The Ink Black Heart, page 89
‘Still not right, poor bastard. Jumpy. Bad headaches…’
A faint creak, a soft shifting of material, as though seats had been taken.
‘… he might be, like, brain-damaged for ever, so if you know who this fucker is—’
‘OK, so I’m, like, nine’y-nine per cent sure. ’Elp yourself.’
The unmistakeable sound of ring pulls being torn off cans of beer followed.
‘So,’ said Wally, ‘there’s this guy on Twitter called Lepine’s Disciple –’
Robin glanced at Strike.
‘– ’e’s always liking me tweets, and ’e sometimes comes – used to come and post comments on mine and MJ’s show.
‘So, last night, ’e tags me in on an argument ’e’s ’aving wiv some arsehole called the Pen of Justice and ’e says ’e knows Anomie.’
‘Who does, the Pen—?’
‘No, Lepine’s Disciple. So I followed ’im back and direct messaged him, an’ I said, “You know Anomie?” An’ ’e says, “Yeah, ’e’s a mate of mine.” Load of shit abou’ Anomie being a fuckin’ genius an’ stuff an’ then I says, “So what did ’e ’ave against Ledwell?” and ’e tells me she fucked ’im over big time – sounded like they were screwing – then the slag swanned off with all the money to shack up wiv Josh Blay.’
‘Did ’e give you a name?’
‘Didn’t need to. I know exactly ’oo that is. Guy called Pe—’
A loud clunk was heard and the voices became suddenly distant.
‘—ierce – fucking cat – and ’e lives at the ’ippy—’
Another loud clunk.
‘—to record at. Like I said, I’m nine’y-nine per—’
Still more clunks: Robin could visualise Wally repositioning the object in which the listening device was hidden, which had evidently been knocked to the floor by the cat. The voices became clear again.
‘—’ard on for ’er, ’cause I remember saying to Josh, that fucker don’t like you, watch your fuckin’ back. ’E’s after your bitch. ’E fort ’e was a better artist than Josh an’ ’e does animation – I’m nine’y-nine per cent, it’s ’im. One of ’is nicknames round the commune was Horse, ’cause ’e ’ad a fuckin’ massive c—’
Uruz laughed. Murphy stopped the recording.
‘We’re hoping,’ he said, ‘you might be able to tell us—’
‘Pez Pierce,’ said Robin. ‘Full name: Preston Pierce. He’s from Liverpool and he lives at the North Grove art commune place in Highgate.’
‘Excellent,’ said Darwish crisply, as she and Murphy both got to their feet. The latter said to Strike and Robin,
‘Will you two wait here?’
‘No problem,’ said Strike.
‘It’s been a pleasure,’ said Darwish, holding out a cool hand, which Strike and Robin shook in turn. ‘I hope your office wasn’t too badly damaged.’
‘Could’ve been a lot worse,’ said Strike.
Darwish left. Strike and Robin looked at each other.
‘Lepine’s Disciple is a real-life friend of Anomie’s?’ said Robin.
‘I wouldn’t bet on it.’
‘He does stick up for Anomie a lot.’
‘So do a load of far-right trolls.’
‘That story fits Pez, though.’
‘Yeah… I s’pose,’ said Strike who looked unconvinced.
‘You’re the one who’s always thought Pierce was a frontrunner for Anomie.’
‘Don’t you think Ledwell being a slag who cheated on Anomie is exactly the kind of story a woman-hating virgin would come up with?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Robin, ‘but—’
Murphy now returned, holding a manila envelope which he placed on the table without comment.
‘Given that your office was bombed, and you’ve given us significant leads in this case, I think you deserve to hear how they tripped themselves up. It’s later on the recording you’ve just heard.’
He fast-forwarded, then pressed play.
‘—on’t stroke the fucker, it’ll just scratch you…’
He fast forwarded.
‘—fuckin’ bricked up so I ’ad an ’ate wank over Kea Niven’s Insta—’
‘That goes on a while,’ said Murphy, cutting off Uruz’s laughter as he advanced the tape again. ‘Some left-wing ex-girlfriend Cardew hasn’t managed to get back into bed.’
He pressed play yet again.
Uruz’s voice now sounded distant, as though the two men were talking in the hall once more.
‘This is it,’ said Murphy, turning up the volume as Uruz’s voice issued from the speaker again.
‘Nah, Eihwaz… new lock up… fucking pigs… nah, not Ben…’
More indistinct conversation, some laughter, then Uruz said,
‘… getting better at… haha… don’t tell him that… Anyway, Charlie’s gonna be fuckin’ stoked.’
‘Glad to ’elp. Give ’im my best, and to Ollie.’
‘Will do.’
‘Bingo,’ said Murphy, pressing stop. ‘Real names. The tossers had too much beer. Heimdall, head of the whole thing: Charlie Peach. We looked into him a couple of months back, but he came up clean. Very savvy, very smart, never makes a slip.’
‘Pity he can’t say the same about his brother,’ said Strike.
‘Yeah, he’s a cocky little shit, or he was. That brain injury’s not healing any time soon. And the third guy they mentioned, Ben – we already knew Eihwaz was the bomb-maker, and them calling him “Ben” was confirmation that our prime suspect is the guy. Engineering graduate: respectable-looking, decent job. You wouldn’t pin him as a neo-fascist on first meeting him.’
‘Benefit of a university education, isn’t it?’ said Strike. ‘Teaches you to tattoo your Nazi rune name on your arse, not your forehead.’
Murphy laughed.
‘He’s clever, but he’s still a wrong’un. Cautioned for stalking an ex-girlfriend and got a suspended sentence for attempted GBH as a teen. I’d be surprised if the defence doesn’t order a psychiatric assessment. The longer you talk to him, the weirder he is.
‘Anyway, at six this morning we made a series of simultaneous arrests. We believe we’ve got the whole top tier of The Halvening—’
‘Congratulations,’ said Strike and Robin together.
‘—which means you two should be safe to go home.’
‘Fantastic,’ said Robin, relieved, but Strike said,
‘And what about Anomie?’
‘Well,’ said Murphy, ‘as you’ve just heard, Charlie’s convinced Anomie tried to push his brother under the train. I’ve just sent a couple of people out to this North Grove place to warn Pierce he might be a target. It’s possible Charlie Peach has given an order to take him out, and we can’t guarantee we’ve got all the small fry yet.
‘I’d strongly advise you to stay well away from Pierce until you get the all-clear from us. You don’t want to be seen to get in The Halvening’s way again, not until we’re sure we’ve got all of them. Mind you, even if we’ve missed a couple of low-level guys, they’re going to be crapping themselves once they see the news.’
‘You don’t think Anomie pushed Oliver Peach in front of the train, do you?’ Strike asked, watching Murphy carefully.
‘No,’ said Murphy. ‘We don’t.’
‘So who did?’
Murphy leaned back in his chair.
‘Ben, the bomb-maker, got his suspended sentence for pushing a kid in front of a car. The kid survived, but it was a close thing.
‘Three months ago, Ben and Oliver Peach had a proper bust-up online, before they realised we were watching them. At the time, we only had suspicions about their real identities. Charlie would rather believe your Anomie pushed his brother off the platform than one of the men he recruited into The Halvening – human nature, isn’t it? – but we think it’s going to turn out to be Ben-the-bombmaker.’
‘Is using latex masks a Halvening staple?’
Murphy picked up the manila envelope as he said,
‘Since you mention it, it is.’
‘It is?’ said Robin, who hadn’t expected this answer.
Murphy now tipped a series of photographs out of the manila envelope and slid two of them across the table. Both pictures had been taken on the street by night, and showed a male figure in a hoodie, his face jowly and expressionless. He was examining the letterbox of a small office that faced a street.
‘Those were taken eighteen months ago. The guy’s wearing a latex mask that covers the whole head and neck. There’s a very shady bloke in Germany who’ll make them to any specifications, and The Halvening have bought several. Those masks are getting far too realistic for our liking. The Halvening aren’t the only crims using them. There was a big bank job in Munich recently where the whole gang were wearing them.’
Murphy pointed at the pictures Strike and Robin were examining.
‘That’s the constituency office of Amy Wittstock. Two days after Mask came sneaking around at night, checking that letterbox, a pipe bomb arrived with the morning post.
‘These,’ Murphy went on, pushing another couple of pictures across the table, ‘were taken the night Vikas Bhardwaj was murdered in Cambridge.’
The picture showed a dark man in a wheelchair wheeling himself towards the door of the Stephen Hawking Building.
‘This is Vikas?’ said Robin.
‘Look again,’ said Murphy. ‘That wheelchair isn’t motorised. It’s one of the fold-up lightweight ones.’
‘Wait,’ said Robin. ‘This is—?’
‘—the killer,’ said Murphy. ‘They wore a brown-skinned latex mask, it was evening, and the same idiot who let you in let this guy in, thinking they were Vikas.’
Sure enough, there in the second picture was the same long-haired man helpfully holding the door open for the man in the wheelchair, while staring abstractedly at his phone. The third picture showed the dark man in the wheelchair leaving the grounds, head bowed beneath his hoodie. Strike handed the pictures back to Murphy.
‘What happened after the killer got off the grounds?’
‘The wheelchair was found folded up in bushes down a lane – but not the hard drive.’
‘What hard drive?’
‘Oh – I didn’t tell you. The hard drive on Bhardwaj’s computer was gone, which figures. If he’d been talking to anyone online about his suspicions, they wouldn’t want to leave that behind.
‘It looks as though the killer took a line across some gardens, so no CCTV footage. We’re still examining pictures from the cameras positioned nearest the gardens. It won’t be long till we’ve identified the individual, but I’m ninety per cent certain we’ve already got whoever it was in custody. We think this Vikas guy got suspicious and twigged who the Peach brothers were, so had to be taken out.’
‘Very similar m.o. to the stabbings in Highgate Cemetery,’ said Strike. ‘Kill, then head for parkland or bushes, still disguised.’
‘Yeah. Whoever perpetrated these attacks has got strong nerves and did a lot of planning. Charlie Peach trained his people well – even if one of them went rogue and tried to kill his brother.’
‘And Ormond’s off the hook,’ said Strike.
‘Yeah,’ said Murphy. ‘He didn’t make it easy for himself, not telling us the truth right off, but we got there in the end… Confidentially, he eventually ’fessed up to having put a tracking app on Edie’s phone, so he could keep tabs on her. He was taking his detention and saw the phone moving towards Highgate Cemetery when she was supposed to be at home in the flat in Finchley. He immediately guessed she was going to meet Blay, so he chucked the detention and went after her, raging.’
‘She hadn’t told him she was going to meet Josh, then?’ said Robin.
‘No,’ said Murphy. ‘His story is that by the time he got in his car the phone was leaving Highgate Cemetery and heading out onto Hampstead Heath. He drove there, followed the signal and found the phone lying in the grass. He picked it up and he claims that while he was standing there a “strange figure” emerged out of the trees and came running towards him.’
‘Strange how?’ said Strike.
‘He says it looked like a troll. Lumpy body, bald ugly head with big ears. Latex mask, obviously,’ said Murphy. ‘The person took one look at Ormond standing there with her phone – which had a bright yellow cover on it, so was distinctive – then took off into the trees and vanished.’
‘So he thinks this masked person dropped the phone, realised they didn’t have it and ran back for it?’ asked Robin.
‘Yeah,’ said Murphy. ‘And Ormond panicked once he heard she’d been murdered, because he knew he’d been a minute away from it. “I knew you’d think I was sus, everyone always thinks it’s the partner, don’t they, I panicked, wouldn’t have hurt a hair on her head—”’
‘He probably didn’t hurt a hair,’ said Robin. ‘Her throat, on the other hand…’
‘I don’t think there’s any doubt he was abusive, but we pretty much tore his flat apart. No sign of Blay’s phone, or the murder weapon, or the dossier the killer took. We didn’t have grounds to hold him any longer, but I’m as certain as I can be that he’s in the clear for murder.’
‘You think the masked person was Halvening,’ said Strike.
‘Yeah,’ said Murphy, gesturing towards the photographs of masked individuals, ‘I do. Now we’ve got them in custody we can search all their hangouts and I think there’s a good chance we’ll find Blay’s phone and the murder weapon.
‘Anyway,’ said Murphy, collecting up the photographs, ‘you tipping us off about that game was extremely helpful.’
‘Can I ask one more question?’ said Strike.
‘Go on. Can’t promise I’ll answer.’
‘Have the Met been getting anonymous phone calls telling them to dig up Edie Ledwell’s body?’
Murphy looked taken aback.
‘No. Why – have you?’
‘Yeah,’ said Strike.
‘Trolls,’ said Murphy.
‘Maybe,’ said Strike.
Murphy accompanied them back downstairs.
‘Been kind of busy with this case since I got back from Spain,’ Murphy told Robin in a low voice while the oblivious Strike walked ahead of them, checking Twitter on his phone. ‘But now things have calmed down…’
‘Great,’ said Robin self-consciously.
‘I’ll call you,’ said Murphy.
As he bade them farewell, he repeated,
‘And keep away from Pez Pierce. Like I say, we don’t know that we’ve got them all.’
90
We lack, yet cannot fix upon the lack:
Not this, nor that; yet somewhat, certainly.
We see the things we do not yearn to see
Around us: and what see we glancing back?
Christina Rossetti
Later Life: A Double Sonnet of Sonnets
‘Let’s get a drink and something to eat,’ said Strike, ‘but well away from here. I don’t want any stray policemen hearing what I’ve got to say.’
They headed away from the Thames into the heart of Westminster and finally entered St Stephen’s Tavern, a small, dark Victorian pub which lay directly opposite Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. Robin found a corner table at the back of the pub and five minutes later Strike set down a pint of Badger and a glass of wine, eased himself with some difficulty around the small, iron-footed table and lowered himself onto the green leather bench beneath the mirrored panels.
‘Is your leg all right?’ Robin asked, because Strike had grimaced again.
‘It’s been better,’ he admitted. Having taken a welcome sip of beer, he said,
‘So, according to Lepine’s Disciple, Edie screwed Anomie over, possibly after actually screwing him.’
‘But you’re sceptical.’
‘I believe that’s what Lepine’s Disciple told Wally,’ said Strike, opening the menu and looking in vain for something he wanted to eat that might also plausibly support weight loss. ‘I’m just not sure I believe Lepine’s Disciple. He’s talking to a YouTuber he clearly admires. Wouldn’t be the first time some prick on the internet made up a story to try and big himself up. Claiming to be a mate of Anomie’s and in on all their secrets wouldn’t cost him anything… How many calories would you say are in a cheeseburger and chips?’
‘A lot,’ said Robin, now perusing the menu herself. ‘But they’ve got a veggie burger. You could have that, without the chips.’
‘Fine,’ said Strike gloomily.
‘I’ll order,’ said Robin, getting up, to spare Strike more walking.
Once she’d returned, she asked,
‘What is it you didn’t want any stray policemen hearing?’
‘Well,’ said Strike, dropping his voice because a family party of four had just sat down at the next table, ‘I can see why the Met think all the attacks have been Halvening. Halvening-style masks used each time – Edie on the Direct Action list – Vikas could have found out something about the Peach brothers inside the game and become a danger to them.
‘If all we had were the murders of Edie and Vikas, I’d tend to agree with Murphy that The Halvening are the likely culprits, but I’m still not buying that Josh was attacked by a terrorist, and I think it’s a hell of a stretch to suggest Ben-the-bombmaker decided to murder Oliver Peach by such a risky method, in such a crowded place. To me, that attack is far better explained if Anomie’s the assailant. That was a desperate move, the kind of attack that happens because the perp knows they’ve got one chance and can’t afford to miss it. It was a bloody huge risk to take, and however weird Ben-the-bombmaker might be, if he’s clever enough to make bombs he’s smart enough to know his life’s worth less than nothing if Charlie believes he tried to kill Oliver.
‘From all we know about him, Charlie’s smart. He’s already slid out of the Met’s clutches once. He’s not a man who’s going to jump to conclusions out of nowhere. So what makes him so certain Anomie attacked his brother? Did he know Anomie had arranged to meet Oliver at Comic Con? Or suspect that Anomie had lured him there?’
‘Possibly,’ said Robin.
‘I’m certain Oliver went to Comic Con to try and ID Anomie. He kept approaching Dreks and trying to talk to them. I know that’s not proof,’ he added, as Robin opened her mouth to speak, ‘but I watched the guy for an hour. He was definitely trying to find someone. So either he did find Anomie, who now knew exactly who to attack, or Anomie already knew what Oliver looked like, because he did what I did and Googled the idiot. So while Oliver’s trying to find Anomie, Anomie’s watching Oliver and waiting for his opportunity.’
