The doctor at University College Hospital had told her that if Liberty DuCaine’s neck wound had been a centimetre lower, it would have been over his jawbone. The tip of the weapon would have been deflected and prevented from going into his brain. Instead it had slid straight up, tearing into his temporal lobe. Longbright had spent the weekend trying to imagine what she could have done differently. But there was no use in wondering, because they were all at fault; they had fatally underestimated the capabilities of their suspect.
“What do you think you’re doing?” demanded a large Caribbean woman, watching her from the damp archway.
“I was just reading the tributes on the flowers,” said Longbright, straightening up.
“We don’t want the police here. Did you even know my son?”
“I worked with him for a while.”
The older woman examined the badge on Longbright’s jacket. “He wasn’t at your unit for very long.”
“No, but we brought him in on a number of special investigations before he joined full-time.” Longbright held her ground. She had heard about Liberty’s mother, and knew what to expect. “I’m sure you’d rather not have anyone from the PCU here, Mrs DuCaine, but I counted myself as a close friend.”
“How close?” Mrs DuCaine gave her a hard stare before approaching the floral display with a weary sigh. She bent with difficulty and tidied the tributes with the air of a woman who needed something useful to do. “If you want to be here, I suppose I should accept with grace. There’s too much bad blood in the world.”
“Thank you.”
She stood with a grimace, sizing Longbright up. “I’m as much to blame as anyone. I encouraged Liberty to enter the force. We all did. But I didn’t want him joining that crazy unit of yours. Most of his friends were against it. They said it would damage his career, that it wasn’t even part of the real police.”
“There’s a lot of prejudice against us, Mrs DuCaine. We don’t operate along traditional lines.”
“Then what do you do?”
“We look after cases of special interest. Sometimes people commit acts that can cause – unrest – in society.”
Mrs DuCaine waved the notion aside with impatience. “I don’t know what you mean by that.”
Longbright tried to think of a good example. “Suppose two people were killed in your street in one week. People would think it was a bad neighbourhood.”
“We already live in a bad neighbourhood.”
“Well, in such a situation the Peculiar Crimes Unit would be called in to find out if the deaths were connected, or if it was just coincidence. We would try to lay public fears to rest. A lot of people live and work in this city. Someone has to look after its reputation. Your son was invited to help us do that. Not many people are good enough to be asked.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better? My son ended up getting stabbed in the neck.”
“It could have happened to him anywhere, Mrs DuCaine.”
“As soon as I heard the doorbell, I knew.” She reached past Longbright and delicately replaced a card on top of a spray of yellow roses. “It was the stupidest thing. My mother had a plate, a big Victorian serving plate with scalloped edges, covered in big red roses. I dropped it. We never use that plate, it stays in the dresser and nobody touches it. But that day I used it. I remember looking at the pieces of china on the floor and thinking something just broke.”
“We’re going to catch this man. I don’t know how long it will take, but we will. He’s dangerous. He hurts people for money, and has no feelings for anyone except himself. But we’re going to take him off the street.”
Mrs DuCaine studied the array of flowers. “When someone in the police force dies, his friends are supposed to rally around him, aren’t they? No-one from Headquarters even called. Liberty’s workmates deserted him because he told them he was moving to your unit.”
“I know.”
“Well, then.” Mrs DuCaine studied the flowers with dry eyes. “There’s nothing more to say.”
Longbright knew she was being dismissed. She turned to leave.
“Take one of the yellow roses,” said Mrs DuCaine, unexpectedly. “It was his favourite colour.”
Longbright selected a rose and turned, to see two horribly familiar figures looming out of the misty rain. With the arrival of Bryant and May, it became obvious that a police presence at the crematorium was not a good idea. One officer was acceptable, but three looked defensive. The rest of DuCaine’s friends and relatives were emerging from the chapel into the cramped anteroom to mourn their lost brother, and a demarcation line quickly developed. DuCaine’s father fired a baleful stare toward the detectives, who moved back onto the porch.
“I thought you weren’t going to come today,” said Longbright, displeased to see them.
“We knew him for years,” May reminded her. “We couldn’t just stay away.”
“And I thought there was a chance you know who might turn up to gloat,” Bryant added, “so I made John come with me.”
“All right, but please don’t say anything to the family.” She knew only too well how Bryant’s condolences had a habit of turning out.
Bryant thrust his hands deep into his pockets and watched as DuCaine’s relatives moved slowly between the wreaths, reading the cards, rearranging flowers, conferring in low tones. “You know as well as I do that every arrest contains an element of risk,” he told his partner.
“We should have covered all eventualities,” said May.
“We couldn’t, John. The lock on that door should have been strong enough to hold him.”
“But it wasn’t. And that’s an oversight on our part.”
Mr Fox’s weapon of choice was a slender sharpened rod that left virtually no trace of use. Using a skewer to pick the lock of the holding room and attack DuCaine seemed bizarre at first, but the more Bryant thought about it, the more expedient the method became. Their killer had been raised on the streets of King’s Cross, where for many carrying a knife was still considered a necessity of teenage life. But knives were carried to provide a display of defence, not for efficiency of attack. Mr Fox had streamlined the concept, making his weapon easy to hide. The effect of punching it through the neck into the brain was swift and lethal, like causing a stroke. In this case it had worked despite the fact that their young officer’s sharp reflexes made him a difficult target.
May watched as DuCaine’s mother leaned heavily on her husband’s shoulder, staring down at a wreath from the PCU. “They’ll come over if we stay any longer,” he whispered to his partner, leading him away. “We have to go, Arthur. The rest of the family’s coming out.”
Emerging from the chapel were Liberty DuCaine’s grandparents; several aunts and uncles; his brother, Fraternity, and his attractive young sister, named, with a certain amount of grim inevitability, Equality.
“Presumably she doesn’t actually call herself that,” Bryant mused.
“They call her Betty – apparently it was her grandmother’s name.” The pair could replicate Holmes and Watson’s old trick of picking up each other’s unspoken thoughts. After so many decades together, it was second nature.
“Look out, the family’s finished, let’s get out of here,” said Bryant, heading for the crematorium car park. “One tough old Caribbean bird in my life is more than enough, thank you.”
“You’d be lost without Alma and you know it,” said May. Bryant’s former landlady Alma was currently spending her days at the town hall, where she was defending the pair’s right to stay in their Chalk Farm home. The building had been scheduled for demolition. Bryant was meant to have gone with her, but he’d had his hands full for the last few days. The Unit’s investigations rarely proved finite; many had unforeseen loose ends that dragged on long after the cases had been officially closed. As a consequence, Bryant had been staying late through his weekends. There were times, May knew, when his partner used work to avoid his other responsibilities.