Denied to all but Ghosts

by Pete Heathmoor

  “I told you,” she insisted, “Paul made me do it!”

  “What, the dancing?”

  “No, you idiot,” she cried, “the drugging!”

  “I can’t believe he could force you to do anything!” He emphasised the ‘you’. “What’s he got, bloody Polaroids!”

  “No!” she screamed.

  “What then, it must be something pretty fuckin’ damning!”

  Beckett suddenly fell silent as he contemplated the implication of his accusations. Neither of them had realised how charged the atmosphere in the room had become as he released his pent up frustration and she faced her guilty conscience. Emily stared at the picture on the wall in front of her featuring the colourful beach huts on the golden sands that lined the Wells beachfront.

  “It was a recording,” she said quietly. “I was drinking one night and got carried away. I said some things about my colleagues that I shouldn’t have. I was stupid, I had no idea the sick bastard was recording it all.”

  Even after all she had been through, she could not bring herself to reveal the full contents of the recording, especially to Tom Beckett. Silence ensued as Beckett grappled with her confession.

  “I guess I can understand why you did it, but it doesn’t change the fact that you did do it. You knew you were going to hurt me, so what am I supposed to take from that, that deep down you don’t give a shit about me!”

  “Who stayed with you?” she spat, returning her attention to the patently wounded man. “Who cleared up your vomit? Who undressed you and cleaned you up? Who put you to bed and comforted you until they knew you’d be okay? It certainly wasn’t your bloody friend Cavendish!”

  It was Beckett’s turn to be dumbstruck.

  “But I thought it was... I’m sorry I had no idea.”

  “No you haven’t. You’ve no idea what I have been through, no one does. Okay, it was all of my own making but that doesn’t make it any easier. Do you think I’m proud of what I did? Do you not think that every day I wonder how I got myself into this ridiculous situation, sitting fuck-knows where, wearing a pair of oversize jeans and some bloody remnant that belongs in the Canadian wilderness!”

  “I’m sorry, Emily.”

  She laughed at Beckett’s sincerity.

  “Why are you laughing at me?” he asked pitifully.

  “I’ve ruined my career, I’ve made a laughing stock of myself with a bully and you apologise. I’m sorry I accused you of being like the rest. If I could say that anything good has come of this whole sorry episode then it has to be meeting you. Thinking is all I've done lately. Believe me. When I was locked in that room I thought what I would do to Paul the next time I saw him, believe me it wasn’t nice. The bastard used me. When I was at my lowest, I thought of you. You got me through the ordeal.”

  Beckett felt initially embarrassed by her admission but slowly found himself basking in a wonderful glow that he vaguely remembered from many years ago. For a few blissful seconds he was lost for words.

  “Tell you what, Emily; I’ll make us a fresh coffee. I don’t know about you but I’m famished. Fancy a fry up?”

  Emily stared doubtfully at the incorrigible Beckett and her icy glare melted like the morning frost in the spring sunshine.

  CHAPTER 31. ANOTHER LANGUAGE IS TO POSSESS A SECOND SOUL.

  Leaving the Goldstein brothers, Cavendish paused with uncertainty on the steps of their house. Pleased that he had controlled his temper, he could almost imagine that Simeon had some sympathy for his plight, but perhaps that was expecting too much. The interview with Miles took place at Cavendish’s accustomed expeditious rate, Miles was not out to hide anything and seemed relieved to be able to disclose his part in the theft, perhaps as an act of contrition.

  Cavendish galloped back to the parked car but began to experience a disquieting uncertainty, he felt that he was chasing shadows and would need a good deal of luck if he was to recover the Romanov items before they were out of reach and his career was over. Luck was something that Cavendish did not like to rely on.

  As he seated himself in the Galaxy, he became aware that he was sweating profusely despite the chill of the early morning; he struggled to remove his coat but in doing so found the frostiness of the car interior numbing his cognitive reasoning. With a tacit sense of self-loathing, he realised he was afraid and desperate as events transpired beyond his control.

  As an Untersucher, it should be his prerogative to move the chess pieces, as he done with Slingsby and Emily. However, some unseen hand had attempted to usurp his manipulation with a cunning ploy of their own. Yet as a master of the art of sedition, he grasped that his opponent had moved too rashly for they had given him a chance that he would never have granted.

  He needed to regain control of the board and allay his anxieties. He needed to start moving the pieces, to distance himself from his mutable anxieties. Reaching for his coat, Cavendish fumbled for his mobile and after consulting the contact list; he dialled a number and waited impatiently for the call to be answered.

  “Miss Williams? Marchel Cavendish here. I’ve a few errands for you if you would be so kind.” Bethan Williams, the firm’s UK Fixer, had never spoken to the visiting Untersucher; all their previous dealings had been via email. She felt perturbed and yet also intrigued and excited to be called in person by this firm luminary.

  “For Christ sake, Herr Cavendish, it’s seven in the morning, you shit the bed or something?” answered Bethan in her typically forthright manner. The coarseness of her words was lost on the German as he was engulfed by the mellifluous ripples of her south Wales accent. By now he was accustomed the jocular and abusive vocabulary employed by so many members of the British firm. They were indeed a breed apart.

  “I need a trace on a number, and all you have on the owner. I’m sending you the number now,” stated Cavendish.

  “Well you’ll have to bloody well wait for me to get up won’t you? I’ll call you when I’m fit to face the world,” replied the obdurate Bethan.

  “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t take too long, Miss Williams.”

  “Oh, you bloody men are always in a hurry.”

  “Thank you.” The line went dead. Cavendish disconsolately placed the silent phone on the passenger seat; he had no next move to make and was solely dependent on Bethan tracking the number that Miles had provided. His heart was pounding, as he glanced down at his white shirt he watched with casual detachment the way the fabric billowed with every contraction of his left ventricle. His career stood on a knife-edge in a foreign city, dependant on the efficiency of a woman he could barely understand.

  The world was becoming busier around him; people were leaving their homes to go about their daily lives, oblivious to his presence, their purposeful activity infusing him with an overwhelming compunction to move, anywhere was preferable than this oppressive Bath side street.

  He drove in the only direction he knew and that was towards Bristol. Slowly, he edged through the busy city centre towards the outskirts, desperately hoping that Bethan would ring and end his meaningless drive into ignominy. He drove blindly on, fixated upon the road ahead in his efforts to assuage his mocking indecision, when suddenly he spotted a road sign for a Park and Ride and made an intuitive decision to pull into the car park.

  What he found suited him, the car park, already busy, was surrounded by an apron of dense trees and bushes. Here he could park up and feel cocooned from the disobliging world and await Bethan’s call. As he parked the Galaxy in the remotest corner of the car park, he was aware that his shoulder holster was clearly visible to the world and was in the process of removing it when his mobile rang.

  “I’ve got the number, Herr Cavendish.” Bethan was sitting in front of the computer screen in her home office as she keyed the number into the database. “You’re in luck; it’s a contract phone, registered to a Zachary Asimov, home address in London. I’ll stick his details in the database, hang on a mo. He’s twenty-six and down as a student. Pretty looking boy. Ok
ay, he’s had a few run-ins with the law, a male ‘prozzi’. Does he sound like your guy?”

  “Could be, I’m going to need you to run a trace on the phone, I need to know where this Asimov is. I want you to relay the tracking information to my phone as soon as you can. How long will it take?”

  “You’re very demanding, Herr Cavendish, I do have other work to do for the firm you know.”

  “I really need this one, Miss Williams.” Something in Cavendish’s voice conveyed itself across the ether, Bethan picked up certain nuances in Cavendish’s precise, yet quirkily foreign accent that conveyed something was clearly worrying him. “I’ll have to ask you to do a little leg work for me, Miss Williams. I want a list of his recent calls; you can pass it on to me later. For the moment, all I need is to find this man. Can you access his credit and debit card statements as well?”

  “You certainly ask a lot of a girl, don’t you? I assume he is a heretic of some kind?”

  “He is a suspect, yes. There’s a lot riding on finding him quickly.”

  “Alright, Herr Cavendish, I’m doing it for you now. How is your house in Wells, hope it’s okay for you?”

  “I’m not in Wells, I’m in Bath.”

  “In Bath, what are you doing there? Oh, never mind. Triangulation on that number is coming through now. Well, I’ll be buggered; it’s showing as being in Bristol. Huh, I suppose you knew that, didn’t you?” Cavendish silently ingested her information. After a moment, he received a signal on his phone to follow.

  “Where are you, Mr Asimov,” he mouthed through clenched teeth. Cavendish aggressively fired up the Galaxy’s engine and followed the satnav directions to Bristol. He was entering the built up area of Brislington when Bethan’s strong Welsh inflection erupted over the hands free phone speaker.

  “He’s on the move!” Bethan sounded excited.

  “Can you track any card transactions he may make?”

  “You know bloody well I can, and if he buy’s anything we’ll be the first to know about it.”

  “Where’s he heading?” demanded Cavendish anxiously.

  “He must be on foot; he’s moving very slowly, could be heading towards Temple Meads railway station.” Cavendish clumsily punched the destination into the satnav and drove erratically towards the railway station, accelerating too quickly and breaking abruptly as he encountered traffic lights and other driving impediments during Bristol’s rush hour.

  “Temple Meads it is!” Bethan’s feverish tones were now beginning to rile Cavendish’s highly stressed state of mind. Minutes elapsed as Cavendish fought against the exasperatingly slow commuter route into the heart of the city. He questioned as to how anyone could tolerate such a daily grind into this vehicular hellhole.

  “He is using his credit card, give me a mo,” Bethan fell silent for what seemed like an eternity. “He’s bought a single standard railway ticket for Plymouth!”

  Cavendish could now see the station but the one-way road system prevented his right turn into Brunel’s station, his way bared by a fenced central reservation.

  “Scheiβe!” he shouted, “I’m going on foot!”

  He was driving in the right hand lane as he drew level with the incline to the station and impulsively stood hard on the brake pedal, bringing the car to a screeching, slewing halt.

  The car behind had no chance of avoiding him and smashed into the rear of the Galaxy, rendering the overcast Bristol street with the expensive resonance of crumpled plastic and metal. Cavendish’s forward impetus was checked by the seat belt as the rear bumper furrowed under the impact of the following Range Rover. The Galaxy was shunted forward a further three times, as Cavendish fashioned a four-car pileup.

  He clumsily grabbed his coat, revolver and anything else that came to hand and jumped frenziedly out of the car, oblivious to the remonstrations of the barrister who had driven into the Cavendish roadblock. The irate barrister fell silent as he watched in amazement as the tall blonde vaulted the central barrier and staggered onto the opposite carriage way, his hand raised optimistically Canute-like against the oncoming rush of traffic.

  An approaching black Lexus swerved left to circumvent hitting him and slammed forcefully into the side of a white Transit van, which veered off at forty-five degrees to face the central reservation before shuddering to a halt. The German was impervious to the rush hour traffic carnage he had brazenly fashioned as he dashed recklessly across the road and ran for the incline leading up to the station entrance, where Beckett had collected him after his stay at Flash Seminary. His tour of England had come full circle.

  Cavendish sprinted pell-mell into the station main entrance and barged his way obliviously through the milling crowd, condemning one unfortunate suited man to the ground. Ignoring the ticket desks, he turned right for the platform where, before reaching the gates, he frantically glanced up at the departures board. The next train for Plymouth due to arrive in the next ten minutes.

  Realising that time was against him; he stopped and ran his right hand through his unkempt hair as he blew hard to regain his breath and control his shaking body. He stared forlornly at the ever-growing queue to buy tickets and wondered if he could purchase a ticket on the train. He decided he could not take the risk and headed for the ticket kiosk.

  “Hey you, you ruined my suit!” said the balding middle-aged man who Cavendish had collided with and sent headlong to the grubby station floor. The man hurriedly walked over to confront Cavendish.

  “My apologies, sir, a most unfortunate accident I can assure you,” said Cavendish distractedly as the man halted in front of him.

  “Well, don’t do it again,” said the man pointlessly as he prodded Cavendish in the chest. The sudden contact instantly refocused Cavendish's anarchic mind. The balding man then took his first proper look at the foreign-sounding transgressor and instantly regretted being so hasty and saying anything at all, let alone the provocative poking.

  He would normally have known better but this morning he was late and really hated the thought of travelling to the capital. The foreigner had a feral look about him and anyone with such a scarred face was hardly going to be a choirboy. As an overweight salesman, he was hardly set in the mould of an action hero.

  “Good,” smiled Cavendish contritely, “no harm done then.” The salesman made the mistake of breaking eye contact with the fearsome tall stranger and looked down at the rolled up coat the man was carrying. Protruding from the wrapped coat was the handle of Cavendish’s revolver. The man looked slowly up towards the scarred face, noting Cavendish’s enquiring smile. The colour drained from the salesman’s normally ruddy cheeks and his mouth fell agape as he peered reluctantly into the austere reptilian eyes of the Untersucher.

  “Well?” asked Cavendish. The plump man slowly shook his head; he had no wish to tangle with this perilous looking man. “Good call,” said Cavendish and with closure impatiently moved on to buy a ticket.

  Strolling brazenly to the front of the queue at the ticket desk, Cavendish waited anxiously for a window to become free. He was tapped insistently on the shoulder by the young woman he had supplanted at the front of the queue and snapped his head to look enquiringly down on her.

  “There is a queue you know!” The woman’s eyes raged piercingly yet the tone of her voice, although indignant, did not convey the full fury of the affront. He watched with an air of delicious mischief as the people behind her made their feelings known to each other with varying degrees of severity; however no one else dared to challenged him. The Untersucher smiled cynically at their very British reaction to his egocentric exploit before returning his attention to the wrathful young traveller.

  “Do you know, the mountain peaks are particularly beautiful at this time of year, you would look very beautiful scantily clad as a young shepherdess as she cajoled her flock to the fresh spring pastures.”

  The woman stared at Cavendish in a befuddled fashion and ceased her remonstration. He had addressed her with his best impersonation of a Bavarian
accent and had thrown in a good deal of Bairisch dialect, local to the mountain regions of Bavaria and Austria. His incomprehensible utterance was sufficient to quell the angry protestations of the queue, allowing him to buy a railway ticket for Plymouth.

  CHAPTER 32. THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE FREEZER.

  Houghton smiled as Blanch returned with the Audi having dropped off Beckett and Emily at Flint House. She read the smile as one of approval for her actions, not realising that his mind was considering the strange world of Marchel Cavendish. The inquisitor had not warned him of any relationship between Beckett and Spelman and he found it troubling.

  Cavendish was perhaps the most deliberate and precise person he had ever met and Houghton found it confusing that Cavendish would allow Beckett to become emotionally involved with his chief suspect. Yet, he supposed, Cavendish was a paradox himself. Sometimes Houghton wondered how the hell he put up with the machinations of an organisation like the firm.

  It still troubled him how he was going to tell his sergeant of their connection to the firm. His previous sergeant had been fully cognisant and Houghton had remonstrated with his superior for his friend and confident to be retained following his suspension over the Cavendish’s dog case but had failed to win his argument. Now he had to groom a new sergeant, his orders from Sir Fletcher Dobson had been to break her in gently to their bizarre world, yet he was struggling even to broach the subject.

  “Come on, Sergeant; let’s take a quick shufti around the place.”

  Houghton and Blanch carefully sifted through rooms for anything that could be of relevance concerning the missing man without trying to contaminate the scene. He had concluded his search and sat at the foot of the stairs. They had amassed a paltry collection of documents that may or may not be pertinent to their enquiries. Houghton was not even sure what his brief was anymore. Of the few conversations he had with Cavendish, the focus had been on Dr Spelman, it was assumed that Slingsby would be around, or was it? This was Cavendish’s investigation; he was only here to see that things were carried out smoothly, at the behest of the firm.