by Mo Hayder
‘I’m sure,’ Basset nodded. ‘I’m sure you can’t. Now shall we concentrate on what you were telling the desk sergeant about your neighbour?’
‘I was telling your sergeant that I think he’s left that freezer of his unplugged again. The smell! Well, you’ve never known the like of the smell, Officer. It’s not healthy whatever it is. He was all right when he first moved in—kept the place reasonable from what I could tell. But, see, now he’s got to the point where he’ll leave the place for days on end, never check on it. And this’—she tapped an arthritic finger on the desk to punctuate each word—‘this is the sort of thing that is bound to happen. You’d think, wouldn’t you, him being a professional, you’d think he’d show a bit of respect.’ She put the mug on Basset’s desk and started to unpin her hat as if she was finally comfortable. ‘It’s his patients I feel sorry for.’
‘He’s a doctor?’
‘Maybe not exactly a doctor, but he’s something to do with the medical profession, that’s what my son says. Must be something important with him and his nice car and his two properties. But it don’t stop him being an odd one. The way he neglects the place—’
‘But there was something particular that bothered you,’ Basset prompted. ‘Wasn’t there something, Mrs Frobisher? Didn’t you say something to the desk sergeant about—about some animals?’ He paused. Mrs Frobisher was blinking at him. For a moment he wondered if the PC had misheard. That this was all a mistake. ‘Didn’t you mention there were some animals involved? Something about them being mistreated?’
‘Oh, that.’ The light dawned. ‘Yes. That as well. He doesn’t look after them proper. I found two dead ones in the bin outside. Looked like they starved to death.’ She sipped her tea and sighed. ‘Now that’s a nice cup of tea. They say you don’t get a nice cup from a bag, but I can’t agree in this case.’
‘Mrs Frobisher.’ Basset took a calming breath. ‘Mrs Frobisher, are we talking about birds? Were they birds you saw in the dustbin?’
‘That’s what I said.’ She looked at him as if he was slow. ‘That’s what I said. Birds.’
‘And what sort of birds? Big ones? Pigeons? Crows?’
‘Oh no, no. No no. Little ones.’ She showed a span of two inches between her arthritic fingers. ‘Little tiny ones a person might keep in a cage if they didn’t have a cat to think of. With red feathers. Reddish sort of feathers.’
‘Could they have been finches?’
She paused, egg-white cataracts wandering across her eyes. ‘Yes, that’s it. That’s it. Finches. I’d bet any money.’
‘Good.’ Basset wiped his forehead. ‘Good.’ He leaned forward and put his hands on the table. ‘Now. I’m wondering if you’d like to tell one of my colleagues the story?’
‘Will he do something about it?’
‘He’ll certainly be very interested.’
Mrs Frobisher settled back, pleased by the attention. ‘I’d feel better.’ She folded her hands on her lap. ‘Is he coming to speak to me?’
‘I’m going to call him this very moment.’
Basset sat on the edge of the desk and dialled the Croydon switchboard to put him through to Shrivemoor. He watched Mrs Frobisher sipping her tea as the line clicked and connected. He was feeling faintly sick.
Essex shuddered when he saw the doll’s unblinking, forget-me-not blue eyes gazing at him. ‘Don’t leave the windows closed or that thing’ll come to life. Haven’t you ever seen Doctor Who?’
Caffery put his head in his hands. The tiredness was deep in his muscles. ‘Gemini lied.’
‘Yeah. Bad news, that.’ He looked around the office. ‘Where d’you want these photos?’
‘He could have turned the whole thing on a word. Yes. Yes, I knew Shellene. Yes, she was in my car. Yes, I supplied her, had sex with her or any of the other things he did. We know he cabbied for the girls, he should’ve just said.’ Caffery sat back in his chair and opened his hands. ‘All we’ve got going for us is the blood group on that sample; knowing our luck it’ll match.’ The phone on his desk started to ring. He stared at it blankly. ‘Have we got a warrant for his flat?’
‘Diamond is just leaving for the warrant office. Then they’ll take him in for questioning.’
‘Jesus.’ Caffery tapped the desk impatiently. ‘Our options are closing down here. Something had better come out of these St Dunstan’s interviews.’ He reached for the phone but it stopped ringing. ‘Shit.’ He sank back in his chair, rubbing his face.
‘Do you want these or not?’
Caffery nodded and held his hand out. ‘I think I know what the wounds on the head are.’ He slid the photos out of the envelope and spread them on the desk. ‘There. Do you see? These slits, very clean. Krishnamurthi still isn’t certain of a weapon.’
‘But you are?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well?’
‘The holes are stitching.’
‘Stitching?‘ He picked up the photo of Shellene, held it close to the window and squinted. ‘OK. I’m with you. What’s he stitching?’
‘Remember what Kayleigh’s aunt said?’
‘What?’
‘She said Kayleigh had changed her hairstyle.’
‘Yes.’
‘Kayleigh didn’t have those puncture wounds. Her hair was almost the same colour as the wig. Shellene’s blond was darker. Gold, not ash.’
‘And?’
‘He didn’t stitch anything to Kayleigh’s head because he didn’t need to. He cut her hair the way he wanted it. That wig we thought the offender was wearing? Your Dressed to Kill wig?’
‘Yeah?’
‘It wasn’t him wearing it. It was the girls. He stitched it on to stop it falling off when he played with the bodies. When he pulled the wig off the skin tore, split between the stitching. He’s trying to make the girls look identical.’ Caffery shovelled the photographs back into the envelope. ‘That’s what the make-up and the mutilation to the breasts is all about. He’s making clones. Probably keeping them in his bed for days.’ He stood and pulled his jacket on. ‘Now if we could find who he wanted the victims to look like we’d be halfway to the Old Bailey.’ He took his keys out. ‘Shall we?’
‘Shall we what?’
‘St Dunstan’s, I think.’
The incident room was busy. Officers wearing short-sleeved shirts in deference to the early arrival of summer carried dockets to and fro. The blinds were down, the lights on. Kryotos had her shoes off under the table and was slowly eating a piece of fudge cake as she prepared HOLMES for Jack’s St Dunstan’s hospital interviews. She would have to create up to 180 more nominals just to cover all the cross-references needed.
‘Jack, Jack, Jack,’ she murmured. ‘What goes on in that head of yours?’
The effect Caffery had on women was not lost on Kryotos, earth mother, she of the matronly observant eye. She watched the indexer girls behind their monitors when he walked through the room, touching their hair, crossing and uncrossing their legs, distractedly reaching down to rub their calves and run fingers under ankle straps. And he would wander away, casually trailing his air of detachment, the occasional shaving nick—Kryotos was in no doubt about what the girls would like to do with those shaving nicks. But Caffery seemed somehow removed from it all; as if there were more worthwhile preoccupations in his world. Kryotos was curious to meet Veronica, famously brave Veronica, going ahead with a party this week, in spite of the fact that she was in chemotherapy.
When no-one in the SIO’s office had answered after five rings, DI Basset’s call was automatically transferred to the incident room, to the phone on the desk next to Kryotos’s. DI Diamond, pulling on his jacket and heading for the door on the way to pick up Gemini’s warrant, stopped and answered it.
‘Incident room.’ A pause and then: ‘DI Caffery’s not here, mate. Who wants him?’
Kryotos looked up. ‘He’s in his office,’ she mouthed.
‘He’s tied up just now. Anything I can do?’ Diamond listened for a m
oment, picking at a green ‘Met-Call’ sticker on the phone. ‘If you’ve got a lead then howsabout you take a statement yourself, MSS it to us, and if we like it we’ll pick it up?’ He broke off. ‘All right, mate, whatever you say.’ He pulled out a pen, uncapped it and positioned himself to write. ‘What have you got for me, then?’
He jotted down a few notes, glanced hungrily at Kryotos’s fudge cake, listened, recapped the pen, tucked the phone under his chin, looked at the cake again and idly scratched his ankle just above his sock. More theme socks, Kryotos noticed. Wallace and Gromit this time. Just about what she’d expect. She turned back to the monitor.
‘Look, Mr Basset—Basset! If I can just get a word in edgeways. Thank you. Now, tell me—are we talking an IC1 here—a white male? We are? Good. And this woman—a habitual caller, is she?’ He listened and smiled. ‘I see. No, no, no. We treat all tip-offs as serious. Thanks for the pointer. I’ll get it circulated to the crew. OK?’
Replacing the handset, he tore the page out of the book, stood, stretched and scratched his belly. ‘Jesus.’ He yawned. ‘Some of the shit you get thrown at you as soon as the public get a whiff of anything.’ He licked his lips. ‘Where’s your file thirteen, dolly?’
Kryotos looked up. ‘Sorry?’
‘Where’s the trash?’
She nudged the tagged confidential waste-paper bag out from under the desk with her bare foot. ‘The shredder’s on the blink. You’ll have to use this.’
‘You’re a good girl. You know that?’ He scrunched the paper into a ball, took a few steps back and zinged it into the bag. ‘Fucking foxes.’
‘Fucking F team,’ Kryotos said under her breath. She delicately removed a gobbet of fudge from her fingers, used a tissue to wipe her hands, and went back to her work.
... 25
While Diamond, swollen with confidence, the self-appointed conductor of the mission to pull Gemini in, drove victoriously to Deptford, Caffery and Essex’s route split off to St Dunstan’s in Greenwich. It was a good bright day, and, on the streets where chestnut trees hung over the park wall, women in floral prints walked with prams, occasionally stopping to wait patiently, hand out, for a fat-legged toddler to catch up. Cars lined the streets—they found a parking space almost half a mile away.
‘I wonder what he’s doing on a day like today,’ Essex said, looking at the sky as they parked. ‘Birdman. I wonder if he’s thinking about the next one.’
‘Thinking about a woman with blond hair.’
‘The clone. Someone he knows?’
‘Or someone he thinks he knows.’ Caffery opened the windows a crack, locked the car and pulled on his jacket.
‘So we’re looking for someone who drives, knows their way round anatomy, and has the hots for a blonde with small tits.’
‘Poetic.’
‘Ta.’ They separated to allow a female jogger in a black-and-white Nike sweatshirt past. Essex turned and watched her, the zinc-blond ponytail bobbing in the sun. ‘Maybe he’s already got the next one.’ He looked at Caffery. ‘Maybe’s he’s doing it with her now.’
Caffery pictured this possibility as they walked in silence towards the hospital. Neither spoke for a while. It was Essex who broke the mood, stopping suddenly, to rock back on his heels and give a long low wolf whistle.
‘Whoo-eee. Checkidout.’
Near the hospital gates, in a residents’ parking bay, glinting in the sun, sat a green Cobra convertible, wire wheels, cream upholstery, walnut steering-wheel. Essex approached it reverently, the same glazed expression he’d worn at Joni and Rebecca’s on his face. ‘Oh baby, mamma mia, excuse me while I ejaculate.’
Caffery rolled his eyes to the sky and sighed. ‘For God’s sake—if you must, then make it discreet. And quick, Detective Sergeant Essex. This fair city is counting on you.’
Wendy the librarian, in her customary twinset, blushed when she saw Caffery. She had the room ready.
‘You nearly lost it, though—one of the committees sits today. I thought for a moment they were going to want this room—I expect you had trouble parking, didn’t you?’
The blinds were drawn, and, placed thoughtfully on the desk, a writing pad which he wouldn’t use and two polystyrene cups of steaming tea with evaporated milk. Essex discreetly smuggled the tea out, tipped it in the urinals and got coffee and Twix bars from the canteen. Then he wandered away with the list to herd some interviewees in.
It was 12.30 p.m. and Caffery had interviewed three occupational therapists and an ophthalmology department technician, when the door opened and Cook came in. His shaggy coppery hair was curled up in a hairnet, and he had removed his scrubs to reveal a rainbow-striped nylon tank top, a canvas marijuana leaf appliquéd on the chest. He wore overlarge dark glasses which he only removed when the door was closed. Caffery was once again struck by the sore, wet eyes.
‘We’ve met.’ Caffery extended his hand.
‘Thomas Cook.’
‘Easy name to remember.’
‘This is about those girls, isn’t it?’ He ignored Caffery’s hand and pulled a chair back without waiting to be asked. ‘Since I saw you here last time I’ve been expecting a visit.’
Caffery steepled his fingers. ‘You know about it?’
‘It’s been all over the papers and Krishnamurthi was on the shout. They’re saying it was a Jack the Ripper copycat.’ He had a soft, nasal, womanly voice. ‘From that I guess this guy cut them. Am I right?’
‘Do you know Krishnamurthi?’
‘I’m a techie. I helped him on a few PMs before he went big time with the Home Office.’
‘You’re a mortuary assistant?’
‘I wanted to be a doctor.’ His face was expressionless. ‘This job was bottom of the spectrum, but it pays the bills.’
‘Mr Cook. I’m clearing up routine enquiries. As I hope my DS explained, you are under no obligation. You are talking to me of your own free will, I take it?’
‘That’s why I’m here.’
‘You live—’ Caffery put his glasses on and checked the address on the list. ‘Where? Lewisham?’
‘The Greenwich side. Near the Ravensbourne.’
‘Do you know a pub on the Trafalgar Road? The Dog and Bell?’
‘I don’t drink.’
‘You don’t know it?’
He crossed his pale, hairless hands on the table in front of him. ‘I don’t drink.’
Caffery took his glasses off. ‘Do you know it?’
‘Yes, I know it. No, I don’t go in it.’
‘Thank you.’ He put his glasses back on. ‘Have you ever seen this woman?’
He pushed the shot of Shellene over the table.
‘Is this the one whose face was crushed by a JCB?’
‘You’ve heard a lot.’
‘People whisper.’ He tilted his head and peered at the photo. ‘No, I don’t recognize her.’
Caffery slid the photos of Petra, Kayleigh and Michelle across. Cook put a finger on Kayleigh’s smiling face and dragged it closer.
‘Know her?’
He pushed the photograph back and looked at Caffery with his raw, colourless eyes. ‘No. I’d remember her.’
‘If it helped in our investigations, would you consider giving us a swab, a saliva sample, for DNA analysis?’
‘No problem.’
Caffery looked at him carefully. ‘No objections to that?’
‘You think because I look like a hippy I live by the civil liberties bible? Well I don’t: I trust science; I am a scientist. Of sorts.’
‘Could you tell me what you were doing on the night of the sixteenth of April? And the night of the nineteenth of May, that’s two weeks ago?’
‘I wouldn’t have a clue. I’ll ask when I get home. She’ll remember. My north, my south, my east, my west.’ His expression didn’t change. ‘My social secretary, my memory.’
Caffery fished inside his suit for a card. ‘When you remember give me a call.’
‘Is that it?’
&n
bsp; ‘Unless you’ve got something to tell me.’
‘You obviously haven’t got a lot to go on.’
‘We’ve got DNA evidence.’
‘Course you have.’ Cook stood. He wasn’t tall. His limbs were rounded and his hands were big. ‘I’ll be in touch.’ He reached in his back pocket for his sunglasses and, pulling them on, went out into the light-filled library.
In the darkened room Caffery sniffed. Cook had left a slight sour smell. Something like a mixture of old milk and patchouli oil. He tapped the pen on the desk thoughtfully.
After a while he wrote: Cook: says he is married/lives with someone. Believe him??????? he pondered this for a moment, then scribbled underneath: No.
For lunch he and Essex had Pasta Funghi and Spitfire beer in the Ashburnham Arms. Back at the hospital for the afternoon session, the library was quieter. Essex wandered off to round up staff from radiology and Caffery took a seat near the window to check through the morning’s notes. Slowly he became aware of a grey-haired figure in a white coat sitting in a booth on the far side of the periodical stacks, his head bent intently in study. There was something familiar about him.
Caffery approached.
‘Afternoon.’
The man took his steel-rim glasses off and looked up mildly. ‘Good afternoon.’
‘I’m sorry to interrupt.’
‘Not at all. Can I help?’
‘Yes.’ Caffery sat down and put his elbows on the desk. ‘You’re Dr Cavendish.’
‘This is true.’
‘You’ve moved from Guy’s?’
‘No, no.’ He closed the book and put the glasses in his pocket. ‘I’m here for a satellite clinic. Sickle cell. Unusually high incidence in south-east London.’
‘We’ve met.’
Cavendish looked embarrassed. ‘Forgive me. If there’s one lacuna in my character it is the ability to recall faces. I am not an individual primarily steered by visual stimuli, a quirk that Mrs Cavendish has found to be of great benefit over the years.’