58
Saturday, 5 May 2012
‘Your dad was the attending officer.’ Jack had Lucille May’s file open on his lap. ‘Michael Thornton must have been one of his first fatalities. Lucie gave Terry the lead on this case, be it unwittingly.’ Jack had told Stella what the journalist had said. He left out the hint that there had been more between them.
‘Why is she living there if she hates it?’ Stella parked along from a Mini outside the cemetery gates. Saturdays were shopping and chores; she supposed tomorrow would be busier. Jack had done an extra shift on the District line during the day on Friday. She had picked him up by the statue of the Leaning Woman on the Great West Road. Beyond his text assuring her he was fine, they had not discussed the case since Jack’s second visit to Lucille May’s on Thursday.
‘She’s a journalist stuck with a story that she can’t write and can’t abandon. I think it’s got to her. She doesn’t have the drive to operate a campaign of murder, pardon the pun.’ Jack thrust a faded photostat at Stella. She sniffed stale ink on the shiny paper, and read the paragraph of blurred type from Terry’s report.
I arrived at the location – Young’s Corner, south side of King Street, ten yards from traffic lights, at 15.47 hours. I confirmed that the victim, a male child (dressed in shorts, shirt, one sandal thrown off during incident), was fatally hurt. Checked for vital life signs. I covered him with my jacket. I radioed for an ambulance and police. The vehicle involved in the collision did not stop at the scene. No one present had witnessed the accident. A customer in the hardware shop ten yards east of the location reported a grey car travelling at speed. He could not give the make or the model. Stated was a grey saloon.
‘Lucille May knows more than she’s let on. Look at all this. Weird that she gave it to you. Did she say anything else about my— about Terry?’ Stella looked out of the window at Hammersmith Cemetery. Michael Thornton was buried there. Her dad would have gone to the funeral, probably in the black suit her mum said was past its best when it was new. He would have stood a distance from the graveside ceremony. He’d have made a silent promise to find Michael’s killer; he never had.
Someone else had made that promise too.
‘Come on.’ Stella got out of the van without waiting for Jack to reply.
Hammersmith Cemetery was a half-mile square and bounded by railings partially obscured within bushes. Although sprawling between the traffic-clogged South Circular and the Lower Richmond Road the graves and mausoleums were shrouded within a breath-held quiet. Despite the strong morning sunshine, Stella zipped up her anorak against an insidious chill.
‘Opened in 1926 as an overspill for Margravine Cemetery.’ Jack paced down the central path reading aloud from his phone. ‘The graves are on the lawn principle with a concrete strip at the head of the plot. That means you don’t need to wait for the soil to settle before installing the headstone.’ He sounded chirpy. Telling her about his visit to Lucille May’s he had been oddly upbeat and optimistic. This rather annoyed Stella; he was there to gather facts, not enjoy himself.
‘After a coffin’s in the hole and the soil replaced, there’s ten per cent of the earth left over. Think how much soil that is in a place this size.’
‘There are hundreds of graves. We need an index of burials.’ Stella headed for a brick chapel halfway along the path. A chain was looped through iron handles on the doors barring access and there was no sign of a warden. She went on a few metres to where an intersection offered three directions.
‘Look out for an angel.’ Jack scanned the acres stretching before them.
‘That narrows it nicely,’ Stella muttered. ‘I can already see four.’
Jack jogged along the left-hand path to an angel with outspread wings. ‘First World War casualty.’ He darted across the grass to the next one.
None of the angels marked the grave of Michael Thornton. Without conferring, they struck off along a track from the central avenue. The sun had gone behind a stratum of cloud, casting a flat light that left no shadow.
They were in a secluded section of the cemetery. The silence intensified. Letters on headstones were missing or worn away. What dates Stella could decipher were from the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Coarse grass and creeping foliage disguised plots long untended. The path lost definition and petered away. Stella forgot to look for an angel. Unable to shake off a growing unease, she trudged mechanically behind Jack.
‘Oh!’ He stopped; Stella trod on his heel. He snatched at the sleeve of her anorak. A figure was framed against the lowering sky.
Stella was about to pull Jack back the way they had come when he set off at a run towards the person. He leapt over grave edgings and tussocks, his coat like black wings. She lost sight of him behind a clump of bushes.
Stella blundered after Jack, crashing through undergrowth, blood pulsing in her ears.
Jack was dwarfed by the tallest statue Stella had ever seen. It was at least fifteen feet high. Upon a tiered plinth, she read:
IN LOVING MEMORY OF
MICHAEL
AGED 7
15TH MARCH 1959 – 6TH MAY 1966
BELOVED CHILD OF
ROBERT AND JEAN THORNTON
‘WHO IS LIKE UNTO GOD’
‘BONNY AND BLITHE AND GOOD AND GAY’
‘Their grief is palpable,’ Jack breathed. The statue was enclosed by a marble ledge a foot high, wide enough to fit a car on. The enclosed space was filled with green chips of glass.
‘“And the child that is born on the Sabbath day is bonny and blithe and good and gay.”’ Jack stepped on to the base. He scooped up a handful of glass. ‘I have the same birthday as Michael.’
‘That would make you older than me.’ Stella didn’t need Jack and his signs now.
‘The date, not the day.’ He examined the glass. ‘This is the same grade aggregate as ours.’
‘How can you know?’ But Stella knew it was.
‘These markings like rainbows?’ He held up a piece between thumb and forefinger. ‘Glass grinding against glass. Our man comes here before his next murder and each time he takes seven pieces.’
‘Would be more practical to take more and save the journeys.’
‘He must return each time.’
Stella didn’t like it when Jack talked as if he knew the killer. ‘Why?’
‘To pay a forfeit to the angel. To atone.’ He sprinkled the glass back on to the grave. ‘I was born on a Tuesday.’
Stella gave a start. The angel’s eyes were admonishing. She knew about the database printout. Stella could never undo what she had done. ‘I thought angels were nice.’ She said this more to herself.
‘Tuesday’s child is full of grace.’ Jack settled beside her. ‘When were you born?’
‘The twelfth of August 1966. What’s this to do with Michael Thornton?’
‘Which day?’
‘No idea. Michael can’t have been that good or gay, you said he sneaked out without permission to get sweets.’
‘Not a capital offence. Three police officers were shot on the day you were born, you said that was why Terry didn’t get to the hospital to see you.’ He fiddled with his phone.
Anxious to avoid the angel’s penetrating stare, Stella trudged behind the statue. The sense of recrimination did not lessen. ‘Surely this thing contravenes the height regulation.’ She heard a rustle in the bushes. It was an animal but still it made her skin creep.
‘You were born on a Friday.’ Jack put away his phone. ‘“Friday’s child is loving and giving.”’ He nodded at Stella. ‘That’s you.’
‘Ha ha.’ Stella shot him a look, but he appeared to be serious. ‘Aren’t angels supposed to be guardians? This one is like a prison guard. The sculptor was having an off-day.’ She stirred the glass with her boot, expecting to expose soil. There was more glass. Whoever was taking it from here would not run out.
‘This angel is for a beloved son. No expense spared. That expression of recrimination is not the artist lacking inspiration, it signifies that someone must pay for the death of sweet baby Michael.’ Jack put up his coat collar. ‘If we stay it will be us.’
Stella was generally immune to Jack’s quirky impressions, but not this time. He had used the word ‘recrimination’, a word she had just applied to herself. The angel would make her pay.
Jack stood in front of the statue. ‘Someone’s tried to stop her.’
Stella joined him. The angel’s arms were slightly raised, exposing thin wrists peeping from the folds of a flowing gown. The wrists ended abruptly. Her hands were missing.
‘Vandalism.’ In the grey afternoon light the severed ends resembled fractured bone.
‘No.’ Jack stroked the marble. ‘It’s a sheer slice. It was premeditated. Cold calculation.’
Stella had cleaned up wanton damage after burglaries or parties that had got out of hand. This was a colder act. ‘Who would do this?’
‘The Archangel Michael defeated Satan and kicked him out of heaven. Satan escaped to earth,’ Jack said under his breath. ‘St Michael is his enemy.’
‘The Fallen Angel.’ Stella caught echoes of a patchy religious education. ‘Michael Thornton committed a sin, you mean?’
‘No, Michael’s with God. Whoever removed the angel’s hands wanted to fracture the power of his guardian angel.’
‘That doesn’t fit with our theory that the murderer is taking revenge on drivers who have run over children.’ Stella squatted down and combed her fingers through the glass.
‘The Book of Revelation is stuffed with sevens: John’s message for seven churches, seven trumpets, seven seals and the final portent when seven angels each bring a plague.’
‘More sevens.’ Stella hadn’t read the Book of Revelation. ‘Sunday is the seventh day of the week,’ she offered.
‘Sunday!’ Stell, you are an angel! Let’s see your matrix.’
Stella swung her rucksack off her shoulder and found the spreadsheet tucked in her Filofax. She kept her back to the angel.
‘The tenth of November, when my erstwhile friend Jamie Markham was killed, is a Sunday and it equals seven.’ Jack sat cross-legged on the glass beside her.
‘Charlie Hampson’s doesn’t, we know this. But—’ Stella nudged him. ‘Hampson was killed on Michael Thornton’s birthday!’
Jack jumped out and went over to the angel. ‘Of the seven deaths we know about, four are in mid-March and one at the end of March, the month of Michael’s birthday.’
‘Lucie said one of the children, Robert Smith, died on the fifth of November, five days before Jamie on the tenth. Mrs Thornton killed herself on the fifteenth, the same day Myra Hindley died.’ Jack got out his phone. ‘The Daily Mirror’s headline was “Gone But Not Forgiven”. There has to be a link.’
‘Myra Hindley is one person who can’t be guilty of these crimes.’
‘Lucie made me think. Why did Mrs Thornton wait so long before killing herself?’
‘Lucille May also said some things are only coincidence.’ Stella swung her rucksack on to her back. ‘It was the first time Mrs Thornton succeeded, odds on she had tried before.’
‘What if she’s our killer? She realized with Jamie Markham’s death that nothing had changed, her son was still dead. She saw the futility and ended it all.’
‘Good thought!’ Stella looked at the spreadsheet. ‘Only the shoe man Harvey Gray and Charles Hampson died after she committed suicide.’
Jack had been looking at his phone. ‘Michael was killed on the day the Moors murderers were sentenced to life. Lucie told me. That day Mrs Thornton’s life effectively ended. Hindley dying brought it all back. She couldn’t bear it.’
Suzie had told her that after the Moors murders Terry had vowed never to let his own child out of his sight. Impossible. Finally he left his daughter altogether. Men bottled up feelings for their children. Marian said Joel Evans’s father punched a wall and broke his finger when he heard his son was dead. ‘We’re forgetting something.’
‘Likely. My brain’s on overload.’
‘Joel Evans.’ Stella flipped through her diary. ‘The boy killed outside Marks and Spencer’s on King Street.’
‘So we are!’ Jack grasped the angel’s wrists as if he might heal them.
‘Monday the twenty-third of April. The day I found the blue folder.’
‘Wasn’t it a hit and run?’
‘A man gave himself up later. I was there when Marian was told.’
‘He will be the next victim! We must warn him. What was his name?’
‘Can’t remember.’
‘If the killer is alive, going by the pattern he won’t kill for months after the child died.’
‘You said he was speeding up. Something’s changed. His health or his circumstances.’ She saw again the sandy shape on the tarmac. A child ghost washed away in the rain. ‘I’m due at David Barlow’s.’
‘That’s a strange job,’ Jack remarked. ‘Deep cleaning. A metaphor for cleansing guilt or shame. You should profile deep-cleaning clients. Bet there’s a corollary.’
‘David’s got nothing to be guilty about; he nursed his wife to the end. Not many men would and he was burgled.’ Stella hadn’t spoken to David since finding the stuff under his bath. Jack would have a field day if she told him. ‘I’ll drop you at Mrs Hampson’s.’ She hesitated, struck by the reality of where Jack was going. She would not like to clean there by herself. ‘If we delay it, I could come too.’ There was more rustling in the bushes, just to add to it all.
‘I’m normally there without you.’
‘With Mrs Hampson being dead.’
‘She’s not still there. I should escort you to your deep-cleaning gig.’
‘No need.’ Stella cast about for the path. The rustling stopped. ‘Jack. Come on!’ She didn’t relish walking across the cemetery by herself.
‘What’s tomorrow?
‘Sunday sixth of May.’
She read the lead lettering on Michael Thornton’s monument: ‘15th March 1959 – 6th May 1966’.
‘Ring your friend,’ Jack said softly. ‘He will kill Joel Evans’s driver tomorrow.’