Birdman

by Mo Hayder

  ‘Open it.’

  She lifted the lid. A silver coke spoon lay in a bed of white powder.

  ‘It’s the best. The purest. Or maybe—’ He sipped his drink. ‘Maybe you’d prefer some heroin.’

  ‘Heroin?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She looked up and flashed a white smile. ‘If it’s good, of course I would.’

  ‘The best, the best.’ Harteveld stood, his shirt a dull radium glow reflected in the darkened window. He held out his hand. ‘Come with me, then. We’ll go and find it.’

  Peace wanted to know what lay beyond the oak door. ‘Smells bad,’ she said. ‘Don’t you ever clean up in here?’

  ‘Don’t worry about that.’ Harteveld steered her away from the door, down the main hallway.

  ‘What’s in there, then? Is that the rest of the house?’

  ‘I’ll take you in there later,’ he promised, pressing her shoulder. ‘Nothing to worry about now.’

  In the kitchen he quickly heated some smack in an eggcup-sized pan. Peace smiled as she watched the bubbles rise, the sides of the pan remaining clear silver.

  ‘Good gear,’ she said.

  ‘Pure. I’ll shoot it for you. I can do it painlessly.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I was a doctor.’

  ‘But not in my arm, OK? My mum checks my arms.’

  ‘OK.’

  He sat her on a stool and tied a tea towel just under the bulge in her calf, and, when the vein showed blue, trapped between the soft coffee skin and the white of her ankle bone, he popped the skin and the vein lining with the needle and squeezed the syringe contents out.

  ‘Ow,’ she yelped lightly, grinning, clasping her hands over her ankle. ‘Ow. You butcher.’ She smiled as the rush took her and dropped her into the red-leather booth. ‘You’re not a doctor, you’re a butcher,’ she mumbled, smiling distantly. Her head lolled; the black window reflected her saucer eyes. ‘Oh God—‘s good though, ‘s good—’

  Harteveld took his pastis and stood by the fridge watching her. He thought of what he could do with her that night, what she could do for him, and a deep, hard strength filled his abdomen. She could help him to forget in a way even heroin couldn’t. A precious, sweet amnesiac, this girl.

  ‘If you want an even better rush I’ve got another way.’ He sipped his drink. ‘Want it?’

  ‘Yeah, want it.’ She laughed lazily, and swung herself out of the booth, hanging her head. ‘First I’m gonna puke like, if that’s cool.’

  ‘There’s the sink.’

  ‘Ta.’ She smiled as she pushed her hair from her eyes and vomited over the pile of dishes and glasses. ‘Euch.’ She smiled up at him and wiped her wet nose. ‘Euch. I hate that. Don’t you?’

  ‘You want the quick rush?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ She turned on the tap. Her head was wobbling very gently. ‘Wan’ it, wan’ it, I want it.’ She started to laugh at her own sing-song voice. ‘Peace wants it, give it to Peace.’

  As he filled a second syringe, she slumped in the booth again and dropped her head back, staring at the ceiling, her foot jerking. ‘Give it to Peace.’ She bounced her shoulders, opened her mouth, jerked on the seat, dancing on the spot to an internal tune, dropping her hands heavily on the bench, and laughing herself weak as if there had never in the world been anything quite this funny.

  Harteveld watched as he worked. Even in his panicky excitement he was cold-minded enough to stop and see this moment for what it was. The last minutes of her life, the breath of death-enhanced life: she had looked this beautiful—crumpled in his kitchen, singing softly to herself—only once before, at her birth. This moment, lit by the soft kitchen lamp, was her essence caught in amber.

  ‘Lift your hair up, Peace.’ He had to bite hard on the words to stop his voice from trembling. ‘Lift it up and let me get round the back here. You won’t feel anything.’

  She obeyed, glazed eyes swivelling to the window to watch her reflection. ‘Wha’ is it?’

  ‘It’s H. Just a little. But take it like this and the rush is like nothing you ever felt before.’

  ‘Sweee-eeet,’ she purred and curled her neck down.

  A drop of sweat fell from Harteveld’s cold face onto the leather seat, but he didn’t tremble. Once, only once, it had gone wrong. The girl hadn’t wanted it and he’d had to tie her, gag her with a bath towel and bind her hands and feet with two of his shirts. She had struggled like an animal, but she was very small and Harteveld had been able to get her onto the floor—ignoring her hot urine squirting on his calves—and push the needle through the cervical bones …

  In the booth Peace’s bowels opened, and her head jerked once. It was the only movement.

  Harteveld sank back against the wall and started to shake.

  That had been two nights ago. Now he was sitting here in the dark with Peace wrapped in clingfilm on his floor. She had been with him long enough now. It was time for him to do what he had to do; say goodbye to her, do the necessary.

  He found the keys to the Cobra and opened the orangery door.

  ... 23

  He dreamt about Rebecca, standing in the street with rain dripping on her hair from the lilac tree, and woke with a start at 6.15 a.m. Downstairs Veronica was already in the kitchen, cutting bread and opening blinds to let the sun in. She wore a sleeveless Thai silk dress in aquamarine. Two dark crescents were visible on the cloth under each armpit as she lifted the skillet from the hob and slid a curl of Normandy butter onto saffron-bright kippers. She snipped parsley from a terra-cotta grower in the window and Jack, standing sleepily in the doorway, realized he had no idea when the pot arrived or how it had got there.

  ‘Morning.’

  She cocked her head and eyed him, taking in the tousled hair, the T-shirt and boxers he’d started wearing in bed. She hadn’t commented on them before and clearly she wasn’t going to now. Instead she used a teaspoon to fish a vanilla pod out of the coffee pot, poured a mug and handed it to him.

  ‘Morning.’

  ‘How you feeling?’

  ‘I’m not to go into the office today, put it that way.’ She shook the skillet and threw in a handful of chopped herbs. ‘This isn’t for me. I couldn’t touch a thing.’

  ‘After last night?’

  ‘I feel awful. I peed red this morning and these kippers smell like petrol.’

  ‘I didn’t want to wake you.’ He put a hand on her shoulder. A flat, neutral hand. ‘How did it go?’

  ‘As expected, I suppose.’ She pushed her hair out of her eyes. ‘What’s that all about?’

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘That thing in the hallway.’

  ‘Oh. I uh …’ Penderecki’s Barbie doll, still wrapped in cling film, lay on top of his Samsonite by the door. All night its image had chased him—he had woken at 2 a.m. certain that it was significant to Birdman, had got out of bed, retrieved the doll from Ewan’s room and left it in the hallway to remind him. ‘Nothing,’ he murmured. ‘Just an idea.’ Idly he picked up a twist of vegetable from the cutting board. ‘What’s this? Ginseng?’

  ‘Ginger, you moron. I’m doing my Dal Kofta for the party.’

  ‘Are you sure about this party thing?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure. I want to know if they all look like David Caruso.’

  ‘Do not get your hopes up.’ Caffery ducked his head out of the window, checking Penderecki’s back garden. ‘He’s been quiet since the doll thing.’

  ‘Now, don’t be so nosy.’ She twisted a lemon onto the kippers and shovelled them onto a plate. ‘Here. Sit down and eat.’

  By seven he had eaten, shaved and dressed—Veronica, I can do my own ironing. In fact, I’d rather do my own ironing—and was at the office. Essex had news.

  He’d finally tracked down Petra Spacek’s family and Rebecca had been right, Petra had been allergic to make-up, never worn it. No signs of an allergic reaction meant it had been applied either very soon before the slaughter or post-mortem.

  Fr
om what Caffery now knew about Birdman, he doubted it had been ante-mortem.

  He retreated into the office to sneak a cigarette before he and Essex headed on to St Dunstan’s. The doll, mummified in its plastic shroud, lay like a silver chrysalis on the desk. Next to it a blue loose-leaf folder, a cc letter to the Commissioner from ‘Spanner’, the SM rights group, Sellotaped to the front as a comment from an anonymous exhibits officer. Inside, mounted and laminated, photographs of every example of SM paraphernalia hauled in by Vice in the last ten years. Caffery had learned more than he wanted to about spreader and suspension bars, penis gag masks, anchor pads, D rings, O rings, sport sheets, curb-tip surgeon’s scissors and rubber gag masks with their twin nasal tubes to allow the ‘bottomer’ to breath.

  He was still thinking about the marks on the victims’ foreheads. He had searched the file in vain for anything commonly used to puncture the skin. But the cuts on the victims were too small, too clean to be caused by anything in these photos. If Birdman had placed a spiked or barbed mask on the victims, the flesh would have been ragged, chafed, the diameters erratic. In fact the wounds were as precise and even as the punch holes on a doll’s head.

  A doll.

  He unwrapped the Barbie doll and held the head between his white thumb and black thumb.

  ‘Just like the Black and White whisky Scottie dogs,‘ his mother used to say.

  He thought of Rebecca propped up against the bike saddle, tanned fingers picking at the stitching on the canvas straps, pretty dark eyes splintered by the sun, telling him about Petra.

  ‘She looked like a doll with all that make-up on.’

  There! His palms tingled. There was the link. Makeup. Punctures. Make-up. Punch holes. Follow it. Come on, Jack, think!

  Why didn’t he do it to Kayleigh? Why was she different?

  She was the only one without the marks. Someone, around the time of her death, had cut her long hair to shoulder length. Her hair was blond, the same almost white blond as the samples of wig hair. Wig. Make-up, punctures. Rebecca’s tanned fingers. White nails playing with the stitching. ‘Like a doll with all that makeup on.‘ The trim had left Kayleigh’s hair at almost exactly the same length as the wig.

  He flipped the doll onto its front, ran his nails down the rows of perforations in the scalp, each sprouting a pinch of nylon hair, and the answer lifted, leaped at him.

  Stitching.

  ‘Marilyn.’ He threw open the door of the incident room. ‘Marilyn.’

  She looked up, startled. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Where’s Essex?’

  ‘In exhibits.’

  ‘Good.’ Caffery could feel the sinews in his hands twitch. ‘I need a look at the PM photos. I think I know what those marks are.’

  In the tiny property room there was only space on the Flex-Stax shelving for evidence from the current operation. Evidence from all past cases had overflowed and was kept in lockers in the tea room.

  ‘Essex. I need—’ He stopped. He’d walked in mid-conversation. Essex sat at the tiny desk, his face tired and motionless. Behind him Diamond leaned casually on one of the shelves, sleeves rolled up, the faintest of smiles on his face. Logan, the exhibits officer, sat with the yellow grab box at his feet, a computer printout in one hand, a buff docket in the other. When he saw it was Caffery he stood up so hurriedly that the paper air-drying evidence bags on his lap slid to the floor.

  ‘Ah!’ He snatched clumsily at the bags. ‘Morning, boss.’

  ‘The PM photos, Logan.’

  ‘Of course, of course, no probs, sir.’ Moving a trifle too quickly he stacked all the bags back on the desk and busied himself with a blue box file in the corner. Essex met Caffery’s eyes for a moment then looked away. It was enough. Caffery closed the door behind him and leaned against it with his arms folded.

  ‘Well?’ he said. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘The SA at Lambeth’s been on regarding Gemini’s car,’ DI Diamond said calmly.

  ‘I see. What’s she got for us?’

  ‘Four hairs found.’ His washed-out blue eyes had centres of hard indigo. ‘Didn’t match any of the victims.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘But that doesn’t matter.’ In the corner Logan gave a short discomfited cough and Essex stared at his hands. Diamond took the time to run his hand over the hard, gelled helmet of hair. He sniffed, straightened and plucked the report from the desk with an ornate flick of the wrist. ‘Numerous smudged partial prints, and someone had had Kodian-C out to the interior.’

  ‘An industrial-grade cleaning fluid,’ Logan explained.

  ‘Which seems well suss to me.’ Diamond blinked slowly like a lizard in the sun. ‘Then the lads at Lambeth found three prints with enough points to make a match.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘One with Craw and one with Wilcox.’

  ‘He cabbied for them.’

  ‘He says he doesn’t even know them.’

  ‘OK.’ Caffery pushed himself away from the door. ‘Does the super know?’

  ‘Oh yes. We caught him on the way to the CS’s.’ Diamond smiled and rolled his sleeves down, buttoning them carefully. ‘He’s clearing it with Greenwich. We’re going to give that shitty little scrote a chance to come in and answer some questions voluntarily. And if he doesn’t want to play, we’re arresting him. Don’t want him heading back home and losing himself in the Blue Mountains.’

  ‘You can see his point, I suppose,’ Essex said, and Caffery could feel his empathy straining out.

  ‘I suppose,’ he said coldly. He turned to go, stopping briefly, his hand on the door. ‘Essex?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I still want those PM photos on my desk.’

  ... 24

  Mrs Frobisher took her coat off and hung it carefully on the rack in DI Basset’s Greenwich office. She kept her hat and gloves on.

  ‘A cup of tea, Mrs Frobisher?’

  She smiled. ‘That would be nice.’

  Basset kept a discreet eye on her as he opened the blinds and flicked the switch on the kettle. A little worm of unease was crawling across his stomach. Mrs Frobisher was well known to the staff at Greenwich police station: in the last six months she had been a methodical visitor, complaining about anything from the fights in the council block opposite, the dirt and noise of local building works, to the antisocial behaviour of the tenant in the flat below. She had refused to be foisted off onto the environmental health department, and was considered by the duty team to be part of the Monday-morning drudgery.

  Until this Monday, when, at 10 a.m., she had ambled in as customary, wearing her best hat and coat on a hot summer’s day, and given a statement to the desk sergeant which had made him reach for the phone. DI Basset, who had been one of the first attending CID officers at the aggregate yard last weekend, had cancelled his morning meeting with the community liaison officer and invited Mrs Frobisher into his office.

  She sat, sparrow-like, on the edge of the chair, staring out of the window at the sun on the striped awning of Mullins dairy on Royal Hill. ‘It’s lovely here, isn’t it?’ she sighed. ‘Absolutely lovely.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Basset said. ‘I think so too. Now—’ He lifted the tea bags on a spoon and dropped them in the waste-paper basket. ‘Now, Mrs Frobisher, our desk sergeant tells me you’ve been having some bother. Shall we have a little chat about it?’

  ‘Oh, that? It’s been going on months, not that any of them would take a blind bit of notice.’ She took her gloves off, put them in the matching fawn mock-leather shopping bag and zipped it up. The hat remained in place. ‘I’ve been in here like clockwork every week, and no joy until now. Wouldn’t listen to me. I might be old, but I’m not stupid, I know what they’re saying—crazy old witch—I’ve heard them.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ He held a mug out to her. ‘I’m sorry about that, Mrs Frobisher. Sincerely sorry. It’s just you’ve had one or two of our lads out to you in the past, and I think they feel—’

  ‘Only for the foxes! At th
is time of year they will insist on having their little romances and what-not. The noise they make! It sounds like a woman screaming, and you can’t be too careful, not in this day and age.’ She took the tea, resting it on her knee. ‘When my George was alive he used to throw bricks at them. Now he’d know the difference between a fox and a woman screaming.’ She leaned forward, glad of the audience. ‘I was born in Lewisham, you know, Officer, and I’ve been in Brazil Street fifty years now. Got a special fondness for this area in spite of everything. I’ve seen the Jerries bomb the place, the council get their hands on it, the foreigners and now the developers. They’ve pulled everything down I cared about and there’s new buildings going up. Hyper this and hyper that, loft conversions and I don’t know what.’

  ‘Mrs Frobisher.’ Basset placed his tea next to his notepad and sat down opposite. ‘In the statement you gave our desk sergeant you talked about a neighbour of yours, is that right?’

  ‘Him!’ She cocked her head back and pursed her lips. ‘Yes. And there’s him. As if I haven’t got enough worries.’

  ‘Tell me about him. He owns the flat downstairs?’

  ‘Owns it. Don’t mean he gives a tinker’s for it, does it? Never bloody home.’

  ‘Been there long, has he?’

  ‘Years. Ever since my George died. No sooner had I got him in the ground than my son decides the old place is too big for me—has the council in, the planners, the gas board and I don’t know who else, and even more dust, if you please. They bricked off the staircase, put a door round the side and one of those carport affairs, horrible American-looking thing, I can’t be doing with it myself. Next I know they’ve sold that floor off to him and me and the cat are marched off upstairs like a pair of lepers in our own home.’

  ‘His entrance is at the side?’

  ‘At the back, under the carport—so he’s got the garden, you see. Not that he looks after it. Oooh no.’ She sucked in a breath and shook her head. ‘No, no, no. Not with him never being there. Covered in bindweed it will be by July, the rate he’s going. But even if he did get it nice, what then? Who’d want to sit out there with the noise and dust and hammering every minute of the day? And if it’s not that it’s them over the road screaming and shouting—you can’t win, Officer, you can’t win.’