There were nods and muttered assent.
‘Good. Now do Royal Hill nick proud for Butler’s sake.’
As the gathering broke up, Groombridge picked out Stark and beckoned him aside. ‘Another long night.’
‘Guv.’
‘You should get some rest.’
‘Yes, Guv.’
Groombridge smiled faintly at his error. ‘That’s an order, Detective Constable. Go home. Get some sleep.’ He held up a hand to head off Stark’s protest. ‘I’m sure Fran will call you if we get a lead, or the whim takes her.’
Stark clamped his jaw shut, picked up his coat and left, conscious of Groombridge’s eyes following him.
In the corridor he passed Harper. ‘Where are you going?’
‘DCI Groombridge told me to get some kip.’
Harper nodded approvingly. ‘Good. The roster still says you’re off all weekend. See you Monday.’
The word but was almost out of Stark’s mouth, but he swallowed it.
Harper paused, as if daring him, then turned away.
On his way out of the building Stark passed a Deputy Assistant Commissioner with a cold expression striding in. For an officer that senior to be way out here in the early hours, toys were about to leave the pram, and Stark was suddenly glad to be leaving.
Ptolemy dropped Stark off on his way home to his family.
Stark was pulling out keys when footsteps hurried up behind him in the dim pre-dawn light.
He swung around, fists curled, freezing his attacker in their tracks.
A girl, pretty despite sharp features. Not nearly as scared as she should be.
She regained her composure first, thrusting her phone at him, flash-on for filming, shielding it from the rain with her other hand. ‘Detective Constable Stark. Is it true that the killing of your fellow police officer is linked to the recent murders of Thomas and Mary Chase and Carlton Savage?’
Stark was still fighting for control, scanning beyond her – vehicles, windows, rooftops; eyes darting, the adrenaline-crazed creature inside writhing for release. Gritting teeth, he turned away, fumbling his key into the lock.
‘Do the police suspect Simon Kirsch for all four killings and will you pursue him all the harder now a cop has been slain?’
Stark froze. ‘The police in this country don’t place higher value on our own lives than those of the public,’ he growled, unable to keep this most basic point behind his teeth.
‘Did you know Traffic Officer Butler personally?’
He turned on her sharply, plucked the phone from her hand and switched it off. ‘Where did you get that name?’ he demanded, his intensity causing her to flinch. She was young, a junior reporter sent to doorstep a junior cop, for all he knew on her first assignment, but that was no excuse. ‘Who told you?’
‘No one,’ she protested, confused. ‘It’s online. The news channels have had it for twenty minutes,’ she explained, as if amazed he didn’t know; as if twenty minutes didn’t make it old news in her century.
That didn’t mean there was no leak. Only that whoever it was wasn’t stupid enough to divulge Butler’s name before his family was informed, or their paymaster wasn’t stupid enough to run it.
The reporter took her phone back, disapprovingly.
Suddenly everything fell into place.
Stark could scarcely believe his eyes.
Her phone cover. Her face. Her sturdy coat, waterproof, shaped for biking. Red curls whipping in the wind. There was a dark-blue moped parked up the street. The cute girl from the gym tour, and outside. And outside Chase Security on day two!
‘You’ve been following me!’ He didn’t wait for her to deny it. ‘Was it you? Taking shots of suspects, crucifying them in the media?’
The girl looked appalled. ‘That’s not me –’
‘What about Mary Chase’s pregnancy? Was that fair game too?’
‘I wouldn’t –’
‘Wouldn’t what?’ Stark interrupted again. ‘Follow me? Film me through fences? Blag your way into my gym? Hide in the shadows across the street,’ he growled, pointing to the alley. She flushed guiltily. Shit, he thought, suddenly remembering the moped outside the hospital. Dark blue. Had she trailed him to his shrink too?
‘It’s a personal piece; that’s all,’ she insisted. ‘I’m not really on the criminal case. I’m on you.’
‘Me?’
‘A follow-up piece, to Remembrance Sunday. But it just took off. The war hero, plunging straight from the Cenotaph into a bloody double murder. The public will love it!’
She fished out a card. Gwen Maddox. Freelance.
Stark ignored it. ‘This isn’t some second-rate docudrama. These are real people.’
‘And so are you,’ she replied. ‘That’s the point.’
‘I am. And it is,’ he stated, pointedly.
The point made no visible impression on her denseness. ‘Right. And real people in the street want to know who you really are. How you do it. What makes you face danger and death and how you cope, live, unwind.’
‘And what if I want all those people, you included, to mind their own business …?’
Her face displayed a total failure in comprehension. She probably had hordes of online friends and followers and thought ‘likes’ lent her puerile utterances meaning. She thought opinions mattered more than deeds. ‘But this is your chance to tell your side of everything,’ she ploughed on, oblivious, pulling a tattered notepad from her jacket. ‘If you’ll just give me half an hour, just a few questions …’
‘My side of things is mine,’ he said coldly. ‘My life is not a “public interest issue”. Everything I say, or have said, is off the record. I do not give you permission to use any image or audio of me. If you say one word that undermines the hard work of the police on this case or any other, I’ll make you regret it. And if I catch you stalking me again I’ll smash that phone into a thousand pieces.’
Finally, he seemed to have got through. ‘You wouldn’t dare.’
‘Try me.’
‘I’m trying to write your true story,’ she insisted.
‘What would you know about truth? You think you can sum up my life with some stolen snaps and a half-hour Q and A? The only truth you’re interested in is sales.’
‘Not true,’ she said hotly. ‘I could’ve sold this a week ago on the pictures alone.’
Stark’s temper finally snapped. ‘And taken your place among the rest of the bottom-feeding parasites, scraping a living off slime and decay.’ The cold fury in his voice sent her two steps back. ‘The bins are over there, in case you haven’t finished sucking through my life for shit.’
Her face flushed again, but more from anger than embarrassment, he was sure. ‘Isn’t that more your line of work?’ she riposted.
‘For justice. Not salacious tittle-tattle.’ He cut off her retort with a raised palm. ‘So … just in case I’ve been in any way unclear … Fuck off! And no, you can’t quote me on that!’
Turning his back, he let himself in and slammed the door, pausing in the dark stairwell to close his eyes and slow his breathing, heart drumming, fists bunched against the shaking, chastising himself for giving vent to frustration, yet again.
The letter box rattled. A business card poked through the brushes. Her silhouette and sharp voice through the glass. ‘For when you change your mind!’
Plodding angrily up to his flat he poured himself a measure of the cheap stuff and stared at it.
What was the point?
He tipped it down the sink with gritted teeth, left the glass unwashed, slid open the balcony door to listen to the storm and collapsed on the sofa with a grunt, hip and muscles mocking him for his spinning class hubris and everything since.
Dreams took him almost at once; to places he had been or never been, had no wish to return to or go, places where dreams hid their nature behind reality and vice versa. The tolling bell shifted … and cut through the confusion. Gulping, dry-mouthed, he fumbled for his phone and st
ared at the caller ID until his eyes focused.
Unknown.
The time: 10:04 a.m.
Not for the first time, or likely the last, he cursed himself for a career choice where silencing one’s phone to sleep was frowned upon. Few people had this number and his standard policy with unknown callers was to let them go to voicemail; but if voicemails were being hacked … And if it was just a cold caller he was too angry at being woken to leave it. ‘Yes?’
‘Is that Joe?’ asked an accented female voice.
Cold caller, he thought coldly. Or worse, another reporter. ‘That depends on who you are and how you got this number.’
‘Andy gave it to me. Andy at the gym. It’s Selena … you know? From spinning?’
‘Selena …’ Stark sat up, rubbing the drowse from his eyes.
‘Maybe I shouldn’t have called?’ she asked, uncertain.
‘No,’ he said hurriedly. ‘I’m sorry, I’m still waking up. I was working last night. Andy gave you my number?’
‘He said you didn’t have Facebook. He said you wouldn’t mind?’
‘No, that’s fine. I’m sorry … the Facebook thing … it’s complicated.’
‘Yes?’
Andy knew Stark’s past, but Stark trusted him to have restricted his indiscretion to the phone number. He changed the subject. ‘I’m glad you called.’
‘Good.’ He heard a little relief in her voice.
‘I was hoping you might want to meet up.’
‘Yes, I was hoping that too.’
‘Hang on a sec …’ He checked the phone for messages, more than half expecting a text from Fran calling him back in; but there was nothing. With Harper waving the overtime joker, Fran had little choice, and Groombridge seemed to be allowing Harper some rope … ‘Sorry about that. How about tonight? Seems like I’m off duty.’
Playing the short-notice card sometimes offered an insight into how keen, or over-keen, a girl might be.
‘Yes, okay. Do you like tapas? There is a good bar near the covered market. Il Palio.’
‘Great. What time?’
‘Spanish time, ten. But there is a pub around the corner, the Bosun’s Mate. Shall we meet there? At eight?’
‘Eight o’clock. I’ll see you there,’ said Stark.
‘Good. See you tonight then.’
‘Okay, bye-bye.’ Stark winced at the lame farewell, but Selena rang off.
He tried to sleep again but his body clock was all over the place. His damp clothes lay in a heap beside the sofa and the blanket was too thin with the balcony door left ajar when he’d fallen asleep. The storm had moved away, leaving a rippled grey-tarpaulin sky behind.
Shivering, he pulled on baggies and warmed up with grudging exercises, hip and muscles now set like concrete, cursing every step.
Two days off. The term weekend no longer held much significance to Stark since joining the police and army. Selena’s timely call offered the tantalizing hope of a pleasant pastime, but the meantime stretched out before him like a yawning chasm. What the hell was he supposed to do for two days, apart from shopping online to restock his depressingly bare fridge?
He fixed himself a makeshift breakfast and sat on the sofa to watch the latest news report.
MOTORBIKE COP SLAIN!
Butler’s picture.
Left out of a live manhunt felt like sitting out a combat patrol. Orders were orders, but a colleague was dead.
He couldn’t just sit on his arse.
46
The first half-mile always hurt; damage and scars, rusty limbs. But soon Stark’s legs were turning over in smooth rhythm, heart and lungs burning. Road cycling was so much more invigorating than the static gym bike, no need for dance tracks and tongue-lashing with the 360-degree threat that was London traffic. Endorphin and adrenaline, Mother Nature’s gifts, blasting away the cobwebs.
Where he might normally head south out of London for a few hours, today he powered up the hill and over Blackheath, following the map in his head, searching for landmarks in the unfamiliar streets of north Eltham. If he couldn’t contribute to the hunt directly, he’d do so on the quiet.
The best way to win a battle was to walk the ground ahead of time, like Wellington scouting the terrain around Waterloo a year before the battle. And the best way to understand how one had played out was walk the ground after.
He found Dumbreck Road and stood over the crossbar catching his breath and steaming in the frigid air. Last night’s thunder and lightning had passed over, but he’d had to fight the wind all the way here and the air was thick with the threat of further rain. He looked about him, the scene half-familiar from online Street View.
Harper’s whispered threat may have been a trigger, and naming Kirsch to his face couldn’t have helped, but the source of all this death was twenty years earlier, in these streets.
This was the spot the elderly couple reported the altercation in the street back in November 1989. An ordinary street like any other. How could such a thing happen here? people always thought. The elderly couple was gone, him to his grave, her to a home.
The wind shifted and Stark shivered in his rain shell. He needed to keep moving. He followed Dumbreck Road to where it curved north to a footpath emerging by the Rochester Way, a short section of east–west dual carriageway linking somewhere to somewhere for some reason.
Here a motorist had reported seeing one figure carrying another, according to Darlington’s notes; barely a glimpse between streetlights through wiper-smeared rain, a figure emerging from the footpath on the south side as Stark had just done, freezing in the headlights and retreating back, exactly where paths led up into Shepherdleas Woods.
Hoisting the bike’s crossbar over one shoulder, Stark walked a short way in. The main paths were slippery but the ancient woodland off them was thick. A killer need not have gone far in to dump a body. But to hide one …
Crossing the carriageway to the northern side, Stark followed the cracked tarmac path uphill beside Oxleas Meadow, a broad slope of grass topped by a solitary cafe located for the view, bordered by the much larger Oxleas Woods.
Both woods had been searched by officers with dogs and local volunteers but it had rained for three days straight, and then on and off for weeks, and no trace of Kimberly Bates had been found then or since. Somewhere uphill to the east stood Severndroog Castle, Simon and Kimberly’s secret love nest, all locked up tight now according to uniform. Stark would check for himself, but first … A track of sorts led along the back of the houses of Crookston Road, too rarely trod to be free of brambles, but often enough to be churned with mud.
Using his phone map, Stark approached the old Kirsch house. Like most, it had a back gate on to the woods – bolted from the inside. The rear garden was paved but cracked and strewn with weed and loops of bramble. The back door wore a heavy padlock. The plywood nailed over the windows was grey and blistered. Time or historic elbow grease had faded most of the graffiti. But Stark could just make out one word, writ large – KILLER.
He was about to climb in for a closer look when he clocked the old lady and her dog approaching. She stopped, regarding him thoughtfully beneath her clear plastic dome umbrella, pink wellingtons splattered with mud. The elderly, overweight Jack Russell terrier in its tartan doggie coat paused, wheezing, at her feet, fixing Stark with a baleful stare.
‘Bit conspicuous for a daylight burglary,’ she announced, with a hint of amusement, eyeing the bike for its impractical getaway capabilities.
Stark fished out his warrant card.
The dog growled but she silenced the sorry hound with a gentle tug on his lead. ‘Don’t mind Binky. He was a decent yapper in his time but an arthritic hip takes the fun out of life.’
Being saddled with a name like Binky probably hadn’t helped, thought Stark.
She glanced at Stark’s ID. ‘You’re a bit late to the party. You might’ve found Simon Kirsch skulking around here twenty years ago but he’s long gone, and good riddance.’
&nb
sp; ‘You remember him?’
‘Oh, I remember Simon; and his fool of a mother. What sort of policeman are you, then, dressed like that?’
‘The off-duty over-curious kind.’
‘Ah.’ She tapped the side of her nose and winked. ‘A busybody. Expect that comes in handy in your line of work. I’m not averse to a spot of gossip myself.’ The old lady broke into a grin. ‘You look in need of a hot cup of something. This is me,’ she said, opening the back gate of the house next door. ‘Come in out of the rain for tea and a natter; I’ll tell you about the boy if you tell me about the fugitive.’
Stark looked down at his splattered cycle gear.
‘Don’t worry about that,’ she told him. ‘Binky’s in a worse state and I’m sure I can find you an old blanket too.’ Without waiting for agreement she set off towards her back door, leaving him to follow or appear rude.
A good soldier never shuns the offer of a hot brew and a dry place to drink it. And winning the trust of the locals over a brew was page one of the hearts-and-minds handbook.
47
Denise Albright was her name. In her seventies or more, Stark guessed. Twice widowed, she announced, as if it were perfectly normal to share such a thing with a stranger. She gave him a towel, a blanket, a pair of dead husband number two’s old carpet slippers, tea with two sugars and a plateful of chocolate Hobnobs in the cause of putting some meat on his bones. Photos of the last husband had, since his passing, been joined on the mantel by photos of the first. There was a fine candidate for number three at the local over-sixties dance, but she feared her reputation as the Black Widow might put him off. ‘Couldn’t blame him, I suppose,’ she mused.
Stark sipped his steaming tea gingerly.
‘Don’t worry. It’s not poisoned,’ she chuckled, a devilish twinkle in her eye. ‘So while your lot are chasing Simon Kirsch again, you’re here on your day off snooping round his old house – why’s that then?’
Between the Crosses (Joseph Stark) Page 21