by Brett Adams
That was all finally in that faraway land, The Past, and by god the air was better here.
Within minutes the fax on her desk began to hum and the receiving light blinked orange.
Faxes. So 70’s. So Interpol.
Still, it got the job done. Page upon page of raw material on Jack Griffen. And if she relished the challenge, she had a right to it. Inspector Marten Lacroix was not Sherlock Holmes to turn to cocaine in a fit of boredom, but the past months of gang violence and psychosis-driven murder had reminded her starkly of the sacrifices she had made to leave the continental drift of departmental promotion to specialize in profiling.
Too many CSI episodes. Too many Ruth Rendell novels.
But then she lifted the first sheet hot from the fax and her eyes lit with the challenge.
“Jack Griffen: Divorced. One daughter, living in the US with her mother.”
“Born and raised in Perth, Australia, Bachelor of Arts (Hons) from the University of Western Australia, then a PhD from the same, and finally, without so much as moving down the road, a professorship in Literature in the Faculty of Arts.” An intellectual. So often a factor.
Earning a reasonable wage, but riding the line on a mortgage in an expensive neighborhood, probably a legacy of the divorce. Perhaps Griffen’s wage was draining down a secret hole?
But no police record. The nearest thing to a black mark was two parking infringements from the council on which the university was situated, waived on appeal.
Preliminary interviews with Griffen’s acquaintances were summarized below. Garbage mostly, to Marten’s mind. Pleasant, polite, quiet.
Emails and net activity awaited a warrant and subpoena to the university IT department, and Griffen’s internet service provider.
All in all, not much to go on. But Marten could wait. The picture would fill out.
It was then that Marten noticed a small stack of cards of assorted size and color that had been left on her desk. The cards were held together by a rubber band, and a post-it note was stuck to the top. Marten peeled it off and read, “Marten: dropped by Griffen during aborted arrest.” The note was penned in felt marker in her supervisor’s unmistakable hand. Marten raised her eyes to the ceiling; so much for chain of evidence.
The rubber band came off easily, and splaying the cards, Marten saw that they appeared to be business cards for practitioners of a bewildering variety of medicine: doctors, specialists, eastern medicine . . .
The oddest thing was not so much that Jack Griffen (she assumed) had need of such a wide range of medical expertise, but that he’d kept the cards.
“Am I dealing with a massive hypochondriac?” That was an intriguing thought. Hypochondria had been a notable feature of high profile serial killer cases. John Wayne Gacy; John Christy; Richard Chase, the ‘Vampire Killer of Sacramento’.
On closer examination, she found scribbled in the top right corner of each card a weird doodle. Simple, line-drawn icons, that Marten couldn’t interpret, but shuffling them back and forward, a pattern emerged.
Those cards for practitioners focusing on mental health—psychologists, psychiatrists—all had one icon; those focusing on physical health another; and the leftovers, those practitioners of likely-not-rebatable therapies, yet another.
The icons were evidence of an odd obsession.
Or an odd sense of humor.
One card didn’t fit the pattern, a card for the ETN Engineering Consultancy. Flipping this over, Marten found printed on the reverse three words: Idiopathic Takosubo cardiomyopathy. Only ‘idiopathic’ was clear; the remainder had been struck through.
Marten looked up Takosubo cardiomyopathy. Takosubo, so-called for the ‘octopus pot’ shape it gave to the left ventricle of the heart, could be brought on by bereavement, illness, worry, or even, apparently, a happy event such as a wedding (Marten felt a frisson race through her limbs). It was also known as broken heart syndrome.
Okay.
But those words had been crossed out. Only ‘idiopathic’ remained clear.
She had to look that one up too. It meant: unknown origin; without apparent cause.
Did Jack Griffen have—or imagine he had—a mysterious medical ailment? Le malade imaginaire was a hot-button topic of her father’s, and about the only complaint he ever voiced about the ‘pill-popping hypochondriacs’ of his birth country.
Part of Marten desperately hoped Jack Griffen was fixated on his mortality.
Because if so, perhaps she had discovered a foundation.
Immediately below the words was a doodle Marten could interpret. A skull and cross bones.
Marten spoke her thoughts aloud, “Death wish, then. A death with meaning . . .”
“Happy to oblige,” said a voice, and Marten turned to see Collins standing behind her. “How do you want to go?”
“You’re the one with the death wish, sneaking up on me like that.” She went on, “So where did your lads lose our guest?”
Collins grimaced, acknowledged the blame. “A junior let Griffen take his firearm.”
“He’s armed?”
A nod.
That didn’t fit with the profile already forming in Marten’s mind. Griffen didn’t sound like a gun-toter. Violent, obviously. But nothing so clinical and ordinary.
“I won’t ask why you went armed to catch a bookworm.”
“Do you want to talk to the officer or not?”
“I’m a married woman, Guv.”
He grimaced. “That was an olive branch, not a come-on, Lacroix. You’re the one needs profiling.”
“Let me see the kid.”
“Why the hell did you take a child to this sting?” Marten said, eyeing the young officer through the one-way glass. She could see the sheen of sweat on his jaw. There were no wrinkles around the eyes sitting above the sticky plaster covering his nose.
“Griffen was on the wrong train, came the night before. Officer Trent,” Collins jerked a thumb at the young man, “wasn’t even supposed to make it to the show.”
Marten followed Collins into the interview room.
“Sir,” said Trent, standing to attention.
“Sit down,” said Collins. “You’re not in trouble. DCI Lacroix here,” he nodded at Marten, “wants to ask you a few questions about this morning.”
She extended her hand and a standard-issue comforting smile. “You can call me Marten.”
Trent blinked.
Marten sighed. “Shit, Trent. Actually, I don’t care what you call me. I do care what you can tell me about Jack Griffen.”
A strange light came into Trent’s eyes. “The Intercontinental Killer?”
Marten glanced at Collins resignedly. “The Intercontinental Killer? Which rag coined that—no, don’t tell me. The Sun?”
“Guardian.”
Figured. She gave her attention back to Trent.
“Just tell me what happened.”
Trent flinched, and seemed to reach for a cigarette that wasn’t there before replying. “He tried to kill me.”
Marten fished a notebook from her jacket. “What makes you say that?”
“What else does a guy mean when he points a gun at you and pulls the trigger?”
Marten frowned.
“Jack Griffen tried to shoot you?” She glanced at Collins, who shrugged in response.
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“You remember when I said you could call me what you like?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Don’t call me ‘Ma’am’.”
“Yes, M—“ He fell silent.
“Alright, Trent,” she said, and settled back into her chair. “Just describe what happened. Everything you can remember.”
“I’ll try,” he said, with the first sign of a smile.
She studied Trent’s face, the tilt of his head. He was trying for off-handedness. She had seen it before. One of the mind’s defenses against new and deep trauma. She would have to work past it to extract the information she needed, but it was bett
er than the usual bravado.
Trent continued. “I heard footsteps before I finished on the loo. I heard him—well, I didn’t know it was him yet. I heard the steps stop outside my cubicle. Didn’t hear the taps run, maybe that’s why I thought it a bit odd.”
Retrospective detective, thought Marten. Seen that before, too.
“You flushed,” she said, “and stepped out of the cubicle with the intention of washing your hands.”
Trent smirked. “Always.”
“And what was Griffen doing when you emerged?”
“Just kind of leaning over the sink. His head was down, like he was crying. He looked up into the mirror when he heard me.”
“Then what.”
“Well, I don’t know. I guess he went psycho.”
Marten noticed Trent sit forward, tense.
“He swung a punch, missed. But it was a feint. He dove for my gun—”
Collins butted in. “Why wasn’t your piece secured?”
“It was, sir! But he was fast, and I couldn’t believe it. I guess I was, well, surprised, to be honest, sir.”
“Now Griffen has your gun,” said Marten. “What happened next?”
Trent sat up straighter. “We grappled. No way I was letting him point my own gun at me. But he swung his elbow, broke my nose. I lost touch, and next thing I know . . .” His voice trailed away, and his gaze abstracted.
“Next thing I know there was a gunshot and I thought, ‘That’s me done’.”
Silence fell, seconds were parceled out by a wall clock.
“If you hear it,” said Collins, “it missed.”
Trent inspected his fingernails and gave the briefest nod.
“What then, he ran away?” said Marten.
“Not straight away. He pushed me into the cubicle, told me to sit, dropped my radio in the loo. Told me if I came out he’d blow my brains out.”
“Why didn’t he just shoot you?”
Trent shrugged and went back to the fingernail.
“But he has your gun,” said Marten. Her eyes ran over the shirt-enshrouded torso of this 20-something, and she realized the profile she’d received on Jack Griffen didn’t include a recent photo. But he was an academic, probably a rake. And he had disarmed this pride of the force?
“We searched the station,” said Collins. “No sign of it. But we found the cards I left on your desk. Looks like he dropped them in his flight.”
Marten rose, and turned to leave. At the door she paused. “And through all of that, the only thing Griffen said was ‘Stay or I’ll blow your brains out’?”
Trent considered for a moment. “No. There was something else.”
“Yes?”
“He said something about liking incest.”
Silence.
“Officer?” said Collins.
“Honest, guv. ‘I like incest’, or ‘I’ll act incest.’”
“What?—wait,” said Marten. “You sure it wasn’t ‘alea iacta est’?”
“Might’ve been,” grunted Trent, with a glance that said he was no longer sure who or what he was looking at.
Collins quirked an eyebrow. “Marten?”
“I took one class of Latin and it’s pretty much all I remember.” Marten replied a little defensively. “It means ‘the die is cast.’ Julius Caesar said it on crossing the Rubicon into Italy with his army, an act punishable by execution unless he conquered.”
Marten turned to Trent. “Any idea what he meant?”
“Nope.”
That made two of them.
27
St Pancras, Saint of the Pancreas was far behind me.
I travelled in a daze for an hour that seemed a handful of connected moments. I switched trains again and again, guided by a vague intuition—watching the buildings and streets thin imperceptibly—moving gradually, chaotically away from the heart of London, from St Pancras, from the kicked-anthill of a failed sting, and from the memory of a kid in cop’s clothes seated in a toilet cubicle, sniffing up snot and blood, and from that moment.
That moment. The moment my life dog-eared so far from Reality it came unstuck completely. It was now prey to the breeze.
When at last I got off the train and descended from the platform, it was the glimpse of a park that drew me. Something about its trees, seen through the scratched surface of the carriage window, heavy with leaf, the unkempt grass, the park benches strewn across it said, “Haven.”
The train doors hissed open, and I stepped onto the platform along with a couple of teenagers wearing backpacks. They reminded me I’d left my new suitcase on the Eurostar.
The doors hissed shut behind me and the train rumbled away.
The station sign, which had been partly obscured by fresh graffiti, said ‘Broadway’. Where the hell was that?
England.
I was deeply lost.
But standing was suspicious. Autopilot engaged. My legs shunted me toward the station exit. I had been thinking, planning only moments ahead for so long I was spent. Seconds later the autopilot disengaged. A ticket barrier barred the exit. It wasn’t until I leaned on the metal bar, tried shoving it with my hip, that I realized this might be bad.
A uniformed man was sitting in a little office with a view of the barrier. His head bobbed above the lintel of the office window, and he glanced at me benignly. His presence rang alarm bells at the back of my head. Meanwhile I was still trying to comprehend why the gate was stubbornly refusing my every attempt to move it.
My gaze had finally travelled to the metal box from which the gate protruded, and the slot in its face, when yet another rock went splut into the mire of my mind: a ringing noise.
My ears were still ringing from the gunshot, that was it.
No. The sound came from outside my head.
I stopped pushing on the gate and stood straight, while my brain informed me as an aside that what had prevented me from exiting was the ticket expected by the machine. A ticket I didn’t possess.
The face of the man in the office rose, a faint frown now creasing his brow.
And finally, finally, I located the source of the noise. My phone was vibrating with a call.
It buzzed like an angry hornet in my pocket, a voice from another world.
The man was rising from his seat by the time I retrieved the phone.
My first thought was that Collins had tracked my jittery flight through the rail network. That any moment cars would screech to a halt outside the station and disgorge angry cops.
The train officer, standing observing from the door of his office, became in my mind’s eye their messenger, harbinger, vanguard.
But the call had no caller id.
I poked the pick-up button, and put the phone to my ear.
For a moment I thought I had missed the call. Then a voice spoke.
“Jack,” it said. “How’s it hanging?”
“By a thread,” I said.
I didn’t recognize the voice at first. Not in the normal way. But the smothering intensity of emotions that engulfed me—fear, sorrow, anger, above all anger—told me whose voice it was.
“Hanging by a thread, Jack?” Hiero chuckled. “Tatty cliché from the lit professor? I’ll let it slide. You’ve had a rough week.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw the train officer move. He walked toward me. He would catch me, on this station in Greater London, while Hiero listened. I was going to jail—starting right here, right now. And Hiero had the next best thing to a front row seat. Hiero, the one who had put me here.
Triggered by a deep self-defense response, my free hand patted my jeans, then fished in its pockets for a ticket I didn’t possess.
“Professor? Still there?”
“I’m here,” I whispered, gaze fixed on the machine slot that wanted a ticket. The train officer was an approaching dark blob in my peripheral vision, accompanied by the jangle of his keychain.
“You have no idea how hard it has been, the wait. We can finally talk.”
A
gravelly voice intruded. “Do you need assistance, son?” The train officer had reached my side.
Assistance? The question was so absurd I nearly giggled.
“Jack?” Hiero’s voice sounded tinny as I took the phone away from my ear, and made a show of patting my pockets again.
“Your ticket, sir?” the officer said, and the welcome light in his gaze dimmed.
“Jack?” Hiero’s far-off whine grew louder. I planted my thumb over the speaker holes.
I felt in my back pocket for the bulge of my wallet, and retrieved it. What I meant to do with it I can only guess. Bribe the man in Euros? Jack Griffen had never bribed a man in his life. This was now the thread my life hung by.
I flipped my wallet open, and was riffling through it for paper money when the thick-skinned, liver-spotted hand of the officer settled over mine. He patted it once, then seized the corner of a card poking from the wallet flap. He drew it out, and I recognized it at once as the ticket I had stolen from Dieter Schleicher while he emptied his bladder in the Vienna Hauptbahnhof, the ticket that had taken me from Paris to London on the Eurostar.
He held it at arms length and squinted. “Swiss?” he said.
“Nein,” I replied.
“Ah,” he said, and a smile wrinkled the skin around his eyes. “Germans don’t like to make mistakes, do they. But this is a through ticket.” He lay a stumpy finger on an indecipherable smudge.
With a practiced arm, he slotted the ticket into the metal box, and I nearly fell as it flipped forward, and spat me out of the station.
“Have a nice day, Mr Schleicher”, he said, and returned to his office accompanied by the jangle of his keychain.
“Danke.”
A short flight of steps, across the parking lot, and I came to the roadside. Beginning at the far curb was a path that led to the park that had beckoned to me from the train. With a glance each way I crossed.
The phone was heavy in my hand as I walked. I drew a deep, steadying breath, and brought it up to my ear.
“Jack!” Hiero shouted.
“I’m here,” I said. “Ticket trouble.”
A pause. “Okay, I guess—”