Sunday morning
‘DECK THE HALLS with boughs of holly! Fa la la la la, la la la la. ’Tis the season to be jolly … Fa la la la la, la la la la!’
‘Do you want to button it, Roy?’ said Jack Delaney as he leaned against the counter and contemplated lighting a cigarette. Roy stopped singing and grinned over his shoulder at him.
‘What’s up with you this morning, Jack? Or do I even need to ask? You being normally such a ray of emerald-green Fenian sunshine.’
‘What does that even mean, Roy? How in the name of St Joseph on a fucking bicycle can you have green sunshine?’
‘I was talking metaphorically, Jack.’
‘You were talking bollocks.’
‘You want an egg with this?’ asked the portly short-order cook as he flipped some slices of bacon.
‘I do.’
‘I see the piece of shit we talked about yesterday walked free.’
‘Yeah, he did.’
‘Anything going to come down on your head?’
‘I should think so.’
‘If you’d handled things a little differently back then, Jack …’
‘You saying this is my fault?’
‘Nothing of the sort. Like I say, I wouldn’t even have let the scum make it to court.’
‘Yeah, well, I’m a changed man nowadays.’
‘Are you?’
‘You see me smoking this cigarette?’ Delaney asked, holding up an unlit Marlboro.
‘Not yet.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Don we now our gay apparel, troll the ancient Yuletide carol!’ sang Roy happily, as he cracked an egg that spattered and sizzled when it landed on the hot griddle plate. ‘Fa la la la la, la la la la.’
‘God give me strength,’ muttered Delaney as Sally Cartwright walked up to the van. She was dressed in black trousers, with higher heels than usual and a smart black parka with faux-fur trim. Her long, blonde hair was tied back in a loose ponytail. She had on more make-up than usual too, and was altogether too bright and perky-looking for seven o’clock on a Sunday morning.
‘Are you on a promise, Cartwright?’ he said.
‘Sir?’
‘Never mind. But I am guessing you are not dolled up like a tart’s breakfast for Roy’s and my benefit.’
‘You look gorgeous as ever, Sally darling,’ said Roy and started buttering some bread.
‘I don’t want butter on mine,’ said Delaney.
‘Jeez, Jack. How long have you been coming here?’
‘Too bloody long. Next year I’m going vegan!’
Roy laughed as he slipped some bacon into the buttered slices and handed the sandwich over to Sally Cartwright in a paper napkin. ‘Beauty before age,’ he said.
‘Cheers, Roy,’ said Sally, and squirted some tomato ketchup into her sarnie.
Roy Smiley flipped the egg briefly, put three slices of bacon on a slice of unbuttered bread, added the egg, topped it with another slice of bread and handed it over to Delaney, who grunted approvingly.
‘Reckon it’s going to snow?’ asked Sally.
‘Sing we joyous, all together, heedless of the wind and weather,’ sang Roy.
‘Fa la la la la, la la la la,’ added Sally.
Delaney shook his head despairingly and took another bite of his sandwich.
‘So I’ve done a bit of looking into the Reverend Geoffrey Hunt,’ said DC Cartwright.
‘And?’
‘He retired from the church twenty years ago.’
‘About the same time our man was planted in his churchyard.’
‘Give or take, I guess. As you know, Derek Bowman couldn’t be very specific. Could be after Hunt’s time. Could be during, as you say.’
Delaney finished his sandwich and wiped his lips clean with the paper napkin, before screwing it into a ball and handing it over to Roy.
‘How old was Hunt when he retired?’
‘Late forties. Health reasons apparently. And his wife was on a good wage.
‘University lecturers? Wasn’t aware they were well paid …’
Sally looked at him curiously.
‘Yeah, well, I didn’t just go to the pub last night, Sally. I did some research of my own.’
‘Where?’
‘Never mind where.’
‘Anyway Dr Hunt was a publishing academic. She had one book which sold an awful lot overseas as well as here. Particularly in America.’
‘So he could afford to retire.’
‘Yes. Just about.’
‘What else do we know?’
‘Well this is where it gets interesting.’
‘Get on with it then, Sally. For God’s sake. We’ve got a murder to investigate.’
‘I know, sir.’
‘Well?’ added Roy.
Sally smiled. ‘We did a missing-persons check for the area, going back nineteen to twenty-one years.’
‘And?’
‘And it seems that the Reverend Geoffrey Hunt’s brother, Jeremy Hunt, went missing in that period.’
‘And?’
‘And he was never found, sir.’
BIBLE STEVE WAS floating in a sea of mist and fog.
He held his hands fanned in front of him, moving his arms in a slow breaststroke, but the milky light slipped between his fingers and he seemed hardly to be moving at all. His eyes were fogged with the stuff and it filled his lungs with a cold moistness. And then the mist thickened into a cloud and started sliding down his body. And a light overhead grew brighter and brighter. And his feet came forward, and the white stuff around him sank down around his ankles. And the light dazzled, reflecting off the cold steel in his hands, and the blood poured over his hands like hot soup.
Then he opened his eyes and screamed.
Patricia Hunt took the kettle off the stove and placed it carefully on the trivet beside it. Her hand throbbed a little, but she had been quick to run it under cold water, so that it hadn’t blistered and worsened overnight.
She looked across at her husband, who was dressed in pyjamas and a dressing gown and was hanging up the phone.
‘It was the police,’ he said.
Patricia nodded without replying.
‘They’ll be here a little later. I had better get dressed.’
‘Better had.’
‘We have to be very sure of what we say, Patricia.’
‘I know.’
‘Everything’s going to be all right.’ He nodded reassuringly and then his whole body shook again as he coughed and fought for breath. He gestured to the dresser, and his wife hurried across to fetch his inhaler for him, shaking it vigorously. He took a quick breath and, after a few moments, squeezed it again and took a deeper breath.
‘I really think we should go and see the doctor, Geoffrey.’
‘And what will she tell us? There’s nothing different. It’s a cold. You have to wait it out, that’s all.’
‘Well, dress up warm!’
‘Yes, dear,’ he said, smiling, his breathing steady now, and kissed her on the forehead.
Detective Inspector Emma Halliday had only been in the job for a few months. As a detective, that is. She had been promoted from sergeant back at the tail end of summer. She was in her mid-thirties, six foot one in her flat feet, with short hair that she had recently dyed black to give her a little more gravitas. She had clearly defined cheekbones and a set of perfect teeth. Her nickname back at Paddington Green was ‘Catwalk’, but very few people called her that to her face.
Emma’s father had been a policeman, and his father before him. Her twin brother had gone to university and studied textile design and was now successful, in a small way, in the fashion industry, with his own business just off Oxford Street. Emma had opted for Hendon, even though she had grades good enough to go to Oxford and read English, which is what her mother would have preferred. But Emma was always sure what she wanted to do, and that was to join the Metropolitan Police force. Sometimes, though, she regretted it.
She was waiting outside the morgue in the South Hampstead Hospital. Her young assistant, Constable Andrew Hoyland, shorter than her by a good few inches, with short-cropped ginger hair and a spray of freckles across his cheeks, was taking notes as she talked with the constable from the Transport Police and the A&E registrar.
‘He was brought in at eight-thirty last night?’
The registrar, a short man in his early thirties, nodded. His hair was dark too, but, whereas Emma Halliday’s was glossy and healthy, his was matted and dull and the bags under his eyes suggested he could do with a good night’s sleep. ‘That’s correct. He died shortly afterwards. His injuries were massive. Nothing we could do.’
‘And you still have no idea who he is?’
‘There was no identification on him. Do you wish to come through?’
The doctor gestured towards the morgue, and Emma Halliday could see the colour draining from her younger assistant’s face. ‘Are you all right, Constable?’ she asked.
‘Yes, ma’am. I’ll be fine.’ He sounded as though, by stating the fact, he hoped it might be so.
‘Goes with the territory, Andrew.’
‘I know.’
‘Can’t say you ever really get used to it. But we have to deal with it.’
The temperature dropped considerably as they entered the morgue, and Emma was glad of it. She hoped her constable would be okay, but equally she hoped she would be herself. She had made the mistake of eating a full English breakfast that morning, and prayed she’d be able to keep it down. He had seen a fair few dead bodies over her years on the force, but had never seen one that had gone under a train.
The registrar crossed to one of the large steel drawers and pulled it smoothly out. She looked over at DI Emma Halliday, who took a deep breath and nodded. The doctor pulled back the cloth covering the top part of the dead man’s body. His head had been smashed on one side, but not so badly on the other side. He looked like a man wearing a particularly gruesome horror-mask. The Phantom of the Opera without his face-covering.
It was enough for Detective Inspector Halliday. She nodded to the registrar and he slid the drawer smoothly back into place.
‘His belongings are over here.’
The small man led the detective over to a side-table where the man’s shoes and clothes and belongings had been put in individual, clear bags. Emma picked up one of them.
‘Eight hundred and fifty in cash. Lot of money to be carrying around.’
‘Yes,’ agreed her constable. ‘And in just a plain brown envelope?’
‘Yes,’ answered the registrar.
‘And just this card?’ asked Emma Halliday as she put down one bag and lifted another.
‘Just that, yes.’
Emma looked at the card in the bag. It was larger than a standard playing card. Rectangular, about six inches by four inches. The picture depicted the Angel Gabriel playing a trumpet from which hung the St George’s Cross flag. Underneath him was a group of people — men, women and children who were standing in graves and looking up at him in awe. In the background was a towering ocean, a tidal wave.
‘What is this?’ the detective said, to no one in particular.
‘It’s a tarot card,’ replied the registrar. ‘Judgement.’
SERGEANT ‘SLIMLINE’ DAVE Matthews, on guard duty, stood with Laura Chilvers outside the intensive-care room where Bible Steve was being attended to. Laura had little make-up on, as usual, but this morning she didn’t look radiant. Her eyes were red and there were the first signs of bags under her eyes. Matthews took a swig of water from the clear plastic cup he was carrying and looked over at her.
‘Did you get much sleep last night?’ he asked.
‘Not much, why?’
‘You look like shit, Doctor.’
‘Yeah, thanks for that, Slimline.’
The sergeant smiled cheerily. ‘Just saying.’
‘Well, don’t!’
He gestured towards the window. Bible Steve was under the covers with his arms outside. His head was back on the pillow and he was snoring loudly.
‘Looks like he’s getting plenty of sleep.’
Laura nodded.
‘That’s a good sign, I guess.’
‘I suppose it is.’
‘Means he’s alive at least.’
Laura Chilvers nodded again.
Dr Lily Crabbe came out of the room. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting.’
‘How is he doing?’ asked Laura.
‘He’s been sedated. We’d rather not do it, but his body needs to repair itself and sleep is the best mechanism for that sometimes.’
‘Why was he sedated?’ asked Laura.
‘He woke up screaming this morning. Talking gibberish and wouldn’t settle. We didn’t have any choice. He looked like he might become violent. It took a couple of nurses to hold him down, or he might have injured himself or one of my staff.’
‘Does he remember anything?’ asked Laura.
‘He remembers being here. He remembers being on the streets. The snow. Being cold.’
‘Is that it?’
‘Yes.’
Sergeant Matthews looked down at the sleeping man. ‘How long will this amnesia last?’
‘It really depends on what caused it in the first place. You tell me that he has had this condition for a number of years?’
‘As far as we can tell, yes.’
‘Well his situation has certainly changed. He doesn’t remember the name Steve, or Bible Steve. But that is the name you say he has been giving for himself.’
‘Yes,’ agreed the sergeant. ‘It’s the one he responds to.’
‘Not any more.’
‘Is there anything that can be done, Doctor?’
The woman ran her hand through her hair. ‘It depends what caused it and what type of amnesia he is suffering from.’
‘There are different types?’
‘Yes, Dave. There are,’ Laura answered for the registrar. ‘Short-term memory loss which means anterograde. That concerns recent memories only. Then there is retrograde amnesia, which means whole chunks of your life can disappear, even your identity. And it can be caused by all kinds of things: stress, physical or mental trauma.’
‘What do you think caused the problem?’
‘In the first place?’
‘I guess so. A blow to the head?’
‘Maybe. Like I said, there are all kind of causes. I’m not a neurologist,’ said Dr Crabbe. ‘But yes, a physical trauma is often the cause. Or a big emotional upset. Many people on the streets are ex-military. Mental illness brought on by post-traumatic stress disorder.’
‘Do you think he is ex-military, Doctor?’
‘I have no idea. Surely that would be more in your line?’
‘He can take care of himself, from what I have heard.’
‘Not very well, Sergeant.’
‘Can you tell us what caused his head injuries, at least?’
‘It was definitely a blow. And, looking at the bruises on his body, quite possibly a long, blunt instrument. Not metal, probably wood.’
‘Something like a baseball bat?’ asked Slimline Matthews.
‘Possibly. Like I say, these areas are more in your line.’
The sergeant gazed down at Bible Steve. ‘Looks like somebody really wanted to hurt him.’
‘If you ask me, Sergeant,’ said the registrar, ‘somebody tried to kill him.
And Bible Steve sat bolt upright in bed.
SNOWFLAKES WERE DANCING in the air again. A slight drift had accumulated at the base of Geoffrey Hunt’s writing cabin, covering once more the path he had cleared so carefully.
Inside their kitchen Patricia Hunt’s hand trembled as she poured some tea into a cup. DC Sally Cartwright noticed the bandage on her hand and wrist and went across to help.
‘Why don’t you let me do that?’
The older woman smiled gratefully. ‘Thank you, dear.’
‘Have you hurt your hand?’
‘She scalded it yesterday,’ said her husband, then blew his nose into a large white handkerchief. ‘Refuses to see her doctor.’
‘You should,’ said Jack Delaney. ‘I hear she is a very nice woman.’
‘You know Dr Walker?’ asked Patricia.
‘I should do. She’s having my child.’
‘Oh. Well, congratulations!’
‘Thank you.’
‘The detective is a very lucky man,’ said Sally Cartwright and handed him a cup of tea.
‘We need to talk to you, Reverend Hunt, about St Luke’s,’ said Delaney.
‘I’m afraid I don’t have much to do with the church any more, Detective. Not for some years.’
‘You do know the church has been sold to a property developer?’
Geoffrey hesitated and blinked.
‘Yes, we do know that. Don’t we, dear?’ said his wife.
‘Yes, sorry. Of course we did. My memory. Not what it was.’
‘That’s okay, Reverend.’
‘But I don’t understand. What has that to do with us?’
‘A body was discovered in the grounds.’
‘Well there has been a cemetery in the grounds since the church was built.’
‘It wasn’t in the cemetery part.’
‘Oh?’
‘I still don’t see what this has to do with us, Detective,’ said Patricia Hunt.
‘We don’t know who the man is. Trying to get a lead on him. We’re just making enquiries really.’ Delaney smiled reassuringly.
‘We heard about it on the radio,’ said Patricia. ‘We would of course have phoned if we thought we could help in any way.’
‘As far as our forensic pathologist can tell, the body has been there for some twenty years. About the time the church was under your care, Reverend.’
Geoffrey Hunt took a hit on his inhaler, his breathing wet and ragged. ‘I retired twenty years ago. Have you spoken to my successor?’
‘Not as yet. He is in Africa on missionary work at present. We’ve left him a message.’
‘He may …’ The older man struggled to get the words out. ‘He may be able to help. Maybe he knows something …’ He trailed off, wheezing.
‘Are you all right, dear?’ Patricia crossed to his side and held him as Geoffrey’s eyes rolled back and he collapsed in his chair. ‘Help me,’ she shouted to Delaney, who rushed over to catch her husband.
Sally pulled out her mobile and punched in the number nine three times.
‘I need an ambulance quickly,’ she said.
Bible Steve stood in the gents’ bathroom, horrified at the sight of the man looking back at him from the mirror. His whole body was trembling, and tears had formed in the corner of his eyes. He turned both taps on and looked down at his shaking hands as he put them under the jets of water. The water turned pink for a moment, then clear as he rubbed harder as if to scour the skin from them.
He splashed water onto his face and through his hair. Making fists of his hands and rubbing the corner of his eyes. He opened his eyes again and leaned in closer to the mirror.
‘Who are you?’ he whispered. ‘Who the fuck are you?’
He held his hands under the water again and then cried out as it burned his hand.
Dave Matthews came running into the room, closely followed by Laura Chilvers. ‘What’s happened?’ he asked.
‘It’s hot,’ said Bible Steve.
‘Here,’ said Laura, taking his hand, running the cold water and putting his hand under it. After a while, she dried off his hand with a paper towel and looked at it. ‘You’ll be okay, I’ll get the nurse to put some cream on it.’
‘What happened to me?’ said Bible Steve.
‘You scalded your hand, Steve,’ replied Dave Matthews.
‘That’s not my name. I’m not called Steve. And I don’t mean the water.’
‘You need to get back into bed.’ Laura took his arm and led him out of the room into the ward corridor.
Bible Steve walked docilely along, no fight in him. ‘How did I get so old?’ he asked.
Laura shrugged sympathetically. ‘Can you remember anything at all about what happened last night?’
Bible shook his head, confused, and looked down at his hands again as they arrived back at his room. ‘My skin is parchment, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘How charged with punishments the scroll!’ he continued.
‘What are you on about, Bible?’ asked Sergeant Matthews.
‘The spirit is weak, so the flesh must be punished, and here that punishment is recorded.’ He held up his hands, forming them into fists. ‘The body is a canvas and pain is the paint with which God marks us.’
Dave Matthews held his hands up. ‘Okay, Bible. Let’s not do any decorating here.’
The confused man lowered his hands, looked at Laura, then back at the sergeant. ‘I do remember one thing,’ he said, tears forming in his eyes again.
Laura put her hand on his arm. ‘What?’
‘A death.’ He almost whispered the word.
‘What do you mean?’
Tears streamed from the homeless man’s eyes now. ‘I murdered a young woman.’ He looked down at his bunched fists again. ‘I can still see her blood.’
Sergeant Matthews would have pressed him but the registrar came bustling up to them, a nurse in tow and a serious expression on her face.
‘Okay. That’s quite enough, Sergeant. You’re upsetting him.’
‘He’s just confessed to a murder.’
‘He is tired and confused. Your questions will have to wait and we need to do some blood tests.’
‘Hold on just a minute,’ said Dave Matthews. ‘I need to speak to him.’
‘Then you need to speak to him later.’
‘It’s important.’
‘He’s in no state to be questioned right now. That’s a medical … and a legal opinion.’ She looked over at Laura, who nodded.
‘I’m not talking about a formal interview. We just want to talk.’
‘Then you can do it a little later. Come on, sir. Let’s get you back to bed.’
She led Bible Steve back into his room. Sergeant Matthews swore mildly under his breath. ‘What the hell’s going on here, Laura?’
Laura Chilvers shook her head, her eyes troubled. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, of course I am!’ she snapped back.
Dave Matthews looked down at the hand she was rubbing nervously, unaware that she was doing it.
‘How did you hurt your hand?’
‘I did something really stupid.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know.’
THE BRIEFING ROOM was about half-full. Uniforms and CID, some sitting, some standing. Most with cups of coffee. The windows were steaming up, but through them you could see the snow falling in earnest. Delaney wiped his hand on the window, peering out to see a white layer covering his Saab. Maybe it was time to get a new car. As a detective inspector he was entitled to have replaced it years ago. And with a baby on the way, maybe he should. An estate maybe. Kate would probably approve of a Volvo, something dependable, reliable, safe. Words not usually associated with him. He smiled at the thought, and realised that Diane Campbell had just said something to him.
She half-sat on the desk behind her, a pint-sized mug of tea held in her petite hand.
‘Sorry, what’s that?’ he asked.
‘I said, is something amusing you, Detective?’
‘Life, boss. Sometimes just looking out of the window, seeing the city stretching out in all directions. The millions of people. Some of them loving. Some of them just living. The hate, the poverty, the dirt. And then days like today with the snow falling, covering up all the dirt. Makes you wish it could do the same for the pain and hurt that human beings visit on each other on an hourly basis. But you know nothing can. You have to either smile or cry.’
‘Yes, thank you, Brendan Behan. But back in the real world of the Metropolitan Police, what can you tell us about the John Doe we dug up in Queen’s Park yesterday morning?’
‘Not a lot more, ma’am. The lab will run a DNA analysis, but that will take a while. Likewise dental records. We’re checking the missing-persons lists for the area, going back to the time we estimate he was buried there.’
‘Any hits?’
‘The vicar at the time, Geoffrey Hunt. His brother went missing about the same time. A little while later, the reverend’s brother called to say he was okay, apparently.’
‘You think the brother might be the John Doe?’
‘It’s possible. But I also think he might know what happened to the John Doe. Could be he had a reason for disappearing.’
‘A reason like murder, you mean.’
‘Someone put a hole in the man’s head and tried to make sure the body was never discovered.’
‘If those workmen hadn’t been digging that trench, it probably never would have been,’ said Diane Campbell.
‘Exactly. I get the sense that there was something the retired vicar wasn’t telling us.’
‘You think he knows where his brother is?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Can you not lean on him?’
‘He’s in hospital, ma’am,’ answered Sally Cartwright.
Diane looked over at Delaney. ‘Jesus, Jack! Don’t tell me—’
‘Of course not,’ Delaney said. ‘He’s an old man. He’s sick. He just collapsed is all.’
‘I’ve seen your bad-cop routine, Jack.’
Delaney held up his hands. ‘I swear. Just asked him a couple of questions is all. I’ll go and see him later when he’s fit to question.’
‘Where is he?’
‘The South Hampstead.’
‘Talking of which, what’s the update on Bible Steve, Slimline?’
Dave Matthews shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘He’s still there. Out of intensive care now, but not in good shape.’
‘What about his mental state?’
‘In some senses worse. He doesn’t even recognise the name Bible Steve any more and has no memory of being on the streets.’
Diane nodded. ‘Paddington Green are not treating the Chinese woman’s death as suspicious. The coroner said she died from a heart attack. She had a long history of heart problems, apparently. It could have been triggered by finding Bible. Or it could have happened any time, according to the coroner. The cold didn’t help.’
‘Looks like the poor old sod was attacked, though, guv.’
‘Go on?’
Laura answered for him. ‘The X-rays show he was hit with something. Something long and round-shaped.’
‘A baseball bat?’
‘Could be.’
‘But it was definitely a deliberate attack. He’s lucky to be alive,’ added the sergeant.
‘Random?’
‘We’ve spoken to the homeless unit. No other reports of recent tramp bashing.’
‘We prefer the term “homeless”, Slimline.’
‘But there’s another problem.’
‘Go on.’
‘Bible Steve tells us he saw a murder the other night. A young woman. Early twenties. Blonde. Blood everywhere.’
‘Where?’
‘He doesn’t remember.’
‘And can he describe the attacker?’
‘Perfectly.’
Dr Laura Chilvers uncrossed her arms. ‘We think he is suffering from some kind of psychotic episode. The blows to the head, his earlier fall. Some kind of fugue, delusional fantasies.’
‘What’s the neurologist say?’
‘They’re running tests.’
‘There’s been no report of any young woman being murdered?’
‘No, boss,’ said Sergeant Matthews.
‘Doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened.’
‘It’s a possibility.’
‘Highly unlikely!’ added Laura.
‘So he can give us a good description of who this possible murderer is.’
‘He said he did it himself, ma’am. He claims he killed the young woman.’
‘You’re not telling me you’re taking him seriously?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘This is Bible Steve we’re talking about.’
‘He says he killed someone. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he saw something, though.’
‘Maybe.’
‘He does seem different as well,’ said the sergeant. ‘Not like his old self at all. A different person somehow. Not just the amnesia. In a funny way he seemed more together.’
‘He was just more sober,’ said Laura. ‘It won’t last.’
‘Best get a wriggle on then. Because he might have imagined or dreamed or hallucinated something last night. But someone beating him up with a baseball bat isn’t a delusional fantasy, is it?’
‘No.’
‘Then we had better look into it.’
‘Ma’am.’
Diane nodded at Dr Chilvers. ‘And I don’t need to remind you that if Bible Steve left here last night with a serious head injury, and you allowed his discharge without picking up on it, there could be serious consequences.’
‘I’m pretty sure …’
Diane held a hand up to interrupt her and turned to Delaney. ‘This is one for CID,’ she said. ‘The other case has been waiting for twenty years. I want you to get back on this, Jack. You’re going to the hospital anyway.’
‘Sure.’
‘As Laura says, it sounds highly unlikely. I don’t have Bible Steve down as a psychotic murderer. But we can’t afford to ignore it and he might well have seen something.’
‘I’ll get on it,’ said Delaney.
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Laura.
‘Kate, see if you can chase up the reverend’s brother meanwhile as you know the family. What’s the brother’s name?’
Kate consulted her notebook. ‘Jeremy Hunt, Diane. Reverend Jeremy Hunt, I should say. Runs in the family.’
There was a knock on the door and DI Tony Hamilton walked in followed by DI Emma Halliday.
‘Hello, ma’am. Sorry to interrupt,’ said DI Hamilton.
‘That’s okay, Tony. We’re wrapped up here.’ She gestured for the team to get on. ‘So what can I do for you?’
‘Like to have a word with Inspector Delaney.’
‘Be my guest.’ Diane left, followed by the rest of the team.
‘What’s going on, Tony?’ asked Delaney.
‘Not entirely sure.’ Hamilton waited for the room to clear then closed the door on the three of them.
‘Bit of a puzzle,’ Emma Halliday agreed.
‘Bit out of your bailiwick, aren’t you, Catwalk?’
‘Not really. They are going to combine White City here with Paddington Green next month apparently.’
‘Why?’
‘Cutbacks, Jack. Streamlining of management and operational infrastructure. Just the beginning, I’d say.’
‘Be about right. What does Napier say?’
Emma grinned. ‘Don’t know, but if it means a sideways move for him, he’ll not be happy.’
‘That’s something then,’ said Delaney, finishing his coffee. ‘So what’s the puzzle that brings the Met’s best and beautiful over to see little old me?’
Emma reached into the black leather bag she had slung over her shoulder and placed an evidence bag on the table.
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s a tarot card. Major Arcana.’
Delaney picked it up. A man dressed in medieval garb, hung by his one foot from a T-shaped tree. Red hose, blue jerkin and a yellow corona around his head.
‘The Hanged Man,’ said DI Hamilton.
‘I’m Irish, not a gypsy. What’s this got to do with me?’
‘The card was found on a man who suicided a year ago. Jumped under a train at Piccadilly Circus station. Took a while to track him down. His name was Andrew Johnson. Came from a town called Lavenham in Suffolk. He was the landlord of a small pub called The Crawfish there.’
‘Go on.’
‘He was visiting London on business, he made the trip several times a year. In his suitcase we found women’s clothing. We thought he was a transvestite. But there was also a pair of torn knickers, with semen stains, some blood and pubic hair. Male and female.’
‘And?’
‘Turned out the semen was his, as was the male pubic hair,’ continued DI Halliday. ‘The blood and the other pubic hair was from an as-yet-unidentified female.’
‘So we have a suicide. And some stained underwear and a mystic tarot card, on the person of a pub landlord from Lavenham in Suffolk.’
‘Except maybe it wasn’t suicide,’ said DI Hamilton.
‘You have my attention,’ replied Delaney.
‘Last night,’ continued Emma Halliday, ‘another man jumped under a train. This time from the east-bound Bakerloo Line platform at Baker Street station.’
‘More underwear in a briefcase?’
‘No. But again no identification on him. And he was carrying an envelope with a lot of cash in it.’
‘And something else,’ said Tony, as the tall woman handed another evidence card to Delaney.
‘Another tarot card.’
‘This one is called Judgement,’ said Emma.
‘Does that have any special significance?’
‘It might do, especially if he didn’t jump.’
‘He was pushed, you mean?’
‘No witnesses said they saw him being pushed. But one of the people on the platform beside him thought they heard a sound before he went under the train.’
Delaney met her level gaze. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me.’
‘The sound she described sounded a lot like a static electric buzz.’
‘He was tasered, you’re saying?’
‘You catch on fast.’
‘I’m a detective inspector. It goes with my pay grade. And what’s the rest of it?’
‘The face was pretty smashed in,’ said DI Halliday.
Delaney grimaced.
‘But something about him …’ She gestured with her hand. ‘I got the pathologist to run a check for burn marks.’
‘Evidence of a Taser?’
‘Yep, hand held, close range. Enough volts to make him jump involuntarily.’
‘Police-issue kind of Taser,’ Emma Halliday added.
‘So this guy who jumped in front of the Bakerloo Line train. We know who he is?’
‘We do now. What I could see of his face looked kind of familiar. I ran some fingerprints. And bingo bongo!’ replied Emma.
‘So the question we need to ask you, Jack …’
‘Yes?’
‘Is where were you at eight-thirty last night?’
‘Are you tugging on my lariat?’
‘Sorry, cowboy,’ said Emma with a wink. ‘But I hear nowadays you’re a married man, good as. So where were you?’
‘Who’s the John Doe.’
‘Michael Robinson, Jack.’
‘Ah.’
‘Indeed.’
‘So, anything you want to tell us?’
Delaney shrugged. ‘It’s four days to Christmas. I haven’t done any shopping. I’ve got a tree to buy, a house to decorate. An unsolved murder to investigate, another possible murder. It’s dark and I’m wearing sunglasses. Now tell me, who do you love?’
Emma smiled and Delaney smiled back at her. ‘Got to love you, Jack.’
‘Where were you, cowboy?’ asked Hamilton. ‘Just for the record.’
Delaney leaned in and whispered in Catwalk Halliday’s ear. The female DI raised an eyebrow.
‘You are fricking kidding me!’ she said.
Delaney gestured apologetically with his hands and Emma smiled again.
‘Everything they say about you is true, isn’t it?’
‘I guess it is.’
‘Like I say, got to love you, Jack!’
‘Anyone want to let me in on the secret?’ said DI Tony Hamilton.
SALLY CARTWRIGHT FLICKED the windscreen wipers to full speed. The snow was really coming down in earnest now and the traffic was crawling through London.
‘You reckon this snow is going to last until Christmas, boss?’ she asked Delaney.
Delaney peered out at Edgware Road station, people bundled up and coming out of the entrance. The shopping spree still in full swing.
‘You done all your Christmas shopping, Sally?’ he asked, ignoring her question.
‘Two weeks ago, sir. Presents wrapped, cards all sent.’
‘What a surprise.’
‘I take it you are not entirely finished?’
‘I haven’t even started. But yeah, I hope it does last for Christmas.’
‘Turning into an old romantic?’
‘Less of the old. And no. I meant for Siobhan’s sake. Christmas, it’s for kids, isn’t it?’
‘And big kids, sir. You’re not fooling anyone.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure of that.’
‘What did Catwalk and Tony Hamilton want with you?’
‘Some developments in the Michael Robinson case.’
‘What kind of developments?’
‘Someone pushed him under the eight-thirty to Elephant and Castle last night.’
‘Bloody hell! Is he dead?’
‘Let’s just say he didn’t need to buy a return ticket to Harrow-on-the-Hill.’
‘Bloody hell,’ she said again, quieter this time. ‘So why the both of them? And why not just call you?’
‘It was in the way of an official enquiry. They wanted to know where I was at the time.’
‘Well, I can’t say I’m unhappy that he’s dead. What did you tell them?’
‘That I had an alibi.’
‘And do you?’
‘Sally, I am shocked that you could even ask that question,’ he said, shaking his head in mock-sadness.
‘So have they got any leads on who did it?’
‘They think we’ve got us a serial killer. There was a tarot card found in his pocket. A year or so ago another man was under a train with a tarot card from the same deck.’
‘How do they know it’s the same deck?’
‘I meant the same style of deck. Apparently there are hundreds of different decks, different designs. These two were from the same series.’
‘Who was the first guy?’
‘Chap called Andrew Johnson. A publican from a quaint rural town called Lavenham, in the heart of Suffolk.’
‘Any connection between them?’
‘Not sure. But according to Tony Blue-Eyes, he used to live in Harrow before moving to Suffolk.’
‘They knew each other?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Somebody knew them both.’
‘Certainly looks that way.’
Sally Cartwright flicked her indicator down and turned left into the grounds of the hospital. It was an imposing Victorian building, much of the architecture as it originally was, with some modern wings and extensions added. She parked the car and placed the ‘Police on call’ sign on the dashboard.
She looked across as Laura Chilvers pulled her car into the adjoining slot. ‘What do you make of Dr Chilvers?’ she asked Delaney.
Delaney winked at her. ‘I don’t go for blondes,’ he said.
‘Yeah, funny, sir.’
‘What’s on your mind?’
‘I don’t know. There’s something odd about her lately.’
‘She’s a lesbian, Sally. Maybe she fancies you.’
Delaney got out of the car before she could reply, and walked towards the entrance.
MRS JOHNSON LOOKED down at the man who had his head placed between her legs. He was a twenty-four-year-old called Simon, who worked in the bar for her. He worked in the bedroom for her too.
She moaned and tangled her fingers in his hair, pressing his head down harder on her sex.
‘That’s it, work that tongue, boy. Do a good job of it and I might let you fuck me.’
She smiled as she saw his bare buttocks buck slightly on the mattress. If he came before she did, it wouldn’t be the first time, but she’d keep him down until the job was done. She had had a variety of young lovers over the year since her husband had died, and regretted not starting a lot sooner. The truth was, she was never much interested in sex before his death. He was a boring man in life, and never more so than in the bedroom, where he would roll on top of her like a beached seal and, after a few cursory pumps with his small member, would reach a climax and flop back over again. In all the years since they had been married she hadn’t orgasmed even once. Now she insisted on it every time. Two or three times a day.
She lay back and smiled as the boy beneath her moaned with pleasure himself as he lapped at her like a large dog at his water bowl.
And then the phone rang.
Bible Steve was dressed in a hospital gown. Blood was dripping slightly from his arm where he had ripped the IV tube loose, and the young female nurse blocking his way to the hospital exit was holding her arms up trying to placate him.
‘Please, sir. You can’t leave.’
‘I’m no sir,’ he bellowed back at her. ‘Look at me. Look at these hands.’
He held his weather-beaten, scarred and sore hands palm upwards.
‘These are not the hands of a sir. They are the hands of a bum. Of a tramp. And there is blood on them. Macbeth blood. They will not be washed clean.’
‘You need treatment.’
‘I need scourging. I need fire. Most of all … I need whisky!’ He brushed her aside and stumbled up to the door, where Delaney held out his hand and put it on his chest.
‘Hold your horses, Bible.’
‘Stop calling me that. You think if you keep calling me Bible or Steve, it will make me believe it’s who I am.’
‘And who are you?’
‘I’m just a man in need of a drink!’
He moved to skirt around Delaney, but the DI held his hands wide.
‘You need to stay here,’ added Laura. ‘They are doing some tests. They can help you.’
‘No one can help me.’
‘The thing is, we need to talk to you. You made some claims this morning,’ said Delaney.
‘I can’t remember,’ he said and stumbled past him to Laura, holding his hands out to her. ‘Give me money, so I can get some hot tea and a sandwich.’
‘They can give that to you here.’
Bible Steve shook his head angrily. ‘I need a drink.’
‘For God’s sake, man. Do you want to kill yourself?’ asked Laura.
The bearded man looked at her sadly for a moment. ‘I must have wanted to, mustn’t I? Whoever I was, that’s what I’ve been doing.’
He turned away and then started coughing, his body shaking violently. Then Bible Steve dropped to his knees and vomited. Spattering the clean and shiny floor with bile and bright blood. Laura rushed over to him and Delaney handed her a handkerchief.
‘Is he all right?’
‘No, he’s not.’
A few minutes later and Bible Steve was back in the intensive-care room. He watched passively as drips were once more attached to his arm, monitoring devices attached to his chest. There was no fight in him and his eyes were scared.
The registrar, Dr Lily Crabbe, came back out of the room.
‘We’ve given him some more sedation.’
‘Vomiting blood. That’s quite serious, isn’t it?’ asked Delaney.
‘It can be. We won’t know till we get his blood-work back.’
‘Coughing blood can mean an internal injury,’ said Laura Chilvers, looking worried. ‘Something he got as a consequence of the beating he received?’
The registrar shrugged — not disinterested, just tired. ‘It could also mean he has been vomiting heavily recently. Given his condition, it is not an unlikely situation. That can lead to tears in the oesophagus — the throat,’ she added unnecessarily for Delaney’s benefit.
‘But it could be from the beating?’ Laura pressed on, chewing nervously on the corner of her thumbnail. She realised what she was doing and thrust her hands into her pockets.
‘It could be from many things.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Delaney. ‘But we do need to talk to him urgently.’
‘Might I ask why you people are taking so much interest in this particular homeless man? I don’t mean to be rude, but from my experience such people are not usually high on the priority list of the Metropolitan Police,’ said Dr Crabbe.
‘That’s not true,’ said Delaney. ‘But as it happens, this particular homeless man may be the victim of an attempted homicide.’
‘Homeless people get beaten up all the time.’
‘And this one may have seen a murder. Or may have committed one himself.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He confessed earlier.’
‘He was rambling, confused. I think he has been suffering from some kind of psychotic fugue, perhaps brought on by the attack. Or exacerbated by it,’ said Laura.
‘I guess we’ll have to find out, then,’ said Jack Delaney.
KATE WALKER SAT at her desk, her laptop computer open in front of her. She should have been responding to about fifty emails that had built up in the day she had been away from the police surgeon’s office. She should have been … but wasn’t.
She was looking to find something to buy Jack Delaney for Christmas. Their first Christmas together. They had gone shopping for presents for Siobhan and he had been as happy as she had ever seen him. Not that she had known him that long. Not even nine months, for goodness’ sake, and here she was living with the man, bringing up his daughter as though her own. And a child they were having together being carried inside her. She didn’t know yet whether it was a boy or a girl, and neither she nor Jack wanted to find out. She figured he would probably like a son. Replace the son that he thought was his when his first wife died. Died when Jack intervened in an armed robbery at a petrol station in Pinner Green. One of the masked men had blasted a shotgun towards him, only it had hit his car instead, critically injuring his wife who was in the passenger seat. She had died later in hospital and they were unable to save the unborn son she was carrying inside her.
Delaney had been devastated, had gone on a four-year binge of self-destruction. Wallowing in alcohol and violence. Functioning as a cop, but only just. When a friend of his, an Irish prostitute called Jackie Malone, had been killed in an attempt to stop the exposure of an organised paedophile ring, it had thrown Jack and Kate together. In more ways than one. Her own uncle, a high-ranking police officer, had been involved in the ring. Luring runaway children off the streets of London under cover of offering protection, whereas in fact the children were being taken to a large house near Henley-on-Thames, where they were subjected to horrific abuse, filmed and in some cases murdered. Jackie Malone’s nephew had been used by Kate’s uncle as bait on the streets and, as far as she was concerned, ex Chief Superintendent Walker could rot in hell. He was never going to see the outside world again, that much was for sure. She had given him a knife scar on his right cheek after he tried coming to her room late at night one last time. If she had been able, she would have taken his head off with it from the neck.
So she and Jack had both been in dark places when they met; she could never have thought they would get together in a million years — but they had, and now they weren’t in those dark places any more. She guessed that’s how it happens sometimes. She ran a hand over her stomach and smiled sadly. She kind of hoped it would be a boy too. The truth was that the unborn baby that Jack Delaney’s wife had been carrying when she died wasn’t his. She didn’t have the heart to tell him, when she had accidentally discovered the fact. And she didn’t have the heart to tell him now, either.
She looked at the Amazon gift page she was browsing and then closed it with a sigh. She was already carrying the best present she could give him, he always said. But she’d think of something!
Her phone went and she snatched it off her desk. ‘Dr Kate Walker.’
The voice on the other end was male. He was speaking quietly. ‘Hey Kate, it’s Ben Fielding.’
Kate nodded and pushed some papers around, looking for a pen. ‘What have you got for me, Ben?’
‘The blood-work and sample analysis back on your mysterious woman.’
‘And?’
‘No semen. No blood. No foreign pubic hairs. Some evidence of lubricant.’
‘Consistent with a condom?’
‘No. Too much for that.’
‘Okay.’
‘Her blood had a cocktail of drugs showing in it, and her alcohol levels were very high for the morning after. I’ll email you the report. But you didn’t get anything from me.’
‘Of course not. Goes without saying.’
‘But I’m not at all surprised this lady didn’t remember anything of what happened. It’d be amazing if she did.’
‘Thanks again, Ben. I owe you one.’
‘No, you don’t, we’re quits.’
Kate sat at her desk for a moment or two, pondering the implications after she had hung up her phone. And then moved her thumb on the touchpad of her laptop to bring up her mailbox, to see if the reports were there. They weren’t yet, but another message had come in. She read the subject line and clicked it it to open.
Then she took out her mobile and hit a speed-dial button. The phone was answered after a couple of rings.
‘Hey, gorgeous, I was just thinking about you.’
‘Getting all hot and bothered, were you,’ Delaney replied on the other end of the line, lowering his voice and putting on the brogue.
‘Always. But I was thinking of what I should get you for Christmas.’
‘Why don’t I take you down to Agent Provocateur in Broadwick Street? I’ll help you pick something out for me.’
‘I don’t think stockings and suspenders would be a good look for you.’
Delaney laughed. ‘I wasn’t planning on wearing them myself.’
‘So, you still at the hospital?’
‘Just grabbing a coffee. Both witnesses are unavailable for comment right now. Hope to speak to Bible Steve soon. He had a bit of a turn.’
‘Well I just heard back from the World Peace Mission. Seems Geoffrey’s brother, Jeremy Hunt, was a missionary with them. Also a reverend with the Church of England, but peripatetic as it were, overseas.’
‘Go on.’
‘The World Peace Mission is tracking down his medical records. Not easy from twenty years ago, if you think that he was in Africa at the time and the Internet wasn’t anything like as accessible as it is today.’
‘When will we get them?’
‘This afternoon, they promised.’
‘Good work.’
‘I do my best.’
‘And you do it very prettily.’
‘Now that wouldn’t be a sexist remark, would it, Jack?’
‘It’s a statement of fact, Doctor. My job, after all, is sifting the facts from the fiction.’
‘And you do it very handsomely.’
‘I do my best.’
‘So are you just going to hang around until you’re allowed in to speak to the witnesses?’
‘I’m going to speak to the reverend’s wife. See if she has anything to add.’
‘Send her my regards.’
‘Will do.’
‘And be gentle with her, she’s an old lady.’
‘This is an old murder.’
‘True. But Patricia Hunt is no murderer.’
‘Everybody has secrets, Kate.’
‘Part of your job is wheedling them out?’
‘Yup.’
Kate ran her hand, slightly guiltily, over her stomach. ‘You just take care of yourself, is all.’
‘Hey, I’m always careful out there. Bye, darling, catch you later.’
‘Bye, honey.’
Kate hung up and looked down at her stomach. ‘Because he has to take care of us too, doesn’t he? He has to take care of all of us,’ she said in a soothing voice.
An incoming message beeped on her computer and Kate pulled up the report just in from Ben Fielding.
She scanned it briefly, raising an eyebrow. If Laura Chilvers had been seeking oblivion that night, she had certainly gone about it the right way. Traces of enough drugs in her system to sedate an elephant. Unless someone had planted them in her drinks, of course.
She moved the cursor and clicked on the print icon.
DI TONY HAMILTON looked over at the tall woman who was driving. It was an estimated two-and-a-bit-hour drive to Lavenham in Suffolk from White City, but DI Emma Halliday had her foot down hard on the accelerator. They had been going for an hour or so and were at Bishop’s Stortford, about to leave the M11 and head towards Sudbury. The roads had been pretty clear out of central London, and even the North Circular had been remarkably hold-up-free. The heavier snowfalls expected in the capital had probably put most people off. Tony Hamilton didn’t blame them. Traffic in London was like one of the seven circles of Hell at the best of times; add a snow blizzard to the mix, and he’d count himself out soon enough. The only trouble was he couldn’t. The call comes and London’s finest have to answer, even if it does mean driving through several counties to get there. There were flurries of snow and the clouds overhead seemed to be thickening, but Emma had driven fast and controlled; he was impressed.
The DI noticed that he was looking at her, with a small smile on his face.
‘Spit it out, Detective. You got something to say?’
‘Just having a little sexist thought.’
‘You better not have been looking at my legs.’
DI Hamilton on reflex looked down at her very long trousered legs and then back up at her. ‘Actually I was just admiring your driving skills and was admonishing myself for being surprised.’
‘I surprise a lot of people with a lot of things.’
‘I’m sure you do, Catwalk.’
‘Yeah, Detective Inspector Halliday will do just fine thank you!’
‘Hamilton and Halliday. Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?’
‘No.’
‘I could see it on the TV. After Eastenders … stay tuned for Hamilton and Halliday. They kick butt, but boy do they look good!’
Emma looked over at him, smiling despite herself. ‘Got tickets on yourself, haven’t you?’
‘Is that what you think?’
‘What I think is that you should let me concentrate on the driving.’
‘Just trying to pass the time with some witty conversation.’
‘Well you’re failing. Stick the radio on.’
DI Hamilton leaned forward and pushed the button on the dashboard. A smooth announcer’s voice was reading the news.
‘… Superintendent Napier of White City Police Station and the Metropolitan Police has today confirmed that the body recovered from under the carriages of an east-bound Bakerloo Line train was indeed that of Michael Robinson. Mister Robinson had earlier that morning walked free from the Old Bailey after several charges of rape and aggravated sexual assault and grievous bodily harm were dropped against him. The chief witness for the prosecution, who was the alleged victim of the vicious assault, herself sensationally claimed that she was shown a photograph of Michael Robinson before the formal identification parade.’
Tony moved his hand to change the channel, but Emma flicked it away.
‘The person who showed her the photo,’ the announcer continued, ‘was Detective Inspector Jack Delaney, she claimed. This claim is under internal investigation but it has also emerged that Michael Robinson had served a civil lawsuit on Inspector Delaney on the very morning he was released. DI Delaney has not been available for comment but Superintendent George Napier has confirmed that at this moment they are treating Michael Robinson’s death as suspicious. In other news Cheryl Cole has reportedly …’
Emma switched off the announcer in mid-speech. ‘That sounds to me like wolves gathering, don’t you think, Tony? Smelling blood.’
‘Yeah I’d say so. Jumping Jack Flash better be watching his back.’
‘To think a few months ago he was the poster-boy for the Met.’
‘Tall poppy syndrome. The real English vice.’
‘And Jack Delaney is Irish.’
‘Black-as-bog Irish.’
‘Just as well he’s got us on his side, then.’
‘Let’s hope so. I can see heads rolling over this.’
Emma nodded and pressed down harder on the accelerator pedal.
*
Delaney walked into the family area of the intensive-care unit. It was as depressing a place as they always were in hospitals around the country. National Health hospitals, at least. Some gestures towards comfort but the effect was mainly utilitarian. An industrial-style maroon carpet on the floor. Modern wooden tables with a few magazines scattered on them. Blue moulded furniture with hard-wearing fabric on it, formed into benches and individual chairs. A cold water dispenser in the corner. The light overhead too bright. A mixture of hope and despair hung in the air in these sorts of rooms in hospitals throughout the country. Throughout the world.
Patricia Hunt was seated in the middle of the long blue bench opposite the door Delaney had just walked through. Her head was down, lost in the kind of thoughts that Delaney didn’t have to imagine. He knew only too well what they were. He presumed she had her faith to find some comfort. The last time he himself had prayed was when his wife was fighting a losing battle for her life in a hospital theatre not so very many miles away. He wasn’t sure if he was praying to a Catholic God. Over the years he had lost a sense of who he was in that regard. He was praying to the Catholic God or the Protestant or the Hebrew (even though it was supposedly the same thing), or to the Hindu God or to whatever power it was that created and shaped the universe. He prayed that that was the case and that this was not just some random chaos. So that someone might listen, might change the terrible course of events which were heading full speed to a tragic conclusion. But the words he mumbled in his head over and over again were Catholic ones. Drummed into him by rote as a schoolboy and altar boy back in Ballydehob. The words came as easily as breathing.
Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris.
But the Father in Heaven who was hallowed by name, had not forgiven Jack Delaney his trespasses. His wife and her unborn child had both died that night. And Delaney had not been led astray into temptation because of this. He had simply lost all will to resist it. Neither was he delivered from Evil, but was put in its path like a sun-stroke victim walking blindly into a herd of stampeding cattle. But he was here now and he was sane and, even though he had not prayed since that terrible night, he didn’t look angrily at the trappings of religion, he didn’t bridle at the sight of a dog collar and crucifix. And he didn’t curse God and his actions every time he swallowed a glass of whiskey and ordered another.
‘Can I fetch you a coffee or a cup of tea,’ he asked simply.
Patricia Hunt looked up at him for a moment or two and blinked. ‘No thank you,’ she said. ‘It’s Inspector Delaney, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re married to the lovely Dr Walker.’
‘Not married. Living together.’
‘With a child on the way.’
Delaney shrugged apologetically. ‘Yes.’
‘Please,’ said Patricia Hunt. ‘You get to my age and attitudes change. I’m not sure the expression “living in sin” applies any more. Living in love is far more important. Amor Vincit Omnia. Isn’t that what they used to say?’
Delaney smiled. ‘Not in Ballydehob.’
‘Do you come with news of Geoffrey? How is he?’ she asked anxiously.
‘No news, I’m afraid. They’re keeping a close eye on him.’
‘It’s my fault.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘This cold weather, Inspector. Letting him out. Shovelling snow. He’s not a well man, said the fresh air would do him good.’
‘You mustn’t blame yourself, Mrs Hunt.’
‘You’re a Catholic, or once were?’
Delaney nodded.
‘Well then, you should be familiar with the concept?’
‘I am. And it’s not a helpful one. I know that from experience.’
‘So how can I help you?’
‘I need to ask you some questions about your husband’s brother.’
‘Is that really necessary right now?’
‘As you know, a body was found in the church your husband used to be the vicar of. The victim was murdered and buried there, about the same time as your husband’s brother went missing.’
‘I really don’t see the relevance. This has waited twenty years for your attention. Do you not think it could wait a little longer?’
‘I know this is a difficult time for you, Mrs Hunt, but if you could tell me anything about the last time you saw or spoke to him.’
‘Do you think it is him then, Inspector?’
‘We’re not ruling it out.’
‘It can’t be Jeremy.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I am not sure of anything any more, Inspector. As a young girl, and later as a lecturer in theology, I was pretty sure. Pretty sure about most things. Now that I am just a silly old woman, it is quite the opposite.’
‘You have lost your faith?’
‘Not in God. Never in him.’
‘The Reverend Jeremy Hunt had been in Africa …?’
‘Yes.’
‘For how long?’
‘Oh I am sure if you check his records, you’ll see he had been over there for many, many years. He would pop back to England every so often. But rarely. More as a holiday. Taking care of affairs, that kind of thing.’
‘What kind of affairs?’
‘The usual. Banking, investments. Like I say, it was more of a holiday and he didn’t ever stop long. We didn’t see much of him.’
‘Your husband had had a falling-out with him?’
‘Not at all. Why do you ask that?’
‘The way you say you didn’t see much of him.’
‘They are both busy men. And some families … well they are not all the same, are they, Inspector.’
‘Certainly not.’
‘Do you have any siblings?’
‘I have a sister.’
‘And do you see much of her?’
‘Sadly not. She lives in America. In Pennsylvania.’
‘Once a very religious part of the world.’
‘Not these days. My sister’s married to a cop. Seems he is kept pretty busy.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘So the last time you spoke to Jeremy …’
‘He had come back from Africa. Twenty years ago. He had phoned us.’
‘Did he speak to you or your husband?’
‘He spoke to me, Inspector.’
‘And what did he say?’
‘Very little. He said he’d come to attend to some matters of pressing urgency and arranged to come to the vicarage for dinner a couple of nights later.’
‘Did he say what the matters were?’
‘No. But he did say that he had left the missionary society that he was working for.’
‘Was that a surprise?’
‘I really couldn’t say, Detective. He didn’t really say much.’
‘Not even at dinner?’
‘He never turned up, Inspector Delaney. And we never saw him again.’
‘And you have no idea what happened to him?’
‘One phone call, a message left on our answer-phone to say he was fine and would be in touch. But that was the last we heard.’
‘He just vanished?’
‘We prayed every night for him. But, no. That was it. We never did find out what happened.’
Delaney made a note in his small, black notebook. ‘Do you know if your husband’s brother had any enemies, Mrs Hunt?’
‘Enemies? What do you mean?’
‘Anyone who may have wanted to do him harm?’
‘No. Why would they?’ She took a sip of water and blinked back some tears. ‘Please, if there is nothing else. I am not up to this at the moment.’
‘Of course.’ Delaney closed his notebook and stood up. ‘I’m sorry to have troubled you.’
‘Inspector,’ she said, as he walked over to the door. ‘Don’t give up on your prayers.’
KATE WALKER APPROACHED Dave Matthews, who was back in his usual spot behind the desk.
‘Doctor,’ he said with a smile and a nod.
‘Hello, Slimline,’ Kate responded. ‘Just to let you know I’m expecting a package couriered over to me sometime soon, I hope. Let me know when it gets here, will you?’
‘Of course I will.’
Kate smiled, but made no attempt to move away.
‘Was there anything else?’
Kate leaned on the desk, keeping her voice neutral, but low. ‘Dr Laura Chilvers,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘Friday night — how did she seem to you?’
The desk sergeant shrugged. ‘Much as she ever is, I suppose.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Kate. ‘She seemed a bit … I’m not so sure. Can’t put my finger on it.’
‘She was in a hurry to get out. Some kind of date, I think. A club opening. She didn’t say where. Why do you ask?’
‘Because if she dropped the ball on Bible Steve, that could come back to bite the station. Particularly her.’
‘He seemed all right to me.’
‘And have you studied for seven years, and then worked in the field for years more, to make that kind of qualified judgement?’ Kate asked, but not unkindly.
‘Maybe not.’ The sergeant smiled ruefully. ‘But I’ve done over twenty years dealing with drunks.’
‘The point is that Bible Steve, or whatever his name is, had a fall before he came in, didn’t he?’
‘He collapsed outside the restaurant. Not sure how.’
‘As I understand it, he was found in a cruciform position?’
‘Come again.’
Kate demonstrated. ‘His feet together, his hands outstretched like this.’
‘Yes, like that.’
‘Which suggests to me that he toppled over backwards, his arms outstretched for balance. Rather than crumpling in on himself, to land in a kind of foetal position.’
‘I guess so.’
‘Which means that he could have slapped his head hard on the pavement when he fell. He could have suffered some kind of subdural haematoma.’
‘Which means?’
‘That we shouldn’t have released him unless we were very sure he hadn’t.’
‘Laura Chilvers did ask if we could keep him in overnight.’
‘Why?’
‘Because of the cold, she said.’
‘If she was worried that Bible Steve had suffered a serious head injury then she should have called an ambulance.’
‘Which she didn’t.’
‘No.’
‘But yet she wanted you to keep him in, even though in your opinion he was fit to be released?’
‘Yes, but you know what it is like on a Friday night here, Kate, at the best of times. Friday night a week before Christmas, it was like the biblical Bethlehem.’
‘No room at the inn?’
‘Exactly. And she knows that. I’m surprised she even asked. She knows we would have taken Bible to the homeless shelter anyway.’
‘Not that he stayed there.’
‘No.’
‘What if we released him when we shouldn’t, and he really did go out and murder someone?’
‘If he has, then we’re missing a corpse.’
‘Maybe we should have kept him in?’
‘If if and ans, as my granny used to say,’ said the desk sergeant, ‘were pots and pans, we could set up a bloody department store.’
Kate chewed at her thumbnail. ‘I don’t know. Laura did seem distracted. She got that call, do you remember? Seemed very snappy after it. Not herself.’
‘Like I say, Kate. It was a very busy night.’
‘Too busy, it seems.’
‘It’s not going to get any quieter this side of the silly season,’ said Matthews.
‘Never does,’ said Kate.
‘Never does,’ agreed the sergeant.
‘I wonder who it was that called Laura,’ said Kate, not really intending to voice the thought to the large man behind the desk, but he answered it for her anyway.
‘I guess only Dr Chilvers can tell you that.’
DELANEY SAT IN his car with the engine running, an unlit cigarette between his lips as he looked out of the window.
The heavy precipitation promised by forecasters and amateur pundits all day was yet to materialise. Delaney watched the glistening snowflakes crystallising like pieces of coral fusing together on the ground. An ice carpet built up of millions and millions of flakes, no one of them alike, each unique and yet coming together.
Delaney wished he could manage that with the various elements of the cases he was working on. Fit the disparate particles together and make some sense.
Patricia Hunt had lied to him. He knew that much. Or if she had not lied exactly, had not told him the entire truth. A sin of omission rather than commission, as the brothers and sisters back at Ballydehob would have told him. The kind of brothers and sisters who don’t tease you on your birthday or give you home-made Christmas presents. The kind of brothers and sisters who would put the fear of God in you and made sure it stayed there.
Delaney didn’t read the Holy Book much any more. But what he did read, and could read very well, was people. Not just the old body-language trick of people looking up and to the left if they remembered something when asked a question, or up and to the right if they were making up the answer. No, Delaney knew intuitively. Maybe the story he had told his daughter Siobhan the other night was true, he thought to himself as he dragged his thumb across the wheel of his lighter, scratching against the flint and flaring it into flame. He lit his cigarette and took a drag. Not long to go to New Year’s Eve and he was making a conscious effort to cut down. It wasn’t so much Kate’s wafting of her fingers when he came in from having one, or the fact he didn’t want to smoke around his newborn baby when he or she was born. Well, perhaps it was. But it was mainly Siobhan’s critical eyes that spurred him on. Family, he thought to himself, what a powerful thing it is. How it makes people and breaks people. Nearly broke him, and he wasn’t going to let that happen again.
But what was happening in the Hunt family? Patricia Hunt was not being honest with him. And, in his experience, people who were not honest with the police usually had a very good reason not to be so.
Kate Walker fished the herbal teabag from the mug it had been sitting in, white china with the words ‘I’d rather be in Ballydehob’ written on the front. She had ordered it for Jack online, but somehow appropriated it for herself. Crystal Mountain organic Himalayan green tea. Blended with four botanical herbs, she discovered from the packet: peppermint, angelica, lemon verbena and ginseng. It was supposed to create a deliciously refreshing infusion that would awaken the mind and revitalise the body. Kate blew on the surface, took a cautious sip then added a squirt of honey from a squeezy bottle she kept on her desk. She liked the drink and found it worked for her. Maybe it was a combination of a sense of well-being from being pregnant and giving up the alcohol. Maybe it wasn’t. One thing she did know for sure, though, was that it wasn’t a few glasses of ice-chilled Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc after a hard day’s work that she missed. It was the jolt in the morning that the espresso machine in her kitchen gave her. Coffee was her secret vice. In that respect, she empathised with Jack’s senior boss Superintendent George Napier, if with little else. She took a sip of her tea and permitted herself a small smile. Actually she empathised with the man in one other major way. He had to deal with Detective Inspector Jack Delaney and that could drive any man, or woman, to stronger stimulants than freshly ground Jamaican Blue.
She pulled out the folder she had recently liberated from the courier’s padded envelope and started reading the medical files on the missing man. The Reverend Jeremy Hunt. Last seen in the parish some twenty years previously. She pulled her notepad towards her and started to make notes, correcting herself as she did so. According to the conversation she had just had with Jack, he hadn’t actually been seen twenty years ago. Just made a phone call and never turned up. Jack had put a call though to immigration to chase up entry and exit visas, but, as she well knew, the wheels of that particular bureaucratic engine could turn very slowly, and neither of them had access to the kind of grease required to speed up their progress. Kate made a few jottings as she turned the pages of the various reports and papers, not just Jeremy Hunt’s medical record but his history of service through Africa in the Seventies onwards. Her cup of tea grew cool.
After a while, she picked up her phone and punched a speed-dial button.
‘Hey, Jack,’ she said as the call was answered. ‘Whoever we dug up yesterday from St Luke’s church …’
‘Go on,’ said the familiar voice.
‘Are you smoking?’
‘Never mind that.’ Delaney adopted a professional tone that didn’t fool Kate for one second. ‘What do you want to tell me, Doctor Walker?’
‘Well, Detective Inspector Delaney, I can tell you for a fact that whoever it was we dug up … it wasn’t Jeremy Hunt!’
PC DANNY VINEM and PC Bob Wilkinson were out on foot and none too happy about it.
‘Jeez, Bob,’ said Danny. ‘Why couldn’t they give us a car? My plates are freezing here.’
‘Feet are a part of the job. You know that, Danny.’
‘I think I’m going to go into CID,’ he continued as the two of them walked to the top end of Oxford Street. ‘Yeah, lookit …’
Bob Wilkinson stopped and stared at him. ‘Did you just say “lookit” to me?’
The younger constable shrugged. ‘What about it?’
‘I’ll tell you what about it, Danny Vine. You ever use the expression, “lookit”, “innit” or “knowwhat-imean”, and I will stamp on your size-ten plates of meat, and then you will really know what chilblains are.’
‘You going racist on me, Bob?’
‘I’ll go racist with my asp up your arse in a minute.’
‘Seriously though, why not?’ Danny persisted as they passed the only pub genuinely to be found on Oxford Street, The Tottenham.
‘Did you know, Danny, that in 1852 there were thirty-eight pubs in Oxford Street and now there is only one?’ Bob jerked his thumb sideways as they passed it. ‘Now, if that ain’t a sign of the times, I don’t know what is.’
‘Seriously though, Bob, what do you reckon? Should I go for CID?’
‘Get to work a bit closer with the lovely Sally Cartwright. Is that the idea?’
Danny Vine shook his head, a little flustered. ‘No. Not at all.’
‘You don’t have to be coy with me, son. I’ve worn out enough shoe leather in this game to know a thing or two or the mating dance of the lesser spotted constable.’
They turned left at the intersection and walked up Tottenham Court Road. The snow underfoot had turned to mush although the temperature was definitely dropping again.
‘Don’t get me wrong, Bob. She’s an attractive woman.’
‘She’s gorgeous. Clever. Personable,’ Bob Wilkinson agreed. ‘If I was sixty-eight years younger, I might be giving you a run for your money.’
‘But she’s made it quite clear she’s not interested in me. Can’t say I blame her after what happened.’
‘The guy got what was coming to him, that’s for sure.’
‘Jack Delaney sure don’t take no prisoners, does he?’ said Danny.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘First Michael Hill and now Michael Robinson. Both taken out. You’ve heard the gossip.’
‘What, he don’t like people with the name Michael?’
‘Couldn’t blame him if he did. I was just saying …’
‘Well, don’t.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘Seriously, Danny, DI Jack Delaney may have a lot of enemies on the force, but he’s got a lot of friends too.’
‘Yeah I know. Jeez, Bob! I didn’t mean anything by anything.’
‘Good. That’s that then.’
‘But CID, you know. People like Jack, they get to make a difference.’
‘Sometimes.’
‘That’s what I want.’
‘We make a difference too, lad.’
‘What, out tramping in the cold and snow, homeless shelter after homeless shelter?’
‘You think CID just sit around in warm pubs drinking mulled wine this time of year, and waiting for inspiration to strike?’
‘Guinness maybe,’ Danny laughed and held up his hand before Bob Wilkinson could reply. ‘Joke, Bob. Joke.’
The constable shook his head. ‘Well, you might just be right on that one.’
Five minutes later and they were in the offices of one of the many homeless shelters dotted around the capital. Not the one Bible Steve was usually taken to. That had been their first port of call. Then lots more.
The woman in charge of the centre was in her fifties, with a plump figure, thick dark hair and a sense of energy and enthusiasm that was a dramatic contrast to the hangdog attitude of Bob Wilkinson.
‘So how can I help you, officers? My name is Marian Clark.’
‘We’re just constables, ma’am,’ replied Wilkinson, although PC Danny Vine here has plans to become the next Commissioner.’
Marian Clark smiled at the young constable. ‘Well, as the great man once said … you have to have a dream in the first place, for that dream to come true.’
‘William Shakespeare?’ asked Danny Vine.
‘Oscar Hammerstein.’
‘Oh,’ said Danny. ‘I’ve not read any of his books.’
‘Anyway,’ said Bob. ‘We’re trying to ascertain if a young woman has gone missing.’
‘A runaway, you mean?’
‘We’re not sure. We have a confession to a murder that we are checking out.’
‘It’s probably a waste of time,’ interrupted the younger constable. ‘One of our regulars, Bible Steve. He’s delusional, drinks a bit, lives rough, you know …’
Marian Clark’s expression was replaced with something a lot less kind. ‘Yes, this is a homeless centre, Constable. I think you will find we know exactly how it is.’
‘Have any of your regulars not turned up for a day or two?’ asked Bob Wilkinson.
‘Sometimes we don’t see them for days, particularly in the summer when it is hot outside, even through the night.’
Bob Wilkinson looked out of the small office’s window. It was getting darker now as the clouds thickened even more ominously overhead and the snowflakes were falling more intensely.
‘A young woman, you say?’ The shelter manager picked up on the constable’s unspoken point.
‘Yes, early twenties maybe.’
‘Child-like. Blonde-haired, blue-eyed. Delicate skin?’
Bob Wilkinson looked down at his notebook. ‘Face like an angel.’ He read out the quote.
‘Oh my God,’ said Marian Clark.
‘You think you might know her,’ asked Danny Vine.
‘This man who says he murdered her …’
‘Bible Steve,’ answered PC Wilkinson.
‘Is he much older than her? Grey matted hair, tall. Always quoting from the Bible or some such?’
‘Hence the nickname.’
‘She came in with him a few times. We don’t have men here. I had to ask him to leave, and he became quite …’
‘Violent?’
‘Not violent as such. Abusive. He left with her.’
‘When was this?’
‘Friday afternoon.’
‘And you haven’t seen her since?’
The woman didn’t reply, but PC Bob Wilkinson didn’t have to be CID at any level to read the answer in her eyes. He pulled out his radio phone and thumbed the Call button.
‘Foxtrot Alpha from Thirty-Two.’
JACK DELANEY WAS sitting in the right-hand room of The Holly Bush pub in Hampstead.
Danny Vine would not have been at all surprised to learn that Jack was there with a drink in his hand. He might have been surprised at what he was drinking, though.
‘What’s that, sir?’ asked DC Sally Cartwright as she perched herself on the stool alongside him. ‘Bloody Mary?’
‘Bloody half-a-chance would be a fine thing,’ replied her boss with a grimace. ‘Virgin Mary. All the goodness, apparently. None of the vice.’
‘I’m sure the sisters would approve.’
‘Not if they were drinking it.’
‘So, no movement, then?’
‘No, been stuck out here twiddling me thumbs watching the snow fall. Came in here for a bit of a warm.’
‘Couldn’t you have waited inside the hospital?’
‘I hate hospitals, Sally. And I figured it wise to give White City a wide berth for a while.’
‘Don’t blame you, sir. The super is strutting up and down like a cock who’s had his henhouse raided.’
‘You got half that right. Anyway, I just took a call from Diane. Seems like Bible Steve might not be quite so delusional after all.’
‘Go on.’
‘A young woman’s gone missing off the streets. Pretty much matches Bible’s description of the woman he claims to have murdered. Another homeless person been seen in his company a lot lately.’
‘He might be telling the truth?’
‘It’s unusual, I grant you, but it wouldn’t be the first time.’
‘Jesus! I would never have had him down for that.’
‘It happens. Who knows? Maybe God told him to do it.’
‘Paranoid schizophrenics who kill sometimes do say they had God talking to them.’
‘Or the Devil.’
‘True. But Bible Steve isn’t a paranoid schizophrenic, is he?’
Delaney shrugged. ‘Seems to me that people sometimes get labelled properly after the event. After is usually much too late.’
‘I still don’t have him down as a murderer.’
‘Maybe he saw someone else. Maybe there was a fight. Maybe he got in the way. A lot of maybes, I know. Time will tell, I guess. Meanwhile, what have you got for me?’
‘I’ve been going through the records we got from Northwick Park Hospital the other night.’
‘Going through it with Tony?’
‘No, sir. On my own. DI Hamilton’s headed up to Suffolk with DI Halliday.’
‘Catwalk, eh?’ Delaney raised his eyebrow, knowing it would annoy his young assistant.
‘DI Emma Halliday, yes sir. I don’t know why people have to belittle the woman’s intelligence just because she is six feet tall.’
‘She’s over six feet tall and gorgeous, Sally.’
‘Can you just get me one of those drinks please, sir,’ she replied, not rising to the bait.
Delaney gestured to the barman and Sally opened the folder and flicked through a few pages.
A few possible women to talk to, nothing really obvious. They are all a bit vague as to how they got their injuries. Pointing more towards domestic abuse maybe, but not the sort of assault Michael Robinson made on Stephanie Hewson. But this one looks more promising, sir,’ she said, removing a sheet or two of paper and closing the folder.
‘Go on?’
‘Her name is Lorraine Eddison. She’s a thirty-three-year-old dental nurse. She lives and works in Harrow. She was assaulted four months after Michael Robinson was arrested and put on remand.’
She placed a photograph in front of her boss, taking the drink that had been put to one side for her.
‘They look alike, don’t they?’
‘Not only do they look alike, sir. She claims she was mugged, resisted and the attacker cut her with a knife.’
‘Where?’
‘Down by where we parked the other day when we met DI Hamilton at The Castle pub.’
‘I didn’t mean where was she attacked, I mean where was she cut?’
‘Sliced across the belly, sir, from behind. He had hold of her round the neck and she struggled. So he cut her.’
‘But no rape?’
‘She says not, sir.’
‘But she may not be telling the whole story.’
‘Like you said.’
‘I did. Where does she live?’
‘The other side of the hill. Past the school and heading down to the main road that goes to Northwick Park. Maybe fifteen minutes’ walk from where she was attacked.’
‘What was she doing on the hill?’
‘Had been meeting friends for a few drinks at The Castle. Someone’s birthday celebration. It was a warm night. Thought she might as well walk.’
‘Just like Stephanie Hewson. Maybe we should go and have a chat with her.’
‘Now?’
‘Not just yet. We’d better go and have another chat with Bible Steve first, don’t you think?’
‘Sir.’
DI Tony Hamilton held the door open leading into the lounge bar of The Crawfish pub open for his female colleague, who didn’t seem impressed by the gesture.
‘Save it for the uniform girls, Hamilton,’ she said.
She walked past him and into the bar. The Crawfish was an old-fashioned country pub, L-shaped. Wooden beams, a wooden floor with rugs. A medium-sized bar at the top of the small part of the L, with a dining area to the left and snug bar in front. The snug had a large open fireplace with a firedog in the middle filled with flaming logs. The flames crackled and snapped as they walked past. There weren’t many diners left but a few locals were dotted here and there, a couple playing dominoes, an elderly man sitting by the fireside, with a pile of scribbled receipts and notes that he was going through and entering into a notebook. The bar was L-shaped too and Tony and Emma walked up a small step and perched in the corner on a couple of bar stools.
There was one barman behind the bar. A man in his late twenties, called Lee, according to the name embroidered on his staff polo shirt. He was serving a couple of middle-aged Hooray Henrys. The Henry was in maroon-coloured corduroy trousers with a striped yellow shirt and tweed jacket, Henrietta in a pair of riding trousers a size too small for her and a white silk shirt. Apparently, the wine the barman offered to them wasn’t to their liking. They were obliged to wait for a few minutes until, with a sniffy nod, they seemed pleased, if not delighted, with the best that was on offer.
Lee rang up their purchase on the till, then crossed to Tony and Emma. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting. Will you be staying with us tonight?’
‘No, that won’t be necessary,’ Emma Halliday said.
‘Sorry. We’re expecting a couple who booked in. Probably delayed by the snow.’
Emma nodded. She wasn’t too surprised. The last leg of their journey had taken a lot longer than the first.
‘It’s getting a bit Winter Wonderland out there,’ Tony agreed.
‘Nightmare, more like,’ said Emma.
‘So what can I get you?’ asked the barman. ‘I’m afraid the kitchen is closed until six o’clock if you were looking to have something to eat.’
‘We weren’t,’ said DI Halliday, flashing her warrant card. ‘We’re looking for the boss. Is she working?’
The barman pulled a face. ‘You’ll not find her this side of the bar. She’ll be upstairs. Shall I go and tell her you’re here?’
‘Why don’t you just take us up to see her?’ said Emma with a smile.
‘I don’t think she’d like that, without being told.’
‘Does that bother you unduly?’
The barman pretended to consider for a moment, then smiled himself. ‘Not unduly,’ he replied.
‘Bingo bongo!’ said DI Tony Hamilton, holding his hands wide as he and Emma got off their stools.
The barman led them through a pair of swing doors into a narrow hallway and up some stairs.
The landing above had a window at the far end and leaded lights, but it was dark outside now. Emma Halliday glanced at her watch and realised it wouldn’t be getting any brighter.
The barman knocked on the door and opened it. A younger man rushed out, reddening a little as he mumbled an apology at DI Halliday, as she had to step swiftly aside, and hurried down the staircase.
‘What is it?’ Marjorie Johnson sounded less than happy with the disruption. She had a southern-counties accent.
‘It’s the police,’ said the barman, showing the visitors into the room.
It was a large lounge with mullioned windows. Expensively decorated. A polished wooden floor with hand-woven rugs on it. The mullioned windows looked over the street below. Overhead were ancient beams and there was another large, open fireplace. Logs were burning in the grate. A substantial antique red leather sofa stood next to a couple of matching club chairs. There was an eighteenth-century writing desk under the windows with a reading lamp on it and a tantalus, with the decanters full. A drinks cabinet was to the left of where DIs Hamilton and Halliday were standing.
Marjorie Johnson sat on the sofa. She was a large woman, with long blonde hair, expensively styled, held back in a black Alice band. She wore a low-cut, cream-coloured silk blouse and was clearly not afraid to show her cleavage and a hint of white lace beneath it. She had a black skirt, too short for Emma Halliday’s taste, with a hint of lace on her stocking top. She wore high-heeled black shoes and had a cut-glass tumbler in her hand. She twirled the ice. It made a tinkling sound as she looked at Tony Hamilton appraisingly and then smiled, showing white, perfectly aligned, if slightly predatory-looking teeth.
‘To what do I owe the pleasure, Detective Inspector?’ She completely ignored Hamilton’s female associate.
‘We’re here to talk about your husband, Mrs Johnson, said Emma.
She shot the DI a surly look. ‘Can I offer you a drink, Detective?’ Turning to DI Hamilton, she put the smile back in place.
‘No thanks, we’re on duty,’ Emma answered for them both.
‘Is that gin and tonic you’re drinking?’ asked Tony Hamilton.
‘It certainly is. Tanqueray No. 10.’
‘Excellent. I’ll have one of those please.’
Marjorie Johnson stood up in one languid movement. She was nearly as tall as DI Halliday in her high-heeled shoes, but not quite.
Tony shrugged at his colleague. ‘You wanted to drive,’ he said with a grin.
‘Sure I can’t tempt you, Constable?’ asked Marjorie Johnson over her shoulder.
‘I’ll just take a plain soda with ice, if you have such a thing. And it’s Detective Inspector Emma Halliday.’
‘DI Tony Hamilton,’ said Tony, as he took the glass she offered him.
‘Women are making great strides in business nowadays,’ said Marjorie, as she squirted some soda from a Thirties-style soda siphon into a tall glass and added some ice.
‘Yes. And we don’t even have to burn our bras any more,’ replied Emma, smiling sweetly.
‘Just as well, in my case,’ said the older woman, expanding her chest so that Tony Hamilton didn’t miss her point.
‘Need the support?’ said Emma, keeping the smile hovering on her lips.
Marjorie Johnson laughed. ‘No, dear, I was thinking more of the fire-hazard risks.’
She walked back to the sofa, swaying her broad hips like Mae West on steroids, and sat down. ‘Please make yourself comfortable,’ she said, gesturing to the two armchairs opposite.
Emma and Tony sat down. Emma put her glass, untouched, on the sherry table beside her chair. Tony took a small sip of his. ‘Very nice.’
‘Not too weak?’
‘No, it’s certainly not that.’
‘Do you think we could discuss your husband now, Mrs Johnson? We have driven a long way.’
‘Yes, and in such awful conditions. I can’t think what was so important. My husband has been dead for a year or so, you know.’
‘I am sorry if this is painful for you,’ replied DI Halliday without any hint of sarcasm in her voice. ‘But there are some matters that have arisen.’
‘What kind of matters?’
DI Hamilton reached into his coat pocket and handed a card over to Mrs Johnson. ‘Does this mean anything to you?’ he asked.
‘It’s a tarot card.’
‘Yes.’
‘Major Arcana.’
‘You know about the tarot?’ asked DI Hamilton, surprised.
‘Oh yes, Inspector,’ Marjorie said, giving the words a seductive lilt. ‘I am very much in touch with my spiritual side. The Hanged Man, a significant symbol.’
‘What sort of significance?’ asked Emma Halliday.
‘It is all down to interpretation, of course. The cards are like notes or chords in a piece of music. You need to put them together for a proper reading.’
‘So what does this one mean?’ prompted Hamilton.
‘A good question.’ She gave him a look a schoolteacher might give a particularly bright pupil. ‘A very good question.’
‘Which is why I asked you what the significance is.’ Emma could do little to hide her growing irritation with the woman.
‘I am afraid I don’t know, my dear. I have a lady come in and give readings once a month in the pub. It’s quite an attraction. I like to have different special nights each week.’
‘And what has any of this to do with your husband?’ interrupted DI Halliday. ‘Did he organise the tarot nights?’
‘Goodness me no. Andrew never came up with any good ideas. I’m sorry, but I don’t understand.’ She held the card up. ‘What has this got to do with Andrew?’
‘We were hoping you might be able to tell us.’
‘You have completely lost me.’
‘The card was found on your dead husband’s body when it was recovered, Mrs Johnson. It was in his pocket.’
‘This one?’
‘One like it. I bought another deck of cards,’ explained Tony Hamilton.
‘Did you not recover your husband’s things?’
‘They told me there was nothing of value on him. The clothes were obviously ruined. I just told them to dispose of them. His body was transported up here and it was cremated. I didn’t look at him. I’m a bit squeamish about that kind of thing.’
‘Did you love your husband, Mrs Johnson?’ asked Emma.
‘What on earth has that got to do with anything?’
‘It’s just you do seem, shall we say, a little dispassionate about all this.’
‘It was over a year ago. My husband decided to jump in front of a train for whatever reason. Am I to wear sackcloth and ashes for the rest of my life?’
‘Do you know of anyone who may have wanted to harm your husband?’ DI Hamilton interjected, trying to calm the waters.
Marjorie Johnson looked at him, her smile gone and any hint of flirtation a distant memory. ‘Okay, why don’t you tell me what exactly is going on here?’
‘We think your husband was murdered,’ said Emma Halliday bluntly.
JACK DELANEY AND Sally Cartwright were standing in the registrar’s office, talking with her as she typed up some notes into her computer.
‘He’s okay to be interviewed now?’
The consultant stopped typing and swivelled her chair to face them. ‘Yes. But try not to agitate him too much.’
‘He still can’t remember who assaulted him?’ asked Sally Cartwright.
The petite woman shook her head. ‘It’s entirely possible he never will.’
‘But he does have a clear idea of the woman he claims to have murdered?’ asked Delaney.
‘Do you know who she is?’
‘Maybe.’ Delaney read from his notebook. ‘Early twenties, blonde hair, blue eyes, waif-like.’
Dr Lily Crabbe rose to her feet, picked her stethoscope up from her desk and swung it around her neck.
‘A bit like her,’ said DC Cartwright, holding out a photograph.
The registrar took it. ‘Who is this?’
‘A young homeless girl. She hasn’t been seen at the shelter she normally uses. And the last time she was there, she was with Bible Steve. They don’t take men at the hostel and so they left. She hasn’t been seen since.’
‘You don’t think he really has killed her then?’ said the registrar.
‘Nothing much surprises me any more,’ said Delaney. ‘Not in this city.’
Bible Steve was sitting up in bed. His breathing was laboured but he seemed calmer. His eyes were still bloodshot. Tired and haunted.
Delaney sat on the chair next to him as DC Sally Cartwright and the registrar stood at the base of his bed.
‘You were have been on the streets for a large number of years. When you first turned up in London, you were disorientated, confused. You didn’t know who you were, or where you were. You had complete amnesia.’
Bible Steve nodded.
‘You were brought into one of the shelters by the homeless unit. You couldn’t remember your name, but they gave you one. Steven Collins. It’s what you have been known by since. But on the street they call you Bible Steve.’
The man nodded again.
‘Is it okay if I call you Steve?’
The older man shrugged wearily.
Delaney held up a picture of the young woman. ‘This is Kathy Simmons. She is a homeless person like you. She is registered at the Saint Catherine’s shelter in the West End. She has been in prison and on and off the streets since she was fifteen years old.’
Bible Steve looked at the picture but didn’t say anything.
‘You said earlier that you had killed someone. That you remembered it.’
Bible Steve blinked and gazed at Delaney. ‘I can still see it. There are lights and she is lying there. Blonde hair, young. Too young to die and there is blood everywhere. My hands awash with it. And I am holding something in my hands.’ His eyes started flicking nervously from side to side. ‘She’s dead. It’s too late! You can’t do anything. So much blood. I can hear her pleading, begging for help.’ He squeezed his eyes shut. ‘I should have died. What use am I? I’m an old, useless man. Coughing blood. I know what that means, I’ve seen it on the streets.’
‘Is this the girl?’ Delaney showed him the photo.
‘It should have been me. It should have been me!’
Delaney held the photo closer. ‘Is this the girl, Steve?’
The homeless man shook his head and whimpered.
‘Open your eyes, please. Look at the photo.’
Bible Steve did so, but stared at the ceiling.
‘Is this the woman, Steve?’ Delaney asked again.
The homeless man finally looked at the photograph.
‘No,’ he said. ‘No, it’s not!’ Then he leant across and vomited bright, red blood over Delaney’s shoes.
DETECTIVE INSPECTOR TONY Hamilton sat happily on a stool tucked into the corner of the bar. He had a pint of Abbot in front of him, which the barmaid, who had just come on duty, cheerfully informed him was a very popular, Suffolk ale. He took an appreciative sip.
‘Maybe I’ll become a convert,’ he said to the barmaid, a red-headed twenty-something-year-old with a blaze of curly hair and a spray of freckles across her nose. Her green eyes sparkled and she winked at the DI.
‘Did I not tell you so?’
‘With that accent and that colouring I am guessing you’re not Welsh?’ he replied.
The barmaid laughed. ‘Not unless the Red Dragon invaded Cork in 1990 and someone forgot to tell me ma.’
‘You a Cork lass, are you?’
‘The city itself top of the bottle, as we call it.’
‘I know a guy from there. He’s a right miserable git sometimes.’
‘Good-looking though, I’ll bet.’
Tony flashed her a grin. ‘Depends who else is in the room.’
‘All the best-looking people come from Munster, you know.’
‘That a fact?’
‘Oh yeah. Born in the shadow of the Shandon Bell, me.’
‘I guess that makes you an official corker?’
The red-haired woman laughed loudly. Emma Halliday came in, shaking the thick snow from her hair.
‘Don’t you ever give it a rest, Hamilton?’
‘Use it or lose it, isn’t that what they say? How did you get on?’
‘Signal cut in and out, but they’ve closed the A134 and a lorry has jack-knifed on the M11 southbound.’
DI Hamilton got serious quickly. ‘Which means?’
‘Which means you’d better order me a large glass of that mulled wine they’ve got sitting in the pot over there.’
Hamilton gestured to the barmaid. ‘Can we get a large glass of mulled wine for Nanook here, please?’
‘So this has been a wasted journey.’ Emma Halliday sat on a stool next to him.
‘I wouldn’t go that far.’
‘All we’ve learned is that Andrew Johnson didn’t have any enemies, as far as his wife was concerned. He was a pillar of the local community. And she obviously hated his guts.’
‘Enough to do something about it?’
‘Her alibi checks out. I phoned the hospital where she was hosting a charity dinner. She was nowhere near London when Andrew Johnson did the hop, skip and a jump to Oblivion Central.’
‘She could have contracted it out.’
‘What’s the motive? Not money. We already know that, the money in the relationship all came from her.’
‘Maybe she was tired of bankrolling him.’
‘There’s something she’s not telling us.’
DI Halliday picked up the glass of mulled wine that the barmaid had poured for her. ‘What do I owe you?’ she asked.
‘I’ve started a tab,’ said Tony Hamilton.
Jack Delaney sat staring at his laptop in the CID room back at White City Police Station. He sipped at his mug of tea. It was stone cold, but he drank some of it anyway.
DC Sally Cartwright came over, holding some pieces of paper.
‘What have you got for me, Sally?’
‘Someone who liked pretty young girls. Schoolgirls. Fifteen years old. Susan Nixon and Caroline Lewis.’
‘We’ve got names?’
‘We have.’
‘And who was it taking such a keen interest in them?’
‘The Reverend Geoffrey Hunt.’
‘The plot thickens.’
‘The girls were part of a drama group attached to the church. They were in a play to be performed at Christmas in the Church Hall. Apparently the vicar didn’t just get his own knickers in a twist.’
‘He assaulted them?’
‘Apparently.’
‘And we know this, how?’
‘The person who succeeded him in the vicarage. We finally tracked him down.’
‘The other missionary?’
‘That’s him. Out in the People’s Democratic Republic of the Congo.’
‘So what did our missionary friend have to say?’
‘At the time he was asked to take over, he remembered there was a bit of a scandal. The parents of the two girls had contacted the parish bishop making formal complaints about Reverend Hunt.’
‘Were the complaints investigated? If the police were involved then we should have had records, and there weren’t any. We checked.’
‘I know we did. The complaints from the girls were dropped. No approaches to the police were made.’
‘So what happened? Why the volte face?’
‘It seems the complaints were dropped when Geoffrey Hunt agreed to retire. There could have been a lot more, of course. Girls, I mean. Some who didn’t come forward.’
‘And we still don’t have a missing person, apart from the reverend’s brother, and Forensics have confirmed that our John Doe in the shallow grave isn’t him.’
‘So where is he?’
‘That might just be the question, Sally.’ Jack Delaney stood up and put on his black leather jacket.
‘You going to be warm enough in that, sir?’ asked the young detective constable.
‘What, are you my mother now?’
‘Someone has to keep an eye on you.’
‘Says who?’
‘Says Kate Walker, sir.’
Delaney grunted and tossed her his car keys. ‘You can drive.’
DANNY VINE WAS off duty and heading down Edgware Road on his pushbike. The snow was driving into his face and he had to blink continually to see where he was going. There was still a solid gridlock of traffic running all the way from the Harrow Road onwards.
The recession might be continuing. But not on Oxford Street this Christmas. Danny was on his way to Selfridges. He wanted to buy something nice for Sally Cartwright. He didn’t expect to get anything in return. He figured that boat had pretty much sailed. And he wasn’t aboard. He didn’t blame her for not wanting to strike up a work-based relationship after what had happened to her. If he’d had his way, he would have done exactly what Jack Delaney did to the creep who attacked Sally and wipe him off the face of the earth. But Delaney beat him to it. And you could see the gratitude in her eyes whenever Sally looked at him.
Danny darted in and out of the stationary cars, wishing he had half of the Irishman’s luck. But the past was the past and, like his mother always said, sometimes you have to put the cork back in the bottle and forget about it. He had always assumed that the funny expressions she came up with were phrases lost in translation from her original Jamaican roots. Nowadays he was convinced that she just made them up. ‘When the polar bear he shiver, then the whole world be cold,’ was another one of hers. As Danny felt the snowflakes sticking to his cheeks, he reckoned she might be right. So he was going to Selfridges to buy a bottle of Sally’s favourite perfume. It was going to cost him an arm and a leg but he figured she deserved it. A smile was good enough for him. He was picturing her face opening the present, when a woman ran straight out into the road and he crashed into her.
The woman collapsed to the floor and Danny Vine went sprawling across the bonnet of a stationary Volvo estate and smashed onto the pavement. Luckily he wasn’t cycling anywhere near full pelt. He stood up painfully and the woman was already on her feet, and shouting in his face. She was tall, and was dressed in what looked like a real fur coat.
‘I’m sorry, are you hurt?’ he asked.
‘Never mind me — that man’s stolen my bag. Get him.’ She spoke with a slight Scandinavian accent and was clearly used to getting her own way. She pointed to a man who was trying to make his escape down the street, his progress impeded by the multitude of Christmas shoppers.
‘Okay, I am a policeman,’ Danny said.
‘Go and arrest him then!’ said the woman, encouraging Vine on his way with a small shove as he mounted his bicycle.
Danny gradually picked up speed as he rode down the middle of the road, the traffic crawling in both directions on either side of him.
‘Stop, police!’ he called out.
The man, in his twenties dressed in a grey hoodie, filthy denim jeans and distinctive yellow running shoes, looked back over his shoulder and crashed into a group of middle-aged women, knocking one of them to the pavement.
PC Vine stood up on his pedals and pumped his legs.
The man ahead of him threw another backward glance at his pursuer and darted through the traffic across the road, turning right into Kendal Street. Danny jumped off his bike and followed him, threading his way through the cars which were picking up a bit of speed now that the bottle-jam at the Marble Arch end of the road had cleared.
As he turned the corner, Danny jumped back on his bike as the man turned left into Portsea Place, then left into a cul-de-sac.
As Danny swept into the cul-de-sac himself, the man was some thirty yards ahead, looking at the wall at the end of the street and wondering if he could make the climb. Suddenly he turned, and came charging back at Danny. Danny pedalled straight at him but, at that moment, a cat ran out and he swerved to avoid it, clipping the man as he went and knocking himself off balance to land in a pile of black bin bags. Danny took a moment or two to disentangle himself and cursed as he saw the man dashing out of the street. But he grinned when he noticed that the thief had dropped the bag he had stolen from the Scandinavian woman.
His grin disappeared, however, when Danny attempted to stand up and spotted the pale white arm he had uncovered. He moved the rubbish bags aside to reveal the young woman’s body that the arm belonged to. Her skin was white with cold, the veins showing through its pearly translucence, the colour drained from her perfectly formed lips. Her eyes frosted, cold and immobile. The lashes brittle and her long blonde hair fanned out around the black bag beneath her, as though she were floating on some dark lake.
Danny Vine took a deep breath or two, checked for a pulse, even though he knew it was futile, then pulled out his mobile phone.
DR KATE WALKER was back in her police surgeon’s office at White City.
She tapped a pencil nervously on the desk as she sorted through the reports. Tap. Tap. Tap. Realising what she was doing, she put the pencil down, then snatched it up again and twirled it in her fingers. After a moment or two, she sighed and threw it to the back of her desk. Then she picked up a DVD and slid it into the player on the side of her laptop.
After a moment or two, the disc started playing. It was CCTV footage of the night when Bible Steve was brought into police reception, locked in a holding cell, to be later charged and released.
She fast-forwarded the footage to when he was first brought in, paused it and zoomed in on the man’s face. His long hair obscured his forehead. She made a note on a pad by the laptop, confirming the time and noting there was no visible bruising to the man’s head.
She zipped forward to footage of the custody cell and let the tape play, pushing the volume slider to maximum.
Bob Wilkinson opened the door and held it wide for Laura Chilvers to enter. ‘All right, calm it down, Bible,’ he said. ‘You’re not in Kansas now.’
Bible Steve stood up from the bench bed and, casting his eyes heavenwards and spreading his arms wide, shouted, ‘It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer; he enables me to stand on the heights. He trains my hands for battle; my arms can bend a bow of bronze. You give me your shield of victory, and your right hand sustains me; you stoop down to make me great. You broaden the path beneath me, so that my ankles do not turn.’
Lowering his arms he looked at the doctor, then squinted his eyes and pointed at her. ‘I know this harlot!’
‘No you don’t, Bible. She just moved down here.’
‘She is a Jezebel! Satan’s spawn.’ He continued to point, saliva running into his beard.
‘She’s a police surgeon from Reading,’ said PC Bob Wilkinson.
‘I think you must be mistaking me for someone else,’ said Laura Chilvers and smiled at him.
The drunken man clasped his hands over his ears. ‘That voice,’ he said, almost reverentially. ‘Are you my angel?’
‘No, like the constable said. ‘I’m just a police surgeon.’
He opened his raw eyes and looked at her, tears welling up now. ‘Are you my guardian angel?’
‘I’m nobody’s angel!’ she said. ‘He’s still drunk, Sergeant. Get him some tea and I’ll check back later.’
‘What about …’ the sergeant started to ask her, but Laura was already …
Kate paused the tape at that point and picked up the pencil again, tapping it on the desk top. She took a sip of her tea. Kate had a gut feeling that the supposed remedy the ancient herbs claimed to supply would do nothing to help. She moved the tape on to later that same evening when Bible Steve was brought from his cell.
‘I’m out of here, Sergeant.’
‘Just take a minute. The cells are full back there.’
‘Are you going to charge him?’
‘You bet! I want him charged and out of here as soon as.’
Laura’s nostrils quivered. ‘I can see why.’
Bible Steve looked up at her. ‘I am here, you know!’
‘No doubting of that, Mr Bible.’
‘What are you going to charge me with?’
‘Putting people off their sweet-and-sour pork balls,’ said Dave Matthews and Laura laughed.
Kate forwarded the tape again.
Laura gestured for the constable to bring him to her office. As they walked towards it, Bible Steve turned and looked at her.
‘I know you,’ he said.
‘No, you don’t.’
Bible Steve looked across at the constable. ‘She interfered with me, the last time I was here.’
‘She wasn’t even here the last time you were brought in, Steve.’
‘Interfered, I tell you!’
Kate stopped the tape once more and fast-forwarded to the CCTV footage from Laura’s office. Glad that all areas had to be covered now.
Laura shook her head and took her hands out of his. ‘No. Like I said. I met you earlier, on the street, and when you were in the cell. You were drunk. You still are.’
‘No. I know you! You are my angel. My guardian Angela!’
He reached out for her and Laura stepped back, her eyes wide with horror.
Kate rewound the tape and played it again, focusing on Laura’s expression. She paused it again and then wrote on her pad: She knows him. What’s their relationship?
There was a knock on the door and Diane Campbell stuck her head round.
‘How’s it going, Kate?’
‘Just doing the report on Bible Steve.’
‘Are we in the clear?’
Kate hesitated before answering, then gave her a quick smile. ‘I think so. There doesn’t seem to be any bruising to his head while he was in custody. It looks like all the damage was done after he was released.’
‘We’ve just had a call in. The body of a woman matching the description Bible Steve gave us has been found.’
‘She’s dead?’
‘A couple of days, according to Derek Bowman.’
‘Who is she?’
‘We don’t know yet.’
‘Cause of death?’
‘She was beaten. We know that much. Will learn more when he has done the post, I guess.’
‘What kind of beating?’
‘A long thin object.’
‘Like Bible Steve?’
‘Could be. Bowlalong wasn’t specific. I’m heading to the morgue now. Want to tag along?’
Kate looked at the frozen image of Laura Chilvers and closed the laptop. ‘Yeah,’ she said, standing up and putting on her coat. ‘Maybe whoever beat Bible Steve also battered this woman to death. Maybe Bible saw it. That’s what he remembers.’
‘He said he did it himself, though. Blood on his hands.’
‘Maybe it was the woman who hit him. Defending herself against him, maybe?’
‘Maybe.’ Diane Campbell opened the door and they walked through reception towards the front doors, waving at Dave Matthews who was behind the desk talking to a couple of uniforms. ‘What’s the update on Bible?’ she asked.
‘They’re operating on him shortly. He has bleeding varices, torn blood vessels in his stomach. It’s why he was throwing up so much blood earlier.’
‘These torn varices. Were they the result of the beating he was given?’ asked Diane as they walked into the car park.
‘More likely a result of his alcoholism.’
‘Is he going to be all right?’
‘I don’t know, the poor guy is in a pretty terrible state.’
‘This poor guy might just have beaten a twenty-three-year-old girl to death, let’s not forget that.’
‘I think he’s mixing things up in his head. I’m pretty sure there is something going on we don’t know about.’
‘That’s for damn sure,’ Diane agreed. ‘We’ll take my car.’
PATRICIA HUNT STOOD by the window overlooking the car park of the South Hampstead Hospital. It was full. Some of the cars had a couple of inches of snow on their roofs and some didn’t. Still hot from the journey in, she guessed. She looked up at the dark sky. Soon the whole city would be covered in a white shroud.
She sat down next to her husband. His breathing was laboured and he had an oxygen mask attached to his mouth. His eyelids were closed but the eyes beneath them moved from side to side, and his body twitched every now and then, like a cat might when dreaming.
In the corridor a team of nurses and a porter wheeled a hospital bed down towards the operating theatre. Drips attached to the patient, and monitoring devices. He had long unruly hair and a bearded face.
Patricia Hunt made the sign of the cross on her forehead and chest and mumbled a prayer.
‘God save us,’ she said. ‘God save us all.’
She picked up the leatherbound notebook she had brought from her husband’s office in the garden, and started reading.
Zambia, borders of Namibia. 1989.
The missionary knelt on the floor of his hut. He ran a finger under his dog collar to loosen it slightly. It was just past dawn, but the light was brightening and the heat was building. It was a simple room. Wooden floor and walls with a pitch roof. The wood had been stained and varnished. He knelt on a simple rug. A single bed lay beside the side window. Netting covered the windows casting a mottled pattern on the floorboards. He had a plain desk and chair opposite the door that led into his hut, and a washstand with a bowl and jug on it. There was a large ceiling fan overhead that, had it worked, might have brought some relief from the growing heat. A heat that would bake the ground even harder by midday. Even at that early hour, it was enough to force beads of sweat on the missionary’s brow, which he mopped with a large, cotton handkercief. Moisture from the night still hung in the air and it reminded him of the time he visited the Butterfly House in Kew Gardens. He mopped his brow once more and tried to shake the memory away.
He looked up at the simple crucifix hanging on the wall and made a sign of the cross.
‘Oh Lord,’ he said. ‘I know I am a sinner, and I know I am not worthy. But make me strong in your service. Make me strong in my faith. Make of my weak body a weapon to fight evil on your behalf. Make of my weak mind a chalice for the purity of your love. Make my heart strong so that I might bring that strength to the weak who falter on the path of righteousness; succour them, Lord, and guide them to your glory.’
And then the screaming began.
The sound of running feet. Shots firing from automatic rifles. The whop-whop-whop of rotor blades as a helicopter came in to land. Shattering the peace of that humid dawn in the way that only man and natural catastrophes can.
The missionary threw his handkerchief to the floor and staggered outside into the village.
White men in black combat gear with no insignia, and black scarves wrapped round their lower faces, were shouting at the terrified villagers who were scattering before the automatic fire of the invaders which mowed them down.
A scream came from the church to the reverend’s left. It was built of plain varnished wood, just like the reverend’s hut, only some twenty times bigger with a tall cross mounted on the apex of the roof above the entrance doors. Entrance doors that stood open.
The missionary ran towards the steps leading up into the church, glad he wasn’t hampered by his service vestments. He was wearing Chinos with a pale blue shirt and a dog collar. The back of his shirt was dark with sweat as he rushed into the building.
At the far end of the aisle his assistant, a young Zambian woman, stood with three young girls whose eyes were wide with horror, as they looked at the man with the automatic rifle pointed straight at them. Another man, thick-set with iron-grey hair, shifted the upturned altar to reveal a plate cover set into the ground. He opened it and brought out a small, white canvas sack.
‘Stay back, Padre,’ said the man holding the assault weapon.
‘What are you people doing here? This is a simple mission. What harm can we do you?’
‘A simple mission,’ said the one holding the sack, hefting it in his hands. ‘Then perhaps you could explain this.’
‘I’ve no idea what it is.’
‘It’s diamonds, Meneer,’ said the thick-set man. ‘Diamonds to fund your so-called bloody People’s Liberation Army. Diamonds stolen from the mines of South Africa by nigger-loving liberals to send bombs and death to the rightful owners of this land.’
‘I know nothing of this.’
‘White men!’ He took off his bandana and spat on the ground. ‘White men fornicating with kaffirs. Lying down like beasts of the field with the black animals.’
The man had an iron-grey beard and moustache to match his hair. There was fury in his eyes. ‘Well, white men bleed,’ he continued. ‘Just as much as the black monkey. White men feel pain and white men talk when hot coals are held to their skin, and their genitals, and their eyes.’ He smiled like a wolf baring its yellow teeth and weighed the sack of stones in his hand. ‘And white men confess,’ he said.
The missionary stepped in front of the children, making an extra human shield of himself.
‘You have got what you have come for. Leave now. I will see no harm come to these children.’
‘You have prayed to a higher power, Reverend,’ said the grey-haired soldier and raised his pistol. ‘And he has failed to listen to your supplication.’
Then he pulled the trigger, the bullet punching a hole into the reverend’s chest, sending him flying backwards.
*
Bible Steve was staring upwards at the ceiling.
The surgical registrar, Dr Lily Crabbe, was gowned and ready as her anaesthetist brought the gas trolley over to the gurney. ‘We’re going to try and help you now,’ she said.
‘I don’t want help. I want to die,’ he replied.
The registrar didn’t respond. She was all too aware that the homeless man might very well have his wish granted.
The anaesthetist lowered the mask over the bearded man’s mouth. ‘Count backwards from ten,’ he said.
Bible Steve didn’t respond, keeping his blood-shot eyes open. After a few seconds, though, they fluttered and closed. When the anaesthetist took the mask away he was already unconscious.
It was as dark as midnight outside now. The snow showed no sign of stopping. The traffic crept along the Harrow Road and the windscreen wipers of Delaney’s old Saab had fallen into a slow, steady rhythm. An almost hypnotic sound, and, given the fact that Delaney had cranked the heating to as high as it would go, Sally was feeling sleepy.
Delaney’s phone trilled in his pocket, waking Sally out of her trance, and she leaned forward concentrating on the road ahead.
‘Hi darling,’ said Delaney. ‘What’s new in Glockemorra?’ He listened for a while. ‘Okay, honey, keep me posted.’
DC Cartwright looked over at him. ‘Bob Wilkinson?’ she asked.
‘Sure if you make me laugh much more today I swear my funny bone will fall out of my body, Sally.’
‘Kate, I take it.’
‘She’s on her way to the morgue’
‘What’s the squeal?’
‘You’ve been reading too many American detective novels, Constable.’
‘No time to read, sir. Catching up on Sky Atlantic.’
‘Well, the squeal is that someone matching the description of the woman Bible Steve says he killed has turned up. Died on Friday night according to Dr Bowlalong Bowman’s best guess.’
‘And Bible Steve?’
‘Being operated on.’
‘So we have two dead bodies. One male from twenty years ago. And one young female, recent. And the two people who might be able to tell us something about them are both in hospital and unable to speak. They don’t make it easy for us, do they, boss?’
‘Didn’t they teach you that in Hendon?’
‘Everything I learnt as a detective I learnt from you, boss.’
‘God help us all then,’ said Delaney.
‘Exactly.’
Sally swung the wheel and parked outside a medium-sized detached house in Pinner. The driveway and pavement had been cleared. A man in his late forties was making a snowman in the middle of the left-hand lawn.
He raised a hand in greeting as Delaney and Sally Cartwright walked up to his house.
‘Caroline is inside, Detectives,’ he said. ‘But I don’t know why you couldn’t have a meeting at the school.’
‘I’m sorry?’ asked Sally.
The front door opened and a woman in her mid-thirties appeared. She was of medium height with a curvy figure and shiny, coppery hair. She had bright-red lipstick and long eyelashes. She reminded Delaney of somebody but he couldn’t place her.
‘Because the school is closed, darling, you know that.’
‘Well, next term then, you bring enough work home with you as it is.’
The woman smiled at Delaney. ‘Ignore him, Inspector, he’s just a grouch.’
‘I’m only saying …’ said her husband.
‘Well, don’t, just keep at it. I want that snowman built before Natasha comes home!’
‘Yes, darling,’ said her husband, with a dispirited grin and picked up another handful of snow.
Inside the house Delaney and Sally sat in the lounge on a large, white leather sofa. It was a comfortably cluttered room. A boudoir grand piano had a bunch of family photos on top of it. Mainly of a young girl whom Delaney presumed was Caroline Lewis’ daughter. She certainly had the same lustrous hair and easy smile.
Except Caroline Lewis wasn’t smiling now. ‘Are you sure I can’t get you anything — tea, coffee?’ she asked.
‘We’re fine, thanks. And sorry to disturb you on a Sunday evening. But it is urgent. A body has been discovered in the grounds of your old church.’
‘What’s that got to do with me?’
‘We don’t know. Maybe nothing.’
‘It was all so long ago.’
‘Twenty years ago.’
‘Yes.’
‘About the same time, a man was shot in the head and buried in the grounds of the church.’
‘Like I say, that has nothing to do with us. With what happened.’
‘What did happen?’ asked Sally.
‘Does it matter now? No charges were brought. We made a mistake.’
‘Reverend Hunt is an old man now,’ said Sally. ‘He is very ill and in hospital. He can’t hurt you now.’
‘He never did.’
‘Are you saying you made it up? He never touched you or Susan Nixon?’
Caroline Lewis reddened. ‘I never said he actually touched us.’
‘What did happen then, Caroline?’ pressed Sally Cartwright.
‘We were both in a play the church was putting on that Christmas. Part of the celebrations for the week.’
‘Go on.’
‘It was a play he had written. Kind of a religious pantomime, I suppose. The girls were dressed as Herod’s serving women. I played Salome.’
‘And he made you take off your seven veils?’
‘No. Not in the play at least.’
‘But when you were alone.’
‘Not really. It wasn’t like that.’
‘What was it like?’
‘He had put a clothes rail up and hung blankets to make a changing area for us girls. There was a gap and he would peek through when we were changing.’
‘And you reported him.’
‘The other girls didn’t know. But Susan caught him one day. It was just the two of us. He was touching himself.’
‘And your parents put a stop to it?’
‘No. It was all Susan’s idea. She said he could continue but he had to do it in front of us. And pay us. We were fifteen. We thought it was funny. He gave us fifty quid each.’
‘How many times?’
‘Six or seven. Susan’s parents found her money and all hell broke loose. But you can’t tell anyone about this. I’m a school teacher.’
‘He was still to blame, Caroline. You were fifteen years old.’
‘I know. We weren’t exactly virgins, though. But I can’t have my husband knowing. The man was sick. A Peeping Tom. But we shouldn’t have done what we did.’
‘Like I say, he’s guilty under the law. I can’t make you bring charges,’ said Delaney.
‘It’s too late. What good would it do anyway? Susan and I will never say anything in court. You can understand why.’
‘How many others were there, though?’ asked Sally. ‘How many other children did he peep on, abuse, maybe assault?’
‘We were nearly sixteen, Detective Constable. We weren’t children.’
‘Yes, you were,’ said Delaney.
‘You said he was very ill?’
‘He is.’
‘Then maybe he is being punished. Maybe it’s enough.’
‘Maybe somebody didn’t agree with you, Caroline. Maybe somebody at the time wanted to punish him more. Someone whose body we may just have found in his back yard.’
‘I can’t tell you that, Detective. All I can say is that I have forgiven him, and that I have forgiven myself too. ‘Sometimes that’s all you can do.’
Delaney looked at her for a moment. ‘Sometimes,’ he said. Sometimes we can do a little more.’
The woman would have responded, but at that moment her husband came into the room.
‘Darling, you haven’t even offered the officers a cup of tea.’
‘I did do, darling, but they are just leaving.’
‘That was quick. Did you get everything sorted?’
Caroline looked over at him and smiled. ‘Yes, I think we know where we all stand now.’
‘So you’ll be giving a talk to the school next term, Inspector?’ her husband asked.
Caroline looked at Delaney, her eyes pleading with him. Delaney smiled. ‘Something along those lines. Thank you. I think we have all we needed here.’
‘Excellent, excellent. Well why don’t you come along and have a look at Sammy?’
‘Sammy?’ asked DC Cartwright.
‘Sammy the snowman. I just need a carrot to finish him off.’
He hurried out of the room as Sally and Delaney stood up.
‘Let’s just hope it’s for his nose,’ Delaney muttered to Sally.
DETECTIVE INSPECTOR EMMA ‘Catwalk’ Halliday wasn’t exactly drunk, but she wasn’t exactly sober either.
She was on her third medium-sized glass of wine. Sauvignon Blanc, after declaring her mulled wine undrinkable. Tony Hamilton was on his second pint of Abbot, but had barely touched it.
‘I don’t know how you can drink that stuff,’ said Emma.
‘It’s natural. Nutritional, no chemicals added, just barley, hops and water.’
‘Still tastes like pond water.’
Hamilton laughed. ‘Maybe it’s an acquired taste. Some things are.’
‘Are you hitting on me, Tony?’
‘No. Sorry — don’t do the work/personal thing. Gets too messy.’
Emma Halliday raised her eyebrows. Not sure if she was relieved or offended. ‘I wasn’t saying I wanted you to, Tony.’
‘That’s okay then.’
‘Yes.’
‘What about you?’
‘What about me?’
‘You ever had a relationship with a fellow officer?’
‘Once.’
‘Didn’t work out?’
‘In some ways I thought it would be easier. At least he’d understand the job. The hours. The stress.’
‘There is that, I suppose.’
‘But we never got to see each other. Different shifts. Different shouts.’
‘Shame.’
‘Well, I’m a big girl I guess.’
‘You certainly are that!’
Emma gave him a flat gaze and finished her glass of wine as the barmaid came past.
‘Can I have a word with you’ the barmaid asked Tony.
‘Sure,’ he replied, smiling. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Outside. I could do with a breath of fresh air.’
‘Okay.’ Tony took a slug of his ale and followed the barmaid to the entrance.
‘Can I get a glass of wine here?’ Emma Halliday called after them, but her words fell on deaf ears.
The snow had finally stopped and the moon was riding high in the sky. The barmaid fished a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket and offered Tony one. He shook his head and looked along the High Street as she flicked at her nearly empty Zippo lighter. It was a picture-postcard kind of town. With the snow covering the ancient buildings, he half expected a coach and horses to come clattering up the High Street. He could see why someone would want to move from Harrow-on-the-Hill to here. Was pretty sure, though, that it would drive him mad after a month or so. He’d miss the adrenaline rush London provided on a daily basis, but right now he could have stayed there for a week or two. Recharge his batteries. He thought about Emma Halliday sitting at the bar. A long streak of attitude and smiled. He wouldn’t mind if she stayed with him, come to think of it.
‘So, what’s the mystery?’ he asked the barmaid who had finally got her cigarette alight.
‘No mystery as such, just wanted a fag and I didn’t want the old dragon to hear.’
‘She doesn’t like you smoking?’
‘She doesn’t care as long as it’s outside. I meant her not hearing what I was going to tell you.’
‘Go on.’
‘Lee told me you had been asking about her husband? You think he might have been murdered.’
‘How did he know that?’
‘He was listening at the door. He’s got no time for the old dragon either. He used to be her toy boy before she traded him in for a younger model.’
‘She does seem to be a woman of appetite.’
‘You can say that again. Sure if sex were potatoes she’d supply the town with chips.’
‘That a Cork expression, is it?’
‘It is now,’ she replied with a wink, drawing on her cigarette again and blowing out a long stream of smoke.
‘Well, he heard right. Andrew Johnson was officially logged as a suicide.’
‘I’m not surprised people believed it, especially if they’ve met his wife.’
‘Now we think he was murdered.’
‘You were asking if he had any enemies.’
‘And did he? Do you know something?’
‘There was an incident in his old pub back in Middlesex, at a staff party. Everybody got very drunk apparently. One of the barmaids, Michelle Riley, claimed Andrew Johnson assaulted her.’
‘But she never brought charges?’
‘She was flirting with him in the cellar, they had a bit of a snog. He wanted to take it further, she didn’t.’
‘But he still did.’
‘Raped her. Didn’t take long — I suppose that’s something.’
‘Why didn’t she go to the police?’
The barmaid laughed. ‘You’re joking me, aren’t ya? A staff party, alone in the cellar, she leading him on. His word against hers. What are the chances of that getting to court? And even if it did, what are the chances of a successful prosecution?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Yeah, you do. And besides she was paid off. Big time.’
‘How much?’
‘Fifty large, apparently.’
‘And you know all this how?’
‘The old dragon told Lee. One night off her head on the Tanqueray while he diddled her.’
DI Hamilton smiled. ‘Diddled?’
The barmaid grinned. ‘The old diddley do. Makes the world go round so they say.’
‘So they do.’
The barmaid flicked her cigarette on the floor and ground it under her heel, then jerked her thumb back towards the bar. ‘So the Queen of Narnia in there …’
‘Detective Inspector Halliday.’
‘If you say so.’
‘What about her?’
‘Are you diddling her?’
‘Ours is a strictly professional relationship.’
‘Good. I come off shift at eleven o’clock if you’re snowbound and still around.’
‘I’ll bear it in mind.’
‘Do that.’ She handed the detective a piece of paper. ‘Name and address. If she’s still there, that is.’
‘How did you get hold of this?’
‘The old dragon’s phone book. All their old numbers.’
‘You consider a career change, come and look me up.’
‘And if you fancy making the world go round, come and do the same.’
She winked at him and walked back into the bar.
A couple of minutes later, DI Halliday came out of the Ladies and up to the bar. Tony had his coat on and his beer remained untouched. She looked at the piece of paper in his hand.
‘Give you her number, did she? And where’s my wine, by the way?’
‘She gave me a number, yes. And you won’t be needing the wine.’
‘I bloody will, if I have to sit here and look at your “cat that’s got the cream” smile much longer.’
‘They’ve cleared the jack-knifed lorry on the M11 and the B-roads are clear enough now. We’re good to go.’
‘Thank Christ for that!’ She stood up and fished the car keys out of her pocket.
Tony took them from her. ‘You’ve had three glasses of wine, I’ve had a pint and I only took a sip of that gin.’
Emma Halliday was going to snap back but realised he had a point. ‘Fair enough. Come on then,’ she said, putting on her coat and heading for the door. Tony Hamilton shrugged apologetically at the barmaid and followed her.
‘So what’s the number you’ve got?’ asked DI Halliday as the night air hit them.
‘It’s what you might call a bit of a clue.’
‘Go on.’
‘Michelle Riley. Used to work for Andrew Johnson when they ran a pub in Harrow-on-the-Hill.’
‘And?’
‘And,’ replied Tony as he beeped the car door open, ‘seems she claims that Andrew Johnson raped her one night in the pub cellar.’
‘Ah!’ Emma moved the seat back a little to accommodate her long legs.
‘Ah, indeed. And it seems likely he did, because they paid her fifty large to keep her mouth shut about it.’ Tony Hamilton pulled his seatbelt around him and clicked it into place.
‘Michael Robinson. Andrew Johnson. Both from Harrow. Both rapists. Some kind of club, you’re thinking.’
Tony fired up the ignition. ‘Rape club? I don’t know. Maybe.’
‘Somebody used a police-style Taser to make them jump in front of a train. Maybe we have a vigilante?’
‘I’d say we definitely have!’ said Tony Hamilton as he flicked on the windscreen wipers to clear away the fallen snow and pulled out into the High Street heading back to London.
DEREK ‘BOWLALONG’ BOWMAN was whistling rather tunelessly as he laid out his instruments on the trolley by the mortuary table. He looked at his watch and smiled as Kate Walker came into the room, followed by Diane Campbell.
‘I was just about to start without you,’ he said.
‘That’s okay, Derek. You can start when we’ve gone,’ said Deputy Superintendent Campbell.
‘Fair enough,’ replied the pathologist, laying down the circular Stryker saw.
Diane and Kate walked across and looked at the naked body of the young woman lying on the table. Her hair had been straightened, her arms laid flat alongside her. Her eyes were closed, the blue veins in her eyelids even more prominent now.
Diane Campbell pulled out a photograph and compared it with the dead woman. She handed it to Kate. ‘Looks like we found her,’ she said.
‘Who is she?’ asked Derek Bowman.
‘She’s a statistic, Derek,’ said Diane Campbell. ‘More proof that we’re not doing our job.’
‘The police aren’t responsible for homelessness, Diane,’ said Kate.
‘I meant as human beings.’
‘She was living rough?’
‘Had been on and off since she was fifteen years old. She ran away from abuse at home, into prostitution, drugs, prison. Seemed she’d been let down by society her whole life. According to the homeless shelter where she was registered, she had the mental age of a child.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Margaret O’Brien,’ said Diane. ‘Everyone called her Meg.’
‘What did she die of?’ asked Kate.
‘Neglect.’ Dr Bowman shook his her head. ‘Just as the Chief says. Left on the street, sub-zero temperatures. Didn’t stand a chance.’
‘She wasn’t murdered?’
‘Depends how you define that. The cold killed her as far as I can tell pre the post. But it certainly looks like hypothermia to me.’
‘It does,’ agreed Kate.
‘But someone beat her first. At least we know who she is, now. Maybe give you people something to go on,’ he said to Diane Campbell.
Kate Walker looked at the girl’s right arm. The bruises on her arms were purplish and mottled.
‘Defence wounds, I’d say,’ continued the pathologist.
‘Similar to those on Bible Steve,’ said Diane Campbell. ‘What kind of instrument would have caused these injuries?’
‘A baseball bat,’ offered Kate.
‘Possibly,’ Bowman said. ‘Or a policeman’s truncheon.’
‘We call those “asps” nowadays, Derek.’
‘So you do.’
‘And policewomen carry them too,’ added Kate.
The pathologist crossed to an X-ray display and switched on the light. It was an X-ray of the young woman’s arm. ‘Whoever it was that hit her, and whatever it was he …’ he paused and looked at Kate, ‘or she hit her with, they did it hard enough to cause a hairline fracture here.’ He tapped on the image.
‘She had very little padding, mind,’ added Kate Walker. ‘Doesn’t look like she had had a meal for months.’
‘So we do know who she is now, as Derek said,’ said Diane. ‘But that does leave us with another problem.’
‘Which is?’
‘If this isn’t the girl Bible Steve said he killed … then who was he talking about?’
‘Assuming he saw anything at all,’ said Kate.
‘Maybe someone else was taken. Maybe Steve and this girl tried to stop it, got in the way and were beaten off.’
‘Meg ran away to hide from whoever it was, and died in the cold.’
‘Bible Steve was certainly left to die.’
‘Sounds like there might be another body out there,’ said Bowman.
‘This is London, Doctor,’ replied Diane Campbell. ‘You can count on it.’
Kate’s phone trilled in her pocket. She took it out and read the text message. ‘Rip Van Winkle has started to get flashes of memory back apparently.’
‘He’s out of the operation?’
‘Yup.’
‘Is Jack on it?’
‘No. He’s in Harrow.’
‘Come on then, Kate, it looks like the A-team are on the case.’
JACK DELANEY PUSHED the buzzer and stepped back from the door. He was standing outside an end-of-terrace house at the bottom end of the hill in Harrow. Sally Cartwright stood beside him, flapping her arms around herself in a vain attempt to get warm.
‘Aren’t you cold, sir?’ she asked, looking at Delaney who was wearing his customary, battered leather jacket.
‘Not particularly, Sally, I have the love of a good woman to keep me warm.’
‘Bushmills in your veins, more likely.’
After a short while the door opened, as far as the chain allowed, and a woman looked nervously out. ‘Are you the police?’
‘Yes,’ replied Delaney, immediately spotting the resemblance to Stephanie Hewson. Same height, more or less, same build, same hair-colouring. Same haunted look in her eyes and worry lines creasing a handsome face.
‘Can I see some ID?’
‘Of course, Miss Eddison,’ said Sally.
Delaney and Sally held up their warrant cards which the woman inspected before shutting the door and opening it again with the chain clear. They followed her down a small hallway and down into a sitting room off to the right.
It was a furnished simply, with a three-piece suite in floral fabric, a television, a brown coffee table. The curtains were closed and a small gas fire was burning. Delaney opened his jacket as he sat down on the sofa. Sally didn’t.
On the coffee table was a hardback copy of When God Was a Rabbit, with a bookmarker halfway through it and a coffee mug beside it, steam still rising from the surface.
‘Good book?’ Sally asked.
The woman nodded without replying. Delaney hadn’t read it, but Kate had. It spoke of childhood, of happier times, but was also very sad in parts too. But then life was like that. You got dealt a mixed set of cards.
‘We need to speak to you about what happened to you earlier this year, Lorraine,’ he said.
The woman burst into tears.
Kate Walker ignored the stern glances the surgical registrar was giving her. She hadn’t met the woman before but she looked like she only weighed six stones wet, and Kate had never been one to be intimidated by authority.
Bible Steve was sitting up in bed now. He seemed different, his eyes more focused. Not as scared.
‘You say you have been having flashes of memory?’
‘Just fragments really. You know, like a dream. When you wake up and try to hold onto it and sometimes you can’t. Sometimes just bits of it.’
‘You seem a lot more lucid.’ Kate turned to Dr Crabbe. ‘Do you think his memory is returning?’
‘Possibly. As I explained to Steve, amnesia can be caused by a number of things. Shock can often be a part of that. And another traumatic episode can have the reverse effect. He has been through a lot these last few days.’
‘These fragments,’ continued Diane Campbell. ‘Can you tell us about them?’
The old man rubbed his eyes. ‘Just people, faces,’ he said.
‘Do you know who they are?’
‘No. At least, I think I did know them once. And I can see buildings. Tall, granite buildings. And I can see a house. I think it’s possible I might have lived there.’
‘Do you remember the road? The town?’
Bible Steve closed his eyes tight shut, then opened them and shook his head. ‘I can’t, I’m sorry. If I try it just fades away.’
‘Don’t try and force it. Sometimes these things take time,’ said Kate.
‘Can you remember anything of Friday night?’ asked Diane, in a manner that suggested time was something they didn’t have.
‘No.’
‘You were with a young woman. You were both attacked. Did you hurt anyone, Steve?’
‘I can’t remember. Why would I hurt anyone?’
Diane Campbell’s phone beeped in her pocket. ‘I’m sorry, I have to take this,’ she said and went out into the corridor.
‘Make sure that woman doesn’t upset him further.’ The registrar went to check on a patient next door. The intensive care unit was always a bit of a revolving door, Kate knew only too well from her own days on rotation in the department. She didn’t miss them one bit. Beds becoming vacant were not always a good sign.
She sat down on the chair beside the homeless man’s bed.
‘I watched the police footage of you being booked in on Friday, Steve,’ she said. ‘I know that Steve isn’t your real name, but do you mind me calling you that?’
Steve shook his head.
‘In the footage you seemed to recognise the police surgeon who attended to you.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Doctor Laura Chilvers. She has been in to see you.’
‘The blonde lady. The angel.’
‘Yes, you called her that in the station. Why is that?’
‘I don’t know. It just came into my head. I know her, I think.’
‘Where from, Steve?’
‘I don’t know. But I can see her. And there is blood on my hands.’
His forehead furrowed as he tried to remember. ‘Did I try to kill her?’
‘You recognised her before you were attacked, Steve. At the police station.’
‘Did I want to hurt her?’
‘I don’t know.’
KATE WALKER FLIPPED the X-ray transparency onto the light box and clicked the switch.
She looked at the skeletal chest that was exposed and traced her finger across it.
She flicked off the light and stood there looking for a moment, contemplating.
‘Did you find what you were looking for?’ asked Dr Crabbe.
‘Yes. I think I did.’
‘Good.’
‘Maybe. I’m not so sure that it is good. Do you think he’ll make it?’
Dr Crabbe considered for a while, then shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think he will.’
Lorraine Eddison held a paper tissue and blew her nose. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘You have nothing to be sorry for, Lorraine,’ answered Jack Delaney.
‘Yes I do.’
‘It wasn’t your fault you were attacked.’
‘I shouldn’t have been walking alone at night. I should have got a taxi. I had had too much to drink.’
‘None of that makes it your fault,’ said Sally Cartwright. ‘The man who attacked you is a sick predator.’
‘Did he rape you, Lorraine?’
‘No. But he tried to.’
‘You managed to get away?’
‘He held a knife to my side and said if I shouted out or screamed he would kill me.’
‘Just like Michael Robinson,’ said DC Cartwright.
‘I saw on the news that he had been killed.’
‘That’s right, Lorraine.’
‘But this wasn’t him. I was attacked after he was arrested.’
‘We know. We think there might be two of them. Which is why it is important you tell us exactly what happened.’
‘I told the police before.’
‘You didn’t say he tried to rape you, just that he mugged you and cut you.’
‘I didn’t see the point.’
‘What actually happened, Lorraine?’
‘He dragged me down Church Hill to the back of the theatre there.’
‘I know it.’
‘It was dark. He had me up against the wall, making out we were just kissing, he ripped my knickers off. He unzipped himself but …’
‘But what?’
‘He couldn’t get it up.’ She held a hand to her stomach. ‘Then he cut me with the knife, pushed me over and ran off.’
‘And you didn’t get a good look at him?’
‘He had a hoodie on. It was dark.’
‘But you did say he had curly hair, though.’
‘Yes.’
‘And his voice when he spoke?’
‘It wasn’t rough. Middle class more like.’
‘Educated?’
‘Yes.’
Delaney and Sally Cartwright exchanged a look.
‘What is it?’ asked Lorraine Eddison.
LAURA CHILVERS SAT at the corner of the bar in The Pig and Whistle, the local pub the police mainly favoured, a short stroll from the White City Police Station. She lifted a glass with a large measure of Pastis in it, tilted her head back and downed it in one. She held the glass out to the tall woman behind the bar. ‘Same again please. A little water this time.’
The barmaid handed her a refill and put a small jug of water on the counter. Laura poured a splash in her glass and took a sip. Most offices in London were closed for the weekend, but there were still a large number of civilians in the bar, which was unusual for that time of day. Especially on a Sunday. But Laura figured there were enough workers and shoppers in town to keep all the pubs busy. She had suggested The Pig and Whistle as she thought it would be quiet. Most police workers coming off shift would be heading home for Sunday dinner. At least there was no loud music playing and mobile phone use was actively discouraged. She tuned out the chat that was buzzing around her and stared at the cloudy liquid in her glass. Fifteen minutes later the glass had been refilled, although she couldn’t remember ordering another, and a hand fell on her shoulder. She was startled, then surprised.
‘Oh. It’s you,’ she said.
Emma Halliday leaned back in the car seat and yawned. ‘So what made you transfer out of special ops back into CID?’ she asked Tony Hamilton.
The DI shrugged. ‘Special ops is a good word. Felt more like army than the police. Not really why I joined up. I found it was taking up more and more time, especially with the cutbacks, so I was doing more of that than the detective work that I enjoyed.’
‘So why apply for it in the first place?’
Tony flashed her a quick grin. ‘I like a challenge. What about you?’
‘What about me?’
‘Why’d you sign up?’
‘I had a thing for men in uniforms.’
‘Really?’
‘What do you think, genius?’
‘I think you’re pretty smart and wanted a challenge too.’
‘I came from a long line of policemen. Pretty much all I wanted to do.’
She leaned back and closed her eyes. Tony looked over at her for a moment or two, a half smile playing on his lips.
Kate Walker took the change from the lady behind the bar and sat on the stool next to Laura Chilvers.
She took a sip of her soda and lime and stared at her colleague for a moment without speaking.
‘What?’ snapped Laura finally.
‘Bible Steve.’
‘What about him? Has something happened?’
‘You knew him, didn’t you? He said you did, and he was right.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I looked at the CCTV footage from that night, Laura. You knew him and you were covering for something. You then went out and got so blind drunk on drugs and booze that you thought you’d been raped.’
‘Well I wasn’t.’
‘You sure of that? You’ve got your memory back? Seems Bible Steve’s amnesia is catching.’
‘You’re not very funny, Kate.’
‘I’m not trying to be. Something’s going on, Laura. I want to know what it is.’
‘You’ve been living with the Irishman too long, Doctor Walker. You’re not a detective.’
‘Bible Steve recognised you.’
‘He was paralytic. He could barely stand up, let alone know who he was talking to.’
‘And yet you said he was fit to be charged and released?’
‘Can you cut me some slack here? All right, I was keen to get off. You know that. I had a hot date. Somebody special, maybe the one. Might be I dropped the ball a little with Bible Steve.’
‘And your date can back this up, can she?’
‘What are you talking about?’
Kate stared at her colleague’s still-bruised knuckles. ‘What happened to your hand?’
‘You think I went out and attacked him myself? Are you out of your mind?’
‘Something happened that night, I don’t know what. But a girl is dead and a man was put in intensive care.’
‘You know what, Kate. I don’t have to listen to this shit!’
Laura drained her glass, stood up and snatched her jacket off the hook.
‘Why are you lying, Laura?’ Kate asked as the younger woman walked away. But she didn’t get a reply. Laura Chilvers was too busy walking out of the door and pulling out a mobile phone.
Sally Cartwright had her laptop open on the back seat of the car, a mobile printer attached to it. Delaney was driving, cursing under his breath as the car slid on the icy road.
‘Here we go, sir,’ said DC Cartwright as the printer chugged out a five-by-seven-inch colour photo of the technical manager of the Ryan Theatre at Harrow School. She had googled the place and found photos of the theatre staff on their webpage.
His name was Christian Peterson.
Delaney pulled the car to a stop outside the address that DIs Tony Hamilton and Emma Halliday had phoned through to Diane Campbell. Delaney got out of the car and lit a cigarette. A few seconds later Sally joined him and gave him a sharp look.
‘Yeah all right, don’t you start. I’m giving up in New Year.’
‘About time.’
Delaney took a couple of quick drags, then dropped the cigarette into the snow. They walked a few yards down the road and up to a mid-terraced house.
On the other side of the road a man slumped down in the seat of his van, ran his hand through a tangle of curly, dirty blond hair and watched. His eyes were blue, and intent. Filled with hate.
Delaney rang the bell and a woman in her late thirties answered the door. Michelle Riley had dark hair, cut in a bob to her shoulders. She was above average height and wore little make-up.
‘Why don’t you come in, detectives?’ she said.
‘Don’t you want to see some ID?’ asked DC Cartwright.
‘I know who you are. I have seen the inspector in the papers and on television.’
Delaney and Sally followed her down a narrow hallway and into a medium-sized front room. It had a desk, shelves full of books and files, a small sofa and a number of plastic chairs stacked atop one another against the side-wall. On the wall beside the desk there was a poster with the words RAPE SURVIVORS ONLINE with a web address underneath it.
Michelle Riley moved a stack of files from the sofa. ‘I’m sorry for the mess. This doubles as my office.’ She dumped the files on the desk and perched on the chair beside it as Delaney and Sally sat on the sofa, rather squashed.
‘That’s fine, Miss Riley, we’re not the tidiness police,’ said Delaney.
‘Just as well.’
‘We’re here to talk about Andrew Johnson.’
‘I know. Your deputy superintendent told me. It was all a long time ago. I can’t see why you’d need to revisit the incident. And what I did wasn’t a crime.’
‘No one was suggesting it was, Miss Riley.’
‘Michelle, please.’
‘That money he paid wasn’t fair compensation, but it was some compensation. It helped me set up the support group, for one thing. We used to meet here, I’d fund a counsellor. But it’s all online now, money is tight and … anyway I can help more people this way. Victims talking to each other can be the best kind of help, I have found.’
‘Yes, I imagine so,’ said Sally Cartwright.
‘I can’t say I shed a tear, though, when I heard that he’d jumped in front of a train.’
‘How long had you worked for Andrew Johnson before he assaulted you?’
‘Just over a couple of years.’
‘In that time did he have any particular friends or associates?’
‘Not that I recall. Can I ask what this is all about? I have to visit my mother in Watford this evening. I’ll be delayed as it is, what with the weather. And you know how the elderly are — they like everything to a routine.’
‘Andrew Johnson didn’t commit suicide, Michelle,’ Delaney said. ‘We believe he was murdered. We believe the same person also killed Michael Robinson the other day.’
‘I saw that on the news.’
‘We believe the two knew each other, part of a ring. Rapists. So I need you to think was there anybody you saw him with, someone you might recognise or know.’
‘His wife kept him on quite a short lead all the time. She was a fairly domineering character. There were the masons, of course, but that was about it.’
‘He was a mason?’
‘Yes. Is that relevant?’
‘I don’t know, Miss Riley. We’re just trying to put the pieces together, and the two people who could enlighten us are both dead.’
She shrugged apologetically. ‘That’s all I can think of.’
‘Did he have meetings at the pub?’
‘We had a back room, a function room. Every fortnight or so he would get cheese and wine in. Goodness knows what went on in there.’
‘You would recognise a photo of one of the men?’
‘I’m pretty sure I would. I have a good memory for faces. Names are another matter. Don’t get me started on names. But faces, I’m like an elephant.’
‘Would you have a look at a photo for us then, please,’ asked DC Cartwright.
Michelle Riley picked up a pair of black-framed glasses as Sally handed her the photo of Christian Peterson.
‘No,’ she said, without hesitation. ‘Never seen him before in my life.’
KATE WALKER WAS at her desk in her office at the station. She typed in some codes on her laptop, entered the name Dr Laura Chilvers and her police personnel file came up, starting with her full name.
Kate took a pen and wrote the name Angela Laura Chilvers. Underlining the first six letters of her name, twice.
Kate had suspected that Laura had been lying to her. Now she knew it. She flicked through her file and started checking her CV, the pen tapping on the desk once more as she read it.
She closed that page, then accessed the NHS database system, entering her security code and opening the files for Reading General Hospital. She put the pen aside and read the files from eight years ago. Twenty minutes later, she pushed the print icon and a photo printed from the wireless machine on top of her filing cabinet.
She slipped the print into an A5 envelope, then looked at her watch and cursed. She was running late. She was supposed to pick Siobhan up from dance school. The other matters would have to wait.
Stephanie Hewson drew the bolts on her door and opened it. Delaney and Sally Cartwright were standing on her doorstep and, as they walked into the house and the door closed behind them, the man with cold blue eyes in a van on the opposite side of the road made a fist of his gloved hands as he held them on the key in his ignition, then fired up the engine and sped away heedless of the frozen snow that was turning the road into a skating rink.
‘I thought now that he was dead it would all be over,’ said Stephanie Hewson.
‘I’m sorry, Stephanie,’ said Delaney, in no hurry to take off his coat. ‘But we are on it. I’ve spoken to Harrow nick and they are going to send some uniforms to stand guard here.’
‘But I don’t understand. Why would I need it?’
‘Because we think there is more than just Michael Robinson.’
‘A group of them,’ added Sally.
‘What, like some sick sort of club?’ said Stephanie Hewson.
‘It looks that way.’
‘Do you ever drink in The Castle pub?’ asked Delaney.
‘No. I’ve never even been there.’
‘You changed your testimony because someone threatened you, and I know I said I wouldn’t press you,’ said Delaney. ‘But I need to know what these people said.’
‘They didn’t say anything. They left things on the doorstep.’
‘Like what?’
‘White lilies at first. Then a postcard with the three monkeys on it.’
‘Hear no evil. See no evil. Speak no evil.’
‘Yes that’s the one. Finally there was a wreath, I think their message was pretty clear.’
‘Yes.’
‘All the time I felt like I was being followed. Watched. I know I am bound to be nervous, but it was more than that.’
Delaney nodded to Sally, who held out the photo to the distraught woman.
‘Do you recognise this man?’
‘No, should I?’
‘He matches the description of a potential rapist. Someone else was attacked on the hill.’
‘Poor woman.’
‘Do you have any connection with someone called Michelle Riley?’
‘She runs a rape victims support group, not far from here.’
‘And were you a member of that group?’
‘I went once, on the advice of a friend. But it wasn’t for me. Talking about it made it all come back. Can I see that picture again, please.’
Sally handed her the photo.
‘He does remind me a little of someone though,’ said Stephanie Hewson.
‘Of whom?’ asked Jack Delaney.
‘The guy who took me to the group.’
‘He was a friend?’
‘No. Well, sort of. I had had a blind date with him on the night I was attacked. But he came too … I don’t know. He was always turning up with gifts asking if I was okay. He knew I didn’t want a relationship. I told him that but he said he was happy just being a friend. In the end I told him to stop calling.’
‘And he did?’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s his name, Stephanie.’
‘John Smith.’
‘Jesus!’ muttered Jack Delaney.
‘Do you know him, sir?’
Delaney gave Sally a withering look. ‘I should think there’s a good few million people know a John Smith, Constable.’
‘Sir.’
‘Do you have his address?’ he asked Stephanie.
‘He did give me a mobile phone number but I threw it away. Sorry. Do you think he was part of this group then?’
‘Possibly.’
‘My God. I had him in the house. All that time.’
‘I told you I’d take care of you, Stephanie, and I will. No one’s going to hurt you again. Not on my watch.’
Sally Cartwright thought about commenting on the expression, then decided against it.
‘Come on, Sally,’ Delaney said to her. ‘We need to go back a step.’
Kate Walker looked anxiously at her watch. The traffic had been horrendous. She was already twenty minutes late and had had to park quite a way from the hall where Siobhan’s dancing classes were being held. She’d be looked after in the hall, but, even so, Kate felt guilty for keeping her waiting.
She tightened her coat and was walking briskly along the pavement when a voice called out to her.
‘Excuse me.’
Kate swivelled round to see a figure in a hat, a scarf wrapped around his face and a knife in his hand.
‘Be very careful what you do. I know you are pregnant.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I want you to follow me back to my vehicle and keep very, very still.’
‘Just don’t hurt me, or the baby. I’ll do anything you want.’
‘That’s a very good attitude to have.’
The man took her arm and marched her along to a black van parked behind her car. The sliding side-panel was open. ‘Get in,’ he said, then followed Kate inside, and shut the door.
DELANEY RANG THE doorbell for a second time, long and insistent.
‘She said she was going to her mother’s, sir,’ said Sally.
‘I guess we’ll just have to let ourselves in then.’ Delaney kicked at the door. There was a cracking sound, but it remained closed. Another kick shattered the lock and the door flew wide open. It was dark inside. Delaney flicked on the light switch and hurried down to Michelle Riley’s office. He went straight to the filing cabinet while Sally checked the desk.
‘Stephanie said she had to register to join the group and John Smith likewise. Find his details, quickly.’
‘I still say we should wait to get a warrant, sir,’ she said.
‘And I say you look good in uniform, Cartwright. So shut it or I’ll bounce you back to the beat before you can say due legal process.’
‘Sir.’
‘Also we’re not going to be arresting Michelle Riley, are we?’
Sally opened the left-hand drawer and took out a wooden box wrapped in a red silk handkerchief. She unwrapped it and looked inside. ‘Are you sure about that, sir?’
‘What is that?’
Sally held up a pack of tarot cards. ‘Maybe somebody crossed her palm with silver?’
‘Count them. There’s supposed to be twenty-six Major Arcana cards. See if there are two missing.’
Sally took out the cards, separating them into two piles, Major and Minor, while Delaney tackled the filing cabinet. It had three drawers. The bottom was filled with rape-counselling literature and pamphlets. The second had a number of textbooks, sociological studies, videos and DVDs. The top drawer had an alphabetical filing system. Delaney pulled out the index card filed under S. There was no John Smith. He tipped the cards on top of the cabinet and went through them all. Stephanie Hewson’s contact details were there, but there was no sign of any John Smith. Delaney knew it probably wasn’t even the man’s real name. His luck wasn’t that good. He looked over at Sally Cartwright. ‘Full deck?’ he asked.
‘No. There’s five missing.’
‘Five?’
‘Sir.’
‘Shit! You know what I’m thinking now, Sally?’
‘This isn’t about a group of men raping. It’s about a group of people taking revenge.’
‘Why John Smith, if that’s his name?’
‘Michael Robinson queered his pitch big time, didn’t he, sir? And from what Stephanie tells us, he’s not actually playing with a full deck himself.’
‘And then he went on to try it himself. So fixated with the woman that he acted out his fantasies on Lorraine Eddison at the back of the Ryan Theatre.’
‘Or tried to.’
‘What was the date Lorraine Eddison was attacked?’
Sally dug out her little black notebook and flipped back through some pages.
‘Twentieth of April, sir.
Delaney snapped his fingers.
‘Is that significant, sir?’
‘Very significant. Come on, we’re out of here.’
Kate Walker leaned against the side of the van. Her hands had been tied behind her back with the kind of plastic slip-knot cuffs the police use.
The van was moving slowly but it skidded every now and then, and Kate was thrown forward. She couldn’t use her hands to protect her belly and every movement made her almost cry with despair. She knew how fragile was the life she was carrying inside her. Particularly at this relatively early stage of the pregnancy. She silently prayed to God to save them both, but mostly she prayed for Jack.
Delaney and Sally Cartwright waited impatiently in the plushly carpeted entrance foyer of the Ryan Theatre. A couple of ridiculously tall schoolboys in their mourning outfit of a school uniform watched them curiously.
A short while later, and the theatre’s technical manager came hurrying through the entrance door, slightly red-faced and out of breath. He was about five foot eleven with curly, mousy hair, in his forties, but with a pampered, youthful look about him.
‘What kept you?’ said Delaney.
‘I was in The Castle.’
‘Haven’t you got a show on? Shouldn’t you be working?’
‘Nah.’ The man grinned at Sally. ‘I was working on a pint of Foster’s. I just open the theatre for them, lock up when they’ve gone.’
‘It’s a rep company?’ asked Delaney.
‘Yes.’
‘And you hire the place out in school holidays, I saw your poster for this show that’s on tonight when we were here the other day.’
‘Yes, we hire it out. Why? Thinking of holding another Secret Policeman’s Ball?’
Sally smiled but didn’t let Delaney see it.
‘So it was hired out last Easter?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who to?’
‘I’d have to check the records. It was a musical, though. Starlight Express.’
‘Not exactly opera, then?’
‘Not exactly musical either, if you ask me.’
Delaney grunted. ‘Sally, show him the photo.’
‘It’s his own photo, sir.’
‘I know that. Just show him the bloody picture.’
Sally handed over the photograph to Christian Peterson.
‘Any members of that visiting company look a bit like you?’
The technical director scratched his head. ‘Come to think of it, I did get mistaken for one once. A woman from the audience asked for my autograph.’
‘What did you do?’ asked Sally.
‘I gave her one.’
Sally laughed and Delaney glared at her. ‘And you,’ he said, turning back to the curly-haired man. ‘Get his bloody details, now.’
‘Can I ask what this is about?’
‘No, you bloody can’t!’
Twenty minutes later, DI Jack Delaney had his foot raised for the second time in an hour and was kicking in the front door of a downstairs flat. A woman opened the window to complain, but Sally held her warrant card, and she disappeared back inside, slamming the sash window down noisily.
It took a few more kicks, but eventually Delaney had the door open.
They walked into a room with a three-piece suite in beige fabric, a television and a coffee table. Nothing expensive. Seemed that John Garland — Delaney had discovered from Christian Peterson what Smith’s real name was — had saved all his money for the state-of-the-art sound system and huge collection of CDs that dominated the left-hand side of the room.
They continued through the lounge into a small passageway. There was a bedroom to the right, a kitchen ahead and a bathroom with the door open leading off from the kitchen.
Delaney pushed the bedroom door open and flicked on the light.
‘Jesus Christ, sir,’ said Sally as she followed him.
There was a double bed in the right-hand corner. One wall was covered with newspaper cuttings and photos. Mainly of Stephanie Hewson.
The phone in his pocket trilled and he took it out. ‘Delaney.’ He listened for a while. ‘How long has she been missing?’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Siobhan’s safe?’ His right hand was balling into a fist. ‘I’m at John Garland’s place now, Diane. Send back-up.’
He closed the phone and put it back in his pocket. Gazing at the photos on the wall, his mind whirred. There he was with Stephanie Hewson on her doorstep, Stephanie hugging him as if he was a long-awaited lover. And there was a picture of Kate Walker. Her curly hair every bit as dark as Stephanie Hewson’s.
‘He’s got her, Sally,’ said Delaney. ‘That sick son-of-a-bitch has taken Kate.’
BIBLE STEVE SMILED at the pretty young nurse as she walked alongside his bed which was being wheeled, by a porter, along the corridor to the general ward at the top of the intensive-care area.
‘Sorry to have to move you, Steve, but there has been a pile-up on Western Avenue. Too many people thinking they can drive as fast as they like even in these treacherous conditions.’
Bible watched as paramedics and nurses hurried past with people on trolleys, blood-splattered, some moaning in pain. The surgical registrar ran alongside, her junior assistants with her as she talked to the paramedics, assessing the seriousness of the crash victims’ injuries.
‘So much blood,’ said Bible Steve.
‘I’m sorry?’ said the nurse who was distracted by the commotion.
‘More people will die.’
The nurse helped the porter wheel his bed into position in the empty space at the top of the ward.
‘What do you mean, Steve?’
Bible Steve turned to look at her. ‘That’s not my name,’ he said.
*
Jack Delaney took a candle from the box by the small side-chapel. He carried it to the wrought-iron candelabra. It already contained a number of candles, none of them alight. He took a lighter from his pocket and scratched the flint. The wheel turned but no flame came. Again and again he tried, but to no avail. He closed his eyes and shook the small, steel box furiously. Once more he span the wheel. A flame flared and Delaney quickly lit the candle before it winked out, and carried it over to the candelabra.
He knelt on the cold stone floor, closed his eyes once more and made a sign of the cross.
‘Pater noster qui es in caelis …’ But he stumbled over the words. ‘Pater noster …’ he began again, but couldn’t find the words that once upon a time had come so readily to his lips. He opened his eyes and looked upward at the statue to the woman after whom the church had been named.
‘Hail Mary, full of grace,’ he said. ‘Our Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.’
Kate stumbled slightly but John Garland held her arm tightly and marched her along the alleyway. He had cut the ties from her wrists, but they still throbbed with the pain of it. She held her left arm over her stomach. Trying to feel her baby’s heartbeat through the thick, woollen fabric of her coat.
She grunted with pain as the man dug his fingers into her arm.
‘Shut it or you’ll regret it,’ hissed Garland angrily.
‘Who are you? Why are you doing this?’
‘Because I can.’
‘What do you want?’
‘You’ll find out soon enough. You and that sad fuck of a boyfriend of yours.’
‘What’s Jack got to do with this?’
‘He’s been a bad boy, Kate.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Jack’s been putting himself about. What’s up — now you’re pregnant, you don’t let him fuck you?’
There was an old street lamp at the end of the alleyway. It cast a warm yellow glow of light, but she could see heavy snowflakes falling in front of it. Could feel them in her long hair, chilling the cheeks on her face. She had no idea what the man was talking about. He was clearly insane, but if she could keep him talking maybe she could figure out a way to get help.
‘Has Jack done something to upset you?’
‘He’s been fucking the woman I’m going to marry.’ John Garland’s smile sent a shiver down Kate’s spine.
‘You must have made a mistake.’
‘No mistake. Last night he was at Stephanie’s house. She had her arms wrapped around him as he left. He’s been fucking her and now he’s going to pay.’
‘Jack was with me last night.’
‘I was there, watching.’
‘You’ve got the wrong end of the stick. She was scared. He was helping her.’
The man grunted. ‘Yeah. Just the kind of help I’m going to give you.’ He pulled her tight to him as they reached the end of the alleyway.
A church stood almost directly opposite, with a broader alleyway beside it. The snowflakes danced in the light of the old lamp post. Kate reckoned she was as far from Narnia as she could be, as she felt the blade jabbing in her right side.
‘Across the road now. Make the slightest noise and I’ll cut you right here.’
Kate walked across the road with him, her mind in turmoil. Light spilled through the cracks of the curtained windows on the apartments on the right-hand side of the alleyway. She blinked, not sure how much the moisture in her eyes was melted snow or how much was tears. As they passed the church, John Garland switched hands with the knife and pulled out a key.
‘Be prepared, that’s what the Scouts say, isn’t it? Well you can consider me a good Scout in that regard,’ he said as he led her up to the Seventeenth Roxborough’s Scout hut and turned the key in the lock.
Thoughts flashed through Kate’s mind. The dream she had of Siobhan being married. The daughters she was supposed to have with Jack. The baby that she was carrying. She thought about the thickness of the coat, how hard he would have to stab to penetrate it. She thought about the risks if she tried to escape. But the thought uppermost in her mind was that she was not going to be a victim. If she went into that Scout hut with that man, even if she survived if her baby was hurt, she would never forgive herself. She whispered a silent I love you to Jack Delaney and said, ‘I consider you a sick son-of-a-bitch and you can rot in fucking hell!’
John Garland stabbed at her with his knife as Kate reeled backwards, slamming against the wall of the hut and slid to the ground.
John Garland raised the blade above his head, then screamed as the door to the hut opened and Jack Delaney stabbed a screwdriver straight into his right eye.
DI TONY HAMILTON yawned and pulled the car to the side of the road. He had seen enough snow and traffic to last a lifetime.
Emma Halliday opened her eyes and stretched. ‘This is my house,’ she said, having wiped her side-window.
‘I know.’
‘How are you going to get home?’
‘I figured I’d phone for a taxi.’
‘You’ll be lucky in this weather.’
‘I didn’t think you should drive.’
‘I’ll be fine now.’
‘Well … like you said it’s pretty foul out there.’
‘Why don’t you come in for a cup of coffee?’ she said.
‘I don’t drink coffee.’
Emma smiled. ‘That’s okay. I haven’t got any.’
‘In which case I’d love a cup.’
Laura Chilvers looked at her bedside clock. It was dark and the glow of the illuminated numbers helped her locate the button for Classic FM. She pushed it and the lush sounds of Mahler’s Third Symphony filled the room.
She closed her eyes and moaned as a hand cupped her right breast, her nipples hardening, her heart beating faster in her chest.
‘Do you want me to hurt you again?’
Laura opened her eyes and ran her hand down the woman’s long blonde hair. ‘No, Nicola,’ she said. ‘I just want you to hold me.’
‘The other night you scared me, Laura.’
‘I don’t remember it. I’m sorry.’
‘You made me beat you, hurt you. Use toys. You took so many drugs, drink. Punching the wall. I didn’t know what to do.’
‘But you brought me home, didn’t you?’
‘Yes. Maybe I should have stayed, but you told me to leave.’
‘Probably best that you did.’
‘But I don’t understand. What happened? Why were you like that?’
Laura kissed Nicola on the mouth and put her arms around her. ‘Just hold me,’ she said.
‘I only want to help.’
‘You can’t help.’
‘What is it?’
‘I did a very bad thing.’
Bible Steve walked along the corridor. He felt calm for the first time in a long while. He knew that it was due to the Valium they had given him, to help with the severe alcohol withdrawal symptoms he would be experiencing. But he felt calm. Cogs were clicking into place, wheels were in motion. He looked down at his battered, old hands and didn’t recoil with horror as he had previously. He was beginning to understand, and he knew that understanding was the first step to being healed, although he very much suspected it was too late for that.
He stopped outside the room next to the one where he had been treated and looked inside. An elderly lady had fallen asleep by the side of a hospital bed. A man lay there with an oxygen mask over his face. Wires and tubes were connected to his body. The man’s breath was a low, ragged gurgle. Bible walked into the room and looked at the various monitors. Staring down at the man for a moment or two, he returned to the monitoring equipment and turned a dial.
Jack Delaney held Kate’s hand as she lay on the hospital bed. The technician moved the scanning device and Kate smiled as she saw the images appear on the monitor.
‘Absolutely nothing to worry about,’ said the ultrasonographer.
‘Not even a scratch,’ added Delaney. ‘Who did you think you were, Superwoman?’
‘I don’t know about that,’ said Kate. ‘I’m going to need a new coat.’
‘I’m going to need a new screwdriver,’ said Delaney.
Kate grimaced and gestured towards Siobhan who was busy checking the scan image.
‘Yeah, sorry.’
‘You’ve got nothing to be sorry about, Jack. You saved my life. You saved both our lives.’
‘Nah, you’re a tough cookie, Kate. You’d have had his measure. You sure you’ve not got a drop of the Irish in you?’
Kate laughed. ‘Shall we go home?’
‘Yeah, let’s do that,’ said Delaney. ‘We’ve got a tree to decorate.’
‘Yay!’ said Siobhan and clapped her hands. Delaney looked from her and back to Kate and, as he ran his hand over her stomach, he had to blink his eyes, which were suddenly moist.