‘Freddie!’ Jamie’s voice, somewhere below. She looked up. The wind was blowing the smoke back into the building. Wisps swirled down the staircase.
‘Out my way!’ Someone pushed her. A blur of denim. Freddie’s head smacked into the concrete wall.
‘Remain calm! Please walk in an orderly fashion.’ Jamie again. She looked down as a man in a blue hoodie took a swing at him.
‘It’s terrorists!’ a woman shrieked, her red lips a startled O, barrelling toward her.
Freddie dodged her.
Clutching her head, she drove her feet down onto the concrete steps, her hamstrings and calves screaming as they pumped. Keep running. Alarms sounded. More sirens. Police. Was that an ambulance? As she rounded another corner, the yelling strangers grew further away. Her heart was punching against her chest: the fourth floor.
Open to the elements, the walkway to all the flats on the fourth floor was cold, clear and empty. Lazy wisps of smoke were drifting out of what she guessed was Mark Hamlin’s gaping front door. Freddie slowed. A door cracked open to her left, making her jump. A pair of eyes peered out. The other doors were closed, with metal gates bolted over them. She juddered to a halt as Moast and Tibbsy stepped out of Hamlin’s flat. A bedraggled man, his hair and beard overgrown, was strung between them, like Jesus. It was him.
‘Mark Hamlin, I’m arresting you on suspicion of…’ Moast said. Tibbsy looked up as if to say ‘what the hell are you doing here?’
Hamlin, his head hanging down from his shoulders, emitted a low moan. Where was Nas? Hamlin looked like he hadn’t eaten in some time.
Tibbsy signalled with his head for Freddie to flatten herself against the wall as they passed. The smell coming from Hamlin was rancid.
Moast turned toward her, ‘We’ll speak about this later. Cudmore, make sure she gets downstairs.’
‘Yes, sir!’ Nas stepped out from the smoke.
Freddie clutched her chest and exhaled. She hadn’t realised she’d been holding her breath.
‘What the hell are you doing, Freddie?’ Nas stood with her feet hip-width apart, and Freddie saw it wasn’t a gun in her belt but a can of CS spray.
‘You’re not armed? You went in without a gun?’ She couldn’t believe this.
‘I’m a trained professional, Freddie, I know what I’m doing. You shouldn’t be up here.’
Relief unexpectedly undulated over Freddie. ‘I just…I just wanted to see what was happening. Other people, residents, they were taking photos. They were running out of the building.’ Now she was here she felt foolish. What had she been planning to do? She could hardly help detain the suspect. She hadn’t documented anything. She’d just got in the way. ‘I…I don’t know what I thought.’
Nas coughed, as one of the firearms team stepped out of Hamlin’s flat, his face squashed like a raisin between his helmet and chinstrap. He gave Freddie a funny look. ‘Forensics’ll be up in a few minutes, ma’am, want me to secure the area?’
Nasreen smiled, a huge disarming slice of white teeth against the smoke wisps billowing around them. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll do it.’
The raisin-faced guy looked faintly startled, nodded and headed past Freddie. Freddie stared at Nas.
‘Well, now you’re here let’s take a look.’ Nas pulled a pair of latex gloves from her pocket and threw them at her.
Freddie pulled the gloves on. This was her third crime scene. There wouldn’t be another body would there? She followed Nas into the flat. Orange curtains glowed, pulled across windows, casting everything in an eerie tangerine light. Like peering through a Quality Street wrapper. Her eyes took a second to adjust. The stench of piss and shit made her gag. She put her hand over her nose. Freddie’s skin crawled. Piles of newspapers and boxes filled the room. Had he done it here? Killed someone? Killed Sophie? No, that made no sense. Something moved and caught the corner of her eye. She jumped.
‘Cats,’ said Nas. ‘I’ve counted four so far.’
‘That accounts for the smell then.’ She hoped. And possibly why Hamlin had ended up on the cat chat room talking to Sophie?
She followed Nas into the kitchen. Festering piles of plates and food containers were stacked like towers. A tabby was eating something from one of the bowls. Freddie didn’t look too closely. This man was clearly very unwell. She tried to breathe through her jumper sleeve. ‘There aren’t any…bodies, are there?’
‘No,’ said Nas. ‘Come look at this though.’ She led her into a bedroom.
A bed, strangely neat compared to the rest of the flat, was bathed in a dusty plume of light pouring through the gap in yet more orange curtains. ‘Shit,’ said Freddie. Piles of coins, hundreds of them, sorted into denomination, covered the white veneer bedside table and marched in from the walls, covering the floor.
‘Remind you of anything?’ asked Nas.
‘There was a stack on Sophie’s dresser.’
‘Yup. Fifty pence pieces, and two towers of pound coins. Piled up just like these.’
Had Hamlin left them in Sophie’s bedroom? Had he found them and sorted them while he was there?
‘Why would he pile them up like this? They’re like religious columns. Totems. It’s fanatical.’ Freddie surveyed the room – were these an indicator of a mentally unsound mind? She took some photos of the piles of coins with her phone.
‘The coins are only circumstantial,’ said Nas. ‘But there’s that too.’ She pointed at the bed.
And then Freddie saw it: the Mac Air, just the corner, shiny, clean, poking out from under the bed. Internet access. Despite the cloying musty closeness of the room, Freddie shivered.
‘It could be him then? Despite all this,’ she signalled at the decaying flat. ‘He has a device. He could be Apollyon?’
‘Everyone has computers. It doesn’t mean anything. The IT boys will have to check it. So far I haven’t seen a phone, but hopefully the SOCOs will turn one up. Look, we haven’t got long. Forensics’ll be up any second and the DCI will go nuts if he knew I’d let you in.’
For a second Freddie felt like they were together again. Like at junior school. Her and Nas versus Moast. Her and Nas versus the world. The overwhelming feeling of gratitude nearly made her cry. She had to hold it together. She followed the line of Nas’s hand as she pointed at the wall. That was odd. The plug sockets had been removed and covered with silver foil. ‘Why would you do that?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Nas. ‘It’s the same in each room, look.’
She followed Nas back into the kitchen. The sockets looked like they’d been chipped out. Crumbled plaster lay around them. More silver foil covered the hole. Through the lounge, the hallway, all the sockets were the same: removed and covered over. Freddie bent down, using the light from her phone to look at one. She took a couple of photos. She was just peering closer when they heard a high-pitched scream. Freddie stood bolt upright. It was coming from outside. Nas started toward the front door. She raced after her.
Chapter 26
VBD – Very Bad Date
14:17
Wednesday 4 November
2 FOLLOWING 123,402 FOLLOWING
Nas powered down the steps, Freddie tried to keep up. Turning round the corners, peering down the staircase she caught flashes of Moast and Tibbsy and Hamlin. What was going on? Was there another victim? No, the sound was coming from Hamlin. Moast had him by the arms. He was kicking his legs, flailing up and away from him. Moast was trying to balance them. They were dangerously close to the edge of the stairs.
Nas was below her. Closer to them. She heard her shout, ‘What happened, Jamie?’
Freddie saw flashes of the top of Jamie’s sandy head as she turned down the stairs, trying to catch up. ‘I…I…don’t know!’ he said.
Nas was past him. ‘We need backup now, all units, the north stairwell in Tower B.’ Nas’s radio crackled as she called it in.
‘Try to calm down, Mark!’ Moast shouted.
Hamlin was still screaming. The sound cut through her; it was
pure terror. Freddie stopped running and hung over the rail, watching the scene below. Jamie was one floor below her. Moast had Hamlin in a corner, the floor below that. A monster of arms and legs and flailing cloth. It was hard to see who was who.
‘I can’t hold him!’ Moast shouted as Hamlin broke free and bolted toward the balcony.
Tibbsy made a grab for him and was thrown off. Hamlin careened into the railings. ‘Jesus, he’s going to fall.’ Tibbsy sounded panicked.
‘Mr Hamlin, if you do not calm down I will be forced to taser you.’ Moast’s voice could just be heard over Hamlin’s screaming. Tibbsy scrambled and got Hamlin round the waist. Hamlin’s head ricocheted back into Tibbsy’s face, sending him stumbling backwards. Freddie winced. Hamlin bolted for the railings. ‘Clear!’ shouted Moast.
The wire hummed and shot out. The prongs stuck into Hamlin and he fell rigid to the ground. His body convulsed. Freddie clamped her hand over her mouth and turned away.
‘Sir! He’s foaming at the mouth.’ Nas’s voice had an unaccustomed note of alarm. ‘Switch it off!’
Twisting back, Freddie saw Nas on the floor next to Hamlin’s body, checking his pulse.
‘Shit,’ she heard Jamie say.
‘We need paramedics on north stairwell of Shadwell estate Tower B.’ Nas spoke into her radio as she moved Hamlin into the recovery position. ‘Repeat: suspect unconscious, we need medical support north stairwell Tower B, Shadwell estate.’
‘Did he bang his head?’ Moast asked. ‘What happened?’
‘Ambulance on standby. Paramedics on the way up, ma’am,’ Nas’s radio crackled in response.
Freddie turned away, took a step back. She closed her eyes and pressed her forehead against the cold concrete wall, listening to the pitter-patter of the paramedics’ shoes on the concrete steps below getting closer.
The ambulance was long gone by the time the team took their vests off and loaded them into the van. Freddie watched as a number of uniformed officers took witness statements from neighbours, and yet more officers loaded up evidence, including Hamlin’s laptop. The forensics had set up a cordon, and the public clumped around it wondering when they’d be allowed back into their home for dinner. The public. Freddie was no longer one of them. She looked at Nas and Moast and Tibbsy, calmly talking in a huddle. But not one of them either. Who was she? She knew it must be cold: it was growing dark, and people were bundled up in scarves and hats and blankets, but she couldn’t feel it. She leant against Jamie’s car trying to make sense of everything. She’d seen a man tasered. She’d felt sorry for him. But he might be the Hashtag Murderer. She thought of the coins stacked up in Sophie’s bedroom and the link they’d established between the two victims. He could be the Hashtag Murderer. If Mark Hamlin was @Apollyon, then she’d felt sorry for @Apollyon. He was clearly mentally unwell. It looked like no one – family, the state – cared for him. He lived in filth and squalor. And the terror, the fear in his eyes. The sounds of his screams. But what had he possibly done to Mardling and Sophie? What about their screams? That couldn’t be excused. Explained, yes: he was not well. But not forgiven. How do you deal with a man like Mark Hamlin? How do you find justice in a situation like this?
Nas and Moast walked toward her. She stood up and off the car. Like she was at school and had been caught slouching. They were the teachers: grown-up, responsible, weary. ‘Will he be okay?’
‘Probably. Doctor said it was a seizure. Probably caught his head on the way down.’ Nas had her hands in the pockets of her long black coat. ‘There’s an officer with him now. He was only out for a few minutes. They’ve given him a sedative. He’s on the observation ward. We’ll be able to question him in the morning.’
Moast was unstrapping his stab vest and pulling a fleece on.
Freddie thought of Hamlin curled up in the stairwell. ‘He seemed so…pathetic.’
‘Can’t count on anything, Venton.’ Moast pulled his puffa jacket over his top and rested his stab vest on the car. ‘He could be a psychopath acting up. Different persona. They can do that.’
‘Or schizophrenic,’ said Nas. ‘If he’s had a breakdown, it might have triggered an episode. He could be suffering from delusions.’
‘We don’t know what we’re dealing with yet.’ Moast picked up his vest and went back to the van.
Freddie watched him go. ‘Do you think he feels any remorse?’
‘We don’t know for sure if he did it yet,’ said Nas, undoing her ponytail and retightening it.
‘I meant Moast,’ Freddie said.
‘He just did his job. The suspect was in danger of hurting himself. This is what it’s like. You have to make decisions in the heat of the moment.’ Nas cupped her hands and blew warm air onto them.
‘Would you have done it? Tasered him?’ Moast’s bravado reminded Freddie of American cop shows, but then she’d pushed people aside to get up there. Who was to say what was right and what was wrong from all this? How I Lost Myself In A Tower Block in East London.
‘DCI Moast took the best decision he could based on his assessment of the situation.’ Nas sounded like she’d been briefed.
Freddie looked at her. ‘You don’t reckon he harbours secret fantasies about being Bruce Willis in Die Hard then? I saw that tight white T-shirt he was wearing on the night of Mardling’s murder.’
Half a smile trickled across Nasreen’s lips.
She could still make her laugh. ‘Today’s been nuts. I’m not sure I believe it all myself, and I was here to watch it.’ The feelings she’d had for Nas, their friendship, that bond, she was too raw to hide it now. It had flooded through her. Their den in the meadow behind Nas’s house. Scary stories and stupid torch faces at Brownie camp. Lounging on the old blue sofa cushions in the garden. Covering everything with glue and glitter at Christmas. Nas giving her her ice cream when Freddie dropped hers. Their first taste of alcohol – gin and lemonade pilfered from her parents’ drinks cabinet. Friendship bracelets. The first swell of their teenage years, of who they would grow up to be. She still wanted Nas in her life. She wanted to be her friend. They shared something. Something that wasn’t easily found. She didn’t want this moment to end. She floundered for something to say. ‘So you still living out in Pendrick? I heard Jamie ask about your commute in.’
‘Yeah, helps keep it separate. Plus I like being close to mum and dad.’ Nasreen buttoned her coat up.
Freddie nodded. She’d often thought about Nas’s mum, Afnan: small, petite, a temper as fiery as her cooking. Nas had her eyes and hair. And soppy Don Cudmore, who worshipped the ground on which his daughters walked. ‘Got a flat?’
‘No, a Victorian terrace. Just off the high street. It’s still got the original fireplace.’ Nas’s face softened as she spoke of her home, morphing briefly into the girl Freddie used to know.
‘Nice,’ Freddie nodded. She felt no jealousy. Nasreen deserved somewhere nice to go back to after all this every day. She watched Moast who had stopped by a young mother and a small dark-haired girl, who looked bewildered, clinging to the edge of her mum’s cardigan. Barely up to her mother’s knee. What had that little girl seen, living somewhere like this? She watched as Moast bent down and produced a coin from the little girl’s ear and held it out to her. A huge smile cracked across the girl’s face as she turned her new-found treasure over in her fingers.
Nasreen followed her eyeline. ‘He’s not as bad as you think,’ she said.
Freddie didn’t know what she thought anymore. Who was good and who was bad? Whose side was she supposed to be on. ‘What happens now?’
‘Debrief. Back at the station. We won’t be able to question Hamlin till tomorrow. They may opt to keep him in hospital.’ Nasreen opened the back door for Freddie. Unlike a few days ago, when the world was very different and she was angry about things that didn’t seem to matter anymore, Freddie got gratefully into the back of the car.
Chapter 27
BTDT – Been There Done That
07:30
Thursday 5 November
2 FOLLOWING 123,908 FOLLOWERS
Nasreen had always disliked hospitals, and now the sickly smell of bleach reminded her of the morgue. Never a good association. The long, spongy grey and blue corridors of the hospital could be a police station, were it not for the nurses and doctors in their scrubs coming and going. Blank-faced visitors clogged up the place, unsure of what to do. Who to pray to. The DCI and Tibbsy had come straight in when Hamlin had come round. She knew the drill, he’d be kept in for observation for 24 hours following head trauma. Even if it was slight. She glanced at the signs screwed to the wall, turned down another corridor. The hospital, a huge glass monolith from outside, like Duplo blocks constructed by a child, inside was like a maze. She hoped Hamlin wouldn’t be a bolter. Nightmare running anyone down in here.
She rounded another corner and the high-vis jacket of the officer standing guard outside Hamlin’s room informed her she’d finally arrived. Six foot two, Caucasian, neat, clipped brown hair, mouth that turned down. She’d encountered him a few times. He was from the Whitechapel force. It was PC Slade, she thought. Must have been brought in. The manpower was increasing on this one. The whole force itching to get the perp locked up.
‘Morning, ma’am, the guv’s through there.’ Slade pointed at a door across from him.
‘With the suspect?’ she asked.
‘No, he’s in here.’ He signalled with his thumb behind him. ‘Nurses gave them that room. Family liaison usually, I think. Bit of privacy, eh?’ Slade’s lips bounced up and down as he spoke. A face like rubber.
Nas knocked on the door, before opening and going in. The DCI and Tibbsy were sat on low, square, foam chairs, both leaning forward resting their forearms on their knees, gathered round a low table. ‘Morning, sir.’
‘We made the papers again.’ DCI Moast flicked a copy of The Mirror over on top of the table. A grainy photo, presumably taken by a witness, showed one of special ops, gun up, edging toward Hamlin’s flat. Nasreen could just make out another newspaper under that, the words Hashtag Murderer visible above a photo of smoke pouring from the Shadwell estate tower.
Follow Me: A chilling, thrilling, addictive crime novel Page 21
