by Peter May
It was hot and uncomfortable inside his mask. Sweat was running into his eyes. He heaved himself back up into his cab. This was going to be a long couple of hours.
III.
Amy lay on her back gazing up at the ceiling. Her right leg was raised and propped on MacNeil’s shoulder. He knelt in front of her and his big hands worked down the muscles of her calf, strong flat thumbs kneading giving flesh. He worked around her knee, and then down her thigh, in long sweeping strokes. She wished she could feel it. It was the strangest thing, knowing she was being touched, and yet having no sensation. She doubted if she would ever get used to it.
Occasionally she thought she had the faintest impression of pins and needles in her feet, and hope would flood back. Maybe one day life would return to these useless appendages. Maybe one day she really would walk again. The doctors said no. But on optimistic days she would tell herself that doctors could be wrong. And then on pessimistic days she feared that the pins and needles were only a figment of her imagination. Just wishful thinking.
But for MacNeil there was no question. Of course she would walk again. And she must keep the muscles supple and strong. It would be an awful thing to let them wither. And so he spent hours working her legs, exercising the muscles in groups, bending her legs at knee and ankle. Back and forth, back and forth. He had endless patience, it seemed. They never spoke during these sessions. He worked in silence, and she enjoyed a tranquillity she had never known before. Sometimes she closed her eyes and just drifted, her mind empty of all thoughts. At other times she would let it range over things that troubled her, problems at work, the estrangement of her brother. And often she would find answers, or partial solutions, or comfort in thoughts which had not occurred to her before.
Today she broke their unspoken code of silence. ‘I’ve brought her home,’ she said.
‘Who?’ MacNeil frowned and paused in mid-stroke.
‘Lyn.’
‘Who the hell’s Lyn?’
‘The little girl with the cleft palate.’
MacNeil leaned forward to look at her. ‘What are you talking about, Amy?’
‘That’s what I’m calling her. Lyn. She’s got to have a name, and I’ve always liked Lyn. I had a cousin called Lyn in Hong Kong, and I used to always wish my parents had called me that.’
‘I like Amy,’ MacNeil said. He started working her leg again. ‘What do you mean you’ve brought her home?’
‘I’m going to do her head. A reconstruction. It would help to know what she looks like, wouldn’t it? She’ll be very distinctive with that disfigured upper lip. Easily recognisable, I’d think.’
‘You mean you’ve got the skull with you here?’
Amy nodded.
‘Won’t it stink?’
‘A bit. But I’ll work at the French windows upstairs. You know, where there’s a little balcony overlooking the garden. As long as it’s dry, I’ll keep the windows open and it should be okay.’ She drew herself up on to her elbows. ‘Take me up and I’ll show you.’
MacNeil liked the space at the top of the house. There was room to breathe here, and the sense of elevation helped. It couldn’t have been more different from his claustrophobic little bedsit in Islington. He helped Amy set up a table at the French windows and gather together the materials she kept in a large cupboard against the back wall. He had never seen her working on a skull before, and had been quite taken aback by the row of heads that stood along the shelf in the middle of the cupboard. A bald man, a young woman, a boy, two older women, an unfinished man with a serious head injury.
She gathered her books and charts and dowels and cakes of plasticine around her, and MacNeil watched, fascinated, as she set up the skull on a pedestal, manoeuvring her wheelchair into the best position for working on it. The smell wasn’t too bad with the windows open.
‘You’re going to build a face over the skull itself?’
‘No, I’m going to make a plaster cast of the cranium, then cast the mandible in a cold-cure resin. We don’t want to damage what might be evidence.’
He watched, fascinated, as she began her preparations. ‘How do you know what the face looked like just from the skull? I mean, they all look the same, don’t they?’
Amy grinned. ‘Just like the Chinese?’
MacNeil felt his face colouring. ‘You know what I mean.’
She nodded and smiled and said, ‘I’m going to bore small holes at thirty-four reference points around the skull, and then glue little wooden dowels into them, just two-point-five millimetres in diameter. The dowels are marked at average soft tissue depths, according to a scale determined by a man called Helmer, who calculated them from ultrasound measurements made on living people. So they’re pretty accurate. Then I’ll sculpt the face, using what they call the American method. It’s a scientific rather than an artistic process. You join the average tissue depths with strips of plasticine about five millimetres wide, effectively building up the layers of muscle beneath the skin. The teeth and the jaw will determine the shape of the mouth, and in particular the cleft lip. The shape of the nasal bridge is decided by the dimensions of the nasal bones. There are charts and measurements to shape the line of the eyelids, and of course race will play a part in that.’
‘Where did you learn all this stuff?’
Amy shrugged. ‘I was always interested in it. But after the accident, it was one of the few things I didn’t need legs to do. Of course, I’ve had a lot of help from my mentor at BAHID.’
MacNeil knew that Amy was a member of the British Association for Human Identification. It was an informal academic association of experts from various fields of forensic expertise, from pathologists and policemen to lawyers and dentists. But he didn’t know anything about mentors. ‘You have a mentor?’
‘Yeah. It’s not unusual for some of the older practitioners, usually retired, to take some of the younger ones under their wing. My mentor’s a retired anthropologist. Sam. We communicate by email and instant messaging.’
He watched her work for a while, marvelling at the dexterity of her fine, long fingers. She had the most beautiful pale, ivory skin, and lips that curled in what always looked like a smile, a reflection of a disposition which had been sorely tried by trauma and tragedy. He wanted just to pick her up and hold her, to possess her, to absorb her into himself. He had never felt like this about any other human being before. He was surprised, even shocked, by the feelings she aroused in him. Feelings he never knew he had.
‘Scotland the Brave’ jangled in his pocket. He took out his mobile and glanced at the screen. MARTHA, it said, and he was about to cut it off.
‘Is it her?’
He glanced up to find Amy looking at him gravely. He nodded.
‘You should answer it, then.’
And something about the look in her eyes made him feel guilt at having spent the morning avoiding doing just that. He hit the green button. ‘What do you want, Martha?’
‘Where in God’s name have you been, Jack? I’ve been trying to get you for hours.’
Something in her voice set alarm bells ringing. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘It’s Sean.’ He heard her voice crack.
‘What about him?’
‘He’s sick, Jack.’
IV.
Pinkie swung south-west along Manchester Road, past the Christ Church and St. John with St. Luke. Through gaps in the houses, and beyond the trees in Island Gardens, he could see the twin domes of the Old Royal Naval College at the University of Greenwich on the far side of the river. The air was cold, rising up from dull grey water, and veiled in a thin mist. Beyond the Docklands Light Railway station he turned left into Ferry Street, swinging right then past the Poplar Rowing Club and along a street of red-brick new-build apartments overlooking the Thames.
The Ferry House pub on the corner was closed, but the gates into St. Davids Squ
are stood open. Charlie had told him that he always took a fag break here, and if anyone was watching, they’d never objected. Pinkie drove on into the square, past the Elephant Royale Thai restaurant. Six-storey apartment blocks rose all around, with white-painted balconies and French windows. What light there was played blue in a pool and fountain at the centre of the square. The river side of it was open to the view across mud flats to Greenwich. There, the three masts of the Cutty Sark rose above everything else.
Pinkie spent fifteen minutes unloading boxes, watching carefully for any sign of life at any of the windows which overlooked the square. There must have been dozens of pairs of eyes on him, but he saw nothing. He wondered how these boxes were divided up. Did they come out in ones or twos? Was there a rota? How did they settle disputes? He could not imagine what their lives were like, but even though he could not see them he could feel their fear. It was in the air, in their silence, and in the absolute absence of any sign of human life.
He finished unloading and closed up the truck, then strolled casually towards the riverside walkway, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. But he had no intention of smoking them. To his left, a door led into the lobby of Consort House, numbers eight to forty-two. He sat for a moment on the wall next to the canopy and took out one of the cigarettes. He let his eyes wander along the line of the roofs opposite. It was now or never. He knew he would be seen going in, but who was going to stop him? Unless they had a gun. And who was going to open their door, or check on the old lady? They were all too afraid. He crushed his unlit cigarette and threw it away as he stood up. He pulled the door open and walked inside, waiting for the bullet in his back. It never came. In the lobby he drew a deep breath and took the elevator to the top floor. Stepping into the hall he ran his eye quickly past the numbers on the doors. Number 42A was next to the far wall. He moved quickly along to the window at the end of the corridor and glanced out across the water. A group of seagulls chased each other low across the river, swooping and diving and shrieking, before soaring skywards and beyond his field of vision. He knew she wouldn’t answer the door, and it would make too much noise to kick it in. But he had other skills. He drew a slim plastic pack of thin metal rods from his pocket and examined the lock for a moment before drawing one out.
The hall beyond the door was carpeted, and absorbed the sound of his footsteps. He closed the door gently behind him and moved carefully down the hall towards the daylight spilling from the room at the far end. He paused at its open door, pressing himself back against the wall and tipping his head to look inside. It was a large, open room with windows looking out over the Thames, and patio doors opening on to a narrow balcony. The walls were covered with paintings and framed family photographs. Old-fashioned, chunky, patterned furniture made the room seem smaller than it was, but homely somehow. Pinkie liked the feel of it. He could live in a place like this. It reminded him of his grandparents’ house. Except that they could never have afforded to live here.
He heard a chattering sound coming from beyond the angle of the door, and he took a cautious step in to determine what it was. An elderly lady with silver hair cut in a bob, a fringe dipping over her eyes, sat at a desk, fingers dancing with well-practised ease over a computer keyboard. Wire-rimmed spectacles were pushed back on her forehead, and the table beside her was covered in papers. She had a stunning view out across the river. But her eyes were fixed on her monitor. What a waste, Pinkie thought. People spent far too much time at computers.
He stepped into the room. ‘Hello,’ he said.
The old lady turned, alarmed, piercing blue eyes staring at him in startled disbelief. ‘What – who are you?’
Pinkie smiled. She made him think of his grandmother. ‘Your salvation, granny.’ He slipped the gun from beneath his overall, its barrel extended by its silencer, and fired a single shot. It made a neat hole in her forehead, but the exit wound was messy, and blood and brain was spattered all over the window. She fell forward, face-first, and her blood soaked into the carpet. Pinkie winced. He didn’t like to leave a mess. Cleanliness, tidiness. These were virtues that his mother had dinned into him. Honesty, kindness, loyalty. Diligence. If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. Never start something you can’t finish.
He crossed the room to look at the family pictures on the wall. There she was. The matriarch. Head of the family. Children and grandchildren around her. Happy and smiling. And Pinkie felt a fleeting sadness that it was he who had taken all that away. It was a pity, really.
A sound like a baby crying startled him. He turned, pistol raised, to see a black cat with white bib and socks sniffing at the dead head of its mistress. It knew something was wrong, but had no idea what. Pinkie slipped his gun away. ‘Aw, puss,’ he said. ‘Who’s going to feed you now?’
The cat responded to his tone, and walked towards him, tail erect, slightly curled at the tip. Pinkie stooped and picked it up, and it let him cradle it in his arms, stomach exposed for him to rub gently. This was an old cat, well used to human handling. It was almost choking on its purr.
Pinkie carried the cat through to the kitchen and put it down on a worktop while he searched the cupboards for cat food. It was below the sink. He opened two tins and emptied them on to a couple of plates. That would keep the poor old thing going for a bit. It arched its back as it ate and he ran his fingers gently along its spine. ‘Poor pussy,’ he said. ‘Poor old puss.’
CHAPTER SIX
I.
It was all depressingly familiar – the place they had bought together with the money he had saved, and Martha’s inheritance. Even so, there was a crippling mortgage which he was still paying. It was a modest, two-bedroomed ground floor flat, the lower half of a modern terraced house in the leafy south London suburb of Forest Hill. At least there was a garden at the back for Sean, and MacNeil had been able to drive to Lambeth in twenty minutes outside of rush hour.
They had arrived here, mother, father, newborn baby, with such high hopes. But eight years on, this street was now just a painful reminder of how all their dreams had come to naught. A place haunted by failure.
It had never been a marriage made in heaven. He had only been twenty-seven when he first arrived in London, fresh-faced and naive from a job in rural Inverness-shire. The Met was a challenge, the Big Smoke an adventure. He met Martha in his first month. At a police party. She had been going out with a DC at the time, but it was a relationship nearing its end. She and MacNeil had been instantly attracted to each other. Sex was the driving force behind their relationship. They did it every chance they got, anywhere they could. They rented a little studio apartment in Lewisham, and spent most of his days off in bed eating ice cream, having sex and getting drunk. It was a crazy roller coaster existence, free from any responsibility, devoid of any thought of the future.
And then one day she told him she was pregnant, and their life changed.
Neither of them knew how it was possible. They had taken precautions. But there it was. Martha was torn. She desperately wanted children. But not just yet. She raised the subject of abortion, but MacNeil wouldn’t hear of it. He had no religious convictions himself, but his parents had been lifelong members of the Free Church of Scotland, and while he didn’t believe in their God, their morality had been seared into his soul. In the end, she was glad he had talked her out of it. Especially the day that Sean was born, and she held him in her arms and couldn’t stop the tears from streaming down her face. And through them had seen that her big, tough Scottish husband was crying, too.
MacNeil pulled up his car at the foot of the path and locked it. What had once been a single arched doorway was divided now into two – one maroon door, one white. MacNeil climbed the steps, his heart frozen by fear. Two words is all it had taken to blow the remnants of his life out of the water. Sean’s sick.
Martha opened the door before he got to it. He was shocked by her appearance. Her face was a bloodless white, deep sh
adows smudged beneath tired eyes. She seemed so much older than when he had last seen her, strained and tense. Was it really only a week ago? There had been no hint, then, that there was anything wrong with Sean. The schools were shut, and they’d had little or no contact with anyone. How in God’s name had he got infected? It was all he could think to ask her. And there was more than a hint of accusation in it.
‘I don’t know.’ She shook her head, and he heard the desperation in her voice. They went inside. ‘Maybe it was you. We haven’t been anywhere. Maybe you brought it in with you.’
MacNeil tipped his jaw and held his peace, containing the anger that rose in him like bile. ‘Where is he?’
‘The Dome. I called the doctor last night. By four this morning he was coughing up fluid. I can’t believe how fast it’s been. The ambulance came at first light.’ She glared at him accusingly. ‘Why didn’t you answer the phone?’
‘You don’t give me many reasons to want to talk to you these days.’ He looked around the living room. It was chaotic. Sean’s Arsenal football strip was hanging up to dry on the clothes horse. His games console was lying next to the TV. MacNeil relented. ‘I was working.’
‘Of course you were.’ Martha was unable to keep the bitterness out of her voice. ‘Aren’t you always?’
He looked at her and felt that familiar guilt. He knew she had cause. After the baby she hadn’t been interested in sex any more. And somehow they didn’t have much to say to each other. What little time off he had he spent with Sean, and she seemed to resent that. She grew more and more remote. He spent more and more time at work. The atmosphere in the house was awful. He just wanted to be out of it, to be anywhere else but here. Marry in haste, repent at leisure, they said. ‘I’m sorry.’ MacNeil shrugged. ‘It must have been terrible for you, on your own.’ He moved towards her, intending to take her in his arms, a belated offer of comfort.