The Reaper (41 page)

‘Why no art to look at while they die?’ Rowlands asked.

‘Maybe he brought something but they were in no state to appreciate it so he didn’t put it up.’

‘Or maybe he’s changing his MO every time to try and fool the profilers.’

‘Could be.’

Rowlands studied his friend. ‘I’ve seen enough. Let’s go. Be quick if you want that serial number.’

Brook stopped the music and pocketed the disc. He knelt down behind the CD player with a small pad and pencil.

Rowlands was already on his way back down the steps. Brook watched him go and jumped up to follow. He put the pad and pencil away then paused and turned to one of the officers still toiling away.

‘Have you found anything useful?’

‘It’s not looking good apart from that footprint. No fingerprints, no weapon, no DNA, no fibres. This guy knows what he’s doing.’

‘If you do find something, anything from the killer, I want you to get it DNA tested.’

‘Obviously.’

‘I mean anything. And if you don’t think the sample is usable, make sure you still store it carefully. It may be usable in the future. Clear?’ With that triumphant demonstration of his interpersonal skills, Brook followed his boss out into the crisp, winter afternoon.

‘And you can blow it out your arse, you fucking nutter,’ mumbled the officer to his retreating back.

‘Wanker,’ agreed his colleague with venom.

Brook took the cigarette thrown in his direction and placed it in his mouth. The lighter followed. Rowlands sat opposite refilling his flask from a half bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label. It was unavailable in Britain, but he had a friend in Customs and Excise who sent him seized contraband from time to time. When he’d finished he took a swig first from the bottle, then the flask. Finally he looked back over at Brook. ‘Well?’

‘Guv?’ Brook looked back at his boss.

‘Does the serial number match?’

Brook fished for his notebook and flipped it open. He stared at the blank page. Then rummaged around his drawer and drew out the delivery note he’d taken from the boxed CD player in Sorenson’s house. It still had the brown tape clinging to it. Brook located the serial number and held it next to the blank page away from his boss.

Brook smiled. It was a bittersweet smile. A smile of loss. A smile that wished things could have been different.

‘Are they the same, lad?’

Brook picked up the lighter from his lap and ignited his cigarette. Then he held the flame to the edge of the delivery note. The tape crinkled and smouldered before the paper took light. Brook held it up for a moment to ensure the conflagration then dropped it into the metal bin at his feet. ‘No.’

‘Well?’ McMaster sat with her back straight and her hands interwoven on the desk. Her stony gaze was supposed to penetrate him, her silence pierce him.

But Brook stood impassive, staring at a fixed point above her blonde bob. He understood Sorenson’s story about the terminal ward now. Brook was the same. Finished with life. Nothing anyone did could affect him, nothing anyone said could bring him back.

But he had a job to finish and a lack of concern, a refusal to play out this scene along its scripted course would lose him the support he needed for a little longer. So Brook fought his instincts and concentrated hard to remember the next line.

‘I screwed up, ma’am. I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry? Sorry is the pause you should’ve taken between thought and deed. I’ve had the DCC of West Yorkshire barking down the phone at me for half an hour…’

‘I can explain…’

‘Can you? I wish you would.’ She broke her gaze and unclasped her hands. She picked up Brook’s warrant card from the blotter and began to fiddle with it.
Brook shot a look at her spider plant. It was brown and withered.

McMaster waited but Brook said nothing.

‘For God’s sake, stand easy and speak to me, Damen. Don’t give me this strong, silent number. I’ve seen it a million times from coppers who aren’t fit to lick your shoes. I thought I knew you. But I don’t, do I? It’s always the same. Whenever you bloody men are in trouble you clam up and play the hard nut…’

Her volume subsided and she put her head in her hands, before looking back at him. ‘And, no, I’m not going to cry.’ Brook’s face softened into a half smile.

‘No, ma’am,’ he said. ‘Not you.’ He relaxed his shoulders into the break of tension.

‘Well, thanks. I think.’ Her voice was soft and measured once more. ‘They could have your job for this, Damen. Do you care?’

‘Not really.’

‘I didn’t think so. Well, what now?’

‘Now? I’m going to Glasgow, ma’am. I’m going to do what I should’ve done years ago. It’s in the past. Something they’ve done that’s got them killed. Bobby Wallis abusing Kylie, Floyd Wrigley selling his daughter for sex. It’s The Reaper, ma’am. I’m sure of it now. He’s back and he wants me to know it. So I need to go to Glasgow and find out about Roddy Telfer’s past. That’s why I went to Leeds.’

‘Did he have a daughter too?’

‘What?’ Brook looked at her as though he hadn’t understood.

‘Did Roddy Telfer have a daughter? I assume that’s the connection you’re talking about.’

Brook stood there like a fish in a bowl staring out at a world misshapen by glass. He was rooted for several seconds while his superior looked on. ‘Are you all right, Inspector?’

Brook’s mind was in turmoil at this sudden spark. It was difficult not to show it. ‘Yes. I mean no. He didn’t have a daughter, at least, none that I know.’

‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

‘I’m fine. I’ve got to go, ma’am. I need your help.’

‘Oh, now you need my help. Well you…’

‘Look, ma’am. Evelyn.’ McMaster blinked in surprise. ‘They can have my job after I’ve been to London. But do you really think that will satisfy them?’

‘I thought you were going to Glasgow…’

‘No. Maybe. It may not be necessary. Look, ma’am. You must see. They don’t want my job. I’m a harmless washout. But you, you’re a woman in a man’s world. And they’re waiting and watching, every second of every day. Waiting and hoping for you to screw up. It’s you they want, you must know that…’

‘Inspector Brook…’

‘I’m close. I’m close to The Reaper. After all these years. What better thing to give them? What better way to make yourself fireproof than to give them The Reaper?’

‘And for yourself, of course?’

‘I don’t care about that.’

McMaster looked down at her desk in apology. ‘No.’

‘There’s my warrant card. Take it now if you think it will help your career, but I’m following this up to the end. I’m going to finish this, with or without your help.’

There was a long silence in which McMaster clasped
and unclasped her hands. She stood and turned away from Brook, then stepped across to her spider plant and rustled the dead fronds. Her mind made up, she turned back to her desk and picked up Brook’s warrant card and tossed it at him. ‘What do you need?’

‘Speak to whoever you need to, and get them to cooperate. I need to look at Telfer’s record…’

‘You can get that from the PNC.’

‘True, but Floyd Wrigley pimping his daughter wasn’t on record. It was a whisper. So I need to look at all the scraps that may not be on his record and if I go up to Glasgow, I’ll need to talk to any coppers, ex-coppers who had any dealings with him.’

‘If?’

‘There may not be time. But meanwhile, get everything you can on Telfer faxed down.’

McMaster sighed. ‘I’ll make the calls now.’

‘Thank you. I know what this is costing you.’

‘Don’t worry about me, Damen. I can always go to the tribunal. There’s big money in sex discrimination these days,’ she added with a laugh.

‘It’s never been about money for either of us, ma’am.’

‘Thank you for that. Now get out. And good luck.’

Brook unlocked his office and stepped through the door. He walked over to his desk, bent down then stopped dead. ‘Hello,
Bob!’
he said, without turning round.

Greatorix stood in the doorway. He was taken aback for a second. ‘Hello, Damen. Come to clear your desk?’ Brook turned to catch a yellow grin of satisfaction, which Greatorix made no attempt to hide.

Brook sniffed the air without being too obvious. There was an unsanitary current wafting over from his dank colleague. Greatorix had clearly worked himself into a special lather of anticipation at Brook’s impending unemployment. Noble stood behind him, but not too close.

‘Something like that,
Bob’

‘I can’t say I blame them.’ He stepped into the office, sizing it up for his own use. ‘A maverick like you on a case this important…’

‘Did you want something? I’m in a hurry.’

‘I don’t want to hold you up but you have some video tapes which belong to the Wallis investigation. I’d like them.’

Brook looked blandly at Noble who shrugged his apology. ‘From the station’s CCTV? Yeah, I took them home to watch. I forgot all about them.’

‘Did you? Well I want them.’

‘There’s nothing on them for you.’

‘Are you refusing to hand them over, Inspector?’

‘Don’t be crass. They’re at home. I’ll drop them off in the morning…’

‘I want them now!’

‘I don’t work for you,
Bob’

‘You don’t work for anyone,
Damen’.

Brook laughed. ‘Tell you what. Lend me DS Noble for an hour and I’ll give them to him. That suit?’

‘It’ll have to.’

‘Oh and Bob, speaking of mavericks, don’t you know it’s an offence to search the office of a serving colleague without some kind of permission?’ Brook exhumed a malicious grin
of his own, to crank up Greatorix’s temperature. Greatorix turned to Noble with a malevolent expression. ‘No, DS Noble didn’t tell me, Bob, it was the smell.’

‘Smell?’ Greatorix narrowed his eyes. Noble stifled a laugh. ‘What smell?’

Brook took a pause to give his portly colleague time to stew. ‘Ambition, Bob. Unfettered ambition.’

‘Unfett…?’

‘It’s in the dictionary.’

Greatorix was on the wrong foot for a second before retrieving his own spiteful grin. ‘But you’re not a serving colleague. In the words of the great Norman Tebbit, you’re semi-detached.’

‘Shouldn’t you be out arresting Jason Wallis, Bob?’ asked Brook.

‘My, our enquiries,’ he added with a curt nod at Noble, ‘have put young Wallis in the clear.’

‘Really?’

‘He’s even going to help with an appeal.’

‘On TV?’

‘Of course on TV. I don’t know why you didn’t think of it.’

Brook nodded. ‘So Jason’s going to be a big-shot after all. Much as I dislike you, Bob, can I tell you that would be a mistake.’

‘Really? Why?’

‘Trust me.’

Greatorix smirked in Brook’s general direction. ‘Just get those tapes.’ He turned to walk past Noble. ‘You’ve got an hour, John,’ and walked out as haughtily as he could for a man of his girth.

‘Sir.’

Brook watched Greatorix retreat before continuing. ‘John, I don’t have much time. Have you got your mobile?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Give it to me.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Don’t argue. I don’t have one. Now if I’ve already left, I need you to ring me on your mobile. I’m expecting a fax from Glasgow about a small-time villain called Roddy Telfer. When it arrives, ring me and tell me if there’s any mention of him outside of Glasgow and Leeds. Is that clear?’

‘I don’t know…’

‘And while you’re waiting for that, I want you to run a trace on a Petr Sorenson. P-E-T-R–it’s a Swedish name–Sorenson. Find out where he lives, his job etc.’

‘Has he got a record?’

‘Unlikely.’

‘Well it may take longer than Inspector…’

‘Forget him. Here. Take my office key. Lock yourself in, put a chair under the handle if you have to. Just do it. Tell him you were following another lead.’

‘O-kay.’ Noble was hesitant and Brook, for the first time, wasn’t sure he could trust him. Unlike Brook he had a career to think about.

‘Good. Let’s get those tapes.’

Brook led Noble into his front room, located the bag of video cassettes and held them out to him. Noble made
no effort to take them and Brook saw he was distracted by the surroundings. He realised that Noble had never been inside his flat before and his DS was as stunned as every other visitor by its decrepitude. It was a familiar reaction and one that, until recently, wouldn’t have concerned him.

‘This is just temporary, John. ’til I can find a place to put down roots.’

Noble was embarrassed now and tried to cover his error. ‘It’s not bad to tide you over, it’s only been…’

‘Three years. Since the transfer. Come with me.’ He took Noble back into the kitchen and opened the fridge with a flourish worthy of Barnum. ‘Can I get you anything? I’ve got beer, cider, alcopops.’

‘No thanks.’

‘Something to eat then? Chicken, pâté, dips, quiche, cocktail sausages?’

‘No really, sir.’

‘What about tea? Or I’ve got coffee or orange juice?’

‘Maybe an orange juice then,’ agreed Noble.

Brook cracked a carton from the brick, removed the attached straw and inserted it through the foil hole, before giving it to Noble with an air of quiet satisfaction.

Noble, unsure what to do, took it from him and waited. But Brook would only stare at his guest, looking first at the carton then up at Noble until he shoved the straw in his mouth and proceeded to suck. ‘Mmmm. Delicious.’ Noble finished his drink and handed the carton to Brook. ‘Sir? What’s wrong with Jason doing an appeal?’

Brook paused and thought for a while, the merits of
long-life orange juice forgotten. ‘It will cause embarrassment to the Force and whoever organises it, John. I want you to promise me you’ll speak to McMaster and get her to block it.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Promise.’

‘Tell me why.’

Brook paused. ‘I think Jason was involved in the murder of Annie Sewell.’

Noble raised an eyebrow. ‘Annie Sewell?’