‘Who is this?’
‘It’s Ben, as you very well know.’
Toby peered through the fog and saw a tall shadow materializing as it grew closer, beckoning. This was definitely Mer’s giant and his own nightmare. He didn’t need the phone now and stuffed it back in his pocket as he walked down towards the concrete-lined underpass.
Ben put away his own phone. ‘What are you playing at?’ He sounded colder and more cruel than ever. ‘Did you think you could hide in the school? Or were you trying in your usual pathetic way to protect your sons? You won’t be able to, you know. We can get to them whenever we want.’
‘But you said they’d be safe and I’d be free after I’d bought the painting today. I did it. I did everything you wanted, and I haven’t told anyone. Not even about Mer’s arm.’
‘That’s good. But it’s not enough. You haven’t quite earned your freedom yet.’
‘I am not going to buy any more of your fakes. You can do whatever you want to me, but I’m not going to. And if you hurt one of my boys again, I will kill you myself.’
‘Don’t make me laugh. You couldn’t kill a bluebottle. But don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to buy any more pictures. No one in his right mind would let you do that again after the spectacle you made of yourself today. But there is one more thing you have to do for us.’
‘I can’t do any more for you.’
‘I think you’ll find you can, when you consider the alternative. Mer screaming on the floor as we take a hammer to his knees.’
‘You bastard! I’ve done everything you asked to establish your boss as a serious collector and your fucking fakes as the real thing,’ Toby said, understanding at last that he would never be free. He could see this scene endlessly repeating itself down the years, with Ben promising him freedom after one more small, illegal job.
‘God, you are naïve! And stupid. You haven’t been buying and selling fakes. At least you may have, but that wasn’t the point. You’ve been helping us move our money around so that it’s untraceable. But never mind that now. Your next exercise is to think of someone else like you, with a dirty little secret to protect. That’s how we got on to you, you know. Your mate Peter didn’t want to tell us anything, but in the end even he cracked.’
‘Peter?’
‘Peter Chanting. Your partner in the Clouet scam.’ Ben peered into Toby’s face, as though the fog had thickened so much he couldn’t see what was only centimetres from his eyes. ‘You didn’t know he’d shopped you? How did you think we got on to you?’
‘I—’ Toby began to cry.
‘There’s no need for that. He won’t be troubling you again, after all.’
‘Did you kill him?’
‘Of course.’ Ben moved further away from the road, into a doorway plastered with notices. Only as they got close to it, did Toby manage to read the warning not to obstruct it. He hadn’t realized fog could fill up a tunnel like this. He couldn’t see the wall on the far side of the road, and the cars that passed were just vague roaring lumps in the murk. Even their headlights couldn’t penetrate the grey-green blur all round.
‘Why?’
‘He’d started to talk. So take it as a warning of what will happen to you if you ever tell anyone what you’ve done for us.’
‘You bastard!’ The thought of all the weeks he’d spent hating Peter made Toby feel as guilty as if he’d fired the gun himself.
‘There’s no need to be so emotional,’ said Ben. ‘The sooner you give me the information I need, the sooner you’ll be left alone. In your line of work, you must know someone with secrets to hide.’
‘Of course I don’t.’
‘It’s surprising how many influential people have them: it could be a fraud like yours, or some tasty little sexual oddity, or even an unexplained death. An amazing number of people seem to have helped friends or family to die. And euthanasia is still illegal, so that would do as well as anything else. All you’ve got to do is give me the story and the name and address. Once we’ve checked it out and found it works, you’ll be on your own again, free to do whatever you want. Except talk about this, of course. And you know now what’ll happen if you do that.’
Toby felt his mouth opening and closing, but he couldn’t squeeze any sound out of his larynx, until Ben’s laughter freed the blockage.
‘I wouldn’t put my worst enemy through what I’ve had to bear,’ Toby said very clearly.
‘I think you’ll find you can. Your Peter said much the same at the start after we’d leaned on him with his false names and his Shatoosh smuggling and his tax avoidance. But in the end he was happy enough to hand you over so that he could protect his old father. Think of your sons, Toby. Mer fainted when his arm was broken, you know, so he didn’t feel as much as we’d meant. Next time we’ll bring smelling salts to make sure he’s conscious throughout.’
Toby’s stomach lurched, as though he’d dropped fifty floors in an express lift. The rush-hour cars throbbed on through the fog, their peering drivers unaware that Toby’s whole life was up for grabs.
Ben was laughing again. He came closer and patted Toby’s shoulder.
‘Don’t touch me.’
‘Have it your own way.’ Ben let his hand drop to his side again. ‘But let’s get out of this tunnel. Fog like this could kill us both.’
And the sooner the better, Toby thought as memories of the last few weeks burst into his brain. All that suffering for this shit of a man? All that unjust hatred of his dearest friend?
‘Are you telling me that you’ve done this to lots of people? More than Peter and me? Just so that you can clean up some dirty money? It’s drug money, I suppose. You really are the lowest kind of filth.’
‘Come on, Toby, it’s only business.’
Almost before he’d thought, Toby had reversed the umbrella he’d been holding. He could remember every detail of his father’s stories of the ex-Shanghai policeman who’d once told him how to deal with an attack in the street. His father could have been reciting the instructions into his ear.
‘You just push the ferrule up through the chin. It punctures the soft palate without any great force and destroys the brain. Quickest, easiest way to kill anyone in secret, my boy.’
‘Toby?’ There was surprise in Ben’s confident voice, but no fear. Not yet.
Cars were moving four or five feet behind him, but only their lights were visible, like huge boiled sweets melting into the fog. Toby knew the two of them must be invisible to everyone in the cars. Ben leaned forwards as though to see Toby more clearly. The position was perfect. His chin was stretched forwards, quite unprotected.
This is for Mer, and Margaret, Toby thought as he shoved the umbrella upwards with all his strength. And for Peter. And this one is for me. He twisted the umbrella.
Ben coughed. Toby twisted the umbrella once more, feeling the power of it under his hands, and then pulled it clear, stepping smartly sideways as blood spurted out from Ben’s punctured chin.
He must be dead by now, Toby thought, watching the body crumple downwards on to its knees, then face forwards into the blood and dirt. Still the cars growled by. No one stopped. There were no cries, no shrieking brakes, no sirens. He waited a little longer, then wiped the ferrule on Ben’s coat so that nothing would drip from it and walked away, looking at his feet in case of any CCTV camera that might just happen to be loaded with film. He didn’t think there were any in this part of the tunnel, although there was one at the Puddle Dock end, but he wasn’t going to look up to check.
There might be one at the Southwark end, too, he thought and wheeled left to walk back up Baynard Street. There definitely wasn’t one there. It meant a slightly longer walk home, but a safer one in the circumstances. And if there were a camera or two in Queen Victoria Street it would be no bad thing to be seen, looking ordinary on his way back home from his sons’ school play.
He was surprised to realize that he felt no disgust, no terror and no distress. There was just a vast
freedom, as though he’d launched off some rocks to swim in a gloriously empty warm sea.
How could I ever have been so frightened of him? Toby wondered, remembering the days when the sound of Ben’s voice had sent him scurrying to the basement to hide.
There’ll be time for that later, he told himself.
He knew he must be practical now. There would probably be some of Ben’s blood on him, even if he couldn’t see it, and he’d have to make sure it didn’t betray him. Forensic scientists could find the tiniest traces these days.
He thought of the soles of his shoes, too, as he walked with confident steps towards Mansion House. But he was sure he hadn’t trodden in any of the blood, so he couldn’t be leaving a trail that way. And he was carrying the umbrella straight out in front of him, holding it by the middle of the shaft so that the ferrule couldn’t trail any of Ben’s blood or brains on to the pavement if there were any traces he hadn’t managed to wipe off. No splatters on his coat would be visible in this weather, so long as he kept away from the street lights and away from the cars.
For the first time in weeks, Toby was glad to know there’d be no one at home. He’d be able to burn everything that might be contaminated with Ben’s bodily fluids. He wouldn’t be caught out by forensic scientists finding blood splatters on any of his clothes. Of course, the clothes would have to wait until he’d dealt with the umbrella. Obviously that had to go first.
He thought of Peter’s voice in the old days telling him that whatever anyone suspected, they couldn’t touch him without proof or a confession. Good memories of Peter would see him through this, just as the man himself had seen him through the original fear of discovery, and through the amoebic dysentery. Peter was, and always would be now, his friend.
Toby lifted the umbrella a little further up, to look affectionately at the ferrule. Who would have thought something so ordinary could have been such a life saver? He thought even more affectionately of his father who had given him this most priceless piece of information. It made up for a lot that he hadn’t been able to give.
Now, at last, Toby had crossed the line from victimhood to power. The world would be a better place without Ben. Cleaner, too.
Toby had reached the steps up to Southwark Bridge. He paused again, waiting to make sure no one was following him. For the first time he realized that Ben might have brought someone else to watch his back at the rendezvous he must have planned in the tunnel this evening.
There were no sounds of pursuit and when Toby turned casually, looking first at the pavement as though he’d dropped something, he checked the street and saw no sign of anyone either. Perhaps Ben’s contempt had been such that he’d never realized he’d need a bodyguard for a meeting with the despised Toby Fullwell. Even if he had, there wasn’t much any of them could do now. Ben was dead and, criminals themselves, his friends could hardly demand help from the police.
Reaching home at last, Toby almost skipped up the first few steps. He could have been alone in the fog, he thought as he took his time finding his front-door keys, and he liked it now.
There were no more ships to be heard on the river. Even the cars seemed to be avoiding the bridge tonight. His keys clattered against the phone in his pocket as he pulled them out. Opening the door and punching in the alarm code was automatic; he didn’t even have to turn on the hall light to do it. He walked up the dark staircase to his office on the first floor at the back.
There was an open fireplace there with a working chimney, the only one that was ever used. Smoke in any of the other parts of the gallery might have damaged the paintings, and open fires would have been much too boring for Margaret to have to clean in the flat.
The insurance company hadn’t liked the idea of even this hearth being used in such a building and quoted a vast extra premium because of it. Toby had managed to persuade the trustees that it was necessary to have actual flames, as a way of welcoming important visitors and showing them what the house would have been like in its heyday. He’d negotiated a small discount with the insurers to save his face and then had the most beautiful chain-mail curtains made to draw across the whole fireplace whenever the room was to be left unattended while the fire was burning.
Up in the office, he turned on the overhead light and took off all his clothes, leaving them in a heap on the tiled hearth. The shutters were already properly secured so he didn’t have to worry about any of the neighbours looking in. He was surprised to find himself so calm. He hadn’t felt as well as this for months. His mind was clear, and he knew exactly what he had to do.
There was a small radio on the desk. He turned it on to Radio 4 and was gratified to hear The Archers. He hadn’t realized how late it was. Nigel and Elizabeth were having another tense marital spat, which made him feel better, too. Nothing in the world had changed outside the circle of his relationship to Ben, and no one would have any idea what had happened. Life – for everyone except Ben, of course – would go on just as it always had.
Toby built his fire in the grate as meticulously as he knew how, until real flames were flickering up around the nasty smokeless briquettes. That made him think of the neighbours and wonder whether they would notice illicit smoke billowing out of his chimneys. Not in the fog, surely. But just in case someone did see and wondered, it might be a good idea to burn some wood.
Even under the clean air act, you were allowed to burn household waste, he thought. And there was an old tea chest downstairs. Tinder dry, it would make the fire burn even more effectively and if anyone ever came asking questions about the smoke, he could show them the metal sides and screws of the tea chest.
Cracking up the tea chest was good fun. First the paper lining went on the fire, scattering the last few tea leaves it had once protected. They’d be useful evidence, too, if anyone ever came looking for clues here. He dismantled the metal sides and then broke up the thin, inflammable wood panels. Once they were properly alight they generated plenty of heat, so he hardly noticed that he was naked.
‘Hardly,’ he said aloud, chortling, ‘or barely.’
Now that the fire was burning merrily, he began to dismantle the umbrella. This would be a long job, he knew, but it was important to do it properly. He fetched a small pair of very sharp scissors from the pencil pot on the desk and snipped the stitching that held the black nylon material round each spoke. Underneath the material, he found the join between the dull black spokes themselves and their shiny caps. They weren’t at all difficult to pull apart. He put the rounded gleaming ends in a new envelope with no betraying address written on it. The sharp spokes themselves would go into a John Lewis plastic bag, which also bore no personal identification.
Opening the umbrella to dismantle the mechanism that lifted the spokes gave him a pang of old-style angst. It was supposed to be unlucky to have an open umbrella indoors. Then he chuckled again, amazed at the toughness of his new self.
Toby tried to remember that he had just killed Ben, that a once-breathing, talking, living man was dead in a pool of blood because of him, but it didn’t mean anything more than confirmation of his own strength.
Maybe Margaret was right and he had gone mad. If so, he couldn’t think why he’d fought so hard against the idea for so long. This was great. If this were madness, then give him madness every time. Ben Smithlock had not deserved to live. That was all there was to it. Who was it who’d said that ‘moral is what you feel good after’? Hemingway, could it have been? Toby couldn’t remember, but it didn’t matter.
The Archers had moaned and comforted each other into silence, to be replaced by Mark Lawson and Front Row. It was ages since the producers had asked Toby on to Front Row. Somehow, subtly, he’d have to remind them of his existence without looking as though he was begging for work. It would never do for the powerful player he’d discovered beneath his anxieties to beg.
Now the umbrella was almost dismantled. The spokes lay neatly in their bag. He’d have to think of the best place to ‘lose’ them. He was left with the br
ass ferrule and the cup-like piece that had held the nylon in place, along with the gold band with his betraying initials. That had probably better go straight into the river. Even if the river police ever dragged the bottom for evidence, they weren’t likely to come up with something as small as that, or know what it was if they did. After all, they sometimes turned up whole bodies they could never identify.
The fire was still burning nicely. He put the wooden shaft of the umbrella across his knees to break it. It wouldn’t move. All he got from his efforts was a bruise. Still, he thought he looked rather wonderful in the flickering firelight, half kneeling like someone’s statue of Vulcan. He’d never noticed how dark and thickly curling his pubic hair looked. Somewhere in the house, there must be a hacksaw. Even a pair of heavy pruning shears might do it. In the meantime, he’d better start burning the clothes so as not to waste the fire’s heat.
Margaret’s dressmaking shears were sharp and heavy enough to deal easily with the overcoat, but he was surprised at how many layers of different sorts of linings and waddings there were. Fine in a handmade coat, he thought, but not in something off the peg like this. No wonder it had cost such a fortune.
It took a long time to get the whole lot burned and he didn’t like to leave the fire to search for a hacksaw. While the coat was burning, he slit up the two pieces of his suit, his shirt, socks and underpants, adding small heaps of the resulting scraps whenever flames managed to get through the mass of overcoat pieces. He should have fed them in more slowly, he realized. But at last the flames began to take control back from the fabric pieces.
No wonder they’d always talked of fire as purifying. It was doing a grand job tonight. He’d have to think what to do with the ash, of course, but getting rid of that somewhere no one would ever link with him shouldn’t be beyond his new capabilities.
At last the scraps were all on the fire. The final few were still smouldering, so he drew the iron mesh curtains in front of the grate and went to find his hacksaw. Someone rang the front-door bell as he was halfway down the stairs. He hoped it would be one of the innumerable charity collectors, or perhaps a canvasser rather than someone like Henry. The bell rang again, followed by the sharp, imperious crack of the knocker.
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