Vicious Circle

“Peace ran one way and you ran another. You lost touch with him, anyway, and you spent the next few days trying to track him down. You were stupid enough to ask a lot of people a lot of questions, and to use your own name while you were doing it. You couldn’t have given us a clearer evidence trail if you’d been trying to—so thanks for that. But if you’re asking me whether it worries me that you shot Peace with his own gun, no, it doesn’t. Not at all. We found a knife on you, so we’re assuming that you went in with the intention of using that—but then a better opportunity presented itself and you took it.”

She quirked an eyebrow. “Or did he draw on you first? Was it self-defense? Maybe we can haggle about motive.”

I slammed my hand down on the table, making Field move in and loom over me with unspoken but unmistakeable threat. “Fuck!” I said, louder than I intended. “Didn’t Reggie Tang tell you that I waded in to help Peace when he was attacked at Thamesmead pier? I wanted to talk to him, not to kill him!”

For the first time, a flicker of something like interest—nothing so strong as doubt, not yet—passed across Basquiat’s face. She looked up at Fields.

“Did Tang say anything about that?” she asked him.

“Not a word,” said Fields, scornfully.

“Listen to me,” I said. “I was approached by a couple who claimed to be Abbie Torrington’s parents. They wanted me to—”

“When was this?” Basquiat interrupted.

“Monday. Three days ago. They wanted me to find Abbie. They told me she was already dead, but they said Peace had somehow taken her ghost—her spirit—away from them, and they wanted her back. There are other witnesses to this. A man named Grambas: he runs a kebab house on Craven Park Road. He saw these two even before I did. He gave me their phone number.”

“By Monday the Torringtons were dead. They’d been murdered two days before, on the same evening that Abbie died.”

“I know that. I think these two were the killers.”

“That’s funny. I had you and Peace down for that, as well.”

“For the love of Christ, Basquiat!” I was starting to lose it now. “Are you going to put me down for Keith Blakelock and Suzie Lamplugh, while you’re at it? I didn’t have any reason to kill the Torringtons, and you can’t even place me there!”

“We’re working on that,” Basquiat said equably. “We can place Peace, by the way. We’ve got his prints now. On the bodies themselves, and also on a lot of the stuff that was torn up or thrown around.”

“He was looking for Abbie,” I said, through my clenched teeth. I had to make Basquiat believe me, and I didn’t know how. “But he found out that she was already gone. She’d been taken, I mean—to that meeting house, where she was going to be sacrificed. Peace got the address of the meeting house from Melanie Torrington and he went tearing off there. Either he already had the assault rifle with him or he picked it up on the way.”

“Why would he do that?” Fields threw in from over my shoulder, just to show that he was still listening.

“Why do you think?” I snapped back, without sparing him a glance. “Because he knew he was going to be outnumbered about thirty to fucking one, is why. And he left Melanie Torrington alive,” I added, groping for nuggets of fact that might make Basquiat at least consider another possible scenario. “She was killed later, right? Later than Steve, I mean. She was murdered by a man named Fanke. Anton Fanke. He killed her because she caved in and told Peace where to find Abbie. He’s the one that’s really behind all this.”

Basquiat blew out her cheek. “And it’s this Fanke who killed Abbie?”

“Yes.”

“And Peace?”

“Yes!”

“And Suzie Lamplugh?”

I opened my mouth to speak, gave it up. I suddenly saw the hopelessness of the situation. It wasn’t even just regulation police-issue blinkers: Basquiat was on a moral crusade. She wanted someone to pay for the murder of Abbie Torrington, and she’d already decided that that somebody was going to be me.

But maybe that was where I needed to insert the lever. If I could make her consider the possibility, just for an instant, that someone else might have killed Abbie, then maybe I could put that same ruthless zeal to work on something positive.

“The second gun,” I said, pointing a finger at Basquiat. She didn’t like the finger and she nodded to Fields, who took my hand and placed it firmly—a little too firmly, maybe—down on the table. “The gun that killed Melanie Torrington,” I repeated, leaning past Fields’s unattractive bulk to maintain eye contact with the sergeant.

“What about it?”

“You must have the forensics on it by now. So check it. Check it against the bullets that were sprayed around at the Oriflamme.”

“What will that prove?” Basquiat asked, coolly.