Lucas sees them too. 'No,' he whispers, his voice laced with real pain.
He steps forward and tugs open the passenger door. Hot, fetid air wafts out as Snowy comes into view properly. Lucas moans. I gasp. Neither of us, I think, can believe what we're seeing.
A long, deep slice runs across Snowy's throat, pretty much from ear to ear, the pale flabby flesh hanging open like a burst seam. The wound's still leaking thick streams of arterial blood onto the shirt, so much so that I know it's a leaf-green colour only by looking at the material directly above the waistband of his trousers. There's more blood on the dashboard, as well as the drops on the lower end of the windscreen where it must have spurted. On his lap, perched on the protruding zipper of his fly, is the tracking device I saw Lucas insert into the lining of the briefcase. It's a tiny black thing, very close in colour to the leather of the case. Almost impossible to spot, I thought at the time, as I recall did Lucas, but it's clear we were both wrong because someone has not only spotted it, they've spotted the tail as well, and decided to do something about it very quickly, very decisively and, of course, very brutally.
Even so, it's a clean killing. Someone's come up to the car unnoticed, leaned in the window, grabbed him by his mop of snow-white hair with a gloved hand, and used the other to inflict a single cut from a very sharp knife or razor without him having a chance to react or cry out. This place may be quiet, but it's hardly the dead of night, and it takes some serious balls to do what the killer did. And Snowy's no easy target either. He's an ex-para who's now a private detective, so he's the kind of guy who keeps his wits about him.
But he's still dead.
'Look,' says Lucas, 'they've searched his pockets as well.' He points to his former colleague's trousers, to where the threadbare material of the lining is hanging out.
'Jesus.'
I turn away, feeling sick, reminded of Leah's dead body and the way her blood soaked through the bedclothes. I'm also thinking about the Maxwell and Spann murders Lucas and I were talking about barely fifteen minutes ago. The Vampire. Is this his work?
The sound of the kids playing only yards away seems suddenly amplified, a grotesque contrast to the sight that has just confronted me. I move a few paces away from the car, unable to breathe in the smell of death any more.
'Get back in my car,' Lucas tells me, pulling on a pair of clear plastic evidence gloves. 'I need to check something.' He clambers into Snowy's BMW and shuts the door behind him.
I don't need asking twice and, keeping my head down, I walk back and get inside, taking deep breaths to fight down the nausea I'm feeling. I've fucked up, no question, and in the light of this latest grim development, I'm left wondering what the hell I'm going to do next.
But, of course, I know the answer to that one straight away.
The door opens and Lucas jumps back in the driver's seat.
'I'm sorry,' I tell him, not really sure what else to say.
He doesn't acknowledge the comment. Instead, he tells me that Snowy's pockets are all empty. 'They've taken everything,' he adds, the expression on his face uncharacteristically grim. 'His phone, his wallet. The whole lot.'
'Which means they'll know who he works for.'
He sighs. 'It looks that way. This is a warning. It's telling us to leave well alone.'
'I know, but I can't.'
'Somehow I thought you'd say that,' he says, starting the car and reversing out of the parking space. As he drives out of the road's only exit, with his free hand he plants a cigarette firmly between his lips and lights it.
'I'm going into the warehouse,' I tell him.
'Fuck it, Tyler, don't risk it,' he mumbles through the cigarette.
'Look, Leah's dead, Snowy's dead. That case is my only lead.'
'It probably isn't even in there now,' he points out as we drive aimlessly through the back streets, moving in a rough circle round Orsman Road.
'It might not be, but there are going to be people inside who know something, and I'm still armed.'
'Listen, it'll be a lot easier and a lot safer for me to get the address and do a land registry search.'
'And you'll probably end up finding out that it belongs to some Bahamas-based offshore company, and that's not really going to tell me anything, is it?'
Lucas spits the cigarette out of the window. His hands are tight on the steering wheel, the knuckles red. There's perspiration forming in tiny droplets on the tanned, only faintly lined skin of his forehead, even though the BMW's air conditioning is blasting out on full.
I wish I hadn't involved him now, and I know he feels the same way. He wanted to help an old friend, but in one fell swoop his trusted colleague's dead and the business he's built up over years of hard work is suddenly in jeopardy, because Snowy's murder's going to get back to him. He may be sitting there dead with no ID on him and in a car I know is registered in his name rather than Martin Lukersson Associates, because I sold it to him; but even if the police are on a go-slow, they're eventually going to link Snowy with Lucas. And when that happens, when what they are working on comes out, my name's going to end up in the frame and the police are going to be looking for me. This is another reason why I feel I've got no choice but to go into the building and take my chances. Because already my time is running out.
Lucas tries hard to dissuade me as we drive round. He tells me that for a start I have no actual plan, and improvisation is hardly going to work, unless I'm prepared to kill again. And with two corpses to my name today already, do I honestly want to add any more? He also points out that the people inside may well be expecting me, knowing that there's a strong possibility I'll have discovered Snowy's body, and since I'm acting alone, and am therefore almost certain to be overpowered, that effectively means I'm a dead man. Lastly, it's going to be a lot safer to find out who we're up against using more conventional detection methods in which he is, if he says so himself, something of an expert.
He says all this in the space of about thirty seconds, and I've got to admit I'm impressed by the strength and breadth of his arguments. Unfortunately, they don't work. My mind's made up, and I don't want to hang around thinking about what might go wrong because that way something inevitably will. Soldiers should never think too much when they're going into battle, and generally they don't, which is why they still go rather than dwell on the reasonable statistical chance that death awaits them and high-tail it the other way. There's an old adage that when the bullets are flying, you never think you're going to be the one to get hit, and it's true. Which is why I tell Lucas to turn right and then right again, and soon we're driving back down Orsman Road.
As we do so, I can see that a taxi has pulled up on the road directly outside our building, and two ordinary-looking businessmen in suits emerge from it. They walk up to the black door, and one speaks into the intercom. By this time we're driving past and Lucas hisses at me not to stare. 'Look at me,' he demands. 'Casually. Like we're having a conversation.'
I do as he says.
'You never know who's watching,' he tells me, 'and we really don't want to stand out. Not after what's happened.' He takes a casual look in the rear-view mirror. 'You see, this is how we do it, using the mirrors. That way it looks natural. Right, the door's opened and those two guys have just gone in. Recognize them?'
'Never seen them before in my life.'
We're now coming to the end of Orsman Road where it meets with Kingsland Road.
'OK, drop me off at the top here,' I tell Lucas. 'I'm going to go in the back way.'
'I hope you know what you're doing,' he says, fixing me with an intense expression that accentuates his high cheekbones and Nordic features. It's a look that suits him. He has very vivid blue eyes, the colour of tropical seas in winter holiday adverts, and at the moment they're filled with what looks a lot like genuine concern.