‘He’s still here,’ says Jack, yelling, ‘hey, Harley!’
Lenny holds him back, bracing her arm across the door, telling him to stay.
She looks at me. ‘You OK with this?’
I nod.
Using hand signals, she sends me towards the kitchen, while she skirts the opposite wall, heading in the direction of the ringtone. The flat isn’t large. Light from the living room spills across the linoleum floor of the kitchen. It creates a diagonal across the legs of a bearded young man sitting in a chair, facing away from me. His wrists and ankles are bound together with plastic ties.
‘Harley?’ I say, stepping around him. His head is cocked to one side and his eyes and mouth are open. For a moment, I think he might say something, but a garrotting wire has severed his windpipe.
Lenny’s name gets caught in my throat. I turn. She’s in the doorway. My shock registers on her face.
‘Ambulance?’ she asks.
I shake my head.
She steps into the room and pulls me away, raising her phone to her mouth. I catch only some of the words. ‘Deceased. Male. Homicide. Forensics.’
I keep seeing flashes of Harley’s face, particularly his bulging eyes and twisted mouth. There were paintbrushes in the sink. He was rinsing them when someone knocked on the door. He answered. The visitor had a police badge. Harley invited him inside. Turned his back.
I move through the other rooms. Most have been recently painted and some are still covered with dust sheets. The smallest of the bedrooms has a single bed and a clothing rail hung with shirts and trousers. This is where Hamish Whitmore was living. It has a small desk squeezed into the corner beneath the lone window. The drawers have been pulled out and searched. Empty manila folders are scattered on the floor. A laptop power cord is plugged into the socket, but the computer is gone.
Whitmore had a whiteboard fixed to the wall above the desk. It has the torn corners of photographs stuck beneath Sellotape. Hand-drawn lines make connections between the missing images. Some have names written beneath them. Samantha Doyle, Abbie Harper, Arjan Kulpa – all victims of Eugene Green. The other names are not familiar. Gina Messud and Patrick Comber. Missing maybe. Unsolved crimes.
I scan the whiteboard, wishing I had some table, or list of contents, to explain what it means. Without the photographs and other notes, the arrows have no context or meaning. It’s then I notice a new name, written in the bottom left-hand corner. Linked by a single red line, the words read:
Angel Face.
London.
2013.
8
Cyrus
The clock on the dashboard of the police car has ticked past midnight. Blue flashing lights are strobing across nearby yards and parked vehicles. Jack is sitting in the back seat, holding his head.
‘We’ve known each other since primary school. We grew up two streets apart. We shared our first beer. Went to our first concert …’
‘Is Harley married?’ I ask.
‘Not yet.’ The words catch in his throat. ‘He and his girlfriend, Nicole, were going on a holiday next month to Sri Lanka. Harley was going to propose on Hikkaduwa Beach at sunset. He showed me the ring.’ Jack drops his head. ‘Oh, fucking fuck! Who’s going to tell her?’ He opens the side door and spits into the gutter, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve.
Lenny emerges from the block of flats, her hands thrust deep in her pockets. She jogs across the road.
‘I’m going to be a while,’ she says, addressing me. ‘I’ll get someone to drop you at your car.’
‘What about me?’ asks Jack.
‘You should go back to the Whitmore house. Be with your wife.’
I step out of the car and pull Lenny further away. Her features are set hard as though fixed by a wind change. A double murder with all the hallmarks of a professional hit. Trouble.
‘What was in those files?’ I ask. ‘Whitmore must have stumbled upon something.’
‘By sun-up this will be someone else’s case,’ she says. ‘The grown-ups will want to take it over. Xcalibre most likely.’
‘What if it’s not gang-related?’
‘Not much happens in Manchester without the gangs knowing or being involved.’
‘You saw the whiteboard. He was investigating Eugene Green.’
‘That case was closed.’
‘Why would a retired detective be interested in a convicted paedophile without a friend in the world?’
Lenny isn’t biting. Normally, she appreciates having a fresh set of eyes on a case – someone who isn’t the police or a lawyer – but this time she doesn’t want me involved.
‘It wouldn’t make him popular with his old colleagues,’ I say.
‘A copper didn’t do this.’
‘He had a warrant card.’
‘Maybe,’ she grunts. There is a sharpness in her tone. I’ve noticed it before whenever I’ve questioned the integrity or behaviour of the police. She circles the wagons, defending her own.
I want to talk about the names written on the whiteboard. Six children. Three of them were known victims of Eugene Green. Two other names I didn’t recognise, but they’re most likely missing children. The last name was Angel Face. I’ve read Evie Cormac’s files – there are volumes of them – and none of them mentions Eugene Green.
Lenny signals a young uniformed officer, giving him orders to take us back to Eileen Whitmore’s house and then drop me at my car, which is still at the warehouse where Hamish Whitmore died.
Jack and I ride in silence until we reach the house. The lights are still on downstairs. As the car slows, the curtains open and a pregnant silhouette is framed by the light of the bay window.
‘I knew she’d be awake,’ says Jack.
‘When is she due?’
‘Any day now.’ He hesitates before opening the car door. ‘What do I tell her?’
‘The truth. She’ll find out anyway.’
‘Did Hamish ever talk about Eugene Green – why he had doubts?’
‘He said it was like a puzzle that had to be solved. Not like a jigsaw. He saw it more as a Rubik’s Cube, you know, where you have to keep turning the sides and trying all the combinations, until the colours line up.’
‘He secured Green’s conviction.’
‘It was the biggest case of his career, but he wouldn’t let it rest. When Green died, Hamish went along to the funeral. Nobody else bothered showing up except for Green’s mum and some bloke she’s living with. Hamish talked to her afterwards. She wasn’t angry. She knew Eugene had done terrible things, but she said that somebody had twisted his mind. Manipulated him.’
‘All mothers make excuses for their children.’
‘Hamish thought so too, but she begged him to visit her and he came back with a box of stuff, convinced that he’d missed something.’
‘What stuff ?’
Jack’s shoulders lift and drop.
‘Whatever it was, he said it was too big for him. There were too many pieces. Too many players. Every time he followed a strand, it branched off into another six different directions.’
The front door opens. Suzie stands with one hand on her hip and the other on her stomach.