by Adam Baron
The second part. That’s difficult.
Chapter Twenty-Two
One of McKenna’s arms was thrown out in front of him, the other one by his side. A long thick trail of red, bordered by crusts of dried black, ran down from the knife that someone had left in the agent’s neck. It ran past his ear, joining the tacky balloon of blood that sat pooled on the desk beneath him. Though McKenna’s head was resting on it, it didn’t look like a pillow. It was more like a cartoon bubble – but minus the words. A pity.
Everyone was looking at me. The room was silent.
‘This the sort of thing you used to do when you were one of us, Mr Rucker? Fairly basic error, wouldn’t you say – mistaking a murder victim for the murderer? Unless of course you’re suggesting that Mr McKenna here killed Alison and then, in a fit of remorse, stabbed himself three times in the back and once in the neck. Boys, I think we’ve solved it. You can all go home.’
I should have seen it coming but I hadn’t. I didn’t know what to say. Everyone in the room was looking at me intently, including McKenna. I turned to Coombes. Her head to one side she said, ‘So, still don’t think it was Draper, then?’ I glanced from her to her assistant, the kid who had been in my flat, who looked a little pale round the gills. Then my eyes took in the rest of the office.
The room we were standing in was about twenty feet by thirty. The walls were pale yellow, with frosted glass light fittings plus a series of framed and unframed photos running the entire length of the far wall. Draper looked out of one of them, as well as other faces I knew. The floor was a blocked hardwood, a huge modern rug covering most of it. A long leather sofa was backed against the rear wall, behind a smoked glass coffee table littered with magazines. It was an expensive-looking place, the office of a man doing well for himself.
‘Gentlemen,’ Coombes said to the room. ‘This is Billy Rucker. Former DS and now Private Dick, in every sense of the word. A man who’s got a rather strange knack of finding himself in the vicinity of corpses.’
She was talking to two fingerprint specialists who looked a trifle confused before going back about their business, one dusting the window frames, the other using a sideboard to bag and label items he’d found. They seemed oblivious to the fact that between them, lying on a big, bloodstained desk, was the slouched form of Jeff McKenna. Behind him was a set of sliding glass doors, looking out onto a small balcony. The low winter sun was trying to break into the room and half of the floor-length blinds had been turned against it.
Too other men were taking notice of McKenna. One went back to packing up a video recorder that he’d obviously just used on the scene while the other was using a tape measure to map the exact position of the victim.
‘How many wounds, Ron?’
‘Four, ma’am,’ the man with the measure replied. ‘Three in the upper back, the last one in the neck. All deep, this one’s gone through to the desk.’
‘A shame,’ Coombes said. ‘Nice piece of furniture. I wonder what they’ll do with it once we’ve got laddy-boy here bagged and away. Look nice in my flat that would. I wonder if the Habitat people would do me an exchange. I’ve never seen a sign disclaiming responsibility for corpse damage. Now then. Mr Rucker here thinks that Mr McKenna here is a dangerous killer, so I want you all to be careful. I also want you to take notice of his technique and learn from him. Mr Rucker, the scene is yours.’
Coombes swept a hand out before me and smiled. Her attitude surprised me. The ironic detachment was usually a male thing – who can be the least concerned, the most blasé. Even then I always felt it sat uncomfortably on most officers, who seemed to feel they had to take part in it. But Coombes was enjoying herself. She was making sure she outdid the men, she got there before they did. It certainly seemed to work, they all looked at her as if she were barely human. I could see why she’d made DS in her early thirties.
Coombes moved her hand again so I shrugged and took a step forward. Seeing as she’d invited me, I moved towards McKenna and he stared at me through two vacant eyes, filmy as those on a bass the fishmonger can’t sell.
‘Don’t touch anything, please. Don’t want to mix your prints up with any of yours that may already be here, do we?’
Coombes moved to the right of the desk and I mirrored her. McKenna was, or had been, a short, heavy-set man, with dirty blond hair tied back in a ponytail. It was difficult to say what he looked like because his cheek was squashed into the blood beneath it, some soaked into a neatly trimmed goatee, but it was the same man whose face I’d seen in the Star. Though McKenna was slumped over his desk, rigor had stiffened him, giving him the artificial appearance of a badly weighted dummy. He was dressed in a black suit, a white shirt without a tie rimmed with blood around a tightly fastened collar. I looked for signs of lividity in his neck but there was too much blood to see. I looked down at the hand by McKenna’s side, already discoloured to purple by the blood that was gathered there. I moved round and saw the three stab wounds in his back. The small, dark tears in his suit looked like bullet holes. The wounds looked too small, too insignificant to kill a man, but any single one of them would have done it.
Coombes stood over me as I studied the knife. It was the type used by sushi chefs, but I’d seen ones like it in any number of cookshops and department stores. I could just make out the brand name. The handle was a hard, shiny steel, with indentations for grip, many of which were clogged with blood where it had backed up out of the wound. I looked from it, to the rest of the corpse, before leaning over to the fingernails on the hand thrown out in front of him. I couldn’t see anything in them. I looked for signs that his clothing was in any sort of disarray, which might have suggested a struggle. It wasn’t. It seemed pretty obvious that he’d let the person in and then been stabbed from behind. He probably died wondering just what the fuck was going on.
Looking over McKenna’s body didn’t have the same effect on me as seeing Alison’s had. Maybe it was some kind of inherent sexism on my part. Or maybe the fact that it was now a crime scene gave me distance, the presence of five police officers all treating it with flat humour or efficient unconcern had dulling any feelings I might have. It might even have been because of Alison – I’d seen her so recently that something in me had prepared itself, re-erected the wall that had gradually crumbled over the last seven years. I had a feeling I hadn’t had since it had been my job to look down at inert forms, former people. It was distaste. Distaste for myself.
I stood up, my hands on my hips. ‘When was he found?’
‘The cleaner opened up at eight this morning,’ Coombes said. ‘I don’t think she was expecting the kind of mess she walked in on. He was alive at six last night, the receptionist saw him.’
I turned to my left. ‘What’s the smell?’
The DC packing up the camera looked up from his equipment. He was a well-built man in his mid-forties with a full moustache and thin, sandy-coloured hair. He was dressed in tight chinos, a blue short-sleeved shirt and a burgundy tie. He looked at Coombes. She nodded.
‘Apart from piss, shit and blood?’ he asked in deep Lancastrian tones. ‘Gin. Gin and tonic. There was a glass on the desk. Prints all over it. Probably turn out to be the victim’s but we’ve bagged it anyway.’
‘I can still smell it, though.’
He nodded. ‘There’s more on the floor, behind him. Broken shards as well. Another glass. It must have got smashed. We think that one was being used by the perp.’
‘Prints?’
‘The pieces are too small. And there aren’t enough. Perp must have taken the bigger bits with him, when it was all over.’
‘Bugger.’
‘Bugger indeed,’ the man agreed.
‘Anything else?’
I turned to the man at the sideboard, labelling bags. He was smaller than his colleague, with large, heavy plastic glasses that gave him more of a scientific look. He had the glass tumbler in his hand, protected by plastic. He introduced himself as DC Carpenter.
‘A
ny more prints?’
‘Plenty,’ he said. ‘We’ve been over every inch of this place. This guy was an agent of some sort. A lot of people came through here. Prints all over the coffee table, the magazines.’ He smiled, and looked at Coombes. ‘Don’t worry, we’ve got more than enough for you lot to be going on with.’
‘And it’ll all turn out to be shit,’ Coombes said. ‘We’ll end up interviewing most of the squad of Tottenham Hotpsur and half the cast of Starlight fucking Express. Right then.’
Coombes unfolded her arms and seemed to come to life. She’d enjoyed playing games with me but now they were over. She asked me if I’d like to revise my little theory about McKenna, and then asked me if I’d spoken to Draper yet or if I knew where he was. I said I hadn’t and I didn’t. She didn’t believe me. Coombes asked me again how I’d learnt that McKenna had sold Jack out and I was about to tell her when three men clothed in greens filed through the door. They said ‘Hi’ to the forensic team and ‘Morning, ma’am’ to Coombes. They set a stretcher down by the side of the desk.
Coombes and I watched as the three men approached the body. Now that they’d mapped his position and filmed him, McKenna could be moved. They’d get a far better look in the morgue. The most senior of the three men had another quick look beneath his eyelids, though, and into his wounds. Then his two colleagues lifted McKenna upright, one pulling the knife up out of the desk where its point had just broken the lacquered surface. The duty pathologist spent a while pressing the neck, probably looking for lividity marks like I had, which give away an approximate time of death. He was gentle, like a doctor examining an appendix wound. He reached over and turned the blinds a notch. Then he told his colleagues to set the corpse back down and he took hold of the knife that was still embedded in McKenna’s neck. He wasn’t pulling it out, though. Instead he grasped it firmly with both hands, moving it left in the wound then right, testing the pressure.
‘So?’ Coombes asked. ‘Won’t you give us your opinion?’
I turned from the body, more than happy to do so. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’
‘Tell me.’
I shrugged. ‘He knew them.’ I glanced towards the door. ‘No sign of that lock being forced. Downstairs door looked okay to me too. Killed from behind after making a couple of drinks. Find out which of his mates drinks G and T. You’ll check the phone calls, in and out?’
‘Of course. Anything else?’
‘Dunno. When do you think he got it?’
‘From initial temperature, sometime last night.’
I nodded. Cheryl had seen him at five. ‘Right. Well, whoever did it was careful.’
‘Whoever?’ A laugh.
‘Whoever. Taking the glass like that. He’s not someone who’ll panic.’
‘Still think it wasn’t Draper?’
I thought of Cheryl, sitting in my office. It had all seemed so easy. ‘I don’t know what to think,’ I said.
The men in greens had a bit of trouble getting McKenna onto the stretcher. I don’t know why they tried to straighten him, it was never going to happen. As they were wasting their time Coombes turned to me. She looked thoughtful. Something had seemed to soften in her.
‘Spoke to your old gaffer after I left you,’ she said. ‘Ken Clay.’
I saw a fat man with yellow teeth and empty, piggy eyes, all encased in a cloud of Aramis.
‘Nice for you.’
‘Asked him what kind of man you were. Said you used to be a pretty fine copper.’
I looked at her and shrugged, wondering where this was going. ‘I had my moments. Got lucky a couple of times.’
‘We all need that. Not sure what to make of you now, though, he told me.’ Coombes left a second and her nose and mouth squeezed together. I knew what was coming. ‘He told me why you quit. I…I’m sorry.’ I didn’t say anything. ‘It must have been hell. Those bastards wanting to get to you and then your brother getting in the way. Christ. Did you have to leave, though?’
‘I had to leave.’
‘Couldn’t you have just taken time out? To get over it. Clay said they would have given you as long as you needed.’
‘It wouldn’t have been long enough,’ I said. ‘However long they gave me.’
‘Don’t miss it, then, this?’
I just laughed.
‘What about…?’
I was saved from any further probing by a sound in the hallway. I followed Coombes’ gaze out there and saw two heads reaching the top of the stairs. Coombes stiffened instantly. She stepped back like a cornered animal, before shooting me a vicious, warning glance. I didn’t understand. But then I saw who it was, stiff backed, approaching the room at a brisk pace. Coombes looked at me, to see that I understood. I smiled. The man walking towards us was Deputy Commissioner John Landridge, the number two policeman in the entire Met. He had a reputation for sticking his oar into high-profile cases, having done a lot behind the scenes on the Jill Dando killing. In my day he was a chief liaison officer at Scotland Yard, and I’d had some dealings with him. Coombes looked terrified at being caught allowing a civilian on a crime scene, especially one with as much media interest as this had. There was, however, nothing she could do about it.
‘Morning everyone,’ Landridge barked.
We all wished him good morning in reply, nearly all of us adding a sir at the end.
‘Good to see you all hard at it. Coombes, isn’t it?’
‘Sir.’
‘Super Jack put another one in the back of the net, has he, Coombes?’
We all chuckled.
‘Looks that way, sir.’
‘Right then, that makes him our leading scorer this season. Better get him arrested, hadn’t we? Should have done that before now. So, what’s the state of play here?’
‘Just removing the body, sir. The scene’s been mapped and filmed, prints taken. Once the body’s out we’ll seal it. We’ll leave someone to answer the phone.’ She told him about the glass fragments and the door to door she’d put in motion.
‘Good stuff. Carry on, then. Don’t mind me, everyone.’
Landridge stood with his hands behind his back, a good six two with a mane of black hair shot with silver. He looked as imposing in his snap uniform as he no doubt intended. He was in his late fifties, but still had a hell of a dynamism about him. As I was the only one apart from Coombes who didn’t seem to be racing around, his eyes fell on me. A frown crept onto his face like a cloud across the sun. I could see Coombes wince.
‘We’ve met?’
Coombes stood stock-still. I smiled. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Used to work out of…Camden? No, Islington?’
I nodded.
‘You’re working with Coombes now?’
It was sort of the truth, so I admitted it.
‘Excellent. Tucker, am I right? Phil?’
‘That’s it.’
‘Yes. Yes. The CC and myself pride ourselves on knowing who’s in our force. Put away a lot of nasty Yardies five, six years ago, yes?’
‘More like eight, sir.’
‘Is it really? My word. Got a lot of good PR points for that if I recall, could do with you doing it again. Oh well, glad to see you’re on the team.’
The sun suddenly cut into the room and Landridge put a hand to his face as though he were being interviewed by the Stasi.
‘Actually—’ Coombes began.
‘Wait!’ I said.
My cry brought everyone’s attention to the stretcher. McKenna had been loaded onto it sideways, in a foetal position, a cushion keeping the knife in place. He was being taken into the hallway, where they’d cover him and secure him to the dolly before carrying him downstairs. The two men at either end stopped.
‘Wait! There.’
Something was glinting. I pointed to the far end of the stretcher and everyone followed my hand.
‘Look.’
I took a step forward. Everyone was still. Poking out of the turn-up on McKenna’s left trouser leg was a piece of glass,
dazzling as it was caught by one of the slats of sunlight pressing through the open blinds. Instinctively, Coombes stepped towards it too.
‘Leave it!’
Landridge stopped her. He turned to DC Carpenter. Carpenter still had his gloves on. He looked unsure for a second, then went towards the glinting jag, gingerly easing it out. He held it by the edges. It was a thin, triangular-shaped splinter, two inches at its base, three along. Carpenter’s wrist turned as he examined it.
‘Don’t keep us in suspense, man!’
Nobody spoke as Carpenter took the glass fragment over to the sideboard, where he set it down on a length of clingfilm. He opened his case and took out a bottle of dark grey aluminium dust. He uncapped it. He sprinkled a good quantity of the dust over the whole surface of the glass before brushing the dust away. He leaned over and sent a light breath across the surface. Then Carpenter picked the jag up again, carefully. He held it up, his arm at full stretch, until he found the light.