He had thought, or so he said, that there would just be an effigy at the heart of his designs and by the time he realised the truth he was in too deep. He thought he was making a kind of art but it had the frisson of a real death. The phone was ringing. I picked it up. It was the chairman.
‘Well, Kish, I meant what I said. Just because you think you’ve been indulging in some kind of sleuthing with police involvement it doesn’t excuse the neglect of duty that’s led to this serious breach of security. It can’t go on. Who knows what people got up to while you were swanning off to Amsterdam to play detective.’
‘If you mean my staff, I trust them implicitly.’
‘It seems to me there’s been too much taken on trust. No, as I say, it won’t do.’
‘I take it you’re still asking for my resignation?’
‘Well I’m glad you agree you have no alternative.’
‘I expect the terms of my appointment to be honoured in full.’
‘We can talk about that.’
‘I believe I’m entitled to a month’s notice. I shall date it from today.’ A sliver of ice had entered my heart at the unfairness of his reaction. He wanted a scapegoat or, maybe all along he had been wanting someone he could browbeat even more than he did me, always the mark of the petty tyrant. ‘A dog’s obeyed in office.’ Now more than ever I needed the comfort of Hilary’s voice. I would have to ring her when I got home. She must hear what had happened from me, not just read about it in the papers.
I decided to leave by the rear entrance to the museum so not to have to pass the Discovery Centre, now crawling not just with police but sniffer dogs. At least I told myself that was the reason but the truth was a reaction had set in that made me afraid of my own shadow. If Hildreth was right and this latest happening was aimed at me what might I find when I got home: a trashed house and a dead Caesar? The sense of relief when I closed the front door and walked into first the kitchen and then the sitting room and found it all as tidy as Doris Shepherd had left it that morning and Caesar safely curled up on my bed, was so intense that it left me feeling sick and exhausted.
Hilary wouldn’t be home yet. I poured myself a drink and rang the cattery. Caesar would be safer there. Then I began to search my old green metal filing cabinet for the copy of my contract. I was determined to go down fighting. I had just pulled it out when the phone rang. It was Hildreth.
‘Alex, I thought you’d like to know what we’ve come up with so far.’
I wanted to say I’d had enough but I knew it was no good. ‘Go on.’
‘You were right that this is different but you couldn’t know how different.’
‘Yes…’
‘This boy is British, Scotch I should say. Ran away from home, brutal stepfather, usual story, taken into care, ran away from the hostel, been living rough, died of malnutrition and drugs. On the Missing Persons Register.’
‘What about the blood?’
‘Animal. They think pig, you know, bleeding like a stuck pig.’
Hildreth’s brand of gallows humour had begun to grate badly, reviving the overwrought sensations that the whisky and familiar surroundings had begun to soften.
‘You’re talking about a dead boy.’
‘This job is like being a surgeon. You have to develop a shell or you can’t wield the knife. What I don’t get is, why they think they can frighten us off with these tactics. Or is it just the self indulgence of revenge.’
‘Well they’ve succeeded. I’ve agreed to resign. In other words I’ve been sacked.’
‘Is that my fault?’ Hildreth’s tone was one of simple enquiry not denial.
‘In a way I suppose, though I don’t blame you. You were doing your job. I went along with it. Maybe I was flattered and so it is my fault. I’m accused of neglecting my duty, playing detective, ironically being negligent about security.’
‘I’m sorry, Alex. I didn’t foresee this. I hadn’t sussed out your chairman sufficiently. What will you do?’
‘Oh, they’ll have to pay me redundancy. I’ve got a five-year contract. Maybe I’ll join the police. You like graduates these days, I believe. Immediately though, I’m insisting on a month’s notice to put things in some sort of order for the poor sod who takes over. I wish him luck. Are you issuing a statement yet? I’d like a copy before the press come calling.’
‘I’ll see you get it.’
‘Tonight?’
‘I’ll make sure it’s emailed to you. There’s not much in it. There’s not much we can say at this stage. Get some sleep. With luck there’ll be more to tell you tomorrow.’
‘I’m not sure I want to hear it,’ I said and put back the receiver, only to feel very alone as soon as I’d cut the link, like a dog that’s slipped its lead and finds itself in a strange street and hungry for home.
The boy had slipped his lead; thousands do every year, the papers tell us, and thousands are never found, spirited away, gone underground with the rejected asylum seekers, illegals, druggies, an underworld we treat as the festering residue at the bottom of our society, a murky sediment we try not to disturb in case it muddies our clear waters, underclass in the underpass, with ‘subprime’ the new word for the next layer up who still have aspirations to be part of the common weal or wealth.
Trying Hilary’s number I got her answering service. There was no help to be had there; nowhere I could give my self-pity a workout. Perhaps I should take up Buddhism or Stoic philosophy. What about a book: Meditation for Non-Believers? Instead I poured a good measure of Famous Grouse and, suddenly seeing its relevance to my present state of mind, felt my mood lighten and raised my glass. ‘Here’s to you, kid,’ I toasted myself.
Next morning I called the staff together to tell them I would be leaving at the end of the month. It was Phoebe who showed the strongest reaction, putting up her hand to her mouth and almost sobbing, ‘Oh, Mr Kish!’
‘Will you put in for the job?’ I asked Lisa after the others had left. ‘I’d give you a glowing reference of course, but I don’t know that that would do you much good’.
‘I don’t think I could cope with the chairman,’ Lisa laughed. ‘I may apply somewhere else.’
Selfishly I hadn’t thought about the impact my going might have on the staff. Locked in my own bleak bubble I’d been oblivious to their loyalty, even affection over the years. It was something, a real plus to set against my low self-esteem.
‘What will you do, Alex?’ Lisa asked. She rarely called me by my first name, nearly always using the non-committed ‘you’ without attribution.
‘I honestly don’t know. It’s all been so sudden I haven’t had time to think.’
Phoebe brought in a stack of newspapers. The tabloids had gone to town, ‘Lost Boy Found Dead.’ ‘Billy’s Last Grisly Gameshow.’ The Daily Muckraker had tracked down his parents. ‘We don’t know why he ran away. I never lifted a hand to him.’ ‘Sinister Gang Targets Homeless.’
The phone rang. It was the man from The Echo I’d managed to dodge yesterday. ‘We think you owe us a statement, Mr Kish.’
‘You can tell your readers I’ve taken full responsibility for the security failure that made this grotesque happening possible, and have given in my resignation.’
‘Yes, but who was the kid? What’s it all about?’
‘You should ask your national colleagues. They seem to know more than I do, I’m only a local government agent not the police. Try them.’
‘I have. They’re not giving us anything.’
It was true. The press release Hildreth had emailed through to me was of the classic ‘No comment. We are continuing with our investigations’ order.
‘So why exactly are you resigning?’
‘I’ve told you. If you like, I’m old-fashioned. I believe in taking responsibility for what happens on my patch.’
‘Alex, are you alright?’ It was Hilary breaking our rule not to use our work phones.
‘You shouldn’t be ringing me; it’s not safe.’
&
nbsp; ‘I’ve seen the papers. I had to ring.’
‘I tried to get you last night to tell you but there was no answer. You must have been out. I didn’t leave a message.’ I hoped I didn’t sound petulant.
‘I was at the Lyttleton. Coriolanus is one of Beth’s set texts or one she’s chosen. Anyway she wanted to see it, so she came up and stayed the night. Can’t we meet?’
‘Hildreth thinks it isn’t a good idea.’
‘He seems to want to govern everything you do. And without getting any closer to solving anything. It’s just going on and on.’
‘I should tell you I’ve resigned. At least we’re calling it that. Actually I was effectively sacked, told to fall on my sword.’
‘What will you do?’
‘Find another job if I can. Maybe there’ll be a vacancy in your outfit or the V&A.’
‘Alex, I’m so sorry. I feel so inadequate…’
‘It’s a help to hear you. I’ll ring this evening. Will you be in?’
‘I’ll be at home. Let’s talk then.’
The museum still swarmed with police and was closed to the public. Hildreth turned up at the end of the morning. ‘Let’s go back to that pub where we can talk.’
‘When can we have the building back, and re-open?’
‘Shouldn’t be long now. I’ll tell them to get a move on. Will you go on with your exhibition?’
‘It’ll certainly pull in the crowds.’ I remembered the queues outside on the day after the break-in and the theft of the amulet. ‘They’ll probably come in busloads. We found the original Aunt Sally in a cupboard. As soon as your boys get out we can put it all back as if nothing had ever happened. Did you get to the boy’s parents first or was it the press?’
‘We tracked them down as soon as we found him on the Missing Persons Register.’
‘And nobody knows where he’s been all this time.’
‘The post-mortem showed he’d been fed before he died and then took or was given too big a shot of speed. We’ve got enquiries going on to find where he used to hang out. The homeless often have their own beat where they’re known and feel safer.’
‘But he wasn’t safe, was he. Someone got to him as they did to the others.’
‘The Ganymede site has closed down. They’ll start up again under another name of course. But they’re not the real villains. Some of us even question whether just looking should be a crime, or rather such a serious one, being banged up and put on the register, with all the consequences. Those who go in for grooming and trying to fix up meetings are the really dangerous crims. But there you are: it’s the law and we’re the grunts who have to enforce it.’
He was off on some crusade of his own where I couldn’t follow. ‘So what happens next?’
‘They’re getting desperate. They’ll make a mistake, that’s what I’m waiting, hoping for. They’ve lost a market. Presumably it was worth something to them. They must have had some pay-to-view system going. We might find there was a credit fraud involved as well but of course their customers couldn’t come forward to complain without involving themselves, probably risk their jobs at least.
‘Anyway they’ll need to find another line. This wouldn’t have been their only business. The fact that the Scotch boy died of an overdose suggests an involvement with the drug trade. Who knows what else. The trouble is if they’re just able to switch tracks, to start again without being caught, then we’ll be searching blind.’
We were able to open again the following week. As I’d predicted there were queues all day to see the reconstituted exhibition. Phoebe and Reg were kept busy moving the crowds through the displays in groups, and excreting them the other end. I shut myself in my office and concentrated on finishing the annual report, the inventory, and the financial statement that would show I had done a good job, and that the museum was in as good shape as the budget would allow.
The police did a safety check as part of their own enquiries and for good measure I got in a security firm to go over all our precautions. The verdict was the same. Nothing we could have put in place, or done, apart perhaps from employing a night watchman would have kept them out if they were determined, and even then they could easily have killed any guard since they obviously had no qualms about a body or two.
Hildreth himself seemed to have gone into limbo and I was glad of his absence. Hilary and I spoke often on the phone in the evenings, which helped, but I was aware that I was waiting, sure that this wasn’t the end, that they would strike again and that no one was safe until there were answers, a resolution. I had never asked for anything so much since the last weeks of Lucy’s life. And outside every day the sun shone and the sea glinted back its light as if in a mockery of human terror and disaster.
It was the second week after the aborted exhibition opening. I had only a fortnight to go before I had to clear my desk, say goodbye to everything that I had known for the best part of my working life and be out on my own. Something had prompted me to take the finds from the amulet out of the safe and lay them on my desk as if they were the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that, if I could only fit them together, would reveal the answer. I pushed them about with a forefinger trying to remember what Jack Linden had said. Jack had been able to read the script. He had said it contained instructions about what the soul should do after death, engraved on the gold by an Orphic priest and worn by a Christian convert hedging his bets with a good luck charm.
I picked up the little notebook too and began to look through it. I saw at once that it was some sort of sketchbook. Stalbridge had clearly been in the habit of making drawings of things just as I’d seen him doing at the Forgotten Empire exhibition. And there indeed, as I turned the page, was the winged disk. There were other sketches too that I recognised. The boy in the soft cap from the Museum of London, a flagon from the prince’s grave. I came to the last pages. A few were empty, intended for future use. Something made me turn to the very end. There was no picture, only what seemed a list. I stared at it.
Egg
Orpheus
Crucifixion
Bull slaying
I was looking at a list of the death scenes. There was nothing that suggested the fire on the pier. Perhaps that was what had given him the idea for the whole thing. Someone had wanted to get rid of the body and make it look like an accident. Stalbridge had refined on the original plan and gone on from there. But what was meant by ‘bull slaying?’
I picked up the phone and dialled Hilary’s number. ‘Does “bull slaying” mean anything to you?’
‘Mithras,’ she said at once.
‘What do you mean?’
‘That’s what he does, did, in the myth. He slew the primeval bull from which came life. Its death set life going if you like. We’ve got a sculpture of it that was found in the Walbrook. Why?’
‘It’s something in a notebook that belonged to Stalbridge, part of a list. I wondered what it meant.’
Someone came into the room and she rang off hastily. What did it mean? Was it going to be Stalbridge’s next project if I hadn’t got in the way? Did I have anything I could usefully tell Hildreth? Stalbridge was dead and that was presumably the end of it. But they had wanted to threaten me or get their own back for meddling, as they would see it. There might still be a supply of dead boys they wanted to use to make more pornopics from or there might even be girls as well if they decided to expand into another market, as Hildreth had called it. Perhaps Stalbridge had given them a last set-up. Maybe they still wanted the religious element to give that added frisson. Judging by the previous installations it didn’t matter to the commissioners what the religion was. Or was that Stalbridge’s own input, reflecting his interests and the pieces from the amulet? Zoroastrian, Orphic, Bacchic, Christian. There were all the Christian virgin martyrs, some of whom must have been young girls, to choose from. There was the sacrifice of Abraham and Issac, Proserpina whose rape led down to Death, Kronos devouring his children. Oh, they’d got plenty to work their way through, en
dless depictions of lust and murder under the guise of art, art which was meant to achieve catharsis, resolution, but was being subverted to titillate. I was beginning to sound even to myself like ‘Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’. Yet the alternative was the ‘woolly liberalism’ ridiculed by traditionalists.
Somehow you have to cling on to ‘No man is an island’, with all its consequences, even if you go down pinioned to the great white whale, and drown in your own failure. I had to risk being thought a fool by Hildreth.
I rang Hilary again. ‘Any news?’ she asked at once. ‘I’m sorry I had to ring off like that before.’
‘If you were thinking of staging something to do with Mithras, another scene, where would you do it?’
‘Not us again! I don’t think I could bear it.’
‘I don’t think so. At least they’ve never repeated themselves before. Where else might it be? Somewhere within what you might call their catchment area.’
‘Do be careful, Alex. Don’t get too involved. Let the police get on with it. It’s their job, not yours.’
‘I can’t refuse to help if Hildreth asks me.’
‘You’re all like little boys playing cops and robbers, and dressing it up in duty or idealising’.
I thought of the last of the great Victorians, Kipling:
What is a woman that you forsake her
And the hearth fire and the home acre
To go with the old grey widow maker?’
I knew that Hilary was right. I felt myself carried along on the wave of Hildreth’s enthusiasm, the energy that emanated from him, in a game of follow my leader, even while I was sick with a complex fear I couldn’t share with anyone.
The next day passed uneventfully. Unable to believe that in a week I would have cleared my desk and left, I went about the building like a sleepwalker, knowing the chairman and board were already interviewing the shortlist for my job but unable to apply for any new post myself.
The Orpheus Trail Page 21