Murder Club (8 page)

Laura shook her head and took her hands out of his. ‘No. Like I said. I met you earlier, on the street, and when you were in the cell. You were drunk. You still are.’

‘No. I know you!’ he said for the third time, in a hoarse croak. ‘You are my angel. My guardian Angela!’

He stood up and reached out for her, turning his huge hands into claws, and Laura stepped back, her eyes wide. Horrified.

LAURA STEPPED OUT
from her office, nodding to the constable, and hurried across to the desk where Sergeant Matthews was filling in a form and watching two uniforms lead a drunk Santa Claus to the holding cells. He sighed and put the form to one side.

‘What’s the verdict, Doctor?’

‘He’s sober enough now, I guess. If not entirely lucid.’

‘Bible Steve is never entirely lucid.’

‘Probably not, no.’

The sergeant looked across as the constable led the man in question out of the police surgeon’s office. ‘So I can charge him and release him?’

Laura held up her hand to the constable, signalling for him to wait, and leaned in to speak quietly with the desk sergeant. ‘He’s sober enough to be charged and released, but why don’t you keep him in for the night?’

‘Why would I do that? Is he ill?’

‘Not physically, no.’

‘I’m jammed up here, Laura.’

‘I know it’s against procedures, but a night out of the cold isn’t going to hurt him.’

Bible Steve called out to them, ‘I just want my own bed, Officer. Take a page or two of the Good Book. God’s love keeps us warm. Nourishment, not punishment.’

‘He hasn’t got a bed, Dave.’

‘Neither have we – like I say, we’re jammed up here and the night is far from over.’

Laura looked at her watch. ‘Yeah, and it’s time I was out of here.’

‘We’ll drop him off at the shelter. We always do.’

‘You’re a good man, Sergeant Matthews, and I’ll kill any man who says otherwise!’ shouted Bible Steve.

The sergeant nodded to him. ‘Please don’t. And remember, sweet-and-sour pork balls are off the menu tonight!’

Laura adjusted her hat and headed for the door.

‘Bless you, my child!’ the homeless man called after her.

But Laura hurried on, the door closing behind her.

‘Take care, darling,’ Bible Steve said softly.

London, off the Edgware Road. 3 a.m., Saturday

THE STREETS OF
London were mostly quiet now.

In the distance, the sound of music playing from a club that was staying open until five in the morning. Lou Reed singing about shiny boots of leather, but faintly. Audible when the club doors opened for people to leave. There was little or no traffic on the roads, which were covered with thick snow. Large flakes of it that continued to fall, filling the air. Any footprints in that snow in the little side-street had long been filled in.

Bible Steve looked upwards, his eyes wide with wonder as the snow fell on his upturned face. He reached a hand out and clutched it, as if the dancing snowflakes were little bits of magic he could catch in his palm. He watched as they melted on the back of his hand and a tear trickled down his cheek. He wiped the sleeve of his coat roughly over his eyes, as he did hundreds of times a day, then thrust his hand into his pocket and pulled out a can of strong lager. He pulled the ring-pull, took a long drink and then belched.

‘Onward then, ye people,’ he sang loudly. ‘Join our
happy
throng, blend with ours your voices in the triumph song. Glory, laud and honour unto Christ the King, this through countless ages men and angels sing.’

He waved his can of lager to conduct an invisible choir, and his voice grew even louder.

‘Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus going on before …’

And then his voice faltered and his eyes widened. But not with wonder this time. He shrank back against the brick of the wall that he was leaning against and raised a protective arm.

‘You keep away from me,’ he said, his voice trembling with fear. ‘You keep away from me!’

Hampstead, north-west London. 6.30 a.m., Saturday

JACK DELANEY YAWNED
and got out of bed. He peeled back the edge of the curtain and peered through the window; it was still dark outside.

Dark, but still snowing heavily in London and had been all night, by the looks of it. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he could see the garden thick with it. Five days away from Christmas now, and the capital was blanketed in snow. The bookies would be paying out big time this year, he thought to himself, as he slipped his feet into a pair of sheepskin slippers that Kate had bought for him. He hadn’t worn slippers for years. Thin end of the wedge, he had told her; but a nice wedge, he conceded.

He could hear her snoring gently behind him. The corners of his lips slipped into a smile as he listened to her. Kate denied she ever snored, and truth to tell it was more of a sighing sound, and a gentle smack of her lips, than a proper snore. It was a peaceful sound, a contented one, but Delaney was a light sleeper, unless he had had a skinful of whiskey of course, and then he slept through pretty much anything. But it was getting rarer and rarer for him to tie one on
nowadays.
The last few months had changed him. That much was for sure. He’d put the past back where it belonged and was concentrating on the present, on the future. At least he was trying to. He knew he was a changed man, and a lot of that change had been down to the good lady doctor who shared his bed.

He looked out at her back garden again. A picture-postcard scene. Hampstead in winter. It could have been 100 years ago, 200. Kate owned the whole house, but rented the upstairs flat to a gay couple, Patrick and Simon, a pair of musicians with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Violinists. They spent most of their time away and so she hadn’t bothered parcelling the garden into two lots, as her tenants were quite happy not having the use of it – if it meant they had to pay less rent. It suited Kate fine, and she and Delaney had talked about not letting the flat out again, if the musicians decided to move on. At some stage, in the hopefully not-too-distant future, they had discussed selling Kate’s house and buying somewhere out in the country. The Chilterns maybe, or somewhere else equally rural out near Oxford.

The garden was long and narrow, but beautifully laid out. Not that you could tell at the moment, with the thick snow covering every surface like the frosting on a wedding cake. Jack smiled to himself again, as the image came to his mind. Kate and he had never actually discussed the idea of getting married. But others had. Particularly down at White City Police Station. It was becoming something of a standing joke.

The main line of questioning on the marriage issue, however, came from his daughter Siobhan. Seven years old, going on twenty! More of an interrogation than a questioning, come to that. Jack had thought she might have been against the idea, seeing as her mother had died when she was still young. Jack had carried the guilt of her death around like a small child carries a comfort-blanket. But meeting Kate had changed all that. It had changed everything. And for the better.

He looked back over his shoulder and squinted through the gloom to look at her. Her dark and gloriously curly hair was piled around the pillow that supported her head. He resisted the urge to cross over and smooth it. She had got in late last night and he didn’t want to disturb her. She deserved a lie-in now and again, and she wasn’t rostered on at the police station or at her general practice at the university until later.

He looked back out at the garden again and pulled the curtain shut. He’d talked with Kate about digging a fish pond when spring came and the ground was soft enough. But she had pointed out that they had a baby on the way. Maybe later, when the new addition to the family was old enough for it to be safe, but for now maybe a small fish tank for Siobhan would suffice.

Downstairs he yawned, stifling the noise with his hand, pushed the button on Kate’s DeLonghi Prima Donna coffee machine and waited for it to work its magic. He had dressed in a coal-black woollen suit that Kate had bought him. A white shirt with a new dark-blue silk tie.

He caught sight of himself reflected in the glass of the window looking out over the sink into the lawn. He didn’t recognise himself from the wreck of a man he had been only some few months ago. A shambling, borderline alcoholic on the verge of coming apart at the seams. His jaw was clean-shaven, his dark hair was cut and brushed, his deep-blue eyes were clear and intelligent. Even his black shoes were polished to a military shine.

He looked like he was going to a wedding or a fashion shoot for a men’s magazine cover … or what he actually was going to be doing, later that morning.

Appearing in court.

Seemed that some of his past wouldn’t stay buried after all.

DONGMEI CHANG WAS
in a foul mood as she came out of Edgware Road station.

Her first name might well be a translation of Tung Mei which translated as ‘winter plums’ for some, but the truth was that she hated winter. And always had. To her it meant ‘younger sister from the east’ and she would have dearly loved to return east. To Hong Kong, where she was born. But Dongmei was in her late sixties now and resigned to the fact that she would never be going home. She had been in the United Kingdom since 1962, when she had been brought over to marry a man her father had chosen for her. He was starting a Chinese restaurant and, although she didn’t love him when they first met, he was older than her and he wanted her respect and obedience more than her love. It wasn’t an unusual concept to Dongmei, for she had seen her elder sisters married in a similar fashion. Daughters were business assets in her family. But she and they worked hard, and the business prospered in a modest way, and over the years she came to love her husband in her own way.

He had died ten years ago from a brain embolism suffered during celebrations for Chinese New Year in
Soho.
They had never been blessed with children, and her husband had refused her requests to seek medical help, so she had carried on the restaurant on her own, staffed mainly by family members who came over from China in generational waves. Trained up for years and then moving on, setting up their own restaurants in different parts of the country. Nobody could afford to buy or rent in London now. Dongmei Chang held the deeds to the building, however, and had been advised to sell up and retire many, many times. But the restaurant was more to her than just a business. She had toyed with the notion of selling up immediately after her husband had died, but even though she wanted to go back home to Hong Kong, she knew that it no longer existed. It wasn’t just that it was now under communist China’s governance, but everything about it had changed. She had left it half a century ago and there was nothing there for her now, and there was nothing here for her either if she sold the Lucky Dragon. And so she hadn’t.

Some mornings, though, the thought did still tempt her. And it certainly tempted her again that morning. Even though it was still dark, her train from Paddington, where she lived in a small apartment that she also owned, was late and subsequently packed full of early-morning commuters. Nobody had offered her a seat, so she had been jostled and bumped all the way on her admittedly short journey.

The rest of her staff and family wouldn’t be in until later, but she had come in early to do the bookkeeping. She didn’t trust handing her accounts over to a family member to prepare for her accountant. Her financial business was just that – hers.

She was muttering to herself as she came out of the station. There are two Edgware Road stations in London, for some reason, neither of them connected and about 150 yards apart. Dongmei Chang used the Marylebone Line one, next to the flyover on the corner of Edgware Road, Harrow Road and Marylebone Road.

She was still muttering as she made her way down Edgware Road to her restaurant. She had been in England for more than fifty years now, but still thought and spoke in Chinese. She could speak a little English, but didn’t care to. The snow was heavy underfoot as she turned into the side-street, and she had her eyes focused on the pavement. The flakes were swirling in the wind, lighter now, but enough to make her eyes water. As she fumbled for the keys to her shop she didn’t at first notice the shape lying against the wall, a heavy coating of snow on it. But when she got nearer and looked more closely, she could see it was a man. As she bent down to look even closer, she could see the thick mat of dried blood on the man’s skull, and the red staining of it on the snow beneath and around him. And then she gasped with shock, clasping a hand to her chest, which had suddenly become impossibly tight and painful, and collapsed in a gentle heap to lie beside him on the snow-crusted pavement.

GEOFFREY HUNT STOOD
up and rubbed his right hand at the base of his spine, arching his back and tilting his head skywards.

From the warmth of their kitchen his wife, Patricia, watched him as he did so. After a moment or two he bent over again and continued to shovel the snow that had covered the path running along the side of the garden, down to the summerhouse that Geoffrey used as an office. Fair weather or foul, he always spent an hour or two in there writing.

For some twenty years, since he had retired, Geoffrey had been writing stories, as well as mystery and romance novels, and sending them off to magazines and publishers. As yet he had had no luck, but he hadn’t given up hope. At school he had always wanted to be a writer, a novelist, but things had turned out differently for him. He knew better than most that the plans men make when young are sometimes as resistant to the forces of change as a stick tossed into a river.

Patricia watched him as he worked, methodically clearing the snow, although she knew full well the pain would be shooting through his body. Snow was no friend to arthritis. She knew very well too that his
body
was stooped and burdened with more than the manual effort and the inflammation in his joints.