Ash & Bone (34 page)

'Thanks for your help,' Furness said.

'Drink before you go? On the house.'

Furness gave Denison a glance. 'Yes, why not? Small Scotch, maybe.'

'Lee,' Denison said.

'What?'

'Better not.'

Furness shook his head and stood away from the bar. 'Another time,' he said.

'Suit yourself,' said the barman and opened his book.

'Blessed are the pure at heart,' Furness said, as he followed Denison through the door. 'Blessed and thirsty, too.'

* * *

'What the flying fuck,' Mallory said, 'is going on?'

'Not here,' Repton said.

'Not here? Not fucking here? Farmer fucking Framlingham and that deadbeat Elder come waltzing in without so much as a by-your-leave, and next thing you're going off with them in Framlingham's fucking four-by-four. Nice little drive, Maurice? Giving the motor a spin? Got the picnic basket out later? Spot of lunch? Hamper in the fucking trunk?'

'Not here,' Repton said again.

Mallory's face was puce, fingernails digging deep into his palms.

'Then you'd better say where, Maurice, and soon.'

* * *

Karen's call tracked Elder down at his flat, late afternoon.

'We've placed Kennet near the scene of the murder, the day after he came back from Spain. Had a drink in a pub on Hornsey Rise, close to the time. Right between his flat and the place Maddy was killed. He could have walked from there to the community centre in five minutes, ten tops.'

'Good work,' Elder said. 'I mean it. Really good work.' And then excused himself to go across to the entryphone. There was a parcel downstairs waiting for collection.

By the time he had arrived downstairs, whoever had delivered the package was nowhere in sight. A padded envelope the size of a hardback book, with his name printed on the front. Elder shook it, prodded it, carried it back upstairs. Inside the envelope the contents were swathed in bubble wrap, a video tape with a title handwritten on the edge.
Singin' in the Rain.
Just that and a date.

Who, Elder wondered, was sending him home-taped movies and why?

Not certain when he'd last eaten, Elder thought he'd do it right; phoned out for a pizza and some garlic bread and, when they arrived, opened a bottle of Becks from the fridge.

A mouthful of pizza, and he slotted the tape into place; pressed 'play' and leaned back. For a copy, the picture quality wasn't too bad. Fine, in fact, until the scene, maybe a quarter of the way through, when Debbie Reynolds, in her pink cap and little pleated skirt, pops up out of the cake. Then abruptly the image twisted, caught and jarred, and changed to black and white. An interior, blurred and poorly lit. Some kind of party scene. Men in dinner jackets, black tie; others with jackets discarded, white shirts, braces. Women in low-cut dresses. Champagne. And, as if on cue, a face Elder knew. Like watching a veteran actress in her heyday, cigarette in one hand, glass in the other, wearing a pale dress that reached to the floor, Lynette Drury crossed the room and, for one moment, looked directly at the camera, as if she were the only person present who knew that it was there.

Elder pressed 'pause' and searched the screen for someone else he recognised, but no. When he moved on, the picture changed: the same room later. Kneeling at the low table in the centre of the room, a young woman, naked save for a bracelet in the shape of a snake on her upper arm, snorted cocaine through a rolled-up banknote, while a man, trousers round his knees, fucked her from behind.

A starburst of static and what had to be another camera, six people sitting round another table in another room, a poker game. And amongst them faces Elder knew: Mallory, Slater, Grant, and standing just behind Mallory, at his shoulder, Maurice Repton. Younger, all of them. A decade ago, Elder guessed. Possibly more.

The image broke again and reformed.

A bedroom, sparsely lit. Elder adjusted the brightness with the remote control but to little effect. Shapes moved naked across the bed, arms, legs. Three bodies, intertwined; two women and a man. One of the women detached herself and stood beside the bed. Not a woman at all. A girl, slim-hipped, no breasts to speak of, long fair hair. The man reached out for her and she evaded his hand, turning away. Surfacing from the bed, he seized her arm and pulled her back. As his arm tightened around her neck, the other hand pulled at her hair. Silently, head swivelling towards him, she shouted or screamed.

Elder could see her mouth, opening wide, but heard nothing.

He moved closer and peered at the screen.

The man had the girl in his grasp, increasing pressure, and now the other girl, similar but with shorter, darker hair, started hitting him, pummelling his back and shoulders, trying to get him to stop, but to no avail.

Suddenly, without warning, the man released the first girl and swung round towards the other, smashing his forearm into her face with such force that her head was jolted back and round and she tumbled over the edge of the bed towards the floor.

Imagining that he heard the impact, the clash of bone against brittle bone, Elder held his breath.

Now the man caught hold of the girl's ankles and dragged her back on to the bed, legs spread, and lifted himself above her.

The fair-haired girl gouged her nails down his back and, spinning, his elbow struck her full in the face so that blood shot from her nose. Grabbing her, he forced her down. His hands at her neck, squeezing, as he leaned down with all his weight.

Elder stopped the tape, rewound and watched again, looking for the moment when the fair-haired girl's body went limp, and Mallory pushed her to the floor and she lay, lifeless, as no unbroken body could have lain.

Mallory.

If there'd been doubt in his mind before, it was no longer there.

The dark-haired girl was just visible in the far corner of the room, mouth slightly open, silent, staring, one arm tight across her breasts. And for a second, possibly two, a shadow fell across her, followed by the partial figure of a man, fully dressed, walking into the room, the frame. Then nothing.

Fade to white.

To black.

To nothing.

Treasure trove.

Elder went into the kitchen on less-than-steady feet and poured a shot of whiskey, the neck of the bottle rattling against the glass.

* * *

His call to Framlingham found him in Hampstead, a terraced cottage in the Vale of Health, a hop, skip and a jump from the Heath itself. The woman who let Elder in was in her late forties, tall, wearing a generous green needlecord dress. Dark hair turning gracefully grey. Imposing was the word that came to mind.

She made no attempt to introduce herself and neither did Framlingham when he appeared, stooped, in the doorway, carpet slippers on his feet.

They sat in the small living room, not much more than an arm's length from the screen, sipping twelve-year-old Macallan and watching as the girl fell, again and again, to the floor.

'This is what Mallory was afraid of? What Grant had threatened him with?'

'I assume so.'

'There has to be more.'

'You think so?'

'We need more than just the tape, Frank. We need a place, we need names. If there are bodies buried, we need to know where they are.'

'There's a date,' Elder said, 'written on the label, along with the name.
Singing in the Rain.
17th May 1996. Could be when the film was recorded - we could check the schedules - but I doubt it. If you look at them carefully, date and name, I'd say they were written at different times.'

'Then that's the date of the video, the party?'

'It's a good bet.'

'The raid at Gatwick, the one which linked up Grant to Slater, that was when?'

'1995.'

'And the case was thrown out of court?'

'A year later.'

Framlingham smiled. 'Celebration party, then.'

'Could well be.'

'For Mallory, too. Thanking him for his assistance. Let him win a few hands of poker, throw him a couple of girls.'

Elder shivered inside, remembering. 'When I was talking to Lynette Drury, she said that was what Mallory liked, young girls.'

'And that was her, Drury, at the party? You've no doubt?'

'None.'

'We should talk to her, then.'

'Sooner or later.'

'Where the bodies are buried, you think she's the one to know?'

'If they're buried.'

'If.'

Elder was thinking of Lynette Drury's face, the pain behind her eyes.
And no matter how filthy it all became, that was what I clung on to.
'Yes,' he said. 'I think she knows.'

'You think she sent you the tape?'

'It's possible, yes.'

'She'll deny it.'

'Of course.'

Framlingham wound back the tape again.

'There, Frank, the man who comes into the room at the end — what are the chances that's Repton?'

'You think have another go at him first?'

'Why not?'

Framlingham rose, slightly awkwardly, to his feet. These chairs, this room, they weren't intended for a man his size. 'I'll see if I can't organise some coffee. Don't want you falling asleep at the wheel.'

Framlingham's office was dominated by an oil painting of his yacht, a Mistral class thirty-footer with white sails and green trim. Framed alongside it were three small watercolours of the Blackwater estuary near St Osyth Marsh that Framlingham had painted as a young man.

Framlingham himself looked comfortable behind his desk, chair eased back, one leg crossed lazily over the other. Elder stood by the side window in front of drawn blinds, feet apart, hands lightly clasped behind his back. Both men were looking at Maurice Repton, and Repton did not look comfortable at all.

The faint ticking of the clock on the shelf opposite the window was just audible beneath the ragged edge of Repton's breath.

The phone on Framlingham's desk rang unanswered and then was silent.

'You're hanging me out to dry,' Repton said.

'Maurice, nonsense. Another little chat is all.'

'A fucking summons, your office, eleven sharp.'

'You weren't expecting coffee?'

'Fuck your coffee!'

'Tea, then. It might be possible to arrange tea.'

'You're a cunt,' Repton said.

Framlingham slowly smiled, as if this were indeed a compliment. Perhaps, from Repton, it was. 'We just thought,' he said, 'you might appreciate the privacy. Rather than resume discussions in the full public view.'

'There's nothing to discuss.'

Framlingham leaned lazily forward. 'I think if there's a problem it may be rather that there's too much. A matter of where to start. Though Frank and I think what we've seen on the video might be the place.'

'What fucking video?'

Framlingham and Elder exchanged smiles.

'Singin' in the Rain'
Framlingham said. 'Always a favourite.'

* * *

Watching Repton's increasingly ashen face, Elder thought about the call he'd received from Maureen Prior earlier that morning. Up in Nottingham, Bland was coming round to making some kind of a deal, the best that he could in a bad set of circumstances. In the end, Elder thought, that was what they all did. Bland and his kind. Aside from the ones who chose a gun to the head or a rope knotted tight about the neck; the ones who went silent to the grave.

* * *

Repton had sat watching the tape with scarcely a movement, scarce a word. Now that he was faced with a blank screen, a nerve twitched arrhythmically above his right eye, hands knotted in his lap. Elder eased open the blinds and light seeped back into the room.

Framlingham spoke into the silence. 'Only two ways to go, Maurice.'

Repton said nothing.

'Try saving your pal Mallory, it isn't going to happen. Isn't going to work. Besides, you've watched his back long enough. Wiped his backside. Time to save yourself, if you can.'

Repton looked at him quickly, then away. There was something troubling him about the crease in his trouser leg and he straightened it carefully with index finger and thumb.

'I need to think about it,' he said.

'Of course.' Framlingham rose to his feet. 'I need to take a slash, anyway. Five minutes, okay? Frank will be just outside the door. And no calls, Maurice, eh? In fact, Frank, why don't you relieve Maurice of his mobile, just in case?'

Sour-faced, Repton handed over his phone.

'Not armed are you, Maurice?' Framlingham said. 'Carrying a weapon of some kind? Dereliction of duty if I left you alone with enough time to put a bullet through your brain-pan.'

'Fuck off,' Repton said.

'Frank,' Framlingham said.

Elder carefully patted Repton down: no weapon.

'Five minutes,' Framlingham said, opening the door. 'Don't let them go to waste.'

When they came back into the room, Repton seemed not to have moved.

'I'm going to need assurances,' he said.

'Of course,' said Framlingham, repositioning himself behind his desk. 'That's understood. Your assistance, a case like this. Minimum sentence, open prison. Back outside in eighteen months, I shouldn't wonder.'

'No,' Repton said. 'No jail time. None at all.'

'Maurice, be reasonable. You know I can't promise that.'

'Then there's no deal.'

'Oh, Maurice, Maurice. What am I going to do? You want me to fetch CIB in on this? Here…' reaching for the phone, 'I can call them now. If you'd really feel more comfortable talking to them than me.'

'Listen,' Repton said. 'Everything you want to know George has been into, going back what? The best part of twenty years?' He tapped his fingers against his temple twice. 'It's all in here. Names, places, amounts, everything. And that stuff on the tape…' He laughed. Not a pleasant sound. 'You want to know where the bodies are?' He tapped his head again. 'But I want guarantees. One, no time inside. Two, protection, before the trial and after. Twenty-four-hour, round the clock. And then I want a new identity, new address the other side of the fucking world.'

Framlingham set the phone back down, unused. 'Maurice, I'll do what I can, you know that. But there's only so much, in good faith, I can promise.'