Summon Up the Blood (31 page)

‘Y-yes.’

‘And you have your sketchpad with you today?’

Petter withdrew a small pad and graphite stick from a pocket.

Quinn glanced around. His eye was caught by the damaged figure of a winged youth, much like a Christian angel, which seemed to be emerging from a massive block of stone. It was described as a sculpted marble column drum from the fourth century
BC
, found at Ephesos. The figure was not an angel, but Thanatos.

Quinn nodded decisively. ‘I think you should sketch this.’

‘Do you want me to draw it as it is, or to reconstruct the missing part?’

Quinn spent a moment considering the time-ravaged form. ‘Imagine it as it once was. Perfect.’

‘What shall I do, sir?’ asked Macadam.

‘You have familiarized yourself with what our suspect looks like?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Then keep an eye out, Macadam.’

Macadam wandered off, with that tremulous drifting gaze that was typical of a highly alert police detective feigning inattention. Quinn cast his eye over the preliminary marks that Petter had made. He nodded approvingly and left the young artist to it.

As Quinn moved among the statues, he thought of the long-dead youths who had modelled for these placid remnants; of the passions and humours that had stirred their living limbs, of the blood that had coursed through their veins. The smooth, immovable stone stood for warm flesh that had once been caressed, perhaps by the hands as well as the eyes of the sculptor.

He knew how it was in those days and thought he understood why men like Fetherstonhaugh came here. Indeed, how it would be difficult for them to stay away. It was not simply for the aesthetic – or even sensuous – pleasure of gazing on sculptures of muscular young bodies. He supposed there had to be a kind of nostalgia in play too. Could a man feel nostalgic for an age he had never known? But for men of that type, Athens of the classical period – with its well-known acceptance of love between males – represented a lost homeland. Their longing for it would be all the stronger because they had never known it.

Quinn found himself in front of a semi-clad male figure holding a lyre. The loose robe was carved with great skill. It was frozen in the course of slipping from the otherwise naked body, suspended eternally at the top of the thighs, revealing a tantalizing glimpse of the penis. Although he had left Inchball in the car, he felt his disapproving presence at his shoulder. He could almost hear what he might say:
I bet they love that, the fucking queers.

Quinn felt suddenly embarrassed. He wondered if he would be taken as a connoisseur of antiquities, or a pervert. He turned his attention to the placard at the base of the statue. He read that the statue apparently depicted a hybrid of two gods, Apollo and Dionysus.

‘It represents the reconciliation of the two opposite sides of our nature, does it not?’

Quinn half-turned, reluctant to show his face to the man who had addressed him. It was enough to see not Inchball but a top-hatted Sir Michael Esslyn standing at his shoulder. Quinn turned his gaze quickly back to the statue. It was some time before he realized that he was looking directly at the god’s penis.

Sir Michael went on: ‘The supremely rational and the wildly irrational. The intellect and the passions. The Apollonian and the Dionysian.’

Quinn wondered if Esslyn knew who he was. The first time he had seen the mandarin, he had not thought that Esslyn had noticed him sitting outside Sir Edward’s office. And there had been no flicker of recognition after Count Erdélyi’s lecture.

Quinn preferred to think that Esslyn was merely addressing casual remarks to a stranger. But then it occurred to him that if that were the case he had to accept the rather shocking possibility that Sir Michael was attempting to pick him up.

‘Rather a sophisticated idea, is it not? We tend to think of earlier civilizations as more primitive than our own, but this rather belies that, do you not think? Not simply in the excellence of the craftsmanship, which is the equal of anything by Michelangelo, but also in the psychological acuteness of the conception. What truth! What depth! What beauty!’

Quinn muttered that he did not know anything about that. When he risked a second glance in Sir Michael’s direction, he saw that he had gone.

Now Quinn moved away from the statue, scanning faces for any that might be Fetherstonhaugh’s. Inchball had confirmed that the photograph they had for reference was relatively recent; hairstyle and facial grooming were up to date. It was easy to discount the women. He then discounted any men who were too obviously old or young; Inchball had said that Fetherstonhaugh was around forty. Inchball had further briefed them on hair and eye colour. Hair colour could be changed, so Quinn looked first at the eyes. Inchball had described Fetherstonhaugh’s irises as ‘murky green’. Of course, it was a subjective description, but it did enable Quinn at least to eliminate faces whose eyes were remote from green on the spectrum.

Quinn walked the length of the gallery, at least pretending an interest in the classical nudes. One, of a boy removing a thorn from his foot, genuinely engaged him. The boy’s absorption in his task was timeless. It was a glimpse of a human moment that cut across the centuries. As far as Quinn was concerned, you could take the prancing satyrs, the headless goddesses and eternally poised athletes; he would swap them all for this one boy poring over his foot.

Quinn felt the sense of something about to happen. At first he thought it was related to the statue, which was so imbued with life that he was almost surprised not to see the boy twitch and fidget as he yanked his leg into a better position. He was eternally on the verge of coming to life.

After a moment, Quinn realized the source of his intimation was a commotion coming from the next gallery. Raised voices intensified into shouts. He ran towards them.

Macadam had the arm of an auburn-haired man of about forty years, dressed in a tweed suit, twisted up behind his back.

The other visitors to the gallery took the disruption in their stride. There were no shrieks. It was simply that the crowd parted around the grappling men, suddenly more interested in grappling centaurs.

Quinn looked into the eyes of the man Macadam had in a tensioned hold. ‘Mr Fetherstonhaugh, I presume? I am Inspector Quinn of the Special Crimes Department. I was hoping I might run into you today.’

Fetherstonhaugh called out to the room: ‘Murderers! These men are murderers!’

‘Now now, sir, calm down. We’re policemen, not murderers.’

‘The police are waging a war against the love that dare not speak its name. The love between a man and a man. They are slaughtering those that love that way. They are seeking to purge society of us. Those they do not kill they seek to cow into submission. If you are here as a male lover of men, run for your life, I say. I am Henry Fetherstonhaugh. If you read about my death in the paper you will know that I am right!’ Fetherstonhaugh gave out a sharp yelp of pain as Macadam twisted his arm further up his back.

‘Enough of that! We only want to ask you some questions.’

‘You can kill me, but you will never kill the love that dare not speak its name!’

‘We ain’t gonna kill you,’ said Macadam. ‘Wherever did you get that idea?’

‘Four young men brutally murdered. The coroner’s inquests held behind closed doors. No public, no press. Why else would the authorities do that unless they have something to hide?’

‘Mr Fetherstonhaugh,’ said Quinn. ‘Your theories are interesting. May I suggest we discuss them back at the Yard?’ To Macadam, he added: ‘Get the cuffs on him then take him to the car. I shall just tell Petter we are finished here.’

Quinn retraced his steps. The marble column drum came into view. There was no sign of Petter. Quinn felt a fluttering sensation, like a muscle going into spasm. Then the ripples hardened into the fierce hammering of a heart overwhelmed by the chemicals of panic.

He told himself that the artist might have been overtaken by a call of nature, or that he had grown bored of sketching that particular artefact and had moved on to something else. But the crowd in this gallery had thinned as everyone had rushed into the next room to view the fracas with the police. It was easy to see that Petter was not there.

Quinn noticed a discarded leaf from Petter’s sketchpad, lying in a crumpled ball on the floor near the figure he had been sketching.

He straightened the paper to see a reasonable rendition of the winged figure of Death, perfected by the artist’s imagination. Beneath it was written in a hurried scrawl:

to bring terrible events to a terrible issue

Q
uinn pinned the sketch of Thanatos to the wall, as if he were putting up a child’s picture for admiration.

‘It doesn’t mean he has been abducted by the murderer,’ said Macadam. ‘He could have just got bored. Or scared. You can’t trust his type.’

But Quinn’s pinched, bloodless lips brooked no reassurance.

‘We cleared the galleries, one by one,’ said Inchball. ‘No sign.’

Quinn glanced at the map of London. ‘I thought he might be intending to leave a body outside the museum. I did not consider the possibility that he would abduct his next victim from there. I ought to have.’

‘Why did he choose Petter?’ asked Macadam.

Quinn thought back to the moment he had directed Petter to sketch the figure of Thanatos in its pristine form. Had an unacknowledged part of his reasoning been the consideration that if he were the killer, he would prefer to see Death immaculate?

‘What I mean,’ continued Macadam, ‘is that perhaps it is someone known to Petter. Petter knew we were going to the British Museum. He may have mentioned it to one of his . . . friends. Why else would he go off with this individual, unless it was someone whom he knew? It is hard to imagine that he was forcibly abducted from a gallery in the British Museum in the middle of the afternoon.’

‘Unless it took place when you were arresting Fetherstonhaugh,’ Quinn pointed out. ‘Which would make it, essentially, an opportunistic crime. But you are right. It could be someone known to Petter. Someone who knew he would be there. Someone, therefore, who was playing games with us.’

‘The message . . .’ began Macadam.

‘
To bring terrible events to a terrible issue
,’ read Quinn.

Inchball shook his head grimly. ‘Doesn’t look good for Petter,’ he concluded.

‘
He
may have written it,’ suggested Macadam, a little more brightly.

‘
Why?
’ Inchball gave the word a disparaging force.

‘To alert us to the fact that he had been abducted?’ suggested Macadam hopefully.

Inchball screwed up his face. ‘Why not just write,
Help! The murderer’s got me!
Or even better, shout it?’

‘He didn’t want the murderer to know he was on to him.’

‘Nah, nah, nah, it don’t make sense,’ insisted Inchball dismissively. ‘I mean, if he thought it was the murderer, why would he go with him at all, even if it was someone he knew?’

‘Maybe he decided to play amateur detective?’ said Macadam tentatively. ‘Hence the enigmatic note. That’s how he believes detectives carry on from the books he’s read. We know he is something of a book reader.’

‘I believe the murderer wrote it,’ said Quinn abruptly. ‘It is a quote from
De Profundis.
’

All three men lapsed into thought.

Quinn crossed to the wall and began to take down the photographs of the existing victims, as if he were making space for those yet to come.

The photographs were face down on the table of the interview room, spread out like cards for a tarot reading. Quinn did not need to look at them to know what they depicted, or the order in which they were placed. The images had burnt themselves into his memory.

Fetherstonhaugh was directed into the room by Macadam.

‘You are in a good deal of trouble, Mr Fetherstonhaugh. Did you think we would take lightly the drugging and false imprisonment of a police officer?’

Macadam rough-handed Fetherstonhaugh down on to the seat opposite Quinn.

‘I did what I had to do.’

‘You may be interested to know that Sergeant Inchball has recovered fully from his ordeal. Thank you for asking. He wanted to conduct the interview with you himself, but I could not allow it. We have a responsibility to protect those in our custody.’

‘He wants me dead.’

‘He’s very angry with you. You can hardly blame him. What would have happened if we hadn’t found him? He might be dead himself.’

‘Someone would have found him.’

‘Where is the scrapbook?’

Fetherstonhaugh was momentarily thrown by the sudden change of tack. ‘It is in a safe place.’

‘At the Panther Club?’

Fetherstonhaugh gave a second start of surprise.

‘Yes, we know all about the Panther Club. We also know about
De Profundis.
’

‘What do you mean? What about
De Profundis
?’

‘You have pasted a page from that book into your scrap collection.’

‘What of it?’

‘Why were you at the British Museum? Had you arranged to meet someone there?’

‘There are always members of the Brotherhood there at that time.’

‘Ah, yes. The Brotherhood. I have heard about this Brotherhood of yours. What is the link between the Brotherhood and
De Profundis
?’

‘Why do you come back to that?’

Quinn knew the time had come to reveal his hand. He turned over the first of the photographs. Without glancing down, or taking his gaze off Fetherstonhaugh in any way, he said, ‘James Neville. Perhaps you knew him better as Jimmy. A friend of yours, I believe.’

Fetherstonhaugh blanched.

Now was the time for Quinn to make a conscious display of sharing in what he had revealed to Fetherstonhaugh. ‘
May beauty and sorrow be made one in their meaning and manifestation
,’ he recited. Even knowing the nature of Neville’s vices, it was hard to look upon the face in the photograph without the word
angelic
coming to mind. The luminous perfection of his features was
beauty
;
sorrow
was the wound beneath them. That slit in his flesh, inhuman in its swift precision, furnished a fine glimpse into the blackest part of the human soul.