Foetus Man shrugged. ‘Ronnie who?’
The dressing room door opened, and MacNeil looked past Foetus Man into the mirror and saw the reflection of a young man in jeans and a leather jacket. He was not a tall man, and he had managed to emphasise the smallness of his head by gelling thin black hair down over his skull. For a moment MacNeil thought he knew him. There was something familiar in the high cheekbones and wide-set eyes. He had bad skin, pasty and white, that looked as if it hadn’t seen daylight in months. An odd memory flashed through MacNeil’s mind. A woman’s face behind a net curtain, features made mean by generations of poverty. And he remembered where he had seen this man before. A smudged image on a faxed printout. Ronald Kazinski.
Kazinski stopped in the doorway and saw MacNeil’s reflection looking back at him. His eyes flickered to meet Foetus Man’s and he knew immediately he was in trouble. He turned and ran, sprinting back up the corridor like a man possessed, sneakers squeaking on the linoleum. MacNeil went after him, slower, his big frame lumbering through harsh yellow light until he hit the door at the far end, bursting through it into the glowing sea of masks and the assault of the music. Kazinski had cut a swathe through it towards the stairs at the far side, and MacNeil followed in his wake, shouldering bodies out of his way as he went, until finally the sea parted voluntarily before him.
He took the stairs two at a time, and the heavy metal door was slamming shut as he reached the landing at the top. The bouncer with the bald head and the leather waistcoat stood in his way. He put a hand out to stop him. ‘Where do you think you’re going, pal?’
It took the merest flick of his neck, MacNeil leaning forward as if to kiss him. He felt the bridge of the man’s nose splinter beneath his forehead and the bouncer staggered back, a look of astonishment in his eyes. The back of his head smacked into the wall and his mask turned red as blood soaked into white cotton. MacNeil heaved the door open and was out into the night. He heard the clatter of overturned bins, a smell of stinking refuse whipped up on the edge of an icy wind. Light spilled across the courtyard from the open door, and he saw the shadow of the fleeing Kazinski as he dived up the alleyway towards the street. Rats scurried and screamed underfoot as MacNeil ran after him.
When MacNeil emerged from the alley, Kazinski was sprinting up the centre of Dean Street, being rapidly swallowed by the dark. He was like a hare to MacNeil’s bulldog. MacNeil saw him turn into St. Anne’s Court, a narrow pedestrian street between tall brick buildings, and knew he was going to lose him. But as he reached the corner, he saw that there was something going on beyond the far end of the lane. The flicker and glow and crackle of flames. Voices raised in laughter and howling derision. Looters. Kazinski pulled up and glanced back towards MacNeil, caught between the devil and the deep blue. MacNeil could almost hear the wheels grinding as Kazinski tried to decide which was the lesser of two evils. But he found a third way instead. A narrow passage that ran south, at right angles to St. Anne’s Court, opposite the shattered Georgian windows of what had once been a cake shop. It was no more than three feet wide, and he hurtled down it, covering twenty yards or more before realising that the opening into Flaxman Court at the far end of it was choked with upturned bins and debris tipped from the windows of looted offices. MacNeil heard him curse in the darkness, and slowed to a walk to try to catch his breath. There was no way out for Kazinski. He’d turned into a dead end and wasn’t going anywhere.
As MacNeil approached, Kazinski backed off until he couldn’t go any further. ‘Your mother thinks you’re at work,’ MacNeil said.
‘What do you want?’
‘Why did you run?’
‘I can smell a cop at fifty paces.’
‘Yeah, it’s the smell of urine from creeps like you pissing their pants.’
‘I got rights.’
‘Yes, you have. You’ve got the right to bleed quietly. You’ve got the right to a decent funeral. Not that you’ll get one. Not these days. But then, you’d know all about that.’
Kazinski tried to break past him, ducking and squeezing to scrape between MacNeil’s right side and the wall. But MacNeil was nearly as wide as the alley itself. He just leaned to his right and pressed Kazinski against the wall. Then he grabbed the back of his collar, almost lifting him off his feet, and threw him bodily against the barrier at the end of the lane. Kazinski fell in a crumpled heap, and refuse and rubble cascaded over him.
‘Tell me about the bones,’ MacNeil said.
‘What bones?’
MacNeil sighed. ‘I’ve got a thumbprint on an Underground ticket found where you dumped them. You’re going down for murder, Ronnie.’
‘I never killed her!’ There was panic in Kazinski’s voice. ‘Honest, mate. I was just to get rid of the bones.’
‘You didn’t do a very good job.’
‘I was supposed to sneak them into Battersea, dump them in the furnace. At first they wanted me to get the whole body in. But there was no way I could have got her in there past security. So I said, gimme the bones. I can get them in. They didn’t want no traces, see? They had to be destroyed.’
‘Why?’
‘I dunno. I didn’t have nothing to do with it, honest.’
‘So why didn’t you burn them?’
‘Because that hole was going to get filled in with concrete this morning. It meant I didn’t have to take no risks, and they wouldn’t have been any the wiser.’
‘Who’s they?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Bullshit!’
‘Honest, mate. They just paid me to get rid of the bones.’
MacNeil leaned in towards him. ‘Ronnie, you’re going down for these guys unless you tell me who they are.’
‘Jesus, mate. I don’t know their names. This guy approached me after work one day, made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.’
MacNeil shook his head. ‘You’re going to have to do better than that, Ronnie. Where did you pick up the bones?’ He heard Kazinski sighing deeply in the dark.
‘I don’t know the address. It was a big house. You know, some rich geezer’s place.’
‘Where?’
‘It was somewhere near Wandsworth Common. Root Street, Ruth Street, something like that. It was dark. I dunno. They picked me up and dropped me off in a car.’
‘During curfew?’
‘Sure. It didn’t seem like a problem. Nobody stopped us.’
MacNeil stood and looked down at him for several moments. He needed much more than this, and he was sure that Kazinski had more to tell. ‘Come on, get up,’ he said.
Kazinski didn’t move. ‘What’re you gonna do?’
‘I’m taking you in, Ronnie, on suspicion of murder.’ He didn’t see the pole coming out of the dark until it was too late. He heard the hollow clang of it against his skull, and his knees folded under him. Kazinski dropped the length of scaffolding tube his fingers had found amongst the rubble, and it rattled away across the tarmac as he leapt over the prone figure of the policeman and sprinted back the way he had come.
MacNeil was doubled over, gasping, lights flashing in his eyes. How could he have been so careless? He cursed, and spat on the ground and tasted blood in his mouth. It took him a full minute to recover enough to stagger to his feet, leaning one hand against the brick wall to support himself until he was able to stand without falling. His head was still ringing like a bell. There was no point in taking things too fast. Kazinski was long gone.
It was several minutes before he emerged shakily into St. Anne’s Court and saw a dark shape sprawled on the ground a few yards to the east. He wondered for a moment what it was. There hadn’t been anything there five minutes ago. He stepped towards it and saw that it was a man lying face down, black liquid pooling on the ground beneath him. Sticky blood, coagulating in the chill wind. MacNeil knelt down and felt that he was still warm. He pulled the body over and Kazinski gazed up at him with staring eyes. His white shirt was soaked with blood, but MacNeil could still see where the three bullets had passed through it. All in the vicinity of his heart. He was quite dead.