Seventy-Seven Clocks

∨ Seventy-Seven Clocks ∧

26

Madwoman

All hell had broken loose at Mornington Crescent.

The press were doorstepping the building, and the phones were ringing off their hooks. All the papers wanted the Daisy Whitstable story. The child’s parents had been informed, and Isobel Whitstable was being treated for shock. It was eleven a.m., and Bryant had yet to make an appearance, leaving his partner to face the wrath of their acting superior.

“Where the hell was she all this time? Her clothes were bone-dry. Where had this nutcase kept her? She’s not been interfered with and seems to be in one piece, but she’s suffering from exposure. We won’t be allowed to talk to her for at least twenty-four hours.” Raymond Land flopped heavily on to the sofa and lit yet another Player’s Special. In the last few minutes the acting chief’s face had flowered with red blotches. “Why was she taken at all? Child kidnap motives are sexual, or for ransom. It makes no bloody sense. Do you realize how useless this makes us all look?”

“We can’t assume anything until forensic tests have been carried out on her clothes,” said May.

“Do we have any further information on the icecream van?”

“It seems to have vanished off the face of the earth. We’re searching all the contract garages and storage arches in London.”

“You realize this could be an entirely separate attack,” said Land. “Have you considered that, or are you just shoehorning it into your current investigation?”

“It seems unlikely that the Whitstables are being targeted from more than one direction. Daisy’s kidnap must be connected. Her dry clothes suggest she was dropped off under the arch, so that she could be found alive.” May shifted to avoid the fountains of smoke funneling from Land’s flaring nostrils.

“I’ve had nothing from you or your partner in two days,” Land reminded him. “Instead of constructive reports all I get is a list of complaints, first from the Whitstables about your unhelpful attitude and the non-advancement of the case, and then from that whingeing twerp of an arts minister who just wants us to shove the whole thing in a file marked Solved. Now we’ve really stepped up into the big time.” He pulled so hard on his cigarette that it crackled. “They’re going to throw us to the lions, do you realize that? It’s more or less the end of our careers. The Home Office have called twice in the last hour. I’m having to hide from them. Don’t you have anything at all for me?”

May had seen the look on Raymond’s face before, a look of panic under pressure that could only bring more trouble. He was begging for something to release to the media, but how could they help him? They had nothing so far that would stand up as substantive evidence.

Earlier that morning, Bryant had hesitantly described his discovery at the V&A. May could imagine Land’s reaction when he informed him that their only suspect was a man who had been dead for nearly a hundred years.

“Bloody cold out,” said Bryant, suddenly breezing in behind his superior. “Oh, hello, Raymond, what are the barbarians doing at the gates of Rome?”

“What?” asked Land, momentarily non-plussed.

“Journalists.” Bryant waved his hand at the window. “They’re everywhere, bullying receipts out of taxi drivers, crawling all over the place shouting their heads off.”

“Daisy’s been found, Arthur,” said May quietly. “She’s alive, barely. They took her into St Thomas’s a few hours ago.” He recounted the preliminary findings of the admitting doctor.

“I need to know if you have anything for me,” said Land. “Whatever I tell the press can’t be worse than what they’re capable of making up. I can’t afford to alienate them any further.”

“It’s a little late to worry about that now,” said Bryant. “They’ve been accusing us of incompetence for the past fortnight. I suppose John must have mentioned our new lead.”

“I’ve been explaining that we’re following a new line of inquiry,” said May, signaling silence to his partner, “but that we’re not quite ready to present it.”

“What line of inquiry is this?” asked Land, confused. “If you’re keeping anything back from me – ” Just then the office door reopened and the two workmen entered armed with cans and buckets. Land turned to glare at them. “Christ on a bike, do they have to be here all the time?”

“We do if you want these offices finished,” said the older of the two workmen. “We pack up on Friday for ten days. It’s Christmas, mate. Do you know how many layers of paint we’ve still got to strip off before we can do your sills?”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Land, grinding out his cigarette and rising.

“At least we’re making good use of our time,” said the younger workman. “Leave it to the working classes to handle all the shitty jobs. At least we’ve got a sense of duty.”

“Yeah,” agreed his mate. “Try catching a few criminals instead of telling taxpayers where they can’t park.”

“I can’t delay speaking to the Home Office any longer. I’m going to tell them that this whole thing will be wrapped up by the end of the week,” said Land, heedless of the breach in security represented by the listening workmen. “And I’ll say the same thing at the press briefing if I have to.”

“Why not give them a hypothetical sequence of events?” asked May. “Release plenty of facts and figures, all the exact times and dates we’ve held back, and let them draw their own conclusions. There can’t be any harm in that. They might even be able to help us.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” agreed Land, a little mollified. “You’d better talk to them. If you can’t arrest anyone, at least you can come up with a plausible explanation as to how this whole damned mess occurred. We must explain that whatever triggered these attacks is finally over and done with.”

“He’s going to try and shove it all under the carpet,” said Bryant after the door had shut. “Wait and see.” He unwound his ratty scarf and dropped it on to a chair. “Four deaths and an abduction, and he doesn’t care about getting to the truth so long as he keeps himself off the hook.”

“He’s panicking because someone’s pressuring him to put a lid on the whole business,” said May. Understandably, the kidnapping of a child was a highly emotive issue, and the media would wring every last drop of coverage from it. Until now, the biggest story of December had been how Bourne and Hollingsworth were stocking up on candles and oil lamps, ready for the strike blackouts.

“It’s a government cover-up, innit?” said one of the workmen. “Stands to reason. Just like Jack the Ripper.”

“Thank you, Fabian of the Yard,” said Bryant, surveying the mess beyond his desk. Half of the office was now a sickly hospital green, which the workmen were scraping off to reveal orange lincrusta wallpaper from the 1930s.

“This room is starting to make me feel sick,” said May, tossing his partner’s hat over to him. “Let’s go.”

“But I’ve only just come in,” complained Bryant. “It’s thick fog outside.”

“It’s not much better in here,” replied May, noting the filled ashtray that Land had left behind. “Come on. We’ll slip out the back and I’ll buy you a pint over the road.”

“It’s much too early for me.”

“We have to talk where no one can find us.”

The saloon bar of the Nun and Broken Compass was mercifully deserted. Only the disgusting dog that lay half in the fireplace ceased clawing clumps of hair from its ears to briefly register their arrival.

“Two days to make a breakthrough,” said May, returning from the bar with pints of Bishop’s Finger. “The chances of wrapping the whole thing up in forty-eight hours are pretty slim. The city’s already half empty. Have you found out anything more on James Whitstable’s group?” Bryant’s first appointment of the morning had been to conduct further research on the Alliance of Eternal Light.

“Only that his family denies any knowledge of his activities,” said Bryant, relishing his first sip of beer. “There was a biography of him written in the twenties but the British Library has no record of it, so Janice is searching through private collections.”

“Everything about this case is upside-down,” complained May. “We eliminate all the suspects, only to resort to digging through the past. None of the traditional investigative methods work, and any evidence that turns up seems to appear entirely by accident.”

Just then the door opened and Sergeant Longbright stuck her head into the saloon bar. “Mr Bryant, there you are. Your friend Mr Summerfield called. He wants to see you urgently. He says he’s made some kind of discovery.”

♦

The Triumph 250 sat beneath a dripping plane tree, its engine quickly cooling. Joseph slid from the pillion and massaged his rump as Jerry kicked up the stand. She had managed to borrow the motorcycle from a school friend.

“You haven’t given me an answer,” Joseph said, shoving his sweater further into his jeans. “What are you going to say when she opens the door?”

“I’ll figure something out. I could introduce you as the photographer who works with me. She’s the only lead I have and she certainly knows more than she’s told me so far.”

Jerry checked her watch. Nearly nine-thirty p.m. The street behind them was shrouded and silent. The lights were on in Peggy Harmsworth’s house, but they had no proof that she was even home.

“I don’t see how you expect to extract any more information from her without arousing suspicion. Nobody makes business calls at this hour.” Joseph pulled the sleeves of his leather jacket over his hands. The freezing fog had turned the overhead branches crystalline. This was no night for them to be standing around outside. Seen through the saffron aureoles of the surrounding streetlamps, the Holly Lodge Estate took on the unreality of a film set.

“Either knock on her door or turn around and go home,” he told Jerry. “Make a decision. My blood’s slowing down.” He watched as she stared across the glittering lawn, grinding her teeth. “Maybe I should go with you.”

“No, I can handle it by myself.” She made a fist. “So tough. What are you going to do, fetch her a punch up the bracket when she questions you? Assault and battery. Great.”

She was about to reply when the front door opened. After pausing to examine her gold pocket watch in the hallway, Peggy Harmsworth stepped on to the drive in a full-length mink coat and head scarf. They pressed back against the trees as their quarry set off across the estate on foot.

“Get on the bike,” Joseph hissed. “We can follow her with the engine off.” He kicked away the stand and they mounted the Triumph, rolling silently into the road. Mrs Harmsworth marched purposefully to the far side of the street, then turned into the thickening fog within the cul-de-sac.

“She can’t get out of there,” Joseph whispered over her shoulder.

“Maybe she’s visiting a neighbour.”

When she reached the end of the road, Peggy Harmsworth skipped between two tall mock-Tudor apartment buildings and faded from sight.

“Damn, there’s an alleyway.” After several hundred yards the path opened out onto a hill. On the other side stood the iron gates of Highgate Cemetery.

“Where the hell is she going?” Joseph rolled the Triumph to a standstill. Ahead of them, Mrs Harmsworth rattled a padlock in her hands and let it drop, passing through a smaller gate set within the large entrance. “Jesus, she’s got her own keys.”

The padlock was refastened on the other side of the railings, and the figure in the mink coat began to retreat once more into the mist.

“We’ll lose her if we’re not quick,” warned Jerry, helping to lean the motorcycle against a tree. She stowed her helmet in the rear pannier and pocketed the ignition key. Then she headed for the gates.

“Wait a minute,” said Joseph. He had agreed to go with Jerry to ask this woman a few friendly questions, not follow her into a graveyard. “We can’t get in there, and even if we could – ”

Too late. Jerry was already halfway over the gate.

High heels clicked on cement as the mink coat moved through the thickening fog. They followed as closely as they dared, the cemetery gates lost somewhere behind them. The main path was illuminated to deter dopesmoking hippies, but the light barely reached the ground.

Mrs Harmsworth switched from the main route on to a smaller path that led uphill, through a less accessible part of the cemetery. Jerry and Joseph could barely keep pace with her. Here, new graves gave way to the older family vaults.

Despite their general air of neglect, several monuments had fresh wreaths at their feet. As she passed, Jerry glimpsed the half-eroded epitaphs. There were Germanic Victorian names and grim little platitudes carved in stone, children ‘Joyously Accepted into the Bosom of the Lord’ as if death were a privilege; adults ‘Departing This Vale of Tears for Eternal Peace’. She sensed lives of dutiful toil passed in the anticipation of acceptance into a golden kingdom. She saw crumbling monuments to the Victorian conviction of everlasting life. And she watched as Peggy Harmsworth stopped before an ivy-stranded mock-Grecian mausoleum of disproportionate immensity.

Instinctively dropping from sight, Jerry knelt behind a gravestone. Seeing her, Joseph did the same. Mrs Harmsworth descended the few stone steps and produced another key, inserting it into the portal. She shoved back the door, stepped inside, and pulled it half-shut behind her. Jerry mouthed, “Now what?”

“Wait,” Joseph signaled back.

The chill settled about them. Water droplets coated Jerry’s jacket in a gelid frost. Far in the distance a lorry laboured up the hill, engine noise fading in the encroaching silence. A light showed faintly through the doorway of the crypt.

“What can she be doing in there?” Joseph whispered. Somewhere nearby, a branch broke beneath a shoe. They looked at each other and dived back behind their respective gravestones. A figure appeared beside the crypt, moving with a spiderlike gait, a man wearing a brown slouch hat and a tattered greatcoat. As he paused before the door, Jerry looked over at her accomplice, puzzled.

After waiting for a moment or two at the entrance, the tattered man stepped through the gap, entering the crypt. Barely able to contain her excitement, Jerry ran over. “That’s the man,” she said. “The one who attacked me in the theatre. At least, I think it is.” Uncertainty nagged at her.

“Well, is it or not?”

“He’s dressed the same, but – he’s a lot taller.”

“Great,” said Joseph. “A murderer who changes height. Why not?” He rose, exasperated. “Why not add it to the rest? Add it to the vandalism, explosions, and poisonings. What is it with you, anyway? If you’re so scared of the dark, what the hell are we doing in a graveyard at night?”

Before she could think of a reply, there was a guttural grunt followed by a squeal, and the door of the crypt was shoved open. As they ran towards it, the tattered man emerged. Peggy Harmsworth had fallen to the floor of the mausoleum and was thrashing from side to side. Joseph ran down the crypt steps towards her, only to slip over in the blood that had been smeared across the flagstones.

The tattered man threw something aside as he ran, an instrument that shone with a steel edge. Jerry closed in behind him, running hard. The figure in front moved quickly across the slick grass between the gravesites, coattails flapping behind. For an instant, the tunnel of trees and the fleeing dark figure threw her back into the searing panic of her nightmares and she stumbled, slamming her hip against a memorial slab.

By the time she had pulled herself up and resumed her pursuit, the tattered man had almost reached the main gate. Jerry ran back on to the path and limped toward the cemetery entrance, just as he flew at the lock with a kick that smashed open the small gate through which Peggy Harmsworth had entered. Then he dashed across the road, hauling himself into a small white van parked at the side of the road. Seconds later, Jerry reached the Triumph and painfully straddled it, keying the ignition.

The van pulled away down the hill with a squeal of skipping tyres. Jerry jerked out into the road, her crash helmet still locked in the rear pannier. The bitter wind tore at her skin, blasting aside rational thought. Although she’d borrowed the bike before, she’d never ridden it at high speed. She tried to keep the van in her sight, but the fog grew thicker with their descent.

Van and motorcycle shot across one junction, then another. The roads were virtually deserted this close to Christmas. For the moment no other vehicle appeared in their way. Then the van swung right so hard that it seemed it would topple over, and cut across the path of an oncoming bus.

Sounding her horn, Jerry skidded in an arc around the vehicle, mounting the pavement but holding her position behind the van. Together they raced over Dartmouth Park Road and down towards the city.

She tried to pull out ahead of the van, intending to force it over, but the blinking amber lights of open roadworks warned her back. Her quarry was still picking up speed.

Jerry knew that if she jumped the lights, collision with another vehicle would be unavoidable. The only way to cut off the van would be to do it right now. She twisted the throttle, opening it wide, praying that her tyres would keep their grip on the shining road surface.

In the next moment she had drawn alongside the van. The figure within had opened his window and was waving something in his hand. As soon as she saw the shotgun, Jerry’s grip on the bike throttle instinctively relaxed, and the Triumph fell back, wheels slipping as they tried to bite on wet tarmac.

They hit Kentish Town Road at seventy-seven miles per hour. An oncoming Peugeot and a Morris Minor swerved as the van burst from the fog, catching the first car by the front bumper and spinning it into the path of the other. Jerry pushed ahead as the van struggled to right itself, taking to the oncoming lane of the road as she raced towards the red and green Christmas lights of Camden.

The Triumph drew along the inside of the van, and then into the lead. As the van’s radiator grille touched her rear mudguard, she knew that the driver was planning to push her off the road. The grille slammed against her back wheel as the van accelerated.

A crowd of pub-crawling revelers scattered in their path. Jerry swung the bike aside, resuming her position at the rear of the speeding vehicle. It was a stalemate.

Where the hell were the police when you actually wanted to be pulled over? They usually swarmed all over the West End at Christmas. Jerry’s face and hands were dead, her fingers locked and frozen, her eyes stinging from the intensity of staring into the pulsing fog. She was surprised at how well she handled the bike, but knew she would have to stop before she killed herself, or someone else.

The van began to slow down.

Jerry eased back as it cut through the red lights of an intersection, ploughing across Camden High Street into Delancy Street. She suddenly realized that the driver was lost. The tattered man had missed his turning somewhere and no longer recognized his surroundings.

As she tore on to the empty streets circling the railway lines above the city, she knew that the van would have to stop. Here in this corner of North London, all the roads were effectively sealed off by the tangled network of rail tracks fanning out fifty feet below them. There was no way to safety. The triangular area beyond was known to locals as the Island, hemmed in on each side by Regent’s Park, the railway, and the canal systems.

The van was in trouble. Following raids, getaway cars usually turned left because they followed the traffic flow. Her quarry was doing the same thing. They tore into the street, and Jerry knew that it was over. Ahead was a brick wall, a humpbacked pedestrian bridge, and a long drop to the railway tracks. There was everything but a road.

The van slammed its brakes on hard, to no avail. The vehicle continued to charge forward, fishtailing over tarmac as if the brakes had not even been applied. It hit the metal fencing beside the wall and uprooted two concrete posts. For a moment Jerry thought that the chickenwire might hold. Then the van tore through, the fence screaming over its roof, and slid down the embankment to the lines below.

She had just pulled the bike over and dismounted, planning to head down into the cutting, when blue lights reflected on the walls ahead, and she turned to find herself facing a pair of arriving squad cars.

♦

As Joseph ran down into the Whitstable family crypt to attend to Peggy Harmsworth, the door was pulled shut behind him and an oppressive darkness closed over his senses.

For a moment he heard and saw nothing, nothing at all. Now he knew how Jerry must feel in the dark. There was someone else breathing right next to him. With a shrill shriek of laughter Peggy thrust out her hands, raking her fingernails across his face, spinning him away from the faint light around the entrance. His legs slipped from under him and he hit the stone floor heavily. She leapt on to his back, pulling at his hair, trying to dig her fingers into his eye sockets.

He lashed out at her throat, or where he imagined it to be, and hit stone instead. Trying to force her body away from him, he moved towards the door, but his sense of direction had been confounded.

Before he could think further she was upon him again, shouting laughter in his face, digging her nails into his skin, sinking her teeth into his shoulder, kicking and screaming and lashing him with her hair like an inmate of Bedlam.

As he fought for the door, blinded by his own blood, carrying the ranting maniac on his back, it seemed that he had left the realm of the sane to enter someone else’s nightmare. He fell painfully to his knees as the madwoman dug deeper into him, screaming and howling in an echo chamber of her own insanity.