Fifteen minutes later Mike and I were walking along the river towards London Bridge, a cold east wind making us squint. We strolled past the Globe Theatre, white as a goose in the night air, and then under Southwark Bridge, where a man dressed as an Elizabethan clown was singing an Oasis song, accompanying himself on a lute. It got a pound coin from me. When we emerged I looked out over the Thames, the dark surface spotted with light. It was high tide now and the water was moving in shifting eddies, not knowing which way to turn.
I’d managed to persuade Mike to tell Ally what he was feeling. Give her a chance to respond. I told him that Ally loved him and wouldn’t want to stifle him in any way. Mike said he’d try to put a clamp on his feelings, for now at least, and hold onto the love he had for his wife. He still looked a mess, though, dread stamped on his features as I wished him goodnight. He said he was going to speak to her that night, as soon as he got in, and I thought about the conversation they were going to have. I really hoped that Ally would be able to reassure him, help him through the doubts he was feeling. Ally and Mike were so right for each other. Anyone who knew them could tell that.
After Mike had gone I thought about a cab but decided to walk home, back towards the Tate, then over the new footbridge, again wondering why they’d seemingly decided to model it on the interior of an Eighties’ wine bar. I carried on past the cathedral and up through Clerkenwell Green to my flat. It only took thirty minutes: London can sometimes be a lot smaller than the traffic in the daytime lets on. I emerged on Clerkenwell’s fashionable Exmouth Market and walked along to the side street at the other end and the former photographic studio I’ve lived in for eight years. All the way I was thinking of Sharon. Having Mike’s problems thrust into my face as well as Jemma’s really made me want to see her. I couldn’t wait for these treacle-slow days to go by, couldn’t wait to be standing at the arrivals’ gate, scanning the weary faces for two fresh green eyes. The three months she’d been away had gone pretty quickly, I’d even enjoyed the pain of missing her, for the certain knowledge it brought with it. But I couldn’t believe these last two weeks were ever, ever going to end. I suddenly realized that, like Mike’s, my life was also going to change dramatically. Unlike him, I wanted it to.
I spent most of the next day back at Loughborough Junction looking for Denise Denton. It was the coldest day of the year so far and I saw a few hats, quite a few scarves, people beginning to cover up in inverse relation to the trees. I heard a lot of Eminem, banging out of passing cars, watched a wino drink himself unconscious on White Lightning, and bizarrely, I caught a glimpse of Prince Charles in the back of a sleek black Jag. I didn’t see Denise, though. She wasn’t around and neither, fortunately, was the hooker I’d tangled with. I passed out more photos and told myself that was about the end of it. I had something more important to look into.
At six-thirty I was standing at the bar of a pub on Islington’s Liverpool Road. I was waiting for Detective Inspector Andrew Gold, and he didn’t keep me long. When I saw him struggling through the door with his briefcase I ordered him a pint of Stella. By the time he’d made it through the crowd, mostly men watching the football highlights on a wall-mounted TV, the pint was sitting on the bar with lines of white foam running down the sides. Without even looking at me Andy lifted it and sank it down to a couple of inches. He slammed the glass back down on the bar top and let out a long, growling belch, before looking over my shoulder. I turned to see a table of four men getting up to leave.
‘Get us a pint in, Billy,’ Andy said. ‘I’m fucking parched.’
The Rising Sun was packed and it took me a while to get the barmaid’s attention again. I spent the time looking round the pub I used to frequent four, five, even six times a week. It hadn’t changed. There was no espresso machine, no list of New World wines chalked up above the bar. The clientele wouldn’t have stood for it, they wouldn’t have countenanced the removal of the chipped, wood-effect Formica tables or the replacement of the booze-encrusted, red-paisley carpet. I wondered why every coppers’ local I had ever set foot in was a fleapit. There was a bright, clean boozer round the corner that would have made the safest of havens for any number of rapists and drug pushers because no member of the Queen’s constabulary would ever have set foot in it. Entering the Rising Sun was like walking into a diseased lung.
I carried the drinks over to Andy, who was sat at a small round table in the corner where no one would notice us unless they were really looking. Andy had finished his pint and took a long pull of his new one.
‘Fuck, that’s better,’ he said. He pulled open his tie like a condemned man pardoned just before the drop.
‘Bad day?’
‘Oh, you know.’
‘Not any more. Tell me.’
‘Usual crap. Middle-aged woman down Lea Valley way tells some kids to stop sitting on her car. Instead of saying yes, miss, sorry, miss, they gang-bang her, chuck her in the canal.’
‘Lovely.’
‘S’ what I thought. Girls as well as boys, you believe? They all helped. We bring in some suspects and she identifies them. She’s like positive: posse of black teenagers, you know the type. Haven’t spent long enough in school to have learned more than four words each and two of those are mother and fucker. We’re happy, of course, but the only problem is they can’t have done it. They mumbled something about being in Old Street, which I took to be a crock of shit, but there they are, on CCTV. The woman just shrugs. She thought it was them but she just wants someone to blame, any stroppy black twats. So today we collar some more and she says it again – that’s them. And this time it might have been but how the hell do we know? Jesus, Billy, I think you were right to jump ship.’
‘I think that too.’
‘Yes, well. You certainly look all right on it. You’re even thinner than the last time I saw you, you cunt. When was that?’
‘A year ago. Maybe more.’
‘Was it? Anyway.’ Andy ran both hands back through his black, glutinous hair, reminiscent of a cormorant caught in an oil slick. ‘I’ve had a terrible day, so I hope you appreciate the inconvenience of continuing to discuss police business once my shift is over.’
‘I do, Andy, I do.’ I’d known this was coming. ‘Here.’
Detective Inspector Andy Gold was not the first person I’d called in my efforts to find out background on the murder of Josephine Thomas. I had other contacts on the police and I’d tried two of them first, but one was on holiday and the other, a woman named Coombes, was on a course. She was back Monday and I could have waited but I’d tried Andy instead and he’d agreed to meet me. Who knows? Maybe I actually wanted an excuse to see my former partner. Maybe I wanted to see the kind of man I might have become.
Andy stuffed the three twenties I’d palmed him into his back pocket and then stretched, showing me a full Scrabble board of filled teeth. He smiled.
‘Thought you might be calling me.’
‘Oh?’
‘Not my case but I heard about it. Recognized the name of your building. Victim’s parents was it, hired you?’
I shook my head. ‘A friend of hers. Another girl from the building.’
‘Whatever. Nice little earner for you. Fart around a bit, tell ‘em you’re getting somewhere but you need a bit more cash. Unless you think you can do what twelve murder detectives and thirty odd beat boys can’t?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘The friend’s just in the dark, feeling powerless. I said I’d try to find more background for her, that’s all.’
‘Well, I’ve got that for you. Got some piccies too. And I hope you’re not thinking of eating later or getting laid because these are quite likely to put you off doing both for quite some time.’
Andy pulled his case onto his knee and played with the combination. Two young women in office clothes squeezed by us and Andy waited until they were past to hand me a hard-backed A4 envelope. I slid my hand inside and pulled out a selection of photographs, which I looked at as discreetly as I could. The first was of a girl lying naked on her back on a mortuary table. The lighting was bright and uncompromising, showing me one deep stab wound in the girl’s side accompanied by five or six shallow, superficial slashes. The stab wound was purple and small, more like a puncture than a fatal wound. The skin surrounding it was a fading, bloodied yellow like raspberry jam stirred into custard. The snap was taken from the side but there were others taken from the top, the other side, the feet and head, the photographer’s flash gun finding its way into each and every pore and fold of the girl’s flesh.
‘Nice, huh?’
‘Very. You’re not on this, you said?’
‘Me? No ta. Carpenter – remember him?’
‘Carpenter?’
‘Humourless fuck. Pen-pusher, brings the Guardian into the station but you never see him look at it.’
‘I remember. Just surprised he ever came to head a murder. Personal hygiene issues?’
Andy nodded. ‘The only roll-on he’s ever used is a car ferry. He’s got his lot working like tossers doing stuff that’s never going to get them anywhere.’
‘Didn’t mind you copying the file?’
‘Would have if I’d told him. Not much point, though. I can give you everything Carpenter’s got in two words.’
‘Being?’
‘Fuck and his good friend all.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. No weapon. Found the girl’s purse but that’s it.’
‘Prints?’
‘Sure, but no idea whose. He’s got nothing else and he’s starting to panic, especially as some helmet’ll probably crack it when a junkie caught with a bag of H shops one of his mates. You want a Scotch with that?’
‘I’m all right.’
‘OK, but you don’t mind if I get myself one? Looking at PM photos does tend to bring a thirst on. Here.’
‘What?’
‘Look at the size of her.’
‘So?’
‘I’ve got a theory. It’s a new terrorist group. They’re Muslims, ultra-thin Muslims.’
‘What?’
‘I reckon they’ve issued a fatwa. A fatwa! Yeah, geddit? A fucking fatwa!’
While Andy was at the bar I went through the rest of the pictures, all the time filtering them into the kind of thing I could talk to Jemma about. There were reasons why the police didn’t tell you things and I was looking at some of them. The next pictures were individual shots of the victim’s clothing, laid out on a white background. All of the garments were blood-soaked, a white vest-type undergarment torn where the knife had gone through. Just a little rip, easy to mend. Following these I was faced with the scene photos, the glimpse under the tarp that the WPC outside the Lindauer had taken. There were ten of these in all, close-ups of the body plus wide shots that told the whole story. I remembered the expression on the WPC’s face and looking at these pictures I understood it more. Jo hadn’t just taken a while to die. She’d tried to drag herself out of the alley, back the way she’d come, onto the road. Smears of blood followed her to her final position. There were small black pools at intervals of five or six feet, where she’d stopped and tried to get her breath. The final one, with Jo’s body lying in it, was the biggest one of all.
The last picture in the pile was a headshot of Josephine, smiling into the lens. It was a studio shot, taken for acting purposes, and from what I remembered of her it looked about as much like Jo as the slab shots had. When Andy came back I slid it and the rest of the pictures into the envelope and then skipped quickly through the typed notes that were also in there. They were photocopies and Andy said I could keep them. There was detail, the bus route, time of death, but nothing concrete bar the prints: Josephine’s purse had been found in a litter bin half a mile away. I could see why Carpenter was worried and I could also see that, actually, there might be a space for me here. I spoke to kids all the time, kids on the street who heard things. If the perp was a user who’d freaked, it was just possible that I might get a whisper, one that wouldn’t blow the way of a desk hugger like Carpenter. You could paint the word on the street in bright yellow letters ten feet high and he still wouldn’t see it.
‘You sure about this? Just a mugging gone wrong?’
‘Me?’ Andy laughed. He’d been gazing through the smoke haze at the two office girls. I saw them checking us out. One looked Japanese and she smiled shyly. ‘I’m not sure about anything. Not my case.’
‘But that’s what’s being said?’
‘At the moment. Anything wrong with that? She didn’t have any enemies, except the thin Muslims. Just unlucky walking home. Shouldn’t have been alone, not in Dalston at that time of night. Perp sees the girl, sticks her and robs her. Her purse was gone.’
‘I know, but why do that to her? Hit her with something maybe, threaten, but stabbing her?’
‘Billy! Some cunt three days cold, not enough cash for the candy man! He doesn’t think like you.’
‘I know. You’re right. But there’s something. I don’t know. Her coat was open. When she was found, in the scene shots.’
‘So?’
‘Seems odd. In the middle of October?’
‘She couldn’t be bothered to button it from the bus? It wasn’t far.’
‘It was pretty cold that night.’
‘Doesn’t matter, she can’t be bothered with the fuss of undoing it again in five minutes. Or – what am I saying? – she was being mugged for God’s sake. They were after her money. He stabs her first and then searches her.’
‘Yeah, you’re right. I’m just picking at the edges.’
‘I know. But don’t stop, Billy, because I really do hope you beat Carpenter to it. It’d be great to see his face if you did. In fact, if you do get anywhere why don’t you give me a call? You pegging it is one thing but me doing it on my spare time’s another. If that happened Clay might finally realize what a useless fucker Carpenter is.’
‘You’ll be the first person I speak to, Andy,’ I assured him. ‘Aren’t you always?’
Andy nodded and then a grin appeared on his face. I thought it was at the idea of unearned glory, something he’d always been a fan of, but his gaze had gone past me.
‘Now then,’ he said, reaching for his case, ‘if that’s all, which I assume it is, let’s go and see how far those sixty notes you gave me go to impressing those two smart lovelies, shall we? It’s been a pretty frustrating day, but you never know, one of us just might get to bang someone up tonight after all.’