The Borgia Ring (17 page)

‘My friends,’ Father Garnet said, addressing Sebastian and me. ‘This is our guest of honour this evening, William Byrd.’

I stared at the man, astonished. The figure before me, smiling and modest, was perhaps the most respected musician in the land. But, most incredible of all, he was a favourite of the Queen’s, her Court Composer no less. I knew he came from a Catholic family, but had always assumed he had surrendered his faith in order to serve the monarch.

I bowed. ‘I am deeply honoured, sir.’

Byrd smiled and took my arm. ‘I can understand your surprise, young man. You need have no fear of me.’

I realised this was a remarkably perceptive man, for a small part of my mind had indeed been filled with doubt the moment I heard his name. I had heard such horrible stories concerning the religious clash that had become the great dividing point of our age. Tales of brother killing brother, lovers betraying each other, and parents condemning their own children to torture in the name of their faith. In these dreadful times, it was hard to know who to trust and who to doubt.

Father Garnet led William Byrd around the altar, and six of the congregation followed them. They lined up in two rows.
Byrd stood in front of them, raised his hands, and the group began to sing. With the others, I fell to my knees.

It was a beautiful sound. Immediately it transported me back to the college, my home for the past five years. I suddenly felt very homesick. But at the same time, these sounds of worship, so ingrained into my soul, lifted my spirits. The fears I harboured floated away from me as I immersed myself in the magisterial sound of the ‘Kyrie’. Then suddenly … silence. A stillness almost unnatural in its intensity. Father Richard walked to the altar and began the Penitential Rite in Latin, in direct disobedience of the ecclesiastical laws of England: ‘
Fratres, agnoscamus peccata nostra, ut apti simus
.’

A prayer followed, again recited in Latin, in which Father Richard beseeched the Lord to show us, His humble servants, mercy, and to give especial grace to Sebastian and myself on our perilous mission. William Byrd and the choir regained their feet and the composer led the chant of the ‘Gloria’: ‘
Gloria in excelsis Deo et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis …’

I could hear Sebastian beside me, singing as though he were back in the chapel at the Jesuit College. To my right knelt Ann, her head bowed and covered with a square of black lace. She had a sweet, almost angelic voice. Looking up, I was startled to see Anthony dressed in white server’s vestments over his rough and filthy tunic, handing Father Richard a small bowl. He seemed utterly calm, as though he suffered no abnormality of the mind. Indeed, his expression was one of utter serenity, his eyes bright and focused on the task.

I felt Ann press against me and realised she was getting to her feet. It was only then that I heard a discordant voice breaking through the music. The singing stopped abruptly. I turned and saw the maid who had brought us down here
earlier. She was at the entrance to the underground chapel, her face ashen. ‘Pursuivants!’ she screamed. ‘The Queen’s …’

Before she could finish her sentence, the maid was propelled down into the room. She sprawled in the dirt as two men in leather tunics and metal breastplates barged down the stairs. One of them picked up the girl and shoved her aside while two more men descended into the chapel, each with their sword drawn.

I felt a shudder of terror pass through my guts. I felt, rather than saw, Sebastian jump to his feet beside me, and then came the rush of air as he ran past, straight towards the intruders. I yelled, but have no recollection what exactly I shouted. It was something automatic, from deep within my soul, a yell of pure terror. They were the last words I ever spoke to my dear friend. As he dashed forward, the man at the front of the group simply extended his sword arm and Sebastian ran on to it, the metal scything through his flesh and emerging, dripping, from his back.

I heard a woman scream and felt someone slam into my back. I almost lost my balance. Stumbling forward, I found myself at the altar. The choir had scattered. I caught a brief glimpse of William Byrd, his face white with terror. And then I felt a strong hand on my arm. I tried to turn to see who had grabbed me, but I was falling forward again.

In my memory, the next few seconds remain a blur, a tangled mesh of noise and colour, a burning sensation in the pit of my stomach as realisation dawned that I could die very soon. I felt the acrid taste of bile in my mouth, and almost gagged. I felt myself stumble again. I put my hands out and touched wood, the panelling of the basement wall. Then I was out of the room, crouching in a damp, confined space and the light from the chapel was extinguished. Only a narrow line of it reached us through the gap where the panels joined and the wood had split slightly.

‘We’re safe here,’ a voice said. It was Anthony. He was panting heavily. I turned and could just make out his sharp features in the fractured darkness. He looked petrified for a second, then grinned from ear to ear before bursting into tears.

Stepney, Wednesday 8 June, 8.25 p.m.

Pendragon paused for a moment to gather his thoughts. He smoothed back his hair, coughed unnecessarily and pushed the doorbell. Sue Latimer opened the door. She was wearing a light blue summer dress, her hair tied back, accentuating her fine cheekbones.

‘Hello. I imagine punctuality is all part of the training.’

‘Sorry. Should I have been fashionably late?’

She laughed.

He held out a bottle of red wine in one hand, a bunch of tulips in the other. She looked genuinely delighted. ‘Gorgeous. Thank you, Jack.’

Sue’s flat was so different from Pendragon’s, it was hard to believe it was in the same building. The walls were painted in warm shades, chocolate and cream and duck egg blue. The lighting was subdued. A wall of shelves held hundreds of books and CDs. The kitchen was modern and glistened with highly polished pans hanging from hooks above an expensive-looking hob. A medley of smells came from a pan. A radio in the corner of the counter was playing some piano music he half-recognised.

‘I hope you like Indian,’ she said, and handed Pendragon a glass of red wine.

He felt unusually relaxed straight away. He had never been
a great mixer, and often needed time to get to know people, but Sue was so open and warm, it felt natural to let the barriers down.

‘I must say, you struck me as a bit of a mystery when I first met you,’ she said, as she stirred the curry.

‘Oh, it’s a carefully cultivated act.’

She lifted a wooden ladle and handed it to Pendragon, inviting him to taste. He took a little into his mouth and nodded his approval.

‘Well, the act was successful,’ she replied. ‘I’m intrigued.’

The music on the radio faded to silence and the host of the programme handed over to the newsdesk. Sue was reaching over to turn it off when the newsreader began: ‘The homicide investigation into the deaths of two men linked with Bridgeport Construction took a new twist this afternoon …’

‘Wait a second,’ Pendragon said, and Sue took her finger from the ‘off’ switch.

‘Sources close to the investigating team at Brick Lane Police Station have disclosed that a human skeleton, said to be several hundred years old, was unearthed at the construction site in Stepney shortly before the murder of Amal Karim early on Saturday last. The police have not released details of the find, but the skeleton disappeared the night of Karim’s murder and reappeared only this morning. It was found in a skip less than a hundred metres from the building site where it was unearthed. In an official statement from Brick Lane Police Station, Superintendent Jill Hughes told reporters that police forensic scientists were studying the bones and that details would only be made public when that investigation was complete. Turning to other …’

‘Bad news?’ Sue asked, seeing Pendragon’s frown.

He forced a smile. ‘Oh, not really. It had to come out, I suppose.’

‘Are you working on this case?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you only got here at the weekend.’

‘A cop’s life is rarely boring.’

‘Obviously! So, this skeleton,’ Sue said. ‘It’s connected to the murders?’

‘We’re not sure yet.’

‘But the report said it was discovered just before the workman was killed.’

‘That’s true, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the two things are connected. Could just be a coincidence.’

‘So do you have a suspect … a motive? Oh, God, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You can’t …’

‘It’s okay … but, no, you’re right, I can’t really go into details.’

Sue topped up his glass, then her own, and led him into the living-room. They sat on the couch, Sue perched on the edge, the glass held on her knee. From the kitchen came a new piece of piano music, a lilting Chopin mazurka.

‘The thing is, though, if the discovery of the skeleton is a coincidence, that’s one thing. If it’s not, it puts a completely different complexion on the whole affair, doesn’t it?’ Her eyes sparkled as she studied Pendragon’s face.

Protocol dictated that he should not say anything more, especially about any aspects of the case that had been deliberately held back from the public, but something indefinable told him to ditch protocol this once. ‘I think you’re absolutely right,’ he said. ‘I stopped thinking it was a coincidence, even before the second murder.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh?’

‘When the skeleton was first found it was wearing a ring. This was missing when the bones were rediscovered in the skip this morning.’

‘You shouldn’t be telling me this.’

‘No, I shouldn’t.’

‘Well, you have your motive then, don’t you?’

‘Possibly.’ He drank some wine.

‘Was there a ritualistic aspect to the murders?’

‘No, there wasn’t. Why? What are you thinking?’

Sue stared into space for a moment. ‘The newspapers said that the first victim, the labourer … Kaalim?’

‘Karim.’

‘Yes, Karim … was beaten to death. The second murdered man was poisoned. Must be transference.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Sorry.’ She focused on Pendragon’s face again. ‘The ring must be the key. The killer places great importance upon it. There’s no obvious ritualistic aspect to it, so it’s not a cult or a religious thing. It’s personal transference, or personal ritual if you like. The murderer needs the ring to carry out the killings. Well, they needed it for the second murder anyway.’

Pendragon looked puzzled. ‘I’ve heard something about this theory before. It’s pretty rare though, right?’

Sue pursed her lips and tilted her head. ‘It wasn’t properly understood until twenty years ago, so many older crimes were explained by different motives. I did some work on criminal psychology for my PhD. I remember one particular case study that fits the transference scenario perfectly.’

Pendragon raised an eyebrow.

‘A chap called Hopper, James Hopper, a killer in the early-eighties in Devon. His wife Gina was having an affair and she deliberately let her husband know about it. She saw him as a weak, indecisive man, and had grown to despise him. She would dress up before going on a date with her lover, taunting James by showing him her stockings and fancy
knickers, telling him that only her lover would get to appreciate them.’

‘I’m beginning to remember this now,’ Pendragon said. ‘He strangled her with one of the stockings, didn’t he?’

‘That was the start of it. He then went on to kill three of Gina’s closest friends who had been involved in the affair somehow – the woman who had introduced his wife to the lover, and two friends who had helped cover for Gina until she decided her husband should know about it and the whole taunting thing started.’

‘And the stockings were used each time?’

‘Yes, James Hopper had given those stockings a special significance. For him, they were all-important, the focus of his rage.’

‘Yes, I can see …’ Pendragon began, when his mobile rang. He recognised the number. ‘Turner? … Yes, yes. All right. I’ll be there in five minutes.’ He closed the phone.

‘Duty calls?’

Pendragon sighed heavily. ‘Yes. I’m really sorry.’

The first things he noticed were the crucifixes. But then, it would have been hard to miss them, they were everywhere. A line of them ran along the narrow hallway of the Ketteridges’ flat, and a small side table contained three more grouped together in a Holy Trinity. He passed a small, cluttered lounge where a middle-aged woman in a pink winceyette dressing gown was being consoled by Sergeant Mackleby. A line of crosses stood on the mantelpiece, with one large crucifix, blood and all, hanging on the wall above.

A few paces along the hall, he reached the kitchen. A floodlight on a stand had been set up close to the sink. It cast an intense white glow over everything. The back door to the garden stood open and Pendragon could see a forensics officer moving around on the path between the kitchen and a brick wall covered with a trellisfull of yellow roses. Along the windowsill above the sink and draining board stood another row of crosses. Pendragon counted nine of them arranged with the largest in the centre, a smaller version of the one on the lounge wall.

‘I’ve just arrived, Pendragon. So no, I can’t give you times, dates, reasons or any other bloody thing,’ Jones said as the DCI came into the room. The pathologist was standing beside Tony Ketteridge’s body. The dead man lay on the floor close to a small breakfast table, his back against a dishwasher that was still going through its cycle. Ketteridge’s head was
twisted to one side, his chest soaked in blood and vomit, mouth wide open. Both eyes were red discs.

Pendragon looked round as Turner came in through the back door.

‘Were you first here, Sergeant?’

‘Yes, guv. I was just leaving the station when the call came in. I got here with Sergeant Mackleby about twenty minutes ago.’

‘I take it Mrs Ketteridge reported the murder?’

‘Yeah. She was hysterical, apparently. Not too surprising.’

‘Had the body been touched?’

‘Pretty sure it hadn’t. Mrs Ketteridge could barely bring herself to open the door. Roz … Sergeant Mackleby’s with her now in the other room.’

‘Yes, I saw her as I came in.’

‘When we arrived, the back door was open. Didn’t look like there was much of struggle. The table has been pushed to one side, but that’s about it.’ Then he added in a whisper, ‘What’s with all the bloody crucifixes?’

Pendragon shrugged. ‘No idea. Who’s outside?’ He strode over to the back door with Turner in tow. A forensics officer in a plastic suit had their back to him. They turned.

‘Dr Newman,’ Pendragon said.

‘Chief Inspector.’

‘First impressions?’ He looked around the narrow space. A line of paving stones stretched from the kitchen door down the side of the house into the garden, little more than a smudge of dark green in the night now. A brick wall about head-height, separating the house from the neighbouring property, ran the length of the passageway then petered out into a wire fence dividing the gardens. A cat brushed against Pendragon’s calves. He bent down to stroke it. Straightening, he said, ‘If only animals could talk.’

Colette Newman smiled. ‘Not much to discover on the surface,’ she said. ‘There are some traces of mud along the path here. They look quite new. We followed them back to this side of the garden fence. Looks like our murderer came in from over there and went in through the back door of the kitchen.’

Pendragon saw movement in the garden and noticed another SOCO in a plastic suit crouching beside the fence, dusting brush in his latex-covered right hand.

‘Wouldn’t the ground be too hard to carry soil through to here?’ Turner queried. Pendragon and Newman spun round in unison.

‘My first thought too,’ the Head of Forensics said, noticing the sergeant for the first time. ‘Looks like one of the Ketteridges watered the flowers earlier this evening. Ignoring the hosepipe ban, of course.’

‘We’ll have to charge them,’ Pendragon replied darkly.

‘We’ve taken samples anyway and two of my team are covering the kitchen and the rest of the house. The minute we know anything …’

‘Thanks,’ he replied and turned back to the kitchen. ‘So, Tony Ketteridge either knew the person who killed him and let him in, or the murderer was watching the house and knew how to get in.’

‘Or it was an opportunist attack.’

They walked back to the body and Pendragon crouched down beside Jones who was examining the corpse.

‘Do you get a sense of
déjà vu
, Pendragon?’ he asked.

‘Carbon copy, by the look of it.’

‘Indeed. Can’t tell you where the puncture site is yet, but I bet we’ll find one. You happy for me to get the poor sod to the morgue?’

Pendragon nodded and straightened up. ‘Do you mind
if I come over to the lab when I’ve finished here?’ he asked.

‘Not at all. So long as you can stomach it,’ Jones replied with a smirk.

Pendragon returned to the hall, pausing for a moment to look at the crucifixes on the table and the wall. They were all different shapes and sizes, some old, some looking pretty new. Most were unadorned but a few carried the image of the body of Christ. Turning into the lounge, he indicated to Mackleby that he would like to have a chat with the victim’s widow. He sat down on the sofa.

Pam Ketteridge was a large woman, tall and broad-shouldered, with fat arms that filled out the winceyette. She had a wide face. Her eyes were bloodshot from crying and dark tracks ran down her cheeks where tears had washed away mascara.

‘My name is DCI Jack Pendragon. I’m sorry for your loss.’

She made a snorting noise. ‘You sound like you’ve been watching too many crappy American cop shows,’ she retorted without looking at the Chief Inspector. She had a faint northern accent. ‘I apologise,’ she added quickly, scrutinising him. She dabbed at her right eye. Pendragon said nothing, hoping she would talk, but she looked away without adding anything.

‘You found your husband’s body?’ he asked.

She nodded and stared across the room. ‘And, no, I didn’t touch anything, DCI Pendragon. I was so shocked, I thought I was going to have a heart attack. Then, I … I seemed to act automatically. I don’t have any memory of going into the hall or making the call to the police. The next thing I knew there were two officers at the door. I haven’t been back … back in there.’

‘Had you been in here all evening?’

She looked at him, her eyes puffy, and shook her head. ‘No, that’s the worst thing,’ she replied. ‘If I had … I was in bed.’

‘And you didn’t hear anything?’

She put her hand into the pocket of her gown and pulled out an iPod. ‘Tom bloody Jones.’ And she burst into tears. Pendragon let her cry and gazed around the room as the woman blew her nose and tried to compose herself. The flat reminded him of his childhood, the sort of décor his parents had gone in for – no subtlety, over-patterned everything.

‘If only I had paid Tony more attention,’ Pam Ketteridge sighed. ‘We were having an early night. He was exhausted …’ Then she suddenly froze. ‘You don’t think this has anything to do with the other …’ She couldn’t bring herself to say the word ‘murders’.

‘It’s too early to know.’

‘This is my fault,’ she said suddenly, her voice trembling with emotion. ‘The problems he’d had at work … that poor man, the workman who was killed. My husband felt terrible about it. I should have talked to Tony, should have listened.’

‘Did he tell you anything about the lead-up to the death of Amal Karim?’

She stopped sobbing and looked away again. ‘You mean, the skeleton? They reported it on the news tonight, just before we …’

‘Yes,’ Pendragon replied, considering the woman’s face. ‘Anything new could be extremely useful.’ It was impossible, he realised, to know for sure how much she was keeping to herself in this state. What was she holding back? And what did she believe the police knew? Had her husband told her about being questioned at the station? He thought it unlikely because it would have led to all sorts of uncomfortable
questions from Pam about what Tony had been up to on Saturday morning.

‘No. Not that I …’ She broke down again. This time she could do nothing to conceal her anguish. Taking her hands from her face, she stared into the middle distance and let the tears run down to her chin. ‘O, Lord, take me from this pain,’ she cried. And to Pendragon’s astonishment, she dropped from the sofa to the floor. Landing on her knees, she started to rock backwards and forwards. ‘O, blessed art thou, Lord God Almighty. Show mercy upon our wretched souls. We have sinned! We have sinned!’ And she threw herself on to the carpet, arms outstretched towards the line of crucifixes on the mantelpiece. Christ, suffering his own agonies, frowned down upon her.

Sergeant Turner had just walked into the room as Pam Ketteridge threw herself to the ground. He ran over and he and Pendragon began to help the woman to her feet and guide her back to the sofa. She did not resist, but kept repeating the same five words. ‘He shouldn’t have done it. He shouldn’t have done it.’

It took a few minutes for Pam Ketteridge to calm down enough to focus on Pendragon’s face and to understand that he was asking her a question.

‘What do you mean, Mrs Ketteridge? Shouldn’t have done what?’

She simply stared at the DCI in silence. Then she seemed to pull herself together. ‘The skeleton. Tony hid the skeleton.’ She glanced at Sergeant Turner who was sitting on the edge of an armchair opposite, taking notes.

Saying these few words seemed to calm her. It was as though she had confessed her sins to a priest. ‘He didn’t know what to do with it. They’re weeks behind, see? And he
thought … well, he thought he could just keep the whole thing quiet.’

‘He told you this?’ Turner asked.

She turned towards the sergeant and then back to Pendragon. ‘Yes. On Sunday. I knew something was wrong with him. He was being very quiet, hardly spoke a word to me all evening. I finally dragged it out of him.’

‘So, what did he say exactly? Try to remember his own words, Mrs Ketteridge.’

She frowned and ran the tips of her fingers across her brow. ‘He said they had come across a skeleton … a complete skeleton. He was thrown by it. It was late on Friday. He didn’t know what to do. A couple of his boys were spooked. When he said they should just rebury it, they balked. So he shut up shop and told them it could wait until Monday.’

‘And when did he dispose of the skeleton?’

‘He told me he went back a few hours later, about nine-thirty, as soon as it was dark.’

‘What did he do with it?’

‘He wouldn’t tell me. Just said, “It’s done.”’

‘I see.’

‘I was very upset, and he knew it. I told him he had done wrong. That he had committed a terrible sin.’

‘And what about this evening? After the news report about the skeleton being recovered?’

She screwed up her mouth as though she was fighting to keep the words in. ‘We had a row. A huge row. He had lied to me, see? First I thought he had done a terrible thing, pretending the skeleton had never been found, but then I learned that he hadn’t done that at all.’

‘Did he say tonight what he had done with it?’

‘He had hidden it under the site hut, then moved it to the boot of his car.’

‘Then decided to make it reappear?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he say why?’

‘No.’ Pam Ketteridge responded. ‘He clammed up completely. Our last words to each other were angry ones.’