Those Who Feel Nothing (16 page)

Your mobile phone rings for the first time in weeks.

‘Jimmy?' your friend Bob Watts says when you answer.

‘Bob.'

‘Bloody hell. I can't believe I've actually got through to the elusive Mr Tingley. I've been trying for an age.'

‘Connections have been a bit iffy,' you say quietly. You slide open the glass door and step back out on to your veranda. ‘I read about your new job, Bob. Looks like you outmanoeuvred the bastards. But tell me you're not going to reopen the Milldean Massacre case to go after your erstwhile friend William Simpson.'

‘William Simpson will get his due retribution but I have no immediate plans to facilitate that,' Watts says. Then laughs. ‘If only.'

You watch the water ripple in the pool, then say: ‘You joke but I know it's not a joke for you.'

‘That's as maybe.' You can tell Watts can hear something in your voice that he can't quite place. ‘When are you coming home, Jimmy?'

You sit in the chair on your veranda and pick up the half-full glass of vodka on the floor beside it. ‘Home being Brighton? In due course.'

‘You OK, buddy mine?' There is concern in Watts' voice.

‘In the pink,' you say.

‘Yeah, right,' Watts says. ‘What's going on, Jimmy?'

‘I'm not myself,' you say, standing again and looking back into your room.

‘Recuperation can take a long time,' Watts says. You are distracted for a moment. ‘Jimmy?'

‘I mean that statement very precisely, Bob,' you say. ‘I'm a person I don't recognize or feel anything for. I feel as if I've been hijacked by somebody else.'

Watts clearly doesn't know how to respond to that. ‘Are you still in Italy?' he finally says.

‘Cambodia.'

‘Cambodia? That's a bit sudden, isn't it? Holiday?'

You rub your eyes. ‘Pilgrimage. Sort of. A kind of twelve step.'

‘You've given up booze?'

‘Far from it.'

Watts laughs. ‘That's a relief. I can't imagine you without your rum and pep.'

‘Can't get the peppermint over here so I've switched temporarily to vodka.' You swirl the vodka round in your glass as you say this.

‘I hope it's Polish,' Watts says.

‘It is.'

Another silence.

‘What kind of twelve step?'

‘People I need to apologise to. Ask their forgiveness. Things I need to apologise for.'

Watts says nothing.

‘The problem is that pretty much all of them are dead.'

Watts knows better than to pry. You are probably his best friend but he knows scarcely anything about you. You and he are both to blame. Watts is useless at asking questions and you are brilliant at not answering them.

‘You haven't got religious, have you?' Watts finally says with a chuckle that sounds forced.

‘I've always been religious in my own way,' you say. Which is true.

‘Buddhist over there, aren't they? Are you listening to the sound of the one hand clapping?'

There is a little patch of bamboo beside the veranda. It clacks in a sudden shiver of air.

‘Not exactly.'

After a moment, Watts says, ‘Revenge a factor in this?'

You say nothing.

He says again: ‘Come home, Jimmy.'

‘In due course,' you say. ‘But first I could do with a favour.'

‘You know you only have to name it,' Watts says.

‘Can you find out about a shop for me – discreetly though. An antiques shop in the Lanes.'

‘Sure. What do you want to know?'

‘If the owners are around in Brighton. What their circumstances are. That kind of stuff.'

‘Let me grab a pen,' Watts says. ‘What's the name?'

‘The shop is called Charles Windsor Antiques but I don't know if that's the actual owner. It's people who might be linked to it I'm interested in. But you've got to be discreet. I don't want anyone scaring off.'

‘What have they done?' Watts asks.

You lean forward. You want to say but you find it difficult to get the words out. You don't think you have vocalised it before. Ever. You want to hang up the phone. But before you hang up, you exhale and say quietly: ‘They killed my wife.'

Rafferty was holed up in a big house on the beach at East Preston, a posh village on the edge of Worthing. He looked little changed when he met them at the door in blazer and cravat. Gilchrist got a waft of alcohol as he ushered them into a large sitting room at the back of the house. It was ten a.m.

His lawyer was sitting in an armchair by the window. He stood and nodded to them.

The window looked out on a long stretch of lawn that ran to a short wall. Beyond the wall they could see high waves rushing up the beach.

Rafferty gestured for them to be seated on a long sofa. As they both sank into it, Gilchrist doubted she would be able to get up again with any dignity.

‘Mr Rafferty,' Heap began. ‘We want to talk to you about Hindu artefacts from Cambodia. Twelfth century.'

‘Not my area of expertise. I'm more rural England. Graveyards. I thought you knew.'

‘That wasn't always the case though, was it? You've had a long career at the Brighton museums. Worked your way up.'

‘It's the British way. I'm sure you two have done the same.'

‘You spent time as deputy director of the Royal Pavilion in the eighties.'

‘Just after a bad time for the Pavilion. A load of fucking philistines ran the council in the seventies. Medieval banquets and horse races down the corridors. Those beautiful rooms used as council offices.'

‘Your relationship with Cambodia?'

‘I have no relationship. But knowing the wankers in power in the seventies in Brighton, we were probably twinned with Phnom Penh whilst Pol Pot was massacring everyone in sight with half a brain.'

‘Did you buy some illicit treasures from Cambodia when the country was dying?'

‘Excuse me,' the lawyer said. Rafferty waved him away.

‘I wish,' Rafferty said. ‘That's how you create a world-class collection. You think Lord Elgin paid actual price for the Marbles? You ever been to St Paul de Vence? No, don't even answer – no way you have. There's a restaurant there – La Colombe d'Or. The food is pretty good but not great. But people go there to see the artwork on the walls. Worth millions. You think the restaurant owner had millions to spend on it? Not at all. He gave Picasso free meals and in return Picasso gave him a couple of pictures. Same with the other artists. Braque, Miro, Fernand Leger.' He sniffed. ‘All collections start with someone buying cheap.'

‘But we're talking about artefacts that were known to be stolen.'

‘You're a few years out – Pol Pot was long gone by the time I got the Pavilion. And I don't know what artefacts you're talking about. But I do know that nobody gave a fuck in the seventies about Angkor Wat.'

He turned to Heap.

‘Big brain – when did UNESCO register Angkor Wat as a world heritage site?'

Heap shrugged. ‘Years ago, I guess. Why do you ask?'

‘Because I know that it wasn't until the early nineties. One of the greatest religious and archaeological sites in the world didn't have any kind of protection through war, civil war, the Khmer Rouge genocide and ten years of Vietnamese occupation.'

Heap tilted his head. ‘You're well informed about its recent history for someone who has no interest in its cultural heritage.'

Rafferty grinned, almost wolfishly. ‘You obviously never saw me polish off my General Knowledge round on
Mastermind
when Magnus was still in the chair.'

‘Was I born then?' Gilchrist muttered to herself.

‘What?' Rafferty said.

Gilchrist shifted, with difficulty, on the soft sofa. ‘Just thinking aloud, sir,' she said.

‘So you're saying that whoever looted these things was providing a public service?' Heap said.

Rafferty pressed his knees together. ‘That's exactly what I'm saying. They left Cambodia through back-door channels? So what? They were taken out of harm's way. Elgin did the same – the Marbles would have been destroyed. The ones that remained in situ were pretty much destroyed, not least in the twentieth century by acid rain.'

‘Elgin was a philanthropist?' Heap said.

‘Are you two saying the world hasn't been enriched by having the Marbles on show in the British Museum for decades when they could have been destroyed entirely had they been left in situ?' Rafferty pretended to stifle a yawn. ‘Indigenous populations don't usually care about their heritage until they discover there are people willing to buy it. They pull down temples to use the stones to build their own houses. We're no different in this country. Ever been to Avebury? Every house in the area is built from the stones that formed part of the original stone circle and processional route. The same around Stonehenge – a much inferior site in my view.'

‘If we could get back to the question of these objects in the basement …' Gilchrist said.

Rafferty ignored her. ‘Mainly, though, indigenous people flog the artefacts off or learn how to copy them and rip the West off with forgeries,' he continued.

‘The objects in the Pavilion?' Heap repeated.

Rafferty steepled his fingers. ‘Whoever bought these things has ensured they will be protected, celebrated and saved for the future.'

‘They were hidden in a tunnel,' Gilchrist said. ‘I think the only person who would have been celebrating these things was whichever wealthy private collector bought them.'

Rafferty said nothing.

‘You sure it wasn't you?'

Rafferty leaned forward. ‘You know, I thought you were here to tell me what's happening with this other thing.'

‘We're evaluating.'

‘Evaluating?'

‘Yes. Then we pass our papers on to the Crown Prosecution Service and they decide whether to take it further.'

‘And the charges?' Rafferty said.

‘Will be decided upon when the evaluation is complete,' Gilchrist said.

‘As a matter of fact, sir,' Heap said, ‘it would help us reach some decisions and speed up the evaluation process if you were willing to undergo evaluation yourself.'

‘What kind of evaluation?' the lawyer said.

Rafferty pointed at him. ‘Earning his money, you see,' he said.

The lawyer pursed his lips.

‘A psychological one,' Gilchrist said.

Rafferty laughed an exaggerated, high-pitched laugh, rocking a little. He stopped abruptly. ‘To see if I'm sane enough to testify, you mean?'

‘Not precisely that, no,' Gilchrist said. ‘And it will just be part of the mix.'

‘Do you think I'm sane, Clarence Darrow?' Rafferty called to his lawyer.

‘Of course,' the lawyer said shortly. ‘You're as sane as the rest of us.'

Rafferty sneered. ‘That leaves quite a lot of leeway,' he said.

‘Are you willing to be assessed, Mr Rafferty?' Gilchrist said.

‘What do you think, Clarence?' he said to his lawyer.

‘It's your decision,' the lawyer said. ‘You're not legally obliged to submit to any evaluation until and unless you've been convicted. Reports are usually asked for at that stage to assist sentencing.'

‘This evaluation will help us decide whether we proceed at all,' Gilchrist said.

‘There's some doubt?' the lawyer said quickly.

‘We're trying to establish the facts,' Gilchrist said. ‘Until we do so there is neither doubt nor certainty.'

‘I'll do it,' Rafferty said. ‘If I can do it here. I don't particularly want to leave my little bolthole. The public and the press have shown a surprising amount of interest in this matter.'

‘We can arrange for the psychologist to come here,' Gilchrist said. ‘But let me just go back to these artefacts discovered in the storeroom underneath the Royal Pavilion. Are you denying you put them there?'

‘I am.'

‘Do you know who did put them there?'

‘Since I didn't know they were there I can hardly be expected to know the answer to that, can I?'

‘Can you think who might have put them there?'

‘Aside from God, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, you mean?'

When you were younger you were scared of no man. You would steam in against anyone. But now you have to be more careful. More cunning. Especially with the drink you've been consuming lately. You haven't counted today – when did you? – but you know you are teetering on the edge of recklessness.

You take a deep breath. You are pretty sure the breeze that is shivering the bamboo is a through draught from somebody opening a door or a window in your room. Maybe more than one person. Maybe in your bathroom. You're pretty sure Sal Paradise has sent him or them back to finish the job.

You are wrong. Your bathroom is empty. You set the chain on the door. Your phone is ringing again.

‘You dropped two bombshells on me,' Bob Watts says. ‘First, that someone killed your wife. Second, that you have a bloody wife.' He laughs. ‘I didn't know you'd even been married. Hell, I didn't even know you were straight.'

You rub your face and work your jaw for a moment. ‘It was a long time ago. And it wasn't for long.'

‘Jimmy, I don't know what is going on with you here.'

‘What is going on with me is I find the men who killed my wife are still alive when I thought them dead. I find that one or more have been living in the same town as me. In Brighton.'

‘They run this antiques shop?'

‘Certainly one of them is linked. Will Rogers. But I don't know if he's there or here. Some investigator I am if he's there. How many times do I go down the Lanes, for Christ's sake?'

‘Hardly ever, I would think,' Watts said consolingly. ‘You never get beyond the Cricketers, do you?'

Your laugh turns into a sigh.