by Mo Hayder
Maddox shook his head. ‘They won’t have it. These personnel people are tight as arseholes.’
‘Let me try.’
Maddox lowered the raincoat and turned his face to the sky, his eyes screwed up against the rain. When he looked down his face was composed. ‘OK. You win. You can have Essex, if you want him, and you’ve got four days from Monday to come up with something.’
‘Four days?’
‘Four days.’
‘But—’
‘But what? You’ll find the time. And you don’t skip a single team meeting and if I need to pull you off I’ll do it at a moment’s notice. Anything else?’
‘Yes.’
‘What?’
‘You still coming to our party, sir?’
‘Ask me when I’m not pissed off with you.’
... 12
The girl in the back of his GTI was wearing a lime-green spandex miniskirt and platform sandals. Her hair, cut bluntly at jaw level, had one gold-sprayed chunk in it. She was dark-eyed, coffee-skinned, and Gemini knew Africa was somewhere in her bloodline.
She’d approached him in the Dog and Bell last night, before the trouble, before the police, and asked him to meet her tonight at the north side of the Blackwall tunnel to drive her to Croom’s Hill. She had some business there. At the time he’d thought nothing of it, but since the pub raid this afternoon he’d been nervous.
Gemini was no more than a wannabe Yardie, born in Deptford; in spite of his walk and talk the closest he’d ever been to Spanish Town Road was the Bounty rum his aunts brought to London each visit. Dog—his main contact—knew this and played on it, using Gemini to shift stuff that was too white for his own tastes: Es, microdots, scag. Last week it was sixty grams of ‘Special K’: Ketalar, horse anaesthetic. Gemini, disgusted and shamed, had no choice but to move it for him, and now it looked like one of those girls the cops were asking about had blabbed. Or—the thought made his blood run cold—what if one of them had gotten ill on something he’d sold them? The wash should have been as pure as morning. But as for the scag—everyone in Deptford expected local scag to be a cut deck. But cut with what? Baby laxative? Dried milk? Ammonia? Or something even deadlier. If that had happened it wouldn’t be just the police Gemini had to worry about—the public would turn it into a witch hunt and then the ranks would want to know who had put them in the spotlight.
And now it crossed his mind that the girl in his car might be a set-up. He kept her in his rear-view mirror as he drove. They’d passed St Dunstan’s when she leaned forward and tapped him on the shoulder.
‘I heard in the pub maybe you could help me.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Like rock or H or something.’
He studied her in the mirror. Whatever the police were on to, he couldn’t afford to shy away from a deal. It was life blood.
‘There’s somewhere here,’ he said eventually, and flicked the indicator, turning the red GTI into a cul-de-sac. It had stopped raining mid-afternoon. Ahead he could see the four towers of the London Transport power station against the orange sky, and a column of smoke rising from the damp allotments next to the railway. He cut the engine. The girl smoked silently, gazing out of the window with cool disinterest. He was sure—had to be sure—she wasn’t a cop. He swung around in his seat, hugging the head rest with his right arm. ‘So what can I help you wid?’
She didn’t look at him, just went on staring out of the window. ‘What you got?’
‘I ain’t stupid, know what I’m saying. From where the Bill are crawling around me, you know, I decide I ain’t going to put my feet straight in no trap.’
‘I want H. Heroin, horse, smack … whatever the fuck you call it. Drugs, OK? I ain’t no cop.’
Gemini relaxed a little. ‘OK OK. I got a bit. Me mostly into rocks, draw, know what I’m saying.’
‘One wrap.’
‘One?’
‘Yeah. More’s waiting for me.’
He’d been hoping for something higher, but his grin didn’t falter. ‘OK, sweet, sweet. That’s a tenner.’
‘And then let’s go.’
‘OK. OK.’ From the pocket of his blue Helly Hensen sou’wester he flipped a little folded envelope into his palm. Holding the wad between his middle and forefingers, he extended his hand between the seats. She better not drop anything, he thought. At the end of the night he was going straight down to Creek Road and getting his car cleaned inside and out. He’d heard that the Bill had techniques that could vacuum the car out and detect the smallest grain of gear.
The girl checked it, rewrapped the package and paid him. ‘Let’s go.’
Gemini jammed the car into reverse. ‘Croom’s Hill?’
‘Yeah. Blackheath end.’
On the heath they stopped for pedestrian lights.
‘Do a right here, and then you can drop me.’
‘You live up here?’
‘My friend does.’
‘Is it?’ He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, and stared at her in the mirror. He’d dropped a couple of the girls up here in the last few months and they’d all said the same thing. Maybe there was a punter up here. ‘Who your friend then, girl?’
‘Just a friend.’ She looked out of the window and went on smoking. She had a little mole above the top left-hand corner of her mouth.
‘I drop some of dem girls up here before.’
‘Did you?’ She wasn’t interested.
‘Coupla white girls.’
‘Is it?’
The lights changed. Gemini pulled off to the right, liking the way the car felt. ‘She went in one o’ dem big houses. Know what I’m saying?’ He grinned at her in the mirror but she ignored him.
‘You can stop here.’
Gemini pulled the car into the kerb, and put it into neutral. ‘Four quid.’
She got out of the car, slamming the door. Dropping a fiver through the two-inch gap of opened window.
‘And hey—’
‘Yeah?’ He looked up, grinning.
‘You should stop with the Yardie shit.’ She held a delicately extended finger in the air, her eyebrows arched sarcastically. ‘Cos, y’know, you sound a real prick, yeah?’
She turned away. Gemini picked up the note from his lap and watched her legs flash away in the twilight. He wasn’t offended.
‘You got a sweet nigger’s arse under that skirt, girl,’ he whispered, still grinning. ‘Someone’s going to get a piece tonight.’
She turned down the twist in Croom’s Hill and Gemini let the car drift forward a few feet. But she had disappeared. He waited a few moments, to see if she’d appear from behind the curve in the road, but she didn’t. Mosquitoes circled lazily under the security lights of a brick-walled house—the road remained empty. Clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth and shaking his head, Gemini cranked up Shabba Ranks and headed back down to east Greenwich.
It wasn’t till he got back to the pub that he remembered the last time he’d seen that Shellene girl the cops had been asking about. Last week. Last Monday. After the blow job he’d dropped her in exactly the same place.
... 13
The house:
A rambling Regency villa, set back from the road within a walled garden, overlooked by a stooping crowd of cedars. Once it had been owned by a wealthy patron of the Bloomsbury Group, who had commissioned trompe l’oeils, grisaille murals. There was even a 200-square-foot orangery rumoured to be a Lutyens. The last visitors to this place, if asked to recall, would have remembered gardens on a far grander scale than was usual for most town homes. One could disappear in one of the many hived-off areas, and lose track amongst the topiary and espaliered plums. White Pascali roses bloomed over trellised arbours, bees flew in straight lines down corridors of yew, searching out pyracantha and fuchsia.
But now there were blankets of rotting leaves piling up against the walls and, partially hidden near the garage entrance, lay the skeletonized remains of a dog, trapped there since last summer. The
curtains remained closed during the daytime. The cleaner, because of the trouble, had been sacked months ago and gradually areas of the house had become unfit to live in. Harteveld moved through those parts at night only, shuffling along through the mess. But during the day the heavy oak door which led to that part of the house was locked. He couldn’t risk unexpected visitors accidentally seeing his things. His belongings—
Tonight he had locked the door and was in the ‘public zone’: the area he could afford to show outsiders, comprising the hallway, the kitchen, the cloakroom, the small study and the living room, where he stood now, by the fireplace in front of the portrait of his parents.
He’d spent the afternoon cleaning—making it safe for tonight, hooking a hose to the sink in the main kitchen and sluicing disinfectant through the waste disposal. The smell, though, had defeated him. It was coming from—but at that point he had hesitated, his hand on the old door. For a long time he stared at the marquetry panels; the bamboo and spindly bridges supporting parasolled geishas. No. He turned away. Nothing he could do about the mess in there.
Now he swallowed two buprenorphine, washing them down with pastis and water. Then he opened a lapis lazuli snuff box, and with the long, sharpened nail of his little finger, scooped a pile of cocaine into his left nostril. He rubbed the residue on his gum, and closed his eyes for a moment.
If she didn’t come soon he believed he would explode.
He bit his lip and stared up at the portrait of his parents: Lucilla and Henrick.
No, he realized, no, he wouldn’t explode. What he would do was to haul himself up onto the mantelpiece, wait until he was sure he had his balance, then carefully lean forward and very precisely, with a minimum of fuss, bite Lucilla’s face out of the canvas.
... 14
‘The Killing Fields’.
The words jumped out at Caffery from billboards outside newsagents as he drove to St Dunstan’s. Last night the news had been confirmed through the bureau, and now the press were crawling over Greenwich, clogging the streets, harassing the residents, setting up camp outside North’s aggregate yard. The Sun‘s headline was ‘Millennium Terror’ with colour shots of Shellene, Petra, Wilcox and Kayleigh above a black and white shot of the aggregate yard. The Mirror had a single photo of Kayleigh: she wore a cherry-pink satin off-the-shoulder dress and was holding a drink up to the camera. There were the predictable comparisons with the Wests, photos of number 25 Cromwell Street—‘How could it happen again?’ asked the Sun. The Mirror dubbed the killer, predictably, ‘The Millennium Ripper’. Caffery had bet Essex that, of all the sobriquets, this would be the favourite.
The rest of AMIP were liaising with Intelligence at Dulwich—putting a spotlight on Gemini—running checks to see if he was already ‘flagged’, wanted by another Met unit. So Caffery, conscious that the stopwatch was running now, drove to St Dunstan’s hospital alone. He parked at the foot of Maze Hill where the lime trees and red walls of Greenwich Park ended.
They’re as tight as arseholes, these personnel people, Jack. No magistrate in the country is going to grant a warrant to open up the personnel files of an entire hospital because a wet-behind-the-ears DI has a ‘feeling’.
More than a feeling now, more than just a sense—now he believed that the man he wanted knew this building. Whatever shape the road took he was certain that it would end here. He stood for a moment, outside the hospital, imagining he saw something off centre about the grey buildings, the Portakabins in the brilliant yellow sunshine. The sky over the incinerator chimney was the same saturated, surreal blue as Joni’s eyeshadow, flattening perspective into Mondrian blocks. But then he realized he was resketching the sky, the world, to suit his picture of this place, and that the lines of the buildings were straight, the windows unremarkable. He straightened his tie and pushed through the plastic fire doors, glad to rest his eyes.
Inside the hospital was shabby; the corridors were hot with the steam from unseen kitchens and sterilizing units, a faulty fluorescent strip flickered. He was alone—his only company footsteps echoing briefly from beyond a bend in the passage—and a starling, flapping amongst the pipes in the ceiling. It dropped a tin-white pellet inches from Caffery’s feet as he pushed open the door marked PERSONNEL.
Take it slow. Take it too fast and they’ll see you’re desperate.
The office was large, divided by portable screens, the only sound the halting tap … tap … tap tap tap … tap of a keyboard.
Caffery peered around a screen. A small, round-backed clerk with a receding hairline, wearing a greying nylon shirt. Tapping at a keyboard.
Not promising.
Caffery cleared his throat.
The clerk looked up. ‘Morning, sir. For the committee, is it?’
‘No—not for the committee, Mr … uh.’ He checked the nameplate on the desk. ‘Mr Bliss. Detective Inspector Caffery. The head personnel officer, is he … ?’
‘She.’ He half stood. ‘She‘s sitting on the committee. They won’t be out till eleven.’ He held his hand out to Caffery who shook it. ‘Maybe I can help, Inspector … sorry.’
‘Caffery.’
‘Inspector Caffery.’
‘I’d like access to your personnel files.’
‘Oh.’ The clerk sat back and peered myopically up at him. ‘If I said no would you get a search warrant?’
‘That’s right.’ He wiped his hand discreetly on his trousers. Like the hospital itself the clerk’s hand was damp. ‘That’s right, a search warrant.’
‘And then you’d get all the information you’d need anyway?’
‘That’s correct.’
‘Can I be rude enough to see your badge?’
‘Of course.’
Caffery stood in front of his desk, hands in his pockets, watching the clerk fastidiously jotting down the details from his warrant card.
‘Thank you, Detective Inspector Caffery.’ He placed the warrant card on the edge of the desk, and leaned forward. ‘I’ll OK it with my boss when she comes back from her meeting, but who do you want to know about? Anyone special?’
‘No-one special. Doctors, morticians, nurses. Anyone with theatre experience.’
‘Mmmm.’ The clerk scratched his pink ear. ‘What did you want? Home addresses?’
‘Age, home address, contact numbers.’
‘It’s going to take some time. Can I fax it to you? I think our fax machine is still working.’
Caffery scribbled a number on the back of his card. He had, by fluke, hit this at the right angle.
‘And is there a staff room? Somewhere quiet I could do interviews when I’ve sifted?’
‘Mmm. Let’s see—Wendy, one of our officers, is covering in the library. Maybe she’d open the back reference room for you. Let’s go and have a look.’ He came out from behind the desk, pausing to lock the office as they left. ‘I hope you parked somewhere sensible. It’s a funny old area.’
‘Up the hill, next to the park.’
‘You have to fight for a place these days—what with all the committee members and their big cars and their parking permits. I haven’t got a choice, I’m not leaving the car at home, too much building work—just trust some workman to accidentally chuck a spanner through the windscreen—so I come in and battle it out with the bigwigs. They’re here all this week, you know, can’t get away from them—’ He stopped. ‘Here we are. The library.’ He opened the door. ‘Wendy?’
They were looking at a small panelled entrance hall. Behind a sliding pane of glass a woman in a pearl-grey cardigan and batwing glasses looked up from her Reader’s Digest. When she saw Caffery she blushed and shovelled the balled tissue she was clutching into her sleeve. ‘Hello.’
‘This is Wendy. She’s usually with me in personnel.’
Wendy gave Caffery a damp smile and extended her hand.
‘Hello, Wendy.’ She blushed deeper as he took her hand. It had the same limp humidity as her colleague’s.
‘We’re wondering if we could help
Detective Inspector Caffery here. He wants somewhere discreet to do some interviewing. Is that little back room of yours available?’
Wendy stood up and pulled the cardigan tightly around her breasts. Caffery saw she was younger than he’d thought; it was the clothes that belonged to an older woman. ‘I don’t see why not. We’re very old-fashioned about the police here. We like to give you all the support we can.’
‘I’ll be on my way, then.’ The clerk held his hand out again and Caffery shook it.
‘Grateful for your help. I’ll wait for the fax.’
Left alone, Wendy stared at Caffery in shy awe, waiting for him to speak, until he became irritated by her silence.
‘The room?’
The spell broke. ‘Sorry!’ She blushed and dabbed her nose. ‘Silly me. We don’t get many policemen in here. We do admire you, admire the work you do, actually, we think you’re wonderful. My brother wanted to join the force but he wasn’t tall enough. Now, come through, come through.’ She unplugged an orange card from the computer and clipped it on a chain around her neck. ‘It’s the little glass room at the back. I’ll open it for you—see if it’s appropriate.’
The library was very quiet. Sunlight came through unwashed windows and lay in dusty slabs on the floor. A few doctors sat in little booths, absorbed in study. A pretty Indian woman in a white coat looked up at him and smiled. In front of her a periodical was open at a page headed ‘Amnion Rupture Sequence’ and beneath it a large colour photograph of a red accident of birth: a baby, headless, spread out next to a tape measure like a deboned chicken. Caffery didn’t smile back.
Wendy stopped at a small glass-walled room. Blinds were drawn in the windows, isolating it from the library. ‘This is the quiet room.’ She opened the door. ‘Oh, Mr Cook.’
In the shadows at the back of the room a figure was rising from behind a desk. He wore a green overall, open to reveal a tie-dye T-shirt. His eyes were bloodshot, strangely colourless, and his pale red hair was long enough to fasten in a net at the nape of his neck. As Caffery’s eyes got used to the dark, he saw that some of the hair sticking out of the neck of the T-shirt was grey.