Meltdown (44 page)

Rupert actually looked embarrassed as he said this. As if it was a sign of weakness, contrary to every principle of warped Darwinian elitism that he had always held so dear.

‘I’d decided that for the first time in my life I was going to do something unselfish. The world knows I still have some money, it’s no secret. Maybe I’ve got more than the world thinks. Not that
you
’ll ever find it, Inspector. So I’d decided to offer to set Jim up again. Not here in Britain of course, even I couldn’t cover his bloody debts. A man would very soon go broke himself pouring money into that particular pit. No, my idea was to get him to do a bunk, grab Monica and the kids and shoot through. I’d set him up somewhere nice and he could start trading again. Britain’s fucked anyway. Everybody knows that. Basket case. Ugly people, ugly country. They deserve their bloody awful grubby politicians.’

‘Do you think they deserved you, Lord Bennett?’ Beaumont asked. ‘The people who put their savings in your bank?’

Rupert looked at Beaumont and sneered.

‘Screw ’em. Who cares?’ he said.

Beaumont sneered back.

‘I do,’ he said.

‘Well, bully for you, Mr Plod,’ Rupert replied.

Beaumont realized that this wasn’t getting him anywhere with his investigation.

‘So you went to Webb Street to offer Jimmy Corby a new life abroad?’

‘Yes. But he wouldn’t take it. Said the time for running was over and he needed to face things head on. All he’d take was some cigarettes and a box of matches.’ Rupert’s eyes seemed for a moment to fill. ‘I never should have given him the matches.’

‘You gave him the matches?’

‘We used to love smoking together. Stood on fifty pavements after the ban. But he gave up after he lost all his money. Realized for the first time how expensive they were, I suppose. We had a couple of smokes together with our drinks. He loved it, took down half a fag in a single drag. Used an old paint tin for an ashtray. Never crossed my mind there was any danger in it.’

Beaumont looked at Rupert long and hard. Lord Bennett was a ruthless man, there was no doubt about that. For his entire adult life he’d been creating disasters and then escaping the consequences. Had he done it again? Clearly he had gone to Webb Street on a mission to stop Corby speaking out about the illegal share tips.

But how had he intended to do it?

Was he merely going to try to buy Corby off with the offer of a new life abroad as he was half admitting? Or did Lord Bennett hope to silence Jimmy more permanently?

Truth less strange than fiction

Monica knew it wasn’t suicide.

Nor had it been an accident.

And it wasn’t bloody murder either.

Because Jimmy wasn’t dead.

‘It’s his
story
,’ she wailed. ‘He made up a whole story about a fake-death canoe scam and now he’s gone and bloody done it!’

It was late evening, the children were in bed and Monica was sitting in the family room of the Notting Hill house with Inspector Beaumont.

‘What story?’ Beaumont asked.

Desperately trying to remain calm, Monica told him. The story about the dead tramp. The one about a bankrupt house owner using another body to fake his own death.

‘Are you seriously suggesting, Mrs Corby,’ Beaumont asked, ‘that your husband would murder an unconscious tramp in order to claim life insurance?’

‘That was just for the
story
! The tramp must have been dead already,’ Monica said, trying not to cry. ‘Jim’s been waiting for him to die for ages. Obviously the silly fool found the corpse and grabbed his chance. Why didn’t I work it out? He told me himself that he was going to dodge and weave and that he would make everything all right. I might have guessed he’d try to find a way out of all this shit . . . but not this! I should have let him sell that bloody fake Rolex. Why didn’t I let him sell it?’

Inspector Beaumont was concerned.

‘Understandably you’re very upset, Mrs Corby, but you have to face the possibility that there’s a much simpler explanation. We’ll have the forensic report first thing in the morning, then we will at least be clear whether the corpse found at the house was—’

‘I’m telling you
it’s not Jimmy
,’ Monica half shouted, fearful of waking the children but scarcely able to contain herself. ‘It all
fits
. It’s his story! Exactly the way he described it. We have to find him. We’ve got to stop him before he makes it any worse. He’s in enough trouble already. He’s hiding somewhere, I know he is. His mobile’s been off since the fire. He’s hiding out. I have to think!’

Beaumont tried to think too. Seldom in his career had he been completely thrown, but this was one such occasion. He had come round to tell Monica personally the circumstances of what he had been quite convinced was her husband’s death, and the moment he had done so she had flown into this near-hysterical anguish claiming that Corby was still alive.

‘What about the tramp’s ID?’ he said eventually. ‘In Jimmy’s story that was crucial. If you’re right about what he’s done he’ll be using that.’

‘Of course!’ Monica said in a moment of hope.

‘Do you know the tramp’s name?’ Beaumont asked.

‘Yes! Yes I do,’ Monica blurted. ‘Bob. His name was Bob.’

‘We’d need a surname,’ Beaumont replied gently. ‘We can’t go looking for new bank accounts and passport applications for just Bob.’

‘Oh . . . yes, of course,’ Monica said. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know his surname.’

For a moment there was silence as both Monica and Beaumont wondered what they should do next.

Then they heard a key turn in the front-door lock.

Moments later Jimmy walked down the unlit stairs.

‘Hello, Mon,’ he said. ‘Hello, Inspector. Blimey, what’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

Scrap metal

After Rupert had left Jimmy at Number 23 on the morning of the fire, Jimmy had gone for a walk. He was pretty pissed and he needed to think.

Rupert’s offer of a getaway, of a new start overseas in exchange for a silence that Jimmy had intended to keep anyway, was tempting to say the least.

Exciting. Intriguing. A second chance. A clean slate. Wow.

Jimmy reeled out of the house sucking on his cigarette and staggered down the steps, nearly falling over his bike as he did so. He thought he’d slammed the door behind him, but of course he hadn’t. Whisky, beer and fags on an empty stomach at eleven in the morning had made him careless.

That was when old Bob the tramp had grabbed his chance. He’d smelt the solvents Jimmy had been using on his gloss brushes and he was after them. Instead he found the whisky and the cigarettes . . . and the matches.

Jimmy wandered up and down Hackney High Street for an hour or so, breathing deeply and sobering up, and by the time he headed back to Webb Street he had decided that he would not, under any circumstances, accept Rupert’s offer of an escape route for exactly the same reason that he had decided not to turn Rupert in.

The reason he had explained to Monica the night before.

It was time to take responsibility for his own actions.

Things had consequences and they had to be faced.

Jimmy was therefore returning to Number 23 with the intention of getting back to work on renovating the house for his family to squat in, but by the time he got there the Fire Brigade were already in attendance and it was all too late.

Standing unnoticed at the back of the little crowd that was gathering, Jimmy realized that once again his old good luck had turned relentlessly bad.

‘I didn’t know anyone was in the burning house,’ he explained to Monica and Inspector Beaumont. ‘I just thought either me or Rupert had left a fag burning and that all my months of work were going up in smoke. I thought that yet again I’d blown it. That I couldn’t even squat a building properly. So I just wandered off. I knew you weren’t expecting me home till late, Monica. I’ve been doing fourteen-hour days anyway.

‘I needed time to think. Time to get up the courage to tell you that our new home was ruined. So I went walking. My mobile had been in the house but I wouldn’t have called anyway. I walked pretty much clean across London before starting for home. Just feeling stupid. Feeling that I’d messed up yet again. Of course now I understand what a truly horrible bloody palaver I’ve caused by wandering off like that. But I didn’t know anyone was in the house, did I? And honestly, Mon, I
never
would have thought you’d think I’d do what you thought I did!’

‘But Jimmy,’ Monica protested, ‘your story . . .’

‘And your watch and wedding ring,’ Inspector Beaumont said sternly. ‘They were found on the corpse. They were actually on its wrist and finger. How did they get there?’

‘I take them off to paint,’ said Jimmy. ‘I always do. Of course I do. Let me tell you, Mon, you couldn’t clean paint off that watch, it’d take the gold colour straight off with it. Same with my Vegas ring. Paint solvents and cheap jewellery don’t mix. Each morning I’d take them off and leave them on the mantelpiece, same place I left the whisky bottle today. I suppose Bob must have found them and grabbed them. Probably thought they’d be worth a shot or two of meths. He put them on. Poured himself a drink. Lit a cigarette surrounded by paint and solvents, threw away the match and . . . Poor sod. Poor bloody sod!’

CCTV footage from the streets of Hackney confirmed that Jimmy had indeed been wandering across London, deep in thought, at the time the fire started. It had been an accident after all.

The Radish Club

The graduation party had crawled round many pubs and clubs and had visited not one but two curry houses, one early and one late. Now it had finally returned to the place where it had started, the rented house which they had all shared for two years. Lizzie had long since staggered off to bed and the one or two other girls who had started the night with them had also pulled the pin and called a cab.

Only the lads were left. The gang. The boys. Jimmy, Rupert, Henry, David and Robbo. The core gang, minus Lizzie of course, whom Robbo had recently stunned everyone by pulling.

They were all
so pissed
.

Reeling, belching, dribbling drunk. The suits that they had worn earlier in the day for their degree ceremony were crumpled and stained. Henry, as a committed radical, had not worn a suit but had instead had on a T-shirt which objected in no uncertain terms to the first Gulf War. That, however, was as crumpled and stained as the rest of their attire.

It was the last night of their student days and nobody wanted to go to bed.

‘This is it, boys,’ Jimmy said, struggling to get his finger under the ring pull of another can of beer. ‘Playtime’s over! The real world is about to begin! We must mark this occasion!’

‘I thought we were fucking marking it,’ Rupert observed. ‘If eleven pints and two curries plus tequila shots isn’t marking it, what is?’

‘We must make a pact!’ Jimmy said. ‘We must always be the best of friends. Or in the case of Roop and Henry, best of enemies. Friendship like ours cannot be allowed to wither on the vine of mundane existence.’ Jimmy raised his still-unopened can in a gesture of flamboyant solemnity. ‘We must carry it with us through life!’

‘Oh, do fuck off, Jimmy, you absolute wanker!’ David slurred.

‘Guilty as charged!’ Jimmy shouted. ‘I
am
an absolute wanker both spiritually and in very practical terms. However, I speak the truth! Our friendship must endure! Wherever we go and whatever we become!’

‘But where will we go! What will we become?’ Henry enquired through a mouthful of cold chips salvaged from a previous day’s takeaway.

‘Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m going to the toilet,’ Robbo said, rising unsteadily.

‘No, wait, Robs, this is serious,’ Jimmy insisted with the sudden intensity of the very drunk person who has seen the truth and needs to share it. ‘We should think about this. Where will we all be in ten, fifteen, twenty years? Come on. Let’s look into the future. Robbo, you need a piss so you go first.’

‘In ten, fifteen and twenty years,’ Robbo replied, ‘I hope to be
exactly
as I am now. Unchanged! That is, drunk! Very, very drunk.’

‘Good answer!’ Jimmy shouted. ‘The
right
answer.’

‘Can I go to the toilet now?’

‘Yes, you may. David, where will you be? What will you become?’

David chewed on a cold chip for a moment before answering.

‘I shall have designed and built the most famous building on the planet and will also be shagging Madonna,’ he said finally.

‘You do realize she’ll be pushing fifty by then?’ Jim pointed out.

‘I do realize that, Jim,’ David answered, ‘because I am not a moron. And she will no doubt be a fat, sagging, great big wobbling jelly of cellulite by then also, but I shall still love her and I shall still shag her. What’s more, I shall shag her in the penthouse of my fabulous building.’

‘Good answer! The
right
answer,’ Jimmy shouted, finally managing to open his can and in the process spraying himself with beer. ‘Henry?’

‘Minimum Cabinet minister. Maximum Prime Minister,’ Henry replied promptly, ‘in a second-term Labour government.’

‘Bad answer!’ Jimmy shouted. ‘
Wrong
answer. Boring answer.’

‘Nonetheless the true answer,’ Henry insisted. ‘You wait.’

Rupert threw an almost empty can at him.

‘Haven’t you got it yet, Henry, you arse?’ he said. ‘Hasn’t the penny dropped? There is never going to be another Labour government
ever again
.’

‘We shall see, you Nazi bastard,’ Henry replied. ‘We shall see.’

‘Yes we will, you commie moron.’

‘Come on,’ Jimmy pressed. ‘Your turn, Rupert.’

‘I shall be rich, of course. Incredibly rich. What other ambition is there?’

‘Good answer!’ Jimmy shouted. ‘The
right
answer!’