The Murder Bag (6 page)

Because I was lonely too.

After a long moment I pulled myself away, cracking my shin against the coffee table and waking up the dog.

Natasha Buck smiled sadly as she slipped the robe back on and tied the belt around her slim waist.

‘Ah, that rare breed,’ she said, nodding towards my left hand. My wedding ring had caught the soft light as I picked up my cup. ‘A married man who loves his wife!’

‘Drink your coffee,’ I said.

The porter was nowhere to be seen when I left. The journalist and the photographer had disappeared. The chauffeur was dozing at the wheel of the Mercedes, his peaked cap pulled over his eyes. The dogs in the park had all gone home and the day was dark far too soon.

I was walking to the car, kicking through the piles of autumn leaves and thinking of Natasha Buck’s long naked limbs, when DCI Mallory called.

‘It wasn’t beginner’s luck,’ he said. ‘We’ve got another one.’

4

A BLACKED-OUT MORTUARY
van waited at the mouth of the alley as the swirling blue lights of a dozen response cars lit up the Soho night. Uniformed officers were still unreeling spools of blue and white crime scene tape across Shaftesbury Avenue and shoving back crowds hopeful of glimpsing fresh corpse.

I ducked under the tape.

The Airwave digital radios chattered and clacked. The SOCOs were putting on their head-to-toe white body suits while Mallory’s two detective inspectors, Gane and Whitestone, were already ripping off their protective gear. They were excited.

‘It’s a good body,’ Gane said to me. He was young and black, his head shaved fashionably clean, and under his protective clothes he was far better dressed than he needed to be.

I pulled on thin blue latex gloves. ‘A good body?’

‘A bad body is one that’s found by the public,’ Whitestone said. ‘Some drunk who needs a pee or a puke. A dog walker clomping through the gore before it’s had a chance to get cold. Destroying evidence, tampering with the scene before we’ve even confirmed death.’ Whitestone was in her middle thirties, a thoughtful-looking blonde woman with black-rimmed glasses. You might not have guessed she had more than ten years on murder investigation teams. ‘A good body is one that’s found by the police when it’s definitely dead. A good body keeps things simple. Saves us work.’

‘And this is a good body,’ Gane said. And then, ‘We read about you. You’re famous, Wolfe. What did they call you in court?’

‘Officer A,’ I said.

‘Officer A. You were in SO15?’

I nodded. ‘Surveillance officer, Counter Terrorism Command.’

‘You were a surveillance officer?’ he said, clearly underwhelmed.

I could see how a Homicide detective like Gane would think surveillance was life in the slow lane. It’s true there was a lot of hanging around, following people on foot and in cars and watching endless hours of CCTV footage, whereas Homicide and Serious Crime’s work is carried out by Murder Investigation Teams, the Metropolitan Police’s specialised murder squads, and is one of the Met’s elite units, investigating nothing but murder, manslaughter and the threat of murder. But Gane made it sound like I had spent my time asking people if they wanted fries with that shake.

‘I heard that it would never have detonated,’ he said with a grin. ‘Because the bomber ruined the cook.’

‘I heard that too,’ I said, flexing my fingers inside the latex gloves. ‘In court the tech guy said the perp didn’t distil the hydrogen peroxide to the correct concentration. Simmered when he should have stirred. Forgot to whisk his egg white. Maybe it’s true. Maybe they’re just trying to cheer us up. Anyone who makes a bomb in their old mum’s kitchen can’t be that bright, can they?’

‘And what did they give you?’ Gane asked.

‘The Queen’s Police Medal.’

He almost whistled. ‘A QPM? Was it for exceptional courage, skill, exhibiting conspicuous devotion to duty, or all three?’ He laughed. ‘Lucky he had a bomb in his bag. Or they would have given you twenty years to life.’

‘It’s good to have you, Wolfe,’ Whitestone told me, ending the chat. ‘The boss is waiting for you.’

SOCOs were putting up arc lights at the end of the alley where Mallory stood next to a black shape lying on the ground by giant recycling bins, his long lean figure stock still in the blazing white glare as the scene was carefully prepared, looking like an actor waiting for his cue to step on stage. The filthy alley felt like it was light years away from the shining tower where we had found Hugo Buck.

‘I thought we had another one,’ I said.

‘We do,’ Mallory said.

There’s a look that you see in all boxers and in certain breeds of dog – German Shepherds have it. It is a look that reveals knowledge of how serious the world is. Mallory had that look now.

‘Different postcode, same killer,’ he said. ‘Look.’

The dead man wore the sad rags of homelessness. And someone had cut his throat out.

All of it.

The fierce white lights revealed a neck that had been ripped open, torn out, the front half of the victim’s neck cleaved clean away. Again. It felt like only the spine was keeping the head attached to the body. Again. Mallory was right. The homeless man in the stinking alley was a world away from the banker in his glass tower.

But he was another one.

Even under the arc lights the alley was cold, and through the thin rubber gloves I could feel the sweat tingle on my palms.

I turned on my torch to look beyond the reach of the lights’ glare, and let the thin beam trace slowly across the great spurts of arterial blood covering the walls and the recycling bins. I turned the torch off as I looked at the blood that soaked and stained the top half of the body.

The blood stank with that distinctive metallic odour that is also sickeningly human, and the smell mixed with the fuel and food and alcohol scents of the West End.

I tried to look beyond the blood and the horror. I tried to look at what had once been a man.

His hair was long and matted, the clothes rags, blackened by the grinding toll of living on the streets. It was hard to estimate his age because he looked all used up, as though he had lived an entire lifetime long before this brutal death.

‘There will be needle marks on his arms,’ I said, ‘and perhaps on the legs, and even between the toes.’

Mallory said, ‘But why kill a man who was so busy killing himself?’

There were a few pitiful belongings by the dead man’s side. A black rubbish bag secured by an elastic band holding his worldly goods. A woollen cap still full of coins. And a musical instrument. A thin piece of black wood with a complicated tangle of silver metal buttons and keys.

‘A clarinet?’ I said.

‘Not a clarinet,’ Mallory said. ‘Too small. An oboe.’

‘Nobody’s busking is that bad,’ said one of the SOCOs.

Nobody laughed.

Mallory’s gaze took in the bloodied body, the untouched money, and the musical instrument. He shook his head with what looked like real sadness.

‘Looks like he was on the streets for a while,’ I said. ‘Plenty of addicts and former addicts around Soho. But the homeless don’t often kill each other.’

‘No,’ Mallory agreed. ‘It’s the people with homes to go to who are the problem.’

I looked back at the street. The SOCOs moved in slow motion now, plodding white ghosts, falling into their routine of photographing footprints, gathering cigarette butts, collecting fibres, prints, and samples of blood. One of them was drawing a sketch. The photographer stopped taking stills and started filming the scene. The usual crop of small numbered yellow markers were blooming on the ragged ground and the SOCOs trod carefully between them, like scientists tiptoeing through the aftermath of nuclear Armageddon. Beyond them, in the festive swirl of the blue lights of our cars, uniformed officers were pushing back the crowds recording the drama on their phones.

‘They think we’re putting on
Les Misérables
down here,’ Mallory sighed. ‘This is a strange space, isn’t it?’

I lifted my head. Mallory was right. It was not really an alley at all, more of a crevice between two of the grand old theatres of Shaftesbury Avenue. At the end of the alley, above the heads of the gawping crowd, I could see the bright lights of the very heart of the city. The white neon of the theatre marquees, the reds and golds of Chinatown.

‘And nobody heard a thing,’ Mallory said, reading my mind.

‘Because his trachea had been cut,’ I said. ‘No windpipe, no scream.’

As the crowds were moved to the far side of the street their voices rose in protest. They craned their necks for a better view and held their little phones even higher above their heads.

‘God spare us from stupid people with smartphones,’ Mallory muttered.

The SOCOs began to erect a tent over the dead man to shield the scene from the public and to protect the thousand tiny scraps of evidence from the weather. Mallory’s gaze settled on the beanie cap full of coins, then moved on to the musical instrument.

‘What kind of heroin addict busks with an oboe?’ he said.

I thought about it. ‘One who comes from money. One who had all the chances. One who comes from privilege. The music teacher coming round once a week to practise the oboe. The lessons going on for years. Money never a problem.’

Mallory ran the palm of one large hand over his bald head and then pushed his John Lennon glasses a bit further up his broken nose. ‘Or maybe he just stole it.’ A beat. ‘But I don’t think so. I think you’re right. I think there was all kind of care lavished on him. A long time ago now.’

The flash from a SOCO’s camera lit up a part of the alley wall that the arc lights had not reached. Among the fresh spurts of travel blood there was a tangle of graffiti I had missed. One word shouted at me and I stepped closer to see, although I already knew what it said.

P I G

On the far side of the street I could see perhaps a hundred mobile phones, held above the shoulders of the uniformed officers who stood on the far side of the POLICE DO NOT CROSS tape. The crowds had been pushed right back now but the numbers were growing, stretching our officers, and as their excitement mounted the white lights on their phones glowed like the eyes of wolves in winter.

A SOCO came down the alley, carrying a laptop in one hand and pulling off her facemask with the other.

‘Good body, sir,’ she said to Mallory.

‘No witness, no weapon, no CCTV, no ID and no glove prints,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen better.’

In the morning I took care of my daughter and my dog and then I drove to work – 27 Savile Row, London W1. The Met call it West End Central.

27 Savile Row is a modern block of offices with one of those ancient blue police lamps outside – the kind of blue lamp that makes you think of Sherlock Holmes hunting Jack the Ripper through the London fog. But although Savile Row is famous for two things, West End Central isn’t one of them.

For hundreds of years Savile Row has been home to the most exclusive men’s tailors in the world. The short Mayfair street is also where, on the rooftop high above number 3, the Beatles played their final gig, attracting the attention of the local police. The attending officers from West End Central let the Beatles finish their last ever set because they were all music fans. That’s what they tell you in West End Central.

Carrying the triple espresso I had bought at Bar Italia in Soho, I went up to the Major Incident Room, MIR-1, on the top floor. MIR-1 would be the centre of Homicide’s murder investigation. It was a large suite of connecting rooms with a computer station at every desk and it was now completely empty apart from DCI Mallory, who stood cradling a carton of takeaway tea as he stared at a blank whiteboard.

‘You’re early,’ he said. ‘Morning briefing’s not for an hour.’

‘I thought I’d be the first to arrive, sir,’ I said. ‘Look keen and all that.’

He laughed. ‘I like to spend a bit of time figuring before I start opening my mouth,’ he said. ‘What could possibly connect a wealthy investment banker and a homeless heroin addict?’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I have no idea. And I need to know. At least I need to have a theory.’ He sipped his tea. ‘Have you heard of the Golden Hour principle?’

I nodded. ‘It means early action can secure material that would otherwise be lost. Witnesses remember things more clearly. Offenders can still be nearby. CCTV footage hasn’t been deleted. The longer we leave it, the harder it all gets.’

‘I believe in the Golden Hour principle as much as the next man,’ Mallory said. ‘But I also believe in what the old SIOs call “creating slow time”. Meaning you need to put your foot on the ball and have a figure; meaning you have to leave time for figuring as well as action.’

He was such a soft-spoken man that it took me a moment to realise that by coming in early I had intruded upon his private time – his figuring time. He must have seen the alarm on my face.

‘Why don’t you go down to the basement?’ he suggested kindly. ‘See if you can find our weapon.’ He held out an A4 file. ‘Take this with you.’

‘Sir.’

I bolted my coffee and went down to the basement. The lift doors opened on to a low-ceilinged room where row upon row of canteen dining tables were covered with knives.

A young uniformed officer was filming them and making notes on a clipboard. He looked like a tourist in some exotic marketplace.

‘Help you, sir?’ he said.

‘I’m looking for a knife,’ I said.

‘What kind of knife, sir?’

‘A knife that can do this.’

There were four photographs inside the file. Two of Hugo Buck’s corpse and the other two of the homeless man. They were all graphic close-ups of the fatal wounds. I held them up for the constable and saw the blood drain from his face.

‘Go ahead, sir,’ he said. ‘We’ve got all sorts here.’

It was true. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of knives glinting under the harsh strip lighting. Knives that had been seized, found, dumped, bagged as evidence or surrendered during an amnesty. So many knives that I didn’t see how I could fail to find a suitable candidate for the one that had cut the throats of the banker and the unknown man.