The Wolves of London (40 page)

Dumbly I nodded.

McCallum sighed. ‘You may not understand this, Mr Locke, young and fit as you are, but the truth is… it’s simply time. I’m old and so very, very tired. It’s time to pass on my legacy, to deliver it into your hands.’

I cleared my throat, forced myself to speak. ‘But you tried to
stop
me stealing the heart.’ Then I realised that the past for me was the future for him, albeit a future he was aware of. ‘What I mean is, you
will
try to stop me.’

The suggestion of a twinkle appeared in McCallum’s rheumy eyes. ‘Well, I had to make it
look
good, didn’t I? Would you have bashed me on the head if I hadn’t attacked you?’

‘No,’ I admitted.

‘No. Of course you wouldn’t. You’re not a violent man.’

This encounter wasn’t going the way I had envisaged it at all. Despite the fact that I couldn’t decide whether I ought to feel relieved to know that McCallum had
wanted
me to kill him, thus lifting my burden of guilt, or angry that he had chosen me to be his murderer, thus dropping me in the shit, I decided it was time to get back on track. ‘Where’s Kate?’ I demanded.

The old man shrugged, resembling a bat drawing up its wings. ‘How should I know?’

I felt the hope I had been offered slipping away from me. ‘But that’s why I came here! You
did
send me the text?’

McCallum gestured at the man behind him. ‘Hartson here did it. My fingers aren’t as dextrous as they used to be.’

‘But you said you were the man who had Kate!’

‘I lied,’ said McCallum casually. ‘I had to say something to get you to come.’

Despair and anger washed through me, as I realised I was as far away from finding Kate as ever. ‘You bastard.’ I glared at him. ‘So why
did
you bring me here?’

‘To talk,’ said McCallum reasonably. ‘I thought it was time you were given a few answers, time you stopped floundering in the dark.’

I half-raised a hand, then slapped it dismissively on my thigh. ‘So tell me,’ I said, as if it was an inconvenience. ‘Tell me everything.’

McCallum looked at me shrewdly. ‘Oh, I can’t tell you
everything.
’

‘Why not?’

‘Too dangerous, Mr Locke. That wouldn’t do
anyone
any good.’

Exasperated I said, ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. This is a waste of time.’

McCallum simply smiled. ‘I understand your frustration. But please allow me to tell you this. You’re about to embark on a long and difficult journey, one on which you must, at all costs, protect the heart.’

‘Why?’

‘Because if you don’t, terrible things will happen. Not only to your daughter, not only to you and your friends, but to
everyone
.’ He paused, and suddenly his eyes seemed to glitter as he fixed them on me. ‘If the heart falls into the wrong hands, if the balance of power tilts, things will unravel at an alarming rate.’

Despite myself I felt chilled by his words. ‘But why me? Why was I chosen for this?’

‘You killed me. Therefore it’s your responsibility.’

I shook my head. ‘No, it’s more complicated than that. I was dragged into this against my will. I was
manipulated
. But this isn’t me. I don’t
want
any of this. So tell me again – why me?’

McCallum spread his hands. He looked genuinely sympathetic. ‘There’s only so much I can tell.’

‘Bollocks!’ I shouted and took a step forward. I saw the man-mountain standing behind McCallum’s wheelchair tense, and I halted.

For a moment there was an impasse. I stared at McCallum, breathing hard. On the way here I had toyed with the idea of stopping to buy cigarettes. But I had kept walking, too hyped up, too anxious to break my stride. Now I wished I
had
bought some. I could have murdered one at that moment.

I grimaced at the unfortunate choice of phrase, a memory flashing into my head of McCallum lying on the carpet, a hole in his skull, blood pooling beneath him. I unzipped my jacket, slipped my hand inside.

‘What if I were to give you the heart back right now?’ I said. ‘What if I were to return it and never kill you?’

‘But you
have
killed me, Mr Locke,’ McCallum said. ‘The dirty deed has already been done and now it can’t be
un
-done. Don’t you see?’

‘But if I were to give you the heart,’ I said, drawing it from my pocket and holding it out to him, ‘wouldn’t that undo everything? Set everything back to normal?’

McCallum sighed. ‘Time is a complicated thing, Mr Locke. But you’ll get to grips with its quirks and contradictions soon enough.’ He slipped his hand under the blanket spread across his knees, then slowly drew it out and held it up, showing me the object he was holding.

An obsidian heart, identical to my own.

‘There are two of them?’ I said, confused.

He smiled indulgently. ‘Of course not. I’ve come forward in time. As far as I’m concerned you haven’t stolen the heart from me yet. This is the one you’ll flee with after killing me. The one you’re holding right now.’

I looked from the heart in my hand to the one in his. ‘How can the same object be in two places at once?’

He giggled, a cracked, rather awful sound. ‘I know. It’s mind-boggling, isn’t it?’

Before I could reply I heard the faint wail of police sirens. I tensed, hoping they would fade, but alarmingly they seemed to be coming closer.

‘Ah,’ said McCallum sadly, ‘my cue to leave.’

I could barely contain my own urge to flee, but I said, ‘But you’ve hardly told me anything.’

‘Another time, Mr Locke. See you last week.’

And with that he tapped the heart once, lightly, on the arm of his wheelchair. I staggered back, buffeted by what I imagined a minor aftershock of an earthquake would be like, and when I looked again McCallum, the wheelchair and his bodyguard were gone.

The sirens grew louder still, and then, with a final blip, seemed to halt right outside the house. I wondered what to do, whether to go deeper into the house and hide or try to make good my escape. I hovered for a second or two, then decided on the latter – decided, in fact, to adopt a casual, confident air in the hope that I could bluff my way out of the situation. I exited the way I had come in and instead of running or hiding, simply strolled along the gravel path towards the garden gate. My heart was pounding in my chest, but I was hoping my nervousness didn’t show. I was about ten metres from the gate when it opened and two uniformed police officers appeared.

‘Hi,’ I said.

The officers regarded me a moment, and then the chubbier and older of the two said, ‘Can I ask what you’re doing here, sir?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m responding to a text.’

‘A text?’

‘Yes. My name’s Alex Locke. My daughter went missing last week. I received a text, supposedly from the kidnapper, telling me to meet him here at noon. I turned up, but the kidnapper didn’t.’

The chubbier policeman frowned. ‘I see. Could I see the text, sir?’

This was the tricky bit. I shrugged. ‘I’m afraid I deleted it.’

The chubbier policeman looked at me in disbelief. ‘You
deleted
it?’

‘Yes.’ I couldn’t tell him it was because the text had named me as McCallum’s murderer. ‘I did it by accident. I was trying to get the sender’s number.’

The officers glanced at one another. It was clear from their expressions that they didn’t believe me.

The chubbier one said, ‘Are you aware that this house is a crime scene, sir?’

I shook my head. ‘No.’

‘So you didn’t see the tape on the gate?’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Yes. But…’

‘But?’

For a moment my mind went blank, and then I said, ‘I thought whoever sent the text might have put it there as a sort of… marker.’

The younger officer snorted softly. Looking over my shoulder at the house, his chubbier colleague said, ‘May I ask how you gained access to the property, sir?’

‘Through the French windows. They’d been left open.’

There was silence as the older, chubbier officer seemed to come to a decision. He leaned towards his companion and murmured something. His companion nodded. The chubbier officer turned back to me. ‘I’m going to check the house, sir, so if you wouldn’t mind accompanying my colleague.’

‘Accompanying him where?’ I asked.

‘Our car is parked on the road, outside the gate.’

‘It’s all right, I don’t need a lift anywhere,’ I said.

His eyes narrowed as if I’d made a facetious remark. ‘But I’m sure you’re eager to notify the officer in charge of the inquiry into your daughter’s disappearance of this latest development, sir? In fact I’m surprised you haven’t already done so.’

I stared at him a moment, and then I nodded. ‘Yes, of course,’ I said.

The older officer gave an abrupt nod and stomped past me, up towards the house. The younger, slimmer one offered me a tight smile and gestured rather unnecessarily at the gate.

‘This way, sir.’

T
he constable who escorted me to the interview room assured me that DI Jensen would be along ‘in just a few minutes’. An hour later he still hadn’t turned up, by which time my mind was jittery with questions.

How much did the police know about me? Why were they keeping me waiting? Were they trying to unnerve me or had they simply forgotten I was here? Had Jensen been detained or called away? And if so, was it to do with Kate and why hadn’t I been informed?

I’d tried the door after ten minutes, to find it locked. Did this mean I was a prisoner or was it simply procedure? Were the doors to
all
the interview rooms kept locked, regardless of who was in them, purely as a security precaution?

I didn’t know, but it was disquieting enough to make me restless. After texting Clover to let her know what was happening, I paced the room for a while before it occurred to me that hidden cameras might be observing and recording my every movement. So I sat back down, rested my arms on the table and lowered my head, trying to look as though I was using the delay to take an afternoon nap. After a while, the bland, duck-egg blue of the walls began to irritate me, so I closed my eyes. I kept them closed until, sometime later, the door abruptly opened.

I raised my head to see DI Jensen sliding into the seat opposite me, and placing a silver MacBook on the edge of the table. He was wearing a hairy grey jacket that had seen better days and his throat looked scraped and raw, as though he had had to use a blunt razor to shave because he had forgotten to buy new ones. He looked grouchy, and waited until he had pointedly smoothed down his green tie with one flat palm, as if to prevent it from curling up like old bacon, before leaning forward, clasping his hands on the table and locking his eyes on to mine.

‘Sorry to keep you so long, Mr Locke,’ he said, not sounding sorry at all.

‘I expect you’re busy,’ I replied.

‘We are,’ he said, as if that was partly my fault. ‘Very.’

Sensing a presence behind me, I glanced over my shoulder to see that a uniformed constable had followed Jensen into the room and was now standing like a guard beside the door.

‘You seem nervous, Mr Locke,’ Jensen said.

I turned back, trying to make it look casual. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m fine.’

He indicated the MacBook. ‘Mind if I record our interview?’

‘Sure.’

He opened the MacBook and busied himself with it, his fingers dancing over the keyboard. Finally he nodded with satisfaction. ‘There we go. Isn’t technology wonderful?’

‘Mm,’ I said.

‘Now.’ He laced his fingers together again. ‘Would you mind explaining to me why you were in the grounds of number 56 Bellwater Drive, Kensington, at approximately 12.15 p.m.?’

‘I explained all this to the officer at the time,’ I said.

Jensen’s facial muscles twitched into something approximating a smile. ‘I appreciate that, Mr Locke, but please indulge me. I would prefer to hear your explanation first hand. And also for the record, of course.’ He nodded at the MacBook.

Trying not to sigh, I told him again about the text.

‘May I see?’ he asked.

‘I deleted it.’

Although I suspected he had already been informed of this, he looked at me as if he was astounded. ‘You
deleted
it?’

I told him what I had told the officer earlier. He stared at me as if to encourage or intimidate me into saying more, but I remained silent.

Finally he sighed and said, ‘Was that the
only
reason you were at 56 Bellwater Drive today, Mr Locke?’

I felt my heart quicken. ‘Yes.’

He was silent for another long moment, and then he said, ‘Did it occur to you to wonder why my officers apprehended you at the Bellwater Drive house?’

Apprehended. It was only a small step from there to ‘arrested’.

‘I expect someone told you I was there.’

‘You expect correctly,’ he said, and fell silent again.

I wanted to ask him
who
had told him, but I waited patiently for him to continue. I had learned long ago that in situations like this it was best to say no more than you had to. After a moment he said, ‘Were you aware, Mr Locke, that the house on Bellwater Drive was a crime scene?’

‘Not until your officers told me, no.’

‘And were you, or are you, aware who the house on Bellwater Drive belonged to?’

‘No.’

‘Were you similarly unaware that the owner of the house on Bellwater Drive was murdered during what is believed to have been a robbery last week?’

‘No.’ I felt a trickle of sweat run down the back of my neck. ‘I mean… yes, I was unaware.’

‘Have you any idea what was taken from the house on Bellwater Drive during the course of the robbery, Mr Locke?’

‘No,’ I said, and this time I couldn’t prevent myself from blurting, ‘How
would
I know?’

Jensen paused, looking at me a moment longer, and then he shifted his gaze slowly and deliberately to fix on his interlocked hands. He looked as though he wanted to give the impression he was thinking hard, mulling over my responses, though I suspected that he knew exactly what he was going to say next and was only prolonging the moment to exacerbate my unease. My lips were so dry they were sticking together, but I felt loath to part them with my tongue. I felt another trickle of sweat run down my neck and soak into the already damp collar of my jacket.