Wild Chamber

by Christopher Fowler

  Bryant had his nose almost touching the pages of a huge volume which lay sprawled across his overcrowded desk. ‘I don’t speculate,’ he said without looking up.

  Steffi Vesta saw Longbright sitting in with the detectives and cautiously entered, handing them a printout. ‘Paula Machin’s previous convictions include three for shoplifting, but she never took clothes,’ she said. ‘Her parents are both registered addicts. According to them she’d been beaten up by her boyfriend and thrown out of his flat a couple of weeks earlier. Shall I bring him in?’

  ‘As soon as you can,’ said Longbright. ‘I’ll cover the interview.’

  Jack Renfield appeared in the doorway. ‘Have you seen the news?’ he asked. ‘They’re closing the parks tonight. We’ve got a leak.’

  ‘This is not a Marx Brothers film!’ barked Bryant. ‘Everybody out. You have a nice new communal room of your own. If you’re confused about matters relating to standard investigative procedure, get Raymondo to arbitrate. I am trying to work here.’ He raised the cover of the book as if it offered an explanation. The title read: An Anecdotal History of London’s Pleasure Gardens. ‘As for the leak, it’s bound to have been him – he can never keep his mouth shut. Wait, wait. Do we have any shots of the Machin body in situ?’

  ‘Dan will have them,’ said May. ‘He should have sent them to you.’

  ‘Very possibly. My computer is having some kind of nervous breakdown. It keeps replaying old Norman Wisdom films. Perhaps Dan could have a look at it.’ Bryant returned to his book. ‘Two murders, it’s not enough.’

  ‘How many would you like there to be?’ asked Renfield. ‘Five, a dozen?’

  Bryant removed his trifocals with an air of impatience. ‘Two is a coincidence. Three is a pattern. I checked all attacks in London parks over the last five years and there are no other strangulations. At the moment the MO is the only real link we have. The attacks occurred at different times to women from very different social backgrounds. Which is why I need to explore an alternative route.’

  ‘May we be privileged to know the route you’re looking into?’ May asked.

  The detective set his book aside as if having to be torn from a conjoined twin. ‘Look, I couldn’t begin to explain my thought processes to you,’ he replied, tapping the stack of volumes next to his unused computer. ‘I’ve still got to get through Licentiousness in London Parks 1800–1945. There’s a lot to take in. Then there are the sheep to consider.’

  May had put up with Bryant’s investigations into the history of Victorian public conveniences and Egyptian street furniture, but this was pushing it. ‘Sheep? Is that the best you can do?’

  ‘Sheep do what they’re told, but more importantly they all look alike. You see my point, I’m sure.’ There was a lot of head shaking. Bryant sighed theatrically and held his partner’s gaze with a steady blue eye. ‘The gardener, Ritchie Jackson. Search his storeroom and see if you can find what he uses to stake his roses. Plastic ties have ridges on one side.’

  ‘You think he’s involved after all?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. If Jackson isn’t the killer he may know who is – he might just not be aware of it. As for Forester, what if the people to whom he owes money decided to hurt him through his ex-wife? We really need to talk to him.’

  ‘Now’s your chance,’ said Longbright, checking her phone. ‘He’s awake.’

  ‘Do you want to come with us?’ asked May.

  ‘No,’ said Longbright. ‘Jack and I are going shopping.’

  ‘We’re not the only McQueen agent,’ said the stick-thin sales assistant at Selfridges, ‘but we’re the only ones who sold this particular model. It was a couture one-off unveiled at London Fashion Week in February last year. If you care to follow me I’ll find you the name of the purchaser.’

  They waited while the assistant logged into the system.

  ‘Who buys all this clobber?’ asked Renfield. ‘I suppose if you’re a seventeen-year-old Japanese anorexic or a human skeleton with a tufty beard and a topknot you’re sorted, but if you’re a middle-aged extra-extra-large male you’re utterly shagged. There is literally nothing in this store for me other than the toilets.’ He examined a rack of what appeared to be artfully torn string vests in shocking pink. ‘Look at the state of that, it wouldn’t see you out.’

  ‘It may come as a great shock to you, Jack, but women don’t buy clothes to “see them out”, as you put it. Clothes don’t have to last for ever. And the harder it is to wear, the more skill you need to pull it off.’

  ‘That looks as if it would fall off. I need skill to pull off those pants you bought me. They’re not big enough for a squirrel to keep his nuts in, let alone—’

  ‘It was sold to a lady named Helen Forester,’ said the assistant, pointing to her screen.

  24

  ‘AN AWFUL LOT OF TRAGEDY IN ONE FAMILY’

  ‘Forester’s medication regimen will prevent anything he says today from being used as evidence against him, you know that,’ said May as they entered the hospital ward. ‘We should really wait another day.’

  Bryant squeezed antiseptic gel on to his hands. ‘We haven’t time to wait. We need to know who was in the park with him.’

  ‘Why should we believe anything he tells us?’ May searched the bed roster. ‘He probably blames his wife for his son’s death. After all, she abdicated responsibility for the boy, handing him over to Sharyn Buckland. We know the nanny saw more of the child than she did.’

  ‘So Helen Forester shouldn’t have had a career, but it was all right for her husband to succeed?’

  ‘All I’m saying is that there are good reasons why he shouldn’t want to tell us the truth.’

  The head nurse met them in the corridor. ‘The van driver on the Archway Road was very lucky,’ she told them. May always found it amazing that nurses could seek out the positive elements in any tragedy. ‘He didn’t lose control of his vehicle even after Mr Forester landed on his roof.’

  ‘How’s Forester doing?’ Bryant asked.

  ‘He won’t be taking tango lessons any time soon. But he should be home in a couple of days. He was lucky. I saw a chap go under a refrigerated truck once. You couldn’t have filled a shopping bag with what came out of the other side.’

  ‘You’re new, aren’t you?’ May was trying to read her name tag without his glasses and failing.

  ‘Yes, Mr May, my name is Ellen Shaw, I’m a good Protestant girl from Dublin and I know all about you, so I’m keeping far out of your reach. Didn’t you date one of the very senior nurses here once?’ She grinned and pushed open the door.

  ‘Can we get some English Breakfast tea?’ Bryant asked.

  ‘Budget cuts,’ Shaw countered with a dazzling smile. ‘And I’m not English. Get your own tea.’

  ‘I like that one’s spirit,’ said May admiringly.

  Jeremy Forester had been placed in a public ward overlooking the streets of Bloomsbury, where there was always someone to keep an eye on him. He was still hooked up to an IV drip. His face was so swollen and blackened that the frame of his skull was lost beneath inflamed flesh. He had no cards or flowers from well-wishers.

  ‘It’s not been a great year for you, has it?’ asked Bryant, sitting on the edge of the bed. ‘No grapes going, I suppose? Your assistant says you told her there were people coming after you. She saw someone from her window. Who are they?’

  ‘Owed – money,’ Forester rasped, painfully turning his head. May gave him a sip of water from a plastic beaker.

  ‘We’ve been going through your accounts. You lied to your creditors. You can’t be surprised about them targeting you.’

  ‘Thought – they would take longer – find me.’

  ‘Well, experientia docet, as they say – you learn by the experience.’ Bryant had a rummage through Forester’s locker but failed to turn up anything of interest. ‘It would be useful to have a name and description of the fellow who came after you. The CCTV footage shows someone of South East Asian desce
nt.’

  ‘Sun Dark.’ Forester searched for his water straw.

  ‘That’s his name?’ May asked. ‘How do you spell it?’

  ‘Opposite of moon, opposite of light,’ said Bryant. ‘Very Manichean. Mr Dark is a bit of a legend. So you borrowed money from a triad society. What made you think that would turn out well?’

  ‘Thought I could – make the money back,’ said Forester, starting to cough. ‘Came for – my wife.’

  ‘Wait, you told us you didn’t see who attacked your wife. Are you saying now that this chap was in Clement Crescent?’

  ‘Could – be. Not – sure.’ Forester coughed again. ‘Someone.’ May wiped his chin.

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘Short man – moving strangely – she just dropped at his feet. Over in – a second.’

  ‘But you didn’t get a good look?’

  ‘No – too dark.’

  ‘What do you mean, he moved strangely?’

  ‘Hard to – explain. Hunched over her, studying her.’

  ‘How did you get into Clement Crescent?’

  ‘Girl has keys – all keys.’

  ‘You mean GPS?’ Bryant was annoyed with himself. Of course – it made sense that she would ‘liberate’ keys to the closed parks. ‘Did you ever hear the name Paula Machin?’

  ‘No – who—’ Forester had another coughing fit, and had to be raised up.

  ‘We think he attacked another woman,’ said Bryant. ‘Same MO.’

  ‘Arthur, he’s had enough,’ said May quietly. Forester’s swollen eyes were starting to close. ‘Come on.’

  ‘He killed my wife,’ coughed Forester, reaching out a hand to them as they rose to leave. ‘Please – find him before he comes back – for me.’

  ‘Well, what do you reckon?’ May asked his partner as they entered UCL’s great white atrium.

  ‘The story about Sun Dark is convenient,’ Bryant replied. ‘If Forester blames his wife for his downfall and chose to kill her, he could be implicating his creditor, knowing that we’d follow it up. A killer shifting the blame on to a criminal organization? That would be a first.’

  ‘And a last, I imagine,’ said May, buttoning his coat. ‘Wouldn’t it leave him in a worse position than being a suspect?’

  ‘Not if it gets rid of his biggest problem,’ Bryant replied. ‘Maybe he’s planned a way out. Of course if he was that smart he wouldn’t have jumped from the bridge.’

  ‘Perhaps he panicked.’

  ‘True. Sun Dark is famous for the severe default terms of his property loans. He once strung a debtor over a railway line on a fishing rod, but the stories may be apocryphal.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of this chap,’ May admitted. ‘How come you have?’

  ‘I sometimes peruse the South China Morning Post,’ Bryant explained. ‘You soon start noticing when unusual names recur. Triads are most associated with trafficking and prostitution, but lately they’ve been making moves into property. They’re known to use number twenty-nine, Harley Street. It’s a property with over two thousand companies registered out of it, some of them bogus or fraudulent. It appears that throwing daggers are the kind of theatrical touch Sun Dark favours.’

  ‘So where does this leave us?’

  ‘Well, it leaves me with one last appointment tonight,’ answered Bryant. ‘There has to be a reason for choosing the parks. I need to talk to an expert.’

  ‘Funnily enough I was planning on doing something similar,’ said May defensively.

  As they left the hospital Bryant dug around for his pipe, thinking. ‘Right about now they’ll be starting to close all the gates, and a lot of angry people will be looking for someone to blame. We need to end this fast.’

  ‘It’s just spin,’ said May. ‘We can distance ourselves. It’s not our decision.’

  Bryant stopped on the steps. ‘You know how Faraday works. He’ll say they had no alternative because we failed to catch the killer. We’re part of a bigger game, John. He’s not thinking about the public, he’s found a way of making political capital out of the closures.’

  All over the city, crowds had begun to gather around the city’s squares.

  The evening briefing session took place during the detectives’ absence, and without Bimsley or Mangeshkar, who were still at Russell Square Gardens.

  ‘Nobody ever tells me where they’re going,’ Raymond Land complained. ‘Miss Vesta, you’ve only just arrived here. Who told you to go off by yourself? No, on second thoughts don’t—’

  ‘Mr Bryant—’

  ‘—answer that.’

  ‘—said I should use my own initiative. I spoke to Miss Machin’s old boyfriend. There is an English word with which I am not familiar, but I understand that it applies to him. Scumbag. I think this is right, yes? I showed him a photograph of the coat Miss Machin was wearing. He said he had never seen it before. But he wants it back. He is not so clever, I think.’

  ‘We ID’d the coat to Helen Forester,’ Longbright explained.

  Land grudgingly accepted the good news. ‘So how did the Machin girl get hold of it?’

  ‘We had a confirmation from Forester’s sister,’ said Renfield. ‘Helen Forester gave a McQueen outfit to her nanny as a thank-you present when she left the household. She said that as they both wore the same dress size, she wanted her to have it.’

  ‘So she did get on with the nanny,’ said Land.

  ‘Sharyn Buckland was there when Helen’s son died,’ Longbright pointed out, ‘so the gift feels a little like a guilt payment. Buckland came up in our conversation with Helen’s sister, Catherine. The nanny had a thing for her employer’s husband.’

  ‘Do we know if the feeling was mutual?’

  ‘I have no reliable information on that.’

  ‘Well, can you get some?’ Land looked around irritably. ‘And would somebody locate my detectives, for God’s sake? They’re not answering their phones. I tried finding Bryant via the tracker Dan hid on him but it says he’s in Scotland, which can’t be right. Why does nothing work properly around here?’

  Longbright ignored him. ‘I’ve been trying to contact Sharyn Buckland to find out where she lost the coat, but so far no luck. What if it’s the connection?’ She dug out her phone and made a call. ‘Mr Bryant, both of the dead women were dressed in red.’

  They waited while Longbright updated the detectives. Land was appalled. ‘How can she get through on her first try when I can’t ever get hold of him?’

  ‘Maybe he blocks your calls,’ Renfield suggested. The room went quiet while everyone listened to Longbright listening to Bryant.

  ‘What is he saying now?’ Land demanded to know.

  Longbright ended the call. ‘He says of course Buckland was the target, not Machin, and does he have to do everything himself. Oh, and he said something about sheep.’

  ‘The cases are linked,’ said Bryant, pocketing his phone as they walked along the Euston Road, ‘which means the killings are premeditated, which rules out your idea of someone randomly stalking London parks. What’s more, the killer didn’t know that Helen Forester gave the coat to her nanny.’

  ‘How do you figure that?’

  ‘He couldn’t have thought it belonged to Forester because he’d already killed her. Oh, we’re heading into darker seas now. The son, the mother, the nanny. An awful lot of tragedy in one family, don’t you think?’

  ‘The son wasn’t murdered,’ said May. ‘It was an accident, and before you say anything, it was the kind of accident nobody could fake. The doctors who attended to him confirmed that.’

  ‘They didn’t confirm that it wasn’t murder because the question was never on the cards, they just said it was reported as an accident,’ Bryant pointed out, looking about for a taxi. ‘I looked at the medical report, too. Do you want to check any further into Ritchie Jackson’s background? Maybe we’ll find out that he was connected to the nanny as well as to Helen Forester.’

  ‘Right now our first priority is finding Sh
aryn Buckland,’ said May. ‘Either her coat was stolen or she deliberately switched it, in which case she knows something that’s attracted the attention of her former employer’s killer. We’re still one step behind. There are more cameras in this city than virtually anywhere else on earth, so how is it that first Forester and now Buckland can evade us? How long is your meeting going to take?’

  ‘That depends on whether my informant gets drunk,’ replied Bryant. ‘I’ll meet you back at the PCU.’ They parted on the corner of Euston Road and Gower Street, heading for their separate encounters.

  Back at the unit’s HQ, Dan Banbury had pinned an aerial map of Russell Square Gardens on the wall of the operations room.

  ‘The park’s litter bins were full and it had been windy, so although we found a few promising bits and pieces at the site, we don’t have anything directly connected to the case. However, there was this.’

  He held up a clear plastic envelope containing a used cinema ticket.

  ‘The dirt around its edge matches the soil from one of the trainer prints, like the piece of card that was dropped in Clement Crescent, so it seems he’s shed another piece of litter, which suggests to me that he’s nervous and distracted. We’ve been checking the CCTV trying to find him, but it doesn’t cover the whole of the square. I thought we’d pick the victim up somewhere outside its railings but no luck so far, and after tonight we won’t even be able to get back inside the park without an official application. We’re running checks on all hotels, B&Bs and hostels in the area. Steffi’s got a list of Buckland’s credit cards, Oyster card, shopping loyalty cards, online sites – so far nothing, which means she must be sticking to cash for now, and that means she doesn’t want to be found. There’s a boyfriend, but he’s been out of the country and hasn’t spoken to her since last Thursday. Buckland told him she wouldn’t be around for a few days because she was going to visit her mother in Great Yarmouth, but the mother hasn’t seen or heard from her. Her last transaction was a withdrawal of two hundred pounds from an ATM in King’s Cross Station on Friday night at nineteen seventeen, then nothing.’