Authors: Sam Bourne
But then he had spotted the strange spikes. At regular intervals along their spines, the men had sharp metal pins emerging from their backs. They were especially visible in the profile photograph, the spines silhouetted against the plain white background.
James liked to think he was a man of the world. In Spain a couple of the other volunteers had pornographic magazines which James had seen, featuring knickerless girls bent over chairs and tables, often prising apart their own buttocks in order to expose themselves more fully. He knew from his academic research that sexual desire was a complicated business and that some people were aroused by the unlikeliest of things – fetishes for women’s hair or feet, for example. But he had never contemplated anything like this, that a man could want to look at images of other men whose bodies had been elaborately pierced.
As James knocked back his second Scotch at the bar of the Owl Shop, he contemplated his rotten luck. He had hoped that Lund would prove to be his lucky break, the man who would prove that every now and again you could rely on the kindness of strangers. Instead he had run into a homosexual and pervert, who had somehow deluded himself into thinking this visiting Englishman would be interested in a quick, queer embrace.
No wonder Lund had wanted to meet far out of town, where no one would discover his shameful secret. James should have been suspicious from the off, starting with Lund’s suggestion that they meet in the evening and at a restaurant. And all that flustered placing of his moist hand on James’s wrist: the man was clearly nervous, uncertain of how James would respond to him. What was it he had said?
You have no idea what you’ve walked into here, do you?
James ordered another whisky. And yet, he could not be sure. If Lund really were a homosexual out to make a conquest, why would he suggest meeting in public and early in the evening? If he had summoned James to his home at 11 o’clock tonight, promising some information on Florence and Harry, James would have gone there without hesitation. Meeting at Frank Pepe’s had only made it harder for the man.
Lund had said something else too. He’d been all but jabbering by then, so James had not taken it too seriously. But the message was clear enough: You’ve stumbled into something much bigger than you realize.
Bigger and more dangerous
.
That could be nothing, loose talk from a man determined to exaggerate his own importance, to increase the value of his information. Perhaps that was it: Lund was going to demand certain favours from him in return for the file on his wife and child. The very thought made James shudder.
In the morning he would make an appointment with the Dean himself. Reluctantly he would have to tell him what his subordinate had been up to, attempting to pressure a visiting fellow of Yale into … unseemly behaviour. James might then be able to propose a little exchange of his own: he would keep silent about the deviant interests of the Assistant Dean in return for the location of his wife and child.
He downed the last of his whisky, his fourth double. Or perhaps his fifth. He emerged from the Owl Shop, breathed the night air in deeply, then turned left and headed for his garret room in the Elizabethan Club, stumbling more than once on his way back.
He had woken so often to the fusillade of gunfire that he had almost learned to sleep through it. Somewhere in his unconscious, a voice told him that the pounding rat-tat-tat he could now hear close by was a creation of his own mind, part memory, part imagination. He could just stay here, under this thick, warm quilt of sleep – made thicker by the alcohol still in his bloodstream – and eventually the sound would disappear.
He started suddenly and was bolt upright: the noise had got louder. Now it was not a knocking sound, but a banging on the door and it was not coming from inside his head, but outside it – from the door of this small room. It was accompanied by voices too, which only now became distinct. It took another second for him to hear what they were saying: ‘Dr James Zennor, this is the Yale Police Department. Open up.’
‘What is this?’
‘Open up this minute, sir. Do not think about fleeing through that window, we have a man on the street outside.’
James’s heart was thudding in his chest; his head was cloudy with dreams and drink. His shoulder was sending volts of agony through him; in his stupor, he had slept on it, the alcohol anaesthetizing the usual pain that prevented him making such a calamitous mistake. He staggered towards the bedroom door, which he did not remember locking, and opened it.
The frame was filled by two uniformed police officers, one of whom spoke immediately. ‘Are you Dr James Zennor of Oxford, England?’
‘Yes.’
Instantly his partner snapped a pair of handcuffs on James’s wrists.
‘What the hell is this? What are you doing?’
‘You’re under arrest.’
‘Arrest? What for?’
‘For the murder of George Lund. He was found dead this morning. And you were the last person who saw him alive.’
London
Taylor was practised in this now. He could wake, remove himself from the bed and tiptoe to the bathroom without disturbing Anna. She slept deeply, especially when she had been so … active during the night.
Last night she had begged him to spend the morning with her: they could have breakfast together and then go out shopping. She wanted to buy him something, she had said. When he had asked what, she had dissolved into a girlish giggle – a trick he guessed she had developed back when she was a debutante, coming out at just eighteen years old. It probably worked wonders then, which was why she had kept it up. But the gesture seemed strange in a woman approaching – how old was she? He had never been rude enough to ask and had never tried to find out. Thirty-six? Thirty-eight? Over forty? Jeez, even his mother was barely forty-five.
Anna had been agitating to go shopping with him for a while. She had mentioned Piccadilly or St James’s. She probably had in mind one of those country sports shops, where they sold oilskin jackets, fly-fishing rods and sturdy umbrellas. She had some crazy idea about getting him invited as a fellow guest to a weekend house party of friends of theirs, Lord and Lady Somebody. She would have a quiet word with the hostess, discreetly requesting that the room she would nominally share with her MP husband be close to Taylor’s. ‘Darling, don’t you think it would be so much fun? I could come creeping along the corridor just after lights out and then slip into your room and jump into bed. I haven’t done that since boarding school!’
‘I thought your boarding school was all-girls,’ Taylor had said.
‘It was,’ she had replied, biting her lip naughtily, then breaking out into more of those giggles.
Or perhaps she would take him to Savile Row or Jermyn Street, to buy an expensive shirt or even a suit. She had already given him a pair of silver cufflinks, far too expensive to wear, especially at work. They were bound to raise suspicion.
He was not sure what to think of this urge of hers. He recognized it of course. Plenty of wealthy men liked to cover their mistresses in dollar bills, dressing them up in expensive couture they would never buy for their wives. It seemed a woman with a young lover could be just as stupid.
He kept a couple of pressed white shirts in readiness for such overnight stays on the shelf in the linen cupboard. He had asked Anna if it wasn’t taking a terrible risk: surely, if Murray spotted them there, he would connect the dots. She had dismissed his concerns so blithely he wondered again if the Conservative MP knew all about the affair already, whether indeed he sanctioned it. He put one of the shirts on, finished dressing and scribbled a note, which he left on the nightstand.
Another time, my love. T.
Since it was not yet seven-thirty, he decided to walk to work. It wouldn’t take too long and it was a beautiful morning. He walked by the river, along the Chelsea Embankment, before heading north and into Hyde Park. That was the joy of London, these gorgeous oases of countryside dotted all through the city. He caught a glimpse of the Serpentine, vowed once more to swim there before the summer was through, then carried on until finally he emerged at Park Lane. Everyone said Park Lane and Mayfair were the swankiest parts of town, but these days they were looking distinctly rough at the edges. You only had to look up at the windows of some of the grand hotels and see the black paint to know you were in a country at war.
At last he reached Grosvenor Square. He could see the flag of his country fluttering through the trees. He checked his watch. He was early, though wartime meant everyone was working odd hours: some staying late in order to be in touch with Washington, others getting in before eight, so that they could be in step with Whitehall. He looked up at the marine on duty at the door, giving him the sharp nod he deemed the civilian equivalent of a salute. And so began another day’s work for Taylor Hastings at the London Embassy of the United States of America.
‘Everything points at you, Dr Zennor. The bust-up in the restaurant, you storming out after him, smashing the place up – all witnessed by at least a dozen people. Why don’t you tell me what happened?’
‘I’ve already told you this.’
‘Well, tell me again.’
James sighed. He was sitting in a grey holding room in the Yale Police Department headquarters which was, to his dismay, a real police station. The name had misled him: he had assumed the Yale Police Department would be an outfit equivalent to the ‘Bulldogs’ who policed Oxford, an arm of the academic authorities rather than a genuine force. But these men were dressed like the policemen he had seen in gangster films back home and they sounded and acted that way, too. Once out of the squad car, he had had to pose for a man with a camera – face on and sideways, like the men in Lund’s photographs – then press each one of his fingertips into a small pad of black ink. This was, he realized, serious.
The bureaucratic processing was long and drawn-out: his mind wandered back to Oxford and the autumn of 1937.
He remembered being surrounded by the paraphernalia of new life, a cot in the nursery, a pram in the hall – signposts pointing to the future. Florence had tiny Harry at her breast, her body fuller and, to James, more beautiful than ever. They were newly married in a new house, a new family brimming with hope and possibility.
That was what the visitors saw, at any rate – the likes of Virginia Grey, pitching up with chicken livers wrapped in greaseproof paper from Harris’s because, ‘My dear, as a nursing mother you will be suffering from depleted stocks of iron which you will need to replenish immediately.’
But neither she nor anyone else saw Florence repeatedly pleading with her husband to pick up their baby and to hold him, urging James to overcome his fears that his shattered shoulder would let him down. No one else was there to witness his insistence that he held no such fears, that it was just that he had to be in college in fifteen minutes or that he had an urgent journal article to complete, or that the baby clearly wanted his mother.
Go on Florence, take him, he’s obviously crying out for you
.
Just as no one had seen the late November afternoon when, while Florence napped, James had gingerly approached the crib after Harry had woken. He had stared at his child for a long minute, like a wrestler sizing up an opponent, before reaching down with his good arm and trying to scoop the baby up one-handed, curling his right hand under and then around Harry’s back. It had worked at first, the child effortlessly light in his father’s grip, James almost managing a smile as he carefully hoisted Harry upward. But then the baby, not yet two months old, had wriggled. James’s left hand tried to come to the rescue, but it was too slow, its movements still too jagged and awkward. Little Harry escaped from his grasp, tumbling out of his hand and into the empty, dangerous air, while James watched uselessly, frozen in place.
Only luck ensured that the child bounced back into the soft blankets of the crib. A few inches to the left or right and Harry would have crashed onto the hard, wooden floor. At that realization, James had let out a sound he had never made before: part scream, part roar. And either that or the impact of the fall had set Harry off, crying silently at first, his baby jaw trembling, his tongue oscillating until James was terrified he was taking in no oxygen, before giving voice to loud, hoarse bawling. Florence had rushed in, her features stretched wide with anxiety, as if a jolt of electricity had just shocked her from sleep.
She had picked Harry up in a single smooth movement, placing him on her shoulder, letting him feel her warmth, his face nuzzling into her neck. He was still crying, but soon the register altered, the sobs becoming calmer and more regular. Keeping her eyes on her husband, who had retreated into the corner, on the other side of the cot, Florence had moved towards him, stretching out her free hand in a gesture that said she knew what had happened. James had recoiled, then pushed her arm away. He refused to be comforted. He refused to be pitied. She had soothed Harry, but she would not soothe him. He fled from the room.
Now, nearly three years later and thousands of miles away, he let out a deep sigh. Fear had prevented him from trying to pick his boy up again. Until this moment he had thought that the mistake he had made that day had been dropping the baby. Now he understood better – but he had left it too late.
‘Do you speak English in England? Or are you deaf?’
Startled, James looked up to see a detective glaring at him. ‘I’m sorry?’ Like a gramophone record spinning at half speed, it dawned on him only slowly that this man had replaced the officer who had arrested him. He took in the man’s face: pale, fleshy with thinning hair. What was his name? Riley? It struck James that the name went along with his accent, an accent that he had heard several times this morning from other officers. All older, grey- or white-haired, with the air of men who had worn uniforms all their lives. He forced himself to listen to what the man was saying.
‘I’m afraid it’s not your lucky day. You’re staring at an Irishman and we ain’t too fond of the English. No offence, but that’s how it is.’