‘We’ve talked to a few people since then,’ Basquiat went on briskly. ‘Former associates and known contacts. Reginald Tang and Gregory Lockyear, also exorcists, who used to share lodgings with Peace, were only too happy to confirm that you’d been looking for the man for the past several days. And that you’d been involved in a fight with him on board a houseboat – the Thames Collective. A woman named Carla Rees further claims that you tried to arrange a meeting with Peace, using her as a go-between.’ She was getting the names out of the file on the table, but now she pushed it away from her slightly and leaned back in her seat. She obviously didn’t need cue cards for the next part.
‘Of course,’ she said, ‘that’s all circumstantial. It helps to build up the case, that’s all. The main thing is that we’ve got your fingerprints on the gun and on a lot of other things that were in the room. A kettle. Some mugs. An empty hip flask. It looks to me like you went in there with some story, got him pissed and off his guard, and then killed him. Is that what happened, Castor? You were looking for a chance at that easy shot in the back, but then you ran out of patience and did him face to face like a mensch, yes?’
There was no way I should have answered that question: I’d been in the same situation before – although not on a murder charge, admittedly – and I knew how the game was played. Basquiat wanted to get some kind of a response out of me, and the more she could needle me the better the odds would be that I’d say something stupid and incriminate myself. But my first instinct – play safe and say nothing – ran aground on one simple, terrible fact. Time was against me. I needed Basquiat to believe me, or at least to take me seriously. I couldn’t afford the luxury of stonewalling her.
‘No,’ I said. ‘That wasn’t what happened. Basquiat, how does your version account for the hits that I took? Someone gave me a couple of good hard smacks from behind, right? While I was shooting Peace in the chest? From in front? What’s wrong with this picture?’
Basquiat looked me over cursorily, as if she’d only just noticed the bruising to my face. She shrugged. ‘Nothing, as far as I can see,’ she said coldly. ‘I didn’t say you got Peace on the first pass. I assume you fought, you both did some damage, you shot him. He was a big man. He could easily have given you those colours you’re wearing.’
‘Look at them,’ I invited her, trying to keep the urgency out of my voice: if I started to think about Abbie, and what might be happening right now only a few miles away, I wasn’t going to be able to think straight – and then I wasn’t going to be able to get out of this. ‘Those marks weren’t made in any bare-hand fight: I was clubbed with a pistol butt.’
‘So?’
‘So whoever took me down was armed, too. I didn’t ambush Peace. There were other people there. I’m betting you must have found tracks outside the Oriflamme as well. You know there were other people there.’
Basquiat sat back in her seat, turning her pen with the tip of her middle finger for a second or two. Then she clicked the nib out and wrote something terse on the case sheet.
‘Peace’s prints were on the weapon too,’ Basquiat conceded, putting the pen down again. ‘Come to that, we think we know where and when he bought it. Recently, if you’re interested. At the same time as he bought the Tavor that was used at the Hendon Quaker Hall. I’ve been busy since the last time I saw your ugly face. Busy building a case.
‘Bottom line? We think the two of you were neck-deep in whatever was going on in that meeting house. Whether it was a Satanist ritual or some kind of a scam doesn’t interest me: with your background – and his – it could equally well have been either. But it didn’t go down the way it was meant to, and a whole lot of people ended up dead. Including Abbie Torrington, who we now believe was Peace’s daughter.
‘Peace ran one way and you ran another. You lost touch with him, anyway, and you spent the next few days trying to track him down. You were stupid enough to ask a lot of people a lot of questions, and to use your own name while you were doing it. You couldn’t have given us a clearer evidence trail if you’d been trying to – so thanks for that. But if you’re asking me whether it worries me that you shot Peace with his own gun, no, it doesn’t. Not at all. We found a knife on the floor a few feet away from you, and that had your fingerprints on it too, so we’re assuming that you went in with the intention of using that – but then a better opportunity presented itself and you took it.’
Basquiat quirked an eyebrow. ‘Or did he draw on you first? Was it self-defence? Maybe we can haggle about motive.’
I slammed my hand down on the table, making Field move in and loom over me with an unspoken but unmistakable threat. ‘Fuck!’ I said, louder than I intended. ‘Didn’t Reggie Tang tell you that I waded in to help Peace when he was attacked at the Thamesmead pier? I wanted to talk to him, not to kill him!’
For the first time, a flicker of something like interest – nothing so strong as doubt, not yet – passed across Basquiat’s face. She looked up at Fields.
‘Did Tang say anything about that?’ she asked him.
‘Not a word,’ said Fields, scornfully.
‘Listen to me,’ I said. ‘I was approached by a couple who claimed to be Abbie Torrington’s parents. They wanted me to—’
‘When was this?’ Basquiat interrupted.
‘Monday. Three days ago. They wanted me to find Abbie. They told me she was already dead, but they said Peace had somehow taken her ghost – her spirit – away from them, and they wanted her back. There are other witnesses to this. A man named Grambas: he runs a kebab house on Craven Park Road. He saw these two even before I did. He gave me their phone number.’
‘By Monday the Torringtons were dead. They’d been murdered two days before, on the same evening that Abbie died.’
‘I know that. I think these two were the killers.’
‘That’s funny. I had you and Peace down for that, as well.’
‘For the love of Christ, Basquiat!’ I was starting to lose it now. ‘Are you going to put me down for Keith Blakelock and Suzie Lamplugh while you’re at it? I didn’t have any reason to kill the Torringtons, and you can’t even place me there!’
‘We’re working on that,’ Basquiat said equably. ‘We can place Peace, by the way. We’ve got his prints now. On the bodies themselves, and also on a lot of the stuff that was torn up or thrown around.’
‘He was looking for Abbie,’ I said through my clenched teeth. I had to make Basquiat believe me, and I didn’t know how. ‘But he found out that she was already gone. She’d been taken, I mean – to that meeting house, where she was going to be sacrificed. Peace got the address of the meeting house from Melanie Torrington and he went tearing off there. Either he already had the assault rifle with him or he picked it up on the way.’
‘Why would he do that?’ Fields threw in from over my shoulder, just to show that he was still listening.
‘Why do you think?’ I snapped back, without sparing him a glance. ‘Because he knew he was going to be outnumbered about thirty to fucking one, is why. And he left Melanie Torrington alive,’ I added, groping for nuggets of fact that might make Basquiat at least consider another possible scenario. ‘She was killed later, right? Later than Steve, I mean. She was murdered by a man named Fanke. Anton Fanke. He killed her because she caved in and told Peace where to find Abbie. He’s the one who’s really behind all this.’
Basquiat blew out her cheek. ‘And it’s this Fanke who killed Abbie?’
‘Yes.’
‘And Peace?’
‘Yes!’
‘And Suzie Lamplugh?’
I opened my mouth to speak but gave it up. I suddenly saw the hopelessness of the situation. It wasn’t even just regulation police-issue blinkers: Basquiat was on a moral crusade. She wanted someone to pay for the murder of Abbie Torrington, and she’d already decided that that somebody was going to be me.