The Mannequin House (25 page)

‘How did you feel when Amélie told you it was over? It’s not for her to say, is it? You’ll decide when it’s over, not her, the bitch. Is that why you decided to teach her a lesson?’

Blackley remained calm, chillingly so. His affable smile was once again back in place. ‘You cannot say things like this and get away with it, Inspector. I don’t care who you think you are.’

‘Don’t you see it in their faces, Mr Blackley? The disgust?’

‘Good day, Inspector.’

‘Did she tell you that she loved
him
not you? Or that she’d slept with both of you? Was that the straw that broke the camel’s back? You’re not one to share your pleasures with any man, are you, Mr Blackley? Let alone your son!’

Blackley shook his head and moved away from Quinn. He threw back his head and began to cry, like a market hawker, ‘Welcome to the House of Blackley! Step inside and enter a world of provision. That’s right. A world of provision! That’s what we say on our advertisements, because it’s true! Goods from all over the world, lacquered knick-knacks from Japan and China, cinnamon and turmeric from the Spice Islands, cotton from America, rubber from India, French fashions, lace from Madeira, the darkest molasses from Jamaica . . . Whatever in the world you’re looking for, you’ll find it inside our doors. Welcome to Blackley’s . . . a world of
provision
!’ Blackley clenched his fist and waved it high in triumph on the last emphatic word; he met Quinn’s gaze with a defiant gleam.

A
drab mansion block occupied most of the south side of Caper Street, across the road from the mannequin house. Macadam had secured the cooperation of an austere middle-aged couple, Mr and Mrs Thomas Sledge, who had rooms at the front.

The Sledges had faces the colour of parchment. They dressed in black and spoke only in whispers, as if they were conversing in a public library. Perhaps the clandestine nature of the operation had some influence in this. Mr Sledge conveyed his thoughts to Mrs Sledge, who then communicated them to Macadam, who would in turn share them with Quinn. For some reason Macadam had also taken to speaking in whispers.

It was perhaps as well that Sergeant Inchball was not there, thought Quinn. He could imagine how he would react to the strange game of Chinese Whispers.

The Sledges kept their apartment dimly lit. Perhaps Macadam had briefed them to do so, but Quinn suspected this was how they preferred to live, in shadows and whispers. He saw no direct lights in the places he was admitted to, just soft flickering glows seeping out from half-opened doors.

After the whispering Mr Sledge took himself off and played no further part in the dealings with the police. He left it to his wife to show them to the room they were to use. Mrs Sledge walked with a stiff upright bearing, her step heavy and slow, as if she was leading a procession, or trudging through deep sand. It was almost as if she had to overcome a great reluctance, or force of resistance, to move through her own home.

She led them to a child’s bedroom. The curtains were open, light from the street dappling the pink of the Empire in a framed map of the world on one wall. A toy sailboat rested on top of a bookcase, ready to be snatched up and run with to Hyde Park.
Boy’s Own
adventure stories showed their spines on the shelves below. On a desk, a microscope and slides waited for a boy’s eye to examine them. A child’s sailor suit hung on the back of the door.

Mrs Sledge whispered something to Macadam. It was a long and intense communication. She waited for him to repeat it to Quinn. ‘She says it was her son’s room. He’s dead. Snatched on his way home from school. Sexually molested and strangled. His body dumped in a dust heap. He was eleven. The police never caught his murderer.’

The woman watched Quinn’s face as he took this in. Her expression seemed recriminatory, as if she held Quinn responsible for that earlier police failing. He nodded solemnly. ‘Tell her we’re very grateful to her and her husband for being allowed to use it.’

Macadam conveyed the message. Mrs Sledge seemed satisfied and left.

Macadam had brought a brown leather travelling bag from which he took a pair of binoculars.

‘I’ll take the first hour,’ said Quinn. Macadam handed him the binoculars; he then took out a roll of carpet and a blanket from the bag and spread them out on the floor. ‘Aren’t you going to use the bed?’

‘Mrs Sledge requested that we didn’t.’ Macadam took off his jacket. ‘In fact, she would rather we didn’t touch anything.’ He seemed at a loss what to do with his jacket now that he had relayed that information. He settled for draping it over the back of the chair that was tucked into the desk.

Quinn sighed deeply. He looked at the model yacht, its string rigging and handkerchief-thin sails heartbreakingly frail, but they still had the power to dredge an ache of emotion into his throat. He was momentarily paralysed by a stab of grief for his own lost boyhood, and for all the innocence that had vanished from the world. Inevitably he thought of his father, remembering the great, good hero he had once been, a man of enthusiasms and optimism. The kind of father who could goad his son to delight, and share in it.

Quinn positioned himself to one side of the window frame and lifted the binoculars to his eyes. The entrance to Seven Caper Street was well-illuminated by a street lamp. There would be no difficulty in observing the comings and goings at the house.

Ten minutes into the watch the door to the mannequin house opened and Sergeant Inchball emerged. He looked up briefly, a minimal signal to Quinn that everything was ready. All the mannequins were inside the house, together with Monsieur Hugo and the domestics.

But no one else: Inchball had been instructed to make a sign if Blackley, or another interloper, was inside. As Inchball headed off down Caper Street, Quinn thought he detected in his gait the self-consciousness of someone who knew he was being watched. His step seemed deliberately jaunty, as if he was making the point that he was finished for the day, whereas whoever was watching him had a night of discomfort and boredom ahead.

Caper Street was a quiet turning, haunted by prowling cats. There was some pedestrian through-traffic, as well as one or two residents returning late from work, or setting out on a Friday night’s entertainment. The public house on Abingdon Road, near where Caper Street came out, was one lure; though to judge by the evening dress of some of those leaving their houses, they were headed into the West End. As the first hour progressed, the passers-by grew noticeably more lively. One group of staggering men shouted boisterously, evidently on a pub crawl.

Quinn found his thoughts drifting back to his father. How could it be possible that such a man could take his own life? That was the question that he had never been able to get beyond. A respected family doctor with a good practice, he had somehow managed to run up debts that left his wife virtually destitute as well as widowed. What was it that had drained the family’s coffers? A secret vice? Quinn had never detected the slightest whiff of alcohol on his father’s breath. Was it something worse than drunkenness?

The last time he had pondered these questions, in the immediate wake of his father’s death, his mind and nervous system had shattered. He had tried to imagine the worst that his father might be capable of. Each potential crime or depravity that passed through his mental review twisted and corrupted his idea of his father. He felt him gradually but perceptibly turn from a paragon to a monster.

To imagine his father in this way was, of course, an act of gross disloyalty. Quinn saw that he himself was the monster, the grotesque, craven, spiritually ugly fiend. It wasn’t his father who was capable of any evil, it was Quinn himself.

When he emerged from the breakdown this had precipitated, he set himself consciously to be on his guard against his own worst propensities; to police himself, in other words. But the door had been opened: an awareness that he was capable of something mutated into a compulsion to do that very thing. By a fortuitous twist (or had he planned it like this all along?) he found himself in the one job where he could act on this compulsion, with the minimum risk of repercussions.

In other words, as a police detective, from time to time, it happened that he killed people.

The tiny chime of Macadam’s pocket watch signalled nine o’clock. He sat bolt upright. ‘Anything, sir?’

‘No sign of Blackley yet.’

Macadam rose to his feet and took the binoculars. ‘I’ll wake you in an hour, sir.’

Quinn lay down on the rug. There was no comfort in it at all. He felt the floor’s uncompromising rigidity squeeze his bones. He pulled the blanket over him and looked up at the toy boat on the bookcase. He thought about the boy that Mr and Mrs Sledge had lost, dressed in his sailor suit, laying his model boat down on the surface of the water. For a moment, he was that boy. But then he was the dark, shadowed stranger watching, waiting for the perfect moment to make his move.

A patchwork of difficult dreams. Long, slow minutes of numbing tedium. At times it felt as though he was keeping watch on his soul, rather than on the house opposite. But somehow the night passed.

The first leavening of the darkness came on his watch. Grey spectral forms gathered substance, like ocean liners nosing through fog. The houses opposite took shape, colours summoned by the birds’ clamour. A whole street formed itself. The sprays of yellow light cast down by the lamps were left enfeebled and looking a little foolish. A moment ago, they had held all there was of the world.

Macadam stirred. ‘Did he show?’

Quinn shook his head. It was the story of the night.

‘What do we do now, sir?’

Quinn consulted his watch. ‘We keep up the pressure.’ He nodded his approval of his own plan and kept his gaze fixed on the door to number seven. After a moment he raised the binoculars sharply, as if some detail on the paintwork had suddenly aroused his suspicion.

M
acadam drove Quinn round to the front of the store. Blackley was already in place, just as the store was opening, in anticipation of a busy Saturday morning’s trade. He tipped his bowler at Quinn and even dared a wink as the Ford shuddered past.

‘Pull up, sergeant,’ said Quinn.

Blackley drew himself up, bristling at Quinn and Macadam’s approach. His smile was cranked up a notch. It did nothing to mitigate the aggression of his stance. In fact, Quinn realized that the smile was itself an act of aggression, Blackley’s assault on the forces set against him. At its mildest, it was an assertion of Blackley’s indomitable will. But that will – and that smile – could not exist without the seam of hard, mineral ruthlessness that ran through Blackley’s soul.

‘What can I do for you, Inspector?’

‘It’s not you we want, Blackley. It’s your son. Benjamin Blackley Junior. I take it he’s in his office?’

The defiance fell away from Blackley. The smile flexed and sharpened. It must have been a strain now to hold it. ‘Ben? What do you want with Ben?’

‘By his own admission he was at the mannequin house on Tuesday night, the night Amélie was raped and murdered. He was the only male – apart from Monsieur Hugo – there. There are discrepancies in your son’s account which we are forced to regard with suspicion. At first we thought he was covering for you. But the more obvious explanation is that he is himself the murderer. And the rapist too, of course.’

‘Ben? No, not Ben. You’re way off the mark there, Inspector.’

‘Am I? Do you know something about what transpired in the mannequin house on Tuesday night that could bring me back on target?’

‘I only know that my son is not a killer.’

‘I’m afraid that’s not good enough. We’ll have to take him in for questioning. DCI Coddington is anxious to bring this case to a conclusion as quickly as possible. I’m sure that’s what you want too, Mr Blackley, so that you can get on with your business. I imagine that we will charge your son later today. We’ll hold him over the weekend and have him before the magistrates on Monday morning. The evidence is circumstantial, but in the absence of anything else we’re confident it will secure a conviction. At the very least, it will go to trial.’

‘You can’t do this. It will break his mother’s heart.’

‘Have you nothing else to offer that might weigh in his favour?’

Blackley shook his head. There was no smile in place now. He stood to one side and allowed the policemen to pass.

You can never tell
, thought Quinn. Never tell in advance how they are going to react. The hardened criminals expect it. And being ready for it, they are quick to break loose. The guilty sometimes almost seem to welcome it.

But the fear and bewilderment that showed in Benjamin Blackley Jr’s face now – it was hard to see it as anything other than a sign of genuine innocence. His eyes were wide with dawning terror; his mouth gaped in speechless incomprehension.

‘What is this?’ Although he resembled his father physically, Blackley Jr lacked the older man’s bluff confidence. Blackley Sr was a self-made man; he stood squarely up to the world, knowing what it expected from him and what he could demand in return. By the time his son was born he was already a successful businessman. His son, therefore, had had everything handed to him on a plate. He’d never had to prove himself, let alone make himself. The business his father had built up through the exercise of initiative, energy and sheer willpower would one day simply fall into his lap. In place of his father’s hard-earned, hard-edged self-confidence, there was a thin and brittle arrogance. The slightest touch and it shattered.

Young Blackley shrank back in his seat, as if hoping the expanse of his desk would be enough to protect him. It was all he had, after all.

‘You’re under arrest.’

‘For what?’

‘On suspicion of murder. And rape.’

‘You can’t be serious.’

‘Oh, I assure you, sir, I am in deadly earnest. Now then, you can either come quietly, or we can put the cuffs on and drag you out through the store. Which will it be?’