I hadn’t eaten all day and it was just as well because I would have spewed everywhere. As it was I bit back the bile in my gullet and swallowed it. Sherwood had been alive when this had been done to him. This was way beyond revenge—this was delight in pain, joy in horror. It was how traitors had been executed in medieval times. Whoever did this was preserving an ancient art form—disembowelling as public entertainment.
Through a daze of shock I heard electronic whooping in the distance: an emergency vehicle on its way to some drunken pile-up. My mind ran backwards and forwards like a rat in a maze with no exit—who had done this to Sherwood? A debtor, driven too far? No, Sherwood had always picked on the weak and helpless—whoever did this wasn’t one of his clients. A rival loan shark? That cop, Lovegrove—but did he even know Sherwood? The hit-and-run driver …? No, that guy had been sent by Sherwood; he told Delroy as much.
Except … Sherwood never signed the bricks his people flung through windows. He was never that obvious.
The siren was getting closer. Now there were two of them—three. I could see now that someone had set out to kill or maim Delroy and Winnie, and point the finger at Sherwood. They must have hoped I’d get to hear about it and come galloping after Sherwood like a rabid Rottweiler, and that’s exactly what had happened. I’d been played. Sherwood had been tortured to death, and a suspect with an obvious motive and an arm-long history of violence was standing over his corpse, too stunned to run.
Voices from below in the alley, lowered and urgent. Car doors slamming and a burst of radio chatter, muted too late. The police were right outside—I had to move. I backed out of the bathroom, suddenly aware I might have trodden in Sherwood’s gore and be leaving a trail of bloody footprints. But no, nothing visible. Where were the exits? Sherwood’s punters would have been angry, desperate people with little to lose, and there must have been times when he’d needed another way out. There were no windows as such, apart from a domed skylight set into the sloping roof, but that was too high to reach. Sherwood wouldn’t have relied on it. There was another door in a recess beyond the loo entrance that looked like a stationery cupboard. I didn’t know if I’d left any prints or DNA on the way in, but I’d sure as hell leave some going out, unless …
A buzzing from Sherwood’s desk, echoing on the landing outside. Sherwood had an entryphone, I remembered now, but I’d never used it. I probably had about twenty seconds before the cops sledgehammered the door.
Gloves. Sean’s outflung hand was bare. Stooping by his body I gingerly inserted one finger into the pocket of his leather jacket. I felt a rubbery bundle, like two gloves rolled together, and abandoning caution for a moment reached into Sean’s pocket. I pulled out the gloves, tugged them apart, stood up and put them on.
Hurrying to the recess I turned the handle and pulled. The door opened onto darkness. My gloved hands groped at the wall beside the door, found a switch and flicked it. Halogens sprang to life revealing a dead-end corridor lined with shelves, with a window halfway down on the right. On the shelf nearest the door was an electric fan. I grabbed it, wrapped the flex round and round the handle of the door I’d just come through, knotting it with the plug, then grabbed the fan, stretched the flex tight against the upright metal strut of the shelf, and wound it round and round. The fan’s casing bashed and clanged against the metal shelving and my skin crawled at the racket I had made, but I kept going, more carefully, finally letting the fan fall and dangle. The shelving was screwed to the wall, so that lash-up would slow the cops when they pulled at the door and buy me a minute or two at least. I hurried to the window.
It was barred on the outside. The window was a sash type with a lower half that slid upwards but there was no point trying—I’d need to be an anorexic supermodel to squeeze through the bars beyond. I thought about turning back, but now I could hear boots clattering up the stairwell. I hurried to the dead end and saw there was a fire door with a pushbar on the left, recessed into the wall where it couldn’t be seen. Wouldn’t the cops be coming up the rear fire escape by now? I had no choice. I leaned on the bar, shoved it down, and pushed the door open. A bell burst into life right by my ear—a nerve-jangling, teeth-rattling racket designed to scare off burglars with its very volume. I barged through the door, stepped outside onto an iron gantry and backed against the door to shut it behind me. The alarm kept going—how soon would the cops realize it wasn’t them who’d set it off?
The night outside was warm and smelled of beer. I was high above the ground, level with thrumming air conditioners sucking stale booze-soaked air out of some nearby pub and blasting it up into the night. The fire escape ran straight ahead of me for ten metres along a brick wall before turning back and downwards towards street level, where the pavements and alleys would by now be crawling with uniforms. They’d soon get bored of waiting for me to come to them, and then they’d start trying the rear gateways in the hope of finding a way upwards. Out here on the fire escape the clamouring of the alarm bell was less strident, muffled by the constant rumble of traffic and the music thumping upwards from the bars all around and the general bawdy racket of a boozy Saturday night.
Trying all the same not to make the iron platform under my feet announce my presence like a gong, I hurried halfway along, then stopped to check out the parapet two metres above. I couldn’t go downwards, but I couldn’t leap that high either—unless I stood on the handrail to my left. It was slightly rounded on top, and only half a hand’s-breadth wide. If I slipped it was a four-metre drop onto concrete and steel bins full of broken glass. Adrenaline was gushing through my system and I forced myself to stay calm, to remember all that Delroy had taught me about distributing my weight; he’d even rigged up a tightrope once to teach me balance. No time to think about how this could go wrong. Throw your leg over the handrail. Pull your knee up. Balance, keep it steady. Pull up the other, slow steady, now … both feet on the rail, and … push.
I was standing upright, the empty air at my back. Laughter and music and girls screeching somewhere, miles below, maybe cheering, maybe crying.
“POLICE! Do NOT move!” The shout came from ground level, and I ignored it. They were obviously talking to someone else.
“You, up there! DO NOT MOVE!”
OK, they were talking to me. But that suggested they still hadn’t found a way to get up here and catch me. I focused on my balance and fixed my eyes on the lip of the parapet, now only an arm’s length above my eye level. I bent my knees into a half-crouch. And I jumped.
Empty air, then rough cold concrete under my fingers, my folded hands the only thing supporting my weight as I swung from the parapet, my knees scraping the brickwork, my feet searching in vain for a toehold between the bricks. Bracing my arms I pulled myself up, slowly, knowing I would have only one go at this, that it had to work, and when my chin was level with the parapet I flung my right arm over, pulled harder and swung my right leg up after it, rolled my body over the concrete lip, and fell half a metre onto fibreglass roofing, my ass landing in a puddle that immediately soaked into my jeans. I wanted to stop and congratulate myself, but there was no time—I jumped up into a crouch and hurried along the rooftop, down to a corner that turned away from the direction of the fire escape and ran parallel to the main drag, until I hit another corner and was forced back away from the street. There was another low corrugated roof below me, and beyond that another.
I straddled the concrete parapet again, turned and lowered myself down until my trainers touched the rippled metal below. Slowly I let the corrugated iron take my weight. If I went for the apex where the roof would be strongest I would be too visible against the skyline. I had to stay lower down. I tested the metal roofing with my feet—it flexed, but held. I decided to run for it as if I was racing over ice and hope that forward momentum would see me to the far side.
It worked, for most of the way, but a metre short of the far end the roof under my foot didn’t flex, but burst, and my leg went straight through, scraping half the skin off my shi
n. My forward momentum dissipated as I fell, and the metal screeched and tore and my other leg went through, waving in space, and as I slid backwards I clutched in vain for a grip and finally dropped, landing two instants later flat on my back with a bang and clatter, onto a heap of wood and metal struts and mildewed cloth.
I lay there for a minute, trying to figure out where the hell I was and how badly hurt. The dusty darkness throbbed with thumping music. Was that blood on the ass of my jeans? No, just stagnant water from that puddle I’d dropped into earlier. My back ached and my shin burned like fire, but that was it—everything else seemed to be working. I looked around, trying to work out where I’d fallen. For a moment I thought I was back in the derelict pool hall, but this place looked as if it had never been used except for storage. Light was seeping in from some misted high-level window that was flickering with refracted laser dots and rattling in time to the beat of music beyond.
I had landed in a storeroom—one that hadn’t been visited in ages, by the smell of it. The mildewed cloth and metal struts were parts of parasols that had once been used in a pub garden, and I had mangled them utterly beyond repair by landing on them. I could just make out that the walls of the storeroom were bare cobwebby brick, and the floor was heaped with ashtrays, bar towels, broken optics and other obsolete pub crap so densely packed there was nowhere even to place my feet. I clambered over the rubbish towards something that looked like a door. Luckily it was bolted from my side. The rusty knobs of the bolts bit into my fingers as I worked them up and down and slowly pulled them free. There was no handle that I could see so I tugged at the bolts until the door opened just wide enough for me to get through.
It was dark on the other side too, but here the air smelled of sweat and booze and perfume and cosmetics. A laser reflected from a mirror ball danced and flickered over packed clubbers dancing in their finest pick-up outfits. As I pushed through the crowd—no point apologizing, when the music was too loud to make myself understood—a few clubbers stared, and I realized they were wondering why the hell the bouncers had let in someone wearing ripped jeans, a woolly jumper that smelled of smoke, and an anorak from a charity shop. I smiled and waved, as if my outfit was the latest casual wear from New York. Yes, this time next year you’ll all be dressed like hobos who’ve been savaged by dogs.
I jostled, shoved and fought my way to the front door, determined to get there under my own steam before any bouncer did notice me and made a big scene about throwing me out. If I could get onto the high street upright and unmolested I had a better chance of mingling with the Saturday night crowds and disappearing. One chair I pushed past had a leather bomber jacket draped over the back. I discreetly grasped the collar and slid it off without looking down or back to see if I’d been noticed. I felt sorry for the poor sod I’d ripped off, but shortly I’d need that coat more than he ever would. I let the charity shop anorak slide off my shoulders in the crowd and felt it fall to the floor behind me. Sean’s gloves I tugged off and bundled into a ball.
A bunch of heavyset guys—rugby players, judging by their thick necks and broken noses—were milling by the entrance, and from the way they were staggering and fumbling with their jackets it looked like they’d been here for quite a while and were now off in search of hotter girls and colder drinks. I’d never understood the point of pub crawls—if you were enjoying yourself, why up sticks and leave?—but then I’d never been into drinking anyway. As I attached myself to the departing knot of jerks—several of them as tall as me and most of them heavier—I shrugged on my stolen leather jacket and helped one of them on with his coat, grinning like an idiot. He didn’t notice me slipping the gloves into his pocket.
Then I followed them out, pretending to listen to a long and incoherent anecdote being told by one guy about the time he had shat himself while wearing white trousers to a mate’s wedding. His pals were all groaning and laughing, and I groaned and laughed too, and stepped aside politely to let three beefy uniformed cops rush past us into the pub, looking incongruous and overdressed in their stab vests and peaked caps. Tugging up the collar of my newly acquired bomber jacket I contrived to look as detached and uninterested as the lads I’d latched onto, and as they bumped about on the pavement debating which boozer to hit next I stuffed my fists into my pockets and moved off down the street, trying not to limp and hoping the blood leaking from my shin wouldn’t soak through my jeans.
Coppers were running along the street, craning their necks downward to shout into their lapel radios. From the way they were scattering in every direction it was clear they had lost my scent. By now I was heading back towards the street that ran past Sherwood’s office, and that felt right, because the cops would be looking for a guy running in the other direction. I watched the police activity openly, because that’s what most of the Saturday night drinkers were doing—it was like the plods were providing free street theatre to give the revellers something novel to talk about. Coming to the junction with Sherwood’s street I saw two police cars halfway down blocking the road off, while a junior PC in a hi-viz jacket ran blue and white incident tape from lamppost to lamppost to form a cordon at the entrance to Sherwood’s alley. A knot of girls in tiny skirts and skimpy tops looked on, giggling loudly and speculating how the young PC would look with his shirt off. Two other blokes loitered casually at the cordon, and one of them flicked a Zippo to light his cigarette.
It was Dean, Sherwood’s in-house Elvis impersonator. He took a long drag and threw his head back to blow fumes out of his nose. As I moved closer, hugging the shadows, I caught a whiff and recognized that smell, the one that had been haunting me—cheap cigars. It was Dean who’d been hanging around my gym the other night, and I’d smelled that same stink outside Sherwood’s office a few minutes before. Dean must have helped to set me up, and now he was waiting to see if I’d be frogmarched out in cuffs or dragged out in a body bag. Clearly he’d changed employers; I wondered if he’d simply watched, trying not to puke, while his new colleagues had slit Sherwood’s belly open—or had he mucked in, to show them how willing and adaptable he was?
The guy he was talking to now was tall, muscular and totally bald, with a shining scalp and a long thick moustache. I could see him rubbing his chin thoughtfully, his fingers glinting with rings. He jerked his head at Dean and they turned and walked away down the road, as if they were bored with observing the chase and now it was time to catch their bus. I strode after them, wincing when I put weight on my barked shin but trying to look casual, while watching from the corner of my eye the coppers on duty outside the murder scene. They barely glanced at me.
Dean’s new boss walked straight across the next street without even checking the traffic, as if any truck that hit him would bounce off. Dean jogged at his heels like a spaniel puppy trying to match the strut of a mastiff. I paused at the corner in case they looked back, but they walked straight on towards a sleek black Merc with tinted windows parked nearby with the engine running. When Dean and his new friend jumped into the back I broke cover to cross the street, but with no idea what I would do if I caught up with them—jump on the roof of their car and hope they wouldn’t notice? Grab the bumper and hang on? I told myself there might be a sticker or something on the window, or a car dealer’s name on the number plate, and if they would only stay parked for fifteen minutes I might have time to read it. But before I could come close the driver tossed some litter out the window and pulled away from the curb, and the Merc sped off with a muted roar of power, its rear lights quickly merging into a million others.
I was homeless and hungry and alone on the street, wearing a stolen jacket and wanted for murder. Dean and Baldy had screwed me over nicely, and I’d never find them before the cops found me. Where was I going to hide out? Delroy and Winnie’s?
The memory of Winnie, thrashing with fear and pain in that hospital bed while Delroy tried in vain to comfort her, filled me all over again with cold and bitter fury. I stood in the spot where the Merc had been parked and looked around�
�for what, I had no idea. I checked for CCTV cameras covering the street, knowing that London was dotted with them; the operators liked to supplement their rubbish pay by flogging off footage of drunken couples shagging in doorways. But the only camera I could see now was pointed in the opposite direction, monitoring a 24/7 bus lane.
Where the Merc had been parked a paper coffee cup was rolling around in the gutter—the litter the driver had thrown out of his window. I picked it up, feeling like an idiot—what was I going to do, ask the cops to take prints off it? Analyse the coffee grounds? Inside the cup I could feel a few inches of coffee sloshing about, and something solid tapping the sides. I prised the lid off and saw floating in the dregs a cigarette butt and a twisted wad of paper. I took the wad out, tossed the cup back in the gutter, shook the coffee off the paper and untwisted it.
I could just make the logo of a chain of roadside cafés. The rest of it was a mass of faint grey figures and numbers, hard enough to decipher even before that milky coffee had soaked in. Charms. Sauces? Church-something. Churchfield … Chelms … ford. Churchfield Services, Chelmsford. 2 x reg latte, £4.90.
Chelmsford was in Essex, fifty miles out the other side of London. Yes, the cup had come from Dean’s car—but what did that signify? They’d stopped at some services to buy coffee, but so had a hundred thousand other people, all headed somewhere else.
As a lead it wasn’t much. In fact, it was practically nothing. But it was all I had.
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