The Murder Code

by Mosby, Steve

  ‘But?’ Laura said.

  ‘But I don’t trust my instincts any more. I don’t know what to make of this investigation. None of it makes sense.’

  She looked at me for a while, then leaned forward again.

  ‘What about the video? He sent us the video.’

  ‘That’s true. So maybe there’s two of them working together. Or maybe what happened at the cemetery last night isn’t connected.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘I don’t know what to think.’ But I said it too hard, and I could tell from Laura’s face that she was on the verge of asking me that too-familiar question again. Are you okay? ‘I’m just throwing this out there. Just chucking ideas in the pot.’

  ‘Okay. Listen, I—’

  But she was interrupted by the phone ringing. She frowned at it, then took the call.

  ‘Fellowes.’

  I watched her, silent now, as she listened to the incoming call. A moment later, she snatched up a pen and began scribbling furiously. Her expression had turned grim. Her pad was upside down, but I could see she was writing an address and details.

  Marie Wilkinson …

  ‘Right.’

  She sounded sick.

  When she put the phone down, I didn’t need her to tell me. I was already getting my jacket on. We had another. And it was a bad one.

  Right then, of course, I had no idea.

  Thirty-Two

  SITTING IN HIS CAR in traffic, the General is on fire.

  Even though his arms are still trembling from the adrenalin, he feels alight with strength—all but delirious from the electricity that this day, and the ones before it, has generated inside him.

  When he was planning this, he had visualised it principally as an intellectual exercise—he’d had no idea quite how exciting its execution would be. There have been horrors and difficulties, of course, but it has all been thrillingly unique. And he has secret knowledge now. Few people walking the earth have experienced the sights and sensations that he has. Few people have killed so many.

  And he understands now how and why his father had grown into the man he remembers: that dispassionate murderer of men. The act of killing is impossible to describe: a mixture of transgression and power; the sense that you should not do this, quickly followed by the realisation that you can.

  His father would be proud.

  Up ahead, the traffic lights change, and the cars in front ease away. His hand shaking, the General releases the brake and moves forward with them.

  The ghost of his father, now summoned, keeps pace in his head. His father never killed a man directly, but make no mistake, there was blood on his hands: blood that was inches deep, impossible to scrub away even if the man had wanted to—which, of course, he never had. The General’s father had loved his stories. And he had told them far too frequently for his apparently dispassionate tone of voice to hide how much they meant to him.

  One story has always stayed with him.

  His father, words blurry with alcohol, would tell it to him at the dinner table while his mother washed up, pots clattering loudly in the sink, pretending not to hear. It was about the factory in Bremen that had been bombed in the war. His father’s doing. Without me, the man would tell his enthralled son, the war could easily have gone a different way. It might have forked off down a less successful path.

  Because his father was a code-breaker. Even now, retired and slower, he could crack any sequence his son came up with. And years before, he had broken the code on transmissions that revealed the location of the pharmaceutical factory in Bremen. Without him, they would not have been able to drop the pinpoint bomb that turned it and the village around it into a booming pillar of pitch-black smoke.

  I watched it on the video, his father would say. A lot of men’ll tell you they saw faces in the smoke, but there wasn’t any. Bits of bodies maybe, but nothing else. That’s human nature, you see, to look for patterns. But it was just smoke.

  Even as a boy, the General was old enough to know the reputation the strike had subsequently gathered: that it had become contentious, historically. Had there really been biological weapons? Of course, our country said. Of course not, said the enemy: it was a medical facility; as a result of its destruction, thousands died, many of them children. Whatever the truth, neither side contested that the surrounding village was demolished by the bomb. Innocent lives had undeniably been lost in the strike. Vaporised bodies in the smoke, many of them civilian.

  Now, the lights up ahead turn red. His car rolls to a halt and he cricks on the handbrake.

  The lights change. Off he goes again.

  Collateral damage, his father would tell him, raising the glass of whisky to his lips. Do you know what that means?

  Yes.

  It means it had to be done. It’s not nice when you have to kill civilians, but it was worth it. Their lives against ours. It was for the greater good.

  The General would ask him: why were we at war, Dad?

  His father would often shrug, maybe grunt into the last rounded triangle of liquor in his tilted glass, but he always gave the same answer.

  Who knows?

  As he follows the flowing traffic—this time through a set of green lights—the General remembers that answer. As a boy, he was impressed by the ambivalence of it, the sheer matter-of-factness. It seemed like a soldier’s answer. Now, as an adult, he recognises a deeper truth to the words. There will have been many decent reasons underpinning the war on both sides, and probably many indecent ones, but attempting to untangle them is impossible and pointless. The world rotates on an impenetrable clockwork of cause and effect, impervious to excavation.

  Why did it happen?

  We did it for resources, for territory, to protect ourselves. And so on. There are a million possible answers, but the truth is that they are never really intended to be explanations, only justifications.

  Below the surface of his words, that was surely what his father meant, wasn’t it. That for a child killed in the village of Bremen—perhaps tilting their head and seeing a dot in the pale sky above them; perhaps even sensing the hush of death descending—what possible use was a justification, an explanation, a reason?

  Thirty-Three

  WE INTERVIEWED TONY WILKINSON in the suite. He sat across from us on the same seat in which we’d talked to Billy Martin yesterday. But the atmosphere was very different.

  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man so reduced. I’d never met him before, of course, but it was easy enough to get a sense of the man from his more obvious physical characteristics. He was thirty-four years old, good-looking, broad and athletic. I imagined that twenty-four hours ago, he would have given the impression of being a strong, reliable man.

  But twenty-four hours ago, he had a wife and a son waiting to be born, and while traces of that man remained, he seemed to be in tatters. Some internal clock had been wound on countless years in the last few hours, hollowing and ageing him from within so severely that his loss appeared physical, visible. It had crippled him.

  He said, ‘Jake.’

  It took me a moment to understand.

  ‘That was going to be his name?’

  ‘That is his name.’

  He shot me a look. Under different circumstances it might have been angry and forceful, but he was too drained right now—his emotions all over the place—for him to summon it properly. He was right, though. It made me realise that Rachel and I hadn’t even discussed names yet. I wondered whether she had ones in mind that the gulf between us had prevented her mentioning to me. I was sure she did. That was normal, wasn’t it? That was what normal people did.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘You’re right. Jake.’

  ‘It’s not you. I’m sorry. But Marie …’

  Wilkinson shook his head and broke off, taking a few moments to gather himself together. Determined, I thought, not to cry. As beaten down as he was, it was obvious he was not a man to cry in front of strangers, not even under circumstance
s like these. His shoulders seemed slumped from the weight of it. Laura and I sat quietly, patiently, waiting for him to be ready to speak again.

  ‘That was what Marie wanted to call him,’ he said finally. ‘It took me a while to understand, I guess. He was such an … abstract concept for a while. But then he was just … well, he was Jake.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said again.

  I meant something different this time: not so much an apology as an attempt at sympathy. Sorry for your loss, perhaps. Sorry for what you’ve been through. But, really, it was a meaningless thing to say; the words sounded empty even to me, and Wilkinson barely registered them. Why would he? I’d seen what the killer had done to Marie Wilkinson. I hadn’t known and loved her, and I was in some way prepared for it by the countless horrors I’d seen in the past. And yet the Wilkinson house was still the most abhorrent, awful crime scene I’d ever stepped into.

  ‘I can’t imagine how hard this is,’ I said. ‘I really can’t. But what I can tell you is that we will—that we are working around the clock to stop this man. He will not get away with what he’s done.’

  ‘No.’

  Wilkinson looked at me as he said that, and a little more of the anger came through this time. Heaven help the man, I thought, if Wilkinson got hold of him. With everything that had happened—not least the indescribable, inhuman horrors of today—a part of me wished it was possible to make such a thing happen.

  ‘The only reason we’re asking you to go over all this again is so that we can catch him more quickly. There might be some detail that can help us. Maybe even save somebody else’s life.’

  He nodded slowly.

  ‘I know.’

  We’d already noted his movements over the past day, but I wanted to go over them again in case there was anything he or we had missed. Marie had made him a coffee, which he’d drunk before leaving for work at about half past eight. About quarter of an hour later, the Wilkinsons’ elderly neighbour, Keith Carter, had phoned the police to say he had seen a masked intruder enter the property next door.

  What happened next was unclear, but Carter appeared to have taken matters into his own hands and gone round to the Wilkinsons’ house to make sure Marie was all right. Upon entering the property, he must have interrupted the murderer, and had himself been struck. At that point, or very shortly afterwards, the killer had fled the scene.

  Officers had arrived at the house just before nine, where they had found Carter slumped on the outside steps with serious head injuries, and Marie Wilkinson lying on the kitchen floor. Both of the victims died at the scene. While Carter’s interruption had prevented the killer committing his usual level of damage to Marie Wilkinson, what had been done proved to be enough.

  Where did that leave us? For one thing, it meant the killer had probably been watching them—that he’d waited for Tony Wilkinson to leave, and then taken the first opportunity he had. Carter’s involvement was presumably accidental. So if Marie Wilkinson was his chosen target, how did that fit into the pattern? Was it something specific about her, or was it the location? We didn’t know. For the moment, it left us nowhere.

  I was rubbing my hands together, still thinking it over. ‘Have you noticed anything untoward in the past few weeks?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Someone hanging around? Someone who seemed to be watching the house?’

  Wilkinson shook his head. ‘God, no. I wouldn’t have … left her alone if I had.’

  I nodded as sympathetically as I could. But while he sounded sure, I knew it was an easy thing to say in hindsight. In reality, he might have seen something suspicious, or Marie could have mentioned something to him, and he probably wouldn’t have acted on it. Because you don’t. A guy was hanging around a bit too long yesterday. What were you supposed to do—give up your job and sit by the window?

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Nothing, however small and insignificant it might have seemed at the time …?’

  ‘No.’.

  That look again: I’m not an idiot.

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘Okay.’

  I swallowed the frustration. There had to be something, didn’t there? Even if it was something so innocuous, so small, that he’d forgotten it—or, worse, was choosing to forget, because acknowledging it now would mean recognising that he’d failed his family in some way. If that was true, I understood and, again, was sympathetic. But the small things were exactly what we needed right now. Anything was what we needed right now.

  So I was about to try again, but then Laura tapped my knee gently: her perennial ‘can it for a moment, Hicks’ gesture.

  ‘And you can’t think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt Marie?’ she said. ‘I know that—’

  ‘No. Of course not. She never made an enemy in her life.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘No.’ His face clenched up at that. ‘What is wrong with you people?’

  ‘We have to check.’

  ‘If someone had a problem with me, they’d take it up with me, wouldn’t they?’

  'Not necessarily, I thought. The fact is that everyone has enemies, at least to some extent. No matter what Tony said about his wife, or himself, somebody probably disliked them. Maybe someone even hated them. In a standard investigation, it was often those kinds of apparently trivial animosities and vendettas that turned out to be fertile ground to plough.

  But this wasn’t a standard investigation. With our guy, it wasn’t personal. The people who have died mean nothing to me. The traditional lines of enquiry here were more a matter of box-ticking and time-wasting than anything else. Marie or Tony could have been hated by a hundred people, and it wouldn’t mean anything.

  So, again, that question: why had the killer chosen her? How did she fit into the code he was challenging us to break? She had been a thirty-three-year-old brunette. She had been pregnant. Was it that? Or was it nothing to do with her at all, and more about the location?

  ‘Have you got kids, Detective?’

  Tony Wilkinson’s question was like a slap. I thought of Rachel again, and almost said yes. But she was at the same stage of pregnancy as Marie had been. Given what had happened, and how I felt about my own upcoming fatherhood, it didn’t seem like a good thing to mention.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well I do.’

  ‘I know.’

  And I wanted to tell him that it was something to cling to. He had lost his wife, yes, and in the most horrific of circumstances, but he had not lost his son: the paramedics at the scene had managed to deliver Jake. The little boy was now under twenty-four-hour care in the special baby unit of the hospital.

  And that really was something. But it was not what Tony Wilkinson needed to hear right now. That it could have been worse.

  I said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You have no idea.’ This time the anger in his voice was undeniable. ‘Why did this happen to us? You can’t even tell me why, can you? I’ve seen you on the news. Why haven’t you caught this fucking bastard yet? Why is …’

  But then the words collapsed under him.

  ‘We will,’ I said. ‘We’re doing everything we can.’

  Wilkinson shook his head and looked down at the floor for a moment. At the neat, plush carpet that I knew was designed to give an illusion of comfort to the interview suite because it might remind people of home. After a moment, without looking up, he said:

  ‘Do you know what Marie used to tell me about Jake?’

  I waited.

  ‘She used to say that she couldn’t wait to meet him.’

  I wanted to close my eyes. Instead, I forced myself to meet Tony Wilkinson’s gaze as he looked up at me. His face crumpled as he burst suddenly into tears. It was an awful sight and sound. The sobs seemed to rack him from head to toe, from the top of his soul to the very bottom.

  ‘And she never got to. Oh God.’

  He could barely even get the words out.
Laura and I sat very still.

  ‘She never got to meet him.’

  Thirty-Four

  IN ONE CORNER OF his shop, Levchenko keeps a small television on a stool, where he can see it from his seat behind the counter. He is sitting there now, his elbows resting on the counter, watching the press conference unfold live on the twenty-four-hour news channel.

  There has been a steady stream of customers and browsers for most of the afternoon, but for the moment the shop is empty and he is alone. Jasmina is in the back room, tidying his pans and polishing away dabs of spilled wax from the gas burner. She is more fastidious than he is. Occasionally, it drives him to distraction, but he also knows it is one of the things he would miss most about her if she was gone: that ultimately we love the rough edges of people more than the smooth surfaces. He also knows that for her, cleaning has become a way of erasing thoughts, of keeping them at bay. For him, in some strange way, it is the opposite. But they are both coping strategies. One removes; the other attempts to ignore.

  Regardless, he is glad she is otherwise occupied right now.

  That she does not have to see this.

  But then he senses Jasmina emerge from the room behind the counter. Instinctively he picks up the remote control and turns the television off, making it as natural a gesture as possible. His wife bustles past him without noticing.

  ‘You are running low on pellets,’ she says.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And red dye too. Mind you …’ she gestures around the empty shop with a flap of her arms, as though the lack of customers is another black spot she would like to clean, ‘it is not like there is any urgency.’

  ‘No.’

  He is still staring at the silent television screen. On the surface, his mind is equally blank, and by a similarly deliberate act of will. Like the television, it would take very little effort for him to bring his thoughts back to life.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Jasmina is staring at him with a curious frown. He blinks at her and, for a moment, has no idea how to answer. It is suddenly as though this woman is a stranger to him, a person he has no idea how to communicate with. The press conference on the television—the sight of the detective—has taken him back to a time when they might easily have separated, and accelerated him forward on the path they did not take, a path where she would not be here.