1 An awkward burial

Jonathan Knight said many things in his final will and testament. He saw it as an opportunity to leave on a high, a final addendum. Yes, another great work of art, but the reading of the will would come later, a joy Syd Campbell had already experienced at a visit to the late author’s house two weeks before his fatal accident with a ladder.

For now there was the small matter of getting him into the ground. Three men wrestled with the coffin. Any physicist could have told them that a rectangular object would be more stable with four pallbearers, not three, but as in life, Knight’s death fell that crucial distance short of greatness: just one more pair of hands, one more strap, a grave edge with a little more stability, a wind speed unable to dislodge the unsteady mourners.

Every stumble forced Syd forward, and every time she was pulled back by a grinning Cedric Halifax who had come along for the crack. “Leave ’em to it,” he said out of the corner of his mouth. “Think of the health and safety implications if you fall in there and break your leg. The damages will have to come out of his estate.”

“If they drop it and it breaks open,” said Syd.

“Unless they’ve done an Alistair Cook on him, that’s nothing to worry about.”

“Alistair Cook?”

“Nicked his legs and swapped ’em for drainpipes.”

“Nicked his legs or not, if they drop it it’s going to break open and then what?”

“It won’t break open. It’s an oak coffin not a cardboard box. It’ll be all right.”

As if the lowering of the coffin wasn’t bad enough the priest in charge of the occasion didn’t look too steady either. He tutted and twitched at each aborted attempt to lower the coffin horizontally. When it dangled at an angle of forty-five degrees, and an audible slumping noise provoked a gasp of horror from around the edge of the grave, the priest looked up at the clouds, expected some divine advice or reassurance, shook his head and grabbed the elbow of the man stood next to him.

“Sorry. Feeling a little feint. The mackeral is disagreeing with me, I think.”

Cedric whispered to Syd, “You know what I think? I think that’s a coded message.”

“Coded message?”

“Yeah. The mackeral is disagreeing with me. A coded message referring to Rob Wallet’s disappearance. I reckon it’s him in that coffin, not Knight.”

“A few weeks ago when I was at your house I saw a book by David Icke on your shelves.”

“That’s not mine. I just borrowed it.”

“When you go down that rabbit hole. . . .”

“I haven’t gone down any rabbit holes. And Icke doesn’t write about Malandanti stuff, which in itself is a bit suspicious. But think about it. Jonathan Knight writes an unofficial biography, Rob Wallet disappears, Knight falls off his ladder and a few weeks later we’re burying one and discussing the other.”

“Haven’t buried him yet though.”

The rear pallbearer slipped, two mourners lurched to pull him back, the coffin strap slithered away from his grip and Knight landed head first at the base of his trench with a stomach turning thud. Visible over the lip of the grave, the coffin lid remained intact, the strap coiled like a snake, the narrow end of the box pointing upwards at the priest, his complexion the same colour as the sky behind his windblown head.

Now the real struggle began.

A phone rang, Cedric’s pocket shuddered and he turned to answer the call as the redundant pallbearer sat on the edge of the grave and lowered himself down to the stranded coffin.

Cedric stepped away, but his conversation was still audible. “Vincent, always a delight to hear from you. What part of south east London are you driving around now?”

The coffin was wedged fast and the trench wasn’t wide enough for the pallbearer to grip both sides.

“A map, what do you need a map for? He lives in Holborn not Holland. . . . Holland, the Netherlands. . . . No, it’s not near Swiss Cottage, you twat.”

Oliver Cross had been eyeing Syd from the moment he had come alongside her. Leather bound organiser in his right hand, mobile phone in his left, he made a point of waving them both around to add a little more expression to his conversation. “Your father’s voice carries, doesn’t it?”

“It does, but he’s not my father.”

“Ooh, isn’t he?” His cheeks billowed in expectation. “Older relative, sugar daddy, retired footballer-trophy wife combination. Seen ’em all at funerals, you know.”

“Have you? Been to a few?”

“Vincent, Vincent, stop talking for one minute. Of course he’s in, he’s bedridden for Christ’s sake.”

“In fifty-five years I’ve seen everything. See her over there, the brassy one with the magenta lips, buried her third husband last September.”

“Must be quite expensive.”

He stressed each syllable of the words, “Life in-sur-ance.”

The top of the pallbearer’s head signalled to everyone that this particular funeral was going into extra time. “We’ll have to lift it out again, if I can get the strap around this end.”

“Can you not pull the head towards you?”

“Can’t get a grip on it. Can’t get a grip.”

Cross tutted. “Nothing he ever did was straightforward. Pity we couldn’t include this in the biography. Would have made a good epilogue.” Cross was there at the end of Knight’s journey through life, just as he was there at the end of Knight’s torturous route to publication.

“Have sales lived up to your expectations?” said Syd.

Cross sort of shook his head. “It’s all relative, isn’t it? I still think one of the majors will buy the rights.”

Jonathan Knight’s regular publisher Shanks went out of business in 2013. Knight lined up two more companies, Routledge Balcarres and The Tiny Book Press.

“Routledge Balcarres? They print technical manuals for doctors, don’t they?” said Syd.

“Yes. The Tiny Book Press promised to print the biography when it reached fifty thousand positive reviews on Amazon. Of course it bombed in the ratings when he self-published. TBP walked away after that. And then you got in touch.”

“And how grateful you were for that, eh Oliver?”

Cedric ended his telephone call with an abrupt exclamation and turned back to the burial. “If you leave him like that all the blood’s gonna rush to his head. It might wake him up.”

“Cedric, ssh.”

“He can’t hear me. So what is a low content book, Oliver?”

“It’s a euphemism for PDF notebooks full of empty pages,” said Syd.

“It’s a little bit more than that,” said Cross. “You should know better than anyone, Cedric. There’s always a market if you know where to look. Unofficial biography of Toten Herzen? Of course I snatched his arm off when he came to me.”

“Snatched his arm off.” Cedric laughed. “Some say that’s why he fell off his ladder.”

A well placed foot did the trick, wedged under the coffin’s edge it drew forward allowing the trailing end enough space to finally level itself and after several moments of real anguish Jonathan Knight rested in peace. Syd nudged Cedric and waited for him to see what she could see.

“Oh, Jesus.”

When the pallbearer was rescued the swaying priest could get on with the rest of it. He rushed his lines and closed his eyes expecting the final respects to endure, but the crowd were off, back to the Fiddler’s Elbow for the wake, leaving Jonathan Knight buried face down after his coffin had rotated about its axis, the position unnoticed in the urgency to recover the pallbearer. Syd was sure she heard another clattering noise, but when she looked back the grave was abandoned, the priest nowhere to be seen.

Staff at the Fiddler’s Elbow were well prepared for wakes and laid out the same furniture used for weddings and business conferences; plush, gilded and bought wholesale from a supplier in Basingstoke. Knight, a writer of Gothic melodrama, would have recoiled at the decor, but the trouble was, he didn’t have time to plan anything. Writing his will two weeks before his fatal accident was pure coincidence. Tempting fate, some might have said. And death didn’t just deprive him of his royalties it robbed him of the chance to witness the unholy row that followed the publication of his unfinished book: Toten Herzen, the Unauthorised Story.

Distracted by a disagreement with his publisher over the spelling of unauthorised – American with a Z or English with an S – he missed the big question being asked online. Why has it been published before it’s finished? Of course, when Knight dropped to his death the conspiracy theories exploded.

“Come on, you must know something, Syd.” Cross balanced a plate of salmon and salad on his organiser. Each mouthfull offered a convenient pause for Syd to spill the beans.

“I told you, I met him just before he died, but that was about me handing over my research material. He wasn’t bothered about it being incomplete.”

“You didn’t shove him off his ladder, did you?”

“I wasn’t there when it happened.” Which was true. She was being bitten by midges in the Scottish Highlands, her relationship with her former employer long gone. A research project abandoned after Rob Wallet vanished. And that question floated around the wake, there and then amongst the fifteen quid bundles of irises and Interflora wreathes, drifting in the salad fresh atmosphere of shredded carrot and mayonaise, competing with the Chanel and Lynx; the other question, the entangled conundrum of Rob Wallet’s disappearance. One minute they’re rounding up terrorists from every corner of Europe, the next minute Rob Wallet is awol, books are coming out about his great hoax, his life changing discovery, his earth shattering revelation. His monster running amok. . . .

“So, come on, Syd, you can tell us. What’s been going on? If you published your researh notes. . . .” He waited for her response. “What tales they would tell, Syd. You could command a six figure sum.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s obvious to anyone with a brain. Unlike Wallet’s whereabouts. Where is he?”

“We just buried him.”

“Not Jonathan Knight, Rob Wallet?”

“I said we just buried him. That’s what Cedric thinks, but he’s been reading David Icke.”

“Is that rhyming slang?”

“What?”

“It is a bit odd though, isn’t it?” Cross placed his empty plate on a passing tray of drinks. “Jonathan dies, Wallet disappears. It’s like 1977 all over again. What’s going on, Syd?”

“I wish I knew. The last I heard Rob Wallet had been eaten by a werewolf. Excuse me a minute.”

She found Cedric in a corner, his ear pinned to the phone that only ever gave him grief. Vincent had found his bedridden debtor, but failed to extract the readies. “Can you believe that?” Cedric stared at his phone. “A bedridden man done a runner.”

“How much did he owe you?”

“Ah, not much. You look as if you’re ready to go.”

“Yeah. They’re starting to talk about Rob. I’ve said all I want to say about him and I’ve paid my respects.” A horrible shriek alerted them to the crowd.

A heavily bruised limping priest was helped into the conference suite by sympathetic mourners. Useless chairs were offered for his relief, but it was his back, wouldn’t bend, and his left leg was smeared in clay and wet grass, another dollop of mud across the side of his face.

“What’s happened to him?” Syd and Cedric pulled together a line of chairs to create a makeshift hospital bed.

“Fell into the open grave.” The unknown mourner eased the priest onto the chairs.

“I’ll be all right,” the priest said.

“No you won’t,” said Syd. “We need to get an ambulance here.”

“No, not the ambulance. I can’t stand hospitals. People die in hospitals.”

“People die in hotels,” said Cedric. Syd elbowed him in the ribs. “Well they do. You can’t be irrational about it. Bert Troutmann had a broken neck and no one knew. You need to get down the A and E.”

Before a decision was made, Syd peered into the priest’s swollen eye. Behind her Cedric said, “Hang on a minute.”

He waited for a shifty looking man to step across the reception area, oblivious to the moaning patient. He introduced himself. “Kevin Burrows. It’s Cedric Halifax, isn’t it?”

“Normally I’d say who wants to know, but you’ve just said. Do I know you?”

“Yes. You were gardening up in Lincolnshire, weren’t you? Jim, you got a moment?” Jim pulled himself out of his bucket chair and joined the triage group.

“Have they done you for anything, Cedric?” said Burrows.

“Done me? Who? No one’s done me for anything. What are you talking about?”

“The amnesty.”

“What amnesty?”

The priest winced and grabbed his thigh.

“They’re quite deep those graves, aren’t they, Father?” said Syd.

“These moments are a test for us. I’ll survive. I’m in capable hands.”

The hotel’s first aid person, a duty manager called Adrian, acted like he knew what he was doing, but kept his capable hands to himself. “We should get him into a foetal position and check his airwaves.”

“He’s done nothing but moan and groan since they got him in here,” said Cedric. “There’s nothing wrong his airwaves, you need to check his hips. Have a closer look at that bump on his head too. It looks like a goose egg.”

Burrows agreed. “Like I was saying, Cedric, anyone mixed up with the Malandanti are being offered an amnesty in return for information. It’s how they’re banging up the terrorists.”

“I’m not involved with that lot. Never have been.”

“Neither am I, but Cedric,” Burrows lowered his voice, “they pay compensation if you qualify.”

“Go on.”

The priest listened too.

“All the big important institutions had insiders working for them. Gofers, dogsbodies, helpers, fixers, they were everywhere. Now, to get them out in the open they’re offering amnesties, but some, the ones who were really up to their necks, they’ve got a lot to lose, so they’re being offered, you know, financial incentives.”

“So what’s that got to do with me?”

“Oh, come on Cedric, put two and two together. You tell ’em you were in it and you were an important player, could be a few sovs in it for you.”

“And we can arrange it for you.” Jim moved out of the way so that Adrian could rotate the priest’s neck.

“Well done, Adrian,” said Cedric, “You just crippled him for life doing that. What are you saying? You running a scam?”

“Keep your voice down,” said Burrows. “You never know who’s listening. Yeah, we’ve gone through it, we know how it works, what to say on the forms.”

“How much are we talking about?”

“Ministry of Defense, up to ten grand.”

“Ten grand?”

“Did you get compensation?” Syd asked.

“A little bit.”

“How much?”

“Two hundred and fifty.”

“Come on, Syd.” Cedric headed for the door.

“Hang on a minute,” said Burrows, “don’t take me as an example. I only worked in the planning department in Tottenham. Everyone’s getting in on it. It’s the best thing the Malandanti have done in years.”

“Look, Kevin, may I call you Kevin? Take it from my friend here, they haven’t rounded up the Malandanti. The leaders are still out there.”

“Are they?”

“Frieda Schoenhofer,” said Syd, “Virginia Bruck, Jennifer Enzo, Lena Siebert-Neved, all still out there.”

“They don’t like people informing on them, Kevin.”

“That’s not all of them,” said Burrows.

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” Burrows checked the priest who turned away, “he’s gone missing, hasn’t he?”

“The priest? He’s sat over there.”

“Not the priest, you dickhead. Wallet. Paying big money to informers, Wallet disappears. If you ask me he’s took the cash and they’ve put him in a witness protection programme.”

Cedric and Syd shared a concerned look.

“Cedric, they were talking about it online.”

“Online.”

“That Joe Logan geezer and some other yank, talking about it for three hours. What was his name, Jim?” Burrows clicked his fingers.

“Alex, Alex Jones.”

“Alex Jones.”

“Fuck off, Kevin.” Cedric walked away. “Remember what I said, they don’t like informers.”

Syd followed him across reception. “And their bosses like it even less,” she said.

“Bosses?” said Burrows.

She held her index fingers against the sides of her head. “Doesn’t do to make the Devil cross, Kevin.”