The Faceless

by Simon Bestwick

  RENWICK SHUT THE door of her third-floor flat behind her just after ten pm, weary to her bones, and dropped her suitcase in the lounge.

  She wanted a shower, but not because of dirt or sweat. Baldwin. She felt greasy at the thought of him. But too tired. An excuse not to ring Dad, anyway. Tonight at least. Tomorrow is another day. She made her way to the bedroom, shucking off suit jacket, blouse, unfastening her belt.

  Nick had left the wardrobe doors open, showing all the gaps where his clothes had been.

  Renwick kicked away shoes, trousers. Peeling her socks off felt like too much effort, so she kept them on as she pitched onto the bed. She groped for the alarm clock, held it to her bleary face and set the time. “Think I’ll become a nun,” she muttered, and slept.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Friday 20th December.

  THE MEETING ROOM at Mafeking Road. Scraggy ropes of tinsel hung glittering from the ceiling. Merry bloody Christmas. Renwick, Stakowski and McAdams – a fortyish Detective Sergeant with thinning ginger hair – facing a dozen journos: the Kempforth Chronicle, local rags from neighbouring towns, even – the big time – the Manchester Evening News and North-West Tonight. Cameras flashed. Renwick breathed deep; she’d only had ten minutes to talk to McAdams about the other missing person.

  “Tahira Khalid, aged seventeen, from the All Saints district of Kempforth.” A photograph; a soft-faced girl with wire-rimmed glasses, shyly smiling. “Last seen Monday afternoon, Kempforth High Street. A scream was heard around the time she was last seen. A handbag identified as Tahira’s was found near the War Memorial.”

  “Are the two cases being treated as connected, Chief Inspector?”

  “Could this be an honour killing?”

  “Is a paedophile ring operating in Kempforth?”

  “There’s no hard evidence either way at this point; we’ve two separate investigations that will share information. There’s no indication of that. There’s no evidence to support that view either.”

  “Then with respect, Chief Inspector, what information do you have?”

  “We have leads we are investigating. When we’ve got information to share with you, we will share it. Any further questions? Thank you.”

  THE SQUAD ROOM, and Renwick viewed the rest of her team: four Detective Constables, all the flu outbreak and the usual pre-Christmas crime rise had left available.

  “So... Tahira Khalid. What do we know?”

  McAdams coughed. “She were working part-time as a shop assistant, doing a Theatre Studies A-level at Kempforth College before it burnt down.” A moment’s silence. Nearly all of them had seen the charred remains, mostly unidentifiable, carried from the college’s ruins. At least it’d happened at night; by day it’d have been ten times worse. “Went to Primrose Hill Secondary School after work most days, where they’ve been holding some of the college classes. Work colleagues were fairly non-committal about her.”

  “Non-committal?”

  “Nowt to say against her, but nowt particularly for her either. Fades into the background sort of thing. Nice enough lass, good worker, but distant, away with the fairies.”

  “Any boyfriends?” asked Tranter, the youngest – early twenties – of the detectives, in a smart suit a size too big. Pale grey eyes, dark frizzy hair; a receding chin and a prominent nose.

  “Gonna ask her out if we find her?” smirked Janson. Renwick winced – Janson’s volume always seemed to be set two notches too high. One of Renwick’s few female colleagues in Kempforth CID, God help her.

  “Sue,” said Renwick.

  “Sorry mum.” Janson blinked. Her eyes were small and too close-set; what little bone structure her face had was lost in pale, doughy flab.

  “Go on, Colin.” Tranter was painfully earnest – downright humourless at times – but capable.

  He flushed. “I was thinking exes, maybe. Rejected suitors.”

  “That occurred to me,” McAdams said. “So I asked DC Crosbie to speak to the family.”

  “Shot down,” Janson cat-called. Tranter went redder.

  “This isn’t the playground, Janson,” McAdams said.

  “Sarge.”

  “Alastair?”

  About Renwick’s age, but dressed ten or twenty years older, Crosbie wore grimy spectacles and an old suit jacket with dandruff on the shoulders. “She was seeing a laddie called Usman Khan, but he dumped her a fortnight after starting Uni. Nae-one since.”

  “What about the family itself?”

  “Parents, grandmother, four brothers, two sisters – all crammed into one semi-detached house, Christ knows how. Plus an older sister, married and moved out.”

  “Any problems at home, that we know of?”

  “None we could discover,” Crosbie said. “Spoke to DS Ashraf over at the Dunwich – he came in, helped translate. The granny didnae have great English.”

  “They only do when it bloody suits them.”

  “Something to share, Janson?”

  “No mum.”

  “Good. Alastair...?”

  “There’d been talk of marriage.”

  “Arranged?”

  “Aye.”

  “And was she happy with that?”

  “She wasnae bothered. That’s what they all said. Whole family, even the kid sisters. All said the same. Lad she’d been seeing had upped and left her. Seems she thought an arranged marriage might be less painful – bit less chancy.”

  “Not bein’ funny, mum, but they’re not gonna just come out and say it, are they? Course they’re gonna say she were up for it.”

  “Some girls do enter into arranged marriages of their own volition, Janson,” Renwick said. Not that Janson was necessarily wrong, but how she’d crow if she were right. “Let’s not jump to conclusions.”

  “Yeah, but–”

  “Yes?”

  Janson shifted her bulk in her chair. “Just saying, can’t just take their word for it, can we?”

  “Which is why,” said McAdams, “we interviewed both neighbours and Tahira’s friends.” He glanced up at Janson. “Some of whom were actually white. All said the same thing. She weren’t bothered. Took things as they came. Away with the fairies. Lived in a world of her own.”

  “Any suspicious persons reported round the time she went missing?” asked DC Wayland, who’d arranged himself into a casual slouch most likely copied from a cop film. He was actually good at his job when he wasn’t posing.

  “Nothing.”

  “Any other questions? OK. Mike?”

  Stakowski relayed much the same information he’d given her the night before. He was thorough, as always; if he’d left it out of the report, it hadn’t been there to begin with. No questions afterward, not even from Tranter, and no gobbing off from Janson; toddlers didn’t run away from home.

  “OK, then,” Renwick said. “DS Stakowski will handle the Roseanne Trevor case – DS McAdams, Tahira Khalid. Janson, you’re with Dave – Tranter, Wayland, you’re with Mike. We’ll be running them both in tandem out of here.” She hated the idea of Janson going near the Khalid case, but better there than Roseanne Trevor. And she knew she’d put her best two officers on the Trevor case. She should be trying to weight both investigations equally. Could she live with it if they found Tahira Khalid dead? She didn’t know, but she couldn’t live with finding Roseanne Trevor that way.

  “What about me, boss?”

  “Hadn’t forgotten you, Crosbie. We’re short on bodies, so we’ll all be out in the field a lot – Mike, Dave and myself included. We need a point of contact here in the office. That’s you.”

  “Nae hassle, ma’am. Fine by me.”

  Wayland grinned. “Trust you to get the cushy detail, you Jock git.”

  Crosbie flicked a ball of paper at him. “You hear that, ma’am? Outright racial abuse, that is. Ah should make a formal complaint.”

  “So should I,” called Wayland. “You all saw him cob that at me. That’s assault, that is.”

  “You hurt ma tender feelings, y
e bloody Sassenach.”

  “Alright, children, settle down.” Even McAdams couldn’t keep a straight face.

  Stakowski chuckled. “Kids, eh? Who’d have ’em?”

  “They grow up so fast,” said McAdams. “It’s when they become teenagers you’ve got to worry.”

  “One more thing.” Renwick took a deep breath. “You’ve all heard, I’m guessing, about these so-called Spindly Men.”

  “Kids pratting around,” Janson mumbled.

  “Maybe, maybe not. They showed up around the same time people started vanishing. Stupid not to check. So – Crosbie, collate any reports pertaining to them. See if anything jumps out. Rest of you, report any other sightings or reports you come across to DC Crosbie. Questions?”

  Janson, predictably. “With respect, mum, there’s no evidence even the two cases are connected. Most likely is that the Paki girl–”

  “Janson!”

  “Alright, the Asian girl, Khalid – that her family did something to her. That or she did a bunk, slung her bag to throw us off. We should be focusing on the Trevor girl. And the Spindlies... come on, that’s just–”

  Someone tapped on the incident room door. “Come.”

  “Sorry, boss.” Joyce Graham, the desk sergeant, stuck her head round the door: tubby and thirtyish with two teenage sons, but handier than she looked if pepper spray and truncheon were required. “Dave?”

  McAdams rose. “Yeah?”

  “Call from DS Ashraf, out on the Dunwich. He said to let you know there’s been another disappearance, over at the Trinity. Macy Court. Two folk together this time.” Graham hesitated. “And one dead.”

  “Christ,” said Stakowski. “They just graduated.”

  Renwick flicked the last of her coffee into the bin. “You all know what to do. Dave, get the Khalid case rolling. Mike, get your team to work. Then you’re with me.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE DUNWICH WAS near the edge of town, like the weird kid no-one wanted to be near. A concrete bin smashed by hammers; a metal one blackened by fire. Beyond squat low-rises and flat-fronted houses in dull grey pebbledash, Renwick glimpsed far-off craggy hills veiled in mist. Hoodies with muffled faces watched them pass. At the estate’s black heart stood three tower-blocks: the Trinity. Among them, Macy Court.

  The lift was broken. The stairs reeked of piss; Renwick counted one fresh-laid human turd and three used syringes as they climbed. She breathed through her mouth. “Where’s the crime scene again?”

  “Twelfth floor.”

  “Christ.”

  “Small mercies. Could’ve been thirteenth.”

  A big man with a spade-shaped beard appeared. “Chief Inspector? DS Ashraf.” His handshake was an iron clamp, gently applied. “This way.”

  The corridor had faded blue concrete walls smeared with shit or blood. One striplight flickered; the others were smashed. An old man with yellowed eyes and a drinker’s reddened face stood in his doorway giving a statement. An obese woman with a pallid, doughy face and greasy dark hair, vast slack breasts hanging to her navel beneath a stained top, stood screaming at another officer, spit flying from her mouth. She saw Renwick and lunged at her; the officer held her back. “Fuck you lookin’ at, bitch? Eh? Eh?” In her flat, three kids aged between three and thirteen sat gazing slackly, faces lit by a TV’s cold dead flicker.

  There was incident tape across the hole where a steel door had been smashed down. Inside were the SOCOs in their white suits; among them, a thin, fiftyish woman with short black silver-sprinkled hair.

  “Dr Wisher.”

  “Chief Inspector. Come in if you’re coming. I haven’t time to print invitations.”

  Renwick waited until Wisher turned away before rolling her eyes. Stakowski winked, took out a jar of Vick’s menthol rub. They and Ashraf smeared a little under their noses to counteract the stink of the place. Renwick had been in flats like this before; the very air made her want to scrub her skin with wire wool. They donned the white protective bunny-suits and entered.

  THE TESTAMENT OF PRIVATE TOBY GOODWIN from the suffolk fens farm labourer by trade reserved occupation could have stayed at home but i chose to fight for king and country to risk my life for greater good and this is my guerdon such is my reward i fought hoping for a better world to come but it was not to be shrapnel tore my guts out at passchendaele resection of four feet of large intestine other smaller resections carried out along the colon and another in the duodenum constant pain there was constant pain and this bag this bastarding bag filled with my own liquescent shite that i carried a constant rebuke to my old high minded dreams and still i did not despair but laid my hopes at the door of education and yet this too came to naught as i lived to see another war more terrible than the last and in its embers a last flicker of hope a new world rising but this too this too pulled down and now only the ashes and the embers remain and in it crawl such things as these men and women sunk lower and fouler than dogs was it for these i fought was it for these my entrails were torn asunder was it for these i bled in the wind and rain the filth and shellfire the flanders mud and such were my thoughts when i lay gasping out my last breaths in a hospital ward with cancer eating up what innards i had left with the crabs pincers rending at my guts in 1962 year of the cuban missile crisis when it seemed certain that the world would end leaving us all burnt offerings on the sacrificial altar of our leaders pride as so many of us had been at passchendaele the somme the marne loos mons and so i died thinking nothing changes and so i think now watching from the blackness at the world we fought for the country we helped to save

  BLOOD GLUED CLUMPS of hair to the walls, dried slowly dark on the cheap tiled floor.

  “How many dead?”

  “One.” Wisher folded her arms; her spectacles glinted. “As I told Sergeant Ashraf. Did he forget, or you?”

  “Neither, Doctor Wisher. Just wanted to check.”

  “I do try to be sure of my facts before making a statement,” Wisher said. “But I take your point. It does resemble the scene of a massacre.”

  “Where’s the body?”

  “Kitchen. Just follow the blood trail.”

  Red handprints on the kitchen door; blood on the draining board and countertop, thickening on the tiles. A man sat against the sink unit, shirt open. Two kitchen knives beside him, blades red; a third still in his hand. Matted hair hung from the red-black ruin of his head; his eyes were ragged holes.

  “Christ on a bike,” said Stakowski.

  Renwick took a breath. Stay calm. Objective. There was one question here: whether this connected to her investigation or not. “What the hell happened here?”

  “You know me better than that, Chief Inspector,” Wisher said. “We’re still processing the scene.”

  “An educated guess?”

  “Alright. This is of course a provisional statement only. But if you look, his nose is broken, the skin on his forehead badly split – apparently from smashing his head against the walls. If he fractured his skull, it wouldn’t surprise me. Look at his fingers and you’ll see hair stuck to them from where he ripped it out of his scalp. And then he went to work with the knives.”

  “He did all this to himself? Are you serious?”

  “Have you ever known me to joke, Chief Inspector?”

  “Fair point,” Stakowski muttered.

  Renwick stepped back in. “Some kind of episode, then? What? Drugs?”

  “Possibly, or he could simply have a history of mental illness or self-harm. Formal identification and a toxicology report will help. Without that, I can only offer guesswork, and I’ll thank you not to build your case on that. I have a professional reputation to maintain. Now, if you’ll excuse me–”

  “With pleasure,” Stakowski muttered.

  “I heard that.”

  IN THE CORRIDOR, the obese woman was still screaming at the same unfortunate copper, who had to hold her back when she lunged at Renwick again.

  “Stairs?” Stakowski suggested.

  At
the top of the staircase, Stakowski offered Ashraf a cigarette. The two sergeants lit up. Renwick found herself wishing she smoked. “What else have we got? Manzoor?”

  Ashraf released a stream of smoke. “Two missing, ma’am.”

  “So who’s who?”

  “The flat’s registered to a Danielle Morton. Officially single, but neighbours say she shares the place with two men, a Pete Hardacre and a Ben Rawlinson.”

  “Ben Rawlinson?” Stakowski tapped ash out of the window. “Used to play pool with his dad, if it’s who I’m thinking of. Pulled him in a few times. He were a decent lad once, but he had some problems upstairs. Hearing voices and that. Last I heard he’d hooked up with a lass who was as tapped as him.”

  “So what about Hardacre? Who’s he?”

  “Small-time dealer,” said Ashraf. “They’re both addicts. He provides – provided – them with a supply of drugs in exchange for a place to stay. Also, according to the neighbours, there was something of a menage a trois going on.”

  “Menage a trois?”

  “Threesome.”

  “I know what it means, Manzoor. Just surprised anyone round here did.”

  “I’m paraphrasing. The most polite version I heard was ‘she’s a fucking slapper doing it with the pair of them’.”