The Slaughter Man by Tony Parsons Read Free Book Online Page A

key to the place were long gone. Now the Black Museum was used as a training facility to impress on young coppers that every day on the job could be their last day on earth. More than anything, the Black Museum was a memorial to evil.
    ‘Curtis, run the MO through HOLMES,’ Whitestone told Gane. HOLMES, or more accurately the new improved HOLMES2, is the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System. ‘See who’s been convicted for murder with a cattle gun. Living, dead, the lot. I believe there’s at least two of them currently doing time. Couple of farm boys who were unlucky in love or didn’t get their Christmas bonus.’ She looked thoughtful for a moment as a memory stirred. ‘Now I remember – it must have been thirty years ago.’
    ‘Someone took out a family with a cattle gun?’ I said.
    ‘A father and his three grown-up sons. There was a girl – and her mother – but he didn’t touch them.’ She shook her head; it was all a very long time ago. ‘But he’s probably dead by now.’
    Whitestone looked across at Scout and Edie chatting away to each other and totally oblivious to the rest of us. But still she kept her voice low.
    ‘The Slaughter Man,’ she said.
    I had arranged to meet Mrs Murphy under the old blue lamp that marks the entrance to West End Central but as soon as Scout and I stepped out of the lift, I saw that was never going to work.
    The press pack seemed to have grown. The TV vans now stretched all the way down Savile Row. Uniformed officers were doing their best to keep the crowds on the pavement and the traffic moving on the narrow road, but reporters with orange tans kept sneaking into the middle of the road so they could do their pieces to camera with the blue lamp of 27 Savile Row in the background. They jabbered dramatically in a dozen different languages.
    ‘It’s very crowded, isn’t it?’ Scout said.
    ‘It is, angel.’
    It was also bitterly cold. I fastened the top two buttons on Scout’s coat and jammed her hat over her ears and picked her up, scanning the crowds for an old lady sporting the kind of hat, coat and handbag that the Queen would favour.
    ‘There she is,’ Scout said.
    Mrs Murphy was sensibly waiting just beyond the crowds, a black cab with its engine running waiting beside her. She saw us and began to smile and wave. I called over a uniformed officer.
    ‘You see that lady in the green hat and coat?’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘Can you get her to the door?’
    The young copper nodded and stepped into the street, waving Mrs Murphy and her cab forwards. Suddenly the crowd stirred. Two police motorbikes were turning into Savile Row from the Conduit Street end, the blue lights pulsing on the big BMW bikes and piercing the misty morning. And then two more. Photographers began to sprint towards them. And then there was the car, a black 7-Series BMW with its windows blacked out, edging past the paparazzi now followed by another two motorbike outriders, all of them shouting at the press to get back. The first two outriders pulled up just behind Mrs Murphy’s black cab. I saw her worried face at the window and I carried Scout down the steps, my arms wrapped tight around her.
    My boss got out of the black car. Detective Chief Superintendent Elizabeth Swire – the Chief Super. She stared coldly at the press and then smiled at Scout.
    ‘Hello, young lady,’ DCS Swire said. ‘Are you helping your father today?’
    ‘No,’ Scout said. ‘I’m only five.’
    ‘Excellent,’ DCS Swire said and turned back to the car. Nils Gatling got out, buttoning his suit jacket and ignoring the questions shouted at him by the press pack. He was clean-shaven but his eyes looked as though he had not slept since yesterday.
    ‘I’ll talk to them later,’ he told DCS Swire.
    His sister got out of the car and the mob charged forward, screaming her name. Charlotte Gatling had a face that was as near to perfect as I had ever seen. Yet grief and shock were etched deep on that face, and the