by Tim Ellis
Waiters and waitresses, from the catering company Bartholomew had hired to provide the food and drink, were on hand to serve those arriving with aperitifs and hors d’ oeuvres. From the cornucopia offered to him, he had decided on the appetisers himself. Amongst the selection were: tempura prawns served with sweet chilli dipping sauce; individual savoury quiches with various fillings; mini gourmet beef and Guinness pies and Arancini-basil risotto balls, crumbed and deep-fried. He helped himself to a glass of Sirop de Grenadine and a Thai fish cake.
He checked his watch – seven forty – dinner would soon be served.
‘Bartholomew,’ Judas said, patting him on the back. ‘Tonight promises to be a splendid occasion, if your welcome is anything to go by.’
‘I certainly hope so, Judas.’
‘Gentlemen -’ the maître d’ announced, ‘dinner is served.’
Bartholomew waited until the other members had shuffled through into the dining room; he was, after all, James’ right-hand man and the anchorman for these suppers. He was especially pleased with the arrangement of the large rosewood dining table and chairs.
For starters they had a choice of white truffle, oyster savoury tarts, or smoked salmon profiteroles. The main course presented a mouth-watering decision between amuse bouche of red mullet essence with aioli, truffled terrine of Bresse chicken and foie gras with pickled girolles and leek puree, butter poached lobster with bitter almond foam and saddle of lamb belle époque. Bartholomew ordered the lamb; he wasn’t particularly keen on mullet or chicken, and lobster was terribly messy. For dessert he chose prune and Armagnac ice cream, although he was drawn to the Guanaja chocolate palette, but at his age he had to watch the calories. The wine selection boasted bottles of Laurent-Perrier Champagne; Moët & Chandon Cuvée Dom Pérignon Rosé; Chevalier - Montrachet Grand Cru Domaine Laflaive; and Château Lynch Bages. He drank his fair share, as they all did. Now, his stomach having taken up the slack in his waistband, he was savouring a 1966 Graham’s port, which had been decanted and allowed to breathe.
‘Gentlemen,’ James said as he stood up and tapped his port glass with the silver teaspoon from the saucer beneath his coffee cup.
The catering staff had departed half an hour previously. With the exception of the entertainment upstairs, the Apostles were alone now in the house. The external doors had been locked from the inside, and the eight security guards were located outside to ensure the occupants of the house were not disturbed.
‘Let me introduce Phillip,’ James continued. ‘Some of you have met him already - others, I am sure, will take the opportunity to introduce themselves after I have spoken. Phillip will be taking charge of our online security. As you know, a certain Detective Inspector Quigg compromised our business enterprise earlier this month. He was able to discover our names and then rescue his daughter from the estate in Surrey. In the process, he released a number of children we had bought and paid for, which amounted to a considerable financial loss. It will not happen again. I have liquidated all our assets, moved accounts, changed and re-named companies until even I am struggling to find everything we own.’
There was a short burst of laughter. He replenished his glass from the decanter, took a mouthful, and savoured the rich fruity flavour of the tawny port.
‘Quigg employed two hackers to track us down. One of those hackers had an unfortunate accident recently, and the other will soon suffer a similar fate. Bartholomew has people watching Quigg and his accomplice, Ruth Lynch-Guevara. Yes, I know some of you have met the investigative journalist before, the granddaughter of Ché Guevara. For those who know nothing of Cuban history, speak to Bartholomew. He knew Ché personally and, I believe, took part in the 26th July Movement during the revolution.’
Bartholomew gave a snort. ‘That would make me around seventy years old, James.’
‘I thought you were older than that, Bartholomew?’
Everyone laughed.
‘Sometimes I feel it, James.’
‘To continue.... Our new company name is Pastesol, and for those with their faculties still intact after the excellent wine and the even more excellent port, it is an anagram. I know you are all eager to enjoy the entertainment Bartholomew has organised, so I will finish by saying that you can sleep easy in your beds - our secret is safe.’
The men clapped. James sat down and lit a Cohiba Coronas Especialas Cuban cigar that Bartholomew passed him.
‘Business as usual, James?’
‘Business as usual, Bartholomew.’
***
Thursday 1st January
‘Is that all you can remember, Sir?’
The duffel coat was wrapped around him, and his head was down the toilet. God knows where the rest of his clothes were. Duffy was standing over him in her nightdress with her hands on her hips.
‘Don’t shout, Duffy - can’t you see I’m ill?’
‘Well, you’d better go and be ill somewhere else. I need to use the toilet.’
He vomited at the thought of her going to the toilet. ‘Just pee on me, Duffy - it might make me feel better.’
‘I will not.’ She took hold of his coat, dragged him into the hallway, and left him there while she went back into the bathroom and shut the door.
He curled up and went to sleep on the parquet floor.
Somebody was kicking him. Well, they could go right ahead and kick him, he didn’t care.
‘It’s eight o’clock, Sir. If you’re going to work, you’d better move your arse.’
‘Move my arse? That’s hardly the language of a lady, Duffy.’
‘And lying in the hallway with your parts on show is hardly the behaviour of a gentleman.’
Quigg moved his hand and felt behind him. His duffel coat had ridden up. He sat up slowly and opened his eyes. ‘That was not the evening I had planned, Duffy. Did you hire those people to kill me?’
‘It wasn’t my idea for New Year’s Eve either, Sir.’
Hugging his duffel coat to his naked body, he stood up. ‘Tell me those alcoholics have gone back to Ireland, Duffy?’
‘They live in Wandsworth, Sir.’
‘I’m going to take out a restraining order on them. They’re not allowed within a continent of me in future.’
He staggered into the bathroom, shed the duffel coat, and stepped into a freezing cold shower until he turned blue and his head throbbed.
Duffy came in while he was rubbing himself dry and shivering.
‘I’ve got to go to work now, Sir. Will you be all right?’
‘I’ll survive, Duffy. My mum wants to see us later.’
‘OK, Sir.’
‘What time do you finish?’
‘Four o’clock.’
‘I’ll pick you up outside Kensington Station at four then. We’ll collect your car on the way back.’
He felt considerably better than he had before getting into the shower, and for some reason he had an erection.
Duffy smiled and backed into the safety of the hallway as he came towards her. ‘I’m going to work before you do some damage with that thing.’
‘Have a good day, Duffy, and Happy New Year.’
‘Happy New Year, Sir.’
‘Don’t I get a kiss?’
‘No.’
Disappointed, he got dressed. He couldn’t face toast, but drank two mugs of black coffee.
When he stepped outside it was twenty to nine and he saw that the world had turned to ice.
It was nine forty-five when he walked into the lobby of the May Fair Hotel in Piccadilly. He felt stupid asking for Madame Aryana. He was forty-five minutes late, but being a psychic she would have known he was going to be late. He smiled at the thought as he sat down in an easy chair by a window.
‘Inspector Quigg?’ A good-looking woman with shoulder-length blonde hair and a Canadian twang was standing before him. She wore jeans and a short bluey-purpley-orangey kaftan type of thing on the top.
As he stood up and took her hand, out of habit he began to undress
her in his mind. ‘You tell me?’
‘I’ve heard it a million times before. Nothing you say will be original, so I wouldn’t bother.’ She put her coat over the arm of the chair and sat down. ‘You were more than likely thinking that because I’m a psychic I would know you were going to be late.’
Quigg raised his eyebrows. She was good, but then looking at the weather outside, it didn’t take a psychic to realise the whole of the UK would be late this morning.’
‘What I do know is that you went to Kavanagh’s bar in Kensington last night and made a fool of yourself.’
God! She had to be the best psychic in the world. Even he didn’t remember he’d made a fool of himself, but it was a safe bet. He was a moron after he'd had a few pints of Guinness. 'How, in God’s name…?’
‘Don’t worry, Quigg - I don’t have psychic flashes about you getting down and dirty in Kavanagh’s with pole dancers. I was there with a friend and I saw you.’
They both laughed. It eased the tension between them.
‘Do I have to call you Madame Aryana?’ Quigg asked. ‘I feel as though I’m in a brothel.’
‘A man speaking from experience, I presume? You can call me Aryana.’ She waved her hand to signal a waiter and ordered a pot of coffee and a stack of toast for them both.
Being flippant, he said, ‘I suppose you feel at home in this weather?’
‘I come from a small place called Moose Jaw in Saskatchewan, Quigg. There, we have temperatures of –30 degrees and snowfall that reaches the bedroom window of my two-storey house. Summers are like this.’
‘Sounds like a nice place to live. What is it you want from me?’
‘Believe me, Quigg, if it was up to me, I wouldn’t be here.’
‘You make it sound as though you’re here against your will, like you’re possessed or something.’
‘In a way, I am. The children’s faces haunt me. I wake up in the night crying. I had to come - to help them.’
‘How?’
‘I saw him, burying the last child.’
‘What? You saw his face?’ Once he’d asked the question, he realised how ridiculous he sounded. She was a charlatan, a phoney, a fraud. He had a picture in his mind of her in a zombie-like trance contacting the other side.
‘I only saw part of his face, but I can describe what I saw.’
He’d humour her; give Sally Vickers something to do on New Year’s Day. ‘Will you come to the station and meet with our forensic artist?’
‘Of course - anything I can do to help.’
‘So, is that all you’ve got for me?’
The waiter came back carrying a tray loaded up with a pot of coffee, cups, plates, and a stack of buttered toast and pots of jam and marmalade. The aroma of freshly brewed coffee and buttered toast made him feel like a late breakfast.
‘Are you willing to suspend your belief in reality as you know it, Quigg?’
‘I’m here, aren’t I?’
‘Coffee?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Toast?’
He thought she’d never ask and slid three pieces onto a plate.
‘Help yourself to sugar and milk.’
‘Mmmm,’ he said, not wanting to spit toast all over the lobby in a five-star hotel by talking with his mouth full.
‘Do you know what message he has sent you?’
‘Not yet. We’re still trying to find out if it is a message, or merely a false lead.’
‘It is a message. I have seen his hands searching through the Bible to find the right quotation.’
‘What do you mean: the right quotation?’
‘You think this is easy, Quigg? I see fragments only. The hands belong to a man who has worked in an office all his life. They are white and soft with well-cared for and clean fingernails.’
‘A description of a significant percentage of the adult male population of England. Don’t you have anything I can use, like his name, address and telephone number?’
‘When I am only given glimpses, I see things as if I am standing behind him, looking over his shoulder.’
‘Does he know you’re there?’
‘Where?’
‘Standing behind him?’
‘I’m not standing behind him.’
‘Then how can you be looking over his shoulder?’
‘I am used to dealing with sceptics, Quigg.’
‘Sceptic… me?’
‘When I am with him I sense that he feels me there.’
‘How long have you been visiting him?’ He couldn’t stop himself smiling.
She ignored his rudeness. ‘It started when he buried the last child.’
‘Why now? I mean, he’s been abducting and killing children for sixty years; why are you seeing him now?’
‘You think I have answers, Quigg? I have no answers. I see something I think is important. I feel I can be of help to you in your investigation. I fly over here from Canada at my own expense, and you make fun of me and reject what I am telling you. I will fly back home tomorrow.’ Tears welled in her eyes, and she started to get up. ‘I apologise for wasting your time.’
He felt like the belly of a snake slithering through slime. ‘I’m sorry - you’re right.’ He reached across the table and touched her arm. ‘Please, sit down.’
She sat back down.
‘I have the manners of a pig. How many times has he appeared in your… visions?’
‘Three times. The first time I saw him burying the black child… In fact "saw him" is not strictly accurate. I don’t stand there watching him, as such. I am with him. When he moves, I move. I have no control over what I am seeing. I saw the grave and the child clearly, but I only saw the side of his face. The second time I witnessed him turning the pages of the Bible. I sensed his impatience because he couldn’t find what he wanted.’
‘What did he want?’
She looked at the hands resting in her lap as if they belonged to someone else, and shook her head. ‘I wish I could be more precise.’
‘And the third time?’
‘Was last night.’
‘What, here? In London?’
‘Yes. He took another child.’
He felt the adrenaline surge into his bloodstream. His heart began thrashing about in his chest like an alien parasite trying to escape its prison. An abducted child was something he could verify. ‘What did you see?’
‘It is a very old vehicle. The driving compartment is small, but there is enough space for three people. He turned around to look at the young white girl in the back of the van. She was asleep on a blanket on the floor. It was dark, and the windows all had red curtains across them.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me this right at the start?’ He pulled his mobile out. ‘I can check whether another girl was abducted last night.'
‘It is too early; she has not yet been reported missing. Later today her parents will discover that she has gone and phone the police.’
‘Anything else? Like where she was taken from? What she looks like? What she was wearing?’
‘Her name is Kylie and she has long black hair.’
He found Walsh’s number in his address book and pressed ‘call’, but then cancelled it almost immediately. He’d had it in his mind to ask her to arrange a second round of television and radio interviews to request information, but what did he really want? He wanted confirmation, not information; confirmation that Madame Aryana was really a psychic. The fact – if it was a fact – that another child had been abducted wouldn’t change anything. Everyone connected to the case was working as fast and as hard as humanly possible. Alerting the press to another abducted child would simply crank up the pressure, and he didn’t need any more pressure.
His mobile rang.
‘Quigg.’
Did you want me, Sir?
‘Do you want me to want you, Walsh?’
No, Sir. I thought…
‘I’m sure you’ve got better things to do than investigate people who nearly called y
ou.’
I’ll go then, should I, Sir?
‘Good idea, Walsh.’ He disconnected the call.
The other problem, of course, would be that everyone would want to know where he had got his information. He’d have two choices. First, he could tell them a psychic had told him. The fallout would be unpleasant. The Chief would take him off the case and replace him with another DI. His job in homicide and in the police force would hang by a thread. His second choice was to tell them he had deduced it through a brilliant piece of detective work. People who knew things before they happened were seen as suspects. No one believed in precognition, extrasensory perception, or telepathy. The powers that be would determine that the only way he could have known that another child had been abducted was if he was in some way involved in the abduction. No one would believe him. The Chief would have no choice but to remove him from the case. He’d be suspended and become the subject of an internal investigation. He decided that keeping quiet was probably the best course of action.
‘You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?’
‘I’ve just been running through the various scenarios in my mind. No, I’m not going to tell anyone. If I did, it wouldn’t change anything for the abducted girl, but the person who has a chance of saving her – me – could lose his job.’
‘You don’t believe me, do you?’
‘It’s not about whether I believe you or not, it’s what other people believe. You have to trust me that I know what I’m doing.’
‘I do, Quigg. I’ve seen other things that I can’t tell you about just yet.’
‘Oh!’ Did he want to know? If he did know, would it change the course of history? He decided that he could wait to find out what else she had seen.
‘I would like to visit the site of the graves, and also touch some of the children’s clothes. It might help me to see more, to better help you.’
‘I can’t today, but what about tomorrow?’
‘Will you call here for me?’
‘I will come at eleven o’clock in the morning; I have a press briefing at ten. Are you ready to go to the station now?’