by Adam Baron
‘But you looked further on.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you were looking for Mitchell.’
‘That’s right. I remembered him saying that the night barman had just come on. That meant that his shift was over. And there he was, following Edward. He was only a few minutes behind. He didn’t need to keep too close because he knew where Edward was going.’
‘To the car park?’
‘Yes. They have a separate area for the airport staff. He may have heard Edward talk about his car or just guessed that he had one. Either way he knew where to go.’
‘But what happened? I mean, had Edward arranged to meet him?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘My guess is no. I think he followed him there and then begged a lift off him. He may have said that his car had broken down or something, and then pretended to suddenly recognize him from the bar where Edward had been sitting. Edward won’t have been too concerned about taking him. Why should he be? The man was friendly enough behind the bar, he won’t have asked Edward to drive out of his way. Edward was a kind man, he would have taken him.’
‘And then …’ Morgan’s words tailed off. I left a second and studied Morgan’s face. He wanted me to go through it all.
‘Well, I think that Mitchell just assumed your brother was gay, having seen him chatting to a man and then leaving with him. Apparently, some gay flight staff did visit his bar. Maybe he thought he could kill both of them, and this new twist was too good to pass up. But the other man had gone, so he begged a lift and then instead of Edward dropping him off somewhere he took him home, to his house.’
‘And …’
‘And then they shared a bath, and had intercourse and …’
‘No!’ the MP said. ‘Not Edward! I just can’t see it. I just can’t. He wasn’t gay, he wasn’t!’
‘Mr Morgan,’ I said. I leant forward in my chair and lowered my voice. ‘He didn’t have to be. You, for instance. You are gay, yet you’re married.’
‘Yes, but that’s different. I didn’t know, not for a long time …’
‘But if you had known, would you not have ever thought of sleeping with a woman? Wouldn’t you have been curious to know what it would have been like, to do that?’
The MP looked confused. ‘I don’t know. No. Yes. Yes, maybe I would. I see what you mean.’
‘You don’t have to be certain you’re gay or even really think it to wonder. Edward wondered. And I suppose Mitchell came on to him in the car. And Edward’s wife was away, and they hadn’t been getting on too well. Edward just thought he’d try it. You yourself said he was very open about things like that, and there was no reason anyone would find out. So he did what he did and then he was unlucky. Very unlucky. Just like Mitchell’s other victims.’
‘God,’ the MP said. ‘It’s all so … God.’
I let him take in what I had told him. There really wasn’t any doubt about it. The police had found something in Alex Mitchell’s flat which could only have come from Edward. I didn’t tell Morgan about that yet though. I watched him as a look of incomprehension came over his face.
‘How could a man do such horrible things?’ the MP asked, as if I could tell him. ‘I mean, how on earth? To Edward, and all these other people?’
‘It’s impossible to say,’ I told him. ‘No doubt there’ll be some lawyers who’ll come up with reasons, and some faux psychiatrist-cum-hack writer who’ll put a book out blaming it all on his childhood. But no one will ever really know. Not really. I doubt he knew himself. If he had he might not have felt the need to do it. My own theory is that it’s all about power.’
‘Power? In what sense?’
‘The most basic sense of all. Something about him told him he had no power in his life. Maybe he came from a very straight background and hated the power his sexual feelings had over him. He tried to pretend he had power over them by murdering homosexuals, these men who he saw sometimes and couldn’t help feeling attracted to. This also had the effect of making him feel empowered because, as soon as he had begun, he could feel the power that he had over the police, who couldn’t catch him. It made him feel strong, like he mattered.’
Sir Peter nodded. ‘And the boy in your flat. More of the same?’
’Probably,’ I said. ’Mitchell had nothing on me. I think it irked him. I think, when I spoke to him at the airport, that I gave the impression of being in control, of not being fazed by what he was doing. What I was really feeling was that I was wasting my time, that I was just going through the motions investigating it for you. I was blasé because I thought I was on an easy way to pay the phone bill. I think he wanted to bring me into it, to involve me in his actions, to make me really feel them.’
‘And he saw you talking to the boy?’
’Yes,’ I said, ‘he was following me. I’d given him my card which had my office address on and he hooked me there and then tailed me to my flat. He followed me to King’s Cross and saw me talk to Dominic Lewes. I remember sensing that someone was watching me but I thought it was just kids out to rip off my stereo. But it wasn’t. I’d actually tried to reach Mitchell at the airport a couple of times, but he wasn’t there; he was keeping tabs on me. I’d even made the mistake of worrying about him, thinking of him only as a potential witness the killer may have wanted to eliminate.
‘A couple of days later he killed Dominic and then sat outside my flat waiting for me to leave. He may have planned a ruse to get me out of there himself but if he had he didn’t need it. He got lucky; someone else got me out of bed, and I ran off on a fool’s errand to York Way, giving him time to leave the body on my bed and put me in the frame for it. My road is quiet, it’s an alley really, no one would have seen him. Later, when he’d seen me come home, he called the police and said he’d seen something strange, a man with a knife, and they arrived to find me there.’
Sir Peter sat back in his chair. Behind him, across the room, the door opened and a man stepped in and stood by the side of it, waiting quietly with his hands clasped in front of him. Sir Peter let out a long breath.
‘It was my fault,’ he said. He was serious. His voice came up from a deep well of regret and impotence. ‘It was me. I never should have spoken to Edward, never. About the way I felt. I put it into his head. If it wasn’t for me he wouldn’t have gone with that man. He told me that he’d never even considered it, not ever. It was my fault.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘He didn’t go with a man because you suggested it. That simply isn’t what happened. It wasn’t as if he’d never heard of gay sex. It wasn’t that that killed him.’ I was telling this to Morgan because it was true. I wasn’t trying to make him feel better. He didn’t argue.
‘Whatever you say.’ Sir Peter smiled. He was a long way off. ‘It doesn’t make a lot of difference now though, does it?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘It’s over. It’s over now.’
Sir Peter shifted forward in his chair and went to pick up the cheque, no doubt to hand it to me. His hand stopped in mid-air, however, when I said, ‘No, Sir Peter, it’s not. It’s not quite over yet I’m affaid.’
* * *
The waitress came over with the coffee jug. As she poured, Sir Peter Morgan didn’t take his eyes off me. When she had gone I reached into the side pocket of my jacket and drew out a photograph. I reached over to hand it to Sir Peter and he took it from me. He didn’t have to use his glasses to see what it showed. The blood fled from his cheeks like ants from a burning nest.
‘The police found it,’ I told him. ‘In Alex Mitchell’s flat. He took it from Edward. There are more but the police have those. This kind of sums up the general mood though.’
Morgan was completely still, unable to take his eyes off the picture.
‘I made some mistakes,’ I told him. ‘I got all ravelled up in Graham Lloyd. You’re right about him being a bastard by the way, though it was never likely that he was involved, not really. But it was only a short while after I’d quizzed him that I got beaten
up by the man in the video still. I was sure that Lloyd was paying him but if he was, what for? He certainly wouldn’t have employed him to be a serial killer but he may have paid him to kill Edward. He had a motive. Yet Lloyd surely couldn’t have been stupid enough to get the man he’d hired before to have a go at me after he knew I was interested in him. He would more likely have shut up tight and covered his tracks.’
Morgan was sitting very still, his eyes on me now. He still had the photograph in his hand.
‘I knew this, and I had actually discounted Lloyd, but when I found Dominic Lewes’ body in my flat it really threw me. I knew then that the same person had killed all of the men, just as the police had known all along. But I tried to make myself believe otherwise, to tie Lloyd in, largely because I didn’t like him but mainly because it was the only way I could figure it. You see, I couldn’t square the man in the baseball hat with his presence in the airport video. He would only have been there if he was the killer, but the killer had been meticulous and controlled and to a large degree very careful. There were only a few occasions when Mitchell had taken any real risks, and killing Edward was one of them. Except it wasn’t much of a risk in retrospect because he knew that if he killed Edward everyone would think it was the man in the hat, who he’d been seen drinking with. And he was right, we all did think that. You were probably the only one who knew it wasn’t him. Which is why you hired me. The killer had been careful and here was this guy getting caught on camera, meeting me but not finishing me off, letting me hear his voice, telling me who he knew. I couldn’t square it so I hung on to Lloyd and hoped he was the answer.’
Sir Peter didn’t say anything. I didn’t have to go on. He knew what I was going to tell him. But he had asked me to come here and tell it to him and that is exactly what I was going to do.
‘I made another mistake,’ I said. ‘A small one but important, something I didn’t check. The officer who initially interviewed Edward’s co-pilot reported that Edward had asked him to go for a drink when the flight landed but that wasn’t true. They sometimes did go for a drink together but Chalkley begged off that night without even being asked. He remembered that when I phoned him this morning and said he hadn’t meant to give any other impression.’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Not now,’ I said. ‘But it gave the impression that Edward wanted Chalkley along when he certainly did not. It would have made it a lot easier for me if Chalkley had wanted to go because he would then have remembered how Edward put him off.’
‘What does this show?’
‘I’m sorry, Sir Peter, it really doesn’t show that much. Call it my deformation professionelle. All it shows is that Edward knew he was going to meet someone. He was going to meet the man in the hat. The man who got me out of bed and proceeded to kick the shit out of me. A pimp, a petty hood and blackmailer. The very man who took the photograph you’re looking at.’
But Sir Peter Morgan wasn’t looking at it any more. It dropped from his fingers and fell down on to the table right next to the cheque Morgan had written out for me. Morgan held his hands up to his face and began to sob quietly, streams of water coming through his fingers almost immediately, like water through the sluice-gates of a dam.
‘You said it was your fault,’ I said, though I couldn’t be sure he heard me. ‘And it was. Not for making him want to know what it was like to sleep with a man, no. But it was your fault that Edward went to sit at that bar.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’
I didn’t say anything. He wasn’t speaking to me.
‘I told Teddy I wanted to go. I told him. I never should have mentioned the man, never. If I’d gone to meet him instead it would have been me the barman met. I’d have taken him home. Home or somewhere. It would have been me, not Edward.’
Sir Peter couldn’t get any more out. He was sobbing, his shoulders jerking with the effort like one of those small wooden toys whose joints are sprung with string.
I glanced down at the table where the photograph lay. It was face up. It was a colour photograph, taken from behind a curtain which explained the blurring round the edges. The rest of the shot was clear enough though. It showed the inside of a small room. It showed a boom box, the same one that I’d seen in the caravan two days ago. I imagined it was there to mask the sound of the camera shutter as it captured the events taking place. It also showed a young black boy bent over a table, naked except for his socks. He was the boy I had first seen at Sal’s gym and who had later run away from me. I cannot describe the expression on his face except to say that it conveyed far more than the immediate pain he was feeling. Behind the boy was a tall, rather thin white man who was also naked. The man was quite clearly Peter Morgan and it was also quite clear what he was doing.
Morgan was hunched over in his hands. I looked past him to see that Andy Gold was getting impatient. I turned back to Morgan and went through the rest of it quickly.
‘The boy’s brave,’ I said. ‘He’s going to testify, against both you and the man who was pimping him. He hated what you did to him. He recognized you on the news one day and pegged you for one of his regulars. He told his pimp, a guy called Smile, to please him. You see, this Smile was seeing the boy’s mother. He beat all shit out of her and only promised to lay off the boy’s kid sister if the boy went to work for him. He wanted to get in Smile’s good books because though he hated him he thought it would help keep his sister safe. That didn’t work too well though. Apparently Smile was keeping the sister for his own enjoyment.
‘Smile was glad of what he heard though. About you being a prominent politician.’ I picked up the photograph. ‘He set this little show up and then started to hit you for cash. You panicked and told your brother, and he agreed to help you. Maybe he insisted, like you said, or maybe you begged him to go and meet the guy for you. I’ll go with your version of that as it happens. Edward was a good guy; I think he would have insisted on helping.’
Morgan was nodding his head. His tears had dried up but his shoulders kept heaving up and down.
‘He had the cash in the boot of his Rover, and after meeting up with Smile at the bar, and making sure who he was, he went off to the car park with him. Mitchell said they stuck around for thirty minutes before leaving but that was bullshit; he wanted to make it seem like Edward had never met the man in the hat before and was being picked up by him at the bar. That would make it seem more like Smile was the perpetrator, because the perpetrator had never previously known any of his victims beforehand. Telling the police that the two men sat at the bar for a while made a pick-up more plausible than if they had only been there two minutes.
‘When they got to the car Edward gave the cash to Smile in exchange for the pictures and the negatives, which were found at Mitchell’s place. Other copies were found in the caravan Smile used. He wasn’t going to rest at one payoff; blackmailers never do. He’d have been back and you’d have had to do it all over again. Everything went OK this time though, it all went smoothly. Smile got the money and drove off. But that’s when Alex Mitchell decided to show up, He went home with Edward and killed him, knowing that the guy he’d seen Edward with would be the prime suspect. And he was. Smile saw the video-still I was showing round, and he knew in what context he was wanted. He knew he’d likely go away for murder if I found him so he came after me to warn me off.’
Morgan was quite still now but his hands remained covering his face. I left a second and then said, ’You shouldn’t feel guilty about what happened to your brother. Not about that really. But you should feel guilty.’
Andy Gold couldn’t wait any longer. He walked across the room towards us, followed by two uniforms who had been standing out in the corridor. Without standing up I removed the wire I’d been wearing inside my jacket and handed it to him. Gold already had the pictures but wanted to catch Morgan talking about it in case the kid didn’t come through. I knew it wasn’t necessary, feeling pretty sure that Morgan would confess to it all on his own, but I cou
ldn’t see what harm it could do. Andy read Sir Peter Morgan his rights. One of the uniforms put some cuffs on him and stood him up. Morgan didn’t look at me. His eyes were closed and he was mouthing something. I think it was the word ‘sorry’ repeated over and over again but the movement of his lips was so small I couldn’t really be sure.
As the two officers walked the MP over to the door, Andy stopped and asked me if I was coming.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not yet.’
Andy shrugged and followed the two officers as they escorted Sir Peter Morgan from the room.
I sat back in the armchair and gazed at the elegant array of old leather furniture. Shafts of sunlight cut through the residual haze of homeless dust and old tobacco smoke. The clock ticked. I reached for my coffee before it went cold.
I’d wait there ten minutes and then slip out. I didn’t have any desire to see Sir Peter Morgan being led out of his club by the police, past the grave portraits of his predecessors and the horrified eyes of his fellow members. I’d never wanted to meet him here anyway. I felt a curious heaviness, not the sort of feeling I associated with the other times I’d helped put away someone who preyed on people more helpless than themselves. I felt strangely rueful, and wondered why I should feel like that.
It was because he must have known. When he’d hired me he must have known what would happen to him if I was successful in pursuing my investigations. And plenty would happen to him, so much that I doubted whether he would be able to handle it. He had known who the man in the hat was and what I would find out if I found him. I guessed that was why he’d already announced his retirement, to cause as little embarrassment as he could. Putting his affairs in order like a Samurai before he falls on his sword. I remembered his fervour when he was urging me to go on with the case. It seemed strange to me now, that fervour, as though he did want to end it all but he needed me to help him; he couldn’t plunge the blade in on his own. I had to admit that I felt a certain amount of pity for Sir Peter Morgan. I couldn’t condone what he’d done with that boy and I didn’t want to, but he knew that what he’d done was disgusting and it was his actions subsequently which led to his paying for it. No one would have known otherwise. He really didn’t care what happened to himself, he didn’t care at all. He just wanted to catch the bastard who killed his brother no matter what the consequences were. He loved his brother and wanted, in the end, to do right by him.