Twelve Deaths of Christmas

Prologue

15 May 2014

A muggy, fly-bitten day. A reach of colourless scrubland under a sky of shifting clouds. DI Kerry Cox climbed from the car.

‘You all know who Warren Boyd is, you all know what he looks like, but I want to take another look. Be sure.’ Detective Chief Inspector Peter Naysmith had to bawl to be heard over the roar of an aeroplane tracking overhead along the Stansted flightpath. He walked from officer to officer – there were six of them, four uniform, two CID, all armed – passing out prints of the man’s mugshot: a beaky nose, close-set eyes, a sulky, sour expression. Boyd.

‘He’s a slippery bastard,’ Naysmith went on, handing Cox the last print, propping his hands on his hips. ‘He’s resourceful, he’s cautious and he knows the area.’

Cox looked around, took in the layout, which she’d already memorized from an aerial printout. A poorly maintained chainlink fence separated the scrubland from a bare earth track and a row of three concrete lockups, each the size of a double garage. Beyond that, a stretch of boggy fields straggled west towards an ex-council estate a mile or so away. Naysmith had wanted a chopper, but Cox didn’t want to spook Boyd. It would have been a nightmare with air-traffic control too.

Her gun felt heavy, awkward in her hands. Wasn’t her first time on an armed op, but it never felt right. They’d got new vests since her last, though – not quite so bulky.

‘The GPS says he’s here,’ continued Naysmith. ‘One of the lockups. Now, these lockups, far as we know, have been disused for years: the company that owned them went bust, and there’s been no registered owner since – least until Boyd bought one for peanuts earlier this year. Bottom line, there could be fucking anything in there. So be ready.’

‘Do we know if he’s armed?’ One of the uniforms, chewing gum, trying to hide his nerves.

‘We know he’s got no firearms licence,’ said Kerry. ‘Beyond that, no idea. He might come out shooting. He might try to run, he might try to negotiate with us. Like I say: be ready.’

Naysmith nodded: ‘Okay.’ Made a gesture. The seven of them began to move purposefully towards the lockups.

They didn’t need the bolt-cutters to breach the tatty fence; there were holes where the wire had been hacked before, or had rusted away. One by one they picked their way through. The lockups, squat and grey, waited for them.

Naysmith and two uniforms moved warily left, circling in a line around the back of the buildings; Cox and the rest made their way to the front. Beyond the farthest unit Cox saw the front end of a parked bottle-green car, a dusty old Vauxhall – Boyd’s.

Her pulse quickened. She glanced at the GPS; the tracker was showing in the last lockup in the row.

They moved anticlockwise, filing between the car and the lockup’s westward wall. Cox was hoping for a side-door. The corrugated garage doors to the front, rust-streaked and spray-painted clumsily with NO PARKING and KEAP OUT, would take too long to break open – she didn’t want to give Boyd even a half-second more than she had to.

And there it was: a windowless, peeling uPVC door, no padlock, halfway along the wall.

To her right, Naysmith and his guys were edging around the far corner of the lockup. Cox caught the chief’s eye; he glanced quickly at the door, gave her a nod.

She stepped forward, gun heavy in her right hand, and tried the door-handle cautiously with her left.

It was unlocked.

Took a breath. Pulled the door open.

The seven officers surged inside, torches flaring in the darkness; fanned out swiftly into a semi-circle around the door. Their torch beams raked the bare walls, the ridged concrete floor.

Dust. Cobwebs. A hank of bindweed growing through a flaw in the iron roof.

‘Nothing, guv,’ someone said.

There was relief in his voice, she thought.

Where the fuck was Boyd? He couldn’t have known they were coming – and even if he had, he couldn’t have just vanished …

Cox turned her torch on the wall to her right, the back wall of the lockup. Doors – four vertically folding shutter-type doors, steel by the look of them, all locked at the bottom with heavy D-locks. Behind, she calculated, a space of – what – three feet by four feet? Wardrobe-sized. Room enough to stash a bike, say, or a couple of filing cabinets, or a decent haul of drugs or guns, or …

Again she looked at Naysmith.

‘Guv?’

‘The car,’ Naysmith said, eyeing the locks. ‘Find a key.’

Cox went out, blinking in the muddy May light. A passenger jet howled by overhead. Tried the car’s passenger door – it, too, was unlocked. Wasn’t like Boyd to be so sloppy, she thought, as she pulled it open – no, wasn’t like Boyd at all.

Opened the glove compartment, rifled quickly through a clutter of odds and ends: a pocket A–Z, an open packet of boiled sweets, an in-car mobile charger – and a key, attached to a plastic tag.

31, the tag read.

Back into the lockup, the dust and darkness, the confusion of torch beams. 31: the third shutter along.

A lockup within a lockup. A paedophile’s hiding place. There could be fucking anything in there, Naysmith had said. Well, she wasn’t exactly new to the job – whatever was in there, she was ready for it.

She crouched, broke open the D-lock, heaved up the shutter door. Shone her torch into the darkness.

She wasn’t ready. She wasn’t ready at all.

1

26 December 2014

Dead white skies over London and low, cold mist clinging to the lawns of the park. Black rooks in the leafless trees. The wires and railings of the zoo enclosures glimmered dully with beads of rainwater. It was busy, despite the weather: kids restless, parents weary at the dog-end of the Christmas holidays. Kerry saw the ennui in the other parents’ eyes and wondered if she looked the same. Perhaps they’d just wanted to get out of the house after being cooped up the previous day, with the heating on too high and the kids coming down from another sugar rush. She felt like an impostor.

The polar bear enclosure was gloomy, an angular pattern of grey water, weak shadow and dark, wet concrete. By the waterside a female bear pawed at her cub. She played roughly, tumbling the cub down the concrete slope. The ball of fluffy white fur yawped.

At the rail, wide-eyed, togged up in scarf and hat, a young boy watched intently. Rapt. The mother bear ambled heavily towards the cub, nuzzled it, batted it with a paw. Every movement showed her strength, her weight – the damage she could do.

‘I’m not sure he ought to be up there. It doesn’t look very safe.’

A youngish mum, her own toddler held in the crook of her arm, leaning across with a look of concern.

Cox blinked.

‘Sorry?’

‘That’s your boy up there on the railing, isn’t it? I’m not sure he should be climbing on the railing.’

‘Yes. No. Of course.’ Mustered a brief smile. ‘Thanks.’

Matthew had stepped on to the first rung of the railing to get a better view. What was he, eight inches off the floor? He didn’t respond when she called his name. Too busy watching the bear. She could feel the woman with the toddler watching her – judging her.

There’s more dangerous things in the world than climbing on a bloody railing, she wanted to say. More dangerous than polar bears, even.

Tried again: ‘Matthew. Get down.’

This time he looked around, glowering at her under his patterned woolly hat. Grudgingly stepped down. Turned back to the bear.

Cox sighed. Six years old, and giving her attitude already. Growing up fast. She had a good few years of that to look forward to, she thought wryly.

At the same time, she heard the counsellor in her brain, doing that infuriating cocking of her head – maybe ‘attitude’ is the wrong word, Kerry. How do you think Matthew is feeling?

She wondered when the next appointment was – she’d have to check her diary. No doubt there’d be a clash with work. There always was. The counsellor didn’t seem to get that police work wasn’t always neat and tidy, nine till five with an hour for lunch.

In fact, the two-day break she’d managed to wangle over both Christmas Day and Boxing Day was a small miracle. But given how yesterday had turned out – a high-strung mum, Christmas dinner, it was never likely to go well – she was wondering if it’d been worth the effort.

Today was going a bit better, though. At least she was with Matthew.

She turned away from the enclosure, let her gaze drift across the busy concourse. Kids everywhere. Little girl clutching a stuffed giraffe. Twins in a buggy slobbering over ice creams. Seriously – in December? A boy with an Elmo rucksack badgering his dad to take him to see the elephants. And a dark-haired girl in a blue duffle coat wandering away from her mum.

Cox felt her focus narrow reflexively, felt herself zero in on the kid. An instinct. Like a lifeguard at a busy swimming-pool. She found herself scanning the area for singles, dodgy-looking men, creeps, loners. This guy, smoking a cigarette under a dripping palm tree? Or this one, alone at a picnic table with a newspaper and a carrier bag?

She chided herself inwardly. Could just as well be someone’s loving dad or granddad, she knew. But then, that was no guarantee. And it didn’t have to be a man, of course. She’d read witness statements – from other countries admittedly – about women being used to tempt the victim to a snatch location.

Shook her head, told herself to get a bloody grip. She’d enough on her plate without worrying about other people’s kids. She shuddered at the thought of what was waiting for her back at home: stacks of paperwork, briefings from the barrister, case notes – and she’d said she’d give Naysmith a call, too.

The woman who’d chided her earlier was glancing at her oddly. Kerry realized, in a moment of sardonic horror, that only one person looked dodgy around here.

Nearby a camera clicked, and she turned sharply, ready to unload a volley of abuse. She’d had more than her fill of paparazzi … But, she saw, reddening at the realization, this wasn’t a pap, wasn’t some smirking sleazebag with an SLR and a moped. It was an old couple, arms about a grinning grandchild, making a pig’s ear of taking a selfie by the chimpanzee compound.

One day, Kerry, she told herself, you’re going to have to stop expecting the worst.

‘Mum!’

She turned.

‘Mm?’

‘Look what the bear’s doing.’

She lifted her chin to look over the rail.

‘Oh, yes.’

‘You didn’t even see. It’s not doing it now. Wait, look – it’s doing it again.’ The mother bear had picked up its cub in its jaws and was carrying it slowly up the slope. ‘Why’s it doing that, Mum?’ Matthew wasn’t happy. His face was pink, his voice winding up in pitch. ‘Mum? Why is the bear eating its baby?’

‘Oh, love. She’s doing no such thing.’ She moved to the rail, put a hand on Matthew’s shoulder. ‘She’s just helping the baby bear out, you see? She doesn’t want the baby bear to get hurt or fall in the water.’

Matthew nodded seriously. She could see him processing. Taking it in.

‘A baby bear,’ he said eventually, ‘is really called a cub.’

Then he turned away from the enclosure and looked up at her, blinking in the milky winter sunlight.

‘Where next?’

‘Wherever you like, love.’

Matthew took her hand – the wool of his mitten was damp from the railing – and they moved off across the concourse.

As they walked, Cox had the oppressive feeling of being watched – no, not watched exactly, but looked at, noticed. Heads turned when they passed by. She saw uncertain flickers of recognition in people’s faces, awkward grimaces as they looked away a moment too late. She wasn’t imagining it. And why wouldn’t they notice, if they read the papers.

She could do without this.

‘Look!’ Matthew stopped, pointing excitedly at a queue of young families outside the penguin pond. Feeding time! a sign said. A young woman in flip-flops and a zoo sweatshirt was chatting to the kids, a metal bucket hanging from her hand.

‘Are they feeding the penguins?’ Matthew asked, tugging at her hand. ‘Can we go? Come on! It’s dinner time for the penguins.’

Cox hesitated. Thought uneasily of sitting among a crowd of parents, all of them knowing who she was, what she did – thinking they knew her.

‘Dinner time for mum, more like,’ she said with false heartiness. ‘Let’s go get something to eat! I’ll buy you a hotdog, how about that?’

To her relief, Matthew went for it.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I want fish, though! Like a penguin.’

He waddled off ahead of her, ducking his head and waggling his elbows like flippers at his sides. Cox laughed – the sound of it surprised her, somehow.

They’d just picked up their trays in the zoo canteen when Cox felt her phone buzz in her jacket pocket. As she fished it out she watched Matthew make his way hungrily towards a display of fancy iced pastries. She could already see how the next few minutes were going to play out, when she saw the number. Her appetite vanished.

‘Hello?’

‘Kerry. Naysmith. Can you come in?’

The chief super. His manner as flat and blunt as his northern vowels.

‘Guv, I’ve had today booked off for ages –’

‘I know. But something’s come up. A body.’

Christ, he knew how to play her. She could feel the buzz of excitement starting up somewhere in her chest; adrenaline beginning to pump.

‘Go on.’

‘I’ll text you the address. See you there.’

Rang off.

She dropped the phone back into her pocket. Smiled ruefully as she watched Matthew struggling with the tongs to pick up a frosted muffin. Well, there’d be other days.

When she knelt beside him, curling an arm around his waist, it was like he already knew. His bottom lip poked out.

‘Matthew, love …’ she began.

‘You’re going, aren’t you.’ It wasn’t a question. Trust me to have the only psychic infant in London, Cox thought.

‘Yes, love, I’m afraid so. I’m sorry. But I’ve got to go and –’

‘Save the world. I know.’

It was an old joke between them, a line they’d used for years, whenever she had to work nights, or was late home, or missed a birthday party or a school play …

But did he say it differently, this time? For the first time Cox thought she detected an edge of resentment in Matthew’s voice.

‘But I’ll see you soon, love, okay? We’ll come here again – I’ll take you to see the penguins’ feeding time.’ She kissed his forehead. He was trying not to cry, she knew. She wondered where they got that from. Where did boys learn that tears were something to keep hidden, keep inside?

As they walked back through the zoo to the car park she dialled Aidan’s number.

He answered sharply: ‘Let me guess.’

‘Look, Aidan, I wouldn’t ask if –’

‘If it wasn’t urgent. Yes, I know the drill, Kerry.’

‘Come on. It’s not as if you’re busy, is it?’

A deep, withering sigh down the phone line.

‘You really think that’s what this is about? Matthew really wanted to spend some time with you. It’s Christmas, Kerry, for God’s sake.’

‘I know. I know.’ How many times had they had this conversation? Cox felt herself engaging autopilot. ‘I’ll try harder in future. I promise I will. I’ll have a word with my boss, try and sort out my work–life balance. But just –’

‘Just this once.’ Aidan’s voice was heavy with cynicism. ‘Sure. Bring him over. But you need to make it up to him, Kerry. You are his bloody mum, you know.’

‘We’ll be there in half an hour,’ she said. Blipped open the car with the key-fob. ‘Depending on traffic.’

The First Day of Christmas, 1986

‘It’s too dark, you berk. It won’t work in the dark.’

He doesn’t like me calling him a berk. He takes stuff to heart, does our Stan. Scrunches up his face.

‘It flippin’ does,’ he said. ‘Point it at the bottom of the door, you’ll see.’

I call him a spaz, but I have a look anyway. Put my eye to the eye-thing and give it a turn. Patterns. Bit of colour.

Shrug, give him it back.

‘I don’t get it,’ I say, because I don’t.

‘It’s a kal-ide-oh-scope.’

‘I know what it is. What’s it meant to do?’ Grab it back off him, turn it over in my hands. Feels gritty. Rub my fingers and thumb together. Oh, bloody hell. ‘Here. Here, Stan, there’s all stuff coming out of it.’

His eyes flick wide in the darkness. He snatches it from me.

‘Careful, you’ll get it everywhere –’

’Cause I can see bits of glitter coming out of the end of it.

‘You broke it!’ He’s trying to cup his hand under the leak.

‘I never. It was already like that.’

‘It was fine when I was playing with it.’

‘Give over, I bet it was already busted when they gave it you. Place like this, they’re not going to give you something dead good, are they? Bet they bought it from Oxfam or something.’

Stan’s holding his kaleidoscope like it’s his favourite pet that’s just died.

‘Anyway,’ I say, because I don’t like seeing him look like that, ‘you’re too old for a toy like that. It’s a kid’s toy, that. You’re nearly nine.’

He drops his face into his pillow. Mutters something – something about how Santa gave it to him, and Santa wouldn’t give him something rubbish from Oxfam.

‘You what? Speak up, mumbles.’

‘I said’ – he lifts his face up, and even in this gloom I can see he’s got tears on his cheeks – ‘it’s off Santa, so it’s not rubbish, Robbie, so shut up.’

I don’t say anything. It was a second-hand toy, ’course it was, maybe third-hand, fourth-hand. Other kids’ cast-offs, that’s what bloody Santa brings at Hampton Hall. Same as the clothes, the comics. Stuff normal folk’d chuck away.

I look at Stan. He’s got his blanket pulled over his chin and he’s not crying any more, but his eyes are still open.

‘Ro-ob,’ he says, quietly.

‘Wha-at.’

‘There’s a grate over the chimney.’

He’s looking across the dorm, at the old fireplace in the far wall that hasn’t ever had a fire in it as long as we’ve been here. It’s just an alcove in the wall is all it is, but he’s right, there is a metal grill-type thing over the hole that used to be a chimney.

‘Yeah, so?’

‘So how does Santa get down?’ The worry in his voice, bloody hell, it’s painful to hear.

I don’t know when I realized Santa didn’t exist, or why. Now I don’t know how I ever believed in him. I must’ve been bloody daft.

I start to answer: ‘Well, he’s probably got a key, hasn’t he, to the side-door, so he parks his reindeer in the car park and –’

A laugh from across the room cuts me off.

My fists clench.

Mark Duffy is sitting up in bed – I can see his outline. Recognize his snotty bloody laugh anyway.

‘What’s your problem, Duffy?’

‘Your kid’s a bit old to be believing in Santa, isn’t he? He’s such a little spaz.’

I know Stan’s looking at me. I don’t look at him.

‘You shut your bloody stupid mouth.’

‘Here, Stanley, how was Father Christmas when you saw him yesterday?’

Stan’s voice is on the edge of breaking, right on the edge. ‘I did see him, I did, he give me a present, a kaleidoscope, and –’

‘I bet that’s not all he gave you,’ Duffy sniggers.

Stan doesn’t say anything – doesn’t understand. But I understand well enough. I don’t know what Duffy’s on about exactly but I know his tone, what it means. Something dirty.

Can’t fight in here, not after lights-out, I’d get a proper bollocking. Only been in here a week, don’t want to mark my card already. And they might take me away, to solitary or whatever – and Stan’d be left on his own.

‘Why don’t you fuck off, Duffy,’ I say.

‘Make me.’

‘I’ll see you in workshop tomorrow, then I’ll bloody make you.’

He shuts up. Knows I could have him. That’s a good feeling.

Then he says: ‘I was only telling the truth. It’s not Santa, it’s only bloody Merton. Real Santa’s not got bad breath and wandering hands. Real Santa might make you sit on his knee but that’s all he does – not like Merton.’ Duffy lies down, pulls his blanket over himself. ‘Don’t much mind whether you been naughty or nice, neither.’

What the bloody hell have we let ourselves in for here, Stan?, I think.

He’s really sleeping now. Can tell by his breathing.

Wish he was awake. Wish we weren’t here. Wish we were still in our old room.

What’s it been now, nearly a year? Can’t be a year yet ’cause we was at home last Christmas. Bloody Malky was already around then, though. Smackhead crackhead Malky. I’ll never forgive him, that skinny, slimy, creepy bastard. For what he done to our mum. For what he done to me and Stan.

Not a fit parent, they reckoned. Not responsible. I told ’em, come on, she’s never been a fit parent, our mum, it’s me what’s been cooking tea and looking after Stan, for years, like – she’s lazy, our mum, and I don’t think she ever wanted us – but she’s our mum. We’ll just carry on like we have been, I told ’em, whether Mum’s on smack or whatever, it doesn’t matter – we’ll just carry on like always.

Didn’t make no difference. Nothing we say ever makes any difference.

‘Into Care.’ It was like the bloody bogeyman when I was little, that. Mum used to threaten us with it when we was bad but I know she never meant it. If she’d meant it she wouldn’t’ve been all crying and screaming when they took us away, would she?

I knew it was going to be bad. Stan didn’t know, but I knew. That place, though – that place was worse than I’d ever thought.

We were lucky our dad’s a bloody headcase. I mean, it wasn’t lucky out in the real world because, well, he was a proper bloody headcase, but in there – he got us out of there. Found out where we was and properly kicked off. Started trying to get in, threatening, having a go at the staff, wound up in court –

I remember something Stan said: ‘It’s nice, isn’t it, that Dad cares about us.’

Made me laugh, that. Anyway, they moved us on. And here we are.

Footsteps. Footsteps, out on the landing.

Stan wakes up sharply, frightened.

‘Who’s there? Robbie? What’s that?’

From across the dorm, Mark Duffy tells him in a hiss to bloody well keep quiet. I lean over, touch his arm – tell him it’s okay, I’m here, nothing’s going to happen.

The footsteps come up to the door. I hold my breath. I think we all do. I can see the shadows of two feet through the crack between the door and the tiles.

Then the footsteps move on.

Bloody hell.

I reach under my mattress – if you can call it a bloody mattress, it’s like an old sack full of coathangers – and pull out my picture. Can hardly see it in the dark but I just want to hold it. Mum, Stan, me, in the lounge of our house in Oldbury. Stan’s only small. I’m about nine. All smiles, all saying ‘cheese’. Happy bloody family.

‘When will they let us go home?’ Stan says suddenly, his voice wobbly, in the darkness.

Soon, I tell him. Dead soon.

I hear Mark Duffy make a noise under his blanket. Can’t tell if he’s laughing or crying.

2

The PC on the door knew who Cox was before she told him. Well, of course he did.

As she signed in, he gave her the details of the case. William Radley, sixty-eight. Ex-copper. Found dead that morning. The name rang a bell, but she wasn’t sure why.

It was a big place, a Victorian townhouse in a leafy bit of Ealing. High ceilings, she noted as she made her way through the hall. Wood floors and a staircase you could drive a Routemaster up.

‘This his place?’ she called back.

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘On a police pension? Must’ve made some sound investments.’ A businesslike nod. ‘Thanks, Constable.’

A white tent was being put up in the long back garden. Cox stood for a moment in the roomy kitchen (Belfast sink, marble worktops, a set of expensive and well-used cast-iron pans) and sized up the situation. Through a rose-trellis to the left she could see the neighbours – a constipated-looking middle-aged man and a woman with steel-grey hair wrapped in a fierce bun – gawping at the scene. A few uniform were standing around, looking bored. A female sergeant was talking to a man in a well-tailored dark suit who, with a cursory assessment of their body language (her talking more, nodding a lot; him brusque, authoritative, inquiring), she judged to be a superior officer. Didn’t recognize him, though. Wasn’t CID. That rang alarm bells. MI5? GCHQ? Trouble, anyway.

He turned and saw her as she stepped out through the French windows on to the lawn. Smiled fleetingly and extended a hand. His handshake was firm and brief.

‘Sam Harrington,’ he said. ‘Ministry of Justice.’

‘DI Cox.’ She looked at him meaningfully. ‘So, to what do we owe this honour?’

Harrington laughed lightly. Not buying it, Cox thought.

‘Just a formality,’ the MoJ man said, absently smoothing a lapel. ‘Bill Radley was quite high up at the Yard. We have to make sure everything’s done by the book.’

Thanks for the vote of confidence, she thought. ‘Sure. So what’s the story?’

‘Hard to be sure at this stage, of course – but it looks a lot like suicide.’

‘Suicide?’ Then what the hell am I doing here on my bloody day off? she thought bitterly. Then the self-awareness kicked in. Come on, DI Cox, be honest – would you really rather be watching feeding time at the penguin pond right now?

She half-turned, looked up, taking in the layout of the house and garden. The back wall, thick with drab winter ivy, rose up three storeys to a shingled mansard roof. A balcony jutted from a second-floor room – a bedroom, she guessed. Must be a hell of a view from up there.

Turned back to Harrington. Something here didn’t feel quite right; something about this set-up – something she couldn’t put her finger on – was making her uneasy.

‘What’s the family situation? Next of kin?’

‘No family that we know of. Radley never married.’

Confirmed bachelor, as the newspaper obituaries used to say, with a nod and a wink.

‘Okay.’ She nodded, gestured towards Radley’s body – they’d put up the tent, and it lay under a sheet, parallel to the house, one arm flung out. There were dull burgundy blood-spots on the paving stone near the dead man’s head. ‘Shall we take a look at him?’

Harrington, thin-lipped, nodded grimly. Left it to Cox to bend down and draw back the concealing sheet.

William Radley – AC Radley, or DC Radley, or whatever he’d been at the Yard – was a slightly balding, grey-haired, middle-aged white man. No surprises there, Cox thought drily. His face, baggy and pale, was composed, perhaps slightly puzzled. Someone had closed his eyes, but hadn’t bothered to cover his modesty where the navy-blue dressing-gown had flapped open. The dead didn’t need dignity, thought Cox. Patches of purple lividity were already pooling in his buttocks and thighs. The back of his head was a pulpy, red mess, gummed to the spotted paving stone with viscous, part-congealed blood.

Looked about right for a head-first fall from three floors up, Cox thought grimly.

‘Who found him?’

‘Chap in the house opposite.’ Harrington nodded towards the bottom of the garden. ‘Heard a bang just after nine this morning, saw him lying here. Called the police.’

‘Hmm.’ Cox replaced the sheet, straightened up. Harrington, she noticed, was looking pretty green about the gills. ‘I’m going to take a look inside.’

The MoJ man nodded mutely. As she turned away, she saw him press a handkerchief to his mouth.

It was warm in the house, but you couldn’t call it cosy. She moved slowly through the kitchen and the hall, turning through the first door she came to into a dark-panelled dining room. The table and six chairs – oak, she thought – shone in the subdued lighting; the smell of furniture polish made her eyes sting.

For an older man living alone, Radley had kept the place immaculate. Every picture dust-free and straight on its hook; every book square on its shelf. The sitting room was the same. The TV and DVD remote controls might have been positioned on the coffee table with a set square. Well, he was a copper, Cox thought. Meticulous.

Back into the hall, up the wide staircase.

The first floor seemed a little more lived-in. Toothbrush and shaving things left by the bathroom basin (sink dry, she noted, shower screen too); shirts drying on a rack in the guest bedroom. A small study – computer, two filing cabinets, bookcase – was decorated with framed photographs of Radley dinner-jacketed or in full uniform, grinning beside various public figures. Home secretaries, lord chancellors, local MPs, anti-crime campaigners. In the pictures he looked engaged, genuine, his wide smile easy and unforced.

An old snap from a long-ago ACPO conference rang a bell in Cox’s mind. She’d been there – Brighton, had it been? Bournemouth? – and, now that she came to think about it, she’d met William Radley there. The memory flared brightly from somewhere in her subconscious. Only briefly, long enough to exchange a few words of small talk, but she remembered the man’s easy-going charm: ‘Call me Bill,’ he’d said, and never mind the badge of rank on his shoulder. That had been in the good years, what the papers later termed, with more than a hint of schadenfreude, her ‘meteoric rise’.

The second floor of the house was divided into two big rooms, one either side of the steep staircase. On the right, facing south, was a bare-planked artist’s studio, flooded with pale light from three tall windows. There were two large canvases set on wooden easels, one bare, the other a half-finished watercolour, a landscape – to Cox’s eye, it looked pretty good.

Radley, she thought, had had nothing to fear from retirement. His books, his paintings, his love of food and friends – he’d built himself a life, a good life, on leaving the force. Not like Dad, Cox thought bleakly. DS Colin Cox had clung on to his going-nowhere career as long as he could, and been pensioned off at sixty-five. He’d found nothing to replace policing in his life – found, in fact, that policing was his life. Nothing she or Mum could say seemed to help. It wasn’t that he wasn’t kind, that he’d stopped loving them, caring about them, both of them, and Matthew, too – it was just that he seemed to have lost his way and could never seem to get back on the right track. He’d shrunk from the world outside; settled into his chair in front of the telly and waited for it all to be done with.

Was it really a year ago? Cox thought, moving from the studio out on to the landing. A year ago that the end finally came for DS Cox (retd). Mum’d been off visiting her sister in Kent. Cox had been roused from sleep by a phone-call at 3 a.m.: her parents’ neighbours complaining about the TV blaring all through the night. Turned out he’d had a stroke; with no phone to hand – he couldn’t be doing with new-fangled nonsense like mobiles – he’d grabbed for the TV remote and squeezed the volume button until his strength gave out.

Too little, too late. His body was cold when Cox found him.

She shook her head, tried to shake away the memory, to focus, as she pushed open Radley’s bedroom door. The coldness in the room made her blink. The balcony door, of course: it was still open. The well-made maroon curtains stirred in the breeze. The duvet was thrown back, and Radley’s size 13 slippers were on the floor by the bed. Nothing out of the ordinary.

So Bill Radley just woke up this morning, got out of bed, opened the curtains and jumped out of the window?

Cox circled the unmade bed and stepped gingerly out on to the little balcony. Took a breath and looked down. Only three storeys but Christ it looked like more, down to the garden, the trembling white square of the tent – and, beneath it, the bloodied body of Bill Radley. Her head spun; she’d never been good with heights.

As she stepped back into the room, the door from the landing opened, and Harrington stepped inside. He greeted her breezily: ‘Find anything interesting?’

She replied with a non-committal shrug.

Harrington, one hand in his trouser-pocket, began poking desultorily around the room. Pulled open the drawer of the bedside table; peered into the empty tea-mug by the bed; picked up one of Radley’s slippers and ran his thumb absently over the nap.

‘You’re disturbing a crime-scene, Mr Harrington,’ Cox said sharply.

He looked up guiltily. Dropped the slipper as if it had suddenly turned white-hot.

‘Sorry. Didn’t realize it was a crime-scene.’

Cox eyed him sourly for a second.

Then she moved back to the double-glazed door that opened on to the balcony.

‘Have you been out here?’

‘Lord, no.’ Harrington laughed urbanely. ‘No head for heights, I’m afraid.’

Cox gritted her teeth.

‘Have you ever attended at a suicide? A suicide by jumping?’

‘Nope. Not really my field. I assume you have?’

‘A few, yeah. And you know what they had in common?’

‘A dead body?’

She let his facetiousness slide.

‘Exactly. That’s exactly the point. Jumpers, more than most other suicides, want to make sure. No second thoughts, no turning back. This’ – she gestured to the little balcony – ‘is what – maybe twenty feet? Hornsey Lane Bridge it isn’t. It’s not a sure thing, Mr Harrington. You’re as likely to break both your legs as be killed. Or end up in a wheelchair being fed through a tube.’

‘Could it be that, at the time of his suicide, poor Mr Radley was in no fit state mentally to carry out such calculations?’

Again Cox forced herself to ignore the faint note of mockery in Harrington’s voice.

‘It’s possible,’ she nodded. ‘But look at this place. Nothing here suggests a man who’s lost his grip on reality. Everything neat as a pin downstairs. The garden’s been well cared for. And look at his painting.’

‘Come on. Weren’t all the great painters raving madmen?’

‘This isn’t the home of a man who’s got nothing to live for,’ Cox insisted.

Harrington followed her as she made her way back downstairs.

‘I’m not jumping to any conclusions,’ she said, over her shoulder. ‘But I want to at least wait until we get the forensics report before I rule out anything suspicious.’ She collared a passing constable. ‘Are forensics here yet?’

The young PC looked at her in surprise.

‘Ma’am?’

‘Forensics. You know, the guys in facemasks and white jumpsuits. Have they arrived yet? They should be here by now.’

The PC opened and shut his mouth and glanced appealingly over Cox’s shoulder. She heard Harrington clear his throat.

Oh, here we go …

‘The thing is, inspector, we decided not to bring forensics in on this one.’ Harrington, moving past her, patted the young copper on the shoulder. ‘Thank you, constable. On you go.’ Turned to Cox. His expression gave nothing away. Either he’s a hell of a poker player, Cox thought, or he’s as clueless as I am.

‘It seems pretty open-and-shut,’ he said calmly. ‘William Radley killed himself. No need to waste scarce resources and call out overstretched personnel on a –’

‘Whose decision was this?’

He shifted uncomfortably. ‘I – this was my call.’

‘I’d ask you what exactly you’re trying to achieve here, Mr Harrington,’ she said acidly. ‘But it’s clear to me that we’ve wasted enough time here already. I’m overruling you.’ Turned away before he could answer. Called back the young PC – told him to bring in a full SOCO team, ASAP.

‘And while you’re at it,’ she added, pulling out a business card and handing it to him, ‘get in touch with this guy, Don DiMacedo at Quantum Data. Don’t let him fob you off – I don’t care if he says he’s busy, tell him to call DI Cox as a matter of urgency.’

The PC hurried off. Cox lowered herself on to the bottom step. Ran a hand through her hair, blew out a breath.

‘Well, that’s me told,’ muttered Harrington, a little coldly.

He moved away, sauntering hands in pockets through to the kitchen. She heard him call to someone to fetch him a cup of coffee.

Hell, maybe it was a suicide, she thought. Maybe Bill Radley had more going on than we know. Maybe he really did just wake up today and think: That’s it, I’m done.

God knows, everyone had rough mornings – mornings when the world is just too much to handle.

Or is that just me?

She stood, smoothing her suit trousers. Whatever – she was a copper, after all. What kind of copper walks away from a dead body on the say-so of a pen-pusher from the MoJ?

And it wasn’t as though she had nothing to go on. She made her way outside, into the garden. There was someone she needed to speak to.

The uniformed sergeant to whom Harrington had been speaking was sitting on a garden bench, reading through her notes. She looked up as Cox approached. Recognized her – stowed her notebook, got to her feet.

‘Ma’am.’

‘Sergeant – Adeola, right?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘DI Cox, CID. You should know that SOCO are on their way, sergeant – let me know if our friend from Whitehall gives you any trouble. And for God’s sake, get him a pair of latex gloves and some bags for his feet.’

‘Will do, ma’am.’

‘Harrington said it was a neighbour that called in the body?’

‘That’s right, ma’am.’ Adeola snapped open her notebook. ‘A Mr Jefferies. Number 54. Reportedly saw the body and dialled 999.’

‘And asked for the police? Not an ambulance?’

‘I thought that was funny myself, ma’am. But I guess Mr Radley being who he was, Mr Jefferies thought the police ought to know.’ She shrugged. ‘People make bad decisions in emergencies.’

‘Okay. We’ll come back to that. Now – has anyone talked to the cleaner.’

A blank look.

‘What cleaner, ma’am?’

‘There’s not a speck of dust on that ground floor, sergeant. Kitchen surfaces gleaming, floors swept, wastebins emptied.’

‘Maybe he just enjoyed housework. Some retired men do.’

‘Yes, but it’s a different story upstairs. Clean enough, I suppose – but not a professional job. Mug of tea by the bed, bathroom in need of a scrub.’

‘But no one’s mentioned a cleaner, ma’am.’

‘I don’t suppose anyone’s asked. Who was first on the scene?’

‘I responded to the 999 call. But Mr Harrington was already here when I arrived.’

Cox nodded thoughtfully.

‘Okay. Look, I could be wrong – but have someone look through his papers, call the local agencies. I say there was someone here this morning – someone who only did half a job, because halfway through they came across Bill Radley lying in the back garden with his head caved in.’

‘Then why didn’t they phone it in? Why did they just leave?’

‘That’s what we’re going to find out, sergeant.’ She turned at the sound of footsteps: Harrington, striding towards them across the lawn. A bit pink-faced.

‘Still here, inspector?’

‘Very much so.’ She gave him a hard smile. ‘Just so you’re in the loop, Mr Harrington: I’m about to order a door-to-door, three streets in each direction. Sergeant Adeola, I want full statements – and I mean full – from anyone who’s seen or heard anything, anything at all, that might help us. Keep me posted. I’m going to have a talk with this Mr Jefferies.’

Harrington made an impatient grimace.

‘I’m sure this officer has many more important things to be dealing with,’ he said. ‘Honestly, inspector, don’t you think this is overkill for a straightforward suicide?’

‘It would be, for a straightforward suicide,’ Cox nodded. ‘Now what I need you to do, Mr Harrington, if you can, is put a blackout on this. No press, no media of any kind, nothing on or off the record – total lockdown.’

‘Look, inspector, if you’re trying to make a point –’

‘I’m not trying to make a point.’ Cox cut him off bluntly. ‘I’m telling you this isn’t suicide, straightforward or otherwise. I’m telling you we’re dealing with a murder.’

Jackson Sharp