by Peter May
Now his mother was stooping over his bed. He could smell her perfume, feel the warmth of her cheek next to his. Then the softness of her lips and her sweet breath whispering goodnight, little man, sleep tight, little man. And then the phone rang, and to his annoyance she said, I’ll have to get that, and she was gone. Who the hell was phoning at this hour anyway? Why couldn’t she just let it ring? And yet, it did. On and on, until with a whispered curse under his breath, Pinkie rolled over and snatched the phone from the bedside table. The dream was gone. He was back in the waking world.
‘What the fuck do you want?’
‘Good morning, Pinkie. I hope I didn’t wake you.’
Pinkie took a deep breath to calm himself. This was business. He recognised the voice immediately. The smooth, strangely monotonous tones of Mr Smith. He had thought they were all done. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Sorry, I was busy with something.’
‘Pinkie, I have a problem.’
Pinkie could not imagine what possible problem there could be. ‘What problem?’
‘That young man you found for me . . . he didn’t follow through.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean he didn’t dispose of the bones. He dumped them on a building site. And now the police have them.’
‘Shit!’ Pinkie felt anger tighten the muscles of his neck and shoulders. That little bastard! ‘You want me to off him?’
‘I want you to keep a watching brief, Pinkie. Make sure the bones don’t lead them anywhere. You know what I mean? Take whatever action you need to tidy things up.’ Mr Smith sounded very calm, but Pinkie knew that he wasn’t. He’d witnessed his temper, knew he was capable of things Pinkie could never have contemplated. In truth, Pinkie was a little scared of Mr Smith.
‘How am I going to get around?’
‘You can take my car. It has clearance to go just about anywhere.’ There was a pause at the end of the line. ‘I think I have found a way to monitor whatever progress the police might be making. That way we’ll know exactly what it is you might have to do.’
‘Why don’t we just take out the cops?’
‘No, no,’ Mr Smith said quickly. ‘If anything were to happen to the investigating officer that would only draw attention. And that’s the last thing we want.’
CHAPTER FIVE
I.
Amy drove east on Tooley Street in her little yellow Toyota. It was the Japanese motor manufacturer’s concept welfare vehicle, especially adapted to take her wheelchair. A clever arrangement with a backward-sliding driver’s door and an extending ramp with a short rise and fall that slid her neatly in behind the wheel. It had not come cheap – none of the accoutrements of disability did – but the compensation money had enabled her to equip herself for a life as normal as she could make it.
It was easier getting around now that the streets were mostly deserted. Not that she ventured out much these days.
She passed a convoy of military vehicles speeding west and glanced north towards the river and the tilting curves of the glass and steel edifice that was City Hall. All that glass, the Mayor had once said, should be seen as a metaphor for the transparency of government. Now you could see right through it. Because it was empty. Hollow promises which had come to nothing. For all their planning, they had never envisaged anything on this scale.
She turned north on Three Oak Lane, where presumably three oaks had once grown. But they were long gone. In Gainsford Street she turned into the multi-storey car park and drove up the ramp to her parking place on the second floor. It had been the only spot she could get at the time, and it left her always at the mercy of the lift. If it was working, there was no problem. If it was not, then she was in trouble. Today it rumbled down to the ground floor without a hitch, and she steered herself across the cobbles to the gated entrance of Butlers and Colonial Wharf, a collection of new-build and warehouse conversions around an open concourse. The whine of her electric motor seemed very loud in the quiet of this still grey day, a strange blue light leeching all colour out of the honeyed brick. There was not a soul to be seen. Once, in a bygone age, these streets and alleys and buildings would have heaved with life. Dockers and warehousemen and stevedores. Ships sailing up the estuary to the Pool of London to unload exotic foodstuffs and spices from the far reaches of the British Empire. Girdered metal bridges ran at peculiar angles overhead between towering warehouses. A huge, arched gateway gave on to the Thames, where workers had queued daily in the hope of picking up a few hours’ work. Now these were the homes of those renaissance city dwellers who could afford them, serviced by the wine bars and gourmet restaurants which animated the cobbled lanes. The silence was eerie. Not a single echo of the past remaining.
Amy tilted up the ramp to her front door and unlocked it to let herself in. This had once been a warehouse for the storage of spices. The old lady who sold it to her told her she had toured the building in a hardhat before the conversion work began. ‘It was heavenly, my dear,’ she’d said. ‘The whole place smelled of cloves.’
It was on three floors and Amy had the top two. Quite impractical for someone in a wheelchair, but she had been determined not to sacrifice anything to her disability. If she’d had the money before the accident, she would have loved to live in a place like this. Now that she could afford it, she was determined not to make any compromises. So she had installed stair lifts on both flights of stairs and a wheelchair on each floor. She slept on the first floor and lived on the second – in a huge open space up amongst the rafters which she had subdivided with furniture and bookshelves. In the far corner she had an open-plan kitchen, and on the back wall, French windows led out on to a square metal balcony where, in summer, she could sit and read and soak up the sun.
Amy transferred from her wheelchair to the bottom stair lift. She had developed strength in her arms to heave herself about, although there was not much weight in her slight frame. Sometimes she found the lift frustratingly slow. Today she simply closed her eyes and drifted up with it, cradling the small package in her lap. It had been a traumatic morning. To find herself identifying with a murder victim was a unique experience. But something about this poor little girl had touched her in a way she had not believed possible. She thought of all the corpses she had handled, the heads she had brought home to work on, and how she had always been able to separate herself from the unpleasant reality of her job. Until now. There was something about that collection of small bones which somehow still contained the spirit of the child. Amy found it disturbing, and when she held the skull in her hands, she could almost have sworn she felt the child’s fear, passing through bone into her very own flesh.
All the doors on the first floor landing were closed, and only the light filtering up from the front door permeated the darkness. There was a faintly unusual smell hanging in the air, but Amy was distracted, putting down her package to enable the move to the wheelchair at the top of the stairs, and it didn’t really register. She didn’t mind the dark. Sometimes she would sit for hours with the lights out and pretend that none of this had ever happened. That she would simply decide to turn on the light and get up and do it.
She steered herself along to the foot of the second staircase and stopped in sudden confusion, unaware of the shadow moving through the darkness behind her. The stair lift was not there. She craned her neck to peer up and saw that it was at the top of the stairs. How was that possible? She had left it on the landing when she went out this morning. And in that moment she registered the faintly lingering scent which had eluded her just seconds earlier, and her heart seized. Just as a hand came around from behind and clamped itself over her mouth. She tried to scream, but she couldn’t open her lips, and the strength in the arm from behind held her firmly in place. She put both hands up and grabbed the sleeve as her attacker moved silently around to scoop her up and out of her chair.
Amy was helpless, legs dangling uselessly. All she could do was hold o
n to him as he moved across the landing and kicked open the door to her bedroom. In three strides he reached the bed and laid her down amongst the quilt and cushions. He took his hand from her mouth. ‘You bastard!’ she screamed, and she reached up and grabbed him by the neck, pulling with all her strength until he tipped towards her and she found his lips with hers.
When they broke apart she was breathless, and he was grinning at her. ‘You were brilliant,’ he said.
She couldn’t resist a smile. ‘Just doing my job, Detective Inspector.’
He kissed her again, lightly this time, then brushed her hair from her eyes. Such lovely, dark eyes. He gazed at her, full of admiration and desire. ‘What would Dr Bennet say if he could see us now?’
A shadow passed over her face. ‘He’d hate it. He thinks you’re the kind of cop who would beat someone up just because they were gay.’
‘I wouldn’t mind taking a pop at him sometime. But not because he’s gay. Because he’s such an obnoxious little shit.’
She pushed him away. ‘He’s my friend, Jack. My best friend in the whole world. I’d never have survived the last two-and-a-half years without him.’
MacNeil drew a deep breath and held his tongue. ‘I know. But you’ve got me now.’
‘For how long? As long as it takes the novelty to wear off?’
‘Don’t be silly. You know how I feel about you.’
‘I know how I’d like you to feel about me. I’m not sure you’ve ever really told me.’
‘Let me show you, then. I’ve never been good with words.’ He leaned over to kiss her again. At first she resisted. She hated it that the two men in her life were so at odds that she had to keep one secret from the other. It wasn’t even as if they were in competition. MacNeil forced her lips apart with his tongue, and finally she succumbed, passion rising in a sudden flood tide.
When they had told her that she was unlikely ever to walk again, she had thought her sex life was over. The spinal cord had not been severed, just damaged. And she had always kept control of her bladder and bowels. But she just didn’t know if she would ever have any feelings down there again. Until that first time with MacNeil. And it had been like the first time ever. Full of pain and pleasure and tears. And until that moment, she had never quite trusted his motives. Why would a healthy strapping man like MacNeil be interested in a little Chinese girl who couldn’t walk. But he had been so gentle with her that she had known immediately there was much more to him than met the eye. A complex, shy, caring man full of the hang-ups instilled in him by his Presbyterian upbringing. It wasn’t that he was homophobic, he was just embarrassed by any overt display of sexuality. And Tom wore his homosexuality like a badge.
MacNeil stripped off his shirt and slipped off each of her boots, before removing her blouse and her long black skirt. Then he paused suddenly. ‘We shouldn’t do this,’ he said. ‘I might give you the flu. I’m more exposed than you are.’
‘Then we might as well stop living now, because we’ll die anyway.’ Amy gazed up at him. ‘And if we don’t live life while we can, then we’ll die without ever having lived.’
II.
The white Mercedes truck rattled east on Aspen Way. The dual carriageway was deserted. The truck passed under the Docklands Light Railway, and the lead grey waters of West India Quay slopped against the concrete berths all along the south side of the road. There was the merest thinning of the cloud overhead, and the cold morning air was suffused with a watery glimpse of insipid yellow light.
Pinkie felt uncomfortable in his ill-fitting uniform, but secure in the anonymity afforded him by the gas mask and goggles that covered most of his face. The peak of his baseball cap was pulled down low over his eyes, and he kept a careful watch on the soldiers who approached as he turned right and swung his vehicle into the opening that led to the North Bridge beside Billingsgate Fish Market. There were twenty or more troopers based here in what had become a semi-permanent camp, a Mexican stand-off with the snipers on the far side of the water. There were armoured vehicles and a barbed wire barrier. He pulled up and rolled down his window. He smelled fish on the breeze, even though the fleets had not been out for weeks now. The stink had been absorbed into the fabric of the place.
The lead soldier approached cautiously, pointing his weapon up at the driver’s window. He held his hand up for Pinkie’s papers, gave them a cursory glance and then handed them back. He flicked his rifle through the air. ‘Take the mask off.’
Pinkie’s heart sank. He hadn’t thought they would ask that. He removed his baseball cap and snapped off the mask.
The soldier looked at him suspiciously. ‘Where’s Charlie?’
‘Sick,’ Pinkie said. And he saw the soldier take an almost involuntary step back.
‘Did you have any contact with him?’
Pinkie shook his head. ‘Don’t know the man. They took me off another run.’
The soldier seemed relieved. ‘Put the mask back on.’ He turned and shouted to the engineers at the barrier, ‘Let him through.’ And the soldiers peeled back the rolls of barbed wire to make a path through to the bridge.
Pinkie pulled his mask into place and slipped into first gear. The truck grunted and lurched forward towards the bridge. On the far side of the water, glass skyscrapers rose sheer into the mist. Company logos betrayed ownership. The McGraw-Hill Companies. The Bank of America. Pinkie ran anxious eyes along the skyline, looking for the snipers he knew had their rifles trained upon him. But he saw no one. He drove slowly up the ramp, past an empty blue security booth and stopped in front of the bridge. It was raised from the south side at an angle of around forty-five degrees. It was designed to let large vessels pass beneath it, but it created a very effective barrier. Someone, somewhere, threw a lever, and the bridge began a slow descent until it became, once again, a roadway passing south across the water into Canary Wharf, and the Isle of Dogs beyond.
Pinkie eased the white Merc slowly across to the other side, and in his side mirror saw the bridge begin to rise again. He glanced at the clipboard on his dash. The route and drop-off points were clearly marked. He would have to follow it meticulously to avoid arousing suspicion. He knew there were other checkpoints at Trafalgar Way and at Westferry Road, below the Bank Street roundabout. His exit on the return leg was through the checkpoint on West India Avenue, heading for Westferry Roundabout. But until then, he was in no man’s land. An island of self-imposed quarantine in the heart of East London.
Pinkie had often wondered why it was called the Isle of Dogs, when in fact it was really a peninsula, a deep loop in the river. Only now did he realise that the loop had effectively been cut off from the north bank by the network of wharfs and waterways built to serve what had once been the busiest docks in the world. Apparently it was where Henry VIII used to keep his dogs, hence the name. At least, that’s what Charlie had told him, just before Pinkie gently slid six inches of cold stainless steel between his ribs. He was a nice boy, Charlie. Shame he’d had to die.
Pinkie headed south, through Canada Square towards Jubilee Place, along canyons of tarmac between towering structures. There was no sign of life, not a single, solitary soul in the streets. Canary Wharf was like a ghost town. Opposite the tube station, the statue of a partially headless creature, half-man, half-horse, flanked by six stark leafless trees, gazed out east towards the hazy but distinctive shape of the Dome on the far bank of the river. An armless torso lay canted at an angle beneath the horse’s belly, a head set into a niche in its flank. Pinkie allowed himself a tiny smile. And they called this art?
He swung right at Bank Street, and ahead of him saw the span of the blue-painted metal bridge carrying the Docklands Light Railway over the water between Canary Wharf and Heron Quays. There was no evidence here of the vandalism that blighted the city centre. Nothing was boarded up. Shops and restaurants were shut, but exposed to the world. The Slug and Lettuce. Jubilee Place Mall. Anyo
ne who did not belong here, anyone who might be a carrier of the virus, would be shot on sight. So nobody ventured out, even the residents, because questions were only asked afterwards – by which time it would be too late.
Pinkie caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. A white golf buggy, driven by a man in blue uniform, a rifle sticking up at his side. It was just a flash of white and blue, and then it was gone, turning quickly into a darkened loading bay. Many of the original security men here had joined the vigilantes and commandeered the buggies. The big mystery was where they had got the guns. But wealthy and powerful people lived here. And where money and lives were at stake, anything was possible.
First stop was an underground car park on the south side of the square. Pinkie turned down the ramp and into a gloomy, deserted parking area that covered the entire footprint of the building. A low roof supported on metal beams. There were a handful of vehicles here, but no sign of life. Of course, he knew there must be someone watching. He pulled up and left his engine idling, and jumped down to throw open the doors at the back of the truck. The next half hour was spent loading boxes on to the pneumatic ramp, then lowering it to the ground and unloading them on to the concrete. Pinkie was fit, but it was hard work, and by the end of it he was sweating profusely. There was nothing on the boxes to indicate what was inside, but he was pretty certain it was tinned food. As many as twenty vehicles a day made the circuit, trucking in supplies for the nearly twenty-five thousand people who lived on the island.
As he shifted the final box, a bare arm fell out from behind a stack right at the back. Charlie’s hand was locked in a position which gave the impression he had been clutching a cricket ball that someone had just removed. There were specks of blood on his forearm. Pinkie kicked it quickly out of sight and glanced around to see if anyone watching might have seen it. But still, he saw no one. He moved some boxes to ensure that Charlie made no more unwelcome appearances, and jumped down to swing the heavy doors shut again, locking the corpse away from prying eyes.