Down into Darkness

by David Lawrence

  The expensive suburb, the detached house screened by a line of silver birches, the radio-controlled gate of black iron railings, the long, broad driveway. The man uses his remote control to roll the gate back, but then sees that there’s something in the driveway: it might be the green recycling bin that’s kept close to the gate but to one side; it might be a child’s bike. He sighs, he gets out of the car…

  Yes, that one looked promising.

  *

  Woolf’s room contained a desk, an operator’s chair, a bed, a low table made from ply and veneer. He sat in the operator’s chair with his feet on the desk, watching the television that was never switched off. On screen was either a newscast of police action in some unnamed city or a shoot-’em-shitless TV drama, he couldn’t tell which.

  That night, he had dreamed of Aimée, the pair of them far out to sea in a small boat and waves breaking across the bow. He had told her everything about his life while the storm raged. It was clear to him that she was afraid of the darkness and the running sea, so he’d put his arm round her, and she had folded against his chest, her body supple and warm. Now, in his recollection of the dream, she told him she loved him, swore she would never leave him, though he wasn’t really sure whether the dream had offered that moment or not.

  He crossed to the bed and lay down. Woolf lived a life that took no account of when people normally slept or woke. He hoped that the dream might return, and the moment come round again when Aimée talked about love, but, although sleep arrived almost at once, his dreaming was a series of random images that melted as he woke.

  Traffic build-up outside the window and lengthening shadows in the room told him it was late afternoon. He checked the clock on his laptop and saw that it was just after five. The sun had moved round, but the room held that warm, sharp odour of charred wood. He drank water straight from the tap, then went out and walked to the Park Clinic. It was a store-front facçade: two pavement-to-lintel plate-glass windows and the name in blue neon script. Venetian blinds guarded the privacy of waiting patients, though some before-and-after blow-ups on each side of the glass door were distressingly intimate. Woolf walked to the top of the street, then back, as if that was what he’d always intended. He went into a fast-food place almost opposite, ordered beer and moved to one of the stools by the window.

  He looked for her, and, sure enough, after a while, she appeared. She wasn’t quite as he remembered her from the dream – not as slender, not as pretty, not as dark – but he still liked the look of her. He could see that her hair, now it wasn’t wet, had a soft curl to it. He had thought he might follow her, but, when he stepped out into the street, she saw him at once, and he realized that he’d wanted her to. Her face changed when she smiled – softer, warmer – and she crossed the street to him as if they had done this before.

  They walked for a while until they found a pub with a garden, then ordered some drinks and sat in a thin rectangle of sunlight and told each other lies.

  Aimée reached home an hour later than usual, though Peter barely noticed. Not that he was indifferent or even hostile – far from it – but it would never have occurred to him to be curious about Aimée’s activities. Or about Aimée. He was a good husband, and that was a large part of the problem. He wasn’t much good at being a lover or a friend, but he was a top-notch husband.

  It must have seemed a pretty likeable set-up: likeable Aimée and likeable Peter with their likeable ten-year-old son, Ben. Aimée had grown tired of being told how lucky she was. Just recently she had started to believe that there were different brands of luck, and that the brand she’d been given led to the sort of quiet, uneventful life many people sought.

  Aimée wanted a different kind of luck. The kind that had to do with risk, with chance, with a throw of the dice.

  36

  A scrum of doctors and Mike Sorley in the thick of it. He’d died twice, and they’d dragged him back. Now someone was using the defibrillator paddles again. Sorley hopped and flopped, and his heartbeat flickered on the monitor.

  In the relatives’ room Karen sat with her hands on her knees, then got up and went to the door, then took a turn round the room, then went out and walked down the corridor and back, then sat down with her hands on her knees.

  When Stella came in with two cartons of coffee, Karen said, ‘No one’s saying anything. No one’s saying a word.’

  ‘Then they’re not saying he’s dead.’

  Stella had made a triple-nine call for the first time in her life. While she was on the phone, Sorley had got up and walked out of the office as if he were on his way to meet the paramedics; or maybe he thought he stood a better chance in the open air. He got as far as the squad room, Stella hard on his heels, when he went down, clattering into a white-board pinned with SOC shots of Tree Girl and Leonard Pigeon. His face was the colour of dishwater and he was breathing in stop-start gulps.

  Traffic was backed up in Holland Park Avenue and in gridlock round Shepherd’s Bush roundabout. They could hear the whoop of the siren, but the ambulance wasn’t getting any closer. Stella got on to her knees, laced her fingers and leaned on Sorley’s chest. She counted as she pumped.

  *

  A hospital, in the small hours, echoes and ticks. The corridors are empty, but you’ll hear cries or the sound of running feet. There are deaths like sudden silences. In a side room, under white neon, people sit and wait for bad news to walk in the door.

  At 2 a.m. a doctor in green scrubs told Karen Sorley that her husband was in ITC playing pitch and toss with death, but looking the likely winner. He said it would be okay for Karen to go and sit with Sorley. To Stella, he said, ‘It was you who found him.’

  ‘I was with him when it happened.’

  ‘You gave him CPR.’

  ‘The ambulance was backed up in traffic.’

  ‘It was a bad occlusion. You saved his life.’ The doctor sighed and pulled off his skullcap; it was the end of his endless shift. He turned to Karen and smiled. ‘He’s not a smoker at all, is he?’

  Stella waited until dawn, when Karen came back to the relatives’ room to say that Sorley had made it through the night.

  ‘It was you,’ she said. ‘You saved him.’

  She took Stella’s hands and held them tightly, the sort of intimacy that only fear and deliverance can provoke.

  ‘Anyone would have done it,’ Stella told her.

  ‘Yes, but it was you.’

  A London dawn can be bright and fresh for ten minutes or more.

  Harriman had driven her to the hospital, ambulance-chasing through the back streets and rat-runs, his blue light clamped to the roof-arch. Now she walked back towards the Kensals, birdsong over the low drum of engines, the morning sky criss-crossed with jet trails.

  When she reached the park railings, she realized that she’d been heading there all along. The tree cast a long, morning shadow. Stella stood in its shade and looked at the trunk; it was about shoulder-height, just where Andy Greegan said it would be.

  Who are you, you bastard, and why did you do that to her? What were you thinking when you hauled her up into the tree? Dirty Girl. Is that why she died? Do you think she deserved what she got?

  Suddenly she was seized by a wild anger.

  Who are you to be judge and executioner? I’m going to find you, you piece of shit. You shithead. You bag of shit, you’re mine.

  She went home and showered and sat by the window with a coffee. Delaney came out of the bedroom and looked at her. She said, ‘Not dead.’ She drank more coffee while he made eggs.

  When she got to the squad room, Sue Chapman handed her the day’s reports and cocked a thumb towards Sorley’s office. Stella walked down the corridor and looked in. DS Brian Collier was sitting at Sorley’s desk; it was nearly clear of paper. He grinned winningly.

  ‘Acting DI, AMIP-5, and trying to get a handle on all this crap.’ He indicated two files, side by side in front of him. ‘Bryony Dean, know her?’

  ‘Missing-persons possibili
ty. When did this happen?’

  ‘Last night. I got a call from the SIO. Oh,’ he said, remembering the etiquette, ‘how is he?’

  ‘Good. Doing well. Be back at his desk pretty soon, I should think. Sorry about that.’

  ‘Stella… you turned down three promotion boards. And this is Acting DI – they’re not making me up.’

  ‘It’s fine. It’s fine with me, Brian.’

  ‘Okay. So, I’ve read the case papers, but I’ll need to be brought up to speed.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Good. And look… it’s Brian in here; in this office; it’s Boss in the squad room. You understand.’ He pushed the two files forward an inch or two. ‘Bryony Dean, missing persons file, follow-up by yourself and DC Harriman, your conclusion: that the girl had run off with her mother’s boyfriend, have I got that right?’

  ‘We think the mother knew. The boyfriend reported her missing to put himself in the clear.’

  ‘Okay, well…’ Collier paused for effect. ‘Her file’s here. And there’s another – it was about three deep – on someone called Elizabeth Rose Connor.’ He flipped open the file covers to show the photos provided for the MPB. One had been taken at a party, the girl looking into the camera and smiling a wide smile.

  Bryony.

  The other was less clear: taken in a club, perhaps. The girl had a cigarette in her hand, and her gaze was beyond the camera, as if she had just spotted someone coming in.

  Stella leaned over to get a better look. The same girl. There was no doubt about it. She looked at the MPB form, and the name leaped out at her.

  Elizabeth.

  Lizzie.

  37

  Melanie Dean said, ‘So it was her, then.’ She hadn’t even bothered to look at the Elizabeth Rose Connor mugshot Harriman held out to her. ‘It looked like her, I said so.’

  ‘You said it looked like her. You also said it wasn’t her.’

  ‘I didn’t know. Only that she’d gone.’

  ‘You thought it might be her, but you didn’t say.’

  ‘No, it just looked like her. I could see it looked like her, but I never thought it was, not until now.’ She half turned away. ‘I mean, I looked at the picture, and I could see something of Bryony in it…’ She was trying to find an excuse for herself. ‘I didn’t like to think about it.’

  Stella said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  Another flawless day apart from the carbon emissions, the jet-fuel offloads, the ozone factor. From 1136, Block A, all you could see was blue sky. Melanie went to the window and opened it; at that height there was a faint breeze.

  Stella looked at the woman, searching for some trace of sorrow. She said, ‘Why would she be calling herself Elizabeth Connor?’

  ‘That was her nan’s name. She loved her nan.’

  ‘Why would she use it?’

  Melanie sighed, as if anyone ought to know the answer. ‘She had to live.’

  ‘Benefit fraud,’ Harriman said.

  ‘She was on the Social already. I expect he put her on again. He always claimed twice. Most round here do.’

  ‘Your boyfriend,’ Stella said. ‘Chris Fuller.’

  Melanie laughed. It sounded like someone shaking pebbles in a box. ‘Yeah, bloody Chris.’

  Harriman asked, ‘And would it be Chris that was sending her out whoring?’

  Melanie didn’t blink. ‘Yeah, that sounds right.’

  ‘And when he was living here,’ Stella said, ‘did he send you out too?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And Bryony?’

  ‘Yeah.’ There was a pause before Melanie added, ‘Course, we did think of being famous film stars or marrying royalty, but it seemed like a lot of bother.’

  Stella asked for a photo of Chris, and Melanie found an away-day threesome, Chris in the middle looking solemn. She handed it over. ‘It rained that day. Day out to the sea, it was. Day wasted.’

  Harriman said, ‘If you wanted to find Chris, where would you look?’

  ‘I don’t know. How would I fucking know?’ No one spoke for a while, then Melanie said, ‘He’ll still be claiming for her. Saying she’s sick…’

  Stella looked round the room: chipboard furniture, bare floor, bare walls, a lick of grime over everything. Little Stella Mooney’s home from home. She said, ‘I’m afraid we can’t release the body to you, just yet. There’ll be an inquest.’

  Melanie said, ‘I can’t afford no funeral.’

  A squad-car siren started faint and grew, stopping somewhere eleven floors below. The Bull Ring, Stella guessed. Just the one vehicle, so not a major op: the dealers could go on cutting and wrapping, the whores whoring, the fixers fixing.

  As they were leaving, she asked, ‘What do you think? Was it Chris? Did Chris kill Bryony?’

  For the first time, there was genuine surprise in Melanie’s expression. ‘Chris? No, course not.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He loved her, didn’t he? That’s why they went off together. First off, he loved me; then it was her.’ She gave a shaky little smile. ‘He was always selfish like that.’

  Cuts of sky between the blocks, a shimmer of heat-haze rising and bringing with it smells of fast food, dope, decay and a subtle admix of bad luck. Little Stella sitting all alone in a room on the eighteenth floor, watching birds drift by, hearing the slam of music, the blatter of TVs, the yells of pain and hatred filtering up the stairwell.

  Harriman shrugged out of his leather jacket as they emerged on to the walkway. He said, ‘Shit, it’s hot.’ He started to walk away, then realized Stella wasn’t with him. He turned and saw her standing utterly still just outside the door of 1136, Block A, staring across the gap to the door of 1169, Block B. A woman was standing there, arm raised.

  Across that short distance, that limitless distance, almost near enough to touch, almost lost in planes of blue, standing on the concrete walkway, Stella’s mother waved like an excited passenger on the deck of a ship coming gently in to dock.

  She said, ‘Hello, Stell. I thought that was you.’

  38

  Gideon Woolf was off territory. In a scabrous pub by London Fields, he sat with a beer and waited to be approached. He would have been noticed before he got to the bar to order his drink; being noticed was easy; being approached constituted a commitment. He was easy in his mind, though that area of London was a risk for the unwary. While he waited, he ran the movie scene again.

  The car, the gate sliding back, the man getting out. Since devising the scene, Woolf had been on location: he’d scouted the venue, he had been the eye of the camera. To the left of the gate was a tall hedge and then a narrow path between the hedge and a screen of four skinny silver birches. The car is running, the gate is back, Woolf and the man are in that screened space. He acknowledged the need to be quick – the car is on the drive-up from the road, still ticking over, the gate is open, the man is nowhere to be seen.

  That necessary speed was one of the reasons that had brought him to London Fields. A knife isn’t always fast, isn’t always fatal, and it can be hard work. But speed wasn’t the only reason; a single gunshot was part of Gideon Woolf’s story.

  He drank his beer and bought another. It was early afternoon, and the pub was filling up, but no one sat at his table.

  Bryony… Lizzie… down from the tree and laid out on a slab.

  Stella was looking at the post-mortem blad when Maxine Hewitt perched on a chair at her side. Chocolate bar of the day was TimTam. Maxine was carrying one for each of them. She looked over Stella’s shoulder at the evidence of Sam Burgess’s delicate butchery: Bryony laid open, her ribs sprung, the heart–lung system gone.

  ‘Do you think he killed her – the boyfriend?’

  ‘Her mother doesn’t.’ Stella shrugged. ‘It wouldn’t be unusual would it? But then, did he also kill Leonard Pigeon?’

  ‘You don’t think so?’

  ‘Not really. We’d better find him, though.’ She let go a little hiss of annoyance. ‘DI Collier’s insistin
g.’

  ‘DI Collier’s fairly loud on the issue.’

  ‘DI Collier thinks boyfriend Chris is our man.’

  Maxine tossed her wrapper towards a waste bin and missed by a mile. She said, ‘Surveillance, then: if he’s still picking up her benefit.’

  ‘And his own,’ Stella guessed. ‘Fancy it?’

  ‘Sitting in a car with a Tango, a cheeseburger and a sweaty cop, how could I resist?’

  ‘Ask Collier to get some local help, but coordinate it yourself.’

  It was Maxine’s cue to leave, but she didn’t take it. After a minute she said, ‘When I came out to my mother, she slammed the door and locked it.’

  Stella continued to turn the pages of the PM blad: Bryony at various stages of lack and loss. Eventually, she said, ‘It’s not like that – a disagreement, a feud…’

  ‘No? What, then?’

  ‘I hate her. I always have.’

  ‘Always?’

  ‘So far as I can remember.’

  ‘Oh…’ Maxine didn’t know where to go from there.

  Stella said, ‘Take Frank Silano with you. Tell him not to sweat.’

  *

  She leafed through the blad as if the sight of Bryony’s body, broken down to spare parts, might cause a clue to spring out at her – an answer, a reason – but her mind wandered.

  She remembered standing at the door of 1169, Block B, and ringing the bell; she remembered the splash of blood on the doorstep.

  Harriman passed her desk and glanced sideways at the blad. ‘That’s us in the end, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Meat and bone and hair.’

  Stella’s reply was too soft to be heard. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s us.’

  A tall man with razored sideburns and laughable aviator shades sat down at Woolf’s table. He seemed a little vague, which might have been anything from coke to cool. After a few checks and trade-offs, he made some offers. He offered coke, crack, Billy, rophie, blow, scag, Nazi crank, skunk, rush, coco snow, black Russian, Texas red and acid.

  Woolf said no thanks.

  The man offered girls, boys, trans, black, white, Asian, Oriental, straight, bent, blow, hand, skin, anal, facial, pain, rain, rubber and leather.