‘Then you’ll give yourself up,’ I said eagerly with some relief, releasing the grip on the revolver in my pocket.
But Warren shook his head. ‘No, I shall not give myself up or be caught. I have no wish to be a living fun fair attraction in the courts and then on the gallows. Again, it will take the attention away from the real monster in this grisly scenario: Raymond Carter. He will be the one to live on with the pain of life and become his own sideshow. Meanwhile, I will just … slip away.’
With great speed he placed the barrel of his revolver into his mouth and pulled the trigger.
There was a brief muffled crack and Warren’s body jerked violently. The gun fell to the floor and he slumped gently backwards in the chair while the wall of the cabin behind him was sprayed with fine spots of blood. Blood also pulsed from the wound at the back of his head, running down the back of the chair. Mouth agape with a vivid scarlet trickle meandering down his chin, Warren gazed sightlessly at the ceiling.
I had never seen a man kill himself before. Whether it was the sheer shock of such a desperate action or simply the horror of the scene, I don’t know but I found my whole body shaking with unrecognizable emotion. Now, I thought, it is time to be sick and before I knew what was happening, I was leaning over the chair and ejecting the contents of my stomach on to the floor, my throat burning as I spewed out the vomit. I hung in this undignified position for some moments until I felt certain that I had completed this unpleasant evacuation process. As I pulled myself upright once more, wiping my mouth with a handkerchief, a sound came to my ears in the fierce silence of the cabin. It was high-pitched and near at hand, but at first it was difficult to identify the actual sound and its location. I rose to my feet, avoiding a glance in the direction of my dead companion, and strained my ears. The sound came again. It was a cry. A human cry. A high-pitched shriek. It was from outside the boat. A cry for help as though …
As swift as my legs could carry me, I raced up on deck. The voice was now bright and clear and came from the darkness of the river. I could hear it quite clearly now and what it was saying.
‘Help,’ it cried. ‘Help! I can’t swim.’
I pulled out my torch and flashed the beam over the seething waters.
‘Where are you?’ I yelled.
‘I’m here,’ came the reply. A tiny frightened voice emerging out of the gloom.
My body stiffened with fearful apprehension. It was a voice I knew.
‘Peter!’ I bellowed, sweeping my torch in the direction I had heard his cry. ‘Keep shouting. Keep shouting!’
But this time there was no response. And then the beam of the torch picked out something in the darkness. It was Peter’s cap. At first I thought it was just floating on the surface but then as the waves shifted, I realized that Peter was still wearing it. He had slipped under the water.
With a cry of anger, I flung off my overcoat and dived over the side of the barge. My heart thudded against my chest as though it might explode with the shock of my immersion into the icy river. Thankfully my sense of self-preservation took over and as I rose to the surface, I began to swim furiously. I gasped desperately for air as I tried to move forward to where I had seen Peter. Without the benefit of my torch it was like playing a game of watery blind man’s buff.
Since that terrible night, I have gone over these moments time and time again in my mind and I am still amazed at how I reacted to the situation. It was an automatic, an instinctive response. It was as if no thought patterns were involved. Never once did I pause to consider how surreal, bizarre and nightmarish this scenario was: I had just witnessed a murderer blow his brains out and moments later I was floundering about in the Arctic waters of the River Thames in the dark trying to rescue a drowning boy, my Peter. The question of how he’d got there never crossed my mind.
‘Peter,’ I yelled again, praying desperately for a response, but my words were swept away by the night wind leaving me with only silence. I thrashed about desperately, reaching out, hoping to find my boy.
‘Oh, God,’ I moaned, as the overpowering belief that I had lost him took hold of me.
‘Peter!’ I bellowed once more, my voice harsh with desperate passion.
Nothing.
Just the wind and the slapping of the water.
For some aching moment, time seemed to stand still, allowing the implications of my tragedy to burrow into my brain.
And then I heard something. A little cough, a splutter – just ahead of me to the right. Frantically, I swam in the direction of the noise. I heard it again. It was nearer now. I was almost on top of it. Suddenly, my hand touched something solid. My heart leapt. It was the inert body of Peter. He was floating like debris on the water. I managed to lift him up so that his head was above the surface, but his eyes remained closed and his features still. I had no real notion whether he was just unconscious or dead.
Swimming backwards with Peter floating on my chest, I made for the bank. There was a little jetty at water level running between the two house boats. I aimed for this and then with some difficultly I hauled Peter’s sodden body on to the wooden planking. A lifeless water-logged twelve-year-old is quite a weight.
Now, Hawke, I told myself, cudgel your bloody brains and remember your drill from your days in the force. How to resuscitate a drowned rat! I laid Peter face down with his head lying over the edge of the jetty and massaged his back in a desperate attempt to get rid of some of the water from his lungs in order that he could breathe.
‘Come on, Peter,’ I cried in his ear, thrusting down on his tiny limp frame. ‘You can do it. If Tiger Blake can do it, so can you!’ Gradually water began to trickle from his mouth and the boy’s eyelids started to flutter. I pumped even harder. If the patient survived, he would have bruises for weeks, I thought inconsequentially.
At last my efforts were rewarded with a brief choking cough. And then Peter’s eyes flickered open momentarily. That was the breakthrough I’d been hoping for. I knew that if he had remained unconscious, no matter how much water I managed to pump from his body he would be a goner. Now I had to maintain that consciousness. I shook him vigorously and sat him upright. His eyes opened and focused on my face.
‘Johnny,’ he said in a ghost of whisper.
‘That’s me,’ I said, smiling.
Now I had to get him somewhere warm so that the cold didn’t overpower him. Half carrying and half-dragging my very wet boy, I managed to climb my way up a rickety staircase to the towpath and return to Warren’s houseboat. I laid Peter down by the stove, which still provided a small amount of heat. I went in search of the bedroom and found it easily as it was merely a small area curtained off from the rest of the main room by a flowery curtain. It contained two bunk beds and a washbasin. From one of the beds I retrieved a sheet and an eiderdown. I draped the eiderdown around Peter who hugged it to his damp body gratefully. Meanwhile I flung the sheet over Warren’s gruesome corpse, which lay still staring in amazement at the ceiling. I grimaced as the apparition disappeared behind the folds of the dingy covering.
In the galley kitchen I found some brandy. Diluting it slightly I gave a glass to Peter who was shivering now in a feverish way.
‘Drink that slowly,’ I ordered, ‘and make sure you stay awake. Do you understand?’
He nodded.
‘Drink this … and stay awake,’ I repeated.
He put the glass to his lips and drank a little. He pulled a face of disgust as he tasted the brandy.
‘It’s like medicine,’ he moaned.
‘Exactly. It will make you better. Come on. Have some more.’
He took another sip, but his disapprobation did not diminish.
‘Good boy.’ I said smoothing back his damp hair.
Now it was time for official business. Using the telephone on the houseboat, in quick succession I rang for an ambulance and interrupted David Llewellyn’s evening peace yet again.
The ambulance arrived first. While I’d waited I kept talking to Peter, giv
ing him simple quiz questions just to keep his brain active and his body awake. However, I could see that the fever was taking hold of him.
I explained the situation to the ambulance men and they gave him a quick examination.
‘Well, all things considered, he seems in reasonable condition,’ said the older of the two men who seemed to be in charge. ‘I reckon he’s got a little hypothermia and he’s still got some water sloshing about in him but these young ’uns are toughies. A night under surveillance and some medication should see him well on the way to recovery.’
I smiled in gratitude.
‘Where are you taking him?’
‘Chiswick Lodge. It’s only five minutes away from here.’
I gave Peter a hug. ‘I’ll see you in the morning, cowboy.’
He just beamed back at me dreamily and no doubt a little inebriatedly also. He had drunk all the brandy.
After the medical chaps had taken my damp friend with them, it was my turn to have a go with the brandy. But there was no watering it down for me. I think I deserved a little alcoholic ease after the night I’d had and I needed some Dutch courage also to peer behind that sheet once more at the remains of Al Warren.
I was just draining my glass when David Llewellyn and Sergeant Sunderland arrived with two strapping constables.
‘Where is he then?’ asked David gruffly.
I pulled back the sheet, unmasking the dead man. All four men blanched at the sight.
‘Saved the hangman a job, then, did he?’ said David.
I nodded. ‘As I said on the phone, he turned the gun on himself.’
‘He got a screw loose then?’
‘Had a screw loose? Well, I suppose he had but there was method in his madness.’
‘You’d better tell me.’
And I did. I told him how Raymond Carter had abandoned his wife and his baby son twenty-five years ago; how she had committed suicide as a result and how the boy had grown up in America with a cruel couple who adopted him.
‘It was in his formative years that the desire, the need for Warren to take revenge on his father for his mother’s death and his own plight was fostered. It grew until it controlled his every thought and action. It became his obsession.’
David gave a low whistle of surprise. ‘Blimey. What goes on in the heads of some men, eh? But why didn’t he just kill him? Just put a bullet through his brain like he did to himself at the end?’
‘That would have been too easy. He didn’t want to end Carter’s life … just destroy it.’
‘You’re beginning to lose me now, boyo.’
‘He wanted the man whom he had hated all his life to suffer the indignity of failure, loss, and degradation. To have all that he had achieved, fame, money, security all taken from him.’
‘So, you don’t think Mr Carter is lying in a ditch somewhere. You think he’s still living and breathing.’
‘Living and breathing – but not talking.’
‘Why do you say that?’
I leaned over and placed my hand into Al Warren’s jacket pocket and retrieved the jagged piece of flesh that had once belonged to Raymond Carter. I held it out on the palm of my hand for inspection by David and his men.
‘What on earth’s that thing?’ my friend asked.
‘It was … Raymond Carter’s tongue. Warren cut it out.’
David groaned. ‘My God, he had more than one screw loose. He had the whole bloody tool box adrift.’
I slipped the tongue back in Warren’s pocket without comment.
‘So where is Carter now, d’you think?’ asked David.
All thoughts of Raymond Carter’s whereabouts had been pushed from my mind, all thanks to my watery adventure and concerns about Peter, until now. I stood up quickly. ‘I believe there’s every likelihood that he’s here on this boat,’ I said.
David narrowed his eyes. I could tell from his expression that he was highly sceptical of my suggestion, but I also knew that he was canny enough a policeman not to reject any possible scenario out of hand if it had the slightest of possibilities of bearing fruit.
‘Very well,’ he said decisively. ‘Let’s test your theory. Let’s search the place.’
THIRTY-SEVEN
* * *
We did find Raymond Carter on the boat. It is one of the moments in my life which will stay burnt on my memory as long as I walk this planet. How I wish I could eradicate the vision of it and the associated memories which rise from it. It is like some particularly unpleasant vignette from Dante’s Inferno.
Behind the galley kitchen, towards the rear of the boat we discovered a secret door which led initially to a kind of antechamber which in turn led to what would seem to be a storeroom or junk room, the equivalent of a dusty old attic where all unwanted items were deposited.
All unwanted items.
It was in here that we discovered Raymond Carter.
Or what remained of him.
David and I had ventured into the antechamber, which had no electric light that we could see, so David pulled out his regulation police torch with a strong steady beam and flooded the chamber with a fierce white light. Mine was still out on the deck nestling, I hoped, in the pocket of my overcoat where I had dropped it before diving into the river.
As we stood quietly watching the beam of David’s torch pick out the dimensions of the chamber and details of its scant contents, we heard a noise emanating from the room beyond. At first it seemed like an animal noise, mice or more likely rats but as we listened more carefully, it seemed to me unlike any noise I’d ever heard before.
Tentatively we opened the door and David shone his torch into the further chamber.
Very quickly, the beam picked out a figure sitting on a chair – later inspection revealed that he was firmly secured to it, tied both hands and feet with a tight cord around the chest. Carter was wearing heavy stage make-up, plastered on, no doubt by his demented captor. The thick pancake was coated with a mixture of flaking grains of powder and sweat. The eyes, wild and flickering, had been ringed with a black line and the cheeks had been violently rouged to represent bizarre shining apple cheeks. Lines had been drawn on his brow, down from his nose and at the side of his mouth towards his chin. The effect was vivid and grotesque. In the harsh glare of the torchlight he resembled a doll. In fact, he looked like a kind of Dorian Gray version of Charlie Dokes.
Carter’s lips were bright red but the colour was smeared all round his mouth. I was unsure whether it was greasepaint or blood from his severed tongue. At first Carter seemed to be gibbering quietly to himself but when he became aware of the bright torch’s beam, his body jerked to attention and the eyes widened with what seemed a wild kind of pleasure. The eyelids flicked mechanically, while the mouth broadened into a surreal smile and the head twitched from side to side as though it were being operated by an unseen hand. And then it began to speak or to make sounds. It was a croaking formless noise that emanated from this tongue-less mouth but it sounded to my ears like the inarticulate bleatings of Charlie Dokes.
We stared for some time at this horrendous apparition before us, shocked into inaction. We were held in horror, pity and pain by the slobbering madman who had twisted his body as far as he could while gyrating his grotesque head. Raymond Carter had, through despair and fear, slipped into madness and thus mutated into a damaged version of his own creation.
It was just half an hour before closing time that same evening when, weary and sick at heart, David and I shuffled into The Guardsman pub near Scotland Yard. It had been a hell of a night. David had supervised the removal of Warren’s corpse to the police morgue and Carter to the police hospital. It was clear to both of us, that if the fellow lived, as was likely, he would spend the rest of his days in an insane asylum.
I’d gone back to the Yard and given my lengthy and detailed statement concerning this tragic affair and then telephoned the hospital to find out how Peter was faring. A very kindly voiced night sister assured me that ‘the little mite was
doing fine’ and that I could visit him in the morning. That cheered me somewhat, but I was still plagued by two fierce images that flashed with unpleasant regularity into my mind. There was Warren calmly placing the gun in his mouth – I could still hear the barrel clicking against his teeth – and then calmly blowing his brains out. I heard the sharp, muffled report and saw again the fine shower of red blood spray the walls. The second vision, though less violent, was the more disturbing: Raymond Carter’s grotesquely made-up face caught in the beam of David’s torch just like a theatre spotlight and the mouth clamping up and down like a ventriloquist’s doll while inarticulate squeals and grunts emanated from it. It was the stuff of nightmares and it made my blood run cold.
David ordered the drinks and offered me a cigarette. We both lit up and obscured our faces in wisps of grey smoke.
‘This has been a rum one and no mistake,’ he said at length when the drinks arrived.
I nodded. ‘It’s strange but I can’t help feeling sorry for both of them.’
‘Nonsense. Warren was obviously a bit barmy and it turns out that Carter was a heartless sod.’
‘True. But did they deserve their fates?’
‘Oh, don’t go down that route, old boy. I’m a policeman. It’s my job to catch the buggers. You’ll need to speak to priests and professors if you want to take the moralizing path. It was messy and unpleasant but it’s cleared up now and we can move on to the next bit of nastiness. Don’t let it hang around here.’ He tapped his forehead. ‘That way madness lies.’
I forced a grin. ‘I guess you’re right.’
‘Too true, I am.’ He raised his pint. ‘Another couple of these and a good night’s sleep and it’ll just be a memory in the morning.’
I wasn’t convinced, but I said nothing.
As it turned out David decided to go after he had drained his first pint. ‘I’m not really in the mood, actually. I’ll get home to the little woman. She’s having a bit of a rough time at the moment with me being called out all hours.’
Requiem for a Dummy Page 24