by Tony Parsons
The dog paused to lick his testicles.
‘I wish I could do that,’ Gane said.
‘Maybe you should buy him dinner first,’ I said.
The Akita was the pack leader and he considered me with his pale blue eyes as I got out of the car. I stood there and did not move while he tasted the air.
‘Lots of people,’ the girl said, ‘they hold out the back of their hand so the dog can smell it.’
I laughed. ‘But there’s no need, is there?’ I said. ‘He can smell me all right.’
‘That’s right. You don’t need to hold out your hand. He already knows what you had for breakfast.’
‘He’s magnificent. What’s his name?’
‘Smokey,’ she said, and when she ran her fingers through her hair I saw the tattoo of a dog on her inner wrist. It looked like a German Shepherd, although it might have been an Akita. Maybe the body artist couldn’t do an Akita.
‘Do you know Mr Nawkins?’ I said.
‘My dad,’ she said. ‘I’m Echo Nawkins. I’ll show you where we live.’ Then she looked at us doubtfully, as if she couldn’t decide what we were. Gane was in one of his Savile Row suits.
‘You the lawyers or the council?’ she said.
‘We’re the law,’ Gane said.
She nodded, suddenly cooler.
‘And you’re a traveller,’ I said, trying to restore relations. It didn’t work.
‘Our Lord was a traveller,’ she said, as if I had attempted to insult her.
I got back in the car and we followed Echo Nawkins and her pack of dogs.
‘Do you think people would like them a bit more if they cleared up their trash instead of chucking it out the window?’ Gane said.
‘This is it,’ I said.
She had led us to a caravan and a chalet, both twice the size of anything else in the camp. There was a skip on the drive, overflowing with junk, and the acrid black smoke of burning plastic was rising from it. On the patch of grass in front of the chalet, a man sat reading the Guardian and drinking tea at a small table where breakfast was set for one. He was tall, lean, fifty and rimless spectacles gave him a studious air. He poured milk from a bottle that said Oak Hill Farm Dairy into a cereal bowl. Gane and I looked at the burning skip and then at each other. They were clearly not big on recycling in these parts. We got out of the car.
‘I’m Sean Nawkins,’ the man said. ‘Who are you?’
Our warrant cards came out.
‘DI Gane and DC Wolfe,’ Curtis said. ‘I believe we want the other Mr Nawkins. Peter Nawkins.’
‘My brother,’ Sean Nawkins said, shaking his head and looking at us as if he wanted to rip our throats out. ‘You’ll never leave him alone, will you? You’ll never let him get on with his life. He did his time. A lot of time. The best years of his life. What do you want with him? This London murder, is it?’
‘A few routine questions,’ Gane said easily. ‘Where is he?’
But Sean Nawkins was building up a head of steam.
‘Can’t you let him die in peace?’ he said.
We let that settle for a while.
‘What’s wrong with your brother?’ I said.
‘Pancreatic cancer.’
‘Terminal?’
‘He has months rather than years.’
‘Is he having chemotherapy?’
Gane gave me a look. As if we were not actually here to discuss anyone’s medical problems.
‘Peter doesn’t want chemo,’ Sean Nawkins said. ‘He saw what chemo did to both of our parents. He just wants to enjoy whatever time he has left.’ He softened. ‘Please – can’t you let him be? Can’t you just get off his back?’
‘Yeah,’ came a voice from somewhere behind and above us. ‘Get off his back.’
We turned to look at a man on a large white horse. The man was dark and bearded, and the horse looked like the one we had seen grazing on the scrap of grass. But I was no expert. It might have been a completely different horse.
‘Tell the bastards about your wife, Sean,’ the man said.
‘They don’t care about my wife,’ Nawkins said.
‘What happened to your wife, sir?’ I said.
‘Do you really want to know how she died?’ he said.
‘Dad,’ the girl said.
‘Shut up, Echo,’ he said, not looking at her. ‘Townies set fire to our caravan. Ten years ago. Gunnersbury Park. Remember that riot?’
‘There was an illegal traveller settlement in Gunnersbury Park,’ Gane said. ‘Some of the locals took matters into their own hands.’
‘That’s the one,’ Sean Nawkins said. ‘Why did you never catch them? Why is it always us who get the strong arm of the law?’
I turned at the sound of a large amount of animal moving towards me. The man and horse were edging forward, sideways on, although I couldn’t quite work out how he was doing it. He had no saddle or reins. It was as if he was moving the horse through some act of will.
I turned back to look at Sean Nawkins.
‘This really doesn’t have to be difficult, sir,’ I said. ‘We just need to ask your brother a few questions.’
‘Or stitch him up.’ The bearded man was off his horse and staring at Gane. ‘Look at you,’ he said. ‘Walking on your hind legs and everything. Got many coloured chaps in your line of work?’
Gane let it go. You would be amazed how much of this stuff we have to let go. Every day of our lives we let stuff go. And it is worse for the guys like Gane. I looked at the horseman and then I looked at Sean Nawkins.
‘As I say, this really doesn’t have to be difficult,’ I said. ‘But it can be – it can be as difficult as you want to make it – but it doesn’t have to be. We just need to eliminate your brother from our enquiries.’
‘Fitting him up!’ said the bearded man. ‘Those London murders! That family! Pinning it on him, they are! Because they always have to nick someone for the big ones!’
‘Dan,’ Sean Nawkins said quietly. ‘Get my brother, will you?’
The bearded man snorted, but went away.
‘Doesn’t look like you do a lot of travelling,’ Gane said. ‘Considering you’re travelling folk, I mean.’ He gazed around, nodding at the dozens of new chalets. ‘You look quite settled.’
Sean Nawkins folded his copy of the Guardian and spoke to DI Gane as if addressing a simple child.
‘Our people never travelled all year round,’ Nawkins said. ‘Not in this country. In our family the year began with potato planting and ended with hop picking. And in the winter months we were off the road. Do you know what they did to him?’
‘Your brother?’ I said.
He laughed with genuine pleasure. ‘Yes. Peter. My brother. Do you know what they wanted to do to him? The farmer he killed? His sons? They were going to nut him. The way you nut a horse. That’s what they tried to do.’
‘You mean – they tried to castrate him?’ I said.
‘That’s exactly what I mean, Detective. For touching the girl. For getting her in the family way. No way that old farmer was going to tolerate a posh-rat in his family. Know what a posh-rat is, do you? It means half-blood. People think a posh-rat is a gypsy who lives in a house. But it means that our mother was not a traveller. They hated him so much and he is not even a full-blooded traveller. They picked up Peter when the girl was away with her mother. Took him down some lane. Had his trousers off. Going to cut his fucking balls off, they were. But he fought them off. Big, hard lad, he was. Then he went back. And he made sure they would never do it again. Now you tell me, detectives – what the hell has any of that got to do with those murders in London?’
We were silent for a moment.
‘Does your brother ever have visitors?’ Gane said.
‘You mean outsiders who are obsessed with what he did? Fans, obsessives, stalkers, the like?’
Gane nodded. ‘Like that.’
Sean Nawkins shook his head. ‘Not any more. It’s all a long time ago. You still think of him as th
e Slaughter Man, don’t you? To me he was a boy with learning difficulties who made a mistake after some dreadful, terrifying provocation. To you – he’s just some old lag. To me – he’s my brother.’ He was looking over our shoulders and his voice dropped low. ‘He did the crime and he did the time and he has earned the right to die in peace.’
Then he was suddenly there.
Peter Nawkins.
The Slaughter Man.
I tried to see the violence in him. I tried to see the dark shadow of the past. But he did not look like a man who had taken the lives of four other men. He was large, much larger than the bearded horseman who walked beside him, and Peter Nawkins’ face was still a fading photocopy of the matinee-idol looks he’d had as a young man. But he seemed far older than his years. That was prison, I thought, and that was cancer. And as he wiped dirt from his hands onto his tracksuit, I believed that I could tell he was dying.
‘Been working on your allotment?’ his brother said gently.
‘Lots to plant in January,’ Peter Nawkins said, looking at Gane and me. ‘Aubergines. Leeks. Cauliflowers, of course.’
‘Peter Nawkins?’ Gane said, and we produced our warrant cards and made the introductions again.
Peter Nawkins looked at his brother.
‘I didn’t do anything, Sean.’
‘It’s all right, Peter. They just want to ask you a couple of questions and then they’ll go back to their holes in London and you can get back to the garden.’
We were drawing a crowd. They gathered between us and the car and I wondered how much of a problem this might be.
‘Where were you on New Year’s Eve, Mr Nawkins?’ Gane said.
Peter Nawkins looked at his brother.
‘Just tell them,’ Sean Nawkins said, with a hint of irritation.
‘I don’t know,’ Peter Nawkins said.
We let that sink in.
‘You don’t know where you were on New Year’s Eve?’ Gane said.
‘He was in camp,’ Sean Nawkins said. ‘I can get witnesses.’
‘Yeah, I bet you can get five hundred witnesses,’ Gane said.
The bearded horseman had acquired a little rat-faced friend.
‘Don’t get smart, black boy,’ rat-face said to the back of Gane’s head.
I smiled at him but he kept looking at the back of DI Gane’s shaven head, muttering to himself and the horseman, working himself up into a frenzy. That’s what people who were not drunk or stoned had to do – they had to work themselves up to the violence. More bystanders arrived to gawp, gossip and give advice. A woman with a baby in her arms spat on the ground behind Gane’s muddy Italian shoes.
‘I pay your wages,’ she said.
‘Were you here on New Year’s Eve?’ I said.
Peter Nawkins nodded. ‘I guess. When was that? That was last week, right?
‘Have you ever met any member of the Wood family, Mr Nawkins?’ Gane said.
‘He’s never met any member of the Wood family,’ Sean Nawkins said.
‘Please, sir, I would rather talk to your brother,’ Gane said.
The rat-faced man said, ‘And he’d rather talk to the organ grinder instead of the monkey.’
It got a laugh and I knew they did not fear us.
‘No,’ Peter Nawkins said. ‘No to all of the questions. I wasn’t there and I don’t know them and I didn’t do anything wrong.’ His breathing was becoming more shallow. He was old and he was sick but he was big enough to be a handful if he lost it. ‘And I’m not going back to prison.’
Gane and I looked at each other.
Something passed between us and we knew it was time to go.
By now the crowd had got bigger and there were more of them between us and the car. If anything was going to happen, it would happen over the next sixty seconds. We thanked Peter and Sean Nawkins for their time. We turned away. And then it happened.
‘You black—’
It was rat-face.
And before he had finished, Gane had picked him up by the collar of his shell suit and slammed him with maximum force against Sean Nawkins’ caravan.
I don’t think he was aiming for the window. But there was an explosion of glass as rat-face’s head went clean through the caravan’s window. I picked up the milk bottle from the table and in one smooth move I brought it down on the ground and then offered its broken end to the men who were coming for us.
‘Now it has to be difficult,’ I said.
They stopped. Rat-face was on his knees, blood all over his verminous features.
We paused, giving them their chance to make their move. But nobody stepped up, so we walked slowly to the car. The bearded horseman thought about it more than the rest. I dropped the broken milk bottle into an overflowing rubbish bin.
‘Catch you later,’ I told him.
We took our time getting in the car.
But we didn’t take our time getting away.
‘Hit it,’ Gane said.
I hit it.
For several minutes the green fields of Essex flashed past.
‘Pull over,’ Gane said.
I pulled over.
He was still shaking with adrenaline.
‘That went well,’ I said.
‘I wasn’t aiming his head at the window, Max.’
‘I figured.’
‘Sometimes they go too far.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I get it. People think the police are racist. But we just hate the people who give us the most trouble. That doesn’t make us racist,’ I said. ‘It makes us human.’
We sat in silence for a bit. The heavy traffic to London roaring by, the tension draining away.
‘What do you make of him?’ Gane said. ‘Peter Nawkins. The Slaughter Man.’
‘If he killed anyone, I reckon it would have to be personal.’
‘It was personal, wasn’t it? They tried to cut his balls off.’
I closed my eyes and steadied my breathing. It had been a busy morning.
‘That’s quite personal,’ I agreed.
‘They tried to castrate him because he fell in love with some girl he shouldn’t have fallen in love with. You can see how that would make you reach for the cattle gun. The poor simple bastard. He’s not a hitman. He never was a hitman.’
‘And it’s probably too late to start now,’ I said, sticking the X5 into drive. ‘He’s too busy dying.’
9
It was a beautiful apartment.
A seventh-floor penthouse in the Barbican. Light, airy, modern. Lots of white walls, not much furniture. A table for two, a white leather sofa, music system, elliptical trainer. The bare necessities, but all very tasteful. I opened doors. Just one bedroom. It was a bolthole, but a very luxurious bolthole. Brad Wood wouldn’t have got much change out of a million. Wren said there was no mortgage.
There were a couple of paintings of the wall of the living room and they were the only real splash of colour. I peered at the signature. Patrick Caulfield, they both said. They were paintings of cool modern rooms that looked a lot like this one. There was a desk where a computer had been, but forensics had taken it away.
I stepped out onto the south-facing balcony. There was a courtyard with a small lake and private gardens seven floors below and above the rooftops there was the dome of St Paul’s, looking very close, and on the far side of the river, the Tate Modern and London Eye. It was late afternoon and the sun was setting in a cloudless and freezing cold sky, the brilliant blue streaked with rivers of red.
I couldn’t see it from here but Smithfield meat market and our loft was almost next door, just the other side of Aldersgate. We were practically neighbours.
The doorbell rang. I answered it. It was young woman in her mid-twenties, pretty and short and a shade too blonde to be believed, slowly smiling as if we shared an innocent secret.
‘Hello,’ she said.
‘Hello,’ I said.
‘May I come in?’
Her English was pretty good, but not
so good that it wasn’t charming. I stood aside and she walked in, taking her time, not sure which way to turn. So it was her first time here too. She was wearing shiny black heels, very high, and they were the kind with the red soles. Christian Louboutin. My wife had liked those shoes, too. Ex-wife, I mean.
‘This is such a cool area,’ she said.
‘It used to be Cripplegate,’ I said. ‘One of the oldest parts of London.’
She looked surprised. ‘Cripplegate? That’s a funny name.’
‘From Roman times,’ I said. ‘It was a gate in the city wall. Then in the war, the Germans bombed it flat.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Sorry about that.’
‘I’m sure it wasn’t you personally.’
‘Could have been my grandfather. Perhaps both my grandfathers. Have you lived in the area long?’
I thought about it. I had been single and married and divorced in this area. I had been childless and a father here. I’d had a dog and I’d had no dog.
‘For years,’ I said, but by then she had wandered off.
She was making herself at home. I heard water running in the bathroom. I went back out to the balcony. If you get up high enough, I thought, then London has the greatest sunsets in the world.
‘Sir?’ she said behind me.
She was still wearing her Christian Louboutin shoes but that was all. She had a dancer’s body – small-breasted, not tall although the heels gave her some height, but with strong quad muscles in her thighs and what looked like a very hard abdomen, the kind of stomach you can’t get without ten thousand sit-ups.
As I wondered what kind of dancer she had been she held her hands up, palms facing me, as if we had to decide something very soon.
‘And should I keep my shoes on, Mr Wood?’ she asked me.
My new friend – Claudia – was on the edge of tears from the Barbican all the way to Gerrard Street in Chinatown. I parked the X5 in the big multi-storey behind the fire station and looked at her over the bonnet. She suddenly seemed very young.