Pop Goes the Weasel

78

Helen was still chewing on her confrontation with Harwood when she arrived at the old cinema on Upton Street. Hugging the shadows, she slipped inside via the fire exit. The building was supposed to be up for sale soon, though who would want to buy it was beyond Helen. As soon as she stepped inside, she was assaulted by a rich aroma – the smell of years of rotting wood and decaying vermin. It made her gag and she quickly put her mask on. Gathering herself, she held on to the shaky rail and made her way downstairs.

The Crown Cinema had been popular with families in the 1970s. It was a traditional picture palace, right down to the galleried theatre seating and heavy velvet curtains that concealed the screen. At least, it had been in its heyday. Its owners had gone bust during the recession in the 1980s and subsequent attempts to resurrect it had fallen foul of the out-of-town multiplexes and the arthouse cinema down by the waterfront. Now the main auditorium was a travesty of its former glory, a fractured mess of torn-up seats and building rubble.

The SOC team were grouped in a corner near the screen. The levels of activity and excitement meant progress. Helen hurried over. The phone call she’d received just after her confrontation with Harwood had been the one small piece of good news she’d had all day. She wanted to see it with her own eyes before she got carried away.

The SOC team parted as she approached. There he was. He was still mostly buried in the rubble, but enough had been lifted off to reveal the top of his head and a raised arm. The fingers on the exposed arm pointed upwards in accusing fashion. The skin, though covered in dust, was dark and suggested the victim was mixed race. But that wasn’t what really interested Helen. More important still was the fact that he only had four fingers, the one having been removed some years earlier by the look of the historic wound.

They didn’t know much about Anton Gardiner – his parentage, his early life – but they did know that he had had his ring finger cut off in a tit-for-tat gang punishment ten years earlier. Was he the trigger for Lyra’s killing spree? Was he the cause of all this? Helen shivered as she looked at his mutilated corpse, a pulse of excitement flowing through her. Was Anton’s ravaged hand finally pointing them in the right direction?