On the Loose (32 page)

‘God, no. The idea is to push up the value of your own collection, not someone else’s.’

‘And briefly, what’s in your collection?’

‘It’s taken me a lifetime to build up. I can hardly be expected to quantify it in a few minutes. People collect anything of limited availability that’s likely to increase in value. Tastes change all the time. You wouldn’t believe what fetches money these days. There are a lot of amateurs in the business, too many TV shows explaining how to do it.’

‘All right, what’s your speciality?’

‘If I had to pick one thing? Music, mainly. Original artwork and photography. Western pop memorabilia is highly prized in countries like Japan. The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The
Doors. Anyone who has died tragically—Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison.’

‘What were you fighting with Adrian Jesson about?’

‘Oh, lobby cards. You know, the hand-inked cinema stills that used to decorate the exteriors of old movie houses. They were always produced in sets of six and came in sealed packets, which makes them highly attractive acquisitions. When the Rank film studio closed down, the new buyers sold off everything in the vaults. I had a set of stills Jesson was desperate to purchase, one of the old Ealing comedies, extremely desirable. He was missing one, and I wouldn’t sell him mine.’

‘So the argument wasn’t about his sister.’

‘Marie and I have been together for years now,’ said Standover. ‘Jesson’s had time to get used to the idea.’

‘But he wasn’t happy about it.’

‘Not particularly. He was very competitive in every part of his life. That’s why he annoyed people so much.’

‘And he annoyed you.’

‘I wouldn’t say that; I just know what collectors are like.’

‘Mr Standover, I understand you were out of the country when Adrian Jesson died, but at the moment I’m not concerned with him. Have you ever seen either of these two people?’ Bryant showed him the photographs of Cavendish and Delaney.

‘No,’ said Standover, clearly puzzled. ‘At least, they’re not in my business.’

Bryant switched tack. ‘Know anything about St Pancras Old Church?’

‘I’ve never heard of it. I’m surprised to hear there are any churches at all in an area as godless as St Pancras.’ The answer felt glib and prepared. Bryant made a mental note.

‘Tell me, are there collectors who specialise in murder memorabilia?’

‘Of course. Jack the Ripper, Crippen, Christie, the American killers like Gacy and Gein. There are a few sick individuals out there collecting more recent stuff, but a lot of it is black market. You can find Internet links for that kind of thing. Professionals would shun such material. Is that all? Can I get out of here now?’

Bryant’s early optimism waned through the day. He had sensed they were close to a breakthrough, but the solution remained tantalisingly out of reach. The PCU worked on in isolation, without equipment or data, doggedly backing up each step with the requisite paperwork, writing out reports by hand. At the end of the afternoon everyone was tired and bad-tempered. Renfield went out without telling anyone where he was going, and failed to report back in. A little after six o’clock May realised they could go no further. Obviously the killer had moved Delaney’s body in a vehicle, but no-one had seen it parked outside his flat, or outside the shop on the Caledonian Road. Vans were rendered invisible by their ubiquity. Kershaw had found no new evidence on the corpses. No new witnesses had come forward. Their leads were all played out.

‘We’ll give it another couple of hours and then adjourn until the morning,’ May said. ‘There’s no point in staying late tonight. I want everyone in by eight a.m. tomorrow for a briefing session.’ He rubbed his eyes wearily. ‘Arthur, when we finish I’ll run you back to Alma’s.’

‘If my home is still there,’ said Bryant gloomily. ‘We’re being kicked out.’

‘Then perhaps I’ll buy
you
a beer instead. Hell, I’ll
buy everyone
a beer.’

‘Not me, chief,’ said Liberty DuCaine. ‘I said I’d run Janice home later.’

‘You didn’t come back to the unit after Brighton,’ said Bryant. ‘What did
you
two get up to? You didn’t stay down there, Janice, did you? Together?’

‘Oo
ooo
ooh.’ Everyone turned to look at the pair of them.

‘What?’ said DS Longbright. ‘What? I have a private life, you know.’

‘You never had one before,’ said Bryant grumpily. ‘I don’t know why you have to start now. It’s very inconvenient.’

But she knew he was secretly pleased for her.

41
HAYWIRE

M
addox Cavendish took off his tie, rolled it up and put it in his pocket. He opened his collar, trying not to look like an executive. The afternoon was cold, but he was sweating. He drank half a pint of beer in each bar he visited. After the fourth, he had built up enough courage to start conversations
.

In the Ruby Lounge he met a former boxer who offered to sell him amphetamines. Wandering in the gloomy depths of the Big Chill House he was offered drugs and a woman for the night. It took nerve to enter the Flying Scotsman, considered by many to be the worst pub in London. He stood in a crowd of overweight skinheads watching as a bony crack-addled girl performed a dead-eyed bump-and-grind on the tiny raised stage. The more coins that were thrown into her pint pot, the more she took off. How desperate did a man have to be, Cavendish wondered, to strip a drug addict? This was not his world. He belonged in the Thames Valley, where the houses were lost behind hedges and every family had three cars. How had he been reduced to this?

Think of what will happen if you don’t do it, he told himself, you’ll be unemployable
.

He struck up conversations and got strange looks. Finally, in one of the more brightly lit and respectable bars, a pub called the Golden Lion, he found what he had been looking for. Seated on a tiny verandah with the smokers, he joined a promising conversation and realised that he was
talking to a burglar with a string of convictions. The boy’s name was Mac. He was pale and ratty, with a scrawny tattooed neck and faux-Russian gang tattoos entwined over both arms. This was no good—Cavendish wanted someone who did not look guilty and would not get caught—but at least the subject was raised. Soon they were joined by others who boasted of TWOCing neighbourhood cars. ‘Taking Without Owner’s Consent’ had to be explained to him, but a few minutes and several beers later, Mac had agreed to introduce him to a man who had never been caught, even though Mac was sure he was insane and deserved to be locked up
.

Mac gave Cavendish a joint, which was mixed with dark rolling tobacco and nearly choked him, and after Mac held several sly conversations on his cell phone, they went off to the Thornhill Arms, to meet up with Mr Fox
.

Cavendish felt the skin on his neck tingle as Mr Fox entered the pub. He was small-boned, sandy-haired, pale and inconsequential, and yet there was something terrifying about him. He nodded politely as he was introduced to Cavendish, but there was no life in his deep black eyes, nothing at all except the hungry prospect of taking something from another. He commanded the space; the others fell silent out of respect. Cavendish skipped the small talk. There was no point in wasting time. He explained what he wanted, but was careful to play down the importance of the item to be stolen from Delaney’s apartment. He did not want Mr Fox to understand its value
.

Mr Fox listened to the proposal as if it was the most normal thing in the world, as if it was almost beneath his attention. Then he nodded imperceptibly and asked for half the money up front
.

‘No,’ said Cavendish. ‘You get it when you deliver.’

Mr Fox rose to his feet. He seemed to have grown in stature somehow. Mac was clearly annoyed. ‘You got to pay him,’ the burglar whined
.

‘One third up front,’ Cavendish offered
.

Mr Fox hovered for a moment, and for a terrifying instant
Cavendish feared he might lash out at him, but then he sat back down, grudgingly indicating that they had a deal
.

Cavendish withdrew the cash from his personal account, knowing it was better not to involve the company. Nothing happened the next day. He sat at his desk, shuffling papers, biting his nails. Sammi, his assistant, kept looking at him strangely. When the phone finally rang, Cavendish found himself talking to Mac
.

‘Meet me back at the pub tonight, same as last time.’ The line went dead
.

Mac was skittering about at the bar, manically chewing gum, drinking beer, nervously tapping skull-ringed hands on the counter. The moment he saw Cavendish in the mirror he spun around. ‘You didn’t say nothing about him coming back from work early, didja?’

‘Where’s Mr Fox?’ Cavendish asked, sensing trouble. ‘What happened?’

‘I’ll tell you what happened. Your pal came back and caught him in the act. So Mr Fox had to deal with it.’

‘Where’s my package?’

‘Don’t know, mate. Don’t know anything. He never met you and you never met him, all right?’

‘We had a deal. I gave him money—’

‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Don’t try to scam me, you little weasel,’ Cavendish hissed. ‘Who the hell do you think you’re dealing with?’

‘It ain’t me. Mr Fox knows where you work. It’s him you have to worry about now. He’s nuts; he’ll do anything. You screwed him around. He’s got nothing to lose. Nothing.’

Cavendish thought of Mr Fox’s frozen dark eyes and the truth began to dawn on him. ‘Oh God, Delaney’s dead,’ he realised. He could see bony fingers digging into the construction worker’s windpipe
.

‘Just get the rest of the money by tomorrow, all right?’ Mac shoved past him and stormed out of the pub
.

42
MAD DAY OUT

B
efore they left for the night, the PCU staff assembled at the front of the second floor in what had become the briefing room, simply because it was the room with the most floorboards. The last two hours of the evening had brought some leads, but hardly the breakthrough they had been hoping for.

‘Okay, everyone present and correct?’ asked May. ‘The good news is that we’ve managed to locate Mr Porter’s granddaughter, Ellen. She lives just a few streets away, in Tiber Gardens. The bad news is that she doesn’t know anything about a property deed. Looks like Delaney didn’t have time to track her down. No-one’s been in contact with her.’

‘But the deed wasn’t in Delaney’s apartment,’ said Bryant. ‘So where on earth did it go?’ He noticed that Jack Renfield had appeared in the doorway. ‘Ah, Mr Renfield, glad to have you back amongst us. Where did you disappear to?’

‘I decided to follow up one of your leads,’ Renfield explained. ‘You kept banging on about the St Pancras Old Church, pagans and such, so I went there and had a very interesting talk with the grave digger. Seems you missed an obvious connection with one of the suspects.’

‘I did?’ Bryant sat forward, intrigued. ‘And what did I miss, pray tell?’

‘You missed the Mad Day Out.’ Renfield looked around the room.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘The Beatles. Seems the old vicar remembers it well. In 1968, The Beatles were photographed all over London in what became known as their Mad Day Out. They were filmed in seven different London locations by a veteran war photographer named Don McCullin, but four other photographers came along as well. The fifth location was a big series of shots taken in the grounds of the old St Pancras churchyard. The photos were designed to promote their White Album. It’s one of the most famous photo sets in pop history, after the shot of them crossing Abbey Road.

‘In your report you say that Richard Standover denied ever having heard of St Pancras Old Church,’ Renfield continued, ‘but he specialises in Beatles memorabilia. He lied to you.’

Bryant looked like he’d been hit with a brick. Besides, he hated being upstaged. ‘You’re telling me this is about The
Beatles?
he asked incredulously.

‘No, I’m saying it’s one element.’ The sergeant threw the others a smug look. ‘I did some further checking up last night while you lot were brushing your teeth and making cocoa. Adrian Jesson owned the original photographs from the Mad Day Out, signed by McCullin and all four of The Beatles. Standover was desperate to buy the shots because he owns the sets from the other six locations, meaning that he would have the complete photographic record of The Beatles’ historic day. It would have sent the value of Standover’s collection through the roof. You met him, so you know there’s one problem; he’s got the charm of an open grave. He failed to bargain the photographs away from his old rival after staging a very public argument with him. Everyone in the collecting community knew he was trying to get
his hands on them, so when he got turned down he made himself a laughingstock.’

‘But if he tried to steal from Jesson, surely everyone would suspect him?’ Bryant argued. ‘And even if he had done so, he wouldn’t be able to sell the collection, because he could never reveal that he was in possession of Jesson’s photographs.’

‘That’s right. You can see parallel situations rising between Maddox Cavendish and Richard Standover,’ said Renfield. ‘The connection between them is a desperate desire to steal something. The architect Cavendish steals from Delaney, the collector Standover steals from Jesson, and now three of them are dead. Cavendish the workaholic screws up and kills Delaney, and the process changes him. He’s a murderer now—he has nothing left to lose. Suppose Cavendish knew Standover? Did anyone think of that? Suppose he shows Standover how to get what he wants by killing his rival? And Standover does the job, but he’s worried about Cavendish, who’s nervous and fast becoming a liability. And now that Standover has killed, he’s sure he can do it again. Out of the four, the only one left alive right now is Richard Standover.’