A Death at the Palace

by M. H. Baylis

  Chapter Eight

  Susan Auerglass, Rex’s friend and champion, his long-time colleague and his boss, was angry with him. She was angry because she needed him, because no one else like him would come and work on a weekly newspaper in the bleakest part of northeast London. She knew she had little choice but to re-employ him when he asked her to do so.

  Susan’s way of making all this known to Rex was to appear at her most charming. Even as she heard his confession, and granted him forgiveness, she was online, ordering him a special new ergonomic chair from the office suppliers. She also offered him her old laptop, a device upon which one could upload streaming video from Antarctica, should one wish to do so. She behaved, in short, as if he had been struck by some rare, embarrassing tragedy: something that should not be mentioned, but at the same time should be vigorously compensated for.

  She informed him, too, that Ellie Mehta would be the lead reporter for the foreseeable future, and that he was to take charge of whatever shorter stories said lead reporter should delegate to him, as well as the judging and reporting of the photography competition. Rex got the message. He had to keep his head down, accept Susan’s gifts with humility, and never walk out again. So be it.

  He sat at his desk, and looked for the folder containing the entries for the competition. It wasn’t there. He went over to ask Terry, who pointed to a grey canvas sack containing around ten kilos’ worth of photographs and letters.

  Unfathomably, the prospect of a free tripod had whipped the population of Haringey into an image-capturing frenzy. Among the first few entries Rex opened were some tiny squares from passport booths; A3-sized black-and-white blow-ups; earnest, arty shots of abandoned textile workshops and cheesy Polaroid birthday ensembles. Rex glanced towards Susan’s office, and could have sworn she looked away with just the faintest of smiles on her face.

  Terry was not so discreet. Tapping his teeth with a viewfinder, he said that he would rather have gum surgery than go through that mailbag, and wished Rex luck with it.

  ‘Is your entry in there too, Terry?’ Rex sniped, as he hauled the bag back over to his desk. ‘Or did your agent advise you against entering?’

  ‘I haven’t got a bloody agent,’ Terry replied, gloomily. ‘And it’s actually a bit of a sore point, Rex, actually, so I’d rather you didn’t joke about it.’

  ‘What happened to the global overnight success story?’

  ‘Thirty-five percent plus VAT!’ he spat. ‘That’s what the cheapest of the bastards wanted in commission. Plus printing fees, postage fees, two-and-a-half per cent for internet reproduction, plus…’

  ‘You decided against it,’ Rex said.

  ‘Aye.’ Terry tapped his fingers against his skull. ‘I thought, sod ’em. I’ll be my own agent. So I stayed up half the night, rang up the Sydney Morning Star. Says – do you want this picture, like? And the bloke goes, we only buy from recognised agencies, sorry. Same for the lot of them. Bastards.’

  Through the middle of Terry’s lament, Lawrence Berne now strode, in a silver-grey suit. He’d had his roots done since Rex last saw him, and his tan reddened further. In his shining wake, were Aguta and her daughter, Dovila.

  As usual, Lawrence was talking. ‘So I said to the policeman, a man has just run out of this building and over the railway line, and I’m not doing railway lines in these shoes!’

  At length, Aguta extricated herself from Lawrence and his self-glorifying tales. She approached Rex, followed by Dovila.

  ‘We went to your house, but that Japan lady next door said you went back to work.’ Aguta’s sharp, elfin features looked aggrieved, as if Rex ought not have gone anywhere without telling her.

  ‘She’s Colombian.’

  Aguta rolled her eyes. ‘We got a message.’ She swung Dovila round and unzipped her pink back-pack, rummaging through assorted bits of PE kit and packed lunch until she found a star-spangled notebook. ‘Niela found other message from Milda. On the Skype voicemail. From Wednesday 5th October.’

  ‘Milda’s sister found another message from Milda? The day before she died? When did you find out about this?’

  Dovila opened her mouth to speak, but Aguta cut in. ‘Yesterday, Niela rang to us. She checked her Skype account at the internet café. She said it was first time for long time because factory is always late paying her wages…’

  She ushered Rex out of the way and typed the Skype address on his computer. Some debate followed between mother and daughter about the precise details of the username and password noted down in the book, and whether a certain glyph was a 3, a B, an 8, or some jam. Their conversation was in Lithuanian, but conducted with such vigour that Rex, and everyone else in the office, was able to follow the gist. Finally, Aguta logged into Niela’s Skype account and clicked on the voicemail.

  And there, suddenly, was Milda’s voice, issuing eerily from some far-flung ante-room of cyberspace. Rex didn’t understand the words, but she sounded breathy and excited. It was just a day before she died.

  Rex suddenly realised he had re-written the narrative of Milda’s last days in his mind. He had turned her into a poor wretch, suffering ever-mounting torments until the final blow. But the truth was more disturbing. She sounded happy. Excited. She sounded like someone enjoying their life, and confident that it would continue. But what had she said?

  ‘She said, I moved in with a KP now, into his house,’ Aguta said. ‘I am looking after him for now. But I’ve got a surprise for you. I am coming home. In a few days. I will see you soon.’

  ‘She was going home. For good, do you think, or a visit?’

  Aguta gave one of her classic shrugs. ‘Maybe, from the verb she uses, for good. It’s more like, I am returning to the home.’

  ‘Who the hell is this KP?’ Rex said.

  ‘Could that be Keith…?’ said Ellie.

  Rex was about to answer when, suddenly, from the depths of a story-book, Dovila said, ‘Kishkis Pishkis.’

  ‘What did you say, Dovila?’

  Dovila turned her book round. It was a Lithuanian book of folk tales, and the picture facing them was of an officious-looking rabbit.

  ‘Kishkis Piskis, He’s a very busy, bossy rabbit.’

  ‘It’s like a… a folks tale character,’ Aguta said, shrugging. ‘Bugs the Bunny kind of thing.’

  ‘A rabbit? Someone like a rabbit?’ Rex mused.

  ‘Or someone who liked rabbits?’ Ellie added.

  ‘But was she – was she somebody who used nicknames?’ Rex asked.

  Dovila and her mother looked at one another and laughed. Aguta held a palm up. ‘Er…durr?’

  Dovila repeated the gesture.

  ‘I’m guessing the answer is yes.’

  ‘My nickname, since a juniors, is skuja. It’s a needle,’ Aguta told him. ‘Because of my nose. And Milda was vezlys. A tortoise, because –’

  ‘She did everything so slowly,’ Rex said. Suddenly he felt abominably, unbearably sad, not just at the memory of that lovely girl, who had always needed an hour and a half to eat a tiny bowl of muesli, but because he’d never known about the nicknames. They had never got that far. Having heard her voice, he now felt an overwhelming urge to see her again. Even just once. ‘Dovila,’ he said, clearing his throat. ‘Do you still have that picture of Milda on your phone?’

  Dovila frowned. ‘It’s gone.’

  ‘You deleted it, you mean?’

  She shook her head. ‘I mean, one day I had it, and the next day, it wasn’t there.’

  Rex opened his mouth to ask another question, but Aguta cut in. ‘She’s just a child, Rex.’

  She’d spoken so sharply that Rex held up his hands in surrender, as if to say he hadn’t been accusing Dovila of anything. He’d just wanted to see Milda. That was all.

  He stared at the picture book. Did this get them anywhere? That Milda might have moved in with someone who might have been like a rabbit, or like the particular rabbit-character in the Lithuanian children’s stories, or just liked rabbits. Or KP might
mean something else entirely.

  Of one thing there was no doubt. She had sounded happy. She hadn’t sounded desperate, or like someone who would put their own life at risk. She had plans. And from somewhere, from someone, she must have had some money.

  Brenda, wheezing, came upstairs with the post. There was a hand-written envelope for Rex. N6 postmark. Just up the road.

  He opened it. Inside was a sheet of A4 paper, with cut-out newspaper letters glued onto it: the classic blackmailers’ and kidnappers’ calling card. Everyone came over to examine it.

  skewer iNTo mY

  ‘It’s an anagram of New York Times,’ Lawrence said.’

  ‘And it’s OET,’ said Susan. ‘Old English Text – the typeface the Times uses for its masthead.

  ‘Still think I’m imagining things?’ Rex asked her. ‘I’ve been getting lots of these. I think it’s something to do with Milda.’

  ‘Does the message mean anything to you?’ Susan asked.

  Rex shook his head. Skewer into my meant nothing.

  New York did, though.

  * * *

  ‘Yes, but why,’ Rex asked, through a mouthful of stuffed eggplant, ‘why did the imam faint?’

  ‘Because… it tasted so frigging good,’ replied Terry.

  The Turks, it was said, knew 256 different ways to prepare an aubergine. And you could sample a good sixty of them at the Pamukkale. Authentically cheerless, with a décor of white tiles, metal furniture and strip lighting, it served no meat before 8 pm, no alcohol ever, and was permanently, justifiably, rammed to the rafters.

  This had been Terry’s price for helping Rex out with the photography competition entries. Lunch at the Pamukkale. With double portions of Imam Bayıldi, the famous stuffed aubergine dish whose name, enigmatically, translated as ‘The Imam Fainted’. Rex had readily agreed. He needed a treat.

  ‘Yes, but’ – Rex reached for a spoonful of the garlic-laden, sumac-dusted yoghurt before the last of it disappeared into Terry’s mouth – ‘Some people say the imam fainted for the opposite reason. Because his wife cooked him this beautiful dish for twelve days in a row, and then on the thirteenth, she didn’t.’

  ‘Aye well,’ Terry commented, his face momentarily clouding over. ‘That’s birds for you.’

  ‘Are things between you and your…’

  ‘Shall we crack on?’ Terry interrupted brusquely. Rex got the message, so he cleared a space amid the little saucers of seared artichoke and the courgette fritters, and began to lay out the thirty photographs he’d narrowed it down to over the course of the morning.

  ‘Easy… daft… boring… FAKE… obvious… trying too hard, man… bollocks… not bad,’ Terry reeled off a staccato list of verdicts as he went through the pile. He paused at a picture of Hasidic boys dressed up in superhero garb for the Purim festival. ‘I fucking took this one when I worked on the Highbury and Islington. Cheeky twat. Hmm…’ He paused again at a startling image of two cranes, chewing up the earth near the Tottenham Hale roundabout.

  They looked like dinosaurs, or giant yellow vultures, and the lurid red signage of the Tube Station behind accentuated the idea that some sort of slaughter was going on. Or if not exactly slaughter, then consumption. A feeding frenzy on the marshes. An old world being swallowed up by the new, the futility of the process underlined by the ‘Y’ formed by the cranes. A giant Why?

  Meanwhile, Terry had moved on and was gazing appreciatively at a nice reportage of some Turkish girls primping for a Sunday wedding in one of the nearby hair salons. He squinted from various angles. ‘A little too much light, but…’

  ‘I think it’s this one.’ Rex placed the crane picture back on the table. He was glad to have been given this task. Every minute spent on photographs and aubergines was a minute away from Milda and the chilling message he’d been sent this morning. Skewer into my. Into whose what?

  Terry glanced between the two contenders once, twice, a third time. He took a sip of cherry juice. And finally inclined his long Viking head.

  ‘I think you’re right. Who’s the lucky boy?’

  Rex looked on the back of the photo. ‘He calls himself Arthur Chapman, and he lives at Number 44 Trentino Gardens, N14. Where is N14?’

  ‘Southgate.’

  Where Milda had seemingly moved. Every day would be like this, for who knew how long: full of tiny, barbed reminders, one loss, made into a million.

  ‘He hasn’t put a phone number.’ Rex called Directory Enquiries, but there was no listing for that address. Arthur Chapman wasn’t on the phone. Was that truly possible?

  ‘This one’s got a number,’ Terry pointed out, flipping over the hair salon picture. ‘Landline, mobile and email address…’

  ‘But we decided this is the winner. And anyway, Terry, what has a bunch of girls in a hair salon got to do with the changing face of the area?’

  ‘That one’s having her make-up done, man. How much more of a changing face do you want?’

  ‘Come off it, Terry. It’s this one. Mr N14.’

  ‘Well, if you want it to go in tomorrow’s paper, you’ll have to get up there with one of my cameras this afternoon, and get some snaps of him looking delighted with his new tripod.’

  Rex was about to cajole Terry into giving him a lift over there, when Ellie came into the restaurant, all rosy-cheeked, excited and smelling of the outside. In her short, belted raincoat, she made Rex think of girls on the Paris Metro. She slapped a printed document on the table.

  ‘My little friend at the council owes me a favour,’ Ellie said, tapping her nose – a comic gesture, given the volume at which she was speaking. ‘That’s everyone in Haringey, Enfield and Edmonton with the initials KP.’

  ‘Wow,’ Rex replied. ‘What made you go and get this?’

  Ellie sat down. ‘Adem Dushku’s pleading Not Guilty.’

  ‘Yeah, I know, on grounds of being a fruit loop.’

  ‘No, on grounds of not having done it. Boy I know at the CPS just texted me. Dushku admits the four attacks, but he says he was co-erced into admitting the murder, and he’s changed his plea.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Rex, for a second time.

  ‘Is that all you’re going to say?’

  Rex stood up, slapped a pair of twenties on the table, and folded Ellie’s papers into his jacket pocket. He turned to Ellie. ‘Come on.’

  ‘Where?’

  Rex’s phone rang.

  ‘Hello.’

  Silence. Then a quiet roaring in the background, just like before.

  ‘Who is this?’

  Over the roaring, a muffled voice said what sounded like, ‘It’s me, Rex,’ and then hung up. Rex didn’t know whether it was a woman or a man. He didn’t recognise the voice. He wasn’t even certain they’d said what he thought they said.

  ‘Wrong number,’ Rex said, ignoring the look Ellie and Terry exchanged. ‘Come on. We’re going to see Bernadette Devlin.’

  * * *

  If a single window-sign could sum up the ethnological history of the whole area, it was the one that announced, in gold, bold letters, the offices of Ozturk, Devlin, Berg and Mganga, Solicitors. The entrance was via a thin, frosted glass door between a Greek printers and a shop selling nothing but nuts. The office was upstairs in a long loft of a room, where each of the partners had a desk overlooking the Lanes. As in any truly multi-cultural enterprise, there was an ongoing feud between the various bosses and employees regarding the ambient temperature, and, depending on where you sat, you would be singed by hot-air heaters, or deafened by desk-fans, whatever the time of year.

  As the daughter of immigrants from Guyana, Mrs Bernadette Devlin, LLM, LLB, MLS, was obliged to champion the hot side of the debate, but she did so in a half-hearted fashion, accompanying her own desk with a single-bar electric fire, which was in fact far too dangerous to use. She preferred to regulate her body temperature by alternating Polo mints with an obscure, fiery brand of Caribbean cough-drop.

  ‘Have a sweet, darlin’,’ said Bernadette Devl
in, holding out the pack to Ellie. Her voice always surprised people who didn’t know her. With her long earrings and close-cropped silver hair, she looked as if she should speak some rich, lilting Creole. In fact, she sounded exactly as she was: Tottenham, to the bone. She winked at Rex as Ellie leaned forward and accepted a dark lozenge. Then they waited for the inevitable paroxysm.

  ‘My husband says they’re called cough drops,’ Bernadette said, as Ellie staggered wheezing in the direction of the washroom, ‘because they make you drop everything.’

  ‘You never tire of it, do you?’

  Bernadette beamed at him. ‘I’m a black lawyer with the name of an IRA terrorist. I’ve got to have some compensation.’

  As a man whose name attracted its own fair share of tiresome comments, Rex could sympathise. And he knew better than to correct Bernadette Devlin on the matter of the other, more famous Bernadette Devlin’s occupation. No one ever interrupted, corrected, or questioned Bernadette Devlin, which was why half of Tottenham wanted her to represent them when they’d been arrested.

  ‘How can I help you, Mr Tracey?’ For all her larks with cough drops, she was a very formal lady – the deaconess of a hypermarket-sized Tabernacle Church in Seven Sisters. ‘Have I won that photo competition? Mine was the one with all the cakes.’

  ‘Adem Dushku. I take it he’s one of yours?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘Care to comment on his change of plea?’

  ‘Care to spend a night inside Crews Hill?’

  ‘Eh?’ Mrs Devlin’s utterances were often somewhat Delphic.

  ‘Adem Dushku made the mistake of believing what he was told about secure mental hospitals being nice, gleaming white hotels with Playstations and En Suites.’

  ‘In other words,’ said Ellie, back from the washroom, ‘the Feds told him to cop to the murder as well as the other stuff and he’d end up in a nice comfy hospital instead of a prison, so he did, even though he didn’t do it, and now he’s realised what a fucking awful place he’s in, he’d rather go on the nonce-wing in prison than stay there.’