The ash doll, p.24
The Ash Doll, page 24
part #2 of Charlie Priest Series
‘Maybe it was.’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, exasperated. ‘Nothing makes sense.’
Georgie got up and poured herself a glass of tap water. A strange feeling had crept over her, one that she didn’t like. She wanted it to be Fox, but why? Because it was an explanation, something they could use to sort this mess out? Or because she just didn’t like her? And what if it was Fox? Then her reaction to seeing Simeon’s dead body had been callously feigned.
She stayed by the sink, thinking it through. But she kept coming back to the same conclusion. Why would Fox have killed Simeon and then purposefully placed the body in her own car? She’s not that dumb.
‘We have to find her,’ Priest said at last.
‘OK,’ Georgie breathed.
‘Of course she has a hostage so we have to be cautious.’
She didn’t catch on immediately. ‘Who . . .? Oh, your fish.’
‘Come on.’ Charlie took his jacket from the back of the chair.
She hesitated. ‘You think she took a blowtorch to a woman’s eyes and burnt them out?’
‘I don’t know. But I intend to find out. And if she did, you know what that means?’
‘What?’
Charlie finished pulling his jacket on and ushered her to the door. ‘It means my fish is in mortal danger.’
*
Outside, Priest and Georgie had to battle their way through a congregation spilling out of a small gallery underneath Priest’s apartment block. Mostly corporate sponsors in pinstriped suits, more men than women, clutching large fishbowl-sized glasses of red wine and laughing with each other in a forced, detached way. A few arty types too, in garish tweed sports jackets and absurdly cut beards.
‘Some French artist’s new exhibition,’ Priest called back over his shoulder by way of explanation.
‘Bit early for drinking,’ Georgie remarked.
‘Not in France.’
‘I’ve been thinking about the Elias house in Norfolk,’ Georgie said as they made their way back towards the office.
‘Me too. No doubt we’re thinking the same thing.’
‘Why was the cellar flooded? The house is two miles from the coast, on high ground and built on clay.’
‘Quite. Perhaps the flood wasn’t the result of something natural. Solly pulled off the title deeds from the Land Registry; the house was transferred into Alexia’s sole name in 1989, which incidentally is the same year they bought the house in Kent where they now live. That house is also in Alexia’s name only.’
‘Why would they flood the cellar?’ asked Georgie.
‘Possibly to make their quick exit look like it was because the property was defective, and also to explain why they didn’t want to sell it.’
Georgie agreed. ‘Something happened in 1989. Something that meant Alexia and Dominique had to leave their home but without arousing suspicion.’
‘Maybe I can leave that bit with you. The local archives might be a good starting point?’
‘I guess they’re in Norwich but I’ll check.’
‘OK.’ As they crossed the road, Priest’s phone buzzed. He checked and found a message from Solly. He’d found something on Simeon’s phone, something other than the exchange of messages with USER3412. ‘I’ve got to check something out. Are you going to be OK?’
‘Of course.’ She seemed slightly perturbed that he asked the question but flashed him a smile before saying, ‘I’ll get a train.’
‘They’re on strike. Didn’t you see the news?’
‘Oh.’ Georgie thought for a moment. It wasn’t ideal to involve someone else but there seemed no choice. Charlie couldn’t drive her; he had other things to attend to. ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll get a lift.’
‘You sure?’
‘Absolutely. Let’s get back and I’ll arrange to be picked up from the office.’’
Priest drove to the office and abandoned the Volvo outside the Piccolo Cafe, which would annoy the owner no end but he didn’t have time to worry about that. When he got to Solly’s office he knocked and waited for the accountant to clean the handle before opening the door at an angle predefined by the clear line marked across the carpet. Inside, everything was as it usually was and Priest was shown to a seat opposite Solly.
‘Ah, now, Priest,’ Solly began. ‘You asked me to look at this mobile telephone to see if I could retrieve any data from it of significance other than the messages stored on the SIM card.’
‘Yes,’ replied Priest patiently. ‘I did.’
‘Well, you may or may not be pleased to know that I have managed to mine various fragments of deleted emails, more particularly the attachments thereto.’
‘But not the emails themselves?’
‘I’m afraid not. But I have managed to recover one document in its entirety, which you may find of interest, although I note you did not define what data you would consider to be of significance and therefore I feel it would be better if you judged for yourself whether the document has any relevance to Priest & Co.’s current case.’
He nodded. Half the time Priest had no idea what Solly was talking about but no doubt, as always, all would soon be revealed.
As it happened, Solly had printed the document he had referred to and handed it to Priest, who quickly scanned it.
‘You’ve no idea where this came from?’ asked Priest when he finished.
‘I cannot say for certain, but I believe it came from the same individual that messages under the name USER3412,’ Solly replied. ‘Is it helpful?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Priest said, rubbing his head. ‘I’ll let you know.’ He got up.
‘Where are you going now?’ Solly enquired, picking up a packet of baby wipes and a bottle of supermarket own brand antibacterial spray.
‘To see my brother.’
‘Oh, of course, the notorious serial killer. How nice. Now, if you don’t mind I need to sanitise that chair you’ve been sitting on. Good day, Priest.’
*
Georgie skipped out of Priest & Co.’s office, waving cheerily to Maureen who winked at her from behind her desk. Outside, she took out her phone and rang Li.
‘Hi, it’s me,’ she said when Li picked up at the other end.
‘God, you’ve got good timing. I’m starving. Wanna grab something with me?’
‘Can we drive past Norwich on the way?’
Li didn’t respond at first, then said, ‘What?’
‘I know it’s inconvenient, I know it’s a long way, but you definitely said you weren’t doing anything today, so . . .’
‘Sure – it’ll be fun. Girls’ road trip. Actually, gives me an opportunity to meet an old acquaintance of mine that moved up there a few years ago.’
‘You’re a star, Li. I’ll be home in fifteen minutes.’
*
Norwich.
Elinor Fox narrowed her eyes. It had been difficult catching the whole of Georgie’s telephone conversation crouched in an alcove underneath the steps to the Priest & Co. office, but it had been enough.
I bet I know where you’re going.
She didn’t need to follow her anymore now. She knew where Georgie would end up. All she needed to do was retrieve the fish.
Fox pulled the hood over her head, waited for Georgie to pass, then merged into the crowd.
Chapter 50
The fragments of data Solly had recovered from Simeon’s phone puzzled Priest. It was possible that the text was unrelated but the prospect that it was part of a document sent by the same person who had lured Simeon into this dark conspiracy was too intriguing to ignore. Sitting in the car park at the Fen Marsh institute, Priest read as much as he could, but there was pages and pages. All the same story about a girl locked in a basement.
What is this?
He had skipped a few sections in the middle and flipped to the end. The story ended with the girl escaping, clutching a wooden doll.
‘Come on, Ash Doll,’ she whispers. ‘We can go together.’
Priest had been relieved. The girl’s ordeal was torturous to read. Dolls were a recurring theme. The girl’s abuser was sick. Even though it was only a story, Priest’s hatred of him was real.
There were occasional respites, moments where the girl was ruminating about her confinement, or staring out of the window.
The girl closes her eyes and thinks of the church spire, just visible beyond the trees. On a clear day, the girl can stand on boxes piled on top of each other and reach the windowsill. From there she can see out across the valley and to the top of the church. She finds comfort in this simple image, just an upside-down ice cream cone above a tree. But it makes her calm. It gives her hope. In there, God is waiting for her.
Priest closed the papers, packed them into a bag. The story must have some relevance, but what?
The car park was full. He could just see the entrance to Fen Marsh over the car roofs. With its large peach-coloured bricks and teal fascia, Fen Marsh presented a benign exterior compared with the foreboding red bricks of Broadmoor. But that was a deception. It was a small facility, with fewer than eighty patients, but some of the country’s most feared criminals were kept confined behind the shiny new walls. Priest hated it.
Inside the reception, Priest surrendered his phone and wallet and everything else he had in his pockets, before he was ushered through to a waiting area. After a few minutes, a nurse appeared.
‘You’re here to see Dr Priest?’ she asked, anxious.
‘Doctor? You still call him that? I’m pretty sure they revoked his doctorate.’
She shrugged. ‘He insists.’
He stood up. ‘Best not keep the good doctor waiting then.’
*
William Priest set the paper down on the table and turned sideways, crossing his legs and placing his hands behind his raised knee in what Priest had learnt to recognise as ‘William’s thinking pose’. The same two male nurses shuffled their feet behind them again. They exchanged nervous glances; no doubt they had also learnt to be on high alert when Dr Priest crossed one leg over the other. No time to worry about them now, though.
‘This is just awful,’ William rasped.
‘That’s some statement coming from a serial killer.’
William waved his hand, dismissive. ‘No, no. Children aren’t fair game at all. I once killed a man with a cheese grater. He may have been twenty-three. I don’t know. But that’s my limit, and it was never sexual.’
Priest resisted the temptation to contradict him. It was never sexual in the conventional sense, you mean.
‘I’d say an account of quite awful childhood abuse,’ said William. ‘In the form of a pseudo-diary. But who is the author?’
‘You think it’s real?’
‘That was always your problem, Charles. You could never tell what was real and what wasn’t.’
He ignored the jibe. ‘It sounds like she’s being dressed up as a doll. You think that’s part of the . . . fun?’
‘As deplorable as it sounds, yes.’ One of the nurses coughed – he may have been genuinely trying to clear his throat but William took it as a challenge. Turning in his seat only marginally, he spat at the nurse, ‘And you needn’t laugh, Anton! If you find the concept of me, a known mutilator of men, seeing deplorability in indecent acts committed against children then you need to read my file more closely. You’ll see that most of my victims were paedophiles. I took my rage out, properly, on those that deserved it.’ Then he turned back and said to Priest under his breath, ‘And the occasional venture capitalist, wouldn’t you say, Charles?’
‘Concentrate, Wills.’
‘My apologies. Where was I?’
‘The doll,’ Priest reminded him.
‘Ah, yes.’ William relaxed in his seat. ‘I understand that there is a subculture of men who like to dress up as living dolls for various disturbing psychological reasons. I think they are called maskers. As for dressing a child as a doll for sexual pleasure, I dare say it is possible but I have never come across it.’
‘A perversion you’ve never heard of is one worth noting.’
‘Quite. But it is conceivable. A doll represents an unattainable attractiveness. They cannot find a real partner who is satisfactorily perfect so they dress up as a doll, which is. Here, the abuser creates something similarly perfect, so he can defile it. He’s filth, Charles. Filth.’
‘We’re agreed on that,’ said Priest, rubbing his temples. ‘Who do you think wrote it?’
‘Well it seems only a limited number of people could have. The abuser, the woman mentioned in the early passages, the victim, someone who knew the story or it’s simply all made up, and this is a red herring in whatever quest you are currently undertaking.’
‘If it was the victim . . .’
‘Then somebody is observing themselves, as the story is written in the third person. A little close for comfort, brother, don’t you think?’
Priest had immediately recognised the discomforting similarity between the account Solly had pulled off Simeon’s phone and the condition he shared with William, which habitually catapulted him into a trance-like state in which he would observe himself from afar.
He felt a flush of shame. The condition that Jessica knew all about.
‘I know you have a disliking of our common problem, Charles, but you are going to have to face up to it one day.’
‘It’s getting better,’ said Priest, looking at the whitewashed walls and through the window to the garden where patients wandered around distractedly tending to overgrown weeds. This is where seeing ghosts gets you. Priest tried to swallow but found his throat was uncomfortably dry.
‘You mustn’t blame yourself, Charles.’
‘I don’t.’
‘You’re a poor liar. Most depersonalisation sufferers constantly rue the day the onslaught came. What did I do wrong? What if I had done things differently? I doubt you are any different to me. The simple matter is that you have a genetic susceptibility to it. You had a fifty-fifty chance of inheriting the gene. Our sister is the lucky one, but your ghosts, as you call them, would have come to haunt you, whatever.’
He looked away. William was right. He had spent the best part of two years self-scrutinising every aspect of his life, but without coming to any conclusion. It was part of the reason why he could never let go of William. As crazy, perverse and dangerous as he was, William was the only one who really understood his younger brother.
That is a fucked-up thought.
‘Maybe you’re right,’ Priest admitted. He felt weary all of a sudden.
‘Mm. Where did you get this, by the way? It’s hardly your usual read is it? Could it be connected with our earlier discussion?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Of course, and no doubt confidential. I shall treasure our chat as always. Oh, and brother –’ William placed his hand gently on Priest’s arm as he got up to leave ‘– if you find the pervert who dresses children up as dolls for the wrong reasons, then don’t hesitate to send him my way.’
*
The New Playhouse Theatre had stood on a Soho street corner near the John Snow memorial since 1879. A circular building bookending a four-storey row of converted Victorian houses in shades of pink, white and grey, the theatre had closed its doors on 23 November 1961 and remained derelict ever since. A few revivals were attempted but a survey in the early nineties identified a number of major structural problems with the upper circle, making a restoration unviable. A consortium of investors made one final attempt at resurrection in 1992, but when that effort failed less than a year later, the building was forgotten, sold off and eventually became the property of local businessman Sir Eric Warner, albeit through inheritance rather than choice.
With the building effectively sterilised, Sir Eric had sought to salvage something and applied for a conversion into flats. The cost of the project was enormous and unlikely to yield much by way of profit but Sir Eric couldn’t bear to see the old building completely go to waste. Thus, it was with considerable enthusiasm that he now opened the door to the owner of the white Ford Mondeo parked outside who strode in and looked around admiringly at the cluttered foyer with the intention of hiring the space for an art project of an unspecified nature.
And why not? If the theatre was to be abandoned completely, subject to the borough council’s procrastinations over planning issues, then one last performance of any artistic merit would be worthwhile.
Sir Eric studied his visitor as they made their way through to the auditorium and concluded that the phone manner didn’t fit the physical appearance but was otherwise unperturbed. And the stranger certainly seemed passionate about the project, asking plenty of appropriate questions, mostly about acoustics. Of course, Sir Eric had few answers of any credibility but was happy to indulge in a deliberation over the position of microphones to record a monologue of some description.
A keen interest was shown in the control booth, although of course it was devoid of any equipment, and much excitement was exhibited at the little window pointing out to the stage.
‘And the lighting?’ Sir Eric enquired. ‘It is extremely dull in the auditorium. Will that pose a problem for you?’
‘Oh, I think not. Nothing that cannot be overcome, at any rate.’
Sir Eric felt the meeting was positive, albeit that his new renter had many strange mannerisms. A modest fee was agreed and Sir Eric shook hands and watched the Ford Mondeo drive off.
An art project. How fascinating.
Chapter 51
Li drove a custom-made bright yellow Mini Cooper S Roadster with black stripes on the bonnet and black and yellow leather seats to match the paintwork. It was the most ridiculous and fun car Georgie had ever seen and if it wasn’t for the fact that she knew Li had paid for it from prostitution, she might have even enjoyed the roar of the two-litre engine as the little mechanical bumble bee surged into the fast lane of the M11.
They had, mistakenly in Georgie’s view, put the soft top down and she had to shout to be heard above the howl of the wind, her hair flapping around her face. Somehow Li didn’t seem affected and looked perfectly at home in her Gucci leather jacket and skinny jeans as the car advanced beyond ninety-five miles an hour.
