It has always seemed certain to me that there is only one way to go about anything or go anywhere – it is as straight as possible. I must end with my hands right in my work and solve it; and although I have made terrible mistakes through ignorance, I see justice under that light – everything usefully done is done for others. Now Carstairs and Suarez, too, in their new state, will surely find and join hands with us in a mysterious and valuable way that the rest of us can’t yet know.
It’s a silly, frightening world but our own, I suppose.
I suppose.
(They say that faith can move mountains; so I have heard and do in part believe it, that’s Shakespeare, that is. I hope he was right; that’s me.
For Betty Carstairs was murdered because she loved Suarez as the daughter she never had, and at eighty-six she tried to save her; and Suarez was killed because she was beautiful, poor, sick and at our mercy, and we showed her none, and may our country hang its head.
I see now, clearer than I have ever done, that my work is a matter not just of my personal honour, but of our national honour, as if, in spite of everything, there were still a spark in us as there once was when we loved the dead as ardently as we did the living and believed in their continued being as I still most certainly do, and then I am really not capable just by myself of explaining just what went wrong after that.)
Did you know I sometimes cry in my sleep? Did you ever hear of a man who never cried in his sleep?
By examining other people’s lives and deaths I am half consciously showing myself how to approach my own.
Strip horror; face it naked. Don’t hide or run, and then the good will come, even if it has to go through hell to find you.
I remember, a long way back, talking to Frank Ballard about a flasher he had arrested on the banks of the Serpentine. ‘Nine flashers out of ten are harmless,’ I said. ‘The tenth is a killer.’
The tenth could be a Tony Spavento.
The Voice rang. ‘I don’t like the way you’re going about this Carstairs/Suarez case,’ it said in a tone somewhere between authority and nervousness. ‘I don’t like it at all. You’re acting as if you were the law, not just a sergeant working for it.’
‘There ought to be a law that made murder impossible,’ I said, ‘but there isn’t, so I’m filling the gap until there is.’ I added: ‘As for being just a sergeant, don’t assume I’m not ambitious merely because I turn down promotion; we’ve had this conversation before. In my own way I’m very ambitious. Most hardworking people are – also my twin ambitions are positive and useful. One, I want to be a pioneer, not a pawn – two, I want to find out everything I possibly can about myself and others, because the more I know, the better equipped I am for catching killers, What would I find out as a detective chief superintendent? Nothing.’
‘We don’t want any pioneers at A14.’
‘Well, it’s that or take me off the case,’ I said, ‘in which case I’ll continue it as a private citizen. I told you what the contract was at the word go, and you agreed to it.’
After a long pause the Voice said wearily: ‘All right.’
It rang off.
I went into Stevenson’s office. ‘Well?’ I said. ‘What happened to our three lovely detainees?’
‘They went over to Great Marlborough Street, where they were remanded in custody pending further enquiries, application for bail refused.’
‘Well, that’s one part of the vomit cleared up,’ I said. ‘Now let’s see about the big lot.’
As I spoke I found I was remembering my grandmother from my childhood, for no reason perhaps but that, like my sister Julie, she represented innocence. It was summer, and my gran sat reading in a deckchair in our small garden under the only tree, an apple tree, wearing a straw hat tilted over her nose; she was still a very handsome woman, even at forty-eight. A hot wind raved vaguely among the leaves, turning up their pale undersides, and just the memory of her helped disentangle my spirit from all the squalid filth that was my working life. For an instant, Stevenson and Room 202 vanished and I was running towards her through the long grass that hot afternoon – oh Didi! Didi! – taking her by the hand and pulling her up out of her chair to bring her up for tea, which my mother had set out on the verandah – tea, bread and butter, jam and cake on a cloth spread over a green-painted iron table.
What I do know is that if my grandmother were in my place now, and if it were she who had to deal with the deaths of Carstairs and Suarez, she would have acted just as I am doing – she was stubborn, independent and compassionate, and that was why I had always loved her so. She never uttered a word when her two sons died in that car accident, but a cancer which, according to the doctors she had had for a long time but had said nothing about, now suddenly declared itself, perhaps because of the shock, so that she had to go into hospital very shortly after the funerals. Sensing, as she told my mother, that the operation had failed, she called for all her makeup and put it on asking sister for the loan of her pocket mirror, and she hummed a little music from The Coronation of Poppaea, her favourite opera, the morning she died.
Voices from so far back now that they are still young fly calling, searching in the darkened wood of my mind and I see at long last that the pain of her loss helped me make me what I am.
Sometimes I feel so oppressed by evil that I feel I could go out of my mind like my wife Edie did. It’s not just the terror that the facts of a murder inflicts on me, but the needless agony that threatens and visits people – that’s my sadness. Life, people, the places they made for themselves, the traces they leave behind them like the wake fading behind a ship, the earth itself – life is so precious that I fear one day it might blind me, just as it blinded Suarez.
But I will equalise everything for you, Dora, just as I swore over your body in the morgue that I would.
(I saw the photograph of her again, taken in the Parallel Club while she was still alive. The shot was taken from slightly behind her and close to her right side with a flash, and the light brought her cheek out dazzling white in contrast to her black hair. Her almond eyes were three-quarters open under thick lids, only they were responsive and living, not fixed absently upwards as they had been when I saw them in death. She was heavily made up – I understood why now, of course – and on the monochrome film her lips showed as black as her eyes and hair. She held a microphone in her right hand and her lips were close to it, parted and singing. Beyond her, looking with the camera, were tables jammed with the solid, impassive faces of villains – Parker and Sharpe, the iron-bar specialists, were there with their women, also Mike Slattery and Phil the Gap, and of course the dark-haired man, in the act of turning his face instinctively from the camera, that I had shown the Italians.)
I was worn out suddenly; we were trying to do work in hours that needed weeks. I said to Stevenson: ‘We’ve known each other a while – can I just tell you something that makes this case different for me? Different from all the others?’
‘Of course. What is it? You sound really serious.’
‘I don’t care what you think when I say this,’ I said, ‘but I think I would have been in—’
The phone rang. Stevenson picked it up, saying: ‘It’ll have to wait a minute.’ When he had finished listening, he put it down and said: ‘That was Barry from Records.’
‘Well?’
‘Suarez had form, did you know?’
‘Don’t tell me,’ I said, ‘I can guess – theft and prostitution?’
‘Well done,’ he said. ‘Three months theft, thirty days for the other.’
‘As if she were the only one,’ I said, ‘and as if it mattered.’ I added ironically: ‘Desperate people will do almost anything these days, won’t they?’
‘He was only trying to help,’ said Stevenson.
‘Oh I know that,’ I said. ‘Nothing on Spavento, I suppose.’
‘Nothing.’ He added: ‘What were you just going to tell me when the phone went?’
It rang again. Stevenson pick
ed it up, listened, and handed it to me.
‘Cryer.’
I took the phone and said: ‘Yes, Tom?’
‘We’ve found him – my photographer’s got his picture again, but this one’s different. In this one he’s at home.’
I said: ‘College Hill? The old rubber factory?’
‘That’s right.’
‘How long ago was this?’ I nudged Stevenson and put the call on the loudspeaker so that he could listen.
‘Less than an hour ago. He’s taken lots of them; he’s taking them all the time.’
‘Where the hell is he taking them from?’ I shouted.
‘He’s up on the rooftop opposite. Spavento’s place has three big windows, and from where my boy is he can cover them all.’
I said: ‘Are you in contact with him?’
‘Yes,’ said Cryer. ‘By walkie-talkie. I’m down in the street. So what do we do?’
‘Keep on doing exactly what you are doing till we get over there, which’ll be as quick as it takes four wheels,’ I said. I added ‘What’s Spavento doing right now?’
‘Wait,’ said Cryer. There was a pause while he contacted the photographer on the roof. When he came back on, he said: ‘Nothing. He’s lying on a bundle of old rags in a corner, staring up at the ceiling; he’s using a black Adidas sports bag for a pillow.’
‘Christ, where is this photographer of yours?’ I said. ‘In the room with Spavento or something?’
‘You know it makes no difference,’ said Cryer. ‘With the lenses we use it’s as if he were.’
I said: ‘Where do we find you when we arrive?’
‘Public call box halfway up College Hill.’
I said: ‘Right.’ I said to Stevenson: ‘This is it. Come on, let’s motor.’ As we started downstairs I said to him: ‘No chance of any of our people being over there, is there?’
‘How could there be?’ said Stevenson. ‘Nobody knows where Spavento is except you, me and the press.’
‘It’s the press that bothers me. Anyway, thank God for that – I don’t want a single leak here.’
‘Any particular reason?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’ll explain later.’ We reached the Ford in the police park and got in.
‘I’ve got reasons of my own,’ I repeated, ‘I’ll explain later.’
We had reached the south side of the river when Stevenson turned to me suddenly and said: ‘By the way, you’ve got a serious-looking bulge in your right-hand pocket. You’re armed, aren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I am for once.’
‘When did you draw the pistol?’
‘I didn’t,’ I said. ‘It’s my own pistol, a .38.’
‘Look,’ he said, ‘it’s none of my business, but you know it’s against the law for you to be carrying anything other than a police weapon when you’re on duty.’
‘I know what the law is,’ I said calmly. I added: ‘What about you?’
He said, ‘No, I’m clean the way you usually go. I hate fire-arms.’
I said: ‘So do I, but this is different.’
‘Why?’ he said. ‘Why is it different? Spavento’s neither more nor less dangerous than any other maniac.’
‘That’s not it,’ I said. ‘This is just different. I repeat, I’ll explain to you later, when we get down there.’
He said: ‘You’ve not treated this case the way you treat other cases – not since the first moment you were put on it. Can I ask you, just between ourselves, as two men, why that is? Is it the victim that’s different?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘yes. For me Suarez is totally, utterly different.’
‘But why?’
‘I can’t tell you why,’ I said. ‘To me she’s not just reference A14 stroke 87471, she’s just different.’
‘Just Suarez?’ Stevenson said. ‘What about 87472? What about Mrs Carstairs?’
‘She too, of course.’
‘But it’s Suarez, really.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it’s Dora, yes.’
‘Dora?’
‘I don’t want to go into it any more. Please don’t try and make me.’
‘Be careful,’ Stevenson said.
‘Why?’ I said. ‘There are plenty of careful people around – too many.’
We didn’t speak any more for a while but drove on down the South Circular, making for the Lovelock Road turn off which led to College Hill. Dora was in my mind – Dora’s box, Dora’s book, the photographs of Dora. It suddenly started to pour with rain.
‘I wish you’d tell me what you were going to do,’ said Stevenson.
‘I will in a minute.’
‘Do you know yourself?’
I said: ‘Yes.’ A light turned amber and we sat in a silence broken only by the dirty rain pelting on the dirty windscreen.
‘I wish I understood.’
‘You understand all right,’ I said. ‘Anyway part of it – the part about realising how it was for Suarez, being axed to death; I’m convinced her arm was cut at the shoulder like that as she reached out to try and plead with her killer. The rest of it, thank God, she knew nothing about – being drunk from, masturbated into; and all that the very night you had decided to kill yourself anyway.’
‘Yes, I suppose I do,’ he said.
‘We can never suppose in our job,’ I said.
The whole dreadful mosaic was in my head, my saying to the crew of the morgue ambulance, yes, I’ve finished now, you can take them away, taking a last look at Suarez in what was left of her new dress as they covered her and put her on the stretcher; at the two overturned bottles of wine which were to have been her send-off to the other world, at her new shoes lying in a corner, at the magazine lying open at the advertised holiday in Hawaii. There, too, in my head as I drove through the heavy, early-night traffic was her uninjured arm, stark white, which appeared to be waving us all freely onward into a different world; and there were her thighs again under the thin material of her dress, too heavy and out of proportion to her now, swollen on account of the blood which, because of the position she had died in, had drained down into them. There was the tightly-clenched little fist that belonged to her bad arm, the one half hacked off; there were her black eyes eternally devouring the secret of an empty corner.
Off the South Circular Road I started reading off the names – Neanderthal Avenue, Sobers Street, Gunters Passage. I said to Stevenson: ‘Lovelock Road ought to be third on the left after the next set of lights.’
Cryer came on; I always gave him the frequency. He said: ‘Where the hell are you?’
‘Nearly there,’ I said. ‘Why, what’s happening?’
He said: ‘How can I start explaining to you what you’ve never seen before?’
‘Your feller still up on that roof?’
‘Yes.’
‘His nerve holding out?’
‘Just about.’
‘What’s Spavento doing?’ I said.
‘You might call it some kind of training,’ said Cryer.
I could hear his voice shaking even over the radio. ‘We’re coming,’ I said, ‘we’re two minutes away.’
‘You’re going to have a nightmare job.’
‘I was constructed to have nightmares,’ I said.
‘Don’t drive up all the way to the factory,’ Cryer said, ‘Mike says he seems like nervous, uneasy. There’s an Indian take-away fifty yards before on the left as you come up off the South Circular, you can’t miss it, I can see it from the roof here, it’s all lit up.’
‘We’ll meet you there,’ I said. ‘What does it look like in Spavento’s room?’
‘Horrible,’ said Cryer. ‘It’s unbelievable what he’s doing – anyway, Mike says it’s too disgusting to print, and it’s a story I couldn’t write for the paper, it belongs in Krafft-Ebing country.’
I saw the take-away and said ‘Don’t bother, we’re here. Come down to the caff, Tom.’
10
The killer was looking carefully round the very edge of
the middle of the three glassless windows of what had been the old machine workshop down into the street. He didn’t know why, but he was nervous. He told himself he was really well hidden out and so had nothing to worry about, but it didn’t help; instinctively he was sure something was gliding over him.
He was taking the fifteen-minute break from training as he did every three hours, timing himself with his plastic multiprogramme wristwatch, and had just now balanced the trainer neatly in its corner, noting that the rusted spokes were satisfyingly covered with his blood – he was only sad that there was no one on the dishes placed around the workshop to watch him perform. He put his thick lips to his blood as he placed the trainer against the wall burned grey by fire; then, having looked out of the window, he moved slowly backwards and stood where he could see the street from a point in the workshop that lay in deep shadow, where neither daylight nor streetlight ever reached.
He was in very great pain after the last session, but he nodded slightly to himself about that, knowing that the pain was necessary – as with creation, destruction overrode every other desire. He opened his fly, that he had only just zipped up, and looked down at himself in there for the sheer pleasure of it; in the middle of the mat of blood that lay in the crotch of his sporting joggers now there was practically nothing left of that at all, just red shreds. Pain was a liking which you grew to love.
‘I’m really honed now,’ he whispered. ‘Honed.’
Some hours before he had felt it imperative that he should go down to a boozer called the Double Barrel not far off in Oakley Grove, and so he had put his running shoes on, the new spiked ones that he had found for himself over in Brent Cross, paced himself over there and trotted in. Neither people nor alcohol had ever interested him, but he was often, though outwardly impassive, excited to see the effect that both had on others, and himself on them. He could never share their lives – the very idea of being involved with others made him shudder, though he had a series of carefully observed copies which superficially worked to attract a victim. He could be entrancing, serious with his good looks; only it was death to peel off the image, even to interrupt or in any way trespass on him, as thirteen dead people could tell if they could tell. He had been constructed to remain outside in the dark, alone; so he avenged himself by seizing one of these creatures from time to time as the ferocity of his desire seized him, and when his training permitted. Because of this self-punishment, when he did attract and ensnare a victim, any form of death was allowed.
I Was Dora Suarez Page 19