Hell on Earth

by Philip Palmer

  Dougie locked her gun in the boot of his car, which he felt was more secure than hers. Then he drove it up on to the grass, so there was no chance of the vehicle being nicked without them noticing. You couldn’t be too cautious these days; that was Dougie’s philosophy.

  Dougie and Gina got out of the car and nodded at each other, slipping into off duty mode with the usual awkward moment that swiftly passed.

  Dougie watched with the faintest of smiles as Gina strolled over to his kids, and was greeted with a mocking ‘Wotcha’ from Daniel. Jessica ran up to her and gave her a big hug and got a swing through the air out of it. Dougie knew his daughter loved the fact that Gina had such big bosoms and didn’t smell of perfume like the other women she was forced to hug. Like all her aunties and, well, all her other aunties.

  ‘You’re a little bugger, you know that,’ Gina said to Jess, though Dougie had forbidden her to swear in the vicinity of the children. Which, he knew, was precisely why she did it.

  ‘Hey,’ Dougie said reprovingly.

  ‘Piddle off, copper,’ Gina told him.

  Dougie glowered at Gina. Unabashed, Gina stuck her tongue out at him. Jessica giggled at Gina’s rudeness. Daniel shook his head in dismay at the daftness of grown ups.

  Daniel was too old for hugging and kissing now; so Gina did the touching knuckles thing with him. The boxer handshake. Daniel liked that, he thought it was cool.

  ‘Yo,’ said Gina.

  ‘Yo,’ Daniel repeated, gravely.

  The game began.

  ‘To me,’ said Gina, and Dougie bounced the football on the grass a few times, then killed the bounce with an expert foot, and passed to Gina with effortless accuracy.

  She ducked down to get under the ball, flick-headered it up skilfully, and watched it fall almost to the ground. Then she tapped it up again with her foot. She bounced it on alternate feet for about thirty seconds with dazzling speed, trapped it, and passed it very slowly to Jessica.

  ‘Not to her!’ screamed Daniel. ‘She’s an idiot!’

  ‘Where’s the goal?’ asked Jessica, patiently.

  Dougie had already explained this, several times. ‘That tree, and that tree,’ he reiterated, pointing.

  ‘No,’ argued Jessica. ‘There.’ And she kicked the ball randomly. ‘Goal!’ she screamed in delight.

  ‘No!’ said Daniel, outraged.

  ‘I’ll allow that,’ said Gina.

  ‘Oh for pete’s sake,’ said Dougie, who had spent thirteen years training himself to say ‘pete’ instead of ‘fuck’. ‘That’s not the goal, sweetheart.’

  ‘Yellow card, laddie, you’ve got a big gob on you,’ said Gina, taking out her warrant card and flashing it at Dougie.

  He glared at her. She glared back.

  ‘You’ve got a bad attitude, Dougie,’ Daniel advised him. ‘You’d never make the grade in the professional game.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve not committed any offence,’ Dougie insisted.

  ‘Swearing at the referee!’ Gina claimed.

  ‘I did not swear at the bloody referee!’

  ‘Right, that’s it.’ Gina pointed at the touchline. Then she blew an imaginary whistle, whilst making the ‘whistle’ noise with her mouth.

  ‘Dougie, you’ve been sent off,’ Daniel informed him.

  Dougie saw red. ‘Gina!’ he hissed furiously, grabbing her by the arm and dragging her off to one side. ‘You don’t get it, do you? It’s about parenting strategy. Don’t you see how important it is to -’

  ‘And now Randall has completely lost it and he’s assaulting the referee!’ Gina pointed a finger at him in accusing horror. Jessica squealed and also pointed at her father accusingly.

  ‘Looks like a three-match ban to me,’ thirteen-year-old Daniel said, judiciously.

  ‘Some people have NO respect for authority,’ argued nine-year-old Jessica.

  Dougie sighed.

  ‘Marching orders, pal,’ said Gina, and gestured again to the touchline.

  ‘Gina! Don’t be so fucking stupid!’ Dougie said; instantly nullifying all his years of training.

  ‘Right, that’s it! Assaulting the referee, swearing at the referee, and telling the referee she’s BLEEP! stupid. That’s four offences in all by my count. Off, Off, Off! Hop to it, son!’ Gina bellowed.

  Dougie hopped to it. He ran away from the kids as far as the twisted oak tree, put on an imaginary different shirt and ran back as an imaginary different player.

  ‘Your shirt’s on inside out, laddie,’ said Gina.

  ‘It’s not,’ Dougie snarled.

  ‘Arguing with the –’

  Dougie sighed, and took off his imaginary football shirt and put it on the right way.

  After that they played Duck Duck Goose. The kids were too old for it now, in Dougie’s view, and in Daniel’s view too. But it was Jessica’s favourite game: end of story.

  Dougie went first. He jogged around the three crouched bodies of his children plus Gina. As he ran past Daniel he tapped him on the shoulder and said: ‘Duck.’ Then he jogged on. Then he tapped Jessica: ‘Duck.’

  Gina: ‘Duck.’

  Daniel: ‘Duck.’

  ‘Dougie, get on with it!’ Daniel protested.

  Daniel never called his father ‘Dad’ or ‘Daddy’ any more; not since his mother was murdered. It was a small thing, but a source of real pain for Dougie. But he had learned the hard way never to refer to it.

  Jessica: ‘Duck.’

  Gina: ‘Duck.’

  Daniel: ‘Duck.’

  ‘Tra la la,’ said Gina mockingly.

  Jessica giggled.

  Dougie continued remorselessly, jogging around on the grass in small circles, making a lifetime’s work of it: ‘Duck.’ ‘Duck.’ ‘Duck.’ ‘Duck.’ ‘Duck.’ ‘Duck.’ ‘Duck’ Until his kids were hurting from frustration and leg-cramps.

  Finally: ‘Goose’ – Jessica was the one he tapped – and then she chased him like buggery around and around, and just managed to tap him before he could reach the place she’d vacated. So down he went, and Jess took over the job as picker.

  ‘Goose!’ she said immediately, tapping Daniel, and the running began again once more but Dan kept laughing too much to run fast and couldn’t tag her in time, so Jessica ended up being the picker again.

  And again.

  And again…

  Eventually they were all too knackered to play, and they drove home in separate cars. Dougie cooked dinner for them all. Pasta in the shape of Barbies for Jessica, fish fingers and chips for Daniel, and steak and kidney pudding with cabbage and mash for him and Gina. The latter was a plate of sheer stodge. Cholesterol in pastry she called it.

  ‘Bloody smashing, isn’t it?’ Dougie said.

  ‘Mmm,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Yuk,’ said Jessica.

  ‘Leading question,’ Gina said reprovingly.

  ‘Very well,’ Dougie conceded. ‘Then I put it to you, Ma’am, that a reasonable person might well conclude that the meal which Mr Randall just cooked was bloody smashing.’ And he gave his wolfish ‘victory’ smile: the smile that hundreds of murderers had recalled at leisure with despair.

  ‘Your mum’s recipe, is it?’ Gina asked. ‘The steak and kidney pud?’

  ‘It is indeed.’

  ‘And your Dad died of a heart attack?’

  ‘He did not. He’s alive and hale and hearty and screwing a rich widow in Eastbourne.’

  Gina laughed. Jessica laughed too.

  After dinner Dougie took the kids upstairs to bed.

  Daniel was in a chatty mood tonight, as he often was these days. He told Dougie some long tales about someone in his class who had fallen out with someone else in his class, for reasons Dougie could not fathom.

  ‘Are we done here, kiddo?’

  ‘I’m still talking, Dougie!’ Daniel protested.

  ‘You’re a hard taskmaster, lad.’

  Dougie felt a pang of love. Daniel was growing up into a grand little kid, despite all he’
d been through.

  Things had been bad for Daniel though, at one stage. Very bad indeed, in the months and years after his mother had been murdered by a green-scaled sharp-clawed monster from Hell.

  The poor kid had gone off the rails, in fact. There had been temper tantrums. Panic attacks. Bed-wetting. And a few incidents that had put Dougie in fear of his life; like the time when Danny had come at him like a screaming banshee with a pair of scissors, and almost cut his dad’s ear off. But Dougie had coped with it all, just about. He’d shunned the psychologists. He’d refused to have the boy sectioned. He’d endured the bad times; he’d relinquished all thoughts of a social life. And, in his opinion, he’d raised a son a man could be proud of.

  Now, ten years after the death of Angela, Dougie had a son who was happy. Most of the time anyway. Except on his mother’s birthday, when he cried a lot; or when he had one of his terrible, body-bucking nightmares.

  ‘Good night, kiddo,’ said Dougie, glancing at his watch.

  ‘Goodnight, Dougie.’

  ‘Don’t go to sleep with your headphones on.’

  But it was too late; Daniel was already listening to his iPod.

  Dougie sighed. And departed, to the next bedroom.

  Jessica did still like to be told stories by her dad. So he read Park in the Dark to her from memory then read a chapter of a new early-teen novel about werewolves. Marvelling as he did so that anyone could enjoy such terrible dark stuff. Whatever happened to stories about magic carpets?

  As his watch touched twenty minutes past, he kissed her good night. ‘Daft dad,’ Jessica said.

  ‘Daft dad,’ Dougie agreed.

  Dougie was done. Forty two minutes in all. He had it down to an art.

  He headed back downstairs, and found that Gina had stacked the dishes in the machine, opened a bottle of wine, drunk more than half of it, and picked a film.

  ‘OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Wine’s really nice.’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘Shut up and watch.’

  It was, he soon discovered, a truly rubbish movie. European, with subtitles, subtext and anomie: the works. Dougie didn’t feel able to complain though. So instead of trying to follow the story, he just looked at the cars and the women and tried to decide which character would have been the murderer if it had been a murder story; which it wasn’t.

  Later, he and Gina smoked some skunk. The old fashioned stuff with no New Age adulteration. And Dougie tested Gina’s endurance by playing highlights from his collection of twentieth century jazz.

  ‘It all sounds the bloody same,’ she grumbled.

  ‘It doesn’t,’ Dougie snapped. ‘This is Charlie Parker; that was Ornette Coleman.’

  ‘I hate this crap.’

  ‘How can you hate it?’

  She counted the ways on her fingers: ‘There’s no tune. It’s old fashioned. I don’t like it. Oh, and there’s no swearing.’

  Dougie rolled his eyes. ‘You’re a philistine! Just listen to this.’ Dizzie Gillespie, creating a tune out of a single note. ‘How could anyone not love this?’ Dougie argued.

  Gina rolled her eyes. ‘It all sounds the same.’

  ‘That’s because he’s only playing one note.’

  Her face said it all.

  Gina fell asleep on the sofa, and he pulled a duvet over her and went to bed.

  At 3am he woke up with the munchies and heard noises downstairs. So he went down and found Gina in the kitchen, eating toast smeared with Marmite. He joined her, and the two of them had a midnight feast, devouring toast and pan-burned bacon.

  Later she came upstairs and slept next to him in the bed. Nothing happened though; they were both too smart to go down that road. They’d been friends for ever, why spoil a good thing with sex?

  In the morning, Gina made breakfast for the kids. Toast, and lots of it, buttered an inch thick. Then the knock on the back door came, and Dougie unlocked it. Dougie’s sister Beverley bustled in.

  ‘Hi, kids,’

  ‘Hi, Aunt Bev,’ they muttered.

  ‘You look wrecked,’ Beverley told Dougie, as he gobbled his fourth piece of buttery toast.

  ‘I’ll rally,’ said Dougie. He always did. He could survive on three hours sleep a night or less.

  The skunk was playing havoc with his guts though.

  Gina poured some tea for Beverley and they enjoyed a quick natter about performance cars - a mutual passion. Dougie tuned out, thinking of the day ahead.

  Finally they were ready. Dougie and Gina said their goodbyes, and drove to work in separate vehicles, leaving Bev to do the school run.

  As he drove Dougie remembered the highlights of the day before. Toast, wine, bed-time stories, snuggling with Gina, playing footie with the kids; and Duck Duck Goose.

  Chapter 4

  Twenty minutes later Dougie was pacing around the Major Incident Room at Leman Street Police Station in Whitechapel, his body taut with aggression and authority.

  ‘So what the fuck happened?’ he demanded of DC Alliea Cartwright, Office Manager for the Embalmer enquiry.

  Alliea was sporting a huge black eye, a real corker, turning her face into a half-panda beneath her sunkissed yellow hair.

  ‘I won the bout,’ she admitted, proudly. Alliea was a practitioner of kyokushin kaikan full contact karate. Back in the day, when Dougie had been shagging her, he’d often be appalled to find that her soft naked body was covered in yellowing bruises.

  ‘Well done,’ Dougie informed her, proudly.

  Gina took her usual seat at the briefing table. She was wearing a fresh white top and black skirt - she had her own wardrobe at Dougie’s house now. A secret they concealed with care. Alliea also sat, the cue for the rest of the team to take their places with associated shifting of chairs and taking off of jackets.

  Dougie sat too, aware of his rumbling tummy. But in an instant he was utterly focused on the case in hand. Operation Penumbra, the investigation into the serial killer whose operational code name was Epsilon, but who was known to the press as ‘The Embalmer.’

  There were twelve around the briefing table, including Dougie, who was their Senior Investigating Officer, and DI Gina Henderson, the Deputy SIO. They were:

  DS Alliea Cartwright: Office Manager, who ran the machine that was Five Squad.

  DC Shai Hussain: Receiver.

  DC Andy Homerton: Senior Document Reader.

  DC Catherine ‘Cat’ Okoro: Indexer and Action Writer.

  DC Tony Williamson: Exhibit Officer.

  And DC Lisa Aaronovich, Researcher. Twenty-seven years old with only two years detective experience.

  Seated with them were the four members of the Outside Enquiry Team:

  DC Dai ‘Taff’ Davies, and DC Ronnie Tindale. Unlikely pals, and the most experienced of all the investigating detectives.

  RDC Fillide Melandroni: expensively dressed, arrogantly beautiful, exuding boredom, and

  DC Seamus Malone, a big hearted, rugby-playing Irishman, who was almost as tall as Dougie.

  These were the key members of the London East Number Five Murder Squad.

  Six of the more junior team members – Vincent Hare, Hyun-Shik Moon, Alice Tunstall, Ian Gregory, Clinton Sandford and Victoria Howe - had their own desks at the far end of the L-shaped room, and were following the briefing via their desk screens.

  All the while the telephonists Emily Cantrell and Owen Heath were fielding calls from members of the public:

  ‘Number Five Murder Squad, how can I help?’

  ‘Can you repeat that, sir?’

  ‘This is Number Five, can I help you?’

  Like a river babbling; the ceaseless background noise that made the Major Incident Room feel alive and vital.

  Dougie surveyed his team around the table.

  A moment of mischief seized him. He turned his head, and looked at Gina. She looked back, and caught his drift. He mouthed the word: Duck. She mouthed back: Duck. He mouthed at her: Goose. All done so fast,
only they could see it. Then their poker faces were reassumed.

  ‘Ready,’ said Cat Okoro, as her HOLMES booted up.

  ‘Good. Let’s begin. What have we got?’ said Dougie.

  ‘We’ve now completed a full photographic montage of the last hours of Matthew Michael Baker,’ said Cat. She was Glasgow born, to Ghanaian parents; her accent mellowed by years in London. ‘Born July fourth 2001. This is the deceased as he appeared before the post mortem.’

  Cat tapped her screen and a three dimensional ghost of Matthew’s naked body appeared in the Holo Wall. All eyes turned to look at it. The corpse shimmered faintly, even though it was high resolution; the body was approximately one quarter life size.

  ‘And this is Matthew’s body as filmed sitting in his seat on the Tube Train.’

  The image changed. Now it was Matthew wearing a suit, looking bored. Slumped in his seat. A typical commuter, or so it seemed. They heard the hushed breaths and sighs and mutters of Tube travellers not-talking inside a Tube train that was hurtling fast through deep tunnels.

  ‘How did the body get on? Do we have any images of the killer lugging a corpse on to a crowded commuter train?’ said Gina, hopefully.

  ‘It’s there right from the start,’ said Andy Homerton softly. As Senior Document Reader, it was his role to carefully scrutinise all information received. ‘It was there when the morning shift drove the train from the depot at Neasden on to the Circle line tracks. No one searched the train, but the camera shows this one unmoving passenger.’

  ‘Neasden is the surface depot?’ said Dougie.

  ‘No, Hammersmith is the surface depot,’ said Lisa Aaronovich. ‘The Circle Line shares a depot with the Hammersmith and City Line. But if there’s major work to be done on the train, they dock it at Neasden. And there were engine issues with this particular train. The train had been at the depot for four days before it was logged out.’

  ‘CCTV at Neasden?’

  ‘My lads are looking at it now,’ said Andy Homerton with the calm assurance of a man who has numerous slaves tied to desks, compelled to scroll screens or watch CCTV footage all day long. ‘But it looks as if there are corruptions in the image files. Someone’s been using a jammer.’