MONOLITH (14 page)

Jess scrolled down the list of properties, occasionally shaking her head as she looked at specifications and prices.

In the background the hiss and crackle and electronic murmur of voices coming from a number of radios filled the air with sound. As she sat at the laptop, Mark Paxton contented himself with moving from receiver to receiver occasionally checking frequencies and noting some of the words coming from the radios.

‘Robbery in Selfridges,’ he said, distractedly, glancing in Jess’s direction. ‘A couple of kids trying to nick some leather jackets.’

Still Jess didn’t look around; her attention was fixed on the screen before her.

‘Dispatch rider knocked off his bike in the Strand,’ Paxton went on.

Again Jess seemed not to hear him or if she did she didn’t acknowledge him.

She scrolled further down the page, chewing the end of a biro as she looked at the pictures before her.

‘A flasher in Green Park,’ Paxton chuckled.

Still nothing from Jess apart from the occasional sigh. He glanced at her and saw how seemingly entranced she was by whatever she was looking at.

‘Fifty-six people machine-gunned to death inside Ann Summers,’ Paxton grinned. ‘Two people decapitated and partially eaten outside Fortnum and Mason.’ He looked at her, a smile still on his face.

Still Jess didn’t answer.

‘I know some good porn sites if you’re interested,’ Paxton murmured.

She glanced at him finally and smiled then returned to whatever was holding her interest so raptly on the screen.

Paxton smiled to himself and returned to the radios.

‘What the hell are you looking at that’s so interesting anyway?’ he wanted to know.

‘I’m looking at apartments in the Crystal Tower,’ Jess told him, her eyes still fixed on the screen.

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m thinking of buying one.’

Paxton turned and looked at her, a look of incredulity on his face.

‘Are you having a fucking laugh?’ he grunted. ‘Have you won the lottery without telling me?’

‘I need to get inside the Crystal Tower and that seems as good a way as any to do it,’ Jess informed him. ‘A potential buyer for one of the apartments. I mean, they don’t know I haven’t got a pot to piss in, do they?’

‘They might check when you make an appointment to view; some of these posh estate agents don’t even let you look if they think you haven’t got the money to buy.’

‘I’ll take the chance,’ Jess said, flatly.

‘A young single woman in a position to buy one of their apartments,’ Paxton said. ‘You’d have to be fucking royalty.’

‘As far as they know who says I’m single,’ Jess smiled.

‘So there is something you haven’t told me.’

‘I think I’ve got less chance of finding a guy than winning the lottery, Spike,’ Jess grinned.

Paxton raised his eyebrows.

‘Oh I don’t know,’ he said. ‘You’re not too bad. You scrub up reasonably well.’ He eyed her up and down. ‘And you’ve got a great pair of legs. I would.’

Jess chuckled.

‘You smooth talking bastard,’ she grinned.

‘Seriously, Jess,’ Paxton went on. ‘How come you haven’t got a bloke?’

‘It’s not the be all and end all, having someone. I’ve got my career. I’m married to that.’

‘That’s a fucking cliché,’ Paxton said dismissively.

Jess merely got to her feet, drained what was left of her drink and reached for her handbag.

‘Life’s a cliché, Spike,’ she said, wearily, turning towards the door.

‘Very profound,’ he called after her, listening as the door closed behind her.

Now only the sound of the radio receivers filled the room once again.

Detective Inspector Robert Johnson sat back in his seat and shook his head as he read the report for the third time that morning. It was on his computer screen too, as if seeing the facts and findings both on paper and also on the screen would somehow make them easier to digest.

It didn’t.

Johnson got to his feet and turned towards the window of his office, glancing out across the sprawling landscape of London that was so clearly visible from where he stood. There were a couple of framed photos on the window sill. One of himself and his wife and another of him, his wife and their six-year-old daughter. Johnson picked up the picture, smiling as he looked at it. It showed him buried up to his waist on a beach, smiling happily while his wife and daughter looked on and laughed.

A perfect family picture.

Johnson raised his eyebrows. Some smartarse had once said that the camera never lies. That was bullshit too. It did nothing but lie. The snapshot he was looking at now made it look as if he and his family were without a care in the world.

It hadn’t been until they’d returned from that holiday that his wife had found a lump in her left breast.

Johnson could still remember the absolute fear that had consumed him when she’d told him. He’d marvelled at how small a discovery could produce so much stress and worry. The fact that it had seemed to take an age to get her an appointment for a biopsy hadn’t helped. That had been two months ago and she still had another few days of waiting for the operation that would tell her whether the lump was benign or malignant.

He sucked in a deep breath. Even the word itself was frightening. Malignant. It was right up there with inoperable and terminal. As well as fear, Johnson had felt another emotion he hadn’t expected to feel. One of anger. Why did it have to be his wife? Why her? She had done nothing but good all through her thirty-six years. Why single her out for this ordeal? He’d seen plenty people during the course of his work who deserved far more richly the kind of worry and possible suffering that his wife was going to have to endure but no, she had been picked for this. A good person, not a shithouse. Not someone who deserved to suffer. Of course he’d tried to consider the positive side. The lump may well be benign. It would be removed and everything would go on as normal.

Finding the positives in situations wasn’t exactly Robert Johnson’s forte. Maybe that was the result of eighteen years on the police force, he told himself. If he always looked on the dark side then anything at all was a bonus. That was the way he’d always been and he saw no reason to change now.

The hardest decision he and his wife had been forced to take had been over whether or not to tell their daughter. How did you explain to a six-year-old that her mother might have a disease that could kill her? How did you look into the face of a child and tell it that it may well be losing one of its parents?

They had decided to wait until they found out the result of the biopsy before explaining anything one way or the other. If the news was bad then they’d deal with it somehow and if the lump was benign then there was no need to say anything anyway. Ignorance would be bliss for their daughter. At least that was what Johnson hoped.

If he’d been a religious man he would have prayed for his wife’s well-being but along with a tendency to see the bad rather than the good in situations, his time in the police had also brought it crashing home to him that no God whoever he was would permit some of the things to happen that Johnson had seen over the years. He’d heard a quote but couldn’t remember where from and it had always stuck in his head: ‘I believe that God is a sadist but probably doesn’t even know it.’ Johnson looked down at the image of his wife and he found it hard to disagree.

He was still looking at the picture when there was a knock on his office door.

He was about to call out to the person on the other side to enter when they did.

D.S. Raymond Powell walked in and closed the door behind him.

He noticed that Johnson was looking at the picture and for a moment he thought about saying something but, he told himself, what was the point? He was sure that if there’d been any good news then his colleague would have told him. Best let sleeping dogs lie.

‘I’ve been through all the statements that the uniformed guys took,’ the D.S. began.

‘And?’ Johnson murmured.

‘Nothing. No one saw anything. A couple of people heard what they thought was breaking glass but no one saw a thing.’

‘Did Dunham or his wife add anything to their statements?’

Powell shook his head.

‘So all we’ve got left is the report from forensics about the attacker,’ Johnson sighed, slumping into his seat.

‘The residue at the bottom of the indentations in the garden and on the walls of the house was clay,’ Powell confirmed.

‘But not commercial clay, not something that could have been carried on the feet of a builder or workman.’

‘So is our suspect a mad sculptor?’ Powell chuckled.

Johnson sighed wearily.

‘What do you think, Ray?’ the D.I. said, holding the report up and waving it before him. ‘About the estimated size of the attacker?’

‘Forensics says that their calculations are based on the depth of the footprints…’

‘But they’re not footprints are they?’ Johnson interrupted. ‘There are no marks or patterns that would have been left by the sole of a shoe or boot. If there were we could trace them, find out which make they were and who might have bought some recently. The fucking marks in Dunham’s garden aren’t even shaped like footprints.’

‘Well someone left them,’ Powell said.

‘Someone who must, according to Forensic calculations on the height to weight ratio, be over twenty-five feet tall. What are they telling us? We’ve got to arrest fucking King Kong?’

‘It wouldn’t be the first time,’ Powell grinned but the joke didn’t seem to register with Johnson who merely shook his head and sighed.

‘It’s crazy,’ he murmured.

‘It doesn’t make a lot of sense, I’ll give you that.’

‘Not a lot of sense? It makes no fucking sense at all. Those marks were left by someone calculated to be over twenty five feet tall and weighing more than fifty stone. And not one single person in that street last night saw anything, before during and after the attack. Now you, or someone, tell me what the fuck is going on because I haven’t got a clue.’

‘You should have told me about your father.’

Jessica Anderson looked into the face of the man seated opposite her and saw the distress in his expression.

‘Why? What good would it do?’ Alex Hadley said. ‘Talking about it isn’t going to make him any better is it?’

‘You shouldn’t bottle stuff like that up, Alex. It doesn’t do you any good. That’s what my mum always says to me.’

Hadley laughed bitterly.

‘Maybe your mum’s right,’ he murmured. ‘How is she?’

‘Frail,’ Jess said. ‘That’s the best word I can use to describe her. She seems to shrink a bit every time I see her. She keeps telling me she’s fine but …’

‘Maybe she is.’

‘She misses my dad, I know that.’

‘How long were they married?’

‘Fifty years.’

‘No wonder she misses him.’

‘And she’s struggling with money too. She doesn’t say it outright but I can tell. She’s always going on about how expensive things are and talking about her bills. My dad’s pension isn’t much and what she gets barely covers her expenses every month. I just wish I could do something to help her.’

‘Like what?’

‘Pay her bills or something. Give her some money when I go round to see her. I don’t know.’

Jess exhaled almost painfully.

‘It’s not your place to do that, Jess,’ Hadley told her.

‘I know that but kids are supposed to help their parents, aren’t they?’ she protested. ‘They gave me everything when I was growing up, Alex. I wanted for nothing and now I feel that I’m letting my mum down.’

‘I know what you mean but you’re not.’

‘Well I think I am.’

‘It isn’t your fault, Jess,’ Hadley said, flatly. ‘Stop blaming yourself.’

‘That’s a bit pot and kettle isn’t it? You’re blaming yourself for the state your dad’s in.’

Hadley shrugged.

‘So, do you want to talk about your dad?’ Jess went on.

‘No,’ he sighed. ‘A trouble shared is a trouble halved and all that bullshit. Is that what you mean?’

Jess regarded him evenly.

‘I’m just saying, if you wanted someone to talk to you could have talked to me,’ she said, finally.

Hadley glanced down at his half empty coffee cup then took a sip of the contents.

‘What fucking use is talking?’ he muttered. ‘If I tell you my Dad’s dying is it going to make him better? No.’

They sat in silence for a moment then Hadley spoke again.

‘And what about you, Jess?’ he said, softly. ‘When you’ve got problems who do you talk to? Who do you unburden your soul to?’

She wasn’t slow to catch the edge to his voice and she held his gaze unblinkingly.

‘I was trying to help, Alex,’ she said.

‘If you can’t help yourself then no one can help you.’

‘Who said that, Oscar Wilde?’

‘Amy Winehouse I think.’ He smiled.

‘And look at her,’ Jess grinned.

Hadley nodded.

‘Listen Jess, I appreciate your concern,’ he said. ‘But there’s nothing you can do. There’s nothing anyone can do.’ He sighed. ‘No one gives a fuck.

‘Nobody in that hospital cares about my dad. He’s just another statistic to them.

‘Another bed they want empty so they can put some other poor sod in it.’

Jess was about to say something when Hadley pressed on as if anxious to change the subject.

‘So, come on, tell me, what do you need my help for?’ he wanted to know.

‘I have to get back inside the Crystal Tower and have a look around,’ she informed him. ‘I told you that.’

‘And what the fuck are you looking for, Jess? Still trying to find a story that isn’t there?’

‘There is a story and you know it.’

‘Then what is it? If it’s such a big deal why aren’t there other journos all over it?’

‘People have died, Alex, too many people. There’s a reason and I think that reason is inside the Crystal Tower. That’s why I have to get back inside and see what I can find.’

‘That’s not going to be easy. And after your little run in with that security guard last time they’re going to be looking for you. They probably got you on close circuit TV and Christ knows what else.’

‘That’s why I need your help.’

Hadley raised his eyebrows and sat forward slightly.

‘Go on then,’ he said, smiling. ‘I’m listening.’