by John Gardner
An hour or so later, as they lay quietly together he said, ‘I could spend the rest of my life labouring at the soft anvil between your thighs.’
‘How lovely,’ she breathed. ‘Poetic.’
‘Not original.’ He propped himself on an elbow and looked down at her. ‘Poetic, yes, but soft anvil is the work of, I think, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. Ask Molly, she’ll know.’
‘What’s made Molly such an expert?’
‘How much d’you know of her?’
‘I know about the beating and rape in Hong Kong.’
‘Then you know she set about learning to defend herself in both orthodox and unconventional ways?’ He explained that, during the painful journey home from Hong Kong she had whiled away the days by examining all the dictionaries, encyclopaedias, and other research volumes in the ship’s library. ‘Soaked them up like a sponge. Now she knows what my old mum — forgive her, Suzie — refers to as the far end of a fart.’
She was consumed in a short burst of schoolgirl giggles.
‘And your ma’s a countess, isn’t she?’ As yet they hadn’t touched on the title thing.
‘More to the point my pa’s the Earl of Kingscote. But don’t get ideas above your station, heart. I’m almost certainly going to give up the title when it’s hurled in my direction.’
‘You are?’
‘Don’t hold with accidents of birth making you heir to titles and things. Actually, it’s the titles I don’t hold with. That’s why I became a copper. That explain it, heart?’
‘Yes, I suppose it does. But you can’t escape the job can you? I mean the responsibility?’
He gave a little growl. ‘No, and I wouldn’t want to either. Happily I can see to it that the large areas of land and buildings of the family estate would be run properly, so there’s no problem.’
‘As long as you run me properly, Tommy.’
And after she said it, she realized how selfish she must have sounded, and apologized.
Later, on the cusp of sleep she wondered how the Earl and Countess of Kingscote would take the news of their engagement.
‘Overjoyed, I should imagine.’ He could smell the scent of melons again in her hair. ‘They’re sort of proud that I’ve come this far, but I know they’ve been waiting for a grandchild, so they’ll be doubly happy.’ He muttered on for a minute or so as they both dropped into what was happily a dreamless sleep.
Not so across London in another part of the forest of dreams and fantasy.
*
Golly heard the voice coming from a long way off, as though it was calling to him from beyond time and space. Only when it had fully penetrated his half-consciousness did he realize that the lovely voice had been preceded by the clatter of the great spiders. He could clearly hear the spiders still clicking away around his bed.
The voice began by simply calling, almost singing, his name: ‘Go-lly. Go-lly. Listen Go-lly.’ Then, when it had his attention, the voice became slightly harsher as she chided him for making such a bad mistake. ‘Foolish. Foolish. Folly Golly. Killed the wrong girl, Golly. You must put that right. You must kill the lady policeman. You understand? Golly, kill.’ Then she sang out the address where the lady policeman lived, and told him it was the only way.
He must watch closely. Watch where the lady policeman lived, then he must follow her when she went out. He must choose the right time. Choose when it was safe for her to die.
Then the voice went away for a while, but he knew she was still there in Lavender’s room with him, just as he knew when the beast he thought of as the Banshee was also there.
And this was the most horrible thing so far when the voice, Miss Baccus, started to sing to him a second time.
‘Go-lly. Go-lly. After you have killed the lady policeman there is one more great thing you have to do for me. It will be hard, Golly, but you must do it. Once you have done it you will be free of me for ever. Free to do whatever you desire.’
A tuneless singing now, followed by the clicking of the spiders. Then —
‘Golly, my slave. You must do this last thing. Golly, you must kill Lavender. Kill Lavender with the wire.’
And Golly woke up, the sweat running off him and his hair on end as though a thousand swift creeping insects were playing on all the nerve ends at the back of his neck.
Kill Lavender with the wire.
He wondered if he had really heard that, and immediately knew he had.
He sat up, turned his head and screamed, for in the corner of the room, in the first hour of day as he lit the nightlight by his bed he saw the Banshee: the ratlike creature, standing on its hind legs, with the banner over its shoulder. Clear in all its lamentation, with the word in blood on the banner, as though rippling in a breeze that was not there. ‘Death Rattle’ it said, the blood dripping from the letters, and as he read the words so the spiders clicked their bony legs together in a haunting cacophonous clitter-clatter.
Kill Lavender, he knew.
Kill Lavender.
Kill with the wire.
How was he ever going to do that to Lavender?
Twenty-Six
They woke again a little after four in the morning, when they had another roll around. In turn this led to Tommy saying they really didn’t need to be in the office until about eleven. Suzie reset the alarm for eight thirty. They got up at about nine thirty, but first Tommy telephoned Molly Abelard. Then he rang Billy Mulligan. As Suzie was tripping in and out of the bathroom she heard him say to Abelard, ‘I’ll arrange that with Billy. You just continue doing that job — what you do best ... Yes, Dance.’
And to Billy she heard him say, ‘It’s possible that we’ll need to go in, so see one of your tame magistrates and get a warrant, okay?’
‘Warrant for where?’ she asked.
‘Lavender’s place. The girl supposed to be Goldfinch’s cousin, the one he minds. Might be an idea to go in and take a look — her place just off Rupert Street, I mean. He used to sleep there most nights. My inclination is to find Lavender herself and bring her in, maybe to Camford or Vine Street.’
‘For what?’
‘The usual gentle chat. A few questions, a couple of lies. Variations on a porkie or two. Sort out the sows from the hogs. Meet the hoggets. Take her down the Tombs, give her the third degree.’ ‘The Tombs’ often figured in Hollywood cop films and was the New York City Prison, while the third degree was a very hostile form of American interrogation involving bright lights, harsh words and physical threats.
When she was dressed, Suzie went through to the kitchen. ‘Your family keep pigs?’ she called out.
‘Why?’
‘Your ma’s sent you some bacon. Only just found it.’
‘Treats and delights,’ he shouted back. ‘Let’s have some for breakfast. Toast, grilled bacon and coffee. Best thing in the world for breakfast.’
There was a letter for her and she recognized the handwriting, but couldn’t put a name to it.
‘Oh lawks,’ she said aloud when she opened it.
‘Disappointed swain?’ He was uncannily accurate.
‘You’re uncannily accurate,’ she said. ‘There was this uniformed chief super at Camford nick.’
‘That twit Walter Sanders?’ Tommy cocked an eyebrow at her.
She thought about her inexperience. Eventually — ‘Tommy, I love you like anything, but how many girls have you had? You know, properly had?’
He frowned, looked at the ceiling, and began to make an exaggerated show of silently counting on his fingers.
‘Don’t be a clown.’
‘That’s bad news you know, heart?’
‘What?’
‘Talking to your true love about past lovers. Leads to perdition, privy conspiracy: come face to face with the old green-eyed monster, the one that gnaws at your soul.’
‘I’m willing to risk that.’
‘Well, not counting teenage crushes — and there was only one of those — the answer’s five.’
‘
Tell me about them.’
‘Tonight.’
‘Now.’ But already she was jealous of all the girls he’d kissed, and ... well ... in the past.
‘Tonight, heart.’ Suddenly he was very serious. ‘Turning over the ground where you’ve walked with old lovers inevitably sets off traps and snares. There’s really neither world enough nor time, or whatever Andrew Marvell said. Okay?’
She shrugged, capitulated and turned back to the letter from Sanders of the River.
My Dear Suzie
Today I’ve been officially told that you have left our little family in Camford, and have gone to work under the great Tommy Livermore. I can say truthfully that we shall all miss you here, but to work under Dandy Tom is a very great bonus. He’s a wonderful officer, and you’ll learn a great deal from him.
I hope this does not mean that we will not meet again. Remember you have promised to have dinner with me soon. The flurry of changing jobs can be difficult, so I enclose my work and private numbers. Looking forward to hearing from you. As ever with much affection.
He signed himself, Wally Sanders, and she giggled out loud.
‘What’s funny?’ Tommy slurped the last of his coffee.
‘Mr Sanders says “to work under Dandy Tom” — that’s you, sweetheart — “is a very great bonus”. He doesn’t know how great.’
‘That’s almost crude, heart. Very nearly ribald.’
‘That’s rich coming from someone who less than an hour ago ...’
He flashed his ravishing smile, the one that consumed her alive, as he was putting on that spectacular overcoat, the double-breasted one, the military cut in a deep grey.
This time he ordered the taxi to drop them right in front of the Yard.
‘I think a lot of people have already put two and two together. We can’t stave off the inevitable, heart.’
She held his hand all the way there, and it took a great deal of personal discipline to let go and not walk into the Yard still with her hand clasped in his.
The Spear Carriers were already gathered when they reached the conference room and Pete, Dave and Bert were back from darkest Hampshire. Abelard and Mulligan were, of course, conspicuous by their absence on the fourth floor.
The boys back from Hampshire had nothing really new. ‘It wasn’t quick for Ailsa Goldfinch,’ Pete told them. ‘I got the impression that Golly almost mucked it up.’
‘Right enough,’ Dave agreed. ‘Nothing you could actually rely on. Just a sense that it wasn’t as clean as his usual work. Unless you had our prior knowledge, I wouldn’t even put Golly in the frame.’
Bert had the box with him — the one that included the card sent to Golly’s mum from Cambridge. It was there, in a little cellophane bag — OLD COLLEDGES LOVLY. VERI BUTIFUL; the other things also, in separate bags: the knife — a curved blade, very sharp and in a leather scabbard — and the black provocative underwear they had tied down to Geraldine Williams, choked with piano wire then raped and mutilated in her kitchen in Jesmond, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
Always smart. Geraldine was.
Suzie helped Tommy bring out the folders and separate file boxes that were usually kept in the big safe in his office. They contained all kinds of material, pieces of evidence, photographs, the detailed documents of the various killings linked by the use of the brutal piano wire.
‘Right,’ he began. ‘This is what we’re going to do.’ He chose to split the eight most experienced detectives into four pairs, allocating each team two or three of the murder investigations they now reckoned were tied into Golly Goldfinch.
‘Nothing is better than the painstaking detail,’ he told them. ‘I want each of you to go over the investigation files again. Get in touch with officers who were originally on the cases — most of them’re still around. Look at the evidence, see if there are any anomalies. If there are, go back to the prime sources, and keep your eyes out for anything that may link cases. I’ve been through them, and apart from the obvious errors of wasting too much time looking at husbands and boyfriends — even Nick Booker, now doing time for Owlet’s murder — most of them have been investigated with great diligence, by first-class people. Door-to-door and every tiny piece of evidence are the things that usually lighten the darkness of crimes like these.’ He also admitted there was a possibility that they’d eventually have to get out there and reopen cases on the ground. ‘So try to look at things with new eyes.’
He told them that he would be dealing with the ongoing Jo Benton and Charlotte Fox — Charlotte Mountford — cases with the help of Sergeant Mountford, so together they settled in his office to sort through the pile of names pulled from Five Coram Cross Road, Camford. There were four more boxes than the ones Suzie remembered ordering to be brought to Camford Hill nick from the Coram Cross Road house.
‘When did these turn up?’ she asked, puzzled.
‘On the day you tootled off to Middle Wallop. The boys and girls thought we should take a dekko, so I trotted over to Camford, with a few of the lads. Had a picnic. Amazing what an inexperienced team misses. We found bills, letters, memos, even some contracts.’
‘I could have sworn I went through all the desks.’
‘The desks were cleared. It was cupboards and one or two other drawers that hadn’t been done.’
They were just going through Suzie’s original interview with Steven Fermin when Molly Abelard returned threading her way down through the conference room tables.
‘We’ll have to hear Molly out before we move on.’ Suzie watched her warmly greeting Pete, Dave and Bert, looking like the cat who’d licked the cream.
‘What’s she been up to?’ Molly seemed to be unusually chummy with Dave, the forensics officer.
‘Doing an in-depth on the guy you’re having dinner with tomorrow night. Didn’t I tell you, heart?’ he gave her a sly smile. ‘Been at it ever since we got back actually. On the blower; traipsing the streets; policeman’s lot not a happy one, she tells me.’
And Molly, as she put it a few moments later, had turned over a few interesting stones: uncovered the odd maggot.
*
The Mark came to see Golly in the morning. It was about half-past nine, and Golly was sitting on Lavender’s bed looking nervous, unhappy, and very twitchy.
‘What’s up, Goll?’ he asked.
‘Nothing. Nothing’s up, but I’ve got to get out of here. Can’t stay with Lavender no more.’
‘Come on, Golly. It’s the only place you’ll be safe.’
‘I can look after myself, Mark. Take care of myself. Been doing it for years, so I can do it again now.’
The Mark tried to jolly him along. ‘Well, just stay another night. I’ll find you somewhere else after that. Why not?’
‘’Cos I’ve got something to do. Got to get out of here to do it.’
‘I see. So you’re going to do it today, whatever it is?’
‘Tonight, prob’ly.’
‘Well, come back here tonight, Golly. I haven’t taken all these risks just to see you nicked on the streets. They are looking for you. Looking hard. They’re everywhere.’
‘I’ll come back. Prob’ly. Prob’ly tonight.’ He didn’t believe a word, nor did the Mark who had brought some chocolate. ‘Give you energy,’ he said. There were two 2d bars of milk chocolate and a bar of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut. A big bar, so Golly ate some after the Mark left, then he began to make his plans.
Because of his face Golly had spent almost all of his life hiding. For years he’d known this didn’t mean simply staying inside, or covering up his deformities. Golly could be out in the open — in Piccadilly even — and still be hidden; just as he could walk along the Earl’s Court Road and not attract a single glance. Also he could choose whether to be seen or not: at least that’s what he imagined, and it appeared to work.
On days when he went out with his mask and his hat, heading to places where he was known he expected to be seen. People see what they’re used to seeing. Change yourself and they do
n’t immediately recognize you. He had discovered that relatively quickly. So when he really did not wish to be seen he had his own ways of hiding: like wearing his long mackintosh, the special dark glasses his mum had got made for him, and the flat cap he’d bought himself last year. Dolled up like this, nobody recognized him.
So he thought.
Now, in this fearsome time when he’d been told to kill the lady policeman and Lavender, it seemed as though he’d better wear his disguise. So today, Saturday, he put them on — the mac, glasses and the cap at a jaunty angle and took a walk — from near Rupert Street all the way to Upper St Martin’s Lane.
He sang to himself, in his head, as he walked along the pavements —
Over hill and over dale,
See we come together.
The carol made him strong and happy. Put him in the right mood for what he was going to do; and when he got to the address in Upper St Martin’s Lane — the one the nice voice had revealed to him — there were hardly any people about. Certainly there were no police looking for him. He knew how the police watched places. Golly even scanned nearby windows opposite the building where the lady policeman had her flat. He knew the signs, the spoor of policemen, and they definitely weren’t watching her home. He reasoned, correctly, that if they weren’t watching she was probably not at home.
Golly’s as cunning as a bag full of blue-based baboons.
He sauntered across the road and walked up to the front door. How many people would be in on a day like this? On a Saturday? In this part of London? Not many, but he wasn’t going to risk the old dodge of ringing a lot of bells in the hope that one would spring the automatic lock. Nor was he confident enough to hang around and wait to follow in the slipstream of another resident.
This was an old building, and it probably had a fire escape round the back, so he walked right around the block, noting the only alleyway that could take him to the rear of the flats, so he walked round a second time, ducked into the alley and, to his delight, found the zigzag of a solid fire escape running from top to bottom of the building. At each stage there was a grilled metal landing right below a high window. The steps to the landings were hinged, folded up out of reach because these were steps for coming down, not for going up. But the Civil Defence Volunteers and the Auxiliary Fire Service had been at work: brand new ropes hung from the hinged landings.