Past Mortem (37 page)

It’s fucked. So the kid says nothing, his parents think he’s been burning himself and are trying to make him see a psychiatrist, but still he won’t tell. I’m the only person who knows the truth, but I’m not supposed to intervene directly, it’s policy. Fuck! How’s that, eh? I know it’s going on, it’s probably happening now, as I write this email, and I’m not supposed to do anything about it. I’m supposed to just sit here. And that’s what I’m doing, sitting here thinking about how my life was ruined by bullying and that somehow I have to save this boy. Oh, fuck it. What do you care, Ed? Cops, eh? Bullies yourselves. Like our mutual mate Roger Jameson. Mind you, at least he recognizes his problem. At least he knows who he is. Do you, Ed? Do you know who you are? Are you the guy I saw sitting on his kitchen floor with a dick like a truncheon and his-fist inside me? Did you recognize that guy when he appeared, Ed? When you met him for the first time? That was you. He’s inside you, as much a part of you as your preferred version of yourself. The decent, amiable, steady copper. I preferred the wild guy. You should let him out again some time. I’m cold now, covered in goose pimples. All over. Except in my lap, the computer’s warm on my skin. Hot, in fact. But the rest of me’s cold. My nipples are fat and hard, Ed, there are rings of goose pimples around them. They took the stitch out by the way. It’s as good as new, thanks for asking. You’d hardly know it had your nail scissors in it. My teeth are starting to chatter. I should have towelled myself properly after my bath, shouldn’t I? But I wanted to write to you while I was still warm and wet. I can’t afford heating, you see. There’s an electric heater in the sitting room where Karl is, but here in my bedroom it’s cold. It’s very, very cold. My mind’s wandering. I keep thinking about that kid. Perhaps he’s burning now.

Get Bad Ed to call me some time. Bye bye.

Newson turned off his computer. He couldn’t understand how this girl, this person he’d known in happier days, as a complex but lovely person, had travelled so far from her centre. How had she got to be so scary?

Time, of course. That was all it took. Time.

Time had not been kind to Helen Smart. He wondered whether in the long run, in the very long run, time was ever kind to anyone.

That evening Newson sat alone and got quietly drunk, and as consciousness began to slip away he was forced to resist a sudden urge to call Natasha and offer to kill Lance for her.

He fell asleep in front of a late-night movie. When he awoke it was early morning. He’d slept all night on the sofa and felt like shit. The first local news bulletin of the day was on the television, and Tiffany Mellors’ funeral, which was to take place that afternoon, was being heavily trailed.

‘The family have requested a quiet funeral,’ the reporter was saying, ‘but police are expecting a large turnout from the local community.’

Well, they would do, Newson reflected, now that the time and location had been broadcast on television news.

‘There is a great deal of heartache here, and also anger,’ the reporter continued. ‘Anger and confusion. How could this happen? People want answers and so far no one is able to supply them. It is expected that trained counsellors will be on hand to help those who find the scale of this tragedy all too much.’

Newson turned off the television. Answers? They didn’t even know the questions. They thought that an angel had killed herself. Newson, however, knew that a bully had been murdered. What was more, he knew that unless his luck changed soon, more bullies would die. Bullies like Neil Bradshaw, who had clearly been a bad man, and like Christine Copperfield, who had been merely not entirely good.

But Newson knew that he had to do more than rely on his luck changing. He simply had to. Despite what the psychopath he was chasing might think, none of the victims had deserved to be murdered.
Nobody
deserved to be murdered. Newson was firmly against capital punishment. He’d seen far too many miscarriages of justice to think anything else. Unfortunately, his adversary was not, and his adversary definitely had the upper hand.

Newson drank some coffee and took a shower, during which he resolved to join the insensitive throng who would surely deny the Mellors family’s request for privacy and attend Tiffany’s funeral that afternoon. Perhaps the killer might turn up? Newson’s heart sank to realize that his investigation, which in some ways had begun to progress, was now so deeply mired that he had no better plan for the day than that.

He’d been on to something with Friends Reunited. All of his murders were connected by the site, until Tiffany’s. Tiffany’s class would not feel the tug of nostalgia for at least a decade. Most of their school memories had not even happened yet and in Tiffany’s case never would. This time the killer had decided on his victim by another means.

The answer when it came to him struck Newson as being so obvious that he cursed himself for not having worked it out the moment he had seen the cuts on the arms of Tanya Waddingham, the girl whose life had been immeasurably improved by Tiffany Mellors’ death. She was there at the funeral with Tiffany’s entire class, red-eyed with the rest of them, and overcome by the solemnity of the occasion. Only Newson knew that Tanya’s tears were not what they seemed.

But it was not Tanya at whom Newson found himself staring as he stood in the crowded churchyard, behind the police cordon, scanning the faces in the crowd.

It was Henry Chambers. Helen’s unwanted admirer. Her fellow worker at the offices of Kidcall. Kidcall: help online for the victims of bullying. Online. Just like Friends Reunited.

The crowd stirred. The funeral cortège was arriving at the front of the church. Every gawper gaped as Tiffany’s family followed the coffin through the old iron gates. Newson had never seen a pink coffin before.

Once more he scanned the crowd, standing on tiptoe and shuffling about in order to do so.

‘Oi,’ said a voice behind him. ‘We all want to see, mate.’

But Newson ignored the voice. Nobody in the crowd wanted to see as much as he did. Or had better reason. The faces around him were grim. Some were weeping, others were angry. But they were all grim — except one.

Henry Chambers was smiling.

He wasn’t grinning. Nor was he gloating. In fact, his smile didn’t seem to be a happy one at all. There was no joy in it, but it was a smile nonetheless, a small, determined smile that seemed to contain within it a hint of satisfaction.

‘So you came for Tanya?’ Newson said, approaching Chambers from behind as the black Daimlers drove away and the crowd began to disperse.

Chambers turned round in alarm.

‘I’m Detective Inspector Newson. We met at your office.’

‘Yes, I remember.’

‘I said that you came here for Tanya Waddingham.’

‘Yes, I heard you.’

‘Tiffany Mellors was bullying her.’

‘Yes, she was.’

The churchyard was almost empty now, and the two men stood facing each other amongst the gravestones.

‘And Tanya Waddingham appealed to Kidcall.’

‘I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to — ’

‘Don’t be so bloody stupid, Mr Chambers. Of course she did. You’re here at Tiffany’s funeral, for God’s sake. Why did you come?’

‘Because Tanya was a client. Her case had moved me…And now it’s over with.’

‘Yes, it’s certainly over with.’

There was silence for a moment.

‘Why did you come here, Henry?’ Newson asked. ‘I don’t really know. Not to mourn, certainly. I suppose I…it just all seems very strange, that’s all.’

‘Yes, it does, doesn’t it?’

‘That girl killing herself.’

‘You don’t believe she did kill herself, do you, Henry?’

‘What? Of course she killed herself, there was a note. It’s in the papers — ’

‘Did Helen know about this case, Henry?’

Chambers looked at the ground. There was a long pause before he answered. ‘She knows about all the cases. We’re a small office.’:

‘Was she upset about Tanya’s distress, like you were?’

‘Of course she was. How could she not be? Helen’s a very caring soul, she feels the pain of our clients very deeply…Too deeply, I think. I try to help her but she doesn’t seem to want it.’

‘Whose client was Tanya? Yours or Helen’s?’

‘As I say, we share them, but — ’

‘Whose client was she?’

‘Helen’s.’

‘You say you try to help Helen with her pain, Henry. But Helen doesn’t want your help. Do you find other ways of helping her?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Henry Chambers scurried away through the church gate. Henry Chambers, in love with Helen Smart, whose personal experience of bullying had given her such pain, who felt the pain of the victims she dealt with at Kidcall as keenly as she felt her own.

He’d do anything for me, you know. That man would do absolutely anything to impress me
. That was what Helen had written in her last email and now here was the very same man attending the funeral of a girl murdered for being a bully.

Newson called Natasha and instructed her to get a warrant to impound Henry Chambers’ computer. ‘You’re looking for any mention of Friends Reunited. Also check him out for the date Tiffany Mellors was murdered. See if he has an alibi.’

‘You think it’s the bloke from Kidcall?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

As Newson made his way back to his car he wondered. Henry Chambers was unprepossessing. His face could pass unnoticed and be instantly forgotten. Could that face have got him close to Bishop? To Porter? Was it possible that so unthreatening a demeanour could effectively mask the most terrifying of threats? With each step he took, Newson felt that he was getting closer and yet equally it seemed to him as if his quarry was moving away.

He feared that the killing was not over yet.

When Newson arrived home there were two messages on his answer phone. One was from Helen Smart.

‘
What the fuck’s going on, Ed? Some coppers just turned up and took away Henry Chambers’ computer. Call me
.’

The other was from Roger Jameson.

‘
Did you check out the news yet, Ed? Things moving a little fast for you, huh?
’

Newson turned on the television to Sky News and had only moments to wait before the quarter-hourly headlines revealed what Jameson was referring to.

The news led with yet another adolescent tragedy. A boy had been deliberately burnt to death.

A big boy. A tough boy. On this occasion there was no suggestion that an angel had been returned to heaven. Trevor Wilmot was a known local thug, a major player in the inter-school gang wars that were a feature of the south London comprehensive which he sporadically attended. A known bully, it seemed that he had fallen victim to others of his kind, and in the most brutal manner possible.

Some time that afternoon a person or persons unknown had spirited Wilmot from the streets of Brixton as he made his way home from school. They had taken him to a lock-up garage and then set him on fire.

Newson sat watching the television, trying to make sense of the suspicions spinning around in his head. What had Helen written to him only twenty-four hours before?

Some little shit has been burning my client with cigarette ends…It’s been going on for months now and suddenly it’s started getting worse. The boy’s having his hand held in the Bunsen burners during science lessons…flicking lighted matches into his hair…

Newson turned on his computer and scanned the email that Helen had sent.

I’m the only person who knows the truth…Somehow I have to save this boy.

The telephone rang. It was Roger Jameson.

‘So you’re back, then,’ Jameson said in his lazy drawl. ‘Did you see the news? Your guy is picking up the pace, huh? Better get him quick, my friend, before he knocks off half the kids in London.’

‘If you’re talking about the boy burnt in Brixton, Roger, why would you think that his death is connected with my investigation?’

‘Ed, come on! You gotta be thinking what I’m thinking here. It’s just too big a coincidence. You ain’t going to tell me that you’re not asking yourself if the kid that our old pal Helen’s so upset about ain’t connected with the bully that just got burnt and is all over the news.’

‘Helen wrote to you about that?’

‘Nah, not this time. Hey, I should be so lucky to get e’s like she sends.
Hot babe
, Ed! Damp skin, one finger on the keys, one in the bush, goose pimples round her fat, hard, cold nipples.
Nice prose
. Did you whack yourself off, Ed? Course you did. Man, I thought about it and I’m gay.’

Suddenly the scales fell from Newson’s eyes. How could he have been so stupid? ‘Have you been reading my emails?’