The Borgia Ring (14 page)

‘There have been two recent deaths associated with Bridgeport Construction’s site at Frimley Way,’ he began. ‘A labourer named Amal Karim was beaten to death early on Saturday morning. He had been a night watchman at the site. His body was found on the dance-floor of a nearby club. Our forensics team have ascertained the attack occurred on the roof of the club and the man’s body was shoved into a ventilation shaft that came out above the dance-floor.

‘The second death was that of an architect from the firm of Rainer and Partner. The dead man is Tim Middleton, the “Partner” of the firm and one of the architects in charge of the development at Frimley Way. Mr Middleton died on Sunday at a local restaurant. The cause of death is presently unknown, but police pathologists are working to elucidate one. At this time, we have no evidence to link these two deaths, or indeed to say for sure whether or not Mr Middleton was murdered.’ Pendragon paused for a moment and surveyed the faces in front of him.

‘And the body unearthed at the site, DCI Pendragon? What can you tell us about that?’ It was Fred Taylor.

Pendragon took a deep breath, buying himself time to gather his thoughts. ‘I think there’s been some misunderstanding, Mr Taylor,’ he retorted. ‘There is no body.’

‘My sources tell me otherwise.’

‘Ah, your sources. Yes. Well, I’m afraid your
sources
are misleading you. During the course of their examination of the murder scene, our forensics team unearthed a human bone, a metatarsal from the right hand. Would you like me to spell metatarsal for you, Mr Taylor?’

A couple of the newsmen laughed.

‘A human bone?’ one of the journalists asked.

‘Yes. However, the bone is extremely old.’

‘But from another murder victim … and at the same location,’ Taylor insisted.

‘No idea. If there is another murder victim, the crime would have occurred a very long time ago,’ Pendragon retorted. ‘The bone is at least a hundred years old.’

The journalists all started talking at once. After a moment, Pendragon raised his hand and they quietened down. ‘I’m afraid that is all the information we have at this time. We will keep you informed of any new developments.’

‘Chief Inspector, do you have anything to say about the recent spotlighting of your private life?’

‘No comment,’ he responded, and turned towards the doors to the police station.

‘No comment, Inspector? You don’t wish to respond?’ Taylor pressed him.

Pendragon paused for a second and ran one hand over his brow. Pushing the door open, he strode purposefully into the station.

It was almost 7.30 by the time Pendragon got back to his flat. He felt exhausted, but it was not just the demands of the job that made him feel so tired. Containing his inner frustration and anger was exhausting. He had always viewed the press with suspicion. The memory of the media intrusion when his daughter had disappeared remained a bitter one. The local papers in Oxford had pointed out the irony of the fact that a senior cop could do nothing to protect his own daughter. It had been obscenely cruel and had hurt both him and his wife deeply. His marriage would have fallen apart slowly even without this added burden, but he could never forgive the press for that insult and had kept them at a distance ever since.

And now, this shit of a local journalist had regurgitated the same bile. Fine, poke fun at the fact that Jean had left him for a woman. He could deal with that. But Amanda? He could still see her so clearly in his mind. She would be a teenager now. And perhaps indeed she was. Perhaps she was living safely somewhere with someone else, and one day she would return to his life. But long ago he had decided never consciously to think these thoughts, they were too agonising, too destructive. No, the only way to maintain his sanity was to imagine his daughter dead. Long dead. At peace.

When Amanda disappeared he had thrown himself into his work, and that had been another factor in the dissolution of his marriage. Ironically, apart from offering him a much-needed distraction, his dedication to duty had done no one much good. Although he did his job well and was respected by his colleagues, he was never promoted. He had once been a high-flier, destined for great things – Chief Superintendent perhaps, maybe even Commander – but suddenly all doors had closed to him, his career had ground to a halt.

Then Jean had finally upped sticks and gone. One evening Pendragon came home extremely late to find she had removed her clothes from the wardrobe, taken a few personal items and left him a brief note. He had done his best to keep everything under wraps but naturally the story got out. Suddenly his position at Headington Police Station near Oxford was untenable. He was owed months of leave and took himself off to Ireland, losing himself in the Derry countryside, drinking Guinness in village pubs and walking twenty miles a day.

Returning to Oxford, he filed for divorce, handed in his resignation and rented out his house. Through an old friend from Police College days, he was offered the position at Brick Lane. At first, he had been a little worried about taking it on.
He had grown up within shouting distance of his new station, but had barely been back since graduating from Oxford twenty-five years earlier. Part of him doubted the wisdom of returning to the place in which he had grown up. So much had changed in his life since he had last walked these streets, so much had changed in him. Indeed, he bore almost no resemblance now to the snotty-nosed young boy who had played on Mile End Road in short trousers, his knees cut and filthy from playing soldiers on waste ground left derelict by Luftwaffe bombs twenty years before he was born.

He looked around his grimy flat and sighed. He had just put Bill Evans’s
Sunday at the Village Vanguard
on the turntable when he heard a soft tap at the front door. He turned the music down and went to answer it. Sue Latimer was standing in the hall outside, holding a bottle of whisky tied with a blue ribbon. ‘A small token of thanks,’ she said, giving it to him.

‘For what?’

‘Being my knight in shining armour.’

Pendragon laughed and took the bottle. ‘You really didn’t …’ He saw Sue peering into the room beyond him. ‘Come in.’ He opened the door wide and let her through ahead of him. ‘I’m sorry, it’s not much to write home about. Can I get you a drink?’

‘Any wine?’ she asked, gazing around the room. ‘I love Bill Evans.’

‘You do?’ Pendragon said, going to the kitchenette.

‘You sound surprised.’

‘Oh, it’s just that, well, I didn’t think many people knew about him these days. Jazz isn’t exactly fashionable any more.’

‘I grew up with it. I used to sing in a little band.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh, just amateur stuff, standards. Fun, though.’

Pendragon was smiling, holding two glasses.

‘You having both of those?’ Sue asked.

He handed her one. ‘Cheers.’ He raised his glass. ‘You know, you really didn’t need to buy that bottle. I’m afraid I wasn’t much use.’

‘Nonsense! Who knows what would have happened if you hadn’t arrived at just the right moment? At least I only lost my purse.’

Pendragon shrugged. ‘I got one of my sergeants to follow it up, but without seeing the thief’s face, it’s pretty hopeless. You cancelled the credit cards?’

‘Of course, and thankfully there were only a couple of small notes in the purse. Anyway, the whisky was only partly to thank you. I thought you might need cheering up.’

He gave her a quizzical look.

‘I saw the paper this morning,’

‘Oh.’

‘It amazes me how low tabloid journalists can stoop.’

‘Yes, well. It’s done. It’s in print.’

They fell silent for a moment. He topped up Sue’s glass and they went to sit on the sofa.

‘So, my private life’s been smeared all over the paper, but apart from learning that you like jazz and you can sing, I know nothing about you,’ he said.

‘Well, you already have the interesting bits,’ she replied. ‘Born in Sheffield, forty … something years ago.’ She grinned and took a sip of her whisky. ‘I’m a lecturer at Queen Mary College: psychology. I was married for twelve years, been divorced for three. No kids. There – the scintillating biography of Dr Sue Latimer.’

Pendragon shook his head and drained his glass.

‘What?’

‘Oh, nothing.’

She held his eye for a second.

‘It’s just a shame you think so little of yourself. I do the same thing. I think its collateral damage from divorce.’

She was nodding. ‘Maybe. Although I have to say, I felt liberated by it at the time. Anyway,
I’m
the psychologist.’ She laughed, then looked at her watch.

‘You have to be somewhere?’ Pendragon asked as she finished her drink.

‘’Fraid so. I have an evening lecture for part-time students. Poor souls have to listen to me drone on after they finish at the bank or the office.’

‘There you go again.’

She smiled. ‘Old habits …’

He led her to the door. He went to shake her hand, but Sue leaned towards him and pecked him on the cheek. ‘Oh, I almost forgot,’ she said as she stepped into the hallway. ‘Can I tempt you to dinner at my place tomorrow night? Nothing fancy, I’m afraid. I’m no Delia Smith.’

‘Very glad to hear it,’ Pendragon responded. ‘And, yes, I’d be delighted.’

‘Eight-thirty?’

‘I’ll be there.’

Stepney, Tuesday 7 June, 11.45 p.m.

It was a piece of waste ground popular with kids during the day and on into the dusk; now, with the sky lit only by pinpricks of stars, it was deserted.

The man wore a long, flowing dress made from rich crimson velvet. The full skirt fell away beneath a tight bodice laced at the front and pushed up and out with the aid of tissue paper and cotton wool. The synthetic threads of a black wig teased the top of the bodice and flowed over the shoulders. At the back, the wig had been plaited with great care. Gold silk threads had been woven into the hair. To finish off the costume, he had placed on his head a gold band intertwined with small white roses on slender stems. On his feet he wore gold silk slippers, a little scuffed and dirty from the dried summer mud of the field. It all clashed horribly with the white latex gloves just visible beneath frilly lace sleeves. In his right hand, the man held a carrying cage. A muzzled spaniel had been squeezed inside. It whined pathetically.

In the distance stood a row of tenements, brightly lit at this hour. On the eastern side of the field, a railway bridge could be seen silhouetted against the stars. The man came on to the waste ground through a rusted metal gate under the railway bridge. It was a hot night and the heavy velvet dress made
him sweat profusely. To make things worse, the cage seemed to grow heavier with every step.

But the darkest point was not far away.

A hundred feet into the field, under the faint starlight, the man had become almost invisible, only his white, sweaty face visible beneath the black braids.

The man in the red dress lowered the cage to the ground. The dog had been whimpering through its muzzle ever since it had been taken from the boot of the car. The cage was too small for it to move around in. The poor animal just stared, terrified, looking this way and that, scraping its head against the steel mesh at the front of the container as it tried to turn.

The man opened a small leather shoulder bag and lifted out a metal tin. Inside lay two hypodermics. He removed the smaller of the two, eased the plunger in a fraction and held up the dripping needle to the faint light. The dog yelped as the needle sank into the flesh of its hindquarters, the sound stifled by the muzzle. The animal panicked and started to claw at the grille, pushing against it and trying to bite through the mesh. Then it froze, and crumpled.

The man opened the top of the cage and cautiously lifted out the spaniel, laying it on its side in the grass. The dog eyed the man. It knew instinctively that something was very wrong but could do nothing about it. Its pupils were dark and big, the look of the calf when it smells the abattoir.

The man removed the second, larger syringe. It contained an orange-brown liquid. Without hesitating, he bent down over the dog and grabbed a lump of fur and flesh just beneath its collar. The animal let out a low, almost inaudible moan as the syringe slid in up to the barrel. The man looked away, unable to meet the dog’s eyes.

It began to shake. Its legs flailed the air, paws twitching.
Its eyes seemed to grow impossibly large and green foam dribbled over its gums.

The man nudged the dog with the toe of his golden shoe. It was dead, rigid and staring blindly at the stars. From the metal box he withdrew a small plastic container. Inside there was a small glass dish, a pipette and a stoppered test tube. The dog’s head was twisted so that its slack jaws faced the ground. With great care, the man ran the rim of the dish around the fleshy gums, gathering up the foam. Then he used the pipette to transfer this to the test tube. When his task was complete, the man swathed the stoppered test tube in bubble wrap before returning it to the metal box, along with the other equipment. This was then placed carefully in the shoulder bag.

The man looked down at the dog one last time, closed the lids over its eyes and turned back towards the gate. He retraced the path he had taken on to the waste ground, but just as he reached the perimeter there was a sound from across the street. He ducked down. A car drove past along the narrow lane beside the field, its lights sweeping the darkness.

Standing up, the man in the dress hurried across the final few feet of wet grass and mud. He did not notice the hem of his dress catching on the bottom of the metal gate that opened on to the lane, leaving behind a sliver of fabric about two inches long. Stepping on to the wet tarmac, he dashed across the lane and ducked into his car, pulling the folds of the red skirt behind him.