by JOHN YORVIK
* * *
I arrived at St George’s Church at noon, just as the service was beginning. There were only four people sitting in the front row of the vast hall. This was a serial killer’s funeral; it had been kept very quiet for security reasons. Lillian Stewart and her carer made up half of the congregation. It was hard to say how much Lillian understood about what was happening. I had a hunch that her dementia hadn’t progressed as quickly as she wanted us to think. There was still a palpable intelligence in her eyes. Stood dressed in black with the tired face of appropriate grief and decorum, she didn’t acknowledge my presence.
The other guests were Amy and Mickey Riley, so I sat on the bench next to them. There we were in a church in Jesmond, one of the more well-heeled neighbourhoods of Newcastle, where neither Marty nor I ever ventured when we lived in the city. But this was the nature of a secret funeral: the dead are displaced from their origins and the service is quick.
There was no eulogy but the vicar stressed that we were all God’s children. And all deserved forgiveness. And made some mileage out of the fact that Marty had written a confession asking for such forgiveness from Natasha’s family and thus ending their torment of not knowing what had happened to her. The vicar seemed to know more about the letter than the newspapers had. Or had he been inventive in looking for redeeming qualities? Would I get to see that letter?
After the service, I thanked the vicar as he waited by the door and fell into step with Riley. He guided me over towards some trees behind the church. There, he lit two cigarettes and passed one to me.
“How long you up for?” he asked.
“Going back tonight.”
“Look, I did some digging around like you asked.”
“Yes?”
“Jarpy, Jim Sharpel, two months before he died, was cautioned for breaking into Lillian Stewart’s house. Neighbours say him and his gang had been taunting Lillian in the shopping centre. They’d never forgiven Marty for what he did to Jarpy. But I guess you know more about that than I do.”
“Yes. We were only kids really. Teenagers,” I said. “Jarpy’s gang jumped the two of us and I ended up in hospital with broken ribs and ankle. Marty wanted to warn Jarpy off trying it again, so broke into his house and woke him up with a knife to his throat.”
“That’s Marty,” said Riley, nodding.
“Around about the time of the fire at the Jazz Club – Amy couldn’t give me an exact date – Marty returned to London from seeing his mother in Newcastle. He had burns on his torso and hands. He claimed he’d stopped on the road to pull someone out of a burning car,” I said.
“You mentioned that before. Well, I checked and there’s no police record of Marty’s involvement in a car fire. Spoke to some of Jarpy’s gang, too. They say Marty had been round to Jarpy’s house to warn him off bothering Lillian a few weeks before his death,” said Riley.
“In the Jazz Club fire, did the police think Jarpy was working for someone or acting alone?”
“Old Jim, the owner of the Jazz Club, he was accused of paying Jarpy to start the fire. No charges stuck, but soon after, Old Jim was investigated by Inland Revenue, some irregularity in his accounts. They accused him of arranging the fire to cover up a decade’s worth of tax fraud. You see, all his accounts were on paper. They were destroyed in the fire. Old Jim still maintains that he has no idea what they were talking about. I looked into it. The whole thing stank of a frame up. Anyway, when it all died down, Ransom Amusements moved in and bought what was left of the Jazz Club at a snip.”
“But what do your instincts tell you? Was Marty involved or not?”
“Obviously, most of the evidence has been destroyed, so it’s hard to prove anything either way. And there are a lot of unanswered questions: if Marty was involved, how did he get Jarpy into the Jazz Club? Did Marty have connections to Ransom? Or was it all just a coincidence: he had threatened Jarpy to protect his mother, and he ended up with burns from a car fire, as you said?”
“I need you to look into the Ransom company. I can pay you whatever you usually charge plus expenses. I’m going to send you a list of names of people and companies I’ve had dealings with recently. I need to know if they are connected to Ransom.”
“If it’s important to you, I can do this one pro bono. For old time’s sake,” said Riley.
“May I join you?” said a cut glass voice.
We both turned round to see Amy standing there. I don’t know how much she heard.
“Riley, Amy. Amy, Riley,” I said to introduce them.
Riley offered Amy a cigarette and she took one and allowed Riley to light it.
“Lillian’s left already. I suppose it was all too much for her,” said Amy, although her show of concern for Lillian lacked sincerity.
We stood in silence in the beautiful English church gardens at St George. For a moment none of us had anything to say so we said nothing and spent a few minutes thinking about Marty as the sun came out behind the clouds and warmed up the day. Finally, Riley checked his watch.
“Drink?”
We all nodded, walked on to Osborne Road and flagged down a taxi. Riley instructed the taxi driver to take us to the Cluny Pub.
* * *
We were sat on distressed leather seats in the Cluny’s bar, finishing off a pub lunch. A band was setting up for that evening’s performance through in the concert room. Riley and Amy were chatting occasionally between mouthfuls. I was silent, sipping on my drink and watching the dust shiver in a beam of sunlight that had broken through a gap in the curtains.
None of us wanted to talk about Marty, but he was very much the fourth presence at our table. Riley had never got on with Marty and, with what he had told me about the fire at the Jazz Club and Jarpy’s untimely death, I could tell he was fairly convinced Marty was the Pentonville Strangler. And who could blame him? Marty had written a letter of confession after all.
Riley had only attended the funeral out of loyalty. The kind of loyalty we would show to any deceased member of our old Newcastle gang whether we had liked them or not. They would always be one of us. I guessed Amy was here because on some level under the surface she felt a little bit guilty about our affair and how it might have set in action a chain of events leading to Marty’s death. But this was only my guess. The chances of her ever admitting to the fragile humanity I assumed she had were very slim indeed. And how had she found out about the funeral? Connections at Scotland Yard, I imagined. But I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of saying as much.
“Absent friends!” she toasted.
Riley and I joined in, because that toast could be about anybody who was not there.
“At least he did the honourable thing and confessed,” said Amy, finally breaking the Marty taboo. “Got you off the hook, didn’t it, Lishman?”
“What do you mean?” asked Riley, his curiosity awakened.
“Lishman here, was arrested in connection with the Natasha Rokitzky murder. He spent the night with her. Possibly more than once, but he was so drunk he can’t remember.”
“You never told me about this, Lishman.”
“Are you surprised? It doesn’t look good when your best friend’s a serial killer and you’ve slept with at least two of his girlfriends.”
“Christ, if the press get hold of that, Lishman,” said Riley in hushed tones, “that’d be the end of you. It’s like the whole Manson Gang thing. Lots of people were hangers on and not involved with the murders, but no-one trusted them afterwards.”
“More than one of us has got a lot to lose being wrapped up in this business,” I said, shooting a glance at Amy for her to shut up.
“I guess you’re right,” said Amy. “We should draw a line under the whole affair. Until, that is, your journalistic career goes tits up and then you can write a sensationalist exposé. My Life with the Pentonville Strangler. The public loves a real life murder book.”
“Where there’s murder there’s money,” agreed Riley with a slow nod.
&nb
sp; Thankfully, our somewhat disrespectful conversation was brought to an end by the opening chords of a Bob Marley song. Riley went to the bar without bothering to ask if we wanted more to drink. He returned with three beers and three shots.
Amy leant towards Riley and was giving him the third degree about his job as a private detective. I escaped into my own world for a while, thinking about the fact that Marty might well have been a murderer after all. But somehow, the idea of him having killed Jarpy, a demon from Meadow Well whose removal would improve the quality of life of so many people, wasn’t as bad as him killing Natasha Rok. Burning down the Jazz Club, however, was unforgivable.
I was drifting along with the beat of the music enjoying the respite from the conversation. And then it clicked. The bass line we’d heard at AmizFire. It was very similar to the heartbeat bass of this Marley song. And similar to a rhythm I’d heard several weeks before.
“EgoFunk,” I said aloud.
“EE Go fuck?” said Amy. “Is that a Northern thing?”
“No, EgoFunk. It’s the latest fusion reggae band in Camden. I was just thinking someone should sign them up before it’s too late.”
* * *
On the train on the way back, I slept as far as Doncaster, but was woken by someone claiming the reserved seat next to mine. It was a timely disturbance, the symptoms of an early hangover were painfully evident. I planned to treat it with a pint of strong coffee and a chocolate bar.
Arriving back at my seat with the coffee I was dismayed to see that my new table-mate had put on headphones and was listening to music with a heavy bass that was causing his headphones to give out an irritating tinny rattle. Deciding that the best thing would be to concentrate on something else, I took out my notebook and began transcribing Natasha’s book notes from the photo.
ФIГHCZAФИЖЗRMCCZUK PRILACZA
ЗXTESCZUK HЗPSCZAЩENTЗTCZUK
No-one Dani and I had asked had been able to recognise the language. Some of the letters were Cyrillic and some were from the Latin alphabet, though there were some letters resembling Latin script in the Cyrillic alphabet. I’d begun to think it was some kind of code and in spare moments played around with the letters as if it was a word puzzle.
As I was sinking into the metasphere of Natasha’s words, I felt a hand on my shoulder. There I was relaxing on a train, trying my hand at a conundrum, and I’d forgotten about Marty’s death, the firebombing at Hackney and the fight in the East End. I was in danger, and it all came rushing back to me. I grabbed the hand and yanked it forward, ready to strike out.
“Jesus, Lishman! What is wrong with you? I’ve heard it’s rough in Standard Class but this is ridiculous.”
“Amy!”
* * *
Sitting in First Class with Amy, I helped myself to more champagne. Amy was looking at Natasha’s notes I’d copied into my notebook.
ФIГHCZAФИЖЗRMCCZUK PRILACZA
ЗXTESCZUK HЗPSCZAЩENTЗTCZUK
After ten minutes of humming and nodding, she picked up the pen I’d left on the table and started scribbling down words on the page, a self-satisfied expression showing on her face.
“Have you got it?” I said, surprised.
Amy nodded. “Child’s play, it’s Pig Latin.”
“What’s Pig Latin?
“At school, we wrote coded notes to each other in Pig Latin so the teachers wouldn’t understand them if they were intercepted. It’s simple. You move the first consonant and add ‘ay’ to the end of the word so ‘meet’ becomes ‘eetmay’. If the word is too easy to see, you can alter it a little, take out the double vowels and so on.”
“And this is the same system?”
“Yes, but with different letters repeated. And some letters disguised in Cyrillic.”
“So it’s Pig Russian?”
“Or Pig Polish,” corrected Amy. “Look at PRILACZA. This is the easiest. The first five letters spell April in Pig Latin. The CZA is a typical Polish cluster used to confuse the reader.”
“Does it say April 16th?”
“Yes. How did you know?” said Amy.
“Thank goodness for your boarding school education,” I said, changing the subject. “What else does it say?”
“The first word ФIГHCZA. Take off the CZA.”
“It begins with H.”
“Yes, HOL. We can guess that the last letter Г is either E, D or Y. As E exists in other words, it probably means it’s a D and spells HOLD or a Y and spells HOLY. Okay, you do the rest,” said Amy, beginning to sound like a school mistress.
ФIГHCZAФИЖЗRMCCZUK PRILACZA
ЗXTESCZUK HЗPSCZAЩENTЗTCZUK
I took the original notes I’d photographed and began to decode them. After a few minutes, I held up the paper to Amy.
HOLD CONFIRM APRIL
SIXTEENTH SHIP TWENTIETH
Amy topped up the glasses, emptying out the bottle. We were coming in to London. We drank a toast and began to get our things together.
“Make yourself scarce, Lishman. I’m being met on the platform.”
“By whom?”
“Your grammar’s improving, Lishman. I’m not sure I approve. By someone you’re never going to meet. And who will never know about you.”
I took my bag and made my way back to Standard Class, where dishevelled travellers with too many bags were already queuing to get off the train. I waited where two carriages joined, feeling the rattle and sway through the suburbs towards King’s Cross. It was dark and too cold for April. My mobile vibrated in my jacket pocket. I picked it up and seeing the number, clicked answer.
“Yes...” I said. “Yes. Yes, it is Lish-mon! Nice to speak to you again, too... Thanks for getting back to me... You liked it? Good. Good...”
Chapter Sixteen
I was standing on Camden Lock Bridge. It was about eight-thirty and just starting to get dark. I’d given a tenner to the usual punks that begged for beer money on the bridge and they’d gone off to get some cheap cans from the big supermarket beside Chalk Farm Station. I stood alone, dressed a little like one of the punks: in jeans, a band tee-shirt, a dark blue Levi jacket and a black baseball hat with the visor pulled down to obscure my face. I was waiting for the EgoFunk transit van. They were to take me into AmizMusic, where they were recording their first album. Once I was in there, I was on my own.
I’d talked to Judas the night of Marty’s funeral. He was intrigued by my plan and gave me all the information I needed. The studio was on level −1. Level −1 was a series of corridors flanked by rooms on each side that AmizFire was converting to studios. Because of this, there were always workmen around till late and EgoFunk, AmizMusic’s only signing, had the run of the place until the workmen were cleared out and the guards started patrolling with dogs at eleven o’clock. Judas said he often escaped the pressure cooker of the studio to smoke a joint and was able to wander around unhindered until 11 pm when he’d be shepherded back to the fold by the guards.
There was easy access by staircase to level −2, which was a large hall. My goal was to find a way down to level −3, where Natasha’s notes said the stolen art was being held and would be shipped out on April 20th. That was tomorrow. I knew where I had to go, but no idea how to get there. Decoding the rest of Natasha’s notes two days earlier had revealed a shorthand which could only have been meant for someone who had pre-knowledge of AmizFire and the stolen art. It didn’t make much sense that Natasha was writing these notes for herself, so I speculated that the notes were for Marty. It was possible that he had entered her flat with his own key and picked up any messages by checking the book on stolen art. He could have used the same key that he left for me in the locker at Euston station along with the gorilla mask. The notes told me that several of the items in the stolen art book were being held on the third floor below ground level. Dani had located a map of the AmizFire building in a university library’s architectural section. I had a small hand-drawn copy of that map in my pocket. The map didn’t show a level −3 at A
mizFire. But I decided to take Natasha’s word that it really existed.
EgoFunk were late, and I was still waiting when the punks returned to the bridge. One of them was good enough to offer me a can of beer that my money had paid for. I sat down with them for a while, sharing out my cigarettes. I had another packet tucked into my jacket pocket. I would save them for later.
“What’s your name?” said an old mohican, veteran of ‘76.
“Lishman,” I said. “What’s yours?”
“Don’t have one,” he replied. This caused a chorus of piratical laughter among the six or seven others who were sitting on the bridge.
Just then a white transit van pulled up. The side window was rolled down, letting a cab full of smoke and dub reggae escape into the night air.
Judas, EgoFunk’s lead singer, leant out of the window and said, “Lish-mon! In the back.”
“In the back of the van, Lish-mon!” the punks chorused before collapsing into laughter.
I picked up my jacket and got into the two foot space at the back of the transit van next to amplifiers, instruments and drum parts. Before I’d even closed the door the van lurched forward, its brakes whinnying as it semi-stalled its way in fits and starts along Camden High Street. I feared being crushed by a ton of musical equipment before I even got to AmizMusic. On the way, I checked I had everything I needed. There was Dani’s slim digital camera and my mobile phone. Also, in my inside jacket pocket there was a bicycle tool wrap with two screwdrivers, a heavy adjustable spanner and a thin torch. They were all things that a roadie might carry. And could all be used as weapons if the need arose.
Dani was waiting back in Shakespeare Street for news from me. She had several phone numbers she was to call if anything went wrong. If I located the stolen art, she was to alert Agent Greenfield at the Commission for Looted Art or the mystery caller. This would depend on my instruction when I contacted her. The truth is I still didn’t know which one to trust. Either one could be in collusion with AmizFire. There was even the possibility that both of them were.