A Killing of Angels (24 page)

There was no time to think about Andrew, or to check the texts that kept arriving. My phone was on silent, but it buzzed steadily in my pocket throughout the day. I saw three new referrals and scrambled to complete my paperwork between appointments, determined not to take anything home. The phone on my desk rang at six o’clock, just as I was switching off my computer. It was a surprise to hear Lorraine Brotherton’s voice, sounding calm and businesslike.

‘Do you know where Lombard Street is, Dr Quentin? I’d appreciate an hour of your time.’

I put the phone down in a state of irritation. It was bound to be something routine, and I was beginning to regret letting Burns press-gang me into getting involved. The investigation had stalled since they’d arrested Liam Morgan, and the visit would make me late for Andrew. I left a message on his phone as I trotted down the fire escape. He had back-to-back meetings that afternoon, but hopefully he’d check his voicemail before he set off.

Lombard Street was a ten-minute taxi ride across London Bridge. I peered up at the elegant Georgian building. It would have belonged to a wealthy merchant or trader when it was first built, but it had been divided into separate offices, a row of company logos printed beside the door. Their rates would be astronomical because the block was right at the heart of the City, a stone’s throw from the Angel Bank. I couldn’t guess why Brotherton had summoned me to a broker’s office, but at least the view from the stairs made the climb worthwhile. From this vantage point I could see the entire Square Mile. The Bank of England was basking in late-afternoon sunshine, secure in the knowledge that it was impregnable.

When I reached the top floor, crime scene officers in white suits were crawling over the landing. I had to get through a cordon, and a SOCO bustled past clutching a plastic box. She glanced at my ID card then waved me into a wide hallway. It was painted charcoal grey with huge monochrome photos of London’s skyline filling the walls. I guessed that it was someone’s apartment rather than an office. The place felt like a bachelor pad, because there was no sign of softness anywhere − not so much as a cushion or a houseplant. I could hear people talking in the distance, but there was no one in sight.

‘Hello?’ The word bounced back at me from the dark walls.

Burns’s voice was jabbering behind a closed door, and Pete Hancock scribbled my name on his register before letting me through the containment cordon. He was as monosyllabic as ever when he handed me a Tyvek suit and plastic shoes. I could tell he thought that shrinks should stay in their offices instead of tampering with evidence. His black monobrow lowered to half an inch above his eyes.

‘Your hair’s not covered,’ he snapped.

I tucked the loose strands inside my hood, then pushed the door open. I was standing inside a state-of-the-art bathroom, big enough to accommodate a rugby team. A cluster of men was huddled in front of me. Glossy black tiles ran from floor to ceiling, shelves loaded with towels. But everything else about the picture was wrong. A SOCO was dusting the mirror, and the floor was awash with several inches of water. Burns must have been overheating inside his plastic suit, because his grin looked feverish, a sheen of sweat glistening on his forehead.

‘You won’t believe this,’ he said. ‘Are you ready to take a look?’

‘Do I get a choice?’ I picked my way across the wet tiles to join him.

The water in the bath was overflowing, tinted the colour of pink gin. I rubbed my eyes hard, but the picture stayed the same. I recognised the man who was staring up at me blankly, through a foot of liquid, but the information didn’t make sense. Trails of blood were seeping from slash marks on his wrists, his hair floating like threads of seaweed.

32

I could see that it was Andrew, but my brain kept cancelling the idea. The fact hovered somewhere nearby, waiting to hit me if I closed my eyes.

‘Are you all right?’ Burns’s voice was travelling from miles away.

I don’t remember him leading me outside, but he must have done, because I was in a vast living room, and SOCOs were buzzing past, photographing ever y object in sight. Time had switched to slow motion. Brotherton’s mobile was clamped to her ear, her grey hair hanging in rats’ tails. When she turned to speak to Steve Taylor, her body twisted too slowly, as though she was wading through a swimming pool.

I rubbed my forehead, trying to push my thoughts back into place. Yesterday, Andrew had been alive and well, begging to come round. I felt sure I’d wake up soon, and the day would start again, in the normal way.

‘It’s the bloke who chatted you up at the bankers’ do, isn’t it?’ Burns said.

I shook my head. ‘I was seeing him.’

‘Since when?’

‘A few weeks.’

The colour slowly drained from Burns’s face. ‘I’d have kept you away, if I’d known. I’m afraid it looks like he was involved, Alice.’

‘What do you mean?’ The room was still swimming, furniture hovering a foot off the ground.

Taylor was monitoring the conversation. He looked drunk on a cocktail of ego and triumph, grinning from ear to ear.

‘We found this lot in his office,’ he bragged, pointing at a row of evidence bags on the coffee table.

One was stuffed with white feathers, and another held a stack of postcards. The angel on top of the pile was gazing at the ceiling, like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. The tightness in my chest was squeezing the air from my lungs.

‘They’re not his,’ I said. ‘He’d never hurt anyone.’

Taylor ignored me. ‘You won’t believe the kit in here. Pity the camera by his front door was on the blink − we’d have mug shots of all his mates by now.’

He hurried away and I forced myself to stand up. Burns was watching me closely, as if I might fall at any minute. I wanted to go back to the bathroom to make sure they were taking care of him. Andrew must still be lying there, gazing through a lens of water, in a T-shirt and boxer shorts. More than anything I wanted to scream at them all to get out, so I could say goodbye, but I made myself walk from room to room. The flat seemed as unreal as a film set, so obsessively tidy that it already felt like a mausoleum. I remembered him telling me that he’d just moved in. He’d spent little time there because he was so busy. There were no newspapers or books lying around, hardly any personal items on display.

When I reached Andrew’s bedroom, the sheets had been thrown back, as though he’d just leapt up to make coffee. I rested my hand on my collarbone, holding back a wave of nausea. If I’d let him come round last night, he might still be alive. Taylor’s comments were starting to sink in. Maybe I’d been wrong about him all along. I would have been the perfect target − lonely and gullible enough to miss all the clues. But there’d been no sign at all. His odd flashes of temper had disappeared as quickly as they came. I rubbed my hand across my eyes and reminded myself of his gentleness, and the time he sacrificed to helping other people. It was wrong to start doubting him. I couldn’t live with myself if I let him down.

I made myself carry on walking. The flat’s previous owner must have been a James Bond fan, with a limited supply of taste. A monochrome version of Marilyn Monroe covered a whole wall in one of the spare bedrooms, and behind another door there was a fully equipped gym and sauna. It was like a hi-tech hotel that had lost its personality. The study was the only place where Andrew had left traces of himself. Biographies and history books lined the shelves:
Stalingrad
and
Shackleton’s Last Voyage.
Maybe he’d been yearning for adventures, longing to travel just like me. The scene-of-crime team had already emptied his desk. Credit card statements and letters were arranged in piles, and his Filofax sat on top of his in-tray, wrapped in an evidence bag. I glanced around, but the team had moved on to another room. I thumbed quickly through the pages, my stomach lurching when I saw my birthday circled on his calendar, with my name scribbled by the date. I don’t know what I was hoping for, but I fumbled to the back and found his parents’ address, staring at it until it lodged in my memory.

Taylor ambushed me in the kitchen, gazing at me like a lost cause. ‘How well did you know him?’

‘We went out a few times, that’s all.’

‘Did he tell you he worked at the Angel Bank?’

‘Of course, but it was years ago. Who waits that long to get even?’

The contempt on Taylor’s face was turning to disgust. ‘You don’t get it, do you? He was working with Morgan. He couldn’t have killed Wilcox, because you and Burns saw him at the Albion Club, but he knew Gresham and Fairfield. Maybe they got him fired.’ His words spilled out in a gush of excitement. ‘Piernan heard Morgan had been caught. He knew it wouldn’t be long before we knocked on his door, so he topped himself instead of facing the music.’

I glared at him. ‘There’s no way Andrew killed himself or anyone else.’

‘He left it all here for us to find. And guess what? There’s a pint of Rohypnol in his bathroom cabinet.’ His blasé, sing-song tone made me want to slap him.

‘Someone planted it there.’

‘Who? The neighbours say he was never home. No one came by, except some bloke, once or twice a week. Maybe he was protecting his cash. After all, Mummy and Daddy own half of Berkshire.’

I tried to argue, but I was running out of strength. He turned away before I could yell at him that he was wrong. Burns appeared as I slumped on a stool by the window.

‘Come on,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ll take you home.’

‘Not yet. I need to see him first.’ My legs felt unsteady as I marched towards the bathroom, but Taylor was guarding the door.

‘You’re not in a fit state, are you?’ he sneered.

I could see Andrew through the doorway. They’d lifted him out of the bath and he was lying on the floor, facing me, in the recovery position. It looked like he might come round at any minute. I tried to reach him, but the floor lurched up to greet me, and when I came round I was in Burns’s car, heading along the Embankment, still wearing my blue sterile suit. I tore at the zip, desperate to free myself, and my mind kept flitting over everything I’d seen. The blurred film of Gresham falling under the train, and Jamie Wilcox’s body dumped beside the rubbish bins. But it was different now, because I was involved. I’d laughed at Andrew’s jokes. I remembered running with him in Regent’s Park, and the first time he kissed me, in the middle of a crowded restaurant.

‘He’s loving it,’ I said, under my breath.

‘What?’ Burns glanced across at me.

I stared at the buildings going by on Upper Thames Street. ‘The killer’s conned you lot into thinking you’ve found your man, so he’s free to carry on.’

Burns didn’t reply. Maybe he believed Taylor’s ridiculous theory that Morgan and Andrew were a double act. When we got back to Providence Square he turned to face me. It was hard to read what he was thinking, but it looked suspiciously like pity. He rested his large hand on my shoulder, but it didn’t feel comforting. In fact it made me want to punch him, so I jumped out of the car before I lost control. The shock hit me when I got inside. My whole body was shaking, and I didn’t have a clue what to do with myself. Crying wasn’t an option. When I looked out of the window, the sky was a bleached, unnatural white, and my eyes were so dry that my corneas itched when I blinked. I tried to call Lola, but there was no answer. A new text had arrived on my phone. When I opened it, the message was from my mother. Her villa was even more luxurious than the pictures in the brochure − she was having the time of her life.

33

It was impossible to sleep. Every time my eyes closed I was swimming in shallow water, trying not to look down because the seabed was thick with corpses, hair waving like the tendrils of anemones. When the alarm went off I considered calling in sick, because a numb feeling of shock was still lodged under my breastbone. But there was no way I could face staying by myself at home.

I bumped into a delivery man on the landing. The bouquet he was carrying was so large that he staggered slightly as he heaved it onto the kitchen table. Even at the best of times, I’ve never been a fan of florists’ bouquets. There’s something disturbing about watching dozens of perfect blooms slowly dying in front of your eyes. There was no card in the box, but my heart raced as I looked at the docket. Andrew’s name was printed at the bottom in thick black type. He must have placed the order as soon as he got back from Paris. My first impulse was to lug the flowers out onto the landing, so I wouldn’t have to look at them, but I sealed the door behind me and set off for work. It was difficult to think straight as I walked down Tanner Street. Taylor might be convinced that Andrew had masterminded the attacks, then committed suicide, but his diary was full of events and meetings. I could still hear his voice, saying that he couldn’t wait to see me. Misshapen windows stared down from the apartment blocks, and everything my gaze fell on looked wrong. The street looked like a picture game of spot the mistakes.

I realised as soon as I got to work that I was a liability, because I’d stopped listening. Normally it’s easy to tune out distractions and give my whole attention to each patient as they tell me their stories, noticing the symptoms that hide in the pauses between words. But today I was missing whole sentences. I carried on nodding and asking questions, but nothing registered.

I sat in Hari’s office and told him what had happened. He made small, sympathetic grimaces as I spoke, then invited me to stay with him and Tejo. I thanked him, but explained that I needed some time alone.

‘I’ll tell HR you’re on compassionate leave,’ he said. ‘Call me tonight, and let me know you’re okay.’

Hari stood in my office and watched me pack my briefcase. I got a strong feeling that he wanted to escort me from the building, and I didn’t blame him. He had a duty of care, and I was in no fit state to make a diagnosis.

Journalists had already gathered when I reached Pancras Way. They must have got wind of Andrew’s death, and now they were desperate for a scoop. Maybe Taylor had been leaking vile rumours, saying that the Angel Killer had been found dead in his bath. They were jostling each other, prepared to trample over their colleagues to get the shot. I put on my dark glasses and turned up my collar. In an ideal world I’d have hurled a smoke bomb and watched them scatter. Dean Simons came scuttling over the instant he saw me.