The Murder Bag (26 page)

‘I will – but you need to talk to the SIO,’ she said. ‘You need to talk to Mallory. About what James Sutcliffe said before he died.’ A beat. ‘About the school.’

‘Mallory has the chief super breathing down his neck. And the chief super is anxious to protect Ben King.’

‘You still need to talk to him.’

I looked at the VHS tape in my hand.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘But what did Sutcliffe really tell us? We don’t even know who we’re talking about, do we? Who was in that room?’

‘He told us enough,’ Wren said. ‘They’re not dying because they’re rich, are they? They’re not dying because they’re sons of privilege or symbols of social injustice or any of that Bob the Butcher stuff.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘They’re dying because of the past.’

We found a quiet corner of Vice with a couple of dusty video recorders and settled down to watch our videotape.

All around us young men and women were watching writhing bodies on their computer screens, and trying to separate standard filth from criminal obscenity that was likely to corrupt and deprave.

‘Is that vulva open?’ said one young man.

‘I think it’s only slightly ajar,’ said a young woman.

‘Definitely a grey area,’ said the young man, making a note.

They were friendly enough but neither Wren or I knew any of the twenty-something officers in the department.

‘They change personnel every six months down here,’ Wren whispered. ‘In case it does something to their sex drive. One way or the other.’

She posted the VHS into the video recorder and pressed play. The remote had been lost in time.

‘Do you want to watch it on fast forward?’ she said.

‘Just let it roll,’ I said.

I recognised the playing fields of Potter’s Field. The tree line, the stone cottage, the endless expanse of green churned to mud down the centre of the pitches. Only the haircuts of the boys were different.

It was easy to spot Hugo Buck. Big, proud, confident. A good-looking bully. Calling for the ball. Exhorting his friends. Arguing with the referee. After twenty minutes he scored a try and preened before the camera, his big grin in our faces. I heard the laughter of the cameraman as he said ‘Played, Bucko!’ and it sounded like Ben King.

Five minutes later it happened.

The ball was kicked deep into the Harrow half. The Potter’s Field First XV flew after it, Buck in the vanguard. A Harrow defender caught the ball, fumbled, dropped it, picked it up again. Voices screamed with excitement. The defender made to kick the ball just as Buck reached him.

Buck hurled himself at the Harrow defender.

The Harrow defender lashed wildly at the ball.

Buck beat it down.

And the point of the Harrow defender’s right boot speared into Buck’s left eye.

He screamed.

The game stopped. Players and pupils and teachers gathered around the boy on the ground.

He was silent now. But the teachers were shouting for an ambulance. The cameraman kept filming. And just before the tape stopped he went on to the pitch and looked over the shoulders of the boys and men gathered around Hugo Buck.

His eye was a ruined pulp.

The footage abruptly ended on that last bloody image.

‘So,’ Wren said, ‘Hugo Buck lost his eye playing rugby.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘James Sutcliffe told us he was hurt by a girl, didn’t he?’

I paused, considered.

‘Is that what he told us? Sutcliffe was doped up to the eyeballs for years. He was doped up when he was at school. He was doped up on the day he died. James Sutcliffe was a poor little rich boy who spent his entire life on medication.’

‘Come on, Wolfe. You’re the one who said Hugo Buck’s wife was lying. You’re the one who held Buck’s fake eye in your hand. But she wasn’t lying, was she?’

I stared at the frozen image on the screen.

We went back up to MIR-1. Suddenly the suite was heaving with people. Swire and Mallory. Cho and Dr Stephen. Gane and Whitestone. Faces were flushed with the fever of a chase that was nearing its end.

‘What’s happening?’ I said.

‘We’ve got Bob,’ Gane said.

24

BEHIND THE JOHN
Lennon glasses, Mallory’s eyes were burning with quiet rage.

‘Setting a trap with human bait,’ he said quietly, each word chipped from Aberdeen granite, his bald head gleaming under the lights of MIR-1, ‘was never the plan.’

‘Change of plan,’ said Swire.

‘I’m not wearing a bullet-proof vest,’ Scarlet Bush was telling DI Whitestone. ‘Bob was very specific: “Come alone. No tapes I can’t see.” He might think a bullet-proof vest is a wire. I’m not wearing it.’

‘It’s not a bullet-proof vest,’ Whitestone said patiently, ‘it’s a Kevlar Stealth. Lightweight, the thinnest we have. Invisible under the clothes you’re wearing. I’d wear it if I were you.’

Gane’s laptop was open on Bob the Butcher’s timeline. Bob had changed his picture again. Instead of Robert Oppenheimer’s thoughtful, pipe-smoking skull, there was now a mushroom cloud.

In sleep – in confusion – in the depths of shame – the good deeds a man has done before defend him. #killallpigs

‘Where’s his response?’ I said.

‘He didn’t respond online,’ Gane said. ‘He called her.’ He laughed. ‘On a
telephone
. A
landline
.’

Gane grinned, and I saw that Cho and his techie pals from the PCeU were looking sour.

‘Stick around, boys!’ Gane said. ‘We might be able to show you a few tricks!’

‘Give DI Gane your phone and he’ll fit a GPS tracking device,’ Whitestone told Bush.

‘I don’t want to carry anything bulky,’ the journalist said.

‘It’s either a SIM card or some software,’ Gane said, cutting her off. ‘You’re not going to notice it. The only people who will know it’s even there are us, OK? But it means we know where you are. It means we can pinpoint your movements to within ten metres. If you go beyond a prescribed area, it sends us an alarm.’

Bush gave Gane her phone.

‘The Kevlar Stealth and the tracking device,’ she said. ‘Is that it?’

Whitestone nodded. ‘That’s it. Belt and braces.’

‘What did Bob say to you?’ I said.

I saw the pride in the journalist’s eyes.

‘He said he liked my piece,’ she said. ‘And he said he’d be in touch.’

‘How do you know it was him?’

‘He told me he would post an Oppenheimer quote in the Bob the Butcher timeline. “In sleep – in confusion – in the depths of shame – the good deeds a man has done before defend him.”
And then he did.’

There were a dozen copies of her paper scattered across the workstations of MIR-1. In the end she had not goaded Bob the Butcher. There had been no references to sexual preference, childhood trauma or bed-wetting. She had stuck to Dr Stephen’s script. Bob was presented as a mixed-up homicidal maniac who was operating by his own rules (‘Honour, power and control are clearly motivating factors for this most complex of serial killers’) and choosing victims who were something less than totally innocent (‘It seems hardly a coincidence that Bob the Butcher selected as his targets a wealthy investment banker, a drug dealer and an inveterate bully’), and also as a slightly volatile folk hero to the dispossessed (‘These are horrible crimes, certainly – but they are also a cry of rage in a society where the obscene gap between rich and poor is the new apartheid’).

It was more of a press release than journalism. You could see why Bob the Butcher would want to cut it out and stick it in his scrapbook. It made him sound like a psycho Robin Hood.

‘He’s calling my paper’s switchboard some time over the next twenty-four hours,’ Bush said.

‘We’ve got call analytics set up on your switchboard,’ Gane said. ‘The longer you can keep him talking the better. But as soon as he calls we will have the number of whatever disposable or payphone he’s using. A landline or a mobile is too much to hope for. But it will give us more than we have right now. And when he gives you the meet you’re going to lead us to him.’

Mallory was still not happy.

‘I want you to have police protection from this moment on,’ he told Scarlet Bush. ‘I want two officers to escort you back to your office, and to accompany you to the meeting point, where we’ll be waiting.’

‘No chance,’ she said. ‘This is the most important story of my career and I am not going to let you screw it up for me.’

Mallory looked helplessly at Swire, who shrugged.

‘The meet is going to be surrounded with ARVs and SFOs,’ the chief super said. ‘There’s going to be enough Special Firearms Officers to keep her from harm. And I’m all for making sure we don’t frighten Bob away.’

‘Then I want officers in the room an hour before you arrive at the meet,’ Mallory told Bush. ‘And I want roadblocks at fifty metres, five hundred metres and a mile. And make sure you’re wearing the Kevlar.’

‘Bob cuts throats.’ Bush laughed, and for the first time I saw the raw courage in her. ‘What good is a stab-proof vest going to do me?’

Swire chuckled approvingly.

‘And I’ll tell you what I want,’ Bush added. ‘When I get to the meet I want to talk to him before you move in and arrest him.’

‘Five minutes,’ Mallory said.

‘Fuck that!’

Mallory visibly flinched at the profanity.

‘I want at least an hour with him.’

‘We’ll give you five minutes,’ Swire said. ‘But any sign of aggression and he’s coming down.’

Gane returned the reporter’s mobile with the tracking device.

‘What’s in there?’ Mallory said.

‘In the end I went for the handset-based software,’ Gane said. ‘It’s more accurate than a SIM card with an iPhone.’

Mallory still didn’t look happy.

‘Let us know as soon as he makes contact,’ he said. ‘Don’t wait for us to pick it up on your switchboard.’

‘Of course,’ Bush said. She threw her phone into her bag. ‘I’ll tell you where we’re meeting and I’ll see you there.’

She left, escorted by the chief super, and for a moment I thought I was going to hear Mallory curse for the first time. Instead he ran his hand over his polished skull and said angrily, ‘And I want the lot of you in a Kevlar Stealth!’

In the only quiet corner of MIR-1, Dr Stephen was at his laptop. I walked over to him and saw that he was staring at Bob the Butcher’s timeline. The forensic psychologist looked thoughtful. The mushroom cloud was still there.

‘Those people in Hiroshima,’ Dr Stephen said. ‘They had been expecting a massive bombing raid for months. But what they got was the end of all things. What they got was a new world.’

‘So what does it mean?’ I said. ‘The cloud. What’s he trying to tell us?’

He shook his head.

‘I’d be making a guess,’ he said.

‘Go ahead.’

‘The designated target,’ he said. ‘It’s been chosen.’

The internet café was on the Holloway Road. Wren and I sat on opposite sides of the room while half a dozen weary-looking foreign students checked their mail and Skyped home. It seemed a strange location for Scarlet Bush to meet Bob the Butcher.

And when I heard Gane curse in my earpiece, I knew they never would.

Wren heard it too. She looked over at me and I shook my head.

In the back room was a group of armed officers looking like soldiers from the next century. They wore black rubber goggles, Ballistic Kevlar helmets and shiny boots. They carried Heckler & Koch assault rifles, Taser X26 guns and CS gas spray. Their mouths were thin lines of frustrated adrenalin. Mallory and Whitestone were to one side hunched over Gane and his laptop.

‘What’s happening?’ I asked them.

‘We’ve lost Scarlet,’ Mallory said. ‘Not the signal from her phone. Just her.’

‘She gave our officers the slip at her paper,’ Gane said, not looking up from the screen. ‘Went out the fire exit, we think. That easy.’

‘Wanted some quality time on her own with Bob,’ Whitestone said.

‘The tracer on her phone told us she was on her way here,’ Gane said. ‘And now it seems she’s not. The signal hasn’t moved for ten minutes. Look.’

A red dot pulsed steadily in the map’s spider web of streets.

‘Where is it?’ Mallory said. ‘That looks like somewhere near St Paul’s.’

‘East Poultry Avenue, EC1,’ Gane said. ‘It’s the Barbican.’

‘That’s not the Barbican,’ I said. ‘That’s the meat market.’

Mallory shook his head.

‘That stupid girl,’ he said. ‘Oh, that stupid girl.’

The hooks hung around the storage room like stainless steel bunting and our breath made steaming clouds in the freezing fog. Huge slabs of bloody meat hung everywhere in the sub-zero air. I could hear Wren and Whitestone calling her name.

‘Scarlet! Scarlet! Scarlet!’

Mallory pushed aside a great headless carcass of beef.

‘She’s not here, is she?’ he said.

Gane rubbed a hand over the misty screen of his laptop.

‘Well, the phone’s here,’ he said.

And then I saw the pig’s head sitting on a marble slab. The pig’s head with its giant, floppy Dumbo ears. Comical and tragic all at once. The albino skin, more white than pink, with just a few delicate smears of blood. The eyes shut as if overwhelmed with exhaustion. And the monstrous snout, squashed flat and rich with blood.

Figures moved in the mist of the cold room, cursing and bumping into each other. Unable to find the thing they sought. They kept calling her name.

My spine throbbed with pain as I reached under the snout and into the pig’s mouth and pulled out a phone, its screen smeared with milky blood.

‘Sir?’ I said.

Mallory took the phone from me. He looked across at Gane, who nodded and closed his laptop.

‘He has her,’ Mallory said.

My own phone began to vibrate. I took it out. SECOND FRONT CALLING it said, and I saw that the blood of the pig’s head was on my hands now, and on my phone, and on my clothes, getting on everything.

‘It’s Cage from the war memorabilia shop,’ a very distant voice said.

‘What happened?’ I said.

‘I sold a knife.’

25

‘
THIS BIG GUY
walked into my shop,’ Nick Cage said. ‘Well, not big – pumped up. Weights. Maybe steroids. A little man but pumped up, you know?’