Birdman

26

By 7 p.m. the day had become windy, the breeze yanked low, brown clouds across the sky, drivers pulled visors down against the on-off flashing of the late sun.

Caffery didn't want to go home. Veronica would be there, faux pallor and weariness, and he was afraid of what he might say — or do — to her. Nor did he want to go to the office and have conversations die around him, the knowledge that he was backing a loser against all the odds, holding out for Gemini who even now was on his way to Greenwich police station. What Caffery wanted was to see Rebecca. The excuse, when it came, was reassuringly legitimate.

He dropped Essex at the station, in the heart of a sudden shower, did a U-turn and retraced his steps through rush-hour traffic on Trafalgar Road. At Bugsby Way the rain stopped as suddenly as it had started and the evening sun came back for one last try at drying the world, glinting on the silt-heavy Thames, casting the long shadows of peeling advertising hoardings across the road. The only things that moved were stray plastic bags rolling along the empty service routes, and Caffery was struck once more by the strange, end-of-the-world loneliness of this landscape.

The aggregate yard had changed dramatically. The scene hadn't yet been released, but the forensics team had finally completed their fingertip search; the GPR equipment had gone, the conveyor belt and the sieves lay unattended, and the alloy crush barriers intended to restrain the press stood redundant, a length of police tape fluttering lazily from one.

DC Betts sat, unobtrusively, in the team car parked at the end of the service road, quietly warming his face in the evening sun. Caffery acknowledged him and ducked under the perimeter tape. Since he was last here the ground had sprouted a fine summer cover of new vegetation, wet from the rain. He headed back towards Bugsby Way, retracing the steps he'd taken with Fiona Quinn that first night. It was hard going, strange long grasses, the colour of mud, clung to his ankles, and by the time he'd reached the far perimeter fence the shadows were longer, his socks sodden, studded with seed heads.

He stood still and lifted his face into the air, eyes half closed, smelling the bad, bitter perfume of wild poppy mingling with the river smells. The search had revealed only one sizeable gap on this side of the fence. On the service road the holes were numerous. The accepted theory was that Birdman had parked in the service road and carried the bodies almost a quarter of a mile across this difficult terrain, going back to the car to retrieve the gardening spade which they thought he'd used to make the graves. Caffery believed that Birdman had had reason to come here before the killings, or to pass it on his way somewhere. For a St Dunstan's worker this could be part of the homeward journey to any number of places: Kent or Essex, even parts of Blackheath.

A snarl of DS Quinn's fluorescent tape, peeled and discarded in the fingertip search, lay at Caffery's feet. He picked it up and studied it thoughtfully, turning it in his hands. All the bottles and cans recovered from here were now speckled in fingerprint dust and bagged in the evidence room at Shrivemoor: Heineken, Tennants, Red Stripe, Wray and Nephew.

Wray and Nephew — Gemini — drugs. Something about that connection glittered with significance. Drugs and the ligature marks on Spacek's wrists and ankles.

Only Spacek had struggled. A connection buried in there somewhere. Two seagulls swooped over the yard, eyeing him. Caffery's thoughts rolled slow as clouds.

Four of the girls were users. Only Spacek wasn't. There was a continuity. He dropped the tape and turned it over with his toe.

Something — tape? — to bind Spacek. Drugs.

And then, abruptly, he knew. He put his head back and breathed deeply, surprised to find his heart was thudding.

The offender had to tie Spacek up because she was the only one who wouldn't stay still. She wasn't a user, he couldn't talk her into taking a needle in the back of the neck. The target wasn't drugging the girls to keep them still, nor was he threatening them. The truth was far simpler, far more tragic.

The victims were doing it voluntarily; rolling over, maybe even holding their hair up, looped over a wrist, to give him access to that vulnerable knot of bone, ligament and fluid which is the body's second-to-second, day-to-day neural switching centre. The brain stem. He'd convinced them this was what they wanted, a fast way to get high — 'Quickest way into the blood stream' — and they were just desperate enough to try it. He had enough rudimentary medical knowledge, confidence, a little jargon. It was a real possibility, especially if the girls, with wills eroded by years of heroin use, already knew and trusted their killer.

'Oi. You!'

Caffery turned. The man coming towards him was tall and barrel-chested, dressed in a pinstripe suit, the jacket flying open to reveal braces over a dark blue shirt and blue tie. His thinning hair was greased back like Diamond's. Gold glinted at his neck and wrists. 'The Bill should've stopped you. I've had enough of your sort clambering around.'

Caffery showed his card, and the man stopped a few feet away. 'No, mate. I'm sorry. A little flash like that. It ain't good enough. Hand it over here.' He tapped his palm. 'Poxy press card, is it?'

Caffery leaned forward and held the card up. 'OK?'

The man rubbed his nose and shoved both hands hard in the pockets of his trousers. 'Yeah, yeah. You can't blame me. I had the place crawling all yesterday.'

'You're North. The owner.'

'I am.'

'We weren't introduced, but I saw you. The first night we were here.' He returned the card to his pocket. 'I'm having a look around.'

'Think he'll come nosing back here, do you? They say a dog returns to its vomit.' He tipped back on his heels and looked at the sky. 'Well? When can I expect to see you off my land, then?'

'As soon as we've charged someone.'

'I was on to your super this afternoon. I hear they've got someone up at the station. Is it true?'

'I can't discuss that.'

'Black lad, is it?'

'Who told you that?'

North shifted his weight and rubbed his nose. 'Heard this morning the whole area is under compulsory purchase orders. It don't rain but it pours, doesn't it?' He jingled change in his pockets and looked up at the sky where new clouds were gathering. 'Maybe I should be approaching you for compensation. Eh?'

'I can't stop you trying.' Caffery turned. 'Now, if you'll excuse me.'

'Yeah yeah.' He stood motionless, watching Caffery make his tortuous way back to the road. Only when he'd completely disappeared did North move. He dropped his head and sank to his haunches, his face in his hands.

Over the Thames Barrier it had started to rain again.

After he'd done what he had to do with Peace's body, he continued driving. There was only one thing left to do: keep going.

Better not look down, Toby.

He spent the whole day driving, as if he could blow the taste away by perpetual travel, through the storms and the sun, through the dripping, leafy Nash terraces of Camden, the green sweeps of Hampstead, the sticky red roads of Hyde Park, until the Cobra's engine grew hot and hoarse and the sun dropped behind Westminster.

Just after dusk Harteveld found himself on London Bridge. His breath caught in his throat. London laid itself out to him, from the diamond point of Canary Wharf, west through a million lights reflected in the Thames, to the Houses of Parliament.

He stopped the Cobra, found his coke kit in his pocket and unwrapped it. Using his nail he scooped a small pile of coke into his left nostril. To his right, behind Guy's tower, where it had all started, the moon hung low and smooth. Harteveld leaned back in the seat and stared at it.

Beneath the bridge the water lapped against the pilings.

He rubbed his temples and hurriedly started the Cobra.

Better not look down.