A Killing of Angels (11 page)

Taylor’s swagger was less pronounced when we got outside. Rayner’s homosexuality seemed to have scrambled his brain temporarily.

‘Christ, what a freak. You wouldn’t want him running a scout group.’ His sneer deepened. ‘I wouldn’t mind swapping jobs with you, though. All you have to do is ask questions, then let us do the dirty work.’

He strutted back to his car without offering me a lift. There was no doubt in my mind that his aggression posed more of a threat to the general public than the man I’d interviewed. I thought about Stephen Rayner as I reached Leicester Square. Few people would take two weeks off work when their boss died, no matter how close they’d been. He was doing his best to present an immaculate image to the world, but he was near to breaking point. It seemed hard to believe that a gay man could still feel intimidated in the twenty-first century. Banking sounded like the opposite of the NHS. I was lucky to work for an organisation where everyone went out of their way to be politically correct.

*   *   *

Rayner soon slipped from my mind as I rushed to my meeting with the hospital trustees. The executive suite gave no clues that the place was low on funds – plush carpet and floral displays everywhere you looked. I paused on the landing to admire the skyline. It rose and fell like spikes on a cardiogram: Centre Point, The Pinnacle and The Shard soaring effortlessly into the sky. A row of blank-faced suits stared back at me when I reached the boardroom. I explained the reasons why they should fund the anger management groups: follow-up studies showed a reduction in domestic violence, and ex-prisoners were fifty per cent less likely to reoffend. No one batted an eyelid, and the chief executive marched me to the door as soon as I’d finished.

‘Thank you, Dr Quentin, you’re very passionate about your cause.’ He didn’t bother to crack a smile as he nodded goodbye.

I was seething when I got outside − my time would have been spent more usefully shrieking into a paper bag. I forced myself through the afternoon’s duties with gritted teeth.

At five o’clock I put on my running gear and sprinted down the fire escape. When I reached the ground floor I was glad I’d taken the stairs, because Darren was hanging around by the lifts. His jeans and T-shirt looked so crumpled he must have been wearing them for days, but it was his body language that worried me, alert and watchful as a guardsman, and I knew he was waiting for me. Maybe no one else had given him the benefit of the doubt. I should have run back upstairs and told Hari about his vigil, but the idea exhausted me. I’ve always resisted giving in to paranoia about my safety, so I jogged towards the station without looking back.

Commuters were packed into the Tube compartment like fish in a drag net. When I finally reached the escalator at Warren Street, everyone was staring upwards expectantly, longing for a glimpse of the sky. My heart lifted as I reached Regent’s Park and started to jog. It’s my favourite of all London’s parks − so big that it’s a world in itself, with enough attractions to keep you entertained for weeks: a boating lake, a mosque, a theatre, cafés. It even has its own zoo, with cages full of sad-eyed orang-utans. Perhaps Stephen Rayner was a regular visitor, taking photos to keep his stress at bay. It was easy to spot other would-be marathon runners. The punishing heat hadn’t broken their training schedule, and they’d invested in the best trainers they could afford. The woman in front of me was setting a brisk pace, so I followed her, admiring the mansions on Cumberland Terrace. They must have been built two hundred years ago, for the landed gentry. It was hard to imagine who owned them now. Only oligarchs and supermodels would have the right cash flow.

Andrew Piernan was sitting on a bench beside Clarence Gate, wearing a dark blue tracksuit, and he fell into step without saying a word, thin shoulders rising and falling steadily. I felt guilty for assuming that he never took exercise. He looked completely at ease, and he had the right physique for distance running – wiry and long-limbed, no excess weight to carry.

‘You’ve done this before, haven’t you?’ I asked.

‘Couple of times a week. Not here, though. I run in the City.’ He nodded at my backpack. ‘Let me carry that.’

I shook my head. ‘I’m fine, thanks.’

‘Of course. You’re superwoman, how could I forget?’

I gave him an old-fashioned look and we ran on in silence. The fact that he was relaxed enough to tease me meant I didn’t have to worry. It didn’t matter that my ponytail had collapsed, and patches of sweat were soaking through my T-shirt, while he ran effortlessly.

‘Want to go faster for the last mile?’ I asked. Sprinting at the end of each run was one of my strategies to improve my speed.

He smiled back at me, then cut left along the Broad Walk. People were relaxing on the grass, a young couple sitting under a chestnut tree, giving each other mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Piernan was sprinting so fast that my wounded ribs ached and my lungs heaved with effort. The late-afternoon sun was still dazzling when we reached the café.

‘You’re quick.’ He grinned at me. ‘You’ll do that marathon in no time.’

‘If I survive,’ I gasped.

I left him queuing for drinks while I splashed cold water across the back of my neck in the toilets. When I blotted my face with a paper towel, I noticed that I looked surprised. The shock of discovering that Piernan could outpace me was still registering. He was pouring mineral water into ice-filled glasses when I got outside. His hands looked fragile, knuckles white under his freckled skin.

‘How long have you been running?’ I asked.

‘Forever. It was the one thing I enjoyed at school.’

‘Let me guess, you went to Eton, right?’

Piernan laughed. ‘You think I’m a cliché, don’t you? A posh twit with oodles of money and no sense.’

‘The jury’s out. For all I know you’re on Jobseeker’s Allowance.’

‘I bet you went to some nice girls’ grammar, followed by three years of mayhem at Cambridge.’

‘God, no. A grotty comprehensive in Charlton, then London for my degree.’

Piernan’s expression hardened suddenly, and he was silent for a while before he spoke again. ‘You’re quite wrong about me, you know. I’m from a privileged background, but it doesn’t interest me.’ His voice petered out. ‘I’ve always worked hard, partly for my sister.’

The attendants were collecting the last fares of the day on the boating lake, and Piernan still looked angry, the muscles tight around his mouth. It was a trait I recognised in myself – rage bubbling out of nowhere, requiring constant effort to keep it in check. Maybe he was sick of being reminded about his silver spoon, or his sister’s condition made him feel guilty. It took a while for him to talk easily again, the tension gradually lifting from his face. He told me that he’d grown up in a country house that his family had owned for generations. It took ten minutes to walk from his bedroom to the kitchen, which was hidden in the basement.

‘It was like Downton Abbey, but with fewer scandals,’ he said. ‘They had to sell it in the end. They live much more modestly now.’

The café had emptied since we’d arrived. The waitress was starting to clear away noisily, stacking chairs on tables. Piernan leant forwards in his seat.

‘The thing is, you’re not really looking for a relationship, are you?’ His light brown eyes were studying me. ‘Is that because of something in the past?’

‘Probably. The last time wasn’t much fun.’

‘You could set the pace, you know. I can be surprisingly patient. You might even get to like me.’

‘Stranger things have happened, I suppose.’ I smiled back at him.

He handed me his card with a grave smile. ‘If you want to meet up again, text me, or send me an email.’

‘Thank you.’ I put the card in my rucksack. ‘Time I was going.’

I set off across the grass, and when I glanced back, he was still sitting there, surrounded by empty tables. I waited for a bus on Euston Road and thought about his offer. Normally the men I ended up with were brash, confident and determined to take charge. Piernan had been shrewd to offer me the driving seat, because it made me keen to see him again. I studied the delicate blue lettering on his card, then looked out of the window and did my best to forget him.

14

Marimba music woke me before the alarm. I thought I’d woken up in Havana, until I remembered I’d changed my ring tone. I hauled myself upright and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. It was six thirty, and a man’s voice was babbling too fast to make sense. It took me a while to realise that it was Steve Taylor.

‘I hope I’m not disturbing your beauty sleep.’ I could picture him leering into his phone. There was a buzz of voices, then a door slamming somewhere nearby. ‘Brotherton wants you at the hospital, quick as you can.’

I let out a string of curses then got dressed and jogged to my car. The river was already glittering with sunlight, boats motionless on the tide. Going to work so early felt unnatural, like the start of a nightmare, but the press had beaten me to it. A crowd of journalists and photographers were loitering by the entrance doors, clutching cameras and cigarettes. I picked up my pace when I saw Dean Simons. He was a freelance hack who touted nonsense to the tabloids, and he’d made my life hell after the Crossbones case, doorstepping me for weeks, begging for an interview. It had taken two solicitor’s letters to make him slink back into the shadows, but he’d exacted his revenge. He wrote a story that was full of fabricated quotes, insinuating that I’d been so broken by my ordeal that I’d never work again. I’d decided not to sue, but the sight of him still made my skin crawl. He looked the same as ever. An overweight, red-faced, fifty-year-old with dirty grey hair, trying to hide his beer belly inside a tight leather jacket. A look of excitement crossed his face when he saw me, like he’d spotted a long-lost friend.

‘I’m still waiting for that exclusive, Alice. Come and chat on the way out.’

A chorus of shutters snapped at me as I hurried past. When I found Burns he was standing outside Marshall Ward, looking sheepish, as though he regretted getting me involved.

‘Nicole Morgan was attacked last night,’ he explained. ‘Brotherton wanted you here before the press briefing.’

‘What happened?’

‘She went to a meeting at one of the banks. He attacked her by her car.’ Burns was leading me up the stairs, pacing so fast I could hardly keep up.

‘And it’s definitely our man?’

He stopped to pass me a crumpled piece of A4 wrapped in an evidence bag. The garish colours looked like an image from a stained-glass window. It was a different type of angel this time, downloaded from the internet, a crude contrast to the serene Renaissance faces from the previous attacks. I stared at the image in surprise.

‘He’s changed his signature,’ I said.

‘No feathers this time either. A car frightened him off before he could finish her. Nicole can’t tell us much else – he got her from behind.’

The changes to the killer’s signature were beginning to make me wonder whether Morgan’s attacker had been a copycat.

I used my pass key to unlock an office nearby and he followed me inside.

‘Was it a knife attack?’ I asked.

Burns pulled some Polaroid photos from his pocket reluctantly and handed them to me. I studied each one, then closed my eyes. Nicole Morgan’s attacker had gone for maximum damage. The first concern would be her kids; they would need counselling to help them accept the change. It looked as if a plastic surgeon had made a series of catastrophic errors. A knife wound had extended her mouth by several inches, but the left side of her face had taken the brunt of it. It was sliced cleanly in two, so badly lacerated that the flesh had collapsed. A deep vertical cut ran from her hairline, through her eyelid, and her cheek. The blood loss would have been terrifying, and so would the pain. With any luck the doctors had given her enough morphine to knock her out.

‘Where’s her husband?’ I asked.

‘Out there. He’s been with her all night.’

Through the glass window I caught sight of Liam Morgan, still dressed in his manservant’s uniform of black trousers and white shirt. His sleeves were rolled back, revealing a blur of military tattoos. He was too preoccupied to notice me staring. His face was tense with misery, and I could hear him negotiating Nicole’s transfer to a private hospital on his mobile, his voice cracking with strain.

‘What time does the plastic surgeon arrive?’ he asked.

I felt like telling him to protect her from more pain. No surgeon in the world could disguise those wounds. But that was the downside of being Helen of Troy. The TV shows would drop her, unless someone performed a surgical miracle.

Lorraine Brotherton appeared while Burns was giving me the details, with Taylor following in her wake. She was so thin, her grey suit made her look as insubstantial as a wisp of smoke, but her frown lines had deepened overnight, and it was clear she was in no mood for small talk. The four of us were acting like warring factions eyeballing each other across the table, failing to achieve a truce.

‘This happened right in the middle of our demographic,’ Brotherton snapped. ‘Who’s responsible for the street patrols?’ Her glare alternated between Taylor and Burns.

‘He is, ma’am.’ Taylor lounged back in his chair.

‘What went wrong, Don?’ She gave him the full force of her glare.

‘We’re been covering the Square Mile with thirty extra uniforms, and another twenty on the streets round the Angel Bank. That’s the policy we agreed.’

‘Our policy screwed up then, didn’t it? Nicole Morgan’s celebrity has changed the game – the media will be round us like flies. I’ve got a press conference in twenty minutes. You need to brief me.’

Burns was refusing to look apologetic. ‘We want to hear from anyone who was on Staining Lane, around 10 p.m. The SOCOs say there are bike tracks at the scene.’

‘A motorbike?’ Brotherton sounded incredulous.

He shook his head. ‘Pushbike. It looks like our man’s following the mayor’s advice and using pedal power.’

My image of the murderer was starting to fragment. It was hard to picture someone calmly putting on his bike helmet then cycling off to commit murder.