In Her Blood

by Annie Hauxwell

  She went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. What a bloody mess. She needed to get her head on straight and get down to business. Fast. An app downloaded her voicemail to the computer; she would listen later. A bath, breakfast. But first, a quick check online to try to allay at least one of her anxieties.

  The National Health Service homepage boasted ‘Your health. Your choices.’ Except not in Berlin’s case. The website made it clear that registered addicts were prescribed methadone and required to participate in counselling and other so-called therapeutic activities, with the ultimate aim of being drug-free. Whatever that meant. She trawled through the government portal and pages offering advice on substance abuse, but came up with the same result every time.

  Lazenby had regarded himself as a doctor, not an instrument of social policy. It seemed Lazenbys were few and far between. There was no easy route to a general practitioner who was licensed to prescribe heroin and who actually did so. It would take time and luck to find one. She was running out of both.

  *

  Pellicci’s on Bethnal Green Road was famous. It was built in 1900 and had been run by the same Tuscan family ever since. It had a Grade II-listed interior which dated from 1946 and the Krays used to eat there. But for Berlin it was the chips.

  ‘There you go, darlin’.’ Nino garnished her breakfast with a wink.

  Tucked into a tight corner, she focused on eggs, bacon, sausage and chips. She knew it would probably kill her, but then, they had said that about heroin. The first crunchy, golden morsel was halfway to her mouth when the door swung open, admitting an arctic blast and a fat man wearing a camel overcoat and a clutch of gold rings.

  ‘Morning, Mr Doyle,’ sang out Nino.

  Berlin dropped her eyes to her plate and let her hair fall around her face. Of course, this was where she’d seen him before. It was now late morning. Her usual time was before work, and Doyle obviously didn’t keep office hours, so their paths would rarely cross.

  She couldn’t believe the police hadn’t got his flat under observation. Unless he had been interviewed and released overnight. It was unlikely. In a murder the magistrate would usually authorise an extended period for questioning. They had her statement that the victim had identified Doyle as a loan shark, which gave them reasonable grounds to hang on to him for a while.

  It was barely two days since she had found Juliet Bravo floating in the lock and here was the prime suspect, ordering sausage and eggs. She looked up and saw Doyle glaring at a bloke sitting in the warmest corner. The man took the hint, scooped up his newspaper and corned beef sandwich and found another seat.

  Doyle moved gingerly. The plaster below his right cheekbone indicated something more than a shaving cut. He took off his coat, but not his scarf. When he bent over she could see a livid purple streak across the back of his neck.

  Perhaps he felt her eyes on him. Doyle turned and looked straight at her. For a fleeting moment he gave her a small, rueful smile, expressing fellow feeling for another human being who had copped a good smacking. She realised that her face was in a similar condition to his. She couldn’t help herself. She smiled back.

  14

  JEREMY FERNLEY-PRICE ATE a solitary bowl of Bircher muesli while scanning his Financial Times. It was telling a story so miserable that he thought he might bring up his breakfast. His world continued to implode. Each page was littered with words like ‘disarray’, ‘turmoil’ and ‘collapse’. These were not terms with which a Master of the Universe was familiar.

  Amid the chaos of subprime meltdown, credit default swaps and contracts for difference, Fernley-Price had watched his capital, which wasn’t his anyway, disappear. It took with it his self-esteem.

  He was a massive, gleaming product of privilege. His thick, flaxen hair was swept back, coiffed but nonchalant, accentuating the patrician brow and clear, blue eyes. His hands could only be described as meaty, but manicured. His suits and shirts were bespoke.

  His father had been in the City, a broker, but had retired about the time they abolished the distinction between brokers and jobbers, and computer systems had begun to replace the judgement of human beings. This was Mrs Thatcher’s Big Bang. The Iron Lady was a class warrior with a very hefty handbag.

  He tipped the rest of the muesli into the sink, turned on the tap and ran the garbage disposal unit. A shrieking sound was succeeded by the grinding of metal on metal, then the whine of a seized motor. He had left the fucking spoon in the fucking bowl. Enraged, he smashed the bowl down on the granite bench top, shattering the translucent china. Fine needles of porcelain penetrated his palm. Blood bubbled up from the embedded slivers, a tattoo of exquisite agony.

  It was the last fucking straw. His mind buckled.

  He was caught between his housemaster’s knees, a vice to prevent him squirming as Matron dug black splinters from his fingers with a hot needle. He screamed.

  Be a man, commanded his housemaster.

  Fernley-Price made a fist of his bleeding palm and struck the granite. Rage smothered despair.

  Twenty minutes later he stood in his German Rainmaker shower beneath an expensive mix of water, air and light, and tried to think how it had come to this. The problem was people were less reliable than a well-structured financial instrument. His colleagues across the globe would no doubt share his sentiment.

  He recalled his first encounter with The Silent Woman. She was a dull pub that squatted on the border of Canary Wharf and Poplar and lived up to her name. The landlord could guarantee the CCTV cameras at each end of the street were always broken. Despite this, there was never any graffiti. The local hoodies knew better.

  Fernley-Price had strolled in, leant against the bar and had been about to order a gin and tonic when he’d realised that a G & T wasn’t really on in this environment.

  ‘A pint of London Pride, mate,’ he’d said, keeping it chummy.

  ‘Coming up, sir,’ said the barman, feigning deference. You couldn’t miss the mocking edge in his voice.

  Fernley-Price felt again the prick of that humiliation. Fuck them. Once, he could have bought and sold the decrepit establishment. He’d decided at the time that if the new venture flourished, and there was every reason to think it would, he would shut down The Silent bloody Woman and reopen it as a gastropub. Revenge. He had experience in that area.

  He stepped from the shower, grabbed a towel from a set that had cost the same as a holiday in Spain, and reflected on the fact that he had always been ill-used. Though he could still come out ahead if he played his cards right. But at this moment he had no fresh shirts and the place was rapidly becoming a pigsty. A very expensive pigsty.

  At the window he gazed down at the river. The apartment overlooked the wharf that was said to have been Execution Dock. He wondered for a moment if he had made some poor choices, then resolved to put that thought behind him and move on quickly from breakfast to lunch.

  He would contemplate matters over a drink at The Prospect of Whitby, where they had a gallows. It would suit his mood. He would pull himself together, find a halfway clean shirt and get out of the apartment. There was no point in hanging around. He prided himself on being a man of action.

  15

  BERLIN LEFT PELLICCI’S without exchanging any more fond glances with Doyle, who was hoeing into double sausage and egg on toast. She hobbled across the road and ducked into The Shakespeare, where the landlord was just putting up the optics.

  ‘Eye-opener, madam?’ he inquired.

  ‘Talisker,’ said Berlin, without thinking.

  ‘I beg yours?’

  ‘Scotch. Whatever you’ve got. Make it a double, please.’

  She took her drink to a window seat with a view of the café and settled in to wait for Doyle to finish his breakfast. By rights, she should call DCI Thompson and alert him to Doyle’s location. But after the way she had been treated at the initial case conference she wasn’t inclined to do him any favours. They weren’t going to brief her on their inquiries, so why should sh
e keep them informed of hers? Fuck them. She sipped her Scotch and waited.

  The sound of sirens was routine in Bethnal Green, but when a police car and an unmarked vehicle pulled up outside Pellicci’s half of the locals stopped to watch while the other half made themselves scarce. Berlin noticed the Chinese bootleg-DVD sellers were the quickest off the mark.

  Craning to see around the number eight bus, which had pulled up so the driver and passengers could get a good look, Berlin saw uniforms clearing pedestrians out of the way as three suits went inside. Moments later two of them walked out again, frogmarching Doyle. One of them was that little toe rag Acting Detective Sergeant Flint, the other a black detective she didn’t recognise. They got in the back of the unmarked car with Doyle between them.

  A couple of minutes later DCI Thompson emerged, bacon roll in hand. He paused and nodded at a couple of people in the crowd. Berlin used the moment to appraise the man heading up the Juliet Bravo investigation.

  In his late fifties, about five ten in his socks, which, she guessed from the look of him, had holes in them, Thompson had probably joined the Met when that was the unofficial minimum height for recruits. The legal minimum was actually five foot eight until the nineties, when they’d abolished it altogether. Before that most forces had set their own. Yorkshire had been infamous for requiring six footers with good right hooks.

  Flint was a good couple of inches shorter than Thompson. Short-man syndrome there, she thought, and then realised that this was a prejudice she had inherited from her mother. ‘Short men have dangerous egos,’ she would intone. Berlin’s father had not been tall.

  Thompson seemed in no particular hurry to leave. He stood on the pavement munching and staring across the road at the pub. He couldn’t possibly see her, but he could see the shape of someone watching. She wondered whether he had staked out Pellicci’s and had a report of her entering and leaving. Great instincts. A man in tune with the manor. He gulped the last of his roll, wiped his mouth and fingers with a large, snowy white handkerchief, then got into the front of the waiting car.

  It took off, sirens wailing. No doubt this was Flint’s contribution, putting on a show for the locals. Berlin waited until the other police car drove away, then finished her drink and left the pub.

  Time would start to run as soon as Thompson got Doyle to the station. Did they have enough to charge him? She considered various scenarios as she headed for home.

  The custody officer would authorise detention so they could question him, but it would get harder to justify as the hours ticked by, particularly if his brief turned up and directed him not to answer any questions. She doubted Doyle would rely on legal aid. Too many forms to fill in. If he went ‘no comment’ the case could stall before it got started, unless forensics had come up with something.

  How could she find out what sort of case they were building against him? The truth was, she couldn’t. The police had arrested Doyle and her mission had evaporated before her eyes. With it went the sense of purpose that had helped to distract her from her other problems.

  The future opened up before her, a yawning chasm of listless boredom and the chill void of methadone. A wave of anxiety engulfed her and she realised that the sweet cushion between her and a deep sense of loss was dissipating. Lazenby. Could she make it without him? In four days she would find out.

  *

  Berlin’s flat, like Doyle’s, was only a ten-minute limp from Pellicci’s. On the way she dropped in at Poundsavers and bought a pay-as-you-go mobile. The SIM card in her phone had cracked under the heel of the hoodie’s boot, but everything on it was synchronised with her computer and she could download her contacts and voicemail. It was a lesson learnt growing up in a borough with a rich heritage of cutpurses and highwaymen.

  Her father had passed on her grandfather’s tales of the East End mobs in the nineteen hundreds, coalitions of villains who went by exotic names: the Bessarabian Tigers, the Odessians, the Yiddishers.

  In the fifties the Blind Beggar Gang and the Watney Streeters ruled. It was their offspring who had tested Berlin’s mettle in the gravel playground. Those hot, sharp stones buried in her kneecaps were the childish equivalent of a soldier’s old war wound. The pain still lingered.

  The latest youthful crews to run cocksure through the streets, the Brick Lane Massive and the Roman Road Bloods, were just the contemporary versions of familiar foes. But equally feral.

  Berlin turned into her road and crossed the courtyard of the block of flats. At the bottom of the stairs she reached for her keys. She was so preoccupied that it took her a moment after she looked up to realise that the Metropolitan police officer swinging a manually deployed battering ram, commonly known as an enforcer, was aiming it at her front door.

  Despite her dodgy knee, she took the stairs two at a time. ‘Hey!’ she shouted.

  Two burly coppers, one male, one female, were watching the officer with the enforcer. They turned at the sound of her voice.

  The door gave with a crack at the second swing.

  Berlin arrived on the landing and kept going, until the female copper put a straight arm-bar take-down on her and she hit the concrete.

  The officer kindly kept her there to give her a chance to regain her composure, during which time Berlin managed to lift her head a couple of inches off the ground, just enough to be able to see boots marching into her flat.

  ‘What the fuck is going on here?’ she screamed.

  The coppers lifted her back onto her feet.

  In her doorway stood a tall, cadaverous man in a charcoal suit that was too small for him. His arms hung loose at his sides, the too-short sleeves exposing knobbly wrist bones. Everyone else had about four thermal layers on, but he just stood there in his cheap suit and thin cotton shirt, oblivious. He looked as if he was in charge, so she asked again, as politely as she could.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

  He didn’t say a word, just nodded at the uniforms.

  ‘If you’d just like to come this way, madam,’ said the male officer.

  They dragged her back down the stairs.

  ‘Let me go, you bastards, there’s no need for this!’

  She should have known better than to resist, but the adrenalin had kicked in and she put up a spirited struggle. To no avail. They threw her in the back of a police transit van and the woman slammed the door on her ankle. Then they got in the front and the woman got out her notebook while the bloke intoned a litany Berlin knew all too well.

  ‘You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

  Berlin collapsed into a corner of the van. She had nothing to say.

  16

  AT THE STATION one of Berlin’s two officers went to the canteen and brought back tea in small plastic cups for the three of them. She sat on a bench against an institutional green wall, the last in a long line of miscreants. They were all waiting to see the custody sergeant. Her officers hung about, along with all the other arresting officers who had to wait their turn with their glad bag of shoplifters, muggers and joy-riders.

  A girl of about fourteen at the other end of the bench eyed Berlin, then started to whine.

  ‘Can I have a cup of tea?’

  Everyone ignored her, so she tried again, louder this time.

  ‘I said, can I have a cup of tea? She’s got one, why is she so special?’ She pointed at Berlin.

  The custody sergeant didn’t look up from his keyboard. ‘Shut it, Chrissy.’

  Chrissy’s arresting officer put a finger to his lips, shushing her. Chrissy wasn’t having any of it. She leapt to her feet and shouted.

  ‘I want a fucking cup of tea!’

  Before the officer could shove her back onto the bench, Chrissy, clearly familiar with the station facilities, hit the panic bar. The alarm was piercing, almost painful. There was a thunder of boots as officers from all over the
station ran into the custody suite. Pandemonium broke out.

  The bloke in the thin charcoal suit chose that moment to arrive. He glided through the chaos towards Berlin, touched her on the shoulder and mouthed ‘Follow me.’

  Obviously he had realised they’d made a mistake and he was now going to grovel so that she didn’t make a complaint. She noticed her two officers scowl as he led her away. She gave them two fingers. The interview room was the size of a broom cupboard. The bucket and mop in the corner and the smell of disinfectant suggested it still had a dual function. Charcoal suit closed the door and offered Berlin his hand.

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector Tony Dempster,’ he said.

  She took his big red hand, surprised that it wasn’t cold at all. The devil would have warm hands, she thought.

  ‘Catherine Berlin,’ she said.

  He gestured that she should sit, and they each took one of the broken office chairs that had been placed either side of a small table. He was so tall his knees nearly touched hers. She noticed he didn’t switch on the tape machine.

  ‘You didn’t ask why you’d been arrested,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve not been processed by the custody sergeant,’ said Berlin.

  She noted his faint Newcastle accent. A Geordie. That’s why he didn’t feel the cold. His hair was the same colour as his suit. Berlin found it difficult to pin an age on him. He could be a wrecked thirty-five or a fit fifty.

  ‘Sorry about your front door. I’ve sent someone round to fix it. But it’s good for your reputation with the locals. If you know what I mean.’

  She did. Her stocks would rise if she was seen to be an enemy of the state. But it didn’t mean she had to enjoy it.

  ‘What the hell is this about? Do you know who I work for?’ she said.

  ‘Worked for,’ he said.

  ‘I’m suspended pending an inquiry. That’s all. So if you think I’m going to have a cosy chat with you now that you’ve had your bully boy and girl soften me up, you’ve got another think coming. I’m not just another punter and I want to make a complaint,’ she said, rubbing her ankle.