Birdman

23

He dreamt about Rebecca, standing in the street with rain dripping on her hair from the lilac tree, and woke with a start at 6.15 a.m. Downstairs Veronica was already in the kitchen, cutting bread and opening blinds to let the sun in. She wore a sleeveless Thai silk dress in aquamarine. Two dark crescents were visible on the cloth under each armpit as she lifted the skillet from the hob and slid a curl of Normandy butter onto saffron-bright kippers. She snipped parsley from a terracotta grower in the window and Jack, standing sleepily in the doorway, realized he had no idea when the pot arrived or how it had got there.

'Morning.'

She cocked her head and eyed him, taking in the tousled hair, the T-shirt and boxers he'd started wearing in bed. She hadn't commented on them before and clearly she wasn't going to now. Instead she used a teaspoon to fish a vanilla pod out of the coffee pot, poured a mug and handed it to him.

'Morning.'

'How you feeling?'

'I'm not to go into the office today, put it that way.' She shook the skillet and threw in a handful of chopped herbs. 'This isn't for me. I couldn't touch a thing.'

'After last night?'

'I feel awful. I peed red this morning and these kippers smell like petrol.'

'I didn't want to wake you.' He put a hand on her shoulder. A flat, neutral hand. 'How did it go?'

'As expected, I suppose.' She pushed her hair out of her eyes. 'What's that all about?'

'Hm?'

'That thing in the hallway.'

'Oh. I uh…' Penderecki's Barbie doll, still wrapped in cling film, lay on top of his Samsonite by the door. All night its image had chased him — he had woken at 2 a.m. certain that it was significant to Birdman, had got out of bed, retrieved the doll from Ewan's room and left it in the hallway to remind him. 'Nothing,' he murmured. 'Just an idea.' Idly he picked up a twist of vegetable from the cutting board. 'What's this? Ginseng?'

'Ginger, you moron. I'm doing my Dal Kofta for the party.'

'Are you sure about this party thing?'

'Of course I'm sure. I want to know if they all look like David Caruso.'

'Do not get your hopes up.' Caffery ducked his head out of the window, checking Penderecki's back garden. 'He's been quiet since the doll thing.'

'Now, don't be so nosy.' She twisted a lemon onto the kippers and shovelled them onto a plate. 'Here. Sit down and eat.'

By seven he had eaten, shaved and dressed — Veronica, I can do my own ironing. In fact, I'd rather do my own ironing — and was at the office. Essex had news.

He'd finally tracked down Petra Spacek's family and Rebecca had been right, Petra had been allergic to make-up, never worn it. No signs of an allergic reaction meant it had been applied either very soon before the slaughter or post-mortem.

From what Caffery now knew about Birdman, he doubted it had been ante-mortem.

He retreated into the office to sneak a cigarette before he and Essex headed on to St Dunstan's. The doll, mummified in its plastic shroud, lay like a silver chrysalis on the desk. Next to it a blue loose-leaf folder, a CC letter to the Commissioner from 'Spanner', the SM rights group, sellotaped to the front as a comment from an anonymous exhibits officer. Inside, mounted and laminated, photographs of every example of SM paraphernalia hauled in by Vice in the last ten years. Caffery had learned more than he wanted to about spreader and suspension bars, penis gag masks, anchor pads, D rings, O rings, sportsheets, curb-tip surgeon's scissors and rubber gag masks with their twin nasal tubes to allow the 'bottomer' to breath.

He was still thinking about the marks on the victims' foreheads. He had searched the file in vain for anything commonly used to puncture the skin. But the cuts on the victims were too small, too clean to be caused by anything in these photos. If Birdman had placed a spiked or barbed mask on the victims, the flesh would have been ragged, chafed, the diameters erratic. In fact the wounds were as precise and even as the punch holes on a doll's head.

A doll.

He unwrapped the Barbie doll and held the head between his white thumb and black thumb.

'Just like the Black and White whisky Scottie dogs,' his mother used to say.

He thought of Rebecca propped up against the bike saddle, tanned fingers picking at the stitching on the canvas straps, pretty dark eyes splintered by the sun, telling him about Petra.

'She looked like a doll with all that make-up on.'

There! His palms tingled. There was the link. Makeup. Punctures. Make-up. Punch holes. Follow it. Come on, Jack, think!

Why didn't he do it to Kayleigh? Why was she different?

She was the only one without the marks. Someone, around the time of her death, had cut her long hair to shoulder length. Her hair was blond, the same almost white blond as the samples of wig hair. Wig. Make-up, punctures. Rebecca's tanned fingers. White nails playing with the stitching. 'Like a doll with all that makeup on.' The trim had left Kayleigh's hair at almost exactly the same length as the wig.

He flipped the doll onto its front, ran his nails down the rows of perforations in the scalp, each sprouting a pinch of nylon hair, and the answer lifted, leaped at him.

Stitching.

'Marilyn.' He threw open the door of the incident room. 'Marilyn.'

She looked up, startled. 'What is it?'

'Where's Essex?'

'In exhibits.'

'Good.' Caffery could feel the sinews in his hands twitch. 'I need a look at the PM photos. I think I know what those marks are.'

In the tiny property room there was only space on the Flex-Stax shelving for evidence from the current operation. Evidence from all past cases had overflowed and was kept in lockers in the tea room.

'Essex. I need—' He stopped. He'd walked in mid-conversation. Essex sat at the tiny desk, his face tired and motionless. Behind him Diamond leaned casually on one of the shelves, sleeves rolled up, the faintest of smiles on his face. Logan, the exhibits officer, sat with the yellow grab box at his feet, a computer printout in one hand, a buff docket in the other. When he saw it was Caffery he stood up so hurriedly that the paper air-drying evidence bags on his lap slid to the floor.

'Ah!' He snatched clumsily at the bags. 'Morning, boss.'

'The PM photos, Logan.'

'Of course, of course, no probs, sir.' Moving a trifle too quickly he stacked all the bags back on the desk and busied himself with a blue box file in the corner. Essex met Caffery's eyes for a moment then looked away. It was enough. Caffery closed the door behind him and leaned against it with his arms folded.

'Well?' he said. 'What's up?'

'The SA at Lambeth's been on regarding Gemini's car,' DI Diamond said calmly.

'I see. What's she got for us?'

'Four hairs found.' His washed-out blue eyes had centres of hard indigo. 'Didn't match any of the victims.'

'Yes?'

'But that doesn't matter.' In the corner Logan gave a short discomfited cough and Essex stared at his hands. Diamond took the time to run his hand over the hard, gelled helmet of hair. He sniffed, straightened and plucked the report from the desk with an ornate flick of the wrist. 'Numerous smudged partial prints, and someone had had Kodian-C out to the interior.'

'An industrial-grade cleaning fluid,' Logan explained.

'Which seems well suss to me.' Diamond blinked slowly like a lizard in the sun. 'Then the lads at Lambeth found three prints with enough points to make a match.'

'I see.'

'One with Craw and one with Wilcox.'

'He cabbied for them.'

'He says he doesn't even know them.'

'OK.' Caffery pushed himself away from the door. 'Does the super know?'

'Oh yes. We caught him on the way to the CS's.' Diamond smiled and rolled his sleeves down, buttoning them carefully. 'He's clearing it with Greenwich. We're going to give that shitty little scrote a chance to come in and answer some questions voluntarily. And if he doesn't want to play, we're arresting him. Don't want him heading back home and losing himself in the Blue Mountains.'

'You can see his point, I suppose,' Essex said, and Caffery could feel his empathy straining out.

'I suppose,' he said coldly. He turned to go, stopping briefly, his hand on the door. 'Essex?'

'Sir?'

'I still want those PM photos on my desk.'