My Bloody Valentine (Alastair Gunn) (17 page)

He waited for a black cab to pass before crossing the street, losing some ground on his target, but ending up directly behind him. Hayes lumbered on without turning. Bull began closing the gap, careful not to make any noise, even though Hayes was probably too out of it to hear him anyway.

He was only ten yards back when it happened.

Hayes stopped without warning, took another swig. Bull slid out of sight between two cars. He gave it a few beats before leaning out, just enough to see past the bumper hiding him. Then he stood, looking around.

He moved from behind the car, checking up and down the street. He could see fifty yards in front and behind, but somehow Hayes wasn’t there. Bull moved to where he’d last seen his target.

Where the fuck had he gone?

Then he realized. A small alleyway sat between two buildings on his right. He hadn’t seen it before because the same lorry had been parked in front of it every night, hiding the entrance from anyone on the opposite side of the street, where Bull had been.

He moved into the black mouth of the passage,
freeing the hammer from his belt, feeling the adrenalin kick in. The walls were close but, as his eyes adjusted, he realized that enough light crept in from the far end to allow him to see. Bull kept his steps silent, alert for any signs that the other man was waiting for him. Could Hayes have faked being pissed?

Bull reached the back of the buildings, where the alley opened into a courtyard. A small car was parked on the left, just inside the large wooden gates in the rear wall. There was no security lighting, but the clouds had shifted, leaving the moon bright in a clear piece of sky, showing details on the peeling window frames, a stack of paving slabs against one wall. And, in the far corner, facing away, Matthew Hayes. Taking a leak.

Bull moved, gliding across the concrete towards his target, winding back the hammer, ready to strike. The gap between them closed: ten feet, six feet, four.

But just as Bull was about to swing, Hayes turned, and their eyes met.

The moment froze: two killers facing each other. Hayes was taller, leaner, maybe faster when alcohol wasn’t involved. But Bull was armed.

Neither man spoke.

The hammer connected with Hayes’ temple, punching its way through soft tissue, stopping only when the handle made contact with his eye socket.

Hayes dropped, jerking as his knees hit the ground, slumping forwards in the dirt at Bull’s feet.

Bull used a few more heavy blows to cave in his skull, before levering the hammer free and walking back to the alley. He reached the street and headed for home, pleased that he’d been able to finish Hayes without wasting another day. He was making good progress.

Three down.

31

As usual, Hawkins was awake before the alarm.

For a moment she just lay, letting herself adjust to the new chapter of consciousness. Then she stretched and rolled on to her side, an arm out in search of the bed’s other occupant, finding empty space. Mike must already be in the shower.

Hawkins rolled back and stared at the ceiling, pleasantly surprised at how rested she felt. She must have had a decent sleep, something she hadn’t expected after the last couple of strenuous days at work. She’d been exhausted when she and Mike had arrived home the previous night. They’d eaten with her dad, who had managed to cook a surprisingly decent lamb hotpot without reducing the kitchen to a smoking ruin.

The other positive development was that she and Mike had successfully shared a bed, for the first time since her return home. Obviously, there had been no action after lights out; Hawkins still wasn’t up to that, and neither had she broached the subject of her scars. Until now, Mike had remained on the sofa, mainly because there wasn’t a huge amount of room in the bed for them both, and a collision in the night would have had Hawkins waking in agony.

As far as she recalled, though, that hadn’t happened.

At that point, her professional brain assumed control, dragging their main case back on to the agenda. Hawkins had brought her work laptop home, and she and Mike had spent some time, post hotpot, reviewing Steve Tanner’s shock news.

Just like Samantha Philips, Rosa Calano had done time. And, just like Samantha Philips, within weeks of her release someone had used a hammer to cave in her head.

The investigation team that had originally looked into Calano’s murder was led by Sean Davies, another DCI with whom Hawkins had worked briefly on a couple of cases a few years before. He hadn’t been exactly inspirational then, but his team’s performance on the Calano case really stank.

Calano had been murdered just over four months ago, and Davies’ team had swiftly labelled it an indiscriminate attack, connected to the victim’s Portuguese roots. There had been a spate of race-hate crimes in north London around the time, using a variety of nasty methods. A few local gang members had gone down for the ones where evidence was found, and it had simply been assumed they were responsible for the others as well.

With Calano’s young, easily appeased friends, and no family to placate, it had been simple for an overworked investigation team to lump the case in with the gangland murders, despite the lack of evidence to back them
up. As a result, the investigative minimum had been done. So Hawkins had instructed her team, via emails they’d pick up that morning, to recheck every element of the original case.

The investigation in fact remained live, with Davies’ team supposedly still looking into it, but they certainly wouldn’t be disappointed when Hawkins applied to have it transferred into her name.

Already completing the handover form in her head, Hawkins eased herself into a sitting position, simultaneously deciding what to wear. She twisted, checking the quality of the light creeping around the edges of her blackout blind. It already looked like being an unusually bright day.

She turned back, realizing that she couldn’t hear any of the banging her unsubtle American companion usually made in the bathroom.

She looked at the clock.

Oh fuck.

It was nearly 10 a.m.

Hawkins was off the bed and three steps towards the door before she felt the pain in her torso and realized what she had done. She froze, reassuring herself that the wardrobe was there if she needed support, trying to establish whether she should retreat to the edge of the bed or call for help. But the longer she stayed upright, the more confident she became. Her stomach wall wasn’t impressed by this impromptu excursion, but she was standing straight nonetheless.

She challenged herself, stepping further into the no-man’s-land behind the bed. She reached the door, heaving it open and edging out on to the landing, her hand skirting the rail, still cursing Maguire.

The bastard had left her. He’d got up,
chosen
to leave her sleeping and buggered off to work alone. No change of heart in the shower; no pang of conscience on the bog. Now it was late morning and by the time Hawkins reached the office Mike would have been there for three hours or more. She’d probably walk in to find him high-fiving Steve Tanner over some case-breaking event.

She rounded the corner and was almost at the bathroom door when she nearly collided with her dad, who came bowling out of the spare room in an indecently short dressing gown, a toothbrush poking out of his mouth.

‘All right, love,’ he mumbled through a mouthful of white foam. ‘You’ve had a good sleep.’

She ignored his verve. ‘Where’s Mike?’

‘At work, I expect. It’s Monday, isn’t it?’ He walked to the sink.

‘Exactly. Where I’m supposed to be.’

Her dad began rinsing his brush. ‘He tried to wake you before he left, but apparently you weren’t too happy about it.’

‘I seriously doubt that.’

He shrugged. ‘Mike also said you’ve been working too hard
in your condition
.’ He glanced at his daughter’s midriff. ‘I hope he means the attack.’

Hawkins sighed. ‘I’m not bloody pregnant, Dad.’ She watched as he vacated the bathroom. ‘Chance’d be a fine thing.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’ She shuffled in, closing the door behind her. ‘I’ll just get ready and we can go.’

Her dad wasn’t the sarcastic type, but Hawkins realized she’d pushed it too far when a curt knock preceded his response. ‘I’ll put some clothes on and drive you, then, shall I, madam?’

32

Hawkins walked slowly around her desk and turned to glare at Maguire. ‘Why the hell didn’t you wake me?’

‘I tried, Toni.’ He held up his hands. ‘You told me to fuck off.’

‘Rubbish.’

‘You said we have Steve Tanner on the team now, so you might as well stay in bed.’

‘My mistake, then.’ She didn’t remember a word of it. ‘I should know better than to unleash the complexities of sarcasm near Americans.’

He ignored her scorn. ‘You were obviously exhausted, so I let you sleep. You’re doing too much too soon, Toni, and you swore not to.’

‘Well,’ she retorted, ‘until they crowbar me out of this office, I’m still your boss. So mind your manners and button it.’

But Mike wasn’t done. ‘You want technicalities? How about the fact that I asked the DCS about you coming back? He says you’re on contract hours only, quote “easing back in”
.
’

‘I’m fine.’ She tried to wave the conversation closed. ‘I’ve spent every day back sitting down, haven’t I? Stop mollycoddling me.’

He shot her a sceptical glare. ‘Where’s your wheelchair?’

Silently, she cursed her negligence in raising the point. ‘At home. I don’t need it, and this morning I realized why everything’s felt harder since I came back. It wasn’t me; it was that
thing
. As soon as you’re in a chair, people think you’re an idiot.’ She pictured Vaughn’s secretary, Otis King and half a dozen others who’d patronized her, if they’d addressed her at all, in the last couple of days. ‘You of all people should understand I won’t put up with that.’

She elaborated no further, having decided she could handle a day without the chair, figuring that, if it wasn’t even in the building, she couldn’t resort to it in any moments of weakness or, more crucially, be forced back into it by Mike. The fact she’d had to take refuge in the quietest loos on the first floor of Becke House on her way in, simply to recharge before attempting the second leg to her office, wasn’t something he needed to know.

Despite the fact her abdomen was now singing like a talent-show reject.

At least her office chair, now back in its rightful place behind her desk, was supportive, which was more than could be said presently of Maguire.

Fortunately, the DI pursed his lips, conceding the round, if not the entire fight.

‘Anyway’ – Hawkins moved on while she was ahead – ‘the chair’s not here, so we’ll have to manage
without. At least you don’t need to ferry me around any more.’ She left it there, hoping he wouldn’t challenge her newfound independence, because, in truth, it was fragile at best.

‘Whatever.’ Mike rolled his eyes. ‘But if you end up in ER, don’t expect me to be there feeding you damn grapes all night.’

‘I think we understand each other,’ Hawkins closed. ‘So now you’ve made me late, why don’t you explain what I’ve missed?’ She waited, omitting the fact that she had needed the lie-in.

She’d tottered into the operations room ten minutes ago, in foul humour thanks to her dad’s geriatric driving style and his clucking about her disposal of the chair. It was eleven thirty when she arrived, having missed nearly three hours of research into Rosa Calano’s death.

Discovering Maguire in conference with her competition hadn’t improved things. Tanner was the archetypal man’s man. He’d infiltrated the established male contingent straight away, but his arresting looks and implausibly white smile even seemed to have gained ground with Amala.

Mike had found himself summoned straight to Hawkins’ desk.

‘Okay,’ he’d said at last, ‘I’ll tell you what’s going on, but only if you swear to take things at a pace you can handle and get the rest you need in between. You’re no good to any of us burned out.’ He waited for Hawkins’ sullen nod of agreement before taking a seat, sliding a
photocopied Victim Profile Report across the desk. ‘Rosa was nineteen at the time of her death, four months ago, October last. She finished work at the Masala Den, an Indian joint in Enfield, just before midnight, and caught the bus from the town centre to the end of her street, a mile or so to the south. She was on foot, a couple hundred yards from home, when someone took her out. Hammer to the temple, same as Philips. She had earphones in, so she didn’t hear it coming, and the street was badly lit, so no one saw.’

‘Only according to the original report,’ Hawkins reminded him. ‘I want all potential witnesses found and checked again. What about her background?’

‘We’re on it. Original investigation has some big-time holes, so we started from scratch, like you said. Nothing fresh yet.’

She rubbed her forehead. ‘So what the hell have you been doing all day?’

Mike didn’t say a word as he dug in the case file. Hawkins knew her DI well enough to know she’d riled him, but she was still too mad about being late to ease up.

He produced some papers and calmly began reeling off Calano’s history. ‘Rosa was a Portuguese immigrant. Dad went AWOL when she was eleven, current whereabouts unknown. Mom came to the UK the year after, looking for work; brought the girl along. She took a job in a hotel while the kid finished school, but she died of cancer right after her daughter graduated. Rosa wanted
to stay here, though, and at sixteen she landed the au pair gig with a family in Camden.’ He flipped a page. ‘That didn’t go so well. Kid had never worked with new-borns, managed to shake their six-month-old to death when he wouldn’t quit screaming. She got five years, starting in a young offenders’ institution, but they let her out after three. The court set her up in the shared condo and helped her get the restaurant job.’

‘And two weeks later she was dead,’ Hawkins added. ‘Just like Sam Philips. They both killed, even though one meant to and the other clearly didn’t, and they both did time. But dozens of prisoners are released every week. Why
these
two? Were they random selections chosen for their respective vulnerabilities, or are they linked some other way?’