Birdman

by Mo Hayder

  Maddox waited until the incident room was quiet.

  ‘Right. The good news is we can give up knocking down the magistrate’s door.’ No-one spoke. ‘That poor bugger in Greenwich is going home. Even if they had a better sample they wouldn’t have needed it. It’s not even the same blood group.’

  In his chair against the far wall Diamond’s jaw muscles worked under the tanned skin, the pinched nostrils pulsed gently as if they wanted to flare. Kryotos’s phone jolted to life, making everyone jump. She stared at it for a moment, red-faced at having been singled out like this. It was Betts calling from London Bridge. Kryotos listened, looked at Maddox, then at Diamond, and handed the phone silently to Caffery.

  Gemini stared at a textured black streak on the cell wall wondering if it was what he thought it was. Don’t they clean these rahtid places? The door opened and the custody sergeant came in, holding Gemini’s clothes in a plastic cover. The Nikes were perched on the top like twin loaves clean, fresh and new from the oven.

  ‘Mr Henry.’

  ‘Whassup?’

  ‘You’re going home.’

  Gemini rolled his eyes suspiciously. ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yes.’ The officer placed the clothes on the bunk beside him, straightened up and gave him a bored look. ‘It is.’

  Caffery was on the phone to Fiona Quinn when Essex and DC Logan knocked on the door. Essex had a grim look on his face.

  ‘On our way to Harteveld’s.’ He held up the familiar yellow grab box.

  ‘I’m a step behind you. Quinn’s meeting us there.’

  ‘Jack.’

  ‘What is it?’

  Essex leaned in so Logan couldn’t hear. ‘Dr Amedure’s been trying to reach you from the lab.’

  ‘Yes?’ Caffery straightened up and covered the mouthpiece. ‘Did she have something?’

  Essex paused. ‘She’s got something.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘She says they’re animal. Pig bones. She’s sorry.’

  Caffery sank back in his seat.

  ‘You all right?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s not a surprise.’

  ‘They could probably do Penderecki for breach of the peace. Get him bound over. You’ve got witnesses coming out of your ears.’

  ‘No.’ Caffery was tired. Tired of what Ewan was costing. ‘Thanks. But I’ll let it go. It won’t be the last time.’

  ... 35

  The doors to the orangery stood open. Caffery taped the warrant and schedules to a window pane and stood back to allow DS Quinn and DC Logan, like a brace of thoughtful ghosts in their white Tyvek suits, to enter. Essex and he remained outside, shuffling through the gravel, examining a soggy pile of cigarette ends in the bed of moon daisies.

  On this—a day belonging not to early summer but to later in the season, where autumn begins—the wind was bright, the sun fluttered strobe-like in the overgrown trees, Japanese maples, a towering gingko, filling the garden with sparkling green and yellow light. Similar to the September day that Ewan had wandered off down the humming rail tracks. Bones on an anonymous bench in the forensic science lab. Pig’s bones. Penderecki still stirring the pot.

  ‘Sir?’

  DS Quinn was standing at the head of the black-and-white tiled hallway, gloved hand resting on a heavy oak door.

  ‘Locked,’ she said when he approached. ‘Can’t find the keys anywhere.’

  ‘Well? What do you think?’

  ‘I can’t say I’m looking forward to it.’ She put her head back and sniffed the air. ‘I mean, can you—?’

  ‘Yes.’ Caffery nodded. ‘Yes. I could smell it from the garden.’

  Essex found a chisel in the garage and, after Quinn had dusted a small downstairs window for prints, he carefully prised away the moulding, letting the pane swing out on its sash. The smell released made them all take an involuntary step backwards.

  Quinn quickly pulled a face mask out of her grab bag and smiled. ‘You stay here and put baggies over your shoes.’

  She and Logan took it slowly, stopping on the ledge to shine a torch up the curtains and below the window. ‘Strong smell in here, Jack,’ Logan confirmed.

  ‘You don’t say.’

  ‘Give me some of those stepping plates out of my grab bag.’ Caffery passed them a stack of yellow lightweight plastic blocks and Quinn and Logan disappeared behind the curtains, leaving Essex and Caffery with nothing better to do than pull bags over their shoes and stand there in the shade of the cedar of Lebanon, whistling to themselves and jangling change in their pockets.

  ‘So,’ Essex said after a long silence. ‘What do you think the smell is?’

  Caffery was surprised to notice a faint sheen on his face. Essex was nervous. In spite of his bravado, he was actually afraid of what they might find inside.

  ‘What do you think it is?’

  ‘Birds?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Peace Nbidi Jackson?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘God.’ Essex loosened his collar and rubbed his face. ‘You’re a better man than I am, Jack. I mean that.’

  Quinn reappeared at the window. A light had been switched on in the room behind her.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well what?’

  Caffery sighed. ‘Where’s the smell coming from?’

  ‘Oh, that. There’s some food left lying around. But—’ She looked over her shoulder.

  ‘But?’

  ‘But mostly it’s coming from the bathroom on the second floor. Put your hands in your pockets and I’ll show you.’

  They moved carefully through the ground floor, Quinn allowing them glimpses into rooms, but not entry. ‘Not for now. I want the camera crew to go through here first.’ She had switched on all the lights and taped off a path on the floor in fluorescent tape. They looked into the first room. Harteveld’s Bang & Olufsen sound system sat in one corner, an empty bottle of pastis and two milk-crusted glasses on top of the amplifier. The floors were deep in newspapers and fast-food boxes, chairs upended, a table covered in clothing. In a small utility room at the front of the house they disturbed a swarm of flies, which rose to reveal piles of dirty plates, topped by two chicken carcasses. Everywhere the curtains were closed.

  ‘OK, upstairs now.’ Quinn led them up the staircase. In the corridor Logan was waiting outside the bathroom, his expression neutral.

  ‘This is where the smell is coming from.’ Quinn smiled at them. ‘You can see why.’

  Logan opened the door.

  ‘Shit,’ Essex said simply.

  The bathroom was small and high-ceilinged, a brightly striped blind pulled tight across a large, oblong window. Across the marble-topped vanity unit someone had abandoned empty toothpaste tubes, yards of grey dental floss, used razors, two or three condom packets, a grimy bar of soap. All were covered in dust.

  ‘That’s the problem.’ Logan pointed to the toilet. ‘That’s the smell.’

  The seat was up. In the porcelain bowl swam a mess of faeces and toilet paper. At some point the toilet had flooded onto the floor and the stew of excreta and tissue had washed up against the tiled walls, the edge of the bath, the shower stall. Later the water had evaporated, leaving a stinking black sediment, pocked with pink tissue.

  ‘No Peace?’ Essex asked.

  ‘No human remains. A few pubic hairs, that’s all. And we’ll take samples of that.’ He indicated the brown swamp in the toilet bowl. ‘We’ve found some fingerprints too.’ He lowered the toilet seat to show where he had dusted it, and pointed out two thumbprints on the rear. He lifted the seat and showed four inverted fingerprints, small, like a woman’s, on the underside. ‘Look at how they’re spaced. What do you suppose she was doing?’

  Caffery held his own hands in the same formation. ‘Holding the seat? To vomit. Heroin maybe.’

  ‘I wouldn’t need heroin to puke at this mess.’

  ‘Before it was blocked. One assumes.’

  ‘What’s blocking it?’ Caffery peered tentatively into the
bowl.

  ‘OK.’ Quinn pulled up the mask and rolled the cuffs of her latex gloves up to seal her white paper suit. ‘Let’s have a look.’ She crouched on the floor and thrust her hand deep into the U-bend. Like a vet feeling for a breach birth, Caffery thought. Logan unravelled a plastic sheet onto the floor as Quinn’s arm disappeared. ‘Yup, there’s something here all right.’ Essex paled and rolled eyes at Caffery as Quinn squinted, laying her face against the rim to get a better grip. ‘Here we go.’

  The accumulated mess of hairs, condoms, toilet paper and faeces was dumped, dripping and stinking, on a plastic sheet in the centre of the bathroom floor. Essex covered his mouth and took a step back, shaking his head, his Adam’s apple dancing in his throat. Quinn sniffed and straightened up, poking at the mess with a finger. ‘These—’ She pulled out two tangled objects and dropped them into the bag Logan held open for her. ‘These’re the problem.’

  ‘A skirt. A pair of tights.’ Caffery was disappointed.

  ‘They’ll have to be dried out at the lab.’

  ‘It’s still just clothing.’

  ‘Not what you were expecting?’

  ‘Not really. No.’

  Essex, hand still over his mouth, watched Logan tag and label the bag. ‘Know something?’ he said later, patting him on the back. ‘You’ve got a gift for this exhibits thing. Tell you what, if I get exhibits officer next case I’ll trade you.’

  ... 36

  By the end of the day they had found Shellene’s prints on a tumbler, a bone-handled fork and a bottle of Malibu pulled from the back of the drinks cabinet in the living room. Two aubergine-coloured hairs were caught in the drain trap of the ground-floor cloakroom and Logan found syringes in a lacquer box, and small amounts of heroin and cocaine in two antique blue-glass and silver ink bottles. Everything was painstakingly sealed in evidence bags.

  ‘But I’m still worried,’ Fiona Quinn admitted at the evening’s meeting. ‘I was expecting organic evidence of the mutilations. I don’t think I’ve got it from today’s search.’

  Nor had she found suture material, the surgeon’s scalpel that Krishnamurthi believed had been used in the mutilations or the Wright’s Coal Tar soap.

  ‘He should have made more mess. There would have been leakage when he opened them: blood, putrid matter. We should have some trace evidence, at least in the drain traps. FSS have pulled plenty from his car, from the boot, and I think that’s our key—I think he took them somewhere else. Maybe to kill them, but possibly after he killed them. It’ll be where he’s keeping the cage birds.’

  ‘Schloss-Lawson & Walker,’ Caffery said. ‘Family solicitors. They’re drawing up a list of his other properties and I’m with Quinn: we find anything else, we search it.’

  ‘Yes,’ Quinn murmured. ‘And when we find it, I think we’ll find Jackson.’

  No-one spoke for a moment. Essex’s first task tomorrow was to call Clover Jackson—ask her to come in tomorrow and look at Polaroids of the articles recovered from Harteveld’s bathroom. See if the lime-green skirt was the same one her daughter had been wearing the night she disappeared.

  ‘OK,’ Maddox sighed. ‘Marilyn, actions to be generated in the morning re Harteveld’s other residences. I want Jackson before this weather gets working on her.’

  After the meeting Caffery, exhausted, took his tie off and called Rebecca.

  ‘I was on my way to the park,’ she said. ‘I want to paint the naval college.’

  ‘Can I meet you there?’

  ‘Oh, sure. Half an hour? Hey—are you OK?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘Oh.’ She was quiet for a moment. ‘You don’t sound OK.’

  ‘Well I am. I’m fine. Honestly.’

  When Essex heard this he started jumping. ‘You randy little fucker, you. You kept that quiet. Get her to put a word in with Joni for us, eh? Tell her how sensitive I am or some shit.’

  Caffery locked his tie in the desk drawer, splashed water on his face in the washroom, put the mobile in his pocket and drove to Greenwich. The late sun was turning the Royal Observatory’s ancient windows gold when he arrived at the park. With Harteveld dead he should feel relief. Instead he was uneasy, his nerves pared and ready as if his body was preparing itself for more hurdles. You’re just tired, Jack, he told himself. Get a night’s sleep, the world’ll look better tomorrow.

  She was sitting on the grass in front of Flamsteed’s onion dome, a block of watercolour paper on her raised knees, one paintbrush between her teeth as she mixed paint with another. Caffery stopped, enjoying the luxury of watching her unseen. The sun lit the curve of her cheek, he almost believed he could see each fine hair gold on her skin. In the short tartan skirt she seemed shockingly vulnerable. Like an encouragement on this spread of emerald grass.

  She put the brush down, wiped her hands on a small piece of rag, and, as if she had known he was there all along, looked up, squinting slightly, a slim brown hand shading her eyes from the low sun.

  ‘Hello.’ She had no make-up on, and he could see the beginnings of a laugh line on the right of her mouth. ‘Hello, Jack.’

  ‘You know my name.’

  ‘Yes.’ She looked down, hair dropping to hide her expression. ‘Look, I’ve got Burgundy.’ Opening a rucksack she held a bottle and a corkscrew out to him. ‘And this. A whole bag of fresh nectarines. I hope you weren’t looking forward to a McDonald’s.’

  ‘This means we’re having a drink together.’

  ‘So?’

  He shrugged, pulled his jacket off, sat on the grass and took the bottle from her. ‘I’m not the one who’s worried.’

  ‘Anyway, it was you who wanted to see me.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Why, then? What do you want?’

  The truth? I’d like to—

  He stopped himself. Began pulling the foil from the bottle. ‘We’ve got him. It was Toby Harteveld. We released it to the press an hour ago.’

  ‘Oh.’ Rebecca dropped the rucksack and looked at him. ‘Toby.’

  ‘Something else.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s dead. You’ll see it on the TV, I wanted you to know now. He jumped from London Bridge this morning at ten o’clock.’

  ‘I see.’ She let her breath out slowly and stared out at the ocean floor of London spread out below them: upstream, London Bridge put its shipwrecked elbows up out of the blue mist and downstream, shimmering near the smog-streaked horizon, the Millennium Dome, like a cleaned bone against the blue. Beyond that the aggregate yard … ‘It’s over, then.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  Rebecca was silent for a long time. Eventually, as if she had decided to shake it off, she took two glasses from the rucksack and placed them next to him on the grass. She looked at him and smiled. ‘We’ve got something in common. You and me.’

  ‘Good.’ Caffery lifted the arms of the corkscrew. ‘What?’

  ‘Fingernails.’ She looked at her hands. ‘Ever since this thing began I haven’t been able to touch anything without my nails crumbling. It’s as if that’s where the stress comes out.’ She paused. ‘What’s your excuse?’

  He smiled, holding up his bruised thumb. ‘This?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Oh—you really want to know?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well, let’s see. We had a tree house. That’s the first thing.’

  ‘A tree house?’

  ‘Almost all gone now. Maybe one day I’ll show you where it was.’

  ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘My brother, Ewan, pushed me. I was eight. The black should have grown out, but it hasn’t. Doctors are baffled. I’m a medical marvel.’

  ‘I hope you killed him for it.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your brother.’

  ‘No—I—’ He paused. ‘No. I forgave him. I suppose.’

  He fell silent and Rebecca frowned. ‘What’ve I said—’

  ‘Nothing, nothing.’ He uncorked the bottle and pou
red wine into her glass.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—I’m sort of tactless sometimes.’

  ‘Don’t!’ He held his hand up. ‘Really, don’t, Rebecca. Just—don’t—worry.’

  They stared at each other, Rebecca puzzled, Caffery stuck with a confident, lying smile stitched on his face. In his jacket pocket the mobile found the embarrassed gap in their conversation and rang loudly, making them both jump.

  ‘God.’ He put the bottle down, reached over, caught the sleeve between his middle and forefinger and dragged the jacket bumping across the grass. ‘Talk about timing. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be.’ She sank back on her haunches, half grateful to be off the hook. He answered the phone.

  ‘I’ve done it.’ She sounded very faint.

  ‘Veronica?’

  ‘I’ve done it.’

  Caffery glanced at Rebecca and turned away, cupping his hand around the mouthpiece. ‘Veronica, where are you?’

  ‘I’ve done it. I’ve finally done it.’

  ‘Don’t talk in riddles.’

  Silence.

  ‘Veronica?’

  ‘You bastard.’ She caught her breath as if she was crying. ‘You deserved it.’

  ‘Look—’

  But she had hung up.

  Caffery sighed, placed the phone between his feet and looked up at Rebecca. She was drawing lines in the grass with the butt of a brush, not looking at him.

  ‘Who was that?’ she asked eventually.

  ‘A woman.’

  ‘Oh. Veronica? Is that her name?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did she want?’

  ‘Attention.’

  ‘Well’—she dropped her chin into her hand and looked up at him—‘are you going to give it to her?’

  ‘No.’

  Rebecca nodded. ‘I see.’

  She doesn’t believe you, Jack.

  He fumbled for a cigarette, and suddenly, from behind the red roofs of the observatory, a flock of squabbling starlings rose into the air. Caffery paused and stared at them, inexplicably shocked.

  ‘Birds.’

  Rebecca tipped her head back to look and the late sunlight slipped across her face. ‘Ah.’ She smiled. ‘Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird! No hungry generations tread thee down.’ The starlings pivoted on the air, paused for a shivering moment, then plunged towards the ground, filling the air with wings. Rebecca drew her shoulders up. ‘Oh.’