‘She said she’d give him ten, but she only had the twenty pound note and she was asking who could change it. She’d just been paid. It was her pay. He was acting like he was ready to get pretty rough with her — and she just let him take the twenty quid.’

  ‘And the second time you saw him?’

  ‘Second time she wasn’t here and he started threatening everyone in the bar, trying to find out where she was. The landlord had to phone the police, but of course he left before they got here.’

  ‘Between the 4th of August and the 5th of September, Mr Melies was detained by the police in Sao Paulo after his involvement in a street brawl. Did you know that?’

  ‘No, I’d no idea.’

  ‘So who else did you suspect, Mr Kendrick?’

  ‘Maybe that’s too strong a way of putting it. But I didn’t much like the sound of the people she was working for — some agency it was — sounded a bit shady to me.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘They warned her not to talk about her work to anyone. She had this stuff to translate and she wasn’t supposed to tell anyone what was in it. But sometimes I could see it bothered her. She used to say she wanted to leave, but she couldn’t earn as much anywhere else because she didn’t have a typing speed. So it was twelve quid a week for bar work or the dole, basically.’

  ‘The people Sabina Melies worked for were the Spanish embassy, Mr Kendrick. Confidentiality is a condition for all their employees.’

  Kendrick, who had been mild mannered so far, suddenly kicked the leg of his chair. ‘Are you just trying to make a fool of me? Why do you ask me about things you already know?’

  Macready made a discreet gesture to silence Latham and cut in.

  ‘I apologise, Mr Kendrick. Your recollections are important and no discourtesy was intended. Please continue. There was someone else you had a suspicion about, was there?’

  ‘Sort of. It was a week or so before — before she got killed. She came in with this bloke — I can’t remember his name, or whether she even told me it. Said he’d been part of a commune she’d stayed in for a while when she was living in California. He’d just come back. He wanted her to put him up for a few days, but she was obviously very uncomfortable about it, which wasn’t like her. He had a drink with her for about half an hour then he went off on his own and she came and talked to me. She was all jittery. First of all she wouldn’t say anything about him, then after a couple more whiskies she said something like — I can’t remember the exact words — but it was like, this bloke was into the dark stuff. I asked what she meant and she said some of those communes had gone bad. And I said, is that why you left? And she said yes. Then she said — and here I do remember the exact words: “They got in deep shit”. So I tried to probe a bit more — asked what was she scared of. I suppose I was a bit intrigued, really. All that Charlie Manson stuff came to mind, you know? But when I brought that up she started laughing. She seemed a bit hysterical in fact, so I dropped it. But she asked if she could stay with me that night.’

  Latham came in again. ‘So was that the first time you slept with her?’

  Kendrick’s mouth twitched. ‘No. The first time was a few months previous, shortly after I met her. I was a convenience. I didn’t really mind.’

  ‘Can you describe this man who upset Miss Melies?’ asked Macready quietly.

  Kendrick took a deep breath. ‘That’s hard. Shaggy hair. The rats’ tails look, you know? Kind of dirty brown. I’d say he was quite tall. Five eleven or so. Quite thin. It was a warm night, but he wore a duffle coat, I remember that. He was the edgy type — moved his hands and feet a lot, like people do when they’re on speed, but he seemed very focused, which people usually aren’t when they’re on speed.’

  ‘Did you notice the colour of his eyes?’

  ‘Couldn’t be sure. I had the impression they were dark eyes. Once he looked at me, when I stepped over his legs on my way to the toilet. Dark eyes, pale face — that’s about the best I can do, I’m afraid.’

  ‘And you really cannot recollect the name?’

  ‘I keep thinking about that. And the more I go over it in my mind, the surer I am that Sabina didn’t say what his name was.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Kendrick,’ said Macready firmly, as Latham looked ready to launch into another line of questioning. ‘If you do think of anything further about this man, or about what Miss Melies said to you concerning him, please let us know immediately. Now. We would like to see upstairs, please, and inspect your gardens at closer quarters.’

  Kendrick seemed to be hesitating about making a move. He hunched his shoulders and looked down at the table. Macready prompted.

  ‘Mr Kendrick? Is there anything else you’d like to mention?’

  ‘Maybe. Just one thing. I may be wrong, mind you. Your memory can do funny things sometimes, you know? And I’ve been asked that many questions about what I remember, I sometimes wonder if — Well, anyway. Sabina was sitting with this guy over there.’ He pointed to a bench on the far side of the room. ‘They were in some kind of conversation, but they certainly weren’t talking loud. I was collecting the glasses, so I had to pass them to fetch a couple from that table, just in front of them. And I heard their voices, but I didn’t recognise any of the words they said. I thought they were talking in Spanish.’

  17

  Sometimes Walker spoke in the night, waking him with the close-up sound of his voice. Sometimes the voice was part of a dream, but not always. This time he heard it so clearly that it woke him, but he did not catch its words. That bothered him. He sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed.

  ‘What?’ he said. ‘What?’

  The voice hung there in the darkness, waiting.

  He pulled on some jeans and a coat, put the things he needed in a bag that could be slung over his shoulder and left.

  Outside, the air was almost still and the world had got larger, as if the sky had swollen, above the hulks of the empty warehouses. Walker’s steps were silent for a time and sped fast until he reached Borough High Street, where two late drinkers swerved out from the edge of the footpath, their arms around each other. These he followed, one footfall at a time.

  ‘Here! Who’s that behind us?’

  One of the men wheeled around, pulling out of the embrace. Another footfall echoed.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  The other man, dazed with drink, swam on the spot and offered slurred words of reassurance. ‘Aint nubuddy, you pissy ole tyke. Nubuddy here.’

  They came together again and continued on their way. Walker stepped lightly, allowing an occasional scrape against the dirt to keep the attention, but as they crossed towards St Thomas Street, the echo came again and built until it rebounded from all the blank-eyed, empty buildings.

  ‘I said,’ The voice cracked as it strained for emphasis. ‘I’m asking you, who the bloody hell are you? Where the bloody hell—’

  Walker appeared in front of him for a moment, smiled and was gone from sight again.

  ‘Bloody hell. Who was that, then? Did you see that? That’s the bloody devil, that is. I swear I seen the bloody devil.’

  The second man said no recognisable words, but shook and gibbered and wrapped his arms around his chest.

  Walker continued his journey. Three in the morning. London was awake twenty-three hours a day but this was the hour when the city stopped. He could walk down the middle of London Bridge, between Southwark Cathedral and Magnus the Martyr, with only one set of passing headlights to distract him as he looked out across the black water. The deaths of London were many and varied, but of all of them the black water was the easiest. He could see it again turning to a soup of corpses here, but he was not interested. The barrier between life and death had to be made to flame bright, to roar and dazzle, so the eye might be satisfied with seeing and the ear with hearing. He passed the Monument. Remembrance of things past. But for Walker there was no past. He saw the inferno of Pudding Lane rage around him and ash float in the air like swarming moths. Fire was a stronger death than water, but lives were best plucked one at a time, albeit in close succession when the occasion offered. That way the terror could be seen to pass from one to the other.

  Walker could cut across time, or move in it and with it. Step by step. Step by step up Gracechurch and into Bishopsgate, up Bishopsgate across London Wall, and on, house by house, each house with its hearing walls, waiting to be entered. But he ignored them.

  In Brushfield Street, where he turned east, deserted shops and houses presented their blank faces on either side of him; everything failed here, on the border between two worlds. On the other side of the line, those who knew how to survive on the poisoned ground were no shopkeepers. Ahead of him loomed the massive body of the church, its steeple gashing the purple sky its shoulders braced against the timid structures huddled around it. It was a different species from them. He’d once heard a story about the building of the church. Its foundations were dug in the plague pit, and the mason’s son was killed in a fall from the steeple. Turn.

  At the end of Brushfield, the road was strewn with cabbage leaves and other vegetable refuse from Spitalfields markets, shown up in the light spill from the Ten Bells. He came to a stop in Hanbury Street. Here there were no street lights and the darkness thickened in layers between the roofline of the cramped houses and the ground.

  Jack had found Annie Chapman in Hanbury Street and she had found Jack. Leather apron. You’d need a leather apron for that sort of work. Walker laughed out loud, cracking the silence.

  The place was a little further along, on the left, near the crossroads with Brick Lane, on a section of the pavement that was lined with rusting sheets of corrugated iron. Nothing marked the spot. So, opening the bag, he began preparations to rectify that.

  Afterwards, retracing his steps a short way, he cut through via Wilkes into Fournier Street and skirted the vast blank side wall of the church. On this he had to leave something to keep the fuzz buzzing while he went about his real work a bit further away. He enjoyed the movements of the brush over the smooth stone. It was as if the design he knew so well was already there, waiting to be brought to the surface line by line.

  When he had finished the job, he packed the bag and walked across the road, and along Brushfield into Crispin Street, a narrow passageway to which a new concrete building showed its back, filling the spaces where there was once a sick mess of dives and alleyways.

  This was where Jack got Mary Kelly and made his last work. If you closed your eyes, the whole scene was still there, the filthy mess in the little stinking room, floating in the dark. It was meaningless, doing that to a body: spreading it all over the walls like that, making the face into a hash, trying to get an effect with a botched disembowelling and ending up with something you might come across in any abattoir. Mary Kelly was Jack’s last scene. After that, Walker had done with him. Took him to the river and made an end.

  He had already decided what to do here and it didn’t take him long. When he’d finished, he packed up again and set off for the other side of Jack’s mile. That’s what they called it now, but it was Walker’s long before it was Jack’s.

  The alleyways were guarded by iron posts, to prevent cars from entering. You could get the bike through here, but that wouldn’t be smart. Artillery Lane skewed at an unexpected angle, as if to confound horses and bikes, and the uneven brick paving was no friend to either. He stopped. This was where it all began, the sprouting warren of misaligned alleyways in which human low-life germinated like some outgrowth of the dirt. He stood there, feeling the shapes of the stones against the soles of his shoes, sensing the static in the air, trying to gauge the direction of the current. When he turned slightly so he was facing towards the church, he lost it, but another quarter turn and the charge travelled clean through him so his fingers tingled and the soles of his feet were hot. Yes, this was the axis, running diagonally across the mile, between Hanbury and Mitre Square.

  Coming out onto Bishopsgate again, he looked up at the darkened windows and smiled. Nothing going on behind those. Bodies lying asleep, having dreams that told them nothing, showed them nothing, all through the dead hours. He turned into Houndsditch, a wider road that looked as if it belonged in the twentieth century, and passed two cars, the first traffic he’d encountered since he entered the mile.

  More cars were turning through from both ends of the road as he cut across to Duke’s Place, back into the last chopped off corner of the old world.

  18

  ‘Spitalfields,’ said Macready. His pronunciation of the word was dry-mouthed and precise. ‘We are going to pay a visit to Christchurch in Spitalfields, where it appears someone has made a copy of the art work we found in Gresham. A painting, I’m told, on the church wall. The constable in the office took a call from a Mr Fisher, the sexton, who was instructed to notify us by Whitechapel Station. Williams, check the call please and find out who Fisher spoke to at Whitechapel. Palgrave, get the soco team on the case. Latham, we will go ahead in the first car. It is time to be up and doing, as my mother used to say.’

  I don’t blame her, Briony thought. Having spent most of Sunday sitting in Macready’s office listening to interview tapes and picking over the case notes with Steve on one side of her sucking smoke into his lungs and Palgrave on the other making strange shapes with his bony hands, she was thinking she’d be crawling up the walls if she had to spend another morning in there. Even the work in the files seemed like a refreshing prospect by comparison. Not that they hadn’t been working — the level of concentration Latham and Macready maintained as they went back and forth over some detail or other made her head ache — but it was such a claustrophobic way of doing things.

  The investigation seemed to be heading everywhere and nowhere, with too many clues producing leads in too many different directions and Macready was determined to get to what he called ‘the nub of the case’. She still hadn’t managed to interest him in the story of Mathew Quin.

  ‘It is 8.30, so we will still have to contend with rush hour traffic. Williams, you can follow us with Palgrave after you have spoken direct with Mr Fisher. Be sure to instruct him to leave everything untouched.’

  Briony went to the front desk in search of a London telephone directory, wondering whether she should look under Church of England, or parish churches, or what, when a very young looking constable in a gleaming new uniform came out from one of the administrative offices.

  ‘Inspector Williams? I’ve got a telephone number here I’m supposed to give you. For the sexton at Christchurch.’

  ‘Ah, good! Was it you who took the call?’

  ‘That’s right. He sounded quite distressed, poor man. Said they’d had an anonymous tip-off. It was hard to get a word in edgeways, actually. You can use the phone just there on the left.’

  Briony copied the number into her notebook before dialling it. Fisher answered the call himself.

  ‘Police, you say? I thought they’d be here by now, not ringing me up with a lot of silly questions. It’s a terrible mess here. Worse than last week. And I can’t find Reverend Burroughs, which is very unusual. I see him every morning at eight in the rectory, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone there.’

  ‘Superintendent Macready is already on his way to you, Mr Fisher,’ said Briony. ‘You mentioned some kind of tip-off to the officer you spoke to first.’

  ‘Somebody rang up about a quarter to eight just when I was having my breakfast. He said there was a message for us in Fournier Street. So I went out there — and — well, I hope I never see another message like that.’

  ‘Did he say anything else?’

  ‘That was it. Put the phone down. So I went straight across to the rectory — then, when I couldn’t find Reverend Burroughs, I phoned the police in Whitechapel and when I told them what it was I seen on the church wall, they said to phone you.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Fisher. We’ll be with you very soon. We need to be sure no one interferes with the site before we get there, so please keep watch for us.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll be keeping a watch all right, but I need to find Reverend Burroughs. I wondered if he might have gone into the church. It’s kept locked, you see, because there’s structural damage and we can’t afford to repair it so it’s too dangerous to have people in there. That’s the state things are in, you see, in this country.’

  ‘Is the church locked now?’

  ‘Yes. Yes. I told you. It’s always locked. But what if he went in there and locked the door behind him and had an accident or something. He could have gone in there to check everything was all right, or something, see. If he’d got the same kind of a phone call, I was thinking, that’s what he most probably would have done. But I can’t get in there now, because it’s a heavy bolted lock and we’ve only got the one key.’

  ‘All right, Mr Fisher. We’ll check the church as soon as we get there. Who did you speak to at Whitechapel Station?’

  ‘Several people. They hand you round from pillar to post there. Last time I had to phone them up about the vandalism — they made me explain it to three different people. Then it took them two days before they got around to paying us a visit. Apparently they weren’t interested in obscenities and splashed paint, but this is somethink different.’

  Briony was looking at her watch and getting anxious about how long this was taking. She tried to keep the impatience out of her voice.

  ‘Just briefly, Mr Fisher, can you tell me who at Whitechapel Station told you to contact us here at Vine Street?’

  ‘Inspector something or other. I didn’t get the name. He said to give the details and tell them to inform Superintendent Macready.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Fisher. We’ll be there very soon.’

  Briony went in search of Palgrave and found him on the phone in the incident room, giving instructions about who was to do what, then ticking them off in a small black notebook with an improbably short stub of pencil, which he licked each time he’d made a mark with it. It took a particular kind of person to hang onto a pencil long enough for it to get that short, thought Briony. In fact, there were very few pencils around that were less than half the length of a new one. So what happened to all those half used pencils? When he’d finished the call, Palgrave tucked the stub into the elastic band on his notebook and deposited them in the upper pocket of his jacket.

 

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