The Bone Field Read online

  ‘That’s good to know,’ I told him.

  ‘Satanism is a celebration,’ he continued firmly, ‘of pagan, pre-Christian beliefs and individualism, and the people who practise it these days, myself included, don’t wish harm to anyone. What you have here is totally different. This sounds like ritualistic murder by people who use the worship of Moloch as a cover for their own ends. And I imagine they would be very, very secretive about what they’re doing, so neither myself, or any of my colleagues, would likely know who they were. And I don’t think you’ll find them by looking for worshippers of Moloch either.’

  I thought back to the dates Dana and Kitty went missing – a year apart, but almost to the day. ‘Tell me something. Is there any significance to the period of mid- to late July in Satanism?’

  ‘Is this when your victim went missing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He thought about it for a moment before answering. ‘According to some people – and I think most of them are evangelical Christians trying to blacken the religion of Satanism – the period between July twentieth and July twenty-seventh does supposedly have a significance for Satanists. But I want to emphasize that it has nothing to do with mainstream Satanism.’

  ‘So, what’s the significance?’ I asked.

  He paused before answering, and when he spoke I noted his voice had lost its Vincent Price-like tone. ‘It’s supposedly a time for the kidnapping, holding and ceremonial preparation of a person for sacrifice. The sacrifice itself is supposed to take place on the twenty-seventh of the month in what is called the grand climax.’

  Dana Brennan had gone missing on 24 July 1989, and on the phone the previous night Tina had told me that Charlotte had seen Kitty early on the Friday morning, but it wasn’t her in the taxi on the Saturday afternoon when she was supposed to be flying to Thailand with Henry. I took out my notebook and checked the dates relating to Kitty’s disappearance. She’d flown off to Thailand on 28 July 1990.

  Which meant she’d almost certainly died on the 27th.

  Thirty-nine

  Slowly but surely I was building a picture of what had happened all those years ago. There were still plenty of pieces to add in, as well as the much bigger issue of gathering evidence to back up my theory, but at least I was making progress.

  What concerned me was the snuff DVD that Dan Watts had found at the home of the Albanian people smuggler and his girlfriend, the one with the young woman being murdered by masked men next to a wall with the Moloch symbol painted on it. That had been years after the murders of Dana Brennan and Kitty Sinn, and it suggested that the killings themselves hadn’t stopped. Yet so far no more bodies had been recovered from Medmenham College.

  But they had to be somewhere.

  I left Stamoran with stern words not to say anything about what I’d been saying to anybody, and strolled back to Fulham and a café I knew on Parsons Lane that served the best all-day breakfast in the whole of west London. By the time I got there I’d worked up a good appetite. I was halfway through demolishing a full English when I got a call from a landline I didn’t recognize.

  It was Dan Watts. ‘Is your phone secure?’

  ‘It’s the same one as last night. I’m hoping so.’

  ‘I’m going to text you an address. If you want a meet with the contact, be there at one o’clock, and do not be late.’

  Two minutes later he sent me a residential address in Hackney. I looked at my watch. It was 11.40. I ordered another coffee and thought about what I had. It wasn’t a lot. I had absolutely nothing on Cem Kalaman that would even vaguely stand up in a police interview, let alone a court of law. I had theories, a possible occult motive that was outlandish and even more vague, and a lot of dead bodies. I’d messed up majorly the previous night by not taking Anton Walters alive, even though there was no guarantee he would have talked. Thankfully, the fact that Walters had been ID’d using CCTV footage meant that Dan Watts’ informant wouldn’t be in the frame, but even so, he was going to be jumpy. Still, it was a good time to be gathering information, because people in the Kalaman outfit were going to be talking about what had happened. The informant was going to need to be persuaded to plant listening devices or to wear a mike.

  Dan was already supplying the stick. Maybe it was time to supply the carrot.

  While I finished my coffee, a young couple came in and sat down a couple of tables away. They were probably mid-twenties, both student types, and dressed on the bohemian side. They held hands as they talked, and looked into each other’s eyes, only tearing themselves away for a couple of seconds to order from the waitress. I watched them for a few minutes as they sat oblivious to the world around them, and remembered when I’d felt that way about someone. For just that one spell of probably no more than a year, I’d been truly happy with Jo and her girls. Sometimes, these days, I’d drive out into the countryside and just walk, piecing together all the good memories from that time. The first meal we cooked together; the week-long honeymoon in Grenada; the trip to Legoland with the girls. The good times.

  But then, of course, I’d remember how it had all ended. How Jo had seen on the local news a report on the violent assault on Kevin Wallcott in his bedroom; how he’d been beaten and pistol-whipped. Unsurprisingly, the police had theorized that it was a vigilante enraged by what Wallcott had done, but they had no suspects. Nor did they ever come up with any as the weeks passed.

  It didn’t take Jo long to piece together what had happened. We’d talked in depth many times and she knew I had a dark side to my nature. She knew too that I had a burning sense of injustice, as well as the inside knowledge, that made it possible for me to carry out such an attack. Crucially, she’d also remembered the change in me after I’d seen the original report on the news of Wallcott’s hit-and-run.

  For about a month there was a tense atmosphere between us in the house. I knew what Jo was thinking but I didn’t want to bring the subject up because I didn’t want to have to lie to her. Eventually, though, she confronted me one night while the girls were at their dad’s.

  ‘Was it you who attacked Kevin Wallcott?’ she said, looking right at me, daring me to meet her eye. ‘And tell me the truth, Ray. Please. I deserve that.’

  I could have lied. And I would have probably got away with it too. I’m a good liar, and I’d been half expecting the question for weeks. But Jo was right. She deserved the truth.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It was me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I couldn’t face him getting away with it.’

  ‘I can’t have you round my children.’

  Her words stung me like an angry slap. ‘Don’t say that. I’d never touch them. You know that.’

  ‘But it’s what’s inside you, Ray.’ She pointed to my chest. ‘The darkness. I can’t be with a man like that.’

  I told her that I’d change. That I loved her more than anyone I’d ever known. That I loved the children like my own, and that I’d protect all three of them as long as I lived. And I meant it. I meant every word.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  ‘I want you to move out, Ray. By the time the girls come back. Please. Respect my wishes.’ As she spoke, tears ran down her face.

  None ran down mine. I couldn’t let her see my weakness. My utter vulnerability. Instead, I told her I’d go straight away.

  And I did. I packed my stuff and left an hour later, collecting what I couldn’t carry with me a few days afterwards when Jo and the girls were out. I couldn’t face saying goodbye to Chloe and Louise. It would have broken my heart, even more than it had been broken already. I cut my ties with all three of them. Just like that.

  Two months later, Jo called me. I didn’t pick up and she left a message asking how I was and saying she missed me.

  I didn’t call back.

  Funnily enough, though, sitting in the café watching this young couple, I didn’t feel jealous of what they had. It made me feel good that amid all the brutality, the darkness, the pain and the loss
there was still some semblance of normality in the world.

  I paid the bill, smiled at them as I passed, and walked away.

  Forty

  The address I’d been given by Dan Watts was a vacant office building backing on to Regent’s Canal not far from Hackney’s Victoria Park, flanked on both sides by brand-new apartment blocks. Once this area had been dirt poor but the process of gentrification had pushed the poverty further to the north and west, into dangerous pockets like the Ridgeway Estate where I’d been last night, barely a mile away.

  The main door to the building was locked and the entrance smelled of stale urine. Beyond the tinted glass, the interior looked empty but reasonably well kept, and there were no piles of mail on the floor.

  My mobile rang.

  ‘I’ve just seen you arrive,’ said Dan Watts. ‘I’m up on the roof. Take the back stairs to the top. The code to get in is 4443.’

  It was four flights of stairs to the top and I was breathing more heavily than I’d have liked when I opened the last door and walked out on to the roof. Dan was standing there alone, looking down towards the street. To the south-west, the grand skyscrapers of the City of London rose majestically, while to the east, the low-rise buildings of the East End stretched like a carpet towards that second bastion of extreme wealth Canary Wharf, which stood like a huge fortress in the distance.

  ‘Nice place you’ve got here,’ I said, walking over.

  ‘I need to make sure we don’t get seen or heard.’

  We shook hands and he gave me an exasperated look.

  ‘So what the hell happened last night, Ray?’

  ‘I told you, it was an accident. I was never going to drop him deliberately in front of two hundred witnesses. He was a lot more use to us alive than he was dead. It was just bad luck.’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘Is that right? You know, Ray, you make your own luck sometimes, and you seem to be manufacturing some real havoc. Remind me never to have you round for dinner.’

  ‘Well, I’ve known you four years and you’ve never invited me yet, so I think you do a pretty good job of reminding yourself. Anyway, thanks for letting me meet your informant. I wasn’t sure you would.’

  ‘I found something that makes me think you might be on the right track. Look at this.’ He produced an A4-sized envelope from under his jacket and took out a high-quality black and white photo. ‘This is a surveillance shot taken four months ago. The man on the right you know. The man on the left is his boss in the Kalaman outfit, Jonas Mavalu.’

  I examined the picture. It was a close-up shot showing the top halves of Anton Walters and a powerfully built black man in his forties as they talked together. Walters was smiling but looking slightly nervous, as if he was afraid of the man next to him, while Jonas Mavalu himself was laughing as he held up a cigarette towards his mouth. Mavalu was wearing a basketball vest that did a good job of showing off his physique. Because of the angle of his arm as he lifted the cigarette, the same pentacle tattoo that I’d seen on Henry Forbes and Walters was just visible on his right underarm.

  ‘How did you come across this?’ I asked.

  ‘I was going back over surveillance shots seeing if I could see any of those tattoos you were talking about. I missed it the first time round.’ He paused. ‘You know, Ray, Jonas Mavalu is a high-ranking Kalaman operative and a very dangerous man. He’s suspected of at least five murders, one of which involved a man being dismembered with a chainsaw. We’ve never been able to get anything on him, and he’s very surveillance aware, so even photos like this of him are rare. But if we can get my informant close to him, there’s a chance we might be able to get some new information on the Forbes murders.’

  I smiled, handing back the photo. ‘Thanks, Dan. This is the kind of lead we need. How’s the informant handling things after what happened to Walters?’

  ‘He’s jumpy. He wants out.’

  ‘I don’t blame him. So what have you got on him to keep him working for you?’

  ‘He’s a killer out on licence. We know he’s been doing some bad things that could get him sent back down for years.’

  ‘So, you’re blackmailing him?’

  Dan looked at me coldly, and it made me think that he might have been, that as a Christian he was a lot more Old Testament than New. ‘Don’t give me that shit, Ray. We’re giving him an incentive.’

  ‘I want to give him an incentive too. Something that’ll keep him onside. You know I’ve got money, right? I want to pay him.’

  ‘That’s a dangerous game. If it ever gets out in court—’

  ‘If any of this op gets out in court then you and me are both fucked. But you want these people put down, right? And so do I. Badly.’

  ‘But you’re not even on the case any more.’

  ‘I know more about what’s going on than anyone. That’s why you asked me here. I’m also the only one pursuing the occult angle to the murders.’ I told him what I’d found out about the pentacle sign from Cornell Stamoran. ‘And Cem Kalaman’s got links to one of Kitty’s cousins. They were at uni together.’

  ‘Shit, Ray, you’re going to have to do a lot better than that. We need some real concrete evidence.’

  ‘And that’s why we need to keep your informant onside.’

  ‘Well, here he is,’ said Dan, motioning towards the street.

  I looked down and saw a big black man in jeans and check shirt approaching the building with a lumbering gait while making far too much of a show of looking around him.

  ‘He’s not exactly acting inconspicuous, is he?’

  ‘The Kalamans trust him, and I think he may be in line for a promotion. It’s a damn good thing Anton Walters got ID’d with CCTV, otherwise he’d be in a lot of danger.’

  I watched him as he disappeared from view and wondered what his prospects of survival were, and whether I should feel guilty about helping to use him this way. I decided I shouldn’t. He’d made his bed. Now, like everyone else, he was going to have to fester in it.

  We waited five minutes in the sunshine until the roof door opened and the contact walked out, squinting against the brightness. He had a good three inches on me and about a foot on Dan but he didn’t know how to make it count. He looked nervous and out of sorts.

  He approached slowly, as if expecting some kind of ambush, and stopped a few feet away. He had a lazy eye that couldn’t quite focus and the kind of face that looked unfinished, with big, outsize features that didn’t sit right.

  ‘Who’s this guy?’ he said, staring at me with his good eye, his voice slow and deep.

  ‘This is Ray,’ said Dan. ‘He’s a close colleague of mine working on the Forbes murder.’

  The informant grunted. ‘You got anything to do with last night?’ he said to me. ‘That was a fuck-up.’

  ‘He fell,’ I said.

  ‘That ain’t no good for me,’ said the informant. He looked at Dan. ‘It’s going to come back to me. You know that, right?’

  ‘It’s not going to get back to you,’ I said. ‘We got Walters on CCTV on the night of the Forbes murders. It’ll be all over the papers tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s tomorrow. I got a meet tonight. With Jonas. Junior’s picking me up later.’

  ‘Was the arrangement made before or after Walters got killed?’ asked Dan.

  ‘Before.’

  ‘Then you’re all right. Do you know where the meeting’s going to be held?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t know shit about it.’

  ‘If you’re meeting Jonas, it’s good news. They want to promote you, brother.’

  The informant gave Dan a look of pure contempt, and I noticed he was balling his outsize hands into fists, and rubbing the thumbs against them. ‘You ain’t my brother. If you were you wouldn’t be making me do this shit.’

  Dan didn’t seem fazed. ‘The sooner we get evidence against the big boys the sooner you’re out of there and starting a new life somewhere else. I need you to plant a recorder in Junior’s car. He’s
obviously good at shooting his mouth off.’

  ‘No way. He searches his car every day.’

  ‘These things are tiny and you can’t pick them up on bug finders. He won’t find it.’

  ‘If he does, I’m dead. Please, man. It’s too dangerous.’

  ‘Look, maybe I can make things a bit easier for you,’ I said, knowing that this meeting with Jonas Mavalu was an opportunity we couldn’t miss. I slipped on a plastic glove and pulled an envelope from my jacket pocket. I went to hand it to him but he made no move to take it. ‘There’s a grand in cash inside here. Another four if you give us evidence of Kalaman involvement in the Forbes murders.’

  At one time, maybe even as recently as a year back, before my good friend and colleague Chris had been murdered, I would have baulked at what I was doing now. Not only was I breaking all the rules, I was also putting Dan’s informant’s life in potential danger. But that time had passed and, for better or worse, my moral compass had moved. I was off the case and I didn’t think there was any real chance of what I was doing coming back to haunt me. Plus, I could see this guy needed some encouragement to continue gathering inside information for us.

  ‘I’ve done enough,’ the informant told Dan, ignoring me as well as the envelope.

  ‘We need more,’ said Dan firmly. ‘You know how it is. At least wear your tracker tonight so we can see where you’re going.’

  ‘I can’t. I had to give it to someone.’

  Dan looked furious. ‘What the fuck are you talking about? It’s expensive kit. You can’t just give it away. Who the hell did you give it to, for Christ’s sakes?’

  The informant looked sheepish. ‘One of those illegals I was telling you about. The girls we picked up the other night. I had to take her to this house in the middle of nowhere. I was worried about her.’