I don’t normally take cases that the police are already working flat out on. I usually spend my time looking for runaway kids, teenagers or younger, who are a low priority to my ex-colleagues on the Met but a high priority to the families they have left behind. In most other matters the Met have me beaten. They have more resources, and more powers of surveillance, entry, and arrest. They do, however, tend to stand out like sore thumbs in bars and clubs and casinos in either cheap suits or tacky undercover leather jackets, and this makes room for me. The bars and the clubs are the sorts of places where I generally find my teenagers because they are often part of the reason the teenager comes to London in the first place. The Big City, provider of action and anonymity. I don’t look like a copper, I don’t even look like an ex-copper, and having spent the first fourteen years of my life in Toronto I can make sure that I don’t sound like one either. I can go to the places I have to go to and not have half the kitchen staff legging it out of the back door before I’ve even managed a sip of my Canadian Club. Also, thanks to a vicious old man I haven’t seen in twelve years, I know what it feels like to be a kid and to hate your life so much that anywhere, anywhere, is better than home. I do OK at what I do, but I usually leave the big stuff to my previous employers.
The message I found on my machine one bright Monday morning in mid October, however, intrigued me. I had just opened up the small, sparsely furnished office that I keep in a business unit up behind Highbury Fields. A plummy middle-aged male voice informed me that it belonged to one Sir Peter Morgan, and it asked if I could please call it back as soon as I was able. The voice was nervous and far too restrained, as if the owner of the voice was afraid of what the voice might say, and held it tightly in check like a pit bull on a leash in a Montessori Centre.
The name intrigued me. It had been in the news a lot recently, although it had been sidelined in the last couple of weeks by the state of Sarah Ferguson’s thighs and the health, or lack of health, of the Russian President. I have a good memory for names, though, and even if I hadn’t I could hardly have forgotten it. Sir Peter Morgan was a Conservative Member of Parliament, a (now) Shadow Minister at the Treasury. He was a leading Euro-sceptic and senior member of the 1922 Committee. He was a regular guest on Question Time, Any Questions, and those political programmes you turn off immediately when carving the Sunday roast. His name was especially familiar, however, for the fact that his younger brother Edward, an airline pilot, had recently been brutally murdered in the flat he shared with his wife of six years, by person or persons unknown wielding a broken champagne bottle. I wrote down the number he gave and sat for a second, wondering why he was calling me.
There were three other messages on my machine and I dealt with those first. One was from Joe Nineteen, a regular provider of information concerning the whereabouts of errant children, and one was from a woman whose son I had located six months ago; she wanted me to locate him again. The other was from Sharon. I called Joe and told him that his tip of the day before had been spot on and that I would be round to see him soon. I called the number the woman – a Mrs Lewes – had given, and left a message on her machine stating that I would be happy to help her and that I would be in touch when I knew more. I didn’t call Sharon because the message was from yesterday and I had already arranged to have dinner with her after she’d reached me at home. I sat for a second, thinking, and then dialled the number the MP had given.
A secretary put me on hold for a minute and I was just about to hang up, redial, and leave a message when Sir Peter came on the line.
‘Mr Rucker?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Sir Peter Morgan? ‘I’m just returning your call.’
‘Thank you. I…’ He thought for a second. ‘I was wondering if you are free for lunch today. Your services were recently recommended to me and I have something I would like to discuss with you.’
The MP’s voice wasn’t so restrained as it had been on the machine. The pit bull wasn’t on its leash any more; it was dressed up like a poodle.
‘May I enquire who you spoke with?’ I asked. My usual customer survey.
‘I really would rather do this in person if you don’t mind, Mr Rucker. Could you meet me at one today? Do you know where the Portman Club is?’
I waited a second. I don’t like talking to people who give orders by asking questions, or whose tone of voice indicates that they cannot conceive of ever not getting their way.
‘Sir Peter,’ I said, ‘I have an idea as to what you might want to talk to me about. If it is what I think it is, I really don’t think that I can be of much help to you. I’m not a big organization, I don’t have anyone else working for me. I usually look for missing teenagers.’
‘I am aware of that,’ he answered. ‘My information is, however, that you are very good at your job, and that it would be worth speaking to you.’
‘All the same,’ I went on, ’I don’t want to waste any of your time.’ Or mine, I thought. ‘It would be pointless to come all the way down to your club to tell you exactly what I could tell you now.’
‘Nevertheless, Mr Rucker, I would like to meet you. I will of course pay for your time, whatever the outcome, and I can assure you of a most excellent lunch.’
‘I…’
‘Please, Mr Rucker. It would save me the trouble of hunting you out. If you have an idea as to why I want to speak to you then you might understand how much it means to me that I should.’
The ex-Minister stopped speaking abruptly. The leash on his voice was back and ready to snap. I thought about it for a second. Something inside me sighed wearily.
‘Crème brûlée?’ I asked.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘On the menu. At your club.’
‘Oh,’ he said, thinking. ‘Of course. The finest west of Paris.’ He managed a short laugh.
‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’ll be there.’
He laughed again, stiffly. ‘Thank you.’ Then he added, ‘I don’t want to sound patronizing but the club insists that visitors should wear a jacket.’
‘I’ll buy one on the way, sir.’
’And a tie, I’m afraid.’
‘Right. What about trousers?’ I asked. I took the address from him and then hung up.
It was perfect. Mine is as good but I don’t have a blowtorch to get the top perfectly crisp while leaving the underneath firm. I make do with a grill.
I had made a few calls, looked at the file I had on the missing Dominic Lewes, and decided that I would work on him either that evening or else the next day. I had drunk some coffee in the café that serves the business units, and then gone back to my flat and donned the Paul Smith suit that I had bought for my brother’s wedding but never had a chance to wear. I’d chosen an antique Ralph Lauren from the seventy or so ties in my cupboard, which I collect, but which I seldom get a chance to wear.
We were sitting across from one another in the Portman Club’s dining room, a huge, high-ceilinged room, with the requisite wood panelling, oil paintings of sea battles, and huge chandeliers. Sir Peter Morgan was a tall man of forty-seven/forty-eight, elegant in a conservative way, with a greying, full head of hair, which would make him look very distinguished in a few years’ time. He had a high forehead above a narrow face, with striking blue eyes and a nose that seemed just a little too small compared with his other features, making him look slightly boyish. A pair of reading glasses hung on a delicate silver chain around his neck.
Throughout the three courses we made polite conversation. I asked him how he was normally addressed and he said that Sir Peter was fine. He didn’t like being called Mr Morgan but he never complained when people made the mistake because it sounded very petty to do so. He told me a little about his job, I told him a little about mine. At one point I thought he was going to get into politics but luckily he didn’t. It might have been the end of a very beautiful friendship. We ate, we chatted, he nodded at the odd acquaintance, and I noted his perfect Windsor knot over a starched Hilditch and Key blue striped shirt, with matching handkerchief poking cautiously out of the pocket of an exquisitely tailored single-breasted pinstripe. He showed few signs of his recent loss beyond an unwillingness to engage any of the people who passed the table in any conversation beyond the usual pleasantries. His table manners and posture demonstrated a man who was used to being in control of himself. He was like an uncle who invites you to lunch during your final year at Cambridge in order to dissuade you from going to live on a commune in Goa, recommend a tailor, and enquire as to which City firm you would like him to get you a job at when you graduated.
When the waitress took away our dessert plates Sir Peter told her that we would take our coffee upstairs. We stood up and I followed him through the dining room and up a broad circular staircase, covered in a deep red carpet held down by bold brass rods. The walls were similarly covered in oils, but most of these were of stern old men whose faces gave the impression that, unlike me, they hadn’t found the crème brûlée at all satisfactory. We walked past them and along a broad corridor, towards a heavily polished oak door which Sir Peter pushed open. It didn’t make a sound. On the other side of it was a large room, filled with armchairs that were mostly vacant, next to low coffee tables liberally covered in broadsheet newspapers. I say liberally: they were either the Telegraph, The Times or the FT. Sir Peter led me through the speckled columns of light charging through large arch windows on the opposite wall, across to the furthest corner of the room where we sat facing each other, both of us encased in green leather.
Sir Peter shifted uncomfortably in his seat, looking for a way to begin. I waited while he sipped his coffee, listening to the faint hum of traffic on Piccadilly. I noted that he had the same colour Turk’s Head cufflinks as I had found in the pockets of a second-hand Gieves and Hawkes suit I’d bought on Portabello Road a year ago.
‘Mr Rucker,’ he began finally. ‘I find this quite difficult. I’ve never needed the services of a private investigator before. I…’ He stopped speaking and gazed out of the window.
‘You want me to find the person who murdered your brother,’ I said. Well, I didn’t have all day.
‘Yes. It’s as simple as that I suppose. Yes. Yes I do.’ He looked at me, relieved that the ice had been broken. He seemed scared too, scared of going over what had happened, of seeing it again.
‘In that case I’m afraid that this has been a waste of time,’ I said. ‘Except for the crème brûlée. You are aware of the amount of manpower the police are already putting in to this? Especially now.’
‘I am aware that the police are doing what they can.’
‘I happen to know one of the officers on the case. He’s good. I don’t think that there is any doubt that they’ll find whoever it is who’s behind these killings.’ Sir Peter seemed to wince, to shy away from what I was saying. I carried on.
‘The first one hardly got into the news as far as I can remember. It certainly didn’t make the TV. A lorry driver found dead in the sleeping area of his cab. Stabbed with a broken beer bottle and all his cash taken. Kids probably, crackheads who needed fifty quid bad enough at certain times that they’ll quite cheerfully kill a man to get it. Without breaking a sweat. No sign of sexual activity, a simple robbery that possibly went wrong.’ I leant forward for my coffee cup. Sir Peter was perfectly still, his expression blank, looking straight at me.
‘The second one did make the headlines. A rent boy in Brixton, only fourteen, still at school, halfway through his GCSEs. This time there was sexual activity, although it’s impossible to state in this case whether or not any of the four brands of sperm found in various areas of the corpse actually belonged to the perpetrator. Again a bottle, this time Lucozade I believe, was used to pierce the victim’s abdomen. Pieces of glass were discovered in the boy’s anal canal, which was severely lacerated.’
Sir Peter shifted in his seat and looked at me in a way which suggested he was used to being treated with just a touch more deference.
‘You seem to know what you are talking about,’ he said coldly.
‘I read the newspaper. I also called DI Gold after I spoke to you earlier. The officer who recommended me to you. I trained with him at Hendon, he filled me in. With the MO similar to the motorway killing a link was established and background work done on the driver. It appears that he was a homosexual, or a bi-sexual bearing in mind that he was married with three children. The pathologist still insists that there was no evidence of sexual contact the night he died, but several men were found who admitted sexual encounters with him, some of them in his lorry. It’s curious. Apparently the driver’s wife was more distressed when an officer was forced to relay this information to her, than she had been when she’d been informed that her husband had been killed.’
I sat back and waited for a response but Sir Peter didn’t say anything. I took a big sip of my coffee before it went cold. I hate cold coffee.
‘The police don’t like serial killers,’ I continued. ‘Even if it’s only arse bandits as I can assure you they refer to gay men who are the target. They put a lot of people on it. That number was doubled when your brother was killed. It would have been increased anyway, but the fact that you are a prominent politician won’t have hurt things. Anything I could do would be a drop in the ocean compared to what is already happening.’
I relaxed into my armchair and threaded my fingers together. The waitress walked over with a coffee jug and refilled my cup. I should have known, in a place like that. As she refilled Sir Peter’s I gave myself a little ticking off. I was not being very kind. Something about him, his reserve perhaps, or simply his position as powerful politician, reversed to bereaved supplicant, made me want to be brutal with him. It seemed to be working; his face had a deeper, more introverted quality than his previous gravity. He smiled weakly at the waitress and then waited until she was quite a way off, serving a crumpled old man who looked suspiciously like Winston Churchill.
‘It isn’t that I doubt the police, Mr Rucker.’ There was a certain impatience in his voice. ‘I have visited the operations room, I have seen what they are doing.’
‘Then you must know how ineffective I would be. They have officers out asking every possible question in thousands of different places. More importantly they have forensics, DNA tests. That’s how this guy, assuming it is a guy, will be caught. Unfortunately you may have to wait until he does it again, maybe two or three times, but he’ll make a mistake before too long. They always do.’
‘I don’t doubt you, Mr Rucker.’ The irritation and impatience in his voice was overlaid by an increased imperative. ‘But you see, from my point of view, it doesn’t really matter what the police are doing. Edward was my brother. It matters to me what I am doing about it. I can’t just sit back, I have to do something. I can’t do nothing.’ The MP’s hands turned palm up and suddenly there was an appeal in his eyes, an honesty that I had not seen before.
‘I can understand that, sir. But if you already know that employing me is really a way of easing your conscience, of trying to do something, then you know how pointless it is because you haven’t done anything wrong and catching criminals is not your line. You’re a politician, not a detective. It was not your fault, how could it have been? Also, from my point of view, I really don’t want to spend my time on a fool’s errand because you feel helpless. I sympathize with you but I’m sorry, there really isn’t anything I can do.’
I stood up to go, but the MP let out a long sigh and pursed his lips against a swell of emotion.
‘Mr Rucker,’ he said. He was firm, his voice raised a little too loud. It stopped me. I sat back down again, resigned to hearing him out. I leant back in the armchair as he clasped his hands together and stared over his knuckles at me. I could see him around a table in a television studio, waiting for the jeers of a studio audience to die down.
‘Mr Rucker. There is something. Something else. The police listened when I mentioned it but I could tell they were just being polite, they didn’t believe me.’ He hesitated. ‘Mr Rucker, I heard what happened to my brother. I know the details. I was told there was evidence of sexual activity. With a man. My brother had been buggered before he was killed. I am well aware of this. But, Mr Rucker,’ he looked right at me, ‘one thing is wrong. I know that my brother was not a homosexual.’
His voice was lower now. He had regained control and was staring at me intently, his blue eyes not appealing to me but measured and precise, cold as an empty house. I suddenly lost all sympathy with him. So that’s what he cares about, just like the lorry driver’s wife.
‘Sir Peter,’ I said, ‘it maybe difficult for you—’
‘I know what you are going to say, Mr Rucker; that I am an old Tory bigot who can’t stand the fact that his brother was gay, who refuses to accept what the evidence so clearly displays. But you are wrong.’
‘I didn’t say—’
He cut me off. He leant forward towards me. ‘You are not gay,’ he said. He stated it flatly, like a logician beginning with a simple premise. ‘You’re not, are you?’
I looked at him, surprised, trying to work out where he was going.
‘No,’ I answered, ‘I’m not, but…’
’And my brother was not either. He would not have slept with a man. He was not a homosexual.’
I didn’t say anything. He could finish, then I could thank him for lunch, get up and leave.
‘Do you know how I can tell?’ he asked, his eyes fixing me now, sensing my irritation. I shrugged.
‘I can tell, Mr Rucker, because I am.’
The MP sat back and smiled to himself ruefully. The room was suddenly silent except for the ticking of a grandfather clock which I hadn’t noticed before. Sir Peter seemed to be lost within himself for a second, seeing things which I couldn’t, things which seemed to bring him pleasure along with a dark, overshadowing wistfulness.
‘Do you know, Mr Rucker, you are only the third person I have ever told that particular piece of information to. I didn’t want to but somehow, ever since Edward was killed, being secretive doesn’t seem to matter any more. Finding out who killed him does.’ He smiled at me. ‘It is amazing how simple it is to say it. Before I told my wife it was much worse. And before I told Edward I was a wreck. I was almost forty years old and I was so terrified of what he would say I couldn’t eat for a week.’ He laughed sadly and waited for me to say something. I didn’t really know what.
‘How did he take it?’ I found myself asking.
‘Oh, brilliantly. He said he’d been waiting for me to tell him ever since he was sixteen and I was nineteen. He was relieved that I had.’
‘That must have meant a lot to you.’
‘It did. My wife, quite understandably, was not so generous. We had already begun to lead separate lives within the same house but she was scared that I would “come out”, as I believe they say, and it would humiliate her. She enjoys being the wife of a Minister you see, even an Opposition Minister as she puts it.’ He hesitated, and I waited for him to go on. ‘Diana told me never to mention it again. To anybody. But I did decide to tell Edward. After I had told him I was then able to confide in him, to tell him of my feelings. We had long chats about it and it made the burden a lot easier to bear, knowing I could talk about how I felt, that he understood me and I would never have to worry that he would tell anybody. It was a great relief. For some reason I found that I hardly ever needed to do anything about it after that, I didn’t need to take so many of the risks I was taking.’
The MP stopped for a second as the waitress came back over. She was either naturally very diligent or a member of the KGB. In the gap it afforded him the former Minister restored some of his reserve and when she was gone he said, ‘The point, you see, is that I know he wasn’t gay. We spoke about it and he told me he had never even thought about it for a second. He wasn’t lying to me, he had no reason to. He had no problem with my sexual preference and would not have had if it were his own. Edward was a lot more open, far more relaxed about life than I am.’
‘And you think it strange that he should be murdered by a serial killer specializing in homosexuals?’
‘I do. Even if it was the same man I feel that the police are blinkering themselves by insisting that my brother was gay, and that this one fits a neat pattern.’ I nodded my head reluctantly. The police do like things to be neat. They even go so far as making things neat when that is the last thing that they are. I’d done a fair bit of neatening myself in my time.
‘You told them Edward wasn’t gay?’ I asked.
‘I did, but I didn’t tell them how I knew. They were polite enough but I know they didn’t take any notice. They think I just want to lessen the political embarrassment of what happened.’
I’d thought that myself earlier. I still wasn’t sure if that wasn’t the case.
’So, what you want is to employ somebody to explore the possibilities that you believe the police are overlooking.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you don’t want a big organization because a big organization would just do what the police are doing. And they might not be, what you would call, discreet.’
‘Yes. I told DI Gold that I wanted to hire someone, an individual to help me. I didn’t expect to meet the resistance I am getting from you. DI Gold tried to talk me out of it, like you did, but when I told him I was determined, and would simply look in the Yellow Pages if he didn’t recommend someone, he came up with your name. I am aware that it may turn out to be a waste of my money, but while there is a chance that I may be able to contribute, I will. DI Gold told me that you usually find missing children at a flat fee, but that I might be able to engage you by the day.’
‘You might,’ I said.
And I thought about it.
There was a chance it would be worthwhile, a chance I could dig something up, although it wasn’t likely. It certainly wouldn’t hurt my bank balance to try and I could probably fit in my other work around it. Also, it was a challenge, a piece of real work. I didn’t know what to do, I was still shocked by what he had told me, or, rather, by the fact that he had told me it at all, here in this dusty, establishment boys’ club where such a revelation was completely incongruous. I found myself saying that I would do my best for him until I’d either found something interesting or couldn’t think of anything else to do. I told him he was almost definitely wasting his money and my time, but he seemed pleased. We discussed terms and then we stood up.
‘Mr Rucker,’ Sir Peter said, taking my hand. ‘Thank you. I trust that anything I have told you will be treated in confidence.’ He looked uneasy. ‘My wife, you see.’
I told him that he had nothing to worry about. He nodded his thanks. Then he snapped back into Uncle mode and told me some of the history of the club, as he showed me out of the room and back down the broad staircase, which looked even more impressive on the way down. He pointed out a portrait of the club founder, and one of his own grandfather, and he told me what their motto meant: diligence and discretion.
At the bottom of the staircase we passed the waitress with another jug of fresh coffee in her hand. I could have sworn she looked disappointed to see us leaving.