A Darker Shade of Blue

GHOSTS

It was mid-morning, and Kiley was in his office two floors above a charity shop in Tufnell Park, stranded between his second cup of coffee and his third. ‘Investigations’, read the ad in the local press, ‘Private and Confidential. All kinds of security work undertaken. Ex-Metropolitan Police.’ The absence of carpet made it easier to hear footsteps on the stairs. A pause and then a knock.

She was late thirties, dressed ten years younger, and looked all of forty-five, with the eyes of someone who woke up every day expecting to be disappointed and was rarely, if ever, disabused.

‘Jack Kiley? Rita Barnes.’

Her hand was all cheap rings and bone.

Kiley knew the name and a moment later he knew why.

‘Bradford Barnes, he was my son.’

The flowers had spread across the pavement close to the spot less than a hundred metres away where he’d been killed; tiny candles had burned through the night. Photographs and messages taped to the wall. ‘Always remembered’. ‘A tragic waste’. Bradford had been on the way home from a party, not late, a little after twelve, and had inadvertently brushed the shoulder of a young woman heading the other way. When he’d stopped to apologise, one of the men with her had raised his voice and then his fist. Punches flew and then a knife. When the group sauntered off laughing they left Bradford where he lay. A still-warm statistic, choking on his own blood. The twenty-second young person to have been stabbed to death in the capital that year and still months to go. Gang stuff, drug deals gone sour; the wrong look, the wrong word, the wrong place at the wrong time. Respect.

‘I remember,’ Kiley said.

The flowers had long since faded and been swept away; the photographs torn down.

‘A year ago next week he was killed,’ Rita Barnes said, ‘three days short of his birthday, an’ the police still i’n’t got a bloody clue.’

She took an envelope from her bag and counted the notes out on his desk. ‘There’s two hundred and fifty. I’ll get more. Find the bastard as did it, okay?’

What was he supposed to say? It was a waste of his time and her money?

Well, he had the time.

When she’d gone he put in a call to a DI he knew at the local nick. Jackie Ferris met him in the back room of the Assembly House, its dark wood panelling and ornamented windows harking back to palmier days.

‘Not got a clue, that’s what she says?’ Still on duty, Ferris was drinking lemon and lime.

‘She’s wrong?’

‘We’ve had more than a clue since day one. Russell Means. It was his girlfriend Barnes bumped into. He’s got form and a mouth to go with it, but forensics didn’t give us shit and, surprise, surprise, no one’s talking. Least, not to us.’ Ferris raised her glass. ‘You might have more luck.’

Rachel Sams lived on the seventh floor of an eight-floor block close to the closed-down swimming pool on Prince of Wales Road. Three of the flats on her level were boarded up and padlocked fast. The first two occasions Kiley called she refused to open the door and then, when she did, it was only to slam it in his face. It took a fierce squall of rain — Rachel hunched against the wind as she manoeuvred a buggy laden with supermarket carrier bags and containing a wailing two-year-old — for Kiley to open negotiations.

‘Here, let me help.’

‘Piss off!’

But she stood back while, after freeing the bags and handing them to her, he lifted the buggy and led the way.

Kiley followed her into the flat and, when she didn’t complain, closed the door behind him. The interior was dominated by a wide-screen plasma TV, the furniture, most of it, third- or fourth-hand. Toys were scattered, here and there, across the floor. While Rachel changed the child’s nappy, Kiley found a jar of instant coffee in the kitchen.

They sat at either end of the sagging settee while the boy piled wooden bricks on top of one another, knocked them down with a loud whoop and started again.

‘Gary, for Christ’s sake.’

‘He’s Russell Means’ boy?’ Kiley said.

‘What of it?’

‘Russell see him much?’

‘When he can be bothered.’

‘Bradford Barnes’ mother came to see me, a week or so back.’

‘So?’

‘She wants to know what happened to her son.’

‘She buried him, didn’t she? What else she wanna know?’

‘She wants to know who killed him. Wants some kind of — I don’t know — justice, I suppose.’

‘Yeah, well, she ain’t gonna find it here.’

Kiley held her gaze until she looked away.

After that he called round every week or so, sometimes bringing a small present for the boy.

‘Listen,’ Rachel said, ‘if you reckon this is gonna get you into my knickers…’

But, stuck up there on the seventh floor, she didn’t seem overburdened with friends and now, as soon as he arrived, Gary scrambled up into his lap and happily pulled his hair. Kiley hadn’t mentioned Bradford Barnes again.

Ten days short of Christmas, the sky a low, flat, unpromising grey, he got round to the flat to find Rachel hurling bits and pieces over the balcony, tears streaming down her face.

‘That bastard! That lousy bastard!’

Kiley tried to calm her down and she lashed out, drawing blood from his lip. When he finally got her back inside, she was still shaking; Gary cowering in the corner, afraid.

‘One of my mates rung an’ told me, he’s only gettin’ married, i’n, it? To that skanky whore from down Stockwell. Saw it in Facebook or somethin’.’ Picking up a half-empty mug, she hurled it against the wall. ‘Well, he’s gonna learn he can’t treat me like that, i’n he? He’s gonna pay.’

Kiley listened while she told him what had happened that night, how Russell Means had stabbed Bradford Barnes three times, once in the neck and twice in the chest, and then walked off laughing. He phoned Jackie Ferris and listened while Rachel told her story again, then promised to look after Gary while the two of them went to the station so that Rachel could make a statement.

Three days later, Russell Means was arrested.

Rita Barnes had tears in her eyes when she came to thank him and ask what more she owed him and Kiley said to forget it, it was fine. He would have given the two-fifty back if it hadn’t been for a little matter of paying the rent.

‘You’re sure?’

‘Sure.’

She kissed him on the cheek.

That night, Kiley walked past the spot where Bradford Barnes had been killed. If you looked closely, you could just make out the marks where the photos had been taped, a young man smiling out, his life ahead of him, ghosts on the wall.