Phobia

by Dean Crawford

  Table of Contents

  PHOBIA

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  PHOBIA

  © 2019 Dean Crawford

  Publisher: Fictum Ltd

  The right of Dean Crawford to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  Dean Crawford Books

  1

  London

  Nobody is looking at you. Nobody is interested. Nobody cares.

  Honor McVey kept her head down as she was buffeted by the hot breath of the London Underground. A train burst from the darkened maw of a tunnel to her right, aged Victorian brickwork giving way to a brightly lit subterranean platform and ranks of impatient commuters. The air was stale and heavy, the last of the summer heat trapped in the city’s tunnels. The commingled scents of metal, grease and electrical charge competed with wafts of aftershave and perfume as the train whined to a halt and the doors hissed open. A flood of suits, glowing mobile phones and briefcases poured out of the interior, and Honor was swept up by a similar crowd, all jostling for space as they boarded.

  Don’t make eye contact.

  The seats were all taken by suits hiding behind their broadsheets and teenagers hiding behind closed eyes and headphones, tinny–sounding music emanating from within. Nobody offered her a seat. Honor gripped a handrail and held on, one commuter’s back pressed against her chest, another man hemming her in from behind. The air was even hotter in the confines of the train, and her heart skipped a beat as she missed a breath.

  Breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Count your heartbeats. You’ve got this.

  The swaying motion of the train, the dense air and the close confines threatened to shatter Honor’s fragile shell and she closed her eyes, pictured another place, another time, somewhere when everything was just fine and she wouldn’t have to see what she was about to see. Distraction was, she had been told, the best way to avert anxiety; not so easy when she was crammed like a sardine in a metal tube, hurtling along a centuries– old tunnel, deep below ground. The heat intensified. Keeping her eyes closed wasn’t an option, she realised, as she almost fell against the man in front of her.

  She caught her reflection in the blackened windows, the darkened Victorian–brick tunnels flickering by on the far side. Blonde hair in a neat ponytail, charcoal–grey suit, white shirt, five–foot–nothing. She looked like any other commuter on their way to work. The difference was that they would be behind desks, or at tills, or on workshop floors, safe places. They wouldn’t have to see what she would witness.

  Two stops, and three hundred and twelve heartbeats later, the train pulled into Monument. The doors opened and she followed the crowd off the train, across the platform and up the escalators, crammed once again between men who always seemed so much taller than she was. Ninety–eight beats later, she walked out of Monument Station and sucked in a lungful of fresh air as she closed her eyes and stood for a moment, rigid amid the bustling morning crowds near London Bridge.

  The streets were crammed with vehicles all noisily hurrying somewhere, their headlights lost in a foggy gloom that enshrouded the city. The air was damp but mild, the streets alternately lined with modern tower blocks and two–hundred–year old architecture, contemporary steel and glass warring with Georgian stone, all rising up to vanish into the grey murk above.

  Honor gathered herself together and crossed the junction at Monument, headed south beside the A3 toward her unavoidable meeting with death. Ahead of her was London Bridge and the wind–flecked waters of the Thames, a sheet of beaten lead flowing ever eastward. The odours of water, mud and old stone gusted between the buildings, filling her lungs with the breath of the city.

  London had a presence all of its own, ingrained with the ages, pounded into the cobbles, alleys and pavements. She could sense the immense antiquity around her as she passed a monument to the Great Fire of London, then descended onto Lower Thames Street. The sweep of the Thames was not visible from here, the street lined with office blocks, but amid them towered the ancient spire of St Magnus the Martyr church. She looked up at the medieval heights vanishing into the fog and swayed with vertigo.

  Honor came to a halt on the opposite side of the street and took a breath. It was time. She wasn’t sure that she was truly ready, but as her cognitive therapist had told her, it would never feel like the right time.

  Honor crossed the street to where a police cordon surrounded the church. The street was sealed off at both ends, keeping traffic and onlookers at bay. Two sets of ambulance hazard lights flickered a kaleidoscopic display through the mist as she approached two police constables manning the cordon, the distinctive red and white check–flash of their otherwise black uniforms marking them out as City of London Police. The constables turned to her as she reached them, and she pulled out her warrant card, along with her blue cordon card.

  ‘Honor McVey, Detective Sergeant.’

  ‘Ma’am,’ came the immediate response as one of the uniforms lifted the cordon for her. ‘It’s this way. We’re keeping the public as far away from the scene as we can.’

  The constable led her toward the church, and Honor saw three detectives, probably a Homicide Assessment Team out of Bishopsgate, standing around something on the pavement at their feet.

  ‘D.S. McVey,’ the constable announced, as though she were royalty of some kind. The detectives looked up at her, all three of them registering a flicker of surprise – or maybe concern, she couldn’t be sure. One of them was unknown to her, unusual in a small CID force.

  ‘It’s an honour,’ Detective Constable Danny Green greeted her with a broad south– London accent and a cheeky grin. ‘Good to see you back.’

  Danny’s brief embrace was welcome and she couldn’t help the smile that caused her cheeks to ache as she returned it. Danny was in his thirties, with thick, unkempt brown hair above piercing grey eyes that missed nothing. Tall, somewhat arrogant and with a permanent five–o–clock shadow on his jaw, Danny was considered a safe pair of hands, with ten years in CID.

  ‘This is DC Samir Raaya,’ he introduced the younger man next to him, ‘fresh out of MET direct–entry training, now attached to City, so he’s being led by the hand, by me. You’re welcome.’

  Samir was dark–eyed, black hair crossing his scalp in a fashionable sweep and an eager–to–please expression on his features. He looked like he should be fronting a boy– band, not standing in the fog at a crime scene. He shook her hand deferentially.

  The third man was all too familiar to her.

  ‘Honor,’ Detective Constable Colin Hansen greeted her coolly, his handshake limp, without passion. ‘I’m Supervisory Officer, CAD’s been updated, I put you down as the Investigating Officer when I heard you’d been assigned.’

  Disappointment. Honor could see it in his eyes. Hansen was only a few inches taller than her, stocky but short, and seemed forever to be trying to make up for it. He’d been made up to acting–Detective Sergeant in her absence, but that would now be rescinded. Promotions were rare in such a small force. Short, black hair framed a round face with small, dark eyes. Honor decided not to make waves.

  ‘I got called in,’ she said by way of an explanation. ‘First day back so I’m go
ing to follow your lead, for now.’ She looked down at the pavement, where a damp spot revealed the likely location of the crime. ‘What are we looking at here? The DI was pretty vague.’

  Danny gestured to the damp spot.

  ‘Local building firm called it in an hour ago,’ he explained. ‘The body’s been here since some time during the night. We were on–call with the HAT car so we headed straight down.’ Bishopsgate had recently been assigned a single Homicide Assessment Team vehicle, which was shared between the four Major Incident Teams stationed there. ‘We’re already searching for local CCTV coverage, but unfortunately none of the cameras are set to cover the scene of the crime.’

  Honor frowned. ‘Why not? The body was found here, right? Is it in the ambulance?’

  Danny Green smiled without humour and pointed one finger straight up. Honor tilted her head back and the world swayed around her.

  ‘Oh, Jesus, you’ve got to be kidding me?’

  The sky above was a featureless ghost grey, the magnificent church spire soaring into the gloom, but she could see a faint patch of darkness alongside it and realised that it was the body of a man. She was looking up at his feet, and he was hanging from something. The fog between the church and the opposite ends of the street was dense enough to conceal the body from sight, but that wouldn’t last for long.

  ‘Welcome back,’ Danny said with a cheery wink. ‘It’s all yours.’

  Honor’s stomach back–flipped inside her. Her first thought was to insist that another Investigating Officer take the case, maybe Hansen, but after what had happened, turning down a case now might be the end of everything. Sympathy or no, the DCI would write her off active duty and she’d be behind a desk for the rest of her career. Honor steeled herself.

  ‘How long before we can get the body down?’

  ‘Scene examiner’s already on site and the specialist search team will be here soon, shouldn’t be too long,’ Danny said, knowing that she would want the body down before the media could get a handle on the story. ‘We got an ICEFLO camera to do the rounds but there’s nothing out of the ordinary, except for the victim, obviously.’

  ‘Obviously,’ Hansen echoed. ‘First glance, it’s a suicide.’ ‘Who found the body?’

  ‘Site manager, Gary Wheeler, at seven–thirty am,’ Samir replied, keen to join in as he glanced at his notebook. ‘Called it in right away, we got here, scene examiner showed up about ten minutes ago. As the Senior Investigating Officer, DI Harper said she was assigning you the case.’

  Honor nodded, her mind already racing. Detective Inspector Katy Harper had suggested she take the first case that came along, get right back into things, throw herself in at the deep end. Her cognitive therapist had felt otherwise, but Honor was suffering from cabin fever and had to get out of the apartment for a bit, even if it was a risk for her.

  ‘Do we have a name?’

  ‘Nothing yet,’ Hansen replied. ‘Once we get the body down, we should be able to identify the victim. They’re wearing a suit, could have done this after a hard day on the trading floor, lost a billion on commodity stock or something. Wouldn’t be the first time.’

  Honor frowned inwardly. The body of the victim could have been in situ for many hours, perhaps since the previous nightfall, which presented a number of difficulties for the investigation that she had been assigned to lead. The pathologist would have to establish the time of death, while the laborious task of trawling through hours of CCTV to try to identify the time that the victim arrived at the church would be down to her team of three, as Hansen would almost certainly be returned to his own Major Incident Team, the force desperately short of detectives.

  ‘Canvassing? Witnesses?’

  ‘No witnesses yet,’ Raaya replied. ‘Not enough uniforms to send anybody knocking on doors, so it’s down to us.’

  ‘Standard,’ Honor agreed. It was going to be a long day. ‘Danny, can you try to ID the victim, take a look for missing persons reports north and south of the water? The victim might not be from our borough. And see what CCTV assets we can get on the approaches to the church. I’ll go take a look at the scene with Samir and handle the door–to–door afterward.’

  ‘Will do,’ Danny said with a surprised smile, relieved that he was being spared the drudgery of canvassing the local area for information. Most detective sergeants would have sent the DCs out for that. Win hearts and minds, Honor thought as she turned to leave with Samir. She was coming back after a long layoff and she was going to need a good team behind her to pull through – Danny was the only face that was both friendly and familiar.

  ‘Is there any point heading up there again?’ Hansen asked. ‘I’ve already tagged it as a suicide – the guy didn’t levitate onto that rope.’

  ‘I just need to see it all for myself, before signing off on it,’ Honor replied. ‘It won’t take long.’

  It wasn’t a request, and she didn’t wait for Hansen’s response as Samir led her toward the church entrance. Built in the 11th century, the church was close to a thousand years old. To her left lay Whitechapel, the dark warren of the city where once Jack the Ripper carved his name as the most famous serial killer in history. Less than half a kilometre from the Tower of London and the wall, she was acutely aware of the city’s ancient past all around her as they walked into the church.

  ‘Where’s Gary Wheeler?’ she asked Samir.

  Her voice echoed through the vaulted interior, the air weighted with antiquity. Aged pews were arranged over a stone floor of engraved tombs that had lain at rest for centuries, worn smooth by the passage of countless pious feet.

  ‘Just over there,’ Raaya gestured with a nod of his head. ‘Giving a statement to the uniform.’

  Honor made her way across to Gary Wheeler, her heels clicking on the cool stone. Somehow, after the cramped tube journey, the airy church and the scent of polished wood seemed comforting.

  Wheeler was a big, thick–set man with a thick moustache, curly receding hair and a ruddy complexion. A large belly hung over a utility belt, a yellow hard–hat perched at a jaunty angle on his head as he turned to them. Honor showed him her warrant card and introduced herself, then let Wheeler do the talking.

  ‘I didn’t even see him until I got up into the steeple,’ he explained as a young female officer jotted down his statement. ‘Damned near scared the life out of me. It’s not every day you open a door to see a dead body hanging in mid–air.’

  ‘And you saw the body how, exactly?’

  ‘From the belfry,’ Wheeler replied. ‘I opened the baffles to get out onto the scaffolding, and there he was, danglin’ right there in front of me.’

  ‘Could anybody else have got into the building before you?’ Honor asked.

  ‘Sure,’ Wheeler nodded. ‘The site’s locked overnight and has camera coverage, but it’s not Fort Knox, y’know? Guess he had to have got in, otherwise he wouldn’t be hanging there now, would he?’

  ‘Was there any sign of break–and–enter into the site?’

  Wheeler nodded. ‘Lock’s been forced on the church doors. Brute force job, not professional. Looks like he got in here to top himself.’

  ‘Are you contracted to Tower Hamlets or Southwark?’

  ‘Hamlets,’ Wheeler replied. ‘Been working for ‘em for twenty years. I’ve seen some stuff in that time, but nothin’ like this.’

  ‘Who else has access?’

  ‘Site manager, Jenson Cooper,’ Gary said. ‘He’s on his way over.’

  Honor nodded. She directed the uniform to get statements from both men before she joined Raaya as they headed for the belfry, Hansen following silently behind.

  ‘Guy wants to commit suicide, he could throw himself under a train or off London Bridge,’ she said. ‘But no, he breaks into a church and hangs himself from the bell tower. Why?’

  ‘Statement?’ Raaya offered. ‘A need to be seen for some reason?’

  Honor walked with mechanical efficiency to an open door to the belfry. There were already fo
rensics officers in customary clean–suits combing the door for evidence, but they waved Honor through. The temptation to ask them to take the body down first was overwhelming, but she knew that to do so would be a break in procedure that could fail the case with the CPS.

  The climb to the top was arduous, narrow twisting staircases of stone leading her to the upper heights of the tower. There, a single belfry door was opened out onto narrow gantries that were surrounded by walls of clear plastic tied to scaffolding poles.

  ‘Did he get outside through these doors?’ she asked, more to distract herself than anything else.

  ‘Yes,’ Raaya replied, not mocking her question. ‘Once inside the church, there was little to stop him from getting up there onto the scaffolding.’

  Raaya gestured in a deferential “ladies first” manner. Reluctantly, as though tracing the steps to her doom, she edged toward the opening. The cold air from outside hit Honor as she reached the tiny opening. Beyond was a three–foot wide, wood–planked walkway of scaffolding that surrounded the belfry, to which had been strapped three eight–inch wide scaffolding planks, each stacked atop the other, each about ten feet long. Two forensics officers dressed in white suits were working on the walkway, taking samples.

  Beyond, the scaffolding planks extended out into the misty air, a hundred and fifty feet above the city streets. Honor, her legs unsteady, sucked in a breath and stepped out onto the narrow walkway.

  The world seemed to tilt around her as a hot flush plunged through her body. The fog was lifting and she was treated to a plunging, vertiginous view to the street far below. If she leaned forward even a little, she knew that she would topple over without any means to grab hold of anything to break her fall. Nausea poisoned her throat and she felt herself start to fall to one side.

  ‘Oh shit.’

  She jerked away from the view and the back of her head smacked onto the unyielding stone of the belfry.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Honor closed her eyes and tried to catch her breath as she struggled back inside, feeling her way with her hands and trying not to catch Samir’s eye.