The victims were doing it voluntarily; rolling over, maybe even holding their hair up, looped over a wrist, to give him access to that vulnerable knot of bone, ligament and fluid which is the body's second-to-second, day-to-day neural switching centre. The brain stem. He'd convinced them this was what they wanted, a fast way to get high — 'Quickest way into the blood stream' — and they were just desperate enough to try it. He had enough rudimentary medical knowledge, confidence, a little jargon. It was a real possibility, especially if the girls, with wills eroded by years of heroin use, already knew and trusted their killer.
'Oi. You!'
Caffery turned. The man coming towards him was tall and barrel-chested, dressed in a pinstripe suit, the jacket flying open to reveal braces over a dark blue shirt and blue tie. His thinning hair was greased back like Diamond's. Gold glinted at his neck and wrists. 'The Bill should've stopped you. I've had enough of your sort clambering around.'
Caffery showed his card, and the man stopped a few feet away. 'No, mate. I'm sorry. A little flash like that. It ain't good enough. Hand it over here.' He tapped his palm. 'Poxy press card, is it?'
Caffery leaned forward and held the card up. 'OK?'
The man rubbed his nose and shoved both hands hard in the pockets of his trousers. 'Yeah, yeah. You can't blame me. I had the place crawling all yesterday.'
'You're North. The owner.'
'I am.'
'We weren't introduced, but I saw you. The first night we were here.' He returned the card to his pocket. 'I'm having a look around.'
'Think he'll come nosing back here, do you? They say a dog returns to its vomit.' He tipped back on his heels and looked at the sky. 'Well? When can I expect to see you off my land, then?'
'As soon as we've charged someone.'
'I was on to your super this afternoon. I hear they've got someone up at the station. Is it true?'
'I can't discuss that.'
'Black lad, is it?'
'Who told you that?'
North shifted his weight and rubbed his nose. 'Heard this morning the whole area is under compulsory purchase orders. It don't rain but it pours, doesn't it?' He jingled change in his pockets and looked up at the sky where new clouds were gathering. 'Maybe I should be approaching you for compensation. Eh?'
'I can't stop you trying.' Caffery turned. 'Now, if you'll excuse me.'
'Yeah yeah.' He stood motionless, watching Caffery make his tortuous way back to the road. Only when he'd completely disappeared did North move. He dropped his head and sank to his haunches, his face in his hands.
Over the Thames Barrier it had started to rain again.
After he'd done what he had to do with Peace's body, he continued driving. There was only one thing left to do: keep going.
Better not look down, Toby.
He spent the whole day driving, as if he could blow the taste away by perpetual travel, through the storms and the sun, through the dripping, leafy Nash terraces of Camden, the green sweeps of Hampstead, the sticky red roads of Hyde Park, until the Cobra's engine grew hot and hoarse and the sun dropped behind Westminster.
Just after dusk Harteveld found himself on London Bridge. His breath caught in his throat. London laid itself out to him, from the diamond point of Canary Wharf, west through a million lights reflected in the Thames, to the Houses of Parliament.
He stopped the Cobra, found his coke kit in his pocket and unwrapped it. Using his nail he scooped a small pile of coke into his left nostril. To his right, behind Guy's tower, where it had all started, the moon hung low and smooth. Harteveld leaned back in the seat and stared at it.
Beneath the bridge the water lapped against the pilings.
He rubbed his temples and hurriedly started the Cobra.
Better not look down.
27
A short marigold dress, bare arms and a heavy copper Kara bracelet on her wrist: Rebecca was getting ready to go out when Jack called. A private view at the Barbican: ordinarily she'd have avoided it, but it got her out of Greenwich for the evening. She needed the diversion. Since the day Caffery and Essex had come to the flat Rebecca had thought of little else — she spent her days in front of the easel, not working, absently stroking a sable brush between thumb and forefinger, reconjuring the faces: Kayleigh, Shellene, Petra, while Joni hummed to herself and rolled cones of Acapulco gold with her tea and toast, staying stoned until bedtime. Joni had made it clear that she didn't want to discuss what was happening — rarely came home and when she did a strange pseudo-quiet descended on the pair.
In the quiet Rebecca heard the first faint knockings of a change.
Well, Jesus, it's been long enough coming.
Worlds apart — everyone said it — the two of them were worlds apart. And their only link, which once had glittered with significance, was now fading.
Rebecca was a Home Counties girl. Her father — a tall, solemn man with a classic philosopher's face — only truly touched happiness alone in the study amongst his gold-tooled editions of Elizabethan love sonnets. Meanwhile his wife stumbled around upstairs pressing handfuls of prescription trazodone into her mouth. The professionals muttered about bipolar disorders. Sometimes she lay in bed for days, forgetting to wash or eat. Forgetting she had a daughter to care for.
So this was what Rebecca had to build an identity on: Spenser's Amoretti and amitriptyline. And bedtime beatings. If little Becky was noisy Mummy's tranquillizers found their way into her orange juice.
She grew into a thin, solemn teenager, believing herself quite alone, quite unique.
It's fathers who abuse — not mothers — nothing in the papers or on TV about mothers.
She escaped from Surrey, setting out for university but landing instead in London. And suddenly there was Joni — sashaying towards her along the streets of Greenwich in shorts and heart-shaped sunglasses, a spliff between her teeth, raging like an evangelist about her shitty childhood. For her it had been high-rise council blocks, benefit queues, vomit in the stairwells and pigeons coupling on her windowsill. But the theme was so familiar it stopped Rebecca in her tracks.
'Mum. It was Mum who got me onto drugs — if it'd been a bad day she'd make me take her trannies just to keep me quiet — shove them in my mouth and scream the place down if I didn't swallow. Should've been sectioned before I was born, the mad fucking cow.'
Then Rebecca:
'Once she made me wash her in the bath. She was crying. I was eight and I started crying too. She gave me sweeties to calm me down.'
'Don't tell me — Tofranil.'
'Yes, or something like it. And if she wasn't eating properly then neither did I — once I lived on banana Nesquik for a week. My father said I was getting thin and that scared her. She drove straight to Bejam's in Guildford, came back with five tubs of Neapolitan ice cream and force-fed me until I threw it all up.'
'And then beat the crap out of you, I s'pose.'
They knew they were different but they swore that inside they were sisters. Together they lived out their happy, slap-dash early twenties, sharing boyfriends and lipstick — neither caring to stop and note that while Joni spent her days sleeping off the night before, Rebecca was getting up early and taking a bus to Goldsmiths College. Slowly their intimacy was fracturing and now Rebecca confessed as little to Joni as she might to a child.
Especially the things she'd thought about DI Jack Caffery.
A cop? A cop, for Chrissakes, are you mad?
But the other day, outside the pub, she'd become momentarily transfixed by his neck — such a stupid thing, but she'd been obsessed — by the junction of tanned skin and white collar, the hair cropped close around his ears. And she'd caught herself several times wondering how he'd look as he climaxed…