On Eden Street

by Peter Grainger

  The taller man crossed towards the doorway, and he had something in his hand, holding it out and then stooping, slowing into a crouch. A few more seconds passed and a dog appeared, head down, tail wagging cautiously. The man waited and the dog began to sniff what he was holding – it had to be food. As the dog grew more persistent and excited about the smell, some sort of lead went around its neck, and then the man stood up, walking on towards the Fairhills end of Eden Street. Before he was out of sight in the same shadows where the woman had gone, the second man was moving quickly across the street. He disappeared into the doorway. Nothing could be seen. The image became an empty tableau for a few seconds – Waters was counting and it was six seconds – and then he was out in the street again, hands in his pockets, walking north at a steady pace.

  ‘OK, stop it there.’

  All eyes went from the screen to the detective chief inspector. She said, ‘We’ll see the rather sad conclusion to this in a moment, but let’s have some input first. Chris and Serena, you’re seeing this for the first time – the rest of us have had since last night to ponder it. Some of us might even have lost a bit of sleep over it. What are your impressions?’

  Serena was ready to speak and Waters gave way. She said, ‘This was premeditated. You don’t go wandering around the town on a Sunday night with a pound of sausages in your pocket, or bacon or whatever it was they used to get the dog away. And how did they know there was a dog…’ Serena was thinking as she spoke, and Freeman nodded, encouraging her to go on. ‘They came prepared because they knew there was a dog with him. They must have been by before, seen the dog and got the food so they could get it away. Evil bastards.’

  Detective Inspector Greene looked mildly surprised and glanced at the DCI as if she might tell off the detective constable for her language. Instead, Freeman said, ‘You’re assuming this was the moment when the victim was stabbed.’

  Serena said without hesitation, ‘Yes, ma’am. I’m totally assuming that. Does anyone have any doubts about it?’

  There were no takers. Freeman said, ‘Chris? Your thoughts?’

  The immediate one he did not share – the thought that he would like to sit down, have control of that keyboard and watch this through at least a dozen times, perhaps making notes as he went along. Maybe scrounge a cup of tea from Priti, put up his feet on the desk, close his eyes and let his mind play over the recording for as long as required to make complete sense of it. Instead, all he had was the half a minute that Serena’s observations had given him.

  He said, ‘Sunday night. Probably the quietest time of the week on Eden Street, so if it was premeditated that’s not a coincidence. I’d say they were very aware of the camera. They’ll have had a car somewhere but they don’t go back the way they came because that would mean they’d be facing the camera, and they might be close enough to be recognised from a recording. They’d checked out the security beforehand. The only people that aware of cameras are us and the opposition, so I’d guess this won’t be the first evil thing they’ve done.’

  Freeman said, ‘OK. Go on.’

  ‘It’s done in a matter of seconds, which-’

  ‘Six seconds.’

  Tom Greene didn’t look up from his paperwork until he noticed the silence – then he half-smiled apologetically at Waters.

  ‘Which is impressive. Sorry if that’s the wrong word, but…’

  Freeman said, ‘We take your point, Chris. Fellow murderers would be impressed. Explain why.’

  ‘I’m assuming the victim is asleep on his back – he must be asleep or he’d have reacted to the dog going out – and probably covered by the blanket we saw over the body. The attacker had to crouch down to pull that back, and then stab through the anorak, which was a proper outdoor coat, wasn’t it?’

  Freeman nodded.

  ‘And has to do so accurately enough and hard enough to hit the heart at least once in only two attempts. Then he stands up and leaves. He’s calm enough to walk away rather than run. He’s in control.’

  ‘Good. We came to the same conclusion last night. Anything else?’

  Waters had the feeling that Freeman wanted more than he was willing to give at this stage – he hadn’t even seen the footage once all the way through, and she was asking for his thoughts as they formed. It was an odd sort of pressure, a new way of working. Detective Inspector Terek had been top-down, always; we, the senior officers, will work out what needs to be done and you, the underlings, will go and do it and report back in triplicate. With Smith, most of the time it had hardly seemed like work – he could be brisk but investigations had been somehow personal and meaningful. And intriguing and funny… Waters didn’t quite have the words to explain it to himself and everyone was still watching, waiting for him to respond to Freeman.

  ‘I’d like to see the footage a few more times, ma’am. But it’s a good lead, in my opinion. We should get the best stills we can from it and show them to the Eden Street people – I mean, of the woman and the two on bikes. They’re sure to be local and if we can trace them, they’ll be potential witnesses.’

  When he paused, Freeman nodded again, in agreement, he thought, rather than at anything novel in his suggestions. ‘Also,’ he said, as she was about to speak, ‘we should now be looking again at earlier footage. There’s a chance we can find them watching or contacting the victim some time before the attack.’

  Freeman said, ‘Bingo! Someone’s already beaten you to it, though, Chris. Not that this is in any way a competition.’

  A couple of the detectives in the room were looking at Maya Kumar. Waters glanced at Murray but as usual the face was impassive and giving nothing away.

  ‘OK, Tom. Run VT. I love saying that…’

  The image on the screen began to move again. The perpetrator took the final few steps north into the darkness, and Eden Street was empty again. In the doorway, thought Waters, a man lay dying, unseen and alone.

  Tom Greene said, ‘I’ve cut out two minutes of this.’

  Then the dog Lola appeared, trotting along and looking pleased with herself as dogs do when an unexpected meal has turned up and been consumed. She sniffed at something near an overflowing waste bin and then went into the doorway. Seconds later her head appeared, looking in the direction from which she had just come and then she was back inside and out of sight.

  Greene said, ‘It’s a reasonable assumption from this that the second man was holding onto the dog until the other one turned up. Allowing time for the attacker to walk north and for the dog to walk back, he wasn’t far away, I’d say.’

  Freeman said, ‘Do dogs ‘walk’? I know we take them for a walk but it sounds wrong.’

  No one else seemed to have a strong opinion on the matter. The senior investigating officer shrugged and went on, ‘Anyway, as Chris said, this is good stuff. We’ll be doing as he said and showing images of those witnesses to everyone there. But there’s more. Tom?’

  Greene said, ‘It was obvious as soon as we saw this that one or both of these men had been on the street before. They knew where to look for the victim and they knew there was a dog. By the way – does anyone know what happened to it?’

  Glances were exchanged before Freeman said, ‘The dog?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I was wondering last night… It’s not important. Just one of those loose ends, ma’am.’

  Freeman said, ‘Last night when you were in bed, trying to get some sleep? I’m glad I wasn’t the only one. But I’ll be honest, it wasn’t the whereabouts of the dog that kept me awake.’

  Waters told them what he knew, and Freeman said his visit to Eden Street yesterday hadn’t been a complete waste of time, then. She seemed to say it jokingly but one couldn’t be sure with her, at least not yet. But Greene, he noticed, wrote down the new piece of information; this was a man who disliked loose ends.

  Greene closed the video file and opened another. Before he played it, he looked at Waters and said, ‘We decided to look ba
ck through the day once we’d seen the attack, just as you said. Maya said she thought she had seen one of them before when she watched Saturday’s footage, which is why we found it quickly…’

  Waters looked at her but she didn’t react at all to the mention of her name.

  Greene said, ‘Here we are. The video seems to skip a bit but here he is. This is probably the same man, the taller one. It’s a few minutes after midday on Saturday.’

  A figure stood across from and almost opposite the noodles bar doorway, within a few feet of the entrances to the bookmaker’s and florist’s shops. The clip showed him turning away to look into the bookie’s window as if contemplating a bet on the two thirty at Wincanton but only for a moment – then he was watching again. Two elderly women stopped and had a brief conversation with the homeless man who was sitting on the pavement a few yards from the entranceway where in less than forty-eight hours he would be stabbed. One of them bent down to fuss the dog. Before they left, both women had dropped money into whatever lay on the ground in front of Lola the dog. The women moved away and the man continued to stare from across the busy street.

  As a detective, you want it to be him, of course – you need it to be one of the two men who were there on the Sunday night – and so Waters allowed for that as he made his own judgement. Dressed the same, in dark jeans and what appeared to be the identical hooded sweatshirt; thin build and of at least Waters’ own height. The man watched for a few seconds, looked away as if he wasn’t doing so and then he was watching again. After a time, he walked a few steps further and seemed to be examining what was in the window of Flower Power, and then Waters remembered the CCTV camera there; it was angled to show the entrance door but there was a chance the man was close enough to have been recorded on it.

  He said, ‘There’s a camera inside the entrance to the florist’s shop,’ and Greene pressed pause on the video. He flicked open a file and said, ‘I’ve got no record of that.’ Then Greene ran a finger down a list, nodded because he knew he was right and said, ‘No record. How did we miss that?’

  The question was addressed to everyone who had been on Eden Street, and no one had an answer. Eventually Waters said, ‘It’s a small camera, and it’s not obvious. I didn’t notice it until I was there yesterday. I arranged for us to get the footage if it was needed.’

  Freeman said, ‘Good. It is now, so we’ll have that checked out this morning.’

  She was plainly ready to go on, but Greene said to Waters, ‘After the briefing, can you mark exactly where this new camera is on the blueprint, Chris?’

  Serena was looking at him but Waters resisted the temptation to meet her eyes, just in case. Then the detective inspector said, ‘And now, the best thing of all,’ and pressed play again.

  Another minute or so passed and then the tall man went across Eden Street towards the noodles restaurant – he went casually, not hurrying, not purposefully, and stood where the two women had been earlier. He began talking to the man sitting in the doorway.

  Waters had no doubt now that this was one of the two men who were present on the Sunday evening. As he watched, he saw the dog get up and wag its tail at somebody new, and then after a few more exchanged words, the vagrant was also up on his feet. Waters remembered Miriam Josephs saying the man had done the same with her when they’d had a longer conversation. Did these two know each other? Had they met before? Studying the body language, he didn’t think so. The tall man pointed to something, pointed down, and it might be the piece of cardboard that explained how hard times had come to a former soldier. The homeless man talked then, his hands gesticulating a little before he reached into the anorak and took something from a pocket. He held it towards the stranger, who peered at it. Much too far away to see what it was, but Waters guessed what it might be – the soldier’s ID card. What question had been asked, or what comment made, to get him to produce it?

  The conversation went on for another minute or thereabouts, and then a hand from the taller man went out towards the other. They shook hands, and Waters could imagine it – well done mate, thank you for your service, we owe you, and sure enough he reached into a pocket and handed him something, probably a note. Ten pounds, maybe twenty? Then a wave and he was on his way back towards Kings Gate. After no more than half a dozen steps, the tall man stopped and looked up directly towards the camera that had recorded the encounter, as if in that moment he could see or imagine Waters and the murder squad watching him. It was almost possible to make him out – a long, narrow face to match the rest of him, hunched, rather sloping shoulders as if he was a man who didn’t enjoy being as tall as he was, dark hair of moderate length and probably of no particular style.

  He stood for some seconds as the people moved around him, and his thoughts could have been no plainer had Greene added a caption to the bottom of the screen. Freeman said, ‘I like this next bit,’ and the man turned one hundred and eighty degrees and walked away towards Fairhills until he was out of sight.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Waters had the impression that daily briefings would usually be brisk and brief affairs but on this Wednesday morning, Freeman was not in a hurry. She perched herself on the nearest desk, which happened to be John Murray’s, and then inched herself back until she was sitting on it, and her feet didn’t quite touch the floor. She said, ‘All this CCTV tells us a lot – more than you first realise. I want us to – sorry.’

  She was looking at her mobile. Waters had noted before that she invariably ignored calls if she was in conversation, but not on this occasion. She said, ‘It’s the lab. I’ve already pestered them this morning. Watching me grovel would be bad for morale, so I’ll take it outside. Talk amongst yourselves.’

  She slipped off the desk and left the briefing room. Looks were exchanged and there was a moment of uncertainty – this wasn’t a team yet. DI Greene was preoccupied with the papers in front of him, probably looking for those blueprints thought Waters, and it was Serena who spoke first.

  ‘The guy who was watching him was one of the two who were there Sunday night. It was him who took the dog away. Anyone have any doubts?’

  There were none, apparently. Serena went on, ‘And I don’t think they were old Army pals or anything like that. I don’t think they knew each other.’

  Denise Sterling said, ‘Agreed. The handshake would have happened straight away, or something like it. They have a chat and then our victim shows him something. I reckon I know what it was…’

  She looked around and Murray spoke next.

  ‘The ID card. I’d guess he was asked if he’d really been in the Army, and that was his proof.’

  Sterling said, ‘That’s it. But what does he see on the card? Because Wortley and the dead bloke don’t look that similar, or they didn’t when Wortley’s photo was taken.’

  The thought had occurred to more than one of them, then. Waters said, ‘He doesn’t look at it closely, and the victim hadn’t shaved in a while. It’s possible he was growing his beard for that reason – to disguise the difference. And the other thing that was obvious on the card was the name. Maybe that’s what he wanted to see.’

  Another pause, and sure enough, Greene had found the blueprint he wanted – Waters watched the detective inspector lay it carefully to one side, ready for his input. Greene was apparently only half-listening to the conversation around him.

  Clive Betts said, ‘Alright, now he’s got a name. But the motive? Anyone got the faintest idea? Because this is as premeditated as it gets. This piece of work goes away, after shaking the bloke’s hand and giving him a good drink, and thirty-six hours later he comes back with his mate and they stab him. “In cold blood” doesn’t really do it justice, does it?’

  ‘And don’t forget,’ said Sterling, ‘that it’s a clinical sort of stabbing, as Chris said earlier – two hits, one or both in the heart we’re guessing, all over in six seconds. Then calmly walking away, remembering not to be facing the camera when they leave. That needs a motive and a half, doesn
’t it?’

  Thomas Greene finally seemed to have the documents and folders where he wanted them. As Waters watched, the DI pushed the top back onto a silver fountain pen and tested it to make sure it was securely in place. Then the pen went back onto the desk, laid exactly parallel to the top of the clipboard that held his notes for the day. Finally, Greene looked up and said, ‘We have to wonder what it was that first caught our man’s attention. What could he see from across the street, when he was standing outside the bookmaker’s?’

  Serena – ‘A homeless man and a dog.’

  Betts – ‘How many of those around the town?’

  Serena – ‘According to someone I spoke to yesterday, it varies. Somewhere between five and ten would be a fair estimate at this time of year. The ones who spend the summer in coastal resorts drop back to Lake about now.’

  Betts – ‘Say it is ten. If these two have some weird thing about the homeless, our victim was unlucky, at those odds.’

  John Murray sat down – whatever Freeman was doing was taking a while. He said, ‘Thinking about what the DI just said – what could he see from across the street. Could he have read the writing on the cardboard, the victim’s promotional material?’

  Greene’s fingers tapped some keys and an image of the board in question appeared on the large screen. All studied it again, and Waters said, ‘I think you could, John. If your vision was good, you’d read that from across the street.’

  Murray said, ‘Lots of street people do something similar. The only thing that makes this a bit different, as far as I can see, is the detail about his military service. The service number and the name of the regiment. Is that what attracted unwelcome attention?’