by DS Butler
He didn’t turn until the first sickening thud reverberated in his skull.
Senses dulled, Henryk raised a hand to his head. A pathetic gesture of self-defence. What good were his hands against a hammer?
Henryk staggered. Dazed, he lifted his head to face his attacker.
“You…”
Blood dripped in his eyes. He couldn’t see.
The second blow was swift, vicious and final.
Henryk fell to the floor and felt the warm, sticky, wetness spread over his scalp, leaking down over his face and neck.
His attacker was talking, saying something, but the voice was fading.
As Henryk Blonski’s life slipped away, his final thought echoed in his mind. Simple and full of regret: I’m sorry, Anya.
8
The following morning, Collins called as Mackinnon was standing by the kitchen counter, eating a slice of toast and marmalade and polishing off his first cup of coffee.
“I’ll be passing yours in five minutes if you want a lift,” Collins said.
Collins drove into work every day from Essex. Mackinnon didn’t envy him that journey. But to be fair, a policeman’s salary went a lot further in Romford. Collins couldn’t fit himself, his wife and two kids into a flat the size of Mackinnon’s.
Mackinnon usually caught the DLR, from South Quay, but he wouldn’t pass up the opportunity of a more comfortable journey. He told Collins he would be waiting downstairs in five minutes, then hung up.
He patted himself down, mentally checking off his morning list. Wallet, mobile, keys… He picked up his coat and headed out the door, yawning. He hated the early shift.
Well, he hated the early shift in the mornings, but loved it in the afternoons.
As Mackinnon climbed in the passenger seat of Collins’ silver Astra, with a cheery “Hello,” Collins shifted in his seat, looking guilty.
“What is it?” Mackinnon asked.
Collins pulled away from the curb. “I have an ulterior motive for giving you a lift.”
Mackinnon frowned. “And I thought you offered because you couldn’t get enough of my sparkling personality. Go on then, what is it?”
“I want to get your opinion on Henryk Blonski.”
“The guy whose sister’s missing?”
Collins nodded as he pulled out into the heavy traffic. “I couldn’t sleep last night. I kept thinking about it.”
“You said it yourself, people go missing all the time. Usually, by choice.”
“Yeah, I know. There’s just something odd about it. I mean, it doesn’t look suspicious on the surface. The most likely scenario is that she went off on her own. But, I don’t know, something just doesn’t feel right.”
Collins sighed, his eyes fixed on the road ahead. “Maybe the brother’s paranoia is rubbing off on me, but I’d appreciate your take on it.”
“Sure.” Mackinnon looked at the digital clock on the dashboard and tried to tune out the irritatingly cheerful voice coming from the radio. “We’re a bit early for a house call, aren’t we?”
It was just before seven am.
“I don’t think he’ll mind. I think he’ll be grateful to know we are looking into his sister’s disappearance. Yesterday, he was mouthing off about me not taking her disappearance seriously enough.”
They made it through the morning traffic in surprisingly good time and pulled up outside the red-brick council flats of Jubilee House on the Towers Estate.
Most property in the City of London was occupied by businesses, and residential areas were relatively rare.
The unimaginatively named Towers Estate was a collection of tower blocks. The area had been gradually extended over time, so there was no uniformity, just a mishmash of buildings. Low-rise, red-brick blocks mixed with grey, high-rise towers, and between the buildings, a network of dark alleyways crisscrossed the estate. The alleyways weren’t the kind of place any law-abiding person would choose to walk alone at night.
The Towers Estate had the largest residential population in the City of London, and it caused the police a great deal of trouble.
A couple of kids, of senior-school age, leaned against an old, black BMW three series, trying to stare Mackinnon and Collins down. They wore school uniforms, shirts untucked, ties in their pockets. It was anyone’s guess if they would actually make it to school.
Mackinnon glanced at his watch. Seven twenty am. At least they were up early. Their eyes followed Mackinnon and Collins. They may not have guessed they were police, but they knew Mackinnon and Collins didn’t belong in the neighbourhood.
“Over here. It’s number sixty-two, Jubilee House,” Collins said, heading to the second entrance to the block of flats.
Jubilee House was a typical sixties building and relatively low-rise compared to other flats in the area, at only seven storeys tall.
The blue doors were tagged and spray-painted with graffiti.
Despite the early hour, the sun was already warm. It was going to be another hot one. Mackinnon caught a whiff of the rotten stench from the bins, already cooking in the warm weather, as he passed the base of the rubbish chute. He held his breath until he reached the security doors.
Someone had propped open the door with half a breeze block. Despite the bright, early morning light outside, the entrance was dark. The fluorescent strip light above the entrance was broken. A crack ran straight across the plastic casing. A strange, ominous sensation crept over Mackinnon. He didn’t want to go in.
Mackinnon shook the feeling off and stepped inside.
***
The inside of Jubilee House wasn’t much better than the outside. The lobby was ingrained with dirt. The floor was swept clean, but grime, driven into the tiles over the years, wasn’t that easy to remove, and a quick once-over with a broom wasn’t going to get rid of it.
The hallway smelled of fried food, spices and bacon.
Mackinnon looked at Collins. “Stairs?”
Collins nodded. “Definitely.”
Mackinnon always avoided the lifts on the Towers Estate. They always smelt awful, and six floors was a long time to hold your breath.
They took the stairs two at a time.
There were only two flats on each floor. There was no central stairwell and the staircase led straight onto the lobby. So they had to walk past the flats on each floor to get to the next set of stairs.
As they passed the first floor flats, Mackinnon caught a whiff of urine, mixed with the smell of bleach, where some poor resident had tried to clean it up.
They increased their speed, and by the time they had reached the second floor, Collins was wheezing.
“You need to get a bit more exercise, Nick,” Mackinnon said, grinning.
“I’m perfectly fit, thank you very much.” And to prove his point, Collins climbed the stairs faster, moving ahead of Mackinnon.
“And I’ll have you know, Debra likes my physique.”
“She likes the soft, cuddly type, then?”
Collins turned to face Mackinnon, swore, then climbed more quickly.
Mackinnon felt his own breath coming faster by the time they reached the fifth floor, not that he would admit it to anyone, especially not Collins.
Between gasps for air, Collins managed to say, “I thought I’d tell Henryk Blonski we would keep his sister’s details on record, but unless he can give us some more information, there’s not a lot … Shit.”
Mackinnon reached the top of the stairs behind Collins and almost bumped into him.
“What?”
He looked over Collins’ shoulder and saw the gruesome sight of Henryk Blonski, or what was left of him.
Henryk Blonski lay outside the door of his flat, his body curled up, and his mouth open in a silent scream.
For a moment, both Mackinnon and Collins stared down at him. Then Mackinnon crouched down a couple of feet away from the body. He didn’t want to move closer and risk contaminating the scene.
His eyes took in his surroundings, looking for detai
ls, something that might explain what had happened and why.
Beside him, Collins let out a shaky breath.
“I’ll call it in,” Collins said as he moved past Mackinnon to walk back down the stairs.
Mackinnon watched him go, then turned his attention back to Henryk Blonski. He stared at the wound on the back of Blonski’s head. Some of the blood had dried and darkened, matting his hair and staining his clothes. His body had been here for a while, hours at least.
He could smell the blood, taste the metallic tang of it. But that had to be his imagination. The horror of the scene was influencing his perception. He needed to focus.
Mackinnon forced himself to look away from the body and take in the scene. It looked as though Henryk Blonski had been killed by repeated blows to the back of his head. But there was nothing in the immediate vicinity that could have been the murder weapon.
Could he have been attacked elsewhere then staggered back home, only to die on his doorstep? Mackinnon found it hard to believe he could have walked anywhere with that gaping hole in the back of his head. And the only blood was around the body, right by Henryk Blonski’s front door.
There was no blood trail, which suggested Henryk Blonski had been attacked outside his home. But why?
It was a rough area, stabbings were not uncommon, but this had been a furious attack. How someone could inflict this sort of damage on another person, spoke of rage, hatred. It seemed personal.
A mugging? But if it were a mugging, why hit him so many times? Did he fight back?
Or was this something to do with Blonski’s sister’s disappearance?
Directly opposite Henryk Blonski’s body was the door to the second flat on this floor. There were a total of fourteen flats on this side of Jubilee House. Someone must have heard something. The Towers Estate was rough, but even here, surely a man couldn’t be bludgeoned to death without anyone noticing.
9
Blue-suited CSIs were already filing through the entrance of Jubilee House when DI Green arrived on the scene.
Five-foot-eight, with a shock of prematurely white hair and startling blue eyes that never seemed to miss a thing, DI Green radiated authority. He stood with the early morning sun behind him.
Mackinnon squinted at the detective inspector, the sun’s glare hurting his eyes. He felt pressure at the base of his skull, the beginnings of a headache.
“Tell me what we’ve got.”
DI Green spoke to Mackinnon, but Collins answered, telling the DI how they found Henryk Blonski’s body.
Hierarchy in the police force could be a tricky issue. Technically, as Mackinnon was a detective sergeant and Collins was still a detective constable, Mackinnon outranked him, but Mackinnon had known Collins for years, and they had a good working relationship.
Mackinnon would never insist on Collins calling him sir. Some higher-ranking officers did, as they thought it showed respect for the chain of command. Mackinnon would rather be on first name terms with someone he trusted. DI Green, on the other hand, was an officer who liked the boundaries clearly marked. He was called DI Green or sir. There was no first-name familiarity with him.
Mackinnon listened as Collins filled DI Green in.
He knew Collins needed to handle this one, to talk it through and explain his actions. Immediately after they found Henryk Blonski’s body, Mackinnon asked if Collins was all right. Collins said he was fine and brushed off Mackinnon’s concern, but he was clearly badly shaken.
It wasn’t only the horror of finding Henryk Blonski on the floor of Jubilee House with his head caved in, though God knows that was bad enough. It was because Collins kept asking himself if he should have acted differently and whether he could have prevented Blonski’s death.
Of course, it wasn’t Collins’ fault, but pointing that out right now wouldn’t be helpful. So Mackinnon kept quiet.
While Collins talked, DI Green pulled his incident bag from the boot of his car. They walked towards the blue and white tape pulled across the entrance to the flats. A young PC standing guard recorded their names in the log and stepped back, letting them enter.
Mackinnon watched them walk inside the taped path marking the route to Henryk Blonski’s body. Mackinnon didn’t follow. There were enough people in there already – crime scene photographers and scenes of crime officers collecting evidence.
Instead, Mackinnon took in the view outside Jubilee House and fumbled in his pocket for an antacid tablet. He always seemed to have indigestion these days.
The kids and the black BMW were long gone. In their place, other residents had gathered to try and work out what had happened. They watched the police suspiciously. Every now and then, one of them would approach the flustered PC guarding the entrance and demand to know what was going on.
A few minutes later, DI Green came stalking out of Jubilee House, followed by Collins and the crime scene manager.
DI Green looked up at Mackinnon. “Brutal. Poor bastard.”
Mackinnon nodded.
“Looks like he was hit from behind,” Collins said. “He didn’t stand a chance.”
Collins’ face was grey as he looked down at his shiny, black shoes. Mackinnon made up his mind to talk to him again later and make sure he really was all right.
“Briefing,” DI Green said, turning and walking back to his car. “Wood Street in one hour.”
***
“Do you know what happened?” a woman with a toddler balanced on her hip asked Mackinnon and Collins. The kid had a runny nose and rubbed at it with the back of one hand, managing to wipe it all over his face.
“Do you live near here?” Mackinnon asked.
“Yeah, I live in there, don’t I?” The woman nodded at the PC standing by the blue and white tape, guarding the entrance to Jubilee House. “But he won’t let me back in.”
She had a shiny, red face and wore a short, denim skirt and a white vest with a black bra underneath. One of her bra straps had slipped down over her right shoulder.
“We will be as quick as we can,” Collins said. “But a man has been…”
“Well, that’s nothing to do with me, is it?” She yanked up her elastic bra strap and snapped it back into place. “I need to get inside and get my little boy’s milk. It’s too hot to stand around out here.”
“Did you notice anything unusual last night?” Collins asked.
“What?”
“Did you see anyone hanging around?” Collins asked. “What number do you live at?”
Mackinnon watched the shutters come down. Her face blank, she narrowed her eyes.
“Why are you asking me questions? I haven’t done anything wrong. I’m just minding my own business.” She tucked a strand of greasy hair behind her ear.
“Just tell us what number you live at,” Collins snapped.
Mackinnon raised his eyebrows at Collins’ tone.
“All right. Calm down.” She lifted the kid onto her other hip. “Number sixty.”
Mackinnon paused for a minute, trying to remember the layouts of the flats. “Then you live opposite Mr. Blonski at number sixty-two.”
“The Polish fella? Yeah.”
“When did you last see him?”
“Oh, I can’t remember. He keeps to himself. Lives with a girl. Snooty cow, if you ask me. Always looking down her nose at everyone. She asked me once if I wanted to use their washing machine. She thought my washing machine was broken because Taylor’s clothes were dirty. I mean, the cheek of it. Kids get dirty, I told her. That’s just what they do.”
“What’s your name?”
“Tina Mathews.”
“Were you at home last night?”
“No.” Her eyes narrowed again. “I was at my boyfriend’s place.”
Collins pulled out his notepad and took down her boyfriend’s address, while Mackinnon spoke to a couple of uniforms and asked them to start canvassing the other flats. Someone must have seen something.
When Collins finished talking to Tina Mathews, he looke
d at his watch and waved Mackinnon over.
“The crime scene manager said we can take a look at the flat now if you think we have time before the DI’s briefing?”
Mackinnon nodded. “Time for a quick look.”
Mackinnon and Collins made their way back to Henryk Blonski’s apartment, keeping to the path marked out by tape. “What do you reckon, Jack?” Collins asked. “Is it a coincidence that his sister is missing?”
“Could be, but I don’t think so.”
Collins was quiet for a while as they walked up the stairs, then he turned to Mackinnon and said, “Doc said he was killed with a blunt object, a blow to the back of the head. Two or three blows, perhaps.”
They reached the sixth floor, and they both looked down at the dark bloodstains on the yellow tiles.
The photographs had been taken and evidence collected. The clean-up crew would arrive soon to wash the blood from the public areas.
Mackinnon and Collins stepped over Henryk Blonski’s blood and into the flat.
The paint on the walls was old and slightly yellowing. The flat clearly hadn’t been decorated for some time. The carpet, worn thin along the centre, was a dirty green colour.
Despite the fact the walls were crying out for fresh paint, and the carpet should have been replaced years ago, Mackinnon’s first impression was that the flat was clean. He had been inside many homes on the Towers Estate, and this was easily the cleanest he’d seen. The smell of furniture polish lingered in the air.
The flat had an empty feeling to it already.
They walked into the living room. There were a couple of cheap armchairs, upholstered in an ugly, green fabric. A small table and chairs set back against one wall. A small TV set, no stereo. The carpet, like the one in the hall, had seen better days, but it was clean.
On the mantelpiece, above an ancient-looking gas fire, there was a row of framed photos. Mackinnon picked one up and took a closer look.
“Anya and Henryk?”
Collins walked over and peered at the photograph. “Yes. Henryk gave me a couple of photos of Anya yesterday. Pretty, isn’t she?”
“So young. Nineteen, did you say?”