The Waxwork Corpse: A legal thriller with a chilling twist (Charles Holborne Legal Thrillers Book 5)

by Simon Michael

  At the same time Sonia began to see the errant brother through her beloved David’s eyes too, and so it was with open-minded curiosity she finally met Charles the week before her wedding. She discovered a man who had rejected the religion and culture which had sustained his forebears for millennia but who, paradoxically, lived his entire life according to one of its most essential principles, that of tzedakah, the ethical obligation to do what is right and just. Charles had in him the same kindness as his younger brother, but in Charles it was expressed as a fierce drive to help those in trouble and at the bottom of the pile. It puzzled Sonia that Millie couldn’t acknowledge that, despite Charles’s rejection of the formal religion, he was the living embodiment of one of its most admirable tenets. Surely that was something of which to be proud? And Charles was funny and good company; he shared with David the same twinkle and susceptibility to uncontrolled giggling they both inherited from their father, Harry.

  So although Sonia keeps her own counsel and could no more turn her back on her community than cut off her legs, her sympathies lie with Charles. She admires the courage and patience it takes for him to expose himself to the whips of his mother’s sarcasm and emotional manipulation week after week.

  ‘Courage, mon brave,’ she says, giving Charles a gentle push in the small of his back to usher him out of the kitchen.

  As Charles enters the lounge, there’s a sudden silence and both his parents turn to look at him. Millie is scowling and Harry stands with his arms and his eyebrows raised in supplication. Millie turns from her husband and sits.

  ‘Hello, son,’ says Harry, hugging Charles and kissing him on both cheeks. Charles holds his diminutive father at arm’s length, a quizzical expression on his face. Harry Horowitz is a reserved, soft-spoken man, not given to emotional displays, so this greeting is unusual.

  ‘Everything OK, pops?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t everything be OK?’

  Charles smiles. ‘No reason.’ He turns to his mother and bends to kiss her. She receives the light brush of his lips on her cheek without quite flinching but makes no movement in response. It’s like kissing a statue. ‘Hello, mum.’

  ‘I’ll see if Sonia needs a hand,’ she replies, and she stands and walks directly out of the room. Charles watches her departing back and turns to his father, who he finds studying his shoes.

  ‘What’s going on, dad?’ Charles asks quietly. ‘Did I cause that?’

  Harry smiles sadly and shakes his head. ‘No, of course not.’ He sits, patting the seat beside him on the couch. ‘Sit. Tell me what you’ve been up to.’

  Charles hesitates and looks at the open doorway through which his mother has just departed. Millie and Harry have been married for over forty years, and in all that time he has never seen them row.

  Charles distractedly spends a couple of minutes telling Harry something about the cases on which he working, but neither is really paying attention.

  There’s a pause in Charles’s flow. Then:

  ‘And how are things with the boys?’ asks Harry.

  Charles knows exactly to what his father is referring: his long-running and complex relationship with the Kray twins.

  ‘Quiet,’ replies Charles, simply.

  ‘Resolved?’

  Charles shakes his head, and lowers his voice. ‘Not really. They’re still broigus over the Izzy thing.’

  Charles almost never uses Yiddish. It’s another marker of his Jewishness to which he’d prefer not to draw attention, but in the company of his brother and father it occasionally slips out. It’s familiar and comfortable; moreover, there are some expressions the nuances of which cannot be conveyed in English. To describe the Kray twins as “broigus”, loosely, offended or “miffed”, is a significant understatement. Ronnie Kray has more than once tried to have Charles killed for both real and imagined wrongs. Most recently Izzy Conway, Charles’s cousin, was manipulated by the Twins into attempting to murder Charles. Charles won that battle, but at the cost of Izzy’s life. The setback only reinforced Ronnie’s determination to settle scores. On the other hand, Charles’s relationship with Reggie is more nuanced; faint childhood bonds still join them. Accordingly, an undeclared armistice now exists; the Krays have material on Charles which would end his career and land him in prison and, for the present at least, they consider the blackmail potential to be more useful to them than having Charles dead. The debt has yet to be called in; it’s the suspense, waiting for that particular axe to fall, that’s responsible for Charles’s insomnia, night after night after night.

  David puts his head into the room.

  ‘We’re ready.’

  The family gathers around the Shabbat table in the dining room and Sonia says the ancient prayers to usher in the sabbath and bless the bread and wine. The family sits to eat, chicken soup with dumplings followed by roast chicken and vegetables, all prepared before the sabbath began. David and Charles exchange news, Harry and Sonia contributing occasionally, but Charles notes that Millie is even more tight-lipped than usual.

  The soup and main course finished, Sonia and David collect the plates and return to the table with bowls of stewed fruit for dessert. They sit, and Sonia smiles at David as he takes her hand.

  ‘We have an announcement,’ he says.

  He pauses, looking into the faces of those he loves around the table, savouring the moment. His eyes are shining and Charles’s memory goes back to the moment in synagogue when, blessings completed and glass stamped upon, his brother took his new bride in his arms. The same radiance fills David’s face now, and Charles guesses what’s about to follow. David turns to Sonia and nods encouragement.

  ‘We’re expecting,’ she says simply.

  ‘In early January,’ adds David.

  The room fills with exclamations, hugs, kisses and congratulations. David points behind Charles at a bottle of champagne on the sideboard and indicates that he should open it. Charles complies while everyone else chatters, pouring five glasses and handing them around the table.

  ‘I’m so proud of you, David,’ says Millie, toasting the couple to her left. ‘A real mensche, you’ve become. And you, Sonia, a balabusta.’

  Charles can’t disagree that his brother is an honourable man, a man of integrity, nor that his sister-in-law is a good Jewish homemaker. It’s the scornful challenge on his mother’s face as she turns defiantly towards him that reveals the subtext to everyone in the room, which falls uncomfortably silent. Charles is neither a mensch, nor has he married a balabusta. Charles fixes a good-humoured smile to his face and says nothing.

  ‘Now, now, Mum,’ soothes David. ‘This is a time for celebration.’

  ‘What did I say?’ Millie protests. She turns back to Charles. ‘Did I say anything?’

  ‘You didn’t need to,’ says Charles quietly. ‘We all know exactly how you feel.’

  ‘So now you’re a mind reader?’ challenges Millie, her voice rising. ‘My oh-so-clever barrister son, the successful professional man.’ She is almost shouting. ‘Now he’s a mind reader too!’

  ‘Millie,’ intervenes Harry softly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t start.’

  ‘Well, something should be said. It should have been said years ago. And if you won’t —’ and she flashes an angry glance at Harry, and Charles wonders if she’s inadvertently revealed the subject of their disagreement earlier — ‘I shall.’

  ‘Not now —’

  ‘Please —’ say Harry and David simultaneously, but Millie’s fuse, smouldering even before Charles arrived, is aflame. She’s worked herself up into a righteous fury and cannot hear. She bangs her champagne glass on the table, shifts in her seat and squares up to Charles. Here we go, he thinks, and maybe it is time for some honesty. A showdown has been brewing for months, years in fact; he just wishes she’d chosen some other occasion.

  ‘A succession of shiksas, you inflict on us. First the hoity-toity one, God rest her soul. Then a bunch whose names people show me in the papers but,
thank God, you never brought home. And then finally, little Sally.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Did we make her welcome?’

  ‘Sally? Yes, Mum, you did,’ replies Charles, still attempting conciliation. ‘You were very kind to her.’

  ‘You’ll never know what that cost me … us!’ she says, her voice full of bitterness. ‘But we did it, for you, for our great and mighty son, the one who’s in the papers every day already! Just to keep the peace.’

  ‘No, Millie,’ intervenes Harry softly. ‘We did it because we love him, even though he … he…’

  ‘Even though he broke our hearts. Say it, Harry! It’s time he heard the truth!’

  Harry looks away as his wife continues her attack.

  ‘We made her welcome, treated her as if she was your wife, instead of some cheap shiksa you were shacked up with!’

  ‘And I was grateful, Mum. So was she. I know it was hard for you.’

  ‘And now what? You throw it back in our faces!’

  ‘Throw it back in your face?’ asks Charles, finally goaded into raising his voice. ‘What on earth do you mean by that?’

  ‘You just dumped the poor girl.’

  Charles, astounded, looks to the others, baffled at his mother’s logic. ‘That’s not what happened at all, Mum. We split up; it happens.’

  ‘You’re a fool!’ Millie throws out.

  ‘Maybe. But if so, it has nothing to do with you. It was between Sally and me. I threw nothing back in your face.’

  ‘For you, we broke our principles —’

  ‘Is that how you see it? Well, it looks different from where I sit! You cast me out of the family because I refused to marry “a nice Jewish girl”! I wouldn’t do as you wanted so, to punish me, you pretended I was dead. For over a decade! Henrietta had to be murdered before you’d acknowledge my existence! What right have you to tell me how I live my life? And then, when I finally found someone I loved, I was again in the wrong for “living in sin” with a shiksa. But you, so gracious, so forgiving, deign to invite Sally and me to your home … for tea!’ continues Charles, his voice dripping with the sarcasm he’d learned at the knee of the master.

  Out of the corner of his eye Charles sees Harry shaking his head sadly, but now the brakes are off and he doesn’t want to stop. ‘Well, thank you for that, your Majesty. And now, now I’m in the wrong because I’m no longer living in sin with her?’ Charles raises his hands to the heavens in exasperation.

  ‘Charlie,’ implores David.

  Charles casts a glance at Sonia, who now sits with her face in her hands, barricading herself against the typhoon of emotion raging around her. David has his arm round her shoulders which heave with emotion.

  Charles’s own shoulders slump in defeat. ‘I’m sorry Davie, Sonia. Really I am. I told you this would happen.’

  Charles drags his jacket off the back of his seat as he stands.

  ‘There’s someone you should really meet, Mum, a chap from my Chambers,’ he says, now more sad than angry.

  ‘Oh yes, why is that then?’ demands Millie, knowing a trap when she sees it but defiant to the last.

  David raises his voice for the first time. ‘Enough, Mum! You’ve already spoiled what should’ve been a special evening.’

  ‘You’d get on well with him,’ continues Charles. ‘You’re both contemptuous of me — in his case ’cos I’ll always be too Jewish, in yours ’cos I’ll never be Jewish enough. I’d like to see that bout.’

  ‘Please don’t go, Charles,’ says Sonia, her tear-streaked face lifting.

  ‘No,’ says Millie. ‘Let him go, already. I’ve had enough of him.’

  Charles pauses. ‘It’s probably best, Sonia. I’m sorry. Mazeltov to you both. It’s wonderful news and I couldn’t be happier for you.’

  Charles navigates round the dining table. As he reaches the dining room door, he turns. His anger has evaporated. What remains is a deep well of unhappiness but, also, clarity.

  ‘Whatever I do, Mum, it’ll never be enough. Instead of trying to bully me into being who you want, why could you never just love me for who I am?’

  CHAPTER 11

  Charles spends another largely sleepless night, his mind teeming with white noise and vivid dreams that he can’t remember on waking, but which leave him tense and moody when he finally drags himself from bed. He decides to go into Chambers where, he hopes, the tranquillity of the Temple and the view over the river will soothe him.

  He walks though the deserted courtyards and climbs the steps to Chambers. The outer doors are still locked, so he’ll be the only person in the building. Some papers have been rolled into a tube and squeezed through the letterbox which is substantially too small for them. The result is that the outer pages are torn and marked. Charles extricates them from the letterbox and then realises with surprise they bear his name. He unfurls the damaged envelope. Inside are the additional statements from Jones. He throws the papers onto his desk and his hat onto the hook behind the door (a perfect shot, for once), tunes his transistor radio to Radio Caroline to catch the last hour of the Gary Kemp show, and returns to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee.

  The Beachboys are belting out Help Me Rhonda when he returns to his desk and the joyous song helps lift Charles’s mood. It climbs further as he opens the new evidence from Jones. The first statement confirms what he expected: the co-axial cable was generic and could have been purchased from most electrical stores. The second is not actually a statement, but a summary of the absence of evidence compiled by Inspector Carr. No boathouse had been found and no shed. No boathouse, therefore no boat; and if there’s no boat, how could the judge have got the body into the centre of Wastwater? Furthermore, if he had any connection with the plastic used to wrap the body, it can’t be proven. All that can be proven is that the plastic sheeting emanated from a company that used to trade in Kent and that it, with the body, ended up four hundred miles away in Wastwater: perhaps a coincidence, perhaps not, but not enough.

  Charles turns to the third, and last, new document. It’s a short statement from a scientist at the Central Research and Support Establishment at Aldermaston, dealing with the plastic bag in which the deceased woman’s head had been encased. The lab had succeeded in completing the wording on the side where the ink had been obliterated by examining the plastic bag for minute indentations left during the printing process.

  It is the final sentence which makes Charles’s heart beat faster. The statement concludes that the bag came from a village food shop in Somerset. Charles leaps to his feet and reaches for a road atlas from his shelves. He turns the pages to the map for Somerset, pores over it for a moment and then punches the air. He leafs frantically through the documents on his desk for the scrap of paper on which he scribbled Jones’s telephone number. After throwing most of the contents of his desk onto the threadbare carpet, he eventually finds and dials the number.

  ‘Jones?’

  ‘Who’s speaking?’ The voice does not belong to the diminutive Canadian solicitor.

  ‘My name’s Charles Holborne. I was counsel instructed on a recent … to advise on evidence.’

  ‘I’m sorry sir, but he’s not in today. Can I take a message for him?’

  ‘What about the police officers who were working with him? There was an Inspector Carr from Cumberland I think, and a local superintendent.’

  ‘Yes, sir, that would be Superintendent Hook. I’m afraid he’s not in today either, and I believe Inspector Carr has returned north.’

  ‘Shit!’

  ‘Sorry, sir?’

  ‘Never mind. Please can you get a message to Mr Jones as soon as possible and tell him to contact me? He has my numbers both here in Chambers and at my home.’

  ‘Will do, sir.’

  Little more than an hour later, Charles hears the phone ringing in the clerk’s room downstairs. He races out onto the landing, leaps down the stairs two at a time, and bangs open the door to the room just in time to catch the call.

&
nbsp; ‘Holborne,’ he announces breathlessly.

  ‘Mr Holborne, this is Superintendent Hook. I saw a note on a colleague’s desk to the effect that you need to get in touch with Jones urgently. Can I help?’

  ‘Yes, Superintendent, thank you for calling. I think I can get you a search warrant of the judge’s present home.’

  ‘How come? I thought we were dead in the water. If you’ll excuse the pun.’

  Charles smiles grimly. ‘Well, we have blood at the former matrimonial home. The body was wrapped in plastic from a factory twenty-two miles from that property. Not enough on its own, I agree. But the plastic bag found over the deceased’s head comes from a village store only two miles from the oldest boy’s school. That’s where the judge says he was the day after his wife disappeared. We now have a connection with every stage on the body’s potential journey: Kent, then Somerset, then Wastwater. Not enough to persuade a jury to convict on its own perhaps, but I think it’s enough to get us a warrant to search his present home.’

  The line goes silent as the Superintendent considers Charles’s theory.

  ‘Would you feel confident arguing that before a magistrate?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘Under normal circumstances I’d be perfectly happy to take this decision myself but, given the identity of the suspect… Leave it with me and I’ll see if I can dig up Jones. How’s your diary for tomorrow?’

  ‘Well, by chance, I’m going to be at Maidstone Assizes anyway. If Jones goes with it, have him speak to my clerk about timing, but it should certainly be possible.’

  ‘It is enough to arrest the suspect?’

  ‘Yes, I think it is.’

  ‘On what charge? Disposal of a corpse with intent to prevent an inquest?’