The Mannequin House (26 page)

‘My father will have something to say about this!’

‘Your father? We have already spoken to your father. We told him of our intention. He stood aside. Waved us through. “He’s all yours,” he as good as said. “Take him away.”’

‘He didn’t say that!’

‘Not in so many words. But you know as well as I do, there was something he could have said. A few simple words that would have prevented us coming down here to arrest you. He chose not to. He chose to sacrifice you, Ben. Your father’s thrown you to the wolves!’

Ben Blackley’s head swung to the side as if he had just been slapped across the face. ‘He wouldn’t do that,’ he murmured. But the hurt in his expression belied his assertion.

‘You know what he’s like. All he has to do to save you is tell the truth. But it’s more important to him to be outside the store touting for business. He has hardened his heart to you, Ben. He doesn’t care what happens to you so long as he can save himself and his own reputation.’

Ben Blackley shook his head.

‘It’s hard for you to accept the truth. It feels like you’re betraying him. I know. I know what you’re going through . . . My own father . . .’

Ben looked up sharply. ‘What?’

‘. . . killed himself.’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘You remind me of the young man I was at the time. I couldn’t accept that my father would do such a thing. That he would leave me. That he would choose self-annihilation. Did he have so little love for me? And what of my mother? How could he do that to her? He was not there to see the pain that he inflicted. No. The man that my father was, the loving, loved, husband and father – he would not, could not do such a thing. I was incapable of imagining what could have driven him to the act. So I refused to believe it. Oh, my mother believed it. She had no choice. She was the one left penniless. Destitute. How she turned against him! And how I hated
her
for that. Not him.’

‘What is your point, Inspector?’

Quinn thought for a moment. ‘Why do you think my father killed himself?’ His voice was low, but intense, as if everything was hanging on young Blackley’s answer.

‘I have no idea.’

Quinn nodded. ‘I don’t know either. I have never been able to find out. But I have come to the conclusion that he must have done something so shameful that he simply could not live with himself.’

‘You don’t know that,’ said young Blackley.

Quinn shrugged. ‘What I would say to him, having lived the years I’ve lived, and having committed a few sins of my own, what I would say to him now is, “Whatever you have done, you’re still my father.”’

‘So, you had a father who killed himself. I don’t see what that has to do with me.’

‘You have a father who may have done far worse.’

‘How can you be so sure he has done anything?’

Quinn looked down at Ben Blackley. ‘You know your father is no saint.’

‘He’s not a murderer.’

‘Perhaps not. The only way we can establish that for certain is if you tell us the truth.’

Ben Blackley put a hand to his forehead and hid his gaze from Quinn.

‘Do you know the one and only thing that your father said to try and stop us taking you away? “It will break his mother’s heart,” he said.’

A muffled sob came from Blackley Jr.

‘Listen, my young friend, I know you’re not lying to protect your father. It’s for your mother, isn’t it? She didn’t send you to spy on him.
You
needed to know for yourself the true depth of his depravity. What was your plan? To use what you discovered for your own purposes? Were you worried he was going to crack over the Spiggott affair and recognize him as his son? You wanted some leverage to make sure that didn’t happen. Or perhaps you simply needed to know the truth about your father.’

Ben Blackley rubbed his face vigorously with both hands. When he looked up at Quinn his expression had a fearful, chastened quality to it. The young man seemed suddenly and profoundly uncertain, as if he had been subject not simply to a passing doubt, but to the fundamental upheaval of his core beliefs.

‘I can understand that. But the truth is a terrible thing, is it not? Once you know it, you cannot un-know it. The man your father once was is gone forever from you. A monster stands in his place.’

‘I saw nothing. I know nothing.’

‘I understand why you say that. You’re determined that your mother should never know the true nature of the monster she has devoted her life to. You even swore on your mother’s life that your father was not in the mannequin house on Tuesday night! It is psychologically interesting that you should choose such an oath – interesting, but plausible. It shows you were thinking of your mother. The lie needed to be sworn on her life to make it believable. You justified it to yourself because you were doing it for her sake. You saw it as the lesser of two evils. To find out the truth about her husband would destroy her. What then will it do to her to see her first-born son hanged for a murder he did not commit?’

‘If I tell her that I didn’t do it she’ll believe me, no matter what anybody else says.’

‘You’re prepared to swing on the gallows for your father?’

‘My mother will believe me. A jury will believe me.’

‘You never can tell with juries, son. All right, Macadam. Get the cuffs on him.’

‘There’s no need,’ said Ben Blackley, rising. ‘I’ll come of my own free will.’

Macadam began to back off.

‘Cuffs, Sergeant Macadam.’

‘That’s not fair! You said . . .’

‘I don’t care what I said. I’ve changed my mind. We can’t take any chances with the likes of you.’

Macadam nodded and closed down young Blackley by the speed of his attack. He was well-practised at apprehending trickier customers than this. He turned him deftly, gathering up his wrists and snapping the handcuffs around them. A sharp wrench of the arms upwards produced a cry of pain. Macadam began frogmarching him towards the door, steering him by his arms.

‘You can’t do this!’

Quinn mimed for Macadam to give the young man’s arms another tweak. He was not a sadist. But he needed to make an impression, and not just on young Blackley.

They dragged him screaming in pain through the back-room offices. Quinn was gratified by the cowering looks they drew from the staff they passed.

Macadam drove Ben Blackley forward, using his cuffed arms like a tiller. Blackley stumbled several times, giving a fresh scream each time Macadam yanked on his cuffs to keep him upright.

‘Bastard!’

‘Don’t want you having an accident, do we?’ said Macadam.

The stairs were a struggle. Blackley Jr fell out of Macadam’s grip at one point, to lie sprawling across a flight of steps.

Quinn signalled for Macadam to go easy. He wanted to put pressure on the young man but not to injure him.

They proceeded more patiently from then on, the policemen pausing at each step for young Blackley to catch up. At last they reached the ground floor. Ben Blackley nodded towards a side exit. ‘We can get out this way.’

‘No. We want the front exit, son,’ said Quinn.

They stepped into the store. It was still early. Not quite as busy as Quinn might have hoped for on a Saturday morning. However, he made sure that their progress did not go unnoticed by those who were there. ‘Make way,’ he shouted. ‘Police coming through. Everyone out the way, please. Thank you.’ This was despite the fact that they had a clear way across the floor.

Just as they were about to go through the front door, Quinn leant towards Ben Blackley and whispered something into his ear. The young man appeared startled by it. He frowned as he considered what Quinn had said, as if trying to make sense of it.

They pushed out on to the street. Macadam hoisted the young man’s arms up his back once more. The cry that this prompted turned Benjamin Blackley’s head. The smile froze on his lips when he saw his son cuffed and manhandled.

‘You’re making a big mistake, Inspector.’ To his son, he added: ‘Don’t worry, Ben. We’ll sort this out. These fools will have to let you go.’

‘We can let him go here and now, sir, if you like. It’s up to you. All you have to do is tell us what happened in the mannequin house on Tuesday night.’

‘I wasn’t there. Does Ben say I was there?’ Blackley asked the question with complete confidence in the answer.

‘Oh, don’t worry. He hasn’t revealed your secret. Yet.’

‘Well, then . . .’ said Blackley.

‘Well then,’ echoed Quinn, ‘if you weren’t there, he certainly was. Which means, by a process of elimination, that he must be Amélie’s rapist. Unless you expect us to believe that it was Monsieur Hugo.’

Blackley looked uneasily at the gathering crowd. ‘Keep your voice down, Inspector. Is it really necessary to bandy such terms around on the public highway?’

‘Is it really necessary to rape young girls to whom you stand
in loco parentis
?’

There was a collective gasp from the onlookers.

‘No, no, no. You can’t get away with this, Inspector. Your incompetence is breathtaking. While you’re here dragging off my son and making wild accusations, the real killer is going free. I shall complain to the highest authorities. The highest authorities, you hear!’

Quinn nodded as if this was no less than he expected; as if, indeed, it was strangely satisfying to hear Blackley make the threat. He turned to young Blackley. ‘Do you have anything you wish to say to your father, Ben?’

Macadam released his hold on Ben Blackley so that he was able to stand upright and look his father in the eye. With the two of them face-to-face, it was easier to see the differences, as well as the similarities, between the two men. They were from the same pattern, no doubt. But if the father’s face had been carved from granite, the son’s was barely formed, the features thumb-pressed into a mound of grey putty.

‘Whatever you have done, you’re still my father.’

Benjamin Blackley the elder frowned as if what his son had said was beyond mortal comprehension.

‘And I’m still your son. I always will be . . . whatever happens.’

‘There’s no need for that kind of talk, Ben. We’ll get this sorted out, you’ll see. You can trust me. I’ll get the best lawyers available. I’ll talk to Yeovil now. He’ll know what to do.’

It was perhaps not surprising that a mood of nervous excitement had taken hold of the small crowd gathered around them. But it became clear that the growing commotion was not entirely due to what had passed on the pavement outside the House of Blackley. A stream of shoppers coming out of the store seemed ominously on edge too. Quinn was reminded of the hysteria that had caused the stampede two days ago.

Blackley had noticed the change in mood and was distracted by it. Quinn saw his son’s body sag with disappointment. It seemed that what Quinn had insinuated earlier was true. Blackley would always care more about his store than his family.

At that moment Yeovil pushed his way through the crowd, as if he had heard Blackley’s call and rushed to answer it. ‘Mr Blackley, sir!’ Quinn was struck by how wide the man’s eyes were open. He had the thought that Yeovil was not a man to surprise easily. Consequently, when he was surprised, he experienced the emotion to a more extreme degree than others. ‘Mr Blackley, sir,’ he repeated. ‘She’s dead!’

‘What do you mean? Who’s dead? What are you talking about, man?’

‘She’s in the window. Dead.’ Yeovil turned to Quinn, as if he was seeing him for the first time. ‘Someone’s killed her and put her in the shop window.’

‘T
ake him to Brompton nick,’ said Quinn to Macadam. ‘And raise the local bobbies. Then you’d better get word to DCI Coddington, if you can. He needs to know about this. You’d better get him to bring Inchball along too. We’re going to need everyone on this.’

As Macadam led Ben Blackley away, Quinn turned to Yeovil. He still had the dazed, appalled face of a man to whom the unexpected was inconceivable. ‘Now, sir, what’s all this about?’

‘It’s the Summer Fashions window display.’

‘And where will we find that?’

‘It’s in the Grand Dome. In the Costumes Salon.’ Yeovil glanced back uneasily at the entrance to the store. It was clogged with two competing streams of foot traffic: those fleeing the new horror, and those rushing to find it.

Quinn took out his whistle and gave three sharp blasts. The noise caused a momentary relaxation in the jam, as at least some of those trying to force their way through thought better of it. Clearly their instinctive reaction to the presence of the police was that they ought to make themselves scarce.

Among those peeling away, Quinn noticed the back of a head that he thought he recognized.

‘Spiggott!’

The young man picked up his pace but Quinn caught up with him, laying a hand on his shoulder.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I have a perfect right to be here.’

‘I rather suspect you’ve lost your position at the House of Blackley.’

‘I’m entitled to come here and shop. The old place offers a
world of provision
, don’t you know.’ Spiggott quoted Blackley’s advertising slogan with a bitter emphasis. He tapped a small white cardboard box that was tucked under his arm.

‘Were you trying to get in or out?’

‘I heard that man. What he said. Someone else has been killed.’ As an afterthought, Spiggott added: ‘He was the one who was spying on me, you know.’

‘So you thought you’d go and take a look?’

‘Why haven’t you arrested Blackley? It’s not Ben Blackley. It’s his father.
My
father. He’s the monster.’

‘You’ll have to let me decide whom I arrest and whom I don’t.’

‘He’s grinning . . . Look at him grinning. Two dead now, and all he does is grin!’

‘Go back to the church and stay with Father Thomas. Don’t do anything rash. Leave it to me.’

Spiggott walked slowly backwards, away from Quinn. ‘Two dead. How many more will it take before you stop him?’ He spun on his heels and broke into a half-run. Just as he reached the entrance of the Sacred Heart, he paused and turned as if to shout something else back to Quinn. But evidently he thought better of it and disappeared into the church precinct.