Birdman

  ‘It mightn’t be her. That’s what you got to tell yourself, Dor.’

  ‘But it might, mightn’t it? Oh, Jesus.’ She turned dull eyes to the window. ‘You’d think they’d let you smoke in here, wouldn’t you?’

  The glass doors opened and one of F team stepped into the cool, a half-smile on his face. DI Diamond followed, removing sunglasses, laughing. He glanced at Rebecca and let the laugh fade to a small, knowing smile as the two men crossed reception on the way to the coroner’s office. When they had rounded the corner the laughter continued.

  ‘How about this one, then, eh?’ Diamond said. ‘Listen, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘OK. What’s the difference between a hooker and an onion?’

  ‘Go on, then. What?’

  ‘C’mon, a hooker and an onion.’

  ‘Yeah, what? I give up.’

  ‘OK.’ He paused, and from the squeak of shoe leather on lino Caffery knew Diamond had stopped and turned to the other officer. ‘You can cut up a hooker without crying.’

  In reception four people stared at the floor. Caffery sprang to his feet and rounded the corner.

  ‘Hey.’

  Diamond turned mildly surprised eyes to him. ‘All right?’

  ‘Use a bit of fucking decorum,’ he hissed. ‘You know where you are.’

  ‘Sorry, mate.’ Diamond raised a hand. ‘Won’t happen again.’ He turned and the two men continued in the direction of the coroner’s property office, softly snickering, their shoulders dipping in to each other as if Caffery’s intervention made the joke even sweeter. Caffery breathed out slowly and returned to reception. The damage was done. Kayleigh’s mother’s face was wet with new tears.

  ‘Oh, Doreen, oh, Dor.’ The aunt buried her face in her sister’s collar. ‘Don’t cry, Doreen.’

  ‘But what if it’s my baby in there, my baby, my little, little girl? What if it’s her?’

  ... 11

  Kayleigh Hatch was identified by her aunt.

  ‘She’s cut her hair, but it’s her. I’m sure of it.’

  And AMIP had four positive IDs out of five. The chief superintendent had decided to lift the press moratorium that evening so Maddox agreed they could risk a visit to the pub.

  The rain had settled with depressing familiarity on London. It was a fresh, acidic rain, spring-bright compared to the usual greasy drizzle, but it was still rain. Seven of them, carrying raincoats, set out in two cars. Diamond drove two of F team in the Sierra. Caffery took his Jaguar, with Maddox, Essex and Logan for passengers.

  The Dog and Bell, flaking paint and grime, occupied a plot on the suffocating Trafalgar Road between a dilapidated travel agent and a KLEENEZIE launderette. Inside it smelled of stale tobacco and disinfectant. All conversation stopped and in the blue-smoke pall the punters, nursing their precious pints, turned expressionless faces to the seven detectives. DI Diamond moved to the far exit, DC Logan stood guarding the big, curved stairway with its polished Victorian banister. Maddox closed the door behind him with his foot. The barmaid, a woman in her sixties, as wiry as a leather strap, with high blue eye-shadow and dyed-black hair, stood smoking behind the bar, unsurprised, watching them with bright thyroidal eyes.

  ‘OK, gents.’ Maddox held up his warrant card. ‘It’s all completely routine. No need for panic.’

  Caffery slipped away from the bar and within ten minutes had accounted for two of the names in Harrison’s list. The barmaid was named Betty and the dancer that day, a tall, irritable blonde from somewhere in the North, with closely spaced blue eyes and feet and hands like a teenage boy’s, was named Lacey.

  She was wearing stockings under a baggy hip-length red jumper and was in the upstairs toilet brushing silver glitter on her cheekbones when Caffery knocked on the door, carrying a double vodka and orange. The fundamental rules of trade.

  ‘Shut the door,’ she muttered, taking the drink. ‘It’s that fucking freezing in here. Supposed to be summer.’

  He closed the door and sat on a small stool in the corner. Lacey pecked at a cigarette, drawing smoke into her nostrils, leaning against the sink and watching him as he broke the news.

  She was philosophical.

  ‘That’s the way with those types,’ she shrugged, turning to the mirror. ‘You won’t catch me worrying about it. I’m too careful.’

  ‘We know you knew Shellene.’

  ‘Knew them all. Doesn’t mean to say I trusted them. Or even liked them.’ She placed the cigarette on the edge of the sink where it smouldered, adding its mark to the countless orange nicotine trails. ‘Couldn’t leave your clobber in the dressing room with her around. That’s the problem with scag. If you ask me, they’ve got that busting for a hit they’ve gone and done a trick for some fucking lunatic.’

  ‘And Petra?’

  ‘She wasn’t a user, so she’d never do it for drugs. But it don’t mean she never turned a trick. Does it?’

  ‘Do you know the punters here?’

  ‘I’m not here that often.’ She took another drag of the cigarette and threw the butt under the tap. ‘Ask Pussy Willow—she does nearly every show. It’s empty today but when she’s here the place gets rammed. All in love with her and her blow-up tits.’

  ‘Any of the punters hospital workers?’

  ‘Solicitors, civil servants, students. This place isn’t exclusively for the scum of the earth, you know.’ She sipped the vodka. ‘And there’s a couple of types come in suited and booted, I think they’re doctors or something like it.’

  Caffery took tobacco from his pocket and crumbled it into a Rizla. ‘Where do they come from? The doctors?’

  ‘From over St Dunstan’s.’

  ‘Do you recall any names?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Any of them downstairs now?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘No. Not when I last looked.’

  He bent his head to light the roll-up. ‘Thanks for the help, Lacey, thank you very much.’

  At the foot of the carved Victorian stairway Caffery stopped, his arm resting lightly on the worn banister.

  Maddox was a foot or so in front of him, watching the room, arms folded. The officers were dotted around, their raincoats crumpled on stools next to them. On each table the four photos of the girls battled for a place amongst the glasses and ashtrays, circular beer stains seeping through the paper. Diamond sat with his jacket unbuttoned, his trousers riding up to reveal a small expanse of novelty Warner Brothers sock, the Tasmanian Devil. Opposite him a pair of labourers frowned into their beers.

  The door opened and a young black man in his twenties ducked in out of the rain. He wore a grey Tommy Hilfiger baseball cap, high-top Nikes and was slight but muscled. His left canine was capped in gold. He was almost at the bar before he realized everyone was staring at him.

  DI Diamond was on him in seconds, haunches twitching with the thrill of the hunt. He placed a hand lightly but pointedly on his shoulder and steered him towards a table.

  ‘You can’t let him interview him,’ Caffery muttered in Maddox’s ear. ‘Not as a witness. He’ll turn it to a suspect interview.’

  ‘Don’t interfere,’ Maddox said.

  ‘He’s already made up his mind who he’s looking for.’

  ‘That’, Maddox said, ‘was an order.’

  Jerry Henry, known on the streets around Deptford as Gemini, had never been busted. He put it down to the fact that he was small time. That was his strength. For the Bill he simply wasn’t worth the effort. He saw himself like a basking shark, just trailing around the hems of Deptford, picking off whatever drifted out from the two big outfits that had the area sewn up. He didn’t do any harm.

  But the flip side of this coin was that small meant defenceless. The Bill weren’t stupid; they knew that the goods had to come from somewhere. Sometimes they’d go for someone like him, just to push it back further and further until it splashed up against one of the ranks. The Bill wouldn’t think twice about sacrificing him if it meant opening up o
ne of the big south London outfits.

  Whatever it is they want, he told himself as he followed the cop over to a table, keep cool, deny it, let them prove it. He ran through what he had in his inventory today. It could just about pass as personal use, but Dog from New Cross had sneaked some wash-rock out of one of the Peckham labs for him, just a little, cookies Gemini had broken down. ‘Keep it in your mouth, man. Swallow it if you get any shit.’ But Gemini hadn’t wanted to, it was tucked in his high-tops, and now he was going to pay the price.

  ‘Deny it. Style it out.’

  ‘What’s that you said?’ the cop asked.

  ‘Not’ing,’ Gemini mumbled. He sank into the seat.

  ‘All right, now it’s just a routine enquiry.’ The cop pulled the sides of his jacket back, straddled the stool and sat facing him, his small, round belly settling on his thighs, his elbows on the circular table. Gemini slouched back, one hand shoved into the waist of his Calvins, his head tilted, mouth deep and sullen.

  ‘Keep cool. Deny it. Let them prove it. Style it out,’ he muttered.

  That infuriated the cop. He shot his face forward until it was inches from Gemini’s. ‘What? Are you trying to co-mmunicate with me?’

  ‘Don’t get vex.’ Gemini didn’t flinch at the bitter breath. Casually he opened his hand where it rested on the seat. ‘An’ who you, man?’

  The cop swallowed hard and pulled back. He tapped his biro on the table. ‘Detective Inspector Diamond.’ He enunciated the detective inspector with care. ‘Are you a regular here?’

  ‘What it to you, man?’

  ‘Do you know any of the girls who work down here?’

  ‘No.’ Gemini clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth dismissively. ‘I don’t know dem girls.’

  ‘You’ve never met any of them? I find that surprising.’ The cop held his gaze with his arrogant, washed-out eyes and pushed a photograph across the table. ‘Does this help?’

  Gemini recognized them immediately. Especially the blonde. Shellene. He’d been retailing to her for months, and cabbying for her. A couple of weeks back she’d given him a little blow job in the back seat of his GTI, in return for some rock. He wondered what the girls had been telling the Bill about his operation.

  ‘I ain’t seen dem. Maybe this one, a dancer here, ain’t it? But it’s all.’

  ‘You know she’s a dancer here.’

  ‘I seen her.’

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  Gemini shrugged. ‘Long time now, innit.’

  ‘Have you ever seen anyone leaving with any of these girls?’

  Gemini gave a derisory laugh. He knew how the question was angled. ‘Now why you arxing me this dibby dibby question, boy? And dem say English police is clever!’

  ‘Are you going to answer me?’

  ‘I know what yous is like.’

  The cop became very still. He was staring at his hands. Gemini could see his anger spreading out under the smooth white skin. When he looked up his pupils had narrowed to pinpoints. ‘Mr, uh?’

  ‘Mr No-one to you.’

  ‘Ah, yes, of course. Mr No-one.’ He lifted his hands; they’d left sweat prints on the table. ‘Well, Mr No-one, Mr Fuck all, I didn’t understand your last comment. Was it, by any chance’—he leaned in, his lips peeled away from his teeth, his voice low—‘a slur on the law-keeping force in this country, the country which has generously supported you, and will support any number of piccaninnies that you spawn, house you, feed you and pick up the pieces after you mug some poor little old lady of her pension. Is that what it was?’

  ‘You’s a racist man,’ Gemini said, smiling lazily. ‘I might be stupid nigger boy to you, but me know me rights. I know what de PCA is. I read de Macpherson report.’

  The cop didn’t flinch. ‘If you really read the Macpherson report you’d know you haven’t got a leg to stand on. No-one can hear what I’m saying. I can spade, darkie, nigger, sooty you all I like.’ He smiled. He was enjoying this. ‘I can throw it all at you. And you know what? At the end of the day it’s your word against mine. With every little jungle bunny in the system jumping up and down and shouting ”racist”, you think anyone is going to listen to you, you low-life little shit?’

  Gemini’s composure drained out of him. ‘I ain’t have to listen to this.’ He stood up. ‘You want me to help you, Raas, you come get me.’

  The cop was on his feet in a second, blocking the door. ‘Where the fuck do you think you’re going?’ he said pleasantly. The words slipped out like honey. ‘Nigger cunt.’

  And Gemini snapped. Grabbing a pint from the nearest table he threw it in the cop’s face. The cop wasn’t quick enough to close his eyes. The beer made contact, and he spun away, his hands flying up to his face.

  ‘You little shit!’

  But Gemini was out of the door before anyone could react.

  To Caffery, standing at the bottom of the stairs, the whole encounter seemed to have the slow-motion surrealism of a silent film. The two men had been smiling, talking almost casually, then in the next second Diamond was doubled over, clutching his face as if he’d been glassed. Caffery expected blood, but Diamond quickly wiped his eyes and spun out of the door, jacket flapping. Two of F team leapt up, interviews forgotten, to stand in the doorway, letting the rain splatter their shirts as they stared off down the street at their DI.

  They didn’t have to wait long. Mel Diamond reappeared in the doorway, breathing hard, his jacket dark with rain and beer.

  ‘It’s OK.’ He leaned over and spat on the pavement. ‘Got his index. The little shit.’

  On the way back to Shrivemoor, Caffery drove. Maddox sat next to him, his wet raincoat folded inside out on his lap, Essex and Logan slouched in the back, smelling vaguely of beer. Caffery was silent. In the wing mirror he could see the Sierra following at a short distance. Diamond drove. Caffery caught glimpses of him talking and laughing each time the wipers cleared the windscreen: the Sierra was misty with condensation, the Jaguar’s windows remained cold and clear.

  ‘They’ve all agreed to come in for a mouth swab.’ Maddox sighed and looked out as they passed the twin eggshell-blue cupolae of the Naval College. ‘Every last one except Diamond’s new-found chum. He drives a red GTI, two witness statements put Craw leaving with him—’

  ‘White,’ Jack murmured. ‘White through and through.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Series killers hardly ever fish in other racial pools. They just don’t. It’s such a basic principle it’s almost laughable.’

  For a moment no-one spoke. Maddox cleared his throat and said, ‘Jack, let me explain: there is nothing, nothing, on God’s green earth guaranteed to get the chief’s hackles up like profiling. I think we discussed this when you transferred.’

  ‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘And I think it’s time you and I talked about it.’

  ‘Go on then, talk.’

  Caffery glanced in the mirror at Essex and Logan. ‘In private.’

  ‘Really? Good. Let’s do it. Now. Come on. Stop the car.’

  ‘Now? Fine.’ He took a left into the park, stopped the car at the edge of the road, put the hazard warnings on. The two of them jumped out.

  ‘Right.’ Rain from an ancient oak overhead hissed and bounced off the pavement against their ankles. Maddox held his coat over his head like a monk’s cowl. ‘What’s going on with you?’

  ‘OK.’ Caffery hiked his jacket over his head and the two men stood closer. In the car Essex and Logan tactfully found something else to stare at. ‘It feels, Steve, it feels as if you and me are walking in different directions.’

  ‘Keep going. Get it off your chest.’

  ‘I meant what I said. This is not a black crime.’

  Maddox rolled his eyes. ‘How many times do I have to—’ He stopped. Shook his head. ‘We’ve gone through this already—I told you the chief’s position.’

  ‘And if he knew we’d taken one look at a couple of poxy rum bottles, for Chrissake—rum bottle
s brought in by the team’s resident Nazi—and decided we had a black target, what would his position be then? Think about it.’ He held his hand up, his fingertips pressed together, white with pressure. ‘Think about the bird. Can you really picture that useless bit of shit in the pub having the nous—or even the imagination, for Christ’s sake—to do something like that?’

  ‘Jack, Jack, Jack. Maybe you’re right. But look at it from my point of view. I don’t want this to be an IC3 any more than you do, and nor does the governor, which is exactly why we have to eliminate hard evidence—’

  ‘Hard evidence?‘ Jack sucked in a breath. ‘You call that hard evidence?’

  ‘There was an Afro-Caribbean hair pulled from Craw’s scalp and a sighting near North’s aggregate yard—plus all the shit we’ve collected in the last hour. Plenty enough to worry me. Don’t take offence now, Jack, but remember, in B team the buck stops with me, not you. And if I have to choose between listening to a new DI who I’ve known five minutes and brown-nosing the CS, well, Jack, with all respect …’ He paused, took a breath. ‘Well, what would you do?’

  Caffery looked at him for a long time. ‘Then I want this on the record.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘We’re steering in the wrong direction. Someone out there thinks he’s a doctor. We should be looking for a hospital worker. A white hospital worker.’

  Maddox raised his eyebrows. ‘Based on—’

  ‘Based on what Krishnamurthi said, the target’s got rudimentary medical knowledge. Steve, today wasn’t an average day in the pub—we got it wrong. On your average day the place is full, and some of the punters are hospital workers.’

  ‘OK, OK, calm down. Hold fire until tomorrow’s meeting, yeah? Then we can look at this in the cold light of day.’

  ‘I want to start now.’

  ‘What do you think you’re going to do? Stake out every hospital in area four—RG, PD and PL?’

  ‘I’ll start with RG. Right here. St Dunstan’s. It’s the nearest to the pub: approach personnel. Narrow it down through them, then do a blanket interview. If that draws a blank then I’ll have a look at Lewisham, maybe Catford.’