Slow Motion Ghosts Read online

  ‘And this card represents?’

  ‘The young man is setting out on his journey through life, full of confidence. So confident, he doesn’t notice the chasm gaping at his feet.’

  Hobbes nodded. ‘And does this mean anything to you?’

  ‘Not to me, no. But Lucas Bell was obsessed with the tarot.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And he always said that this …’ She touched the evidence bag gently. ‘That the Fool was his special card.’

  ‘And why should it be in Brendan’s pocket?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Her voice wavered. ‘Maybe Brendan put it there himself? Maybe it was always there.’

  ‘No. It has blood on it. It was placed there after the fact.’

  She made a noise in response, a tiny cry of pain. Hobbes looked at her. She was biting her lip with her front teeth.

  ‘Are you keeping information back from me?’

  ‘No.’ She glared at him, her eyes fierce and dark. ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘Tell me about the telephone.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘You rang the police at that point.’

  ‘I did, yes.’

  ‘From the bedroom?’

  Now she hesitated, so he pushed the point. ‘You’ve known this man for what, an hour in full, if that, and yet you’re quite happy to ring from a phone a couple of yards from his body. His mutilated, bloody corpse. I don’t buy it. I just don’t. I think you’d walk downstairs, and ring from the hallway.’ He shrugged before adding, ‘Any normal person would do that.’

  ‘Are you insulting me?’

  ‘I’m wondering, that’s all. What was going through your mind? As you sat there and waited, smoking a cigarette?’

  And now she spoke simply and clearly: ‘I didn’t want to leave him alone.’

  At last, Hobbes could see that she was telling the truth. He pictured her in Brendan Clarke’s bedroom, keeping the dead man company, the music playing, the blue smoke from her cigarette drifting in the dimly lit air.

  He clicked off the tape recorder. ‘Thank you. I’ll be in touch if I need anything else.’

  Simone nodded in response, and made to leave. But at the door she stopped and turned.

  Hobbes stared at her. ‘Yes, what is it?’

  ‘There was a piece of paper inside Brendan’s mouth.’

  So then, she had studied the corpse as closely as he had. Hobbes couldn’t get this woman straight in his mind. What was her motivation?

  He stared at her. ‘I can’t discuss that.’

  Simone Paige left the room.

  Hobbes gathered his thoughts. His eyes closed momentarily as he pondered the known facts. Then he rewound the cassette tape back to the beginning and listened to the opening moments of the recording, the witness stating her name, himself making his excuses and then leaving the room, the door closing behind him. And then silence. Simone shuffling in her seat, fingers tapping at the table. Her breath.

  He leaned in closer to the machine’s tiny speaker.

  A cigarette taken from the packet, the rasp of a lighter flint. The smoke drawn into her lungs, and a sigh of pleasure. Silence once more. Moments going by. And then at last she spoke to herself, her voice rising quietly from the speaker grille.

  He couldn’t believe what he’d just heard.

  The Face Illuminated

  Hobbes saw the word as soon as he walked down the side passage towards the door of his flat. Four letters in red paint, scrawled across the panels of the door: SCUM. His mind clicked into working mode. The paint was sticky to the touch, but not wet. Probably an hour or less since it had been applied. He studied the ground below the door. The pathway was concrete, so there were no footprints. Drips of red paint spotted the surface. He could imagine that the person’s shoes might also be marked. Possibly. He didn’t like the word possibly, it tied a painful knot in his thoughts. Maybe Fairfax was to blame; the young detective had made his dislike plain, right from the start. But then again, Hobbes could easily imagine one of his former Charing Cross colleagues doing this; that would be more likely, given how much he was hated at the old station. He told himself to keep working. The edges of the letters were too sharp, not diffuse. The person had used a pot and a brush, not a spray can. Now that struck him as unusual. Someone older perhaps? It certainly explained why there were so many drops on the ground. He went inside and found the only paint he owned, a small can of blue acrylic he’d bought to touch up scratches on his car. He sprayed over each letter.

  Back inside the flat, he tried to settle down. It was quiet, far too dark. Shadows hunched in the corners, ignoring any lights he switched on. Some animal was scratching away in the walls. It was there every night.

  The place had been the best he could find at short notice. In truth, he’d been glad to get out of the family home, if it could still be called that. Any remaining love between himself and his wife had grown icy cold as the trouble started. And then there was his son, Martin. Still missing. One problem after another, building from Brixton and its terrible aftermath in that cellar in Soho.

  Hobbes poured himself a whisky and sat down to watch the television. He listened for five minutes or more to a man in a mauve corduroy jacket explaining polynomial long division, before he realized he was watching The Open University. He leaned over and reached for a book from a shelf, a collection of English verse that had belonged to his mother. Inserted inside was a piece of paper, discoloured, the writing pale, almost lost. Lost, as its meaning was lost. This was the one mystery he could never solve. And sometimes he would frown at this fact, and at other times smile. But now his attention kept drifting away. He couldn’t stop thinking about Brendan Clarke and the way the sheet had been pulled up over the face. He wished he’d known that earlier, when he’d examined the body …

  Immediately he sat up in the chair. The book fell from his hands.

  The murderer had hidden the face! The murderer had mutilated Brendan Clarke’s face, made a terrifying artwork of it, an elaborate display, and then covered it up. All that work, the time spent, the mess, the blood flow, the details of the various cuts.

  The thoughts had set in. The questions. Sparks in the brain, too many of them.

  What had the murderer been thinking?

  Hobbes finished the whisky and went to bed. He undressed, wrapped the loop of string around his ankle, and climbed under the sheets. It was a necessary precaution, the string. And against all his expectations, he was soon asleep. The form of Charlie Jenkes was the last thing he thought of, as he was in his youth, laughing and drinking and telling jokes. A ghost. The darkness of the room gathered, and settled. One hour passed, another, one more. And then Hobbes woke up suddenly with the image in his mind, perfectly formed.

  The street lamp.

  He got up immediately, forgetting the length of string in his haste; the other end of it was tied to a bedpost, and he was pulled back by it as he tried to walk away. He slipped the loop over his foot, put on some clean clothes and went out to his car. He drove the short distance to Richmond police station on Kew Road and picked up the keys to Brendan Clarke’s house. Westbrook Avenue was quiet when he got there. He glanced at his watch; past four in the morning. Still dark. Good. He needed that. A patrol car drove slowly by, the two officers inside staring at him. He waved at them and nodded.

  Hobbes entered the house and made his way upstairs. Not much had changed in the front bedroom. The body was gone, and the bed had been stripped of its sheets.

  He went to the window and checked the curtains. They were coloured green and fawn, in an abstract pattern. He had the idea that men never changed curtains, or hardly ever, and that they never cleaned them. And Brendan Clarke had lived alone. In contemplation, Hobbes pulled the curtains together. They didn’t quite meet in the middle, which made it even worse. And he noticed that a clothes peg was fixed to one side. Clarke had used this to hold them together. It was like something out of a T. S. Eliot poem, or Philip Larkin, something lon
ely. There was a sadness to it. He clipped the curtains together, and even now the light from the street lamp outside streamed through, right across the bed. Bloody hell. How could he have missed it? He cursed again, and recalled the words of DI Collingworth, his first proper teacher.

  Always look elsewhere, Henry. Turn away from the corpse.

  He switched on the overhead light and looked across the room to the telephone on its cabinet. His eyes narrowed. Such an odd place to put it, so far from the bed. It would mean the sleeper would have to get up if the phone rang. It didn’t feel right, not at all. He studied the bed frame, and then searched the floor and soon found the four indentations in the carpet.

  Now that was strange.

  MONDAY

  24 AUGUST 1981

  X for Unknown

  He would never get to sleep now, so Hobbes headed back to the station and read through the case file: the brief, typed-up interviews with the street’s residents, those they could find last night; Simone Paige’s initial statement to Fairfax; the doctor’s notes. It would take a while for the forensic and autopsy reports to come in, but he’d asked for one piece of evidence – the fingerprint in the blue putty on the record player – to be quickly checked against the victim’s prints. They matched. That set his mind working; it corresponded to what he’d worked out in his visit to the house.

  He looked through the sheets of A4 paper found in the living room, and the one found in the victim’s mouth, which had been removed and carefully unfolded. It was preserved in its own see-through plastic bag. The paper was creased and smeared with blood on the reverse, but the writing on the other side was clear enough. It was the lyric sheet of a song called ‘Terminal Paradise’, the words typed out, with later additions written in ballpoint pen. There was a composer’s signature at the bottom of the sheet.

  Lucas Bell.

  At a quarter past six Hobbes ate a breakfast of fried eggs on toast in the canteen and then went to the incident room and prepared the board, ready for the morning meeting. For a moment he stood stock-still, clearing his mind of everything but the task ahead. He had to demonstrate his worth, now more than ever.

  PC Barlow was the first in, looking even fresher and pinker than yesterday. Meg Latimer arrived on the dot at seven, looking like she’d not long fallen out of bed but with her usual smile in place; she was the only one who had welcomed Hobbes to the station. She’d had her own share of career troubles in the last couple of years, especially with her alcohol intake. She’d received a written warning apparently, so maybe it was just a mutual sense of despair that she felt with Hobbes.

  DC Fairfax sauntered in ten minutes later. His hair was washed, brushed back, sticky with wet-look gel. He was dressed in a smart jacket and open-necked shirt over a pair of stone-washed jeans. The sleeves of his jacket had been pushed up at the cuffs to show off his tanned arms. No doubt he was heading for early promotion to detective sergeant, and beyond; the powers that be seemed to prefer these new young professional types. Fairfax made a muted excuse for being late and sat down at his desk. He took out a bacon sandwich and started to eat it, paying special attention so that none of the grease dripped on his clothes.

  Such was the team.

  Hobbes began. ‘Sometime around midnight on Saturday, a young man was killed in his own house, in his own bed. His name was Brendan Clarke.’ He pointed to a photograph of the victim on the board, one that showed his features unmarked. ‘Mr Clarke was twenty-six years old. He lived alone, as far as we know. Meg, did you get a chance to talk to the parents last night?’

  Latimer nodded. ‘Briefly. They wanted to see the body.’

  ‘They identified him?’

  ‘The father did. He was shook up.’

  ‘What did you gather? First impressions.’

  ‘They’re well off. Live in Maidstone. Devoted to their son, by all accounts. An only child. Brendan never wanted for anything, or so they say.’

  ‘Little good it did him.’

  Hobbes stared at Fairfax, who had spoken through a mouthful of sandwich.

  ‘What? It’s true.’

  Hobbes shook his head. ‘We’ll talk to them properly, today. Now then …’ He turned back to the board. ‘The victim’s face was mutilated, sliced in several places with a knife. One of the eyes, both sides of the mouth, the forehead.’

  ‘But there’s no sign of the knife,’ Fairfax stated.

  ‘No. It was taken away from the scene. Meg, can you make sure a search is made for any discarded weapons in the area?’

  ‘Already on it.’

  ‘Good. OK then. We’re still waiting for the autopsy, but I’m inclined to agree with the doctor’s best guess, that the stab to the neck killed him.’ He looked around the room. ‘Now the face is, I believe, very important in this case.’

  ‘Because the murderer left the rest of the body undamaged?’ Latimer asked.

  ‘That’s right. One area of attack. A focus.’ Hobbes quickly moved on. ‘Brendan was a musician. A singer in a band called Monsoon Monsoon. They weren’t exactly famous. But music is a key element here.’

  Fairfax smiled. ‘Music? Really?’

  ‘Yes, really.’

  ‘I agree, sir.’ This new voice came from the back of the room, where Barlow was standing. They were the first words he’d spoken.

  ‘What’s the plod doing here?’ Fairfax asked.

  ‘PC Barlow’s helping us.’

  ‘Helping? Hasn’t he got some traffic to direct?’ Fairfax looked around for the support of laughter; receiving none, his face settled into a smug grin.

  Barlow dared to take a step forward. ‘Music is very important,’ he said. ‘And the face, also.’

  ‘You’ve got him well trained, sir,’ Fairfax commented. ‘He’s repeating every little thing you say. Woof, woof !’

  Barlow was holding a plastic shopping bag, which only added to his comical aspect, and Hobbes couldn’t help feeling for him. But this was life in the snake pit. He’d have to get used to it.

  Latimer said with a broad smile, ‘Ignore him, love. I’ll look after you.’ The young man blushed.

  Fairfax belched, far too loudly, and put his feet up on his desk.

  ‘Sorry. Sir.’ He grinned.

  Every time Fairfax said the word sir, it sounded like an insult.

  Hobbes took a step forward. His voice was purged of all emotion as he spoke: ‘I’d like it, Fairfax, if you could use a civil tone.’

  And now at last they were all looking at him.

  ‘Do you hear me? Do you? Everyone?’

  His question was met with answering murmurs, even from Fairfax.

  ‘And while we’re about it, Detective Constable, next time turn up on time.’

  ‘I was delayed—’

  ‘And take your bloody feet off the desk!’

  Fairfax did as he was told.

  ‘Thank you.’ Hobbes took a breath. ‘What I’d like us all to do is go through the events of the day, as far as we can construct them.’

  Latimer started the ball rolling. ‘There’s not much from the residents. Nobody saw anything untoward, certainly not around midnight. But we do have a statement from the neighbour on the right, a Mrs Newley, who saw a woman leaving the victim’s house around eight in the morning, via the back garden.’

  ‘Do we have any idea who this is?’

  ‘No. The woman in question was walking towards the back gate.’

  ‘Description?’

  ‘Young. Dressed in dark clothing. That’s all.’

  Hobbes looked at the witness interview. ‘It says here that the neighbour saw her face.’

  ‘Only briefly. The young woman glanced back, and then hurried through the gate when she realized that she’d been seen.’

  ‘Anything? Anything about the face? Was she carrying anything?’

  ‘It’s all there, guv. I got what I could.’

  He let it go for now. ‘So then. Who is this woman? Any ideas? Come on. Quickly!’

  ‘The murd
erer,’ said Fairfax. ‘Who else?’

  ‘But she left in the morning, that’s a long time after our time of death.’

  Fairfax shrugged. ‘Fair enough. So this woman, let’s call her Miss X for now, right, she stayed the night.’

  Latimer shook her head at this idea. ‘The killer slept the night?’

  ‘Sure. Why not?’

  ‘Is that what you’d do?’ she asked.

  ‘Hey, I’m not a killer. Who knows what’s going through her sick little head.’

  ‘She’d have to be pretty crazy—’

  ‘She’s sliced a guy’s face open, Meg, darling. How crazy do you want?’

  Latimer stared at him. ‘I don’t think …’

  ‘Let’s hear it.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think a woman did this.’

  Fairfax raised his hands in glee. ‘Ah, here we go.’

  ‘What? I just don’t believe—’

  ‘Oh, you don’t believe it. And what about feminism, then, eh? Equal opportunities for murderers, men and women alike.’

  Latimer laughed. ‘You’re a piece of shit, Tommy. You really are.’

  Fairfax started on his protest, but Hobbes shouted them both down. ‘That’s enough!’

  Latimer appealed to him. ‘I’m serious. There aren’t many cases, sir – to my knowledge, anyway – of female perpetrators who go to such lengths as this.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Hobbes said.

  ‘Sure,’ Latimer added; ‘we can give out as good as we get, when needed. But a knife to the eyes, no. Facial mutilation? Just no!’

  It seemed like a final statement, and the room fell silent for a moment.

  ‘We keep it all in mind,’ Hobbes told them both. ‘Every possibility, until only one remains.’ He looked at Latimer. ‘What did the neighbour mean by “young”?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Teens? Early twenties?’

  ‘It was a glance. That’s all.’

  Hobbes bit his lip. Christ, despite all the trouble, he wished he was back at the Charing Cross nick. At least there, the coppers didn’t have to be told what to do all the time.