By now it was quite dark and we had gone down some steps to a walkway by the river, beneath a bridge and through a hole in the wall. What we saw inside was appalling.
Chapter Twelve
But what changes come upon the weary desert of our culture, so darkly described, when it is touched by the magic of Dionysus!
Nietzsche
The first thing to strike was the smell of human faeces and things rotting. The place was lit by old stage lights connected to car batteries. Cavernous, high, damp walls streaming water, grease and green mould, as if the whole place was a giant sewage tunnel, which perhaps it was. Dozens of destitute people were in various stages of collapse and disintegration, a gallery of ruined faces and filth. Many of them wore incongruous clothes: a man in a tuxedo four sizes too small, the trousers tight and ending below his knees; a woman wrapped in ragged net curtain and wearing a turban fastened with a swastika; a man in an old First World War army outfit full of holes and patches; a woman in the latter stages of syphilis with a pointed metal nose held on by a rubber band around her head. A woman squatted by a wall, urinating, talking rapidly to herself in a language only she understood. A man lay semi-conscious, shouting at his demons, the sound echoing and bouncing horribly. Cardboard shelters were in various stages of decay with rags for doors. They all greeted Freud in their different ways; a bow, a smile, a wave.
I took Cass’s hand as we entered deeper. Freud gesticulated. He was clearly king of this little metropolis of fractured souls.
“Welcome, pilgrims, to the Tunnel. Eng-er-land. People think England is Shakespeare, Charge of the Light Brigade, Winnie Churchill, Winnie the Pooh, Bend It Like Beckham and the National Health Service. My arse it is. It’s also the plague, maggoty heads on spikes at Tyburn, multiracials aching to kill each other, Myra Hindley and Bungalow Bill. Let me introduce you.”
I was horrified by this underground kingdom of decay, but also intrigued. He pointed out people as we walked.
“Wacko, a leprous scouse. Mantovani, failed conductor – whether orchestra or bus he’s long forgotten. Betty the Bitch; her doppelgänger Belinda the Barrister. Mohamet, our local GP. All now retired. I think we are in rats’ alley where the dead men lost their bones. You must find this weird. And me. A weird wired wanderer. Home at last. An Englishman’s cardboard is his home.”
Freud indicated a wobbly looking cardboard structure with a large rag as a door. He opened it and beckoned us to enter. Inside were piles of newspapers, empty bottles, a kettle, a few psychology books: Nick Hayes’ Principles of Social Psychology; Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams; Michael Daniels’ Shadow, Self, Spirit: Essays in Transpersonal Psychology. He squatted on an upturned crate and we sat on a wooden board on two bricks. He found a bottle of cider amongst the mess, swigged, wiped the top on his sleeve and offered it to me. I refused. Cass did too. He rummaged and found a whole cardboard box of mobile phones. He gave a few to Cass.
“Most of these work. I come by them in the course of my urban perambulations,” he said.
“I’ve got one, but thanks,” she said.
“What happened? You. Here?” I asked.
He took another swig and looked at Cass, then me. He made his hands into fluttering wings, then opened them, as if letting something go.
“A weakness for track and turf. My life dashed beneath the marvellous hooves. A second weakness for nubile young patients. Pish – practice gone. Pish – wifey and kids gone. Pish – house gone. Pish – mind gone. But at least I was the architect of my own ruin, unlike some poor fucker suckers these days. Success is contemptible. Any fool can be successful. Look at our political leaders. The Pope. Failure is infinitely harder, more variegated and interesting. If you want to study the richness of humanity, study failure. But I digress. To business. What did you discover about Brissot today?”
“He’s involved with the disappearance of my client’s brother, and with the murder of my client, Andy Hebden, and of someone else I knew. I want to know exactly what happened and why. I want to know what he actually does.”
“And then?”
I shrugged.
“One step at a time, sweet Jesus. You just want to know,” he said. “OK. I know a great deal about Brissot. Another of my professional misdemeanours was that I occasionally hypnotized people without their knowing. It’s easier than people think. I will give you information but I want something in return.”
I looked at him.
“Affaire de couer. Actually it was more of the body, but I’m an old romantic. Sarah Davenport. Thirty three. Hair the colour of warm honeycomb. Eyes emerald green. A body to crucify nations for. She and I went at it like rabbits in my office. We planned to run away. Then she discovered that I hadn’t actually told my wife. A mere technicality but it quickened her. She left and it was the beginning of the end. Brokenhearted, I decided the great shammy artifice of my life would crumble and so it did. Despite my enormous intelligence, deviousness, cunning and ability to lie, blackmail and ferret out the darkest nugget, I couldn’t find her. That is now your job, Dr. Rook. We make an exchange of facts.”
“And what will you do if I find her?”
“Like you, I just want to know.”
“You don’t want to see her?”
Freud laughed.
“Look at me.”
I could see his point.
“Of course I don’t want to bloody meet her, you fool. I just want to know where she is, what she is, how she is. A deal?”
“A deal.”
He gave me a few details about Sarah Davenport, then threw a mobile at me.
“You can contact me with that. Mine is the only number on it,” he said.
I stood to leave. Cass, I noticed with some misgiving, was more reluctant. Perhaps she had inherited some awful fascination for the darkness of humanity.
“One more thing,” Freud said, now slightly drunk. “Brissot won’t stop now you’ve insulted him.”
“I’ve already had several warnings,” I said.
“He will have taken steps towards your demise. Be vigilant.”
“That’s exactly what he said.”
“You’ve seen something. Don’t dismiss it as nonsense or superstition. Things fly out of the dark and we should heed them. It’s like a shining.”
The strange image of the man in the fedora hat rowing towards me returned, the sense of drowning but being outside myself, and the shrieking bird. On a whim I took out the bottle of 1982 Chateau Lafleur Pomerol and gave it to Freud. He took it and put it beside him.
“Better than the cider. It’s worth…”
“I know what it’s worth. Slightly overpriced at three thousand pounds. Never underestimate me, Dr. Rook. Bon voyage.”
Outside we breathed the stale Thames air to clear the stench of the Tunnel from our noses and minds.
“He makes you seem almost normal,” she said.
“Thanks, Cass. You’re in danger of nearly paying me a compliment. I think he might be useful, but I also think he’s dangerous.” As yet, I had no inkling just how dangerous Freud would prove to be. I wasn’t happy about Cass’s involvement. I should have found a way of keeping her out of this case.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Cass. “And it’s too bloody late. I am involved, whether you like it or not. So the best thing we can do is try to work on it together.”
There was nothing more to say. My daughter seemed to be my partner. What concerned me more immediately is that I knew we were being followed.
Chapter Thirteen
You are hurrying to the sweet place,
To the nonsense chasing your spirit
And in the nonsense you look for answers.
Dejan Stojanovic
I said nothing to Cass, and made sure we kept changing pace and crossing roads. I wanted to get to a busy area as soon as possible, though that didn’t help Sam – he was murdered in a crowd. When we turned a corner I chanced a look behind. I was expecting to see Darnel but it wasn’t him –
this was a figure in a long coat and wearing a hat, so I could make out very little, which I suppose was the intention. Was it a fedora? A shadow passed through me and I felt suddenly weak and chilled. I needed to get us home. I needed a large Famous Grouse.
I took us through an M&S store and then through the back and then doubled back through another entrance and through the store again.
Cass hissed, “Are we being followed?”
I smiled and nodded. We came out of the M&S store where we had first entered it. We stopped. I couldn’t see him anywhere. We got to the Tube and I was fairly sure he didn’t follow us there. There are different kinds of followers. Those who want to be seen, which acts as a warning; those who want to get in for the kill as quickly as possible; those who look for patterns of movement so they can predict where someone will be at a given time. I had a sense that our follower was the latter. He was being careful. It may be that he wanted to get me alone, and simply by being there Cass made me safe. I hoped this was the case because it also meant he had no interest in her. It was me Brissot wanted out of the way. We were OK for now. As usual I got things wrong.
As we left the tube station and walked towards my car I knew something was going to happen. He came from the evening shadows, full tilt at me, knocking me clean off my feet and thumping down on the bonnet of my car. But this wasn’t the long coat and the hat. Darnel held me down and with his free hand took a little bottle of something from his pocket and unscrewed the lid. I was too winded to fight back.
“Stay back, Cass!” I said.
Cass stood and watched in horror. Darnel looked at her, then back at me. He held the bottle close to my face and tilted it slightly.
“Acid,” he said. “Enough here to turn your ugly mug into a bloody hole. Now, you back off. This is the last warning.”
He tilted the bottle and at the last moment moved his hand. The acid fell on the car bonnet, where it sizzled and smoked the paint and metal away in an acrid plume. Then he threw the bottle away and walked to the black Audi. Brissot sat in the back watching. He raised a hand in farewell and Darnel drove them away.
Cass and I held each other in shock, then got in the car. The bonnet still smoked a little. We sat in silence for at least five minutes.
“Cass, I’m so sorry,” I said.
“Are you going to do what he said – back off?” she asked, swallowing back the tears.
“I can’t,” I said.
“Good.”
At home I put on some fresh linguine with mozzarella and Cass made a leaf salad. It was as if we had both swallowed the horror and decided to behave as if nothing much had happened. Trauma always kicks in, but often with a delay. With a stitch of pain in my heart I realised I would miss her when she moved out, which could happen at any time, yet given the ludicrous dangers she was experiencing it could only be for the best. We started a bottle of cheap Rioja (regretting my generosity to Freud) while the pasta cooked.
I switched on my laptop, put in an USB sensor and after a few seconds a tiny green light showed and a beep could be heard. I brought up a map of England and slowly the view zoomed in to somewhere in Hertfordshire. A large country house. Bedworth Lodge in Cucumber Lane, Essendon. The photographic view showed huge gardens, a pool and tennis court, outbuildings and a large main house. I searched. The blurb stated: A charming Grade II listed 17th Century house set in beautiful gardens with a contemporary conversion of the former coach house, in a delightfully rural yet accessible location. Bedworth Lodge has close associations with Beatrix Potter, the celebrated author of children’s books. It is understood, during the summer of 1891, she stayed at the property where she sketched a number of pen and ink drawings including ‘The mice in their storeroom’ and ‘The rabbit’s potting shed’ which inspired the famous Peter Rabbit stories, the first of which was written in 1893.
“Nice gaff. What is it? Birthday present for me?” Cass asked.
“It’s where Brissot is. I put a micro-tracker in the spine of the book I gave him. At least I know where he is for now.”
He owned a London house and a country listed building, worth something like six and a half million between them. Whoever said crime doesn’t pay should meet the top players, like Brissot, international bankers, corporate giants – the real criminals. Don’t start me on that – my blood boils as soon as I think of how money really works and who really controls it.
I wrote down the names of the non-existent lorry drivers. A. Ames, J. Andre, R. Sorge, N. Hale. I looked at the file of deliveries they were meant to have made – to such far flung places as Laos, Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Chad, Zimbabwe, Somalia. Cass blue-tacked the names on the wall. Given that they appeared to own no trucks, what were they delivering, if anything, and how? The names of the drivers were spies. The places were some of the poorest and most disease ridden in the world – hardly honeypots for gangsters to dip into. What was the connection? What the hell did it all mean? Cass tacked up the list of deliveries, at least two a month for the past twelve months, alternating drivers, but sometimes both drivers named. Given that the drivers’ names weren’t real, but the places were, and presumably the dates, what could we make of it? It was Cass who had the breakthrough.
“The places are real, so maybe they really do take stuff there. The drivers are the names of spies. Why spies?” she asked.
“What do spies represent? Secrets. Duplicity. Codes.” I sensed we were opening a real can of worms.
“So the names stand for something else. Perhaps the names of other people,” she said.
“Or whatever it is being delivered. But that sounds right. The names are codes. Perhaps Brissot came up with the spy names because his ancestor, Jacques Brissot, was also accused of being a spy for the British by the Revolutionary tribunal. It’s why he was executed.”
We had something. Dates, places, but as yet no idea what was being delivered. We knew Brissot and the Hebdens were the main players, but not who actually made deliveries, or how payments were made. Investigations are like iron filings and a magnet. The filings swirl and scatter and are formless, then you have an idea, something to connect, and it magnetizes them into a shape. As yet, a shape in a mist, but I would get closer. I’d see it. Somehow. Cass was smiling.
“We make a great team,” she said.
That worried me. As if the horror was becoming commonplace. I suddenly knew I had to distance her from all this. I thought of the stalker. The fedora hat. Darnel looking at her like a bird of prey. The acid incident.
“Cass. Think of everything that’s just happened. That’s my life, my choices, not yours. From here on I follow this on my own.”
Her face tightened.
“But you said…”
“I know what I said, and I was lying.”
“Is there ever a time when you’re not? You always do this – let people in and then shut them out. What are you so scared of?” she said.
“I’m scared of something happening to you. I couldn’t bear it.”
“Then you shouldn’t have let me in at all.”
She was right.
“No more, Cass. No more.”
As she left, she slammed the door so hard the names of the spies fluttered to the floor. As usual, I had handled things clumsily. When would I learn? And the answer whispered back from the shadows: Never. Given what had happened I had to make sure Cass was OK. I went outside but she was nowhere to be seen. It was dark now. Across the road a blue Audi was parked and I’d never seen the car or the driver before. He looked up at me as he spoke on a mobile, and then started the car and drove away. Panic fired in me and I imagined Cass unconscious on the back seat or in the boot. I ran to my Saab (I must get that back window repaired), started it and went after the Audi. He turned left and then just made it through some lights. He clearly wanted to get away. I put my foot down and hoped for the best as I went through the red light; to my left a van swerved and I could see the driver’s irate face as he hit the horn long and loud.
That’s t
he strange thing about cowardice: when the red mist descends it dissolves – whatever kicks in is a powerful drug, a cocktail of adrenalin and primal rage. I’d already decided that if Cass was hurt I would kill him. To my shame a tiny part of me found this horribly, obscenely exciting. Many Indians, such as the Rajputs warrior-caste, would take bhang (a cannabis based drug sometimes mixed with opium) before a battle in order to steady their nerves and to inhibit untimely bowel movements. The Sikh Nihang warrior sect has a historic tradition of preparing bhang for pain management before battle. For me the fuel was mad protectiveness, an addiction to danger and a few glasses of red wine and scotch. You can’t afford to start feeling emotional and grief-stricken when you’re heading straight for the jaws of the croc. There’s time enough afterwards.
I kept the Audi in sight for several miles, but traffic was too heavy to get really close, then he turned left onto the North Circular road. I put my foot down in the slow lane, overtook a row of cars, then swung back into the overtaking lane. I was tail-backing two cars behind the Audi. Traffic lights were coming in a hundred yards or so. The Audi just made it through them and the two cars in front of me slowed to stop. I swung back in the slow lane and put my foot down. An elderly man about to cross the road pointed his rolled up newspaper at me and shouted something. I was alongside the Audi now and could see the driver was a man in his forties, balding, glasses, oblivious to me. I accelerated to eighty, cruised in front of the Audi, and started to slow. He tried to overtake in the slow lane but I pulled over, still slowing. Eventually I stopped and he had to stop too because traffic was heavy in the other lane. I got out and opened my boot, and picked up a large spanner, then approached the car. He looked at me, his jaw dropped and eyes widened and he locked all the doors. I banged on the windscreen but he just stared at me. I caught sight of myself in the driver’s window – a sweaty, snarling idiot, and smashed the image to snowdrops with the spanner. I pushed the window in and tried to grab at the driver, but he had rolled across to the passenger side, unlocked the door and gotten out.
Beyond Good and Evil Page 6