“A public lecture on Brissot the Revolutionary,” I said.
“Exactly. A magnet. And now…” he looked around at an approaching police car as the city hummed into gear for the day, “…I have an important appointment. Keep in touch. My business card.” He gave me a card.
“How did you know I’d be here? Why are you helping?” I asked.
But he was already shuffling away into whatever spidery life he’d created for himself. I looked at the business card. It was blank. A few feet away the same pigeon with the white crown was twitching uncontrollably on the ground, then its eye rolled and it lay still. He’d poisoned it. I took a tissue from my pocket, picked up the still warm soft body, stepped forward and threw it in the river. The current took it upriver.
“Goodbye pilgrim,” I said, echoing Freud.
As I walked away my phone rang. It was Sam Spot. He told me to meet him at Romford dog track that evening. He had some important information.
Chapter Eight
The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.
Nietzsche
At the university I had a tutorial with Cass’s group. She had become fired up by big questions – Why are human beings as they are? What does it mean to be alive? Love and hate, good and bad, spirit and matter – these, to me, had always been the driving forces of philosophical enquiry. The main reason I’d ended up in a backwater university on a pittance and surrounded by the dregs of academic failure was because Rook Investigations was my passion, but also I couldn’t play management games or fit in with the current academic climate, which is deeply conservative and full of brown-nosing ferrets stupid with self-entrancement. In Philosophy most students are intellectually deadened by the second year, and taught by nit-picking acolytes of semantic minutiae. Safe and predictable English pragmatists bore the pants off anyone who is genuinely hungry and curious to know what life is. They spend their professional lives commenting on each other’s work in journals nobody reads. If I cared about teaching I’d encourage students to read the historical greats, then buck the system and ask the big burning questions and try to answer them with both rigour and passion.
I cut the tutorial short by twenty minutes and sent them off to the library to read Nietzsche’s chapter on The Free Spirit. Cass lingered and chatted to Kierkegaard, who had slept through the tutorial, and Alfred who had wolf whistled occasionally. I had an email from Audrey, telling me that the Academic Committee for Something Irrelevant had approved my outreach work and I would be starting with some preliminary workshops at a Community Centre for Young Offenders. Audrey had thrown down the gauntlet.
“I think I might do my seminar discussion paper on existential laughter,” Cass said, poking a raisin through the bars for Kierkegaard. “You know, theories of laughter and what different kinds of laughter tells us about people.”
“Great idea,” I said.
“Speaking of which, Mum said you made a complete fool of yourself at the restaurant.”
“Tell her thanks. It’s very hard to be a complete fool. Most people are only partially successful.”
“Your ability to ruin things and self-destruct is getting worse.”
“Thank you, my darling.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
“Into the valley of death!” screeched Alfred.
I told Cass I was planning a public lecture on French Girondist revolutionary Jacques Pierre Brissot’s book Théorie des lois criminelles and was going to call it A Revolution in Thinking. I said it had to be organised and publicised very quickly. She intuited immediately that this was for Rook Investigations and offered to do all the publicity, which is what I’d hoped. I left her at my computer looking for a venue and then probably reading my emails.
I drove to Romford with an uneasy feeling that I was being followed. An old silver Mercedes kept appearing in the driving mirror. I pulled into a garage and watched the car pass. No glimpse of the driver. I met Sam inside Romford Greyhound stadium by a fast food booth. He was eating a pie with something soft and pink inside its pale, watery crust, and sipping a pint of lukewarm lager. He looked hopelessly at his picks for the races, scribbled on the back of an envelope. It was a warm evening and a big crowd. There was a faint hum of expectation and hope, which would end for most with a lighter wallet and the familiar ennui of losing yet again. We went upstairs to the Laurie Panthers bar and Sam sat disconsolately. He looked everywhere but at me. He took out a little black notebook and consulted it. When he spoke it appeared to be to his beer mat.
“Word was Marty went to Edinburgh with the gear but I thought I was being sold a line. Didn’t quite believe it. You can sniff a porky sometimes. Then got a call he’d been clocked in London, getting a train up to Brum. Came back next day.”
“When was this?”
“Three, four days ago.”
The suspicion that Marty had killed his own brother was growing. He knew the building. He gave his brother’s death the artistic flair as a way of pretending, perhaps to himself, that this really was an act of love. And did anyone help Marty, considering the state of the body?
“Something else,” he said.
I waited.
“Someone doesn’t love you. In fact someone is very annoyed you’re taking an interest.”
“Do you know who someone is?”
“Name slips me. Maybe the spot needs hitting.”
I put another envelope in his hand.
“It’s come back. Name’s Darnel Thompson. Works for some Frog geezer.”
“Brissot?”
“Could be. But Darnel’s hardcore. Watch your back.”
I suspected Darnel might be the character who destroyed my back window and left me the RIP warning. We went and watched the races, which I hated. The dogs looked anxious, fretful and too thin. Sam lost forty pounds. He said he had another bet on at a different stadium so the night might not be completely lost. We joined the queue to leave the stadium and were in a crush of people. Jostling. Shouting. Chatter. Body odours. Stale urine, onions and old hot dogs. The somnolent gloom of a thousand disappointments darkening chatter. Someone pushed me forward, then apologised. Suddenly Sam held my hand. I thought perhaps he was having a panic attack and told him he’d be alright. His grip tightened and suddenly his feet stopped moving. The swell of bodies behind threatened to trample him. I put my hand on his back to steady him and to let the tide of people carry us, but there was something hard and bony. I gripped it and knew it was a knife handle. I turned to face him and held him.
“You’re OK, Sam. I’m with you.”
For the first time ever he looked at me, his grey eyes questioning, as if he was wrestling with some profound internal dilemma. Faces and bodies pressed us to go forward.
“For Christ’s sake, stop. This man is hurt!” I shouted.
Slowly the shuffle of people halted and a few backed off. A man recoiled in horror and looked at blood on my hands. A woman screamed. Someone helped me support him. So many people. Faces, bodies, voices. Whoever did this could be close or already have pushed their way through and into the night. I looked around at the fear, panic and curiosity on a tapestry of faces.
“Someone get help!” I said, then looked down at Sam. He was turning from pale to grey. Something in him was leaving. “Hang in there, Sam. Hang on.”
“Sugartop,” he said, then his eyes flickered and he twitched so violently I couldn’t hold him and he fell to the ground, his left leg still twitching. Blood pooled around him and the smell was noxious. Strings of spittle roped from his mouth as his head shook from side to side, then it subsided with a great earth-leaving sigh and only his left leg twitched for another minute. He had wet himself. I knelt down and listened for a heartbeat, felt for a pulse, but all had gone.
“I’m sorry, Sam,” I said.
I reached in his pocket and took his notebook. I stood and backed a little into the crowd.
Everyone was looking at Sam. I turned and slowly pushed my way through to the exit. People notice the event, the drama, and often miss the contextual detail. I was simply background noise to the main event. With any luck no one would remember me.
Outside I looked around. Sometimes killers have huge egos and like to tempt fate a little and stay to see the mayhem they have created. I wondered why they had gone for Sam and not for me. Perhaps he had discovered more than he told me, or was on the brink of discovering more, and this was to scotch it. As I got in my car an old silver Mercedes passed me. The car behind it prevented me from seeing the number plate. I started my Saab and put my foot down. The ancient engine trembled but then responded and I kept the Merc in view. It wasn’t the sort of car I associated with Brissot or Darnel, this was a beaten up roadster, a working car and not a look-at-me showcase.
The Merc turned left at some lights into a narrow side road and I fell right into the trap. Now the black Audi was on my tail and I was sandwiched between the two. No way out. The Merc driver stopped and stayed in his car. I braked. Darnel eased the black Audi to the tail of my Saab and got out. I thought of reversing hard and at least causing as much damage as I could, but what would be the point? I took out my mobile and pretended to make a call. As Darnel approached I started talking.
“That’s right, officer, left at the lights and I’m between a silver Mercedes and a new black Audi. They mean me harm. Yes, two men. A few minutes then. Thank you.”
Darnel’s eyes flickered. He was uncertain. Despite the cut of the handmade leather jacket he was still Elephant and Castle dressed up as West Hampstead. He must know by now I didn’t like to work with the police, but if I was desperate perhaps I would call them. He looked at the dried blood on my hands. Sam’s blood.
“Been up to mischief, have we?” he asked. “Be your prints on the knife, old son.”
“How do you know it was a knife?” I asked. “Stabbing an old lag in the back. Very elegant. Very brave, mon coeur.”
He wanted to hit me, but then I had a smidgeon of something that usually eludes me – luck. A police siren sounded a few blocks away and started to grow nearer. Darnel thought for a second, looked around, then strode back to his Audi and started reversing. His boss would not be pleased if there was a gathering storm around Sam’s murder that might whirl him into it. I knew by now that Brissot liked to keep carnage at a distance and get others to do his dirty work. The Mercedes drove away too. I waited half a minute, then drove off to whatever came next. I was going to get these bastards.
Chapter Nine
…we possess nothing but metaphors for things — metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities.
Nietzsche
Sam’s death weighed on me. You say to yourself – He knew the risks; it was a life he chose; it wasn’t me who topped him – but there’s still the vinegar taste of knowing that someone died as a result of something you did. I console myself with the Butterfly effect in Chaos Theory. It is a nonlinear concept and a good metaphor for the chaos of systems. One action, however small, can eventually result in a dramatic change elsewhere in the system. The flap of a butterfly wing in Bombay can be the prime mover in a tornado in Kansas, so the theory goes. It’s interesting to speculate about it in human terms. The small slight to a child’s self-esteem can, arguably, in a complex chain of cause and effect, turn him into a wife beater, or a killer, whereas a small kindness might have made him a decent human being. Ostensibly inconsequential actions can have shattering long term effects. Thought of in that way, we are all victims of the butterfly effect. I ask Sam to do something, and within a complex pattern of events, circumstance and actions, Sam later gets killed. I didn’t intend this, of course. Is that really a comfort? Is it hell. But with the help of a few large Famous Grouses that evening it had to suffice.
The next day I wrote down the big questions that, if answered, would take me further. What did Sam’s last word Sugartop mean? What did the M on Andy’s gold chain stand for? Where was the document he’d mentioned that would ‘finish’ Brissot? Why use spy names for drivers? I got nowhere with Sugartop. What did M signify? Mother? I looked through Andy’s laptop and there was an email from a nursing home asking for an increased payment for May. Maybe this was the aunt Andy mentioned. A phone number was included so I rang and said I was a cousin of Andy Hebden’s and wanted to visit Aunt May. Half an hour later I was driving to the Riverside Care home, which, the PR declared in a frenzy of arbitrarily capitalized words, has a ‘Dementia-Friendly Design, Beautiful Patio Lounges and a Focus on Luxurious Living… You can catch a film in our cinema or enjoy a slice of cake and a chat in our Light and Spacious Coffee Shop.’
I entered what appeared to be a pristine conservatory, and felt as if I was on the TV film set of The Prisoner, everything manicured and ordered, the real mess of failing human biology struggling to assert itself against the deodorised, lavendered air. I told Dawn, the smiling meet and greet person with blonde streaks and earrings like large feathered mosquitos, that I’d rung earlier, and that I’d been abroad for several years. Luckily there was only one May so she didn’t ask me for a surname.
I was shown into an en suite bedroom, the smoke alarm blaring deafeningly. Drawn curtains. A TV blasting out a fight between two women the size of Sumo wrestlers trying to gouge eyes and tear out hair – Jerry Springer, I guessed, or possibly Today in Parliament. Still with the alabaster smile on her face Dawn approached the elderly woman I assumed was May, who sat in a chair by the bed staring out of the window, back to the TV, and smoking a Marlboro. Dawn took the cigarette from her mouth, opened a window, stubbed it out on the ledge and then threw it away.
“Naughty, naughty, May. You know the rules. No smoking inside.”
“Given that I’m fucking crippled and stuck in this arsewipe of a place, you can shove the rules and get out of my room,” said May.
“Language. You’ve got a very special visitor. Your nephew’s cousin, back in the UK after all these years.” She looked at me and silently, and completely unnecessarily, mouthed, “I’ll leave you to it.”
So this was Andy’s aunt. Dawn left, thank God, and slowly May shuffled her chair around to face me. Skin like dried leaves, reptilian eyes in a filigree of fine lines and the puckered mouth of a lifelong smoker. Her teeth had departed long ago. She held out a walking stick and shook it for me to take. Then she looked up at the smoke alarm on the ceiling.
“Give it a good poke,” she said.
I took the stick and poked at the smoke alarm.
“Hit it, man!” she rasped.
I rammed the stick hard and the smoke alarm cracked, whimpered and died. I gave back the stick, May lit a Marlboro and settled back, eyeing me like a rat with a mouse.
“Now Mary Poppins has gone you can tell me who the hell you really are,” she said.
I told her I was a friend looking for Marty and was worried that harm may have come to him.
“Hasn’t been all week. Comes every third Tuesday, brings me smokes, but ain’t seen him for months. No idea where he is. God, I hope he’s alright. And Andy usually rings.”
She had nothing else to offer. It was starting to look as if Marty might be dead, but I was no closer to finding out if it was Brissot, and if the money and paintings were the real motive. I left May in a fog of smoke. She clearly didn’t know about Andy’s death. I thought of telling her – it might shake something useful from her, but I decided against it. I wasn’t in the mood for a grieving, embittered, chain smoking octogenarian. Smiling Dawn stopped me as I was leaving the building, holding a leather embossed book and a pen.
“Sorry, but I need to record your visit. Company policy,” she gushed. “Lucky May, eh?”
I looked at her.
“Two visits in two days,” she said.
“Who came yesterday?” I asked.
“It was odd. It was her nephew, Marty, comes every third Tuesday, but yesterday he insisted his name was Bob Gresham. Isn’t that funny? I thoug
ht he was just having a joke with us.”
Not odd if you wanted to hide your tracks in case anyone was trying to trace you. So he was alive, and May was lying. I gave my name as Thomas Hardy and went back to May’s room. She was on the phone, which I half expected. She dropped it back in the cradle. Then, cleverly, she picked it up, pressed a few digits and cradled it again. That meant I couldn’t dial 1471 and get the last number.
“Ring him back when I’ve gone, May, and tell him he’s in trouble. I need to find him. Tell him to ring me.” I gave her my card. “And I’m sorry, but Andy’s dead. He was murdered. That’s why Marty is in trouble. He may know something, or the murderer may be after him too.”
Her lip trembled but years of practise kept the tears back. Instead she looked defiant, lit another Marlboro and waited until I left. I waited outside for what I knew would happen. She rang him back, but I couldn’t hear anything useful – only her tearful rage that Marty hadn’t told her about Andy. Why hadn’t he told May that Andy was dead? To delay her grief, or because he was embroiled in the murder?
I went back to Dawn and said I needed to contact Marty about May’s belongings in storage, and she gave me a number. She had no address. Outside I rang it and someone, presumably Marty, answered but said nothing.
“Marty, I need to talk to you.”
The line went dead.
“I’ll find you. No matter where you are.”
Chapter Ten
My problems are new, my psychological horizon frighteningly comprehensive, my language bold and clear…
Nietzsche
Cass had moved swiftly. With all the youthful speed of social networking she had booked the Court Room of the Fishmongers’ Hall, publicised my lecture on more network sites than I knew existed, and guaranteed it would be full. Her bombshell was that the lecture was tomorrow night. She said that if the current Jacques Brissot didn’t see at least one of the ads he must live in a cave. My knowledge of the original Brissot was scanty to the point of ridicule, but I could always rely on the sound tried and tested practice of academic waffle to steer me through the occasion. The purpose of the lecture was, after all, to try and attract his namesake, not for me to show off. However, intellectual pride was at stake and I did some serious thinking until about one a.m., with the assistance of a supermarket Rioja. By the time the bottle had gone every thought I had seemed to strike a note of genius. The next morning the truth painted a different picture, but I am always my own worst critic.
Beyond Good and Evil Page 4