To Dwell in Darkness (7 page)

“Who's we, Iris?”

The girl's brief animation flickered out. “We're just . . . a group. We're not anything official. We care about London's history, that's all,” she added, jutting her chin out with a bit of attitude.

Left-wing radical fringe? Kincaid wondered. “Save London's History” could translate into antiprogress, anticapitalist, even antipolice. “How many of you are in this group?”

“It depends.” Iris shifted in her chair. “People, sort of, you know, drift in and out.”

“You had placards, right?” Kincaid noticed that while Sweeney was looking bored as he took notes, Nick Callery was listening with quiet interest. “Is that how you meant to get attention?” he went on.

Iris nodded, then bit her lip. “Yeah. And—we—uh—”

“You what, Iris?” he prompted when she didn't go on.

Her eyes welled with tears again and she looked at PC Rynski. “It was—it was supposed to be a little smoke bomb. To get people to listen to us. It was Matthew's idea. Everything is always Matthew's idea.” The words were spilling out now. “But Ryan said he'd do it. He said he'd been arrested before, so it didn't matter if he got into trouble. The rest of us would still have clean records.”

“Arrested for what?” asked Nick Callery.

“Protesting. Things like the nuclear power stations, you know. Real stuff.”

“And Ryan had the smoke bomb?”

Iris gulped and nodded.

“Who gave it to him?” There was something in Callery's tone that made her look away from him, back to Kincaid, as if she might find more understanding there.

“Matt— Matthew.” Iris pushed her half-drunk chocolate away and folded her arms across her chest, rocking a little bit. “We—we never meant for anyone to get hurt. And I can't think how something could have gone wrong . . . I still can't believe it. Ryan's . . . dead? Are you sure it was Ryan?”

“We're not sure of anything,” said Kincaid. “Where was Ryan supposed to set off the smoke bomb?”

“Across the concourse from us. By the entrance to the taxi rank. We ran when people starting screaming. Everyone was pushing and shoving. We didn't expect such a panic. I got separated from the others. Then, when I got outside, I heard someone say a man was on fire, and I couldn't leave without knowing . . . And then people were saying he—that he—that the man—was dead—burned—and I couldn't—” Iris was crying again. PC Rynski patted her arm, a little awkwardly.

“What's Ryan's last name?” Kincaid asked.

“Marsh. Ryan Marsh.”

“And you say Ryan's been in some big protests? Is he about your age?”

Iris shook her head. “No. He might even be, I don't know, thirty.” The emphasis on the last word made it sound as if thirty were ancient. “But he's cool. Cooler than anyone. And he's—he was—nice to me.”

Kincaid glanced at Sweeney, making sure he'd gotten the last name. Nick Callery was already typing it into his phone.

“What di—does Ryan look like?”

“Sort of—ordinary, I guess,” Iris said, but she smiled. “About as tall as you”—she nodded at Callery—“with hair about the color of yours, maybe lighter.” Another nod, towards Kincaid. “Blue eyes. Not too thin like Matthew the scarecrow. He keeps his hair short. Sometimes he grows a little stubble but I've never seen him with a real beard.”

Kincaid translated all this as average height, average weight, light brown hair, blue eyes. Not entirely helpful.

“What was he wearing today? Do you remember?”

“Oh, the usual. Jeans. Boots. A heavy dark hoodie. Blue, I think. I told him he'd be cold, but he never seemed to feel it.” Iris frowned. “And he must have had his backpack, because he never goes anywhere without it.”

“Any distinguishing marks?” asked Callery.

When Iris didn't answer, Kincaid added, “You know, like tattoos? Or birthmarks?”

She shook her vehemently. “Ryan hates tattoos. He's always warning us we might get infected or something.”

“Birthmarks, then?”

Flushing, Iris said, “Not that I ever saw.”

“Did Ryan have any family we could contact?” Kincaid asked.

“No. There was—no, he never said.”

“Do you know where he lived?”

Iris looked at him blankly. “With us. I thought I said.”

Glancing at Callery, Kincaid said, “You mean with your group?”

“Yeah.” She wiped her sleeve across her nose and sniffed.

“Where?”

“Oh, just up the Caledonian Road.” She jerked her head towards King's Cross. “Not half a mile from here.”

St. Pancras Old Church is one of the oldest sites of Christian worship in Northern Europe. The churchyard is the resting place for the remains that were exhumed when the Midland Railway was built in 1866. The railway ran through an extensive graveyard, and the Vicar of St. Pancras insisted that the remains be respectfully removed and re-interred. The job fell to a junior architect—Thomas Hardy. 8,000 remains were relocated in all, many to the churchyard at St. Pancras Old Church. You can see the relocated headstones which were placed around an ash tree, which has become known as the Hardy Tree.

—camden.gov.uk/parks

Kincaid hadn't realized that he'd grown accustomed to the relative warmth of the railway station until he stepped outside. The bitter March wind hurled itself down Pancras Road, snatching the breath from his mouth in passing and seeking every slight gap in his clothing.

Callery had ordered a car to take them to the address in the Caledonian Road. And an armed response team as backup.

An unmarked silver Vauxhall nosed past the police cordon and pulled in at the curb. Nick Callery got in front with the driver, leaving Kincaid to take the backseat with a shivering Iris Barker.

“I shouldn't have told you,” she said as the driver began to inch the car through the crowd gathered outside the cordon. Reporters shouted questions, then held their mics towards the car, but Kincaid doubted they could see much through the tinted glass. “Matthew and the others, they're going to kill—,” Iris began, then stopped, perhaps realizing that was not the best metaphor. Then she shook her head. “But—Ryan—someone had to say. We couldn't just leave him, not knowing . . .” Iris fell silent again, chewing her lip.

The driver turned north on Pancras Road, away from their destination, and Kincaid knew he would have to snake through the backstreets in order to work his way round the one-way system. It would, under more clement circumstances, have been much quicker to walk.

Before leaving the station, Kincaid had sent a sullen Sweeney to help DI Sidana with the witness statements. Then he and Nick Callery had Iris stay with PC Rynski while they stepped outside Starbucks's glass-walled enclosure and argued over the use of the response team.

“We're going in with an armed unit to tell these people their friend is more than likely dead?” Kincaid said. He wasn't averse to calling in armed response when the circumstances dictated it, but he wasn't convinced they did. “Surely just uniformed backup would be sufficient. It might have been suicide. Or at worst, accidental death.”

“Aren't you the Pollyanna. These people,” Callery said pointedly, “may have meant to blow up a good part of St. Pancras station. As it is, mystery man managed to injure a good number of people, including your friends, and disrupted the whole bloody rail system during rush hour, for God's sake.”

Kincaid dug in his heels, even though he knew that Callery was right, and that he was skating on jurisdictional thin ice. “We're not even certain that the victim really is a member of this group. Or that Iris is telling the truth about who they are or where they live. Or, if she is, that any of the rest of her group will be there.”

After a moment, Callery shrugged. “We'll go in, then, the two of us, with Weeping Myrtle here.” He nodded towards the café.

“It's Moaning Myrtle,” Kincaid corrected, feeling a flicker of surprise at Callery's Harry Potter reference. He didn't seem the fantasy type. And somehow he couldn't imagine that this man had kids.

“Whatever.” Callery shrugged. “But I want the armed unit on hand. Agreed?”

“Agreed. And I'll set up uniformed backup to arrive a few minutes behind us. We're going to want to take the protesters in to Holborn station for interviews, but I want to get a feel for the group on their own patch first.”

Once in the car, they'd crossed and recrossed the Regent's Canal and were now heading south again on the Caledonian Road, back towards King's Cross/St. Pancras. As close as they were to the railway stations, the gentrification that had been promised to the area more than a decade ago had not reached this little stretch of road. Kincaid saw a sad shop advertising
ADULT
DVDS
and wondered what delights the videos could possibly hold that couldn't be found on the Internet for free in five minutes.

There was a wine shop, a hostel, a Thai takeaway, and an Internet café—the last a sure sign that the area catered to the disenfranchised.

“There,” said Iris as they reached another small strip of shops. “It's this terrace. Above the chicken takeaway.”

As the driver pulled into the curb, Kincaid saw a ratty shop selling gym equipment, its windows dark and covered with iron grating. Next to it was a radio car service, and then a bright red sign proclaiming
HALAL
CHICKEN
AND
CHIPS
.

They exited just as a number 10 bus roared by, sending up an arc of dirty, slushy water. Kincaid shielded Iris, then took her arm, steadying her. He looked up at the building. A three-story terrace, it was the most derelict of any Kincaid had seen in the road so far. With its dark gray-brown brick and windows trimmed in peeling white paint, it looked as if it might be Georgian. Kincaid whistled under his breath. This would undoubtedly be, at some point, prime real estate.

An unmarked van pulled up behind them and sat, lights off, engine idling. Kincaid turned Iris away. There was no point in alerting her to the presence of the armed unit, and he'd just as soon she didn't see the panda cars arrive, either.

Light shone from the second-floor flat. “Is it the second floor, your place?” Kincaid asked Iris.

She nodded and shrank deeper into her coat.

“All of you live here?”

“Well, it's really Matthew's. He knows someone who lets him live here. It's that door,” added Iris, pointing to a peeling entrance on one side of the chicken takeaway. Light came from the transom as well.

Nick Callery had stepped away and spoken quietly into his radio, but now he rejoined them and said, “Let's have a word with your friends, then, shall we?”

The door was sturdier than it had looked from a distance, and the lock was both new and expensive. “Who lives on the first floor?” Kincaid asked as Iris fumbled in her pocket for her key.

“Some university blokes. Matthew doesn't like it because they smoke in their flat and the stairwell.” Her key clicked and the door swung open.

The entry and the stairwell did smell of smoke, with a faint undertone of mildew and urine. But both were, if slightly shabby, surprisingly clean.

Kincaid deliberately left the door off the latch for uniformed backup, or, God forbid, the armed response team.

They climbed silently, Iris leading the way. The first-floor flat was dark and quiet, and Kincaid thought he could hear his own heart pounding.

When they reached the second-floor landing, Iris stopped, holding another key from her key ring in her hand. Kincaid sensed her indecision—she would, he guessed, normally unlock the door and walk in. But how could she walk in unannounced with two policemen?

Voices came from inside the flat, one indistinct, one louder, nearer the door.

“What the hell happened in there? Can someone tell me that?” The louder speaker was definitely male, and agitated. “And where the hell is Iris, the silly cow?”

Iris flushed, unbecomingly.

“I think that's our cue,” said Kincaid, and he knocked, solving Iris's dilemma.

The door swung open, revealing a very tall, thin young man with a head of curly dark hair. “Iris, what the hell—,” he began. Then he stopped, staring, as he took in Kincaid and Callery. “Who the—”

“Matthew, they're policemen. It's about Ryan.” Iris's voice shook on the name and Kincaid gave her a gentle nudge forward so that they all stepped into the room, making the young man called Matthew move back. Kincaid was scanning the room as he entered, and he could sense the tension in Callery's body as he did the same. They left the door standing open behind them.

Kincaid was sure Matthew's voice was the louder one they'd heard from outside on the upper landing. There were four other people in the room—a young bearded man, standing, who Kincaid guessed had been the more muffled speaker. Another young man and two girls sat on a sofa, startled expressions on their faces. None of them looked potentially threatening.

Nor did the flat fit his definition of the squat he had expected. There were some mattresses and folded bedrolls on the floor, but there was also the sofa, a charity-shop dining table with mismatched chairs, and against the back wall, a large flat-screen television.

And the flat was clean. Scrupulously so. There wasn't a fast-food wrapper or even a dirty coffee mug to be seen. A few clean dishes sat in a rack in the kitchen alcove at the far end of the room.

A doorway beside the kitchen alcove led into what looked like a small bedroom.

The television was on with the sound muted, footage of the crowds and the emergency vehicles outside St. Pancras station scrolling across the screen.

“What about Ryan?” said the man called Matthew, eyeing them warily. Although Kincaid put him in his early twenties, he already had the slight rounding of the shoulders that Kincaid sometimes saw in very tall men. His long face seemed all planes and angles, his expression intense.