In the Dark

by Mark Billingham

  Frank Linnell was sitting in the garden. He stood up when she walked onto the patio, said, ‘Helen, is it?’

  He was fifty-odd, but looked fit enough in blue gym shorts and a white polo shirt. There was no grey to speak of in hair that was curly at the neck and greased back with something. The face was . . . softer than Helen had expected.

  She sat down opposite him at a small, slatted table and said thank you when the big man laid her drink down.

  ‘Just shout if you want another one,’ he said.

  ‘Nice out here, isn’t it?’ Linnell said. ‘Be bloody gorgeous in a day or two. Tell you the truth, I’m not even sure I want to sell the place.’

  Fresh turf had been laid between where they were sitting and a new fence thirty or so feet away, and one side of the patio was filled with rows of hanging baskets and potted plants, their tubs still wrapped in polythene.

  ‘Stick a couple of swings or a slide over there on the grass, be smashing.’

  Helen took a long drink and a deep breath. Looked across at a man who, if a fraction of what she’d heard was true, was on the wish list of half the city’s senior detectives, and who carried on speaking as if they’d known one another for years.

  ‘Can’t be too long now.’ He pointed at Helen’s belly. ‘Looks about done in there, I reckon.’

  ‘Try not to make any loud noises,’ she said.

  ‘Going back to work straight away? Or . . .’

  ‘Not straight away.’

  ‘Most advantageous arrangement for the kiddie, if you ask me.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘And what about today?’ Linnell took a sip of his own drink. It looked like Coke, but there was no way of knowing if there was anything else in it. ‘You working today?’

  ‘I just came to talk about Paul,’ Helen said.

  Linnell smiled. ‘I’d like that.’

  For the second time in as many minutes, Helen had been put firmly on the back foot. She told herself that Linnell, and those who worked for him, were probably well practised at doing it; urged herself to relax and stay focused. The baby was kicking up a storm and she quietly shifted position to make herself more comfortable. She moved a hand across to her belly beneath the table, and started to rub gently. ‘How did you know Paul?’ she asked.

  ‘We met six years ago,’ Linnell said. He began to play with a gold chain around his neck, drawing the links back and forth between his fingers as he spoke. ‘He was part of the team on a case I was close to. The murder of someone I was close to. Afterwards . . . all the way through, matter of fact, Paul was terrific. One or two of his colleagues were not quite as . . . sympathetic, if you know what I mean. When you’ve got a reputation, some people can only see things one way. Paul always treated me the same as he’d treat anyone else who was a victim.’

  ‘And after that?’

  ‘We stayed in touch.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘We became friends, I suppose.’ He shrugged, like it was all very simple. ‘We were friends.’

  ‘Did you see him often?’

  ‘Every month or two, give or take. We were both very busy. Well, you know . . .’

  ‘So you had lunch, went to the cinema, what?’

  ‘We had lunch, we talked about this and that, went to the pub. I took him to the Oval once to see a day’s cricket.’ He laughed. ‘We got thoroughly pissed on.’

  Helen was nodding, as though there were nothing out of the ordinary in what Linnell was telling her, but her insides were churning and it was nothing to do with the baby playing football with her kidneys. She needed to get up a head of steam, to ask the more awkward questions that she’d been rehearsing since the previous night. She saw the warmth in Linnell’s face as he spoke about Paul and wondered if there might really be no more to it than the friendship he seemed to treasure so much. It crossed her mind that he might be gay, might have been in love with Paul. She glanced down and saw that he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

  Maybe Paul had known that Linnell had a thing for him and was using it to his advantage somehow.

  ‘You want anything to eat?’ Linnell asked.

  Helen gave a small shake of the head, said, ‘Did you ever talk about the Job?’ It was clear from the look that passed across Linnell’s face that he knew what she meant. His job, if you could call it that, as well as Paul’s.

  ‘First few times we met up, I suppose, just making conversation really, but not after that. It was kind of an unwritten rule. We didn’t want that kind of thing getting in the way.’

  Helen noticed he was still fingering his chain. Thought, Getting in the way of what? ‘So he never asked you about any work associates? Never asked about anything you were doing?’

  ‘Like I said, it would have got in the way. Made things awkward.’ He swirled the melting ice around in his glass. ‘Do your friends always talk to you about abused kids?’

  On the back foot again. Linnell was making it clear that he knew plenty about her, and what she did. He might have dug around; she didn’t doubt that he knew other coppers who would have been happy to do his digging for him and pass on the information. Or he might simply have heard it from Paul during one of their cosy chats. Sitting at the cricket, maybe.

  Either way, it made Helen feel as though she wanted a long, hot shower. ‘When was the last time you saw him?’ she asked.

  He thought about it. ‘About two weeks ago. Something like that. He came here, matter of fact.’

  ‘I know,’ Helen said. Just to make it clear she had done some digging, too.

  ‘He brought me over some lunch.’ Linnell enjoyed the memory, but the smile slipped off his face fairly quickly. ‘I wish we’d parted on better terms, tell you the truth.’

  ‘What?’

  He looked a little uncomfortable, wrapping the chain around a finger now, but then he shrugged, as though deciding there was no harm in telling her. As though he’d worked out that she probably wouldn’t be too surprised. ‘What I said before, about not talking about work? Well, we did, the last couple of times we got together. Paul had asked me to help him out, to pass on a few names. People I thought he could . . . talk to.’

  Helen swallowed.

  ‘I told him I couldn’t help,’ Linnell said. ‘Well, that I didn’t want to. It wouldn’t have been right for all sorts of reasons.’

  ‘What kind of people?’

  ‘People in my line of work. Businessmen. People you might also have come across in your line of work.’

  ‘Like Kevin Shepherd?’

  ‘Who?’ He looked like he’d never heard the name before.

  Helen’s tongue felt thick and heavy in her mouth. ‘Why did Paul want you to do that?’

  ‘Come on, love.’

  ‘Have a guess.’

  ‘What, same as you have, you mean?’

  Helen reached down for her handbag, drew it closer to her, feeling like she might need to be out of the chair and away at any moment.

  Linnell turned away from her and stared out across the small garden. ‘Things turning out how they did, I wish I’d helped him. You go over those things when you lose someone, don’t you? You replay moments. I’m sure you’ve been doing the same thing.’

  ‘I doubt we’ve been doing the same thing.’

  ‘Stupid really.’ Linnell cleared his throat. ‘I’d’ve been happy to lend him some money if that’s all it was. He only had to ask, you know?’

  ‘You should never borrow money off friends,’ Helen said. She emphasised the last word. Still not convinced there hadn’t been a more formal arrangement.

  ‘Was he in any kind of trouble, money-wise?’

  There was no way Helen was going to answer. She would not give him any of herself, of herself and Paul. There was no way she was going to tell him the trouble Paul had been in was something he’d kept strictly to himself. She felt anger building in her, like a desire to piss or puke; at Paul, Christ yes, but also at herself for being stupid. As though she could ever c
ome away from this feeling any other way.

  At Linnell especially, right at that moment, seeing that he meant it. How much he cared. Seeing that tears had welled up in his eyes the second before he had turned away.

  The big man stepped out onto the patio and told Linnell he was needed inside. Someone had drilled through a cable.

  Linnell put a hand over Helen’s when he stood up. ‘Stay and finish your drink, love,’ he said.

  Theo sat in the stash house, not because he was expecting to do a roaring trade, not with the streets crawling with the Met, but because it felt like the safest place to be.

  Ever since Mikey, he’d been wondering whether he should start carrying a gun all the time. Easy and Wave did, liked to show them off like bling whenever possible. Most of the others said they did, patting their pockets like they had their dicks in there, but Theo had never bothered. He had always thought that carrying a gun made you a target, fair game. Easy said that was stupid; that as a member of the street crew he was a target anyway, and that people would presume he was carrying whether he was or not.

  Easy talked sense every now and again. A gun might have been a better investment than those Timberlands.

  Even if Theo couldn’t quite bring himself to get one for personal use, there was always a gun to hand in the stash house, which was why it was as good a place as any to sit and think. To hide. He knew how to use it, knew that he could have it in his hand by the time anyone had managed to get through the reinforced steel door.

  ‘Like Fort Knox,’ Easy had said. ‘Only time you’re in trouble, some fucker comes knocking with a JCB.’

  Mikey and SnapZ had both been there in Hackney that night and now both were dead. But was Theo being stupid? Maybe Mikey had paid for what he did to that hooker. Maybe SnapZ had been doing business of his own that nobody knew about. His mind worked through the possibilities but was unable to come up with any explanation for what was happening that didn’t sound ridiculous.

  Maybe it was coppers?

  He’d killed one of their own, after all, and he knew how that kind of thing went down. He’d seen a film once, an Eastwood movie before he went serious and got old, where cops were taking the law into their own hands and killing drug dealers and rapists and all that. What if they knew who had been in that car; had known all along and decided that five bullets were a lot less trouble than five warrants? A good way to cut down on paperwork . . .

  Theo heard shouting outside the door and froze, his eyes seeking out the gun on the table in front of him.

  He waited. Just kids, enjoying all the excitement.

  He needed to call Javine, let her know where he was and what was happening. He opened his phone and dialled the number, trying to relax so she wouldn’t hear anything in his voice.

  It wasn’t easy.

  On the way across from the estate he’d passed the place where they were doing the mural for Mikey. Like always, they’d gone to town, made him look like some kind of angel. Golden-skinned with shiny white teeth.

  Theo had stared at the painted bricks and thought about SnapZ and the rest of them. He couldn’t help wondering if they were going to need a bigger wall.

  Feet up in front of the box - in dressing gown and pyjama bottoms, with tea and a rapidly diminishing packet of Jaffa Cakes - was going some small way to easing the memory of the meeting with Frank Linnell.

  The feeling of being handled.

  It wasn’t like she’d expected to come away with too many answers, or any answers at all, but she hadn’t banked on walking out of that pub with even more questions.

  At work, cases often turned out to be far more complex than they’d first appeared: the horrified relative who turned out to be the abuser, who it was subsequently revealed had been abused himself. There was always something else going on. Most of her colleagues dreaded such cases; were worn down by the long hours and the paperwork, by the weight of all that pain.

  But Helen thrived on it.

  Some people opened a can of worms and fought to get the lid back on double quick, but Helen had always been more inclined to thrust her hands in good and deep. To let the slimy, twisted things curl around her fingers until she developed a feel for them.

  She enjoyed trouble, wasn’t really happy unless she’d got a few problems to sort out, that was what Paul had said. The messier the better.

  ‘Yeah, right, Hopwood. Pretty ironic, considering . . .’

  She changed the channel and stuffed another Jaffa Cake into her mouth; turned up the sound and swung her feet to the floor when she saw what was happening.

  A reporter talking straight to camera, a spray-painted wall behind her. She was young, black and suitably earnest; trying to ignore the group of young boys doing their best to get into shot. ‘This was another gang shooting,’ she said. The second murder in only a few days that had shocked this tightly knit community. Police in Lewisham were now working flat out to get to the bottom of the killings, but it looked very much like they had a gang war on their hands. Two of the boys leaned into frame as the reporter handed back to the studio. Shouted at the camera and struck poses.

  Helen remembered what the DI had said when she’d sat in his office that first Monday morning after the crash. Paul had died in north London, but the car had been stolen in the south. Perhaps the gang responsible were involved in a turf war, so had deliberately carried out the shooting on rival territory. It had just been a question of which gangs, the DI had said, which wasn’t so easy to work out when there were so many of them. When none of them were queuing up to help out the police.

  Now, they might have made it a little more obvious.

  It was certainly a decent enough place to start looking. She had a hospital appointment first thing, but bugger all else after that. No reason not to give it a go.

  Get those fat fingers in a little deeper.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The woman who came in every Monday, the sainted Betty, sorted out most of Frank’s meals for the week, but he enjoyed making his own breakfast. He relished the thinking time. Listening to media poofs and politicians talking out of their arses on Radio Four, while he made himself a pot of tea, cooked and mentally ran through the day ahead. Sometimes Laura would be around early, and they’d enjoy the time together, but there was no sign of her this morning.

  That was OK; he had a lot to think about.

  He chopped a tomato to stir into his scrambled eggs and thought what a nice girl Helen Weeks was. That said, he hadn’t really expected her not to be. Why would Paul have been with any other sort?

  Paul had never said too much about her, and Frank hadn’t pushed, but he’d sensed there’d been some trouble around the previous Christmas. It was hard to tell whether it came from him or her, and it probably made no difference either way. But you didn’t need to be Einstein to work out it would have been around the time when she got herself up the stick.

  Not for the first time, Frank was thankful to be well out of all that carry on. Happy enough to remember a few special people from his past, and to pay for a bunk-up every now and again. It was the easiest way to avoid grief.

  Last winter, Frank had told Paul he was there for him if there was a problem - if he needed to talk, night or day - and had left it at that.

  He pushed his tomato from the chopping board into the pan and added some more butter. That was the secret of perfect scrambled egg, plenty of good, salted butter.

  Paul had been right to play his cards close to his chest, though, Frank could see that. She was bright and suspicious, this one; on top of which she wasn’t afraid to dig. It probably made her a bloody good copper. Matter of fact, he was grateful she didn’t work for Serious and Organised. Soon as he thought it, Frank wished he’d said as much to her the day before. He had a feeling she’d have found it funny.

  He poured the eggs on to his toast, carried the plate across to the table, added plenty of black pepper.

  The previous Christmas, he’d given Paul a silver hip flask, and Paul had
given him a Bruckner CD he’d been banging on about. The Vienna Philharmonic playing the Seventh. It was the same one he fetched out and played into the early hours, the night Helen had called to tell him that Paul had been killed.

  Laura had come down half asleep and asked him what was wrong, but he’d sent her back to bed.

  When he’d eaten, Frank loaded the dishwasher, then walked through to his office to give Clive a call. He wanted to move matters forward. He’d always been one for getting a job done as quickly as possible and pushing on to the next thing. Hot irons and all that . . .

  Besides which, he never liked to give anyone the chance to work out he was coming for them.

  Detective Inspector Spiky Bugger called just as Helen was leaving the hospital. He said he was sorry that she hadn’t been told very much; apologised that she’d been left out of the loop. She said she understood, knew that it was probably because there hadn’t been much to tell her, and he didn’t argue.

  He seemed keen to keep it short, just wanting to let her know that they were following up a few fresh lines of enquiry. He promised to try to keep her better informed. She told him she’d be grateful, and insisted she was fine when he asked how she was.

  Half an hour later, walking down from the multi-storey above the Lewisham Centre, Helen had a pretty good idea what those ‘fresh lines of enquiry’ were. Having seen the news the night before, and several more reports on TV first thing, she knew that many of the DI’s team, if not the man himself, would be walking the same streets as she was at that very moment. She half expected to bump into him, queuing for a parking ticket, and wondered how the conversation would go if she did.

  ‘Small world . . .’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Just out for a walk. Exercise is good for the baby.’

  ‘In Lewisham?’

  ‘It’s very underrated.’

  Helen knew that few people would overrate Lewisham, based on a cursory stroll around its main shopping area at any rate. Granted, anywhere that had seen two fatal shootings in less than a week was hardly likely to feel like Hampstead or Highgate Village, but even so. The place felt like somewhere people would visit only if they had to; only if the life they endured behind their own four walls was close to intolerable. Somewhere to get in and out of quickly. There was a leisure centre, a decent-looking park and a library, and Helen knew that if she had the time to look, she’d find a variety of smaller communities untouched by the tension and the violence. But around the DLR and bus stations, outside the pubs and shop-fronts, the noise, the industry, only seemed to heighten the edgy atmosphere.