Captives

FIFTY-ONE

Coffee dripped from the bottom of the cup as DI Frank Gregson lifted it to his mouth and took a sip. It was strong. He pulled the lid from one of the other milk cartons and poured in the contents, stirring until the dark colour lightened.

Opposite him DS Stuart Finn was smoking a Marlboro, blowing out streams of smoke, alternately gazing into the depths of his tea cup and glancing out of the window.

The neon lights outside were barely visible through the sheen of condensation coating the inside of the cafe window. The film of steam combined with the patina of dirt on the glass made them almost opaque. Inside the cafe there were half a dozen other people. At a table in the corner three young girls sat, smoking and chatting quietly, occasionally glancing across at the two policemen.

Two men sat at a table near the counter, one of them pushing huge forkfuls of food into his mouth, the other sipping at a cup of tea.

Another man sat alone at the table next to them, peering at a magazine. Finn noted that he was tracing a column of names and addresses with the tip of his pen, occasionally ringing one with the biro.

The place smelled of fried food and damp.

Finn stubbed out a cigarette in an already overflowing ash-tray and immediately lit another. He noticed that he was almost out of them and fumbled in his jacket pocket for some change to feed into the cigarette machine. On the radio in the background, a voice announced that it was nine-thirty.

'It's weird, isn't it?' said Finn. 'How all these places start to look alike after a while.'

Gregson shrugged.

'The cafes, the bars, the clip-joints,' Finn continued. 'In the bookshops, too, there's something familiar about them, every one of them. Even the same punters, it seems.' He chuckled. 'I was flicking through a couple of magazines at that last place.' He smiled. 'More cunts than a meeting of the Arsenal supporters' club.' The DS shook his head, still grinning.

Gregson didn't return the smile. He merely sipped at his strong coffee and ran a hand through his hair.

'Yeah, the places look familiar and the answers are starting to sound familiar, too,' he said wearily. 'No, never seen him. Never heard anything. Didn't see anything.'

'I wonder if any of the other blokes are having better luck.'

'Are you serious? This whole fucking area is sewn up tighter than a nun's crotch,' Gregson grunted.

'Then why are we here?'

'Because it's our job.'

Finn sucked gently on his cigarette and looked across the table at Gregson, who was peering through the window into the street beyond.

'You knew it was going to be like this, Frank,' he said. 'You knew that no one around here was going to help us. Why call a search in the first place?'

'Procedure,' Gregson told him.

'Bullshit,' Finn said, smiling thinly. 'What do you know?'

'I know that we should be asking questions instead of sitting on our arses drinking cups of tea,' the DI told him, pushing his half-empty cup away.

'Come on, tell me the truth,' Finn persisted. 'You owe me that. We've been working together long enough. If I had a hunch or an idea about these killings I'd tell you.'

Gregson smiled thinly.

'The idea I had was crazy,' he said slowly, 'illogical. Impossible, even. I checked it out. You remember I said to you that the only thing any witnesses could agree on about the first bloke who killed himself was his staring eyes?'

Finn nodded.

'I checked the files, because that rung a bell somewhere. We arrested a bloke called Peter Lawton for a series of armed robberies. Remember me telling you?'

'Yes, I do,' said the DS. 'He's banged up, though, isn't he?'

'In Whitely Prison in Derbyshire. Yeah. He has been for the last six years.'

Finn looked vague.

'The second killer, the one who murdered the girl, I checked out his MO because that sounded familiar, too.'

'And?'

'It matched with the MO of a guy called Mathew Bryce who was also arrested over eighteen months ago. He's doing time in Whitely as well. What conclusions can you draw from that?'

Finn shrugged.

'That someone copied them,' he said.

'Or that they both escaped and duplicated the crimes they were originally arrested for.' Gregson smiled when he saw the look on Finn's face. 'See why I didn't mention it before? It's fucking crazy. We know they didn't escape because we would have heard, the whole country would have heard. They're still inside Whitely.' The phrase on both the files he'd read re-surfaced in his mind. Term being served. 'But if someone imitated the crimes committed by Lawton and Bryce, what's to stop somebody else imitating murders committed by any killer locked up in any jail in the country?'

'That still doesn't explain why they torched themselves,' Finn observed.

Gregson shrugged.

'On that point,' he said, 'your guess is as good as mine.' The DI got to his feet and headed for the door. The other occupants of the cafe watched him go. Finn left some money for the tea and coffee on the table, then fed change into the cigarette machine and pulled a packet out. He joined his superior at the door, pulling up the collar of his jacket as they stepped out into the street.

'Where to next?' he said, cupping his hand around the Marlboro he was trying to light.

'Over there,' said Gregson, nodding in the direction of the neon-shrouded building opposite.

The lights formed the word 'Loveshow'.