The Hollow Man (12 page)

“What a surprise,” the commander said, with quiet fury.

“Sir.”

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“I was getting a coffee.”

He stared at Belsey. Then he walked away, towards the crime scene.

“You know him?” Banks said.

“We’re close.”

“Get yourself sorted. Go in. We’ll pass any instructions through your station.”

20

I
t was a five-minute walk from the crime scene to Hampstead police station. Belsey chose to go up Pond Street, past the hospital, to avoid the bottleneck of emergency vehicles on South End Road. At the station he showered, borrowed a clean shirt and went to the meeting room. The usual morning prayers—the 8:30 a.m., pre-shift meeting—had been converted to a murder briefing. Gower gave a breakdown of what they knew, then read a list of officers to go to the incident room and a list of those to remain on Rosslyn Hill assisting from there. Belsey wasn’t assigned to either.

“Look,” he said to Belsey, when the other men and women had gone, “I’m still waiting to hear from the IPCC, but I think it’s best if we keep you on restricted duties. Away from Northwood. Someone’s got to hold the fort . . .”

Belsey returned to the CID office and sat at his desk. He hadn’t been expecting this. He leaned back in his chair with his eyes shut listening to the sirens on Rosslyn Hill and felt like he used to, aged eleven or twelve, hearing his father and his father’s friends drunk downstairs. Shut out of the party. He had spent his life as a police officer trying to find out what people got up to downstairs, knocking on the doors of men and women’s individual nights and peering in. He didn’t like to be shut out of a murder investigation. Not when his shoes still had the victim’s blood on them. Devereux’s shoes.

His hope had been to flee the country this evening. He knew, without having to think, that his plans were on hold for now. It would look awful. And he couldn’t bring himself to turn his back on a girl who had died in front of him. Not for the moment. Guilt was not just a matter of what you had done, but what you had chosen to run from—even if it was not your crime to start with. He could not run while her dying face was still fresh in his mind.

And he had recognised her.

The canteen was empty. Belsey turned the TV on. Sky News showed shots of the white tent; men and women beside the police tape being interviewed and their breath steaming. The ticker reported
SHOCK AND CONFUSION OVER SHOOTINGS IN AFFLUENT LONDON SUBURB
. There were no photos of the girl yet.

He thought of patterns: women get killed by the men who love them. Places of work get fired up by former employees. Walk into a coffee shop with five people inside and one of them will owe someone money, another will have slept with someone’s wife. None of these clicked. Belsey moved through the events as his mind had preserved them, using the visualisation techniques he used with witnesses. He started with the morning he had been enjoying, the sunlight, the shape of branches against the sky. He moved in on the details: frost in the centre of each paving slab; a horn blaring somewhere on Fleet Road. Then he let the girl appear. And he looked harder than he did then. He saw the individual strands of her dark brown hair, the black quilt of the handbag, a chipped nail on the cigarette hand. The right hand. The girl looked back at him, her gaze passing back through him, and the more he thought, the more she stared, still staring, from wherever she was now.

He had seen her before today. He had seen her recently. When had he been into a school, or spoken to teenagers?

Tony Cutter arrived at the station, shaking and delusional, confessing to the crime. Belsey offered to speak to him.

“I had my suspicions, Tony.”

“I’m sorry, Nick. There’s blood on my hands.”

“Things happen. Let’s move on. Where are you sleeping these days?”

“Alice Ward.” The psychiatric ward of the Royal Free. It saw a lot of Tony.

“Looks like you’ve been on the street quite recently,” Belsey said.

“I was. Now they’ve given me a bed in Alice.”

“Cheaper than a hostel.”

“Cheaper than a hostel!” He laughed. “I’m not going in a hostel.”

Belsey walked him back to the Royal Free. They attracted glances on Rosslyn Hill. With Pond Street taped off, the traffic had solidified, as if it was all part of a spreading rigor mortis.

“Can I ask you something?” Belsey said, as they approached the hospital.

“I’m in trouble, aren’t I, Nick?”

“Did you ever work?”

“Work?”

“Did you ever have a job?”

“I was a handyman. And then I washed the buses, when I was married.”

“You were married?”

“Seventeen years, Nick.”

The police tape stopped short of the Accident and Emergency Department, allowing a narrow channel for ambulances. There was a thin crowd beside the hospital itself: nurses, visitors, patients on drips. All watched the forensics team. There was nothing to see and it was hypnotic.

“I’ll be all right from here,” Tony said.

“OK. I’m hoping to go on holiday soon,” Belsey said. “So you might not see me around. If you don’t, then take care of yourself. Don’t cause trouble.”

“Off on holiday!” Tony grinned.

“Bye, Tony.” Belsey walked back to the police station and called Dispatch. “Where’s the incident room?”

“St. John’s. Downshire Hill.” They’d taken over the nearest church, which was common procedure for the initial days of a Major Incident Inquiry. The investigation was at speed, and there was no way Hampstead police station could accommodate it. The station gave him a number to call. He called.

“Any ID on the girl yet?”

“Jessica Holden, eighteen years. Hospital have just pronounced it DOA.”

The name wasn’t one he knew. This only made his feeling of recognition more puzzling.

“Anything on her?”

“Nothing.”

“When’s the press conference?”

“There’s one in the community centre at ten. They’re already starting to report on it and Northwood wants to get the facts straight.”

“Northwood?”

“He wants to get a statement out fast.”

Belsey sat back and remembered the panic, people taking cover, the girl’s last gaze upon him. He ran Jessica Holden through the Police National Computer: nothing. Youth Records: nothing. He called Customs.

“It’s Chief Superintendent Northwood’s office here,” he said. “Yes, I expect you’ve heard . . . Yes, we’ve got a name for the victim now and I want to run a check.”

According to Customs, Jessica Holden had a new passport ordered five days ago, fast track.

“Forty-eight-hour fast track?”

“That’s right. Unused so far, sir,” the Customs officer said.

“How much did that cost her?”

“Two hundred.”

“When was she last out of the country?”

“Three years ago.”

“Suddenly she’s in a rush to go on holiday.”

“Looks that way, sir.”

Belsey walked past the hospital, down towards the crime scene. News vans with satellite dishes crowded the patisseries. He felt a story breaking, like a wave crashing down on all their heads. If it bleeds it leads. But where?

Belsey’s stomach cramped. He hadn’t had a proper meal since the Wetherspoons.

A
t 10 a.m. the first reporters filed into Hampstead Community Centre. They’d halted the installation of a secondhand book sale and replaced it with cables, the first TV cameras and a chaos of orange plastic chairs. Northwood arrived five minutes late, sweating. He went to the front. Belsey stayed by the door, out of sight. It was crowded, yet quiet enough to hear the electronics whirring. For a moment he thought Charlotte might be there. He couldn’t see her. Northwood cleared his throat.

“I’m going to keep this short. There will be a more extensive briefing at midday. At seven forty-five this morning there was a firearms incident at the Starbucks on South End Green. One member of staff and one member of the public were hit. The member of the public was a young woman. She was pronounced dead at the Royal Free Hospital at eight-thirty this morning and I can confirm that this is now a murder investigation.”

Belsey sensed the quiet thrill pass through the room; a death, a story, a dead-girl story.

“I can’t give you any names until we’ve notified the families. The exact chain of events is unclear at the moment, but it appears that at least five shots were fired into the store from outside. Investigations are now concentrated on a group of individuals seen leaving the area on foot shortly after the incident, and we would call upon anyone who might have seen anything suspicious to come forward.” Belsey frowned. He wondered if he’d misheard but Northwood went on: “We would implore acquaintances of those responsible for this terrible act to come forward. Don’t be afraid to do the right thing. Someone out there knows why a young girl lost her life this morning. They can contact us in the strictest anonymity.”

He gave a Crimestoppers number, and a number for the incident room, and invited questions from the press.

“How many weapons were fired?”

“We’re waiting for confirmation.”

“Do you know the type of weapon used?”

“Not yet. Our ballistics experts are looking at that now.”

“Is the staff member male or female?”

“Male. I don’t have an age yet.”

“Do you have an age for the girl?”

“I won’t be disclosing any more details about the victim until I’ve spoken to her family.”

“Can you confirm a possible connection with the shooting in Chalk Farm last week?”

“I can’t confirm that, no. That is one of many avenues we are exploring. Obviously we are now going to concentrate all the resources at our disposal on solving this crime. You the press will play a vital role and I must ask you to be patient.” Northwood glanced at his watch and began unclipping his microphone. “I hope to be able to tell you more this evening.” He ignored the rest of the shouted questions.

Belsey walked out quickly to avoid the throng. Someone grabbed his arm.

“Nick.” Belsey looked into the pale eyes of Miranda Miller from
Five News
. He knew her from a Soho bar they both used to frequent, an establishment so desperate they thought a police officer lent the place some class. He was a bright-eyed constable then and she was a cub reporter for the
Camden New Journal
. “What the hell’s going on?” Miller said.

“I don’t know, but that was bullshit.”

“I owe you a drink.”

“How about owing me breakfast?”

They got a table at the back of the Coffee Cup cafe. Belsey ordered eggs and toast and a double espresso on her company card. Miller ordered orange juice. She launched straight into interview mode.

“Can you confirm it’s gang-related?”

“No. But it’s going to impact on property prices.”

“Come on, Nick. I heard the girl who got shot was eighteen.”

“That’s why I like you, Miranda. You tell me news.”

“And I’ve got a leak from the chief super himself that they’re searching for three teenagers.”

“He leaked that?”

“Straight to me. A robbery gone wrong.”

“It’s not a robbery.” Belsey sipped coffee and when the food arrived he set about it hungrily.

“It’s a robbery according to Northwood,” Miller said.

“Northwood doesn’t know how to work this sort of investigation. He’s in line for assistant commissioner and thinks this is going to be open and shut and get his face on TV.”

“And it’s not?”

“It’ll get him on TV. There’s nothing straightforward about it, as far as I can tell. The whole thing’s crazy. Have you heard anything else about the girl?”

“The victim? Nothing yet. Why are you so sure it wasn’t a robbery?”

“There was no attempt to take anything.”

“What information do you have on that?”

“I don’t have information, Miranda. I’ve got a hunch. It says you’re being fed desperation and guesswork. It says there were two buses parked at the stand in front of the coffee shop and no one in front of them with a gun. But I don’t have evidence and I haven’t been asked to find any. Do you want another juice?”

“I’ve got a live two-way in ten.” Miller flicked open a compact. She checked her face and teeth. “Do me a favour: pass the usual message to the parents. Put them in touch with me if there’s going to be any interviews or appeals.”

“What are you starting at these days?” Belsey said.

“Two grand.”

“For their grief?”

“For an interview. Everyone gets the grief. And a photograph of her would be wonderful.”

“And what do I see?”

Miller snapped the mirror closed. She fished a fifty-pound note from her suit jacket and placed it on the table with a business card, drank the juice down and wiped her mouth.

“Did you know, Starbucks have requested we don’t refer to it as the Starbucks shooting?” She grinned humourlessly. “No ‘Starbucks Killer’ or ‘Starbucks Victim.’ ”

“They’re quick. Didn’t you once say you’d speak to your producer about getting me a show?”

“I know a guy who does police-chase videos. I can talk to him.”

“It’ll be like that,” Belsey said, taking the money. “High speed: but thought, not cars. But all the violence, all the crashes.”

“Promise you’ll call me if you get a suspect. Even a wrong one.”

“OK.”

“A police source cast doubt on the gang-related leads. How does that sound?”

“Sounds like you’ve got yourself a story.”

“Give me a call soon, Nick. You’re making me curious.”

E
mergency Incident Room: St. John’s Church, Downshire Hill.

The street was one of Hampstead’s most charismatic, with overgrown gardens behind high brick walls. Its sash windows now reflected back a stream of homicide detectives heading to the whitewashed church at its centre.

The temporary incident room had overwhelmed St. John’s. Belsey saw officers from Serious and Organised filing in, which meant someone somewhere had twigged it might be a hit. There were also reps from the specialist gang units, press officers, heads of forensic departments. He stepped in, showing his badge. The usually airy, classical-style church was a trading floor of investigation. One large whiteboard at the front carried lists of the officers visiting every Starbucks in the area, questioning every local jogger, dog walker, milkman and rough sleeper who might have caught a glimpse of anything suspect.

“Nick, what are you doing here?” Detective Sergeant Karl Munroe, an expert on evasion, walked past clutching two phones and a notepad: Munroe knew where people went when they wanted to vanish, how they got money, what modes of transport they used. He was short, with tinted glasses and a stubble-shadowed face.