Creed (21 page)

He looked nonchalant enough as he strolled along the Bays-water Road, but inwardly Creed was a mess of nerves. A part of that condition was due to professional excitement, the
buzz
; another part, perhaps the largest, was due to fear; the final proportion had much to do with curiosity. He lingered, looked around. Traffic was halted momentarily at the lights further down the broad main road, too far away for the drivers and passengers to observe a lone figure standing by the brick and iron barrier that bordered the northern edge of the park. Creed had left his own vehicle in one of the many side-streets opposite.

‘Now or never,’ he mumbled to himself. It had taken a good fifteen minutes to find a reasonable gap between traffic and pedestrians, even at that late hour, so he couldn’t afford to hesitate too long. In no more than three seconds he was perched on the horizontal bar of the railings mounted on the low wall, one foot resting between the spikes. He balanced there for barely another second before leaping into the blackness beyond.

He landed heavily, but years of jumping into forbidden territory had taught him the trick of collapsing his legs and rolling forward on one shoulder. Quickly he pushed himself back against the thick hedge on the inner side of the railings; he rested there, waiting to find out whether or not he’d been seen. His breaths came sharp and heavy, and for a few brief but almost enjoyable moments he imagined himself an escapee in one of those venerable prisoner-of-war films.

That fancy soon passed when he recalled why he was there.

He could be, he might
just
conceivably be, on to something BIG, the revivification of a story that had involved sex, scandal, obsession, suspicion and ultimately, mutilation and murder. Juicy stuff.

Prunella had done a good job: inside the envelope she’d left for him he had found Xerox copies of an old newspaper story, one that had made front-page headlines in its day, a story whose principal ingredients were sex, scandal, etc, etc . . . The editorial comments and features had been full of indignant outrage, an obvious reflection of the public’s views.

Nicholas Mallik apparently had been one of those enigmatic figures who, while generally unknown to the public at large, moved in high social circles: there were photographs (unfortunately somewhat bleached by the photocopying process) of him alongside members of government, industrial tycoons, a fair glittering of movie and stage stars, and the occasional high-ranking church elder. Judging by the company he kept, Mallik’s wealth must have been considerable, yet nowhere amongst the cuttings was there a hint of where it came from. Nor was there any certainty as to his origins, although one story suggested that Hungary might have been his birthplace, while another decided upon Russia, for Nicholas obviously – to the journalist writing the piece, at any rate – had been altered from Nikolai. Mallik, according to others, could have been the shortened version of a dozen or more foreign names. Wherever he came from, however, Nicholas Mallik wasn’t saying; but his accent and aristocratic manner continued to fuel the speculation.

Still, that little conundrum was not what had excited the masses: no, it was the man’s nefarious activities that had done that. Many of the stories about Mallik referred to him as a colleague or cohort of Aleister Crowley – Aleister Crowley, later to be dubbed ‘the wickedest man in the world’, whose motto was, ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law’. A satanist, black magician, mountebank, dope fiend, womaniser and sexual pervert, Crowley appeared to be an all-round hateable guy but an interesting person to knock around with. Both of them, along with the likes of Algernon Blackwood and the poet, W. B. Yeats, belonged to a dubious mystic society known as the Order of the Golden Dawn. It appeared that this infamous pair, Mallik and Crowley, had finally fallen out over an incident in Paris. Nothing Creed read indicated the cause.

Anyway, that was all background gen. The real meat was this: Nicholas Mallik, later dubbed ‘Count Nikolai’ by the Press, was something of a roué (this despite a rather gaunt and ravaged appearance which even the contrasty photocopies could not disguise) and his list of ‘conquests’ (the early
Dispatch
, incidentally, was careful not to use such a term but any fool could have read between the lines) was pretty impressive. Interestingly – and this is where Creed had become very excited – Mallik had had a fairly long-standing relationship with Lily Neverless who was, at that time, married to a businessman named Edgar Buchanan (this was the husband who, when finally divorced and on the point of suing Lily for slander, had brought proceedings to an abrupt halt by way of his own heart attack). That had been during the 1920s and there was no suggestion that the relationship had continued beyond that decade.

As Creed had sifted through the sensational newspaper stories, he came to realize that there were very few hard facts about Mallik himself, or his activities; most of the journalists dwelt upon his associations with others, particularly certain dignitaries of the day. Implied rather than stated were his numerous relationships with other men’s wives. One solid fact that was known about him, though, was that he owned an elegant Regency house in Eaton Place and another large but far less select abode in Camberwell, South London.

The beginning of the end, for Mallik, came in the form of a striking young socialite (unmarried, this one), by the name of Lavinia Nesbit, who developed, as had many females before her, an unwholesome and obsessive passion for the ‘Count’. Age difference appeared not to matter as far as the girl was concerned and, according to later evidence, it wasn’t long before she was completely under Mallik’s domination. The relationship lasted for almost three months; then Lavinia vanished without trace. Only the dogged efforts of her father, an aircraft manufacturer whose fortune had been made when he joined forces with a number of other private airline companies to form the government-subsidized Imperial Airlines, had led to the discovery of her body.

To add further to patriarchal distress, the body was found in several pieces.

Now comes the
really
bad part.

The girl’s father, who had powerful friends of his own, was able to bully, inveigle, or shame (probably all three) the police into making a snap search of Nicholas Mallik’s two homes. It was the one in Camberwell that provided the bloodcurdling surprise, for not only did the police find the various parts of the missing girl there (the head had been pickled in an iron bucket in the cellar), but they also discovered odd bits and pieces of other human bodies. Most of these appeared to be of children.

Although the ‘Count’ never admitted to such, it was the prosecution’s submission that the defendant had a propensity for cannibalism. It was further alleged that illegal and diabolic rituals had taken place inside the Camberwell house, but no one had stepped forward to verify the fact (for obvious reasons, Nicholas Mallik had become
persona non grata
as far as his wide circle of ‘friends’ was concerned. They claimed they knew him only on a casual basis, in fact, hardly at all; if truth be known, they had met him once perhaps at a social gathering, and what was that name again?), and Mallik himself wasn’t saying. Nor did any of his staff, which he undoubtedly must have had to run such large homes, present themselves as witnesses. Creed assumed these people had flown as soon as the soft stuff had hit the fan.

Reading between the lines, it looked to him as though much of what had taken place at Mallik’s Camberwell home had been hushed up, and because of that he wondered what else had been discovered inside that house of slaughter. The fact that two refrigerators which had been found stacked full of old and fresh foetuses was mentioned almost as a footnote indicated that some editorial censorship had been invoked, and if that
was
the case, then why? To protect the public sensibility from more gruesome revelations? Or to protect certain parties who had been involved in some way?

Since Mallik would say not one word in his own defence nor offer any explanation, and since none of the other victims could be properly identified (although files on several missing children were closed around this time), Nicholas Mallik, nicknamed ‘Count Nikolai’ and latterly ‘The Beast of Belgravia’, was hanged (by the Home Office’s top executioner no less) only for the murder of Lavinia Nesbit.

Creed had been puzzled as to why the awful story was not more widely known to the public of today – after all, such murderers as Crippin, innocuous by comparison, had become part of criminal folklore. The answer came to him when he noticed other headlines and then checked the date of Mallik’s execution: 25 August 1939. The week before the outbreak of the Second World War. The outrage had been over-shadowed by the greater tragedy of world events. And naturally, after the horrors of global devastation whereby millions upon millions had been killed or suffered the most dreadful tortures and deprivations, who would care to be reminded of atrocities that had happened before the great conflict, a period that must have seemed like a lifetime away to the shell-shocked masses? The story – and, apparently, the memory – had been smothered by greater horrors.

Creed had smiled to himself as he had slid the Xerox copies back into the envelope. Perhaps it was time for a revival.

Now, crouching against the rough hedge, he considered the possibilities. The lunatic he’d photographed in the cemetery was no doubt a relative of Nicholas Mallik’s, for their likeness, despite the poor quality of photocopies from old newsprint, was undeniable. Mallik’s son? A nephew? The Press had estimated Mallik himself to be somewhere in his forties when he was executed, although no evidence of his birth date had been discovered. That was fifty-odd years ago. The graveyard crazy, judging by his line-etched features might have been about seventy (Christ, was it possible to practise self-abuse at that age? Creed made a mental note to find out for himself nearer the time), so he could easily have been this monster’s offspring. No mention of Mallik’s son in the newspapers though, nor of any relatives; but then there had been hardly any background information at all.

He could easily understand the man’s desire not to have his father’s(?) grisly past resurrected, but to go to such lengths? There
had
to be much more to it than just family shame. And why the graveyard desecration? The question Creed asked himself was this: To blackmail (and make a quick financial killing) or to indulge in a little piece of investigative journalism (which could lead to glory and perhaps an even higher financial reward)?
No
question really. Two birds in a bush was
always
better than one in the hand as far as Creed was concerned. Fame
as well as
money was what he was after.

He stashed the Nikon back inside his coat and rose to his feet, brushing damp mud from his jeans as he did so. A smoke right now would have been terrific.

He looked around, this way and that. Silver light rendered the grass flat and the trees black; shadowy bushes could have hidden anything.

To his right was a children’s playground, a surreal landscape of climbing frames and unmoving swings. To his left was a broad tarmac path, a road really, that, like the yellow brick one, led to the unknown. He shook his head in disgust at his own overwrought imagination.

In the distance he could make out Kensington Palace looming in the night like some huge sinister tomb.
Shut up, Creed. Christ!
He was giving himself the shakes. Okay, the pond, the Round Pond, should be somewhere to the left. Thing to do was cross the road – the strip they called the Broad Walk, he now remembered – and head south. That way he had to run smack into it. Wet feet would tell him when he was there. Not funny. In fact, nothing about this was funny.

For just a few moments he debated on whether or not to get the hell out of the park – after all, he really didn’t know what he was getting into – but inevitably the call of greed and glory prevailed.

He crossed over the road to where cover was better and trudged towards the big pond, using odd trees here and there to screen himself from the main highway, constantly on the lookout for any patrolling police cars, vans or whatever else they made their rounds in. Better to keep well away from Kensington Palace, he advised himself; it was bound to be guarded at night. Soon he saw the broad expanse of water, moonlight giving its surface an unearthly sheen.

He crouched when he spotted headlights in the distance, the vehicle obviously somewhere near the Serpentine, the park’s great lake. There was no chance of his being seen from that far away, but Creed stayed where he was until the lights faded completely. He tried to remember where the park’s police station was located, not because he was afraid of being caught, but because it might be the place to head for if he got into trouble. He groaned when he realized how far away it was. Not only that, but the lake also cut him off from it. There was the bridge, of course, the one that divided the Serpentine and the Long Water, but even that was some distance.