Red Angel (19 page)

Feeling like I’m about twenty paces behind, I take a deep breath and try to work out how to play this. I’m about to pretend I know what’s going on when my phone beeps, rescuing me. I give an apologetic smile and pull it out. It’s a text from Connor with three addresses on it – the three remaining London-based Checkers’ Trustees. The second one is 12 Forest Avenue and in that instant I really do know.

‘Is she dead?’ he asks me when I put the phone away again.

‘Madeline?’

He nods.

I don’t miss a beat. ‘Yes.’

His shoulders drop fractionally but he’s not shocked by the news. ‘I changed our name, I wiped out my past and he still found me.’

I watch him carefully. ‘Tobias Renfrew?’

‘Who else?’ he says sadly. He walks over to a Welsh dresser, opens a drawer, takes out a photo and hands it to me. The edges are crinkled and the image is faded but there’s no mistaking the familiar figure of Renfrew with his arm around a younger version of the man in front of me. Other beaming figures mill around. No doubt they are the remaining Checkers’ Trustees.

‘It wasn’t my idea.’ He laughs shortly. ‘I know that’s pathetic but it really wasn’t. It was easier to go along with everyone. We had good intentions, you know. We helped a lot of children. The Sixties weren’t like now. There were a lot of women who got themselves into trouble and we dealt with the aftermath. Orphans, the lot of them. We clothed them, sheltered them. Helped them.’

I keep my expression bland. ‘Those women didn’t get themselves into trouble. Men are involved in creating babies.’

‘Turn of phrase. Like I said, they were different times.’

I don’t have the will to debate gender politics. I focus on the matter in hand. ‘Tell me. Tell me what happened.’

He moves to his left where there is a silver tray with a bottle of whisky and a single glass. He pours a drink, sips it and closes his eyes with pleasure. Then he looks at me. ‘Would you like one?’

‘Tell me,’ I repeat again.

He takes another sip. ‘Very well.’

Alan Deutscher, as he was known back then, was on board with Checkers from the start. He didn’t fancy charity work initially but he was full of ideals. When his favourite cousin found herself unmarried and pregnant as a result of her summer of love, he began to appreciate how difficult things were for women in that situation. He and six like-minded acquaintances created Checkers. Essentially, it was a last resort: if you had a child and were unable – or unwilling – to bring it up, they would do it for you. Unusually for that time, the organisation was ethnically blind. It didn’t matter whether a child was a daemon, human, witch or combination of the three; Checkers took them in, no questions asked.

It was a grand premise and brimming with promise. The trouble was that no one on the board had any experience in how to run a charity. Deutscher assured me that they had the very best of intentions but they were several sandwiches, a dozen sausage rolls and a bottle of fizzy orange short of a picnic. Within six months, their grandiose ideas were already faltering.

Part of the problem was their desire to let any child of any origin through their doors. Nowadays it wouldn’t be such a big deal – in fact, there are any number of conglomerates, well-meaning millionaires and fundraising drives that practise such impartiality. Back then, it didn’t work. The humans didn’t want to be seen to help daemons, and vice-versa. The witches were even worse. Forget the issues they had with anyone else, their own black–white squabbles meant they wouldn’t touch Checkers Children’s Charity with a barge-pole. When Checkers’ initial funding dried up, it seemed that they’d be forced to close their doors. In hindsight, it would have been better if they had.

A chance encounter with Tobias Renfrew changed the charity’s fortunes. Elizabeth De Mille, the trustee who’d met her demise at the wheel of her zippy red sports car, travelled in the most exclusive social circles. New money was admired and Renfrew’s billions opened the same doors that De Mille had walked through because of her family’s name and stature.

The way Deutscher told it, they wooed each other – she gained a financial benefit and he got sexual favours. Renfrew agreed to become the charity’s benefactor. I suppose it boosted his reputation but there’s no doubt that his own miserable childhood also played a role in his decision.

As months turned into years, Renfrew’s largesse increased. The charity moved to larger premises and gained further prestige. It was said that children who were taken under their wing were well-educated, well-rounded individuals who would go far. The trustees also enjoyed the benefits: they were vaunted across the country as pioneers of a new, more liberal age. Invited to speak at dinner functions, open galas and rarely required to foot a restaurant or bar bill, they congratulated themselves. Not only were they living the high life, they were doing it as a result of helping impoverished orphans. OBEs were definitely in the offing. And when Renfrew informed them that they would be the sole beneficiaries of his will, they all agreed that it was only natural and fitting.

The cracks soon began to show. In less time than it takes the average boyband to rise to fame and disappear again, the bickering started. Funds were misappropriated; and unwise decisions were taken, from hosting lavish fundraisers that lost money to outfitting the orphans with a uniform in such stiff, uncompromising fabric that half of them broke out in hives.

Renfrew, tired of seeing his money being frittered away, threatened to pull out if things did not improve. The trustees held an emergency meeting then sent Deutscher to plead for another chance. It was for the children; everything they did was all for them.

Unfortunately, while the billionaire took a few days to make his decision, the worst happened. There were allegations of abuse against one of the teachers, a history tutor who’d been with the charity since its inception. The boy making the claims was brought in front of the trustees under the cover of darkness. It was imperative that he kept his mouth shut.

This lad, however, was not prepared to back down. Having made the decision to tell all, he was not going to retract. Such bravery in the face of adult opposition was impressive; perhaps one day he would have become another Tobias Renfrew. We will never know.

Deutscher claimed it started with De Mille. Shaken by the boy’s refusal to bend to the trustees’ will, she grabbed his arm, sinking her red talons deep into his skin. He screamed from shock as much as pain. Two of the other trustees, Brownslow and Wiggins leapt into the fray in a bid to keep him quiet. The boy panicked and struggled and during that struggle something went wrong.

Afterwards, all seven of the trustees stood round his limp body hurling recriminations. Brownslow, Wiggins and De Mille were responsible; they had to be turned over to the police. But the remaining four were also implicated. If word got out – if even a whisper left that terrible room – Renfrew would not hesitate to distance himself from the charity. There wasn’t any choice: they had to hide the evidence.

Bound now by a dark veil of guilt, pain and murder, there was no going back. Even though Deutscher eventually persuaded Renfrew to remain as benefactor, the bloody pact the seven made that night created shadows which only deepened as time went on.

Three months later – and only five hours before Renfrew’s ill-fated, infamous party was due to begin ‒ the daemon billionaire broke the news to the trustees: he’d met someone. He’d fallen in love. She was a human woman, the complete opposite to him. He was going to broadcast the news that very night and, Renfrew added with a jovial wink, was already looking for appropriate godparents.

The trustees panicked. Renfrew had had women before, they all knew that, but a long-term relationship was entirely different. De Mille encouraged them to remember that such women often turned out to be nothing more than gold diggers. If there was a child or, God forbid, children, they could kiss goodbye to all those billions.

Deutscher told me he could not remember who made the suggestion; perhaps it was even him and he had chosen to forget. Whatever, once it was voiced aloud, the die was cast. The trustees returned to Renfrew and asked to meet the woman of his dreams. They wanted to welcome her fully into the Checkers Charity family. The children were so excited, they said; Renfrew would know what it was like soon enough – once children got ideas into their heads, there was no stopping them. They wouldn’t rest until they met her.

Arrangements were made and Miss Hope Havrington of Shrewsbury agreed to spend half an hour at the Checkers’ house in all her party finery. The little girls were going to love it.  Or they would have, if they’d ever known about it.

Although Hope entered the house alone, she left an entire retinue waiting out at the front. Tobias Renfrew was not about to let the light of his life travel alone. Unfortunately for her, she insisted on meeting the children alone because she didn’t wish to intimidate them.

Of course, she didn’t meet a single child. She met her death, courtesy of a hemlock-spiked drink. Oh, the tragic symmetry of it all.

The moment the deed was done, guilt set in. A momentary madness had overtaken them all, Wiggins stated. De Mille agreed. They would never harm a child, they
helped
children. They consoled themselves with the fact that the Renfrew foetus could only have been scant weeks old. Hope Havrington hadn’t been showing at all. They would tell Renfrew with unfeigned dismay that she must have miscarried, with internal haemorrhaging as an unfortunate side effect. She had keeled over before they even knew what was happening.

In the midst of this discussion, they didn’t hear Hope’s driver and her maid approach, concerned at what was taking her so long. It took only a moment or two of eavesdropping – and a creaky floorboard – for all their plans to go awry. Now left with three bodies, two of which betrayed signs of blunt-force trauma, the trustees had to switch tactics. They’d leave the corpses at Renfrew’s mansion and the blame would land on the guests. There were lots of people attending the party – at least half of whom were no doubt involved in dodgy dealings. Someone else could be the scapegoat. The trustees had children to look after.

The only way to move the remains without being detected was to chop them up and sneak into Renfrew’s house through a side entrance. Even then, they were interrupted by two people – a vampire and a daemon – who had taken a wrong turn while searching for the way out. More victims.

They left the body parts in a rarely used bathroom, carefully arranging them in the middle of the floor. Each of trustees was sticky with blood. They needed somewhere as far away as possible from the scene to clean up. On their way to another wing, with the strains of Skeeter Davis and
The End of the World
floating up towards them, they were caught red-handed. Literally.

According to Deutscher, although most people believed Renfrew was still involved in illegal activities, he had genuinely turned over a new leaf. He’d taken a vow to change his ways for good and it was this vow the trustees now had to count on.

Wiggins blurted out the truth: he told Renfrew what they’d done. They’d killed. They’d murdered Hope and, along with her, Renfrew’s child. Tobias Renfrew, who’d seen more death than most people and, thanks to his armament dealings, had been responsible for more death than anyone else in the United Kingdom, went into shock. I guess when it’s your own family everything suddenly changes. He didn’t cry; he didn’t collapse; he didn’t attack the trustees. But he did go into a semi-catatonic shutdown.

Deutscher grabbed him and slapped his face, trying to revive him. It didn’t help; all their efforts achieved was to smear him with their own bloody handprints

If the trustees thought things were bad before, it was nothing compared to now. The only recourse left to them was to pin the blame for the deaths on Renfrew himself. He’d been an equal opportunities employer; the deaths included a vampire, witches, humans and daemons. One of those groups would take revenge and kill him. The trustees would still get their money. Renfrew had brought it on himself, they reasoned. He’d done plenty of things in the past that marked him as a villain. He deserved this.

They dressed him in a tuxedo they found hanging in his own closet, bundled up his now bloody clothes and threw them in a fireplace to burn. Then they took him down to the party, frog-marching him all the way. If any partygoers saw the state he was in, they probably attributed it to too much wine. While De Mille stood behind him and whispered in his ear to feed him his lines, they made him give a speech. Such was his shock that he repeated their words verbatim. He spun a pretty tale for the crowd; De Mille was an artist. His audience was rapt.

De Mille’s final act was to get Renfrew to admit to the murders right there on the stage, in front of hundreds of people. Such a public confession would be upheld. Right after she told him what to say, however, Renfrew fell silent. He seemed to shake himself. She repeated her words. He turned and gave her one long look. Then there was an almighty flash and he vanished. No one ever saw him again.

*

‘I would like to believe it was a momentary madness, just like Wiggins said,’ Deutscher tells me once he’s finished his tale. ‘But we were too greedy. We only cared only about ourselves and we’d forgotten our lofty ambitions to help orphaned children. We were culpable. We
are
culpable.’

I stare at him. I try to work my jaw but no words will come. Deutscher hands me his glass of whisky, encouraging me to drink. When his fingers brush against mine, I flinch. He looks sad but he nods in understanding.

‘I don’t get it,’ I stutter. I shake my head as if to make sense of it all. I’m in a room with a cold-blooded multiple murderer and he’s confessed to everything. ‘Why are you telling me all this? No one knew. No one even suspected.’

‘Because,’ he says with an odd brightness in his eyes, ‘as I suspect Tobias already knew, in the end we all must atone for our sins.’ He barks a short, sharp laugh. ‘Truth be told, I didn’t think we’d get away with it. I thought we’d be found out almost immediately. I
wanted
us to be found out. Knowing what we’d done was too much. Once the blood lust had passed and the cold light of day was upon us…’ His voice trails off. He licks his lips and straightens his shoulders. ‘It’s such a relief to tell you now.’

‘So you have no idea what Renfrew did? How he disappeared or where he went?’

Deutscher shakes his head. ‘Not a clue. But I knew he’d be back for his revenge sooner or later. I didn’t think it would take him this long. It would have been easier if he’d done it before. I’ve never forgotten. I’ve always expected him to show up on my doorstep one day.’

‘You think that’s why he killed Madeline? You know there’s an ear. We can check the DNA and see if it belongs – belonged – to her.’

‘It was her,’ he says simply. ‘I know it.’ He walks over to the drinks tray, gazing down at it as if lost in thought. When he turns back around he’s holding the whisky bottle. ‘To the sins of the father,’ he says to me, before chugging back several gulps.

I watch him, faintly sickened. ‘What happened to the charity?’

He shrugs. ‘It went bust, of course. None of us had any heart for it after everything that had happened.’

‘And you weren’t getting any money any time soon,’ I interject.

A ghost of a smile crosses his face. ‘No. We weren’t.’