If I Should Die (Joseph Stark) Read online

  ‘That’s most of the usual suspects,’ she said. ‘You’ll catch up with everyone else as you go along. They’ve all been told your sob story.’ He looked at her sharply and she regretted her tone. ‘Right. Well, come on, you owe me a coffee.’

  Stark had hardly taken a sip when the interrogation began. ‘So, Joseph or Joe?’ Fran demanded.

  He blinked. A perfectly normal question, yet one he’d not been asked in a while. For the last few years his superiors in both careers had almost only ever addressed him by rank and surname, from ‘Constable’ to ‘Private’ to ‘Lance Corporal’ to ‘Corporal’. In military hospital he’d remained ‘Corporal’, in the NHS he’d reverted to ‘Mr’, and when he’d begun his CID training he’d become Trainee Investigator Constable Stark. His mum called him Joseph. A smattering of old friends called him JP. Everyone else called him Joe, but that sounded overly intimate from strangers now. ‘I don’t really mind.’

  She didn’t accept this. ‘You must have a view. What do mates call you?’

  ‘Either.’

  ‘Okay, why transfer?’ She’d changed her angle of attack. ‘Surely your old nick would’ve been easier. And family, friends? Don’t you need the love and support and all that crap?’

  ‘All that crap wears thin,’ he replied, watching her carefully.

  She seemed to consider this, perhaps waiting for him to expand. ‘That’s it?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Hmph,’ she said, evidently dissatisfied. His new sergeant seemed to think asking personal questions wasn’t rude but refusing to answer them was. Maybe it was a CID thing. Maybe she thought she was being tough, establishing superiority. Either way he quite liked it. Rule number one, after all: no fucking sympathy.

  Despite her frown she had a pretty face, attractive, an everyday lived-in face, mid-tone brown skin, flattish nose, high forehead, hair scraped back into a frizzy ponytail. Caribbean, maybe. Her skin suggested thirtyish but her dark-brown eyes said more. Average height, a little overweight, smart in her charcoal trouser-suit and white blouse. Flat shoes. No wedding ring. She gave the distinct impression of not liking him much but he couldn’t decide if that was personal or simply her default position. Time would tell, he supposed. Fending off her questions, however politely, only served to bolster this impression. Giving up, she showed him around the Territorial Policing areas, introducing him to the senior uniformed officers and the attached CID team, led by DI Graham. Then up to the CID floor and the MIT.

  ‘And this is our little nerve centre, for our sins. DCI Groombridge’s office is through there. He’s not bad. DS Harper is off with flu.’ She rattled off names of the DCs present but most fled Stark’s memory instantly. ‘Everyone else is out and about somewhere.’

  ‘No detective inspector?’

  ‘Early retirement and not replaced. Cutbacks,’ she answered, without rancour, though it must’ve added significantly to her and DS Harper’s workload: promotion and responsibility without rank or reward. ‘That’s yours.’ She stabbed a finger towards a tiny desk wedged uncomfortably into a corner between filing cabinets and a photocopier. Stark considered asking which poor sod had occupied it before him but thought better of it. She’d probably give him some bollocks about the last trainee resting in a shallow grave for giving her cheek.

  So, this was to be his home. The Major Investigation Team, often called the Murder Investigation Team or Murder Squad.

  ‘The DCI suggested you start by familiarizing yourself with the happy-slappings.’

  Stark frowned. ‘What makes them MIT? No one’s been killed. Has intent been established?’

  ‘No, but the sodding risk assessment suggested substantive risk to life so uniform punted it upstairs to us. It’s as good a place as any to cut your teeth and I don’t want you underfoot with anything serious. DC Dixon will show you where to find the files.’

  ‘Yes, Detective Sergeant.’

  ‘“Sarge” will do. Any questions?’

  ‘No, thanks.’ This didn’t seem the right time to ask after the mobile phone he’d been told to expect. He’d cancelled his own in anticipation, prematurely as it turned out, with his landline still not connected. It might have given him a nice break from his family but he was still an army reservist, if pending discharge, and required to provide a valid number.

  ‘Good. Read those files. There’ll be questions later. And stay out of everyone’s way.’ And that was that, his introduction. No cotton wool.

  The DCs all said hello and asked a few polite questions. Stark carried the files to his excuse for a desk and got stuck in. They didn’t make pretty reading. There had been four assaults reported in the last three months, though there might have been more. Homeless folk weren’t always in a hurry to report things to the police. Stark felt rising anger prickle his skin as he read on. All the attacks had taken place late at night in secluded places, always on a single victim, outnumbered and defenceless. Broken bones, cuts, contusions, concussion – helpless middle-aged men and women, beaten and humiliated, and for what? The level of despicable cruelty was only matched by the cowardice.

  Unsurprisingly, suspect descriptions varied, but they overlapped enough to lead the local officers’ suspicions to a particular group of nasty young thugs. A gang, led by one Kyle Gibbs and his girlfriend Nikki Cockcroft. The word ‘gang’ was often misused. Greenwich might endure its share of drug-gang turf disputes but this was just the common teenage tribal affiliation, another ASBO-generation epicentre. Gibbs and his coterie sprang from the Ferrier Estate – which, Dixon informed Stark, was the borough’s least desirable postcode – a loose aggregation known as the Rats. From what Stark knew so far, the name was too good for them.

  Dixon invited Stark to lunch with him and the two passed the time in polite conversation. He seemed a decent enough bloke, of similar age to Stark though ahead in career. Hadn’t wasted time playing in the sand. Maybe that was why he seemed unsure of himself with Stark – people often reacted strangely when they knew you were a veteran. Being a veteran of two unpopular and misunderstood wars was worse. It wouldn’t be long before someone here got hold of that ridiculous Gosport Herald article, if they hadn’t already. Stark asked him about DS Millhaven but he wouldn’t be drawn, saying only that she was all right once she got used to you.

  Towards the end of the day she reappeared and offered to drive Stark home via the Ferrier Estate. It was a couple of miles as the crow flew and she used the time to quiz Stark on what he’d read earlier, as if trying to emphasize his inexperience.

  If anything, the estate was worse than Dixon had described, a late-sixties carbuncle bisected by a main road, each half a series of large courtyards that were all but enclosed on four sides by six-storey blocks of flats and ramped walkways with the occasional twelve-storey tower thrown in for extra misery, all in cheap brutalist concrete panelling; the culmination of decades of ever-cheaper bastardizations of the thirties’ modernist ideal.

  Tucked in one corner, Telemann Square had once held a series of inward-facing shops. Most were boarded up now, including the once-notorious Wat Tyler pub and a community centre that had never looked its best. All that clung to life were a pharmacy, a doctor’s surgery, a dentist, a tiny library and the Holy Spirit Church Centre, surely the C of E’s most desperate outpost, and an off-licence/convenience store so covered with security grilles that it had to display a ‘WE ARE OPEN’ sign behind the glass.

  Almost everywhere you looked there was graffiti. Not Banksy-esque satire or hip-hop street art, just the usual anatomical diagrams, four-letter words and throwaway tags – stylized nicknames sprayed, gouged or etched, like a tomcat pissing on a post.

  With its war-zone chic the ‘shops’ area was the hangout of choice to the ‘local scumbags with little better to do’. Looking around, Stark saw there was little better to do. The embattled offy probably ran a fine line, peddling two-litre bottles of cheap white cider to all ages more out of self-preservation than greed.

  The few people
he saw hurried along in a manner Stark recognized all too well but had not seen outside Basra and Helmand. Fear, in broad daylight, in London. Stark felt bile rise in his throat and swallowed hard. Looking down, he found his fists were clenched.

  As they drove out of the estate Fran pulled over and pointed out a lean, pale, shifty-eyed teenager leaning against a wall, smoking. ‘That’s him, Kyle Gibbs, local hero, several convictions for burglary and shoplifting as a minor, served three months’ youth custody. Suspected of dealing wraps and pills at the cockroach level. Cautioned for possession of cannabis, but usually has the nous to drop his stash if a stop-and-search looks likely. Cocky little shit. De facto leader of the rudderless scrotes because he’s older and marginally more vicious.’ Gibbs glanced their way and, sitting in the unmarked car, Stark was acutely aware of his uniform. Gibbs smirked, stubbed out his cigarette and flicked it in their direction, spat on the pavement and walked off round the corner with the bow-legged, bent-arm swagger of the wannabe hard-nut, the ape trying to look big. ‘He and his girlfriend Nikki Cockcroft rule the roost and, for sure, they and their hangers-on are behind the happy-slappings.’

  ‘Always on the homeless?’ asked Stark.

  ‘So far. They’re not above jumping some poor sod outside a pub and there’s no shortage of muggings on the estate, but I guess the homeless are less likely to fight back. One of the attacks even turned up briefly on YouTube. The spiteful little shits like filming their exploits on their phones. Nice to know who you were fighting for, I’m sure,’ she huffed. ‘No offence,’ she added, watching him out of the corner of her eye.

  Stark didn’t bite. ‘You pulled him in?’

  ‘And her, and half a dozen others. Waste of a perfectly good Sunday. Cocky little shits just clam up, laugh at us.’

  ‘Forensics?’

  Fran laughed. ‘Perhaps if they beat someone who mattered.’

  She dropped him at home. ‘Demob suit tomorrow,’ she said, by way of farewell. ‘Moustache optional.’

  2

  The bad dreams when they came could be bright, hot and painful, but the degree varied. If there were some way to predict or control them, going to sleep might involve less trepidation. They’d begun a few weeks after he was evacuated, when body and mind began to accept his survival. They’d escalated fast but he’d had help, medicinal, cognitive and peer-oriented. It was understood, expected, manageable. That night they wandered erratically from warm surreal twists on recollection to darker, hotter places but without the searing hyper-real intensity of the bad ones. He awoke more with relief than terror, tired but not exhausted. He did his exercises, like a good boy, ate like a horse, then shaved and showered in swift order, acutely aware of the military conditioning grinning through.

  Reaching into the wardrobe, his hand hovered between green and blue, then slowly withdrew charcoal grey. Mufti to work. Stark stared at his reflection and tutted at the odd insecurity he felt without uniform to define his role. He reflected on his first day in the Metropolitan Police Service. Everyone had been nice enough, though DS Millhaven wasn’t a barrel of laughs. If she warmed up, great; if not, he’d known worse. Right now he had bigger worries.

  It wasn’t until Stark was halfway through breakfast that he noticed the answerphone blinking a red number two. He jumped up and lifted the receiver. A clear tone greeted his ear. Finally.

  The first message was his mum, predictably – the usual mixture of worry and accusation. She also said his CO was trying to get hold of him. I’ll bet he is, thought Stark, glancing at the offending MoD letter. The second was from Colonel Mattherson himself. ‘Sorry to do this with a message but I’ve been trying to reach you for days. Felt you should hear it from me, not some ministry oik. I think you’d better sit down …’ Mattherson had that senior-officer quality of delivering all information, welcome or otherwise, without the slightest modification in tone. He had junior officers to do the shouting. If anything, that made it worse. Stark hit delete.

  When he arrived Fran was perched on the end of Dixon’s desk, halfway through a warm pastry. ‘MoD spared no expense, then,’ she said, looking Stark up and down. The sarcasm was implied rather than expressed, and he ignored it. It was a decent enough suit, smart enough to pass muster, cheap enough to chase a suspect over a wall if required. And he was close enough to NATO Standard to make off-the-peg look made-to-measure. ‘Good morning, Sarge.’ He smiled.

  ‘If you say so.’ She glanced at his gleaming shoes. ‘Right, get the coffees. There’s a team meeting in ten and I’ll be buggered if I’m going in there without another caffeine hit.’

  The meeting was as dull as Fran’s tone had suggested it would be, not least because Stark knew nothing of the cases discussed. He wasn’t about to drag it out for everyone else with questions, so pieced together as much as he could. He was introduced to several more new faces, and surreptitiously began jotting down names.

  Afterwards there seemed little for him to do. DS Harper had been leading the happy-slapping case but he was still off sick and his DC, Bryden, was out. Rather than just get in the way Stark suggested he went out in one of the patrol cars for the day to start getting a feel for his new patch. Fran agreed with an uninterested shrug. Maggie helped find him a ride, calling him ‘sweetie’ again, and soon he was being driven around by Sergeant Ptolemy and WPC Peters, two decent uniforms, no apparent axe to grind with his CID aspirations. He bought them lunch from a local sandwich bar and they gave him an overview of their manor, warts and all. They seemed quite fond of the place, proud almost, in that learnt-rather-than-felt cynical tone used by coppers before the shine had worn off. You saw the same thing in the army.

  The first thing Stark did after they’d dropped him home was call the base. It had been on his mind all day and he needed it off. The adjutant put him straight through.

  ‘Corporal Stark! About bloody time!’ Colonel Mattherson’s rapid-fire delivery.

  ‘Constable Stark now, sir.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Thought you’d dropped off the bloody world!’

  ‘Comms were down, sir, logistical misunderstanding.’

  ‘Situation normal et cetera. Now, you got my message?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And the letter?’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Well, then, what have you got to say for yourself?’

  The next day DS Harper had failed to recover so Stark re-read the file before sitting down with DC Bryden to talk it through. In essence the investigation was at a halt awaiting new leads, meaning fresh assaults, so Stark tidied his desk and ordered a cab. Though University Hospital Lewisham was only two miles away across Deptford Creek, it was outside the borough. Greenwich’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital was four miles over in Woolwich, and Stark had no idea how to get there by public transport.

  ‘Going somewhere?’ frowned Fran, noticing him pull on his jacket.

  ‘Hospital appointment, Sarge.’

  ‘This was in the schedule you submitted?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll be back after lunch.’

  She pursed her lips. Maybe she wasn’t a fan of people getting special treatment but there was little he could do about that. The force had made it clear he was free to work around his recovery needs. Maybe resentment would build up in others if it went on too long. He also got the impression she was fishing. The schedule he’d submitted didn’t say what each appointment was for, though Superintendent Cox had full details, and Stark wondered if she’d got wind that Wednesdays were psychotherapy.

  He found the right department with little difficulty but they kept him waiting. He’d never been in one of these sessions that was allowed to overrun by a millisecond yet they still contrived to keep him waiting every time. It was some kind of institutional fourth-dimensional phenomenon. It shouldn’t make him angry or anxious but it did.

  He wasn’t looking forward to it, he never had, and the thought of starting with a new therapist, someone with no military affiliation or experience, made him feel sick. At least the milit
ary ones had got straight to the point. Nevertheless Stark had never balanced the pain with any alleged gain. There was a joke they used at Headley Court – PTSD: it’s all in your head. Post-traumatic stress disorder; symptoms manifest in various ways and severity. Stark’s were mild at most, so mild he felt fraudulent accepting treatment. But until the dreams left him alone he’d never persuade the shrinks to do the same. In theory this new one should have reviewed his notes in detail, prepared, planned. In theory he shouldn’t have to cover too much old ground. In theory.

  So much for theory, he thought an hour later. Few people leave you with a true impression of imbecility, but Dr Hazel McDonald made his head throb. It was like wading through treacle or, worse, like talking to a wall – every statement echoed back at you with a question mark on the end, every fact queried, every frustration seized upon. Nothing went in, nothing. He had a dreadful feeling the next session would start where this had and get no further.

  And it was past lunchtime. If they were just honest about appointment times he’d have been able to eat beforehand. He didn’t like being hungry. Army life was regular except when it wasn’t, teaching you to associate regular meals with safety and rest. Selly Oak and Headley Court had reinforced the point by associating mealtimes with respite from torture and, despite what people might say, food in the army and in hospital was plentiful and nutritious. It didn’t matter if you liked it, you ate it: fuel, fuel, fuel, for fighting or healing, shovel it in. All was well when the food came like clockwork. Right now his stomach told him all was not well. The thought of speaking to that woman again made him feel all the more sick.

  He found what passed for a sandwich in the hospital canteen and spent the cab ride back dispelling the unpleasant thoughts rattling around in his head. Talking of which, he ought to phone Margaret Collins. He couldn’t keep his head in the sand for ever. There didn’t seem much way he could hope to avoid what was coming and she deserved to hear it from him first.