Cold Kill (35 page)

I know what you're doing. I'm second-guessing you now. I'm closer than you think.

With first light, the frost hardened as if the sun were ice. A ragged flock of birds drifted through, looking for a place to settle.

Leon Bloss watched the gulls settling at the river's edge, searching for carrion. He was thinking things through. He would collect his fee from Billy Souza, pick up fifteen-k on the bracelet, then make sure that Robert Adrian Kimber took the fall. After that, Christmas in the sun.

But don't think it hasn't been fun, Bobby. Don't think I haven't enjoyed myself.

Delaney sat with his back to the wall of the Ocean Diner and watched the hard, grey light spread into the alley. He was chilled, bone-deep. He wondered how people lived like this, not one night but every night. He wondered how long he would wait for Stella to make up her mind.

It's easier to stay away, isn't it? Coming back means back to stay
…

*

Stella finished her notes and suddenly felt tired. She got into bed and lay flat out, as if she had fallen there from a height. Patterns from the window-blind, like lines of water droplets, shimmered on the wall. She had some admissions to make, some owning up to do.

It was just a fuck. But here's a thing – he was pretty good. Pretty good in bed.

Robert Adrian Kimber was asleep in his room just off the Strip. His journal and his silver-ink pen were on the floor by the bed. He had slept all night, untroubled, dreamless.

In the cemetery opposite, the city's scavengers hunted between the cold stones of the dead.

Pete Harriman said, ‘It's a set-up. He's the fall-guy – Kimber. Is that what you're saying?'

‘That's right.'

Stella was sitting on a desk at the front of the AMIP-5 squad room, drinking the cooling coffee she'd brought in with her. The first few swallows had washed down the morning-after pill. That was before she'd called the squad meeting.

‘Which is why,' she said, ‘Kimber's DNA was so prevalent at the Kate Reilly murder and at the murder of Oscar Gribbin and Ellen Clarke. Mister Mystery is happy to let Kimber implicate himself by DNA.' She looked at Marilyn Hayes and asked, ‘Anything more on her, by the way – Clarke?'

‘Nothing. We've done cross-searches until we're dizzy. It wasn't her real name or no one cares or she's alone in the world.'

‘Her mugshot went up to the Strip,' Frank Silano observed, ‘but none of the girls knew her. Or no one would admit to knowing her. The fact that the photo clearly showed she was dead didn't help.' He shrugged. ‘Maybe she was a honey-trap, or she just got unlucky.'

‘Either way,' Stella said, ‘we have to separate the Gribbin killing from the others and look at it as a pro-job. It's the only reasonable thing to do. We have to think of Mister Mystery as a technician – a hit-man. There's a link between Oscar Gribbin and Billy Souza. We ought to look at that.
We're dealing with traceable people here and possibly traceable motives. We're dealing with villains and crooks, people we know about, people we can anticipate. If this was a hit, someone ordered it. Go back to the street, go back to informants, look for business contacts in this, look for antagonisms, look for feuds old or new. Maxine, talk to your chis at Jumping Jacks again – the blackjack dealer.'

‘Okay.'

‘Marilyn – Souza is very probably linked to gun imports. Search computer records for any likely imports involved in a crime or seized by Customs, see where you get, feed in all the names, ask anyone on any police computer-link for anything that looks connected.' Marilyn nodded. She was sitting on the opposite side of the room from Harriman, which hadn't escaped Stella's attention.

‘Okay. Anything on Kimber?' No one responded. ‘Keep trying. At least we know what he looks like.'

The meeting broke up, leaving a litter of paper cups, sandwich packs and chocolate-bar wrappers. Stella drank the rest of her coffee. It tasted rank.

Mike Sorley had developed the habit of attending squad meetings by standing at the far side of the room. Sometimes he didn't even turn up: the leper of AMIP-5. The sound of his coughing travelled all the way up the corridor from his office, which itself was pretty much a no-go area. Stella stood by the door and watched him flick through the notes she'd made the previous evening.

He said, ‘You think he was planning this all along – Mister Mystery?'

‘I think he saw an opportunity.'

‘Here's a possibility.' Sorley had put down Stella's notes and was looking from the post-mortem findings to the lab
report. ‘Sam Burgess makes the point that when they combed Ellen Clarke for evidence, they found a substantial amount of Kimber's hair. He queries it as unusually large. So this guy's not just leaving a DNA
trace
, he's leaving something more like a
trail
.'

‘You mean it's not just a case of Mister Mystery allowing Kimber to be careless.'

‘Sure.'

‘The DNA was planted.'

‘In this case – yeah, maybe.'

‘Kimber wasn't at the scene.'

‘Didn't need to be.'

‘More than that,' Stella said, ‘I guess Mister Mystery wouldn't want him there. It's a different operation, different way of doing things. Kimber would be asking why.'

‘He'd want to know what was going on,' Sorley said. ‘After all, he's not a hit-man, is he? He's not someone with a logical purpose. Hit-men get paid.'

‘You're right,' Stella said. ‘And Kimber does it for love.'

When Stella came out of Sorley's office she saw Pete Harriman further down the corridor with Marilyn Hayes, looking like a man who'd just stepped backwards into a bear-trap. Marilyn was standing very close to him and talking in a rapid, low tone. When his mobile rang, Harriman grabbed for it and walked a few paces off to take the call. Marilyn turned and went back to the squad room, hitting the door with the heel of her hand. As Stella walked by, Harriman closed the call. He said, ‘That was my chis.'

‘Saying what?'

‘Saying that he wasn't saying anything over the phone. I'll go down to the hospital.'

‘Okay,' Stella said, then, ‘I see you talked to her.'

Harriman sighed heavily. ‘It was just… you know – a little affair, fun for everyone, something and nothing.'

‘It was something. I don't think it was nothing.'

Ronaldo was hooked up to three lines and looking less than happy. His skin had a yellowish tinge, except round the eyes, where it had the dark bloom of a bruise. There were no girls in fur coats, though the TV was turned to a race meeting and Ronaldo was getting his fun by posting phone bets with his bookie.

He pointed his mobile at the screen as a leggy bay cantered up to the start. ‘Can't lose,' he said; ‘want me to get something down for you?'

‘You look like shit,' Harriman told him.

‘They patch me up in ITU, send me down to a ward, I get some fucking virus. Hospitals are death traps. Final Word.'

‘What?'

‘Name of the horse, Final Word. I know the trainer. I also know it's going to win.'

‘There's a fix on?'

Ronaldo laughed. He said, ‘Trust me.'

‘I'll have fifty quid,' Harriman said.

‘It's ten to fucking one.'

‘Just the fifty.'

Ronaldo shrugged, then speed-dialled his bookie and laid the bet, fifty for Harriman, a grand for himself. He said, ‘There's a man they call the Trader. Real name Lexie Bramall.'

‘His real name's Lexie?'

‘That's all I've ever heard him called. He's got your bracelet, trying to lay it off.'

‘Trying to?'

‘The word is it's linked to a murder, so people are being just a tiny bit cautious – they're also being cheap, which is most of the problem.'

‘It
is
linked to a murder. Tell me about the Trader.'

‘You're wondering if he killed someone for the bracelet, is that it?'

‘I'm wondering if he killed someone.'

Ronaldo shook his head. ‘I very much doubt it. Anything's possible, but each to his own, you know? Trader's a middle man, that's his living. He doesn't get involved in the heavy stuff. He's a specialist: second-hand and used items. Contraband, Mr Harriman. He doesn't go after the goods, goods come to him.'

‘Where will I find him?'

Ronaldo shrugged. ‘I haven't got an address. Someone will know; I don't.'

‘Where would
you
find him?'

‘He does a bit of trading up on the Strip, sometimes.'

‘Who with?'

‘Whoever wants to buy. The Chinese like to show a bit of class. So do the Yardie boys, you know, get a Rolex or a gold chain, whatever. Nothing like this bracelet, though. He won't get rid of that in any shebeen.'

‘How often is he up there?'

Ronaldo looked weary. ‘I don't fucking know. It's Christmas, that'd be his busy time, don't you think? I expect he's all over the place.'

Harriman stayed to watch the race. Final Word was brought down by a loose horse at the fourth. Ronaldo closed his eyes and settled back into his pillows. He said, ‘You're a jinx, Mr Harriman. You're bad news for me.'

Harriman took fifty pounds from his wallet and dropped
it on the bed. Ronaldo looked at it sourly. ‘Jinx money from a jinx copper,' he said. ‘You'd better keep it.'

‘Okay.' Harriman scooped the money up. ‘Keep smiling.'

Bloss wanted to give Kimber a sedative. He wanted to give him a Seroxat sandwich or a Prozac pie or maybe a baseball bat to the side of the head would do the job. Kimber was wired, he was running on high-octane fuel, walking the perimeter of his room, and talking. Talking, talking, talking.

Bloss had been trying to break into the flow. He'd said, ‘Sure of course, me too –' and ‘Listen, we'll do it, we'll definitely do it –' but it was like surfing against the wave and now he was just waiting for Kimber to wind down. He was dealing with a man who had needs, a man with a mission. The mission was to kill someone. It might be DS Mooney or it might be a girl called Jan, but whichever came first, Kimber told him, the other would follow. And then another, and then another.

As he walked the room, Kimber was smiling.

Over the season of peace on earth and goodwill towards men, shootings in London had been running at about three a day and pretty much all of them had involved handguns or small automatic weapons. Shotguns barely figured: they had been the weapon of choice once, but that time was long gone. You might use a shotgun for a punishment shooting, use it to tear someone up, fuck up their legs perhaps, but shotguns weren't cool.

With that number of shootings and that number of handguns, it was difficult to single out a make. The dudes
that hung out – the dudes that liked to show class – they had their likes and dislikes. The dudes liked Walther PPKs, they liked Brococks for their cheapness and availability, they liked the weapons coming in from Romania and the Czech Republic, especially the Scorpion machine pistol, and the dudes liked Glocks too, Glocks were solid, but where they scored them and who from was another matter.

Marilyn Hayes found several standard references to
guns/illegal import/models/country of origin
, but nothing that came with a crime number until she fed in the area reference NHG on the off-chance –
Notting Hill Gate
– and came up with an incident that had occurred almost on the doorstep.

It involved some dudes. Dudes in a BMW parked just off the Saints – Retro Man and his associates. The report told her that two men in the Beamer had died at the scene and a third had been declared dead on arrival at hospital. It told her that the killer had taken a bullet in the side and had spilled his gun before running from the scene. Well, not running: hobbling. Glock Man. He'd left a trail of blood for more than half a mile, twice tried to hail cabs, jumped a bus to the horror of its passengers, and finally had run into a pharmacy off the Portobello Road and started sweeping up sterile dressings from the counter before passing out. Officers at the scene had found the weapon still underneath the car. It was listed as a Glock 21, .45.

Marilyn took the report to Stella. In doing so, she skirted round Harriman's desk, even though Harriman wasn't there. She had paper-clipped a charge-sheet to the report, together with a note to say that Glock Man, whose name was given as Eric Keith Fellows, was on remand awaiting trial.

Harriman called in from his mobile five minutes later. He said, ‘Lexie Bramall. People call him the Trader. He's trying to raise money on the bracelet.'

‘Is he Mister Mystery?'

‘I doubt it. But he's trying to find a buyer, so he knows the guy.'

‘Probably,' Stella said. ‘Unless it came to him at several removes. Let's hope not. Okay, find him.'

‘Easy to say.'

‘He'll have convictions, he'll have a record, ask Marilyn, she's records and reports.'

Harriman hung up. Stella redialled and jumped through the hoops necessary to gain an interview with Eric Keith Fellows.

Dark came in early, though it was city-dark, first gunmetal cloud with a bilious, yellow tinge to its edges, then a deeper dusk and a sky slick with sodium, with neon, with halogen.

Stella sat in a prison interview room and made certain offers to Eric Keith Fellows. Since he'd killed three men in broad daylight there wasn't a hell of a lot of leeway, but, given that the men in question had extensive records of violence and intimidation, she was able to raise the notion of ‘retaliation' or ‘response to threats'. What Stella wanted in return, she told him, was the name of the armourer who had supplied the Glock 21. Fellows listened carefully to what Stella had to say, then he told her to fuck off. He told her no deal. He told her that just talking to her was bad enough and that he had no desire to die.