Full Dark House (31 page)

And with that declaration of war, Andreas Renalda swept from the cluttered office with as much force as his crippled legs could muster.

‘Interesting,’ said Bryant after the magnate had been helped back into his car. ‘He’s hiding something about this brother of his. But he’ll only answer direct questions, and I’m clearly not asking the right ones.’

‘Then let’s run with your instincts,’ said May. ‘Take a chance.’

Bryant shook the idea from his head. ‘We have to uncover the truth about Minos before we start accusing anyone. Come on, it’s time for curtain up.’

44

LOOKING OUTSIDE

‘They’ve put together an e-fit of your culprit.’ Liberty DuCaine waited for the printer to finish running off a hard copy of the monochrome JPEG, then passed it over to May and Longbright. The annexe of Kentish Town station was experiencing an eerie lull in the battle-stations activity that had been surging around them all day. Officers sat making quiet phone calls, wearily nursing plastic cups of coffee.

‘What’s it based on?’ asked Longbright, examining the face on the desk.

‘A couple of bouncers from the Camden Palace were walking past Mornington Crescent tube station, heading for their car. They saw this geezer come out of the door to the unit just before the bomb went off.’

‘These things are about as much use as old Identikit posters,’ May complained. ‘He looks like a character from a video game. How can you identify someone from that?’

He studied the picture more carefully. It was the blurred face of an old man with staring alien eyes and abnormally large teeth. This wasn’t Bryant’s murderer. May was sure that the man seen loitering outside his flat had also stolen his partner’s dental records. The infuriating part of it was, May knew his identity. But they had met only once, and had not seen each other in over sixty years. You could study the face of an old man and find no vestiges of his youth. DuCaine’s e-fit bore no resemblance to that wartime killer. Time wrought great changes. How would he ever recognize such a person now?

‘These two guys couldn’t even agree on how he was dressed,’ warned DuCaine. ‘They’d been smoking a bit, and when I say a bit, I mean a lot.’

‘This looks more like Arthur than our mad bomber. So much for technology. Did nobody see him turn up at the unit?’

‘If they did, they haven’t come forward.’

‘What about the CCTV cameras?’ asked Longbright.

‘Nothing on that side of the road. We’ve got a shot from a supermarket camera further along the pavement, someone standing outside the entrance. Trouble is, the time lapse on the footage lets him simply disappear. All we’ve got is a distant figure in a grey coat.’

‘You couldn’t tell if he was carrying anything?’

‘Not from the back. Nothing identifiable at all. I’m sorry.’

‘That’s all right,’ sighed May, running his hands through his white hair. ‘We weren’t expecting a breakthrough. I’m told they want to use you here for a few days.’

‘Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. I mean, the unit’s got nowhere to work from, and they’ve got all this shit going on. Kids running around, taking each other out with activated replicas.’ DuCaine felt guilty, but he was too valuable a resource to waste. His restless energy needed to be applied, and May wasn’t about to hold him back.

‘Someone around here is bringing Ingram Model Ten sub-machine guns in from the U.S. and converting them into working firearms. It’s the accessory of choice for would-be gangsta rappers. I’ve got some contacts, I can help—’

‘There’s no need to explain,’ interrupted May. ‘Do what you have to do. Longbright and I will figure this out.’

‘Well, what do we do now?’ asked Longbright as they walked towards the tube station.

‘Something I should have done earlier,’ May replied. ‘I have to start thinking like Arthur. If he could do it, track down someone after six long decades, why can’t I?’

‘How do you propose to do that?’ How much weight he’s lost, she thought. This could be the last thing he ever does.

May thought for a minute. ‘When I first met Arthur, he’d already suffered a tragedy. I didn’t know it at the time, of course. It was your mother who told me what had happened. Later I realized it was what made him look beyond rational explanations. It drove him to solicit the advice of outsiders. In a way, it was what made him the man he became. It locked him out of the normal world.’

‘You make it sound almost like a good thing,’ said Longbright, stopping.

‘Sometimes it almost was.’ May gave a rueful smile. ‘It could also be disastrous. That’s why he needed me. To balance him.’ He gave the detective sergeant a gentle pat on the elbow. ‘I’ve been too sensible for too many years. It’s time I learned the lesson he was always trying to teach me. Come on.’

45

IN THE DEVIL’S COMPANY

The audience was resplendent in evening dress, but most members were carrying gas-mask boxes. They were as Helena Parole had predicted, culturally more diverse, livelier and younger than the lethargic Home Counties brigade who usually attended operettas—perhaps reflecting that this was not in any sense a classical production. Eurydice’s opening striptease and virtually naked seduction by an outrageously priapic Aristaeus saw to that.

The single intermission occurred between the second and third tableaux, and listening to the exhilarated hubbub in the building’s bars, Bryant judged the production to be a hit—more, a sensation. The crowd made him feel claustrophobic. He descended the grand staircase and wandered out into the lobby. The bow tie he had donned for the occasion was strangling him. Few playgoers had ventured down here because the night was so cold. He nodded to PCs Atherton and Crowhurst, who were meant to be acting as security on the entrance but found themselves holding back a ragged line of irate demonstrators. Rain was falling hard from dark, low clouds, and that meant a cloak of safety for the theatre.

‘We’re going to need more men if this goes on every night, sir,’ warned Crowhurst.

‘They’ve got their own security people coming in on Monday.’ Bryant studied the placards pinned to the steel barriers. BAN THIS PAGAN SHOW NOW. THOU SHALT HAVE NO OTHER GOD BUT ME. And more peculiarly, LESS LUST THROUGH LESS MEAT AND SITTING. This makeshift placard was displayed by a soaked young man in a corduroy cap who looked as though he would rather be somewhere else, preferably in a pub.

A mobile anti-aircraft gun had been placed on the opposite corner for the last two days, but now this reminder of danger from the skies had been moved away to higher ground. The theatre had been banned from spotlighting its exterior, and was forced to content itself with displaying a large OPENING TONIGHT! banner.

‘They’re all out this evening,’ sighed Bryant. ‘I’m surprised we haven’t got any Band of Hope ladies.’ Temperance women were known to turn up at any public event to extol the evils of alcoholism.

‘There were a couple chucking eggs here earlier, sir,’ said Atherton. ‘One lady punched Mr Woolf on the nose and called him a dirty darkie. None of ‘em has gone in to the show, they just heard that saucy bit about it on the wireless. You’d think they’d have something better to do with their time.’

Bryant strolled over to the box office, where Elspeth was closing up for the night.

‘Have you heard from Miss Petrovic yet?’ she asked anxiously, hauling a bagful of leeks from behind her counter. She had permed her hair into an unflattering helmet of Medusan curls for the occasion.

‘Not a word.’

‘I do hope she’s all right. There’s been talk about sea mines being dropped by parachute down the Old Kent Road. Sea mines! Apparently they blow up sideways and take out all the houses. I feel sorry for anyone over there tonight.’

‘It seems quiet in town,’ said Bryant, ‘what with the rain.’

‘I’m worried they’ll shut the production down. The Archbishop of Canterbury says we’re all going to go to Hell, and that the only practical solution is to pray.’

‘Oh, he always says that,’ said Bryant. ‘The moment he finds something people enjoy, he’s on the wireless faster than a cat up a Belgian, telling us all to stop doing it at once. Is everyone accounted for from your side of the house?’

‘It would appear so, although I can only check the ushers and FOH staff. You’d have to go back to the stage door and see Stan about the sign-in book, but I think they’ve got a full complement.’

‘No unfamiliar faces, then?’

‘No, we know everyone. Mr Mack had to locate two more stagehands because a lot of the scenery has to be shifted manually. They’re a father and son team who know the understage area well. He bribed them away from the Duke of York’s.’ She locked the box office and pocketed the keys. ‘We’re having drinks up in the balcony green room after the performance. You’re welcome to join us.’

‘I thought everybody had to be out quickly.’

‘Yes, but it’s traditional on opening night.’

‘You know, I’ve walked around this place for a week now,’ said Bryant, ‘and the running of it is still a mystery to me.’

‘Some people never get used to it. I’ve been at the Palace most of my life and I still get lost. I never venture down to the lower levels because the lights are scattered all over. You have to keep trying different switches as you make your way across, but half of them don’t work, and you need to know where they are in the first place. Then of course there’s the well. Everyone knows it’s hazardous so they just stay away from the area.’

‘Are there any parts of the building you haven’t visited?’

‘I’ve never been to the upper gantry levels, and certainly not to the grid. You can only access that via a drop-ladder, and I’ve no head for heights. Hardly anyone has been up there in years, but a couple of the stagehands had to get up there to refurbish the block-and-tackle system. You forget how big the Palace is. It’s hemmed by three roads and a circus, all exactly as it was when Mr Sullivan was here.’ A bell sounded above them. ‘That’s my signal. I’m not keeping the box office open once the second act starts, no matter what Mr Renalda says.’

‘He wanted you to keep it open?’

‘Until the end of the performance and for twenty minutes beyond. I told him absolutely not. We never have in the past, and he has no authority to change my hours because we work for different companies.’

‘Of course, you’re with the theatre management, not the company production,’ remembered Bryant. ‘Tell me about the pass doors again. You said there are two of them.’

‘Yes, but as I explained, we lost the keys to the left-hand one. The right side still works, but not many people use it. There’s no need, when you can go around to the stage door and access the backstage area that way.’

‘But you’d have to pass at least one permanently posted member of staff to do so,’ said Bryant thoughtfully. ‘Who has a key to the pass door?’

‘There are two, but they have to be signed out by Geoffrey Whittaker. He keeps hold of both of them.’

‘Are you aware of him signing them out at all?’

‘Not to my knowledge, but you’d better check with him. Are you going to watch the rest of the show?’

‘Thank you, I saw it earlier in the week.’

‘Yes,’ Elspeth agreed, ‘but you haven’t seen it with the applause in.’

‘My partner’s prowling around the building with his henchmen, so I suppose I could spend a little time in the devil’s company after seeing Mr Whittaker.’

‘You can slip into the rear stalls box,’ she said, leading the way. ‘It used to be a cigar booth before it was converted to hold chairs. The sightlines are pretty poor because the ceiling of the dress circle cuts so low. We didn’t open it tonight because Geoffrey’s storing stuff from dressing room two in it. We’ll have to, though, if
Orpheus
proves popular.’

‘I think that’s a pretty safe bet, don’t you?’

‘It’s bad luck to discuss it before the reviews appear, but yes, I have a feeling we’re in for a very long run indeed. Mr Renalda will be able to make good on his promise.’

‘What promise is that?’

‘Why, to run on right through the war.’ Elspeth looked at him oddly. ‘I thought you knew. He came round to tell us that he’s done a deal with someone in the Home Office, not to let the bombs close us down. It’s going to be good for public morale. “Britain Can Take It” and all that. That’s why the Lord Chamberlain won’t touch us. Apparently, Miss Parole will cover up a couple of the girls, take out some of the ruder lines, but we’ll stay open right through to the bitter end, barring a direct hit.’ She smiled nervously. ‘You could say it’s the first time theatre folk have ever prayed not to have a hit.’

46

FALSE IDOL

‘As you can imagine, I’m rather busy,’ said Geoffrey Whittaker, unsnagging his cardigan from a nail and racing ahead. ‘Can’t Madeline help you?’

‘It’s you I need to talk to,’ said May, ducking beneath a low pipe as they passed along the narrow corridor at the head of the orchestra pit.

‘It’s the assistant stage manager’s job to know everything I know,’ Whittaker called over his shoulder. ‘Mind out.’ They passed a set of ten vicious-looking steel costume hooks, part of a quick-change area that had not been altered since the theatre’s construction.

‘This won’t take a minute. I was wondering about the keys to the pass doors. I understand you’re the only person who gives them out.’

‘That’s right. The left door got painted over, and then the lock broke. It was never much used because the company office and the stalls-level dressing rooms are to the right.’

‘I need to know who you’ve given the keys out to this week.’

‘That’s easy enough. I can tell you from memory. Miles Stone asked for one a couple of days ago.’

The day the boy fell from the balcony, Bryant noted. ‘How long did he have it?’

‘A couple of hours. He wanted to store a suitcase, and it was too heavy to take the long way around. Helena borrowed the other one because she was shifting stuff out of dressing room two to make room for Mr Renalda’s memorial thing. Sometimes it’s quicker to do a job yourself than wait for the stagehands to do it.’

‘How long did she have the key?’ asked Bryant.

‘She’s still got it, as far as I know,’ Whittaker replied as he vanished through an arch. ‘She wears the trousers around here.’

Bryant stepped back and trod on Biddle’s foot. ‘Do you need me here, Mr Bryant?’ Biddle asked. He looked very fed up.

‘While you’re still under the unit’s jurisdiction, Mr Biddle, you remain on duty until we’re through. Do we understand each other?’

‘How can I help when you haven’t told us what we’re looking for?’ asked Biddle angrily. ‘I’d be more use filing DS Forthright’s interview slips.’

‘I realize it’s boring for you.’ The boy’s attitude exasperated Bryant. ‘Perhaps you’d rather be sitting in front of a nice big pile of paperwork. A lot of our tasks are the same as you get in any police unit, foot-slog stuff, standing around and waiting. It requires a sharp eye for detail, a good memory and an ability to judge character. But we have the power to leap off the rails of traditional thought and head into darkness. Once you’ve done it a few times you’ll be hooked. Now go down to the floor below and watch out for anything unusual.’ Considering there was a ten-foot-high three-headed purple dog god growling on the stage above their heads, it was a little like asking a clown to keep an eye out for any funny business.

Eurydice was imprisoned in Pluto’s palace with her gaoler, John Styx. Jupiter had called for the three judges of Hades, and set about questioning Cerberus, Hell’s doorkeeper. The gigantic six-eyed dog owned by Hecate was a mechanical device winched up onto the stage in three sections that slotted together as they met. It was a feat of engineering to rival the construction of a Spitfire, but with less practical purpose.

John May scanned the darkened auditorium through the velvet curtains and spotted Andreas Renalda seated in the royal box with several middle-aged men in smart black suits, who were busy ogling the chorus girls’ exposed thighs. The front rows were filled with corpulent broadsheet critics taking notes, writing without removing their eyes from the stage. The orchestra performed beneath their steel mesh cage, a precautionary measure taken because the apron had been brought out to the edge of the pit, and some of the dancers came very close to the edge, much to the pleasure of the woodwind section.

May left the corridor and made his way to the rear of the stalls. He could see Bryant’s tufted head poking over the parapet of the converted cigar kiosk.

‘I thought you were keeping an eye on the backstage area,’ Bryant whispered.

‘There’s nowhere to stand without being in the way. Did somebody check the fly wires on Senechal’s replacement?’ In the next part of the tableau, Jupiter was due to turn himself into a bluebottle in order to squeeze through the keyhole into Eurydice’s cell. This involved him being swung out over the heads of the audience on a rig.

‘I mentioned it to Geoffrey Whittaker this morning. They’re using a double rig with a second set of cables attached. Did you hear about Senechal’s wife suing the company for negligence?’

‘Can’t say I blame her. Gladys said she’d get in touch if she had any news on Petrovic. The girl Phyllis is adamant that she’s been abducted. I’d like to know how her kidnapper got in and out of the house.’

‘The same way he got in and out of here,’ Bryant muttered. ‘Maybe he’s a magician.’

Onstage, there was a fiery explosion as Jupiter vanished through the floor and reappeared as a rather overweight insect. He rose from the ground and gracefully swung out across the front row of the audience, his wires glimpsed in the beam of the spotlights. Bryant held his breath, half expecting something terrible to happen, but the god made it safely back, flapping across to down right in order to duet with his lover. Bryant watched John Styx exiting the stage left centre with a silver hoop of prison keys in his hand.

‘Tell me, who’s got the keys to the top-floor offices?’

May thought for a moment. ‘You’ll probably find them in the box in the company manager’s office. Why?’

‘Something I’ve been meaning to do,’ Bryant whispered, bypassing May’s question. ‘I’ll use the pass door to the lift, I’m not facing all those stairs with my ticker.’

‘Can’t you get Biddle to run up for you?’

‘No, I have to find it myself. Hang on here and enjoy the show. It’s nearly the end of the scene.’ Bryant felt his way out of the booth as a swarm of human flies invaded the stage and buzzed into a sprightly chorus.

The curtain fell at the close of the tableau, and reopened as the applause died down. Now they were at Pluto’s orgy on the banks of the Styx, and once again the stage had filled with cavorting golden-breasted women. There were worse things, May decided, than guarding a theatre on a cold winter’s night.

Bryant tried the lights, but nothing worked on the top floor. The oppressive darkness increased his heart rate. He pushed open the door to the archive and shone his torch inside. Beneath the photographs and programmes he found Cruickshank’s desk. Beside it were piled damp-swollen books of building plans, blueprints filled with intricate arabesques of the understage structures, technical designs for a mechanized age too complex and cluttered for practical use. Bryant wedged the torch between his knees and flipped through the volumes, setting them aside one after the other. Finally he came to the volume he had been hoping to find, the one containing details of the building’s exterior.

There, at the pinnacle of the roof, was the statue and a set of accompanying notes. Her designation, the name that had eluded everyone, was Euterpe, and suddenly everything began to fall into place.

He had been fooled—who wouldn’t have been?—by the flaming torch she held aloft, because it wasn’t supposed to be there at all.

According to the typescript pinned beside the picture, the statue was a copy. The original figure had been removed by the impresario Émile Littler, who had wanted it for his garden, but it had been smashed to pieces on its journey. A replacement statue had been commissioned, but a mistake was made. Euterpe was holding a flaming torch instead of her traditional double flute. Bryant shook his head in wonder.

Euterpe, the Muse of lyric poetry. He found himself a sheet of paper and began hastily scribbling notes in the torchlight.

47

DEADLY DEPARTED

Euterpe and the flaming torch.

He recalled Bryant’s theory about the statue as he made his way through the crowded Camden streets. Euterpe had survived the war and was still cemented in place on the roof of the Palace Theatre, over half a century later. Not much else was, when you looked around the city. The Palladian stucco, the elaborate wrought-iron railings, the secluded courtyards and mysterious alleyways in permanent shadow, the absurd flourishes that gave the metropolis its character had mostly been removed, demolished, stolen. Developers had reinvented the future so ruthlessly that the London of his youth had disappeared. Offices were revealed behind glass walls, as though they had to offer proof of their profitability to pedestrians. There was no room in the modern world for anything unnecessary. At least Camden hadn’t changed as much as people said. The layout of the streets was exactly as he had always remembered it.

The rain had eased, but the damp air invaded his leg muscles and made walking a chore. May wondered if he was being followed by the fanged man. He checked the pavement behind him. Camden was filled with students and tourists wandering between the market stalls. Every tribe and fashion was represented; nose-rings, navel piercings, velvet hats, leather jackets, Goths and God-Squaders, skinheads and Sex Pistolettes. A permanent carnival atmosphere had settled across the area. May was the oldest person on the street. Outsized sculptures of a spacecraft, a tank, a Dr Marten’s boot, a rocking chair were suspended from the first floors of the high-street shops like toys discarded by a giant child. Camden Lock survived as a polyglot arrangement of stalls selling clothing, jewellery, incense, noodles and furniture. The pavements were dirty, noisy, chaotic, but alive in a way that the poplar-lined avenues of the suburbs could never be.

May felt bad about dismissing Longbright, but this had to be done alone. He stopped in front of the door leading to the flat above the World’s End pub. A chunk of floorboard had been nailed over the letter box, giving the entrance an air of dereliction. A scuffed steel plaque on the lintel read:

COVEN OF ST JAMES THE ELDER
North London Division
No Hawkers or Circulars

Below this, a photocopied sheet read:

Suppliers of Equipment to the Spiritualism Trade
Wholesale Only

The woman who answered his knock had a square, friendly face framed by ragged curls of bleached hair. She appeared to have missed when applying her lipstick, and missed again with her eye shadow, so that she looked more like a confused plump poodle than a white witch.

‘John, thank God, I was beginning to worry,’ Maggie Armitage cried, propelling herself into his arms and hugging him fiercely. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t come to Arthur’s funeral but the vibrations would have overpowered me. Isn’t it awful? I mean, I know it’s a great adventure for him, navigating a pathway into the celestial beyond, but I’ll miss our monthly piss-ups. Sorry about the front door. Drunks kept being sick through the letter box. Don’t talk to me about care in the community. Come on up.’ She led the way into a tilting dark passage. ‘Neema wanted to host a leave-taking ceremony for Arthur, but I couldn’t bear the idea. She’s a Muslim and I like to use dry sherry in the ritual, so we fell out.’

May followed the little witch into her front room, a riot of busy purple seventies wallpaper, battered Formica counters and plastic orange lamps. The thunder of a heavy metal band playing in the pub below was shaking the crockery in the kitchenette.

‘What exactly is a leave-taking?’

‘The idea is you summon the departing spirit with madrigals and conduct a ceremony to send it on its journey, but Neema’s Yamaha badly needs a service.’

‘She rides a motorbike?’

‘No, her electric organ. It sounds so awful that decent spirits won’t answer its call any more. The last time she performed the ritual she summoned an Icelandic incubus, and we had to burn incense-soaked cloths to clear it out. Unfortunately, she also set fire to the sofa and we all nearly wound up on the other side. Flammable kapok. I called
Watchdog
and lodged a complaint.’

Maggie’s amber necklaces rattled as she threw herself down into a broken-backed orange armchair. ‘There are only five of us left, you know. We had a membership drive for the new millennium but it’s dropped off.’ She waved a dismissive hand in the direction of the street. ‘You’d think that lot out there would be curious about spiritualism, but they’re more interested in shopping. Olive, the lady who used to conduct our séances, had to pack it in because she can’t get up the stairs. She only attends the Hendon branch now because they have a ramp. Nigel and Doris have both passed over, and unless I use a spirit guide I never get to see them.’

‘Do you still have Edna Wagstaff’s cat?’ asked May, looking around for the Abyssinian.

‘I use it as a doorstop,’ Maggie admitted. ‘I fear its days as a source of spiritual succour ended when it got the moth. Of course I can’t throw it out, because I have nothing else to remember Edna by, and she doesn’t answer the Call’—Maggie pointed at the cracked Tibetan bell that hung above the fireplace—’because she’s a lost soul. Either that or she’s gone deaf. You’ve lost a bit of weight. Are you dying?’

‘God, I hope not.’

‘God’s not got much to do with it any more. You’re not coping well without Arthur, are you?’

‘I’ll manage,’ May replied wearily. ‘Do you have anything to drink?’

‘I just made tea. You can have a shot of whisky in it.’

‘What brand?’

‘PG Tips.’ She made her way to the kitchenette and rinsed a mug. ‘I suppose you want “closure”. That’s the buzzword these days, isn’t it? When will people learn that there’s no such thing? Life and death are open-ended. Everything begins and ends in the middle.’

‘Not this time,’ said May, accepting the mug. ‘I know who killed Arthur. I just don’t know where he is.’

‘Perhaps I can help you there. Hang on a minute.’ Maggie crossed to the window and shut the curtains. ‘Did you remember what I asked for?’

‘Here.’ May withdrew a plastic bag from his overcoat pocket and emptied the contents onto the coffee table before him. ‘You said bring something that belonged to him.’

‘What is it?’

‘A souvenir of our first case together. It belonged to a tortoise called Nijinsky.’

Maggie picked up the tortoise shell and peered through its leg holes. ‘What did you do with the body?’