by Nicci French
Frieda indicated a small sign beside it. ‘“So long as the Stone of Brutus is safe, so long shall London flourish.” It’s supposed to be the heart of the city, the point from which the Romans measured the scope of their empire. Some people think it has occult powers. Nobody really knows where it came from – the Druids, the Romans. Maybe it’s an old altar, a sacrificial stone, a mystical centre point.’
‘You believe that?’
‘What I like,’ said Frieda, ‘is that it’s in the side of a shop and that most people walk past without noticing it, and that if it got mislaid, it would never be found because it looks like a completely ordinary piece of rock. And it means what we want it to mean.’
They were silent for a few moments and then Sasha put a gloved hand on Frieda’s shoulder. ‘Tell me, if you were ever in distress, would you confide in anyone?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Would you confide in me?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Well. You could, that’s all.’ She felt constrained, embarrassed by the emotion in her voice. ‘I just wanted you to know.’
‘Thank you.’ Frieda’s voice was neutral.
Sasha dropped her hand, and they turned from the grille. The air had become notably colder, the sky blanker, as if it might snow.
‘I have a patient in half an hour,’ Frieda said.
‘One thing.’
‘Yes?’
‘Tomorrow. You must be worried. I hope it goes all right. Will you let me know?’
Frieda gave a shrug. Sasha watched as she walked away, slim and upright, into the swallowing crowds.
Three
Detective Constable Yvette Long arrived a few moments before Karlsson. She had got the phone call just fifteen minutes previously but already a small crowd was gathering in the street: children who ought to be at school, young mothers with babies in buggies, men who seemed in no hurry to get anywhere. It was bitingly cold but many of them were not wearing overcoats or gloves. They looked excited, bright-eyed with curiosity. Two police cars were parked in front of number three and a barrier had been put up. Just behind it, a thin stringy man with a ginger ponytail was pacing up and down, up and down, with his barrel-chested dog. Every so often it sat down and yawned, saliva drooling from its jaws. There was another man, enormously fat, ripples of flesh encased in his T-shirt, behind the barrier. He was standing quite still, mopping his shiny forehead, as if it was high summer, not icy February. Yvette parked and, as she opened the door, DC Chris Munster came out of the house, holding a handkerchief to his mouth.
‘Where’s the woman who found him?’
Munster took the handkerchief from his mouth and put it into his pocket. He made a visible effort to control the working of his face. ‘Sorry. It got to me for a bit. She’s there.’ He nodded towards a middle-aged African woman sitting on the pavement with her face in her hands. ‘She’s waiting to talk to us. She’s shocked. The other woman – the one who was with him – she’s in the car with Melanie. She keeps talking about tea. Forensics are on the way.’
‘Karlsson’s on his way too.’
‘Good.’ Munster lowered his voice. ‘How can they live like this?’
Yvette and Karlsson pulled on paper overshoes. He gave her a reassuring nod and, for a moment, put his hand on the small of her back, steadying her. She took a deep breath.
Later, Karlsson would try to separate all his impressions, put them in order, but now it was a jumble of sights and smells and a nausea that made him sweat. They walked through the rubbish, the dog shit, the smell, half sweet and so thick it caught in the back of the throat. He and Yvette made their way to the door that wasn’t blocked off. They stepped inside, into a different universe of order: it was like being in a library, where everything was meticulously catalogued and stored in its allotted space. Three pairs of ancient shoes, on top of each other; a shelf of round stones; another shelf of bird bones, some of which still had matted feathers stuck to them, a tub of cigarette butts lying side by side, another plastic container with what looked like hair balls. He had time to think, as he passed into the next room, that the woman who lived here must be crazy. And then, for a while, he stared at the thing on the sofa, the naked man sitting upright, in a halo of slow, fat flies.
He was quite slender, and although it was hard to tell, didn’t seem old. His hands were in his lap, as if in modesty, and in one of them was an iced bun; his head was propped up with a pillow so that his open sulphurous eyes stared straight at them and his lopsided, stiffened mouth leered. His skin was a mottled blue, like a cheese left out for too long. Karlsson thought of the acid-washed jeans his little daughter had made him buy for her. He pushed the thought away. He didn’t want to bring her into this setting, even in his mind. Leaning forward, he saw vertical marks striping the man’s torso. He must have been dead for some time, judging not just from the way his skin had darkened where the blood had puddled on the underside of his thighs and buttocks, but also from the smell that was making Yvette Long, standing behind Karlsson, breathe in shallow, hoarse gasps. There were two full cups of tea by his left foot, which was curled upwards at an unnatural angle, the toes splayed. He had a comb stuck into his light brown hair, and lipstick on his mouth.
‘Obviously he’s been here some time.’ Karlsson’s voice sounded calmer than he had expected. ‘It’s warm in the room. That hasn’t helped.’
Yvette made a noise that might have been agreement.
Karlsson forced himself to look more closely at the mottled, puffy flesh. He waved Yvette over. ‘Look,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘At his left hand.’
The tip of the middle finger was missing from above the knuckle.
‘It could be a deformity.’
‘It looks to me like it’s been cut off and the wound hasn’t healed properly,’ said Karlsson.
Yvette swallowed before she spoke. She absolutely wasn’t going to be sick. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s hard to tell. It looks a bit mushy but it could be …’
‘General decomposition,’ said Karlsson.
‘Yes.’
‘Which is happening at an advanced rate because of the heat.’
‘Chris said the bar-fire was on when they arrived.’
‘The autopsy should tell us. They’ll need to get a move on.’
Karlsson looked at the cracked window and its rotting sill, the thin orange curtains. There were things that Michelle Doyce had collected and ordered: a cardboard box of balled-up, obviously soiled tissues; a drawer full of bottle-tops, colour-coded; a jam jar containing nail clippings, small yellowing crescents. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said. ‘Talk to her and the woman who found him. We can come back later, when he’s been taken away.’
As they left, the forensic team arrived, with their lights and cameras, face masks, chemicals and general air of professional competence. Karlsson felt relieved. They would take away the horror, turn the ghastly room boiling with flies into a well-lit laboratory where the objects would become data and be classified.
‘What a way to go,’ he said, as they went back outside.
‘Who the hell is he?’
‘That’s where we start.’
Karlsson left Yvette talking to Maggie Brennan and went to sit in the car with Michelle Doyce. All he knew about her was that she was fifty-one years old, that she had recently been discharged from hospital after a psychological evaluation that had come to no real conclusions about her mental health, and that she had been living in Howard Street for a month, with no complaints from neighbours. This was the first time Maggie Brennan had visited her: she was standing in for someone else, who wouldn’t have paid a visit because she had been on sick leave since last October.
‘Michelle Doyce?’
She looked at him with eyes that were very pale, almost like the eyes of a blind person, but didn’t reply.
‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Malcolm Karlsson.’ He waited. She blinked. ‘A police office
r,’ he added.
‘Have you come a long way?’
‘No, I haven’t. But I need to ask you some questions.’
‘I have come a very long way. You may well ask.’
‘This is important.’
‘Yes. I know it.’
‘The man in your flat.’
‘I’ve been entertaining him.’
‘He’s dead, Michelle.’
‘I cleaned his teeth for him. Not many friends can say that about their guests. And he sang for me. Like the sounds of the river at night, when the dog has stopped barking and the shouting and crying dies down.’
‘Michelle, he’s dead. The man in your flat is dead. We need to find out how he died. Can you tell me his name?’
‘Name?’
‘Yes. Who is he? Was he?’
She looked puzzled. ‘Why do you need a name? You can ask him.’
‘This is a serious matter. Who is he?’
She stared at him: a strong, pale woman with uncanny eyes and large reddened hands that floated in vague gestures when she spoke.
‘Did he die in your flat, Michelle? Was it an accident?’
‘One of your teeth is chipped. I am quite fond of teeth, you know. I have all my old teeth under my pillow, just in case they come, and a few of other people’s, but that’s rare. You don’t find them so often.’
‘Can you understand what I’m asking you?’
‘Does he want to leave me?’
‘He’s dead.’ Karlsson wanted to shout it, to use the word like a stone that would shatter her incomprehension, but he kept his voice calm.
‘Everyone goes in the end. Though I work so hard.’
‘How did he die?’
She started to mumble words he couldn’t make out.
Chris Munster was making a preliminary assessment of the rest of the house. It repulsed him. It didn’t feel like a criminal investigation at all: it was about people who were hopeless, who had slipped through the cracks. This upstairs room was full of needles: hundreds, no, thousands of used needles covering the floor so at first he’d thought it was some kind of pattern. Dog shit here too, most of it old and hardened. Bloodstained rags. One thin mattress with nasty stains near the middle. Right now, he didn’t care who’d killed the man downstairs. He just wanted to empty everyone out of this house, torch it and get out, breathe some clean air, the colder the better. He felt dirty all over, outside and in. How could people live like this? That fat man with the red-veined eyes and the livid skin of the drunk, hardly able to speak, hardly able to balance his bulk on his small feet. Or the skinny dog-owning one, with his punctured arms and scabby face, who grinned and scratched himself and bobbed around: was this his room and were these his needles? Or maybe it was the dead man’s room. That was probably it. The dead man would turn out to be part of this household from Hell. Fucking landlord. They’d been pushed in here, the hopeless misfits, the ones society didn’t know how to deal with, had no money to treat and abandoned so that now the police had to clear up the mess. If the public knew, he thought, his feet in their heavy boots sliding among the syringes, if they knew how some people lived and how they died.
Four
Karlsson was on his way into the case meeting when he met Commissioner Crawford in the corridor. He was in conversation with a tall young man who was wearing a shiny blue suit and a brightly patterned orange and green tie. He had slightly oversized black-framed glasses. Everything about him, from his strictly parted hair to his pointy green leather shoes, seemed to signal a degree of irony.
‘Mal,’ said the commissioner, ‘have you got a moment?’
Karlsson held up the file he was carrying.
‘Is it that body in Deptford?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sure it’s a murder?’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Then why are you handling it?’
‘Nobody can make any sense of it,’ said Karlsson. ‘We’re trying to decide what to do.’
The commissioner gave a nervous laugh and turned to the other man. ‘He’s not always like this,’ he said.
The commissioner was expecting some sort of joshing retort from Karlsson but he didn’t get one and there was an awkward silence.
‘This is Jacob Newton,’ said the commissioner. ‘And this is DCI Karlsson, the man I was telling you about. He’s the one who got the Faraday boy back.’
The two men shook hands.
‘Call me Jake,’ said the man.
‘Jake’s going to be around for a few days, looking at procedures, structures, that sort of thing.’
Karlsson was puzzled. ‘Are you from the Met?’
The man smiled, as if Karlsson had said something unintentionally amusing.
‘No, no,’ said the commissioner. ‘Jake’s from McGill Hutton. You know, the management consultancy.’
‘I don’t,’ said Karlsson.
‘It’s always useful to have a fresh pair of eyes. We can all learn lessons, especially in these days of budget reorientation.’
‘You mean “cuts”?’
‘We’re all in this together, Mal.’
There was another silence that lasted just a little too long.
‘They’re waiting for me,’ said Karlsson.
‘Mind if I come along?’ said Newton.
Karlsson looked quizzically at the commissioner.
‘He’s got a free hand,’ said Crawford. ‘Go anywhere, see anything.’ He clapped Karlsson on the back. ‘It’s not as if we’ve got anything to hide, is it? You can show Jake what a lean team you run.’
Karlsson looked at Newton. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Join the tour.’
Yvette Long and Chris Munster were sitting at a desk drinking coffee. Karlsson introduced Newton, who told them to pretend he wasn’t there. They immediately looked ill at ease and self-conscious.
‘Anyone else coming?’ Karlsson asked, and Yvette shook her head.
‘Autopsy’s this afternoon,’ said Karlsson. ‘Wouldn’t it be good if it was a heart attack?’
‘You thought he might have been strangled,’ said Yvette.
‘I can hope, can’t I?’ said Karlsson.
‘It’s the dog I feel sorry for,’ said Munster. ‘These guys, they live in shit, they can’t hold down a job, but they’ve always got a bloody dog.’
‘From the fact that I haven’t heard anything,’ said Karlsson, ‘I’m assuming that the deceased has not been identified as one of the other residents.’
‘All accounted for,’ said Munster. He picked up his notebook. ‘Lisa Bolianis. Aged about forty, I think. Apparent drink problem. I talked to her. Not very coherent. She said she’d seen Michelle Doyce once or twice. Never with anyone else.’ He pulled a face. ‘I don’t get the impression that these housemates are meeting much around the barbecue. Michael Reilly – our dog owner. Got out of prison in November. Three and half years for possession and distribution of a class-A substance. He said he’d nodded to her in the hall. She didn’t care much for his dog. He didn’t see her with anyone either.’ He looked down at his notebook. ‘She collected things. She’d come back with bagfuls of stuff she’d bought or found or whatever.’
‘We saw that in the flat.’
‘Anyone else?’
Munster looked back at his notebook. ‘Metesky. Tony Metesky. I could hardly get him to talk at all. Wouldn’t look at me. He’s clearly got some kind of mental problem. I’ve rung Social Services about him and someone’s meant to ring me back. His room was in a real state, even by the prevailing standards. There are needles on the floor, hundreds of them.’
Karlsson frowned. ‘His?’
Munster shook his head. ‘Cuckooing, I reckon.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Newton. The three officers all glanced at him and he looked embarrassed.
‘Cuckooing,’ said Munster, ‘is when a dealer identifies a vulnerable person and uses his accommodation as a base for activity.’
‘I suppose that Mr Whatever-his-name
-is didn’t give you any information about the deceased.’
‘I could hardly get any sense out of him at all.’
‘What kind of place is this?’ asked Yvette.
Munster shut his notebook. ‘I think it’s where they put people when they can’t think what else to do with them.’
‘Who owns the house?’ asked Karlsson. ‘Maybe the dead body is the landlord.’
‘The owner is a woman,’ said Munster. ‘She lives in Spain. I’m going to call her, check she’s actually there. She owns several houses and uses an agent. I’m getting the details.’
‘Where are they all now?’ asked Karlsson.
Munster nodded across at Yvette.
‘Michelle Doyce is back in hospital,’ she said. ‘The others are still there, as far as I know.’
‘Still there?’ said Karlsson. ‘It’s a crime scene.’
‘Not strictly speaking. Until we get the autopsy result, it may just be a matter of failing to register a death and I don’t suppose any court will find Michelle Doyce fit to plead. As for the rest of them, where are they supposed to go? We’ve been ringing the council and we can’t even find a person to talk to about it.’
‘Do they not care that one of their own hostels might be being used as a centre for drug-dealing?’ asked Karlsson.
There was a pause.
‘Well,’ said Yvette, ‘if we could find someone in Social Services and get them down here, what they would probably say is that if we suspect a crime then it’s a matter for us to investigate. Which we probably won’t do.’
Karlsson tried not to catch the eye of Jake Newton. This might not have been the best introduction to police work. ‘So what we’ve got,’ he said, ‘is a woman serving tea and buns to an unidentified naked rotting man, whose only distinguishing feature is the missing finger on his left hand. Could the finger have been removed to get a ring off?’
‘It was the middle finger,’ said Munster. ‘Not the ring finger.’
‘You can have a ring on your middle finger,’ said Karlsson. ‘Who the hell is this guy?’
‘Don got prints off him,’ said Munster. ‘It wasn’t much fun, but they got them. And they didn’t get a match.’