There was a momentary silence while they all considered this.
Then Ramsey said quietly, ‘I don’t remember reading about a Strain II case.’
‘Lambeth Social Services have kept it quiet, at least so far. They figured things were bad enough without the public getting hold of that as well. So far they’ve managed to keep it out of the papers, but when Hurke’s case goes to trial next year it will come out. They got a statement from Joey Brannigan before he died.’
‘And how does this piece of shit account for poor Joey Brannigan’s Strain II infection?’ Ramsey asked.
‘Interestingly, she hasn’t. She’s given up other clients, but not the one who requested Joey. Prosecution have stopped pushing – they’ve got more than enough to convict her – and Brannigan’s family don’t care. You know how it is, sir—’ Armstrong looked at Ramsey a little apologetically. ‘You never get the whole lot of them if there’s a paedophile ring. Time and resources are too thin.’
‘I think we should pay Ms Hurke a visit,’ DI Ramsey growled, his eyes still on the photograph.
‘I’ve already primed Holloway.’
‘People in her situation stay silent out of fear.’ Hask looked thoughtfully at the photo. ‘We have to make sure she’s more afraid of us than she is of whoever killed Joey Brannigan. That shouldn’t be too hard; I should imagine that she’s feeling isolated and paranoid by now.’
He grinned and took another doughnut from the bag for the journey. Waste not, want not. At least it was finally beginning to feel like they were getting somewhere.
Caroline Hurke had a face that matched her personality: deeply unpleasant. She was an overly thin woman in her fifties, and hard lines pulled down her mouth, leaving her with a permanent sour frown – not that she’d had much inclination to smile recently. Her eyes looked bitter too; Hask could see clearly exactly how Caroline Hurke felt about her current situation: she was the victim here; she was the one left to carry the can when all she’d done was facilitate – she’d never touched the brats herself … There was an angry whine of it’s not fair coming clearly from her. It was all there in the expression. Hask decided he didn’t like her very much at all.
‘I have nothing to say about that. I don’t remember.’ She leaned back in the chair and folder her arms defiantly.
‘Of course you remember.’ Ramsey smiled. ‘And you will tell us.’
‘No, I won’t.’ She looked like some awful parody of a sulking teenager being told off by a headmaster. ‘I didn’t tell them, and I won’t tell you.’
‘If Joey’s dead, then maybe he is too.’
‘He’s not dead.’ She smiled, but under it was a death mask of terror. ‘You know that and I know that. We get the papers in here too, you know. I’m only on remand, remember?’
Hask felt the tension crackling between them. She’d recognised the e-fit: so she really had procured children for the man they were hunting.
‘Remand’s a funny thing, isn’t it?’ Armstrong hadn’t sat down. Now he leaned against the wall next to the table. ‘It’s like you’re a prisoner and yet not – it’s amazing how slack security can get in remand …’
‘What do you mean?’ Hurke flashed a glance at him.
Armstrong didn’t answer, but he nodded at the female prison guard standing by the door. She looked at Ramsey, who also nodded, and then she left the room. She didn’t look at her prisoner once.
Hurke squirmed round in her chair. ‘Where’s she going? She should stay in here, shouldn’t she?’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t play games with me. I know the law.’
‘Do you think anyone actually cares? On the side of the law, that is?’ Ramsey smiled.
‘What do you mean?’
‘He means, you thick bitch’ – Hask leaned forward – ‘that the prosecution have got everything they need to convict you and your clients – physical evidence, phone records, statements from the children – so why do they need you? You’re not important.’
Her pupils widened slightly. He’d hit a nerve.
‘In fact, you’re just an embarrassment to the system,’ he finished.
‘They need me,’ she said forcefully.
‘No one needs you,’ Armstrong said with conviction.
‘You do – you want to know about him.’
‘That’s true,’ Ramsey agreed, ‘we do want to know about him, and we know no one cares about you. That’s an interesting combination, don’t you think?’
Caroline Hurke paled slightly. Hask wondered how she’d looked at the height of her respectability, with her hair and make-up done, wearing something soft and feminine rather than her baggy jeans and sweater. It was hard to picture.
‘Where’s the guard gone?’ There was a nervous rasp in her voice now.
‘I think you have rather bigger worries than whether the guard is taking a piss or having a cup of tea.’ Armstrong still hadn’t moved. ‘Do you know what station we’re from?’
‘Does it matter?’ Hurke kept up her sullen tone.
‘Oh, I think it does. We’re from Paddington Green. Most of our lot got nicked not so long ago. Some of us got away with it.’ Armstrong smiled.
‘Bullshit.’ Hurke said, though she didn’t sound convinced, despite her strong language.
‘You get the papers in here, remember? So you must have read about our young sergeant?’ Ramsey took over. ‘The one who got poisoned? On remand?’
‘Are you trying to tell me that you did that?’ Hurke’s chair shifted an inch, scraping on the cheap lino.
Hask smiled inwardly; her face might still be all arrogant rebellion, but they had her on the back foot.
‘I’m not saying anything. I’m just pointing out that he was on remand and now he’s dead.’
‘And,’ Armstrong cut in, ‘he was in isolation for most of the time – harder to get at.’
‘Are you threatening to kill me?’ Her eyes widened slightly and then she snorted a bitter laugh. ‘Going to get someone to stab me in the shower? I think you’ll notice less of that happens these days, ever since you brought the death penalty back.’ She grinned triumphantly. ‘I have learned some things in my time here, you know; you can’t fool me with a trick like that.’
‘It’s no game, I assure you. And we were not thinking anything nearly as complicated as a stabbing in the shower would be required.’ Ramsey smiled. ‘There was a point to be made with young Sergeant Blackmore; people needed to know he’d been taken out. With you it would be different.’
A wave of confused anxiety crossed Caroline Hurke’s lined face. They nearly had her.
‘Let me break this down for you,’ Hask said. He pulled the padded envelope from his pocket. ‘I brought a visual aid – just so there are no misunderstandings.’ He tugged the evidence bag out of the envelope and placed it on the table between them. Hurke stared at the syringe inside.
‘Before you ask, yes, it is infected.’ He waited until she looked up at him. ‘This is a prison – don’t tell me you haven’t learned how rife drug usage is in a place like this? How hard would it be to knock into you with a needle? One tiny prick, and that’s you taken care of. Maybe they’ll even spare you a bit of smack in there too, get you high before you die. To all the world you’ll look like one more prisoner-turned-junkie who’d got unlucky.’ He kept his voice slow and steady, letting every word sink in. ‘You don’t think there’ll be plenty in here who would do that one little thing for the right price? Women who have children?’ He leaned forward. ‘Guards who have children? You don’t think people will actually care if you come to some awful end, do you? I think you’ll find most folks would see it as natural justice.’
Hurke’s mouth moved as if she was trying to spit out words of denial, but it was clear she couldn’t find any.
‘It would be easy,’ Hask finished. ‘And believe me, I wouldn’t lose a minute’s sleep over it – why should I? You’re not losing any sleep over the people out there getting infected because you won’t open your mouth, are
you?’
‘I’m no killer,’ Ramsey added, ‘but I think I’d almost enjoy reading about you dying slowly of the bug.’
‘He’ll kill me,’ she whispered, ‘if I tell. You don’t understand.’
‘I hate to break this to you,’ Armstrong snorted, ‘but your options aren’t great here. At least if you tell us what we want to know, we can put you in solitary – that’ll keep you safe. And wherever he is, he’s sick – he’s moved onto other things. I doubt he even remembers who you are.’
‘I may not be a killer,’ Ramsey grinned, ‘but I’m a very good liar. And here’s the thing, Ms Hurke: if you don’t co-operate with us, then I’ll just say you have anyway. I’ll announce it to the media, and I’ll do it loudly – it’s not like they’d be expecting us to actually give up any details, is it? Then if you were unfortunate enough to find yourself infected with this rather virulent strain of the bug, no one will blame us, no matter what you might try to say, because everyone will be certain it’s all the fault of this Angel of Death, as they’ve so poetically dubbed him.’
She stared at them for a long time, and then her shoulders slumped. ‘I’d never done anything like this until I met him – you know, with the kids. I’d never even thought about it, not even when the bills were mounting and the government were cutting how much they were paying for each child …’
‘You’re all heart,’ Armstrong muttered, and Hask and Ramsey both flashed him a sharp look; now she was starting to open up they didn’t need him needling her.
‘It’s not something I’d even have thought of.’ She frowned a little as if remembering a previous version of herself, someone so long gone she was hardly recognisable. ‘I liked the children, even the ones who could be little shits. I’ve been running foster and care homes for years. I started with Jake, and then when that broke up’ – the frown turned into a slight sneer and Hask was pretty sure that there’d been a third party who’d taken Hurke’s husband away – ‘I carried on by myself.’
‘So what happened?’ Ramsey asked, trying to sound sympathetic.
‘Things started getting really difficult, about a year ago – personally, that is. I had some credit card debts that I was struggling to pay after I’d gone a bit mad on retail therapy when Jake left. It was stupid, really; I didn’t even like the stuff I bought. Anyway, I started cutting corners at the home and used the extra money to meet my payments, but even that wasn’t enough. I defaulted on the mortgage twice.’ She looked up, and the hard mask had slipped a little; now she looked like a scared woman who knew she’d fucked up. ‘You know that horrible feeling, when you realise you’re sinking and you’ve slipped so far back that you’re only just stopping new leaks rather than solving the problem?’
Hask nodded. There was a whole lot of it around; sometimes it felt like the whole world was trying just to keep its head above the waterline. Too many people – governments, corporations and citizens alike – had spent too much, and no one had any money in the banks to back it up. The whole house of cards had started to topple.
‘Then a man came to visit me – he told me he knew about my financial situation, and that he could help.’
‘Was that our man?’ Ramsey asked.
‘No, not him, not yet. I only saw him once – and once was enough. This man was called Draper. I was in my study – my flat was the top floor of the home, and he rang that doorbell, not the home. I don’t have a first name for him. He was in his forties, I suppose. Brown hair. He was average build – he looked ordinary but smart. I thought he was from Alliance & Lloyd, my mortgage company, and when he said he wasn’t I told him to go away – I presumed he was a loan shark; there’s plenty of them around, but tempting as a quick fix was, I knew it wasn’t going to help me. At that point I was waiting to see if Jake would lend me some money to tide me over – we’d been married for fifteen years and I thought that counted for something. As it turned out, he couldn’t help me: apparently she was pregnant and they needed all their money for the baby.’
Her face twisted sourly as she spoke and Hask was struck once again by her bitterness. Was she typical of the population in general? Were they all blaming each other for their ills?
‘The Social doesn’t provide that much for each kid, and even though I’d squeezed another couple in, there was only so much I could skim from the top. I started ignoring the credit cards completely and tried to get the mortgage together, but I didn’t have anywhere near enough – I was at rock bottom. People say that a lot, don’t they? I’ve hit rock bottom. But when you do, you really know it. I was numb, couldn’t focus at all. I was thinking of just burning the place down, kids and all, and walking away.’ Her eyes filled up. ‘How terrible is that?’
Hask realised that something had cracked in Caroline Hurke back then, and it had never repaired itself. He wondered if she had any idea of the enormity of what she’d done since then?
‘That was when Draper came back, and this time I let him in. I don’t even know why – I think he just looked so calm, he looked like he could make my mess go away.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘I suppose in his own way he did.’
Armstrong had slipped out of the room, no doubt to get someone checking on the name Draper, but Hurke hadn’t noticed; she was lost in her memories. Despite their desperate need for the information, Hask hoped they weren’t doing her too much more damage. The heavy-handed bad-cop/worse-cop game to get her to talk had been his idea, and it had worked, but now that he was watching her crumble he found himself almost regretting it. The bitterness she wore was like a shell; inside, she was so damaged – she’d obviously had a breakdown, whether she knew it or not.
Oblivious to Hask’s thoughts, she went on, ‘He told me he was there on behalf of his employer, a very wealthy man, who wanted to enter into a business arrangement with me.’
Ramsey flashed at look at Hask: so their man did have private money.
‘He told me what that arrangement would be, about the boys, and he sounded as if he was offering to come and clean my carpets or buy jam from me. As if it was normal.’
‘Just boys?’ Ramsey asked.
‘Yes, just boys – for him, anyway.’ She sniffed. ‘I told him no, of course. I was shocked – disgusted. And children are people, aren’t they? What if they told? People always talk, don’t they? I couldn’t do it; even when he said he knew about my fiddling the books I said no. I’m not a monster.’ For the first time, Hask saw terror in her eyes – not because of this mysterious man who’d made her do these things, but for what she had become: she was a monster.
‘I was angry, and I told him I’d report him to the police.’ She took a deep breath. ‘He wasn’t fazed by my reaction, but he made a call on his mobile and asked if I’d give his employer ten minutes of my time. By that point I just wanted Draper to go – I didn’t know who he was and I was starting to get scared; his boss might be some Russian gangster. The children were due back from school about then and I knew I’d have to get back downstairs and help the staff.’ She half laughed. ‘I was worried about the children.’
‘And?’ Ramsey had moved forward on his seat, impatient to hear the rest. ‘So what happened?’
‘Draper said that he would give me a thousand pounds just to hear his boss out. He promised me that I’d be quite safe, and that if I still wanted nothing to do with them after the meeting, then they would leave and I’d never hear from them again. I said yes – I didn’t think I had much of a choice, to be honest. So I called the office and made some excuse about a migraine, and then Draper and I waited in silence until his phone rang again, and he went downstairs to get his boss. He wasn’t what I’d expected – he was slimmer, and younger, maybe mid-thirties. I don’t know why, but I’d been imagining a much older man. Anyway, he looked like the man in the paper – well, when he did anyway.’
‘Have you seen him since then? You said you only saw him the once?’ Hask frowned.
‘He talked to me,’ Hurke said, caught up in the memory. ‘He made it a
ll sound so reasonable – so normal. He talked about history, and cultures, and nature, until my head was spinning and I didn’t know what to think any more.’ She paused. ‘And then, when I asked him how he could know all these things’ – her breath hitched, a small gasp – ‘he showed me what he really was.’ Her eyes went wide and she looked upwards towards the ceiling. ‘He changed, right in front of my eyes. One minute he was a man in an expensive suit, and the next he was … He was gone; he’d become something else, something beautiful and terrible – a god. He was all light and claws and sharp edges and in all the brightness that held me I could hear the awful beating of wings. They were like my heartbeat.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Ramsey said. ‘What do you mean, he changed?’
‘You wouldn’t understand,’ Hurke said. ‘You didn’t see him.’ She let out a long sigh. ‘After that, there was no way I could refuse. I couldn’t refuse him.’ Tears started running down her face. ‘He made it sound normal. He made me think it was okay. How could I refuse him?’
They left her there, crying bitter tears over her own memories, and headed back out into the crisp December air. Hask found the cold bite a welcome relief.
‘No one warned us she was fucking mad,’ Armstrong said.
‘To be fair,’ Hask shrugged, ‘I didn’t realise until about halfway in.’
‘Anything on this Draper, Armstrong?’ Ramsey asked.
‘Not yet. Shame she couldn’t give us a first name.’
‘How did he know to target her? How did he know about her financial situation?’
‘Draper’s certainly valuable, but I don’t think we should see him as any more than a puppet.’ The cold was losing its allure and Hask was pleased to get into the relative warmth of the car. ‘Anything he’s done has been under instruction; it’s his employer who does all the thinking.’ He leaned back against the leather. ‘Interesting how she refers to our man as a god – not only refers to, but actually had some kind of hallucination that allowed her to see him as one.’
‘This is the word of your God,’ Ramsey muttered.
The Chosen Seed: The Dog-Faced Gods Book Three (DOG-FACED GODS TRILOGY) Page 11