Gallowstree Lane

by Kate London

  Through a mist of rain the city streets passed. Raindrops in beads on the shoulders of coats. A small girl beneath a shiny transparent umbrella. The boys were talking on, like she wasn’t there. She could hardly hear them.

  ‘Matt black. Gotta be matt black.’

  ‘Tinted windows.’

  She leant back against the headrest. The street lights had been triggered prematurely – pink against the afternoon sky. She closed her eyes and let it wash over her.

  She opened her eyes. Disorientated. They were south of the river, further than she had thought. Traffic-choked Elephant and Castle.

  She said, ‘We’ve come a long way.’

  The driver, turning up a wide road, said, ‘Can’t hear you.’

  She leant forward between the two seats. ‘I said we’re a long way. I need to get back.’

  ‘You ring us when you’re done. We’ll drive you back.’

  ‘But this is going to be OK, yeah? I mean I’m gonna be way out of Soldiers’ territory here. Will I be safe?’

  ‘It’s all good.’

  She sat back. The boys knew nothing. They were just roadmen. What was she doing out here? Why ever had she thought she could trust the Soldiers? They owed her nothing.

  They were pulling over and she was getting out onto the pavement, tugging her short skirt down over her thin thighs in a habit of modesty, like a dog that turns in ancient circles over imaginary grass.

  She stood, half-heartedly offering her wares.

  The rush hour had started but most of the traffic was moving relatively quickly, most of it leaving London, she guessed, for the sea or the South Downs. Rottingdean, perhaps, or the Seven Sisters. They must be imaginary places to have names like that; she pictured art deco cinemas and lidos and brown tea made properly in teapots. Little lace doilies over jugs of warm milk. Here the air smelt of petrol. For most people this road wasn’t a place. It was just a strip of tarmac they had to drive over to get to somewhere better. But two realities existed here, side by side – the fast cars and the cars that lingered. Other girls were working, standing, leaning into cars. It was early for business but some cars were slowing and pulling over. Lexi walked a little and turned and stood, her weight on one hip. It was grim working out here, so far from home. Lonely, too. She didn’t know any of the other girls and no one was showing any interest. She wanted to go back but she needed money to pay for the hit and the journey and the next hit.

  The cars slowed, sped up, cruised, drew to the kerb. The window sliding down. Conversations. Decisions. Sometimes more than one of them in the car. She never liked that. Always felt risky. Sometimes a girl getting in: a moment of surprising delicacy, as if they were her chauffeurs and she a star off to a red carpet.

  A car glided towards her. Two in the front, two in the back. She smiled grimly at the double meaning and shook her head and stepped back from the roadside. She wasn’t up for that. Not even now.

  She hated this place. No one to look out for her here. She’d score once and call up the two Dromios.

  Paused at the traffic lights ahead: a white car. Nothing special. The headlights flashed. She took a step forward. Seen you. Red to green. The car pulled away from the changing lights. VW badge. She tugged at her skirt, prepared herself to look enthusiastic. And then, in an infinitesimally slow firing of her neurons, her mind altered course. The silhouette through the windscreen was recognizable. Her body was way behind her brain, which had understood everything in an instant. However slow she was, there was an exuberant clarity to her as she turned and ran through heavy water, trying to put the lamp post between her and the car that swung towards her like a juggernaut towards roadkill. And she was nearly there as the heel of her shoe broke beneath her.

  25

  Lee was driving. Sarah got out her phone.

  ‘Elaine, just a thought. The CCTV outside the shop on Gallowstree Lane—’

  ‘It wasn’t working.’

  ‘Was it you checked it?’

  ‘It was the local officers.’

  ‘Can you see if they made a note of what was wrong with it?’

  ‘I’ll call you back.’

  The traffic was nose to tail and so slow that people on foot were overtaking them up the hill. The neighbourhood was as separate from the London of Big Ben as if it were a plane journey away rather than only a few miles. Plantain and guava lay in trays outside shops. Waiting by the roadside was a group of tough-faced builders dressed in steel-capped boots and paint-spattered trousers. A fat woman in a colourful African headdress waddled along the pavement beside an equally fat boy in grey school uniform. Under the lights in a health food shop a cyclist, in full fluorescence and cycling shoes, held a metal basket and queued with his helmet on.

  The debacle with Ryan was gnawing at Sarah. It had gone so wrong. She’d alerted him to their interest but achieved nothing in terms of information. The opposite, in fact: she’d alienated him.

  She and Lee were on their way to check out the cell site locations for the phone Ryan had called from the canal. It was a last stab at giving the investigation into Spencer’s death some sense of forward momentum before giving up for the day.

  She got her phone out and texted.

  Cesarino’s? 7 p.m.?

  She’d get off more or less on time and take Caroline out to their favourite Italian. Drink red wine, fall into bed with her girl. Sleep. In the morning she’d come back fresh, review it all, start again. This was going to be one of those stamina jobs. She couldn’t let a little setback get her down.

  They turned into the estate. It was 1970s – an open concourse, raised streets and walkways, three- and four-storey linear blocks, and beyond them, Oxford Tower. As they parked and stepped out, the whistle of a drug dealer warned that police had arrived. Three men walked quickly away, hunched over and unidentifiable. The sky was wide and pale and seemed to come right down to pavement level.

  Lee had a fire-door key and they got access to the high-rise without having to talk to anyone.

  Light filtered blue and cold into the lobby through a wide strip of glass bricks. White concrete pillars were tagged with black pen. On the right-hand side, next to a single stairway, was a disused locked office. In front of it an abandoned office chair on casters.

  ‘Nice place,’ Lee said.

  A handprint pressed low against the wire-meshed double doors. A toddler in a brightly coloured dress stepped in, followed by the front end of a pram. Lee moved over towards the doors.

  ‘Let me help you.’

  Sarah could see the woman pushing the pram now – small and neat, wearing a long black coat and a black hijab with gold zigzag trim. She tutted and shook her head. ‘I got it.’ She manhandled the pram competently inside. The child was already moving towards the lift, but the woman paused and looked at Sarah. ‘You police?’

  Sarah nodded.

  ‘When you going to do something about this place?’

  ‘What’s the problem?’

  The woman looked around her. ‘Drug dealers, all the time.’ She gestured towards the chair. ‘That’s his office, right there. Scared to come in here sometimes.’

  ‘His office?’

  ‘Black guy. Sits there, makes calls, does his business.’

  Sarah displayed only boredom.

  ‘Well, it’s not really our job, but I’ll tell someone back at the station.’

  The woman shook her head, disappointed but not surprised. She was already following her daughter towards the lift. ‘Right dump this place is. We try to keep it nice, but no one cares.’

  They returned to the car and turned out of the estate.

  There was a text on Sarah’s phone from Elaine.

  Locals have made no record of why the Yilmaz CCTV wasn’t working or how long it had been broken.

  Sarah called her.

  ‘We need to find out more about the CCTV – did the suspects know it was broken, or did they just get lucky?’

  ‘Yes, sorry about that. It slipped through the net. I
’ve put an action on for it.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Sarah leant against the headrest and closed her eyes. She heard Lee, ‘We could put some surveillance cameras in the tower block. Find out more about the drug dealer.’

  She nodded and opened her eyes. ‘I’ll think about it tomorrow.’

  They were heading back west. Petrol stations. Betting shops one after another. A huge pub with a mock-Tudor facade that offered absolutely everything – good food, apparently, and real ales, live music, Sky Sports. In the distance the iconic City skyline looked more like a poster for a disaster movie than something real. You could almost see the spaceship hovering above it.

  They turned right and threaded their way through to Farrens Lane, the other frequent location for the phone Ryan had called. The road was blocked for a market and they had to park and walk. The ground floor of the flat was a dreary-looking Chinese health shop. ‘They’ve got the I’s covered then,’ Lee said, and Sarah looked and saw that they had indeed. Painted on the shop window was a list of the ailments treated. Impotence. Infertility. Incontinence.

  To the right of the shopfront was a bell by a narrow front door.

  A coffee shop opposite with a red plastic sign – Scrumptious. Meal prices in the window offered a Full English for £5.60 and a Chicken Fillet Burger for £4.99. A shelf ran the length of the window and they sat there side by side on high chairs next to an old man in shirtsleeves who smelt strongly of sweat and cigarettes. The coffee came as if it had been dispatched through a time tunnel from the 1950s – grey, lukewarm and tasting of something indeterminate. Lee helped himself to a copy of the Mail and leafed through it. Sarah glimpsed a pregnant celeb in the turning pages and then directed her gaze away towards the narrow front door opposite. A man she recognized was walking along the pavement opposite. It was DC Steve Bradshaw. He turned and glanced at the café as if patting himself down for his keys and saw her too. It was only a moment of recognition. In an instant he had entered the flat and closed the door behind him.

  Sarah’s phone started ringing. It was her boss, DCI Fedden. She listened.

  ‘OK, boss, can you just run over it again? How is this connected to Spencer?’

  26

  Sarah drove. Even with the siren going, she had to alternate between bursts of speed and navigating with tedious care through traffic that inched to the side or stubbornly refused to move.

  The link was tenuous, perhaps, but surely too much of a coincidence to be mere happenstance.

  The victim of the collision had called the same number Ryan had called after Spencer’s murder.

  And there was another link. The vehicle that had hit the victim was a white Volkswagen Touareg – the same model and colour as the car that had picked Ryan up from outside Caenwood police station. Sarah told Lee to call the PNC and put a marker on the registration Lizzie had given her.

  ‘My notebook’s in my bag – you’ll find it in there. I wrote it down this morning about eight o’clock.’

  She looked in her wing mirror and pulled into the oncoming traffic to overtake. A motorbike was following her, hitching a lift on her blue lights.

  ‘What should I put on the remarks?’ Lee asked.

  She checked her mirror and pulled back in. The motorbike was still there, obstinately stuck to her tail. What a nuisance. She’d have to keep watching out for it. Last thing she needed now was to be party to a collision.

  ‘Inspect for damage. Consider seizing and arresting the driver for murder. Link it to the crime report.’

  ‘Arresting for murder? That’s a bit extreme. What’s our evidence?’

  ‘We’ve got another link in the investigation to the same model and colour. If it is a different car then it’s a big coincidence. We can’t waste time – if it is that car it’ll be off the road in no time. Put my mobile on the report for inquiries. No harm in pulling it and asking questions. When you’re done, call Elaine and ask her to check how the inquiries are going on the car. I put an action on for someone to visit the hire company.’

  ‘Can you bring me up to speed first?’

  ‘Sorry … got to concentrate. Call Elaine.’

  They were at a junction and she inched forward against the lights. The bike that had been following obviously thought better of running a traffic signal and Sarah was finally able to accelerate away.

  Lee had been talking with Elaine. He closed the call.

  ‘She says no one’s actioned the hire company yet.’

  ‘OK. Can you get onto it? Elaine can give you the details.’

  There was a hesitation. ‘Sure.’

  Sarah guessed at his reluctance but ignored it. ‘I’ll drop you. Take a cab back to the Elephant. It’ll be quicker by tube from there.’

  ‘Are you serious? We’re in the middle of nowhere.’

  She pulled over. ‘Of course I’m serious. Don’t you know me yet?’

  ‘Bloody hell, Sarah. It’ll cost a fortune.’

  She went to get her purse out of her bag but he waved her away.

  ‘Never mind.’ His seat belt was already off and his hand on the door handle.

  ‘Keep a receipt.’

  ‘Yeah, OK.’

  He had stepped out and was beginning to walk. She drove alongside him with the window down. ‘Think positive, Lee. It might make all the difference.’

  He raised his thumb cynically. ‘Yeah. It might.’

  ‘Lee?’

  ‘What?’ He looked back into the car and she smiled.

  ‘Thanks.’

  He shook his head and tutted, smiling and irritated at the same time. ‘You think you’re bloody charming, Sarah, but you’re not.’

  She left him standing waiting for the lights to change at a pedestrian crossing. The traffic was so congested that it was still another ten minutes’ drive.

  The approach to the scene was heralded by a noise like the fanfare of a thousand vuvuzelas. An entire junction had been closed off and traffic was being filtered away. A short female PC in an oversized high-vis was standing at the closure, and her strained expression suggested she’d been on the wrong end of a lot of abuse over the last ninety minutes. Sarah showed her warrant card and the PC entered her details in the crime-scene log.

  Sarah suited up and looked towards the inner cordon, which began about a hundred metres away by the traffic lights. In contrast to the noise and teeming frustration of the gridlocked approach, the crime scene was a strangely peaceful desert of concentration. Beyond the second line of tape two traffic officers in white hats were working steadily doing their technical stuff. The world of collision investigation was a jealously guarded specialism, to which she wasn’t privy. The PC pointed down the road to the traffic lights, towards one of the officers, back turned looking into a theodolite.

  ‘DS Clarke’s running the traffic side of things.’

  Sarah had assumed DS Clarke was a man, but as the traffic skipper looked towards her, Sarah saw that she was in fact a tall, athletic woman. A single thick blonde plait fell down her back.

  ‘The homicide team are in the tent,’ she said. An accent – unplaceable rural Scottish that mingled a fleeting sense of a different landscape with something shrewd. Sarah offered her hand and smiled.

  ‘Detective Inspector Sarah Collins.’

  DS Clarke accepted the handshake with a brief firm squeeze. ‘Sorry. Got wrapped up in it. Meghan Clarke.’

  A pause. They both smiled. That flicker of recognition.

  Sarah said, ‘Could you just brief me why you think it’s homicide?’

  Meghan gestured down the road towards the white tent beside a lamp post. ‘That’s your collision, down there. Ninety-two metres away. We’ll have a more precise figure for the report.’

  Sarah nodded.

  ‘So the vehicle was stopped here. Green light, and it pulled away towards the fatality.’

  The tone was dispassionate: this was a woman who dealt day in, day out with the pitiless physics of human flesh up against more than thre
e tons of metal.

  ‘There’s a witness. One of the local working girls. She’s good. Observant.’ Meghan smiled. ‘Should have been a cop. Anyway …’ she gestured down and across the road, ‘witness was standing on the opposite pavement. We’ve got her at twenty-two metres from the victim, sixty-three from the lights. Had an unobstructed view.’ She flicked open her notebook and glanced down. ‘Yes, so the witness says the victim stood out – wasn’t one of the usuals. She’d been watching her, thought she’d never score. Looked so miserable. Heart wasn’t in it. But you never know, apparently. Some of the joes like that kind of thing.’ She caught Sarah’s eyes shrewdly. ‘Each to their own, heh?’

  Sarah blushed, thinking in an embarrassing rush of this woman with the blonde plait down her back and what her own might be.

  ‘Anyway, so the vehicle was stopped here and the witness – down there, yes? – sees it flash its headlights. Lights change; the car pulls away towards the fatality. Witness’s first thought: Hello, new girl’s got a punter. But that thought’s over in a second, she says, because …’ another glance down at the notebook, ‘well, in her own words, “the car roars” and our victim suddenly starts running. Instead of slowing down at the pavement to pick up a tart, the car’s accelerating. There’s your intent as far as I’m concerned: that foot on the accelerator. Then there’s the direction of the vehicle. Doesn’t pull alongside the kerb like a punter; no, it swerves and mounts the kerb.’

  Meghan stopped speaking, proud of her expertise and, it seemed, proud of herself too. She met Sarah’s eyes with a steady gaze and Sarah felt a sudden heat in her face. Amidst the liberation of being – finally! – out and in a relationship, she was also still sometimes flustered by the doors that were opening inside her. Meghan smiled and nodded and moved on.

  ‘So, the fatality’s struck at an awkward angle. I think she’s turned away from the vehicle and probably running when she’s hit. Hard to tell, because of the impact.’