by Alan Beechey
“Angus had no other family,” said Effie. “Cliff is his only child, and his wife died a year ago, while he was in prison.”
“Yet another reason why Cliff may be bitter—he may blame his mother’s death on his father’s incarceration,” Moldwarp moaned knowingly, as if fulfilling a prediction he had made during some earlier jeremiad.
“We also have the possibility that Angus himself decided on revenge,” said Mallard. “He may have planned the murders inside and used an agent to carry them out.”
“The agent is still most likely to be Cliff,” commented Welkin.
“Agreed. But Angus will have made some new friends in the nick. Sergeant Moldwarp, check on Burbage’s known associates, especially those who’ve been released in the last six months. Any other suggestions?”
“Someone who was frustrated on Burbage’s behalf?” ventured Welkin. “Another victim of police brutality? A bleeding-heart liberal?”
Mallard screwed his face up, as if the possibility caused him minor pain. “Look into that if Cliff Burbage doesn’t pan out,” he conceded. “Okay, anything new from our continuing investigations? How about that crossbow?”
“Still no leads,” Moldwarp complained.
“The dart gun?”
“He didn’t leave it behind,” Welkin reminded them. “None have been reported stolen recently. They ain’t that hard to get hold of, apparently.”
“The drug that was used on Mark Sandys-Penza?”
The detectives shook their heads.
“So much for the ‘instruments of darkness,’ our man uses,” Mallard grumbled. He had been waiting for an opportunity to use the expression since discovering that it originated in a speech by Banquo.
“Sir,” said Effie cautiously.
“Yes, Sergeant?”
“At the risk of being labeled a pedant,” she continued, not that anyone in the room would dare take such a risk, “now that we know the murderer was only pretending to be a serial killer, perhaps we should consider the possibility that he’s not necessarily…a man?”
***
The sky was blue over Camberwell as Effie and Detective Sergeant Welkin made their way along the concrete walkway that gave access to the third floor flats. Down in the open area between the pre-war buildings, boys were playing soccer around the parked cars, flitting in and out of bands of sunlight. Beyond the housing estate, they could see the bright livery of a Southern Region train rattling lazily across a honey-colored viaduct. They passed the kitchen windows and the pale blue front doors of the flats, each offering a tantalizingly audible hint of life within—children laughing, loud reggae music, a couple arguing, a television playing an Australian soap opera.
Welkin rang the doorbell of the flat at the far end of the passage. On the third ring, they heard a shuffling, and the front door was opened a fraction. A young woman with dyed blond hair and a bad complexion peered through the gap.
“Yes?” she snapped.
“Wendy Burbage?” asked Welkin.
“Who wants to know?”
“Is your husband home?”
“No, he ain’t. What do you want?”
“We want a word with him, love. Where can we find him?”
“How should I know? I don’t arst what he does during the day.”
A baby started crying inside the flat. She glanced behind her impatiently.
“Mrs. Burbage, we’re sorry to trouble you,” said Effie kindly. “But we need to speak to Cliff. It’s very urgent.”
The woman looked her up and down critically, making wet noises with her chewing gum. “Has the bastard knocked you up too then, girl?” she asked with an unpleasant smile. Her teeth were bright and flawless. “Blimey, his tastes have changed.”
“Now then, you watch it,” Welkin cut in sharply.
“Don’t you tell me to watch it,” she snapped. “I got enough to watch without you telling me to watch it. Piss off.”
She tried to shut the door, but Welkin placed his shoulder against it. “What’s your game?” she snapped, facing up to the big man without fear.
“We’re police officers, love,” he said, making no attempt to show any identification. “Detective Sergeant Welkin and Detective Sergeant Strongitharm. We want to talk to Clifford Burbage.”
The woman paused, with another surreptitious glance behind her. The baby’s cries died away. “What’s he done this time?” she asked at last.
“Never you mind that, where can we find him?”
“I don’t know, I told you. He ain’t here.”
“Then you won’t mind if we come and see for ourselves,” said Welkin, pushing harder against the door. It opened, but the woman, who seemed to be wearing only a cheap dressing gown, blocked the hallway. Welkin paused, knowing that he could not get away with any further physical force. The flat smelled equally of mildew and marijuana.
“Wendy,” said Effie firmly. “We know somebody’s in the flat. It’ll save us all a lot of trouble if you just let us in.”
The woman broke eye contact first, and with a sigh, stood to the side, making a sarcastic gesture of welcome.
“I knew she had company,” Effie said to Welkin as they headed back to the car.
“Maybe, but unless he’s been getting a lot of sun, that wasn’t Cliff Burbage,” Welkin replied with a grin, remembering the look on the naked Trinidadian’s face as Effie swept into the bedroom. “Still, she’ll think twice before she tips Cliff off that we’re looking for him.”
They reached the bottom of the graffiti-marked staircase. An older woman in a paisley housecoat ran up to them with a stooped scurry that seemed to imply a well-timed arrival, although they had spotted her lingering there from the walkway.
“Are you looking for Cliff Burbage?” she asked nosily. Her arms appeared to be locked in the folded position.
“If you know where we can find him, we’d appreciate it,” Welkin told her without slowing down.
“You from the Social Security?”
“It’s a sort of social security, yes.”
The woman drew the corners of her mouth down as if extracting Welkin’s admission had been a personal triumph. She walked with them, letting her thin head move through a small circle, like a tulip in a gust of wind.
“I thought so. I knew he was on the fiddle. And Wendy with a new babe, too. Course, that one’s no better than she should be. Coh!” She jerked her chin up with the exclamation. They had reached their car, so there was a reason to stop. Welkin played with the keys, smiling at an attractive Indian woman in a colorful sari, who hurried by.
“Still, I blame Cliff,” the woman continued, “he should be around for the little one. He’s supposed to be unemployed, but as far as I can tell he spends all his time over at Brixton, running a fruit stall. I said to my hubby, you don’t pay taxes just so he can get away with that malarkey.”
“You interfering cow!” came a shout from above them. Wendy Burbage’s head was poking over the third-floor parapet.
“So bloody common,” remarked the older woman as she backed nervously out of the young woman’s sight and hurried into a ground floor flat. The door slammed. Mrs. Burbage swore loudly and disappeared.
“Brixton, I think,” said Effie.
***
A row of makeshift stalls had been set up beside the railway viaduct, selling fruit, vegetables, and flowers. They spotted Cliff Burbage at the third stall—a younger, stockier version of his late father.
“Mr. Burbage, I wonder if I could ask you a few questions,” said Welkin, vaguely showing his warrant card. Effie took up position a few paces away.
Burbage, who had been packing a shopping bag with fruit for an elderly lady, paused, a honeydew melon in his hand. “What for?” he asked suspiciously.
“I’d prefer not to explain here, sir.”
Burbage shrugg
ed and made a gesture of concession, passing the carrier to his customer. Then he suddenly flung the melon as hard as possible at Welkin. The detective took it full on the side of the head and went down. Burbage kicked away one trestle of the fruit stand, causing the wooden top to drop heavily on Welkin’s shin, followed by a shower of apples, oranges, and grapefruit from the open crates. He ran.
Effie instantly took off after him, hoping someone would go to Welkin’s aid. Burbage reached Brixton Road first and veered left under the railway bridge. She made it to the busy road in time to see him crash into an elderly West Indian lady, bringing her down hard on the pavement and spilling her shopping into the street. He staggered, but kept his balance. Then he ran on like a juggernaut through the Monday shoppers, pushing several out of his way with his hands or a shoulder. Effie kept up the pursuit, praying Cliff wasn’t carrying a shooter. She hurdled the old lady rolling in her path with a single stride, regretting the callousness of the action, but glad she had chosen to wear jeans that morning.
Effie knew better than to cry out for help. Reactions would be too slow, and shouting “Stop! Police!” was a ploy used so often by bag-snatchers that some public-spirited citizen might “have a go” by bringing her down instead. She was an easier target than the heavy-set man thirty yards ahead of her, running like a charging bull across a side street and under the second railway bridge.
She was gaining as they reached Brixton Underground station. Burbage risked a glance back, saw her, and ducked into the station entrance. When she skidded round the corner after him, three seconds later, he was already out of sight. Had he shot through the arcade of shops to the left, or hurtled down the steps into the station itself? There was an indignant cry from below. It was enough.
Effie leaped down the steps, in time see Burbage vault over the ticket gate ahead and vanish down the escalators. “Police officer,” she cried to nobody in particular as she followed. She jumped the barrier and landed on the other side with a jar that caused her to fall forward, scraping the palms of her hands on the floor. As she got up, she felt the sudden weakness in her left ankle, the first sign that the chase was aggravating an old injury. She shook her head violently and ran forward onto the escalator.
She tried at first to go down two steps at a time to catch up with Burbage, who was still in sight. But each leap downward sent flames of pain into her ankle. The striped metal treads strobed on her retina, making it hard to judge the distance. She gave up halfway and switched to one step at a time, which was slower. Near the end she tried sliding sidesaddle down the rough moving belt that served a handrail, but the friction on her denimed bottom slowed her even more.
When she got to the lower level, she lost Burbage. Brixton was the end of the Jubilee Line, and both platforms—one on each side of the deserted antechamber—had trains with their doors open. Which would Burbage have taken? she thought as she paused, panting and sore, her skinned palms oozing blood. The first train, as indicated on the departure board, in the hope that the doors would close before she caught up with him? Or would he hide on the other stationary train, expecting her to leave with the first? Then he could double back while she was safely on her way to Stockwell. How would he play the game?
The loudspeaker suddenly hissed and delivered its genial reminder to “Mind the doors.” The first train was about to depart. She ran toward it, forced to guess that Burbage was less intelligent than she was, with less time to review the choices. A second or two later, the doors slammed shut, and the silver carriages eased themselves suggestively into the tunnel ahead.
As the train’s rear lights shrank into the darkness, Burbage popped his head out of the shallow alcove and peered cautiously along the now empty platform. He grinned. The policewoman had behaved as he had expected—she’d assumed he would jump on the train that was about to depart. It never occurred to her that he could jump off again at the last second and hide himself from view on the platform. It hadn’t occurred to him at first, either. As it was, he had to react almost instinctively to the idea, with barely enough time to flatten himself against the tiled walls before he heard her run by.
Burbage tiptoed back toward the platform entrance and listened. Members of the public posed no threat to him, but there was always the chance that the other cop was behind, although that melon had taken him down pretty hard. (His days of putting the shot at school weren’t wasted, he thought with amusement.) Apart from the constant rumble of the escalators, out of sight around the corner, there were no other noises. Still, even if the male cop couldn’t follow, he could call for reinforcements on his radio. Better move sharpish, Burbage decided, setting off quickly toward the up escalator.
The handcuffs were snapped on his wrists before he had time to register that it was Effie who had been leaning nonchalantly against the wall around the corner, waiting for him.
“How did you guess what I’d do?” he asked despondently, after she had read him his rights. “Was it pure luck? Or did you spot my double-bluff?”
Effie grinned. “Clifford, what I spotted was your double butt. Sticking out from the alcove. You could lose a little weight, you know. Try eating more fruit.”
Burbage went quietly.
***
“I wouldn’t lie to you, Mr. Mallard. Integrity is my middle name.”
“But how often do we use our middle names?” said Mallard impatiently, with an ironic glance at the computer printout of Cliff Burbage’s criminal record. The two men had been sitting in the interview room for more than two hours, but so far, the thickset son of the late urban terrorist had said nothing about the murders. He didn’t seem to know that any murders had even taken place. Burbage claimed to have panicked on seeing Welkin—whose tibia had snapped under the avalanche of fruit—because he was operating an illegal stall while on probation for handling stolen property. Finding himself under suspicion of a string of more serious crimes, he came clean about all his current petty larcenies, to which, Mallard reminded him, he had just added several more, including assaulting a police officer with a melon.
“Would you call that a deadly weapon, Cliff, or a blunt instrument?” Mallard asked.
“Do me a favor…”
“No, you do me the favors, son,” Mallard riposted angrily. “You tell me what you know about the murders of Sir Hargreaves Random, Nettie Clapper, Mark Sandys-Penza, Gordon Paper, Vanessa Parmenter, and Archibald Brock, and the attempted murder of Edmund Tradescant.”
Burbage looked scared. “I told you, I don’t know nothing about no murders,” he breathed. “I never even heard of them people, ’cept for the first. Didn’t he write them snooty kids’ books? You have to believe me, Mr. Mallard. I’m as honest as the day is long”
“Yes, but the days are getting shorter, aren’t they?” muttered Mallard. He flipped on the VCR, which he’d wheeled down to the interview room, and froze the picture as Angus Burbage’s face appeared.
“Your father knew those people,” Mallard said. “He knew them very well.”
“Dad’s dead. He died in the nick. Didn’t you know?”
“Yes, I knew. So did he plan the murders and get you to carry them out? Or was it all your idea?”
Cliff was staring at the screen. “I remember that time Dad was on the telly,” he said reflectively. “I had no bleeding idea what he was talking about.”
“Your dad did a lot for you,” Mallard persisted. “He went to prison for you. He tried to kill people for you. Why shouldn’t you kill people for him?”
The other man broke his eyes from the television and looked down at the floor. “I don’t know why he did those things, Mr. Mallard,” he grumbled. “I didn’t ask him to. I didn’t understand what it was all about at the time, and I still don’t. I wish he’d left it alone. So the cops did me over—no offense, sir, but they did. That’s the way it is sometimes. If you play the game, you gotta know the rules.”
Not the way I pla
y, thought Mallard, no matter how much I’m tempted, no matter how much I want to beat a confession out of this whining mouth-breather.
“He didn’t understand,” Burbage was saying. “He thought the world was different. Look where it got him. He never even got to see his grandchild.”
Mallard turned off the monitor. “Tell me about your father,” he prompted quietly.
Burbage continued to study the carpet without answering. Then he looked up at Mallard, his eyes glistening.
“Dad would have done anything for me. Just like I’d do anything for my nipper. Dad always stuck by me, never threw me out like a lot of me mates’ dads did when they got into trouble. But I was too stupid to see what he was getting at. Eventually I got so far in that I dragged him down with me. He couldn’t dump me, so he got to be like me. Only more so—I couldn’t plant a bomb, couldn’t even make a bomb.” He rubbed at his eyes with the heel of one hand. “Can I have a cigarette?” he asked.
Mallard slid a packet across the table. Burbage took a cigarette and lit it, drawing the smoke deeply into his lungs. It reappeared with a long sigh.
“The irony is, Mr. Mallard, my dad risked everything and lost because he thought he saw an injustice—his son getting beaten up for a job he didn’t do. But there was no injustice. I was actually guilty of that job, and the coppers knew it all along, though they couldn’t prove it. I never told my dad that, not even in his last days. But I deserved what I got in that interview room.”
“No you didn’t,” Mallard said quietly. “Guilty or innocent, you should not have been beaten while you were in police custody. Your father was right about that.”
Burbage stared at Mallard. “Don’t know what planet you’re living on, guv,” he said wryly. A chill struck Mallard, a physical sensation in his stomach that almost threw him from the chair. The dawning realization that Cliff Burbage was telling the truth. This man was no murderer. He was the sempiternal victim.
The door opened, and Moldwarp’s woeful face came into view. Mallard signaled him to wait. He scribbled the dates and times of the zodiac murders on a piece of paper and slid it toward the suspect.