Either way, Mount Grace was the link. That was where the killers went. That was where John had gone after he’d engaged Todd to change his will. And I was willing to bet a rupee against a roll-over lottery win that that was where Myriam Kale had been taken, after Ruth gave up her sister’s mortal remains to Mister Bergson, the charming killer with the bleach-blond hair.
‘Thanks, Nicky,’ I said. ‘I owe you.’
‘Yeah,’ he confirmed. ‘You do. More than you can pay. That briefcase is full of the Git’s bits and pieces. There’s no way I’m gonna try and sell them now: I’m going underground, and they’re too fucking easy to track. So you keep them to remember me by.’
‘Going underground?’ I tried to read his expression. ‘Do you mean that literally, or-?’
‘Ask me no questions, Castor, I’ll tell you no fucking lies.’
I looked out of the window. I had the sense of clocks ticking and events accelerating past me, out of control. I’d vaguely assumed that we’d be taking the North Circular and I could jump out at Wood Green on the way through to Nicky’s gaff in Walthamstow, but the cabbie had taken the M25 and we were coming down on the A10 now, through Enfield and Ponders End. A memory stirred in my mind.
I looked at my watch. It was very late, but what the hell. If nobody was home I could always come back another time. It felt like more than coincidence that I was passing this close right after Nicky had dropped that bombshell on me. Then again, that’s how all the best coincidences feel. First things first, though. Too much unfinished business was pressing on me: if I could shunt some of it off, I’d travel lighter.
‘Can you get a message through to someone for me?’ I asked Nicky. ‘On your way to wherever it is you’re going?’
‘Maybe,’ he allowed warily. ‘Who’s the someone?’
‘The governor of Pentonville.’
He gave a sardonic laugh. ‘Fine. What do you want me to say? That you love him after all?’
‘That a demon from Hell is probably going to walk through his front door some time in the next twenty-four hours, looking to let a serial killer back out onto the street. A guy in the remand block. Douglas Hunter.’
Nicky stared at me.
‘A demon from Hell?’
‘Yeah. Wearing human flesh. Answering to the description of a wet dream.’
‘Juliet?’
‘Obviously.’
‘You’re rolling over on Juliet?’
‘I wish. Look, I don’t think there’s anyone in that place with the balls or the tradecraft to exorcise her. I just want them to keep her out. Otherwise – well, a shitty situation gets one degree shittier.’
Nicky considered. ‘I can drop him an email through a blind proxy. That good enough?’
‘That’s perfect, Nicky. Thanks.’
‘You’re very welcome. Where I’m going, even she won’t find me, so what the fuck do I care?’
‘Hey,’ I called to the cabbie, ‘can you fork a left at Nags Head Road?’
‘I was going to anyway,’ he grunted.
‘Great. You can drop me on the other side of the reservoir. That’s Chingford Hatch, right?’
‘Chingford Green. Chingford Hatch is a bit further down.’
‘It’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’
‘Who do you know all the way out here?’ Nicky demanded, genuinely curious. He’s curious about everything, because he knows, deep down, that the huge global conspiracy of which we’re all a part takes in every tiny detail. I think he even believes that one of the tiny details may turn out to be the clue that unlocks everything else.
‘A guy who runs a crematorium,’ I said.
19
The cab rolled away into the night, leaving me standing on a rain-slick pavement in the middle of a strangely lopsided street. In front of me was an unremarkable row of white-fronted semis: at my back was the Lea Valley reservoir, a broad slash of night-black nothingness barely contained behind a chain-link fence.
King’s Head Hill lay to the north of me, most of the rest of Chingford to the south. Taking advantage of a street light, I fished out my wallet and rummaged through it until I found what I was looking for: the calling card that Peter Covington had given to Carla on the day her husband got cremated, and that Carla had passed on to me because she had nowhere to put it in her funereal glad-rags. The address was off New Road, in Chingford Hatch, and it had a name instead of a number: ‘The Maltings’. Less than a mile away, anyway, even if it was at the further end of New Road, up by the golf course. I made a start.
As I walked I mulled over what I knew and didn’t know. The crematorium was the centre of some reincarnation racket whose implications I couldn’t get my head around just yet. John Gittings had been investigating it when he died, and he’d known what was going down long before he knew where. He’d spent days and weeks going through every damn cemetery in London, crossing them off laboriously on his list before finally coming to the big revelation that it wasn’t a cemetery he was looking for at all. Smashna. The light-bulb moment.
And what did John do after that? Two things I knew about already, and they didn’t fit together all that well. He changed his will, insisting that he be burned at Mount Grace instead of being buried out at Waltham Cross. He did that even though he knew by this time – or maybe he knew from the start – that whatever the deal was at Mount Grace it was by invitation only, with thugs, murderers and former gangsters forming all or most of the clientele.
And at the same time he planned an invasion. The letter I’d found inside his watch case, where he’d hidden it with such paranoid care, didn’t bear any other interpretation: Youll just get the one pass, and its got to be on INSCRIPTION night, so you can get them all together. Take back-up: take lots of back-up.
So did he ever make that pass? Presumably not. He killed himself instead, and gave himself into the tender care of the born-again killers he’d been stalking. I couldn’t see the logic. Even for a man whose mind was crumbling away like a sandcastle at high tide, I just couldn’t for the life of me see how that would work.
One thing I could see, though: whatever was going on, Maynard Todd was at the heart of it. He’d said he handled most of Lionel Palance’s business affairs, which meant he was de facto in charge of the crematorium if Palance didn’t ask too many questions. He’d told me it was his suggestion that John Gittings should choose Mount Grace after he’d decided on cremation. Then he’d moved Heaven and Earth to make it happen, calming Carla’s fears and bringing her on board with a tact and sensitivity that didn’t go hand-in-hand with the word ‘lawyer’ in my personal lexicon. And Gary Coldwood had had his accident – you can take the ironic emphasis for granted – after I’d pointed him towards Todd’s office.
Okay, so Ruthven, Todd and Clay were next on the itinerary. But right now I had to keep my mind on the job in hand.
The Maltings wasn’t a house at all, I realised as I reached the front gates. It was a mansion, set way back from the street behind a thick barricade of mature yew trees. The gates were electronic, as I could see by the thick hydraulic arms mounted at waist height across each one. There was a bell push and a speaker grille, but I ignored them for the moment. There was plenty of more interesting stuff to look at.
It had crossed my mind as I walked that I might be wasting my time: that I’d find the house silent and dark, everyone safely tucked up in bed and sleeping the sleep of the more or less just. I needn’t have worried. Every light was ablaze, and figures crossed and recrossed the lawn beyond the yew hedge, calling out to each other as they went. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I could hear the urgency in their tones.
I rang the bell, waited, rang it again: nobody answered. The crisis in the house, or rather in the house’s grounds, hadn’t left anybody free to deal with casual after-midnight callers. What the hell has happened to the social niceties these days?