‘Well?’ he says. ‘Well?’
Bewildered, she raises her head. Oliver sees her face properly for the first time. She is so swollen – the veins in her face are red and prominent, outlined like a road map. She catches Oliver’s eye and her expression conveys all the despair and humiliation the universe can contain.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers, though he’s sure she can’t hear. ‘I’m so sorry.’
In a daze she lowers her eyes to Honey, who still has his head on one side, waiting for her to comply.
‘You heard me, Mrs Robinson. You heard what I said, and although you don’t quite believe what I said, you did understand it. I want you to undo your shirt. Just a bit. Come on.’ He leans forward, whispering up at her with a smile, as if he’s her lover. ‘Undo it. You know you want to. It’s all I want you to do – just open the buttons a little.’
‘Is that all?’ she says distantly.
‘That’s all. Cross my heart, hope to die.’
Slowly, trancelike, Matilda begins to undo the blouse with trembling fingers. Honey watches for a few moments, then he turns away, as if she doesn’t much interest him and now he wants something else to amuse him. He wanders to the back of the ottoman and picks up the Sudoku book, sits down, leafing through the pages to the puzzle he was working on. He pulls a biro from his top pocket, uncaps it using his teeth, and scribbles a number into one of the squares. As Matilda finishes unbuttoning her blouse he is totally immersed in the puzzle, his face a mask of concentration.
The muscles at the top of Oliver’s cheeks ache from where his eyes have tried to close over and over again. A few tears of despair sluice across his stinging eyeballs.
Honey scribbles down a couple of numbers, scratching his head with the base of the pen. Eventually, seemingly bored with the puzzle, he closes the book and puts it on the ground and puts the pen in his top pocket. He gives a long bored sigh. Then he glances up at Oliver, and, making a huge play of pretending he hasn’t noticed him until now, gives a theatrical start backwards. Then, as if shocked to see Matilda standing there with her blouse half undone, he does the same to her. He rocks slightly back on the ottoman to get a better angle from which to appraise her. Makes a vaudeville expression of shock to the gallery, putting one hand to the side of his face and fanning himself with the other, as if the place has suddenly got too hot.
Oliver lets out a long, slow breath. He wants to die. He wants to die this moment and not live any more of this.
‘I’ve said, whatever it is you want you can have it.’
‘Shut up, Oliver. Just shut up.’ Honey touches his waist at the point of his trousers button. ‘Mrs Robinson? Could you just loosen those a little bit there?’
‘What?’
‘Just a little.’
‘But you promised …’
He blows a long snort out of his nose and slams a hand on his forehead. ‘You’re right – I said just the blouse, didn’t I?’ He shakes his head. ‘You know, I disgust myself sometimes. I’m really shite at keeping promises, aren’t I, Mr Molina?’
‘You’re not great.’ Molina raises his eye from the viewfinder. ‘It’s not your strong point, it has to be said.’
‘Yeah – I’m crap. Sorry about that. Now take the fucking trousers off.’
Oliver glances to the opposite side of the gallery and sees Lucia staring rigidly at her mother. Her face is contained, unreadable. On the mezzanine Matilda puts her hands to her waist and unzips the trousers. She bends and folds them down to her feet. Under them she is wearing tights with a pair of plain white knickers.
‘Take those off too.’
‘Take off what?’
‘The tights.’
There is a long pause. Then Matilda lowers her face and begins to cry.
‘Just fucking do it,’ Honey says boredly. ‘Just get on with it.’
Eventually she does as she is told. She rolls the tights off her feet, almost losing her balance as she bends to pull them off each foot. When they are gathered in a ball she drops them next to the trousers. Tears drip from her face on to the floor.
‘And now your bra.’
This time Matilda doesn’t pause. She’s given up. She unhooks the bra and lets it fall to the floor. Her breasts – large and familiar to Oliver – loosen down into their natural place. On the landing the piece of tape holding one of Oliver’s eyes open suddenly gives way. His right eye falls closed and tears lubricate its sore surface.
Honey steps forward and studies Matilda’s breasts, his head on one side, his tongue between his teeth. Her hands twitch, wanting to cover herself, but he gives them a sharp look, and they instantly stop moving and subside. He seems to like that, the way he can make things happen just by using his eyes.
Now she is still he puts his face very close to her stomach. Her belly button, folded like an oyster in a shell. Tongue between his teeth, he sticks a finger into it. Jiggles it around.
Then he looks up, smiling like a child. ‘I like doing that.’ He does it again, his tongue wiggling between his teeth in time with his finger. ‘I love it, love it.’ He lets his finger trace down Matilda’s stomach. He tugs at her knicker elastic and peers inside, frowning. ‘I can smell you from here.’
‘Don’t talk to me like that.’
‘I’ll talk to you exactly the way I want. Now take these off.’
‘No.’
‘Yes.’
‘You said I didn’t have to.’
He rolls his eyes up to her. He looks like a caricature of a supplicant in a religious painting. ‘Matilda,’ he says evenly. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’
He lets the elastic snap into place and takes a step back, arms folded. She hooks her fingers into the top of her knickers, rolls them down over her pelvis, her knees, and keeps rolling until they drop on the floor at her feet. She stands up straight, her shoulders back, proud in her nakedness, her eyes fixed on a point on the chandelier.
‘Mr Molina? I suppose it’s obvious you’re not interested in Mrs Anchor-Ferrers here. I mean – you’ve got your young bit of trim lined up over there.’ Honey jerks his chin in Lucia’s direction. ‘Admit it, Molina – you have got it in your head, haven’t you?’
Molina doesn’t answer. He continues filming.
‘And I suppose that begs the question about what you do when you find your fancies turning to thoughts of love – I mean, can you be trusted? Are you a courteous lover, or are you a bit rough? A bit inconsiderate? I hope you’re not the sort of freak that Kable was …’ He pauses. Then continues, in a curious voice. ‘Mrs Anchor-Ferrers? Mrs Robinson? How much were you told about the way Hugo and Sophie died? Do you know as much as your husband does?’
‘You’ve told us you’re nothing to do with Minnet Kable,’ Lucia says angrily. ‘Just stop talking about him.’
Honey raises an eyebrow at her. ‘Good morning, trim. Are you upset because Hugo was your boyfriend?’
‘Shut up about it.’
‘I don’t think I will. If it’s all the same to you.’
Lucia closes her eyes and swallows once, twice, her throat working.
Honey pulls the biro from his breast pocket and taps it thoughtfully against his temple. He begins to pace the mezzanine. He has the air of a college professor in a lecture, thinking carefully through the information he’s imparting.
‘Let’s examine the evidence that Kable actually got off sexually in killing those two poor unfortunate friends of yours, Lucia. I mean, you know that when they were found they’d been placed together, as if they were … what’s the nice way of putting it? In flag—What’s it again?’ He snaps his fingers repeatedly, trying to bring the word back. ‘In flagrante delicto. I’ve got that right, haven’t I? But the thing with the guts.’ Honey makes a circling motion at his own stomach. ‘All that nastiness. What was all that about? I mean, I’ve calculated it and at a guess two people, it makes nearly sixty feet of intestines. It must have weighed – oh, I don’t know, with food in it three or four stone in total. T
hat’s not easy work, you know. He must have had a motive for that. And what other motive is strong enough to do that than a sexual motive? So I did some research – and what I discovered is that some people are unnaturally attached to the sight and smell and feel of viscera. They love the slime and the blood. Do you think that was what our Mr Kable was into?’
He stops next to Matilda. He uncaps the pen and holds the point against her stomach, then raises his eyes mildly to Oliver.
‘The other thing I read, anecdotally of course, is that for some of these sex freaks where the wound is made is really important. For some of them that’s the most important thing – can you believe that? It has to be in the right place. Even to a centimetre. Imagine that! A centimetre one way or another and all the fun is ruined.’
He tucks his bottom lip under his top lip and peers at Matilda’s stomach.
‘Was it an accident, where the girl got pierced, do you think? Or do you think Kable was clear? If so, I wonder exactly where he liked the hole. I’m going to guess it’s somewhere around here.’ He lets the pen trail over Matilda’s abdomen. ‘Because of what he pulled out of those kids. But where exactly, I wonder?’ He uses the pen to pensively lift the soft skin on her stomach. ‘I mean, it’s difficult to tell with you, with all this flesh. The girl was just a teenager – she’d have been firm in this area, easier to get at.’
He pauses then and holds a finger up to the ceiling to illustrate he’s just realized something. For a moment he is absolutely motionless, then he turns very, very slowly back to Matilda and quite deliberately and slowly, he draws a cross just under her navel.
‘Don’t ask me why,’ he says lightly, recapping the pen. ‘But let’s just say I had to choose something so disgusting to do, then that would be the place I’d go for.’
Hatton Garden
THE SPONSOR’S MARK on the ring turns out to be ‘Beale, Cohen and Dartford’ and the city denoted by the leopard is London. Of course, Caffery thinks, it would be London. The biggest city, the biggest haystack.
London Calling. The opening chords of the old Clash song lodge on a loop in his head. He bangs out the rhythm on the steering wheel and casts edgy glances at the other drivers in the lines of traffic around him. All being drawn into the beating living heart. London calls. It’s a magnet, a black hole into which everything will ultimately sink and drown.
He’s a Londoner, he knows every inch of the city, but that doesn’t mean a visit there isn’t time-consuming, expensive and complex. On this hunt he’s not bolstered by the luxury of police expenses, and although he’s got money in the bank – for years he’s had nothing much to spend it on – he still itches with resentment at the petrol receipts, the congestion charge, the NCP ticket.
Hatton Garden has always, to Caffery’s eyes, seemed curiously placed. Cheek by jowl with Fleet Street and its giant newspaper offices, which when he was growing up hadn’t yet made their switch to the Eastern docks; he still can’t imagine how the two places have come to live so close together. The press buildings have gone, but the jewellers are still here – the long hill of Hatton Garden rising up from Holborn to Clerkenwell, overshadowed by the white Ziggurat building, and flanked on both sides by row after row of bullion and diamond dealers. Some are mere holes in the wall, with sliding shutters to speak into, or concrete staircases in the backs of anonymous buildings. Others have shining gilded shop fronts, displays glistening. It’s like a Harry Potter movie set.
He finds the jeweller’s in a side road halfway up the hill. It isn’t big, but the owners have installed a high-security entry system, a two-door airlock bristling with cameras where you have to wait to be allowed to enter or exit. Caffery waits patiently, one hand in his jacket pocket, fiddling with the ring and the chain he’s jammed in there. The interior of the shop is dark, but after a moment or two a figure appears. He goes around the darkened shop switching on lights and one by one the display cabinets come to life.
‘Sorry.’ Caffery holds up his warrant card as the man comes to open the internal door. ‘I’m not a customer. You can save the leccy.’
The man lets him in then goes around dutifully flicking all the switches to off. He’s about Caffery’s age and very small. Like a man in miniature, he wears a respectable suit and his hair cut very short and initially Caffery finds him hard to place. At first glance he’d have said Levantine – something about the angularity of his skull – but the complexion is pale, the hair is fair, and his accent is pure East London. Possibly something Jewish somewhere, but he’s as mixed and varied in his blood as London is.
‘Michael Beale.’ He shakes Caffery’s hand, his eyes flitting to the police badge. He registers it but he’s not flustered by it. In a place like this it’s probably commonplace. ‘Welcome. Come in. Do you want to sit somewhere private? In the back perhaps? If we sit out here in the front we’re going to be disturbed, I can guarantee it.’
‘The back then.’ Caffery puts his card away. ‘Go ahead.’
They go into the office. It’s just a cubbyhole, but it’s been decorated like a country bed and breakfast, with family pet portraits in cheap frames on the woodchip paper. A stained net curtain hangs in front of the grimed window. Caffery can’t see what lies beyond but he can guess. Fire escapes, wheelie bins and pigeons. It’s funny, he’s been in the countryside for two years but the city is still imprinted on him like an acid plate.
‘What can I do for you?’ Michael flicks the switch on the kettle and begins rinsing out the dirty mugs that clutter the sink. ‘Is it the robbery again?’
‘No. I’m from out of town.’
He pulls the chain out of his pocket and puts it on the table. Michael stops what he’s doing. Mug still in his hand, he bends over and peers at the chain.
‘Plated. No hallmark. If you’re after an identification then you’ll be lost, I’m afraid.’
‘And what about this?’
Again Michael bends his head and peers at the ring. This time he doesn’t dismiss it instantly. He wrinkles his nose so his glasses inch up a bit. He turns his head from side to side, his brow furrowed.
‘I’ve got photos too.’
Caffery’s been to the Scientific Support department at HQ. He’s not on duty but they don’t know that. He’s asked them to photograph the ring and has convinced them to backdate the request so it’s in his duty time. There are two 8 x 10 photos which he holds out to Michael.
‘Yes. It’s one of ours. Nineteen eighty-one. Thirty-three years ago. When my father was running the company.’
‘Your father? Is he alive?’
Michael shakes his head. ‘He went in 1997. BSE, if you can believe it. Ten thousand to one chance of getting it, that’s what they told us. Dad told us that if it’s a ten thousand to one, somebody has to be the one. To make it fair on the other nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine.’
‘He’d have made this ring?’
‘He’d be the only person who could have made it – we’re a small operation.’
Caffery glances up at a dust-covered filing cabinet in the corner. On top of it is a stack of plain blue folders bulging with paper. ‘You keep records. Can we find out who it was commissioned by?’
Michael follows Caffery’s eyes to the cabinet, but he shakes his head. ‘No – they only go back as far as the nineties. And besides, mostly what you see there is appraisal stuff, for insurance companies.’ He turns the ring from side to side, squinting at it. ‘The gold was assayed here in London – and that makes it a pretty common breed – but …’
He stands. He put his mug on the draining board and goes into the shop front. He returns a few moments later holding a jeweller’s loupe. He takes up the ring and examines it carefully.
‘What is it?’
Michael is silent, turning the ring side to side, his face a mask of concentration.
‘I know this ring. I know it. This symbol. I just …’ He screws up his face, groping for the memory. Caffery sits quite still, waiting. After a long silence, Mi
chael rocks back in his chair, a triumphant smile on his face. ‘Yes, bloody hell, what’re the chances? I do remember. I was here when it was made.’ He digs his finger on the table. ‘Right here – in this chair. I remember because Dad was grumbling he had to have special punches commissioned for these two symbols. We didn’t use lasers in those days. I must have been – what? Nine? Ten?’
‘Who was it made for?’
‘The space-junk guy.’
‘The space-junk guy?’
‘Yes – he was the coolest guy I’d ever met. Something went wrong with the punches, I can’t remember, but the guy had to hang around while Dad finished the ring, and I ended up sitting in here with him while he waited. We talked – you know, me trying to be grown-up, rattling on.’
‘About?’
‘Spacecraft. That’s the reason I remember him. He was telling me stories that opened my eyes up like I’ll never forget. About how there was this huge asteroid belt developing round the world, made up of bits of old satellites, discarded parts of spacecraft. He said it’d get to the point where you couldn’t send a rocket into space without it hitting something. That every time there was a collision it’d put more junk into orbit. I thought it was the most amazing thing I’d ever heard. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. I’ve still got an obsession with space to this day.’
‘And his surname?’
‘Jimmy?’ Michael shrugs. ‘Well, I don’t remember that. All I remember is the space stuff. Afterwards I just referred to him as the space-junk man. We talked about him a lot – I mean, I talked about him. I became a dreamer. I got a subscription to Omni after that, became a Trekkie, etc. I think I bored my parents to death, if you want the truth. I never saw him again though.’
‘You can’t remember anything else to identify him? His job? Where he came from?’
‘I suppose I thought he might be something in NASA. Back then we were still buzzing about the space race, if you recall; it wasn’t that long since all that had happened. In my head I must have had some dream he was an astronaut or something.’ He shakes his head. ‘I was a kid – what can I say?’