MO, there was a connection with Harlesden and Brixton. Especially Brixton.
Something bubbled away beneath his consciousness but wouldn’t surface. His mind drifted back to the face of the Wrigley girl on that terrible night in Brixton. The night Sorenson had shown him he could take any family he wanted, even Brook’s.
Families. Sammy Elphick had killed Sorenson’s brother in a bungled burglary. Floyd Wrigley had raped and murdered Laura Maples. What had Telfer done to interest The Reaper? What had Bobby Wallis done?
‘How you feelin’, Brooky?’
‘Okay guv.’
‘You don’t look okay. That baby keeping you awake?’ Brook nodded.
‘How is she?’
‘Terri’s fine.’
‘Fine.’ Rowlands contemplated Brook. ‘You must be the first parent in history who don’t gush at any mention of their new-born baby. And what about you, lad? Are you fine?’
Brook nodded.
‘I can do this on my own. There’s still time for you to bail.’
‘I’m okay, guv,’ replied Brook and they both returned to their reading matter. Brook finished his toast and drained the last of his syrupy tea. He looked back across at Rowlands reading the autopsy reports and nursing his whisky-laced coffee. His toast lay untouched. He wouldn’t eat on an empty stomach.
‘There were traces of chloroform around the Wrigley girl’s face and nose and she was given an injection. A mixture of Nembutal and Seconal. A lot.’
‘Nembutal?’ Brook looked up. ‘That’s a barbiturate. Relatively harmless.’
‘So is Seconal and you’re right. It says here if they’re taken orally, they’re absorbed slowly. Injected into a vein it causes damage. It would have killed her.’
Brook received this information with a small measure of relief. ‘So she may have felt no pain.’
‘But why cut her throat as well?’
‘For show, like the Elphick boy,’ answered Brook. ‘What about the parents?’
‘Smack. They were both users so it was probably self-administered, which means he didn’t have to work hard to control them.’
‘That explains why they weren’t gagged.’
‘I guess.’
‘Would you like the good news, guv?’ asked Brook, nodding at his own reading matter. ‘Floyd Wrigley Petty theft, possession, affray, ABH, GBH. It goes on.’ There was no mention of rape and murder. Now there never could be.
‘Some comfort then,’ nodded Rowlands.
‘It gets worse, guv. Or better. DS Croft reckons Floyd was living off immoral earnings to fund his habit. They had nothing solid but…’
‘He was pimping his girlfriend? Classy.’
‘Not the girlfriend, Tamara, the daughter.’
‘Fucking…scum. How old?’
‘Eleven. There’s a note at the end of the autopsy. They asked the pathologist to look for it. She wasn’t a virgin, guv.’
Both fathers of daughters, one living, the other dead, looked at a space that couldn’t look back at them, that couldn’t see through the eyes, into their hearts where all the private things were.
Rowlands lit a cigarette and took a huge pull. ‘I don’t envy you, Brooky At least Elizabeth…’ Rowlands looked down at his coffee. In a trice that a gunfighter would have been proud of, he’d whipped out his flask and was replenishing his cup. ‘Look after Amy and little Theresa, lad. You only get one go at it.’
‘Guv…’
‘I know. Sorenson’s finished with you. But you’re here aren’t you?’
Brook examined his boss. He didn’t look well. Then again he never looked well.
Rowlands squinted up through the blue smoke driftingacross his face. ‘Ready?’ He finished his coffee at Brook’s nod and they manoeuvred themselves off the Star Burger’s unyielding bucket seats.
They walked together down Brixton High Street, not speaking, not looking at each other. Instead they looked at the second-hand Christmas illuminations, cast-offs purchased by the Council, on the cheap from Blackpool. They even studied the famous railway bridge, straddling the main road with its patronising ‘We’re backing Brixton!’ message, its cluster of business logos a knee-jerk, post-riots affirmation of capitalism. They looked but they didn’t see.
As they turned onto Electric Avenue, Brook had to make a conscious effort to stay half a pace behind Rowlands who was scanning the street to get his bearings.
He stopped outside a door sandwiched between two moribund shop fronts, daubed with posters for bands, concerts, jumble sales and obscure political groups. A constable squinted at their ID and stood aside. A gaggle of ghouls still loitered outside the murder scene four days after the event. They talked in lowered tones about the killings. They were shocked and horrified in conversation, but glowed inside, satisfied to be a spit from the spotlight of public infamy.
Brook glanced warily around for the empty boxes that The Reaper had left outside the doorway. They were gone. Rowlands passed through the entrance but Brook hung back.
‘You coming, lad?’ said Rowlands from the bottom of the stairs.
Brook smiled and followed his boss. He made to close the door but the constable put his hand out to keep it open. ‘They want fresh air up there, sir.’ Brook nodded.
The lounge was the last room at the top of the rickety stairs. Rowlands nodded to the two SOCOs on their knees still sifting and scraping and measuring and combing four days after the fact.
Brook took out glossy photographs from the dossier and started handing them to Rowlands who examined them against the layout of the room. It was bright now because the curtains had been drawn back. On the photographs the curtains were closed and the room was poorly lit. Rowlands looked around, getting the measure of what had happened here, acclimatising to where he could and couldn’t walk.
There was a tatty, if comfortable looking sofa at one end of the room. It had once been a faded blue but was now covered in black stains, particularly on the seat cushions where rivers of blood had dammed against the thighs of the man and woman, sat side by side. The rest of the sofa was a patchwork of blood splatter.
The bare floor had also been stained-dry-black pools, in contrast to the scuffed dirty brown of the boards. The bloodstains were edged in white chalk and tape to alert pedestrians. At the edge of one such stain the smooth circular regularity of the encroaching blood had been breached and part of a footprint was clearly visible.
‘What size?’ asked Rowlands.
‘The file reckons ten,’ said Brook. ‘Thereabouts.’
‘And what’s Sorenson?’
‘Size eight.’
‘Told you so.’
‘We can’t say for sure it’s the murderer’s shoe, guv.’
‘Well it ain’t the milkman’s.’
To one side, under the window, lay a small mattresswith a couple of thin blankets for cover-perhaps the place of work for one wretched human being.
In the middle of the room there was an old straight-backed dining chair, lying on its side, facing the sofa. Another apron of black spewed out from where it had toppled. Black-red sprays extended out from the mass of the pool-like flares under the great initial force of the severed artery. These thin jets of blood had escaped at several different angles. The girl, Tamara, had contested her fate, despite the drugs. Shed been bound, gagged and doped up but still fought against the ebbing of her scarred life.
What had she thought of the world in those last few terrible moments, Brook wondered? Tied to a chair, cold in vest and knickers, throat sliced by a stranger, facing her parents, drug addicts, who sold her for sex and were only able to stare back, saucer-eyed, uncomprehending, as their daughter convulsed herself into oblivion.
‘Why her? Why the Elphick boy? Why the children?’ muttered Rowlands.
