A Killing Mind

‘Grab your coat,’ he told him.

‘We going somewhere?’ Donnelly asked, looking like a man who had no wish to go anywhere.

‘North London MIT,’ Sean explained. ‘We need to speak to them about Tanya Richards.’

Sally walked along Oxford Street with DC Fiona Cahill at her side. At twenty-seven, Cahill was ten years Sally’s junior and happy to follow her lead and learn from her experience. She even copied the way Sally dressed, although she was much taller and naturally more elegant, with her hazel hair cut short. Each woman carried a photograph of the smiling William Dalton in her coat pocket, but so far they’d had little luck in finding anyone who wanted to talk about the dead man. They’d spoken to more than a dozen homeless people, almost all of whom had openly told them they knew the victim, but no one could help them with his movements or suggest who would want to hurt him. Sally sensed their suspicion of the police, despite the fact they were trying to find a homeless man’s murderer. Many of the West End’s visible forgotten lived in anonymity and wanted to keep it that way.

As they crossed the junction with Bird Street, Sally saw a catering van parked up. From the open side-hatch a white woman in her mid-forties, not much taller than herself, stood dispensing hot drinks and sandwiches to a small gathering of the homeless, most of them men. Clouds of steam swirled from their boiling cups and disappeared into the freezing London sky. When they saw Sally and Cahill pulling out their warrant cards, the entire group immediately turned their backs and took a few steps away.

‘DS Sally Jones,’ she told the woman at the serving hatch. ‘And my colleague, DC Cahill. Special Investigations Unit, Metropolitan Police.’

‘I may not have known who you were,’ the woman smiled, ‘but I could tell what you are and why you’re here.’

‘Oh?’ Sally asked.

‘Word spreads fast,’ she explained. ‘Faster than you can walk anyway.’

‘And you are?’ Sally asked.

‘Izzy. Izzy Birkby, from the charity Reach Out. We do what we can to help – hot drinks and sandwiches, sometimes just someone who’ll listen. We don’t lecture them or try to get them to rejoinsociety. There are enough people doing that. We don’t judge. I assume you’re here about poor Will.’

‘Yes,’ Sally replied. She held up the picture. ‘Is this the man you know as Will?’

‘Man?’ Birkby raised an eyebrow. ‘More of a boy, don’t you think?’ Sally said nothing, but carried on holding the photograph out for the woman to look at. ‘Yeah. That’s him,’ she confirmed, ‘although he didn’t look like that when he was living on the street. You’d be surprised how quickly being homeless changes the way a person looks.’

Sally had been in the job long enough not to be surprised, but she let it go without comment. ‘How well did you know him?’

‘Pretty well,’ Birkby explained. ‘For a few months, at least. We always try to look after the young ones – especially the drug users. Once they get high, they forget to eat and then they don’t last very long out here.’

‘You knew he was taking drugs?’ Cahill asked.

‘Of course,’ Birkby admitted, surprised by the question. ‘A lot of our customersare drug users.’

‘Did you try to get him to stop?’ Cahill asked. ‘Or tell someone who could have helped him?’

‘Like I said,’ Birkby reminded her, ‘we don’t judge. If we start putting pressure on them they’ll shy away and we won’t be able to help them at all. We can’t allow ourselves to get too attachedto them either. A lot of young people don’t make it out of here. We can’t afford to fall apart every time one doesn’t.’

‘Soup and sandwiches, right?’ Sally nodded.

‘Right,’ Birkby answered. ‘Soup and sandwiches.’

‘What can you tell us about him?’ Sally asked. ‘Anything at all could be useful.’ Birkby looked nervously at the homeless huddle. ‘You don’t have to be afraid of betraying anyone’s trust,’ Sally told her. ‘William’s dead now. All we want is to find whoever killed him.’

Birkby took a deep breath and nodded, as if she’d come to a decision. ‘He appeared on the street a few months ago,’ she began. ‘Was a bit of a loner at first, but soon realized it made him vulnerable, so began to team up with others to go begging. He seemed a nice kid, you know, but the drugs had got a good hold on him. Crack, I think. He got kicked out of a couple of night hostels for using drugs, so decided he’d rather sleep rough and be left to his vices than be told what to do.’

‘But he didn’t sleep rough in the West End,’ Sally reminded her.

‘No,’ she acknowledged. ‘Some of the weaker ones make easy targets for muggings or cops looking for easy drugs arrests.’

‘And he was one of the weaker ones?’ Cahill asked.

Birkby shrugged.

‘Looks like someone found out where he was staying,’ Sally said. ‘Did he tell people where he was living?’

‘No,’ she replied. ‘He told me south of the river, but didn’t say anything more specific.’

‘What about anyone from the homeless community?’ Sally asked, looking over at the dishevelled figures eating and drinking. ‘Could someone have known?’

‘Maybe.’ Birkby called across to two of the younger men in the group. ‘Tom. Archie.’ They both looked in her direction. ‘These guys knew William. Maybe they can help.’ The two young men, wearing layer upon of layer of clothes to defend against the bitter cold, shuffled forward. Little could be seen of their faces aside from their eyes, peering through small gaps in the mixture of hats and scarfs they wore.

‘What’s up?’ Archie asked, shuffling from one foot to the other to keep warm.

‘These are detectives,’ Birkby explained. ‘Trying to find out why someone attacked William. You guys knew him pretty well, right?’

‘I guess,’ Archie shrugged.

‘William didn’t sleep in the West End,’ Sally took over. ‘Do you know where he went?’

‘Nah.’ Archie shook his head. ‘Said he had a garage over by London Bridge. He never said where.’

‘And you?’ Sally asked Tom. ‘Did he tell you where?’

‘No, man,’ Tom mumbled, looking anywhere other than at the detectives. ‘Never showed anybody. Never told anybody.’

‘People’re saying he must have been followed,’ Archie said, fidgeting where he stood, the fear sharp and real in his eyes.

‘Nobody knows that,’ Sally told him.

‘Yeah, well, people are scared,’ Archie continued. ‘People are saying he killed a woman in the same way. A prostitute or something. Took her teeth just like he did with Will. People are saying he’s evil – that he’s hunting people like us, like we’re some kind of animals – that the teeth are his trophies. Some people are saying he’s not even a man – that he’s something else – something no one can stop. Not even the police.’

‘All right,’ Birkby interrupted. ‘That sort of talk’s only going to make people more afraid.’

‘People couldn’t be more afraid,’ Archie told her. ‘We don’t have safe places to go. We don’t have doors we can lock. We’re easy prey, man. Easy prey.’

‘I understand your fears,’ Sally explained, ‘but there’s no evil out there – just a man. A man who pretty soon we’ll catch. Until then, everybody needs to be extra vigilant and look out for each other. Keep your eyes open for any strangers who don’t fit in, anyone acting suspiciously and make sure you report it.’

‘Have there been?’ Cahill asked. ‘Have there been any strangers hanging around?’

‘There are always strangers in the West End,’ Archie told her.

‘Any that concerned you?’ Cahill pressed. The two men merely shrugged and looked at the ground.

‘Anyone you can think of who we should be speaking to?’ Sally asked. ‘Someone who knew William better than most.’

‘Yeah, sure,’ Archie answered without hesitation. ‘You should speak with Jonnie. He and Will did stuff together, you know.’

‘You got a surname?’ Cahill asked.