Birdman

33

Where Croom's Hill twists down past the site of the old Ursuline convent, Greenwich Council Environmental Service's refuse lorry was halted in the centre of the road by an unmarked white van. Minutes later the lorry continued on its way up the hill, stopping outside the Harteveld house as usual. The van turned away and made a wide, looping swing through Blackheath, arriving at the top curve of Croom's Hill — similarly concealed from the house — just in time to meet the truck a second time. The driver took two full refuse sacks from the workers, passed them carefully to a colleague in the back of the van and slammed the doors closed. Back in the driver's seat he adjusted the wing mirror until he could see, down in the elbow of the hill, a grey Sierra parked almost out of sight under a dripping oak. The van driver didn't turn. With a minutely subtle movement he extended his thumb a small degree, holding it against the mirror.

He waited until the two men in the Sierra nodded in response, then started the van and headed up the hill.

In his walled garden Harteveld saw none of these exchanges. He was propped against a stone bench, blinking at the morning with bloodshot eyes. Next to him, in a bed of violets and moon daisies, lay an empty pastis bottle and a small pile of cigarette ends. He had been there all night, listening to the storms and sirens chase each other up and down Greenwich, not taking shelter, but waiting motionless as the clouds swelled and broke, dropping their rain on his face, turning the maze of paths into rushing gullies. The sheet lightning had turned the bone-white church spire blue, and by morning fruit trees had lost branches, the lawns were boggy and the lovely irises along the west wall lay exhausted and flat. The orangery doors stood open to the morning and the copy of The Times, which had been lifted from the living room floor by the winds, was distributed around the orangery and patio. Kayleigh Hatch's face hung in the branches of a cedar of Lebanon.

Now, as the shadows in the gardens faded and the new sun dried out the rain-drenched cobwebs in the copper beeches, Harteveld began to stir.

In the Sierra, Betts turned and looked at Logan. Somewhere in the alley next to Harteveld's house a car had started. Presently garage doors opened, and a green car, a beautiful, high-reared classic car, swung out into the alley. It turned left onto Croom's Hill and headed off into the bright morning.

Betts's mouth twitched slightly as he reached for the ignition.

Five miles away, in Shrivemoor HQ, Caffery's phone rang.

'DI Caffery? Jane Amedure speaking. Your SA at the Forensic Science Services. I'm in receipt of two black plastic dustbin liners and contents. I can run a GC/MS on those compared to the ones submitted from the autopsies, and have the results later today.' She cleared her throat. 'And, uh, something else came my way from DS Essex this morning.'

'Yes,' Caffery said dully. He was exhausted. 'That was personal. From me. We're not reviewing it yet. Not officially.'

'I know, DS Essex filled me in. If it doesn't go any further I might be able to sneak it in under operation Walworth.'

'Good of you.'

'Yeah well, I heard the story.'

'Anything you can tell me?'

'Not much visually, they're old and very fragmented. In the event they prove to be human I'll run a mitochondrial DNA test, so I need to know if your mother is still alive? Hello?'

'Yes, hello.'

'I said is your mother still alive, or one of her relatives?'

'Yes, she's — you think they're human?'

'I can let you know for sure later today, maybe tomorrow.'

'Thank you, Dr Amedure. Thank you very much.'

He replaced the handset, leaned back in his chair and stared out of the window for several minutes. He had a blunt, toxic pain between his eyes. He'd got to bed at 4 a.m. On Betts's return they had worked for an hour. While Veronica wrapped her mother's goblets and placed them in a tea crate, Essex shut himself in the living room, tagging and bagging the bones, carefully, as if he was turning Caffery's emotions in his hands. By ten the next morning, just as Gemini's extended period of detention was starting, everyone at Shrivemoor knew the story, knew about Ewan and Penderecki, understood Caffery a little better. The women in the incident room looked at him with something new, something, he imagined, curiously like fear. if he let it, he could be undone in the time it took Amedure to make a report on the bones.

'Got a minute?' Maddox was standing in the doorway. 'Someone to see you.'

'Yeah. Go on, then.'

'Do you want to be alone?' Maddox asked the figure in the corridor. 'I can butt out if you want?'

'You might as well hear.' North, the owner of the aggregate yard, stepped into the room. He wore a white polo neck under a suit, polished shoes, a heavy gold chain over the neck of the sweater and was sweating profusely in the heat. He sat in the chair Maddox offered, his gaze unsettled.

'I feel a right cunt being here if you'll excuse my French.'

Jack and Maddox sat, placed their elbows on the facing desks and folded hands a few inches apart. Maddox tilted his head. 'Sounds like you want to talk.'

'I suppose I've got to.' He pinched the crease in his trouser knee and shook it lightly, watching it settle. 'It's been dragging me down the last few days, and the wife — well, she's got the right hump, won't let me through the door till I've done the proper thing and come down here.'

'What's on your mind?'

'That lad down at Greenwich—'

'How do you know about him?'

'The truth?'

'Yes. If you feel like it.'

'I've got a mate in this department.'

Caffery and Maddox exchanged a brief look.

'It's a black lad, isn't it?'

'Is that important?'

'In a way.' North stared at the trouser crease and Caffery sensed he was trying hard not to squirm. 'I might have told someone something — well, wrong like.'

'When you were questioned?'

'No. Later. In the pub.' His face slackened. 'Mel Diamond, DI Diamond—'

Maddox sighed. 'Yeah. What about him?'

'He's an old mate. Old Charlton supporters, we are.' North bit his lip. 'Look, my daughter lives in east Greenwich, near the yard. She's got problems with her neighbours. Nigerians. Noise, smells, ignorant animals they are, got rats living in what come through the holes in the wall, under the floorboards and up into the baby's room.' He paused. 'Not that I've got anything against them, but they drive around in their flash cars, God only knows how 'cos not one of them's in work, and there's my daughter scratching a living and can't get herself a job round her way cause every post goes to a black with the world being what it is.'

'What are you getting at, Mr North?'

'I lied.'

'Lied?'

'Can't you see my position? You'd have done it too if your daughter was living where my girl is. I can promise you that.'

'When you say you lied—'

'All right, all right: I told Mel Diamond I'd seen a Nigerian in a red sports car hanging around outside the yard. I thought if I could shake those boys up a bit — but you went and took someone else in.'

'We had a lot of witnesses came up with the same sighting.'

North twisted his wedding ring on his fat livid finger. 'Well, I don't know about them, but the honest truth is that I ain't never seen no-one sitting outside. There. I've made a right prat of myself. Hope you're happy.'

'Mr North.' Maddox stood, extending his hand. The phone was ringing on his desk. 'We appreciate your honesty. Now if you'll excuse us.'

As North left he picked up the phone.

It was Betts, calling to let Jack know that Harteveld had left Croom's Hill.

The inside of the Cobra smelled of leather and, faintly, of hot tarmac as the air conditioner sucked in some of the outside world. He stopped at the traffic lights where Tooley Street sloped up to meet London Bridge. It was a bright blue day, the sun pulled out the sparkles in the new buildings along the Thames so they looked as if they were built from packed sugar.

He stared blankly out at it all from his hermetic bubble. He hadn't noticed the sleek grey Sierra five cars behind, or the two men unmoving behind their sunglasses. He was very thin, he must have lost two stone since Christmas, but now he was sweating like a fat man: in spite of the air conditioning yellow sweat wet the front of his shirt.

The traffic lights changed, but the car in front didn't move. Harteveld hardly noticed. His long hands resting on the wheel looked as if they were trying to curl in on themselves. Maybe, he thought — hoped — his body was giving up.

The usual babble of people crossed the road, dark suits, women in heels and flesh-coloured tights, the occasional white jacket of an intern hurrying out of Guy's to catch the post. On Harteveld's left Guy's hospital tower, studded with satellite dishes, seemed to spy him out amongst the other cars. He shuddered. He should find somewhere to park but to stop, get out and walk the few yards to the York Clinic: it seemed easier to tow the earth across the galaxy on his shoulders.

His plan was vague and desperate. After days of wishing that his heart would spontaneously burst, stop him having to make the decision, now he knew he needed to throw himself at the feet of the psychiatric community. To do this in the York Clinic, in the grounds of his Alma Mater where the seed had been sown, seemed symbolic and right. Cathartic, if there was a catharsis available for this.

But as he imagined it, as he imagined unbuckling the load and passing it across a discreetly decorated room, tears sprang to his eyes. Even a professional couldn't forgive him what he'd done. Even a professional recoils at the stink of shit. He was trapped. Nowhere to turn.

He sat there, hands clamped on the wheel. The lights changed once. Twice. The traffic didn't move. Harteveld leaned slightly to his side and from the white flash of sun on a metallic badge realized that he was two car lengths away from a police roadblock.

Very quietly, very discreetly, he started to cry.

Diamond caught up with North outside the building. 'What the fuck do you think you're doing here?'

North folded his hands over his abdomen and continued walking.

'I said what the fuck are you doing here?'

'I had to tell the truth.'

'What did you tell them?'

'That I never saw no-one outside the yard.'

'Shit.'

'I'm sorry, mate.'

'Sorry ain't fucking good enough. I took that and ran with it. Made a good case on the basis of what you told me.'

North stopped, sun glinting on the gold around his neck, and looked at Diamond. 'Now you knew I was lying.'

'Bullshit.'

'Course you knew. You couldn'ta been happier when I said I'd seen a spade hanging around.'

Diamond put his hands in his pockets and shook his head. 'That's not how I remember it, my friend. That's not how I remember it.'

PC Smallbright of Vine Street station was in a great mood. He was good-looking and in love. It was a pretty, blue day, and the sergeant had let them wear short sleeves under the fluorescent traffic police vests. The ten of them stood at the top of London Bridge with their white shirts flapping in the warm breeze. It was good to be alive, he thought, as he bent over to look through the driver's window of the green Cobra.

'Morning, sir.' The cadaverous expression on the driver's face didn't stop Smallbright's smile. He tapped politely on the window. 'Could you—' The window rolled down and the rush of stale cold air and the yellow face made him pause. He bit his lip. 'Sorry to stop you, sir, but we're doing a vehicle check. Completely routine, just having a little look around at things, OK?'

Taking the silence as assent he went to the back of the Cobra, glancing back, a new unease clouding his thoughts. The driver, oddly, looked exactly as if he was crying.

Maddox leaned his forehead against the window pane and sighed.

'I'm asking myself what I've done to deserve this. It's my balls are going to be on the butcher's block for this. Not Diamond's.'

'You think he invented the door-to-door interviews?'

'What do you think?'

'I think we should have a look. If Gemini's been rotting in that cell all this time on the strength of a false statement—'

'Don't say it, Jack. Just don't say it.'

Harteveld sat cold as rock as the PC checked the rear of the Cobra, ran his fingers along the bumper, around the tail lights. The sweating had stopped now. The hard glitter of sunlight on water reflected in the glass buildings. On the north of the river he could see a tiny wisp of cloud spiralling up into the sky over the bluish dome of St Paul's cathedral, as if a spirit were leaving a body. Vapour which would reform in a different strata of the atmosphere, co-mingle with other vapour, crystallize, liquefy, and one day drop again onto the earth. Purer. Diamond clean.

'Who's one hundred and sixty?' Caffery shouted over the heads of the receivers and officers milling around the room. He was in shirtsleeves, one hand on the desk, looking at an indexer's monitor. A flashing cursor at the top of the screen highlighted the message:

Record locked port 160.

Someone else in the room had opened the house-to-house file, denying him access.

'I said WHO IS ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY?'

Over the piles of blue duty sheets and the buffcoloured actions dockets a dozen sets of unblinking eyes stared at him. In the corner, by the exhibits room, only one person wasn't looking up. Diamond's head gleamed, bent under the grey ellipse of a VDU. The strip of blue Dynotape stuck on the monitor read 160.

Caffery and Maddox crossed the room.

'What the fuck are you doing?'

Diamond looked up with mild blue eyes. 'Just entering some actions.'

'That's Marilyn's job.'

'Oooops,' he said simply, pushing the keyboard away. 'Sorry. Hope I haven't cocked anything up.'

'I don't feel like spending the day' — Maddox said — 'reading up on falsehood and prevarication discipline.'

'Of course you don't. Sir.'

But later, when Kryotos checked HOLMES, she found the street numbers in the house-to-house entries had been deleted or never entered in the first place.

'Inspector Diamond?' Maddox found him with his feet up on the desk in the property room.

'Sir?'

'A word.'

Caffery stood in the corridor watching as Maddox opened the door of F team's office and placed his hand on DI Diamond's back, gently propelling him inside, closing the door behind them with a soft click.

When PC Smallbright came back he was shocked at the change in the driver's expression. It was as if a hand had been there and smoothed all the lines down, like sand raked free of prints. Peaceful. The eyes were fixed on a point on the other side of the river.

'Did you know you've got a smashed brake light, sir?'

'Is that so?' Harteveld opened the car door and stepped outside, unravelling his long, cadaverous body into the sun. He stood quite still, his eyes closed, his face turned skyward, as if he had never before felt the sun on his skin. His suit hung on him, and his hands dangled out of the sleeves like the clappers of ancient bells.

'Sir?'

'Yes.'

'It's just a smashed brake light. Nothing serious. You've got a smashed brake light.'

'Of course. And please take into account the dead girls.'

'Sir?'

'Tell them what I've done, if you'd be so kind.'

PC Smallbright glanced nervously at his sergeant, who was leaning into the driver's window of a Mazda. He turned to Harteveld. 'Do you want to talk about something, sir?'

'No, kind of you, but I think I'll be off now.'

PC Smallbright had never seen anything like what happened next. 'The river had never looked better, never bluer or more sparkly,' he told people later. 'But the guy, he looked like a corpse, looked just like a dead thing, grey yellow, like milk gone off.'

And in that sphere of humans, as Harteveld pinpointed the co-ordinates of his place of death, five cars back, two men, not much younger than he was, sensed simultaneously what only Harteveld knew. It was outside their remit, but DC Betts understood the emergency.

'GO GO GO!'

They hurled themselves out of the car, scattering city workers, who shrank back, awed by the two men in suits and sunglasses, faces straining, ties streaming behind them. They covered the hundred yards to the bridge in less than twenty seconds, but even moving slowly Harteveld was ahead of them. If he was aware of their presence he only indicated it with a slight inclination of the head, as if he'd heard something of vague, momentary interest. He took the low parapet of the bridge almost without breaking stride, and, as if the next step was no different from any of the others, stepped simply out into the blue air.

PC Smallbright shouted. The two men rounded the head of the traffic and flung themselves at the parapet. Smallbright ran towards them, reaching them seconds later. The three men stood, panting, as fifty feet below Toby Harteveld's calm face broke the surface like the underbelly of a yellow fish. He twisted, moved his arms twice, jerkily, like a puppet, and rolled onto his front, disappearing from view under the green water.