by Tim Weaver
‘Here,’ I said.
He came over. Among a group of bagatelles was an empty space where another one should have been.
‘The one we saw in Grankin’s house must go here.’
But Healy was frowning now, looking over at the other side of the arcade.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘They’re in the same position.’
I glanced from him to where he was looking. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The one we saw in Grankin’s house had a design with three red circles on the front. Did you notice that when we were there?’
I tried to remember.
He gestured across to the other side of the arcade. ‘There’s one with three red circles on it over there, not far from the strength tester you were looking at. I saw it earlier on. The one that Grankin had in his house, and the one over there, they’ve been placed in the same position – just on opposite sides of the room.’
He was right: the one that normally occupied the empty space, and the near-identical bagatelle on the other side of the room, mirrored one another’s position exactly. They were the same distance from the middle aisle, in a straight line across from one another. Had they been purposely placed like that?
I returned to the one that was still here, opened its rear door and checked it over. Just like the strength tester, there was nothing unusual inside.
‘We’re still missing a phonograph and a fortune teller,’ I said, but as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I’d found them both: they were among a crowd of machines between Healy and me.
‘They’re all in a row.’
Healy looked at me. ‘What?’
‘The machines – they’ve all been placed in a row.’
The phonograph was different from the others. It sat atop a wooden plinth, about two feet in length and a foot high – no rear door, just a slide drawer built into the plinth itself. I opened it up. There was nothing inside. When I checked the fortune teller with the scratch – a smaller version of the Oracle, which I’d seen on my way up to this floor – it was exactly the same: empty. None of the machines was directly adjacent to one another – there were other cabinets in between – though they’d been placed roughly the same distance apart. No one would notice the pattern unless they knew what they were looking for. But because we did know, it was absolutely clear: they were in a straight line. If the missing bagatelle had been here and not at Grankin’s house, we’d be looking at a deliberate pattern – the only five machines Korman and Grankin had ever cared about, all purposely placed in a row.
‘Why have they done that?’ Healy asked.
I shook my head, still trying to piece together the evidence I was seeing, when something Korman said bubbled to the surface.
You need a change of perspective.
‘Raker?’
An idea started to form. I ran my fingers across the surface of the fortune teller, which was closest to me, and then over the surface of another, random machine to the right of me. Something was different. The finish on the fortune teller was good, smooth – but was marginally darker, and it was harder to the touch as well, with a texture like chalk.
‘Raker, what’s –’
‘Hold on a sec,’ I said, and removed my phone from my pocket, my adrenalin starting to fizz. I checked my camera app, going through its settings, and when I saw that it had the option I needed, headed over to where Korman had placed the floor lamp. Following the lamp’s cables, via an extension lead, to the nearest plug point, I found the switch that would turn everything off.
Healy was watching me.
‘I’m going to turn off the lights,’ I said.
‘What? Why?’
The arcade was plunged into darkness. Using the glow from my mobile phone, I returned to the fortune teller and selected the camera option I wanted. Slowly, I levelled the phone’s lens at the back of the machine.
On-screen, the fortune teller lit up.
‘What are you doing?’ Healy asked.
I directed the phone towards the rest of the floor, towards the phonograph and the strength tester; to the bagatelle and its matching empty space on the other side of the middle aisle.
They were all a luminous pink.
Even the empty space was marked with the remnants of it: the outline of a square where the bagatelle normally sat.
‘They used infra-red paint.’
‘What?’ Healy stepped towards me. ‘What are you talking about?’ he said, watching my phone screen now, seeing for himself what this arcade really was.
‘They mixed infra-red paint with the varnish,’ I said, as much to myself as to Healy, ‘and it reacted. That’s why the revarnished wood has slowly got darker over time. That’s why it feels harder to the touch. They made a mistake with the two bagatelles, right back at the start, by getting the mix wrong – it’s why East said it was gloopy and careless. But they never got it wrong again.’
It seemed so obvious now: Korman and Grankin had chosen wooden machines because, unlike the metal ones, they could revarnish them. But they’d also selected the machines based on their location, revarnishing the same cabinets over and over again to maintain a line of five beacons, all in a row. The missing bagatelle, the fortune teller and the phonograph on the left of the aisle; the remaining bagatelle and the strength tester on the right.
Except the row wasn’t quite perfect.
Because the pattern seemed unevenly weighted – three machines on the left, two on the right – my eye was drawn to a point roughly in the middle, between the centre aisle and the bagatelle on the right, where a sixth machine was sitting. If it had been revarnished like the others, if it had shown up under infra-red, it would have fitted perfectly into the pattern, turning five machines into six. It would have made things even – three on the left, three on the right. It would have finished everything off.
But it hadn’t been varnished.
It had been left untouched.
I took a step closer. It was a tall, thin cabinet, some kind of puppet show, its name written across the top in letters that dripped blood: The Haunted House. A coin slot on the side had a plate above it – Do you dare bring the Haunted House to life? – and, through the glass, there was a domestic scene: four small puppets – two parents, two kids – sitting at the kitchen table. Waiting in the wings, crudely visible through long slots at the side of the cabinet, were ghosts, which would pass back and forth across the kitchen – the family reacting accordingly – once a coin was inserted.
‘What the hell is this place?’ Healy said.
I looked from him to the machine, then back to him. ‘I think it’s a map.’
74
I switched on the lights again, and the map disappeared. To the human eye, the varnished machines were virtually indistinguishable from the ones around them: a little darker in shade, the finish a little drier and firmer to the touch – but you’d have to look hard to see the difference. The only reason we’d even been able to find them in the first place was because of what Calvin East had told us.
The Haunted House was the largest of the six cabinets by a long way, about five feet high and three feet wide – and it sat in the space where, if Korman and Grankin had completed their row of revarnished machines, the fourth point on the line would have been. It seemed obvious why they hadn’t revarnished this one, though: it was too big to move, too cumbersome, too heavy; the chances of being caught taking it out of the museum, too great.
But I wondered if there was another reason.
It sat among a group of others of about the same size, almost disguised by them. Its rear panel was incredibly difficult to get at: not only was it against a pillar, but there was no access to it from either side because of the location of adjacent machines. That, presumably, was the point. However, while under infra-red there was no evidence of varnish having been applied to this cabinet, I could see scratch marks on the wooden slats of the floor, made by the machine’s feet, where it had been levered out and then b
ack in again.
‘Give me a hand here,’ I said to Healy.
With no space at the side of the machine, I bent down and pulled from the bottom, while Healy tried to heave it from the top. It was clumsy, difficult work, and we kept getting in each other’s way. Eventually, I told him to stand back, and – with a series of jerks – I managed to get it far enough out from the pillar to squeeze in behind it.
Manoeuvring into the space we’d created, a network of cobwebs and dust at ankle level, I tried the rear door of the machine. It was locked.
I looked back at the other machines in the row, starting to get a sense of what was going on here. ‘Korman removed something from them.’
‘What?’ Healy said.
He was standing behind me, shadowing me, partially reanimated by what he’d seen on the phone. ‘The other machines,’ I replied, ‘the revarnished ones in this row, their rear doors have been left unlocked. Because Korman removed something from each of them.’
Healy looked along the row, then back to the Haunted House, seeing where I was going with this. ‘And the reason this one is locked …’
‘Is because he put whatever he took out of those into this.’ I glanced across at Korman. ‘Can you grab his knife for me?’
He seemed reluctant to go back to the body at first, but then retreated down the middle row. Once I had the knife, I slid the tip of the blade in through the gap between door and frame, and began prying it open. Eventually, the panel started to bend.
With one final heft, it popped open.
Inside was a small sports holdall, zipped up, padlocked. I removed it and shuffled out from behind the cabinet, to where Healy was standing. Puncturing the holdall with the blade, I cut along the top, adjacent to the zip, and opened it out. For a moment, I wasn’t entirely sure what I was looking at.
It was a series of five opaque plastic sleeves, all ziplocked. When I opened up the first, a wristwatch spilled out into my hands. The face was a sickly yellow, faded and discoloured, and it wasn’t working. The maker, Wirrek, I’d never heard of. When I turned it over, I found a manufacturer’s mark, a series of numbers, and then an inscription: To our darling Edward. With much love. Mum and Dad.
I set it aside and opened up the next sleeve.
A gold chain with a crucifix attached.
In the third was a cigarette lighter, silver and ridged. I flipped it open. The spark wheel still turned, but there was no flame. I looked for any identifying marks, but all I could find were scratch marks on the underside of it.
I placed it down on to the floor, next to the wristwatch and the chain, and opened the fourth sleeve. Inside was a waistcoat. The last sleeve felt lightest of all – and, when I opened it up, I wasn’t even sure that there was anything in it.
But then something fluttered out.
I reached down and picked it up.
‘What’s that?’ Healy said.
It was plain, flat and stiff, like a piece of yellowing card. I turned it over. On the other side was a drawing: a bluebird carrying a heart, with the name Life in a scroll under it. The drawing had faded over time, its lines smudged.
I handed it to Healy.
He took it, examining it, turning it over again – and a sudden realization bloomed in his face. It wasn’t a piece of paper. It wasn’t a drawing.
It was a tattoo on a flayed piece of skin.
‘Who the hell do these belong to?’ Healy said, looking from the skin to me, to the holdall on the floor – and then he started frowning. ‘Wait, you’ve missed something.’
I looked back at the bag.
Right in the corner, hidden beneath the folds, was another item. I reached in and grabbed it – but as soon as I took it in my fingers, as soon as I had it halfway out of the holdall, I knew what it was.
We both did.
It was the grey mask that Grankin had been wearing.
Part Five
* * *
75
Forty-eight hours later, I’d struck a deal with the police.
The alternative was admitting to nothing and building a lie, but as soon as I contacted Bishara and arranged to hand myself in, I realized there were too many ways to slip up, and he was too smart. Sooner or later, he’d find some area I hadn’t considered, an anomaly, and because he and his team were good at their jobs, and I was bone-tired and depleted – barely functioning after two days with no sleep, and a month of insomnia – the lie would reveal itself, and then everything would collapse. So I admitted to fleeing the scene in Wapping, putting it down to panic after finding East murdered in the back of my car; and then I admitted to leaving his body on Wanstead Flats, uncertain now of the reasons why I’d chosen to do that. Had I seen it as some sort of moral act? Had I really believed that there was something better and more principled in leaving him out there like that – exposed to the elements – rather than driving him around the city in my boot?
I wasn’t sure any more.
I couldn’t think straight.
Yet I maintained enough of a spark to know what I had to play with. If the police wanted the whole story, they’d have to come through me. For better or for worse, I had answers they didn’t yet – not everything, but enough. With my help, they could join the dots, knit everything together, and there’d be something close to a complete picture. Without my cooperation, they’d carry on the search, never having the opportunity to call on Korman and Grankin, and particularly on Calvin East, who’d revealed so much about the life of the arcade, its machines, its secrets.
The only lies I told them were to safeguard Healy.
I assured them that Grankin was dead before I ever arrived at St David’s, and pushed a theory that Korman was cutting off every avenue back to whatever it was they had done together. It was an obvious but logical route to take, not least because Korman had already accounted for Calvin East, for Carla Stourcroft and Gail Clark, even for Gary and Joseph Cabot, who thought the pier had just been a tourist attraction – and the twins, who knew even less than that. It made sense to Bishara, to Sewinson too, a petite detective sergeant on his team, who had a hard south London accent laced with steel and mistrust, and who asked most of the questions. After all, if Korman was prepared to kill himself, why would he leave Grankin alive? There was no logic in ignoring a loose end.
When they asked me if I knew who the person was who’d been caught on CCTV camera, scaling the front gates of St David’s minutes before police arrived, I said I figured it was Korman; that he’d done a loop and come back around to the house at Whitehall Woods to grab a forensic suit. When they asked me why, if that was the case, he didn’t just burn the place down before he left, I told them it was because he would have been spotted and cornered that way. Police were only seconds away by the time he jumped the gate. In using a forensic suit, in taking his time, he’d almost been able to walk in and walk out again.
Every time I tried to protect Healy with a lie, I thought of him, of what he might be doing, and how he might be dealing with the fallout. He was somewhere safe for the moment, holed up in a hotel not far from my house. But while I could protect him from other people, at least for now, I couldn’t protect him from himself. That was what worried me most. He’d barely spoken in the hours after we’d left the museum. At the hotel, he’d gone to the toilet and locked the door, and I’d been able to hear him sobbing. Before I’d left to hand myself in early the next morning, he’d told me that it wasn’t over, not until we found out why the girls had been killed. But I wondered, with Korman and Grankin dead, if we would ever know – and whether, in some ways, it might even be better that way.
The other thing I had to sidestep was an eyewitness account from the day the pier was set on fire. At first, I thought they were still pushing what Korman had anonymously called in, but then realized it was a genuine eyewitness living in one of the flats surrounding the pier. She claimed to have seen two men out on the promenade in the minutes before it went up in flames. ‘Maybe she meant she saw me and, sometime af
ter, she saw Korman,’ I said to Bishara and Sewinson.
‘She said she saw two people at the same time,’ Sewinson replied.
I nodded. ‘Maybe Grankin was there too.’
‘So you’re saying she saw Korman and Grankin?’
‘I was alone.’
She eyed me, face neutral.
‘I don’t play well with others,’ I said, attempting a half-smile. It was met with absolutely no response at all. Ultimately, I wasn’t sure if they believed me or not, but I hadn’t once deviated from the account I’d given them, so they couldn’t accuse me of changing my story. A couple of times I saw them trying to trap me, clever attempts at backing me into a corner and forcing me to come to a different conclusion, or present a different set of circumstances. But I managed to head them off, and after a while there became fewer gaps for them to come at me through.
Eventually, they couldn’t find any gaps at all.
My solicitor had always been Liz, my former neighbour, my ex-girlfriend, but when she moved out, it was because she wasn’t coming back, not for me, nor for anything I became involved in, so I took the name of a solicitor the police gave me, and called him. He was an earnest man in his fifties, starchy and humourless, but he did what I needed him to. He listened to me, advised me, worked with the Met to draft an agreement where I wouldn’t be charged if I provided information that helped progress the investigation and close the case, and – after I signed it – he remained there in the room, taking notes, as I recounted everything I knew.
76
Eventually, the flow of information went both ways.
‘After you gave us the name of Korman’s antiques shop,’ Bishara said, ‘we raided it. Ninety-nine per cent of the stuff in there was legitimate antiques.’
‘But not all of it?’
Bishara shook his head. ‘Not all of it.’