by Tim Weaver
I looked at her, silence settling between us.
But it felt like we were both thinking the same thing: these names on the wall, this collapsing housing estate, this was just another ghost to be exorcized.
He’d rid himself of one by writing Gemma an apology, committing words to paper that he’d never had the courage to speak aloud. He’d done it again by signing the divorce papers, unshackling her, giving her the freedom that she’d long wanted. And here he’d done it a third time, perhaps for the final time, returning to his first few years of being a cop, to a case that, two decades on, would be mirrored by the murder of the twins and their mother.
He’d have seen the similarities between the two cases: the age of the victims, the brutality of their killers, the two crumbling housing estates against which the crimes took place. And, despite there being over twenty years between them, perhaps a part of him may even have seen the parallels as some kind of sign, as his inevitable fate. Years ago, he’d watched from the back of the room. In 2010, he’d watched as a killer slipped away.
Both times, he’d been powerless.
The beginning was the same as the end.
22
I left the car where it was, and walked up Dog Kennel Hill to Helton Way. Craw passed me as I did and beeped once. It wasn’t a greeting, it was a reminder: she’d asked me to call her with an update later if I found anything at Highdale. I acknowledged her, watching as her Mini disappeared over the brow of the hill.
Helton Way was the road that bisected Highdale, although the estate – half a mile from corner to corner – was actually subdivided into quarters, each part as huge as a cruise ship, its balconies lined with endless doorways, its walls dotted with satellite dishes. Every window on the side of the estate still standing was made of frosted glass, milky like cataracts after years of neglect; but on the other side of Helton, Highdale was reduced to memories and rubble.
Trucks and diggers were parked on mounds of dry mud, a crane with a wrecking ball too, vehicles and building-site Portakabins secured behind endless mesh fencing. I stopped and took in what lay beyond the fence: one quarter of the estate was gone entirely, nothing left of it but its concrete base; another had been reduced to half a building, roof gone, walls torn away, interiors revealed. I could see dangling electrical wires and crumbling plasterboard, floral wallpaper, half-rooms with walls dotted in mould. Another few weeks, and both quarters would be consigned to history. I turned back to the half that remained.
It seemed to loom over me, even though it was only five storeys high. A single walkway – suspended at the fifth floor – connected one quarter to the other; otherwise it could just as easily have been one vast structure, two back-to-back L-shaped buildings designed to be perfect mirror images of one another.
Highdale was built on a slight slope, and this half sat higher than the part already in the process of being demolished. That meant the tiny car park I was standing in, enclosed on three sides by hundreds of flats, was below the level of the ground floor. I took a flight of concrete steps up from the car park, where the main entrances to each block faced a patch of scorched grass. This early on, with the sun only just up, the place was quiet: I could hear a car engine somewhere close by, the throatier sound of the traffic on Dog Kennel Hill, birdsong, but not a lot else.
I started with the building on my left.
It had no name of its own, no identity to speak of, and inside it was like a photocopy, duplicated and stuck together, over and over. Unlike the building that Healy had found the twins in, Highdale was all enclosed, its corridors long and windowless, smelling of industrial cleaner and damp. The flats here looked like they were still occupied: as I passed them, I could hear sounds from inside.
On the second floor, things were exactly the same, except it looked like the council had colour-coded the doors. The ground floors had been red; these were blue. On the third floor they were green, on the fourth yellow, and by the time I got to the fifth it was back to red, but one marginally darker than before.
At the end of the fifth-floor corridor, a set of double doors opened up on to the walkway I’d glimpsed from outside. I headed out, into the freshness of the morning, and was met by the same sounds as before, except with better views: I could see the building site to the north more clearly, workers starting to arrive.
I headed inside the other building.
Despite the same layout and colours, a sheet of paper had been attached to each of the doors on the fifth floor. I moved closer and looked at the first one.
It was an eviction notice.
The same printout had been taped to every door, all the way along, and as I headed further in, towards the stairwell that would take me down to the floors below, I started to realize that this corner of the estate was different from the last. There was no sound.
No music. No televisions.
No voices.
This was the next part of the site to go, its occupants already departed, its life mapped out now in days not weeks. There were no internal lights on, and there was no stench of cleaner or polish, no suggestion anyone had been inside for weeks. I began trying doors straight away. They had no handles on the outside, just a single Yale lock; I pushed at them, seeing if any of them were ajar. They weren’t. I got to the stairwell at the end and headed down to the fourth floor.
It was the same here, except it was darker, unlit by the daylight from a walkway. The same notices were pinned up. I continued to try the doors, and on the third floor too. But just as I was starting to think that the entire building had been cleared, I got to the second floor and found a few people in the process of moving, their doors open, household items under their arms as they carried them out to their cars. No one paid me much attention as I passed, or as I paused on the stairwell and listened to one of the residents telling a guy in the blue uniform of a removals company that they had to be out of here before Monday.
That was two days’ time.
I headed down to the first floor, where the scene was exactly the same – a few open doorways, people starting to move out – and then a small foyer, just inside the main entrance, with views out across the car park I’d started in twenty minutes before.
Outside, I stood there in the space between the two buildings, the sun up but still hidden behind the turreted roofs of Highdale. There was more noise now: the chug of diggers; the whine of cranes, cars and lorries out on the main road; birds squawking from the balconies above my head. I heard the rattle of a skateboard and watched a kid pass, headphones on.
Where now?
As disappointment fizzed in my guts, I headed into the space between the two buildings, under the fifth-floor walkway I’d crossed not long before. At the back was another car park, boxed in by ugly grey walls and a series of air-conditioning units growing out of the buildings like a line of blisters. They were all off, soundless, none of the fans turning inside their white metal casings.
Under them, something caught my eye.
At ground level, adjacent to one of the units, a grate had been removed. It was about two feet high and six feet long, and should have been screwed to the wall. Instead it was propped against the space it was supposed to be covering.
I moved across to it.
Dropping to my haunches, I tried to angle my head to get a better view of what lay inside; but it was hard to see anything, so I got down on to my belly.
Directly inside, level with the top frame of the grate, was the underside of a metal ventilation shaft. Beneath that, the space dropped down six feet – maybe more – into a cramped space, bricked on all sides with white concrete blocks.
There was a mattress inside.
As my eyes adjusted to the lack of light, I was able to make out even more. Next to the mattress was a cardboard box, turned upside down and being used as a table. There was a tin cup and a book on it. Beyond that, partially set in shadow, were the edges of a black-and-yellow backpack, tatty and stained, the zip broken. Spilling out of it was a red T-
shirt with something printed on it.
A flash of familiarity formed.
Was it something about the T-shirt?
I started to edge closer on my stomach, shuffling across loose stones and gravel until my head was all of the way inside the shaft.
Then I stopped.
A body lay face down in the corner.
The smell hit me a second after I saw him. It crept up the walls, drawn into the daylight, gluey and ripe like meat left to rot in the sun. I swallowed once, again, again, trying to rid myself of its grasp, but it kept coming, forcing its way into my throat until I had to wriggle my way out and suck in gulps of fresh air.
As dread gripped the well of my stomach, I returned, took a deep breath and headed in with the phone out in front of me, its light casting a grey pall across the walls. Once my head crossed the lip of the shaft, into the darkness, the smell hit me a second time, but I pushed on all the same, moving as far in as I could get and directing the light down, into the corners of the space.
Now I could make out what was printed on the T-shirt, and knew why I recognized it: I’d seen it before, on 14 January, when I’d met Healy at the motel.
Boys on Tour – Dublin 07.
He’d been wearing it.
23
I put my phone in my pocket, turned myself all the way around and, gripping the ventilation shaft with both hands, shuffled along on my back, gradually dropping into the space below feet-first. I started to feel nauseous, and not just because the smell seemed worse than ever.
I didn’t want to go any further.
I didn’t want to see him like this.
When I hit the floor, the darkness seemed to waken: something scurried away, the scrabble of claws on concrete, and then there was a low, soft buzz.
Flies.
They bumped against my face, against my arms, and when I removed my phone again, directing its light out to where the body was, I realized it wasn’t flies, it was wasps: they drifted endlessly in the shadows, like black snowflakes.
The body’s too old.
The flies have already gone.
Putting a hand to my mouth, I inched forward.
He had a bright blue beanie on, his head turned to the right – away from me – his right arm caught under him, and facing off in the same direction as his left. He was wearing a thick woollen sweater, which had ridden up, exposing the dirty white T-shirt he had on underneath, and the small of his back, which had become ashen. He’d flattened in death, sinking against the skeleton as he’d dried out. I stopped, four feet from his legs, keeping my hand pressed against my face, overwhelmed by what I was seeing. It was hard to recognize him as the man I’d known, the skin on his face thin and papery, and clinging to the curves of his cheekbones and eye sockets. I’d seen enough death to know for sure now he wasn’t fresh. Maybe twenty days.
Maybe five weeks.
Five weeks ago would have been the end of August, days after he’d sent Gemma the letter; days after he’d been back to The Meadows, returning to those moments when he’d sat at the back of a flat on the fifth floor of Highdale, as the mother of Ian Arnold’s seventh, surviving victim told detectives what had happened. He’d spent his last hours connecting the cases that began and ended his career.
And then, after that, he’d come here to die.
If I had any doubts it was him, if I retained any hope that his life hadn’t ended here, in this hidden part of a decaying building, they disappeared as I directed the light out past him, to the spaces beyond his emaciated fingertips.
Because there – its battery disconnected and cast aside – was the mobile phone I’d bought him from a supermarket in January. Next to that was a box of Zoplicone sleeping tablets, an entire tray consumed, the foil in every pocket punctured, the pills long since gone. Beyond both, open, pages spilling out of it, was the Clark family murder file, You’re on your own scrawled across the front page of the file in my handwriting. And then, finally, tacked to the wall, were three photographs.
Gail.
April.
Abigail.
Part Three
* * *
31 OCTOBER 2014
31 October 2014
FUNERAL FOR COP FOUND DEAD IN DEMOLISHED HOUSING ESTATE
The funeral of former Metropolitan Police detective Colm Healy will take place at Bells Hill Burial Ground in Barnet today. Mr Healy’s body was found in a maintenance room under notorious south London sink estate Highdale on 4 October. He’d committed suicide.
Healy had been a detective inspector at the Met before his dismissal in 2012, which was down to ‘investigative decisions not in the public interest’ and ‘insubordination’, according to a spokesman. However, one of his former commanding officers, Detective Chief Inspector Melanie Craw, said ex-colleagues on the force were still ‘extremely upset at the passing of a man who served with great distinction until the regrettable decisions of his final few months’. She also confirmed that a contingent from Scotland Yard would be present at the funeral.
24
The day of the funeral it rained. The late summer was long gone, replaced by the grey of autumn, cloud knitted together, the temperature down to single figures.
I was surprised at the number of people who turned up to say goodbye to Healy, and while I felt nothing for him but sadness, his last months haunted by ghosts he’d never been able to control, a part of me was strangely relieved. As I’d driven to the cemetery that morning, I’d been worried the only other people at his graveside would be Gemma, her sons, Craw, and maybe a few former cops who felt sorry for him. Instead, despite all that he’d done, all his history with the force, forty-six travelled up from the Met, joining some former neighbours from his time in St Albans, and some cousins of his who’d flown over from Ireland.
He was buried a two-minute walk from Gemma’s house. It was difficult to know where else we could lay him to rest: at the end, he’d had no home, no anchor to anywhere, so I suggested Bells Hill to Gemma, and she went along with it. In the days after I’d found him, she’d gone along with most things. It had been a long time since she’d thought of Healy as her husband, but that didn’t mean, in some small way, she hadn’t still loved him. In that first week, as we waited for DNA results, for definite confirmation it was him, she was dazed, a little punch-drunk, so I offered to take care of all the arrangements.
She didn’t cry at any point in the run-up to his burial. Instead, she’d sit there, staring into the middle distance, telling me she trusted my judgement, that the coffin I’d chosen was fine, that the flowers were lovely, that the hymns were perfect. For a month, she was like a dam groaning under the weight of water.
I watched his sons during the service, having only met them once in the flesh, at their sister’s funeral three years before. Ciaran, whom I’d chatted to on the phone briefly in the days before I found Healy, was thinner, physically similar to his mother, and showed nothing, staring at the coffin throughout, hands in front of him, suit dotted with rain. His brother, Liam, was the opposite: bulky like his father, red-haired, intense, emotional. He began welling up as the coffin was lowered into the ground, gripping his mother’s arm as if trying to prevent himself from falling in after it. Gemma, immaculately turned out, held out for an hour, first in the church and then out at the graveside, but on the walk back to the car park I saw her stumble a little, like her legs had given way.
Then, finally, she cried.
The wake was held at a golf club on the northern fringes of the town. Although Craw was there, she never spoke to me, her doubts about being seen with me in public keeping us on opposite sides of the room. Instead, as I stood on my own at the windows of the clubhouse, looking out at the greens, I saw a reflection shift in the glass to my left, and when I turned I realized I’d been approached by a couple of CID cops I’d crossed swords with before. One, a softly spoken Scotsman in his early forties called Phillips, had been the senior investigating officer on the case that had led Healy and me to the body – an
d the killer – of Leanne; the other was a pudgy, aggressive detective sergeant in his fifties called Davidson. Davidson had worked alongside Healy on the Snatcher task force in 2012, but the two of them had loathed one another.
‘David,’ Phillips said.
I nodded at him, and we shook hands.
Davidson didn’t offer me his hand, just looked me up and down.
The three of us stood there in an uncomfortable silence for a moment, then Phillips said, ‘I understand from what I’ve read that you were the one that found Colm.’ It wasn’t a question, so I just nodded again and let him continue. ‘Still running around trying to save the world, I see.’ He stopped, this time for longer. During my dealings with him, I’d never liked Phillips as a person, although I’d come to admire his abilities as an investigator – but it was clear he didn’t feel the same way about me either personally or professionally. ‘It seems that every time I pick up a newspaper these days, I find your name plastered all over it. Why can’t you just let us get on with our jobs?’
‘I didn’t realize I was stopping you.’
‘You’re damaging cases, David.’
‘You don’t believe that.’
‘Don’t I?’
‘I’m searching for people no one else cares about.’
‘So it’s a public service?’
I shrugged. ‘It’s whatever you want it to be.’
He smiled but didn’t say anything.
Next to Phillips, Davidson had edged around so he was almost side-on to me, and through the gap that had opened up between them, I could see a crowd of other detectives looking on, Craw among them. They were obviously all in on whatever this was. Briefly, my eyes met Craw’s, but she showed nothing in her face, and then a guy leaned in and whispered something to her, his eyes on me, and she broke out into a smile. I felt a spear of anger.