Cold Kill (43 page)

Stella switched on the tape. She gave details of those present and the time.

‘It was the
only
thing to do,' Lauren added, nodding as if backing her own opinion. ‘It's what they all do, when you have to put someone out of the way. Billy, Leon, JD, all the hard men; it's what they do. It's not so unusual. I knew that if she wasn't there he would forget her, because that's what happens. People forget.' She looked at Stella. ‘You must know that.'

Lauren went on talking; she talked for almost half an hour. She gave them a number for Leon Bloss that registered as ‘discontinued'.

The street-people had gone to ground. The luckiest had found a refuge or a squat; the worst off were rolled in their
bags under bridges or in subways. Jamie was in church, the place where he most wanted to be. He sat at the back and off to the right, where he could hear the choir at practice without being seen. The voices thrilled him; they opened portals to God. When he looked towards the choir stalls, he could see, in the stained glass, the risen Christ surrounded by angels.

It was the church where Kimber had murdered Kate Reilly.

When the voices came to an end, Jamie got on to his knees, then on to his stomach, and lay down in the space between the pews. No one could see him there. He pulled his bag over and took a hassock as a pillow. Long after the choir had left and the church had been dimmed to a single light above the altar, Jamie could hear the rustling of the wings of angels.

Leon Bloss packed a bag, then he made a phone call. He pressed buttons to go from one recorded voice to the next. The seventh voice told him that due to blizzard conditions, there were no flights leaving Heathrow Airport. Calls to Gatwick, Stansted and Luton produced the same result. He switched on the TV and got the news and weather. It seemed the country had closed down; the country had seized up. He called the ferry ports and was told that there was a gale blowing in the Channel; all sailings had been postponed, but, if the weather improved, ferries would be putting to sea the next day.

He made a provisional booking for the three o'clock sailing for Le Havre on Christmas Day, then stood by the windows looking at the white-out on the river and wondering who had fixed this for him, who had organized this kind of luck. An odd warbling sound broke the silence and he turned fast, not knowing what it could be, then realized it was JD's mobile phone. JD sat motionless on the sofa. He'd been there all night and he wasn't looking so good, his lips drawn back in a fixed grin, his face plum-dark. Bloss took the phone from JD's pocket and looked at the display.

Billy Souza calling
.

He let it ring out, then went to ‘Inbox' and found fifteen missed calls, four of which were from Billy. Bloss was filled with a sudden rage that made him grind his teeth and clench his fists until his shoulders shook. He kicked out at JD's legs and then again, kicking and screaming, making the body
hop and sway, until his fury slackened. He should be gone by now, on his way to the airport, check-in would have been in an hour, take-off in three. He wondered when JD had been missed and reckoned it must have been late morning. He would have been expected to arrive at the casino at ten, would have been missed by, say, eleven, and the first calls would have been made then. Now it was one o'clock and JD had been out of touch for two hours. At first, Billy would have been more annoyed than concerned. JD had a girl, and they would have checked with her, but she wouldn't have expected him to come home every night or say where he'd been. Soon, though, Billy would remember the errand he'd given JD the previous night.

Take Bloss his money; tell him to leave now
.

Bloss had phones of his own, but the numbers had changed since he worked for Billy Souza. If they wanted him, they'd have to make a house call. He thought it through: JD is late, Billy tells someone to put in a call. No reply. This happens a couple of times, then they phone the girl. She doesn't know where he is, so she puts in a call and a few minutes later someone from Jumping Jacks does the same. Billy starts to get angry: he needs JD on the job because the casino is about to open. He tells them to keep trying, but they keep getting JD's message. Finally, Billy puts in a couple of calls himself. Then he thinks back.

Take Bloss his money
...

He went into the bedroom and collected his bag, his money, his fake passport, the videotape. He put in his copies of
The Sandman
and
The Preacher
and
Elektra Assassin
. The bag was a carry-on size rucksack – he hadn't planned to stand around in baggage-reclaim halls being stared at by CCTV cameras. He shouldered the bag and left without a backward glance. There was nothing of Leon Bloss in the
place, nothing that could identify him or provide a trace.

Except, perhaps, JD, lolling back on the sofa cushions and black in the face with laughter.

Jamie had slept for a while and dreamed of angels, their muscular wings and their perfect voices singing of the coming of Christ. When he woke, the echoes of those voices were still there, wafting among the roof beams.

He walked down the aisle to the rood screen and then up to the altar. The table held a small crucifix about a foot high, Christ hanging there, nailed and racked. Jamie picked it up and looked at it closely. He put the crucifix under his padded coat, holding it trapped with one arm, and smiled a secret smile.

It had been easy for the hoodie-boys and it was easy for Kimber, because, all in all, properties are easy to break into; even easier if dark falls by four o'clock. Stella had put in a call to a house-security firm who had never called back. Christmas was their busy time: Christmas and summer holidays. Kimber hit the same bedroom window that the boys had hit, used his hammer to knock open the same window lock, climbed in the same way.

He pulled the blind against the weather and stood in the dark for a moment, breathing deeply. He could smell her smells. The bedroom light was on a dimmer switch. Kimber turned it on low and made a tour of the room. Everything was there, just as he'd imagined it: clothes in a closet that was fronted by a long mirror, other clothes in drawers, perfumes and make-up and creams, bits and pieces of inexpensive jewellery, personal items –
personal
. He had brought a little bag with him. Bag of tricks. He put it on the floor, took off his outer clothes and draped them over a radiator, then went through into the larger room.

A street light was shedding an orange glow into the living space. He walked around it, as if claiming possession, then sat on the sofa for a moment, just where he'd seen her sit, but it wasn't really where he wanted to be. He helped himself from the fridge, a little snack; he helped himself from the vodka bottle, a little nip. Then he went back to the bedroom.

He opened jars and tubes, sniffing, sampling. He stripped off and opened the closet. Her clothes were his. He put on
a sparkly top and a short skirt, a pair of black silk trousers, a backless dress. None of it fitted: he had to leave zips unzipped and buttons unbuttoned, but he turned this way and that in front of the long mirror, in the dim light, feeling the material against his skin just as she had. He opened the drawers and put on her underwear. He applied some body lotion and a little flourish of lipstick.

He smiled at his image, the blond hair flopping to the side, the grey-green eyes, the lips a little too pink.

It was okay to switch on the bathroom light, because there was no window. He breathed deeply, wanting to get all there was of her: the hot, perfumed smells, but most of all he wanted some taint, some earthy scent of Stella herself. The odour of her faeces or her menstrual blood. He took a shower, using her gels, her sponge, taking it into his crotch, over his buttocks. He washed his hair with her shampoo and rubbed in some of her conditioner.

After a while he went back to the bedroom, walking naked. He'd brought with him the clipping of her hair, a photo of her approaching the AMIP-5 offices, and a little story he'd written about himself and Stella, silver pen on black paper. He pinned them all to the wall. The story included everything he'd done so far but also mentioned that he climbed naked into Stella's bed, smelling the lingering perfume on the covers and on her pillow, so that was what he did next.

With the cover pulled up to his chin, he waited for Stella to come home so the story could end.

The London streets were nothing but headlights and snow-light. The sky had come down to a point just six feet above the heads of the home-going crowds and if you looked up from Notting Hill Gate towards Bayswater, you saw what
seemed to be a tunnel with white, flowing walls, lit by beams racked back for miles. On roundabouts and at junctions, there were pile-ups and broadsides and sideswipes. Drivers stood bare-headed in the blizzard, exchanging insurance details. A chorus of horns was sounding across the city.

Jamie held the crucifix up for the drivers to see and the metal seemed to shed droplets of white light. He held it up to passers-by as they walked into the near-horizontal snow; they dodged and sidestepped. He held it up to anguished shoppers crowding the stores in search of that post-last-minute gift; security men hustled him back on to the street. He held it up in the cafés and fast-food facilities; the customers studied their plates with unusual interest until he went away.

And he was shouting – to be heard over the traffic, the muzak, the indifference –
He is coming the Lord is coming Jesus is coming
...

The car drivers and the shoppers and the diners had him down as a crazy, another of the looney-toons bastards who made life uncomfortable for a moment or two, but if Jamie was deranged, he was also strung-out, angry, half starved, abandoned and desperate. He knew that Christ's appearance on earth would change everything; it would salve the wretched of the earth. It was something he had to believe in because there was nothing else to hand.

On the snow-covered streets, he ran back and forth, slipping and stumbling, crossing roads, weaving between cars as they nosed forward, showing the crucifix and its dangling man to everyone he met. On Christmas Eve, for a man like Jamie, it was a last hope. Why shouldn't it be true?

Even in that weather, even at six in the evening on the day before Christmas, AMIP-5's complement of extra officers
were going door-to-door on Harefield, making follow-up calls and calls to doors that hadn't opened first time round. They showed pictures of Robert Adrian Kimber and Leon Bloss. Sometimes people shook their heads, sometimes they invited the officers to fuck off.

The weather was having an effect on business. Just as the Strip was clear of hookers and dealers, so the bull ring and the Harefield approach roads were white waste lands. Out on the DMZ, the shapes of abandoned hardware were muffled under snow. Business was being done indoors, and the presence of cops on the estate was making everyone jumpy. Triple locks were being thrown and lights were being switched off. The high walkways were swept by the winter-wind and the cops tramped round cursing their luck.

Marilyn Hayes was going home for Christmas, which was the last thing she wanted to do – and the last thing she'd expected to do. Pete Harriman had tried to intercept her; he wanted to say something, but he had no real idea what. Sorry, perhaps, or I didn't get it, or I never promised you a rose garden. Marilyn had brushed him off with a look. Now she got into her car and gunned the engine.

I thought it was something special. I thought it was something different.

She jabbed the accelerator, shimmied, turned to line up with the exit, floated sideways and hit another car with a slam-crash sound that allowed her to know that real damage had been done.

She wasn't going back into the squad room now. She made a call on her mobile and said, ‘I've just hit your car. I think it's a bad one.'

Stella stood side by side with Marilyn and looked things over. She said, ‘You're right. It's a bad one.' The driver's-side
window was smashed; there was glass all over the interior of the car; the door itself was buckled and jammed, a flat scissor-blade of metal protruding into the driver's space.

Marilyn said, ‘I'm really sorry, Stella.' Her own car had damage to the entire side, but nothing that would render it undrivable.

Stella smiled, meaning: forget it. She glanced at the mascara runs on the other woman's cheeks, then looked away. She said, ‘It's okay. Go home, Marilyn.' She didn't say Happy Christmas.

Harriman looked at her. ‘What?'

Stella shook her head. ‘Nothing. There's ice in the car park. She hit my car.'

‘Is she all right?'

‘Was she hurt? No. Is she all right? I don't think so.'

She made a call and told Delaney what had happened.

‘I'll come and get you.'

‘No. I don't know how long I'll be here. We've charged someone, there's the paperwork… I'll get a cab or cadge a lift, go to Vigo Street, then come on to you.'

‘Okay.'

‘It could be really late.'

‘Okay.'

‘Don't wait up.'

London was white.

Things were freezing over and closing down. The elevated sections and motorway approaches were thick with accidents or abandoned vehicles. Emergency services were having emergencies of their own. This is what extreme weather could do. What it couldn't do was stop the parties. There were parties in houses, in pubs, in clubs, in bars and – in back-ups that stretched from the city to the suburbs – there were parties in cars.

Leon Bloss cruised the streets until he found the party he was looking for just off Kensington Church Street. It was a big house and you could hear the music through the double glazing. When Bloss looked up he could see something going on in every room: people dancing, people drinking, people finding ways of getting close to each other. He backtracked to a wine store and bought a bottle of champagne, then leaned on the bell until a girl in a green dress opened the door. He held up the bottle and laughed, she laughed back and let him in: everyone was someone's friend. Bloss thought he would quite like to be hers, because of her strawberry-blonde hair and her wide smile. She wasn't a terrific looker, but her smile knocked you out.