Lastnight (11 page)

There was police tape across the door to Flat 3 and a letter had been stapled to it saying that no one was to gain entrance and that any queries could be dealt with by calling one of three phone numbers. The wood around the lock had splintered, presumably from when the police had broken it down, and it had been roughly repaired with a few pieces of cheap timber.

Flat 5 was directly above Heaton’s flat. Nightingale knocked on the door and it was opened by a man in his late twenties wearing Mickey Mouse boxer shorts. He looked at Nightingale blearily and yawned, showing perfect white teeth. ‘Yeah?’ he said, then yawned again.

‘Joe Lumley?’

The man nodded and ran a hand through his unkempt hair as he tried to focus on Nightingale’s face. ‘Yeah.’

‘I’m sorry to have woken you up,’ said Nightingale.

‘I haven’t been to bed yet,’ said Lumley. Nightingale looked at his watch. It was ten o’clock. ‘I work nights,’ the man growled. ‘I only just got in.’

‘Sorry,’ said Nightingale.

Lumley opened the door wider. ‘No sweat. You want tea?’

‘Yeah, thanks,’ said Nightingale. The man padded over to a table on which there was a microwave and a kettle. He switched on the kettle, then grabbed a pair of jeans and a black pullover and disappeared into the bathroom. He reappeared a couple of minutes later wearing the jeans and pullover and having attempted to run a comb through his hair.

‘Like I said, I’ve spoken to the cops already. There’s not much I can add. I must have been out when he was killed. I never heard anything.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘That was the point, actually. For the first time in over a year he was quiet. I should have realised something was wrong when he wasn’t playing his stereo full blast in the afternoon.’

‘Noisy neighbour?’ said Nightingale.

‘You don’t know the half of it,’ said Lumley. The kettle switched itself off and Lumley dropped teabags into the mugs and poured in hot water. ‘I know I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead but Daryl was a nasty piece of work. He really didn’t give a toss about anyone other than himself. He was up late at night but that was okay because I worked nights. I know the girl in Flat 1 was always complaining and even got the council environmental people around once, but you couldn’t reason with him. I think he had two ASBOs from his last place. That was council-owned so they got him out eventually but this is private so there was no way to get him out.’

‘He’s out now,’ said Nightingale.

Lumley looked over his shoulder. ‘Yeah, but skinning him alive was a bit drastic, don’t you think?’

‘I suppose they looked at the woman in Flat 1?’

Lumley laughed. ‘She’s five foot nothing. Daryl was a big lad.’ He bent down to open a small fridge tucked away under the table. He sloshed milk into both mugs. ‘Sugar?’

‘Sweet enough,’ said Nightingale.

Lumley handed him one of the mugs, a tea bag still floating in the brew. ‘So they’re no nearer catching the guys that did it?’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘What I read in the papers. Plus the fact that you’re here.’ He waved Nightingale to the one chair in the room, a wood one with a high back. Lumley sat down on the bed.

‘I was hoping to talk to whoever was in Flat 4. I wanted to know if they saw Daryl with any visitors.’ Nightingale took photographs of the four other victims and gave them to Lumley.

‘They’re the others that were killed, right?’

Nightingale nodded. ‘Did you ever see any of them here?’

‘I didn’t see much of him or his visitors, truth be told,’ said Lumley. He flicked through the pictures and then handed them back. ‘We were in different time zones. Once I got into the habit of sleeping with earplugs I rarely had any dealings with him.’ He sipped his tea. ‘You know what he was like, right?’

‘A thirty-nine-year-old Goth, unemployed. That pretty much says it all.’

Lumley chuckled. ‘Yeah, he wasn’t a great one for nine to five, that’s for sure. He wasn’t a Goth though. I think they just said that to make it a better story. The first four were Goths, right? Two young guys and two young girls. Then they found Daryl all cut to bits and they wanted to label it the Goth Killers so that’s how they described him. But I heard the music he played and he wasn’t into the Goth stuff. More heavy metal. The heavier the better.’

‘Goth stuff would be what, then?’

‘Pierce The Veil, Sleeping With Sirens, My Chemical Romance. The Cure if you’re old school. Not Aerosmith and AC-DC.’

‘So you’re saying he wasn’t a Goth?’

‘He wore black, sure. But none of that make-up nonsense. Black jeans, black shirts, black motorcycle boots. He was more of a biker.’

‘Did he have a bike?’

Lumley laughed. ‘No, he was a biker without a bike. But he did have biker mates. Not Hells Angels exactly, but serous bikers. I saw the picture they used in the papers, and it was him, sure, but it showed his face and his hair was spiky and gelled but usually he just wore it natural. And you didn’t see the tattoos in the picture, his arms were covered in them. All sorts of stuff. Fish. Animals. Flowers. A pirate. A sword. The times I saw him he was wearing a denim jacket with the sleeves hacked off.’

‘So you saw bikers around but never Goths?’

‘Like I said, he wasn’t a Goth. I think the papers just wanted to say that he was to make it a better story. I mean, it’s not a great headline to say that cops are hunting a Goth and biker killer, is it?’

‘I guess not,’ said Nightingale. ‘You said Daryl was the fifth to be killed. Actually he was the fourth. But his was the last body to be found.’

‘Yeah, it was me that reported it. You could tell that something was wrong from the smell in the hallway. At first I thought a rat had died under the floorboards but it got worse. I knocked on the door a few times and eventually I called the landlord.’

‘Not the cops?’

Lumley shook his head. ‘I’m not a big fan of the cops,’ he said. ‘If I’d called it in then I’d be in the system. You know what it’s like, some bright spark would wonder if I’d done it and would start giving me the third degree. So I called the landlord and let him handle it.’

‘The cops don’t think you did it, I can tell you that much,’ said Nightingale. ‘Anyway, most of the killings took place late at night when you’d have an alibi.’ He sipped his tea. ‘So what do you work at?’

‘I’m a night porter at a hotel in Covent Garden,’ he said. ‘Well, I’m a student but that’s what I do to pay my bills. They’re pretty cool about me reading textbooks while I’m there, so it’s all good.’

‘But Daryl, he was just on the dole?’

‘He must have been getting cash from somewhere,’ said Lumley. ‘The amount he spent on booze and dope.’

‘Dope?’

‘Used to smell that in the hallway, too.’ He grinned and tapped his nose. ‘Sensitive nose, me,’ he laughed. ‘Plus I’m not impartial to a bit of …’ He grimaced. ‘Whoops, probably shouldn’t say that.’

‘It’s practically legal these days,’ said Nightingale. ‘And all I’m interested in is who killed Daryl.’

‘Has to be a psycho, right?’ said Lumley. ‘Cutting him up the way they did. Must have taken an hour or so, to kill him and chop him up.’

Nightingale nodded. ‘There are some sick people around.’

‘When I heard he’d been killed I thought maybe it was a drug thing. Maybe he’d been dealing and he’d pissed somebody off. But then this whole Goth Killers thing blew up. I mean that’s really sick, right? Killing someone because of what they look like.’

‘But you said Daryl wasn’t a Goth.’

‘Yeah, but he wore black. Maybe they made a mistake.’

Nightingale stared down at the tea bag in his mug. ‘Maybe.’ He drank his tea and stood up. ‘Well, I’ll let you get to bed,’ he said.

‘Sorry I wasn’t more help. But I do hope you catch them, whoever’s doing it.’

‘You and me both,’ said Nightingale.

11

T
he Aitken home was in Hampstead, close to the village. It was detached and there were two cars parked outside, a white Lexus and a green Mini Cooper. The house looked Edwardian, the red bricks were weathered and the slate roof was dotted with patches of moss. It was Luke’s mother who answered the door, a stick-thin woman with dark patches under her eyes that suggested she wasn’t getting much sleep. She wore a pale blue cardigan with a string of pearls around her neck. She was in her mid-forties but the death of her son had hit her hard and she looked a good ten years older. She led Nightingale down a hallway to a sitting room with a large cast-iron Victorian fireplace either side of which were bookshelves lined with leather-bound books. There were two green leather Chesterfield sofas either side of an oak coffee table piled high with books and she waved Nightingale to one. ‘My husband has gone to work,’ she said. ‘He didn’t want to but if he’s not there, the place falls apart.’ She shrugged and forced a smile. ‘Can I offer you a tea or a coffee?’

‘I’m fine, Mrs Aitken, thank you,’ said Nightingale.

She walked over to a drinks cabinet in the corner of the room. ‘I’m going to have a sherry,’ she said. ‘Would you like one?’

‘I’m driving, but thank you,’ he said. He saw her hand pull away from the decanter and the look of disappointment etched on to her face. ‘Go on then,’ he said. ‘Just a small one.’

She beamed, poured two glasses of sherry, gave him one and sat down on the sofa opposite him. ‘You had some questions, you said?’

‘I’m trying to get a feel for who your son met during the days before he died,’ said Nightingale.

‘The investigation has stalled, hasn’t it?’ she said. She was sitting with her back ramrod straight, the glass of sherry in her lap.

‘Not stalled exactly,’ said Nightingale. ‘There are as many officers on it as there was when the investigation began. And witnesses are still being canvassed and CCTV is being looked at. But we’re keen to open up more lines of enquiry.’

‘I don’t follow you,’ she said. She was watching him intently and he had could see that she was weighing him up. He had her marked down as a housewife when she’d opened the door but it was clear that she was used to dealing with people from a position of authority. He looked over at the mantelpiece. There were framed photographs there, mainly of Mrs Aitken, her much older husband, and Luke, the son. There was also a photograph of Mrs Aitken in the robes and wig of a barrister.

He looked back at her and smiled. ‘We’re trying to work out why Luke was targeted.’

‘Wrong place, wrong time,’ she said. ‘I’ve been trying not to play the “what if” game. What happened, happened, and we have to deal with it.’

Nightingale nodded. ‘We’re looking for a possible connection between those who died,’ he said. He deliberately avoided the word ‘victim’ and ‘killed’, though he could see that Mrs Aitken didn’t need to have her feelings spared.

‘If you can find that connection, it will help identify the killers,’ she said. ‘That makes sense.’ She sipped her sherry.

‘I’m sure you’ve already been asked this, but have you ever seen Luke with any of these people?’ Nightingale took the five photographs from his pocket, took out Luke’s and handed the remaining four to Mrs Aitken.

She looked at them carefully, then shook her head emphatically. ‘I have seen the pictures before and no, I don’t recall ever seeing any of them with my son.’ She handed them back and took a longer sip of her sherry.

‘Luke was a student?’

‘He was, at Exeter University.’

‘But it was term time, right?’

‘Luke was having problems at university and we felt that it would be better for him to spend some time at home.’

‘Problems?’

Mrs Aitken sipped her sherry again. Her glass was already half empty. ‘Luke was always …’ She looked pained. ‘A little confused. He always went into things with enthusiasm, but that enthusiasm never lasted for long. He just wasn’t enjoying being at Exeter. At first he said it was the course that he didn’t like, but it soon became clear it was the place. We were looking at the possibility of him transferring to London.’

‘He had a lot of friends here?’

She nodded. ‘I think that was part of the problem. He had so many friends here that he didn’t give Exeter a chance.’

‘His friends were mainly Goths?’

‘I hate that label,’ said Mrs Aitken. ‘The Gay Goth the tabloids called him. And the gay community has been using him as the poster boy for their campaign to criticise the police. As if his sexual orientation had anything to do with it.’ She finished her sherry and walked over to the drinks cabinet and poured herself another. ‘Luke was a gentle soul. He never had a girlfriend and I don’t think he had a boyfriend. He went to gay clubs but I think that was just him experimenting. It was the same with the Goth thing. He only got into that before he left for Exeter. He said he liked the music.’ She shuddered. ‘My husband and I hated it. He has his own apartment in the basement but we could still hear it if he played it loud. Horrible lyrics.’ She shuddered again and then went to sit back on the sofa.

‘Do you know what clubs he went to?’

‘Soho mainly,’ she said. ‘He never said which ones. Just Soho.’

‘Did he go alone or with friends?’

‘He’d meet up with friends when he was there.’

‘So it is possible that he might have known one of the other four?’

‘I suppose so.’ She took another sip of sherry. ‘My husband is taking it very badly.’

‘It must be a nightmare,’ said Nightingale.

‘Do you have children?’ Nightingale shook his head. ‘We only had the one. And we nearly lost Luke when he was born. He was premature so he was straight into the neonatal babies unit. The first few days were touch and go.’ She forced a smile. ‘But he was a fighter. There was a strength about him, under the surface. He was soft and gentle but deep down, he could be like steel.’

Nightingale took a drink of sherry as he listened. He wanted her to talk because anything that she said might be helpful. But at the end of the day, maybe she was right – her son had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

‘Luke and his father had a big argument, two days before he died,’ said Mrs Aitken. ‘Luke had been to get a tattoo. He hadn’t told us. I don’t even know when he got it. I just noticed it one day. On his shoulder. I told him it wasn’t a smart thing to do, that these days a lot of firms won’t hire anyone with a tattoo but he said I was being silly and that any shirt would cover it.’ She sighed and sipped her sherry again. ‘I made the mistake of mentioning it to Gerald, my husband.’ She raised her eyes to the ceiling and sighed out loud. ‘It was a huge mistake, but then hindsight is always twenty-twenty, isn’t it?’