Disturbia

by Christopher Fowler

  Stokes was puzzled to see him punching out a number on the illuminated buttons of the phone.

  ‘No service.’ Vince snapped the mobile shut. ‘Payphone?’

  ‘Just over there.’ Stokes flicked the torch beam to the far wall. ‘You’ve got to hurry.’

  ‘I think I’ve found the right cross,’ he announced as the call connected. Stokes came over frowning and mouthing the word ‘Where?’

  He pointed at the ground. Stokes looked down, then his eyeline returned to the Holbein painting. The broad violet carpet runners laid across the white marble floor bisected one another directly in front of the painting, forming one gigantic ianthine crucifix, with two smaller ones on either side.

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ said Stokes.

  ‘Where does the top of it point?’ asked Masters.

  Vince shone the torch up on a Pre-Raphaelite painting of two lovers standing beside a tree.

  ‘That’s not normally there,’ Stokes explained. ‘It belongs in Birmingham City Art Gallery. It’s on loan.’

  ‘What is it?’ asked Vince.

  ‘Not to my taste at all,’ said Stokes. ‘All that preachy Victorian stuff is like stuffing yourself with iced buns, too sickly. I prefer something more robust. Tintoretto’s more my style—’

  ‘The painting, man, what is it?’ Masters fairly shouted over the line.

  While Vince stretched the telephone cord as far as it would reach, Stokes peered close at the painting with his torch held high. ‘It’s called The Long Engagement, by Arthur Hughes.’

  ‘I’ve got it,’ cried Maggie, proudly holding the picture up for everyone to see.

  ‘Well, what does it say?’

  ‘It was originally called Orlando in the Forest of Arden. The artist replaced the central figure with lovers after the picture was rejected by the Royal Academy.’ She read aloud. ‘ “The woman waits for her lover to marry her, even though she has been waiting so long that ivy has grown over her name, carved into the tree’s bark.” Amy,’ she said, closing the book. ‘The girl’s name is Amy.’

  Chapter 37

  No Witnesses

  ‘I really have to make a phone call,’ said Pam, shifting uncomfortably in the armchair where Xavier Stevens had unceremoniously dumped her. ‘They have no right to keep me here like this.’

  ‘Sebastian doesn’t see it like that,’ said Barwick apologetically. ‘I can’t untie your hands again. He’d be furious with both of us.’

  ‘One call, Horace. I promise I won’t get you into trouble. It’s not as if I’m going to ring the police or anything.’ She wriggled and grimaced, pantomiming pain. ‘At least find some proper rope.’

  She had turned on the waterworks and admitted to Xavier Stevens that the other disk containing Vince’s manuscript was carefully hidden in the bottom drawer of her office desk, failing to mention that, having suffered a series of break-ins, the estate agency was abnormally well alarmed, and the disk wasn’t there anyway. She prayed he would get caught astride the window ledge in a blaze of light, but doubted her luck would hold out that far; if he didn’t, he might well return in a less amenable frame of mind.

  Vince had hand-delivered one of the disks to Esther Goldstone a few days ago, and, she knew, had planned to give Louie the other. She had no idea where it had gone from there, but knowing Louie, he had probably left it in the pub.

  At least she was holding her own against these arrogant young men, standing up to them. She could be just as bloody-minded as they were. She felt that the lessons she had learned in her most recent business management course (‘Hidden Persuasion at the Negotiating Table: The Art of Striking a Deal’) were starting to pay off, and decided to put more of them into practice. Mark your man, they taught her, mark and mirror him. ‘Now listen to me, Horace,’ she wheedled, making eyes at the alarmed Barwick, ‘come and sit over here beside me. I have an interesting proposition for you.’

  —

  The envelope was Sellotaped to the base of the painting’s frame. George Stokes had just finished easing it free when his wristwatch started emitting a reedy beep.

  ‘That’s it, lad, our time’s up. We’re too late. The alarm sensors are going back on right throughout the building. I don’t know how I’m going to get you out of here now.’ He shone his torch back along the corridor.

  ‘What happens if we don’t make it?’ asked Vince.

  ‘Every light in and around this place goes on, and sirens start up the likes of which won’t have been heard in the capital since the Second World War,’ he explained grimly. ‘Make for that doorway over there. Stay off the carpet, but don’t go any nearer than five feet to the wall. Don’t touch anything.’

  Thirty years of prowling the museum had caused the custodian to develop a delicate, silent run that made him appear to move on invisible wires. He sped through each eerie sepulchre like a tardy ghost. Vince could see thin pencil-beams of light flicking on all around them at a height of about eighteen inches from the floor. The sparkling red latticework was like a computerised spiderweb. Breaking any one of the gossamer lines would be enough to trip the entire alarm system.

  A quadrant of beams pulsed on at his feet, forcing him to slow and step between them. ‘Christ,’ he whispered, ‘they’re everywhere.’

  He was about to run through the archway leading to the main entrance when a row of beams appeared like a glittering ladder across the opening. Dropping to his knees and sliding the last few feet, he was able to avoid touching them by a matter of centimetres.

  They reached the hall through which Vince had entered, and Stokes dived behind the reception desk just as the last of the override switches in the steel alarm box switched itself back on.

  He looked up at Vince through a sweating bushy brow. ‘That was too bloody close for comfort, lad,’ he panted, pulling Vince towards a small side door. ‘Well, you’ve got your precious envelope. Arthur Bryant has used up his last favour with me. I’m going back upstairs to fabricate some story for Albert. If you get into any further difficulties tonight you’re on your own, understand?’

  Vince clutched the unopened letter in his hand and looked out across Trafalgar Square. He was relieved to be out of the gallery without tripping the alarms. The rain had momentarily eased, and the roads were almost empty. An odd, contemplative stillness filled the air, as if the goddess of the city had momentarily fallen asleep.

  Vince dug the phone from his jacket and rang Pam, but her answering machine switched itself on. The message she had left was a week old. He wondered if Louie had returned yet. It was unlikely, but worth a try. Vince punched out his number and waited, only to find himself connected to another answering machine. He gave the recording device his present location and Harold Masters’s number before ringing off. A call to Esther connected him to a third tape machine. This time he hung up.

  Where were all his friends? He had never felt so completely alone. His only link to the city’s warm-and-normal interior world was via the lifeline to Harold Masters. He felt like chucking in the whole thing. What was the point of continuing, anyway? Let them bury the damned book, let them shut him up and anyone else that got in their way, what difference did it really make? He could find something else to write about for Esther. If they were that clever and all-powerful, they probably possessed both copies of the manuscript by now. He should have put them somewhere safer instead of placing Esther and Louie at risk.

  He was exhausted. His arms and legs were turning into dead timber. He had twisted his right knee in the gallery. If he abandoned the game now and threw away the League’s damned envelope, just turned on his boot-heel and caught the first night bus home, what would Sebastian do? Kill him? Where the hell were the League anyway? Did they really have nothing better to do than watch him stumbling blindly through the night? He wanted to be back in Betty’s inviting arms, not stuck here in the city he had only thought he loved. He looked across the wet road to St Martin in the Fields, at the blank eyes of the security cameras peering down fr
om the eaves like so many metallic ravens. The question nagged at him: what would they do if he stopped?

  Well, there was one way to find out. He walked over to the nearest litter bin and with a grand flourish directed at the lenses monitoring his actions, dropped the envelope in. Fuck ’em, he thought. Let’s see what happens now.

  —

  ‘Sebastian! He’s quit!’ Caton-James came running up the stairs. ‘He’s thrown away the seventh challenge and walked off!’

  Sebastian had been dozing on the couch when Caton-James came bursting in. Elgar’s “Nimrod” was playing softly in the background. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked, rubbing his hands briskly over his face.

  ‘St John Warner just located him on the monitor. I told you this whole thing was a stupid idea. You had to turn it into a game, didn’t you? What the hell are we going to do now?’

  ‘Shut up for a minute and let me think.’ He pulled himself upright and tried to awaken his brain. The room temperature had dropped in the last hour, and the Chelsea streets had grown silent as the night deepened. ‘How many more has he got to cover?’

  ‘Four. The most important ones. You shouldn’t have grouped them all together. This whole enterprise is so bloody fraught with risk it’s a wonder we haven’t been caught yet. If the WBI gets wind of this—’

  ‘How could they? Show some fortitude, Bunter. There’s very little actual risk involved. Reynolds needs to be frightened into completing his tasks. Does he know about his little helper being taken out of the picture?’

  ‘We lost him for a while in Vauxhall, but I don’t see how, no.’

  ‘So, he’s not in fear of his life, or anyone else’s. We have to change that.’

  ‘The girl downstairs?’

  Sebastian considered the option. ‘It’s the most obvious solution, but my gut reaction is to get rid of someone else. She’s on the premises, which makes it risky. Someone might have spotted her coming up here. You can see the house clearly from the road. Besides, we don’t know enough about her, who her family is, who she knows. I’m short of facts. Barwick could at least have interrogated her but of course he didn’t, and Stevens isn’t much better.’

  He rose and tensed the muscles in his tired arms. ‘Still, we might threaten him with her demise, not that I trust hostage situations. They always seem to end in tears. There’s something irredeemably vulgar about kidnap. And I have a feeling it would encourage him to come here rather than concentrate on finishing the game. Where is Xavier, by the way?’

  ‘Right now he’s busy tearing up some estate agent’s office, searching for Reynolds’s copy of his text. The girl told him she’d hidden it there.’

  ‘Get him on the phone and tell him not to bother looking.’

  ‘You don’t think he’ll find it? He already turned over her flat and found nothing.’

  ‘Just do as I say, will you? Don’t try to think.’

  It seemed obvious to him that Reynolds would not have risked the life of his best friend by asking her to hide the manuscript in her apartment. Having monitored Goldstone’s mobile calls, Sebastian knew that one disk had been left with the agent, who was used to handling such documents, and the other with ‘someone who could take care of himself’. Which narrowed it down to the last member of their trio, the one they called Louie.

  ‘What are we going to do about Reynolds?’

  Sebastian gave a theatrical sigh. His original plan had been worked out meticulously. He was nervous about extemporising now. He knew that improvisation led to mistakes. This was what happened when he took a nap for twenty minutes—everything went to pot.

  ‘Just leave it to me, all right?’ He looked about for his jacket. ‘Tell Xavier to stop wasting his time and get over to Covent Garden. Where is he at the moment, Kentish Town? At this time of night he can be there in ten minutes on that monstrous motorcycle of his. And don’t take your eye from Reynolds. I want to be kept informed about where he goes and who he talks to. I don’t expect anyone to come up and tell me that he’s gone missing again, do you understand?’

  ‘Where in Covent Garden do you want Stevens to go?’

  Sebastian raised his eyes. ‘Where do you think? To the Goldstone agency. We already gave him a key to the place. He’s to bring back the other copy of Reynolds’s manuscript.’ He had planned to retrieve it from the agent one day when she was out of the office, but while Xavier was in a ransacking mood, he could break in and remove the disk tonight. Sebastian had a nebulous idea that news of its theft might encourage Reynolds to continue, in order to protect his last remaining copy. Well, it was worth a try. He had no other stand-by plans.

  In truth, he was tired of having to sort out everything by himself. Caton-James and St John Warner were the brightest of the bunch, and that wasn’t saying much. They had no initiative. They were full of fine talk, but not one of them was capable of making a decision by himself. It was his own fault for setting this whole night up in the first place. What the League really needed was someone like that soaked kid out there, running through the rainswept city.

  —

  Dinner had not been quite the success Esther had hoped for. As an experienced writer-groupie she rarely expected much beyond entertainment from her dates, but her hopes for this one had been a little higher. A sexy thirty-something writer with an axe to grind and the ability to articulate his case was a rare thing these days, but unfortunately it was coupled with an immaturity that coloured his behaviour. He had suffered a mood-swing in the restaurant, sending back his meal and picking a fight with an innocent waiter, and Esther had been forced to reconsider her motives for taking him out, quite apart from the consideration that he was married and shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Compounding her first mistake, she went back to his apartment and spent several hours listening to him rant about his absent wife, whom he clearly hated for invading his heart so completely. She wondered if he had even noticed her leave.

  It was almost 4:15 a.m. when she placed her key in the lock and heard what sounded like a lamp being clicked off inside her office. Sometimes, when it was this late and the weather was bad, Esther preferred to sleep at the office. It was cosy here, more familiar than the apartment that just reminded her of Morris, her ex-husband. There was a kitchen and a bathroom, and the couch folded out into a comfortable bed, although the garbage trucks ended any chance of sleeping in late.

  Esther put her ear to the wall and listened. Her daughter was the only other person who had access to the suite. Warily, she pushed the door wide and found the hall in darkness. Had she left the lights on earlier? She could not remember. Lisa must have called by, she decided. But as she approached the open door of the lounge area and saw the shutters fall back in place a second too late, she knew that a stranger was there with her, and that he had heard her enter.

  For a moment she was frozen in the doorway, unable to think of her next move. Then the figure broke free from its hiding place and rushed at her, catching her in the stomach with a projected elbow and knocking her from her feet. She fell back against the jamb of the door, thumping her skull with a wallop that flooded her head with sparkles of pain. The man careened drunkenly towards the front door and was gone. Esther waited until her heart-rate had slowed before hauling herself to her feet and checking what was missing.

  Her first thought proved to be correct. Vince’s manuscript, labelled and transferred to a Maxell disk, had been taken from the bottom drawer of her desk. She cursed herself for touching the handle of the drawer—it would have to be fingerprinted—and noticed that her hands were shaking.

  The next noise she heard puzzled her until she realised that her attacker was still in the flat. It sounded like he was opening and closing a drawer, over and over. Perhaps he thought he had knocked her out. The telephone was on the coffee table, at the other side of the room. She slowly began edging towards it.

  Xavier Stevens was looking for a decent knife. He had thrown the one he had used on the dealer into the Thames, and had meant to
collect another from Barwick at Sebastian’s Chelsea manor. He systematically searched the kitchen and finally found a decent set of Sabatiers. Wickedly sharp, these. You could cut through the breastbone of a twenty-pound turkey with the larger ones. He selected the biggest and walked back towards the lounge.

  Anyone looking into the office from the street below would have seen Esther fall, and heard the grisly thump of Stevens hammering the knife through his victim until it pinned her to the floorboards beneath the carpet. But the street was deserted save for a man so drunk that he would remember nothing in the morning. Sensing the frequency of such atrocities and not wishing to become personally involved, the city turned a blind eye to Esther Goldstone’s lonely death.

  Chapter 38

  Nonconformists

  The call was marred by static and the voice kept cutting out, but its identity was unmistakable. Sebastian’s louche drawl had tightened with urgency. Vince wondered why it had taken him this long. He checked his watch. 4:22 a.m.

  ‘To give up now is the same as admitting you’ve been wrong all along,’ he wheedled.

  ‘You can do what you like,’ Vince answered wearily. ‘I’m going home for a hot bath and a large whisky, and I’m going to ask a nice thick Camden plod to stand on guard outside the flat, just in case you get any bright ideas.’

  ‘Then you should know before you decide to abandon the challenge—’

  ‘I’ve already decided. I should be doing your job, mate, I’d be much better at it.’

  ‘—that your agent will no longer be handling that pernicious diatribe you call responsible journalism. She was killed at her apartment a few minutes ago. Surprised an intruder and was brutally stabbed to death. An awful lot of blood, apparently. Sprayed gouts of it across the ceiling, would you believe. Knifed in the neck, the lungs and the kidneys. Ruined the hardwood floor. A very thorough job, though. She squealed like a pig being slaughtered. The main thing is, we got your copy from her, which just leaves the one you gave your darkie pal.’