Down into Darkness (23 page)

She went to them, talking softly, trying to coax them away, though it was impossible for her to keep the ragged edge out of her voice. Finally, the younger had turned to her, dry-eyed, and asked, ‘Who is it?'

Stella asked questions that brought no useful answer. ‘Did you see anyone, anything? Did you hear anyone, anything? His car had been driven to the end of the street, so did you –? A shot was fired, so did you –?'

Carrie shook her head. A fine evening, she explained, barbecues were lit, all the activity was in back gardens, people talking over the fence, music playing, children running about –'

‘Did the children say anything to you?' Stella asked.

‘The little boy – James – wanted to know who it was.'

‘What did he mean?'

‘He was asking about the dead person – asking who it was.'

‘Are you sure?' Stella worked to keep the note of challenge out of her voice.

‘What else could he have meant?' Mark asked.

Stella looked at Carrie. ‘What were his exact words?'

‘He said, “Who is it?”'

‘Meaning?'

‘Well, he must have meant… Their father, mustn't he? Who was it they could see lying…' She stopped, then picked up again. ‘Who was it tied to the gate, who was it dead?'

‘What else
could
he have meant?' A touch of irritation in Mark's voice, shock emerging as anger: anger he had already dampened down with whisky – the bottle was open on a side-table, and he had a full glass in his hand.

Carrie was looking at Stella but spoke to her husband. ‘She thinks they might have seen it happen.'

‘It's possible,' Stella said.

Suddenly tears were running down Carrie's cheeks. She said, ‘You think he was saying who is it that killed my daddy.'

Collier arrived fifteen minutes after the press, which was lousy timing, because several journos had managed to bypass the police cordon by knocking on doors in a neighbouring street and infiltrating the back-garden gossip. Put the right questions in the right way and people will talk; they've just witnessed something terrible; they
need
to talk. The journos
are good at this; suddenly they're counsellors, they know how to prompt, but, more, they know how to listen.

Collier stepped into the camera lights. He knew what to do: talk to the interviewer but glance at the camera from time to time; don't lean into the microphone; don't elaborate or you'll grope for words.

It was a particularly brutal murder.

Inquiries were in progress.

Anyone with information should come forward.

He couldn't be more specific at this point in time.

The interviewer's technique was second to none. He drew Collier on with the easy ones, making his interviewee look good, a man in control.

Then he named the victim, and Collier hesitated a second before saying that details would be released later.

Then he mentioned the fact that Martin Turner was the editor of a national newspaper, and Collier repeated his earlier remark, though he didn't seem to know enough to cut the interview short.

Then the interviewer asked about the words that had, apparently, been scrawled across Turner's body: LYING BASTARD.

This stopped Collier dead, so the interviewer took the opportunity to mention that many people now believed that a serial killer was at work, given the city's other recent killings, given the public and gruesome nature of their deaths.

Collier had the wit to say, ‘No comment,' though a denial would have been the better option. In journo terms, ‘No comment' means ‘Yes, but I'm not prepared to confirm just now.'

As he backed off beyond the police-tape, voices called after him; he turned and walked away, and the voices stilled as the journalists frantically hit the speed-dial buttons on their mobile phones.

*

Collier emerged from the tent as Stella and Harriman were leaving Mark and Carrie Phipps. He gave Harriman a look and took Stella by the arm, steering her to the far side of the road.

‘Why wasn't I called?'

‘I thought you had been. Sorry.'

‘I just walked into a press trap.' He was speaking quietly, but the tremor of anger in his voice was unmissable. ‘I got this call as part of an update bundle from Notting Dene. You were named as investigating officer.'

‘I'll send an email.'

‘You're the DS. It's your job to notify me.'

‘Look…' Stella wondered how long he would spend on bitching with a dead man roped to the gates and a scene-of-crime team waiting to be told what next. ‘Look, I got the call because one of the triple-nine guys reported the writing on the body; that was picked up on the computer and cross-referenced, and my name was on the Bryony Dean crime sheet. Aren't you listed as team leader on those entries?'

Collier looked back at the lights and activity by the SOC tent. After a moment he said, ‘I don't know. I should be.'

Admin
. Stella thought.
Paperwork. It can bury you
. For a brief moment, she felt sorry for him.

Collier went into the tent and came out again a couple of minutes later. Stella was organizing the ambulance and the police doctor, putting in a call to Sam Burgess. Collier signalled to her, and she handed over to Harriman.

‘The press asked about the possibility of it being serial. They're tying it in with the other two.'

‘Are they? Why?'

‘Three in the space of a week, apparently random, out in the open, it doesn't take all that much imagination.'

‘Did they mention any of the details we're holding back?'

‘Yes, but for this case, not the others. They seem to know
that this one had writing on him.' Collier suddenly saw an opportunity for a fight-back. ‘They can only have got that from people at the scene. How many neighbours showed up before we did?'

‘We're not sure. Maybe twelve.'

‘There you are, then. So the press managed to get to some of those people and question them. Your job is to stop that happening. That sort of leak is just another form of crime-scene contamination.'

‘There are sixty or so houses on this street,' Stella said, ‘with the same number backing on to them either side. A hundred and eighty houses, each with an average of… what… three occupants?'

Collier nodded. ‘High risk. You didn't cover it.'

He walked away. Stella couldn't see his smile, but there was a trace of it in the set of his shoulders. She thought it took someone like Brian Collier to make capital out of a man with his face shot off.

Andy Greegan was still patrolling the crime scene, watching for any danger of contamination. Stella walked the path by the hedge, dressed in the white coverall and shoe covers that Greegan had given her. She had been back into the SOC tent with a torch. The halogen lights threw a hard glare, but they also threw strong shadows, and she had used the torch to illuminate the undersides of the railings and certain patches of ground. What she was looking for wasn't there. Now she was checking the boles of the trees, each in turn, the entire circumference to head-height and beyond. She'd expected to find it there, but so far she'd had no luck. Forensic officers were still searching the far end of the walkway, each carrying a halogen baton. They were looking for it too.

She gave up on the trees and walked to the garbage bunker, though she knew that the forensics team had been over it,
that it had been dusted for fingerprints, that DNA sweepings had been taken.

It's the one thing no one knows about. Morgan heard about the writing from Collier, Delaney heard about it from me, that sort of thing spreads like a stain. But this is the one thing that lets me know there isn't a copy-cat at work. A sign, a signature. It's yours, isn't it, you bastard; yours alone? It's here. It's got to be here
.

Harriman found her on her hands and knees at the kerbside. He said, ‘Tomorrow, Boss. It's hopeless in this light.'

‘You're right.'

Stella stood up and switched off her torch. Everyone would be back tomorrow for a second look in daylight. She dusted herself down and walked along the street towards her car. Three uniformed men were winching Turner's Mercedes on to a low-loader, getting ready to cover it; the interior had already been hoovered and tweezered. Stella stepped sideways to skirt the trailer as the car tilted. A little river of light from the halogens ran down the wing, and there it was, finger-drawn into the film of London grime:

A smudge of red on the outline; a sticky drop of red in the cut of the lower vee.

Forensics officers in white were eerie figures between the silver birches. Camera flashes bounced off the Merc's paintwork. The moon was high, a clean-cut white disc in a midnight-blue sky.

Two paramedics came out of the tent wheeling a body-bag on a collapsible gurney; the scene-of-crime team, the photographers, the
AMIP
-5 squad, went about their business, all of them throwing hard, clear shadows.

I'm being followed by a moon shadow, moon shadow, moon shadow
.

The tune would run through her head all the next day.

Ricardo Jones was sitting in the front passenger seat of a car, his hands resting quietly in his lap, his back straight. He wanted to blot the drop of sweat that had sprung up alongside his left eye, but he left it alone. Not that he was unable to reach it; he just felt it was better to remain still.

The driver was the same man he'd encountered in Jonah's flat. Somewhere just off Notting Hill Gate, they had stopped to pick up another man, who said, ‘Don't turn round.' He didn't speak again until they had driven up to Wormwood Scrubs and parked. ‘You're Ricardo Jones.'

Ricardo wasn't sure whether it was a question or a statement. In the end he said, ‘Okay.'

‘Don't speak,' the man said. ‘You don't have to speak at all.'

They sat for a while in silence, apart from the tick-tick of the engine as it cooled. Ricardo could hear himself breathing; he could smell his own sweat, rank and hot. They were parked in a side street close to the Scrubs. Moonlight frosted the rough ground. Ricardo could see himself lying out there, dead and done with.

The man said, ‘You've been providing a service on Hare-field, Ricardo. You've been offering premium rates, which is all well and good, except you've been offering them to my clients. You've been undercutting me. You've been poaching. Don't speak; there's no need for you to say a single fucking word. Now, you did a very nice deal for a man called Jonah, and, as I think you know by now, it was not to his advantage. He thought it would be, but it wasn't. The thing about
hands with no thumbs, Ricardo, is they're not much use for anything. You can't count money with them, for a start.'

A soft Scottish burr, not so much angry as chiding.

‘Of course, that could have been you, Ricardo. The man sitting beside you would have been happy to perform the same sort of operation on you – a bit of a warning, a way of letting you know you'd overstepped the mark. In fact, that was my intention, at first. I was pissed off,
really
pissed off, and I wasn't thinking straight. Well…' he chuckled, ‘I could still change my mind. Not the thumbs but… I don't know… the little fingers of both hands… just a reminder… but don't worry about that now; just listen to what I have to say, because it's a way you could keep all your fingers and make a little profit into the bargain. Not the kind of profit you've been making, of course; no, a
little
profit. It's simple. You turn your contacts over to me, and you act as go-between. As gofer. For a small percentage. Why am I bothering to use you at all? Well, I'm buying your goodwill, Ricardo. Your goodwill and your good reputation with your clients, and I'm sure they'll feel happier – to begin with, anyway – if they're still dealing with someone they know and trust. As for the future… we'll have to see how things go, won't we?'

There was a faint buzzing: a mobile switched to vibrate, and the man rummaged in his pocket, rising slightly to get purchase; Ricardo caught a glimpse, in the rear-view mirror, of a narrow face, a goatee, a gunslinger's moustache.

‘Call you back.' After that there was a long silence. Finally, the man said, ‘Well, you can talk now. Just say yes or no.'

Ricardo said, ‘Yes.'

They drove back to Notting Hill, Ricardo next to the driver, neither saying a word, the man in the back looking out at the crowded streets and humming an almost inaudible tune. Ricardo thought it was ‘Lord of the Dance'. The driver pulled
over in Pembridge Road. He said, ‘Get out, walk away, don't turn round, we'll be in touch.'

Ricardo walked across the hill to Hammersmith Road, then down North End Road, his legs jittery, his lips dry. When he got back to 1169, Block B, he was badly in need of a piss. Tina Mooney looked up as he went through and noticed the set of his mouth. He came back carrying their stash and did a couple of lines without looking up.