The geek smiled. ‘Haven’t you heard? They’re scrapping the forensic service altogether. Everything’s going to be contracted out.’ He rubbed his hands together, anticipating the windfall. The lift arrived and Thompson stepped into it. ‘Nice doing business with you,’ called the geek as the doors closed.
Christ Almighty, thought Thompson. What next?
Striding out of the lift and across the smart glass and granite lobby, Thompson called the Limehouse Control Room and asked to be put through to the supervisor. There was a delay, during which Thompson felt his nerves fray.
‘Send two cars to the Royal London now, and get me the mobile number of the constable who’s on duty there,’ he demanded as soon as the supervisor came on the line.
‘Sir,’ the supervisor began to reply, then paused.
Thompson instantly regretted his tone, but it was too late. No doubt the supervisor was sick of detectives snapping their fingers and ordering up resources that didn’t exist.
‘Sir,’ the supervisor spoke slowly and deliberately. ‘All teams are attending a major incident. The constable on duty at the hospital is a special and I don’t have a mobile number for her. I’m running three shifts with the same number of bodies that previously worked two and I’m not allowed to authorise any overtime. Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?’
Thompson hung up as he reached the revolving doors, which refused to budge. A security guard approached and pointed to Thompson’s visitor’s badge.
‘Sign out before you leave,’ he explained.
Thompson snatched the badge off and thrust it at the guard. The guard gave a resigned sigh.
‘No good. You have to sign out at the desk. They swipe the card or the doors won’t open.’
‘For Christ’s sake!’ muttered Thompson, pulling out his wallet and shoving his warrant card under the guard’s nose. ‘Let me out, now!’
The guard shrugged, unimpressed.
‘Makes no odds,’ he said. ‘The system doesn’t care who you are.’
Thompson sprinted back across the lobby.
77
THE ROYAL LONDON Hospital had hosted the Elephant Man and the surgeon who had assisted with the Jack the Ripper investigation. Now it was home to Fernley-Price, although he didn’t know it. Still comatose, he had been moved from intensive care to a surgical ward, at which time the Special Constable had arrived to replace the sworn officer.
The officer told her she’d been given the job because the Control Room Supervisor had asked the DCI how long he thought he could get away with keeping a warm body assigned to one that was almost cold. He thought it was funny, but she was confused.
She was a volunteer, and not entirely sure what she was supposed to do. All she knew was that to get a proper job with the Met, it was now pretty much expected that you would work part-time for nothing for at least a year, despite insistence from the powers that be that this was not the case.
So she would sit there and make sure no one came near the bloke except doctors and nurses. And police officers, of course.
*
‘Oranges and Lemons’ was Doyle’s favourite nursery rhyme. He used to sing it to Gina when she was a little girl, swinging his arms in an axe-like motion when they got to ‘here comes a chopper to chop off your head’. She would scream and giggle and run.
His phone kept ringing, but he wanted to hear the tune, so he just let it ring.
When a plainclothes bloke approached the special, gave her a warm smile, flashed his warrant card and told her she could go and get a cup of tea, it didn’t occur to her that a detective would never be sent to give a lowly volunteer a tea break. She legged it to the canteen. But she was smart enough to record his name in her notebook.
Berlin felt empty, as if she had no substance. She flew along Whitechapel Road, amazed that her legs could still carry her. It was a market day. The Bangladeshi stallholders stamped their feet to stay warm and watched with only mild interest as she weaved through their customers, glancing back to see who was chasing her.
Thompson’s cab was stuck behind a number twenty-five bus, which was proceeding tentatively on the icy road.
‘Okay, this will do!’ he said, thrusting twenty quid at the driver. He jumped out. They’ll never cough up for that on expenses, he thought.
Just ahead he could see the brick arches of the hospital’s portico, and the clock just above them. The sound of the traffic was drowned out by the rapid approach of the air ambulance. Everybody stopped to watch as it hovered over the hospital. Thompson ploughed on through the gawkers.
The pungent scent of coriander and cinnamon, melded with diesel fumes, caught in Berlin’s throat. She gasped for air as she reached the pedestrian crossing opposite the hospital and found herself trapped amid a sea of Bengali housewives toting bright plastic bags of produce, all waiting patiently to cross. Berlin tried to push through them, but they stood shoulder to shoulder, all gazing up at the helicopter, solidly repelling all comers.
Fernley-Price slumbered on, untroubled by the thrum of helicopter blades, or the trembling hand that closed over his mouth and nose. It was merely an instrument of the man who sat outside in the black Merc listening to his phone play ‘Oranges and Lemons’.
Coulthard stumbled down the worn stone steps, making a beeline for the car. The passenger door swung open and he got inside.
‘There. That wasn’t too hard, was it?’ said Doyle.
Coulthard couldn’t speak. He jammed his hands between his knees and squeezed, as if he could never again trust them to act in accordance with his own wishes.
‘Good thing you’ve had plenty of practice at impersonating a police officer. It came in handy, didn’t it?’ said Doyle, as he pulled away from the kerb and dialled a number on his mobile.
Berlin saw Coulthard slumped beside Doyle as the black Merc sailed through the traffic lights. He looked as if he’d seen a ghost. The lights changed and the housewives surged forward but Berlin didn’t move. She saw Thompson bounding up the hospital steps. She knew he was too late.
In Coulthard’s living room his girlfriend sat on the couch between the lads, her elbows pulled in tight. When the mobile rang, one of them answered.
‘Yeah?’
Doyle’s irate voice carried into the silent room.
‘How often have I told you that’s no way to answer the fucking phone?’
‘How may I help you?’ mumbled the lad.
‘That’s more like it,’ said Doyle. ‘You can help me by letting her go with a warning. Tell her the weather’s cracking in Australia this time of year. Then get your lazy fucking arses down to the lock-up.’
The lad hung up. He gave the girl a slap and Doyle’s message, then indicated to his mate they were off.
‘That’s it?’ said his mate, disappointed. ‘Pity. I was looking forward to that.’
78
THE MOMENT THAT Thompson stepped out of the lift and saw the special in the corridor crying, he knew he was too late. Nurses were running in and out of the ward and a couple of the hospital’s security guards were standing around, slack-jawed, already denying any responsibility. As Thompson approached, four policemen came running up the stairs, led by a wheezing, fat sergeant who looked as if he might have a heart attack on the spot.
‘Someone died,’ gasped the sergeant.
‘Well it’s a hospital, isn’t it?’ joked one of the policemen.
Like the bloody Keystone Kops, thought Thompson. ‘Get this lot out of here!’ he yelled at the sergeant, pointing at the crowd in the corridor. The special looked up, startled, and burst into a fresh flood of tears.
‘Seal it off. It’s a crime scene. Call the SOCOs!’ ordered Thompson.
‘They’re all at a bombing,’ said one of the uniforms.
Thompson thought things couldn’t get much worse. Doyle had murdered Fernley-Price right under his nose, despite a so-called police guard, and in full view of the CCTV on every floor. Doyle had done it, or had it done, without any
bother at all, and had made a complete fool of Thompson in the process.
He beckoned to the special. Eyes wide, she scurried over like a scared animal, cowering in front of him.
‘I’m ever so sorry, sir,’ she said. ‘He said I should go and have a cup of tea.’
‘Jesus Christ, you just walked away?’
‘He was a detective. He showed me his warrant card!’
Thompson stared at her. ‘Are you telling me this is down to a police officer?’
She thrust her notebook at him. At the top of the page neat writing recorded the time of her tea break and the name of the relieving officer. Flint.
Thompson took a breath. ‘Get me the CCTV footage,’ he said to one of the hospital security guards, who glanced at his mate, who looked at the floor.
‘Er … it’s on the blink,’ said the guard.
When Flint’s phone rang and he saw Thompson’s name displayed, he was disinclined to answer. In fact, he was thinking he might not ever be going in to work again. He’d disclosed information and compromised an investigation, lost his warrant card and assaulted a senior officer. Dempster would be well within his rights to lay charges.
Now he’d given Coulthard up to a violent loan shark. He’d had misgivings about that, thinking it might come back to bite him. But by the time he’d called Coulthard to warn him, it was too late. Doyle answered the phone. Flint had hung up, fast, praying that Coulthard had Flint’s number stored under a name that wouldn’t give him away.
All in all, it wasn’t a good look for an Acting Detective Sergeant on the rise. Plus, he was sick of being treated like a numpty by Thompson. He’d be better off in the private sector. More money, more respect, less hassle. Once he resigned, the Met couldn’t discipline him and they wouldn’t want the sort of publicity that would come with a criminal trial. They would let him go quietly.
The only problem was that in the current economic climate it might take him a while to find a suitable gig. He was mortgaged up to his eyeballs and a bit short of the readies. But he had a fair idea where he might be able to lay his hands on some.
He touched his inside pocket, where he had put the envelope Dempster had dropped at Berlin’s. The contents had made interesting reading.
Thompson listened to Flint’s voicemail greeting but hung up without leaving a message. It was all his own fault. He’d dropped the ball on this one, big time, and ignored all the warning signs of an investigation unravelling.
He felt something inside him snap. He had cut corners, compromised himself and still he was no closer to Gina Doyle’s killer. Now he had another body on his hands and his Acting Detective Sergeant was the prime suspect. Someone would pay.
79
THE MEAN WINTER sun was fading fast. Berlin felt that she would disappear with it – dissolve, absorbed in darkness, a cipher emptied of humanity. Her phone rang and when she saw it was Thompson she switched it off. There seemed no point in listening to his recriminations; she was more than capable of self-loathing.
The market stalls were closing, the crowd was sparse and the pavement was thick with crushed cardboard and rotting vegetables. A few homeless people picked them over, competing with the pigeons for edible refuse, and with one another for the driest pieces of cardboard to sleep under.
Speculators and the poor: the driven and the desperate. She glanced up at the Gherkin, the City’s icon, cheek by jowl with the East End. The dying light was trapped in the myriad panes of its diamond carapace. Reflecting history. The South Sea Bubble. The Great Depression. A royal bank bailed out by a levy on the citizens, its barons richly rewarded for failure.
Berlin’s mind wandered in lockstep with her restless feet, turning away from the City. Money never sleeps. I never sleep. She would just walk into the night, as she had done so many times before, and at the end it would be just like the beginning. The need that drove her on would find a way.
She tried to look forward to a time when Gina Doyle’s death didn’t hang around her neck like an albatross and she had a steady supply of good-quality dope. She would talk to Dempster and sort things out with him. He would understand; he would say it was okay. But her natural inclination was retrospective.
It had all started with Coulthard’s bastardry and Nestor’s weakness. And her stubborn demand for evidence. It had started then. Her compulsion to go back, to find the very heart of things, to seek the source of rage, despair and murder, came from the same place as her addiction. It gave her faltering legs the will to keep moving.
A beggar touched her arm and, startled, she raised a fist to ward him off. He cowered, seemingly resigned to the blow – an emaciated ancient, his eyes pearly with opaque cataracts. It had begun generations ago.
She had looked back and seen a glimpse of her own history, a stray thread that linked her with the Doyles. It was a tangled thread. There was only one person who could draw it out.
80
DELROY CLOSED THE front door behind the police officers. Linda, his girlfriend, emerged from the kitchen, none too happy.
‘What did they want?’ she asked.
‘They’re looking for Berlin.’
‘What’s she done now?’ said Linda.
Delroy frowned. Linda thought Berlin was trouble and was going to drag down his promising career. Delroy hadn’t mentioned the team’s imminent demise, which was going to cut his career off at the knees anyway.
‘Nothing. The inspector on the Gina Doyle inquiry is looking for her, that’s all. Apparently she’s gone off the radar.’
‘She went off years ago, if you ask me,’ muttered Linda.
He hadn’t told her the half of it. The uniforms had told him the DCI was on the warpath and had issued a BOLO; be on the lookout. He wanted to interview Berlin about a murder down at the hospital. The bodies were piling up around that woman.
81
‘STAY THERE,’ DOYLE said to Coulthard as he parked the Merc outside the lock-up. ‘The lads will drop you home in a minute.’
Coulthard barely nodded. He was in no fit state to argue. All mouth and no trousers, thought Doyle as he got out of the car. The door of the lock-up opened and the lads hovered just outside, clearly reluctant to leave the warmth of the old-fashioned paraffin heater in the corner.
Doyle strode past them and they followed him back inside.
‘Leave the door,’ he said. He wanted to keep an eye on Coulthard. ‘Any trouble with the girl?’ he asked.
‘Nah. She was packing her bags before we were out of the house.’
‘Good. Now I want you to take him down to the Basin and make sure he doesn’t come back.’
The lads looked at each other.
‘What?’ said Doyle.
‘Well, it’s a bit different, innit?’ said one. ‘Breaking a few legs, giving a girl one, all right. But this, this is like, well it’s …’
‘We want more money,’ said the other one.
Doyle regarded them in disgust. The little shits. The Ivans were moving into the manor and they were always looking for muscle. He wondered if the lads had been headhunted.
‘My daughter, my little girl, lies mouldering in her grave and all you two can think about is money,’ he snarled.
The lads looked sheepish. ‘Yeah, well, he didn’t do it, did he?’ said one, chancing his arm.
‘No, you bleeding pillock!’ bellowed Doyle. ‘But we just blackmailed him into killing the bastard who did! Did you think of that? So now he’s got the drop on us, on you, you fucking genius, unless we get rid of him!’
The lad’s face fell. It was clear he hadn’t thought of that.
‘Sort it!’ commanded Doyle.
The lads shuffled out to the Merc.
‘And take the fucking Mondeo!’ he shouted after them. He glanced at his watch. ‘I’ve got to get over to Frank’s.’
82
FRANK OPENED THE door and smiled. ‘I always knew you would come,’ he said.
Berlin glanced back at the rusty iron gates. The padlock on
the chain hadn’t been locked, but the gates were frozen and she hadn’t the strength left to force them open. She’d had to squeeze through the small gap.
Even if she did change her mind, the tail lights of the cab were already tiny red eyes in the distance. She wouldn’t get far in her condition. Every muscle felt like wire beneath her skin and she was jarred by a dry, racking cough. Despite the freezing temperature her hair was drenched with sweat and she stank. She felt like she’d lost six pounds already.
But why would she run? The old man who stood before her in his fingerless gloves, muffler and ancient herringbone tweed overcoat looked harmless. His feet were encased in decrepit hobnail boots. She could see the newspaper they were stuffed with peeking through the toes. There was no hint of the villain with the fearsome reputation.
Frank stepped aside and she crossed the threshold into the cold, dark hall. When he closed the front door, it was pitch black for a few moments, then he switched on a torch.
The beam glinted off icicles hanging from a pipe that ran along the ceiling. She was seized by the notion that she was entering an underworld where not only water, but time itself was frozen.
Frank led her down the hall, turning into ever narrower passages constructed out of old doors. They passed doorways boarded up with old planks, their missing doors apparently used to construct the passages. The house was utterly silent. At last he turned into a room and switched on a light. It was the kitchen. A heavy blanket hung at the window.
‘For the blackout,’ Frank explained. ‘Make yourself at home.’
Berlin sat down at the table. ‘Mr Doyle,’ she began, but he raised a hand.
‘Frank, please,’ he said. He was looking at her with what she could only describe as benign wonderment. He shook his head. ‘You’re the spitting image of your father.’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Doyle – Frank. I came because … there’s something …’ Bothering me.
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