What She Saw (13 page)

‘Forensics haven't come back yet,' said Gold.

‘Tracey, I'm going to call Superintendant Stephens and ask him to release you onto this MIT. Are you good with that?' asked Rosen.

‘I'm better than good with that.'

A ripple of laughter passed around the group. Rosen noticed the way Feldman couldn't keep his eyes off Leung but that when she looked round, and her eyes met his, he instinctively looked away. In nearly thirty years, Feldman was the shyest officer Rosen had ever worked with.

‘Tracey, what do you know about the guns the three stooges possess?' pushed Rosen.

‘If the bullets used on Bannerman Square were 10.16 mm diameter, it was a Smith & Wesson and it belongs to Trent. Ruskin uses a Beretta 21A Bobcat and Jones has a third-generation Glock 17.'

Rosen looked at the pictures of Ruskin, Jones and Trent and saw a potential bridge to the people who set fire to Thomas Glass. But he guessed the gunman wouldn't know the full picture, or how deeply in the mire they'd dropped themselves.

‘What's your hunch, Tracey?'

‘Any one from three.'

‘It started out as vandalism for cash,' said Rosen, ‘and wound up as conspiracy to murder. One crime leads to another, and it's always an upgrade. Any questions?'

‘About this cult idea?' asked Corrigan, his Liverpudlian drawl marbled with scepticism. ‘What are the implications?'

Rosen considered.

‘If it is a cult and we get into a stand-off, they're not going to take any prisoners, us or themselves included. Think Waco. I hope I'm wrong. My alarm bells are chiming.'

‘I can't see any of the gang kids being directly involved in a cult,' said Leung.

‘Why, Tracey?' asked Feldman, his voice almost a whisper.

‘To them it'd just be completely uncool, and weird with it. If it's not rooted in the moment, concrete reality, instant gratification, they don't want to know.'

Rosen took her words on board. She knew the disaffected young men who scourged the streets better than anyone else in the Met.

‘Thanks for that, Tracey,' said Rosen.

‘No problem.' As she reached her hand to her head to smooth back her hair, her sleeve pulled back to reveal more of the intricate, thickening body of the tattooed serpent.

29

9.03 P.M.

I
n his car, Rosen called Lewisham Hospital's A & E and got through to Stephanie Jones, the nurse he'd encountered the night before.

‘Hello. . .' He almost called her Bugner, but paused. ‘Stephanie, how is Thomas?'

‘Highly critical, but stable. He's still in the resuscitation unit.'

‘I'd like to see him.'

There was dead silence and Rosen wondered if she'd heard him.

‘Mr Glass says
you
're not to visit Thomas.'

‘Me, personally?'

‘I'm afraid so.'

‘Any particular reason?'

‘He doesn't want to talk to you.'

Doesn't he?
thought Rosen.
Why?

‘What does Mrs Glass say?'

‘Nothing to anyone except Thomas.'

‘Please tell Mrs Glass I called and asked after Thomas.'

Macy's withered flowers, her thoughts and prayers for the Glass family consumed Rosen for a moment, and he felt a deepening to the ever-present sorrow that the world caused him.

‘Is that it?' asked Stephanie

‘For now,' responded Rosen.

30

11.15 P.M.

T
hree women emerged from Claude House and walked briskly across Bannerman Square. At the front, a woman in her late thirties took a long drag on a cigarette, but it did nothing to steady her nerves. Thin and with bottle-black hair, her green eyes danced with agitation.

‘Marie,' said her sister, clasping her hand.

‘All day long there's a constable standing there. Where's he now, Jan?' asked Marie Jensen, frustrated, tearful.

‘The tape's down, they must've got all they needed,' replied Jan. Dressed in loose, grey jogging bottoms and a black quilted coat against the cold, she was a little shorter than her sister and with blonde hair and a rounded face.

‘There won't be anyone in there,' said Kaye, their friend. Red-haired and pale-skinned, she marched directly to the mobile incident room. Inside, a light was on but the door was closed. She turned the handle. Locked. The bluebird tattooed on the heel of her hand was a mistake she'd made in her teens and regretted every time she saw it.

Marie threw her cigarette on the ground and hammered on the door with the flat of her hand. ‘Anybody there?' Anger and fear competed inside her.

Behind her back, Jan exchanged a look with Kaye.

‘I want to report a missing person. A missing person! Are you in there, Mr Rosen?'

‘Marie! This ain't gonna help none.'

She stopped banging the Portakabin door.

‘Let's go to Isaac Street and report him missing there. There's someone there, twenty-four-seven.'

Marie took out her cigarettes and tried to spark up her disposable lighter, but her hands were shaking too hard. Jan wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and she fell into a fit of sobbing. Kaye took the lighter from her and said, ‘Here.'

The friend ran her thumb over the wheel of the lighter and a flame shot up. She lit the cigarette but kept the flame alive, her attention captured by graffiti on the Portakabin door.

The sisters were already walking away.

‘It didn't take 'em long. . .'

‘Kaye, are you coming or what?'

She lifted her thumb and the flame died.

Some kids round here
. . . thought Kaye, trying hard to distract herself from the thought of her friend's son who'd been missing for hours.
No respect for anyone, especially the police
.

31

3.05 A.M.

A
fter three hours' sleep, David Rosen took the bottle of formula from the bottle warmer and shook the excess water from its sides. Sarah sat up in bed with Joe in her arms, the room lit by a lamp in the corner, the darkness outside dense. The short walk across the room to the bed felt like an uphill march. Rosen up-ended the bottle and shook it again to test the temperature of the milk on the back of his hand. It was just right. He handed it to Sarah and, within moments, Joe's face was half-obscured as he drank enthusiastically, two bright blue eyes shining over the rim of the bottle.

Rosen looked into his son's eyes and his tiredness eased a little.

‘Why don't you go in the spare room and try and sleep through?' asked Sarah.

‘I'd rather be up all night with him than sleep in there. I don't see enough of either of you as it is.'

‘Any progress?' Both Sarah and Joe had been asleep when he returned home, and Rosen had only spoken briefly to his wife mid-afternoon. Of all the day's developments, his mind went back to lunchtime and his conversation with Macy Conner.

‘We've got an eye witness, says she saw two men running away from Bannerman Square. They knocked her to the ground, threatened to
come back and burn her alive, stole her money. She's ten.'

‘Poor kid.'

‘They punched her in the face.' The memory made him angry, and something knotted in his gut.

‘Did she give you a description?'

‘It was dark and their hoods were up. So nothing facially. But she gave me the smell of petrol on one of them.'

‘What's her name?' asked Sarah.

‘Macy Conner.'

‘How do you rate her as a witness?'

‘Good. I need to know more about her. She could be crucial. Gold and Feldman are sifting CCTV, looking for the two of them exiting onto Lewisham High Street and the inward traffic coming towards Bannerman Square.'

‘She sounds like a good kid, stepping forward like that.'

‘She is. She's also a poor kid from a poor family,' said Rosen, looking at his son, grateful for the security he had with two working parents.

He recalled the way she'd been keen to get off to school that lunchtime and thought aloud: ‘I'll phone her school first thing in the morning; get an appointment to talk to her teacher. Get a bit of background on her.'

‘Good idea.'

Rosen recalled Macy's mental block, the piece of information she couldn't quite recall.

Sarah removed the teat from Joe's mouth and a sucking noise drifted across the softly lit bedroom.

‘Here.' Rosen held his arms out and Sarah placed their son in his hands. Sitting on the edge of their bed, he lifted the baby to his chest and started gently patting his back.

In his mind, Rosen watched Macy head off for the library, weighed down with her grandmother's borrowed books. He was stabbed by sadness at a sudden thought, a connection of two ideas. He looked at his wife closely and something tender shifted in her face.

‘What's wrong, love?' she asked.

‘Macy's the same age Hannah would've been if she was still alive.'

Nearly nine years had passed since she'd died, and there wasn't an hour that passed by in which he didn't wonder what she'd be like had she lived. He knew it was the same for Sarah: very often, when they were out together – shopping, visiting a cinema or in a restaurant – he caught his wife looking at girls of the age she would have been, and the pain in her eyes always showed behind the smile she cast at these children and their incredibly blessed parents.

There were still times – her birthday, usually, but other days as well – when alone in the bath or behind some closed door, Rosen would weep for their loss and wish he could hold her just one more time.

Rosen held on to his son, looked down protectively at the crown of his head.

‘He'll be just fine,' said Sarah. ‘We've so much to be grateful for now. This little boy needs us and we need him. He needs us to be upbeat. He's our future.'

He cradled Joe in his arms and, watching his eyes closing, Rosen felt the full force of his unconditional love but, with it, an undertow of fear.

It was a dangerous and violent world for children and he asked himself,
Would anyone save Joe if I wasn't there?

‘He'll probably sleep through for the rest of the night now.' He stood up and walked Joe up and down the room. The motion did the trick of sending him into a deepening slumber.

He took him back to his room and lay the baby down in his Moses basket.

As he settled back into bed, Rosen said, ‘One day, I'll come home and Joe'll be five years old. He'll look at me and say, “Who are you?”'

‘He's a baby but he knows you're his dad, and he always will.'

Rosen switched off the light. As he lay in the dark, trying to empty his mind and sink into sleep, the thought of Thomas Glass's father refused to leave.

Money. Outlook. Fingertips
.

Cult. Gang. Gun. Fire
.

Glass. Thomas. John
.

‘Who's hiding something?' asked Sarah.

‘What?'

‘You just muttered under your breath, “He's hiding something.”'

‘Oh, no one, nothing, love.'

John Glass, that's who
, thought Rosen.

32

7.30 A.M.

O
n her way in to Isaac Street Police Station, Bellwood had received a call from Rosen telling her to make a diversion to Bannerman Square and the mobile incident room.

As she crossed the square now, she noticed that the door of the Portakabin was wide open but there appeared to be no other signs of life.

As she got there, Rosen emerged from behind the back of the unit, black coffee in one hand, camera in the other. He looked very tired and rattled.

‘Are you OK, David?' she asked.

He looked over his shoulder. He had made a call to James Henshaw as well, and the profiler was almost running to get across Bannerman Square.

‘Have you met James Henshaw?' asked Rosen, indicating him.