Game Ten: A gripping conspiracy thriller, page 18
Suggestions came in, were amalgamated and refined to remove American idiom. The team in the van were equipped to deal with extra documentation, and the fax link soon provided them with as close a copy of Claire’s handwriting as they needed as a basis for the final version.
*
Harry tried the phone again and got a steady ‘out of order’ tone. He told himself that telephones went wrong all the time, then he went looking for his street directory. He found it five minutes later under a pile of canvases on the floor. The house was near Stockwell tube, he knew that much, and there it was. Burnett Road, off Lansdowne Way. He went down to the hall and unlocked his mountain bike.
Twenty-five minutes after the phone call, he arrived, panting, in Burnett Road. There was no sign of Claire’s car anywhere. Number twenty-eight had been divided into flats. He was quite sure Claire had said it was a little terraced house, but it wasn’t anything of the sort. It was a tatty Georgian three-storey job, split into semis and then clearly sub-divided, floor by floor. There were three bells. One said ‘Da Costa’, another said ‘Emmy’, and the third had no name. He pushed it. Nothing happened. He pushed it again.
Above his head a window rattled up.
‘Who’s that?’ demanded a man’s voice.
Harry stepped back and looked up. A middle-aged black man was looking down.
‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I must have pressed the wrong bell. I was looking for Ann.’
‘Fucking late man. What the fuck you doing ringing my bell?’
‘I’m looking for Ann. I’m sorry if I woke you. Do you know which her bell is?’
‘No Ann here. Now fuck off.’ The window slammed down.
She’d said twenty-eight. She’d definitely said twenty-eight. He got back on his bike and pedalled slowly down the road. He turned left at the end, intending to go round the block, and there, suddenly, on the right hand side, was Claire’s Golf. He stopped and looked at it to make sure. Then he saw the road sign next to it, Burnett Gardens. Number twenty-eight fitted the bill much more closely; a narrow two-storey terraced house with empty milk bottles on the doorstep. There were lights on inside. He pushed the bell and heard it buzz but no one came. He pushed it again. Still nothing. He put his eye close to the frosted glass and saw disconcerting fragments of bright colour, then bent down and looked through the letter box. In the harsh light of the hall he saw a vivid red puddle on the tiles with a long smear leading away from it.
He stood up sharply, his skin chilling and the bite of sour stomach acid in his throat, and fought the rising fear while he tried to think. Steeling himself, he looked again. There was blood everywhere, on the walls as well as the floor. He took a deep breath and tried the door handle but it was locked. The neighbours’ lights were out. He picked a loose half-brick out of the low wall by the front gate. The noise would probably wake someone and they might call the police. Well, that would only save him the trouble.
There were four small panels of frosted glass in the upper part of the door and he chose the one nearest the lock. When he swung the brick against it the whole pane simply came loose with a tiny noise of splintering wood, and fell dully on to the doormat inside. He reached through and opened the door. Two irrevocable, nervous steps took him into the hall and the strong reek of blood that told of the certain wreck of a human being. He moved with tiny, slow steps, down the hall, past the puddles and into a kitchen, where there was more blood, much more blood, and an empty sack of a once-human thing, twisted like a dummy with its legs sprawled out on the floor. The torso and battered, pulpy head were propped against the fridge door. Had he known, it was all that was left of Ann Farrow.
His first awful feeling was one of relief that it wasn’t Claire. The clothes and what little he could see of close-cropped hair showed that. He looked away appalled. There were red footprints on the floor and he followed them out to the stairs and up. The marks on the carpet had tapered off by the top of the stairs, but the second door he opened showed him another body and this time the heavy fall of blue-black hair which hid her face revealed who it was. She was lying on the bed, her hand clutching a hammer, its end caked in drying blood, a strip of skin smeared across the side. On the bed by her was an open, brown plastic bottle. A few loose capsules had rolled down the slope of the bed cover, and rested against her arm.
She couldn’t have been there long, he thought, and bent closer, to see with sudden, leaping relief that she was breathing. He turned to go for the phone, but then all the elements came together in his head. Her phone message – ‘the police thought I was trying to kill someone’ – the hammer, the pills. What had happened to her? He stopped and turned back to her. He tried to pick her up, staggering under the weight, and managed at the second attempt. Her feet banged against the door frame as he hauled her into the bathroom. She moved and made a small noise. Encouraged by that, he draped her over the edge of the bath. There was a shower hose and he tried spraying cold water on her head. She moved a little in response. Then he opened her mouth and stuck his fingers down her throat, and in only a second or two she was noisily, violently sick all over his arm and into the bath.
He cleaned her up with a flannel and then tried to do the same to his shirt where the remains of the curry had now met their match. She was a little less comatose, and when he forced two glasses of water down her she was sick again. For ten minutes he watched over her, talked to her, encouraged her, poured drinks into her and held her while she threw up; then there came a moment when she was able to sit, slumped against the wall, without immediately sliding sideways to the floor, and when she lifted a hand to her head and tried to say something.
*
The Producer looked at his watch and the minute hand clicked round to the right time. He punched in the execute command for the final phase and across the Atlantic a man, now safely removed from Stockwell, moved to a phone and pressed the nine button three times.
The phone rang twice and an operator answered. ‘Emergency services. Which service do you require? Fire, Police or Ambulance?’
‘Police, please.’ The voice was not his own but he’d practised it well. It was thin, weak, old. The police came on. ‘I’ve heard noises. Screams and blows,’ he said. ‘Just down the road.’
‘Yes sir. Could you just give me your name and address?’
‘No. I don’t want to be involved, you see. Not round here. Can’t you just go and see. I think someone was being killed. It was number twenty-eight. We’re in Burnett Gardens. That’s Stockwell.’
‘Thank you, sir. Just your name, sir. Strictly confidential. Just for our own information.’
‘No. I won’t. It’s those gays you see. They’re dykes. I don’t want trouble with them.’
The phone clicked down and the sergeant on the other end sighed, looked up at his status board and reached for a microphone.
*
Harry had Claire’s arm round his shoulders and her car keys in his hand. There was no one about in the little street, and her legs were taking some of her weight. He got her into the passenger seat and then remembered his bike. It wouldn’t go in the boot, so after puzzling with the mechanism for too long, he got the hood down and lifted it into the back seat.
He had never been a smooth driver, and since Steffie’s accident he hadn’t driven at all, so the rear lights of the car in front took the brunt of his first attempt to leave the parking space. He took it more carefully the second time and made his way safely round the corner, fifteen seconds ahead of the police car that entered Burnett Gardens from the other end and braked harshly to a halt outside number twenty-eight.
Once the two men inside had seen the kitchen, it was only minutes before the street was full of cars. The PC given the job of locating their informant didn’t have to wake any of the residents; the whole street was out in no time, and he found it a little puzzling that no one seemed to want to admit having made the call. It was the first CID man on the scene who noticed what Harry had missed; an envelope on the sitting room table, carrying two dramatic, smudged fingerprints marked out in blood, but then Harry hadn’t been in that room.
The officer opened it gingerly, holding it through a disposable plastic glove, read it, and whistled. ‘All right. Well, now we know who we’re looking for, anyway.’ He went to the car to set in motion the nationwide hunt for Claire Merrick.
Chapter Twenty
Monday August 5th
‘Harry,’ said Herman. ‘We got shit all over the walls. Grab a chair. You’d better listen to what Derek’s got to say.’
Jane Bernstein and Chief Inspector Derek Palmer were already sitting in Herman’s office; Jane somewhat white, Palmer looking masonically conspiratorial. Harry kept a look of innocent enquiry on his face.
‘Bit of a shocker this one, Harry,’ Palmer said. ‘Seems Claire Merrick went off her head last night. First she tried to attack some Arab at his house, then she went back to the place where she was staying and did in the other woman who lived there.’
‘Christ almighty,’ said Harry, letting his jaw go slack. ‘Did in? You mean killed?’
‘Just that. Used a hammer.’
‘What, murdered her?’
‘Yup.’
‘Good God. So she’s locked up, is she?’
‘No, she isn’t. She’d gone. We’ll catch her pretty quick; I mean she’s not exactly an unknown face.’
Harry decided a bit more surprise was called for.
‘But why? I mean, I didn’t have much time for her, OK, but I never thought she was that sort.’
‘Read him the letter, Derek,’ said Herman.
‘Well, keep it to yourself,’ said Palmer, and pulled out a photocopied sheet. ‘She left this behind. Looks like she was going to do herself in too but she changed her mind. They found pills all over the place. First she broke in the door so it would look like someone else did it, then she wrote this.’ He held it up and read it out in the artificial monotone of an officer giving evidence from his pocket book in a court room.
‘I shall be past caring by the time you read this. Don’t anyone feel sorry for Ann. She shouldn’t have done it. I had to kill the bitch because she stopped me settling things with Azogi. I know it was her who told the police. She’s been seeing someone else. I told her what would happen if she wasn’t faithful. It’s her own fault.’
‘Bloody dyke,’ said Herman. ‘Did you know she was a dyke? I didn’t. Anyway, who’s Azogi?’
Jane Bernstein gave him a reproving glance but kept quiet.
‘Some Arab,’ said Palmer. ‘Apparently she had it in for him. Thought he’d messed her about once.’
‘You’re sure she wrote this?’ asked Harry, and regretted it immediately when he got surprised looks from all three of them.
‘It’s her handwriting and her fingerprints,’ said Palmer. ‘Looks like it to me. Why do you ask?’
‘No reason,’ said Harry quickly, ‘I just thought she used to have a boyfriend.’
‘Yes, she did. An American. He’s being helpful.’
‘Doesn’t mean she isn’t a dyke really,’ said Herman. ‘She split up with this bloke. Didn’t like it that way, maybe.’
‘Umm,’ said Harry and looked around at the policeman. ‘So, what happens now?’
‘Fingers out,’ said Palmer. ‘It shouldn’t be too hard. Frankly I’m surprised we haven’t picked her up already. The word’s been out since last night. She never said anything to any of you about other special friends or places she stayed, did she?’
‘No,’ said Herman.
‘Me neither,’ said Jane, ‘and she hated Harry so she wouldn’t have told you, would she?’
So all Harry had to do was look at her and shrug and forget about being an accessory after the fact or whatever they called it; forget about having the object of all their interest lying in his bed back at his studio. If only they knew, he thought with a feeling somewhere between hysterical humour and despair.
The phone buzzed and Herman’s secretary’s voice, through the squawk box, said, ‘Mr Gilligan for you, Mr Dent.’
‘I put a call in,’ said Herman. ‘I mean, he picked her, not me. We’ll have every tabloid in the world on our doorstep when this lot breaks. It’s not exactly the best publicity, is it?’
He picked up the phone, switched off the squawk and swivelled round away from them. The other three kept quiet and listened unashamedly.
‘Yeah, that’s right, Des,’ said Herman. ‘No question. You’ve read the stuff I faxed?’ He listened a bit more. ‘This afternoon? Oh, right. Yup, OK.’
When he put the receiver down it took him a second to recompose his face.
‘He’s coming in. Says he wants a personal input. He thinks we can turn this one to our advantage. Until then, everyone keep quiet, right? Keep it buttoned up tight.’
Harry had taken four steps down the corridor when Charlotte nabbed him.
‘Is it true?’
‘What?’
‘You know perfectly well what. Is it true Claire Merrick’s killed her lesbian lover?’
‘Don’t ask me.’
‘It is then,’ said Charlotte with triumphant logic. ‘Otherwise you would have looked surprised. I know you, Harry. You can’t fool me. Go on, what do you know about it?’
‘Sounds as though you know more than I do.’
The office was buzzing and Harry realized that for camouflage he had to join in, so he speculated with the best of them. At lunchtime, he borrowed a producer’s car and rushed back across south-west London to his flat. Claire was still in bed, sleeping deeply. He stood looking down at her, his body yearning to climb in next to her and seize the quiet moment, his mind yelling the impossibility of the whole thing, calling the widening odds of them ever sharing that bed in peace again. He wrote a note. ‘Don’t go out,’ it said. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can. Don’t answer the phone. There’s food in the fridge.’ He went to check that last claim, came back and inserted the word ‘no’ before ‘food’.
Back at his desk, he tried to concentrate on a script for a murder re-enactment, but in his mind’s eye, the body was Ann, the witness was himself and the photofit of the murderer kept shimmering into Claire’s face. Jane interrupted him.
‘We’re wanted in the conference room.’
‘Who by?’
‘The big boss. Gilligan himself. Herman’s in a twitter.’
*
There was no doubt where the centre of gravity lay in that room. Gilligan had a powerful economy of movement. The slightest turn of those steady, all-seeing eyes, the subliminal nod of acknowledgment at their entrance, left no doubt who’s room it was, who’s game National was. Harry took the seat indicated by Herman and looked around. Derek Palmer was there, in uniform. Vivien Prest, National’s press and publicity officer, sat next to Gilligan. Jane had come in with Harry, and that was it.
‘All right,’ said Gilligan, and the deep voice harmonized with the seasoned-timber look of the face around the flattened nose. ‘Thank you all for coming. We have a unique situation to deal with and we all need to think fast. This show’s in danger of turning into a laughing stock. We recruit a top name journo and within three weeks, she’s killing people. That kills the show.’ He paused to let that sink in, looking round at all of them. ‘My fault. I picked her. Now it seems she has a long history of obsessions. She was one of those people who saw conspiracies in all directions. Viewed the other way, it’s an incredible opportunity.’ He looked around like a schoolmaster hoping for a clever child to guess the right answer.
‘It’s a unique story. A nationally famous woman reporter murders someone and she’s front-of-camera in a crime show. It’s huge, and we have the inside track. If she hasn’t been caught, we’ll go to town on Friday with the biggest manhunt story we’ve ever had. I want you, er, Chaplin, full-time on it. Hand over anything else you’ve got. I want half the show on it with the biggest PR blitz we’ve ever seen from you, Viv, and I want to show just how mad and just how persuasive she was, so that none of it sticks to us.’
He turned to Derek Palmer. ‘Mr Palmer. Within these four walls, would you bring us up to date?’
Palmer cleared his throat. ‘You’ll understand I’m not leading the investigation, but I have been asked to liaise closely because of my own knowledge of Miss Merrick. I can tell you that forensic have established that she apparently took a large overdose of sleeping tablets at the scene, then changed her mind and induced vomiting. Earlier in the evening we’d been tipped off that she intended harm to a gentleman of Arab origin living in West London. She was intercepted near his house.’
‘Who was this tip from?’ asked Harry, who had been doing a lot of amazed head-shaking, and thought it was time to change the record.
‘More than my job’s worth to say, Harry. What matters is it would seem she decided it was her flatmate who gave us the tip. We’ve spoken to a Mr Jerome Hackman, who formerly went out with Miss Merrick. He’s not at all surprised to hear that, sexually, perhaps men were not her first choice.’
Harry puzzled over that one. Palmer was still talking. ‘Her last employers, ITN, told us she’d claimed this Azogi had been behind a plan to discredit her. They say it was nonsense, just wild accusations. Now, as to where she is, her car was found in New Cross this morning, badly vandalized.’
That’s what happens, Harry thought, when you leave a nice Golf Convertible in the middle of Balham with the keys in the ignition.
‘She has a boat at a marina near Portsmouth. There’s no sign of anyone there, but we’re keeping an eye on it, and that’s about it.’
Gilligan had been making notes throughout. ‘Right, thanks. What about keeping it quiet?’
Palmer looked slightly embarrassed. ‘Well, I’ve done what I can. Our Press Office won’t give out her name before tomorrow. That’s not to say it won’t leak, because her picture’s being circulated round all the forces.’
‘That’s not long. We want a beat on it until Friday,’ said Herman.
