Paul Cornell - London Falling

Sefton looked over his shoulder, and started to laugh.

‘These,’ said Costain, ‘are the houses Toshack went to search on New Year’s Eve! All except this one in Willesden. That could be the one he went to on his own, before he called us out. Toshack was looking for Mora Losley!’

Quill leaped up, and Ross thought he was about to hug her but, seeing the look on her face, he awkwardly turned it into a high-five that became a hearty handshake. Then he grabbed his phone. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is enough to merit a search warrant!’

Costain looked around him, as he waited in the unmarked car. The house Toshack had visited on his own had turned out to be situated on a suburban T-junction, with an Irish pub at one end and a West Indian pub at the other, in a row of houses running along a curved street near the park. At lunchtime, in winter sunshine, Quill’s tiny team had parked just around the corner from it, where they could hear the sounds of the school playing field. The unmarked van sat at a decent interval along the curve of the road itself. At Quill’s request, approved through Lofthouse’s office, personnel from the local nick had been folded into an operation that was registered as still being called ‘name to follow’.

That indicated a certain lack of confidence, as if Quill still thought this might be about something other than the obvious. Like catching out Costain? Costain himself didn’t really think this could still be about that situation in reverse. This wasn’t about Lofthouse suspecting Quill. He’d been wondering if she would pop up again, reassure him again, give him something else to go on as to why she wanted him involved in this. There was one particular thing which could still have him — have him badly. It was what he’d thought of as his exit strategy. But here he was, hanging on, even getting interested in how the pieces were coming together.

Costain had grown up in Willesden, and it hadn’t bloody changed much. There were a lot of For Sale signs, a lot of boarded-up shopfronts, chain stores that now hid behind sheets of wood instead of bullet-damaged windows. All these neat little houses with individual gardens were from when this had been a posh suburb, decades before he was born. They’d also driven past one of those marooned churches, with a big sunny graveyard, from when this had been a separate village. At one point there had actually been pilgrimages that led people here. Costain remembered deciphering the shopping street at the end of this very road when he’d first walked along it as a copper, his new training considered sufficiently in place. It included honest greengrocer with West Indian produce outside, paying protection; a furtive newsagent with something that looked like a pillbox on his roof. . That remained there from when that same corner shop had been the entrance hall to an art-deco club where the Charleston was played, back when it took an adventurous train ride to get you to this fashionable suburb. There had been kids on mountain bikes riding up to catch the baggies of coke as they were thrown from that vantage point above. The only difference now would be that they’d ride scooters, and the set of guys chucking the bags would have changed about twenty times in the meantime. Back then he’d actually wondered if there was anything he could do there on his own, and reported this activity when he got back to his nick. There had been posters up for black comedy nights, representing traces of community. There had been black grannies who kept those sociable gardens nice, and owned their own houses. A few doorsteps where people sat outside in the evening. There had been life in the ruins then, green shoots that were signs that the place might resist the creeping gentrification of nearby Hampstead.

From what he’d seen this morning, though, in the last decade the character of the place had tottered from being rotten black and Irish to theme-pub black and Irish, and then reverted to rotten again, without ever having quite been decent black and Irish at any moment in between. God, it was as if the future was dead. As if nobody could imagine now what might come next. He seemed to have fallen into being a copper again, as if someone had handed him a different hat. And that took some getting used to.

They’d met the local uniforms last Friday, and had received a briefing from a sergeant. The place was a typical house in a typical residential street. Nothing on the books, but a couple of incidents nearby this year: a mugging and a pub fight, neither connected. They’d driven just once past the house before they’d parked, Costain being the one allowed to glance idly at it. Bare garden, a little snow still melting in the shade. In fact, it looked a lot like the everyday houses Toshack had dragged them round. Except this one had very dark windows. Heavy black curtains, maybe? But not so much as a West Ham pennant on display.

Mora Losley didn’t show up in any official records, other than police ones. It seemed that she didn’t use any local services, didn’t answer to any landlord; the ground plans were mysteriously absent, and she’d somehow avoided taxation. The council had said, embarrassed, that she must be in the system somewhere, but they hadn’t yet come back with anything. It was actually an unprofessional level of secrecy; even international terrorists paid their council-tax bills. The strangeness was astonishing. Not the sort of thing Toshack usually did.

Quill now got on the radio to the sergeant in charge of the uniforms. That same morning, he’d given a briefing about looking out for traps. Maybe there was going to be a scene, and spitting, and that weird taboo thing of an elderly woman swearing at you.

They got out of the car at exactly the same moment as the four uniforms got out of the van: two women, two men. There were two more already round at the back door. Quill opened the gate and led them up the garden path. He pulled the warrant and search notice out of his pocket, along with his warrant card. He knocked heavily on the door. If there was no reply, they’d move in the squad with the breaking device.

The door suddenly seemed to give way under Quill’s knocking, as if it had been standing open, resting against the frame. It swung open an inch or two. Only darkness was visible beyond. Quill looked ill at ease. Costain hadn’t heard anyone moving inside. He found himself taking a step back, the UC part of him already anticipating gunfire blasting through that door.

‘Police officers,’ Quill called into the darkened gap. ‘I am Detective Inspector James Quill. Ms Losley, we are here with a warrant to search your premises in connection with the death of Matthew Howarth.’

No reply.

Quill pushed the door gently with his foot until it was fully open. He stepped inside, the uniforms quickly following him, then came Costain and the others.

Costain found himself taking a deep breath as he went in. This was different from the others: the inside of the house was pitch black. That thin carpet again, though. That bare granny’s house feeling. The little window panel beside the door had been painted on the inside with something that looked black and sticky. That was different too.

And on the newel post at the top of the banister there sat something that couldn’t quite be made out, but that looked organic, animal origin and long dead. It could only have been fixed there.

Ross’ voice sounded tremendously calm. ‘Is that the skull of a baby?’

Costain stepped forward and now saw what she meant. And, at that moment, the smell hit him. And the others, too, if the coughing was anything to go by.

Quill immediately called for back-up, containment and an Armed Response Unit.

Costain felt the sense of triumph from the coppers around him, and something inside him finally started to relax. This was why Toshack had come to this house on his own. ‘Serial killer house,’ he said. ‘Excellent.’