DCI Bramble had a disturbing feeling of déjà-vu. Another poky garage. Another crushed stiff. But the sergeant from the local police station told him that it was impossible to identify the victim. “I know this garage, but I have no idea who this one-armed man could be.”
“Well, assuming he was already one-armed before he was crushed to death, it shouldn’t be too hard to find out… Who raised the hydraulic lift?”
“I did, on the off-chance that we could reanimate him.”
“All right; sound procedure; no worries.”
Another difference with the case from a year back, in that other garage, was that this time there had been a break-in. The sergeant led the detective over to the door and showed him the traces of forced entry. “Seeing the smudges of paint, I would say a fire red crowbar, Sir.”
Then there was the fact that this corpse was completely naked, making the display of mangled meat all the more gaudy and distasteful to witness. The man’s filthy and tattered clothes were lying in a sorry little heap not far from his remains.
“So, who found the body?” the detective wanted to know.
“I did Sir,” the sergeant replied. “Some neighbours of the garage called the station to report bloodcurdling screams in the middle of the night. The man on duty notified me immediately and I came at once to investigate.”
“Called straight out of your bed, huh?”
“That’s right Sir. I was here at half past three…”
“Excellent. Commendable job, Sergeant.”
“Thank you Sir.”
Presently another police car screeched to a standstill just outside the workshop door, and a strange pair of colleagues emerged from it: an old, disfigured man in a wheelchair, and a young bobby whom Bramble immediately recognised as none other than Constable Collins. Introductions were made, rather unnecessarily.
“I know who you are, Mr Thistlehurst. Everyone at the Met knows you: the Yard’s own secret weapon against crime!”
Bernard chuckled. “Pleased to meet you, Bramble. All I can say is that the case I have recently taken over from you had been well handled; very well handled indeed. I like to see paperwork well done…”
“Thank you Sir. And congratulations for solving the case within forty-eight hours! Very humbling. But I understand you’re retired, so I don’t suppose I need to address you by your rank?”
“No, of course not. I’m a civilian now. The current Commissioner believes in the unorthodox approach, but the fact that I’m the beneficiary of this policy doesn’t mean that I approve of it. I myself like to stick to the rules, you know…”
Constable Collins was already crouching by the corpse, and during this exchange of pleasantries between his superiors, he had been scrutinizing the scene.
“What do you say, Collins? Jonathan’s handiwork?”
“Absolutely Sir. There’s no doubt about it: we now have a serial murderer on our hands.”
“Couldn’t it be a copycat killer?” the detective asked. “There are differences with the previous case, you know.”
“Yes, but I don’t think so Sir. If you’ll recall, I was instrumental in keeping onlookers away from the scene of the first garage murder, a year ago, and then this state security thing kicked in, the case was kept under wraps, so I’d say that the public at large is not aware of any example to copy.”
“Right; true!”
“Of course, this time the victim is naked, still tied up with electric jump leads, and he’s not been bitten and bled to death, by the look of it. He seems to be homeless, judging by the pile of clothes and by his hands and feet: incredibly dirty. Even though he is one-eyed and one-armed, it will not be easy to find out his identity; it never is with homeless people…”
“Any ideas about motive?” Bernard asked.
“Hard to tell Sir. It seems to me that Jonathan himself must have joined the ranks of the homeless. Maybe the victim had some money that he wanted to steal; maybe there’s no other motive than crushing someone to death while he screams? The case was reported because of the screaming, so maybe Jonathan has acquired a taste for staging this kind of horror show.”
“Very good, Collins! You’re getting better at extracting the narrative out of a crime scene!”
Bramble discreetly shook his head and thought, “Old Thistlehurst’s famous literary method… though you won’t hear anyone sniggering right now at Scotland Yard: the man has had spectacular results!”
As they were leaving the crime scene in the able hands of their colleagues from forensics, the detective pulled Collins by his sleeve and asked discreetly, “How’re you doing these days, my friend?”
“As you can see, I’m having a ball!”
“What happened? I’m really dying to know…”
“Well, I was detached to the Yard to assist the old man on the McCullough case. Another constable was sent over to my station for the duration. I owe this little caper to you, Sir, because at the time you reported our conversation so well, giving me my due. That’s why the boss wanted me on his team when he was called back from retirement.”
“I see. Well, I’m a bit jealous, now. Will you get any promotion out of it?”
“No Sir. The boss doesn’t believe in jumping the queue. But he says I have talent and that I should take the required courses to become a detective as soon as possible.”
Sometime later, at New Scotland Yard, an important meeting convened in one of the bigger conference rooms. The Commissioner of Police was there, and he pointedly introduced Bernard as Detective Chief Superintendent Thistlehurst. Bernard took the floor to explain what was going on and to give a brief description of the suspected serial killer Jonathan Hadley. “A real psychopath. We have reason to believe that he has joined the ranks of the homeless. Either that, or he will be looking for his next victim among the panhandlers. I’m also concerned about the safety of the killer’s mother; he might want to hurt her as well. At any rate it will be hard to nab him: he is very clever. On the other hand, he is smart, but not wise. He is bound to make a mistake sooner or later.”
Then the chief of operations for the task force was introduced, and he started to spell out the plan of action. “We have to ramp up our search for this man. I am sending our best undercover agents and informers into the field to infiltrate the homeless scene and gather information. The identity of the last victim is still unknown, so we will be looking into that as well. Then I want extensive measures in place to capture our quarry. As soon as he has been spotted anywhere in London, we turn out in great numbers and close off a large perimeter around his last known location. I want everyone in this room to set up a direct communication link to the ad hoc coordination unit. From now on we are on a permanent alert concerning this case.”
Jonathan was longing for home. Surely they must have stopped looking for him by now? He was sitting on the ground, his back against a wall of the Earl’s Court Tube station. He looked awful: blackened eyes, puffed-up lips and a big, red, bruised nose. His clothes were incredibly dirty and in tatters. But the paper cup in front of him was full of coins; Jonathan was getting more money than ever before. He looked so awful that most people had to avert their eyes as they walked by—the invisibility of those no one wants to see!—and a fair number of the morning commuters who hurried past him gave him some coins to assuage their conscience for not even looking at him.
He had recently been beaten up by a whole posse of panhandlers. They had ganged up on him, dragged him through mud and dog shit, beaten and kicked his face to a pulp. They accused him of killing old Paul. They didn’t know how he’d done it or where he’d left the body, but the case was clear. He had gone off with the old man, and that was the last they had seen of him. And the young one had come back alone, with a lot of money in his pockets, which of course they’d taken away from him after leaving him unconscious in a back alley. These homeless people wouldn’t dream of going to the police to report a murder, but after they’d beaten up the culprit—guilty as charged—justice had been served as far as they were concerned. Jonathan reckoned that he was lucky to be alive.
Now he was sitting there with his mashed-up face and his filthy clothes, looking like a helpless old man, and he longed for home. Mummy’s place was only a couple of blocks away, but the last time he had checked, it had still been under police surveillance. He had been there on a recce several times, before he had been beaten up. They were still looking for him then. The setup was obvious: sometimes there was a bobby patrolling the square, sometimes a bloke in an unmarked car, and once he’d even spied a pair of plainclothes men hiding in the bushes, hoping to nab him if he tried to enter his house. At the time he’d still had his key, but no longer: his attackers had taken that away as well.
Anyway, Jonathan had managed to spy on the police detail without being detected. “I’m too clever for them,” he reflected, “I’m on to their little games.” One night he’d even managed to slip unseen to the back of the house by way of the mews. There was a hedge he knew, with a gap in it where he could peer into the garden of the upstairs neighbours. Then, climbing the ladder of a fire escape on the back wall of a neighbouring house, he’d been able to peer inside the light well at the back of the basement flat. The lights were on. His mother was in bed with a man. “Wait a minute,” he’d almost cried out, “that is my room, my bed…” Well, they’d made a double bed for themselves by putting Mummy’s bed along his own. The bastards! So much for his dream of going home and telling Mummy to shut up and let him hide there. Now he had to find out who the lover was. He wouldn’t mind killing that man. He wouldn’t mind making him scream…
In fact he wouldn’t mind killing Mummy as well, but there Jonathan was not so sure. She wouldn’t be able to see the beam of the hydraulic lift coming down… She would sense it, though, but that was not the same. Besides, Mummy would never, ever scream. “Just think back to that time when she was hit by a bicycle speeding down the pavement… I was only a kid, but I remember well. It was just ‘Ouch!’ and ‘Drat!’ though she did end up in hospital with a pair of broken ribs… No, crushing Mummy just wouldn’t work.”
Lately he had been keeping an eye on her movements. She went out almost every day, seemed to stay away a couple of nights every week, then came home for a few days. She probably stayed at her lover’s place, and he came to stay with her, but he didn’t take the tube, so Jonathan hadn’t spotted him again since that night, from the mews. He wouldn’t mind taking a closer look at the lover… to begin with.
Suddenly his attention was drawn by the tapping of his mother’s cane. She was coming! Her forceful style of echolocation was unmistakable. The pitiable panhandler almost held his breath. He’d always had the feeling that his mother could see right through him. She could smell him; she’d recognize his voice from a mile away; she could read his very soul like an open book. But here she was now, passing along a few yards from where he was sitting, unaware of his existence. He no longer smelled the same, of course, and he kept his mouth shut… held his breath.
A moment later she was down the escalator. Jonathan got up slowly, like an old man, his limbs still aching. He followed his mother at a safe distance, down to the platforms. He’d bought a Tube ticket for the day; he was bent on finding out what was going on. Mummy took the District line to Upminster; Jonathan boarded the wagon next to hers. Then she changed lines at South Kensington, took the Eastbound Circle line. Her son followed suit. Finally she got off at Aldgate Station, her son still on her heels, at a safe distance. And then there was this guy in a wheelchair waiting for her. Jonathan froze and hid inside the Tube station gate; the guy could easily spot him if he wasn’t careful. Mummy bent over and kissed the cripple on his cheek… Then she took the handles and they crossed the street, Mummy pushing the bloke in the wheelchair. They went into a café on the other side. Good. Jonathan sat down by the entrance of the Tube station with his paper cup in front of him, perfectly invisible again, and kept an eye on the door of the café across the street. He would be able to spot those two as soon as they got out again.
Stirring his coffee, Bernard said, “I have some momentous news for you, darling. Good news and bad news.”
“All right. Start with the good news then; that’s always what I want to hear first.”
“Well, we’ve had an answer from the Crown Prosecution Service. They are not pressing any charges against you for the death of Robert Parker in 1967.”
“Good. That’s a relief. And what’s the bad news?”
“I’m not supposed to tell you this, but it concerns you directly: Jonathan has killed a man again…”
Daisy took a sip of her coffee, apparently undisturbed. “Thank you for telling me, Bernard, but I’m already aware of that. Very distressing news, of course…”
“I beg your pardon? How do you know? It happened only a couple of days ago, and it hasn’t been in the papers yet.”
“I can’t read the papers, Bernard. But the rumour on the street is that a panhandler named ‘old Paul’ has disappeared, and his friends believe that Jonathan has killed him. So they beat him up very badly, but he survived. Now he’s making good money as a beggar because he looks awful.”
“The rumour on the street? I’d be interested to know who exactly your informer is. The police would like to talk to him—or her—very much.”
“Well, I can’t tell you that, Bernard. It’s just a friend of mine who happens to know a lot of people on the street, so I asked him to report to me about Jonathan, if he could get any news… But please tell me what happened. Did the police find the body?”
“Yes, crushed under a hydraulic lift, in a small neighbourhood garage… But now you please tell me: who is this ‘old Paul’? The Metropolitan Police still have no idea of the victim’s identity.”
“Well, that I can disclose. The story on the street is that old Paul used to be a bookmaker. So I phoned Victor Hadley, who told me that this must be Paul McKenzie, indeed an old colleague of his, who lost an eye in a barroom brawl, and an arm in an accident on a building site. Does it ring a bell?”
“That’s him exactly. And Jonathan has been badly beaten up, you say? Don’t tell me you’ve been in touch with him yourself.”
“No, Bernard. I don’t know where he is. But on the other hand, he knows exactly where I am… He can find me anytime he wants to.”
“True. Could he hurt you? Do you feel threatened?”
“No. Don’t worry. I can handle my own son.”
“Good. But I still think that you should let me talk to your informer. Jonathan has now become a serial killer: time is of the essence!”
Daisy’s answer sounded a little tetchy. “Look, my friend only gave me some news of my son on the understanding that I wouldn’t disclose his identity to the police. Otherwise he would not be giving me any information at all. So be grateful for what I’m telling you and use the intelligence well, Bernard.”
“All right, all right! Now if you’ll excuse me for a moment, I have to make an important phone call…”
Bernard propelled himself to the back of the café, whipped out a badge, and was immediately escorted into a backroom by a waiter.
Daisy shook her head slightly and thought, “On the phone with New Scotland Yard, no doubt. Once a cop, always a cop.”
She was feeling uneasy, and she knew exactly why. When Bernard had called her to set the time and place where they would meet up, he’d also told her that her second deposition had been delivered by the transcriber. Her “confession” about Cedric’s death. She would have to read it and sign it at his place that very same day. It was like having an appointment at the dentist’s for a root-canal filling or something. It put a damper on your whole day; made you feel like you’d rather have stayed in bed that morning.
Jonathan saw his mother and the wheelchair-bound man leave the café. They started walking down the street, away from the Tube station, so after a short while the “old” panhandler got up, stiffly, and followed them at a distance. He felt unwelcome and conspicuous in the arid ravines of bank facades of the City. Fortunately the man in the wheelchair couldn’t turn around and see him; Jonathan was walking behind them, and his mother was pushing the chair, screening him off all the time. The pair of them seemed to be lost in conversation anyway. All the better.
After five hundred yards they came to a tall building that looked a bit like a factory, with stacks of steel drums and bundles of pipes on the outside. Very unlike the smooth glass towers rising high in the vicinity. The two moved towards what looked like the main entrance of the building, under a canopy of steel girders and glass, and there they waited. Jonathan had to duck into a recess of the intricate façade; his mother had let go of the wheelchair and the man was now facing her, still talking animatedly. Again, he could have been spotted quite easily, an old panhandler, completely out of place among these glistening buildings.
This creep and Mummy seemed to be getting on like a house on fire. Could it be that this was the man he’d seen in bed with her? “Naah,” Jonathan reflected, “cripples like him can’t even get it up… or can they?”
Presently another man approached them; stocky but handsome, elegantly turned out in a charcoal pinstriped suit and a bowler hat. “That’s more like it,” Jonathan thought. “That must be the man I saw in bed with Mummy, only without the suit… and without the bowler hat!” Introductions were made all around and the three of them made their way to a side-entrance where there were no stairs, and they disappeared inside the building together. Jonathan settled down with his paper cup in front of him. Why not panhandle for a while among the rich bankers of the City?
As he turned his wheelchair around, Bernard said, “Here we are, my love. We’re right in front of the Lloyd’s building. Our escort will be there any moment.”
“Well? Tell me what you see! I’m counting on a running commentary from you.”
“Well, it’s impressive; a lot of steel and glass…”
“And? Come on! Is it tall?”
“Oh yes; let me see; I’d say about twenty stories… But the thing is, you have all these steel pipes running everywhere, and stacks of shiny drums and boxes. And you have glass elevators going up and down on the outside of the building. I can see the tiny people inside the elevators from this spot! You know, this building really looks like a huge factory, or like something that could be launched straight to the moon!”
Daisy bounced slightly on the balls of her feet. “There you are, Bernard… I’d heard the report on the Beeb, but now I can really see it through your eyes!”
Then their escort approached, heralded by the leather-soled footfalls of some dressy footwear, and an unmistakable whiff of expensive cologne. Daisy smiled, even before she heard him speak. “Bernard! It has been ages…” Another soft, crooning voice, cultured and cajoling; the idea of this man was clear in her mind after only a few words.
“Daisy, this is Peter Hodgkiss, an old friend of mine. He danced with your friend Margery in 1939, remember? Nowadays he’s an insurance broker who does a lot of business here.”
“Well, currently I’m retired, but I still have quite some contracts running at Lloyd’s, and I have my old contacts, of course. So I was able to get us some tickets to visit the place. Delighted to meet you, my dear.”
“How do you do,” Daisy said. “So let’s go! What are we waiting for?”
They stepped over to the entrance. The porter knew Peter Hodgkiss by name, and after a brief exchange of pleasantries they were allowed through. As soon as they reached the ground floor—“the Underwriting Room”, Hodgkiss said—Daisy and Bernard both had the same reaction: “Wow!”
“What do you make of it?” Bernard asked.
“It’s like entering a cathedral, only more so. I can sense infinite space all around me… I can hear a strange humming; I can hear that it’s huge!”
“You’ve got that right,” Hodgkiss crooned. “This atrium is two hundred feet in height, crowned by a majestic barrel-vaulted glass canopy that always reminds me of Crystal Palace!”
“And there are endless cascades of escalators, dear Daisy, I’ve never seen so many escalators in my life!”
“And what do we do when we encounter escalators, dear Bernard?”
“We take them! Tally-ho!”
“Keep your voices down, I beg you,” Hodgkiss hissed. “Are you sure of this, Bernard?”
But already his wheelchair-bound childhood friend was going up the first flight of mechanical steps, holding on to the rubber handrails with both hands. He had to follow suit.
“You know what the extraordinary thing is, Daisy? These escalators are entirely clad in glass, so that if you look up, you can clearly see the steps, folded away flat, going down on the underside of the escalator above you.”
“Fantastic! But tell me please, Peter: how come this place sounds so cathedral-like?”
“Well, the interior is one huge room, really. All the floors are open galleries looking onto the atrium, and all the offices are so-called ‘open floor’, so from this escalator you can virtually see each and every employee sitting at his or her desk, most of them behind computers of course.”
“Ah, so you can hear the hum of every conversation.”
“It reminds me of a science-fiction set,” Bernard said, “something from Star Wars. Yes, Hodgkiss, I went to see the whole Star Wars trilogy at the time… Anyway, this huge open space is dominated by a few massive concrete columns that seem to be supporting the sky itself… eight humongous pillars. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that these spectacular columns must be made of cardboard!”
Daisy giggled. “I see!”
“Did you attend the Star Wars films, Daisy? Or don’t you go to the cinema?”
“Oh I go very often, but of Star Wars I only saw the first instalment; a bit disappointing for me. If you miss the visual effects, the story itself turns out to be rather thin… But where are we going, anyway?”
“I don’t know; I’m just following Bernard; he seems to know where we’re going.”
“