The Killing Club (13 page)

Quite apart from the havoc created by the intruders, Ruth was taken aback at the dismalness of the flat. The wood plank floorboards had been painted black, the varnish chipped and dusty. The wallpaper was faded and torn, showing islands of dark red paint underneath. The furniture was an assortment of cheap tat, the kind of thing you might take out of a skip, or buy from a junk shop, devoid of any pretence to be stylish. Worn out, shabby items no one would ever have bothered to love and look after.

The kitchen was small and bore little sign of any cooking having taken place in it for a very long time. The contents of the waste bin were strewn on the floor – empty takeaway boxes of Indian food and pizza, empty cans of lager.

Ruth sighed, thinking of Christian coming home to this soulless, brutal place.

In the bedroom the bed had been stripped and the mattress pulled out to rest at a crazy angle against the base. It had been savagely ripped open in several places.

‘Wonder if they got what they were looking for,’ Craig said, leaning against the door frame.

‘What makes you ask that?’ Ruth asked, with a degree of sharpness.

‘Because if they left that telly behind they were either blind, cretins, or looking for summat else.’

That was the longest speech Ruth had heard him make. He was coming on.

There was a knock on the entrance door.

Ruth froze. A picture of Mac the Knife leapt into her head.

‘I’ll get it,’ Craig ambled to the door and opened it.

A man in a stripy T-shirt and dark-blue jeans peered expectantly at Craig, then seeing Ruth hovering in the background ventured a tentative smile. ‘I’m from the flat across the hallway,’ he said, jerking his head in the direction of a half open door. ‘Can I help you?’

‘Oh! Come in,’ said Ruth, highly relieved to see anyone who was not the snake-eyed Mac. ‘We’re looking through Christian’s things. I’m Mrs Hartwell … a relative.’

‘I see. I heard noises and I wondered if everything was all right.’ He looked around the room, suddenly realizing that it had been gone through by someone with no regard for the well-being of the contents. ‘Bloody hell. What’s been going on here?’

‘We don’t really know,’ said Ruth.

‘I’d no idea about all this lot,’ the neighbour said. ‘I mean, if I’d heard anything I’d have been in here like a shot.’ He looked down at his hands which were covered in flour, then wiped them vigorously on a tea towel tucked into the waste band of his jeans. ‘I’m a bit messy.’ he apologized, ‘I’m making bread.’

Ruth was looking around the room again, thinking that Christian had made very little attempt to make it a comfortable and welcoming place. Even before his yellowed and battered paperback books had been strewn around the floor, and his duffle bag tossed into a corner of the room with its contents of worn shirts and underpants scattered over it, the place must have been hollow and unwelcoming. Maybe he’d been staying somewhere else in recent months, maybe there had been a girlfriend, or boyfriend for that matter, and he had been staying with them.

‘I’m really sorry about Christian,’ the neighbour said. ‘I didn’t know him well. I’ve only been here a few months. But he seemed a nice guy.’

‘Yes,’ Ruth said. ‘He was.’

‘I wonder how they got in?’ the neighbour said, rubbing his forehead and leaving little white grains of flour in his shaggy dark fringe. ‘Mind you, the main door’s not much stronger than paper. It must be dead easy to get in this place. We’ve asked the landlord to get us a new door. It’s promised for next month. We can but hope.’

‘It’d be no bother getting in here,’ Craig said, grasping the lightweight entry door to the flat and swinging it to and fro. ‘I mean, any burglar with a bit of savvy could pick that lock. It’s pathetic.’

‘Thanks for the free advice,’ the neighbour said, grinning. ‘I’ll take heed.’

‘Did you say you were making bread?’ Craig asked him.

‘Yeah.’

‘Can you really do that? On your own?’

The neighbour smiled. ‘Sure, I’ve done it loads of times. Do you want to come and watch? The dough should be risen by now.’

They went off together, Craig smiling like a small boy who’d been unexpectedly invited to a party.

Ruth hung back, going through the place again, picking up the mug from the floor, rubbing at the dark stain of coffee and wondering if there were cleaning materials in the kitchen she could use to try and get it out, make the place look more ordered and homelike. She stood at the bedroom door and imagined Christian sitting in his bed in the mornings, drinking his instant coffee and contemplating his day. In her mind, she went back through the years, seeing him as small and alone as he had been when his mother abandoned him, just a speck of humanity, as helpless as the dust in the atmosphere, blown about by all the invisible currents. Gently, she shut the door, sensing that reviving memories of Christian was like running the tip of your tongue around a troublesome tooth – poking at the tender and painful flesh and making the pain worse.

She looked into the small bathroom, which was surprisingly clean and fresh-smelling. She noticed a pine-scented air freshener on the windowsill and smiled.

Returning to the living room, she took a last look around, resolving to find a reliable house clearing firm to take everything away and dispose of it. Christian’s effects. She couldn’t bear to look at them ever again.

She shut the entry door to the flat behind her, locked it carefully and went in search of Craig. A glorious smell of baking filled the hallway and guided her to the door of the neighbour’s flat. The door was ajar and she went straight in, heading for the kitchen. Craig was watching transfixed as the neighbour pulled a batch of golden bread rolls from the oven. ‘Wow!’ he said.

‘I think we should go now,’ Ruth said to him.

Craig looked about to protest, then thought better of it.

‘Here,’ said the neighbour, ‘I’ll put a few in a bag for you.’

Ruth told the friendly neighbour. ‘I think I’ll get some house clearers to deal with the rest of the things.’ She wanted to explain why she had chosen this seemingly heartless attitude towards Christian’s belongings, but couldn’t quite think how to phrase it.

‘Aye, you do right. There’s nothing much of value to take away with you,’ the neighbour said, consolingly. ‘Are you going to contact the police … about the break in? It would help our case about the new front door.’ His tone was both apologetic and urging.

‘Yes, I understand,’ Ruth said. ‘Leave it with me.’ Damn, she thought. And then it suddenly dawned on her that, of course, she must contact the police. Specifically Chief Inspector Swift. This was surely no routine break-in. She thought of Mac the Knife, and once again fear swirled inside her.

Craig accepted the rolls from the neighbour with a smile of thanks. He looked at Ruth, seeming rooted to the spot. She guessed he could hardly bear to tear himself away from the baking session.

‘You’re not going to leave the TV are you?’ he asked.

‘What?’

‘The telly in your friend’s flat?’

‘Oh!’

‘He’s right,’ the neighbour said. ‘It’s a nice one. I’m sure Christian would have wanted you to have it.’

‘Oh, I don’t know’ Ruth protested. She supposed it was all legal and above board to take away any item of Christian’s, bearing in mind she was the sole beneficiary of his will. But it didn’t seem right to do so soon after his death. And she hated being cast in the role of greedy relative.

Ruth looked at Craig’s eager face and capitulated. ‘OK, then. But won’t it be very heavy?’

‘Nah, no problem.’ He drew himself up and flexed his shoulders and biceps.

‘Nah,’ said the neighbour, grinning up at Craig, ‘A piece of piss, if you’ll pardon my French.’

Swift and Cat met up in his office around 5.30. Having exchanged details of their findings of the day, they sat in reflective silence for a time.

‘Slow progress?’ Cat suggested, optimistically.

‘You could put it that way. I’ve contacted the Burley-in-Wharfedale team. They’ve had all hands on deck chasing a bunch of rampaging truants from the local school but they’re going to send a couple of officers to look at the flat in Calverley Street and get back to us as soon as possible.’

Cat nodded. ‘So after your follow up visit to The Black Sheep Inn it looks like there’s no need for me to polish up my French in order to make a call to the police in Algiers about whatever it was Brunswick got up to there twenty years ago,’ she said with a degree of regret.

‘Afraid not. I can see no way Brunswick could have got himself to Fellbeck Crag, tracked Hartwell, pushed him off the crag and then set fire to him, even if he had known Hartwell’s whereabouts.’

‘And if he didn’t know, he’d have had to have spent time finding him and tracking him,’ Cat said.

‘Exactly.’

‘We need to get Ruth Hartwell to spill the beans on what’s bothering her,’ Cat said. ‘And I don’t think she’ll do that when big-boy ex-con Craig is around.’

‘We could invite her in to talk to us here,’ Swift suggested.

Cat looked around. ‘It’s a bit of a monk’s cell.’

‘I could ask Ravi Stratton for another chair and a plant to make things look more welcoming,’ Swift said, attempting to keep a straight face.

Cat grinned. ‘Good thinking,’ she said. Then, ‘Do you think Ruth is frightened of Craig?’

‘No, I don’t think she is. According to her daughter, Ruth is a serial rescuer of people in need. She was married to a prison chaplain and was herself a social worker and a prison visitor. My take on it is that Ruth has a very clear idea of the risks she takes with her lame ducks, she knows what she’s doing and she’s basically a very confident woman.’

‘But something has rattled the bars of her cage,’ Cat pointed out. ‘Or, more likely, someone.’

Swift was in full agreement, but would Ruth be persuaded to tell them who? Because if not, he doubted once again that they were going to move this case on. He dialled the number of the
Old School House
but, as Cat had found before, there was no reply, and Ruth Hartwell didn’t use an answering service.

‘I’ll call her in the morning and invite her in,’ he decided. ‘No point in trying again to get her now and having her fret all night about it.’

‘Agreed.’

‘And possibly using the time to cook up some tale to satisfy us,’ he added, reflecting on Ruth Hartwell’s shrewdness. He shut down his computer, and said to Cat, ‘Time to knock off. And I haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast.’ He was about to invite her to join him for a bite to eat, then remembered that she had Jeremy to think about as regards a dinner companion.

‘Fancy a quick drink?’ Cat said cheerily.

‘Sure.’ He glanced at her, the faint surprise clearly showing in his face.

‘Jeremy and I are going out to dinner this evening,’ she told him. ‘But that doesn’t mean I can’t have a glass of wine with you first.’

Swift took her to a nearby French bistro. Cat sipped at her wine, washing it down with a glass of mineral water so there was no risk of driving over the limit. They fell back into the easy friendship they had shared over the years. And when it came for her to leave he was dismayed to discover how much he wanted her to forget about Jeremy Howard and come home with him instead.

At the
Old School House
Craig had spent some time fiddling with the television which had once belonged to Christian Hartwell and eventually got a picture up on the screen. He felt elation. This TV was the most fantastic piece of equipment he had ever had in his hands and under his control. It had numerous digital channels and a remote with tiny black buttons which responded instantly to the touch of his fingers. He pointed it at the screen and channel-hopped until he was dizzy.

Ruth, meanwhile, had retired to the bathroom, locked the door and run a hot bath. Before undressing and getting in to the water she sat on the Lloyd Loom chair which had once belonged to her mother and finally opened the flat envelope which she had found nestling inside the larger padded one which Emma Varley had given her.

As she had both feared and yet somehow hoped, it contained a number of photographs.

She began to go through them. There were old photographs of Christian and his mother. One of them showed him as a baby kicking on rug wearing just a vest and a nappy. Another was a portrait of an eight- or nine-year-old Christian standing under an apple tree on a bright, sunny day, quite possibly in the garden of the
Old School House
. And there was one of Pamela, glamorous in a low-cut sundress, sporting long dangling earrings in the shape of parrots. The surfaces of the pictures were grainy and scratched and the colours had faded to orange and yellow. They seemed to be pictures from another life, another world.

She dug around amongst the other photos, sadness and a growing anxiety stirring within. But it was impossible to stop now. And then she found some pictures which were quite different from the family snaps. The images were in black and white, glossy and new-looking. Looking at two or three was enough to make her wince at the images of a number of half naked women writhing around poles: a group of men sprawled in their chairs watching them, their faces drunken and vulpine. Ruth was no aficionado of lap-dancing clubs but she had a strong feeling this was no seedy back-street club. The décor looked expensive – marble walls, velvet drapes at the windows, sparkling chrome furniture. The whole scene was anathema to her. What was Christian doing in a place like that? Was it for professional reasons or personal pleasure? And then she came to a photograph which made the colour drain from her face. What she saw was bad enough, but the knowledge that she must share it with Chief Inspector Swift and his colleague made things even worse.

Ruth rose early and took Tamsin for a walk in the nearby park. There was a tingling crispness in the air and the sky on the horizon was patched with dark tongues of cloud standing out from a gleaming background of pale, buttery light.

She walked around the boating lake, through the regimented ranks of pom-pom dahlias, and up the stone steps leading to a high terrace which was the home of ranks of stone statues, depicting departed grandees from the Victorian era.

Tamsin hopped along briskly on her three good legs, the smaller, withered limb swaying cheerily, her long curly tail waving with the joy of being out in the open air and free to run.

Ruth loved this time of the day, when the town and countryside were just waking to welcome a new day. She quite often had the park to herself, although the occasional early morning runner would break the solitude.

She walked with her head down, her thoughts occupied with the issue of Christian’s envelope of photographs and the shiny mobile phone. ‘Do I, or do I not, show the photographs to Chief Inspector Swift?’ she asked herself, speaking the words very softly. ‘That is the question.’ Her mind couldn’t focus, couldn’t sort out the right way from the wrong, and possibly disastrous, way.

As she reached the end of the terrace a figure walked out from behind the last statue.

It was Mac the Knife.

He fell into step with her, his manner easy and relaxed. ‘Good morning, Mrs Hartwell. Nice morning for a walk, eh?’

He might as well have been holding a gun to her temple for the cold terror Ruth experienced. ‘What do you want?’ she demanded, hearing her voice sound in her head; the quavering voice of a panic-stricken old woman.

‘Just those photos, the ones I told you about.’

She thought about the cardboard box filled with pictures which she had taken from Christian’s flat. She had placed them under the sideboard in her dining room, a draughty cold room she hadn’t used for years and treated as a temporary storage place for items she didn’t quite know what to do with. Her mouth went dry. She couldn’t speak. Wouldn’t speak. Wouldn’t bloody just cave in to his demands. Her heart was hitting her breast bone so hard she thought it would break a rib.

‘Come on, love, just tell me where they are.’

She stayed silent. She felt a prickle of sensation move over her scalp. She tried to speak but her lips wouldn’t work.

Tamsin had come close, was sitting at her feet, watchful and afraid.

Moments went by.

Mac the Knife took a pair of shiny surgical scissors from his pocket, then grasped Tamsin by the collar. The dog sprang up, trying to shake herself free. Ruth saw the flash of the blades, saw his fingers move to encase the flap of Tamsin’s left ear.

There was a drilling feeling inside her skull. And then it seemed as though a huge plastic tube was lowering itself on to her, enclosing her. Her vision and her hearing seemed to have left her and become swallowed up in a blur of cloud. She found herself cut off from the outside world.

And then there was nothing. Just darkness and silence.

It was around three hours later that Swift rang the bell at the
Old School House
. Having failed to get Ruth to answer the phone on the several occasions he had called between 9.30 and 10 o’clock, he had got into his car and driven around to her place, a faint anxiety about her welfare stirring within him. He was disappointed that Cat was not able to be in on the visit, but she had phoned in with heartfelt apologies to say she that she had suffered a migraine in the early hours of the morning and was reluctant to drive until the disturbances to her vision had settled.

The door to the Hartwell house was opened by Ruth’s young protégé, Craig. Seeing him standing framed in the doorway, Swift was impressed by the young man’s sheer physical presence: his tallness and his sheer mass, the shoulders those of a rugby prop-forward. Craig regarded Swift with wary dark eyes under heavy black eyebrows.

‘Hello,’ Swift said. ‘I was hoping to see Mrs Hartwell.’

‘She’s not here.’ His tone was uncompromising.

‘Do you think she’ll be back soon?’ Swift kept his tone calm and pleasant.

‘Yeah. Guess so.’

‘Could I come in and wait?’ Swift said.

The young man’s deep forehead contracted into folds. ‘Yeah, OK.’

He opened the door just wide enough to allow Swift to pass through, closing it as Swift walked into the hallway and overtaking him to lead the way down the hall into the kitchen.

Glancing through the doorway into the front room Swift could see a large TV set tuned to a cartoon show which played out to an accompaniment of lively music and loud whoops.

The young man went through into the kitchen and stood beside the table, his head bent away from the visitor.

‘May I sit down?’ Swift asked.

The young man nodded.

‘Would you like to sit down too?’ Swift suggested.

He followed, sitting as far from the policeman as possible. There was a long silence.

‘Do you know where Mrs Hartwell has gone?’ Swift asked gently.

‘Taken the dog for a walk.’

‘Right.’ He allowed another silence to fall. ‘Perhaps we could have some coffee?’ he suggested eventually, guessing that might free up the young man to talk whilst diverted with a practical task.

‘OK.’ The young man got up. He was wearing a pair of new denims, and a pristine grey sweatshirt with North Bay written on it. There was a crease down the middle, indicating that the shirt had only recently come out of the packet. The sleeves were slightly too short, revealing the young man’s large wrist bones. On his feet were spotless grey trainers with silver stripes. Swift saw that everything was new, giving a strangely self-conscious look, as though he were wearing a costume put together by someone else. Which, given the clothes would be prison issue on discharge, was in fact the case.

‘Have you known Mrs Hartwell long?’ Swift asked, as the young man busied himself with the kettle and the coffee jar.

‘Aye, quite a few years.’ He spooned grounds into two mugs. ‘She helped me learn to read and write.’

‘Did you ever meet Christian Hartwell, Craig?’

There was another pause, and more frowning.

‘Do you mind me calling you Craig?’ Swift asked. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know your surname.’

There was a beat of silence. ‘I don’t mind.’

‘And did you know Christian Hartwell?’ Swift persevered.

‘No. I never came to this house before. I only ever saw Mrs Hartwell …’ He jerked himself straight and shot Swift a look of blazing defiance. ‘I met her in prison. I’ve been in prison for eight years. Just got out of Wentworth.’

‘That’s a long time to serve,’ Swift said.

‘Yeah.’ His Adam’s apple dipped and bobbed.

‘It’s all behind you now,’ Swift said, accepting a mug of steaming black coffee which scalded his lips when he took a sip.

‘Do you want milk?’ the young man said.

‘This is fine.’

The young man sat down again. There was a lessening of tension in the air now that the topic of prison had been opened and closed. He looked across at Swift, his eyes clearly holding some information which he was afraid to reveal. Swift guessed he was experiencing the same kind of conflict which Cat had reported seeing in Ruth Hartwell’s eyes the day before.

Swift took a further sip of his coffee, this time with a degree of caution. ‘I expect Mrs Hartwell will be back any minute,’ he remarked, casually.

The pleading in the young man’s eyes transformed itself into sudden desperation. ‘I’m worried about her,’ he said. ‘She’s been out for going on three hours.’

‘Perhaps she’s taking the dog a long walk – it’s a fine morning for walking.’

‘No!’ He shook his head vigorously. ‘She only takes it twenty minutes or so at a time. It’s disabled, you see. Its mum lay on it when it were a tiny pup and made its bones go out of shape. Mrs Hartwell told me all about it.’ He sank into silence after this long speech, his forehead heavily creased.

‘What do you think has happened to her?’ Swift said.

‘Dunno.’ His breathing harsh and jagged.

Swift leaned forward, trying to ease the boy’s anxiety. ‘Tell me what you think has happened to Mrs Hartwell,’ he repeated.

‘She’s in some sort of trouble.’

‘Can you tell me about it?’

He swallowed hard, his eyes flicking from one side to the other. ‘There was a man here yesterday. He was up to no good.’

Ah – now we’re going somewhere
. ‘Did he come to see you or to see Mrs Hartwell?’

‘Mrs Hartwell,’ he said, grasping on to a question which required a plain, simple answer. ‘He came to see her.’

‘Were you here when he arrived?’ Swift asked, beginning to build a picture of the scene, having a keen sense that it was one of significance.

‘No, I was out.’ He sliced a brief glance at Swift. ‘Seeing if I could get some work at the local pub.’

‘Did you get it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well done.’ Swift drank some more black coffee.

The young man ploughed on. ‘He was all puffed up with himself. He said his name was Mac the Knife. I didn’t like the sound of that.’ He drew in a long breath, steeling himself for the next speech.

‘No, neither would I,’ Swift commented.

‘Mrs Hartwell … was like … getting a bit worked up. She said she had to go to the doctor’s. She tried to get away from him, but he kept following her.’

‘Did you follow them?’ Swift asked, keeping steadfastly neutral.

‘Oh, aye.’

‘And did you hear anything?’

‘He said, “Chill. I only wanted to talk to you about Christian”. And she said that she couldn’t tell him nothing, she hadn’t been in touch …’ He took another restorative breath.

Swift was impressed. ‘Did he say anything else?’

‘He kept going on at her. Something about this Christian being her next of kin.’ He looked again at Swift. ‘That means she was important to him, doesn’t it? Like me and my mum.’

‘Exactly.’ Swift waited a few moments.

Craig frowned, seeming to have become exhausted with the effort of volunteering so much information. He began gnawing at his knuckles, leaving teeth marks in the skin. ‘He was certainly after scaring her,’ he burst out. ‘He was a slimy, bullying bastard. And I’ve met a fair few of those.’ The irises of his eyes shivered as he flicked yet another glance at Swift, who guessed that most of the bullies the young man had in mind had been policemen or screws, people whom he would see as basically on Swift’s side.

‘Anything else?’ Swift prompted, impressed with the young man’s account, and sensing that it was a pretty accurate recollection of what he had seen and heard. If only all informants were as clear and straightforward.

The young man was scratching at a patch of eczema on his right palm, picking at the skin and making it bleed. He gave a long slow shake of the head. ‘What have I to do? Have I to go looking for her? Yeah, that’s it.’ He got to his feet, swallowing hard, panic showing in his eyes. ‘I don’t know where to go….’

Swift could feel the young man’s fear and his despair at being unable to formulate some kind of plan to help Mrs Hartwell, his friend, perhaps the only person he could trust at the moment. ‘Why don’t I phone in to the station and see if there have been any reports of her whereabouts?’

‘Aye, yes.’ He sat slumped in his chair, his head hanging down, his hands lying loosely between his legs.

Swift spoke quietly and crisply into his phone. After he cut the connection he stood up and put his hand lightly on the other man’s shoulder. ‘She’s been taken to the local hospital. The A and E staff are assessing her now. She doesn’t appear injured, but she’s unconscious.’ He felt the younger man’s broad shoulder bones sag. A low groan of misery resonated in his chest.

As Swift reached for his car keys he contemplated offering to drive the distressed young man to the hospital to see how Ruth Hartwell was faring. Instantly he dismissed the idea as inappropriate and intrusive. Ex-convict Craig was not related to Ruth, and, given that he had still been in prison at the time Christian Hartwell was killed, he had no clear role to play in the drama surrounding the current events in Ruth’s life. His first task here was to check with Ruth’s doctor at the hospital and to ensure that Harriet Brunswick was informed as soon as possible.

Giving the stricken young man a card with his contact number on, and a reassuring smile, he walked quickly from the house and slid behind the wheel of his car.

Larry McBride walked away from Ruth Hartwell’s huddled, collapsed body and headed towards the gates of the park. His steps were regular and purposeful, his heart rate only minimally above its normal level. He had wanted to scare the old lady, make her aware of how seriously he wanted those photographs. He had not expected her to capitulate in quite the way she had done. She was not looking at all good, and that did slightly disturb him. If she died, his main lever was gone.

He would have to make a thorough search of her house, cross his fingers that she had not already disposed of the pictures or lodged them in a safe place with either the police or her solicitor. He knew the whereabouts of her solicitor’s office, but the knowledge was of little use, getting into the safe of a law firm being somewhat more problematical than frightening a decent, law-abiding woman like Ruth Hartwell. Not impossible to arrange, but risky.

This job was turning out to be unnervingly complex. He thought he’d cracked it when he broke into Hartwell’s flat and found his state-of-the-art Nikon camera flung into a corner of the sofa. Quite a number of jobs were like that; you thought you were going to have to get into a real sweat finding what you were looking for, and then it just dropped into your lap like a ripe plum. He’d run the camera through its paces. The bugger had deleted everything and then taken shots over the deletions just to make sure the erased stuff wasn’t found by a special retrieving process. He’d had to look through fifty shots of Hartwell’s kitchen sink to find that out.

And then he’d come up with Mrs Hartwell, her great big house, her giant-sized, well-muscled relative and her bloody dog. Not the best scenario in which to institute a search. Or an assassination.