The Murder Code (3 page)

‘When they broke up, I told her not to worry,’ Carla said. ‘These things happen, don’t they? It’s sad but we have to move on.’

‘And you were glad to have her back, weren’t you?’

‘Yes.’ Carla’s face brightened a little. ‘Yes, I was. She’s a good girl.’

‘She never mentioned why they’d broken up?’

‘No. But I’m sure it wouldn’t have been her fault. That’s what I told her. She’s a catch. Are you married, Detective?’

The last was directed, somewhat hopefully, at me. I felt awkward and sad for her.

‘Yes.’

‘That’s a shame. She’s a lovely girl.’

I leaned away from the wall and, for the first time, involved myself directly in the interview.

‘Did Mr Gregory ever come round here after they broke up?’

‘No, no.’

‘Would you have any contact details for him?’

‘Oh. Well, perhaps—yes.’ She stood up, wobbling slightly. ‘They lived together before she moved back home. I need to find my address book.’

‘That’s okay.’ I held out a hand to stop her. We had that address already, and officers had established he wasn’t home right now. ‘I was more wondering if there was anywhere else you knew of? Places he went, or friends or family he might stay with?’

‘In that case, no, I’m sorry.’ She sat back down again. The chair seemed barely to register her. ‘I didn’t know him like that. I didn’t really know him at all.’

‘That’s all right.’

It had been a long shot anyway. Whether out of pride or embarrassment, Vicki Gibson had kept the abusive element of her relationship a secret from her elderly mother. Again, that wasn’t remotely surprising. The situation she found herself in did not make her weak, but when you’re in that situation you’re made to feel that way, and are often reluctant to compound the feeling by admitting to it. People who really need and deserve help are usually at the point when it’s hardest to admit it.

There was no real consolation in it, but one thing we could guarantee now was that Tom Gregory wouldn’t get away with what he’d done. Not this time. If he was proving elusive for the moment, he wouldn’t be for ever.

I was already thinking ahead when I realised Carla Gibson was looking at me, a distressed expression on her face, as though my thoughts had been a little too obvious—already out of the door, in fact. I was about to apologise when she said:

‘Vicki was so strong.’

It took me a second to realise she was talking about Gregory—regressing to the point of the conversation where Laura had described their relationship as volatile. She didn’t want to believe her little girl had endured something like that silently. And I understood it wasn’t about me being distracted but about Carla Gibson, despite the drugs, being suddenly present again.

‘She
was
strong,’ I said, looking right back at her. Even though it’s not about strength, because that can seem like a judgement on those who don’t leave, I said it again. ‘She was very strong indeed.’

And I thought:

We’re going to catch you, Mr Gregory.

O
N OUR WAY BACK
downstairs, Laura and I talked it over.

‘You’re convinced?’ she said.

‘I’m more convinced than ever. You mean you’re not?’

To me, it looked clear-cut. People aren’t killed for no reason; there’s always cause and effect, and the facts here spoke for themselves. It wasn’t an aggravated robbery and there had been no sexual assault. All that was left, realistically, was that Vicki had been murdered out of revenge—out of passion, or at least its curdled, ugly flip side. Tom Gregory had form. If it wasn’t him, then who was it? The odds, already good, were only getting shorter.

Laura sighed.

‘It looks nailed on, I admit. And that’s obviously what we move forward with for now.’

‘That’s what we
move forward
with. Yes.
Blue-sky thinking
there, Laura.’

‘Shut up, Hicks.’

‘Look. He’s got motive. He’s got opportunity. He’s got form. And he’s missing.’ I threaded my fingers together, then drew them apart. ‘We’ll have this sewn up by the end of the day.’

‘I’m sure.’

‘I sense a but.’

‘But … something in me doesn’t feel it’s right. Don’t say it: I know you hate it when I use the word feel, but it’s true. Don’t you feel … something?’

‘I’m not a monster,’ I said.

‘Oh God, Hicks, I know you’re not.’

‘I feel sorry for Vicki Gibson. Don’t let my flippancy kid you otherwise. And I feel
intense
fucking dislike for Tom Gregory. And believe me, I’ll feel a lot better when he’s locked up paying dear fucking money for what he’s done.’

‘That’s not what I meant.’

I didn’t say anything. No, I knew that wasn’t what she’d meant—we’d worked together long enough for her to take the things I’d said as given. Still, I didn’t say anything else. I’d been intending to add something like
I don’t feel anything weird
—and yet for some reason I didn’t. As far as I could tell, I was totally in the right, and I was still sure we had our man, but a part of me knew what she meant. Not that I was going to admit it.

‘I just find it hard to imagine,’ Laura said. ‘That someone could
hate
someone that much. Don’t you?’

I shrugged.

‘To a point. I find it hard to imagine me or you hating someone like that. But we don’t know anything about this guy. He could have taken it as an affront to his manhood, her leaving him. Maybe he didn’t like being confronted with the fact that he didn’t own her the way he thought. You know what some men are like.’

‘Yeah. Unfortunately so.’

‘
Some
of them.’

‘Defensive much?’

‘Defensive always.’

We pushed our way out into the midday sun. After the interior of the stairwell, it was too harsh and too bright; I shielded my eyes.

‘What?’ Laura said.

I lowered my hand to see an officer standing in front of us: the same one who’d met me at the cordon. He looked panicked, excited, a bit lost.

He said, ‘We’ve got another body.’

As Laura and I took my car south through two intersections of the grids, all we knew was that the second body found belonged to a male, but because I tended to go with probabilities, I was expecting it to be Tom Gregory.

Again, we’d both seen it happen before. Most likely he’d been incoherent during the murder itself, with alcohol or anger or both, and the effects, the armour of that, wear off in time. It’s fairly common in these circumstances for the perpetrator to take his own life after it hits home exactly what he’s done—destroyed not only someone else’s future, but his own as well. Plus, it would explain why we hadn’t been able to find Gregory so far.

A minute later, we drove out of the end of Lily Street, into a rough parking area on the northern bank of the river. The water stretched out in front, fifty metres wide, and silver in the sunlight. The water was moving along at quite a lick: rippling and shredding. On the far bank, the rich old town clustered, gathering itself gradually upwards into the distant skyscrapers of the business district that glinted and beamed in the sun. On the river itself, a tourist ferry was purring along in the middle. As we parked up, I could see people on the deck, staring in our direction.

As we got out of the car, the wind hit. Whatever the temperature, there always seems to be a cold breeze close to the Kell, as though it’s made of ice.

There were already two police cars in the parking area, but only one officer in sight—standing at the far end by a break in the moss-green stone wall, guarding the steps that led down to the old promenade.

‘Hicks.’ I showed him my badge. ‘And Fellowes. Where are we going—down there?’

‘Yes, sir.’

The steps were ancient and weathered: blocks of stone from a different world. Our city is several centuries old, and this is roughly the spot it spread out from, the initial colonies clustering along the length of the river. For a long time, the northern bank itself was considered too marshy to develop, and it was only fifty years ago that the grids were constructed on its upper lip, fitted in between the water and the industrial and agricultural areas further north. But you feel the heart of the city here. The rocks and flagstones always remind me of gravestones in an abandoned churchyard.

‘Christ.’ Laura winced. ‘I wish I’d brought my coat.’

‘It’s a bit more sheltered down here.’

It was often used as a shelter too. The steps led down to a secluded stretch of stone walkway, walled off at either end. They were scattered along this bank, a row of old benches to each, the wood as gnarled and dry as dead trees. These places collected litter. Some of it blew in and couldn’t escape; the rest was discarded around the benches—dirty bags of cans and bottles, left by the vagrants you could often find curled on the benches, sleeping, somehow, in the cold. But then, as freezing as it could be here, it was still preferable to other central locations: the parks they’d likely be moved on from; the two derelict underground stations where so many homeless gathering together created a pretty volatile atmosphere.

The second body was lying on the furthest of the three benches here. It was surrounded by four officers, one of them talking into his radio. They looked up hopefully as we approached. We were the first detectives on site.

‘Gentlemen.’ I showed my badge again. ‘Let’s give the man some air, shall we?’

They moved to one side to let us see what we had.

‘Shit,’ I said.

‘Language, Hicks,’ Laura said.

‘Sorry. But shit.’

It wasn’t Tom Gregory—I could tell that from the victim’s age. It was a man, though, and most likely a homeless one. He was lying on his back, wrapped in layers of paint-stained coats, jumpers and pants: bundled up in the clothes like a mole in a burrow. One arm lolled down, the hand resting on the stone ground. It was the skin there that gave the age away—that and the thin, emaciated wrist, the weathered yellow fingernails. An old man. But it was impossible to tell much more than that, because, like Vicki Gibson, somebody had beaten him relentlessly until his face had been smashed into non-existence. You couldn’t tell what had been his forehead and what had been his chin.

I crouched down, slightly reluctantly. Beneath the bench, the discarded plastic bags and food cartons were covered with blood and fragments of his skull that had fallen through the slats in the bench.

‘What do you think?’ Laura said quietly.

‘I think he’s dead.’

‘You know what I mean.’

I shook my head to indicate that I didn’t know what I really thought. She was asking me if this was the same killer—whether Tom Gregory had done this as well. And I didn’t know, because at first glance, it didn’t fit at all. Obviously it looked like the same killer, but I was sure Gregory was our man for Vicki Gibson and I couldn’t imagine what might have led him to do this too. It didn’t make any sense.

Come on then, Sherlock.

‘I don’t know.’

I stood up.

‘I really don’t know.’

W
E PICKED UP TOM
Gregory in the middle of the afternoon.

As is the way of these things, it wasn’t down to any impressive detective work on the part of Laura, me or the officers looking for him, but simply because that was when he ambled back up to his front door, without a care in the world. Until he was arrested with his keys half out of his pocket.

And I say it’s the way of these things, because it’s usually the way it works. In the movies, there’ll be some sharp flash of insight that leads the detective to the culprit, but real life tends to be more mundane—and reassuringly so. The killer is often the first person you think did it, and he did it for the first reason you thought of. In the vast majority of other cases, you catch people through a shitload of hard work: processing the data and winnowing down the options. Flow-chart stuff, really. When it isn’t either of those things, it’s always down to luck. The right person tells you the right thing. You walk into the right place at the right time. Or else—as in this case—the muppet you want to talk to wanders up to his front door, hands practically outstretched, exclaiming
arrest me
.

That was my experience. By the time Tom Gregory was in a transport back to the station, Laura and I were seated in an office on the fifth floor of the building, holding an unofficial debrief with our boss, DCI Shaun Young, discussing the connection between the cases.

One crime scene of the magnitude of Vicki Gibson was more than enough to occupy days of activity, and now we had two. Under normal circumstances, we’d have palmed off the second. Given the possible connection, though, we were keeping them linked—cautiously—for the moment.

But, but, but.

‘I’m sensing doubt,’ Young said.

That was directed at me. I was leaning back a little, one heel trailing back and forth on the plush carpet.

‘That’s because I’m doubtful, sir. I’m wearing my heart on my sleeve in my usual manner. My guard is down.’

‘Apparently so. Stop slumping, by the way.’

‘Yes, sir.’

I made a token effort in that direction, but Young was used to me by now. Close to retirement age, he kept a trim, muscular build and a grim face topped with dyed black hair. His manner was generally feared. But while he gave every appearance of being gruff and unforgiving, some strange part of him had always seemed to enjoy my acts of minor insubordination.

‘I remain unconvinced that the two murders are linked.’ Beside me, sitting more neatly, Laura shook her head. I added, ‘Despite my colleague’s evident disapproval.’

‘They’re obviously connected. I don’t understand how you can possibly think they aren’t.’

‘I didn’t say that. I said I was unconvinced.’

‘Oh God—you’re exasperating sometimes. You always go by statistics and likelihoods, and I don’t understand why you’re abandoning that now. What is the probability of two blunt-force murders occurring in the same vicinity on the same night?’

‘Right now, the probability is one. Because it happened. Overall, I don’t—’

‘And having
two different perpetrators
.’