Birdman

  After the funeral Henrick came back to Greenwich with Toby and they walked together in the park. In the shadow of Henry Moore’s Standing Figure, Henrick paused. He turned, unprompted, to his son and, quietly, in his rich, Gelderland accent, began to tell the story he’d kept to himself for nearly sixty years. She had been a Dutch nurse, he explained; he’d last seen her on Ginkel Heath, 20 September 1944. Later he was told she’d perished in the chaos of the Arnhem battle—along with the members of the South Stafford Brigade she was tending. He had continued to believe this until thirty-five years later, when she resurfaced—freshly widowed by a wealthy Belgian surgeon and working in an orphanage in Sulawesi.

  Toby stared past Henrick as he spoke, down into the valley, where the pale pink colonnades of the Queen’s house glowed like the inside of a shell. Slowly it was dawning on him that for most of his parents’ marriage his father had been marking time.

  A month after the conversation Henrick sold the Wiltshire estate, passed another £2 million to his son and moved to Indonesia.

  With his father abroad and the new money, Toby slipped further out of the mainstream: he rarely went into the Sevenoaks office. Now the only time he put on a business suit was for committee meetings at St Dunstan’s—the rest of the time he stopped shaving and dressed, as if on permanent vacation, in linen suits, expensive shirts—sleeves rolled up, espadrilles or calfskin shoes on bare feet. The opium, and later the cocaine and heroin, were doing their job; they blotted up his worst impulses, they tamped and quietened, leaving no evidence that they had harmed him physically. He was careful not to keep a large supply in Croom’s Hill, using the lonely little Lewisham flat as a safe house. None of his contacts knew the address and he could visit, replenish his stocks incrementally.

  For over a decade he maintained a shaky control of his life.

  By the late Nineties, however, the parties had taken on a different hue, a new casualness. Now, along with the chilled glasses of Cristal and Stolichnaya, came cocaine served in willow-pattern Japanese miso bowls. Girls he had met in Mayfair clubs slouched against the walls, smoking St Moritz cigarettes and tugging at the hems of their miniskirts. He shopped closer to home too, using a discreet network of contacts to guide him to resource pools. Some of his acquaintances lingered on, but they were soon hopelessly outnumbered by the new breed of guest: the girls and their tag-alongs.

  ‘This is wild, isn’t it?’ one said to Harteveld, who—seconds-fresh from a heroin hit—was lowering himself into the walnut highback in the library.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ He looked up, hazy. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I said it’s wild, isn’t it.’ She was a tall, calm girl in her mid-twenties, fine-boned, with swinging chestnut hair and long supple legs. He had never seen her before. She was oddly out of place in her pared-down make-up, buttoned grey wool dress and low pumps.

  Is she really one of the girls? Really?

  ‘Yes,’ he managed. ‘Yes, I suppose, I suppose it is.’

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. Apparently the guy who’s throwing it shoots up for people if they want. Just go into the bathroom and he’s there—oh—handing it out like candy. Even shoots it for you if you’re going to be a baby about it.’

  Harteveld stared at her in disbelief. ‘Do you know who I am?’

  ‘No. Should I?’

  ‘My name is Toby Harteveld. This is my house.’

  ‘Ah.’ She smiled, unrattled. ‘So you’re Toby. Well, Toby, it’s nice to meet you at last. You’ve got a lovely house. And that Patrick Heron on the landing—an original?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘It’s exquisite.’

  ‘Thank you. Now—’ With an effort he pushed himself out of the chair and held out a shaky hand. ‘Regarding the heroin. I take it an invitation to partake would not be rejected?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head, still smiling. ‘Thanks, but I’m crap with drugs. I’d only throw up or something pathetic.’

  ‘Very well. A schnapps perhaps? In the orangery. There’s a, let me see, a Frida Kahlo in there. I believe you’d be interested.’

  ‘A Frida Kahlo? You’re joking, aren’t you? Of course I’m interested.’

  The orangery, piggy-backed onto the house, was chilly. Mango loops of light from the party fell on the potted trees, casting plush grey shadows on the stone floor. In here it smelled of plant food and cold earth, the voices of the guests were muffled. Harteveld scratched his arms, his thoughts meandering. Now why were they here? What was it he wanted?

  The living blue of her veins. Toby, raised and frozen. Her hair soaked and smoothed away from her forehead.

  The girl turned and looked up at him. ‘Well?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘The painting? Where is it?’

  ‘The painting,’ he echoed.

  ‘Yes. The Kahlo?’

  ‘Oh, that—’ Harteveld scratched his stomach, looking down at her soft-edged face. ‘No, I’ve got it wrong. It’s not in the orangery. It’s in the study.’

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake.’ She turned to go but he gripped her arm.

  ‘Look, there’s something I need you to do. Usually—’ His head was swarming. ‘Usually I give two hundred, but with you I’d make it three.’

  She gave him an incredulous look. ‘I’m not on the game, you know. I came with my flatmate. That’s all.’

  ‘Come on!’ he said, suddenly alarmed by her rejection. ‘Four hundred, make it four. And I’m not hard work—all you have to do is keep still, that’s all. I don’t—’

  ‘I said, I’m not working.’

  ‘I don’t take long.’ He tightened his grip. ‘If you keep very still I’m over in a few minutes. Come on—’

  ‘I said no.’ She shook her arm to loosen his fingers. ‘Now let go or I’ll scream.’

  ‘Pleas—’

  ‘NO!’

  Harteveld, shocked by the new imperative in her voice, dropped her arm and took a step back. But the girl had been ignited, wasn’t dropping it. She matched his movement, advancing on him, furious.

  ‘I don’t care’—she lashed out, catching him under the chin with clean, pink nails. Drawing blood—‘Who the fuck you are—’

  ‘Shit.’ He grabbed his neck, stunned by her sudden viciousness. ‘Shit, what did you—what did you do that for?’

  ‘You learn to take no for an answer.’ She turned on her heel. ‘Get it?’

  ‘You!‘ he called after her, clutching his neck. ‘You. Listen, little bitch. You’re not welcome in this house. Understand?’ But her soft black pumps retreated across the stone floor. Smug, self-fulfilled. ‘You come here and take my hospitality, my wine, my drugs—and do this, you little cow. You are no longer welcome!’

  But she was gone, and he knew, as he pulled his hands away and examined the dark streaks, that his control was slipping, that trouble was near the surface.

  He didn’t return to the party. The cleaner found him the next day, coiled on a sofa where he had dragged himself in the small hours, his hands folded crab-like over his head, tears on his face, blood crusted into his collar. She said nothing, flinging open the windows and noisily tidying away ashtrays.

  Later she brought him coffee, sliced fruit and a glass of Perrier, setting the tray on the Carrara marble table and giving him a pitying look. Harteveld rolled away and sniffed the bright air coming in through the windows. There was a promise of winter in it, of cloud and snow. And something else. Something bad in the distance was coming to town. It smelled to him like crisis.

  December the fourth, his thirty-seventh birthday. And it arrived.

  He found the girl under the piano just before 3 a.m. when the party was beginning to break up. Her eyes were rolled back in her head, her arms hugging her shoulders. From time to time she moaned and wriggled gently like a fat cocoon. She was very plump, and wore a short baby-blue dress. There was a tattoo on her bicep which looked as if it had leaked through her skin and whitish strands of matter webbed her mouth.
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  Amused by her, he rested his elbow on the piano and leaned in to look at her. ‘Hey, you. What’s your name?’

  Her eyes rolled back, trying to focus on the noise. Her mouth opened and closed twice before sound came out. ‘Sharon Dawn McCabe.’ In the three words she had identified herself as a child of the Gorbals.

  ‘You know you’re out of your head, don’t you?’

  She hiccoughed once and nodded, her eyes closed. ‘Ah know ah am.’

  So he carried poor, fat Sharon into his bedroom, undressed her in the dark and put her to bed. He fucked her very quickly and silently, dry-eyed, holding on to her cold breasts from behind. She didn’t move or make a sound. Downstairs the party ended, he could hear the caterers clearing glasses. Outside snowflakes hurried past the dark window.

  Next to him Sharon Dawn McCabe started to snore very loudly; he fucked her again—she was too drunk to know it had happened, he reasoned—and fell asleep.

  He dreamed he was back in the anatomy lab at Guy’s that winter afternoon, crouched on the floor, watching in horrified excitement as the fat security guard improved the thin stump of his erection with a soft white hand and, standing on tiptoe against a dissecting table, a look of intense concentration on his face, slid the hips of the lifeless woman to meet his.

  Harteveld could bear it no longer; he let his breath out in a thin sigh.

  The security guard stopped, frozen in the fading light, his eyes rolling as he tried to spy out who was watching him. He wasn’t a tall man, but to Harteveld, crouched on the floor, he seemed to block the horizon. His eyes were wet and cold.

  There should have been a chance to stand up, protest, disassociate himself from this tableau, but Harteveld was dead-locked with fear. And in the second he chose not to move, the security guard, sweat streaking his forehead, recognized that the thin med student in his scrubs had been waiting in here in the darkness for the privacy to do exactly what he was doing.

  The moment shimmered a little. Then the guard smiled.

  Harteveld woke, years later, in the Greenwich house, mewling like an animal, the image of the smile hot in his mind. It was still dark in the room, a thin crack of moonlight coming through the curtains. He lay in a deep sweat, staring at the ceiling, listening to the juices of his heart slowing, waiting for his thoughts to settle.

  I understand, the smile had said. I am like you, the inhuman and sick cannot stay apart for long. They will collide.

  Harteveld ran his hands through his hair and groaned. He rolled onto his side, saw what lay next to him on the pillow, and had to stuff fingers into his mouth to stop a cry coming out.

  ... 22

  Sharon Dawn McCabe was less than ten inches away, on her back, her eyes open. A blood-tinted froth foamed out of the nose and mouth and trickled in mucousy tracks down her chin and neck.

  ‘Oh—my—God,’ Harteveld whispered in awe. ‘Oh, sweet Jesus Christ, what the fuck have you done to yourself?’ He shoved a hand under the sheets and felt for a pulse.

  The clock on the bed table said 4.46 a.m.

  Heart thumping, he hurried into the bathroom and filled the sink with cold water. He plunged his face in until the water lapped around his neck.

  He counted to twenty.

  Restraint, the long pull of desire, days becoming weeks becoming years, and now, after it all, this, this tripwire of fate lying still and white in his bed. Exactly what he had been wanting all these years, the one thing he couldn’t get from the girls, no matter what he paid.

  He straightened, gasping, dripping.

  His face blinked out at him from the mirror. Haggard in the oblique light, his thirty-seven years showed; as if he had been sucked at from the inside, juiced dry by the strain. He pinched his cheeks hard, hoping pain would bring him clarity. But all he got back was the dull, familiar tug in his belly.

  ‘Help me, help me, please.’

  His voice was shallow, little more than a whisper. Nothing was going to help him. He knew that. He dried his face and went back into the bedroom.

  The room was heaped with predawn purples. She lay staring blankly at the ceiling, her mouth open, the sheets demurely pulled up to her collarbone as if she had wanted to die neatly. Shakily Harteveld crossed the room and opened the window. The night air was cold and sweet, stained with snow. The cedar of Lebanon brittle against the star-freckled sky.

  If you wanted to, if you really wanted to—she couldn’t tell you to stop. No-one would know. No-one has to know—

  Trembling, he crossed to the bed and slowly unpeeled the sheet, stripping it from her torso, bunching it at her feet. Her arms were splayed wide; he rearranged them, resting them neatly beside her hips, her still-pink palms curling inwards. The snail’s trail of mucus on her chin winked in the dull light. Oedema. From the lungs. He brought a damp towel from the bathroom and gently wiped the mess. Then he cleaned between her legs where her bowels had opened, changed the soiled sheets. Rigor hadn’t started and she was easy to move, a calm mound of pliable white circles in the cyan light, round breasts, round stomach, thick, lapped knees, long oval thighs: all lines sliding gently to meet at the dark bruise of the pubis.

  The inside of the right arm was traced with scabs. She’d probably taken some of the good-quality heroin that he supplied his guests, he told himself. She must have been used to Gorbals street scag, her body couldn’t tolerate the pure stuff he served. Toppled by purity. Harteveld wasn’t blind to the irony.

  He squatted level with the small white feet. The skin, folded over the tendons of the instep, looked like salted fish. Her sightless eyes gleamed in the purple light. Carefully he ran fingers up over the ankles, the stubble of shaved hair abrading his fingertips, the coolness of the skin making his heart quicken. She was soft. Soft and cool. And still.

  The house was quiet and dark as he unclenched his fists and unfolded himself onto the bed.

  Afterwards he was so filled with self-disgust that he drank a bottle of pastis straight. He vomited most of it back up, and was furious to find himself still alive in the morning. And the grey, used corpse at his side.

  He locked the big oak door at the bottom of the stairs and went back to bed, lying there all day next to her, his hands rigid at his sides, staring out of the window at the spire of the neighbouring church, as it absorbed the colour of the winter air: from cold, bone-grey, warming up through coral, to blue and white, then dipping back into grey again. The cleaner arrived, knocked on the oak door. When he didn’t answer she gave up and before long the sounds of the day started as usual: the hoover moved up and down the corridor, ice dripped from the cedar, glasses clinked as they were packed into their rightful places.

  Harteveld continued staring at the church.

  He was strangely calm. The bridge was crossed, a deep lever had been nudged and would never be returned. He knew that his world was folding in on itself.

  He rolled over and gently stroked the rigid nipples.

  When the cleaner came back later that week Harteveld met her at the front door with a white vellum envelope containing £250 and a note dismissing her. He was resigned to it—he knew exactly what was going to happen in the coming weeks. He couldn’t afford witnesses.

  The mechanics of death were simple for someone with his training; he slipped easily into killing. Over the next six months others came. One every five weeks or so. Harteveld believed he was dying, being consumed from the inside out. The only time he could forget was for the hours he spent with the women.

  By late May, there were five bodies, his responsibility each one.

  Peace Nbidi Jackson, 20 years old and the second lovely daughter of Clover Jackson, had appeared at the house on the Thursday night, just as the detective chief superintendent in Eltham was issuing a statement to the press—so that when the doorbell had rung Harteveld still knew nothing of the police’s discovery, those five grim worm-casts uncovered on a wasteland in east Greenwich.

  He placed his glass on the mantelpiece, lightly touched Lucilla’s varn
ished face and went to the door.

  ‘You came. How nice.’

  She stood on his threshold, bare arms glazed copper in the twilight. He stared at her for a long time, knowing he would be the last person in the world to see this girl alive.

  ‘Can I come in or what?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. I’m sorry.’ He stood back and let the girl wander in, eyes wide at the cathedral-like spaces of the house. If she noticed the smell he was worried about, it didn’t seem to bother her. ‘Go through, I’ll get you a drink.’ He followed her into the living room, switched the lights on and opened the drinks cabinet. ‘Would you like something from here? Or wine?’

  Peace sat straight and neat against the Braquenie silk cushions. ‘Have you got Baileys?’

  ‘Yes. Of course.’ Harteveld reached into the depths of the cabinet. He should have guessed. The girls always wanted something sweet. He poured the Baileys into a heavy crystal tumbler. ‘I suppose you’ve got a name.’ He held the tumbler up to the light in his long fingers. ‘Haven’t you?’

  ‘Peace.’

  ‘That’s nice.’ He didn’t smile.

  Peace looked at him sideways. ‘Why’m I supposed not to say nothing about this?’

  Harteveld placed the glass of Baileys on the table, and returned to the cabinet to pour himself a pastis. ‘Peace, I am in the fortunate position of caring less about money than about discretion. Here.’ He opened the calfskin wallet and pulled out ten £20 notes, creasing and folding them expertly, a little effeminate flick of the fingers as he held them out to her. ‘I’ll keep my end of the bargain. And believe me, I’ll know if you haven’t kept yours.’

  Peace looked around, at the grand piano, the portrait of Lucilla and Henrick over the fireplace, the crystal decanters, and seemed satisfied. She picked up the Baileys and leaned back against the cushion. ‘I didn’t tell anyone.’

  ‘Good. Now …’ He sat on the arm of the sofa. ‘If you look on that end table, you’ll see a little ivory box. Can you see it?’

  On the Chinese lacquered table lay an exquisite Ju wood and ivory box. Peace leaned over and inspected it. ‘Yeah.’