by James Oswald
I’m just about to give up my search and go to Shami’s for a kebab, like I should have done first, when there’s a light knock at the door. My immediate instinct is to hide, which just goes to show how much fun the past few months have been. The lights are on in the front room and hall though, so it’s not as if I can pretend there’s nobody here. Instead, I approach the front door cautiously, and peer through the little glass peephole to see who’s there.
‘Con? You in there, child?’
Through the fish-eye lens, I see the distorted form of my downstairs neighbour, Mrs Feltham. She’s taken a step back to look in through the window, but I can see she’s holding something small and tupperware shaped in her hands. I rattle the chain from its slot and haul open the door to welcome her.
‘Mrs F. I wondered who’d drop round first.’
It’s a stupid thing to say, really. None of my other neighbours have ever done much more than nod to acknowledge my existence in all the years I’ve lived in this place. Mrs Feltham, on the other hand, took me under her wing almost the day I arrived. She helped me when I most needed it, and cooks the most fearsome curries you have ever tasted. I’ve every hope one of them is in the plastic container she’s brought with her, although now I think about it, I haven’t got anything to go with it.
‘There you are. Thought I heard you come back, only then the alley was full of them police officers. What’s that all about then?’
It surprises me that she doesn’t already know. Maybe she does, and is just asking because to say nothing would be odd. I tell her about the boy, skipping over the exact nature of his injuries. After a minute or so I realise I should have asked her in, both because it’s polite and because what little heat the wheezy old boiler had begun to generate is now tumbling out into the winter night.
‘And you’ve no idea who he is?’ Mrs F asks before I can suggest she steps inside.
‘No. Not yet. My boss – well, sort of boss – was here. He didn’t say much, but I get the impression this isn’t the first time something like this has happened on his patch.’ It sounds a bit corny even as I say it. DCI Bain’s team are part of the National Crime Agency. Their patch is the whole of the UK – further afield if necessary. If I’m lucky I might even get to join them. That’s if I decide I want to. Still a work in progress, that.
‘Sounds like you right back in the thick of it, girl. Here.’ Mrs F thrusts both hands towards me, the tupperware box held between them. ‘Made it fresh this morning. My boys are coming round later, but they won’t miss a little bit, and you look like you need feeding up.’
I take the curry from her, too grateful to even pretend to protest. It’s still warm, and I can smell the spices despite the container. ‘Thank you, Mrs F. I’d invite you in, only I’ve no tea or coffee yet.’
‘Don’t you worry yourself about that, girl. You go eat your curry now before it gets cold. It’s good to see you back. Place has been so dull without you.’
I open my mouth to say something, not quite sure what, but she just smiles, waves me silent, then turns and walks away.
3
I’m early to the station the next morning, yawning from a sleepless night. The flat had warmed up soon enough, and Mrs Feltham’s curry had helped in that respect too. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the young lad lying beside the bins. Who was he? Why was he there? Who had beaten him up so badly, and why those specific injuries? It wasn’t random aggression to cut someone’s tongue out and castrate them, after all. These thoughts and the constant worry about having my name plastered over the news again fought with each other as I stared at my bedroom ceiling and tried to tune out the city sounds that had once been such a comfort to me. As dawn had begun to pick out more detail in the room, I’d given up the struggle, showered, dressed and gone in search of coffee. Somehow that quest had turned into a long walk and a bus ride across the city until I found myself back where I used to work.
If I’d thought my absence over the past few months would have cleared the air of hostility in the station, it took no time at all to be disabused of the idea. I probably should have expected it from the way the duty sergeant barely said a word to me as he buzzed me through the security door, but surly duty sergeants are hardly anything new. The few uniformed officers I recognise as I make my way through the station stare at me with undisguised malice. For a moment I worry that I’ve come a bit too casual, but there are other detectives more scruffy than me. It’s only when I hear a constable I barely know mutter under his breath as he passes me, and distinctly hear the words ‘some fucking nerve’, that I realise there’s a problem that needs attending to.
‘You say something, Peterson?’ I stop and turn back to face him. Watch as he takes two steps, slowing, deciding whether he’s going to answer. Finally he makes up his mind.
‘I said, you’ve got some fucking nerve showing your face in here, Fairchild.’ His voice rises as he speaks, the blood flushing his cheeks red. He clearly has anger management issues.
‘And why’s that, exactly?’ I match his growing agitation with studied calm, but I hold my ground as he takes two swift paces up to me, standing too close for comfort.
‘Half the bloody unit quit or got fired because of you. Good coppers lost their pensions. Some of them are facing charges. You any idea how short-staffed we are? Knife crime’s up, drug dealing’s up, everything’s going to hell out there, and what little respect we had disappeared the moment you . . .’
He tails off, rage spent. Or his brain’s finally caught up with his lack of logic. They always shoot the messenger, never listen to the message. ‘You really want someone to shout at, Colin, go find some of those good coppers you’re so fond of. If they’d not been on the take, none of this would be happening. If one of our own hadn’t shot Pete Copperthwaite right here . . .’ I reach out and tap him on the forehead, between the eyes. ‘Then maybe your job wouldn’t be quite so shitty as it is. You got a problem with that, go take it up with ex-Detective Superintendent Bailey. ‘Kay?’
His eyes cross slightly as he looks at my fingertip, then he focuses on my face again. I’d hoped reason might have prevailed, but from the sight of him I fear I may have been too optimistic. He’s about to say something else when a voice behind me interrupts us both.
‘Fairchild. My office. Now.’
I don’t need to turn to know that it’s DCI Bain. PC Colin Peterson glowers at me as if to say this isn’t over yet, so I give him my best cheery smile, then let him slink off with his tail between his legs. On the outside I’m calmness personified, but inside my gut is churning. I’d not thought much about the reception I’d get when I came back to work, but if this is what I’ve got to look forward to, I’m not sure I want to come back at all.
‘You’re early.’ Bain checks his watch as he speaks, a slim gold thing that looks expensive but probably isn’t. ‘I said eight o’clock.’
‘Couldn’t sleep, sir. After that poor lad last night. Any news on him?’
‘He’s in intensive care. Lost a lot of blood and his injuries are badly infected. Touch and go whether he’ll survive, and even if he does there’s no telling what state he’ll be in.’ Bain walks around a desk that’s more clutter than surface, slumps into his seat and runs a hand through his thinning grey hair. I stand not quite at attention, but at least with a straight back. No point pissing him off too much. Not yet.
‘His injuries seemed quite specific. Any idea why someone would do that to him?’
Bain picks up a report folder, and for a moment I think he’s going to chuck it across the desk for me to read. But I’m still on suspension, nothing more to do with this case than a bystander. The report is just a prop, something for him to fiddle with while he decides how much he’s prepared to tell me. I give him the time he needs to make up his mind. It’s not as if I’ve anything better to do right now, and in here I’m not getting hate-filled glares from my so-called coll
eagues.
‘What do you know about muti?’ he asks eventually. For a moment I’m surprised, but then it starts to make a horrible sense. I have to suppress a cold shiver as the implications spider out in my thoughts.
‘Tribal medicine. Spirit healing. Practised in large areas of south and west Africa. Mostly rubbish, but then so is homeopathy and you can get that on the NHS these days.’
Bain goes back to playing with his report folder, but he doesn’t manage to hide the raised eyebrow.
‘That’s the harmless side of it, anyway,’ I continue. ‘There’s folk who believe you can gain strength or good fortune by taking it from others. And by taking it, I mean by killing them, drinking their blood, eating other body parts or just having them as trophies. That’s what we’re dealing with here, isn’t it? And I’m guessing he’s not the first one either.’
Bain puts the folder back down again, flips it open. The first page is a photograph that I can’t see properly from where I’m standing. It looks like a body, dark skin and torn clothing, brown earth strewn with rubbish.
‘He’s the first one we’ve found who’s been still alive.’
‘How many before now?’
‘You’re not part of this team, Fairchild.’ Bain leans his elbows on the desk, hands together almost in prayer. ‘The only reason I’m telling you anything at all is because it happened on your doorstep. That said, we’ve had six bodies turn up in the past three months. Seven including yesterday. All young men – boys really. Mostly black like the one you found last night, but not all of them. Some have been missing eyes, some tongues. A couple of them had been castrated like our survivor. Two had been drained of almost all their blood.’ He leafs through the pictures in the folder as he speaks, still keeping them too far away for me to see properly. I’m not about to complain.
‘And this is all happening here, in London?’
Bain shakes his head. ‘No. It’s all over. Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool. This one was Cardiff.’ He finally stops flipping the pages and turns the folder around for me to get a better look. A young man lies on his back, surrounded by garbage and forensic tags. Dried blood cracks on his cheeks in tear stains, but it’s the ragged hole in his naked chest that makes me glad I only had coffee for breakfast. ‘He’s missing his heart.’
The silence that stretches on after this last revelation is uncomfortable to say the least. I’m beginning to wish Bain had offered me a seat, or maybe given me a little less detail. He toys with the corner of the topmost photograph, and I can tell he’s not really looking at it.
‘Is there anything I can do?’ I ask when it feels like someone really should say something. He almost startles at my voice, as if he’d forgotten I was here. When he looks up at me, it’s with a puzzled expression.
‘Do?’ I can see him considering the implications of the question, but he quickly dismisses them. ‘No, there’s nothing you can do, Fairchild. You’re suspended, remember? And your team’s been disbanded anyway. You’ll be reassigned once the trials are out of the way. Best you can do is go home and keep your head down.’
‘But . . .’ The word is out before I can stop myself. The past few months have left me out of practice, and I was never that good with authority anyway.
‘But nothing.’ Bain slaps the folder shut, pushes it away as he stands up. The effect would be more imposing if he were taller than me, but I’ve got a good few inches on him and I wore boots with heels today. I take a step back anyway. Nobody likes a bollocking.
‘I should probably never have told you anything about this,’ he continues. ‘It’s only because you found that young lad and called it in quickly. That and you’re a police officer. But that’s as far as it goes.’
‘Yes, sir.’ I nod my understanding, turn and walk to the door. He waits until I’ve opened it before speaking, as I knew he would. His words are pretty much what I was expecting too.
‘Don’t mess with this, Constable. Not if you know what’s good for you.’
DCI Bain’s parting words stay with me as I leave the station and set off towards home. He had to tell me not to get involved; I can quite understand that. Even if he’s working out of that station, he’s NCA and this is a nationwide operation. I’m a detective constable in the Met, on suspension while Professional Standards look into last year’s fuck-up. And I’m going to stay that way until I’ve given whatever evidence is necessary in the various trials that are going to come out of that. If – when – I am finally reinstated, who knows what my job will be? I don’t seem to be terribly popular in my old nick, judging by the reception I got from Constable Colin Peterson, and I can’t help remembering the look the duty sergeant gave me. I’ve seen folk embrace dog mess on their shoes more fondly.
On the other hand, Bain showed me the details. Six young men, seven now. He didn’t have to do that, could just as easily have had me sit in an interview room and give a statement to a junior constable, like any other citizen helping the police with their enquiries. I fully expected to have to give someone a statement anyway, and the fact that I haven’t seems odd. Maybe I’ll get home to a message on the answering machine telling me to come back in again.
Bemused, I stick my hand in my pocket and pull out my mobile. No new texts from anyone at work, although my aunt wants to know if I’ve arrived safely. I tap a quick reply, really should have called her last night but circumstances conspired to make me forget.
It’s only as I go to put the phone away that I realise where I am. Or where I’m close to, more accurately speaking. I don’t know what hospital they took the young lad to last night, but there’s a very good chance it was the one I’m just a few hundred metres away from. A quick call to one of the few contacts at work still talking to me confirms it. He’s in intensive care and still unconscious. Still unidentified, too.
Standing at the entrance to the hospital, I pause for long enough to know that it’s a really bad idea, going inside. I have nothing to gain but sated curiosity, and everything to lose. But I can still see the young man as I found him, half curled up, trash pulled over and around him like dirty sheets and blankets. Was he hiding from whoever had done those horrible things to him? Escaped from their clutches, yet too weak, too badly injured to get help? Or was he simply discarded there by his tormentors, along with the rest of the trash? Were they so confident he wouldn’t live long that they didn’t feel it necessary to finish him off? Did they think he was already dead? I need to see him again, see his face cleaned up. I need to understand.
4
You can’t be an officer in the Met for the best part of a decade and not spend some time in hospitals. London has more than its fair share of them, and quite often the job involves dealing with people who’ve ended up in Accident and Emergency. I’ve made friends with a few nurses down the years, and even had a bit of a fling with a junior doctor that’s probably the closest thing I’ve ever had to a serious relationship. He didn’t work here, fortunately, and neither of us were big on commitment to anything other than the job, so it didn’t last. I could never have been a doctor’s wife anyway; it would have pleased my parents too much.
Reception is busy as ever, a handful of harassed admin workers struggling to cope with a workload that twice their number couldn’t hope to do properly. That’s probably why the young man I speak to takes it on trust that I am a detective, and directs me towards the intensive care ward without asking to see my warrant card. My luck holds out when I reach the corridor leading to the unit itself, in the form of a familiar face complete with welcome smile.
‘Hey, Con. It’s been a while.’
Maggie Jennings is a nurse I got to know well enough back when I was going out with Dr Andrew Walters. She was part of a group who used to hang out with Drew, possibly had a thing for him although she never said. Of all of that lot, she’s the one I got on with the best, and as I see her, the whole uncomfortable unravelling of that relationship c
omes back to me like a drowning wave.
‘Hey, Mags.’ I try to smile, but probably look like a lunatic. ‘How’s things?’
‘Oh, you know how it is. Always busy.’ She has a clipboard under one arm and isn’t wearing a standard nurse’s uniform, I notice now. So much for being a trained detective. ‘I took you up on your advice, by the way. Jury’s still out on whether it was a good idea or not.’
‘Advice?’ I don’t recall giving her any advice, but then it’s been a few years.
‘Yeah. Applied for med school. See me, I’m a junior doctor now.’ She smiles once she’s said it, but it’s a tired smile. The slump of her shoulders and bags under her eyes tell of too much to do and too little sleep.
‘That’s great, Mags. Go you.’ I’m not sure what else to say, and the silence lingers awkwardly between us.
‘I take it you’re here about the young lad they brought in yesterday?’ she asks after a while. I nod my head just enough for her to go on.
‘He’s in a bad way, poor kid. Whatever they used to cut out his tongue, it wasn’t very sharp. Probably used the same blade down below, too. We’ve got him stabilised for now, but I’m not holding out too much hope for him ever waking up.’
‘Can I see him?’
‘I guess so. He’s in one of the clean rooms though, so just through the glass. Not as if there’s any point getting any closer. He’s not going to be telling you anything, after all.’
She points me in the right direction, then darts off with a ‘we must catch up sometime.’ Part of me thinks it might be nice to have friends again, to do things that aren’t entirely tied up with work. But I know the chances of me calling her, or of her meaning it when she suggested I do, are very slim indeed.
True to Maggie’s word, I find the young man – boy, really – in an isolation room. I can’t go in, don’t actually want to, but I can see him well enough. Unconscious, he’s propped up in bed, hooked to a saline drip, a tube in one nostril. Wires trail from his body to several machines, blinking their quiet readouts as they stand vigil around him. He’s been cleaned up, at least, the blood gone from his face, his tight-curled hair washed of the muck and rubbish from around the back of my apartment block. If anything he looks even younger now than he did at the scene. So small and vulnerable. Who the fuck did this to him? Why?
