John Harvey: Good Bait

The face looked back up at her from beneath the ice. Dead eyes, unblinking, their focus defused as if through bottled glass. Off to one side, a small covey of ducks, uncomprehending, shuffled this way and that. In places, Karen Shields thought, the skin would have stuck fast: the forehead, the bridge of the nose, the chin. Little doubt the substance that had pooled close alongside the head, then frozen, was blood. That wanker, she thought, the artist — what was his name? — a small fortune for slicing animals in half and shoving them on display, pickled in formaldehyde.

Officers in protective clothing were cordoning off the path that ran down between the ponds with tape, no urgency now, time theirs to take. A brace of early runners stymied in their tracks, hats and gloves, jogged up and down, looking on; Karen could see their breath bobbing in the air.

When the call had come through she’d fumbled uneasily awake, mobile falling between her fingers and down on to the bed.

‘Hey!’ A shout as she leaned her elbow against something soft in the shape alongside. ‘Hey! Go easy, yeah? Chill.’

She had almost forgotten he was there.

She spoke briefly into the phone then listened, the man beside her moving grudgingly to give her room, whatever was tattooed between shoulder blade and neck starting to fade into the natural darkness of his skin. She wondered if she would pick him out again in a crowded bar. If she would want to.

‘Twenty minutes,’ she said into the phone. ‘Thirty, tops.’ No way she was leaving without a shower.

‘What’s all the fuss?’ the man asked.

Scooping up his shirt and trousers from near the end of the bed, she tossed them at his head. ‘Dressed, okay?’

She arrived as the Crime Scene manager and his team were assembling: no agreement as yet on the best way to free the body from the ice. Someone from the Coroner’s Office would decide.

Where the ground rose up beyond the pond’s edge, threads of trees were laced against the sky. Christmas in four days. No, three. Presents bought for her family in Jamaica but still not sent. Come spend it with us, her sister had said, Lynette, the one in Southend with the twins. You don’t want to spend Christmas on your own.

‘Ma’am.’ Without his helmet, the young PC barely topped her shoulder. ‘The Chief Super, he wants a word.’

Karen looked up.

Burcher was standing on the broad slope of path that led on to the Heath, beyond the point where the route for entry and exit to the scene was marked. Overcoat unbuttoned, green wellingtons protecting the trousers of his suit, pale yellow gloves. Detective Chief Superintendent Anthony Burcher, previously with Covert Intelligence and now head of Homicide and Serious Crime Command. Twenty-four Homicide teams under his control, one of them hers.

‘What the hell’s he doing here?’ Karen asked.

No reply.

Burcher stood with one glove removed, as if he might want to shake her hand. Waiting for her to come to him.

‘All under control?’

‘Sir.’

‘No idea yet, of course, who …?’

Karen shook her head.

‘Yes, well …’ His gaze slipped past her, attention caught for a moment by something at the farther side of the pond. ‘I was in the area, last night, friends. Picked up the call first thing.’

There were more people gathering now, peering interestedly before being moved on: cyclists on their way to work, solitary walkers, joggers, people with dogs, too many dogs. The gravel was deeply freckled with frost.

‘Much on your plate right now, Chief Inspector?’

Her plate. Oh, yes. A double murder for starters. Holloway. Mother and child. The mother only seventeen, little more than a child herself. Battered, then stabbed: edge of a stool, underside of a saucepan, a kitchen knife, whatever had been to hand. The child, a girl, suffocated with pillows, three years old. The estranged father had been seen hammering on the door of the flat two days before. ‘I’ll kill you, you bloody bitch! Bloody kill you!’ The neighbours had heard it all before, shut their windows fast, turned up the volume on the TV, made yet another cup of tea. Karen had seen it, too. Too many times now. Inadequate men unable to cope without anger, lashing out. Family life. The police were, as the phrasing went, anxious to speak to the father, Wayne Simon, in connection with both deaths.

So far there had been sightings in Sheffield, Rotherham, Leeds. Rumours he’d slipped abroad. Karen would still not be surprised to find he’d strapped himself into his car in a lock-up somewhere, sucking down carbon monoxide; either that or hanged himself from a length of flex; walked off the edge of a cliff. Beachy Head, that was popular. More often than not, it was what they did, men like that, men she despised, too cowardly to face the consequences of their actions, the way they’d lived.

More recently there’d been a shooting in Walthamstow. All the appearances of a drug deal run sour. The teenage victim gunned down as he ran. Some disagreement still as to how involved he had been, mistaken identity a possibility, the family swearing by his good name — a lovely boy and loving son, a grade A student, college place secured. So far, there had been two arrests, both men — Liam Jarvis and Rory Bevan — released, insufficient evidence to charge.

Before that a fatal stabbing in Wood Green. An argument over nothing that had ballooned from threats to fists, fists and boots to knives. By rights it should have been handed over, lock stock and barrel, to Operation Trident, which dealt with violent crime in the black community, but since the new government had taken power Trident’s resources had been cut and they were already overstretched. Sixteen murders in London the year just ended, none of the victims older than nineteen.

‘Enough, sir,’ Karen said.

‘Handle this yourself then, or …?’

‘A reason why I shouldn’t? Sir?’

Something interested him near the toe of his boot. ‘See how it develops, but at the moment I can’t see any need …’

‘Need?’

‘You know, delegate. Reassign. Besides …’ Inclining his head towards her, he smiled. ‘Can’t go on plundering the minority thing for too much longer. Good result now, not go amiss. Been a while.’

‘Which minority thing is that, sir? The gender minority or the black?’

‘Either. Both. You choose.’ The smile had disappeared.

Fuck you, Karen thought, the words unsaid.

Burcher heard them nonetheless, read them in her expression, her stance.

‘Don’t let me keep you, Chief Inspector.’

A magpie startled up raucously from a branch as she walked away.

Back down at the pond, they were gingerly breaking the ice in a broad circle around the body, preparing to float it closer to the shore.

All the way back to the office it nagged at her, a good result, not go amiss. Knowing it to be true. She remembered the first time she’d been introduced to him, Burcher, some function not long after he’d been confirmed in post; the way he’d looked at her, appraisingly, so much prime meat.

She’d seen the victim’s face freed from its frozen mask before she’d left, the last drops of moisture caught along his upper lip, hair that curled against the nape of his neck: a young man’s face, eighteen at most. Younger. The body stripped naked before immersion. Two knife wounds in his back, either one deep enough to have punctured his lungs. Bruises. Other marks. The second finger of his left hand missing, severed below the knuckle. Expediency? Identification? A stubborn ring?

At the last check there were no mispers that matched, no worried parents, lovers, brothers, aunts. Not his. Within an hour, the details, such as they were, would have been passed on by the Press Bureau to the media. Some Riz Lateef wannabe on work experience with BBC London News, shivering in front of the camera and hoping her make-up hadn’t smudged and the cold wouldn’t make her nose run. If nothing new had emerged by the end of the day, they’d release the victim’s photograph in time to catch the dailies, maximum exposure, pray no natural disaster or ministerial cock-up shunted them off to the bottom of page six or eight.