by Jeff Gulvin
‘What’s happening?’
‘I’m suspended.’ He eased himself away from her.
‘Are you going home?’
He thought for a moment then he half-smiled. ‘After a fashion,’ he said.
‘Where’s Vanner?’ Morrison demanded.
McCague passed a hand across his eyes. Half of him wanted to say Where’s Vanner, SIR? but what was the point? Morrison sat opposite him with Scammell. They had returned from seeing Berry almost immediately, which had surprised him.
‘I thought you had finished with Vanner for the time being,’ he said slowly. ‘He was exhausted. I sent him home.’
Morrison flicked his tongue over his lips. He looked at Scammell and then shuffled forward in his seat. ‘Sir, this is a CIB investigation. Nobody is supposed to leave the building until we say it is okay. Already we’ve had to go out to visit one of the restraining officers and now the suspect is missing.’
‘He is not missing.’ McCague thumped the table and Morrison sat back with a jerk. ‘I sent him home, that’s all. He isn’t going anywhere. For God’s sake, Morrison, he’s admitted it, hasn’t he? Nicholls bears him out and so, I assume, does Berry. Cut and dried. What more do you want?’
‘With respect. Sir,’ Morrison shoved the words through his teeth. ‘None of that is relevant. This is a serious investigation. We have rules. Rules have to be adhered to. There is the public to consider, especially given the nature of Vanner’s current investigation.’
‘Watchman,’ McCague said. He could already imagine the questions.
Morrison nodded. ‘Delicate don’t you think? That investigation nearly four years old and now this. My God, Sir, the press will have enough of a field day without CIB procedures having lip service paid to them.’
McCague closed his eyes. There was no stopping the man. He was like a pit bull with someone’s leg in his mouth.
Morrison stood up. ‘I will want to speak to Vanner again, Sir. Please ensure that I have access to him. That goes for Berry and Nicholls too.’
Morrison and Scammell walked to the door. ‘Morrison.’ McCague called him back. ‘Vanner,’ he said. ‘Finished isn’t he?’
Morrison transferred his briefcase from his left hand to his right. ‘It’s not my job to speculate, Sir.’
‘But this will go before the CPS.’
Morrison nodded. ‘You can’t expect anything else. The accusation has been levelled. Apart from a detail or two, Vanner admitted as much. Both Nicholls and Berry corroborated.’ He forced down his smile. ‘As you said yourself—cut and dried. If you want an opinion, Sir, you’ll be better off without him. The man’s a liability. This sort of thing was bound to happen sooner or later.’
When they had gone, McCague leaned against the door with his eyes shut. Vanner, he thought. Bloody stupid fool. A little shit like Daniels. After a few minutes composing himself, he left the office and walked downstairs. He found Nicholls talking with Sarah Kennett in the Incident Room and he called him to one side. Nicholls followed him into Vanner’s office and closed the door. McCague offered him a cigarette.
‘Morrison’s after your Guvnor,’ he said.
‘I think he’s already got him, Sir.’
McCague nodded. ‘For now, maybe. He just can’t wait to get his recommendation back to his Chief Super.’
‘It’ll go to court.’
‘Yes. And they’ll convict him. Vanner’ll go down. They’ll make sure that he does.’
Nicholls wrinkled his brow. ‘Have you got an idea?’
‘Yes,’ McCague said. ‘Get onto Mullen, Daniel’s brief. Tell him I want a word with him.’
Vanner stood on the headland, watching the weight of the North Sea as it sagged against the coast. The tide was on the turn but the wind was light and the surface barely stirred with its passing. Boats dotted the water; fishing craft, mostly two-man vessels of the inshore Norfolk fishermen. The flat, white of the sky settled against the distant horizon and, before it, Vanner could make out a gas platform being towed out to the fields by a tug.
Below him on the beach, a woman in a brown duffle-coat and off-white mittens exercised her dogs between the mud-coloured groins that broke up the path of the sea. The cliff edge, sandstone and flaky, crumbled and fell away all along the coastline here, and not even the half-finished concrete defences would stop the chewing of land.
The little wooden cottage—chalet really—stood on its own, and he was grateful for that. It had been in the family for years; his father’s uncle had built it back at the dawning of the century, and apart from the usual repairs it stood much as it had done. Unlike other beach dwellings, it was separated from its neighbours by twin fields of sugar beet, which stretched a hundred yards in either direction. From where he stood the house was squat, nestling now perilously close to the cliff edge; and beyond it, the wizened Norfolk trees straggled almost at right angles.
This place was as much home to him as any place he had lived, though he had never actually lived here. It was a holiday place, where his father had brought him and the two of them had disappeared to fish and swim and talk. The house had always been here, on the unfashionable eastern coast, away from the tradition and clutter of the northern run.
The lighthouse had been the landmark, always the lighthouse. In his boyhood, when his father collected him from school for the holidays, they came here. Driving through the night, where he slept fitfully with the scent of oiled leather in his nostrils and the drone of the old Wolseley engine in his ears. Always he would wake with the trickling of dawn and he would scour the flat, deserted landscape for the red and white hoops of the lighthouse.
At night, lying in his soft cabin-style bed with his father listening to music through the wall, the beam of the great light would wash his wall in yellow, and the crashing of the sea would send him deep beneath his blankets. Memories. Precious. They had served him well. They would serve him still, though the days were bleak and the nights around him seemed darker now than ever. Those memories evoked emotion, tinged with a sweetness that even now he could smell. Every now and then the scent would filter into his soul and fitfully remind him of life.
He had been here two days now with nobody anywhere near him. A walker on the beach maybe, the dullest drone of traffic from the coast road when the wind stilled. No telephone. No letter box. Nothing. But he heard a car now, not on the road but in the lane that led up to the cottage. The afternoon was waning and his thoughts had turned from the sea to the pile of wood by the fire and the bottle of Irish on the mantel. But the car came on and his mood soured till his lips pressed into themselves and he stalked back up the headland.
When he got to the house he saw a blue Volkswagen parked in his driveway and Sarah Kennett was knocking on his door. He stood for a moment just watching her. Her jet black hair bobbed about her ears, and her face was caught by the waning light in profile.
‘Sarah,’ he said. She jumped and whirled round. Then she flattened a palm against her chest and leaned on the door.
‘Don’t do that.’
‘Sorry.’ He walked up the garden, seeking the house keys in his pocket. ‘I didn’t mean to frighten you.’
She looked past him to the sea and the dimming, cloud-broken sky. She shivered. ‘My God, Aden. You don’t half like it bleak.’ He smiled to himself. ‘What’re you doing here?’
‘McCague sent me. He wants to know why you’ve gone AWOL.’
Vanner eased back from the lighted fire and breathed in the first throat burrs of woodsmoke. Sarah stood hugging herself at the huge, casement window that faced straight out to sea. What sunset there was, streaks of burning gold that coursed the clouds from the west, died in shallow fires on the water. ‘My God, but it’s beautiful.’
Vanner came alongside her. ‘Just now you said it was bleak.’
‘Just now you scared the shit out of me.’
He grinned. ‘You ought to see it in the summer when the cloud’s gone. The sky is so vast here, no two evenings are the same.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘No you can’t.’
She turned to face him.
‘You have to see it.’
‘Maybe one day I will.’
He looked at her then. ‘Drink?’ he said, as he moved back to the fire. She followed him and sat down in the winged armchair that rested against the hearth. ‘Is Irish all you have?’
He nodded.
‘Irish it is then.’
He poured two glasses and handed her one. She sipped and gagged then sipped again. ‘McCague’s really pissed off because you left London.’
‘He knows I won’t leave the country.’
‘You should’ve told him.’
Vanner shrugged. ‘What’s the story anyway? No doubt Morrison is having a field day.’
‘Haven’t seen him. He spoke to Berry and Joe Nicholls. What is it with him? Joe says you knew him before.’
‘I did.’ Vanner swallowed whiskey. ‘Worked with him in Scotland. He was in charge at Lothian for my first year. He hated me. Didn’t trust me an inch.’
‘Why?’
‘Who knows? The past, I suppose.’
Sarah frowned. ‘Your past?’
‘I was a soldier, Sarah. A good one. Maybe it bugged him.’
‘He was up there when the Watchman started wasn’t he?’
Vanner nodded. ‘Yes, he was.’
‘Why did you hit that suspect?’
Her quiet little question drifted in the smoke of the fire. Vanner stared at it, drew it towards him and let it go again. With it came a darkness, clotted with other questions. He looked deep into the leaping of the flames. He could feel her eyes on him and for the first time since she arrived he felt discomfort. His solitude was all to him. Now, her proximity, her scent, her womanhood disturbed him. He forced himself to look at her. She relaxed in the chair, head against the wing, half to one side. He looked once more to the fire.
‘Why did you come here?’ he said softly. ‘I mean why you instead of Joe or one of the others.’
‘Because I volunteered.’
Her sureness prickled his senses. Arousal; the lifting of hairs on his neck; solitude suddenly challenged. He wanted to look at her now but he could not. He felt her gaze; trawling his face, his chest, his arms.
‘Why did you hit him?’ She asked it again.
Vanner stood up and walked to the window. His reflection accused him. He hauled the curtain across and turned back to her. ‘I don’t know.’
Her gaze followed him as he moved about the room. Eventually he settled back in his chair and watched her out of half-shut eyes. She smiled at him. ‘I don’t blame you,’ she said. ‘Everyone has their breaking point.’ She poured more whiskey into her glass. ‘Sometimes you just have to react. Sometimes there’s nowhere else to go—nothing else to do.’ She moved nearer to him, edging herself across the chair. Vanner stared into the fire.
‘Aden.’ Her voice liquid now like honey. Reaching across the short space of the flames she let her hand fall gently onto his arm. Vanner looked up at her, eyes steel again.
‘I can offer you nothing, Sarah.’
She smiled and the soft fullness of her cheeks dimpled. ‘I want nothing.’
‘Love,’ he said. ‘I can’t offer love.’
‘I know.’
‘I have no love.’
‘I know that too.’ She slipped off the chair, kicking her feet from her shoes. She knelt on the floor and looked up at him. Vanner sat where he was, the breath rippling his chest. He wanted to touch her hair. Bits of him broke away. Desire to catch up her hair and drown in it, breathe it in so deeply it would intoxicate. Cupping the back of his head, she closed her lips over his.
Three
THE KILLER STRETCHED SURGICAL rubber gloves over stiff fingers. Outside, the heat of the afternoon was smothered under the massing of summer rainclouds. The killer moved back from the window. On the desk an office-style typewriter lay with its keys sheathed in an opaque plastic cover. Newspaper clippings hung from where they were glued on a board against the wall beside it. Faces. Headlines. On the other side of the typewriter, a scrapbook with thick, pastable pages bulged with more clippings and slim facsimile copies. On the floor beside the desk lay a five-hundred-sheet ream of paper.
Slowly the killer eased the chair back and sat down before the desk. Box files bulged from metal shelves built alongside. Magazines and books stacked efficiently together; and on the top shelf, a green cardboard shoe box and a polaroid instant camera. On a separate shelf a clip frame was propped, housing a faded photograph of a soldier with a rifle under his arm and a maroon-coloured beret on his head.
The killer lifted a single sheet of paper from the ream on the floor and laid it on the desk. The plastic casing that hid the typewriter keys rustled slightly under the touch of the rubber gloves. Carefully the paper was placed beneath the roller and the killer began to type.
The street hissed with rain. A red post office van lumbered through puddles close to the kerbside, in the wake of a double decker bus. The killer held the envelope to the jaws of the letter box, letting it fall as the moisture threatened to spoil its newness. The van bumped up onto the kerb and a man in a blue and red anorak jumped out, a brown cloth sack in his hands. The killer stepped back from the box.
‘Is this the last collection?’
‘Certainly is.’ The postman spoke without looking up. ‘If it went first class it’ll be there in the morning. At least that’s what we promise you.’ He giggled and looked up at his questioner, but the street beside him was empty.
Alex Jennings watched satellite television, slumped in the chair that his mother normally occupied, one leg dangling over the arm. He crunched crisps and drank beer from a heavily condensated can. Beside him a cigarette glowed red in the ashtray. Save that and the flickering blued images that scuttled the breadth of the screen, the room was banked in darkness. His mates had gone home. He was sinking one final beer, which set his eyelids sloppy and brought forth giggles every time Stallone shot someone in front of him.
The car stopped two streets away and reversed into a large space between a red Mini and a white van. Almost before the wheels had stopped moving the engine died and the swollen heat of the night lifted into silence. The killer sat very quietly, hands, whitened by rubber, resting on the wheel. On the passenger seat lay a small canvas bag. Outside, the street shrank into shadows that were only broken by the still pools of lamplight. The killer watched the road, eyes darting this way and that out of slanted holes in a silk balaclava helmet. Black: everything was black; everything save the hands; pale hands, illuminated almost, like the second skin of a snake. After exactly five minutes of silence the killer opened the door.
Jennings flicked channels as the movie credits began to roll. American footballers fought it out on one channel, and two Frenchmen raced along a Parisian street on another. A German gameshow and then basketball with German commentators.
‘Kraut gits.’ Jennings belched and crushed the crisp packet in his fist. Then he reached down to suck on his cigarette.
The killer walked in shadow, head moving constantly from left to right, watching every doorway, watching every window. Short precise footsteps, making no sound on a pavement softened still from the heat and the rain of the day. There was no moon, no stars; the clouds sweating over the city. Black head, black body; only pale hands and a small canvas bag. At the corner of Milton Crescent the killer stopped.
Jennings got up from his chair, staggered slightly then giggled as he flapped a hand at his mother’s photograph which stood on one end of the mantelpiece. He scratched at his groin and then opened the door into the hallway. Halfway along the corridor he belched and farted simultaneously and started giggling hysterically.
The killer stood on the path just inside the gate, back to the door, darkness against darkness. No movement in the air. No sound. From across the street no sound from the houses; no flicker of light. The killer backed to the door, watching, listening. The faint ru
sh of an engine in the distance. Silence once more. The killer crouched and then opened the neck of the bag.
Jennings zipped up his fly and lumbered back into the kitchen. He flicked off the light and at the same time he fumbled for the switch in the hall. Somebody rapped lightly on the front door. He started, then frowned and decided it must be one of his mates come back again. Finding the light switch he sauntered down the hall and opened the door.
‘What’s the matter. Can’t …’ He stared into the barrel of a black automatic pistol. Then he was marching backwards into the hall with his hands half-raised and the door was shut very quietly.
Jennings opened his mouth but a jerk of the gun stilled him. The killer stared at him from the eyeholes of the balaclava. Saliva gathered and dried on Jennings’ lip. All at once he was cold. Urine burned in the bladder he had only just emptied.
The killer motioned with the gun and Jennings backed into the front room. ‘What do you want?’
The killer pushed the gun into his face and Jennings gave a little yelp. Tight, cold fingers gripped his shoulder. The tip of the gun was brushed across his nose and he stared into eyes that shone dull and dark like ice.
The killer looked past him into the room where the next film had now begun on the television. The fingers bit into Jennings’ flesh for a second time, and he was manhandled around so now he faced away. He felt the prod of the gun barrel against the knots of his spine and he walked forward. He was almost at the fireplace. The fingers pressed down on his shoulder. Down and down, the gun probing his back, Jennings had no option but to drop to his knees. He could not speak. He began to shake uncontrollably. His tongue thickened in his mouth and a chill moved over his skin like the fine tread of a spider. On his knees, he could feel the killer above him, breathing, lightly; the steady rise and fall.
Jennings could hear the television. He faced the tiled hearth of the fireplace, but from the corner of his eye he saw the Terminator climb onto a motorcycle.
‘What’re you going to do?’ He pushed out the words. Then he felt a foot lift one of his shins and kick it over so that now he was kneeling with his ankles crossed.
