by Tim Ellis
‘Are you coming, Sir?’
‘Yes.’ He climbed in and shut the door.
‘What were you doing?’
‘Seeing if Miss Grieg was being followed.’
Laughter burst from the rear seat. ‘Are we in the middle of a conspiracy? And it’s Mrs actually.’
Parish grunted. ‘I always get it wrong.’
‘You were nearly right. I’m divorced, but I prefer his name to my maiden name of Bracegirdle. Rowan Bracegirdle just doesn’t open doors like Rowan Grieg.’
‘I can imagine.’ He wasn’t happy at her laughing at his paranoia. ‘Richards has told you what happened the last time I tried to find out who my parents were?’
‘She gave me a summary.’
‘And she told you about the clue?’
‘That’s why I’m here.’
‘Did she also tell you that a number of people had to die including two coppers who were assigned to look after my wife?’
‘No, just that an attempt was made on your life.’
‘Well, I don’t want any more people to die because of me. I especially don’t want me or my family to die, so if you think I’m paranoid then so be it.’
‘Sorry, I had no right to laugh.’
No she didn’t. ‘You’re keeping an eye on the cars behind us?’ he said to Richards.
‘Yes.’
Richards drove along the A113 and turned left at the junction with the B173. After a couple of hundred yards she hung a right into the grounds of the Menzies Prince Regent Hotel.
He swivelled in the seat and looked beyond Rowan Grieg through the back window to see if any other cars followed them along the winding road to the hotel, but none did. Not that anyone needed to employ ancient methods of surveillance in the electronic age. They could be using a stealth helicopter or an unmanned drone to watch their every move via infrared video link; be tracking them via satellite, radio frequency tags, or global positioning devices such as their satnav or mobile phones. An electronic bug could be attached to his car, or Rowan Grieg could be a walking blip on a monitor with a chip injected under her skin. In fact, if someone wanted to track them it would be pretty damned easy. With enough money – and P2 would certainly have enough Mafia-laundered money – they could purchase the right people and the right equipment.
It was twenty to nine when Rowan Grieg booked in at the hotel reception. The original building housing the reception – together with a converted chapel – was a listed Georgian grey stone building, but other – newer buildings – were red brick. Two staff – a male and a female in the hotel’s blue and white livery – were standing behind the wooden reception desk.
Parish gave the young man an impression of his credit card and told him to make a note on the computer that he would return tomorrow evening to conclude the transaction. He also gave him his mobile number should there be any problems.
‘Do you want to go up to your room to freshen up or something?’ Parish asked.
‘No, I’m fine, thank you.’
They walked through into the bar and found a table farthest away from a group of noisy revellers. It was a large room, which was obviously used for functions, and the decor was predominantly light wood, dark brown leather on the chairs and bar stools, and a green and yellow patterned carpet. After a while it was clear there was no waiter service, and that Parish would have to go up to the bar and get the drinks. Eventually, he had a Guinness in front of him, Richards a diet coke, and Rowan Grieg a Bacardi and lemonade.
‘Richards tells me you might know who my parents were?’
‘Well, that’s going a bit far. I have an idea, but it would need verification.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Before I tell you my idea let me give you some background. The P2 lodge was reorganised in 1971 by Licio Gelli, and due to its high-profile membership became what has been described as a ‘shadow government’ in Italy. In 1974 a vote was taken by the Grand Orient of Italy to erase P2 from the list of Masonic lodges due to Licio Gelli’s growing influence and the lodge’s illegal activities. From that time P2 became a covert lodge. In other words, as far as Italian freemasonry was concerned the P2 lodge no longer existed, but they did exist and continued to exert their influence from the shadows. Then in March 1981 prosecutors investigating the collapse of Michele Sindona’s financial empire and its links to the Mafia discovered the P2 lodge was still active. Investigators found a list of P2 members at Licio Gelli’s country villa, which included important state officials and politicians, military officers, the heads of the three secret services, and the Italian Prime Minister at the time – Arnaldo Forlani – which brought down the government two months later...’
‘This is a very interesting history lesson of Italian freemasonry, but what has it got...’
‘Please Inspector, let me finish. The list contained 962 names, and the Italian government published the list in May 1981, but by then it contained only 827 names. In 1974 P2 secretly moved their headquarters to London, and on the list investigators found a number of prominent Englishmen.’
‘I’ve never heard...’
‘It was buried by the then Conservative government because rumour has it that many on the list were leading peers, politicians, businessmen, judiciary, and senior military officers, but the main reason it was buried was because a member of royalty was on that list.’
‘Who?’
‘Oh, there are lots of whispers and rumours, but nobody knows for sure. I’ve spent twenty years trying to find out which Englishmen were on that list, and at last I think I’m getting close.’
Parish sat back nursing his Guinness and took a long swallow. ‘Let me get this right. You’re saying that a list of P2 members was found in 1981, the Italian government published it, but omitted 135 names?’
‘Yes.’
‘And that when P2 re-located to London in 1974 they recruited prominent Englishmen to its ranks?’
‘Yes.’
‘How many of the 135 are English?’
‘Again, only rumours, but thirty-five.’
‘Any names?’
‘I have over fifty, but without the list...’ Rowan shrugged.
‘Okay, so you’re suggesting that one of these thirty-five men on the list is my father?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Frati Neri would only be used to refer to the black friars – P2, and a man called Arthur Pocock – your Sir Charles Lathbury – is one of the fifty names rumoured to be on the original list.’
‘You could be a member of royalty,’ Richards said.
He smiled. ‘I could be third in line to the throne. You’d better start calling me “Your Highness” just in case.’
Richards let out a laugh. ‘As if.’
Rowan took a red folder from her bag, delved inside, and withdrew a sheet of paper. ‘This is a copy of the list of fifty names,’ she said passing it to him. ‘The twenty-three that have a line through them are deceased, but the others are very much alive.’
‘When you say you’re “getting close”, what exactly are you getting close to?’
‘A copy of the original list of 962 P2 lodge members. I’m meeting someone tomorrow.’
‘Then what?’
‘I publish. It will be the story I’ll be remembered for.’
He scanned down the list and recognised two names immediately. Walter Day was dead, but James Miller-Gifford – the Chief Constable of Essex – was very much alive.
Chapter Ten
He was still alive after the man had left. How was he still alive? Time after time the man came and inflicted so much pain he thought he would surely die, but afterwards he was surprised to find he was still alive.
Any shame he once felt about being raped by a man had left him long ago, and the anger had dissipated to nothing. What did any of it matter now? He was just glad that the man came at all. In a way, after such a long time, the man was like an old friend come to stay awhile.
Each
visit was the same. After the man had hosed him down, fed him, and satiated himself – the pain began. Sometimes, it was short, but other times it lasted an age. He had tried to keep count of the strips of skin the man had cut from his body, but like trying to keep count of the passage of time it had been an impossible task. The man had taken the thin slivers of skin from nearly every part of him. Did he have any skin left? He could see that the half-inch by three-inch strips had been taken from all the others, but why? What was the man doing with the pieces of skin?
Sometimes, he remembered what food and drink tasted like, and those times were even worse than the pain. He imagined himself eating a cheeseburger from Macdonald’s, or drinking ice-cold orange juice with the bits still in. He hadn’t had food or drink since he’d woken up in this place. There was a plastic needle with a nozzle in the vein of his right arm, and the man regularly connected up a bag of clear liquid to the nozzle that said Hartmann’s Solution on it in black lettering. In his nose he had a tube, into which was injected a gooey liquid. Allan suspected that the liquid contain penicillin as well as food. The man did enough to keep him alive, that was all, but he seemed to know what he was doing.
If he could, he would have ended his own life, but the man had thought of everything. How long had the man been doing this to people – years? Why? What was it all for? He had the idea that he was an experimental subject, just like all the others. One day, in the shopping centre, Animal Rights Campaigners had set up a table right outside the shoe shop. They wanted people to sign their petition to stop animal testing and vivisection. He had ambled out to see what all the fuss was about and seen the horrific pictures. A girl with dreadlocks had explained what they were doing and he signed their petition. He now felt like some of those animals in the pictures, and understood why the girl with the dreadlocks had been so zealous.
He used to ask the man questions, but he was simply ignored. Soon, soon he would die. For a while now he had felt his life ebbing away. He looked forward to the blackness, the wasteland free from pain where he could walk and run again. His eyes welled up, but there was no point in shedding tears, no point at all.
***
Thursday, 14th July
He’d been up since five o’clock, but hadn’t achieved a lot. It was now six-thirty. The list of fifty names lay on the kitchen table next to his mug of cold coffee like a World War II unexploded bomb. He knew that if he started shaking it to see if it rattled, or hit it with a hammer to crack it open, it would most likely destroy him and everyone he cared about. One by one he’d examined the names and tried to fit them into his existing memory schema. Even though the list was as old as he was he knew twelve of the people. Some had been prominent at the time the list was compiled, and some were prominent now. But what took his breath away was the realisation that the sheet of paper was much more than merely a list of names from the past, it was a death warrant in the present.
‘Are you going to tell me who’s on that list?’ Richards said as she shuffled into the kitchen in her Tigger pyjamas and sheepskin slippers.
He slid the paper into his briefcase. ‘No.’
After Rowan Grieg had given him the list last night, and he’d seen the names on it, he quickly folded the paper up and slipped it into the inside pocket of his jacket. Richards was desperate to see it, but he told her she couldn’t. He’d stood up then, thanked Rowan for coming, and agreed to meet her in the bar after work tonight.
‘I thought I was your partner?’
‘Which has nothing to do with the list.’
‘If you hide things from me, how can I help you?’
‘I don’t need your help anymore.’
‘I don’t believe that.’
‘It stops here. I have better things to do with my life than chase ghosts and get everyone around me killed.’
‘You don’t want to know then?’
‘No and you don’t want to know either. There’s a reason the list was buried thirty years ago, and why it’s remained hidden all this time.’
‘And that reason is?’
‘To stop nosy people like you finding out who’s on it.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you’ll end up dead.’
‘You know.’
‘I know I know, that’s why I’m a walking corpse.’
‘Don’t say that, nobody knows you know.’
‘I think you’ll find that they do.’
‘If they know you know they’ll think I know as well, so you may as well tell me.’
He pulled the paper out of his briefcase, stood up, found the giant box of matches in the cupboard next to the hob, and set the list alight over the sink. ‘There, that should solve the problem of your curiosity,’ he said as he swilled the ashes down the plug hole.’
‘I’ll find out tonight when we see her.’
‘No you won’t, because I’m not taking you.’
‘But... I’m your partner.’
‘At work. Right, I’m going to take Digby for his walk. Make sure you’re ready when I get back otherwise you’ll be catching the bus.’
‘I don’t think I like you anymore.’
‘Good, you won’t miss me when I’m gone then.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘I’ve just told you – to take Digby for a walk.’
She stomped out of the kitchen and up the stairs.
He pulled the list out of his briefcase and stuffed it into the back pocket of his trousers.
‘Come on, boy,’ he said to Digby as he hooked the dog’s lead onto the ring of his collar.
***
Ed Gorman had been a Detective Sergeant at Hoddesdon for nine years. He was now forty-five years old, and he hated Jed Parish. If it weren’t for Ray Kowalski he’d have had nothing to do with him and that airhead Mary Richards. Of course, he’d never shown his true feelings, kept them buried deep inside, and played along. What choice did he have? But for six months now it had been eating away at his insides like a parasite.
He should be the Detective Inspector, not Parish. He’d served his time and passed his exams, but he’d been leapfrogged, forgotten, thrown on the scrapheap. Chief Day had called him into the office about nine month’s ago in response to his application for promotion to DI.
‘You’re too old,’ The Chief had said, but what he’d really meant was that he wasn’t considered DI material, and then they’d promoted Parish six months ago instead.
Since then his heart and mind hadn’t really been on the job. He’d been going through the motions, but he’d fallen into a deep depression. Parish’s star was in the ascendancy while his was spiralling into the depths of hell. He was barely surviving. The job didn’t mean anything anymore. It was a struggle to get out of bed each morning.
And then, to twist the knife, on Tuesday morning, after he’d returned from the stake-out at the cemetery to catch that lunatic, Daisy had said she was leaving him and taking the kids with her. After twenty-three years of marriage how could a woman do something like that?
The kids were long ago in bed. He and Daisy were sitting at the kitchen table. He stood up and grabbed himself a beer from the fridge, and then spent a long time pleading and rationalising with her, but she wouldn’t change her mind. She said there was no one else, but he didn’t believe her. Something inside him snapped, and he grabbed her round the throat. In all the time they’d been married he’d never laid a finger on her that wasn’t out of love, but without her he was nothing. Without his children he may as well curl up and die. Before he realised what had happened Daisy lay dead on the tiled floor like a broken flower.
For what seemed like an eternity he stood there staring at his childhood sweetheart, at the hands that surely belonged to someone else. He was a murder detective not a murderer, who the hell had murdered his wife, the mother of his children? Who was the evil bastard standing in his kitchen weeping crocodile tears? After a very long time, he knew what he had to do. He crept upstairs, and one by one he smothered his child
ren – Alice, Dorothy, and Paul. These children had been his life’s blood, the fruit of his loins, the legacy he would leave behind him, but he knew he couldn’t be without them. As he carried them through into his bedroom and lay them down next to each other he hoped they would all be together in heaven, if such a place existed. Then, he went back downstairs and carried Daisy up to the bedroom, placing her next to her children.
His plan was to lie down on the bed with his family, to swallow every tablet in the medicine cabinet, but he couldn’t do it. When it came down to actually killing himself he realised he was a coward. He had wept until there was nothing left inside him, and then gone to work and pretended he was still Ed Gorman the husband, the father, the murder detective.
Now, here he was drinking coffee, eating the remains of the cornflakes, and waiting for Ray Kowalski to beep his horn while his family lay rotting upstairs. He knew he had to make a decision soon, before what he’d done was discovered. How many times had he seen this scenario on the television news – a man kills his wife and children, and then himself? But he hadn’t killed himself – he was a murderer and a coward. He’d be taken into custody, tried and convicted. They’d throw away the key, and he’d be lucky if he lasted a month in prison. An ex-copper would be a walking dead man. No, it all had to end before anyone found out.
He heard the horn on Ray Kowalski’s Volvo Estate.
At the front door he turned and called goodbye to Daisy.
‘Morning, Ed. Daisy and the kids okay?’
‘Hi, Ray. Yeah, they’re fine. Daisy’s feeling a bit off this morning, otherwise she’d have come out and said hello.’
‘Did you drink the homemade beer last night that Parish gave us?’
‘No, why?’
‘Christ, it sent me doolally after one glass, but it was like nectar from the gods.’