by Jane Goodall
‘Funny, I was thinking the same. But four days is four days. You know what Macready says when we’re on a murder case? Think of every day as a week. Four weeks doesn’t sound so bad, does it?’
‘Does that mean I’m a bad case?’
‘Shocking.’ She put a hand over his. ‘I wish we really did have another four weeks.’
‘Had we but world enough and time ... ’
‘What’s that? Poetry?’
‘Andrew Marvell. A poem to persuade his mistress to go to bed with him.’
‘I thought you’d already done that.’
‘Two coffees?’ chanted the waitress.
They waited in silence as she set down the cups and saucers, then Gareth leant forward, elbows on the table.
‘Come with me, Bry. Come and live in Paris. We could have such a great time together.’
Briony shook her head. ‘Wouldn’t work. I don’t even speak French. I’d be completely out of it. If you introduced me to the Paris in-crowd as “my girlfriend” you might as well put a sack over my head. I’d be a complete nobody.’
‘And back here you’re looking to be Detective Chief Inspector.’
‘I’ve worked hard for that. You know I have.’
‘But you could take six months out.’
‘If I cut loose now, I’ll get sidelined. Chelsea’s full of ambitious CID officers who’d be itching to take over my patch. Besides, Macready would take a dim view of it. He’s the one who’s given me all the breaks so far.’
‘You’re not married to him, are you?’
‘I’m not married to you either.’
‘You could be. Seriously, Bry. We could get married. Why not?’
‘Look, Gareth, I’m not going to just drop everything and follow you round the world.’ Her voice came out sharper than she meant, and he slumped back in his chair, pulling the Guardian onto his lap. Briony fished out the Daily Mail and pretended to read, but she couldn’t concentrate. Suddenly everything was out of kilter.
She got up. ‘I’m going for a walk on the beach.’
‘What — on your own?’
‘You can come if you like.’
‘I’ll catch you up later. I have to go through these.’
Outside the wind was coming in wet squalls, so you couldn’t tell whether it was rain or sea-spray. Was this really July? She lowered her head and set off at a brisk pace, trying to let the wind blow her thoughts away, but the adrenalin only brought them out more strongly.
Sometimes Gareth was impossible. He was lovely, but he was impossible. Couldn’t he see that he was being unreasonable? After all, he wouldn’t think of blowing his exciting new opportunity just to stay in England with her. And how could he bring up the suggestion of marriage in that way, as if it was just some kind of convenience for him?
Two firm hands grasped her shoulders from behind.
‘Don’t run away from me, Bry. We’ll sort it out.’ He turned her round and she saw he looked confused. Scared, even. ‘We’ll sort something out, won’t we?’
They walked on, arms tightly interlaced, listening to the gulls squawking and the sea slapping at the beach and the wind whipping at the sea.
‘You know one of my worries is London’s getting ugly,’ Gareth said.
‘I think I know more than most people about the ugly side of London.’
‘No — look, what I mean is — it’s getting uglier. Much more random violence. Bad vibes in the streets.’
‘I can look after myself.’
By lunchtime the wind had dropped and some weak sunshine was breaking through the clouds. They bought fish and chips wrapped in yesterday’s local paper and sat on a bench to eat.
‘See,’ she broke off a piece of gleaming white fish. ‘Things are looking up.’
‘That’s my line. I thought I was the one being the optimist. I’m trying to learn how to have a sunny disposition. What about this then?’ Gareth smoothed out a sheet of the newspaper. ‘“Topless sunbathers arrested on Traeth Dolwen beach”. What do you think about that then?’
‘I think they must be a bit short of crime to report on.’
‘They’re short of sunny beaches, as well — but just goes to show, you never know your luck, do you?’
‘What did you do with all those papers you bought this morning?’
‘Left them in the cafe, didn’t I?’
‘That’s not like you — abandoning a pile of unread papers.’
‘Well now you know how much you mean to me, Bry.’
‘How about we get some more and take them back to our room?’
‘Is that a subtle way of telling me you’re up for an afternoon of non-stop lovemaking? Why don’t we just forget the newspapers?’
Their room was on the top floor, with a skylight that made the best of the afternoon sun. Gareth kicked the door to, and in one swift movement pulled off Briony’s t-shirt. He sat on the bed and took her hands, he kissed her wrists again, then her navel, working his way up. She dropped her head back and closed her eyes, hands clasped behind his neck.
Later they went back to the beach to get the last of the afternoon sunshine. Briony took off her shoes and ran to the edge of the water, yelping and laughing at the cold. She called for him to follow, taunting him for being chicken, then sprinted back and grabbed him by the arm.
‘Come on!’
Gareth dug a toe into the caked sand. ‘There’s something I ought to tell you, Bry.’
She waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. ‘Well, what? That’s not a good opening line, you know.’
‘Sorry. It’s just — I don’t want you overreacting to this.’
She pulled away and stood facing him. ‘Sounds worse and worse.’
‘Yeah. All right. I’ve stuffed it up, haven’t I? There was something in the papers. At first I thought — it might be better if you didn’t know. Not yet, anyway. Not while we’re on holiday.’
Briony’s mind was working at lightning speed. ‘Something’s happened in London. It’s police news, isn’t it?’
‘Here. You better read it for yourself.’ Gareth took a torn-out scrap of newspaper from his pocket and handed it to her. The wind kept trying to whip it out of her hands as she devoured the words.
Attack on Senior Police Officer Commander Alexander Macready, one of the most distinguished senior officers in the Metropolitan CID, is in intensive care after having been viciously attacked by an intruder at his residence in Hampstead on Saturday night. He suffered knife wounds to the neck and shoulders, but managed to fend off his assailant and raise the alarm. His condition is reported as stable.
Briony looked up at Gareth. ‘Are there any other reports?’
‘Times exclusive, apparently.’
‘I’ll have to ring up and see how he is.’
‘Of course. Do you want some change?’ He delved into his pocket and produced two pounds and some silver. ‘But, Bry — don’t get sucked in.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Don’t get sucked in to the case. I know you.’
‘Maybe I’m already in it. There was something going on before I left. I didn’t tell you about it because ... well, you know.’
‘Confidential CID business.’
‘Partly that. There’s a phone box up by the pier. I won’t be long.’
After ten minutes of frustration trying to get through to Macready’s assistant, she gave up and rang Steve Latham’s number. He answered the phone straightaway.
‘The Times got mixed up with your holiday reading, did it?’ he said dryly.
‘What’s happened, Steve?’
‘We’re still trying to find out. Macready’s been in surgery, so he won’t be out of the anaesthetic for another few hours. The Hampstead police found him semi-conscious, so he couldn’t tell them anything last night. The DAC is charging in on his big white horse. Best thing you can do is stay where you are, Briony. Out of trouble.’
She disconnected, knowing that she’d alr
eady made a decision, and rang British Rail.
Gareth was waiting for her on the promenade, leaning against the sea wall with his hands deep in his pockets, chin on his chest. He raised his eyes but not his head as he heard her coming. She stopped before she got within touching distance.
‘Gareth — I’ve just talked to Steve. Things are in a bad way.’ Gareth wasn’t going to make this easy for her. The expression in his eyes changed, but he didn’t move or say anything. She swallowed.
‘Look, Gareth. I have to go back to London. There’s a train at 5.10.’
‘So that’s it then?’ he said quietly.
‘What d’you mean by “that’s it”? I have to go back, that’s all. It’s an emergency.’
‘It’s always an emergency, isn’t it? That’s your job. 999 is your middle name.’
‘I’m sorry. This is the last thing I wanted — ’
‘I don’t think you know what you want.’
She looked up at him, startled at the tone in his voice, and met an unfamiliar hard stare.
25
Logan put the phone down and smiled. Sometimes it was like this — you worked away, trying to break a story, but you could only get so far before you found yourself repeating all the approaches and getting no further into the heart of it. Then suddenly, out of the blue, it came to meet you. Some stories just wanted to be told. Best not get too excited before he’d checked out the bona fides, but an invitation to meet another member of the Suddens — face to face — was a breakthrough.
The mystery-men act had started to bite in the British press now, with an article in the Daily Mail about the ‘Rockers in the Rapist Masks’ and another in Time Out on the ‘Cult of Secrecy’ surrounding the membership of the group. The Time Out journalist knew his stuff and included an identity parade — complete with photographs — of musos from the alternative scene who might be candidates. But that journo was driving by the wrong map, because it wasn’t the music scene the Suddens were feeding off. It was something completely different, so you needed an inside line to even get started on the question of what they were really about.
Logan checked back through his notes, then opened a clean page and did a stocktake:
Who are the Suddens?
1.Flak: no secret. Front man, lyricist. Aka Garry Flaxman.
2.Kaiser. Guitar and vocals. Paranoid wannabe SS man. Aka John Polito.
3.Sol: Wacko with a wind-up problem. Writes some of the lyrics, makes the masks, but is he up there on stage? Sometimes. Aka??
4.Mr Ex: Drums. Publisher of the Yeller. Aka Johnny Mullighan.
And then there were the extras — the ring-ins who got picked to experience the thrill of a single gig. Nice touch, that. They felt they were getting initiated into an exclusive club, but it was clever how they were kept from seeing anything that mattered: no introductions, just here’s your guitar, kiddo, now get up there and play. They didn’t need to know how to play. Soon as they got offstage they were handed a twenty-pound note — double the session fee anyone else in the down-end club scene would get — and told to piss off. The extras didn’t penetrate the secrecy, they added to it.
On the other hand, if anyone who mattered — the cops, for instance — should find out what was really going down behind the scenes, there was a string of twenty-pound witnesses at the ready who hadn’t seen a thing. Flak was canny that way, but he had to depend on the solidarity of the band members and there he’d made at least one big mistake. When it came to violence, the image and the actuality were two completely different things, and a couple of weeks ago Kaiser saw something that freaked him out so much he decided to grass to Logan Royce.
So where was Johnny Mullighan in all this? Was he the real thing? Calling yourself Mr Ex was a bit of a standing joke in the World’s End pubs, but Kaiser had told him Mr Ex was Johnny Mullighan and no one else around the traps knew that. Most significantly, the guy on the phone knew all about the conversation Logan had had with Flak in the High Stepper. He had rung with an offer of the inside story on the Highgate show: ‘a special vantage point’, as he put it.
From now on, every detail of this had to be documented. Logan had been making notes while he was on the phone, taking down the complicated instructions about how to find the meeting place, and trying to capture Johnny Mullighan’s style of talk. It was different from the talk he’d been hearing over the past few weeks — tighter, simpler, more formal somehow.
‘We’re looking to break into the American market and that means a tour. Which means passports and hotel registrations and all the rest of it. We always intended the mask thing to be temporary, but we’ve been able to spin it out much longer than we originally planned. The British press fall for everything we throw at them, so we thought we’d break the story through an American mag. If you want it, you might be in luck.’
It was even a bit disappointing to have it all laid out on a plate like that, with the raging anarchists turned into smooth-talking media stuntmen, more managed than the Sex Pistols and less dangerous than the Rolling Stones. Kaiser might just be suffering from amphetamine-driven paranoia, but on the other hand this might just be a set-up.
Logan had a little Colt 9 mm that he’d kept as a personal insurance policy, ever since he’d found himself too close to the frontline at Altamont. Mostly the thing wasn’t even loaded, but it was a really good way of saying ‘back off’ if you got yourself in a bad situation. He took it out and checked it over, and on second thoughts decided to slip a bullet into the barrel. One would be enough. He was a good enough shot to know how to miss, and if these guys needed a more serious type of scare, he could give it to them.
But that raised another issue. He drummed his fingers on the desk top, staring at the gun and frowning. If the Suddens really were dangerous, did that mean he had a responsibility now to give the police a tip-off about the where and the when for this concert? He picked up the phone and dialled directory enquiries, then followed up with a call to Chelsea police station, burbling something about a situation coming up that they might wish to monitor.
‘Yes, sir. Your name?’
Logan hung up. Stupid idea, getting himself involved in a tip-off. There’d be no surer way to blow his chances of the scoop. He checked his watch again, then grabbed his keys, stashed the pistol inside his denim jacket and left.
Outside, the weather had changed. The wind was up again. Rubbish bowled along the street, the people walking past were hanging on to their flapping clothes, birds were flying every which way. A good day for the cemetery, Logan thought as he looked up, assessing the clouds for rain. They were moving too fast to drop anything right now, he figured, but later — could be a good idea to have something waterproof at the ready. He stopped outside the tube station and bought a black plastic raincoat, smiling at the idea of ripping it up later and wearing it into SEX. Maybe tomorrow he would do exactly that — show them he knew how to ring the changes on the Dylan look.
*
Sharon had just returned from rehearsal, where Flak had shown her how to tie him up in chains and bandages and swing him up over the heads of the crowd. He seemed to know what he was doing but it looked incredibly risky. Zig was obviously dead-set on her going through with it, because it was a chance to find out what was going on behind the scenes.
‘He won’t expect you to know what to look for,’ she said. ‘He just thinks you’re a pea-brained school kid.’
‘Gee, thanks.’
‘Well I know you’re smarter than that, don’t I? Else I wouldn’t be telling you to do it. Look, Sharon, I’ve done it myself — played the assistant and got twenty quid cash in hand, and I couldn’t have told anyone exactly what went on down there under the stage because I hadn’t a clue about it. That was before I got involved with Sol.’ She dragged on her cigarette. ‘Flak wouldn’t let me anywhere near Sol now, when he’s on stage. He doesn’t like girls getting too close to his precious band members.’
‘You said I had to know what to look for. So what am
I looking for?’
‘What’s going on between them. Flak’s had a bust-up with Kaiser, that’s obvious, so watch how they act with each other. More than anything I have to know if Sol’s actually up there on stage with them. If it is Sol, they have ways of communicating, even with the masks on. Nods, looks — and there’s little sort of hand signals.’ Zig demonstrated, holding up one finger, then two, and swivelling her hand around. ‘Like they’re agreeing this is going to happen or that’s going to happen.’
‘What about their feet?’ Sharon asked. ‘Can’t you tell who they are from their feet?’
‘Nuh. They all wear those thick-soled factory boots. They got it all worked out, Sharon. I been living with Sol for eight months now and I’ve seen all their concerts in that time, but you know I’ve never been able to find out who Mr Ex is.’
‘What if he’s a robot? Like one of those Doctor Who cyborgs?’
Zig ignored the suggestion. ‘What’s really getting to me is I’ve got this idea it must be someone I know, but I’ve gone round and round in my head trying to figure it out. One thing I do know is Flak and Mr Ex are like that.’ She held up crossed fingers. ‘There’s some big agenda going between them.’
‘Like chaos and anarchy.’ Sharon rolled her eyes. ‘That’s obvious, isn’t it?’
‘You don’t get chaos,’ said Zig, ‘without planning exactly what you’re going to push off the rails.’
*
When Logan emerged from the tube station at Highgate the weather still looked very uncertain. Following the directions he’d been given, he made his way towards the cemetery but decided to use the main entrance rather than Johnny Mullighan’s recommended way into the western end, which involved climbing over walls and very likely cutting across backyards. At a pinch, the black raincoat might convince any over-vigilant gatekeepers that he had genuine business with the recently dead. Logan put it on, moved the gun to the pocket on the right side and walked through the gates at a solemn pace, attracting a respectful nod from an elderly gardener who was tending the roses along the side of the path.
Logan was not superstitious, but he didn’t like cemeteries —especially the older kind, where the gravestones were toppling over and cracking apart and the plants grew in vigorous tangles as if they’d been feeding on bone marrow. He’d read in the papers that they’d been having a lot of trouble with satanists and vampire hunters in the wilder parts of the cemetery, and the caretakers had tightened up their act. Sounded like there were a few good stories in that, too. But they were for somebody else.