Daniel Blake - White Death

He didn’t need to tell Patrese why he was calling.

It’s seventy-five miles, give or take, between downtown New Haven and the campus of Columbia University in Upper Manhattan’s Morningside Heights district. Lights flashing and sirens blaring, Patrese managed the journey inside forty-five minutes.

He found his way to the murder site easily enough: it was lit up by the blues and reds lazily rotating on the roofs of the half-dozen police cruisers in attendance. At the main entrance to an austere-looking stone building, two uniforms stood guard behind crime-scene tape. A hundred or so students milled around, weeping on each other’s shoulders or talking dazedly into cellphones. A shrine seemed to be growing organically on a patch of grass nearby: candles, photographs, T-shirts, scarves.

HARTLEY, proclaimed letters on the building’s front wall. Patrese turned sideways, edged through a gap between two students, and flipped his badge at the uniforms. One of them stepped forward and lifted up the tape for him to duck under.

‘Down the corridor, sir. It’s right at the end, in the corner.’

‘Thanks.’

Crime-scene officers flitted through bright pools of arc lights. Halfway along the corridor, Patrese stopped one of them and asked where he could find Detective Dufresne.

‘Right over there.’ A finger swathed tight in blooded latex pointed at a black man by the far wall. Dufresne had a sports jacket and a goatee beard trimmed to what looked like an accuracy of micrometers. He came across, hand extended.

‘Agent Patrese?’ A glance at his watch. ‘Where’s Mario?’

Patrese stiffened. An Italian insult right off the bat?

‘Mario?’ He kept his voice neutral.

‘Andretti. No other way you could have got here this fast.’

Patrese laughed. ‘Mario’s got the night off. Dale said he’d drive instead.’

Dufresne clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Glad you made it. Pleasure to meet you. Heard a lot about you, all that stuff down in New Orleans round about Katrina. Took an interest in the voodoo side, for obvious reasons.’

Patrese made a quick calculation: black skin, French name, voodoo, New York’s diaspora. ‘You’re Haitian?’

‘Came here when I was nine. Never going back. Anyhows, I can give you my life story sometime else.’ He gestured toward the corner room. ‘You wanna go on in?’

‘Sure.’ Patrese started to walk toward the room. ‘What happened?’

‘Deceased’s name is Dennis Barbero. President of Columbia’s BSO, the Black Students Organization. Not as minority as you might think, this being Ivy League and all. Columbia’s got more black students than most, and the, er, head guy, the president of the university, he’s a big fan of affirmative action.’

‘You got an ID so fast?’

‘Excuse me? Oh, you mean ’cos he’s got no head and shit? Yeah, yeah, definitely him. Definitely Dennis Barbero. Public Enemy T-shirt he always wore, that’s on the, er, body, and also, he’s one of the few who had a key to open this room up.’

They reached the door. Dufresne gestured: After you.

‘G-body meeting of the BSO, every …’

‘G-body?’

‘General body. General meeting. Every Thursday, nine till eleven, right in here, but it’s locked when not in use. Dennis had to open it up.’

There was a sign on the door. MALCOLM X LOUNGE, 106 HARTLEY HALL.

Patrese stepped inside.

Blood everywhere, all over the walls and floor, as though a herd of pigs had been slaughtered in here rather than one man. Dennis’ body was sprawled between a table and two chairs. Unlike Regina King and Darrell Showalter, he was clothed. Like them, he was missing a head and one of his arms.

The Public Enemy T-shirt had the band’s famous logo: the silhouette of a black man’s head with a beret, as seen through rifle sights. The shirt had ridden up to reveal the missing patch of skin. The left arm of his shirt had been severed, along with the arm itself. There was a tarot card near the body, but it was too far away for Patrese to make out exactly what it was.

He looked round the room. On the near wall, a painting – Sherman Edwards’ My Child, My Child , according to a card alongside – from which a staggeringly beautiful black woman, dressed in a purple shawl and clutching a naked baby tight to her chest, stared at Patrese in silent, reproachful challenge. Directly opposite was a poster-sized photo of Malcolm X himself, lips pursed, right index finger raised, old-fashioned radio microphone in front of him, and beneath it a quotation:

‘We declare our right on this Earth to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being.’

And to be killed like an animal, Patrese thought bitterly.

He went closer, careful not to step in any of the outlying islands of blood. He peered at the tarot card. A young man in armor astride a charging horse, sword held high in his right hand. The Knight of Swords.

Since Anna had told his fortune, Patrese had pondered and studied the major arcana with a fervor some might have thought obsessional. He knew this card wasn’t among them. The knight of swords was minor arcana, the lesser secrets. He’d have to go back to Anna tomorrow and pick her brains all over again.

No tarot reading, though; not after last time. That was for damn sure.

He turned to Dufresne. ‘Give me the timescale. What do we know?’

‘I’ll walk you through it; it’s easier. Let’s get out of here.’

The Columbia campus stretches over six city blocks, but in the last few hours of his life, Dennis had moved within only one of them. Hartley Hall was located at the eastern side of this block, on 114th and Amsterdam: Dufresne took Patrese over to Alfred Lerner Hall on the western side, 114th and Broadway. Patrese glanced at the 114th Street sign.

‘Across 110th Street, huh?’ he said.

Dufresne laughed. ‘Oh, you’re not in Harlem yet. 110th Street’s the marker only over to the Upper East. Round this side of the park, us niggers don’t start in earnest till north of 125th. Matter of fact, this precinct’s one of the safest in the city. Till tonight.’

There was another uniform at the entrance to Lerner Hall. He snapped to attention as Dufresne approached.

‘Easy, son,’ Dufresne said. ‘This ain’t Crimson Tide .’

Dufresne and Patrese rode the elevator to the sixth floor, where Dufresne led the way through two sets of fire doors to a sign: WKCR, 89.9 FM. Columbia University Student Radio Station.

‘Dennis was here, seven thirty till eight thirty. Did it every week: Dennis Barbero’s Black Music Hour. Played whatever he wanted to play, long as it was black. Could be Martha Reeves or Kool Herc, could be Gladys Knight or Grandmaster Flash. One of the most popular shows they have.’ He made a face. ‘Had.’

Patrese smiled: it was the most natural mistake in the world.

‘Anyhows,’ Dufresne continued, ‘show finishes eight thirty. Dennis hands over to the guy doing the news headlines – on the half-hour, short ones only – says adios to the producer, and leaves.’ He took Patrese back through the fire doors, down again in the elevator, and through the main foyer. ‘A couple of people see him here, leaving the building.’

‘What time is this?’

‘About eight thirty-five.’

They left the hall and headed across the quadrangle.

To their right, on the south side, was an enormous neo-classical library fronted by an arcade of Ionic columns. Above the columns ran a frieze of famous writers’ names, starting with Homer and Herodotus and ending with Voltaire and Goethe. To their left, a sculpture of the goddess Athena sitting on a throne, with a laurel crown on her head and the book of knowledge balanced on her lap. Her arms were raised as though welcoming the knowledge all around her.