Blythe Mccabe is just one of their foot soldiers. He is nothing, an empty space. The man’s a placeholder. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. That foul creature Geest as well.
NO MORE AND no less bizarre than most of what Rose had been putting up recently, but his words kept nagging at me, the way he’d described this Mccabe bloke as an empty space. The more I thought about it – and I thought about it a lot – the more it seemed similar to the way I’d started to think of Claire after she changed. I told myself the contents of Rose’s rants were irrelevant, that Rose was just another mad man on the internet. But even though the majority of Memento Mori users seemed to be ignoring him by then – fed up with having their heads bitten off, I imagine – I couldn’t let it rest.
His words were like maggots, eating away at my brain. Like turning over a rock and seeing the soil beneath writhing with cellar grubs.
MEMENTO MORI WAS a forum for people who collected murder memorabilia. Makes them sound like ghoulish crackpots, I know, but they weren’t like that at all – you want twisted, check out the user groups for Nazi regalia. This lot were more like a book club, and in fact I’m sure they saw the objects they collected – the personal effects of murder victims, diaries and photo albums that once belonged to serial killers, the pieces of jewellery or decorative trinkets they’d taken as souvenirs – as particularly rare and desirable first editions.
The title of Rose’s thread was Rawlin’s watch? and it related to his search for a Swiss railway watch that had supposedly belonged to Arthur Rawlin, one of Britain’s last generation of executioners and who had worked with Albert Pierrepoint on several occasions. According to Rose, and to several other early posters on the thread, Rawlin had originally purchased the watch as a kind of fan homage to Pierrepoint, whose practice of timing his executions became something of a legend.
Lionel Rose had seen the watch advertised via the small ads of an obscure print-only collectibles magazine. Rose originally put up the thread to find out if the dealer, Blythe Mccabe, who he’d not come across before, was reputable.
No one who replied to the post seemed to have heard of Mccabe either, and the discussion soon spiralled off into speculation about whether the watch being advertised could possibly be the genuine article. Several posters seemed convinced that Rawlin’s watch had been sold privately to an American collector, decades ago.
Is this guy Mccabe a yank? asked one of them, I can’t see this watch of yours turning up in London again otherwise.
The conversation rambled on over several pages. Rose didn’t seem overly bothered by the sceptics. He appeared to have made up his mind, he was going after the thing whatever. About ten days after his initial query, he posted to say he’d received a personal invitation from the vendor, to examine the watch himself with no obligation.
Sounds kosher to me, he wrote. No harm in looking. Posh address, too.
Two weeks went by with no posts from Rose. A couple of regular commenters left messages on the thread, asking Rose how he’d got on in London and whether he’d bought the watch or not. When a further week passed with no response, someone joshed that their good buddy Lionel had most likely been lured into a trap, his body disposed of under the floorboards of that so-called posh address of his.
Does anyone happen to know where it was, exactly? the poster added. Either nobody did, or it was tacitly agreed that the kidnap and murder joke had been in poor taste, because no one commented further.
Ten days after that, Lionel Rose resurfaced.
Irongrove Lodge, more recently known as Greystone Lodge, would once have been one of the most handsome houses in Belsize Park. It is divided into flats now, like most of the Georgian residences in the neighbourhood. Blythe Mccabe’s apartment occupies the whole of the first floor, which does at least ensure that the original proportions of the rooms remain intact, and thus the apartment manages to convey some of the grandeur of the house as it once must have been. Mccabe informed me that he lived with his companion, a person named Regan Geest, whom Mccabe referred to on several occasions as his amanuensis. Geest was absent from the house during my visit – I presume on some errand – and Mccabe did not show me the rooms Geest occupied. Mccabe’s collection of memorabilia is exceptional, each object of impeccable provenance. I have no reason whatsoever to doubt that the article offered for sale was one hundred percent genuine.
It sounded like a wind-up to me, and several of the other forum members clearly thought so too. Otherwise known as Hammer House of Horror, smirked one wag. For Regan Geest read Cousin It. Rose wasn’t amused, apparently. His next post consisted of a single image, an uploaded photograph of the watch he had purchased. At least I assumed he had purchased it. He didn’t elaborate.
The watch was silver, with a bold white face and Roman numerals. Rawlin’s initials – A. W. R. – were clearly visible, engraved on the inside of the case.
Several of the regulars made appreciative noises and posted their congratulations on his acquisition. The Rawlin’s watch? thread ground to a halt after that, but it wasn’t long before Lionel Rose began gatecrashing other, totally unconnected threads on the forum. To begin with, his contributions had the glazed-over, stilted quality of his pronouncement on Mccabe’s apartment in Belsize Park. These comments bore only tangential relevance to whatever subject was being discussed, which pissed people off. A couple of the forum’s more outspoken members even opened up a separate thread, speculating about what drugs he might be taking.
The more time passed, the more Rose’s comments began to tip over into open aggression. He remained obsessed with Blythe Mccabe, who he seemed to believe was dangerous in some way. Whatever the subject in hand, you could be certain Rose would find a way of bringing it round to Mccabe eventually.
This pattern continued over a period of around six months. Finally someone – a poster calling themselves ConstanceKent – snapped and told Rose to shut up. Rose responded with more than a thousand words of incoherent bile, culminating in the warning about foot soldiers.
He went quiet after that. I logged on to the forum several times a day, waiting for him to show himself, but he never did.
His absence chafed at my mind, bringing back memories of my second term at college, my counselling sessions with Sylvia, my manic restlessness. Even when I was at work, I felt rattled.
There was something. Something under my skin.
I knew I had to find out what had happened to Lionel Rose.
IT WAS DIFFICULT to know how to proceed. For a while I considered contacting one or other of the regular members of Memento Mori, someone who’d interacted with Rose both before and after his apparent breakdown, but then decided this was probably a mistake. There was nothing to suggest that any of the posters had known Rose personally, outside of the forum, I mean. And I didn’t want to draw attention to myself by asking.
I knew Rose lived somewhere in Essex – or at least he had done when he first started posting. My job gives me privileged access to all kinds of information – names, addresses, financials, I can get hold of anything. Unauthorised use of personal data is strictly prohibited, obviously – you can be suspended on the spot just for dialling a phone number unless you’ve filed the appropriate paperwork beforehand – but I thought in the case of Rose it was worth taking a risk. He wasn’t a criminal and he wasn’t on the system. Most of what I wanted was freely available, anyway, if you knew where to look. Who would know?
Telephone records confirmed that Lionel Rose lived in Malden, in Essex. They also threw up something interesting, namely that shortly after his final outburst on Memento Mori, his number had gone ex-directory. I thought it would be unwise to try and talk to him directly, at least to begin with. From his recent behaviour online, the man was clearly locked in a state of deep paranoia, a fact backed up by his choosing to go off the radar. Whatever it was that was bugging him, if I called and asked to speak to him out of the blue he’d probably think I was in on it. How did you come by this number, sir? I could almost hear t
he words surging towards me down the line.
Far better to find someone who knew him, who knew him well – a wife or partner, a close friend. It can’t be easy, I thought, watching someone you care about go to pieces in front of your eyes. You’d be anxious by now, desperate even. You’d want to confide in someone.
The Rose telephone number was registered to ‘Lionel R. & M. Rose’. It didn’t take much digging to discover that ‘M. Rose’ was actually Marian Rose, a moderately successful crime writer, whose novels were mainly set in East London and the estuary towns. Lionel Rose was an antiquarian bookseller. The two had met at the annual crime writers’ festival in Harrogate.
Should I pose as a reporter, I wondered, or just a fan? Both deceptions seemed shoddy. Even before meeting her I felt a keen affinity with Marian Rose, whose position I felt I understood perfectly.
I knew Rose must be driving her crazy, the same way I’d driven Ronny crazy, and finally away.
Which was why she was exactly the person I needed to talk to.
MAYBE IT’D BE best just to tell the truth, I thought, after a weekend of letting the thoughts circle inside my head like demented goldfish. The worst thing that can happen is that she slams the phone down.
SHE DIDN’T, THOUGH. I apologised for disturbing her, then said I was a friend of Lionel’s, that I was worried about him.
“We’ve not seen him around much lately,” I said. “On the forums, I mean. Is he OK?”
“Lionel isn’t here,” she said. She sounded tense, suspicious, but behind the wariness there was something else – the desperation I had half-expected, the eagerness to talk.
“I can call back,” I said.
“He’s gone,” said Marian Rose. “He’s left me with the shop, left everything. I’ve not spoken to him in weeks.”
I fell silent. I felt embarrassed and vindicated at the same time. “Would you like me to call round?” I said in the end. “To the shop, I mean.”
“You can if you like. I don’t see what good it will do.” She sighed. “Sorry, Mr –?”
“It’s William Randle. Willy.”
“Willy. I’m sorry. I’m just tired. Tired out. I’m at my wits’ end, actually.”
When I turned up at the shop three days later, she greeted me as if we’d known one another for years.
“No word from Lionel, then?” I said.
She looked me up and down – trying to work out if I might be a serial killer after all, probably – and then asked me if I’d like a cup of tea.
“Seeing as you’ve come all this way,” she said. “I’ll put the closed sign on.”
“CAN I ASK you something?” she said. She leaned forward over her cup. She was different from how I’d expected – younger. Now that we were alone together her need to talk was palpable. You could feel it in the air, like electricity.
“I never met Lionel in person,” I said.
“No, but you knew him online. You know what he was like.”
She asked me if I thought her husband’s behaviour had changed in recent months and I said yes.
“He didn’t seem like himself at all,” I added. “That’s why I telephoned, really. I thought he might be ill. People were worried about him.” I paused. “We thought it might be something to do with that watch he got interested in.”
“The hangman’s watch? I don’t think so,” Marian said at once. “He was excited about it, yes, but that was just Lionel. I’ve never had the bug for collecting – material objects aren’t that important to me – but I like to think I understand it, a little bit, anyway. Lionel getting worked up about an old book or... or an executioner’s watch, or whatever, isn’t so different from how I feel when I get a new idea for a story. The research he does, the reading up on things – for Lionel that’s creative. It’s what keeps him switched on to life.”
“His passion?”
“His passion, yes, exactly.”
“But you don’t think it was the watch that upset him?” I knew the answer already – it had all been there in Rose’s forum posts – but I needed to hear it from Marian. I needed to hear it in her own words.
She hesitated. We were daring each other, I think: you show me your crazy and I’ll show you mine.
“It wasn’t the watch at all,” she said in the end. “It was that place, that man. Whatever happened there, Lionel was never the same afterwards. It was as if – I don’t know – as if he’d been hypnotised or something. Even though he was still running the shop and seeing his friends and everything – to begin with, anyway – his mind seemed absent. You know what it’s like if you’re watching something on television and someone comes into the room and tries to talk to you? You answer them – your answer might even make sense – but you don’t care about what they’re saying or even remember talking to them later because what you want is for them to go away so you can carry on with your programme. Lionel was like that. He wasn’t here at all. He was still in that house.”
“You think he was...?”
“I know it sounds ridiculous. But it was as if the house – his memory of whatever it was that took place during his visit – was eating him alive.”
Like maggots under the skin, I thought. Neither of us said anything for a while, just drank our tea. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked. It was old-looking, and square, with a polished brass case. I thought about Rawlin’s watch, whether it was still here in the house somewhere or whether Lionel had taken it with him when he went.
“That was my grandmother’s,” said Marian Rose, seeing me looking. “It’s just an ordinary clock. Not one of Lionel’s.”
“Did Lionel tell you what happened?” I asked. “Did he say anything at all?”
“Oh, he said plenty. He said the house was just a front, just a facade. That was the word he kept using – facade. He said this man – Blythe Mccabe? – had offered him safety in return for his silence, but that he couldn’t keep silent, he wouldn’t, and that was why he wanted to get away from London. It wasn’t safe anymore, he said, not even here. He kept asking me to go with him – begging me, really. I said no. How could I, with the shop and everything? We couldn’t just up and leave. I said we could talk again in a month or two and if he still felt like moving house, then we could discuss it, like sensible people, but he had to see a doctor first. Talk to someone about what was really bothering him. Do you think that was cruel?”
I shook my head. The memories of Ronny – Ronny bursting into my room at college, showering me with all those articles on Capgras syndrome – were so strong they hurt. “What did he say?”
“He said he couldn’t talk to a doctor because no doctor was trustworthy.” She sighed. “Do you want to know the worst thing I did? I went through his things. I hate myself for that, but I was desperate. I thought I might find something – something that might help me understand what was happening to him. Lionel wasn’t going out of the house much by then, but he did sometimes, he’d go to the park, or down to the corner shop to buy a newspaper. I waited until he’d gone then started rifling through his desk drawers like a jealous wife searching for restaurant receipts.” She let out a laugh. “Do you know what I found? An old map of London from the 1800s – he’d marked that house on it I think, Irongrove Lodge, Greystone Lodge, whatever it was called – and a matchbox with a woodlouse inside. The woodlouse was alive – goodness knows how, there was nothing in the box with it, no food. I felt really sorry for it. I thought about letting it go in the garden, or at least putting some soil in there for it to burrow in, but I knew I couldn’t. Lionel would know then, wouldn’t he? He’d know I’d been spying on him.”
Her eyes were glistening like quartz, shiny with tears.
“You weren’t spying,” I said. I touched her briefly on the shoulder. She smiled.
“You’re very kind,” she said. “I hate to think what I must sound like.”
“Where is Lionel now, do you know?”
“We have a cottage near Knaresborough. I bought it with my advance money
for Dirt Devils, just after we were married.” She smiled again. “It’s tiny but we love it. That’s where we met, you know. Near there, anyway.”
“So he’s safe at least.”
“I suppose so. He never answers when I try to phone, but he was like that here too, in the end. I think he was afraid, you know, that the person on the other end would turn out to be him.”
“Blythe Mccabe?”
She nodded. “What do you think I should do? I know I shouldn’t ask – I shouldn’t be bothering you with this – but I’ve been thinking that if I don’t talk to someone I’ll go as crazy as Lionel.”
“Honestly? I think you should wait.”
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