The Chalon Heads (42 page)

She holds up her index finger and Starling’s attempt to argue this point dies away.

‘I couldn’t stay there after that, you knew that very well, and I was angry. I thought, my mum took little Sammy into our home when he was an orphan, and now he kicks me out in my old age without a penny.’

Starling makes another attempt to protest, but she waves it aside. ‘All right, yes, it was all her doing, but you believed every word she told you, and wouldn’t listen when I tried to warn you, right? Right. Anyway, I came back to this part of town, where we all grew up, and the council gave me a little temporary, like, and I took up again with some old friends who’d stayed hereabouts, like Rudi Trakl, who worked for a time for my dad. Poor Rudi was going blind, cataracts in both eyes, at the wrong end of a long hospital waiting list, and drinking every penny he could get because of it. I looked after him, poor old bugger, and tried to work out how we could get enough money to live better and get his eyes fixed.

‘Now, I’d left you my forwarding address, as you know, and one day, bright as a button, who should turn up on my doorstep but Eva. I couldn’t believe the gall of the girl, even less when she got round to telling me what she wanted. She was in a right pickle, she said, going mad with worry. You remember that beautiful gold and emerald necklace you gave her?’

Starling’s eyes widen and he becomes very still.

‘Yes, well, she said she’d been very stupid and lost it, and I knew what that meant, of course—sold it for drug money. She said you’d been asking where it was, and she’d told you it was having the clasp repaired, but sooner or later she knew you were going to find out the truth, unless she could replace it. She’d found another identical one in the shop you bought it from, and she needed ten thousand quid to buy it. Unfortunately she had no cash, but she was sure that I must have squirrelled a bit away over the years, and would I lend it to her?’

Starling leans back against the wall, looking more ashen than before, but he doesn’t challenge Sally’s story.

‘I blew my flippin’ lid, believe me. I told her everything I knew and suspected about her, and told her to eff off in no uncertain terms. She scarpered with a flea in her ear, but later on, when I’d calmed down and was telling Rudi about it, another thought came into my head. I thought, here’s Sammy wants to spend all his money on bloody stamps, and here’s Eva, Rudi and me all needing that money in our different ways. Why can’t we all be happy? Tell the truth, I didn’t care whether Eva was happy or not, but I figured she’d have to be part of it. The key was Rudi. He’d always been a brilliant copier. I remember him in our dad’s shop when I started work there, copying the drawings for the latest fashions so you couldn’t tell the difference between Dior and Hubbard. And he’d told me he’d made copies of etchings for this bent art dealer he knew up West. Only that was before his eyes got bad, and I wasn’t sure he could still do it. But he knew about stamps, and when I told him what was in my mind he said he’d give it a try.

‘That first one was the most difficult. We used your book, of course, Sammy. We picked a nice one from your book . . .’

‘Nova Scotia, 1853, one penny brown, block of twenty, mint.’ Sammy recites dully.

‘I daresay you’re right. Rudi’s a perfectionist, and it was agony to watch him, his nose almost touching the surface of the plate, working away all hours, week after week. But it did take his mind off the booze.

‘While he was working at that, I found Walter. We needed someone in the business, see, to make it look convincing. I would have preferred someone else, someone more dependable, who looked more respectable, but Walter was the only one I could find. And that was when we decided that we would have to invent Raphael.

‘I didn’t really trust Walter, you see. I knew him of old, and I knew he had a reputation as a grass. I was bothered that he might decide one day to shop us, either to the Old Bill or to you, and so I didn’t want him to know where the stamps would be coming from, and who would really be involved. Raphael was Eva’s idea. She invented him, like one of the characters in those movies she was always going to see. I never thought Walter would swallow it, but she believed in Raphael, and she could make other people believe in him too.

‘When the stamps were finished, Eva took them to Walter’s shop in Shepherd’s Row. She told him that she had a rich husband who was mad keen on stamps. She said she also had a lover, a young penniless art student, who was very clever at copying things. She and her lover wanted to steal money from her husband by selling him fake stamps that the lover would make. But they needed a proper stamp dealer to act as middle man, to convince the husband that it was all above board. Was he interested?

‘She made it sound like a fairy story, you know the way she could tell you something in that accent of hers, and Walter was fascinated, but of course he wanted nothing to do with it. Not until she’d showed him Rudi’s work. He told her it was so good that he couldn’t believe it wasn’t the real thing, and she told him things about Raphael, about the etchings he had been doing for the art market, and other things. And then he realised that this could be a serious proposition.

‘Eva told him that this was the bait, a free sample to get her old man hooked. She would give this to him, and say she had sold one of her necklaces to buy it for him from this funny little shop she’d found. Then her husband would come to the shop, and they would begin to sell him other high-value stamps that her lover, Raphael, would make for them, and then they would all be rich.

‘I’m sorry, Sammy,’ she says, and falls silent.

‘He told me they were lovers,’ Sammy whispers, ‘Eva and Raphael. That’s why I cut off his fingers. He told me the name straight away, but I cut them off anyway. I was very upset.’

‘Of course you were,’ Sally says consolingly. ‘Considering everything that had happened.’

‘Hang on,’ Brock says. ‘What about the murder of Mary Martin?’

Sally hangs her head. ‘When everything worked so well, Walter wanted to know more about Raphael, and Eva obliged. She created little stories for him, like instalments of a movie serial. As well as Raphael, there was this friend of his that they called The Beast, because he was so scary and nobody knew his name. She invented him to frighten Walter, in case he turned difficult.

‘One day Walter told Eva that he’d heard about a new machine that a forger like Raphael would be interested in. He showed her a photocopy of the specifications that he’d come across, and told her some details of when and where it would be kept in London, on its way to a printer up north. He said he’d heard all this on the grapevine. When Eva told us, we all thought what a joke it was that he was taking Raphael so seriously, wanting to help him. Of course, there was no way we could try to steal the machine, although we wished we could.

‘Then we read in the papers what had happened to the lady copper in the warehouse, and the joke wasn’t funny any more. But the thing was, it impressed Walter no end. He was convinced Raphael had killed the copper, and from then on he treated Eva with a kind of dread, as if she might set The Beast on him if he didn’t behave. She lapped it up.’

Brock shakes his head, perplexed. ‘And Walter knew nothing about you and Rudi?’

‘Nothing. Eva would take him fresh stamps that Raphael had given her, and collect the money in return. They made up the story of the widow and her family heirloom collection together, she and Walter.’

Starling looks devastated as the full extent of their betrayal sinks in. ‘I got expert opinion,’ he whispers. ‘I had the first few lots checked, to make sure . . .’

‘Dr Waverley?’ Sally says.

‘You know him?’ Brock asks.

‘Oh, yes. He was a smart one. He came to Walter’s shop one day and said that he’d been checking some of the stamps that Sammy had bought from him. He didn’t come right out and say they were forgeries, and Walter got the impression he wasn’t absolutely sure. He was fishing, probing Walter’s story, letting him know he had doubts about the whole thing. He certainly got Walter worried. Finally he said, “Tell you what, Mr Pickering, why don’t you suggest to your seller that they might like to pay me a fee to authenticate the stamps before they come to Mr Starling, so as to avoid the embarrassment that might arise if I were to find that some of them weren’t quite right?” Walter agreed to put the proposal to his client, and we decided we had to go along with it. Ten per cent, he took. That’s what we called him, Dr Ten Per Cent. The rest was divided equally between Walter, Eva, Rudi and me.’

‘Do you have records of what was paid to Waverley?’ Brock asks.

‘Walter kept a book of all Raphael’s transactions, money in and money out.’

‘I’ve got it,’ Starling says, pulling a small notebook from his hip pocket. ‘He gave it to me. But I can’t make out who the people are.’

‘He gave them nicknames. Waverley is Afghan, because Walter said he reminded him of an Afghan hound, tall and thin and over-bred.’

Sally gets slowly to her feet, goes over to Starling, puts her arms round him and draws him to her, so tiny and frail that she makes him look ungainly large, and he sags and begins sobbing in her arms.

‘Poor Sammy,’ she whispers. ‘Poor Sammy . . .’

Eventually he lifts his head to Brock and says, ‘Who killed her, Mr Brock? Who killed my Eva?’

‘Someone who hates us both, Sammy. They took everything from you and made you look like a murderer, and for good measure they made me look like a thief. I think it’s time we sat down together and put an end to it, don’t you?’

Starling nods, and wipes the back of his hand across his eyes. Brock gets stiffly to his feet and goes over to Desai. ‘Leon, old chap,’ he whispers anxiously, ‘can you hear me?’

The head stirs and gives a little nod. Thankfully Brock takes hold of the tape and peels it off, layer by layer, until Desai is blinking up at him ruefully. He has a large bruise on his left temple, and he winces with pain as Brock frees his wrists and ankles, so that Brock tells him to stay on the floor and wait for help.

Brock is the first through the front door, waving into the darkness, then shading his eyes when the floodlights come on, and holding Starling’s rifle up for them to see. He turns back to the doorway, and Starling comes through, blinking tentatively, hands in the air.

He points down into the darkness of the central courtyard towards the streetlights at the far end, illuminating the waste-ground which they had driven past earlier that evening. ‘That’s where I was going to get you and Raphael to come, Mr Brock,’ he says. ‘One bullet each for you, I had. Then one for me.’ He sighs hopelessly. ‘I couldn’t have got things more wrong, could I?’

‘It hasn’t been your week, Sammy.’

‘You can say that again. I reckon I must have killed a Chinaman.’

He grins weakly at Brock, who smiles back encouragingly, and is then startled to see a small black hole appear in the centre of Starling’s forehead, followed a moment later by the ringing smack of a gunshot. Without changing his expression, Starling drops like a sack of potatoes to the floor.

There are sudden shouts, cries from the darkness. Brock drops to his knees, pulling Sally down with him, calling to Desai to stay inside. Sally is wiping stuff from her eyes, spray from the exit wound in the back of Starling’s head.

18
The Source

T
im Waverley objected strenuously to being roused at dawn. As he was brought down to the interview room he didn’t shrink from making comparisons between the Metropolitan Police and the KGB to the silent officers who accompanied him. He became quiet, however, when he saw the grim-faced pair waiting for him, Brock meeting his eyes without acknowledgement, and McLarren with eyebrows bristling furiously at the sheet of paper clutched in his hands.

‘Sit down,’ McLarren said, without preliminaries, and immediately cautioned him.

Waverley looked from one to the other without replying, now very alert. He tried to make out what was written on the paper McLarren had set aside on the table. It appeared to be a list of some kind.

‘Dr Waverley, we require you to make a full statement of your involvement in the events which have led to the death of Eva Starling,’ McLarren went on.

Waverley paled a little. He took his time replying, sweeping the errant lock of hair back from his forehead. ‘I’ve had no involvement in Eva Starling’s death, Superintendent. Perhaps I should say no more until I get legal advice.’

‘As you wish,’ McLarren said.

‘What exactly am I suspected of?’

‘Suspected is no longer the relevant word, Dr Waverley. You are known to have been a party to a fraud involving the sale of forged stamps to Mr Sammy Starling.’

‘Oh, really?’ Waverley said carefully. He was momentarily disconcerted to notice a black stain on the sleeve of Brock’s blue shirt—blood, surely—as if the man has been bleeding profusely. ‘Have you found Mr Starling then?’ he asked, tearing his eyes away from it. ‘The last time we spoke he was on the run. Has he accused me of something?’

‘This,’ said McLarren, sliding the sheet of paper across the table, ‘is a full schedule of payments you received from Mr Walter Pickering in respect of the sale of forged stamps to Mr Starling.’

Waverley flushed. ‘I certainly carried out inspections for Pickering, authenticating new material—I’ve already stated that.’

‘Most of these stamps you never saw. You simply took ten per cent from the seller in order to keep quiet about their dubious quality when you reported to the buyer, from whom you also took a fee. Dr Ten Per Cent, they called you. Did you know that?’

Waverley, who had been about to make some other point, stopped short and his colour deepened. He took the sheet of paper cautiously and examined it.

‘How much, exactly, do you know?’ he said at last. ‘I mean, if you already know it all, there’s not a lot of point in my saying anything, is there?’

‘We want your version. And your co-operation will be noted and the court advised accordingly. That is likely to be especially important when it comes to the murder charge.’

‘What murder charge?’ Waverley jerked up straight, sending his hair flopping forward again. He adjusted hair and spectacles in one fluid movement. ‘You don’t imagine that I was involved in any murder?’