Down into Darkness (37 page)

Harriman cast a glance at Costea. ‘What?'

‘No, not him. Our silent wolfman. Does he get into costume when he gets up in the morning, or –'

‘Who knows… Why?'

‘Because now we have a description,' Greegan observed. ‘Now we know what he looks like.'

They'd left the car at the bottom of the Strip and walked to the SOC, because a lorry had spilled its load up on the rise. Greegan fished in his pocket for the keys, then checked his watch. ‘I'm heading home,' he said. ‘You?'

‘Definitely. Hot date.'

Greegan sighed and sang a couple of lines of ‘Memories'. They got into the car and drove the fifty yards to the end of the Strip, where the traffic backed up.

Gideon Woolf was walking in the opposite direction, masked from them by a high-sided van, thinking of a letter he had to write.

Stella was adding a picture to the white-board in their flat – Silent Wolf, his desert camouflage combat pants, his long coat, his ruff of hair. Delaney was watching the news, reading through an article, opening wine.

Stella asked, ‘Stanley Bowman, Neil Morgan –'

‘I asked around,' Delaney said. ‘The only connection anyone could come up with was that Bowman had fingers in many business pies and Morgan has influence with various committees.'

‘They were talking business – if that's what it was – very late at night.'

‘So off the record, you think?'

‘I do, yes. Money matters, Bowman said. Where to invest.'

‘You know…' Delaney poured the wine. ‘… politics and business are much the same thing these days. They all swim in the same sea. Sea of Sleaze. Is that him?'

He was pointing at the artist's impression of Silent Wolf.

‘We think so.'

‘The fashion for combat fatigues,' Delaney observed; ‘it says “I'm hard,” but it's also something to do with belonging, don't you think? I'm a soldier, I'm combat fit and I'm ready. The paramilitaries in Bosnia used to wear them as if they conveyed authority. You'd get pulled over at a checkpoint by some illiterate kid with a bad-attitude problem and a liking for violence. He'd be wearing combats and a New York Mets baseball cap. So far as he was concerned, he was the law. You might live or die on his say so.'

‘They were militia?' Stella asked.

‘Nationalists is what they called themselves. Arkan's Tigers, for instance: nothing more than a bunch of homicidal thugs. Patriotism's a repulsive thing.'

He looked shaky for a moment, and Stella reflected on what he must have seen but would never speak about.

Harriman's date was called Miriam, and she was definitely hot. She was catwalk-hot, drop-dead-hot, perfect-in-all-departments-hot. One of the departments in question was bed, which is where she and Harriman were doing everything you could possibly do without throwing your back out or pulling a hamstring.

Afterwards, Harriman took a shower: an unusual event; why wash that scent away? Miriam's bathroom had everything, just like Miriam, but he felt uncomfortable there, and when he emerged to find that she had unpacked lobster from the fridge and put a bottle of champagne on ice, he felt his appetite wane.

They ate the food and drank the champagne. Miriam talked, but Harriman didn't have a hell of a lot to say. An hour later he left, telling her that he would call her. He'd call her soon.

Miriam knew what that meant.

When he got back to his own apartment, Gloria was on the answerphone.

Hi, whassup? You still working late? Hmm… You know what? I've got a funny feeling about you. Not so funny, really. Not funny at all. Want to talk about that?

He could still smell Miriam, so he got into the shower and stood with his face raised to the jets, gasping, like a man drowning.

Delaney was at the checkpoint. The boy in combats and baseball cap had just unslung his gun. One minute Nathan
Prior was standing at Delaney's shoulder, the next he was on the other side of the checkpoint, beckoning and smiling. Delaney started to shout at Prior, but the words were a mouse-squeak. The boy lifted the gun to Delaney's head, except now it was a pistol, and Delaney and the boy were making that iconic image of execution from the Vietnam War: the prisoner shot on camera.

Delaney was yelling, but only he could hear. Prior beckoned, smiling. The gun made a mechanical sound, like tumblers falling, and the bullet started along the barrel.

Stella lay beside him as he muttered and twitched his way through the dream. She thought she knew what all these combat-zone dreams meant.

That morning an estate agent had called to tell her that they'd had an offer on the Vigo Street flat. The buyer was offering the asking price. She put a hand on Delaney's arm and he half woke, staring at her.

‘You were having a bad dream.'

‘Okay,' he said, and closed his eyes. ‘Okay,' as if he'd expected nothing else.

I am the one in the papers, but it's over now. I have no more calls to make. The ones who died deserved what they got, and there is nothing left to say. To let you know this is genuine, I can tell you this one thing that hasn't appeared in the papers, I wrote on them about their offence. Leonard Pigeon was a mistake and I am sorry for that
.

Gideon Woolf at the computer in his room high above the heat and lights of the Strip… A thin charcoal dust from the scorched beams sifted down on to the keyboard as he inserted the game and waited for the logo to arrive on the screen, for the low, slow notes of the music, for the first graphic of yellow eyes on a black screen, then the skyline of the city fading in below a rose-coloured sky.

Silent Wolf walked him down unlit alleys and round blind corners; they were the street-sweepers; where they walked, enemies fell; they were invincible.

It's over now
…

But there was still Aimée.

The letter was in Brian Collier's mail. He opened it and read the first couple of lines before realizing what it was. Stella picked up his call as she was leaving Coffee Republic, and by the time she reached the squad room a forensics officer was already on the way. She read the letter hands-free.

‘It's him.'

‘Could it have leaked – the writing on all the bodies?'

‘I don't see how. Anyway' – she was remembering that, yes, she had told Delaney – ‘it hasn't been in the press, and that's the only way a crank would have known about it.' She hunkered down to get an eye-level view of the envelope that was lying on Collier's desk, next to the letter. ‘This doesn't look like a self-seal. If he licked it – plenty of isolated DNA. That'll tell us for sure.'

‘I wonder if he means it,' Collier said.

‘That he's finished?'

‘Yes.'

‘He's nuts,' Stella said. ‘Who knows what he means?'

‘He means he's killed his chosen victims, the ones he set out to kill.'

Stella sat in Anne Beaumont's basement kitchen and watched as Anne chopped vegetables. A large pan of water was simmering on the stove.

‘This is a man who thinks he's Silent Wolf, enemy of Ironjaw, for Christ's sake.' Stella leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes for a moment. ‘What makes you think he's working off some sort of logical game plan?'

‘Depends what you mean by logical. Remember Leopold and Loeb? They killed because they felt like it.'

‘He even dresses like Silent Wolf.'

‘Well, we think he does. James and Stevie might have projected that. But, yes, it's a fair bet. How mad does that make him? We all imitate styles of dress in order to belong or impress. Mods, greasers, punks, hippies, politicians in grey suits, the bare-midriff look, hoodies. You, for instance, have obviously been strongly influenced by Parisian haute couture.'

‘Fuck off.'

Anne laughed. ‘He's playing a role, because he believes he has a role to play. There's a key to this lock, and it's something to do with the cartoon hero's brand of frontier justice. He's paying back; he's settling a score; he's demonstrating his worth… I don't know. Somewhere along the way, there's a major trauma.'

‘You're cooking,' Stella said, as if the oddity of that had only just struck her.

‘I am, yes.'

‘We unwrap… sometimes we defrost.' After a moment, Stella added: ‘Delaney's having nightmares: bombs and battles.'

‘You suspect he's going to find himself a war…'

‘I do.'

‘And what do you think about that?'

‘I think he might well get himself killed. I think he's a selfish bastard. I think trying to stop him would be a bad move.'

‘I think you're right.'

‘Here's another thing. I had a letter from my mother.'

‘Why?'

‘She's leaving. Or else she's left.'

‘What did it say?'

‘She was passing on a message from her boyfriend, whose
links with the criminal world seem pretty well established… no surprises there.'

‘A message?'

‘A tip-off, really. I've also passed it on.'

Anne took a chicken carcass from the fridge, broke it, put it into the pan and added the vegetables.

‘What is that?'

‘Stock. For soup?' Stella nodded as if it was something she did every day. ‘What else did she say?' Anne asked.

‘She made reference to my happy childhood, our precious time together, the way we'd always been there for one another, the laughter we'd shared, the evenings when she'd read to me as I sat in bed sipping my Ovaltine.'

Anne shook her head. ‘My God, she's in trouble.'

‘
She's
in trouble?' Stella's laugh bore no trace of humour.

‘Yes,' Anne said, ‘that's right. She needs help. Can't you see that?'

Stella sat in silence for five minutes, while Anne stirred and flavoured. Finally she said, ‘Yes, I can.' Then: ‘But fuck her, okay? Fuck
her
!'

‘You owe me some money. It hasn't arrived.' Bowman's tone of voice was genial, which was what made it threatening.

The American sighed. ‘Is he going to get better?'

‘No one seems to know. For now? Count him out.'

They were talking about Neil Morgan, who showed no sign of being able to check out of ITC. Candice had set up camp, with a director's chair, coffee flask, health snacks and a make-up bag. She watched his monitors, the slow rise and fall of his chest, his face wiped clean of all expression.

Don't die, you bastad!

The American said, ‘So get me someone else.'

‘I'm working on it.'

‘Work harder.'

‘Happy to. I expect the money's on its way.'

‘This is a long-term thing,' the American observed. ‘It's a market thing, a worldwide thing. Just now? I've got two deals in train. I've got a coup on the move. Big order for small arms. The new government will need to keep the population on side. I've got anti-personnel mines and mortars going out to a civil-war situation – protection of territory, or religion, or whatever. This is all good; this is all fine. What I really need is throughput, I need volume, I need your market and for that I need help.'

‘And the money's about to arrive,' Bowman said, ‘have I got that right?'

‘Yeah, yeah… for Christ's sake.'

‘Good,' Bowman said, ‘because that'll be a great incentive.'

‘What happened?' the American asked. ‘It was, like, a break-in? Morgan got in the way?'

‘Looks like it.'

‘Hey, the world's a dangerous place.'

Bowman sat behind his vast desk in his vast office in his vast house and watched the tiny, bright jot of a mile-high aircraft tow white plumes across the sky.

He didn't think about landmines, or the field-workers and children who would tread on them. He didn't wonder about the civil war and who was worshipping the wrong god. He did think about coming downstairs and finding Neil Morgan, though, and remembered the damage the man had undergone, the knife slashes, the fault line on the skull where the fire-iron had struck, the broad spillage of blood.

Bowman would need another politician, someone who liked money, someone who thought of politics as a high-risk, high-rewards game, someone who knew that the meek would never inherit the earth.

He didn't expect to have to look far.

Frank Silano had posted an abstract of the killings.

Bryony Dean – hanged

Leonard Pigeon – decapitation attempt

Martin Turner – shot

George Nelms – decapitated

Neil Morgan – decapitation attempt

‘Okay,' Stella said, ‘if we take Pigeon out of it, if we work on the assumption that the killer was really after Neil Morgan, then we can also assume that the intended method was decapitation, so we've got a hanging, a shooting and two decapitations. Why?'

‘Silent Wolf carries a knife,' Maxine observed. ‘Weapon of choice.'

‘He sometimes carries a gun,' Silano said.

‘And karate-kicks the shit out of people,' Harriman added; ‘he's a multitalented man.'

The
Silent Wolf
game was now a squad-room feature. Harriman had racked a good score and so had Silano, but no one had come close to Sue Chapman, who, among her colleagues, had earned herself the title of Silent Wolf Bitch.

Stella said, ‘Silent Wolf never hanged anyone.'

‘So this is his pattern, the killer's.'

‘That's what the profiler says, and it seems right to me.'

‘Hang, chop, shoot, chop, chop,' Maxine offered.

‘We're taking Pigeon out of it,' Silano reminded her, ‘so it's hang, shoot, chop, chop.'

‘No,' Harriman said. ‘The guy thought Pigeon was
Morgan, so it's really hang, chop, shoot, chop in that order.' He looked at Stella. ‘We're looking for the reason for that particular pattern, that particular order?'