Читать книгу: «The Angel», страница 2
Chapter 1
2017
Gabriel Webb was a killer. He didn’t know it yet, but before the day was out he would know what it felt like to take someone’s life. He turned the music up in his bedroom to drown out the sound of his parents arguing about him. Apparently, he was ‘out of control’ and ‘needed to be taken in hand’. His mother had suggested sending him to live with an aunt in Cheltenham. His father had suggested forcing him to join the army, which ‘might show him how good he had it at home’. All this because Gabriel had shoulder-length hair and occasionally wore eyeliner.
He pulled on his red tartan punk trousers and leather New Rock boots, feeding the laces through the chrome shin panels on the front. Searching through his tops, he tried to decide which one to wear today, which one would be best for what they had planned. His phone beeped and he looked at the screen. An array of emojis all signifying excitement from his girlfriend Emma, listed in his phone as Proserpina, Roman Goddess and Queen of the underworld. He was in her phone as Pluto, the God of Death. Embracing darkness was part of the fun of being a goth. Tonight, they were going to see Apocalyptica, a nu-metal band, in a local club, a rare occurrence in Exeter now that the artisan hipster gin bars had all but taken over the city.
Gabriel pulled on his black wet-look cycling top; it hugged his lean muscular frame and he loved the way Emma looked at him when he was in it. He would catch her eyes resting on his chest as she swallowed hard, suppressing whatever desire his body aroused in her until they were alone. He grabbed the black buckled leather cincher out of his wardrobe and put it on, despite his parents’ voices echoing in his head. A man in a corset? Ridiculous. It wasn’t like it pulled his waist in or anything, it was just a fashion statement – not a nod to his sexuality. He couldn’t worry about what his parents thought though. His clothes were an expression of himself, for himself. It wasn’t about shocking anyone or even about rebelling. It was about feeling good in his skin, and this outfit made Gabriel feel good. He wrapped black electrical tape around his wrists and hands, then picked up the black eyeliner and drew a star on his left cheek. He was ready.
On entering the kitchen, his mother took a deep breath and turned her attention to the kitchen sink. Avoiding being a part of the conversation that was about to happen.
‘What the hell are you wearing?’ Michael Webb, Gabriel’s father, had an expression like thunder, but that wasn’t unusual, it was the standard greeting these days.
‘Clothes.’ Gabriel grabbed an apple and started to eat it. He had a foot on his father, but he was still uneasy. He wouldn’t say what he wanted to say, he never did. It was always better just to let his father rant and then leave anyway.
‘You’re a bloody man – when are you going to start acting like one?’ his father sniped. ‘Who’s going to employ you looking like that? You’re nineteen years old for God’s sake. Isn’t it time to grow up?’
‘A job like yours, you mean?’ Gabriel said. ‘I should be a drone?’
‘My drone job pays for those god-awful trousers you are wearing! I mean what the hell are all those straps and chain things hanging down? What kind of message do you think you’re putting across with those?’ His father tugged hard at the cord that linked the trousers together, ripping it. He looked at Gabriel with a sneer.
Gabriel smiled back with a pinched mouth. He was contemplating punching his father in the face – and not for the first time.
‘Anything else?’ He leaned down closer to his father, locking eyes with him – making sure he didn’t look away first.
The anger in his father’s eyes faltered for a moment.
‘Don’t even get me started on your face. Men don’t wear make-up, and what’s with the star? You look like a fucking communist.’
‘Michael! Language!’ Gabriel’s mother Penny said.
‘I’m off to meet some friends, I’ll probably stay out tonight.’ Gabriel walked out, shaking his head, his father’s insults getting fainter as he got further from the house. It was the most disrespectful he had ever been but he couldn’t tolerate this nonsense today. He was in a good mood and he wasn’t going to let his father ruin it. He was going to see Emma; he had texted her before he left, so she should be waiting outside. She lived three streets over. He had first seen her working in his local supermarket sometimes at the weekends, she’d always stood a little straighter when he walked past and so he knew she had seen him too. One day he just asked her out; she had said yes immediately and the rest was history.
Emma was standing outside her house with her new friend, Leanne. He saw Emma’s eyes light up as she saw him approaching, sucking in her breath in a way that turned him on. He knew what she was thinking about as she glanced at his body for a split second. He was thinking about it too. There had always been a certain electricity between them, he felt an involuntary breathlessness around her that only abated when they were locked together. He was always anticipating the next kiss.
‘You changed your hair again.’ He pointed to her roots which were a neon red, the rest a trailing black tangle down her back. She chewed on the back of her labret lip piercing and smiled at Gabriel. Leanne was obviously clueless about personal boundaries as she hung onto Emma’s arm. Emma’s eyes said later and he found himself excited at being forced to wait.
‘We’re going to go meet Leanne’s mates, they’re coming too.’
Gabriel didn’t know Leanne well but she had attached herself to Emma lately. They worked together at Tesco on Saturdays. Together, the three of them walked up through Heavitree and past the bus station. They kept walking, past the town, up towards the prison and beyond that, to the fencing that separated the railway tracks from the road, keeping local kids and cats from sliding down the bank and wandering into the path of an oncoming train.
It had started to spit. As they approached the fence, Gabriel saw two guys in their late teens standing waiting for them, hoods pulled up against the rain. Leanne yanked up some of the chicken wire fencing and disappeared behind it. Gabriel and Emma followed. The disused signal box near Exeter Central station was a known hangout for some of the less savoury characters that Leanne was friends with. As they made their way down, Gabriel heard a commotion and the sound of glass smashing; he was kind of excited at the rebelliousness of it all. In Gabriel’s eyes, the only thing worse than being bored was listening to his parents either fighting or fucking. Tonight was going to be far from boring, he would make sure of it.
Gabriel had seen the boys by the tracks in town before; they were Laners. Laners were the scum of the city as far as most people were concerned. Burnthouse Lane had a reputation for being home to some of the more violent members of local society. Between the ASBOs and the muggings there was little love left for the Laners. The kids were left to fend for themselves and the adults just did what they wanted. There was no community feel to the Lane, except among the teens. Several of the boys claimed to be the offspring of the Sly crew, the firm of football thugs that supported Exeter FC and made a name for themselves in the eighties. The Sly crew were not only well known for their random acts of violence, but also their almost myth-like status. None of the teens were sure if they had ever actually existed or not, which somehow made them even more terrifying to boys like Gabriel growing up. Everyone from the Lane had a story about the Sly crew, usually exaggerated to the point where they had witnessed a murder or were owed a massive favour that they could call in at any time.
Inside, the signal box was set up like an office, with all the levers chained to the wall, although most likely no longer connected to the tracks. There were three large chairs facing the centre and various wrappers, bottles, needles and other rubbish lying around the place. Gabriel stayed standing, aware that they may need to start running at any moment if anyone figured out they were in there. Emma wrapped her arms around herself, rubbing her arms as though she was cold and huddling up on a chair, crossing her legs to stay warmer.
‘This is Trey and this is Chris.’ Leanne pointed at her friends, who took the other two chairs. ‘Fucking hell, it’s freezing in here!’
Gabriel didn’t like the way the boys were looking at Emma, as though she were somehow there for their entertainment. He hated the idea that just because she wore a short skirt and fishnets that somehow that was for anyone other than herself. It was a mindset that people who weren’t part of the alternative scene didn’t appreciate. You dress for yourself. It would never occur to Gabriel to tell Emma what to wear and yet she had the same problem with her parents that he had with his. Today, she was wearing a very short black denim miniskirt with a bustle, fishnet tights and knee-high boots. He could see what these boys were thinking. They were making assumptions about the kind of things Emma would or would not do just because she wore black leather and studs. Gabriel hated people sometimes.
Emma shifted uncomfortably in her chair. Gabriel wished he had a coat he could take off and give to her.
One of the boys pulled out a crack pipe and Gabriel clenched his teeth. Why the hell were they here? This was a little more rebellion than he liked to engage in. Gabriel had smoked weed a few times, he had even had some skunk, but this stuff? No, this was not his place at all. People often assumed Gabriel was on something because he was so slim and he had long hair, and because he sometimes wore make-up; it was just the way people operated. They made assumptions. But this really wasn’t Gabriel’s idea of fun.
Emma looked up at Gabriel with an apologetic face. She knew how much he hated these kinds of people.
The Laners grunted and looked Gabriel up and down.
‘Want some?’ One of them held the black, stained pipe out towards Gabriel.
‘No thanks,’ he replied.
‘Are you going to be a problem?’ the other man said. Gabriel looked at him more closely; the name Trey was tattooed on his neck. Gabriel shook his head slightly and watched as Trey twirled the glass pipe in between his fingers, a smile on his face.
‘It’s fucking Baltic in here,’ the one who Gabriel now supposed must be Chris said, rubbing his hands together.
Trey dropped a few rocks of crack into the pipe and sucked in a couple of deep breaths as though he were about to dive into the sea before putting his lips to the edge of the pipe. He held the lighter under the glass bowl and gently rolled the glass stem in his fingers as he slowly drew the milky smoke into his lungs. His expression changed and he sat back in his chair. Chris took the pipe from him. Gabriel noticed that Leanne was watching Emma the whole time, obviously trying to gauge her reaction to this, to see if she was open to it. He saw her shiver again.
‘We should go. It’s freezing in here,’ Gabriel said, stepping closer to his girlfriend. The sun was going down and he didn’t fancy crossing the tracks in the dark, plus he really didn’t want to be here with these people any longer.
‘Killjoy.’ Leanne grinned, her face like a viper.
‘It’s OK. We’ll go in a bit.’ Emma smiled at Gabriel. He noticed how people were different with each other; Emma behaved differently when they were alone, she behaved differently with her family too and she was definitely behaving differently here with Leanne. This behaviour didn’t feel like her, it was a side he hadn’t seen before. A tapping sound echoed against the window as the rain began.
‘It’s starting to chuck it down,’ Gabriel said, looking at Emma hopefully, trying to impart to her his strong desire to leave. She just shifted her gaze away.
‘Why don’t you see if you can warm it up in here?’ Leanne asked him, it was a challenge, a threat maybe; there was something about her that made Gabriel really uneasy and it seemed amplified in here.
Gabriel went to the corner and grabbed the metal waste paper bin that had been left in the signal box. He didn’t want to cause a fuss; maybe his argument with his father earlier had made him extra defensive, maybe he wasn’t thinking straight. He collected some of the rubbish from the floor and piled it in before picking up one of Trey’s lighters from the table and snapping the head off.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Trey said.
Gabriel tipped the fluid from the lighter into the bin and then picked another lighter from the table. He found himself trying to prove something to Leanne; she had a way about her that made him feel impotent, it explained why Emma was the way she was around her.
‘Don’t break them all!’ Chris said, holding the crack pipe in his hands, menace in his voice.
Gabriel lit the edge of a piece of card and threw it into the bin. It ignited immediately. He concentrated on the flames, hoping this part of the evening would be over soon enough. He felt strangely vulnerable. Something terrible was going to happen.
Chapter 2
DS Adrian Miles held his hand out to his partner DS Imogen Grey to help her over the railway sleeper, his other hand lighting up the wet ground with the torch app on his mobile phone. Imogen tutted and stepped over the sleeper without assistance, trudging off ahead. They walked along the side of the tracks until they got to the burnt-out signal box which was illuminated by the lights on the fire truck. There was no more smoke now; it was a dripping carcass of a building.
‘You look nice, Grey,’ Adrian said as his torch beam hit Imogen’s face. He instinctively stepped out of her reach as he complimented her. She had her hair up and lipstick on; tonight must have been a special occasion. He by contrast had been lying on his sofa watching old episodes of Star Trek when they got the call.
‘I was out to dinner.’
‘Wow, that sounds so grown-up.’
‘Shut up, Miley.’
The fact was, it was good to see Imogen like this. Her mother had not long woken from a coma and, within a few weeks, had left to go on a ‘restful’ holiday, leaving Imogen with only guilt that she hadn’t protected her, that the attack on her towards the end of their last police case was somehow Imogen’s fault. She was often distracted by it at work, but Adrian knew better than to mention it, he had to trust that she would know she could confide in him if she needed to.
‘Is Dean all right? Behaving himself?’ Adrian asked, checking there were no uniformed officers listening in. Despite all of Adrian’s predictions to the contrary, Imogen and Dean were still together. Even with Dean’s sketchy history, something he’d apparently assured Imogen was in the past, they had managed to make it work. It wasn’t illegal to date an ex-con but it certainly wasn’t looked on favourably. At some point, they would have to declare it, which would mean even more scrutiny from the higher-ups, something Adrian could do without.
‘He’s good.’ She looked down and smiled. ‘It’s his birthday, so we went out for a curry.’
‘Wise not to subject him to too much of your cooking if you want to keep him around.’
‘It’s not my fault that mushroom risotto got burned,’ she protested.
‘I was impressed, I didn’t know you could burn anything in a microwave, let alone soggy rice.’
A firefighter walked over to them, cutting through the darkness of the night.
‘Looks pretty serious,’ Adrian said. The firefighter nodded.
The train station manager was approaching down from the platform with a quickened pace; he had probably been dragged in from home as well.
‘Officers,’ he said, nodding at them both.
‘Follow me,’ the firefighter said, beckoning them towards the ruined signal box. They got to the foot of the building; the wooden staircase was completely gone, as was the entire top floor.
‘Deliberate?’ Adrian asked, pulling out his notebook.
‘We’ve had a lot of trouble with kids and homeless people breaking into this one in the past,’ the station manager offered. ‘Until the investigation is complete we can’t say for sure, but it definitely looks that way. Even though this is old wood it’s a rainy night, and from the calls we got, it escalated to disproportionate levels for what we would expect from a building like this. There does seem to be some evidence of accelerant.’
‘Do you think it’s arson then?’ Adrian asked him.
‘I’m leaning that way. The point of origin seems to be a waste paper bin, but we’ll need to check that out further.’
‘Do you have any CCTV footage?’ Imogen turned to the station manager.
‘We do. My colleague is just retrieving it for you now. It’s a poorly lit area and with the terrible weather the visibility will be even crappier, not to mention the fact that it was actually night when whoever it was came out. It’s possible that when the arsonist was leaving some of the station lights or the lights on the bridge illuminated the area a little better though.’
‘Did they not tell you the main reason you’re here?’ the firefighter asked, looking between them curiously.
‘What do you mean?’ Adrian asked.
‘We found a body.’
Imogen and Adrian looked at each other.
‘You probably should have led with that,’ Imogen said crossly.
‘The fire started in the upstairs part of the building but the body was in the room with the mechanics on the ground floor. Probably male, possibly homeless, but that’s really a wild guess as the body is so badly damaged. It’s most likely he snuck in here for a kip or something. They come into the bottom of the building because there are no windows. It happens all the time. We’ll know more when the investigators have done a proper search and you get your pathologist down to the site to have a look before the body is moved.’
They made their way forwards, the firefighter handed them hard hats although it seemed unnecessary as there was nothing above them anymore, the ceiling and roof had been completely burnt through. Adrian started picking through the rubble of the structure. The floor was burned, the machinery charred black and as their eyes adjusted, they could make out a human-being-shaped pile of debris. The firefighter shone a light at the ground.
The station manager gagged and crumpled forwards at the sight of the body. Imogen looked at Adrian who gave a nod.
‘Show me the CCTV,’ Imogen said to the station manager before following him back out towards the platform, leaving Adrian to deal with the body.
Adrian bent down and looked at the ground. The body was contorted, almost in a foetal position, crisp and delicate, with obvious fracture points where the entire floor had caved in on top of it, smashing the skull to smithereens. What was previously the floor now lay around the body in charred splinters, the wood had been so dry it had almost entirely burnt away. He shone his torch upwards to see the smouldering hole where the fire had torn through the roof and exposed the inky sky overhead. Back on the ground he noticed debris, rat droppings, chunks of wet, singed wood. It was like staring at a black and white TV, everything in monochrome, various shades of grey. Dark wet ash, light dry ash, everything covered in some variant of grey dust. Even the red-brick walls were blackened with soot.
The crime scene technicians approached and Adrian took a couple of markers, the bright yellow practically glowing against the dirge of this tiny burnt-out structure. He focussed on the shape of the body, the hands shrivelled into claws. Adrian shuddered at the thought of the man, hiding in here from the cold when the fire broke out.
‘How long does it take for a body to get like that?’ Adrian asked the crime scene technician once he’d checked that Imogen had taken the station manager a safe distance away.
‘It really depends on how hot it got in here. It’s a small space and fairly well insulated despite the broken glass upstairs. There’s a lot of metal in here too, which would have added to the intensity of the heat. I spoke to one of the firefighters and he said it was at least forty-five minutes before they made it down here onto the tracks safely. It’s out of view, and although there aren’t many trains at this time of night, a lot of calls had to be made before they could access the building. It’s a tricky spot to get to as well. And who knows how long it was burning before anyone noticed, the CCTV footage should be able to tell you more.’
‘Will we be able to get DNA from the body?’ Adrian had taken out his notebook and was scribbling as the technician talked.
‘I can’t say at this stage, I’m sorry. It really depends on a variety of factors. We’ll know more when we get the remains back to the lab.’
‘Thank you.’ Adrian closed his notebook and walked back to find Imogen. He felt strange walking alongside the tracks, remembering his mother’s old obsession with the fact that this was probably how he would die. Growing up, their house had backed onto the lines at Exeter St Thomas station, and every time he left the house she would warn him not to play about on the tracks. The trains had been delayed tonight, so he knew he was safe. Still, this felt like an act of betrayal.
Adrian stepped into the railway office and saw Imogen sitting with the station manager, going through the CCTV footage of that night. He went over to them and sat down, wanting a closer look at the screen. They were rewinding back from the fire. Five figures came out of the signal box, two wearing hoodies. They looked like males, probably teenagers. The rain was coming down. Adrian could see a girl with a baseball cap on, but there was no clear shot of her face, and another girl who was wearing a short skirt and had a newspaper covering her head. There was a young man with her, holding her hand and helping her down the stairs. He was tall, with shoulder-length dark hair obscuring his face and clearly alternative clothing.
‘We’ll never get an ID from that picture.’
Imogen spun around on her chair to face him. ‘There’s not many places for the alternative crowd to go around here, Miley. I think I know where we can start looking.’
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