The Murder Bag

by Tony Parsons

  A forklift truck was slightly tilted on the slope of the old graveyard, and it seemed to rock dangerously as its long metal fork eased beneath the grey stone of Henry’s tomb.

  The Murder Investigation Team from West End Central stood just behind the SOCOs, their mufti evidence of their interrupted weekends. Whitestone was in a parka thrown over jeans and T-shirt, as if she had come straight from home. Gane was in a tracksuit, as if he had come straight from the gym. And Edie Wren was in a short dress and killer heels and complicated hair, as if she had come straight from seeing her married man, or maybe trying to forget about him.

  I saw the chief super exchanging words with Sergeant Lane of Potter’s Field, their faces ghost-like in the fierce artificial light.

  And then I looked back at the tomb as the wheels of the bulldozer fought for purchase in the soft soil. All at once the great slab of stone came away with the crack of torn granite. It rose in the air, clumps of dirt and cement falling away, and the grave was suddenly open.

  A dozen officers in protective clothing moved quickly forward, and there were shouts and groans and protests as they heaved the lid of the tomb on its side and eased it up against an ancient oak. The white-suited SOCOs and the uniformed officers edged forward, but the grave was pitch black, buried in the darkness.

  Somebody adjusted a light.

  And there in the earth were the small bones of perhaps a dozen spaniels, their legs as thin as fish bones, their skulls the size of tennis balls, locked for eternity in the embrace of what were unmistakably human remains.

  34

  NATASHA CAME DOWN The Broadwalk in Regent’s Park, her perfect face impassive behind dark glasses, long of hair and arms and legs, the little Pekingese-Chihuahua cross trotting by her side with a stick in its mouth, and she looked like the one for me.

  It was sixty hours since we’d found the lonely bones of Anya Bauer. I had not slept and I had not eaten since we’d opened the grave, but after taking Scout to school on the third morning I knew that I desperately needed to do both. You can go without food and sleep for three nights and then you begin to fall apart. A single parent can’t afford to fall apart.

  Then I saw Natasha coming towards me as I was finishing my second bacon sandwich at a table outside The Honest Sausage, and I saw that I needed her even more.

  ‘My stalker,’ she said.

  ‘The merry widow,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No daughter? No dog?’

  I looked under the table. ‘I knew I’d forgotten something.’

  ‘Too bad,’ she said. ‘I like your dog and daughter.’

  Susan had abandoned her stick and was snuffling at my hand.

  ‘They like you,’ I said, wondering if it was too much. ‘My daughter and my dog.’

  ‘I can’t think why.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  She indicated the little Pekingese-Chihuahua cross who was eating out of my empty hand.

  ‘I didn’t know Susan cared for you.’

  ‘Nothing to do with me. Everything to do with my bacon sandwich.’

  Natasha took off her dark glasses. She seemed younger than I remembered, and not quite as tough as she wanted to be.

  ‘Listen,’ she said.

  Later, as we lay side by side, and I knew her for the first time, my hands moved across those long limbs and skin that was as white and unbroken as snow. And I remembered that I had seen her naked body once before, long ago, the first time we met.

  She kissed my mouth and read my thoughts, and the traffic down on Marylebone High Street seemed to be coming from some other world. She held my hands and made me feel her, made me know her properly, made me understand what had changed.

  The bruises were gone.

  ‘I healed,’ Natasha said.

  We loved and slept the day away.

  I had not slept by someone’s side for a long time. It was a delicious feeling, a private world of warmth and safety and longing. But then, too soon, it was time for me to go.

  I slipped out of the sheets, and the dog at the foot of the bed stirred with annoyance and then went back to sleep.

  Natasha was half awake, and I sat by her side and smoothed her hair and very softly ran my hands over the smooth warmth of her skin and all of that seemed to make her more sleepy and smiley.

  ‘Oh, come back to bed,’ she said. ‘Don’t make me call the cops.’

  I kissed her arm.

  ‘I have to pick up my daughter.’

  ‘Then come back tonight. Both of you. I’m not a cook but there are some great restaurants round here. What does Scout like?’

  ‘We have to do something tonight. Family stuff.’

  She hugged me.

  ‘OK,’ she said, waking up a bit now, the real world creeping into this secret room. ‘I know you’re a father. I know a dad has to do what a dad has to do, right?’

  I kissed her cheek, her neck, her mouth.

  ‘Right,’ I said.

  ‘But we’ll work it out,’ she said, and I believed her.

  I parked the X5 outside a terraced house on a quiet street in Pimlico.

  Scout was in the passenger seat, holding Stan and a bouquet of white flowers that was almost as big as her – lilies and roses and flowers that neither of us knew the name of.

  Bringing flowers always felt like an imposition to me. A vase had to be found. Stems cut, water added, topped up at regular intervals, and one week later the dead flowers had to be thrown out, the stinking green water poured away, the vase washed clean.

  It felt like you were asking a lot of someone when you gave them flowers.

  Then Scout grinned at me as we got out of the car – a new smile, a gappy smile, because she had lost two teeth at the bottom, the first of her milk teeth to go – and I knew the flowers didn’t matter a damn. What mattered was her, and us, and knowing that coming here was the right thing to do.

  Scout rang the bell. Stan barked once, then again, his feathery tail revolving with excitement. From beyond the door’s frosted glass I heard the excited yap of a West Highland Terrier.

  Then I saw the shape of Mrs Margaret Mallory coming down the hall, and the outline of her face through the frosted glass, and the start of her smile.

  35

  SOHO WAS OUR canteen.

  It meant that odd, unexpected couples were sometimes seen sharing a meal together in the backstreet restaurants.

  PC Billy Greene and Dr Stephen were in a corner table of the Siam Café on Frith Street. Greene’s hands were no longer bandaged. He was in uniform. I was about to join them when I realised that this was not a chance encounter. This was therapy.

  ‘Please,’ Dr Stephen said. ‘Our fifty minutes are just about up. So you’re no longer suspended, Max?’

  I shook my head. ‘One day you’re the cock of the walk and the next you’re a feather duster,’ I said. ‘Or is it the other way round?’

  I joined them.

  ‘You found the missing girl,’ Dr Stephen said.

  I nodded. ‘We just got the results of the forensic autopsy from Elsa Olsen. Identified her body from dental records sent over from Germany. Cause of death was a broken neck. Peregrine Waugh snapped Anya Bauer’s neck like she was some kind of wounded animal.’

  ‘And twenty years later,’ Greene said, ‘he opens up his veins.’

  ‘And gets off too lightly,’ I said. ‘I wanted to see him in court. I wanted to see him in a cell.’

  We were silent until I nodded at Greene’s hands.

  ‘How are you doing, Billy?’

  ‘Doing good,’ he said. ‘The pain is easing off. The physio is coming along. My fingers are working better, although the right hand is still a bit stiff. The more exercises I do, the better I feel.’

  The waitress brought a plate of fruit. I saw that Greene’s hands were stained black with burns, and that he held a fork with difficulty.

  ‘Stick with it, Billy,’ I said. ‘Stick with all of it.’

  But he didn’t want my pity.
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  When a piece of mango slipped from his fork and slid across the table, he stabbed at it repeatedly until he finally speared it. He popped the mango in his mouth and laughed.

  ‘Lunch takes a bit longer,’ he said.

  Dr Stephen stared at his plate and then back at Greene.

  ‘Funny thing is, they gave me sick leave,’ Greene said. ‘After the night we got Bob. And I went to Vegas – because I always fancied Vegas. So I flew to Vegas.’ He paused dramatically. ‘But they wouldn’t let me in!’

  Dr Stephen had obviously heard the anecdote before. I had the impression that Greene had told the story many times, and that his fellow uniformed policemen had enjoyed the punchline. It was the kind of punchline that coppers would find amusing.‘They wouldn’t let you in?’ I said. ‘You mean, into the country? When you landed?’

  He nodded, still looking cheery, still seeing the funny side and assuming that I would see it too.

  ‘The Americans fingerprint everyone when they pass through immigration – part of the tightened security after 9/11, right?’

  I shrugged. ‘OK.’

  Greene held up his hands like it was a conjuring trick. ‘And guess who doesn’t have fingerprints any more! They put me on the first flight home!’

  I stared at Billy Greene’s blackened hands and I kept on staring until he placed them on his lap, below the table, where I could no longer see them.

  ‘Harry Jackson,’ said Sergeant John Caine. ‘People tend to walk right past old Harry Jackson.’

  It was true.

  The Black Museum was so full of gory artefacts, from the endless variety of firearms and blades that had claimed policemen’s lives to the pots and pans in which serial killers had cooked the flesh of their victims, that it was easy to walk past the small, unassuming display devoted to Harry Jackson.

  There wasn’t much. A glass frame containing a short newspaper clipping, yellow with age. Two typewritten paragraphs of explanation.

  And the whorls of a dead man’s thumbprint.

  ‘Harry Jackson was the first man to be convicted in England because of fingerprint evidence,’ Sergeant Caine said. ‘Harry was a burglar. In the summer of 1902 he climbed through a window in Denmark Hill, stole some billiard balls and left his thumbprint in wet paint on the windowsill.’ Sergeant Caine chuckled. ‘Silly bugger. He got seven years.’

  I peered closer at the newspaper clipping. It was a letter to The Times, signed by someone calling himself A Disgusted Magistrate.

  Sir, Scotland Yard, once known as the world’s finest police organisation, will be the laughing stock of Europe if it insists on trying to trace criminals by the odd ridges on their skins.

  ‘Eight years later, the rest of the world was catching up,’ said Caine. ‘Thomas Jennings of Chicago became the first person in America to be convicted by fingerprint evidence.’

  ‘Another burglar?’

  ‘No – Jennings was a murderer. And soon the French were at it, nicking a reprobate by the name of Vincenzo Perugia – doesn’t sound very French, does he? – on the basis of a left thumbprint.’

  ‘What had he done?’

  ‘He stole the Mona Lisa from the Louvre. Took the Frogs two years to find him because they only had his right thumbprint on file. I hear you solved your case. DCI Mallory would be very happy.’

  I nodded, staring at Harry Jackson’s thumbprint.

  ‘Twenty years ago, a girl called Anya Bauer was the victim of a gang rape at Potter’s Field,’ I said. ‘The Head Master, Peregrine Waugh, killed her to stop her talking. Bob the Butcher – Ian Peck – cut the throats of the men who had been the boys who attacked Anya. We got two murderers. We got their motives. The pieces all fit. The trouble is, John, when you look at them, those pieces don’t make much sense.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Peck is going to get life for Mallory’s murder,’ I said. ‘And his prints were everywhere in his parents’ house.’

  ‘I heard.’

  ‘But they were not at the murder scenes of Hugo Buck, Adam Jones and Guy Philips, the other murders he confessed to. No prints there. Not even a partial. Not even a glove print.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sergeant Caine. ‘I heard that, too.’

  ‘But why would he lie?’ I said. ‘Why would Ian Peck confess to murders that he didn’t commit?’

  ‘Because he’s nobody,’ said the keeper of the Black Museum. ‘And he wants to be somebody. They’re all the same. Serial killers – you think they’re criminal masterminds? They’re not Hannibal Lecter, Max! They’re all just grubby little men. They’re all psychopathic losers. Who are they? Albert DeSalvo, Peter Sutcliffe and Ian Peck. They’re germs, they’re insects. But their crimes make them the Boston Strangler, the Yorkshire Ripper and Bob the Butcher. It wouldn’t surprise me if Bob the Butcher is standing up for murders that he didn’t do. It’s what Albert DeSalvo did. He wasn’t even in jail for killing those thirteen women in Boston. He was in jail for rape. That’s the kind of vicious little woman-hating creep we’re talking about. But then he becomes the Boston Strangler and suddenly you’ve got Tony Curtis playing you in a movie.’

  I was still staring at Harry Jackson’s thumbprint.

  ‘No prints,’ I said. ‘Who has no prints, John?’

  Sergeant John Caine of the Black Museum reached out and straightened the frame on his neglected Harry Jackson display.

  ‘Only a man with no hands, Max,’ he said.

  36

  MIDNIGHT ON THE school playing fields, the black silhouette of Potter’s Field behind me, a jumble of towers and spires and architecture from the last five centuries.

  Blink your eye and a hundred years go by.

  It felt like the world was dead.

  I checked my phone one last time – no new calls, although I had left urgent messages for Whitestone, Gane and Wren on my drive out here – and then began across the playing fields.

  The wind whistled through the trees in the distant woods and I shuddered, as if the eyes of Anya Bauer were watching me. Soon you will be at rest, I thought. Soon you will be at peace at last.

  There were no lights on in the little stone cottage as I felt in my pocket for the Head Master’s keys, the large set that looked like they were from a fairy tale, holding the key to every lock in every door in Potter’s Field.

  There were two locks on the front door of the cottage. A standard Yale lock and a flush bolt. Nothing complicated. But I still had to try a dozen keys before the door swung silently open and I stepped inside.

  I stood there listening for a moment, my eyes adjusting to the light, slowing my breath, and then I quietly eased the door shut.

  On the table there was an empty teacup, a copy of the local newspaper and a .410 shotgun.

  It was a small cottage. A servant’s quarters given a quick coat of rural comfort. To the left was the bedroom and the bathroom, both doors shut. To the right the small living area ran into an L-shaped kitchen only large enough for one person at a time.

  I stood there, seeing in the darkness now, but not knowing what I was looking for until I glimpsed it under the sink.

  I moved quickly to the little kitchen, crouched down and pulled the door all the way open. An ancient leather bag was sitting with the bleach and disinfectant and insecticide. Its dark brown cowhide was worn and cracked, the brass hardware and locks blackened with rust.

  But somehow you knew it was still being used.

  As something very small scuttled away in the skirting board, I reached in and took out the worn-leather Gladstone bag.

  A Murder Bag.

  I turned to carry the bag back to the living space and there he was, old Len Zukov, sitting at the table with the .410 shotgun in his arthritic hands.

  I held up the bag for his inspection, as if he had asked me to retrieve it.

  ‘Your bag, Len?’

  He sniffed. ‘Of course.’

  I set it on the table, saying nothing.

  ‘You don’t believe me,’ he said, th
e accent forever caught somewhere between rural England and his Russian homeland. ‘You never believe a word I say, do you?’

  I watched his hands on the .410. Despite his condition the shotgun rested easily in his strong arms and those locked, arthritic fists. He was more comfortable than I had ever seen him. And I looked towards the door, wondering if the .410 was even loaded, and how much mobility he needed in his fingers to pull the trigger.

  Not much, I thought. The .410 is the lightest shotgun, often used for teaching children how to shoot.

  ‘Sit down now,’ he said, interrupting my calculations.

  ‘My colleagues will be here soon,’ I said, hearing the doubt in my voice.

  He liked that. ‘Perhaps not soon enough,’ he said. ‘I told you to sit down.’

  I remained standing.

  ‘You didn’t come forward to claim the body,’ I said. ‘Anya’s body, Len. Anya Bauer. We know it was her remains in the grave with the dogs. No doubt about it. We obtained dental records from Germany. What stopped you coming forward and claiming the body? What were you afraid of? You knew her, Len.’

  ‘Did you ever see what a shotgun does to a man’s face?’ he said.

  I joined him at the table. There were only two chairs. He wasn’t one for doing a lot of socialising.

  ‘Poking around in the night,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘What you looking for?’ He indicated the Gladstone bag that I had placed on the table. ‘That old thing?’

  ‘Not you,’ I said. ‘I’m not looking for you, Len.’

  ‘Maybe you should be,’ he said, and he shifted the shotgun in his paralysed hands.

  ‘Why don’t you put the gun down, Len. Then we can talk.’

  He gripped the .410 tighter.

  ‘You asked me how I came here,’ he said. ‘I came with the soldiers. I rode on the back of a T-34. Do you know the T-34?’

  ‘It was a tank in the war. The Second World War. The Great Patriotic War, you call it. The T-34 was a Russian tank.’