“The Killing Fields.”
The words jumped out at Caffery from billboards outside newsagents as he drove to St Dunstan’s. Last night the news had been confirmed through the bureau, and now the press were crawling over Greenwich, clogging the streets, harassing the residents, setting up camp outside North’s aggregate yard. The Sun’s headline was “Millennium Terror” with colour shots of Shellene, Petra, Wilcox and Kayleigh above a black and white shot of the aggregate yard. The Mirror had a single photo of Kayleigh: she wore a cherry-pink satin off-the-shoulder dress and was holding a drink up to the camera. There were the predictable comparisons with the Wests, photos of number 25 Cromwell Street—“How could it happen again?” asked the Sun. The Mirror dubbed the killer, predictably, “The Millennium Ripper.” Caffery had bet Essex that, of all the sobriquets, this would be the favourite.
The rest of AMIP were liaising with Intelligence at Dulwich—putting a spotlight on Gemini—running checks to see if he was already “flagged,” wanted by another Met unit. So Caffery, conscious that the stopwatch was running now, drove to St Dunstan’s hospital alone. He parked at the foot of Maze Hill where the lime trees and red walls of Greenwich Park ended.
They’re as tight as arseholes, these personnel people, Jack. No magistrate in the country is going to grant a warrant to open up the personnel files of an entire hospital because a wet-behind-the-ears DI has a “feeling.”
More than a feeling now, more than just a sense—now he believed that the man he wanted knew this building. Whatever shape the road took he was certain that it would end here. He stood for a moment, outside the hospital, imagining he saw something off centre about the grey buildings, the Portakabins in the brilliant yellow sunshine. The sky over the incinerator chimney was the same saturated, surreal blue as Joni’s eyeshadow, flattening perspective into Mondrian blocks. But then he realized he was resketching the sky, the world, to suit his picture of this place, and that the lines of the buildings were straight, the windows unremarkable. He straightened his tie and pushed through the plastic fire doors, glad to rest his eyes.
Inside the hospital was shabby; the corridors were hot with the steam from unseen kitchens and sterilizing units, a faulty fluorescent strip flickered. He was alone—his only company footsteps echoing briefly from beyond a bend in the passage—and a starling, flapping amongst the pipes in the ceiling. It dropped a tin-white pellet inches from Caffery’s feet as he pushed open the door marked personnel.
Take it slow. Take it too fast and they’ll see you’re desperate.
The office was large, divided by portable screens, the only sound the halting tap … tap … tap tap tap … tap of a keyboard.
Caffery peered around a screen. A small, round-backed clerk with a receding hairline, wearing a greying nylon shirt. Tapping at a keyboard.
Not promising.
Caffery cleared his throat.
The clerk looked up. “Morning, sir. For the committee, is it?”
“No—not for the committee, Mr … uh.” He checked the nameplate on the desk. “Mr Bliss. Detective Inspector Caffery. The head personnel officer, is he …?”
“She.” He half stood. “She‘s sitting on the committee. They won’t be out till eleven.” He held his hand out to Caffery who shook it. “Maybe I can help, Inspector … sorry.”
“Caffery.”
“Inspector Caffery.”
“I’d like access to your personnel files.”
“Oh.” The clerk sat back and peered myopically up at him. “If I said no would you get a search warrant?”
“That’s right.” He wiped his hand discreetly on his trousers. Like the hospital itself the clerk’s hand was damp. “That’s right, a search warrant.”
“And then you’d get all the information you’d need anyway?”
“That’s correct.”
“Can I be rude enough to see your badge?”
“Of course.”
Caffery stood in front of his desk, hands in his pockets, watching the clerk fastidiously jotting down the details from his warrant card.
“Thank you, Detective Inspector Caffery.” He placed the warrant card on the edge of the desk, and leaned forward. “I’ll OK it with my boss when she comes back from her meeting, but who do you want to know about? Anyone special?”
“No-one special. Doctors, morticians, nurses. Anyone with theatre experience.”
“Mmmm.” The clerk scratched his pink ear. “What did you want? Home addresses?”
“Age, home address, contact numbers.”
“It’s going to take some time. Can I fax it to you? I think our fax machine is still working.”
Caffery scribbled a number on the back of his card. He had, by fluke, hit this at the right angle.
“And is there a staff room? Somewhere quiet I could do interviews when I’ve sifted?”
“Mmm. Let’s see—Wendy, one of our officers, is covering in the library. Maybe she’d open the back reference room for you. Let’s go and have a look.” He came out from behind the desk, pausing to lock the office as they left. “I hope you parked somewhere sensible. It’s a funny old area.”
“Up the hill, next to the park.”
“You have to fight for a place these days—what with all the committee members and their big cars and their parking permits. I haven’t got a choice, I’m not leaving the car at home, too much building work—just trust some workman to accidentally chuck a spanner through the windscreen—so I come in and battle it out with the bigwigs. They’re here all this week, you know, can’t get away from them—” He stopped. “Here we are. The library.” He opened the door. “Wendy?”
They were looking at a small panelled entrance hall. Behind a sliding pane of glass a woman in a pearl-grey cardigan and batwing glasses looked up from her Reader’s Digest. When she saw Caffery she blushed and shovelled the balled tissue she was clutching into her sleeve. “Hello.”
“This is Wendy. She’s usually with me in personnel.”
Wendy gave Caffery a damp smile and extended her hand.
“Hello, Wendy.” She blushed deeper as he took her hand. It had the same limp humidity as her colleague’s.
“We’re wondering if we could help Detective Inspector Caffery here. He wants somewhere discreet to do some interviewing. Is that little back room of yours available?”
Wendy stood up and pulled the cardigan tightly around her breasts. Caffery saw she was younger than he’d thought; it was the clothes that belonged to an older woman. “I don’t see why not. We’re very old-fashioned about the police here. We like to give you all the support we can.”
“I’ll be on my way, then.” The clerk held his hand out again and Caffery shook it.
“Grateful for your help. I’ll wait for the fax.”
Left alone, Wendy stared at Caffery in shy awe, waiting for him to speak, until he became irritated by her silence.
“The room?”
The spell broke. “Sorry!” She blushed and dabbed her nose. “Silly me. We don’t get many policemen in here. We do admire you, admire the work you do, actually, we think you’re wonderful. My brother wanted to join the force but he wasn’t tall enough. Now, come through, come through.” She unplugged an orange card from the computer and clipped it on a chain around her neck. “It’s the little glass room at the back. I’ll open it for you—see if it’s appropriate.”
The library was very quiet. Sunlight came through unwashed windows and lay in dusty slabs on the floor. A few doctors sat in little booths, absorbed in study. A pretty Indian woman in a white coat looked up at him and smiled. In front of her a periodical was open at a page headed “Amnion Rupture Sequence” and beneath it a large colour photograph of a red accident of birth: a baby, headless, spread out next to a tape measure like a deboned chicken. Caffery didn’t smile back.
Wendy stopped at a small glass-walled room. Blinds were drawn in the windows, isolating it from the library. “This is the quiet room.” She opened the door. “Oh, Mr Cook.”
In the shadows at the back of the room a figure was rising from behind a desk. He wore a green overall, open to reveal a tie-dye T-shirt. His eyes were bloodshot, strangely colourless, and his pale red hair was long enough to fasten in a net at the nape of his neck. As Caffery’s eyes got used to the dark, he saw that some of the hair sticking out of the neck of the T-shirt was grey.
Cook caught him looking. “Is it that bad?” He cast a sorrowful look over the shirt, his face deep in shadow. “I’m colour blind. Helpless as an infant when it comes to choosing clothes.”
“It’s very—young.”
Cook raised his eyes to the ceiling. “I thought as much. They lie to you, these shop assistants. It’s like a game to them.” He shuffled around to the edge of the desk and for the first time Caffery noticed a book on the table. He just had time to register a black and white photo of a Stryker bone saw when Cook snapped the book shut, tucked it under his arm and shuffled to the door. “I’ll be getting out of your way, then.” He drew a pair of sunglasses from his overalls and rubbed his eyes. “All yours.” He slipped outside and closed the door quietly.
Caffery and Wendy stood in silence for a moment until Wendy shook her head and made a disapproving clicking sound in her throat.
“Some of the people we employ. Really, it’s a shame.” She mopped her nose with the tissue from her sleeve and straightened her glasses. “Now, Inspector Caffery, can I get you a nice cup of tea? It’s machine, I’m afraid, but I’ve got a little Nestlé’s evaporated under my desk I’d be happy to let you have …”
———
In Caffery and Maddox’s office the blinds were up and the afternoon sun coming through the dusty window had grilled everything on the desk. Caffery could smell the hot plastic of the phone as he opened a window, pulled the blinds, leaned on his elbow and picked out Penderecki’s number on the key pad. He let it ring and watched the hands on the clock turn. He knew it wouldn’t be answered.
One day last year he had tried calling Penderecki mid-afternoon. He knew Penderecki’s movements so intimately that he was puzzled when the phone wasn’t answered. He let it ring, watching out of the French windows, wondering if the unthinkable had happened and Penderecki was lying dead on the floor of the house.
But then Penderecki’s stout figure appeared at the back door, braces worn over a dirty vest. The trees were in full foliage, but Caffery could make out his face and the glutinous white arc of his arm waving amongst the leaves. It took him a moment to realize Penderecki was waving at him, putting his thumbs up, grinning his toothless smile. He was telling Caffery that he knew who it was on the phone.
From that day on, whether Caffery called him from the office or the house, Penderecki let it ring. On the rare occasions he did answer it was with a dry, accentless, “Hello, Jack.” Caffery assumed he’d bought a digital read-out for the phone. Now the only pleasure was knowing that the sound of the phone ringing was filling the house for as long as he chose to let it. Small childish pleasure, Jack. Maybe Veronica’s right about you. Sometimes he called several times a day.
He let it ring for ten minutes then replaced the receiver and wandered into the incident room to see if a fax had come from the clerk at St Dunstan’s.