Verismo Bliss - Chapter 19

19.

Harry tried to open his eyes, but it felt as though the skin around them had been stuffed with marshmallow. He wiped the grunge away with fingers that felt like crab claws. The world was in colour, but he felt like he was in black and white – not quite whole. He was scared to move, being pretty bloody sure that every muscle was going to hurt. He stared at the ceiling. He tried to recognise it, to work out where he was. The ceiling was white. He knew he should have studied the I-spy book of ceilings. He was in a bed. It felt like he was naked. He could hear the muffled sound of music. He felt, rather than knew, that it was Bob Dylan. He was alive. He wasn’t sure how it had happened, but he was alive. He let his marshmallow eyes close and let sleep take him from the pain.
He dreamt that a woman came to him and put tablets in his mouth. The tablets made him smile and sleep even more. Then he dreamt that he was lost in a Black Forest gateau. No matter how he tried he couldn’t escape. The cream suffocated him and the cherries blocked the paths through the forest of dark trees that were inhabited by crows that pecked and toads that spat at him and he could hear somebody calling him, calling him, in a voice soft and urgent, a voice of a young woman, and the voice came from the ground (a shallow grave) and he started to dig and dig but his arms hurt and he rested amongst the cream and the trees but still the voice called to him so he dug and dug some more, and dug and dug some more until he had dug through the forest and out into the Piazza in Covent Garden and a girl was there calling to him, holding out her hand to him, and he reached out to her, and then he saw her face - and then he screamed.
He woke up, jerking forward as though gasping for breath. Fuck. That fucking hurt.
‘Careful, you’ll pull your stitches.’
Gentle hands pushed him back into the soft pillows. It was Ramona, smelling like a fresh autumnal morning. She roused his senses. Yep, he was still alive. She looked worried and also a good couple of years older than when he’d last seen her, tied up on the bed in Gwendolyn’s apartment. Then it all came back to him.
‘How are you feeling now?’ she said.
‘I guess getting so close to death is a painful business.’
She smiled. ‘Yeah, but you survived.’ She kissed him on the forehead; her lips were softer than the cushions.
‘How?’
She picked up her slim handbag and pulled out a compact. Flipping it open she turned the mirror to Harry. He’d looked better. There was a deep scar, stitched neatly, across his cheek and his lips and eyes were swollen, but what really caught his attention was the missing hair on the left side of his head and a scorch mark, like somebody had pressed his head to an oven.
‘That’s how close you came to having your head blown off.’
‘Cannon?’
She nodded. ‘He’s dead.’
‘Me?’
‘You and a pair of scissors. I guess you didn’t learn that trick from Blue Peter.’
Harry had only ever killed one man before. One was too many. But two didn’t weigh any more on his conscience than one did.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘he deserved it.’
‘Did he?’
‘He was going to kill us.’
Harry let it go. He knew she was right, but why did he have a bitter taste in his mouth? Maybe it was the painkillers. ‘What were you doing there?’
‘It was Jonka. He was hanging around the Orion building, had a regular connection there; he saw you go in with a girl and then he saw Oliver going in. He’d seen Oliver before, had a bad feeling about him, and followed him up. He heard shouting, saw Gwendolyn run out and knew something was up. He got his gear and got out. Good kid, Jonka, but a really speedster – he’d have forgotten about you if he hadn’t bumped into me. I knew him from hanging around Goodwins Court. I used to give him food from time to time. Anyway, he mentioned you in his ramblings and I got him to show me where you were. For some reason he decided to hang around. We owe him. That bullet that scorched your head hit the wall and then went in his leg. Shhh, he’s ok. They got the bullet out clean and he’s had a couple of days in a warm hospital bed and three square meals. He’s good. Better than you. You need to rest more.’
‘What about the police?’
‘It’s sorted.’
He frowned.
‘Sleep. Don’t worry. I took care of it.’
‘Our DNA must be all over that room and the bodies.’
‘Then we’d better hope they don’t find the bodies.’

Harry was in bed for three days. Ramona refused to talk any more about that night until he was better. On the evening of the third day he managed to get out of bed and dress himself. He was at Ramona’s place in East Ham. An old terraced house completely modernised inside, and as colourful as a Latin American market. He went downstairs, following the enticing smell of food. She had cooked up some tostada and burritos. Once he started eating he found he was as hungry as a man who hadn’t eaten solid food for three days should be. She said nothing as he ate, just replaced his Castro when he had drained it. He knew his hunger was abating when she began to look more attractive than the food. The world was beginning to feel normal again. But with normality, and the recession of the pain, came the necessity of thinking.
Ramona seemed too relaxed about it all, as though they had been involved in some jolly adventure rather than a scrape with death. He remembered the look of abject terror in her face as Oliver had held the knife to her throat, and the smell of piss as she had lost control of her physical functions. Was she in shock? Was she in denial? Was she ashamed of the way she had acted? It didn’t add up, but Harry was more concerned about something else. The bodies. Specifically the one he had killed. But she wouldn’t tell him anything
‘You should’ve called the police; my plea of self-defence will look dodgy when they find out you buried the body and didn’t report it.’
‘And if I’d dialled 999, would you have thanked me for it? That would have been game over.’
Harry knew she was right. If he wanted to expose Falsham, and he badly did, then calling the police would have given him time to cover everything up. But he still didn’t like it. The thought of Cannon’s body with his DNA all over it was like a constant shadow on his mind.
She took his face in her hands. ‘You have to trust me on this. You’ll see. Maybe tomorrow, it will become clear.’
He pressed her on this but she wouldn’t relent. Could he trust her? He was torn. He didn’t think he could trust her, but he so wanted to believe her. In Gwen’s apartment he really felt that he would rather have died than let her be killed. Why would he do that for somebody he didn’t trust? He shook his head to try and shake out the doubts, like a sunbather shaking sand from a towel. But nobody ever got all the grains of sand out of the towels. He picked up the day’s newspaper to see if anything had happened in the world during his enforced isolation. There were just the usual wars, murders, rapes, teenage disgrace and football boredom. Harry wondered why the soccer teams even bothered playing any more, they ought to just compare bank balances before kick-off and whoever had the most zeros would get the three points. Then he saw it, only a small article, a follow up piece to a murder at Heathrow. The victim had been found with his throat slit in the gentleman’s toilet at Terminal 3. The man had now been named by police as one Richard Verlaine.
‘What’s wrong?’ Ramona asked.
Harry didn’t reply. He pulled out his smart and called Cornelius Apricot.
‘Harry, old bean, how are you?’
‘Cornelius, have you seen…Rachel? Has she gone to the hospital, do you know?’
‘Ah, I’m glad you mentioned our dear Rachel, I’ve been meaning to contact you. Erm, this is a bit delicate, and how to put it best, but she came back to the club, only an hour or so after she had left with you and, to put it bluntly, she was in a state of distress, demanding to be sent to our patron’s hospital asap.’
‘So she’s gone to Leeds?’
‘I really don’t think…Harry, I have to tell you that if anything like this occurs again we may have to consider rescinding your membership.’
Harry hung up.
‘Harry?’ Ramona said. ‘What’s going on?’
He searched for train times to Leeds on his smart. ‘Gwen has fled to Leeds to have her baby. I’m going to go up there. There’s something wrong there. Somebody told me something. Now he’s dead. He told me to start at the Bump Banger’s Club and follow the trail - well, that’s what I’m going to do.’
He checked his watch .There was a train from Euston in two hours time.
‘Let me come with you. We can take the car.’
He shook his head. ‘Haven’t you had enough of almost being killed?’
For a moment darkness passed through her brown eyes, like a beetle scuttling over a fallen autumn leaf. ‘Don’t…I want to come. Don’t you think I have a stake in this?’
‘Oliver killed your father, Ramona. Isn’t that the end of it for you?’
She ran her fingers through her hair. ‘No. Gwen led Oliver to my father. Bliss drove Oliver crazy. Raf-Med are testing Bliss: they must have known about the side effects. Oliver may have…sure, he’s gone now, but the trail, as you said, leads to Raf-Med. I want to see it through. We’ll take the car. You can drive.’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t drive.’
‘Then I’ll drive.’
‘You aren’t coming.’
‘You thought about how you’re going to get in? I imagine security will be tight.’
Harry remembered his last visit. In his usual way he hadn’t thought much beyond the first stage of any plan.
‘I could help you get in.’ Her voice was seductive as though she was offering him fruit from a tree he’d been explicitly told by the head honcho not to eat from.
‘How?’ he asked.
‘With this.’ She produced an ID card. It had Adam Cannon’s face on it.
‘I’m guessing you’re not just going to give me that.’
‘Uh-uh,’ she said, putting the card into the pocket of her jeans.
Harry pondered. Maybe as a couple they could get in easier than just him on his own. For some reason people trusted women more. But then people, especially men, were generally fools. And the card would no doubt give them access to every part of the building.
‘Don’t suppose you’ve got a nurse’s outfit have you?’
‘Oh, I may be able to dig something up.’

Harry sat on the edge of the bed. He was flexing his muscles, feeling where his body hurt the most. He realised he hadn’t even asked Ramona who had stitched him up. Then he realised he hadn’t even thanked her. He’d thank her properly, once all this was over. Same with Jonka. He’d sort the kid out with some dosh even if he did just blow it on speed. He needed to plan. They could swing by his place on the way, pick up a few things. It would take 3 to 4 hours to get up to Leeds in the car. It would be hours that he could spend deciding how he was going to play it. Hours he could…
‘Well, Mr Reed, I thought I told you to stay in bed.’
Harry looked up. Ramona was standing in the doorway, one arm raised up and leaning against the jamb. She was wearing a nurse’s uniform, but not one that was standard NHS issue. The white hat had a large red cross, set at an impish angle, above her beaming face. The white, short sleeved top, had buttons up the front and barely reached below her waist, so that her white, lacy panties were visible as she shifted her weight. She wore sheer white tights that reached to just above her knees and were attached to a garter belt with red ribbons. Around her neck was a bright blue stethoscope, a thick red belt around her waist, and, clipped onto the front of her uniform, was a name tag that declared her to be… ‘Nurse Betty is cross with you, Mr Reed. Let me help you back into bed.’
No punch by Cannon could have left him as dazed as the sight of Ramona, dressed as Nurse Betty, advancing on him and bending down, exposing her braless breasts, and lifting his legs up and onto the bed.
He smiled inanely, not wanting to speak in case it woke him from the dream. If he had indulged a fantasy about Ramona in uniform then it probably wouldn’t have been as good as the reality.
‘Now, where does it hurt…?’ She put the toy stethoscope earpieces in and moved the chestpiece across his heart and down to his abdomen and then paused over his groin. ‘Hmm, I think this may be the problem area. Let’s get these trousers off and take a look.’
The ache of Harry’s body was lost, enclosed by pleasure and desire. He had thought about this scenario for so long. And tried not to think about it. At times he had thought she was his, and at other times that she was drifting from him. Once they were naked neither spoke much. They communicated with grunts and with their hands, guiding each other, like silent GPS manoeuvring to the points of pleasure on the map of the body.
There was nothing unique about the sex. There was nothing utterly depraved about it. There was nothing to remark it from a million other couples who were having sex that day. It would pass unrecorded in the history of mankind. And yet. And yet. Does any desire fulfilled, any dream come true, not become as important an act as a declaration of war or a peace treaty signed? Any act of union between human beings was an act of belief; a belief that two people could be joined both physically and mentally, if only for a few moments, because the pleasure, the loss of control, the complete defencelessness, allows a true breaking down of barriers. It is the little death. Only at the moment of total surrender, the moment when we give it all away, do we receive everything.

They drove through the fag end of August into the dawn of a bitter fresh September, along the M1 that cut through the heart of England like a hair in the gate. Headlights and the constant sound of engine and vibration. The radio playing songs to keep you awake and a DJ talking with a voice like gravel. Late night radio for late night travellers. Playing pianissimo in the background because Ramona wanted to talk and Harry wanted to listen.
‘I loved my father, Harry; I hope you believe that. I’ve done…questionable things because of that love. Isn’t love supposed to make us do good things? Isn’t it a noble thing? Yet all I see of love is the depths it drives us to. We shame ourselves because of love. Because of love we do things that would be beyond our morality when we are not in love. Love is madness. I’ve lied to you Harry, because of love; I know you know I have. And maybe I’ve done worse than lie, but my father was my whole world from the age of 5 until I was grown up, and even then, as an adult, I still revered him, thought him more than human, thought him impervious to the degradation where love will take us, but he was just human, after all. Is that the moment we truly become grown up, I wonder: when we finally realise our parents aren’t all powerful, all knowing? Of course, my mother was enshrined in immortality and remained a goddess to me. Nothing could besmirch her memory, for, what little I had, was filled in with my own dreams that I wove around her. I thought her the most beautiful woman in the world. I prayed to her every night. For me, she was an immediate presence, like an imaginary friend, so much so that I never thought about my dad missing her. He never showed his sorrow to me. I never imagined he would need anybody else other than my mother, because she was so perfect. Only later did I find out that…well, I guess we are all human, even parents.
‘England is so grey, isn’t it? It looks better at night, just the lights. Sometimes I think that all England is just one long grey upon grey motorway; we just keep following the red tail lights as those behind us follow us. I’ve never been to Mexico. I’d like to one day. To La Paz. I was born here. I’m half white. Mulatto. That’s what they say in Spanish. In Mexican. It comes from the word mule, I presume, that beast that came from two different animals. I’ve never really felt at home here. London isn’t too bad, but Brighton was a different matter. Brighton is fine if you are queer, but not dark skinned. If you’re queer and dark skinned, then you’re fine. It’s funny how a perfect day can be ruined by a stupid remark; something to remind me that I don’t belong because I’m not white. My dad always told me to keep my head high, to ignore it, but…ah, fuck, what’s the use? Sometimes I hate this country, Harry; hate it as only a true native can. Why did my grandparents come here? Why didn’t they go to America, like most other Mexican migrants? I could be sitting on some California beach now, where my brown body wouldn’t stand out, instead of this bleak northern country of pale skins.
‘I asked him once, why they had come to England. He said he didn’t know. He was only 10 at the time and, obviously, hadn’t been involved in the decision process. I always felt there was something dodgy about it, but maybe that was just a product of my child’s romantic imagination. I have three aunts and an uncle but they are just wisps of memory like my mother. I don’t know if they are alive or dead. As far as I know I am the last of the line of the Noche family. It gives me a feeling of utter loneliness and terrible freedom.’
She paused for a moment, her face flashing bright and dark as they passed under the motorway lights.
‘I hated my father when I found out he was seeing whores. I use that word that nobody uses now because that is what they are: not self-employed, not body dollar, but whores, plain and simple. They let men do things to them for cash. My father paid women, young women, to let him fuck them. It broke my fucking heart and made me sick to think about it. I felt he had betrayed my mother. And don’t give me any shit that he was just a man with needs who had devoted his life to raising me alone, and why shouldn’t he get some pleasure? Don’t tell me that because I bloody well know that’s true, but he was my bloody father. My father!’
Her gasped venom filled the car with disgust.
‘The funny thing is, is that part of my anger was jealousy. I told you about the guy I was engaged to, the one who conveniently forgot to tell me he was married? Well, it hadn’t been long since I’d split up with him, and I was hurting bad. He’d only been my second lover; the first had been a brief thing and was really just about discovering sex for both of us. So there I was, not really that experienced, hurting like only a broken heart could make you hurt, and suddenly I find out my father is enjoying himself with a different woman every week. I was jealous, jealous because I wanted my father to myself, and jealous that he was having more fun than me!
‘I’d heard about Bliss. A friend of mine from school who I meet up with every now and then for drinks and gossip, told me she could get me some. So, one night, full of bitterness and fear, I went out to a club up west, with a couple of sand coloured pills in my bag.
‘It was the sort of thing I never could have imagined myself doing. I sat at the bar and ordered a drink which I downed quickly to give me courage. I think I must have got lucky that first night. The first guy to approach me wasn’t a creep or a mass murdering rapist, but just some sweet American kid who was over here studying. He was as expert at talking to women as I was at going to a nightclub alone. I think when I told him I wanted sex, to try out the Bliss, he figured it was some trick; that I was going to take him to a room where two burly men would rape and murder him. But I guess his desire overcame his fear, because he came with me and we got a hotel room.
‘I have to tell you that Bliss is fucking fantastic. That first night it was like having the best lover ever, and this kid, he was just ordinary in every way. That night I jetted to the moon and didn’t come back down for a good hour or so. Believe me, with a better lover it’s like going all the way to Neptune and back. I’m pretty sure there is gonna come a day when we really don’t need to drive stick again, we can just put on the auto pilot. But for now we need you; thing is, Bliss doesn’t seem to work when you work yourself, if you get my drift.
‘So, let’s just say I went on something of a Bliss cruise. I began to see men just as props, as the catalysts, for what I wanted – the effects of Bliss. And I got more confident. I began to love the power that I had over men. Why had I never realised how easy it was? Just a look here, a bit of flesh there, a whisper in the ear, and Bob is your uncle, and Barry is willing to do anything! Ha ha. And I loved it. Loved the way I could make men do what I wanted, all because I gave them what they wanted, or hinted that I might give them what they wanted. Is that wrong, do you think? All I know is I loved it and every time it felt like I was getting back at my dad. Every time I was fucking a man, he was fucking some pregnant whore. And sweet Jesus, what was that all about? Why did he get off on the pregnant ones? You know, to start with, I was pleased when I found out about him and Gloria; I thought that at least it would stop him seeing the others, but it didn’t. And she didn’t seem to mind at all! That’s when I started to get doubts about her. I’m pretty sure she was seeing other men on the side. My father was never serious about her, no matter what they might say, he was just maybe deluded for a while. And she was cooking the books, I am sure of it. Anyway, you know all this, you’ve done your detecting. Point is, for me, she was just another rival for my father’s attentions, and all the men and all the Bliss in the world weren’t going to make up for that.
‘One weekend my father was away at some auction up in Whitby so I decided I’d take a man back to the shop. For some reason I thought I might get some kick out of screwing a guy in the same bed that my father screwed his whores. The guys name was James, I think; some 19 year old, full of himself, full of sperm, a walking cock who spent every waking second either screwing or thinking about screwing. Pretty much a typical teenage boy. Usually I don’t go for them, I prefer the older man, but his cockiness appealed to my vanity. So, there we were, me on all fours full of Bliss and half way to Mars, and him pounding away at me, and in walks my dad and Gloria. My dad just hit the kid, who fell on the floor, his dick sticking up like a flagpole. Gloria stifled a laugh, I remember that.
‘The kid got his things and took his hard-on back to the clubs. Problem was I was full of Bliss but only half way to Mars. Not good. I think at that moment I might even have let Gloria go down on me, or maybe…Anyway, as you can imagine, it all ended in a blazing row with each of us accusing the other of outrageous things. Gloria started putting her oar in and stirring it up, trying to increase the wedge that was growing between me and dad. At that moment I knew I would never get close to my father whilst she was around. I decided I had to separate them. The argument that night ended in some sort of truce: he agreed to stop going to the Bump Banger’s Club, and I said I’d stop picking up strange men. He then told me he was planning on marrying Gloria. I walked out, picked up the first man who approached me in a bar, and got him to scratch the itch that was driving me crazy.
‘I tried to be good, I did, but what is a girl to do? Besides, I knew he was still going to the Banger’s Club. Thankfully, before he was killed, we were on speaking terms and we did discuss things, mainly about my mother. He told me I was the most precious thing in the entire world to him, and I said that if I could find a man half as good as him then I would be a very lucky woman. If only that had been our last conversation; instead, my last words to him weren’t so pleasant.
‘I knew about Gwen. I’d seen her around the place. She seemed so young, even to me, and I kinda liked her, even though I did threaten to take her head off if she ripped off my father. I turned a blind eye to it, but I couldn’t ignore it when I found them naked. Can you imagine what it’s like seeing your father like that? Mother Mary, it’s enough to traumatise you for life.
‘It’s funny, don’t you think, how we can never comprehend our parent’s screwing. It’s one of those things in life that we know is true but we ignore, don’t talk about, put on our sunglasses to shield our eyes from. We think of our parents being related. Mum and Dad. Like Aunty and Uncle and brother and sister. Of course, these days, a kid will often have only one parent, or two parents of the same sex, or no parents at all. No wonder none of us know where the fuck we are going.
‘Anyway, there he was, my dad, Luz Noche, naked with some pregnant young girl called Rachel, whose real name is Gwen, and whose brother, I now know, killed him. We rowed. Shouted. Screamed. I slapped him across the face and called him a dirty bastard. Those were my last words to him. You know his last words to me? He just said, “Please”. He held out his hand to me. I stormed out. That kid was in the ally, that Jonka. Oliver might have been there too.
‘I can still see him standing there, his hand stretched out, just saying that word.
‘They say that all time exists in the same moment and it is just our perception of it that makes it appear to be going forward. If that’s true why can’t I shift my perception and shift this grief to another time where it weighs less heavy?’
Between the motorway lights could be seen the vast darkness. The clouds were tinged with an electric blue. The moon was waxing gibbous. The stars nothing but grubby dust particles.
‘I fucked Karl. Just so you know.’
On the radio the DJ spoke from his throat, talking about the time he crossed America in his teenage years and the beautiful and ugly people he had met. He’d washed up in San Francisco where he’d settled down for a year with a neo hippy/goth. He growled that it was one of the best years of his life and wondered what the girl was doing now. He played a record. It was Another Girl, Another Planet by The Only Ones. Harry considered it to be possibly the greatest 3 minutes of music ever immortalised in grooves.
They stopped at an anaemic service station with dawn just the smallest of hints in the sky. The service station was like every other service station. They could be anywhere in England. Even the accents of those who staffed the place, moving about like lost zombies forever condemned to living life on a ribbon of tarmac and poisonous emissions, were from all around the world and gave no indication of what part of England you were in. For the record they were in Yorkshire. But they could have been in Dorset. Everything cost twice as much. The punters were a captive one, imprisoned by the black ribbon road, and had no choice. Harry and Ramona ordered food based on pictures above the service area. When it came the food bore no resemblance to the pictures. It bore no resemblance to food. It tasted of sugar and salt. They drank coffee, suddenly aware how tired they were, but the coffee tasted more soporific than perk-me-up. Ramona bought the latest edition of Implant, a tech fetish magazine, and Harry got the early edition of The Independent. He didn’t look at it until he had finished eating, gazing fitfully outside at the dark, the headlights, the people moving from car to service station and from service station to car. But Ramona flicked through her magazine with harsh finger pulls between raising fork from plate to mouth. He thought she was getting worried about what they were going to do, but when he finally put down his utensils and picked up the paper he knew what she had really been nervous about.
The headline was clear and to the point: ‘Ripper’ Dead. Harry glanced up from the paper; Ramona glared at her magazine, suddenly fascinated by GPS implants in the ear. Harry read.
Two days ago police had been involved in a shoot out at Orion House, a social housing complex that is a warren of corridors and old-school drug hovels (a reminder of the under-class created back in the bad old days of Thatcherism, Harry thought), in the oxymoron that is Covent Garden – the only flowers that grow in abundance there are cannabis sativa and papaver somniferum. Police patrols had been increased in the area to try and restore confidence with the locals. But the locals had lost any faith in the police during the infamous crack down on the area a couple of years back which had led to the worst riots that London had seen since the Thatcher regime of the ‘80’s. The police weren’t welcome on the Garden streets, even if they were there to protect the residents from the tiredly named Covent Garden Ripper. When the two beat bobbies stopped a young man who was acting suspiciously (suspicious by whose standards, Harry wondered) they had no idea they were going to get credit for collaring Britain’s Most Wanted. (It was true, Harry thought, detection and police work was always 90% just dumb luck.) The young man, reluctant to provide his ID, made a run for it into Orion House. The two police officers followed, but quickly called for back-up when shots were fired at them. It is still unclear if the shots were fired by the suspect or another resident who didn’t like the presence of the police.
Police arrived in numbers and Detective Karl Carr took charge on the ground. He opted to enter the building quickly, stating that he did not want a siege situation to develop. It was Carr himself who took charge of the situation, leading a heavily armed, highly trained special forces unit. As Carr tells it they had to go though the building floor by floor and room by room to find the suspect. Rooms full of unhelpful, aggressive residents.
On the seventh floor they found him. When they broke in, Carr said, the Ripper was taking a knife to a large, and obviously already dead, mixed race man. The Ripper pulled a gun and got one shot off, which narrowly missed Carr’s head. Carr returned fire and the Ripper was dead.
The Covent Garden Ripper has been named as Oliver Falsham, the 23 year old son of Martin Falsham, head of the pharmaceutical giant Raf-Med. His last victim has not been named, but it is believed he is an employee of Martin Falsham. The reason for his presence at Orion House is unknown. Martin Falsham made a statement through his solicitor to say that he was shocked and saddened by the turn of events. He had instructed his financial team to set up a fund to help the residents of Covent Garden.
Money was always the answer to people like Falsham.
The original shooting incident had attracted little media coverage at the time - another shooting incident in Covent Garden – and indeed the residents of Orion House themselves could not recall the incident in great detail, unless their memories were greased with a Chaucer or two, stating that ‘raids happen all the time’.
The police have yet to provide evidence as to their belief that Oliver Falsham is the Ripper, but promised definitive proof within the week.
Carr demurred when asked to comment on his new hero-cop status. ‘I’m just doing my job. There are no real heroes when so many have died. Let’s hope Covent Garden has a brighter future.’
Amen to that.
There was a picture of Carr, dressed in a Fred Perry polo, his face serious, but his eyes betraying glee. In the scrum of photographers and journalists holding up recorders, Harry spotted PC Hayley O’Toole, pressed up close to Carr, her face looking up at him with such admiration that Harry figured she’d replace Nelson with a statue of Carr in Trafalgar Square if she could.
Harry closed the paper and folded it in two.
Ramona put down her magazine and drained her cup of ersatz coffee. ‘It’ll be light soon,’ she said.
Harry pushed his half drunk coffee mug away. ‘Let’s get this done.’