Down into Darkness (29 page)

Harriman was looking at the floor and biting his lip. Stella said she had no advice to offer on the subject.

Monica showed them to the door. She said, ‘I liked him, but he never had much to say for himself.'

Harriman pulled out into a box junction and sat on the grid listening to a chorus of horns.

He said, ‘Is that right? Is she right about that?'

‘Definitely,' Stella said. ‘A man gets laid, he loses sole ownership of his house. It's as it should be.'

When the message tone had gone off during Stella's briefing, it had been a text to Harriman from Gloria:
Last night? Best fuck in history
.

‘I've had a thought,' Harriman told her. ‘I wonder whether he meant to decapitate Leonard Pigeon. The incision went right to the neck-bone, I remember that.'

‘And he was interrupted, you think?'

‘It was on the towpath, there must have been people about.'

‘But no one saw him.'

‘Maybe it was all taking too long. He panicked.'

‘He doesn't strike me as a panicker.'

‘Okay, not panicked. Just didn't have the time. What did the crime-scene analysis tell us?'

‘About what?'

‘About how he left the scene?'

‘Behind the bench there are bushes, beyond the bushes an iron fence, then a ditch, a field, a road. That seems to have been his route.'

‘Right. He didn't have to walk along the towpath to get away. So maybe he did see someone coming.'

‘Okay, maybe. But he hanged Bryony Dean, and he shot Martin Turner.'

‘So is there some sort of pattern to that? A hanging, a shooting, a decapitation.'

‘Meaning that's what he intended, and he cut Nelms's head off, because first time round, with Leonard Pigeon, it didn't go right.'

‘That's what I'm saying, yes.'

Stella nodded. ‘And the pattern, if it is a pattern, tells you what?'

‘No, I didn't say I had a theory about what the pattern might mean. Just a theory about the pattern.'

‘If it is a theory.'

‘Yes.'

‘Big step forward,' Stella said.

They drove in silence for a while, Harriman shooting amber lights and overtaking on the inside. He said, ‘That's common law? One fuck and you're out on the street?'

Candice Morgan looked out of the window at the mid-range Honda illegally parked across the driveway. She said, ‘Is that actually a police car, or are they trying to be undercover?'

Neil Morgan was speed-reading the press, the semi-literate tabloids and all the broadsheets, scanning them for a mention of himself. He had a secretary and a cuttings agency who also did this, but he liked to be ahead of the sort of back-stabbing name-check some journalists favoured. He said, ‘Our security services are cash-strapped. I made a speech on the subject last week.'

Candice's suitcases stood in the hallway. She said, ‘Perhaps I shouldn't go.'

‘Why not?'

‘If they're right. If he really meant to kill you, not Len.'

Candice and the girls took a break twice a year: Paris, New York, Rome. A break from husbands and the round of tennis, lunch, gym, charity work. This time it was Madrid.

Morgan smiled. ‘Candice, I have visible police protection. I'm not sure what you think you might usefully add to that. Go. Have a good time. Bring me something back.'

She said, ‘They just sit out there with their coffee and cigarettes. I could be in here chopping your head off with a meat cleaver.'

‘You wouldn't know where to find it.'

‘It's in the kitchen.'

‘My point exactly.'

They were the sort of jokes any couple might make, though there was a drop of acid in the tone, a chip of ice in the look. Morgan's mobile rang, and he glanced at the LCD display, then let it ring.

‘You're avoiding someone,' Candice observed.

‘A business call.' He realized that sounded odd, so he added: ‘Unimportant business.'

Candice was wearing a robe, though she was fully made up. She had fine features and an aristocratically long face that looked better with nothing but a light tan, but she was too aware of the faint lines by her eyes and the corners of her
mouth. The lapel of the robe had fallen to one side, revealing the globe of her breast, and Morgan glanced at it reflexively.

She said, ‘It'll be good to get away from London for a few days.'

A limo was double parked alongside the Honda. The driver, carrying Candice's suitcases, came down the steps from Morgan's house.

Candice looked into the sitting room on her way out and said goodbye. Morgan was taking a call on his mobile. He blew her a kiss. After the front door closed, he said, ‘Look, I did what I could. These guys seem to think I've got the say-so on this. Not true. I know people who have, but that's a different matter.'

Bowman said, ‘They paid you.'

‘To do a job. I've mentioned their name. I've mentioned it several times. What more do they expect?'

‘When you met with them, you were more positive, that's what I hear. That's their recollection.'

‘When I met them…' Morgan hesitated. ‘Things were a little different. You know how it is in politics.'

‘Not really.'

Morgan tried to muddy the issue. ‘People move on, people who might have been useful, you have to take time to develop new allies.'

It was a brand of bullshit Bowman had slipped up in before. He said, ‘Maybe I'd better come and see you.'

‘That wouldn't be helpful.'

‘We could talk this through.'

‘I don't think so,' Morgan said. ‘I'm caught up in other things just now.'

‘The Americans are eager that we sort something out. They think it ought to be possible to formulate some sort of ongoing strategy.'

‘Really?' said Morgan. ‘The Americans think that? Look, tell the Americans to go fuck themselves.'

He flipped the phone shut. It was a confident gesture, but it didn't reflect the way he felt. He opened the phone and made a call. He said, ‘She's gone to Madrid.' Then, ‘No, not tonight. There's someone I have to see.'

Abigail said, ‘Oh, well… Sure. Okay.'

It was disappointment masquerading as indifference.

Morgan said, ‘I want to see you, of course. It's something I wasn't expecting. Something I ought to take care of.'

Abigail picked up on the note of anxiety in his voice. ‘Are you all right, Neil?'

‘Fine. Look, tomorrow, okay? Tomorrow for sure.'

‘Yes.' A pause, then she said, ‘I'll be here.' As if it had ever been in doubt.

He made a few calls, answered a few letters, tried to settle in his study with some committee reports, but the words ran on the page. He wandered round the house. He made coffee he forgot to drink.

Finally, he called Bowman back. ‘Okay, let's meet. If you're worried, if the Americans are worried… Here's the problem: I'm under police protection. It's a precaution.' He offered no explanation, so Bowman assumed terrorism. ‘So far as I know, they photograph anyone who calls at the house. You don't want that.'

‘No? Why not? We could be meeting for any number of reasons.' Bowman laughed. ‘Offshore-investment packages, perhaps.'

‘I don't want it.'

‘Ah, well… that's a different issue.'

‘I'll try to lose them. Meet you somewhere…' Morgan considered for a moment, then gave Abigail's address. ‘Sometime after dark. So: ten o'clock?'

Bowman said, ‘If I get there first?'

‘Someone will let you in.'

‘Okay,' Bowman said. Then: ‘Is she pretty?'

Morgan called Abigail. He said, ‘I'll be there at ten, okay?'

‘Sure.' She sounded pleased. ‘What changed?'

‘The person I have to see? We're meeting at your place. Ten o'clock.'

‘Okay.'

‘Just a brief meeting.'

‘Okay.'

‘A private meeting.'

‘I'll watch TV in the bedroom.'

‘It means I can see you after all.' As if he'd arranged things to that end, as if he'd been beating his brain to think of a way.

‘Yes,' she said brightly. ‘Two birds with one stone.'

People were walking their dogs in Norland Square Gardens. Woolf walked the same circuit, a man taking some exercise, a man lost in thought. Each time he passed Neil Morgan's house, he glanced towards it. He saw the Honda and knew what it meant; he saw Candice leaving for Madrid; he saw that it would be impossible to kill Morgan there, in his own house, then transport the body to some public place where all could see it. But not impossible to kill him, perhaps.

He walked head down, his nails digging into his palms. It ought to be over, but he'd made a mistake. He'd been led astray. Not the house by the river,
this
house. Not that other man,
this
man. They had been fooling someone, and they'd fooled him too. In following the car, he thought he was following the man. The meeting at the hotel, Woolf watching the man being greeted by two Americans. The house by the river – Woolf watching the man as he dismissed his driver and went indoors. Woolf seeing the night out, waking with
the sun, watching as the man re-emerged to take a walk by the river.

Woolf tried to remember whether the other man had looked quite so much like Morgan. He thought he had; thought he must have done. But close up? He couldn't be sure. He'd marked the man, he'd been sure of his target, he'd locked on. After that, he hadn't looked too closely.

He left the gardens, going out as he'd gone in: behind a resident with a key to the gate. In the street that ran parallel to Morgan's he found a house that was being renovated. The place had been gutted. People in that neighbourhood could afford to buy a house for a million or more, then spend as much again to have things just as they wanted them. Scaffolding rose from the basement area to the roof.

Woolf counted down from the end of the street. The house was three doors from Morgan's. A sign on the scaffolding warned that it carried an alarm system.

He would wait a day or two, think things through, look at patterns. He'd seen Candice's luggage being loaded into the boot of the limo: cases, not overnight bags. Morgan would be on his own in the place for a few days, that was obvious.

Wait a day. Look at patterns. Know your terrain, your killing ground.

The lights were hot, but the morgue, as ever, was cool. Stella recognized the music, but couldn't identify it. A boy soprano, sweet and pure.

Sam said, ‘You have to get through the trachea and the thyroid cartilage. Muscle's not that easy to sever, though a strong man with a sharp knife would do the job quite quickly. He'd already have gone through the carotid sheath – through the artery and the jugular vein. Most likely, he would stand behind his victim, make the man kneel down, that way he could pull the head back by the hair and lift at the same time to expose the throat and make it taut.' Sam's voice was flat and neutral. ‘After that, he would definitely encounter some difficulty.'

‘How much difficulty?'

‘To decapitate his victim, he'd have to get between the cervical vertebrae – between the atlas and the axis in this case. Hacking away wouldn't do it. Well' – Sam shrugged – ‘no, it would eventually, of course, but you'd need time.'

‘Did this man hack?'

‘No. He found the gap. Or, rather, he created it. He would have manipulated the head, held it two-handed and rocked it to and fro, while, at the same time, pulling upwards to open a gap, maybe even partially dislocate the neck. That way, he would only be cutting connective tissue.'

‘He knew what he was doing.'

‘Possibly. Though it's easy enough to work out if you think about it.'

‘Yes? Who would think about it?'

George Nelms's body had been reduced to its constituents, exposed and emptied out, stripped down like a machine, but Stella still thought it looked odd without its head.

‘What I
am
saying,' Sam told her, ‘is he would have needed time.'

Aimée said, ‘It won't be long. I won't be gone for long.'

Peter was working at his computer. He said, ‘We'll be fine.'

‘Just overnight.'

‘It's your mother,' Peter said. ‘Of course you must go.'

Aimée's time out had been arranged before the incident at the sports field, before Ben's nightmares. She didn't know what to do. She stood in the room, dressed for work, knowing that passion would certainly overcome guilt.

‘I could call in after work; before I go to –'

‘I'm writing it down,' Peter said. He looked up from his two-finger typing. ‘I thought if I wrote down what happened, I might somehow make better sense of it.'

‘How can you make sense of a thing like that?'

‘No… It's like… it's the same as telling someone about it.'

‘You've told me. You've told the police.'

‘Writing it down is different, Aimée.'

‘How?'

She noticed that his hands, poised above the keyboard, were trembling slightly. He said, ‘I can go back to it. I can go back over it. I can change things, make it more accurate. Not details the police would want, details for me.' He paused; his voice became a whisper. ‘Like the smell. Like the way the head looked. The face…'

Aimée said, ‘Look, I could stay, of course I could.' But she knew she wouldn't.

Yellow-board feedback is random and time-consuming. You get time-wasters and glory-seekers; you get people who are
simply confused; you get people who were in the right place at the wrong time. Sometimes, though, you get a piece of information that's right on the money.

A woman walking her dog had seen the Volvo parked in the grounds of the old hospital. Sue Chapman had taken the call and, yes, the woman was certain of the day and, yes, the time was right and, yes, it was a Volvo.