Cold Kill (21 page)

‘There's the problem, you see. You
told
me.'

‘How do I know it wasn't you that made him run?'

‘It wasn't.'

‘How do I know?'

‘Look, Stella, you have a job to do; me too. So it goes.'

‘An idea that works in your favour.'

‘Does it? How's that?'

‘What would you say if I asked you to reveal a source?'

Delaney was silent on that one. He felt like a man who had just swum out of his depth. Even so, he kept swimming. He said, ‘Now that you know, I'd better tell you this – he was talking to someone by email. Someone called Angel. He mentioned you.'

She looked at him, her mouth open. ‘Kimber did?'

‘No, Angel. Whoever he is.'

There was a silence to break rocks. Eventually, she asked, ‘What did he say – about me?'

‘No, it was just a mention. I only had a chance to look at the screen for a moment or two. A fantasist, like Kimber. He asked about Kimber pissing you around: “Leading them a dance,” he said. I remember that.'

‘What else?'

‘Well, he was offering his compliments. Telling Kimber
what a good job he'd done. Wanting to compare notes.' He remembered another sentence: ‘“I would like to go through it with you”; something like that.'

Her stillness was the next thing to violence and her voice was just a whisper. She said, ‘You knew this and you didn't tell me?'

‘You would have known I'd seen him. And I wanted to see him again.'

‘Have you?'

‘No.'

‘And that's all you can remember – of the emails?'

‘Stella, I only had a second to look. I saw your name, that was what stuck in my mind. It was just some crazy man; another crazy man; I bet Kimber's address book is full of them.'

‘A harmless crazy-man ring, is that how you see it?' He shrugged. She said, ‘We spend our time fine-combing. Forensics fine-comb the scene; we fine-comb the evidence; by and large we come up with something very close indeed to fuck all. This kind of case is the most difficult to get a grip of. Drugs, domestics, gang rivalries, turf wars, all of that – no problem. We either know who did it or we know someone who probably knows. Or else we can do a bit of detecting: of the two plus two makes four sort. We're on home ground. This kind of killing's different.' She remembered what Sorley had said and repeated it to him. ‘Somebody who's anybody goes out and kills somebody who's nobody. We're grubbing around. We're looking for anything. And you had this.'

‘It's not important,' he said. ‘Loonies anonymous.'

‘Who was it?' she asked. ‘Who was this person and how did he make contact? And what else did he say? And what does he
know
, you fucking idiot? If you had told me straight
away we'd've been down there within the hour and taken the hard disk and perhaps we'd've saved –'

She stopped because she had never intended to stay to argue it with him; never intended to bat it to and fro, as if they were having a row about who did the laundry, or cut the lawn, as if they were in a
marriage
, for Christ's sake. She was too angry for that sort of farce. Best to go. Best to get the hell out.

She was putting her coat on, and he was watching her in disbelief, when she found herself saying, ‘A woman, an illegal immigrant, her child died, she was suckling it but it was dead, and they were getting ready to deport her but she cut her own throat with a dirty scalpel, and this was no day for me to be hearing what you just told me. And fuck you.'

Delaney had thought that he might get between her and the door, but there was something desperate and wild-eyed about her that made him want to let her go. He looked out of the window and watched the hazard lights on her car flash as she blipped the lock. A moment later, she came into view. Her breath was a plume on the cold air, then she was a smudged silhouette on the side window, then just tail-lights snaking up towards Notting Hill Gate.

It was eight thirty; already the stats for the day were a little worse than average and the day was far from over.

The Bank Hill Posse made a raid off-territory and lifted a member of the Random Crew. They took him to a park, nailed his hands to a tree and pistol-whipped him. It was a business issue. No one saw a thing.

A Merc cabriolet was eased sideways by a Freelander. The Merc dipped in and out of the bus lane, came down a gear, and slid in front of the other vehicle as the lights went red. Cabriolet Man got out carrying a wheel-brace and hammered the Freelander's lights. When Freelander Man emerged yelling, he was hammered in the self-same way. He went straight from the tarmac to ITU. Passers-by hadn't noticed the incident.

On Harefield, a local crack-distribution problem was solved when the poacher was stabbed five times in the head. He wasn't dead, but his ability to match one thought with the next was never going to be the same. This caught no one's attention.

In a street just off the Strip, a whore had finished giving head in a car when the client showed her a Stanley knife and offered to leave her face intact if she handed over her earnings from the rest of the day's blow-jobs. She gave him the money but called him an arsehole, so he cut her anyway. She ran down the Strip screaming, her lime-green fun-fur gouted with red. She was invisible and inaudible.

You could call it a worse than average day.

Someone pulled a Brocock makeover in a shebeen and wounded four punters; he couldn't remember why. Four kids of about ten mugged seven oldies in fifteen minutes – a numerical triumph. Stella Mooney walked into the Vigo Street flat and took a punch in the mouth that broke an incisor. People would tell her that she only had herself to blame.

They weren't the Clean Machine crew, that was for certain. They'd trashed the place; they'd had some fun. Anything breakable was broken, the surfaces were tagged, the living space looked as if it had caught the brunt of a small twister. Which is why Stella hadn't stopped to wonder whether they might still be there; but they were. They'd heard her come in and had heard her shout of anger. Things were quiet for a while: a period of recovery. Then she'd lifted the phone and started to make a call and that's when they came out of the bedroom, all threats and laughter and crotch-grabbing bravado. Three of them. Baggies, hoodies, big trainers, face-metal. Here's how scared they were – one of them was on his mobile phone.

Stella was on to the local uniforms. She broke the connection and had dialled triple nine before one of them stepped up and hit her. Just to keep her quiet. Just to give them some time. She sat down amid broken glass, books, CDs, the contents of cupboards and drawers, and backed off fast, using her heels and hands, but they weren't coming after her. She had dropped her bag when she fell, so the guy who'd hit her picked it up, taking his time. The sleeve of his hoodie was decorated with a black serpent design like a tattoo. He lofted the bag as if to say thanks, then they collected a couple of bulging black bin-liners from beside the front door and sauntered out and on to the street, the Untouchables.

They would have gone to the bedroom first, because that's where everyone keeps the portable valuables. Stella didn't have a lot of jewellery, but what she had they'd taken. The bin-liners had held her clothes and shoes: not all of them, just the saleable stuff. The sort of items Stella had seen at the warehouse. But these kids weren't the Clean Machine. They were the Shit Spreaders.

They'd checked out the living area and trashed it. Then they'd gone back into the bedroom and trashed that.

And pissed on her bed.

She made a routine call to the local nick and gave descriptions, then went out on to the street. She could feel the corner of her mouth and the flesh along her cheekbone beginning to swell. There was a hard lump between her gum and the soft tissue of her mouth. She delved with her tongue, lifting the half tooth, and spat it out along with a little streamer of blood. She felt for her car key and it wasn't in her pocket, so it must have been in her bag, along with some cash she'd recently drawn: two hundred pounds. Her credit cards were in a thin wallet that she always kept in her pocket, but the loss of the money stung.

On the main street, vehicles were backed up between three sets of traffic lights, no one going anywhere, a toxic haze wafting back and forth in the cold air. She jogged down towards Harefield.

The roads that ran on to the estate had once been brightly lit – that was for a month or so. Bright lights were bad for business, so they'd had to go. Now the inroads were dark, the DMZ was dark, and the lights of the tower blocks, far back, shone through the gloom like ships at sea.

Her phone went and she checked the screen. It was Delaney, so she pressed hang-up. Two minutes later it rang
again and she was about to repeat the process when she saw Harriman's name there. She slowed to a walk and answered the call.

He said, ‘I thought you'd be amused to know that Martin Cotter has fingered his wife.'

‘Her motive being?'

‘He wasn't too specific on that one. His wife,' Harriman added, ‘and her lover.'

Stella was looking left and right, in shop doorways, along side streets. Three boys in hoodies: it was like looking for pebbles on a beach.

‘Who's the lover?'

‘Some joke. Some guy she's been fucking. There's nothing in it.'

‘It's clever, though. Accuse the accuser.'

‘He
is
clever, didn't you think so?'

‘Mostly I thought he was a scumbag who killed people for fun and I'd be happy to see him on a slab.'

He noticed the real edge of anger in her voice, and he could hear a chorus of horns from the tailback. He said, ‘Where are you?'

‘Out by Harefield. Some lads did the Vigo Street flat.'

She went into a pub and stood at the door to look round. Harriman's perception of background changed to boy-band music, laughter, the electronic warbling of fruit machines.

‘Oh, shit. Bad one?'

‘They pissed in my bed.'

‘You're not looking for them?'

‘They were still there when I got back. One of them broke my tooth.
And they pissed in my bed!
'

‘Jesus Christ, you
are
looking for them. What do you mean, broke your tooth?'

‘Hit me. Broke my tooth.'

She was back on the street, scanning doorways and bus shelters.

‘Did you call the locals?'

‘Sure. We agreed there was nothing much they could do.'

‘Stay off Harefield. I'll come down.'

She said, ‘Call for back-up.'

‘Don't go on to the estate, Stella.'

‘Make the call.'

‘Jesus! Look, you're angry, you're not thinking straight, don't do it.'

‘Make the call.'

Three lads in hoodies eating kebabs and drinking beer from the bottle.

She stepped out into the road and a motorbike cruising the corridor between the lines of cars stood up on its front wheel. Her eyes were on the lads. One had a pattern on the sleeve about where his bicep would be, a flame-pattern that resolved to a snakehead. She recognized it – the guy who'd hit her – and they recognized her as she made the pavement and turned towards them.

They couldn't believe her. What was this mark doing on the streets seeking them out? This
victim
? She was walking fast, looking straight at them and without the first idea of what she was going to do if she caught up. Suddenly she felt scared, but she'd come this far. Come this far and, for some stupid reason, couldn't bring herself to back off. One of them beckoned, as if to say,
Come on, then, we're up for this
, which is when the patrol car rolled up to the junction between Harefield and the main road, looking for an opening in the solid nose-to-tail.

The car was between Stella and the boys. She leaned down and tapped on the window, showing her ID, and the
driver let down the window. The car smelled of bodies and smoke and fast food. Stella pointed. She said, ‘We're picking them up – suspicion of breaking and entering.'

The boys edged away towards the dark approach roads, walking slowly at first, looking back to see what was happening, then turning and quickening their pace. The cops looked at Stella, then at the boys. The driver said, ‘They're about to leg it.'

‘I can see that.'

As she said it, the boys started to run. The second cop activated the roof-bar and the patrol car pulled out and turned against the flow of traffic, hopping the kerb with its nearside wheels canted over, making for the first road into Harefield. Stella ran straight for the DMZ. She was counting on the car catching up with her before she got too far into the estate. The boys were in sight, running hard, heading for the walk-space under Block C.

Stella was sprinting through a garbage-field of junked furniture, white goods, bin-bags, whatever people had tossed out and walked away from. She hacked her leg against a toppled fridge and yelled but ran through the pain. The boys were shadows, slipping into the walk-space. She looked round as she ran. The patrol car was somewhere back on the road, trying to weave and shunt its way out of the gridlock.

She reached Block C and pulled up. The DMZ was dark, though not entirely lightless. There was a half-moon and the sky was almost clear; frost glistened on the scrub grass and on the bald concrete pillars that supported the block. In the walk-space it was total blackout. Someone standing twenty feet back would be invisible, but someone walking in from the perimeter would be a dim silhouette. Either they were waiting for her, or they'd gone straight through to the bull ring.

Stella took a step in, then another, then a third. To begin with, she had been operating on raw anger –
They pissed on my bed!
– but now all that kept her going was the fact that she'd come this far, to the black edge of things.