The Corpse in Highgate Cemetery: (Quigg 8)

by Tim Ellis

  ‘Why did you leave me and Billy all those years ago?’

  ‘I had no choice. If I’d stayed they would have killed both of you.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The people I work for.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They wanted me to do a job for them.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Why would they have killed me and Billy?’

  ‘We had a difference of opinion. I wanted to give up my job, stay home and look after my two children, but they wanted me to work for them. They wouldn’t let me quit.’

  ‘Where was mum?’

  ‘She left us.’

  ‘You killed her and buried her underneath the roses, didn’t you?’

  He didn’t answer her.

  ‘That’s the last thing I remember. You said mum had gone and would never hurt us again, and when I asked you why your hands were dirty you said you’d been burying treasure in the back garden to feed the roses. The vegetable soup you gave me forced the memory to the surface. I’d never been able to eat vegetable soup since that last day – now I know why.’

  ‘I didn’t have a choice.’

  ‘Everybody has a choice.’

  ‘No – not everyone. She threatened to go to the authorities and tell them what I did for a living and who I worked for – I couldn’t let her do that. She wouldn’t listen to reason, so I had no choice but to kill her.’

  ‘You had a choice, but you chose to save yourself.’

  ‘No. I chose to save you and Billy. My life means nothing. Everything I did, I did for you and Billy. If I’d let her go to the authorities, they would have killed us all.’

  ‘What do you want from me?’

  ‘I need your help.’

  ‘Why? I’m nobody.’

  ‘You’ve never been nobody, Lucy. Billy needs our help.’

  ‘Billy?’

  ‘Yes, they’ve got him.’

  ‘Who have?’

  ‘The people I work for.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I’ve been living down here. I wanted to disappear. But they’re trying to get me to . . . do another job. To draw me out and force me to do what they want, they took Billy. They would have taken you if they’d have been able to find you. That’s part of the reason I pushed you off the platform – they were getting close. They were just waiting for you to respond to the #Lucycomehome campaign.’

  ‘That stupid Quigg.’

  ‘Will you help me?’

  ‘Who are the people you work for?’

  ‘They call themselves Lancer Communications. It’s a small group of operatives who do whatever they’re told to do.’

  ‘Are you one of the operatives?’

  ‘That’s under discussion at the moment.’

  ‘Who tells them what to do?’

  ‘A shadow organisation behind the elected government called the Druid Council. I don’t know who they are or how many are on this committee, but they’re the real power behind the throne.’

  ‘And what do they want you to do?’

  ‘Kill Quigg and everyone connected to him.’

  ‘The children as well?’

  ‘Everyone – Including you.’

  ‘The bastards. I’ll help you.’

  ***

  He headed back to the office. Traffic was heavy, but he wasn’t particularly bothered – it gave him time to think, and to wonder, not for the first time, what he’d become mixed up in. Maybe it was time to tell DI Holm that his involvement was at an end. And inform DI Quigg that Bulldog Investigations had gone as far as they could go in tracking down his wife and daughter – it was now a police matter.

  Mr Dring had shown confidence in him, and was planning to leave the agency in his capable hands. He therefore had the reputation of Bulldog Investigations to think about now. He wasn’t simply an employee anymore, he was the senior investigator and soon-to-be owner of the business and had to shoulder that burden. Giving up at the first obstacle wouldn’t do anybody any favours. No, he had to take the investigation to its natural conclusion – it was his duty, his responsibility, and he wasn’t a man who shirked his responsibilities.

  But it wasn’t a simple case. Not by any stretch of the imagination. It was a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, stuffed into a Chinese puzzle box and hidden in a haystack in a pitch black room. When he was teaching his investigators how to tackle difficult cases in the future, he would use the Quigg case as an unusual example. But before he could do that he had to work out where the hell he was, and then solve the case.

  How could anybody justify killing an eight year-old child simply to use their identity? The list of deaths that were tied to Lancer Communications just kept getting longer. Who were they? And more importantly – what were they doing? How did all the deaths he’d attributed to them fit into any kind of intelligent design? Or were they just random killings? Were the people employed by Lancer Communications government secret service black-operatives? Would the government sanction the murder of children? If it wasn’t the government, who was it?

  Where did he go from here? He’d been hoping that going back to the beginning would have made things clearer, but instead he’d just muddied the waters. Not only that, he wasn’t even sure that the murder of Leonard and Fanny Tomkins was the beginning. Why had they been murdered? Maybe he needed to travel even further back in time and find out who Sally’s parents were. What had become apparent was that he couldn’t take anything for granted – he had to question everything and everyone.

  An additional problem was that he didn’t want to ask Sandrine to do any work for him. The last time he’d asked Deirdre to find out about Lancer Communications someone had paid them a visit and tortured and killed not just Deidre, but Sue and Peter as well. No, it was best if he worked alone, kept everything to himself and didn’t put anyone else’s life in danger. Especially the new love of his life – Sandrine Dibble.

  He parked at the back of Bulldog Investigations in his own parking space. Sandrine had suggested that because he was now the Senior Investigator he should have his own named parking space:

  Bulldog Investigations

  R. Crankshank

  (Senior Investigator).

  He’d gone along with her idea, not because he was full of his own self-importance, but because trying to find somewhere to park on the roads around the office was a daily nightmare.

  Every time he walked up the stairs to the office he wondered what he was going to find. Discovering Deirdre and Sue’s brutalised bodies had affected him more than he cared to admit.

  But today was a good day. There were no bodies, only Sandrine’s smile. She was wearing a stunning ice-blue dress; with matching chunky necklace, bracelet, earrings and shoes – she was colour-coordinated, and he wondered if her underwear was ice blue as well. The fluorescent light ricocheted off her blonde hair and made it shine like the sun.

  He didn’t want to speak. He just wanted to take her. She’d promised herself to him, and now it was time she came good on that promise.

  Thankfully, there was no one else in the office.

  ‘Hello . . .’

  He took her hand and led her into the photocopy room . . . Well, it tripled as the photocopy room, stock room and storage room. It had occurred to him on many occasions – although not recently because he’d been too busy what with one thing or another – that maybe the photocopier ought to be moved into the main office . . .

  ‘Rodney! What are you . . . ?’

  He shut the door and locked it so that there were no unexpected interlopers to sabotage his mission, bent Sandrine over the photocopier – if the photocopier was in the main office he wouldn’t be able to use it as a sexual aid! Mmmm, he’d have to give that some thought, pulled up her ice-blue dress . . . Well, now he knew what colour her panties were – she wasn’t wearing any. He let his trousers and boxers slide down his legs and entered her from behind with an erection that was as hard as a horn.

  ‘Oh, Rodney!’ />
  He tried to take off his shirt and tie, but the half-Windsor knot seemed to have a mind of its own. He liked half-Windsor knots, wouldn’t have any other round his neck. They were symmetrical and triangular, instead of lopsided like most men’s ties. If there was a disadvantage to the half-Windsor knot, it was that one needed two hands to untie it, but his right hand was busy teasing down the zip of her ice-blue dress. He decided to forget about the shirt and tie and thrust into her.

  ‘My God, Rodney. It’s been so long.’

  He pushed the ice-blue dress off her shoulders, unhooked her matching lace bra and cupped her breasts . . . This was everything he’d imagined it would be.

  She lifted the photocopy lid up and forced it backwards because it kept rattling on the in-stroke, bent further down over the clear glass, opened her legs a little more and wiggled her backside.

  He nearly ejaculated when she did that, but for some strange reason known only to the ghosts in the machine, the photocopier began making copies of Sandrine’s breasts. Instead of concentrating on depositing his sperm in the repository provided, he began wondering how the photocopier could start working when it required a security PIN, and a number of design decisions to be input before it would approach anywhere near starting. He also became distracted by the copies being made of Sandrine’s breasts. First, he noticed that the areolae were shaped like hearts with the nipples near the V of the heart. He wasn’t an expert on areolae by any means, but in all his time as a private investigator he’d never seen heart-shaped areolae. Second, he became fixated on how many copies the photocopier was making of Sandrine’s breasts. He’d certainly take a few copies for personal use, but he wondered how they could be accounted for. Usually, any copies being made would be absorbed . . .

  ‘Now, Rodney. Come inside me now.’

  His mind returned to the matter in hand. Yes, now would be a good time to empty himself into her. He’d proven to her that he was up to the job of . . . what was the other man called? The other woman was called a “mistress”, but what did they call a man – a “mister”? No, that didn’t sound right. A kept man? No . . .

  She began to shudder beneath his hands.

  He felt some minor contractions around his penis. Yes, now was not the time for holding back. He let it all out and flopped over her back.

  The photocopier creaked to complain about the weight, and he noticed that there was a message flashing on the small LED screen: OUT OF PAPER.

  Yes, he was definitely out of paper.

  ‘You can certainly come again, Rodney.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘No, I think we’ve made enough copies for one day.’

  The sweat was dripping off him. He took her in his arms and kissed her. ‘Are you sure?’ He looked down at his rising erection. ‘I think I’m getting my second wind.’

  ‘Second wind or not, Rodney Crankshank – we have to pace ourselves. And I have a home to go to.’ She put her hand on his cheek and kissed him back.

  In the future, if anybody asked him when he fell in love with Sandrine Dibble – he’d tell them that this was the time. He looked at his watch – it was six o’clock. ‘Is it that time already?’

  They both re-adjusted their clothing.

  After helping himself to a few photocopies of her 38DD breasts, he left her in there to feed the remaining 500 copies into the shredder.

  There was no one about in the main office.

  He turned everything off, and when she’d finished shredding they left the building together.

  ‘Goodnight, Sandrine,’ he said to her in the car park. ‘We didn’t iron out the details of our affair.’

  She smiled like a goddess. ‘Oh, I think we did, Rodney.’

  Chapter Twelve

  They couldn’t go directly up to the penthouse apartment of Cambridge Towers on Lawford Road, because a key was required to activate the penthouse (P) button in the elevator. But before the concierge would use his key, he needed to contact James Baglio via the phone in the lobby to ask if he wanted to see the police.

  ‘Mr Baglio said you can go up,’ the concierge said to them as he put the phone back in its cradle.

  Quigg’s lip curled up. ‘I was just about to call in the helicopters.’

  The concierge didn’t seem too impressed at the threat of reinforcements being drafted in. ‘Of course you were. Everyone knows the Met can’t afford skateboards, never mind helicopters.’

  ‘If that’s what everyone thinks, then our masterplan is working.’

  ‘Of course it is.’

  They stepped into the lift. There were eighteen floors before the penthouse.

  The concierge turned his key, pressed the P button on the console and stepped out.

  ‘What if it doesn’t go all the way up?’ Quigg said.

  ‘It will.’

  ‘But what if it doesn’t?’

  The doors shut.

  Dwyer shook her head. ‘There’s something seriously wrong with you.’

  ‘Do you think there’s any hope for me, doctor?’

  ‘Not from where I’m standing.’

  ‘But if you moved to the left a little?’

  The lift arrived at the penthouse and the doors opened.

  Quigg showed his warrant card and introduced himself and Dwyer to the man waiting for them.

  James Baglio was short – probably five foot seven – with gelled black hair, and a dark-brown hairy mole about an inch in diameter on his left cheek that matched the colour of his eyes. He wore a Japanese kimono over a light-blue shirt and black trousers, and a gold Rolex Oyster Perpetual watch weighed down his left wrist.

  ‘Welcome,’ he said. ‘Please come through.’

  They followed Baglio down a hallway and into an open-plan living/dining room with light wood laminate flooring, hanging lights and large pieces of object d’art. One side of the room was constructed of glass panels and they were drawn to the view over Kentish Town and London, which was stunning in the afternoon sun.

  ‘I don’t like it,’ he said from behind them. ‘I’m scared of heights.’

  Dwyer turned her head slightly. ‘Then why didn’t you get a ground-floor apartment?’

  His nose wrinkled up. ‘Only the poor live in ground-floor apartments. Why are you here?’

  ‘You have a fiancée?’

  ‘That’s right, Emilia.’

  ‘Emilia who?’ Dwyer said.

  ‘Whitworth. What’s all this about?’

  ‘When was the last time you saw Emilia, Mr Baglio?’

  ‘Sunday night – why?’

  ‘Can you describe Sunday night to us?’ Quigg interrupted.

  ‘I called for Emilia at eight-thirty. We ate at the Bluebird on Kings Road in Chelsea. From there we went onto the LC Club in Highgate, stayed there until around midnight . . . I had to leave fairly early because most of my work is done in the mornings . . .’

  Dwyer took charge of the questioning again. ‘And did Emilia leave at the same time?’

  ‘No, she wanted to stay. I didn’t mind. She seemed to be having a good time.’

  ‘What exactly did you do at the LC Club?’

  ‘Oh, you mean the orgy?’

  ‘Did you both take part?’

  ‘I did for a while, but to be honest – I wasn’t really in the mood, so I extricated myself and simply watched until I left.’

  Dwyer became all judgemental. ‘You watched your fiancée having sex with a dozen other men?’

  ‘And women . . . Yes. Why – do you see something wrong with that?’

  ‘You obviously don’t. Did you know she’d had an abortion recently?’

  ‘Yes. We discussed keeping it, but it didn’t suit our lifestyle.’ Baglio’s forehead creased up. ‘I don’t understand. How do you know about the abortion?’

  ‘Do you have a photograph of Emilia?’

  He moved along the room, picked up a digital photo frame off a shelf and handed it to Dwyer.

  Dwyer passed the frame to Quigg and he nodded
at her.

  ‘Emilia Whitworth was found dead in Highgate Cemetery on Monday morning.’

  Baglio went white, staggered to the sofa and flopped down. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘We’re sure. She was still wearing her engagement ring, and the ultraviolet LC Club stamp was found on her ankle.’

  He gave a weak smile. ‘Everybody else had the stamp on their wrists, but she liked to have the doorman put it on her ankle. It was so the man doing the stamping would look up her dress. She was a bit of an exhibitionist, I’m afraid. Liked men and women to look at her and want her. What was she doing in Highgate Cemetery?’

  ‘That’s what we want to ask you?’

  ‘I have no idea. How did she die?’

  ‘She was murdered.’

  ‘Murdered? I don’t understand. Who would want to murder my Emilia?’

  ‘Another question we’d like an answer to, Mr Baglio. We’re obviously pursuing a number of leads, but you’re our number one suspect.’

  ‘Me?’ He shook his head. ‘No, I wouldn’t have killed Emilia – I loved her. She was like a broken butterfly, but she was beautiful. I think she was only with me for my money, but I didn’t care. And as I said, I left the club early and she was still there.’

  ‘And you came straight here?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sure the CCTV in the lobby will verify that.’

  ‘And you didn’t leave again?’

  ‘No. I needed to sleep. My job is very stressful, which is made a lot worse if I don’t get the required amount of sleep.’

  ‘Weren’t you concerned that you hadn’t heard from her?’

  ‘Not really. She knew I had to work. Sometimes she came up here during the week, but mostly she didn’t.’

  ‘Have you not seen the news or read a newspaper?’

  He swept his hand around the oblong room. ‘As you can see, I don’t own a television – they’re to keep the poor people docile. And unless it’s the Financial Times, I don’t read newspapers either.’

  ‘We’d like you to formally identify, Miss Whitworth.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Do you know where her parents live?’