Let The Bones Be Charred

by Andy Maslen

  Kim sighed. She raised her eyes to meet Roisin’s stare.

  ‘OK. Look, it’s nothing. He just, I mean sometimes, in the car, he points out a woman and makes a remark about her. Like, an inappropriate remark?’

  Roisin’s pulse quickened. She kept her voice light. Neutral. But she could smell blood.

  ‘Inappropriate, how?’

  ‘You know, about her appearance.’

  ‘What, her makeup? Her hair?’

  ‘No.’ Kim was practically squirming in her chair. Roisin suspected she was embarrassed at what she was about to own up to, given that her employer was sitting two feet away. Because Roisin knew that Isaac Holt’s comments were about something other than hair and makeup.

  ‘What, then? Kim, please tell me. It’s important you tell me the truth right now.’

  ‘Fine! Their tits!’ she blurted. ‘Their breasts, I mean. He’ll say something like, oh, I don’t know, “Look at those. Why doesn’t she put them away?” Or, “She should get a breast reduction, they’re too big for her figure.’’’

  Kim looked across the desk at Eleni, who was staring open-mouthed at her.

  ‘I’m sorry, Eleni. I should have told you. But Isaac’s so passionate about our work. I just think he’s a bit immature. Emotionally, I mean.’

  ‘We’ll talk about Isaac later,’ Booth said quietly.

  And in her head Roisin could hear the voice of a psychologist she’d once consulted about psychopaths. Doctor Yvette Law had enumerated a number of pointers to a psychopathic personality. ‘They’re almost always emotionally stunted,’ she’d said. ‘If they do experience emotions, they’re invariably shallow and very immature. Like a toddler screaming with rage because its mother has denied it an ice cream.’

  Time to go.

  She stood, retrieved the sheet of paper from the desktop and slid it back into her bag.

  ‘Thank you, both. You’ve been very helpful. Please don’t get up.’

  Reaching the door, which was only a matter of a couple of sideways steps, she stopped dead, her hand on the doorknob, and turned.

  ‘I’m sure the thought will cross your mind, Kim, but I advise you strongly not to call Isaac. Your number and the time would show up on his phone records, and we really don’t want that, do we? Tell Nancy as well.’

  In her car again, she set the satnav for 1 Blackbarn Lane, Newham and pulled away from the kerb, heart pounding. As she drove east, she called Will.

  ‘What’s up, boss?’ he asked, voice chipper.

  ‘I want you to meet me at the northern end of Blackbarn Lane in Newham. I’m going to be there in thirty. Park in a side street and stay in your car. I’ll call you when I arrive.’

  As she drove through the midday traffic, Roisin revolved the problem in her head, looking for the angle she liked best. She had the first solid lead the team had had since Niamh Connolly’s body had been found. Holt clearly had issues with women, with their sexuality, specifically. And he’d been carrying a placard with an explicit death threat against Niamh Connolly.

  The boss was dead-set on it being a serial killer, but Roisin wasn’t buying that. You needed three-plus for a serial, and they were only at one. She’d always thought Stella Cole was a glory-hunter and had never truly forgiven her for getting the DCI job that Roisin felt was rightfully hers.

  So, Isaac Holt. She could place him at the last public appearance of the victim, too. And he looked weird. Had that flat stare she’d seen before on the faces of vicious killers. No compassion, no remorse. Serial? No. Psychopath? Almost certainly.

  There’d be comeback because she hadn’t kept Stella in the loop but she could always fall back on the old standby, ‘my radio was on the fritz and I couldn’t get a signal for my phone’. It was thin but impossible to disprove. Anyway, bringing in Holt would soon shine a different kind of spotlight on Roisin.

  After half an hour’s drive, she arrived at Blackbarn Lane. This part of East London had somehow avoided, or simply been passed over by the creeping gentrification that had transformed formerly working-class areas into trendy, bourgeois enclaves where a two-bedroom flat cost half a million quid. Newham had plenty of council houses or, what did they call them nowadays, social housing? Cheaply built flats, miniature terraced houses squashed together like cages in a battery farm.

  Holt’s street was identical to those either side, mostly pale-sand brick houses interspersed with low-rise sixties blocks. Lots of cars parked nose-to-tail, but from the tattier end of the second-hand market.

  Roisin had worked a case the previous year that had involved interviewing the residents of a leafy square in Kensington. On the walk back to her car she’d counted nineteen Porsches, four Aston Martins and three Bentleys. The Mercs, BMWs and Audis were so numerous she hadn’t even bothered.

  She pulled in at the opposite end of the street from Holt’s house and texted Will.

  I’m here. Outside 79. U?

  The answer came back within a few seconds.

  Farthingale Rd. Next 1 over. I come 2 u?

  She sent a terse Y then climbed out of the car and into the roasting, humid air. Immediately, she felt a flush of sweat break out all over her body. She breathed in deeply, then regretted it. Someone nearby had obviously left their dustbin out too long. The stink of rotting domestic refuse was unmistakable.

  While she waited for Will, she looked around for the source of the stench. There! Piled up outside a house featuring six bell buttons in a metal panel by the front door were a dozen or so bulging black bin liners.

  The bag nearest the door had split, or, more likely, been ripped open, and a mess of fast-food containers, chicken bones and some indefinable reddish-brown goop had spread onto the pavement. Foxes, most likely, she thought. Scrawny little bleeders got everywhere these days.

  The sound of footsteps made her turn. Will was ambling up to her, hands in pockets, pinstriped navy cotton blazer flapping above a pair of clean but crumpled chinos.

  ‘Still rocking the preppy look, I see,’ she said.

  Will smiled.

  ‘Glad you like it, boss.’

  ‘I didn’t say I liked it.’

  ‘What’s the deal, then?’

  Down to business. Roisin nodded sideways, towards the low-numbered end of the street.

  ‘Isaac Holt. He was there at the LoveLife protest in Mitcham. On the pro-abortion side. Had a placard saying, “Death to Niamh Connolly”. According to a woman at the group who organised the counter-demonstration, he’s funny. Got a hang-up about women with big boobs or something. I want to bring him in for questioning.’

  Will’s face betrayed his obvious nervousness. His forehead creased with concern.

  ‘You think he’s going to be dangerous? Do we need back-up?’

  ‘You are the back-up,’ she said. ‘Hang on.’

  Roisin rounded the car and opened the boot. From behind a small black cargo net attached to the wheel well she withdrew a short, black ribbed-rubber cylinder.

  ‘ESP SH-21 extendo,’ she said. Then, keeping her back to the street, she gave the extendible baton a deft flick, and the telescopic black steel sections slid out and locked into place. ‘He gives any sign of going for a weapon, let him have it with this.’

  She pressed a button on the side of the handle and smacked the baton closed with the heel of her hand. Will took it and slid it into the waistband of his trousers at the side, then arranged his jacket to cover it.

  The two detectives, both ambitious in their own way, walked down the street. Apart from a small child outside a house about halfway down, sitting on the kerb and playing with a grubby plastic tea set, the road was devoid of people. Roisin looked up, shading her eyes. The sun hung in the sky like a PI’s desk lamp in a pulp-fiction novel, giving Londoners from Newham to Richmond the third degree.

  ‘I wish this heatwave would let up,’ she said with feeling. ‘I’m melting in this suit.’

  ‘Not much chance of that,’ Will said. ‘Apparently the Jetstream’s stuck over
Scandinavia. The only place getting cool weather is Iceland, fittingly enough.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I hope they’re enjoying it. God, I could kill for a cold lager right now.’

  ‘Maybe once we get Holt squared away, we could go out and get a couple?’

  Roisin cast a sideways glance at Will. He was looking straight ahead. Was that as innocent as it sounded? Or was there something just below the surface? Later, she cautioned herself. Let’s deal with Mister Isaac Holt first.

  26

  THURSDAY 16TH AUGUST 2.17 P.M.

  Standing outside the flimsy-looking red-painted front door of 1 Blackbarn Lane, Roisin felt a familiar sensation in her gut. I’m close. That’s what the churning, wriggling worms of energy were telling her. She wiped her forehead and straightened the lapels of her jacket. She turned to Will.

  ‘Ready?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘OK, follow my lead.’

  ‘OK, boss.’

  She watched him as he patted the grip of the baton through the thin material of his own jacket.

  Doorbell or knock? she asked herself. Different levels of authority. Softly, softly, catchee monkey, Roisin.

  She pressed the bell push and heard a reedy electronic ringing on the other side of the door.

  She waited for a count of five. Nothing.

  ‘He could be at work,’ Will said, unnecessarily in her opinion.

  ‘Yeah, or he could be hiding behind those lovely net curtains,’ she answered, jerking her chin in the direction of the rectangular window to the left of the front door.

  She raised her right hand and knocked. Not loudly, not an aggressive ‘3.00 a.m. Special’, just a firm, assertive, rat-a-tat-tat on the thin wooden panel above the aluminium letterbox.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ a high-pitched male voice called from the other side of the door. ‘I ’eard you the first fackin’ time. Just ’old your fackin’ ’orses, will ya?’

  The door swung inwards. Roisin straightened her posture, adding another inch to her height. Beside her she sensed Will adjusting his stance, moving his feet further apart. Keep it together, DC Dunlop, she thought.

  The bleary-looking man framed in the open doorway was Isaac Holt. No question in her mind. His sandy hair was sticking up at odd angles and he had at least a day’s growth of beard on his narrow jaw. He was wearing a stained grey T-shirt and a pair of pink-and-white striped pyjama trousers. He rubbed his face, drawing a hand down over his mouth.

  Roisin seized the moment.

  ‘Isaac Holt?’ she asked him in a pleasant voice, though inside she was as tense as a feral cat ready to pounce on an unsuspecting rat.

  ‘Tha’s right. Listen, I had your lot round here last week. I told them, I ain’t interested in God, all right?’

  Roisin plastered a smile on her face.

  ‘We’re not Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mr Holt. I am Detective Inspector Roisin Griffin and this is Detective Constable Will Dunlop. Can we come in, please?’

  She showed Holt her warrant card and caught Will’s in her peripheral vision. Holt didn’t bother scrutinising them. That could mean one of two things. Either, like most law-abiding citizens, he assumed people saying they were police officers were police officers. Or he knew a Met ID when he saw one and didn’t need to check if they were genuine.

  ‘Fine,’ he said, rolling his eyes.

  He turned and led them into a small sitting room, furnished with a vinyl-covered sofa, the brown cushions scabbed from much use, a matching armchair, similarly distressed, a huge flat-screen TV with the usual array of slim black boxes underneath it, and an oddly prissy side table with barley-sugar twist legs and an octagonal top featuring a chessboard demarcated in light and dark squares.

  A packet of cigarettes, glass ashtray and a half-empty bottle of lemonade sat atop its polished surface. But what caught Roisin’s eye was the Samurai sword hanging by its red, twisted-silk sling from a hook on the wall.

  Holt flung himself down into the sofa, legs spread, and extracted a cigarette and a disposable lighter from the packet on the little table. He offered it to the two detectives, both of whom refused.

  ‘Yeah, well, gotta die of sumfing, ain’t you?’ he said before lighting the cigarette and inhaling deeply. ‘So, what do you want?’

  Roisin gestured for Will to stand by the door, while she sat across from Holt in the armchair. Now, Isaac. Which way do I play this?

  ‘We are investigating the murder of Niamh Connolly. She’s—’

  ‘I know who she is,’ Holt said with a sneer.

  ‘Yes,’ Roisin said, pleasantly. ‘We saw you on the news. Quite a placard you had with you last Friday. What did it say again, Will?’

  ‘Death to Niamh Connolly. You can’t kill what doesn’t live,’ Will recited in a deadpan voice.

  ‘And now you got your wish, didn’t you, Isaac?’

  Holt gazed levelly at Roisin. She saw that look again. The look of a man with a burning, deep-seated hatred for women. Hiding in plain sight among a whole gang of them at WAGSARR.

  ‘I never wrote it. They gave it me to carry.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘WAGSARR. They get them done up by some printshop over Shoreditch way.’

  ‘Really? Because we took down the wording on all the other placards. Yours really stood out. The others were all about women’s right to choose, that sort of thing.’

  Holt shrugged and blew out a stream of smoke towards the ceiling before hacking out a cough.

  ‘What d’you want me to say? I told you I didn’t write it. They hated her, you know. Used to call her all kinds of names.’ He fixed Roisin with a steady glare. ‘Traitor. Bitch.’ He paused and ran the tip of his tongue over his lower lip. ‘Cunt.’

  Roisin was too experienced to fall for such a cheap provocation.

  ‘What about you, Isaac? Is that what you thought of Niamh?’

  He spread his hands, holding the cigarette between his lips and tilting his head back.

  ‘Me? Not really. I didn’t kill ’er if that’s what you’re finkin’.’

  Time to switch track.

  ‘So why do you go to those demos? Bit of an unusual hobby for a bloke like you, I’d have thought. Kim from WAGSARR gives you a lift, doesn’t she?’

  Holt leaned forward, grinned, the cigarette bouncing on his lip as he spoke.

  ‘Easiest way I’ve found to meet women, that lot. A man gets all passionate about abortion being a woman’s right? They can’t wait to shag you. You’re safe, see? No threat. Me and Kim? She gives me a lift and I give her a ride, know what I mean?’

  Then he winked. And suddenly Roisin felt dirty, just being in the same room as Holt. Dirty and apprehensive, and glad, too, for Will’s presence in the house. She was glad the Samurai sword was behind her.

  Roisin scratched the back of her head. Acting on the pre-arranged signal, Will spoke.

  ‘Isaac, can I use your toilet, please?’

  Holt turned to Will and pointed upwards.

  ‘Top of the stairs, turn left, first door on your right.’

  He turned back to Roisin as Will left the room.

  ‘You got any more questions for me, Roisin? Nice name, by the way. You a Catholic like Niamh, are you? I went out with a Catholic girl once. I tell you, she was gaggin’ for it. Up the arse, that’s how she liked it best. No risk of getting pregnant, eh?’

  He leaned back, spreading his arms across the top of the sofa, eyeing her. Roisin could feel the PAVA spray in her jacket pocket digging into her hip. One move, and you’re getting a faceful of liquid chilli, sunshine. One move.

  ‘Where did you go after you left the demo, Isaac?’ she asked, returning the stone-faced look. She made a mental note to question Kim again. The woman had lied to her about her relationship with Holt.

  ‘Home.’

  ‘On your own, were you?’

  ‘No. Kim gave me a lift.’

  A girlfriend’s alibi isn’t worth as much as you seem to think, Holt.

  �
�Really? And then what?’

  He leered at her.

  ‘What d’you think?’

  ‘I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?’

  ‘We ’ad sex, didn’t we? Tell you the truth, I think goin’ on them demos gets ’em all worked up. All that yellin’ and screamin’, plus, obviously, you know, the sex stuff.’

  Roisin frowned.

  ‘The sex stuff,’ she repeated, flatly.

  He seemed to get animated, for the first time since she’d begun questioning him. His eyes widened and he leaned towards her.

  ‘Yeah! You know, the abortion stuff. You know where babies come from, don’t you? Even as a Catholic, you must know, right?’

  ‘Yes, Isaac. I do know where babies come from.’

  He nodded triumphantly.

  ‘That’s what I’m sayin’, innit? They come out of a woman’s belly. Shoot out between her legs from ’er, you know, and into the big, wide world. Bound to get a woman all hot an’ bovvered. Stands to reason.’

  Holt was not the first offender Roisin had encountered with distorted ideas about what got women ‘all hot and bovvered’, but the abortion angle was a first. Time to dial up the pressure.

  ‘What time did Kim leave?’

  Another shrug.

  ‘I dunno. Three-thirty. Four, maybe?’

  Which would still work. Just. He could have driven across London to Wimbledon, murdered Niamh and got away well before Jerry Connolly returned home from work at eight.

  ‘So after Kim left, what, you were on your own?’

  ‘Yeah. Had some stuff to take care of.’