Chief Inspector Maigret Visits London Page 16

  ‘What they got you banged up for, guv?’ Slippery Sam asked sociably.

  ‘I really don’t know,’ replied Evremond, ‘and I’m very worried because my daughter’s ill and there’s no one looking after her. Except the police, of course, but they’re hardly qualified to… ’

  ‘Act like they’ve graduated from Florence Nightingale’s nursing academy?’ Slippery interjected helpfully.

  ‘Precisely. Do you have any idea of how long they’re likely to keep me here?’

  Slippery shrugged. ‘Depends,’ he said, ‘on what charge they can cook up for you in the meantime.’ ‘What are they holding you for?’

  ‘I don’t know, guv,’ Slippery lied, ‘I’m in the same boat as you are: I think I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

  ‘That’s a shame.’

  ‘Yes, it’s a damned shame, but what I can I do? They’re holding all the aces. Same in your case, I guess.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  On the other side of the two-way mirror frustration was building with every insignificant word the pair spoke.

  ‘I get the feeling they don’t know each other, boss,’ Andy Gillespie said. ‘They’re just making small talk.’

  ‘And I get the feeling that you’re right, dammit,’ Clive Scott said. ‘Okay, get the duty officer to wheel Evremond out and take him back to the cells, then wheel in Cruella De Vil (his name for The Recruiter’s girlfriend, nurse Cynthia Craven!): let’s see if Slippery Sid knows her.’

  But he didn’t.

  Meanwhile, in Dulwich, the police nurse, Deirdre Wilson, had just walked into Genevieve’s room where she was still sitting in a comfortable chair by the side of her bed, talking animatedly with her brother.

  ‘Will you two be okay if I pop out to the chemist’s for fifteen minutes?’ she asked. ‘Dr Lucas has just phoned through a prescription that he wants me to collect for you, young lady,’ she said smiling at Genevieve.

  ‘We’ll be fine,’ brother and sister replied together.

  ‘Good. And then, when I’m back, I think it will be time for the patient to get back into bed for a little rest before her supper.’

  Not long after Deirdre had left, the front door opened again: this time very quietly. Patrick thought he heard something, so he stopped talking and listened carefully. Nothing: must have been my imagination, he thought.

  The Recruiter left his briefcase in the hallway and crept silently towards the basement door which led off the end of the kitchen. To his surprise, the door was not locked. He flew down the stairs with that peculiar motion he had perfected over many years of practising the martial arts. When he found that the boxes of the exploding sparklers had gone, he lost all control and fell into a total frenzy. He rampaged around throwing things about, pulling stuff off shelves, and opening, then slamming shut, cupboards and drawers. And that noise Patrick most definitely did hear.

  ‘Close the door after I’ve left, Ginny,’ he said quietly, ‘and make sure you lock it. Then dial 999. Tell them there’s a dangerous intruder in the house, and they’re to let Chief Inspector Scott at Scotland Yard know immediately. And tell them to come quickly!’

  ‘Patrick – don’t go!’ she cried. ‘I must. Now be a brave girl, and do as I say.’

  Patrick stood on the wide landing at the top of the stairs and looked down. As he heard the click of Ginny locking her door, The Recruiter suddenly appeared in the hall below him, and they glared at each other.

  ‘Well, well – another Evremond brat, by the look of things,’ The Recruiter said with an unpleasant laugh.

  ‘I will not let you pass,’ Patrick shouted down at him.

  The Recruiter sneered, ‘Is that meant to be some kind of joke? You’re just a boy. How can you stop me? You don’t know what you’re up against, my lad, nor the strength of the forces I have at my disposal. There’s no limit to the ways I can hurt you: many of them without so much as a drop of blood being spilled. If you don’t believe me you can ask the policeman outside your front door. Oh wait,’ he laughed. ‘You could ask him, but he wouldn’t be able to answer you. How could he? He’s dead!’

  ‘I can stop you, alright,’ Patrick said, standing his ground. ‘Can’t you see I’m not alone? Look who’s behind me.’

  ‘You don’t think I’d fall for that trick, do you? It’s the oldest one in the book. There’s no one behind you.’

  ‘Look again,’ Patrick said calmly, although he was trembling inside. ‘Can’t you see the Archangel Michael: the very one who fought your filthy old Satan-Snake and slung his evil butt out of Heaven? Michael’s here, standing behind me, with his angels, and behind them are all the holy martyrs of the Lord.’ What else, what else, Patrick thought desperately, trying to remember his Sunday school lessons. Who comes after the holy martyrs? ‘And… and all the blessed company of saints and apostles,’ he finished triumphantly.

  Then suddenly The Recruiter was on the landing, facing him. How did he do that Patrick thought – did he fly? It looked like he flew. But how is that possible? And then The Recruiter’s hands were on his shoulders and they were struggling, fighting, clawing and gouging each other. Patrick was young, fit, and athletic. But his assailant was stronger, and well experienced in the deadly arts. As they grappled with each other his hands were probing to find the exact location on his neck that would send Patrick to his death as effortlessly as he had killed the young policeman.

  ‘I need help,’ Patrick found himself shouting. ‘Can’t you hear me? Help, I said. I need your help!’

  The Recruiter laughed. I’ve got him now, he thought. There is no help for him. I’ve got him exactly where I want him. He’s mine. And this one I think I might kill slowly. Slowly, and with the most excruciating pain. With his next heartbeat, Patrick became aware that his entire body was being filled with an extraordinary power. Every sinew was strengthened once, then twice, and then again and again, and again. At the same time he could feel the increased blood supply surging effortlessly through his veins. He felt invincible. He felt blessed. He had been empowered with an ancient strength: a holy strength. It was the same power that the boy David had felt, four thousand years earlier, when he loaded the first stone into his slingshot and prepared to take aim at the giant Goliath.

  Patrick grabbed The Recruiter, and threw him to the floor like a rag doll. He got up, shook his head, and they struggled again. Patrick delivered a series of heavy blows to The Recruiter’s upper body with his fists and elbows, and he staggered back teetering close to the edge of the top step. Then he recovered and lunged at Patrick again, full of the devil’s own fury. Patrick looked him steadily in the eyes, then, with all the force of which he was now capable, he shoved him backwards.

  The Recruiter fell down the stairs with such momentum that he hit the wall at the half-landing with a loud whack, before bouncing off again. With the collision had come a terrible scream: an unholy cry of pain. One of the sharply-pointed stars of the inverted pentacle he wore around his neck had been thrust deep into his heart by the impact with the wall. He was dead before his body dropped to the floor below, but that fall broke his neck. I did it deliberately, Patrick thought. I knew that if I hit him hard enough he would fall. Was I wrong to do that, he asked. It doesn’t feel wrong.

  Simultaneously he heard the sound of Ginny unlocking her door, and the wail of the approaching police sirens. She crept out to the landing and clung tightly to him without saying a word. Brother and sister stared down at the lifeless body of her tormentor lying on the floor below them, twisted and splayed out like some wretched reject from a Guy Fawkes’ bonfire.

  ‘Ding, dong, the witch is dead,’ Genevieve said softly.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  The two police cars, each with four officers in them, arrived at the Evremond home at the same time as Deirdre Wilson returned from her visit to the chemist’s. It was Deirdre who pronounced the young constable dead at the scene, after one of his colleagues had found his body where The Recruiter had dragged it, beh
ind a flowering tree in the front garden.

  ‘It’s Robbie Grainger, poor lad,’ one of the officers said. ‘Only this morning he was telling me about his plans to ask his girlfriend to marry him. He’d been saving as hard as he could to buy a ring for her, and he figured that his next pay would do the trick. Now he’s never going to get the chance to ask her. Who did this to him? I tell you if I get my hands on the swine he’ll wish he’d never been born!’

  All the other officers agreed loudly with his last comment.

  ‘Calm down, everyone,’ Sergeant Tom Moore cautioned. ‘And keep on your toes. Whoever did this might still be inside the house.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Nurse Wilson cried. ‘I’ll never forgive myself if anything’s happened to that dear girl and her brother.’

  However, when the officers and Deirdre entered the house, they found Genevieve and Patrick very much alive and still standing on the landing, looking down at the lifeless body of The Recruiter. It was as though they half-expected, half-feared, that he might suddenly spring to life again.

  At that point the relieved nurse took charge, fussing over her patient like a mother hen with only one chick, as she settled her back into bed, and made her pillows comfortable again. Then she enlisted Patrick’s help to make cups of tea for everyone, while the ambulance men covered The Recruiter’s body, and the police did a further search of the house.

  ‘Whatever you do, lads,’ Tom Moore instructed the ambulance men, who were discussing the removal of the body, ‘do not – repeat, do not – take our young colleague away in the same ambulance as this… this… vile… thing,’ he said firmly.

  ‘Wouldn’t dream of it, mate,’ the senior ambulance man replied. ‘We have our own system: the young police hero will go first, and then later we’ll return for the garbage.’

  By the time Chief Inspector Scott and Sergeant Andy Gillespie arrived on the scene thirty minutes later, the police team had found the treasure chest of information that The Recruiter had stuffed into his briefcase when he’d beat his hasty retreat from the Whitechapel house that morning. There were six slim files in the briefcase: each one giving names, addresses, and complete details of the terrorist outrages that were to be simultaneously carried out in six different European cities at the same time as the attack on the London Eye: each using the exploding sparklers, each taking as many lives as possible. Paris; Rome; Madrid; Brussels; Berlin and St Petersburg: it was all there, in chapter and verse. Everything Scotland Yard and Interpol would need to round up the satanists – with a few dozen anarchists thrown in as a bonus – and put an end to their insane ambitions.

  ‘I can’t quite believe my eyes, Andy, old son,’ Clive Scott said, staring in amazement at the files that he had spread over the kitchen table in the Evremond house. ‘All this seems too good to be true: and it’s going to keep the police forces of Europe busy for a very long time to come. Never, in all my years of policing, has anything remotely like this fallen into my lap, like a ripe peach from a tree.’

  ‘It’s some kind of a miracle, boss,’ Andy Gillespie replied.

  ‘That’s exactly what it is, matey – a diamond-studded miracle! And let’s be thankful for that mercy!’

  ‘But why were they doing it? What were they after?’

  ‘Complete world domination, of course – what else? That’s what these nut jobs; the blasted satanists, anarchists, and any other kind of “ists” you care to name, always want. From what I’ve been able to figure out from these papers so far, their plan was to cause wide-spread panic by a series of high-casualty disasters, then, afterwards, when everyone was still reeling from the shock, they’d flood the EU countries with the counterfeit currency which would have a disastrous effect on an already weak economy. And this, in turn, would lead to a total, world-wide financial collapse. Then they’d take over and run the whole damn show: lock stock and blasted barrel.’

  ‘And all of it was brought to nought by one young Cambridge undergraduate,’ Andy Gillespie said.

  ‘Yep, my dear old mum was right. She always said that there was nothing more important in life than a good education, and Patrick Evremond has just proved her point,’ his boss said, smiling broadly as he took another slurp of tea to celebrate.

  The next morning, Slippery Sid Ellis, James Evremond, and Cruella De Vil, were each taken, one by one, to confirm the identity of The Recruiter.

  Slippery Sid’s reaction was the most surprising. He looked at the lifeless body, did a kind of double-take, looked again, then fell to his knees on the cold tiles of the mortuary floor, and wept like baby.

  ‘Free at last! Thank God Almighty, I’m free at last,’9 he cried, over and over again. ‘Aren’t those words from a Negro spiritual?’ Andy whispered to his boss.

  ‘I think they might be. I must say I’d never sussed Slippery as a religious man, but he does seem mightily relieved about something. And that something seems to be that The Recruiter is well and truly out of the picture now.’

  ‘He sounds genuine enough, guv: you have to admit that.’

  ‘Yes, he does. I’ll give him that much: he sounds nothing if not completely genuine. Okay, take him back to the cells, and tell them to get him a hot drink, and something decent to eat. And next get Cruella down here.’

  When Cynthia Craven saw The Recruiter’s body she made absolutely no sound. She just stared at his lifeless body in total disbelief for a long time. When she finally spoke, she said, ‘He’s not dead. It’s impossible. He said he was immortal. He said we both were: that we would live forever.’

  ‘He’s dead alright,’ Clive Scott said bluntly. ‘If you like, I could show you the results of the post-mortem.’

  ‘He’s not dead,’ she insisted. ‘How could he be when we did everything that the… ’

  ‘The devil, wanted?’ Andy Gillespie interrupted.

  ‘The Master,’ she corrected. ‘We did everything that The Master wanted.’

  ‘Well, his post-mortem says that he died when his heart was pierced by one of the points of the damn thing he wore around his neck, and then his neck was broken when he hit the floor. Hard to see how anyone could survive those sorts of wounds.’ Clive Scott said, in a matter-of-fact voice, but both he and Andy could see that she was not convinced.

  Cynthia Craven moved forward and kissed The Recruiter on his cheek, but when she did, she fell back in alarm. ‘He’s stone cold,’ she cried.

  ‘Yes, that’s because he’s dead,’ Clive Scott said. ‘That’s what we’ve been telling you: he’s as brown bread as it’s possible for anyone to be. And that’s the bottom line, Ms Craven. Now, take her back to her cell, I’ll have some questions for her later.’

  When James Evremond saw the body, his reaction was also surprising, but not as dramatic as Slippery Sid’s had been. ‘Who will save my little girl, now that he’s dead?’ he whispered plaintively. ‘Certainly not this sack of snake’s sick, because he’s as dead as your average dodo. But then he never could save Genevieve, Mr Evremond. Shall I tell you what was in the so-called tonic he was forcing her to swallow?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, let’s see: there were mood stabilisers of every shape and variety. Uppers, downers, sideways – you name it, it was in that damn mixture. Then there were a couple of your nastier class A drugs, plus a few pinches of some other things – which could be ”eye of newt and toe of frog”10 for all we know – that the lab boys haven’t been able to identify yet. But none of it did any good to your daughter, nor was it intended that it would. It was just meant to give the illusion that it was helping her. That blasted stuff was the very opposite of good! And, if you want the honest truth, it has probably shortened her life.’

  ‘Is that absolutely true, Chief Inspector?’

  ‘It is, Mr Evremond. I swear by everything I hold dear, that what I’ve just told you is the absolute truth.’

  ‘Then it’s fortunate for him that he’s already dead: otherwise I would have killed him myself.’

  ‘Aren’t you ju
st a little bit curious as to how he actually did die, Mr Evremond?’ the chief inspector asked, as they were leaving the mortuary.

  ‘I’d assumed that you – I mean the police – had killed him. Isn’t that how it happened?’

  ‘No, it’s not. He killed one of ours, but we didn’t kill him.’

  ‘Then who did?’

  ‘Your son. Patrick Evremond.’

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  ‘Please show Mr Evremond into our best interview room, Andy,’ the chief inspector said as the lift took them up to the third floor, ‘and get him a cup of coffee. Then fill him in on the details of everything that happened in his home during his absence. I’ll be with you in ten.’

  ‘Okay, sir,’ Andy Gillespie replied.

  When the chief inspector joined them he looked very pleased with himself, but James Evremond looked shocked.

  ‘Now then, Mr Evremond,’ he said, ‘I have been authorised to make you an offer. And I think you’ll find it is an offer you don’t want to refuse. But in return, you need to answer some questions from me. Is it a deal?’

  ‘It’s a deal, although I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about, Chief Inspector.’

  ‘Okay, shall we begin? Things will become clear to you as we proceed. Agreed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I am prepared to release you on police bail, so that you can return to your family this very day, provided you surrender your passport, and give me your word that you will remain in this jurisdiction to answer whatever charges may be brought against you in the future. So far, so good?’ he asked, looking steadily into James Evremond’s eyes to gauge his reaction.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay, then. Now for the questions: how did you meet the man we have downstairs, and what is his real name?’

  ‘Well, he was introduced to me as Kevin Lomax, so I assume that’s actually his name. And I met him at a… er… a meeting in Essex.’