The Murder Bag

by Tony Parsons

  ‘You faked your death, didn’t you? That summer in Italy. The clothes left on the beach. It was very convincing. But why did you do that, James?’

  He closed his eyes and released some breath that sounded as if it had been trapped for a long time. When he opened his eyes I saw the ancient pain inside the man.

  ‘Starting again?’ I said. ‘A clean slate? Was that it? And who knew? Your sister here. How many of your friends? All of them?’

  ‘None of them.’

  ‘Hugo Buck knew.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He had two of your paintings on the wall of his home. One by James Sutcliffe. And another by Edward Duncan.’

  He looked shocked.

  ‘I’m not interested in exposing you,’ I said. ‘Unless you’ve done something wrong. Unless you’ve broken the law. Unless you’ve hurt someone. Is that what you did, James?’

  And at last there was panic in his eyes.

  ‘I know how you got away with your disappearing act,’ I said. ‘They believed you because you were suffering from depression. I saw what you were on. Prozac. Luvox. Lustral. Cipralex. That’s quite a cocktail of happy pills, James. But what were you depressed about? What happened at that school?’

  He took a deep breath. Let it out.

  ‘When you’re young, you try things,’ he said. ‘You experiment. You’re a sponge. You soak it up – all of it, any of it. Dear Mr Waugh – he was more than just a House Master. He was our friend. And he taught us about so many things. Wonderful things. Artists. Writers.’ A beat. ‘To get beyond the self. “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is – infinite.” Who doesn’t want to get beyond their sad, shoddy little self at sixteen? “To be shaken out of the rut of ordinary perception.” Sacramental visions. Experimentation.’

  ‘Drugs.’

  A short laugh.

  ‘Drugs? My God. Drugs were just the start.’

  ‘Keep talking, James,’ I said.

  I could see that he remembered it all now, that it was almost a relief to talk about it.

  ‘There was a girl,’ he said.

  There was silence in the room.

  ‘There was a girl,’ I said.

  ‘James?’ his sister said. ‘I’m going to call Mother. And Mother is going to call Burke. Do you remember Peter Burke? The lawyer, darling. Don’t say anything else to these people.’

  ‘It was meant to be . . . not fun,’ he continued. ‘An experiment. Pushing the boundaries of experience.’

  He was less certain of himself now.

  I glimpsed the pale bracelet of self-harm on his wrists, as wide as a sweatband and as white as a dead fish.

  He tugged at his shirtsleeves, knowing what I had seen.

  ‘Who was the girl?’ I said. ‘What was her name? Where did you find her?’

  ‘How many of you?’ Wren added.

  ‘Six of us,’ he said. ‘No – seven. And she was nice.’

  ‘She was nice?’ Wren said.

  ‘She was. In another life, you might have loved her. The night is a blur.’ He looked at the floor and then at me. ‘Did you ever take opium— I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name?’

  His sister crossed the room and slapped his face. ‘Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! I’m so sick of carrying you. I am so sick of covering up for you. Just shut up when I tell you to shut up!’ Then she hit him again.

  He ducked away, cowering, taking a step back. Wren stepped between them, and it was enough to restrain the sister.

  ‘Who was in that room?’ I said. ‘You said seven, right?’

  ‘Six,’ he said. ‘Seven . . .’

  ‘Seven? Concentrate. You, Hugo Buck, Adam Jones, Salman Khan, Guy Philips, Ben King, Ned King. Were they all there? Who else was there? What happened to the girl?’

  ‘We were going to let her go,’ he said. ‘That was the plan.’

  ‘You bastards,’ Wren said, to herself.

  ‘We were going to let her go but she hurt someone. Very badly. It got out of hand. All of it.’

  ‘She hurt someone,’ I said, and I remembered the morning in the Iain West Forensic Suite, and I recalled what Elsa Olsen had placed in the palm of my hand. ‘She hurt someone’s eye, didn’t she?’

  He looked at me with wonder. ‘Yes, she hurt someone’s eye. Really hurt it, I mean . . .’

  ‘She hurt Hugo Buck, didn’t she?’

  He looked confused. ‘Hugo? Was it Hugo? I don’t think—’

  ‘Yes, Hugo Buck. He had a glass eye.’

  James Sutcliffe covered his face with his hands. ‘I don’t remember. It was a long time ago. It was another lifetime.’

  ‘Do you know how I know, James?’ I said. ‘I held it in my hand. I held the glass eye in my hand when they were cutting Hugo up on the slab.’

  Wren said, ‘Do you want back-up? I think we should get back-up now. Wolfe?’

  ‘We can handle this,’ I said. ‘What happened to the girl, James? And what was her name?’

  He hung his head. He shook his head. There were no words.

  ‘I think we are going to have to take you in, James,’ I said. ‘You’re part of a murder investigation.’

  His sister said, ‘You’ll kill him!’

  But he looked at me, his eyes clear, strangely calm now that he knew for certain it would soon all be over.

  ‘All right,’ he said, his voice steady. ‘I suppose I’m ready to go.’

  He glanced towards the window. Outside the evening was cold and foggy, the street shrouded in the misty lights of winter. It looked like one of his paintings.

  ‘It’s a lovely day today,’ he said, walking over to the window.

  And then he broke into a kind of run, the shambling run of the badly out-of-shape man.

  I called out to Wren.

  But it was too late.

  He went through the closed window with an eruption of glass and fell into thin air. I heard his sister scream and I heard Wren cry out and just a second later we heard a hideous thump as he landed one floor below.

  I was already running for the stairs.

  The wrought-iron railings had broken his fall, impaling his great bulk, one spike speared into his groin and another through his cheek. A couple more had torn open his guts and buried themselves deep inside.

  I heard Wren calling it in at the same awful moment I recoiled backwards as if struck in the face, choking on the sewer stink of a man’s spilt intestines.

  23

  I SAT IN my car on Prince Albert Road, the lights of the mansion blocks rising up on one side of me and the black vastness of Regent’s Park on the other, and I felt the sickness rise in me as Ben King came out of Natasha Buck’s block. I grimaced at the smooth Westminster smile as the fawning porter let him out, actually touching his head in salute, as if seeking a forelock to tug.

  Even when he was sneaking around his friend’s widow after dark, King looked every inch the visiting dignitary.

  She must have thought there was time enough to get him off the premises before I arrived. But for some reason there is never much traffic around the park, and I was early.

  Natasha was dressed for a date. Candles on the table. Al Green singing about staying together. The smell of roasting red meat. And the perfumed smell of her as she kissed me on one cheek and then the other and then, finally, on the mouth. A smell to make a man want to start inhaling and never stop.

  I was carrying a bottle of wine and she took it with elaborate grace as I thought how wrong, how grotesque, how inappropriate.

  A date, I thought. We’re on a date.

  The rage inside me was directed at myself as well as her.

  On the sofa the dog opened its bleary eyes, clocked me and then closed them again, deeply unimpressed, as Natasha brought me a bottle of Asahi Super Dry and a frosted glass that had been sitting in the freezer, waiting for me.

  ‘Scout,’ she said. ‘She went with her friend? To her playover?’

  ‘Sleepover,’ I said. ‘Yes,
her friend’s mother picked them up after school.’

  Natasha bit her bottom lip. Laughed. Shook her head.

  ‘Then we can have a sleepover too,’ she said, coming in close, holding my arm, looking up at me. ‘You must think I’m bad.’

  I laughed. Then she wasn’t smiling.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  I walked towards the sofa but I didn’t sit down. I wasn’t staying long.

  I took a pull on the Japanese beer and said, ‘Do you know what it does to a murder case if an investigating officer sleeps with a material witness?’

  She took a step back. ‘What?’

  ‘Of course you do,’ I said. ‘Of course you know.’

  She had her hands on me and I froze so she stood back, keeping her distance.

  ‘Max,’ she said. ‘Please.’

  Her eyes were shining.

  ‘Spare me the tears,’ I said.

  She angrily wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll spare you the tears if you tell me what’s wrong with you. I thought we were going to have a lovely night—’

  ‘Meeting us on the Heath – that wasn’t a coincidence, was it?’

  She looked away.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You don’t walk your dog on the Heath, do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You don’t walk your dog at all, do you?’

  ‘No – I’m another rich bitch who gets some little Eastern European scrubber to walk her dog.’

  ‘And your husband didn’t lose his eye playing rugby, did he?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your husband. Old Hugo. That story about how he lost his eye. That was all bullshit, wasn’t it?’

  She looked genuinely surprised. ‘No, that’s true.’

  ‘Were you there? Did you see it happen?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then you don’t know, do you?’

  ‘But I do. I do know.’

  Maybe she believed it, I thought. Maybe she really believed in the sports injury lie.

  ‘What was Ben King doing here?’

  She laughed with disbelief. ‘Is that what this is about? You saw Ben leaving? Don’t you think it’s a little early to be getting possessive?’

  ‘You fucking him too?’

  Her open palm cracked hard against my cheek.

  The dog sat up, finally looking impressed.

  ‘I’m not fucking anybody. Especially not you. Ben came to collect some of Hugo’s personal things.’

  ‘A couple of paintings?’

  ‘I want you to go now.’

  ‘What happened at that school?’

  ‘Please leave.’

  ‘Do you want to know how your husband lost his eye? Do you really want to know?’

  She suddenly seemed very tired.

  ‘I don’t care,’ she said. ‘He’s dead. It doesn’t matter.’

  She swallowed hard, and looked around the flat, taking it all in – the candles, the smell of prime beef, Al Green. She ran her hands through her hair. It was all ruined now.

  ‘You’re using me, Natasha,’ I said. ‘You’re setting me up. You’re telling me lies.’

  ‘You’re the liar,’ she said, angry at last. ‘You wear a wedding ring but you’re not married.’

  ‘What happened at that school? What did they do? Who was the girl?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Where’s your wife? What happened to her? You have a ring but no wife? What’s all that about, detective? You liar. You fucking liar.’

  She was pushing me out of the apartment and I was letting her. And I saw that she was as stupid as me. Another mug.

  ‘You’re wrong about everything,’ she said, closing the door in my face.

  In the morning, just inside the communal front door of our block of flats, half covered with flyers for pizza, there was a package waiting on the mat with my name on it.

  As Stan sniffed at the junk mail, I tore the package open and pulled out a VHS videotape. It felt cheap, plastic, rickety. Incredibly old-fashioned. I looked at the spine. There was printed felt-tip writing, written very carefully, as if by a bright child.

  Our 1st XV v Harrow 1st XV 10-10-88

  I searched inside. No note. I looked back at the VHS I was holding, then down at the dog.

  ‘How am I meant to play this?’ I said out loud.

  ‘Vice,’ Wren told me when I got to work. ‘Down on the third floor. Vice has video recorders from back in the day.’

  MIR-1 was still deserted. Wren always got in early.

  ‘I’ve been looking on HOLMES for missing persons,’ she said. ‘I started with female mispers between the ages of fifteen and thirty within a ten-mile radius of Potter’s Field in 1988.’

  ‘Keep looking.’

  ‘I will – but you need to talk to the SIO,’ she said. ‘You need to talk to Mallory. About what James Sutcliffe said before he died.’ A beat. ‘About the school.’

  ‘Mallory has the chief super breathing down his neck. And the chief super is anxious to protect Ben King.’

  ‘You still need to talk to him.’

  I looked at the VHS tape in my hand.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘But what did Sutcliffe really tell us? We don’t even know who we’re talking about, do we? Who was in that room?’

  ‘He told us enough,’ Wren said. ‘They’re not dying because they’re rich, are they? They’re not dying because they’re sons of privilege or symbols of social injustice or any of that Bob the Butcher stuff.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘They’re dying because of the past.’

  We found a quiet corner of Vice with a couple of dusty video recorders and settled down to watch our videotape.

  All around us young men and women were watching writhing bodies on their computer screens, and trying to separate standard filth from criminal obscenity that was likely to corrupt and deprave.

  ‘Is that vulva open?’ said one young man.

  ‘I think it’s only slightly ajar,’ said a young woman.

  ‘Definitely a grey area,’ said the young man, making a note.

  They were friendly enough but neither Wren or I knew any of the twenty-something officers in the department.

  ‘They change personnel every six months down here,’ Wren whispered. ‘In case it does something to their sex drive. One way or the other.’

  She posted the VHS into the video recorder and pressed play. The remote had been lost in time.

  ‘Do you want to watch it on fast forward?’ she said.

  ‘Just let it roll,’ I said.

  I recognised the playing fields of Potter’s Field. The tree line, the stone cottage, the endless expanse of green churned to mud down the centre of the pitches. Only the haircuts of the boys were different.

  It was easy to spot Hugo Buck. Big, proud, confident. A good-looking bully. Calling for the ball. Exhorting his friends. Arguing with the referee. After twenty minutes he scored a try and preened before the camera, his big grin in our faces. I heard the laughter of the cameraman as he said ‘Played, Bucko!’ and it sounded like Ben King.

  Five minutes later it happened.

  The ball was kicked deep into the Harrow half. The Potter’s Field First XV flew after it, Buck in the vanguard. A Harrow defender caught the ball, fumbled, dropped it, picked it up again. Voices screamed with excitement. The defender made to kick the ball just as Buck reached him.

  Buck hurled himself at the Harrow defender.

  The Harrow defender lashed wildly at the ball.

  Buck beat it down.

  And the point of the Harrow defender’s right boot speared into Buck’s left eye.

  He screamed.

  The game stopped. Players and pupils and teachers gathered around the boy on the ground.

  He was silent now. But the teachers were shouting for an ambulance. The cameraman kept filming. And just before the tape stopped he went on to the pitch and looked over the shoulders of the boys and m
en gathered around Hugo Buck.

  His eye was a ruined pulp.

  The footage abruptly ended on that last bloody image.

  ‘So,’ Wren said, ‘Hugo Buck lost his eye playing rugby.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘James Sutcliffe told us he was hurt by a girl, didn’t he?’

  I paused, considered.

  ‘Is that what he told us? Sutcliffe was doped up to the eyeballs for years. He was doped up when he was at school. He was doped up on the day he died. James Sutcliffe was a poor little rich boy who spent his entire life on medication.’

  ‘Come on, Wolfe. You’re the one who said Hugo Buck’s wife was lying. You’re the one who held Buck’s fake eye in your hand. But she wasn’t lying, was she?’

  I stared at the frozen image on the screen.

  We went back up to MIR-1. Suddenly the suite was heaving with people. Swire and Mallory. Cho and Dr Stephen. Gane and Whitestone. Faces were flushed with the fever of a chase that was nearing its end.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I said.

  ‘We’ve got Bob,’ Gane said.

  24

  BEHIND THE JOHN Lennon glasses, Mallory’s eyes were burning with quiet rage.

  ‘Setting a trap with human bait,’ he said quietly, each word chipped from Aberdeen granite, his bald head gleaming under the lights of MIR-1, ‘was never the plan.’

  ‘Change of plan,’ said Swire.

  ‘I’m not wearing a bullet-proof vest,’ Scarlet Bush was telling DI Whitestone. ‘Bob was very specific: “Come alone. No tapes I can’t see.” He might think a bullet-proof vest is a wire. I’m not wearing it.’

  ‘It’s not a bullet-proof vest,’ Whitestone said patiently, ‘it’s a Kevlar Stealth. Lightweight, the thinnest we have. Invisible under the clothes you’re wearing. I’d wear it if I were you.’

  Gane’s laptop was open on Bob the Butcher’s timeline. Bob had changed his picture again. Instead of Robert Oppenheimer’s thoughtful, pipe-smoking skull, there was now a mushroom cloud.

  In sleep – in confusion – in the depths of shame – the good deeds a man has done before defend him. #killallpigs

  ‘Where’s his response?’ I said.

  ‘He didn’t respond online,’ Gane said. ‘He called her.’ He laughed. ‘On a telephone. A landline.’