‘No bother, I’m suffering for two now.’ She rose gingerly, supporting her large belly in her forearms, clambered to her feet and waddled down to the kitchenette, yawning and shivering in equal measures.
‘What’s up, guv?’
‘Murder. A bad one. Meet me at 67b Minet Avenue, above the launderette.’
Brook scribbled furiously. He’d soon learned to keep pad and pencil by the phone. ‘Where’s that?’
‘Harlesden.’ The phone clicked. Brook swung his legs onto the cold floor and dressed, though not as quickly as usual. The inclement weather had provoked him into wearing pyjamas for the first time since his early teens and he fiddled with the outsize buttons and starched material, unaccustomed to such a test of dexterity.
Having dressed sufficiently he crept downstairs and cast around for the A-Z, sweeping it up as he clambered into his overcoat.
Amy stood by the door, one arm supporting their first child-their only child as it turned out though they’d planned four-one holding out a mug of tea.
Brook looked at her eyes, virtually closed save for a glimmer of pupil which shone between the lids. He took the outstretched mug and turned away, stifling a tic of horror. It was the same face, the death mask of a butchered prostitute he’d seen the year before. He’d noticed the face. She’d been stabbed repeatedly in the vagina and the killer had tried to cut off her breasts.
Brook took a sip of tea and kissed her on the forehead.
‘Go upstairs before I go out,’ he said, one hand on the doorknob. ‘Don’t want the baby catching its death.’
‘His or her death,’ she corrected him, obeying like arobot. Brook looked after her, aching to follow. He blinked at his watch. Gone three. A fine night to leave your warm bed and milky soft wife. She’d long since stopped asking him what time he’d be back. He’d long since stopped apologising.
Brook hurried through the spitting wind to his temperamental Triumph Stag, the usual will-it-won’t-it knot pulling on his gut. He’d need something more practical in a month, he reflected not without regret. Another expense though. Another temptation to give in to the Kick Back Squad.
‘It’s only fifty quid. Everybody else is in. You don’t have to do anything illegal.’
‘What do you call this?’
Besides, he was a graduate. He knew his Economics. He’d seen the way things were shaping. After the stock market crash, property in London was cheap-but not forever. If they could afford to hang onto the flat when they moved into their Battersea house, they’d clean up in a few years. Fulham was up and coming. There was money to be made. Not that he cared about money. Not as much as Amy. Brook worried more about choice, that’s what money bought: freedom to choose. That was something they might need soon, especially as it was becoming clear to both of them that his current choices weren’t making him happy.
He shook the worries from his mind and turned to more practical matters. He drained his cup and placed it ontothe passenger seat with the others, before pulling on his carefree face and patting the leather-clad steering wheel with affection.
Then he rotated the ignition key nonchalantly as though expecting no resistance. ‘Come on.’ The engine coughed a haughty response, complaining in injured tones at being disturbed at this ungodly hour. ‘Come on,’ he pleaded a little more insistently.
‘Start please,’ he ordered with a hint of teeth beginning to grind. The Stag decided it had made its point and spluttered into life on the fourth turn and Brook swung off the kerb and north onto Fulham Palace Road, towards Hammersmith. Traffic was light though London was never deserted, even at three in the morning, something which never ceased to amaze Brook. His hometown, Barnsley, became a ghost town after what local publicans, without irony, called Happy Hour.
Twenty minutes later Brook pulled onto Minet Avenue. For a second the headlights illuminated a fox, nonchalantly nuzzling through shredded bin bags. It turned to face Brook, calm, at home. This was its patch, its time.
Brook killed the engine behind the flashing lights of a squad car and nodded to the constable on crowd control, though there wasn’t much interest at that time of the morning.
‘What have we got Fulbright?’
‘A nasty one, sir.’
‘Brooky Up here.’ DI Charlie Rowlands was leaning on the top of the stairwell that climbed to the first floor flat from the alley at the side of the grimy launderette. He pulled urgently on the inevitable Capstan Full Strength.
Rowlands was a tall, well-built man with the permanent flush of excessive drinking on his face. His eyebrows knotted in the middle above intelligent black eyes and a large, pockmarked nose. He had an air of the thinker, though, to Brook, he always seemed not to be wrestling with present problems but distant mysteries.
Unlike Brook he was in regulation dress for an officer of his age: dark grey suit, grey raincoat, flecked with moisture, and a tie that would last have had sartorial approval on VE Day His brown suede brogues confirmed the impression of a man who cared nothing for his appearance save that it wouldn’t be noticed.
At this moment, he was in imminent danger of falling through the flimsy iron rail on which his weight rested.
‘Guv.’ Brook stepped carefully up the damp metal stairs and perched at the top, fearing the whole structure might suddenly tear itself away from its fastenings under their combined presence. Rowlands’ features seemed drawn and apprehensive and Brook felt his superior’s unease was not selfish. ‘What have we got?’
Rowlands flicked his cigarette onto the wall across the alley and swept his nicotine-stained fingers across the thin wisp of grey hair he habitually trained across his bald head. It amused and comforted Brook that someone with so little idea of fashion could channel his vanity into such a hopeless venture. More hopeless than ever, now the rain had left the umbilical to Rowlands’ youth matted against his crown.
With a heavy sigh, he turned to train his penetrating dark eyes onto Brook’s. The smell of stale whisky defeated the stench of urine rising from the alley and infused theair between them. Rowlands’ drinking had been virtually constant since the death of his daughter the year before. Shed been at university in Edinburgh and, despite being the daughter of a senior policeman, or maybe because of it, she’d succumbed to the attractions of heroin.
Brook was worried about him. He didn’t need to be out on a night like this. Not with his heart. But Brook understood the self-perpetuating disease of police work. The more you saw in the job, the more you wanted to be away from it, but the more time you spent recreating yourself the more you dwelt on the terrible things you’d seen. The only answer was to keep working. Work was the only consolation, the only solution.
But there was a cost. Sooner or later something would have to give. Health, marriage, sanity. Take your pick. With Brook it would be two out of three. All he could hope was that it would be later rather than sooner.
‘Sammy Elphick.’
‘Sammy Elphick? Oh dear, what’s he been up to? Got himself in with the wrong crowd, has he?’
‘It looks like it. Whatever Sammy’s got into, it must have been pretty bad because they’ve all been done. And it’s no robbery. There’s a room full of stolen goods that’s not been touched.’
Brook screwed his face, sifting through scraps of memory. ‘Did he have kids?’
Rowlands nodded. ‘A boy. I’ve never seen anything like this, Brooky In all my years…’
‘How bad is it?’ Brook replied, damping down the fear and excitement that swelled in him at the start of a case. This didn’t sound like a routine refuse disposal.
‘I don’t know any more,’ Rowlands replied with a curt little laugh. ‘I need you to tell me.’ Brook caught the little look of envy thrown at him. Charlie Rowlands was on the final bend of the course and his emotional resources were spent. But he still saw scraps of humanity, of feeling, clinging to his DS and he needed it now to inform his own dead soul.
He ushered Brook through the door into a short hallway, in which it was difficult for both men to stand in comfort. It smelt of damp and stale beer and vomit. The walls were lined with peeling wallpaper. There was a halo of worn grime around the outdated circular light switch.
A gilt-framed picture of Jesus hung on the back wall. It hadn’t seen a cloth in decades. The incongruity didn’t
