Birdman

'Morning, sir.' Detective Sergeant Paul Essex, with his usual air of good-natured dishevelment: tie unknotted, sleeves rolled up to reveal his huge red forearms, stood in the doorway holding up an orange docket. 'NIB.'

'Prints?'

'Yup.' He swiped thinning fair hair back from his big, flushed forehead. 'Victim five was kind enough to get herself on the prostitute register. One Shellene Craw.'

Caffery opened the docket. 'These were indexed on the tom register.' He looked up at Maddox. 'Funny they never found their way to missing persons, isn't it?'

'Meaning someone chez Craw has a lot of explaining to do.'

'Namely one, uh, Harrison.' He handed him the docket. 'Barry Harrison. Stepney Green.'

'Fancy putting him top of your shopping list today?' Maddox said.

'Will do.'

'And Essex, mate, I believe you're family liaison officer this case. Am I correct?'

'You are, sir. Specially selected for my tenderness.'

'Then you'd better go with Caffery. Someone might need your tender shoulder to cry on.'

'Will do. And, sir, this came.' He passed a length of computer feed paper to Caffery. 'From the Yard. The operation name — Operation Alcatraz.'

Caffery took the paper, frowning. 'Is that a joke?'

'No.'

'OK. Get onto them and have it changed. It's not appropriate.'

'Why?'

'Bird Man. The Bird Man of Alcatraz. Haven't you seen the PM prelims?'

'I only just got here.'

Maddox sighed. 'Our offender left us a little gift on the victims.'

'Inside the victims.' Caffery corrected, folding his arms. 'Inside the rib cage, sewn in next to the heart.'

Essex's face changed. 'Nasty.' He looked from face to face, waiting for the follow-up. Maddox cleared his throat and looked at Caffery. Neither spoke.

'Well?' Essex opened his hands, frustrated. 'What? What are we talking about here? What did he leave?'

'A bird,' Caffery said eventually. 'A small bird. A cage bird, probably a finch. And that doesn't go any further than the team. You hear?'

5

By 10 a.m. the National Identification Bureau had another match on the prints. Victim number two was one Michelle Wilcox, a prostitute from Deptford. Her files were transferred from Bermondsey to Shrivemoor that morning as Caffery and Essex drove through the Rotherhithe tunnel to interview Shellene Craw's boyfriend. It was a fresh, sparkling day. Even the East End rushing past the car seemed alive, the poor, grimy London trees vivid with leaves.

'This Harrison character.' Paul Essex looked out across the oaks on Stepney Green past a row of blond-bricked Georgian houses — freshly painted, the pride of their bond-salesmen owners — to Harrison's red-brick Victorian tenement, blackened by years of pollution, forgotten by the march of gentrification. 'I know you don't think he's our offender.'

Caffery stopped the car and pulled on the handbrake. 'Of course not.'

'So what do you think?'

'Dunno.' He wound up the window, got out of the car and was about to close the door when he hesitated and put his head back inside. 'Our offender's got a car, that's certain.'

'He's got a car. Is that it?' Essex heaved himself out of the Jaguar and slammed his door. 'Haven't you got a better theory than ''He's got a car''?'

'No.' He span the car keys on his fingers and pocketed them. 'Not yet.'

In Harrison's building the lift was broken, so they climbed the four flights of stairs, Caffery stopping once in a while to let Essex catch up.

Maddox had explained Paul Essex to Caffery early on. 'Every team's got to have a joker. In B team we've got Essex. Likes geeing the lads up — swears he gets home at night and slips into a baby doll to do the hoovering. It's bullshit, of course — go along with it, but still take him seriously. Truth is he's solid, the cornerstone…'

And slowly Caffery was starting to believe in the innate goodness of this drayhorse of a man. He took his cues from the way women treated Essex: like a wounded old bear — they flirted and teased him, sat on his lap and lightly slapped him for his jokes. But maybe they secretly understood that he operated from an emotional base-line deeper than their capabilities; at the age of thirty-seven DS Essex still lived alone. This awareness brought Caffery moments of guilt for the ease and lightness of his life compared to Essex's. Even now the physical inequalities proved themselves: Caffery reached Harrison's cool, ready, Essex dragged himself the last few steps to stand panting at the top, sweating and red-faced, pulling on his shirt collar and tugging at his trousers where they stuck to his legs. He took several minutes to recover.

'Ready?'

'Yup,' he nodded, wiping his forehead. 'Go on.'

Jack knocked on Harrison's door.

'What?' The voice from inside the flat was sleepy.

Caffery bent down to the letterbox. 'Mr Harrison? Barry Harrison?'

'Who wants to know?'

'Detective Inspector Caffery.' He shot a look at Essex. They could smell marijuana. 'We'd like a few words.'

A hiss, and the sound of a body rolling out of bed. Then a tap running — a toilet flushed and the door opened, the safety chain neatly bisecting a face — bulbous blue eyes and a patchy beard.

'Mr Harrison?' He flashed his card.

'What's up?'

'Can DS Essex and I come in?'

'If you tell me why, yeah.' He was thin and freckled, naked from the waist up.

'We'd like to talk to you about Shellene Craw.'

'She's not here, mate. Hasn't been for days.' He started to shut the door but Caffery leaned his shoulder into it.

'I want to talk about her, not to her.'

Harrison eyed Caffery and then Essex as if deciding who'd come out best in a scrap. 'Look, she and me, we're finished. If she's in trouble, I'm sorry, but we weren't married or nothing, see, so I ain't responsible for her.'

'We won't keep you, sir.'

'You don't give up, do you?'

'No, sir.'

'Oh for fuck's sake.' The door closed and they heard the safety lock being unhooked. 'Let's get it over with, then. Come on, come on.'

Harrison's living room was small and grubby, opening on one side to a balcony and on the other to a kitchen dotted with pallid spider plants, KFC boxes. The floor was scattered with cigarette papers and tobacco.

Caffery sat, uninvited, on a blue PVC chair near the window and folded his arms.

'When did you last see Shellene, Mr Harrison?'

'Dunno. Coupla weeks.'

'Any more specific?'

'What's she got into now?'

'A couple of weeks, is that a week or a month?'

'Can't remember.' Harrison pulled on a T-shirt and took a cigarette pack from his jeans. He stuck a Silk Cut between clenched teeth and retrieved a disposable lighter from the floor. 'It was after my birthday.'

'Which is?'

'May tenth.'

'She was living here, wasn't she?'

'You're fucking good, you are.'

'What happened?'

'I dunno, do I? She did a runner. Went out one night and never come back.' He tensed his hand and smacked its heel across the other palm, letting it shoot away towards the window. 'But that was Shellene for you. Left half her crap in the bedroom.'

'Have you still got it?'

'No, I was, you know, so pissed off I chucked it — her stripping stuff and that.'

'She was a stripper?'

'On her good days. But with Shellene it's always borderline hooking. Catch her fucking Arabs in Portland Place, did you?'

'Did you report her missing?'

Harrison clicked his tongue sarcastically. 'Missing? Missing what? A conscience?'