The detective walked over to the table where a small, battered suitcase had been opened and some items of clothing were placed in evidence bags.
‘Nobody handled these?’ he asked the Soco officer who stood beside the table.
‘Just me.’
‘Good.’
The detective turned back to Emily Wood. ‘And there was no identification on him? No wallet? Nothing?’
‘No, sir, just that card.’
She pointed to a smaller evidence bag. DI Hamilton picked it up and looked at the card. It showed a picture of a medieval man hanging by his one foot from a T-shaped tree. Red hose, blue jerkin and a yellow corona around his head. The Hanged Man.
‘Tarot card, sir,’ said Emily Wood.
‘I can see that.’
‘Major Arcana.’
‘You know about this kind of stuff?’
‘A little, sir. My mother is very into it.’
‘What does it signify?’
‘Do you think it is important?’ asked her colleague.
DI Hamilton shrugged. ‘I have absolutely no idea. It’s what we detectives do, Constable. Find clues. See what they mean.’
‘He killed himself. He jumped in front of a train. No one saw him pushed. And there were lots of people there. It’s no great mystery.’
‘I tell you what, Constable. Why don’t you do your job and let me do mine?’
‘I was just saying—’
‘Well, don’t,’ Tony interrupted him. ‘Just button it! Go on, Emily, tell me more.’
The constable grinned, as much at her colleague’s scowling face as flirting with the detective.
‘It’s a Major Arcana card, sir.’
‘Which means?’
‘Well, there are two types of card in the tarot deck. Major and minor arcana. Bit like in an ordinary deck, with the court cards and the ordinary cards.’
‘So what does the Hanged Man signify?’
‘It’s really to do with being in a hiatus, sir. A suspension, if you like. Spiritually. When the man is righted, everything will be different.’
‘It was certainly different for him.’
‘It certainly was,’ she agreed.
‘And there was just female clothing in the case?’
‘Yes, sir,’ the forensic officer nodded.
‘So our John Doe was a transvestite?’
‘Looks that way, sir,’ added Constable Wood.
‘Couldn’t live with it, so he jumped in front of the seven-thirty Bakerloo Line to Harrow and Wealdstone.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure,’ said the scene-of-crime officer.
‘Go on?’
‘The underwear, sir. Female.’
‘Yes.’
‘Semen stains, by the looks of it. And blood, sir.’
‘I see.’
‘What does it mean?’ asked Emily Wood.
Detective Inspector Hamilton flashed her a mirthless smile. ‘I have absolutely no idea,’ he said.
5
May Bank Holiday …
JASON KELLING SHIFTED into fourth gear and put his foot down. He was driving along the Western Avenue at one o’clock in the morning. He had been out clubbing, but hadn’t exceeded the alcohol limit. He was very careful like that. He was exceeding the speed limit, though.
He felt the adrenaline pumping through his veins as the speedometer dial reached the 100 mph point. He leaned his head back and shouted, gripping the wheel tightly, feeling the car — a Porsche Boxter in midnight-black — still accelerating.
Ten minutes later as he tried to brake and couldn’t, he was shouting again, this time the shout turning into a scream. The wreckage was strewn over fifty yards.
A week later, Jennifer and Jeremy Carling were seated at the kitchen table of their modest semidetached house in Northwood Hills, west London. He was a retired milkman and she was a retired nursery-school teacher. They were both in their seventies.
A bottle of vodka was on the table, together with two shot glasses and a bottle of Jennifer Carling’s newly prescribed sleeping pills. She had been diagnosed with clinical depression, and the pills were supposed to be a short-term measure to help her sleep while more thorough therapy was put in place for her. It was a short-term solution that provided a long-time answer.
They looked at the person who was standing in the doorway to the kitchen and, if they were hoping for sympathy in the eyes that gazed upon them, they were sorely disappointed.
‘You can do it this way, or I can make it painful for you.’
‘But why are you doing this? We don’t know you. We’ve never met you. We never hurt you.’
The elderly woman’s voice cracked as she burst into tears. Her husband patted her hand. Then he poured vodka into the shot glass and poured some pills into his wife’s open palm. He looked up at the woman, angry now as he tilted the bottle into his mouth, then swallowed the pills with the vodka. His wife swallowed hers a few at a time, her throat constricting painfully as the harsh spirit burned her throat. The man took another shot of vodka and downed it in one, then glared at the figure in the doorway.
‘Fuck you!’ he said.
‘No,’ came the reply. ‘Not me.’
Half an hour later and the couple were dead. Heads slumped motionless on the table. A card between them, face-up.
A tarot card. Major Arcana. The Lovers.
Part One
6
The present. Friday, 19 December
NIGHT-TIME IN THE city.
Seven-thirty. Friday evening. Inner London. The western edges. North of the river. The air had crystals dancing in it. The pavements sparkled with them, as if a dusting of magic had been sprinkled over them. The night sky had clouds half-covering the low moon. A moon that broke free, now and again, from the long, floating fingers of dark cloud that tried to snaggle it in their grasp, reel it back to them. But the moon shrugged them off, sailed free like a galleon under full sail. Further east, however, even darker clouds were massing and banking together, rolling ever westwards towards London, like a slow tidal wave.
On the streets of Oxford Street and Regent Street, of Piccadilly and Haymarket, the crowds still thronged. Couples and singles laden down with packages, gift-wrapped from Fortnum & Mason, from Selfridges and Hamleys. The golden light spilling from the ornate window displays in the shop fronts onto the faces of the happy shoppers. Office workers en masse, arms linked and singing. The air rich with a heady melange of sound, traffic, laughter, taxis hooting, the swirl and cacophonous dance of carol music competing with one another as doors were opened and closed.
Christmas.
A time for sharing and love. For wassailing and mistletoe, for mulled wine and mince pies. A time for peace and goodwill to all men — whatever their religion.
At least that was the theory. Some people, however, hadn’t got the memo. Some people had other agendas — and goodwill to their fellow man was nowhere on their list. For in the hearts of some, even at Christmas (especially sometimes at Christmas), there is a black wickedness that defines humanity every bit as accurately as the charity in the hearts of good men and women.
Light and dark. Yin and yang.
Life and death.
Holland Park. Eight o’clock Friday evening
Jack Delaney sat on the edge of his daughter Siobhan’s bed.
Her head was propped back on the pillow and her eyes were tired, threatening to close at any minute, but she blinked them determinedly, keeping herself awake.