The Slaughter Man (24 page)

Bradley Wood was yesterday’s news.

With Whitestone and Wren still on leave, PC Billy Greene and I spent the next day wading through what remained of the alleged sightings of Bradley. Dispatching uniforms to Trace, Interview and Eliminate. Logging it on Holmes. But it was all thin stuff and I did not feel guilty about leaving Billy Greene to it when the darkness fell on Savile Row.

I had an appointment at the Black Museum.

Sergeant John Caine and I stood in the quiet corner of the Black Museum that was devoted to the Slaughter Man.

Nothing had changed. After all that effort, all that hard work and routine, all that fear and blood, everything here was still the same. I wasn’t sure what I had been expecting, but the display was exactly as it had been when I first saw it, and that shocked me.

The cattle gun that looked like a hand drill was still sitting on a small card table. The ancient newspaper article was still in its dusty glass case, the yellowing paper disintegrating with time.

RITUAL SLAUGHTER ON ESSEX FARM

Slaughter Man executes father and sons in midnight killing spree

A killer was jailed for life yesterday for murdering a father and his three grown-up sons with a bolt gun used to slaughter livestock …

And the two photographs that accompanied the article were same as they ever were. The large, good-looking boy with the totally blank expression being led away in handcuffs by a uniformed officer. And a family dominated by men grinning under their Christmas tree.

‘Will you update it?’ I asked the keeper of the Black Museum. ‘Now that Nawkins is dead?’

John Caine shook his head. ‘Now that the Slaughter Man’s story has a happy ending? Don’t think I’ll bother. This place is not really about the likes of him.’ He nodded towards a much larger, much cleaner glass case nearby. ‘It’s about the likes of them.’

The faces stared back at me from inside a glass case that was labelled OUR MURDERED COLLEAGUES. Official photographs, just standard Met mugshots, and yet all those eyes of murdered policemen and women twinkled with mischief and smiles played around lips pressed tightly together for the photographer.

Sergeant John Caine said, ‘And how was Peter Nawkins at the end?’

I thought about it.

‘He was in bits,’ I said. ‘He looked at me though he had never killed anyone in his life.’

Sergeant Caine laughed bitterly. ‘Yes, the jails are full of totally innocent men, aren’t they?’

We walked through the deserted Black Museum, John Caine switching the lights off. It is probably the biggest collection of murder weapons in the world but I paused in front of the display of a woman who never held a weapon in her life. Maisy Dawes, the Victorian maid from Belgravia who was set up for a burglary and then destroyed for a crime she did not commit.

‘Maisy Dawes,’ I said. ‘Whatever happened to the men who set her up?’

‘As far as I know, they all died in their beds,’ said Sergeant John Caine. ‘It was a very good blind. What’s on your mind, Max?’

‘Sergeant Sallis,’ I said. ‘The local support who came with our mob to the flat where we found Nawkins.’ I shook my head. ‘Nawkins didn’t kill him, John. He wasn’t armed with a handgun, some puny little weapon that can only spray and pray beyond eleven feet. Nawkins had a twelve-bore. And at that range it was easier for him to hit Sergeant Sallis than the wall. Yet he missed. Why?’

John Caine shrugged. ‘I don’t know, son. Maybe he bottled it. Murderers are not brave. Murderers are cowards. You want to get a drink and talk about it? You can have a triple espresso and I can have a tea and we can live the life of sin.’

‘Some other time, John.’

‘Got a date, have you?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s a sort of date.’

I looked for Ginger Gonzalez in the American Bar at the Savoy, but she was not there.

I looked for her in the Coburg Bar at the Connaught and the Rivoli Bar at the Ritz and The Fumoir at Claridges and the Promenade Bar at the Dorchester. But she was not there either.

I was driving home past Broadcasting House on Portland Place when I saw the lights in the grand façade of the Langham Hotel. It wasn’t on the list, but then I wasn’t sure she had given me her entire list.

The Artesian Bar in the Langham smelled of money. Discreet, unflashy money. Huge windows looked out on the street and made you glad to be inside this place of soft lights and laughter and plush purple leather chairs designed to make you stay.

Ginger Gonzalez was sitting at one of the window tables, smiling over a glass of champagne at the man sitting opposite her. When he leaned forward to make a point I saw his face clearly in the candlelight.

The man was Nils Gatling.

I took a seat at the bar, my back to the room, watching them in the mirror behind the bar. The bartender approached me.

‘What can I get you, sir?’

‘Triple espresso.’

I saw his surprise and glanced my watch. It was knocking on for midnight.

‘Better make it a double,’ I said.

‘Yes, sir.’

It was a good bar.

Nils Gatling and Ginger Gonzalez had the easy intimacy of old friends. But that was her way. For all I knew, they had met five minutes ago.

The waiter brought my coffee. I knocked it back as Nils Gatling walked behind me, heading for the door. Ginger was still sitting at the table. When she saw me walking towards her table, her eyes blazed with anger. Then she recovered.

‘Detective Wolfe,’ she said.

‘Has your companion gone?’ I said.

‘He’s retired for the night. He has a suite upstairs.’

‘Nils Gatling has a suite at the Langham? The family have a house in Fitzroy Square! It’s less than a mile away. Why does he keep a suite at the Langham?’

There was something like pity in her eyes. Did I know nothing of the rich?

‘
Because he can
,’ she said.

I sat down in a chair that was still warm.

‘I need a girl,’ I said.

She laughed shortly, as if all men were the same in the end.

‘What sort of girl?’

‘Kind,’ I said. ‘She has to be kind. That’s very important. And smart. Really smart. University educated. Oh, and she has to be very beautiful.’

Ginger Gonzalez finished her champagne and sighed.

‘No wonder you’re unlucky in love,’ she said.

Ginger dashed off a text message and then we waited. I had another espresso and Ginger had another glass of champagne. For the first time since I’d met her, she seemed slightly drunk.

‘How long have you known Nils Gatling?’ I said.

‘A while.’

I could see that she did not want to talk about it. Client confidentiality, I guess. Maybe being somebody’s pimp is like being their doctor.

‘Surprised, Detective?’ she said.

I nodded. ‘He has a wife, doesn’t he?’ I said.

She smiled with genuine amusement.

‘And what do you imagine
that
means? Brad Wood had a wife, didn’t he?’

‘Is that how you know Nils Gatling? Through his brother-in-law?’

She quickly shook her head.

‘God, no. I knew the old man first. Victor Gatling. The daddy of them all.’ She hesitated. ‘Victor Gatling was just about the first proper man I met after I got off the banana boat.’

‘You mean the first rich man,’ I said.

‘I mean the first man who knew how to act in this world. The first man who knew how to treat a woman. I was very young. He liked me. And his wife had just died.’

‘And it didn’t work out.’

‘I wasn’t what he needed.’

‘What did he need?’

‘To spend time with his family. But we stayed in touch. I’ve known Nils for years. And I’ve done work for the company, OK? Gatling Homes.’

‘I never knew you were in the property business. I can see you as an estate agent.’

‘They have a lot of clients they need taking care of.’

‘I bet they do.’

‘Here she is.’

Zina was tall and pretty and tired looking. I stood up to shake her hand. She did not sit down. I dropped some cash on the table and we left.

She was Romanian, I found out as we were walking to the X5, although she said it had been ten years since she had left Bucharest. She was twenty-six. In another world she would have been a businesswoman or a mother.

I didn’t ask to see her university degree.

The three of us drove east.

Ginger and Zina in the back of the X5. I glanced at them in the rear-view mirror but mostly I listened to their typical London conversation –
Where are we to live?
What areas were up and coming, where would be next, where the cafés and restaurants were good, where was safe, where was too dangerous, where was too expensive, what was still affordable, where you could still get a bargain.

‘I’m thinking of Shoreditch,’ said the woman.

I cleared my throat. ‘What about money?’ I said. I wasn’t thinking about Shoreditch.

Zina looked out at the street. We were passing Liverpool Street. The last of the half-cut commuters were staggering to the train out to Essex.

Ginger lightly touched my shoulder.

‘You can pay me later,’ she said. ‘Cash, credit or banker’s draft. You don’t have to worry about payment now. I know you’re good for it.’

I nodded and we drove in silence for another few miles.

‘This is it,’ I said.

There were patients enjoying their cigarettes outside the doors of the Homerton Hospital, huddled up inside their dressing gowns, shaking with cold. One of them had some kind of oxygen tank. Another had the bloated hands that I recognised as a side effect of chemotherapy.

Nobody even looked at us as we went inside.

A policeman, a pimp and a prostitute.

We blended right in.

Curtis Gane had been moved to a private room. We stood outside the door and for the first time I wondered if I was doing the right thing.

‘He’s still in a lot of pain,’ I said to Zina. ‘And he’s angry. And he’s depressed. And he knows he is never going to walk again. So he’s not going to—’

Zina lightly kissed my cheek.

‘I understand,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry. You’ve done a good thing.’

She slipped into the room and closed the door. Ginger and I bowed our heads, listening to the sound of Gane waking.

‘…
who are you?
’

I reached for the door when I heard the alarm in his voice. Ginger placed a hand on my arm. She shook her head.

‘We’ve done this before,’ she said quietly.

‘
But I can’t do anything
,’ Gane said, and the shame in his voice tore at my heart.

‘It’s all right,’ Zina told him. ‘I’m just here to hold you.’

Ginger and I didn’t speak until we reached the cancer patients sucking on their cigarettes outside the main doors.

‘
Salamat po
,’ I said. ‘I mean it, Ginger. Thank you very much.’

‘You speak Tagalog.’

‘I’m a policeman in London,’ I said. ‘I know a few words in fifty different languages.’

She ran a fingertip down the side of my face.

‘You know the word
gwapo?’
she said. ‘Tagalog word for
handsome
.’

‘I know
bola-bola
,’ I said. ‘Tagalog word for
bullshit
.’

She laughed.

‘What about you, Detective? You want me to make a few calls? Or do you have someone waiting for you?’

It was getting late.

Time to relieve Mrs Murphy.

‘Someone’s waiting for me,’ I said.

I watched Scout sleeping.

Stan appeared in the doorway, sniffing the air and eyeing the bed, wondering if he could get away with sneaking in and curling up next to her for a few hours. I shook my head at him and he followed me out as, very quietly, I closed her bedroom door.

Mrs Murphy was putting her coat on.

‘Scout wants a dress,’ she said.

Stan climbed on the sofa, listening with interest. Mrs Murphy scratched the back of his neck and he closed his eyes in bliss.

‘A dress?’ I said dumbly. Beyond the great windows of our loft, Smithfield’s lights were blazing. The dome of St Paul’s Cathedral rose under a full white moon.

‘A Belle dress,’ Mrs Murphy said. ‘You know –
Beauty and the Beast
?’

I shook my head, a bit desperate. I didn’t know.

‘Her friend – Mia – the little Australian girl – is having a princess party,’ Mrs Murphy said.

This was all strange new territory to me. I felt as if I had stumbled onto a stage where I was the only person who didn’t know his lines.

‘What do I have to do?’ I said.

‘You have to go online,’ Mrs Murphy said.

And so I did.

Stan slept at my feet as I sat in the kitchen with my laptop, frowning at little girls around Scout’s age smiling as they posed in ballgowns of silky golden ruffles. It was made apparent to me that I was also going to have to fork out for Belle gloves, Belle shoes and a Belle tiara.

I found myself grinning.

Scout was really going to wear this stuff?

And then I felt a stab of something and I knew it was the loneliness of the single parent. It came out of nowhere and I was shocked by the force of it, like a punch to the heart that you don’t see coming.

It’s not just the bad times that you have to go through alone, I thought.

It’s the good times, too.

‘Rocky’s got the spite,’ said Fred. ‘Speed. Timing. Power. That’s all good stuff – but you don’t go anywhere without the spite.’

We were ringside at Smithfield ABC watching Rocky dismantle his sparring partner. He was in with a light heavyweight who had on a threadbare Wild Card vest and one of those Cleto Reyes headguards with the bar across the front. Those headguards are designed to protect the mouth but Rocky had hit it so hard and fast and often that it was coming loose.

I could see Rocky’s mean streak now, and I saw it was hidden well, buried deep, behind the big easy grin and the default charm, and I thought of how he had looked me in the eye and told me he knew nothing of the men from Oak Hill Farm going to The Garden. I would have been happy to see the man in the ring with him give him a good hiding.

But the sparring partner was struggling. Breath coming harder, the feet more flat-footed, a look of dazed confusion in the eyes. Rocky had dragged his opponent into the trenches and it seemed to put a joyous spring in his step. That mean streak was obvious to me now.