Down Among the Dead Men (30 page)

In the kitchen he finds some rags and cleaning products and a pair of bright yellow rubber gloves. He puts on the rubber gloves, returns to Nicky's bedroom and slowly, methodically wipes every trace of himself from the room. Noone collects and folds his clothes
and places them in the bathroom. He takes the taser receipt from his pocket.

Back in Nicky's room Noone puts the receipt in a drawer under a pile of Nicky's crap. He checks Paul Peters for a pulse but can't feel anything. Hooking his hands under the man's armpits he drags him out of the bedroom. On the stairs he lets gravity slide Peters down, holding him enough to prevent too much noise.

He gets Peters into the garage and places him on the smooth cement floor.

It takes him almost ten more minutes to locate a rope. He eventually finds a length of what looks like clothes line in a room in the cellar. The rope is good quality, still inside a plastic wrapper.

Noone takes a wooden chair from the kitchen and brings it to the garage with the rope. He places it under one of the girders which form the support for the angled roof and loops a section of rope over it. It takes him several attempts to make a noose but eventually it's there. Satisfied, he drags the man to the centre of the garage underneath the noose. A ticking noise from the engine of his car is the only sound.

Noone places the noose around Paul Peters' neck and tightens it. He drags him into a sitting position on the wooden chair and hauls on the rope. The girder creaks gently as Peters is lifted by the neck upwards. When his feet are six inches above the cement floor, Noone ties the rope in position and steps back. He's sweating with the effort now but his mind feels as calm and collected as he can ever recall. It's as if the situation is evolving in front of his eyes and he is simply a part of that process.

Noone strips the hanging man and balls up his clothes. He places the chair back against the wall. It's only later he'll come to realise that's a small mistake.

Noone checks his watch and waits ten minutes in the darkened garage just to make certain the guy's dead. It's peaceful in there and Noone feels an unaccustomed sense of privilege and gratitude.

You're my first
.

Noone doesn't know if he's spoken the words aloud but he thinks he may have done. He tries to gain a sense of the import of the moment but it's just time passing as always. He takes hold
of the dead man's penis. He doesn't know why. This is new to him. He doesn't know how killers behave. Holding the cock in the rubber glove feels strange.

After a moment, Noone lets go and picks up the dentist's clothing before moving towards the kitchen a changed man. A virgin no longer.

In the kitchen, Noone selects a large knife from the woodblock stack on the countertop. He feels the weight of it and heads upstairs to the bedroom, the dead man's clothes under his arm.

Upstairs everything is exactly as he left it.

On the bed, to his surprise, Maddy is making small noises. He realises that while he's been busy downstairs it's possible the woman could have woken. She could have called the police if she'd been a little stronger. It's a bad mistake and Noone feels a rush of adrenaline flow through him so powerful that his hand starts to shake. He has to start being more careful. What would have happened if Paul Peters had come to?

Noone puts the taser on the bed and places the kitchen knife next to it. He finds a tie with which he gags Maddy. He uses four leather belts hanging on a rail inside the wardrobe door to strap her spread-eagled to the bed and then removes her bra.

Maddy Peters comes round as Noone's replacing her husband's clothes in the wardrobe.

She blinks, her vision unsteady, her expression confused. Her jaw looks broken. Noone expects her to struggle but she doesn't. Instead she just watches him, her eyes wide.

He walks across to the bed and looks down. He feels scared and excited at the same time and becomes aroused. He doesn't particularly want to make Maddy suffer but she probably will. Fuck, look at her, she's suffering already, looking up at him, the man who's going to kill her, the last thing she'll ever see. Noone bends in close and tries to see what she's thinking. So this is what it's like, he thinks. The power is unbelievable.

He can almost see her thinking about her child, her husband, and about her life. It makes him feel like crying, but he doesn't, because he doesn't cry. He could walk away. Disappear right now.

He could do it, too. He has the money.

But apart from the fact that she's a witness, when everything is taken into account, he really does want to kill her.

'Hello, Maddy,' he says. He keeps his voice low. 'I'm sorry about this.'

He means it. Kind of.

Sixty-One

Frank hadn't been down in the tunnels much during the search in the days following the murders. Before Dean Quinner's death there'd been little to suggest that the killings in Birkdale had anything to connect them physically to the Williamson tunnels, so the search, while thorough, had been limited.

There hadn't, Frank was certain, been anything shoddy about the search. It was just that, with finite resources, there was only so much they could do. Especially with so many other potential avenues of investigation.

And less than ten per cent of the tunnels complex is available to the public. What Frank is looking for won't be in that section, he's sure of that.

There's a map on the wall of the centre. The system extends under Edge Hill haphazardly. Frank pinpoints where he is and takes the view that if Nicky's going to be down here, he'll be as far as possible from the entrance.

Frank takes one of the printed maps from a stack on the counter and heads down a flight of bare concrete steps into the first of the caverns. He studies the map for several minutes, analysing the layout and imagining where he'd have put Nicky. There are a couple of possibilities but he has no idea if they are accessible. In all likelihood the places he's identified have already been examined.

And yet . . .

The only time he'd been in here, a quick visit at the start of the investigation, the place had been alive with activity, lights and people. Now, deserted, the bare brick dripping moisture and his torch sending shadows dancing across the blackness, it's just about the last place on earth Frank wants to be.

And if I feel like that, what must Nicky have felt like?

Say
feels
. Keep the option open at least. With food and water it's possible the boy may still be alive.

Frank follows the beam of his torch.

At the end of the first cavern he follows the path over a water-filled trough and through a twisting concrete shaft that bends to the right. Down another flight of steps and he's at a crossroads.

On the map the yellow lines indicate those tunnels that have been explored. The red lines show those that are dangerous, or filled with rubble, or otherwise unusable.

'Here goes nothing,' Frank mutters and takes the direction shown by the red line.

This shaft narrows dramatically and runs on a gentle slope for about forty metres before it opens into a cavern similar to those at the entrance. The difference here is that the space is mostly filled with builder's rubble. There has been an effort to excavate some of this but Frank sees it's got a way to go. He scrambles awkwardly up the slope until he has to crouch. Near to the top he can see that there is a narrow space. He pokes his head through. The torch beam picks up a narrow shaft, the bottom of which is covered in water.

Frank squeezes through the gap and tumbles a couple of metres into the shaft. He barks his shin against a rusted iron bar set into the wall of the shaft, and as his feet find solid ground freezing water pours over the tops of his trainers.

'Fuck!' He rubs his leg and moves slowly forward, not trusting the surface underfoot. At the end of the water-filled corridor, there is a brick arch dividing the space ahead. Below the arch, from what little Frank can see, there is another dumping ground for rubbish. Here he can go no further.

Frank looks at his map. One of his possibilities is out.

Ten minutes later he's standing at the entrance to another of his guesses. A maze of small passages seems – on the map at least – to finish in a remote dead end. Frank sees that if he is to access this he must first get through a crawl space only just large enough to fit his frame.

Frank can feel his heart rate leap at the prospect of inserting himself between the two great slabs of brick and concrete but he
slides his head and shoulders in and wriggles forward. Lying there, he can almost feel the weight of the earth piled above him pressing down on the two-hundred-year-old structure. If he hears a rat he knows he's going to scream. Just the idea of being in here with a rodent is enough to jerk him into motion and he shuffles manically forward until, thankfully, he slides out into a space large enough to stand upright.

It seems to be a second dead end. Another slope of rubble with a wooden door at the top, propped against the wall. Frank scrambles up and sees that the door has been placed across a rough gap in a wall.

He gets a little lift. Someone's put this there for a reason. He pushes through the gap into a large cavern with a curved roof. There's a metal structure at one end – a box.

Big enough for someone to be inside. Frank feels his stomach lurch.

Drawing nearer, Frank can see it's some sort of industrial container. How it came to be down here he has no idea, but the tunnels are littered with the abandoned detritus of centuries of small industry. The container looks like one of the more recent additions but it's still in an advanced state of dilapidation.

Close to, the box is a solid-looking affair with a rusty locking arm placed through two steel hoops.

Frank slides the lock back and notices the metal is free of rust. It's been opened sometime recently.

It takes him an effort to free the door, and when he pries it loose, it flies back and he loses his footing. Frank's torch clatters to the floor and goes out. In the same instant, the smell hits him and he knows what's inside the container.

The next few minutes are, quite simply, the worst in Frank Keane's life.

He scrapes his hands on the rocky surface of the cavern floor, scrabbling for his torch. Once found he presses and re-presses the switch without success, each passing second alone in the dark sending him ever closer to full-blown panic.

And then he remembers his mobile. He drags it from the pocket of his zip-up and flicks it on.

In the blue-white light he sees what must be the decaying corpse of Nicky Peters lying curled in a corner of the filthy metal container, his back to the door as if, in the final hours and days, he had waited for the end without any trace of hope. He looks very small, and somehow still vulnerable.

Frank's ashamed of himself for being afraid. He's ashamed of himself for not being able to find the lost boy. Most of all, he's ashamed of himself for failing, completely, to protect the innocent.

He turns off the phone, puts his head in his hands and sits in the dark with Nicky, crying.

PART TWO

LOS ANGELES

One

About the size of a labrador, the raccoon scurries out from the trees at the foot of Fern Dell Drive and heads directly for the four lanes of traffic on Los Feliz Boulevard.

Noone, stretching before his run, watches with interest as the animal darts between the cars and trucks without breaking stride. It doesn't look right or left and none of the cars has to swerve. In less than ten seconds the raccoon has reached the safety of the other side and disappears into a thick hedge bordering a mansion on the corner of North Serrano.

A street raccoon, clearly.

Noone, wearing a long-beaked cap pulled low and a pair of dark blue Nike wraparounds, jogs along Los Feliz before turning left on the road heading up past the Greek Theatre. Just beyond there he leaves the road and takes the first of the maze of ochre-coloured hiking trails that criss-cross Griffith Park. He opens up a little on the rising ground, enjoying, as always, how the city – so close – is forgotten so quickly. There's silence up here as Noone steadily climbs through a series of winding trails. After ten minutes the white deco grandeur of the Griffith Observatory starts to appear between the trees. The building gets closer and then recedes as the tracks dance around the canyons. Finally, almost thirty minutes after leaving the city, Noone's running up a track directly below the observatory. He puts in a sprint on the last fifty yards and arrives on the lawn in front of the building breathing hard. It's a Monday morning in July and the weather is warm.

At this time of the morning there are few tourists and Noone walks through those that are here letting his muscles warm down. When his breath is back to normal he walks around to the side
of the observatory facing the city. Leaning against the white wall he looks out towards the tall buildings of downtown, misty blue through the haze. To his right, lost from view, is the coast and Santa Monica. It took Noone almost forty-five minutes to drive across from there this morning but it's worth it. Up here the City of Angels is laid out below him and his mind is clear.

Pushing off from the wall of the observatory, Noone walks around to the front of the building and starts jogging down Western Canyon Road. He takes a turn back onto one of the trails and winds down in the direction of the Hollywood Reservoir. Around here the trails are less well used and Noone sees no one for almost ten minutes. With the greenery and the cypress trees and golden light, he could be in Tuscany.

He works his way up past Bugsy Siegel's old house, squatting above Mulholland Drive like a medieval castle, the Hollywood sign incongruous on the hill behind. In more recent years the place had been owned by Madonna but she is long gone too now.

Five minutes later, Noone slows his pace as he jogs past the back of a French chateau-style mansion with rolling grounds tumbling down the side of the canyon. The high, thick stone walls that surround the place have discreet, expensive-looking cameras dotted around the perimeter.