London Falling

FIVE

Sefton stayed at the safe house in Wanstead for a week. He slept a lot. He watched daytime telly. He had some terrible dreams. Stupid stuff, easy to forget in the daylight. He was back on his school bus, being tormented by those little shits. Batty boy, that was their favourite. As if they knew. Posh boy. In that accent of theirs that he himself did offhandedly now, and still hated. The white kids called him black, and the black kids called him everything else.

‘That,’ he explained to a bloke called Tom, from Norfolk, in the right sort of pub, ‘is how I realized I had a talent for my line of work.’

‘What’s that?’ Tom hadn’t really been listening to Sefton’s tales of woe, just looking at the other man’s chest.

Which was great. But maybe not for tonight, ’cos he was in a safe house, and out for an innocent pint. ‘Underwear model,’ he said, and at least the bloke laughed.

So, loads of time alone in his room, lots of time to let the tension flood out, but that only seemed to let the memories flood in. Fucking Costain! He wished he could put it all in the past, but Costain blowing him that kiss had connected. Even now. Even here. No racism or homophobia in the Met. Not these days, sir, no, I’ve never seen any. I’m one of the good ones.

He had found a gym with a boxing ring, sparred a bit. His partner, a cocky bloke, thinking he saw something vulnerable in Sefton’s passive expression, said, ‘No, come on, two rounds proper like.’ Sefton dropped his guard twenty seconds in, stepped past the haymaker, and hit him — body, jaw, body — and the kid staggered back, waving his gloves in the air, laughing awkwardly. ‘Okay, okay!’

Sefton had inclined his head to him. ‘Yeah. I get that a lot.’

That night he had thought about going on Grindr and setting up a random encounter with some bloke who wouldn’t give a fuck about all his angst. Yeah, but no.

Then a phone call had come, saying Toshack had died in custody. Sefton had just nodded, because he felt so numb. Then he wanted to hit something. But he kept it all in.

After that he went out for more runs, got himself ready for the debriefing, ready to become his public self again. He wanted to tell them about Costain, about that moment, about the fucking months of bullying, both in and out of character. But he wouldn’t. That wasn’t who he was. He didn’t want to be an adult who was bullied, so he rose above it by not talking. Or that’s what you tell yourself.

Debriefing took him to anonymous meeting rooms in anonymous hotels. He found some relief in being led through the last few weeks of the operation, giving the required details, establishing a narrative. He’d expected Quill to be there, but he wasn’t. His DS led the meetings and, when asked, said Quill was on leave. That didn’t bloody bode well.

Sefton wanted, he realized after the first session, to at least be asked about Costain. He wanted to be asked so he could. . well, maybe mention the drugs. Yeah, that.

But he wasn’t asked. And was left frustrated. But perhaps that was for the best. It wasn’t as if he’d seen him take anything, damn it.

That night, in a different right sort of pub, he declared, again without having given the context: ‘It’s as if I haven’t got a voice.’

‘Talk a lot, don’t you?’ said the other bloke this time.

Sefton gave him a long look that made him take a step back. Then he broke into a cheerful smile. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘long day.’ And he went back to the safe house alone.

And then it was over. He was told he should expect a meeting with SCD 10 for reassignment, considered damaged goods along with the rest of Goodfellow. But then he got another call: this time Lofthouse’s office, which was on his approved list but not a number he’d ever used. A new meeting to be held at a Radisson hotel out near Heathrow. This must be a post-mortem, something on the way to holding an inquiry. Dirt was going to be dished and Sefton resolved that, just for once, he’d do the dishing. Against all his experience of the copper lifestyle, he was hoping for some sort of closure.

He stepped out of the lift, walked into the anonymous meeting room without knocking, closed the door behind him and found himself facing someone he didn’t know. A young woman in her twenties, who had the strangest eyes he’d ever seen. She looked out of place in a suit, didn’t stand like police did — she wasn’t balanced squarely on both feet so as to be braced against whatever was about to happen, the way he’d had to train himself not to stand. She thus looked vulnerable, and vulnerable was worrying. Lofthouse, Quill and Costain were there, too. Apart from the detective superintendent, they all looked equally uncomfortable. ‘Ma’am,’ he nodded, ‘Sir.’ Just a nod to Costain. ‘Who’s this?’

‘This is our intelligence analyst, Lisa Ross,’ began Lofthouse. ‘Lisa, this is DC-’

What the fuck? ‘Ma’am, I’m not comfortable with-!’

‘You were told at the start of Goodfellow that Lisa was indoctrinated in the operation, but cut out from it for security reasons. And you’re now reacting like any UC would, but Goodfellow is over, Detective Constable. And I’ve put together a juicy little spin-off.’

Sefton felt like walking straight out again. This was the last thing he’d expected. And it was not bloody closure. A spin-off with Costain? But. . he wasn’t being sent home either. He controlled himself. He kept it all in. He nodded to Ross. ‘DC Kevin Sefton, second UC.’

She looked back at him, apparently as fearful of hearing his name as he was of giving it. Then she looked over to Costain. ‘You’re “Blakey”, then?’ she said.

‘Guilty as charged.’ At least he hadn’t smiled.

Ross actually snorted, which made Sefton hide a smile. Oh, he liked her.

Quill had meanwhile been lost in paperwork and waiting. Waiting far too long for those bloody test results to come in. He’d also been anticipating a post-mortem in which they’d doubtless try to establish exactly what Costain had been guilty of. His own reports to Lofthouse had leaned heavily in that direction. But it seemed he’d been ignored.

‘A spin-off?’ he enquired.

‘Just you four, reporting directly to me.’

Quill looked round at the others, and saw they were as boggled as he was. ‘Two UCs, an analyst and a DI?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, apart from anything else, I’ll need my DS, Harry Dobson-’

‘I’m sorry, no.’

Quill felt himself getting angry. ‘Is the possibility of corruption in Gipsy Hill so widespread,’ he said, ‘that we are the only four definitely exempt?’ And he couldn’t help but look straight at Costain as he said it.

Lofthouse just raised a warning eyebrow.

Costain had only narrowly persuaded himself to come here. His memory darted back now to the night when Lofthouse herself, incredibly, had arrived outside his cell. She’d taken away the Nagra tape. But then she’d come back, the key to the cell in her hand. ‘Only take phone calls from me,’ she’d instructed, walking him out to a waiting car. ‘I’ll take care of you. All right?’

He’d felt ridiculously glad to hear that. He remembered the night when she’d called him about the death that occurred in custody. He’d heard about Rob breaking, of him being about to tell it all, against everything he stood for, and then he heard that Quill had been the only officer in the room. Costain had hung up and gone to a door in his safe house and started slamming it. As if that would bring down punishment.

‘Just us four?’ he echoed, glaring back at Quill in the same way the man was glaring at him. ‘How are we going to do this without a traffic warden and a dog handler?’

Since that death in custody, Ross had continued examining the evidence from Goodfellow in her exile in Norwood. She’d kept at it ferociously, focused on it, because she couldn’t see a life beyond it. She’d kept telling herself she needed to get past how she felt about Toshack. She’d kept trying to find satisfaction in his death. But she couldn’t.

And now this new operation was going to demand that she actually lived in this world that was not — but was supposed to have been — a happy-ever-after one. It was mad. It was irrelevant. She focused her attention back on the man they were calling Costain, and set about memorizing him as if one day she’d have to profile him.

Lofthouse pointed to the round table in the middle of the room. ‘Please, sit.’

Quill, aware that he was eyeing her interrogatively, even a bit desperately, made to do so but she held up a hand. ‘Ah, no. Wait.’ They all halted. She toyed with her charm bracelet for a moment, lost in thought, then pointed from each person to a chair. ‘Jimmy, you go there. Tony there. Kevin there, Lisa there, please.’

They moved around to their assigned places, feeling rather amazed. None of them had witnessed a detective superintendent having a nervous breakdown before.

‘I’m leaving the name of this new operation,’ she said, passing out the documents, ‘to you.’

Quill gaped at that too. There was a reason that job and subject names were picked from lists of randomly chosen words. What if he suffered a fit of madness and called it after the target? Speaking of which: ‘What’s the objective?’

‘Investigate what happened in that interview room. Find out who killed Robert Toshack.’

Quill’s heart sank.

‘And how, because the pathologist’s tests found no evidence of poisoning or physical assault.’

‘So. .’ he couldn’t quite find the words for a moment. ‘How are you so sure he didn’t die of natural causes, ma’am?’ He wanted her to confirm he was in the clear.

‘Because, according to the many experts I’ve spent a long time talking to, there are no natural causes able to do that.’

He looked to his insanely small team. They looked back, equally flabbergasted. They had, as the old joke about the stolen toilets went, nothing to go on.

‘You’ll stay at Gipsy Hill.’ She finally managed a smile. ‘Lisa, you’ll finally be able to join them. But I’ve found you a nice new Ops Room, to keep you out of the general population.’

Two days later, Quill staggered into the Portakabin, carrying an ancient overhead projector he’d found in the stores at Gipsy Hill, and had heaved the quarter-mile back to the trading estate across the way. The inside of this new ‘Ops Room’ looked as unpromising as the outside. An Ops Board that had been improvised from a cork board found at the market, but empty except for a single photo of Toshack. Some desks. A stack of chairs. One desktop PC, perhaps even more ancient than those in Gipsy Hill. A new kettle. He looked out of the window towards the building in which he’d previously worked. He could smell the distrust even from here. ‘Gone all Professional Standards on us, have you?’ That had been Mark Salter when Quill had popped into the canteen this morning. He’d said it with a smile, but it hadn’t extended to his eyes.

They’re sure we’re looking for a mole. And Lofthouse has bloody kept us here on the Hill to do it. When he’d stopped Lofthouse on the way out of that insane meeting, she’d firmly told him there was nothing further to discuss. And that tone in her voice was one he’d learned to pay attention to.

Ross entered and nodded to him, still wearing that face of hers that looked like it might one day end up on a wanted poster or a stamp. Understandable. The only change for her was that now her anonymous building had slightly more people in it. He made tea as first one car and then another stopped outside, and first Sefton, then Costain, entered, having both taken the shortest possible route from vehicle to door. At least Lofthouse had realized how neither of those two would be eager to show his warrant card at the gate of Gipsy Hill, especially since now there was a strong possibility that someone might write down the name on it, so that a visit to friends and family could be arranged. Not that they weren’t still vulnerable out here. Not just politically but physically.

‘So,’ he said to his unlikely unit now it had been assembled, ‘what have we got?’

‘A nagging fear that this is all bollocks, Jimmy,’ replied Costain.

They went over every detail. Quill then called the pathologist to hear it for himself, but it was open and shut. No known toxin. No known medical condition. An impossibility.

There were only a few avenues of investigation that he could even think of as places to begin with. He next set his team to the task of checking out the records of everyone who’d been in and out of Gipsy Hill on the day Toshack died.

‘Okay,’ said Sefton, but with an enormous internal sigh written on his face. And this was just the first day.

‘This,’ said Costain, ‘is why we became UCs: to share a computer in a Portakabin, processing data.’

‘Well,’ said Quill, limiting himself to a knowing look at Costain, ‘just think — it could have been so much worse.’

And that was the first week, with the sound of the rain pounding on the roof of the Portakabin, and the slow sensation of false trail after false trail coming to an end. Since the time frame to be checked was the early hours of New Year’s Day until the following morning, no civilians had visited, except Toshack’s brief. ‘So it’s either a copper or he “ingested the poison” before he arrived at Gipsy Hill,’ said Costain.

‘You reckon that’s likely?’ asked Quill.

‘No,’ said Costain casually, as if it was none of his concern anyway.

This felt like internal exile, as if somehow Lofthouse expected Quill to accuse himself of something. The week lasted forever, and Quill underwent several pints of therapy, on his own, each night.

It was early on a Monday morning, before the other two had come in, that Ross looked up from the wheezing PC and caught his eye. She, in her quiet way, had dug in, had become the one who was too busy to make tea. Quill realized that, for her, doing something that still even tangentially involved Toshack must be some sort of lifeline. And he wondered if it would actually be a mercy to her to cut that line and to let her get on with life.

‘I’ve found something in the Goodfellow case notes,’ she said.

He went over, and she pointed out the entry: ‘Lassiter, the driver of the Fulham Road security van. He lost a lot of blood, too. It was assumed that he’d been beaten, but I think someone was a bit quick to jump to that conclusion, ’cos the injuries I’ve got here aren’t entirely consistent with that explanation.’

‘You’re saying getting people’s blood to explode in all directions might be someone’s modus operandi?’

‘It’s just one data point, so I’m not, not yet.’

Quill sighed. ‘Listen, do you want to go and check out the scene of the crime over at the Hill? The other two bloody can’t, but while it’s just you and me here. .’

‘I think that’s a reasonable risk.’

‘You think Tony’s dodgy,’ said Ross, as they crossed the road and headed towards the rear gate of Gipsy Hill.

Quill neither confirmed nor denied it. ‘I do sometimes think there might be some other reason for this weird unit assignment. Maybe to shake something out.’

‘So why us too?’

Quill shrugged. He saw that it was Josh Stuart stationed at the back gate, and actually got a smile out of him as he showed him his warrant card and then Ross’ ID. Ross seemed to be trying to make herself invisible, and she was doing a good job. They headed down the garden path and out of earshot.

‘I need this op to be real,’ she said. ‘Is it?’

Quill stopped. They were by that strange pile of earth, and still nobody had planted that bloody tree or whatever it was going to be. ‘You know as much as I do.’

‘Only, you three already have that look on your faces. .’

‘What look?’

‘That copper look. That British look. The “Oh well, it’s all going to fall apart, so might as well get on with it, even though we’re going to fail.”’

‘Do you have a point, Lisa?’

‘Because if this is a real op, and if you all treat it as a real op, we can make real progress. If you make proper use of me; if you let me do what I do. And I’m going to need you too, because otherwise I don’t know what I’m going to do. And because. . we’re standing on top of something huge.’

Quill realized that her expression had become urgent — amazed, even. And that she kept looking between his eyes. . and then at the ground by his feet.

He turned and examined the pile of soil closely for the first time. There was a pattern there, preserved by the frost, not washed out too much by the rain. It was as if someone had inscribed it in the disturbed earth with a spade. Or maybe it had needed a tool more precise. It was a fine spiral.

‘Literally,’ continued Ross. ‘I’ve seen that symbol before.’

With joy bursting in his heart, Quill looked up and around. He pointed up at the CCTV camera that was looking straight down at them. ‘Bingo,’ he said.

Quill headed into Gipsy Hill to get the CCTV tapes sent over, while Ross rushed back to the Portakabin to grab her camera. ‘We’ve got a new intelligence analyst,’ said Harry, falling into step beside him. ‘Since you took away ours.’ Many more arrests were being made, extending to the outlying reaches of the Toshack firm. Harry waited until the corridor was clear, then dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘What are you doing out there, Jimmy?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine. I asked to get you over straight away-’

‘’Course you did: you knowing which side your bread is buttered. But Lofthouse said no, didn’t she?’

‘Harry-’

‘No no, it’s not your fault. But, I tell you what: you have not seen the depth of ill feeling here.’ He leaned closer and locked that sleepless gaze of his on Quill. ‘You have no idea.’

Costain and Sefton had arrived by the time he got back to the Portakabin, and had obviously been told by Ross that something was finally happening. She looked up from a huge pile of what looked like school exercise books that she’d brought in. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘where can I display some images?’

Quill had to use a biro to mark a new square of best focus on the wall.

‘The spiral tag.’ Ross’ first image, from a PC projector she’d brought in herself, was a photo of the design that had been etched in the soil, the real thing now having been covered in plastic and fenced off — if Quill’s orders had been complied with. ‘A pile of soil, bit wet for London average, in a spiral pattern that seems to have been formed with some sort of vacuum tool. Nobody’s ever come up with any more than that, concerning its formation. One of the first things that Rob Toshack got into, when he took over the family firm, was fixing football matches. He needed to make and launder cash very quickly, and a series of big certs would have done that for him.’

She clicked the mouse and the next image appeared: a picture of another such symbol, this one slightly different. ‘The reason we know about this is because this approach immediately clashed with how clean football had become at the time. Players didn’t automatically cave in when threatened, so a number of them started to have the spiral tag appear in their gardens. Some of their managers, and a DI called Sam Booney-’

‘Sam Booney,’ interjected Quill, ‘out of Kensal Rise, shot in the knee in the course of his duties. Could burst an apple with his hand, goes the story.’

‘-knew what the tag meant,’ she continued. ‘It’s a legend that was purely associated with West Ham Football Club, before it became a more general threat.’

‘Is this,’ asked Sefton, ‘that same urban myth about anyone who scores a hat-trick against West Ham dying?’

Quill saw Costain glance sidelong at the other UC. ‘Didn’t think you’d be into football.’

Sefton gave him a dangerous look, but his tone remained neutral. ‘Why?’

Costain just shook his head, with a smile on his lips.

‘Right,’ said Ross, ‘Toshack always was a West Ham fan. That myth of dying after scoring a hat-trick was the myth that he, or rather someone working for him, was using to try to scare these footballers into cooperating with him. This tag was also associated with some of those deaths.’

‘There really were some deaths,’ nodded Sefton.

‘Who do you support?’ asked Costain.

‘Chelsea,’ said Sefton, again in that oh-so-reasonable tone.

‘I sometimes get. . feelings about sidelines, so I do stuff like this on my own time,’ Ross persisted. ‘Last night, I ran the numbers. Footballers who score hat-tricks against West Ham do not always die in suspicious circumstances, but-’

She clicked to the next image, which showed a series of graphs.

‘-they often do. More often, statistically, than they should. The shape of the graph here, the extent that it deviates from the norm, is very close to what you get if you look back through records of previously unlinked deaths while looking for serial-killer traits after it’s been proved there has been a serial killer operating.’

‘Bloody hell,’ murmured Quill, aware of Sefton and Costain also leaning forward.

‘So,’ Costain pointed to the image, ‘that’s saying that there’s probably a genuine effect? That someone was killing players that scored hat-tricks against West Ham?’

‘Thanks for providing subtitles,’ said Quill.

‘Yeah,’ confirmed Ross, ‘and if we match players who died after having scored hat-tricks against West Ham with people who have had the spiral tag show up in their garden. .’

Two circles came together on the screen, one representing the unfortunate scorers, and one for the people with the tag appearing in their garden, and a number whirled in the space where they intersected. It settled at 78 %.

‘Fuck,’ chorused all three members of Ross’ audience, simultaneously.

‘So,’ said Quill, when he’d got his breath back. ‘That means a seventy-eight per cent success rate on the part of a very specific serial killer. Which would just be a brilliant new cold-case lead. .’

‘Apart from the fact that the tag showed up when Toshack died, too. Presumably a statement on the killer’s part, rather than a warning, this time. And, erm. . thanks,’ she looked awkwardly away, ‘but there’s more. Most, though not all, of these murders were committed with what was assumed at the time to have been poison. Investigators were obviously a lot more comfortable with the idea of unknown toxins back in the day. Also — and this is the big one — the data that doesn’t overlap here is uneven. One of those circles on that diagram contains more items than the other. Eighteen per cent of the other cases are hat-trick scorers, over the years, who probably died of natural causes. The four per cent in the other circle represent people who got the tag planted in their gardens, but hadn’t scored hat-tricks against West Ham. Indeed, none of those people is a footballer. They’re a range of organized crime network bosses, bankers and made men — many of them with connections to Toshack. I’ve prepared a list. And how many of those also died?’

She clicked on to another image. This time, the two circles slid together and the numbers gradually spun. . to reach 100 %.

Quill couldn’t help it, he started to applaud. To his delight, Costain and Sefton joined in. Ross nodded, looked away again, unable to deal with this reaction. ‘Shut up,’ she said, finally. ‘Let me finish. What we see here, then, is strongly indicative of Toshack hiring a serial killer who specialized in football-related poisonings, using a still unknown delivery system, a killer who also presumably has a love for West Ham-’

‘You could see how that would mess you up,’ said Quill.

‘-who, after Toshack abandoned his plans for fixing matches, was kept on, and remained an enforcer, killing on Toshack’s orders. The number of deaths slows down across the decade, perhaps as the reputation of Toshack by itself starts to do the job without the threat having to be carried through. And when Toshack is killed, subject to what we’re going to see on the CCTV footage to establish a time frame, that killer — or someone who knows of them — plants their usual marker near the scene of the crime.’

‘I didn’t see any of this,’ said Costain. ‘No, I mean, I do believe it, this really is the first sight we’ve had of one of Toshack’s freelancers, but this was kept from his ordinary soldiers.’

Quill got to his feet. ‘Lisa, can you take us back to that first Venn diagram?’ She did so. ‘Ta.’ He went to the wall and used the shadow of his hand to point at the intersection between the two circles. ‘That’s a person there on that screen. That’s bloody fantastic police work, that is.’

Ross was shaking her head, as if she didn’t deserve all this praise. ‘But the trouble is,’ she said, ‘apart from the non-footballers, the people on that list. .’

‘What?’

‘The data goes. . back a long way,’ she said. ‘To when West Ham first played under that name, in 1900.’

Quill paused only for a moment. ‘Then it’s a gang tradition. We’ve got an angle now — so let’s not look it in the mouth.’