“Body was discovered about an hour ago. There’s a doctor checking him over now.”
Tennison followed him, stepping over the heaps of rubbish and broken bottles. As they approached the gates a hand reached out, grabbing at her coat, and a slurred voice said, “Givvus a quid fer a cup o’ tea…”
Tennison stopped one of the policemen. “For chrissakes, clear them out of here!” she snapped. “Get rid of them!”
Lifting the yellow tape for her to bend under, Otley gave a half smile. “Can’t get rid of them, Guv. Each tombstone’s an allocated lodging.” He pointed. “He’s over there, by the angel. Some bloody guardian!”
He remained at the tape, watching Tennison moving through the headstones toward a huge white praying angel with a shattered wing, marble eyes raised sightlessly to heaven. Then, with his sardonic grin, Otley went out through the gates and along the street in the direction of Waterloo Bridge.
The doctor had been kneeling on a plastic sheet while he carried out his examination. He stood up, clicked his small black leather bag shut, and moved aside. Tennison peered down. In death, Martin Fletcher looked even pathetically younger and frailer than he had in life-short, brutish and nasty as that had been.
He lay on his back on the pitted tombstone, one leg bent under the other, his arms open wide. His head was tilted to one side, puffy eyelids closed in his chalk-white face, a string of saliva and vomit hanging from his half-open mouth. By his outstretched hand were two cans of lighter fluid and a two-liter plastic bottle of Woodpecker cider, empty.
I never told nobody nuffink and that is the Gawd’s truth. . .
Tennison had seen all she wanted to. She turned away, thinking that Martin Fletcher must have told somebody something, or he wouldn’t have ended up a cold lump of meat on a stone slab, fourteen years of life washed down the drain.
Otley stood at the chest-high wooden counter of the sandwich trailer not a stone’s throw from the iron trelliswork of Waterloo Bridge. It was dark now, the patch of waste ground near the trailer dimly illuminated by a sulky fire in an oil drum. A dozen or so kids sat around it, one of them holding a thin shivering mongrel on a piece of string. Cans of beer were being passed around. Somebody had his nose inside a brown paper bag, breathing heavily, then coughing and spluttering as he passed it on.
“You want ketchup? Mustard? Onions…?”
The stallholder held Otley’s hamburger in his palm. He pushed a large white mug toward Otley’s elbow. “Sugar in the tea? Milk? Top or not?”
“No top, mate,” Otley said, reaching into his pocket for change. “An’ I’ll have the rest, but easy on the ketchup, heavy on the mustard.” He plonked a pound coin and fifty-pence piece down and turned to the boy beside him. Alan Thorpe was a fresh-faced kid with jug ears and straight blond hair hacked off in ragged bangs. Otley guessed he was about thirteen.
“Who else was there that night then?”
Together they strolled, Otley munching his hamburger and sipping his mug of tea, toward the group around the fire. On the far side of the trailer, in the vast shadow cast by the bridge, Tennison slowly drew up. She wound her window down. From this distance she couldn’t hear, but she could see everything that was going on. Otley saying something that made the blond kid laugh, and Otley laughing too. Otley bending down to feed the dog some hamburger. Otley talking to the blond kid, paying close attention to what he said. And then Otley glancing up and seeing her car, the word “Shit” as discernible on his lips as if she’d heard him mutter it.
He came across, chewing the last of the hamburger, wiping his fingers on his hankerchief. He gestured.
“Come midnight they’re around this place like flies. Does a hell of a trade.”
“The boy that bit Dalton, Billy. Turns out he’s got AIDS.”
Otley stared. “Jesus Christ. How’s Dalton?”
“We don’t know yet,” Tennison said bleakly. “It’s tough.”
“Yeah, it’s tough for Billy too,” Otley said, and she was surprised by the bitterness in his voice. He leaned on the open window and nodded toward the group. “That was Jackson’s third witness, blond boy with the dog, Alan Thorpe.” He belched and covered his mouth with the back of his hand. “Says he was too pissed to remember who was at the centre the night Connie died, so that’s one alibi that’s no good.”
“You want a ride home?” Tennison asked him.
Otley hesitated, half shook his head, then changed his mind. As they drove off, the midnight blue Merc with the rusty patches that had been parked under the bridge with its lights off ghosted forward. Jackson slid out from behind the wheel. He stood running his thumb over the rings on his hand, wearing a long, beat-up leather coat that nearly reached his ankles. Pursing his fleshy lips, he gave a low whistle. The kids around the fire turned to look. Jackson whistled again. The dog was released and trotted over to him, trailing its bit of string.
Jackson knelt down, rubbing the dog’s head. He looked up, smiling.
“Alan, come here a sec.”
When nobody moved, Jackson stood up.
“ALAN!” The smile wiped from his face, he pointed. “You! Come here. Don’t mess with me, get over here.”
The group of kids shrank away as Alan Thorpe stood up and shuffled across the loose gravel. He was shuffling too slowly, and Jackson made an angry beckoning gesture.
“What was all that about?” Jackson asked softly as Alan came up. And reaching out, Alan shying away a little, Jackson ruffled the boy’s hair.
“He wanted to know about Connie,” Alan said, barely audible.
Jackson opened the passenger door. “Get in, Alan. We’re goin’ for a little ride.”
“Okay.” Alan moved forward. “What about me mates, can they come too…”
Jackson grabbed him by the back of the neck and flung him inside. He smiled. “Just you an’ me, Alan.”
Alan suddenly grinned back, eyes impish in his soft childish face. “Got a punter for me, ’ave yer?”
Jackson slammed the door.
Tennison turned off Holloway Road into the little street of neat terraced houses, each with its own few square feet of scrubby garden. Otley lived three doors from the bottom end, where the viaduct of the London to Birmingham mainline blocked off the street.
She didn’t expect him to invite her in for a coffee, and he didn’t. She wouldn’t have accepted anyway. They were reluctant colleagues, not bosom friends. He was strangely on edge. He opened the door but stayed in the car, one leg out. He looked back at her. In the streetlight his eyes were black pits, unfathomable, perhaps unknowable. She didn’t know him.
“Your real bastards are the ones that use them,” Otley said. “Can’t get to them though, can you?” Grinning at her, teeth clenched. “Especially if they got friends in high places. Dig deep enough an’ you come up against concrete… know what I mean…”
He was out fast then, slamming the door, through the squeaking gate, up the little path, not looking back. As if he’d said more than he should, shown too much of how he really felt.
Tennison drove home, too tired to bother to understand what he had been getting at. A large Bushmills and bed, that was all she wanted. Another day over, thank God.
At 9 A.M. it started all over again. The Squad Room was a cacophony of ringing phones, shouted questions, some foul language, and twenty conversations going on all at once. Updates from the night-duty staff were being passed around. Halliday was at the big notice board with Norma, who was taking him through the various lines of inquiry that were under way. Tennison had one ear to everything that was happening while she listened to Kathy. She felt to be in better shape today, her attention keener, adrenaline buzzing with the noise and activity. Down one day, on a high the next, it was puzzling.