The Door That Led to Where (8 page)

The funeral of Leon's mum took place the following Wednesday. No horse-driven hearse for her – just a basic coffin, one wreath and three mourners: AJ, Slim and Elsie. No one had seen Leon since his mother had died. It wasn't for the lack of looking.

AJ had spent all of Sunday searching for him and all he had found were rumours and gossip about Leon being in deep shit.

AJ hadn't found Leon and he hadn't found the snuffbox papers, but on Monday he had learned, to his relief, that although Mr Baldwin's condition was stable he was expected to be in the London Clinic for a little while longer.

AJ had hoped that Leon would be at the crematorium, but he wasn't. It was off a busy main road and the minicab driver had had to stop and ask for directions at a petrol station. The chapel itself sat adrift among a rocky sea of monuments sanitized with plastic flowers. The crem was nothing more than a clinical conveyor belt where mortal remains were turned into something more manageable.

Slim had said he would meet AJ and Elsie there.

‘Why he wouldn't come in the minicab with us is beyond me,' said Elsie. ‘It's a right trek out to this dump.'

AJ had a feeling he knew the answer. It was all over Sicknote's Facebook page: pictures of her with Moses, all loved up. “My man, the one and only,” she had written. Elsie was paying the cab driver when Slim emerged from behind a memorial stone, looking like death.

‘Have you eaten?' said Elsie. She took a sandwich from her handbag and offered it to Slim.

‘No. Yeah. I'm all right,' he said.

‘Eat,' said Elsie.

Slim stuffed it in his mouth as the hearse bearing Leon's mum's coffin slowly pulled up.

It was a woebegone sight. Wednesdays, thought AJ, are made for woebegone sights.

‘I'm glad I've saved with the Co-op,' said Elsie. ‘When I go, I'm going in style. It'll all be catered for, down to the last egg sandwich.'

The priest wanted to be done with this cremation. He looked awkward. In his hand was a laminated order of service. AJ reckoned he had picked out the one most appropriate for a drug addict.

‘She was a wonderful mum,' the priest said in a voice of hopelessness, ‘and will be much missed in her community.'

So much so that she was already forgotten, thought AJ. Her flat had been cleaned out, slapped with paint and was waiting for a new family to move in.

The priest seemed relieved when at last he could press the button, and the curtain opened as Bob Dylan croaked Leon's mum's one request. Broken head, thought AJ. Nothing but a broken life.

It was then that AJ saw the sparrow. It must have flown into the chapel by mistake and it settled on the coffin. He wished Leon was there to see it; he would have known it was a sign, a good sign. Just before the conveyor belt started with a judder and the coffin chugged into oblivion, the sparrow flew up and sat on the rafters cleaning its wings.

‘That's that,' said Elsie as they stood outside in the rain. There was another funeral party waiting to go in. A family affair with weeping relatives, a huge glass hearse, pallbearers and even a small lad with a bugle to play ‘The Last Post'. So many wreaths. The largest spelled out ‘DAD' in chrysanthemums.

Elsie had told the minicab to wait. Slim said he would rather go home by tube but Elsie was insistent.

‘There is no tube to Stokey,' she said. ‘What you going to do, love? Walk back in the rain?'

‘No,' said Slim. His phone bleeped.

They sat, the three of them, in the back of the car.

‘What're you going to do about her ashes?' asked Slim.

‘I'm picking them up tomorrow,' said Elsie. ‘I'll keep the urn in the lounge until Leon comes back. I mean, what else can we do? At least she can watch TV with me.'

Slim's phone bleeped again.

AJ only now realised that Slim's phone had been bleeping all the way through the service.

Slim looked at it nervously as if the phone itself might attack him. At Stokey Town Hall he asked the minicab to stop. He said he had something to do.

‘I'd better go with him,' said AJ.

‘You be careful, love,' said Elsie.

On the pavement Slim was as jumpy as a bag of nuclear beans.

‘What's up, bro?' said AJ.

Slim handed him his phone. The last message read ‘if i CU your dead.'

AJ scrolled down. All the messages were to do with the killing of Slim. He handed back the phone.

‘Moses,' he said.

Slim nodded. ‘Not just Moses – his whole gang are after me. And his dog. Bloody vicious, that dog, a prizefighter. It'd kill a man for a bone.'

They walked together up Albion Road. After a bit AJ realised that Slim was crying.

‘He's going to kill me and Sicknote doesn't care. She went back to him. She told me I was pathetic, that I didn't know nothing about ladies, that I should go back to school and learn the facts of life. Bitch. She put these pictures up on Facebook, of her and Moses. I might as well kill myself and save Moses the trouble.'

‘Don't say that,' said AJ.

‘You tried to warn me. So did Leon. I wish I was dead, man.'

‘What? And be stuffed in an urn?'

‘What do I do? Where can I hide? This is no joke.'

It came to AJ in a flash. He still had to find the documentation – there was more than a chance that Mr Baldwin would be back in chambers any day now. Why not take Slim through the door? At least in 1830 there was no chance of Moses getting his hands on him. Yes. It might well work.

‘Can you lay low until Friday?' AJ asked.

‘I hope so.'

‘OK. On Friday I'll meet you at Phoenix Place, about six o'clock. Just be there. Oh, and make sure you've had all your jabs – measles, polio, typhoid, anything like that. Go to your GP and say you're going travelling.'

‘What?' said Slim. ‘He'll think I'm going to a jihadi training camp. Anyway, I don't have a passport.'

‘You won't need one,' said AJ. ‘Not where I'm taking you.'

Once you've made it over the bump of Wednesday it's downhill all the way to Friday. And Friday couldn't come soon enough for Slim. He had phoned AJ to say that he was holed up with a cousin in Dalston. He sounded terrified and said he was too scared to go to his doctor.

‘They're still after me. I tell you, man, I'm dead meat.'

AJ had insisted. ‘Go in disguise,' he said. ‘But go.'

By Thursday Leon still hadn't been in touch. AJ felt weighed down by his friends, work, worry. Ever since he had visited Mr Baldwin he had been as edgy as a dog with fleas. At any moment it might be reported to Morton that there was a thief working in chambers and that the thief was Aiden Jobey. He had looked up the definition of stealing online. ‘To take (another person's property) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it.' The key had his name on it so legally it was his property, not Baldwin's or anyone else's. It struck him – and why hadn't he thought of this before? – supposing there were hundreds of people who knew about the door and all of them were walking back and forth through time, just like it was an outing to a theme park, and helping themselves to candy? No wonder Baldwin wanted the key. No one would want to lose their free pass.

The image of a beanstalk came to him and he laughed. Jack selling tickets for all those who wished to climb up past the clouds. Somewhere through that door, he thought, a giant is waiting to eat me up. Fee-fi-fo-fum. What he didn't know was what the giant looked like.

The tension at Baldwin Groat was so thick that morning it could have been classified as toxic waste. Morton's mobile was superglued to his ear and he was constantly in and out of meetings. Mr Groat, who seldom put in an appearance at chambers, was now there most days except when he was in court on his partner's cases. The atmosphere was made worse by the presence of the police, who were searching Baldwin's room again.

Stephen had recovered in time to be back in the centre of the maelstrom, wearing a new suit. He had lost weight and his neck, which was long and permanently spotty, stuck out of his shirt collar. Hunched over his computer, picking at any scraps of gossip and titbits of scandal, he reminded AJ of a cartoon vulture.

‘They say Mr Baldwin's house is like a museum, full of valuable paintings and clocks from the eighteenth century.'

Stephen said this to the fees clerk who looked none too happy. Mr Baldwin was still in intensive care, though it was reported he'd had a better night and there were slight signs of improvement. But the suspicion that someone had attempted to murder him was proving bad for business.

‘Mr Basil called Mr Groat this morning,' added Stephen. ‘He's taking his client's case elsewhere. Not the first and I doubt it will be the last. There'll be departures here soon.'

Morton stuck his head round the clerks' room door.

‘Stephen,' he said, ‘if anyone is going to depart, you will be the first in line. Aiden, my office please.'

AJ noted that Morton's office, never exactly tidy, was in complete turmoil.

‘Is everything going to be all right?' asked AJ.

Morton sighed. ‘I suppose it depends which end of the bottle you're looking through. It'll be all right for someone but not necessarily us.'

AJ didn't know what he meant. It took him a moment to realise that what Morton was saying had nothing to do with Mr Baldwin.

‘Mr Groat is summing up a libel case at the High Court. Take him these papers. You are to stay with him unless he sends you back. Oh, and, Aiden, I found this in Mr Baldwin's office.' He handed AJ a file. ‘Lord knows what he was doing with it. Would you put it back in the Museum?'

It was the file marked
Jobey 1813
. AJ looked inside. The map was gone.

AJ turned to leave and Morton followed him into reception where Detective Poilaine was waiting to see him. AJ thought it best to avoid eye contact with her, although he could feel her staring at him.

‘I understand you want to look at the diary,' said Morton. ‘We have chambers to run, you know. Aiden, what are you waiting for? Cinderella's coach?'

AJ arrived at the High Court to find Mr Groat pacing up and down the corridor outside, his hands behind his back.

‘Ah, Aiden. At last.'

In his wig and gown he looked even more like the man in the portrait that hung above his desk.

AJ, forgetting his place, said, ‘That painting above your desk, sir – is it of a relative?'

Mr Groat glanced up.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘He was a judge at the Old Bailey – sent more men to the gallows than you've had hot dinners.'

‘How did he live with himself?'

‘Different times, Aiden. A man – or a woman – could swing for a loaf of bread.'

Mr Groat and his team were acting for a film star who was suing a newspaper. It was an interesting case and AJ watched from the side of the court. It took his mind off the impossibility of the instructions Mr Baldwin had given him. Twice he was sent back to chambers to bring other documents. When court was adjourned for the day, AJ collected the files, packed away the wigs and gowns and made sure Mr Groat had all the correct papers in his briefcase.

He was expecting to push the cart back to chambers alone but Mr Groat accompanied him up Chancery Lane.

‘What are you reading at the moment?' he asked.

‘
Our Mutual Friend
, sir,' said AJ.

‘Wonderful. One of my very favourites – Dickens's description of the Thames, the finding of the body  … '

AJ had been wondering if he would ever have the chance to ask Mr Groat if he had known his father. In the street light of Gray's Inn, late on that Thursday afternoon, he took the plunge.

‘Mr Groat,' he said, ‘did you ever meet my father?'

‘Lucas Jobey? Yes, I did. Although he was Baldwin's client, not mine. I met him and your grandfather, Old Jobey. I never took a shine to him but your father was very different.'

‘I never knew him, sir,' said AJ. ‘What was he like?'

‘I remember him as a handsome man with an eye for the ladies – or rather, an eye for one particular lady. Your mother was a lovely young woman, full of hope, and Lucas Jobey was determined to marry her, despite, I believe, some family difficulties.'

‘It never happened,' said AJ.

‘Oh, the marriage went ahead, all right. I remember that Baldwin attended the ceremony.'

‘So I'm not a bastard then – sir?'

‘Not in any legal sense.'

‘Bloody hell,' said AJ quietly.

They were just outside 4 Raymond Buildings when Mr Groat's mobile rang.

‘Where is the blasted thing?' said Mr Groat, fumbling in his briefcase. ‘Hello? Yes.' There was a long pause before Mr Groat said, ‘When?' He reached out and held on to the railings. ‘Thank you,' he said and ended the call.

AJ took the phone and put it back in the briefcase. Mr Groat was gazing into a vague and distant place.

‘Has something happened, sir?' AJ asked.

‘In a word, yes. Mr Baldwin died an hour ago.'

The wheezy sound of a vacuum cleaner acted as an alarm for AJ. Elsie was always up at six and she liked to hoover before switching on the radio to listen to the international disasters as she called them. AJ crawled out of bed. He had hoped to see the professor before he went back through the door but there was no time. The consequences of Mr Baldwin's murder were taking up nearly every minute that could be squeezed from a day.

‘I'm off to work,' he told Elsie when he was dressed. ‘Then I'm going away for the weekend with Slim.'

‘Where to?' she asked.

‘Nowhere special.' AJ felt his cheeks go red. He wished he was better at lying. ‘Slim's a bit down after his break-up with Sicknote.'

‘You're a good friend, you are,' said Elsie. ‘But when you come back, maybe you should go and see your mum. Jan was down here yesterday in tears. She said to me she'd made a right royal mess of things.' Elsie lowered her voice as if Jan might have her ear glued to Elsie's front door. ‘She said the Slug had moved out.'

‘I will,' said AJ. ‘On Monday.'

He closed the front door and for a moment tried to imagine his mum having any regrets at all. In the dim morning light the concrete steps of the stairwell sparkled. When he was a little lad he had believed he and his mum were rich because the stairs had diamonds in them. He could hear Jan shouting at Roxy. Things must be bad.

It was still early when he arrived at Raymond Buildings. He would have to wait until the doors were unlocked. He stood on the step and checked his messages. All were from Slim, who sounded more worried with every text he sent. AJ texted him back.

‘calm it armit,' he wrote. ‘cu at 6'.

He waited in the rain, regretting that he didn't own a proper winter coat. The one thought that kept him warm was the release that Mr Baldwin's death had brought about. The weight of a mountain had been taken from his shoulders. Although if – and it was a big if – he could find the documentation it would help Ms Finch win the case. And it wouldn't do his prospects any harm either.

AJ was now so wet that he rang the bell on the off-chance that one of the cleaners might still be there. To his surprise, Morton's voice snapped down the entry phone.

‘It's me, Aiden,' said AJ.

‘Stay there.'

AJ watched through the glass as Morton came down the stairs.

‘Good morning,' AJ said.

‘Is it?' said Morton. ‘I hadn't noticed.'

It occurred to AJ that Morton hadn't been home.

‘Are you squeamish?' Morton asked him.

‘No. I don't think so,' said AJ.

‘Come on. There is someone I need to see.'

That was all the explanation AJ was given.

Morton was no more forthcoming when their taxi drew up at an impersonal office building, and AJ felt it would be a mistake to ask any questions. A lift took them to the basement where the door opened with a judder and the low light made it feel as if they were in a submarine. A man in a white coat appeared in the corridor. He had a face divided by a bridge of eyebrows that ran as straight as Roman Road and overshadowed his eyes.

‘This is very good of you, Ron,' said Morton, shaking his hand. ‘I owe you one.'

The man pushed open a door on which was a nameplate that read:

R E Haggerty

Senior Forensic Pathologist

‘And this is?' said the man, looking at AJ, the drawbridge of his eyebrows rising.

‘Aiden, a baby clerk,' said Morton.

AJ stood up a little straighter.

‘So, Aiden,' said Mr Haggerty. ‘You are one of the chosen few. You must be a bright lad.'

The room was clinically bare apart from a long white table.

‘Take a seat,' said Mr Haggerty.

The chairs scraped across the floor as Morton and AJ pulled them out, the same sound as the chairs at school used to make.

AJ sat down. Through the open door to the next room he could see on a trolley a figure covered in a cloth, a toe sticking out, white and waxy. With a shock he realised he was looking at the corpse of Mr Baldwin.

‘This is an intriguing case,' said Mr Haggerty. These are, of course, only the initial findings. More work needs to be done.'

Morton nodded.

Mr Haggerty collected two files and put them before him, then, staring at no one in particular, started.

‘The post mortem shows that Mr Baldwin swallowed arsenic trioxide, known as white arsenic.'

‘White arsenic?' interrupted Morton. ‘Wasn't that used in the early nineteenth century? You never hear of it now.'

‘Yes, they called it the inheritance powder,' said Mr Haggerty. ‘It was very unpredictable. Some victims were struck down instantly, some died in eleven hours or so and others took two weeks.

‘Whoever murdered Mr Baldwin wanted him to take time dying. I would say the murderer knew what he was doing, even took a perverse delight in killing. One has to ask oneself why, in this day and age, would anyone go to so much trouble?'

‘Why indeed?' said Morton. ‘I gather that what you are about to tell me is not what I want to hear.'

‘Let's start with the clothes Mr Baldwin was wearing at the time he was taken ill. His suit was made in Saville Row, his shoes were from Lobbs. But the interesting thing is his scarf. It looks as good as new but in fact was made by Mare Brothers of Clerkenwell Road, who went out of business in 1900. The tailors kept meticulous records and the Mare family put them online in 2012. The scarf was purchased in December 1826 by a Mr Dalton.'

AJ struggled to arrange his features.

‘I suppose his first name wasn't Samuel by any chance,' said Morton.

‘Actually, it was,' said Mr Haggerty.

‘A coincidence, that's all,' said Morton. ‘Mr Baldwin was in the middle of a fraud case and his client swears that he received the snuffboxes in question from a Samuel Dalton. It must be an alias. There's no record of the man ever having existed.'

‘Except in 1826,' said Mr Haggerty.

‘That's no help to us,' said Morton who, unlike AJ, was having trouble taking all this in. ‘So you're telling me that Mr Baldwin swallowed arsenic given to him by some nutcase who is keen to enact a nineteenth-century style murder. Do you think it could be one of his clients with a grudge?'

‘It's possible,' said Mr Haggerty. ‘A client with a grudge and a degree in toxicology. As you may know, I'm writing a book about historic cases of poisoning. One I'm particularly interested in took place early in 1813. To me it's obvious that the perpetrator had studied the effects of poison as an entire family died within a matter of hours. There was a great deal of interest in it, because the supposed murderer was a seventeen-year-old servant girl. It seems most unlikely that a servant would have an apothecary's knowledge of poisons.'

Shit, thought AJ. Hadn't Mr Stone said that a servant had been accused of murdering the Jobey family?

‘When are you showing this report to Detective Poilaine?' said Morton.

‘I'm just about to send it over.'

‘Thanks, Ron,' said Morton as they walked towards the lift.

‘Mr Haggerty,' said AJ, trying to sound calm. ‘Where can I find out more about the 1813 murder? Is there anything online?'

‘No, there isn't. But if you're interested I'll email my account of it to you.'

Once out of the building, Morton checked his emails.

‘Better get back to Raymond Buildings in case Detective Poilaine turns up,' he said. ‘Don't say a word to anyone about our visit to Ron Haggerty.'

‘No, I won't,' said AJ.

‘Oh, I nearly forgot. This arrived for you,' said Morton. He handed AJ a thick envelope and hailed a cab.

AJ waited until he was alone at his desk before he opened the envelope. Inside was a book, small and beautiful, with drawings and maps of London. AJ had never owned anything so old. Tucked in the back was what looked like Monopoly money. It wouldn't buy anything here, thought AJ. Not even a sandwich. There was a note from the professor.

‘Things have taken a decidedly awkward turn,' it read. ‘I assume that you will be going back through the door. Be careful. I will see you next week.'

AJ put the book and the note in his pocket. His mobile rang.

Slim said, ‘Can we go any sooner, mate? I can't hang on until this evening.'

‘You'll have to,' said AJ.

‘I might be dead by then.'

‘Try not to be.'