The Charnel House in Copperfield Street

by Tim Ellis

  The door was unlocked. A dim light shone through the stippled glass in the window. He opened the door, took a step inside and stopped.

  ‘Hello, Sergeant Sage. I didn’t know you worked in here.’

  ‘I don’t normally, Sir. Sergeant Morgana Pinkerton is off sick with alopecia.’

  ‘Alopecia!’

  ‘Lost all her hair over last week apparently, and not just on her scalp either. As well as being completely bald, she has post-traumatic stress disorder. So, she’s off sick and nobody knows what’s going to happen to her. Not only that, I keep finding clumps of hair in here like tumbleweed in the desert. I hope alopecia is not something that you can catch.’

  ‘You want to get someone in to disinfect the place.’

  ‘Inspector Wright has organised Rentokil to come in later today.’

  ‘Don’t they deal with rats, fleas, woodworm and the like?’

  ‘It was the only company who would take the job on.’

  He shivered. ‘Oh well, good luck with that.’

  ‘I’m late, Sir.’

  ‘Late! That will never do, Sage. I have the car outside. I could give you a lift? Or maybe you’d like me to call you a taxi? Grab your coat . . .’

  ‘Late with my period.’

  ‘Ah!’

  ‘You know I threw my husband out?’

  ‘I have a vague recollection of you alerting me to something along those lines. Not a very good husband by all accounts.’

  ‘I’d have been better off with an inanimate object. Well, I haven’t had sex since the last time you and I . . .’

  ‘As I recall, it was more you than I, Sage.’

  ‘If that was the case, I wouldn’t be late.’

  ‘You duped me.’

  ‘You’re easily duped, Sir. In fact, you were easily duped about five times as I recall. Anyway, the bottom line is that without a husband I need satisfying, and as I’m probably pregnant with your child I wouldn’t want to contaminate the genetic makeup of the foetus by having sex with another man, so the satisfaction of Ada Sage is down to you.’

  ‘Talking about contamination, I don’t think that having sex in here would be a good idea with all the alopecia tumbleweeds blowing about.’

  ‘I have the key to the Emergency Mattress Store three rooms along the corridor on the left.’

  ‘Emergency Mattress Store! When did we acquire one of those?’

  ‘About five years ago. The Emergency Plan for Hammersmith was rewritten and we had to designate a room to store a hundred mattresses. The plan has been re-written three more times since then. As we were an Emergency Service anyway, the local council removed us from the plan. Someone was meant to come and take the mattresses away, but they forgot about them.’

  ‘And you’ve got the key?’

  She dangled a key on a keyring between thumb and forefinger. ‘I have.’

  ‘We’ll I’d love to oblige Sergeant, but I’m briefing the Chief in . . .’ He checked his watch. ‘Twenty minutes.’

  ‘Just enough time for a quickie.’

  ‘A quickie! What’s one of those?’

  She pushed him through the door, locked it and pointed him in the direction of the mattress store. ‘Well, it doesn’t entail talking about it for ten minutes before we get down to the nitty gritty.’

  ‘I don’t know . . .’

  She unlocked the door to the mattress store, pushed him inside and said, ‘Get it out.’

  ‘Get what out?’

  ‘There’s only one thing of yours I’m interested in, so get it out, Inspector Quickie.’

  He wasn’t sure. ‘What if somebody comes?’

  ‘That’s the idea.’ She hoisted up her skirt, pushed down her tights and panties, and turned her back to him. ‘When you’re ready.’

  The idea of a quickie began to appeal to him. It was like a short snort, one for the road, a snack between meals. He rose to the occasion.

  ‘You’ve not forgotten how, have you?’

  ‘It was touch-and-go for a moment there, but I think it’s coming back to me now.’ He guided himself into her and pushed forward.

  She leaned over and thrust backwards to meet him. ‘Yes, that’s it.’

  He undid the buttons of her blouse, eased his hands inside her bra, cupped her breasts and kneaded her nipples.

  ‘Faster . . . Harder . . . Deeper.’

  He didn’t mind going “Faster”, thrusting “Harder”, but inserting “Deeper” was a problem of length that he had no answer to. He’d often heard it said that, it wasn’t what you had, but what you did with it that mattered. Well, he hoped that was true, because what he had was all he had – no more, no less.

  ‘God! I’m . . .’

  He clasped his hand over her mouth to stifle her gasps of satisfaction with the service on offer. All they needed was for someone to hear her, come to investigate what the hell was going on and find them . . . He thrust into her as far as it would go and ejaculated.

  ‘Not bad for a quickie fledgling,’ she said, pulling her tights and panties up, and sorting her bra and blouse out.

  ‘As long as you’re happy, that’s all that matters.’ He made himself comfortable and zipped his flies up.

  ‘I’m happy for now, but a quickie has its limitations. A quickie is only a quickie. By definition, quick sex is a quick fix – nothing more. There’s no long-lasting satisfaction. So, by five o’clock I’ll be unhappy again.’

  ‘Unhappy!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about the short- and long-term psychological effects of quickies.’

  ‘I carried out a lot of field research when I was younger.’

  ‘Field research!’

  ‘Music festivals, concerts, bars, clubs, restaurants, train stations, church . . .’

  ‘Church!’

  ‘You can always find somewhere quickly for a quickie. That’s what’s good about them – they’re quick, less chance of being caught.’

  ‘I didn’t realise quickies were so involved.’ He checked his watch. ‘I have to go.’

  ‘What did you come down here for?’

  ‘Oh yes! I’m on a case. I have two dead bodies and no heads . . .’

  They crept out of the mattress store, back along the corridor and into Missing Persons.

  He gave her the details of both victims. ‘They were found in Chiswick, but they may not be from Chiswick. In fact, they may not even be from London at all, so cast your net wider.’

  ‘Come back about five o’clock and I’ll have something for you.’

  ‘Something! To do with the case?’

  ‘Maybe something on that as well.’

  ‘What about the quickie?’

  ‘A down-payment only. The outstanding balance will become due at five o’clock – don’t be late.’

  ‘I’ll try and keep to your schedule, Sergeant Sage.’

  ‘Good.’

  There was a knock at the door.

  He opened it. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Rentokil,’ a man wearing a red boiler suit, a white hard hat and a black mask hanging from a strap around his neck said. In his hands he was carrying a spray pipe connected by a hose to a small tank. ‘Here to de-gunge the place.’

  ‘I’m only visiting,’ Quigg said.

  ‘There are health and safety issues regarding visitors.’

  ‘I was just going.’

  ‘Best news I’ve heard since I arrived.’

  He squeezed past the man and headed for the stairs. A “quickie”! Whatever next? If, as Mandy had said earlier, everything had an opposite, then there must be a “longie” as well. He’d probably completed a few “longies” in the past without actually realising what they were called.

  ‘Good afternoon, Miss Tinkley,’ he said as he brushed past her desk.

  She smiled at him, leaning forward slightly. ‘Good afternoon, Inspector Quigg.’

  He had to blink to stop his eyeballs falling out of their sockets and disappearing into her cleav
age.

  She slipped a small folded piece of paper into his right hand and put a finger to her cherry blossom lips.

  His heart began thrashing about. Had she passed him the map to the lost city of Eldorado; the whereabouts of the Flor de la Mar treasure; the location of the missing Imperial Fabergé eggs; the . . .

  ‘QUIGG!’

  ‘Yes, Chief?’

  ‘I hope you’re not lollygagging with my secretary?’

  He had no idea what lollygagging meant. ‘Definitely not, Chief.’

  ‘Get in here then. I’m an extremely busy man as you very well know. You’re here at my convenience, not the other way around.’

  ‘Coming, Sir.’

  He slid the slip of paper into his trouser pocket. He’d have to look at it after he’d briefed the Chief. He opened the door and stepped inside the office.

  ‘I hope you’ve got good news for me, Quigg.’

  ‘I haven’t got bad news for you.’

  ‘Well, that’s one thing at least. So, how’s the case going?’

  ‘Bit of a conundrum, Sir. As you know, the two corpses were headless and had been branded with twelve-by-six inch crosses on their torsos. One’s a male in his early fifties, the other is a female in her early thirties. We have no identities for either of them, although both have identifying marks that might produce results; they both had wrist and ankle restraining marks; neither had any clothes or personal possessions with them; the woman had been raped, and both had been sodomised by multiple perpetrators . . .

  ‘It’s beginning to sound like a ritual, Quigg.’

  ‘Rummage and I have had similar thoughts, but what ritual and by whom, we currently have no idea, and neither does Reverend Golightly of St Ethelreda’s Church on Fulham Palace Road who we popped in to speak to. The victims also had various bruises on their bodies as if they were beaten or tortured. There’s a lot of semen on both victims as well, and Doc Solberg is running those samples through the database, as well as the victim’s DNA. The heads were removed using a bow saw, which are too common to provide us with any leads unfortunately. The Doc estimates that they were murdered probably between midday and ten in the evening yesterday, but the lay-by was not the scene of the crime, so Perkins is examining CCTV footage.’

  ‘You seem to be on top of things, Quigg.’

  ‘I’ve been wondering if the Commissioner has passed me the proverbial poisoned chalice, Sir.’

  ‘Just say if you’re not up to the job anymore, and I’ll let the Commissioner know that it’s time to put you out to pasture.’

  He half-laughed. ‘No, no. I still have a few productive years left in me yet, Chief. Rummage is working on a couple of leads, and we’re meeting Perkins in the incident room at four o’clock to find out whether he’s had any luck with the CCTV coverage and fingerprints. Also, Doc Solberg will be carrying out the post-mortems at two o’clock tomorrow afternoon, so we’ll be attending those . . .’

  ‘Press briefing?’

  ‘I’ve scheduled it for ten o’clock tomorrow morning, if that’s all right with you, Sir.’

  ‘You’ll let me know of any significant changes before then?’

  ‘That goes without saying.’

  ‘All right, you can go.’

  ‘Already not here, Chief.’

  ‘And make sure you shamble past Miss Tinkley as if she wasn’t there as well, Quigg.’

  ‘I didn’t even know you had a secretary, Sir.’

  He made his way out and could only glance out of the corner of his eye at Christie Tinkley, but she wasn’t even looking at him. The slip of paper! What was on the slip of paper? He stuffed his hand in his pocket, but after a careful fingertip search he discovered it wasn’t there. What he did find, however, was a small hole in the corner of his pocket. He stopped, turned the pocket inside-out and found that the stitching of the seam had disintegrated.

  His stomach flip-flopped.

  Where was the note?

  He lifted up the leg of his trousers, shook his foot, checked inside the top of his sock, kicked off his shoe and turned it upside down - nothing.

  Where had the paper got to?

  He undid his belt, unzipped his flies, dropped his trousers to his ankles and turned the leg inside-out, but there was nothing there.

  ‘Where was it?

  People skirted round him, sniggered, muttered behind cupped hands to each other and stared at him as if he was having a psychotic break, a nervous breakdown, or suffering from mental exhaustion and delusions.

  He got down on all fours, pressed his cheek to the cold linoleum and looked back along the corridor, but he couldn’t see the scrap of paper. If it had fallen out in the corridor he would be able to see it, but the floor was litter-free. The only thing he could think was that it had fallen out through the hole in his pocket and onto the carpeted floor of the Chief’s office. The thought filled him with horror and dread. There was no way he could go back into the Chief’s office, say he’d dropped something, get on his hands and knees like he was now, and begin searching the floor.

  What if the Chief had already found it . . . and read it?

  He stood, pulled his trousers up and made himself decent. There was nothing he could do about it now. It was four o’clock and he had another meeting, and then after that a rendezvous with Sergeant Sage. Life was so complicated.

  He called Miss Tinkley’s number as he walked.

  ‘The Chief’s secretary.’

  ‘It’s Quigg,’ he whispered.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I must have dropped the piece of paper you gave me on the floor of the Chief’s office.’

  ‘Oh God!’

  The line went dead.

  ‘Hello! Hello! Miss Tinkley – are you there?’

  There was no answer.

  He guessed he’d burned his bridges with Miss Tinkley, but if she could just find the slip of paper before the Chief did, maybe all was not lost.

  Chapter Seven

  Delilah had changed her clothes and already left.

  After a phone call from Delilah, someone would come to the apartment later to clean the place up, change the bed linen and take their dirty clothes to the dry cleaners.

  He dressed in a new suit, shirt and tie hanging in the wardrobe and stared out of the window at the sparse vehicular and pedestrian traffic shuffling along Birdcage Walk in the November wind; at the equidistant trees lining the road; the black-painted Victorian street lamps; and the ghostly clip-clopping of the Horse Guards.

  Lupton was a problem. What had he found? If he’d decided to turn whistle-blower, then he must have stumbled onto something, but what? Yes, it was important to identify what Lupton had discovered, but it was also imperative to stop him leaking any more information about their activities. The sooner Lupton had his accident, the better he’d feel. Cut the information flow off at the source, that was the simplest answer.

  He took out his second phone and called one of the three numbers in the phonebook.

  ‘Yes?’ a female voice said.

  ‘I have a job for you.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have called me if you hadn’t. It’s not a chat line, is it?’

  He ignored her sarcasm. ‘John Lupton. He’s the Clerk at the IOPC. Make it look like an accident.’

  ‘Time-frame?’

  ‘The sooner the better.’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘I may have more for you soon.’

  ‘You hum it, I’ll play it.’

  ‘I remember that. It was . . .’

  The line went dead.

  No, it wasn’t a chat line.

  As soon as Lupton was a confirmed kill, he’d arrange the transfer of sixty thousand pounds to a numbered offshore account. He had no idea who the female assassin was. She’d been recommended, or at least the telephone number had. He’d heard someone call her Medusa, but that seemed a bit far-fetched. It made her sound like something out of an Xbox game. So far, he’d ordered fifteen kills. She’d followed his instruc
tions to the letter and there’d been no problems with any of them.

  Ruth Lynch was new to him. Investigative reporters weren’t really a part of his social circle. In fact, he tried to avoid them like the plague. He’d Google her later and find out what stories she’d covered. As for ex-Constable Mavourneen Duffy, she was a non-entity and could be ignored. In fact, it all seemed a bit pathetic really. Why would Lupton arrange to meet Lynch? If he had anything earth-shattering to pass on he would have contacted one of the heavyweight investigative reporters, someone who Thackeray knew like Kate Adie, Carl Bernstein or Denise Routledge.

  There was a bigger problem though. If Lynch and Duffy told DI Quigg and the hacker – Lucy Neilson – what Lupton had said, which they were more than likely to do if they were all living together like a family of monkeys, then they could cause him difficulties. He’d better find out who he was dealing with and take action accordingly. One unknown investigative reporter wouldn’t have been a problem, but already the chances of things getting out-of-hand had increased fourfold.

  And if Quigg was the Commissioner’s blue-eyed boy, then that only raised the stakes. He’d find out what Quigg was working on, and explore the possibility of a legitimate accident. The problem, of course, was that too many single accidents would look suspicious. Pratt said there were four adults and four children living in the converted church. He didn’t know the layout of the building, but he imagined that a gas explosion, or a fire resulting from an electrical fault would solve the problem. Since when had he become a child-killer though?

  Delilah wouldn’t be happy if he arranged the deaths of four children, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. She may not be directly involved in the murders of those who stood in their way, but her hands were just as dirty as his. Her moral compass – like his – had been discarded some time ago. A conscience was for people who cared about the notions of good and evil, right and wrong.

  Eliminating obstacles wasn’t something he shied away from, but he needed more information before he could make an effective decision. Killing people didn’t bother him, but it wasn’t something he enjoyed doing. He didn’t derive any pleasure or satisfaction from murder, especially the murder of children.