45
COMPLETE

Richard Standover worried about his collection.

Now that it was finally complete, something indefinable had been lost. That magical, mystical day in 1968 had been catalogued and pinned down, every last minute accounted for. He had been there, at location number five, reading a Beano comic on the park bench in the graveyard attached to St Pancras Old Church, when the Fab Four had turned up with their photographers.

They were rowdy and filled with laughter, and he was seven years old. John Lennon had insisted that he join them in the group shot on the bench, and had even put his arm around his shoulders. Passers-by had stopped to gawp through the gates of the churchyard, but were too awed to come in. People were in those days. It was a working class area; the old’uns were dismissive of pop stars, and the young were shy.

The photographs were taken, then all four were off with a smile and a wave to be filmed in a flower bed of crimson hollyhocks beside the hospital buildings. Paul McCartney was in a pink suit, George Harrison wore a bright blue shirt and orange-striped trousers. The heat of the afternoon sun was starting to fade. Cool green shadows crept over the lawns as the watchers dispersed. Standover had remained on the park bench, touching the wooden slats where his heroes had sat, laughing and joking with him as if they were his older brothers.

It was the day his collecting habit had begun, and now the most important part of it was complete, sealing the faded memories of his childhood behind cardboard and clear plastic forever.

Going on-line, he printed out a boarding pass for a 7:20 a.m. Easyjet flight from Luton and threw a few clothes into a holdall. He would rent out the flat until it could be sold, but the slender envelope of photographs would remain in his hand until he arrived in Majorca, where it could take its place in the documented schedule of that extraordinary day.

His cleaning lady had promised to drop off her keys before he left. When the doorbell rang, he assumed it was her.

Renfield and Bimsley knew something was wrong as they approached the block of apartments in Bloomsbury where Standover lived. The lighting in the front-facing third-floor living room was askew; Renfield had seen enough rooms where fights had occurred. A lamp had been knocked to the floor, its shade displaced. A shadow stretched, the upturned beam passed across the opposite wall, then the ceiling, rolling fast.

‘I know these flats,’ said Bimsley. ‘There are exits all over the bloody place.’

Renfield broke into a run, with Bimsley close behind him. He powered through the unlatched main door and up the stairs, through the open apartment door and into the dim hall. He could already see the bright scarlet smears in the room ahead. Standover was on his back, his right hand still frozen in a posture of defence, the left gripping his throat, ebbing rivulets of blood pouring between his fingers. He was already dead.

‘Roof,’ said Renfield. ‘Come with me.’

There were smears and splashes on the staircase above, and on the landing over that. The exit door led to the lift mechanism and a shingled flat roof set in a hollow square, four apartment buildings with an internal garden at their centre. The low London night was yellow enough to see ahead, but they heard his crunching steps first. Renfield led by experience, with Bimsley hard on his heels.

At the far edge they saw him, a small figure in a knitted brown cap, moving with shocking agility. They saw him look back in panic, then brace, but could not believe he would actually jump. The noise of his landing was immense; a wide gap onto the next building, too wide for men as heavy as Renfield and Bimsley to chance, one floor down and onto an angled metal-skimmed awning that allowed little purchase.

Bimsley was calling in the description as Renfield searched for another way across. They ran back to the roof door, but four flights of stairs took them outside with no obvious way around to the next building. Even as they ran, they knew they were dealing with someone unusual, a man who knew exactly where he was going. They would search now, but their quarry had gone. Standover was dead, and somewhere in Bloomsbury’s confusing maze of streets was a blood-smeared madman.

Renfield was always angry, and never more so than when a life which might have been saved was cut short. He had no way of knowing that in one sense, Standover had died with his world completed at last.