18
They clapped as he entered. He didn’t know why they were doing this; he’d failed after all, the probable suspects had been in his grasp and he’d let them get the better of him. His left eye was black and swollen, and he had a square of white gauze taped to his right temple. He tried to smile but it still hurt too much, so he nodded his head and waited for everyone to take their seats. Someone, maybe Geneva, had left a chocolate Florentine by his chair. He took a hurried bite, feeling the sugar hit, and then he began.
‘First of all, thank you for all this, but I fucked up. I should have called back-up and maybe we’d have those two in custody right now instead of this bloody headache I’ve got, so, please, no more clapping, okay?’
‘We weren’t clapping because you got beaten up,’ Karlson was rather too eager to clarify. ‘We just heard back from the lab. They managed to extract a sample, God knows how they did it so quickly. The DNA from the pink hair you found matches the sample the pathologist retrieved from the eleventh victim. I think we can be pretty certain that the body in the confession booth is the new girl Hubbard told us about. We’re running the sample through the database at the moment but the server’s on the blink, as usual, so it’s going to take a while.’
Carrigan stared at his sergeant – was there a grudging acceptance in the man’s tone? He’d never got on with Karlson, or maybe it was the other way around, but there was something about this case that seemed to transgress all personal issues. ‘That’s great,’ he said. ‘But it doesn’t mean we’ll necessarily be able to identify the eleventh victim – it’s only good to us if she’s on record somewhere, so don’t get your hopes up.’ He stopped, out of breath, a sharp hot pain in his left side making him buckle. ‘Anyone talk to the SOCOs about what they found in the secret room?’ he said, hoping no one had noticed his momentary weakness.
Singh looked up from her notes. ‘A lot of fingerprints, mainly overlaid and of no use to us. They said it looked like many people had stayed in the room. I did manage to identify the statue found at the seat of fire. It depicts Archbishop Oscar Romero. The sampler in the secret room is of the same person. He was a famous church leader and liberation theologian in Central and South America and was assassinated in 1980.’
‘What on earth is liberation theology?’ Karlson asked.
‘No idea,’ Singh replied. ‘The SOCOs also went through the bookcase in the secret room. The books had nothing unusual inside them. They’re sending them over to us today. They didn’t find anything else they considered significant.’
‘The hidden room is significant,’ Carrigan said. ‘Many older religious buildings have priest-holes of some kind but this one was in use. Was the girl with the pink hair staying there? And if so, why? Singh – get the blueprints for the convent, see if the room is marked on them or whether it’s a later addition. There was also something that looked like a workshop along the back wall – tools and machines and so forth – I want you to liaise with forensics over this, find out what the space was used for . . . it doesn’t fit with the rest of the basement.’ He paused and looked down at his hands, then cleared his throat. ‘We still have no idea what the cocaine was doing there and that bothers me.’ He looked across the room and saw Karlson smiling to himself. ‘You have something to share with us, Sergeant?’
Karlson shuffled in his chair, stretched and sat up. ‘The nuns were hassling dealers and moving them on. Maybe they confiscated the coke off one of these dealers. It would give that someone a bloody good motive to set the fire.’
‘It seems a bit implausible,’ Carrigan replied, making a note in his policy book. ‘Now, how’re we doing on locating Father McCarthy?’
Jennings shrugged despondently. ‘I spoke to Roger Holden and he told me that, as of yesterday, Father McCarthy is on retreat and uncontactable.’
‘On retreat?’ Carrigan repeated, wondering exactly what kind of game Holden was playing. ‘Thank you, Jennings – keep hassling the diocese, try and find out exactly where he’s staying. We need to talk to Father McCarthy. We know he was a regular visitor and he was seen leaving the premises an hour before the fire.’
‘You think it’s possible he set the fire?’ Jennings asked.
‘I’m not thinking anything yet except it’s bloody curious he decided to pick this week to go on retreat.’ Carrigan wrote something down on the whiteboard then turned towards Geneva. ‘Miller, what did you find out at the diocese?’
Geneva ran through it point by point. ‘It looks like Mother Angelica recruited the other nuns. Seven of them knew each other from Peru. They were all stationed there in 1973.’
‘1973 . . .’ Carrigan said. ‘Forty years ago.’
Geneva nodded, and there was a momentary silence as they considered the implications of this. ‘They also curtailed all their charity work a year ago. Before, they were involved in organising homeless shelters and youth workshops. They set up drug rehab centres and mobilised local residents in picketing known drug houses, giving out leaflets and advice to customers – suddenly, this all stops dead a year ago.’
‘And you’re assuming this has something to do with the case?’
‘Everything has something to do with the case until we rule it out.’
He nodded. It was something he’d taught her. ‘Okay, keep looking into that, Miller, but let’s focus on what we have that’s concrete. Berman? Did you get anything from the school’s CCTV tapes?’
Berman’s face emerged from the bank of computer screens lining his desk. He blinked twice like some burrowing animal unused to the light. ‘We got lucky there. Because of previous problems with paedophiles, the school keeps all the footage archived.’ He stood up, taking a long black lead from his desk, and plugged it into the back of a flatscreen television mounted on the far wall. He was clumsy and uncoordinated and it took him several tries before he got it right. ‘The camera is angled towards the front gates of the school. The convent is two doors down. We can just see their driveway.’ Berman nervously fingered the prayer shawl he wore under his shirt and looked up at the screen as if for confirmation to carry on. ‘The uniforms spent all night going through the footage. Take a look at this.’
He pressed a button on his laptop and the TV flickered to life revealing the front gate of the school and the gently curving road beyond. Berman fast-forwarded the tape until a black SUV drove into frame, slowed down and disappeared at the edge of the camera’s domain. ‘I checked the number-plate. It’s fake, not stolen, made up from two separate plates as far as I can tell.’ He pointed to the screen. ‘They’re parking a couple of doors down from the school, almost directly outside the convent. See how they’re starting to swing in?’
Berman switched to another shot. ‘This is a couple of weeks later. It’s the same SUV, no doubt about it. Now watch this . . .’ He fast-forwarded the tape until a glimmer of black filled the bottom left-hand corner. ‘This time there’s already somebody else double-parked outside the convent – you can just make out the back of what looks like a Royal Mail van.’
He pressed play and they all watched as the black SUV came to a stop closer to the school gates. The driver was the first one out but his face was obscured by the top of the SUV and he quickly walked off screen. Then the man sitting in the passenger seat opened his door. He stepped out, checked either side of him, then looked directly at the school.
Carrigan stared at the frozen image of the man who’d been standing at the top of the stairs. In the light, his face was raw and curiously unformed, but the scar which disfigured his mouth was unmistakable.
‘Thought you’d like that,’ Berman said, punching keys with a renewed energy. ‘You’re going to like this even more.’
The image changed and Carrigan saw that the sergeant was running the video taken at the initial crime scene, a visual record of the frantic eager crowd who’d gathered to watch the fire. The young female constable had done a good job. There were families with kids and shopping bags, groups of teenagers swigging on cans of lager and Middle Eastern businessmen in long flowing white robes, everyone’s eyes wide and agape, their faces freckled by flame, a reverent awe in their muted expressions. Carrigan found himself transfixed, realising he’d never seen this footage before, watching the rapt and stunned faces as the camera moved steadily through the crowd, past the pressed huddle of bodies and flung arms and party cheer, and suddenly there he was.
The same man. Three rows back, watching the fire and talking to another man who was partially hidden from view.
‘This was taken only an hour after the fire started,’ Berman said.
He paused the video and Carrigan stared at his assailant, the small recessed eyes and jagged horror-film scar. He got up and walked over to the screen.
Everyone was silent and spooked and a little excited. Carrigan’s eyes were fixed on the TV. The man who’d attacked him in the ruins had visited the convent a week before. He’d been standing outside watching the fire as it blazed. Had this man followed him to the ruins last night? Or had he come there for a different purpose and just stumbled upon him?
‘Karlson, get Berman to run you off some stills. Focus on the scar. There can’t be too many of those around. Check through the PNC database – if he’s been in trouble before, it’ll be in there.’ He walked back to the table and sat down and pulled out his policy book. ‘Our main focus now is getting an ID on this man. I want you to circulate the photos, see if anyone in vice or immigration recognises him, send it to all patrol and watch officers.’ He stopped and waited for everyone to finish their frantic scribbling, and was about to assign the constables their daily tasks when Karlson’s computer started beeping insistently. Everyone stopped what they were doing and turned towards the sergeant’s desk. Karlson was staring at the screen, his face a mask of surprise.
‘What?’ Carrigan said.
‘The system’s back online. We’ve got a match . . .’ The normally deadpan sergeant looked utterly astonished as he clicked on the link, his fingers tapping impatiently against the desktop.
‘I don’t fucking believe it . . .’ he said. ‘Our eleventh victim has a criminal record.’
19
Emily Maxted.
Thirty-two years old.
Carrigan flicked through the three scant pages resting on his lap as Geneva drove, the cars and trees and buses whipping by his window in a smeary spray of light.
Emily had been arrested in 2008 for cannabis possession. The arrest had resulted in a couple of hours in the cells and, luckily for them, a DNA sample, taken from her as part of a trial programme the Met had been running at the time. The sample matched both the pink hair found in the priest-hole door and the degraded DNA from the corpse in the confession booth.
Emily Maxted was their eleventh victim.
Carrigan felt his heart beat a little bit faster.
As they headed north, the tight constriction of Paddington and Kilburn gave way to an unobscured sky, steep hills and sudden unexpected views. Parkland spread out on either side, a brilliant blaze of white melting into the far horizon. Children ran across the road clutching toboggans in mittened hands while their parents tried to keep up, hampers and wet writhing dogs juggled in their arms. The snow fell in white swirly sheets making the world seem domed and contained as if they were trapped inside a snow-globe. Carrigan took a KitKat from his pocket and scored his nails down the foil, popping half of it in his mouth and closing his eyes for a moment to savour the taste. When he opened them again he noticed Geneva watching him. ‘What?’
‘Is that all you’re having for lunch?’
He balled up the chocolate wrapper and dropped it next to his seat. ‘Got another one in my pocket.’
She couldn’t help but smile and was a little too slow to cover it up. ‘You know that’s not what I meant.’
‘I’ll eat when the case is over,’ he said, unpeeling the small faded photo from the first page of the arrest sheet and holding it between his fingers.
Emily Maxted had been stunned by the flash, her eyes squinting against the sudden burst of light. But despite that, and the fact she’d just been arrested, there was something about her that would grab your attention even in a crowded room. Her skin was pale and finely textured and it made her eyes appear unnaturally green and defiant. There was a dangerous curve to her lips and her hair was dyed purple and hung across her forehead in a set of uneven bangs that concealed as much as they revealed. She seemed squeezed into the photo’s frame, its strict parameters unable to contain her, but even in this single snapped moment Carrigan could see a wealth of buried history lurking in her eyes, storms and resentments and things that happened to her when she was four years old.
He put down the photo and re-checked the address on the file, telling Geneva to take the next right. They soon entered a hidden London, spacious and pristine, folded between the rolling hills and humps of Hampstead Heath. The area looked as if the last hundred years had never happened. They drove by houses that took up a whole block, houses invisible behind ten-foot walls and houses set so far back on their grounds they seemed mere specks on the horizon. The road curved and twisted as it followed the swirled spine of the heath, making the residences seem cut off from one another, distant ships on a jewelled sea. You could spend money to protect and seclude yourself from the harsh noise and swagger of the city but, as they pulled into the driveway, Carrigan knew that no amount of money could spare the people inside from the news he was about to deliver.
He got out of the car, brushed the crumbs from his jacket and stretched his legs as he stared up at the imposing Palladian facade. ‘You ever done this before?’ He turned towards Geneva, startled at how pale and drawn she looked.
‘Once . . . only once,’ she replied. ‘Swore I’d never do it again.’ She laughed faintly, the sound disappearing almost as soon as it escaped her mouth.
He’d been pleasantly surprised when she’d volunteered to come along. It was a necessary part of the job but it was always ugly and nothing would change that. It was the part everyone hated, the part where they suddenly made excuses or remembered important meetings they were late for, but Carrigan had always believed that he, as the investigating officer, should do it himself. No victim’s relatives deserved a uniform three weeks into the job stumbling through his lines and putting his foot in it. But it wasn’t just that, he had to admit, as he stared one last time at the photo. They needed to find out as much as they could about the mysterious pink-haired girl, about her life and friends and routines, before they could understand how she was involved with the nuns and why she was there that night.
A Filipino woman dressed in an old-fashioned black-and-white maid’s outfit opened the door.
‘We’re here to see Miles and Lillian Maxted.’ Carrigan showed her his warrant card. The maid looked at him in alarm, staring down at the card then back up at the man with the black eye and Frankenstein gauze.
‘Maria? Is everything okay?’ A woman’s voice came from a small speaker attached to the maid’s outfit. It was the same kind of device parents use to monitor sleeping babies. The maid winced when she heard the voice, then picked up the receiver and pressed a button. ‘There’s two policeman here to see you and the mister,’ she said in a pleasant sing-song voice.
The receiver crackled briefly with static. ‘Well, I suppose you’d better bring them up.’
They handed the maid their jackets and followed her through a hallway that was like the atrium to some eccentric oil baron’s private museum. Statues of Greek nymphs and Roman legionnaires were mounted in niches at regular intervals. Wood-smoked Regency chairs stood stout and wary as guard dogs. The walls were heavy with painted faces, dark troubled portraits from another era, every available bit of space crammed with a confusion of art. The maid knocked once on a large wooden door, then, without a word, turned and left.
The woman who opened the door showed no sign of surprise when she saw them. Carrigan could tell she was far too well bred for such displays. She was one of those women whose former beauty resided just below the skin, like old paintings that still sparkled underneath the patina of years and neglect. ‘You’d better come in,’ she said, incurious and unrattled, as if they were delivering her weekly shopping.
The room was overwhelming in its bounty. The Maxteds had collected so many books and artworks and knick-knacks that the space seemed diminished by them, the light from the floor-to-ceiling windows disappearing in a murk of haze and obstacle. There was no sense or order to the room: Indian dream-catchers stood next to Greek figurines, Buddhas next to sculptures made from toothbrushes. The floors were covered with ornate Persian rugs and Turkish kilims, a riot of colour and squiggle. A series of paintings dominated the room. The image was almost the same in each one, a procession of anguished heads, eyeless, wrenched in agony, contorted by silent screams, the brushwork loose and furious. There were books on the floor and books on the piano and books teetering on the curved arms of sofas.
‘What do we have here, then?’
Carrigan turned to see a man sitting in a deep black leather armchair. He wore a brown polo neck and ash-grey chinos and was holding a glass of red wine in his hand. His fingernails were manicured, outshining the glass, and his eyes possessed a deep probing restlessness, sizing up the two detectives in one quick glance.
‘My name is Detective Inspector Carrigan . . .’
‘Yes, yes.’ Miles Maxted rose from his chair and put down his drink on a small, ornately lacquered side table. ‘What do you want?’
‘Is your daughter Emily Maxted?’ Carrigan watched the man’s eyes carefully but saw only a sharp intelligence and a wary cunning there, no sign of what lay underneath.
‘What has she done this time?’ Miles asked, then shook his head. ‘No, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.’
Carrigan looked over at Geneva. This wasn’t turning out the way he’d planned. He took a step forward. ‘I’m afraid that a body identified as Emily’s was recovered from the scene of a fire three days ago.’ He watched as the words sank in, noting any facial tic or tell. It was always the same in these situations – at first it was as though they hadn’t heard him, quickly followed by bewilderment and then, finally, the realisation of what lay behind the words.
‘A fire?’ Miles Maxted tapped his fingernails against the side of his glass. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’
Lillian Maxted was absolutely still beside her husband, a three-inch gap separating them. She didn’t say anything but her face was pale and stretched. A grandfather clock stood sentry by the door and its insistent ticking filled the silence. Carrigan cleared his throat. ‘There was a fire at a convent in Bayswater on Thursday night. I’m afraid we’ve identified Emily as one of the . . .’
The glass fell from Lillian’s hand and shattered on the floor. She stared down at the scattered shards and quietly began to sob.
Miles Maxted turned towards his wife. ‘Lillian, please!’ His voice was sharp and brusque and his expression cold and weary as if he’d been through this kind of thing too many times to count. Lillian gathered herself together and wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her blouse.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I . . .’
‘There’s nothing to be sorry about.’ Carrigan took her by the arm and gently led her towards a large red velvet armchair. As he passed Miles, he brushed against him and felt the man’s taut frame beneath the silky skin of his shirt. ‘We’re used to much worse, believe me. I’m very sorry about your daughter.’
Lillian slumped into the chair and snuffled, rubbing her eyes and smearing her make-up. ‘A convent? Are . . . are you sure?’
Carrigan knelt down until their heads were level and nodded, then stared down at the floor. It had been polished so many times that the wood sparkled with an unnatural clarity and he could almost see his own reflection in it. ‘We have a positive DNA match.’
Lillian looked up briefly, saw something in Carrigan’s eyes that confirmed her worst fears, and began to cry, quickly wiping the tears away with her hand. ‘I always knew it would end like this.’
Geneva and Carrigan looked at each other as Lillian’s words tumbled into incomprehensible sobs and punctured coughs.
‘Mrs Maxted?’
‘She means Emily chose her own path,’ Miles said, his voice breaking slightly on the last syllable. ‘The path she chose was always going to end badly, Inspector. You’re only confirming what we knew and feared would happen.’
Carrigan stared at the man, trying to figure out if it was the shock that was making him like this or if he was like this all the time. ‘Mr Maxted, we’ve just informed you that your daughter is dead. I think . . .’
‘You think everyone reacts in the same way?’
‘They usually do.’
‘But some people don’t, right? Some people don’t behave like everyone else?’
‘Yes, and that tells me quite a lot about them,’ Carrigan replied. He took out his notebook and pen and flipped the pages till he found a blank one. ‘You don’t mind if I make some notes, do you? My memory’s not what it used to be.’
Miles Maxted shrugged.
‘When was the last time you saw Emily?’ Carrigan asked, his mouth tight, the breath locked in his chest.
‘We haven’t seen her in nearly two years,’ Lillian said.
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Carrigan replied.
Miles settled himself down in the armchair and poured a large measure of Scotch, his hands unsteady, the whisky splashing on his sleeve, but he didn’t seem to notice or care.
Carrigan closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The last thing he could afford to do was lose control in front of a grieving parent, but there were questions that had to be asked and leads that needed to be pursued. ‘You said you knew she would end up like this – could you please explain what you meant by that?’
Miles took a long messy gulp of his drink. ‘I’m afraid Emily was lost to us a long time ago, Inspector. The people she hung around with, the lowlifes and bottom feeders, those crazy ideas of her, it was bound to end up like this. It was only a matter of when.’
Carrigan leaned forward and propped his elbows on his knees. ‘It would be helpful if you could tell us a little more about who you mean when you say
lowlifes
.’
‘Why are you asking these questions if she died in a fire?’ Maxted searched Carrigan’s eyes and then he understood. ‘This fire was intentional, is that what you’re saying?’
‘I wasn’t saying anything, Mr Maxted, but yes, we do believe the fire was intentional. We have no idea what Emily was doing at the convent or why anyone would want to set fire to it, and we were hoping to find out a little bit more about her.’
‘I don’t understand . . .’ Lillian was sitting up, she’d wiped her eyes dry of tears and make-up and there was a seriousness and purpose to her expression that had not been there before. It was clear to see that, even though this was probably the worst news she’d ever received, she was no stranger to suffering and that sudden shocking awareness of how thin life really is.
‘It can’t be her. Don’t you see, Miles? It can’t be her.’ She began to laugh, her eyes crinkling with light. ‘Thank God!’ She grabbed Carrigan’s wrists, encircling them with her palms.
‘I’m afraid that . . .’
‘But it can’t be!’ Lillian stared at Carrigan, her eyes and face each telling a different story. ‘She wouldn’t have set foot in a convent. That’s not Emily. You’re mistaken.’
Carrigan was about to correct her when Miles interrupted. ‘Lillian is quite right. We didn’t bring Emily up to believe in that nonsense and for all her failings and faults, religion, I’m glad to say, was not one of them.’ His face was calm and composed as if he were working out a crossword rather than talking about his daughter’s death but when Carrigan glanced down he could see the man’s hand worrying the arm of the chair. The area under his fingers had scuffed and frayed over the years and Miles kept picking at it as if it were a scab too itchy to resist.
‘That’s what puzzles us too . . .’ Carrigan began to say, then stopped, as he heard a door closing upstairs followed by the sharp percussive patter of a pair of high heels against a wooden floor. He looked up and he saw her and he blinked.