Crossbones Yard (16 page)
Authors: Kate Rhodes
It was impossible to sleep. Lars and Lola were trying out a new sexual style. They had graduated from fast and furious to experimental, and seemed to be aiming for the longest orgasm of all time. I finally drifted off to the sound of Lola repeating Lars’s name, like she was afraid he might disappear before the act was complete. A nightmare woke me a few hours later. I was locked out of the flat wearing only a T-shirt, my feet bare on the frozen road, staring through the windows of Will’s empty van. The black tarpaulin was there again, rolled up like a huge cigar. Even though I knew what was inside, the temptation to look was irresistible. But when the fabric pulled apart, the white face that gazed up at me didn’t belong to Suzanne Wilkes. It belonged to Will. His eyes were fixed on the sky, the wound in his throat gaping. My heart rate slowed as soon as I opened my eyes. At least Will was alive and, given the downward spiral he’d been following, hospital was the safest place for him.
Lola listened to a potted version of events while she made coffee. Her spoon clattered into the sink when she heard about Will.
‘Will he be able to walk?’ She glanced down at her mile-long legs in horror. For someone who made a living on the stage, his injuries must have seemed like the end of the world.
‘Probably. But it’ll be a long time.’
‘The poor soul. It makes me feel guilty. You’re both going through all this, while I’m mooning around, singing stupid songs in a bar.’
‘Don’t knock it. It sounds great to me.’
‘It is.’ She buried her hands in her red curls. ‘It’s more than I deserve.’
I smiled at her. ‘Lucky beast.’
‘Lars is taking me to Malmö, to meet his family.’
‘Oh my God,’ I groaned. ‘You’ll be eating reindeer and living in a log cabin before you can say Ikea.’
Lola giggled, then her face grew serious again, as if it was a crime to seem happy. ‘What ward is Will on?’
‘Bermondsey.’
She scribbled the word down on the back of an envelope, then wrapped her arms round me. She smelled of the Scandinavian aftershave Lars wafted around the bathroom: pine cones, lavender and sea air.
I set off down the stairs at ten o’clock, mentally preparing myself to see Will. By now he would be coming to, trying to find ways to cope with the pain.
Burns was waiting by the gate when I opened the security door, blowing clouds of hot air into the cold, smoking a fantasy cigarette.
‘Morning, Alice. I’m sorry about your brother.’ His pinhole eyes peered at me through his thick lenses.
‘What are you after, Don?’
‘You know me too well.’ Burns’s small mouth broke into a smile. ‘I want you to meet someone.’
‘It’s Saturday. Don’t you believe in weekends?’
‘They’re cancelled for the time being,’ he said. He was already beginning the difficult job of squeezing himself into his car.
I wondered if Alvarez had told him about our flirtation the night before; another piece of my complicated sexual history to add to the official jigsaw.
Burns focused on his driving as we turned right on to Tower Bridge Road.
‘Your brother had a lucky escape,’ he commented.
‘You’re kidding. He’ll be in pain for months, and the physio will be agony.’ I could have gone on arguing, but there was no point. The car was stuck in traffic on Tower Bridge, giving me the chance to take in my favourite view. The Thames swung left towards the Houses of Parliament, but there was no glitter today, just acres of mud-brown water, currents twisting under its surface, like sinews under skin.
‘I mean he’s lucky they left it at that.’ Burns hunched uncomfortably over the wheel.
‘I’m not following you.’
‘There’s a witness.’ He glanced across at me. ‘She saw a car pull up round the back of her flats in Stockwell late yesterday afternoon. A bloke dragged him off the back seat, dumped him by the rubbish bins and drove away.’
‘Fucking bastard,’ I muttered.
‘The dozy cow didn’t get the licence number. Too shocked, apparently.’
Burns headed right towards the East End. When I was growing up people told you never to go there alone, even in daylight, unless you wanted to get mugged or shot in the back. These days Wapping High Street was failing to live up to its shady reputation. Gangster hideouts and dark alleyways had given way to delicatessens, estate agents and Pizza Express. I closed my eyes and tried to make sense of what Burns had said. Someone had pushed Will from the roof of a building, scooped him into the back of their car and left him in a car
park, on a day when it was cold enough to snow. It was hard to fathom why anyone would want to inflict that much pain.
park, on a day when it was cold enough to snow. It was hard to fathom why anyone would want to inflict that much pain.
‘At least this means Will’s in the clear, doesn’t it?’ I said.
‘Not if there’s a gang of them.’ Burns avoided my gaze. ‘We’ll see what he’s got to say when he comes round.’
There was no point in contradicting him. Disagreement just made Burns even more determined to fly in the face of logic. We drove through narrow, gentrified streets, lined with Smart cars and Prius estates − well-heeled young couples doing their bit to save the planet. He parked outside a converted Victorian factory. It looked different from the neighbouring buildings. Decades of East End grime had been scrubbed away, restoring the bricks to their original pink. It stuck out, like a baby surrounded by adults. As we walked towards the entrance Burns warned me who we were about to visit.
‘Brace yourself,’ he said. ‘He’s not great company at the minute.’
Mark Wilkes took forever to answer the doorbell. A pair of dull brown eyes inspected us through the gap before he finally let us in. A tornado had passed through his flat. Clothes were lying in abandoned heaps in the hall, and an assortment of books, cups and takeaway food cartons were scattered across every surface. The sitting room smelled of coffee and stale air, and a pile of bedding was heaped in the corner. Wilkes looked even worse than his flat. His T-shirt had seen better days and his greasy brown hair clearly hadn’t been washed for some time. The rings under his eyes were so dark that he looked like he’d been punched. When he traipsed away to make us a drink I opened the window a few centimetres to air the room. A Siamese cat appeared out of nowhere and rubbed against my legs, mewing a high-pitched greeting. She curled up beside me on the sofa, purring loudly. When Wilkes came back there was no clear space on his coffee table, so he dumped the mugs on the floor.
‘The cat’s Suzanne’s,’ he said. ‘Fuck knows what I’ll do with her now.’
Wilkes’s voice was flat-lining. The tone was instantly recognisable. Depressives always sound the same. At its worst the illness reduces their speech to a monotone, as if nothing could ever surprise or please them again. Burns was minding his own business, balancing himself precariously on a tiny stool. Wilkes sat cross-legged on the floor, like a primary school child, waiting to be told what to do. He started talking before I had the chance to ask a question.
‘I told her to give up that fucking job, wasting her time with street people. Scum, the lot of them.’
His hands were balled into fists, clenching and unclenching, like he was preparing for a fight. Maybe he would carry on yelling at the walls long after we’d gone. Burns looked shaken, as though the torrent of words had knocked him sideways, but for me it was business as usual. No one chooses to visit a psychologist unless they’re prepared to shout their problems down.
‘I don’t know what I’m meant to do,’ he said, on the verge of tears. ‘They won’t even give her back to me.’
I tried not to think about the two women I’d found, side by side in the freezer at Guy’s. A picture of Suzanne Wilkes was balanced on a table beside me, next to a tumbler of whisky, covered in smeared fingerprints. The smell of alcohol so early in the day made me feel queasy. The photo looked nothing like the woman I had found beside Will’s van. She was standing beside her husband, arms slung round each other’s shoulders, beaming, as if they’d been out on the tiles. She must have been my height, the top of her head barely reaching his shoulder, a cap of sleek black hair framing her delicate face.
‘How long were you married?’ I asked.
Wilkes began to speak more calmly. Maybe my question was a welcome distraction. ‘Since June. The wedding was in
Cyprus. She sorted the whole thing, sent out the invitations, booked the hotel.’
Cyprus. She sorted the whole thing, sent out the invitations, booked the hotel.’
Sooner or later someone would have to make phone calls, tell the relatives. Burns sat next to me and tried to catch Wilkes’s eye. Eventually he got a word in edgeways, and began to scribble down Wilkes’s garbled answers. I observed his reactions, and tried to work out why Burns was so keen for me to spend my Saturday in his company. There was little to learn about Wilkes’s state of mind except that he was in denial, stuck in the first stage of grief, which could last for months.
I got up and went to the bathroom. It was just as Suzanne had left it. The cabinet was crammed with pots of nail varnish, eye make-up, moisturiser: dozens of Superdrug reminders for Mark Wilkes that his wife wasn’t coming home.
There were more photos in the hall. I spotted one of Suzanne at the centre of a sea of faces and did a double-take. I recognised one of them instantly. Morris Cley was standing beside her, waving, as if he’d never been happier. It must have been taken before he went to prison. He looked like a different person, less grey and careworn. Eight or nine people were clustered around Suzanne in an overgrown garden, and there must have been more, because the photo had been cropped to fit the frame. For some reason my heart was pumping too quickly, but there were a dozen innocent reasons why Cley would know her. Her job would have brought her into contact not just with rough sleepers, but with many of Southwark’s most vulnerable people.
Burns slumped on the wall when we got outside. He was panting so hard, it sounded like he’d run a marathon.
‘Poor bastard.’ He took off his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose. ‘I’m glad we saw him though. Take a guess where Suzanne used to work, Alice.’
‘Surprise me.’
‘The Bensons’ place. Street Safe sent her in to help the punters get job interviews.’
‘Yet another connection,’ I murmured.
The East End disappeared in the wing mirror and I let the sights of London wash over me, like a tourist who’s just touched down. A queue had gathered outside the Tower of London, all waiting to pay an extortionate sum to be dazzled by the world’s biggest collection of bling. Burns was talking non-stop in his soothing hybrid accent. As usual he was asking me to do something unpleasant.
‘You can go tomorrow, can’t you? It won’t take all day.’
‘Why would I want to waste my Sunday on Marie Benson?’
Burns frowned. ‘She knows what’s going on, Alice. You were right about our man being chairman of the Benson fan club. She’s got to know who he is.’
‘She won’t tell me a thing, Don. Withholding information’s the only power she’s got left.’
I felt like pointing out that the murderer was just as likely to be a complete unknown, who got off on all the gory stories the press told about the Bensons’ deeds when he was a kid. And who knew how much information had been leaked at the time? But there was no point in trying to reason with Burns when he had the bit between his teeth. When I finally agreed to visit her he looked smug. Yet again he’d managed to persuade me to do something against my better judgement. His technique never failed, he just carried on begging until I crumbled.
It was lunchtime when Burns dropped me at the hospital. I was steeling myself to face visiting Will when Laura Wallis came into my mind. I decided to call on her as a delaying tactic. I knew it would cheer me up to read how much more weight she’d gained.
When I got to Ruskin Ward another patient was asleep in Laura’s bed, and there was no sign of her ever-present mother. I spoke to the first nurse I saw.
‘Do you know which ward Laura Wallis has gone to, please?’
She looked confused. ‘Sorry, I’ve just come on duty, I’ll have to check.’
She scurried away to ask the ward sister, but I already knew what must have happened. Laura had nagged some well-meaning intern into sending her home, even though she was still below her target weight. She was probably lounging on the sofa right now, calling her mates, arranging her birthday party. The ward sister bustled towards me.
‘I left a message on your voicemail, Dr Quentin. Would you like to come in here for a minute?’
I followed her into the airless cubbyhole she used for an office. She had a brisk, pleasant manner, and a broad Belfast accent. It was clear she didn’t believe in beating around the bush.
‘We lost her last night, I’m afraid.’
‘Lost her?’ My brain was lagging at least two steps behind.
‘Laura had an arrhythmia. They took her to ITC but it was too late.’
‘Her kidney function was improving,’ I stuttered. ‘She was gaining weight.’
The sister gave a sympathetic nod. ‘I know, but the heart muscle was damaged. That’s anorexia for you.’
Something snapped inside me. I felt it go, like the sound runners hear when their Achilles tendon breaks. Maybe we’re all held together by invisible elastic bands that we don’t notice until it’s too late.
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