Cold Kill

by David Lawrence

  ‘Can we get out of the bedroom, please?’

  ‘And go where?’

  ‘The laboratory would be good.’

  A man was seen entering the churchyard carrying a gun, a machete, a crossbow. He was twenty thirty forty fifty. He had black brown blond hair. He was following a prostitute a housewife a black woman a Chinese woman.

  ‘There’s a problem.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘I’m backed up.’

  ‘I said out of the bedroom, Davison.’

  He laughed. ‘Look, there’s a process. I get items from the scene, items from the morgue. They don’t necessarily arrive together. I correlate them. I cross-reference. I go to lunch.’

  ‘You know –’

  ‘Do you ever go to lunch, DS Mooney?’

  ‘– what I’m looking for, don’t you?’

  ‘A match with the DNA of whoever killed Blake and Simms.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘But you’re standing in line. I have other sergeants with black silk panels who are just as demanding as you.’

  It was my husband father brother son. It was the guy next door the postman the builder the vicar. It was the man who sells the Big Issue.

  ‘When will I get a result on this, Davison?’

  ‘Officially, three days from now.’

  ‘Unofficially.’

  ‘Sooner.’

  A woman like that is filth sewage disease corruption. Luring men to a graveyard. She deserved all she got. She was struck down by the hand of justice the hand of righteousness the hand of God.

  ‘Any chance of sooner than that?’

  ‘Same MO, was it?’

  ‘He caved her head in with a hammer and throttled her with a ligature. She was on her way home from work: looking forward to an evening out with her boyfriend. She was twenty-three.’

  ‘Leave it with me.’

  I saw two men coming out of the churchyard. It was about that time. It was dark and I didn’t see their faces. They were average height not young not old not fat not thin. The choir was singing. I don’t walk through there myself, it’s spooky.

  Her mobile had five voicemails and three texts, all from Delaney. She went out into the car park to find some privacy and called him to let him know she was all right. There was no moodiness in her or a desire to hurt. She told him about the flat being burgled but not about the lads in hoodies or Panhandler Pete.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ he asked.

  ‘Stay at the flat for a bit. It ought to be lived in. There’s a danger of squatters.’

  ‘Okay.’ She pictured him at his workstation, the mess of books and papers round his chair, and it pained her. ‘Call me,’ he said. ‘Let me know what’s happening.’

  ‘I’ll be okay there. It’s time I had a clear-out.’

  Delaney knew enough to give her rope. Even so he couldn’t help but say, ‘I love you.’

  Harriman walked into the car park with a plastic-packed BLT, a tuna baguette, a coffee grande, two Twix bars, three packs of Marlboro Lights and a forbidden Budweiser. Stella said, ‘You read the yellow-board stuff?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘A witness saw two men coming out at about the right time. A local secretary, I think she was. Get her in.’

  ‘Two men?’

  ‘It was about the right time.’

  ‘But two men?’

  ‘I know. Get her in, all the same.’

  She went back to the squad room with him. He gave the tuna baguette, the coffee, a Twix and a pack of Marlboro to Marilyn Hayes. They sat at her desk to eat. Marilyn reached out and took a crumb from the corner of his mouth.

  Maybe that’s the way to do things, Stella thought, home-life and love-life as separate events. George and Stella. Stella and Delaney.

  Tom Davison came back to her just as she was about to go home.

  He said, ‘You’re right. It’s him, whoever he is.’

  ‘For sure?’

  ‘Same traces as we found at the other two scenes of crime, Blake and Simms. No doubt. He didn’t leave much but he left enough.’

  ‘Thanks, Tom.’

  She would write a brief report and circulate it before she left. Her mind was on that and she was getting ready to put the phone down when she heard him say, ‘There’s more.’

  Something in his voice: an urgency. She said, ‘Go on.’

  ‘Your confessor, Robert Adrian Kimber. Him too.’

  ‘Him too meaning what?’

  ‘His DNA’s all over the place. All over her. He was there. He was involved.’

  She was silent for a moment; there was a faint ringing in her ears like distant voices. She said, ‘There’s no chance of that being wrong?’

  ‘None,’ Davison said. ‘Does it fuck things up at all?’

  47

  ‘We had him,’ Stella said, ‘but we let him go.’

  ‘You had no option: he hadn’t done anything.’ Anne Beaumont was making omelettes while Stella opened a bottle of red wine, which meant that they were neither cop and profiler nor shrink and patient, though Stella wasn’t at all sure what the other option might be. Friends, perhaps, except that Stella felt that Anne knew a great deal more about her than a friend had a right to know.

  ‘He’s done something now.’

  ‘And he didn’t do it alone.’

  Stella poured two drinks, took a sip, then sat on a stool by the counter. The wine seemed to go straight to her bloodstream but cleared her head rather than fogged it. ‘What have we got? A series of attacks on women, including the murders of Valerie Blake and Sophie Simms.’

  ‘And Kate Reilly,’ Anne said.

  ‘Yes, I know, but leave that aside. Martin Cotter’s definitely in the frame for the attacks before the one on Valerie Blake. So take those out of it. Blake and Simms were killed by a man we can’t identify; we’ve got his DNA, but it’s not on record. Call him Mister Mystery. Robert Kimber confesses to killing Valerie Blake but didn’t. Now Kate Reilly is killed by Mister Mystery and Kimber is there at the time.’

  ‘Or Kimber killed her and Mister Mystery was there at the time.’

  ‘So Kimber confessed to a murder committed by Mister Mystery, now he and Mister Mystery are working together.’

  Anne topped up their glasses. She said, ‘You think Mister Mystery and Angel are the same guy – the one who was emailing Kimber?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘And Delaney didn’t tell you about him. I can see why you moved out.’

  ‘I haven’t moved out.’

  ‘No? Where are you living? And why am I cooking for two?’

  ‘I have to live at Vigo Street for a bit. They could come back if the place is empty.’

  ‘Good excuse,’ Anne said. She added, ‘They could come back anyway. What would you do then?’

  ‘Shoot the little bastards.’

  Anne looked up sharply. ‘Who’s that talking? The thug beneath the skin?’

  ‘You forget,’ Stella told her, ‘that I’m off Harefield. I’m off the estate.’

  ‘So, you’re at Vigo Street, but you haven’t dumped him.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘In fact, you still love him.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Do you know how irritating that is – that okay?’

  ‘I’m a shrink. I’m not supposed to comment. Which is what “okay” means – no comment.’

  ‘But you’re not my shrink any more, so say what a friend would say.’

  ‘Take your time,’ Anne told her. She opened a bag-salad and cut some bread. When they were sitting at the table, she said, ‘That was a piece of advice. It comes free.’

  *

  Turbo-mop had done a great job. The place was clean and they’d swept out the crap, made the bed, collected the CDs, put books back on to shelves, boarded up the window, left a bill. The walls and furniture were still tagged in red and black, but with the debris gone you could almost take the flat for a Brit-art installation.


  Stella brought in some essentials: chill-cabinet food, vodka, a baseball bat. She called Harriman and told him about Tom Davison’s findings.

  ‘Which is why,’ he said, ‘you’re interested in the secretary who saw two men coming out of the churchyard.’

  ‘You know what I think? I think Mister Mystery killed Valerie. Kimber confessed to it. Mister Mystery got interested in him. He contacted Kimber. Now they’re a team.’

  ‘He killed Sophie Simms too.’

  ‘He did, yes.’

  ‘Why the fake rape stuff and the garrotte?’

  ‘Cotter raped his victims, or attempted to; he also used a garrotte. Mister Mystery was trying to replicate Cotter’s pattern, hiding his killings among Cotter’s.’

  ‘Hiding his killings among Cotter’s doesn’t account for Kate Reilly.’

  ‘I know. But it’s different now. Kimber’s with him.’

  ‘So what’s his motive?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe he’s just having fun. Maybe they both are. But I know this: Mister Mystery could be anyone. We haven’t had a single lead on him, not a jot – he would have been impossible to catch unless he made a mistake. But it’s different now. We know Kimber. Find him, we find them both.’

  ‘So you want everyone on the street.’

  ‘You, me, Maxine Hewitt, Frank Silano… Nick Robson’s been office-bound for a while but probably still has contacts, Andy Greegan, if he can get out of bed. We’ve all got a chis, maybe two or three. Talk to them, put pressure on. Intensify the house-to-house, take in a wider area, hassle the operators on the Strip: make them uncomfortable, make them understand that thrill-killers are bad for business.’

  Harriman said, ‘We had him and we let him go.’

  ‘I’ve been down that road,’ Stella said. ‘It’s a dead end.’

  It was late. She propped the baseball bat up against the wall close to the bed-head and lay down. She felt unaccountably sad. Sad to be at Vigo Street, sad to be without Delaney, sad that George was making new friends.

  She fell asleep and had a short, brightly coloured dream in which Kimber sat by her bedside and poured the whole story out to her, the whole truth, but his words overlapped and criss-crossed, cancelling each other out. Behind him, in shadow, stood a man who was singing, his voice soft and true.

  She looked beyond Kimber to that dark silhouette and found herself drawn into the song, matching his pitch; a sweet duet. She was singing it when she woke.

  ... have yourself a merry little Christmas...

  48

  A chis, a snout, a grass. The first thing to remember is that they’re criminals; they’re on the other side. They do it for money and in the interests of self-protection. There’s always a trade-off and it’s not just the back-hander twenties: it’s the tight lip; it’s the blind eye.

  Stella ran three, one of them Mickey Wicks. The other two were Harefield veterans.

  Frank Silano used a couple of bookies. Bookies know most things, and people owe them, which is useful.

  Maxine Hewitt called in from time to time on an ex-colleague, now a private inquiry agent. He had a few of his own: it was cumulative.

  Andy Greegan wasn’t too ill to get out of bed, but out of bed was as far as he could get. No one asked him for the names of his contacts: chis relationships worked on trust and exclusivity.

  Pete Harriman found his information among the low-lifes and sleazebags, the pimps, the dealers… the hod-carriers of the criminal world. The advantage was they were everywhere. They ran between cracks and crevices. The fault line was their natural habitat.

  He was in a pub called the Wheatsheaf, half a mile south of the Strip, waiting for a guy called Ronaldo, real name Ronald Nelms. Ronaldo worked up on the Strip and had convictions for assault, conspiracy and carrying an offensive weapon, though he hadn’t considered it offensive at all, he’d considered it necessary. Mostly the girls could cope with an aggressive punter, but just now and then Ronaldo would have to offer a helping hand. The hand in question wore a sap-glove. It was surprising how quickly a fractured cheekbone and the loss of a couple of teeth could quieten someone down. Harriman had managed to get a GBH reduced to ‘affray’ and on a couple of occasions had told Ronaldo when to take the night off. It was the way things worked; everyone had dirty hands.

  Ronaldo came in looking like a man with urgent business, which he was, though the business lay elsewhere. Time was money, and, with no one to watch, the girls could get a few quickies in for themselves and stash the cash. He took the bar-stool next to Harriman’s and said, ‘I’ve got girls on a fifteen-minute turn around. Head-job in a car can be ten. Can we get this done?’

  Ronaldo was stocky and wore a thin, shaped beard that he thought gave him an exotic touch, like the gold cross earring, like the diamond stud in his tooth. He glanced round the pub looking for familiar faces and not wanting to find them. There were three guys at the far end of the bar drinking brandy chasers. They wore custom-made baseball caps with their gang tag up front – MAGNA – and a tattoo on the side of the neck with a curlicued ‘M’. They were branded; they belonged. Ronaldo thought they were from Harefield, but that didn’t matter. The estate wasn’t his territory and, anyway, they had their own teams to run.

  Harriman bought a drink. He said, ‘This isn’t close to home, Ronaldo. It’s unrelated.’

  ‘Good, because there are wheels within wheels, Mr Harriman, Chinese boxes, know what I mean?’

  Harriman didn’t but he handed Ronaldo some petty cash. It meant nothing to the guy. It was tokenism, like shaking hands on a deal.

  ‘Recent attacks on women. Valerie Blake, Sophie Simms, Kate Reilly.’

  ‘Not familiar.’

  ‘The last one was the day before yesterday, in the churchyard by –’

  ‘Oh, right, yeah. I saw the action.’

  ‘Bad for business, was it?’

  ‘Yes and no. Too many cops about, but they’re not looking our way. Doesn’t affect the punters, why would it? Some girl was topped, you’re getting tossed off in the back of your Vauxhall Vectra, where’s the connection?’

  The Harefield team was looking at them and Harriman noticed. He said, ‘You know those guys?’

  ‘Nah. They’re drugs and boy-gangs. We don’t cross over.’

  ‘We had a suspect called Kimber. Robert Adrian Kimber. He walked, but now we want him back.’

  ‘Never heard of him. What makes you think I might?’

  ‘He kills women.’

  ‘Not working girls.’

  ‘Not yet.’

  The Magna boys got up to leave, brushing along the bar, solemn-faced.

  Ronaldo said, ‘Nutters are a different thing, Mr Harriman. Nutters make their own rules, know what I mean?’

  ‘I’m talking to everyone.’

  ‘Okay, and you’ve talked to me.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’m supposed to be clocking them – it’s rush hour.’

  Harriman glanced up as the Harefield guys approached and saw that all three men had their eyes on the door. They were checking a route to the exit. He had time to say, ‘Oh, shit!’ but that was all.

  Ronaldo looked the wrong way – looked at Harriman – and the blade went in hard. His eyes widened and he said, ‘Ooof !’, then his mouth went slack and his eyes misted. The knife-man was already by the door. Harriman got off his stool, swinging a punch that landed dead-centre on the second man’s face; he’d put the motion of his body into the blow and he felt the guy’s nose-bone crack.

  Ronaldo slipped sideways off his stool, the weight of his body taking Harriman off balance. He hopped back, letting Ronaldo’s body hit the floor, then took a step forward, lining up the man he’d just hit. He could see the third man out of the corner of his eye and thought he’d sidestep to move himself out of range, but he was too slow. The beer-glass came round in a tight arc and took him in the side of the face. He felt the glass explode, didn’t feel anything for a second, then felt everything.

  49


  Stella was walking into the hospital as Marilyn Hayes was walking out. Marilyn was wearing clothes that said ‘sensational figure, look this way’ and men seemed happy to obey. Stella wondered how many of them were headed for the maternity wards.

  Marilyn said, ‘He lost a lot of blood.’

  ‘I heard that. Is he okay?’

  ‘You know Pete.’ She bit her lip and looked away for a moment; the line of her mouth went ragged...

  Stella said, ‘We’ve got good IDs on the guys that did it.’

  ‘That’s great,’ Marilyn said. ‘That makes all the difference.’ Then, ‘I smuggled him in some cigarettes and a bottle of Scotch.’

  ‘Yes,’ Stella said, ‘that sounds just what the doctor ordered.’

  Harriman was in a side ward, getting his needs through a cannula and watching TV. He had been practising smiling without pain and gave Stella the benefit. One side of his face was covered by a thick wound dressing, but the bandage went all the way round his head.

  She said, ‘He really caught you with that.’

  Harriman grunted. ‘Fucking pub fight. What’s the likeliest thing? You’ll get glassed. Do I see it coming? Do I fuck.’

  ‘How long are you here for?’

  ‘Tonight. There are still bits of glass coming out of my face. Extruding, they call it.’ He puckered his lips. ‘Extruuuuuding.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I have to come back to get sewn up. Scar-management.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Starts under the ear, makes a loop, goes along the jawline.’

  ‘Sounds romantic. Like a duelling scar.’

  ‘That’s what I’m hoping for.’

  ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘Oh, Christ, yes. Hurts like fuck.’ The news came on TV and he lowered the sound. ‘Is Ronaldo dead?’

  ‘No. He’s in ITU. The considered medical response of his consultant was to make him a four-to-one shot. Apparently, the word on the street is that it wasn’t personal.’

  ‘Wasn’t personal? At four-to-one?’

  ‘It wasn’t particularly aimed at Ronaldo. And it certainly wasn’t aimed at you.’