that?’
Brook smiled his appreciation of her powers of reasoning. The shift in their relationship, no matter how temporary, hadn’t escaped him. She was now
‘Scared of what?’
‘You mean for whom?’
‘Okay. Scared for whom?’
‘For my family, for myself.’
He looked at Jones with a mixture of apprehension and sudden exhilaration, his expression pleading for her to stop mining this deep stratum of emotion, yet willing her to go on so that he could finally exhaust himself of the burden. Jones urged him on with an eyebrow.
‘I was confused. There was another case. A teenage girl, Laura Maples, was murdered. And I wasn’t sure what kind of…person I was becoming.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Sorenson. When I spoke to him, it was a gradual thing, and one I’m sure he was bending over backwards to achieve…’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I began to envy him. I know it sounds incredible. You’ve got to remember the state I was in. My life was beginning to unravel. And…Sorenson had what I needed. Complete control over his emotions, his destiny. It was only natural.’ Brook tried to think of a way to dress up his next utterance, make it more ambiguous. He failed. ‘I liked him.’
After a moment, when the only noise to disturb them was the distant hooting of horns muffled by double- glazing, Jones realised there was nothing more to say. To introduce the question of who was paying for the rooms, and why, would have been absurd after such a conversation. She rose to leave.
Brook was alerted to her presence again. ‘I’m tired. I need a nap.’
‘Good idea.’
With a supreme effort, Brook looked at his watch. ‘I’ll see you in the bar at two.’ And with that he fell back onto the bed with a sigh and closed his eyes.
Within five minutes, Wendy Jones was changed and on the street. She had a couple of hours to kill and she needed some air and time to think. She’d not been to this part of London before so now was an ideal time to take a walk, look around.
She strolled west towards Notting Hill, taking in what sights there were, the fine restaurants, the novelty of a tube station, the opulent houses sitting grandly back from the road, aloof among the mayhem of traffic, remnants of a more civilised age.
Chapter Sixteen
As DS Brook arrived at Ravenscourt Gardens, the hottest day of the year was drawing to a close. The temperature, up in the low thirties in the middle of the afternoon, had eased to a more comfortable 22 degrees, as the sun began to fall over the horizon.
If Brook had any doubts about the directions he’d been given, they were soon dispelled when he approached the street. The lights of three panda cars flashed at the end of the road, intersecting with Ravenscourt Park.
Brook pulled up to the melee and stepped from his car. After a brief conversation with one of the constables, Brook followed him to the railing above a basement flat.
He descended the few steps to the litter-strewn yard and trained a torch onto what passed for a door. He took a step forward and skidded on the vomit of the young PC who had found the body. Uniformed arms grabbed to steady him.
‘Easy, sir,’ said a voice. It was a nasal voice, its owner pinching his nostrils to defeat the stench.
Brook wretched as the odour hit him but managed to stuff a handkerchief in his mouth and over his nose. From the entrance to the building came the stench of old putrefiedmeat. It mingled with, yet dominated the other smells-as royalty fraternised with lowly subjects-lording it over the damp cardboard, the sick, the dog shit and the urine.
‘You don’t have to go in there, sir. It’s not pretty. We think it’s a young girl. She…You should wait for the police surgeon.’
But Brook had to see. There was something he had to find out. He had to know if Charlie Rowlands had been right about Harlesden. Had Brook lost all feeling, all sense of the suffering of others? Was he out of reach at twenty-seven? He had to see.
‘Just a quick look, Constable. While it’s fresh.’ He caught the ironic grin of the PC and pulled back the warped hard-board that doubled as a door, then shone in the torch. A rustling was taken up inside. Brook puzzled for a second, assumed it was the wind, and squeezed his slender frame through the gap and under the police tape. More rustling-early autumn leaves caught in the draught from a broken window perhaps.
He took his first step into the chamber. The smell was worse now and Brook clamped his nose tighter. He made his way carefully towards the interior room, picking his feet over various lumps of indistinct detritus. A scurrying in the corner wheeled him round and his light fell on a whiplash tail. Rats. Brook grimaced. He agreed with Winston Smith. He hated rats.
But he thought of Harlesden, imagined Amy beside him, as he had several times since, looking on as he examined the boy, watching him as he strolled from place to place, unconcerned, stroking his chin in contemplation and smiling when a theory suggested itself. What would Amythink of him? What kind of monster was he? He had to press on, prove to himself he could still be affected. Prove it for her sake.
A moment later he was at the entrance to the murder room. He lifted the light from his feet and swept it round the space.
Brook was surprised. Even in this squalor, efforts had been made to create a homely atmosphere. Off in one corner was a tiny, one-ring stove, a screw-in gas canister still attached. A small pan sat on top. Behind the stove there were a few unopened tins. It was quite orderly.
An old pair of curtains hung across the window and a few sticks of furniture, rescued from skips, were arranged around the room. A house-proud squatter-was there anything sadder than this self-delusion? The victim had tried to create a sanctuary, a place away from confusion, impose a pattern, a personality on her environment. Pathetic really.
Brook knew then this girl was not from London. He knew because he’d had the same reaction when he first arrived from Barnsley. Fearing the encroachment of others in this massive city, his first instinct was to construct boundaries. So Brook had bought the poky flat in Fulham to have a place to shut himself off, barricade his thoughts from all the distractions, all the invitations to self-destruction. It was the only way to survive in such a place.
But the attempts at civilisation only threw the spectacle on the mattress into sharper relief. Having taken in the periphery, Brook finally moved his torch to illuminate the corpse then span away, his gorge rising at what he saw. But he didn’t puke. His heart thumped and his mouth cracked with sudden dehydration but he didn’t puke.
After a few seconds to compose his nerves, he knew he had to look again. He opened his watering eyes and took quick urgent breaths. He tried to keep the smell out but flimsy linen was no match for such perfume.
He turned again to the face of the girl, inclined towards him, head slightly raised by the makeshift pillow on her deathbed. Her eyes were gone or at least invisible in the blackened sunken orbs where they once belonged- eaten away by bacteria, maggots and rats. The hair had survived though, short and blonde with red highlights, as did that part of the ear adorned with indigestible studs. Some of the nose was also intact, some flesh still clinging to the cartilage.
There wasn’t enough left to show Brook that this had been a pretty girl, but the teeth confirmed she was young. They were clean and straight, no absentees even at the back of the jaw.
Brook took a step nearer but hesitated. That fluttering sound again, this time emanating from near the body.
