Birdman

27

A short marigold dress, bare arms and a heavy copper Kara bracelet on her wrist: Rebecca was getting ready to go out when Jack called. A private view at the Barbican: ordinarily she'd have avoided it, but it got her out of Greenwich for the evening. She needed the diversion. Since the day Caffery and Essex had come to the flat Rebecca had thought of little else — she spent her days in front of the easel, not working, absently stroking a sable brush between thumb and forefinger, reconjuring the faces: Kayleigh, Shellene, Petra, while Joni hummed to herself and rolled cones of Acapulco gold with her tea and toast, staying stoned until bedtime. Joni had made it clear that she didn't want to discuss what was happening — rarely came home and when she did a strange pseudo-quiet descended on the pair.

In the quiet Rebecca heard the first faint knockings of a change.

Well, Jesus, it's been long enough coming.

Worlds apart — everyone said it — the two of them were worlds apart. And their only link, which once had glittered with significance, was now fading.

Rebecca was a Home Counties girl. Her father — a tall, solemn man with a classic philosopher's face — only truly touched happiness alone in the study amongst his gold-tooled editions of Elizabethan love sonnets. Meanwhile his wife stumbled around upstairs pressing handfuls of prescription trazodone into her mouth. The professionals muttered about bipolar disorders. Sometimes she lay in bed for days, forgetting to wash or eat. Forgetting she had a daughter to care for.

So this was what Rebecca had to build an identity on: Spenser's Amoretti and amitriptyline. And bedtime beatings. If little Becky was noisy Mummy's tranquillizers found their way into her orange juice.

She grew into a thin, solemn teenager, believing herself quite alone, quite unique.

It's fathers who abuse — not mothers — nothing in the papers or on TV about mothers.

She escaped from Surrey, setting out for university but landing instead in London. And suddenly there was Joni — sashaying towards her along the streets of Greenwich in shorts and heart-shaped sunglasses, a spliff between her teeth, raging like an evangelist about her shitty childhood. For her it had been high-rise council blocks, benefit queues, vomit in the stairwells and pigeons coupling on her windowsill. But the theme was so familiar it stopped Rebecca in her tracks.

'Mum. It was Mum who got me onto drugs — if it'd been a bad day she'd make me take her trannies just to keep me quiet — shove them in my mouth and scream the place down if I didn't swallow. Should've been sectioned before I was born, the mad fucking cow.'

Then Rebecca:

'Once she made me wash her in the bath. She was crying. I was eight and I started crying too. She gave me sweeties to calm me down.'

'Don't tell me — Tofranil.'

'Yes, or something like it. And if she wasn't eating properly then neither did I — once I lived on banana Nesquik for a week. My father said I was getting thin and that scared her. She drove straight to Bejam's in Guildford, came back with five tubs of Neapolitan ice cream and force-fed me until I threw it all up.'

'And then beat the crap out of you, I s'pose.'

They knew they were different but they swore that inside they were sisters. Together they lived out their happy, slap-dash early twenties, sharing boyfriends and lipstick — neither caring to stop and note that while Joni spent her days sleeping off the night before, Rebecca was getting up early and taking a bus to Goldsmiths College. Slowly their intimacy was fracturing and now Rebecca confessed as little to Joni as she might to a child.

Especially the things she'd thought about DI Jack Caffery.

A cop? A cop, for Chrissakes, are you mad?

But the other day, outside the pub, she'd become momentarily transfixed by his neck — such a stupid thing, but she'd been obsessed — by the junction of tanned skin and white collar, the hair cropped close around his ears. And she'd caught herself several times wondering how he'd look as he climaxed…

Now — sitting in the studio in her party dress — she put the image away carefully.

Really, Becky, just get some nice, clean, middle-class thoughts into that diseased little head of yours.

She waited for the blood to go from her face and arms, and buzzed him into the building. Soon he was standing outside her door, tired and faintly unshaven.

'Come in.' She opened the door wide and hooked her leg up to slip on a leather pump. 'I can't be long.' She pressed her other foot in its shoe and followed him into the kitchen, switching on the wall lights as she went. 'Glass of Pouilly?'

'Is it open?'

'Wine flows when I'm nervous.'

'About what?'

'Apart from the obvious? The Millennium Ripper?'

'There's more?'

'Fear of arty gatherings, if you must know, terror of the black turtleneck, goatees, endless arguments, Fluxus versus German expressionism blah blah blah. You know the routine. Coxcombs paying two hundred guineas to have paint flung in their faces or whatever the saying is. So if I've got to come out of my atelier and make intelligent noises, I'm bloody well going to fortify myself with an intelligent little Fuissé.'

Seeing he wasn't smiling, she closed her lips and took the wine from the fridge, placing it on the wooden table, where condensation pooled around it. 'You said you wanted to tell me something.' She stood on tiptoe to search the cupboards for glasses.

'Gemini's been taken in for questioning.'

Rebecca stopped, two long-stemmed glasses poised mid-air. 'I see.'

'I thought you'd want to know.'

She dropped to her heels and stood very still, staring at the fridge. 'We talked about this.'

'I know.'

'What went wrong?'

'We talked too late. If you'd told me about Gemini and Shellene when I first asked—'

'Are you blaming me?'

'Or when we were at the morgue.'

'So you are blaming me.'

'Wasn't what you saw in that body bag more important than your friend's drug supply? Maybe I should have shown you more of Petra. He cut them, you know. Cut their breasts, opened them—'

At that she turned to him. Caffery stopped, a blank look on his face as if he couldn't quite believe what he had just said. 'Shit. I'm sorry.'

Rebecca shivered. 'It's OK.' She put the glasses on the table, poured the wine and handed him a glass. Her fingers were trembling. 'I used to work in that pub. It could have been me. Or Joni.' She looked at him. 'That is where he finds them, isn't it?'

'It's something we need to talk about. You and I.'

'So that is where he finds them.'

'Probably.'

'He follows them when they leave?'

'That's been the assumption.' He lifted the wine and looked at it thoughtfully, rotating it to catch the last splinters of sunlight from the window. 'But you need to know what I think.'

'Go on. What do you think?'

'I think they've arranged to meet him. To do a trick, or to score. I think they knew him, even trusted him to some degree, certainly enough to be somewhere private with him: his car, probably even his house. I think he seems very well adjusted; maybe he's a doctor, a lab assistant, a hospital worker.' He paused, choosing his words carefully. 'He's certainly someone they trusted enough to let him inject something into their bloodstream.'

Rebecca stopped, the glass halfway to her mouth. 'What?'

'He told them it was a fast way to get high. Maybe he was someone they had dealt with before. Someone they had scored from before.'

'Why are you telling me this?'

'Because I think you've met him. Met him, maybe even know him. And I think Joni has too, although she doesn't realize it. So I'm asking you now — if you're protecting anyone else for any reason, no matter how insignificant it seems—'

'You can stop there.' She held her hand up. 'I'm not protecting anyone. I swear.'

'I believe you.' He sipped his wine thoughtfully, watching her over the rim. 'Do you remember meeting anyone in the pub who worked at St Dunstan's? The hospital?'

She frowned. 'I don't know. Well, Malcolm, I suppose. He's something to do with a hospital. Someone Joni's known from years back.'

'Second name?'

'Don't know. She hangs out with him if she's got nothing better to do — lets him buy her drinks, that sort of thing.'

'Is he sort of hippy-looking?'

'Nope.'

'You don't know a Thomas? Thomas Cook.'

'Like the travel agent's? I think I'd remember, don't you?'

'Long, red hair. Weird eyes. Distinctive.'

She shook her head.

Caffery sighed. 'Well, my P45'll be in the pipeline for everything I've told you tonight.' He put the empty glass on the table and smiled at her. 'Maybe I'll become an art critic.'

'I won't gab.'

'Thank you.' He meant it. 'Thank you.'

She stood at the front door and watched him disappear down the stairs. He was almost out of the building when she called after him.

'Mr Caffery?'

His dark head appeared beneath her in the stairwell. 'What is it?'

It was out of her mouth before she knew she'd formed the thought. 'He scares me, you know. The killer.'

Caffery didn't answer. Suddenly he looked immensely tired. 'I'm sorry,' he said wearily, rubbing his forehead. 'I've got to go. Call me if you think of anything.'

The streetlights had come on in central Greenwich and the buildings were lit white and gold, festive as ocean liners in port. A thin pink rind behind the roofs on the western horizon was all that was left of the day. Taxis stopped, people queued outside the cinema. Rebecca stood next to the Hotel Ibis, trying to get a cab, clutching a cardigan around her shoulders.

She was jumpier than usual. Since leaving the High Road she'd had the unnerving sensation that she was being watched from somewhere high up amongst the gargoyles in St Alfege's. The back of her shoulders tingled and her sweat grew cold. She couldn't wait to get out of Greenwich for the night.

From the Spread Eagle restaurant terrace came the discreet clink of expensive glass and silver. Orange and bay trees in pots dropped leaves into the street below, sunken lighting cast their magnified shadows on the whitewashed wall above.

Something about those shivering leaves made Rebecca pause.

What had Jack said? That they trusted their killer enough to let him inject them.

The answer reached her — its breath cold and clear. The orangery in Croom's Hill. Toby Harteveld.

Of course. She dropped her head back and stared up into space. Harteveld. She'd never even thought about it before. Of the endless possibilities that had traipsed through her mind, this one had never presented itself. Now it seemed as obvious as the sky.

She shivered in spite of the warm night and, buttoning her cardigan tight, turned for home. Forget the Barbican. She wanted to speak to Jack Caffery.