by Steven Dunne
After taking so much energy on board, Rowlands failed to detect the insinuation in Brook’s voice. ‘Beats me, laddie,’ he replied.
Brook shrugged. He helped Rowlands to his feet and led him to the front door.
‘Damen.’
Brook turned to Vicky. She held out a carrier bag. Brook took it. There were two brightly wrapped packages inside. ‘Uncle Vic wanted you to have these for Christmas.’
‘Thanks very much, lass,’ Rowlands slurred. ‘It’s much appreciated.’
‘Thanks, Vicky.’ Brook’s affectionate tone was more of a surprise to him than to Vicky. ‘Look after yourself. And say hello to your brother for me.’
She smiled her goodbye but said nothing.
Two hours later, Brook sat in the warmth of Rowlands’ Caterham home, leaded glass in hand. It was dark outside and in. Brook didn’t want light. He wanted to be alone, cut off from everything and everybody. Time spent with Sorenson had a way of inducing sensory overload and Brook needed to let his mind drift for a while or he’d blow a fuse.
He sipped on his Navy rum and ran the mellow heat around his mouth as an antiseptic. He could hear Charlie snoring heavily upstairs. Alcohol-induced stupor was the only medicine for him now.
Brook kicked off his shoes and warmed his feet before the gas fire. It had been a difficult two days but now they were over. He’d done it, he’d faced Sorenson and come through. He knew he could win now. Sorenson would confess, he was certain. Then he’d know why. That would be his victory.
Brook dragged the carrier bag from ‘Uncle Vic’ towards him on the sofa. He pulled out the parcels and examined the labels. The bottle-shaped parcel read, ‘To my old friend Charlie Rowlands. Sleep well.’
Brook snorted. This terminal illness deal was something else. He looked at his package. It felt like a book. His label read, ‘To Inspector Brook. So near yet so far. Don’t judge this book by its cover. Victor.’
Brook slid off the paper and turned the book. He could make out the title on its white background by the glow of the fire. His mouth fell open. It was an A-Z of Leeds, published 1993.
Chapter Twenty-six
DS Brook trudged through the office, aware that he looked wilder than usual. He hadn’t shaved or changed his wet clothes, his eyes were red-rimmed and his hair was dank and matted against his skull. Even the DCs, and other assorted grunts, who generally avoided his passing, were moved to stop what they were doing and stare.
Brook, aware of inquisitive eyes, locked his attention onto the plastic cup of black coffee he carried, holding it like a bar of plutonium. He didn’t go out of his way to indulge in that fiendishly difficult small talk that others found easy so he hurried to the sanctuary of his office.
Once there, he slumped into his chair, took a mouthful of the black unction and rummaged through a drawer for cigarettes. He pulled out a dented pack, cracked the cellophane and lit up, closing his eyes to the bite of the smoke. Then he reached for the phone and dialled.
‘Hello.’
‘It’s me, darling.’
‘Where’ve you been?’
‘Working.’
‘All night? In that terrible weather?’
‘Fraid so.’
There was a pause from Amy. She’d been down this route before. Since Harlesden. Since Laura Maples. Her husband was unreachable, not of this earth. But she couldn’t let him off lightly. He had responsibilities. ‘And were there no phones where you were working?’ She was about to add his name but thought it might signal weakness.
‘I…It was difficult, darling. There was another family killed last night. It’s The Reaper. He’s taken another family.’
‘Oh God. Where?’
‘Brixton. Can you hear me? Do you understand? It was The Reaper again.’ Brook closed his eyes and recalled Amy peering out of the window of the house the night before, ignorant of his presence, unaware how her simple reaction to a car horn had released such a tide of relief and self-loathing in him. He remembered the cold hand of fear tightening its grip on his shoulders, holding him, pushing him down into his seat, numbing him.
‘Does this mean another year like the last one, Damen?’
‘No.’
‘Don’t lie to me. I can’t stand it any more. Never seeing you and all the time dreading seeing you. You come home, sit in a chair and stare…I can’t stand any more…’
Brook took the silver chain from his pocket and draped it around his fingers, playing with it. For a moment, he forgot he was on the phone and just stared at the necklace with its little hearts glinting in the pale light. He spoke again, his voice a mere croak.
‘You can rest easy now, Laura. Don’t worry any more.It’s over, Laura. It’s over.’ He replaced the receiver and slumped forward onto his desk.
The door opened. ‘Brooky. Fucking hell! Are you all right, old son? You look like shit.’
Brook opened one eye at Rowlands from the cradle of his trembling arms. He lifted his damp head and caught a waft of the brewery from his boss. He drained the last of his coffee. ‘Sorry, guv. Didn’t sleep last night.’
‘Was that at home or in your car outside Sorenson’s?’ Brook opened his mouth to speak but thought better of it. ‘I thought so,’ nodded Rowlands. ‘Well,’ he said, looking at a wad of papers in his fist. ‘That might be a blessing in disguise.’
‘Why?’
Rowlands smiled. ‘Because now you’ll know Sorenson ain’t The Reaper. There’s been another.’
Brook nodded. ‘I know.’
‘What do you mean, you know?’
‘The Reaper killed another family. I followed him.’
Rowlands was speechless, his face pained. He turned away from Brook and slumped into the nearest chair, pulling out his flask. After a longer pull than usual, he offered it to Brook, as was his custom. For once Brook kept the tip of his tongue from the neck and allowed the cheap whisky to burn his throat.
‘You’re right.’ Rowlands was sombre. ‘In Brixton. A black man, name of Floyd Wrigley and his girlfriend and daughter. What happened to you?’
Brook looked away. ‘I lost him. In Battersea.’
‘What?’
‘He went to my house first to remind me what he could do.’
‘Jesus, Brooky! Then you don’t know for sure it was Sorenson.’
‘It was him, guv.’
‘Fucking hell, lad. When will this thing end? You can’t go on like this. You’ve got to get on with your life.’ Rowlands seemed like he was about to burst into tears. ‘Look, I’m your friend. You have to drop this now. Another year like this will kill you…’
‘Guv!’ Brook held up a hand. ‘Stop worrying. Sorenson’s finished with me now.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘He’s beaten me, he’ll move on.’
‘Talk sense, man.’
Brook smiled at his incomprehension and decided not to disturb it. ‘I’ve nothing left to give. He knows that. After last night. That’s why he went to my house. To show me he can do what he wants and I won’t…I can’t stop him.’
Rowlands took another pull on his flask and looked off into space. After several moments he began nodding and even managed a smile. ‘Good. We’ll let someone else worry about it. And you don’t want any details then?’
‘No.’
‘You really mean it, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you don’t want to reccy the crime scene?’
Brook paused. ‘No need.’
‘I’d better ring the Brixton Boys then. They were expecting you on a consult. I’ll tell ’em we’ve got complete confidence in ’em.’ He winked. ‘They’ll lap that up. Go home, Brooky. You’ve got a beautiful wife and baby waiting for you.’
‘Thanks, guv. I will.’ Brook stood with some difficulty. He seemed to be on the verge of complete collapse. He shuffled to the door.
‘What’s this?’
Brook turned to see Rowlands fingering Laura’s silver necklace, which lay on the blo
tter. He held out his hand and his boss dropped it into his palm.
‘It’s a present for Theresa.’
Brook pulled his collar up against the cold and headed for the sanctuary of the cafe. He bought a tea and hesitated, surveying the available food. He was hungry but not that hungry.
The Leeds-Derby service was delayed but Brook didn’t care. He needed time to think. He knew now what he had to do, but he needed support from McMaster and had to work out how to get it. Suspended or not, he must have her backing to go to Glasgow, even if unofficial, just drop her name into the conversation to get the jocks to speak to him about Roddy Telfer’s background and try to find a link with the other Reaper killings.
It would be difficult. His visit to Leeds had been a mistake. He’d been refused any co-operation without back-up from a senior officer. Now McMaster would be hearing about Brook treading on toes in the North, sniffing around on a case from which he’d been suspended.
Brook sipped his tea. He pulled out the Leeds A-Z given him by Sorenson. What had he missed? Despite all indications to the contrary, there had to be something to learn from Telfer’s killing in ’93. But what? What did Sorenson mean? ‘Don’t judge this book by its cover.’
Well Brook had judged it. He’d marked Leeds down as a copycat but now he was being forced to reassess. The murder of Roddy Telfer and his heavily pregnant girlfriend was connected to The Reaper. Sorenson had told him that much, told him to dig deeper.
Brook stared at the A-Z, at the page with Telfer’s old street on it. He wondered if Sorenson knew Telfer’s building had been flattened to make way for a new link road and that there was no longer a murder scene to visit. Did that matter? Sorenson was telling him Leeds was important. Brook had missed something. Despite the botched MO, there was a connection with Harlesden and Brixton. Especially Brixton.
Something bubbled away beneath his consciousness but wouldn’t surface. His mind drifted back to the face of the Wrigley girl on that terrible night in Brixton. The night Sorenson had shown him he could take any family he wanted, even Brook’s.
Families. Sammy Elphick had killed Sorenson’s brother in a bungled burglary. Floyd Wrigley had raped and murdered Laura Maples. What had Telfer done to interest The Reaper? What had Bobby Wallis done?
‘How you feelin’, Brooky?’
‘Okay guv.’
‘You don’t look okay. That baby keeping you awake?’ Brook nodded.
‘How is she?’
‘Terri’s fine.’
‘Fine.’ Rowlands contemplated Brook. ‘You must be the first parent in history who don’t gush at any mention of their new-born baby. And what about you, lad? Are you fine?’
Brook nodded.
‘I can do this on my own. There’s still time for you to bail.’
‘I’m okay, guv,’ replied Brook and they both returned to their reading matter. Brook finished his toast and drained the last of his syrupy tea. He looked back across at Rowlands reading the autopsy reports and nursing his whisky-laced coffee. His toast lay untouched. He wouldn’t eat on an empty stomach.
‘There were traces of chloroform around the Wrigley girl’s face and nose and she was given an injection. A mixture of Nembutal and Seconal. A lot.’
‘Nembutal?’ Brook looked up. ‘That’s a barbiturate. Relatively harmless.’
‘So is Seconal and you’re right. It says here if they’re taken orally, they’re absorbed slowly. Injected into a vein it causes damage. It would have killed her.’
Brook received this information with a small measure of relief. ‘So she may have felt no pain.’
‘But why cut her throat as well?’
‘For show, like the Elphick boy,’ answered Brook. ‘What about the parents?’
‘Smack. They were both users so it was probably self-administered, which means he didn’t have to work hard to control them.’
‘That explains why they weren’t gagged.’
‘I guess.’
‘Would you like the good news, guv?’ asked Brook, nodding at his own reading matter. ‘Floyd Wrigley Petty theft, possession, affray, ABH, GBH. It goes on.’ There was no mention of rape and murder. Now there never could be.
‘Some comfort then,’ nodded Rowlands.
‘It gets worse, guv. Or better. DS Croft reckons Floyd was living off immoral earnings to fund his habit. They had nothing solid but…’
‘He was pimping his girlfriend? Classy.’
‘Not the girlfriend, Tamara, the daughter.’
‘Fucking…scum. How old?’
‘Eleven. There’s a note at the end of the autopsy. They asked the pathologist to look for it. She wasn’t a virgin, guv.’
Both fathers of daughters, one living, the other dead, looked at a space that couldn’t look back at them, that couldn’t see through the eyes, into their hearts where all the private things were.
Rowlands lit a cigarette and took a huge pull. ‘I don’t envy you, Brooky At least Elizabeth…’ Rowlands looked down at his coffee. In a trice that a gunfighter would have been proud of, he’d whipped out his flask and was replenishing his cup. ‘Look after Amy and little Theresa, lad. You only get one go at it.’
‘Guv…’
‘I know. Sorenson’s finished with you. But you’re here aren’t you?’
Brook examined his boss. He didn’t look well. Then again he never looked well.
Rowlands squinted up through the blue smoke driftingacross his face. ‘Ready?’ He finished his coffee at Brook’s nod and they manoeuvred themselves off the Star Burger’s unyielding bucket seats.
They walked together down Brixton High Street, not speaking, not looking at each other. Instead they looked at the second-hand Christmas illuminations, cast-offs purchased by the Council, on the cheap from Blackpool. They even studied the famous railway bridge, straddling the main road with its patronising ‘We’re backing Brixton!’ message, its cluster of business logos a knee-jerk, post-riots affirmation of capitalism. They looked but they didn’t see.
As they turned onto Electric Avenue, Brook had to make a conscious effort to stay half a pace behind Rowlands who was scanning the street to get his bearings.
He stopped outside a door sandwiched between two moribund shop fronts, daubed with posters for bands, concerts, jumble sales and obscure political groups. A constable squinted at their ID and stood aside. A gaggle of ghouls still loitered outside the murder scene four days after the event. They talked in lowered tones about the killings. They were shocked and horrified in conversation, but glowed inside, satisfied to be a spit from the spotlight of public infamy.
Brook glanced warily around for the empty boxes that The Reaper had left outside the doorway. They were gone. Rowlands passed through the entrance but Brook hung back.
‘You coming, lad?’ said Rowlands from the bottom of the stairs.
Brook smiled and followed his boss. He made to close the door but the constable put his hand out to keep it open. ‘They want fresh air up there, sir.’ Brook nodded.
The lounge was the last room at the top of the rickety stairs. Rowlands nodded to the two SOCOs on their knees still sifting and scraping and measuring and combing four days after the fact.
Brook took out glossy photographs from the dossier and started handing them to Rowlands who examined them against the layout of the room. It was bright now because the curtains had been drawn back. On the photographs the curtains were closed and the room was poorly lit. Rowlands looked around, getting the measure of what had happened here, acclimatising to where he could and couldn’t walk.
There was a tatty, if comfortable looking sofa at one end of the room. It had once been a faded blue but was now covered in black stains, particularly on the seat cushions where rivers of blood had dammed against the thighs of the man and woman, sat side by side. The rest of the sofa was a patchwork of blood splatter.
The bare floor had also been stained-dry-black pools, in contrast to the scuffed dirty brown of the boards. The bloodstains were edged in
white chalk and tape to alert pedestrians. At the edge of one such stain the smooth circular regularity of the encroaching blood had been breached and part of a footprint was clearly visible.
‘What size?’ asked Rowlands.
‘The file reckons ten,’ said Brook. ‘Thereabouts.’
‘And what’s Sorenson?’
‘Size eight.’
‘Told you so.’
‘We can’t say for sure it’s the murderer’s shoe, guv.’
‘Well it ain’t the milkman’s.’
To one side, under the window, lay a small mattresswith a couple of thin blankets for cover-perhaps the place of work for one wretched human being.
In the middle of the room there was an old straight-backed dining chair, lying on its side, facing the sofa. Another apron of black spewed out from where it had toppled. Black-red sprays extended out from the mass of the pool-like flares under the great initial force of the severed artery. These thin jets of blood had escaped at several different angles. The girl, Tamara, had contested her fate, despite the drugs. Shed been bound, gagged and doped up but still fought against the ebbing of her scarred life.
What had she thought of the world in those last few terrible moments, Brook wondered? Tied to a chair, cold in vest and knickers, throat sliced by a stranger, facing her parents, drug addicts, who sold her for sex and were only able to stare back, saucer-eyed, uncomprehending, as their daughter convulsed herself into oblivion.
‘Why her? Why the Elphick boy? Why the children?’ muttered Rowlands.
Brook approached the top-of-the-range CD player. He squirreled a look at Rowlands who nodded back at him.
‘Alright, don’t rub it in, Brooky.’
‘Has this been dusted for prints?’ Brook could tell from the powder residues that it had, so he switched it on before the SOCOs could reply. He opened the CD tray. It was empty. Brook reached into his overcoat and pulled out a thin plastic case. He flipped out the disc and fed it into the machine. Mozart’s Requiem crept out of the speakers positioned in opposite corners, barely audible. Brook turned it up so the music flowed over them. This would be the only beauty young Tamara would have known in her life.
