Serial Sunday: Murder in Hackney, Part IV

By Paul Leone.

Keziah was just finishing the paperwork for a search warrant application when the phone on her desk rang. She answered it with “Carter, Murder and Manslaughter.”

“This is Constable Deeks at South Gate.” The man, who Keziah vaguely remembered was an aging Yeoman Warder stranded by advancing age on the beach of desk duty, sounded rather annoyed. “There’s a civilian here who wants to speak with you. She had a gun with her.”

“Was it loaded?”

“No, but she had bullets too.”

“Bridge of woe.” Keziah drew in a deep breath. “I’ll be down there right away.”

Just as promised, she swiftly reached the South Gate, where a pair of annexes, one from the 18th century and one from the 20th, had been grafted on to the medieval entrance. Once upon a time, the most notorious traitors condemned to death had been carried by boat through the riverside gate into the Tower. Today, it was the employee entrance.

Deeks was waiting for her in the security office along with a young woman dressed in what Cat might call alley flair — lace trousers, tiger stripe blouse with the obligatory missing buttons, high heeled shoes, rings and earrings and bracelets, none of them matching, all of them gaudy. Her hair was in a split dye style, half blonde and half black with just a hint of her natural red at the roots. Her face was caked in make-up.

Probably to try and cover up the bruises.

Keziah clenched her fists but said nothing.

The elderly constable held a small metal box, inside of which was the 10mm pistol the girl had tried to bring into the Tower. It was a big, flashy gun complete with custom silver and gold grips. An urban matador’s pistol.

“Why’re you so pissy? I told you there wasn’t bullets in it!” the woman was shouting at Deeks when Keziah appeared.

“You can’t just bring a gun into the Tower! Bloody Folkers,” Deeks snapped.

“Hoy! You can’t talk at me like that!”

“I’m a constable, I can talk however I want.” He saw Keziah and beckoned her over. “What’s all this about, anyway?”

“I don’t know. What is it about?” Keziah asked the woman.

“I’m Ahinoam Bowker,” she answered as if that explained everything.

Keziah stared blankly at her. It explained very little.

“My man’s Clifton Reeves!”

It explained everything.

“Come on, then,” Keziah said, putting a hand on Ahinoam’s shoulder.

“What about the gun? She should get a charge,” Deeks said.

“It’s evidence,” Keziah told him. I hope, she thought.

As they crossed the Inner Ward of the Tower, Keziah heard the whole sad story of Reeves and Bowker. Or she would have if she hadn’t held up a hand when the girl paused for breath between long, rambling sentences. “Wait until we can make it official,” Keziah said.

Ahinoam nodded. Just before they entered the East Block, she looked at Keziah. “I don’t wanna get slewn,” she said in the mix of rural and urban dialect typical of second-generation London Fishers.

“That’s not going to happen,” Keziah promised.

“He’s done it before.”

“Never again,” Keziah said. She ushered Ahinoam into one of the mews and took a seat after she did. After they got the witness statement formalities dealt with, the girl looked around the room for a few seconds and then stared down at her colourfully painted fingernails. Each one was a different shade — black and white pinkies, every colour of the rainbow between them.

“Look at me,” Keziah said in a firm voice that was a little louder than the small room needed. It worked.

Ahinoam looked up, smiled nervously, waited.

“Your man killed another man.”

“He’s not — he —”

Keziah stared at her.

Ahinoam trailed off, mumbled, clearly wanted to look away. But she didn’t. “I know.”

“This is the time to tell me what you know, Miss Bowker. Help me. Help me do what’s right by Mortimer.”

Ahinoam looked away, then back. “I can’t.”

Not ‘I won’t’ but ‘I can’t.’ Keziah took that as a good sign, a good start. She leaned forward just a little. The girl didn’t shrink back. Another good sign. “If you’re afraid of him, don’t be. If you tell us the truth, if you help us get him, he’ll never hurt you again.”

Keziah had calculated the odds. If convicted, someone like Reeves wouldn’t see outside gaol walls again for at least ten years. Fifteen was more likely. In the worst-case scenario for him, if not for society, he’d spend the rest of his life in a cell, taking whatever solace a man like him could in the fact the death penalty was if not formally at least effectively abolished.

Ahinoam said nothing. What was she thinking?

“It’s true. The Crown will come down hard on him. A murderer of preachers. An abuser of women.”

The girl, still silent, hugged herself.

“You know it’s right. It’s justice.”

Silence. She was tearing up now.

“You’re a Fisher. So am I. It’s not easy.”

The girl backhandedly wiped her eyes and looked at Keziah.

“Nine out of ten of them, they think we’re at least a little bent. Standers. Prods. Friday meat eaters. You know how it is.”

Ahinoam nodded, sniffled. After a moment, she smiled bitterly. “When I was in school, they’d stuff dirty loo paper into my locker. Called me —”

“Bloody Folker.”

“Yeah. And sometimes Whore of Babylon.”

“It’s hard. I know.”

“Yeah…” Ahinoam shifted and rubbed the side of her hand against the table.

“That’s what this is about. Mortimer was one of us.”

The pretty young thing frowned, pouted really. “He wasn’t a Fisher.”

“But he was a Protestant. And in England, specially, that means he was a brother.” Keziah wrapped her fingers around the plain cross around her neck.

Ahinoam reached up and laid two fingers on the gold chain around her own neck. No cross, but a diamond-eyed dove.

“Reeves killed him.”

The girl made an inarticulate noise, not quite a denial, but close to it.

“Yes, he did. He killed him. He killed our brother.”

The girl hugged herself again, was crying more noticeably now, but after a moment, she nodded.

“Say it, Ahinoam.”

Hesitation, despair on her face. Despair and fear.

“Say it,” Keziah said. “Get the stone off your chest.”

“He…”

“How did it happen?”

“He’ll hurt me.” Her voice was soft, quavering.

“I won’t let that happen.” Keziah waited a beat, then continued in a softer voice. “Tell me.”

Ahinoam grabbed her sleeve and twisted it.

“Tell me, sister.”

“It was… it…”

Keziah stared at her, then leaned forward again and took hold of her hands.

When Ahinoam spoke, it was in less than a whisper. “It was because of me.”

Keziah squeezed her hands.

After that, the words came freely.

“We was comin’ out of the Minsk grill on Tresham.”

Keziah wrote quickly as she listened. Witness left Zrazy Kuchnia on Tresham Lane

“We?”

“Me and Clifton.”

in the company of the suspect

“And I was crazin’ him about that sowpig, Micola what’s her name, that Venet tart – Camilla Famizi –”

and talked about another girl

“When he slapped me. I mean, he shoved me...” She trailed off and stared down at her rainbow of fingernails.

Suspect struck the witness.

“And that’s when Preacher Charlie come out of nowhere. It all happened so fast, detective! I didn’t even know what was happenin’ until it had happened.”

“What did happen?”

“He saw him hit me and he weren’t having it.” Ahinoam sniffled and smiled at the same time. “‘Hoy! Who do you think you are?’ And then he yelled something about Exodus... 20? 30? I don’t know. My mum didn’t teach me Scripture much.”

Keziah frowned slightly, both in dismay at the parental lapse and in irritation she couldn’t think of what the preacher might have been quoting. Later she would realize she’d probably meant Exodus 21, which contained a number of divine injunctions against violence towards one’s kindred and neighbours. Exodus 21:25 was in fact the cornerstone of her own personal creed – “Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.”

“How did Reeves take that?”

“He shoved me down and then he drew iron. That big fancy pistol he has. Had. You have it now. ‘Say it again! Say I should die again!’ Clifton said, and didn’t even let Preacher say anything back. Just this.” She pointed a finger at Keziah and went ‘bang’ several times, rapid fire. “And I ran. I thought he might put bullets in me, too,” she said in a low, miserable voice laden with guilt. “And that’s it.”

“They were across the street from each other when this happened?” Keziah asked, knowing Reeves’ lawyer was likely to try and claim otherwise, claim that Mortimer did more than yell, that he attacked Reeves.

Ahinoam nodded. “We was just down the street from the Minsk place, and he were coming up from the other way, like from the Undertrain station or something. He might’ve come across, but there was no time. It all happened like –” She snapped her fingers twice. “That.”

***

Keziah adjusted the buckles on her bulletproof vest. Compared to what she’d worn in the Army, it felt like a child’s imitation. Those constables who had been shot in the line of duty rarely spoke very highly of them. Those slain in service were eloquent in their silence.

A small pack of constables formed a loose semicircle around Keziah, who was standing next to a patrol car. She stood up straighter and cleared her throat, silencing the murmured conversations. “Our man’s name is Clifton Reeves,” she said, holding up her copy of the ID sheet bearing his photograph. “He’s likely to be armed and should be considered a high-risk suspect. He’s killed once — that we’re aware of.”

The armed constables, a mix of borough patrol officers and a quartet of Yeomen Warders, the Constabulary’s special response unit, stirred a little at that.

Keziah guessed the direction of their thoughts. “Respond as the circumstances dictate, and nothing more,” she said, looking at each of them in the eyes. She didn’t want any matadors tonight. Clifton’s soul was in his own hands, but right now it wasn’t looking good from her perspective. Better to bring him in cleanly and let him make amends, or at least repent, in his own time.

Or not, if he chose.

Keziah’s duty in that regard was, she felt, somewhat minimal. She thought of Mortimer on the morgue slab, of the bruises on Ahinoam’s face, and her vestigial doubts melted away. Exodus 21:25.

“Let’s go, then,” Keziah said. “Stay sharp, stay safe, and God bless.”

“Amen!” It was Kavanagh, who had talked her way into the detail.

Keziah, smiling tightly, nodded back.

She was right behind the two lead Warders up the stairs to Clifton’s front door. A knock, a shouted “Constabulary, open the door!” and a near-simultaneous swing of the metal ram. The door went down and the constables went in.

Clifton Reeves was at the kitchen table in a pair of boxers, a bath robe and rubber sandals. He was halfway out of his chair, a bottle of Passey Stout in hand, eyes wide, mouth open, as half the constables in the county seemed to appear and swarm him. In seconds, he was down, the robe torn apart and tossed away, and cuffs locked around his wrists. The four or five strong hands wrapped around his arms and neck were a pleasing redundancy as far as Keziah was concerned. The bottle of beer disappeared, which didn’t bother her.

“Clifton Reeves, by the Crown’s order, you are under arrest, so help you God,” Keziah said as she leaned in close after the man was dragged back to his feet. He looked at her with malice radiating through the drunken haze all around him.

“I didn’t do it! What didn’t I do?” he demanded with more poise than she expected with three or four guns in his face.

“Murder,” Keziah said.

He blinked and squirmed.

“Murder,” Keziah repeated. She stepped closer. The stink of beer on his breath was almost enough to make her gag. Beer and — she glanced down, then back up at him, smiling viciously. “And urinating in the direction of an officer of the crown,” she added, conjuring up a new statutory offence on the fly.

The room was filled with laughter, which only made Reeves even angrier. He drew in his breath and was about to spit when Kavanagh clouted him on the back of the head.

“That bitch sold me out!” Reeves yelled as he was hauled towards the door.

“Lots of people sold you out,” Keziah said. She grabbed him by the arm, halting the rough procession for a moment. “Stupid and evil both,” she said before shoving him away.

When he was pulled through the door, Reeves looked back at Keziah for an instant. “You bitch! Bloody Folker bitch!”

Keziah stared back as the door shut behind him.

***

Keziah stared across the table at Reeves, who was handcuffed to it.

“Nothing to say for your wretched self?” she asked him after he’d passed the requisite form back with his shaky signature on it.

Reeves shook his head. “I want to talk at my lawyer.”

“He probably can’t help you much. I’m the one you want to talk to,” Keziah said, not bothering to put much conviction into her voice. It would’ve been a lie. It was always a lie – no man or woman handcuffed to a table in a mew ever benefitted from saying anything to anyone except their counsel – but this time she couldn’t force herself to even pretend otherwise. All she had was contempt.

“I want my lawyer.”

Keziah eyed him for a moment. “So be it,” she said. She rose and left, not-quite-slamming the door on him.

***

There wasn’t much of a crowd at The Maiden & Drake as Keziah entered. She recognized a few of the dozen or so uniformed constables and smaller number of fellow detectives, nodding to one or two before taking a seat at the far end of the bar, near where Cat usually held court beneath a hanging jersey signed by Harold McCord, one of London’s abbeyball legends and a neighbourhood hero.

The only other Murder and Manslaughter investigator to be seen was DI Mazal Shamy, a veteran detective from DCI Bertrand’s squad. She was carefully dividing her time between her phone and her pint glass. Looking up, she spotted Keziah and nodded politely, then beckoned the younger investigator over.

“Evening, Carter,” Shamy said. “The word on the wire is that you bagged a bad guy today.”

“So they say,” Keziah answered. She sipped at the ginger ale Old Eddie passed over the bar.

“You don’t seem especially enthusiastic about your victory.”

Keziah sort of smiled, sipped again.

“Might I ask why?”

“I don’t...” Keziah exhaled and tried to collect her thoughts. “I’m glad the killer is caught –”

“Glad that you caught the killer.”

Keziah smiled again, more fiercely this time. “Yes. But the man is still dead. It was easier when I was in patrol, or even Iniquity. The victims weren’t always dead.”

Shamy nodded and slowly rotated her glass without taking a drink. “The Fifth Book of Moses says that vengeance is the Lord’s.”

Deuteronomy 32:35. Keziah was able to quote it with ease. “Vengeance and recompense are mine, their foot shall slide in due time; for the day of their destruction is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them, make haste,“ she declared.

“Ye-es, that,” Shamy said. That’s Fishers for you, she thought with a tipsy mix of amusement and respect. Her grandfather Avram, a rabbi in Wahran, would have respected the learning, at least. “Now let me tell you a secret.” She leaned sideways towards Keziah, who likewise leaned in.

“What’s the secret?”

“We are the things that come upon them,” Shamy declared in a grave whisper. “Do you see? We work for the Sheriff, but for the Lord, too,” she added in an even lower voice. Then she winked and roughly patted Keziah on the shoulder before taking another long drink. “Now be thankful you’ve done the Lord’s work. The rest is up to the lawyers.”

Keziah instinctively grimaced.

Shamy laughed. “No matter how badly they ruin it, you did your part. That’s all that counts.”

“It doesn’t feel like enough.”

“I’d tell you to go light a candle for – Morehouse?”

“Mortimer.”

“For Mortimer, but you don’t do that. So just say a prayer for him.”

We don’t do that, either, Keziah thought, but she nodded along.

Shamy nodded too. “Cheers to the victorious thing,” she said.

Keziah smiled and raised her glass.

“You might not drink like you should, but you’re – you are – still a fine copper,” Shamy told her after emptying her own glass. She beckoned Old Eddie over. “More of the same for me, and more of the finest for her, too.”

Keziah smiled wanly and settled in for the long haul.

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Paul Leone is an author who, among other works, wrote the book In and Out of the Reich for Sea Lion.