Rubbernecker (28 page)

Patrick opened his eyes slowly and looked into the hole in the middle of a gun. Not the middle; the
end
of a gun. Where the bullets come from. The deep black holey thing. The—

‘Barrel,’ he said, relieved that he’d remembered.

‘Shut up,’ said the policeman at the other end of the gun. ‘Shut up and turn over. Hands behind your back.’

He was short and shaven and not alone; there was another, older man in the doorway, and Patrick’s landlord – the waspish middle-aged Mr Boardman – hovered in the background.

From somewhere downstairs he could hear Lexi crying.

‘What’s going on?’ asked Patrick.

The shorter policeman made a snorting noise and said, ‘
You
tell
us
, sunshine. There’s a
head
in the
fridge
.’

‘Yes,’ said Patrick. ‘It’s mine.’ Then he laughed because it wasn’t
his
head, of course – it was Number 19’s.

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Shorter. ‘He’s completely crazy.’

‘And look what he’s done to my
carpet
!’ wailed Mr Boardman.

‘It was dirty,’ shrugged Patrick.

‘It was
brown
!’ yelled Mr Boardman.

‘I told you to get this man
out
of here!’ said the older policeman sharply.

There was a noisy pause while several sets of feet pounded up the stairs and Mr Boardman was led down them, muttering.

Older cleared his throat. ‘Patrick Fort,’ he said, ‘I am arresting you on suspicion of murder.’

Patrick frowned. ‘That doesn’t make sense.’

The policeman held up a hand, closed his eyes and spoke over him. ‘You do not have to say anything—’

Patrick interrupted him, finishing more quickly. ‘But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something that you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

‘Done this before?’ said Older.

‘No,’ said Patrick, ‘I watch TV. Aren’t you supposed to ask me if I understand it?’

‘
Do
you understand it?’

‘Of course. I’m not an idiot.’

‘Smart-arse,’ said Shorter. ‘Turn over and put your hands behind your back.’

‘Why?’ said Patrick.

‘Because you’re under arrest.’

‘But I didn’t
do
anything. The head in the fridge is just proof.’

‘Of what?’ said Older.

Patrick frowned. ‘I don’t know. There’s a lot of
bits
to it. Number
19
had a peanut in his throat, although he was allergic to them. Dr Spicer has bite marks on his finger. But he lied about them and then tried to kill me. So I took the head because of the gouges and because of the teeth. Maybe Number 19 bit Dr Spicer, but I’m not sure.

‘It’s your job to find out the rest,’ he added. ‘I’ve done my bit.’

‘What the
fuck
are you talking about?’ said Shorter.

‘
Patrick!
’ yelled Jackson up the stairs. ‘Don’t say anything without a
lawyer
!’

‘I don’t need a lawyer,’ Patrick told Older. ‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’

‘That’s good,’ said Older, jotting down notes in a small black book. ‘Then you won’t mind answering a few more questions down at the station.’

‘No,’ said Patrick. ‘I don’t mind.’

Older nodded at Shorter.

‘Then turn over and put your hands behind your back!’ said Shorter.

‘I have to get the head,’ said Patrick and stood up. Shorter gripped his shoulder – and everything went from calm to mayhem in the blink of an eye. Patrick punched and flailed against the hated hands on his bare skin, and soon had his face in the pillow, a knee in his back, what felt like hot wire around his wrists – and a left ear that buzzed so hard that the only underwater sound he could hear was Kim shrieking, ‘
Don’t hurt him! Don’t hurt him!
’ over and over again.

While Patrick Fort was half dragged, half carried out to the car, Detective Sergeant Emrys Williams stared once more into the fridge and thought,
This is how everything changes
.

There was salad and chocolate on the top shelf, old rice and
curling
bacon on the bottom, and – squeezed on its side on the middle shelf – a severed human head, lips drawn back, veins poking from the frayed flesh and pressed against the frosted glass. One eye socket was empty, the other was hidden by a jar of Tesco Value peanut butter.

Williams stood, bent at the waist, lit by the fridge as if bowing down before a golden calf, and knew that here, finally, was the Big One – the case that would put him on the map.

Emrys Williams had become a policeman straight out of school because the careers master had told him he’d be able to retire at forty on two-thirds of final salary. The careers master had seduced a lot of them that way – early retirement on good pensions or – for teachers – long summer holidays. He’d been more of an
anti
-careers master, really, selling them the spaces between work.

But neither the careers master nor the young Emrys had foreseen that life’s rich tapestry would weave him two ex-wives, four gadget-hungry sons, and a girlfriend who only seemed happy to drain
him
at night if she were permitted to drain his wallet for the other twenty-three and a half hours a day.

So, at the age of forty-eight, Williams was still a policeman. And a policeman who was still only a detective sergeant, years after his contemporaries had climbed the promotion ladder. Somewhere along the line, petty crime and paperwork had squeezed all the ambition out of him.

Of course, he’d helped to put away his fair share of burglars and muggers and rapists and wife-beaters. They’d had murders knocked down to manslaughter on a plea, and murders that had stuck. But never – not once – had DS Williams been involved in a Big One. He had never been part of the kind of high-profile case that captures the public imagination and the newspaper headlines. He’d never been on the telly – not even the local news; never worked a case that anyone else would have heard of or cared about – bar Gary in the canteen, who was some kind of OCD memory freak.

Sometimes Emrys Williams felt as though he had spent the entire thirty years of his working life in an interview room with hard chairs and bitter coffee, and achieved little more than bad breath and piles.

But this was different.

Whatever the outcome, Emrys Williams knew that
this
case would always be about this moment.
This
was what the boys in the station would remember about him;
this
was what they’d joke about every time someone opened the staff-room fridge to get a Coke or a cheese triangle. And even though he would hand the case over to a superior as soon as the day shift arrived, it would be
his
testimony of discovery that the reporters would be crowding the benches to hear when the case went to trial at the city’s Crown Court.
The head-in-the-fridge case
, they’d call it. Or something clever and journalisty that he couldn’t think of right now.

Something he would be remembered by, even in jest.

Emrys Williams straightened up into a new phase of his policing career, and found he
did
have a tiny sliver of ambition left.

He puffed out his chest.

‘This is a crime scene,’ he said. ‘Everybody out.’

The car swung away from the house, and from Jackson and Kim with Lexi between them, and from the curious, slippered neighbours.

Patrick had calmed down as soon as Shorter pushed him arse-first into the back seat and shut the door. Now he rested his head against the glass and watched the bright, Saturday-morning city pass through his vision, while a great peace settled over him like warm silk.

He had solved the mystery of Number 19.

Soon the police would realize their mistake and let him go, and
arrest
Dr Spicer instead. Soon Lexi would know what had happened to her father, and for some strange reason, that felt good – even though it didn’t benefit
him
. Without knowing how or why, Patrick felt there was something about having given something
back
. It was curious and he didn’t understand it, but that didn’t make it untrue, even if it had not helped him in his own quest.

In that he had failed, and yet he no longer
felt
like a failure. He had come to the city for answers and he had found them here. They were just different answers – and to different questions.

There were mysteries that could be solved, and others that could not. Maybe what had happened to his father was one of those that could not. The idea had never occurred to Patrick before and it did now with a sudden surge of hot emotion. He had done his best. Maybe that would have to be enough. He didn’t think he had any more left inside him.

The idea of his quest slipping away brought heat to his eyes. He wiped them, then stared curiously at the shimmering trail on the back of his hand.

It made him feel strangely normal.

49

DS WILLIAMS HAD
only been in charge because he was on night shift. The big guns came in by day.

Williams briefed DCI White as soon as he arrived, then went down the corridor and opened the flap in the cell door to check on the suspect, who was pale and wiry, and still wearing only his boxer shorts.

He didn’t look much like a killer, but then, killers rarely did.

‘All right?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said the boy. ‘My head hurts.’

‘Drink much last night?’

‘I don’t drink,’ said the boy, with an edge that surprised him. ‘I went to Dr Spicer’s party but I only did the washing up. Then I saw the bite marks on his finger and left. That’s when he ran over my bike and tried to run
me
over. I had to jump out of the car park and into a tree.’

Williams wondered what he could say in the face of such craziness. ‘First time in a police station?’ he asked cautiously.

‘No,’ said the boy. ‘I went to a police station after my father died.’

Emrys Williams bit his lip. He always tried to keep an open mind about suspects – even when they were found covered in blood and with a severed head in their fridge – but Patrick Fort wasn’t doing himself any favours. The skinny goth at the crime scene had said something about him having some mental health
issues
. They had to do this properly; they didn’t want a killer wriggling off the hook on a technicality.

So he just said, ‘The doctor will be here soon. And the duty solicitor.’

‘I don’t
need
a solicitor. I haven’t done anything wrong. I just want to tell you what happened. but nobody wants to
listen
.’

‘All in good time,’ said Williams. ‘We’re trying to get hold of your mother now.’

‘My
mother
? Why?’

‘She needs to be with you.’

‘She won’t come,’ said the boy.

‘Why not?’

‘She doesn’t like me that much.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true,’ said Williams, even though he thought it might be.

The suspect shrugged and then shivered. Williams could see the gooseflesh on his chest from here. It reminded him of drying the boys after swimming when they were younger. Rubbing warmth back into them while their teeth chattered.

He fetched an old blue sweatshirt from Lost Property.

‘Here, put this on.’

Patrick Fort took it from him warily and held it up, wrinkling his nose. The slogan on the front said LITERACY AINT EVERYTHING.

‘It has sick on the sleeve,’ he said, pushing it to the other end of the slatted bench. ‘And no apostrophe.’ Then he looked around the cell and said, ‘Do you have a dustpan and brush?’

Williams sighed and withdrew, shaking his head.

Sergeant Wendy Price passed on her way from the machine with a cup of grey coffee. ‘What’s up?’

Williams jerked a thumb at the cell door. ‘Kid’s got a severed head in his fridge but he wants a bloody feather duster to do a bit of housework.’

She grinned and leaned up to peer through the flap. ‘Oh,
him
,’ she said.

‘You know him?’

‘He came in a few days ago with blood on his hands and said he wanted to report a murder. When he saw I’d clocked the blood, he legged it. I chased him halfway to Splott!’