Parker stepped outside to talk.
“All okay?” he asked.
“I’m back at the hotel, and I saw your message,” said Johnston. “I think I may have poisoned myself with gin.”
“You know, there are other ways to embrace the spirit of London,” said Parker. “You could get on a tour bus, or buy a T-shirt.”
“I’ll take that under advisement. I wasn’t expecting to see you for a few days.”
“Amsterdam didn’t appeal.”
“That’s an untruth. I bet you came on my account.”
“Maybe I was missing you some. So, what did you find out before you succumbed to Mother’s Ruin?”
“I visited the former home of Dunwidge and Daughter. The current owner, Rosanna Bellingham, thinks it may be haunted.”
“What do you think?”
“I think it smells as though someone burned to death in it.”
“Someone did.”
“Yes, Eliza Dunwidge, almost a century ago. Unless Rosanna Bellingham is in the habit of incinerating corpses, there’s no reason why it should still stink of charred flesh.”
“Badness lingers.”
“That’s what Rosanna suggested, even if the smell has only recently become obvious. She gave me an album of cuttings relating to the history of the house. I’m looking through it now.”
“Anything interesting?”
“Lots, but that’s not the same as being relevant. I found an illustration of Atol Quayle in an old newspaper.”
“And?”
“It looks much like the man in the passport pictures: not an exact likeness, even allowing for the difference between a sketch and a photograph, but enough to suggest a family resemblance.”
“I’ll take a look in the morning.”
“Good, because I’m going to swallow two aspirin and go to bed. Where are you?”
“Outside a bar.”
“Find out anything?”
“That it’s more comfortable inside.”
“I’ll take that as a no, then. See you in the morning.”
Johnston hung up, and Parker returned to his chair. He was reading a book on crime and punishment in London, one of a number he had gathered in an effort to understand the world that had produced, and sustained, Quayle’s legal firm. Most of it was profoundly depressing. William Calcraft, one of the City of London’s most famous nineteenth-century hangmen, and apparently an otherwise mild-mannered individual, had enjoyed jumping on the backs of prisoners as they disappeared through the trapdoor of the gallows, riding them like ponies as they transitioned from this world to the next.
John Soter was mentioned briefly in the book, mainly because his alleged murder of the prostitute Sally Campion had occurred in the vicinity of Miller’s Court in Spitalfields, where Mary Jane Kelly, the Ripper’s final victim, had died. In fact, the book scout Maggs, another of Soter’s supposed victims, had also once lived in Miller’s Court, and died at Princelet Street, not far away from it. According to the book, Maggs’s body had been severely mutilated: his eyes were burned out, and reports suggested that Soter had attacked his mouth with a sharpened piece of wood, probably postmortem. Campion, meanwhile, had been eviscerated, and Wenham Dunwidge was so badly beaten that his skull had collapsed.
Maggs, Campion, and Dunwidge: all murdered on one of the Ripper’s former hunting grounds, and all brutalized, but in markedly different ways. Parker reflected on what Johnston had told him about the smell in Rosanna Bellingham’s home. Badness lingered, and if blood penetrated deep enough into wood, the stain became near permanent. The past gave substance to the present, and all old places were storehouses of memory: the more ancient the site, the greater the accumulation, and bygone atrocities called to new. Parker had witnessed it in his own life, in the desecration of the house in which his wife and first child had died, and so knew this to be true.
John Soter: the more Parker learned about him, the harder it became to balance Johnston’s description of a former soldier who was courteous and kind to women, and wept when an infant reminded him of his own lost family, with the image of one who could tear apart men, women, and children. Because here was the most disturbing part: whatever the truth about the adults, there appeared to be little doubt that Soter had killed a young boy and girl, shooting both. A Luger pistol, kept by Soter since the war, was found after his disappearance, and the bullets used on the children had almost certainly come from the same weapon. Soter had also been seen in the area a short time earlier. The dead boy and girl were never identified, and their bodies lay unclaimed before eventually being buried in paupers’ graves. According to Johnston’s researches, the corpses were dumped by Soter behind bins of rotting meat, the contents of which had been treated with some combination of acid and lye that leaked over the bodies, disfiguring their faces beyond recognition and damaging their remains so badly that a proper autopsy was never performed. The pathologist did conclude that the children had suffered from a bone disorder, “possibly rickets,” that caused grave deformities to their limbs. It was a wonder, the pathologist noted, that they had even been able to stand upright.
Parker finished his wine, put the book away, and headed into the night. He considered walking back to Soho, but he was tired, and the darkness now seemed oppressive to him after the comfort of the bar. He hailed a cab and asked the driver to take him to Hazlitt’s. The unfamiliar city passed like a series of slides framed by the window, but he barely noticed it.
It was to the detail of the boy and girl killed by Soter that Parker kept returning. Earlier that year, he had briefly glimpsed a child with deformed limbs, this one on the streets of Portland, while following a man linked to Quayle. The sighting had been only momentary, but it had stayed with Parker: a pale creature, more like an emaciated bird than anything else, its limbs misshapen, its leg and elbow joints bent at unnatural angles. He had not seen it since, and for this he remained thankful.
In Johnston’s reports, he had found its echo.
CHAPTER LXXI
Karl Holmby sat in his brother’s apartment in Newcastle, a bottle of Beck’s in hand. By now Karl had drunk four beers and was starting to feel the effect. He was half watching one of the Alien movies, and wondering when Gary would return from whatever was so important that he’d had to leave in such a hurry, even on his crutch, assuring Karl that he’d be back before he knew it, and they’d talk more then.
Karl hadn’t known that Gary had injured himself. Gary claimed to have slipped on wet cobblestones. It didn’t mean anything, not even if the police were speculating that whoever was responsible for dumping Romana Moon’s body on the moors might have done so only after incurring an injury. Lots of people slipped and injured themselves, every day, or so Karl told himself.
Gary Holmby’s apartment was part of a new development on the Quayside, standing across the Tyne from the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, which was housed in one of the old mills that once flourished along the river. Karl had only been inside the Baltic on one occasion, and that was with Ryan Clifton. They’d traveled to Newcastle for a concert, and Karl had expected them to kill the time beforehand by mooching around the shops, or maybe finding somewhere in the Bigg Market that would serve them a few beers without kicking up a fuss about ID, but instead Ryan had suggested visiting the Baltic.
Karl assumed Ryan was joking at first. He knew his friend liked to draw, and even painted a bit, but he’d never associated Ryan Clifton with the frequenting of actual galleries, not unless he was hoping to nick something from the gift shop. It made Karl reconsider what Ryan might have been doing on those days when he didn’t bother turning up for school. Karl had always supposed Ryan was playing pool, or sneaking into movies, or just doing nothing at all, which for Ryan was still preferable to learning. Instead, it seemed he might have been frequenting the Heritage in Middlesbrough, or the Institute of Modern Art. Funny how you could think you knew someone only to have him surprise you with a left hook personality-wise. The Baltic hadn’t been s
o bad, either. At least it was free to enter, and when Karl eventually got bored, which didn’t take long, he sat outside and had a smoke while looking at the girls, the city, the river, and the apartment block on the other side of the water, the one in which his brother had recently acquired a nice two-bed with a balcony, and a parking space for his BMW.
Gary was older than Karl by seven years, and the younger brother had spent much of his early adolescence despising his senior. It wasn’t just the difference in their ages, but also their personalities. Gary had always been a bit of a loner, and preferred spending time on his computer to socializing with actual living, breathing human beings his own age. All Karl’s friends thought Gary Holmby was weird, and Karl had tended to agree with them. The fact that a lot of clever adults, particularly female ones, liked Gary only caused Karl to dislike him more, even though Karl shared his brother’s ability to mix easily with his elders.
But then Gary became the first male on their street—and the first person in the extended Holmby clan—to progress to university. It emerged that all those hours spent alone in his bedroom, staring at a screen and tapping on a keyboard, had helped make Gary some kind of genius when it came to stuff like symmetric ciphers and encryption algorithms. He started earning serious money almost as soon as he left college, with three big-name companies fighting to recruit him. Gary ended up working for two of them, one after the other, until he had bled them for all the information and experience he required. Since then, Gary had been operating as a freelance consultant, with an hourly rate that was more than their mum took home at the end of a full week at the call center.
The brothers had grown closer after Gary left home, despite what Karl had told the police, distance lending him a different perspective on his sibling. It was Gary who had encouraged Karl to consider university; Gary who promised to help him out with a weekly allowance if he got a place on a good course; Gary who told him that he didn’t have to be like all the rest, that he could be anything he chose to be; Gary who assured him that it wasn’t about becoming better than everyone else, because he was already better than them. He had ambition. He was good-looking. He was clever. Karl had all the advantages. He now needed to put them to good use.
By then it was clear to Karl that his brother wasn’t some stereotypical computer nerd, either. He dressed well, drove a fifty-grand car, and was never short of female company. Women didn’t just like him, but were actively attracted to him. He had money in his wallet, which always helped. He listened. Females old and young fluttered around him like moths.
And then he hurt them.
Not physically, or at least Karl didn’t think so. Gary just enjoyed the thrill of the chase, of luring women into bed before dumping them. It was a game to him, and the smarter or better-looking the woman, the more pleasure Gary derived from drawing her in, and throwing her back into the sea when he was done. Karl thought it might be a form of revenge on all those girls who had rejected Gary when he was a teenager, before he had the cash to afford nice clothes and a fancy car. That was the way women were, Gary would inform his brother. They were conniving, always looking for the advantage. You had to teach them their place, because they’d kick you in the balls otherwise.
When Miss Moon had rejected Karl—first giggling at him and then, as he grew more insistent, becoming angry, before screaming at him to leave—it was to Gary that he decided to turn, because he knew Gary would understand. Karl had taken the train to Newcastle, drinking a couple of cans of cheap lager on the journey, thereby adding alcohol to his cocktail of shame and rage. He’d started blubbering as soon as he got to Gary’s apartment, after which Gary gave him a few more beers, and offered him a bed in the spare room.
Karl was pretty certain it was his brother who had proposed picking up Miss Moon, and fucking her every which way before laughing in her face, just as she’d laughed at Karl. He might even have suggested posting pictures of her on some of those revenge porn websites—they were rancid as anything—just to compound her humiliation. But by the next morning Karl had forgotten most of the conversation, distracted as he was by his hangover, and his continuing sense of mortification at his behavior. God, he’d even stolen a pair of Miss Moon’s knickers, just to impress Ryan Clifton…
Many months later, Gary had sent a picture of Miss Moon to Karl’s phone. She was in a bar, looking away from the camera, unaware that she was being photographed. Under the image, Gary had written:
SHE’S SMILING NOW. SHE WON’T BE SMILING SOON!
#REVENGEISADISHBESTSERVEDCOLD
Karl had panicked. He could barely remember what he’d said months before in the apartment, or what actions he and Gary might have discussed. Anyway, it had just been a way for Karl to let off steam. He hadn’t been serious. It had been stupid of him to come on to her to begin with. Most of all, he didn’t want his brother to have sex with Miss Moon, because he didn’t want Gary to have what he couldn’t.
(SHE HAS A SCAR ON HER BELLY, RIGHT ABOVE HER PUSSY. #HAHAHA)
PLEASE LET IT GO, Karl texted back, and heard nothing more about it. His brother always did have a weird sense of humor. Gary went to Europe for two cybersecurity conferences, grabbing a weekend for himself in Berlin along the way, and suddenly Karl was into revisions for his first-year exams. He didn’t ask Gary again about Miss Moon. He didn’t want to make him angry, because Gary had a temper. He assumed his brother had done as he asked, and was keeping his distance from her.
Until Romana Moon’s body turned up on the Hexhamshire Moors.
And the police came calling.
CHAPTER LXXII
Sellars had no trouble making the appointment with the young hooker. The phone he used was a fresh one that he’d bought at a market stall, and the SIM came from another Asian corner store. The shop had a security camera, but Sellars wasn’t overly concerned. Even if, by some miracle, the police traced the card back to the store, he figured that the owners wiped the camera footage on a regular basis, as long as nothing untoward had occurred in their little retail empire. Jesus, they were so old they probably still relied on VHS tapes, and wound them back each night.
The girl lived in a block of council flats, which made everything easier for Sellars: no entry camera, just a buzzer, and then a lift that stank like council lifts everywhere, which meant a mix of fast food and human waste. When she opened the door, she appeared even younger than on her Internet profile. The flat smelled of baby, and the living area held a crib and a playpen, but he couldn’t hear or see the infant, and the place only had one bedroom.
“You got a kid?” he asked, which seemed like a question with an obvious answer, under the circumstances. Still, he had to ask, if only for the sake of appearances.
“My friend’s watching her.”
Her voice was very soft, and didn’t sound like it belonged to someone who should be living in a dump like this. A small shelf beside the television was crammed with books, some of them clearly university texts. Sellars was starting to build up a picture now: a student; pregnancy; estrangement from her parents; a need for money. Better and better. It made it unlikely that she knew many people in the block, apart from whoever was looking after the child: a neighbor, or a neighbor’s daughter, who’d be paid for babysitting out of the evening’s proceeds.
Or wouldn’t, in this case.
Sellars’s only regret was the absence of the baby. He’d planned for it, and Mors had been excited to learn that the girl he’d selected was also a young mother, or as excited as Mors ever got about anything. She’d even given him a second syringe with the correct dosage for a child, and instructions on exactly how much to inject in three-month increments from a newborn to two years of age. The girl herself would receive a standard dose: just enough to make her docile, but not so much that Sellars would have to carry her to the car.
In the end, he didn’t even bother taking off his shoes. He was on top of her as soon as she showed him into the bedroom, and injected her on the floor. He’d grown adept at keeping
their mouths shut without being bitten—you only made that mistake once—and knelt on her back until she grew drowsy.
“Why’d you do that?” she asked, slurring her words.
“I didn’t want you worrying.”
“ ’Bout what?”
“About anything at all.”
She was having trouble keeping her mouth moist. The drug did that, Sellars had noticed. Eventually, she accumulated enough spittle to croak the word “baby.”
“Boy or girl?” he asked, as he helped her up.
“Girl.”
“Little girl. That’s nice.”
He found a coat, and managed to get her arms into the sleeves before buttoning it up. She wasn’t fighting him, but she wasn’t cooperating, either. Sellars was concerned that Mors might have misjudged the dose, or maybe the girl was just more resilient than she appeared. He pulled her toward him as they got to the door, one arm around her shoulders, the other working at the lock.
“No,” she said, and tried to move away, but he had her now. He forced her against the wall, and topped her up with the second syringe, the one intended for her baby. It did the trick. Within a minute she was pretty much asleep on her feet, but now he was forced almost to carry her out. Thankfully, the hallway was empty as they shuffled to the lift. An old woman entered on the fifth floor, and rode down with them, but Sellars held the girl close, whispering to her as though to a lover. The old woman kept her gaze averted from them, for reasons of prudery or privacy, and did not look back as she exited.
Sellars got the girl outside, and put her in the back of the unmarked Carenor van: plain white, with a set of plates stolen from a similar model he’d found parked at Newcastle Airport. He laid her under some tarpaulin, closed the doors, and headed for the M6. It was just as well he’d given her the second dose, he thought. They had a long way to go, and it wouldn’t have done for her to start kicking up. He’d selected the site on the basis of the following day’s job: a pickup in North London at sparrow-fart the next morning. He’d told his wife that he planned to find a cheap bed-and-breakfast on the outskirts, to save himself having to get up at three in the morning, and informed the company of the same thing. He was covered.
A Book of Bones Page 37