hurt you, I promise.’
‘But if he-’
‘I promise. You’ve got my word.’
Another saying of her grandmother’s started jinking round inside her head as she stepped back out on to the street, something about promises being like pie crusts, crumbling, she thought, at the merest touch.
She was back on the motorway, heading south, headlights spindling about her, when her mobile rang and she pulled over on to the hard shoulder.
Ramsden’s voice, off-pitch, urgent. ‘On your way back down? Might want to make a detour. Stansted. Something you ought to see.’
32
She had read it somewhere: the smell of a slaughterhouse, blood and piss and shit and fear. The sweet bite of vomit at the back of the throat.
For a moment, she swayed, eyes glazed.
She had seen death before, too many times, but not like this.
She had to force herself to look again, to see.
Kebab shop, she thought. That’s what it reminded her of. A kebab shop, late at night: walking home, two, three in the morning, head furred and thick from too much vodka, too many cigarettes, the overlapping stink of sweet chilli sauce and slowly turning meat; the man behind the counter, bored, tired, wiping his fingers down the front of his filthy apron before slicing the meat into veinous, bloodied strips. Except that these slabs of scored meat, hanging from the aluminium struts of the roof, had arms and legs and heads; the latter barely recognisable, burned, gouged, torn.
Bile caught in her mouth and she held it there while her body juddered before swallowing it back down.
Her head swam.
The belly of the nearest man hung down in folds, half covering his shrivelled cock and balls.
‘Outside,’ Ramsden said quietly, close behind. ‘Talk outside.’
He touched her arm at the elbow; started, gently, firmly, to steer her towards the doors.
As Karen stepped through into the air, Scene of Crime officers turned aside.
The light bit at her eyes.
The parking area, surrounded on three sides by multi-level storage units, was busy with police vehicles, ambulances, unmarked cars.
Karen counted, slowly, one to ten inside her head.
‘What do we know?’ she asked.
‘Found by a delivery team from the airport. Come to collect a container, evening flight to Ankara. Poor bastards, got more than they bargained for.’
‘The bodies. Any idea how long they’d been there?’
‘Best guess so far, early hours.’
‘This morning?’
‘Be a sight worse, else.’
He gave it a moment, watching her eyes. ‘Security comes round every couple of hours. Two men usually, sometimes one.’
‘This morning?’
‘Just the one.’
‘Handy.’
‘Nothing noted in the log. Call out now for him to come back in.’
Karen looked up at the CCTV cameras attached to several of the buildings; another, mounted on a high stand, slowly revolving, centrally placed.
‘Funny thing,’ Ramsden said, following her gaze. ‘System went down, two thirty, thereabouts. This whole area. Malfunction. Didn’t get up and running till close on four.’
‘Coincidence?’
‘What’s that? An explanation waiting to happen? Don’t you soddin’ believe it.’
‘What then?’
‘Bloke in charge went off conveniently sick. A while before they could get someone else in to cover. Couple of uniforms, local, went round to his address. Nobody home. We’re still looking.’
‘Whoever worked them over,’ Karen said. ‘All that was done somewhere else. That’s what we’re assuming?’
Not really a question that demanded answering. Anything else, there would have been far more blood than there was: ceiling, walls, floor. And even there, that close to the airport, too great a risk of noise. Slow screams of a dying man. Three dying men. She realised she didn’t know exactly how they had died.
‘Two of them,’ Ramsden said when asked, ‘a bullet to the back of the head. Small calibre by the look of it, close range. After they’d been worked on, my guess, not before. Biggest of the three, apart from what’s been done to his face and hands, no obvious cause.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe his heart just gave out.’
‘No way yet of knowing who they are?’
‘Not as yet. Once the computer guys get to work on the faces we’ll have a better idea what they looked like before all this. Run ’em through the system after that. See what pops.’
Nodding acknowledgement, Karen stepped away, slowly turned and looked up into the sky. A late plane, taking off, its lights curving gradually upwards into the night sky. Wherever it was heading, she wished she were on board, bound for wherever. Anywhere. Anywhere but here.
33
‘Croissant?’
‘What?’ Letitia’s voice was harsh, bruised by sleep.
‘Croissant? It’s a sort of curved doughy thing, a bit like-’
‘I know what a fucking croissant is.’
‘Good. Here. Have one.’ Cordon sat on the side of the bed, paper bag in his lap.
Letitia shook her head and, shuffling into a sitting position, pulled the pillows up against the headboard and leaned back. The sheet slipped as she twisted round, leaving one breast exposed. Outside, rain was falling lightly; you could hear it faintly against the shutters.
‘Where’ve you been anyway?’ she asked.
He held up the bag. ‘To get these.’
‘I didn’t hear the car.’
‘I walked.’
‘In this?’
He shrugged. ‘Live in Cornwall, remember? You get used to it.’
His hair had been darkened by the rain; shoes and waterproof jacket he’d taken off and left just inside the door. His idea had been to give himself time to think, think — what was the expression? outside the box? — but all he could see was the same set of imponderables, the same set of walls.
They’d taken the ferry from Portsmouth to St. Malo. Letitia’s father had driven them to the port and then continued on his way towards Bristol, old friends he hadn’t seen in far too long a time. The bookshop was locked up. A sign:
