A Death at the Palace Read online

  And June’s piebald rabbit which, freed from his humiliation into shirt and trousers again, he’d taken and gently squeezed until it stiffened and thrashed and then fell limp. Hid it where nobody but he knew, deep in the woods beyond the brook. He remembered how warm the rabbit had felt, for so long after he’d killed it. And wondered, in a move so bold it took his breath away, if the girl would feel so warm after she died, and placed his hand upon her mottled cheek. Was she one of those Nature had pencilled in for dispatch, or would she survive to become stout and weary like Sister Hornby? She stirred a little, fleeing the clamminess of his fingers, and shifted in the bed, so that the full extent of her pubic apron revealed itself to him, like the cities of life he’d uncovered under stones.

  The pillow lay to one side of her, and he took it up and smelt it. Sharp thoughts and equations replaced ancient feelings. If God saw everything, and he saw everything, then his was a power equal to God’s. God could try to wipe him out for his mother’s sin, but he too, had the power to decide who stayed and who went. He had already killed one of God’s Creatures, after all – and nothing had happened to him. And now the girl squirmed as he climbed on top, and sealed the pillow over her face and clung to the sides of it, feeling her flailing knees knock against the rough serge covering his back. The horsehair in the pillow crackled, as her head twisted about. He could still smell her last stale breath as he pulled the nightdress down and covered her neatly with the bedclothes. Scared that he might one day forget it all, he took out his pocket knife, and cut a tiny swatch from the girl’s hair, storing it in the breast pocket of his tunic.

  Sixty years later, in his small house in the far north of London, he rubbed those locks between his fingers, hoping the power they still held might float up into the air of his living room and away. He wanted it to go now. He was no longer strong enough to resist it. A pact, kept for decades, had almost been broken up like pie-crust. And he’d sworn to himself, of course, that this had been different, a different type of life-taking, not a return to his old longings at all. But it had felt the same.

  He heard her feet on the stairs, two steps, then a pause, two and a pause, like always. He saw what she was doing, without the need to see, because she always came downstairs that way, as though not wanting to miss some detail of the journey. And as much as he liked that, he longed for her to go away. With her little habits and her funny expressions, always leaving that strange, sad perfume in the air, so pale, so intense, he wondered what he might end up doing.

  Chapter Two

  ‘I’m still not getting the peg,’ Susan said, back to her usual, bullish self an hour later, as she argued with her staff over the contents of the next edition. Rex ground his teeth. He knew, as they all knew, that theirs was just a local paper in a district of North London that would never acquire a gastro-pub. With the exception of Ellie, who was young, and Susan, who owned the paper, everyone on the staff was there because they had nowhere else to go. But Susan, being from somewhere along the East Coast of America, conducted all her business as if she and her band of disciples were responsible for bringing out the New York Times. It was daft, if you thought about it; but if you didn’t think about it, in a way it made work much more enjoyable. Often more frustrating, too.

  ‘A bloke just gave me this leaflet,’ Rex said, brandishing the offending article for all to see. ‘“Fascists hand out leaflets on High Street on Monday morning.” What more of a peg do we need?’

  ‘And what better publicity could they hope for?’ Susan said, toying with one of her dark ringlets. She had, Rex often thought, remarkably kittenish ways for a woman in her late fifties.

  ‘What I don’t get, right, is, right –’ Terry, the photographer, shifted awkwardly in his chair. His six colleagues all turned to him. ‘You’ve got that Polish bird attacked up at Ally Pally last week. Now it’s happened to Maggs the cleaner. That should be your lead story, shouldn’t it? Two Polish birds in the same place in two weeks? I mean, young women,’ he added, with a nervous look towards Ellie.

  In spite of his terminology, there were a few murmurs of approval. Terry sat back in his chair, folding his arms.

  ‘The first girl was called Ilona Balint,’ Susan replied. ‘She was Hungarian. What happened to her, actually happened seventeen days ago. And we covered what little information there was in the relevant edition of the paper. But still, I take your point. Is this something we should be leading on?’ She spread her palms out towards the staff, as if inviting their views, although the staff knew it was never that simple.

  ‘In other words,’ Rex said, ‘at the same time as two Eastern European women have been brutally attacked in the same way, in the same place we’ve also got a new political party handing out leaflets saying all the Eastern Europeans need to go home.’

  ‘Rex, we don’t know that the person who attacked Magda is the person who attacked the Hungarian girl. And we certainly don’t know that the motive for either or both of them was…’

  ‘He pulled out her hair,’ Rex said. ‘Isn’t that what we reported? Someone pulled a great chunk of hair out of the Balint girl’s head? And now someone’s done it to Magda.’

  There was a pause, as everyone thought about the office cleaner. She wasn’t exactly a chatty soul, but she cheered the place up. Always came in wearing parakeet colours, shocking pinks with queasy greens, and sang little snatches of Elvis as she cleaned.

  She’d been found by a van driver taking a cargo of pastirma sausage and salty cheese on the high, mountain-pass circuit around Alexandra Palace to avoid the permanent log-jams of Wood Green High Street. He’d almost knocked her down as she stumbled out from the trees.

  ‘Both young, attractive blondes, walking across Ally Pally,’ Rex finally said. ‘Both grabbed by the throat. Both given a brutal new hairdo. Pure coincidence? No. Same attacker, same targets. And this BWP group is targeting them, too…’

  ‘You’re lumping them together because they’re young blonde women,’ Ellie said. ‘But Ilona Balint is a Hungarian lettings negotiator, and Maggs Wysocka is a Polish music student working part-time as an office cleaner. And people are always getting attacked around Alexandra Palace,’ she added. ‘It’s a big space, surrounded by park and woodland, with lots of hidden bits. And this is a violent area.’

  ‘I thought we were supposed to call it vibrant,’ Rex said.

  Susan ignored him. ‘I agree it needs covering,’ she said. ‘In brief. And if and when Maggs is ready, we’ll see if she wants to talk to us. But in the meantime, come on. I say this every week.’ Susan rapped her desk with a biro. ‘Biggest disparity between rich and poor in any London borough. Biggest growth in disparity in any borough in Western Europe. School meals cut. Libraries closed. Care budgets slashed for the elderly. That’s our story. Not panicking people with a story about some whack-job in the park.’

  ‘And every week I point out that the word ‘budget’ on the front page sends people into a coma!’

  ‘We’re not leading on budgets. We’re leading on the business at the Surgery,’ Susan said.

  ‘What?’ Rex sat up in his chair. He heard his phone ringing outside, at his desk, but ignored it. ‘No way, Susan. I am not writing that as our lead story.’

  ‘You are under no obligation to,’ said Susan in her chilliest mid-Atlantic accent. ‘Ellie – I want interviews with the Receptionist, with Dr Shah… and see if anyone who was in the Waiting Room can give you a line or two. You just need a link…’

  ‘Mental health budget cuts?’ Ellie suggested, scribbling furiously.

  ‘Perfect.’

  Rex groaned. Susan pointed at him with her biro. ‘The oldest resident in Haringey is 101 today. I want an interview and snaps. Something uplifting, Rex,’ she added pointedly. ‘And some ideas for the competition, too. It’s six months since we ran the last one.’

  ‘Wasn’t it like this in Berlin in the Thirties?’ Rex said. ‘Nazis marching to power, and all the local papers doing stories about cats up sodding trees?’ />
  He was annoyed now, not only because Susan wouldn’t see his point, but because she’d handed the lead story to his junior. It was Susan’s management style: part Zen, part prankster. They were all supposed to rise to the challenge and surprise themselves.

  ‘Rex,’ Susan said, looking up with a sigh. ‘Interview this little fascist rat-catcher if you must. I can’t imagine he’ll have anything new to say. I can imagine even less why I should give him any publicity. But I’ll read it. That’s the best you’re going to get.’

  Rex sat back, glum in victory as the weekly meeting went into its final phase. Brenda, who sub-edited the paper as well as manned the phones, announced some new protocols for the spelling of Albanian names. One of the Whittaker Twins – Rex could never tell one whey-faced, bulbous headed member of the advertising sales team from the other – asked for sponsorship for a Fun Run. Rex wasn’t listening. He sensed his piece about the British Workers’ Action Party was doomed to sit around the page 21 mark, somewhere between the local sports and the Laureate of the Ladders column. If it got in at all.

  The end came and the staff drifted out to their desks. The light was flashing on Rex’s desk phone, but whoever had called had left no message. Rex sighed, impatient to go, but having to wait for Terry as he scrabbled around the office getting his stuff together. The Geordie photographer possessed a vast quantity of equipment, all of it stored in locked metal suitcases scattered about the office. Keys for these had to be located, items had to be decanted into satchels and shoulder bags and bomber-jacket pockets. Terry had a passion for war photography, stored volumes of it in his Tottenham flat, but Rex often wondered how his colleague would actually fare in a war. They’d have drawn up a peace treaty by the time he’d made it beyond the hotel lobby.

  As he watched his colleague, Rex was reminded, somewhat incongruously, of the delightful spectacle of Milda’s morning preparations. Like the Japanese tea ceremony: formal, balletic, involving dozens of embroidered silk bags. That she never put any clothes on until the last moment gave it an additional power.

  He’d kept just one photograph of her. Not a naked one: she was underneath a tree in Highgate Woods, in her sternest Communist librarian’s outfit. Trim woollen suit, horn-rimmed glasses, hair in a bun, but smiling in her mysterious way, as if she might just be on the verge of shaking the hair loose, tearing off the blouse and making howling love on the nearest surface.

  You could also see the watch. Rex had won her a watch at the funfair, on a day-trip to Clacton. A gaudy, see-through plastic thing, digital, and pale blue. If ever anyone wanted to know the meaning of the word gewgaw, you only had to show them this watch. Milda had loved the word, and claimed to love the watch, sporting it as her one concession to the modern age.

  And that photograph, the only one he had left, was on the old phone. The phone he’d given to Aguta to give to her daughter. Ellie had transferred all the important phone numbers to his new device, but he hadn’t asked her about the picture of Milda because he didn’t want anyone to know he still had it. So that was that. Probably a good thing.

  Ellie was nowhere to be seen, and Terry was still faffing, so Rex made use of the interval to call Diana. She was with a patient, but he left a message on her voicemail. ‘See you around eightish,’ he said, his spirits restoring as he thought how refreshing it was to have a new girlfriend who could understand every slack nuance of the language, someone you could leave voicemail messages for. Diana wasn’t officially his girlfriend, of course, it had only been one round of drinks, two sit-down kebabs and a kiss, but he had hopes. ‘You’re going to get a visit from my young assistant,’ he added. ‘Don’t let her wind you up.’

  No sooner had he replaced the receiver when the phone rang again. Number Unavailable.

  ‘Hello… Hello…?’

  A distant roar greeted him, like heavy traffic. Then a clatter – a receiver dropped from a height rather than replaced.

  Rex shrugged and hung up as Terry finally came across, garlanded with bags and photographic baubles. ‘Ready, boss?’

  ‘It’s off. That was the old folks’ home on the line. The borough’s oldest resident just carked it.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ Terry said, agreeably.

  As they went past Reception, Lawrence Berne was leaning over the desk in a manner that he no doubt thought was waggish, telling Brenda and Ellie about the opening night of the Hornsey Players’ production of ‘The Boyfriend’.

  ‘And speaking of boyfriends,’ Berne said, in an unnecessary basso profundo, waggling his shaggy eyebrows. ‘When is my niece going to make an honest woman out of you?’

  This was a reference to Diana, and was met by the female part of the audience with a peal of laughter. It troubled Rex that all the women in the office appeared to adore Lawrence Berne, the genius behind the ‘Laureate of the Ladders’ column, local historian and theatre critic to boot. Especially Brenda: vast, sixty year-old, no-nonsense Brenda, Gazette gate-keeper, fundamentalist sub-editor, mother of five, policeman’s wife. How could Brenda be impressed by a bloke with a year-round suntan and a bow-tie? He didn’t wish he wasn’t dating Lawrence’s niece. He just wished she wasn’t his niece.

  ‘She’s married to her job,’ he said, getting out of the doors before Lawrence could respond.

  ‘What a twat,’ Terry said, gently but with feeling, as they crossed to the car park. And then, ‘Your car or mine?’ Terry always forgot about Rex and cars. Rex didn’t mind. In fact, he liked the fact that Terry never remembered he didn’t drive. It was better than the awkward dance everyone else did, that polite yet painful way they managed to drag the issue of his not-driving up by so very pointedly not dragging it up.

  ‘Let’s get something to eat first,’ Rex suggested. ‘You never know, maybe he really will croak before we get there.’

  ‘I could go another Egg McMuffin,’ Terry said, having noisily eaten two of these items throughout the conference. ‘Have you lost something?’

  Rex was gazing back at the building, and the route between the cars. The route the kid on the moped had taken. Had that really happened?

  He turned back to Terry. ‘I’m not going to McDonalds.’

  They got into Terry’s lovingly preserved 1980 Chevette, stowing the photography kit on the back seat. A quirk of the car’s design meant that if you sat down heavily in the passenger seat, the glove compartment sprang open. It did so this morning, depositing a gaudy scarf onto Rex’s knees. It was a pastiche of the Burberry print: Pepto-Bismol pink in place of the red horizontals, canary yellow where the black vertical stripes ran.

  Rex stuffed the scarf back into the glove compartment, wondering idly who would wear such a garment. Then he remembered that he’d seen it dozens of times, around the neck of the only person on earth who could possibly wear it and not look silly.

  It belonged to Magda Wysocka, the cleaner.

  They drove along Green Lanes, through the heart of North London’s Turkish community. There were jewellers first, all in a line, with that bright yellow gold so popular east of Athens, then they passed a row of grocers with identical displays of fruit and veg. ‘Saw that in Istanbul once,’ Rex said, more or less to himself. ‘With Sib. You get one street – all they sell is typewriters. Next street – hooks. Just hook shops. How do they all stay in business?’

  ‘Aye. Well,’ Terry responded. ‘Funny lot, your Turks.’ He glimpsed a quartet of head-scarfed girls in tight jeans passing down the pavement, arms linked. ‘Mind you, I wouldn’t say no to a shish kebab,’ he added meaningfully.

  They drove on, slowly, because there were roadworks, as always, and half a dozen vans with long, agglutinated Turkish words on the sides were blocking the way. Hizmetinizdeyiniz. Mahdumlari. Roads of neat, Edwardian terraces sprouted off left and right, and a metal sign announced that this was the Haringey Ladder. As with the Southfields Grid and the Wimbledon Toast-rack, Rex wondered why these names stuck, why people seemed to like the idea of a community laid out like a piece of metalwork.


  They parked in one of the ladder-roads, walked back to the Lanes, and there, next to a dim hall where old Greeks gambled, found the ‘Good Taste’ café, a lone beacon of British builder’s breakfasts amid the variegated stews and flatbreads of the Levant. The clientele wore high visibility vests. The staff came from Eastern Europe and included Rex’s ex-girlfriend, Milda. Or generally did. Today there was no sign of her. Instead, the tall, cheese-complexioned girl from the Czech Republic was by the till. She didn’t like Milda and so, out of some perverse logic, was always very pleasant to Rex.

  ‘Milda finished now here,’ she told Rex, hardly able to disguise her pleasure. ‘Fight wiz boss, maybe one month ago, she walks out. Dat’s it… You want Heart Attack?’

  He declined the café’s famous ‘Heart Attack’ breakfast in favour of a toasted cheese sandwich. Terry tried and failed to make the girl blush with some witticism, then meekly ordered a burger with egg. ‘Can I have a word with the boss?’ Rex added, as she left. ‘When he’s got a moment?’

  ‘Why d’you want the boss?’ Terry asked, folding a paper napkin into a swan. ‘You after a new job?’

  ‘If Susan keeps chucking out my ideas I might think about it.’

  ‘Bosses.’ Terry gave a philosophical shrug. Rex sometimes wished he could be more like Terry, resplendently unconcerned about so many things. But that attitude also frustrated him. Susan was wrong to think he wasn’t concerned with issues. It was just that Rex’s issues weren’t the same as hers.

  ‘Come on,’ he leant forward across the blue Formica table top. ‘You live right in the middle of Tottenham. You’ve got every nationality under the sun in your building: South Americans, Somalis, Kurds. You want running battles between them and the skinheads? Fire-bombs? Smashed windows? Think what that’ll do to your equity.’

  Terry’s flat round the back of Bruce Castle, the intricacies of its mortgaging, and the dimensions of its ever-fluctuating equity, were among the few things Terry was concerned about. But today, he wouldn’t be drawn. ‘I couldn’t give a shite,’ he said, rubbing his buzz-cut, copper-tinged skull. ‘I’ve got two Polish lads in there paying three hundred a week. Actually, it’s probably thirty of them paying a tenner, but like I said, if it’s in my bank on the first of the month, I couldn’t give a flying one.’