Paul Cornell - London Falling

The Scene of Crime Officers of SCD 4 had extracted a very new-looking piece of paper from where it had been found folded up and wedged between two floorboards, and handed it to them, properly bagged, for inspection.

Quill laughed out loud when, at the bottom of the same letter, he saw Rob Toshack’s signature. Putting all modesty aside, he called Ross over — with her younger eyes — to read it aloud.

‘Dear Mora,’ she read out, increasing pleasure in her voice. ‘You’re not here, and I can’t find that door of yours. If it sweetens the deal, I’m bringing a few of my lot over to your safe houses. You can have any of them you want, all of them if you like. Just talk to me, all right? Yours sincerely-’

‘Formal, in the circumstances,’ commented Sefton.

‘That’s him, all right,’ said Costain. ‘Proper, like.’ There was a horrified look on his face, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘Was he offering her. . us?’

‘She might have had a bit of trouble with Mick and the boys,’ said Sefton. ‘Bloody hell, it’s like a backwoods-cabin horror movie. There must have been a whole family of them for him to say that: loads of them across all these houses, if he thought they’d be able to ambush us. And he didn’t even bother telling us not to bring guns!’

That thought made the others pause, even as it settled down in Quill’s head and made itself at home. What the fuck were they dealing with here? ‘Hi ho,’ he said, ‘it’s off to work we go.’

Costain took himself aside for a few minutes, and thought about what he’d heard read aloud, and found that a little bit of bile had now entered his lovely day. But, what the fuck, that was history now. Rob had been willing to sell him out to who knows what: well, that was how the world worked, and he’d got in his retaliation without knowing it. And now he didn’t have to feel bad about anything. He shook his head and carried on.

Quill called a conference of all those still inside the house, and told them to concentrate on finding a hidden door. But none was found. The next time he looked up, it was dark outside. The noises from out there suggested a major press presence and a crowd of onlookers on the other side of the police cordon, big television lights now heating the air. He phoned Sarah, left a message just saying, yes, he was in the middle of what she was seeing on telly, and so, obviously, he’d be home late. She called back to say there was nothing bloody obvious about it — then clicked off before he could reply.

Lofthouse arrived, relief showing on her face. She went around, touching walls and windows, as if she was considering buying the place. ‘Brilliant stuff, James. You reckon we’ll nick her?’

‘I’m amazed someone out there hasn’t found her already.’

‘Quite a few say they’ve sighted her, but so far it’s just the nutters. We’ve put a watch on the West Ham pubs, and so on. The club are being. . fulsomely cooperative.’

‘I’ll bet.’

‘I should think they’ll burn her regular seat and salt the ground beneath it.’

Quill stopped her just before she went outside to conduct her press conference. ‘Ma’am, is this what. .? I mean, you put such a. . strange unit together. This has the ring of insane genius.’

‘Flattery is always welcome.’

‘But I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. Is this really about. .’ he chose his words carefully. ‘. . corruption in Gipsy Hill?’

She looked for a moment to be choosing her words carefully. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Let’s find out. At least you’re thoroughly off the hook.’ And her expression now urged him to leave it at that.

Lofthouse delivered her press conference out on the doorstep, the light drizzle reflecting the television lights. She didn’t speculate, but asked for the public’s help, particularly from those who were West Ham supporters. She was asked about the matter of the child victims’ identity, and said that she couldn’t add anything on that subject, as yet. Nor could she, for operational reasons (that was, protecting the UCs), offer a narrative that led from the Toshack investigation to this doorstep.

Quill watched it all from an upstairs window. He wondered how iconic that bare doorway was going to become. This was going to be a famous London murder house, like 10 Rillington Place or 39 Hilldrop Crescent. The neighbours, who’d been moved out and were currently being interviewed, hadn’t, thankfully, done the usual by saying that Losley was a pleasant neighbour who’d kept herself to herself. (Always delivered in a tone of voice that suggested that, since keeping oneself to oneself was the single greatest thing one English person could do for another, the suspect ought to be excused whatever psychopathic shit they’d visited on other people.) They just hadn’t seen her at all. A few of them had even thought that the house was empty, which meant Losley had probably been absent for some considerable time. According to the internet, on the other hand, the holders of season tickets in seats near Losley, plus the supporters’ club, were now queuing up to say she was a bloody paedo and to distance themselves from anything she’d done, from goal celebrations to using harsh language. Quill called up West Ham and arranged to be sent a list of names and contact details for those season-ticket holders seated near to Losley, so he could call them in for interview.

‘We’ve heard from West Ham supporters,’ said a reporter with the BBC logo on her microphone, ‘that Mora Losley expressed particular hatred for those who scored hat-tricks against the club. And there’s an urban legend about such players being murdered. Is there anything to suggest-?’

And the crowd goes wild, thought Quill, who’d been hoping nobody would make that connection. Lofthouse let the noise die down and started to do her best to quench that particular fire. Sefton tapped Quill on the shoulder, and handed him the late-edition Evening Standard . That Losley season-ticket photo featured in it. The Witch of West Ham , said the headline.

Bang, that was what she was now.

‘Anything in there?’ Quill asked the SOCO with the magnetic resonance device, who was running it over the tub of soil. For the third time, because he’d requested her to.

‘Soil,’ she said.

‘Yeah,’ said Quill. ‘Have a biscuit. Anything else?’

‘No,’ sighed the woman, ‘as I said : a shaped pile of the West Ham soil, wet as you’d expect that club’s soil to be, and matching that found at Gipsy Hill, with a layer of what looks to be local soil underneath. We’ve also sifted it and looked under the tub. Which is bloody heavy.’

‘Small bones? Needles? You’ve completely forensicated it?’

The SOCO just glowered at him and walked away.

At the end of their shift, the forensics team left the loft, heading off for a cuppa, and, in the gap before the next shift came on, Quill looked around and saw that it was just the four of them in here now. Which felt kind of weird. For a while, there, they’d been back in the mainstream of police work. And with luck it was going to be like that from now on. It would surely be the only sane thing for Lofthouse to draw some more personnel into her now highly successful spin-off. Yeah, the sane thing — so how likely was that really?

He called down to the outgoing SOCOs. ‘Here,’ he yelled, ‘can I touch that soil now? I mean touch touch, with no evidence gloves?’ Having examined every inch of the cauldron in sight before Quill’s team had entered, they’d just taken it — and the skeletons contained therein — off to the lab.

‘You’re not the first,’ a female voice came back. ‘I’ve already had a feel. But, if for some reason you want to, you may.’