Tooth and Claw

by Nigel McCrery

  And then there had been the expanding cloud of CS gas that had spread over the rioters. Within moments his nostrils had been prickling and he could feel a catch at the back of his throat. His eyes began to itch violently, and he had blinked several times to try and clear them. But he’d come prepared, and had managed to pull the plastic bag with a dampened handkerchief inside from his pocket and hold it over his mouth. He needed to move, and quickly. CS didn’t just get into the body through the mouth and nose – it could be absorbed through the skin, if it was moist enough – and it hurt. It really hurt, to the point where you couldn’t do anything else apart from think about how to stop it.

  Carl had been swept along with the crowd, wet handkerchief clenched tightly to his mouth. People were choking around him, and he could feel his eyes burning. A teenager in front of him stumbled and fell. Other people kicked him and stepped on him in their panicked attempts to get past. Carl bent down to try and get him back on his feet. His face was covered with a balaclava, and he pulled it off, needing to see whether he was breathing, whether his eyes were open. He was about the same age as Carl. His nose was freckled, his hair blond, and Carl suddenly had an overriding desire to smash something into his young face, disfigure it beyond recognition. It was like a scarlet wave sweeping over him, and like a swimmer too far from shore he found himself buffeted by forces beyond his control. He reached for a half-brick on the ground, fingers closing round the rough, gritty edges. He glanced up. Nobody was looking at them. The rest of the crowd were too busy looking forward at the police or back in the direction they were retreating to pay them any attention, and the sheer press of bodies would shield them from the media cameras ahead.

  Anything that happened there, in that little space, was private. Secret. Just between the two of them.

  He raised the half-brick and brought it down on the teenager’s nose. Skin cracked open revealing red, wet tissue and white bone. The kid’s hands came up to protect himself. Carl smashed the brick down again and blood spattered across the kid’s face, covering the brown freckles with crimson ones. The hands fluttered weakly. Carl raised the brick again and hammered it down on the kid’s forehead. Something seemed to give way; the smooth expanse of flesh buckled, dented, crumpled inwards.

  And then Carl dropped the brick and moved off into the crowd, expecting at any moment to feel a hand on his shoulder. But nothing came.

  Nothing ever came.

  He felt his breathing returning to normal, and his heartbeat gradually slowing. There was no sound from outside – the near-storm appeared to have abated – but it was still dark. Dawn was some time away.

  Carl let himself sink back down into the sofa’s warm, slightly damp embrace. He knew he should head for bed, or at least check on his father, but the effort of getting up and climbing the stairs seemed far too hard. He closed his eyes and let himself slip backwards into a restless and thankfully dreamless sleep.

  Morning came slowly and unwillingly. When Carl finally awoke the sun was casting a hard-edged light through the windows and there was no sound outside save the singing of the birds. He lay for a while, mind blank, and then forced himself to get up. He had things to do. He had people to kill.

  His head was muzzy, and he slowly made himself a cup of coffee, having to take each action in turn and think it through carefully – switch kettle on, take top off jar of coffee, put spoon in jar, transfer granules to cup, wait until kettle boiled, pour water into cup. The mechanical movements calmed him down, and the musky smell of the coffee cleared the mists from his head. He needed to focus. He needed to think clearly if he was going to select a place and a victim for his improvised explosive device.

  Where to hide it? He wasn’t aiming to cause mass panic, and neither was he aiming to cause large numbers of casualties. This wasn’t terrorism, after all. No, he just wanted to commit a murder, a single murder. But it didn’t particularly matter whose murder it was, except that it had to meet certain criteria of age, size and sex and be done remotely, at a distance. He didn’t need to know their name; just see their face before he made the final call.

  For a while, as he stood at the kitchen counter, staring blindly out of the window, he considered leaving the device in a supermarket toilet, but they tended to be cleaned on a regular basis and any suspicious package would be spotted and the supermarket evacuated. Perhaps he could bury the device by the side of a road. If he chose his location carefully he could watch from cover and trigger the bomb as a car passed by. The problem was that he would only have a split second to see the driver before he pressed the button, and the vagaries of the various network providers in the UK meant that he wouldn’t quite know how long it would take for the call to be connected to the mobile phone attached to the explosive. And there was no guarantee that the explosion would actually kill the driver – it might cause them to swerve or crash, but the sudden deployment of an airbag, or just a lucky combination of circumstances, might save their lives. And that would destroy his careful pattern. He could place the bomb in a lay-by and wait until a driver pulled off the road to make a call, check a map or just relieve themselves, but it could take hours of waiting until the right person turned up – the person who best fitted his criteria. The problem was that he needed to kill someone in the open, but be able to separate them from the crowd, identify them.

  What about a car park? He could place the device in a bush, or bury it in the ground in one of the areas that separated the lines of parked cars, then wait in his own car until the right person parked beside the device and stepped out. It might take a while, but he was used to waiting. He could survive a few hours in a warm car with no problems, as long as he had a bottle or something to urinate into. Perhaps he could find a shopping centre or outlet village. There was bound to be a wide selection of potential victims there.

  Something was bothering him about the car park idea. He sipped at his coffee, mulling the idea over. Security was likely to be an issue: there would be cameras covering the parking area, looking for car thieves, and there were likely to be security guards on patrol. And someone who sat in their car for several hours without leaving or moving was likely to attract attention, if only because people would think he was ill or suicidal or dead. No, despite the opportunities for selecting the ideal victim, the car park wouldn’t work.

  Something else was tugging at the edges of his mind: a potential idea that had spun off from thinking about the car park. What about a railway station? It would have to be fairly open, so that he could see the platform from various locations, but the advantage was that people usually stood still, waiting for their train. He wouldn’t be catching someone in momentary transition. The device would have to be hidden quite carefully, but there were usually plenty of opportunities at a station: rubbish bins, wheelie bins, flower beds, those folding access ramps for disabled passengers that were usually left upright by a pillar. And cars with people sitting in them were rarely remarked on in station car parks; people waited for spouses, partners or friends all the time. He would have to choose the right time of day, of course – he wanted to target an individual, not a crowd, but as long as he avoided the peaks of rush hour he should be okay.

  He lifted his cup to take another sip of coffee, but it was cold. He poured the dregs away into the sink. Where was the best station? Termini and major interchanges were out: he would be spotted placing the device, and there were likely to be too many passengers waiting for trains. He needed somewhere smaller, but somewhere that either had a large car park or was overlooked by another building to which he would be able to gain easy and unnoticed access. There was a particular station he remembered, near Braintree. He had travelled through it a couple of times, huddled anonymously in the corner of a carriage. It had a shopping centre of some kind just across from the station. If he could get up on the roof, he could command a perfect view of the platform.

  He needed to conduct a reconnaissance of the area. Carl placed the coffee mug decisively on the counter and headed out of the
kitchen, towards the outbuilding where he kept his stuff.

  Bypassing the pine table with its wires and tools, Carl went into the second room. In it, on a couple of scavenged school desks, were two computers with 17-inch LCD screens – one Windows-based, one Mac – five printers, a card-encoder, an embossing machine and several piles of paper of various sizes. One of the computers was connected to a high-definition webcam that was aimed at a bare stretch of wall that Carl had painted white, as a conveniently neutral background.

  On top of the filing cabinets were more animal dioramas made out of the dried-up corpses of creatures which Carl had found – or killed – out in the salt marshes. Unlike the ones in the outer room, which represented creatures in their natural habitats, Carl thought of these as more like Beatrix Potter fantasies of the ways animals would act if they had human characteristics and were subject to the same inexplicable rages. There was a rather dowdy fox, its pelt faded from red to dull beige, crumpled on the ground; a small replica knife plunged to the hilt between its visible ribs. Next to it, behind glass, was a cat, limbs contorted in the throes of arsenic poisoning. And there were more: two mice, one delicately strangling the other; a badger with its head messily removed; a seagull whose breast-bone was marred by a ragged bullet hole.

  In pride of place was a box containing Carl’s latest creation: a rat lying on a blue silk cushion, back legs wired together and front legs spread wide, the skin of its front left leg stripped back to the bone.

  It was his homage to Catherine Charnaud, but soon he would replace it with another one, just as soon as he had planted his bomb and watched to see who was unlucky enough to be passing by when he triggered it …

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘Where were you between eight o’clock last night and three this morning?’

  ‘I told you, I was trainin’ with the team. Ask any of ‘em. Ask the coach, he’ll tell you.’

  Mark Lapslie sat in the office at the back of his cottage and listened to the two voices emerging from the speakers of his computer; a Pinteresque dialogue that flickered back and forth between the grapefruit harshness of Emma Bradbury’s voice and the cardboard sullenness of Catherine Charnaud’s boyfriend.

  ‘When did you start the training?’

  ‘Five o’clock.’

  ‘And when did you finish?’

  ‘Ten o’clock.’

  ‘It was dark at six. How did you manage to train in the dark?’

  ‘The floodlights was on, weren’t they?’

  ‘You tell me. Why did the training start so late?’

  ‘They was usin’ the ground for some competition game or somethin’. We couldn’t get on till it was finished.’

  Lapslie could picture him, just based on the Essex accent that made the boy sound like he was speaking through a blocked nose. Or, more likely, a broken one. Face probably good-looking, in a coarse kind of way; hair cut close to his scalp; ears slightly cauliflowered from too many rucks on the pitch and off. Oswald Boateng suit over a Ben Sherman shirt. No tie.

  ‘So what did you do after the training finished?’

  ‘We went clubbin’.’

  ‘Which club?’

  ‘China Blue in Romford.’

  ‘Anyone see you there?’

  Smugness replaced the sullenness. ‘Everyone saw us there.’

  The interview had taken place the afternoon of the day before, after Lapslie and Emma had returned from the mortuary. Lapslie had not sat in on it as he knew from experience that the taste of the two voices building up in that small room would make him feel sick. Instead, Emma had copied the tape onto computer and emailed it through to him. Now, in the stillness of the hours before dawn, he could listen to it without being distracted. Listening for the sweet, tropical taste of lies, and not finding any.

  ‘What time did you leave the club?’

  ‘Dunno. Ask the taxi driver.’

  ‘What’s your best guess?’

  ‘What?’ He sounded confused; the dialogue slipping off the expected rails.

  ‘Was it still dark? Was the club closing? What did it say the last time you looked at your watch?’

  A vague sound as the boyfriend shifted in his seat. ‘It was prob’ly around half three in the mornin’.’

  ‘So you got a taxi home. What happened then?’

  ‘Then I found her, didn’t I? All cut up and …’

  Grief had its own flavour. The boyfriend’s voice hadn’t obviously changed in tone, but suddenly it tasted to Lapslie of tonic water and bitter lemon. He winced. If he’d still been in the room at that point, he probably would have thrown up at the sheer intensity.

  ‘Was there an argument?’ Emma’s voice asked. ‘Did she want to know why you were back so late?’

  ‘She was dead.’ Flat, but flavoured with so much grief that Lapslie felt his mouth puckering up. ‘She was dead when I got there. And you know somethin’? When you find out who did it, they ain’t goin’ to survive to the end of their trial. That I can promise you.’

  Lapslie reached out and clicked on the screen button that stopped the playback. He’d heard enough. Emma had already told him that the boyfriend had maintained his innocence all the way through, but Lapslie had needed to hear it for himself. And grief that intense couldn’t be faked, but it could be redirected. Perhaps the boyfriend had discovered that Catherine Charnaud was having an affair with someone and killed her in a fit of anger. The subsequent grief would be genuine, but didn’t prove anything.

  All in all, the boyfriend was looking like a good choice. Statistically, most murders were carried out by someone known to the victim. Lapslie made a note to investigate his background further. Any violent incidents, fights, childhood pets that might have died or gone missing … it was all grist to the mill.

  He became aware that his mobile phone was ringing on the desk beside the keyboard: Bruch’s 1st violin concerto. Usually, during the day, he set it to vibrate rather than ring, but there was no guarantee at night that it would wake him up if he was asleep. He had tried it once or twice, but had woken up to find the mobile on the floor with a message on the screen saying that he had three missed calls. The vibrations had obviously caused it to jitter across the bedside table before it had fallen off, all without waking him, and in his job Lapslie needed to be on call at all times.

  ‘Lapslie,’ he said into the mobile.

  ‘Boss? It’s Emma.’

  ‘I was just listening to the interview. I wanted to ask you something—’

  ‘It’ll have to wait. I’ve just had the chief on the phone again. There’s been an explosion at a railway station in Braintree, just before rush hour. One confirmed casualty. Police are already on the scene, but Rouse wants you to provide top cover.’

  ‘Top cover?’ Lapslie shook his head. ‘Why do they need top cover for an explosion?’

  Emma paused. ‘Not a gas-main explosion. A bomb explosion. Someone planted a bomb at a railway station.’

  Lapslie felt his train of thought suddenly and judderingly switch onto a divergent track. ‘A bomb?’ he repeated stupidly. ‘In Braintree?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said slowly. ‘A bomb. In Braintree.’

  ‘A terrorist bomb?’

  ‘Too early to tell. Don’t you listen to the radio?’ She caught herself. ‘No, of course you don’t. Stupid. Anyway, nobody’s claimed responsibility.’

  Lapslie sighed. ‘I ought to feel flattered that Rouse keeps calling you so that you can give his bad news to me. I take it you told him that we were working on another case?’

  ‘I did. He said that this one needs sensitive handling, and he doesn’t trust anyone else to do it apart from you. We’re going to have to run both cases in parallel – the Charnaud murder and this bombing.’

  ‘And you also reminded him that I’m physically unable to stand too much noise, and a bomb explosion at a train station is just about as noisy as it gets?’

  ‘I did say something along those lines.’

  ‘And?’

 
‘And he mentioned something about getting you seconded to a study into security at football grounds. A hands-on study.’

  ‘He’s trying to get me back into harness, isn’t he?’

  Emma’s citrus voice took on a buttery flavour of sympathy. ‘It does look that way, boss.’

  ‘Okay. I take it the army’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal Team are at the scene?’

  ‘They apparently turned up half an hour ago. Long way to come, they said. They’re in the process of checking the station for other devices.’

  ‘How long will that take?’

  She made a noncommittal noise. ‘They have to go through a set list of things. There’s something called a “soak time”, which is the amount of time that they leave an electronic timer for before they can be sure it’s got to zero. They estimate another hour or so before they can declare the place clear.’

  ‘Understood. How’s the victim?’

  ‘Pronounced dead at the scene by a local doctor who happened to be waiting for a train, but apparently there wasn’t much doubt. Waiting for the pathologist to turn up now.’

  ‘Okay. Which station?’

  ‘Braintree Parkway.’

  He thought for a second. ‘I can be there within the hour,’ he said, ‘traffic allowing. Is the station closed?’

  ‘Yeah, and one line is powered down, but the fast line is still working. It’s not making us popular. They’re just ramping up to rush hour. Rush hour there being like Happy Hour: it lasts for two hours or more.’

  ‘It’s not our job to be popular. Make sure nobody opens the station up until after we arrive.’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  ‘I’ll see you there.’

  The roads were largely clear on the way from Chelmsford to Braintree. Once or twice Lapslie was becalmed behind a lorry trundling along the narrow country roads, but lessons learned during his advanced driving course several years before allowed him to overtake safely. Rather than swing out from behind the lorries on long stretches of road and hope that nothing was coming the other way, he held back and used bends in the road to allow him to look along the inside of the lorries as he followed them round. When the road visible round the bend was straight and clear, he moved out and zoomed past them, feeling the effortless brawn of the Saab’s engine.