House of Bones Read online

  ‘Berlin,’ she said.

  The earl supported himself on two sticks. When he hooked one over his arm to take her hand, his own was almost a claw, typical of rheumatoid arthritis. He did his best to shake hands, smiling all the while, despite the pain it must have cost him. Berlin could see it in his eyes.

  Haileybury’s considerable height was somewhat diminished by a curvature of the spine, but his broad, open face had an attractive quality. A wave of tousled silver-grey hair rippled over his collar. He was ever so slightly dishevelled, with an air of distraction.

  ‘Sorry about all the security nonsense. Insurance insists on it,’ he said. ‘I have one or two pieces.’

  He gestured, and she stepped on to the platform. Haileybury prodded a large red button with the rubber ferrule of his stick, a motor hummed and they rose in a stately fashion.

  Gliding past three floors in shadow, Berlin had an impression of pulleys, geared wheels, levers and cables. It was an ascent through the Carceri, Piranesi’s imaginary prisons. But when they came to a gentle halt on the fourth floor, the scale was overwhelming for a different reason.

  A pair of stone guardian lions reared above her as she stepped from the platform into a gallery crammed with treasures: jade and bronze sculptures, ivory and sandalwood carvings, bronze fountainheads, cloisonné enamel, red lacquer boxes. Silks adorned the walls.

  Immense cast-iron stanchions supported a soaring roof; the furthest wall was glass, allowing light to flood in and illuminate a phalanx of carved dragons set on granite plinths. Ornately carved tables, chairs and cabinets occupied every inch of floor space.

  The ‘one or two pieces’ were the famous Haileybury Bequest, artefacts taken from the Old Summer Palace in Beijing, and the subject of a well-publicised stand-off between the earl and the Chinese government.

  Haileybury lifted his stick and described a quick arc through the air.

  ‘They want it all back, you know,’ he said. ‘All of it, including the stuff that’s on loan to museums for the public good. Cheek. They’re supposed to be communists. They’ve offered me squillions.’

  She remembered something about the Prime Minister getting involved too; one of his gaffes at a Chinese state banquet.

  ‘The government is backing me, of course,’ said Haileybury. ‘Precedent. Elgin Marbles and all that. Ironic, really. It was Elgin’s son, an eighth earl himself, matter of fact, who ordered the destruction of the Summer Palace. You know about the Marbles.’

  ‘We pinched them from the Greeks,’ said Berlin.

  ‘Except the Turks were running Greece at the time,’ said Haileybury. ‘The sultan was sweet on Lady Elgin, so he let the earl crate up the Marbles and ship them home. Massive job. Cost a fortune. It broke him. In the end he was forced to sell ’em to the British government at a loss. Never trust a politician.’

  He twisted to face her.

  ‘The Chinese say this is their history, that my forebears were looters,’ he said. ‘What do you say?’

  He didn’t wait for an answer.

  ‘But isn’t it my history – our history – too?’

  Berlin had never thought of herself as a beneficiary of British imperialism, but he had a point.

  Haileybury negotiated a path between the furniture with practised ease, making his way to two armchairs, worn wingbacks, beside a large walnut table that was littered with the mundane: newspapers, cups and saucers, an electric kettle, bottles of Scotch, reading glasses and a computer.

  The chairs were arranged to take in the breathtaking view of the river through an enormous pair of double-glazed floor-to-ceiling doors, which opened on to a terrace.

  Berlin followed him to this niche without comment; words couldn’t do the place justice. It was like opening the door of an old shed and finding the British Museum inside.

  ‘Of course, the government’s not interested in history, it just wants another weapon in its diplomatic stoushes over trade,’ grumbled Haileybury. ‘It’s all about politics.’

  He dropped into one of the wingbacks with obvious relief. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You’re not here for a history lesson. I’m afraid I’m a little discombobulated this morning.’

  He gestured to a bottle of Ardbeg ten-year-old.

  ‘Would you mind terribly?’ he said. ‘I could do with a drink. Would you care to join me?’

  It was important to keep the client happy, and anyway, it would be impolite to refuse. Berlin nodded.

  Haileybury poured two generous measures and handed her one.

  ‘I just got off the phone with the lawyer,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure how well Philip will cope with incarceration.’

  ‘He might have to get used to it,’ said Berlin. ‘Apparently there’s a witness. This area’s bristling with CCTV. The police don’t necessarily need the victim for a conviction.’

  Haileybury grimaced.

  Berlin sipped her single malt and gazed at the muted outlines of Tower Bridge, the Shard and the grey, mist-laden ribbon of the river.

  ‘Did you engage the lawyer, too?’ she said.

  ‘I felt I had to do something,’ said Haileybury. ‘The school called and said Philip had been in a scrap, that he would need a lawyer and so forth.’

  In her book, the bloody cobblestones put the assault somewhat higher than a ‘scrap’, but as she was the so forth, it was not her place to say so. Hopefully the reason she was there would soon become clear.

  Haileybury shifted uneasily in his chair, apparently unable to sit in one position for too long.

  ‘In a manner of speaking, I’m in loco parentis,’ he said.

  ‘Oh?’ said Berlin.

  His discomfort had preceded this admission. She waited.

  ‘I’m a trustee of a scholarship programme for talented Chinese orphans,’ said Haileybury. ‘The Anglo-Chinese Friendship Society. We pay their fees as boarders at my old school. Philip is one of them.’

  Berlin watched him.

  ‘Do you know what precipitated the incident?’ she said.

  ‘No idea,’ said Haileybury.

  ‘It was early,’ said Berlin. ‘On a Monday morning.’

  It was a speculative gambit. Clients often needed some encouragement to come clean. This was no straightforward missing person case.

  ‘Over the years I’ve made it a habit to offer the scholarship boys some hospitality,’ said Haileybury. ‘It can be rather lonely for them in this country at times.’

  He stared out of the window for a moment, and then turned to look her in the eye. A challenge.

  ‘Philip had been here for the weekend,’ he said.

  Now it made sense. She had been surprised when Del said Lord Haileybury would brief her personally. Someone of his standing would usually deal with the organ grinder, not the monkey. The august firm of Burghley LLP would want to keep this sort of thing at arm’s length. It was a bit tacky for their tastes.

  ‘I understand you want the victim found,’ said Berlin. ‘Why is that?’

  Haileybury ran his stiff, crumpled hand through his hair. ‘This is going to get out, isn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘More than likely,’ said Berlin. ‘There’s invariably someone in every police station – a cleaner, a clerk, a copper – who tips off the press. Palmerston Hall is newsworthy. Although they can’t name a juvenile offender.’

  She didn’t add that if they put it all together, which they would, they could name Haileybury. The victim was going to turn up looking for compensation when he learnt who was involved. The earl would want him found and paid off before he took his long, sad story of being bashed by a public schoolboy friend of Lord Haileybury to the press.

  She wanted to hear him say it.

  ‘How many trustees are there?’ she asked.

  ‘Three, including myself,’ said Haileybury. ‘You needn’t concern yourself with the others. They’re very discreet.’

  ‘Has Philip ever done anything like this before?’ said Berlin.

  ‘No, never,’ said Hailey
bury.

  ‘I’d hoped to talk to him this morning,’ said Berlin. ‘But it will have to be tomorrow, after he’s bailed. He may be able to provide the sort of detail I’ll need if I’m to have any chance of locating this person. When Philip left here, was he angry or upset?’

  ‘No,’ said Haileybury. ‘Not at all.’

  She pressed a little harder.

  ‘If I can find this person – and it’s a big if – then what?’ she said.

  Haileybury eased himself out of his chair and stood with his back to the terrace doors, facing her. He seemed to be bracing himself for something.

  ‘I believe this incident is part of a campaign of harassment. It’s a warning, a signal that they have leverage and can use it against me.’

  This was unexpected. Speedy recalibration was required, but the Ardbeg had taken the edge off.

  ‘Leverage?’ said Berlin. ‘You mean blackmail?’

  The diffuse light behind Haileybury was a ghostly aura.

  ‘I am rather fond of the boy,’ he said. ‘Of which they are no doubt aware.’

  ‘Who are “they”?’ said Berlin.

  Haileybury looked at her as if she hadn’t been paying attention.

  ‘The Chinese, of course,’ he said. ‘If we can show this is the work of their dirty tricks brigade, it will cause them a great deal of embarrassment. Possible expulsions, all sorts. They watch me all the time. The PRC – the People’s Republic of China – are ruthless, you know.’

  She’d been completely wrong about Burghley. It wasn’t the more salacious aspects of this job that had put them off; it was the possibility of being dragged into a diplomatic incident involving an unpredictable foreign power and a paranoid aristocrat.

  She proffered her glass for a refill.

  ‘Perhaps you could run that past me again,’ she said.

  3

  Bryant stood beneath a gnarled horse chestnut tree in St John’s churchyard, sucking on a Fisherman’s Friend. He could watch discreetly from here; he knew exactly who lurked in the decrepit warehouse on the other side of the street.

  Bryant was Wapping born and bred. In the eighteenth century, his great-great-grandfather had owned a pub in the High Street, the Waterman’s Arms, long gone. A good thing too, his grandmother would have said. She had been a very devout woman. Church of England, but High.

  Bryant had grown up with the history of Wapping and its denizens, and a lot of what he knew wasn’t to be found in books. The churchyard he was standing in was all that remained of St John’s, which now boasted two-bedroom apartments full of character with original features.

  The one hundred bodies removed from the crypt were not mentioned in the glossy brochures. They may have been Low Church corpses, but it was a godless act anyway, according to Gran.

  He shuffled, his collar chafing in the humidity. It was humiliating, a serving officer reduced to this, but he needed to be sure who was sticking their nose in, which meant following this blasted woman. She had clearly been around the block a few times and didn’t take much pride in her appearance.

  His boss, Detective Chief Inspector Tomalin, had pointed a finger towards the ceiling when Bryant asked him where the order to cooperate with her had come from.

  He’d been told to extend every courtesy to the private investigator, although Tomalin added that her role wouldn’t affect the case; there would be no interference.

  Bryant knew what that was worth if higher-ups were involved. They would talk to the Crown Prosecution Service over a skinny latte, and once they got their hands on it they would live up to the name more commonly used by coppers: ‘Can’t Prosecute, Sorry’.

  He didn’t like it. It smelt wrong. Like the mucky odour coming from the drains in this weird, clammy weather. He popped another Fisherman’s Friend in his mouth and waited.

  Leaving Haileybury’s, Berlin was conscious that her reaction to his story might have been influenced by the single malt, the effects of which she was still enjoying. Until Bryant stepped into her path.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ she said. ‘What are you playing at?’

  ‘I knew it. I just knew it,’ he said.

  He was so wound up he was practically fizzing.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said Berlin.

  ‘I know who lives in there,’ said Bryant.

  ‘Bully for you,’ said Berlin.

  ‘What did he have to say?’ he demanded.

  ‘Do me a favour, Bryant,’ said Berlin. ‘Sod off.’

  ‘I’m not a turnip,’ said Bryant. ‘The assault occurred just down the road, he’s got friends in high places and you scuttled off to see him as soon as you left the station.’

  ‘Surveillance without reasonable cause is harassment, Detective Bryant. I’ll be lodging a complaint,’ said Berlin.

  She tried to walk away, but he grabbed her arm. A cloud of aniseed fumes engulfed her.

  ‘Get your bloody hands off me,’ she said. ‘Those cough sweets have got you wired.’

  ‘The high and mighty eighth earl wants the victim found,’ said Bryant. ‘What else is there for you to do? And I know why. So he can protect his catamite.’

  The word exploded from his mouth in a flurry of spittle.

  Berlin almost laughed.

  ‘Catamite?’ she said. ‘Who do you think you’re dealing with, Oscar Wilde?’

  ‘I know what goes on in there,’ said Bryant.

  ‘Do you?’ said Berlin. ‘How?’

  Bryant let her go. They were standing beneath an old tree. One of its thick limbs creaked in a current of tepid air. The hoary sentinel was wheezing.

  ‘What’s your problem, Bryant?’ said Berlin. ‘You’ve pretty much got the boy on the assault. What more do you want? You said yourself the victim was probably up to no good.’

  ‘And you said the circumstances of the assault were a bit odd,’ said Bryant.

  He had a point.

  ‘So why do you care if Haileybury’s involved?’ said Berlin. ‘Chen’s old enough to consent. There are a lot of dirty old men about. As you seem to be only too well aware.’

  Bryant was squinting at her, apparently trying to decide if she was taking the piss, when a sudden squall threw grit and dust in their faces.

  There was a sharp crack. They both looked up.

  The rotten limb, splintered from the trunk, hung above their heads at a precarious angle. Berlin took a quick sidestep, but Bryant just stood there, staring up at the branch, until Berlin shoved him out of harm’s way.

  He didn’t say anything, just gave her a small, enigmatic smile before he turned and walked off.

  She had the feeling he’d wanted the limb to fall.

  Berlin took the bus, the D3, which would drop her close to home in Bethnal Green. Her leg was aching, thanks to an old Achilles tear repaired badly, and her feet burned, the result of nerve damage from frostbite.

  She was still managing, just, not to fall back into the arms of her old flame, or even its stand-ins, methadone or buprenorphine, which she loathed for their cold, deadening effect. Prescription codeine washed down with Talisker was her fallback position for pain. Analgesia had never played any part in her addiction to heroin.

  Abstinence was a relentless state and she couldn’t yet put her hand on her heart and say she had fully embraced it. Age hadn’t diminished her agitation; fifty-eight felt no different from eighteen when it came to anxiety.

  She wasn’t at all sure she wanted this job. The peer’s tirade about the Chinese intelligence service didn’t really fit the facts and stretched credulity. Haileybury was reaching for an excuse for his boy; how often had some psychopath’s mother insisted her son wouldn’t hurt a fly?

  Whichever way you cut it, the earl was intent on a cover-up. Helping a privileged public schoolboy avoid the consequences of a nasty crime didn’t sit well with her. A kid from one of the sink estates would still be in a cell waiting for legal aid to turn up.

  On the other hand, there was something slightly off about the whole bu
siness; Haileybury’s explanation could have some element of truth. But which element?

  The bus was stuck in traffic halfway across Whitechapel Road. Berlin took out her phone and dialled. Del answered, panting.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re jogging at lunchtime?’ said Berlin.

  ‘Squash with the boss,’ said Del. He lowered his voice. ‘Sir Simon May, a senior partner putting in a rare appearance at the coalface. He’s the source of your current job.’

  ‘How are you doing?’ said Berlin.

  ‘I’m losing,’ said Del.

  ‘Very sensible,’ said Berlin.

  ‘How are things at your end?’ said Del. ‘Behaving yourself with the gentry?’

  ‘They have excellent cellars,’ said Berlin.

  ‘Where you belong,’ he said. ‘Below stairs.’

  Only Del could get away with such a comment.

  ‘This job has all the upstairs-downstairs features the tabloids could want: a seventeen-year-old delinquent public schoolboy and an ageing aristocrat.’

  In recent years, both houses of the Palace of Westminster, not to mention other bastions of British civil society, had been exposed as harbouring more than their fair share of depravity. The Great British Public would ask how long this association between the earl and the schoolboy had been going on. The question had crossed her mind, too.

  ‘So you’re okay with it, then?’ said Del.

  He knew her well enough to know she would have doubts.

  Leaving aside the political angle, Bryant’s open hostility and prejudice had made her uneasy. Philip Chen was seventeen. If he had a sexual relationship with Haileybury it was legal. Just.

  That wouldn’t deter a homophobic detective; Bryant would look for every opportunity to drag the peer into it. His strange behaviour in the churchyard made that a certainty.

  An old man parading a young woman on his arm attracted a certain sneaking admiration. It was different when it was a young man. And Haileybury himself had said he was practically in loco parentis. It might be tasteless, but it was nobody’s business.

  ‘Yes,’ said Berlin. ‘Against my better judgement.’

  ‘It will be a walk in the park,’ said Del.