‘No one knows yet. That’s what I’m trying to find out. Who and why.’
He paused at a picture showing a shattered headstone with a pentagram scrawled on it, peering at the name and age on the remains of the stone.
‘Another child,’ he whispered.
‘All the graves belong to kids, all the ones desecrated,’ Cath elaborated.
‘Oh Jesus’ Reed hissed, looking at a picture of a coffin that had been hauled from its resting place. The lid had been split, the woodwork riven and scarred.
He came to the ones taken in the church crypt.
Cath watched him as he studied them.
‘How much do you know about witchcraft, Frank?’
Reed looked at her blankly.
‘Are you serious?’
‘My editor told me to play up the black magic angle. I just wondered what you knew.’
‘Are you asking me in my capacity as a history teacher or as an ordinary member of the public?’
‘Both.’
‘As a history teacher I can tell you about the Inquisition, the Salem Witch trials, Matthew Hopkins the Witchfinder-General, even Hitler’s interest in the occult. Is that good enough for starters?’
‘And as an ordinary member of the public?’
1 think it’s bollocks.’
‘You don’t believe in it?’
‘Whoever did that,’ he gestured dismissively at the pictures, ‘they were sick bastards, but I doubt if they were witches.’
‘So you think the O’Brian family would talk about what happened to their daughter’s grave?’
‘Are you asking as my sister or as a muck-raking, sensation-seeking journalist?’ he asked, smiling.
‘I prefer investigative news reporter’ she retorted, feigning indignation.
‘Would they talk, Frank? You could put me in touch with them. Give me an address.’
Reed looked down at the photos again.
‘I might even be able to find out whether or not you’re right about the parents whacking their kid if I speak to them’ she persisted.
He looked at her.
‘Excuse me, Mr and Mrs O’Brian, how do you feel about your baby’s grave being dug up, and by the way have you beaten up your son lately?’ he said, sardonically.
She held his gaze.
‘The address, Frank’ she murmured. ‘That’s all.’
He glanced down at the top picture.
A headstone, cracked, smeared with excrement.
Sick.
When he looked up, she was still gazing at him.
Waiting.
Thirty-nine
James Talbot dropped two Alka-Seltzer into the glass of water and watched as they started to dissolve,
turning the liquid opaque, fizzing loudly. He watched bubbles rising to the top of the fluid, following their journey from the bottom of the glass to the surface with disproportionate fascination.
Across the table from him, William Rafferty watched his superior, noticing how pale he looked.
The other two men in the room didn’t seem to notice.
DC Stephen Longley was more concerned about the temperature in the room,
fidgeting uncomfortably in his seat and occasionally tugging at his shirt collar as he felt the heat building.
His companion, DC Colin Penhallow, was turning a cigarette lighter abstractedly between his thumb and forefinger, tapping it on a file which lay before him.
Talbot used the end of his pen to stir the Alka-Seltzer, licked the Biro dry and took a large swallow of the white fluid.
‘Rough night?’ Rafferty asked.
‘You could say that’ Talbot murmured, clambering to his feet and crossing to a nearby window, which he pushed open. The noise of traffic from below was loud, the stink of engine fumes strong, even three floors up. He closed the window again.
‘OK, fellas, what have you got?’ he said, turning to face his colleagues.
‘A little bit more than we knew a few days ago,’ said Penhallow. ‘But not much.’ He lit up a cigarette, watched almost longingly by Talbot who swigged from his glass again.
‘Thrill me,’ Talbot said, flatly.
‘It’s mostly background stuff, guv’ Penhallow said. ‘Upbringing, work, family life. That sort of shit.’
‘Anything to connect them?’ the DI wanted to know.
‘Now that is the interesting thing’ Penhallow continued.
Talbot drained what was left in the glass, grimaced and sat down, his gaze fixed on his colleague. ‘Don’t tell me, they all went to the same boarding school’ he said, a thin smile on his lips.
‘They’re all masons’ Longley chuckled.
‘I wouldn’t say that too loud around here’ Talbot reminded him, and all four men laughed.
‘They were all working on the same building project’ Penhallow announced, taking a drag on his cigarette. ‘There are some old warehouses near the West India Dock Pier, along Limehouse Reach. They’ve been empty for five or six years now. Somebody bought the warehouses and the land they stand on. It’s going to be a new development. Flats, that sort of stuff.’
‘More yuppie hideaways’ Rafferty added.
‘Do we know who bought the land?’ Talbot asked.
‘Believe it or not, it was a firm of accountants’ Penhallow informed him.
‘Morgan and Simons’ Rafferty elaborated. ‘The firm Peter Hyde worked for.’
‘Part of Hyde’s job was to cost out the project,’ Penhallow offered.
‘What about the houses nearby?’ Talbot enquired. ‘Had there been any complaints about this building project from local residents?’
‘None that we could find’ Rafferty replied.
‘So, how are Parriam and Jeffrey linked to this?’ Talbot enquired.
‘Jeffrey was a surveyor, right? Guess what he was working on when he topped himself?’ Rafferty said.
‘And Parriam had already designed two office blocks and fifteen different types of apartment that were to be built on that land once the warehouses were levelled’ Penhallow added.
‘There’s your link, guv’ Longley finished.
‘That still doesn’t explain why they all topped themselves’ Talbot said. ‘If they’d been murdered then I’d say let’s find out who didn’t want those warehouses being knocked down, find out who had a reason for wanting them dead, but it still doesn’t make any sense, does it?’
The policemen sat around in silence for a moment, the stillness finally broken by Talbot.
‘None of them was connected to anything to do with villains, were they? None of them taking backhanders from anybody who might run that manor or want a bit of the cream once those new flats were built?’
‘Backhanders?’ Longley chuckled. ‘They were in the building trade. How many honest builders do you know?’
The other men laughed.
‘You know what I mean’ the DI added, smiling.
‘Not a sniff of villainy with any one of them’ Rafferty told his superior. ‘If they’d smelled any sweeter you’d have seen them on a fucking perfume counter.’
Talbot rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘Who stood to benefit by the three of them dying?’ he asked.
