Blood On the Wall (15 page)

W
hen Georgiou came to, his first thought was that his head was going to explode. Pain seared across the back of his skull. His second thought was the
realization
that he was on a wooden chair with his hands and legs securely tied. Very securely.

He was tied to one of his own chairs in his own kitchen. Sitting at his kitchen table watching him, his face impassive, was the face that had been in all the newspapers and on all the television screens. James Willis. Jamie.

‘Hurts, doesn’t it?’ said Willis.

Georgiou said nothing. His mind was racing, wondering how he could get out of this. Tentatively he pulled at ropes that held him.

‘You won’t break them,’ said Willis. ‘Electrical wire. Remember. Like the others. Very strong.’

‘You’re going to kill me?’ said Georgiou.

Willis shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You’re going to commit suicide.’

Georgiou laughed sarcastically. ‘In your dreams!’ he said.

‘At least, that’s what it’s going to look like,’ continued
Willis. He produced a sheet of paper and held it out so that Georgiou could see the words on it. ‘I used your computer to write your suicide note. It’s all there. How it was you who killed them. How you fixed everything to try and make it look like someone else, but then guilt overcame you.’

‘Oh?’ said Georgiou.

Willis seemed very comfortable, very relaxed. Very neat as well. His clothes were clean. His hair was washed. His face was neatly shaved. He didn’t give the appearance of a man who’d been living rough for the past few days. Once again, Georgiou gave a tug at the wires that tied him to the chair, but it was just as Willis said, they were very tight, very secure. There was no way he was going to get out of them.

Keep Willis talking, Georgiou thought. The longer he talks, the more chance you’ve got of getting out of this. ‘Why would I want to kill those people? I didn’t know them.’

‘Grief,’ said Willis. ‘Revenge against the world. Your wife died and it sent you over the edge. Then, when you were suspended, it made you angry at the police.’ Seeing Georgiou’s surprise, Willis smiled and added: ‘You see, Inspector, I’ve been following your career. Only when you’ve been in the papers, of course. I’m not a stalker. But fortunately very little happens in this part of Cumbria, so a Greek detective is news.’

‘I’m not Greek,’ said Georgiou.

‘Especially one who gets suspended,’ continued Willis, ignoring Georgiou’s denial.

‘You won’t get away with this,’ said Georgiou. ‘You’ve left too many clues.’

Willis laughed out loud, a sound that sent a chill through Georgiou.

‘Oh, I love that phrase,’ he said, mimicking ‘“You won’t get away with it!” Yes I will, Inspector. And I will just disappear. And then I’ll reinvent myself. Just like I did when I came here six months ago.’

‘Who are you?’ asked Georgiou. ‘Where are you from, exactly?’

Willis shook his head.

‘Oh no, Inspector. We haven’t got time for that. And anyway, that’s all in the past, and the so-called experts tell you that it’s not what happened in the past that matters, but what happens in the future.’

The so-called experts, thought Georgiou. Counsellors. Psychiatrists. He’s been locked up, having treatment.

‘But we know that’s not true, don’t we, Inspector?’ Willis carried on. ‘We know it’s the past that makes us what we are. Where we’ve come from. What we’ve done. What’s happened to us.’

‘At the risk of using another cliché,’ said Georgiou as calmly as he could, ‘they won’t believe it was me.’

‘Yes, they will,’ said Willis, ‘especially when they find the new body here at Bowness. One of your own.’

One of my own? thought Georgiou.

Willis obviously saw the look of alarm on Georgiou’s face, because he smiled.

‘Yes,’ he said, nodding. ‘She’s in the back of my van at the moment, nicely tied up and sleeping like a baby.’

From his pocket he produced an air pistol.

‘Tranquilizer dart in the neck,’ he said. ‘She never knew
what hit her. She’ll be out for … ooh … ages. She might not even wake up before I do what I have to do.’

‘And what’s that?’ asked Georgiou.

Again, Willis laughed.

‘Really, Inspector, don’t pretend to be naïve. I am going to hang her up and cut her head off, of course, just like the others.’

‘Who is it?’ asked Georgiou. Although he was trying to present a calm front to Willis, he could feel his heart pounding, feel an icy sweat.

‘One of your detective sergeants,’ said Willis. ‘The butch one with the short hair. DS Seward, I think.’

Georgiou shook his head.

‘You’re lying,’ he said.

‘Really?’ said Willis with a smile.

He took a small black folder from his pocket, opened it, and tossed it on the table for Georgiou to see. It was Seward’s warrant card.

‘So?’ said Georgiou. ‘You could have got that any way. Picked her pocket.’

Willis smiled again and shook his head.

‘Really, Inspector,’ he said. ‘Why on earth should I lie about this? You’re going to die very shortly. I thought it would be interesting for you to know this last part of my plan.’

‘Why should I be interested?’ asked Georgiou.

‘Because you need to know that in the end we beat you.’

Georgiou frowned.

‘Beat me?’ he echoed. ‘Who?’

‘Not you, Inspector. Your race. The Romans and Greeks.
The so-called conquerors of the world.’

‘I’m not Greek!’ exploded Georgiou angrily. ‘I’m British!’

Willis shook his head.

‘No, you’re not,’ he said. ‘The British were almost wiped out by your kind two thousand years ago. But we survived. Some of us. We never went away. You tried to wipe us out but we came back.’

Now the smile and any hint of humour, ironic or otherwise, had gone from Willis. As he looked at Georgiou, his eyes burnt with passion and hatred and anger, like one of the revivalist preachers Georgiou had seen on the screen in old films. Or like some of the radical Imams who preached Islamic purity, rousing their followers up to kill all unbelievers.

‘You came here to conquer us, the greatest military machine the world had ever known. The Roman army had conquered the whole of the known world, and now it tried to conquer Britain. But it couldn’t, because it had never faced an enemy like the British. Pure fighting spirit. A warrior race like no other.’

‘The Romans fought plenty of other so-called warrior nations,’ said Georgiou, racking his memory, searching for information from those history lessons at school. The names of the old tribes came to him: ‘The Gauls in France. The German tribes.’

‘Yes, but none of them so powerful that you needed to build a wall to control them.’

‘The Romans were nothing to do with me,’ repeated Georgiou firmly.

‘The Roman Empire was built on the conquests of the
Greeks,’ countered Willis. ‘The Romans built their culture on what they took from the Greeks, so, to all intents and purposes, it was the Greco-Roman Empire. You are a Greek.’

‘My father was from Cyprus. My mother was English. I was born in this country. I’m British.’

Willis shook his head.

‘It’s in the blood,’ he said. ‘Who we are, what we are. You’re a Greek. The great conquerors. You and the Romans.’

He’s mad, thought Georgiou. Absolutely mad. But terrifyingly clever with it.

‘Your Roman allies built the wall. Seventy-four miles long, from coast to coast. It was said to be the greatest engineering achievement ever. But for the Britons it was a massive symbol of the greatest possible oppression.’

The wall, thought Georgiou. Diane Moody had been right. This had been about Hadrian’s Wall.

‘Haltwhistle, Birdoswald and Stanwix,’ he murmured. ‘Points along the wall.’

‘Not just points,’ said Willis. ‘Major Roman forts. And Stanwix was the largest fort on the wall by far. And the second largest fort on the wall–’

‘Was here,’ Georgiou finished for him. ‘At Bowness on Solway.’

Willis nodded. ‘Maia, to give it its proper name,’ he said. ‘And what have you people here done? You have built a Roman temple here in this village to celebrate it!’

Georgiou shook his head. ‘If you’re referring to the building on The Banks, it’s not a Roman temple,’ he said.

The Banks, as the one open area of public amenity in the village was known, had been a place for the Edwardians
to sit on the grass and picnic and look out over the Solway Firth in the early years of the twentieth century. As the twentieth century had moved on, so time had taken its toll on The Banks. Gravity had meant the paths had slipped. At one point the local council had even talked about closing it off as dangerous. Then the local village community group had stepped in. They leased The Banks from the parish council at a peppercorn rent and set about working with local organizations to raise the money to restore it. This had coincided with the opening of Hadrian’s Wall Trail as a major tourist walk. At the eastern end of the trail was Segedunum, Wallsend in Newcastle. The other end of the trail, the official western end of the wall, was at Bowness on Solway. And so funding had been found to restore The Banks to its former glory. And, as much of the money came through the official tourist channels, it had been agreed that the renovation and restoration should have a Roman theme. Plants that the Romans had brought with them to Britain were planted. Replica Roman pottery was made as decoration. A
Roman-style
mosaic was created by the children from the village school under the direction of a local artist. And the old brick shelter with a corrugated tin roof had been demolished and replaced with a new building from which keen birdwatchers could shelter from the elements as they followed their hobby, watching the wading birds and the geese out on the mudflats of the Solway. To reinforce the Roman theme, this building had been designed and constructed completely along Roman lines. No nails had been used in its construction, just wooden pegs, as the Romans had done. The roof had been tiled with specially made replica Roman tiles. The building
was a marvel of Roman workmanship, 2000 years after the original craftsmen had worked at this same spot.

‘It’s a temple,’ insisted Willis. ‘And, as such, it’s the perfect place for my last sacrifice. It even has stout wooden beams for me to hang your sergeant from.’

‘There’s no need to do this,’ said Georgiou. ‘Kill me, OK, if it satisfies some twisted sort of logic in your mind. But why kill my sergeant? You’ve made your point already with the other three bodies. You don’t need another one.’

‘It’s the end of the wall, Inspector,’ said Willis calmly. ‘It will drive my message home, so there will be no mistake. Another headless body. The British way of war. It’s a spit in the face of the Romans!’

‘The Romans have gone!’ insisted Georgiou desperately. ‘They went sixteen hundred years ago. Not gloriously, either. They just faded away. Your precious Barbarians beat them.’

‘But no one remembers that,’ said Willis. ‘There’s nothing to mark them going. Just fading away, as you say. Well, people will remember now. Four headless bodies along the wall. And once they realize the message, they’ll be waiting like scared rabbits for the next one. Where along the wall will it happen next? Wallsend? Corbridge? Chesters? Vindolanda? Housesteads? They’ll be talking about this for years. Decades. Waiting for the next one. Terrified!’

‘But why my sergeant?’ repeated Georgiou.

‘Because it makes it personal,’ said Willis. ‘It points the finger at you. She’s murdered here by you. You commit suicide.’ He smiled. ‘I saw the two of you the other night here, coming out of the pub. Everyone will assume there was something between you that set you off.’

‘And how am I supposed to commit suicide?’

‘Whisky and sleeping pills,’ said Willis. ‘It’s nice and uncomplicated. No messing about with guns and stuff, where they can use scientific tests to see which hand you used to fire it, that sort of thing.’

Willis produced a bottle of pills from his pocket.

‘I bought the pills. A very common sort. Available in every chemist. And you have whisky here already, I see.’

For the first time Georgiou noticed his bottle of whisky on the table.

‘I force them down your throat, and then it’s off to your fake Roman temple with your unconscious sergeant. And that’s it. All over.’

‘Someone will see you,’ said Georgiou. ‘This is a very small village.’

‘If they do, that’ll be even better,’ said Willis. ‘I’ll be wearing one of your coats and a hat pulled well down. But, to be honest, I doubt if anyone will be at The Banks at this time of night.’

Willis flipped the top off the bottle of pills.

‘Well, I think we’ve talked enough, Inspector,’ he said. ‘It’s been nice talking to you, but I have work to do.’

Georgiou watched Willis unscrew the top of the bottle of whisky and pour a large measure into a glass. There had to be a way out of this! There had to! He would jam his mouth shut and resist! But he knew he wouldn’t be able to, not for long. Willis would clamp his nostrils shut tight, and sooner or later Georgiou would be forced to open his mouth, and then the whisky and the pills would be forced in. It wouldn’t matter if the whisky spilled: the investigators would just
assume that Georgiou was so drunk or drugged he couldn’t control the glass.

Willis smiled and walked towards Georgiou, the whisky bottle in one hand, the bottle of pills in the other.

‘Open wide,’ he chuckled. ‘Take your medicine like a good boy.’

Georgiou clamped his jaws shut tight and glared at Willis, who shook his head.

‘Dear oh dear,’ he said. ‘It looks as if I’m going to have to be very strict with you.’

He put the bottle and pills down on the table, and then suddenly whirled round and smashed his fist into Georgiou’s nose. Georgiou rocked backwards at the force of the blow and the chair tipped over, Georgiou crashing to the floor. The pain on his bound arms was excruciating, as was the pain in the centre of his face. He was sure his nose was broken. He could feel blood trickling down his throat.

Willis picked up the whisky bottle again, leaving one hand free.

‘That’s better,’ he said, moving to stand over Georgiou. ‘Now gravity can be our helper.’