The Chalon Heads

by Barry Maitland

  Having come to this decision, McLarren was persuaded that they had won, on the whole, a glorious victory, and he told his secretary to round up a few of the key players for celebratory drinks in his office at seven that evening, and especially those, like Brock and to a lesser extent Kathy, towards whom he had an uneasy sense that he had behaved badly.

  Brock spent most of the afternoon fussing over Leon Desai’s accommodation in hospital, and the prognosis for his severe concussion, suffered, like the broken jaw and cracked ribs, when Starling had inadvertently pushed him down a flight of stairs during their forced entry at Myatts Grove. Kathy passed her time following up a number of loose ends in the case to be mounted against the surviving perpetrators.

  At 7.10 p.m., Kathy opened the door to McLarren’s office. The men were in shirt-sleeves, McLarren, Brock, Hewitt standing by the windows looking out over Vauxhall station, drinks in hand. A knot of others from McLarren’s team stood on the other side of the room. There was a companionable murmur of relaxed conversation, of tension easing away.

  ‘Come in! Come in, lassie!’ McLarren waved a hand at her. ‘What are you drink—?’ He stopped in mid-sentence and stared in surprise at the person Kathy was leading into the room.

  ‘Sir, I hope you don’t mind, but Peter White has been helping us, and I thought it might be appropriate if he joined us.’

  ‘Well . . .’ McLarren recovered quickly. ‘Why, certainly, of course! Come away in, Peter, old friend.’

  White ducked his head in an embarrassed little bob. ‘I really didn’t think it proper for me to be here, Jock, but Kathy insisted . . .’

  ‘Of course you should be here! She was quite right. What’s your poison, eh? As if we didn’t know.’ He clapped White on the arm and led him to the drinks. It was apparent to everyone that the retired chief inspector couldn’t hide his pleasure at being there. His face glowed pink and freshly shaved, and he had dressed carefully, a little too formally, his best suit and best tie, now five or six years out of fashion.

  Kathy went over to the group of lower-ranking staff on the other side of the room and spoke for a while to DC Colleen Murchison, with whom she had spent part of the afternoon.

  Conversation became louder as the drink flowed, and then McLarren’s voice rose above the hubbub to make a short and good-humoured speech, thanking them all, and most particularly their comrades from SO1 and laboratory liaison. Toasts were proposed, a couple of jokey remarks tossed around, and conversations resumed. Kathy watched the triumvirate across the room: Brock, White and the ebullient McLarren, three old hands congratulating each other, yarning about old times, and felt profoundly depressed. Something made McLarren look up at that point and he caught the expression on her face, and thought that, despite his generous words of thanks, he had perhaps failed to please her, although God knows he had tried. And so, with a little spurt of gallantry he called to her across the room, rather too loudly, so that conversations died away again, ‘Kathy! You look low in spirits, lassie. Come and let me replenish you!’

  The room went silent, and someone sniggered.

  Kathy didn’t stir, then replied, ‘I was thinking of Mary Martin, sir.’

  ‘Oh, Lord, yes.’ McLarren’s face darkened. That was the black thought that he had been avoiding all day—that they had discovered Raphael but failed to find Mary’s killer. And at that moment he did not appreciate Kathy bringing it up, in such a way, at their triumph. The rest of the room didn’t like it either. She hadn’t even known Mary Martin, as they all had.

  ‘After all our hard work, it turns out that poor Mary was the victim of a random act,’ McLarren said heavily. ‘The sort of thing that could happen to any of us, at any time, when our luck runs out.’

  There was a murmur of assent. Someone muttered a toast to Mary’s memory. Glasses were raised awkwardly, the drinks no longer quite as palatable.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Kathy said quietly, looking down at the empty glass in her hand, feeling the pressure of their attention turn on her again.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ McLarren said. ‘You’ll have to explain that remark for us, lassie. What has Mary’s murder to do with Eva Starling’s?’

  ‘I think it has everything to do with it, sir. Mary Martin’s death was the thing that kept the Raphael investigation going, without which none of this would have happened. Everything changed with Mary’s death. It was the time that Marty Keller had a breakdown in prison, the time when Cabot’s published their programme of auctions for the following twelve months, leading up to the auction for which Eva died . . .’

  Voices came from around the room, puzzled, some angry. McLarren cut across them: ‘What the hell are you talking about, Sergeant?’

  Kathy was very pale. She took a deep breath and gripped the edge of the table behind her to stop herself shaking. ‘And it was the shocking way that Mary was killed that galvanised everyone, wasn’t it? I looked at the photographs this afternoon. The terrible wounds, like the way the Mau Mau used to hack people to death with machetes . . . Peter White was in Kenya at that time, weren’t you, Peter? You mentioned it to me. You must have seen wounds like that?’

  White seemed rather startled to be singled out in this way. He looked at Kathy as if she were mad, then gave a modest little bow to the others and retired again behind his glass of whisky.

  ‘Kathy,’ McLarren was looking with concern at her now, ‘I think that’s enough, lassie.’ His voice was conciliatory. ‘We’ve all put in some very long, hard hours. You need some rest. You’ve earned it.’ At his elbow White leaned over and whispered something in McLarren’s ear.

  ‘Sir, I’ve referred the photographs and reports of Mary Martin’s death to Dr Mehta,’ Kathy said. ‘I’ve asked him to establish if the same weapon may have been used to decapitate Eva Starling.’

  ‘What!’ The room erupted now with noise. Only Kathy was silent and still, and Brock. She looked over at him and he gave her a little nod, his face as masked and expressionless as Sammy Starling’s would have been.

  As the noise subsided, McLarren said angrily, ‘There is no connection between the murder of the two women, Sergeant. Damm it! Eva Starling’s killer was in a maximum-security prison at the time of Mary Martin’s death!’

  ‘Was he? The plan to kidnap Eva and fix Sammy was begun long before Marty Keller got out of prison. Ronnie Wilkes was recruited a couple of years ago.’

  ‘By someone acting on Marty’s instructions—his brother Barney.’ McLarren sounded exasperated.

  ‘We’ve been interviewing Barney all afternoon. He denies it.’

  ‘Of course he does!’

  ‘And he wasn’t in London at the time Mary Martin was killed. I’ve checked. On the morning of the eighth of July last year he was in Durham, visiting his brother in jail.’

  ‘But that’s what I’m telling you!’ McLarren spluttered, astounded at the insolent persistence of the woman facing him. ‘They had nothing to do with Mary’s death!’

  Kathy said, ‘Why—’ The syllable caught in her throat, so dry, and she coughed and started again, making her voice big enough to command their attention. ‘Why was SO6 fed material on Raphael for a full year before Mary died?’

  The question brought instant silence. This was home ground. McLarren stared at her.

  ‘Now that we know that Raphael was simply a private fairytale, a family rip-off played by Sally and Rudi and Eva and Walter Pickering on Sammy Starling, why would they want anyone else to get a whiff of it, let alone set off a full-scale investigation by SO6?’

  People were exchanging glances, shaking their heads.

  ‘Can I ask, sir, who your sources were for the stories about Raphael?’ Kathy persisted.

  At first McLarren seemed inclined to tell her to go to hell, but then decided that humouring her might be easier. ‘We had information coming in from all over,’ he said gruffly. ‘Why,’ he smiled, trying to lighten the mood, ‘even Peter here had his ear to the ground for us, didn’t you, Peter?’


  White shrugged noncommittally.

  ‘Peter White was a Raphael source?’ Kathy asked.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘And in exchange you gave him information, and kept him involved in things.’

  ‘Aye.’ Jock McLarren glared at Kathy, beginning to feel really quite irritated. The damn woman was standing there, in his office, in front of his colleagues, drinking his booze, and interrogating him.

  ‘Did you wonder . . .’ Kathy stopped and rephrased it. ‘Weren’t there questions about why this information was being leaked? I mean, surely a super-forger would want to be invisible, especially when there was so little physical evidence that he existed?’

  ‘All right! That’s enough, Sergeant!’ McLarren exploded. ‘You go home now and get some rest, and first thing tomorrow morning you report to my office and tell me what’s on your damned mind.’

  Kathy didn’t move. She saw Peter White staring at her with something like fascination, eyes glittering bright, a tight little smile playing on the mouth beneath the precisely clipped moustache.

  ‘Sir,’ Kathy persisted, ‘I’d like to say what I think happened to Mary Martin.’

  Someone put down their drink too heavily on a glass-topped table, with a bang. Someone else muttered ‘Jesus!’

  White turned to McLarren and said in a low voice, which everyone clearly heard, ‘I warned you, Jock. I told you she was a bloody menace.’

  But Jock McLarren couldn’t send her away now, when the whole room was straining to hear what she had to say about Mary’s death.

  ‘Go on, then,’ he said ominously. ‘One minute, then you leave.’

  ‘I think the source of the Raphael information came upon it accidentally, while he was digging for something to damage Sammy Starling. He gave it to you as a trade, to keep himself in touch with things inside the force. In a way it was quite innocent—he believed the stories to be true. He just embellished them a bit, to make them irresistible. And he genuinely hoped you would catch Raphael, so that Sammy would suffer by being confronted with his wife’s betrayal. But not too soon, because he wanted to continue being your source.

  ‘Then you decided to set a trap for Raphael. You gave your informants details of the new copying machine, of course, so that the word would get back to Raphael. The source was as interested as anyone to see what would happen. He had a real dilemma—if Raphael was caught, he would lose his information to trade with you, but if Raphael didn’t show up there was a danger that the whole investigation would be abandoned as a waste of time. I imagine the source was there, in Kilburn, watching and waiting with the rest of you, although you didn’t see him. As time passed and Raphael didn’t appear, he probably realised that there could be another way, one that would keep the Raphael story alive. He got some hired help, and when the stake-out at the warehouse was finally abandoned, he went in himself, to remove the copier as if Raphael had outsmarted you all.

  ‘But unfortunately Mary Martin returned. I imagine she confronted the hired help because her gun was drawn. The source was behind her, although she didn’t know it. He had brought something—a machete, perhaps—to open the packing cases. She heard him, and began to turn, and he realised that he knew her, and realised, too, that she would recognise him if she saw him. I suppose he had only a split second to decide what to do. He killed her.’

  Kathy looked across at Peter White. ‘You knew Mary, didn’t you, Peter? I saw on her record that she worked in your section for six months, before you had her transferred somewhere else. You said that she was a menace too, I recall. You wrote it on her file.’

  White’s jaw dropped. He lowered his glass and was about to utter some oath or protest but Kathy ploughed on.

  ‘Everything changed after that. What had been almost a game became, for the killer, a very serious and deadly thing. From that moment, Sammy and Eva were doomed. I don’t think you did it to avenge Tom Harley, really, Peter. Nor Marty Keller. I think you drew Keller into it like you did the others, thinking they were serving their own ends when really they were only serving yours, as you brought them all, Sammy and Eva, Pickering, Waverley and Keller, crashing down in flames. And Brock too—why not contaminate him in the general collapse?’

  White put down his glass very deliberately and stepped forward, fists clenched so tight that his arms shook with the tension, at first unable to speak with rage.

  ‘You mad, stupid bitch,’ he finally spat at her. ‘I knew from the first that you were a waste of space.’

  He lifted his right arm slowly up to shoulder height, as if it held the handle of an invisible weapon which he would bring down on Kathy’s head. Jock McLarren, looking shocked, jumped forward and took his arm. ‘Easy, Peter!’

  White was shaking. He turned his face to McLarren’s and said, ‘Does she think anyone would believe this? I tell you, Jock, she’s lost it! I warned you! They can’t cope with the pressure.’

  ‘How did Keller find Sammy last night, Peter?’ Kathy cut in, her voice angry and harsh. ‘How did he know to come to Myatts Grove to shoot Sammy? He knew because I told you we were there and you told him. You’d recruited me, just as you’d once recruited Superintendent McLarren. You phoned me to give me your helpful ideas, and I was so sorry for this lonely old bastard, and so impressed when you finally got something right, that I laughed and told you where Sammy was, and as good as put a bullet through his head.’

  She turned to McLarren and said, ‘That’s why I’m low in spirits, sir. I killed Sammy Starling.’

  19

  A Chalon Head

  Kathy sat on the edge of Leon Desai’s bed, eating the grapes she’d brought for him. He watched her, his head bandaged, jaw wired.

  ‘I’m sorry you can’t eat these,’ Kathy said. ‘I should have realised.’

  ‘Never mind,’ he mumbled through clenched teeth. ‘Thanks for the book.’

  He lifted the paperback she’d brought and read the title again thoughtfully, The God of Small Things.

  ‘This isn’t some kind of ironic comment on my personal attributes, is it?’ he asked.

  She laughed. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘They say I’ll have a scar on my left temple.’

  ‘Oh dear. So you won’t be perfect any more.’

  ‘Only on the outside. How are you getting on with White?’

  Kathy shrugged. ‘He’s enjoying himself. This is much better than pruning roses. He’s the unrivalled centre of attention. There’s no chance that he’ll do himself in with a bottle of pills. Not for a while, anyway.’

  She munched another few grapes. ‘The psychologist has come up with a preliminary diagnosis. Narcissistic Personality Disorder, he reckons.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  Kathy took a pad from her bag and consulted her notes. ‘ “A personality disorder is where the subject displays normal reasoning processes and mental state, but nevertheless exhibits bizarre or otherwise unacceptable behaviour.”’

  ‘That covers everyone.’

  Kathy nodded. ‘The point is that they are responsible for their actions. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is . . .’ she searched through her notes and quoted “. . . a pervasive pattern of inflated self-importance, lack of empathy with others, and at the same time hypersensitivity to their evaluation.” ’

  ‘That’s everybody again,’ Leon mumbled, through his swollen mouth.

  ‘White exhibits classic symptoms, apparently. He has features of a “craving personality”, a “manipulative personality” and a “paranoid personality”.’

  ‘That’s what I said—perfectly normal.’

  ‘He demands to be seen as someone special, entitled to special treatment, he reacts to criticism with feelings of rage, and he has chronic feelings of envy for those he perceives as more successful. Apparently that’s the root of his hatred of Brock. Even though they reached the same rank, he always felt that others looked up to Brock more. It was he who convinced McLarren that Brock was corrupt. Similarly he was enraged by Sammy’s wealth
and marriage to a young, attractive woman, and he has a special dislike of young women whom he suspects of being more successful than he was at their age. As for being manipulative . . .’

  Kathy put her her notes away and took a few more grapes. ‘He’s not a nice man. While he was within the discipline of the force, and had a wife to temper his behaviour, he was probably not too bad. It was the stress of loneliness and isolation after his retirement and his wife’s death that made it all spiral out of control.’

  ‘Never mind about him, Kathy,’ Desai said. ‘Indulge my personality disorder, will you? Do you think that I’m not a nice man? I thought we were getting along OK, and then suddenly the shutters came down. It was at Sammy’s house that day, after you found Eva’s stuff. You’ve hardly spoken a word to me since, until now.’

  Kathy lowered her eyes. ‘You’re asking me this, when you’re lying there in that state, and I can’t possibly give you a hard time.’

  ‘That’s right. It’s characteristic of my manipulative, craving, paranoid personality.’

  Kathy gave a tight little smile and raised her eyes to his. ‘When I was getting changed that afternoon, while you made the call to McLarren, it suddenly occurred to me that you must have betrayed Brock to McLarren in the first place—that you’d been passing everything on to him.’

  Desai stared at her for a moment before saying, very softly, ‘Go on. What else?’

  ‘I thought . . . I thought it possible that McLarren had told you to confront Brock the previous evening, to see what he would do, to bring matters to a head and let McLarren take over Brock’s investigation . . . which is exactly what happened.’