by Kate London
Tommy arrived with a coffee. He sighed at the uncleared tray that held dirty cups and a plate smeared with the remains of a fried breakfast. Whoever had left it on the table hadn’t much liked baked beans. He picked up the tray and walked off.
Elaine and Lee were next with the coffees, toast and pastries that Sarah had subbed. She was hoping to give the team a sugar boost. Since the job broke, no one had had enough sleep, but it wasn’t just tiredness that was making everyone irritable. It was the feeling of working hard but making no progress.
A teenage boy stabbed in the street: these murders were usually the spontaneous acts of reckless young people. By this point in the investigation Sarah would have expected the information to be flooding in: CCTV, phones, DNA. If there was a context – some pathetic beef, some dispute over postcodes – it was easily identified as people started to talk and social media filled with gossip. Arrests would be quickly made, and from those arrests more evidence would be harvested. The boys, panicking in their cells, would forget the street’s code of silence. Like children facing an angry parent, they would start to accuse each other: He did it! He made me! I didn’t mean to. It was his idea.
But Spencer was more than a day cold, lying alone in his mortuary drawer, and there were no such breaks, no cries for help, no leaks. No murder weapon. None of the tarts who worked Gallowstree Lane were talking. The victim had neither a phone nor a family to provide information.
The only option was to keep chipping away.
Tommy returned and sat, too big for the low chair. He knew pretty much everything there was to know about phones, and that was all the job asked him to do nowadays. He passed a bundle of papers to Sarah and began to talk through the number the witness had called from the canal.
‘It’s only been active a month. Everything about the usage says criminal: no texts, no internet searches, just voice calls. Lots of calls, usually short ones. Obvious thing would be drug deals. After the call we’re interested in, the number goes dead. If that’s a reaction to our call then it’s interesting, but I’m struggling to get anything useful out of it. I’ve done some cell-siting – that’s page fifteen in the bundle. It’ll show you some frequently visited spots, but mostly the phone’s moving around. I’d say from the distances covered and the timescales that it’s in a car most of the time. I could do more on it, but I’d need a fresh RIPA authority and we’ve got an issue with collateral intrusion – we’re already looking into a phone we’ve no provenance for. All we really know about it is that someone called it after the murder. It’s getting a bit iffy in my opinion.’
Sarah took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. ‘OK, thanks. How are we doing with CCTV?’
Elaine passed two screen shots across the table.
‘We’ve got this vehicle on Lion’s Road, on the approach to Gallowstree Lane, and then returning within twenty minutes. We can’t get a registration mark from the image but the timing’s right. It passes the traffic lights at 22:27 and comes back the same way at 22:45. The stabbing could easily have happened within that time frame – first call to the ambulance service is 22:42.’
Sarah considered that. It might be a coincidence. Or it might be the chink of light they needed. She passed the image to Lee.
‘What kind of car do you reckon?’
He studied the stills. ‘Could be a BMW X series – you know, one of those top-of-the-range SUV-type things.’
‘OK, I’ll write an action to check ANPR cameras and cross-reference. We’ll draw wider parameters – anything fitting that type of vehicle. Well done. It’s a good spot. Anything else?’
‘The canal exits.’ Elaine handed over a still. ‘This is about a mile down.’
An unremarkable London street. Paving stones, a lamp post, a black bin. The boy caught, mid-step, hands in pockets, head down. Black hoody with a white zip and white pull cords. No logo.
‘Not the same jacket,’ Lee said.
Elaine sighed. ‘But I’d still put money on it being our witness. Right height, right build, right colour, right location. Plus we’ve got no one else exiting the canal who fits the bill.’
Sarah agreed. It wasn’t just the boy’s slim build and height; it was also his demeanour, something about the practised way he was concealing his face, the particular turn of the head, the bend of the chin towards the chest. If it was him, then he’d had help – someone had got a change of clothing to him. That must be the person he’d called from the canal.
She said, ‘Tommy, I’ll write another application for authority for the unidentified phone. I want you to develop it to the max.’
He shrugged. ‘Up to you.’
Elaine was passing Sarah another sheet from her plastic folder. It was a street map. She pointed to a cross drawn on it.
‘This is the location of the camera by the canal.’ She leaned over and tapped another cross. ‘And that’s our possible witness Ryan Kennedy’s flat on the Deakin estate. It’s about a mile and a half between the two.’
Lee said, ‘Have you been able to track him there?’
Elaine sighed. ‘Give me a break. It’s only thirty-six hours since the tasking. I’m good, but I’m not fucking Superwoman.’
Sarah put her hand up. ‘Play nicely, please. We’re all tired.’ She put a ten-pound note on the table. ‘Anyone want another coffee? I’m going outside to think.’
Standing outside vaping, she glanced at her phone and saw a text from Caroline.
Hey.
She thought of her girlfriend, fast asleep when she’d arrived home last night and barely stirring when she left at six in the morning. She should call her maybe. Talk nonsense. Promise a holiday. But she rejected the idea. Her thoughts would be elsewhere, and Caroline would know it.
She texted.
Hey.
Then another one.
Love you.
The boy in the Superdry hoody kept returning to her. She saw him lingering at the edges while the paramedic worked and his friend bled into the gutter. A hardened criminal would have turned on his heel and left his own mother to die. And the sound of his sobbing into a stolen phone. That was not the sound of a person who had been prepared for what had happened.
But there was a contradiction. The rest of the boy’s actions had been those of a person avoiding detection with a level of skill. No phone. Only one CCTV camera had captured him. And he’d been helped.
She wondered about this murder. What was it – a robbery gone wrong? A drug deal? In some ways it had the look of something properly criminal about it. But there was this sobbing boy … If they could get to him quickly, maybe he’d talk.
She fished her job phone out of her bag and called Lizzie Griffiths.
‘Is this an OK time to call?’
‘Yes. It’s fine. I’m walking to the tube.’
‘Ryan Kennedy, when you nicked him, what was he wearing?’
‘White trainers, black joggers, a black hoody with white trim. Noticed it because there wasn’t a logo.’
Sarah pulled the CCTV image out of her sheaf of papers – there the witness was, leaving the canal. Black hoody. White trim. No logo.
‘Got anything more about the fight?’ she asked. ‘Any background – what it was about, that kind of thing?’
‘No, sorry.’
‘OK. I’ll collect that disc from you later.’
She closed the call. Then she remembered the other piece of information Lizzie had given her – the car that had picked Ryan up after his arrest. Researching that vehicle was another action to task out urgently.
Through the canteen window she watched Elaine and Lee ignoring each other. Lee gazing down at his phone. Elaine eating cake and staring out of the window. It was always the same thing: no love lost between the two of them. The ten-pound note was still on the table. Sarah would have preferred to take Elaine out on enquiries, but she was busy with the CCTV. It would have to be Lee.
20
Ryan was lying on the sofa. He wasn’t asleep and he wasn’t awake.
A hole inside him went down and down and down, through the building, through its foundations and into the centre of the earth. He couldn’t find an end to it.
His mum had been crazy. She’d been asking around, she’d told him, and now she knew about Spence. ‘Like a child to me!’ she’d wept. Then she’d been shouting. Those boys coming round! She was going to the police. She didn’t want him seeing Shakiel. When Ryan had tried to calm her, she’d slapped him like he was a little kid. Then she’d been sorry and cried again. ‘Ryan, talk to me. I’m worried sick.’
After a few minutes he’d had to leave her because she wasn’t making no sense. When he’d got back, she was gone. Tuesday was one of her cleaning days. She must have got her shit together and gone out. She cleaned for other people; how come she couldn’t fucking clean here? There were marks on the wall, and cobwebs in the corner, grey from time. A strand of spider’s stuff hung down and moved purposelessly. By the window the paint was cracked.
There was the deep stuff inside that moved hardly at all, and then there was the surface where the same stuff went round and round and round and round.
Shakiel had promised him, but nothing had happened. And Ryan hadn’t heard nothing neither. Shakiel hadn’t been round, hadn’t sent no one. If he just could have a chat with him, sort it out, then it wouldn’t be pressing on him like this.
Sometimes it was like he was just feeling booky about Shakiel, but now it was more than that: he was certain. Shakiel had cut him loose, didn’t want nothing to do with him now that Spence had been killed. The man wasn’t righteous after all. He was a bullshitter.
But even as it came, his certainty wavered. Shakiel wasn’t that kind of guy. He was upstanding. Look how he’d visited his mother with the news of Daniel Harris’s death, the newspaper on the kitchen table. Shakiel was all about loyalty and respect. Ryan could trust him.
The crack in the corner, the strand of web swinging free. He fucking hated this flat. Why did his mum never clean up?
Did Shakiel know who’d done it yet? Had he been asking? It must be Soldiers. Who else could it be? But did he know which one? Who was the boy who’d stepped forward with the blade, the boy with the blue bird on his neck?
Maybe it didn’t matter anyway. He should just go and kill one of them. One of them for one of us. He could do it, he knew he could. Spence’s death had taught him how. The Zombie Hunter rested in his palm. The hungry blade would jab forward, one, two, just like the other one had. Eye for an eye.
There was a photo of his dad on the wall. It caught the light and reflected back the room, but Ryan knew the picture well anyway. His dad was smiling and you could see the jewel in his tooth. Shakiel had sorted that. He’d found out exactly who’d done it and he’d dealt with it. No one had never come after him.
There he was, starting the circuit again, beginning where he started. He couldn’t keep lying here like this. He slipped on jeans and a T-shirt, tucked the knife into his waistband. He’d cycle about a bit. See what was going down.
He’d opened the door before he realized they were there. A man and a woman. Two feds. He went to shut the door but the man had his foot in it.
The woman, small, white, slim. Trousers and jacket. Short hair, a bit of red lipstick. A dyke. Defo. The bloke, more your standard fed. Clean-shaven, gelled hair. Rocawear jacket – didn’t he know people don’t wear that shit no more? Under his arm a glimpse of the cop harness. S’posed to be covert but the guy couldn’t resist letting a bit of it show, could he? Bet he wished there was a gun. Bet he wished he was an American cop in a TV series, stuffing his machine under his armpit and clipping his shield on his belt.
The woman spoke. ‘Ryan?’
‘Who wants to know?’
‘My name’s Sarah Collins. You’re not in any trouble.’
Not in any trouble. Joking! They always said that, and it was always trouble.
‘I don’t want to talk to you.’
He started to shut the door. He didn’t want to be seen talking to no feds. But the woman – what had she said her name was, Sarah? – said, ‘It’s about your friend.’
It was as if the ground had tipped and there was an impetus rolling him backwards, slowing him down. That’s how feds work: try to get into your head. You have to resist them.
She said, ‘I’m a homicide detective. From the Met.’
‘Well you ain’t from the moon, innit.’
She smiled at that, but there was something sad in her smile. He didn’t like that neither. She said, ‘Can we talk?’
They were going to anyway, weren’t they? Once they’d decided, there was never no stopping them.
He opened the door and moved through into the hall. Then he turned, partly so that the back of his jeans was facing away. Didn’t want them to see the knife.
‘What you want?’
‘It’s about Spencer.’
The woman was looking at him with a sort of kind curiosity. He didn’t reply.
She said, ‘Did you call him Spencer or Spence, Ryan?’
She was getting on his nerves! He wanted to be angry because that was more comfortable, but he could feel his skin tightening in that horrible expression that shamed him.
‘Spence.’
‘I’m sorry. I know you were close.’
Sorry? Well maybe she was sorry, but not sorry enough. That don’t cut it, he told himself, as though it was the fault of this woman in the hall that Spencer was dead.
It was cramped in the hallway, and dark, lit only by the light from the dirty door pane. There was a smell of cannabis and fried food. Sarah tried a half-smile – not rude, just something to signal that she understood how it was – and said, ‘Can we talk in the sitting room?’
She watched him thinking it through, his eyes flicking to the side. He had that wild look, like an animal that would suddenly bolt, and she remembered a wild cat a friend’s mother had once trapped in a cage with a view to rescuing it from its harsh existence. It had never once let its guard down, watching fearfully from behind the mesh and scratching and biting anyone who tried to touch it.
‘You go ahead,’ he said.
There was something odd about that, and Sarah knew that Lee would be reluctant to move past Ryan and then have his back to him for even the shortest time. But he did it and she followed him, her body shielding him and feeling the heat of Ryan behind her. Lee had insisted on wearing his harness, and although she herself had risked going in without, she thought now he had been right.
The sitting room held no surprises. A Styrofoam takeaway tray on the floor with a couple of chips and some onion ring leftovers inside. A pillow and a dirty cover on the settee – the boy probably slept there. On the floor, an ashtray with a couple of burned-out roaches. A framed photo of another good-looking young black man: the shadow of a moustache, a big smile revealing a red jewel set into one of his incisors.
They their backs to the sofa and Ryan was facing them, blocking the door, arms folded across his chest, his feet spread wide. His jeans, falling to his hips, showed the waistband of his Guccis. He was simultaneously intimidating and a bit ridiculous. Boy or man? Neither. Both. This was the witness then? It made sense.
There were a million ways to begin to speak. Like she knew everything. Like she knew nothing. She wanted somehow to show Ryan that she saw him, or, at the very least, that she was guessing at the dark place in which he found himself.
She said, ‘How are you doing, Ryan?’
The question was dangerously close to a provocation. The suggestion that he might not be doing well carried a whiff of humiliation. Ryan was definitely the kind of boy who was doing very badly but wanted to be thought of as doing well. She didn’t dare look at Lee, hoping that he was managing something close to neutral.
Ryan smiled belligerently. ‘Good. You?’
She nodded, tried to tell the truth. It seemed only fair. ‘Yeah, OK. Bit of trouble with my girlfriend.’
That surprised him, and his smile was different. It cracked op
en his face. She saw good teeth and the flash of something likeable. ‘Sorry to hear that.’
She smiled too and said, ‘You know how it is.’
‘Not really.’
His smile now was almost a laugh, but not a malicious one. His guard was open for an instant and she tried to move the matter on.
‘I know you and Spence were close. I heard how upset you were when you called the ambulance …’ Even as she spoke, she realized her words were a mistake. His face had tightened into hostility. But then she realized it wasn’t hostility; it was the threat of tears. She continued gently. ‘I want you to help me catch whoever it was killed him.’
His hands hung limply by his hips and his face was blank. He said, ‘I don’t know nothing about it.’
She nodded. ‘OK.’
She waited, but he offered nothing more.
‘We know you were there. We’ve got CCTV of you leaving the canal after the murder. And you were nicked that morning in the same clothes you were wearing when you left the canal.’
He shrugged. ‘No comment.’
‘No comment? That’s for suspects, Ryan. You’re not a suspect, you’re a witness.’
‘Whatever.’
She wished they were standing differently, maybe side by side. Maybe if he wasn’t looking at her directly it would be easier for him to speak.
‘You say you don’t know anything, but there’s lots of ways of not knowing. Is yours the kind of not-knowing that doesn’t want to talk to police? If so, you can tell me stuff without it ever being linked to you. I can talk you through how that would work. Any information’s useful right now. I want to catch whoever killed Spence.’
Ryan made a quiet tutting noise and shook his head. ‘No.’
Lee had had enough. ‘Don’t you want justice for Spencer?’ he said.
It happened in an instant. Ryan’s right hand flicked momentarily towards his waistband. It seemed almost a reflex, the briefest impulse translated into movement, but no less scary for that. Sarah and Lee had both noticed it and Ryan’s eyes flicked too, quickly to the side. He hadn’t meant to do that. Perhaps they’d let it pass, his smile seemed to suggest, and for a crazy moment Sarah wondered if they could. But out of the corner of her eye she caught Lee’s right hand going under his arm to where he kept his asp. He wouldn’t be happy until they had whatever it was Ryan was concealing, and he was right.