Children of the Octagon
Chapter One
“THE THIEF”
As he slid his finger under the clinging ridge of the clear plastic folder, Max felt as if he were about to set free a black tangle of malevolent eels which would slither across his desk. He knew it was only photographic evidence, but there was something about it which undermined his faith in the spring weather. Max riffled through the photographs, the Surrey house with its fake wood beams, crested gables, twin garages, treated gravel. He had seen the ritual damage, the doll’s head on the gatepost beneath the dusty rhododendron bush, the broken furniture, the splayed drawers, the crushed toys, the dead baby trapped beneath its capsized cot, as if in a broken cage, the half-completed ancient hieroglyph on the wall, smeared in faeces. Of all the images it was the bland face of the cracked doll impaled on the gate that remained most vivid in his mind, a doll that the baby barely had time to know, or breathe life into. It had the quality of a warning, an emblem of worse to come.
There was a cold precision to these images, a bleak, ordered landscape of the mind, which Frank Tierney, a petty thief and a chancer, could never have created. His mind was incapable of the refinement of such a ritual. It was the court itself which knew about ritual. Max and his brotherhood of lawyers were steeped in it, earning their positions at the bar by eating dinners in the ‘Temple’, sporting their stifling cloaks and little periwigs like the lackeys of some corrupt eighteenth century landlord. Max had his own opinions about all that.
Max had never fitted in with his fellow banisters. He was short beady-eyed and a little blinkered, profoundly committed, but never quite happy with his work. He took nothing for granted and treated each case, however small, as if it were a rehearsal for one momentous battle. This made him nervous, edgy, and never very confident, but, for all that, the best and most interesting briefs were beginning to come his way. This success seemed only to add to his unease, as he had recurring dreams of falling, and would wake up each morning as if he had it all to do again.
He slid the photographs away, took one last look at himself in the mirror, adjusted the white tie of privilege, picked a speck of egg from his suit, pulled himself up as far as he could, until his neck clicked, and prepared for war.
“It’s all a fucking conspiracy,” Frank spluttered. “The baby was dead from the start.”
Frank tugged at his tousled hair, leaning on the tin table, in the inadequate lighting of the interview room. Max watched him, wanting to be reassured of his innocence, but unable to forget those sinister photographs. They left an invisible stain, a fine translucent oil that seeped beneath Frank’s hair-line, and glistened on his sallow skin. It didn’t seem to matter if he were guilty or not. Evil clung to him, gleaming like sweat. Max had begun to understand that evil is something shared by criminal and victim alike. Both seem to smell of it, as pungent as burnt fat.
Frank was a victim, Max was sure of that, even though he was also an inveterate liar. He filled Max with compassion and dread. “I thought you didn’t see the baby. I thought you never went into the house.”
“I didn’t.”
“Then how did you know the baby was already dead?”
“I couldn’t, could I? I didn’t know. I never saw the flicking baby.”
Max had to form his own opinion. This was that Frank had entered the house, and with intent to steal, but he had stumbled on the scene of a crime. Frank was too frightened to admit to anything. Preparing a simple defence was impossible for Frank. His whole life was a defence, and the strength of that defence depended on its subtlety, its flexibility.
“If I’d meant to empty the gaff, the fuckers would never have seen me. They were waiting for me. You know that.
If Frank would only explain what actually happened, but Frank could not explain, only wince as if something were thrown in his face, and shift his position. Frank believed in the total corruption of authority. His mongrel race, the tan colour of his skin, made sure that he was picked on. He had been all his life by black and white Max would never understand.
There has to be one clear story, Max explained, something that everyone can follow. Two stories spell disaster, and several stories will only increase the sentence.
Frank seemed to understand, and was transformed for a moment, his descriptions becoming almost lucid, but the next moment an access of fear over the dead baby sent him spiralling off down a totally different path. He began to sneeze into a tiny lump of torn tissue. He lived in a world where nothing was certain, where memory was a moveable feast, and the future a terrible confusion. The truth was of no more value there than any other story, and a story was a tool used to wriggle out from under, escaping from the traps which “they” had set.
“They” were the faceless, malignant enemy, who controlled the world. “They” were everywhere. Crime had been his only way to get at “them”. “They” owned everything he ever stole. In moments of panic, when he was completely cornered, a lifetime of pain and anger came to the surface, with a cold influx of sweat. In such moments he was afraid of everything, as if he had met “them” face to face, but the next moment he would be cocky again.
“You should be bloody grateful to me, my friend,” he said suddenly “defending a murder wrap must be quite a feather in your cap. And you’re only doing it ‘cause I got faith in you. Don’t you forget that.”
Max knew that this was true. It was almost unknown for a barrister of thirty two, or anyone other than a ‘silk’, to take a murder brief He had wanted to attribute his success to his own dedication and determination. It was a natural compensation for his frugal lifestyle, his lack of a partner, the fact that he was married to his work, living in a large shared flat, a way of life which had hardly changed since law school. But it had all happened too easily, and on this occasion it was undeniably true that Frank had given him his big opportunity. For some obscure reason, Frank had chosen him above all others, and had willfully stuck by that choice.
“Then you should listen to me, when I try to help you,” said Max. “If you’d only admit to breaking and entering, then it will be a whole lot easier to get you off the other charges. You were apprehended right outside the property.. How many similar offences do you have on record? Fourteen? Or more than that....?”
“No, you listen to me for once!” Frank was unexpectedly assertive, and his normally evasive eyes were looking straight at Max “I know how they think. I’ve had a good taste of that right from the beginning. I was just a kid. Now, you listen. I was only ten or eleven, but I was smart. I knew my way in and out of places. They seen me but they never caught me. So I cheeked ‘em, got ‘em into a chase, six of ‘em. I knew I had the better, because none of ‘em could climb as fast as I could, and I could wheedle me way through little cracks, not like you lot.”
Max tried to cut his mind off. Frank was talking like a drunk. The trial was too close, and he did not want extraneous facts to interfere with the clear concept he had of how it should be handled. He was quite sure that nothing Frank could dredge up from his childhood would alter even the slightest detail. On the other hand it cut him to the quick that Frank should now identify him with “them”. He might have expected it. He was a barrister, after all, but he had always felt different from other lawyers, a crusader, as his dead journalist father had once been, a champion of the people. He was silent, as Frank rambled on.
“It was an old cinema, and I knew my way about, huge walls rising with millions of bricks in them, crumbling at the edges, no roof, big girders going nowhere, but I knew which ones were safe. I had it sussed. It was hot, which made them sweat, and the bricks were crumbling. I could feel the red dust warm my hands as I scrambled up and over.
“The coppers looked like idiots, heaving their fat arses over lintels, trying to keep their sweaty faces stern and serious, sweltering in their bloody uniforms. None of them would dare cross the girder I walked on. It was too thin and their boots would never grip. I danced along, I tell yer. I was king then, and my face was in all the papers. It was a great feeling, way up, out of it. I could watch them scrabbling about down there. They didn’t know which way to go. I did. I knew how to vanish right before their eyes.
“As I reached the little room my footing slipped. Something had been changed, but it was no big problem. I wriggled on to the ledge and through the hole, where I knew they couldn’t see me. This was a room, you see, which only I could reach. It must have been a projection booth or something, but there was no way up to it. I tumbled inside. There was only me and the pigeons. I could hear all their voices clearly, and that told me which way they were going. They all went in one direction. Stupid. Their voices came from further and further away, and I was sure I’d made it. They were chasing ghosts.
“I was on a high. Down there was rubbish. Down there were fights and buggers who’d beat you up for nothing, but upstairs I was king. I waited until the voices died away. A dog was barking, but he was just excited, not part of it. I lifted myself up the full length of my arms. There was a gap which must have been an air vent. I could squeeze through. Luckily I looked down. Fucking bricks had fallen out like rotten teeth. Perhaps I could have found some usable holes, but I didn’t feel like trusting a few bits of loose mortar on a vertical wall. It went right down, all the way.
I slipped back into the room, a bare box, walled up. The only thing was to wait it out, and then go back the way I’d come.
“There was this muffled grunt from the far wall. One of them buggers had stayed back, and was trying to get up the building the way I had. He was built like a rugby player, overweight, definitely a ground animal, but I could hear the determination that was pushing him up that wall. He reached the girder which stretched across the big gap, and I could see he couldn’t walk it, but that didn’t stop him. He straddled it, and began to squirm his way across. I found some loose bricks at the back of the room, and picked one up, a broken one, fist-sized, easy to throw. I enjoyed thinking how easy it would be to knock him from his perch. I didn’t want to, though. That would give the game away. I thought he might still give up. Twice he looked like slipping, but he just kept on. I fired a warning shot. It hit the girder just ahead of his hands, spot on.
“Little bastard!” I could hear him like he was next to me. And the bugger only increased his speed, writhing across like a fat worm. I went for another brick. the killer. Big one, jagged with cement. I could hear the sound he would make as he fell.
“But for some reason I didn’t bloody throw it. Why the fuck I didn’t, I don’t know. I suppose I thought I’d had it. Where there was one, there’d be another. That’s how it is with the Bill. But I was just stupid. I could have had got him if I’d wanted. The next thing I knew he was in the room with me, pock-marked face, red and blowing. I waited, brick in hand. I put my arms down, submissive-like, but ready to hit if necessary. But he was too fast. He was across the room in one leap.
“”Got you know. You’re in the net, and believe me monkey boy, you’ll never get out of it!” He had me crushed against the wall and he was using all his bulk. He wouldn’t let up. He kept on crushing me and grinding me into the wall, scraping my face against the brickwork. All the bricks were ridged in a jagged herring bone pattern that I’ll never forget. My clothes was ripped. He was dragging the trousers off me. He crushed my ribs so hard I thought I’d never breathe again. I didn’t know what he was doing or why he did it to me, but it bloody hurt, and I was bleeding. He was pounding and grinding me again and again as if I was an insect that wouldn’t die.”
Frank took Max through the whole exploding horror of it, the lack of oxygen causing a growing numbness, the tears squeezed from his eyes, the dull grunts hurting more and more. Despite his efforts to keep cool, Max felt his own bile rising, a sense of indignation such as he never thought he would feel on Frank’s behalf Even when he was a kid, they’d done whatever they wanted. He knew that feeling of powerlessness and cruel manipulation. He identified.