Daniels managed to drag herself from sleep, turn on the light and find the phone. On the other end of the line, Pete Brooks had a bad case of verbal diarrhoea. He was talking faster than she could scribble down notes on a pad.
‘Slow down, Pete . . .’ she said, ‘you’re way ahead of me.’
‘Give over. This is Britain’s party capital, remember? I’ve got a queue of calls a mile long. The whole world wants to talk to me tonight. Except the poor bastard you’re off to see. He’s past caring.’
As Brooks filled her in on what he knew, Daniels put him on speakerphone and leapt out of bed in a room ready for call-out at a moment’s notice: a suit of clean clothes hung from the wardrobe, matching shoes and briefcase beneath, next to a fully charged mobile phone and car keys. Her watch read one twenty-eight. She’d been asleep less than two hours, having spent a long day on her regular duties, then three hours teaching cognitive interviewing to rookie detectives on the CID training course. It was a skill well worth cultivating – a technique proven to enhance eyewitness recall by up to forty-five per cent – a subject so well received she’d been invited to eat with the group afterwards to carry on discussions down at the pub. Despite her best efforts to avoid it, she’d been late getting home.
‘You got an address?’ she asked.
‘Number 24 Court Mews. Drop down to the Quayside on Dean Street, go east along the river for about half a mile. You can’t miss it.’
‘Who’s the SIO?’ Daniels hoped for someone decent; not a detective with less experience than she had – someone recently promoted because his face happened to fit.
‘You are. This isn’t Night Owls calling.’
‘Very funny. Where’s Bright?’
‘Busy with another victim in the west end . . .’ Brooks raised his voice above others in the control room. ‘Nasty one too, by all accounts, so it looks like you’re on your own.’
‘You’re kidding?’
‘No, I’m deadly serious.’
Daniels punched the air. Some would say it was her lucky day, though in reality luck had little to do with it. Her first crack at Senior Investigating Officer had been a long time coming but finally it was here. Just thinking about it put a smile on her face.
‘Who do you want out?’ Brooks said, interrupting her private celebration.
‘DS Gormley.’
‘Ask a stupid question. You want to be careful, ma’am – people will talk.’
‘You don’t say?’ Daniels had a wry smile to herself. ‘And you’ve been nicknamed The Font by accident, I suppose?’
‘Ouch! You really know how to hurt people.’
‘Speak to you later, Pete. I’ve got to go.’
She hung up. Eight minutes later, she was on her way . . .
The road was unusually busy as she headed across town hoping Brooks had made the call. He had. As she turned the corner, she saw her DS sitting on his garden wall. Hank Gormley stood up as he heard her car approaching. He binned his cigarette, grinding it out on the pavement with his foot. Daniels stopped at the kerb just long enough for him to dive into the passenger seat, then did a quick U-turn and put her foot down heading for Newcastle city centre.
Gormley settled back in his seat. ‘What’s the mutter from the gutter?’
Negotiating a right-hand bend, Daniels told him what little she knew. Details were sketchy. The key-holder from Salieri’s, a popular Italian restaurant, had reported the shooting. He’d been about to lock up for the night when a woman ran in screaming blue murder. Gormley listened to every word and didn’t interrupt. It was his patience and good nature she appreciated most about him.
As they neared the city, she engaged the blue flashing light on her unmarked police car and took a short cut, driving the wrong way up a one-way street. The strategy backfired as traffic ground to halt in a haphazard line in front of St Mary’s Cathedral. Drumming her fingers on the steering wheel, Daniels stared blankly through the window at the building. Its impressive architecture was lost on her. She was somewhere else entirely, suffocating in thoughts of death, priests, and one church in particular.
Gormley followed her gaze. ‘You’ve probably got time for three Hail Marys . . .’ His joke went down like a lead balloon. ‘What’s up? You’re a good Catholic girl, aren’t you?’
‘Was, Hank . . . not any more,’ Daniels said, jabbing her horn at the driver in front, who refused to shift out of her way.
Realizing he’d said the wrong thing, Gormley tried to make amends. ‘Listen, what happened at St Camillus would shake anybody’s faith.’
‘Don’t even go there, Hank; it has nothing to do with that!’
‘If you say so.’
‘I know so . . .’ She edged forward, nudging the bumper of the car in front. ‘Let’s just say, I haven’t been to church since my mother died and leave it at that, shall we?’
‘But you did go back . . . after that.’
‘To St Camillus?’ An image of two dead bodies flashed across Daniels’ mind. Their discovery had affected her deeply, occupying every working day since, keeping her awake at night. ‘Yeah, and look where it got me.’
Gormley said nothing as she moved forward in the line, troubled, but in no mood to elaborate. She blasted her horn again, keeping it depressed until the car in front mounted the pavement. She was angry . . . though not necessarily with the driver. That didn’t stop her glowering in his direction as she drove by.
The Quayside was buzzing with energy. On the south side of the river, the Sage music centre sat like a giant silver bubble gleaming in the moonlight. To the left of it, the Gateshead Millennium Bridge offered the best view of the celebrations. On the north quay, there were scores of people milling about, more than usual for the time of night: a few drunks, the odd worker off the late shift making their way home, but mostly just people having a good time.
‘They got no homes to go to?’ Gormley asked.
‘Stragglers from Guy Fawkes, I suppose,’ Daniels offered vaguely.
‘Well, I wish they’d move. We’ve a gunpowder plot of our own to attend to.’
Daniels inched forward, frustrated with the lack of progress she was making. Tail lights up ahead were another reminder of the previous Christmas Eve – though on that night it was winter weather, not crowds, obstructing her journey.
Five minutes later, she glanced sideways. Gormley was hanging like a bat from his seat belt, catching up on lost sleep. She could see the steady rise and fall of his chest, hear his breathing changing gear as he sank deeper and deeper into unconsciousness. He snorted loudly. Sensing her interest, he opened his eyes, then shut them again when he realized they were stationary with still a way to go.
Daniels tried in vain to drag her thoughts away from St Camillus. But the memory was so vivid she brushed the side of her face expecting to feel wet tears streaming silently down her cheeks, hot and salty as they crept into her mouth. She flinched as a firework exploded on the bonnet of the car. It ricocheted off into the night, transporting her back to the church, to a lit candle on a stone-flagged floor.
‘I’ll make the bastard pay.’
‘What did you just say?’
She didn’t know he’d woken, was too busy trying to shake off the image of Sarah Short’s funeral. The poor girl had been buried at St Camillus less than three weeks from taking her last agonizing breath. The church was packed. Hundreds of mourners had come to pay their respects, outraged and saddened by the senseless act of violence that had brought about her death. The case had touched the nation from the outset, was reported widely in the press, repeated on every news bulletin, discussed by young and old, in every home, workplace, school and university. The worst of it was, the killer was still out there. And Daniels found that impossible to live with.
‘Nothing,’ she said finally. ‘Just thinking out loud.’
They were approaching a block of executive apartments in a renovated seventeenth-century warehouse. A young officer in the street saw her coming and sprang into action, lifting cones, directing her into a parking space. He seemed to be having difficulty controlling a group of drunken females at the main entrance, a well-dressed crowd wearing little but smiles and goose pimples – including a much older woman trying her best to keep up appearances.
Daniels got out of the car, telling him to get rid of rent-a-crowd.
He flushed up. ‘Yes. Ma’am.’
The older woman grinned. ‘Who does she think she is, fucking Juliet Bravo?’
One of her mates pulled a face. ‘Juliet who?’
Daniels and Gormley stifled a laugh as the young officer tried to prevent the older woman from giving him something, finally managing to penetrate his trouser pocket.
‘My mobile number,’ she said. ‘Call me when your marm’s not around.’
The foyer of Court Mews was a little pretentious for Daniels’ liking. She took a cursory look around, finding nothing out of the ordinary. As the lift doors slid open, she moved forward with Gormley hot on her heels. She turned, lifted her hand to his chest and pointed to the stairwell door. Gormley headed off . . .
Moments later, Daniels left the lift on the fourth floor. A female officer standing guard outside number 24 greeted her. The scene was secured with thick tape: Police Crime Scene Do Not Enter. Before Daniels had a chance to introduce herself, Gormley arrived through a set of double doors. He bent double with his hands on his knees, taking a moment to get his breath back.
‘I’ve got to get back in the gym,’ he said.
Daniels smiled at the policewoman. ‘He’s being ironic. It makes our grim task a bit more bearable. He hasn’t seen the inside of a gymnasium since leaving junior school.’ Then, to Gormley: ‘Find anything?’
‘Negative . . . but it was different, I’ll give you that.’
‘In what way?’
‘No hypodermics, no used condoms . . . no stink of piss. Hardly our usual murder scene, is it?’ He looked at his watch and then at the WPC. ‘Time our visit please. This is DCI Daniels and I’m DS Gormley. Where’s the body?’
‘Second door on the right as you go in, Sarge.’
‘Who found him?’ Daniels asked.
‘His wife, Monica Stephens.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘Hospital, ma’am.’
Daniels thanked her and led Gormley by the arm into the apartment, checking the door frame for signs of a forced entry. It was clean. They walked on along a wide hallway, peering into the rooms on either side. Each one appeared to be immaculate; a place for everything and everything in its place, as far as they could tell – until they reached the lounge.
The room was cold and uninviting. Daniels didn’t care much for the decor: barring the blood on the walls, everything in the room was white. Surreal was the word that sprang to mind. It was more like a chilling art exhibit than someone’s private living space. It was as if an artist had deliberately splashed red paint across a white canvas for others to appreciate, placing the corpse of a white male carefully at its centre for effect.
In a London gallery it would probably win a prize.
‘I think we can safely assume he’s dead,’ Daniels said. ‘Call out the troops and contact Area Command. Tell them to start the house-to-house immediately. I want a mobile incident caravan too. The whole nine yards, if you can get it.’
Gormley made the call, then crouched down beside the body to get a closer look. The dead man was dressed in a dinner suit; his clothing intact, apart from a missing bow tie. A bullet wound had caused enormous trauma to one side of his skull.
‘Bet that smarted a bit . . .’ he said. ‘He must really have upset someone, given that it’s not a robbery.’
‘What makes you say that?’
Gormley looked up. ‘His wallet’s on the table by the door.’
Daniels knelt down beside him. But she didn’t stay there long. Although she’d seen death in all its grisly forms, for the second time in under a year she suddenly recoiled from a body. It was like this with Sarah Short and now – almost twelve months later – it was happening all over again.
Her actions telegraphed alarm to Gormley, who couldn’t fathom what he’d missed. His eyes shifted to a photograph she was staring at. He gave her a moment to compose herself, curiosity getting the better of him.
With her DS breathing down her neck, Daniels moved to the table near the door. She took out a pen and used it to open up the wallet. Inside was a driver’s licence and money – lots of it.
Gormley read over her shoulder. ‘Alan James Stephens. D’you know him?’
‘Trick of the light.’ She held up her glasses. ‘If I wore these more often, maybe I’d see a whole lot better.’
Gormley eyed her warily and chose to leave it alone.