Ash & Bone

by John Harvey

  Instead of a turkey, he ordered a prime leg of lamb from the butcher's on Fore Street and, having grown up in the days when most shops had still closed for several days over the holiday, stocked up with vegetables and milk and bread. For some minutes he lingered over a small Christmas pudding before settling for a pack of mince pies and a carton of double cream.

  The last weekend before Christmas itself, he drove up-country and watched Plymouth Argyle outmanoeuvre and outplay Notts County by three goals to nil, his first live match in years and watched in a mixture of blinding sunshine and driving rain, County willing and eager but lacking purpose or plan, the phrase 'headless chickens' coming easily to mind.

  On Christmas Day, he put the lamb in a slow oven and set out for a walk that would take him almost to the opposite coast, certainly well within sight of St Michael's Mount, before turning back. Forecasts of heavy rain and high winds regardless, he was rewarded with clear skies and no more than a single shower. A long, slow bath and a glass of whiskey on his return and lamb that fell away from the bone at a glance.

  Joanne's card, as spare and functional as his own, stood on the kitchen shelf between a large jar of Branston pickle and a bottle of HP sauce. Though he'd willed himself, without success, not to listen for the post van on the lane, persuaded himself, as best he could, there was no likelihood that she would send him anything, the absence of an envelope bearing Katherine's writing, a card with her name, cast a pall, longer and deeper, over each and every day.

  * * *

  For Elder, as for Karen Shields, the new year started early, a grey Monday at the nub end of December, the north London headquarters of Homicide West.

  Elder was in the room when Karen arrived, together with a tall man wearing a Barbour jacket and twill trousers, whom she recognised as Robert Framlingham, head of the Murder Review Unit.

  'Karen,' Framlingham said, extending his hand. 'Good to meet you at last.'

  So that was the way it was going to be. She was surprised it had taken this long.

  Introduced, she shook hands with Elder; his grip was dry and strong and no more lingering than her own.

  'The Maddy Birch case,' Framlingham said. 'I've asked Frank here to take a look, see if he can't lend a hand.'

  Elder was dressed in a dark suit that had seen somewhat better days, pale blue shirt and inoffensive tie, shoes that, though recently shined, were as creased as the lines around his eyes. Karen wondered how he had got the scar on his face.

  'You're shunting me aside,' Karen said.

  'Not at all,' Framlingham replied. 'That's not the way we work at all.'

  'Oh?'

  'No. Frank will sit down with you and your team, review the progress in the investigation so far…'

  'Mark my card.'

  'Not in any way. What Frank will do, in full consultation with you, is try to point up areas which will open up the inquiry to new ground.'

  'But it's still my investigation?'

  'You are the lead officer, yes.'

  'In charge.'

  'Absolutely.'

  Bullshit, Karen thought. Bullshit.

  'Frank here knew Maddy Birch,' Framlingham said. 'Worked with her in Lincoln.'

  Karen looked across at Elder, his face giving nothing away.

  'Well,' Framlingham said cheerily, 'the sooner you and Frank sit down and talk the better.'

  After raising an imaginary glass, he walked away.

  'You want to get some coffee?' Karen asked. 'Talk things through.'

  'What I'd like to do,' Elder said, 'is read through the log, the pathologist's report. Familiarise myself with what's been done. Tapes of any interviews. And then I'd like to drive out to where she was killed. Look around. We can talk after that.'

  Karen looked at him through narrowed eyes. 'Whatever you say.'

  'I'm sorry,' Elder said.

  'No. No, you're not.'

  * * *

  DS Sheridan was the office manager: cheery, somewhat portly, still possessed of a Potteries accent which flourished after standing with the home supporters at the Britannia Stadium, which he did whenever he could, Saturdays Stoke City were at home.

  'Call me Sherry, everyone else does.'

  Elder explained what he needed and found himself set up with a corner desk, a tape player with headphones, a rackety but still functioning PC, and, until the files began arriving in profusion, plenty of elbow room.

  Shutting out the rise and fall of background noise as well as he could, Elder read and listened and read some more, only stopping when his vision blurred and his head began to throb.

  Towards the end of the morning, Karen's sergeant, Mike Ramsden, came over and introduced himself, the pair of them discovering a few acquaintances in the Met in common.

  'Fancy a bite in the canteen?' Ramsden said.

  'Later in the week definitely,' Elder said. 'Right now, I'd better push on.'

  Ramsden gave Elder a suit-yourself look and moved away. How to win friends and influence people, Elder thought; second time today. By four thirty, he realised he had read the same page on the screen three times without taking in more than a few words.

  * * *

  One of Elder's main concerns about coming up to London had been where he would stay and what it would cost; but Framlingham had assured him something would be arranged and, on arrival, had handed him a mobile phone and two sets of keys: one to a no-longer-new maroon Vauxhall Astra and the other to a flat in a small block near the top of Hendon Lane, close by Finchley Central station.

  The car ran better than its looks suggested it might; the flat, presumably maintained as a safe house for the Witness Protection Scheme and suchlike, was well equipped, recently cleaned, and totally anonymous. Kitchen, living room, bathroom, bedroom. Roberts radio in the kitchen; TV and VCR in the living room. With the windows closed it was almost possible to shut out the sound of traffic from the nearby North Circular Road. There was butter and a pint of milk in the fridge, a sliced loaf in its wrapping, biscuits, a jar of instant coffee, a packet of PG Tips and some strawberry jam.

  Elder walked along past the Tube station to Ballards Lane and bought a hearty chunk of cheddar cheese, a packet of bacon, eggs, oranges and bananas, a bottle of Jameson's and some dark Nicaraguan ground coffee. Not all in the same shop.

  When she had stayed with him in Cornwall, Katherine had teased him about the way in which, having drank nothing but tea for years, he had become a real coffee snob. Well, he had reasoned, there were worse things to be snobbish about.

  Back at the flat, he spooned coffee into a plain white china jug, and, while it was standing, cracked the seal on the Jameson's and poured himself a small glass. Reading through the files, he could see why Maddy Birch's former husband, Terry Patrick, had looked such an almost irresistible suspect, and he could read Karen Shields's anger and disappointment between the lines. Not only had Patrick seemed picture perfect, he was, after so many hours of effort, the only serious suspect she had.

  Cross-checking the records of the Sex Offenders Register and the National Criminal Intelligence Service, the computer had flagged some twenty names, all but three of whom had so far been checked and eliminated. Elder wondered how many of these warranted looking at again.

  As for the forensics, he couldn't think of many cases he'd worked on where the evidence had amounted to so little. No blood save for the victim's own. No stray hair, no shred of skin. It was hard to believe: so hard it had to be worth persuading Forensic Services to look again, re-examine the clothes and the body.

  And he wanted to talk to — who was it? — sliding his glass to one side, he fumbled through his notes - Vanessa Taylor, Maddy's best friend. Maybe this guy, as well. The roofer. Kensit? Kendrick? Kennet. Came over as so reasonable on the tape, talking about the times Maddy had stood him up at the last moment, evenings cancelled whenever she had been thrown some unexpected overtime. Like a south London boy who'd somewhere picked up a few lessons in gender and the negotiation of personal space. Elder slipp
ed the headphones free. Maybe Kennet had never been that involved, not enough to really care. Maybe he was just a nice bloke. There were still some around.

  Stretching, Elder walked to the window. The tail lights of vehicles sparkled and blurred as they moved in slow procession towards Finchley Lane, the Great North Way, the M1. Men and women, mostly men, hurried home from the station, backs bowed, heads bent into the wind. Here and there, umbrellas sprouted; spots of rain against the glass. He should phone Joanne and tell her where he was, let her have this number just in case. In case of what?

  Dad, I'm never going to be like I was before.

  On impulse, he called Maureen Prior first.

  He and Maureen had worked closely together for three years in Nottinghamshire, right up to the time of his retirement, and then again last year, when Katherine had been abducted. As an officer, she was efficient and perceptive; her judgement fair but unyielding. At work, she was intolerant of fools, time-servers, anyone who stepped outside the line. But as a person, as a woman, Elder knew next to nothing about her. She had never divulged anything about her private life and all of the speculation that usually arose round unmarried women officers had simply evaporated away. Elder knew where she lived and nothing more: he had never been invited past the front door.

  'I thought you'd turned your back on all that,' Maureen said, when he outlined what he was doing in London.

  'So I had.'

  'But this was different?'

  'Something like that.'

  'I'd like to think you'd do the same for me, Frank, if the circumstances were the same.'

  'What's that?'

  'Saddle up that white horse of yours and ride up out of the west.'

  'Bollocks, Maureen.'

  She laughed, a low chuckle. 'Hope you'll be all right, Frank. Working with a woman.'

  'Shouldn't I be?'

  'Depends.'

  'I worked with you.'

  She laughed again, more open this time. 'That was easy, Frank. You scarcely thought of me as a woman at all.'

  Joanne, when he spoke to her, was taciturn, distracted, her mind elsewhere.

  'How's Katherine?'

  'Oh, you know, much the same.'

  'I don't suppose she's there?'

  He could hear voices, muffled, Joanne with her hand, he imagined, not quite covering the phone.

  'No, Frank, I'm sorry, no.'

  Which, in the circumstances, probably meant yes. Joanne currying favour. He didn't push it.

  They exchanged a few words about Christmas, Joanne's plans for New Year's Eve, and that was that. As soon as the call was over, suddenly hungry, Elder made himself bacon and eggs, slices of soft white bread buttered and folded over, more coffee. Switching on the radio, he worked his way through the pre-sets: a low rumble from down near the bootstraps which the DJ informed him came from the late, great Johnny Cash; something languidly classical; someone with a faint Scottish accent explaining the intricacies of European Union budgeting; fevered commentary on Coventry versus West Ham; a jolt of violent, acerbic sound, like the contents of an old-fashioned kitchen being demolished around someone playing electric guitar — the thrash metal he'd read about somewhere?

  Opting for the orchestral concert, he angled his legs round on the settee. Maddy's killer: had she known him or had she been taken by surprise? Opening the envelope, he looked at the photographs of the wounds. Vicious and deep. Vicious and yet whoever had delivered them had retained a degree of control, of calm; calm enough not to have left any apparent clues, to have taken scrupulous care. Controlled anger: anger and control.

  Training, then?

  Elder closed his eyes.

  Army? SAS?

  Under the wash of music, he drifted off.

  All that coffee, he thought, waking fifteen minutes later to the sound of the announcer's voice and bright applause, how could I fall asleep?

  He tried the TV. On one channel, a disparate group of men and women were clambering their way, laboriously, through the jungle; on another, the same people, or others that looked just like them, were sitting around on settees, not speaking, doing nothing at all. So easy to switch off.

  The volume of traffic had eased back. High up where he was, he could see the strange, muted glow thrown up by the city, a false, unchanging day for night. Back down in Cornwall the sky would be close to black and scored through with stars, Cassiopeia, Pegasus, the Plough.

  He pictured Maddy walking — running? — though a dark space he had not yet seen, except in photographs. The movement of branches in the wind. Foxes following a trail across back gardens; the cry, unworldly, of cats on heat. Clouds across the moon.

  Something moving in the thickets of shrub and bush down by the old railway line.

  A voice.

  Did he call out?

  Maddy. Her name.

  Trying to conjure up her face as she turned towards the sound, Elder could only see her eyes picked out green in the shadow of the cathedral light, her mouth broadening into a smile and then closing round his in a kiss.

  You didn't have her, Frank. Just wanted to… But somehow you let her get stuck inside your head.

  Freeing the cord from the hook around which it had been looped, Elder lowered the blind. Another small whiskey before turning in. The sheets unwelcoming and cold. After catnapping as he had, he thought it would be hard to get to sleep, but not so. A few small shifts of position and the next thing he knew he was stretching awake by habit, the hands on his watch showing six o'clock.

  17

  Shaded green, the narrow swathe of designated parkland stretched west to east across page 29 in the London A-Z, Highgate towards Stroud Green and beyond. The best approach to the particular section he wanted was unclear from the map and Elder drove into a crescent off the main road and parked between a crowded skip and a long-abandoned Nissan with its windows smashed and the engine half-removed. From there, following a sign, he walked along a narrow alley between houses, bypassing both a discarded fridge and a dismembered supermarket trolley, before finding himself on a track leading to a two-storey wooden building he assumed to be the community centre.

  Broadening out, the path led towards a children's ' nursery on the right, a five-a-side pitch and play centre further along; a fence, broken down in several places, separated it from the slope, tangled and overgrown, that angled steeply towards the muddy track below.

  Elder stood quite still, tuning out, as best he could, the faint morning discord from the nearby flats, the traffic sounds from either side. Some twenty metres off, a female blackbird scuffled through dry leaves, before flying shrilly away into the far trees. The sky was a watery blue, shaded over, here and there, with grey. Elder could see his breath, off-white, on the air.

  She had walked here, Maddy; stopped for a moment, alerted by a sound.

  Or, jogging, had she paused and bent forward, hands on hips, catching her breath?

  Elder turned through a slow circle: how close, even at night, could someone get without being heard or seen?

  In his imagination, he saw a shadow stepping silently out of the dark.

  Why didn't Maddy run? And if she did, why, fit and strong as she was, did she not get away?

  Because she knew him, surely.

  Close. Her breath upon his face. Laughing, as they stumbled out from the doorway on to the cobbled street. Did she take his hand or slip her arm through his?

  Carefully, Elder made his way down towards the old railway track, while above him, whistling cheerfully, a man pushed a buggy containing a well-wrapped toddler towards the nursery. Walking briskly, a woman appeared with her dog and then, as quickly, disappeared. From the reports he had read, the diagrams, Maddy had been attacked above and then been pushed or fallen, the last, fatal blows most likely delivered close by where he now stood.

  In all probability, her assailant had continued to stab her after she was dead. No weapon found. Remembering the severity and extent of the wounds, Elder saw him wiping the excess of blood off u
pon the grass, the ground.

  How long had it taken?

  How long?

  Longer, possibly, to have cleared away all telltale traces than to have committed the crime itself.

  How long had it been before someone else had come along, stopped perhaps, thinking they had heard something, and looked down, but, seeing nothing, continued on their way?

  And the murderer, which way had he gone?

  To the east, the track ran on below Crouch Hill and all the way, almost, to Finsbury Park, a myriad of small side roads with easy access leading off on either side; westwards, it opened out on to Shepherd's Hill, adjacent to the main road leading north towards the motorway. A car conveniently parked. Light traffic flow. Maddy's killer could have been tucked up by midnight, leaving her body to the elements, the foxes and the rodents, small insects, crows.

  Elder saw again the post-mortem photographs of her face, the wounds, open, not quite scabbed over, to her torso and along the insides of her arms.

  Climbing back up, Elder raised the collar of his coat against the freshness of the wind; mud clung to the cuffs of his trousers, the soles of his shoes.

  Back in the street where he had parked, a pair of thirteen-year-olds was considering the possibility of liberating the Astra's radio; seeing Elder approaching, they spat thoughtfully at the ground and strolled, hands in pockets, nonchalantly away.

  * * *

  Off duty, Vanessa was wearing a denim skirt and black woollen tights, calf-length reddish leather boots, a denim jacket over a high-necked purple sweater that seemed to have shrunk in the wash. Her dark hair was curly and closely framed her face; her lipstick, newly applied, was a vivid shade of red.

  The cafe where she had suggested meeting was close to the police station in Holmes Road. Most of the tables were taken and the buzz of conversation and occasional hiss of the coffee machine were underscored by music, Middle Eastern, Elder thought, coming from a radio-cassette player on the counter.

  Elder made his way to where Vanessa was sitting and introduced himself.