In the Dark (34 page)

‘Listen, you're starting to do my head in—'

‘You can relax, Helen, is what I'm saying. Everything's fine. Paul was working for
us
. . .'

 
Leaning out from the end of the walkway, Theo could look across the corner of the estate to the neighbouring block and see the comings and goings. He'd stood there the day before as well and watched for hours: the arrival of the police vehicles, half a dozen at least; the men and women setting up the tapes and tents and spreading out onto the adjacent streets; the body bags taken out and loaded into the mortuary van.

The dog had come out in a black bin-liner.

As soon as he'd got out of the stash house, he'd called Easy, told him to ring back straight away. Then he'd called again, worried that Easy might take his time after the argument they'd had, and told him exactly why he needed to talk to him. Afraid that Javine would be at home, he'd called the police from the street, given them the address, then gone back to his flat and spent half an hour in the shower, trying to scrub away the stink.

There didn't seem to be much going on now, but Theo couldn't tear himself away. He wondered when Sugar Boy's mum and dad had got the call. Wondered what that stuff was that coppers smeared under their noses before they went in, and if you could buy it in Boots.

He checked his phone again, even though he knew he had a perfectly good signal.

He was still waiting for Easy to ring him back.

 
‘Paul's job was to target fellow officers,' Moody said. ‘To secure evidence that might convict any officer who was passing information to organised-crime figures. Individuals, gangs, whatever.'

‘How long?' Helen asked. She had moved over to the armchair and was looking through some paperwork that Moody had considered suitable for her to see. There were photocopies of reports and surveillance logs, details of meetings. Most of the names and locations had been blacked out.

‘A little over a year. It was going pretty well.'

‘Who knew about it?'

‘For obvious reasons, it was all done very discreetly,' Moody said. ‘As far as anyone Paul worked with, the details of the operation were only passed on to DCI level and above. Martin Bescott didn't know, none of Paul's close colleagues. It was as much about compromising fellow officers as risking the integrity of the operation.'

‘And that included me.'

Moody nodded. ‘He couldn't have told you anything anyway. It wouldn't have mattered what you did for a living.'

Helen passed back the sheaf of papers and stood up. ‘It's what I did for a living that made me suspect him, though.'

‘An instinct maybe,' Moody said. ‘You don't need to blame yourself on that score.'

She walked into the kitchen and leaned against the worktop. After a few moments she reached into the sink for a cloth and ran it back and forth across the surface. She was thinking through moments with Paul that suddenly took on new significance; replaying conversations in her head. She could hear Moody shuffling more papers in the sitting room and clearing his throat.

She walked back in and sat down again. ‘So Paul was working on Kevin Shepherd?'

‘Shepherd is a target Paul had been making decent headway with before the accident. You met him, so you know the kind of person we're talking about there.'

‘He's an arsehole.'

‘Correct, and he's an arsehole we suspect has made payments to a number of officers on various units.'

‘What about Frank Linnell?'

Moody took off his glasses and leaned back. ‘We're not too sure about that one. He's not someone we have an active interest in. Plenty of our colleagues
do
, of course . . .'

‘So what was Paul playing at?'

‘What did Linnell say?'

‘Don't you know?'

He smiled. ‘You were being observed, Helen, that's all. Nobody's bugging your phone.'

‘He said they were friends.'

‘Maybe it's as simple as that, then.' Moody's smile widened. ‘I used to play tennis with a pretty well-known forger.'

Helen was still not convinced. ‘He also said something about not giving Paul some names; not being willing to help him out.'

‘I'll look into it,' Moody said. ‘If it'll put your mind at rest.'

Helen could tell he meant it, and that it was something he was willing to do for no other reason than that. She told him she'd be grateful, and that she would be happy to do some more detective work herself, but that she was going to be a bit . . . tied up over the next week or so.

Moody thanked her for the water and said that he ought to be making a move. ‘Is there anything else you found out through doing all this that you think might be useful? Did Shepherd say anything, or . . .?'

‘The computer,' Helen said. She told him about the laptop that Bescott had turned up, that she'd hidden away.

‘Thank Christ for that,' Moody said. ‘We'd sort of lost track of it after what happened to Paul.'

‘Operation Victoria, that the one?'

‘Did you . . .?'

‘I couldn't open the file,' Helen said.

Moody seemed happy enough. ‘It's my daughter's name actually,' he said. ‘It's a bit random really. Like naming hurricanes.'

Helen stood up and asked if he'd like to take the laptop with him. He shook his head. ‘I'm on my way to catch the Eurostar.'

‘Nice,' Helen said.

‘Conference. Chief inspectors and above.'

Helen pulled a face. ‘Sorry.'

Moody reached for his jacket. ‘I'll arrange for a car to come and pick it up,' he said. He moved towards the door. ‘There's a lot of hard work on that thing.
Paul's
hard work.' He looked a little embarrassed. ‘I wouldn't want to leave the bloody thing on the train.'

 
Theo snatched up his phone when he saw who was calling, moved quickly into the bedroom and shut the door behind him.

‘You did the right thing, belling me first,' Easy said.

‘Where you been at, man?' Javine was watching TV in the next room and Theo was doing his best not to shout, but it was a struggle. He was relieved that Easy had called back but angry that it had taken so long. He felt like something inside him had been twisted. ‘I walked in there and found them. Jesus,
both
of them.'

‘I know it hurts, man. I feel it too.'

‘I
found
them.'

‘Breathe easy, Star Boy.'

‘Wave and Sugar Boy all shot up, and that fucking dog.'

‘Yeah, that was cold.'

‘Where you
been
?'

‘Things have got to be dealt with, T.' Theo could hear traffic and music. It sounded as though Easy was driving. ‘Shit like this happens and there's arrangements to be made. Restructuring or whatever.'

Theo pressed the phone between his chin and his shoulder and tried to light a cigarette. He dropped the lighter.

‘You listening, T?'

‘It's like I said the other night.' Theo bent down for the lighter, managed finally to get some smoke into his lungs. ‘It's all about what we did in that car, that copper who died.'

‘I'm not talking about this now.'

‘You see it now though, right? You
understand
now?'

‘Yeah, you're the smart one, T. Top of the class.'

Easy had said it as though Theo had just got the right answer on a TV quiz show. Like it didn't matter. ‘You really need to listen,' Theo said. ‘There's just you and me left now, you get me?'

For a few seconds there was just the noise of an engine, and drum and bass from Easy's car stereo, or somebody else's. Then Easy said, ‘No,
you
need to do the listening, T. You need to shut up and get yourself settled, smoke a couple and stop giving yourself a fucking heart attack. We straight?'

Theo grunted. He knew there was no point arguing.

‘I'll check you tonight.'

‘Where?'

‘Dirty South. Later on, OK? We'll get it all sorted.'

Theo listened as the music was turned up, a second before the line went dead.

THIRTY

Nice and slow, up and down . . .

Saturday afternoon was not the cleverest time to be trudging around the supermarket, Helen knew that, but she'd needed to get out. She'd tried to sit there after Moody had left and take in everything he'd told her, all that it had meant, but it was way too much to process. Too much, sitting there, with Paul's things all around her. With the smell of him still in the flat and a voice, hers or his, letting her know just how stupid she'd been.

How she'd betrayed him . . . again. How she'd pissed on his memory.

Sainsbury's was packed, as she'd known it would be, but still she felt more comfortable negotiating the crowded aisles. The implications of what she had learned were sinking in that little bit easier while she had something else to think about; as she occupied herself with slowly filling her trolley.

Nice and slow, up and down each aisle in turn. Why had she automatically assumed he'd been bent, or screwing somebody else? Why the hell did nappies take up so much room?

The hubbub was a welcome distraction, and the voice that announced bargains over the Tannoy, or ushered staff to particular counters and checkouts, was less harsh than the one in her own head. Besides which, a supermarket run was well overdue. Her dad's muffins had long gone and she was reluctant to drop hints to Jenny about how great her soup had been, so she was all but living on toast and biscuits at home.

God, she needed more biscuits. She should probably get the ones Paul liked, the plain chocolate ones, because he'd been an honest, hard-working copper and she was an evil-minded whore.

People were nice too, walking around and getting on with things; normal men and women who didn't know her, and each small encounter lifted her spirits. A smile from an old man as they both moved their trolleys the same way to avoid a collision. The offers of help as she bent to pick up bottles of water or reached for something on a high shelf.

‘Here we go.'

‘There you are.'

‘Steady on, love, don't want to be having it in here.'

And some odd looks as well, of course. And the sly nudges as other shoppers tried not to stare at the heavily pregnant nutter, moving at a snail's pace and mumbling to herself.

‘You're right, Hopwood, I'm a nasty piece of work, but you always knew that.'

Cheese, semi-skimmed milk, natural yoghurt
. . .

‘So come back and haunt me, then. Why not? Rattle your fucking handcuffs at me in the dark.'

Bleach, toothpaste, toilet roll
. . .

‘What was I supposed to think, for crying out loud? Maybe if you'd
been
here.'

Then she saw the little boy: running up the aisle towards her, sidestepping a trolley in his haste to get to his mum; waving the packet of cereal he wanted so badly. The same sort . . .

She saw it and froze. Heard the cereal rattle as the boy ran past, and as Paul poured it into his bowl. Then everything started to slip away.

She was already falling forward as she felt it rise like boiling milk; as she heaved it up. Her foot felt for the brake on the trolley's wheel and missed. She was hot as hell. She told her hands to let go, but they weren't listening. Her head was swimming with the people who had stopped to watch, the colours they were wearing, as the trolley took her with it; pulling her down to her knees at the same time as the wail began to escape, and the first fat sob felt like a kick in the chest as she hit the floor.

A woman, the boy's mother, asked if she was all right. Helen tried to speak, but then the woman hurried away to fetch someone, and when Helen glanced up again all she could see was the little boy staring at her. He started to cry right back at her while she watched a security guard come marching round the corner. He leaned down behind her and put his arms through hers; asked if she wanted a hand back to her feet. But she was crying so hard that she couldn't answer, so he stood up again. He told her to take as long as she liked.

Helen could hear him telling other shoppers that the lady was all right. Then he said something into his walkie-talkie, and, in the gap between sobs, as she sucked in breaths like a baby, she heard it squawk back at him.

 
The security guard had refused to let Helen drive, putting her into a cab, taking her keys, and promising to drive her car home for her when he'd finished his shift. He was the second person in a few days whose name she'd asked and who she'd told that she might name the baby after him. He'd told her his name was Stuart and had looked a lot more taken with the idea than the boy she'd met in Lewisham.

She was thinking about the boy, about the look on his face while she'd been driving out of that car park as she watched the taxi pull away and walked the few yards to her front door. She had the key to the main entrance in her hand when she heard a voice behind her.

‘Helen?'

She turned, half expecting to see Adam Perrin, and was relieved to see a balding, middle-aged man who raised his hands in mock-surrender and looked nothing but concerned. He'd obviously recognised the tension on her face.

‘Sorry,' she said. She felt wrung out anyway, and remembered how scared she'd been when Kevin Shepherd had come looming out of the dark at her; had as good as threatened her on the same spot.

‘How are you feeling?' the man asked.

She guessed he was one of her neighbours. She and Paul had often talked about getting to know them better, perhaps throwing a party for the whole block, but they had never quite got round to it.