Seventy-Seven Clocks

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘Who’s interviewing the brother, you or I?’

  ‘I’ll take Peter Whitstable,’ said Bryant. ‘He’s a major, fully decorated and highly respected. Let’s hope he’s capable of providing an explanation for his sibling’s behaviour. They’re all inbred, you know. Old families never strayed far from the family seat to marry. You can always tell; their eyes are too close together and they like folk music.’

  Sergeant Longbright entered the room with a small plastic bag in one hand. Her shift had finished four hours late, at three a.m. Thick makeup hid the crescents beneath her eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry you were pulled in on your day off, Janice,’ said May. ‘Raymond Land is worried that this investigation will get too much of a public profile. He’s canceled all leave for the foreseeable future.’

  ‘That’s okay, I was only sleeping.’ If she was annoyed, she had no intention of showing it. She dropped the bag on May’s desk and displayed its tag. ‘Land came by a few minutes ago and left this for you.’ She sniffed the air. ‘What’s that awful smell?’

  ‘You’ll have to talk to Mr Bryant about that. Wasn’t there a message with it?’ May held the bag to the light. Tiny metal shards glittered within, like crystal formations.

  ‘He said he’d call once you’d had a chance to examine it.’

  ‘Is Land based here full time?’ asked Bryant.

  ‘I’m afraid so, old bean. He has the office right at the end of the hall.’ Raymond Land was a reasonably talented forensic scientist, but his meticulous manner and air of superiority did little to endear him to his colleagues. He was particularly irritated by Bryant, whose elliptical, unorthodox approach to investigations infuriated him. Land had been chasing promotion for some time, and had been appointed acting head of the PCU, a position he had most definitely not wanted.

  May unzipped the plastic bag and carefully shook out its contents. He separated the curving slivers of gold with his forefinger. ‘What do you make of this, Arthur?’

  Bryant searched in his drawer for a magnifier and approached the metal splinters. ‘Looks like old gold. Victorian, I should say. Much purer than the stuff you buy these days. Quite red, and very soft. There are some markings . . .’ He slid one of the pieces beneath the magnifier and turned up the light. ‘Roman numerals. Calibrations of some kind? I’ve seen something like this before.’

  ‘Could be pieces of a pendant,’ suggested May.

  ‘No, it’s something more technical. One of these fragments isn’t gold. Looks like good-quality silver.’ He turned the metal over in his hand. ‘There’s a tiny hinge on one side. It’s the lid of an enamel container.’ The telephone rang. ‘That’ll be Land. He’s been sitting at his desk timing you.’

  ‘Well, John, what do you think?’ asked Land, speaking too loudly into the mouthpiece.

  ‘I’m not sure. Where did you get it?’

  ‘Finch removed the pieces from your man, the exploded Whitstable. They weren’t inside his stomach to begin with; the force of the blast drove them in. I assume it’s part of the bomb casing.’

  ‘Tell him it’s not,’ said Bryant in a loud stage whisper. He held one of the gold shards between his thumb and forefinger. ‘Give me the phone.’

  May passed the receiver over.

  ‘Hello?’ Bryant shouted back. ‘This is from a small gold clock. The kind made for a presentation.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ replied Land. ‘You don’t build a bomb out of precious metals.’

  ‘Why not? Craftsmen of the nineteenth century inlaid everything with elaborate metalwork.’

  ‘It’s 1973, Bryant,’ snapped Land.

  ‘I’m aware of that. Still, I’d like you to spectrum-test the shards for chemical residue.’

  ‘I really don’t see what use—’

  ‘No, but I do,’ said Bryant rudely. ‘If you would be so kind.’ He hung up.

  ‘I won’t have many friends left around here by the time you’ve finished,’ said May. ‘Let’s find out if Peter Whitstable has anything more to say.’ They had taken a statement from the Major immediately after his brother’s death, but he had been too upset to be of help to them. Now it was time for some answers.

  9 / Losing Light

  Nearly a week had passed since she had witnessed the murder, but Jerry could still feel death on her hands. She turned them over in the light, trying to remember where the blood had stippled the whorls of her fingertips, attempting to recall the exact spot on the carpet where the old man had taken his final breath.

  ‘I wonder how the police knew it was foul play,’ she said aloud, studying the brown leather armchair from her place behind the reception desk.

  ‘It wasn’t any such thing,’ said Nicholas. Jerry’s obsession was beginning to bore him. It was bad enough that he had been forced to take a Saturday shift with her, but with Common Market delegates arriving in force, everyone was working overtime. ‘The police don’t have any idea what happened. There was an exposé of their incompetence in the Telegraph yesterday. They’re trying to hush the whole thing up.’

  ‘It wouldn’t work though, would it? There’s been too much publicity already. The truth will have to come out eventually.’ With the fallout from Watergate engulfing the presidency on the other side of the Atlantic, everyone was looking for conspiracies.

  ‘I suppose it will, so long as you’re alive to talk about it,’ said Nicholas. ‘There’s another batch of delegates being greeted at twelve-thirty. Leaders of emerging nations. A lot of unusual headgear, the national anthem played on logs, that sort of thing. You’ll have to check them in by yourself because I’ll be off duty by then.’ He smoothed a long curl of blond hair back in place and returned to his bookkeeping.

  ‘If it wasn’t murder,’ she persisted, ‘why haven’t they taken the police seal off Jacob’s room?’

  ‘They have.’ Nicholas looked up from his paperwork, exasperated. ‘We’re putting someone in there today.’ He checked his watch. ‘In about fifteen minutes.’

  Jerry wasn’t sure why, but it suddenly became important for her to see the room. Removing the passkey from the wall compartments behind her, she slipped away from the desk and took the elevator to the fourth floor. The room at the end of the corridor had been sealed along the doorframe to prevent anyone from entering. Now the seals had been removed, and the maids had been allowed to make up the beds.

  There was nothing left in the room to reveal anything of its previous occupier. Had she honestly expected there to be? The police would have removed Jacob’s belongings and forwarded them to his family. The room would have been searched, but their forensic team would have had no reason to examine it. After all, it wasn’t the murder site. Instead they had concentrated their efforts on the ground-floor men’s washroom.

  Jerry walked into the bathroom and flicked on the light. Her pale reflection stared back at her, auburn hair flopping in cobalt eyes. She drew back the shower curtain and checked the ceramic soap holder. Max Jacob had risen and showered on Monday morning, not knowing that this was to be the last day of his life. Why had he come to London? How had he spent his final hours? Presumably the police already knew the answers to those questions. Could she call the detective and ask him? Wouldn’t he think it odd that she wanted to know?

  She could hear rain hitting the windows in the bedroom. The morning had begun as dimly as last Monday had ended. She knew there was something wrong with the way she felt; that something had been triggered by witnessing an act as private as dying. It all felt so sudden and unfinished. Jacob could have suspected nothing. He had come to the front desk earlier that day and chatted pleasantly to Nicholas. He had certainly not been in fear of his life then.

  Jerry reentered the bedroom and searched through the desk drawers. The hotel stationery had already been replenished, and lay neatly arranged for the next resident. If Jacob had left behind any sign of his occupation, it had since been removed by the police and the maids.

  She pulled open the bedside drawer, and was abo
ut to close it again when she noticed the Bible. Her eyes traveled down the bookmarked page to find a passage heavily underscored.

  John 3.19. . . . and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.

  A scrap of notepaper had been folded inside. It bore a number: 216. She flicked back through the pages, noting other marked passages.

  Psalms 139.11. . . . Even the night shall be light about me.

  John 12.35. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you . . .

  Genesis 1.16. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night . . .

  There were dozens of penciled references, all of them offering advice on matters of light and darkness. Presuming Max Jacob had marked the passages himself, he obviously believed in practising his religion. But that made no sense. Surely the name Jacob was Jewish? She was about to check that there was nothing more of interest when she heard the lift arriving. The room’s new occupant could well be checking in. She slipped the Bible into her jacket, closed the door behind her, and kept walking to the end of the corridor.

  John May rang the doorbell and stepped back.

  A constable stood guard beneath the large sycamore at the end of the front garden. Water was running from his jacket, soaking the knees of his trousers. There was no sound save that of the rain falling into the trees in the deserted Hampstead avenue. Bryant trudged through the bushes at the side of the house, pushing aside the wet leaves to peer in through dirt-spattered windows.

  Finally there was a sound from within, footsteps thumping and stumbling in the hallway. The gentleman who laboriously unlocked the door was a little younger than his brother, but in every other way the dead man’s double. The heavyset face, with bulbous crimson nose and pendulous lower lip, recalled to mind any number of Hogarthian caricatures. Peter Whitstable’s heavy winter brown woollens were barely of the present era. He seemed to have trouble opening the door. Finally he managed to pull it wide, whereupon he looked up at May, stumbled on the step, and fell into his arms.

  ‘Good God,’ said Bryant, returning to the doorstep, ‘he’s completely drunk.’

  ‘Help me get him into the kitchen.’ May hooked his hands under the Major’s arms and hauled him across the hall, enveloped in the sour reek of whisky. ‘He’s no use to us like this.’

  ‘Give him a coffee, by all means,’ said Bryant, ‘but let’s ask him a few questions. We might get some honest answers while he’s in this state.’

  The house smelled of lavender polish and old Scotch. None of the furniture could be dated after the late 1900s. Oils and watercolours of every size and description filled the walls, butted frame to frame. It was as if they had stepped into a cluttered Victorian home untouched by passing decades. Heavy green-velvet curtains kept light and time at bay. Bryant’s eyes grew brighter as he examined the gilt-framed photographs on the walls lining the kitchen corridor.

  ‘It’s like wandering into the past,’ he remarked.

  ‘How dare you, Sirr,’ slurred the Major suddenly, raising his head and fixing Bryant with a bloodshot eye. ‘To gentlemen of enlightenment, this was our time of glory. Let others tear down the past with their caterwauling music and their free love . . . and . . .’ He collapsed, unable to summon a third example.

  May sat their man on a straight-backed chair while Bryant made strong coffee. Beneath the sink were more than a dozen empty whisky bottles. Major Peter Whitstable had not turned to alcohol to numb the news of his brother’s death. He and Johnnie Walker were old friends.

  The kitchen was immaculate in the old-fashioned manner of having been scoured to the point of erosion. A vast iron hob dominated the room. Copper saucepans hung in gleaming rows. A Victorian ice-cream drum stood beside a rack of spoons and ladles, and looked as if it was still in use. As Whitstable didn’t seem capable of organizing this himself, the brothers most likely had a housekeeper.

  ‘Jus’ put a shot in it, there’s a good chap,’ he mumbled as Bryant passed him a steaming mug. When no such action was forthcoming, the Major removed a silver flask from his jacket, unscrewed the cap, and tipped in an ample measure before either of the detectives could stop him.

  ‘We have no desire to impose on you in a time of grief,’ began May, ‘but some urgent questions must be addressed.’

  Whitstable slumped back in his chair. ‘I can’t believe he’s gone,’ he said. ‘Or rather, I can.’ He promptly fell asleep. Bryant nudged him awake, none too gently, and prised the spilling mug from his hands.

  ‘Th’ bastards won’t get away with it,’ Peter Whitstable cried, swinging his great head from one face to the other. ‘We’re not the only ones against this, you know.’

  ‘What happened to your brother?’ asked May. ‘Why should someone want to kill him?’

  ‘’S obvious,’ said Peter Whitstable, making a halfhearted attempt to sit up. ‘Enemies. Anarchists. Sybarites and sodomites. None of us are safe! The country’s gone to—where has it gone?’

  ‘We’re not going to get any sense from him,’ whispered May.

  ‘Let me try.’ Bryant dragged a chair close. ‘Major Whitstable—Peter—may I call you that? I know you’d like to be left by yourself. If you want we can take the guards from your house and leave you alone, in peace.’

  ‘God, don’ do that!’ he shouted, terror clearing his drunken stupor. He sat forward, his eyes widening. ‘We’re in terr’ble danger, horrible things could happen!’

  ‘Then you think whoever killed your brother will come after you?’

  ‘I do believe that. Yess.’ He patted his pockets for the whisky flask. ‘And you, too, if you get in the way. Darkness is rising, y’see.’

  ‘Explain what you mean,’ challenged May.

  ‘S’plain, yes. Follow me.’ Whitstable lurched to his feet, holding a finger to his lips, and beckoned to the detectives. ‘Have to come upstairs.’

  At the first landing, Bryant had to move fast to stop the Major from falling backwards. A gloomy room opened from the landing. Here the smell of furniture polish and dead air was stronger than ever. The heavy floor-length curtains were parted no more than a foot. Photograph frames and military trophies cluttered the green-baizecovered mantelpiece, and dingy oils of horses filled the walls. The Major weaved his way over to a walnut sideboard and searched among the decanters.

  ‘Take a good look around at this lot,’ he said. ‘We are a dynastic fam’ly. Aristocratic British stock. Traditional values. We obey the landowners’ creed: If it’s attractive you shoot it; if it’s ugly you marry it. Not many of us left, an’ gettin’ damn fewer by the day. William and I . . . Poor William. I don’t s’pose there’s enough of him left to bury.’

  ‘We can catch the people who did this if you help us,’ said May, but the Major was not listening.

  ‘We knew what was expected of us in those days,’ he was saying. ‘Have a herd of children, marry the daughters into money, stick the bright sons in business, the dim ones in the Church, and the mad ones in the army. O’ course you make enemies. ’S only natural.’ He sat down heavily with a decanter between his knees. ‘I s’pose you want to know who killed him.’

  ‘Yes,’ said May, relieved that their purpose was finally being understood. ‘Although you could start by explaining why your brother destroyed the painting.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know why he did that. Our family has a long association with—’ he paused for a breath ‘—the sponsorship of art, so you can imagine my s’prise when I heard what he’d done. I called on him to explain hisself, but he told me I should already understand the reason for his action.’ He unsteadily filled a tumbler and lost the decanter to Bryant, who managed to snatch it away. ‘But I didn’t understand. William was so attached to the past— how could he be responsible for destroyin’ part of it?’ May made a lunge for the filled whisky glass, but Whitstable clasped it t
o his chest with both hands.

  ‘Poor confused William. Our enemies are laughing at us, but we’ll be avenged by our ancestors, you see if we won’t.’ His cheeks became suffused with an angry scarlet as he began to shout. ‘They hate the power of the light because they will be damned by their foul deeds! You should have asked Max Jacob, slimy little weasel, he could have told you. Bit by a snake—a traditional weapon, see, meant to strike fear into—somewhere or other.’

  ‘He’s off again,’ murmured May. ‘Take his glass away, quick.’

  But Bryant was not fast enough. Whitstable managed to snatch it up and drain it.

  ‘Was Max Jacob killed by the same person who murdered your brother?’ asked May.

  The Major stared wildly at the detective. ‘Don’t be bloody daft, man. My brother was not killed by a ‘person,’ and neither was the Israelite. It was not a Who that killed them, Mr May, but a What. And a bloody frightening one at that!’

  ‘Then if you know, tell us,’ begged Bryant. ‘You can avenge William’s death.’

  ‘William, William, William.’ He shook his head violently. ‘There’ll be plenty more joining him now.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked May. ‘Are more people going to die?’

  ‘Lots more, lots and lots, blood and bodies everywhere, Armageddon for our entire family, all the way to the end of the light. If you try to do anything, you’ll die, too. For without are dogs and sorcerers and whoremongers and murderers.’

  Bryant was torn between leaving the man to sleep it off or questioning him further now. He felt sure that the Major would not answer their questions when he was sober. ‘We can’t understand you,’ he said. ‘You have to explain what you mean.’

  ‘To know what killed William you must understand us all, and the families of others like us.’ He reached out for the decanter and found it missing. ‘You have to face the true darkness, if you can find it any more, which is bloody doubtful these days.’

  Bryant released a hiss of frustration. The Major was never going to give them a straight answer. ‘If you don’t help us, Peter,’ he warned, ‘I’ll have the guards removed from your house.’