Those thoughts of robbery or extortion ... seeing this design kicked the legs out from under them. What had been done here had been motivated by something else entirely.
Let's just say you're in for an interesting first day at work.
The camera flashed again.
Over by the computer, Greg and Mercer were ignoring us. Greg was clicking on different onscreen folders while Mercer directed the pointer, checking through the dead man's files. Pete, however, moved over to talk to me. He looked grateful to escape. His hair was messy, and the reason became clear as he ran his hand through it again, disrupting it even further. I'd seen men look more worn out, but rarely this early in the day.
'Have you seen the body?' he said.
'Just now, yeah.'
He blew out heavily, and then gestured behind him.
'Well, what we're thinking is the victim was working here at the computer, where he was surprised and attacked by an intruder, probably yesterday evening. The victim appears to have been subdued after a small struggle and then spent the night tied up in the bath. Clear evidence of torture. This morning, he gets burned alive. No sign of a break-in.'
'Do we have an ID on the victim?'
'Not concrete. There'll be a formal identification later, but for now we're assuming it's the house's owner, Kevin James Simpson.'
Pete went through the facts of the case as it stood, using his big fingers to indicate each point, one by one. Kevin Simpson was thirty years old, and had been resident at this address since he bought the house four years ago. He owned a low-level IT company, CCL, which provided business solutions: mainly database and website packages. The way Pete said it, I didn't think he held those areas of expertise in especially high regard.
'CCL called us this morning.'
The company had received an anonymous phone call a little after eight o'clock. It had featured a short recording of terrible screaming, and then the distraught woman on the switchboard had been given Simpson's name and address. CCL didn't tape incoming calls, but Greg's IT team had already checked Simpson's home phone account. The call had been made from here, downstairs in the lounge.
According to the medical examiner, then, there had been a period of up to an hour after Simpson had been murdered before the killer made his phone call. More questions. As well as waiting so long to kill his victim in the first place, what had the killer spent his time doing afterwards?
'Simpson lived alone?' I asked.
Pete nodded.
'We don't know about girlfriends yet. We're checking through his backlog of conquests, as far as we can. Accessing his emails.'
'Right.' I nodded at the spider web on the wall. 'What about that?'
Pete looked at it, and the weariness in his face deepened. He was obviously troubled by the web and unsure how to address it. But he was saved by an interruption: on the other side of the room, Mercer and Greg had reached a hiatus in whatever they were looking at, and Mercer walked over to us. I forgot the artwork for a moment.
'Mark.' He gave the briefest of smiles as he shook my hand, but was clearly too distracted to mean it. 'Good to see you again.'
'You too.'
Actually, I thought, it was strange to see him, rather than good. As Mercer's hand returned to his side, it occurred to me that - disregarding the picture at the back of his book - I'd only ever seen him either sitting down or from a distance, and I was struck now by how small he seemed in the flesh, standing in front of me. He was only average height, for one thing. For another, although his build might have been broad and strong when he was younger, it now appeared slightly wasted and crumpled, like a shirt he'd lost too much weight to carry off. He looked a lot older than I'd been expecting. As men age, it's not the wear in the face that gives it away so much as an increasingly visible weakness in the body. John Mercer seemed to be on the cusp of that, and it was startling. He was only in his early fifties, but an extra fifteen years were hanging off him, making him slump.
'You remember Greg?' he said.
'Sure.' I nodded hello.
Greg raised his hand in greeting, but he was preoccupied and deep in thought; he was using his heels to circle the office chair back and forth, probably in serious breach of some crime-scene rule. In fact, everyone was distracted. I was clearly missing something, and I had the feeling it centred on the spider-web design the killer had painted on Kevin Simpson's wall.
'Right,' Mercer said. 'Assignments. Pete's talked you through the basics here, am I right?'
'The basics, yeah.' I paused briefly, and then nodded at the design. 'But not that.'
Mercer glanced across. He seemed almost to be noticing it for the first time.
'Ah, yes,' he said. 'We were just talking about that before you arrived.'
I expected some kind of explanation, but instead there was only an uncomfortable silence. Mercer himself wasn't troubled by it - he simply stared at the spider web. I watched his gaze trace the lines, moving here and there. It was as though he'd been hypnotised by it. Then, the camera flashed again, and Mercer blinked. His attention returned to me, and then moved to his watch.
'Okay, good,' he said. 'Let's get moving on this. We'll have the first briefing at two o'clock, so make sure you're all either back at the office by then or have access to a terminal. Simon, I need as much in the way of forensics as possible. Greg, you're working the computer and the phone records. Pete, CCL.'
'Yep.'
Mercer looked across at him. 'You know where you're going?'
Pete, hands still thrust in his pockets, gave his boss a look. 'Yes.'
'Okay. Everyone who's going, get gone. Mark, hang on for a second.'
Pete and Simon headed out of the room. Mercer moved a little closer to me.
'Door-to-doors,' he said. 'You've got three additional men allocated from the pool. They're waiting downstairs for you.'
'Right.'
'We need every house canvassed. Make a note of anywhere there's no answer and we'll follow them up. In the first instance, we want general opinions on Simpson. Information on friends, girlfriends. Activity in the street.'
It was obvious stuff: 'Yes, sir.'
'Sounds of commotion,' he continued, ignoring me. 'Any previous incidents that might be relevant, however tenuous.'
As he went on, I grew slightly irritated. It wasn't so much what he was saying as the way he was doing it: his attention elsewhere; his gaze directed at the wall behind more often than at me. I found myself simply nodding, wanting to head downstairs and get on with it. Mercer knew all about my record, and according to his wife he'd been impressed, and yet he still felt the need to talk me through things I would have done anyway. Perhaps if he'd explained about the spider web, this wouldn't have been necessary, and--
His wife, I remembered. Hold that thought.
'Any unusual vehicles,' Mercer finished, pointedly. 'And visitors, especially women.'
'Yes, sir.'
'Is there anything else?'
'Your wife phoned. Just before I left the office.'
His expression went blank.
'She said to remind you, "Don't forget". She said you'd know what it meant.'
'Okay. Thanks for that.'
I turned to go.
'One more thing,' he said. 'Remind your team that everyone needs to have their cameras on. Everything needs to be recorded. All the time.'
Standard procedure, which I would have done without thinking.
'Yes, sir.'
The irritation must have been audible in my voice, because he frowned. I was expecting a rebuke, but he didn't seem able to concentrate long enough to make one. The spider web was calling to him again, and he returned to it. But the frown remained.
'Okay,' he said absently.
I was dismissed. I headed downstairs and then outside, grimacing up at the rain.
Stupid, maybe, but I couldn't hide my disappointment - you build these things up into something they're not. In the weeks leading up to today, I'd imagined my first meeting with John Mercer a hundred times, and each time it had felt far more triumphant, more of a vindication of all my hard work, than what had just occurred upstairs. In reality, I felt excluded, and more than a little patronised. Not exactly the fucking Kodak moment I'd been hoping for.
It's just his way, I reminded myself. It wasn't as though he wasn't famous for being difficult to work for.
It made me remember what the girl at reception had told me:
Give it a week
. I would; of course I would. At least then maybe I'd have proven myself enough to be treated like the rest of the team, or as though I knew what the fuck I was doing.
I shook my head, smiling at my own belligerence, then put the emotion away and walked out through the gate and over to the van, where my new interview team was waiting.
3 DECEMBER
19 HOURS, 25 MINUTES UNTIL DAWN
11.55 A.M.
Jodie
Jodie walked quickly across the office and perched on the edge of the desk. Michaela started from her work, looking surprised, as though her friend didn't do this every day and had somehow appeared there by magic.
'Okay.' Jodie leaned down and tapped her pen on the pad of yellow Post-it notes where she'd already written down the other orders. 'What are you having? Knock me out.'
This was Jodie's lunch-hour ritual every weekday. It took twenty minutes to walk to Theo's, where she collected sandwiches for the other five temps in the office, and twenty minutes walking slowly back again.
She saw it as an act of solidarity among the troops. They were all in the same boat, after all, data-monkeys for the insurance firm, spending every morning and afternoon punching in figures from invoices. It was a thankless task, setting down in stone the details of money lost. The company didn't like to pay out, so the account inputters were kept in a dusty old room near the top of the building - a dirty secret hidden away from the proper employees, the ones who actually made money rather than just recorded it leaving. The computers in the office were ancient: sticky and patchy from spilled coffee and old labels that had been torn off. The desks were antiques. The lights fizzed and flickered, as though their real purpose in life was attracting and killing insects. No radiators, no daylight. You punched in and punched out. Jodie thought of it as a digital sweatshop. When she couldn't avoid thinking about it, anyway.
Most of the other temps were rolling stock - students who would be gone in a few weeks, replaced by others who wouldn't stay much longer - but Michaela had been working with her for over a year, and she counted her as a friend. It made her feel even worse for lying about where she'd been yesterday.
Michaela gestured for the pad. 'I'll go today.'
'Uh-uh.' Jodie moved it back. 'What do you want?'
'You're not well. I'm happy to go.'
'I'm fine, honestly. It was just a pissy little migraine. All gone now. See?'
Jodie waggled her head from side to side.
See? No permanent damage.
The older girl grinned, and Jodie felt better.
When she'd arrived at work this morning, the first thing Michaela had done was come over and give her a hug, which was the kind of person she was. Later, at coffee break, she'd told Jodie she hoped Scott had been looking after her. Jodie had wanted to burst out crying. The whole universe seemed to be aligning to make her feel guilty, and it really didn't need to.
When she'd got back from Kevin's house yesterday, she'd done her best to act normal - throwing her bag on the chair, and then herself down on the settee next to Scott. All the way home, she'd been trying to convince herself it was just a huge mistake; she'd put it behind her, forget about it, move on. But Scott had known something was wrong. In the end, she'd had to go through to the bedroom and lie down. She needed to keep away from him to avoid blurting it out.
Sleeping on it had helped a little, and she woke up with a fresh sense of resolve. There were problems. She needed to let the dust in her head settle, and then she and Scott had to think and talk carefully about what was going wrong between them. Their relationship was heading off at a bad angle, and a bit of adjustment was required. There'd probably be a few more wobbles along the way, but wasn't it the same for everyone when a relationship went long-term? They'd sort it. Before long they'd be back on track, and it was worth the effort.
In the meantime, she had to keep in mind that lying to Scott had been bad, but telling the truth would be worse. But it was difficult, and she wanted to be on her own for a while. She'd been looking forward to the peace and quiet since that first guilty hug when she'd arrived.
'I don't mind going today,' Michaela said.
'No, seriously.' Jodie thought:
Bless you
. 'I'd like to go. The fresh air will blow away any remaining migraine devils.' She made her index fingers into little horns and glared menacingly.
Michaela smiled again. 'Idiot.'
'Yeah, yeah. Come on, I haven't got all day. What do you want?'
'I'll try what you normally have. It always looks nice.'
'Duck in hoisin.' Jodie nodded and wrote it down. 'Excellent choice.'
'Do you want some company?' Michaela turned in her seat. 'I could walk with you.'
Jodie gave her a smile.
'You're okay, sweets.' She clicked off the pen, tore the Post-it note from the pad and folded it. 'I'm going to listen to some music and not think about stuff. But thank you.'
She headed down to the lobby in one of the back lifts.
Floor Ten. First, she got the iRiver out of her handbag. It was forty gigs of hard-drive space, currently holding over five thousand songs. Black and silver casing. As with every hi-tech gadget she laid her eyes on, Jodie loved it. The unit clipped onto the belt of her jeans; the remote control onto the hem of her jacket; and the headphones hung snugly in her ears. She pressed the [on] button on the remote, heard a faint beep and waited for the digital library to assemble itself.
Floor Six. The lift didn't provide the best lighting for checking your appearance in the mirror, but she did it anyway. There were mixed results. Sometimes she thought she was pretty, but today she just thought that she'd do. Thin, dark-brown hair, tied back - a wedge had come loose, though. She undid the scrunchy and held it in her mouth, bunching her hair up and retying it. Then she checked her makeup, which was minimal at the best of times.