Down into Darkness

by David Lawrence

  Harriman picked up on the third ring. He said, ‘They’re on their way. ARV promised.’

  ‘Good. It’s in what used to be Byrite – in the Bull Ring. They’re dealing with a crowd of about eighty, maybe a hundred; some armed.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Harriman asked, then checked himself. ‘Oh, right, Harefield…’

  ‘It’s a cage fight. Illegal betting, possibility of GBH charges.’

  ‘Jesus.’ A brief pause, then he thought to ask, ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Outside. Just by Block C.’

  ‘Boss? Stay there.’

  ‘Sure; of course.’

  But she couldn’t. There was a scent on the air stronger than the rankness brought by the breeze, a scent that was calling the crowd in, just as a whiff of fear calls the pack to a wounded deer. It was a complex scent, and fear was certainly a part of it, but there were strong overlays of excitement and an intense, black energy.

  That scent was hot in Stella’s nostrils as she climbed the pole-and-plank bleachers to sit eight rows back. A man with the face of a clapped-out angel was taking bets, clattering up and down between the rows of seats; his betting slips were cloakroom tickets, and his money-bag was a battered school satchel. The fight-handler was talking to the contestants, his voice low but urgent: pumping them up.

  The cage-fighters stood on each side of a wire-frame door, eyes locked in a stone-faced stare-out. They bounced on the balls of their feet and slapped one gloved fist against the other, but the stare never broke. The gloves were light and had individual fingers that stopped just below the middle knuckle. One of the fighters had a muddy tattoo of Christ crucified on his back; the other carried a scar that travelled from just under his left ear to his upper lip. It made Stella think of the scar Pete Harriman carried along the line of his jaw: the result of moving a fraction too slowly when a Harefield foot soldier came after him with a beer glass.

  There were as many women in the place as men. When the fighters entered the cage, the men in the audience yelled advice and encouragement; the women whooped and screamed like mad birds. Something was added to that scent now: the pungent, thrilling smell of sex.

  No rules, no quarter. As the fighters stepped through into the cage, Tattoo Man leaned sideways and kicked out hard, taking Scar Man in the thick of his waist and sending him back against the mesh. Tattoo Man moved in two-handed, but Scar Man was up, knocking his attacker’s hands apart and leading with his head; he didn’t make much contact, but it was enough to set Tattoo Man back on his heels. They circled a while, feinting, trying to find an opening, then drove in at the same time, like stags locking.

  They looked evenly matched; it was a fight that might have lasted; only cage-craft would make the difference, and Tattoo Man was the better equipped. He dropped low under Scar Man’s guard and kicked the guy’s legs out. There was a moment when Scar Man hit the ground, a moment of blankness, and in that moment Tattoo Man jumped on Scar Man’s head.

  Scar Man yelled in pain. He rolled and was fast getting to his feet, despite the damage. A second or two slower and he would have been straddled and beaten. He got in some hard licks as Tattoo Man came forward wanting to finish things: punches that snapped Tattoo Man’s head back and brought gobbets of blood from his mouth. It was a good response, but the result was already there for all to see. Scar Man’s face was lopsided where the cheekbone had caved in, and Tattoo Man was going for it with every swing. He connected with a tight hook to the head that put his opponent off balance, then kicked out stiff-legged, taking Scar Man just under the heart. Those close could see the light go out of his eyes; he took a step back, then another, hands high to block, but the punch got through anyway; then another; then another. He rattled the chain-link and sat down hard, one side of his face folded in like a fault line. Tattoo Man leaned down to follow up, to inflict the maximum, to be sure… then he paused and stepped back, his attention suddenly elsewhere.

  Angel Face was on the move, his satchel tight under his arm. Maybe the bets had gone the wrong way, or maybe he had also heard the wail and whoop of sirens crossing the DMZ.

  By the time Stella had got to her feet and was halfway to the door, the rest of the punters had heard it and were heading the same way. She had an edge, but people were funnelling in from all directions. There was a shout of pain and fear as someone went underfoot, and a shoulder put her hard against the frame of the door, then she was clear and running towards the walk space under Block C, following Angel Face, because she had to pick on someone, and if he was the guy with the money, he was probably the guy with the connections.

  From the corner of her eye she saw an ARV and a couple of people-carriers arriving. They fanned out, turning the crowd as a collie turns a flock, then rocked to a halt.

  If you want to sneak up on the wrongdoer, she thought, then headbanger sirens will do it every time.

  The walk space was half-light, litter, smells of fast food and putrefaction. She could see movement ahead and assumed it was Angel Face. He was running, though not flat out – there were too many obstacles for that – but it was clear that he knew she was following, because he was taking a mazy path, going this way and that, zigging and zagging. Stella lost him for a moment, then heard a clatter and a curse and realized he must have fallen. She stood close to one of the concrete pillars that held up Block C, one dark shape melding with another, and looked left and right, waiting for his silhouette to show up against the dim light.

  She thought that perhaps the money had spilled from his satchel, and she was right. No more than fifty feet away Angel Face was sitting on the ground scooping up the cash. It was a sack of garbage that had brought him down; he could tell as much from the stench of it. As he felt for stray notes, he looked about. Someone else was in the walkway, he knew that; someone under cover and under darkness, like himself, and he was holding a bag full of money. It was well on the way to being a lethal combination.

  When he got to his feet, Stella saw him at once: he was much closer than she had imagined. He glanced back, then ran, this time taking a straight line towards the light.

  Stella yelled, ‘Police officer. Stop!’ and regretted it immediately; under these circumstances it was tantamount to shouting, ‘Shoot me!’ She reckoned that if she could keep Angel Face heading towards the DMZ, she stood a chance of closing him down. If he managed to turn and get back to the Bull Ring, she’d lose him in the middle of whatever chaos was now going on there.

  She was gaining. She was making good progress. He wasn’t close enough to get a hand on, but he was losing the race. Then she hit the same sack of garbage and fell hard; the impact emptied her lungs, and she went down gagging for air. Angel Face clattered off through the walk-space detritus, while Stella lay on her back with her knees drawn up, mouth wide, making a raw gasping sound, like a woman urging a lover.

  13

  The sack of garbage was Barry or Gary, the stench told her as much. Given what lay round about him, others might not have made the distinction, but she’d smelled that smell before.

  The first task force was still active in the Harefield warren when the second turned up: an AMIP squad fronted by a hardnut DS called Brian Collier. Stella had worked with him once in the past, and she didn’t like him.

  Collier had a bristly shadow of pepper-and-salt hair, a wrestler’s neck and a thick waist that pulled at his shirt. He and Stella sat on one of the low walls that formed the outer circle of the Bull Ring. Collier ducked his head to his cupped hands: lighting a cigarette.

  He said, ‘You came because you thought she might have lived down here?’ He was talking about Tree Girl.

  ‘Missing persons lead,’ Stella said. ‘Didn’t go anywhere.’ Then: ‘He’s likely to be off the estate.’ She was talking about Barry or Gary.

  ‘Because no one would come down here if they didn’t have to –.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Might have been on an errand.’

  ‘I suppose so. There’s a lot of casual muggin
g; being a resident’s no protection. Someone sees you leaving the bookie’s with a smile on your face, or thinks you’ve just cashed your DHSS cheque – you’re a target, no exceptions.’

  Collier laughed. ‘It wasn’t that. Wasn’t a mugging.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’ Collier took out his notebook and consulted it, as if giving evidence, his little joke. Stella remembered one of the many things she hadn’t liked about him: he was a prick. ‘Initial report from the police doctor at the scene indicates that the victim’s airway was occluded by a dense substance thought to be polyurethane, or a polyicynene and silicone mix.’ Collier looked at Stella and raised his eyebrows, then continued with the cod-official tone. ‘This substance expands freely when exposed to air and, in this case, flooded both larynx and thoracic cavity before quickly invading the trachea and lungs, causing death by suffocation.’ Collier looked up, grinning. ‘Someone jacked open the poor fucker’s mouth and pumped him full of cavity-wall filler.’

  ‘I’ll write you a report,’ Stella said, ‘unless you need me for anything else.’

  Collier shook his head. ‘Coroner’s court, probably. I’ll email you the details.’ As she walked away, he said, ‘Weren’t you from here?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I thought Harefield girls were all prossies.’

  ‘A missed opportunity,’ Stella said. ‘Better pay, less overtime, and you meet fewer pricks.’

  A yellow blind, something like that, something yellow anyway, and opposite Apartment 1136 on Block A.

  Looked at from up on the walkway, Harefield was an ants’ nest that someone had prodded with a stick. Arrests had been made, but there were crowds in the Bull Ring, young men mostly, and cops in Kevlar vests were walking through, never fewer than five officers together, more often ten. They would still be there when night fell, some up on the walkways, others drawn up round the place like herdsmen circling a corral. Night-time riots were a Harefield speciality, not least after a police raid.

  Stella thought, Why did I call it in, for Christ’s sake? Why not let them hammer each other shitless? Everyone was having fun.

  It wasn’t a yellow blind; it was a magazine double-page photo-spread of a field of daffodils that had been pasted over a cracked window to hold it together. Apartment 1169, Block B. She rang the four-chime bell and waited, then rang again. People passed her on the walkway. Maybe she was recognized from the old days, because one of them put an elbow into her back, but she didn’t turn: it would have been too much, too late.

  There was a whiff of ganja on the wind; the sound of hip-hop from all directions; a splash of blood on the doorstep of 1169.

  She walked back through the Bull Ring, heading for the DMZ, and DS Collier was there directing operations.

  ‘Three fucking monkeys,’ he said, and did an eyes-ears-mouth routine with his hands, then laughed.

  Stella said, ‘No kidding,’ but didn’t stop. She knew he was watching her as she walked away.

  She remembered one of the other things she didn’t like about him: one evening, the job still in progress, the team in the pub for an after-work drink, and he’d hit on her, brash, insistent and then sour-mouthed when she’d told him no. She pictured him with his arm against the wall, leaning to box her in, his whisky breath in her face, saying, ‘I’m hung. I’m really hung.’

  She leaned against her car and took out her phone to make a call, but it rang before she could dial, Pete Harriman’s name coming up on the LCD. She said, ‘I’m on my way,’ in the same moment that he said, ‘We’ve got another.’

  14

  There was a light breeze off the river that rattled the sides of the scene-of-crime tent. Inside there was a smell of nettles and dogshit and blood. The tent enclosed a wooden riverside bench, slatted and bearing a little brass plaque that said:

  IN LOVING MEMORY OF ARTHUR JAMES FITTS

  (1933–2003)

  WHO LOVED THE VIEW FROM THIS SPOT

  The current occupant of the bench was unlikely to be enjoying the view, because he was dead, his head lowered, eyes staring at the ground where a sizeable pool of his own blood had soaked into the dry ruts of the path. His chinos were stiff with it. His shirt-front carried a dark red bib. His shoes were crusted. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled back to the elbow, and his forearms carried what, at first, looked like tattoos. A closer look revealed that they were two words written in black marker pen:

  FILTHY COWARD

  ‘Two in one day,’ Stella said. She was talking about Barry or Gary.

  ‘Only one of them yours,’ Harriman observed.

  Stella looked at him. ‘It’s not the paperwork, for Christ’s sake, it’s the body count. I’m not a pathologist – one’s enough for me. Do we know who he is?’

  ‘Leonard Pigeon.’

  ‘What?’

  Harriman flapped his arms to simulate flight. ‘Pigeon. ID in his wallet: credit cards and so on.’

  ‘He still had his wallet –’

  ‘He did; no cash in it, though.’

  Leonard Pigeon was leaning back, well down on the slats of the bench, knees out, as if he had been taking the sun and fallen asleep. Harriman walked to behind the bench and pointed. A cord had been used to tie Leonard’s belt to the lowest slat in the backrest; a second cord was round his neck to keep his head and torso in position, though the fact that his chin was on his chest made it impossible to see this from directly in front, and the rest was hidden by his shirt collar.

  Forensics officers, dressed from head to toe in white, were active on all sides, gathering, assessing, bagging, some inside the tent, some operating in a wider area that had been taped off. Little bands of walkers gathered at the boundaries, asking when they could continue. It was just the Thames towpath, but some wore hiking boots and carried rucksacks with rugged logos; uniformed officers pointed them back the way they’d come.

  ‘Mobile phone?’ Stella asked.

  ‘Oh, yeah, sure.’

  ‘Use ICE?’

  ‘Two entries: one a landline, no reply, no answerphone; the other a mobile, apparently switched off, no personal message. Sue Chapman’s doing a trace. Shouldn’t be long.’

  ICE had been established after 9/11, after the Tsunami, after the London bombings: In Case of Emergency, entered on to your mobile phone with a contact number; the whole world anticipating the worst.

  There were flies feasting off the drying pool of Leonard Pigeon’s blood and swarming round his chin; flies and a small contingent of wasps, those sharky little meat-eaters. The video man had been and gone, but the stills photographer was popping a few shots, sending flashgun glare off the walls of the tent. Stella stepped out, taking Harriman with her.

  ‘Who called it in?’

  ‘A couple… they were out for a walk. There’s a small problem.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘He should have been at work, and she’s married to someone else.’

  ‘They want us to be discreet.’

  ‘They do.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Gave a statement, left contact numbers, went their separate ways.’

  ‘Have them come into the nick. It’s none of our business. Called it in when?’

  ‘Hour and a half ago? More like two hours.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The locals were doing it, Boss. Then someone noticed they weren’t tattoos on his arms and made the connection.’

  The scene-of-crime doctor was leaning up against a tree and making notes. Stella went across and asked him the one question he wouldn’t want to answer.

  ‘It would be a guess, you know that.’ He was a tall man in his early thirties, his long, thin face peppered with black stubble. His name was Larsen.

  ‘A guess will do.’

  ‘The pathologist will give you an accurate reading: insect infestation, blood pooling, you know… I can only do rectal temperature minus ambient temperature blah-blah.’

  ‘So blah-blah.’

  �
��Somewhere between four and six hours don’t,’ he added seamlessly, ‘quote me.’

  ‘He’s been dead six hours?’

  ‘Could be, I’m not prepared to… you know… outside limit.’

  ‘Is it possible that he was killed elsewhere and moved later?’ She already knew the answer but wanted it from an expert.

  ‘God, no. Once you’re dead, the heart stops pumping: ergo, no blood loss.’ He flipped a hand towards the scene-of-crime tent. ‘You only have to look – blood all over the place.’

  ‘Okay,’ Stella said. ‘Cause of death…’

  Larsen shrugged. ‘Asphyxiation, shock, either or both. Deep transverse incision severing the jugular vein and the carotid artery while also doing severe damage to the trachea and the thyroid cartilage.’

  Stella remembered Collier reading from the doctor’s notes on Barry or Gary: death was all terminology in the end.

  ‘Any thoughts about how?’

  ‘Again, you’ll get more from pathology – from forensics too, I expect. I think it’s a fair bet that the killer approached him from behind, took him by surprise. It’s a single cut, very deep, and the victim has no defensive wounds, so I’d say there was an element of surprise. Came up from behind, pulled the guy’s head back, by his hair or with a hand under the chin, quick, hard swipe of the knife. Whoever cut this man’s throat,’ Larsen observed, ‘made a good job of it.’

  ‘Can you make a bad job of it?’

  ‘Certainly. I’ve seen a few tentative tracheotomies – a paramedic or junior A & E doctor who couldn’t get up the nerve. This guy got it right.’ He shrugged. ‘If you see what I mean.’

  ‘Specialist knowledge?’ Stella asked.

  ‘I don’t think he was particularly skilled,’ Larsen said. ‘Not necessarily, anyway. Just very vigorous.’

  ‘He was vigorous?’ The word sounded strange to Stella – oddly inappropriate.