsy room. Formaldehyde. Used in medical laboratories and mortuaries as a preservative. Three small sausage-shaped objects lay in a glass saucer in the meat tray. MacNeil lifted it out and nearly dropped it. ‘Jesus Christ!’ His revulsion forced the words involuntarily from his lips, and his voice sounded excessively loud in this confined space. The three sausage-like objects in the saucer were fingers. Human fingers. He slid it quickly back on to the shelf and shut the door. He was shaking. He took a moment to compose himself and control his breathing before opening the lower door to reveal four deep freezer drawers. He hardly needed to open them to know what was inside.
But still the shock when he slid the top drawer out forced him to step back. A man’s head stared out at him, eyes wide open, flesh chalk-white and faintly frosted. MacNeil had to force himself to open the others. Legs, arms, hands, feet. An entire torso in the bottom drawer. A woman.
MacNeil slammed the door shut and stood breathing stertorously, trying to stop the bile rising from his stomach. This was sicker by far than F
oetus Man’s jam and bread sandwich. This was real. He staggered out into the studio and looked around at all the body pieces that Flight had ‘sculpted’. He strode across the studio floor and wrenched the work in progress from its support spike, raising it above his head and smashing it down on the edge of the table. The half head separated itself from the arm and rolled across the floor, and the exposed section of the arm split open. There was a crack like the report of a rifle, and the arm hung in two halves in his hand, the bone broken clean through. And bone, he now knew, it was. Human bone. Flight was no sculptor. He was plagiarising nature. Taking human body parts and manipulating them to his own twisted design. Disinfected, preserved, plasticised, painted, whatever the hell it was he did to them.
And MacNeil knew also that Flight had lied about knowing Kazinski. Knew that they must have been collaborating ever since Kazinski got his job at the crematorium. Supplier of body parts to the celebrated sculptor. He dropped the arm as if it were burning hot, barely able to control his anger and disgust. Is this where that little girl had been butchered? The flesh stripped from her bones, her skeleton disjointed. He looked back into the storeroom with its stained workbench and array of cutting tools and felt sick to his stomach.
‘Flight!’ he roared, but was greeted only by silence.
He ran out on to the landing and up the second flight of stairs two at a time. He called Flight’s name again, but there was still no response. Three doors opened off a short corridor. He threw them open in turn. The first was a bathroom, cool blue ceramic, a glass shower. The wash-hand basin was a free-standing bowl set on mahogany. MacNeil saw himself, wild-eyed, staring back from a huge mirror that took up one wall. His face was bruised and scored, and he barely recognised himself. The second door led to a bedroom. Black silk sheets, a cream carpet, a faint smell of feet and eau de cologne. The third door opened into a large, spartan sitting room. Flight was sitting in a red leather recliner, one foot up on a footstool, one arm hanging over the right side of the chair. He was still wearing his surgeon’s apron. Only now, it was blood that covered it, seeping from the signature three bullet holes in his chest. Flight’s silver-bristled head was tipped forward. MacNeil moved slowly towards him and felt for a pulse at his neck. There was none, and the flesh felt cold already. But MacNeil knew he could only have been dead a matter of minutes.