Cold Kill (24 page)

Bloss said, ‘It doesn't have to be tonight.' But he knew it did.

Kimber said, ‘I followed her from Vigo Street, then I lost her, then she turned up again plain as day.'

‘You told me,' Bloss said. ‘We're not thinking about her.'

‘No, but she was with Monica. Does that make it difficult?'

‘Makes it riskier. Degrees of separation.'

‘What?'

‘You narrow the distance between yourself and the police. There's a connection, something personal. Monica knows Mooney, you kill Monica, Mooney knows you. It's a pattern; it looks like bad luck.'

‘But Patricia's random.'

‘Yes, she is.'

‘You think that's the way we should go?'

‘It's my advice.'

‘It doesn't matter much to me. I think I would have chosen Patricia anyway. I've been closer to her. I followed her ten times, maybe fifteen, on the bus, in the street, everywhere. She works in an estate agent's in Notting Hill. She uses a Motorola and her boyfriend is called Ben and I know her routes.'

There were a dozen photographs of her up on the wall – taken in the street, mostly, though there was a long-lens shot of her crossing a park and another taken as she bought something in a shop. A dozen photos and an incomplete story written in silver ink on dark paper. Kimber had pinned the lock of her hair at the very bottom of the unfinished page, the place where the story ended.

‘What time does she come past?' Bloss asked.

‘Seven to seven thirty, but it's easy to spot her. She walks down to the junction, waits for the traffic, crosses the road, then has a hundred metres before she gets to the church.'

‘It's good to have a plan,' Bloss said.

He picked up the hammer and hit the veneer table. The hammer-head went through, buried to the claw. He wrestled it out, working the shaft from side to side, then handed it to Kimber.

‘Your turn, Bobby.'

Kimber watched her up to the junction, watched as she stood at the kerb waiting for the lights to change, then he went down to join her.

He knew it might not be right; he and Bloss had discussed that. Just one other person taking the same short cut would be enough to spoil things. Luck could go this way or that. She strode out in her long black coat, her short skirt and brightly coloured tights, intent on getting home, having a shower, waiting for Ben to turn up. She liked Ben a lot. He was good news and might go on being good news for some time to come. She smiled at the thought, but Kimber was behind her and missed the moment.

He was tense, almost walking on tiptoe; his hand, in the pocket of his reversible coat, was clutching the shaft of the hammer. His eyes were shining.

The lights were on in the church, glowing dimly through the stained glass, and the choir was practising, descant voices wafting out high and clear over the rumble of traffic. The girl's name wasn't Patricia, of course; it was Kate. Kate Reilly. She recognized the carol but couldn't give it a name. She opened the gate and went through, head down, noticing how the light from the windows glistened on the frosted path.

Kimber was breathing fast, like a runner, but making no sound. He looked back for a moment. People and traffic on the road, an undertow of noise, the choir, the yellowish light
from the church, but no one behind him and, when he checked ahead, no one in front.

Close enough to touch
.

Suddenly he realized that he didn't know if he would kill her; the act lay in the future, just a moment away but unrealized as yet. His face was flushed and his heart drummed. He wasn't sure how he'd got to this point, the girl ahead of him, his hand on the shaft of the hammer, her death waiting for her just a few steps away. He was excited and fearful at the same time; he trembled as he withdrew the hammer.

Where the path curved away towards the far gate, Kate felt his presence and half turned. Whatever she saw in his face terrified her and she put out an arm to ward him off, opening her mouth to speak or scream. His blow took her at the place where her neck met her shoulder. She said, ‘
Oh!
' and lost her footing, going down on one knee like a supplicant. Kimber lifted the hammer up over his head and stepped back to get a good swing, then brought it down hard, all the strength of his arm and shoulder behind it. Kate seemed to spring up slightly under the blow, then fell forward, her face hitting his thighs and resting there. Kimber had forgotten what to do next. He stood completely still, with Kate nestling against him.

An hour passed, or it might have been a few seconds. On the street a van making a late delivery ran a red light and tail-ended a Volvo estate that was swinging into a fast, illegal U-turn. The vehicles locked and broadsided on the crossroads: a shriek of brakes, the impact, a moment's silence, then a cacophony of horns.

Bloss came up out of the darkness.

*

He barged Kimber aside, then took Kate under the arms and dragged her off into the graveyard: a dark corner close to the far wall where they were screened by trees and gravestones. He propped her against a tree and stood back. His voice tight with anger, he said, ‘Hit her again.' He walked off even further. Kimber didn't notice, but Bloss was wearing latex gloves and a woollen hat pulled down hard to his eyebrows. He said, ‘Hit her!'

Kimber knelt down beside Kate and paused a moment, head bowed as if lost in thought, then he seemed to find a sudden source of energy, or fury, and he went at her like a man driving a fence post, until he fell back, panting. Bloss said, ‘Now the garrotte: use it!'

‘She's dead,' Kimber said.

‘There's a pattern,' Bloss said. ‘Jesus! We went through this.' Kimber looked at him, struggling to remember. The killing had emptied his mind. Bloss hissed with annoyance. He walked over to Kate and pulled her up by the hair until the back of her head rested against the tree, then opened her coat. He unzipped her skirt, pulled it off, together with her tights and underclothes, and stuffed them into the front of his coat. He threw her boots in among some bushes. Kimber was struggling to remember. Bloss positioned the garrotte, turned the steel bar and stood up. He said, ‘Come on.'

Kimber let his head rest against the tree, his face close to Kate's. His breathing was slow now. He felt drowsy.

‘Come on!' Bloss started off between the gravestones, heading for the gate. Kimber touched her cheek. Her face seemed to have slipped a little and gone lopsided. Her mouth was open, as if that ‘
Oh!
' were fixed on her lips, and her eyes looked straight into his.

Bloss came back. He punched Kimber hard on the shoulder,
just that, no word. Kimber got up and reversed his coat, then used babywipes on his face and hands. He followed Bloss out of the churchyard. They walked up on to the Strip, taking a long loop round in order to approach Kimber's room from the other direction. It was a little early for any real action on the Strip, but a few whores were out to catch the home-going husbands, and the deals were going down on corners and in alleyways.

They crossed a railway bridge and Bloss took Kate's clothing out from his coat and dropped it into the scrub beside the line. He gave Kimber a little nudge, almost a blow. ‘Just as well I was there. Your guardian angel.' An edge to his voice. They walked on in silence for a while, then he added, ‘The first time's strange, Bobby. The first time's always a little bit strange.'

Kimber had his head down like a man hunched against the cold. He was laughing and crying without making a sound.

The voices of the choir filled the church. The lights were low and the altar-candles made the windows glow, deep blues and ochres.

Jamie sat in a pew halfway back, his eyes fixed on the nativity scene to the right of the altar-rail, a dwarfish Holy Family hemmed in by a pint-sized ox and ass. He knew what was going to happen and he knew it would happen soon: Christ would walk the earth. After a while, his gaze moved to the crucifix behind the altar, the naked God spread like a pinioned bird; then to a window that depicted Christ in glory, his arms spread to receive all who would come to be saved.

Jamie slipped to his knees and said a prayer. He was praying for himself and for Sadie.

*

Kimber had been drinking since they'd got back. He'd gone from motormouth to no comment and back again in a very short time.

Bloss wasn't listening. He was watching the activity out on the crossroads, where a recovery truck was still trying to lift the two locked vehicles and traffic cops were making a hash of diverting the traffic flow. He liked the chaos and the horns and the glass littering the tarmac. He'd done a few more lines and he felt sharp – completely in control. Kimber had frozen and that was bad, a bad moment. Bloss had intended to stay clear of the scene, well clear, but in the end things had worked out fine. Things had worked out to plan.

Kimber's eyes were bright and unblinking. His words came like a river as he relived her death, describing the event to Bloss as he might to a stranger, picking through it, going image by image as if he had the video-tape, freeze-framing this moment, slo-moing that, her turn towards him, his swing of the hammer, her voice saying, ‘
Oh!
'

‘
Oh!
' She said, ‘
Oh!
' He could still hear it.

A covering of snow had fallen during the night. The cloud had shifted and a freeze had set in under a hard, clear sky. White name-stones, white monuments, trees shrouded in white, Kate Reilly's white legs and belly, her white hands, her face dark with blood.

White figures on a white ground were the forensics team quartering the area.

Stella and Pete Harriman stood to one side as Frank Silano directed operations. The stills man and the video man had done their work, but the footprints round the scene weren't going to help and the snow would only make sampling more difficult. The uniformed help were running a no-go tape round the trees and getting a scene of crime tent into place. The police doctor wasn't short of options for cause of death, though he wasn't sure which to nominate, the blunt instrument or the garrotte.

Stella said, ‘This is our man. This is him.'

Harriman stamped his feet. He was ankle-deep in snow and feeling it. The locals had called it in less than half an hour before.

Harriman said, ‘She was reported at nine thirty. This is a cut-through. How many people must have walked past?'

‘She's off the path,' Stella observed, ‘and she was covered in snow like the bushes and the gravestones.'

‘She wouldn't have looked like a gravestone. She'd've looked like a dead body with a covering of snow.'

‘People go by with things on their minds, they don't look left or right.' After a moment she added, ‘Get someone to put up a yellow board. For all the good it'll do.' She stared at the body, then turned away, feeling the bile rise. She spoke to Silano. ‘Get them to bag her. Do it quickly.'

Kate had been out all night, open to the weather. In that sort of cold, with the earth hard and the pickings few, little scavengers had found her quickly: rats and foxes and crows. Silano zipped the body-bag over her eyeless face.

DC Nick Robson was at the scene: exhibitions officers were collectors and curators. He noted the usual stuff – what there was of her clothing, items in her coat pockets, the boots that a uniformed man had found in the bushes. The garrotte.

Maxine Hewitt sat in a church pew talking to assorted clergymen. They told her about choir practice, that they'd all walked along the path as they'd left, that none of them had noticed a thing. They observed that it was a terrible thing to happen, and so close to Christmas. They said they would pray for Kate's soul.

The Holy Family looked on with nothing to say.

‘They sang,' Maxine told Stella, ‘they left, they saw nothing.'

‘Fucking wonderful,' Stella said. As they walked to the gate, a crow hopped across the graves and on to the path. Stella took a kick at it and it flew up to head height, then glided to earth ten feet away. ‘Who's doing the family?'

‘Are you asking me to?'

‘I am, yes. Take Pete with you.'

There was a wind coming in from Greenland. Down by the crossroads, cadmium and carbon monoxide were little toxic twisters with a bite of ice.

‘Thanks,' Stella said. ‘For yesterday.' She'd spent the day with Maxine, a walk by the river, lunch in a pub, an afternoon movie complete with chocolate and a half bottle of vodka to sip from. Girls' day out and nothing unusual about it except Stella's sore mouth and swollen face and the after-shadow of another woman's hand on her breast.

‘There's always a bed,' Maxine said. ‘Tonight, if you need it.'

‘I found an outfit in the
Yellow Pages
. Turbo-mop, or something of the sort. Anyway, they're on the case. I ought to go back to the flat. Sixty per cent –'

‘– of burglaries recur at the same address within a week. I know. Have you spoken to Delaney?'

Stella wondered how it was going to work out, this new level of friendship between herself and Maxine. Between herself and Jan. She shook her head in answer to the question and Maxine didn't ask for more.

Their cars were up on the pavement by the crossroads, with a police-tape cordon round them to stop the traffic wardens from getting smart. The gutters were thick with caramelized glass from last night's crash.

Stella said, ‘I'll get your underwear back to you.'

‘It's not mine,' Maxine said, ‘it's Jan's.'

Jan who, on this bright, cold morning, was still alive and in the world. Jan the unchosen, going about her business somewhere on what was just another day in her life.

Robert Adrian Kimber looking down on the scene from his window. The cops, the body-wagon, the white-coated technicians of death.

DS Stella Mooney coming out of the church gate as Kimber framed her up, as his camera clicked.