Death Angels

25

WlNTER TOOK THE ELEVATOR UP FROM THE UNDERGROUND AND passed through the gates with his London Regional Transport ticket. Out on Earl’s Court Road, he was assaulted by the odors of the city: gasoline fumes, deep-fried fish, rotting garbage and that pungent blend of cobblestone and dusty streets you encounter only in truly old places.

Spring was lurking somewhere. The sun shone through the fog, making it warmer here than in Gothenburg. Along the Piccadilly Line-which stretched eastward through Hounslow, Osterley, Ealing and Acton-the maples were about to sprout, the gardens wakening. Children were chasing balls across Osterley Park. Children chased balls all year round, but never as when spring flirted with them like this.

He had seen it all before. He was a stranger, but less of one each time he returned. London was his city too.

The mood in the train had been the usual mixture of anticipation and jadedness. The passengers who’d boarded at the airport were back-packing teenagers, middle-aged couples and a few solitary travelers who studied their maps for the entire forty-five minutes to Kensington and beyond. He heard Italian, German and something he thought was Polish, not to mention Swedish and Norwegian.

As they approached downtown, Londoners got on. White men in chalk-stripe suits and briefcases, the Daily Telegraph under their arms. Black women with children who stared wide-eyed at all the foreigners. Thin young women with skin as translucent as the hazy sky shivered in their short skirts, and he had suddenly felt awkward in his camel hair coat.

When the walk signal appeared, Winter crossed Earl’s Court Road with his suitcase rolling behind, turned left and then right onto Hogarth. He continued a couple of blocks to Knaresborough Place. Crossing the quiet intersection, he heard the low rumble of traffic on Cromwell Road to the left. Just a stone’s throw farther and you could actually stand still and listen to the birds sing.

He rang the bell next to a door with a big 8 on it. Arnold Norman, the manager of the little apartment hotel, opened the door with his hand already outstretched.

“Inspector Winter! It’s a pleasure to see you again.”

“The feeling is mutual, Arnold.”

“Where have you been all this time?”

“I was wondering the same thing.”

When Norman stepped aside, a younger man who had been standing behind him took Winter’s suitcase. He walked quickly toward a stairway that cast a long shadow across the lobby.

Winter had stayed here often over the past ten years, whenever he was in London. The location was superb, a little way from the din up in Piccadilly and walking distance to King’s Road in Chelsea, not to mention Kensington High Street and Hyde Park.

They took their seats in Norman ’s tiny office. “I’ve held suite T2 for you.”

“Perfect.”

“You look terrific.”

“But older,” Winter said.

Norman was a survivor, his rustic establishment a mere half block from Cromwell Road. “All our worries will soon be over,” he said.

“You’re only ten years older than me.”

“That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about a bunch of crazy Scots who have started to clone sheep up in the Highlands.”

“Isn’t it against the law?”

“To clone sheep?”

“To clone at all.”

“I don’t think they bothered asking.”

“What does that have to do with old age?”

“They’re going to create an immortal race, and what bothers me is that every one of them will be a Scot. It’s bad enough they’re all going to look alike, which they already do, but now the world will be stuck with them forever.”

“So it would have been a different story if the experiments had been conducted in England?”

Norman eyed him with feigned incredulity. “You’re not implying I’m a chauvinist or something, are you?”

Winter smiled and got up. “Take me to my rooms.”

The suite was on the second floor, its windows overlooking a tranquil courtyard to the east. It consisted of a bedroom, a living room and a large kitchenette with a dining alcove. The bathroom actually worked, a rarity in England -you could turn on the faucets without attending a crash course in the aqueducts of ancient Rome.

He took off his jacket and shirt and was about to splash some water under his armpits but decided to shower instead. It could be a long day.

A towel around his waist, he lifted the wall phone off the hook and dialed, opening the drapes while he waited. It was one-thirty, and the sunlight that flooded the room was unlike anything he’d ever seen in this hotel. Maybe spring had arrived after all. A patch of blue sky framed the sooty buildings in the distance.

“Four Area Southeast, Major Investigation Pool, Detective Constable Barrow,” a woman answered.

“Chief Inspector Erik Winter from Sweden here. May I speak to Steve Macdonald?”

“Hold on, please,” she said flatly.

There was a murmur at the other end. The constable was talking to somebody seated nearby. Winter heard a shuffling sound.

“Macdonald.”

“It’s Erik Winter.”

“Ah, Winter. Delayed again?”

“I’m in London.”

“Good to hear it. Where exactly?”

“At my hotel on Earl’s Court Road.”

“I can send someone to pick you up, but it will take a while.”

“Isn’t British Rail just as fast?”

“Depends.”

“If you’re down in Thornton Heath, I know how to get there. My timetable says the train leaves from Victoria Station.”

“It takes twenty-five minutes, and you’ll see some of the most beautiful scenery in the world.”

“That clinches it.”

“Take the District Line from Earl’s Court to Victoria Station. It’s only a couple of stops.”

“I know.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

Winter could tell Macdonald had already made up his mind: Mr. Scandi-know-it-all has arrived.

“You’re starting to figure me out.”

“Call when you get to Thornton Heath Station and I’ll send someone for you,” Macdonald said and hung up.

Victoria Station felt like the center of the world. If only I could get on the Orient Express right now, he thought. A quiet investigation onboard, all suspects assembled in the bar car.

The city never felt so close as at this station. Winter was standing by the southern exits, looking up at the information that flapped onto the departure board. The train to Tattenham Corner, which stopped at Thornton Heath, had just arrived.

There was hardly anyone else in his car as the train jolted its way out of the station. The sky was incandescent behind the chimney tops that hovered over the river. They crossed the water and stopped at Battersea Park Station: red brick, graffiti, but less than he would have imagined. People waiting on the benches. Not a sound to be heard. There’s a wall of silence around people who are traveling, Winter thought. They’re in a state of suspension, not at home and not somebody else’s guest either-a no-man’s-land whose chief occupation is waiting.

The purpose of the trip, even the altered slant of the sun at this latitude, saddened him. He had come to London, and to the south side of the river specifically, because death was his constant companion. The premonition plaguing him from the start of the investigation continued to nag-that they had seen only the beginning, that evil was preparing its next inscrutable assault. Whatever direction he took, menace was his journey and his destination. He was alone, and he had no faith in anything.

South London -never described in guidebooks, rarely visited by foreigners-stretched out to his right. He had been on this side of the river only a couple of times, and then no farther than the Putney and Barnes areas to take in some jazz.

Buildings of medieval brick composed an eternal city in which nothing rose above two stories as far as he could see. A man in shorts jogged across Wandsworth Common. When the train pulled out of the station again, he watched some schoolchildren playing soccer on a little gravel field. Their jackets were bright green like the buds of spring.

This part of the city was lusher than he’d expected, with more open fields than north of the river, as though the buildings had sprung up in total ignorance of the metropolis.

At Streatham Common he saw the tower of a mosque. Veiled women sat and waited on rough-hewn benches. Two black men, both wearing leather jackets and knit caps, entered the train, the music from their headphones an audible murmur.

He got off at the next station. Thornton Heath was immersed in shadow; the platform itself was below street level. As he climbed the stairs, a newspaper flapped by his ankle on its way down.

The station building was untended. Three black girls stood in a corner waiting for something to happen. Cars swished by outside the open entranceway, and when he came out on Brigstock Road, he felt as though he were in a faraway country, light-years from London. The passersby were Indian, Pakistani, Caribbean, Chinese, Korean and African.

He walked down a little hill, continued on High Street to an intersection and followed Whitehorse Lane for a block or two. He knew if he went another couple of blocks, he would come to Selhurst Park, a refuge for the ragged soccer fans in the poor sections of Croydon. He had seen a few matches in London, but only at the large stadiums on the north side.

He turned before the viaduct and passed Mame Amisha’s Foreign Foods, which advertised “new puna yams” on a handwritten cardboard sign. The yams lay in plaited baskets outside the store. Bananas hung on poles in the window. He walked by the Prince George pub and was back at the station. He took out his phone and called Macdonald, who answered on the first ring.

“I’m by the flower stand outside the station.”

“If you go down the hill and turn left again at Woolworth’s, you’ll find yourself on Parchmore Road. I feel like taking a stroll myself, so if you stay on the right side of the street, you’ll run into me in ten minutes or so.”

“Okay.”

It occurred to him that Macdonald hadn’t bothered to ask him what he looked like. He’ll know you’re a policeman by the way you walk, he thought.

He headed back toward the intersection and was just about to turn in front of Woolworth’s when he saw a white man grab a young black guy by the scruff of his neck outside the main entrance.

“The little shoplifter is back, I see,” the man said. Winter noticed a badge on his chest. Several black men stood in a circle around the security guard and his prey.

“I didn’t do anything,” the young guy said.

“What’s this, then?” The security guard held up an electric shaver.

“I didn’t take it.”

“Let’s go.” The security guard shoved his way through the circle, hulking over the culprit.

Winter crossed Parchmore Road, turned left and weaved his way north between the gravel heaps and the road workers.

Macdonald walked down the stairs, through the garage and out onto the street, the sun warming his head. He let his leather jacket hang open and left his gloves in his pocket. London is putting on its best face for its Swedish visitor, he thought. He’s going to get the wrong impression.

He headed south. He was stiff after a morning bent over witness statements, and his eyeballs felt like they’d been glued to their sockets. His body was too heavy, his spirit too anxious.

Half a block before him was a man in an unbuttoned camel hair coat. The suit underneath was somewhere between blue and steel gray, with trouser cuffs.

It must be him, Macdonald thought. He walks just like he talks. It’s a miracle he hasn’t been mugged. Has he held his badge out in front of him the whole way from the station?

The man’s hair was blond and appeared to be parted in the middle like that of a fifties actor. As they approached each other, Macdonald saw that he was tall, maybe his own height. There was a fussiness beneath his sartorial élan and a touch of arrogance in his step. He was clean shaven, his ears stuck out a little, his face was wide and a bit too handsome and Macdonald wasn’t looking forward to this at all.

Winter was startled to hear his own name. The man could have been an inch taller than he was, maybe six foot four. His dark brown hair was in a ponytail and he had a day-old beard. He was wearing a tattered leather jacket, a blue-and-white plaid shirt, black jeans and pointed boots. He should have a holster on his hip, Winter thought. He looks lethal.

“Inspector Winter?”

He had an enigmatic smile and a few wrinkles around his mouth. There were no bags under his eyes but they were awash in a weariness that lent his gaze a dull fixity. At least he doesn’t have a ring in his ear, Winter thought. “Inspector Macdonald?” He stretched out his hand.

“I thought we’d have a beer down at the Prince George,” Macdonald said. “It’s calm and peaceful there this time of day. Much more relaxing than the police station.”

They retraced Winter’s steps across the intersection and onto High Street. He noticed that Macdonald had a slight limp.

“I play on the pub’s soccer team every Sunday,” Macdonald explained before he could ask. “I’m always like this at the beginning of the week. People around here think it’s an old gunshot injury and that suits me just fine.”

“I quit a few years back.”

“Wimp.”

The pub was empty. Dust danced in the sunlight that poured through a lone window. The bartender nodded at Macdonald.

“Let’s go in there,” Macdonald said, pointing to a small, oblong lounge on the other side of the bar.

Winter draped his coat over the back of a chair and sat down. Macdonald went off and came back with two glasses of ale, still cloudy from the tap.

“Would you rather have a lager?” Macdonald asked.

“I always drink ale when I’m in London.” Winter hoped he didn’t sound too urbane.

“This is Courage Directors. They also have Courage Best here, which is pretty unusual.”

“Directors is one of my favorites.”

Macdonald studied him. Definitely a snob, he thought, but he might have good taste anyway. “Do you come to our proud city very often?” he asked.

“Not so much recently. And I’ve never been to this pub before.”

“We rarely see new faces here. For some reason, most tourists stick to the area around Leicester Square.”

“They miss out on Mame Amisha’s yams.”

“What?”

“She sells fresh yams down the block from here.”

“There’s Thornton Heath for you.”

“I walked around for a while before I called.”

“That’s what I figured.”

“But not all the way to Selhurst Park.”

“Have you ever been there?”

“No.”

“ Crystal Palace is a lousy team, but the fans love them.”

“Are you a fan?”

“Of Crystal Palace?” Macdonald laughed, drank his ale and looked at Winter. “Just because I work in this district doesn’t mean I have to be as loyal as all that. If there’s any English team I root for, it’s Charlton. They’ll never make it to the Premier League, but when I moved here a very long time ago, I ended up in Woolwich around the Valley, so that’s where my allegiance lies.”

“I would have taken you for a Scot.”

“That’s because I am.”

Two men walked into the lounge and nodded at Macdonald. He nodded back, and they moved to the other room.

“Like I said, not so many new faces. But they show up occasionally, and sometimes things get out of hand.”

“I knew Per Malmström. That’s one reason I was anxious to come to London.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?”

“We’ll drive down to the hotel in a while. We’ve left the room just the way it was.”

“You do understand.”

“I was planning to go to Gothenburg, but I wanted to wait until you had been here first.”

“Has a foreign investigator ever come to see you before? Or vice versa?”

“An American cop was here a couple of years ago,” Macdonald said, finishing his ale. “It was also a murder, up in Peckham, which is our northern border, more or less. And I went to Kingston on a case once.”

“ Jamaica?”

“For two weeks. A murder here that led straight to Kingston. Not so unusual for our part of London. If we scent a trail, it often goes to the Caribbean, Jamaica in particular.”

“What happened?”

“The police down there weren’t particularly thrilled to see me, but I learned enough that we managed to solve the case once I got back.”

“Let’s hope we have the same luck this time.”

“One more?” Macdonald pointed at Winter’s glass, which was almost empty.

Winter shook his head and took out his cigarillos.

“Those things are deadly,” Macdonald said, standing up. “I’ll go get another one anyway and let you poison yourself in peace.”

Winter lit a cigarillo and inhaled its fragrance. There were more customers now, but they had all stayed in the outer room. Macdonald must have some kind of say-so here, he thought, but how many pints of Directors did it cost him?

“I made it Courage Best this time.” Macdonald had returned with two more cloudy glasses. He sat back down.

Music was playing in the other room. Winter could tell it was reggae, but heavier than the kind he’d heard now and again.

Macdonald broke a minute’s silence. “So you knew him?”

“Not exactly, but he grew up on the same street I did. I saw him mostly when he was a young child.”

That child never got much older, Macdonald thought. Can I stand to hear the shrieks in the walls of that cursed room another time?

“How did you feel when you stood in his room?”

He gets it too, Macdonald thought. “I heard cries and screams.”

“That’s exactly the way it is.” Winter drank from the new glass. “I hear your kids and you hear mine.”