A Reconstructed Corpse (15 page)

After about an hour he got bored. Well, that is not strictly true. He got bored after five minutes, but it was only after an hour that he felt so bored he had to do something about the situation or go mad.

He decided to try an old schoolboy trick – ringing the doorbell and running away. The doorway in which he was hiding was too exposed, so he checked out another further along the road before putting his plan into action. He wouldn't be seen there, but should get a good view of anyone who came to the door.

He pressed the broken bell-push, uncertain whether or not it would be working, then scurried off to his hideaway. There he waited.

Just when he had given up hope, decided that either the bell wasn't working or there was no one in the flat, the door was cautiously opened. The hand that opened it appeared to be wearing a rubber glove.

For a moment Charles feared that, seeing no one there, whoever it was would go straight back inside. But no, a figure in shirt-sleeves stepped out on the pavement and looked in each direction before stepping back inside and closing the door behind him.

The man was out there long enough and there was sufficient light for Charles to recognise Greg Marchmont.

An hour and a half later Charles Paris still maintained his vigil, but with diminished conviction. It was bloody cold, apart from anything else. And what was he hoping to see, for God's sake?

He looked at his watch, registered it was twenty to nine, and suddenly remembered
Public Enemies
.

It was the let-off he'd been waiting for. Convincing himself that he couldn't hope to find out anything about the case without the very latest information, Charles Paris rushed back to his hotel and was snugly settled into his armchair with a large Bell's by the time the opening credits started.

Because of the hotel set's poor reception, Bob Garston looked grittier than ever as he promised ‘yet another startling revelation later in the programme – a gruesome new twist in the investigation into the murder of Martin Earnshaw'.

Once again, the audience was teased by trailers through a sequence of more or less irrelevant criminal features until the moment of maximum impact arrived.

Bob Garston back-announced an item about self-switching security sensors and turned gravely to another camera.

‘Now the murder of Martin Earnshaw . . . Police investigations into the crime are of course continuing and we've had another faxed report from our very own private eye Ted Faraday assuring us he's still on the case. But we also have a startling new development.

‘On last week's programme
Public Enemies
brought you exclusive coverage of the ghastly discovery of the dead man's arms . . .' He let the pause linger, relishing it. ‘This week another, equally gruesome and appalling find has been made. I regret to have to tell you this . . .' Oh no you don't, oh no you don't, thought Charles. You're over the moon about it. ‘. . . but only today a pair of dismembered legs have been discovered.'

Bob Garston left space for the nation's collective gasp before continuing. ‘Early tests suggest that these match the arms found last week. Needless to say, today's discovery is yet another indication of the kind of sick mind behind this appalling crime. This particular “Public Enemy” is without scruples or compassion, a cold-blooded monster . . .'

And a brilliant television scheduler, thought Charles.

‘And I can assure all of you,' Bob Garston went on, ‘that I, and all of the other members of the
Public Enemies
team, will not rest until we have tracked down this merciless killer. Don't worry – with the help of you, the public, we can do it!'

After this crusading climax, he passed over to ‘DI Sam Noakes for the details of today's macabre discovery'.

She looked as good as ever, though, after what he'd heard from Greg Marchmont, Charles was even more aware of the hardness in her face.

‘At just before eleven o'clock this morning,' the detective inspector announced, ‘a passenger from a London train arrived at Brighton station. He went to the car park to retrieve his car, but as he was driving away, noticed a polythene-wrapped package which must have been pushed under the vehicle while it was parked. He looked at the package and, becoming alarmed about its contents, summoned the police. The polythene was opened and inside were discovered the severed legs of a man probably in his fifties.'

Sam Noakes left it there. The dramatic impact, all the
Public Enemies
professionals knew, would be greatest without any comment.

The camera cut back to Bob Garston, now so gritty that he could have got a job as a pit-head.

‘Needless to say, Martin Earnshaw's wife Chloe is devastated by this latest development. We know, from the letters and phone calls the programme has received for her, how much all of you out there sympathise with her sufferings, and I can assure you that she is very aware of and grateful for . . . your support.'

The presenter had by now turned up his Sincerity Control almost to danger point. ‘And I'm sure you know that the best thing you – and we on
Public Enemies
– can do for Chloe Earnshaw . . . is to come up with that vital piece of information that will lead us to her husband's killer.

‘So . . . just to see if this jogs anyone's memory – and if it does, remember our phone lines are open twenty-four hours a day – here is a reconstruction – with Chloe Earnshaw pluckily playing herself – of the last time she saw her husband, as he went out . . . “just to have a drink” . . . only a few short weeks ago.'

As the reconstruction began, Charles couldn't help reflecting that his double act with Chloe Earnshaw really had now got top billing.

But that thought was swamped by another shocking realisation.

Now he felt certain he knew what had been in the package the ‘tramp' had been carrying the night before.

No light showed from the flat when Charles got back to Trafalgar Lane. He pressed long and hard on the bell-push, this time with no thoughts of concealment.

But there was no response. No one came.

He tried the handle. The door was locked, but felt loose and feeble in its crumbling frame. Too excited for caution, Charles Paris threw himself shoulder first at the door. Just like they do in the movies.

There were two shocks. First, how much it hurt his shoulder. And, second, that, in a splintering of rotten wood, the door gave inwards.

He rushed up the dark stairs, certain that the flat was empty. He should have brought a torch, but was reckless now and, when he opened the door to the front room, switched on the light.

The space was completely empty and smelt of detergent. Every surface gleamed. Some of the paintwork was still sticky and the floorboards damp. The cleaning-up job had been extremely thorough.

He searched through the sitting room, tiny kitchen, lavatory and bathroom, but there was nothing. Every trace of recent occupancy had been erased.

Only on the floorboards of the bathroom was there anything that might constitute a clue. The area was damper than its surrounds, and had clearly been subject to even more vigorous scrubbing.

But two stubborn marks had resisted all the cleaner's efforts. Two spots, each about the size of a new penny piece.

They were rusty, the colour of dried blood.

IT WAS A DILEMMA. Charles Paris felt certain he had found out something of real significance in the Martin Earnshaw case, but he didn't know what to do about it. His natural instinct would have been to take his findings to the police, but what police? Of those he knew connected with
Public Enemies
, Greg Marchmont quite possibly had some part in the actual crime, and the terms in which Superintendent Roscoe had warned Charles off further investigation ruled him out as a sympathetic ear.

The only officer he felt inclined to inform was Sam Noakes. From what he now knew of the detective inspector's ambition, Charles reckoned she'd welcome new leads to follow up. To have cracked the case apparently single-handed was just the kind of entry she'd like to see on her CV.

But Charles didn't know where to contact her, and anyway wasn't quite ready to do so yet. He needed to get his own ideas on the case clear first.

These thoughts went through his head as he sat over his hotel breakfast. It was a step up from the police station, but only just. Bacon, egg, shrivelled tomato and soggy fried bread slithered about his plate on a little slick of grease. Nor did the fact that all the other deterrently silent denizens of the tiny dining room were smoking add to Charles's enjoyment.

Also he felt the dull thud of another hangover. He'd needed a few slurps of Bell's to calm him down when he got back the previous night, and they had had a disproportionate effect on his head. It all comes of not drinking the night before, he thought wryly. When you start again, the stuff really does feel powerful. Oh dear, getting back into the old cycle again. Must cut down. Wouldn't be that hard to have a few days completely off the booze, would it, he tried to convince himself.

With an effort he brought his tired mind to bear on the murder of Martin Earnshaw – in which he felt increasingly certain both Ted Faraday and Greg Marchmont were involved, though at what level he did not know. Marchmont, he was sure, had done the clean-up of the Trafalgar Lane flat. The timing and the fact that the detective sergeant had been in shirt-sleeves and rubber gloves made that certain.

But had he been cleaning up after his own crimes or after those of Ted Faraday? The ‘tramp' Charles had seen could not have been Marchmont, who was safely ensconced at the time in the pub where Kevin Littlejohn drank, so it seemed a safe bet that it was Faraday in disguise. Roscoe had certainly pointed up the connection between the private investigator and a flat in Trafalgar Lane.

If the contents of the ‘tramp's' package were what Charles strongly suspected, Faraday's involvement became even more chilling. Why would he be carrying the dead man's legs, presumably to their hiding place in the car park, if he had not had a hand in Martin Earnshaw's murder?

If he had, didn't the meticulous cleaning-up operation and the stubborn bloodstains that had survived it suggest that, if not the actual killing, then at least the dismemberment had taken place in the flat?

What the private investigator's motive for murder might have been Charles had no idea. But he remembered Greg Marchmont speaking of Faraday's investigation into a loan-sharking operation and his possibly too close involvement with the criminals concerned. It was Martin Earnshaw's escalating debts to loan sharks that were believed to have led to his murder.

Difficult to get much further without talking to someone. Maybe it would have to be Roscoe or Marchmont after all. Charles decided he would check whether the two policemen were still in Brighton, and rang through to the hotel where they had all stayed.

No, the two gentlemen had checked out the previous day.

Fortunately Charles then asked if any other members of the police were currently staying at the hotel or expected in the near future.

‘One of them's booked in for tonight,' the girl replied, with a lack of discretion that suggested she was new to the hotel business. ‘That lady policeman . . . you know, the pretty one from the telly.'

‘DI Noakes?' said Charles, wondering how Sam would have reacted to her description.

‘That's the one. She's arriving after lunch.' A note of doubt came into the girl's voice. ‘Ooh, perhaps I shouldn't have told you that.'

‘Don't worry about it,' said Charles Paris, as he put the phone down.

There was one small detail of investigation he could undertake on his own before trying to contact Sam Noakes. He consulted the local Yellow Pages. To his surprise, he found no entry under ‘Fax', but then he knew that reading Yellow Pages often involved lateral thinking and cross-reference. Indeed, one of his favourite jokes was an entry he'd found in the Yellow Pages: ‘Boring: SEE CIVIL ENGINEERS.'

He found what he wanted under ‘Facsimile Bureaux'. ‘PRINTSERVE' was there, with an address in Churchill Square. He thought of ringing them, but decided an in-person approach might be more fruitful. So he paid his bill and left the hotel without regret. His lips were still slicked with the taste of that breakfast.

As he walked through Brighton, with the sexy whiff of the sea in his nostrils, Charles Paris tried to decide how to conduct his enquiry at the fax bureau. The direct approach might yield results, but he felt an urge to take on a character for the task. Partly he thought it might get a better response, and partly he was just an old ham.

He went into a tatty junk shop and bought a pair of thick wire-framed glasses. As he put them on, he felt the little lift of excitement taking on a new identity always prompted.

Now who . . .? Perhaps he should present himself as something to do with the police . . .? That would at least give a reason for his making the enquiry. It would also give him the guilty
frisson
of breaking the law. Impersonating a policeman he knew to be an offence, but Charles Paris relished some kind of quiet revenge for the dressing-down he'd received from Superintendent Roscoe.

But who exactly should it be? Mentally he reviewed his gallery of policeman performances. They divided naturally into three: those who'd had speeches beginning, ‘We have reason to believe . . .'; those who'd said, ‘I'm afraid I have some bad news for you, Mrs Blank . . .'; and those who'd shouted, ‘Not so fast!'

His favourites perhaps had been seen at a Soho fringe theatre in the early seventies (‘Charles Paris's policeman was clearly intended by the author to provide comic relief in this depressing farrago. His was the only performance that didn't make me laugh.' –
Time Out),
and on an extended tour of a sub-Agatha Christie epic called
Murder at the Bishop's Palace,
in which he'd appeared in Act Three to arrest the murderer all the way from Winchester to Wilmslow and attracted from the
Nottingham Evening Post
the ambivalent notice: ‘The cast was completed by Charles Paris.'