Murder Club (3 page)

Sometimes he saw the same girls, but not often. It wasn’t about what was comfortable for Andrew Johnson. What was familiar and safe. For him it was about the new. But he always went for the same type of woman. Dark curly-haired women. Of medium height. And he always wanted them to dress the same way. This had posed a problem for him initially – as most working girls in the price bracket he liked to use didn’t usually have the sort of outfit he liked them to wear. Schoolgirl uniforms, nurses’, policewomen’s. These were commonplace enough. Bought cheap
from
Ann Summers or online. Tools of the sex trade. But Andrew liked his women dressed like businesswomen. Power suits and suspenders. Attitude in Armani. High heels and haughty couture. But the wardrobes in the small rooms he visited above the staircases of Soho contained no such expensive items. And so Andrew had bought his own, at considerable expense.

He kept the clothes in a small locked suitcase in a locked cupboard in his windowless office, which used to be a storeroom, at the back of the pub, behind the kitchen. And he would take them with him when he made one of his ‘essential’ business trips to London. His wife, Marjorie, was a large, tall, blonde woman who would have fitted into one of his outfits as easily as the proverbial camel would have fitted through the eye of a needle. He would have said that he didn’t know why he married her. But he knew exactly why. Without her money he would still be a second-rate salesman for a second-rate recruiting agency in Wembley specialising in accountancy personnel, where his entire client base was made up of people from the Indian Subcontinent. Andrew Johnson was not a racist by any means, as he was happy to tell anyone who wished to listen to him, but the one thing he didn’t miss by moving to Suffolk was the world of dark-skinned faces that he had had to deal with every day. Suffolk was like England in the Fifties, and a foreign or ethnic face was something of a rarity, something to provoke comment. And the fact that the women he chose to play with were all white was not being racist either. How can a sexual attraction be racist? he thought. Given the things he
liked
to do, and dreamed of doing, he would have been more racist, in his opinion, had he chosen ethnic women. But he didn’t.

The woman who was modelling his favoured outfit that evening was a tad chubbier than he usually liked. She was called Melody, according to the card on the wall at the base of the stairs, and the notice by the grimy bell on the door to the small flat. In reality her name was Natalie, and she was a single mother of two young children. She lived in Birmingham and commuted down to London three days a week. She earned enough in those three days to take the other four off.

At that moment, however, her hands were tied to the bedstead behind her. The silk blouse she had been given to wear had been opened to expose her breasts, which were cupped in a blood-red corset/bra combination from Agent Provocateur, that was a good size too small for her ample figure. The pinstriped skirt of the suit was pushed up around her waist. One of her high-heeled shoes had flopped from her right foot as it bounced uncontrollably as Andrew Johnson penetrated her. She would have grunted, maybe screamed as the weight of him landed on her soft belly. But the silky knickers he had supplied as well, had been removed and stuffed into her mouth. Her eyes bulged as much as those of the red-faced and perspiring man above her.

Then Andrew’s eyes closed as he came, the tension in his thighs and knees relaxing as he collapsed his full weight upon her again, so that she feared she might well suffocate. He snatched the knickers from her mouth and used them to wipe himself.

‘Jeez, you nearly crushed me to death,’ said the woman beneath him.

Then Andrew Johnson opened his eyes again.

And there was no kindness in them.

Half an hour later he was waiting on the west-bound platform of the Bakerloo Line. Waiting for the train to take him to Baker Street, where he would catch his connecting Metropolitan Line train back to Harrow-on-the-Hill.

A small smile broke out on his face as he replayed in his mind what had happened in the flat. The look of fear in her eyes. The thought of it aroused him once more. He moved his hand surreptitiously down and stroked himself through his trousers.

The sound of a train clattering in the tunnel did little to distract him from his dark thoughts. Past and future pleasures imagined. He smiled again.

A hand fell on his shoulder.

‘
I CANNOT TELL
you what was in the man’s mind. I have had a jumper once before. A woman – she put herself in the path of my train. Her motion was such that it indicated no panic, no fear, but a resigned acceptance of her fate.’

‘I see.’

‘But this man, his face was not towards me, his arm was raised. Maybe in a farewell gesture. I would simply be speculating if I were to say what his motivations might have been.’

Detective Inspector Tony Hamilton nodded and made a note in his book. ‘I was simply asking if you thought it was a suicide, or if you saw someone push him?’

The train driver was a tall man, in his early fifties, Tony would have guessed, with long, but neat, greying hair and half-rimmed tortoiseshell glasses perched on the end of a long, aquiline nose. There was something stork-like about him, Tony decided.

‘If someone pushed him, I don’t recall seeing it. My focus was straight ahead.’

‘Ken here used to be an English teacher,’ said Terry Randall, one of the two transport policemen who were assisting him with his enquiries into the suicide
of
an unknown man who had jumped in front of a west-bound Bakerloo Line train at Piccadilly Circus station. Constable Terry Randall, like the train driver, was in his early fifties, but was shorter, squatter and had a sour expression on his face that showed what he thought of the Metropolitan Police invading what he perceived as his territory. Back in 2006 Sir Ian Blair, the then head of the Metropolitan Police, had wanted a single police force in the capital. He had proposed absorbing the British Transport Police into his force, and this was agreed to by the then Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, bringing it under the control of the Home Office. But it never happened and the two forces remained separate entities. The only difference being that constable was as high as the BTP’s law-enforcing ranks rose. Any serious crimes and the Met would be brought in. Some constables like Randall resented it, but his colleague, Constable Emily Wood, didn’t mind. She was in her early thirties, blonde-haired with a bubbly sense of humour, and she obviously liked the look of the tall, dark-haired detective.

‘Couldn’t face the horror of it, could you, Ken? And so became a train driver.’

‘My doctor advised that I take a less stressful occupation some years ago,’ agreed the thin man. ‘I have always been interested in trains, electric and steam, and my pension was such that I could indulge my hobby and remain in full-time employment.’

‘Is it easy to become a Tube driver?’ asked DI Hamilton.

‘Why’s that, Detective?’ asked Emily Wood. ‘Thinking of hanging up your truncheon?’

Tony smiled at her. ‘I’m a detective, remember. I don’t carry a truncheon.’

The female constable quirked an eyebrow at him, suggesting she thought that might not strictly be true. He had to force himself not to smile as the driver answered his question.

‘It’s not easy, no. Vacancies are rare. To get on the handle isn’t as easy as some people think.’

‘On the handle?’

‘It means driving the train,’ said the male constable, a tad patronisingly.

‘I thought they drove themselves mainly?’

‘Only on the Victoria and Central Lines, sir,’ said Emily Wood.

‘That’s right,’ agreed the driver.

‘Can I ask what difference it makes?’ said Constable Randall.

Tony Hamilton gave him a flat look. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You can’t.’

‘He means was my concentration focused elsewhere, so that I might not have seen clearly what happened.’

‘And was it?’

‘No, like I said. It happened very quickly – he hit into the window facing away from me, his right arm raised, and then he was down and under the wheels.’

DI Hamilton grimaced. ‘I imagine that would be quite stressful for you.’

‘You would be right, Detective. I may well reconsider my position. Once was bad enough; twice is …’ He paused, looking for the right words. ‘As you say, very stressful.’

The detective walked over to the table where a
small,
battered suitcase had been opened and some items of clothing were placed in evidence bags.

‘Nobody handled these?’ he asked the Soco officer who stood beside the table.

‘Just me.’

‘Good.’

The detective turned back to Emily Wood. ‘And there was no identification on him? No wallet? Nothing?’

‘No, sir, just that card.’

She pointed to a smaller evidence bag. DI Hamilton picked it up and looked at the card. It showed a picture of a medieval man hanging by his one foot from a T-shaped tree. Red hose, blue jerkin and a yellow corona around his head. The Hanged Man.

‘Tarot card, sir,’ said Emily Wood.

‘I can see that.’

‘Major Arcana.’

‘You know about this kind of stuff?’

‘A little, sir. My mother is very into it.’

‘What does it signify?’

‘Do you think it is important?’ asked her colleague.

DI Hamilton shrugged. ‘I have absolutely no idea. It’s what we detectives do, Constable. Find clues. See what they mean.’

‘He killed himself. He jumped in front of a train. No one saw him pushed. And there were lots of people there. It’s no great mystery.’

‘I tell you what, Constable. Why don’t you do your job and let me do mine?’

‘I was just saying—’

‘Well, don’t,’ Tony interrupted him. ‘Just button it! Go on, Emily, tell me more.’

The constable grinned, as much at her colleague’s scowling face as flirting with the detective.

‘It’s a Major Arcana card, sir.’

‘Which means?’

‘Well, there are two types of card in the tarot deck. Major and minor arcana. Bit like in an ordinary deck, with the court cards and the ordinary cards.’

‘So what does the Hanged Man signify?’

‘It’s really to do with being in a hiatus, sir. A suspension, if you like. Spiritually. When the man is righted, everything will be different.’

‘It was certainly different for him.’

‘It certainly was,’ she agreed.

‘And there was just female clothing in the case?’

‘Yes, sir,’ the forensic officer nodded.

‘So our John Doe was a transvestite?’

‘Looks that way, sir,’ added Constable Wood.

‘Couldn’t live with it, so he jumped in front of the seven-thirty Bakerloo Line to Harrow and Wealdstone.’

‘I wouldn’t be so sure,’ said the scene-of-crime officer.

‘Go on?’

‘The underwear, sir. Female.’

‘Yes.’

‘Semen stains, by the looks of it. And blood, sir.’

‘I see.’

‘What does it mean?’ asked Emily Wood.

Detective Inspector Hamilton flashed her a mirthless smile. ‘I have absolutely no idea,’ he said.

May Bank Holiday
…

JASON KELLING SHIFTED
into fourth gear and put his foot down. He was driving along the Western Avenue at one o’clock in the morning. He had been out clubbing, but hadn’t exceeded the alcohol limit. He was very careful like that. He was exceeding the speed limit, though.

He felt the adrenaline pumping through his veins as the speedometer dial reached the 100 mph point. He leaned his head back and shouted, gripping the wheel tightly, feeling the car – a Porsche Boxter in midnight-black – still accelerating.

Ten minutes later as he tried to brake and couldn’t, he was shouting again, this time the shout turning into a scream. The wreckage was strewn over fifty yards.

A week later, Jennifer and Jeremy Carling were seated at the kitchen table of their modest semidetached house in Northwood Hills, west London. He was a retired milkman and she was a retired nursery-school teacher. They were both in their seventies.

A bottle of vodka was on the table, together with two shot glasses and a bottle of Jennifer Carling’s newly prescribed sleeping pills. She had been diagnosed with clinical depression, and the pills were supposed to be a short-term measure to help her sleep while more thorough therapy was put in place for her. It was a short-term solution that provided a long-time answer.

They looked at the person who was standing in the doorway to the kitchen and, if they were hoping for sympathy in the eyes that gazed upon them, they were sorely disappointed.

‘You can do it this way, or I can make it painful for you.’

‘But why are you doing this? We don’t know you. We’ve never met you. We never hurt you.’

The elderly woman’s voice cracked as she burst into tears. Her husband patted her hand. Then he poured vodka into the shot glass and poured some pills into his wife’s open palm. He looked up at the woman, angry now as he tilted the bottle into his mouth, then swallowed the pills with the vodka. His wife swallowed hers a few at a time, her throat constricting painfully as the harsh spirit burned her throat. The man took another shot of vodka and downed it in one, then glared at the figure in the doorway.

‘Fuck you!’ he said.

‘No,’ came the reply. ‘Not me.’

Half an hour later and the couple were dead. Heads slumped motionless on the table. A card between them, face-up.

A tarot card. Major Arcana. The Lovers.

The present. Friday, 19 December

NIGHT-TIME IN THE
city.

Seven-thirty. Friday evening. Inner London. The western edges. North of the river. The air had crystals dancing in it. The pavements sparkled with them, as if a dusting of magic had been sprinkled over them. The night sky had clouds half-covering the low moon. A moon that broke free, now and again, from the long, floating fingers of dark cloud that tried to snaggle it in their grasp, reel it back to them. But the moon shrugged them off, sailed free like a galleon under full sail. Further east, however, even darker clouds were massing and banking together, rolling ever westwards towards London, like a slow tidal wave.