Let The Bones Be Charred

by Andy Maslen

  ‘We’re just down the hall, in Bevin, if you’d like to come with me. Good day so far?’

  ‘Oh, you know, the usual. Committee meetings, staff meetings. Meetings with local people. Meeting with LGBTQ campaigners angry about attacks on trans people. Basically, committees and meetings. You?’

  She smiled, a tight-lipped expression he didn’t think signalled a great deal of humour.

  ‘Oh, you know, the usual. Keeping Roly out of trouble. Fighting off the right.’

  ‘You mean those fascists in the English Defence League?’

  ‘Don’t be daft. I mean our right. The bloody crypto-Tories in the Party.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Totally. Backsliders.’

  They arrived at the white-painted door to a committee room labelled on an aluminium plaque, ‘Bevin’.

  Fawcett pushed the door open and stepped inside. Morgan followed. Sitting at the end of the long white-surfaced table was Roland ‘Roly’ Fletcher. The new Labour leader.He looked more corporate than his predecessor. Clean-shaven, dark business suit, mid-brown hair cut short and parted on the left. But Morgan knew it was all a disguise to reassure the City and the right-wing media. Fletcher was a proper leftist with a radical agenda.

  Fletcher stood and extended his hand. The two men shook and Morgan noted how dry Fletcher’s hand was. Resented the fact, since his own was hot and slick with sweat. He also noticed the flicker of disgust that passed across Fletcher’s face, though it was gone in a split-second. Bast– No. Smile. Be cool.

  ‘Thanks for making the time to see me, Roland.’

  Fletcher smiled for the first time.

  ‘Please, call me Roly.’

  ‘Roly,’ Morgan said, sitting.

  ‘I’ve asked Kendra to take a few informal notes. Not minutes, by any means. Just to help me remember what we talk about.’

  Morgan forced himself to smile at Fawcett.

  ‘Of course. No problem.’

  ‘Right. Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? You’ve been selected as official Labour candidate for mayor. The election’s not for a couple of years, so we do still have a little bit of time in hand,’ he said, then paused.

  Morgan realised it was for him to acknowledge the witticism. He smiled, dutifully. Fletcher continued speaking, in his measured way, not stressing any particular words, as if his vaunted passion for radical equality even extended to his own speech patterns.

  ‘I need to know that you’re one hundred per cent loyal to Party ideals and policies.’

  ‘Of course. That goes without saying.’

  ‘Actually, it doesn’t,’ Fawcett said, ‘But it’s sweet you think that.’

  Struggling to bite back a smart rejoinder, Morgan turned away from Fawcett so he was facing Fletcher directly.

  ‘As I said, I am cut from the same cloth as you, Roly. Your ideals are mine.’

  ‘Good. Good. Now, how about the backstory?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You! Your history.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Obviously, we’ve had a good poke around in your CV and haven’t found anything untoward. Not that I would have expected to, of course, but this is a sensitive appointment, and a crucial one, so we have to be careful. No, what I want to know is whether there are any skeletons in your closet that will come tumbling out once the media circus and the Tories’ dirty tricks department start ferreting around.’

  Morgan locked his gaze onto Fletcher’s. And saw, reflected back to him in those pale-blue eyes, the women. Crystal. Shanisse. Roxy. Dannii. Mindy. And the most recent one. Arianna. So many women. So much young, springy, compliant flesh. So much pain.

  ‘They can shake the closet as hard as they like. The only thing that might fall out is an old copy of the Little Red Book. But I’m happy to defend that.’

  ‘Yes, well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Tell me, what do you think about Remi Fewings?’

  Shit! The killer question. How do we fight a mixed-race Tory?

  ‘That’s a very good question. With her…background…it’s hard to play our usual cards. I mean it’s not exactly a feat of investigative journalism to point out that our front bench is whiter than theirs. And I’m white myself, obviously,’ he added, as if it wasn’t blindingly obvious to Roly and Kendra.

  ‘So the race card is out, at least as a lead. But don’t forget, Craig, that whatever the colour of her skin, Remi Fewings can hardly claim to be in touch with the daily concerns of people of colour living and working in London.’

  Morgan thought of the most recent social media spat involving his opponent, the incumbent mayor. She’d been called out for speaking dismissively of black Londoners after she’d been recorded at a private dinner saying ‘they’ needed to ‘get off their arses and start working hard, like the Asians. Bettering themselves’.

  ‘I’m thinking we play the law and order card,’ he said. ‘Never mind the colour of Remi’s skin, look at knife crime. Look at hate crimes. Look at the murder statistics, for God’s sake! You saw the reports in the media from February. London had more murders than New York. We should crucify her over it. After all, if there’s one thing the Tories have always been able to claim as their natural territory, it’s law and order.’

  Fletcher pursed his lips. He looked sideways at Fawcett. Morgan watched the interplay of facial expressions between them. Tried to decode them. What the hell were they saying to each other with their raised eyebrows and pinched lips?

  ‘What do you think, Kendra?’ Fletcher asked, finally.

  She nodded.

  ‘I think Craig has a point. It’s time we went beyond race as a vote-winner. Let’s hit them where it hurts.’

  13

  TUESDAY 14TH AUGUST 2.30 P.M.

  Garry turned into the rear entrance to Wandsworth Police Station. He parked in one of the marked bays and followed his boss out of the car. Detective Inspector Mark Hellworthy met Stella and Garry on the station’s ground floor and showed them up to the incident room they’d hastily thrown together after discovering Niamh Connolly’s body the previous Friday.

  Nice-looking bloke, Stella thought as he introduced himself. Early forties, blond hair cut short and parted haphazardly on the left. Deep-set blue eyes and a mouth that appeared to be permanently on the verge of a smile. No signs of over-fondness for the booze, either, the perennial risk of working in CID. His eyes were clear, his cheeks unflushed, his gut well under control beneath a white shirt open at the neck.

  The Wandsworth CID office smelled like every other detectives’ haunt Stella had ever been in. Fast food and coffee, a heady mixture of aftershave and perfume and, underneath, the faint aroma of bodies owned by people working too hard and too long to get to a shower as often as they’d have liked to.

  The searing heat outside didn’t help; without air conditioning the open-plan space had become heated to the temperature of a sauna. All the open windows did was admit pre-heated air.

  ‘Thanks for referring it to us,’ Stella said, when they were seated at Hellworthy’s desk. ‘I know it’s hard to let a juicy case go.’

  Hellworthy pulled his mouth to one side and shrugged.

  ‘We get our fair share of murders and, to be honest, if it was a straightforward domestic, or maybe a street fight, we’d have dealt with it here no problem. But you saw the crime scene pictures. Well, it was hardly your common-or-garden kill, was it? No. On balance I think I’d sooner see you guys take the heat from the media.’

  Stella smiled. ‘Jesus! If I take any more heat I’m going to melt.’

  Hellworthy returned the smile, with interest. ‘I’m sure you’re used to keeping your cool with the media.’

  ‘Oh, you know. I just flutter my eyelashes and tell them we’re doing all we can and they clap and throw flowers.’

  ‘Can’t blame them there. I would.’

  Suddenly aware of Hellworthy’s intense blue eyes staring into hers, Stella nodded and took out her notebook. To business.

  ‘What were your f
irst impressions? When you went in.’

  Hellworthy looked up and to the left, accessing his memory. It didn’t take long.

  He looked back at Stella, then at Garry.

  ‘D’you ever see the crime scene photos they took of Jack the Ripper’s victims?’

  Both nodded. Stella doubted there was a copper on the planet who hadn’t gazed at the set of smudgy black and white photos at some point in their life. If it came to that, she’d include just about every officer of the court and probably half the teenagers and adults with access to the Internet.

  ‘The last victim: Mary Kelly. The worst one. Turned her into a pile of meat. He cut her breasts off. Didn’t put them on a plate like our killer, but that was my first thought. Basically, oh shit, we’ve got Jack the Second.’

  ‘No other mutilations, though,’ Garry said. ‘Jack the Ripper went to town on Mary Kelly. Gutted her, took her face off, the thighs, everything. Mrs Connolly was basically intact apart from her tits.’

  ‘They start off with a try-out though, don’t they? Get a feel for what they’re doing. He’ll escalate, you can bet on it,’ Hellworthy said.

  ‘We’re all thinking the same, then? A serial?’ Stella asked, a sinking feeling in her gut.

  ‘I think so,’ Hellworthy said.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Garry echoed.

  ‘Shit!’

  ‘What about forensics?’ Stella asked.

  ‘OK, so you have the crime scene photos and the video. I’ll get all the physical evidence sent over to you after this. I started a policy book. I’ve got a copy you can take away with you.’

  ‘Any witnesses?’

  Hellworthy shook his head.

  ‘We had uniforms and DCs on a house-to-house Friday night and through the weekend. You saw those houses. The owners love their privacy so they’re all behind bloody great hedges, fences and walls. We put out an appeal for passers-by who may have seen anything but, to be honest, I’m not hopeful. The chances of some dog walker bumping into a blood-spattered maniac waving a carving knife are worse than zero. I’d sooner bet on Wimbledon winning the FA Cup.’

  ‘What about the husband?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He says he has an alibi. Did you guys get a chance to check it out?’

  ‘Not yet. It’s on the action list. But if it’s him, I’ll buy you a lifetime supply of Scotch.’

  ‘He said Niamh kept a list of the cranks who sent death threats and hate mail. Have you got that?’

  ‘I’ll have it sent over. Someone’s going to have a lovely time reading it: there’s hundreds of the things. Death threats are the mild ones.’

  The rest of the conversation took ten minutes. Mostly speculations on the kind of sicko who got his rocks off cutting up women and the budget cuts that made even getting a working force-issue mobile a work of Zen-level patience.

  With promises on both sides to keep in touch should anything significant crop up, Stella and Garry shook hands with Hellworthy and saw themselves out.

  ‘He seemed nice,’ Garry said in a light voice, keeping his eyes fixed on the road ahead as they wove their way back to Paddington Green.

  Stella snapped her head round to see whether he was grinning. He was.

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Nothing. Just making conversation. Lovely eyes, too. So blue!’

  ‘Oi, you!’

  Garry laughed.

  ‘So you weren’t giving him the glad eye, then?’

  ‘No! Just making sure the local MIT are onside seeing as we’re nicking their investigation off them.’

  ‘He didn’t seem too bothered. He was more interested in your charms, if you ask me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Shirt button, boss.’

  Stella looked down. An extra shirt button had popped open, exposing a little bit of cleavage and the edge of her bra. She refastened it.

  ‘Bollocks! I must’ve caught it when I was getting out of my Noddy suit. Why didn’t you say something?’

  ‘Me?’ Garry asked, now in full pantomime mode, holding his hand flat across his chest. ‘And risk you reporting me for inappropriate behaviour? I don’t think so.’

  ‘You total git! You were enjoying it, weren’t you?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he said, grinning. ‘You like taking the piss about my love life, I thought I’d return the favour.’

  ‘And how is the lovely, who is it this week, Mel? Or was she last week’s conquest?’

  ‘You know perfectly well it’s Mel. We’ve been going out for five weeks and three days.’

  ‘Wow!’ Stella said, her voice dripping fake admiration. ‘Are you talking about a mortgage, kids? I mean, five weeks and three days, that’s got to be a record of some kind, hasn’t it? I’ll tell the boss. She’ll want to organise a party. You know, for the two of you. An anniversary party. We could have cake!’

  Garry threw his head back and laughed.

  ‘All right, all right. You win. Stel one, Garry nil. So how’s your love life, then? Are you going to see if DI Hellworthy wants to go over some evidence over a nice steak dinner one night? I didn’t see a wedding ring.’

  Stella shook her head. Her grin was genuine, more or less, but somewhere inside she could feel the effort she was still having to make whenever the subject of relationships came up.

  ‘Not my type.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Too—’

  ‘Too what?’

  ‘Too detective-y.’

  This garnered another guffaw from Garry, a rich, warm sound that filled the Mondeo’s cabin.

  ‘Too…oh, boss, you’re wasted in the job. You should be doing stand-up.’

  ‘Thank you for that ringing endorsement of my professional skills, Detective Sergeant Haynes. Now, please overtake this idiot in front of us so we can get back to the station before nightfall. I’ve got a report to write, and no doubt a press conference to go to.’

  14

  TUESDAY 14TH AUGUST 5.00 P.M.

  Stella was sitting at her computer, bashing out a report of her visit to the crime scene and conversations with Jerry Connolly and Mark Hellworthy.

  Around her, the members of her team were hitting the phones, searching the Police National Computer, reading action notes or speaking to other officers drafted in to cover the ground at the labour-intensive early stages of the investigation.

  In the background, Radio 1 was playing. Someone had brought in a bag full of Thai takeaway and the smell was making her mouth water. She realised she hadn’t eaten since breakfast time and it was now 5.00 p.m. Coffee would have to do instead.

  For a time, she’d been able to get through the whole day on caffeine and nicotine, stuffing her face with pizza, Chinese or Indian takeaways at the end of a very long day. She’d managed to kick the fags, but the coffee and fast-food addictions were still in play.

  One windowsill in the SIU incident room was lined with jars of coffee, boxes of tea bags and an assortment of herbal teas, chamomile, rosehip, ginger and the like, that were referred to by the squad’s older officers as ‘the gay tea’. The decaf jar was almost full, but when Stella picked up its caffeinated counterpart she saw to her dismay that it was empty, barring about a quarter of a teaspoonful of sticky-looking grains.

  Brandishing it like a hand grenade, she turned and addressed the room in general.

  ‘Who’s been playing coffee-chicken again? Leaving just enough behind so they didn’t have to buy a replacement?’

  Much shaking of heads and muttered ‘not me, guv’s from the assembled detectives.

  ‘Really? Nobody? OK, then you leave me no choice. I’m going to turn my back and I want the guilty person to put a fiver on the desk behind me. Ten seconds.’

  She turned her back.

  The noise of scuffling behind her made her smile. She whirled round after a count of five.

  Def and Camille were holding Will Dunlop by the elbows, and Stella could see they’d both got their fingers deep into the soft spot just abo
ve the joint. A little extra pressure here and you could bring even the most obdurate prisoner into meek submission.

  ‘We’ve got him, boss,’ Def said above the laughter. ‘The SIU caf-head bang to rights. Go on, Dunlop, fork over the cash or it’s the cells for you!’

  ‘It weren’t me!’ Will shrieked in a decent approximation of the average teenage numpty caught nicking cars or dealing weed on a Saturday night. ‘I never!’

  Stella marched over to the trio. She stood in front of Will, hands on hips, legs apart in the classic ‘power pose’. She thrust her chin out and went nose-to-nose with him. In her best old-school, Cockney copper growl, she said:

  ‘Don’t come that old nonsense with me, you slag. We got you bang to rights. Your dabs were all over the jar and we’ve heard from your dear old mum that you’re a bit too fond of the old brown stuff. So, you going to cop to the nickin’ or am I gonna ’ave ter beat it out of yer?’

  Playing his part to perfection, Will stared defiantly back at Stella.

  ‘I know my rights. I want me phone call. I want a brief.’

  Stella was readying her comeback line when Callie stuck her immaculately coiffured head out of her office door.

  ‘Stel! Can I have a word?’

  Hilarity over for now, Stella poked Will in the chest.

  ‘Go and get another jar, would you? I’ll give you the cash when you get back.’ She winked. ‘Nice acting job, by the way.’

  ‘So, where are we?’ Callie said, when Stella was sitting opposite her across a desk mounded with folders, computer printouts and what looked like half a forest’s worth of admin: forms, leave rotas, budget spreadsheets, reports, memos from HR, all the usual crap designed to keep the most experienced detectives chained to their desks.

  ‘I’ve assigned roles and everyone’s working. As to Mrs Connolly, it’s all as described in the report from Wandsworth. She was drugged, then mutilated and strangled to death.’