by Robson, Roy
When they’d first met H had made a play for her during a drunken night out, after cracking a major murder case. Never one to grasp the intricacies of female sexual messaging, he had been sternly rebuffed. Sometime later, over a liquid lunch, Hilary confided that she also preferred the ladies, or, as H put it, ‘batted for the other side.’ With sexual tension off the agenda their professional relationship kind of worked OK.
‘H, what in God’s name is going on in the West End? My PA has just shown me a murder scene exploding all over the internet. In St. James’s Park. It’s not even been called in yet.’
Hilary had always been good under pressure, thought H. Until now.
He often had cause to feel grateful for how good she was at making sure he could get on with the job in his own way, the way she kept the top brass off his back. But since London had started going to hell in a handcart, and with the unsolved murder rate spiralling by the day he’d noticed the cracks appearing in her well-manicured persona. She was starting to feel the pace.
In all the years he’d known her she hadn’t sworn and this was the first time he had even heard the ‘G’ word.
‘Already seen it. On my way.’
Something approaching relief came over her. It wasn’t his patch, and he had other things to do, but she wanted him there early. He was the best copper on the force at reading a murder scene. She knew his record. No one else was even close to his clear-up rate - even if his methods were considered by some to be unorthodox and outdated.
‘H, find out what’s happening. Find out who could have done this. St. James Park, broad daylight, tourists everywhere. Please, for God’s sake. Get this one sorted.’
Blimey, thought Harry. A second use of the ‘G’ word and a ‘please.’ Upstairs must be close to hanging her out to dry.
‘I’m on it’, he said.
He ended the call. The beautiful geek to his left had slipped into a parallel universe. Multiple tabs were opening on her tablet and her phone was pinging with a whole host of airborne updates as her co-ordinated eyes and hands moved faster than the wings of a hummingbird on speed.
‘I’ve never seen anything spread this fast. A million hits and it’s only been on Twitter for twenty minutes. That’s more than the Pope’s Christmas message. I’m telling you guv, this is going to go worldwide.’
Different clips and videos were appearing from multiple sources; the tourists of London town had been well and truly entertained. Amisha was piecing the multiple pics and clips together like an electronic jigsaw, trying to work out the timeline of events.
‘There’s a clip showing this guy firing multiple rounds’, she said, ‘looks like he’s killed three or four people, including two women slumped on a bench, who are appearing in more and more pictures. Everyone at the scene is taking pictures of them and posting them on Twitter.’
Amisha flashed a picture of the gunman.
‘Mike Richards.’ said H. ‘Solid lad. Worked with him a few years back, at Carter Street nick before it was closed down. He’s now part of the Queen’s Protection Unit.’
‘Ok,’ said Amisha. Realising her mistake, she returned to the puzzle, instantly merging with the machines as she assimilated the images and video clips flooding in.
She barely noticed H’s expert gear shifts as he veered in and out of the London traffic as fast as a fat kid in a sweet shop. He knew every inch of this town, every rat run and dark alleyway. He kept to the back streets to keep clear of the grinding London traffic, and decided to stay south of the river until he reached Westminster Bridge. The concrete jungle estates of South London passed by in a blur of architectural ugliness. He skirted the Elephant and Castle roundabout and zipped past an estate where a gang of hoodies, huddled under a pissed-stenched stairwell, were crowded around a phone; they were displaying more alertness than he would normally expect. He knew exactly what was animating them.
‘Three million hits’, said Amisha, ‘the Twitter spike is already fifteen times above the previous record in this timeframe. We’re witnessing internet history in the making.’
What the fuck is she on?
H swung the car past the last roundabout before Westminster Bridge, blistering hot wheels smoking and screeching like a banshee on a bender, and put the pedal to the metal. Beneath the bridge a sewage boat chugged past on its way to a sewage dump near Pitsea in Essex, but the shit on board was as nothing compared to the shit that was about to hit the fan when he entered St. James’ Park.
‘One minute away’, he shouted ‘tell me what the fuck’s happening, and tell me now.’
8
H and Amisha sped on. Past The Houses of Parliament (bunch of fucking nonces), right down Whitehall and past Downing Street, home of the Prime Minister.
Amisha said, ‘six million hits. India, Russia, America - millions upon millions.’
‘Oh for fuck’s sake’, said H. ‘I don’t give a fuck about Twitter hits or early birds in America. What are all these fucking pictures telling you?’
‘Right guv, I think I have it. Two women walk into St. James’ Park, one blonde one brunette. There’s a blurred picture of them in the background of someone’s selfie before the killing starts. From their clothes, or what I can see of them, I’d say late forties or early fifties. They look, shall we say, well bred. I’d speculate they’re not the type of women you might usually associate with gangsters.’
‘In the selfie they are in the process of sitting down so they must have just got to the benches. It’s now 10.20 and based on the Twitter comments I’d say this was 20 minutes ago. They are now both dead - here’s a pic of what they look like.’
She quickly flashed the picture of the unrecognisable dead bodies of Tara and Jemima, slumped over the bench.
‘Fuck me. Then what?’ said H.
‘I think they were killed within a few minutes of sitting down. There’s a clip of some crazed nutter throwing a knife into the skull of the brunette. The clip reveals the blonde already dead, so assume the same guy killed her first. Weird thing is after the second killing the psycho is bowing like a busker at a street show.’
Amisha showed the clip of Aliyev shaping up like a professional street entertainer as H turned left off of Trafalgar Square and headed down The Mall. Alerted by the Twitterstorm, flocks of tourists were descending on St James’ Park and H had to slow down to navigate the growing crowd.
‘Know him?’, Amisha asked.
H had performed surveillance on most of the murderous villains now frequenting London’s underworld. He’d looked at enough mug shots in the last few months to last him a lifetime. But this was a new face.
‘Never seen the sick bastard before. Look at his fucking boat race. Looks as happy as a nonce who’s been given the keys to a nursery. What’s next?’
‘Your man Mike then turns up with what looks like another plain clothes officer. The psycho busker shoots the other officer. There’s a picture of his slumped body. I’m guessing he’s dead but that’s not certain, and there is no clear shot of his face. Mike then takes out the psycho.’
Amisha showed him another few clips as H pulled to a halt as close as he was now likely to get to the murder scene, given the throngs of people heading in the same direction. He watched with satisfaction as Mike filled the murderer with enough lead to contain a nuclear reaction.
At least that’s one less murderous bastard on the streets.
Amisha was about to see H at his best, in his element; taking control of and reading a murder scene. When murder or violence was in the air H went into overdrive. He was made for moments like this. The switch had flipped and H was in the zone.
‘Right, let’s get this crime scene under control before it gets completely fucked up.’
9
H hit the ground running - almost literally. Amisha had never seen anything like it. His door was open and he was halfway out of it before he switched off the ignition.
This is getting to him.
He headed for the scene, barrell
ing and barking through the rain like a turbo-charged Mussolini. But there was nothing comic-operatic about his next moves - he was all Anglo Saxon bluntness and deadly earnest.
‘Get these people back! Straighten the tape! What is this, open day at Buckingham fucking Palace? Get that lot with the cameras further back. There’s dead people here…Jesus wept!’
‘Ames’, he continued, barking back at her, ‘I need to get to work. Get this sorted out; we’ve got the Keystone Cops in charge here. Straighten this lot out, for fuck’s sake, get this park cleared now.’
‘Right you are guv’, said Amisha.
But H had already moved on. Putting the fear of God into all and sundry was one thing. What he needed to do now was merge with the scene, put his senses and his copper’s intuition to work. He calmed himself and focused in.
He did not like what he saw.
On the ground, in front of the bench containing the broken bodies of the two women, was the body of the copper, face down, blood still oozing from his head. The texture and colour of the grass around the head reminded him of a cake Olivia had made him a few days before. H moved in, low and slow, and squatted beside the body. He craned his head to try and get a look at the face. The muscles in his stomach and throat responded to what he saw before his conscious awareness did. Clunk. Ugh.
Jesus, fuck…it’s Jack Thornton. Jack T. This bastard’s killed Jack.
Here? On a day like this?
H’s senses were reeling. The smell of blood was in his nostrils and working its way towards his mouth. The muscles in his face were quivering and he couldn’t control them. He stayed put, down low and quiet, and tried to regulate his breathing. Time passed. He didn’t know how much.
Another fallen comrade.
‘Everything’s under control guv, the park is almost cleared…guv?’ Amisha’s voice snapped him out of it.
‘Are you alright down there? Is there anything I can do?’
No response.
‘Guv, you need to see this.’
H reared up, inhaling hard and brushing down his trousers.
‘See what?’
Amisha pointed towards the body of the assassin. With gestures of hand and arm she motioned him towards the mortal remains of what would now be, for a time at least, the world’s most famous murderer.
Aliyev was lying on his back, splayed out like a six year old boy playing war games. The forehead had collapsed inward and what was left of his brain had splattered upwards, out of the head, into a flume of what looked like vomit.
‘Now that’s what I call putting one in the nut’, said H to no one in particular. ‘Good man, Mike. Good man. He always was.’
But it was the lower part of the face that Amisha wanted him to see. The frozen rictus. Of joy. Of warped glee. Of pleasure at having done what he’d done. This was straight out of some insane-circus clown-on-a-killing-spree nightmare.
‘This one looks like a proper nutter, guv.’
But H was already looking back, over his shoulder. Worse was coming, and he knew it: it was time to have a look at the women. No way around it. H hated doing this more than anything. Dead men didn’t bother him much on the whole; he’d seen scores of them in his time. Many had died in the line of duty and a good proportion of the rest had deserved what they’d got. Good riddance to bad rubbish. But women…all the gender workshops and cultural sensitivity courses he’d been forced to attend over the last few years couldn’t prevent his guts churning when it came to this. Swallowing hard, and with his eyes beginning to smart, he moved back towards the bench.
10
‘Well bred. Mature.’ That had been Amisha’s social assessment of the women in question on the basis of the images that flickered on her screens. While they were women. Now they were a tangled mess of flesh and blood, thrown together and washed up onto the bench as if by a massive crimson wave.
At twenty yards out from the bench, H was steadying himself for the worst. He noted, despite the mess, that Amisha had been right: what could still be made out of clothes, shoes and bags looked high-end and designer. These were not the kind of pumped up and bejewelled molls so loved of his new found Slavic and Balkan acquaintances.
Ten yards out, all of his senses were kicking in again. He struggled to retain what composure he’d managed to put together while standing over Agani.
What was happening to him? Was he finally losing it? At five yards out the mess in front of him began to resolve itself. But while he was still unable to make out human facial features, it looked and stank like a bad night at the abattoir.
Amisha would have to be kept away from this.
She’s not ready.
H came to a halt, straightened himself up and focused in. He snapped on a fresh pair of gloves. He was going to have to have a poke about in this. One of the women’s heads had been all but hacked off and was just about hanging by a combination of backrest and tendon over the back of the bench. And then it happened. Abruptly, without warning, for the first time in years. Just when he didn’t need them the Falklands flashbacks returned; torn bodies, blood, guts and splatter all around him, stinking mud, senses reeling. He was not sure now exactly where he was. His heart was trying to burst out of its cage; his ears were throbbing and his eyes were stinging.
His experience kicked in. Sort yourself out H. He moved in, again crouching down low.
Look at the other woman first. At least her head’s still in one fucking piece.
He put his fingers under her chin and raised her head, gently. Very gently. He felt the knife before he saw it, as it brushed his thigh on the way up. Fuck. With effort he brought her face level with his. The forehead was a dog’s dinner, but the knife had done little damage to the face. It was the face of a beautiful woman, strangely calm. H began to choke and struggled to fight back a wave of anguish and pity the like of which he’d not felt since the aftermath of Goose Green, when things had first started to go wobbly. He had a strange feeling he knew her, but his famous speed of thought under pressure was, for once, letting him down. A wedding, a funeral, a photograph of a summer’s day half a lifetime ago?
He let the head down as slowly as he’d raised it and set himself back on his haunches.
So pretty. What could she have done to deserve this? What is going on in this fucking city?
He rocked on his haunches; images from old documentaries about mental hospitals flashed across his mind. He was feeling heavy gravity. His body was telling him to lie down. To get down on the ground. To stay there until…
Amisha’s voice again snapped him out of it. He stood up and saw that she was bearing down on him fast, about twenty yards out, jabbering big decibels into one of her gadgets. He sent her two hand signals in quick succession: stop; turn around and go back. These he accompanied with the look: no buts.
Now for the lady in waiting.
He moved gingerly around to the back of the bench, taking in the vista of the park, the stalled traffic on the Mall, the throngs of Londoners and tourists flocking to the gates of the park to take a closer look at the reality of what they’d seen in cyber space. He stood for a moment and closed his eyes. Calming himself, he was trying to visualize his approach to the body. Positioned as she was, he’d have to back up, perhaps sit on, the top of the backrest in order to get a proper look at whatever was left above the neck.
H opened his eyes and positioned himself. He looked. And he saw. He saw a face that he knew, and knew well. He couldn’t put a name to it, but it was a face from deep in his past that didn’t need to be named. His mind stopped, and the world began to spin around him; his body convulsed and he emptied the contents of his stomach onto the bloodsoaked grass.
He slumped to the ground. He had seen a face, or what was left of a face. And now it came to him. The face belonged to Tara Ruddock. Had belonged to Tara Ruddock. But where was she now, Tara herself, lovely Tara - surely not here, amid these butchered remnants?
And where was he?
In St James’ Park, in broa
d daylight, slumped against a park bench, eyes closed. He heard sounds, but they seemed far away - not part of his world.
‘Guv?’ he heard. He said nothing. He thought nothing.
11
Amisha had studied long and hard to get where she was. Her parents demanded it, and she’d driven herself with zeal. But who knew that psychology module she’d suffered through as an undergraduate would turn out to be so important?
H had been under pressure, enormous pressure. That was for sure. But she knew him well enough to think it was unlikely that he’d lost it and gone to bits completely. He had not passed over into psychosis; he was probably in a dissociative state, which, in laymen’s terms, meant he really wasn’t handling the situation very well. He’d had to put the shutters up for a while. She might be able to bring him out of himself. That was her hunch, and her hope.
The first slap across the face he didn’t respond to. The second one was harder. A big open-handed bitch slap. He stirred a little and opened his eyes.
‘Guv!, Guv!...it’s me, Amisha. Look at me. Are you with me H?’
H looked like he was trying to pull it together. To focus.
‘Tara…it’s Tara. Tara Ruddock’, he mumbled. He was slurring his words. Amisha prayed he hadn’t stroked out.
‘What’s Tara? Who’s Tara? Speak to me H’, she said.
‘Tara. Ronnie’s Tara. Lovely Tara. Tara Ruddock. Tara Fortescue-Smythe. Tara…’
‘H!’, said Amisha, shaking his shoulders, ‘look at me. Focus. Let’s get back to Tara later. Do you know where you are? Do you know my name?’
No answer.
‘You’ve got to snap out of this guv’, Amisha shouted, ‘you’ve got to take hold of things. We can’t let people see you like this. Big crowd here now. There’s media people here, cameras, the lot. This thing’s gone viral, big man.’
