In the Dark (27 page)

She stared at the empty box on the screen for a minute, at the blinking cursor inside, then entered Paul's surname and date of birth. Like most people, he'd used his birthdate as the PIN for his bank account.

No good.

She tried his mother's name, married and maiden. His father's. Then she tried her own name, asking herself as she typed why it wasn't the first thing she'd thought of.

How tricky could it be, for God's sake? Paul wasn't . . .
had not been
any kind of a whizz when it came to this stuff.

Victoria
. . .

Maybe he
had
got his own back, after all. Christ, could this be about something as simple as a bit on the side? A bit of posh too, by the sound of her. It was a painful thought, but perhaps less painful than the alternative.

There was still Kevin Shepherd to explain away, though. And Frank Linnell.

She began to type quickly, shouting at herself any time she mistyped and when she accidentally hit the CAPS LOCK; trying out words as they popped into her head and jabbing at the ENTER key. Anything that might mean something to Paul: the name of his best friend at school; the dog he had when he was a kid; Queens Park Rangers;
The Great Escape
; Freddie fucking Mercury . . .

The password you
. . .

She slammed down the lid as hard as she dared and sat there until she got her breath back. Until the sweat had begun to cool on her neck and shoulders.

She remembered that Jenny's husband Tim was good with computers, how he'd bored the arse off them any number of times talking about networks and firewalls. She thought about asking him to help, then quickly thought better of it. She knew that Jenny would have a field day as soon as she found out, would interrogate her endlessly. Maybe she could ask Tim to do it on the sly and keep it to himself. A blow-job might do the trick; she knew he'd always had a thing for her.

Jesus, where the hell had
that
come from?

The baby kicked, good and hard. She felt dizzy suddenly, light-headed. She went into the kitchen and drank half a bottle of water.

Once she felt steadier, she took the laptop to the bedroom, wrapped it inside the plastic bag and stashed it away at the bottom of the wardrobe, behind Paul's guitar. She felt herself redden even as she was doing it, but knew that whatever was on the hard disk needed to be hidden.

She thought that Frank Linnell might have the answers, but it wasn't going to be easy finding him. There was no way she could ask anyone to help without needing to explain why, and it wasn't feasible to stroll into her office and sit down at the computer. Tracing a number plate, as she'd done with Ray Jackson, was a simple enough business, but any usage of the PNC would involving logging on and entering her password. The session would be a matter of record.

Christ, if she just had the name of one of Linnell's businesses, it might be as simple as picking up the Yellow Pages.

Back in the living room, she glanced across at the rest of Paul's stuff, still sitting where she'd left it on the table: his diary, tapes and CDs, the mapbook from the car, his sat-nav unit.

‘Come on, Hopwood, admit it. That's bloody genius . . .'

Maybe not, but it was a decent idea, and even though it might take a while, it wasn't like she had much else to do.

Maybe this time the technology would be on her side.

TWENTY-FOUR

They'd found SnapZ first thing that morning.

There were police all over the estate again; shouts and sirens, its dawn chorus. A blanket of blue, vehicles clogging up the side streets, and yellow tape flapping around the entrance to the block where SnapZ had lived. The rumours started flying pretty fast, and by mid-morning anyone with ears knew what had happened.

A crew-boy down.
Another
one.

According to some mouth almighty, who had heard it from a gobby copper, a girlfriend had phoned the police the day before, when she had been unable to get SnapZ on his mobile for twenty-four hours. The report had been dutifully logged and forgotten. Twenty-four hours before that, a woman had called to complain about a disturbance in a neighbouring flat; about how it wasn't the first time the toe-rag living two doors along had ruined her Sunday by blasting out his music and slamming doors. That had received even less attention, reports of excessive noise or anything approaching a domestic coming somewhere below dropping litter and dogs fouling the pavements when it came to the Lee Marsh estate.

Easy had been spot on. They just didn't fancy it.

It wasn't until some sharp-eyed desk sergeant put the two reports together and noticed the one name they had in common that anyone got off their arse. An hour later they were smashing in SnapZ's door. Then, before they had a chance to take off their stab vests, those officers who had been happily returning to desk jobs or foot patrol in Greenwich and Blackheath were racing west, pale and pissed off, back to SE13.

Theo stood watching from just behind a crowd of fifteen or twenty that was as near to the action as it could get. Most of them probably didn't know that they'd already taken SnapZ away; were still waiting in the hope of getting a glimpse of the drama.

It was an odd mix: shopkeepers; a family or two who lived on the estate; and a few bemused souls who looked like tourists and must have taken a seriously wrong turn. One or two of the crew were hanging around as well, to pay their respects or maybe just to gain some comfort from being close to the others. Theo had seen Gospel and Sugar Boy loitering, had exchanged those all-purpose nods before letting his eyes drop.

Near to where he was standing, a small boy stood with his father, slurping at an ice-cream and craning his head to get a good look at whatever was happening. Theo's guts were jumping. He'd called in at the café early on and now he felt like he might chuck his bacon sandwich up at any time.

After another ten minutes or so, a pair of bored-looking uniforms ushered the crowd further back and some of them started to drift away. Theo knew that people would already be preparing their speeches. There were a few local news teams there as it was and he knew that the bigger ones would be arriving later on. National TV and stuff, probably.

As the father and son walked past him, Theo caught the small boy's eye, the shrug and the look on his sticky face.

Nothing to see.

Others, going back to whatever they'd been doing, shared a different expression.

Nothing they hadn't seen before.

Theo hoped his own face wasn't giving too much away. That it gave no hint as to what was going on inside his head;
raging
in there. He hadn't got a clue why, and even less who, but he knew now that all this had nothing to do with Easy and his . . . excursions. Knew that it was not about territory.

There were thirty, maybe more in the street crew, with plenty of others further up, in the triangles above, for those who knew where to look.

Mikey dead, and now SnapZ. It was more than a coincidence.

As far as the media were concerned, the explanation would be simple. They would be marked down as casualties in a vicious gang war or a dispute about ends. They would probably be seen as victims of something bigger, too: symptoms of alienated this and disenfranchised that, the product of a messed-up ethnic underclass or some such.

But Theo knew they also had something more specific in common, something they shared with only Theo himself and two others. The night ten days before when that police officer had been killed. When
he
had killed that police officer.

Mikey and SnapZ had both been sitting on the back seat.

Theo turned away and all but collided with Gospel. She kept her head down, ran a hand through her locks. ‘Out of order, man,' she said.

Theo felt his breakfast starting to move.

Gospel moved away like she was in a hurry. ‘Out of fucking order.'

‘Yeah,' Theo said.

 
Helen had to admit that some of these small-time toe-rags were pretty bloody clever.

Before she'd taken her maternity leave, she'd heard about a spate of car thefts in which kids would break into cars with sat-nav systems, hit the HOME button and be directed to a house which they would promptly burgle, safe in the knowledge that the homeowner was somewhere else. Finding out that his car had just been nicked.

The gadget could, of course, be put to more noble use; not that what she was doing felt particularly noble.

Paul had known his way around most of south-west and central London, so he had only really used the sat-nav for getting home if he found himself north of the river or needed to drive to another city. Helen knew that the ‘recent destinations' were listed in the order they'd been programmed into the unit, and hoped there wouldn't be too many to work through. She recognised a couple and discounted them. Then, remembering what Gary Kelly had told her about where Frank Linnell operated, she started looking for addresses in the south-east of the city.

The first two were a waste of time: Linnell was obviously not based at Catford police station, and the terraced house in Brockley turned out to belong to a retired couple whose daughter had been a witness in a murder case Paul had investigated a few months earlier.

The old woman had remembered him. ‘Nice man,' she'd said. ‘Polite.'

Helen had started out early, and just after ten-thirty she turned into a side street by Charlton Park and stopped near a pub a mile or so south of the Thames. She saw a black Range Rover parked alongside and a skip out front and remembered that Kelly had also spoken about Linnell being in property development.

Third time lucky.

As she walked from the car, a man in paint-spattered overalls came out of the pub and emptied the contents of a heavy-looking plastic bucket into the skip.

‘Is the boss in?' Helen asked. Her warrant card stayed in her bag. The man grunted - could have been ‘yes', could have been ‘no' - and went back inside.

She found herself some shade and waited.

Five minutes later, the door opened again and a well-built black man appeared. He sized her up, then asked what she wanted to drink. Helen was a little taken aback, but tried not to show it. ‘Just some water would be fine.' The man held open the door for her.

He walked her through the pub, where half a dozen men were painting, hammering and drilling. She heard two of them talking in an East European language. Polish was her best guess. There were so many Poles working in the UK as plumbers and builders that their government had recently issued an official request, asking if they could have a few back.

Frank Linnell was sitting in the garden. He stood up when she walked onto the patio, said, ‘Helen, is it?'

He was fifty-odd, but looked fit enough in blue gym shorts and a white polo shirt. There was no grey to speak of in hair that was curly at the neck and greased back with something. The face was . . . softer than Helen had expected.

She sat down opposite him at a small, slatted table and said thank you when the big man laid her drink down.

‘Just shout if you want another one,' he said.

‘Nice out here, isn't it?' Linnell said. ‘Be bloody gorgeous in a day or two. Tell you the truth, I'm not even sure I want to sell the place.'

Fresh turf had been laid between where they were sitting and a new fence thirty or so feet away, and one side of the patio was filled with rows of hanging baskets and potted plants, their tubs still wrapped in polythene.

‘Stick a couple of swings or a slide over there on the grass, be smashing.'

Helen took a long drink and a deep breath. Looked across at a man who, if a fraction of what she'd heard was true, was on the wish list of half the city's senior detectives, and who carried on speaking as if they'd known one another for years.

‘Can't be too long now.' He pointed at Helen's belly. ‘Looks about done in there, I reckon.'

‘Try not to make any loud noises,' she said.

‘Going back to work straight away? Or . . .'

‘Not straight away.'

‘Most advantageous arrangement for the kiddie, if you ask me.'

‘We'll see.'

‘And what about today?' Linnell took a sip of his own drink. It looked like Coke, but there was no way of knowing if there was anything else in it. ‘You working today?'

‘I just came to talk about Paul,' Helen said.

Linnell smiled. ‘I'd like that.'

For the second time in as many minutes, Helen had been put firmly on the back foot. She told herself that Linnell, and those who worked for him, were probably well practised at doing it; urged herself to relax and stay focused. The baby was kicking up a storm and she quietly shifted position to make herself more comfortable. She moved a hand across to her belly beneath the table, and started to rub gently. ‘How did you know Paul?' she asked.

‘We met six years ago,' Linnell said. He began to play with a gold chain around his neck, drawing the links back and forth between his fingers as he spoke. ‘He was part of the team on a case I was close to. The
murder
of someone I was close to. Afterwards . . . all the way through, matter of fact, Paul was terrific. One or two of his colleagues were not quite as . . . sympathetic, if you know what I mean. When you've got a reputation, some people can only see things one way. Paul always treated me the same as he'd treat anyone else who was a victim.'

‘And after that?'

‘We stayed in touch.'

‘That's it?'

‘We became friends, I suppose.' He shrugged, like it was all very simple. ‘We were
friends
.'