Down into Darkness

by David Lawrence

  Stella looked at Carrie. ‘What were his exact words?’

  ‘He said, “Who is it?”’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Well, he must have meant… Their father, mustn’t he? Who was it they could see lying…’ She stopped, then picked up again. ‘Who was it tied to the gate, who was it dead?’

  ‘What else could he have meant?’ A touch of irritation in Mark’s voice, shock emerging as anger: anger he had already dampened down with whisky – the bottle was open on a side-table, and he had a full glass in his hand.

  Carrie was looking at Stella but spoke to her husband. ‘She thinks they might have seen it happen.’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Stella said.

  Suddenly tears were running down Carrie’s cheeks. She said, ‘You think he was saying who is it that killed my daddy.’

  Collier arrived fifteen minutes after the press, which was lousy timing, because several journos had managed to bypass the police cordon by knocking on doors in a neighbouring street and infiltrating the back-garden gossip. Put the right questions in the right way and people will talk; they’ve just witnessed something terrible; they need to talk. The journos are good at this; suddenly they’re counsellors, they know how to prompt, but, more, they know how to listen.

  Collier stepped into the camera lights. He knew what to do: talk to the interviewer but glance at the camera from time to time; don’t lean into the microphone; don’t elaborate or you’ll grope for words.

  It was a particularly brutal murder.

  Inquiries were in progress.

  Anyone with information should come forward.

  He couldn’t be more specific at this point in time.

  The interviewer’s technique was second to none. He drew Collier on with the easy ones, making his interviewee look good, a man in control.

  Then he named the victim, and Collier hesitated a second before saying that details would be released later.

  Then he mentioned the fact that Martin Turner was the editor of a national newspaper, and Collier repeated his earlier remark, though he didn’t seem to know enough to cut the interview short.

  Then the interviewer asked about the words that had, apparently, been scrawled across Turner’s body: LYING BASTARD.

  This stopped Collier dead, so the interviewer took the opportunity to mention that many people now believed that a serial killer was at work, given the city’s other recent killings, given the public and gruesome nature of their deaths.

  Collier had the wit to say, ‘No comment,’ though a denial would have been the better option. In journo terms, ‘No comment’ means ‘Yes, but I’m not prepared to confirm just now.’

  As he backed off beyond the police-tape, voices called after him; he turned and walked away, and the voices stilled as the journalists frantically hit the speed-dial buttons on their mobile phones.

  *

  Collier emerged from the tent as Stella and Harriman were leaving Mark and Carrie Phipps. He gave Harriman a look and took Stella by the arm, steering her to the far side of the road.

  ‘Why wasn’t I called?’

  ‘I thought you had been. Sorry.’

  ‘I just walked into a press trap.’ He was speaking quietly, but the tremor of anger in his voice was unmissable. ‘I got this call as part of an update bundle from Notting Dene. You were named as investigating officer.’

  ‘I’ll send an email.’

  ‘You’re the DS. It’s your job to notify me.’

  ‘Look…’ Stella wondered how long he would spend on bitching with a dead man roped to the gates and a scene-of-crime team waiting to be told what next. ‘Look, I got the call because one of the triple-nine guys reported the writing on the body; that was picked up on the computer and cross-referenced, and my name was on the Bryony Dean crime sheet. Aren’t you listed as team leader on those entries?’

  Collier looked back at the lights and activity by the SOC tent. After a moment he said, ‘I don’t know. I should be.’

  Admin. Stella thought. Paperwork. It can bury you. For a brief moment, she felt sorry for him.

  Collier went into the tent and came out again a couple of minutes later. Stella was organizing the ambulance and the police doctor, putting in a call to Sam Burgess. Collier signalled to her, and she handed over to Harriman.

  ‘The press asked about the possibility of it being serial. They’re tying it in with the other two.’

  ‘Are they? Why?’

  ‘Three in the space of a week, apparently random, out in the open, it doesn’t take all that much imagination.’

  ‘Did they mention any of the details we’re holding back?’

  ‘Yes, but for this case, not the others. They seem to know that this one had writing on him.’ Collier suddenly saw an opportunity for a fight-back. ‘They can only have got that from people at the scene. How many neighbours showed up before we did?’

  ‘We’re not sure. Maybe twelve.’

  ‘There you are, then. So the press managed to get to some of those people and question them. Your job is to stop that happening. That sort of leak is just another form of crime-scene contamination.’

  ‘There are sixty or so houses on this street,’ Stella said, ‘with the same number backing on to them either side. A hundred and eighty houses, each with an average of… what… three occupants?’

  Collier nodded. ‘High risk. You didn’t cover it.’

  He walked away. Stella couldn’t see his smile, but there was a trace of it in the set of his shoulders. She thought it took someone like Brian Collier to make capital out of a man with his face shot off.

  Andy Greegan was still patrolling the crime scene, watching for any danger of contamination. Stella walked the path by the hedge, dressed in the white coverall and shoe covers that Greegan had given her. She had been back into the SOC tent with a torch. The halogen lights threw a hard glare, but they also threw strong shadows, and she had used the torch to illuminate the undersides of the railings and certain patches of ground. What she was looking for wasn’t there. Now she was checking the boles of the trees, each in turn, the entire circumference to head-height and beyond. She’d expected to find it there, but so far she’d had no luck. Forensic officers were still searching the far end of the walkway, each carrying a halogen baton. They were looking for it too.

  She gave up on the trees and walked to the garbage bunker, though she knew that the forensics team had been over it, that it had been dusted for fingerprints, that DNA sweepings had been taken.

  It’s the one thing no one knows about. Morgan heard about the writing from Collier, Delaney heard about it from me, that sort of thing spreads like a stain. But this is the one thing that lets me know there isn’t a copy-cat at work. A sign, a signature. It’s yours, isn’t it, you bastard; yours alone? It’s here. It’s got to be here.

  Harriman found her on her hands and knees at the kerbside. He said, ‘Tomorrow, Boss. It’s hopeless in this light.’

  ‘You’re right.’

  Stella stood up and switched off her torch. Everyone would be back tomorrow for a second look in daylight. She dusted herself down and walked along the street towards her car. Three uniformed men were winching Turner’s Mercedes on to a low-loader, getting ready to cover it; the interior had already been hoovered and tweezered. Stella stepped sideways to skirt the trailer as the car tilted. A little river of light from the halogens ran down the wing, and there it was, finger-drawn into the film of London grime:

  A smudge of red on the outline; a sticky drop of red in the cut of the lower vee.

  Forensics officers in white were eerie figures between the silver birches. Camera flashes bounced off the Merc’s paintwork. The moon was high, a clean-cut white disc in a midnight-blue sky.

  Two paramedics came out of the tent wheeling a body-bag on a collapsible gurney; the scene-of-crime team, the photographers, the AMIP-5 squad, went about their business, all of them throwing hard, clear shadows.

  I’m being followed by a moon shadow, m
oon shadow, moon shadow.

  The tune would run through her head all the next day.

  54

  Ricardo Jones was sitting in the front passenger seat of a car, his hands resting quietly in his lap, his back straight. He wanted to blot the drop of sweat that had sprung up alongside his left eye, but he left it alone. Not that he was unable to reach it; he just felt it was better to remain still.

  The driver was the same man he’d encountered in Jonah’s flat. Somewhere just off Notting Hill Gate, they had stopped to pick up another man, who said, ‘Don’t turn round.’ He didn’t speak again until they had driven up to Wormwood Scrubs and parked. ‘You’re Ricardo Jones.’

  Ricardo wasn’t sure whether it was a question or a statement. In the end he said, ‘Okay.’

  ‘Don’t speak,’ the man said. ‘You don’t have to speak at all.’

  They sat for a while in silence, apart from the tick-tick of the engine as it cooled. Ricardo could hear himself breathing; he could smell his own sweat, rank and hot. They were parked in a side street close to the Scrubs. Moonlight frosted the rough ground. Ricardo could see himself lying out there, dead and done with.

  The man said, ‘You’ve been providing a service on Hare-field, Ricardo. You’ve been offering premium rates, which is all well and good, except you’ve been offering them to my clients. You’ve been undercutting me. You’ve been poaching. Don’t speak; there’s no need for you to say a single fucking word. Now, you did a very nice deal for a man called Jonah, and, as I think you know by now, it was not to his advantage. He thought it would be, but it wasn’t. The thing about hands with no thumbs, Ricardo, is they’re not much use for anything. You can’t count money with them, for a start.’

  A soft Scottish burr, not so much angry as chiding.

  ‘Of course, that could have been you, Ricardo. The man sitting beside you would have been happy to perform the same sort of operation on you – a bit of a warning, a way of letting you know you’d overstepped the mark. In fact, that was my intention, at first. I was pissed off, really pissed off, and I wasn’t thinking straight. Well…’ he chuckled, ‘I could still change my mind. Not the thumbs but… I don’t know… the little fingers of both hands… just a reminder… but don’t worry about that now; just listen to what I have to say, because it’s a way you could keep all your fingers and make a little profit into the bargain. Not the kind of profit you’ve been making, of course; no, a little profit. It’s simple. You turn your contacts over to me, and you act as go-between. As gofer. For a small percentage. Why am I bothering to use you at all? Well, I’m buying your goodwill, Ricardo. Your goodwill and your good reputation with your clients, and I’m sure they’ll feel happier – to begin with, anyway – if they’re still dealing with someone they know and trust. As for the future… we’ll have to see how things go, won’t we?’

  There was a faint buzzing: a mobile switched to vibrate, and the man rummaged in his pocket, rising slightly to get purchase; Ricardo caught a glimpse, in the rear-view mirror, of a narrow face, a goatee, a gunslinger’s moustache.

  ‘Call you back.’ After that there was a long silence. Finally, the man said, ‘Well, you can talk now. Just say yes or no.’

  Ricardo said, ‘Yes.’

  They drove back to Notting Hill, Ricardo next to the driver, neither saying a word, the man in the back looking out at the crowded streets and humming an almost inaudible tune. Ricardo thought it was ‘Lord of the Dance’. The driver pulled over in Pembridge Road. He said, ‘Get out, walk away, don’t turn round, we’ll be in touch.’

  Ricardo walked across the hill to Hammersmith Road, then down North End Road, his legs jittery, his lips dry. When he got back to 1169, Block B, he was badly in need of a piss. Tina Mooney looked up as he went through and noticed the set of his mouth. He came back carrying their stash and did a couple of lines without looking up.

  When he told her, she said, ‘Who is he?’

  Ricardo described him: the face hair, the soft, Scottish brogue. ‘I don’t know his name. The guy that drove – Sekker, that’s what they call him.’

  ‘Is the black guy dead?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘Play along. I’ll have to.’ He sounded apologetic. ‘I’m admin., Tina, you know? I’m deals and percentages. They cut the poor bastard’s thumbs off and nailed his hands to a chair.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘I’ll have to give him something – lose a few good contacts by the look of it. Bastard! I’ll keep most of it back, though. Christ, it took me years to get my fucking list together.’

  ‘He’ll expect the lot.’

  ‘He will, yes. Scotch cunt.’

  ‘So we’re on the move again.’

  ‘After a bit. After I’ve given up a few names.’

  ‘I like London. I’ve missed London. I had good times here.’

  ‘Why?’ Delaney asked.

  Stella had just got out of the shower; she’d run it hot, but now stood by the window to let her skin cool in the night air.

  ‘If I knew that, I’d know everything.’

  ‘I saw him just the other day,’ Delaney said.

  ‘Did you? What for?’

  ‘Just a drink… I used to work for him: freelance, mostly; on the staff for a short while. I didn’t know him well, but I liked him. And he was a good editor.’

  ‘What did you talk about?’

  She had her back half turned to him; he tried to read her expression, but the light put her face in shadow. ‘Nothing special… Why?’

  ‘In case he said something that might –’

  ‘Oh… No, just old times, you know. Want some coffee?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Lying bastard,’ he said. ‘It must be the paper, don’t you think – something he published?’

  ‘It’s possible. How many lies in the average paper in the average week?’

  ‘None. Sometimes there are disputable facts.’

  ‘I’m keeping a straight face. All right, how many disputable facts?’

  ‘Hundreds.’

  ‘Over a year?’

  ‘It’s exponential.’

  ‘Exactly. Here’s another thing: this guy, whoever’s killing these people, has an agenda of his own. His reasons aren’t going to be what we would call rational. So who knows what he considers to be a lie?’

  ‘It was pretty straightforward with the other two,’ Delaney observed. ‘Dirty girl was a hooker, filthy coward ran away.’

  ‘If Leonard Pigeon was the intended victim.’ She turned to confront him. ‘This stuff I’m telling you: it’s not for publication.’

  ‘I thought you said the serial-killer thing was breaking now.’

  ‘It is…’

  ‘And they know that the killer wrote on him.’

  ‘They don’t know about the other two cases – that they were written on, or what the writing said.’

  Delaney laughed. ‘Stella, it’s just a matter of time.’

  ‘We need to hold things back, things only the killer could know. We’re already getting half a dozen confessions a week.’

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m doing the Rich List. Colour-supplement trivia. I’m not in the front line any more.’

  Her head came up, but he was spooning coffee into a cafetière and didn’t see it. Something about the way he’d said it, something hidden.

  No, you’re not. But you’d like to be.

  55

  ABE – Achieving Best Evidence, which is what Maxine Hewitt was hoping to do. She sat in the video suite with James and Stevie Turner, who seemed oddly at ease, if a little detached. James was looking round the room, seeming to take it in piece by piece, his head moving once every few seconds; Stevie was hunched over his Game Boy.

  There was a discreet camera, and there were wall-mounted directional microphones; there were games and dolls and drawing materials, designed to help stir memories. Under normal circumstances, Maxine would have had an A
BE colleague with her – a member of the squad who had also been given specialist training; on this occasion, and at Stella’s request, the other person was Anne Beaumont.

  The trick was to start the boys talking and then just listen for a way in. It took a while. Finally, Anne asked about the house, the house they lived in, trying to steer them towards the front room and the front-room window with its view of the drive.

  Stevie looked up. He said, ‘We don’t live there now.’

  James said, ‘It’s not good, there.’

  And they started to talk about themselves and their mother and the new life they were, apparently, going to live. About their father, they said not a word.

  When Stella walked into Chintamani she was wearing the only substitute she possessed for the TK Maxx jacket, which was Jigsaw, last year, Gap jeans, a touch too much make-up and fuck you. She could have pulled Abigail into the AMIP-5 interview room, but she wanted her at her ease, on her own territory.

  She was defensively late and had barely sat down before two waiters arrived with a bottle of white wine and eight separate dishes.

  ‘The meze,’ Abigail told her. ‘Their speciality, okay?’

  Stella said yes, it was okay, the meze was fine. She realized that she hadn’t been able to take a close look at Abigail during that evening at the Orchard Street club, and saw that the woman was not quite the stereotypical blonde she’d been carrying in her mind. The looks were classy and intelligent, the clothes expensive but unshowy, the voice low with no identifiable accent. Abigail tore off a piece of flatbread and scooped some tahini. She said, ‘I’m not a whore.’

  ‘I didn’t think you were.’

  ‘It crossed your mind.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Stella asked.

  ‘Because it crossed mine.’

  Stella laughed out loud. She said, ‘So what’s the deal?’

  ‘I’m not sure I know. We met at a party. I guessed he was married, but there was no wife in tow, he was attractive… power, mostly – I think I might have a thing for powerful men – we left the party, had dinner, he’s quite funny, you know, witty, mostly at the expense of the world’s movers and shakers. He’s old money; that makes a difference. He sees politics as a rather simple-minded game with everyone trying to win by whatever means they can; something that excludes the population at large completely.’