by Peter May
‘And if you haven’t got a DVD player, you’re just going to have to buy him one, you mean Scots git,’ Rufus said.
MacNeil stared at the box they had gone to so much trouble to buy and wrap. How could they have known? How could they possibly have known? And yet it seemed so cruel. Like kicking a man when he was down. For just a few moments this afternoon, when so much else had crowded his thoughts that he hadn’t been able to think, he had found it possible to forget. And then felt guilty about it when he remembered. But this was the wickedest reminder of all.
And all he could see were their grinning faces, gathered around, watching for his reaction, waiting for his face to crease with the smile they knew so well. And all he could hear was Sean shouting excitedly, Don’t stop, Daddy, don’t stop!
A wave of nausea rose up through him like the chill of a winter draught. The detectives’ room burned out on his retinas. The cup of orange juice fell from his hand. He felt his eyes burning, and he turned and hurried from the room. Grown men didn’t cry. Certainly not in front of their peers.
He ran down the stairs, a voice shouting down the stairwell after him, full of concern and consternation. ‘Jack, are you alright . . . ?’
He ran past the reception desk and burst through the front door on to the steps, passing between the pillars and grabbing the handrail. He retched several times, but nothing came up. Tears burned his cheeks and blurred the street lights. He slumped down on to the top step and tipped his head forward into his open palms.
He heard the door swing open behind him, and Laing’s angry voice. ‘What the hell are you playing at, MacNeil? These guys went to a lot of trouble for you tonight. Just being here for some of them was a big thing . . .’ His voice tailed away as he saw his DI bent over on the top step. ‘For Christ’s sake, what’s wrong with you, man?’ The anger had leeched itself from his voice. Now he just sounded shocked.
MacNeil straightened himself up and quickly wiped the tears away from his face. He didn’t want Laing’s pity. He couldn’t face that. But he knew he couldn’t avoid telling him. He stayed sitting on the top step, gazing down the street towards the Three Stags pub where he’d too often spent too much time avoiding going home. Beyond it, the park and the Imperial War Museum seemed drowned in a pool of darkness. The Days Hotel across the road was empty, its staff laid off weeks ago.
‘Sean died,’ he said. ‘This afternoon.’
He didn’t look round for a reaction, and none came. Nothing but silence. A very long silence, and then slowly Laing eased himself down on to the top step beside him, and both men gazed south along the darkness of Kennington Road.
‘We couldn’t have kids,’ Laing said finally. ‘Elizabeth was always dead keen. She wanted children. That was her raison d’être. A bright, intelligent woman with a great career, and all she wanted was to get pregnant and stay home with the kids.’
MacNeil felt his boss turning to look at him briefly, then gazing away again. ‘I wasn’t that interested. It never bothered me, you know, until they said it wasn’t possible. And then I wanted nothing more in this world. Funny that, isn’t it? How you only start wanting something when you canny have it.’ He scratched his head. ‘And you look around you, and you realise that most of the scum we put behind bars . . . most of them got kids. Seems like there’s nothing easier in this life. And so everyone just takes it for granted.’ He paused. ‘It’s been one of the great regrets of my life, not having kids. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have one, and then lose him.’
He put a hand briefly on MacNeil’s shoulder, then stood up, and MacNeil was grateful that it wasn’t pity he felt. It was sympathy, even empathy, not something of which he would ever have thought Laing capable.
‘Go home, son,’ Laing said. ‘You’re all finished here, now.’
MacNeil shook his head. There was nowhere he could go that he would have called home. He needed a focus. He needed something to get him through this night. ‘Someone murdered that little girl,’ he said. ‘I’ll not be finished here until I find him.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
I.
The West End was eerily quiet, washed out beneath colourless streetlamps, and under the constant, watchful eye of the CCTV cameras. MacNeil had been in one of the control rooms once, watching the bank of screens flicker from camera to camera. All that they had seen moving, apart from soldiers, were rats. Thousands of them. Cautiously venturing out from the dark of the sewers, inheritors of a city abandoned to them by the humans. They must have wondered what had happened. But it hadn’t taken them long to stop wondering. They had grown bold quickly, and now joined the looters in their nightly endeavours to pick the city clean.
MacNeil drove up Haymarket. He could never quite get used to seeing the streets so empty, so devoid of life. Before the emergency, even in the small hours of the morning there would be taxis and private cars, and groups of revellers spilling out from clubs and pubs with late licences. But since the curfew, nothing stirred, and if it did, it would probably be shot.
The fountain and statue of Eros at Piccadilly Circus were still fenced off. The huge neon ads for Sanyo and TDK that once clad the corner buildings above Gap seemed like black holes in their absence. All colour and animation was bled from what had once been one of the liveliest corners of town. The green news-stand on the corner was battened down and all locked up. Nobody these days was buying the sightseeing bus tour tickets it used to sell. A megastore on the corner brooded darkly behind charred plywood. If the looters couldn’t prise the boards free, they set them on fire. And they would almost invariably be gone by the time the army arrived.
Somewhere in the distance he heard the siren of a fire engine, and saw the faint orange glow of far-off flames reflecting in the low cloud that still hung over London. He went right, instead of left, around the roundabout to turn into Shaftesbury Avenue. It was the only plus side of the curfew. There were no traffic lights, and he could ignore one-way streets and roundabouts. The Mayor of London had tried hard to reduce traffic in the city. If only he had thought of this. It was far more effective than congestion-charging.
Immediately ahead of him, two trucks and an armed personnel carrier blocked the road. More than a dozen soldiers stood about in groups of two and three, removing their masks to smoke in isolation, before replacing them to rejoin their colleagues. But as soon as MacNeil’s car turned off Piccadilly, they were on instant alert, SA80s swung in MacNeil’s direction, twitchy fingers on sensitive triggers. One of them stepped forward, hand raised. MacNeil braked and pulled up short. The rifles trained on him made him tense, but he was confident that as soon as they checked his registration number on the computer, things would get more relaxed. He was wrong.
The lead soldier glanced over his shoulder as someone called something from one of the trucks, and he was immediately joined by five others who fanned out around the front of MacNeil’s car. They were clearly jumpy.
‘Get out of the car with your hands up,’ the lead soldier shouted. ‘Do it! Now!’
MacNeil was not going to argue. He opened the door and got slowly out into the road, keeping his hands well above his head. It was disconcerting that he could not see the soldiers’ faces behind their masks and goggles. It made them seem less human. It was hard to imagine entering into any kind of negotiation. ‘I’m a cop,’ he said. ‘I’ve got clearance to be out.’
‘Not on our computer, you don’t.’
MacNeil cursed under his breath. Either Laing had forgotten to enter it up, or there was some glitch. They moved in close around him, the barrels of their rifles inches now from his face. ‘I’ve got ID. I can show you.’ He started reaching slowly for his inside pocket, and one of the soldiers swung his rifle around and clubbed him on the side of the head. A bright light flashed in his eyes and he fell to his knees. ‘Jesus,’ he said, his voice just a whisper. ‘I’m a fucking cop.’
Hands pulled him roughly
to his feet and slammed him up against the side of his car. Someone pushed his face down on to the roof and forced his hands up behind his neck, then kicked his legs apart. ‘Move and you’re a dead man.’ The voice hissed very close to his ear. His head was pounding, and he felt hands frisking him and going through his pockets. His warrant card was slapped down on the roof of the car next to his face. He saw the light from the streetlamps reflecting on the badge with its crown and royal insignia.
‘Where did you steal this?’
‘I didn’t steal it. Take a look at the photograph, for God’s sake!’
The warrant card disappeared from his field of vision and there was a moment of hiatus. Then, ‘Doesn’t look anything like him,’ he heard one of the soldiers say. And he cursed the day he’d decided to get his hair cropped short.
‘Put him in the truck.’
They started dragging him across the roadway.
‘Jesus, just phone my boss, will you? It’s DCI Laing at Kennington Road Police Station. He was supposed to enter my authorisation into the computer.’
Several pairs of hands dragged him roughly over the lip of the drop-down gate at the back of the truck and left him sprawling on the studded metal floor. Someone slapped his face and banged him up against the canvas side flap. His warrant card skittered away across the floor.
‘Don’t fucking move!’
He was vaguely aware of a young soldier at the back of the truck with a laptop computer and a short-wave radio. The light from the screen reflected on the boy’s face as his fingers spidered over the keyboard. But MacNeil had no time to reflect on his situation before a deafening explosion rocked the truck on its wheels. The shockwave pushed the canvas cover inwards as if from a physical blow, before sucking it out again. Breaking glass showered the streets around them like rainfall and a huge flash of searing white light turned the night sky briefly into day.
Voices outside of the truck were raised in panic. He heard someone shout that it was the bank in Chinatown. ‘They’ve blown up the fucking bank!’
From where he sat, MacNeil could see the troops, who moments earlier had manhandled him into the truck, deploying north along the avenue towards Chinatown. No one was worrying much about him any more. The young coms officer at the back of the truck was shouting into his short-wave, calling for reinforcements. MacNeil made an instant decision, something he would almost certainly not have done given time to reflect. He reached forward and snatched the soldier’s rifle, which was lying on the bench beside him. The soldier turned from his radio and grabbed at it. But too late. He found himself on the wrong end of his own gun, with MacNeil grim, determined and frightened, at the other.
‘I’m legit, kid. I’m a cop. Check me out on the computer.’ He bent down cautiously to retrieve his warrant card.
The kid sat frozen with fear and humiliation and shook his head.
MacNeil pulled the magazine from the rifle and tossed it out into the street, and then the rifle after it. ‘I’m going,’ he said. ‘Don’t come after me.’ Even as he turned, the young soldier made his move. He didn’t relish trying to explain to the others how he’d lost his gun and his prisoner. But he was no match in size or strength for the big Scotsman. MacNeil grabbed his jacket and ripped off his mask. ‘Don’t even think about it, sonny. Or I’ll breathe on you.’
The threat was more effective than any physical intimidation. The young man recoiled from the policeman’s breath, and MacNeil pushed him back into the truck before jumping down into the road and running to his car. Nobody had thought to remove the keys from the ignition, and it fired first time. MacNeil reversed at speed into Piccadilly Circus, and with tyres spinning, turned into Regent Street, and then Air Street, accelerating across Brewer Street into Lower John Street and up into the deserted Golden Square. It would be a risk, he knew, leaving his car here, but he would be able to move around more freely on foot.
None of the street lights along the far side of the square were working, forming a deep pool of darkness into which he drove and parked his vehicle. He got out and stood by the car, hearing the tick, tick of cooling metal, and listening intently for any hint of activity nearby. The explosion at the Chinatown bank had started a blaze which lit up the night sky beyond the nearest buildings. He could hear sirens and the crackle of gunfire and raised voices echoing around empty streets, and decided that it was safe to move.
He stuck to the network of narrow streets and lanes which fanned out like a spider’s web across Soho to the north of Shaftesbury Avenue. Bridle Lane, Great Pulteney Street, Peter Street. The devastation here was extraordinary. Stolen vehicles discarded and set alight. Almost every building – shops and offices – violated by looters. The pedlars of sex and pornography who sold their wares in the streets and alleys of Soho had been cleaned out. Slinky’s, For the Liberated and Enslaved – Corsets – Rubber – Leather. The lap dance joints and tattooists and cinemas had been stripped bare. Broken glass and discarded merchandise lay in drifts along streets where doors hung off twisted hinges and windows were black holes. Pubs where he had drunk, and restaurants where he had eaten, were barely recognisable. Soho Spice, The Blue Posts.
Dean Street was shrouded in darkness. The explosion at the bank down on the avenue seemed to have affected power supplies. There were no street lights. But the reflection of an eerie, flickering light licked faintly up the walls of its deserted clubs and restaurants from the fire in Chinatown. Broken glass on the pavements sparkled like frost, and a cold wind carried on it the smell of smoke and burning rubber. The cream-painted walls of a piano bar on the corner with Meard Street were streaked black from the blaze which had gutted it.
MacNeil flitted quickly through the dark to the east side of Dean Street and headed north. Fifty yards brought him to the steel-shuttered facade of the Black Ice Club. There had been clear attempts to force an entry, but metal grilles had so far kept the looters at bay. MacNeil was not sure what he had expected to find. If the club was still in operation, it was hardly likely to be advertising itself. He stood perfectly still, listening. And he felt, more than heard, the faintest thump, thump, thump. The monotonous, endlessly repetitive dance music that so characterised the tastes of today’s kids. Not, he supposed, that it had been all that different in his day. It was all a matter of what you grew up with, and grew out of.
He could not have said for certain that the music was coming from inside the Black Ice Club. But he would have risked money on it, if he’d had to. There had to be another way in. At the end of the block, opposite the Wen Tai Sun Chinese News Agency, a narrow lane led beneath overhead offices, into a cobbled courtyard filled to overflowing with wheely bins which hadn’t been emptied in months. Rats scurried in panic around his feet as MacNeil moved warily through the dark of the alley into the courtyard beyond. There were black-painted railings, and steel-barred windows, and fire escapes that zigzagged up the sides of brick-built office blocks. A pencil-thin line of light showed all around a thick steel door. As he approached it, MacNeil sensed the music getting louder. And now he heard it, rather than felt it.
It seemed extraordinary to MacNeil that people would want to be out partying given the dangers of infection, and the lawless, lethal streets that they would be required to negotiate safely after curfew. Never mind the fact that it was illegal. But then, he thought, a restless generation of kids with energy and money to burn simply weren’t going to stay at home and watch telly with mum and dad. He supposed they probably got a kick out of it, living life on the edge. Better than drugs. But he was willing to bet that the patrons of the Black Ice Club, on the other side of that steel door, would be rich kids from Chelsea and South Ken. Kids from privileged homes, with daddy’s money in their pockets. Not the sort of place a crematorium worker from a South Lambeth slum was likely to frequent.
He hammered on the steel door and stood back, waiting. Nothing happened. He hammered again, and this time a small metal hatch slid ope
n. Light and music spilled out into the darkness of the courtyard, and a face peered suspiciously into MacNeil’s. ‘What do you want?’
‘A drink.’
‘Don’t know you.’
‘I’m a friend of Ronnie’s. Ronnie Kazinski. He told me a thirsty man could get a drink here any time. And I’ve got a hell of a drouth.’
‘How did you get through the curfew?’
‘How does anyone?’
‘Most people arrive before it starts and leave when it finishes.’
MacNeil shrugged. ‘I guess I must have been lucky.’
The bouncer looked at him for several long moments before sliding the hatch shut. For a while, MacNeil thought he wasn’t going to open up. And then he heard the scrape of metal bolts being withdrawn, and the door swung in. The bouncer was a big man, but not as big as MacNeil. His head was shaved, and he wore a leather waistcoat over his naked chest. A beer belly hung low over baggy jeans. A grubby-looking white surgical mask covered the lower half of his face, and he regarded MacNeil warily before flicking his head to indicate that he should come in.
‘Cheers, mate,’ MacNeil said. ‘Where’s the bar?’
‘Downstairs.’
II.
As he went down the stairwell, the music rose to greet him like a physical assault. A brain-numbing level of decibels. Coloured lights were soaked up by black walls, and when he reached the dance floor, maybe two hundred people moved in one undulating wave of sweating humanity, lost in some primordial trance, swaying to sounds that owed more to distant tribal roots than to a sophisticated modern society. They all wore white surgical masks, like a uniform. And in the ultraviolet overhead strips, the masks glowed weirdly in the dark, like a strange, luminescent sea of floating gulls.
There was a small stage on the far side of the dance floor, and two scantily clad females wearing pointed white hoods with slits cut for eye holes swung their hips and gyrated in slow hypnotic circles. A bar stretched along the length of the wall to the right. Two young barmen wearing army-style gas masks were busy serving customers lined up three deep. People lowered their masks to drink, then pulled them back into place. Used glasses were set in circular racks that slid into huge dishwashers to disinfect them for further use. Steam rose in great clouds from behind the bar into air already thick with heat and sweat. A perfect incubator for infectious disease.