I tried to look suitably fascinated, but what I felt was queasy.
‘Was it someone from the tower?’ asked Kevin.
‘Don’t know,’ she said.
Away to the right of the walkway flood lights kicked in and I could make out the white plastic top of a forensic tent. A woman’s voice filtered through the trees, loud, annoyed, barking out orders — DCI Duffy not being happy, I suspected.
Kevin tapped me on the shoulder and nodded over at where Lesley was standing with Zach. ‘I thought that was your bird,’ he said.
‘Nah,’ I said. ‘We’re just friends.’
On the border between Barking and East Ham, the North Circular meets the A113 amongst a confused tangle of retail parks, sewage plants and scrubby wasteland. According to witnesses, a scruffy old model Ford Transit, indistinguishable from a million other white vans just like it, pulled over suddenly onto the grass verge and bundled a body out the back. I recognised the body as soon as I saw him, lit by the crime scene lights inside the forensic tent. It was chainsaw guy.
It was mid-morning and the traffic would have been thundering past if it hadn’t been squeezed down to one lane by the Traffic officers. Probably slowed even more by drivers trying to get a good look at the crime scene. A forensic pathologist had already arrived, but nobody so far had taken official control of the scene. All the MITs were scrambling to avoid taking on what looked like a seriously dodgy Falcon case, especially Bromley who were making it really clear that they didn’t want it either. Which was why I’d been rousted out of my sofa bed after non-sleeping for three hours and dispatched to identify the victim. Bromley were not going to be happy with me for roping them into this — it would probably be wise to avoid southeast London for a bit.
‘I can live without Bromley,’ I said out loud.
‘Did you say something, Peter?’ asked Dr Walid, who was kneeling by the body and shining a light down its mouth.
‘Just mumbling,’ I said.
Chainsaw guy was lying on his back, still in his biker jacket which was unzipped and splayed open to reveal a grey, white and black checked shirt soaked around the neck with what Dr Walid assured me was water. I asked Dr Walid whether he had any idea of the cause of death.
‘I’m fairly certain he drowned.’
‘So this is the dump site,’ I said.
‘No,’ said Dr Walid. ‘I think he drowned right here.’
‘On dry land?’
‘His lungs seemed to have filled up with fluid — can’t be certain it’s water until I’ve done tests — and he drowned.’
‘From the inside out?’
‘That’s my hypothesis,’ said Dr Walid.
Probably better if I just avoided south London entirely for a year or two, I thought.
‘Are you doing the post-mortem on Sky?’ I asked.
‘Later today,’ he said. ‘It should be very interesting — would you like to attend?’
I shivered. ‘No thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ll give it a miss.’
Outside the tent, the sun was bright and the air smelled of petrol. I walked up the scrubby grass slope to where Traffic had established a safe parking zone for emergency vehicles. Lesley was there, fast asleep in the passenger seat of the Asbo. I left her to it while I called Nightingale and confirmed the identification — he could pass on the bad news to DCI Duffy. He suggested we wait where we were in case they could get a lead on the van, so I climbed into the driver’s seat and tried to get comfortable. Lesley opened her eyes and took off her mask to rub her face.
‘Well?’ she asked.
‘Chainsaw guy,’ I said and explained Dr Walid’s theory.
‘That was murder,’ said Lesley. ‘By your little friend.’
‘You can’t prove that,’ I said.
‘Oh, wake up, Peter,’ she said. ‘He drowned by the side of the road. You heard her say it — “one for one” she said and Oberon didn’t have an answer to that. “One for one.”’ She pointed down the slope at the forensic tent. ‘That’s one right there.’
‘Okay, you want to go back and arrest her?’ I asked. ‘She’s what — nine years old?’
‘Is she?’ said Lesley. ‘I don’t know what she is. I know one thing — the law doesn’t seem to apply to her, or to her mum or to any of these fucking people.’ Lesley closed her eyes and sighed. ‘And if it doesn’t apply to them, then why does it apply to us?’
‘Because we’re the police,’ I said.
‘Is Nightingale police?’ she asked. ‘Because he’s not beyond the occasional human rights violation when it suits him.’
‘Oh well, that separates him from the herd, don’t it?’
‘It’s not like we’ll ever prove it’s her,’ said Lesley.
‘It could have been the Faceless Man,’ I said. ‘He’s got a thing for weird deaths.’
‘Why would the Faceless Man kill chainsaw boy?’ asked Lesley.
‘Why did he kill Patrick Mulkern?’
‘Patrick Mulkern fucked up,’ said Lesley. ‘He got greedy and tried to sell a book he wasn’t supposed to. Setting his bones on fire was a deliberate statement. Fuck with me and really horrible things will happen to you, like the guys who had their dicks bitten off and the amputated head of Larry the Lark.’
‘That was Faceless Man senior,’ I said.
‘Yeah, but the principle’s the same,’ said Lesley. ‘And when he just wants someone out of the way he does it very quietly like with Richard Lewis. If Jaget hadn’t spotted it, then it would have been just another “person under a train” wouldn’t it? Or he uses a proxy like Robert Weil to apply a shotgun to the face.’
‘I don’t think he’s the killer,’ I said. ‘I think he was brought in to dispose of the body.’
‘Can you prove that?’
‘Nope.’
There was a bottle of Evian on the back seat. I tried it, but it was warm.
‘Give me some of that,’ said Lesley and I handed it over.
‘You know we’ve left Zach alone in our flat,’ I said. ‘What do you think the chances are of there being anything left inside when we get back?’
‘It’s not our flat,’ said Lesley after she’d finished the last of the water.
‘It’s my telly,’ I said. ‘I paid two hundred quid for it.’
‘That just makes you a handler of stolen goods,’ said Lesley.
‘Not me, guv,’ I said. ‘I thought that TV was totally kosher. I genuinely believed that it fell off the back of a lorry.’
‘He’s not going to nick from us,’ said Lesley. ‘Besides, I told him to look after Toby. Reinforced our cover.’
It was a good plan. If any of our neighbours suspected we were old Bill, spending five minutes with Zach would disabuse them of that notion.
‘Do you still have that app that finds coffee shops?’ I asked.
‘Don’t need it,’ she said. ‘There’s a retail park on the other side of the junction.’
I was just going to suggest that we head over there when one of the Traffic police knocked on our window.
‘Got something for you,’ he said and handed me a number on a scrap of paper. It was the index of the white van. The witnesses to the body dumping had given Traffic a time frame and so it was just a matter of checking the automatic cameras until something popped up. I thanked him and called in IIP on the index. While we waited for that to come back, we headed to the retail park and spent half an hour in a Sainsbury’s the size of an aircraft assembly plant stuffing the go bag with water, snacks and sandwiches.
Then we sat in the Asbo with bucket-sized cardboard cups of coffee, just about drinkable if you put enough sugar in, and went through the results of the IIP as it relayed to us down the phone.
Our white van was owned by a limited company with a trading address in what looked like, on Google Maps, a farm in the middle of nowhere. It had been reported stolen by its owners at nine fifteen that morning, but their statement suggested that it might have been missing for two days or more.
‘Convenient,’ said Lesley.
Clever criminals steal their getaway cars before doing a big job, but it’s a bugger if you’re just popping into town for something small, say for a bit of criminal damage, so you might use your own or a mate’s. The problem there is if things get a bit out of hand and your mate, say hypothetically, starts mysteriously drowning to death in the back and you have to dump him at a road junction. Then you might need to create a bit of plausible deniability. Not with us, you understand, because we’re naturally suspicious bastards, but with magistrates, juries and other innocents. So you report it stolen and, if you’re sensible, you torch it in some remote location.