The Charnel House in Copperfield Street

by Tim Ellis

  ‘You were on point with Constable Irwin last night, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No problems?’

  ‘Everything went like clockwork.’

  ‘You didn’t see anybody . . . Who shouldn’t have been there?’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Reporters.’

  ‘No. We saw no one of interest. It went . . . Well, like clockwork.’

  ‘Did you see Pratt and his men?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So, nothing to report?’

  ‘Not a thing.’

  ‘Thanks, Sergeant.’

  ‘You’re welcome, Sir.’

  He ended the call. Maybe alien abduction wasn’t so far-fetched after all. He went into his bedroom, stripped off his clothes and slid under the satin duvet. Maybe it would become clear as mud in the morning. There was nothing more he could do tonight. Pratt would call him first thing and tell him that there’d been an unusual communications blackout, which was the reason they were all out of contact for so long. But no worries, Lynch and her cronies had been taken care of; there had been a devastating gas explosion at Quigg’s commune, which had killed him, the hacker Lucy Neilson, three guards, a German shepherd named Monty and four young children. People were already putting flowers, teddy bears, heartfelt messages and so forth on the palisade fencing around the property.

  Yes, he was turning into an old woman! No one could get to them. They’d made themselves the untouchables.

  ***

  It was seven o’clock. He walked outside and stopped. His Mercedes wasn’t there. He double-checked that Lucy hadn’t camouflaged it – she hadn’t, so he phoned her.

  He was diverted to voicemail.

  ‘Where’s my car, Lucy? You said you’d be back. What am I supposed to do now? I’m not happy, not happy at all. Have you damaged my car? I’ve a good mind to withdraw my favour. Call me when you get this. In fact, why aren’t you answering your phone? Where are you? What have you been doing all night? I’ll expect a full and detailed explanation when you eventually do come home . . . If it’s not too much trouble, that is?’

  He went back inside, knocked softly on Ruth’s bedroom door and crept inside.

  She opened an eye. ‘I have a headache.’

  ‘No, no. I’ve not come in for sex, although that would be very welcome at a time that suits you and when I don’t have to go to work. And can I say, how stunningly beautiful you look this morning?’

  She propped herself up on her elbow. ‘Just this morning?’

  ‘This morning is an example of your beauty every morning.’

  ‘What about the afternoons? And the evenings?’

  ‘Your beauty is perpetual.’

  ‘What do you want, Quigg?’

  ‘Your car keys.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Lucy took my car last night and she’s not brought it back yet.’

  ‘She stayed out all night?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘That’s a question to which I’d like a detailed answer. In fact, I didn’t hear you and Duffy come home last night either.’

  ‘This morning. It was around one o’clock. You were asleep on the sofa, so we left you there. Anyway, I need my car later. I have a hair appointment at ten o’clock. I’m going back to sleep now in order to maintain my perpetual beauty. Close the door on your way out.’

  ‘I’d also like to talk to you about your sudden interest in police corruption.’

  She turned over. ‘I’d like that.’

  He stood there with his mouth open for a handful of seconds, but it seemed that she’d made it quite clear that he wasn’t getting sex, the keys to her car, and nor was she going to talk to him about police corruption.

  Turning on his heel, he walked to Duffy’s bedroom, crept inside, slid his hand under the quilt and massaged her breast.

  ‘Mmmm!’

  ‘I could give you a full massage, tone you up, ease your aches and pains, and . . .’

  ‘Have you had a vasectomy yet?’

  ‘The doctor said there’s a long waiting list and he’d be unable to fit me in until the year 2050.’

  ‘That’s the next time you’ll be getting sex then.’

  ‘You don’t mean that?’

  ‘Oh, I know you think that, and you might truly believe that, but you’d be wrong, Quigg. Can you feel how firm my breast is?’

  ‘Very firm.’

  ‘Move it down to my stomach.’

  He did as she instructed.

  ‘Do you feel any rolls of fat down there?’

  ‘Not a single one – flat as a pancake and as hard as baked clay.’ His hand began drifting downwards.

  She squeezed her thighs together. ‘The gates to Elysium are locked and bolted, Quigg.’

  He withdrew his hand. ‘I’ll have my hand back then. Anyway, what I really came in for was to ask you for your car keys. Lucy took my car and hasn’t brought it back, and Ruth says she needs hers for a hair appointment later.’

  ‘And as a last resort you want my Toyota Aygo?’

  He pulled a face. ‘You know what the lads will say at the station if I turn up in your Toyota Aygo, don’t you?’

  ‘Feel free to walk.’

  ‘I’ll be a laughing stock.’

  ‘Or catch the tube.’

  ‘I’m up to my eyeballs with an investigation and I’ll need to go places during the day.’

  ‘The keys are in my bag on the side . . . Don’t mistreat it.’

  He kissed her on the mouth, cupped her breast with his hand again and said, ‘You’re so beautiful in the mornings.’

  ‘I know.’ She turned over. ‘Close the door when you leave, I had a late night and I need to catch up on my beauty sleep.’

  Whatever happened to conjugal rights? His rights? In this day and age of the pill, diaphragms, implants, injections, patches, IUDs, the coil and vaginal rings, why should he be blackmailed into having his vas deferens severed? It was barbaric. And it just wasn’t right, not right at all. Who knew what the physical and psychological effects could be. No, it wasn’t right, and he wasn’t having it done, it was as simple as that. Ruth and Duffy would break before he did. And Lucy was taking pity on him, even if he did have to wear a condom. And then, of course, there was Sergeant Sage every fortnight, and the odd jobs for Nichola Wright this coming Saturday, so he wasn’t being completely deprived of sex.

  He hadn’t completed any detailed research, but he’d heard horror stories of depression, anger and remorse after the procedure. Also, if the lads at the station found out . . . And not only that, what about the women? He could imagine that, with a mutilated vas deferens and a distinct lack of sperm, he’d slide so far down the Inspectors’ board as to barely register – all his hard work gone up in smoke. He’d become a non-person, an untouchable, an outcast. And then, of course, he’d heard abominable stories that don’t even bear thinking about, stories of erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation, impotence, and increase of testicular and prostate cancer by as much as sixty-six percent. No, he would never agree, or subject himself, to a vasectomy and that was his final word on the matter.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Lucy ran and jumped on Ruth’s bed.

  She was happy. At about three in the morning, she’d wandered into the back of the surveillance van, that Jack had confiscated and brought into the warehouse, to take a look at what was in there and rubbed her hands with glee at what she discovered. The on-board computer terminals gave her a direct link to all police and crime-related government databases. She’d run queries for any instances of Lucy or Jack Neilson and deleted them. There wasn’t much, but now, as far as anyone was concerned, neither of them existed – in a criminal sense at least. She also went into the DVLA database, gave herself full car and motorbike licences, had them send her copies, deleted the current motorbike registration and re-registered it under her name with the personalised number plate LUCY 01.

  ‘Wil
l you stop doing that?’ Ruth admonished her. ‘I’m trying to sleep.’

  Duffy followed Lucy in wearing an open dressing gown over a skimpy nightdress and sat on the other side of the bed. ‘Quigg’s been looking for you,’ Duffy said to her. ‘Well, to be more accurate, he’s been looking for his car.’

  ‘Fuck him.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure he’d like that a lot.’

  Lucy nudged Ruth. ‘Sleep will be the last thing on your mind when you see what I’ve got for you.’

  Ruth turned over. ‘And what might that be?’

  She changed the subject. ‘How did your fact-finding mission go last night?’

  ‘Not good. Oh, we filmed the collection and handover of money by the two dirty policemen, but out of context it doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘And I’ve been fired,’ Duffy said.

  Ruth pulled a face. ‘No, not fired. It is simply that . . .’

  ‘You don’t want my help anymore,’ Duffy finished for her. ‘So you fired me.’

  ‘I have the answer to both your problems,’ Lucy said, taking out her phone, finding the photographs she’d taken of the copious notes she’d made on the side of the van and handing it to Ruth.

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘The bastards’ criminal empire.’

  ‘I don’t understand?’

  ‘While you were out chasing corrupt cops last night, I was doing all the dirty work for you. My father captured the five men who were in that van at the end of the street. They followed you to the school on Churchill Gardens Road and were going to kill all four of you by making it look like an accident. After that, they were going to come here to kill the guards, Monty the mutt, Quigg, me and the children. The bastards had it all worked out.’

  ‘You’re not serious, are you?’ Duffy said.

  ‘Deadly. Where do you think I’ve been all night?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You’re looking at the woman with all the gifts. Believe me when I tell you, that what I’ve got for you so far is going to make you the most celebrated investigative journalist in the world.’

  Ruth examined the photograph. ‘You have names, telephone numbers, bank accounts, a drug network, prostitution rings, how they move money . . . Oh, my God! It would have taken me months, probably years of exhaustive investigation to find all this out. How . . .?’

  ‘You don’t want to know any of the gory details, believe me. In fact, I could be a confidential informant. You have to protect your sources – right?’

  ‘Yes, that is right. International law prohibits authorities, including the courts, from compelling a journalist to reveal the identity of an anonymous source for a story. The European Court of Human Rights maintains that protection of journalistic sources is one of the basic conditions for press freedom.’

  ‘There we are then. You can think of me as your anonymous and confidential source. You can pretend I’m a dirty cop somewhere in the criminal empire, when in reality it’ll be little ole me.’

  ‘We could call you Deep Throat,’ Ruth said.

  ‘Are you trying to imply something?’

  Ruth laughed. ‘No, Deep Throat was Woodward and Bernstein’s anonymous source in the Watergate Scandal.’

  ‘Never heard of it. So, are you interested in my information, or not?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘I’ll want paying.’

  ‘Doner kebabs with double chilli?’

  ‘Is there any other currency?’

  ‘As many as you can eat.’

  ‘You’ll be bankrupt before me.’

  ‘Is this everything?’ Ruth asked, holding up Lucy’s phone.

  ‘That’s just a taster. There’s a hell of a lot more. Not only have we got the five men from the Transit van, but we’ve also got the three people who were in the surveillance van located on the corner of Goldhawk Mews. Those bastards were hacking into everything we had that wasn’t nailed down. We have a lot of the low-level stuff, but there’s much more. Let me finish putting it all together and then you can decide what you’re going to do with it all.’ She took her phone back and pointed to DCI Victor Thackeray’s name. ‘My father is having a rest at the moment, but later on he’s going to get him, and then we’ll have a better picture of what’s going.’

  ‘Get him! You mean – kidnap him?’

  ‘No, no. A little chat over a few beers is all. Don’t worry, Ruth. These people are happy to unburden themselves. They can’t wait to confess their sins. They already think of me as their friend the Grand Inquisitor.’

  ‘I don’t want to know, do I?’

  ‘No. What you don’t know can’t hurt you. Trust me, it was either them or us. And let’s not forget, they had no qualms about killing the rugrats.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Duffy said, strangling an imaginary child killer. ‘I’d like to get my hands on them.’

  ‘You can be safe in the knowledge that they’ve seen the error of their ways and are seeking redemption.’

  Duffy’s eyes narrowed. ‘You said you had an answer to Ruth firing me.’

  ‘I didn’t . . .’ Ruth began.

  ‘Yes, you did. I was “in the way” you said.’

  ‘Ladies,’ Lucy intervened. ‘Because I’m heavily involved in saving our bacon again, I haven’t got the time now to help Quigg with his haunted house problem, which means that there’s a vacancy for a paranormal investigator – interested?’

  Duffy pulled a face. ‘I could be.’

  ‘Don’t do me any favours.’

  ‘All right. What do I have to do?’

  ‘Investigate the paranormal, but you’d better get some clothes on first, because you have an appointment at ten o’clock in the Henry Cole Wing at the Victoria and Albert Museum on Cromwell Road in South Kensington.’

  ‘An appointment with whom?’

  ‘The librarian. You’re going to find out who originally bought 66 Copperfield Street in Southwark.’

  ‘I haven’t had a shower yet.’

  ‘That’s all right, neither have I. We could shower together, and while I’m soaping your filthy body, I could tell you what I’ve learnt so far.’

  ‘Soaping! Is that all?’

  ‘Well, maybe we could do other things as well.’

  ‘That sounds good . . . I wish Quigg would get the chop and then we could start having sex again.’

  Lucy blew a raspberry. ‘He’s never going to do it under his own steam, you know. Maybe we’ll have to conspire to do it for him.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know yet, but I’m sure the three of us can come up with a plan.’

  ***

  ‘Top o’ the morning to you, ‘Spector Quigg,’ Mandy said, as she sat down and put her bare feet up on his desk.

  She was wearing short blue denim dungarees with a halter-neck and straps over a white lace bra that left very little to his imagination.

  ‘Good morning, Mandy. Doesn’t that imply a bottom of the morning as well?’

  ‘‘Spect it must do. Probably close to lunchtime’d be my guess.’

  ‘You’re probably right.’

  ‘If you got a top, then you gotta have a bottom. I mean, stands to reason, don’t it? It’s like we was talking about yesterday. Everything has gotta have an opposite – good and bad people, happy and sad times, win and lose, naked and not naked, a good-looking car and an ugly car . . .’

  His eyes narrowed to slits. ‘Has somebody said something?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘The car I came to work in this morning?’

  ‘Oh that! I think that little red Aggi is gonna drop you down the ‘Spectors’ board, you know.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Another opposite – top and bottom of the ‘Spectors’ board. You was doing well, as well. I ain’t never seen you so high as you been lately.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, but you scored an own goal – maybe two nutmegs and an offside – with that car. I wouldn’t le
t anybody see you in that car again if’n I was you.’

  ‘Someone is using my Mercedes.’

  Mandy shrugged. ‘You want your mail?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Ain’t much, but you can have what I got.’

  ‘Very generous.’

  She handed him two envelopes. ‘That one there,’ she said, pointing to the smaller of the two.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘That’s from Miss Tinkley – the Chief’s secretary. As you can see, it’s come from inside the station.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘Has a screwed up piece of paper inside it. Something about your photocopying, but I can’t make head nor tail of what it says.’

  ‘The envelope is sealed.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So how do you know what’s inside it?’

  ‘I ain’t gonna divulge my secrets to you, ‘Spector Quigg.’

  ‘You know my secrets, Mandy.’

  ‘But I ain’t gonna tell anybody on account of you being such a nice guy an’ all.’

  ‘Very kind of you to say so.’

  She stood up. ‘Well, I gotta go. Mrs Morbid’s on the prowl. Don’t want her catching me in here chewing the fat with you, do I?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She’s warned me about you. In fact, she’s warned everyone about you.’

  ‘Me! Why me?’

  ‘Says you’re a sexual predator . . . Whatever one of them is.’

  ‘I’m shocked, Mandy. I’m more like prey than predator.’

  ‘Whatever. Anyway, I gotta go, buffalo.’

  ‘Take care, polar bear.’

  The straps of her dungarees slipped over her shoulders and down her arms, the shorts slid down her legs to reveal her naked backside. ‘Oh dear!’ she said, bending right over as if she had all the time in the world to pull the dungarees up again.

  He was sure he could see her tonsils.

  ‘That’s the trouble with these strappy things,’ she said. ‘They keep slipping down to me ankles.’

  ‘Maybe a couple of safety pins would help?’

  ‘Maybe they would. By the way, my offer of a quickie in the stock room is still there, if’n you had a mind?’