Birdman

  ‘You can stop there.’ She held her hand up. ‘I’m not protecting anyone. I swear.’

  ‘I believe you.’ He sipped his wine thoughtfully, watching her over the rim. ‘Do you remember meeting anyone in the pub who worked at St Dunstan’s? The hospital?’

  She frowned. ‘I don’t know. Well, Malcolm, I suppose. He’s something to do with a hospital. Someone Joni’s known from years back.’

  ‘Second name?’

  ‘Don’t know. She hangs out with him if she’s got nothing better to do—lets him buy her drinks, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Is he sort of hippy-looking?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘You don’t know a Thomas? Thomas Cook.’

  ‘Like the travel agent’s? I think I’d remember, don’t you?’

  ‘Long, red hair. Weird eyes. Distinctive.’

  She shook her head.

  Caffery sighed. ‘Well, my P45’ll be in the pipeline for everything I’ve told you tonight.’ He put the empty glass on the table and smiled at her. ‘Maybe I’ll become an art critic.’

  ‘I won’t gab.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He meant it. ‘Thank you.’

  She stood at the front door and watched him disappear down the stairs. He was almost out of the building when she called after him.

  ‘Mr Caffery?’

  His dark head appeared beneath her in the stairwell. ‘What is it?’

  It was out of her mouth before she knew she’d formed the thought. ‘He scares me, you know. The killer.’

  Caffery didn’t answer. Suddenly he looked immensely tired. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said wearily, rubbing his forehead. ‘I’ve got to go. Call me if you think of anything.’

  The streetlights had come on in central Greenwich and the buildings were lit white and gold, festive as ocean liners in port. A thin pink rind behind the roofs on the western horizon was all that was left of the day. Taxis stopped, people queued outside the cinema. Rebecca stood next to the Hotel Ibis, trying to get a cab, clutching a cardigan around her shoulders.

  She was jumpier than usual. Since leaving the High Road she’d had the unnerving sensation that she was being watched from somewhere high up amongst the gargoyles in St Alfege’s. The back of her shoulders tingled and her sweat grew cold. She couldn’t wait to get out of Greenwich for the night.

  From the Spread Eagle restaurant terrace came the discreet clink of expensive glass and silver. Orange and bay trees in pots dropped leaves into the street below, sunken lighting cast their magnified shadows on the whitewashed wall above.

  Something about those shivering leaves made Rebecca pause.

  What had Jack said? That they trusted their killer enough to let him inject them.

  The answer reached her—its breath cold and clear. The orangery in Croom’s Hill. Toby Harteveld.

  Of course. She dropped her head back and stared up into space. Harteveld. She’d never even thought about it before. Of the endless possibilities that had traipsed through her mind, this one had never presented itself. Now it seemed as obvious as the sky.

  She shivered in spite of the warm night and, buttoning her cardigan tight, turned for home. Forget the Barbican. She wanted to speak to Jack Caffery.

  ... 28

  Veronica was sitting at the kitchen table preparing for the party—a glass of wine at her elbow as she shredded and cut, adding to a pile of mint and tomato on the marble chopping block. She wore a silk blouse pinned at the neck with a gold brooch, and had draped a Heals tea towel over her navy pinstriped trousers. The couscousier hissed softly on the hob, steaming up the darkened window.

  ‘I was just about to arrange a search party,’ she said, smiling. ‘I expected you back by seven.’

  Caffery reached to the shelf above the door for the bottle of Glenmorangie. He filled a tumbler, dipped his finger in and sucked on it.

  ‘There’s a couple of Oddbins boxes on the terrace need unpacking.’ She wiped the knife on a tea towel. ‘You could make some garam masala for the spinach if you feel like it and the pestle needs washing.’

  Putting the glass on the top of the fridge he found tobacco and papers in his suit pocket.

  ‘I couldn’t find any decent glasses so Mum’s lending us her Florentine goblets. They’ll need taking care of. OK?’ She halved two lemons, jammed one onto a squeezer and looked over her shoulder at him. ‘Jack? I said OK?’

  Caffery dropped a plug of tobacco into the paper, rolled it, sealed the cigarette and felt in his pocket for a lighter.

  ‘Jack. Did you hear me?’

  ‘I did.’

  She put the lemon down and hooked her arm over the back of the chair. ‘Well?’

  ‘Well what?’

  ‘Mum’s lending us her lickle babies. Her favourite glasses. Imagine that. She’s trusting our evil friends not to smash them. We’re supposed to flop around on the floor in gratitude.’

  ‘Not me.’

  Her face changed. ‘No, seriously. We should be grateful, you know.’

  He removed a piece of tobacco from his tongue. ‘I am serious.’

  She regarded him carefully and then gave a short laugh. ‘OK, Jack.’ She turned back to her work. ‘I’ve got a million things to do for tomorrow. I really haven’t got the energy for—’

  ‘You lied to me.’

  ‘What?’ She turned slowly back. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I thought you might die.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I believed you. I believed the Hodgkin’s was back.’

  She wrinkled her mouth, shaking her head in disbelief. ‘You’re sick, you know. You really are. You think I’d make up a thing like that?’

  ‘I saw Dr Cavendish.’

  Veronica became still. He could almost see the ticker tape of possible lies, possible excuses, rolling out behind her eyes. After a moment she pressed her lips together so tightly he saw the muscles in her neck flex. She turned and started furiously halving the lemons, squeezing them, tipping the juice into a jug with jerky movements.

  ‘I said I saw Dr Cavendish.’

  ‘Yes—so?’ She threw the lemon rinds into a pile. ‘I thought it was coming back. You can’t blame me. You’re difficult, Jack. It’s been very difficult for me to be with you.’

  ‘Well, thank you. It’s been very fucking difficult to be with you too.’

  ‘I don’t think you realize what a mess you were when I met you, Jack. A mess. You’d only get out of bed for work or to spy on that fat fuck over the railway, moping over your idiot brother. I’ve pulled you out of that.’ She used the heel of her hand to drive the knife into the lemons. ‘Me, it’s me has pulled you out of it, made you forget your wallowing. Everyone—Mummy, Daddy—they all said I was wasting my time, but I didn’t listen—God, what an idiot I was.’

  ‘I don’t love you, Veronica. I don’t want you in my house any more. You can leave the key.’

  She dropped the knife and turned to him in amazement, staring at him for a long time, until he was uncertain whether she was formulating a reply or trying not to cry. Eventually she forced out a high brittle laugh.

  ‘Well, that’s fine, Jack, that’s fine.’ She leaned forward in the chair, her shoulders trembling. ‘Because I’ve been thinking.’ She pointed a shaky finger at him. ‘I don’t love you either. I don’t think I ever loved you.’

  ‘Then we’re quits.’

  ‘Yes, quits.’ She was shaking now. ‘I’ll—I’ll stay for the party and then I’ll get out of your life. And don’t think I won’t, because I will.’

  ‘We’re cancelling the party.’

  ‘No, we’re not. You can’t. Not now. If you cancel it I swear—’ She paused a moment, tears in her eyes. ‘I swear … Oh please, Jack, I swear you’ll finish me if you do this.’

  ‘For God’s sake.’

  ‘Please, Jack! It’s my party too. My friends are coming. Please don’t ruin it for me!’

  Caffery picked up his glass.

  ‘Where are you going?’
r />   ‘To have a bath.’

  ‘Look.’ She jumped up and placed a shaking hand on his chest. ‘I’m sorry, Jack, I’m sorry. I am. It’s because I love you so much—’

  But he gave her a look of such distaste that her eyes filled again with tears. He lifted her fingers carefully away from his chest and pushed her back into the chair. She sank down, sobbing uncontrollably. ‘You bastard—you bastard. You made me do it, you made me lie. You and that fucking obsession of yours—’

  Caffery took the bottle from the top of the fridge, closed the door and went upstairs.

  Later, when his pulse had returned to normal, he took the bottle of Glenmorangie into the bathroom, and slid into the water, his eyes closed, his fingers curled around the steamy tumbler on the bath edge. A body-length wave of tiredness engulfed him. He lay motionless, breathing through his nose, thinking, absurdly and self-pityingly, that this was all Penderecki’s fault. That Penderecki had set a small stone in his heart which had stopped him growing well and healthily, excluded him from a universal birth right, the right to love.

  He thought he could hear Veronica downstairs, moving something heavy, the front door clicking softly closed. He drank more whisky and slid under the water; his mother’s St Christopher on its chain around his neck floated up to the surface and bobbed gently under his chin, soft as a nibbling fish.

  He thought about Rebecca. About her face at the top of the stairs. ‘He scares me, you know. The killer.’

  A stair creaked. For a moment he was sure the mobile was ringing. He lifted his head, straining to listen.

  Silence. He let himself slide back under the water. Rebecca. He could feel the familiar longing deep in his stomach. Would he do to her what he had done to the others, force her to unmask herself, skin away the fragile dignity and then lose interest, abandon her because he had something so much more important to think about?

  He sat up and finished the whisky, got out of the bath and dried himself. In the bedroom Veronica was lying on her back, quite still.

  ‘Veronica?’

  She was silent, her eyes blank.

  ‘Veronica? I’m sorry.’

  She was silent.

  ‘I’ve been thinking.’

  ‘What?’ she said dully. ‘What’ve you been thinking?’

  ‘The party. I’ll do it.’

  She sighed and rolled away from him. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’ll sleep on the sofa tonight.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, her arms limp on the bed. ‘You do that.’

  ... 29

  The police surgeon’s room at Greenwich police station had no windows. The only decorations were a yellowing heroin poster and a laminated copy of a detainee’s right to legal advice. Scattered on a low Formica table, leaflets that no-one would ever read: HIV—Are you at risk?, Crack/Cocaine—a legal guide and Victim Support Group—Help for the victims of crime.

  ‘Roll your sleeve up.’ The forensic medical examiner, scrubbed skin, clean white hands swaddled in latex gloves, tore open a sample kit: syringe, kidney bowl, vials, labels, swabs. Gemini fixed his eyes on a single loose thread on the third buttonhole down on the white coat. Things, he had to admit, had gone bad.

  When DI Diamond put his nose through the letter-box two days ago and said, ‘You know why we’re interested, don’t you?‘ Gemini hadn’t seen the news. He was impressed enough by the police activity to guess that the girls were dead, and that the gear he’d off-loaded for Dog was responsible. But by the time DI Diamond came knocking on his door a second time things were worse, Gemini had read the papers and knew the truth. He knew that this wasn’t a drugs thing. Knew that he’d got a little too close to the wrong people. And now he was scared enough to start praying.

  But they didn’t want to arrest him, DI Diamond reassured him, no obligations, just a few questions, just to eliminate him, and had he ever heard of civic duty? And so he’d pulled on his YSL sweatshirt and gone, cool as ice.

  Style it out, style it out.

  In the station everyone seemed relaxed. They’d given him coffee, cigarettes, promised he’d be reunited with the GTI soon. Someone showed him the four photos again and, although now he was terrified, he shrugged.

  ‘No. Ain’t never seen them.’

  And they’d smiled ‘OK’ and asked if he felt like giving a sample.

  ‘Just a formality to eliminate you, Mr Henry, then you’re free to go.’

  Head hair, pulled from the root with tweezers. Pubic hair (same routine). Urine: the doctor stood next to him in the toilet watching his pee splashing into a white plastic cup. And then, in the corridor coming back from the toilet, Diamond’s hand placed lightly on his arm, sour breath on his face, the pallid eyes twitching as if he couldn’t contain his excitement.

  ‘Don’t get comfortable, you fucking little phoney.’ A whisper so the doctor couldn’t hear. ‘We all know you’re lying.’

  ‘Roll your sleeve up, please.’

  ‘Wha’?’ Gemini looked up.

  ‘Your sleeve.’ The doctor snapped open a blood-pressure cuff, cracked it like a whip and leaned over to fasten it round Gemini’s bicep.

  ‘Wha’ you want now?’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ The doctor flicked a vein in the bend of his arm, drew an antiseptic wipe over the skin and the cannula went in. Gemini flinched.

  ‘Rahtid, man. How that gonna prove I did them girls? Eh?’

  The surgeon looked at him steadily. ‘You can refuse but technically the law allows for refusal to supply an intimate sample to be regarded as affirmative evidence.’

  ‘Wha’?’

  ‘And if you don’t let me take this blood we can compel you to give a saliva swab, consent or no consent.’ He slowly drew back the plunger and the vacutainer started to fill. ‘Hold still, please, Mr Henry.’

  But Gemini snapped his arm away.

  ‘No, man. You tell me wha’ you got on me and how my pee in a cup goin’ to prove I done dem t’ings you’s is chattin’ I done.’

  The FME eyed the needle dangling from the vein. ‘You’ve consented, and you’d make life a lot easier if you’d keep still.’

  ‘Well, hear me now.’ He slammed his hands on the desk, the inside of his elbow popping forward. The FME backed his chair up a fraction. The needle wobbled but remained visibly folded inside the big medial basilic vein. ‘I unconsent. I done tell the man already, you know, I tell him I don’t know them ladies. I ain’t done not’ing!’

  The FME pressed his lips together.

  ‘Very well, Mr Henry.’ Eyes on the needle, he rose and left the room, to reappear in seconds accompanied by DI Diamond who stood in the open doorway smiling expansively.

  ‘Mr Henry!’

  ‘You.’ Gemini sucked his teeth in disgust. ‘Why you go running at the mouth and come tell me I is lying to you?’

  ‘You are lying to us. Those girls were in your car. There’s forensic evidence.’

  ‘Ssssssttt! Suck your mother.’

  Diamond’s eyes narrowed a fraction. He turned to a PC in the corridor. ‘Get the custody officer.’

  ‘Last time I seen that girl she was fine and well, man. You want look at one of dem fat punters in dem fancy house, in Croom’s Hill. Now get this t’ing outta my arm.’

  Mel Diamond folded his arms. ‘Jerry Henry—’

  ‘I ain’t done not’ing—’

  ‘Jerry Henry—I am arresting you on reasonable suspicion of the rape and murder of Shellene Craw of Stepney Green, London on the night of May the nineteenth—’

  ‘I ain’t done rape no girl.’

  ‘You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. And under section 54e I’ll ask you now to remove your clothing.’ He looked at the doctor who had retreated behind the desk. ‘Get one of those Andy Pandy things for him to wear.’

  ‘I ain’t done no rape! Nor murder no girl either!’ The needle broke from his skin, ripping an arch of blood fro
m the vein as it cartwheeled to the floor. Diamond skipped neatly back into the corridor away from the blood. Two PCs appeared behind him.

  ‘Does he want cuffing, sir?’

  ‘Watch the blood. He’s a smack-head.’

  ‘Is right, I’m a smack-head nigger an’ I feel feh give you all dem AIDS.’ Gemini shoved his arm in their direction, baring his teeth. ‘Pigs!’ Behind the desk the FME calmly ripped open a box of latex gloves. Gemini rounded on him. ‘Wha’ you doing?’

  The doctor didn’t blink. ‘Protecting my colleagues, Mr Henry.’ He tossed gloves to Diamond and the two PCs.

  ‘You want vex me or wha’?’ Gemini curled his lips and closed on him, his arm raised, blood sliding to the floor. ‘You want dem AIDS, is it?’

  ‘Calm down.’

  ‘Yup.’ Diamond, more confident now, pulled gloves on. ‘I think he wants cuffing.’

  ‘I ain’t done nothing!‘ He snapped round to face him. ‘I gave them some crack is all! I ain’t done no murder!’

  ‘OK, son.’ The older PC expertly moved Gemini’s hand behind his back and snapped the cuffs tight. ‘Let’s get it over with.’

  ‘I AIN’T NO KILLER! I AIN’T NO RAASCLAAT KILLER!’ He coiled up and spat at Diamond, his feet dancing crazily, his head snapping backwards. ‘YOU WANT FIND A MURDERER YOU FIND THEIR PUNTER IN CROOM’S HILL!’

  Diamond sighed and held up his hand. ‘You have the right to legal advice, we’ll contact the duty solicitor if you choose, if you waive your right I want to know why. For the purposes of the code of detention the rest breaks will be measured from now and not from the time you walked in. Now will somebody get the fucking custody officer in here.’

  A bent old Jamaican appeared with a mop and bucket to clean Gemini’s blood from the medical room floor. Superintendent Maddox arrived from Shrivemoor with a bundle of dockets and a headache to find the custody room in chaos.

  ‘You did what?’

  ‘He was getting violent.’

  ‘Well now, I see we are nostril deep in the shi-it.’ Maddox put a cool hand to his head. From the holding cell he could hear Gemini’s wails of protest. ‘Twenty-four hours puts us ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Tell you what, Diamond, you can be the bright spark who interrupts the JP’s breakfast for an extension.’