by Tim Weaver
‘What was it like?’
‘It was kind of globby. Careless.’
‘Did Cabot ever notice?’
‘No. Like I said, he didn’t have the time to attend to all the machines himself; the museum, the car workshops he still owned, they were keeping him too busy. So he passed the job of maintenance to me. He told me, if there was ever something more complicated, I should consult him about it – but basic stuff he was happy for me to handle. I wanted to tell him what I’d found the first time I saw it. I felt terrible lying to him. I felt frightened that he would find out what was going on, about these machines being varnished without permission … but I was even more frightened about what Vic and Korman would do to me.’
He swallowed, tried to speak, but then his words trailed off.
A brief memory sparked, of the conversation I’d had earlier with Ewan Tasker. During the summer fair, Cabot told police that Grankin had stolen thirty-six 250ml tins of wood varnish from him. That was eight years after this – East had noticed the machines swapping position in 2002, Cabot didn’t sack Grankin for stealing the varnish until 2010 – but clearly the two events were connected. The question was how – and why. Why was Grankin revarnishing the cabinets?
‘What else?’ I said.
‘About four weeks later, I was taking a tour group around and saw that something was wrong with one of the fortune tellers. They’re these old machines about six feet tall, set inside a wooden cabinet, with a kind of puppet character behind glass in the top half that tells your fortune when you insert a coin.’
‘What was wrong with it?’
‘It had a small scratch down the side.’
‘It wasn’t like that before?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘No way. Mr Cabot had spent his life preserving those cabinets when they were out on the pier. He used to joke to me that he never got married because he couldn’t love anything more than his arcade machines. The only reason he never noticed was because the side with the scratch on was hidden from view.’ He paused, looking between us. ‘But I noticed. I could see where the cabinet had been removed. Vic hadn’t quite lined it up with where it had sat before. I could see scratches on the floor.’
‘Did he revarnish that one as well?’
‘Yes. Just like the others.’
I glanced at Healy, then back to East. ‘Why would Grankin be doing that?’
‘I don’t know,’ East said, ‘but it was definitely him. A couple of days after that, he came to my office and asked me out to lunch, and we hadn’t got a minute from the museum when he said to me, “When we paid you that money, we paid you to keep quiet.” It was like he knew that I’d noticed.’ A long silence. ‘We never even went out to lunch. He just turned right around and headed back to the museum.’
I tried to imagine the reasons that Grankin would go around applying fresh varnish to machines in Cabot’s arcade – and doing it on the quiet. When I looked across at Healy, the same unanswered question was in his face.
‘There was one other time, four years later,’ East went on. ‘This must have been towards the end of 2007. Vic came to my office and asked me if I fancied some lunch, so I headed out with him, and we actually went to a restaurant this time. Except Korman was there. I hadn’t seen him at all since that meal we had in Soho at the start, back in 2002. He didn’t say anything.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, he didn’t speak.’
‘At all?’
East squeezed his eyes shut, as if trying to exorcize the recollection from his head. ‘He literally sat there in total silence for the entire time.’
‘Why do you think they took you out like that?’
‘I asked myself the same question, and remembered what had happened the last time – how Vic invited me out, and then all he did was warn me to keep my mouth shut. So I went back to the museum and looked around the arcade.’
‘Something was wrong with one of the machines?’
He nodded. ‘Except it wasn’t just one of them. It took me a while to find them, but I found them eventually. There was a very minor crack on the glass of one of the strength testers that I never remembered being there before. It had been revarnished too. So I checked the rest of it. Nothing else had changed, inside or out – it was just the varnish. But then I looked up and saw another machine. A phonograph. That had been revarnished as well.’
‘Just revarnished? Nothing else?’
‘Nothing else. He never made any other changes.’
I glanced at my watch. Two-thirty.
We’d been going an hour, and now East was getting tired, emotional again, his eyes shining in the glow from the penlight.
‘What happened after Grankin got sacked?’ I said.
East went quiet for a moment, eyes on the floor. ‘A few months after he got fired – I don’t know, maybe November, sometime towards the end of 2010, after Gail and the girls were gone – Vic turned up at my house. I’d started to think – hope – that I wasn’t going to see him again, but he came in, acting like nothing had changed. He said, now he wasn’t employed at the pier, there was going to be a new way of working. By then, when the arcade machines needed servicing, I was bringing them home – with Mr Cabot’s permission – and working on them in the garage.’
‘What did Grankin want?’
‘He told me that, before I brought a machine home to service it, I had to call him to let him know which one.’
‘Why?’
‘He didn’t tell me. I tried to stand up to him. I asked him why he was going around adding varnish to all these machines, why he was trying to hide the work he was doing, but he wouldn’t even respond to me. So, eventually, I said to him, “I refuse to lie to Mr Cabot any more …” ’
His words fell away.
‘He grabbed me by the throat, and he squeezed, and he said, “Do you want me to tell Ben you said no? Is that what you want me to go back and tell him?” ’
‘He called him Ben?’
‘Ben, Paul, Gray, Korman, I don’t know who he is, what he is. I don’t know anything about him, and I’ve known him since I was nine. He used to change his name all the time at St David’s, and wouldn’t answer unless you called him by it. He’s had many names over the years.’ His voice cracked; emotion, fear, twisting the shape of it. ‘But then that’s what they always say about the devil.’
Healy had edged closer. ‘So he asked you to call him before you brought one of these machines home for repair,’ he said to East. ‘Then what?’
‘The first few times he didn’t do anything. I’d call him up the day before I planned to take a machine out, he’d listen to me describe the machine that needed servicing, and then he’d put the phone down. But, finally, about ten months later, I called him after that strength tester – with the crack in its glass – had packed up, and he told me to hold off taking it home for twenty-four hours. Next day, I bring it home, and he’s waiting there for me, and he says, “I’m taking this away for the night,” and started loading this machine into the back of his car.’ He stopped, shrugged. ‘And that’s exactly what happened. He brought it back to me the next day with a new coat of varnish on it. The finish was pretty much perfect this time. It had gone on smoothly. No bumps. He definitely used Hoberman’s on it, I guess from the batch he stole from Mr Cabot.’
‘How many times has this happened?’ I asked.
‘Since 2010? Twice. Once for that strength tester, and then once about a year ago when the coin slot packed up on the fortune teller.’
‘The one with the scratch in the side?’
‘Yeah. He arrived at my house and took that one away, revarnished it and then returned it a day later. That’s the weird thing.’
‘What is?’
‘He’s only interested in the wooden cabinets, because they’re the ones he can varnish. You can’t varnish the metal ones. But that’s literally all he’s doing. He’s not changing them, or bolting things on, or repairing them. He’s just recoating them.�
� East looked between us. ‘And he’s only doing it to the same five machines.’
49
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Healy shaking his head. It looked like he was about to say something. ‘Wait a sec,’ I said, as much to Healy as to East, ‘wait a sec. Calvin, this doesn’t make any sense. Why would –’
Healy cut me off: ‘No. No, this is shite. I’m done listening to –’
‘I liked Gail.’
Healy stopped instantly.
East’s eyes moved between us, and then they dropped to the floor. A hint of a smile for the first time: sorrowful, forlorn. ‘I suppose I was predisposed to liking her because of how interested she was in the pier, in the history of the city, in her choice of dissertation. I got a call from her in the middle of 2009, months before Stourcroft came back to me for the second time. Gail came in, she interviewed me, asked me questions, and then she left. I gave her my card, in case she had anything else to ask, and as she was leaving, she said she’d requested an interview with Carla Stourcroft too, but hadn’t heard back from her agent. I remember what I said to her, as clearly as I’m saying it now: “Oh, Carla’s very knowledgeable. She’ll give you lots of good stuff.” ’
A solemn hush hung over the room.
‘I never thought for a second,’ East said quietly, ‘not one second, that the interview Gail eventually did with Stourcroft would lead where it did. How could I know?’ He looked up, tears filling his eyes again. ‘How could I know it would end so badly?’
‘You pretended to date Gail, Calvin.’
I said it without emotion, but the implication was clear: maybe he didn’t know at the start, but he knew at the end. He knew it was all a pretence, a lie.
I glanced at Healy, knife in one hand, torch in the other, and gave him a subtle shake of the head. Hold off. We’re almost there.
His eyes lingered on me, his body as rigid as iron now, fuelled by the knowledge – the dread – of what was coming.
‘Stourcroft came in to see me the second time, in January 2010,’ East said. ‘She didn’t outright accuse anyone of anything, she just said she had information that might not paint the museum, or the pier, in the best light, and that she wanted to speak to Mr Cabot. So, after she was gone, I went next door to see him, and he’s in there with Vic. A few weeks before, a TV company had been in touch about using some machines in a period drama they were shooting, and Mr Cabot had been pretty excited about it. He’d got Vic in to organize the transport.’ He stopped, a deflation to him. ‘I didn’t want to tell Mr Cabot in front of Vic, because I knew – whatever Stourcroft had got a whiff of, whether it was the machines, or the pier itself – it had to involve Korman and Vic somehow. So I made something up on the spot, and then told Mr Cabot I’d catch up with him later. But, after he was finished, Vic comes into my office, just walks in there and closes the door, and I can see on his face that he knows.’
‘He knew you were holding something back?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So you told him?’
He shot me a look like I’d accused him of something, a flash of anger in his face. ‘You don’t get it,’ he said. ‘You don’t know what he’s like, what Korman’s like –’
‘We know enough.’
I didn’t say anything else, dropping to my haunches in front of him again. He glanced at me, glasses back at the tip of his nose. He knew his failings better than anyone. My silence was my reply.
‘I told him,’ he muttered.
‘You told him what Stourcroft said?’
He nodded: culpable, unable to take it back.
I held up a hand to Healy, telling him to wait, clearly seeing now where it had gone from here. ‘Did Grankin begin tailing her after that, Calvin? Is that it?’
He didn’t reply, just nodded again.
I pushed on: ‘He begins tailing her, and when Gail finally gets to interview Stourcroft, Grankin sees the two of them together and starts looking into Gail as well. He finds out that part of her dissertation is about the pier. Maybe he even got inside her flat and saw the dissertation, but I doubt he saw enough to worry him. Gail was academically clever, but she wouldn’t have been battle-hardened like Stourcroft. Stourcroft was a lecturer, a journalist, a writer. She could smell a big story on the wind. She knew how to protect it.’
East was bent almost double now, the top half of his body at forty-five degrees, anchored in place by the binds at his wrist. He was motionless, quiet. Off to his left, coming around closer to him, Healy stood, half covered by darkness.
‘After a while,’ I continued, ‘just to be on the safe side, I think he gets you in a room with him, and orders you to start making friends with Gail. Just in case Stourcroft puts any more ideas in Gail’s head. Just in case Gail knows anything she hasn’t put in the dissertation. And you’re so shit-scared of him and Korman, you do what he asks. You weasel your way into their lives.’
I paused, but I knew I was on the right track.
‘Did you pretend that you also thought something might be going on at the pier, Calvin? Was that how you got Gail to believe you were a good guy, that you weren’t involved in anything bad?’
He nodded.
‘But the thing is, you liked her – didn’t you?’
He nodded again.
‘You liked the girls.’
A flicker of emotion in his face. I remembered the video he had of them, how they’d behaved with him, laughed, how they’d played Scrabble and stolen some of his vowels. I could hear them giggling, could imagine how – for brief snatches of time – he might have forgotten what he was doing there, with them. I leaned in even closer, so he could see my face. ‘Why kill those two girls?’
No response.
‘Why did they kill the girls, Calvin?’ I said again.
Healy stepped closer, unable to get down on to his haunches or his knees, not without effort, not without the creak of old, defective bones. So, instead, he brought the knife forward, placing the serrated blade flat against East’s cheek. I glared at him as East drew a sharp breath, but Healy just looked back, eyes a void. This was the moment he reconnected with that family: their life, their death, his dream.
‘You’re going to tell us,’ he said to East, ‘or I’m going to cut your throat. Why did they kill those two girls?’
East took a moment to compose himself, the cold blade still pressed at his cheek. ‘Vic would call me three times a week, checking up on what Gail and I had been talking about. The night before they died, I went to see Gail after work, and we stood chatting while the girls went and played on the swings at the park.’
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Healy baulk, neck muscles tightening, veins worming their way up his throat. This had been his dream. This had been his life for eleven weeks. Now it was someone else’s reality.
‘I had no idea what was going to happen to them,’ East said, voice shrill. ‘I swear I didn’t. We got on. I wasn’t lying when I said I liked her. I really did like –’
‘Don’t,’ Healy said, teeth clenched.
‘Okay,’ East replied, panicky. ‘Okay, I’m sorry.’
The change in the mood was palpable. Healy was like an animal in a pen now, chewing through its cage. East swallowed, glancing at me, looking for help.
‘What happened, Calvin?’ I said.
‘Okay,’ he repeated. ‘Okay. So we’re out at the park, and Gail suddenly changes the subject and tells me that Carla Stourcroft called her. Straight away, my heart drops. Up until then, Gail had been safe. She was no threat to Korman or to Vic. But Stourcroft … she was like a contaminant, dragging Gail into this –’
‘She didn’t drag Gail anywhere,’ I said to him. I kept my voice measured, but I let him know what I thought of his opinion. ‘She knew there was something rotten going on. She was doing her job. The rest of the world deserved to know what –’
‘No,’ East cut in. ‘She screwed it up for every–’
‘Shut the fuck up,’ Healy said, pushing with th
e flat of the blade.
East swallowed again.
‘Let’s hear it,’ I said.
His eyes moved to me from the floor, but his head – pressed against the knife – was still. ‘Stourcroft thought she was being watched, that someone was following her. She told Gail someone had been inside her house. It wasn’t broken into, ransacked, but she’d got home and things were in the wrong place. So she was phoning Gail to tell her to be careful. Gail asked her why someone would even want to follow them, and Stourcroft gave her the basics: she had a witness who had seen someone out on the pier in September 2007 – and she’d tied this person to the disappearance of a couple at a fancy-dress ball the same month.’
Healy and I exchanged a look. Neil and Ana Yost. They were pinned to the wall next door, their disappearance like a tsunami: it hit Stourcroft, Gail, the girls – and in February 2014, when Healy had gone looking, it had hit him too.
‘Stourcroft told Gail that she believed one man linked both events,’ East continued, looking ahead, a prisoner walking to his execution, ‘and she believed he was Russian. I knew she was talking about Vic. I knew it in a second. I didn’t know anything about him being seen on the pier in 2007, anything about that couple, but I knew she was talking about Vic.’ He stopped again, and this time a tear broke free. ‘She said, “Do you know anyone at the museum like that?” ’
‘And you told her you didn’t,’ said Healy.
More tears ran out from under East’s glasses.
‘You lied to her.’
Healy was silent, paralysed, looking at East with a mix of regret and disgust. The rest of East’s sentence remained there, unspoken, like an echo: And when Grankin rang me to check in on Gail, like he did every week, three times a week, I told him what she’d said, I told him that it wasn’t Gail who was the problem, it was Stourcroft. I sat there and begged him for Gail’s life.
‘But it wasn’t enough,’ East weeped. ‘It wasn’t enough,’ he said again and again, his words perishing the moment they came out, hollow and worthless. ‘He called me while I was there, at the flat with them. I went outside and finished the conversation, and when I came back in, Gail had prepared dinner for us all. I sat down with them to have dinner, looking across the table at Gail, trying to pretend nothing had changed. The girls went off to bed, we had a bottle of wine, and I was going to tell her to run, to take the girls and run – I swear I was – but then someone knocked on the door, and Gail went and answered it, and …’ He swallowed, eyeing Healy, then me. ‘It was Korman.’