A Death at the Palace

by M. H. Baylis

  They had taken cover in the doorway of a sweet shop. The owner, a tall thin businesswoman in a sunset-coloured sari, rushed back and forth with a horror-struck face, trying to keep people out of her premises. Everyone seemed to be talking at, about and over him, in a multitude of tongues. Everything was confusion: the running of the feet outside, the howl of sirens and the ringing in his ears. More people piled in, ignoring the hoarse cries of the owner, shuffling in alongside sweets the colour of rainbows in gold and silver cases, bringing in smells of burning plastic that mingled with the coconut and the rosewater. Everyone was talking, and in their panicked chatter there was just one word he recognized: Esou che bomb. Bomb hatou. Bomb nathe. Bomb.

  He turned to Terry. ‘It was a bomb!’ But the person next to him wasn’t Terry. It was one of the marchers – a crew-cut boy in a pink polo shirt, breathing heavily. Where the hell was Terry?

  * * *

  Rex’s hearing still felt strange as he left the house for work the next morning. There was a quietness in the street, as if everything had been wrapped in a thin shroud, and the people he passed seemed to be moving more slowly than usual, dazed and hesitant. Outside LesDrive! Driving School, all the identical black instruction vehicles were parked up on the kerb. Get In Mini Mart had, for the first time in living memory, closed its doors. There was an air of collective disbelief at what had happened. This was a hard place. Drug gangs took pot shots at each other. Kids sliced each other up, for straying over postcode boundaries. At a more basic level, people often got themselves thumped or shoved to the floor just for looking at someone the wrong way or dithering too long at the cash-point. But a bomb was different.

  Not here. Come on. Not here.

  He’d been at the newspaper until three in the morning, on the phone to contacts in the emergency services, friendly charge nurses at the hospitals. He went back and forth between the office and the site of the blast – a side road of rented houses, with a single empty shop on the junction with Turnpike Lane. Without access to Mike Bond, Rex’s news-gathering abilities were severely tested. He could say that a large blast had occurred at the empty shop, and that seven people were in hospital with minor injuries. Beyond that, not a lot. No one would confirm that it had been a bomb.

  That hadn’t stopped him from writing all night. At about midnight, a woman’s voice, tipsy and perhaps a little unhinged, had floated up from the street below. She kept saying the same thing over and over again to her companion, her tone shocked and disbelieving. Not here. Come on. Not here.

  It had summed up how Rex felt, and spurred him on. He wrote down everything. About the disappearance of Milda. The fire at the nearby squat. The fear of needles and the ‘little friend’. Powell and the vanishing police record. The only things he omitted were the threats to himself. Not because he doubted them: every time he thought about them, he became more convinced of some concerted campaign to unsettle him. And more troubled by the idea that Milda herself might have been behind them. Why, he didn’t know. But people were odd. Sometimes they became vengeful at the end of relationships. They went on the attack when they were afraid. And she must have been afraid.

  When he was finished, he emailed the document to Susan, placed a hard copy on her desk and went home to sleep.

  Now Brenda was at her desk again, in a sparkly leopard-print top, eating a slice of sponge cake. There were further slices of the cake in a round Tupperware on top of the reception counter, but she did not offer one to him. Instead she nodded stonily in his direction, as she did to the window-cleaner she suspected of stealing and the plumber who gave her the creeps. No doubt Mike Bond had gone home and told his wife everything. At various points during the night, Rex had remembered his words to the old policeman and his hurt, disgusted expression, and suspected he’d gone too far. But only suspected.

  ‘There’s someone waiting for you upstairs,’ said Brenda.

  ‘Who?’

  At that moment, Lawrence Berne, Laureate of the Ladders, came in, and Brenda turned the full force of her charm on him. ‘Where have you been, you naughty man? Come and have a slice of my sponge!’ She was upping the pleasantry, Rex knew, to underline the point that he was out in the wilderness. He went morosely up the stairs, trying and failing to think of a visitor he would actually like to see in his office right now.

  ‘Wanted to ask a few questions about what you saw yesterday,’ Orchard said. He sat in Rex’s chair, with his legs indecently wide. He wore a tight, pale brown suit, and long, thin Chelsea boots; the effect was to make his head seem even wider, like a round Dutch cheese balanced upon a garden cane.

  ‘You mean the explosion? I saw what you saw. A big bang. Smoke. People running. It smelt a bit like fireworks at first. I thought that. Some of the other people I spoke to said that too.’

  ‘It was fireworks,’ Orchard said, sitting upright. ‘A double chest freezer, inside the empty shop, filled with Chinese rockets.’

  ‘Frozen fireworks?’

  ‘The chest freezer wasn’t working.’

  ‘What set them off?’

  Orchard lowered his voice. ‘Did you see anyone taking out a mobile phone in the moments before the blast? Anyone doing anything with a laptop or an organiser?’

  ‘You think they were detonated?’

  Orchard tried to look inscrutable.

  ‘So you’re ruling out accidental causes?’

  Another constipated look. Rex couldn’t hold back a smile. ‘You must be in trouble if you’re asking me.’

  ‘We’re asking everyone who was there. And we want your editor to put a plea for information in this week’s paper.’

  ‘You’re making a lot of effort over seven people with cuts and burns and a derelict shop.’

  ‘Meaning?’ Orchard scratched his knee.

  ‘Meaning it’s more effort than you’ve made over Milda Majauskas.’

  Orchard stood up and adjusted his jacket collar. He pointed to Susan’s door. ‘Shall I talk to the boss myself?’

  ‘She had a phobia about needles,’ Rex shouted at Orchard’s back. ‘And three weeks ago, she wrote an email to her sister, saying she was moving in with someone else. Someone called K.P.’

  Orchard turned around. ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘The sister told me. We were planning to come in later this morning to make a statement.’

  Orchard raised his eyebrows. ‘I drove Niela to Stansted this morning and she didn’t mention a word of it.’ He looked at his watch. ‘As we speak, she’s on a flight back home with the body.’

  Rex tried to take this in. Why? Why leave, when she had such important information about the killer, information she’d only yesterday wanted him to know? What had made her change her mind? Or who? As he looked at Orchard, standing there like an Edam advert, he thought he knew.

  ‘Are you sure she didn’t mention it?’

  Orchard glared at him. ‘Positive. But now you have, we’ll look into it. Along with all the other ongoing aspects of the case.’

  He turned away and after a brief knock on Susan’s door, entered her office.

  ‘Rex. Look man. Look!’ It was Terry. With trembling hands, the photographer pulled some blow-ups out of the envelope and laid them on the desk. The top one was very nearly a work of art. A blast, emerging like a crown of fire from the roof of the shop, a plume of black smoke curling out alongside it and twisting along the pavement and in the midst, seeming to leap through the very centre of the carnage like a gazelle in flight, a very fat skinhead in a lime-green Fred Perry top.

  ‘So that’s where you disappeared to,’ Rex said, leafing through the photos, which were all of similar quality. Terry had found his war-zone at last. ‘You could flog that one to the Independent,’ he added.

  ‘I have, man!’ Terry beamed. ‘And the New York Times, and the Sydney Morning Star and the Frankfurter Allgemeine. I sent the top three off to an agency and it’s gone global. Half an hour’s work and I’ve practically paid off me mortgage!’

  Terry
pulled a photo from the bottom of the pile.

  ‘You’re looking like a very ugly action hero in this one,’ he quipped. He’d snapped one of Rex, moments after the blast, running for cover. ‘Well, maybe a very ugly action hero’s even uglier stunt double…’

  Rex didn’t acknowledge the joke. He stared at the photograph.

  Just behind and to the left of Rex was a tall, thin figure in a grey hooded top. It was thrusting an object towards Rex. A slim, metallic object. A knife.

  ‘Can you enlarge that?’ Rex asked.

  ‘It’s a blur. All ye’ll get is a bigger blur.’ He peered at the photo and chuckled. ‘Looks like he’s trying to shank you.’ His grin vanished. ‘You think he was trying to shank you?’

  Rex didn’t have a chance to reply. The editor’s door swung open, and Detective Constable Orchard left Susan’s office, treating the room to a cold, mackerel-eyed glare before stepping out onto the landing. Susan called Rex in.

  ‘I’m spiking it, Rex.’

  ‘Did Orchard tell you to do that?’

  Susan shut her eyes and rubbed a finger around her hairline. It was her way of composing herself. ‘What you’ve just said confirms the worry I had as I read your piece. I think you’re imagining things.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I don’t mean it as an insult. You’re a friend, and a colleague, and an employee. But my responsibility to you in the latter category compels me to step in. This piece…’

  She pulled the hard copy into view from a pile of papers and mock-ups, tapping it with a long, red fingernail.

  ‘This piece illustrates perfectly what a doctor once told me about psychosis. He said: the reasoning’s all sane and logical. It’s just built on a proposition that’s completely barking mad. That’s exactly what this is, Rex. It’s well written. Coherent. It’s a little flabby in the middle, but for the most part, it’s as punchy as everything you write is. But it all rests on an idea that’s round the twist. This isn’t Chile in the 1980’s.’

  ‘Not here. Come on. Not here.’ Rex repeated. ‘A woman kept saying that outside the window last night. Because she’d seen a bomb go off in the middle of a fascist rally. Here. That happened. Why is it such a leap to imagine that Milda’s death, and all these girls being attacked, are all part of it, and so is Keith Powell, and so are the police, and so are a bunch of things that just don’t add up?’

  ‘People can imagine whatever they like. We’re in the business of printing facts.’

  In answer, Rex put Terry’s photo on the desk. ‘Here’s one for you.’

  She frowned. ‘What am I supposed to be looking at?’

  ‘The kid in the hoody. What’s he doing?’

  ‘Running?’

  ‘What’s in his hand?’

  She peered again. ‘His phone.’

  ‘It’s a fucking knife! Last week, someone not a little similar to this twat,’ Rex tapped the photograph, ‘tried to run me over. Then they left a wheelchair outside my house. And sent me a pair of handcuffs. Now it seems they’re trying to stab me.’

  ‘Did you get a look at his face?’

  ‘I didn’t even know he was there until Terry showed me this photo!’

  She blinked in surprise. ‘So you don’t actually know it was a knife?’

  Rex hesitated. ‘I know it looks like one. And I can see it’s the same person who tried to run me over. For a while, I thought Milda might be behind it all, because it all seemed to stop after they found her dead. But this happened yesterday.’

  ‘Rex. Every third kid on the High Street’s got one of these tops. I’ve got one. Rex…’ She rubbed the bridge of her nose. ‘I’m worried about you…’

  ‘Don’t give me the speech, Susan. I’ll resign.’

  ‘I’ll refuse your resignation. You’re exhausted. You’re traumatised by what happened to Milda. And you’re not thinking clearly. I want you to go home and rest and come back this afternoon. Ellie can take over, and fill you in on what we decide at conference.’

  ‘No,’ he said, standing up. ‘I resign.’

  ‘Then you’re sacked.’

  ‘How can you sack someone who’s already resigned?’

  ‘You didn’t give me a letter. It says that in everyone’s contract. So you’re sacked.’

  Rex grabbed a pencil from the elegant Japanese tray, a letter from the top of her In-pile and scribbled ‘I resign,’ on it. ‘I resign’, he shouted, for good measure, slamming the door behind him.

  On the stairs on the way down, he met Brenda, making her stately progress up for the Monday meeting with a pile of letters. ‘You can stop looking at me like that,’ he said. ‘I’ve resigned.’ The big woman stopped stock-still. Rex didn’t look back, but he sensed her, watching him, all the way down the stairs and out of the building.

  He didn’t often see the street at this time on a Monday. This was normally the hour when he was in meetings, fighting with his boss and his colleagues about details that no longer seemed to matter. Green Lanes had the air of some vital, exotic port: Istanbul or Aleppo. Veiled widows were stuffing their shopping trollies with greenery, a haughty-looking waiter crossed the street, between motorbikes and buses, without spilling a drop from his tray of tea-glasses, and in the window of the Famous Manti Shop, a chorus-line of head-scarved girls was rolling out dough for the dumplings.

  This was a hard place. Sad, if you chose to look at the gaunt old men raking through the reduced tins outside the Lidl. Maddening, when you saw bright young kids given a police escort from the school gates to the bus-stops to prevent them from being stabbed, or stabbing each other. But for all that, Rex had a sense of something new being born here, being hewn in the teahouses, forged in the internet cafes and the cab ranks, grafted and sculpted by each fresh set of incomers. No one knew what was going to emerge from the shower of sparks, any more than they’d known in New York in the 19th century, or Rome in the 1st. He loved it.

  Was Susan right? Was he losing his mind? He only knew that many things did not add up. That the future of this place was under threat, as well as himself. Both needed to be fought for. And if that fight had to be conducted outside the newspaper, instead of inside, then so be it. He would survive.

  It was 9.15. The Salisbury opened its doors at 9 and, according to a recent feature in the paper on local eating spots, served a handsome breakfast. Susan was right about one thing. He was exhausted. And he hadn’t eaten properly since Saturday evening.

  He had just enough time to read the menu, and to become very hungry at the prospect of herb sausages with black pudding and mushrooms, fried eggs and grilled tomatoes, before the pub’s one barmaid came over and told him there was no food today. ‘Cook sick,’ she pronounced, with a certain gloomy satisfaction.

  The problem was, he was in there now. With the smells of wood and beer in his nose. The weak autumn sunlight streaming through the coloured glass windows, giving the place the air of a sanctuary. He asked for a glass of Czech beer – Litovel. The girl served him with an air of disdain, but then she did the same to everyone, whether it was nine in the morning or just before chucking-out time. Another customer walked in, and she went off to bully him. Rex left for his corner table.

  He was a few gulps in, already feeling the effects of it, and wondering if the barmaid would take his drink away if he nipped out and bought a paper. He noticed with irritation that the other drinker was heading in his direction, holding a coffee cup. Why did they have to sit so near him when the whole barnlike pub was empty?

  ‘Beer for breakfast. Takes me back to varsity days, that does.’

  ‘What are you doing here, Lawrence?’ he asked, not a little gracelessly, as the Laureate of the Ladders sat next to him.

  ‘I’m doing a little feature-ette… best coffee joints on Green Lanes,’ Lawrence said, placing a pair of half-moon glasses on his tanned nose. ‘And this place serves the best espresso this side of Milan. Or should I say, Danuta serves it.’ He nodded his mass of dyed curls towards the barmaid who, to Re
x’s astonishment, broke into a dimpled grin. ‘Seven miles of wonders, this road is,’ Lawrence went on, before sipping his coffee and smacking his lips. ‘But you know that, don’t you?’

  ‘I fear our love affair might have just come to an end.’

  Lawrence shook his head. ‘You fall in and out of love with places. And jobs. In and out and in again. Just like a marriage.’ He tittered, making a sound like a magpie. ‘Don’t tell Diana that her uncle took you to the pub to discuss marriage.’

  ‘I don’t think Diana would mind either way,’ Rex said, after a long swig from his glass.

  ‘Not what I heard.’

  ‘You talk to her much?’

  ‘Well, she was sat at my table last night, between my wife and my son-in-law, eating our famous baked trout dinner. We had six guests.’ He peered at Rex pointedly over the top of his glasses. ‘At one point, earlier on in the week, we were informed that there might be a number seven.’

  Rex didn’t know what to say. The news cheered him up a little, then depressed him. He took a deep swig from his beer. He felt Lawrence staring at him and put the glass down.

  ‘What? You’re going to tell me to go easy? It’s only going to make matters worse?’

  ‘I’m guessing it’s making things feel a little better,’ Lawrence replied. ‘In the short-term, anyway. You know, Jews don’t really drink. So when we do, we use it like medicine. My Uncle Sonny used to drink one bottle of vodka a year. He’d pick a weekend, draw a circle around it in the calendar, and lock himself in the warehouse. He said it was like topping up his batteries.’ He tapped Rex’s glass with a manicured finger nail. ‘Want another?’

  Rex watched his strange companion at the bar, chatting easily with the normally frosty barmaid. Lawrence Berne, as no one was allowed to forget, was a committee member of North Finchley Golf Club, and he dressed, at all times, for that part. Today, he sported pleated front charcoal trousers with a black and white houndstooth jacket. There was a chunky gold bracelet on his right wrist, matching the thick gold watch and the decorative gold clasps on the front of his slip-on shoes. He wrote one of the most annoying newspaper columns in the history of the printed word. And yet, right now, he was a comforting presence. Benign and understanding, a rabbi-therapist in golfing slacks. Rex hoped he wouldn’t go away.