by Tom Trott
I headed back into the hallway and crept up the stairs. I wanted to check the house was clear before I went where I needed to go. On the first floor there was Joy’s bedroom, but I didn’t dare do any more than lean my head in in case someone in the flats saw me or my shadow. There were posters and books and an oboe in a case. It was just your average young girl’s bedroom to me, I don’t know enough about what’s popular to know how weird or not-weird she was.
The other rooms included a home gym and an office to run their charity from. I was sure this contained a treasure trove of interesting financial information, but I had no way of copying it and not enough time to study it if I had.
I climbed another set of stairs into the loft conversion. It was their bedroom, unsurprisingly fashionable, and an en suite. I wanted to look through all their drawers but I was confident the house was empty and that was all I was up here to find out.
I tiptoed back down both sets of stairs and with a quick glance front and back and a short listen, tried the handle on the cupboard under the stairs. It was locked, but this was the type of lock I could pick with nothing but a paperclip and my tongue. It was open in less than ten seconds. What greeted me was a wall of stuff: an old pram, an old hoover, a spare washing up bowl, wellies, strange old products for cleaning strange old metals, all the crap you always find in those cupboards. The pram was piled on the top and it was the first thing I reached in to remove. I pulled it out and the most extraordinary thing happened: everything else came with it. It was all one piece, superglued.
I had no time to admire the genius of it, instead with my torch I searched for what had to be there. Sticking out of the floor there was a small eye hook. It wasn’t quite what I was expecting, but it would do. I could see on the underside of the stairs, set down a few from directly above, its partner hook. A ball of string was part of the display that had been inside, so I cut off a piece with my flick knife, threaded it through the eye hook and heaved with all my might. The trapdoor lifted up easily and I slipped a hand under it, pulling it fully open and connecting the two hooks. I flicked on my torch and stared down at a set of rickety wooden steps, down to a metal door.
Step by step I went; each creaking, and threatening to buckle beneath me. Finally I reached the bottom and pushed open the heavy, rusted door, swinging the torch beam into the darkness.
I saw a flash of a cellar and maybe a person, I couldn’t be sure. The only thing I was sure of was the cloth clamped to my mouth and that sweet smell.
19
The Society of the Twelve
rough hands threw me down into a chair.
‘What is that?’ a voice inquired.
‘Found him outside, snooping around,’ a voice behind my ear replied.
The room was dark, I could hardly see anything. I was at a table, I knew, and there were windows on the other side. The grey mist made them opaque moonlit panels, strange light fittings. There were four dark shapes in front of me, and between them colours swirled and twinkled in my retinas, a fog of blood vessels. My shoulders felt heavy.
The rough hands searched my pockets, I had nothing but my moped key, tobacco, Rizlas, filters, and my Zippo lighter. The key and lighter were passed into the darkness. Moments later they were shoved back into my pockets with the rest.
‘Who are you, and what are you doing here?’ one of the shapes enquired.
I didn’t answer it. Things were beginning to focus. There were indeed four people opposite me and another behind, pushing my shoulders down into the chair. It was the shape in the middle that was doing all the talking. He had a pleasant voice. The room smelt of something. Lavender maybe.
‘What were you doing outside? I won’t ask again.’
I still didn’t answer.
‘Break his finger.’
The man behind clamped my right hand to the table, I clawed with my left to try and stop him, but he already had my middle finger in his grip. He folded it back until the joints were touching the hairs on the back of my hand. Crack.
Someone slapped me. I must have blacked out. I was tied to the chair now. My hands behind my back, the right one numb and throbbing. It felt like someone was inflating it with a bicycle pump. It might burst any moment.
I looked up. All five were now sitting at the table. The room was still a mystery, nothing but darkness and the white windows of fog, but light and shadow began to form on their faces as my eyes adjusted, pupils dilating.
‘I told you I won’t ask again,’ said the man in the middle.
‘I wasn’t doing anything,’ I told him.
‘I wonder how many fingers we will have to break before I get a satisfactory answer. I’m quite prepared to find out.’
His voice had all the technical qualities of a young man, but the accent and the flow of speech was something from another era. Peter Cushing? Alec Guinness? O’Toole? Something along those lines. Class, that was it. The voice had class.
The larger man pulled his chair closer to mine and without getting up reached round my back toward my hands.
‘I was only coming here to nick stuff!’ I shouted.
The big man stopped, sat back again.
The exertion had pushed more blood into my hand, it throbbed harder and a wave of intense pain washed over me. I tried not to vomit. Instead I stared at the blur opposite. I couldn’t see anything but his silhouette, inside it stars and galaxies seemed to wheel around. I was staring into a crack in the universe.
‘A burglar,’ it said. ‘How disappointing. Take it outside and dispose of it.’
The big man stood up and before I could think he was dragging the chair out of the room, and me with it.
‘No!’ I screamed. Think, goddammit! Save your life! ‘I know about the taxis!’
‘Wait!’ the voice commanded.
The big man placed the chair back on its feet. We were by the door. This was a function room, as characterless as they all are. Tonight its function was interrogation and torture.
‘Bring him back.’
The big man did just that and plonked me down at the table.
‘What do you know?’ the voice asked. He pronounced the ‘h’ in that way that only truly trained speakers do.
Adrenaline was firing. My brain was firing. I could lose my life tonight. And suddenly I heard new sounds and there was more light in the room. Every detail might be important.
I could make out the people a little more clearly. On the left was a black woman in a sharp dark dress, wearing over it a brightly painted chunky wooden necklace. She wore gold Fulani earrings and her hair was clipped short. Her eyes were fierce and she looked as though she would have no qualms about driving one of her stiletto heels through my eye socket. We’ll call her the African Queen. I know that name might be a little racist, but it’s where my brain went, probably because of the film.
Next to her was the older man, probably in his sixties, that Jilani had picked up from Sussex Square. He was wearing a short sleeve shirt with a pen in the breast pocket, and a tie. He had white hair, a white moustache, kind blue eyes, and a large belly. He looked like Father Christmas without the beard, dressed to attend a regional sales conference.
On the other side of the table was another older man, even older, wearing a midnight blue crushed velvet suit jacket that caught the light, over a white shirt. His tongue would dart out of his mouth from time to time and I was worried it was going to shoot out all the way and hit me like a chameleon.
Next to him and closest to me was the larger man. He wasn’t quite so impressive now that I could see him, but I knew what those hands could do. He looked like an ex-footballer, the type that has let themselves go a bit but still gets exercise running up and down the side of their children’s games. Not someone I would ever give a second look.
And in the middle of them all sat the voice that smelt of lavender. He was backlit into silhouette and framed by a white panel of fog. My eyes were drunk on the moonlight but all it illuminated were the orbits of bone around his
large dark sockets, his exceptionally high cheekbones, and where his cheeks hung off them down to his chin. This simple outline gave the impression of a cattle skull.
‘I’m waiting,’ he intoned.
I cleared my throat. ‘Well, I know that you pay taxi drivers to ferry you to your secret meetings.’
There was a moment’s silence whilst he thought about it, like a computer processing my words. ‘And how do you know this?’
‘I just figured it out. I’m smart like that.’
‘Mmm… I do find deception incredibly tiresome. Especially from someone who lacks the proper experience. Something tells me someone needs to pay Mr Jilani a visit tomorrow. And Mrs Jilani.’
Shit. There was only one way to play this: ‘It’s a shame you can’t kidnap their daughter again.’
‘So it was the Jilanis. Thank you.’
Double shit. So he was cleverer than me, big deal. We all have our strengths, I had to play to my mine. And there’s one thing no one can beat me at: being irritating. I had to get under his skin. If he had skin.
‘I’m not the only one who knows.’
‘Really?’
‘And it’s not all I know.’
‘I see. What else do you know?’
‘Why should I tell you?’
‘Perhaps to prove that you’re not lying. Which I know you are. Perhaps to stay alive, if you’re still labouring under the impression that you can do so.’
I couldn’t answer that.
‘I thought so. How tragic.’
‘You prey on desperate immigrants, always with families. Is that only as leverage? Or because you know they’re more likely to take your money?’
It was his turn not to answer.
‘You give them a burner phone, text them the pickup, and then tell them where you want to be taken. Or in your case, you pass them a little printed slip of paper. How am I doing so far?’
There was that little silence again. Processing. Then: ‘The only thing that’s interesting me is who you are. I believe that you’re a burglar, by trade,’ he gave a little scoff, ‘if one can call it that. Perhaps in your circle. But what is your connection to the Jilanis? One imagines you didn’t burgle them. Why would they hire a burglar to find me?’
‘No one hired me to find you.’
‘Of course: the girl. Sadly for the Jilanis, and for you, I can guarantee that you will never find her.’
‘You should have given her back. Then we wouldn’t be in this situation—’
‘I never go back on my word,’ he snapped, ‘burglar.’
‘And just because some guy pinched your wallet? What did you have in there, some receipts you wanted? Donor card?’
‘You’re being facetious, how amusing.’
‘No, someone as shy as you wouldn’t carry anything so identifiable.’ I thought about the slips of paper, the latex gloves. ‘Fingerprints?’
‘I don’t leave fingerprints.’
‘Of course not.’
I thought about it for a few more moments. He kept his face in shadow, he never spoke to them, he didn’t even write the notes by hand, and he wore gloves at all times. Then it came to me, there was one thing he couldn’t avoid:
‘DNA.’
His cheeks moved ever so slightly. Maybe it was a smile.
‘I bet that really frustrates you. Little bits of your skin and hair that can’t be trusted to keep schtum. And if the police found that wallet they’d have your DNA on file forever.’
‘But they didn’t.’
‘No, I don’t suppose they did,’ I sighed. ‘When the guy overdosed, why didn’t you give her back?’
‘I always keep my word.’
He had told Jilani that if he killed the man he’d get his daughter back. He hadn’t. That was that.
‘Do you know who we are?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I replied honestly.
‘We are the Society of the Twelve. Do you know what that is?’
‘No.’
‘Perhaps you should read a book, once in a while.’
I have read books since that told me the little there is to know about the Society of the Twelve. It was an ancient governing board of Brighthelmstone, to be comprised of eight fishermen and four landsmen who were together “the ancientest, gravest, and wisest inhabitants” according to 1580’s The Book Of All The Auncient Customs heretoforeused amonge the fishermen of the Toune of Brighthelmston. Their spelling, not mine.
This group of four men and one woman sitting in front of me were members of what I can only assume is a modern equivalent with a keen respect for history. Criminals. Businesspeople. Councillors? Police? I can only guess. But at the time the words meant nothing, so let’s get back to it, no one wants another history lesson from me.
‘What are we playing?’ I asked.
I asked because there was a wooden box on the table with a set of gold hinges set flush into one of the sides. It could be a chess set, but then the board would be on the outside, and the outside was plain wood. That meant it wasn’t drafts or Chinese chequers either. Could be backgammon, that would be on the inside; but you can’t play backgammon with five people. I figured it had to be cards. Bridge and Canasta are both a maximum of four as far as I was aware, same goes for Hearts.
I looked between them. ‘Poker?’
None of them answered.
‘Knock-out whist?’
‘It is a game of skill and bluff, and above all, subtlety,’ the silhouette explained. ‘It wouldn’t interest you.’
‘Worried I’d beat you at it? None of you look like the gambling type.’ I looked at the big man, ‘you, maybe.’
‘And you are?’ the voice asked.
‘When you don’t have any money you learn to make it whichever way you can.’
‘Fascinating.’ His voice was as dry as a martini.
‘You think you’re good at this game, don’t you; I can tell. Want to put it to the test?’
‘What on earth could you offer as your stake?’
‘The only thing I have: my life.’
Silence greeted me once again. The outline of his cheeks moved in the moonlight. ‘But surely that’s mine to offer, not yours.’
‘Well, we can disagree on that, but let’s face it, it’s the only thing on the table. Why don’t we make it official?’
Silence.
‘Does that not sound like fun?’ I asked.
‘It does rather.’
Father Christmas looked into the darkness and saw something I couldn’t, then he reached forward and undid the gold catch on the other side of the box.
‘Very well, burglar,’ the voice said, ‘let’s play.’
20
Mother of Mercy
darkness. Complete darkness. And the smell of damp. I was on a hard, cold floor. Something was covering my eyes. I reached to pull it off but my hands wouldn’t budge. They were tied to something. I sat up against a stone wall, hit my head, and went spinning. I came back to earth. Then I groped what felt like a copper pipe. And now I wasn’t sure if there was something covering my eyes. I couldn’t feel anything.
What the hell is going on?
‘Can’t you figure that out?’ a voice replied.
I scoured the darkness, but couldn’t see anything. ‘Who’s there?’
I glanced to my left and almost jumped out of my skin. He was leaning right next to me, in spotlight: Richard. Fucking. Daye. We were tied to the pipe together.
‘Where are we?’ he asked.
‘How do I know?’
‘Where did you go?’
Shit. I remembered. Some of the houses on York Avenue were built with cellars. Those glass tiles on the patio, they were light wells, just like on Tidy Street. Just like half of North Laine.
‘Why didn’t you tell anyone?’
‘There wasn’t time. And I had to be sure.’
‘Sure enough now?’
‘Very funny.’
I considered the ramifications before I said it o
ut loud: ‘They kidnapped their own daughter.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘You’re a detective, detect.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You can do better than that.’
‘Can I?’
‘Yes,’ said Clarence, as he crouched down in front of me. ‘What did I tell you?’
‘That everything would become clear tomorrow morning. Right around dawn.’
‘And what did that mean?’
‘It was your poncey way of saying this was all to do with Firstlights. You’re wrong.’
‘What did I tell you about Firstlights?’ Daye asked.
‘They’re in debt.’
‘And?’
‘Their house is tied up in it.’
‘Everything they own.’
‘And how does a charity get out of debt?’
‘Donations.’
‘From?’ asked Clarence.
‘People,’ I told him.
‘And how do people hear about a charity? What makes them donate?’
I looked at him incredulously. ‘Publicity?’
He had a mad smile on his face.
‘No,’ I told him, ‘people don’t abduct their own daughters for publicity.’
‘It’s not publicity,’ Daye stated definitively, ‘it’s money.’
‘Publicity,’ said Clarence.
‘Money,’ said Daye.
‘You’re both wrong.’
There was another voice. It was getting crowded in here.
‘Still playing detective?’
‘Fuck off, McCready.’
‘This is where you belong: down here with the rats.’
‘At the church you told me the Tothovas were “very important people”. What the hell did that mean?’
‘Exactly what it sounded like: that they’re better than you.’
‘They’re important. Important how?’
‘To the city.’
‘To you…?’ It dawned on me: ‘Goldsmid. Of course.’
‘What about it?’