Cold Kill (7 page)

Stella said, ‘How did you get him?'

‘Utilities. Electricity, to be specific. He doesn't vote: not a good citizen.' Even from a distance, the high flush in Greegan's cheeks was noticeable.

‘Print it out and go home.'

Greegan shook his head. ‘I'll be all right, Boss.'

‘Go home,' Stella told him, ‘you've got the flu.'

Greegan clicked ‘print'. It took him a while to get the mouse-pointer settled because of the shivers chasing down from his shoulders. He said, ‘You're right. I feel like shit. I'm really ill.'

Stella flapped a hand at him. ‘Get out of here, Andy, for Christ's sake; you're a fucking germ factory.'

Mike Sorley glanced through the interview transcripts, stopping briefly to read more carefully the passages that Stella had highlighted.

He said, ‘He's taking the piss.'

‘I know. Still think he did it?'

‘He had information not contained in any press release. I like him for it, yes.'

‘Okay, well, we've had him for fourteen hours. He's due another rest period. It looks like I'll be asking you for an extension. And a search warrant: we've got his address.'

‘There was a time,' Sorley said dolefully, ‘when a confession would do it for you. The guy owned up: that was that; a couple of hours in court, then straight to the gallows. Case solved, on to the next.'

‘The good old days,' Stella observed.

‘One less on the streets.'

‘And if he didn't do it?'

Sorley shrugged. ‘They've all done something.'

Between the street and the treble-racked, four-sided arrangement of high-rise blocks that made up the Harefield Estate was a no man's land that Stella thought of as the demilitarized zone. The DMZ. It was a little waste land littered with waste objects that spoke of wasted lives: gutted cars; white goods leaking their CFCs; soft furnishings soaking up the weather; a ground-cover of fast-food cartons and used syringes and condoms and cola cans that had doubled as crack pipes. The tower blocks were arranged round a circular space known locally as the bull ring. When Stella had lived there, her mother would send her down eighteen storeys to the convenience store for groceries and a quarter of vodka. Nowadays, the shopfronts in the bull ring were boarded and graffitied, save for a KFC and a liquor store. You could still get the vodka.

For some, Harefield was simply a place to live: they got by as best they could by hearing nothing, seeing nothing and saying less. They behaved as if they were under martial law; under curfew. For others, the place was a vast business-incentive scheme. The businesses in question included dealing drugs, dealing flesh, dealing cards. There were specialist outlets for passports and visas. Armourers were finding business so hot they were waging a price war. The dealers were on the landings, the whores were on a rota system, and the spirit of free enterprise, like the spirit of Christmas, was in the air, bringing the scent of money.

Two vehicles stopped in the bull ring: the first a car carrying Stella, Pete Harriman and Jack Cuddon, who was doubling for Andy Greegan, the second a people carrier bringing a forensics team. Some spare uniforms would be along later to secure the flat. Stella got out and felt a little lurch of alarm, as if the ground had dipped beneath her. The bull ring was where Nike Man had died – Stella backed up against a car, a second man closing in, and a hot reflux of fear rising in her gullet. The wheel-nut crank had been in the well between the seats, and she had swung it without picking her target. A couple of inches higher and her man might have survived; and couple of inches lower, and he'd have shrugged it off for sure.

She looked up and saw faces on the high walkways, the estate's foot-soldiers in their uniform of estate chic: baggies, hoodies, beanies. They stood unmoving, watching, confident on home ground. Cops came to the estate often, but they would be Drugs Squad or Vice Squad or the
SO19
gun team: and mostly they would be expected. The Harefield Estate operators understood that good business practice involved a little industrial espionage. A pay-off here in exchange for a phone call there and, overnight, product would be shifted. Product and livestock. These cops weren't here to raid. The soldiers knew that. They were the wrong side of the DMZ for sure, but, as long as they kept their distance, things would be fine.

You can name buildings after local dignitaries or poets or Cumbrian lakes. The man who'd designed Harefield was a realist. The blocks went from A to L. Stella and Harriman stepped out of the lift in Block C and on to the walkway of Floor 16; they were looking for Flat 31. Two dudes sat on the walkway rail, their backs to the sheer drop, sharing a spliff.

They said, ‘Hey, motherfucker. Hey, bitch.' That was as far as it went.

The sound of a Hatton gun taking out the door-hinges of 16/31 went round the circle of tower blocks: sharp echoes hanging in the air. Kimber's flat was stone cold. Everyone in the team was wearing white coveralls, and Jack Cuddon was doing Andy Greegan's job of organizing an uncorrupted path from the door to the search site. The flats were basic clones: a passageway from the front door led to one or two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen. But you can customize any space – make it your own, make your mark.

Pete Harriman walked into Kimber's living room and stopped dead. He said, ‘Holy Christ.'

Stella joined him; she said, ‘This guy's a case. He's a real
case
.'

Harriman stood in the centre of the room and did a slow revolve. The walls were black and they were papered with ten by eight candid-camera shots: all women, all young, none of them posing or smiling for the camera because they weren't aware that they were being photographed. A space had been left beneath each photo where Kimber had used a pen with silver ink to record the time, the date, and then to give to each an embellishment, a little story. His handwriting was small and fastidiously neat, the lines evenly spaced. If you stood a little way off, you might be persuaded that this was design: wallpaper that borrowed its ideas from the photograph album; a touch retro-chic for a sink estate, perhaps, but hey...

Then you might take time to read what was written; you might read the
details
.

‘Kimber, you sick fuck,' Harriman said.

Stella was looking at the pictures.

A woman sitting at a pavement-café table, smoking, staring at nothing in particular, her hair drifting across her cheek.

A woman sunbathing in the park, the camera taking in a long length of leg and probing under her skirt.

A woman peering into a restaurant, searching for a friend maybe, her own reflection looking back at her.

A woman walking down the street, all purpose and urgency, her coat making wings either side, her hair flying.

A woman on a park bench leaning back to drink from a bottle of water, her throat arched, sunlight among the water as it flowed.

A woman preparing to dress a naked mannequin in a clothes-shop window, her arms round the dummy from behind, her face looking over its shoulder.

A woman leaning forward to attend to a child in a buggy, her blouse falling forward, the soft slope of her breasts.

And women framed in windows at night, or at dusk, some part-clothed, some naked, some in motion so slightly blurred, some on the far side of the room so muddled with reflections, some removing clothes so indistinct, some closing the curtains so sharp and defined. Many such women… though it would have taken time and trouble to find them and catch them like that: trapped for a moment inside their own lives.

Times and dates logged… and then the little stories, which were brief and dark and terrifying; stories of blood and pain and desecration. As Stella read them, they dizzied her; her throat tightened and the blood sang in her ears.

‘You think he did any of this stuff?' Harriman was reading too.

‘I don't know.' She shuddered. ‘Jesus Christ, I hope not.'

‘We can check some of them. Some of them have names.'

*

Jack Cuddon was going from room to room like a man with a purpose, but, in truth, it was just nervous energy taking him forward. He was muttering to himself. Stella could feel the anger – as if he were shedding flakes of fire. He stared at the photographs in turn. He read the vile little stories word by word. He was breathing through his mouth like a man who had just stepped off a running track.

He said, ‘This is bad. This guy has to go down.'

Stella was staring at a photograph of a woman who was turning to look over her shoulder, almost as if she had spotted her follower or heard the sound of the shutter-release. The movement had brought her into half-profile, the curve of her breast, the sweep of her hip; her dark hair was back in a pony-tail and she had clean, delicate planes to her face, a small, straight nose.

Harriman moved to stand next to her. He said, ‘It's Valerie Blake.'

In the bedroom, they found more photographs, both on the walls and in a long row of albums. They found a laptop computer. They found locks of hair, fifty or so, arranged on a black display card, time and date carefully recorded.

They found a notebook.

I will call this one Anthea.

I will call this one Beatrice.

I will call this one Cherie.

I will call this one Davina.

The book was spiral bound and close ruled. The writing was as neat and evenly spaced as the writing on the walls. There were faint traces of dusting-powder on the covers. Forensics had done a rush job on the book, principally for DNA samples; Stella would let them have it back for dye and heat tests, ink analysis and so forth. It was a book you could buy in any stationer's and the ink was fine-point fibre-tip.

Harriman turned up at her desk with bad-joke coffee and a couple of report-sheets. She said, ‘Who's cross-referencing the women in the pictures?'

‘Maxine and Sue. They're getting some help from the indexers.'

‘Tell them that the names are not likely to help much. He's naming them himself: going through the alphabet.'

‘Some might be right.'

‘Might be. But, if not, there's nothing to go on except the faces; in other words, nothing to go on.'

‘The missing persons files.'

‘Missing persons with no names to match.' She picked up his report-sheets and glanced at them. ‘How long before she came out?'

‘Two hours. Let me tell you how many people knocked on the car window and complained about pollution.'

‘You had the engine running.'

‘Two hours? An airflow coming in straight from the Arctic. They're calling it an ice-wind; listen to the weather forecast.'

‘Duncan Palmer lives in a very middle-class area. People recycle; they ride bikes.'

‘They drive fucking great SUVs that never see a rock or a patch of mud.'

Stella was reading Harriman's description. ‘Tall, sexy, blonde, slim.'

‘I didn't say sexy.'

‘It's between the lines.' She put the report down. ‘You followed her to where she lives?'

‘She went back to Palmer's flat.'

‘Did she now. And before that –?'

‘Went shopping. Picked up some bits and pieces in a food hall: something for the rest of the day. Pâté, pasta, salad, two swordfish steaks. And etcetera. Me next in the queue with my cheese and pickle sandwich.'

‘Then she went back.'

‘No. She went to a place called Filigree. It's a jeweller's in the Hypermarket. She was looking at a 1950s Rolex Oyster.'

‘Did she buy it?'

‘They're trying to find her a Patek Philippe, whatever that is.'

‘Did she give a price range?'

‘Up to fifteen hundred.'

‘No kidding...' Stella picked up Harriman's report again and glanced at it, as if for confirmation. ‘A Christmas present,' she said.

‘Could be for her father, brother...'

‘For her husband.'

‘There's a thought,' Harriman agreed.

‘But we think it might be for Duncan Palmer, don't we?'

‘We're thinking along those lines.'

‘Did you get her name?'

‘They took her number and said they'd call her. Lauren Buchanan.'

‘What were you supposed to be doing?'

‘Browsing. The place was pretty full: it's Christmas. She didn't notice me, don't worry.' He paused a moment, then added, ‘Listen, he was in America. The appointments check out. A few cancellations, but nothing that would give him time to get back to England.'

‘I know,' Stella said. Then, ‘Men can be bastards, can't they?'

‘I don't know,' Harriman said. ‘Why ask me?'

The DNA reports from the scene of crime and from the post-mortem were still backed up in Forensics. Stella called the lab and asked for a cross-check on Kimber's mouth swab. She was told it was going to take time. The guy on the phone sounded weary.

‘How much time?' Stella asked.

‘Difficult to say.'

‘How difficult?'

‘It's a process, you know? A process. Also it stands in line.'

‘What's your name?'

‘Davison.'

‘Okay, Davison. This is a murder case and I've got a suspect – good suspect, really handy – but there's a problem. He's confessed.'

‘That's lousy luck.'

‘Yes, it is. I've got some promising circumstantial evidence but nothing to nail it down with. You've got the DNA reports from the scene of crime and you've got the suspect's DNA.'

‘Which scene of crime?'

‘Valerie Blake.'

‘That wasn't me.'

‘What?'

‘I didn't do the work on that. Might have been processed, might not.'

‘But it's there. Someone's got it. I mean, it's in the lab, isn't it?'

‘Oh, yes. But it's not me.'

‘In about three hours, I'm going to have to ask for a superintendent's custody extension on the guy; after that, I'll have to go to a magistrate and I might not get what I want. If I release him without charge and you come back some time later with the information that his DNA's all over the victim and all over the scene of crime, I'm going to be unhappy.'