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- Herausgeber: Corvus
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014
LONGLISTED FOR THE CWA GOLD DAGGER, 2014 Peckham, south London. A nine-year-old boy crawls from a burning car and is left fighting for his life. As DCI David Rosen and his team scour the scene of the crime, a graffiti image of a sinister eye is discovered above the site of the wreckage - and with it, a series of mysterious markings etched onto the wall. Could this be a code to catch the monster behind this dreadful act? When a teenager is burned alive, evidence on his body confirms Rosen's suspicion that something sinister is at work on the estate. Young children go missing in the dead of night. Each second counts as Rosen battles to find the killers and save the missing souls...
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For my daughter, Eleanor
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth bringsThat then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Shakespeare
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
DAY ONE
Chapter 1: 10.19 P.M.
Chapter 2: 10.32 P.M.
Chapter 3: 10.47 P.M.
Chapter 4: 10.51 P.M.
Chapter 5: 11.01 P.M.
Chapter 6: 11.11 P.M.
DAY TWO
Chapter 7: 2.28 A.M.
Chapter 8: 2.54 A.M.
Chapter 9: 3.24 A.M.
Chapter 10: 5.30 A.M.
Chapter 11: 6.45 A.M.
Chapter 12: 8.30 A.M.
Chapter 13: 8.35 A.M.
Chapter 14: 8.37 A.M.
Chapter 15: 8.38 A.M.
Chapter 16: 9.38 A.M.
Chapter 17: 12.29 P.M.
Chapter 18: 1.35 P.M.
Chapter 19: 1.43 P.M.
Chapter 20: 3.55 P.M.
Chapter 21: 4.03 P.M.
Chapter 22: 5 P.M.
Chapter 23: 6.18 P.M.
Chapter 24: 6.25 P.M.
Chapter 25: 6.40 P.M.
Chapter 26: 7.30 P.M.
Chapter 27: 8.03 P.M.
Chapter 28: 8.10 P.M.
Chapter 29: 9.03 P.M.
Chapter 30: 11.15 P.M.
DAY THREE
Chapter 31: 3.05 A.M.
Chapter 32: 7.30 A.M.
Chapter 33: 10.45 A.M.
Chapter 34: 10.53 A.M.
Chapter 35: 11.01 A.M.
Chapter 36: 11.20 A.M.
Chapter 37: 11.35 A.M.
Chapter 38: 3.25 P.M.
Chapter 39: 3.33 P.M.
Chapter 40: 3.58 P.M.
Chapter 41: 4.09 P.M.
Chapter 42: 4.28 P.M.
Chapter 43: 5.59 P.M.
Chapter 44: 6.40 P.M.
Chapter 45: 6.58 P.M.
Chapter 46: 7.15 P.M.
Chapter 47: 7.21 P.M.
Chapter 48: 7.25 P.M.
Chapter 49: 8.03 P.M.
Chapter 50: 8.15 P.M.
Chapter 51: 8.34 P.M.
Chapter 52: 8.37 P.M.
Chapter 53: 9.15 P.M.
Chapter 54: 9.38 P.M.
Chapter 55: 10.38 P.M.
Chapter 56: 10.42 P.M.
Chapter 57: 11.35 P.M.
Chapter 58: 11.45 P.M.
Chapter 59: 11.55 P.M.
DAY FOUR
Chapter 60: 5.08 A.M.
Chapter 61: 5.30 A.M.
Chapter 62: 5.30 A.M.
Chapter 63: 6.01 A.M.
Chapter 64: 6.04 A.M.
Chapter 65: 6.15 A.M.
Chapter 66: 6.41 A.M.
Chapter 67: 6.45 A.M.
Chapter 68: 6.50 A.M.
Chapter 69: 7.05 A.M.
Chapter 70: 7.10 A.M.
Chapter 71: 7.18 A.M.
Chapter 72: 7.45 A.M.
Chapter 73: 9.15 A.M.
Chapter 74: 9.25 A.M.
Chapter 75: 10.20 A.M.
Chapter 76: 12 NOON
Chapter 77: 12.23 P.M.
Chapter 78: 1.13 P.M.
Chapter 79: 1.43 P.M.
Chapter 80: 2.05 P.M.
Chapter 81: 3.39 P.M.
Chapter 82: 6.30 P.M.
Chapter 83: 6.35 P.M.
Chapter 84: 6.44 P.M.
Chapter 85: 7 P.M.
Chapter 86: 7.10 P.M.
Chapter 87: 7.28 P.M.
Chapter 88: 7.37 P.M.
Chapter 89: 8.20 P.M.
Chapter 90: 8.31 P.M.
Chapter 91: 8.51 P.M.
Chapter 92: 8.57 P.M.
Chapter 93: 9.20 P.M.
Chapter 94: 9.35 P.M.
Chapter 95: 9.45 P.M.
Chapter 96: 9.46 P.M.
Chapter 97: 10.32 P.M.
Chapter 98: 11.05 P.M.
Chapter 99: 11.32 P.M.
Chapter 100: 11.50 P.M.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PROLOGUE
9.22 P.M.
Macy Conner knew it wasn’t good for young girls to walk alone on dark nights.
As she reached the corner of her tenement block, Claude House, she saw light flickering on the surfaces of car windows in the street and felt compelled to turn.
There was a car on fire in Bannerman Square. Next to it two figures, silhouettes, moved swiftly from the flames in her direction.
If I can see them. . . She turned the corner and ran. They’ve seen me.
She ran as quickly as she could, panic mounting inside her with each stride. She could hear the echo of their footsteps as they followed her around the corner.
Macy lengthened her stride, gripping the £10 note she was clutching in her damp fist. But they were like lightning, striking closer with each step. She could smell them.
Macy tried to scream but her voice was trapped.
She stumbled, lost her rhythm but kept on her feet.
She could hear their mingled panting on the edge of the breeze.
No one around. Just her. A ten-year-old girl on her own. And them.
And now they were right behind her.
She could feel their anger as they caught up with her. She could smell the petrol as they surrounded her in a cage of flesh.
One behind her. One in front, massive and oozing menace.
In the distance, back on Bannerman Square, she heard the sound of a child screaming.
She looked up into a face wreathed in darkness. His hood was up. And, when she turned back, the other was the same.
She stared down at her feet and the shaking started.
On Bannerman Square, there was an explosion.
A pair of hands dug into her shoulders, each finger pressing into her, enjoying her pain.
A whisper in her ear, sour breath drifting inside her.
‘Did you really think you could out-run us, little bitch?’
DAY ONE
28 April
1
10.19 P.M.
Two places. One time. An impossible choice.
As Detective Chief Inspector David Rosen ran towards the brightly lit entrance of Lewisham Hospital, he saw himself reflected in the darkened surface of the glass doors. Late forties, thickset body, dark eyes and dense black hair plastered to his head by rain, he wished he was as fit and lean as he’d been in his twenties so he could have made it faster from the car.
His reflection vanished as the automatic door slid back and he was inside, searching the direction board for A & E. The paramedic he’d spoken to on the phone had said Thomas Glass had suffered horrific burns but was still conscious and talking.
The kid was an eyewitness. The brutal truth was that his evidence was crucial. That was why Rosen, leader of the murder investigation team, was there and not at the scene of the crime at Bannerman Square.
‘David!’
Rosen turned his eyes to a voice he recognized, Detective Sergeant Carol Bellwood. ‘This way!’ she called.
Rosen caught up with his deputy on a windowless corridor, illuminated by fluorescent strip lights. DS Bellwood, a tall black woman with braided hair drawn tightly into a band at the back of her head, walked ahead of him.
Rosen noticed Bellwood wore a sweat-stained T-shirt, jogging bottoms and trainers beneath her raincoat. She’d been working out in the gym when he’d put through the action stations call.
‘Are his mum and dad here?’ asked Rosen. He dreaded what awaited them and was filled with sadness and fear for them. Their shared life as parents was irreparably and horrifically changed.
‘Not yet.’ Rosen and Bellwood exchanged a glance of recognition. In a living nightmare, it was their job to orchestrate order from chaos as quickly as they could.
‘You want me to go to the scene now that you’ve arrived?’ asked Bellwood, to the point and as businesslike as ever.
‘Gold and Corrigan are already there. Feldman’s in charge.’
She nodded. Good. The three core members of Rosen’s MIT.
Rosen felt short of breath and his chest was tight. Twenty-three minutes earlier, he’d been in the kitchen of his home in Islington, bottle-feeding his sleep-resisting son; now, he rushed towards nine-year-old Thomas Glass, who’d been missing from his home for eight days.
‘What’s the word from Bannerman Square?’ asked Bellwood.
Rosen thought he heard footsteps following them but when he looked over his shoulder there was no one there. His voice dropped a notch.
‘Corrigan’s working with Scientific Support. Stevie Jensen’s in Gold’s car; Gold’s talking to him.’
Corrigan, great with finding and handling evidence; Gold, a people person, taking care of the witness.
‘Stevie Jensen?’ asked Bellwood.
‘The teenager who called the paramedics. The Prof’s orchestrating the rest of the troops.’
Bellwood had nicknamed DS Feldman ‘the Prof’ because of his ability to concentrate for hours and retain information photographically. The nickname had stuck and Feldman liked it.
At the ITU they met a female nurse, a beefy blonde in a bottle green NHS uniform. To Rosen, she looked like the bouncer at the door of a low-rent nightclub.
‘I’m DCI Rosen and this is DS Carol Bellwood. We’re—’
‘You’re here about Thomas Glass?’ interrupted the nurse, whose ID badge read STEPHANIE JONES, and whose picture whispered time had been tough on her.
‘Is he still able to speak?’ Rosen asked.
‘He’s fully bandaged and under heavy sedation.’
‘Stephanie,’ Bellwood said softly, and the nurse turned to look her way. ‘Did Thomas say anything when he was brought into the unit?’
‘No. He was ventilated.’
Rosen saw Bellwood’s shoulders sink and felt the dead weight of her disappointment.
‘Can I see him?’ asked Rosen. ‘Please.’
She looked hard at him.
‘You can see him through the glass partition. Follow me.’
They arrived at a window in the resuscitation unit.
Lying on the bed, ventilated and bandaged, was the missing boy. On either side of him, a ward sister and doctor were involved in calm but focused discussion.
Rosen took a deep breath and scraped the barrel of his inner grit. ‘Stephanie, did the paramedics tell you what happened when they arrived at Bannerman Square?’
‘It was straight into ATLS scenario,’ she replied.
‘ATLS scenario?’ asked Bellwood.
‘Advanced trauma life support. Checked his airway, red raw. Got him on the spinal board, into the ambulance. They ventilated him. They got what was left of his clothes off him and saw he had sixty per cent full thickness burns. The boy’s fluid balance was wrecked so they hydrated him with a line into his left arm and wrapped him in cling film to stop him leaking to death. Then it was morphine and back here. He’s got a thirty per cent chance of living. Not good.’
With rising sorrow, Rosen looked through the glass. The probability was that Thomas’s mother and father were about to face the most profound fear of all parents. And it was a fear that Rosen knew firsthand. The memory of his daughter’s cot death, eight years earlier, was made fresh by the sight of the young boy. For a moment, he was frozen by terror, sorrow and devastating loss. His mind turned to his wife Sarah, on that terrible night, and the indelible image in his mind, the look in her eyes as she held Hannah in her arms, the moment she said, ‘She’s dead.’
Rosen forced himself into the present.
‘OK, Carol. We need to beat it back fast to Bannerman Square. I need to catch up personally with this kid, Stevie.’ Rosen turned to the nurse, one more thing on his mind. ‘Tell your head of security. I’m putting an armed guard on the door here.’
Bellwood’s phone was out and she pressed speed dial. ‘I’ll get onto CO19, David.’
‘CO19?’ asked the nurse.
‘Central firearms control,’ explained Bellwood.
‘And we want all your CCTV footage, interior and exterior, Thomas’s journey into this hospital – everything you’ve got,’ insisted Rosen.
‘An armed guard?’ asked the nurse.
‘Whoever did this wants him dead. They’ve had him over a week. If you’d done this to him, would you want him alive and talking?’
2
10.32 P.M.
At the wheel of his BMW, before firing up the engine, Rosen made a call on his iPhone. HOME.
After the third ring, he heard his wife Sarah’s voice, tired but relaxed. ‘Hi, David. You OK?’
He struggled to speak. ‘Well. . .’
‘David?’ Her voice was laced with concern.
‘How’s Joe,’ he asked. ‘Is he OK?’
‘He’s fine,’ she reassured him. ‘Fast asleep in bed.’
‘Go and check him for me. Please.’
‘OK.’ He heard her footsteps ascending the stairs. ‘Thomas Glass?’ she asked.
‘It’s looking bad.’ Rosen wondered if Thomas’s parents had arrived yet, if they’d seen their son.
He recognized the familiar creak of Joe’s bedroom door opening.
‘I’m in his room. The night-light’s on. He’s doing that thing when he wrinkles his nose when he’s content. I’ll lower the phone.’
Rosen listened to the sound of his baby son breathing and felt a dead weight of anxiety vanish from him.
‘OK now, David?’
‘Thanks, Sarah. I’m sorry—’
‘I can only imagine what you’ve seen tonight. I’d be exactly the same if I was in your shoes.’
He turned on the ignition. Parental anxiety calmed, time took over as his tormentor-in-chief.
‘Get going, matey,’ said Sarah. ‘Go!’
She hung up and, seconds later, Rosen was in fourth gear at sixty miles per hour.
3
10.47 P.M.
When Rosen arrived at Bannerman Square, he made a mental snapshot of the rain-soaked scene. Officers, plainclothes and uniformed, outnumbered the handful of curious stragglers hanging around the scene-of-crime tape.
Claude House, the building overlooking the square, was illuminated on each floor, and Rosen was reminded how dark it could be on a wet night in the Walthamstow tenement where he grew up.
Gold – a tall, bulky Welshman, an ex-rugby player with a shaven head and sharp blue eyes – raised a hand in salute and pointed to his unmarked car. He was as tough as he looked, but equally friendly.
As he joined him, Rosen looked over at the teenage boy shifting uncomfortably in the back of Gold’s car
‘Stevie Jensen.’ Gold’s melodic voice seemed to threaten to break out into song on each syllable.
‘What’s happening with him?’
‘Local hero, he is. Two separate witnesses from the flats stepped forward to stand up for him, thinking we were pulling him in as a suspect. Saved Thomas Glass from that.’ He nodded in the direction of a burned-out Renault Megane.
As Gold opened the back door of his car, Rosen thought he could hear Gold’s tightly fitting shirt and trousers squeaking against the density of his body.
Rosen gave the kid a brief, avuncular smile as he slid into the back seat beside him.
‘I’m DCI Rosen.’
He pulled the door shut as Gold took the driver’s seat directly in front of the boy.
Stevie was good-looking, with platinum-dyed hair peeping out from the bottom of his baseball cap. He had light bandaging on both hands. He looked pale and nervous, like he wanted to go somewhere quiet and cry himself to sleep. There was a smell of petrol and smoke around him.
‘Thank you for what you’ve done this evening,’ Rosen said, gently. ‘Are your hands OK? How are the burns?’
‘I just want to go home now. Can I? Please.’
‘We won’t keep you much longer.’
‘He took my phone offa me.’ Stevie indicated Gold. ‘Can I have it back?’
‘I told him to, Stevie. I couldn’t be here myself because I was over at the hospital where the little boy is, so I ordered all phones to be confiscated and I’ll tell you why.’
Rosen reached up and switched on the car’s interior light so he could look into the boy’s eyes and have a shot at bridge building. His first impression of Stevie was clear. He was part of south London’s unsung majority, a downright decent kid.
‘First off,’ said Rosen. ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen to Thomas, but I do know he’s still alive and that’s down to you. You gave him a chance.’
He paused and looked away, letting the silence do its trick. Outside, DS Bellwood’s attention was nailed to something to the right of the blackened Megane, and Rosen’s curiosity was piqued. She was looking at a low wall and the light from her torch picked out an eye painted onto the bricks. He looked back at Stevie.
‘Well,’ said Stevie, nervously, nodding at the shaven dome of Gold’s head. ‘Yeah, so why’d he pocket my phone?’
Rosen remained silent until Stevie looked directly into his eyes.
‘You’re a witness at a serious crime scene. You could be the key to catching whoever’s done this. You sit in the car, waiting, texting, talking, you pass information out there, and within an hour it’s all over Facebook, and whoever’s done this knows what you know. Whereas we’d like to keep it to ourselves.’
‘I didn’t think of it like that.’
Rosen let the significance settle in his head.
‘My mum,’ said Stevie. ‘She’s a worrier. She’ll be pulling her hair out.’
Gold turned his head and looked at Stevie. ‘Honestly now, I called your mum and told her everything was OK.’
Stevie looked mournfully at Claude House, and Rosen lay a hand gently on the boy’s sleeve. Seeing the pleading look in the boy’s eyes, as Stevie turned to look at him again, Rosen knew he’d be better off talking to him in his comfort zone.
‘I need to talk to you, Stevie. How about we do it in your flat, with your mum there?’
‘Yes please, Mr Rosen,’ said the boy without hesitation.
‘DC Gold,’ said Rosen.
Gold turned his head. ‘Yes, boss?’
‘Give Stevie his phone back. We’re just nipping over to his place.’
4
10.51 P.M.
The door of Stevie’s ground-floor flat flew open as soon as the boy rang the bell.
His mother gasped, looked him up and down, and threw her arms around him.
He wriggled in her embrace and protested gently, ‘Mum, there’s a copper behind me.’
Rosen stifled the smile on his face into deadpan as he caught the woman’s eye. Without a trace of make-up, she was a small, bottle-black-haired woman with sad green eyes that seemed too big for her thin, oval face. She reminded Rosen very much of his own mother.
‘You can be proud of your son, Ms Jensen.’
She nodded. Of course she was proud of him. She let him out of her arms and looked with some horror at his bandaged hands.
‘Oh my God!’
‘I’m all right, Mum.’
Rosen felt the intensity of Stevie’s awkwardness and steered the moment away.
‘Can we all go inside, Ms Jensen?’
‘I’m going to the loo,’ said Stevie, heading off to the bathroom.
His mother went into the kitchen to switch on the kettle, leaving Rosen alone in the small living room at the front of the flat. He looked around the walls and read the dynamic of the family. There were framed pictures of Stevie at all stages of his life and in most of them he was dressed in a running kit. Stevie, aged nine, holding up a gold medal at a track event; Stevie, aged thirteen, first across the line. . . On the mantelpiece, there were gold-plated trophies and, at the little table near the window, GCSE Chemistry and Biology books were stacked neatly alongside blank revision cards and a stationery set.
The door opened and Rosen turned as Stevie’s mother came back into the room. Rosen extended his hand and said, ‘I’m DCI David Rosen.’
As they shook, her hand felt small and fragile inside his.
‘Marie Jensen,’ she responded. ‘Some neighbours told me he carried that kid away from the burning car.’
‘Yes,’ said Rosen. ‘It was a brave and selfless act.’ In the background, the water in the kettle began to boil, and the toilet flushed.
‘His dad died in a traffic accident when he was five. I think he must’ve thought about his dad when he saw the kid. He’s a very feeling boy, my Stevie.’
Stevie drifted into the room, his eyes red with the tears he’d shed in the privacy of the bathroom. Rosen looked away and pointed to a small sofa.
‘You want to sit down, Stevie?’
His mother walked out of the room. ‘I’ll fetch in some tea.’
Rosen sat on an armchair adjacent to Stevie and said, ‘I’m well impressed with your athletics trophies.’
Stevie looked directly at him, suddenly animated, distracted from the trauma of recent hours. ‘That’s what I want to do. My coach said I could compete in the nationals.’ The boy suddenly winced and stretched his fingers, dissipating the shudder of pain in his palms. A siren rose and fell in the far distance.
‘GCSEs next month?’ prompted Rosen, nodding towards the window and the table of books.
‘Yeah. Working like a dog, me.’
‘What do you want to do, Stevie?’
‘Go to uni and be a success. Make Mum proud of me. Take care of her, like.’
‘You looking to join the police then?’
‘No way, man.’ Stevie laughed briefly.
‘That’s a shame,’ said Rosen. ‘For us.’
Stevie looked questioningly at Rosen as he took out his phone.
‘You OK if I tape our conversation?’
‘No probs.’
Rosen pressed ‘record’ and Stevie stared into space, as if reliving the memory in the thin air around him.
‘Just tell me what happened – everything, OK?’ Rosen sat back, feigned relaxed-for-a-fireside-chat.
‘I was sitting at that table and, like, revising like crazy for me GCSE Chemistry, wasn’t I? I look outta the window. There’s a burning car on the square. So I went out. Next thing, the car door swings open and. . . It was a little kid and all I thought was, That car’s gonna blow, man; I’ve gotta help him! When I got to him, he’d crawled himself into this big puddle on the ground, the stink of petrol and burning was, like, rank. But I grabs him by the coat and trousers, he was screaming, crying, I couldn’t look at him, then, boom! The car went up but by then we were, like, safe and I lay him down on the ground and that’s when I heard him say it.’
‘What did he say, Stevie?’
‘He said, “They’re gonna do it again!”’
Rosen held the boy’s gaze. ‘He said “they”? He definitely said “they”?’
‘Definitely. They. Not he, not she. They, definitely they.’
‘You’re one hundred per cent sure?’
‘My adrenaline was pumping, for a second or two, my senses were all, like, super sharp. I could’ve heard a flea sneeze down Oxford Street.’
‘Did he say anything else?’
‘No. But I’ve got something to show.’ Stevie looked nervously at the door, then he took out his phone and indicated to the space next to him on the sofa.
As Rosen joined him, Stevie’s mother entered the room with two teas. Stevie paused in his scrolling.
‘I’m sorry, Mum. Not now. Please. OK?’
Without a word, she left.
‘I don’t want my mum to see this. It’s too. . . upsetting. Soon as I’d called the ambulance, I did this on me phone. You ready?’
Rosen nodded. ‘I’m ready, Stevie.’
Stevie pressed ‘play’.
On the screen in front of him, Rosen saw Thomas Glass on the pavement in Bannerman Square, his body wet, steaming and shaking, his face a blackened mask.
Rosen felt something clutching at his scalp, something sharp and metallic as his mind spiralled back for a moment to a time when he’d seen his first murder victim, a young woman with her head almost completely hacked off. Rosen clenched his fists at his sides, then focused on the screen again.
‘I asked him questions. I wanted to get whatever evidence I could.’
‘Good thinking, Stevie.’
Stevie had zoomed in on Thomas’s face. His voice came through clearly: ‘Can you hear me? Nod if you can, OK.’
Thomas had nodded, sodium streetlight picking out his charred face. He had no eyelids, just red raw whites, one blacked at the centre.
‘Is your name Thomas Glass?’ The boy nodded. ‘Were you snatched?’ A pause and then Thomas nodded again. ‘Do you know who abducted you?’ This time the boy had nodded as if he wanted to shout Yes! ‘Was it a woman what snatched you?’ He shook his head slowly. ‘A man snatched you?’ The sound of an approaching siren, an ambulance, grew louder and louder. ‘Was it a man?’ Stevie pushed and, distressed, Thomas nodded again. Then he had begun to scream and the film had stopped.
‘I couldn’t take any more. I had to turn my back,’ said Stevie. ‘I feel bad, like, turning away from him.’
‘Don’t. You’ve been brilliant.’
Stevie looked at Rosen, uncertain.
‘I mean it, Stevie. You’ve been brave and shown presence of mind under duress. Your mother has every reason to be proud of you.’
Stevie nodded, digested Rosen’s words. ‘Send it to my phone, Stevie.’ Rosen gave him his number and, within a few moments, received the sequence on his iPhone.
‘You want me to delete it, Mr Rosen?’
When Rosen saw that the film had arrived safely to his phone, he said, ‘Yes, please. When you came onto the square, you didn’t see anyone near the car, or running away from the car?’
‘Not a soul. I got back from a run around half seven, the Renault wasn’t there then. Half eightish, I was revising, no car. About an hour later, there it was. On fire.’
‘Anything else, Stevie?’ asked Rosen, gently.
Stevie shook his head and Rosen knew that, had he spoken, the boy would have dissolved into tears. Quickly, Stevie stood up and left the room.
His mother came back in, carrying the tea.
‘I have a son, Ms Jensen, a baby. I hope he grows up to be as decent as your boy,’ said Rosen.
She beamed with pride. ‘Thank you, Mr Rosen.’
‘I apologize. I can’t stay for tea.’ Rosen smiled and left in a hurry.
5
11.01 P.M.
On Bannerman Square, the burned-out wreck of the Renault Megane rose into the air, lifted by a claw attached to the back of a large Ford pick-up. It was the start of its journey for forensic examination at Clerkwell Road Garage. Rosen reckoned it could still yield useful evidence.
Bellwood was staring at the wall next to which the car had burned.
Rosen approached on her blind side, asking, ‘What is it, Carol?’
‘I’m not sure.’
She pointed a beam of torchlight at the wall. It showed a piece of graffiti that, at first glance, looked like the scrawl on the nearby DLR station.
Rosen crouched for a better view.
It was the painted eye he’d glimpsed from the back of Gold’s car. The low wall on which the eye had been painted was all that remained of a 1960s flowerbed. The quality of the artwork was impressive.
He broke it down into its component parts. The oval outline, top and bottom, was a thick band of black. Within the outline, the white of the eye was dappled with dark pinpoints that created a cast of grey within the white, a shadow effect that suggested the passage of light and made the eye seem alive.
‘Well?’ said Bellwood.
Rosen glanced up at her.
‘I think it’s good,’ he said, ‘but you’re the art buff. What do you think?’
Off duty, Bellwood spent a lot of time in London’s galleries, and had strong opinions that were focused and knowledgeable. Rosen seized on her enthusiasm.
‘Graffiti art,’ she said. ‘It grabbed me as I was passing it by.’
He turned his attention back to the eye and listened.
‘It’s full of shadows. And they’re well executed. You get this kind of detail, this kind of play of light in the work of top-drawer artists. This isn’t just some snot-nosed kid looking for their fifteen minutes of fame in the neighbourhood. This work shows an understanding of technique and perspective.’
Rosen counted. From the iris to the oval outline there were fifteen lines that created the effect of the spokes of a wheel, narrow at the pupil and thickening as they progressed to the outline. She was right. In each line, the perspective was perfect.
Rosen heard Bellwood shiver on an in-breath and he wondered if it was because of the cold night and her damp gym clothes, or the image on the wall. She stooped beside him and gathered her coat together at her throat.
‘Look at the centre of the white – there’s a perfect circle, the pupil with a dash of white dead centre, the suggestion of light caught amidst the passing shadows.’
Rosen took his iPhone from his pocket and started snapping the eye. In spite of his ingrained dislike of anything linked to graffiti, he said, ‘You’re right, Carol, this is quality work.’
‘It’s going to be an uphill slog with the locals,’ said Bellwood. ‘I’ve heard there were over a hundred people at the tape at one point, and nobody saw the car being driven onto the square, nobody saw the driver get away from the vehicle, nobody saw the car being torched. Several people saw the car burning – the same people who saw Stevie carrying Thomas to safety.’
Rosen looked at Claude House and did a quick calculation. ‘There must be a hundred-plus potential witnesses in there. Eight in the morning, we start door-to-dooring.’
‘David!’ The sound of a no-nonsense Liverpudlian accent drew Rosen’s attention to DS Corrigan, who was approaching quickly.
‘What’s up?’
Corrigan, the rock at the heart of Rosen’s murder investigation team, was agitated. Dark blond and with a hardened face that matched his track record in hand-to-hand violent confrontations, he stopped in front of Rosen with a look like he wanted to kill.
‘Fucking bad news. Check it out, David.’ Corrigan pointed at a wall behind him, a wall overlooking the scene. ‘Premeditated. Bastards. That’s what’s up.’
6
11.11 P.M.
Along plume of vapour streamed from Corrigan’s nostrils. He was calming slowly but was still livid. Rosen gazed at the source of his trusted colleague’s anger and immediately shared in his frustration.
On the back wall of a warehouse yard was a rectangular metal cage. Inside was a CCTV camera positioned to look directly over Bannerman Square. The cage and camera were mangled. Rosen felt his heart begin to race.
‘I just phoned CCTV central control,’ said Corrigan, sourly. ‘The camera went down this afternoon. Nice timing eh, David?’
Deep down, Rosen smiled for the briefest moment. It never failed to amaze or amuse him how Corrigan, a detective with twenty years on the darkest streets of Liverpool and London, still took every criminal’s spoilers so personally. As Bellwood was to calm, Corrigan was to passion; it was a good combination.
‘You’re right,’ said Rosen, shrugging, drawing in Corrigan. ‘It’s no coincidence. Come and have a look at this.’
Rosen led Corrigan to the painted eye and flicked on a light.
‘We’re going to have to get Tracey Leung from the Gangs Unit on board,’ said Rosen.
‘How come?’ asked Bellwood.
‘Yeah,’ said Corrigan. ‘Why?’
‘She knows the streets. Vandalized CCTV. Graffiti. We need to know who could’ve spray-painted this masterpiece,’ said Rosen. ‘I’ll call her now.’
Rosen took out his phone, seeing the turning wheels of Bellwood’s mind expressed on her face.
‘Tracey Leung?’ Bellwood pressed him. Rosen found her on speed dial.
‘I heard a story she got her arm tattooed on an undercover op,’ said Corrigan.
‘Yeah, I heard that,’ replied Bellwood. ‘I reckon it’s just a story.’
Rosen was through to Tracey Leung’s voicemail.
‘You’ve reached Tracey Leung. Leave a message. I’ll get back to you.’
After the beep, he said, ‘Tracey, it’s David Rosen. Ring me as soon as you pick up this message. I need your help.’
Rosen observed Corrigan and Bellwood examining the eye like a couple in a gallery.
‘This is bad shit and I don’t like it,’ said Corrigan, as he glanced back at the trashed CCTV.
‘Like you say, bad shit,’ responded Bellwood. ‘But all the same, very well made.’
DAY TWO
29 April
7
2.28 A.M.
For a moment, Rosen stayed at the window, observing the scene in the resuscitation unit. John and Emily Glass sat side by side, their backs to the door, gazing at their bandaged son as horrific reality dawned fast.
On the other side of the bed, a tall, grey-haired man, with a patrician air, spoke to them. Emily collapsed into tears. Rosen considered backing off but remembered the words Thomas had said to Stevie Jensen: ‘They’re going to do it again.’ And he had known his abductor.
They were a well-dressed couple, good-looking and wealthy. Rosen knew his company was a successful one: Glass Equity, lending money to people who saw his adverts in the commercial breaks on daytime TV.
With no ransom demand and the recent turn of events on Bannerman Square, a financial motive to the kidnapping was dead in the water.
John Glass glanced over his shoulder and his eyes met Rosen’s. The tempest of competing emotions on his face consolidated into hard-boiled antagonism, and Rosen knew that he was the cause of this reaction. The relationship between senior investigating officer and father of the missing boy – now victim – had been bad from the word go, and with each passing day of Thomas’s disappearance, John Glass had grown more entrenched in the personal blame he laid at Rosen’s feet.
Glass mouthed something and turned his face away.
Rosen nodded at the sombre-looking CO19 officer at the door, his Heckler & Koch in both hands held diagonally across his bulletproofed torso.
As the tall man came out of the resuscitation unit, Rosen clocked his name badge. MR CAMPBELL, PLASTICS CONSULTANT.
He shut the door and asked Rosen, ‘Who are you?’, his voice like an old-fashioned TV newsreader.
Rosen showed Mr Campbell his warrant card and went for a second opinion. ‘How do you think he’ll do, Mr Campbell?’
‘The odds are stacked against him. The initial assessment was flawed. He’s got seventy per cent burns, a twenty per cent chance of living. That’s what I’ve just had to tell his parents.’ The specialist nodded to him and walked away.
Emily Glass’s forehead was on her knees, her hands linked around the back of her skull. Her husband put a hand on her shoulder. She lifted her hand and threw him off sharply.
In the eye of the crisis, Rosen observed to himself, an unhappily married couple.
He knocked on the door and John Glass stood up.
As Glass moved from his son’s bedside, Rosen recalled how, after Thomas had been absent from home for two days, the case of a missing child had converted into a potential murder enquiry, and the ball had passed to him.
Glass closed the door and eyeballed Rosen. ‘Happy now?’
‘Whatever do you mean, Mr Glass?’
‘At least he’s turned up. That’s progressed your investigation, hasn’t it?’
‘No, Mr Glass. At this moment in time, I’m feeling many things, and happy certainly isn’t one of them.’
‘You in charge, DCI Rosen?’ His name and rank spoken like an obscenity. ‘You see, I’m in charge of over a thousand-plus people and when I issue an order that order is followed; when I issue an instruction it gets followed and results happen fast. So, you’re either not issuing the right orders to the handful of coppers in your team, which makes you incompetent; or the people beneath you either aren’t listening to you or aren’t capable of doing their jobs—’
‘Mr Glass!’
‘I haven’t finished. The end result being’ – Glass pointed at his son – ‘and I blame you.’
Rosen waited, watched Glass breathing hard.
‘Market forces don’t apply to criminal investigations,’ Rosen answered. ‘I wish I could, but I can’t control human—’
‘Nature. Yes, I know. You’ve told me time and time again.’
Yes and you’re the Wizard of Oz, thought Rosen. Great and mighty.
‘There’s been an informational development and we need to talk,’ he said now, steering Glass away from the recurring argument.
Emily returned her hand to her head and her tears fell faster, her sobbing louder. Inside Rosen’s head, stress and pressure rocketed.
He suppressed the words loan shark, the memory of his childhood neighbours in Walthamstow crucified by versions of John Glass, and silently recited a simple mantra: Victim’s father, victim’s father, victim’s father. . .
‘Go on, Rosen, hit me with your big development.’
The expression on Glass’s face told Rosen there was no room for sorrow or sympathy.
‘Mr Glass, the list you supplied of people who know Thomas and who Thomas knows. Is it definitive?’
‘Yes, it’s definitive.’
The first thing Rosen had asked John Glass for was a list of names of people who knew Thomas, and he had supplied twenty-three. All of them had been able to provide cast-iron alibis.
‘I need you to do something for me, as soon as you can, please,’ said Rosen, holding Glass’s hostile gaze. ‘I need you to go through all your contact details and see if there are any names you’ve missed out.’
‘It’s a definitive list.’
It isn’t, thought Rosen. It can’t be.
‘Mr Glass, I’d like you to supply me with the contact details of everyone you know, both business and personal.’
‘Everyone?’
‘Everyone.’
‘There are people on that list in Glasgow, people who’ve never been within miles of Thomas!’
‘We need to catch whoever’s done this—’
‘It’s too late for my son!’
At the sound of his raised voice, Emily Glass lifted her head and turned her face towards her husband.
He took a deep breath and spoke more softly, ‘You’re useless, Rosen, worse than useless, actually.’
Rosen focused on Emily Glass, weeping at her child’s side.
‘Thomas indicated to the boy who helped him that he knew his abductor and that that person was male.’
As the information sank in, Glass said, ‘I have databases. I’ll ask Julian Parker, my PA, to email them to you.’
‘Thank you.’
‘No one I know would do such a thing as this.’
‘You’ve never been surprised, shocked even, by the action of any individual who you know?’
‘Not to this degree. It’s unthinkable, Rosen.’
‘Mr Glass, unthinkable as it is, it’s happened. Someone’s responsible. I need your help. I’ve got to nail them. Fast.’
Emily Glass sat up and reached out a hand to touch her son’s arm. Her hand hovered over his bandaged skin and then fell back into her lap.
Both men watched the tender moment and Glass looked at Rosen, mystified.
‘She wants to touch him,’ explained Rosen. ‘But she’s terrified of hurting him.’
In the silence, something shifted in Glass’s expression.
‘Why do you make me feel like this is somehow my fault?’ Anger welled up in Glass’s eyes.
Rosen was amazed by the question and took a moment to get the measure of his tone right.
‘If I’ve done or said anything to make you feel like that, I assure you it was never my intention. And I’m deeply sorry you feel like that.’
Glass took out his mobile and turned his back on Rosen. Within seconds, he was connected to his PA.
‘Julian,’ said Glass. ‘Not good, not good at all. Now, listen, I’ve been told I’ve got to submit all our databases to the police – every contact, business and private, right?’ He turned and looked at Rosen, his PA’s raised voice leaking from the phone.
‘Everything, Julian. Every single contact.’ He turned his attention away from the phone. ‘You’ve got DCI Rosen’s email address. Get onto it!’
Glass closed the call down and turned to Rosen. ‘Happy now?’
‘I’m going back to work, Mr Glass.’
‘That’s very good of you, Rosen. Thank you, all my cares just lifted away.’
As Rosen walked away, he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. The display read: Clerkwell Road Garage. He picked up.
‘DCI Rosen, I’ve got some news for you.’ It was Alan Carter, civilian forensic expert on burned-out vehicles. ‘The entire search isn’t over, but we’ve got some initial findings to present to you on the Renault Megane from Bannerman Square.’
8
2.54 A.M.
In the hospital car park, just as Rosen took out his phone to call Bellwood and see where she was, he heard her voice approaching from the darkness behind him.
‘David, I went back and spoke to Stephanie, the nurse on ITU.’
‘Oh, yes?’ He recalled the nurse’s folded arms, the bulk of her physique, the pugnacious cast of her face.
‘What are you smiling at?’ asked Bellwood, perplexed, as they got into Rosen’s car.
‘When I was a kid I was a keen amateur boxer – Red Triangle Boxing Club, Walthamstow. My absolute boyhood hero was a British heavyweight, Joe Bugner. Stephanie looks like him.’
Bellwood laughed. ‘I’m glad you didn’t tell her.’
‘Yeah, me too. I’d be in A and E myself now. How’d you get on, Carol?’
‘Stephanie had a Damascus moment after you left to speak to Thomas’s parents. I asked about the journey from the ambulance to the resuscitation unit. She said he made quite a few noises but nothing they could pin down as speech. After all, how could he be understood? He was hooked up to a ventilator.’
‘But—?’ Rosen scented significance in Bellwood’s manner but didn’t know whether it was just wishful thinking. If there was a god to which he could have prayed for a crumb of information, he’d have raised his arms and talked in tongues.
‘She said the boy’s mood altered on the way to the resus. It was like he’d seen or heard something that spooked him. She thought he was going into heart failure.’
‘Did Stephanie see anything that could have affected Thomas?’
‘She thinks she saw the door to A and E reception close. So there could have been someone else on the corridor, David.’
Bellwood had a gift for making silence comfortable, particularly around witnesses. In every case they worked, she had yielded details that otherwise would have been lost through sieves of memory. The bitterness in Rosen’s mouth, left over from the conversation with John Glass, eased off.
‘Do they have CCTV on that corridor?’
‘No, but they’ve got it at the front in A and E reception.’
A grim possibility formed in Rosen’s mind.
‘Then we need to see that CCTV footage and we need twenty-four-hour surveillance in A and E holding and reception. Order the footage; I’ll speak to Baxter, ask him to release a couple of DCs. When they’re assigned, you fill them in and they can cover the surveillance, twenty-four-seven: four hours on, four hours off. I bet you the perpetrators have already got their beady little eyes on A and E. Let’s be waiting for them.’
9
3.24 A.M.
There was something about the space between the bare concrete walls of Clerkwell Road Garage that turned the air bitterly cold. The gas heaters, dotted around the barn-like space, did nothing to touch the chill. Rosen clutched at the collar of his white protective suit and Bellwood’s breath formed a gentle mist.
‘Come this way,’ said Alan Carter, footsteps echoing.
Dead centre of the garage, the burned-out Megane looked tiny. Its charred frame looked like a surreal sculpture, devoid of any of the interior features except the roasted remains of half a steering wheel and a dashboard.
‘They’re absolute idiots, you know,’ said Carter.
Rosen had noticed before the way Carter poured unwanted attention at Bellwood, and he smiled now at the way she made his admiring gaze drift past her. He guessed it was a skill she’d developed in her teens.
‘Who?’ asked Bellwood. ‘Who are absolute idiots?’ She guided Carter’s attention towards Rosen.
