Past Mortem (24 page)

When he awoke the following morning he had a hangover. It was Sunday and Christine was all cuddly smiles and giggly excitement. She seemed unaffected by their day-long binge and wanted to go and buy coffee and croissants in the traditional manner.

‘Come on,’ she said, grabbing a dressing gown and heading for the shower, ‘it’s what you’re supposed to do after a first date. Although this isn’t our first date, is it? We just broke up for a while, that’s all…Hey! How about this? We could go up to Hampstead and have breakfast at Louis’. They’re normally absolutely packed, but you could flash your card and get us in, couldn’t you? Oh,
sorry
, I expect that’s against your principles, isn’t it? But we could at least get some carry-out and go and sit on the Heath. Why not? The sun’s shining and we’ve got all day…‘ She was shouting from within the shower now, and her words were soon lost in the sound of the water. Nonetheless, Newson could hear that she was continuing to prattle.

He sat up in bed and considered the situation. ‘
We just broke up for a while, that’s all
.’ Had she really said that? Did she really think that they were back together? He rather thought she did.

This was extraordinary.

For so long Newson had lived the life of a monk and now suddenly he was fighting girls off. Not only that, but the girl whom he had long seen as the very definition of the phrase ‘out of his league’ was tilting her cap at him and setting the pace. And the pace was fast.

Too fast for him.

He should have been pleased. It was everything he’d hoped for when first he went online to find her. A gorgeous, fun girl, great sex, a relationship even. A way to break his cycle of dependence on the fantasy of Natasha.

Why not go for it? He’d had a good time the day before, and an even better night. Christine was an easy girl to be with. Why not have Sunday breakfast with her? Why not hang out with her for the rest of the day? Why not arrange to meet tomorrow and see where it all went from there?

Because it was already clear to Newson that Christine was expecting more from him than he was prepared to give. She was not a girl looking for fun, sex and a few romantic dinners. A girl like Christine would never need to look for that. She was looking for a relationship, for Mr Right. And Newson knew that he was no Mr Right. Not for her anyway.

It was quite shocking, Newson reflected, how time had changed everything. He was not a vain man. He had never considered himself any kind of catch for a girl, but he could see that the tables had been turned. For twenty years his status with Christine had remained frozen at the low point in 1984 when she had dumped him for a sixth-former. Now, things were different. For all his unrequited romantic obsessions, Newson was happy with his life, and Christine wasn’t. Her brittle self-confidence and expensive breasts could not hide the fact that she was a single woman in a dead-end job paying rent to a flight attendant for half a room in a tiny flat. He could now see that when Christine contacted Friends Reunited she too had been reaching back into the past for a way to break the cycle of the present. Newson was successful, he had status in the community. And that was what Christine craved: status. Once, she’d had it in abundance, she’d been the golden girl of the school.

‘Isn’t it fantastic that neither of us have any
fucking kids
yet?’ Christine said, emerging from the bathroom, a towel knotted across her ledge-like breasts. ‘I’ve been out with loads of guys with kids and, believe me, their kids are never out of the picture. Particularly on Sundays. It’s so boring. You either can’t go round because
she’s
there and doesn’t want to meet you, or you have to sneak off early in the morning because she’s coming round to drop them off and has insisted that the precious infants aren’t corrupted by meeting the slag who’s shagging her ex. You end up feeling as cheap as if it was you that walked out on his family, not him. But you haven’t got kids, have you, Ed? And neither have I, so we can do just what we
fucking well like
.’

Newson knew enough about life to know that as the years went by the number of unencumbered singletons diminished. A girl like Christine could get herself laid twenty times a day if she so desired, but to find a man whose life had so far not been claimed, that was harder. A lot harder.

‘So. Breakfast?’ said Christine, drying her hair.

‘Yes, fine, great,’ said Newson.

They took a cab to Belsize Park and then walked up Haverstock Hill to Hampstead. The sunshine was glorious, the air was fresh, and Newson was still trying to work out what he felt. Perhaps he was being too hard on himself, and on her? Could he not simply take his luck where he found it? He would be quite happy to spend the day with her and indeed the night She was pretty and fun, and he had been lonely for so long. But he
knew
that he had nothing more to offer than that, that he would not wish to develop anything remotely serious with Christine Copperfield. He liked her, but he could never love her, not in a million years.

Besides which, he was in love with Natasha Wilkie, and he always would be. He knew, therefore, that he should not sleep with Christine again, no matter how much he might like to.

They did manage to get a table at Louis’, but shortly after they had sat down and ordered the famous croissant, Newson’s mobile rang. It was Natasha.

‘I think I have something,’ she said, ‘from Adam Bishop’s past. I’m at UGH. Where are you?’

‘Not far. Hampstead. I’ll be there in half an hour.’

Newson explained to Christine that he had to go. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I may not have kids, but I do have an ongoing murder investigation, and something’s come up. I can’t let it wait, either, because the man’s still out there and there’s always the chance that he’ll, as they say, kill again.’

‘How exciting,’ Christine said. ‘I suppose that’s just one of the down sides of hanging out with a big tough cop. Oh well, nothing’s perfect, is it? Will you come round later? I could cook you dinner.
Or
, much more fun, you could take me out to dinner. I
love
eating out.’

‘I don’t know how long I’ll be. You never do with this sort of thing.’

‘Well, I’ll be at home. Come if you can.’

‘Yes, certainly.’

‘Ed, you
will
call me, won’t you?’

‘Of course.’

They exchanged mobile numbers and Newson left the café. He took the Northern Line down to Warren Street and walked a couple of blocks west to University College Hospital. Detective Sergeant Wilkie was waiting for him in the gloomy entrance to the Victorian building.

‘I did what you suggested,’ she said, ‘and got a list of Adam Bishop’s schoolmates in 1959. He was at a state junior in Catford, near Lewisham. There were thirty-eight in the class. After that I thought I’d run the names through whatever hospital archives remained for admissions in that year.’

‘Christ, how many of those records still exist?’

‘A surprising number, actually. I brought Campbell and Levaux in from their Sunday off and we got stuck in. We started with Great Ormond Street, but nothing checked out there. Then we spread out across the London hospitals and, bingo, we got lucky. One of the names on Adam Bishop’s class of ‘fifty-nine list was admitted at UGH in February of that year. A lad called William Connolly.’

‘How do we know it’s the same William Connolly?’

‘He was a nine-year-old boy and, get this, he was seriously ill due to blood poisoning caused by…’

‘Infected puncture wounds?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Wow. That sounds like the real thing, doesn’t it?’

‘Certainly does. But if it was Bishop who stabbed him I don’t think Connolly ever snitched. I’ve checked the school records and there’s no mention of an expulsion or suspension. And we’ve gone through Hampstead, Bromley and Lewisham police archives and they don’t record any juvenile arrests. If it was Bishop — ’

‘Come on, it has to be Bishop.’

‘If it was, he got away with it.’

‘He may have got away with it then, Natasha. But forty-five years later I think it caught up with him.’

‘Well, maybe. Anyway, I’ve tracked Connolly down.

He’s still alive, still living in south-east London. What do you reckon?’

‘I reckon let’s hope he’s in.’

William Connolly lived with his wife in what had once been a council house just behind Blythe Hill, scarcely three hundred metres from-where he had been to school. The little house smelt of old-fashioned Sunday lunch, boiled cabbage, Bisto gravy and proper grey meat. Grandchildren swarmed all over the place. Mr Connolly showed Newson and Natasha into the parlour.—

‘Yes. I remember Adam Bishop,’ he said. —’Anybody who was in our class’d say the same. I doubt anybody who ever met him forgot him.’ For a moment Connolly said no more. He stared into the distance. Newson and Natasha waited.

‘He was a bastard,’ Connolly said finally, before again lapsing into silence.

‘Could you elaborate, Mr Connolly?’

‘That’s the best I can say of him. An absolute bastard. He made our lives a misery, ruined our schooldays. I read he was dead and I hope he rots from now until the end of time.’

The brief spasm of hate that had registered on William Connolly’s features subsided into a mask of weary sadness, a sadness that over the years appeared to have seeped into the lines on his face and the reflection in his eyes. ‘I don’t often get drunk,’ he said. ‘But I certainly did on the night I read that he’d been killed. I went up the pub at six and I didn’t leave till closing time and with every pint I cursed the bastard’s memory and prayed that there’s a hell, because if there is he’s burning in it.’

‘Do you know how Mr Bishop died?’

‘I know what I read in the
Standard
the next day, and when I read it I went out and got drunk again. My missus wasn’t too pleased, but she knew how much it meant to me so she let me go.’

‘He was stabbed.’

‘That’s what I read. Stabbed loads and loads of times.

‘Do you know what he was stabbed with?’

‘It didn’t say in the paper.’

‘That wasn’t what I asked you, Mr Connolly.’

There was a pause. ‘Well, I did wonder. Wonder whether he’d done it to somebody else. And whether that somebody else didn’t roll over and take it like I did.’

‘You were admitted to University College Hospital in February 1959 with blood poisoning caused by small puncture wounds, Mr Connolly.’

‘You’ve done your homework, haven’t you?’

‘You never said at the time who stabbed you or what with.’

‘No, I didn’t. I was too scared. Pathetic, eh? I nearly died because of that bastard and yet I protected him. I wouldn’t say a word. Kids didn’t in those days.’

‘So tell us now what happened.’

‘You obviously know.

‘We need to hear it from you.’

William Connolly undid the cuffs of one of his shirt sleeves and drew it back to reveal a series of tiny white scars in the weathered brown skin. Then he pulled out his shirt flap to reveal similar tiny scars on his stomach.

‘Adam Bishop held me down behind a desk one day during break time and stabbed me with a dirty compass and nearly killed me. It wasn’t the only thing he did to me in the five years I knew him, but it was the worst, the only one that actually put me in hospital.’

‘Mr Connolly, I’ll need to know details of your whereabouts on the evening of Tuesday June fourth of this year,’ said Newson.

‘Is that the night the bastard died?’

‘Yes.’

‘To be honest, one evening’s much the same as another in our house. I would’ve been at home. I’m home every weekday evening. We only go out Saturdays. Bingo or the pub.’

‘Can anyone corroborate that?’

‘Only the wife. It’s just me and her in the week. The grandkids come over on Sunday.’

‘Have you ever told the story of what Bishop did to you to anyone else?’

‘Only to my wife. Isn’t that funny? In all the forty-five years I’ve woken up in the night sweating and remembering what happened to me, you’re the only other people I’ve ever told. I’ve always been ashamed, you see, that I never stood up to the bastard.’

‘So apart from us, your wife is the only person who knows about how, when you were ten years old, your classmate Adam Bishop attacked you with a pair of compasses?’

‘Oh, no. Plenty know about it, don’t they?’

‘Who?’

‘My bleeding classmates, that’s who! It was a wet break, see. This didn’t happen in no dark and quiet corner. Oh no, at least half the class was in the room watching. Not one of them raised a finger. Not one of them said a word. He even made one of the girls go and get some paper from the toilets ‘cos I was crying. When she brought it he told me to stop blubbering, dry my eyes and mop up the blood, but instead of giving me the paper he stuffed it in my mouth.’

Newson and Natasha exchanged glances.

‘Tell me, Mr Connolly,’ Newson said, almost as an afterthought, ‘do you and your wife use the internet much?’