(1998) Denial (47 page)

The voice sounded vaguely familiar, but Glenn couldn’t immediately place it. ‘One barman,’ he replied. ‘Crazy! They need three.’

Behind them was a roar of ‘Get ’em off!’

Both men turned their heads, but could see nothing.

‘Where you from?’ Glenn’s new companion shouted to him.

‘Sussex.’

‘Whereabouts?’

‘Hove.’

His companion nodded thoughtfully, then shouted, ‘D’you know a DC there called Branson?’

Glenn knew now why he recognised the man’s voice. ‘That’s me!’

‘You’re Glenn Branson?’

‘Yup!’

The other man beamed warmly and held out his hand.
‘What a coincidence! Simon Roebuck from Hampstead – we spoke on Monday.’

Glenn shook it. ‘Tina Mackay.’

‘That’s right!’

‘You palmed me off with some of your donkey-work – checking up on a Robert Mason.’

Roebuck smiled. ‘Any time I can reciprocate . . .’ He raised his massive hands. ‘What are you drinking?’

‘My round, let me get you one.’

‘Pint of bitter, thanks.’

Glenn signalled at the barman once more, still without success. He turned back to Roebuck. ‘Any progress with Tina Mackay?’

‘Got another missing woman now. Similar age, build, successful career woman too. Left her sister in Sussex on Sunday evening, never arrived back in London. I was going to give you a call to see if you could check out a couple of people for me in Brighton.’

‘No problem.’

The barman finally took his order. Roebuck helped Glenn deliver the drinks through the crowd, then they returned to the bar. The roistering was still going on, and it was impossible to stand still without being jostled. Some of Glenn’s beer slopped over.

‘I need some air,’ Glenn said, irritably.

‘Me too.’

They took their glasses out onto the pavement. It was a sticky evening, only just growing dark now at half past nine. A bus blatted past. ‘You think these two missing women are connected?’ Glenn asked.

‘I have a hunch they are, yes. A lot of similarities.’

Glenn sipped his lager; he felt an easy rapport with the London detective, as if they were friends of some standing rather than telephone acquaintances of a few days. Both men eyed two girls who strode past in skirts that were barely street-legal.

‘The day I stop looking have me put down,’ Roebuck said.

Glenn grinned. ‘How long have you been in the force?’

‘Thirteen years. Nine in CID. You?’

‘Four. Two in Sid. I’m just a new kid on the block.’ He smiled. ‘Tell me something, you just said you have a hunch – seems to me a lot of police work is about hunches. You agree?’

‘
Hunches
?’ Roebuck drank a gulp of beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Three youths in succession flashed past on trail bikes. Glenn and Roebuck watched them, exchanged a glance. Roebuck went on, ‘Yeah, I suppose, hunches . . . informed guesses . . . intuition . . .’ He scratched the top of his head. ‘I think good detectives are intuitive.’ He fished a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and offered one to Glenn.

‘Don’t use them, thanks, I quit.’

Roebuck lit one. It smelt good to Glenn, much sweeter than the fug of smoke inside. Glenn said, ‘Have you ever had a hunch – intuition, whatever, about something and not been able to do anything with it? Like, not being able to convince your senior officers that you should investigate further?’

‘Yeah.’ He drew deeply on the cigarette, then removed it from his lips with his forefinger and thumb. ‘A few times.’

‘And what did you do?’

Roebuck shrugged. ‘Let it drop.’

‘You never had anything that you just couldn’t drop?’

‘It doesn’t work that way in the force. I don’t have enough hours in the day to deal with everything the way I’d like to.’

‘I have something I can’t drop,’ Glenn said.

Roebuck gave him a strange look, part curious, part wary. ‘What is it?’

‘A sudden death I attended last week. Everyone else reckons it’s suicide, but I don’t.’

‘Why not?’

Glenn drank some more of his lager. ‘OK. You know Cora Burstridge, the film star?’

‘She died last week, great actress.’

‘I found her in her flat, with a plastic bag over her head.’

Roebuck wrinkled his face. ‘Sad way to end up. I’ve attended suicides like that. How long had she been there?’

‘A couple of days.’

‘Wait until you get someone who’s been there a couple of weeks.’

Glenn thought, queasily, about the body from Shoreham harbour. ‘Thanks.’

‘Don’t mention it. What’s your problem with her suicide?’

‘Nothing I can convince my DCI on, but there are things that don’t stack up for me. Anomalies. Why did she go out on the afternoon she died and buy an expensive Babygro suit for her grandchild in the US, but never send it? Why did she have an intruder in her flat, who was seen by a neighbour, who didn’t take anything? Why would she kill herself less than forty-eight hours after being presented with a BAFTA Lifetime Achievement Award?’

Roebuck looked at him thoughtfully. ‘There are probably good explanations. Is that all you have to go on?’

‘Tell me, Simon, would you be concerned by that information, if you’d found her yourself?’

‘Concerned by what you’ve told me?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’d want a post-mortem, and I’d have the flat dusted – I’d put SOCO in there for sure. Then I’d see what showed up. I think I would definitely want to satisfy myself that it was suicide.’

‘I haven’t told you the best bit. Cora had a rival years back, an actress called Gloria Lamark. Unless you’re a movie buff, you probably won’t remember her name.’

Lamark
. It was ringing a bell but Simon Roebuck could not for the life of him think why. ‘Lamark. How do you spell that?’

Glenn spelled it for him, and noticed the pensive look on the detective’s face. ‘So, she has this rival, Gloria Lamark. In nineteen sixty-six they were both up for a role in a film called
Mirror to the Wall
. Cora Burstridge got the part, and an Academy Award nomination. I haven’t seen the film in a while, but I managed to rent a copy last night and watch it through. Cora plays an actress in the film who gets horribly disfigured in a car accident, and one of her lines is, “I can
no longer look at myself in the mirror.” Those were the exact words used by Cora in her suicide note. That was
all
she wrote.’

Roebuck studied his face. ‘Do you think Gloria Lamark might have done this?’

Glenn shook his head. ‘Gloria Lamark loathed Cora Burstridge but she certainly didn’t kill her. She died three weeks ago, took an overdose. Odd coincidence, don’t you think? That they died within three weeks of each other.’

Roebuck dragged again on his cigarette.
Lamark. Lamark
. He had a feeling he knew why the name sounded familiar to him, but he couldn’t be sure. ‘Are you on duty tomorrow, Glenn?’

‘Yes. I’m at Cora Burstridge’s funeral at ten. Otherwise in the office. Why?’

‘I’m tired and I want to go back to the office and take a look at something – sorry to be a party pooper. We’ll talk in the morning. Good meeting you.’

‘Good meeting you, too.’

Glenn took both their glasses back inside and, wondering what the name Lamark had triggered off for his new friend, slowly and with more than a little reluctance, climbed the stairs back to the party.

Michael sat at his desk in the Sheen Park Hospital, with Dr Terence Goel’s file open in front of him, and the telephone in his hand.

The voice-mail answered. ‘Dr Sundaralingham can’t come to the phone right now. Please leave a message and he’ll get right back to you.’

He hung up without saying anything, surprised to get an answering-machine and not a human. Doctors normally had someone to cover when they were off-duty.

He rested his head in his hands.

Dr Terence Goel, you came into my office talking about the loss of loved ones, about a car smash that mirrored the one Katy died in, the dove in the cage, the cellar, the nuclear fallout shelter.

Your name means Avenger of Blood.

Are you just an innocent man with a whole heap of problems and some bizarre parallels with my own life?

Or is there a whole lot more to you that I should know about?

There was a message on the answering-machine from DC Roebuck, saying that he’d been to the cybercafé but, as he had suspected, it could have been any of a couple of hundred customers who had been in that day. If he had a photograph of a face to show, then he might have better luck.

Michael logged onto the Internet, went back to the address of Terence Goel’s website and called it up. Then he copied Goel’s photograph onto a separate file and emailed it to Roebuck.

As the e-mail was going through, he dialled Roebuck’s
mobile phone, and got his voice-mail. He left a message telling him the latest information he had about Goel, from Dortmund, and that he had sent him a photograph of Goel for him to try out in the Cybercafé.

Then, something struck him. On his computer he called up the Alta Vista search engine and entered a search command for the name, ‘Dr Terence Goel’.

As before, there was just one hit. The address of Goel’s web page. Nothing else.

If Dr Goel was such an eminent man, why weren’t there more mentions of him on the Internet? Why only one? Surely there would be links to other sites. Maybe not to the highly secretive GCHQ, but surely to
Nature
magazine? To the Scripps Institute? To USC? To MIT?

He entered a search command for
Nature
magazine. When the index came up, he typed a search command for Dr Terence Goel. Nothing appeared.

He repeated the process with the Scripps Institute website. Nothing there either. Nor could he find anything at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He closed his eyes against a headache down the front of his forehead that was growing increasingly acute, then popped two paracetamol.

He dialled Directory Enquiries, and asked if there was a number for GCHQ. A little to his surprise, there was. But when he rang the number, he got a recorded voice telling him the office was closed until nine o’clock the following morning.

He checked his e-mail. The usual mountain of incoming messages, most of it to do with work, and one from his brother in Seattle telling him that he and the family were planning a visit – and was Michael aware that the year after next was their parents’ golden wedding anniversary?

While he was logged on, another e-mail came through. It was a reminder about the tee-off time for his golf match on Saturday. Golf, he thought. How the hell was he going to be able to concentrate on a golf game?

He read through Dr Terence Goel’s file again, word by word. The letter of referral from Dr Sundaralingham. The
new patient form on which Goel had filled in only his name, address and cellphone number. He dialled it and instantly heard Goel’s recorded voice.

‘This is Dr Terence Goel. Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you.’

Michael hung up, then dialled Directory Enquiries, gave the operator Goel’s address and asked for his home number. She told him it was ex-directory.

Michael replaced the receiver, cradled his forehead in his hand, and squeezed his temples. Then he looked up. The sky was dark against the window. Twenty-five past ten.

He stared back at Goel’s notes.
Fallout shelter
.

A cold flush of fear churned in his gut.

Fallout shelter
.

. . .
some kind of chamber, maybe a vault
.

Fallout shelter
?

He stood up, walked around his office, then he went outside and paced the empty corridor. Dr Goel was obsessing him.

The Avenger of Blood.

What was he avenging?

He looked at his watch again. Half past ten. Cheltenham was a good hour and a half’s drive, he remembered, from the last time he’d been there a few years back to give a talk.

He went back into his office and looked at the man’s address again. A flat. A flat with a cellar or a vault or a fallout shelter?

It was possible.

He closed Dr Terence Goel’s file and slipped it into his briefcase. Ten minutes later he was in his Volvo, on the South Circular road, heading towards the M40 for Oxford and Cheltenham. His eyes hurt in the oncoming lights. He was dog-tired and the night air was stiflingly warm. This was madness. He should phone Roebuck, tell him his thoughts, then go home to bed. Instead he drove on.

An hour later he pulled into a motorway service station, bought himself a tired-looking burger, soggy fries and a beaker of coffee. He sat at a table by a window and stared out at the grey ghost in the glass that was staring back at
him. The ghost’s hair was dishevelled. Even through the oval tortoiseshell glasses he could see huge black rings around the ghost’s eyes.

But from inside those rings determination stared back at him.

A Mandelbrot Set screen saver was busily drawing crop circle designs, wiping each one when it was complete before moving on to the next. Complex fractals, concentric circles, linked star clusters. Simon Roebuck stood in the doorway of the Tina Mackay incident room on the second floor of Hampstead police station, watching a new design appear on the screen. A series of smaller hexagrams clustered around a larger central one, which in turn grew smaller hexagrams.

Patterns, he thought. If he hadn’t gone into the force, he would have liked to have taught mathematics. Sometimes he envied the intellectual satisfaction that his friend, Sarah, who taught maths and physics at a comprehensive, got from her work. He didn’t find enough intellectual challenges in policing, not even in the CID. It was mostly steady plodding, using a mixture of bureaucracy, observation, common sense, intuition, perseverance and sheer hard slog.

Each small portion of a fractal is a reduced scale replica of the whole. There was an elegance about mathematics and about fractals that Simon Roebuck liked. Police work was rarely elegant. It was gutty. Grubbing around against the clock and the budget for clues, for tiny bits of a puzzle, and when you did find them, sometimes you had to bash them with a mental hammer to make them fit.