Murder Club (21 page)

‘Go on.’

‘He was visiting London on business, he made the trip several times a year. In his suitcase we found women’s clothing. We thought he was a transvestite. But there was also a pair of torn knickers, with semen stains, some blood and pubic hair. Male and female.’

‘And?’

‘Turned out the semen was his, as was the male pubic hair,’ continued DI Halliday. ‘The blood and the other pubic hair was from an as-yet-unidentified female.’

‘So we have a suicide. And some stained underwear and a mystic tarot card, on the person of a pub landlord from Lavenham in Suffolk.’

‘Except maybe it wasn’t suicide,’ said DI Hamilton.

‘You have my attention,’ replied Delaney.

‘Last night,’ continued Emma Halliday, ‘another man jumped under a train. This time from the east-bound Bakerloo Line platform at Baker Street station.’

‘More underwear in a briefcase?’

‘No. But again no identification on him. And he was carrying an envelope with a lot of cash in it.’

‘And something else,’ said Tony, as the tall woman handed another evidence card to Delaney.

‘Another tarot card.’

‘This one is called Judgement,’ said Emma.

‘Does that have any special significance?’

‘It might do, especially if he didn’t jump.’

‘He was pushed, you mean?’

‘No witnesses said they saw him being pushed. But one of the people on the platform beside him thought they heard a sound before he went under the train.’

Delaney met her level gaze. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me.’

‘The sound she described sounded a lot like a static electric buzz.’

‘He was tasered, you’re saying?’

‘You catch on fast.’

‘I’m a detective inspector. It goes with my pay grade. And what’s the rest of it?’

‘The face was pretty smashed in,’ said DI Halliday.

Delaney grimaced.

‘But something about him …’ She gestured with her hand. ‘I got the pathologist to run a check for burn marks.’

‘Evidence of a Taser?’

‘Yep, hand held, close range. Enough volts to make him jump involuntarily.’

‘Police-issue kind of Taser,’ Emma Halliday added.

‘So this guy who jumped in front of the Bakerloo Line train. We know who he is?’

‘We do now. What I could see of his face looked kind of familiar. I ran some fingerprints. And bingo bongo!’ replied Emma.

‘So the question we need to ask you, Jack …’

‘Yes?’

‘Is where were you at eight-thirty last night?’

‘Are you tugging on my lariat?’

‘Sorry, cowboy,’ said Emma with a wink. ‘But I hear nowadays you’re a married man, good as. So where were you?’

‘Who’s the John Doe.’

‘Michael Robinson, Jack.’

‘Ah.’

‘Indeed.’

‘So, anything you want to tell us?’

Delaney shrugged. ‘It’s four days to Christmas. I haven’t done any shopping. I’ve got a tree to buy, a house to decorate. An unsolved murder to investigate, another possible murder. It’s dark and I’m wearing sunglasses. Now tell me, who do you love?’

Emma smiled and Delaney smiled back at her. ‘Got to love you, Jack.’

‘Where were you, cowboy?’ asked Hamilton. ‘Just for the record.’

Delaney leaned in and whispered in Catwalk Halliday’s ear. The female DI raised an eyebrow.

‘You are fricking kidding me!’ she said.

Delaney gestured apologetically with his hands and Emma smiled again.

‘Everything they say about you is true, isn’t it?’

‘I guess it is.’

‘Like I say, got to love you, Jack!’

‘Anyone want to let me in on the secret?’ said DI Tony Hamilton.

SALLY CARTWRIGHT FLICKED
the windscreen wipers to full speed. The snow was really coming down in earnest now and the traffic was crawling through London.

‘You reckon this snow is going to last until Christmas, boss?’ she asked Delaney.

Delaney peered out at Edgware Road station, people bundled up and coming out of the entrance. The shopping spree still in full swing.

‘You done all your Christmas shopping, Sally?’ he asked, ignoring her question.

‘Two weeks ago, sir. Presents wrapped, cards all sent.’

‘What a surprise.’

‘I take it you are not entirely finished?’

‘I haven’t even started. But yeah, I hope it does last for Christmas.’

‘Turning into an old romantic?’

‘Less of the old. And no. I meant for Siobhan’s sake. Christmas, it’s for kids, isn’t it?’

‘And big kids, sir. You’re not fooling anyone.’

‘I wouldn’t be so sure of that.’

‘What did Catwalk and Tony Hamilton want with you?’

‘Some developments in the Michael Robinson case.’

‘What kind of developments?’

‘Someone pushed him under the eight-thirty to Elephant and Castle last night.’

‘Bloody hell! Is he dead?’

‘Let’s just say he didn’t need to buy a return ticket to Harrow-on-the-Hill.’

‘Bloody hell,’ she said again, quieter this time. ‘So why the both of them? And why not just call you?’

‘It was in the way of an official enquiry. They wanted to know where I was at the time.’

‘Well, I can’t say I’m unhappy that he’s dead. What did you tell them?’

‘That I had an alibi.’

‘And do you?’

‘Sally, I am shocked that you could even ask that question,’ he said, shaking his head in mock-sadness.

‘So have they got any leads on who did it?’

‘They think we’ve got us a serial killer. There was a tarot card found in his pocket. A year or so ago another man was under a train with a tarot card from the same deck.’

‘How do they know it’s the same deck?’

‘I meant the same style of deck. Apparently there are hundreds of different decks, different designs. These two were from the same series.’

‘Who was the first guy?’

‘Chap called Andrew Johnson. A publican from a quaint rural town called Lavenham, in the heart of Suffolk.’

‘Any connection between them?’

‘Not sure. But according to Tony Blue-Eyes, he used to live in Harrow before moving to Suffolk.’

‘They knew each other?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Somebody knew them both.’

‘Certainly looks that way.’

Sally Cartwright flicked her indicator down and turned left into the grounds of the hospital. It was an imposing Victorian building, much of the architecture as it originally was, with some modern wings and extensions added. She parked the car and placed the ‘Police on call’ sign on the dashboard.

She looked across as Laura Chilvers pulled her car into the adjoining slot. ‘What do you make of Dr Chilvers?’ she asked Delaney.

Delaney winked at her. ‘I don’t go for blondes,’ he said.

‘Yeah, funny, sir.’

‘What’s on your mind?’

‘I don’t know. There’s something odd about her lately.’

‘She’s a lesbian, Sally. Maybe she fancies you.’

Delaney got out of the car before she could reply, and walked towards the entrance.

MRS JOHNSON LOOKED
down at the man who had his head placed between her legs. He was a twenty-four-year-old called Simon, who worked in the bar for her. He worked in the bedroom for her too.

She moaned and tangled her fingers in his hair, pressing his head down harder on her sex.

‘That’s it, work that tongue, boy. Do a good job of it and I might let you fuck me.’

She smiled as she saw his bare buttocks buck slightly on the mattress. If he came before she did, it wouldn’t be the first time, but she’d keep him down until the job was done. She had had a variety of young lovers over the year since her husband had died, and regretted not starting a lot sooner. The truth was, she was never much interested in sex before his death. He was a boring man in life, and never more so than in the bedroom, where he would roll on top of her like a beached seal and, after a few cursory pumps with his small member, would reach a climax and flop back over again. In all the years since they had been married she hadn’t orgasmed even once. Now she insisted on it every time. Two or three times a day.

She lay back and smiled as the boy beneath her
moaned
with pleasure himself as he lapped at her like a large dog at his water bowl.

And then the phone rang.

Bible Steve was dressed in a hospital gown. Blood was dripping slightly from his arm where he had ripped the IV tube loose, and the young female nurse blocking his way to the hospital exit was holding her arms up trying to placate him.

‘Please, sir. You can’t leave.’

‘I’m no sir,’ he bellowed back at her. ‘Look at me. Look at these hands.’

He held his weather-beaten, scarred and sore hands palm upwards.

‘These are not the hands of a sir. They are the hands of a bum. Of a tramp. And there is blood on them. Macbeth blood. They will not be washed clean.’

‘You need treatment.’

‘I need scourging. I need fire. Most of all … I need whisky!’ He brushed her aside and stumbled up to the door, where Delaney held out his hand and put it on his chest.

‘Hold your horses, Bible.’

‘Stop calling me that. You think if you keep calling me Bible or Steve, it will make me believe it’s who I am.’

‘And who are you?’

‘I’m just a man in need of a drink!’

He moved to skirt around Delaney, but the DI held his hands wide.

‘You need to stay here,’ added Laura. ‘They are doing some tests. They can help you.’

‘No one can help me.’

‘The thing is, we need to talk to you. You made some claims this morning,’ said Delaney.

‘I can’t remember,’ he said and stumbled past him to Laura, holding his hands out to her. ‘Give me money, so I can get some hot tea and a sandwich.’

‘They can give that to you here.’

Bible Steve shook his head angrily. ‘I need a drink.’

‘For God’s sake, man. Do you want to kill yourself?’ asked Laura.

The bearded man looked at her sadly for a moment. ‘I must have wanted to, mustn’t I? Whoever I was, that’s what I’ve been doing.’

He turned away and then started coughing, his body shaking violently. Then Bible Steve dropped to his knees and vomited. Spattering the clean and shiny floor with bile and bright blood. Laura rushed over to him and Delaney handed her a handkerchief.

‘Is he all right?’

‘No, he’s not.’

A few minutes later and Bible Steve was back in the intensive-care room. He watched passively as drips were once more attached to his arm, monitoring devices attached to his chest. There was no fight in him and his eyes were scared.

The registrar, Dr Lily Crabbe, came back out of the room.

‘We’ve given him some more sedation.’

‘Vomiting blood. That’s quite serious, isn’t it?’ asked Delaney.

‘It can be. We won’t know till we get his blood-work back.’

‘Coughing blood can mean an internal injury,’ said
Laura
Chilvers, looking worried. ‘Something he got as a consequence of the beating he received?’

The registrar shrugged – not disinterested, just tired. ‘It could also mean he has been vomiting heavily recently. Given his condition, it is not an unlikely situation. That can lead to tears in the oesophagus – the throat,’ she added unnecessarily for Delaney’s benefit.

‘But it could be from the beating?’ Laura pressed on, chewing nervously on the corner of her thumbnail. She realised what she was doing and thrust her hands into her pockets.

‘It could be from many things.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Delaney. ‘But we do need to talk to him urgently.’

‘Might I ask why you people are taking so much interest in this particular homeless man? I don’t mean to be rude, but from my experience such people are not usually high on the priority list of the Metropolitan Police,’ said Dr Crabbe.

‘That’s not true,’ said Delaney. ‘But as it happens, this particular homeless man may be the victim of an attempted homicide.’

‘Homeless people get beaten up all the time.’

‘And this one may have seen a murder. Or may have committed one himself.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He confessed earlier.’

‘He was rambling, confused. I think he has been suffering from some kind of psychotic fugue, perhaps brought on by the attack. Or exacerbated by it,’ said Laura.

‘I guess we’ll have to find out, then,’ said Jack Delaney.

KATE WALKER SAT
at her desk, her laptop computer open in front of her. She should have been responding to about fifty emails that had built up in the day she had been away from the police surgeon’s office. She should have been … but wasn’t.

She was looking to find something to buy Jack Delaney for Christmas. Their first Christmas together. They had gone shopping for presents for Siobhan and he had been as happy as she had ever seen him. Not that she had known him that long. Not even nine months, for goodness’ sake, and here she was living with the man, bringing up his daughter as though her own. And a child they were having together being carried inside her. She didn’t know yet whether it was a boy or a girl, and neither she nor Jack wanted to find out. She figured he would probably like a son. Replace the son that he thought was his when his first wife died. Died when Jack intervened in an armed robbery at a petrol station in Pinner Green. One of the masked men had blasted a shotgun towards him, only it had hit his car instead, critically injuring his wife who was in the passenger seat. She had died later in hospital and they were unable to save the unborn son she was carrying inside her.

Delaney had been devastated, had gone on a four-year binge of self-destruction. Wallowing in alcohol and violence. Functioning as a cop, but only just. When a friend of his, an Irish prostitute called Jackie Malone, had been killed in an attempt to stop the exposure of an organised paedophile ring, it had thrown Jack and Kate together. In more ways than one. Her own uncle, a high-ranking police officer, had been involved in the ring. Luring runaway children off the streets of London under cover of offering protection, whereas in fact the children were being taken to a large house near Henley-on-Thames, where they were subjected to horrific abuse, filmed and in some cases murdered. Jackie Malone’s nephew had been used by Kate’s uncle as bait on the streets and, as far as she was concerned, ex Chief Superintendent Walker could rot in hell. He was never going to see the outside world again, that much was for sure. She had given him a knife scar on his right cheek after he tried coming to her room late at night one last time. If she had been able, she would have taken his head off with it from the neck.