by Seb Kirby
He points to the two long cuts between the nipples on both corpses. “Just what is he trying to tell us?”
CHAPTER 30
As Sophie drives us to Brompton Cemetery, it’s inevitable there are delays along the Fulham Road. As the traffic piles up ahead with little sign it will ever clear, Sophie is being philosophical about our chances.
“Doesn’t appear the congestion charge is having much effect. People are making enough money in London to just pay up and keep driving.”
I don’t reply. I’m lost in thoughts of what has brought me here.
I have parents I’ve never known. Not those of Emma Chamberlain. Not them. The father and mother of whoever I now am.
Why would they have abandoned me? Wouldn’t they want to do everything in their power to find me? Yet they’ve done no such thing. They’ve allowed me to live my life as a lie.
And why choose the name of someone who has died?
Thinking of this, I’m overwhelmed by an emptiness close to outright despair.
Sophie is surprised I’m not responding. “Are you hearing anything I’m saying?”
“Sorry. You were complaining about the traffic.”
“Don’t keep worrying about what you’ve discovered, Emma. That won’t help you understand it any better.”
I’m not convinced. “Guess you’re right.”
The traffic begins to clear, allowing Sophie to travel on and then pull the car over into a side road where she finds a place to park.
“We can walk from here.”
Reaching the cemetery and entering via the South Gate, I’m overwhelmed. There are monuments and gravestones as far as I can see and there’s no map that would lead us to plot O1563.
I’d checked out Brompton Cemetery. It was set up in the mid 1800s to cater for the ever-increasing population of London and soon took on grandiose form with a great circle of Bath stone colonnades and a central avenue flanked by magnificent trees. Now home to over two hundred thousand buried souls, and still a working cemetery, on a typical day there would be as many cyclists, runners and graveyard tourists as mourners.
My problem is to find one grave amongst all the others.
As we begin the walk along the long central avenue, there is a clattering sound behind us. Two horses sporting white plumes, driven by top-hatted undertakers, pull a hearse with glass panels revealing the coffin inside. I shiver. There must be an internment somewhere up ahead, one retaining the Victorian sensibilities of the place.
Nearby, a gardener in overalls is weeding a section of ornate marble tombstones.
I show him the open page in my notebook. “Can you tell me where the O graves are?”
He runs his fingers through his hair. “I can’t lead you straight to them, but I can point you in the right direction.”
We follow him until we’re close to the northern boundary, flanked by the Brompton Road. The gardener stops and points off to the left. “Should be somewhere down there.”
I thank him and watch as he turns on his heel and heads back to his work.
Sophie whispers. “Are you sure you want to go through with this?”
I give her a questioning look. “Why are you whispering?”
“It’s just this place. It gives me the creeps. I came here once to a law meeting held in the Chapel. The people with me, mainly the men, were making a big thing about the cemetery being haunted and when I told them not to be so melodramatic, they insisted on taking me to the catacombs. They’re underground, running all the way beneath the colonnades. It must have been some sort of Victorian business plan to offer an internment area for coffins down there, setting them out eight high on stone plinths. I guess they would have filled the whole space, but something went wrong with the business end and only the first five hundred or so were laid there. It fell into disrepair, like it still is now. The entrances are kept locked but you can peer in through the door grille and see the coffins stacked up and decaying. My colleagues made me go down there. It’s a spooky sight.”
I try to smile. “I thought I was the only one to believe in ghosts.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll stop whispering and grow up.” She raises her voice. “You’re sure you’ll be OK?”
“I will be if you are.”
We pick our way between the graves, looking at the inscriptions. In this moment, existence is exposed in all its fragility as the names and dates of life and death on the gravestones tell their tale.
Sacred to the memory of Albert John
Son of David and Elizabeth Foster
Born St Albans on the 19th September 1948
Died the 15th November 1978
In loving memory of Adel Harris
Born Manchester on 19th April 1933
Died 21st December 2006
I stop at the next grave, a simple stone cross.
In memory of Emma,
Daughter of John and Mary Chamberlain,
1991- 2007
Aged 16
May she rest in peace.
Tears flood my eyes. I’ve tried to prepare myself for this moment. But standing at the graveside, inhaling the despair at the loss of so young a life, affects me much more than I could have imagined.
I try to tell myself that Sophie is right. It’s wrong to dwell on what I’ve discovered about myself. That’s a trap that would condemn me to continual darkness. Compared with the tragic death of this young girl, how could I be so concerned about myself? I’m alive. I should be grateful for that. I might be stripped bare by the shock of not knowing who I am or where I’ve come from. But I have a life to live. Yet, if all this were true, why do I feel this overwhelming terror that makes me want to run away to the darkest place I know and hide forever.
I turn to Sophie. “Now do you believe me?”
Sophie puts her arms round me. “You must stay strong.”
“Did you think I wouldn’t fall to pieces?”
“No. I didn’t mean that. I knew you’d find it hard to cope with this family’s loss.”
“And I do. Seeing her here. It’s worse than anything. But when the sadness clears, I know I’m going to have every reason to feel something different.”
“Anger?”
“Yes, anger at what’s been done to me.”
We stand there for a long time, waiting for my tears to cease.
CHAPTER 31
Time is at a premium. Evan Cargill is certain.
Reports of the killings of Cavendish and Bishop are now on TV and in the newspapers. His next victim will be more prepared.
Is this a good reason to hold off? To disappear into the shadows for a while? Perhaps that is the sensible course of action.
Yet the anger and pain he feels drives him on and the voice inside him will not hear of such defeatist talk.
Barry Finch is likely to be a troublesome target. As a footballer he came into more money than any lad of his age and background could ever have imagined. And, as he matured and grew in the game, he used that wealth wisely, investing in rundown premises in the East End and improving them before letting to local families. And, along the way, making even more money before retiring and establishing himself as one of the wealthiest landlords in London, with over a hundred properties under his belt.
Such well-heeled success brings with it the need for professional protection. And hence, the current problem.
From his vantage point, through his night-vision binoculars, Cargill eyes the Finch property. Yes, word has travelled. He watches as a suited heavy emerges from the rear door and begins searching the grounds, his torchlight dancing here and there as he probes the deepest recesses of the compound. Finding nothing, the guard returns inside.
Gaining entry and dispatching Finch is daunting but Cargill is diverted for a moment by a different series of thoughts. Isn’t this proof positive that Finch is as guilty as Cargill knows him to be? Why would he go to such lengths to protect himself if he wasn’t part of the same sad circle of despair as Cavendish and Bishop.
Cargill had trapped and identified Finch in the same way as the earlier victims, posing as a nine-year-old girl, Vickie, allowing him to groom her, following him home from a failed liaison, adding him to the list.
Yet the problem remains. How to get to his target?
Cargill hunkers down and prepares for a long wait. His army training tells him that all protectors are fallible. It’s a question of waiting for the right opportunity.
An hour passes before the heavy appears again and begins searching the grounds. This is significant. The man’s instructions must be to carry out the search each hour, and this is just what he’s doing. That predictability is the key to what can happen next.
CHAPTER 32
As I arrive back at the Herald, two police officers are being escorted to my desk by a uniformed security guard. I’m convinced I’ve seen them before. But I can’t place where.
The tall, thin one with the young-looking face introduces himself as DI Ives and tells me his partner is DS Lesley.
“We’re responding to the complaint made by your Editor, Mr. McLeish.”
I stand to make eye contact. “I heard you were unable to respond. Something about manpower issues.”
Ives gives a thin smile. “Let’s say we’ve been able to move you up our priority list, Miss Chamberlain.”
My mind is turning as he speaks, trying to recall where I’ve seen him before. “That’s good news, Inspector. Where would you want to start?”
“You still have the threatening message?”
I reach into the desk drawer and pull out the envelope. “I’d thought of throwing it away, given it didn’t seem there would be any kind of investigation.”
Ives takes the envelope and shakes out with care the contents onto the desktop. He gives the scrawled contents a cursory inspection. “Any reason to think this is something other than what you might expect?”
“I don’t know what you mean?”
“Appearing on TV late at night.”
“You make that sound less than respectable, Inspector. I’m just there to review the next morning’s papers.”
“But you expect to receive hate mail. On social media. Don’t most women guests get the same treatment? Wouldn’t you say it was a fact of life these days?”
“Sounds as if you’re condoning it, Inspector.”
He smiles again. “Of course not. The Met takes all forms of hate crime seriously. But there’s a limit to what we can do when faced with what amounts to an epidemic. So, I ask you again, is this anything more than you might have expected?”
I point to the child-like black crayon message.
BACK OFF BEFORE ITS TOO LATE
YOU WONT BE WARNED AGAIN
“This one scared me. It has the look of something really twisted.”
“And you’ve received nothing like this before?”
I shake my head. “Nor since.”
“So, it could be a one-off?”
“I have no way of knowing.”
I realize it’s too late to undo what has been set in motion when I reported the death threat to McLeish. Back then, I jumped to the conclusion that this was part and parcel of being followed by the man in the long black coat. Now I know otherwise, it’s more likely that this policeman is right, and this is just a mindless threat that will never be acted on.
But these thoughts are interrupted by another realization. I recall walking the length of the corridor that led to Ward 5 at Hammersmith Hospital and there, coming towards me, were these two same police officers.
They aren’t here to investigate the death threat at all. They’re here to discover what I was doing there.
I decide to play along in the hope that I’m wrong.
Ives asks the expected questions about what happened to the message since it was received, how many have handled it, what’s happened to the envelope it was delivered in, all in the guise of determining if there is still scope for carrying out forensic testing to try to discover the identity of the sender.
The outcome suggested by Ives comes as no surprise. “Given the amount of time the material has been here and the number of people who’ve handled it, I can’t see what forensics will be able to get out of it.” He pauses. “It would have been a long shot, anyway. These days most felons know how to cover their tracks.”
I try not to show my relief as they prepare to leave. “So, that’s it?”
“If there’s anything more like this, we’ll be straight onto it. But, in the meantime, we’ll assume it’s a one-off.”
As I thank them for their time and begin walking them back towards reception, Ives dashes my hopes that they have not come here with an ulterior motive.
“Oh, by the way, didn’t we see you at Hammersmith Hospital the other day?”
I try to stall them. “No, I don’t think so.”
He turns to his partner. “Yes, we did, didn’t we, June?”
She agrees. “Yes, you were heading towards Ward 5.”
I backtrack. “Maybe that’s so.” And then I lie. “I was there for work. Interviewing the nursing staff about the pressures of dealing with an ageing population, that kind of thing.”
Ives doesn’t look convinced. “When did you publish the story?”
“It’s not ready yet. It’s all part of an on going investigation.”
He gives a wry smile. “I’ll make time to read it.”
Once they leave I return to work on the inflation story. The deadline is approaching, but that doesn’t need to be a problem. I check over the copy one more time and find nothing needs to be added.
With a sense of satisfaction, I press the button to send it to McLeish. He now has what he wants, on time.
My mind turns to thoughts of James. Why hasn’t he been in contact? It hadn’t felt like a one-night stand. Perhaps, that’s just what it was. Perhaps I’m being foolish in believing it could be anything more.
Despite these thoughts, I look for him on the train journey home but he’s nowhere to be seen.
The apartment is oppressive. I spend too long staring at the bottle of scotch on the table before me to ever think I’ll be able to avoid breaking the seal and starting on the amber liquid inside.
The drink does nothing to stop me worrying about Emma Chamberlain. The real Emma who lies there in Brompton in her coffin, six feet under the cold, damp earth. For too long a time, I’m with her in that dark, stench-ridden space, struggling to escape, banging on the coffin lid for someone, anyone to hear.
The bottle is half empty when I slump forward and fall asleep where I sit.
DAY 5
CHAPTER 33
I lift my head and open my eyes. The bottle of scotch comes into blurred focus. Then comes the throbbing pain in the back of my brain that tells me how foolish it was to have drunk so much.
From the corner of the room is a sound I recognize. I try to pretend I haven’t heard it and to stop myself from looking in the direction of the sound. But I do look.
There is Jenny, standing stock-still, staring at me
I struggle to my feet without making a sound and approach with tiny steps.
Jenny does not move. She’s not trying to say anything. Instead, she raises her hands, steeples her fingertips and opens her eyes wide. Those hands make the shape of a roof. She holds the posture for a few moments before allowing her arms to fall to rest by her side.
As I come closer, Jenny turns and walks away. She’s gone before I can say a word.
I lie on the bed and cry. My mood swings are becoming wilder and more sustained. From elation that I’ve found James to despair that he hasn’t been back in touch. From expectation that Jenny will help me understand what’s happening in my life to the feeling of powerlessness at being forced to confront my past alone again.
So why did Jenny come to me? There has been a reason each time before. There must be a reason now.
My mind turns to the house in Morden and why I’m so drawn to towards it. I realize for the first time what lies behind
that obsession.
It’s not the paucity of the evidence against Brian Cooper. It’s the house itself. I must have seen it in the early days when I first heard about Cooper but I didn’t realize its importance until now. He’s become my cause celebre when the house, not Cooper, is the center of everything.
Putting on a dressing gown, I go to the drawer where I keep my few prize possessions. I want to look again at the photo of the house. That’s why Jenny came to me this time, I’m sure.
I pull out the photo and stare at it. What am I expecting to discover? As Sophie told me, it’s just a standard semi in a typical south London street. There’s nothing special to be found by looking at the photograph. My feelings of terror start with foreboding about what happened inside, not with what I can see here.
Without much consideration, I turn the photo over in my hand. There’s something written on the back in pencil. Over the years, the mark has faded but is just discernable.
A number.
605 9143
A telephone number.
Opening the curtains, I let the pale light of dawn into the room. I shower and eat breakfast, thinking all the time about what I’ve found on the reverse of the photograph.
Chances are it’s nothing. After all, people write identification marks of all kinds on photographs. Chances are it’s just a reminder made all those years ago of the number of the lab where the photo was printed. How primitive things were in those days when such things emerged from fixing baths in red light filled rooms.
By seven-thirty I can no longer resist the temptation to call the number.
An officious-sounding female voice answers. “Montago Clinic. Name?”
I don’t query the request. “Emma Chamberlain.”
“Hold on.”
A pause and the sound of someone checking information at a keyboard. “Let me see.”
In a few minutes, the reply comes back. “I can only offer you something if this is an emergency.”