by Mark Hill
He drained the glass and placed it in the sink. Blobs of rain pattered across the window. The back door rattled. Checking the handle, he found it unlocked. That was Babs, in and out of the garden all night, smoking, littering the plant pots with fag butts. He turned the key in the door and wearily climbed the stairs.
Kenny took a piss, careful not to splash the seat, and shuffled down the hallway. Christ, it was pitch black. The door to the spare bedroom was open, the room empty. Phil must have changed his mind about staying – or more likely he was still out with mates.
A pungent stink hit him as soon as Kenny opened the door to his bedroom – Babs’s muggy exhalations. Kenny loved that smell. He was seconds away from snuggling against her.
But there was another smell he couldn’t place – chemical, plastic.
His wife cried out – a toneless, muffled sound.
‘Sorry, love.’ Kenny stumbled out of his trousers, trying not to disturb her. The stench in his nostrils was bitter, acrid. ‘Bloody stinks in here.’
The soles of his socks felt damp. He dabbed anxiously against the wall to find the light switch.
And when he turned it on, when he saw, he knew he was lost.
His head was yanked back and a cold blade placed against the loose skin at his throat.
A voice hissed in his ear: ‘Hello, Kenny. Long time no see.’
4
Ray Drake walked anxiously towards the crime scene. He was there within minutes; it was barely a few hundred yards from Tottenham Police Station.
Police vans and squad cars were parked along the street. Clots of people gathered in the sweep of the cherry lights to watch the proceedings from the outer cordon. An inner cordon sealed off the middle of the street to all but scene-of-crime officers and authorised personnel. Drake badged the uniform there, and took a pair of polythene shoe-covers from a bag dangling from his clipboard.
Eddie Upson stood on the pavement, making the bins look untidy. His eyes were bloodshot, and his shirt flapped open at the bottom to reveal a wiry tangle of stomach hair. When Drake left the pub last night – after that speech by Harris finally ended – Upson looked settled in for a long session.
‘Upstairs, sir.’
Drake nodded up at the bedroom. ‘What’s it like?’
‘Not pleasant.’ Upson smothered a yawn. ‘It’s kind of … intense.’
‘We keeping you up, Eddie?’
‘Bit of a headache.’ Upson stretched. ‘Thought you’d leave all the crime-scene malarkey to Flick – uh, DS Crowley – now.’
Upson discreetly tucked in his shirt as they walked up the path to the house. Drake knew he shouldn’t be there, Flick was the officer in charge and he should just let her get on with it, but Harris would be all over this investigation like a rash. A triple murder just around the corner from a police station – the media would have a field day.
That’s what he told himself. But there was something else.
When he was given the name and address of the possible victims, an alarm, a warning signal buried deep inside of him, had gone off, spluttered into life like a candle, dormant for decades, igniting in the depths of a bottomless cave.
He had to be there. He needed to be there.
‘Talk me through it,’ he said.
At the door, they slipped the elasticated bootees onto their shoes, Eddie swaying dangerously as he lifted one leg and then the other.
‘The house is rented by a middle-aged couple called Kenny and Barbara Overton.’
‘We’re sure it’s them?’
‘Neighbours ID’d their DVLA photos.’
‘And the third victim?’
‘Kenny and Barbara have two grown-up sons who’re always popping in. Phillip and, uh …’ He squinted at his notebook. ‘Ryan.’
‘Which one is it?’
‘We don’t know yet. They’re twins – but not identical. Cars are on the way to both addresses.’
They stepped aside to let a pair of scene-of-crime officers carry tubs of equipment into the house. Drake took nitrile gloves from his pocket and shook them out, taking his time about it. There was a faint tremor in his hands when he snapped them over his wrists.
‘Coming inside, guv?’
Upson had an expectant look on his face. Drake wondered how long he’d been standing there fiddling with the gloves, unconsciously putting off the moment when he had to step inside …
On the landing a large battery-powered arc light was stooped towards the doorway of the front bedroom, its white beam switched off. The bodies inside that room could stay there all day and long into the night, as the CSIs painstakingly recorded the crime scene and a pathologist studied them in situ.
From the room came the whir of a camera. Every detail of the crime scene would be photographed hundreds of times and the images added to an evidence database.
Drake ducked beneath the lamp, stepping carefully across the tread plates that allowed everyone to move around without contaminating evidence on the floor. A crime scene could become a crowded place, with crime scene examiners, coppers, pathologists and medical staff trampling everywhere. On the other side of the room, Flick Crowley frowned at the bodies.
‘Who found them?’
‘A neighbour gets up early every morning,’ said Flick. ‘He’s out of the house by five thirty, works in the kitchen of a West End hotel. He walks past, sees the front door is wide open. Thinks it’s a burglary, so he goes inside to take a look around. Seconds later, he comes out screaming. Runs into a pair of Specials scoffing burgers on the High Road. They come back, call the paramedics and close off the scene.’
‘And nobody else saw or heard anything?’
‘The neighbour on the left is a young mum. She was up at three a.m. breastfeeding. Said she heard a shout.’
‘A shout?’
‘A noise, a cry, she couldn’t be sure.’ Flick pressed against the wall to let the forensics guy leave. ‘She didn’t think anything of it. Mr and Mrs Overton love a good row, apparently.’
Turned inwards to face each other, the three victims were trussed to kitchen chairs by layer upon layer of plastic film, from toes to nostrils. Their arms were formless lumps pinned to their sides.
The wrapping glinted blue in the stark morning light, except across their torsos, which were slashed and shredded and dripping red. Serrated flesh and chunks of gristle poked from jagged holes in their chests and stomachs. Smooth piping and ruptured veins and organs glistened vividly against glimpses of white ribcage. The gouges were deep and wide and, Drake guessed, made by a long, flat blade. He leaned closer to get a better sense of depth. The fleshy bottom lips of the wounds were angled sharply downwards, like fish mouths.
Their killer had stood over them and brought the knife down again and again. Were they awake, these poor people, Drake wondered, and forced to watch the deaths of their loved ones, knowing they would be next? Were they killed one after the other, in a particular order? Or did the killer stab at them randomly, whirling wildly from one victim to another, until the slaughter was complete?
A sliced arterial vein could spurt blood a good few feet into the air. Spatters of it flecked the walls, the net curtains, the delicate china figurines on the window ledge. The duvet on the bed was soaked, the rug beneath the victims’ chairs sodden black. Blood bubbled at the base of the tread plates as Drake stepped across them.
There was a riot of partial footprints in the sticky liquid, left by the special constables who discovered the grisly scene and the paramedics who searched futilely for any faint pulse. Maybe, just maybe, the perpetrator’s prints would be among them.
There was no sign of a blade. The killer may have dropped it in panic, in the house or surrounding streets. It could even be lying on the steps of the station round the corner. That would go down well in the press.
‘No weapon’s been found,’ said Flick, as if reading his mind. ‘We’re hoping to get enough bodies together for a search within twenty minutes. Millie Steiner’s on it now.’
A systematic search was difficult at the best of times, let alone in the crowded inner-city streets. The surrounding area was a dense maze. Parts of the High Road would have to be closed off before the rush of Saturday-morning shoppers made the task of finding the weapon all but impossible.
‘The King is dead,’ intoned a voice behind Drake. ‘Long live the King!’ Peter Holloway, the crime scene manager, stood in the doorway. ‘Just can’t keep away, can you, DI Drake?’
‘What else am I going to do on a weekend?’
‘Practise that golf swing,’ he said. ‘Or take that lovely daughter of yours somewhere special.’
‘I’d rather come and interfere with your crime scene, Peter,’ said Drake. ‘For old time’s sake.’
‘My people need to get on,’ said Holloway.
‘We won’t be long,’ said Flick.
Holloway was right, of course. His team needed to go about their business. Logging and recording. Videoing, photographing, removing evidence for examination. As CSM, Holloway’s job was to coordinate the collection of evidence and protect the integrity of the forensic investigation. Ray Drake always liked to get to the crime scene as soon as possible. The first few hours of any investigation – the so-called Golden Hour – were the most critical, and he and Holloway often exchanged forthright views if the CSM felt he was getting in the way.
Drake had a grudging admiration for the bombastic know-all. A lean, middle-aged man, there was a vanity to his precise movements. When Holloway pulled down the hood of his coveralls, his face was taut and unblemished. Drake often wondered if he’d had some discreet work done.
‘You’ve very big boots to fill, DS Crowley.’ A pair of half-moon glasses tipped from his hair onto his nose with a jerk of his head.
‘If I didn’t know it already,’ said Flick, who was looking at the windowsill, ‘there’s a plenty of people to remind me.’
Holloway gestured with his clipboard. ‘You’ll never be the investigator that DI Drake is.’
‘Thanks,’ Flick said quietly. ‘I’ll try to remember that.’
‘No need to be so touchy, DS Crowley. What I mean is, be your own person, do things your own way. If you try to be a mere simulacrum of Ray Drake, you’ll fail.’
‘I’ve no idea what a simulacrum is, but thank you anyway.’
‘She’ll go far, this one,’ said Holloway, nodding at her.
Drake didn’t look up from the bodies. ‘Yes, she will.’
‘One’s missing,’ said Flick.
‘Excuse me?’
‘The figurines.’ She pointed at three porcelain eighteenth-century figures – a woman in a gown and bonnet, men in waistcoats and three-cornered hats – spaced irregularly on the sill. ‘There’s a space where one’s missing.’
‘Smashed, maybe,’ said Drake.
‘Guv …?’ Vix Moore’s head peeked from behind the banister on the landing, her gaze moving quickly from Drake to Flick. ‘I mean, guv …’
‘What is it, Vix?’
‘Someone’s just turned up at the cordon. Says he’s Ryan Overton.’
‘I’ll come down.’ Hesitating in the doorway, Flick looked at the cocooned victims one last time. ‘They’re like human flies ensnared by a giant spider.’
Holloway followed her to the door. ‘I was thinking more along the lines of mouldy wrapped sandwiches at a seaside café.’ He turned to Drake. ‘Make it quick, please.’
Left alone in the room, Drake forced down the nausea he felt. The stench in the room, of plastic and plasma, was overpowering as he moved from one body to another.
The younger man – in all likelihood Phillip Overton – sat with his head thrown back like a schoolboy laughing at the back of the class, a tight ruffle of plastic shredded around his mouth. His blank eyes were open, and his scalp was sprayed with inky globules of blood.
Barbara Overton’s head, partly concealed by the sheets of plastic cut away by the paramedics, lolled on her chest. Her hair, matted with blood and gristle, was pulled back in a lank ponytail, her slack face imprinted with traces of the terror of her final catastrophic moments on Earth.
Drake arrived at Kenny Overton. The tops of his thighs burned when he crouched to get an eye-level view of the dead man’s face. Wisps of fine auburn hair congealed against Kenny’s scalp. His jowls flopped over the moist plastic around his neck, and his gaping mouth revealed crooked teeth and withered gums stained by vomit and blood.
Horrific death aside, time had not been kind to Kenny Overton.
That sense of foreboding tightened in Drake’s stomach. His hand shook when he lifted it. Something hidden, something dangerous and wrong, had been revealed.
A countdown, a slow, inexorable pulse in his gut.
‘Kenny,’ he whispered. ‘It’s you.’
5
1984
Ray Drake first met Connor Laird on the hot summer day when Sally Raynor found the new kid at Hackney Wick Police Station.
‘Fucking hippy,’ an officer muttered as he lifted the wooden counter to allow Sally into the warren of corridors behind the front desk. She swept past in a heavy poncho and long woollen skirt. A battered satchel, its straps curled and frayed, bumped on her hips.
Sergeant Harry Crowley’s office was barely larger than a broom cupboard, just big enough to squeeze in Harry and a desk heaped with a mountain of paperwork. The heat hit Sally like a hammer when she walked in, the office was right above the station’s boiler. Harry knew where all the bodies were buried in this place, and Sally suspected that someone was trying to sweat him out of the building.
A kid, no older than fourteen or fifteen, was perched on a stool in front of Harry’s desk, and she asked, ‘Who have you got here?’
Harry scratched his belly. ‘A tough guy.’
A fan burred at the edge of his desk, lifting a coil of Brylcreemed hair from Harry’s forehead. He looked like Tommy Cooper, that funny magician on the telly, and some joker had given him a red fez, which was forced over the top of a framed photograph of his wife and children.
Harry reached into his tunic to take out a packet of cigarettes, stuck one in the corner of his mouth.
‘What’s your name?’ Sally crouched in front of the boy. A thick helmet of dark hair framed the kid’s dirty face, his mouth was an angry smear. ‘Where have you come from?’
‘Don’t waste your breath. He ain’t one for talking.’ Harry blew out smoke. ‘One of my lads found him wandering the streets this afternoon. Dennis knocked his helmet off.’
‘Dennis? That’s his name?’
‘That’s what I call him – Dennis the fucking Menace.’ Harry poked about on the desk for an ashtray. ‘Maybe a slap will loosen his tongue.’
‘Don’t you dare, Harry.’
The copper’s throaty laugh disintegrated into a tangle of coughs. He grabbed his belt, yanked up his sagging trousers. ‘That’s a bit rich coming from Gordon’s girl. Talking of which …’
When Harry wiggled his fat fingers, Sally took a battered envelope from her satchel. Inside was a wad of money. He brushed the edges of the notes and dropped the envelope into a drawer.
‘I’m going to need a bigger cut from now on; upstairs is getting nervous about our arrangement and it’d be politic to sprinkle more goodwill around the place.’
‘Gordon isn’t going to like that,’ said Sally.
‘You tell Tallis he can like it or he can lump it.’ The red tip of the cigarette crackled in his mouth.
‘You people.’ She shook her head. ‘Always out for what you can take.’
‘If Gordon wants to do business in my borough, he knows the rules.’ Harry dabbed at his forehead with a hanky. ‘A posh girl like you, maybe you want to pay me some other way.’ He came so close she could smell the nicotine and stale sweat lifting from his pores. ‘I hear you got a thing for us working-class fellas.’
Sally spoke in a fierce whisper: ‘You’re scaring the boy, Harry.’
‘Scared? Does he look scared to you?
’ A laugh rattled in Harry’s throat. ‘Those eyes tell a different story. Go on. Take him away.’
‘Take him where?’
He tugged at his belt again. The heavy handcuffs clipped at his waist were forever dragging down his trousers, so he snapped them off, threw them on the desk. ‘Gordon runs a children’s home, don’t he? He can stay there.’
‘He may have family, a home.’
‘You got somewhere to go back to, Dennis?’ Harry cupped an ear, but the boy just stared.
‘And what if Gordon won’t take him?’
‘Drop him down a hole for all I care, but something tells me this one will be useful to him. Come on, get up.’
Grabbing his arm, the sergeant pulled the kid off the stool and swung him against the desk. He made a big show of wiping the vinyl seat with his handkerchief.
‘Remember to tell Gordon about the money. And you …’ Harry jabbed a finger at the kid. ‘I don’t want to see you again. I got a nose for wrong ’uns, and it tells me that no good is going to come of you.’
* * *
When she arrived in the car park with the boy, Sally saw Ray leaning against the bonnet of her Morris Marina, throwing pebbles at a drain.
She sighed. ‘I told you to go home.’
‘Thought I’d wait for you.’ Ray lifted himself off the car. ‘To discover what secret thing it was you had to do.’
‘Go home, Ray,’ said Sally. ‘Myra will go spare.’
‘She’s at some committee meeting with my father, and they’ll be there till the evening. So, you know, I’ve got all day. We can do something.’
‘I’m going back to the Longacre.’ Sally balanced the satchel on a knee to search for her car key. ‘And you can’t come.’
‘Hi, I’m Ray Drake.’ He nodded at the kid who had come out of the station with her – another teenager, roughly the same age as him – but the boy just stared. As soon as Sally opened the driver’s door, he clambered into the front passenger seat. Ray frowned at Sally over the roof of the car. ‘Not very friendly, is he? What’s his name?’
‘Don’t know yet.’