Vicious Circle Read online

  “No,” I said. “That wasn’t what happened. Basquiat, how does your version account for the hits that I took? Someone gave me a couple of good hard smacks from behind, right? While I was shooting Peace in the chest? From in front? What’s wrong with this picture?”

  Basquiat looked me over cursorily, as if she’d only just noticed the bruising to my face. She shrugged. “Nothing, as far as I can see,” she said coldly. “I didn’t say you got Peace on the first pass. I assume you fought, you both did some damage, you shot him. He was a big man. He could easily have given you those colors you’re wearing.”

  “Look at them,” I invited her, trying to keep the urgency out of my voice. If I started to think about Abbie, and what might be happening right now only a few miles away, I wasn’t going to be able to think straight: and then I wasn’t going to be able to get out of this. “Those marks weren’t made in any barehand fight: I was clubbed with a pistol butt.”

  “So?”

  “So whoever took me down was armed, too. I didn’t ambush Peace. There were other people there. I’m betting you must have found tracks outside the Oriflamme too. You know there were other people there.”

  Basquiat sat back in her seat, turning her pen with the tip of her middle finger for a second or two. Then she clicked the nib out and wrote something terse on the case sheet.

  “Peace’s prints were on the weapon, too,” Basquiat conceded, putting the pen down again. “Come to that, we think we know where and when he bought it. Recently, if you’re interested. At the same time as he bought the Tavor that was used at the Hendon Quaker Hall. I’ve been busy since the last time I saw your ugly face. Busy building a case.

  “Bottom line? We think the two of you were neck-deep in whatever was going on in that meeting house. Whether it was a satanic ritual or some kind of a scam doesn’t interest me: with your background, and his, it could equally well have been either. But it didn’t go down the way it was meant to, and a whole lot of people ended up dead. Including Abbie Torrington, who we now believe was Peace’s daughter.

  “Peace ran one way and you ran another. You lost touch with him, anyway, and you spent the next few days trying to track him down. You were stupid enough to ask a lot of people a lot of questions, and to use your own name while you were doing it. You couldn’t have given us a clearer evidence trail if you’d been trying to—so thanks for that. But if you’re asking me whether it worries me that you shot Peace with his own gun, no, it doesn’t. Not at all. We found a knife on you, so we’re assuming that you went in with the intention of using that—but then a better opportunity presented itself and you took it.”

  She quirked an eyebrow. “Or did he draw on you first? Was it self-defense? Maybe we can haggle about motive.”

  I slammed my hand down on the table, making Field move in and loom over me with unspoken but unmistakeable threat. “Fuck!” I said, louder than I intended. “Didn’t Reggie Tang tell you that I waded in to help Peace when he was attacked at Thamesmead pier? I wanted to talk to him, not to kill him!”

  For the first time, a flicker of something like interest—nothing so strong as doubt, not yet—passed across Basquiat’s face. She looked up at Fields.

  “Did Tang say anything about that?” she asked him.

  “Not a word,” said Fields, scornfully.

  “Listen to me,” I said. “I was approached by a couple who claimed to be Abbie Torrington’s parents. They wanted me to—”

  “When was this?” Basquiat interrupted.

  “Monday. Three days ago. They wanted me to find Abbie. They told me she was already dead, but they said Peace had somehow taken her ghost—her spirit—away from them, and they wanted her back. There are other witnesses to this. A man named Grambas: he runs a kebab house on Craven Park Road. He saw these two even before I did. He gave me their phone number.”

  “By Monday the Torringtons were dead. They’d been murdered two days before, on the same evening that Abbie died.”

  “I know that. I think these two were the killers.”

  “That’s funny. I had you and Peace down for that, as well.”

  “For the love of Christ, Basquiat!” I was starting to lose it now. “Are you going to put me down for Keith Blakelock and Suzie Lamplugh, while you’re at it? I didn’t have any reason to kill the Torringtons, and you can’t even place me there!”

  “We’re working on that,” Basquiat said equably. “We can place Peace, by the way. We’ve got his prints now. On the bodies themselves, and also on a lot of the stuff that was torn up or thrown around.”

  “He was looking for Abbie,” I said, through my clenched teeth. I had to make Basquiat believe me, and I didn’t know how. “But he found out that she was already gone. She’d been taken, I mean—to that meeting house, where she was going to be sacrificed. Peace got the address of the meeting house from Melanie Torrington and he went tearing off there. Either he already had the assault rifle with him or he picked it up on the way.”

  “Why would he do that?” Fields threw in from over my shoulder, just to show that he was still listening.

  “Why do you think?” I snapped back, without sparing him a glance. “Because he knew he was going to be outnumbered about thirty to fucking one, is why. And he left Melanie Torrington alive,” I added, groping for nuggets of fact that might make Basquiat at least consider another possible scenario. “She was killed later, right? Later than Steve, I mean. She was murdered by a man named Fanke. Anton Fanke. He killed her because she caved in and told Peace where to find Abbie. He’s the one that’s really behind all this.”

  Basquiat blew out her cheek. “And it’s this Fanke who killed Abbie?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Peace?”

  “Yes!”

  “And Suzie Lamplugh?”

  I opened my mouth to speak, gave it up. I suddenly saw the hopelessness of the situation. It wasn’t even just regulation police-issue blinkers: Basquiat was on a moral crusade. She wanted someone to pay for the murder of Abbie Torrington, and she’d already decided that that somebody was going to be me.

  But maybe that was where I needed to insert the lever. If I could make her consider the possibility, just for an instant, that someone else might have killed Abbie, then maybe I could put that same ruthless zeal to work on something positive.

  “The second gun,” I said, pointing a finger at Basquiat. She didn’t like the finger and she nodded to Fields, who took my hand and placed it firmly—a little too firmly, maybe—down on the table. “The gun that killed Melanie Torrington,” I repeated, leaning past Fields’s unattractive bulk to maintain eye contact with the sergeant.

  “What about it?”

  “You must have the forensics on it by now. So check it. Check it against the bullets that were sprayed around at the Oriflamme.”

  “What will that prove?” Basquiat asked, coolly.

  “It won’t prove a damn thing. But Peace’s gun will be a match for the weapon that killed Steve Torrington. I’m betting that the second gun was present at the Oriflamme, and that you’ll find bullets on the wall behind Peace. Or maybe in the floor. I just want you to—think about it. That’s all. Think about my version of what happened. Okay, you’re going to charge me whatever I say. But check the ballistics, and if they pan out ask yourself this: Was I blazing away at Peace with two guns, like some fucking cowboy? Or was someone else involved, both at the Torrington house and when Peace was killed?

  “Then if you’re in the mood, look up Anton Fanke. Find out if he’s in the country on a U.S. passport. He’s got Abbie Torrington’s ghost, and if you don’t do your job, he’s going to kill her again—only more so. He’s going to kill her soul. That’s what’s at stake, detective sergeant. So just—think about it.”

  Basquiat stared at me in silence for a moment or two. I waited. There was nothing else I could do.

  “Detective Constable Fields?” she said at last.

  “Yes, sergeant?”

  “I’m formally charging this man—Felix Castor—with the murder of Dennis Peace. Please read him his rights.”

  “Yes, sergeant.”

  Well, it had bee
n a long shot. I wasn’t really surprised: just filled with a sick sense of absolute failure and helplessness. Basquiat stood up, busied herself with collecting her things and putting the pen back in her handbag.

  “What about my phone call?” I demanded, talking to her back view.

  She glanced around, momentarily. “This is a hospital, Castor. They just have one of those payphones on wheels that they trundle around the wards. I’ll tell one of the duty constables to watch out for it when it comes this way. You’ll get your statutory phone call.”

  “Think about it,” I said again.

  That was a bridge too far. She dropped the file, which she’d only just picked up, and spun round to grab a double fistful of the thin fabric of my hospital gown. Her face came up to within a half an inch of mine—which might have been pleasant in some circumstances but was downright threatening right then.

  “You don’t get to tell me what to do, you son of a bitch,” she spat out. “In a perfect world, you’d already be dead. Or there’d be prisons in England like the ones in the States, where you’d get fucked up the arse a couple of dozen times on your first day. There isn’t anything that can happen to you that you haven’t deserved. Anything. So do not—do not frigging push me any further than you’ve pushed me already. Or I’ll get Fields to hold your head down on the ground while I kick your teeth down your throat.”

  She walked out before I could think of a snappy comeback. As a matter of fact, I’m still working on it.

  * * *

  Back on the secure ward, I counted up my options and got as far as zero.

  I was three floors up, and the windows were all barred. The lock on the door was a trifle light as air, if I could improvise a lockpick, but the two boys in blue standing right outside were a different proposition. And even if I could figure a way to get past them, it wasn’t going to help me much once the APB went out. I’d be running for my life in a white hospital gown: no shoes, no underwear, no money, and nobody I could turn to for help even if I could get to them on foot.

  There had to be another way. And I had to find it fast.

  Sometime in the afternoon I hammered on the door and demanded my phone call again. The cop who I was demanding it from looked so bored and vacant it was a mystery what was keeping him awake. He said he’d see what he could do. Half an hour later I repeated the performance, with similar results.

  Half an hour after that, Basquiat came back. Without Fields. One of the uniforms unlocked the door and held it open for her and she stepped in, giving him a curt nod. He closed it and locked it again behind her.

  I was sitting in the one chair in the room, reading a two-year-old copy of WhatCar? I closed it and threw it on the bed. “Ford are bringing back the Escort,” I commented. “That’s good news for families with exactly two point four kids.”

  “Shut up,” said Basquiat. “Okay, you were right about the other gun, and I admit that’s an odd detail. This guy Fanke? He’s meant to be in Belgium, but we can’t raise him there. All we get is the runaround from a whole lot of nice-sounding people who say he just left or he’s just about to arrive.

  “We’ve also verified that there were at least four other men inside that burnt-out club last night. I’m still working on the assumption that they were all friends of yours—but for the sake of argument, tell me about Anton Fanke. In fifty words or less.”

  “He’s a satanist,” I said. “He founded a satanist church over in America. He raised Abbie Torrington to be a human sacrifice, but Peace was the father and when he found out what was going down he objected. Everything else that’s happened comes from that.”

  “Fanke was at the—whatever you called it? The place where we found you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You and Peace agreed to meet him there?”

  “No. He was using me as a sniffer dog.” She looked blank, so I dropped the metaphor. “My landlady Pen Bruckner sent him. I called her to ask if she could bring some antibiotics for Peace’s wounds. She called Fanke because he was posing as a doctor. Or maybe he is a doctor. Certainly some of his friends seem to be able to lay their hands on prescription drugs without too much trouble. Anyway, he told Pen he’d come along and help, and she bought it. She led Fanke right to us. Or right to Peace, which was what he wanted all along.”

  “Peace’s wounds.”

  “What?”

  “You said you needed medicine for Peace’s wounds. How did he get hurt?”

  I hesitated. I had her taking me seriously now, at least enough to walk it through, and I didn’t want to put too much of a strain on her credulity by talking about Catholic werewolves.

  “Some guys set on him outside the Thames Collective,” I said, evading the issue of who and why and with what implements. “You can ask Reggie Tang about that. He must have seen at least some of what happened from up on the deck.”

  “Okay. Say I swallow any of this, even for a moment. Where is Fanke now?”

  I threw my arms wide. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Get some exorcists onto it, Basquiat. Not me, obviously: whoever else the Met calls in on murder cases. Get hold of something that belonged to Abbie and put them on her trail. Peace was blindsiding me because the Oriflamme had built-in camouflage. But she’s not in the Oriflamme anymore, so she ought to be easier to find now, unless—”

  I didn’t finish that sentence. Unless it was already too late, was what I meant. Unless Abbie had been used up in a repetition of last Saturday’s ritual.

  Basquiat was talking again. I had to wrench my mind off that train of thought and try to stay focused. “Do you know where we could lay our hands on anything that belonged to Abbie?” she was asking me.

  “Yeah,” I admitted. “I do. And bear in mind, if I was guilty, I wouldn’t be telling you this—because it makes me look even guiltier.”

  “Go on.”

  “At my office, in Craven Park Road—next to that kebab house I told you about. There’s a black plastic bag, full of toys and clothes. They all—”

  “We already checked your office,” Basquiat interrupted, waving me silent. “The door had been smashed in, and you’d been turned over pretty thoroughly. There was nothing there.”

  Damn. I groped around for inspiration. “My coat,” I said. “There was a doll’s head in the pocket—” Basquiat was shaking her head. It looked as though Fanke had outthought me all along the line.

  Or maybe not. I remembered the golden chain wrapped around Peace’s wrist. Wrapped tightly, and clenched firmly in that meaty fist. Clenched tightly because it had already broken when Peace tore it from around the dead girl’s neck at the meeting house.

  “When your men turned over the Oriflamme,” I said, “did they find any links from a gold chain?”

  Basquiat’s eyes narrowed very slightly. She shook her head.

  “Check again. They’d have to be small enough to miss. And maybe they could have fallen into a crack in the floor, or gotten into the seams of Peace’s clothes. That chain was hers. Abbie’s. She wore it every day for years. And it was broken, so it could have shed a link or two during the fight . . .”

  The detective sergeant stood, briskly, crossed to the door and hammered on it. “I’m not saying I believe you,” she said over her shoulder. “I am saying I’ll check it.”

  “Fast,” I told her. “Do it fast. I know Abbie already counts as dead in your book. But what Fanke has in mind for her is worse.”

  “I said I’ll check it.”

  The door opened and she stepped through without a word.

  “Get me my phonecall!” I shouted after her. “Basquiat, get me my fucking phonecall!”