Keith Ridgway - Hawthorn & Child

— OK.

— And stay linked to the hospital. We’ll need better than a vintage car from him.

He hung up.

— We are not at the centre of things, said Child.

Hampley Road was taped off from the crossroads down to the first junction, from where Jetters had come. Hawthorn closed his eyes. The sky was grey and flat and he liked it. There was a patch of black blood on the cold path. He opened his eyes. There was a patch of blood. But it was not quite black, and it was smaller and it was in a different place. People in baby-blue paper jumpsuits and white shoe-covers were wandering around with bags and brushes and pads and cameras.

— My place was about two streets away, said Child.

— Which way?

— The other way. Other side of Plume Road.

— It’s not exactly murder mile is it?

— No. It’s not.

— Is Amy still here?

— No. We sold the flat, remember?

— Where did she move to?

He didn’t answer.

Hawthorn faced the junction with Plume Road. He tried to picture Daniel Field on the footpath.

— It must be someone very close.

— What?

— If it’s not on CCTV then it’s in a garage somewhere.

— Oh fuck off.

— What?

— He didn’t actually see a vintage car.

— Yes he did.

— A vintage car. With running boards?

— It’s what he saw. It’s what he said to Jetters. Before he had any painkillers or whatever they were giving him.

— He didn’t say vintage to Jetters.

— He said old . He was looking for the word. As soon as you said vintage to him he agreed.

— He was bleeding to death. He was probably seeing his own funeral cortège.

Hawthorn looked at the silver shutters set into the side of the building that faced on to Plume Road. Just to their left was a little yellow flag affixed to the brick where the bullet had struck.

— What’s in there? The shutters, I mean.

— Nothing.

— Nothing?

— It was a bakery. They used to have tiered wedding cakes in the window. Edible bride, edible groom.

— Was.

— Then it was a coffee shop. Now it’s nothing. Hasn’t been anything for about a year.

— Why would he say old car ? For him to say old car … it means that old was the most obvious thing about it. Not a colour or a make or a shape or anything. Old . Old car.

— Maybe he said ochre.

They wandered along the road. A uniform tried to lift the tape for them. It snapped. Child laughed. There were a couple of hobby bobbies with clipboards waiting for passers-by. A car drove up Almond Road. They watched it. It was the way Jetters had come. Residential, quiet, speed bumps. It was a short cut, avoiding the junction at the top of Plume Road if you were coming from the north or north-east. Hawthorn wondered why Jetters felt the need for short cuts at that hour of the morning. One of the hobby bobbies stopped the car. Child walked a little down the road, on the right-hand side. He turned and walked back again slowly, looking to his right. He was trying to see what Jetters had seen. Hawthorn watched him, and looked at the walls of the houses, at the brick of the gables, at the paths. There was the ghost of some graffiti on the wall to his left, at the corner of the two roads. It had been painted over, or washed out, but a shape persisted, snaky, coming out of the side and weaving its way diagonally towards the ground. It came to the footpath where a tuft of weed climbed out of a crack. Hawthorn touched the weed with his shoe. There was a cigarette butt in there. A cigarette butt and a hair clip. Slightly to the left there was a tube ticket. A match. Two matches. There was a blacked-out smudge of old chewing gum. A little further away was a glob of pearly-green phlegm and spittle. He looked down to his feet, at the small, impossibly detailed space he occupied. His patch.

Child was back at his shoulder. They looked further up Hampley Road. In the distance they could see officers going door to door. They’d have to do that again in the evening, when people were home. The stopped car moved off again. It turned left into Hampley Road and hesitated for a moment, working out a way around the blockage. Hawthorn let Child get ahead of him and pretended to be looking at his notebook. He found a handkerchief in his back pocket and blew his nose and pressed it to his eyes and clenched them closed and cursed until he could continue.

Nestor Lane was a short terrace that faced another in the cold, with a line of cars parked on one side. It was very quiet. The houses were pre-war, three-storey, brick, fronted by tiny gardens. Most of the gardens had been paved over one way or another and were taken up now with wheelie bins, covered motorbikes, the occasional flowerbed or small tree. Above the ground floor windows a plain stone lintel ran through the brickwork, all the way down the terrace. Next door to Daniel Field’s house, at what looked like the middle of the row, there was a date elegantly etched or carved — a year — the digits separated by tiny diamond shapes. Hawthorn wrote it in his notebook.

Child had gone ahead of him and was in the kitchen. A young woman stood at the sink, and a woman police officer sat at the table with a cup of something. She nodded at Hawthorn. The woman at the sink was talking. She had been talking all the time.

— And the kids, the kids sometimes come down the road in packs, little gangs, looking for trouble, making noise. Sometimes they’ll kick a football around for a while or that kind of thing, and God help you if you shout at them to get lost. I made that mistake once. Your life is a misery then. They broke a window. Everyone knows not to shout at them, and they just get bored and go away. It’s the older, quieter … oh hello, are you another detective? I think you’re the sixth now, are you? I’ve lost track. We haven’t had this many people in the house for I don’t know how long.

She was in a dressing gown. She was washing cups.

— I’m Detective Hawthorn. You must be Ms Gayle?

— Alison, yes.

She shook his hand, leaving it wet.

— Are you the boss then?

— Not as such, no. Detective Chief Inspector Rivers is leading the investigation.

— Oh yes, someone said. Tea or coffee? I don’t really know what a boss is in the police. No one looks very much like a detective to me. You’re all too well dressed, too young. I don’t know what I’m expecting. Helen Mirren I suppose, being rude to me. No one’s even been rude to me. I am sorry, I’m bab-bling. I tend to babble. When things are … is there any word?

— About Daniel? He’s … he’s still in surgery as far as I know. But I spoke to one of the nurses a while ago. And … unofficially as it were, he’s doing well. It’s going well.

— Oh thank God.

She slumped a little, closed her eyes for a moment.

— I’m sure, said Child, that you’ve been through all this at least a couple of times already. But if you don’t mind. When was the last time you saw Daniel?

— Last night. In here. He wasn’t looking forward to getting up early. He likes his sleep. He didn’t know whether it was better to force himself to go to bed early or not. He was afraid he wouldn’t sleep.

— Apart from that he was in a good mood?

— Yes, he was fine. He’s always fine. He’s very … he doesn’t really do moods.

— You didn’t hear him leave this morning?

— No. He’s quiet in the mornings. He has his own floor, more or less. The top floor. Sometimes I hear him clumping around, but not this morning.

Her eyes had lost focus. She was calmer.

— Is Mr Andone still here? Hawthorn asked.

— He went to take a shower.

— Did you have a normal weekend? Child asked.