“What happened to the weapons, sir?” She didn’t know what made her ask this. It was the first time she had thought about them.
Lockridge looked at her — suddenly very uncomfortable.
“What are you talking about?”
“Did they go to Forensics? They might help us.”
“We’re not looking for help. You don’t seem to have grasped that fact.”
He hadn’t answered her question. She knew she was beginning to anger him beyond countenance.
“Did they go to Amelia Street, sir? His two automatic pistols? Or did we let him take his guns away when we released him?” This was her killer blow, she knew. “We didn’t just give them back to him, did we, sir?…”
“Where are you now, Constable Nashe? Since you left us?”
“The MSU, sir.”
“Lucky for you. And I’m sure they’ll be the first to tell you — don’t rock the boat. Excellent advice — I would take it.”
He left the room at the same brisk pace that he had entered.
Rita stood across the road from the triangle of waste ground on the west side of Chelsea Bridge, wondering what answers to her many questions this forgotten, tiny corner of London might have offered up. Two hundred square yards of overgrown river bank, she reckoned, yet a place that she had visited twice in a week. How unusual was that? And what could possibly be the connection between a man killing a seagull at dawn and eating it and that big ugly bastard hiding in the bushes with his two handguns? Was she going too far? Was it just strange, bizarre coincidence? Was she simply making life difficult for herself, as Sergeant Duke had implied? What had happened to those guns? But she knew the answer from Lockridge’s shifty evasions — they’d just been handed back, like personal effects, a watch, a wallet. Surely that was inexcusable? She had no other clues to follow, no way of making any link other than her own vaporous, woolly intuition…
She walked slowly across Chelsea Bridge towards the Battersea shore, wondering what she should do next. She could try and set up an audit trail on the guns…And what did the custody record say about the disposal of the prisoner? She laughed at her naivety: dream on, girl. She knew a firewall when she saw one — and this was being built higher and thicker as each hour went by — and she thought hard about what she should do, whether she could do anything. Maybe it was all pointless, maybe it was something ‘bigger’, security-related…She flipped open her mobile and called her father.
“Yes?”
“Hello, Daddy-O, it’s me. What do you want for supper?”
29
THE DOG SHAT EASILY and copiously, then did his little, funny, paw-scratching jig on the pavement before stepping away. He looked up at Jonjo — tongue out, panting — seeking approval.
“Good lad,” Jonjo said, patting his back. “Good boy. That’s my boy. Who’s a clever boy?” He was pleased to note the firm consistency of this morning’s deposit. The new diet was working like a charm, clearly. Beautiful.
“Disgusting.”
Jonjo looked round to see a woman staring at him, contempt and fury on her face.
“You got a problem, lady?” he said, pulling himself up to his full height.
“Yeah. That’s disgusting, that is,” she said. “You should pick it up and take it away with you. Absolutely disgusting.”
“You pick it up, darling,” he said. “Be my guest.”
She glared at him, said ‘disgusting’ again and stomped off.
Jonjo twitched The Dog’s lead and they walked away. He would rather rot in hell than follow his dog around with a plastic bag, picking up dog shit. Come off it, Jonjo said to himself, humans—Homo sapiens — did not crawl out of the primeval swamp and evolve, after millennia and millennia, into sentient beings that went around following their pet dogs and picking up their excrement. That was anti-Darwinian and, anyway, it was more a medicinal thing as far as he and The Dog were concerned — he needed a clean patch of pavement so he could verify how the new foodstuffs were being processed. Anybody who didn’t like it was, of course, free to express their opinion. He was more than happy to argue his side of the matter — more than happy. Nothing he couldn’t handle.
He walked The Dog down to the river, turning under the high elevation of the Dockland Light Railway and into the neat precincts of Thames Barrier Park. The grass had been recently mown, the saplings were coming along, in full healthy leaf, and a few people sat out on the decking of the small café, mums with their strollers, the usual joggers panting by. A few other dog-walkers were out and about and they nodded to each other and civilly said ‘good morning’. For a brief moment Jonjo felt he was part of a community of sorts — decent people united in their affection for and care of a dumb animal. It gave him a comforting glow inside, Jonjo admitted, as he looked out over the wide river and saw the sun flashing off the huge, burnished silver humps of the Thames Flood Barrier. Like thick gleaming shark’s fins: they were a symbol of the river’s end, he supposed — beyond the barrier the river widened into the estuary and beyond that was the sea. He had always liked living close to the river but now the Thames brought with it unwelcome associations of Adam Kindred and his own arrest and humiliation. Now he came to think of it, Kindred had spoilt the river for him — another reason for violent retribution — and he turned his back on the Thames and headed for home, his benevolent mood dissipating fast.
It had all gone annoyingly, frustratingly, worryingly quiet. Nothing, not a sign, not a peep — as if Kindred had vanished, somehow disappeared off the face of the earth. And there were other troubling signs. After two weeks of silence Jonjo had contacted the Risk Averse Group, not because he was short of money — he had plenty of money — but because he didn’t enjoy sitting at home on his arse doing nothing. He’d asked specifically to have an appointment with Major Tim Delaporte, the top man himself. He knew Major Tim — he had briefly been adjutant of 3
Para before he left the army and set up the RAG. A good man, Major Tim — tough but fair.
The appointment had been confirmed and Jonjo had travelled into the City, to the new RAG offices in a shiny glass and steel block off Lower Thames Street with a view of the Tower of London. Jonjo had suited up, polished his shoes to parade-ground brilliance and had a savage haircut. He felt both at home and out of place in the RAG offices — it was full of soldiers — men he had worked with or fought beside — but there were also many middle — class young women executives and secretaries with clipped accents that made him feel self-conscious and gauche.
He took a seat in the lobby, sitting upright on the edge of the hardest chair, keeping the creases out of his jacket. There was greenery everywhere — miniature trees and bushes and palms — and abstract paintings on the wall. Girls with long hair and high heels walked briskly across the lobby from time to time to fetch cappuccinos and espressos from the coffee machine and music — classical-lite — played softly from hidden speakers. The magazines on offer while you waited were all concerned with luxury resorts or foreign properties, full of advertisements for watches and speedboats. This was what felt wrong to Jonjo: most of the men in this part of the building were professional soldiers — between them they were responsible for hundreds, possibly thousands, of violent deaths. He thought the place should reflect this, somehow — be honest about the nature of the business transacted here — not dressed up like the office of some travel agent or poncy stockbroker or high-class dentist.
And they kept him waiting nearly an hour. The young woman on reception didn’t know who he was, either. Then he was told that Major Tim had been called away and he was to see someone called Emma Enright-Gunn. As he was led to her office his mood worsened with every step: his collar seemed suddenly to be chafing his neck, he felt uncomfortably hot, his shirt sticking to his back, his armpits flowing with sweat.