Cold Kill (26 page)

Stella brought in some essentials: chill-cabinet food, vodka, a baseball bat. She called Harriman and told him about Tom Davison's findings.

‘Which is why,' he said, ‘you're interested in the secretary who saw two men coming out of the churchyard.'

‘You know what I think? I think Mister Mystery killed Valerie. Kimber confessed to it. Mister Mystery got interested in him. He contacted Kimber. Now they're a team.'

‘He killed Sophie Simms too.'

‘He did, yes.'

‘Why the fake rape stuff and the garrotte?'

‘Cotter raped his victims, or attempted to; he also used a garrotte. Mister Mystery was trying to replicate Cotter's pattern, hiding his killings among Cotter's.'

‘Hiding his killings among Cotter's doesn't account for Kate Reilly.'

‘I know. But it's different now. Kimber's with him.'

‘So what's his motive?'

‘I don't know. Maybe he's just having fun. Maybe they both are. But I know this: Mister Mystery could be anyone. We haven't had a single lead on him, not a jot – he would have been impossible to catch unless he made a mistake. But it's different now. We know Kimber. Find him, we find them both.'

‘So you want everyone on the street.'

‘You, me, Maxine Hewitt, Frank Silano… Nick Robson's been office-bound for a while but probably still has contacts,
Andy Greegan, if he can get out of bed. We've all got a chis, maybe two or three. Talk to them, put pressure on. Intensify the house-to-house, take in a wider area, hassle the operators on the Strip: make them uncomfortable, make them understand that thrill-killers are bad for business.'

Harriman said, ‘We had him and we let him go.'

‘I've been down that road,' Stella said. ‘It's a dead end.'

It was late. She propped the baseball bat up against the wall close to the bed-head and lay down. She felt unaccountably sad. Sad to be at Vigo Street, sad to be without Delaney, sad that George was making new friends.

She fell asleep and had a short, brightly coloured dream in which Kimber sat by her bedside and poured the whole story out to her, the whole truth, but his words overlapped and criss-crossed, cancelling each other out. Behind him, in shadow, stood a man who was singing, his voice soft and true.

She looked beyond Kimber to that dark silhouette and found herself drawn into the song, matching his pitch; a sweet duet. She was singing it when she woke.

...
have yourself a merry little Christmas
...

A chis, a snout, a grass. The first thing to remember is that they're criminals; they're on the other side. They do it for money and in the interests of self-protection. There's always a trade-off and it's not just the back-hander twenties: it's the tight lip; it's the blind eye.

Stella ran three, one of them Mickey Wicks. The other two were Harefield veterans.

Frank Silano used a couple of bookies. Bookies know most things, and people owe them, which is useful.

Maxine Hewitt called in from time to time on an ex-colleague, now a private inquiry agent. He had a few of his own: it was cumulative.

Andy Greegan wasn't too ill to get out of bed, but out of bed was as far as he could get. No one asked him for the names of his contacts: chis relationships worked on trust and exclusivity.

Pete Harriman found his information among the low-lifes and sleazebags, the pimps, the dealers… the hod-carriers of the criminal world. The advantage was they were everywhere. They ran between cracks and crevices. The fault line was their natural habitat.

He was in a pub called the Wheatsheaf, half a mile south of the Strip, waiting for a guy called Ronaldo, real name Ronald Nelms. Ronaldo worked up on the Strip and had convictions for assault, conspiracy and carrying an offensive weapon, though he hadn't considered it offensive at all, he'd considered
it necessary. Mostly the girls could cope with an aggressive punter, but just now and then Ronaldo would have to offer a helping hand. The hand in question wore a sap-glove. It was surprising how quickly a fractured cheekbone and the loss of a couple of teeth could quieten someone down. Harriman had managed to get a GBH reduced to ‘affray' and on a couple of occasions had told Ronaldo when to take the night off. It was the way things worked; everyone had dirty hands.

Ronaldo came in looking like a man with urgent business, which he was, though the business lay elsewhere. Time was money, and, with no one to watch, the girls could get a few quickies in for themselves and stash the cash. He took the bar-stool next to Harriman's and said, ‘I've got girls on a fifteen-minute turn around. Head-job in a car can be ten. Can we get this done?'

Ronaldo was stocky and wore a thin, shaped beard that he thought gave him an exotic touch, like the gold cross earring, like the diamond stud in his tooth. He glanced round the pub looking for familiar faces and not wanting to find them. There were three guys at the far end of the bar drinking brandy chasers. They wore custom-made baseball caps with their gang tag up front – MAGNA – and a tattoo on the side of the neck with a curlicued ‘M'. They were branded; they belonged. Ronaldo thought they were from Harefield, but that didn't matter. The estate wasn't his territory and, anyway, they had their own teams to run.

Harriman bought a drink. He said, ‘This isn't close to home, Ronaldo. It's unrelated.'

‘Good, because there are wheels within wheels, Mr Harriman, Chinese boxes, know what I mean?'

Harriman didn't but he handed Ronaldo some petty cash. It meant nothing to the guy. It was tokenism, like shaking hands on a deal.

‘Recent attacks on women. Valerie Blake, Sophie Simms, Kate Reilly.'

‘Not familiar.'

‘The last one was the day before yesterday, in the churchyard by –'

‘Oh, right, yeah. I saw the action.'

‘Bad for business, was it?'

‘Yes and no. Too many cops about, but they're not looking our way. Doesn't affect the punters, why would it? Some girl was topped, you're getting tossed off in the back of your Vauxhall Vectra, where's the connection?'

The Harefield team was looking at them and Harriman noticed. He said, ‘You know those guys?'

‘Nah. They're drugs and boy-gangs. We don't cross over.'

‘We had a suspect called Kimber. Robert Adrian Kimber. He walked, but now we want him back.'

‘Never heard of him. What makes you think I might?'

‘He kills women.'

‘Not working girls.'

‘Not yet.'

The Magna boys got up to leave, brushing along the bar, solemn-faced.

Ronaldo said, ‘Nutters are a different thing, Mr Harriman. Nutters make their own rules, know what I mean?'

‘I'm talking to everyone.'

‘Okay, and you've talked to me.' He looked at his watch. ‘I'm supposed to be clocking them – it's rush hour.'

Harriman glanced up as the Harefield guys approached and saw that all three men had their eyes on the door. They were checking a route to the exit. He had time to say, ‘Oh,
shit!
' but that was all.

Ronaldo looked the wrong way – looked at Harriman – and the blade went in hard. His eyes widened and he said,
‘Ooof !', then his mouth went slack and his eyes misted. The knife-man was already by the door. Harriman got off his stool, swinging a punch that landed dead-centre on the second man's face; he'd put the motion of his body into the blow and he felt the guy's nose-bone crack.

Ronaldo slipped sideways off his stool, the weight of his body taking Harriman off balance. He hopped back, letting Ronaldo's body hit the floor, then took a step forward, lining up the man he'd just hit. He could see the third man out of the corner of his eye and thought he'd sidestep to move himself out of range, but he was too slow. The beer-glass came round in a tight arc and took him in the side of the face. He felt the glass explode, didn't feel anything for a second, then felt everything.

Stella was walking into the hospital as Marilyn Hayes was walking out. Marilyn was wearing clothes that said ‘sensational figure, look this way' and men seemed happy to obey. Stella wondered how many of them were headed for the maternity wards.

Marilyn said, ‘He lost a lot of blood.'

‘I heard that. Is he okay?'

‘You know Pete.' She bit her lip and looked away for a moment; the line of her mouth went ragged...

Stella said, ‘We've got good IDs on the guys that did it.'

‘That's great,' Marilyn said. ‘That makes all the difference.' Then, ‘I smuggled him in some cigarettes and a bottle of Scotch.'

‘Yes,' Stella said, ‘that sounds just what the doctor ordered.'

Harriman was in a side ward, getting his needs through a cannula and watching TV. He had been practising smiling without pain and gave Stella the benefit. One side of his face was covered by a thick wound dressing, but the bandage went all the way round his head.

She said, ‘He really caught you with that.'

Harriman grunted. ‘Fucking pub fight. What's the likeliest thing? You'll get glassed. Do I see it coming? Do I fuck.'

‘How long are you here for?'

‘Tonight. There are still bits of glass coming out of my face. Extruding, they call it.' He puckered his lips. ‘Extr
uuuuu
ding.'

‘Then what?'

‘I have to come back to get sewn up. Scar-management.'

‘Where is it?'

‘Starts under the ear, makes a loop, goes along the jawline.'

‘Sounds romantic. Like a duelling scar.'

‘That's what I'm hoping for.'

‘Does it hurt?'

‘Oh, Christ, yes. Hurts like fuck.' The news came on TV and he lowered the sound. ‘Is Ronaldo dead?'

‘No. He's in ITU. The considered medical response of his consultant was to make him a four-to-one shot. Apparently, the word on the street is that it wasn't personal.'

‘Wasn't personal? At four-to-one?'

‘It wasn't particularly aimed at Ronaldo. And it certainly wasn't aimed at you.'

‘No? It felt pretty
well
aimed to me.'

‘It was because he's a chis. They're a Harefield firm, running a few boy-gangs – Clean Machine, that sort of thing, the kids who did my flat, perhaps – and they're having a war on narks. Kids are a network. There are rival gangs. They're all doing drugs and they all need cash, so there are lots of leaks.'

‘So it's good to know it could have happened to anyone,' Harriman said. ‘Pity it had to be me.' He added, ‘Give me a day or two, okay? Then I'm back.'

‘They'll never have it, Pete. You're officially on sick-leave as of now.'

‘Okay, then – in the squad room but off the streets.'

‘Forget it.'

‘I'll talk to DI Sorley.'

She laughed at his persistence and shook her head. The newsreader was giving crime stats for the Christmas period and it seemed that crimes against the person were on the
increase. She said, ‘I only ask this in the interests of good team management, but how serious is this thing with Marilyn Hayes?'

‘Seriously fun.'

‘Is that what she thinks?'

Harriman looked at her, slightly startled. ‘What? Sure.'

‘How sure?'

‘It's all about sex. It's an adventure. We've talked about it.' Stella left him another bottle of Scotch. She said, ‘Talk about it again.'

Sadie made a connection and scored some low-grade hillbilly heroin. She'd been busking most of the day, down among the carbon-monoxide overflow and the street-stain, and she'd made enough for a little, but a little wasn't enough. Jamie was tagging along, though not in the hope of being given a handout. He didn't use drugs, he didn't drink, and, so far as Sadie could tell, he didn't eat. He was wearing a quilted coat he'd stolen from a charity shop and a pair of boots with no laces.

They were heading for the alley by the Ocean Diner, a place to sleep, a place to freebase. It was nine thirty, too early for the restaurants to be emptying, too early for the movie-and theatre-goers to be back on the streets, but late-night shoppers were everywhere and Sadie panhandled people as she went, doing a little dance of interception in front of the ones who looked rich or pissed or lost, her litany unbroken:
Spare some change please spare some change could you spare some change please have you got any spare change cheers mate cheers mate merry christmas merry christmas merry spare some change please
...

Jamie muttered an invocation of his own, too low to be properly understood. Sadie thought he was getting crazier. He was a liability, sitting a few feet away while she played her tiny penny-whistle repertoire, talking to himself, following her like some dumb animal on a lead. She was aware of people walking a little oxbow to avoid him. She thought it
would be a good idea to offload him, to cut him loose, but she wasn't sure how best to do it.

Sadie walked past the diner to the alley, feeling in her pocket for the scorched strip of tinfoil and her gear. Her attention was all in one direction, but when she heard the voice, she looked up. A woman's voice.

They were further down the alley, two men and a woman. It took Sadie a moment or two to work out the dynamic of the group, then she could see that it was a mugging. The men were crowding the woman, backing her up to the wall. She was handing over her bag and her mobile phone, arms out as if in supplication. They stood, a tight little triangle, with no need for words. Everyone knew what was happening, everyone knew what to do next, even Sadie, who was preparing to have heard nothing, seen nothing.

Jamie ran past her, his laceless boots flapping. The muggers looked towards him. There seemed no need for them to run, but that's what they decided to do, heading for the far end of the alley where it opened out on to a side road that would take them back to the crowded pavements of Notting Hill. The woman yelled something and one of the muggers turned and ran back. He grabbed the front of her coat, pulled her towards him and hit hard. She bounced off his punch and Sadie saw a little spray of blood go up from her face; then the man pulled her back – dragging her against the force of his blow – and hit her again.