The Hidden Man - Charles Cumming [40]
‘That’s one of our investigating officers,’ the policeman lied. He had first set eyes on Taploe just thirty minutes before, nodding him through under orders.
Uppity, dismissive, shrewd. Your classic grass skirt.
‘Why all the police?’ Ben was asking. ‘How come there are so many people?’
It was a question to which Marchant himself would have liked an answer. When the call had gone out about Christopher Keen, it seemed as if half of London had climbed out of bed.
‘Why don’t I take you over to our vehicle?’ he suggested, trying to deflect Ben’s question. ‘We can sit down there and I can introduce you to some of my colleagues.’
Ben nodded, as if gradually acknowledging the hopelessness of his situation. He spent the next thirty minutes inside a white police Transit van, sipping heavily sugared tea from a polystyrene cup. An older officer, rank of DCI, explained how a neighbour coming back from a party had noticed that his father’s door had been left ajar. He had discovered the body and immediately telephoned the police. No, they had no idea of a suspect: they were still at a very early stage in their enquiries. Yes, they would keep him apprised of any developments. Ben would be asked to identify the body in a few hours’ time and given the chance to answer any questions that might help to piece together his father’s last movements.
‘And may I add my sincere condolences, Benjamin,’ the DCI said. ‘This must be a very difficult time for you. Why don’t I have one of my colleagues take you home so you can have a shower or something before we take you up to the station?’
Almost as if somebody had been listening from outside, the back of the van opened up and Ben was introduced to a black policewoman whose thick leather gloves felt damp as he shook her hand.
‘Will you escort Mr Keen backto his house, Kathy?’
‘Of course, sir.’
‘We’ll arrange for a car to come and pick you up at around ten.’
‘Fine,’ Ben said, now exhausted to the point of collapse. He wondered when he would ever sleep again. ‘Thanks for the tea,’ he said, and stepped down on to the road.
The street was now a trench of stunned activity. Ben experienced a strange kind of amazement that a new day was beginning, the city oblivious to his loss. Residents were emerging from nearby buildings, asking questions of uniformed officials, walking backwards as they stared up at the windows of the fourth floor, like boxers on the ropes. Marchant was still standing on the door, taking the names of everybody who entered or came out of the building.
Standing fifty metres away, beside a battered telephone box, Taploe watched Ben emerge from the van looking lost and broken. The policewoman ushered him down the street, under the taped cordon and, finally, to a car parked two blocks away that was just a shadow in the distance. Minutes later, Keen’s body was brought downstairs on a stretcher and placed in the back of an ambulance which drove slowly away in the direction of Edgware Road. Taploe watched this, listening to the appalled murmurings of the crowd, and wondered if he was witnessing the final act in his long and as yet undistinguished career.
Nevertheless, he sensed the remote possibility of second chance. Clear the trail, he told himself. Distance yourself from the victim. And from his coat pocket, Taploe extracted the Post-it note he had removed from the door frame. Tearing it into six separate pieces, he dropped the shreds into a storm drain and went in search of a cab.
19
When they had buried Carolyn, seven years before, Ben and Mark had floated through the funeral in a trance of grief. Mourners had drifted in and out of focus, approaching them tentatively, offering their whispered condolences. Now and again one of his mother’s friends would take Ben to one side, her eyes swelled and puffy with tears, and attempt to make sense of what had happened. These conversations were all eerily similar: the friend would do most of the talking, invariably relating an anecdote which