The Murder Bag

by Tony Parsons

  I saw my chance and took it.

  Before Fred could slam a short hard left hook into my aching body, or my ringing head, I whipped a short left uppercut on to the point of his chin, jerking back his head just as the buzzer went to end the third and final round.

  We fell into each other’s arms, totally spent, both laughing.

  When we broke from the embrace, I stood there bent double, fighting for breath. I could hear the sound of skipping ropes, the business news on the TV by the treadmills, and a trainer chanting yoga instructions. When I looked up, Fred was taking off his battered headguard and his long silver hair was tumbling down – the hair of a veteran pirate. He pulled out his mouthguard.

  ‘You’re so lucky to be training,’ he said.

  He lifted a glove in salute and I touched it with my own glove.

  ‘Good,’ he told me. ‘But keep those elbows tucked in and don’t be a statue. When you’ve thrown your punches, get out of there. Don’t stand around taking pictures. Even when you’re knackered. Especially when you’re knackered.’

  My breath was slowly returning. ‘It’s hard,’ I managed.

  Fred laughed. ‘It’s supposed to be hard. If it was easy, then everyone would do it.’ He patted my back. ‘Warm down with thirty minutes on the bike and don’t forget your stretching.’

  Fred climbed out of the ring. He wandered over to the sound system and put on The Jam. This was Smithfield Amateur Boxing Club, and Fred ran the place, so he got to choose the music. ‘Going Underground’ began to belt out.

  I was feeling better already. My ribs might be sore in the morning but the ringing in my head had already calmed down and nothing else had sustained serious damage. It was not the pain itself that wore you out so much as the shock of being hit. Yet I was always surprised how little being punched in the face actually hurt. It was those body shots that killed you.

  Then I was aware of someone watching me.

  He was by the free weights, and had gloves on, those fingerless gloves for lifting weights, and his meaty shoulders looked as though he had lifted a lot of them. You don’t see many Asians that heavily into their weights. But I guess you see more than you used to.

  He held my gaze for a long moment, then removed his gloves and walked to the cupboards where Fred stored the boxing kit. He took out a black headguard and a pair of bright yellow gloves. Then he walked back across the gym and climbed into the ring. And by now I knew him. Just poking out of the top of his training vest I could see the bruise where I had punched him in the heart because he’d laughed at my dog.

  ‘I’ll fight you,’ he said, pulling on the gloves.

  ‘We call it sparring,’ I said, ‘not fighting.’

  ‘But it’s full contact, right?’ he said. ‘You’re trying to punch each other’s lights out, right?’

  I shrugged. ‘Of course.’

  I saw no point explaining that there was an etiquette involved in sparring, an unwritten and unspoken code of honour, and a deep degree of trust. He didn’t look as though he would be very interested in any of that stuff. I had been sparring with Fred for five years, but neither of us had ever been hit with a low blow, neither of us had ever left the ring feeling angry. Our friendship had been forged in the rough intimacy of sparring. But it was true what the weightlifter said: when we sparred, we didn’t hold anything back.

  ‘You sucker-punched me,’ the weightlifter said, the anger flaring.

  ‘You were rude to my dog.’

  ‘I wasn’t ready then. But I’m ready now.’

  ‘I just did three rounds,’ I said.

  ‘I want to see how tough you really are,’ he said. ‘Unless you’re chicken.’

  I was looking at his yellow gloves – a pair of ten-ounce Cleto Reyes gloves, the best boxing gloves in the world, handmade in Mexico, but far too light for hard sparring. But that wasn’t what bothered me.

  ‘I’m not sparring with you,’ I said, taking my gloves off.

  When I moved to get out of the ring, he blocked my path.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you don’t have a mouthguard.’

  ‘I don’t need a mouthguard.’

  ‘Yes you do,’ I said. ‘Everybody needs a mouthguard. Because I could catch you with my elbow. Or I could bang you with my forehead. And there’s even an outside chance that I might actually punch you in the mouth.’

  Then Fred was there. He took the weightlifter by the elbow and easily turned the far bigger man around. Fred had worked the doors at some point.

  ‘See that sign?’

  On the walls of Smithfield ABC gym there were framed photographs of boxers. They were a certain kind of boxer – natural-born fighters, all grit and glory, the kind of boxers Fred loved. Jack Dempsey. Jake La Motta. Joe Frazier. Marvin Hagler. The hard men of the sport. And there were other framed photographs – pictures of kids boxing in Cuba, a dozen of them in the ring at a time, shirtless and skinny and sparring with gloves that looked as though they had just been dug up. And above them all there was a sign.

  NO SPARRING WITHOUT PERMISSION

  ‘You don’t have permission,’ Fred said.

  Fred was the smallest man in the gym. But in that place of assorted hard nuts – where policemen came to keep fit, and rough boys from sink estates came to learn the sweet science of bruising, and young women came to learn self-defence, and white-collar City types came to push themselves to the limit – nobody argued with him.

  The weightlifter got out of the ring.

  ‘There are many bad things about steroid abuse,’ observed Fred, who was the kind of boxer who is also a philosopher. ‘Shrunken balls. Acne. Hair loss. But the worst thing is that it wipes out the part of the brain that inhibits aggression. In the end they want to kill someone.’

  There was a heavy bag near the exit door. Just before the weightlifter walked out of Smithfield ABC, he hit the bag as hard as he could.

  Fred laughed with contempt.

  ‘It’s not about how hard you can hit,’ he said.

  9

  STAN KNEW SOMETHING was up.

  The dog was the only member of the family who had eaten breakfast, but Scout was standing at the window with her palms pressed against the glass, watching the street, occasionally flinching with anticipation at the sight of a car pulling up, while I kept checking the clock, my watch, my mobile.

  She should have been here by now.

  Stan lay Sphinx-like in the middle of the loft, his front paws demurely crossed, his huge round eyes watching us with suspicion.

  Something you want to tell me?

  ‘Oh – oh – oh!’ Scout said, and when I went to the window I saw a white van that was stuffed full of dogs.

  An Irish Wolfhound occupied the passenger seat, staring with interest at a white-coated porter emerging from the meat market, arms stained red up to the elbow. A pair of Pugs pressed their flat faces against the rear windows, while behind them a forest of tails were erect and wagging as small faces sniffed large bottoms and large faces sniffed small bottoms.

  A young woman in muddy combat fatigues got out of the driver’s seat. A Labradoodle got out with her. She placed it back in the van and closed the door.

  ‘Stan,’ I said, ‘it’s your ride.’

  She was a cheerful young Czech called Jana, and Stan welcomed her like an old friend. It was nothing personal. Stan welcomed everyone like an old friend.

  Scout was saying goodbye when without further ceremony the dog walker snapped a lead on Stan’s collar and headed for the door.

  We returned to the window. A Bichon Frise had somehow squeezed through the van’s half-open window and was sniffing the pavement as the Irish Wolfhound considered it with lofty disdain. Stan and Jana appeared on the street. The dog walker put the runaway Bichon Frise under one arm and Stan under the other and delivered them both to the back of the van. Then they were off. We stood at the window until the tail lights had disappeared.

  ‘I hope Stan’s all right,’ Scout said.<
br />
  ‘Are you kidding?’ I said. ‘He’ll have the time of his life with the rest of the pack.’

  We went down to Smiths of Smithfield for our breakfast. I was just getting the bill when Stan walked past the window, his lead trailing behind him. Scout went outside to collect him as I got Jana on the phone. I could hear furious barking, sounds of terror and fear, human and canine howls of protest.

  ‘How’s Stan doing?’ I said.

  ‘Ah,’ Jana said. ‘Ah, yes. Sam is very fine.’

  Scout came into SOS with Stan. He was wild-eyed and panting with thirst and exhaustion. A kindly SOS waiter brought him a large silver bowl of water. Scout set him down and he began to lap it up, very loudly.

  ‘You’re sure Stan’s fine?’ I said.

  At the sound of his name, Stan looked up at me, his huge eyes bulging with outrage. Then he went back to his water, Scout’s small hands fussing over him.

  ‘Ah,’ said Jana. ‘Yes, Sam – lovely little Sam – is very fine. Sam is – ah – enjoying the beautiful park with his friends. There he goes now! Ha ha! Into the trees! Good boy, Sam!’

  I looked at Scout and Stan, down on the floor and delighted to see each other, and I knew that from now on we would be walking our own dog.

  At the morning briefing in MIR-1, DI Whitestone stood with her back to Mallory’s wall. A blown-up photograph of the seven boy soldiers was visible just behind her. She had a list of names in her hand.

  ‘Then there were four,’ she said.

  She turned to face the wall and carefully drew a red cross over the face of the boy on the extreme left.

  ‘Adam Jones – deceased.’

  She drew another red cross over the face of the boy on the extreme right.

  ‘Hugo Buck – deceased.’

  And finally she drew a red cross over the boy in the dead centre. The one in dark glasses. The one who wasn’t smiling.

  ‘This is the Honourable James Sutcliffe,’ Whitestone said. ‘Younger son of the Earl of Broughton. Or rather, this was the Honourable James Sutcliffe. Two years after this photograph was taken he committed suicide. Walked into the sea off the Amalfi coast where his parents were renting a villa.’

  We were all silent.

  ‘The summer he turned eighteen,’ Whitestone added.

  Mallory said, ‘He has a daughter, doesn’t he? The boy’s father, I mean. The Earl of Broughton.’

  Whitestone nodded. ‘The Honourable Cressida. She was a bit of a wild young thing in the eighties. Took a pee on the Cenotaph during an anti-capitalism riot.’

  ‘That’s the one,’ Mallory said.

  ‘Ran off with some German artist thirty years her senior. Reconciled with her parents now, all forgiven.’

  ‘When the boy killed himself, did the carabinieri find a suicide note?’ Mallory asked.

  ‘No, sir,’ Whitestone said. ‘They didn’t even find a body. Just his clothes folded on the beach and a half-finished sketch. He was an artist. Apparently the most brilliant of the bunch.’

  ‘Why was there an assumption of suicide if no note was found?’

  ‘James Sutcliffe suffered from clinical depression. He was on quite a cocktail of medication.’ DI Whitestone read from her notes. ‘Prozac. Luvox. Lustral. Cipralex. He had a history of self-harm.’

  Gane said, ‘What does a rich kid like that have to be depressed about?’

  ‘Perhaps we need to ask his friends,’ Mallory said.

  There were four of them left alive.

  The twins – identical apart from the starburst of facial scarring on one of them.

  The tall, dark, whippet-thin, foreign-looking youth.

  And the leering fat boy with the stub of his tongue poking out.

  The three red crosses did something to the old photograph. Whitestone picked up a sheaf of eight-by-ten photographs. Photographs of the living. She tapped the image of the unscarred twin standing between James Sutcliffe and the dark-skinned boy.

  ‘Ben King,’ she said. ‘He’s famous.’

  She pinned a head-and-shoulders shot to Mallory’s wall. A serious, well-groomed man in a suit and tie smiling for some kind of official photograph. It was recognisably the boy in the picture, twenty years on. His face looked vaguely familiar from late-night news shows glimpsed and turned over.

  ‘I know him,’ Mallory said. ‘Ben King. He’s a politician, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes,’ Whitestone said. ‘His late father was the libel lawyer Quentin King. Ben King is MP for Hillingdon North. Educated at Potter’s Field and Balliol, Oxford. PPE first class. On his party’s fast track.’

  Gane said, ‘Which party?’

  ‘Have a guess.’

  Gane guessed the wrong one. I would have got it wrong, too.

  ‘There’s talk of him as a future Prime Minister,’ Whitestone said.

  ‘Independently wealthy, privately educated, slick on TV,’ Mallory said. ‘Never employed anyone, never run a business, never done a real job.’ He thought about it for a moment. ‘He’d be perfect. What about his brother? The one with the scars.’

  ‘Ned King,’ Whitestone replied, pinning a photograph of a soldier to the wall. ‘Serving officer in the British Army. Captain in the Royal Gurkha Rifles. Two tours of Helmand Province. Decorations for valour. He also has a conviction for assault, fifteen years ago.’

  The scar tissue on the left side of Ned King’s face looked like the price of the medals on his dress uniform.

  Next to him Whitestone put up a photograph of a thin balding man in a tuxedo, his bow tie hanging around his scrawny neck like something that had died. He had lost so much weight since his teenage years that he was almost unrecognisable from the fat boy he had been at school.

  ‘Guy “Piggy” Philips,’ Whitestone said. ‘Known the King brothers since prep school. Father made a fortune in the property market. Played tennis at a high level – junior Wimbledon semi-finals. Then his knee blew up. Teaches sport at his alma mater – Potter’s Field.’

  ‘What sports?’ Gane asked.

  ‘Tennis. Fencing. Cricket. Skiing. Posh sports, Gane, OK? And distance running.’

  ‘That’s how he dropped the weight,’ Mallory said.

  There was one left. Whitestone pinned a portrait of an intense, unsmiling man to Mallory’s wall. He was posing for some kind of company photograph and he considered the camera with eyes that looked black.

  ‘Salman Khan,’ Whitestone said. ‘From a wealthy Anglo-Indian family. Builders, funnily enough, defying all the racial stereotypes. His father made a pile building estates in the sixties and seventies. Khan has also known the King brothers and Philips since prep school. Works as a human rights lawyer in the London offices of Butterfield, Hunt and West. Considered one of the rising stars of the legal profession. Successfully sued the Ministry of Defence on behalf of disabled servicemen.’

  ‘You mentioned a conviction of assault for Ned King,’ Mallory said. ‘Anything else on their records?’

  ‘Adam Jones had multiple convictions for drug offences and vagrancy. Six months after the school picture was taken, he was expelled for selling controlled substances behind the tuck shop. Pills. Dope. And plenty of it.’

  ‘The upper class are always a greater mix than they are given credit for,’ Mallory noted. ‘What was he doing? Supplementing his personal use with some dealing?’

  ‘Looks like it, sir. Adam went off the rails early. He was getting into heroin when the others were getting into Oxford, Sandhurst and Goldman Sachs.’

  ‘DC Wolfe, was Jones expelled from the Royal Academy of Music for dealing?’

  ‘No, sir,’ I said. ‘Not for dealing. He was smacked out of his brain during an Albinoni concert in Duke Hall. Nodded off during the adagio.’

  ‘Don’t you hate it when that happens?’ said Gane.

  ‘Our two victims,’ Mallory said. ‘They were both living dangerously, weren’t they? One had a long-term commitment to opiates. The other was a violent, serial philanderer. Either one of those lifesty
les would shorten life expectancy.’

  He left the rest unsaid, but it hung in the air: their lifestyle choices did nothing to explain their identically butchered throats.

  I looked down at a slim red volume I had before me. Get Tough! How to Win in Hand-to-Hand Fighting – As Taught to the British Commandos and the U.S. Armed Forces. The author was Captain W. E. Fairbairn, co-inventor of the commando knife. On its front was a drawing of two grappling soldiers. It looked like some old-fashioned Boy’s Own-style comic. But inside was a manifesto for murder. I had placed a yellow Post-it note on the page I wanted, the one where they taught you how to execute the carotid thrust.

  Artery #3. Knife in right hand, edges parallel to the ground, seize opponent around the neck from behind with your left arm, pulling his head to the left. Thrust point well in; then cut sideways. See Fig. C.

  ‘Piggy Philips has three convictions for criminal damage in an eighteen-month period in the late eighties,’ Whitestone continued. ‘As far as I can tell, the boys enjoyed smashing up the odd restaurant. Seems they couldn’t always buy their way out.’

  ‘Boys will be boys,’ Gane said. ‘Especially when Daddy’s picking up the bill.’ He snorted with contempt. ‘My dog could get five A levels at Potter’s Field. While licking his bollocks.’

  ‘Piggy Philips seemed happy to always take the rap,’ Whitestone said. ‘According to the local rag, he nearly went down for contempt of court one time. “Disorderly, contemptuous and insolent behaviour towards the magistrate”.’

  We stared at the photographs, at the boys they had been, and then at the men they had become.

  ‘So they were a gang?’ Gane said.

  ‘It’s more than that, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘Most of them had known each other pretty much all their lives. One of them sounds as if he was happy to take the rap for the rest of them. It sounds like they were – I don’t know – almost brothers.’

  ‘But did that relationship end with their school days or did it endure?’ Mallory said. ‘That’s the next question. And we can start answering it by going to a funeral.’