Hands of the Ripper (16 page)

Ten

The Tragedy of the Elizabeth

WHEN THE PHONE
rang, Probert was relieved – though he wouldn’t be for long. He had been unsure quite how much shoddy musical theatre he could stand before smashing his wine glass and digging out his eardrums with the stem.

One of the very worst things about his marriage with Kathleen was her insistence on spending the majority of their time in the city. He would much prefer to be lounging around the estate. Getting lost in the woods, perhaps. Maybe shooting the odd animal and pretending it was his wife. But no; Kathleen loved culture. As much as he tried to convince her that the majority of it was as rancid and bacterial as the name suggested, she would not be swayed. They went to theatres, opera houses, concert halls, anywhere the review columns in the bloody
Telegraph
convinced her artistry might be found. Probert hated it all. Currently he was being bombarded by five faux transsexuals exploring the difficulties of post-op psychology through the medium of the rock ballad. The lead, an imported Yank apparently famous for being in some medical drama or
another
, was currently straddling a large chipboard scalpel that thrust into the audience. The imagery was so unsubtle Probert’s eyes were bruised almost as badly as his ears.

‘What about tomorrow?’ the Yank sang, ‘who shall I be then?’

‘An out-of-work actor if there’s any justice,’ mumbled the peer just as his mobile phone began to beep loudly.

‘You’re supposed to turn it off!’ reminded his wife, with a spray of spittle that might as well be venom. It’ll probably burn a hole in the upholstery, he thought and actually smiled. ‘I don’t know what you think’s so funny,’ she added, ‘turn it off! You’re disturbing the rest of the audience.’

‘I think the cast are doing that perfectly adequately,’ he replied, answering the phone and stepping out of their box into the corridor outside.

‘Whoever you are,’ he said, ‘I’m so glad you called.’ He strolled along the passageway of deep-red velvet and yellowing cornicing, like a pretentious airport tunnel leading passengers back to their real lives.

‘You won’t be by the time I’ve finished,’ said Aida Golding. ‘There’s been another death.’

‘Nothing to do with me, my dear,’ he replied. ‘Might I suggest you call a lawyer instead?’

‘I’m making it to do with you,’ she snarled, ‘unless you want people digging back over what happened last night.’

‘The old priest topped himself with a bread knife,’ Probert said, lowering his voice when he saw the look of horror on the face of an elderly steward waiting by the
entrance
to the stalls. ‘He can hardly have done so again so I fail to see the connection.’

‘Tonight was definitely not suicide. Someone took my poor Alasdair and nailed him to the door of the venue …’

Her voice broke off and Probert realised that you could unnerve Aida Golding, you just had to work very hard to do so.

‘That’s perfectly horrid,’ he said, ‘and you have my sympathies naturally, but I still don’t see what the connection is.’

‘Douglas Reece.’

‘Who? Look … this really isn’t anything to do with me.’

‘You will do as you’re told!’ Aida Golding shouted down the phone at him, ‘or I will make your recent troubles in the press seem like fan mail.’

‘You’re as bad as Kathleen,’ he muttered. ‘It’s hardly recent, I haven’t been in the papers for nearly—’

‘I will tell them all about how you wanted to cover things up last night,’ Golding continued, ‘and I’ll tell them all about Thana too, because they don’t know the half, do they?’

Probert shook at the mention of the name, nearly dropping the phone. Get a grip, man, he thought, you can’t let the old bitch talk to you this way.

‘They took her eyes, didn’t they, Probert?’ she continued. ‘The Barrowman brothers … in order to teach you a lesson.’

That time he did drop the phone. The elderly steward shuffled over to try and help.

‘Piss off!’ Probert shouted, slapping his hands away from the dropped mobile, picking it up and running outside with it. He suddenly felt sick, his stomach clenching painfully as he emerged into the cold air. The rain was blowing in under the cover of the entrance steps but he didn’t care, sitting down on the wet stone and dropping his head between his knees. How did she know? How did she know?

‘Are you still there?’ came the woman’s voice from the mobile. ‘You’d better not have hung up on me or I swear …’

‘Still here,’ he said, scared to say more in case he threw up.

‘I make it my business to know all about my important clients, Lord Probert,’ she said, ‘so you just get over here before I have a chance to share what I know. I suggest you get your fancy lawyer on the phone too.’

She gave him the address but he could manage no more than a grunt in reply, he was sure that if he spoke he would throw up. God damn him for being so weak, if he’d been a stronger man he’d not be in this position.

The moment things went out of control for Lord Llewellyn Probert was a summer’s evening two years ago.

‘Well,’ Probert asked, ‘can you do it or not?

Jimmy Barrowman looked at the photograph and smiled a smile with a street value of around four grand, due to the gold teeth he had dotted throughout his yellowing set. Jimmy loved the sweet things in life; one
day
his mouth would be nothing but precious metal. ‘You know me,’ he said, with an East End accent so thick it could only be fake, ‘I can do anything.’

That was certainly the reputation of the Barrowman brothers. Jimmy and Luke had built a thriving business on one simple principle: they could find you anything you wanted. They made no promises that it would be cheap, certainly none that it would be legal. Not that either of those factors tended to concern their usual clients, the Barrowmans aimed high with their clientele and had done business with aristocracy and the business elite from all over the world.

They operated out of The Elizabeth a grand old Edwardian hotel in north London, allegedly named after their mother rather than the monarch. It was a place that was fully booked to the casual enquirer yet always available to its special clients. You booked a room and the price was negotiable, depending entirely on what you expected to find when you got in there. Nine times out of ten the requests were predictable enough: a place where the wealthy could go and slake their thirst for pleasures they could not let their constituents, shareholders or wives know about. The traffic in boys of all ages was brisk, partners with unusual medical conditions, pretty amputees, feral creatures that bristled with piercings and tattoos. It was a rare night that the pristine corridors didn’t catch the echo of some exotic beast or another.

‘Give me a couple of weeks,’ Jimmy said, ‘this will take some tracking down.’

As it happened, Probert received a phone call only six
days
later telling him that his order had been fulfilled. He had cancelled his appointments, offered Kathleen a lazy excuse and made the trip to The Elizabeth with a sense of excitement so strong he couldn’t remember the like of it since he’d been a child.

‘Good evening, sir,’ said Pierre, the receptionist, ‘what room is it?’

‘Two hundred and twenty one,’ Probert answered, checking his reflection in the blind man’s large black glasses. It was an absurd affectation on the Barrowmans’ part but many were relieved that Pierre, the only other point of contact for the illustrious clients of the hotel, would be able to describe none of the visitors should he be pressed.

‘Certainly sir,’ Pierre ran his fingers along the board of keys behind the desk, checking off each row until he came to the right key. He handed it to Probert who took it and walked towards the lift.

He was so lost in his own excited anticipation, he failed to realise the lift was descending with a passenger until the bell rang out across the lobby and the doors opened. In the past, he had made a habit of darting for the stairs in this situation, one could never be too careful and the fewer people who knew you were a client here the better, even if they could hardly know what pleasure you were seeking. There wasn’t time that night and so he just kept his head down as the door opened and a middle-aged woman stepped out.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘do excuse me.’

Which was the first time he met Aida Golding, though he certainly didn’t realise it, as lost in his own
thoughts
as he was. She noticed him though and made a mental note to discover more. She always made it her business to find out about the other regulars here at The Elizabeth, such knowledge was always useful and Luke Barrowman would always owe her favours, the dirty boy.

Getting out of the lift on the second floor, Probert slowed his pace as he approached his room. He pressed the teeth of the old fashioned, long-nosed key into the flesh of his thumb and tried to slow his breathing – he was actually nervous!

He opened the door and stepped inside.

The room wasn’t large but as it had been cleared of all furniture except for the harness and pulley in the centre, space would hardly be a problem. His feet crunched on the black plastic that covered the carpet as he stepped inside, looking around for the companion he had asked for.

She was behind him, a fact that became clear when she curled the leather strap around his neck and yanked it tight.

‘Strip,’ she ordered, and though the voice wasn’t quite right he did as he was told, tugging at his clothes and flinging them as far into the corner as he could.

‘I want to see,’ he said, forced to whisper against the tight strap, ‘let me see.’

She yanked him around so he was on his back, nervous, sweating skin sticking to the plastic sheeting.

‘Oh God,’ he whispered, ‘yes …’

Because she certainly did look like Kathleen, the same slim body, dark hair. He noticed that she even
wore
the same dark red, almost black, nail varnish. He couldn’t judge further fine details, not in this dim lighting – no doubt that was the intention – but it was all too easy to believe it was his wife that currently loomed over him.

She raised a stilettoed foot and planted the heel down on his chest, twisting the point as if his nipple were a cigarette she was trying to extinguish.

‘Tell me your name!’ he shouted. ‘Tell me your name!’

‘Mistress Kathleeen,’ she announced and, again the accent was a little off, there was a hint of Eastern European there. He looked down at himself, pathetic yet clearly elated, and found he simply didn’t care.

‘Fill me with your filth, Mistress Kathleen,’ he begged.

And she certainly did.

The relationship – if that was what you could call it in those early days – grew deeper as Probert visited more often. He simply couldn’t get enough of his Mistress Kathleen, she even made him appreciate the genuine article a little more, though there was little chance that his wife would ever let him indulge in the games he most desired.

His hours in Room 221 became the most important in his life, a glorious window in an otherwise banal and depressing schedule. The only thing he disliked about them was their strict limitations.

The Barrowmans’ had one rule about their business: it all had to be conducted within the walls of The Elizabeth and therefore was constantly under their
protection
. It was forbidden for clients to make their own arrangements with their lovers, certainly they were not allowed to actively pursue a relationship with them. The Elizabeth was a place where functional needs were fulfilled; it was not a dating agency. Breaking that rule was to risk the considerable anger of the Barrowman brothers and it was said that nothing this side of the afterlife could match their ferocity.

Nonetheless, Probert wanted more.

As he showered after his sessions with Mistress Kathleen he wondered if he saw a small chink in her armour too. A moment of self-awareness, exposing a little piece of herself beyond the character he paid her to play.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked her.

‘You know.’

‘No, I mean your real name. The game’s over now; I want to know what you’re really called.’

She stayed silent but, as the weeks went by, he kept asking. Eventually he got an answer, and a smile.

‘Thana,’ she said, ‘now stop asking. They would not like it.’

Mentioning her employers risked ruining the moment so he chose to ignore her.

‘Thana? That’s an unusual name.’

‘It’s Hungarian.’

‘Of course it is,’ he smiled. ‘I want to take you for dinner, Thana.’

The look on her face was pure fear, as if he had just suggested she hurl herself from one of the masked-off windows.

‘I can’t!’ she said. ‘You know the rules.’

‘My darling,’ he replied, ‘I am a lord of the bloody realm. Do you really think I can’t do precisely what I want?’

And he honestly believed that, as eventually, Thana did too.

It took precisely four weeks for the Barrowman brothers to prove them both wrong, but during that short month of grace, Probert had never known love like it. It was the marriage he had always hoped for, filled with good-humour and sweet conversation, with the aggressive sex life he needed. The perfect combination of love and abuse. He was a very happy man.

Something Kathleen certainly noticed. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you,’ she announced one night as she prepared for bed, putting on the silken nightwear that Probert couldn’t help but think of as her battledress, the garments she wore for the constant war of attrition she fought in the bedroom. ‘But I don’t like it.’

‘I’m just happy, darling,’ he explained.

‘Well stop it, it’s unnerving.’.

Despite their extra-curricular meetings, Probert and Thana had of course maintained their meetings at The Elizabeth. One thing that was certain to cause suspicion, they felt, would be a lessening of their scheduled appointments. Besides, Probert enjoyed them as much as ever, and they agreed that behind the door of Room 221 there was no Helly and Thana, there was just Mistress Kathleen and her willing servant. On their last
meeting
unfortunately that was not the case. They were joined by two others.