by Nick Louth
‘You’ve got a line there, mate,’ Baz said. He was aware he was still trying to provoke a reaction. Jakes was a perfectionist.
Again there was no immediate response, but as Baz looked up from his work he could see Jakes staring at him. The most amazing thing was that for the first time, both of Jakes’s eyes were focused and unmoving, his mouth tight.
‘No offence, mate,’ Baz said, already regretting that his own petulance was causing mischief.
‘You don’t understand anything about it, Barry! Not a thing.’ Jakes turned away and, with a sudden growl, gouged a great chunk out of the wall he was working on with his trowel. He flung the hawk to the ground, its full load of plaster splattering across the floor, and stormed out of the room. Plasterers’ sacrilege.
For a full minute Baz carried on working, but then he realised his own arm was shaking a little. He’d never seen Jakes angry before and considered that an apology might be in order. Claire had often accused him of insensitivity. Once again she had been proven right. Perhaps Jakes had been abused as a child, something like that. Maybe that’s why he didn’t even want to discuss Neville Rollason. And he shouldn’t have used the word freaks. Baz emptied his own hawk back into the bucket, set the trowel down carefully and set off to find his workmate.
The lower doorway of the herpetarium led out through a footpath fenced on both sides to a large open area, in which much construction machinery was stored. Baz could see Jakes off to the left by another enclosure. He made his way over towards him, passing through a metal gate and onto a metal walkway that traversed the edge of a large muddy pool. Baz held onto the handrails as the walkway led him across the edge of the turbid waters. Jakes was staring down into the water, seemingly unaware of Baz’s approach. There was movement in the water, swirling currents, and then a shiny brown island surfaced for a moment before disappearing again.
‘Is that a croc?’ Baz asked, hoping for a safe conversational gambit.
As Baz leaned on the rail next to his workmate Jakes spoke, but kept his gaze on the undulating surface. ‘Yes. It’s not really warm enough for them to come out of the heated water. They need at least twenty-five degrees.’
‘So that’s why they are going to enclose the space, is it?’
Jakes nodded.
‘Good idea,’ Baz said mildly. He was wondering how to apologise. His formula for apologising to his wife on the many occasions he upset her was to kiss her on the neck and offer to take her out to dinner. It didn’t always work either. In any case there was no way he was going to kiss Michael Jakes on the neck.
Jakes saved him the trouble.
‘Neville Rollason used to tempt boys into his car,’ he said. ‘He had a toy box in the boot. Tapes of rock bands for the older teenagers, and Lego for the younger ones. He had computer games and consoles, including the Super Mario ones which were huge at the time. He had sweets, chocolate, fizzy drinks and alcohol, all of which he had spiked with drugs. In the basement at his house he kept a huge model railway layout and a pinball machine. He kept photographs of his playroom in the car to show the boys he wanted to lure there.’
Baz didn’t dare breathe.
‘Daniel Cooper was the first victim. Thirteen years old, disappeared outside a sweet shop in Gateshead in 1984. Then Jason Harvey, seventeen, from Newcastle. He was last seen in a park in March 1985. Paul Sullivan, eleven, was the youngest, November 1985. Sullivan’s body hasn’t been found. Then there are the other victims, the suspected and the unknown.’ He looked across at Baz, his eyes steady. ‘Not all of them are dead.’
It seemed to him the pain of Jakes’s childhood was being laid bare right before him.
‘I’m really sorry, it was so insensitive of me.’
Baz saw a complex expression swarm across Jakes’s face. The errant eye resumed climbing gradually, peering over Baz’s head, and then, like a one-armed bandit, dropped back into its normal position.
‘You have been to the police about this, haven’t you?’ Baz asked.
Jakes blew a sigh and turned away in exasperation. ‘I’m touched, Baz, but I don’t think empathy is your strong suit.’
Chapter Eighteen
Friday
Detective Inspector Claire Mulholland had gone the formal route in her approach to Gus van Steenis. The nine a.m. appointment meant she had to hang around a little after giving Baz a lift for his eight a.m. start. She left the car at the gate and, when Baz was buzzed through over the intercom, she walked in with him. The Holdersham Estate still boasted many of the stately-home attributes that had made it such an attractive preparatory school. A long ride of lime trees led up to the main house, and to the left were buildings that had previously housed the sports changing rooms. Between her and them were a series of substantial railings with padlocked gates. Beyond them, in front of a screen of bushes, she could see a woman in a green uniform manoeuvring a bale of straw in a wheelbarrow. Claire called her over, and after a couple of minutes she came to the other side of the railings. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked. She was in her early thirties, pretty and slim. Juliette, according to her badge, a name that seemed familiar. Claire had overheard PC Wickens going on endlessly about someone of that name to his mates in the canteen. Seeing the woman, she understood.
Claire flashed her detective ID and explained that she had an interview with the manager at nine. Juliette looked at her watch and plucked out the walkie-talkie radio clipped to her belt. ‘I’ll call him to let him know that you’re here.’
‘In a minute,’ Claire said. ‘I just wondered if I could ask you a few questions about the owner.’
‘Sheikh Khalil? I’ve only ever seen him from a distance. He’s hardly ever here.’
‘Not here now?’
‘We’d know. Comes in by helicopter. If you want to know anything about him, you should ask Gus, he’s the manager.’
‘I’m not after the official version. I’ll be discreet and won’t be making notes.’
‘Okay,’ Juliette said, her glance crawling sideways to the big house as if she could be overheard.
‘How long have you worked here?’
‘Just over two years.’
‘How many members of staff are there here?’
‘Is this about licensing, or something else?’ she asked.
‘Mainly licensing.’
‘Well, four of us to look after the animals. I don’t know how many work inside the house. Maybe two or three. He sometimes uses conservation volunteers too, to clear the scrub.’
‘Has anyone left or been fired recently?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘Any foreign nationals?’
‘Only in the house, I think they all are.’
‘Can I see the new building?’
‘There’s nothing to see yet. Just a bunch of workmen finishing off.’
‘Humour me.’
Juliette shrugged, and led the way, up a ramp and through a pair of double doors. The building was a wide meandering corridor, lined with apertures on either side. Claire could hear the distinctive gritty sound of a trowel on plaster. She hoped Baz would keep quiet as she passed him.
‘There will be glass tanks in here,’ Juliette said. ‘We’ve got anacondas, boa constrictors, pythons, and a bunch of other reptiles, many of them endangered species. They’re currently in the old barn, which is difficult and expensive to heat.’
‘There must be strict import rules.’
‘Yes, but we don’t import. The snakes are almost entirely rescues, sourced in the UK. They used to be sold quite widely in pet shops, and we buy them from owners who got bored or are incapable of looking after them. People don’t understand that the constrictors have very precise requirements yet spend almost all their time asleep. They can live for decades and get very large.’
They passed Baz and Jakes, who were working on the ceiling of one of the spurs off the main corridor. ‘All this work will be finished in a couple of days,’ Juliette said. ‘As you probably guessed, the build
ing was designed to represent the sinuous shape of a snake.’ She waggled her hips in illustration.
With that sixth sense that men have for a sight worth seeing, Baz’s eyes flicked sideways at Juliette. Up, down, then a lingering glance at her breasts. It took a couple of seconds to register that Claire was there too. A splat of dropped plaster punctuated his surprise. He squeezed out a guilty smile and then went back to his work. His neck coloured slightly. Claire understood. She could read him like a dirty book.
Juliette led her on towards the end of the corridor, where the breeze-block construction was still visible. Claire looked to her left. A staircase, going down. ‘What’s down here?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. Nothing worth seeing, I’m sure.’
‘May I?’ Claire asked as she began to descend.
‘What are you doing?’ Juliette asked, following the policewoman down the stairs. At the bottom, an open door led to a small room, maybe ten feet square, on which the plasterwork had already been finished. On the floor there was a mattress, still in its plastic wrapper. A urinal-style gulley was at one end of the room. ‘I really must ask you to stop,’ Juliette protested.
Claire ignored her request and stepped into the room. ‘What’s this for?’
‘I told you, I don’t know. Now unless you have a warrant I must ask you to leave. If you have any more questions you should ask Gus.’
The detective inspector took a couple of photographs on her phone, and then complied. Juliette guided her upstairs and out of the building.
‘Well, time for me to go up to the house,’ Claire said. ‘Thank you for your time.’
‘I’m assuming the reason you’re really here is to find out if the dead guy from the river used to work with us?’
Now it was Claire’s turn to smile. ‘Yes, that’s part of why I’m here.’
‘I think you’ll be disappointed,’ Juliette said. As she turned away, Claire could almost swear she heard the words the young woman spoke under her breath: nosy bitch.
* * *
Claire made her way up to the main drive and then strode towards the grand entrance of the house. She looked at the pictures she had taken. She wasn’t sure that Michael Jakes had been correct about the function of that basement room. Yes, there was a big lock, and a sliding metal hatch. But it could equally be somewhere for an overnight security person to sleep. There was no smoking gun.
She rang the bell and a few moments later an Asian maid in traditional uniform opened the door and showed her in through the grand entrance hall. She was led into a wood-panelled drawing room. She had somehow expected there to be mounted heads of lions and tigers on the wall, but instead there were paintings of bewigged aristocrats that presumably had come with the property.
Gus van Steenis was wearing a white linen jacket over a crisply ironed pale yellow shirt. With him was a dark-suited middle-aged man, introduced as his lawyer. Coffee was ordered from the maid, and the manager beckoned her to a seat opposite his large walnut desk.
‘So, Detective Inspector, you have come to check up on us,’ he said.
‘Not exactly. As you may be aware, we’re trying to trace a man of Chinese origin who we found in the Thames last week.’
‘I’m aware of that, in fact I gave a statement about my movements on the evening of his disappearance to PCs Wickens and Cottesloe,’ he said.
‘Yes, I have it here.’ Claire opened her leather briefcase and took out the statement. ‘That’s fine for that line of enquiry, but I was just wondering if you had ever employed someone of that ethnicity.’
‘Well, we had a Hong Kong Chinese chef here a few years ago. But he left back in…’ He looked at the lawyer for help.
The suit rapidly flicked through a pile of documents. ‘March 2017,’ he said. He passed the document across to Claire, who made a note of the name.
‘I understood that you were coming to check our various permits for the animals,’ van Steenis said, his glance flicking across to the lawyer, who handed her a thick white envelope.
‘It’s all there,’ the lawyer said. ‘Local authorities and Defra zoo licence, planning consents, movement permissions, dangerous animal consents.’
‘I’ll take these away and have a look,’ she said.
‘Detective Inspector Mulholland, I understand that you have been asking questions of my staff.’ He steepled his hands on the desk. ‘You put Juliette in quite an awkward position, between her respect for the law and her duty of loyalty to me. I really prefer if you would ask me anything you want to know.’
‘News travels fast,’ she replied.
‘Bush telegraph,’ van Steenis said. ‘Very reliable.’
‘Have you ever had any accidents involving your animals?’
‘Yes. I have the workplace accident book just here. There’s been nothing serious for over two years.’
Claire picked up the book and saw that it was meticulously filled out. She was no health and safety expert but it looked like van Steenis took safety very seriously.
‘Anything involving the rhino?’
‘Dennis? No. He’s incredibly gentle. It’s much more likely to be Nora, our female saltwater croc. But we’re very careful with her.’
* * *
Once Mulholland had left, and the lawyer too had departed, Gus van Steenis sat down in his private office. He checked the CCTV monitor to confirm the departure of the detective’s car. He then changed into T-shirt and shorts, always his clothing of choice even in the cool British summers, and headed off to his personal workshop. It was a large and rather ugly metal barn well behind the main house, shielded from view by a line of leylandii. He unlocked the padlock, pulled open the corrugated metal door and switched on the light. The entire shed was turned over to tools of various kinds, from some ancient agricultural harrows and spanners right through to precision electronic kit. Van Steenis was a practical man and this was his chapel. Spread right in the middle of the shed was a large plastic dust sheet, and on it a gym mat. On this was a solidly built wooden dining chair. Van Steenis had built it himself and kitted it out. There were buckled canvas restraints on both arms and the chair’s front legs, and larger canvas belts threaded through the back of the chair. A thick grey cable ran from a large junction box on the wall to the seat-back, where it split into six smaller cables, five of which were connected by brass plates to the arms, legs and back of the chair. The final small cable was connected to a circular brass strip, which hung loosely over the back of the chair like a discarded crown.
Van Steenis went to a toolbox, got out the voltage meter and once again began to test his contraption. It was almost identical to the one that he had made for Mobutu, when he was in Zaire back in ’93, which was in turn modelled on Old Sparky, the Texas chair used until 1964. He rechecked all the connections. He wanted to be sure that it would work properly before Tuesday, when there would be a small select audience.
* * *
The small grey cat woke Michael Jakes just before noon on Saturday. Schrödinger was hungry, and clawing at the pillow and bedclothes, her insistent purr bringing him to consciousness. The cat showed no recognition that this was a day of rest. After stroking her for a few minutes, he clambered out of bed, ran his fingers through his hair and slipped into a bathrobe. Padding downstairs, he topped up the cat’s biscuits and opened a sachet of the soft food that she liked to have in the mornings.
Coffee and The Times. Privilege of a day off. He picked up the heavy paper from the mat and saw that the post had come too, a large envelope in his sister’s handwriting. That was a surprise, as he normally only heard from her on his birthday and at Christmas. They weren’t close. She had the career, the car, the husband, the semi-detached house and the 2.4 children. But inside, Jakes knew that she was as screwed up as he was. The only difference was she didn’t admit it and wouldn’t talk about it. He tore open the envelope and saw that another smaller one was within, as well as a note from Sue.
Dear Michael,
I hope you
are well and taking good care of yourself. You can see from the enclosed that the day we feared is almost upon us. Try not to let it upset you. I promise you he doesn’t know where you live.
All my love
Sue
Jakes set the smaller envelope on the coffee table. It was neatly written and addressed to him, care of his sister. He didn’t know if he dared open it. In the end curiosity overcame him, and he tore the envelope in his hurry, pulled out the one carefully folded sheet and began to read. But before he reached the end he broke down. His shoulders shook, and his vision blurred. The shadow of the past fell on him once again.
Chapter Nineteen
DC Rainy Macintosh was standing in the grand vaulted entrance of Imperial College in London, waiting for the academic to show up. This Saturday appointment was the culmination of half the morning and much of the previous day on a second piece of homework set by Gillard: trying to find what, exactly, the mesh or netting marks on the victim’s body came from. Metal, wire, plastic, wire-in-plastic or something else?
She had soon realised she couldn’t just email out the stomach-turning pictures of the dead body to all and sundry in her search for an answer. It had taken some of the technical expertise of young Research Intelligence Officer Rob Townsend to alter the CSI images and electronically bleach out the human details so that all that remained was the pattern. Rob’s expertise on Photoshop had gradually turned the grisly image of a corpse into a rather beautiful 3D pattern, like violet wallpaper on a pale peach background. Looked at like this, there was a clear waviness that corresponded to the undulations of the now invisible flesh on which the marks were impressed. She had attached a scale to the side of the photographs, and then sent them off to the various obscure industrial academics who might know the answer.
The feedback had varied. Some blinded her with science, emailing back arcane papers and references without explanation. Others passed the buck to colleagues elsewhere, while a good half – this being the summer vacations – just didn’t reply at all.