The Sad Man (5 page)

‘Can you describe her to me? Physically, I mean.’

Her hand starts to shake, he squeezes it. ‘She is tall, like me – we are very much alike in shape and size. We often wear each other’s clothes – though I try not to dress like a young woman.’ She pauses, remembering something she will not share. ‘She is beautiful. Her eyes are light brown, honey, I always think.’

Gold
, Tom thought.

‘With long beautiful hair, she shapes it a little at the end and it sculpts her face. It has flecks of the same light honey but is mostly like muscovado sugar.’

‘It’s brown?’ Tom feels light-headed – it wasn’t her daughter. This lovely sad woman isn’t going to be in mourning for the rest of her life. He feels his heart soar and hi—

‘No. I was forgetting.’ She looks so old now. ‘She had it cut and dyed. Silver. Of all things. I hated it. Absolutely hated it – we had a fight. A big fight. The first ever. I—’

‘She liked it, her new hair?’ he asks, feeling his heart harden once more.

‘She loved it, seemed incredibly excited by it.’

‘Did she tell you why she chose to do it?’

‘She said … she said she had to.’

‘She was forced?’

‘Nothing and no one could force my daughter to do anything. And she didn’t say it with regret. In fact, she seemed very excited by it. Even though she could plainly see it distressed me.’

The car stops. Valerie grips the door handle tightly. Tom understands: she doesn’t want to get out of the car – if she stays there she keeps her daughter alive. They both know who they will find in the morgue.

‘Take your time.’ Tom releases her hand and slides from the car. He stands in the car park in the cold and thinks about silver hair. After five minutes Valerie joins him.

‘Do you have a cigarette?’ she asks. He shakes his head. ‘I haven’t smoked for seventeen years. I thought I might like one.’ She releases a sad little laugh.’

‘Would you like me to find a colleague who—’

‘No. Just a passing fancy. Not necessary.’

She reaches out and takes his hand once more. She even smiles. Together they walk into the building. They begin in the entrance hall. Tom feels her tense next to him and slide behind him as a shield. There is a drone of noise and from all sides people sweep around them – there are people using crutches everywhere. Tom is reminded of the bazaars of Istanbul, or the markets of Calcutta. All human life is here. He raises an arm to protect her and they push forward, to journey to the underworld. They move slowly, from one half-lit
NHS corridor to another, together; in unison with their footfalls perfectly synchronised. Finally they arrive at a lift which takes them down, down into the Victorian belly of the hospital. Strip lighting makes them look green. There are a final two winding corridors, and then they reach the morgue. Inside, steel gleams and hearts are in mouths. Valerie Brindley-Black holds tighter and tighter to his hand as a viewing room is made ready. Tom knows what is in her mind: ‘Please, please let it be anyone but her.’ A sheet is all there is to cover the dead face and that is slowly pulled aside. Tom feels the hand soften, he holds on tight but the woman next to him is gone.

Friday 15 October 1999

The alarm sounds at 5.30 a.m. After a minute or two there is a banging on the wall and a muffled cry.

‘Turn it off.’

The alarm sounds for ten minutes before the internal program kicks in and it is silent. Tom is already at the office, has been there since 3.45 a.m. He had four officers collating all potential cases with similarities – there are dozens of them – and he is going through the files one by one. Most of them are a waste of time – the computer has flagged up
silver-blond hair
and
knots
but Tom can see in an instant there is no connection.

‘Frustrated?’ Dani-in-his-head asks him after a third triple espresso ordered in from the all-night Italian.

‘The problem is that police officers have no poetry in their souls.’

‘Come again?’ she laughs.

‘This was crafted, performance art. It was for show but it also served a purpose. It repeated something or brought clarity to something in the killer’s past.’

‘Oh, get you, Sigmund!’

‘But it’s true. This is something that is meaningful for the killer and we have to sift through all the static to find what that is. He chose a shape – it isn’t coincidence that it’s a lark’s head.’

‘AKA a cow’s hitch.’

‘Fine. And the hair.’

‘She may have just chosen to go wild.’

‘Possibly, but was that why he chose her? Or did he persuade her to dye her hair?’

‘Well, you know what you need to do?’

‘What?’

‘Talk to her stylist.’

‘Ahead of you. I have an appointment at 9 a.m.’

‘Good – nice and short and get highlights.’

He is so glad of his metal toecaps. As he tells Andi of Charlie’s death, her scissors fall and
ding
off the metal toe. If he had been wearing normal shoes they would have sliced through.

‘I only saw her a few days ago.’ She sits down in the chair.

‘Can you remember exactly when?’

‘Monday. Late morning I think, I’d need to check the book.’

‘How often did you see her?’

‘Every six weeks, maybe. She has –
had
– gorgeous hair, so full of life and bounce – most people were really jealous. She would come for a trim – one time she had a lot cut off but I think she really regretted it and she let it grow back. That was three years back though.’

‘Did she have a long-standing appointment for Monday?’

‘No, no it was weird. She’d only just been in, week before last. I didn’t think I’d see her for a while, but she phoned on Saturday.’

‘What exactly did she ask for?’

‘An appointment. Quick.’

‘She was in a hurry?’

‘It had to be Monday or Tuesday morning latest, that’s what she said. And I felt awful because I was fully booked.’

‘So what happened?’

‘I said no. She sounded dead disappointed. Then about an hour later I got a cancellation and called her back. She was really pleased.’

‘And she came in on the Monday morning.’

‘Yeah, and it was nearly a disaster because she didn’t say she wanted anything special. I thought it was just a tidy – I only set aside half an hour. But a dye job like that takes about three hours. I had to start it and get her to sit in the corner while it took, then a junior washed it and I squeezed the cut in when I should have been having my lunch.’

‘Was she happy with the finished look?’

‘She was over the moon. I have never seen her anything like that happy.’

‘And you?’

‘Oh I thought the whole thing was a big mistake. The colour didn’t suit her, made her look so pale – like a statue. But the customer is always right. Supposedly.’

Tom smiles. ‘What was she like that day – did she seem nervous?’

‘No. She seemed good. Really good – excited.’

‘Do you know why that might have been?’

‘No. It was just the impression I got.’

Tom nods. ‘Can you remember what you talked about that day? Did she tell you why she chose the colour?’

Andi frowns. ‘Not really. She could see I was surprised and not sure about it. I mean, I did try and talk her out of it. I actually thought it wouldn’t take, her hair was too dark to go that shade of silver. It would mean too much bleaching, it could damage the hair and the scalp. I offered her a darker colour but she knew what she wanted – I mean, she knew the exact colour and shade.’

‘How?’

‘She …’ Andi drops her voice to little more than a whisper. ‘Customers normally have bits of fabric, like T-shirts or dresses. Sometimes they have bits of wallpaper – even paint charts sometimes.’

‘But Charlie had something else?’

‘She … this is weird. She had a lock of hair, she said she wanted that exact colour.’

‘Human hair?’

‘Yeah, human hair and it was dry – it wasn’t freshly cut. It looked like it had been kept for years.’

7 p.m. Tom had asked them to wait for him. When he finally arrives at Charlie Brindley-Black’s flat there are two SOCO officers, all kitted up, and Patterson. Each of them twiddling their thumbs and collecting overtime.

‘Let’s start.’

Once again Tom snaps on the latex gloves, the shower cap and bags his shoes. Then they enter, cutting away the yellow and black tape that had sealed the room off since Charlie had been identified. The SOCO boys are about to enter when Tom stretches out his arm and holds them back.

‘We’re looking for letters, notes, photos. We need her phone and diary – both personal and business. The office in the gallery had nothing, so maybe she noted appointments in something she kept here. We need to know if she had any meetings planned for Thursday and names and phone numbers if possible. And we’re looking for anything that explains why she dyed her hair – and of course, why a knot was carved into the floor of the gallery. Okay?’

Everyone nods, they know the drill. He drops his arm and they enter like spacemen drifting in the vacuum. One of the SOCO men switches on powerful lights to flood the room, there are now no shadows and no hiding places. As the men move about, opening drawers and taking books from shelves, dust billows into the air, caught in the spotlight; turning and twisting like the stars in the heavens. Tom sends out a silent prayer to the deities of these dust galaxies to help him find the killer.

Four hours later their civilisations have crumbled, thanks to the SOCO hand-held mini-vac. The dust has been sucked up and bagged for analysis. As has all hairs and fabric fibres. Every surface has been dusted for fingerprints. All papers have been tagged and the contents of all bins have been collected and their contents logged and filed. One of the SOCO team then swept the room with a black light, searching for blood. He got very excited by a patch at the foot of the bed but it turned out to be glittery nail varnish. No phone was found, no laptop or personal computer – no diary and no correspondence. A small amount of cannabis was turned up and a sizable supply of condoms and lubricant. No human hair samples and no dye charts or anything to shed light on the choice to dye her hair. They log a lot of art books and art materials – there are tickets for a Royal Academy show coming up and some theatre show later in the year. There are also a number of photo albums. Tom goes through them, they seem to be mostly from university – though there are a few of Charlie at glamorous art world parties. Tom already has three officers checking on her university friends but instinctively Tom feels that is a dead end. This crime is not something from her past – it will not prove itself to be an aggrieved ex-boyfriend or a love rival. Something in his gut tells him this was far more malevolent.

He sits on her bed and pulls open a drawer. Inside are piles of mix-tapes, each one appears themed:
happy songs
,
sad songs
,
opposite songs
,
songs of doomed love
and many many more.

‘You always gave me a mix-tape,’ Dani reminds him. ‘Every time you came to see me at uni – there was always a new one.’

‘Did you listen to them?’ he asks, though he knows she didn’t – which was probably good. They were pretty juvenile, though he enjoyed making them and spending hours in
record stores to get things she might like. Every tape he made Dani ended with David Bowie’s ‘Be My Wife’. Or it would have if he hadn’t erased it every time.

‘You need to see this,’ one of the SOCO men calls over to Tom. ‘It’s a Polaroid. It was in this book.’

He hands over a copy of
On The Road
and a photo. It is of Charlie with her new hairstyle. In it she is topless. She looks brazenly at the camera, as if at a lover.

‘Very retro and arty – muted colours,’ The SOCO man offers.

Tom stares at the photo. ‘Patterson, I want to know who took this.’

‘How?’

‘Get someone in analysis to look at it. I want them to see if they can find a reflection in her eyes, in the glass behind her – anything. I want to see the photographer.’

Patterson looks incredulous. ‘You watch too much TV.’

‘Just get it to them.’

Patterson waits until he is out of the room to shake his head. In fact he is at the communal stairs before his phone rings and he answers it.

‘Oh fuck. Fuckety fuck fuck.’ He turns on his heel and runs back to the flat. ‘Guv!’

Tom hears the urgency and looks up.

‘We’ve got three more.’

Saturday 16 October 1999

Interpol finally fax over the full reports at 2 a.m. Three women killed: two found in Brussels, and the third in Amsterdam. Each of the women had silver-blond hair. Each of them had a single stab wound in the stomach and bled to death, the blood pooling around them. But these are not the details that brought these cases to Tom’s attention – oh no. In each case, the women had a shape carved into their upper chests. A lark’s head knot.

‘You should get some sleep,’ Dani tells him.

‘I can sleep when I’m dead.’

‘You’re joking. That’s an urban myth. There’s no sleep for the dead.’

‘Then I’ll sleep when I’m fired.’

‘Good idea, then you can lie-in until
Countdown
comes on. Or
Murder She Wrote
.’

Tom carries on reading and rereading the notes. Three murders were committed eighteen years earlier between September 1980 and June 1981, all similar to that of Charlie Brindley-Black. Why? How? And is this an English killer who went to Europe to try out his skills? Or a European murderer who settled here?

‘Oh, Christ. Too many questions.’

‘You should get some sleep.’

‘I’ll sleep when …’ He closes his eyes and lays his head down on his desk. In seconds he is gone.

Drool, like a string of pearls lace his lips together and hang down. A mug strikes the desk right by his head, which flicks up and the drool snaps.

‘What?’

‘Coffee, Guv.’ Patterson walks away, smiling.

Tom looks at his watch. It’s 6.35 a.m. He hadn’t meant to sleep, damn. He looks down at his desk …

‘Oh crap.’ He’s drooled on the Interpol files – right across one of the pictures of the murdered women and onto the yellow Post-it-note with his questions on it. His writing is smeared. He picks up the file to wipe it down… ‘Damnit Tom.’ He drops it. A small handwritten piece of paper falls out. It is the original contents list of the room the final victim was found in. Tom picks it up and… something strikes him. The list contains:
1bottle silicone adhesive, 1 bottle latex/silicone lubricant.
He remembers something, and a jigsaw piece heaves into view.