Operation Telic. Telic, meaning ‘directed towards a definite end, goal or purpose’; the understated British name for what the Americans called Operation Iraqi Freedom. Fifteen-hour shifts, seven days a week, boiling in the day and freezing at night, bored shitless ninety per cent of the time, scared shitless the rest. He’d walked patrols, driven patrols, guarded things, smiled at the locals, won hearts and minds, helped officers wipe their arses and on several occasions been shot at. Most of the time it was impossible to see where it was coming from. If anyone could confidently see where it was coming from, you shot back. Stark couldn’t say whether he’d ever hit anyone, most likely not. Contacts like those were exhilarating, terrifying, surreal and not a little sickeningly pointless, the only way in which it was anything like a video game. Of the company Stark augmented, seven were wounded, two killed. They were lucky. Luckier than the poor people of Basra, that was for sure.
Then had followed two months’ ‘Decompression & Normalization’, army speak for making sure you were safe to let out of the box. This was particularly important to TA veterans who, not having army ‘family’ close through living on or around a base, were twice as likely to suffer mental-health issues, through drink, depression or domestic disharmony. Stark had read that nearly 6 per cent suffered PTSD symptoms compared to 2.5 per cent of regulars. The TA downside. Stark got ten days in Cyprus on the way back, sitting on the beach with occasional lectures on stress followed by twenty-four hours’ family leave, then straight off for a week on the Brecon Beacons, hiking up and down in the rain, and the rest on barracks guard duty, still in the rain. Then he was back on Civvy Street, the same but not the same. He’d done his bit, but it wasn’t enough.
A lot had happened since then. If not, he’d probably still have been sitting on the fence between two vocations. But here he was, career copper, and finding the lack of alternative uncomfortable. He’d give it a year, see how he felt about it then, see how he healed, see what was left.
All these thoughts bounced around in his head whenever he looked up from his book to stare at the countryside and townscapes flitting past the train window. Two changes and a taxi ride later he stood before a white plastic front door in a generic brick house in a cul-de-sac in a development of dozens like it. His hand hesitated, then pressed the bell.
‘Mrs Collins,’ he said stiffly, as she opened the door.
‘At ease, Corporal,’ she replied, forcing a smile. ‘You’d better come in and tell me what’s so awful you had to come all this way.’
4
Fresh dreams chased him awake. The intensity of recollection seemed to be increasing rather than diminishing with time. He had pushed fear aside, he thought. But it pushed back hard, so hard it still racked him here in this cold room, conscious, whole, alive, nearly nine months later.
How long could this go on? Why some nights and not others? The shrinks at Headley Court might tell him, the door remained ajar, but he was damned if he’d go back. It was a limited resource and some other poor sod needed it now. Besides, his papers were due soon – Honourable Discharge. Tell that to the guys with no legs, no arms or no eyes. It was wrong to call it bitterness: you took the coin, you knew this could happen. But a discharge might as well have come with a boot in the behind and the door slamming shut behind you. Suddenly you belonged to the NHS, but ‘Don’t worry, priority treatment, military covenant and all that. Great to have you, honour to have served and all that, good luck!’ And the NHS was too cumbersome to notice those drifting away from treatment in droves. Those most in need, those with combined physical and mental damage, were too often those least able to meet the NHS halfway. That left the charities, but with the state abdicating responsibility to them so heavily, they were already stretched to breaking. No, thought Stark, struggling to his feet, he would make do with Doc Hazel, ineffectual as she might be, and with the physical treatment he knew he was lucky to receive.
Dawn was well under way and there was little hope of more sleep. As he ate he stared hard at the whisky and pills on the coffee-table. Little blue OxyContin pills, 5mg, the smallest dose available. An opioid nonetheless, a loathed, all too frequently necessary crutch, both masking and highlighting his physical state. Not to be mixed with alcohol, they proclaimed – unless you’re an insomniac who thinks he knows better than a consensus of informed doctors and expert pharmacologists, thought Stark, with a minor twinge of guilt. Very minor. Needs must when the devil drove. He’d done without both last night; it would be ridiculous to start either now. The pain wasn’t too bad and the sleep was already lost.
After exercises and shower, he studied his reflection as he shaved, studied the scars, not for the first time feeling a strange, chilling, detached ambivalence creeping over him. He made himself look harder, past the marks to their causes, groping for the warmth, however burning. Maybe his mind had decided it was just too tired today, he thought, giving up.
When the uniform car pulled up he was feeling discernibly less motivated than he’d felt a week earlier. He’d have to start walking it soon; being a burden didn’t sit well. The very thought made his hip twinge but he wasn’t ready to buy another car, not until the physios said a manual was okay: with his hip as it was, they insisted it was an automatic or nothing. You had to draw the line somewhere. Besides, walking would speed things up.
He didn’t know the two constables. ‘DS Millhaven asked us to drop you in town,’ said the passenger. ‘There’s been another homeless assault, bad one.’
‘How bad?’ asked Stark, shaking off his lethargy.
‘Don’t know much. An old fella, I think, in the hospital.’ The two talked about the string of attacks and what they’d like to do to the culprits in a cheerfully righteous manner until they turned and parked in the grounds of the large town-centre church, St Alfege. There was police tape across a substantial pedestrian gateway that opened into some kind of park beyond. Uniforms were deflecting public curiosity while Fran stood talking to a man Stark didn’t know. He might have said arguing with, from their body language.
Stark took a moment to get his bearings and realized this must be the other side of the dark space into which Kyle Gibbs had climbed the previous week. Fran spotted him and impatiently beckoned him over. ‘DS Harper, this is the new boy, Trainee Investigator Constable Stark. He’s been tasked to the investigation since he started last week.’
Harper was a tall, solid, thick-set man in his thirties with one of those broken-nosed, hard-bitten but handsome faces, like a rugby flanker; he even had a fat lip and freshly healed cut over one eye. He looked more post-match than post-flu. He glanced at Stark without comment and returned his attention to Fran. ‘You still haven’t answered my question.’
‘It was DCI Groombridge’s decision. We didn’t know you’d be back today and I’ve been boning up on the files to quiz Stark here. It’s nothing personal. I’m sure the DCI will take me off it once he knows you’re back.’ Fran smiled reassuringly.
Harper nodded unsmilingly. ‘What’s the vic’s condition?’
‘Intensive care at the Queen Elizabeth, stable but hasn’t regained consciousness. Churchwarden found him after he opened the gates,’ continued Fran. ‘Thought he was just asleep till he noticed the blood. Apparently knew he was here, said that the homeless sometimes come here during the day, a quiet refuge of sorts, and he lets the elderly or frail stay overnight if they want to. He’s not really supposed to. He said the old boy’d been “beaten like an animal”.’
Harper nodded. ‘I’d put money on Gibbs and Co.’
‘Working hypothesis,’ agreed Fran. ‘The shops will be opening now so I’ve sent Bryden and Dixon to see if any have external CCTV we might use.’
‘SOCO got anything yet?’
Fran lifted the tape. ‘Let’s find out.’
Harper ducked under and Stark took the tape for Fran to do the same. He hesitated, then passed through with a guilty thrill, a wholly inappropriate excitement that made it hard not to smile. He stood at the other s
ide of the tape and took a deep breath.
The open space proved to be the old church burial ground, but at some time the headstones had been relocated against the perimeter walls; only the small stone sarcophagi remained in their original positions. Now it was St Alfege Park, a pretty little space despite its visible history. To his right he saw the gate Gibbs had scaled to evade him, now unlocked and open. In a far corner there was another, offering Gibbs two exit options. It was futile to speculate on which he’d used. With all three gates taped off, the whole park was now the outer cordon. Inside, figures in disposable white hooded overalls, blue overshoes and gloves were painstakingly preserving the scene. Several areas had been taped off to form inner cordons, scene-of-crime officers only. Fran beckoned over a man holding a clipboard, the crime-scene manager. ‘What have we got?’
The CSM pointed to the old brick public convenience near the headstone-lined perimeter wall. ‘The assault took place behind there, a narrow passageway open at both ends. A dirty, tatty, bloodstained sleeping-bag, some cardboard and a knitted bobble hat. The victim’s limited belongings in a plastic bag, kicked away, items strewn, nothing to identify him.’
Stark felt a chill. This was suddenly a lot more real than it had been reading it from the files. He listened closely as the man continued: ‘Also a condom packet, open but with the condom still inside. Lubricant still wet.’
‘Perhaps indicating an amorous couple retreated this way for a quickie knee-trembler and found it occupied,’ said Fran.
The CSM shrugged and pointed across the park to one cluster of sarcophagi. ‘Over there we found the grass littered with empty lager cans, Tennent’s Super.’
‘Ferrier Rats,’ growled Harper.
‘If we come across anything significant we’ll pass it on, but for now that’s as far as we’ve got. After that it’s down to the forensics.’ The CSM excused himself and went back to work.
‘Did they finally beat someone who mattered?’ Stark asked Fran rhetorically.
‘We’re not talking broken bones this time. The guy’s probably in his seventies and the paramedics didn’t rate his chances above fifty-fifty.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Unknown. Perhaps you’d like to be the one ringing round to see if anyone’s missing a dirty old tramp,’ she replied, with a hint of anger, pulling out her phone. ‘Why don’t you two go and see if the poor sod’s fit for a statement?’
As he drove, Harper asked Stark how he’d found his first week, but Stark sensed he wasn’t really listening to the answer. He thought he’d detected tension between Harper and Fran, a minor power struggle. Fran seemed to hold some kind of seniority. Perhaps she’d been a DS longer; that was how it usually worked in uniform.
They were shown the victim in the intensive-care unit, bandaged and horribly bruised. He looked old and frail. A machine next to him was monitoring his vitals. He was being kept unconscious so they had to settle for a photo on Harper’s phone. The poor old sod didn’t exactly have a best side right now.
A doctor appeared. ‘Police?’
Harper flashed his warrant card. ‘How’s he doing?’
‘Not good. Half-a-dozen broken ribs, cheekbone, collarbone. One of the ribs requires surgery to reposition, as will the cheek in time, but there’s nothing we can do till his vitals improve.’
‘Will they improve?’
‘Maybe. There’s a risk of internal bleeding and kidney damage. Scans also indicate possible swelling on the brain but we won’t know unless he wakes up. If he was ten years younger, better nourished, I’d be more confident. Do you know his name?’ Harper shook his head. ‘I don’t know whether this will help, then – it was tucked into a pocket.’ A faded black-and-white photograph in a palm-sized tarnished silver frame: a young woman, smiling, in her prime.
Stark carefully opened the back but found no name or dates written anywhere. ‘Should we leave it with him, Sarge?’ suggested Stark. Harper shrugged, uninterested, and took a photo of it.
‘I’ll call you if his condition changes,’ said the doctor. ‘We’ll just have to see what fight he’s got left in him.’
What fight he’s got left in him, thought Stark. Not much, by the look of him. What fight had he been able to put up last night? Had they even let him out of his sleeping-bag or just kicked him halfway to death like a badger in a sack? The thought made Stark so angry he had to force his mind elsewhere. It was an irrational anger, way beyond proportion. He’d experienced it many times before, been coached in how to step away and dial it down. Even so, he was still simmering dangerously when they got back to the station.
None of the shop CCTV had much to offer. The traffic camera at the nearby junction picked up kicking-out time at the Meridian and one group crossing the street into the lane leading to the park, but it was too far away for any hope of identification. Fran sent Dixon and Stark to question the landlady, who picked out photos of several Ferrier Rats, including Kyle Gibbs and Nikki Cockcroft. They were regulars, she admitted, and Sunday nights were relatively quiet. No she wasn’t aware some were under age. They’d been in all evening and reluctant to leave, becoming abusive. She’d had to threaten to bar them, for the hundredth time.
Stark glanced at the notice on the bar declaring that company policy was to demand identification from any customer who might appear under age. And any landlord worth their salt would not just threaten to bar repeat troublemakers – they would do it. ‘Why didn’t your door staff just throw them out?’
‘Doormen? In this quality establishment?’ The landlady smiled at her own irony. ‘Our area manager says it’s not right for our corporate image. Or his financial spreadsheet, more like.’
Stark frowned. ‘My mistake.’ Then he recalled that some of the group on the traffic camera had been holding carrier-bags. He asked if she sold takeout beer; she said not. That made it more likely the bags had contained the lager cans. She didn’t recall whether the gang had brought bags in with them.
Outside, Stark asked Dixon where the nearest off-licence was. A quick survey established that of the handful of nearby mini-supermarkets only one sold Tennent’s Super, but they had no recollection or footage of Gibbs and Co.
‘Let’s start from the beginning,’ suggested Stark. ‘I’m still learning my way around. Presupposing Gibbs and Co. are our perpetrators, that they fled the park after the assault and that they would have headed for home, which way would they have gone?’
Dixon got out his phone and opened a maps app to show him a number of routes they might have taken up to Blackheath, where they could cut across towards Kidbrooke.
‘But the most direct route must be across Greenwich Park,’ suggested Stark.
‘It’s surrounded by walls, and the gates close around nine thirty this time of year.’
‘If they were willing to climb into St Alfege Park why not Greenwich Park? The darkness would shield them from sight.’ The huge park would save them time and cover their escape.
Dixon shrugged. ‘Some of the gates have CCTV, I think. The Royal Parks Police are stationed up the top end. We can go and ask them.’ He phoned the office to say they were running down a theory and drove up to the main gate off Blackheath. Inside an RPP sergeant sat them down at the CCTV bank and showed them how to work it. Shortly before midnight a group could be seen climbing in at the gates nearest the town centre. They had hoods, caps or both and the camera was on a high pole. It was possible to guess at some of the clothing but little more. All of the gates had cameras but none showed the group egress.
‘They wouldn’t use this gate because we’re right next door, and the Vanbrugh Gate on to Maze Hill has a high wall arched over, with no room to squeeze over the gate. But we’ve had problems in the past with vandals in the nursery at the top. They might have cut through there,’ said the sergeant. ‘I’ll show you, if you like.’
The Flower Garden in the south-east corner, separated from the main park by low railings, boasted manicured grass, a picturesque duck pond, path
s edged with deep thickets of flowering shrubs and beds alive with colour. The gate from it into the nursery was not spiked. Neither was the gate from the nursery on to Maze Hill. There was no evidence anyone had passed through but it fitted the theory. Stark suggested they walk the short distance up to the heath.
At the road junction a curved bite had been taken from the park wall to accommodate a large stone war memorial. The left panel was carved with a large 1914, and the right with 1918. The central panel read ‘IN GLORIOUS AND GRATEFUL MEMORY OF THE MEN OF THIS BOROUGH WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES IN THE GREAT WAR’. Below, the horizontal stone had later been carved with the words ‘ALSO IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE OF THOSE RESIDENTS OF THIS BOROUGH WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES TO THE COUNTRY DURING THE WAR 1939–1945’.
The remains of a vodka bottle lay smashed against the foot of the monument, and a giant pack of cheese puffs had burst its contents across the ground among a number of lager cans – Tennent’s Super, like those at the crime scene. Over all hung the acrid stench of urine. Stark’s hands curled into fists.
‘I think I’d better call DS Millhaven,’ said Dixon.
Fran found Dixon and Stark guarding the memorial with an RPP sergeant. She set a couple of uniforms to take over and phoned for SOCO. Aside from fingerprints, the lager cans and the neck of the bottle would probably have DNA, and several of the gang were on the database for previous infractions. There probably wasn’t any money for testing, but if the old boy died that would change. Better to have the evidence in the bag just in case. Dixon talked her, again, through the rationale that had led them there. He was a good copper, thorough and honest; too honest to take credit for uncharacteristic initiative. She looked at Stark but he said nothing, which, it seemed, was characteristic. Fran was mildly impressed but if he wanted to remain reserved she would reserve praise. ‘Reserved’ was just another word for ‘aloof’.
If I Should Die (Joseph Stark) Page 4