Acid Lullaby (18 page)

Underwood was impressed that Miller had seen the angle too. ‘That would be enormously helpful.’

Dexter’s mind was working through other possibilities. ‘Do these toxins degrade over time? I mean is the killer digging up these mushrooms immediately before he uses them or is he using stuff he’s stored up for a while?’

Miller whistled softly. ‘That’s a smart question. You should be a mycologist. There’s not a huge amount of research literature on that subject. However, I have read some case studies. There are cases of people who have had amatoxin poisoning after eating fungi they have frozen. There was a case of an old guy – in France I think – who defrosted a European Death Cap eight months after picking it. He died. Should have been more careful. My view is that amatoxins degrade slowly. It’s possible that your killer could have harvested these things months ago, extracted what he wanted from them and then frozen it. That’s not what you wanted to hear, is it?’

Dexter shook her head.

Underwood’s mind was racing. He remembered the notion that had occurred to him the previous evening. The idea that the fatal effects of the fungi were not the killer’s only motive for using them. ‘Why do people eat these things then?’ he asked Miller. ‘What do they get out of having these hallucinations?’

Miller shrugged. ‘Many different types of mushroom contain powerful psychoactive agents – chemicals that produce powerful hallucinations. I mentioned earlier that the Fly Agaric contains muscimol. Other mushrooms contain Ibotenic Acid or Psilocybin. They have similar effects to ingesting LSD.’

Underwood frowned. The terms meant nothing to him. He
was interested in the effects. ‘How do those chemicals induce hallucinations? What do they do to the brain?’

‘That’s a tough one. You should really ask a neurologist. Basically, your brain receives millions of pieces of information every second, right? Your sensory organs and nerves are constantly feeding data to your brain about your body, your external environment and so on. Now, your brain has the capacity to filter that information and make sense of it.’ Miller noted their blank expressions. ‘I’ll try to demonstrate. Close your eyes for a second.’ As Dexter and Underwood nervously obliged, Miller looked around him, picked up a plastic biro and hurled it at the glass window. It clattered to the ground a second later. ‘Your brain just told you that the sound you just heard was a pen or a plastic object hitting a window, right?’

‘Pretty much,’ Underwood agreed.

‘But, if the filter in your brain was switched off, that sound might appear to be anything. It might be the sound of the end of the world or of all your bones breaking. And you would believe it.’

‘Sounds terrifying,’ Dexter observed. She liked to be in full control of her senses.

‘It can be,’ Miller agreed, ‘it can make the mind very vulnerable to suggestion. Variants of Ibotenic Acid have been used as truth drugs in the past.’

‘You mentioned that the history of these fungi goes back further than hippies and the sixties?’ Underwood observed.

‘God, yeah! Ethnomycologists have shown that the recreational use of psychoactive mushrooms has been linked into human civilization for thousands of years.’ Miller peeled off his gloves and walked over to a sink to wash his hands. ‘My advice is steer well clear of them. Reality is underrated.’

Alison Dexter dropped Underwood back at New Bolden Police Station shortly after 10a.m. After leaving him, she headed for the Morley Estate. She received an update from Harrison about the search for Jensen and Rowena Harvey via her car phone.

‘Marty Farrell’s team is sweeping the Car Wash for forensics,’ he said. ‘They haven’t come up with much yet. Rubbish mainly. We’re checking what they bagged up for prints but I don’t hold out much hope.’

Dexter agreed. ‘I can’t imagine whoever did that to Stark and Jack would be daft enough to leave a print behind. There was nothing on either body.’

‘Absolutely. The only half-interesting thing that came out of it was a suggestion that Marty made.’ Harrison had explained the theory about the killer driving an expensive car.

‘It’s not much to go on, mate.’ Dexter respected the logic of Harrison’s idea but didn’t see how it would help.

‘I know. I’ve checked the uniform patrols for that night. None remember seeing any unusual cars. We’re still running enquiries around the site of Jensen’s car crash. It’s open farmland though: hardly any houses. Nobody saw diddly-squat. Suffolk Police have been stopping traffic on the A1066 but so far zero.’

‘I’m sorry …’ Dexter struggled for the right words. ‘Jensen and I didn’t get on but … well, you know.’

‘Yep.’ Harrison didn’t want to develop that line of conversation. ‘County HQ at Huntingdon have said we can have the use of their EC135 chopper for a couple of days.’

‘Is that going to be helpful?’ Dexter asked. She knew the latest police helicopters were great at traffic control but she couldn’t see where one would add much value in a manhunt.

‘Probably not,’ Harrison conceded. ‘But apparently it has
new thermal imaging equipment. It might help us locate a body in open ground.’

Dexter could hear the edge of desperation in Harrison’s voice and decided to cut him some slack. ‘Fine. If they’ve offered it, we’ll take it. It’s your show. You run it as you see fit.’

‘Thanks, guv. I’ll be in touch.’

Dexter was relieved he hadn’t asked her where she was going. It took her fifteen minutes of weaving through traffic before the stone bulk of the Morley Estate rose on the horizon ahead of her. She had determined from Ian Stark’s paperwork that he rented two garages at opposite ends of the estate. Dexter was convinced that the bulk of Stark’s drugs and business details were hidden in one of them. She sensed that was why Mark Willis was in New Bolden and she was determined that he wouldn’t get hold of them.

She drove to the east side of the estate first. There were two teenagers sitting at the roadside next to their mountain bikes. Dexter registered that the bikes looked new and beyond the means of fourteen year olds living on the Morley. Still, she drove past. She had more important matters at stake.

She pulled up at the entrance to a square of twelve garages arranged in two rows of six. Stark rented number five. She found it and saw it was padlocked. Dexter had expected this and retrieved a bolt-cutter from the boot of her car. She was vaguely aware that the two teenagers were now riding their bikes in circles watching her from a safe distance. She wasn’t concerned. Big estates are very territorial and the locals recognize outsiders instantly. She was an oddity.

It took considerable force to snap through the padlock and chain and Dexter was sweating with effort by the time she rolled up Stark’s garage door. As the door immediately showered her with dirt and detritus, Dexter sensed she had picked the wrong garage. Stark obviously hadn’t been inside for a while. Carefully, she stepped inside brushing leaves and muck from her hair.

The dismantled remains of a motorbike lay strewn across the floor and there was a powerful, sickly smell of engine oil.
Dexter crouched and opened a heavy canvas bag that was bulging next to the small inspection pit. It contained tools: screwdrivers and engine spanners. She moved on to the back of the garage. There were rows of paint tins arranged along the back of the wooden workbench. She used a screwdriver to prise open each of the lids in turn and to her immense disappointment found only paint.

‘What do they say about great minds?’ asked Mark Willis from the garage door.

‘What are you doing here?’ Dexter asked, suddenly feeling very vulnerable: she had been backed into a corner.

‘I might ask you the same question.’ Willis smiled his tiger smile. ‘Is this an official visit?’

Dexter leaned back against the workbench and closed her grip around a steel hammer. ‘I don’t have to answer your questions smartarse.’ She realized she had left her radio in the car.

Idiot.

‘So this is Starkey’s lair, is it? Not very salubrious.’

Willis hadn’t moved but Dexter could sense his eyes were scouring the room, just as hers had.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘I’m not an idiot, Sparrer. You didn’t come here to strip the engine of that Kawasaki, now did you?’

‘What is it you want, Mark?’ Dexter could feel her anger rising, she was struggling to keep control. ‘Stark owed you something, did he?’

‘You might say that.’ Willis was inside the garage now. Dexter was becoming increasingly uncomfortable.

‘You’re in a bit of trouble, I hear,’ Dexter said, having decided to take the offensive.

Willis looked at her, through her. His smile had gone. ‘What have you heard, Sparrer?’

‘Just that you’ve finally lived up to your reputation as the East End’s leading idiot.’

Willis grinned suddenly and wagged a finger. ‘You’re very naughty. For a second there I almost thought you knew what you were talking about.’

‘I know about you, a hundred grand, the Moules.’

Willis froze and stared at her in sudden fury. ‘How the fuck?’ He thought for a second, ‘Oh, you’ve been speaking to Big Daddy McInally, I suppose. Should have guessed that. You shouldn’t pay any attention to him. He just wants to put his cock in your mouth.’

Dexter let the insult wash over her. ‘He was very keen to know your whereabouts.’

Willis stepped closer. ‘Yeah but you didn’t tell him did you, Sparrer? I can see it in your eyes. Your eyes give you up every time. You’re a lousy liar.’

He was too close. Dexter swung the hammer out from behind her in fury. Willis saw it coming and grabbed her wrist, twisting it away from her painfully until the hammer fell from her grip. He pulled her close and kissed her hard, trying to force his tongue into her mouth. Dexter jerked forward. She cracked her knee up hard in his crotch as they clashed heads. Willis recoiled sharply, wiping blood from his mouth.

‘Pussy,’ he said, giggling, ‘you taste of pussy. You
have
gone peculiar.’

‘Come near me again and I’ll fucking kill you.’

Willis shook his head, ‘It’s a pity we didn’t work it out, Alison. We had some laughs.’

‘Your choice,’ she said. Her fist was still clenched. ‘It was your choice.’

‘Yeah,’ Willis was smiling again, ‘it was, wasn’t it?’ He shot a final look around the garage. ‘I guess I’ll be off, Sparrer. There’s nothing here for me.’

‘I’m on your case, Mark. If I see you again I will nick you. And McInally will be driving up the A10 looking to put your head in a vice.’

‘I don’t think so, Sparrer. You had your reasons for getting out of London on the hurry up. It would be a pity if some of those reasons came up here looking for you.’

‘Don’t threaten me, you piece of shit.’

‘Bear it in mind, Sparrer. Before you have me nicked by some plod for a parking on a double yellow, just bear it mind. Your nightmares must be worse than mine.’

Willis left the garage and jogged over to his parked Freelander. Despite his confidence that Dexter wouldn’t give him up, he was irritated. He was running out of time and still had to find Stark’s stash.

‘Got any pills, Mister?’

Willis looked around. There were two teenage boys a few feet behind him. They were standing on the pedals of their bikes ready to make a quick getaway. Willis smirked at the irony.

‘You’ve got the wrong man, lads,’ he said. ‘Now piss off.’

The bikers turned sharply and pedalled off hard, realizing they had made a mistake. Willis suddenly realized he had made one, too.

‘Wait!’ he called out. ‘Come back!’

But they were gone.

Dexter sat on the floor of Ian Stark’s garage in a cold fury. She felt like a butterfly pinned to a wooden board. She tried to understand the mass of feelings that Mark Willis provoked: loathing, fear, excitement, frustration, loss. He was a cancer in her heart. When she had swung the hammer at him, Dexter had fully intended to do him damage. Now she felt ashamed. Would it ever stop, she wondered? Would there ever be a day when she woke in the morning without his name flickering across her half-conscious brain?

She stood and brushed herself down. She closed Stark’s garage door behind her and sealed it with police tape retrieved from the boot of her car. She looked out across the desolate estate: the towering loneliness of its accommodation blocks. And for a moment, she remembered how Mark Willis had made her love him.

Alison
Dexter
had
joined
Leyton
Police
Station
in
1992.
Three
years
later
she
was
promoted
to
Detective
Constable
and
had
started
working
for
McInally
in
CID.
As
the
only
woman
in
the
group,
she
had
been
hassled
from
the
outset.
It
had
begun
with
suggestive
sexual
comments
and
flirtations,
then
steadily
deteriorated
into
insidious
bullying.
Only
McInally
and
Willis
had
let
her
do
her
job
without
inter
ference
.
Detective
Sergeant
Mark
Willis
gradually
became
her
self-appointed
mentor.

As
the
two
grew
closer
the
suggestive
comments
and
jibes
started
to
evaporate.
McInally
was
highly
respected
throughout
the
department
as
being
fair-minded
and
vastly
experienced,
but
Mark
Willis
was
feared.
He
had
a
reputation
as
a
hard
man.
He
had
received
two
warnings
for
the
use
of
excessive
force
in
interrogations
in
his
first
year
as
a
Detective
Sergeant.
Once
the
rumours
started
that
Dexter
and
Willis
were
an
item,
the
other
CID
officers
started
to
leave
her
alone.

Two
months
after
they
had
started
sleeping
together,
Dexter
had
been
called
to
her
mother’s
flat
late
at
night.
The
next
door
neighbour
had
called
Alison’s
mobile
number
after
hearing
screaming.
Willis
had
driven
her
to
the
council
estate
on
the
edge
of
Walthamstow
and
waited
in
the
car
while
Alison
went
inside.
Her
stepfather,
Vince
Stag,
had
beaten
her
mother
unconscious:
the
culmination
of
a
drunken
row.

‘She
deserved
it,’
Vince
had
snarled
as
Alison
tried
to
rouse
her
mother.

‘Stay
back!’
Alison
had
shouted
as
Vince
had
lurched
at
her.

‘
She’s
always
pissed
up,’
Vince
slurred.
‘
She’s
come
in
swearing,
calling
me
every
name
under
the
bleedin’
sun.’

‘She
needs
to
go
to
hospital,
Vince,
you
stupid
bastard.’

‘They
can
keep
the
filthy
bitch.’

Alison
leapt
to
her
feet
and
threw
herself
at
her
stepfather.
However,
despite
his
drunken
state
Vince
was
still
strong
and
alert
and
his
first
calculated
punch
had
sent
her
sprawling
with
a
burst
lip.