The Blood Whisperer

by Zoe Sharp

  The skylight led out onto the interconnected rooftops that had become her secret refuge. A huge rolling contour map of hips and valleys dotted with TV aerial forests and chimney stacks that rose like rock formations towards the sky. She’d taught herself to navigate the slate and tile landscape like a ghost so those beneath never knew she was there.

  For a moment Kelly stood balanced easily on the sharp slope and breathed in the night air above London. The smell of freedom.

  She picked her way nimbly across the slanted rooftop avoiding loose wires and broken tiles by instinct and familiarity. The end of the terrace butted up against a taller building, its elderly brickwork face providing a relatively easy ascent.

  The first time she’d scaled this wall Kelly had shaken with delayed reaction afterwards but now it was almost second nature. She moved smoothly, continuously, using the mortar gaps and concentrating on texture and grip. Free climbing was risky but by ensuring she always had three good points of contact she could contain the risk. And the prize made it worth the effort.

  Kelly’s favourite spot faced nominally north-east. From there perched on the ridge with her back to a substantial brick chimney she could see the glow of Big Ben, the giant London Eye Ferris wheel, the four huge funnels of the disused power station at Battersea and the glimmer of a thousand lights reflected on the slow water of the river.

  Even if she shut her eyes she could point to every landmark in turn, see them spread clearly across the canvas of her imagination. She’d always had an excellent memory, had once been noted for her ability to recite facts and figures in court with absolute conviction and without recourse to notes.

  But suddenly six years ago she’d had a blackout. A total void that stretched for hours. And when she’d come back to herself she’d discovered that all the evidence—for which she’d always had such respect—pointed to her being a murderer.

  Her victim’s name was Callum Perry. She remembered that much. Secretive and cryptic, Perry had called her claiming to have information she needed to know about a dead prostitute. That case looked straightforward at first glance but Kelly had run into anomalies. Questioning them had not made her popular in some quarters.

  So she arranged to meet him. That was the last thing she knew until she woke next to his corpse.

  So for the first time she’d found herself in the dock rather than on the witness stand, assailed by roiling uncertainties. She’d believed herself to be innocent but didn’t know it. Not for certain. And certainly couldn’t prove it.

  Her friends—ones she’d made through her work and all connected with law enforcement—steadily melted away. Even those who thought she might be innocent were told by their chain of command that if they valued their careers they’d cut her loose.

  She thought of David as she hadn’t thought of him in years. As she had conditioned herself not to think of him. David who had shared her life, her heart, until …

  She’d felt him pulling back from her right from the moment of her arrest, had often thought he’d only stuck around as long as he did because it looked worse to go than stay. In the end he’d stayed too long and the wash of associated guilt had almost drowned him alongside her.

  David resented her for that she knew. Held her bitterly responsible for the permanent stall in promotion that followed. He’d hoped for chief superintendent if not higher. Now he was likely to see out his twenty-five as the longest-serving detective inspector in the Met.

  The police, it seemed, were very quick to turn on their own.

  Alone, all Kelly could cling to was faith in the evidence she’d always trusted. That it would somehow come to her aid.

  But the evidence had let her down.

  Now, she thought back to the scene of Veronica Lytton’s supposed suicide.

  “I know she was murdered,” she told herself. Even if the evidence was gone—all bar a few digital images and her tainted expertise. Neither of which were likely to stand up in court. Especially when she had personally helped wipe out all physical trace.

  Safe in her eyrie looking out over London she hugged her knees to her chest and shivered despite the balmy air.

  9

  Dmitry slumped in the driver’s seat of his black Mercedes-Benz, watching and waiting.

  It was a long time since he’d had to sit like this in silence and darkness waiting for his prey. Not since the old days, he thought sardonically and half-smiled. In some ways he almost missed it.

  But since he had left his homeland Dmitry had tried hard to acquire western sophistication. Take the car for instance. The ten-year-old S-Class coupé was all Dmitry could afford but he’d made up for the age by kitting it out with huge chrome alloys and heavy tint on the glass. Very classy. Back home it was the kind of motor that would have brought people out onto the streets to stare as he passed. In London it didn’t warrant a second glance.

  But for something like this the car’s anonymity was a good thing.

  He’d been waiting for three hours. Three hours without a cigarette and with nothing to occupy his hands. Nothing to occupy his mind either except idly wondering how far to go with the message he had come to deliver. A little further with each passing hour most likely—something had to make up for this boredom.

  He was parked in a side street near the Tube station at Stonebridge Park in north-west London. As he arrived he’d caught glimpses of the arc of the new Wembley stadium in the distance. It was an area more industrial than residential which was a good thing. Not that people were likely to look when they heard noises outside anyway.

  Such a polite race the British. So careful not to get involved even to the point of allowing a stranger to be beaten to death on the very steps of their home. Besides, he was a stone’s throw from the North Circular inner ring road. The constant traffic flow even at this time of night would mask any small sounds. Dmitry prided himself that he was good enough for there to be little else.

  In fact his only brief worry was the Ace Café just a little further along the road. It seemed to be a local bikers’ haunt and there was a lot of coming and going, and groups of people milling around outside. He shrugged it off. If anything the bad press bikers usually got meant they could well be blamed for his actions.

  And then finally the lights flicked off in the office window above the line of roller-shutter doors.

  At last!

  Dmitry was out of the car and across the road in a few seconds, moving fast without seeming to hurry. He made sure to blip the locks on the Mercedes as he walked away from it. It would be bad news if the car was stolen while he was otherwise engaged.

  He was only a few strides away from the main door to the building when it opened. Dmitry tucked in close to the wall so he merged with the shadows. The light that flooded out of the doorway briefly illuminated the figure of a man, just enough to confirm his target.

  Dmitry already had one hand wrapped around the short baton in his coat pocket. Now he pulled it out and extended it with a sharp upward flick of his wrist. The sound of the baton’s segments telescoping outwards and locking into position was designed to resemble that of a shell being racked into the chamber of a pump-action shotgun. The sound alone made most people freeze but this guy ducked and swung on a reflex.

  The first blow landed short. It was still enough to send the man back and down, grabbing hold of the door frame in an attempt to keep his balance. He gave out a grunt and brought his left arm up instinctively to protect his head. Dmitry aimed for the exposed elbow, hearing the muffled crack as the joint exploded.

  This time the man let loose an enraged bellow as he collapsed onto the laminate floor, rolling to escape the pain. Dmitry followed him inside, kicking the man’s legs clear of the door so he could close it behind them. No point doing this in full view of the empty car park.

  Now he could take his time to coldly and scientifically deliver blows that inflicted misery as much as lasting damage. Killing the man would be counterproductive he knew. All he needed to do was scare hi
m into silence.

  When Dmitry figured he was scared enough he stood over him staring down as if to read meaning in the jerky spasms of his limbs. The man’s cries had dribbled away to groans. He lay with his face against the wall in a greasy puddle of his own spittle and blood.

  Dmitry nudged him over onto his back with his foot, leaned in close.

  “You see me?” he demanded.

  The man opened the eye that wasn’t completely swollen shut, swallowed before he could speak. Even then he hesitated as if this might be a trick question.

  Dmitry sighed. “Remember my face, friend. You have poked your nose into something that’s none of your business and my boss is very upset. So let it lie—or you will be seeing my face again for sure. Yes? And next time I will not ask so . . . politely.”

  There was another hesitation, then a slow fractional nod.

  The hesitancy might have been due to pain or confusion but Dmitry did not leave that to chance. Just in case, he repeated his message with several more, brutal blows and followed them up with another verbal warning, laying on a dose of extra threat.

  When he was done he carefully wiped the baton on the man’s clothing and forced it shut against the powerful spring in the base.

  Then he walked out of the building and pulled the door neatly closed behind him. Halfway back to the Merc he lit his first cigarette of the evening and inhaled the smoke deep into his lungs.

  A job well done, he considered.

  Yes, perhaps after all he did miss it.

  Getting back to central London took less than an hour. Dmitry cruised with the stereo on and didn’t go out of his way to attract attention.

  As he pulled up to the underground parking garage the transponder behind the Merc’s front grille sent out a signal that opened the security gates. A few minutes later Dmitry had slotted the car into its bay and was taking the plush lift to the penthouse apartment high above.

  He let himself in and pocketed his keys. Voices came from the living area. When he pushed open the doors he found Harry Grogan sitting alone at the head of the dining table with one of the twenty-four-hour news channels playing on the huge flatscreen TV on the far wall. Grogan was eating a steak so rare it still bled onto his plate.

  He was a big man wearing a three-grand suit and a hand-finished shirt that Dmitry felt did a passable job of disguising the middle-aged slide of muscle into fat. When his hair started to grey and thin he’d shaved his head down to the scalp. It gleamed now under the ceiling spotlights.

  “You’re late,” Grogan said.

  Dmitry bowed his head briefly. Partly in acknowledgement of the rebuke and partly to hide the flare in his eyes.

  “I am sorry boss,” he said. “I was dealing with a . . . minor problem.”

  Grogan stared at him steadily while he chewed another mouthful then picked up his wine glass. “Anything I should know about?”

  Dmitry shook his head. “No,” he said stonily. “It is nothing I cannot handle.”

  10

  Tyrone came to with a start and realised groggily that he was lying face down in something wet. He must have drooled something awful while he’d slept because his pillow was soggy as his football shirt after a tough Wednesday night game.

  He rolled over, his eyes going to the bright figures of his alarm clock on the chest of drawers. It took him a moment to work out that the 4:06 on the display was AM not PM and he stifled a groan.

  There wasn’t even a sniff of daylight outside. Tyrone rubbed his hands across his face and tried to work out what had woken him. Then his cellphone bleeped again to tell him he had a waiting text.

  He scrabbled for it so as not to wake his little brother Brendan who shared the same bedroom. Tyrone flipped open the phone and stabbed the buttons to retrieve the message. It was from Kelly—brief and to the point.

  Ray attacked. Bad way. Central Middx Hosp’l. Pk Royal.

  “Shi-ite,” Tyrone murmured.

  “Tellin’ Ma on you,” came the mumbled response from somewhere under the far duvet.

  “And I’m telling Ma you was awake when you wasn’t supposed to be, yeah?” Tyrone shot back in a harsh whisper. “Go to sleep.”

  The walls in the flat were paper thin and he didn’t want to wake his mum or his sister as well. His mum cleaned other people’s offices half the night. Less messy than the jobs Tyrone tackled but hard slog just the same. She didn’t deserve to be woken by something like this.

  He threw back the covers, grabbed his clothes off the chair at the end of his bed and slipped out of the room. In the bathroom he splashed cold water on his face and dressed hurriedly, stabbing out a brief return message while he cleaned his teeth.

  On way.

  He scribbled a note and tacked it under a fridge magnet where all household messages were left then grabbed his bike helmet from the hall.

  His mum hadn’t wanted him to get a motorbike—had been well against it at first. He’d talked her round. It was cheap transport and faster for getting through London traffic. No congestion charge either, and though the bastards were trying to bring in parking fees at least you were never short of a space.

  At home he kept the old Honda 250 chained to a concrete pillar under the flats next to the wheelie bins. He let it be known that if anybody messed with it, it he had easy access to chemicals that could dissolve a body down to nothing in a couple of hours. Pure bullshit, but so far the local toerags had kept their thieving hands off it.

  Now he unchained the bike and fired it up, letting it warm through while he zipped up his jacket and got himself together.

  Someone had attacked the boss. Bad, Kelly had said. The idea left him shaky. More shaky maybe because he saw the after-effects of violence every day. He’d helped clean up after domestics and home invasions that ended in a bloodbath.

  Where? he wondered, buckling the strap on his helmet. He didn’t ask why. He’d long since stopped looking for reason. A funny look, a spilled pint, a nice pair of trainers. All good enough cause for a fist or a quick blade.

  But Ray McCarron wouldn’t be an easy target. He’d been a copper—still had that way about him. And he was fast for an old guy.

  Not fast enough.

  Anger pushed the shakiness aside. Tyrone toed the bike into gear and accelerated out onto the main road.

  This time of the morning he could go straight down the Mile End Road, then head west through Shoreditch, past King’s Cross, and skirt the bottom end of Regent’s Park to hit the A40. That would take him straight out to Park Royal. It was a route he knew well enough—he went that way to work sometimes if it wasn’t rush hour.

  Tyrone had been riding a bike ever since he was old enough. Before then if truth be told but he wouldn’t admit as much to his mum. He’d always been big for his age and the local coppers were more interested in valid tax and insurance than they were with checking the face and the licence matched up.

  It was only since he’d started working for the boss that he’d seen another side of the cops. The right side, he supposed. Before then they’d been the enemy swaggering into his home territory like invaders, all cocky, ready to swoop on one of his mates. Sometimes they were justified but it could just as easily be a random thing. Like they didn’t care who they picked up as long as they picked up somebody.

  Now he saw most of them as pros who dealt with the worse side of life with dedication and more care than they let on. His jaw clamped under his visor. He just hoped they cared enough to get a result on this one.

  Or Tyrone would be looking to do their job for them.

  11

  Kelly sat on a wooden bench in the hospital courtyard garden staring at the swirling pattern of slate in front of her.

  It was a sculpture as much as a piece of landscaping and was supposed to represent an echogram of the heart laid out in different coloured cobbles that spiralled inwards to a central point.

  She’d watched the texture of the piece solidify as the sun rose slowly over the city and filtered down i
nto the garden. Called ‘Echoes of the Heart’ it was intended to provide an oasis of tranquillity for patients and visitors but all Kelly felt was an overwhelming sense of sadness.

  Ray McCarron had been rushed in an hour ago with a shopping list of injuries that frankly dismayed her. Shattered elbow, cracked ribs, concussion, possible fractured skull and internal bleeding as well as cuts and bruises just about everywhere.

  The only way she could hold it together was to think of it in coldly clinical terms. Whoever worked him over had done a very professional job. Nothing bad enough to be fatal—she clung to that thought—but plenty that would afford a painful lasting reminder.

  She put her head in her hands. If she’d been a weeper she would have wept but tears were a luxury she’d dispensed with a long time ago.