It had been a long night. It turned out to be a long morning too. It was obvious that I was exhausted and having difficulty focusing but they didn’t let me sleep. I wouldn’t have done either. I was left to stew for twenty minutes and then the officer who had cuffed me came in with his younger colleague. The colleague looked like a big farm boy, strong enough to pull a tractor, and I hoped it didn’t get nasty. I was feeling bad enough already.
A medical officer came in and took scrapings from underneath my fingernails as well as hair samples for matching and possible DNA profiling. I was asked to remove all my clothes and these were taken from me. They would be analysed for blood and semen traces, as well as for stray hairs or pieces of skin which did not belong to me. The medical officer then examined my body for cuts, scratching and bruises; plenty of which could be found. He paid particular attention to my groin area, taking swabs from my penis and removing more hair. The two officers sat in disgusted though joyful silence throughout, both with their arms folded in front of them. I was given a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt to wear but no shoes, socks, shorts or any underpants.
The medical officer expressed the opinion that I should see a doctor, both for the superficial wounds to my face and head, but also for suspected broken ribs and concussion.
‘Let the bastard suffer,’ the young man opined, but the doctor was sent for.
I asked for a lawyer and gave the uniformed officer minding the door Mike Williams’ number.
‘Shame his office isn’t open yet, isn’t it?’ The older man stood up and brought his chair over to face me at the desk. ‘Don’t mind if we start without him, do you?’
It didn’t matter what I minded. In fact, I was glad to get on with it; I wanted them to get an officer round to the freight depot on York Way to find evidence of what had happened to me there. With any luck there would still be the bag with my blood in it. That’s if they got there before some idiot chucked it out. They might even get some prints off it if I was lucky.
I went through the events of the evening from going to the gym, and seeing Nicky, to getting the phone call and what had happened after that. I didn’t know whether or not to mention the fact that I’d known Dominic Lewes but decided I should. There were files in my office that could link me to him. I told them how I had photographed him and beaten up his pimp who was apparently known as Rollo. I told them that the man who had beaten me up had mentioned his name. I told them that a Ford Escort, five or six years old, had been parked outside my flat but had gone by the time the police arrived. It was my opinion that its owner had killed Dominic, left his body in my flat and then waited outside for me to come home before making a call to the police. All of this was noted with clearly displayed scepticism.
I was beyond tired and it was now my ribs which were giving me the most trouble. Discovering Dominic’s body in my flat had taken my mind off the painkillers I had intended taking and I asked if I could have some.
‘The doctor will be here soon, sir,’ the older man said with a smile.
The doctor didn’t come for another hour, and only then because I refused to answer any more questions until he did, and took to groaning quietly. Not wanting a cell mortality on their records the two officers let the doctor into the room and he bandaged my head and my ribs and put a dressing on my face. He sent for a nurse and an hour later they stitched up the wound on the back of my head. The front of the head is harder, the doctor informed me. He was told not to give me anything that would send me to sleep. He didn’t give me anything.
All I had to do was sit it out. Both the pain and the interrogation. I was nervous, but the physical evidence would say that I had been at York Way as I had claimed, and the police would find no forensic evidence on Dominic Lewes to say I had killed or indeed been anywhere near him. The ravings of the two officers, taking it in turns to play bad cop and bad cop, sailed over me. I gazed round at the dull grey walls, at the flimsy table, perfect for sweeping aside in dramatic temper tantrums by detectives who have seen too many reruns of The Sweeney. I drank three cups of lukewarm gun oil and as the tiny window announced the coming day, I waited for the appearance of my friend the Chief Inspector. The Chief liked to take a personal interest in the bigger cases, and I’d have to go through it all with him anyway so there was no point saying a great deal to these two. I tried to make some sort of sense out of what had happened, how everything had got tangled up together, but I could hardly make the table sit still let alone figure something which seemed totally incomprehensible. What did Dominic Lewes have to do with what I was doing for Sir Peter Morgan?
The Chief didn’t come at all that day. They let me have two hours’ sleep and Mike Williams came at around ten. He wasn’t a criminal lawyer but he was glad to help and would know who to get in if it looked like I was going to need anyone special. I told him that I didn’t need him around for the interrogations. He asked me if he should demand that I be sent to a hospital but I said no, it would only slow things down. I kept expecting Andy Gold to show up but then remembered he’d been taken off the case. I kept expecting him to show up anyway, because we were supposed to be friends, but then remembered that friendship can be an embarrassing concept for a police officer, especially if the friend in question is a suspect, a likely candidate for serial killer.
Milson and Clarke went at me all afternoon but I didn’t tell them anything that I hadn’t before. They tried to pick holes in my story, especially the York Way episode which I had no witnesses to, but when what you are telling is the truth your story tends to stand up – if you ignore the deviations and stick to the facts. It pissed them off, I could tell, but they still thought they probably had me. They asked me where I was the night John Evans was killed, where I was when James Waldock had been butchered and what I had been doing the night Edward Morgan had taken a man back to his flat. I couldn’t tell them of course, not without looking at my diary, and they got a lot of pleasure out of that. They even sent for a baseball hat, which they put on my head, gazing at me in profile with copies of the picture I had been showing round in their hands. They photographed me and I assumed that they would be showing my picture round to the people they had interviewed already.
I tried to remember how long forensics people took. I was more than three years out of date but I did know that a case like this would get top billing. I figured that if the Chief wasn’t here then the report wasn’t ready yet; he wouldn’t waste his time if there was a chance that forensic evidence would prove it one way or another. Milson and Clarke were just to soften me up, to keep me awake and my head hurting. I remembered what a good detective the Chief had been, what a calculating, heartless, vindictive bastard. Even if he knew I had nothing to do with it he’d have let Milson and Clarke have a go at me, to see if I knew anything else which might be useful to him.
At seven that night I was taken from the holding cell to an interview room and was eventually joined by Ken Clay, the Chief Inspector of Islington Police. He came into the room quickly, accompanied by a humourless, sour-faced DC I had never seen before. He pulled the chair opposite me and sat on it, his thighs running over the sides like a cake rising out of a tin.
‘Well, Billyboy, we have been busy, haven’t we?’
Clay’s face was a huge, fleshy maze of broken vessels and his hands were too; matching mounds of unbleached tripe. He had placed a folder on top of the table and he pulled the contents out of it. He leafed through the fifteen or so pages briskly, his fingers clumsy, not built for such close work. He put them down and then smiled, giving me a flash of lurid red gums above yellow teeth stained with black.
‘All of it. From the beginning. Don’t leave anything out.’
I took a breath and went through it, from first meeting the MP, to trying to get a picture of Dominic Lewes, to the night before last when I’d been beaten up and come home to find a corpse in my bed. I didn’t tell him about Charlotte and Lloyd but not for any other reason than belligerence. I’d let him have it if it looked like he was going to guess there was something missing. Clay’s face was a livid mask.
When I’d finished, he sat back.
‘You beat up a pimp and then the boy you’re after winds up starkers, without his cock, in your bed, after someone sees you threatening a young lad with a knife and forcing him into your doorway.’
‘What knife? That’s crap, that’s absolute crap.’
Clay laughed. ‘Glad I’m not you, Billy.’
I took his point but tried to ignore the mocking, selfsatisfied tone. ‘Who is he, the caller?’
‘The caller preferred to remain anonymous.’
‘What about the pimp? Have you found him yet?’
‘He’s relaxing downstairs.’ Clay was pretending to be affable. I was surprised he was letting me ask him questions.
‘He’s still got a bit of a face on him. Claims he was mugged, doesn’t know anything about any boy prostitutes or private detectives.’
‘He was in Dominic’s house, I saw him.’
‘I know, I know. I believe you there, Billy. There. Just giving him rope to hang himself. You know the score.’
He fumbled for the top sheet of paper on the table and managed to pick it up. The DC sat up a bit.
‘Now then,’ he said. ‘What have we got?’ Clay’s sarcasm was stronger than his aftershave. ‘A corpse in your flat, not only that of a boy you were looking for but also connected to a job you’ve been doing for a bereaved MP; exactly the same MO as that used by a serial killer the MP had paid you to look for. Curious. We’ve then got a flat door which has been broken into, very probably by your good self to make it look like someone else did it. Not very convincing. And …’ Clay looked over at the DC and then at me. ‘Thanks to Dr Burg at the forensics lab, we’ve got something a jury would be very interested in. Very interested in indeed.’
Clay leant forward. The DC sneered. They both stared at me with a look I recognized; that of detectives who had something. What? What forensic evidence? I began to get an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach. Did he mean fingerprints? It was my flat for God’s sake. Blood on my clothes? Maybe, but it was mine and I had already accounted for it. Hadn’t they checked the freight depot? What else could they have? I figured they were just fishing, but I didn’t like the look on them.
I waited for it. Clay cleared his throat and read from the page.
‘ “On examination of the back passage no semen was found although traces of Nonoxynol were evident as were two hairs which, under examination, did not match those of the victim. They probably arrived there during the anal intercourse which accounts for the presence of the Nonoxynol. The hairs are both compatible with those usually found in the groin region.” ’ Clay paused and the DC sat up even straighter than he had been doing. Clay pointed his chin at me.
‘ “Microscope analysis of the hairs, and of those taken from the suspect in custody, shows that the hairs are of the same colour, width and type as the suspect’s pubic hair, though only a DNA match could prove they came from the same person. At this stage I would guess at a likely positive outcome. The samples have been sent to Cambridge and I will advise when the results are in.” JM Burg MD.’
Clay put the paper aside and raised his eyebrows. A muscle twitched in my jaw which could have been seen a mile away. I looked Clay in the eye.
‘They were in my bed.’
Clay shook his head slowly. He spoke softly. ‘They were up his arse you mean. They were way up there.’
‘He shoved them up there, he…’ I stopped speaking. There was no point, I was just falling into his trap, getting angry. A well of doubt rose from my bowels.
‘They were found on my bed,’ I said as calmly as I could. ‘They were found by the killer and placed in the corpse to deflect suspicion from him on to me. The whole thing is a set-up to do that.’ I tried to sound sure but Clay was right; evidence like that was always compelling in the hands of the right prosecution brief. Crying ‘frame-up’ always sounds like clutching at straws. Clay didn’t say anything, waiting for me.
‘I would hardly be likely to do him in my own flat, would I?’
‘You could have got carried away. Butchering young boys isn’t exactly logical, wherever you do it.’
‘What about time of death?’ I said.
‘A couple of hours previous to discovery, maybe three. You could have done it easily.’
I turned my head away. A dead kid in my bed with my pubic hair inside his body. Caught red-handed, on the scene, after a tip-off. Mike Williams, I thought, I hope you know someone good.
‘I wasn’t there, I told you.’
‘Yes, yes, York Way and the Big Bad Wolf.’
‘Did you check it?’
‘You were there, Billy, I’ll give you that. Prints on the door handle like you said and a bag full of puke. Some blood. But there’s nothing to say at what time you were there. What I think is you went there earlier, before picking up the arse and—’
‘A girl, a whore on the road. I spoke to her …’
‘Got a name? An address? Might be difficult to find her.’
Clay put down the sheet and picked up another. He started to read it, not seeming particularly interested in me. He was strangely subdued and I didn’t know why. He would usually have gone after something this good like a bull through a gate in springtime. My mouth was dust. Clay let out a sigh. Then he shook his head and smiled.
‘Such a shame,’ he said, turning to the DC. ‘It would have been very convenient.’ He looked back at me. ‘Not that I would have wanted to see a distinguished ex-colleague like yourself go down, mind you. No.’ He paused and glanced back at the A4 sheet before putting it down. ‘I fibbed about the time of death I’m afraid. It was earlier. Burg is sure it wasn’t much after seven and it can’t have been earlier than six-thirty because the boy was seen going into the Mcdonald’s in King’s Cross at that time. He was a regular and a lassie there recognized him.’
I took that on board. I was in the gym. Pete. Sal. Witnesses.
‘Why did you check the Mcdonald’s?’ I asked. I was relieved, curiosity moving into the space being vacated by panic.
‘You’ve to thank Burg for it. If I were you I’d send him a bunch of flowers.’ Clay pushed the pile of papers towards me and I picked up the top one and looked at it. ‘There was a Big Mac in his stomach, or at least a small part of one. Burg patched it from the mayonnaise. You’d already told us the lad worked the King’s Cross area so we checked the restaurant.’
I scanned the page trying to find the part I wanted. I couldn’t. ‘Where was the rest of it?’ I asked. ‘The burger?’ I had a horrible feeling that I knew what the answer would he. Clay’s smile made me feel slightly sick.
‘Removed,’ he said.
I saw a gaping hole of blood and intestines. Clay read from the sheet again.
‘ “Only a small part of the food was found, which had been chewed but had not begun to be digested, indicating that it cannot have been present for more than an hour at most. It is my opinion that the rest of the burger, assuming that all of it was consumed by the victim, was removed by the perpetrator to avoid an accurate assessment of the time of death. This theory is compatible with other evidence, specifically the slashing open of the stomach and the disturbance of other local organs.” ’ Clay pursed his lips and nodded to himself again. ‘Clever fellow. Burg too. I’m not sure every stiff stitcher would have spotted that. He says he suspected something like it when he saw how the stomach had been carved up, and that’s why he looked so closely for the food. There wasn’t much of it left by all accounts.’
I caught a picture of two bloody hands scraping the contents out of Dominic Lewes’ stomach.
‘It means, of course, that your movements can be accounted for.’
I shut the picture out.
‘Like I said. And the hair, I mean, he put it there. You can accept that, can’t you?’
‘Maybe. Or you could have fucked him before he met his maker. We might do you for that. Sex with a minor.’
I ignored that. ‘But how did he get the kid into my flat? I’d gone back after the gym, he wasn’t there then, after Burg says he was killed.’
‘You’re sure of that?’
‘I’d have noticed,’ I said.
Clay paused. He liked having me on the hook. He didn’t want to let me go lightly, simply because I was the wrong fish.
‘He was killed somewhere else,’ he admitted finally. ‘The body was moved. He’d been strangled. There was very little shit on your sheets which would not have been the case had he been done there. The blood patterns were wrong too, the major arteries didn’t spurt the way they should have if his heart was beating. The boy kind of just leaked. All that gory stuff in your place was cosmetic. He carried the boy up there and then had his home anatomy lesson.’
‘He was hoping I was out.’
‘Or he was waiting outside till you went out.’
I thought for a second.
‘Or he knew I was unconscious and he did it then,’ I said. ‘He was having a go at me and all the time Dominic’s body was in the boot of his car.’
‘Possible,’ Clay admitted. ‘Possibly so.’
Clay looked wistful. I’d seen him look that way before. It was the distant, all but faded ghost of compassion, conjured up by a vision of Dominic Lewes. He shook it off with a laugh.
‘By the way, we had a look in your office, to see if we couldn’t link you with the lorry driver or the other rent boy. Or Morgan. We found the keys in your flat. Your office diary said you were in the clear but we checked anyway. Some dodgy bar owner we weren’t sure about and then a lawyer bird called Sharon. She backed you up.’ Clay laughed again. ‘Tour office is not what you’d call impressive, is it? You doing well in the private sector, Rucker?’
Having established that I was no longer in the frame Clay asked me questions about the man in the hat. I told him that he might be from the North, and that he had practically admitted being the killer. He’d said it didn’t matter if he killed me, he would go away for the same stretch anyway. Clay asked me if I’d seen enough of him to add to the picture image; apparently there’s now a computer program that can do stuff like that. I told him that, unfortunately, I had not. I told Clay about the Escort. Whoever it was had obviously been waiting in it, and when I came back he called in a report about a young kid and a man with a knife. Clay said he’d already put it out on the wire.
I sat back in the chair and stretched. An hour or so had passed. Clay asked me about Rollo and I told him what had happened, that the Morgan thing and looking for Dominic were completely unconnected.
‘They’re not any more,’ Clay said.
I asked if Clay had grilled Rollo on the man in the hat. Clay said he had but he’d pleaded ignorance. They were going to have another go at him. Clay said he thought that was the best bet for now, the closest they were to him; Rollo was someone he knew of even if Rollo didn’t know him.
I relaxed some more, allowing latent exhaustion to begin to spread into my bones. I was waiting for Clay to tell me I could go home. But he didn’t. He put the sheets of A4 back into the file and sent the duty officer out for tea. He also turned the tape recorder off.
’Right then, Rucker.’ Clay made a movement with his hips and his whole enormous frame shivered forward in the chair. ‘What have you got?’ I was about to reply but I was cut off. ‘And don’t give me any shit. You’re close. The guy in the picture picked on you and then this bumboy winds up in your bed after you’ve had a go at his daddy. Not for the first time he’s been there I don’t imagine but this time he’s dead. You’re close, I know it. So give it to me.’
I shrugged my shoulders. He’d done this the wrong way round. If he’d said this when I thought I would be facing twelve indignant citizens having to explain what my pubic hairs were doing in the anal passage of a murdered fifteen-year-old rent boy I might have tried to answer. Now, I didn’t have to say a thing.
‘Tell me about Lloyd.’
That surprised me. How did he know?
‘Lloyd?’ I said.
‘I’ve had Mother Teresa on my back. He says that a certain former detective from my division had been harassing a prominent and respected MP.’
‘A different matter,’ I said.
‘Like hick it is!’
‘And harassment is a bit strong. I just wanted to chat.’
‘About what? What did you want to chat about?’
I shrugged.
‘TELL ME WHAT YOU CHATTED ABOUT!’
Clay continued to ask me that question, or tributaries of it, for the next hour, at a steady increase in volume. He also wanted to know what Dominic Lewes had to do with Morgan and simply would not believe that I was working on two things at once. He mentioned terrifying terms such as ‘withholding evidence’ and ‘perverting the course of justice’, but I knew the law. I didn’t know the link between the two things myself, and I still couldn’t think of a reason to tell him about Lloyd and Charlotte. There wasn’t much the police could do other than lean on Lloyd and hope for a very unlikely confession. They had to catch the man who had beaten me up. Without him they didn’t have anything.
He got tired eventually.
‘You better find out what’s going on, Rucker, and you’d better tell me when you know, or I’ll make some big shit for you. We’re checking that gym story of yours again and if it looks like you might not have been there exactly when you said, you’ll be back in here quicker than piss down a drain. Hear me?’
Clay left in as much of a hurry as he’d arrived. A sergeant came in. My clothes were returned to me and I put them on; all except my shirt which would have to go in the nearest bin. I was allowed to keep the sweatshirt they had given me. I was made to sign for everything and was offered a lift home, which I initially declined. I didn’t know whether or not I wanted to go home. I wanted to think about it over a curry but then I realized that I had no money on me. I changed my mind about the lift and told the sergeant on the front desk that. He said I should take a seat and wait.
It was now ten thirty and I was shafted. The adrenalin which had kept my system in operation for the last thirty-six hours had drained away and all that was left was a deep lake of fatigue, along with a diminishing pain in my head and on my face, and an increasing pain in my ribs. I didn’t rate the chance of sleep too highly though. It would have to be on the sofa in my flat, or on the sofabed in my office, and anyway the whirl of questions which had been stirred by the events of the last day and a half, but kept in the back of my brain, had begun to spin right out into the front of it.
Who broke into my flat? How did Dominic fit in? Lloyd, was Lloyd involved? It seemed ludicrous to think so but I couldn’t think of anything more plausible. But if he was, why carry on after doing Edward? To fit me up? Really? Or was it all the same guy? How had the man got the picture with my address on the back? Was he in one of the pubs I went to? Did I speak to him? Had I spoken to the killer, been friendly, given him information to help him find me? Find Dominic?
And how the hell was I going to find any of this out?
When the boy in blue came to give me my ride he was plainly pissed off at having to do so. It was a course in crime detection he’d done, not the Knowledge. I ignored his attitude and told him where I lived. I’d decided to go home because I had some cash there which I could pick up and then cab it down to the twenty-four-hour greasy spoon on Theobald’s Road before deciding where to sleep. At least I hoped I had some cash. My flat had been broken into by a psychopath and given the once-over by a team of detectives. Was it likely? At least I could change out of these clothes and pick up my cash card or a chequebook.
The car stopped at the top of Exmouth Market. I walked down towards my flat, wondering if the police had left it open or fixed the doorjamb for me. I wasn’t looking forward to going in there. I wondered how much clearing up they’d done. I was tired, hungry, and in no small amount of pain. As I got closer I saw the light from Fred’s Cafe on the right and I wondered if it was still open. It was quarter past eleven and I knew it would be but there wouldn’t be any food on. They’d probably do me a sandwich if I pleaded but I wanted something hot. I walked past the cafe and was about to turn down towards my flat when I heard the door swing open. I glanced round as a figure hurried out of the door towards me. My heart bucked in my chest on impulse and I turned, backing away, pulling my hands out of my pockets.
‘Billy!’
Sharon stood in front of me. I let out a breath. She went to put her arms around me, but stopped when I winced. She looked at me for a second, holding on to my arm, and then held a hand up to my face, lightly touching the bruising beneath my left eye.
‘Oh, Billy,’ Sharon said. Her voice was a mixture of worry and relief. It sounded good. Her eyes reached up for mine. Sharon rested her hand on my shoulder.
‘They called me,’ she said. ‘I came but they wouldn’t let me see you. I’ve been here all day. I was so worried.’ Sharon’s hand moved across my bruising again. She moved her body closer to me. The pain I was feeling, and the exhaustion and the latent fear, all seemed to rise up and out of me like the soul from a dead man’s body. All the misunderstandings, the problems we’d had, went too. There wasn’t anything left, nothing but the face in front of me, and the pleasure I felt seeing it there. I moved forward, filling the small gap between us, and Sharon’s fingers closed round my neck.
‘Oh, Billy,’ Sharon said.
And then there was fear greater than when a shotgun had been pointed at my head.
‘I love you. I love you so much.’