Death Angels (23 page)

He got off at the next station. Thornton Heath was immersed in shadow; the platform itself was below street level. As he climbed the stairs, a newspaper flapped by his ankle on its way down.

The station building was untended. Three black girls stood in a corner waiting for something to happen. Cars swished by outside the open entranceway, and when he came out on Brigstock Road, he felt as though he were in a faraway country, light-years from London. The passersby were Indian, Pakistani, Caribbean, Chinese, Korean and African.

He walked down a little hill, continued on High Street to an intersection and followed Whitehorse Lane for a block or two. He knew if he went another couple of blocks, he would come to Selhurst Park, a refuge for the ragged soccer fans in the poor sections of Croydon. He had seen a few matches in London, but only at the large stadiums on the north side.

He turned before the viaduct and passed Mame Amisha’s Foreign Foods, which advertised “new puna yams” on a handwritten cardboard sign. The yams lay in plaited baskets outside the store. Bananas hung on poles in the window. He walked by the Prince George pub and was back at the station. He took out his phone and called Macdonald, who answered on the first ring.

“I’m by the flower stand outside the station.”

“If you go down the hill and turn left again at Woolworth’s, you’ll find yourself on Parchmore Road. I feel like taking a stroll myself, so if you stay on the right side of the street, you’ll run into me in ten minutes or so.”

“Okay.”

It occurred to him that Macdonald hadn’t bothered to ask him what he looked like. He’ll know you’re a policeman by the way you walk, he thought.

He headed back toward the intersection and was just about to turn in front of Woolworth’s when he saw a white man grab a young black guy by the scruff of his neck outside the main entrance.

“The little shoplifter is back, I see,” the man said. Winter noticed a badge on his chest. Several black men stood in a circle around the security guard and his prey.

“I didn’t do anything,” the young guy said.

“What’s this, then?” The security guard held up an electric shaver.

“I didn’t take it.”

“Let’s go.” The security guard shoved his way through the circle, hulking over the culprit.

Winter crossed Parchmore Road, turned left and weaved his way north between the gravel heaps and the road workers.

Macdonald walked down the stairs, through the garage and out onto the street, the sun warming his head. He let his leather jacket hang open and left his gloves in his pocket. London is putting on its best face for its Swedish visitor, he thought. He’s going to get the wrong impression.

He headed south. He was stiff after a morning bent over witness statements, and his eyeballs felt like they’d been glued to their sockets. His body was too heavy, his spirit too anxious.

Half a block before him was a man in an unbuttoned camel hair coat. The suit underneath was somewhere between blue and steel gray, with trouser cuffs.

It must be him, Macdonald thought. He walks just like he talks. It’s a miracle he hasn’t been mugged. Has he held his badge out in front of him the whole way from the station?

The man’s hair was blond and appeared to be parted in the middle like that of a fifties actor. As they approached each other, Macdonald saw that he was tall, maybe his own height. There was a fussiness beneath his sartorial élan and a touch of arrogance in his step. He was clean shaven, his ears stuck out a little, his face was wide and a bit too handsome and Macdonald wasn’t looking forward to this at all.

Winter was startled to hear his own name. The man could have been an inch taller than he was, maybe six foot four. His dark brown hair was in a ponytail and he had a day-old beard. He was wearing a tattered leather jacket, a blue-and-white plaid shirt, black jeans and pointed boots. He should have a holster on his hip, Winter thought. He looks lethal.

“Inspector Winter?”

He had an enigmatic smile and a few wrinkles around his mouth. There were no bags under his eyes but they were awash in a weariness that lent his gaze a dull fixity. At least he doesn’t have a ring in his ear, Winter thought. “Inspector Macdonald?” He stretched out his hand.

“I thought we’d have a beer down at the Prince George,” Macdonald said. “It’s calm and peaceful there this time of day. Much more relaxing than the police station.”

They retraced Winter’s steps across the intersection and onto High Street. He noticed that Macdonald had a slight limp.

“I play on the pub’s soccer team every Sunday,” Macdonald explained before he could ask. “I’m always like this at the beginning of the week. People around here think it’s an old gunshot injury and that suits me just fine.”

“I quit a few years back.”

“Wimp.”

The pub was empty. Dust danced in the sunlight that poured through a lone window. The bartender nodded at Macdonald.

“Let’s go in there,” Macdonald said, pointing to a small, oblong lounge on the other side of the bar.

Winter draped his coat over the back of a chair and sat down. Macdonald went off and came back with two glasses of ale, still cloudy from the tap.

“Would you rather have a lager?” Macdonald asked.

“I always drink ale when I’m in London.” Winter hoped he didn’t sound too urbane.

“This is Courage Directors. They also have Courage Best here, which is pretty unusual.”

“Directors is one of my favorites.”

Macdonald studied him. Definitely a snob, he thought, but he might have good taste anyway. “Do you come to our proud city very often?” he asked.

“Not so much recently. And I’ve never been to this pub before.”

“We rarely see new faces here. For some reason, most tourists stick to the area around Leicester Square.”

“They miss out on Mame Amisha’s yams.”

“What?”

“She sells fresh yams down the block from here.”

“There’s Thornton Heath for you.”

“I walked around for a while before I called.”

“That’s what I figured.”

“But not all the way to Selhurst Park.”

“Have you ever been there?”

“No.”

“Crystal Palace is a lousy team, but the fans love them.”

“Are you a fan?”

“Of Crystal Palace?” Macdonald laughed, drank his ale and looked at Winter. “Just because I work in this district doesn’t mean I have to be as loyal as all that. If there’s any English team I root for, it’s Charlton. They’ll never make it to the Premier League, but when I moved here a very long time ago, I ended up in Woolwich around the Valley, so that’s where my allegiance lies.”

“I would have taken you for a Scot.”

“That’s because I am.”

Two men walked into the lounge and nodded at Macdonald. He nodded back, and they moved to the other room.

“Like I said, not so many new faces. But they show up occasionally, and sometimes things get out of hand.”

“I knew Per Malmström. That’s one reason I was anxious to come to London.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?”

“We’ll drive down to the hotel in a while. We’ve left the room just the way it was.”

“You do understand.”

“I was planning to go to Gothenburg, but I wanted to wait until you had been here first.”

“Has a foreign investigator ever come to see you before? Or vice versa?”

“An American cop was here a couple of years ago,” Macdonald said, finishing his ale. “It was also a murder, up in Peckham, which is our northern border, more or less. And I went to Kingston on a case once.”

“Jamaica?”

“For two weeks. A murder here that led straight to Kingston. Not so unusual for our part of London. If we scent a trail, it often goes to the Caribbean, Jamaica in particular.”

“What happened?”

“The police down there weren’t particularly thrilled to see me, but I learned enough that we managed to solve the case once I got back.”

“Let’s hope we have the same luck this time.”

“One more?” Macdonald pointed at Winter’s glass, which was almost empty.

Winter shook his head and took out his cigarillos.

“Those things are deadly,” Macdonald said, standing up. “I’ll go get another one anyway and let you poison yourself in peace.”

Winter lit a cigarillo and inhaled its fragrance. There were more customers now, but they had all stayed in the outer room. Macdonald must have some kind of say-so here, he thought, but how many pints of Directors did it cost him?

“I made it Courage Best this time.” Macdonald had returned with two more cloudy glasses. He sat back down.

Music was playing in the other room. Winter could tell it was reggae, but heavier than the kind he’d heard now and again.

Macdonald broke a minute’s silence. “So you knew him?”

“Not exactly, but he grew up on the same street I did. I saw him mostly when he was a young child.”

That child never got much older, Macdonald thought. Can I stand to hear the shrieks in the walls of that cursed room another time?

“How did you feel when you stood in his room?”

He gets it too, Macdonald thought. “I heard cries and screams.”

“That’s exactly the way it is.” Winter drank from the new glass. “I hear your kids and you hear mine.”

MACDONALD TOOK CROYDON ROAD NORTHWEST THROUGH
Mitcham, Morden and Merton, then headed west on Kingston Road through Streatham to Wandsworth and Clapham. Mile upon mile of red and gray brick row houses were interrupted by parks, schoolyards and stores clumped earnestly together. Thruways had become cross streets. Double-decker buses peered out over the other vehicles and lurched around corners. Cars as far as the eye could see, drivers sitting on their horns. More stores with flower and vegetable stands out front. It went on and on.

“London is more than just Soho or Covent Garden, and all this is my territory.” Macdonald gestured to the world outside.

All that’s living, dead and everything in between, Winter thought. “It’s a big place,” he said.

“It’s more complicated than that. Did I mention that Croydon is the tenth largest town in England?”

“Yes, the first time you called.”

“I should be keeping my hands off Clapham. I’m invading the turf of my colleagues on the southwest side. But it’s my old district and the bigwigs thought I was best suited for this investigation.”

“What did your colleagues on the southwest side have to say about that?”

“The murder of a white foreigner? They pounded me on the back and then laughed behind it.”

“So you’re a popular guy.”

“More than ever.” Macdonald swerved to avoid a fruit cart that had just rolled out of an alleyway to the left. He glared at the black man who emerged behind it, clinging to the handle as if he were being pulled along.

“Did I tell you that this so-called thoroughfare is named Kingston Road?”

“Yes.”

“It’s no coincidence.”

They drove through Tulse Hill. Winter heard a whistle and saw a train pass on a viaduct above them, then clatter to a halt in front of the station building.

“Karen and Winston Hillier live in this neighborhood,” Macdonald said.

Winter nodded. “I want to meet them.”

“I’ll do what I can, but Winston just got back from the hospital after a nervous breakdown. It happened when I was at their house.”

Macdonald drove west on Christchurch Road and crossed the intersection. “The street on the right is Brixton Hill,” he said. “Follow it and there you are in the Caribbean.”

“Ah, Brixton.”

“Have you ever been there?”

“No, but I’ve heard about it.”

“ ‘ The Guns of Brixton.’ The Clash.”

“What?”

“The Clash.”

“Is that a band or something?”

Glancing over at Winter, Macdonald laughed and hit the brake to let a taxi pull away from the curb.