by David Mark
“You’re the first.”
He’s leaning in the car window now. Christ he’s young. Doesn’t look like he even needs to shave every day. Pink cheeks, blonde hair. Bit fleshy. A human Battenberg.
He looks wet through. His whole head is in the car, helmet touching the roof, rain dripping from his chin. He’s looking for warmth. Smiling. Obviously lonely. I dare him to mention the knackered windscreen wipers.
“Simmo around?”
“Simmo?”
“Inspector Simmonds, mate. Skinny fella. Press officer. Of a sort.”
“Oh yes, he’s just arrived.”
“I’ll see him in the car park, will I?”
He looks worried, and withdraws his head.
“I haven’t had instructions yet. Best you wait here.”
“Oh, fair enough mate, but there’s going to be a pack here before too long and we’ll be blocking the road. Last time we had a spot of bother in the country park we set up shop in the car park. As soon as Simmo gets his bearings it’ll all be sorted. Tell you what, I’ve got his mobile number in my phone. I’ll give him a call.”
The lad sticks his tongue in his cheek as he thinks. Then he shrugs again.
“OK, go on through.”
I treat him to a warm smile, and drive on.
I turn left into the overflow car park and pull in close to the gates. The rain is easing off but it’s still miserable beyond the glass. The trees that edge the car park stand tall and brooding, their tips stretching upwards to puncture the grey clouds which hang low, like a hammock holding a fat man, over the park.
I get out of the car, and as the rain and the wind grab at my coat-tails and the crows and the seagulls scream overhead, there’s a moment of clarity and astonishment, as though a normal person has suddenly taken a look at the world through my eyes.
Hours.
Just a matter of fucking hours since I was parked up, not more than a hundred yards from here, yearning for death.
Hours since I was smashing in a stranger’s face with a rock.
It’s a funny old world.
12
Standing beneath a striped golfing umbrella, the collar of his leather jacket turned up and his hands deep in his pockets, Detective Superintendent Doug Roper is enjoying the rain. Very cinematic, he thinks. Very noir.
“Sir.”
Roper’s standing on a thick tree root, slick with moss, watching the forensics team erect a white tent around the two corpses. The TV crew are being kept back until he’s got to grips with this. Doesn’t want there to be any unforeseen balls-ups. He needs to come across as confident, together, unflappable. Caring, but not soft.
“Sir. Excuse me. Detective Superintendent Roper, sir.”
He turns at the rumble of the low, deep voice. There’s a Scottishness, in there, but it’s refined, like good whisky. He’s had a good education, this one. Learned to speak the Queen’s. Roper’s been through his personnel file with a red pen and committed the details to memory. He’s a clever sod, his new sergeant, but there’s no cunning there. Sensitive, too, but without the guile to use it to his advantage. He’s dogged, certainly. Diligent. Handsome sod, too, under the blush and the beard. Big lump of a thing. Six foot six and a Viking look about him, if Vikings were given to shyness and didn’t swear in front of the ladies. He’s not the sort of chap Roper would have picked for his team, but the sly sod banked a favour when he found Ella’s body last year and Roper couldn’t think of a good reason to refuse his request for a transfer to the Major Crimes Unit. He’s kept him out of the way for months, giving him every kind of pointless, tedious task he can come up with, but he’s still got a zeal in his eyes that turns Roper’s stomach. He’d have loved to have been there when he found Ella. He’s got it on good authority that there were tears running into his beard as if from a tap. Still wouldn’t let PC Poyser put the boot in, though. Stood his ground and kept his two constables from laying a single finger on Cadbury; standing there, blushing, arms folded, tears and snot and steam rising from his face and the knot in his tie half strangling him, letting Poyser strike him like a drum. All to save a sad sack of shite like Shane Cadbury. It doesn’t make sense to Roper. There hadn’t even been a TV crew handy to capture his display of morality.
“You talking to me, son? Sorry, it’s the accent.” Roper licks his lips, remembering a joke. “Did you hear the one about the Scottish mafia don? Made people an offer they couldnae understand…”
McAvoy gives a dutiful smile. “Very good, sir.”
Roper rolls his eyes. “Not much fun in you, is there, son? Learn English from Jeeves, did you? Lighten up, lad.”
“It’s a crime scene, sir,” says McAvoy, quietly. “Two men are dead.”
“Yes, but you’re not. I’m not. And we’ll solve it. There are reasons to be cheerful.”
Roper smiles, broadly, as he watches McAvoy struggle to find the appropriate expression. It’s like watching a cat chewing a toffee. He seems to Roper like a visitor from another planet: as if Spock had fathered a child by a big ginger yeti. He doesn’t seem to understand how adults communicate with each other. Never gets the bloody joke.
“Go on then,” says Roper, sighing. “Tell me.”
McAvoy nods, gratitude etched into his face. “Sir, the big one’s still got his watch. No wallet, but that’s a nice piece on his wrist. Expensive. I think we can discount a robbery. At least, not an opportunistic one. And I’ve been speaking to one of the park wardens. Got a list of descriptions of people who use this area regularly. Joggers, dog walkers and whatnot. There’s a remote control car club use the car park on a weekend…”
Roper treats his sergeant to his best smile.
“Hector…” he begins.
“Aector, sir. Hard to say, I know. I don’t object to McAvoy.”
“Fucking big of you, lad.”
“Sir?”
Roper shakes his head. He wonders if it wouldn’t be easiest just to wire some money into the big fella’s bank account from an anonymous source and get him suspended while subject to investigation. He might just be a liability. He hasn’t got the hint he’s not welcome. Too fucking earnest by half, thinks Roper. Big clean hands and a scrubbed neck. Always first in and last out. Real ale man. Never going to be one of the boys. The other lads and ladies in his part of CID know how to play the game. They leave it to Roper. They deal with the robberies and the straightforward rapes and the unglamorous shit, and they let Roper solve the murders, and they don’t ask questions and they smile at his jokes and they stay the fuck out of his way. But the Jock is different. He turns up at crime scenes to see if he can help. Drafts suggested working practices in his own time. Cross-references filing systems. Builds new databases on his home computer so staff can share knowledge and make suggestions. There’s something unnervingly wholesome about the cunt.
“You could be right, Sergeant,” says Roper. “You get back to the ranch and start working the database. See if you can find any other robberies where something valuable was left behind. Get on to the remote control club. Check their members for any dirt. Nationwide search. Give Interpol a tinkle, too. Mention my name.”
McAvoy, with mud up to his shins and his feet swimming inside his black shoes, gives a puzzled look. “I’m not sure that the watch being left behind is a signature, sir. I don’t think they left it on purpose. I just mean they didn’t take it. Or want it. And I was thinking of the car club as witnesses rather than suspects, sir. But…”
“No, it’s something worth considering,” says Roper, charming. “Case like this, we want to cover every angle. You’re the computer whizz, anyway.”
“You’re sure you don’t want me here, sir?”
“I’d love to have you here, sunbeam, but you’d be helping the investigation a lot more working the database. The DI is on call if I need anything specific, and you’ll be the first to know if we need anything. You get on back. It’s a horrible day.”
McAvoy stands, shivering and cold. His cheap fleec
e is wet through and his suit is damp underneath. Another drip of rain runs down the back of his neck. When are you going to learn? he asks himself. They’re trying to get rid of you again. Want you out of the way. You’re not one of them. You’re not one of Roper’s boys. Do you even want to be? You’ve heard the whispers. You’ve glimpsed something in the way he does business. Give them a bit of publicity and it goes to their head. They think they’re untouchable.
No, he tells himself, sharply. Give people the benefit of the doubt. That’s what makes you good at what you do. You think the best of people and give them a chance. Innocent until proven guilty. And Roper’s conviction rate is top-notch, he thinks. Keep plugging away. You’ll get there. You’ll show him what you can do…
“Yes sir,” says McAvoy.
“Good lad,” says Roper, watching him slurp his way through the mud and back to the path. “Miss you,” he says, under his breath, as McAvoy reaches out a hand to help up the big, bright-eyed PC who’s slithering around in the mud at the edge of the perimeter.
Roper considers young Sam. He’s got plans for the lad. Eager to please, none too bright, and happy to hurt those whom Roper deems deserving. Big baby face and innocent eyes, and bad all the way through.
Could be a godsend, all this, thinks Roper. Tie up the Butterworth case and sort this out inside seventy-two hours and it’s TV fucking gold.
He shivers under the umbrella and stares out as officers in luminous raincoats tie police tape around trees. Christ, this could be good. Could be a real hit. Real nasty, by the looks of it. Could be gangland. Everybody likes gangland, don’t they?
One of them, the scruffy lad, has got a bullet in his head. Tough luck, son, thinks Roper. Could have been worse.
The other one’s not even human anymore. His head’s almost gone. It’s just bone and pulp, and a swamp of blood-red leaves.
The scruffy one couldn’t have done it, he thinks. Hasn’t got the strength or the venom, by the looks of him. Smackhead, too. Couldn’t lift anything heavier than a needle. No, he thinks, the bigger lad probably shot the scruffy one. Drug deal gone wrong, maybe? Could be. Who killed the big lad, though? Somebody he was with? Somebody he trusted? A partner? Christ, it couldn’t be a stranger. Nobody could stumble on this and then do this much damage. This was somebody who came here to kill, and did it royally.
“Sir, the press are arriving.”
A young female officer, dripping with the cold and with flushed pink cheeks, is shouting at him from the pathway. He gives a smile.
“Anybody I know?”
“Tony from the Mail just pulled up, and Owen Lee from the Press Association has been and gone.”
“Fine. I’ll be out to see them in a tick.”
Been and gone? Quick off the fucking mark, that one. So sharp he might cut himself. You’d never know his past to look at him, either. Never know what he had done. Not unless you’re Doug Roper, he tells himself.
He pulls another cigarillo from his coat pocket and lights it. Runs through a quick mental stock-take. Anything to ruin his mood? Any little problems? Oh yeah. Minns. The bodybuilder. The cellmate. Choudhury’s star witness. Could fuck it all.
Shit.
Roper sucks his teeth. Considers his options and finds that most of them are very much to his taste.
He steps off the root and onto the wet soil, with its carpet of leaves. Takes a step and feels his loafer nudge something hard.
Roper reaches down and gently slides his hand under the leaves.
His fingers close on metal.
It’s good to be me, he thinks.
Quietly, discreetly, he pulls out the gun, and slips it into a clear plastic evidence bag. He puts it in his pocket.
Behind his eyes, wheels are turning.
Can’t waste a moment like that, he thinks. Need an audience.
Besides, it could come in handy.
He turns and walks away.
There’s a spring in his step.
13
Simmo spots me as I walk into the main car park. There are a few police cars, parked up here and there. Roper’s Jag is next to the forensics van, just begging to be keyed. There are some coppers milling about, trying to look busy, and a bloke from Supercop’s documentary crew sits pulling on some wellies in the back of a Range Rover, but nobody pays me much attention.
That’s all going to change.
Simmo gives a wave and plods across to meet me. He’s got a hiking jacket on over his uniform, and is wearing a woollen bobble hat instead of his cap. Well-pressed trousers with shiny knees, tucked into well-loved welly boots. He mimics a shudder as he gets close, and we shake hands. I’m still wearing gloves.
“First again, Owen?” he asks, with a smile.
“You know me, mate. Can’t help it.”
“I thought we’d have the place to ourselves for a while yet. Everybody being tied up with the Cadbury case and all that. Always nice to know where you and Tony H are.”
“Yeah, I struck lucky. I saw a couple of the coppers leave the courtroom in a hurry and popped out on the off-chance. Checked the voicebank and suddenly my day’s even shittier than it was this morning. Fucking trial of the century and now a double bloody murder. Should make Roper’s documentary a little juicier.”
“Aye, it looks like it could be a big one for you, this. One of them’s been shot by the looks of things, and the other’s had his head stoved in. Really bad. Really.”
“Fuck.”
“Aye, fuck indeed. Between you and me, like.”
“Oh yeah. Christ, though. What can you say on the record, then?”
“It’s so early we can’t really say owt. Victims of a violent death, that’s about it. Roper might be willing to talk to you in a couple of hours, but you’re going to get wet. I’d stay in your car. You won’t get near the scene.”
“In the woods, is it?”
“Yeah, a few hundreds yards in. Reckon it happened last night. It’s a bit off the beaten track, but you couldn’t hide two bodies in there without somebody seeing.”
“Were they hidden, then?”
“Well, they were covered over a bit, right in amongst this real tangle of trees. It’s a horrible place for the forensics boys to be working. Soaking, they are.”
“Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch.”
“No.”
We laugh at that, and Simmo removes his glasses to wipe the raindrops from the lenses. He looks weird without them, almost cadaverous. If you didn’t know Simmo you would think he was severe, harsh, patrician-like. Long nose, high cheek bones, thin eyes, grey hair. But he’s a deflated fat man. By nature, Simmo should be twenty stone, red-faced and jolly, able to balance a pint on his gut; the sort who roars with laughter at everything from a filthy joke to a dog’s fart. A fast metabolism robbed him of his birth right.
“What you going to be doing?” I ask as I debate my next move and a gust of wind plays with the tails of my coat. There’s a metallic noise as the gun bangs against something in my pocket. Simmo is too busy shuddering to notice.
“I’ll hang about a bit then head down to Hessle. Get a cup of tea. There’s that sandwich shop on the main street in Hessle, isn’t there? They do that baguette with the caramelised peppers and onions.” He gives the matter some consideration and makes a conclusion. “The day could be a lot worse.”
I give him a friendly pat on the arm, and saunter back to the car. My coat is billowing in the wind, and I’m vaguely aware that I’m looking good.
Step back inside the Vauxhall. Trap my coat in the door and crush the fags in the pocket. Curse, and get over it.
I lie back in the driver’s seat, and close my eyes.
I’m tired now. My mind has always worked at two distinct paces, and it wears me down, despite the adrenaline that’s carbonating my bloodstream. My thoughts arrive like they’re driving between speed bumps, roaring between obstructions, then slamming on the brakes and easing over the hurdles, speeding and slowing, speeding and slowing.
&
nbsp; I look up.
It takes a moment to register what I am seeing.
There.
Just above the level of the trees.
A security camera.
Pointing at the car park.
Clicking.
Whirring.
Like me.
14
I open my phone and glance at Jess. The pain of staring into those eyes is duller than before, as though somehow muffled and muted by the weight of all the other thoughts lining up like stacked towels in my mind.
I allow myself a moment, a fluttering of wings in my chest and a tongue of sickness on my thorax, then I’m scrolling down to Tony’s number.
The briefest of chats. Excitement in his voice, something shrill and anxious in mine. Arrange to meet up later.
Then on to the newsdesk. Neil Grange, the northern news editor, his two bellies divided by a belt, nether regions a bulging mass of flesh, pressing against his cream slacks and forcing his grey jumper to ride up. Moustache and bulging eyes. Panicky. Takes it seriously. Thinks I’m too reckless and doesn’t like the way I talk to him, but hasn’t yet fathomed a way to make me care.
“Neil, mate. It’s Owen. Got the court copy, did you? All cool? Well that’s up to you. I thought we’d try making it sound interesting for a change. No, that’s your call. You get paid more than me. Anyway, there’s been two murders. Two bodies in the Country Park by the bridge. Well no, you’re right, they could be suicides. Whatever. Well look, it sounds interesting so I’ll send you some stuff. That laptop would be a help, if you ever get round to it. No, I’m sure you’re busy. Anyway, I’ll keep you posted. What? No I can’t get there. I’m doing this. And the trial. Got that backgrounder lined up for later. I’m not omnipotent, am I? You show me how, then. No. No. Fine. Bye.”
Fucking prick. One for the list, definitely.
Open the inbox in my phone. Read Jess’s last message again. Three days ago, now. Three days and still the words make my face twitch and fists bunch.
So many tears, inside one girl…
I pull some faces and light a cigarette but I’m not enjoying it and I’m pissed off, so I decide to explore the wound, and call Kerry.