Cleanskin (5 page)

I
WAS AT
H
EATHROW
A
IRPORT
, waiting for Stella to emerge from customs and immigration, when I got the call. The clerk on the other end of the phone didn’t have much info. All she could say was that a body had been found in Paddington Basin and that she had been told to let me know about it.

‘Do they want me at the scene?’ I asked.

‘Yes. Soon as you can get there, my screen says.’

‘I’ll be there,’ I said, ending the call. I’d come all the way out here to get Stella and I wasn’t going back empty-handed. She wouldn’t be much longer, and if she felt up to it, she could always come to the scene with me. It was on the way back to her house in St John’s Wood, after all.

I hadn’t told Stella I would meet her. I’d got the flight details from her secretary, not from her. I wanted it to be a surprise. So there was no
way I was going to walk away right then, not just for a dead body that wasn’t going anywhere.

Within a couple of minutes of the phone alert, I saw Stella walking down the concourse towards me. It was a rare treat for me to be able to watch her without her knowing, and I took pleasure in letting my eyes follow the easy swing of her walk. Her hair was pulled back in a pony tail and she looked a bit bleary-eyed, but given that she’d just got off a night flight, she seemed pretty alert. I couldn’t help myself. I was grinning from ear to ear.

She was only a few yards away when she spotted me. Her eyebrows shot up in surprise, but the smile followed so fast I knew it was real. I stepped forward and we kissed like friends, cheek to cheek. ‘Wow, Andy,’ she said, putting down her suitcase and hugging me. ‘My very own police escort.’

I let my arms slip around her, smelling lavender and feeling the warmth of her flesh. ‘“Working together for a safer London,”’ I said. ‘That’s our motto.’

I grabbed the handle of her wheelie suitcase and fell into step beside her. ‘Flight OK?’ I asked.

‘It’s over. That’s the best thing you can say about any flight,’ she said. ‘So, how have you been managing without me?’

‘Andy the man, or Andy the cop?’

She tucked her arm through mine. ‘We’re in a public place, Andy. Better stick to the cop angle for now.’

As we made our way to the car, I filled her in on what she’d missed while she’d been watching bodies rotting in the States. By the time I’d finished, we were on the motorway back to London. ‘Interesting,’ she said. ‘Jack Farrell kills himself and the genie is let out of the bottle.’

‘Some genie,’ I snorted. ‘If I had three wishes, I wouldn’t spend them like that.’

‘You sure? It gets a lot of garbage off the streets.’

She had a point. ‘I don’t mind losing any of them, it’s true. But I could do without the extreme crime scenes.’

‘Deep down, Andy, you’re a wuss,’ Stella said.

We both laughed. Then I said, ‘If you really feel like you’ve been missing out, we could take in a nice fresh corpse on the way back to yours.’

Stella turned in her seat to look at me. ‘You know the way to a girl’s heart, don’t you?’

I risked a quick glance at her. ‘I hope so. At least where you’re concerned. I missed you, Stella.’

She nodded, as if she got it. ‘Nice of you to say so.’ She shifted in her seat and put her hand on my thigh. It didn’t feel sexual. It just felt like she wanted to be touching me. ‘Being apart’s useful, though. It made me wonder if it was time for us to rethink what’s going on between us.’

This wasn’t how I’d planned it out in my head. I thought things would settle right back into the same groove as before. I’d had a month of sleeping on my own and I’d been looking forward to changing that. Time for a bit of sweet talking, I thought. ‘Seems like you had to go all the way to America before we noticed how much we care about each other,’ I said, patting her hand.

‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that,’ she said slowly. ‘I guess what I’m trying to say is that we need to make our minds up.’

I didn’t much like the sound of this. ‘About what?’

‘About being together.’ She moved her hand
back into her lap. ‘Andy, I’m at a crossroads in my life. At the Body Farm, they made it clear that there was a job for me if I wanted it. Now, I love what I do here. But I know I would also love working there. I can’t choose between here and there based only on the job.’ She sighed. ‘I’d hoped I could work up to this in a more relaxed setting.’

I knew just what she meant. This wasn’t the scene I’d imagined on my way to the airport. ‘What are you saying, Stella?’

‘It’s pretty simple, Andy. If I’m going to stay, there needs to be a strong reason why. You could be that reason. But if you’re going to be the reason, I need more from you than you were giving me before I went away. I want something more than a friendly fuck.’

I pursed my lips and blew out the breath I’d been holding. It wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. ‘Stella, I don’t know how to …’

‘No. Not now,’ she said, her tone abrupt. ‘Think about it before you say anything. We don’t have to rush it.’ She sat up straight in her seat, making it clear the subject was closed for the time being. ‘Now, didn’t you say something about a body?’

I
WAS STILL REELING FROM
Stella’s words as I parked beside the other police motors that marked the fringe of the crime scene. But within minutes, they felt totally trivial.

The police tapes marked out an area by one of the giant pillars that held up the raised section of the Westway. It was a classic scrap of urban desert. Scrubby grass, rubbish all around, the stink of engine fumes and decay in the air. Stella grabbed her kitbag from the boot and we walked over to the cluster of white suits that marked the target of our interest.

We were still a few yards away when one man peeled off from the main group and blocked our way. I had a vague memory of meeting him on some training course, but I couldn’t recall his name or rank. Luckily, I didn’t have to. ‘DCI Martin,’ he said, voice raised to be heard above the traffic noise. He extended a hand. I was a bit taken aback. Cops don’t usually do the
handshake thing. As we shook, he carried on. ‘John Burton, DI Burton. I’m really sorry about this.’

I shrugged. ‘I get called out to stuff all the time. Sometimes it’s linked to my beat, sometimes not. Nothing to be sorry about.’

Burton looked confused. ‘Did nobody brief you?’

‘All I got was a request to attend,’ I said. ‘Why? Is there something more?’

Burton’s eyes were all over the place. He couldn’t settle on me or Stella or on anything else. ‘Christ,’ he said softly. He took my arm and tried to steer me off to one side.

I shook free. ‘You can say anything you have to say in front of Dr Marino,’ I said. ‘If this body’s one of mine, she’ll be doing the post mortem.’

Burton licked his lips. ‘I really am sorry about this,’ he said again.

‘Can we cut to the chase?’ Stella said. ‘I’ve just flown in from America and I need to check this out before I die from lack of sleep.’

Burton nodded and cleared his throat. ‘We know who the victim is,’ he said, still not meeting my eyes.

I didn’t have any sense of looming disaster. None at all. So much for cop instinct. ‘Yeah?’ I said, edgy at being kept waiting.

Burton took a deep breath. ‘It’s your bagman. DS Wilson.’

It was like a punch to the throat. I couldn’t breathe and my legs felt like I’d run a half marathon. I felt Stella’s hand on my arm. That was all that was keeping me steady. ‘Ben?’ I said, not wanting to believe him.

‘No room for doubt. He’s got ID on him, and one of my lads trained with him.’

I felt ill. I wanted to collapse to the ground and wrap my arms round my knees. But my feelings would have to wait. I owed it to Ben to find out what had gone down in this hellhole. ‘I need to take a look,’ I said, moving past Burton.

‘I don’t think that’s a great idea,’ he said.

‘My bagman, my case,’ I said roughly. ‘He’s mine now.’ I strode off to where I knew the body would be, at the centre of the group of white-clad figures. I could sense Stella at my back.

When I saw what was left of Ben, I understood why Burton had wanted me to keep away.
Even Stella, who has seen most of the worst that human beings can do to each other, gasped at the sight.

He was sitting, propped up against one of the pillars. His legs were spread apart, to stop him toppling over. His head lolled to one side, looking quite normal apart from having no face. It had been skinned, like a scalping in reverse. Hair intact, face gone. His torso was naked and he’d been cut from his throat to his navel. He’d obviously been alive when it happened. His hands gripped his internal organs, as if he was trying to push them back inside.

I’ve never cried at a crime scene before, though God knows I’ve seen my share of horrors. But I cried for Ben, big fat tears that spilled down my cheeks. I didn’t even brush them away. I felt no shame for showing my feelings.

At last, I turned away. Stella was at my shoulder, her face a rigid mask. ‘On you go,’ I said. ‘Find me something to nail this bastard.’

‘If it’s there, I’ll find it,’ she said.

Burton was right beside her. ‘How do you want to run this?’ he said.

‘Everything goes across my desk. Get your boss to talk to my boss. We need to be in the loop on this one. We have info you don’t, but we’ll share on a need-to-know basis. Bottom line is we nail the animal who did this. And I don’t give a toss what it takes. The rule book’s out of the window on this one.’

Burton nodded. ‘I can’t fault you on that. I’ll make sure we keep you up to speed.’

I took a couple of steps towards my car, then stopped. ‘Who found him?’ I asked.

‘The Fire Brigade.’

‘The Fire Brigade? What’s that all about?’ I was puzzled.

Burton pointed to an area of scorched grass about twenty feet from Ben’s body. I hadn’t even noticed it. That’s how far I was from being a cop right then. ‘Someone had lit a fire,’ he said. ‘Like a beacon or something. A train cleaner going home from Paddington spotted the blaze and called it in. When the firemen got here, they found Sergeant Wilson.’ Burton looked away. ‘They reckon he wasn’t long dead.’

I tried not to think about that. I drove back to my office, wondering about the fire. What was
the point of making sure Ben was found quickly? Why shout murder from the rooftops? Mostly, killers want bodies to stay hidden so they have more time to cover their tracks.

Whoever had killed Ben wanted us to know about it. He was sending us a message and he wanted us to get it. Fast.

T
HEY SAY IF A CASE
doesn’t start to break in the first twenty-four hours, it won’t break at all. I’ve never worked to that belief. If I did, I wouldn’t have cleared half the cases I have. If you keep pushing, nine times out of ten something will give. But after five days of getting nowhere, I was starting to fear that Ben’s murder might be the one in ten that doesn’t crack wide open.

It wasn’t for the want of hard work. I knew that every officer on my team was working way over their set hours, not caring whether they were being paid overtime or not. And from what John Burton said, the same was true of his squad. When a cop goes down, that’s how it is. Joey Scardino and Brian Cooper were not just on the back burner – they were right outside the kitchen.

I’d hardly seen Stella since the morning of her return. I was working from breakfast to bedtime and beyond, only going home to grab
a few hours’ sleep when my body and brain could go no further. Stella had done the post mortem report on Ben. Her report had been the most detailed I’d ever seen. But apart from that, I had no idea where she was or what she was doing. So much for working out how we could change things between us. That was going to have to wait until I had put Ben’s killer behind bars.

Six days after we’d started the hunt for the monster who had butchered Ben, Stella turned up in my office, looking grave. ‘I need to talk to you, Andy,’ she said, dropping into the chair opposite my desk. She looked as if she hadn’t had much more sleep than I had since her return.

‘I’m always glad to hear from you, Stella.’ I wasn’t flirting and she knew it.

‘I’ve spent most of the last few days out on a limb,’ she said. ‘I know I should trust the people I work with to do the job properly, but I can’t help myself. Call me a control freak, but unless I’ve done the post mortem myself, I always think there’s more to be found.’ She looked a bit embarrassed, but I didn’t see why she should be. I’m the same myself.

‘You’re probably right,’ I said. ‘You being the best, and all.’

She gave me a little look, like she wasn’t sure if I was taking the piss. Then she smiled and shrugged. ‘Whatever. Anyway, once I’d done all I could with Ben’s body, I thought I would take a look at all the other bodies you’ve been tripping over while I was gone.’ She flipped open one of the files she’d brought with her, then looked up at me with earnest eyes. I felt a little stab of dread.

‘I want to be clear about this, Andy,’ she said. ‘Are you tying Ben’s death into the other recent murders, or are you treating it as something apart from them?’

I frowned. ‘Why would it be connected to Joey Scardino and Brian Cooper? They were killed because somebody’s trying to stake a claim to Jack Farrell’s empire.’

‘I don’t know why,’ Stella said in that gentle voice she always uses when she thinks I need to be calmed down. ‘Maybe Ben got too close to finding out who the new king of the hill is, and had to be silenced.’

I shook my head. ‘Not without telling me what he’d found. We were a team, me and Ben.
He wouldn’t have kept something that big to himself. But why are you asking me this, Stella? What’s your point?’

Stella took out a sheaf of photographs and spread them over my desk. ‘The same knife killed Brian Cooper and Ben, Andy.’ She tapped the photos, showing me where the cuts and tears matched each other. ‘There, and there, and there. The same. It’s an unusual knife, that’s why there’s very little doubt. I think it’s one of those fancy cheese knives. You know the ones I mean? They’ve got a very thin, curved blade with sections cut out of it to make it go through hard cheeses more easily. They’ve got twin points.’

She pointed to a couple of details. ‘You see? Stab marks side by side. I think the killer used one of those cheese knives on Cooper and on Ben.’

It was a struggle to get my head round what Stella was saying. ‘That’s insane. I can’t think of any reason why the person who killed Brian Cooper would have any motive to kill Ben.’

Stella looked uneasy. ‘Can we come back to that, please, Andy? I’ve got something else to tell you. Something that might help to make sense of this.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’m up for anything that stops me feeling like I’m on the wrong side of the looking glass.’

‘I thought that I would go back and take another look at Jack Farrell’s body.’

‘You thinking someone murdered him and made it look like suicide?’ I asked. ‘That won’t fly, Stella. The suicide note was witnessed by his lawyer. He didn’t read the contents, but he witnessed the signature.’

Stella’s smile was wry. ‘That wasn’t what I was going to say, Andy.’

‘Sorry.’ I pulled a face. ‘Shouldn’t put words in your mouth. Go on. Tell me why you wanted to take a crack at Jack.’

‘No reason you could put your finger on. Just that it all started with him. And it’s as well I did, really.’ She opened the second file she was carrying. From where I was sitting, I could see bar charts and coloured photos of some part of the human body in cross section.

‘I checked this three times, just to make sure I was right,’ she said, looking me straight in the eye. ‘Andy, whoever you’ve got in that mortuary drawer, it’s not Jack Farrell.’