Down into Darkness (36 page)

James and Stevie went to their grandfather with a shopping list: it was short, just two items. James had noted them in a neat upright hand.

Silent Wolf: Urban Legend.

Silent Wolf: Urban Warrior.

James said, ‘We might have the wrong one.'

Stevie said, ‘Silent Wolf, the avenger. Silent Wolf, death-dealer. Silent Woolf cleans filth from the streets in the city that never sleeps.'

Dear Stell

You know that Ricardo and I have got to move now. Trouble with his business, I think it is, but this is not to bother you with that. I am sending it to your work at Notting Dene addressed to you as personal as I never got told were you are living or what's happening in your life now. Well I know you must be busy but I wish we had seen more of each other during my brief time on Harefield, which was more brief than I ever thought it would be, but life is like that as they say. It was peculiar being back there after such a time as you might think and it brought back the old days. I expect you remember the times we used to have. It was hard at times as we both know but I like to think of them as good times, the two of us together, and I hope you have nice memories of those times as I know I do. Perhaps you remember trying to get a dog and being told it wasn't aloud, then we got some mice and they ran out, it was hysterical. Can you remember my friend Eric who was with us for a short time and he didn't like them at all and went out with us laughing at him I seem to remember. Well Stella those times are gone and we have all moved on and changed but perhaps we will hook up again some time soon and we can talk about those times. It was tough, but we looked after each other didn't we? I was so proud of you with school and your degree and those things and being in the police though that was an odd thing in some ways wasn't it seeing were we came from. You were always good with your homework and I know they thought that at school too. I think back and there we are in the flat, block c at the top, you and me, not that we didn't have problems with money etc some times what with your father going
off but we were always there for each other I do know that. Anyway, Stell, I have to close now because Ricardo has found us a place to be. I don't know were exactly yet but we have to get out of here tomorrow Nottingham I think it is. Ricardo has had some sort of problem with a man called Stanley Bowman who was in the paper and he asked me to tell you this and say that if you look for money going in and out of his bank this Bowman and were it came from you will find it interesting as will customs, or tap his phone, or ask for his accounts, and it will be a large deposit from abroad.

Well I must stop now Stell as there are things to do when you move. I have been writing this on Ricardo's computer and it is slow work for me with two fingers and spell check bringing me up short. I hope you are happy and expect you must be but I didn't have a chance to ask. Much love from, Your loving mother, Tina. xxx

Stella was holding the letter with her fingertips, as if it might unexpectedly ignite. She slipped it into one of the lockable drawers in her desk, then looked around like a prisoner searching for an escape route.

Harriman came by and said, ‘Ten minutes, Boss, car park – all right?'

She said, ‘Yes,' or thought she did.

She couldn't go to the women's room, because anyone might come in there, but she sure as hell couldn't stay at her desk, so she walked out of the squad room and out of the building and got into her car, but she couldn't stay in the car park either, with people coming and going, so she started the car and drove without thinking where she might go, and soon realized she couldn't drive much further because she wasn't able to see all that well, and she was getting horn blasts from either side, so she turned in to the car-wash just off Shepherd's Bush Green.

She sat in the wash-tunnel, hedged on both sides by the rag-rollers, yellow rinse-rollers front and rear, windscreen slathered in foam, everything dim, the roar of machinery, the rollers' clatter and slap, and howled and beat the dashboard with her hands and cried so hard, so
hard
, that she thought something inside might break.

Little Stella Mooney, all alone, tears like stones.

Harriman said, ‘Sorry, where did you go?'

‘Don't be sorry. I had some calls to make.'

Stella had fronted the car-wash men with her make-up a tide line round her jaw and her tear stains plain to see, but she'd parked in a side street and carried out a wet-wipe repair job before driving back to the squad room. Now she felt fine. She felt steady. Apart from anything else, the bitch was leaving. Nottingham – far enough to be out of mind.

Harriman said, ‘You remember the problem I mentioned…'

‘The girl you unaccountably miss.'

‘I'm seeing another girl tonight. Different girl.'

‘And this is your solution to the problem.'

‘This different girl is a very hot girl.'

‘Sounds to me like your troubles are over.'

‘Yeah,' Harriman said, ‘that's what I think.'

He was looking out of the window, his eyes slitted against the head-on sun, though he might have been frowning.

Stella sat down with James and Stevie and got some pretty straightforward answers to her questions. A cartoon character called Silent Wolf had killed their father.

Were they sure?

Yes.

Had they seen him do it?

Yes.

Where did this happen?

At home.

What did he look like?

Like this.

Stella took the game that James handed her. There was Silent Wolf, his long coat, his mane of hair, his yellow eyes. His kick had skied one attacker, another was arching back, the impact-star from the Wolf's fist nailed to his chin. The city skyline was a dark silhouette.

She flipped the disc over to read the blurb, and there was the emblem his enemies had come to fear: the mark of the wolf.

The
AMIP
-5 team spoke to the manufacturer, were briefed on the game's market profile, interviewed the team of nerds who had created Silent Wolf. The nerds were freaky obsessives all right but not killers. Harriman and Greegan went over the SOC stills and videos; they put up new cordons and arranged to revisit the scenes in case there were other symbols, other pointers, that they might have missed. Frank Silano spoke to the design company who'd packaged the game: their designers were checked out and found to be solid citizens with wives, children and only minor coke habits.

Maxine Hewitt and Anne Beaumont sat down with James and Stevie and their Game Boy, all of them taking a walk with Silent Wolf as he freelanced out along the razor's edge. Maxine had obtained the full set of Wolf games, and the boys were heads down, silent, following every move, racking up a score.

Between games they talked about the time Silent Wolf had killed their father.

Stella and Anne found an office that wasn't in use. It contained seven chairs, a white-board and easel, and a photocopier with an
OUT OF ORDER
note tacked to it. They pulled two chairs round to face one another, a mini-conference.

‘What's the profile now?' Stella asked. ‘I mean, crazy, sure, but”?'

‘I need time to look at the games.' Anne was flirting with a cup of squad-room coffee. ‘Follow the narrative.'

‘The narrative? Easy: he kills people.'

‘Yes, but look, there's the business of motive. How did he get started? Is he killing out of revenge or is it a warped sort of altruism? He thinks he's ridding the world of evil, remember that. In a way, he's on the side of right. It's rough justice – he's judge, jury and executioner – but he's not an indiscriminate killer, and he doesn't kill for pleasure.'

‘No?'

‘Well, all right, sure, he's good at it, he has preparation rituals, he assumes he has the moral high ground, and he feels no remorse – all of that. But his victims are deliberately chosen and clearly tagged as bad guys. Silent Wolf's a vigilante.'

‘You think our man sees himself that way? Tell me how his victims
qualify
as bad guys.'

‘If I knew that,' Anne said, ‘I'd know almost everything. A similar sort of question is: why does he identify so strongly with this character? There are hundreds of super-heroes and shoot-'em-up games.'

‘You think the game influenced him?'

‘No balanced individual ever became a killer after watching screen violence, or reading a book, or reading an account in a newspaper.'

‘There are copy-cat crimes – well documented.'

‘Sure, I said
balanced
individual. Obviously that doesn't describe our man… all the same, I think this game has some sort of special significance for him.'

‘Because the hero's victims aren't random and aren't innocent.'

‘Could be.' Anne sipped her coffee and immediately set it aside. ‘One thing seems sure: he's adopted the persona of Silent Wolf. From what the boys said, he looks just like him.'

‘Which is why they're so fixated on the game,' Stella said. She frowned, remembering something. ‘The grandfather… something he said. Yes, one of the boys told him they were
worried they'd got the wrong one – the wrong Silent Wolf adventure, I suppose. Did you or DC Hewitt ask them about that?'

Anne nodded. ‘Yes; but I already knew what the answer would be. These kids live in a screen culture. They see violence of this sort in a game, and it's fiction; they see it on TV, and it's the news; how do they distinguish one from the other? How do they tell the difference between a target centring, a missile firing and a house exploding when on one occasion it's game graphics, on another it's a real missile and a real house with real people in it? The images are identical.'

‘So… when they asked whether they'd got the right one?'

‘They were looking for a certain scene and wondered if it would be in another game, because they couldn't find it in the one they'd got. What they had seen in life, they expected also to see on screen.'

Stella felt a chill. ‘They were looking for the scene where their father is killed by Silent Wolf.'

Anne nodded. ‘Maybe they thought…' She paused, because the idea had only just come to her. ‘Maybe they thought they could put it on rewind; maybe they thought they could hit the stop button and make everything all right.'

Stella took her notes into DI Collier, who reached for them with a stiff, awkward gesture like a man with a pulled muscle. The dailies, with their scare-'em headlines, had been thrown on the floor along with files, reports, memos:
MONSTER
…
SIEGE
…
CRAZED KILLER
…
FEAR
…
STRIKE AGAIN
…

She asked, ‘What did they say at the hospital?'

‘That it looked worse than it was. He clipped me just back of the ribs. It would have missed a thinner man, so they told me, which was fucking wonderful to hear. Lot of blood, only two stitches.'

‘The ARV caught up with them…'

Collier smiled. ‘They ran their car into a fence; bones were broken.'

‘That must have made you feel better.'

Collier shrugged, then regretted it. ‘I was slow. Desk jobs make you rusty.'

‘You saved her,' Stella said, ‘and you got shot doing it. Good job, Boss.' Collier looked at her: both of them taken by surprise. As she was leaving, he said, as if to no one in particular, ‘I'm crap at this. I'm a street cop. I'm out of my fucking depth with all this paper.'

Harriman and Greegan were walking through the Strip. Their trip round the scenes of crime had resulted in nothing new, though there were a few changes. The tree was now in full leaf, and the old hospital had bred a thousand species of crawling and flying insects.

It was neither afternoon nor evening, that depressing, headachy time of day when body-sugar levels dip and everything slows down. The whores, the shebeens, the casinos, the cafés, were idling and the lunch-time drunks weren't yet seeking a freshener. Smells of fast food and gasoline and spilled booze rode the city breeze. Harriman stopped for a moment, looking at a man on the opposite side of the road; the man looked back, smiling and yanking his crotch. It was Costea.

‘Friend or acquaintance?' Greegan asked.

‘We raided a casino down here…'

Greegan remembered. ‘The guy with the razor. You had to go across the rooftops to nab him.'

‘I'm not good at heights.'

‘What's he doing up here?'

Harriman shook his head. ‘Some smart brief got him bail by the look of it. I expect I abused his human fucking rights in some way.'

Greegan looked across to where Costea was leaning against a black four-track Merc. The man waved a cheery finger. Greegan said, ‘Does he look like that all the time, do you think, or only when he's on the job?'