What Remains (17 page)

That left a lot of empty flats.

‘Raker?’ Craw said.

I turned to her, and saw she’d taken a step closer, hair clipped away from her face, eyes fixed on me, studying me. As she moved closer still, the heels of her court shoes clicked against the flagstone path that had carried us into this place.

‘Did you hear what I said?’

I realized then that, as I’d been thinking about Healy’s next move, about him possibly having holed up in Highdale, Craw had been telling me something.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I was miles away.’

‘You know why Healy came here?’

I looked across the tops of the hedges to where the turrets continued to emerge from the dark. ‘I think he recognized something in the murders,’ I said.

She nodded. ‘I think you might be right.’

‘You sound like you know something I don’t.’

She looked at her watch, then sank both hands back into the pockets of her coat. ‘After his suspension, when I tried to reintegrate him back into the force in 2012, I remember reading through his history at the Met. I mean, it was a big risk giving him a second chance, and I wanted to make sure that my instincts were correct. I was well aware that, if it went wrong, I’d be getting my arse handed to me.’ She paused at that last sentence – because, in the
end, that was exactly what had happened. ‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘I’d got to know Healy’s CV pretty well by the time he finally joined my team.’

I saw a glimpse of what was coming.

Craw took a step closer, seeing the recognition in my face, and started to nod. ‘He joined the Met in April 1986 as a uniform in Southwark. I remember sitting down with him in 2012 and telling him he needed to rediscover the reasons why he wanted to be a policeman in the first place.’

‘You’re saying he worked on the Arnold murders?’

She shook her head. ‘No. He was just a constable at the time, but he told me he was at the scene, right at the start, when detectives began to interview the seventh kid – the one that escaped. He said
that
was the reason he wanted to become a murder cop. That was the moment that started it all. What it came down to was he didn’t ever want to see that fear in another kid’s face.’

I looked at her, silence settling between us.

But it felt like we were both thinking the same thing: these names on the wall, this collapsing housing estate, this was just another ghost to be exorcized.

He’d rid himself of one by writing Gemma an apology, committing words to paper that he’d never had the courage to speak aloud. He’d done it again by signing the divorce papers, unshackling her, giving her the freedom that she’d long wanted. And here he’d done it a third time, perhaps for the final time, returning to his first few years of being a cop, to a case that, two decades on, would be mirrored by the murder of the twins and their mother.

He’d have seen the similarities between the two cases: the age of the victims, the brutality of their killers, the two crumbling housing estates against which the crimes took
place. And, despite there being over twenty years between them, perhaps a part of him may even have seen the parallels as some kind of sign, as his inevitable fate. Years ago, he’d watched from the back of the room. In 2010, he’d watched as a killer slipped away.

Both times, he’d been powerless.

The beginning was the same as the end.

22

I left the car where it was, and walked up Dog Kennel Hill to Helton Way. Craw passed me as I did and beeped once. It wasn’t a greeting, it was a reminder: she’d asked me to call her with an update later if I found anything at Highdale. I acknowledged her, watching as her Mini disappeared over the brow of the hill.

Helton Way was the road that bisected Highdale, although the estate – half a mile from corner to corner – was actually subdivided into quarters, each part as huge as a cruise ship, its balconies lined with endless doorways, its walls dotted with satellite dishes. Every window on the side of the estate still standing was made of frosted glass, milky like cataracts after years of neglect; but on the other side of Helton, Highdale was reduced to memories and rubble.

Trucks and diggers were parked on mounds of dry mud, a crane with a wrecking ball too, vehicles and building-site Portakabins secured behind endless mesh fencing. I stopped and took in what lay beyond the fence: one quarter of the estate was gone entirely, nothing left of it but its concrete base; another had been reduced to half a building, roof gone, walls torn away, interiors revealed. I could see dangling electrical wires and crumbling plasterboard, floral wallpaper, half-rooms with walls dotted in mould. Another few weeks, and both quarters would be consigned to history. I turned back to the half that remained.

It seemed to loom over me, even though it was only five storeys high. A single walkway – suspended at the fifth floor – connected one quarter to the other; otherwise it could just as easily have been one vast structure, two back-to-back L-shaped buildings designed to be perfect mirror images of one another.

Highdale was built on a slight slope, and this half sat higher than the part already in the process of being demolished. That meant the tiny car park I was standing in, enclosed on three sides by hundreds of flats, was below the level of the ground floor. I took a flight of concrete steps up from the car park, where the main entrances to each block faced a patch of scorched grass. This early on, with the sun only just up, the place was quiet: I could hear a car engine somewhere close by, the throatier sound of the traffic on Dog Kennel Hill, birdsong, but not a lot else.

I started with the building on my left.

It had no name of its own, no identity to speak of, and inside it was like a photocopy, duplicated and stuck together, over and over. Unlike the building that Healy had found the twins in, Highdale was all enclosed, its corridors long and windowless, smelling of industrial cleaner and damp. The flats here looked like they were still occupied: as I passed them, I could hear sounds from inside.

On the second floor, things were exactly the same, except it looked like the council had colour-coded the doors. The ground floors had been red; these were blue. On the third floor they were green, on the fourth yellow, and by the time I got to the fifth it was back to red, but one marginally darker than before.

At the end of the fifth-floor corridor, a set of double doors opened up on to the walkway I’d glimpsed from
outside. I headed out, into the freshness of the morning, and was met by the same sounds as before, except with better views: I could see the building site to the north more clearly, workers starting to arrive.

I headed inside the other building.

Despite the same layout and colours, a sheet of paper had been attached to each of the doors on the fifth floor. I moved closer and looked at the first one.

It was an eviction notice.

The same printout had been taped to every door, all the way along, and as I headed further in, towards the stairwell that would take me down to the floors below, I started to realize that this corner of the estate
was
different from the last. There was no sound.

No music. No televisions.

No voices.

This was the next part of the site to go, its occupants already departed, its life mapped out now in days not weeks. There were no internal lights on, and there was no stench of cleaner or polish, no suggestion anyone had been inside for weeks. I began trying doors straight away. They had no handles on the outside, just a single Yale lock; I pushed at them, seeing if any of them were ajar. They weren’t. I got to the stairwell at the end and headed down to the fourth floor.

It was the same here, except it was darker, unlit by the daylight from a walkway. The same notices were pinned up. I continued to try the doors, and on the third floor too. But just as I was starting to think that the entire building had been cleared, I got to the second floor and found a few people in the process of moving, their doors open, household items under their arms as they carried
them out to their cars. No one paid me much attention as I passed, or as I paused on the stairwell and listened to one of the residents telling a guy in the blue uniform of a removals company that they had to be out of here before Monday.

That was two days’ time.

I headed down to the first floor, where the scene was exactly the same – a few open doorways, people starting to move out – and then a small foyer, just inside the main entrance, with views out across the car park I’d started in twenty minutes before.

Outside, I stood there in the space between the two buildings, the sun up but still hidden behind the turreted roofs of Highdale. There was more noise now: the chug of diggers; the whine of cranes, cars and lorries out on the main road; birds squawking from the balconies above my head. I heard the rattle of a skateboard and watched a kid pass, headphones on.

Where now?

As disappointment fizzed in my guts, I headed into the space between the two buildings, under the fifth-floor walkway I’d crossed not long before. At the back was another car park, boxed in by ugly grey walls and a series of air-conditioning units growing out of the buildings like a line of blisters. They were all off, soundless, none of the fans turning inside their white metal casings.

Under them, something caught my eye.

At ground level, adjacent to one of the units, a grate had been removed. It was about two feet high and six feet long, and should have been screwed to the wall. Instead it was propped against the space it was supposed to be covering.

I moved across to it.

Dropping to my haunches, I tried to angle my head to get a better view of what lay inside; but it was hard to see anything, so I got down on to my belly.

Directly inside, level with the top frame of the grate, was the underside of a metal ventilation shaft. Beneath that, the space dropped down six feet – maybe more – into a cramped space, bricked on all sides with white concrete blocks.

There was a mattress inside.

As my eyes adjusted to the lack of light, I was able to make out even more. Next to the mattress was a cardboard box, turned upside down and being used as a table. There was a tin cup and a book on it. Beyond that, partially set in shadow, were the edges of a black-and-yellow backpack, tatty and stained, the zip broken. Spilling out of it was a red T-shirt with something printed on it.

A flash of familiarity formed.

Was it something about the T-shirt?

I started to edge closer on my stomach, shuffling across loose stones and gravel until my head was all of the way inside the shaft.

Then I stopped.

A body lay face down in the corner.

The smell hit me a second after I saw him. It crept up the walls, drawn into the daylight, gluey and ripe like meat left to rot in the sun. I swallowed once, again, again, trying to rid myself of its grasp, but it kept coming, forcing its way into my throat until I had to wriggle my way out and suck in gulps of fresh air.

As dread gripped the well of my stomach, I returned, took a deep breath and headed in with the phone out in
front of me, its light casting a grey pall across the walls. Once my head crossed the lip of the shaft, into the darkness, the smell hit me a second time, but I pushed on all the same, moving as far in as I could get and directing the light down, into the corners of the space.

Now I could make out what was printed on the T-shirt, and knew why I recognized it: I’d seen it before, on 14 January, when I’d met Healy at the motel.

Boys on Tour – Dublin 07
.

He’d been wearing it.

23

I put my phone in my pocket, turned myself all the way around and, gripping the ventilation shaft with both hands, shuffled along on my back, gradually dropping into the space below feet-first. I started to feel nauseous, and not just because the smell seemed worse than ever.

I didn’t want to go any further.

I didn’t want to see him like this.

When I hit the floor, the darkness seemed to waken: something scurried away, the scrabble of claws on concrete, and then there was a low, soft buzz.

Flies
.

They bumped against my face, against my arms, and when I removed my phone again, directing its light out to where the body was, I realized it wasn’t flies, it was wasps: they drifted endlessly in the shadows, like black snowflakes.

The body’s too old.

The flies have already gone
.

Putting a hand to my mouth, I inched forward.

He had a bright blue beanie on, his head turned to the right – away from me – his right arm caught under him, and facing off in the same direction as his left. He was wearing a thick woollen sweater, which had ridden up, exposing the dirty white T-shirt he had on underneath, and the small of his back, which had become ashen. He’d flattened in death, sinking against the skeleton as he’d
dried out. I stopped, four feet from his legs, keeping my hand pressed against my face, overwhelmed by what I was seeing. It was hard to recognize him as the man I’d known, the skin on his face thin and papery, and clinging to the curves of his cheekbones and eye sockets. I’d seen enough death to know for sure now he wasn’t fresh. Maybe twenty days.

Maybe five weeks
.

Five weeks ago would have been the end of August, days after he’d sent Gemma the letter; days after he’d been back to The Meadows, returning to those moments when he’d sat at the back of a flat on the fifth floor of Highdale, as the mother of Ian Arnold’s seventh, surviving victim told detectives what had happened. He’d spent his last hours connecting the cases that began and ended his career.

And then, after that, he’d come here to die.

If I had any doubts it was him, if I retained any hope that his life hadn’t ended here, in this hidden part of a decaying building, they disappeared as I directed the light out past him, to the spaces beyond his emaciated fingertips.

Because there – its battery disconnected and cast aside – was the mobile phone I’d bought him from a supermarket in January. Next to that was a box of Zoplicone sleeping tablets, an entire tray consumed, the foil in every pocket punctured, the pills long since gone. Beyond both, open, pages spilling out of it, was the Clark family murder file,
You’re on your own
scrawled across the front page of the file in my handwriting. And then, finally, tacked to the wall, were three photographs.