by Stav Sherez
She was sitting silently on a stool beside the bed, eyes closed, her face tilted slightly towards him, and he could see the curve of her lips, the sudden fullness at the centre, a scar the shape and size of a thumbnail just below her jaw.
‘I wasn’t sure we’d have time for that coffee later, so I thought we may as well do it now.’ Karen leaned forward and her hair spilled across her shoulders as she handed him the small hot cup of espresso, their fingers touching for a brief second.
‘Thank you,’ he said, managing to smile. They held each other’s stare for a moment, her eyes fierce black orbs, her smile soft and gentle. He was still adrift on a sea of painkillers, the hard edges of the world softened into brushstrokes, and in the spilled light she looked haloed and aglow.
A sudden panic flashed through his mind like black rain. ‘Is . . . is my mother okay?’
Karen smiled, her eyes crinkling into focus. ‘She’s fine, Jack. I’ve just come from upstairs. She’s sleeping peacefully. That’s not why I’m here.’
Her accent made even the most familiar words sound exotic. Carrigan relaxed back into the bed. ‘I never thought I’d find myself a couple of floors down from my mother.’ He looked up at Karen and all he wanted to do was fall into her life, her petty struggles, middle-of-the-night fears and small unexpected joys. To forget his own life inside of hers.
She took a sip of her coffee, her lips parting slightly. ‘We never know where each moment will find us. That’s why when I heard you were here I came straight down.’
The door snapped open and they both looked up, startled and gape-eyed, as Geneva entered the room. She took one step inside then stopped and stared at Karen. Her gaze went over to the two espresso cups on Carrigan’s bedside table, then back to the nurse. She blinked twice as she recognised her and her mouth tightened into a perfect O.
‘No one’s supposed to be in here,’ Geneva said. ‘This room is off limits.’ Her voice was sharp and brittle in the tiled white space.
‘I was just checking on him.’
‘I can see that.’
Karen raised her eyebrows and looked back towards Carrigan. She shrugged her shoulders, her eyes retreating, and got up and left the room.
‘That wasn’t very nice.’
Geneva looked down at the floor, her mobile clutched tightly in her right hand. ‘I know. I’m sorry. This fucking case . . .’ She trailed off, not wanting to say it was also the sight of him, so helpless there on the bed.
‘Forget it,’ he replied. ‘We’ve got bigger things to worry about.’
He started to lift himself up and when Geneva tried to say something he cut her off. ‘Quinn’s talking about bringing in a new DI. I need to get back to the station.’
Just then, the door opened and a young, harried-looking doctor came in. He glanced sharply at Carrigan until he lay back down on the bed. The doctor didn’t say a word to either of them as he went round checking the machines and making notes on the clipboard he’d taken off the end of the bed. Finally he turned towards Carrigan. ‘We’re going to take you down for a few more tests, I’m afraid. Shouldn’t be too painful.’
‘How long’s it going to take?’
The doctor was ticking something off on his clipboard and didn’t look up as he answered. ‘A couple of hours, give or take, but there’s no hurry. We want to keep you here a few more days for observation, make sure nothing permanent got damaged. You’re a little overweight and rather unfit for your age and you took quite a fall. I’ll have the orderlies come for you in ten minutes.’ The doctor checked Carrigan’s pulse, looked under his eyelids, made a few more notes and left.
A scream came from the room next door. Carrigan looked at the tubes and clips attached to his skin, saw two orderlies wheeling someone down the dark endless hallway, and started pulling the drips out of his body.
‘Are you sure you should be doing that?’ Geneva asked.
‘Get my jacket,’ he said, ignoring the concern in her voice. ‘And get everyone together in the incident room. We’ve wasted enough time.’
18
They clapped as he entered. He didn’t know why they were doing this; he’d failed after all, the probable suspects had been in his grasp and he’d let them get the better of him. His left eye was black and swollen, and he had a square of white gauze taped to his right temple. He tried to smile but it still hurt too much, so he nodded his head and waited for everyone to take their seats. Someone, maybe Geneva, had left a chocolate Florentine by his chair. He took a hurried bite, feeling the sugar hit, and then he began.
‘First of all, thank you for all this, but I fucked up. I should have called back-up and maybe we’d have those two in custody right now instead of this bloody headache I’ve got, so, please, no more clapping, okay?’
‘We weren’t clapping because you got beaten up,’ Karlson was rather too eager to clarify. ‘We just heard back from the lab. They managed to extract a sample, God knows how they did it so quickly. The DNA from the pink hair you found matches the sample the pathologist retrieved from the eleventh victim. I think we can be pretty certain that the body in the confession booth is the new girl Hubbard told us about. We’re running the sample through the database at the moment but the server’s on the blink, as usual, so it’s going to take a while.’
Carrigan stared at his sergeant – was there a grudging acceptance in the man’s tone? He’d never got on with Karlson, or maybe it was the other way around, but there was something about this case that seemed to transgress all personal issues. ‘That’s great,’ he said. ‘But it doesn’t mean we’ll necessarily be able to identify the eleventh victim – it’s only good to us if she’s on record somewhere, so don’t get your hopes up.’ He stopped, out of breath, a sharp hot pain in his left side making him buckle. ‘Anyone talk to the SOCOs about what they found in the secret room?’ he said, hoping no one had noticed his momentary weakness.
Singh looked up from her notes. ‘A lot of fingerprints, mainly overlaid and of no use to us. They said it looked like many people had stayed in the room. I did manage to identify the statue found at the seat of fire. It depicts Archbishop Oscar Romero. The sampler in the secret room is of the same person. He was a famous church leader and liberation theologian in Central and South America and was assassinated in 1980.’
‘What on earth is liberation theology?’ Karlson asked.
‘No idea,’ Singh replied. ‘The SOCOs also went through the bookcase in the secret room. The books had nothing unusual inside them. They’re sending them over to us today. They didn’t find anything else they considered significant.’
‘The hidden room is significant,’ Carrigan said. ‘Many older religious buildings have priest-holes of some kind but this one was in use. Was the girl with the pink hair staying there? And if so, why? Singh – get the blueprints for the convent, see if the room is marked on them or whether it’s a later addition. There was also something that looked like a workshop along the back wall – tools and machines and so forth – I want you to liaise with forensics over this, find out what the space was used for . . . it doesn’t fit with the rest of the basement.’ He paused and looked down at his hands, then cleared his throat. ‘We still have no idea what the cocaine was doing there and that bothers me.’ He looked across the room and saw Karlson smiling to himself. ‘You have something to share with us, Sergeant?’
Karlson shuffled in his chair, stretched and sat up. ‘The nuns were hassling dealers and moving them on. Maybe they confiscated the coke off one of these dealers. It would give that someone a bloody good motive to set the fire.’
‘It seems a bit implausible,’ Carrigan replied, making a note in his policy book. ‘Now, how’re we doing on locating Father McCarthy?’
Jennings shrugged despondently. ‘I spoke to Roger Holden and he told me that, as of yesterday, Father McCarthy is on retreat and uncontactable.’
‘On retreat?’ Carrigan repeated, wondering exactly what kind of game Holden was playing. ‘Thank you, Jenning
s – keep hassling the diocese, try and find out exactly where he’s staying. We need to talk to Father McCarthy. We know he was a regular visitor and he was seen leaving the premises an hour before the fire.’
‘You think it’s possible he set the fire?’ Jennings asked.
‘I’m not thinking anything yet except it’s bloody curious he decided to pick this week to go on retreat.’ Carrigan wrote something down on the whiteboard then turned towards Geneva. ‘Miller, what did you find out at the diocese?’
Geneva ran through it point by point. ‘It looks like Mother Angelica recruited the other nuns. Seven of them knew each other from Peru. They were all stationed there in 1973.’
‘1973 . . .’ Carrigan said. ‘Forty years ago.’
Geneva nodded, and there was a momentary silence as they considered the implications of this. ‘They also curtailed all their charity work a year ago. Before, they were involved in organising homeless shelters and youth workshops. They set up drug rehab centres and mobilised local residents in picketing known drug houses, giving out leaflets and advice to customers – suddenly, this all stops dead a year ago.’
‘And you’re assuming this has something to do with the case?’
‘Everything has something to do with the case until we rule it out.’
He nodded. It was something he’d taught her. ‘Okay, keep looking into that, Miller, but let’s focus on what we have that’s concrete. Berman? Did you get anything from the school’s CCTV tapes?’
Berman’s face emerged from the bank of computer screens lining his desk. He blinked twice like some burrowing animal unused to the light. ‘We got lucky there. Because of previous problems with paedophiles, the school keeps all the footage archived.’ He stood up, taking a long black lead from his desk, and plugged it into the back of a flatscreen television mounted on the far wall. He was clumsy and uncoordinated and it took him several tries before he got it right. ‘The camera is angled towards the front gates of the school. The convent is two doors down. We can just see their driveway.’ Berman nervously fingered the prayer shawl he wore under his shirt and looked up at the screen as if for confirmation to carry on. ‘The uniforms spent all night going through the footage. Take a look at this.’
He pressed a button on his laptop and the TV flickered to life revealing the front gate of the school and the gently curving road beyond. Berman fast-forwarded the tape until a black SUV drove into frame, slowed down and disappeared at the edge of the camera’s domain. ‘I checked the number-plate. It’s fake, not stolen, made up from two separate plates as far as I can tell.’ He pointed to the screen. ‘They’re parking a couple of doors down from the school, almost directly outside the convent. See how they’re starting to swing in?’
Berman switched to another shot. ‘This is a couple of weeks later. It’s the same SUV, no doubt about it. Now watch this . . .’ He fast-forwarded the tape until a glimmer of black filled the bottom left-hand corner. ‘This time there’s already somebody else double-parked outside the convent – you can just make out the back of what looks like a Royal Mail van.’
He pressed play and they all watched as the black SUV came to a stop closer to the school gates. The driver was the first one out but his face was obscured by the top of the SUV and he quickly walked off screen. Then the man sitting in the passenger seat opened his door. He stepped out, checked either side of him, then looked directly at the school.
Carrigan stared at the frozen image of the man who’d been standing at the top of the stairs. In the light, his face was raw and curiously unformed, but the scar which disfigured his mouth was unmistakable.
‘Thought you’d like that,’ Berman said, punching keys with a renewed energy. ‘You’re going to like this even more.’
The image changed and Carrigan saw that the sergeant was running the video taken at the initial crime scene, a visual record of the frantic eager crowd who’d gathered to watch the fire. The young female constable had done a good job. There were families with kids and shopping bags, groups of teenagers swigging on cans of lager and Middle Eastern businessmen in long flowing white robes, everyone’s eyes wide and agape, their faces freckled by flame, a reverent awe in their muted expressions. Carrigan found himself transfixed, realising he’d never seen this footage before, watching the rapt and stunned faces as the camera moved steadily through the crowd, past the pressed huddle of bodies and flung arms and party cheer, and suddenly there he was.
The same man. Three rows back, watching the fire and talking to another man who was partially hidden from view.
‘This was taken only an hour after the fire started,’ Berman said.
He paused the video and Carrigan stared at his assailant, the small recessed eyes and jagged horror-film scar. He got up and walked over to the screen.
Everyone was silent and spooked and a little excited. Carrigan’s eyes were fixed on the TV. The man who’d attacked him in the ruins had visited the convent a week before. He’d been standing outside watching the fire as it blazed. Had this man followed him to the ruins last night? Or had he come there for a different purpose and just stumbled upon him?
‘Karlson, get Berman to run you off some stills. Focus on the scar. There can’t be too many of those around. Check through the PNC database – if he’s been in trouble before, it’ll be in there.’ He walked back to the table and sat down and pulled out his policy book. ‘Our main focus now is getting an ID on this man. I want you to circulate the photos, see if anyone in vice or immigration recognises him, send it to all patrol and watch officers.’ He stopped and waited for everyone to finish their frantic scribbling, and was about to assign the constables their daily tasks when Karlson’s computer started beeping insistently. Everyone stopped what they were doing and turned towards the sergeant’s desk. Karlson was staring at the screen, his face a mask of surprise.
‘What?’ Carrigan said.
‘The system’s back online. We’ve got a match . . .’ The normally deadpan sergeant looked utterly astonished as he clicked on the link, his fingers tapping impatiently against the desktop.
‘I don’t fucking believe it . . .’ he said. ‘Our eleventh victim has a criminal record.’
19
Emily Maxted.
Thirty-two years old.
Carrigan flicked through the three scant pages resting on his lap as Geneva drove, the cars and trees and buses whipping by his window in a smeary spray of light.
Emily had been arrested in 2008 for cannabis possession. The arrest had resulted in a couple of hours in the cells and, luckily for them, a DNA sample, taken from her as part of a trial programme the Met had been running at the time. The sample matched both the pink hair found in the priest-hole door and the degraded DNA from the corpse in the confession booth.
Emily Maxted was their eleventh victim.
Carrigan felt his heart beat a little bit faster.
As they headed north, the tight constriction of Paddington and Kilburn gave way to an unobscured sky, steep hills and sudden unexpected views. Parkland spread out on either side, a brilliant blaze of white melting into the far horizon. Children ran across the road clutching toboggans in mittened hands while their parents tried to keep up, hampers and wet writhing dogs juggled in their arms. The snow fell in white swirly sheets making the world seem domed and contained as if they were trapped inside a snow-globe. Carrigan took a KitKat from his pocket and scored his nails down the foil, popping half of it in his mouth and closing his eyes for a moment to savour the taste. When he opened them again he noticed Geneva watching him. ‘What?’
‘Is that all you’re having for lunch?’
He balled up the chocolate wrapper and dropped it next to his seat. ‘Got another one in my pocket.’
She couldn’t help but smile and was a little too slow to cover it up. ‘You know that’s not what I meant.’
‘I’ll eat when the case is over,’ he said, unpeeling the small faded photo from the first page of the arrest sheet and holding it between
his fingers.
Emily Maxted had been stunned by the flash, her eyes squinting against the sudden burst of light. But despite that, and the fact she’d just been arrested, there was something about her that would grab your attention even in a crowded room. Her skin was pale and finely textured and it made her eyes appear unnaturally green and defiant. There was a dangerous curve to her lips and her hair was dyed purple and hung across her forehead in a set of uneven bangs that concealed as much as they revealed. She seemed squeezed into the photo’s frame, its strict parameters unable to contain her, but even in this single snapped moment Carrigan could see a wealth of buried history lurking in her eyes, storms and resentments and things that happened to her when she was four years old.
He put down the photo and re-checked the address on the file, telling Geneva to take the next right. They soon entered a hidden London, spacious and pristine, folded between the rolling hills and humps of Hampstead Heath. The area looked as if the last hundred years had never happened. They drove by houses that took up a whole block, houses invisible behind ten-foot walls and houses set so far back on their grounds they seemed mere specks on the horizon. The road curved and twisted as it followed the swirled spine of the heath, making the residences seem cut off from one another, distant ships on a jewelled sea. You could spend money to protect and seclude yourself from the harsh noise and swagger of the city but, as they pulled into the driveway, Carrigan knew that no amount of money could spare the people inside from the news he was about to deliver.
He got out of the car, brushed the crumbs from his jacket and stretched his legs as he stared up at the imposing Palladian facade. ‘You ever done this before?’ He turned towards Geneva, startled at how pale and drawn she looked.
‘Once . . . only once,’ she replied. ‘Swore I’d never do it again.’ She laughed faintly, the sound disappearing almost as soon as it escaped her mouth.
He’d been pleasantly surprised when she’d volunteered to come along. It was a necessary part of the job but it was always ugly and nothing would change that. It was the part everyone hated, the part where they suddenly made excuses or remembered important meetings they were late for, but Carrigan had always believed that he, as the investigating officer, should do it himself. No victim’s relatives deserved a uniform three weeks into the job stumbling through his lines and putting his foot in it. But it wasn’t just that, he had to admit, as he stared one last time at the photo. They needed to find out as much as they could about the mysterious pink-haired girl, about her life and friends and routines, before they could understand how she was involved with the nuns and why she was there that night.