The Natural Law

by Steve Attridge

  I went back into the lounge where Cass was just checkmating Symon, but I knew from his smile that he’d let her win. If she knew she’d call him a patronising bastard, but at that moment her triumph overrode her intuition. The TV was on and there was a piece about Hugh Dillsburgh, the MP who tried to fly in his car. A sudden thought. A hunch. A possibility. I went back into my bedroom and rang Mary King. She sounded tired and spent.

  “Mary, what was Jimmy the Stump’s surname?”

  “Mullins,” she said.

  HDJMMK. HD Hugh Dillsburgh. JM Jimmy Mullins. What’s in a name? The killer had said. Everything, apparently. It was a hit list. With the realization came another. MK. Mary King. King. A royal goodbye. She was next.

  “Mary. Make sure your doors are locked. Close the curtains. Keep away from windows. Make your kids lie on the floor. I’ll be there soon.”

  “OK,” she said.

  It was as if she was expecting it.

  Chapter VII

  ‘Misconceptions play a prominent role in my view of the world.’

  George Soros

  I drove fast and stupidly. Every driver in front seemed determined to hold me up so I did a lot of swerving and honking and trusting to luck. On CCTV it would not look like an exciting movie car chase but a ridiculous beaten up old Saab driven badly by a ridiculous beaten up old driver. I arrived in Mayes Road, Wood Green and found the nondescript three bedroomed terrace house. Curtains closed. A light in an upstairs room. All quiet.

  I texted her to say I was outside. Moments later a curtain opened slightly. Then the door opened and I slipped in. In the shadowy hall she looked pale and lost.

  “Where are your kids?”

  “Asleep,” she said. “What’s this about?”

  “It’s a precaution. The person we’re dealing with is unpredictable.”

  The lie sounded hollow to us both.

  “Oh shit. He’s going to kill us,” she said, and leaned into me.

  Her breath smelled of mint toothpaste and fear. We went into her kitchen and I switched on a small desk lamp. I wondered if he’d seen me arrive. Presumably he had. He knew he’d created a little drama of terror and would be nearby enjoying it. I was beginning to hate this psycho, but a part of me was also simply curious, perversely intrigued. What was at the heart of this? I looked at her laptop with the Little Pony sticker. She needed protecting, I would do all I could but I had a sense this had circles within circles. She made instant coffee. While her back was turned I lifted the Little Pony sticker and put a micro tracker underneath. It might come in useful if she went missing. I registered a few details of her life – a calendar with pictures of Fiji, a gym bag, an ancient wok with the remains of a meal in it, a child’s coat.

  “Perhaps you should call the police. They can offer you protection that I can’t,” I said.

  She sniffed derisively.

  “Police. Do you know how interested they are in the wife of a dead con?” She made a zero with her right index finger and thumb. “And besides, they get so many people threatening others these days I’d be on the C list to check out. They can’t act until something actually happens, by which time it’s usually too late. No, you may not be Bruce Willis but you’re all I’ve got and all I can afford.”

  “You must stop flattering me,” I said.

  She smiled.

  “Are you as fucked up as you look?” she asked.

  “Much more so. Appearances are deceptive.”

  “Appearances are all we’ve got,” she said.

  This was a good sign. Her life was being threatened, her husband dead, but she was still flirting. I didn’t kid myself it was because I looked like a Greek God. It was simply that I was there and I doubt if she got out much. She went to check on her children. I took a few sips of coffee and then my phone beeped. Text from number unknown: You Miss the point. G. More games. Another puzzle. What the hell did this mean? I had something wrong, but what? Hugh Dillsburgh and Jimmy Morrison, both on the list and both dead. MK should be Mary King but I’d missed the point. What point? Did it not mean Mary?

  “Did your husband know anyone with the initials MK?” I asked.

  She frowned and mentally checked off people.

  “Have you got an address book?”

  She went and got a book from the hall. I flipped to K and there were two possibilities. Mike Kincardine and Melissa Kinlet.

  “Mike’s my cousin. Haven’t seen him in ten years. Melissa Kinlet’s an old school mate. Lives in Australia,” she said.

  I looked at the message again. A capital M on Miss. Perhaps it wasn’t Mary King, but Miss...No, no, no. It couldn’t be. Surely it had to be someone connected with Andy King? Surely not Miss Knight. Anna Knight. My Anna. My throat dried.

  “I have to go.”

  Mary’s eyes whitened with fear. She held my arm.

  “Please. Stay. With me,” she said.

  She was very scared, but she also very lonely and needy. Fear does strange things to the body – laughter, desire, all manner of inappropriate demons leap from the dark.

  “I’m not Bruce Willis, remember?” I said. “Believe me, I was wrong. You’re not in danger, but someone else I know is, and I have to go to them.”

  She let me go and I slipped out into the night. On the twenty five minute drive I went through every permutation on why it would be pointless to hurt Anna, except I knew that the very futility of it was the point to this man. To show me there were no boundaries, nothing that can’t be done, no frontier that wouldn’t be crossed in this elaborate game, the purpose of which I was no closer to establishing.

  *

  She looked so young. Curled foetally, wearing the same white slip as when I’d left earlier in the day. Beautiful brown shoulders with a bloodied swollen necklace of pain where the garrotte had squeezed the life from her. Probably the same garrotte that killed Jimmy. The murderer would like that continuity. Anna’s lips salty and bloated blue, her eyes coldly open. She’d been dead maybe three hours. I realised I knew nothing about her family or background, which was how she liked it. I knew her body so well, and her heart not at all. The door had been left unlocked – he knew I’d be coming. I slumped on the floor beside her and held her hand and said goodbye. This was my fault. If my chaos of a life had not led the killer to her she would still be alive, perhaps even sleeping in someone else’s arms, dreaming her strange life of ghosts and shadows and unknowns. There were a few bloody hairs under her right index finger. I took two and put them in a small plastic envelope. The police would have no forensic luck in using the hair to find the killer – he was too sharp. Yet perhaps the fact that he hadn’t noticed them signified an unwise braggadocio.

  Anna had obviously put up a hell of a fight. A lamp and chair overturned, broken glass from photograph frames on the carpet, the TV imploded on the floor. Did no one hear? The phone rang. Without thinking I answered.

  “Hello darling. It’s Mum.”

  Oh holy shit.

  “I’m sorry, she’s not here now,” I said and put down the phone.

  I stood and looked around. My prints would be all over the flat, all over Anna. Pointless to try and clean everywhere. Perhaps the killer was setting me up and already the police were on their way. Murder, rape. How could they not think me guilty? I would. And in some fundamental sense it was true. I made a feeble attempt at wiping surfaces. I knew the killer would have either worn gloves or wiped all prints from anywhere he touched. He would now be intrigued – how had this affected me? Whatever his prime purpose in these murders was he now had a secondary interest – bettering me at every turn. My only chance of getting near him was to keep calm. Not show my cards, despite the fact I wanted to rip out his throat with my teeth.

  I found a key and opened the spare room. I’d never been in there before and she kept it locked. She always joked that the next lover was waiting in there. My heart gagged. It was so entirely unexpected. The room was a clutter of memorabil
ia, tokens that proclaim a childhood and a life. Photographs of family. School reports. Cheap teenage jewellery. A battered hockey stick. A collection of plastic hairbrushes. A doll with faded golden hair on the pillow. A little arrangement of shells on a shelf forming a letter – P. Paul or perhaps some other ghost or lover from the past she never shared. This was the self she kept carefully hidden. All gone now. I took one of the little shells – a butterfly, put it in my pocket, and left.

  I telephoned an ambulance from a public phone, and then went to the university. In my room I could hear Alfred shuffling under the tea towel that some kind soul had placed over his cage. I lifted it off and he blinked sagely. He seemed genuinely surprised to see me.

  “Into the valley of death,” he said.

  “How bloody right you are, my friend.”

  I got a bottle of Famous Grouse from my filing cabinet and switched on the computer. Now I’d stopped the full impact of Anna’s death hit me. A young woman dead because she mistakenly took a middle aged wreck for a lover. The killer had had the upper hand all along. Perhaps it was time to realise my limitations and tell the police everything I knew. I hated the thought because I didn’t work with the police, didn’t trust them and they certainly wouldn’t like what I do. Everything pointed to my guilt and why would they bother to look further for Anna’s killer? And as Mary said, they would be unlikely to help her. Also, I was angry. I wanted badly to get this man. I needed to win. I decided I would work on this until I dropped. Hard work and whisky were always good antidotes to grief. I texted Cass to say I’d see her tomorrow. Then I texted her again and asked her to reply. Anna’s murder had made the world tremble and I needed to know my girl was OK. She texted back: You’re too old for all-nighters xxx

  “If anything happened to Cass the world would end. I love her so much, Alfred, yet I rarely tell her. What kind of fuckwit am I? I’d do anything for her.”

  Alfred considered this, then head-butted his mirror. He understood me perfectly.

  Chapter VIII

  ‘The first Law of nature is that every man ought to endeavour peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use all helps and advantages of war.’

  Hobbes

  I puzzled over the connections between Andy King and Hugh Dillsburgh. A background check on Dillsburgh did little but reveal him as an egotistical and ambitious man with a talent for dirty work. An MP who craved distinction. The jag and the country estate he lived in suggested another source of income as there was no inherited money. I also tried the Rod Whiteley number again and got lucky.

  “Who’s this?”

  “A friend of Andy King.”

  “Never ‘eard of ‘im.”

  “OK. I just had some useful information.”

  “What are you talkin’ about?”

  “I can’t say on the phone.”

  He hung up. My phone rang seconds later.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Paul Rook.”

  “OK Rooky. Five p.m. today. I’ll ring you later to tell you where.”

  At least something was happening. I also decided that, much as I wanted to slowly disembowel him, I would contact David, former friend and present fornicator with the love of my life, Lizzie. A bold decision ably assisted by a quarter bottle of Famous Grouse, grief, guilt, and it was still only 3 a.m. The bastard might be useful with some inside info on Dillsburgh and I formed a vague plan. I phoned his mobile. He sounded groggy.

  “David.”

  “Paul – is that you?”

  “Among others. I need to see you.”

  “It’s three bloody a.m.”

  “I didn’t mean now, you imbecile. Tomorrow will do.”

  “I’m in the house tomorrow.”

  “Then you’ll have a kettle handy to brew some tea. Say three. And if Lizzie is there tell her I love her and I want my Rolling Stones records back, especially Beggars Banquet.”

  I hung up. Anna was dead. Mysterious, nascent, salacious, unknown, secretive, amorphous Anna was dead. Anna the oeillade. Anna keeper of secrets. All her chapters unwritten. A surge of grief biled in my throat. I swallowed it with another large whisky, then realised I hadn’t eaten since lunchtime yesterday. I found some stale crackers in a file marked EXISTENTIALISM and shared them with Alfred, and then before I keeled over I staggered to the small sofa and my lights went out. In an abysmal chaos of dreams I was hopelessly trying to evade capture by some nameless, shadowy form that appeared in the distance, or on a staircase, or through a window, no matter where I ran or hid. At one point I sat on some concrete steps and wept at the relentlessness of everything, the impossibility of escape or peace.

  “Don’t hit me, please, don’t hit me. I haven’t said anything. I don’t know anything. Just go away. Please.”

  I lurched awake to Alfred screeching Jimmy’s last words. Tears streamed down my cheeks. My eyes felt like raw onions. It was just before nine. My head was completely fried. The door opened and Mrs. Simpson came in. She went straight to Alfred and gave him a few grapes, then looked at me. She left the room and returned five minutes later with two aspirin and a mug of coffee.

  “Dr. Rook, you look like you’ve had your greens strained backwards through a Scotsman’s tights. And it smells like an old tart’s jodhpurs in here. It’s not fair on Alfred – he’s such a finiticky, clean little soul,” she said, bustling around annoyingly.

  Alfred preened himself and wolf whistled her, which made her giggle like a young girl. I felt like a stranger in my own life, which I was. I closed my eyes and heard her leave. I sipped the coffee and decided the best thing I could do was go home and sleep for a few hours, but the door opened and Cass came in, followed by seven other students. She took in the scene quickly and whispered: “Dad, it’s our first seminar on Natural Law. Get yourself together.”

  There was no way out. They all sat expectantly. I cleared my throat and looked blearily at a young man with close set eyes and an Adam’s apple that bobbed like a fishing float. I had no idea of his name.

  “Er, Adam…”

  “Ben,” he corrected.

  “Adam, Ben, of course. Can you remind us what, according to Aquinas, are the four kinds of law.”

  The fishing float bobbed furiously.

  “Aquinas distinguishes four main kinds of law: the eternal, the natural, the human, and the divine. Eternal is at the top, then natural, then human. Divine law supposedly reaches human beings by a sort of revelation.”

  “Good. And how would you define Natural Law?”

  “I think it comes from Plato and Aristotle. That nature is good and the natural law that comes from this presupposes that people have a natural tendency towards maintaining good for others. A sort of natural justice.”

  “That’s a big jump – from law to justice.”

  Adam blushed furiously.

  “I just wanted to establish the big picture,” he said.

  “Very good,” I said. “Now I want you all to go away and spend the rest of today writing a short paper entitled: If Natural Law is innate in all people, why do we need a judicial machine to enforce it?”

  “Do you mean the police and courts and stuff?” asked a spotty boy with an annoying sniff and MP3 wires hanging around his head as if his insect brain had unravelled.

  “That’s precisely what I mean. Now go away.”

  They shuffled out mottled with grumbles. Cass remained, looking at me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You know what. You can’t cancel everything. It’s not fair,” she said.

  “Education is about what you teach yourself,” I said pompously. “Besides, I’m starting to realise something. The man I’m after sees himself as a palliative.” She suddenly became interested. “Natural Law depends on a view of the world as being ordered. Principles that underlie behaviour. If someone thinks that order has a spanner in the works and chaos reigns then...”

&nbs
p; “If they were egotistical enough they might want to put things right. A sort of Natural Law engineer.”

  “As they see it.”

  “An avenging angel.”

  “Pale Rider. Yes. But mostly it’s trying to restore order, not dish out punishment.”

  “Can I help?”

  “Sure. You can clean out Alfred’s cage,” I said, kissing her on the cheek and ambling away, feeling a little less ill. I had a lot to do.

  As I left Ron waylaid me. He smiled sheepishly.

  “I’m late for a meeting, Ron.”

  “I was wondering if you’d had any more thoughts,” he said.

  “I’ve had lots of thoughts, Ron. None of them about you. You’re the sort of person who immediately slips off the radar. Sometimes it’s hard to acknowledge you even when you’re there.”

  He smiled. My attempts at escape were failing abysmally.

  “You see, that’s what I like about you,” he said. I looked blank. “Your rudeness. Your indifference to me. It’s somehow vital, alive, sort of Lawrentian – all the things I’m not.”

  Oh God. I had a raving masochist on my hands. There was only one thing to do. I took his chubby cheeks in my hands and gave him a full smacking wet kiss on the lips. It shut him up completely. He stared ahead, his eyes like cold fried eggs. As I walked away I was aware that the Head of Department, the bovine and insipid Audrey Pritchard, had her door open and had seen the whole thing.

  Chapter IX

  ‘Live in danger. Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius.’

  Nietzsche

  I went home to shower and change. I was past sleep by now. It would catch up with me tomorrow and I’d be strange and petulant – nothing new there. Symon was slumped in front of the TV watching a tractor pulling competition on a Belgian TV channel. And I thought I was in trouble.