Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Michael White
Title Page
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Copyright
In all his years on the force, Detective Chief Inspector Pendragon has never seen a corpse like this one. After the initial horror, he recognises the reference to the surrealist painter, Magritte. But that makes the crime even more sickening – accomplished, as it has been, with a calculated ferocity which places it in another league from common or garden homicide.
In the Whitechapel area of London in the 1880s, a person who remains unidentified to this day committed a series of sadistic murders of local prostitutes, which involved elaborate mutilation of the victim’s bodies.
Although the contemporary crimes are not directed exlusively at female targets, there is a grotesque similarity in the mindset of the two perpetrators – divided, as they are, by more than a century. But Pendragon is determined that this pathalogically brilliant killer will not escape detection
A former Thompson Twin, Michael White is now a globally best-selling author of thirty-six books. He has the unique distinction of being the only person in the world who has appeared in three different Top Ten charts: As a novelist, as a non-fiction writer and as a pop star.
He has sold over two million books in forty languages, including Equinox, The Medici Secret, The Borgia Ring and The Art of Murder. He has also written the E-Force series under the pseudonym “Sam Fisher”.
Michael has recently co-authored a novel with the world’s best-selling author James Patterson. Entitled Private Oz, it is due for publication globally in 2013.
For more information visit:
www.michaelwhite.com.au or
http://www.facebook.com/michaelwhitewrites
Fiction
Equinox
The Medici Secret
The Borgia Ring
The Art of Murder
State of Emergency (as “Sam Fisher”)
Aftershock (as “Sam Fisher”)
Nano (as “Sam Fisher”)
Non-fiction
Stephen Hawking—A Life in Science (with John Gribbin)
Einstein—A Life in Science (with John Gribbin)
Darwin—A Life in Science (with John Gribbin)
Asimov: The Unauthorised Life
Breakthrough: The Race to Find the Breast Cancer Gene (with Kevin Davies)
The Science of the X-Files
Life Out There
Super Science
Weird Science
Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer
Leonardo: The First Scientist
Machiavelli: A Man Misunderstood
The Pope and the Heretic
Thompson Twin: An 80s Memoir
A Chronicle of the 21st Century (with Gentry Lee)
Rivals
The Fruits of War
Galileo: Antichrist
Tolkien: A Biography
C.S Lewis: The Boy who Created Narnia
A Teaspoon and an Open Mind: The Science of Doctor Who
Coffee with Isaac Newton
Young Adults non-fiction
Alien Life Forms
Mind and Matter
Mozart
Galileo
John Lennon
Isaac Newton
‘The creative process is a cocktail of instinct, skill, culture and a highly creative feverishness. It is not like a drug; it is a particular state when everything happens very quickly, a mixture of consciousness and unconsciousness, of fear and pleasure …’
Francis Bacon
(1909–92)
Stepney, Wednesday 21 January, 8 a.m.
She came running down the street screaming at the top of her voice. As she ran, commuters heading for Whitechapel tube station moved out of her way thinking she was a madwoman. But she was not mad, she was simply terrified. She had just seen something that would make the strongest stomach somersault.
Her name was Helena Lutsenko, a Ukrainian immigrant. She had been in England for a little over six weeks and her English was limited to a couple of hundred words. In her petrified state, she could think only in Ukrainian. But even in her native language, there were few words to describe the horror of what she had just witnessed.
It was 8 a.m., halfway through the morning rush hour, and the Mile End Road in East London was awash with grey slush. It had snowed the previous night, and, as always in London, it had settled for about ten minutes before turning to a slurry unknown to pre-Industrial man: part water, part diesel, part city grime. The pavements were no better. The grey snow had been piled up to either side of a narrow footpath cleared for pedestrians, and although council road sweepers had been out since six, throwing around sand and salt, the icy strip of pavement was treacherous.
Helena slipped and just broke her fall by grabbing a lamp-post. The shock forced her to calm down a little. She could do nothing in this state, she told herself. She needed to explain something, something desperate, something barely imaginable. And she needed to explain it to anyone who would listen. Anyone at all. Pushing away from the lamp-post, she took measured paces and deep breaths. Approaching a young man dressed in a business suit and carrying a briefcase, she began to articulate her horror, but the commuter speeded up instinctively. Helena walked up to a middle-aged woman talking into her mobile phone. The woman looked at her as though she were insane and shouldered her away. Just another East European beggar, the commuter thought, and sighed. Then a young couple turned a corner. They were well dressed but relaxed-looking, graphic designers or ad execs perhaps, definitely not bankers or insurance grunts. The woman was wearing a Comme des Garçons ankle-length coat; the man had a Louis Vuitton satchel slung over his left shoulder.
‘Help me,’ Helena said as clearly as she could. She stood in front of the couple, one palm held flat against the man’s coat sleeve. He looked down at her hand, then glanced at the young woman beside him. She was ready to move on, but he was a little more patient.
‘Please help,’ Helena said.
The young man pushed a hand into his pocket and came up with a handful of small change.
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Not money. Come. I show.’
‘What?’ the young woman said suddenly and stared at the man. ‘What does she want, Tom?’
Tom Seymour shrugged. ‘Search me.’
‘Please, come. I show.’
‘Don’t like the sound of this,’ the young woman said, and took her companion’s arm.
There was something about the desperate stranger that moved Tom. He seemed to know instinctively that she was genuine, that she needed someone. She was clearly terrified. He turned to the woman beside him. ‘Trish, I think she needs help.’
‘Yes … help,’ the Ukrainian woman responded.
‘Tom, you don’t know her from Adam. She could be the front for a gang. Don’t be a twat.’
He sighed. ‘Yeah, you’re right.’ Then he tried gently to move Helena aside. ‘Have to go,’ he said to her.
Helena deflated like a balloon with the air sucked out of it and she burst into tears. Trish was already a pace away, but Tom hadn’t moved.
‘What’s happened?’ he asked.
Helena did not understand.
Tom put his hands out, palms up. ‘What is it?’
‘Man … dead,’ she said, tears flowing down her cheeks.
Helena took Tom’s arm. Trish remained where she was, shaking her head, unsure what to do. In the end she simply said, ‘I’ll see you at the office,’ and walked away.
Tom turned back just in time to avoid colliding into another commuter. He and Helena dodged to the right. He pulled his arm free. ‘Where’re we going?’
She looked round at him, but said nothing.
They turned a corner, right, off Mile End Road, down Vallance Road. Fifty yards further on, they swung another right into a narrow lane, Durrell Place. For the first time, Tom began to worry, began to wonder whether he had done the right thing after all. Then he saw a sign up ahead: Berrick & Price Fine Art Gallery. He recognised the name from an article in GQ.
Helena ran ahead. Tom caught up with her at the door to the gallery. The front windows stretched for about twenty-five feet. They were blacked out, with the name of the gallery printed in silver lettering across the glass in an eccentric font, a cross between Bank Gothic and Marlett, all block letters and narrow serifs. The door stood ajar. From inside came the faint smell of stale alcohol and incense.
‘So, what’s this all about?’ Tom asked, dropping his shoulder bag to the ground at the gallery’s entrance.
Helena simply pointed through the open door.
‘Who are you?’ he said.
Helena looked puzzled for a second, then tapped her chest. ‘Me? Cleaner.’ Then she pointed again. ‘Man dead.’
‘Dead? You sure?’
She nodded.
He thought about calling the police, but curiosity had already got the better of him. He had come this far, he thought to himself, why back out now? Some part of him was suddenly excited.
‘Where?’ Tom asked.
Helena just nodded towards the door.
Tom took a deep breath. ‘Okay. You wait here.’
It was dark in the corridor, but an archway to his right led into a small room immediately behind the blacked-out windows. Bright halogen spots hung down in a cluster from the ceiling. Two walls were covered with vast canvases, blocks of pure colour, one a dark green, the other a deep purple. Under each stood a black leather and chrome sofa, original George Nelsons. Ahead was another archway that led into a much larger room, the display space.
Tom walked over to the second archway, hesitated for a moment and then stepped inside. This room was also brightly lit from rows of powerful halogens in the ceiling. In the centre of it stood some sort of installation, a tangle of plastic and steel, indistinct angular shapes bursting through a matrix of metal. Tom turned to his left and saw what he took to be another installation. He stepped towards it and froze. He felt the hairs rise on the nape of his neck. His mouth suddenly felt very dry and fear began to ripple through the pit of his stomach. For several moments Tom Seymour could not fit what he was seeing into his image of the universe. It made no sense, it was a set of contradictions, what he was seeing clashed with the model of ‘normal life’ he had in his head. Then, as acceptance came, he felt his guts heave. Dashing back to the archway, he vomited as he ran, the spew landing on the expensive parquet flooring and slithering down his exquisite Yohji Yamamoto coat.
Brick Lane Police Station, Stepney
Detective Chief Inspector Jack Pendragon had just switched on the coffee-maker on a counter at the back of his office when he heard a rap on the door. He could tell by the outline at the other side of the opaque window that it was his sergeant, Jez Turner. He turned back to fill the water container of the coffee machine, calling: ‘Come in, Sergeant.’ As he pushed a button the machine started its repertoire of sounds with a high-pitched whir followed by the crunch of beans being pulverised. Pendragon turned round to see an expression of excitement on Jez’s face. ‘Okay, what’s the big news, Turner?’
The detective sergeant was twenty-three, tall and slim, with a taste for designer suits he managed to find at dramatically reduced prices and paid for by moonlighting as a DJ at a local club. Today he was wearing a dark blue, double-breasted Emporio Armani, a light blue shirt and a yellow tie held down with a slender gold tie-clip. With his hair greased back over his ears, his high cheekbones and large dark eyes, he looked like a 1920s gangster. ‘Sir, just had a bell from the Emergency Call Centre. A murder just down the road in Durrell Place … an art gallery.
‘Berrick and Price?’
‘Dunno, guv.’
‘Must be. It’s the only gallery there,’ Pendragon said half to himself. He grabbed his coat and scarf from a hook to the side of the office door and pushed past Turner into the hall.
There was a commotion at the front desk; a young man in a donkey jacket and calf-high Doc Martens was being restrained by the duty sergeant, Jimmy Thatcher. Another sergeant, Terry Vickers, was running towards them from a room down the hall. The young man tried to twist away from Thatcher, but the sergeant, a powerfully built cop who spent four evenings a week pumping weights at the local gym, was having none of it. As the restrained figure turned, Pendragon saw him head on. He had a web tattooed over his face, two blue spiders at each temple. The man was snarling and filling the air with expletives.
Vickers took only a second to reach them and yanked the man’s right arm up hard behind his back, making him yell in fury. Between them, the two policemen dragged the tattooed man down the corridor towards the holding cells.
‘Welcome to Wednesday morning,’ Pendragon said to Jez as they sidestepped the two sergeants and their bundle of joy. The DCI’s long face broke into a cynical smile.
As they went through the main doors to the station they were hit by a blast of freezing wind. ‘Jesus fucking Christ!’ Sergeant Turner exclaimed. Pendragon ignored him and gripped the collar of his coat tight about his face as he sped towards the nearest squad car. From behind them they heard the doors to the station swing open and close again and caught a glimpse of two other officers, Inspector Rob Grant and his sergeant, Rosalind Mackleby, taking the steps down towards the parking bays.
Pendragon jumped into the driver’s seat and turned the key in the ignition. A voice filled the car, reading a news bulletin on Radio Four. ‘Weather conditions around the country have deteriorated dramatically overnight. Four inches of snow have fallen in some parts of the South East, and some of the worst of the weather has been in London after a blizzard swept over the capital in the early hours. The weather has caused serious disruption. All major airports have been shut down and …’ Pendragon switched it off as Turner clicked in his seatbelt. The DCI reversed out of the spot and turned carefully in the snow. The wheels struggled to gain purchase, then he gently squeezed the accelerator.
Brick Lane had been transformed. Its usual drab greys and browns were smothered in white. ‘Positively Dickensian,’ Pendragon said to Turner with an edge of sarcasm. Cars with their headlights on and wipers snapping back and forth were moving as though in slow motion, and along the pavement marched figures bundled up in heavy overcoats and hats, hands in pockets, heads bowed to the wind. The falling snow was almost horizontal, carried through the air in powerful gusts.
Pendragon pulled the police car into a gap in the traffic and crawled along. They had the heater on ‘Max’ and the wipers cutting two semi-circular swathes across the windscreen. The car ahead stopped abruptly, red brake lights blazing in the driving snow. Pendragon put his foot to the floor, but the car just kept going. He turned the wheel and they slid sideways, finally stopping a few inches short of the kerb. The engine stalled. Pendragon pulled on the handbrake and turned the key. Nothing.
‘Okay, let’s go,’ he said resignedly, and snapped the key from the ignition.
‘Go where?’
‘To the gallery, where else?’
It was only a short walk, but by the time they reached Durrell Place, Pendragon had lost sensation in his fingers and toes. He and Turner dashed into the entrance to the gallery just as Inspector Grant and Sergeant Mackleby’s squad car pulled into the narrow lane behind them, sliding around in the powdery snow.
Pendragon stamped his feet and chunks of frozen slush fell on to the wooden floorboards. He opened his collar and looked up to see a pale young man, tall and wiry, clutching a leather bag over his left shoulder. He was sitting on a metal chair. Pendragon could see that his face was smeared with sweat in spite of the freezing cold. He was wearing a suit and an open-necked shirt. On the floor at his feet was a rolled-up overcoat. Beside the young man stood a woman: short, dark-haired. Probably in her mid-twenties, Pendragon thought, but she looked at least a decade older. East European features. She was dressed in cheap jeans and a drab brown coat that was far too flimsy for this weather. The man stood up.
‘Detective Chief Inspector Pendragon.’ The DCI nodded towards Jez. ‘Sergeant Turner.’
The young man offered his hand. ‘Tom Seymour.’
Pendragon turned to the woman. She was nervous, looking at the floor, raising her eyes but keeping her head down. ‘Helena Lutsenko,’ she said.
‘So you made the call?’ Pendragon asked, turning back to Tom Seymour.
He nodded. ‘I was on my way to the tube station and this lady … Helena … stopped me and asked for help.’ He wiped sweat from his forehead and blew air through his mouth. ‘She … ah … led me here.’
‘I’m cleaner,’ Helena interrupted. ‘I find dead man.’
‘Okay,’ Pendragon said, and glanced towards Turner to make sure he was taking notes. The sergeant had a pad and pencil in his hands and was writing quickly. ‘Where’s the body?’
Tom Seymour flicked a look towards the archway. ‘Through there, in the main gallery.’
Pendragon turned to see Roz Mackleby and Rob Grant appear in the doorway. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Sergeant Mackleby. I think these people need a cup of tea,’ and nodded towards a door at the end of the corridor through which they could just see a rudimentary kitchen. ‘Inspector Grant, come with us.’
The three policemen walked through into the reception area, ignoring the mammoth canvases and the expensive furnishings. Pendragon led the way under the second arch and into the main gallery. Surveying the far wall, he turned to his left and walked slowly across the wooden floor. A man was seated in a chair, hands in his lap. A pole had been placed behind his spine, keeping his dead body upright. He was wearing a black suit, white shirt and a red tie. On his head was a black bowler hat. Just under the rim could be seen a thin cord wrapped around the top of the head and tied to the pole. It kept his dead weight from falling forward. A hole seven inches in diameter had been cut into the man’s face. The hole was the depth of the head. Where his eyes, nose and mouth had once been was now a cylinder of air. It looked as if a massive cannonball had passed through the corpse’s face. Placed at the base of the void was a polished green apple.
Pendragon turned away and saw that Turner was as pale as death and Grant was doing his best to keep his stomach from embarrassing him. ‘All right,’ he said, his own face expressionless, only his dark blue eyes showing emotion. ‘I want the building sealed off. And I do not … Sergeant? Are you with us?’
Jez Turner was transfixed by the sight in front of him, his face a blend of confusion and creeping revulsion.
‘Sergeant!’ Pendragon waved a hand in front of Jez’s face.
‘Sorry. Sorry, guv. It’s just …’
‘Put a call through to the station, inform Superintendent Hughes. Get outside! I want the whole lane cordoned off. No one in, especially the press. I want the media kept out of this for as long as possible, understand?’
Turner nodded and headed for the exit. Pendragon glanced at Inspector Grant and ran a hand over his forehead and through his short salt-and-pepper hair. ‘We need Forensics here on the double. Put a call through to Dr Newman. And get Sergeant Mackleby to escort Seymour and Lutsenko to the station. We need statements ASAP.’
Inspector Grant stared fixedly at Pendragon and then left without a word. The DCI watched him cross the room and was about to turn back to the macabre sight when he saw Dr Neil Jones, the police pathologist, turn the corner under the arch and walk straight towards him across the wooden floor. Jones was short, pot-bellied and bearded. He was dressed in green plastic overalls to protect his suit and carried a grey plastic case in one latex-gloved hand. When Pendragon had first met him six months earlier, soon after the DCI had moved to his current job at Brick Lane, he’d thought Jones bore a striking resemblance to Gimli the dwarf from The Lord of the Rings, though he had never mentioned it.
Jones nodded to Pendragon and moved the Chief Inspector gently to one side so he could take a good look at the disfigured corpse.
‘My goodness,’ he said, as though regarding the football scores in the Sunday paper. ‘How very unusual.’ He ran a latex-covered finger around the inside of the huge hole where most of the man’s face had once been. ‘Well, he’s definitely dead, Pendragon,’ Jones remarked without looking up.
Pendragon ignored him. He was used to the pathologist’s unconventional sense of humour and knew the best reaction was no reaction at all, just let the man get on with his job.
‘I suggest you leave us two alone to get acquainted,’ Jones added, nodding towards the corpse. Pendragon got the message and walked away towards the reception area. As he emerged from the gallery, he saw Inspector Grant trying to restrain a tall black man in an ankle-length oyster-coloured cashmere overcoat who was attempting to enter the reception area from the hall. ‘Look, officer, it’s my gallery, for Christ’s sake!’ the newcomer was saying. His voice was refined, educated. He towered over Grant by at least six inches.
‘Inspector,’ Pendragon said. Grant turned and, seeing his boss’s expression, let the man pass. The DCI took a step towards the tall black man. ‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Pendragon. You’re the gallery owner?’
The man stood rigid before Pendragon, searching his face intently. ‘Jackson Price,’ he said. ‘I’m co-owner with Kingsley Berrick. What the hell’s going on here?’
‘Would you like to take a seat, sir?’
‘No. Why?’
‘I’m afraid there’s some rather bad …’
‘What’s happened?’ Price moved forward and, before Pendragon could stop him, passed under the arch and into the gallery.
‘Sir. If you would …’ Price was now three steps into the room and staring at the horrific sight close to the far wall. Then he simply sank to his knees, buried his head in his hands and started to rock to and fro.
Five minutes later, Jackson Price was installed on one of the leather sofas in reception, nursing a mug of steaming peppermint tea. He hadn’t said a word since entering the main room and was now staring fixedly into space. Pendragon was seated at the other end of the long sofa. He studied Price in profile. He was a handsome man: entirely bald, head smoothed to a shine; taut ebony skin; facial bones prominent but elegantly proportioned; eyelashes long. He had the air of an actor or an impresario. The two of them were alone in the reception area but nothing could be done about the occasional sounds coming from the gallery as Jones worked on the corpse.
‘I realise this is extremely difficult,’ Pendragon began. ‘But … do you know the dead man?’
Price turned to him, his face fixed in a blank expression, as though still processing what Pendragon had asked. ‘It’s Kingsley Berrick,’ he said at length, his voice a monotone. ‘My business partner. He has a distinctive scar on his chin, just here.’ He pointed to a region just below his lower lip, then looked away towards the huge canvases on the far wall.
Pendragon nodded. ‘When did you last see him alive?’
Price turned back and seemed to unwind a little. He took a deep breath and then a sip of the hot tea. ‘Last night, at the private view.’
‘Can you talk me through it?’
‘It was a Luke Martin retrospective – these big canvases?’ And he nodded across the room to a wall-sized expanse of turquoise. ‘Some of the crasser journalists call him the “English Mark Rothko”. Absurd, of course.’ He sniffed and took another sip of peppermint tea. ‘Anyway, it was a great success. The hacks claimed they loved it. We even had a couple of young royals here – admittedly from the wrong branch of the tree,’ he added with a wave of his hand. ‘A sprinkling of rock stars, old and young, and Casper Hammond popped in, en route to his hotel, straight off the plane from Hollywood … apparently. Best of all, everything was sold by nine o’clock.’
‘And Mr Berrick?’
Jackson Price looked back at his tea, suddenly quiet. For a few moments it had seemed as though he had slipped into an alternate reality, one in which nothing terrible had happened. Now he was back confronting the grim truth. ‘Oh, Kingsley was in a fabulous mood,’ Price said quietly. ‘He was terribly nervous earlier in the evening. But he always was a worrier. If I told him once, I told him a thousand times that worrying would be the death …’
‘Mr Price, did Kingsley Berrick have any enemies?’
‘Enemies?’ Price shook his head. ‘The very idea is simply preposterous, Chief Inspector. Everyone loved Kingsley.’
Pendragon decided to change tack. ‘Did you see him leave last night?’
‘Yes. As a matter of fact, I did. It was late … must have been oh, let me see … one o’clock? There were only a few of us still here. He left with Norman.’
‘Norman?’
‘Norman Hedridge, Kingsley’s partner. Well, ex-partner. They’re still friends, but no longer an item.’
‘I see. And did Mr Berrick say where they were going?’
‘Home.’
‘And who remained behind with you?’
Price looked down at his cup again and took another sip before answering, ‘Chester and Selina. Yes, that’s it. Just the three of us.’
‘Then?’
‘Well, we stayed and chatted for a bit. Selina left before Chester. I set the alarm and went home.’
‘Can anyone verify your movements after you left?’
Price looked startled for a moment. ‘My mother was still up. I live with her.’
‘She stayed up that late?’
‘She’s a worrier too.’
Pendragon paused for a beat. ‘So how did the cleaner get in?’
‘The cleaner?’
‘The East European woman.’ Pendragon paused for a second to recall her name. ‘Helena Lutsenko.’
‘Oh, right.’ Price took a sip of tea. ‘A couple of students live over the gallery. We pay them to let the cleaner in and out twice a week. I don’t normally surface till at least ten.’ He smiled for the first time, a big white slash across his face. ‘Surely you don’t think the cleaner … ?’
Pendragon ignored this. ‘I’m grateful. It must be a terrible shock for you. We will need to have a much more in-depth talk later … you understand?’
Price stared at him with his blank expression again. It looked as if he were about to say something, but then thought better of it. Opting to nod instead, he turned back to his tea.
Pendragon walked into the corridor and headed for the gallery’s kitchen. Mackleby and Grant were there with Tom Seymour and Helena Lutsenko. ‘We’ll need you both to come to the station to give a detailed report,’ Pendragon said to the witnesses. Helena looked alarmed, but Tom Seymour simply nodded.
‘I’ve called into work to tell them I’ll not be in this morning,’ he said.
‘Good. Inspector Grant and Sergeant Mackleby here will escort you to the station …’
‘But, sir, I do nothing!’ Helena Lutsenko exclaimed, her eyes wide and dark with worry.
Pendragon found a brief smile from somewhere. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said gently. ‘We’re not accusing you of anything.’
‘But …’ she looked panic-stricken ‘… my job … have to finish …’
Before Pendragon could say anything more, Roz Mackleby stepped in and placed her hand gently on Helena’s elbow.
‘Really … we won’t bite,’ Sergeant Mackleby insisted.
Pendragon spun round as Sergeant Turner appeared in the doorway.
‘Lane’s closed off, guv,’ he said. ‘And Forensics just called to say they’re a few minutes away.’
‘Good. Sergeant, I need you to get a complete list of who was here last night from Mr Price, and take a detailed statement from him. I want a full background on the event plus names … who showed, who didn’t. Find out if anything unusual happened – everything you can get him to cough up. I’ll meet you back at the station.’
‘You’re walking?’
‘Need to clear my head.’
Before leaving, Pendragon turned back into the reception area, walked past Jackson Price and nodded to a uniformed officer posted at the archway to the main room. A police photographer was setting up a tripod and a digital camera a few feet from the murder victim. Jones was kneeling down in front of the dead man, peering into the gruesome void in his head and studying the apple.
‘First impressions?’ Pendragon asked.
There was an electronic whir from behind as the photographer ran off a couple of test shots.
Jones stood up. ‘Well, it’s a Granny Smith, Inspector.’
‘Dr Jones …’
‘Okay, okay.’ Jones had his hands up. ‘What can I say? Male, early to mid-fifties, average height, bit on the plump side. It’s impossible even to guess at the cause of death before I get the body to the lab. I’d say he’s been dead eight to ten hours, no more. The body’s stiff from rigor mortis. No need for the truss. But obviously the body was put here when it was still relatively pliable.’
‘All right. Forensics are on their way. I’ll have the body released to you ASAP.’
*
Pendragon stepped out on to Durrell Place as Dr Colette Newman, Head of the Metropolitan Police Forensics Unit, emerged from a white van parked behind Mackleby and Grant’s squad car. She strode towards him carrying a big plastic box similar to Jones’s.
‘Chief Inspector,’ she said in her clipped, old-fashioned accent. Pendragon had first met Dr Newman the previous summer when they had worked together on a series of mysterious poisonings that had turned out to be the work of a crazed serial killer. She had been instrumental in piecing together some of the clues that had helped solve the crimes. A pretty blonde in her mid-thirties, Pendragon knew her to possess a keen intellect and a sharp wit. He had a lot of respect for her, and he liked her as well. ‘Dr Newman,’ he said. ‘Sorry to drag you from your warm lab, but, well …’ And he nodded back over his shoulder towards the gallery. ‘This one should certainly pique your professional interest.’
‘Oh, goody,’ she said with a smile, and hurried past him towards the gallery door.
Pendragon had been only partially honest with Turner when he’d said he needed to clear his head. He needed to clear it of the horror, but he also needed to assimilate what he had just witnessed, to gather together his thoughts and begin to make some sense of it all.
It never got easier, he knew that. He had seen dead kids being dragged from lakes and old people sliced up on the swirly-patterned carpets of their tiny flats. No, it never got easier. Somehow, though, he had learned to deal with it; to ‘compartmentalise’ as American psychotherapists would have it. But fancy words meant nothing unless he really could compartmentalise, and sometimes he could only just manage to keep it together in front of his junior officers.
In his twenty-five years of police service, Kingsley Berrick’s was definitely the strangest murder Pendragon had seen. The body was what he had once heard described as a ‘statement corpse’. Someone had not simply killed the man, they had wanted to present him as something else. He had seen immediately that the murder tableau was an imitation of René Magritte’s famous painting The Son of Man, the classic Surrealist image of a bowler-hatted figure in a suit with an apple hovering directly in front of his face. But why had the murderer done it? And how? Answers to those questions would take a while to formulate, Pendragon knew that much.
The snow had stopped falling, but the recently swept pavements were now covered in a thin fresh coating that was starting to blacken and turn to slush. At the end of the narrow lane lay Vallance Road, usually a busy thoroughfare which today was almost empty.
At the junction with Mile End Road, Pendragon stopped at the lights. There were more pedestrians than normal, their cars left at home. The monolithic Victorian sprawl of the Royal London Hospital stood at the far side of the street. Snow had settled on the window ledges and the tops of archways leading through into its maze of interlinked buildings. But the white covering did nothing to soften the harsh lines of the place.
He turned right and merged with the other pedestrians, wrapped up in Puffa jackets and anoraks, imitation Russian fur hats and Doctor Who scarves. He saw Grant and Mackleby’s squad car turn out of Vallance Road and carefully negotiate the lights before slowly accelerating west, back towards Brick Lane less than a quarter of a mile away. He could just make out the backs of two heads in the rear seats, the unlikely pairing of Helena Lutsenko and Tom Seymour.
Kingsley Berrick’s ex, Norman Hedridge, proved extremely difficult to track down. Jackson Price had given Turner a phone number, but had warned him it wouldn’t be easy to get the man to the station for questioning. It was only after Turner had called the number and been put through to a secretary that he discovered the stumbling block.
‘Hedridge is an MEP,’ he declared, walking into Pendragon’s office. ‘And he’s in Brussels. Left on the early bird this morning.’
‘Well, we’ll just have to get him on to the first train back, won’t we, Sergeant?’
‘What’s the problem? I heard the letters MEP.’ Superintendent Jill Hughes was leaning on the doorframe, peering in at Pendragon and Turner. The DCI was at his computer, Turner had perched himself on the corner of the desk.
‘Morning, ma’am,’ Pendragon responded. ‘Someone we need to question straight away. Maybe the last person to see the murdered man alive.’
Hughes had been brought up to speed when Mackleby and Grant had arrived back at the station half an hour earlier. ‘You’re talking about Norman Hedridge, I take it?’ She held Pendragon’s eyes with a steady gaze. She was a tough station commander, and, at thirty-three, one of the youngest Supers in the country. Guarded and occasionally aloof, she was nevertheless experienced enough to have nurtured a loyal and solid team at Brick Lane.
Pendragon nodded.
‘I’ve already been on to the Commissioner about him.’
‘You have?’ Pendragon looked at Hughes and then at Jez. ‘Get off my desk,’ he snapped. Turning back to the Super, he said calmly, ‘Well, that’s good … isn’t it?’
‘Up to a point. Mr Hedridge is a friend of Commissioner Rampton, and …’
‘Funny how they always are friends of someone, these VIPs,’ Pendragon interrupted, and Turner gave a brief laugh.
Hughes glared back at them both and Turner altered his expression immediately. ‘That’s as may be, Chief Inspector,’ she continued. ‘All I’m saying is, tread carefully … please.’ And she straightened up and walked away along the corridor.
Pendragon shook his head. ‘The old boy network … never fails. Okay, Turner, so you got the guest list from Price?’
‘I did. Over two hundred people attended. Old Kingsley Berrick was bloody well connected.’
‘I’m sure he was. Two hundred guests? Well, we obviously can’t interview everyone who was there last night, but Berrick must have had a close-knit group of intimates.’
‘The gay art network?’
‘For want of a better expression, Sergeant, yes.’
‘And the starting point would be Norman Hedridge?’
‘Indeed it would.’
It took until 3.30 for MEP Norman Hedridge to make it to Brick Lane Police Station. His driver dropped him and his lawyer at the stairs to the main doors where they were met by a constable and led along the corridor to Interview Room 2. Pendragon stood up as they walked in. Hedridge was an inch or so over six foot, big-framed, tanned, white hair cut into a fashionable, tousled style. He was wearing a Barbour jacket over a pin-stripe suit. The lawyer introduced himself as Maurice Strinner of Faversham, Strinner & Wrench. Pendragon knew the firm, the three partners’ names were often featured in the news, famous for acting as solicitors to what had once been called ‘the Establishment’. Strinner was a short man of forty-something. He had a bulbous, drinker’s nose, watery blue eyes, a weak mouth. The lawyer turned to his client and introduced him as Norman Hedridge MEP. Pendragon shook hands with the two men and they all sat down. Turner came in then and pulled up a chair beside the DCI.
The atmosphere in the room was tense. Pendragon looked at Hedridge as the man stared fixedly at the wall between the two policemen, and it was at that moment he first put the face and the name together. Norman Hedridge … of course, he thought. The MEP had been a contemporary of his at Oxford. Pendragon had known Hedridge then, or at least known of him. Hedridge had remained totally unaware of Pendragon’s existence, for theirs had been very different Oxfords. Pendragon had gone up on a scholarship, which meant he had been at the bottom of the social pecking order, even in the early eighties when student life at the university was supposed to be cosily egalitarian.
The DCI had been born within half a mile of this station and had spent the first eighteen years of his life kicking around the local streets. When he had been noticed at school as exceptionally able academically, his headmaster at Stepney High had convinced Jack’s parents to let him take the Oxbridge entrance exam. Hedridge, Pendragon knew, came from one of the wealthiest families in the country. His father owned vast tracts of land in Devon and Cornwall, and the Hedridges could trace their heritage back to a thirteenth-century baron who had stood beside King Henry III’s son, Prince Edward, at the Battle of Evesham. Young Norman had been famous at Oxford for hosting flamboyant parties; leader of the in-crowd to which all the lesser aristos aspired to belong. Legend had it that after a summer ball at Christ Church, Norman had been found naked and unconscious in an inflatable dinghy circling the statue of Mercury, the centrepiece of the ornamental pond in Tom Quad. When one of the college Bulldogs, the university ‘police’, brought him round, they had fined him £50 on the spot. Apparently, his retort had been: ‘I’ll pay a hundred, my good man. It was worth every penny!’ The Norman Hedridge now sitting before Pendragon was in nothing like so good a mood.
‘DCI Jack Pendragon accompanied by Sergeant Jez Turner. Three-forty-two, Wednesday the twenty-first of January,’ Pendragon intoned for the benefit of the digital recorder at the end of the table. ‘Norman Hedridge MEP has volunteered his time to answer questions concerning the recent death of Kingsley Berrick. He is accompanied by his lawyer, Mr Maurice Strinner.’ He paused for a moment, waiting for Hedridge to engage with him. After a long pause, the man looked away from the imaginary spot on the wall and turned an imperious gaze upon him.
‘Mr Hedridge,’ Pendragon began slowly, ‘you knew the deceased?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘How would you describe your relationship?’
‘We were friends,’ Hedridge replied, giving the DCI a hard look.
‘Friends? As in intimate friends?’
Hedridge didn’t miss a beat. He simply turned to Strinner. ‘I don’t have time for this.’
‘Chief Inspector,’ Strinner began, ‘my client is here to help with your enquiries. As far as we are aware he has not been charged or even accused of any crime. I fail to see the relevance of the question.’
‘As both of you are aware, this is a murder investigation. Mr Hedridge is a known associate of Kingsley Berrick, and, according to a witness, left the gallery with the victim shortly before the murder took place. Indeed, Mr Hedridge may be one of the last people to have seen the victim alive.’
‘I object to the implication,’ Hedridge said coldly.
‘I’m not implying anything.’
There was silence for a few moments. ‘Mr Hedridge,’ Pendragon began again, ‘I am only concerned with solving this murder. I have no interest in your private life. But I feel that your relationship with Mr Berrick is pertinent to this enquiry. Because of that, I must be blunt. Were you and Kingsley Berrick lovers?’
Strinner immediately began to protest, but Hedridge stopped him with a raised palm. Then the politician looked Pendragon straight in the eye. ‘No, we were not. And if any such accusation is made public, Chief Inspector …’
Pendragon had his own hand up now. ‘You’ll have me hounded out of the force? Blah, blah, blah. Do you think I haven’t heard it before?’
Hedridge froze and Pendragon fixed him with his hardest stare, watching the other man’s expression subtly reflect a series of emotions. After a moment, the politician broke into a politician’s smile, one that stopped at the corners of his mouth. ‘Very well, Chief Inspector. Very well.’ There was a barely audible edge of acceptance in his voice. It was as though Pendragon had passed a test. ‘Let us agree to avoid any hint of sexual reference, and I will agree to answer any reasonable questions you may put to me.’ He stared at Pendragon with a look that suggested the DCI was never going to receive a better offer in his life.
‘Talk me through the events of the evening, please.’
Hedridge looked down at the table for a moment, gathering his thoughts. ‘I arrived late, about ten. I’d been at Westminster. There was still quite a gathering at the gallery. I had a chat with a few people I knew; drank a glass or two of champagne. Kingsley introduced me to a couple of artist friends. It was rather a jolly affair actually, and I lost track of the time. It got to about one o’clock and there were only half a dozen of us left. I admit, I was a little tipsy.’
‘And then you left with Kingsley Berrick?’
‘Yes, I did. I’d sent my driver home an hour or so earlier. We called a cab from the gallery. Kingsley lives … lived in Bethnal Green. I dropped him there and the cab took me home.’
‘I see. That was the last time you saw Mr Berrick?’
‘It was.’
‘Can you recall the name of the taxi firm?’
Hedridge paused for a moment. ‘Silver Cabs.’
Pendragon turned to the sergeant beside him. Jez Turner had already scribbled down the name.
‘How long have you known the deceased?’
Hedridge took a deep breath, leaned his elbows on the table and clasped his hands together. ‘Let me see … perhaps ten years. I met him by chance when the gallery was at its old site in Shoreditch. I bought a painting there, a Gary Heathcote. I was very grateful to Kingsley for that tip, it’s shot up in value.’
‘Was Mr Kingsley a popular man?’
‘Not sure what you mean.’
‘Sociable? A big circle of friends?’
‘Well, yes, I believe so. I think it goes with the territory.’
‘Any special friends?’
‘I have no idea, Chief Inspector.’
‘Would you consider yourself to have been a special friend?’
‘Where is this leading?’ Strinner interceded.
Pendragon turned to him. ‘I’m trying to build up a picture of the victim’s social circle. Does your client have a problem with that?’
Strinner looked at Hedridge, who sat staring coldly at Pendragon.
The DCI turned back to the politician. ‘Let’s put it another way, Mr Hedridge. Did Kingsley Berrick have any enemies?’
Hedridge looked a little startled for a moment. ‘Not so far as I’m aware, Chief Inspector. We were friends, but I had no inside information about how he ran his business. I can honestly say we rarely discussed the commercial aspects of the art world.’
Pendragon paused for a moment and the room sank into a heavy silence. He glanced at Turner and noted that he was still scribbling diligently in his pad.
‘My source suggests that your … relationship with the deceased had recently soured. Do you have any comment to make about that?’
‘No.’
‘Mr Hedridge, please don’t insult my intelligence. My source referred to you as Mr Berrick’s “ex”.’
Hedridge gave him a fierce look and Strinner started to raise a hand.
‘His words, not mine,’ Pendragon added.
‘Jackson Price, or “your source” as you prefer to call him, knows nothing about it, Chief Inspector.’
‘That may be so, but for now I have to assume he does. And if he is correct, and you and Mr Berrick were … intimately associated and had only recently become … disassociated, that would have a bearing upon my investigation. Wouldn’t you agree, Mr Hedridge?’
‘Look, this is utterly ridiculous,’ Strinner exclaimed. ‘I’m sorry, but this line of enquiry is so far off beam as to be ridiculous. My client has come here to help solve your case …’
‘That’s correct,’ Pendragon retorted.
‘But the intricacies of my client’s relationship with the murder victim …’
‘Are entirely relevant, Mr Strinner. Come now, you know that as well as I do.’
Hedridge placed a hand on the lawyer’s arm and gave Pendragon a pained look. ‘I thought we had a deal, Chief Inspector.’
‘The terms of a deal need to be clearly defined by both parties in advance, Mr Hedridge. You made a declaration of intent. I did not.’
Hedridge laughed briefly and turned to face his lawyer. ‘Maurice, I think it’s time we left.’
‘Well, that went well,’ Sergeant Turner said sardonically as the door closed behind Hedridge and Strinner.
Pendragon shook his head slowly. ‘Turner, when you are a grown-up copper, you might, if you’re very lucky, begin to realise that what seem like the worst interviews often yield the most useful facts.’
Turner raise his eyebrows. ‘Sorry I spoke.’
‘Good.’
‘But Hedridge was obviously lying out of his arse,’ the sergeant added.
‘About?’
‘His relationship with Berrick.’
‘Of course he was. Though, actually, Strinner was right. It isn’t strictly relevant.’
‘You sure, sir? Couldn’t Hedridge have killed Berrick after a lovers’ tiff?’
‘Oh, come on, Sergeant. How often does a “lovers’ tiff”, as you put it, end with one of the “lovers” boring a huge hole through the other’s head and propping them up in an art gallery as the centrepiece to a René Magritte-style tableau?’
‘Not often, I s’pose.’
‘Try “never”. Or perhaps Berrick committed suicide?’
And Pendragon gave his sergeant a withering look. ‘I think we’ll find that the nature of their relationship was the only thing Hedridge was lying about. He was protecting himself – understandably. According to his file, he’s married with two teenage children, and there’s his political career to think about too. I knew he would clam up about his relationship with Berrick. I wanted to throw him off-kilter. Push him just far enough to let something slip.’
‘Did he? I didn’t notice.’
Pendragon was staring at the wall, lost in thought. ‘No,’ he replied absent-mindedly. ‘No, he didn’t. He’s a politician, and a very clever one … Right, you can get busy, Turner,’ he said, snapping back to the task at hand. ‘I want you to check up on Silver Cabs. See if Mr Hedridge was telling us the truth about last night. I also want you to go through the entire guest list. Trace any connections between Kingsley Berrick and the names featured on that list, and then any links between Hedridge and those who were there last night. No matter how tenuous.’
‘Well, sorry I criticised your interview technique, I’m sure,’ Turner mumbled to himself as he walked off down the hall.
By the time Pendragon emerged through the main doors of the station it was dark outside, and it felt as though the temperature had dropped at least another five degrees. It wasn’t worth bothering with a car; a fresh layer of snow had fallen, making the roads even more treacherous. Instead, he turned up his collar, plunged his hands into his pockets and headed through the gate on to Brick Lane.
The human tide had turned. All those people who had headed west into the city for their daily labours were now on the homeward journey, back to husbands and wives, curries and fish and chips, TV and Sky Sports, the pub and the bottle of chilled Pinot Grigio in the fridge, phone calls to Mum and Dad, a snooze in front of the box or ten pages of a paperback before bed, a freezing cold quickie under the duvet perhaps, and then sleep; ready for tomorrow’s action replay.
The Milward Street Pathology Unit was only two hundred yards away. It was a single-storey red-brick building totally devoid of character. Thrown up in the 1950s, it was a monument to post-war austerity. Inside it was a little less austere. The hallway was painted a warm cream shade, and contained a cluster of chairs, a table with some two-year-old magazines on it, and a plastic palm in the corner. Pendragon strode along, ignoring his surroundings. He had been here on dozens of occasions, and almost every time the visit had involved his staring down at a corpse and receiving distinctly unpleasant information as to how the recently living person had become a dead one.
Jones saw him enter the lab and nodded before turning back to the latest arrival on the dissection table. The lab was a stark affair: whitewashed walls, scrubbed surfaces, and the irremovable stink of offal. Visible through an open door stood a wall of morgue drawers – the ‘sunbeds’ as the staff called them.
Jones looked up from the corpse. ‘You’re tired, Pendragon,’ he observed.
The DCI shrugged and stared down at the almost