Down into Darkness (12 page)

‘What can you tell me?'

‘About the wound?'

‘Yes.'

‘A sharp blade, obviously, but a heavy one, I think. Not a fish-gutting knife or a paring knife.'

‘Not a flexible blade.'

‘That's right.'

‘Hunting knife?'

‘Sort of thing, yes. He didn't know it was coming.'

‘Sure?'

‘No defensive cuts on the hands or arms, and the wound is clean and very deep. The killer could have avoided much of the blood.'

‘Of which there would have been lots?'

‘Oh, God, yes. Arterial jet, like a hosepipe.'

‘But not all of it.'

‘What?'

‘The killer's clothing would have been bloodstained.'

‘For sure.'

Someone must have seen him
, Stella thought.
Blood like a burst pipe
. Sue Chapman had organized yellow crime boards on the towpath twenty yards either side of the bench, but no one had come forward to say: Yes, I saw a man who… running in the direction of… acting in a strange…

Keep your head down, keep your mouth shut, don't make their problem your problem. London thinking.

‘How much strength needed for the job?'

‘Strength…' Sam considered. ‘Not so much strength as energy, I'd've thought. You come up behind someone, you're intending to cut his throat, you've equipped yourself with a really keen blade… You yank his head back, you slash.' Sam made an appropriate gesture, then realized he was holding a
scalpel in his hand and gave an apologetic laugh. ‘Not strength but determination.' He went back to work: measuring, assessing. ‘Will the graphologists need him?'

‘They will, yes.' But Stella didn't expect them to say anything other than: see our previous report.

Filthy coward
.

Who are you to pass judgement
? Stella thought.
Who are you to be judge and executioner
? She gave a little shudder and suddenly was filled with a just and intense loathing for this man, this lone vigilante, this angel of wrath or whatever he considered himself to be.

‘Did you say he was a politician?' Sam asked.

‘No. Worked for one.'

‘Ah…'

Stella took a step forward. ‘What made you ask?'

‘I thought you said politician… and he would have been a very unusual specimen.'

‘Why?'

Sam was transferring something to the scales: he held it up for Stella to see. ‘He still had a heart.'

Late in the day, and a storm was building in the Thames Basin, rolling up from Greenwich to the Isle of Dogs. Over west London the cloud cover bellied down and darkened. Lights went on in the
AMIP
-5 squad room, and in Mike Sorley's office eddies of tobacco smoke wafted around the desk lamp: one cigarette burning forgotten in the ashtray, another clipped in Sorley's fingers. He took a long toke, then scratched his head. Ash dropped into his hair. He picked up a sheet of paper that lay atop the other sheets, files, memoranda, faxes, emails, reports, reminders, draft budgets, schedules, minutes, FYEO documents and interdepartmental bullshit.

‘I have to answer this,' he said. ‘I have to make some kind of a fucking comment.'

‘I know.' Stella was sitting in a chair on the other side of the desk; she only sat down in Sorley's office when there was a problem. As it happened, there was a problem, and she was it.

‘So what do you suggest I say? You were along for the ride. They were doing you a favour. They raided the casino so you could nab this guy' – he glanced at the memo – ‘Radu. The whole thing was headed up by a
CO
14 inspector. He's looking at a situation, he's handling it, you come jumping in through all the fucking windows.'

‘Except he wasn't handling it. As I've explained. He was likely to wind up with the girl dead and Radu dead.'

‘So I should say my sergeant quickly appraised the situation, took note of your gross incompetence and decided to save your ass.'

‘That would do it.'

The lights dimmed a moment and there was a far-off crackle of thunder. Sorley took the last of his cigarette in a long pull, crushed it into the ashtray and reached for his ever-open pack.

‘This is just between us and
CO14
at present: unofficial. My unofficial reply will be that you acted foolishly, but things turned out for the best… that sort of bollocks. It will include an apology from you.'

‘He was getting it wrong.'

‘Okay, I believe you. At the moment this is just bitching, rank to rank. I can't get caught up in some sort of fucking inquiry, DS Mooney. It's not going to happen.'

That ‘DS Mooney' made matters clear.

Sorley gestured at the piles on his desk. ‘If kiss-ass is the way to avoid that, kiss-ass is what will happen.' Stella was tight-lipped. He added: ‘Jesus Christ, a line will do.'

‘Do I have an option?'

‘No.' Sorley glanced at his watch and started to stack papers into an attaché case. ‘Have we got a DNA match for the killer?'

‘You mean DNA found at both crime scenes?'

‘Yes.'

‘We're waiting for the lab. But, listen, it's the same guy: has to be.' Sorley looked at her. She said, ‘You're not thinking copy-cat?'

He shrugged. ‘It's unlikely, given that we haven't released anything about the victims being written on. Depends who might have seen the bodies before we did.' Then: ‘What have you got?'

‘Nothing. No motive, no link between the victims… and if it's serial, then the likelihood is that any connection lies in the mind of the killer, and logic isn't going to help us much. Basically, we need more evidence; need to see more of the pattern.'

‘Would another body help?' His weary tone leached all humour out of the question.

DI Mike Sorley had left his wife because whenever they had a row she would hit him, and he'd been frightened: not of her but of himself. Frightened he would forget to tolerate it; frightened that he would hit back, one time, and find he couldn't stop. He'd lived in the office for a while, bringing pizza and Thai takeaways back, sleeping between two chairs, using the
AMIP
-5 bathroom for a strip-wash and a shave before the team arrived.

Stella had known about Sorley's problem. She'd been working late in those days too; returning to the squad room after downing a couple of vodkas at the pub, trying to displace a problem of her own: a problem called John Delaney. She'd lived with George Paterson for five years, and George loved her in the way people want to be loved, which wasn't enough to save him, because to make an even match Stella would have needed to love George in the same way. Her love for him was a different thing, had
become
a different thing: fondness and tenderness and admiration. Admiration – that was the killer.

Delaney had come into her life at just the right time. Just the wrong time.

Sorley had lived in the office not because he couldn't think of anywhere else to be, but to avoid that final, that conclusive, move; Stella was staying late because she couldn't – or wouldn't – make a decision. They would sit together in the
AMIP
-5 squad room – green curry and Tiger beer, cigarettes and sympathy – with Sorley doing most of the talking. He was a man lost; he needed advice, and he needed reassurance, and Stella had done what she could. It had created a bond of friendship between them, which is why, when he called her
DS Mooney, she knew she had to listen. Eventually Mike Sorley found a new wife. Karen was almost pretty and liked to laugh and was generous in bed.

The storm was circling in the middle distance as he put his key in the lock of his own front door and felt, as he always had since they'd started to live together, as if nothing bad would happen under that roof. They had their first-of-the-evening drink together, as always, and talked and made a few unimportant plans.

While Karen cooked, Sorley spread his papers out on the kitchen table and lit a cigarette. Karen sighed, and he said, ‘I know.' It was her habit to underline the health warnings on the packs in red pen and put Nicorette in the pockets of his jackets. It was evidence of the way she felt about him, and he had vowed to give up smoking to make her happy. In fact, he was going to give up tomorrow; or the day after that, for sure.

He thought being happy was a knack and wondered why it had eluded him for quite so long.

Storm-light over London: yellow, blue-white, dirty pinks in the cloud-wrack, and the rain still holding off like bad news delayed.

Arthur Dorey, aka Sekker, was standing in the hallway of a grand house admiring the paintings. He didn't know much about art, but he decoded the female nude pretty quickly. It made him laugh, just as it had made Delaney laugh. After a short while he was shown into a large room where a man with a goatee and a gunslinger's moustache sat behind a broad desk. It was a straightforward deal, the terms already agreed, the job already done.

Sekker pocketed a white envelope that was reassuringly bulky. He said, ‘It was slow coming.'

Stanley Bowman nodded. ‘It was on its way.'

‘Yes. Slowly.'

Bowman pressed an intercom button on the phone, and the man who'd brought Sekker up to the room took him back downstairs, to a side door. The first few fat raindrops hit as Sekker emerged on to a side road close to the park, and a wind was shaking the trees. It was two hours before sunset, and already the street lights were flickering into life.

Bowman made a phone call. His voice was even, but it carried a cold edge. ‘He came to the house.'

The answering voice was looking for a similar, calm tone, though failing to find it. ‘No, he shouldn't have done that.'

‘He came to the house to collect.'

‘Did you pay him?'

‘Yes.'

‘I'll have the money refunded to you.'

‘Why wasn't he paid?'

‘After he'd… completed… he left town for a couple of days. It's usual. We didn't know where he was. He thought we did.' The voice had a faint burr to it: maybe Irish, maybe American.

‘Make it clear to him that he doesn't come to the house.'

‘Of course.'

‘Make it clear.' A pause; then Bowman said, ‘I hear there's a trader on Harefield.'

‘Small time.'

‘They always start small.'

‘You want it fixed?'

‘Keep an eye on him.'

‘We can fix it for you.'

‘That's good to know. No, just keep an eye on him. As long as it's low activity, low yield.'

‘Any time you say.'

‘I know.'

‘And I'm sorry he came to the house. He shouldn't have come to the house.'

‘Tell him. And listen, keep the money.'

‘Keep it?'

‘For the time being. In case this other guy… In case we need to move on him.'

The thunder was like sheet metal, tearing.

Bowman poured himself a Scotch, cupping a handful of ice into the glass, and sighed. He went to the window to watch the storm as it hit.

Thunder-rain moved down the Strip in solid squalls, bright in the street lights or shot through with red-and-blue neon where it sluiced the shopfronts. The storm was overhead, thunder slamming rooftops and ringing in cornerstones.

The television in Gideon Woolf's room fizzed and popped. He never turned it off, night or day. Just now it was showing what looked like a news broadcast: houses and vehicles burning, men in tri-colour DCU combat fatigues running in a fast crouch from cover to cover, holding a line on each side of a dusty street. Bodies lay out in the open. He picked up the remote control and zapped through a few stations. Men in jungle-greens were running in a fast crouch from cover to cover as incoming ripped into the tree-line. Either this was a movie and the first scenes had been real, or the other way round. He zapped a few more and got back to the men in DCUs. Or men a lot like them.

Gideon was dressing to go out. He favoured an ankle-length black leather coat he'd found in a charity shop: that went over a cotton roll-neck and combat pants together with calf-high lace-up boots. He felt the part. Last, he pulled on the single glove, left hand, that was street code for
I'm carrying
.

He went to the window and peered out at the downpour, at branch lightning glittering against a plum-coloured sky. He liked the look of it. He had no particular intent; this wasn't a mission; but this was the kind of weather that often took Silent Wolf to the streets. Gideon carried an image of the man in his mind, the skirt of his coat turned back by the
wind, leaning into the slant of the rain as he walked the canyons and gulches of the city.

Who would be out in such weather? Only wrongdoers and their Nemesis. Only those who had nothing to lose
.

He was saying those lines to himself and smiling: they were lines from the
Silent Wolf
game. As he watched, a broken-backed column of lightning hissed and crackled, arcing up through the rain. The smell of scorch in the sky was the smell of scorch in his room.

He pushed a sheathed, broad-bladed knife into the top of his right boot and opened the door. He had nothing particular in mind, no one to seek out; the knife was
in case
; it was
who knows?

He dimmed the lights and locked the door as he left. The TV flickered in the half-light: men flanking an APC, coming under fire, fanning out to find cover.

The body count rose: dead men or actors playing dead, who could tell?

He was down on the Strip when he saw her, a woman hurrying home, shoulders hunched against the storm, dark hair hanging in wet tails over the collar of her coat. She was a civilian, that much was clear, because even the toughest pimps had let their girls take to the doorways, the cafés, the bars, to look for work.

Mostly, innocents stayed off the Strip as evening fell, but for those in a hurry it was a short-cut; you walked quickly past the dens and dives to the main road, then took the path through the churchyard that would bring you out four blocks away. In weather like this, it was tempting to save five minutes or more.