Past Mortem (3 page)

FIVE

A
t the end of the second day of the inquiry Newson and Wilkie agreed to compare notes over a pizza.

‘You don’t have to get back?’ Newson enquired. ‘Aren’t you seeing Lance tonight?’

‘Lance is a dickhead,’ Sergeant Wilkie replied.

‘We all know that, but it hasn’t stopped you going home to him before.’

‘It’s just amazing that he thinks he can say the things he says to me and get away with it.’

‘It’s not at all amazing, for the simple reason that he
does
get away with it, because you let him.’

‘Not this time.’

‘So you’re finishing with him.’

‘If he carries on the way he’s going I will.’

‘So you’re not finishing with him.’

Newson and Wilkie had had this conversation or something very like it on numerous occasions and Newson could never work out how such a clever and apparently together girl as Natasha could be incapable of finishing with a man who was so obviously a waste of her time. Lance had been a shadow on Detective Sergeant Wilkie ever since Newson had known her, a boyfriend whose sole contribution to her life appeared to be to eat her food, spend her money and put her down.

Except, of course, Newson knew that Lance did far more for Natasha than that. He excited her. He thrilled her. He no doubt made love to her in a way that delighted her and left her gasping for more. To Newson it was a given that Lance was born to be sexually appealing to women in exactly the same way that he himself was not. Newson had met Lance once or twice and his charm had been clear. His mischievous smile and cocky manner were obviously what Natasha wanted. What girl wouldn’t? He was tough and handsome. He made Natasha laugh and carried himself with a devil-may-care, don’t-give-a-fuck swagger. In fact, the things that made Lance such a bad thing in Natasha’s life — his arrogance and fecklessness — were exactly the things that Natasha liked and that kept her close to him. Newson often wondered what malign stars had been tugging at the firmament when nature had decreed that a man like Natasha’s Lance would get a girl like Natasha while a man like himself never would. He knew that he could wait until the end of time and he would never see Detective Sergeant Wilkie naked. He would spend the rest of his life scavenging for the tiniest glimpse of some small part of her, while Lance, Lance who only made her sad, could glory in every inch of her almost any time he wanted. This thought truly and deeply depressed Newson.

It was his own fault, of course. When first he had realized that he fancied Detective Sergeant Wilkie he should have brought down the barriers. Experience had taught him that flames burn hotter when you fan them. He knew that he’d had a choice and that he’d made the wrong one. He hadn’t been obliged to seek out Natasha’s company. He could have prevented himself from looking forward to her entering the office in the morning, wondering what she would be wearing, hoping that it would be a skirt. He should have affected disapproval of her chatty, bubbly personality and her girlish penchant for gossip instead of exalting and basking in it. He shouldn’t have shared jokes, sneaked glances at her legs when she crossed and uncrossed them, and he certainly should not have discussed her dreadful boyfriend with her, wallowing in the false and sterile intimacy that such conversations afforded him. He was the architect of his own obsession, but it was too late to do anything about it. He loved Natasha and the pain would simply have to be endured.

‘So, d’you still think our bloke’s a serial perv, then?’ said Natasha now, oblivious to Newson’s torment.

Newson hauled his mind back to the job in hand. ‘I have absolutely no idea who or what our killer is. Let’s look at what we know, shall we?’

‘Right,’ Natasha agreed. ‘For me the most salient fact of all is that Bishop let his killer into the house and drank with him. Which tells us that he knew him.’

‘Or at least was expecting him.’

‘We know that Bishop had a million enemies. Almost everyone he knew thought he deserved to die. The local police have given us the names of any number of colleagues and associates who could potentially profit from Bishop’s death. I don’t see any need to drop some shadowy internet pervert into the mix.

‘Bishop has gone through his life being hated,’ said Newson. ‘He’s been surrounded by enemies since he first drew breath. Nothing remotely like this has happened to him before.’

‘You could say that about any killing. Nobody dies more than once.’

‘The killer came prepared with his little skewer and his snake venom. How could he have known that he’d be invited in? If he was someone with a motive to kill Bishop, then Bishop would have been aware of that. He wouldn’t have got into the house, let alone been served a drink. He certainly wouldn’t have got Bishop up to his bedroom. We know Bishop was a sadist and lots of sadists are masochists too. Let’s imagine that cruel, brutal Adam Bishop harbours secret desires. He wants to be punished, but he can’t possibly risk exposing his perversion in his own circle, so he advertises on the internet for a torturer. Bishop lets the man into the house, they have a drink, then he allows himself to be bound to the bed — ’

‘And invites this mystery man to repeatedly stick a skewer into his testicles, anus and eyes.’

It was at this point that the waitress appeared. She had clearly overheard Natasha’s last sentence and her welcoming smile turned into a look of nervous alarm.

‘It’s all right,’ Newson assured her. ‘We’re police officers.., discussing a case.’

The waitress looked at Newson in disbelief. He toyed momentarily with the idea of producing his warrant card but dismissed the thought. It was embarrassing enough to have a girl think he was lying about being in the police without compounding the situation by pathetically frying to prove to her that he was.

‘I’ll have a mushroom pizza,’ he said, and the waitress took their meal order.

‘What about the maid?’ Natasha continued after the girl had gone. ‘What about the wife? One was in the house and the other was bound to return. If Bishop had a dirty secret he’s not going to indulge it while they’re around.’

‘Who knows? Maybe arranging to have his wife brutalized is part of the fun. Maybe he wanted her to hear his screams.’

‘To hear him die?’

‘He didn’t know he was going to die. That would’ve been part of the other fellow’s plan. Or else it simply all went too far.’

‘Honestly, Ed, this is just silly. It’s like you’re deliberately trying to come up with the least likely theory.’

‘Look, of course there’s a good chance Bishop was the victim of some terrible feud. And you’ll no doubt see to it that everyone he ever knew is checked out until you come up with a psychopathic business rival with a blood-stained skewer buried in his back garden. But in the meantime you can’t deny that this is a very strange case. The killing was so
specific
. I believe that if Adam Bishop hadn’t died in the manner in which he did, the killer would have deemed his murder a failure and gone away unsatisfied. That suggests to me that this murder is as much about the killer as it is about Bishop. Something made him kill the way he did, and what worries me is it may drive him to do so again.’

The food arrived and as it did so Natasha’s phone rang. Having glanced at the display to see who was calling, she excused herself and took the phone outside. When Natasha returned her face bore a defiant expression as if to say, ‘Yeah., do you have a problem?’ and Newson knew that, as usual, he would be dining alone.

‘You have to rush? Aren’t you going to eat your pizza?’

‘Lance is cooking.’

‘I thought you’d had a row.’

‘He wants to make up. He’s reaching out to me.’

‘What’s he cooking?’

‘Steak.’

‘That’s nice.

‘If I can get any. Do you think they’d have it at Seven-Eleven?’

‘So he’s reaching out to you to bring him home some steak?’

‘We’re a couple,’ Natasha responded angrily. ‘We can do a bit of shopping for each other if we like. It’s not a sign of weakness, you know.’

Newson borrowed an
Evening Standard
from the cash desk and read it while eating both pizzas and drinking a bottle of Chianti. The paper carried a report on the Willesden murder. Adam Bishop had been a major player in North London Tarmac and his killing was deemed news. It was a short article, tucked away on page seventeen. The horrific details had not yet found their way into the hands of journalists, so Newson didn’t need to fear a copycat killing.

He finished his meal and, slightly drunk, asked the waitress for the bill. When it came he placed a credit card on the saucer and in so doing allowed the girl a glimpse of the police credentials displayed inside his wallet. When the transaction was completed and feeling by now like a complete idiot, Newson absentmindedly picked up the copy of the
Standard
he had been reading and headed for the door.

‘That’s our paper,’ the girl said, pausing before adding, ‘
Officer
.’

SIX

N
ewson lived in a small terraced house between West Hampstead and the Kilburn High Road. He had once shared it with Shirley, his ex-partner, but had bought her out after what they always called ‘the divorce’, although they had never actually been married. Shirley and Newson had split up when Shirley’s infidelities had become too common and indiscreet even for Newson to miss. She claimed afterwards that seeing as how he was such a successful detective and all, she had presumed he knew and didn’t mind. Newson had not known and he did mind.

They had met as students studying law at university. Their relationship had always been more mental than physical. Shirley was smart, but Newson was both funny and smart and she found this attractive. She used to tell people that when it came to brains, size really
did
matter, and that her boyfriend had a whopper. After a time Newson came to hate it when Shirley said this, because he felt that it implied that he had a small dick. He used to wish that Shirley would add ‘and although he’s short his dick’s actually quite a decent size too,’ but she never did.

During the death throws of the relationship Shirley informed Newson that she had faked every orgasm she had ever had with him. She explained that she had developed the deception early on in order to take the pressure off her in the hope that it would lead her to relax and thus encourage the real thing. Unfortunately, Shirley felt obliged to report, it never had. Interestingly, she told him, she had not experienced the same problem with any other lover. He told her that he was thrilled for her.

Now Newson lived alone.

On arriving home after his solitary supper he took a can of Guinness from the pantry and went into his study. Newson kept his beer in a cupboard because of his belief that only lager should be served chilled. It was a point he had attempted to make to the bar staff at the Scotland Yard club, thus provoking more derision from his colleagues, who to a man believed that all beer should be served near freezing regardless of whether this rendered it tasteless. He sat in the darkness of his study for some time, thinking about skewers and snake venom and Detective Sergeant Wilkie’s breasts.

After a while, at the point at which Sergeant Wilkie’s breasts had forced all other thoughts from his mind, he decided to do something he’d been thinking about for months. He woke up his computer and dialled up the website Friends Reunited.com.

Until now he’d resisted the temptation. Something had always stopped him, but that something wasn’t stopping him now. Later he would reflect on this and wonder what it had been that led him to finally surrender to the urge to visit that strange virtual world where fantasy could be made real as long as you stayed online and did not venture far from your computer. Perhaps it was just a simple twist of fate, but for a man with a first in law who had also been top of his year at Hendon Police Training College (in everything except fight training and all sport) that was no answer at all. The truth, which Newson hated to acknowledge, was that his infatuation with Detective Sergeant Wilkie had grown painful and obstructive. Perhaps, somewhere in cyberspace, he could displace it.

The Friends Reunited page was on his screen. Newson had already pressed the Union Jack and arrived at the British version, and now he had only to log on to join the happy throng of virtual teenagers. ‘Christine Copperfield?’ he whispered into the shadowy, screen-lit room, the booze giving voice to his secret hopes.

‘Are you out there, Christine?…Hanging on the wind, crackling amongst the ions, walking in cyberspace? Dancing? Are you, Christine Copperfield?’

Or David, as the class wags had christened her on that memorable day when she had first walked boldly into Newson’s form room halfway through their second year. Did she still wear a ra-ra skirt? He typed in the details of his school and his years of attendance. Such important years to him and to those with whom he’d lived them. The years when he was young. 1981 to 1988.

That skirt. That pure white ra-ra skirt. He could see it still, with its shiny red sash tied low at the waist, knotted across her hips, ‘spread tight across her buttocks. Waists were low that season. How enchantingly she’d worn it, and with such natural grace. White and bright, scarlet for Christmas at the school disco in the deep midwinter, long, long ago.

Did she still wear pink pixie boots?

Probably not, Newson’s logical mind told him, but he was quite sure that her legs would still be exquisite. They simply couldn’t not be. It would take more than twenty years to mess with a pair of legs with the genetic advantages that Christine Copperfield’s had enjoyed. Slim to the point of skinny, but to the point of skinny looks good at fourteen, and Christine’s had looked so very, very good. December 1984. It simply did not get any better than that. Or, at least, in Detective Inspector Newson’s case it hadn’t.

Newson entered his name, credit card details and school information. Now he had only to push the search button to see if she was there. But instead, he hesitated, fearful of disappointment, and allowed the screen to grow dim, stretching out the thrill of expectation for as long as he could. And so, as his details and dates stared back at him, challenging him to take the plunge, he closed his eyes and sought company in the ghosts of Christmas past.

In his mind’s eye he could see his school once more, swathed in winter mists, the red brick cold, dark and unforgiving despite the coloured lights. He could see the sports field hard with frost, the prefabricated additional classrooms twinkling beneath the icy dust of a winter’s night…And he could see teenagers, nearly a hundred and fifty of them, flocking to the Christmas disco, which was being held in the main hall, the hail which also doubled as a gym and which for one night only had been transformed into the home of dreams.

For the first time in Spewsome Newson’s school experience the hall looked wonderful. The tinsel-laden tree, the trestle table heavy with plates of sausage rolls and bowls brimming with prawn-cocktail crisps, KP Discos and Monster Munch. There were rumours that somebody had spiked the bowl of non-alcoholic punch with vodka. In retrospect Newson was quite certain that this had not been the case, but at the time everyone believed it and it had lent a certain frisson to the sticky mix of fruit juice, Tizer, lemonade and chopped apple which they all guzzled. This was in the days before the Ecstasy revolution, ever since which, according to the press, every child has spent their entire school days permanently high. Certainly, one or two of the wilder spirits had managed a swig of booze or a puff of dope before entering the party, but in the main that night Newson and his classmates were straight and sober. Youth and Christmas were all the stimulants they needed.

Newson had arrived at the party with Helen Smart, a girl from one of the other forms in his year with whom he’d recently become friends. Helen was most certainly not one of the cool girls, the gang of which Christine Copperfield was the epicentre. Helen was one of the misfits, the post-punk goths whom the boys routinely accused of being lesbians. These girls wore baggy jumpers, steadfastly refusing to reveal the contours of their bodies, and knee-length skirts, and peered at the world from between split curtains of greasy hair. Newson had always got on better with this type of girl, and Helen was the prime example. She only listened to indie music, had recently read
The Outsider
by Camus, and hated Mrs Thatcher. Like Newson, she carried a certain status within her class for being a proper misfit. She and he were the radicals, being the only kids in the year to support the miners’ strike. Helen had even been sent home on one occasion for refusing to remove the Coal Not Dole sticker from her jumper. Newson and Helen had begun to talk to each other during school Miners’ Support Group meetings. They were the only fourth-year members and they had quickly become fervent co-conspirators against the world. They believed themselves to have a clear and uncorrupted overview of how crap everything was, unlike the idiots and fashion junkies who thought themselves cool. On the night of the Christmas disco Helen had surprised Newson by wearing a mini-skirt and some tinsel in her hair. The short skirt went well with her striped pink and black tights and monkey boots.

They entered the hall, walking past the forbidding figure of Mr ‘Bastard’ Bathurst, the much-loathed headmaster. Though he’d died in 1997, right now in Newson’s wine-and-beer-soaked mind he was alive and well with a face like death, scowling grimly as he always did no matter what the occasion. ‘Aha. Marx and Engels,’ he said, and the lifeless smile indicated that Mr Bathurst was in humorous mode. ‘Isn’t a Christmas party against your principles, Helen? I thought the only party you approved of was the Communist Party.’

‘I’m not a Communist, I’m a Socialist Worker, sir,’ Helen replied, ‘and in line with our policy of entryism I’m going to corrupt this evening from within.’

Beyond Bastard Bathurst, bathed in a golden festive glow, was Mrs Curtis. Curvy Curtis of cleavage fame!

How all the boys had loved her kind smile, blond tresses and enormous tits. Newson could see her now as she had been on that special night, perched against the record table, long legs stretched out before her. No needle was ever jogged by a shapelier bottom than Mrs Curtis’s.

Helen took one look at Mrs Curtis and growled that as far as Mrs Curtis was concerned feminism might just as well have not happened.

‘Yeah, that dress is really sexist,’ Newson agreed, taking another long look just to be sure.. Helen had stalked off to get some punch.

The computer screen seemed to grow ever dimmer with inactivity, but still Newson did not take the plunge. He was drunk and in no hurry to tempt the present, content to linger for a little longer in the safety of the past. To listen once again as the school DJ, an arse called Dewhurst from the lower sixth whose entire personality was based on the fact that he owned a double record deck, cranked up ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ for the fifth time.

How happy Newson had been. How happy they’d all been, those long-since-grown-up boys and girls filled, at fourteen, with the endless optimism of youth.

Boy George, Simon Le Bon, Bananarama and all the stars of ‘84 sang plaintively about how hellish Christmas must be in an African famine zone. Boy George must have been happy too. He was the biggest pop star on the planet. Little did he know that his two lines on the Band Aid single would be the last time he’d ever see the Number One spot.

Boy George’s were not the only dreams that would fade with the coming years. Many of the youngsters who smiled so broadly at that long-since-vanished Christmas party were destined to live lives filled with hurt and disappointment. Nobody could tell that night who would win and who would lose in life, but the years would reveal their secrets soon enough — sooner than any of those happy youngsters could ever have imagined. They thought they’d be young for ever but time was on the starting blocks, the long, lazy, sun-drenched childhood stroll from the pavilion was nearly over and soon the sprint that was adulthood would begin.

The dance floor was slowly filling. One or two of the boys were even shaking leg, having prised themselves from the walls to which they had appeared to be glued. Many of the girls had been dancing from the beginning; of course, the golden ones, the confident ones. Christine Copperfield was such a girl. The team leader.

In
that
skirt. That white ra-ra skirt with the crimson Christmas sash. And those legs. Christine Copperfield played tennis for the school. She also played hockey and netball and had won a disco-dancing competition at the local borough hall. In America she would have been named Homecoming Queen and the Girl Most Likely. She had sporty legs. Athletic. Balletic. Orgasmic. As a pubescent boy Newson had gone to sleep dreaming of those legs on so many nights. Legs that were a quantum leap out of his league. Legs that were most emphatically not for the likes of him.

Until the night of the Christmas disco in 1984.

On that night everything changed. All the rules were broken. The night the nerd got lucky. The night the princess stepped daintily and briefly from her pedestal and bestowed her favours on a member of the grubby underclass.

It had taken Michael Jackson to fill the floor. That, no doubt, and the effect of the additives in the Monster Munch, not yet known to the world as E numbers. DJ Dewhurst had put
Thriller
on to his left-hand side, dropping the needle with a flourish which was almost cool, and suddenly the party was on fire.

‘Rock on, Tommy!’ the young people shouted in the argot of the time as they spilled on to the floor. Everybody whooped, squeaked ‘Ooh!’, everybody tried to moonwalk and failed. The ones who were the worst at it were those who thought they could do it. Kieran Beattie, the class tub in an age when class tubs were rarer and hence painfully obvious targets, was actually wearing a single glittering glove. An eleven-stone, white, freckly, English Michael Jackson.

Michael Jackson was a hero then. Time would prove itself as cruel to the exalted as to the lowly.

Christine Copperfield was dancing with her girlfriends because that very afternoon she’d split up with her boyfriend, a lad called Paul from the year above. Paul and Christine were the golden couple of their years and their separation was the talk of the party. Paul was big, hard and handsome, the leader of his own little pack. He was sixteen and had a moped; what’s more, he’d had the guts to remove the L-plate and carry a passenger as if he were already seventeen and had passed his test. He and Christine looked so cool as they swept up to school, he with that firm chin which clearly required regular shaving, her with those fabulous legs clamped round his muscular frame, her golden hair blowing from the edges of her helmet.