'What made you think it was last night?'
'Well…' she said slowly, puzzled. 'I don't know. Maybe I just assumed I'd've known if a body was lying in my wheelie bin.' She laughed at this small piece of absurdity. 'But I suppose that's not necessarily true. I mean, the lid was down tight, and if I hadn't put the rubbish out this morning I'd've walked straight past it and never known.'
'When was the last time you put rubbish out?'
'I've been trying to think. The dustmen came on Monday. My partner was over on Tuesday night and we had a few drinks. It was his birthday. So there was a bag full of gift wrapping and bottles, that sort of thing. Now I thought I put that out last night. But I must have been mistaken, I must've put it out yesterday morning.'
'Where do you work, Ms Velinor?'
'St Dunstan's hospital.'
Caffery raised his eyebrows. 'St Dunstan's?'
'Yes. Why?'
'Can you think of any reason why Mr Harteveld would have chosen you to do this to?'
'Chosen me?' She shook her head. 'No. I mean I knew him vaguely — we'd been on the same hospital committee once or twice, he knew one of my colleagues, but I can't imagine I stood out to him more than anyone else. He hardly knew I existed.'
When Caffery had finished and came to the front door, the bin, covered in silver fingerprint dust, had been tipped over onto its side and laid on a large plastic body sheet across the path. At its opening squatted Logan, dressed now in a white suit and bootees. Next to him Quinn was on her hands and knees, her upper body almost entirely inside the bin. Maddox stood outside the roped-off area blinking seriously over the white mask.
Quinn shuffled out a little and looked up at Maddox. 'Bingo!' she said, her voice muffled behind her mask. She waved her hand around her head. 'She's got the marks on her head. Let's get her out.'
Caffery stood on the doorstep, hands in his pockets. They were only about a third of a mile from Rebecca's flat. She probably walked past the end of this road on her way into the town centre. Strange, life's invisible undertangle, he thought.
Quinn and Logan looped their hands under the corpse's pelvis. As she came out of the bin Caffery was reminded of a birth: the skin was mottled and moist, the hair slimed in the mucousy cowl of decay, the limbs helpless next to the two professionals in white. She slithered out and landed in a wet heap on the sheet, her head lolling. The PC at the gate put his hand over his face and turned away. The features had been loosened by putrefaction, but from the doorstep the two men could see the familiar make-up on the eyes and mouth, the cobalt-blue stitching on the breasts. The ragged thoracic incision.
Quinn bent close to the face. Her eyes narrowed, she looked up at Maddox and pulled the mask down.
'I think there's a mole above the upper lip.'
Maddox nodded, his face tightening minutely. 'Jackson. That's Jackson.'
38
Malpens Street, just a hundred yards from Lola Velinor's front garden, is quiet and tree-lined. The haughty Edwardian houses sit back from the road hidden beyond opulent gardens crammed with lime trees, jasmine, hibiscus.
Shortly before 9 p.m. that night, in a basement kitchen, the window open to let a breath of honeysuckle into the room, Susan Lister was preparing a red-wine marinade for the evening meal. She'd been jogging, her usual route, along Trafalgar Road, up past St Dunstan's, over the park, and was still dressed in grey jogging pants, a black and white Nike sweatshirt over a sports bra; her blond hair, slightly damp, was up in a ponytail. She wouldn't have time to take her bath before she collected Michael from the station. He was working late, taking the 8.55 from London Bridge. On the scrubbed pine table behind her the portable TV was switched to BBC 1 for the headlines.
She pinched the end of a clove of garlic and peeled away the loose skin. Behind her a strike of the clock and the first headline. 'Another body found in southeast London. Scotland Yard have not ruled out a link to the Harteveld killings.'
Susan quickly put down the garlic clove, turned up the volume and rested against the counter with her glass of wine. 'As more details emerge MPs call for a swift evaluation of the PRCU's proposed Serious Crime Research Project.' The Home Secretary stood on the green outside the Houses of Parliament, the breeze lifting strands of thin hair off his head. He confirmed his sympathy for the relatives of the victims, and trotted out the drop in crime figures this year. Then the Commissioner, spruce at a press conference table, told the cameras that Greenwich CID and AMIP were perfectly competent, thank you very much, and no, they weren't ready to confirm or deny that this was a Harteveld victim.
Susan sipped her wine thoughtfully. Harteveld had lived only half a mile away; God, she'd discovered that the distinctive green car she'd got used to seeing parked outside St Dunstan's on her morning runs had belonged to him. And now — this. Another body.
The scene cut to show a London street, instantly recognizable as Royal Hill, three grey-suited officers arriving carrying a yellow crate. Then a helicopter shot, a fleeting glimpse of the roofs of Malpens Street, and then a cut-back to ghostly figures in white suits meandering among police tape.
'This brings the unofficial death toll to six, only four of whom have been identified. Tonight Chief Superintendent Days of the south-east London Area Major Incident Pool refused to confirm they were investigating a link to Toby Harteveld.'
In her kitchen Susan, suddenly seized by an irrational fear, reached over and closed the window. A body in Royal Hill. How close had she come? Subdued, she finished chopping the garlic, uncomfortably conscious of her reflection slipping silently across the ghostly honeysuckle in the window. Chinese Five Spice, a dash of soy, and drop the pork in. Quickly she rinsed her hands and took the car keys from the top of the fridge. Michael would be waiting.
Outside it was warm and soft, the evening filled with jasmine from the flowering bush in the neighbour's garden. She paused for a moment. It was all over. Harteveld was dead, lying in a morgue somewhere, and she could give up this buzzing anxiety. The road looked as it usually did at night, insects swarming under the yellow streetlights, the palms in the neighbour's garden lending the air a swampy scent, as if you should expect the sound of cicadas. There was nothing unusual. A car she didn't recognize, something French, a Peugeot maybe, empty.
Maybe tonight she'd suggest to Michael that they fitted an alarm system on the house. With him working these late nights she'd feel safer. Or a dog. She walked the few yards to her Fiesta. That was an idea. A dog.
Inside the car was still hot from a day in the sun and filled with a sharp smell. Her husband had a habit of leaving his used cricket kit in the boot for days on end. 'I'll kill you, Michael,' she murmured, fumbling with the keys. She'd make him take the kit out and wash it before he went to bed tonight, remind him that they both had jobs and that he had to pull his weight around the house.
She chewed the inside of her mouth and fastened her seatbelt. A dog was a good idea. A boxer, or a Dobermann. Something big. Something muscular. She could take it jogging with her too, maybe that would make the truck drivers on Trafalgar Road think twice before they yelled at her on the street. By the light from the street lamp she found the ignition key, started the engine and checked the mirror. On the back seat a man sat up and smiled at her.
39
The next morning Harteveld's body was hauled from the river at Wapping and taken to Greenwich for an autopsy. At the same time his solicitors, Schloss-Lawson & Walker, came back to AMIP with their client's property portfolio. Maddox and Caffery took one look and saw immediately what they wanted.