The Rule

by David Jackson

  The uncertainty of it all was maddening.

  ‘Did he say where he was going after he left you? What his plans were?’

  ‘Not that I remember. Why don’t you go and ask Joey?’

  Hannah looked at Marcel, and then back at Barrington.

  ‘What?’ Barrington asked.

  ‘Joey Cobb is dead, Barrington.’

  Barrington stared at her as though expecting a follow-up – perhaps some kind of punchline.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s dead. He was murdered this weekend.’

  Barrington let out a long, drawn-out ‘Shiiiiit.’ And then: ‘Wait. Do you think I got something to do with it? Is that why you’re here?’

  ‘He was here, Barrington. You said so yourself. He was here in this flat just before he was killed. And not long after he was killed, he was cut into tiny little pieces and transported to the local tip. I hope now you can see why we need to ask you some questions.’

  Barrington became suddenly agitated. ‘Wait. Hold on a sec. This is bullshit, man. I haven’t got nothing to do with no murder. When he left my place, he was fine. He was walking and talking and in one piece. I don’t know nothing about what happened after that. Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.’

  ‘You know what I think, Barrington? I think you’re full of it. You’re trying to play us. Joey came here for a drug deal. No music, no band, no playing video games. He was doing a deal with you. And maybe that deal went wrong. He tried to rip you off, or you tried the same with him. Either way—’

  ‘No. Stop right there. You can’t do this to me, man. This is not fucking right. I am innocent. I got nothing to do with no murder. I haven’t been out of this place since Friday, ’cept maybe to go to the corner shop on Saturday morning. Ask my neighbours. Ask them about the music I’ve been playing really loud, and the computer games. Go ahead, ask them.’

  Hannah stood up. ‘We will. And then maybe we’ll come back and search your flat. One drop of blood, Barrington – that’s all it would take. We find one drop of Joey’s blood in here and you will be straight back in prison.’

  ‘Then search. Like I said before, I got nothing to hide. I did not kill Joey. Shit, man.’

  At the door, Hannah turned back to Barrington one last time.

  ‘Have you got a car?’

  ‘Yeah. Hardly ever use it, though.’

  ‘What’s the make and model?’

  ‘Nothing flashy. It’s a Vauxhall Corsa. Why?’

  ‘We’ll be looking out for it on CCTV.’

  ‘Do that. Go ahead. What I said was the truth. I’ve been here all weekend. Whoever killed Joey, it wasn’t me.’

  17

  ‘What do you think?’

  They were in a grimy café around the corner from the block of flats. When they first sat down, Hannah had asked for the table to be cleaned. The woman serving them had simply used her arm to brush all the crumbs onto the floor. The tea now in front of Hannah tasted like it had been brewing for a week. Marcel’s doughnut looked as though it could act as a serviceable doorstop. Didn’t stop him tucking into it, though.

  ‘Not how I thought it would go,’ he answered, licking his lips as thick, dark jam oozed down his chin.

  ‘No. Me neither. Lying about talking to Cobb – I expected that. Birds of a feather, et cetera. But then why not keep up the pretence? Why not simply keep insisting that he hadn’t actually seen Joey on Saturday? You know how their kind usually operate: they deny everything until we present incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, and then they come up with a new story. Barrington didn’t do that. He collapsed way too soon.’

  ‘He seemed worried that Joey might’ve already given us the information that he was there.’

  ‘But that suggests he believed Cobb was still alive.’

  ‘Could’ve been a bluff.’

  Hannah shook her head. ‘I don’t think Barrington is that quick on his feet. You saw and heard exactly what I did. Did you ever get the impression he knew Cobb was dead?’

  ‘No. In fact, when we told him about it, his reaction seemed totally genuine.’

  ‘It did. And did you notice how he didn’t seem the least bit concerned about us searching his flat or tracking his car? Why would he be like that if he’d just hacked up a body and driven it to the tip?’

  Marcel slurped his tea and returned to his doughnut. Hannah took a sip of her own tea, grimaced, then opened a sachet of sugar and poured it in. She never took sugar as a rule, but this called for desperate measures.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ she said. ‘I think that the pair of them were up to no good in that flat. Barrington is a piece of shit, and so was Joey Cobb. They were doing a deal of some kind. But in a way, that’s just another fly in the ointment.’

  ‘You mean the money and the drugs we found.’

  ‘Exactly. There is no way on this earth that Barrington Daley would have thrown that away. Some of it probably went through his hands in the first place. But even if we assume it didn’t, even if we also make the unlikely assumption that Barrington didn’t know Joey had it on him at the flat, I cannot believe that Barrington wouldn’t have searched Cobb and his belongings after killing him. He would have found the money and the drugs, and he would have kept them.’

  ‘So where does that leave us?’

  Hannah stared out of the window. She could see the upper floors of Erskine Court, a bleak column supporting even bleaker clouds.

  ‘If we give Barrington the benefit of the doubt – and I’m not suggesting for one minute that he’s totally innocent in all this – then something happened to Cobb after he left the flat. The mobile data tells us he didn’t move out of the range of the phone mast that serves Erskine Court. Admittedly, that’s a fairly big area, but one thing we do know is that he definitely didn’t go home. And yet, someone told the taxi driver that Cobb had arranged a lift with a friend.’

  ‘You think it could have been the killer who spoke to the taxi driver?’

  ‘I think it’s likely. I don’t think we’re at all far away from Joey’s murderer.’

  ‘So what’s our next step, boss?’

  ‘We start at the place Joey was last seen alive and work our way out. We try to follow in Cobb’s footsteps. Somebody somewhere must have seen him.’

  ‘You want me to arrange a door-to-door?’

  She pushed her mug to one side. ‘No time like the present. Let’s make a start.’

  She asked the café owner for the bill. While they were waiting, Hannah’s phone rang. She answered, listened, hung up.

  ‘Well, that was interesting,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The lab has found Cobb’s prints on the bags of drugs. They’ve also found some other prints on them, and on the bin liners.’

  ‘Barrington’s?’

  ‘Nope. They’re not in the system.’ She looked up at the flats again. ‘So whose are they?’

  18

  When Hannah and Marcel returned to the building – now armed with clipboards and writing pads – the youths were still in the foyer. Despite what she had said earlier, Hannah decided they had nothing to lose by asking them a few questions.

  As soon as she approached, the lads all stood in a line and put their wrists together, as if waiting to be handcuffed.

  ‘Very funny,’ Hannah said. ‘Do you lot live here?’

  ‘Depends what you mean by “live”,’ a ginger-haired lad said. He got the prize for being shorter and uglier than the rest, and was therefore probably the leader.

  ‘All right, Socrates. I wasn’t trying to start a philosophical debate.’

  ‘My name’s not Socrates. Do I look Brazilian?’

  Hannah went to explain that she wasn’t referring to the footballer, then decided it wasn’t worth the effort.

  ‘So what is your name?’

  ‘Phil.’

  ‘Phil what?’

  ‘Phil McCavity.’

  This got a laugh from his colleagues, and he puffed out h
is chest.

  ‘Are you sure it isn’t Oscar Wilde?’

  ‘No, I’ve just told you it’s—’

  ‘Never mind. Okay, Philip. Do you live here or not? And before you get all existential on me again, what I mean by that is: is your home address in this building?’

  ‘What does eggs essential mean?’

  ‘Forget the eggs, Philip. Focus your brainpower on the question.’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘So no, then.’ She scanned the other faces. ‘What about the rest of you?’

  No response.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll keep this brief. You clearly spend a lot of time here, although God knows why. Not exactly the Ritz, is it? Have you ever seen this guy here?’

  She nodded to Marcel, who began to open up an envelope he was carrying.

  ‘He was here earlier,’ the youth said. ‘With you.’

  ‘Not my detective, Philip. Try to keep your premature ejaculations in check, if you can.’

  This got an even bigger laugh from the gang. But now it was at their leader’s expense, and he didn’t appreciate it.

  Marcel slipped a photograph from the envelope, handed it to Hannah. She held it up for them all to see.

  ‘This man is Joey Cobb. Anyone recognise him?’

  She studied the gang as she passed the mugshot in front of their eyes. They remained stone-faced. The leader didn’t even focus on the image, but looked past it at Hannah.

  ‘What about you, Philip? Do you know him? Ever seen him in this building?’

  The redhead was clearly still smarting from her put-down, and she wished now she hadn’t humiliated him.

  ‘Fuck this shit,’ he said, and went to push past her.

  She grabbed him by the arm. ‘Hold on, son.’

  He tore his arm from her grasp. ‘I’m not your fucking son. I bet you can’t even have kids, can you? Any kid of yours would take one look at you and drop dead.’

  That was the trigger point.

  Until that moment, Hannah had been calm and collected. She’d had control, and everyone had known it.

  Now she lost it.

  She dropped her clipboard and photograph, then grabbed the lad by his hoodie and spun him around before slamming his back into a nearby wall. Anger surged through her body. Thoughts of violence. A need to inflict damage.

  ‘Boss! Boss!’

  She realised that Marcel had his hands on her arms, tugging her gently away from her wide-eyed victim.

  She released her hold on the lad. He seemed suddenly very young and very frightened – not of her, or the police, but of life, and what it had done to him. It saddened her that she had just added one more item to his long list of reasons to hate the world.

  The gang leader pushed himself off the wall and walked away, flipping his hood up to hide his face. His mates trailed silently after him.

  ‘You okay, boss?’ Marcel asked.

  Hannah looked at the backs of the figures leaving the building. She thought, What did I do? I had them in the palm of my hand. I had them smiling. And then I had to go and piss it all away.

  She slapped the wall. ‘Fuck!’

  Another mistake. Another stupid mistake. How many more would there be?

  Marcel gathered up the photo and her papers from the floor. ‘We can go back to the station if you like. I can get a team together for the house-to-house.’

  She thought about it, and was tempted. Maybe the office was the safest place for her. Kept away from the minor crises she seemed no longer capable of handling. Prevented from making a fool of herself in public.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I want to get this moving now. I’m convinced there’s vital information locked up in this building. Let’s go.’

  Marcel looked doubtful, but he kept his counsel. ‘Okay. How do you want to do this?’

  ‘I’ll start at the top and come down. You start at the bottom and go up.’

  ‘Going upstairs is harder.’

  ‘Privilege of rank, Marcel.’

  As she said this, she realised that a descent from the summit was probably an ideal metaphor for her career right now.

  ‘Right. See you soon, then. I hope you’ve been on a first aid course for when you find me having a heart attack on the stairs.’

  Hannah pointed along the corridor. ‘Go!’

  He went. She smiled as she heard him singing, ‘You take the high road and I’ll take the low road . . .’

  After he had disappeared through the double doors, Hannah paused for a moment in the now-deserted foyer. Half the ceiling lights didn’t work, casting a gloom over the whole area. Knowing that just above her head were dozens of people carrying on with their daily lives made the silence down here even more eerie.

  What were they doing, those people? Watching television? Having sex? Reading the newspaper? Arguing? Crying?

  And what about Barrington Daley? Was he panicking? Perhaps wondering if a net was closing in on him?

  And, she thought, is there someone up there who knows what really happened to Joey Cobb? Someone who holds a key piece of information that could crack this case wide open?

  Has to be. Even if they don’t know it themselves.

  She steeled herself. Straightened her jacket. Stay professional, she told herself. Do the job the way you were doing it for years before . . . well, just before. Some won’t talk to the police. Some will be downright hostile. Don’t let it get to you. You’ve heard it all before, countless times. Water off a duck’s back.

  She pressed the button for the lift. Heard something mechanical within the shaft getting off its arse and begin lumbering towards her, groaning with age and tiredness.

  She glanced back at the double doors to the corridor. Marcel would doubtless be inside one of the flats now, charming some lonely widow into offering him tea and biscuits. Which was fine, provided she could also tell him how she witnessed one of her neighbours hefting bin bags into their car in the middle of the night.

  Marcel, you can take a whole Victoria sponge cake from the woman if you can also come back with that information.

  The lift was taking ages. At this rate, Marcel would have covered the whole ground floor by the time she knocked on her first door.

  She checked her phone while she waited. Lots of emails and messages. She typed out a couple of quick responses.

  She heard a ping. In front of her, the lift door squealed open. She looked up from her phone.

  Tilly.

  There, in the lift. In her school uniform. Almost within touching distance.

  A sound jumped from Hannah’s lips. A cross between a sob and a yelp of joy.

  Tilly. My Tilly. You’re here.

  And then there was the crack of something slamming into the back of Hannah’s head, and she fell forwards and butted the wall, and then came another wallop, this time across the shoulders, and she dropped everything she was carrying and brought her arms up behind her and tried to scuttle away, but blow after blow rained down, and she thought she could hear a voice, somebody calling her a fucking bitch.

  And then the onslaught became too much, and the waiting blackness stepped in to claim its prize.

  19

  She awoke with a start. Blinked. Saw soft brown material and wondered where the hell she was.

  A noise behind her.

  She rolled over, her hands out to ward off further attacks.

  In front of her, a large shape jumped away, as though startled by her sudden movement.

  He’ll come right back, she thought. If I don’t move now, he’ll have me again.

  She tried to get up. Waves of pain and nausea washed through her body. She let out a groan. Tried again to rise.

  ‘No,’ said the figure. ‘You should stay there. Have a rest.’

  A man’s voice. Deep, yet surprisingly gentle.

  She blinked some more. The image of the figure came into focus. A big man. Huge. She realised she was lying on a sofa.

  I’m his prisoner, she thought. H
e’s brought me here, and nobody else knows where I am. What does he want?

  She tried once more to sit up. Something moved on her forehead. She brought a hand to it and felt cold dampness. Blood, she thought, but then she looked at her fingers and saw no redness. She reached up again and pulled a rough layer away from her head. She hoped it wasn’t her skin.

  ‘It’s a wet flannel,’ the man said. ‘For the bump. My mum does it for me when I have a bad headache.’

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

  ‘D-Daniel. Daniel Timpson. I live here. It’s my birthday soon.’

  Oh, Jesus, she thought. A crazy guy. I’m his birthday present.

  ‘Where am I? What are you going to do with me?’

  The man seemed confused. ‘I’m . . . I’m not going to do anything with you. Unless you want to. Do you want to play?’

  Do you want to play? Something only a serial killer would ask, surely? What kind of perverted games did he have in mind?

  ‘Where am I?’ she asked again.

  ‘1204 Erskine Court. I live here.’

  ‘1204 . . . The flats? I’m still in the flats?’

  ‘Yes. 1204. That’s on the twelfth floor. If you look out of the window you can see all the way to the comic-book shop. I go there a lot.’

  ‘Why did you bring me up here?’

  ‘I . . . You were hurt. The man was hitting you with a stick.’

  Daniel appeared suddenly upset at the recollection. He kept interlacing his fingers and undoing them again.

  ‘So it wasn’t you? You didn’t attack me?’

  Daniel looked appalled. ‘No! I would never do that. I don’t touch people. It’s The Rule. Although . . . although I suppose I did touch you.’

  Alarm bells sounded in Hannah’s head again.

  ‘You touched me?’

  ‘I had to, so I could pick you up. I’m sorry.’