The Whispering Gallery

by Mark Sanderson

  The retired poulterer had finally had enough. He staggered out into West Smithfield. Johnny slipped on to his stool.

  “You just missed her,” said Bennion, placing the foaming beer in front of him.

  “It’s been one of those days,” said Johnny. “The sound and pictures of the movie of my life have somehow got out of sync. I don’t suppose she said where she was going?”

  “She’s not speaking to me at the moment. I made the mistake of trying to talk some sense into her. Dolly might know.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I can’t make her love me. I gave it my best shot. I’d just like to know where I went wrong.”

  “The female mind is a mysterious thing.”

  “You can say that again. I honestly thought I understood her. All I wanted to do was make her happy.”

  “Well, if you want to make me happy you can buy me a drink.” Millie, looking both younger and prettier out of uniform, stood there beaming.

  “What would you like?”

  “Cherry brandy, please. I must say you look much better than the last time I saw you.”

  “I could say the same. Thanks for getting my clothes laundered.”

  “You can make it up to me later.” She winked. “Let’s sit by the window.”

  Johnny was reluctant to be seen enjoying himself in front of Stella’s father but, when he bought a second round, the man who would never be his father-in-law said: “I don’t blame you, mate. She’s a lovely girl.”

  Three hours later, as they left the pub arm-in-arm, Johnny had finally made up his mind what to do. All evening the charming diastema had made him long to kiss her mouth – and the rest of her body. For once, though, he was going to resist the temptation. His ribs would complain and he knew that, despite being blameless, he would feel guilty in the morning. Besides, it wouldn’t be fair on Millie: he would be bedding her out of a lust for revenge rather than genuine romance.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t invite you back to my place – I’ve an early start tomorrow. I’ve got to go to a funeral.”

  “I wouldn’t have gone with you even if you had. What sort of a girl d’you think I am?” Her big, brown eyes gazed at him with merriment. “You can walk me back to the nursing home though – if you like.”

  “Of course.” He didn’t let on that he knew exactly where it was.

  As they headed towards Little Britain Stella emerged from Cloth Fair. She froze, then stepped back into the shadows, watching the happy couple until they turned the corner. A wry smile crossed her face. It hadn’t taken him long to find a replacement. So much for being broken-hearted.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Friday, 9th July, 7.20 a.m.

  He had just reached his desk when the telephone started trilling. Someone had placed an early edition over his typewriter. His freckled face stared out from the front page: NEWS MAN SENT DEATH THREAT BY KILLER. The sub-heading read: Clueless City cops remain tight-lipped.

  “Answer the damn thing!” Dimeo, his hair still damp from the shower – he cycled to work whatever the weather – launched a paper plane at him. He had even drawn Iron Crosses on its wings. It looped the loop then nose-dived to the floor.

  “Your taxi’s here, Mr Steadman.”

  “I didn’t order one.”

  “One moment, please.” Johnny put down the strawberry shake that he had bought from the new milk-bar across the road. Feeling a little rough after the over-indulgence of the night before, he was hoping it would settle his stomach. He hadn’t had anything to eat since the slice of Haggie’s cake.

  “The driver’s adamant, sir. Insists on speaking to you face to face.”

  “I’ll be right down.” He licked the sweat off his upper lip. It could only mean one thing.

  The cabbie was standing in the marble foyer, gazing at the Art Deco star-burst ceiling. Secretaries, messengers and managers, dreading another long, hot, arduous day, eddied round him. He was holding a parcel.

  “Mr John Steadman?” Johnny nodded. “The gentleman was most insistent, sir. I was to give this to you and no one else.” He handed over the parcel. It was surprisingly heavy.

  “What did he look like?”

  “He was a queer fish. All wrapped up ’e was – even on a day like this.”

  “Can’t you be more specific?” The unshaven man gave a crooked grin. He had tombstone teeth. Johnny placed half a crown in the outstretched palm.

  “He was tall, dressed all in black, and had a silly big hat on. He’d a white scarf round his face and all. Made it hard to hear what ’e was on about.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He told me to deliver the parcel to the News and to hand it over to no one ’cept yourself.”

  “I don’t usually start work until eight o’clock.”

  “He said that, but I thought there were no ’arm in trying. I were to wait for as long as it took.”

  “What if I hadn’t turned up till noon?”

  “Not a problem. He give us a fiver.”

  “Five pounds!”

  The man held up the note with pride. “He ain’t short of lolly, that’s for sure.”

  “Did he talk posh?”

  “’Ard to say. He whispered like. Creepy geezer, ’e was.”

  “Where d’you pick up the parcel?”

  “Clerkenwell Green.”

  “When?”

  “’Bout an hour ago. I stopped off to have some breakfast. Been workin” all night.”

  Johnny shook the parcel gently. Something rattled inside. The driver wasn’t the only one who’d been busy.

  “The police may want to speak to you. The man who hired you has threatened to kill me.”

  “Sorry to ’ear it – but I ain’t no grass. Me and coppers don’t get on.” He scarpered out of the revolving doors.

  Johnny sighed. The man was an idiot. He gave the parcel to a doorman, then followed the driver outside. He had plenty of time to jot down the registration number of the cab. There was something to be said for heavy traffic after all.

  Dimeo was perched on the corner of his desk when he got back. “Yum. This tastes really good.”

  Johnny snatched what was left of the shake off him and drank it. He suspected he was about to lose his appetite.

  “Hmm. You’re right. Bit warm though.” He sat down, opened the top drawer and took out a pair of scissors.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Dimeo leaned forward eagerly.

  “Has anyone ever told you what a ghoul you are?”

  “Not to my face. Go on – I’m on tenderhooks.”

  “I think you’ll find it’s tenterhooks,” said Tanfield, hanging his jacket on the back of his chair.

  “Who asked you?” Dimeo turned back to Johnny. “Keep your whippersnapper under control.”

  “Fourteen letters!” Tanfield called over his shoulder, heading for the canteen.

  “One of these days I’ll give that lad what for.”

  Johnny smiled. “He reminds me of you. Doesn’t know when to shut up.”

  He cut the string and, following the same procedure with his handkerchief as last time, undid the brown paper. He opened the familiar cream envelope first.

  The postcard showed a painting by Murillo. Saints Justa and Rufina held what looked like the model of a church tower between them. A few pots lay at their feet. It was a gloomy picture. The women’s robes were a medley of muted greens, purples and browns. Justa’s eyes were downcast; Rufina’s raised to the heavens. Johnny turned the card over to read the inevitable quotation:

  Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

  He didn’t recognise it and knew better than to inquire if Louis did.

  “Get on with it!”

  “My sentiments entirely, Mr Dimeo.” Patsel nodded to his underlings. “Good morning, gentlemen.”

  Dimeo, curiosity overcoming propriety, stayed put.

  #x201C;Glad to see you made it through the night, Steadman.�
�

  “Thank you. Any guesses what it might be this time?” He shook the box again.

  “Bones,” said Patsel. “Bloody, broken bones.”

  Johnny parted the tissue paper. Pencil was right. Scraps of flesh and sinew still clung to some of them. They looked as if they had been snapped or stamped on rather than sawn. Brute force had been employed, not technique. The foul smell, which stung his eyes, made his stomach lurch. He replaced the lid. Dimeo, inexplicably disappointed, returned to his desk without a word.

  “You must inform the police,” said Patsel. “Finally they might have something interesting to say. I hope for your sake they do: the seventh floor want to go big on this story again tomorrow. Let Mr Quarles know of any developments.”

  Johnny was prevented from going straight to the library by another telephone call.

  “Congratulations, my dear boy. You’ve made the headlines once again.”

  “What d’you want, Simkins?”

  At the other end of the line laughter tinkled.

  “Nothing. Nothing at all. Just ringing out of the goodness of my heart.” Johnny doubted there was much of that. “I pray this doesn’t mean I shan’t be seeing you this evening. I promise to look after you.”

  “Now I’m really worried. What the hell, though. I’ll be there.”

  “Good man. You won’t regret it. Toodle-pip.”

  Why was Simkins so anxious that he attend the party? He always had an ulterior motive. Perhaps he wanted him out of the way of something else . . .

  His reverie was interrupted by yet another call. “Mr John Steadman?”

  “Speaking.”

  “Stay on the line, please. I have Commander Inskip for you.”

  Johnny sat down and took a deep breath. This should be interesting.

  “What the blazes d’you think you’re doing?” The roar would not have disgraced a drill sergeant at Sandhurst.

  “I might ask you the same question.”

  “If you want to get yourself killed, then you’re going the right way about it.”

  “Perhaps.” He flipped open his notebook. “How are you going about catching the blighter? My readers would like to know, as would I. And don’t say it’s none of our business. My well-being is your business. I suggest you go public and make a plea for information about any women who have gone missing in the past week.”

  “Don’t tell me how to do my job, Steadman.”

  “I’m surprised you’ve still got it. Anybody with an ounce of self-respect would have resigned last year. Why the Home Secretary didn’t sack you is a mystery. What have you got on him?”

  “Now listen here, you little fuck.” He lowered his voice to a growl. “Write any further criticism of me and my men and I guarantee you’ll regret it.”

  “You really have no idea about how to get a good press, have you? You should be buttering me up, not giving me an ear-bashing. It’s never wise to threaten a reporter. Whatever your opinion of me – and I don’t give a toss what you think – we’re actually on the same side in this case. It’s in both our interests to see this man caught. I don’t want my body to be the first one that’s found.”

  Johnny had never met the commander, but he had seen photographs of him awarding medals, making charitable donations, standing over a bank robber’s corpse. He was at least six foot four and had abnormally large hands – which must have made it easy for him to be on the take. Fierce eyes stared out of a craggy face. The overall impression was of a man in his late fifties determined to withstand the ravages of age. Johnny had no doubt that, if they ever met in a back alley, he would not be the one who walked away.

  “I’ve had men working on this all week.”

  “Are they your best men, though? DC Penterell struck me as still being wet behind the ears.”

  He could hear Inskip breathing heavily as he struggled to keep his temper.

  “Casting aspersions on the professionalism of my men will not solve these murders – if that’s what they are.”

  “I think that’s a pretty safe assumption. I received another parcel this morning.”

  “How?”

  “He hired a cabbie. And before you ask, I did take a note of the registration number. You might be able to get a fuller description out of him. Unfortunately, it appears the killer was in disguise.”

  The commander snorted. “You do surprise me. I presume you opened the parcel?”

  “Bits of broken bones. More pieces of the human jigsaw.”

  “I’ll send someone round to collect them. You know you could be arrested for tampering with evidence.”

  “And what would that achieve? It was addressed to me. If I were taken into custody, the killer would simply wait until I was released. Without me he can’t continue his sick little game.”

  “Why you?”

  “I honestly don’t know. I’ve been racking my brains, but I can’t imagine what I’ve done to make him choose me.”

  “In my opinion, the postcards are a kind of suicide note. He must know that, sooner or later, he’ll be caught and sent to the gallows. The longer the game goes on, the more likely it becomes. Each parcel is a way of saying ‘Come and get me!’ No sane person would announce their intention to commit a murder and think they could get away with it.”

  “Well, he’s obviously not sane – but insanity doesn’t preclude intelligence. He’s got away with three murders so far.”

  “You don’t know that, Steadman. And I’ll thank you not to repeat that in print.”

  “Are the arm and breast from the same body?”

  “No. Preliminary tests suggest the contrary. I’ll ensure the bones are taken directly to the lab. My guess is that the results won’t match the previous victims. Once you’ve killed a person – as it were, crossed the Rubicon – it’s easier to kill again and again. The killer becomes desensitised and, paradoxically, finds it more difficult to quench his blood-lust.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.” Was he speaking from personal experience? Johnny suspected the commander was capable of anything. “Have the envelopes provided any leads?”

  “We weren’t able to get any decent prints off them, if that’s what you mean.”

  “So it’s fair to say you’re still clueless?” Inskip swore under his breath. “Would you like me to give you one?”

  “Withholding evidence is a crime.”

  “I’m not sure you can call it evidence – but it’s more than a coincidence.”

  “What is?”

  “The postcards I received through the mail were marked Mount Pleasant.”

  “So was ours.”

  “The killer hailed the cabbie in Clerkenwell Green. I suggest you focus your attention there.”

  “He’s hardly likely to have been standing on his own doorstep – not if he’s as intelligent as you say.”

  “It was six o’clock in the morning. There was no reason why he should go out of his way. It simply wasn’t worth the effort. Think about it. He could have gone all the way down to Brixton to put us off the scent and yet exactly the same question would have arisen. Is it a bluff or a double-bluff?”

  “We’ll check to see if anyone local has gone missing recently.”

  “Watch your back – he’s a dangerous man.”

  Inskip snorted. “You too, sonny.” The line went dead. For once there was someone else in the library apart from the melancholic librarian and Amy, who looked over her shoulder at him coyly. Blenkinsopp had a medical dictionary open in front of him.

  “What seems to be the problem?”

  “That’s good, Steadman. I’m having trouble with my Pencil. It’s not letting me do what I want.” Out of sight, a giggle quickly became a cough. “He’s got me investigating whether gastritis is genuinely caused by hurried eating – the bus drivers are threatening to strike again.”

  The drivers, who were usually so proud of their punctuality, had forced hundreds of thousands of commuters to walk to work in May when, protesting about snatched lun
ches and two-minute tea-breaks, they had refused to take their vehicles out of the garages. Their sore stomachs had resulted in a lot of sore feet.

  Blenkinsopp slammed the book shut as hard as he could.

  “Quiet, gentlemen, please.” The librarian, accustomed to the boorish behaviour of reporters, shook his head sadly. In response the frustrated hack adopted a stage whisper.

  “Sure you don’t need a hand finding your killer?”

  He got to his feet and, with exaggerated care, silently replaced his chair under the table.

  “No thanks.”

  “Well, it’s your lookout. Don’t forget to write your obit.” He blew a kiss to Amy and tiptoed out.

  Saints Justa and Rufina were sisters born in Seville in AD 268 and 270 respectively. The object they were holding in the picture turned out to be the Giralda, the bell-tower of the city’s cathedral. The pious Christians made pottery for a living, but when they refused to sell their wares for use in a pagan festival the revellers smashed them to smithereens. The sisters retaliated by shattering a statue of Venus. The broken bones must represent the shards of pottery.

  Events then followed a familiar pattern. Diogenianus, prefect of Seville, had the sisters imprisoned, stretched on the rack and pierced with iron hooks, yet they would not renounce their faith. They were forced to walk barefoot to Sierra Morena and locked up again without food and water. Their belief in Christ never wavered. When Justa died her body was thrown down a well while Rufina was thrown to the lions – who declined to eat her. Diogenianus, understandably losing his patience, finally had her strangled and her body burned.

  It was a typically nasty story, but what was its significance? Their feast day furnished him with one possible answer: 19th July. Had the date 1st August been intended to lull him into a false sense of security? Perhaps he had just ten more days to live.

  There were those who believed you should live each day as though it were your last – but Johnny wasn’t one of them. It was true that he spent more time looking back than imagining what lay ahead – the answer to why he was being sent the postcards surely lay in the past – however the only way he would be able to deal with the cruel countdown was to treat each moment as it came, paying attention to the present while trying to ignore the future.