by Tony Parsons
Although not always. I thought of Winnie Johnson, the mother of Moors Murder victim Keith Bennett. Winnie died after almost fifty years of trying to find out where her murdered twelve-year-old son was buried on Saddleworth Moor, outside Manchester. I thought of Winnie now, and the long years of leaving her flowers and toys and tokens of love on random parts of the moors.
Yes, it happens. Yes, it is easier to hide the body of a child than the body of an adult.
But killers are stupid.
And bodies decay.
And if Bradley Wood was dead, I believed with all my heart that we would have found him by now.
My fingertips touched the map of London.
‘He’s still alive,’ I said quietly.
‘Detective Wolfe?’
I jumped back from the map, a breath caught in my throat.
Charlotte Gatling was standing in the doorway.
She bit her lower lip. ‘Why did he do it?’ she said.
I did not know what to say to her. I grasped for some truth that she could understand.
‘I can’t explain madness to you,’ I said as gently as I could. ‘Nawkins was criminally insane. He had some kind of obsession with your sister. If it had not been Mary – and her family – it would have been someone else. He should never have been walking about. After the first murders, all those years ago, he should have been in a high-security psychiatric hospital. He should have done his time in Broadmoor instead of Belmarsh, and they should have let him die there.’ I hesitated. She saw it.
‘Please go on,’ she said.
I was thinking of Wren.
‘A colleague of mine said that Nawkins was a deeply unhappy man who was enraged by the happiness of others. Nawkins saw a happy family and he had to destroy it. My colleague – she’s not a psychologist; she’s not a shrink – she’s just a cop, the same as me. But her theory makes as much sense to me as anything.’
I did not know what else to tell her.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘What will happen to those children? The ones you found in the house on The Bishops Avenue?’
I shook my head.
‘Social services will try to send them home, even though some of them will have been running away from their homes. Most will go into care. I can’t pretend they will have happy endings. I wish I could.’
She thought about it, and nodded.
‘This world is a sewer made by what men want,’ she said.
We stared at each other. She remained in the doorway of MIR-1.
‘What are you doing here?’ I said.
‘I had an interview with the Family Liaison Officer. Looking at CCTV footage. Some pictures taken with an iPhone. Reading reports. I come in once a week. I used to think it was a sign we were making progress. I don’t believe that any more. Pointless, really.’ I could see that a lot of the hope had gone out of her and I hated it. She shook her head. ‘All these ridiculous sightings that lead to nothing,’ she said.
Her face reddened. Perhaps because we both knew the FLO offices were all on the first floor. There was no obvious reason for her to be up here. But she wasn’t lost.
‘I just wanted to thank you,’ she said. ‘And your colleagues, of course. I know you put yourselves in harm’s way to bring Nawkins to justice. But everyone’s gone home.’
It was true. In every sense. It was the end of the working day. And our murder investigation was winding down.
DCI Whitestone and DC Wren were at home with their wounds and their loved ones. Our only suspect was dead by his own hand and, although we would never have publically admitted it, the Met was reluctant to throw endless resources into the search for a four-year-old boy who by now had been missing for two months.
‘I know that my nephew has had a lot of attention,’ Charlotte Gatling said. ‘And I know all the statistics. A child missing every three minutes. One hundred thousand children missing every year. Some new ones disappeared in the time I have been standing here talking to you. And I know not every missing child has the attention you’ve given to Bradley.’ She recovered her poise. ‘That’s why I wanted to thank you.’
‘It’s my job.’
‘But you’re doing far more than just your job, aren’t you?’
She indicated the image of her nephew smiling on my computer screen. I had thought she had not noticed it. I had been wondering how to get across and press quit before she saw it. But she had seen it the moment she came to the door.
‘Your job is done,’ she said. ‘You’re a Murder Investigation Team. And now the murders have been solved. And we both know that every day that goes by reduces the chances of Bradley coming home. But you’re still looking. Everybody has gone home but you’re still up here, thinking about him, not giving up, still trying. It’s true, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
She took a single step closer to me.
‘Why are you doing it?’
‘Daddy?’
Scout lifted her head at an empty workstation. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and swung back and forth on the swivel chair, her feet not touching the ground. Below her Stan stirred himself at the sound of her voice, yawning and settling into his stretching exercises. Downward-facing dog, upward-facing dog.
Scout slipped off the chair.
‘Toilet,’ she said, heading for the door.
‘You OK with that lock?’ I said.
‘It’s an easy lock,’ Scout said, padding from the room, her dog at her heels.
I looked at Charlotte Gatling.
‘I do it for her,’ I said.
28
What I didn’t tell Charlotte Gatling was that the information from the public about Bradley had almost dried up. The cranks, and the time-wasters, and the well-meaning citizens had moved on.
Twin girls, five years old, had disappeared from a park in Notting Hill while under the supervision of an Italian nanny who had an obsessive need to Tweet. While the young Italian was attending to her Twitter timeline, the girls vanished. The twins’ parents both worked in the City and the disappearance prompted countless think pieces in red-top and tabloid about parents who work, the balance between parenting and the office, and how we put our children in the care of strangers.
Bradley Wood was yesterday’s news.
With Whitestone and Wren still on leave, PC Billy Greene and I spent the next day wading through what remained of the alleged sightings of Bradley. Dispatching uniforms to Trace, Interview and Eliminate. Logging it on Holmes. But it was all thin stuff and I did not feel guilty about leaving Billy Greene to it when the darkness fell on Savile Row.
I had an appointment at the Black Museum.
Sergeant John Caine and I stood in the quiet corner of the Black Museum that was devoted to the Slaughter Man.
Nothing had changed. After all that effort, all that hard work and routine, all that fear and blood, everything here was still the same. I wasn’t sure what I had been expecting, but the display was exactly as it had been when I first saw it, and that shocked me.
The cattle gun that looked like a hand drill was still sitting on a small card table. The ancient newspaper article was still in its dusty glass case, the yellowing paper disintegrating with time.
RITUAL SLAUGHTER ON ESSEX FARM
Slaughter Man executes father and sons in midnight killing spree
A killer was jailed for life yesterday for murdering a father and his three grown-up sons with a bolt gun used to slaughter livestock …
And the two photographs that accompanied the article were same as they ever were. The large, good-looking boy with the totally blank expression being led away in handcuffs by a uniformed officer. And a family dominated by men grinning under their Christmas tree.
‘Will you update it?’ I asked the keeper of the Black Museum. ‘Now that Nawkins is dead?’
John Caine shook his head. ‘Now that the Slaughter Man’s story has a happy ending? Don’t think I’ll bother. This place is not really about the likes of hi
m.’ He nodded towards a much larger, much cleaner glass case nearby. ‘It’s about the likes of them.’
The faces stared back at me from inside a glass case that was labelled OUR MURDERED COLLEAGUES. Official photographs, just standard Met mugshots, and yet all those eyes of murdered policemen and women twinkled with mischief and smiles played around lips pressed tightly together for the photographer.
Sergeant John Caine said, ‘And how was Peter Nawkins at the end?’
I thought about it.
‘He was in bits,’ I said. ‘He looked at me though he had never killed anyone in his life.’
Sergeant Caine laughed bitterly. ‘Yes, the jails are full of totally innocent men, aren’t they?’
We walked through the deserted Black Museum, John Caine switching the lights off. It is probably the biggest collection of murder weapons in the world but I paused in front of the display of a woman who never held a weapon in her life. Maisy Dawes, the Victorian maid from Belgravia who was set up for a burglary and then destroyed for a crime she did not commit.
‘Maisy Dawes,’ I said. ‘Whatever happened to the men who set her up?’
‘As far as I know, they all died in their beds,’ said Sergeant John Caine. ‘It was a very good blind. What’s on your mind, Max?’
‘Sergeant Sallis,’ I said. ‘The local support who came with our mob to the flat where we found Nawkins.’ I shook my head. ‘Nawkins didn’t kill him, John. He wasn’t armed with a handgun, some puny little weapon that can only spray and pray beyond eleven feet. Nawkins had a twelve-bore. And at that range it was easier for him to hit Sergeant Sallis than the wall. Yet he missed. Why?’
John Caine shrugged. ‘I don’t know, son. Maybe he bottled it. Murderers are not brave. Murderers are cowards. You want to get a drink and talk about it? You can have a triple espresso and I can have a tea and we can live the life of sin.’
‘Some other time, John.’
‘Got a date, have you?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s a sort of date.’
I looked for Ginger Gonzalez in the American Bar at the Savoy, but she was not there.
I looked for her in the Coburg Bar at the Connaught and the Rivoli Bar at the Ritz and The Fumoir at Claridges and the Promenade Bar at the Dorchester. But she was not there either.
I was driving home past Broadcasting House on Portland Place when I saw the lights in the grand façade of the Langham Hotel. It wasn’t on the list, but then I wasn’t sure she had given me her entire list.
The Artesian Bar in the Langham smelled of money. Discreet, unflashy money. Huge windows looked out on the street and made you glad to be inside this place of soft lights and laughter and plush purple leather chairs designed to make you stay.
Ginger Gonzalez was sitting at one of the window tables, smiling over a glass of champagne at the man sitting opposite her. When he leaned forward to make a point I saw his face clearly in the candlelight.
The man was Nils Gatling.
I took a seat at the bar, my back to the room, watching them in the mirror behind the bar. The bartender approached me.
‘What can I get you, sir?’
‘Triple espresso.’
I saw his surprise and glanced my watch. It was knocking on for midnight.
‘Better make it a double,’ I said.
‘Yes, sir.’
It was a good bar.
Nils Gatling and Ginger Gonzalez had the easy intimacy of old friends. But that was her way. For all I knew, they had met five minutes ago.
The waiter brought my coffee. I knocked it back as Nils Gatling walked behind me, heading for the door. Ginger was still sitting at the table. When she saw me walking towards her table, her eyes blazed with anger. Then she recovered.
‘Detective Wolfe,’ she said.
‘Has your companion gone?’ I said.
‘He’s retired for the night. He has a suite upstairs.’
‘Nils Gatling has a suite at the Langham? The family have a house in Fitzroy Square! It’s less than a mile away. Why does he keep a suite at the Langham?’
There was something like pity in her eyes. Did I know nothing of the rich?
‘Because he can,’ she said.
I sat down in a chair that was still warm.
‘I need a girl,’ I said.
She laughed shortly, as if all men were the same in the end.
‘What sort of girl?’
‘Kind,’ I said. ‘She has to be kind. That’s very important. And smart. Really smart. University educated. Oh, and she has to be very beautiful.’
Ginger Gonzalez finished her champagne and sighed.
‘No wonder you’re unlucky in love,’ she said.
Ginger dashed off a text message and then we waited. I had another espresso and Ginger had another glass of champagne. For the first time since I’d met her, she seemed slightly drunk.
‘How long have you known Nils Gatling?’ I said.
‘A while.’
I could see that she did not want to talk about it. Client confidentiality, I guess. Maybe being somebody’s pimp is like being their doctor.
‘Surprised, Detective?’ she said.
I nodded. ‘He has a wife, doesn’t he?’ I said.
She smiled with genuine amusement.
‘And what do you imagine that means? Brad Wood had a wife, didn’t he?’
‘Is that how you know Nils Gatling? Through his brother-in-law?’
She quickly shook her head.
‘God, no. I knew the old man first. Victor Gatling. The daddy of them all.’ She hesitated. ‘Victor Gatling was just about the first proper man I met after I got off the banana boat.’
‘You mean the first rich man,’ I said.
‘I mean the first man who knew how to act in this world. The first man who knew how to treat a woman. I was very young. He liked me. And his wife had just died.’
‘And it didn’t work out.’
‘I wasn’t what he needed.’
‘What did he need?’
‘To spend time with his family. But we stayed in touch. I’ve known Nils for years. And I’ve done work for the company, OK? Gatling Homes.’
‘I never knew you were in the property business. I can see you as an estate agent.’
‘They have a lot of clients they need taking care of.’
‘I bet they do.’
‘Here she is.’
Zina was tall and pretty and tired looking. I stood up to shake her hand. She did not sit down. I dropped some cash on the table and we left.
She was Romanian, I found out as we were walking to the X5, although she said it had been ten years since she had left Bucharest. She was twenty-six. In another world she would have been a businesswoman or a mother.
I didn’t ask to see her university degree.
The three of us drove east.
Ginger and Zina in the back of the X5. I glanced at them in the rear-view mirror but mostly I listened to their typical London conversation – Where are we to live? What areas were up and coming, where would be next, where the cafés and restaurants were good, where was safe, where was too dangerous, where was too expensive, what was still affordable, where you could still get a bargain.
‘I’m thinking of Shoreditch,’ said the woman.
I cleared my throat. ‘What about money?’ I said. I wasn’t thinking about Shoreditch.
Zina looked out at the street. We were passing Liverpool Street. The last of the half-cut commuters were staggering to the train out to Essex.
Ginger lightly touched my shoulder.
‘You can pay me later,’ she said. ‘Cash, credit or banker’s draft. You don’t have to worry about payment now. I know you’re good for it.’
I nodded and we drove in silence for another few miles.
‘This is it,’ I said.
There were patients enjoying their cigarettes outside the doors of the Homerton Hospital, huddled up inside their dressing gowns, shaking with cold. One of them had some kind of
oxygen tank. Another had the bloated hands that I recognised as a side effect of chemotherapy.
Nobody even looked at us as we went inside.
A policeman, a pimp and a prostitute.
We blended right in.
Curtis Gane had been moved to a private room. We stood outside the door and for the first time I wondered if I was doing the right thing.
‘He’s still in a lot of pain,’ I said to Zina. ‘And he’s angry. And he’s depressed. And he knows he is never going to walk again. So he’s not going to—’
Zina lightly kissed my cheek.
‘I understand,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry. You’ve done a good thing.’
She slipped into the room and closed the door. Ginger and I bowed our heads, listening to the sound of Gane waking.
‘… who are you?’
I reached for the door when I heard the alarm in his voice. Ginger placed a hand on my arm. She shook her head.
‘We’ve done this before,’ she said quietly.
‘But I can’t do anything,’ Gane said, and the shame in his voice tore at my heart.
‘It’s all right,’ Zina told him. ‘I’m just here to hold you.’
Ginger and I didn’t speak until we reached the cancer patients sucking on their cigarettes outside the main doors.
‘Salamat po,’ I said. ‘I mean it, Ginger. Thank you very much.’
‘You speak Tagalog.’
‘I’m a policeman in London,’ I said. ‘I know a few words in fifty different languages.’
She ran a fingertip down the side of my face.
‘You know the word gwapo?’ she said. ‘Tagalog word for handsome.’
‘I know bola-bola,’ I said. ‘Tagalog word for bullshit.’
She laughed.
‘What about you, Detective? You want me to make a few calls? Or do you have someone waiting for you?’
It was getting late.
Time to relieve Mrs Murphy.
‘Someone’s waiting for me,’ I said.
29
I watched Scout sleeping.
Stan appeared in the doorway, sniffing the air and eyeing the bed, wondering if he could get away with sneaking in and curling up next to her for a few hours. I shook my head at him and he followed me out as, very quietly, I closed her bedroom door.