Down into Darkness

by David Lawrence

  ‘Has he spoken to you since he and I met?’

  ‘Oh, God, of course.’

  ‘What did he tell you?’

  ‘Pretty much everything, I expect. You think Len Pigeon might have died in Neil’s place.’

  ‘There’s a possibility.’

  ‘How much of one?’

  ‘I might have a better idea of that if I knew why Leonard Pigeon was impersonating him.’

  ‘Neil says he was just doing a job.’

  ‘I know he does. The Americans – what sort of business are they in?’

  Abigail shook her head, smiling. ‘You think I ask Neil about business?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t you? You’re not stupid.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Stella was trying each dish in turn. Everything was good. The wine was terrific. She said, ‘I never saw Len Pigeon in life. People look different in pictures… they look different when they’re dead. It seems to be generally accepted that he could be mistaken for Morgan.’

  ‘They looked alike, yes; same build too’ – she paused – ‘though I never saw Len with his clothes off. People remarked on it, you know; joked about it – did Neil send his researcher through the lobby when he couldn’t be bothered to vote?’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Convenient alibi, apart from anything else,’ Stella observed.

  ‘You’re right. Len seeing out a late-night sitting, me and Neil taking a couple of days in Paris.’

  Stella almost smiled. ‘Does his wife know?’

  ‘I don’t ask.’

  ‘Have you met her?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Another party – I was someone he’d met somewhere; she gave me a funny little damp handshake.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I think she knows, yes.’

  ‘The handshake –’

  ‘More the fact that she smiled without looking at me. What else do you want to know?’

  ‘Whether you can think of a reason why Neil Morgan might be considered a coward.’

  ‘Ah, yes, he told me about that.’ She gave a little shudder. ‘Jesus, who is this guy? He must be running round the streets foaming at the mouth.’

  ‘You might think so. It’s not like that. He’s not like that.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Profiling.’ Stella was quoting Anne Beaumont, ‘The chances are he won’t look crazy, won’t dress crazy, won’t act crazy.’ She looked round. ‘The man in the pinstriped suit over there, for instance. Him, anyone; it’s what makes sociopaths so difficult to catch: we mistake them for one of us.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Abigail said. ‘Can’t think of any reason why Neil might be thought a coward. In fact, in some ways he’s a risk-taker, certainly at a career level.’

  ‘Domestic level too,’ Stella observed.

  Abigail smiled. ‘Not really. If she does know, she’s not going to do anything about it.’

  ‘Meaning she would have by now… because you’re not the first.’

  ‘Nor the last.’

  ‘So what’s in it for you?’

  ‘I mentioned that he’s old money. Well, there’s quite a lot of old money, and Neil’s generous. He buys me nice things; we stay in nice hotels; I have a nice time.’ She smiled. ‘You see, I am a bit of a whore, aren’t I? Also, he’s fun.’

  Stella paused, her wine glass at her lip. ‘Is he?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Abigail smiled. ‘I don’t think you’ve seen him at his best. And by the way,’ she said, grinning, ‘the guy in the pinstriped suit? He’s a hedge-fund manager; he invests in the high millions. And he is crazy.’

  John Delaney was reading through his piece on Stanley Bowman and watching TV at the same time. A battle zone; a crowd; gunfire; military vehicles on a dusty road; burning cars; a line of troops edging down an empty street.

  He remembered having been on a satellite phone to Turner from the Holiday Inn in Sarajevo. Turner had said, ‘Good copy, John. It sounds like hell.’

  Delaney had been looking at a home-made cocktail being poured for him by a very pretty woman who was doing the to-camera work for a Canadian broadcaster.

  ‘It’s hell,’ he’d confirmed. The hotel had been hit a couple of times that night. There had been a rank smell of highexplosives in his nostrils, and the girl’s faux-military shirt was showing just enough of her breasts to let him know what she was thinking.

  Martin Turner, a civilian casualty.

  The boys hadn’t said much, but they’d said enough to let Maxine and Anne know that whatever they had seen would remain locked away for a while. Perhaps for ever. The women left Stevie and James in the care of Sue Chapman and took five minutes out with coffee.

  ‘It’s enough,’ Anne said. ‘You can try again if you like, but this is as far as it’ll go today.’

  Maxine nodded. ‘I think they saw him,’ she said. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘The same. But they don’t know what they saw, not really. They’ve no way of decoding it.’

  ‘It’s like a snapshot that hasn’t developed.’

  ‘Good description.’

  ‘No,’ Maxine said. ‘I mean, it’s like that for me. Those images exist somewhere in their minds; I just can’t get at them.’ She sipped her coffee and grimaced: AMIP-5 brew. ‘They saw him… Did they see everything? Did they see what he did?’

  ‘If they did,’ Anne said, ‘it’s a lifetime of recovery.’

  The boys came out of the video suite and said goodbye. James smiled at the women, but Stevie was concentrating on his Game Boy. He manipulated the controls, bringing the superhero into frame.

  Silent Wolf, out on the city streets, bringing swift justice to the evildoer.

  56

  This time Tom Davison was a voice on the phone, and Stella realized she was glad of the distance. Her next thought was: why? Is he such a danger? She remembered how things had started: his calls on police business becoming less and less official, his jokes, his flirting.

  Last Christmas. Herself and Delaney at loggerheads. Taking up Davison’s oh so obvious offer, in order to see how it would feel. The sex too good to ignore. Then leaving abruptly… the startled look in his eyes… and finding herself out on Chiswick High Road, pavements glittering with frost, on the phone to Delaney with her sense of guilt building, image by remembered image.

  ‘The forensics team dug a nine-millimetre parabellum bullet out of the ground, exactly where the major blood stain lay… as if we needed that confirmation.’

  ‘Does it tell you anything?’ Stella asked.

  ‘Tells me he was shot with a gun that takes a ninemillimetre load. They’re not unusual. Find me the gun and I’ll tell you a lot more.’

  ‘What about DNA traces?’

  ‘Well, the site was swamped with them. It’ll take a while.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘I’ll do my best. Look,’ Davison laughed, ‘we’ll find a match; it’s going to be the same guy.’

  ‘I believe you.’ The SOC photo of the killer’s signature was on the desk in front of her. She didn’t mention it to Davison; she wanted the forensics tests to be meticulous and impartial.

  ‘It’ll be him.’ A pause. ‘Stella, the other day, I wasn’t blaming you; I don’t think blame comes into it. So –’

  ‘No, I should have been more honest. I was having problems with someone. It was selfish of me.’ She stopped, but he knew there was more. ‘You… unsettled me. It felt good with you, so it also felt like one hell of a risk. Does that make sense?’

  Davison laughed. He said, ‘Oh, yes. Because fucking leads to kissing.’

  The boys in the Beamer were cruising the West End, taking it slow because the traffic was backed up, as always, solid metal wherever you looked, but also taking it slow because they were stoned, even the driver was stoned, and things were brighter, louder, funnier.

  They were sharing their music with everyone in the street and with people in a few streets beyond. One of them sat in the back seat wit
h his feet out of the open window. He was examining his new toy: a converted Brocock ME38. He didn’t need it for anything special, just street cred. He aimed it at one of the crew and fired off an imaginary round.

  The boy grabbed his heart and grimaced and died an imaginary death. They laughed. They all laughed until they hurt.

  Since Bryony’s boyfriend, previously her mother’s boyfriend, had been on the must-see list, Maxine Hewitt had been making an on/off stakeout of the local benefit offices, a duty that involved sitting in an unmarked car, pretending to be there for no particular reason, eating unwise food and trying not to notice her partner’s body odour. Her current partner was Andy Greegan. Andy had noticed the early arrival of summer, the unaccustomed heat and the city’s humidity levels, and his concession to all this was to wear a deodorant called ‘Chill’.

  Greegan had been on sandwich duty. The best he’d been able to do was cheese on white and two cartons of regular coffee. He lodged his paper carton on the dashboard, next to the enhanced away-day photo of the elusive Chris Fuller. Maxine set her sandwich aside and drank the coffee, which was already cool.

  She said, ‘No offence, Andy, but your deodorant smells like machine oil.’

  For a moment, Greegan didn’t register the remark; then he did. ‘No offence?’

  ‘Absolutely not, no. I’m sure it seemed like a must-buy at the time, but it’s clearing my sinuses. Machine oil or else drain-devil.’

  ‘It’s advertised on TV by a godlike young man with a workout body. A girl wearing three handkerchiefs slithers all over him.’

  ‘Maybe it’s an open-air deodorant. I’ve seen that ad. The young man in question is backed up to a waterfall.’

  Greegan looked mournful. ‘Or it smells better on guys that look like him.’

  ‘Or it smells the same, but girls just don’t notice when it’s a guy who looks like him.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Maxine told him. ‘I was looking at the girl.’

  ‘I could open a window.’

  ‘On Kilburn High Road?’

  ‘That guy,’ Greegan said, ‘the guy in the ad. He’s not so good-looking. It just gym-time: abs and pecs.’

  ‘The girl was hot, though.’

  ‘That’s what I was going to say.’

  Maxine laughed and took a bite of her sandwich. She said, ‘Hey, it’s him.’

  Greegan looked up, not sure, for a moment, what she meant. Then he saw a face he knew coming out of the post office on the other side of the road.

  The face on the dashboard.

  A cop’s relationship with a chis is strictly business before pleasure. In fact, pleasure doesn’t come into it.

  Frank Silano had spoken to three people, and from those conversations came the names of five likely contacts. It was a work-intensive business. He chased down the five and got rerouted to a further four. Of these, two deflected him with the same name, a matching description and the name of a pub in London Fields – which is where Silano now sat drinking a beer and asking awkward questions.

  Eventually, the man with the razored sideburns and the dated shades turned up and stood in the doorway. He looked unhappy. Silano nodded, but didn’t make a move. Sideburns left. Silano knew that his presence in the pub was making people nervous, but he also knew that Sideburns would be under instruction to solve the problem, so he let the man wait while he finished his beer.

  They went for a walk through Hackney’s blue haze. Silano said, ‘I’m told you’re the armourer. You’re the man to see’.

  Sideburns gave a little cough-laugh. ‘Yeah? Who tell you that?’

  ‘Everyone told me that.’

  ‘Everyone know jack shit.’

  ‘You sell someone a nine-millimetre weapon recently?’

  ‘You talking to the wrong man.’

  ‘I hear you sell most things. I hear this from what I consider reliable sources.’

  ‘This is people talking crap. This is people don’t know me.’

  ‘They seemed to know you pretty well.’

  ‘Got their names?’

  ‘Look,’ Silano said, ‘you can either help me out here or I could turn up at your address with a full squad, a Hatton gun and some dogs with a keen sense of smell. It’s up to you.’

  ‘I don’t know, man. I sell stuff, everyone does. Cars, mostly. TVs sometimes. I’m legal.’

  ‘Of course you are. What did he look like?’

  ‘I saw a man in that pub back there. Few days ago. He was looking for something. I told him I couldn’t help him, you know?’

  ‘Sure. What did he look like?’

  ‘People come up here, they want all kinds of stuff. Do I know them? Do I know who the fuck they are? No.’

  ‘I believe you. What did he look like?’

  ‘White man, it seem to me.’

  Silano sighed. ‘We’re running out of time,’ he said, ‘or you are.’

  They had turned off the street into a shopping mall. Sideburns stopped and leaned up against the window of a media store. Fifteen plasma screens were showing an afternoon movie in which John Wayne was taking on a regiment of gooks. Gooks died. Gooks were mown down and blown up and ploughed under.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, man, does it matter to me? What do you think? I’d give him up, no problem.’

  Silano said, ‘So go ahead.’

  ‘I think he had long hair.’ Sideburns shrugged.

  ‘It was that long ago?’

  Sideburns laughed. ‘I was stoned. Okay? That’s all there is. I was off my fucking face.’

  ‘What did he sound like?’ Sideburns shook his head. ‘Young or old?’

  ‘You want a guess? Young.’

  Silano wiped a hand across his eyes. ‘Was it a nine millimetre?’

  Sideburns said, ‘Whoever this man was, he’s fuck-nothing to me. If I knew, I’d tell you. Like I need this shit from you.’ He spread his hands. ‘I was wrecked, you know? I was nailed.’ He pushed himself off the window. ‘Don’t come with me, man. Don’t come any further.’ As he walked away, he looked over his shoulder. ‘What kind of gun?’

  ‘Nine millimetre.’

  A faint smile. ‘Yeah…’

  TV images flickered at the corner of Silano’s eye. John Wayne shooting from the hip. John Wayne winning the war.

  57

  Collier was running the briefing. Stella sat on a desk, to one side, head down, saying nothing. Collier, on the other hand, was saying everything from ‘We’re going nowhere’ to ‘Make it happen’. ‘Get results’ was also high on his list, though if he had a method for doing this, he wasn’t sharing it. The whiteboards were covered with the front pages of national tabloids, all of which, one way or another, said MAD DOG SERIAL KILLER AT LARGE – COPS WORSE THAN USELESS – EXPECT MORE DEATHS – IT COULD BE YOU AND YOUR LOVED ONES NEXT.

  The squad room was littered with crisp packets and chocolate-bar wrappers and water bottles. Bar of the day was Galaxy. Stella waited until Collier had run through his list of grievances before stepping up to say that DCs Hewitt and Greegan had arrested Chris Fuller.

  ‘As I remember,’ she said, ‘you considered him our prime suspect.’

  It was clear from the expression on Collier’s face that he didn’t appreciate Stella’s timing. He said, ‘And I wasn’t told about this because –’

  ‘Sorry, Boss.’ Stella gave the perfect imitation of a little, helpless shrug. ‘I thought I’d be giving this briefing. It was top of my agenda.’

  Stella and Harriman sat down with Chris. The air in the interview room was stale and tepid. Harriman switched on a free-standing fan that pushed the air round without releasing it. The enhanced post-mortem photograph of Bryony Dean was on the table between them. Chris had looked at it, then replaced it, face down.

  ‘You knew it was Bryony,’ Stella said; ‘the girl in the tree.’

  ‘Not at first. She just didn’t come back.’

  ‘Which is why you reported her missing.’

  �
�Yeah.’

  ‘As Elizabeth Rose Connor.’

  ‘She changed her name.’

  ‘No,’ Harriman said, ‘she didn’t change it, she used both. I expect you’re doing the same – four identities, four socialsecurity payments.’

  Chris had nothing to say on the subject.

  ‘How did you find out that it was Bryony?’ Stella asked.

  ‘She had some friends over at the Kensals, I –’

  ‘No, no…’ Harriman shook his head. ‘Don’t bother with all that. We know she was on the game, we know that you were pimping her, we know that she used to work the Strip.’

  Chris’s hand jerked on the table, as if he’d been stung. ‘I went up there looking for her. It had gone round that she was dead, that she was the one in the papers.’ He massaged his eyes with finger and thumb and didn’t speak again for a full minute. Finally, he said, ‘I didn’t like her doing that. I didn’t ask her to.’

  Harriman snorted. ‘Sure. You pimped for her, you pimped for her mother.’

  ‘Think it was simple as that?’ Chris’s voice was sharp with indignation. ‘You don’t know. What do you know? Fuck all.’

  He turned away and stared down at the floor. Stella gave Harriman a look. To Chris, she said, ‘So why did she do it? Why did she go whoring?’

  ‘She wanted things, you know, the usual.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The stuff they advertise. The stuff everybody wants.’

  ‘So it was just down to her.’

  ‘We needed money. She had something she could sell.’

  ‘Bryony was reported missing once before,’ Stella observed.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But she wasn’t really missing on that occasion, was she?’

  ‘We wanted to be together, you know how it is…’

  Harriman said, ‘I know you were shagging both the mother and the daughter.’

  Chris sighed. ‘It wasn’t like that.’

  ‘No? According to Melanie Dean, it was exactly like that.’ Harriman paused. ‘Why didn’t you just tell her that you and Bryony were going away together? Why piss about?’