Death Angels (3 page)

She was younger than he had guessed. Not very pretty but in the bloom of youth, although that would soon be gone as well. She’s probably worrying about it already, he thought.

“Come in.” She pointed toward the living room. “I’ll tell John you’re here.”

“Show him in, dammit.” The man’s voice echoed through the hallway, his words both aggressive and jumbled.

He’s got a mouthful of eggs, Macdonald thought. Or bacon.

The kitchen reminded him of the café. The fumes from the frying pan burned his eyes.

Anderton was ruddy and stockily built.

He likes his cholesterol, Macdonald thought. I hope he doesn’t croak while I’m here.

“Perhaps the constable would like a little something.” Anderton waved at his wife and the stove at the same time. Apparently Macdonald could take his pick.

“No, thanks,” Macdonald said. “I already ate.”

“It’s fried with curry,” Anderton said.

“Very tempting, but I’ll pass.”

“Then what do you want?” he asked, as though Macdonald could use some fattening up. “Not even a hamburger?” His smile revealed a set of yellow teeth. “A Big Mac, maybe?”

“Tea would be great.”

“We’re out of milk,” the woman said.

“That’s fine.”

“No sugar either.” Her eyes were on Anderton.

I wonder if they’re married, Macdonald thought.

Anderton inspected him in silence.

I could always ask for a little herring just to be polite, Macdonald thought.

“Here you go.” The woman put Macdonald’s cup down in front of him.

He picked it up and took a few sips. It was just strong enough and not too hot.

“I found some sugar after all,” she said.

“What an honor to have a policeman in my very own home,” Anderton said. “I didn’t know they made house calls. I thought they took you down to the Yard in the middle of the night, even if it was just a case of a missing hamster.”

Macdonald observed him. The poor guy is just as uptight as everyone else, he thought. Chatter is the daughter of nervousness. Maybe he eats these grotesque servings just to unwind. “We appreciate your getting in touch with us, Mr. Anderton,” he said, taking a pen and notepad out of the right pocket of his jacket. He had hung his coat in the hallway.

“I was just doing my civic duty.” Anderton stretched out his arms as if auditioning to be a statue on the Common.

“Not everyone is so conscientious.”

“Not that I have a lot of information to give you.”

“You saw a man. Is that correct, Mr. Anderton?”

“Call me John.”

“Okay, John, you told us that you had seen a man talking to a younger guy.”

“The sun was setting and I had been down at the Windmill Pub, and after we had a couple of beers, somebody said that the night—”

“I’m most interested in what happened at Mount Pond.”

“Like I was saying, it was getting dark. I left the pub by myself and turned off Windmill Drive toward the pond.”

“What for?”

“Huh?”

“Why didn’t you walk straight ahead across the avenue?”

“What difference does it make?”

The woman was finished straightening up and stood by the stove with a towel in her hand. She looked out at the street with her back turned to them.

“If it’s so damn important, I had to take a piss,” Anderton said. “There’s some thick bushes between the pond and bandstand that come in handy if you have to answer the call of nature on your way home from the pub.”

“So you were by the pond.”

“I was pretty close to the pond, and when I was through, I saw this character come by with his arm around a young guy.”

“Were they touching?”

“The character had his arm around him, that’s right.”

“Why do you call him a character?”

“Because he looked like one.”

“What do characters look like?”

“To be honest, more or less like you.” Anderton grinned.

“Like me?”

“Ruffled hair, leather jacket, tall and athletic with dark wrinkles in his face that could scare the shit out of anyone.”

“Just like me, in other words.”

“Right.”

What a find, Macdonald thought. He’s about to drown in grease, but he’s got a sharp pair of eyes in his head. “So you were standing there looking at them?” he asked.

“Right.”

“Tell me in your own words what you saw.”

“Who else’s words would I use?”

“Just go ahead.”

Anderton tilted his cup, looked in it, reached for the teapot and poured. The tea had gotten much darker while they were sitting there, and he grimaced as it passed his lips. He ran his fingers over his balding scalp, the skin red where it had been stretched. “To tell you the truth, I wasn’t especially curious. It’s just that there was nothing else to look at. But I said to myself, this character is twice as big and twice as old as the kid, and they sure as hell aren’t father and son.”

“But he had his arm around him?”

“Like I said. But it was mostly him who was doing it.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was obviously more interested than the kid.”

Macdonald looked down at his blank notepad. The less I write now, the less irrelevant stuff I’ll have to sort through later, he thought. “Was he using force?” he asked.

“Where do you draw the line between force and affection?” Anderton asked, as though he were giving a philosophy lecture at the University of London.

“Where do
you
draw it?”

“He wasn’t dragging the kid along, if that’s what you want to know.”

“Were they talking?”

“I heard voices, but they were too far away for me to catch any words.” Anderton rose from the table.

“Are you going somewhere?”

“I was going to boil more water. Permission granted?”

“Of course.”

“Do you know what language they were speaking?” Macdonald asked.

Anderton sat back down. “Wasn’t it English?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“Why would they be speaking another language?”

“Did they seem to understand each other?”

“The character was doing most of the talking, but it looked like the kid understood him. Of course, they weren’t there very long.”

“I see.”

The kettle began to whistle. Anderton went over to the stove and fixed more tea, his back to Macdonald. “I was just about to come out of the bushes when they left.” He sat down again.

“Did they see you?”

“I have no idea. The kid turned around once and he might have noticed me. But what difference does it make now? He’s dead, right?”

“How long did you watch them walk away?”

“I didn’t stare at them until they disappeared over the horizon, if that’s what you mean. I was in a hurry to get home and watch
East-Enders
. And it was already getting dark.”

“Which way did they go?”

“Straight south across Windmill Drive.”

“We’re going to need your help to put together a composite sketch of this man.”

“But I barely saw his face. I can’t just make things up, can I?”

Macdonald sighed.

“Okay, okay, I wasn’t trying to be a wise guy or anything.”

Macdonald jotted down a note to himself.

“I’ll do whatever I can. It’s not like I don’t realize what you’re up against, and I do feel sorry for the kid. Not to mention his parents. I mean, I called you guys, right? First thing I did when I saw it in the
South London Press
.”

“Yes, a lot of people would have been afraid to come forward at that point.”

“I hope you get your hands on the motherfucker. We’re behind you all the way.”

Macdonald had the impression Anderton was including everyone in the former British Empire.

Macdonald made his way through the traffic to Clapham Common South Side and entered the Dudley Hotel at the corner of Cautley Avenue—twenty-five pounds a night, up front. He broke the seal on the door and walked to the middle of the room. The stench of blood was everywhere. You’re used to blood, he told himself, but nothing like this. He’d grown up on a farm and seen a thousand pigs slaughtered, but it didn’t turn his stomach the same way. Human blood has a cloying sweetness that throws you off balance, he thought.

So this is where they were going. It might have been right after Anderton saw them. Assuming it was them. The kid had been here for two days. Why had he chosen this hotel, of all places? What would make a Swedish kid stay down here in Clapham? Nothing wrong with Clapham, but you’d think someone his age would have found a cheap joint up in Bayswater. Or Paddington. He would have had plenty of other young foreigners there to hang out with.

The wallpaper, off-white originally, was now a sickening orange.

Macdonald closed his eyes and concentrated on the echoes from the walls. Before long he heard a muffled scream and the sound of a body writhing on the floor.

His right eye ached, forcing him back to the present.

How had the man convinced the kid to bring him here? Was it only sex? Or had he promised something else? Drugs?

Why here? Did he know people in Clapham or up in Battersea? Or over in Brixton?

He’d been robbed, but that wasn’t the motive. All that had happened afterward.

We can’t even confirm his identity with his teeth, Macdonald thought. They’re not in the British records.

The victim had scrawled his name and hometown in the guest book when he’d checked into this shabby bed-and-breakfast on the south side of the former capital of the world. His name was Per Malmström. He was from Gothenburg. That’s all they had to go on.

That’s somewhere on the west coast of Sweden, Macdonald thought. Per was blond, like so many of his compatriots. What have they got that makes them all towheads? We’re also exposed to the same merciless winds and sky.

The Gothenburg police must know about it by now, assuming INTERPOL is on the case.

He closed his eyes again, listened to the walls roar, the floors shriek.

A BOY IN HIS LATE TEENS HAD BEEN SPOTTED WITH A MAN IN
downtown Gothenburg. Nobody could recall exactly where—maybe the Brunnsparken area. They hadn’t been seen together before that.

Three people might have caught sight of them after they left Brunnsparken, and that was a hell of a lot to go on. Who knows, maybe there were more than three.

They were obviously together, but they didn’t look like father and son.

According to a couple of witnesses, the kid had dark, badly cut hair, and since Winter knew how unreliable such testimony could be, he made a quick mental note and let it go at that.

There’s always a trail to follow, he thought as he walked by a sports complex. It might feel like you’re not getting anywhere, but it’s just a question of patience.

The icy soccer fields below him were in hibernation, dreaming of last year’s glory. In three months, players would be kicking the shit out of each other, the gravel soft and redolent of sweat and menthol.

Soccer isn’t a sport, Winter thought. It’s a million little injuries, the feeling of loose bone chips rattling around your knees. I could have been something, but I wasn’t injured often enough.

Nobody remembered what the man looked like. But they showed no reluctance to describe him anyway. He had been tall, average height or a bit short. Compared to the kid? No, compared to the streetcar, somebody said, and Winter closed his eyes as if he were exorcising the world’s ingratitude.

The man’s hair had been blond, black and brown. He had been wearing a suit, leather jacket and tweeds. He had horn-rimmed glasses, dark sunglasses and no glasses at all. He was stooped over, his posture was perfect, he was bowlegged and he had long, muscular legs.

What kind of world would we live in, Winter mused, if everybody looked at it the same way?