Next to me, Sydney’s head was just pulp—unlike Moker, he’d landed face first—and strange yellowish stuff oozed out with the blood. One of his legs stretched out at a comical right angle from his hip and a hand rested against the back of his neck, the palm and clawed fingers curiously turned upwards, his elbow twisted. I think his stomach must have split open, because a big pool of blood was spreading over the rain-soaked street beneath him. It expanded in spurts, as though the heart was still pumping, but it quickly became a steady flow, indicating the last weak dregs of life had finally given in.
I stood up and stepped out of Moker as if I were stepping out of a beached canoe. Yet I couldn’t leave him right then and I’m not sure why. His body was of no more use to me and revenge had been delivered—not that I felt any sense of satisfaction or achievement, by the way, only a feeling of great sadness and completion. Oh, and pity, a deep pity for the unfortunate man who was Alec Moker. I remembered the flashback, the instant memory just before his body struck tarmac, the moment of his birth, a beginning that was so traumatic, so devastating, that it had never been erased from his subconscious, even though it happened when he’d only just been born and such an early event should never have been registered, let alone remembered so many years later. (I wondered if everything that happened to us during our lifetime was neatly stowed away somewhere deep beneath the layers of our mind, never to be lost, never to die, but perhaps recalled at the moment of death. Didn’t happen with me, but then mine wasn’t what you’d call a regular demise.)
I turned as a harsh light came from the other end of the narrow street. A car was approaching at speed, headlights on full beam. Then police sirens, two more cars screeching round from a sidestreet at the other end, racing towards me, the darkness and rain somehow giving their sounds even more urgency. Tyres squealed as all three police vehicles slid to a halt on the street’s slippery surface.
45
A uniformed policeman leapt from his car and ran the few yards to the two broken bodies lying in the street, while on the other side of me the two detectives I knew as Simmons and Coates (the latter Sydney’s ex-brother-in-law no less!) left their Volvo and hurried towards the corpses without quite the same urgency. Other uniformed figures were emerging from the patrol car, a Vauxhall Cavalier, that had stopped behind the Volvo.
“Jesus fuck,” the detective called Coates said in a dismayed whisper as he looked down at the two busted men at his feet. There was no need to take the pulse of either of them to verify they were dead.
The uniformed policeman had made the mistake of taking a small torch from his pocket and shining it on the heads of the two dead men. The light wavered as he suddenly turned away as if to throw up. Simmons gripped the policeman’s wrist and held the torch steady so that he could get a proper look at the corpses.
“That one must be Moker, the lunatic we’re looking for,” he said quietly. “That damage to his face wasn’t caused by it hitting the deck. There’s no blood coming from it for a start and the face is just how Andrea True described it. What about the other one? Oliver Guinane, you reckon?”
“I don’t think so,” Coates’s voice was hesitant, his initial dismay graduating to shock. “Even belly down you can see he hasn’t got Guinane’s curly brown hair. I… I think I know who this is.” He pointed a shaky finger. “See the smashed glasses lying in the blood by his head?”
“So?”
“I think it’s my contact in the agency. Sydney Presswell, company manager and financial director. Used to be my brother-in-law until my sister divorced him a few years ago. I’m sure I recognize that grey-check suit—he wears it a lot. He’s the guy Andrea True said Guinane was going to see tonight.”
Both men, and some of the policemen who were now milling around, peered up at the lights near the top of the building.
“Right,” Simmons said briskly, pointing first at the uniforms, then towards the building’s fifth-floor balcony, lights from the room behind throwing the balustrade into relief. “I want three of you up there right away. That’s obviously where these two took a dive from. See if there’s anyone else around. There should be a man called Oliver Guinane about somewhere. Yes, that’s right, the one we hauled in for questioning about the death of his business partner, James True. For all we know, he might be responsible for this as well.” He nodded at the corpses on the ground. “So go careful just in case. If you find him give us a shout.”
He turned towards the officer who had gagged a few moments ago. “You. Get on to control, tell ‘em we need SOC set up ASAP. Better get the medics in, too. There’s nothing they can do, but we’ll need an ambulance to take the bodies. And listen, I want both ends of the street sealed off for now—we can minimize the area once the essentials have been taken care of. Get moving.”
The uniformed policeman headed for his striped white patrol car, just as a Transit van pulled up behind it. More uniformed men piled out of the police carrier.
Simmons caught the elbow of a policeman close to him and pointed to the Hillman parked outside the agency. “Search that old heap over there, break in if it’s locked. It’s the car we’ve been looking for.”
“Looks to me,” said Coates, whose face was pale in the glare of headlights, “by the position of their bodies, that they might have come down together. Maybe they were having a ruck and it spilled out over the balcony.”
“Yeah, could be. But why would Moker go for Presswell?”
“Guinane must have been the target, but Sydney got in the way, or maybe tried to save his friend, or he could have been the only one in the office. It was no secret that we’d taken Guinane in for questioning about James True’s murder, so maybe Moker thought he was the copycat killer and didn’t like it. Andrea True said Moker arrived at the house shortly after Guinane had left, but maybe Moker got there earlier and listened at a window.”
“Heard Guinane telling his girlfriend where he was going next,” Simmons continued for him, although his tone was dubious.
“I reckon that’s it. We know now Moker was the serial killer. Hadn’t managed to get Mrs True and her kid, so went for other bait.”
Simmons shook his head as he pulled his raincoat up against the rain. “I dunno. Doesn’t make sense to me. How could he know where the agency was?”
“We found those phone books in his flat. He’d got the address beforehand, probably days ago when he first read about Guinane in the papers. Don’t forget, the agency’s name as well as Guinane’s was underlined in thick pencil in those articles about him being a suspect. Same as the location of True’s house.”
The two detectives had obviously been able to go through the cuttings more thoroughly than I had, even if it had only been a quick search.
Simmons clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Nah, doesn’t work for me. It’s too pat. I want a proper look into this Sydney Presswell’s background, your brother-in-law or not.”
“Ex-brother-in-law,” Coates insisted.
“In every sense now. Look, there’s something going on that doesn’t sit well with what we know. I want more background on Guinane, Presswell and True. Especially Presswell though, because he’s the one who’s been feeding you information about Guinane. I mean, really putting Guinane in the shit.”
“Okay, but—”
Both men looked towards a new car, a dark Jaguar saloon that has just drawn up behind the other police vehicles.
“Oh-oh,” said Coates resignedly. “The governor’s here.”
“Yep, and he’s got Commander Newman with him,” said Simmons. “Word’s obviously got upstairs about our breakthrough.”