Hawthorn looked at Child again. But he just looked back.
– Were the lights high or low?
Jetters looked confused.
– Were they at the standard saloon car height, or were they raised, like on a four-wheel drive for example? Or low down like a sports car?
– Oh I see. I don’t know. I don’t even know if there were lights. Standard, I suppose. It didn’t register. Not noticeably high or low.
– Square lights? Round? Oval?
He shrugged.
– As I say. I am even doubtful as to lights. Shapes of lights is beyond me. Sorry.
– That’s OK. This is very helpful.
– Could you hear it? asked Child.
He paused.
– Yes. I think so. Yes, I could, of course. It accelerated off from the junction. It was loud. I heard the engine roar. Well, not roar perhaps. But I certainly heard the engine. It
accelerated
away. It sounded … well, louder, I suppose, than I’d … louder than you’d expect. I think. Maybe it was just because there was no other traffic around.
– Can you describe the sound? Smooth? Irregular? High pitched?
– It was a rumble, I think. Like a … I don’t know. A low rumble. I can’t quite recall.
They let him think about it for a while.
– Like?
– Oh I don’t know. I really can’t remember.
– Were there other cars? To the left of you for example, as you came out on to Hampley Road?
– There were parked cars.
– I mean moving cars.
– I didn’t look to the left. I don’t think. I don’t recall looking to the left. I suppose I must have, when I turned the corner, instinctively, to check. But I don’t remember. And I don’t remember seeing any other cars. Not then.
– Where there other cars after that?
There were other cars after that. Some of them had made Alan Jetters nervous. None had stopped. One was a
very pale gold.
– Though I suppose it could have been silver, reflecting my amber hazard lights.
– When did you put them on?
– When I stopped. When I pulled in. I actually don’t remember doing it, but they were on all the time, I was aware of the flashing.
Another was dark, and had a radio playing loudly. Then there had been a van which he had mistaken at first for an ambulance. But it had not stopped either.
– What colour was the van?
– Off-white. Grey. Maybe just a dirty white.
Then there was a people carrier with dark windows.
That was it.
– OK, said Hawthorn. He looked at Child.
– The jumper, said Child. You were wearing the jumper?
– Yes. I usually drive with my jumper on and hang my suit jacket in the back. It’s more comfortable.
– What colour is it?
– The jumper? It’s taupe.
Child nodded. Hawthorn had to look down at his
notebook
. He wrote
tawp
, and threw an important looking circle around it.
– Did you drive yourself here from the scene?
– Yes. With a police officer. She came with me.
– Your car is parked out the back?
– Yes.
– What colour is it?
Jetters looked between the two of them suspiciously.
– It’s … blue.
– What kind of blue?
– Marine.
Child nodded, grinning. Hawthorn wrote it down.
Hawthorn called Frank Lenton.
No vintage cars could be seen on the CCTV footage they’d so far got their hands on from around Hampley Road. They were starting to examine film from earlier and later and further away. Nothing that could pass for vintage. Nothing older than an early 1990s Toyota.
Hawthorn gave Frank the possible car turning north on to Plume Road, and the rumbling engine. And he gave him the other cars and the off-white van.
Daniel Field was twenty-four, Frank told him. He lived in a house on Nestor Lane, a couple of streets away from Hampley Road, which he shared with a book editor and a post-graduate student at UCL. His parents were divorced. His father lived in Chicago, his mother in Cambridgeshire. Daniel worked in the IT department of a small French investment bank with an office near Liverpool Street. He had been due in early that morning – at 6 a.m. – for a pre-trading software update, something that happened irregularly every couple of months or so. He was gay and single. He had one younger sister who was a student in Reading. His sister and his mother were on their way to London. He had no criminal record. He had no arrest record. He did not appear on any intelligence watch list or database. He was a civilian.
Hawthorn called the hospital. Daniel Field was still in surgery, but Hawthorn got hold of one of the nurses. Daniel would be fine. He had been hit once, in the right abdomen, the bullet ricocheting slightly off the top of his hip bone, and coming to rest close to his bladder. But it was a small bullet and had not left much damage in its wake. Surgery would take a while because they wanted it to be as unobtrusive as possible. He was generally healthy. He would make a full recovery.
Child had disappeared. Hawthorn dozed in the stuffy duty lounge of Highbury Station. He stretched out on an
odd-smelling
sofa with his hands on his stomach and his head turned towards the muted television. He was thinking about his father. There was a chat show on the screen, and everyone was smiling. He was not thinking anything specific about his father. He simply had him in mind. His face and voice and the grip of his hands and his smell and his eyes. His voice.
He could call him, he thought. And ask him about old cars. He remembered toys. Old toys. He remembered the carpet in the hallway, and the kitchen floor. He remembered lying down flat, with old toy cars in his hands.
He fell asleep.
He dreamed he was asleep in front of the television.
– We’re getting some progress from a couple of sources in Tottenham. Pointing to a random pair of fun-gunners associated with a dealership, gone a little haywire.
Hawthorn frowned. Rivers sounded upbeat. The case was elsewhere. The case was always elsewhere. Nevertheless, he frowned, and noticed that Child picked up on it and mirrored it, and took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
– In a vintage car?
– Yeah. A blue Hyundai Coupe. About two years old. Does he wear glasses?
– No. At least …
– Find out if he wears contacts. Maybe he’s partial to a
pre-work
spliff. Did you ask the hospital what they’d pumped into him by the time he started talking to you?
– Nothing hallucinogenic. I don’t know.
– I had an assault victim once who insisted that it was the Archbishop of Canterbury in full regalia who’d jumped her on a back street in Lambeth. You’ll have to wait for him to come round. Assuming he comes round. Shock. Confusion. Drifting in and out of consciousness. Maybe he didn’t see it at all and the brain has filled in for him. Who knows? Don’t worry about it.
– I think he was pretty sure.
– Go and speak to the housemates. They’ve given statements. But I want to know if any of them have any links to this Tottenham crew. It’s unlikely but you never know. Do they smoke a bit? A little coke for a party sometimes? Who do they get it from? Any trouble with them? Go gently, please. My money is on random.
– OK.
– And stay linked to the hospital. We’ll need better than a vintage car from him.
He hung up.
– We are not at the centre of things, said Child.
Hampley Road was taped off from the crossroads down to the first junction, from where Jetters had come. Hawthorn closed his eyes. The sky was grey and flat and he liked it. There was a patch of black blood on the cold path. He opened his eyes. There was a patch of blood. But it was not quite black, and it was smaller and it was in a different place. People in
baby-blue
paper jumpsuits and white shoe-covers were wandering around with bags and brushes and pads and cameras.
– My place was about two streets away, said Child.
– Which way?
– The other way. Other side of Plume Road.
– It’s not exactly murder mile is it?
– No. It’s not.
– Is Amy still here?
– No. We sold the flat, remember?
– Where did she move to?
He didn’t answer.
Hawthorn faced the junction with Plume Road. He tried to picture Daniel Field on the footpath.
– It must be someone very close.
– What?
– If it’s not on CCTV then it’s in a garage somewhere.
– Oh fuck off.
– What?
– He didn’t actually see a vintage car.
– Yes he did.
– A vintage car. With running boards?
– It’s what he saw. It’s what he said to Jetters. Before he had any painkillers or whatever they were giving him.
– He didn’t say vintage to Jetters.
– He said
old
. He was looking for the word. As soon as you said
vintage
to him he agreed.
– He was bleeding to death. He was probably seeing his own funeral cortège.
Hawthorn looked at the silver shutters set into the side of the building that faced on to Plume Road. Just to their left was a little yellow flag affixed to the brick where the bullet had struck.
– What’s in there? The shutters, I mean.
– Nothing.
– Nothing?
– It was a bakery. They used to have tiered wedding cakes in the window. Edible bride, edible groom.
– Was.
– Then it was a coffee shop. Now it’s nothing. Hasn’t been anything for about a year.
– Why would he say
old car
? For him to say
old car
… it means that
old
was the most obvious thing about it. Not a colour or a make or a shape or anything.
Old
. Old car.
– Maybe he said ochre.
They wandered along the road. A uniform tried to lift the tape for them. It snapped. Child laughed. There were a couple of hobby bobbies with clipboards waiting for passers-by. A car drove up Almond Road. They watched it. It was the way Jetters had come. Residential, quiet, speed bumps. It was a short cut, avoiding the junction at the top of Plume Road if you were coming from the north or north-east. Hawthorn wondered why Jetters felt the need for short cuts at that hour of the morning. One of the hobby bobbies stopped the car. Child walked a little down the road, on the right-hand side. He turned and walked back again slowly, looking to his right. He was trying to see what Jetters had seen. Hawthorn watched him, and looked at the walls of the houses, at the brick of the gables, at the paths. There was the ghost of some graffiti on the wall to his left, at the corner of the two roads. It had been painted over, or washed out, but a shape persisted, snaky, coming out of the side and weaving its way diagonally towards the ground. It came to the footpath where a tuft of weed climbed out of a crack. Hawthorn touched the weed with his shoe. There was a cigarette butt in there. A cigarette butt and a hair clip. Slightly to the left there was a tube ticket. A match. Two matches. There was a blacked-out smudge of old chewing gum. A little further away was a glob of pearly-green phlegm and spittle. He looked down to his feet, at the small,
impossibly
detailed space he occupied. His patch.
Child was back at his shoulder. They looked further up Hampley Road. In the distance they could see officers going door to door. They’d have to do that again in the evening, when people were home. The stopped car moved off again. It turned left into Hampley Road and hesitated for a moment, working out a way around the blockage. Hawthorn let Child get ahead of him and pretended to be looking at his notebook. He found a handkerchief in his back pocket and blew his nose and pressed it to his eyes and clenched them closed and cursed until he could continue.
Nestor Lane was a short terrace that faced another in the cold, with a line of cars parked on one side. It was very quiet. The houses were pre-war, three-storey, brick, fronted by tiny gardens. Most of the gardens had been paved over one way or another and were taken up now with wheelie bins, covered motorbikes, the occasional flowerbed or small tree. Above the ground floor windows a plain stone lintel ran through the brickwork, all the way down the terrace. Next door to Daniel Field’s house, at what looked like the middle of the row, there was a date elegantly etched or carved – a year – the digits separated by tiny diamond shapes. Hawthorn wrote it in his notebook.
Child had gone ahead of him and was in the kitchen. A young woman stood at the sink, and a woman police officer sat at the table with a cup of something. She nodded at Hawthorn. The woman at the sink was talking. She had been talking all the time.
– And the kids, the kids sometimes come down the road in packs, little gangs, looking for trouble, making noise. Sometimes they’ll kick a football around for a while or that kind of thing, and God help you if you shout at them to get lost. I made that mistake once. Your life is a misery then. They broke a window. Everyone knows not to shout at them, and they just get bored and go away. It’s the older, quieter … oh hello, are you another detective? I think you’re the sixth now, are you? I’ve lost track. We haven’t had this many people in the house for I don’t know how long.
She was in a dressing gown. She was washing cups.
– I’m Detective Hawthorn. You must be Ms Gayle?
– Alison, yes.
She shook his hand, leaving it wet.
– Are you the boss then?
– Not as such, no. Detective Chief Inspector Rivers is leading the investigation.
– Oh yes, someone said. Tea or coffee? I don’t really know what a boss is in the police. No one looks very much like a detective to me. You’re all too well dressed, too young. I don’t know what I’m expecting. Helen Mirren I suppose, being rude to me. No one’s even been rude to me. I am sorry, I’m bab-bling. I tend to babble. When things are … is there any word?
– About Daniel? He’s … he’s still in surgery as far as I know. But I spoke to one of the nurses a while ago. And … unofficially as it were, he’s doing well. It’s going well.