Authors: Kate Rhodes

Crossbones Yard (11 page)

BOOK: Crossbones Yard

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Lola and her new man were sitting at the kitchen table when I got back inside, feeding each other pieces of croissant.

‘Al! I thought you’d gone to work.’ Lola was still wrapped in Lars’s cornflower-blue shirt.

‘I’ve been out there.’ I nodded at the window.

The square was thronging with people. A white tent had been erected beside Will’s van, over the place where the girl’s body was lying. Police cars were coming and going, one of them blocking the road, hazard lights flashing.

‘Is something going on?’ Lars’s immaculate smile flicked on effortlessly. Maybe Alvarez could pay him for lessons in charm.

‘Didn’t you hear the sirens?’

Lola shook her head dreamily. She looked as if she had been drugged and was only just surfacing.

‘Turn on the radio.’ I gritted my teeth. ‘It’ll be on the news.’

In the bathroom I was desperate to throw myself under the jet of water. Tipping my head back, my sight blurred then cleared again. By the time I had dried myself my heart rate was beginning to slow down.

The passenger door of Alvarez’s car was slightly ajar when I got back downstairs. He had to manoeuvre carefully out of the square, edging between half a dozen squad cars. My mind still wasn’t working properly. It was a struggle to remember exactly what I’d seen. I stared out of the window blankly, until
the car swung left into Leathermarket Street, interrupting a stream of Japanese tourists busy photographing everything they saw. A man leaned down and took our picture with an old-fashioned camera, as if we were celebrities. I wondered what he would see when the film was developed: my shocked white face, and Alvarez with his indelible frown.

I phoned Hari, just as we pulled into the car park of the police station. There was a moment’s silence while his brain did calculations. I hardly ever called him, because sick days weren’t my speciality.

‘I found a woman’s body this morning,’ I told him.

‘A body?’ he echoed, taking care not to sound shocked.

I stifled a laugh. ‘It’s okay, Hari. No need to use your sympathetic repetition technique on me. I’ll survive.’

‘Of course you will. But is anyone helping you?’

‘The police. I’m going to the station now.’

‘Would you like me to come with you?’

‘I’ll be fine. Just cancel my appointments please. I don’t know when I’ll be in.’

‘Of course.’ Hari’s voice was as gentle as always, as if words were things to be given out cautiously, like knives.

Maybe it was my imagination, but Alvarez’s swagger seemed less pronounced that day. His walk was slower, like a boxing manager waiting for a fight he had staked his whole future on. When we got inside he led me in the opposite direction from his office, into a meeting room buzzing with people and computers. The air reeked of coffee and adrenalin. Maybe they had spent the night on lockdown, no one allowed to go home. A dozen people were milling around, some of them gazing at their screens, others standing by a large pinboard, which was covered with photos and documents. A tall man quizzed Alvarez earnestly as soon as we walked through the door.

I wandered over to the wall display. My photo had been placed right in the centre. Someone had downloaded it from Facebook. It was taken at Oludeniz in Turkey four summers ago. I looked young and tanned and giggly. Lola had caught me at an unguarded moment, just as we were about to fling off our T-shirts and run into the sea. A picture of the dead girl at Crossbones Yard was pasted beside me, our photos almost touching. Her face was chalk white, still wrapped in her makeshift shroud, like the woman I had just found.

Alvarez appeared again, with two cups of coffee.

‘Can I have a biscuit with that? I feel a bit woozy.’

He dumped a polystyrene cup in my hand and hurried across the busy room, stealing a packet of Jaffa Cakes from someone’s desk on the way.

We ended up in a cubicle just large enough for a white Formica table and two of the hard plastic chairs the police always use, as if discomfort is their official policy. The space was hardly bigger than a lift, but at least it had a glass wall, which gave the illusion that escape was still an option.The incident room bustled with activity while Alvarez flicked through a sheaf of papers. There was no sign of Burns. Maybe he was still in Providence Square, keeping his eye on the forensics team. Alvarez dropped a blank sheet of paper in front of me.

‘If you feel up to it, we need some information, Alice.’

I bit into another Jaffa Cake and waited for him to explain. The rise in blood sugar was helping things to make sense again.

‘I need a list of your boyfriends.’ Alvarez shuffled his papers awkwardly.

‘Sorry?’

‘All your partners. With dates, if possible.’

‘No problem.’ I stared at him. ‘Provided you sit here and do the same for me.’

‘It’s standard procedure, Alice.’ Alvarez got to his feet. ‘You’ve discovered too many dead bodies recently.’

‘You honestly think I went out with a serial killer, do you?’

‘We don’t know at this stage. But we have to rule it out, so I’ll leave you to it.’ He hovered by the door. ‘Give me a shout if you need more paper.’

‘Ha bloody ha.’ I stared at the empty sheet.

The task took nearly an hour. Not because I’ve had hundreds of lovers, but because my brain was on slowdown. The people in the incident room distracted me, spinning between the phone desk and the wall chart, as if they were taking part in an elaborate dance. Watching them was far more interesting than my sexual history. The first name on my list was Jamie Mitchell. The relationship lasted thirty minutes and involved a lot of frantic fumbling with zips and condoms, when I was sixteen years old, under a monkey puzzle tree in Greenwich Park. Afterwards I examined my face in the bathroom mirror to see if my expression was suddenly grown-up, feeling nothing, except relief not to be a virgin any more. My longest relationship finished after nearly a year, when I was training at the Maudsley. It was great at first, but his mother began dropping hints about July being the best month for honeymoons, so I had to leave. When the list was complete there were nine names on the sheet, in chronological order. Not very impressive for a thirty-two-year-old. I decided not to include the rugby player I had sex with in a broom cupboard on the night I graduated, largely because I couldn’t remember his name.

Alvarez appeared in the doorway while I was checking the dates of my conquests.

‘Finished?’ he asked.

He pulled up a chair, so close our thighs were almost touching.

‘Didn’t anyone ever teach you about personal space?’ I asked. ‘You’re meant to give people room to breathe.’

He moved his chair a centimetre away then turned to face me. His eyes were so dark it was hard to see where his pupils began and ended.

‘Now I need another list of your friends, family and colleagues.’

‘This is ridiculous. It’s got to be a stranger. I’ve never seen that handwriting in my life.’

‘Nine times out of ten letters like this come from someone you’re connected with.’ He turned his attention back to my list. ‘Do you still see these men?’

‘Only the last three.’ I pointed to each name in turn. ‘I went to his wedding last summer, I meet him for dinner now and then, and Sean’s a colleague at Guy’s.’

‘And who ended the relationships?’

‘Shouldn’t Burns be doing this?’ I peered across the incident room. ‘He’s the one in charge, isn’t he?’

‘Technically that’s true, I suppose. But he had a heart attack six months ago. He’s only just come back.’

‘So you do the legwork to reduce his stress.’

‘It’s not that simple. He’s helped me a lot in the past.’ Alvarez leaned across the table. ‘Look, Alice, if you tell me who ended these relationships, I’ll leave you in peace.’

‘I did.’

‘Which ones?’

‘All of them. Every one.’

Alvarez looked up from the list. I watched his expression change. He was busy redrawing his picture of me as a ditsy female who couldn’t look after herself, to a witch who destroyed every man on her radar.

It didn’t take long to name my family members: my mother and Will, a frail aunt who I saw every other Christmas, and two cousins who had moved to the Dordogne, to run a holiday company. I was beginning to wish they’d taken me with them. The list of friends and colleagues proved more difficult. Trying to remember names, dates and contexts was giving me a headache.

It was almost lunchtime when Burns finally arrived. Maybe he had spent the morning dozing in his office while Alvarez conducted the action in the incident room, like a ringmaster. The plastic chair creaked ominously as he sat down. Burns let himself recover for a few seconds before mopping his forehead with one of his favourite white cotton hankies.

‘We know who this one is,’ he panted. ‘Suzanne Wilkes. Her husband reported her missing six weeks ago. She worked for a charity called Street Safe.’

‘I’ve heard of them. They’ve got a bus, haven’t they?’

‘A load of
Guardian
-reading do-gooders’ – Burns wrinkled his nose – ‘giving out sandwiches to druggies, and finding them jobs they’ll never hold down.’

‘That’s your world view, is it?’

He didn’t answer. His face was the definition of tired. His skin glistened with a sweat that came from the sheer effort of staying on his feet.

‘Any news on the girl at Crossbones?’ I asked.

‘Not a whisper. Chances are she came over without a visa, slept rough, never found a job. She didn’t appear on anyone’s radar.’

‘And her family back home never find out she’s dead.’

‘We’re not giving up.’ Burns’s microscopic eyes pinpointed me, as if I might try to fly away.

Over his shoulder developments were happening in the incident room. My scrawled list of conquests had been typed
up and magnified to A3 size. It was tacked to the pinboard, for everyone to scrutinise.

‘I’ve got something to show you,’ Burns said. He pulled a bundle of papers from the file he was carrying. ‘It’s the graphologist’s report on the letters you gave us.’

Burns heaved himself to his feet again and left me to peruse the report. I’ve never had much time for graphology, a mixture of nonsense and pseudo-science. But the report was better than I expected. It started with a list of facts. The writer had used a steel-tipped fountain pen, and applied an unusual degree of pressure to incise each word into the paper. The line spacing and gaps between words were unexpectedly regular. Then the report gave a checklist of personality attributes. The writer was organised and obsessive, and the backward-sloping letters meant that he was passive aggressive, waiting to vent the rage he held inside. Photocopies of both letters were stapled to the report. I glanced at the handwriting again, veering to the left, immaculately controlled. Then my eyes flicked back to the first page.

I’d missed the most interesting part. The report explained that the writing was similar to Ray Benson’s. A snippet from a letter I had never seen before had been pasted into the report. Although it was addressed to Marie, the writing was just like my unhinged pen-pal’s. The killer must have hunted through newspapers and the Internet for snippets of Benson’s handwriting that were published by the press. I closed my eyes and tried to take it all in. The report suggested that there was less than ten per cent probability that the killer was writing naturally. He was mimicking Ray Benson’s style. I tried to visualise a man hunched over a desk, patiently transcribing death threats for hours at a time, but the picture refused to take shape.

By lunchtime I was on information overload. My head felt dangerously full, and there was an odd throbbing pain behind my eyes. A policeman who looked about fifteen years old offered me a cup of tea, then disappeared abruptly. Clearly he hadn’t yet mastered the art of small talk. Alvarez was still at the eye of the storm. People circled him in the incident room, asking questions, and offering him pieces of paper. His response was the same each time. He listened carefully then gave a brief reply, never raising a smile. His colleagues probably had dozens of nicknames for him: Mr Happy, Smiler, Sweetness and Light. When the fifteen-year-old boy returned with my tea, it was so thick with sugar that it was undrinkable.

I fished in my bag to check my phone. Three texts and a phone message were waiting for me. Two of the texts were from Lola, but the third was a cryptic one from Sean, inviting me out for dinner, which was baffling. In his shoes I’d have been relieved to move on to someone less complicated. My answering service had registered Will’s number, but only a couple of garbled words had been recorded. His voice was strained and a pitch too high, as if his vocal cords were permanently tense. When I called back there was no reply. By now he must have returned to his van and been sent away by Burns’s forensics team, in case he contaminated their crime scene.

‘You can go home, if you want.’ Alvarez arrived while I was looking at my phone. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Never better.’ I rubbed the back of my neck. ‘Except my brother worries me.’

‘I meant to ask about him.’ Alvarez flicked through his sheaf of papers. ‘You didn’t give us his address.’

‘That’s right,’ I nodded.

‘So where does he live?’

‘Nowhere.’

Alvarez closed his eyes, as if my sarcasm had finally broken him.

‘It’s not a joke,’ I said. ‘Normally he uses my address, but he doesn’t own a property.’

‘But he must rent somewhere, right?’

‘No. That’s the thing. Most nights he sleeps in his van.’

‘Your brother’s homeless?’ Alvarez’s mouth hung open, as though he had swallowed something unpleasant. He tried to return his expression to neutral, but it was a struggle. Not only was I a danger to my boyfriends, but I was cold-hearted enough to let my brother sleep outside in the middle of winter.

‘I see him all the time,’ I blustered. ‘He’s got a key to my flat, he comes by most days.’

‘So why are you worried?’

‘He hasn’t been around since yesterday. His van’s in my space, but I don’t know if he slept there.’

‘Let’s get this straight.’ Alvarez tried to massage the frown from his forehead. ‘Your brother could have spent the night on the same street as the murder victim?’

‘Maybe, but at least I know he’s safe. He called me this morning.’

‘What’s wrong with you?’ Alvarez slammed down his papers on the desk. ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’

‘There’s nothing to tell. He’s unpredictable, that’s all.’

‘It’s not him I’m worried about.’ He marched back into the incident room, leaving the glass door swinging on its hinges.

Another hour passed without anyone telling me anything. Maybe it was paranoia, but people were looking in my direction more often, peering at me through the glass wall, like I was a specimen in an aquarium. By now every one of them was an expert on my sexual history, and now they had heard that my brother was half-crazy too. It was hard to tell whether their glances were curious, outraged or pitying. The headache that had started behind my eyes had spread to the base of my skull.

I began to scribble on a piece of paper to distract myself. I used the same approach when I saw a patient for the first time, listing every trait or verbal tic that could help my diagnosis. The thing that interested me most was the killer’s use of the Benson murders as a prototype, or a form of hero worship. Depending on his illness, he might even believe he could become Ray Benson. Mimicry would allow him to borrow a stronger man’s identity.

By the time Burns returned I had filled several sheets of A4 paper with diagrams, scribbles and bullet point lists. He looked exhausted, even though he had managed to avoid the incident room for most of the day.

‘It’s got to stop, Alice.’ He studied me closely, as if I might be dangerous.

‘What has?’

‘You’ve upset my deputy again. He’s been in my office, moaning his head off. He says you’re concealing things.’

‘Rubbish.’

‘I can see where he’s coming from.’

‘Look, I’ve already explained. My brother’s mentally ill, he disappears all the time. Last year he cleared off for months without telling me where he’d gone.’

‘It doesn’t look good, Alice.’ Burns blew a long jet of air out of his pursed lips, as if he was playing an invisible trumpet. ‘We need to interview him, and now he’s done a bunk.’

‘Nonsense. Will’s probably at my flat right now.’

‘He’s not.’ Burns peered at a computer printout he had spread across the table. ‘And you didn’t tell us about his criminal record. It’s quite impressive, isn’t it?’

‘Don’t exaggerate.’

‘Affray, shoplifting, abusing a police officer,’ Burns read from the printout, ‘not to mention criminal damage and resisting arrest.’

I leaned back in my chair, arms folded. ‘Until eight years ago Will was a model citizen, then he got ill. Simple as that.’

‘I know.’ Burns jabbed at his glasses. ‘And that’s why he’s got off lightly until now.’

‘Look, Don. He was turning a corner, there’s no way he’s got anything to do with this. He wouldn’t harm a fly.’

He appraised me thoughtfully. ‘All right, Alice, let’s get you out of here.’

The crowds made way for Burns in the incident room, like the parting of the Red Sea. A wall of blank faces turned to watch me leave. We headed down a corridor that looked different from the pristine ones at the front of the building. Here the walls were a dirty sepia, the colour of pub ceilings in the days before smoking was outlawed. Burns produced an old-fashioned key from his pocket and opened a large wooden door. The room was almost dark; a narrow stream of light fell from a high window, teeming with dust motes.

‘Sorry about the mess,’ he muttered. ‘No one’s been here for a while.’

He tried the light switch several times. It flickered for a few seconds then made a fizzing noise and died. The room was so crowded with junk it was impossible to move: dented
cardboard boxes were stacked beside files and heaps of manila envelopes; four or five antiquated computers were piled in a corner; a table groaned under the weight of ring-binders and notepads.

‘What is all this?’ I asked.

‘The Benson archive. You wanted to see it, didn’t you?’

I drew in a long breath. ‘Jesus, I had no idea there was so much.’

‘Witness reports, forensic records, transcripts of interviews. The whole nine yards. Thirty of us doing overtime all year.’

‘Can I take a look?’

‘You’ve been here long enough, you should go home.’

‘But the answer’s here, isn’t it? Our man’s the secretary of the Bensons’ fan club.’

He looked exasperated. ‘We’re not even sure there’s a link between the murders and the letters you’ve been getting. There’s no hard evidence.’

‘Half an hour, Don, please.’

Burns rolled his eyes at me, like I was a demanding ten-year-old. ‘All right. At least you can’t get up to any mischief in here.’

After a few minutes of fussing he left me to my own devices. I dusted down a chair and positioned it under the room’s only window, then collected a box-file from the table. It was crammed with photographs. Names and numbers had been printed on the back of each picture of the Bensons’ eight victims, and the five who were suspected dead, but never found. The parade of girls looked back at me. Some of them had produced a broad smile for the camera, but others refused to meet my eye. Ray Benson didn’t seem to have a type, apart from the fact that they were all young. One of them looked about sixteen. I remembered her face from the news bulletins,
a teenage runaway from the west coast of Ireland who came to London for the glamour, but ended up preserved in a layer of concrete under the Bensons’ patio. She had a mane of black curls and a neon smile. It was hard to imagine what Alvarez must have felt, listening to Benson describe what he did to each girl down in that cellar. No wonder he’d forgotten how to smile.

Burns came back just as I was replacing the file. He looked wistfully at the chair next to mine, calculating the energy needed to stand up against the comfort of sitting down.

‘All right, Alice. Here’s how it’s going to work. Someone’s going to drive you home, and from now on you’re not going anywhere without an escort. And when that brother of yours gets in contact, call me immediately. Understand?’

‘Of course,’ I nodded, too tired to argue.

‘And stay away from Ben Alvarez, in case there’s an explosion of some kind.’

The ride home was peaceful. My driver was the monosyllabic fifteen-year-old, so there was no need to make conversation, and I didn’t miss Alvarez’s mixture of disapproval and machismo. The white tent was still standing over the place where the girl’s body had been dumped, but the square was empty, except for Will’s van.

I flopped into a chair in the kitchen. There were hardly any lights on in the flats opposite. Maybe people were staying with friends, unsettled by the news. There was no sign of Lola anywhere. Either she had gone out, or she and Lars were locked in the spare room, indulging in quiet sex, to see if silence increased their pleasure. The red light on my answer-machine winked urgently.

‘Alice, what on earth’s going on? The police have been here, looking for your brother.’ For once the smooth surface
of my mother’s voice sounded ruffled. ‘I hope you’re not in trouble.’

‘That makes two of us.’

I stabbed the delete button with my finger before taking off my coat.

BOOK: Crossbones Yard

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