Girl on the Landing

by Paul Torday

  Peter shuddered and his face looked drawn. I was glad I was sitting down. I felt faint. Then Peter stopped. He sat and mopped his forehead with a handkerchief and swallowed a few times, but was still unable to speak.

  Verey-Jones said, ‘Michael pulled out an armful of cotton wool buds and plastic bags from his carrier bag. He told everyone that the little cotton buds were for swabbing the inside of the cheek. He asked everyone to use the cotton buds to absorb some saliva, then put them back in the plastic bag and write their name on the tag. Michael said he would send the whole lot off to a genetics lab in Oxford for DNA testing. He said, “It will be fascinating. I expect to find that we all have significant proportions of DNA found in post-Pyrenean Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. I think it will put this debate we’re having today into perspective.” Then he stopped for a moment, and added, “Unfortunately, I am not aware of a DNA test that will reveal whether we are gentlemen or not, but no doubt that will come.”’

  Verey-Jones chuckled and said, ‘I liked that. A DNA test for gentlemen. I thought that was terribly funny in the circumstances.’

  ‘Get a grip on yourself, Alwyn,’ said Peter. ‘Remember what we are talking about here.’

  ‘What happened then?’ I asked. Peter continued with the story.

  ‘Michael was just trying to get people to form an orderly line so that he could DNA-test them - and there was something so intimidating about him I almost wonder if he mightn’t have succeeded - when there was a commotion.’

  Peter looked away from me then, and I saw how hollowed out his eye sockets seemed, and I knew that something awful had happened.

  ‘There was a lot of shouting from the back of the room, around the doorway. Then somebody said that Carlos, the wine steward, had found a body in the wine cellar behind the 2005 Burgundies. There was a great rush to the exits. I don’t know where people thought they were going. That was the last I saw of Michael.’

  ‘What do you mean? Where did he go? Whose body did they find?’ I said, gasping each sentence out. I felt too breathless to talk properly, and my head was swimming.

  ‘He just vanished,’ said Peter. ‘He must have slipped away. No one saw him go. I didn’t, Alwyn didn’t, and we were both almost next to him. But then there was complete chaos for a few moments until Andrew Farrell remembered he had once been a major general, and took charge.’

  ‘Whose body?’ I asked again.

  ‘I’m going to have to let the police tell you that,’ said Peter Robinson sadly. ‘They know you’re here, of course. They need a statement from you and it’s important from an evidential point of view that I don’t say too much.’

  ‘Oh, Peter,’ I said. ‘Please tell me.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘I’m afraid I mustn’t. The police want to take a statement from you uncontaminated by anything I might say. They should be here any moment; we were asked to phone them whenever we had got in touch with you.’

  He went and sat on the sofa, before jumping to his feet again.

  ‘Remember, Elizabeth, whatever Michael may or may not have done, we must remember his basic human rights.’

  I sat in an office at New Scotland Yard with Detective Sergeant Henshaw and another officer, watching a video file on a wide-screen laptop. The policeman at the computer said, ‘Here, I’ll run it again. You have to keep your eyes open, it’s all a bit quick.’

  The film was a grainy black and white. People walked backwards and forwards with the jerky movements of extras in a Charlie Chaplin movie, the footage on fast forward. The film had been recorded somewhere where there were a lot of people hurrying about: an airport; no, a railway station. It was the concourse of a large, modern, busy station. If it was in London, I could not tell which terminal it was. There was a soundless section of visual static, as the camera lost focus for a moment, or something else happened to stop it filming, then the picture came back and I could see a large black suitcase standing on its own in the middle of the picture. A large black suitcase I had seen before.

  ‘Oh God,’ I breathed.

  ‘Recognised somebody that time?’ asked the laptop operator.

  ‘No, but I might have seen the suitcase before. Can we go through it again?’

  ‘Slow it down if you can, Charlie,’ said Sergeant Henshaw. Charlie opened up a window on the screen and adjusted some controls, then ran the clip again.

  Stephen Gunnerton walked slowly into the picture, wheeling his case behind him. He stopped immediately below the camera and looked up. Charlie paused the film clip.

  ‘Recognise him?’ asked Sergeant Henshaw

  ‘Of course. It’s Stephen Gunnerton.’

  ‘We think he’s looking up at the departures board there. Now watch carefully.’

  A man walked in front of Stephen Gunnerton, hurrying, his head down, carrying a briefcase. A dark-haired girl came and stood near by for a moment, looking up too, perhaps also checking the departures board. Then she moved out of the picture to the right. Then there was a jolt, as if the camera had lurched, and someone was standing next to Stephen Gunnerton, very close to him. He was wearing a grey fleece and camouflage trousers. I couldn’t understand where he had come from. He put his arm around the consultant’s shoulders, as if greeting an old friend and they walked away from the suitcase. The camera went blank for a second, and then came back online. There was no sign of the two men.

  ‘Recognise that other chap?’ asked Henshaw.

  ‘Yes,’ I said in a dull voice.

  ‘Take your time. Have another look.’

  I let them run the clip once more, but I didn’t need to see Mikey again. I didn’t want to. Charlie closed the video clip and turned in his chair to face me. I had been sitting looking over his shoulder, and DS Henshaw had been standing looking over mine. Now the sergeant pulled up a chair and sat beside Charlie, opposite me. It was a nice, cosy circle.

  ‘We’ll get a proper statement in a minute in the interview room. Just a couple of quick questions, so that we can all get our bearings. When did you last see Stephen Gunnerton?’

  ‘Early this morning.’

  ‘Right. We can go into the details of that for the benefit of the tape in a moment or so. When did you last see your husband, Mrs Gascoigne?’

  I started to weep.

  ‘Three nights ago. I told you last time.’

  ‘I just wanted to be sure you hadn’t seen him since.’

  ‘No - no - I would have told you.’

  I was brought a cup of tea. I had to go to the loo to tidy myself up and mop up my face. Then I went into the interview room with both officers, and Charlie unsealed a fresh cassette tape and put it in the machine. For half an hour we went through my interview with Stephen Gunnerton. They weren’t very interested in what he had told me about Mikey’s psychiatric history; they wanted to know what Stephen Gunnerton’s demeanour had been like, and why he had been packing to go abroad. I told them that he seemed to be afraid.

  Charlie switched off the tape and then DS Henshaw said, ‘He was right to be afraid, Mrs Gascoigne. We don’t know exactly what happened there at St Pancras station. We can see Mr Gascoigne suddenly in shot standing next to Stephen Gunnerton, and we have no idea why the camera didn’t pick him up earlier. Then the wretched thing goes on the blink for a few seconds and, by the time we get the picture back, they’ve both disappeared.’

  ‘What happened, then?’ I asked. ‘Why am I here?’

  DS Henshaw didn’t answer my question for a moment. Instead, he said, ‘We are lucky that British Transport Security didn’t simply blow up the suitcase. After all, something that size could have been a large bomb. But an officer had the wit to look at the address label and thought he’d ring us first. Not many terrorists have a Harley Street address.’

  ‘Why am I here, Inspector?’ I repeated.

  ‘We want to interview Mr Gascoigne in connection with the murder of Stephen Gunnerton. They found him in the cellar of Grouchers Club. You don’t need to know the details, bu
t he was dead. I’m sorry, Mrs Gascoigne, but a lot of violence had been used by whoever murdered him.’

  I was sitting down, of course, but all the same my vision blurred, then dwindled to a vanishing speck of light, and I fainted.

  I spent that night in a hotel the police found for me. They didn’t want me to be alone in the flat. They weren’t too concerned about my safety in itself; after all, in their minds I was the wife of a murderer, possibly the wife of a serial killer. As far as they were concerned, I might well have known about Mikey all along, and just kept the good news to myself. But they did want to keep me alive as a potential witness. DS Henshaw said, in a kindly tone, ‘Mr Gascoigne does seem to have a way with CCTV cameras. That clip you saw was the only bit of footage we’ve found so far with an image of him on it. We’re a little worried he might find some clever way of slipping past us if we simply put a couple of officers in a car to keep an eye on your flat.’

  ‘Mikey would never harm me,’ I said.

  DS Henshaw looked thoughtful, but then added, ‘And how Mr Gascoigne got Stephen Gunnerton into that club of his is beyond me. Of course, we’re just speculating at this stage. Mr Gascoigne may have had nothing to do with it. But he was the last person to be seen with Mr Gunnerton at St Pancras, and then there they both are, on the scene at the club. Mr Gascoigne arrives in that big room, covered in blood, according to witnesses, and then the next thing someone finds the body in the cellar. And your husband does his vanishing act again.’

  I found myself saying, ‘Every single member of Grouchers and nearly all the staff were in that morning room for the meeting; even the porter. Peter Robinson said so. You could have brought an elephant into the club that morning, and no one would have noticed.’

  ‘Your husband would have known that, wouldn’t he?’ asked Henshaw in a gentler voice. I nodded in my misery.

  ‘Well, we’ll keep looking for him,’ he said. ‘There’s a lot of us and only one of him. We’ll find him soon, today we hope. Then we’ll have to see.’

  ‘You won’t hurt him?’ I asked. DS Henshaw looked offended.

  ‘We’ll do our job as professionally as we can, as always. I’ll look in tomorrow morning and let you know what’s going on. You’re safe here, Mrs Gascoigne.’

  I wanted to scream at him then, to tell him once more that Mikey would never hurt me. But then I thought: I don’t really know what Mikey will or won’t do; not any more. In my mind a grainy film clip replayed itself in a loop: first he wasn’t anywhere, then he was, his arm around Stephen Gunnerton’s shoulders. First he wasn’t anywhere, and then he was there.

  The next morning went by without any sign of Sergeant Henshaw. I wanted to leave the hotel and go for a walk to clear my head, but the police officer outside the door wouldn’t let me - even breakfast had to be brought up on a tray. After drinking a cup of tea I lay on my bed and dozed. I was tired beyond all knowledge after the events of the last few days. I shut my eyes and tried drifting off into sleep, but in the end just lay there, half waking, half sleeping, while the world turned on its axis. I wanted everything to be the way it had been only a few days ago, when Mikey and I had embraced each other on the doorstep of our flat.

  At noon DS Henshaw reappeared. He seemed tired and there were dark circles under his eyes. I looked at him as he came into the room, my whole expression a question mark. He shook his head even though I had not spoken.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said, ‘nothing anywhere. No sign of Mr Gascoigne and, come to that, no sign of Dr Grant. We’ve rather given up hope of ever seeing Dr Grant again, especially now we’ve been told that Mr Gascoigne was away from North Berwick for a whole day. It’s only just over two hours up the road to Glen Gala, isn’t it?’

  He pulled out the chair from writing desk and sat on it.

  ‘The thing is, Mrs Gascoigne, we’re really worried now. We have had one very violent killing. We’ve got one missing person, connected through your husband with the person who was murdered. I know that, at this point, Mr Gunnerton was murdered by a person or persons unknown, but I think you know why we’re very anxious to interview Mr Gascoigne and - if possible - eliminate him from our enquiries.’

  I said nothing. There was a long silence, while Sergeant Henshaw looked at the floor, as if he could see clues in the pattern of the carpet. Then he raised his head and said, ‘I’ve read Mr Gascoigne’s medical files, Mrs Gascoigne. I’m no psychiatrist but it seems to me that he has a very strong emotional connection with that place of yours up in Scotland - what’s it called?’

  ‘Beinn Caorrun,’ I said.

  ‘Perhaps he’ll feel safer up there than down in the city, if he can get back without being picked up.’

  He can run for days, I repeated to myself, remembering what Stephen Gunnerton had said, he can hide from anyone.

  ‘Perhaps - this is only a thought, Mrs Gascoigne - perhaps if he knew you were there waiting for him, that emotional connection would be even stronger. It might be irresistible. He might feel compelled to show himself to you, to talk to you.’

  I stared at Sergeant Henshaw in horror but he was unabashed. He looked me straight in the eye without blinking.

  ‘You know what I’m saying, Mrs Gascoigne,’ he went on. ‘Your husband may be a very sick, very dangerous man. We have to take him into care, somehow, for his own protection, as well as that of other people. We have to do it soon. Once something like this starts, it doesn’t stop until there have been more deaths.’

  ‘You can’t ask me to go up there on my own,’ I whispered. ‘You can’t.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be on your own,’ said Sergeant Henshaw.

  ‘Of course not. There are officers, not beat constables, but very special people who know everything there is to know about lying up and waiting without being seen. We’d get them in by night; they’d dig themselves in and watch the house. When we’re all set, you go up north to your place, you go into the house, and you wait. Mr Gascoigne comes. His instincts bring him. Maybe, most likely, we will intercept him before he gets anywhere near the house. If he does get as far as the house, talk to him and hit the send button on your phone. We’ll be there within minutes - seconds even. What’s the mobile signal like up there?’

  ‘Mikey let them put a mast up last summer. It’s strong.’ Then I said, ‘You just want me to be a sacrificial goat, don’t you? You want me to be the bait to trap my own husband. I won’t do it. I couldn’t.’

  Sergeant Henshaw stood up. ‘We can’t make you do it. It’s your choice. Think about the other choices for a moment, though. You can’t stay here for ever, in this hotel room. At some point we will have to decide what to do with you: whether to put you in a witness protection programme or let you go back to your flat and wait: for Mr Gascoigne to turn up there, perhaps, if we can’t find him. Think about it. I’m going to make a few calls. I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Please see if you can bring yourself to do this. It’s our best option.’

  Then he was gone and I was left staring at the door as it shut behind him. I thought for a long time without getting past what I had known as soon as Sergeant Henshaw had first spoken.

  If I went to Beinn Caorrun, Mikey would come.

  17

  Forgotten but Not Gone

  The air in front of the trees was shimmering and it seemed to me as if a man was walking out of the forest towards me. I did not know how he had got there, or how he had walked past the watchers without them doing anything about it. I did not understand why the air was shimmering: it was not hot, but nearly Christmas and very cold. The ground was like iron and there was a sprinkling of snow that even the direct rays of the sun could not shift. In London the Christmas illuminations had been on in Regent’s Street for weeks, and all the shop windows were full of upmarket elves, Santa’s sleighs, tinsel and artificial snow. The first Christmas we were married, I had given him a huge glossy picture book entitled Best Golf Courses of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and he had given me his heart, and he said to me—

>   WAKE UP!

  The rental car had drifted over the centre line of the road and there was a huge foghorn blast from an articulated truck that was barrelling down the southbound lane of the A9 towards me; I wrenched the wheel and the small car shuddered in the slipstream of the huge vehicle I had so nearly collided with. I pulled over into the next layby and sat for a moment with my hands on the steering wheel, trying to control the shaking. Wouldn’t it have been for the best if I had not woken out of my daydream for another second or two? Then I wouldn’t have to explain to Mikey, if he came, why I was betraying him for his own good, and I wouldn’t have to spend the rest of my life waiting for him to come, if he didn’t come this time.