Down into Darkness

by David Lawrence

  ‘Tell me about the pimps.’

  ‘You know… they hate a bandit. She was picking up their business. They tried to kidnap her a couple of times, but pimps are lazy, and she was fast.’

  She finished her drink and looked for another. Harriman said, ‘Sure, in a minute. When did you last see her?’

  ‘Who knows? A week ago, maybe. She’d picked up a cruiser… at least, he’d seen her and was pulling over. Trouble was, Costea saw her at the same time.’

  ‘Costea –?’

  ‘Radu. Costea Radu. He runs ten or so from Romania: pays his street rental and doesn’t take kindly to girls who stray in… or girls who stray out.’

  ‘He’s violent…’

  Stacey laughed. ‘He’s a pimp.’

  ‘Where can I find him? What does he look like?’

  Stacey held up her hands. ‘Pete, this only goes so far.’

  ‘I’m going to the bar to get us a refill,’ Harriman said. ‘You could spend the time looking at Lizzie’s picture. Imagine what she looked like before they did the computer cosmetics.’

  When he got back, Stacey said, ‘Six three, carries some weight, long hair, looks like a roadie. He wears a big cross.’

  ‘Cross?’

  ‘Crucifix, you know.’ She laughed. ‘He’s from Transylvania, think about it.’

  ‘And can be found at –?’

  ‘On the street sometimes. He drives a silver jeep. Or there’s a basement casino underneath a minicab company – Steadfast Cars. I’m going to need a smokescreen.’

  ‘We’ll bust the casino: illegal gambling, nothing to do with Lizzie, nothing to do with you. Then some unnamed officer from vice will let us know what Costea does for a living. After that, he’ll be helping us with our inquiries.’

  ‘Okay…’ She sounded unconvinced. ‘Don’t come back to me for a while, Pete.’ Harriman nodded. Stacey picked up the ten-by-eight, looked at it, then shot it back across the table. ‘I used to work the Strip,’ she said. ‘It’s a fucking treadmill.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘She might have turned twelve tricks a day; what’s that a week?’

  ‘Eighty-four.’

  ‘Right. How many a month?’

  Harriman couldn’t do the maths. ‘A lot.’

  ‘In six months?’

  ‘Your point is?’

  ‘You only need one mad bastard, one crazy. Any one of them could have done her.’

  ‘You have to hate someone to do what he did to her.’ Harriman was thinking of the brand on her back: Dirty Girl.

  ‘We’re hookers,’ Stacey said. ‘The men who use us – they all hate us; it’s just a matter of degree.’

  20

  Maxine Hewitt, Frank Silano, Mrs Pigeon, Mr Pigeon. They sat in diamond formation in Mrs Pigeon’s drawing room. The apartment was on Chiswick Mall, and the room over-looked the river. Maxine calculated that the bench where Leonard Pigeon died must be only just out of sight.

  Mr Pigeon was Mrs Pigeon’s father-in-law. His name was Maurice, her name was Paula. The older Mrs Pigeon had died five years before. Silano had all this down in his notebook. He wondered what Paula’s name had been before she married and became Paula Pigeon; he wondered if she had stood at the altar and had second thoughts.

  Do you, Paula, take this man…

  Silano was distracting himself this way, because he didn’t think there was much to learn from the interview, but also because Maurice Pigeon was on a seamless law-and-order riff in which the police were looking pretty bad. Pretty inefficient. Pretty much willing to let throats be cut on towpaths, while teencreeps dealt dope, glassed each other and threw up in city centres without let or hindrance. It was the same speech Neil Morgan, MP, had delivered to the tabloids.

  Paula was completely in control of her emotions, apart from frequent swallowings and the occasional fractured syllable: techniques designed to kill the urge to cry. She looked like a woman full to the brim.

  Maxine had already mentioned that they would be taking Leonard’s computer away with them. That they would need to look through his papers. That they had already appropriated his BlackBerry. That they would like to have a good, clear photograph of Leonard. That none of these things meant they harboured any suspicions about Leonard’s private life: it was routine practice in a crime of this nature.

  Maurice Pigeon considered it outrageous and would be consulting his lawyer before they would be allowed to take anything, or look at anything, oh, and maybe they would like to tell him what progress, if any, had they made in finding his son’s killer?

  Silano explained, ‘We’re gathering information.’

  ‘Oh, good, I’m pleased to hear that.’ Maurice’s voice was tuned to a sneer. He added, ‘Have you the slightest idea of how we feel? How Paula and I feel?’

  Silano looked at the floor. He said, ‘No, of course not’ – barely audible, just holding his anger at bay.

  Maxine stepped in. ‘Anything strange,’ she said, ‘anything out of the ordinary, any break in routine or change of plan –’

  ‘It was his usual walk. He went at the usual time. He set off in the usual way.’ Paula’s swallowings were punctuation.

  ‘But he didn’t come back,’ Maxine said.

  ‘I assumed he’d gone straight to the office. He often did.’

  ‘Think further back,’ Maxine told her. ‘Anything in the last week… in the last month.’

  Paula shook her head. ‘We live a fairly well-ordered life,’ she said. ‘Straightforward.’

  Maurice said, ‘That business on the bridge.’ When Paula didn’t respond, he said, ‘The bridge.’

  Paula said, ‘Yes.’ Her irritation was plain to see, but it was masking distress. To Maxine, she said, ‘Len was crossing Hammersmith Bridge… going for his walk. It was unusually early – about seven – he had a meeting with Neil at eight thirty. He got on to the bridge and noticed something was happening at the far end. Some young people –’

  ‘Thugs,’ Maurice said. ‘Scum. Subhumans.’

  ‘Some boys… a couple of girls. They were threatening a woman. Mugging her, I suppose. It turned out they’d been taking things, drugs, all manner of drugs… they’d been up all night, it seems…’

  Silano was writing. He asked, ‘This was –’

  ‘A couple of weeks back.’

  ‘They threw her in,’ Maxine said. ‘It was on TV.’

  Maurice snorted. ‘Is that how you people keep up with the crime statistics – by watching television?’

  ‘Len went towards them. He told me he shouted at them. “Leave her alone”… something… Two of the boys came after him –’

  ‘He ran away,’ Maxine said. It was more abrupt than she’d intended.

  ‘He ran to get help. What else should he have done?’

  ‘He ran,’ Maurice said, his voice trembling, ‘to phone for the police, who took fifteen minutes to arrive.’

  Maxine’s mind went to the SOC video of the dead man on the bench: the buzzsaw noise of flies, the voice of the video operator describing what he was filming, the hoot of a pleasure boat in the background. She saw Leonard Pigeon’s chin slumped on his chest, a little fan of severed flesh like a ruff, blood dark on his shirt-front. She saw the marker-pen scrawl on his forearms: FILTHY COWARD.

  There was nothing else.

  Silano put away his notebook and pen. He said they would be in touch. He mentioned the forthcoming visit from a forensics team.

  Maxine gave details of the post-mortem, the inquest, the likely schedule for release of the body for burial.

  They got into their car and drove away. Silano said, ‘He bottled it.’

  ‘Most people would have.’

  ‘What happened to the woman?’

  ‘She drowned.’

  ‘So… You made the connection,’ Silano said.

  Maxine took avoiding action as a Vauxhall Vectra running a red light on Hammersmith Broadway threatened a broadside. She leaned on her horn, and Vectra Man popped a finger
at her.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I made the connection.’

  21

  ‘Filthy coward,’ Stella said. ‘They mugged her; they threw her in; he ran; she drowned. It was on local TV news, local press, even made the inside pages of the tabloids. Anyone could have seen it.’

  ‘Is that what the press called him,’ Anne Beaumont asked; ‘a filthy coward?’

  ‘Not as extreme as that.’

  ‘But it was implied?’

  Sue Chapman had trawled the cuttings and the news footage. A couple of the tabloids had suggested that Leonard Pigeon wasn’t the bravest of men, and, when Leonard had declined to be interviewed, readers and viewers had been left to reach their own conclusions. A radio show had run a phone-in: ‘What would you have done?’ Some listeners suggested that Leonard had made a wise decision: the decision they themselves would have made. Most were not so kind. The question of whether Leonard had balls ran for a day or so, then faded and died.

  ‘What do you think,’ Stella asked; ‘first impression?’

  Anne smiled. She and Stella were sitting in the basement kitchen of Anne’s house in Kensington Gore, just opposite Hyde Park. Anne was in her early forties but looked younger, an illusion that was helped by high cheekbones and strawberryblonde hair that needed only the merest help. She was a profiler but had also, once, been Stella’s shrink: the only person who knew just how traumatic it had been for Stella to find those little bodies hanging in the stairwell.

  Anne said, ‘First impressions are dangerous.’

  ‘Take a risk.’

  ‘Want some coffee?’

  Stella said, ‘Okay,’ then sat in silence while Anne went through the coffee routine, a little frown on her face. Finally, she said, ‘I’m trying to think of something like it, and I can’t, not really. Signature killings, yes. David Berkowitz – you know, Son of Sam – used to leave notes identifying himself that way. There have been killers who have left messages. The Washington Sniper’s trademark was a note that read “Policeman, I am God.” But this business of accusing the victim…’ She stalled on her way to the table with the cafetière and cups, eyes closed for a moment, scanning an image. ‘It reminds me of those photos of war-time atrocities, women mostly, hanged by the Nazis: they often had a sign round their necks stating their so-called crime.’ She moved to the table and poured the coffee. ‘People put in the stocks were treated in the same way, weren’t they? And the crucified – a list of their offences displayed.’ She paused, then: ‘Maybe he’s justifying what he does.’

  ‘To himself,’ Stella suggested.

  ‘To himself… to you. Here’s the reason. Here’s why it had to happen.’

  ‘Don’t blame me? Is that what he’s saying?’

  ‘Or just stating a fact: one that he expects you to agree with. Have you told Delaney you slept with the forensics guy? Harrison…’ Anne was a left-field specialist.

  ‘Davison. No.’

  ‘Will you?’

  Stella laughed. ‘Do all shrinks like gossip?’

  ‘Of course – it’s just analysis with a bad reputation.’

  Stella said, ‘Delaney’s planning something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Not sure. Something up his sleeve.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘He asked me if I was happy. Happy with us.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  This wasn’t therapy, this was serious girl-stuff. ‘I was called away at the crucial moment,’ Stella said. ‘Body hanging in tree. Sorry.’

  ‘Of course, he might just be cataloguing.’

  Stella knew she didn’t mean Delaney. ‘How so?’

  ‘Maybe he’s got a list – dirty girl, filthy coward – and he’s ticking them off. Guilty people: guilty in his eyes, anyway.’

  ‘What, this guy sees himself as some sort of moral guardian?’ Stella sounded indignant.

  Anne shrugged. ‘It’s a theory. Theories are all I’ve got.’

  ‘Can you describe him?’

  ‘Oh, sure, roughly. He’s almost certainly under forty, probably younger, low self-esteem, hence a need for power, strong fantasy life, history of violence, though possibly not known about, solitary by nature, though might well be good at faking regularguy status, difficult childhood –’

  ‘Textbook serial killer,’ Stella observed.

  ‘The guy next to you on the tube, beside you in the street, behind you in the queue.’

  ‘And he’ll do it again.’

  ‘As long as he can find people who have transgressed in some way or another – according to his rules, anyway.’

  ‘Sinners,’ Stella suggested.

  ‘Good word.’

  ‘My God.’ Stella looked at Anne; the truth of it had just struck her. ‘And how many sinners in the world?’

  ‘Well, there’s us,’ said Anne, ‘to begin with.’

  Andy Greegan was sifting; sifting and screening.

  He was a good scene-of-crime officer and had the habit of going back over the stills and videos; there was something about looking at an image, rather than the real thing, that permitted greater concentration. After ten years as a copper, he was still capable of being affected by violent death. They all were, though some pretended better than others.

  There had been several keen pairs of eyes at the scene, and forensics had tweezered and scooped and bagged, but there was something else to find, and Andy found it. A matter of comparison. A matter of compare and combine. At Tree Girl’s scene, it was at about shoulder-height on the trunk. It wasn’t surprising that no one had remarked on it, because the lower part of the trunk was scarred with initials, scratches and scrapes, blisters where the bark had been infested; mostly, though, it hadn’t been spotted because, until Leonard Pigeon’s body had been found, there was no comparison to be made.

  Andy had transferred the SOC images to computer and made a grid for both scenes of crime and then isolated each section. After that, he had laid a second grid over the individual sections and put them side by side: he was looking at fragments of a single image. Even with that kind of scrutiny, it took an odd accident to direct his eye. Leonard might have been sitting with one arm along the top slat of the bench when he was killed – that, or he had flung his arm out when the killer came up behind him and started his work. Either way, the arm ran through eight grid sections, ending in a loose fist with the index finger seeming to point, which drew Greegan’s eye to a mark on the bench close to the finger in the final grid. Like the tree, the bench was defaced. A kid had tagged it with black spray-can paint, and the mark was within one loop of the tag, making it stand out.

  Even then, Greegan might have passed over it; but something nagged at him. He went back to the first scene of crime and looked at the grids he’d made for the tree. There it was: a double inverted ‘V’ over a single, upright ‘V’.

  Greegan isolated the grids, enlarged them, printed them off together with full images of both tree and bench to show their relative positions, sent the whole package to Stella’s VDU and then put the printouts on her desk, along with a Post-it note.

  The note said, ‘What’s this?’

  22

  ‘What’s this?’

  Delaney was cooking one of the few things he knew how to cook; it involved eggs and onions and peppers; it involved shaking leaves out of a bag into a bowl. He’d made the dressing himself, because store dressings were sweet, and he liked to be able to taste the vinegar. He looked sideways at the printout Stella had dropped on to the counter.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘you’ll have to tell me.’

  ‘It’s not a quiz. I don’t know either.’

  He was using a fork to whip the eggs. ‘Do you ever do something, start to do something, and you’re bored as soon as you begin?’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Taking a shower, cleaning your teeth, shaving.’

  ‘I rarely shave.’

  ‘You know…’

  ‘Those things bore you?’

  ‘
Shitless. And whipping eggs. What did Morgan say when you told him?’

  ‘What people always say. There must be some mistake, it’s someone else, no one would do that to… daughter, son, husband, wife, whoever. The only people who accept it straight away are those who half expect it.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Relatives of paramedics, fire-fighters, cops…’

  ‘What did he say after that?’

  ‘To me, nothing. He spent ten minutes on the phone rearranging schedules and finding a temporary replacement for the recently dead.’

  ‘Yep, sounds like the Morgan I met.’ He looked again at the printout. ‘Where’s it from?’

  ‘Scene of crime.’

  ‘What makes you think it means anything?’

  ‘Both scenes of crime.’

  ‘Even so… You’d probably find the same graffiti tag near by if you look. Hoodie boys are everywhere.’

  ‘You think this is a tag?’

  ‘Sure. Why not?’

  ‘How did Morgan come across to you?’

  ‘Rich bastard. Open some wine. Rich pompous bastard.’

  ‘That’s what Mike Sorley said. What are you making?’

  Delaney gestured to the ingredients as if to indicate that they spoke for themselves.

  Stella fetched a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc from the fridge and poured two glasses. ‘Spanish omelette, bag salad: the very outer reaches of your repertoire.’

  Delaney took a big slug of wine. ‘Not true, I can roast a chicken.’

  ‘I look forward to the day. There’s something I need to tell you.’

  She hadn’t meant to say it, but there it was, the words circling the room like little heat-seeking missiles. Maybe because Anne Beaumont had prompted the idea; maybe because she felt Delaney had intended to say something important to her at the restaurant, and she needed to get things straight between them.

  He transferred the eggs to a pan and adjusted the heat. He didn’t say anything; she wondered if he knew what was coming.

  I slept with someone. It was stupid. It didn’t mean anything. It wasn’t to do with him, it was to do with us – a payback. And I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry.