Cold Kill (45 page)

Kimber tried to run through, hobbling, heading for a walk-space under one of the blocks, but Jaz moved in and kicked him high on the hip. Kimber howled and went down hard on to the packed snow. Jaz kicked him again, finding the gut and the ribs; when his man rolled over, he stamped down on his back, then on his head.

Jaz said, ‘You fucking freak.'

The street-dealers stood back, watching, thinking this must be an old score, this must be something really bad from the past. Jaz brought his heel down into Kimber's face, then tried to land a second but missed and raked the man's chest. Kimber bucked and rolled, but Jaz was after him, getting kicks into the body. He was finding a rhythm now, he was warming to his task.

Stella held the Glock up, double-handed, elbows slightly bent, knees flexed. She said, ‘Police!' Jaz turned. The street-dealers left, moving away quietly one by one, not hurrying but not looking back. When Jaz followed them, Stella didn't stop him. To Delaney she said, ‘Call an ambulance first, then my office number, it's on automatic transfer.'

Kimber stirred and sighed, then rolled on to his back and made an attempt to sit up. Stella stood over him with the Glock. She said, ‘Stay there. Sit on your hands.' He was bleeding from the nose and from a dozen face wounds; a great clump of hair and flesh had come away from his scalp where Jaz had stamped on him. Rivulets of blood ran down to his jawline and collected at the point of his chin, a thin drizzle.

When he smiled, his teeth were awash with blood and he made little bloody bubbles when he spoke: ‘Stella. Stella. Stella. It all went wrong, didn't it?'

The light went out of his eyes as if something had switched off. After that, he didn't speak a word.

The party was hot but Dallas was ready to leave. She was nicely drunk and didn't want to go any further with that for a while. Later, yes.

Bloss picked up his rucksack and asked, ‘Is it far to go?'

‘Down in the Gate, Pembridge Square.'

They walked hand in hand because it gave them stability and they laughed their way down the street. The Ocean Diner was throwing pink and blue neon prints on to the snow: cocktail glasses that filled and emptied and filled. Dallas slipped and almost took him with her, shrieking as they slid sideways like skaters.

She said, ‘Hold on, Jimmy.' He'd given her the name on his fake passport. ‘Jimmy, I'm going.' She slipped again, laughing helplessly, and grabbed at him and their faces came close. She looked into his eyes, that startling blue, and reached up to kiss him, her Christmas Eve one-night stand.

Bloss thought he would phone the ferry in the morning and see whether the three o'clock sailing was expected. If not, he'd go to the ferry port and wait; take the first boat going anywhere. He was angry because he ought to be in another country, away clear, and the anger must have shown in his face, because Dallas pulled back for a moment and said, ‘What's wrong?'

He shook his head and smiled. ‘Nothing. Everything's fine. I met you.'

*

At her flat, they made love and Dallas thought Bloss was a by-the-book man – go here and do this, now go there and do that. She didn't mind; at least it was a book he'd read. She got up and went to get a drink. Bloss looked round at her room and found his anger growing: the collection of soft toys, the poster of a dolphin leaping against a setting sun. What luck had brought him to this stupid girl's bedroom in a snow-locked city, what black chance, what killer destiny?

Dallas came back empty-handed. ‘There's nothing to drink. I was expecting to be at my parents. I thought there was some red wine, but there's nothing.' She looked cheated.

‘It's okay,' he said. ‘Coffee or something.'

‘I really fancy a drink.' She got into bed beside him. When he didn't reply, she added, ‘Once you've started to think about it, you know…'

He could feel the edge of anger again and fought it down. Was she really asking him to –

‘There are a few places in the Gate.' She kissed him and made a girlish face. ‘Don't you want a drink?' He shrugged. ‘I do. I
really
do.'

Bloss got out of bed and put his clothes on.

Dallas lay back against the pillows, giving him a good view of her breasts. She said, ‘It won't take you long.'

A & E had been at full stretch all night – minor car-crashes, broken bones from falls on the ice, road-rage victims, pub fights, alcoholic poisoning, the usual Christmas heart-attacks – but Kimber was a police priority so a senior charge nurse and a trauma consultant had taken him on. Two police officers stayed with him the whole time; they were in the cubicle, they were in X-ray. In any case, had Kimber tried for freedom he would have been towing a hospital gurney, because he was cuffed to the frame.

The consultant told Stella that Kimber had major abrasions to the face and head, a broken nose, a fractured cheekbone, extensive bruising of the upper body and three cracked ribs. Stella informed the two officers that they wouldn't be getting home for Christmas. She put in a call to Mike Sorley, who asked, ‘Did he tell you where to find Bloss?'

‘He's not telling us anything. He's not speaking. I've got two coppers with him, they have my number.' She paused. ‘They also have yours.'

‘Oh, good.'

‘I'll have a go at him tomorrow. He won't be out of hospital until then.'

‘He'll speak. Eventually, he'll say something.'

‘Will he? I'm not sure.'

‘He knows where Bloss is. He'll want to cut a deal.'

‘Maybe. I wouldn't count on it.' Stella had seen the light fade from Kimber's eyes. ‘I think he's gone somewhere.'

‘What?'

‘Somewhere inside his head.'

‘Jesus, Stella.'

‘I don't know,' she said. ‘I'll try again tomorrow.'

She would wait until Kimber had left A & E and gone into a side ward with the two officers. Delaney waited with her. He said, ‘I knew you'd never get a cab. I called the squad room, they said you'd left, I called the flat, but you didn't pick up, I called your mobile and it went to message. The main roads are fucked, but no one's using the back-doubles.'

‘Do you know what luck is? A combination of circumstances.'

They were in the relatives' room, the place where people face up to bad news. He put his arms round her and held her tightly, his face in her hair. He said, ‘It scares me to
think about it.' When they pulled apart, he said, ‘I love you, Stella.'

She thought she should tell him, there and then, because a bad-news room might be just the right place.

‘There's something –'

One of the officers assigned to Kimber came in to say that he was in a ward and had been given a knockout drop.

Delaney said, ‘Let's go home.'

Jamie walked the streets of Notting Hill in his padded coat, his hair clotted, his beard a tangled scrub, holding up the dying Christ to anyone who passed.

His Christmas message was, ‘All will be well and all manner of things will be well.'

Leon Bloss stepped left to avoid him and Jamie went the same way; Bloss stepped right and Jamie stepped right. ‘All will be well –'

The anger rose in Bloss like bile, a hot gusher. He shouldered Jamie, but the prophet staggered, then stepped back, gripping the crucifix, bringing it close to Bloss's face. Important to get the words out, to finish the message.

‘All will be well –'

Bloss spat his anger out, a gobbet of phlegm that hit the man on the cross. He palmed Jamie aside, then walked on towards the late-night liquor store. Jamie stared. For a moment, he was inhabiting a vacuum where energy, action, loathing and fury were all in abeyance; then they rushed in to fill the space. To fill Jamie.

Bloss felt a blow to his head and managed to half turn before it properly took effect, then the force of it ran through him and he was on his knees like a man at prayer. Jamie stood over him and the crucifix flashed in the storefront light as it rose and fell. He was hitting wherever he could, Bloss's skull, his face, his neck. Blood geysered up from a split artery to soak Jamie's face and arms, but he kept striking, anger and outrage behind every blow. Striking for
Christ. When Bloss toppled, Jamie went down with him, hammering at the man's face, at the mouth that had defiled, at the eyes that refused to see.

They were out in the open, close to where Sadie and Jamie had always sat, the shops, the fast-food places, the pubs. Some people came out of the Ocean Diner, two men and two women. Jamie was sitting on the pavement panting from the effort he'd put in. The foursome paused, not sure what they were seeing, then they took in the great halo of blood round Bloss's mashed face. One of the women started to scream.

Jamie said, ‘All will be well. And all manner of things will be well.'

Whatever the right time was, it wasn't when they were making love. Stella held on to Delaney and kissed him hard. He laughed at her eagerness, but it excited him; he didn't consider that it might proceed from fear or guilt.

He got up afterwards to fetch some water and, when the phone rang, Stella assumed it must be for her, so she picked up the call on the phone by the bed. It was and it wasn't. The caller asked for Delaney. He said, ‘Detective Sergeant Harris.'

Stella said, ‘Gerry, it's Stella Mooney.'

It took Harris a moment to make the connection. ‘And is there a John Delaney there?'

‘Yes.'

‘Okay. Before I speak to him, are you… is there an involvement here, between you and him, I mean?'

‘Yes, there is.'

‘Okay. Not that it matters much, at least I don't expect it does, but it's best to have things straight.'

‘What's the problem?'

‘We've got an unlawful killing at Notting Hill Gate. The attacker had John Delaney's business card in his pocket. This guy is pretty disorientated. He's a rough-sleeper by the look of it. We found the card and thought Mr Delaney might be able to shed some light.'

‘We're a street away,' Stella said. ‘We'll come up there.'

‘You know the Ocean Diner?'

‘Yes.'

‘You'll see our scene of crime tent.'

Delaney told Gerry Harris what he knew, which, they agreed, wasn't much: the names Sadie and Jamie, some fragments, the story of a night spent on the street for research purposes. Harris said, ‘Don't worry about it. This is all pretty straightforward. We might find a record, we might not. Someone knows who he is.'

Jamie had left the scene in a police car, accompanied by a forensics officer. Drenched in blood and with the murder-weapon still clutched in his arms, Jamie was a forensic gift.

Halogen lamps had been set up inside the tent and seemed to be drawing thick columns of snow down into their beams. Shadows lurched on the blue screen as the technicians went about their business.

‘Who's the victim?' Stella asked.

Harris shook his head. ‘No ID of any sort. No wallet, no credit cards… Take a look if you like.'

Stella stepped inside the tent and stared down at the man lying there, the wrecked face amid the great patch of blood-soaked snow.

Harris said, ‘He really fucked the guy up, that Jamie.'

You couldn't say what the dead man had looked like. Even if you'd known him well, it wouldn't have been enough, that
one bright blue eye in a churn of flesh, that one view of the sky through the skull.

Stella went back to the street where Delaney was finding shelter in a doorway. He said, ‘And –?'

Stella shrugged. ‘Some guy. Who knows?'

Dallas had fallen asleep minutes after Bloss left. Now she woke, just before first light, and looked at her watch. He'd gone and that was no surprise. Then she turned over and saw his rucksack on the bedroom floor and remembered how he had wanted to keep it near him. She opened it up. A few clothes, a passport, some freaky comic books, a videotape.

Much later, after she had been able to get a train to Oxford, after she'd returned, and when she could be bothered, Dallas would turn the rucksack over to the police. And because Jamie's victim would still be unidentified a connection would be made: just speculative. And a cop would thumb the video into a VCR and watch Billy Souza cutting a deal with Oscar Gribbin.

And even later than that, a neighbour would notice the smell from the loft down on the Isle of Dogs. The locals would arrive with a hydraulic hammer and take the door out and find what was left of JD still on the sofa, though looking nothing like his former self.

Dallas could feel the first flickering of a hangover. She got up and made some coffee and took it back to bed, but she knew that things would get worse. Her hangovers always started slow, then picked up.

She was glad she'd never had that extra drink.

Stella was standing naked at the window in Delaney's flat. From somewhere in the building came the sound of a guitar
playing, slow and bluesy. The snow had stopped. It was the moment before first light, the sky almost clear now, the few patches of cloud reflecting the bilious city glow. As she watched, a thin light spread in from the the horizon, touching the tips of the trees in Holland Park.

I'll tell him
, she thought,
I'll tell him sometime.

Not now.

The End