Artie knew Steve didn’t like his asking about the arm, so he just made coffee while Steve scrambled the papers into order, and they worked out the line of attack on Shaft.
Steve dictated the list of extra points that had been bugging him, and Artie wrote them down, and at about a quarter-past eight they left. They managed to pick up a cab in the Albert Bridge Road, and made Shaft by half-past.
The club wasn’t open yet, but they were expected, and one of the bouncers let them in. The place looked like hell now; the harsh ceiling lighting on, extractor fans busily whirring last night’s climate out of the huge gloomy barn.
The bar boys were re-dressing the long bar; pretty young waiters scurrying there and back from the kitchen to the buffet table; the manager fussing everywhere.
They left him to himself for a while, and walked about judging the angles; but before the club opened at nine, they got to work on him.
He showed them what fifty quid’s worth of food looked like, and they worked out how to pile it at one end, and track in over the top. But he was adamant over the wattage in the dance floor reflectors.
‘My dear, you’ll ruin them. You’ll burn them out! Surely you can hang your own lights over the top. I mean, I wouldn’t have any objection to that.’
Steve was fussed by this, and by the non-appearance of Frank, whose technical field this was; so they left it, and went on to other problems.
Soon after nine, the ceiling lights were dimmed and a dribble of members began to arrive. By half-past they were flooding in; the amplification system pounding out the rock.
‘Where die hell is Frank?’ Steve said. ‘He knew he had to get here while we could still talk. Every poof in town is screaming here now.’
Artie smiled a little to himself. He had recognized one particular poof who had evidently had to wait for the crowd to appear to provide him with cover; a cleft-chinned, long-haired poof; his tail.
Frank turned up a few minutes later – happily stoned out of his mind, Artie saw. He was with his Indian friend.
‘Frank, you stupid bastard!’ Steve said angrily.
Artie discreetly separated himself, and looked away, and was in time to catch a most curious expression of consternation coming at him from his tail. This tail had been joined by another man, and they were both staring at him. They exchanged a few words and the other one left. Artie watched him threading his way out.
*
The man who had left jostled his way down the stairs, past those queuing to get in; followed by the curious glances of the two bouncers. He had got in on a police warrant card.
He jumped into the waiting car, which took off in a hurry and in a few minutes deposited him where he’d come from.
Warton and Summers were there with the murder squad.
*
The photographers were flashing off at the bundle on the ground, and Warton was questioning the caretaker and a third-floor resident, the two who had seen it happen.
The third-floor man said it had sounded like a bundle of laundry flopping past his window. But the caretaker, who lived at the bottom, and who’d heard it all the way down, said it sounded more like someone jumping or hopping on the fire escape.
There was no conflict as to the time.
It had happened at twenty-past eight.
The dead man was a foreigner, so they’d informed the duty official at his embassy, and presently someone turned up from there. It was from the embassy of Saudi Arabia, for the bundle on the ground was the remains of a young man from those parts, Abdul-Azbig ibn Mohammed.
Warton had gibbered just a little as Summers said, ‘A.A.M., sir.’
Four
For every time
She shouted ‘Fire!’
They only answered,
‘Little liar!’
30
ONCE about a thousand years ago, when he’d been a young plain-clothes man, Warton had stood and watched a chap work the three-card trick in Oxford Street.
The man had shown the crowd his three cards, and he’d said, ‘All you have to do, folks, is watch my hands and see what happens to the Queen of Spades. Find the lady, and half a dollar wins you a whole one.’
He’d placed the cards face down on a small table and swiftly moved them about, and when he had finished a sporting fellow in the crowd had ventured half a dollar and won a whole one. In succeeding rounds several other sports had ventured half dollars but had not won anything; for the lady hadn’t turned up again.
Warton felt like one of those sports. Three cards had been offered to him, and he had put his money on each in turn, and had lost the lot. He knew how the Oxford Street man had done it, but he couldn’t see how this one was doing it. He felt now like a man not simply bereft of half dollars, but also of half his wits.
Just about an hour later, he felt the other half go.
A murder was enacted before his eyes then, and he still couldn’t say who’d done it.
*
The official from the embassy had made a few inquiries, and a tiny old Arab turned up presently in the fifth-floor penthouse. He had been Abo’s servant. He wept most bitterly and pounded his chest as he sobbed out a long story.
‘What’s he saying?’ Warton said.
‘The foolish fellow,’ the official explained with a sour smile, ‘thinks he will be executed for neglecting his duties. In point of fact, he didn’t. Apparently the prince intended having a party, so he sent him out at half-past six and told him not to come back till eleven.’
‘Why send him out if he was having a party?’
The official barked a few words and received another long and sobbing story, at which he paused, thoughtfully.
‘What was that?’ Warton said.
‘It was apparently a very private party.’
‘Why was he pointing at the mirror – that big wall mirror?’
‘I don’t think he knows what he is doing,’ the official said.
‘Well, ask him. Ask him why he was pointing at it.’
The official asked the man why he was pointing at the mirror, and he immediately stopped doing it, as if shot.
‘Yes. He doesn’t know what he is doing,’ the official confirmed.
‘I see,’ Warton said, and went and had a look at the mirror himself. It was in two bevelled panels.
Several murder squad experts were working in the room, and Warton called one over to look at the mirror. The man felt around with a handkerchief, and opened it; a half of the mirror opened.
There was a room behind it. A camera on wheels was close against the other half of the mirror. A tiny green eye shone on a piece of equipment on a bench, and the expert went over and fiddled a while. ‘It’s a video recorder, sir,’ he said, ‘hooked up with the supply to the screen. The trip cut out as the tape ended, but the juice is still on.’
‘Is there a tape on it?’ Warton said.
‘Yes. There’s one here.’
‘Play it back.’
The expert did, and after some whirring and a click, the screen sprang to life and loudspeakers all around began coughing and laughing. There were four people threshing around on a bed. Warton recognized it as the big divan outside. He stood grimly watching the perverts at it for a few minutes.
‘How long is the tape?’
The man peered. ‘Short one. Under fifteen minutes, I’d say.’
Several brief sequences flashed on to the screen, the tape having been erased and re-recorded a few times. Warton saw the young Arab enjoying an act of fellatio with another young man when the scene abruptly changed, to show the room empty but brilliantly lit. After a few seconds it blacked out. It didn’t black out completely. Undiflerentiated shapes moved and the loudspeakers heavily breathed and gasped. Light flooded again as the shapes swung and became two separate individuals. One was the Arab, fully clothed; the other a grotesque figure in mask, cape and boots, struggling with him from the rear.
They struggled over to the divan and the Arab fell on it, the masked figur
e on top of him. He remained there a full minute, the Arab unmoving beneath him. The room was observable in such detail, Warton could see the clock on the wall: it showed a couple of minutes to eight. Then the masked figure slowly detached itself, keeping one gloved hand over the Arab’s face. There was a pad under the hand. The figure felt in the pocket of the cape and produced two elastic bands and a plastic bag. One band was slipped round the Arab’s head to keep the pad in position, and then the bag went over the head and was secured by the other elastic band. The figure stepped back panting for a moment and walked directly towards the camera and the tape ended.
There was silence in the room.
‘Want it again, sir?’ the man said.
‘Not just now,’ Warton said, and walked into the next room, wondering for a moment if it was a nightmare, and hoping that it was.
*
He saw the sequence a few times more that night and again next day at Lucan Place where a video set had been installed for him. He’d had a few hours’ sleep by then. He had also played Find the Lady again. He had done it with the materials supplied by fate for his very own version of the three-card trick; and in the certain knowledge that each would have a cast-iron alibi for eight o’clock.
This had proved to be the case.
Artie Johnston, tailed all day, had been innocently at Giffard’s at eight.
Giffard’s phone call to him at seven had been monitored and recorded, and his own activities amply accounted for.
Colbert-Greer had turned up at The Gold Key at just about eight and had met his Indian friend and some other perverse friends with whom he had remained until nine-thirty when the whole bunch had drifted over to the homosexual club.
Yes. All covered. As expected.
He went dazedly through the new material in the Cumulative.
There was a summary of the old Arab’s statement. He had said he hadn’t wanted to go out. His master rarely ate when he was out, so he had coaxed him into eating; he had cut him a chicken sandwich and watched him eat it before he went.
There were the scene-of-murder details, properly annotated with card, photo or exhibit numbers. There was the Polaroid close-up showing how the body had been trussed: head between its legs, and legs doubled, to produce the elliptical shape that had helped the hop-hopping descent. A length of the nylon cord had been left trailing and its end tied into a knot. The knot was frayed, and some fibres from it had been found in the room beside the partially-open window that led to the fire escape.
The fire escape ran down to a yard enclosed by high walls and a door that was double-padlocked from the inside. Whoever had murdered the Arab had not got in that way; he had got in the front way. He had probably simply announced himself on the door mike and had been electrically admitted; which argued that he had been expected, at least known.
The latter point seemed amply met by the fact of the recording. The murderer had been familiar enough with Abo to have known of the video recorder; had probably himself made the recording. The sequence ran for exactly three minutes, and it appeared at the end of a tape. The tape had had to be run back, or forward, to allow this amount of time.
Why? Why the recording at all?
Warton’s first thought had been that it constituted yet another ‘Bah to you’. But a number of viewings had brought him to different conclusions. Close study of the Arab’s legs convinced him that he had not actually been using them. The booted feet of his assailant, seen from the rear, were inconspicuously kicking them, one after the other. The struggle on the divan was also more apparent than real; the Arab unmoving during the course of it.
Warton went over it again and again. From beginning to end of the sequence, he was pretty certain, the fellow had been unconscious, perhaps dead. The recording was a re-staging of something that had already happened.
Why, for God’s sake?
In the act of fellatio that preceded it on the tape Abo’s partner had been a golden-haired youth even smaller than himself. The figure in the mask and cape was well over a head taller; a figure of approximately six foot one or two. Warton concentrated repeatedly on the few seconds when it turned and walked towards the camera. Exactly as described in all the statements so far: curls piled high on the head, open cupid’s mouth gaily smiling, neck very short and thick.
What the devil!
Something was being sold to him here, and not simply a ‘Bah to you’. The fellow had already made his point. Some other point was on offer.
Around three o’clock Warton received the pathologist’s report, and got the point.
The police surgeon, who had first examined the body, had himself been mildly puzzled at some aspects of it. He had accounted for the low temperature and the rigidity as due to the rawness of the night and the constriction of the bindings.
The pathologist, similarly puzzled, did not come up with any other explanation, but his clinical examination of the dead man’s digestive tract immediately suggested one to Warton.
The last food eaten by the subject had been some portions of chicken and bread. The stage of digestion reached at the time of death showed that it had been consumed not more than an hour – probably not more than thirty minutes – earlier.
‘Well, I’m damned!’ Warton said, and looked up, sunken eyes gleaming. ‘Chicken and bread, Summers. Get it?’
‘The sandwich.’
‘When did he have it?’
‘Half an hour before death – wasn’t it?’
‘What time?’
‘Well, that little Arab – Oh!’
‘Yes. Well, I’m getting old,’ Warton said. ‘This bugger didn’t die at eight. He died at seven! The bloody clock was fixed. That’s what we were being sold. Half an hour after sandwich time, which was at –’he flipped back through the Cumulative ‘– half-past six, this chap was murdered, and then left dangling somehow until … Now wait a minute!’ Warton’s small eyes narrowed. His whole head seemed to metamorphose into a single scenting organ. ‘Summers – was the shutter up or down when we went in that room?’
Summers thought. ‘What shutter?’ he said.
‘Exactly.’ Warton was shuffling through the photos. ‘Too true!’ he said. View of room towards window; window open; no shutter visible. But a shutter had been visible somewhere. He had seen one. ‘Summers – just switch that thing on again.’
Summers switched on the video again and caught Abo having his bit of fellatio. They watched until the scene abruptly changed, and then sat through the murderer’s scene. Throughout the scene, a shutter was visible. No window was visible. The shutter was down, covering the window.
‘Well, that’s got to be it,’ Warton said. ‘There’s his method. He knocks him off at seven or thereabouts. He alters the clock to show it’s eight. He stages the thing again for our benefit. Then he resets the clock, fixes the shutter in some way … Oh, well, damn it, the knot on the end of the rope! The shutter held the knot. He arranged for it to go up over an hour later. Up goes the shutter, out goes the knot, down goes the body. He’d got it perched there, on the top step of the fire escape. Well, I’ll be – Is that old Arab still there, Summers?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Summers said, silently chiming at this Niagara of deduction. ‘And I’ve got blokes there with him,’ he added staunchly, to keep his end up.
‘Let’s get going,’ said Warton.
31
AN Arabic expert, not from the Saudi embassy, was now also there. And the old servant, his execution prospects less imminent, was in far better spirits. He gladly showed them the shutter, and the Western wonders that controlled it.
A photo-electric cell normally controlled it. When the sky darkened over Abo’s penthouse, the device in the cell lowered the shutter. When the sun again put the stars to flight, the unsleeping device raised it once more.
The device could be over-ridden by a further piece of technology, located in the kitchen, and the old fellow led them briskly to it. To over-ride it, he said, all you had to do was turn this pointer
to the sign that said clock; and he deftly prepared to demonstrate until a closer look showed him that it already was on clock. As the dial behind the pointer showed, someone had set it to eight-fifteen on clock.
‘All right, don’t touch it,’ Warton said, and called over one of his men. He had the shutter lowered, and examined the heavier-gauge steel bar at its base. A slight grazing in it corresponded with the position on the floor now marked by a small exhibit flag. The flag marked the spot where the fibres from the knot had been found.
Twenty minutes later, at Lucan Place, he was back at Find the Lady again.
*
He did it with Summers and three other members of his inner team, one of them, specifically invited, Mason. He had already marked the young fellow for promotion.
The question now was not alibis for eight o’clock, but alibis for seven o’clock, and only one of them showed up as shaky.
He caught Mason coughing a little, and looked at him.
‘All I was thinking, sir,’ Mason said, pinking a bit, ‘is that every time we’ve been led to a particular bloke, it has turned out not to be that bloke. That’s all I was thinking, sir.’
‘Quite,’ Warton said, ‘except he’s our last bloke, and we’ve steadily overlooked him. And it turns out that he’s a bloody genius at timing. In every case so far he’s made the clock work for him – in this one, of course, quite literally. What’s different now is that another clock is in play. One he couldn’t know about and doesn’t know about. Digestive clock. Our clock. Once we’ve got the Arab’s movements confirmed, that’s the one we read the time by.’
The Arab was Abo’s servant. His account, that he had watched his master eat the sandwich immediately before he left, had not varied. What needed confirming was the time when he had left. The last bit of evidence on this came while they were still sitting there.
The man had said that on leaving the flat he had walked across Sloane Square to a mansion in Eaton Square where three other Arabs had been waiting for him in the servants’ quarters to begin a tournament of backgammon. Each of these Arabs had now been questioned and had given, to within a few minutes, a time of arrival for Abo’s man of six-forty-five.
The Chelsea Murders Page 19