Down Among the Dead Men (9 page)

Frank opens the wardrobe. Inside the clothes are hung neatly and precisely. His on one side, hers the other. Organised, careful people. Blue business shirts. A few sleek evening dresses. Peeping from between the sober blacks and blues is a flash of shiny red fabric. Frank teases it out and sees it's a PVC sheath dress stiff with buckles and zips. It's not exactly Amsterdam dungeon material but it does raise the possibility that Harris's sex-game quip might have more weight than he first thought. He flicks through the rest of the clothes with more attention, but apart from the red dress, the only other indication of anything kinky is a pair of high-heeled biker boots tucked away behind a line of shoes. He checks the size to see if they're hers. They are, but it's worth a look.

Below the wardrobe are two deep drawers. Frank finds a couple of sex accessories in there but nothing more than in most suburban bedrooms. Harris is going through the bedside cabinets. It's a slower process as, unlike the wardrobe, the cabinets haven't escaped the blood splatters.

'Anything?' Frank says.

Harris holds up two rolled joints and a pair of fake handcuffs.

'Hardly the Last Days of Rome, is it?'

'Might be more,' says Harris. 'There's a computer downstairs.' Harris looks at the dead woman. 'She's been restrained. The two joints might indicate stronger drug use.'

Frank raises his eyebrows. He and Harris had smoked a little on Thursday and neither of them had moved on to inject heroin into their eyeballs, but it's worth noting, he supposes.

'I'm sure Ferguson will check.'

Theresa Cooper comes back into the room. Harris holds up the joints and Cooper taps her clipboard with a satisfied flourish. 'Already itemised. I left things intact for McGettigan and the rest of the techs.'

'All right, Theresa, no one's having a pop,' says Frank. Harris replaces the joints where she found them.

'What do you want me to put on the sheet, sir? I mean with you and DI Harris being here.' She holds up the scene of crime document on the clipboard. Frank knows what she's asking.

'You're lead, Theresa. Like we said, I'll do the official SIO role and DI Harris will also act as a monitor.'

Cooper scribbles her name on the form and tucks the clipboard under her arm. 'I spoke to Ferguson just now, sir,' she says. She cocks her head on one side to indicate she has something of interest to add, as if, now that her role as lead is safe, she can bring a titbit to the table as reward. Keane and Harris wait a beat. 'The husband. There's something you should see.'

Eighteen

The lid of his prison is lifted and Nicky blinks in the harsh glare of a torch beam.

As the light moves off him, Nicky chokes back tears.

Hovering above is a familiar face. One he's seen looking down on him before, often, sometimes contorted in pleasure. Down here, underground, there's only one word Nicky can think of to describe his captor.
Monster
.

'I have to clean you,' says the monster. 'Give you food.' It sounds like an internal dialogue. He's speaking to himself.

He puts the torch down on the floor, reaches in, grabs hold of Nicky's arms and hoists him out like a kid choosing a toy. He closes the lid of the box and sits the boy back down on top of it. Nicky can see that he's been inside a crate of some sort.

There's no question of escape or fighting. Nicky's legs aren't working properly and he's shivering uncontrollably.

The torch, although not pointing directly at him, is hurting Nicky's eyes but after a few moments the boy can see his surroundings for the first time since being imprisoned.

They're inside one of the Williamson tunnels, a long, L-shaped cavern with a curving brick roof and a bare earth floor. It's not one that Nicky recognises.

One wall of the space is slick with wet moss. The others are dry. At the end of the cavern is a bank of rubble pushed into a rough slope. The slope runs up to a small opening. Nicky can't see where the opening leads to, just that it's dark. He can't feel any air moving, which makes him think that there's something in place blocking this area from view.

Next to the crate is a trestle table covered in plastic. There are
some tools placed on a smaller table at one side along with lengths of rope and some reels of duct tape. At the sight of them Nicky moans involuntarily.

The monster glances at the table.

'Oh, that. Don't panic, Nicky. They're just props. We're friends, aren't we? More than friends.'

Abruptly he hands Nicky a bucket and tells him to clean himself up. 'You stink.'

'You're going to kill me,' says Nicky. He hadn't planned to say anything but it just comes out. The monster can't do all this and let him survive. There's just no way back from this. Nicky tries to keep his voice steady but he can't. If he lets himself think of his mother he knows he'll collapse so he digs his fingernails hard into his palms.

'Who knows? Now get yourself clean. I can hardly breathe.'

'Why are you doing this? I liked you. Those things we did . . . I won't tell.'

'Shh, quiet, Nicky. Get yourself clean.' The monster tries to make his voice soothing but it isn't working. There's a nervy energy emanating from the monster. Unpredictable.

Nicky does his best to scrape the filth from his body, hardly daring to take his eyes from the plastic-covered table holding the tools. When all the water is gone he stands, his knees bent, darting pain shooting up his legs. The monster looks at him without expression.

'All done?'

Nicky nods.

His captor produces a plastic loop from the pocket of his jacket and cinches it tight around Nicky's wrists, held out in front of him. Nicky drops his hands to his groin, covering himself as best he can. The gut-wrenching terror is starting to return.

'What's happening? What are you going to do? Please don't do this.'

Without warning, his expression unchanged, the monster slaps him hard across the face and Nicky falls to the floor before being dragged upright by his hair. He starts to sob and that makes the monster angry.

'Fucking shut it, you fucking little cunt bastard!' Hissing, the monster's face distorts with fury and Nicky can feel the spittle
hitting his face. 'Keep it fucking closed, you fucking got that? Fucking shut it!'

The monster stands back, breathing heavily through his nose. He's tall, the monster, and in the torchlight coming up from the floor, his bloated shadow dancing across the curved brick ceiling, he is a subterranean nightmare, a creature from the depths, the devil himself. Nicky finds it hard to look at the creature's eyes. It's like looking into hell. 'You don't fucking understand. I'm under a lot of fucking pressure.'

The monster's head bobs from side to side, half-nodding, half-shaking, as if conducting an inner dialogue. He keeps clenching and unclenching his fingers.

Then, like a storm clearing, he is calm again. He takes out a bottle of water from a backpack and hands it to Nicky. The boy guzzles it and the monster stops him.

'Slower. You'll make yourself ill.' He bends to the backpack and takes out a plastic-wrapped sandwich. Marks & Spencer, chicken salad. He gives it to Nicky and watches him eat.

'The things I've done,' he says quietly as Nicky sits on the box chewing. His tone is one of bewilderment.

Nicky stands there, waiting. He feels like he's going to be sick and his face hurts from the blow. Curiously, the sudden anger from the creature in front of him makes him feel better. At some gut level, Nicky knows that the violent reaction is because the monster doesn't know what to do with him.

It's something to hold on to.

Nineteen

Frank follows the blood trail leading from the main bedroom and along the landing towards the bathroom filled with white-suited techs.

The house is decorated in that way that Frank always thinks of as being beyond him no matter what the money. It's not that these people are rich, or at least not
rich
rich. It's more that they just seem to have the right stuff. The soft lighting, the sagging but expensive sofas, pictures on the wall that look like they mean something.

He's seen a piano downstairs. The kids round here have piano lessons. Or they can play the piano. Either way, it's not something that was common in the homes he was brought up in. He can remember getting a Muppet trumpet one Christmas and that was about it on the musical instrument front.

Past the bathroom is the open door of what must be the teenager's bedroom. Frank doesn't stop. Bodies first, rest of the house later. At the top of the stairs the uniform who he'd sent outside earlier is back along with another plod. Both straighten up at his and Harris's approach.

'What the fuck are you two doing, exactly?' Frank Keane can be an intimidatory presence when required. 'What precise purpose are you fulfilling?'

The uniforms start blabbering some nonsense.

'Vamoose, dickheads,' says Frank and they clatter downstairs. Chastened as they are, Frank notices the eyes of both young men sliding towards Harris as they pass.

He doesn't blame them. Harris is worth looking at and men are, after all, just men.

Still, it never hurts to remind your basic plod of his lowly position. What's the fucking point of rising up the ladder if you can't occasionally make someone unhappy?

'Tea!' He shouts the order after them as he and Harris and Cooper head downstairs. 'One sugar. With.' He doesn't really want any tea but it'll give the idle fuckers something to grumble about and make sure they jump that bit quicker when asked next time. A good DCI's rep is established like fossil fuels: layer upon layer over long periods of time.

From the hall the three MIT officers walk outside. Access to the garage is from the front of the house or via an internal connecting door. Frank wants another look at the outside. In the mild June air, he stops and looks up at the bedroom windows.

'I've been here before,' he says. 'Years ago. A party.'

Not a flicker in response.

'I mean, this exact house. Not just the area.'

Harris sniffs and Cooper turns diplomatically towards the garage, the entrance of which has been masked off by a tent-like structure.

Frank, a man not known for his forbearance, suppresses a sharp flare of irritation at his ex-partner. Harris is, on paper at least, Keane's subordinate and, whatever the erotic events of Thursday – not to mention Linda's 'acid' attack – she is still at work. The two of them will have to deal with what's been happening at some point but in the meantime Frank expects Harris to toe the line. He bites back the sharp barb on the tip of his tongue and also decides it's prudent not to mention the image that jumps into his mind on recognising the house. Himself at seventeen, inexpertly fumbling under a pile of coats on the parental bed with a Birkdale girl – Catherine? Sarah? – treating herself to the thrill of one of the bad boys. He has a mental flash of the girl's long blonde hair, of her hand guiding him inside, the smell of shampoo and cigarettes, the thrill of being young and hard and wanted. And her breasts, oh God, her breasts. The thought still gives him a shiver.

He looks up at the room in which Maddy Peters lies butchered and feels guilty at his trip down mammary lane.

The house looks the same as he remembers but under the white arcs set up by the SOC officers the solid Victorian appears no more
substantial than a stage set. Frank gets the impression he could push it over with a decent shove of the shoulder.

The temporary illusion of insubstantiality aside, the double-fronted detached has the air of a divorcee caught in the glare of nightclub lights at closing time. But a divorcee with a good lawyer. The place is well-heeled without being flash.

This suburb, the last one before Liverpool is reclaimed by Lancashire in spirit if not according to the county lines, is where the rich live. Restored red-brick Victorian mansions with landscaped gardens and curving gravel drives dotted with Audis and Jags are generously spaced along the leafy, wedge-shaped tangle of roads between the dunes to the west, the train line to the east and the gleaming white art deco Royal Birkdale Golf Club to the south. The village clustered around the train station is dotted with boutique delicatessens and wine merchants and al fresco cafes. From Birkdale, the Northern Line runs south to Liverpool and then on to unspeakable Speke, the socio-economic demographic falling with every kilometre it travels.

Here in Birkdale, Merseyside royalty – ex-Liverpool and Everton footballers – own the bars and restaurants, most of them only a minute in the Merc from the six-bedroom with pool on Selworthy Road. The population of Birkdale west of the line seems to be composed of these footballers, as well as entrepreneurs, media figures, accountants, lawyers, doctors, or, as at Frank's Burlington Road crime scene, dentists.

'You must have been higher up the social scale than you were letting on, Frank. I thought you were a bit of a scally?'

She speaks.

He supposes he should be grateful.

'She – they were slumming it, mixing with us.' Frank isn't protesting. It's a fact. The area of the city he was raised in – Bootle – bears little resemblance to Birkdale. He can't remember the circumstances of being invited to the party but it was rare then for him to venture this far north, which is why it stuck in his memory. That, and the bedroom fumbling.

Until January, Frank lived three stops down on the train in the equally comfortable neighbourhood of Formby. The only reason he and Julie weren't in Birkdale was that Formby is that bit nearer work.
Frank's no working-class hero and he's never met anyone from his background who wouldn't trade the streets of Bootle for the lanes of suburbia in an eye blink. All that bollocks about the inner-city areas being more real? Fuck that. Frank, just like the street rat footballers who migrate from Croxteth, Huyton and Bootle out to the Wirral, or Cheshire, or Birkdale the instant the first million is clocked up, knows that reality is overrated. Give him the suburbs and trees and safety every time.

Cooper's standing at the garage door trying to mask her impatience, a faithful retriever waiting to show her offering. Harris and Frank move along the drive, past the polished Beemer and a small, equally gleaming Toyota, their feet crunching on the white stones.