by Greg Keen
ONE
‘It’s creamy Zummerzet milk wot probably makes Budfield butter taste the best!’
‘Excellent effort, Sir Liam,’ said the woman behind the console, ‘but I’m wondering if we could make it a touch less regional.’
‘You just said you wanted it more regional.’
‘Cider With Rosie is the space we’re after. We’re in danger of drifting a teeny bit towards The Wurzels at the moment.’
Behind the glass the greatest thespian of his generation, and one who had delivered what many critics considered the definitive Lear, looked as though he considered himself to be more sinned against than sinning.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ he muttered into his beard.
The booth mic picked up the comment but the director opted, wisely in my opinion, to ignore it. ‘Could we go one more time, Sir Liam?’ she asked.
‘I’ve got lunch at the Garrick in half an hour.’
‘We’re so close to nailing it.’
Sir Liam was a trouper. He set his shoulders, took a couple of steadying breaths and inclined his head towards the microphone. ‘It’s creamy Zummerzet milk wot probably makes Budfield butter taste the best!’
‘Little bit slower . . .’
‘It’s creamy Zummerzet milk wot probably makes Budfield butter taste the best!’
‘Tiny bit more emphasis on Somerset.’
‘It’s creamy Zummerzet milk wot probably makes Budfield butter taste the best!’
‘Slightly warmer this time.’
‘It’s creamy Zummerzet milk wot probably makes Budfield butter so good for lubing your boyfriend’s arsehole with.’
My brother rose from an L-shaped sofa. ‘I think we’ll leave it there, Suzie,’ he said before speaking into the connecting microphone. ‘Thank you so much for your hard work this morning, Sir Liam. I’m sure we can use one of the takes we already have. If not, we’ll get back to your agent.’
The national treasure pulled off his headphones, hung them on the mic stand and exited the sound booth. Craggy features were a little craggier today after his attendance at the previous night’s BAFTA party. It didn’t appear that celebrating the best in British cinematic talent had done much to sweeten his disposition.
‘Sorry about that last one,’ he said to Malcolm. ‘But you can only say the same damn sentence so many times.’
‘I completely understand.’
A studio lackey appeared carrying a black overcoat. With her assistance, Sir Liam slotted his arms into the sleeves and buttoned it up.
‘Obviously I’ll return if you haven’t got exactly what you want,’ he said.
‘Oh, I think we’ll probably be okay, won’t we, Suzie?’ my brother replied.
The director shrugged, indicating that this may or may not be the case. Grey hair and a pinafore dress made her look like a primary school teacher, although if she had been at all nervous working with the great man, it wasn’t showing.
‘I’ll be on my way, then,’ Sir Liam said. ‘So nice to meet you, Malcolm.’
He shook hands with my brother and nodded at a middle-aged man who was sitting on the sofa. The director may as well have been invisible for all the attention she received. The lackey led the actor past me and out of the studio. Malcolm released a long breath.
‘Christ, Suzie, you rode him a bit hard, didn’t you?’
‘Just trying to get the best out of the old boy. Not my fault if he turns up half-cut.’
‘Well, if we have to get him back, we have to get him back,’ Malcolm said. ‘Thanks for a great job under the circumstances. He’s not the easiest.’
‘No problem. Need me for anything else?’
‘Not right now.’ Malcolm looked at his watch. ‘I’ll ask the office to get in touch and we can go through the takes tomorrow. That suit you, Peter?’
The guy on the sofa nodded. Malcolm and Suzie embraced briefly, after which she left the studio. Having arrived while the commercial was being recorded, I hadn’t had the opportunity to greet my brother. We gave each other a backslapping hug.
‘Thanks for coming, Kenny,’ he said. ‘How have you been?’
‘Not bad,’ I said.
Malcolm was three years older, two stone heavier, and thirty-one million pounds richer than me. That aside, there wasn’t much difference between us.
‘I’d like to introduce you to Peter Timms,’ he said, gesturing to the guy who had now risen from the sofa. ‘Peter’s the CEO of Dairy Vale, the people we’re making the commercial for.’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ I said, and we shook hands.
Peter’s suit was immaculately cut, and an Audemars Piguet Perpetual Calendar watch peeped out from his shirt cuff. He was pot-bellied and in his mid-fifties. No wedding ring. Not much hair.
‘Peter knows you’re a private detective,’ my brother said.
‘Skip-tracer,’ I corrected him.
‘What’s the difference?’ Peter asked.
‘About a hundred quid an hour.’ He looked blank in the same way everyone looked blank when I outlined my job description. I should have become a life coach. ‘Usually I’m hunting down people who’ve reneged on their child support or haven’t returned a hire car,’ I explained. ‘If things get really glamorous, I might pull an insurance case.’
‘What about last year, Kenny?’ Malcolm said. ‘That was . . . off the beaten track.’
That was one way of describing it. An ex-employer had asked me to trace his runaway daughter. A week later, four people were dead. Sometimes I wondered whether I could have handled things differently. Mostly I just tried to forget about it.
‘Are you busy at the moment?’ Peter asked.
‘I’ve got a few irons in the fire.’
‘You wouldn’t be able to take something on, then?’
‘I might. Depending on what the something was.’
‘Have you heard of George Dent?’
I had. But then everyone had. ‘Disgraced Shadow Minister for Urban Development,’ I said. ‘The cops found a load of coke and kiddie porn in his flat. Two weeks later he took a header out of— what’s the place called?’
‘Mermaid Court.’
‘George was a friend of Peter’s,’ Malcolm said.
‘Not a friend exactly,’ Peter clarified. ‘We were at school together and kept in touch. A week or so before he died, I received a call from George. He was very agitated about someone who’d been standing outside his flat.’
‘He had a stalker?’
‘I suppose that’s one way of putting it.’
‘D’you know his name?’
‘Alexander Porteus.’
‘Has anyone talked to the guy?’
‘That would be difficult.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘He died in 1947.’
Sir Liam’s early departure meant there was another twenty minutes on the clock to interview Peter in the studio. We helped ourselves to coffee out of the machine and settled on the sofa. The windowless room with its padded walls lent a confessional quality to the conversation. It turned out to be appropriate.
‘You’re telling me George Dent was being doorstepped by a dead man?’ I said.
‘That’s what he said.’
‘Which is impossible.’
Peter took a sip of coffee. He stared at the carpet for a few seconds and took another sip of coffee. ‘I suppose it is,’ he said.
‘You don’t seem entirely convinced.’
‘Whatever you say will be treated in complete confidence,’ Malcolm assured him. ‘Isn’t that right, Kenny?’
I nodded, and Peter laid the coffee cup down. He placed his elbows on his knees and interlaced his fingers. They were slender with beautifully manicured nails. More like a woman’s than a man’s.
‘George and I attended Hibbert & Saviours in Highgate. You may know it . . .’
Indeed I did. H&S was one of the best-regarded public schools in the country, the kind of place that you paid fifteen grand a term to s
end little Johnny if you wanted him to emerge with immaculate vowels and armour-plated self-esteem.
‘When we were in the lower sixth, I and some other pupils played a bit of a prank.’
‘What kind of prank?’
‘We broke into Highgate Cemetery.’
‘Okay, and what happened?’
‘One of the boys had become obsessed with the occultist Alexander Porteus. You don’t hear of him much now but in the interwar years he was quite famous. Lord Beaverbrook called him the wickedest man in the world.’
A distant bell rang in my memory. ‘Didn’t he live in Dean Street?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And there’s a bookshop in Cecil Court with that name.’
‘He opened it in 1928,’ Peter said. ‘I believe it’s still in the family.’
‘What’s his connection with Highgate Cemetery?’
‘Porteus is interred in the family mausoleum. Simon – he’s the boy I was telling you about – wanted to perform some kind of ritual in front of the tomb.’ Peter breathed heavily a couple of times. ‘We didn’t get the chance to complete it. Halfway through the ceremony a figure appeared. It was Alexander Porteus.’
The silence in the room deepened. Peter stared at his hands. I caught Malcolm’s eye, looking for any indication that his friend might be off his swede. He didn’t give me one.
‘So what you’re telling me,’ I said, ‘is that forty years ago you raised Alexander Porteus from the dead?’
‘We all saw him.’
‘How d’you know it wasn’t someone else playing a prank?’
‘I’d seen photographs. The likeness was too accurate for it to be . . .’ Peter trailed off, shrugged and said, ‘It was Porteus.’
‘I’m guessing you didn’t hang round to say hello.’
‘We ran like hell.’
‘And that was that?’
‘Not quite. One of the boys damaged his knee getting back over the wall. Ray couldn’t walk, and someone called the police. He ended up being sacked.’
‘Sacked?’
‘Expelled.’
‘None of you said anything to save him?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Have you heard from Ray since?’ Peter shook his head. ‘What about the other boys?’ I asked. ‘Are you in touch with them?’
‘Apart from George, I haven’t spoken to any of them in years.’
‘What d’you want me to do?’ I asked.
‘Contact the others and see if any of them have heard from Porteus.’
Money was tight because work was slack. All the same . . .
‘You want me to ask . . . how many men?’
‘Four.’
‘Ask four men whether they’ve seen the same ghost you reckon was hassling your ex-schoolmate shortly before he died. Is that right?’
Peter didn’t say it was, but he didn’t say it wasn’t either.
‘Can’t you do it yourself?’ I asked.
‘I’ve no idea where two of them are,’ he said. ‘And one of them is virtually impossible to speak to.’
‘Let me get this absolutely straight. How many boys in total went to the cemetery that night?’
‘Six including me. Ray Clarke was a scholarship boy from Yorkshire. I suppose you’d describe Will Creighton-Smith as the alpha male, and Simon Paxton was the kid whose idea it all was. We used to call him Paxo, if that helps.’
‘Okay, so put the late George Dent and yourself into the mix and we have five . . .’
‘The sixth person didn’t actually come in,’ Peter said. ‘Henry Baxter was in charge of the ladder. You might know him better as Blimp Baxter.’
‘The developer?’
He nodded again. This information didn’t whet my appetite. Blimp Baxter brought to property deals what the great white shark brought to Bondi Beach. It wasn’t that he didn’t suffer fools gladly – he didn’t suffer them at all.
‘I’m really not sure about this,’ I said, which was putting it mildly. ‘George Dent was probably whacked sideways on coke and Christ knows what else when he saw whatever he thought he saw out of his window. Why not just forget about it?’
‘It’s not that easy.’
‘Because . . . ?’ I asked.
Peter Timms continued to stare at the carpet as though he had lost something minute and extremely valuable in its weave.
‘Tell Kenny what you told me, Peter,’ my brother said.
Timms nodded. He straightened up and looked me full in the face.
‘Eight nights ago I saw Alexander Porteus as well.’
TWO
The studio lackey re-entered the room. She told us that the next client was due. Malcolm thanked her and I asked Peter my next question. ‘What did he look like?’
‘Same as in the cemetery. Tall with a hooded cloak that fell to the ground.’
‘How close were you to him?’
‘About thirty yards. I was looking out of my bedroom window and he was in the garden. There was a bomber’s moon and it never really gets properly dark in London.’
‘How did you know he was there in the first place?’ I asked.
‘There was a peculiar baying sound. At first I thought it was a dog howling but it just went on and on. When I pulled the curtains open . . . there he was.’
‘What did he do?’
‘Raised his arm and pointed at me. After a few seconds he turned and walked towards the bottom of the garden. By the time I’d pulled some clothes on, he’d disappeared.’
‘Is there any way out?’
‘A gate separates my garden from the neighbour’s, but the mechanism’s rusted. The entrance from the street is alarmed. I checked it and nothing had been disturbed.’
‘Did anyone else see the figure?’
Peter shook his head. ‘My wife and I separated last year. I live on my own.’
‘Who else have you told?’
‘Only Malcolm. He suggested I speak to you.’
‘No one comes back from the grave,’ I said. ‘Whoever you saw is just trying to scare you for some reason. And if it were Porteus – which it definitely isn’t – why would he wait thirty-odd years before putting an appearance in?’
‘Kenny’s right,’ Malcolm added. ‘It’s just some moron’s idea of a laugh.’
‘What about George Dent?’
‘Coincidence,’ I said. ‘Have you ever told anyone what you saw in Highgate?’
‘No. We had a pact not to mention it again.’
‘Doesn’t mean someone hasn’t broken it.’
‘I suppose not,’ Timms conceded.
I fished out a notebook and flipped it open. When a bit more fishing failed to produce a pen, Malcolm passed me a Montblanc the size of a torpedo.
‘So, Blimp Baxter was one of the boys,’ I said after removing its cap and writing the date. ‘But you don’t know the whereabouts of the others?’
‘Not Will Creighton-Smith and Ray Clarke, but Simon Paxton I do . . .’
I smiled encouragingly.
‘After he left Hibberts, he had a lot of mental health issues. Simon’s family disowned him and he was in and out of institutions for years. He lives somewhere on the east coast now. As far as I’m aware, he’s a recluse.’
‘Do you have an address or a number?’
‘Zetland House. It’s quite remote. The nearest village is a place called Middlemere. If there’s a phone number, I couldn’t find it.’
I wrote the details down.
‘If any of them have seen Porteus, what then?’
‘I’d feel a lot more comfortable going to the police.’ Timms straightened on the sofa. ‘George didn’t take drugs and I don’t believe the child abuse images belonged to him,’ he said firmly.
‘Even though they were found in his flat?’
‘He was set up.’
‘By the ghost of Alexander Porteus?’
‘Look, I know that whoever was in my garden, it wasn’t Porteus. I’m not an idiot. Someo
ne’s trying to rattle me for some reason.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’
I closed my notebook and put the Montblanc in my jacket pocket.
‘You hardly knew George Dent. Paedophiles don’t go round advertising the fact, and half the world snorts coke these days. How often did the two of you meet?’
‘We’d have dinner every six months or so.’
‘There we are, then.’
‘I know how that sounds, but I was pretty much George’s best friend. He didn’t have a partner and he wasn’t close to his family. He even made me his executor.’
‘My advice is step up security at your house and forget about it,’ I said.
‘You’re not interested?’
I wasn’t particularly, although I’m not interested in tracking down unreturned hire cars either, and Malcolm had recommended me.
‘You know my fees?’
‘I’m sure I can afford them.’
I sucked my teeth for a few seconds but it was all for show. Peter Timms might have been nuts, but his money was as sane as anyone’s. ‘Okay, I’ll get on to it next week.’
‘Actually, I’d hoped you could make it a little earlier than that.’
Most clients want you on the job as soon as possible, but there was a tension in Peter’s voice that I didn’t usually hear. ‘Any particular reason?’ I asked.
‘George received a phone call on the same night he saw Porteus.’
‘What kind of call?’
‘A man said “Ten days” and hung up. Number withheld.’
‘And ten days later, George . . . ?’
Peter nodded.
‘Don’t suppose you know what the guy sounded like?’ I asked.
‘He had a well-educated voice.’
‘George told you that?’
‘He didn’t have to. I received an identical call. At least, I’m assuming it was the same person.’
‘When?’
‘An hour after I saw Porteus.’
‘And that was eight days ago.’
‘Yes.’
I performed the simple calculation. Time up on Wednesday.
‘Why have you left it over a week to bring it to me?’
‘Because I’ve been unbelievably busy.’