Dying to Read

by John Elliott

  Jerzy regarded Hamish quizzically. ‘I wouldn’t have said literary quotations were normally your MO, DC Ogden. Your dalliance with your young lady is either widening your horizons or leading you up the garden path. As far as I know books never solved a crime. You’d do well to remember that.’

  As no suitable riposte either literary or CID procedural immediately came to mind, added to which because he had no idea exactly what had provoked Jerzy’s remark, Hamish concentrated on studying the road signs in anticipation of their arrival in Dollis Hill itself. Jerzy meanwhile fingering his seatbelt absentmindedly lapsed back into his own thoughts whatever they were. ‘Gladstone Park,’ said Hamish. ‘We’re nearly there. I suppose it must have some connection with the old Victorian prime minister.’

  ‘Connections,’ said Jerzy, ‘are our ham hocks and cabbage, our chips and malt vinegar. Things that always go together. Sometimes there’s too much history. Sometimes not enough.’

  ‘Are you feeling alright, guv?’ Hamish essayed a Pat impersonation.

  ‘Of course not. We’ve a murder to solve, and at the moment we don’t know exactly who is dead. Mister or should I say Mistress Bones was in prison with Micky Rubin. Connection. Joan Oliphant picks the Bones Detective Agency to act for her. Connection. LR is possibly Lucy Rubin, who seems to have vanished like the morning dew. Connection. We’re at Clapham Junction for connections, but our destination is far from clear.’

  Hamish hadn’t seen him so morose in all the time he’d been at Feltham. Was it the prospect of leaving before they got a result, of handing over to someone new? Someone who would be different. Someone who perhaps wouldn’t care. ‘I don’t know if the Montevideo express leaves from platform 12, but I’m sure it’s got the answers. Aram sounds like our prime suspect.’

  Jerzy smiled. ‘Keep finding our way to the Bones residence. It’s all I ask.’

  The insistent hollering of an emergency vehicle somewhere behind halted any further ruminations. A moment later an ambulance sped past.

  ‘One only it seems,’ said Hamish, glancing in the mirror. ‘They usually come mob handed. It should be second right. Here we are. This is the turning. Norma’s abode must be halfway.’ He stopped speaking. Two ambulance men were leaning over a prostrate figure on the pavement. A woman was anxiously looking on. ‘Should we?’

  Jerzy nodded. They got out.

  ‘We can manage. It’s under control,’ said one of the paramedics. ‘No need to detain you.’

  ‘Police.’ Hamish fished out his warrant card.

  ‘I didn’t know you’d called them,’ said the other to the woman.

  ‘I didn’t,’ she replied.

  Now he had a clearer view of the supine body, Hamish realised they had arrived too late. ‘Are you Alison?’ he said. ‘How bad is she? I’m Hamish Ogden by the way and this is my DI, Jerzy Turostowski.’

  ‘Yes I am. Funny. I knew a Turostowski once. Not a name you come across every day. Thin girl. Worked at the shoe shop in Uxbridge High Road. Sylvie, I think.’ Alison shuddered. ‘I don’t know what I’m talking about. She’s too old for this to happen to her. Concussion they say.’

  Hamish touched her arm then held her hand. Her face was white. She was shivering in spite of the clement evening. ‘Take your time. Let’s sit on the wall here. They’ve obviously got things under control.’ He steered her towards a low parapet fronting a gnome-strewn garden.

  Jerzy, who had been conversing with the ambulance men, came over and joined them. ‘A few moments still before they move him,’ he said. ‘Will you go with them to the hospital?’

  Alison nodded. ‘Lucky really. I mean Norma could have been lying there God knows how long before someone did anything. I hadn’t planned to go out, but then I decided to post a letter I’d been meaning to send and had kept forgetting. Someone attacked her, I’m sure. There’s a gash to the side of her head. A bit of blood. I felt her pulse then used my mobile. She came round for a moment but didn’t speak, tried to raise herself on her elbow. I kept her still. They arrived very quickly, really, although it didn’t feel like it. I thought I could handle it, but it seems I can’t.’ Her eyes swelled with tears.

  ‘Yes, it’s probably an assault. They don’t think it was caused by just a fall. I’ve relayed the details to the local police.’

  ‘Won’t you follow it up?’ Alison turned to Hamish. ‘You’ve met Norma. And there’s Geraldine. I called her as well. She’s going to the hospital. She mentioned it might be Micky Rubin’s doing. We need your help.’

  Hamish looked to Jerzy, who smiled non-committally. Across the road they were carefully easing Norma into the vehicle on a stretcher. ‘It’s not our patch. However, if it fits in any way into the murder of Augustin Cox we’ll be involved.’

  Alison rose. ‘I must go.’ The three of them walked over to the ambulance. Alison got in

  ‘Remember she’s actually a bloke,’ Hamish said to the shorter of the two paramedics as he closed the rear door.

  ‘You don’t say,’ he replied ironically. ‘London’s full of surprises.’

  ‘Dangerous job being a PI in deepest Dollis Hill,’ said Jerzy when they were back in the car. ‘Since we’re here let’s take a gander at chez Bones. No.’ he smiled. ‘I can see what you’re thinking, young Hamish. The outside only. I don’t plan to utilise a poorly hidden key. By the way, does Geraldine have one?’

  ‘Presumably, but she’s never mentioned it. There it is.’

  A stunted palm tree ineffectually shaded the path to the front door. The strip of now parched looking grass beside it was gnomeless and unwatered. All was quiet and still. West Hampstead and now Dollis Hill. Norma’s two places. Neither facade revealing the character of their owner. Jerzy’s belief in another place for Augustin. Did it really exist or was it simply the mortuary slab? Augustin and Aram. Who was dead, and who still roamed at liberty? Norma would pull through, of that Hamish was certain, but in such a quiet backwater a casual impromptu assault was as unlikely as Jocky Wilson winning Mastermind. Someone had deliberately made their presence felt.

  Chapter 23

  Busy Busy

  Ensconced in Norma’s favoured armchair hard by the empty fireplace grate, Geraldine thumbed through the pages of Collected Tales Of Edgar Allan Poe until she alighted on the one entitled ‘William Wilson’. The book, sure enough, just as Norma had suddenly recalled, was stoutly, rather than palely, loitering in the annual decline reading pile. Decline and then fall, Geraldine thought ruefully, remembering her recent first sight in hospital of the old battleaxe now thankfully revivified but still more than somewhat rusty, frail and shaken. ‘Oh Geraldine,’ Alison had greeted her whilst stroking Norma’s hand, ‘detection’s not all it’s cracked up to be. There’s more than a lot to be said for chrysant growing or a spot of bee keeping as an alternative.’

  It appeared Norma had seen her attacker: a young man, sneakered and hoodified, whom she had passed without incident until being felled with a blow to the back of her head. The probable weapon she reckoned had been a baseball bat. There had been no attempt at robbery. In both her and Geraldine’s estimation, Micky Rubin might as well have left his calling card. His hospitality at Fortnum’s had only been skin deep. Norma’s prying had come at a heavy price. The local police were suitably sympathetic, but the runes said the chance of an arrest was as likely as Jeremy Paxman judging a bonny baby competition.

  Now stretched out on the elongated sofa across from her, Alison was busy studying the day’s cards at Ayr, Newmarket and Redcar whilst making frequent references to the bulky folder of the Form Book tucked at her side.

  Just as the assiduous turf student no doubt experienced a thrill of imminent success when her chosen nag strode into the lead in the final hundred yards to the winning post, Geraldine felt a tingle of keen anticipation as she contemplated the story’s initial page. Was this really the über-text, the key to Augustin’s murder that they had long sought? If it was, how much wasted time could have been short-circuited, avoided, i
f only Norma had given it precedence over Iris Murdoch and the others she had dabbled in.

  ‘Well here goes,’ she said out loud.

  Alison looked up surprised. ‘I thought reading for some centuries had become a silent communication. You sound like an undecided diver testing the spring of the highest board before daring the plunge.’

  ‘Not far off. This could be our solution, which would be wonderful. Norma’s hunch not mine. Or it could be a false trail that, not to put a fine point on it, would be an absolute bummer.’

  ‘So it’s either Krug or flat, inferior Cava. The only way to tell is to taste and spit.’

  With a nod Geraldine, closing her eyes, metaphorically swilled the text round her imaginary glass before slurping its contents and ejecting them for the moment into the uncertain bucket of speculation. It was time to risk Alison’s so called plunge. She opened her eyes, and the very first words of the very first line brought her excitedly to the surface, “Let me call myself, for the present, William Wilson.” It was going to be Krug. Let me call myself Augustin Cox. Not one person but two, as she had intuited and Norma had defined. She began highlighting relevant direct quotes with a yellow marker.

  “I grew self-willed, addicted to the wildest caprices, and a prey to the most ungovernable passions.”

  “This exception was found in the person of a scholar, who, although no relation, bore the same Christian and surname as myself.”

  “…presumed to compete with me in the studies of the class — in the sports and broils of the play-ground — to refuse implicit belief in my assertions, and submission to my will — indeed, to interfere with my arbitrary dictation in any respect whatsoever.”

  “I saw that we were of the same height, and I perceived that we were even singularly alike in general contour of person and outline of feature.”

  “His cue, which was to perfect an imitation of myself, lay both in words and action; and most admirably did he play his part.”

  “I have already more than once spoken of the disgusting air of patronage which he assumed towards me, and of his frequent officious interference with my will.”

  Following these initial conflicts at preparatory school with his namesake and rival the narrator continued to be dogged by his nemesis’s sudden appearances at Eton — where he interrupted a drunken debauch — and later at University, where he unmasked the cheating at cards which had ruined a young gentleman. His reputation in tatters, the protagonist fled to Europe, but could not escape his accuser’s pursuit. Finally, during the masked carnival in Venice, he confronted his opponent and stabbed him to death. Two more relevant quotes stood out in the ending paragraphs, and Geraldine marked them with a flourish.

  “A large mirror, — so at first it seemed to me in my confusion — now stood where none had been perceptible before; and, as I stepped up to it in extremity of terror, mine own image, but with features all pale and dabbled in blood, advanced to meet me with a feeble and tottering gait.”

  “It was Wilson, but he spoke no longer in a whisper, and I could have fancied that I myself was speaking while he said, ‘You have conquered and I yield. Yet henceforth art thou dead — dead to the World, to Heaven, and to Hope! In me did thou exist — and, in my death, see in this image, which is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered thyself.’”

  ‘You look as though your gothic dip was highly invigorating.’ Alison dropped the Racing Post onto the side table. ‘Tell all.’

  Geraldine grinned. ‘Well, there are still conjectures, but I do think this is our blueprint, our book of the case, you could say.’

  ‘Norma will be pleased. As you know, finding the relevant form line was more of Henrietta’s forte. Well done.’

  ‘Oh, there’s still a way to go. ‘William Wilson’ leaves us with more than one hypothesis: (a) Augustin was a split personality and one of them provoked his murderer (b) there were two Augustins, namely Augustin himself and Aram posing as Augustin.’

  ‘Excuse me. Who he? Aram? I thought there was only one Polish person in all this, the Feltham DI.’

  ‘No. He’s Uruguayan like Augustin’s mother. A woman from Montevideo was writing to him at Augustin’s address, but her letters didn’t arrive when they should have. It’s complicated. Hamish put me in the picture. Anyway, to go back to if there were two of them. Aram, he’s the bad guy like the narrator in this Poe story, kills Augustin.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We don’t have a clear motive yet. He wants to take over completely. Augustin has served his purpose in providing a convenient identity and is now surplus to requirements. There might have been blackmail or threats of exposure.’

  ‘And where’s Hamish with all this?’

  Geraldine got up. The image of a reticent Lacenaire came into her mind and his sudden vivacity whenever Hamish paid them a visit. No, it was ludicrous. Perhaps some of the parrot’s stock phrases had emerged from observing Henrietta’s release from life, but there was no way he could know anything about Augustin or communicate it to the Hamish branch of the law. ‘The writer did it.’ Well the supposed writer in Poe’s story was someone who said, ‘Let me call myself William Wilson.’ Thus implying that was not his real name. ‘Lacenaire might have had the answer all the time,’ she said.

  ‘Lacenaire. You mean out of the mouths of birds and dead white male storytellers.’

  ‘Yes. I think better when I’m on my feet. Hamish was holding something back when we last met. I knew it and he knew it, and sooner rather than later I’ll get it out of him. The writer, who styles himself William Wilson and slays his alter ego, is Aram, I’ll bet a bumper packet of Trill to a policeman’s pension.’

  ‘Steady on. Your copper’s got a lot of years to go, and you don’t yet qualify to get your hands on his pension. Sometimes the art,’ Alison tapped the Form Book, ‘is in knowing when not to bet.’

  *

  Completely contrary to the perceptions of a not so young offender, the Uruguayan authorities reacted to Feltham CID’s inquiries about Aram and Maria Pinson Guisbert with an alacrity that was almost breathtaking.

  ‘Well I’ll be a rat up a drainpipe, not to mention a gold disc Deutchygramaphon,’ Pat enthused as the Inbox attachments blossomed and pollinated. ‘And there’s me thinking mañana would be an idea far too soon. They must really want to make mischief for the boy.’

  Aram was Aram Cufovsky, it transpired. He had led a varied life of petty crime and gang-related assaults quite apart from the initial information regarding under-age rape allegations. He had enjoyed a handful of different street names and had used aliases on several occasions in fraudulent scams. In spite of all the incriminating data they had only managed to bang him up once and that for a minor charge. Three times after he had been brought to court, but three times he had been acquitted.

  ‘Quite the young Felthamite,’ remarked Pat. ‘Pity we didn’t get our mitts on him when he was dossing at Bedfont.’

  The downloaded mug shots of him at twenty showed a surly youth with a shaven head. Helpful references to You Tube and Facebook revealed him, this time with a Mohawk cut, trashing a car. At the end of his set up performance he doffed his dark glasses and raised his finger in a triumphant up yours.

  ‘Gotcha!’ said a delighted Pat. ‘Now let’s put our home grown Augustin alongside.’ She opened the Blythe Fuller photo file. There they were, Aram, presumably in Montevideo, and Aug at Canning Town. Not exactly peas in a pod but very similar in height and build. ‘Ooh, the technology do I love you,’ she cooed at the screen as she magnified their features, transposed hairstyles and ended up with a ‘Little brothers you could be. Momma or poppa might well have been playing away internationally.’ There was no doubt in her mind they bore sufficient resemblance to pass a casual scrutiny as the one person. After all, she reckoned, how often had Bert Hill, bad eyesight anyway, Oswald Dunphy, Leonie and Delman Cesareau really seen Augustin Cox? When it came down to it, probably only on a handful of occasions. A look alike at the same address would ea
sily pass muster, and there had been discrepancies they hadn’t quite understood.

  Abstracting herself from the keyboard for a mini mid-morning break, she found the canteen awash with uniformed wiseacres, dimwits and soothsayers. Her serious attempts to masticate a cheese and lettuce crusty roll were continually accompanied by unwanted side orders of ‘time for a siesta snooze, skipper, arrested your gaucho yet? Your new DI’ll need an interpreter, or you’ll have to learn to speak in English, space programme cancelled under new regime.’ All of which she bore with fortitude and forbearance. How were the darlings, who had led such narrow lives, to know the difference between Argentina and Uruguay? Confined to patrolling the River Crane, the majesty of the River Plate was outside their comprehension. However, she had to admit thoughts of Jerzy departing and Aram, non-gaucho, escaping justice were more sensitive issues. Time, for a change, needed to be on their side.

  When she returned to the Ops room, Jerzy and Hamish were awaiting the imminent arrival of Jimmy Houston, the SOCO. Belated finger print tests of the camcorder and the spanking paddle were finally complete following Jerzy’s admonitions ‘Like old times,’ Jimmy said while looking round the ungentrified office furniture, after a quick rap on the door. ‘I served my apprenticeship here before I found my salvation in sweat and smudges.’

  ‘Results, Jimmy, please.’ Jerzy hastily intervened before Pat could get in with bromides about old offenders or far distant galaxies.

  Waiting for the analysis, for this could clarify what up to now had been a murky line of inquiry, Hamish felt a proprietary flush of pride. Off his own bat he had obtained the camcorder, and they wouldn’t have searched Milly’s place without his party-going endeavours, however embarrassing.

  ‘Well in laymen’s terms,’ Jimmy paused dramatically, clearly enjoying having a rapt audience for once instead of the half listening, attending to other tasks, cursory treatment his findings usually received, ‘discounting Simpson’s prints there are two others on the paddle. One of which matches the one found on the handle of the bathroom door at the murder scene. The other corresponds to Print 6, again at Bedfont, located on the Brentwood chair in the living room. These two also occur on the camcorder. I’ve got the full report here,’ he deposited the file on Jerzy’s desk, ‘but that’s the nub.’