Cold Kill

by David Lawrence

  Or has noticed.

  What?

  What did Anne say? Think of them as separate events. Okay, let’s do that. One: we’ve got a killing that has the Blake/Simms/Reilly MO all over it. Two: we’ve got something else entirely. A double murder with an opportunist robbery.

  Here’s something else. Mister Mystery doesn’t know that Cotter has been arrested, sure, but he also doesn’t know that he’s been shedding DNA. As far as he’s concerned, we think that Kimber did Cotter’s work, and killed Blake and Simms and Reilly, and was responsible for Gribbin and Clarke.

  Two separate events. So look at the individual deaths: the victims. Go all the way back and work forward. Where does the pattern break? Who’s the odd one out?

  Oscar Gribbin.

  Stella spoke out loud. She said, ‘Jesus Christ, I know what this is.’

  From the bedroom came the sound of a footfall. Stella was caught up in her thoughts and registered it only after a beat or two. Then the door opened. Tom Davison took a step into the room, then stopped. He said, ‘Are you going?’ She looked puzzled, so he added, ‘You’ve got your coat on.’

  ‘Couldn’t find a robe.’

  ‘Cupboard in the bathroom.’

  He made a move in that direction, but she said, ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  Davison fetched a glass and helped himself to some of his own whisky. He said, ‘Don’t feel bad.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘You’re sitting up at almost four a.m. drinking whisky and looking gloomy.’

  ‘I was thinking.’

  ‘Gloomy thoughts.’

  ‘No. Work stuff.’

  ‘Productive thoughts?’

  ‘So-so.’

  She knew that what Davison had said over dinner had started the train of thought that had led her to what might be a solution, but she didn’t feel inclined to share the outcome with him. Maybe it was mean-minded of her, but he wasn’t the person to talk to on this. That would be Harriman or Sorley or Maxine Hewitt.

  Or John Delaney.

  Davison said, ‘I’ve got an early start.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘So come back to bed.’ He leaned over and kissed her. ‘Because I like what you do there.’

  She kissed him back, touching his cheek with the palm of her hand. She said, ‘I’d better go.’

  ‘Will I see you again?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘I don’t think so meaning “I haven’t decided” or –’

  ‘There’s a complication.’

  Davison sighed. ‘I thought there might be.’ He drank his whisky. ‘It’s a shame. I liked you on the phone and I like you even better now.’

  Stella said, ‘And I like you,’ but he didn’t seem to hear her; he wandered back into the bedroom and sat on the bed. She followed him in and found her clothes on the floor. He looked away while she got dressed.

  67

  The streets were bright with frost; Stella’s footprints were a dark spoor. She stood on Chiswick High Road hoping to find a cab, but the night traffic was trucks and party-people. A patrol car cruised by looking for drunk drivers. Stella dialled Delaney’s number and got his answerphone, so she dialled his mobile and he picked up almost at once.

  ‘It’s four a.m., where the hell are you?’

  He laughed. ‘Freezing my arse off in an alley. It’s called research.’

  ‘You’re with the street-people. Your street-people.’

  ‘They do this every night. I’m doing it just the once. As a lifestyle, it leaves a lot to be desired.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’ve been panhandling the public as well.’

  ‘A particularly aggressive beggar. I ought to be arrested.’ She heard him speak to someone, a reassurance, then he came back. ‘Jesus, it’s cold out here. There’s one hell of a frost.’ A little silence fell, then he asked, ‘Why did you call?’

  ‘Couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘Come and sleep with me.’

  ‘In an alley?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  The light of a black cab was visible fifty yards up the road but moving fast. Stella said, ‘I’ll call you. Don’t get frostbite.’

  He said, ‘Okay, sure,’ but it seemed to come from a long way off.

  She flagged the cab and gave the Vigo Street address.

  *

  Sadie had made a connection late the previous night: a good score. She was hunkered down in her bag and feeling no pain. Jamie wore his quilted coat inside his bag and had pulled everything over his head. He was awake and singing softly to himself.

  … have yourself a merry little Christmas…

  There were three other rough sleepers in the alley apart from Sadie and Jamie. The Ocean Diner was open all night and the sous-chef came out a couple of times with a handout. Delaney ate some cold potato wedges and slugged from the hip-flask he’d brought with him. The others watched this but didn’t crowd him. They seemed to have some help of their own, mostly chemical. They were wary of him anyway. He was the guy with the cassette-recorder and the mobile phone. He was also the guy with the pocketful of money.

  He had a new goose-down bag and thermal skin-wear. He had ski gloves and fur-lined knee boots. He had a pricey apartment less than half a mile away and a vestige of a social conscience.

  Stella sat in the back of the cab and stared out at London’s homeless and rootless and witless. The city was never calm, it never settled into sleep.

  Does it matter?

  You tell me.

  It was just a fuck.

  Oh, really?

  Listen, I liked him. Davison. He’s a nice guy, he’s bright, he made me laugh. In another life –

  Shut up, for Christ’s sake. Don’t tell me that stuff. Save it for yourself. What are you going to do?

  Morning-after pill.

  I know that. I mean what are you going to do –

  It was just a fuck.

  – about Delaney?

  I don’t know. Give me a lead.

  Okay, in the short term, do you tell him about tonight? In the long term, are you staying or leaving?

  I need some time. I’ve got a murder case to solve.

  Sure. What are you going to do?

  Listen, I think I know what it is. I think I know what Mister Mystery –

  Sure. What are you going to do?

  A couple of days. Let me leave it just a few days.

  Until Christmas?

  Okay, yes, until Christmas.

  You’re full of shit.

  I expect you’re right, but that’s the deal.

  And are you all right with this? Tell me how you’re feeling?

  Listen, it was just a fuck.

  No, it was a test.

  Oh, yeah? Testing what?

  You, Delaney. You and Delaney. The whole thing. And it was stupid.

  You think so?

  It was stupid.

  The storefront windows were bright with neon and starburst stickers. There was a queue outside an all-night fast-food place and a drunk was sitting propped up in a bus shelter. Boys in hoodies and girls wearing blocky heels and fake fur. London streets at 4 a.m.

  Okay, it was stupid.

  She felt like crying, but that would have been the easy thing to do.

  *

  She switched on all the lights and took a fast shower. There was something about sounds you make in the early hours of the morning, in the pre-dawn dark – doors closing, water running – they were louder, they had a strange sort of shock value. She got into bed but it was a lost cause, so she got up and made coffee, then started putting together some notes for the squad meeting she would call later that morning.

  She wrote the name Mister Mystery and remembered something Tom Davison had said. He’s tricky, but I’m trickier.

  I know what you’re doing. I’m second-guessing you now. I’m closer than you think.

  With first light, the frost hardened as if the sun were ice. A ragged flock of birds drifted
through, looking for a place to settle.

  Leon Bloss watched the gulls settling at the river’s edge, searching for carrion. He was thinking things through. He would collect his fee from Billy Souza, pick up fifteen-k on the bracelet, then make sure that Robert Adrian Kimber took the fall. After that, Christmas in the sun.

  But don’t think it hasn’t been fun, Bobby. Don’t think I haven’t enjoyed myself.

  Delaney sat with his back to the wall of the Ocean Diner and watched the hard, grey light spread into the alley. He was chilled, bone-deep. He wondered how people lived like this, not one night but every night. He wondered how long he would wait for Stella to make up her mind.

  It’s easier to stay away, isn’t it? Coming back means back to stay…

  *

  Stella finished her notes and suddenly felt tired. She got into bed and lay flat out, as if she had fallen there from a height. Patterns from the window-blind, like lines of water droplets, shimmered on the wall. She had some admissions to make, some owning up to do.

  It was just a fuck. But here’s a thing – he was pretty good. Pretty good in bed.

  Robert Adrian Kimber was asleep in his room just off the Strip. His journal and his silver-ink pen were on the floor by the bed. He had slept all night, untroubled, dreamless.

  In the cemetery opposite, the city’s scavengers hunted between the cold stones of the dead.

  68

  Pete Harriman said, ‘It’s a set-up. He’s the fall-guy – Kimber. Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Stella was sitting on a desk at the front of the AMIP-5 squad room, drinking the cooling coffee she’d brought in with her. The first few swallows had washed down the morning-after pill. That was before she’d called the squad meeting.

  ‘Which is why,’ she said, ‘Kimber’s DNA was so prevalent at the Kate Reilly murder and at the murder of Oscar Gribbin and Ellen Clarke. Mister Mystery is happy to let Kimber implicate himself by DNA.’ She looked at Marilyn Hayes and asked, ‘Anything more on her, by the way – Clarke?’

  ‘Nothing. We’ve done cross-searches until we’re dizzy. It wasn’t her real name or no one cares or she’s alone in the world.’

  ‘Her mugshot went up to the Strip,’ Frank Silano observed, ‘but none of the girls knew her. Or no one would admit to knowing her. The fact that the photo clearly showed she was dead didn’t help.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe she was a honey-trap, or she just got unlucky.’

  ‘Either way,’ Stella said, ‘we have to separate the Gribbin killing from the others and look at it as a pro-job. It’s the only reasonable thing to do. We have to think of Mister Mystery as a technician – a hit-man. There’s a link between Oscar Gribbin and Billy Souza. We ought to look at that. We’re dealing with traceable people here and possibly traceable motives. We’re dealing with villains and crooks, people we know about, people we can anticipate. If this was a hit, someone ordered it. Go back to the street, go back to informants, look for business contacts in this, look for antagonisms, look for feuds old or new. Maxine, talk to your chis at Jumping Jacks again – the blackjack dealer.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Marilyn – Souza is very probably linked to gun imports. Search computer records for any likely imports involved in a crime or seized by Customs, see where you get, feed in all the names, ask anyone on any police computer-link for anything that looks connected.’ Marilyn nodded. She was sitting on the opposite side of the room from Harriman, which hadn’t escaped Stella’s attention.

  ‘Okay. Anything on Kimber?’ No one responded. ‘Keep trying. At least we know what he looks like.’

  The meeting broke up, leaving a litter of paper cups, sandwich packs and chocolate-bar wrappers. Stella drank the rest of her coffee. It tasted rank.

  Mike Sorley had developed the habit of attending squad meetings by standing at the far side of the room. Sometimes he didn’t even turn up: the leper of AMIP-5. The sound of his coughing travelled all the way up the corridor from his office, which itself was pretty much a no-go area. Stella stood by the door and watched him flick through the notes she’d made the previous evening.

  He said, ‘You think he was planning this all along – Mister Mystery?’

  ‘I think he saw an opportunity.’

  ‘Here’s a possibility.’ Sorley had put down Stella’s notes and was looking from the post-mortem findings to the lab report. ‘Sam Burgess makes the point that when they combed Ellen Clarke for evidence, they found a substantial amount of Kimber’s hair. He queries it as unusually large. So this guy’s not just leaving a DNA trace, he’s leaving something more like a trail.’

  ‘You mean it’s not just a case of Mister Mystery allowing Kimber to be careless.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘The DNA was planted.’

  ‘In this case – yeah, maybe.’

  ‘Kimber wasn’t at the scene.’

  ‘Didn’t need to be.’

  ‘More than that,’ Stella said, ‘I guess Mister Mystery wouldn’t want him there. It’s a different operation, different way of doing things. Kimber would be asking why.’

  ‘He’d want to know what was going on,’ Sorley said. ‘After all, he’s not a hit-man, is he? He’s not someone with a logical purpose. Hit-men get paid.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Stella said. ‘And Kimber does it for love.’

  When Stella came out of Sorley’s office she saw Pete Harriman further down the corridor with Marilyn Hayes, looking like a man who’d just stepped backwards into a bear-trap. Marilyn was standing very close to him and talking in a rapid, low tone. When his mobile rang, Harriman grabbed for it and walked a few paces off to take the call. Marilyn turned and went back to the squad room, hitting the door with the heel of her hand. As Stella walked by, Harriman closed the call. He said, ‘That was my chis.’

  ‘Saying what?’

  ‘Saying that he wasn’t saying anything over the phone. I’ll go down to the hospital.’

  ‘Okay,’ Stella said, then, ‘I see you talked to her.’

  Harriman sighed heavily. ‘It was just… you know – a little affair, fun for everyone, something and nothing.’

  ‘It was something. I don’t think it was nothing.’

  Ronaldo was hooked up to three lines and looking less than happy. His skin had a yellowish tinge, except round the eyes, where it had the dark bloom of a bruise. There were no girls in fur coats, though the TV was turned to a race meeting and Ronaldo was getting his fun by posting phone bets with his bookie.

  He pointed his mobile at the screen as a leggy bay cantered up to the start. ‘Can’t lose,’ he said; ‘want me to get something down for you?’

  ‘You look like shit,’ Harriman told him.

  ‘They patch me up in ITU, send me down to a ward, I get some fucking virus. Hospitals are death traps. Final Word.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Name of the horse, Final Word. I know the trainer. I also know it’s going to win.’

  ‘There’s a fix on?’

  Ronaldo laughed. He said, ‘Trust me.’

  ‘I’ll have fifty quid,’ Harriman said.

  ‘It’s ten to fucking one.’

  ‘Just the fifty.’

  Ronaldo shrugged, then speed-dialled his bookie and laid the bet, fifty for Harriman, a grand for himself. He said, ‘There’s a man they call the Trader. Real name Lexie Bramall.’

  ‘His real name’s Lexie?’

  ‘That’s all I’ve ever heard him called. He’s got your bracelet, trying to lay it off.’

  ‘Trying to?’

  ‘The word is it’s linked to a murder, so people are being just a tiny bit cautious – they’re also being cheap, which is most of the problem.’

  ‘It is linked to a murder. Tell me about the Trader.’

  ‘You’re wondering if he killed someone for the bracelet, is that it?’

  ‘I’m wondering if he killed someone.’

  Ronaldo shook his head. ‘I very much doubt it. Anythi
ng’s possible, but each to his own, you know? Trader’s a middle man, that’s his living. He doesn’t get involved in the heavy stuff. He’s a specialist: second-hand and used items. Contraband, Mr Harriman. He doesn’t go after the goods, goods come to him.’

  ‘Where will I find him?’

  Ronaldo shrugged. ‘I haven’t got an address. Someone will know; I don’t.’

  ‘Where would you find him?’

  ‘He does a bit of trading up on the Strip, sometimes.’

  ‘Who with?’

  ‘Whoever wants to buy. The Chinese like to show a bit of class. So do the Yardie boys, you know, get a Rolex or a gold chain, whatever. Nothing like this bracelet, though. He won’t get rid of that in any shebeen.’

  ‘How often is he up there?’

  Ronaldo looked weary. ‘I don’t fucking know. It’s Christmas, that’d be his busy time, don’t you think? I expect he’s all over the place.’

  Harriman stayed to watch the race. Final Word was brought down by a loose horse at the fourth. Ronaldo closed his eyes and settled back into his pillows. He said, ‘You’re a jinx, Mr Harriman. You’re bad news for me.’

  Harriman took fifty pounds from his wallet and dropped it on the bed. Ronaldo looked at it sourly. ‘Jinx money from a jinx copper,’ he said. ‘You’d better keep it.’

  ‘Okay.’ Harriman scooped the money up. ‘Keep smiling.’

  69

  Bloss wanted to give Kimber a sedative. He wanted to give him a Seroxat sandwich or a Prozac pie or maybe a baseball bat to the side of the head would do the job. Kimber was wired, he was running on high-octane fuel, walking the perimeter of his room, and talking. Talking, talking, talking.

  Bloss had been trying to break into the flow. He’d said, ‘Sure of course, me too –’ and ‘Listen, we’ll do it, we’ll definitely do it –’ but it was like surfing against the wave and now he was just waiting for Kimber to wind down. He was dealing with a man who had needs, a man with a mission. The mission was to kill someone. It might be DS Mooney or it might be a girl called Jan, but whichever came first, Kimber told him, the other would follow. And then another, and then another.