Authors: Harold Robbins
It wasn’t impossible that Howler had gotten wind of something that important. He could have stumbled on to something when he was called in to the medical examiner’s office for a job. Maybe the purse of an accident victim sitting nearby as the owner of the purse was being chopped up by a pathologist. The victim could have been a friend and confidante of the princess. Howler sticks his hand into the purse, looking for the price of his next fix, pulls out a letter, it’s in the princess’s own hand, it says that the Palace Gang plans to—
“Probably not,” he spoke to the bird, “but there are all kinds of possibilities.” And
if
there was such a letter, and
if
he could get his hands on it, it would be a giant scoop, a regular “Royalgate.”
Howler said he wanted ten million pounds for his information. A nice round figure that rolled off the tongue. But there’d be millions for each of them if that crazy bastard really did have a death-threat letter.
He needed to talk to Cohn. The man would be on top of the Abbey investigation by the police—he had paid sources everywhere. But he couldn’t tell Cohn about the Howler angle. There simply wasn’t any honor in the tabloid business. And Cohn was very good at his job, earning his nickname of Cohn the Barbarian for the hordes he had massacred with printer’s ink. The editor had a colder heart than the guy with the exposed plumbing under the coffee table. It went with the business of turning out a tabloid—editors, reporters, even the secretaries and mailroom boys had it. Cohn often criticized Dutton, who had gone to tabloid reporting only after his fall from grace with actual journalism, for not having the killer instinct of a true tabloid reporter. The criticism came during those times Dutton tried to insist on some semblance of the truth in a story.
He used his cellular to call Cohn, figuring it might be harder to trace than the apartment phone. He wouldn’t put it past the man to have his call traced and turn him over to the police—as long as Archer agreed to have a
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photographer catching the anguished and terrified and surprised look on Dutton’s face as he was hauled out of the loft by the yard.
“Tony, where are you?” Mangus Cohn asked.
“Why do you want to know? Has a reward been posted for me?”
“The police are looking for you. Bram Archer thinks you’re a suspect in the four bodies found at the Abbey.”
“
Four?
How could there be four?”
“The head didn’t belong to the shoulders down, and other such discrepancies. You didn’t know this?”
“Of course not. I chop up people so fast, I lose count of how many I kill.”
“I know you’re only joking, Tony, but has it occurred to you what a fabulous story we are sitting on? Every rag in the country is headlining the royal murder case and here we are with one of our star reporters suspected of being a serial killer in the nation’s holy of holies. Wonderful stuff.”
“Jesus, Mangus, I’m glad I made your day, but while you’ve been putting together the latest edition of that disgusting rag you dare to call a newspaper, don’t forget that I went into that bloody church to get a story for
you.
Tell me about the damn bodies.”
“I don’t know that much—yet. My source says that someone has put together a body from pieces of other bodies, that sort of thing. The ears were sewn on backwards, didn’t belong to the head, head sewn on the shoulders, that sort of thing. Very bloody, very newsworthy.”
“Jesus. Are you saying that someone’s gone on a murder rampage and is cutting up bodies and piecing them together like a jigsaw puzzle?”
“Isn’t it wonderful?”
“Not if it’s your head the killer wants. Bizarre. Pieces to four bodies, seven in one blow.”
“Seven? I haven’t heard about seven.”
“It’s a fairy tale—you know, one of those fantasies that predates the fantasies your paper turns out. A meek and mild tailor killed seven flies with one blow, people thought it was men instead of flies, and—”
He set the phone on his lap for a moment while Cohn raved on about how they would try to fit the “seven with one blow” into their lead on the story. Implying, of course, that the four deaths already were just a drop in the buckets of blood that Tony Dutton, Abbey Killer, left behind.
The man had the loyalty of a rabid dog.
He interrupted Cohn. “Fuck your story. Tell me more about the Abbey thing. The body was dressed in some sort of costume.”
“Tudor-era dress, Elizabethan, that sort of thing. Police are checking costume rental companies. The stuff was frozen.”
“What stuff?”
“Head, body. The theory is that the killer kept the body in deep freeze.”
“That’s weird, but it would play hell on setting time of death, wouldn’t it? But why would he dump them in Westminster Abbey? How’d he get them into the place?”
“Police theory is that it was carted in, maybe even in baby carriages. Or through a rear delivery door in a box on a hand truck. The Abbey’s open to the public most of the time. Could have come in many ways.”
“Frozen.” Dutton nodded to the bird, soliciting any comments it might have on the subject. “Besides making it hard to pin down time of death, thus making it unnecessary for the killer to have an alibi for when the victims were killed, it makes it all easier to transport. Easier to move because the stiffs are stiff. No messy blood splashing around. And parts are easier to cart than a whole body, they’d stack nicer. But why Westminster, and why piece together the body parts? And where’s the rest of the stiffs’ stuff? St. Paul’s? Buckingham? Nelson’s statue?”
“Tony, my boy,” Cohn purred.
Dutton’s hand tightened on the phone. Cohn had no interest in sex, money, or liquor. He only purred for stories.
“We need to give deep thought to the situation with you and the police.”
Oh-oh.
The last thing Cohn gave deep thought about was an Elvis sighting. “
What
situation with me and the police? I’ve got a loose-cannon cop trying to trump up charges against me. You make some phone calls and get the bastard off my back.”
“Archer has put out a nationwide armed-and-dangerous alert for you in connection with the killings.”
“Mangus, why don’t you get down to the bottom line? I’m getting the idea in the pit of my stomach that you’re trying to make me an Aunt Sally so you can sell papers. I’m not going to play an Aunt Sally for you.”
“Tony,” he purred, “think of what a great story we’re sitting on. A
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writer actually suspected as a serial killer. Murder in the Abbey. It’s the stuff of … of fairy tales—”
“The kind written by Stephen King, a fuckin’ horror story.”
“We at
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understand and sympathize with what you are going through. Hell, you know I personally think of you as a son.”
“Lying bastard.”
“What we had in mind was in the way of a confession.”
“What?”
“Freakkkk!”
“What was that?”
“You want a confession from me? Are you crazy?”
“Not a full confession, just something that implies that you’ve gone amuck. We’ll run it for a couple weeks and then come out with the true story.”
“What true story?”
“The man whose head was found at the Abbey reminded you of the priest who molested you when you were—”
“Freakkkk!”
Dutton hung up. “For once I agree with you, birdbrain,” he told Dr. Livingstone. “I deserve it. I’ve been out crucifying people with rumors and innuendos, now it’s my turn to be chased by the jackals I run with.”
What a pisser. Frozen body parts at Westminster. Pasted together as one man. Dressed in a period costume. With a woman’s head as a lapdog.
He called Howler’s home number. “Piss off,” the recording said.
After the beep, Dutton said, “If you’re there, pick up, I have money for you.”
Nothing. Howler either wasn’t home or was dead. Those were the only two reasons he wouldn’t have responded to an offer of money.
He tried the coroner’s office next. Howler only got occasional assignments from the coroner, but it was possible he was there working on one. He wasn’t. “Haven’t seen him in days,” someone named Mrs. Stewart told him.
Dutton had Howler’s mother’s number, too. He called it, though the odds of the man being there were slim—Howler only showed up once a month at his mother’s the day she got her social welfare check. The phone was answered by an elderly woman.
“Good day, Mrs. Howler.”
“Is this the police?” the woman asked.
“Yes,” Dutton said. You don’t become a top reporter for a shabby tabloid without knowing when to lie.
“Is there any news about Walter?”
Walter. Dutton had forgotten that the man had a first name.
Any news. That would make Howler missing.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Now, Mrs. Howler, you, uh, let me see…?” He made a paper noise shuffling a
Stud
magazine on the coffee table.
“I’m the one who made the missing persons report. I knew something was wrong when he didn’t show up on my check day.”
“Yes, that was very intuitive of you, but a mother always knows, doesn’t she? What I need is to confirm the information, so let’s start from the beginning. Last time you saw your son?”
“About a month ago. The last time I got a check.”
I should have thought of that myself,
Dutton thought.
“He said he was off to the countryside, been invited to the prince’s ball, he had.”
“Prince’s ball?”
“The Prince of Wales. Terrible what happened to him. That’s why I’m so worried about Walter. Maybe someone shot him, too. They say the princess is quite insane, don’t they?”
Dutton stared at Dr. Livingstone across the way. The bird was strangely quiet. Dutton himself was speechless. Invited to the prince’s ball? Howler had less chance of being invited to a royal party as he did of addressing the United Nations General Assembly on medical ethics.
“Wasn’t that the information I gave before?” she asked. “My memory isn’t as good as it used to be. I don’t always—”
“What exactly did he say to you when you saw him last? About the prince’s ball.”
“That he was off to the country with the prince for that hunt and ball that’s been in all the news. Before he left, he dropped by to pick up clothes he had stored here. He was really quite proud that he was shouldering with royalty, you know. But I always knew my Walter was special.”
Her Walter was special, all right, and he had about as much chance of rubbing elbows with royalty as a wallowing pig did.
“That’s the last time you’ve heard from him?”
“Yes, I expected him to call me after that terrible thing happened to the prince.”
“What did the police tell you?”
“You’re the police.”
I should have thought of that myself.
“I mean the other officers who spoke to you.”
“The ones that came to my apartment? They told me not to worry, that Walter was on a special assignment for the police. They also told me not to discuss Walter with anyone but them. But I call them every day because I know he needs to come by and get money for his medicine. You know that he takes medicine, don’t you?”
Yeah, Dutton knew what kind of “medicine” Howler used, it was bought on the streets and went into a hypodermic needle that was injected anyplace on Howler’s body that didn’t already have more holes than a pincushion.
Dutton had her give him the police telephone number, “Just to make sure you’re calling the right one,” he told her. After he jotted it down, he asked, “Uh, did Walter have any close friends? Someone he might have confided in? A girl?”
Someone he shared needles with?
he was tempted to ask.
“No, he broke up with Betty over a year ago, when she went back to jail. Walter was very particular about his women friends, you know. He couldn’t afford to have his reputation tarnished.”
He signed off and hung up after assuring Mrs. Howler that Walter was being well taken care of and swearing her to secrecy about his call. He wondered what it was about mothers that made them blind to the fact their Johnny was a serial killer, rapist, or druggie.
He got another beer from the fridge and sat on the couch with pen and paper. He outlined what he knew.
Bodies or the parts thereto were found at Westminster Abbey.
Howler had tipped him that a body would be there and that there was a royal connection. How did Howler know the body would be there? Did he put it there? And what about the letter Howler mentioned. Where was it?
The Prince of Wales was dead.
Before he died, the prince invited a notorious drug addict to his hunt and charity ball.
No way!
The last “fact” was nonsense. There was no possibility Howler was invited to the ball. He obviously made up that story to cover something else he was doing.
But …
The police told Howler’s mother that her son was on a special assignment. Okay, Howler did special assignments for the coroner’s office, reconstructing bodies. That’s police-connected activity. But what kind of assignment could the man have that was
secret
? And that included an invitation to the prince’s ball?
Dutton underlined
special assignment.
It stank of more of that Danish stink Hamlet complained about.
The body parts were dressed in a Tudor-era costume—the era of Henry VII, Henry VIII, Queen Mary, and the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I. The present royal family weren’t Tudors, but would be related because the crown kept going to cousins and such after the main houses ran out of heirs. But why historical royal garb? What was the message?
They had been frozen.
Why? To make it hard to tell time of death? To make them easy to transport? Those were the easy answers. But were they also frozen to preserve them until they could be placed at Westminster?
Why Westminster? One thing he had learned about covering the crime beat was that serial killers are crazy … but that there was always a method to their madness. That’s why they were called “serial” killers—they had a game plan they usually stuck to. And they not uncommonly operated off of messages—ones from God, Satan, voices in their head, telepathy with their victims.