The Tunnel Rats (4 page)

Edmunds chuckled. 'Well, it,wasn't suicide.'

'The doctor's there now,' said Hunter, 'but I think it's safe to say we've got a murder enquiry.'

'We?' said Wright quickly. 'This is our case.'

'Yeah, handled many murders, have you?' asked Edmunds.

Wright felt Reid's hand on his shoulder. He realised he was glaring at Hunter and he forced himself to relax.

Hunter started to walk away and he motioned with his chin for Edmunds to follow him.

'Don't forget your gloves, lads,' said Edmunds.

Wright was about to reply when Reid squeezed his shoulder. 'Don't let them get to you, Nick. They're just taking the piss.'

They continued along the tracks towards the lights. There was a flash, then, a second later, another. 'What's that?' asked Wright.

'Photographer,' said Reid. They walked by a small generator. A white cable snaked away towards two large fluorescent lights mounted on tripods.

A woman came down the tracks towards them. She was in her forties with greying blonde hair tied back in a ponytail. She was wearing disposable rubber gloves and carrying a large moulded plastic briefcase.

'Excuse me, are you the doctor?' asked Reidr 'Pathologist, actually,' she said brusquely. 'Anna Littman.'

'Tommy Reid and Nick Wright,' said Reid. 'British Transport Police.'

'I've already spoken to your colleagues,' she said briskly, and stepped to the side to walk past them.

'They're not our colleagues,' snapped Wright.

She raised her eyebrows and stared at Wright with the greenest eyes he'd ever seen. 'I've known Gerry Hunter for three years,' she said. 'I can assure you he's a detective.'

'He's with the Met, Dr Littman,' said Reid. 'We're British Transport Police.'

'Sounds like too many cooks to me,' she said.

'Can you tell us what we've got here?' asked Wright.

'What we've got is a dead white male, late forties' I think, and he's been dead for several days.'

'It's murder?' asked Reid.

'Oh, there's no doubt about that.'

'Murder weapon?' asked Reid.

'A knife, I think.'

'You think?'

'The body's in a bit of a state. The rats have been at it. I'll know better after the post mortem. Now if you'll excuse me . . .' She brushed past Wright.

The two men turned to watch her go. 'Nice legs,' said Reid. 'I'm off women just now,' said Wright.

Reid sighed and turned up the collar of his raincoat. 'Why would anyone dump a body down here?'

'What do you mean?'

'Bound to be found eventually. If you really wanted to hide a body, you'd bury it, right?'

They walked down the track, their feet crunching on gravel. 'No footprints,' said Reid. 'And none outside if it was two or three days ago.'

'No drag marks either. So how did they get the body in here?'

'Carried it, maybe.'

'Which brings me back to my first point. Why carry it in here? Why not bury it?'

A Scene of Crime Officer stood up and stretched. He was in his fifties with steel-grey hair and thick horn-rimmed glasses. 'Nice day for it,' he said.

'Found anything?' asked Wright.

'Lots of stuff. Problem is knowing what's relevant. Downandouts have been sleeping here, kids playing around, dogs, cats, rats. There's litter, used condoms, sweet wrappers, empty bottles, cigarettes. We'll bag it and tag it, but as to what's relevant and what isn't, well, your guess is as good as mine.'

'No sign of a murder weapon?' asked Wright.

The man snorted softly. 'No, and I haven't come across a signed confession. But if I do . . .'

Reid and Wright walked past one of the tripod lights. A woman in white overalls was kneeling down, examining a wooden sleeper. Wright flinched at a bright flash of light. The photographer was a small, squat man in a dark suit, standing with his back to them. He took a step back, adjusted his focus and took another picture of something against the tunnel wall.

Wright moved to the side to get a better look. 'Jesus Christ,' he whispered.

'Yeah, practically crucified,' said the photographer laconically. 'I don't think they cut Jesus's dick off, though, did they?' He turned his camera side on and took another photograph. 'Who are you guys with?' he asked.

'British Transport Police,' said Reid.

'Don't think he was hit by a train,' said the photographer.

A young man in blue overalls joined them carrying a large metal suitcase. He placed it on a sleeper and opened it to reveal a large video camera and a halogen light. 'Are you going to want the video, then?' he asked, pulling the camera out of its foam rubber packing.

'Yeah,' said Wright, handing him a BTP business card.

The body was naked, spreadeagled against the wall, the hands impaled on thick nails. The man's groin was a mass of blood, and strips of flesh had been ripped from his chest, arms and legs. A knife had been thrust into the chest.

'That's not what I think it is in his mouth, is it?' asked Reid.

Wright lean forward. Between the man's teeth was a piece of bloody flesh. Wright's stomach lurched. He screwed up his face in disgust. 'What sort of sick bastard would do that?' he whispered.

'Black magic?' said Reid. 'Some sort of Satanic ritual?'

Wright shook his head. 'There'd be symbols. Candles. Stuff like that. This guy's been tortured to death.' He took a step closer to the body. There was something impaled on the knife. A playing card. Blood from the man's, face had trickled down over the card. Wright reached out his hand.

'Don't even think about touching that!' boomed a voice.

Wright looked around. The grey-haired man in overalls was standing behind Wright holding a polythene evidence bag.

'I wasn't going to touch anything,' said Wright defensively.

'Who are you anyway?' asked the man. 'Gerry Hunter's already been over the crime scene.'

'I'm Nick Wright. This is Tommy Reid. British Transport Police.'

'Been at many crime scenes, have you, Mr Wright?'

'What?'

The man sealed the evidence bag. Inside was a cigarette packet. 'Standard procedure is for detectives to wear gloves and shoe covers before they go trampling over a crime scene.'

'Yeah, well, we'll watch where we put our feet,' said Wright. 'And it's Sergeant Wright. What about the victim's clothes?'

'No sign of them. Assuming he didn't walk in naked, the murderer must have taken them with him.'

Wright put his hands in his pockets and turned to look at the body again. He peered at the playing card. 'Ace of spades,' he said. 'Now what the hell's the significance of that?'

'Bridge game got a bit nasty, do you think?' said Reid.

'It must mean something, Tommy. Someone went to a lot of trouble to stick that on his chest.'

Kristine Ross opened the UPS package, taking care not to damage her blood-red fingernails. Inside was a manila envelope, with the senator's name and 'private and confidential' typed across it. She picked up the UPS wrapper and looked at the name of the sender. Max Eckhardt. It wasn't a name she recognised. The address was an apartment in London, England. The space for the sender's telephone number had been left blank. She clicked her mouse on the logo for the senator's contacts book and entered the name Eckhardt. Nothing. She scrolled through the Es, just to be on the safe side, but there was no name that was even remotely similar. It wasn't unusual for members of the public to mark their mail private and confidential in the hope of reaching the senator's desk unopened, but it was Kristine's 28 STEPHEN LEATHER job to make sure that he made the maximum use of his time. Whoever Max Eckhardt was, he wasn't known to the senator and so his envelope was fair game. She slit open the envelope and peered inside. All it contained was a Polaroid photograph. Kristine closed the envelope and tapped it on her desk, a tight feeling in her stomach. She doubted that it was a wedding picture. There was no letter, no card, just the photograph, and the fact that it was a Polaroid meant that it probably wasn't the work of a professional photographer.

People sent strange things to the senator. His mail was scanned before it reached Kristine's desk,\but X-rays couldn't weed out all the nasty surprises. In the twenty-two months she'd been working for Senator Dean Burrow she'd seen pornographic pictures of housewives offering themselves to him, hatemail written in crayon, obscene drawings, and on one occasion a small bottle of urine from a woman who said that the FBI were trying to poison her. Anything threatening was passed on to the Secret Service; anything obscene went into the shredder. Kristine sighed through pursed lips and tilted the envelope so that the Polaroid slid out, face down. She turned it over. For a second or two she stared at the image, unable to believe what she was looking at, then she felt her stomach heave.

'Oh, sweet Jesus,' she whispered.

Tommy Reid dropped Nick Wright at the door to Battersea police station and went looking for a parking space. Wright waited until the grey-haired duty sergeant had finished taking details of a stolen bicycle from a young girl before showing his ID and asking to see Annie Lees.

The sergeant's face creased into a grin. 'What, has she been fare-dodging now, then?' he asked.

Wright smiled coldly. 'She's a witness in a murder investigation,' he said.

The sergeant's grin vanished. 'I know that, son. I was just pulling your leg.'

The door opened behind Wright and Reid joined him at the counter. From somewhere he'd managed to buy a portion of fish and chips. 'Hello, Reg,' said Reid, shoving a chip into his mouth.

'Bloody hell, Tommy Reid,' said the sergeant. 'What've you been doing with yourself?'

Reid offered his fish and chips and the sergeant helped himself to a handful of chips. Reid gestured at the fish and the sergeant broke off a piece. 'Same old rubbish,' said Reid. 'I thought you'd retired.' v 'Next year. You on this murder enquiry?'

Reid pushed a chunk of fried cod into his mouth and nodded.

'I'll let you in,' said the sergeant. He disappeared from behind the counter and unlocked a side door. Reid and Wright went inside. 'Second interview room on the right,' said the sergeant.

Annie Lees was sitting at a table, her hands cupped around a mug of weak tea. She looked up as the two detectives walked into the room. 'Where are my things?' she snapped.

Wright stopped in his tracks. 'I'm sorry?'

'My things. They said I could have my things.' She scrutinised Reid with wary eyes. 'What's that you're eating?'

'Fish and chips. Want some?' Reid put what was left of his meal on the table and wiped his hands on his coat.

The old woman picked up a chip between her first finger and thumb and inspected it closely before taking a bite.

'Annie, did you see anyone near the tunnel?' asked Wright.

The old woman's eyes narrowed. 'What tunnel?'

Wright sat down opposite her. 'The tunnel where you found the body.'

She averted her eyes and concentrated on selecting the best chips. She ate several more before speaking. 'I've already told that other detective everything.'

'Other detective? What other detective?'

'Gerry. He's such a nice young man, isn't he?'

'Gerry Hunter?'

'Inspector Gerry Hunter,' she said, stressing the title.

'He's very young to be an inspector, isn't he? Are you an inspector?'

Wright's jaw tensed. 'No,' he said. 'I'm not an inspector.'

Dean Burrow was bored out of his skull, but the three women sitting opposite him would never have known. Burrow had smiled his way through more than a decade of television interviews, rubber chicken dinners and factory* openings. He'd perfected the technique with the aid of a style coach, the same woman who'd shown him how to walk with authority, how to shake hands sincerely, how to show concern and sympathy when the occasion warranted. He smiled and from time to time he nodded to show that he agreed with them, giving them all equal eye contact so that none of them would feel slighted. They'd wanted to talk to him about abortion, a subject close to Burrow's heart, and they represented a group of more than five hundred churchgoing middle-aged women from Burrow's home state. Five hundred votes was worth ^twenty minutes of anybody's time.

Burrow had been consistent on his views on abortion. In public he was against it; in private he thought it was a necessary evil: his own wife had had an abortion soon after they'd married, and his former secretary had been persuaded to have one three years ago. Both women had agreed to the abortions for'financial reasons his wife because they were struggling to meet the payments on their first house; his secretary because he'd paid her fifty thousand dollars. She wasn't his secretary any more; she'd opened her own beauty salon in Cleveland and Burrow remained convinced that she'd deliberately become pregnant in the first place. Burrow wondered what his three visitors would do if they discovered that their pro-life senator was responsible for two aborted fetuses.

The woman who'd been doing most of the talking, a stick-thin black woman with swept-back hair and tortoiseshell spectacles, stopped speaking and looked at him expectantly.

Burrow nodded urbanely. 'I couldn't agree with you more, Mrs Vine,' he said, even though he hadn't been listening. 'You THE TUNNEL RATS 31 can rest assured that we are of one mind on this issue.' He stood up and adjusted the sleeves of his jacket. 'It's been a pleasure, ladies. I want to thank you all for the time and trouble you've taken to come and see me.'

The three women stood up and he shook them by the hand. His handshake was as practised as his smile, strong enough to show strength of character and determination, but not too overpowering. He escorted them to the door and opened it, giving each of the women a warm smile as they left.

Kristine Ross was standing in the outer office, holding a manila envelope. Burrow gave her a genuine smile and looked her up and down. With her long tanned legs, full figure and shoulder-length blonde hair, Kristine could have worked as a catwalk model. Not that Burrow would ever do anything more than look - he'd learned his lesson the hard way and he didn't want to throw away another fifty thousand dollars. She looked worried.