Foster felt as if he was emerging from the deepest sleep he had ever experienced. Semi-conscious, it was a few seconds before he even considered the effort of opening his eyes. He was lying down, but his body was unable to move. It had yet to catch up with his mind.
What had happened? He remembered the pub.
Then nothing. Had he been that tired? Collapsed maybe, brought home. Yet this didn't smell like his room. It smelled musty -- a heavy scent of cardboard, like some of the archives Barnes had taken him to.
He opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was a bare light bulb suspended from the ceiling by a dirty white flex. There was no other source of light, natural or not. The ceiling was bare concrete, immaculately clean. The walls beneath it appeared pockmarked. As his eyes adjusted, he could see they were lined with what seemed to be eggboxes, an attempt at soundproofing perhaps.
Foster felt his limbs prickle. Feeling was returning.
Why had it gone? He attempted to lift his right hand, but it wouldn't move. Something tight was holding it down, a strap of some sort. Likewise his other hand, his arms, both legs and chest. His clothes were gone, save for his boxer shorts. He tugged hard with his right hand, but the binding wouldn't give. He patted the surface he was lying on. A bed of some sort.
There was a flutter of panic in his stomach.
To his left were piles of boxes stretching to the ceiling. To the right were more boxes, some items of furniture, a chest of drawers and a cabinet. Either side of the bed there were perhaps three or four feet of room. However hard he tried to lift his head, he was unable to see what lay behind or in front of him, but he could sense more clutter looming. It was like being surrounded by the entire contents of a house.
There was a shuffling sound from a corner, outside of his vision. He was aware of breathing, a presence.
'Is someone there?' he mumbled.
No reply.
'Is someone there?' he repeated, more insistent.
A figure appeared at his right shoulder. Foster struggled to focus on his face. He made out dark hair, and that the figure appeared to be holding something, but he was unable to make out what.
'Who's that?' he moaned, his voice weak.
No answer. Foster repeated his question. Still no reply.
'What the fuck is this?' he asked louder, trying to move his arms.
The figure continued to stand by him. Then he spoke, voice clipped, without emotion.
'This,' he said slowly, 'is retribution.'
He strapped some tape over Foster's mouth.
Foster felt his insides lurch with terror. He tried to spit out the tape, force it off. It was impossible.
The man ignored his muffled cries, moved away out of sight. Foster felt him undo the buckle around his right ankle. Instinctively when it was free, his foot kicked out, but he had no strength and no other limb to fight with. The man held down his leg with one firm hand; there was a scraping noise as he pulled something across the floor, another smaller table of some sort. He lifted Foster's foot so the heel and ankle rested on this new platform; the section of his leg from knee to ankle was unsupported. The man strapped his ankle to its new position.
Foster's vision became clearer. At last he could make out the man. It was Karl. The instrument he was holding above his head was a sledgehammer; Foster watched as he lifted it high. He began to struggle against his bindings, trying to jerk and twist his body out of the way, but he was too tightly pinioned.
'No!' Foster screamed, but the tape blocked all sound.
He knew what was about to happen, but could do nothing except wait for the impact. There was a crack as the hammer came down with sufficient weight to smash both his tibia and fibula. The pain roared up from his shin like fire.
He let out a howl of agony no one could hear.
Then slipped out of consciousness.
Nigel stared out of the window of the FRC canteen at the grey morning, silently reproaching himself. Had he checked out the change of name sooner, they might have had a chance to warn Foster. Heather told him to forget it. Foster's phone records revealed that the call that had lured him away from the family history meeting had been made from a public phone box on Ladbroke Grove just before six p.m., well before Nigel had confirmed Foster was a descendant.
Still Nigel blamed himself. He went over all the details he had soaked up over the past week: the newspaper reports, trial transcripts, the endless certificates and census returns he had waded through, searching for some detail that might lead them to Foster and the killer. Nothing came. Time was bleeding away from them. By the end of that day Foster would be killed.
He forced himself to think once more.
Heather, face pale and wan, had gone to join the search. Every cop in London was being called in to help, all leave cancelled. Their leads were turning up nothing. During the night word had come that Eke Fairbairn and the killer's DNA were not a match.
Their one hope - that pursuing the descendants of Eke Fairbairn might lead them to Foster's kidnapper and their serial killer - had been extinguished.
Nigel felt useless, knowing of no way he could help. The last victim in 1879 had been found in a small garden square off Portobello Road. That was being watched. There seemed little more for him to do but wait and see whether half the Metropolitan Police could scour the entire area and find their colleague.
For the sake of completeness he had finished tracing Pfizer's descendants. Foster was the last of the line, the killer's only choice.
The centre opened, the weekend amateurs filing in to lock away their belongings. Nigel sat watching them come and go, a steady stream of people, a younger crowd than during the week, even a few children among them. Before long the room was filled with people having a coffee, catching up, poring over documents they had collected that morning and planning their day's research.
Phil, the whistling receptionist, walked in, looking around. He saw Nigel and made his way over.
'Hello,' he said in his jovial manner. 'You been here all night, then?'
Nigel nodded, hoping he hadn't found him just to make small talk.
'Have you seen Dave Duckworth anywhere?'
Nigel hadn't.
'Strange,' he said. 'There's a group of American tourists at the front desk. He's supposed to help guide their search. He's half an hour late.'
Probably caught in traffic, Nigel thought.
'Not like him, because these people look pretty wealthy,' Phil added.
'I haven't seen him since yesterday,' Nigel said eventually, remembering the conversation about his client with the rare surname, Kellogg . . .
The thought struck Nigel so suddenly, he almost jumped. Could it be a coincidence? He needed to get to the newspaper library to find out.
Foster drifted back to consciousness, drenched in sweat; only when he twitched did he feel the coruscating stab of pain from his fractured shin. He knew the break couldn't be clean. The tape had been removed from his mouth. He turned his head to one side and vomited copiously. Had he passed out through pain or been drugged once more?
He knew Karl was the killer. He knew he was the fifth victim.
'Why are you doing this?' he spat out between gasps for air, his body craving oxygen.
'As I said, retribution.' The voice remained calm, reasoned. Without malice.
A surge of pain left him speechless. He seemed to lose consciousness for a few more seconds, though it could have been longer. Sweat poured from his brow. He came round again, the last words of his assailant on his mind.
'Retribution?' he gasped eventually. 'What for?'
'If you were more aware of your family history, you would know.'
Foster tried to concentrate on what Karl was saying, to forget the pain. It took every ounce of effort.
'What about my family history?'
'You mean you haven't guessed yet?'
'I'm not in the mood for a fucking quiz,' he hissed, regretting the effort when the pain coursed through him and he vomited once more.
'It will hurt less if you remain still. The whole ordeal will be less painful if you remain still. And keep quiet, or the tape goes back on.'
Foster, feeling faint, fell silent. The soundproofing on the wall, the tape across his mouth; this must be a place where they might be heard. At some stage he knew he must gather his strength and let out the loudest scream he could muster. He might only get one chance.
'If you knew your family history, then you would know your greatgreat-greatgrandfather was Detective Henry Pfizer. The crooked German bastard who fitted up Eke Fairbairn to get the press off his back.'
The words came to him through a fog of agony.
Finally, they registered. His ancestor?
The judicial murder of Eke Fairbairn was the corpse in his family's basement.
Consciousness began to ebb away. He could not hear a thing in this tomb. The silence was broken only by the killer's voice and his own wracked gasps of pain. He tried to fight unconsciousness; next time he might not wake up. To remain alert he focused on the shattered limb, going so far as to move his leg, hoping the awful, searing pain would ward off oblivion.
'Pfizer was your ancestor,' Karl said. 'You'll be punished for what he did. Just like the descendants of Norwood, Darbyshire, Pearcey and MacDougall were. You already know this, but before he was executed the police decided to try and beat a confession out of him. That could only have taken place with the sanction of your ancestor. They fractured six bones in his body.'
Six, Foster thought. Five more to go. His whole body tightened at the thought. He must find a way to get out, to deter the killer.
'Why pick me?' asked Foster. 'There must have been other descendants of Pfizer.'
'No. You're the last one. It all ends with you. And it seems appropriate that you're also a police officer.
Thankfully. I picked the most successful of all of them. With Darbyshire, Perry, it was always the wealthiest. Call it class envy, if you want.'
Karl walked into Foster's field of vision on his left, preceded by the smell of stale smoke. Foster remembered the cigarette he'd bummed. Then he knew. That was how the killer ensnared his victims.
All were social or committed smokers. Karl found a way to introduce himself, offered them a smoke and that was it - lights out. Inhaling a cigarette doused in GHB would render you helpless in a matter of seconds, reaching the brain quicker than any spiked drink.
'Now, are you ready?' Karl asked.
Foster's mind swam. He thought of his father. The last few moments before he took the cocktail. He had remained resolute and stoical. The look of a man staring at the void and the void looking away. Death came as a release, a balm for someone so eager to escape. Would he be able to face the end of his life with such dignity?
The tape was laid across his mouth. He could taste the plastic. His left arm was unstrapped, laid outwards, wrist facing up, his hand resting on another table. Foster stared straight into the eyes of the killer, not once looking away. Karl did not return his gaze, merely lifted his boot and brought it down swiftly on Foster's forearm.
This time the break was clean. Compared to the nightmarish pain from his leg, his arm simply went numb. Foster never flinched or once looked away from the killer. He made sure his eyes bored into him the whole time he was at his side.
He waited for him to remove the tape so he could use his anger, all the pain, to let out a roar.
Nothing. The tape remained. He lost consciousness once more. He came round, the tape removed, opened his mouth but the noise was weak. He licked his parched lips. Through the haze he thought of another tactic.
'This can be done another way,' Foster whispered hoarsely. 'I know about Eke Fairbairn. I know about the injustice.' He stopped to grimace, catch his breath.
'I know about the beating, Stafford Pearcey's statement, the knife being planted, the judge's summing up. What happened was a travesty. But there is such a thing as a pardon. The case can be reopened. Your ancestor's name can be cleared.'
Karl was back out of sight.
'Eke Fairbairn is not my ancestor,' he said.
Nigel headed for the national newspaper library, making it there in less than half an hour. Inside he ordered the 1879 editions of the Kensington News. The story he wanted he'd first seen on Monday, in the issue of The Times on the day following Fairbairn's conviction. But it was only a few paragraphs. He needed more detail. When the volume arrived he flicked through to the edition for the third week of May, the first following the trial. A report of the events in court shared the front page with the story he was looking for.
MAN SLAYS WIFE AND DAUGHTERS
Yesterday morning, shortly after seven o'clock, Mr Inspector Dodd of Kensington Division received a report from a neighbour of blood washing under the front door of a house on Pamber Street. The abode was the home and business of Segar Kellogg, chandler shop owner.
Inspector Dodd proceeded to Pamber Street to find no little excitement in a neighbourhood already in foment over the appalling exploits of the so called Kensington Killer. He went to the door and indeed saw what appeared to be blood on the top step.
He knocked and received no answer. Then he tried the door and found it open. To his horror, behind it he found there a boy, unconscious yet still alive.
His body was awash with blood. Behind him was a trail leading to the entrance to the cellar, from where it seemed the stricken boy had dragged his wounded, mutilated frame along the cold wooden floor before passing out. The detective followed the bloody path down to the depths, where he was met with a scene of utter carnage.
The woman was quite dead, her throat carved open.
Alongside her he found the cold and rigid bodies of two children. A short distance away, on the floor, was the corpse of a man with a knife protruding from his chest.
On removal of the body the surgeon's surmises received their confirmation. Mr Kellogg had most likely murdered his wife, stabbed his son in the neck and then smothered his poor little ones before turning his own instrument of murder on himself. No other suspect is being sought.
Neighbours said Mr Kellogg was a devout Christian and abstainer. Detectives have not ruled out the suggestion that he was in the grip of religious mania.
Nigel needed to find Duckworth.
'Then why?' Foster asked, straining now to make himself heard. 'If you have nothing to do with Eke Fairbairn, why are you doing all this?'
There was a sigh.
'The police arrested an innocent man for a crime he didn't commit to save themselves from criticism. On the day that Fairbairn was convicted, the real killer, a man named Segar Kellogg, murdered his wife and two of his children. He slit her throat, stabbed his own son in the neck and smothered two seven-year-old girls. If he had been in the dock - if the police, if your ancestor, had done their jobs correctly - then that family would have lived. An evil man would have swung.
'The son survived. His vocal cords had been severed.
He never spoke again. Never recovered from what he had seen. There was some semblance of a life for a short while. He changed his name to Hogg, which has been our family name ever since, got married, had two kids. But it never went away. Eventually he decided he couldn't live with what had happened, the horror of what he remembered. Before he died, he wrote down everything he had seen but had never been able to speak about. How he had followed his father at night and watched him slaughter two men.
How fear of his father had prevented him from telling anyone. His regret at obeying that fear and how he hated the forces of law and order for getting the wrong man.'
'Have you heard of forgiveness?' Foster asked.
Hogg ignored him. 'You don't know what it's like living with that mark on you. Knowing those genes course through your veins. That your blood is polluted.
The stain has always been with us. I knew that, the day I read the letter written by Esau Hogg. I turned thirty-five in January this year, the same age Segar Hogg was when he murdered his wife and two daughters, and Esau's age when he decided he couldn't take living with the pain any more and hanged himself. I knew then that it was time to finish it all. It ends here with me. There is no one to follow.'
'But what about other members of your family?
Presumably they lived a decent life if you're here today. For God's sake, we're more than a bunch of genes; they don't define us.'
'Coming from someone who's merely the latest in a long line of policemen, that's pretty rich. You've never thought there may be something genetic about that?'
Foster clenched his teeth against the pain. He found that if he didn't move, then it was possible to ignore it; helped, he thought, by whatever drugs were still swimming in his system.
'My ancestor may have stitched up Fairbairn. But that doesn't mean the rest of us are bent cops. There is such a thing as free will. These things aren't preordained.'
'You heard of psychogeography?'
Foster vaguely remembered Nigel Barnes mentioning it. Some bullshit about how a place affects the way people act.
'The theory is that the environment in which you live has an impact on people's emotions and behaviour. I walked the same streets where my ancestor preyed on his victims. I was born a street away from where he slaughtered his family. I learned of what he did and how he escaped justice. How my family has been stained with this ever since.'
'Sounds like an excuse not an explanation.'
Hogg snorted derisively. 'I'd expect little else from a policeman. Funny, the very people you would think might pay attention to theories like this, theories that might help explain the behaviour they have to deal with every day, are the most dismissive.'
Foster dry-retched. Composed himself. 'I don't go in for theories.' He drew a deep breath; he felt himself starting to drift, but steeled himself. 'There are people who live decent lives, there are criminals . . . and then there are weak-minded sadists like you.'
Hogg laughed falsely, almost condescendingly.
'That's enough conversation for now,' he said.
Foster heard him pull a line of tape from the roll.
He tried to turn his head but couldn't prevent it being strapped over his mouth. He felt a hand on his chest.
He watched as the killer pulled back his fist and slammed it into his side. He felt the air escape from him in a rush, a stabbing pain in his ribs. His body, acting on instinct to protect itself, attempted to twist away, aggravating his other wounds. Another punch landed on the same area as the first. It felt like a hot knife was being thrust between the muscles of his ribs. The area burned.
Make this end, Foster said silently, plaintively to a God in whom he had never believed.
Nigel discovered that Esau Kellogg had changed his surname to Hogg. He'd got married and tried to forge a new life at a house in a notorious slum on the outskirts of Kensington. The couple had two children but, two years after the second was born, Esau ended his life at the end of a rope.
Nigel traced the bloodline, spinning through the generations as fast as possible. The line was weak, but it survived. He reached the present day. Only two descendants remained: a man, who would now be thirty, named Karl Hogg; and a woman of seventy-six named Liza. He had no address for Karl other than the house his parents had been living in when he was born. The last address he could find for Liza was more than forty years old. He would need Heather's help if he was to track them both down.
Nigel called her to pass on what he'd found. She was on her way to Duckworth's flat on the border of Islington and Hackney - to see if he was there, and to speak to him about the client he had mentioned, named Kellogg. Heather suggested Nigel meet her there and give her the details.
When Nigel arrived, Heather and Drinkwater, faces taut, were in Duckworth's small, ordered office.
There was no sign of him. Heather was holding an olive-green box file. She threw it down on the table for Nigel to look at. A white tab bore the printed name Kellogg. Nigel opened the crammed file. There was a series of brown paper document holders. The first was labelled with black felt tip: Darbyshire.
Inside were original copies of birth, marriage and death certificates, running from the 1870s - the marriage of Ivor Darbyshire, newspaper editor - to the present day. Nigel flicked through to the present.
There appeared to be around twenty living descendants.
Among their records he found the birth certificate of James Darbyshire.
'The four others are in there. Including Foster,'
Heather said.
'He knew.'
'He found out,' Heather said. 'Read this.'
She moved the computer's mouse, kicking the machine back to life. As the screen brightened, Nigel could see the indexed contents of a folder. The cursor highlighted a document entitled 'kellogg letter'. It was created on the Wednesday of that week. Heather double-clicked.
Dear Mr Kellogg,
It has been some time since I last heard from you. I draw your attention to my final invoice, which was sent to you with your last batch of research and for which I have yet to receive payment. I trust my work met with your satisfaction.
While on the subject of my research, I think we both know the reason you asked for it. I have been reading the newspapers and have noticed a striking connection between the people you hired me to trace and those who have been victims of the serial killer in Notting Hill. It is not for me to judge how people use the information I provide them with. But, in this case, I think my concern is justified.
With that in mind, I think we should perhaps reconsider my fee and seek to increase it sizeably. "I have contacts with the police and national newspapers agencies who would both be interested in getting their hands on the information that I have provided you with. Confidentiality is sacrosanct in my business, and is one tenet to which I strictly adhere.
However, in this case, the circumstances are so extraordinary as to test that belief. The ball is in your court.
Sincerely,
Duckworth
Nigel shook his head, unable to believe that Duckworth had attempted to blackmail the killer before approaching the police.
Actually, he could. Presumably the killer knew that, too, and had picked his stooge carefully.
'We've found a post office box address to which he sent the documents. The owner is registered as a Mr Kellogg, 24 Leinster Gardens, W2. There's a team on the way there now.'
'Read me that address again,' Nigel said.
Drinkwater repeated it.
'Tell your team to turn back. That's a fake address.'
'How do you know that?' Drinkwater said abruptly.
'Because that's a fake house.'
'A fake house?'
'When they built the Circle Line, they had to demolish a whole load of houses on the route because it was built so near the surface. Most people were paid off and relocated, and their houses were then knocked down. The residents of Leinster Gardens were richer than some of their neighbours and had a bit more clout. They said, with some justification, that a railway track would ruin the line of the street.
The Metropolitan Company agreed to build a fake facade to disguise the fact that there was a big gap where numbers 23 and 24 had been.'
'Shit,' Heather said, with feeling. Then she asked, 'How have you got on tracing the Hogg bloodline?'
'I've found two living relatives.'
'Let's find them. Quick,' Heather said. 'At the moment they're all we've got, and we're running out of time.'
According to the electoral rolls, Karl Hogg's last known address was a purpose-built flat nestling at the western end of Oxford Gardens, a blossom-lined street of four-and five-storey Victorian mansions, most of them long since carved up into flats for young professionals.
Nigel and Heather sprinted up to the third floor of a red-brick block that was out of keeping with the stately atmosphere of the rest of the street. They knocked on Hogg's door. No answer. An elderly woman in a neighbouring flat was in. She confirmed that a Karl lived next door, but she knew him as Karl Keene. Two months ago he had taken away most of his furniture in a van, though he had returned a few times since. When she asked if he'd moved out, he said he was going away but would be around for the next few months.
'Did he say where his furniture was?' Heather asked.
She shook her head.
'Did he work at all?'
'As far as I know, he worked from home most of the time. He produced his own magazine and a few books, or he used to. He did a lot for the local history group. They're based in the Methodist church on Lancaster Road. I know he used to give talks and produced things for them.'
They ran the short distance to the church. The history group's office was tucked around the back of the building, up a flight of stairs. A large woman in a huge pair of brown-rimmed spectacles sat behind a desk in a small room neatly arranged with books and files. She gave them a welcoming grin as they entered.
'Can I help?'
'We're looking for Karl Hogg,' Heather asked, flourishing her badge.
The woman could not hide her shock. 'Goodness,'
she said. 'Karl? We haven't seen him for a while, I'm afraid.'
'How long's a while?'
She took a deep breath and looked out of the window. 'A few months at least. To be honest, I think he's got a bit bored with us. He became disillusioned.'
'Why's that?'
'Well, we're just a small local history group. Most of our members are interested in finding out how their relations lived, and a number are interested in the influx of people who emigrated from the Caribbean, the history of Notting Hill Carnival, that sort of thing. Karl's interests were more, well, idiosyncratic you might say.'
Nigel wandered over to a rotating wire stand featuring a few of the group's publications. He turned it and saw a thick, bound booklet called 'The Sound of the Westway'. The author was Karl Hogg. Inside he could see it was self-published; there was little emphasis on design and clarity, page after page of unbroken prose, no illustrations. A labour of love.
He scanned the list of contents. The book appeared to be a treatise on the dark underbelly of Notting Hill and the Dale. Stories of the Christie killings on Rillington Place, Jimi Hendrix's death in a hotel off Ladbroke Grove, the Rachman landlord scandals, the race riots that plagued the area in the 1950s and 60s, the area's role in the Profumo scandal, the declaration of independence by the residents and squatters of Freston Road, 'Frestonia', the spirit of anarchy and independence and otherness that manifested itself in the music of The Clash, who gave the booklet its title.
No mention of the Kensington Killer of 1879.
The woman manning the counter was still explaining why Karl Hogg had drifted away from the group.
'He became obsessed with something he called psychogeography.
I have to say, it went right over the heads of many of our members. He never quite got on to mystical ley lines running beneath the streets, but he was heading that way; it was all-consuming for him, the idea that this area was afflicted - or blessed -- with all these past events and would continue to be. He was obsessed.'
Nigel had seen this happen before. Men (usually) traipsing the streets in search of some mythical London soul, convinced that parts of the city had characters and personalities that imprinted themselves on its inhabitants. Nigel had some sympathy for such theories: how else could you explain an area of London like Clerkenwell with its history of agitation and protest? He remembered standing at the site of 10 Rillington Place less than a week before, as the sun drifted down and night followed, yards away from where he had found Nella Perry's body, and the familiar humbling feeling he knew so well: in the presence of history, on the site of an infamous event, picturing what happened there and how its repercussions still echoed down the years. He had sensed, even then, the killer knew all about the area's history and notoriety, even revelled in it.
'Where is he now? Do you know?' he heard Heather ask.
'No one's seen him. Only the other day we were talking about it. How over the last two or three years he became a solitary soul. Before then, you used to see him in the pubs, on the street, walking, talking to everyone: he claimed to be listening to the music of the streets. But then he became withdrawn, odd. He had a few grand dreams and schemes, but they came to nothing.'
'Any places he used to visit regularly? Local pubs, perhaps?'
'The Kensington Park on the corner of Lancaster Road and Ladbroke Grove. Horrible, grotty pub, but he liked it. John Christie drank in there, he always told us, as if that was going to change anyone's mind.
Other than that, his Aunt Liz lives in a tower block at the top of the Grove. He used to pay her visits.'
'Thanks,' Heather said, and turned to leave.
'I did hear he'd taken a bar job.'
'Where?'
'The Prince of Wales.'
Foster came to, the drug wearing off, the pain rushing in, bursting through. He had watched while the killer had injected him. Was this the dose that ended his life? But he regained consciousness, a mixed blessing.
He tried to move his shoulder but was met with a burning flash of agony in his right wrist as he flexed his hand. He tried to cry out but the tape was in place.
'I broke your right wrist and right ankle while you were out of it,' Hogg's reedy voice said. 'You should thank me for sparing you that experience. Keep still.
We have only two more breaks, then this is over.'
Foster tried to remember where those wounds would be inflicted by recalling the injuries inflicted on Eke Fairbairn, but his mind, scrambled by pain and narcotics, refused to concentrate on one thing for more than a few seconds. Any notion of time had long since gone.
He seemed to drift once more. When he returned, the tape had been removed. Foster, disoriented, muttered woozily. Each word was an effort. Hogg ignored him.
There was a muffled noise from behind one of the boxes.
'Everyone is waking up,' Hogg said.
Foster heard him opening a bottle of some description.
From the corner of his eye he watched as he went behind the pile of boxes. He could hear a man groaning, the voice soft and confused. The killer let out a low shushing noise, then re-emerged syringe in hand.
'Who's in there?' Foster said. There had been only five victims in the 1879 case. Was this a sixth?
'It's someone who gave me a helping hand over the past few weeks. Unwittingly. Though he did grow to be suspicious. However, I picked him well: rather than running to the police, he demanded money for his silence.' He smiled. 'He'll get his payment later.'
Foster fought to keep conscious. He guessed the fracture to his leg might be compound, the pieces of bone having pierced the skin. Without instant treatment it was probably well on the way to becoming gangrenous. Even if he got out of here, saving it was unlikely. He let his head rest back. Bound and drugged, his body broken and battered, he could see no escape.
'Did you bring them all here?' he asked. Foster wanted to know as much as possible. Not that it mattered now.
'Except Ellis,' Hogg said, out of sight. 'I kept him at a place I rented. Cost me an arm and a leg in sedatives but it was worth it, though I got the dosage a bit wrong. Killed him before I had a chance to do it. You live and you learn. For the rest, this place was ideal: you can bring the van in, it's secure, no prying neighbours and I've soundproofed it so no one can hear you scream.'
'Were they all alive, like this, when you 'Yes. On the same bed. Drugged, but they felt it.
I wanted them to.'
Foster felt his gorge rise. The anger gave him strength. There was no way he was going to lie here, tortured and waiting to die.
'You aren't killing to avenge anything,' Foster spat out. 'Those people were innocent. You're doing this because you enjoy it, you sadistic bastard. Just because you think you have a reason - and some pseudo-intellectual horseshit about being affected by the air - it doesn't make you better than your ancestor. In fact, you're worse.'
He paused there, he had to, the effort too much.
As he recovered his breath, summoning the will to goad the killer more, he sensed him at his side.
'You know what the most painful bone in the body is to break, don't you?' the voice whispered directly into his ear.
Foster did not want to hear the answer. 'Fuck you.'
The killer, face red with anger, reapplied the tape.
Then he raised the sledgehammer and brought it down with full force on Foster's collarbone. He felt it break instantly in midsection; a bolt of fiery pain powered through his neck and shoulder and down his right-hand side.
Foster issued a cry that came from his boots.
As he writhed, the killer went out of view, returning with a syringe, which he stabbed into Foster's arm.
The light was beginning to drain from the day as Heather and Nigel sped to the Prince of Wales. The staff sketched in the final few minutes before Foster's disappearance. How he came in search of Karl Hogg, shared a drink with him and collapsed, presumably drunk. A member of staff claimed he appeared woozy when he arrived, though Heather assigned that to exhaustion. When he slumped at the bar, Hogg said he'd overdone it and would take him home. He then took him to his vehicle, a small red van, and drove away. Foster's car was still where he had left it, parked a short distance from the pub.
Hogg was paid cash; he worked there Friday and Sunday lunchtimes; the only contact they had for him was a mobile-phone number, which was switched off.
He was not a registered owner of a vehicle, which closed off one avenue, and he didn't seem to own a credit card.
'The last of the bohemians,' Heather muttered, sardonically.
An address came through for Liza Hogg. Nigel and Heather raced round there, Nigel unable to prevent himself from staring at the digital clock, illuminated on the dash, ticking over. It was ten in the evening when they arrived at Liza Hogg's flat in a tower block on the eastern side of Ladbroke Grove, looming over the Great Western running in and out of Paddington.
Heather knocked at the door. No answer. Heather swore. She knocked again. Silence. Nigel peered through the window beside the door into a dimly lit kitchen, the only colour a pair of yellow rubber gloves draped over the taps.
They were just about to start knocking on the neighbour's door when the light went on. There was a rattle of chains, and the door opened a fraction.
The worn, pinched face of an elderly woman peeped cautiously through the gap. 'Yes,' she muttered, wearily.
'Mrs Hogg?'
The woman nodded.
Heather flashed her badge. 'Sorry if we've woken you,' she said softly. 'We need a quick word, nothing to worry about.'
Liza Hogg invited them in, flicking on light switches as she passed them in her dressing gown and slippers. They followed her through to the sitting room, where three cats had made a bed of the sofa.
Liza shooed them away.
They sat down, Nigel and Heather on the small, threadbare sofa decorated with a faded floral pattern.
Nigel kept quiet -- he felt awkward even being there, but Heather had insisted he came.
Heather apologized for barging in. 'We're actually interested in the whereabouts of a relative of yours.'
'I've only one,' she said slowly, as if still escaping the clutches of sleep. 'You mean Karl?'
'Have you seen him recently?'
Liza shook her head. 'He doesn't visit me much these days.'
'He used to?'
'He used to live with me. After all that happened.'
'All what happened?'
Liza, more awake it seemed, sighed deeply. 'Where do you want to start? The poor lad hasn't had an easy life.'
Heather and Nigel exchanged a glance.
'Go on,' Heather urged.
'His father raised him and his brother for a while.
But then he was driving back from work one day when a drink-driver lost control and smashed into him. He died. Karl took it very bad. He was close to his dad. And to his brother. He came to live with me; his brother went to university. They were strange lads, the pair of them. His brother, David, had a lot of problems. He took his own life at university. Hanged himself.'
Nigel had witnessed much of this tragedy while researching the bloodline at the FRC, but it was only here, coming from the mouth of an old woman, that he saw just how bleak it had been. As if their blood had been tainted.
'Karl withdrew completely when he moved in. Sat up here staring at the walls. Didn't want to do anything with life. The only thing he was interested in was our family's history. You see, we've a rather chequered past.'
'Yes,' Heather said. 'Did Karl know about that?'
Liza nodded. 'We all knew about that.'
*You said Karl got interested?'
'To say the least. All he did was research that. He'd go to the sites of the murders. All day and all night he walked. It was the 1980s; a lot was going on around here. Finally he came out of himself, starting to write about the place, its history. Became obsessed with that, too. At least it stopped him reading and rereading the letter.'
Liza got up and shuffled to a drawer in a bureau at the far side of the room. She opened it and rustled around. Time seemed to stand still. Nigel could not bear it. Come on! he thought to himself, casting an impatient glance at a wooden clock on the mantelpiece.
Eventually the old woman emerged with a piece of yellowing paper, neatly folded.
'This is the letter I showed him.' She handed it to them. 'It's the suicide note written by Segar's son, Esau. Karl used to read it almost every night.'
Heather opened it up carefully. The paper was fragile, the folds worn almost to the point of disintegration.
Nigel leaned in so he could read it too. The writing was a scrawl, though still legible. There was no introduction, no signature, but it looked to Nigel as if it was genuine.
/ knew He killed. I cannot relate what it was that drew me to that conclusion. The look-in his eye, the hours he began to keep, a sense of awfulforeboding. As the police discovered each victim, it became clearer to me that my father was responsible. I could point to no evidence save his night-time excursions and the cold glimmer of hatred in his eyes. He had long since stopped communicating with me. I disappointed him, that was clear. I did alt I could to keep out of his path.
One night I heard him leave. I climbed from my window to the street below. The fog was thicks blanketing the city, muffling its sounds. I simply listened and followed his soft wolf-like tread. I shadowed him all the way until he grabbed some poor soul staggering back^
from a night of drinks I heard a muffled cry and then watched him fall. My father turned, I ducked away, then he made his way back, home.
I failed to get back, before he did. The next morning he asked where I was. I concocted a tale of meeting a friend, though I knew it would earn me a beating. He only stopped when my mother begged him to. I lay on my bed on my front, weeping as my mother tended the wounds to my backhand backside from the strap, praying to whichever God for the peelers to come and take him away.
But they never came.
From that day he sank further into insanity. He made us pray four times a day. would beat me incessantly. Then came the night. He urged us to follow him down to the cellar. 'Each night since, I remember the damp smell, the cold floor, then the noise . . . my mother gurgling, spluttering, choking on her own blood. He grabbed me and plunged the knife into my neck! eyes wide as saucers and brimming with mania. I remember nothing else.
/ was struck^dumb from then on, forever to keep the dark^secret quiet in my heart. until this day when I end my own wretched life. I carry that man's blood. 'With me it ends. It is my fervent dying hope that those who proceed can live without this stain on their souls.
Heather folded the letter back up. You said he doesn't come by very often these days,' she said.
Liza shook her head. 'Once or twice a year. Not quite sure what he's up to. He hasn't written one of his books in a while; he usually brings me a copy, but hasn't done for at least a year. While he wrote them he seemed OK. I think he thought the world would listen - it didn't. But the last time I saw him, he said he was working on another project.'
'Do you know what he does, where he goes, any friends?'
'Not these days. He used to spend a lot of time around the site of the house.'
'The house?'
'On Pamber Street. Segar Kellogg's house.'
When Foster surfaced, he couldn't speak. His mouth gaped helplessly wide, wedged open to its furthest extremity, as if stuck at the midpoint of a yawn. He tried to bring both jaws together but his jaw felt locked in place. From the bottom of his field of vision, he could just make out a metal plate on his top lip. He took a few desperate breaths through his wide-open mouth, the air rushing in gulps, drying his throat in an instant. There was a fleeting moment of panic when it felt as if his throat would seize and he would not be able to breathe.
By inhaling through his nostrils he managed to regain control. Not my teeth, he thought. With his tongue he flicked at the top and bottom rows, only able to reach the latter. They were covered by what felt like a strip of rubber. Some contraption had prised open his mouth.
'Unfortunately, I won't be able to take any more questions from the floor,' he heard his killer's voice say, 'the floor now being unable to ask any questions.'
Foster struggled against his restraints like a wounded, cornered beast, instinct and preservation kicking in once more, damning the pain each minor movement caused.
This wasn't how he thought it was going to end.
Not like this. A heart attack one night, maybe. Or some bullet from a suspect they had forced into a corner. All of these he had considered when lying in bed, or mulling over a glass of red. But not being tortured by a fucking maniac. If he had a gun and the use of his hands, he would have no hesitation in blowing his own brains out.
'The item you are wearing is called, rather bluntly, a mouth opener. I've adapted it a bit, but it's used in sadomasochistic circles in pursuit of helpless degradation and absolute control. God bless the Internet.'
He leaned in closer; Foster could feel his warm breath on his face.
'You can't see, but there are two screws here.'
The contraption moved. The screws were at either side of his mouth.
If I turn them clockwise they bring the two metal plates that are covering your upper and lower sets of teeth closer together.'
Foster felt the contraption loosen and his jawbone relax with an ache.
'But if I turn anticlockwise . . .'
He felt the screws turn. The gap between the top and bottom of his jaw became wider once more.
If I keep screwing like this, then eventually your jawbone will break - very slowly.'
He continued to turn, thread by thread. Foster felt the strain on his jaw as it was pushed back to the position it was in when he woke up. The skin at the side of his lips had split. Breathing was a struggle once more. Foster felt himself fading, unable to get the air he needed because the widening of his mouth tightened his neck and constricted the airway.
The fight was leaving him, his thoughts starting to drift. . .
The barbiturates had come from the street. A drug dealer, who passed them information from time to time, said he would get hold of them for the right price. Three days later they met in a carpark and he was handed the vial.
'You sure you know what you're doing here?' the dealer had asked. 'My mate says that's some heavy shit.'
Foster reassured him. Did not tell him it was for his own father.
That night his father wanted to do it. His affairs had been put in order, nothing was left undone. They sat at the kitchen table as the night fell and drank a bottle of Chateau Montrose 1964. Rain had decimated the crop that year, but the Montrose was picked before the storms came, a true rarity. His father had long been saving it.
He drank it in a state of reverie. Before he took the first sip, he stared long and hard at the beautiful red hue, then buried his nose in the glass and inhaled deeply. A look of contentment was written across his face. When he took a sip, so did Foster. The wine was like liquid velvet, the acidity correct, the tannins gentle and mellow. It was the silkiest wine he had ever tasted. His father savoured each drop like it was nectar of the finest fruit.
When he finished the glass, he stood up. Not even allowing himself more than one glass in the last few minutes of his life.
'Don't do it, Dad,' Foster said, voice breaking.
'This life holds little more for me,' his father said. 'The cancer will kill me in a year. It will eat and eat away at me. I would rather retain some control and choose the time of my leaving.'
'What changed, Dad? You were so full of fight'
His father held up his hand to quieten him. Don't give me the first degree,' he said slowly. Euthanasia means "easy death" and I want it to be that way. Respect my decision.
There are some fights you can't win and there are some fights you don't want to win. Now you can leave if you want. I'll understand. You're implicated enough as it is.' As he stood up, he looked at Foster. 'One day you'll understand.'
His father went upstairs. Foster followed, not quite believing this was happening.
In his room, his father plumped up some pillows and lay down. Next to the bed on a table was the vial. Foster climbed on to the bed; tears stung his cheeks. Helplessness. There was nothing he could do. Fear. This man had always been there.
Nothing was said. They hugged. His father told him he loved him and was proud of him. Foster, breaking down, returned the gesture.
His father edged backwards on his throne of pillows. Then he picked up the vial, turned the top and emptied seven white pills into the palm of his hand. He looked at Foster, smiled, eyes wet. Then he threw the pills into his mouth and took a hefty swig of water.
'Now, this may hurt.' The killer was back, his voice dragging Foster from the brink.
He started to turn the screws.
Heather's car slammed to a halt on Bramley Road.
On the way, as they careered through the narrow, streetlit warren of Notting Dale, she had phoned through for an armed response team to assist them.
Then she turned to Nigel.
'Foster will keep himself alive as long as possible,'
she muttered, her jaw firm.
Her faith in him appeared unshakable. Nigel was desperate to believe her. It was only a half-hour from midnight.
They jumped out, Nigel clutching an Ordnance Survey map from 1893 and a small torch. He marched forwards, checking their position against the map, trying to work out where Pamber Street might have been. Above them the Westway, which carved through the area like a concrete river, pulsated with evening traffic. They walked along a short road leading down to an underground car park, Heather and the team following Nigel's steps.
Nigel could see as he passed a series of five-a-side football pitches that Pamber Street was no more, one of the streets razed when the overhead motorway was built. The map told him that Pamber Street had lain north of the Westway. With his finger he traced the angle of the road and looked up at one of the characterless brick blocks of flats that studded the area. He veered towards one. In the distance he heard a van pull up at speed. He turned to see it disgorge a troop of armed response officers. More should be on their way.
'Keep going,' Heather gasped. 'Find the flat.'
Nigel headed straight for a block that appeared to stand on the same patch of ground as Pamber Street.
Few of the flats were illuminated. There was the thud of footsteps on the ground as the armed team caught them up. Nigel and Heather reached the entrance and made for the stairs.
'Where now?' Heather asked breathlessly.
'Number 12,' Nigel said, bounding up the stairs.
The number of Segar Kellogg's shop. Instinct told him his descendant would have picked a flat of the same number. They reached the second level and made their way across the corridor linking the flats. The armed team was now alongside them. Nigel stopped outside number 12. No one said a word.
Nigel stepped back. His eyes glanced to his right, where he could see lights and vehicles descending on the area from all sides. Then they met Heather's. Her dark eyes were wide with fear, expectation. He felt his heart beat firm and insistent against his ribcage, as if attempting to force its way out.
The team of four men took up their positions, strapping on pairs of night-vision goggles. The flat was silent, no light from within. On the silent count of three, one officer battered the door and it fell with a sonorous thump. The others poured through shouting. Heather followed them, and Nigel's curiosity ushered him through in her slipstream.
The men marched around the flat screaming warnings. Nigel, his eyes not yet accustomed to the light, braced himself for the sound of a gun. Nothing came. The small living room was empty. The single bedroom, too. They burst through into the kitchen: nothing. The air was fusty, sweet-smelling. In the darkness he heard Heather's voice.
'Are you sure it was number 12?' she screamed, her tone accusatory.
'Yes,' he whispered hoarsely.
He was certain. He felt himself shrink visibly.
Another group of officers appeared in the doorway.
One of them flicked a light switch, lighting the room, making Nigel squint.
In the middle of the small, spartan sitting room was a large, white fridge-freezer; the only item in there save a wooden chair. Nigel and Heather looked at each other. One of the ART pulled the fridge door open. Empty but for half a carton of milk. He pulled the first drawer of the freezer open. Nothing. Then the second. Immediately he stepped back. Heather moved in, Nigel at her shoulder. He could see a bed of ice stained watery-red. On it lay a pair of hands and what appeared to be a wig, though a flap of blue-black skin betrayed its true origin.
Darbyshire's hands, MacDougall's scalp. They had the right place.
'Too late,' Heather drawled numbly.
The ringing in Foster's ears was incessant. It drowned out everything: the voice of his potential killer, the quickening beat of his heart, even his own pathetically shallow breaths. Speaking was too much effort. The pain in his body from his many wounds had drifted away. Indeed, he could not feel his body at all. The only sensation was the ringing. Suddenly it stopped.
He felt light, ready to float free. Peace and contentment flowed through him.
Then he felt the bed beneath him once more, as if slammed back into his body, aware immediately of the agony from his suppurating leg and shattered collarbone in particular. He opened his eyes and gasped: the pain from his ripped jaw shot through his entire body, yet he was incapable of emitting anything other than a low moan in protest.
For those few seconds he wanted to be calm and peaceful once more, away from his wracked, fragmented body and the smell of old cardboard.
'Thought you'd done a Graham Ellis and jumped the gun,' he heard Hogg say.
The voice was nearby. What was he doing now?
Foster could sense a presence to his left.
'Not long now,' Hogg added. 'Then it'll all be over.'
Foster had no more fight. He closed his eyes, seeking the soothing balm of unconsciousness. There came the first stab of pain on the thumb knuckle of his right hand. A thin piercing stroke with a knife.
He knew at once what it was.
The number 1.
Nigel stumbled out of the flat, needing air, the image of the severed body parts repeating in his mind.
Policemen poured past him as he made his way down the stairs, mingling with a trail of confused residents forced grudgingly from their flats a few minutes before midnight, many in their nightclothes. Nigel did not know what to do with himself. Foster was certain to be dead; the killer had won.
He turned and glanced back at the functional brick building, ignoring the chaos around him. Two centuries ago, under a similarly brooding night sky, at the same hour, Esau Hogg had followed his father and watched him slaughter an innocent man. A few days later, within fifty yards of where Nigel now stood, Esau's father had ushered his family to the basement beneath the shop, and butchered them.
The basement, he thought.
His eyes were attracted to a sign to one side of the block, black on white in giant lettering: 'STORE
MORE'. A road wound down underneath the council block, ended by a black garage door. Some sort of self-storage facility. Using the torch, he checked the 1893 map, folded and bundled into his coat pocket.
Then he looked back at the block of flats. The road on the 1893 map was at a different angle from the other streets that branched off the main road. Tracing it with his finger, Pamber Street seemed to follow the contour of the road leading down to the underground storage unit. He ran towards it. Outside the entrance was a security guard.
'Is anyone in there?' Nigel asked, gesturing with his finger at the door.
'No,' the guard said. 'There's only me on duty.
What's going on here?' He gestured to the melee around the block of flats.
'Police work.'
The security guard raised his eyebrows.
'Police?'
Nigel decided to lie. He nodded imperceptibly. 'I need to get in there,' he said, indicating the entrance behind the guard. 'It's important,' he added.
The security guard weighed up his decision.
'Once you've let me in, you need to go and find Detective Sergeant Heather Jenkins and tell her to meet me in here,' Nigel continued with as much authority as he could muster, not wanting to give him time to think about it too much.
The gleam in Nigel's eyes, his desperation, appeared to sway the security guard. He turned back and unlocked the door, letting Nigel in.
'Where's unit 12?'
'First floor down. Take the lift.' He disappeared into an office for a few seconds, returning with a set of bolt cutters. 'Only the customers have keys. You'll need these.'
The security guard turned and left. Nigel headed down into the storage area, turning right from the brightly lit parking bay through a giant set of double doors, towards a lift.
'Nigel!' a voice hissed from behind. It was Heather, out of breath from exertion. She had followed him out of the flat, caught him up. 'Where are you going?'
He told her about the family being murdered in the cellar, and how he had re-examined the map.
She looked at him coolly. 'I just passed the security guard. He's adamant there's no one in the entire complex.'
Nigel shrugged. 'There might be something in there that can help us.'
Heather glanced at the bolt cutters, the glimmer of a smile on her lips. 'Where did you get them?'
'Playing the cop opens a few doors. Literally.'
Heather unholstered her radio and spoke, giving her position and asking for back-up. 'Come on,' she said.
The pair ran to the lift, went down a floor, alighting on a long corridor that stretched for about a hundred yards. The walls on either side were white steel, broken at regular intervals by bright yellow steel doors. The only silence was the gentle hum of the air ventilation system. Nigel walked down the hall, to a point where the doors were less tightly spaced, indicating bigger storage units. He turned and gestured to the last door on the left. No number on it.
They stopped outside, looking at each other. Still only the distant hum of circulating air.
'It's not locked,' Heather said.
All the others they had passed had been.
Nigel looked at her. The bolt cutters he had were no use now, but he felt his grip tighten on the shaft.
Heather reached down and grasped the metal door handle. Slowly, without making a sound, she pushed it down and pulled. The door opened.
'Bloody hell,' she said simply.
There was a wall of boxes blocking the doorway like bricks.
From beyond came a noise, the sound of something being knocked over. Followed, Nigel thought, by a low moan.
Heather flashed him a look, eyes wide. 'He's in there,' she hissed. She looked behind her, along the corridor. No sign of back-up.
Nigel looked at the wall of boxes blocking their path. Without another thought, he took a short run and pitched himself headlong. He met a box square on, felt it give on impact and the whole edifice shift.
A searing pain went through his shoulder. The top rows of boxes came down with him as he burst through the makeshift barrier.
'Stop! Police!' he heard Heather scream out.
He was lying on one side and managed to look up, seeing a dark-haired man with a knife charge across the crowded room towards them. Behind him a supine figure lay almost naked on a trestle. Nigel pushed a box out of the way and jumped to his feet, intercepting the man's path to the door and Heather.
He swung the bolt cutters back like a baseball bat and struck at the figure. They hit the man square in the chest, making him stagger backwards and drop the knife. His eyes flared with anger and he jumped straight to his feet, launching himself at Nigel. Nigel did not have time to swing the cutters once more, but used them to fend off his attacker. His face was contorted with agony, sweat streaming from his brow, teeth bared. He was doing all he could to repel the attacker, but his crash through the boxes had wrenched his shoulder and he could feel his grip on the bolt cutters giving way.
The man wrestled the cutters from his grasp. He swung them back behind his head. Nigel lifted his arms to protect himself from the impact. There was a deafening crack that echoed through the vault. He lowered his arms and saw the man on the floor, in black jeans and white T-shirt, slumped against a box.
There was a small hole in his forehead, only now beginning to gush blood. The man's eyes were open, but he was obviously dead.
Nigel felt his legs weaken and he slumped to the floor, staring ahead, ears still ringing from the shot, cordite in his nostrils. There was a silence that seemed to last for an age before all hell broke loose.
Policemen funnelled in, guns at the ready. Nigel instinctively held his hands up to show he was not armed; he saw their anxious eyes scour the room in search of another assailant, then relax when they saw it was empty. One beckoned Nigel over towards them.
Nigel began to tread gingerly but Heather, ignoring the warnings, sprinted past him, to a corner of the room. He turned and saw the pale, lifeless figure of Foster lying on a makeshift trestle. Nigel followed her. Foster's leg was at a grotesque angle, clearly broken. The rest of his body was covered in welts and bruises. He was absolutely still.
'Grant?' Heather screamed, standing over him.
'Oh, my God! Grant!'