The Murder Code Read online

  ‘Christ.’ Laura winced. ‘I wish I’d brought my coat.’

  ‘It’s a bit more sheltered down here.’

  It was often used as a shelter too. The steps led down to a secluded stretch of stone walkway, walled off at either end. They were scattered along this bank, a row of old benches to each, the wood as gnarled and dry as dead trees. These places collected litter. Some of it blew in and couldn’t escape; the rest was discarded around the benches—dirty bags of cans and bottles, left by the vagrants you could often find curled on the benches, sleeping, somehow, in the cold. But then, as freezing as it could be here, it was still preferable to other central locations: the parks they’d likely be moved on from; the two derelict underground stations where so many homeless gathering together created a pretty volatile atmosphere.

  The second body was lying on the furthest of the three benches here. It was surrounded by four officers, one of them talking into his radio. They looked up hopefully as we approached. We were the first detectives on site.

  ‘Gentlemen.’ I showed my badge again. ‘Let’s give the man some air, shall we?’

  They moved to one side to let us see what we had.

  ‘Shit,’ I said.

  ‘Language, Hicks,’ Laura said.

  ‘Sorry. But shit.’

  It wasn’t Tom Gregory—I could tell that from the victim’s age. It was a man, though, and most likely a homeless one. He was lying on his back, wrapped in layers of paint-stained coats, jumpers and pants: bundled up in the clothes like a mole in a burrow. One arm lolled down, the hand resting on the stone ground. It was the skin there that gave the age away—that and the thin, emaciated wrist, the weathered yellow fingernails. An old man. But it was impossible to tell much more than that, because, like Vicki Gibson, somebody had beaten him relentlessly until his face had been smashed into non-existence. You couldn’t tell what had been his forehead and what had been his chin.

  I crouched down, slightly reluctantly. Beneath the bench, the discarded plastic bags and food cartons were covered with blood and fragments of his skull that had fallen through the slats in the bench.

  ‘What do you think?’ Laura said quietly.

  ‘I think he’s dead.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  I shook my head to indicate that I didn’t know what I really thought. She was asking me if this was the same killer—whether Tom Gregory had done this as well. And I didn’t know, because at first glance, it didn’t fit at all. Obviously it looked like the same killer, but I was sure Gregory was our man for Vicki Gibson and I couldn’t imagine what might have led him to do this too. It didn’t make any sense.

  Come on then, Sherlock.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I stood up.

  ‘I really don’t know.’

  Four

  WE PICKED UP TOM Gregory in the middle of the afternoon.

  As is the way of these things, it wasn’t down to any impressive detective work on the part of Laura, me or the officers looking for him, but simply because that was when he ambled back up to his front door, without a care in the world. Until he was arrested with his keys half out of his pocket.

  And I say it’s the way of these things, because it’s usually the way it works. In the movies, there’ll be some sharp flash of insight that leads the detective to the culprit, but real life tends to be more mundane—and reassuringly so. The killer is often the first person you think did it, and he did it for the first reason you thought of. In the vast majority of other cases, you catch people through a shitload of hard work: processing the data and winnowing down the options. Flow-chart stuff, really. When it isn’t either of those things, it’s always down to luck. The right person tells you the right thing. You walk into the right place at the right time. Or else—as in this case—the muppet you want to talk to wanders up to his front door, hands practically outstretched, exclaiming arrest me.

  That was my experience. By the time Tom Gregory was in a transport back to the station, Laura and I were seated in an office on the fifth floor of the building, holding an unofficial debrief with our boss, DCI Shaun Young, discussing the connection between the cases.

  One crime scene of the magnitude of Vicki Gibson was more than enough to occupy days of activity, and now we had two. Under normal circumstances, we’d have palmed off the second. Given the possible connection, though, we were keeping them linked—cautiously—for the moment.

  But, but, but.

  ‘I’m sensing doubt,’ Young said.

  That was directed at me. I was leaning back a little, one heel trailing back and forth on the plush carpet.

  ‘That’s because I’m doubtful, sir. I’m wearing my heart on my sleeve in my usual manner. My guard is down.’

  ‘Apparently so. Stop slumping, by the way.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  I made a token effort in that direction, but Young was used to me by now. Close to retirement age, he kept a trim, muscular build and a grim face topped with dyed black hair. His manner was generally feared. But while he gave every appearance of being gruff and unforgiving, some strange part of him had always seemed to enjoy my acts of minor insubordination.

  ‘I remain unconvinced that the two murders are linked.’ Beside me, sitting more neatly, Laura shook her head. I added, ‘Despite my colleague’s evident disapproval.’

  ‘They’re obviously connected. I don’t understand how you can possibly think they aren’t.’

  ‘I didn’t say that. I said I was unconvinced.’

  ‘Oh God—you’re exasperating sometimes. You always go by statistics and likelihoods, and I don’t understand why you’re abandoning that now. What is the probability of two blunt-force murders occurring in the same vicinity on the same night?’

  ‘Right now, the probability is one. Because it happened. Overall, I don’t—’

  ‘And having two different perpetrators.’

  ‘Look.’ I’d had time to think about this. ‘So far, all the evidence in the Gibson case points to Tom Gregory being responsible. Without the second, as yet unidentified victim, we’d still be one hundred per cent convinced of that. Yes?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Good. Since it seems far less likely that Gregory killed the second victim, that’s my basis for not linking the crimes.’

  ‘Because in your head, you’ve solved the first murder. And you can’t possibly be wrong about that.’

  ‘No, I could be wrong. But it doesn’t make any sense that Tom Gregory did both. What—he had a little residual anger left over and took it out on a homeless man? Or he warmed up for the main event beforehand?’

  ‘You’re assuming it’s Gregory.’

  ‘Actually, no: I’m assuming it’s anyone. For “Gregory”, read “anyone”. It doesn’t make sense.’

  Laura sighed. ‘It doesn’t always make sense, Hicks.’

  ‘Yes, it does.’ I sat up properly this time. ‘It really does.’

  Because this mattered. It always made sense on some level. Not in a satisfying way, perhaps, but always in some way. And the fact is that people don’t go on random killing sprees with blunt-force instruments. If they want to do that, they use guns. And while it was theoretically possible, spree killers also don’t just stop: they keep going until we take them down, or until they get taken down.

  Yes, Laura was right. It would be a hell of a coincidence for two victims to die in very similar ways in such a short period of time. But the alternative—that Gregory, or anyone, had murdered both—seemed even more unlikely. On the basis of probabilities, I was going with my head over my gut on this one for now.

  Which isn’t to say it wasn’t close.

  Young had been sitting very still—really only his gaze moving, back and forth between Laura and me, following the tennis match—but now he leaned forward, rested his elbows on the desk and steepled his fingers beneath his chin. Ready to add his input and verdict.

  ‘What about if Tom Gregory had a reason to dislike this gent
leman as well? Could there be a connection between the two victims?’

  ‘Possible, sir,’ I said. ‘But I can’t see it. It’s the same geographical area, but even given the general poverty, both victims are from massively different social circles.’

  Young nodded.

  ‘But we need an ID before we can rule anything out.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And it’s possible the culprit went down to the river to dispose of the murder weapon. Encountered victim two and decided to get rid of him too.’

  ‘We’re dredging the river now, sir.’

  ‘You take my point, though.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Although if that’s the case, why the need for such extreme injuries? And it looks to me like the victim was asleep when he was attacked, so why not just back out and choose a different spot?’

  ‘Well. These are all questions that need answering, aren’t they? But in the meantime, we proceed as though they’re connected.’ He sighed; checked his watch. ‘Gregory should be here soon. Let’s see what he has to say, eh?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  I looked at Laura. She looked back, then shook her head.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  What Tom Gregory had to say was, ‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Fuck off. Both of you. Both of you can just fuck off.’

  I said, ‘Tom, we really can’t fuck off.’

  We were in one of the upstairs interview suites: a bare, functional room, containing just a steel table, chairs, Laura and me, and the current man of the hour. Gregory was in his early forties, six feet tall, wide at the middle, and had a certain meaty heft to him. The kind of guy who’d never done a day’s actual exercise in his life but would still be dangerous in a brawl. He’d shaved away his receding hair, and was wearing cheap blue jeans and a dirty red lumberjack shirt. The overall impression was that a dilapidated lorry was parked up in a truck stop somewhere waiting for its owner to come home.

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ he said again.

  ‘I can assure you that I’m not.’

  He remained incredulous. It was an emotion that sat transparently on his stubbly face, in much the same way I imagined most emotions did. He was not a man of any obvious subtlety, and seemed to wear whatever he was feeling on his features without much concern as to what other people might think. For men like him, I guess, the fact they’re feeling it is usually enough to justify its immediate and forceful expression regardless of anything else.

  He stared at me for a moment, then leaned back in his chair, which creaked beneath the bulk of him, and folded one beefy arm over the other. It was clear he thought the situation was stupid. To be fair, that was how I felt about him right now too.

  ‘You’ve got to be,’ he repeated.

  ‘You’re being a bit slow here, Tom. It’s surprising, really. You look like you’d be so much sharper.’

  ‘What’s that meant to mean?’

  ‘It’s not meant to mean anything. It means you’re acting pretty dumb. Dumber than you look, in fact. Somehow, you are achieving that. Your ex-partner is dead and you have a history of violence against her, so you’re going to have to do better than telling me I’m making it up. Because I know I’m not.’

  ‘I didn’t kill her.’

  ‘You don’t look too broken up about the situation.’

  ‘Why should I be? We were long over with. I’d put her out of my mind altogether—that’s the truth. I wish I’d never met her in the first place.’

  ‘Wish she was dead?’

  ‘No.’ But then he shrugged. ‘I don’t fucking care, though, if that’s what you’re asking. Why should I? You tell me why I should care. You can’t. She was a dirty, lying bitch. Something was always going to happen to her eventually.’

  ‘Something was always going to happen to her,’ I said. ‘This is good stuff, Tom. You remember this is all admissible in court, don’t you? Keep it up, we can dispense with the trial. I’ll just pull my gun out and shoot you now.’

  ‘What I meant is living where she did.’ He looked slightly more contrite now, probably only because he’d realised what he’d just said. ‘That horrible place. All those fucking scumbags and junkies hanging around. Telling lies about people too. That was what she did. It was only a matter of time before she ended up in trouble.’

  ‘Like she used to get in trouble with you?’

  ‘I never did anything.’ He tapped the table. ‘See any convictions in my file?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So it never happened.’

  Beside me, Laura took a deep breath. I sensed she was losing her patience, which didn’t happen very often. But I sympathised. Gregory was sitting there with a smug look on his face now. It never happened. At heart, men like Tom Gregory are still children. Their response to being told off is to be indignant, to not understand, to say I didn’t do it. It’s always someone else’s fault to people like him. If it happens out of sight, if they can’t prove it, you’re all right.

  I decided to needle him a bit.

  ‘Great logic, Tom. But you know what? We have the call logs and witness statements. Not to mention all the other actual convictions you have. Short temper, haven’t we?’

  He glared at me. ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  While none of the charges relating to Vicki Gibson had stuck, others had. He had three convictions for assault and two for violent disorder. The usual drunken bar fights. One count of criminal damage too. Suspended sentence and fine for each offence.

  ‘Lose it when you’ve had a few, yeah?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Anger-management issues.’ I shook my head. ‘You’re funny, aren’t you? People like you.’

  ‘Funny?’

  ‘Yeah. You always say you have trouble controlling yourselves. The red mist descends and you can’t help it. All that bullshit. But I don’t see you losing it with me. Controlling ourselves, are we?’

  ‘Maybe I’m counting to ten.’

  ‘Maybe you can. No, I don’t think so. The truth is that people like you are cowards. Right? For some reason, you only lose control when you can get away with it. Funny that, isn’t it? It makes me laugh.’

  Tom Gregory just looked at me. I stared back, letting the silence pan out. Rattling his cage was more enjoyable than it probably should have been, but I was angry. Partly it was what he’d done in the past—the kind of man he was—and partly the attitude. Maybe it was also the fact that, deep down, I suspected he was telling the truth—that he hadn’t killed her—and the possibility bothered me.

  I settled back in my chair.

  ‘I didn’t kill her,’ he said. ‘I was at—’

  ‘Yeah, you said. Shut up.’

  Gregory had already given his whereabouts the previous evening to the officers who’d arrested him earlier on. He’d then given them to us as soon as we’d walked into the interview suite. He’d been in O’Reilly’s bar from six until throwing-out time, somewhere between two and three, before leaving in the company of a middle-aged woman from the eastern quarter. He’d spent the night at her flat. We’d picked him up at the end of his walk of shame, assuming he was capable of that emotion.

  On the face of it, it was a solid alibi. He certainly stank of alcohol, and none of his clothes were bloodstained, despite it being obvious he’d been wearing them for a good twenty-four hours. O’Reilly’s was a shitty, bare-boards half-club—a bar, pool tables and a floodlit dance floor by the toilets’—but it saw enough trouble for the owner to have installed CCTV. It was also a fair distance from the grids. The address he’d given for the anonymous lady of spectacularly poor taste was even further away. I knew that area, and many of the blocks of flats there had cameras too.

  So it was either a very good alibi or a very bad one indeed.

  I said, ‘You were drunk last night.’

  ‘Yeah. So? That’s not a crime.’

  ‘But you managed to get through the evening without the red mist descending, yeah
?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You sure about that?’

  He didn’t reply.

  The door opened then, and a young WPC pushed her head in and jutted out her chin, indicating that she’d like a word. Laura and I pushed back our chairs. But I didn’t need to speak to the WPC to read the expression on her face.

  Tom Gregory had a very good alibi.

  In the observation room, I ran my hand through my hair and stared at the small monitor, which showed Gregory still sitting in the interview suite. Needless to say, my hair didn’t fall back down anything as neatly as Laura’s would have done. I don’t primp for such eventualities. I rarely face them.

  ‘He has to have done it,’ I said. ‘He has to.’

  ‘But he didn’t. Face facts, Hicks. We have camera footage of him being everywhere he claims to have been. Putting it all together, it makes it impossible he did it.’

  ‘He could have paid someone.’

  But that was grasping at straws. Deep down, I knew my theory was wrong, and I was going to need to rethink this whole thing.

  ‘He can barely pay his rent,’ Laura said. ‘Besides, the whole point of his record is he does things like that himself. He’s a creep, don’t get me wrong, but his violence is all impulsive, spur-of-the-moment stuff. He’s not the type to hire someone to do his dirty work.’

  ‘No, I know.’

  ‘Plus, why would that same person kill our homeless John Doe as well?’

  ‘All right, Laura.’

  ‘Hit men not being in the habit of throwing in a second, random victim for free. I feel the need to hammer these points home, so I know we’re on the same page.’