Birdman

24

Mrs Frobisher took her coat off and hung it carefully on the rack in DI Basset's Greenwich office. She kept her hat and gloves on.

'A cup of tea, Mrs Frobisher?'

She smiled. 'That would be nice.'

Basset kept a discreet eye on her as he opened the blinds and flicked the switch on the kettle. A little worm of unease was crawling across his stomach. Mrs Frobisher was well known to the staff at Greenwich police station: in the last six months she had been a methodical visitor, complaining about anything from the fights in the council block opposite, the dirt and noise of local building works, to the antisocial behaviour of the tenant in the flat below. She had refused to be foisted off onto the environmental health department, and was considered by the duty team to be part of the Monday-morning drudgery.

Until this Monday, when, at 10 a.m., she had ambled in as customary, wearing her best hat and coat on a hot summer's day, and given a statement to the desk sergeant which had made him reach for the phone. DI Basset, who had been one of the first attending CID officers at the aggregate yard last weekend, had cancelled his morning meeting with the community liaison officer and invited Mrs Frobisher into his office.

She sat, sparrow-like, on the edge of the chair, staring out of the window at the sun on the striped awning of Mullins dairy on Royal Hill. 'It's lovely here, isn't it?' she sighed. 'Absolutely lovely.'

'Thank you,' Basset said. 'I think so too. Now—' He lifted the tea bags on a spoon and dropped them in the waste-paper basket. 'Now, Mrs Frobisher, our desk sergeant tells me you've been having some bother. Shall we have a little chat about it?'

'Oh, that? It's been going on months, not that any of them would take a blind bit of notice.' She took her gloves off, put them in the matching fawn mock-leather shopping bag and zipped it up. The hat remained in place. 'I've been in here like clockwork every week, and no joy until now. Wouldn't listen to me. I might be old, but I'm not stupid, I know what they're saying — crazy old witch — I've heard them.'

'Yes, yes.' He held a mug out to her. 'I'm sorry about that, Mrs Frobisher. Sincerely sorry. It's just you've had one or two of our lads out to you in the past, and I think they feel—'

'Only for the foxes! At this time of year they will insist on having their little romances and what-not. The noise they make! It sounds like a woman screaming, and you can't be too careful, not in this day and age.' She took the tea, resting it on her knee. 'When my George was alive he used to throw bricks at them. Now he'd know the difference between a fox and a woman screaming.' She leaned forward, glad of the audience. 'I was born in Lewisham, you know, Officer, and I've been in Brazil Street fifty years now. Got a special fondness for this area in spite of everything. I've seen the Jerrys bomb the place, the council get their hands on it, the foreigners and now the developers. They've pulled everything down I cared about and there's new buildings going up. Hyper this and hyper that, loft conversions and I don't know what.'

'Mrs Frobisher.' Basset placed his tea next to his notepad and sat down opposite. 'In the statement you gave our desk sergeant you talked about a neighbour of yours, is that right?'

'Him!' She cocked her head back and pursed her lips. 'Yes. And there's him. As if I haven't got enough worries.'

'Tell me about him. He owns the flat downstairs?'

'Owns it. Don't mean he gives a tinker's for it, does it? Never bloody home.'

'Been there long, has he?'

'Years. Ever since my George died. No sooner had I got him in the ground than my son decides the old place is too big for me — has the council in, the planners, the gas board and I don't know who else, and even more dust, if you please. They bricked off the staircase, put a door round the side and one of those carport affairs, horrible American-looking thing, I can't be doing with it myself. Next I know they've sold that floor off to him and me and the cat are marched off upstairs like a pair of lepers in our own home.'

'His entrance is at the side?'

'At the back, under the carport — so he's got the garden, you see. Not that he looks after it. Oooh no.' She sucked in a breath and shook her head. 'No, no, no. Not with him never being there. Covered in bindweed it will be by July, the rate he's going. But even if he did get it nice, what then? Who'd want to sit out there with the noise and dust and hammering every minute of the day? And if it's not that it's them over the road screaming and shouting — you can't win, Officer, you can't win.'

'I'm sure,' Basset nodded. 'I'm sure you can't. Now shall we concentrate on what you were telling the desk sergeant about your neighbour?'

'I was telling your sergeant that I think he's left that freezer of his unplugged again. The smell! Well, you've never known the like of the smell, Officer. It's not healthy whatever it is. He was all right when he first moved in — kept the place reasonable from what I could tell. But, see, now he's got to the point where he'll leave the place for days on end, never check on it. And this' — she tapped an arthritic finger on the desk to punctuate each word — 'this is the sort of thing that is bound to happen. You'd think, wouldn't you, him being a professional, you'd think he'd show a bit of respect.' She put the mug on Basset's desk and started to unpin her hat as if she was finally comfortable. 'It's his patients I feel sorry for.'

'He's a doctor?'

'Maybe not exactly a doctor, but he's something to do with the medical profession, that's what my son says. Must be something important with him and his nice car and his two properties. But it don't stop him being an odd one. The way he neglects the place—'

'But there was something particular that bothered you,' Basset prompted. 'Wasn't there something, Mrs Frobisher? Didn't you say something to the desk sergeant about — about some animals?' He paused. Mrs Frobisher was blinking at him. For a moment he wondered if the PC had misheard. That this was all a mistake. 'Didn't you mention there were some animals involved? Something about them being mistreated?'

'Oh, that.' The light dawned. 'Yes. That as well. He doesn't look after them proper. I found two dead ones in the bin outside. Looked like they starved to death.' She sipped her tea and sighed. 'Now that's a nice cup of tea. They say you don't get a nice cup from a bag, but I can't agree in this case.'

'Mrs Frobisher.' Basset took a calming breath. 'Mrs Frobisher, are we talking about birds? Were they birds you saw in the dustbin?'

'That's what I said.' She looked at him as if he was slow. 'That's what I said. Birds.'

'And what sort of birds? Big ones? Pigeons? Crows?'

'Oh no, no. No no. Little ones.' She showed a span of two inches between her arthritic fingers. 'Little tiny ones a person might keep in a cage if they didn't have a cat to think of. With red feathers. Reddish sort of feathers.'

'Could they have been finches?'

She paused, egg-white cataracts wandering across her eyes. 'Yes, that's it. That's it. Finches. I'd bet any money.'

'Good.' Basset wiped his forehead. 'Good.' He leaned forward and put his hands on the table. 'Now. I'm wondering if you'd like to tell one of my colleagues the story?'

'Will he do something about it?'

'He'll certainly be very interested.'

Mrs Frobisher settled back, pleased by the attention. 'I'd feel better.' She folded her hands on her lap. 'Is he coming to speak to me?'

'I'm going to call him this very moment.'

Basset sat on the edge of the desk and dialled the Croydon switchboard to put him through to Shrivemoor. He watched Mrs Frobisher sipping her tea as the line clicked and connected. He was feeling faintly sick.

Essex shuddered when he saw the doll's unblinking, forget-me-not blue eyes gazing at him. 'Don't leave the windows closed or that thing'll come to life. Haven't you ever seen Doctor Who?'

Caffery put his head in his hands. The tiredness was deep in his muscles. 'Gemini lied.'

'Yeah. Bad news, that.' He looked around the office. 'Where d'you want these photos?'

'He could have turned the whole thing on a word. Yes. Yes, I knew Shellene. Yes, she was in my car. Yes, I supplied her, had sex with her or any of the other things he did. We know he cabbied for the girls, he should've just said.' Caffery sat back in his chair and opened his hands. 'All we've got going for us is the blood group on that sample; knowing our luck it'll match.' The phone on his desk started to ring. He stared at it blankly. 'Have we got a warrant for his flat?'

'Diamond is just leaving for the warrant office. Then they'll take him in for questioning.'

'Jesus.' Caffery tapped the desk impatiently. 'Our options are closing down here. Something had better come out of these St Dunstan's interviews.' He reached for the phone but it stopped ringing. 'Shit.' He sank back in his chair, rubbing his face.

'Do you want these or not?'

Caffery nodded and held his hand out. 'I think I know what the wounds on the head are.' He slid the photos out of the envelope and spread them on the desk. 'There. Do you see? These slits, very clean. Krishnamurthi still isn't certain of a weapon.'

'But you are?'

'Yes.'

'Well?'

'The holes are stitching.'

'Stitching?' He picked up the photo of Shellene, held it close to the window and squinted. 'OK. I'm with you. What's he stitching?'

'Remember what Kayleigh's aunt said?'

'What?'

'She said Kayleigh had changed her hairstyle.'

'Yes.'

'Kayleigh didn't have those puncture wounds. Her hair was almost the same colour as the wig. Shellene's blond was darker. Gold, not ash.'

'And?'

'He didn't stitch anything to Kayleigh's head because he didn't need to. He cut her hair the way he wanted it. That wig we thought the offender was wearing? Your Dressed to Kill wig?'

'Yeah?'

'It wasn't him wearing it. It was the girls. He stitched it on to stop it falling off when he played with the bodies. When he pulled the wig off the skin tore, split between the stitching. He's trying to make the girls look identical.' Caffery shovelled the photographs back into the envelope. 'That's what the make-up and the mutilation to the breasts is all about. He's making clones. Probably keeping them in his bed for days.' He stood and pulled his jacket on. 'Now if we could find who he wanted the victims to look like we'd be halfway to the Old Bailey.' He took his keys out. 'Shall we?'

'Shall we what?'

'St Dunstan's, I think.'

The incident room was busy. Officers wearing short-sleeved shirts in deference to the early arrival of summer carried dockets to and fro. The blinds were down, the lights on. Kryotos had her shoes off under the table and was slowly eating a piece of fudge cake as she prepared HOLMES for Jack's St Dunstan's hospital interviews. She would have to create up to 180 more nominals just to cover all the cross-references needed.

'Jack, Jack, Jack,' she murmured. 'What goes on in that head of yours?'

The effect Caffery had on women was not lost on Kryotos, earth mother, she of the matronly observant eye. She watched the indexer girls behind their monitors when he walked through the room, touching their hair, crossing and uncrossing their legs, distractedly reaching down to rub their calves and run fingers under ankle straps. And he would wander away, casually trailing his air of detachment, the occasional shaving nick — Kryotos was in no doubt about what the girls would like to do with those shaving nicks. But Caffery seemed somehow removed from it all; as if there were more worthwhile preoccupations in his world. Kryotos was curious to meet Veronica, famously brave Veronica, going ahead with a party this week, in spite of the fact that she was in chemotherapy.

When no-one in the SIO's office had answered after five rings, DI Basset's call was automatically transferred to the incident room, to the phone on the desk next to Kryotos's. DI Diamond, pulling on his jacket and heading for the door on the way to pick up Gemini's warrant, stopped and answered it.

'Incident room.' A pause and then: 'DI Caffery's not here, mate. Who wants him?'

Kryotos looked up. 'He's in his office,' she mouthed.

'He's tied up just now. Anything I can do?' Diamond listened for a moment, picking at a green 'Met-Call' sticker on the phone. 'If you've got a lead then howsabout you take a statement yourself, MSS it to us, and if we like it we'll pick it up?' He broke off. 'All right, mate, whatever you say.' He pulled out a pen, uncapped it and positioned himself to write. 'What have you got for me, then?'

He jotted down a few notes, glanced hungrily at Kryotos's fudge cake, listened, recapped the pen, tucked the phone under his chin, looked at the cake again and idly scratched his ankle just above his sock. More theme socks, Kryotos noticed. Wallace and Gromit this time. Just about what she'd expect. She turned back to the monitor.

'Look, Mr Basset — Basset! If I can just get a word in edgeways. Thank you. Now, tell me — are we talking an IC1 here — a white male? We are? Good. And this woman — a habitual caller, is she?' He listened and smiled. 'I see. No, no, no. We treat all tip-offs as serious. Thanks for the pointer. I'll get it circulated to the crew. OK?'

Replacing the handset, he tore the page out of the book, stood, stretched and scratched his belly. 'Jesus.' He yawned. 'Some of the shit you get thrown at you as soon as the public get a whiff of anything.' He licked his lips. 'Where's your file thirteen, dolly?'

Kryotos looked up. 'Sorry?'

'Where's the trash?'

She nudged the tagged confidential waste-paper bag out from under the desk with her bare foot. 'The shredder's on the blink. You'll have to use this.'

'You're a good girl. You know that?' He scrunched the paper into a ball, took a few steps back and zinged it into the bag. 'Fucking foxes.'

'Fucking F team,' Kryotos said under her breath. She delicately removed a gobbet of fudge from her fingers, used a tissue to wipe her hands, and went back to her work.