Cages by David Mark (reading fiction TXT) 📗

got home: pushing himself so hard that he’d ended up in a foetal position on the floor, every muscle cramping, every pore oozing sweat. Freshly showered, newly shaved, he’d sat up most of the night, his bare skin sticking to the leather of his designer sofa, flicking through TV channels in search of something, anything, to divert his attention. In the end he’d texted an old flame, engaging in a steamy half hour of suggestive repartee, before finally dropping off into a sleep filled with visions of sinkholes and headless birds.

It’s a little after lunch, and he’s parked his VW Golf in the car park of the pub by the Humber Bridge. It’s one of his favourite places to be alone. There are always a few vehicles spread out along the pitted tarmac: each containing a solitary individual clothed in their own existential misery. It’s a place where people in search of answers can go and stare at the choppy brown water and wonder if they have the strength to climb up through the woods and take a swan-dive into the water, or whether they should just suck it up, hope for the best and continue buying lottery tickets.

Neilsen has been coming here more and more since his father died. Things that hadn’t troubled him before are weighing on his mind. He’s beginning to question his decisions. What was it Roberts had said? That he could do more good – do something more useful – if he wasn’t a police officer? That had stung. It stings more the more he thinks upon it. He knows where such thoughts can lead and has always done his best to fight them, but he suddenly finds himself wondering whether he may have held himself to the wrong set of principles all of his life. Would he not be a better man, he asks himself? Would he not be of more use, more benefit, if he just grabbed Griffin Cox and shook him until the answers fell out? He knows that he will not allow himself to do such a thing, but it does feel unspeakably silly not to. He and countless other detectives are running around chasing hair fibres and skin cells and trying to trace thirty-year-old phone calls, and the man who could tell them everything is in a prison cell, smiling benignly at his occasional visitors and enjoying himself on a creative writing course! He can’t help but think it would all be so much easier if he could just be allowed to bend Cox’s fingers in the wrong direction and see who has the greater resolve.

He looks down at the sheaf of documents in his lap. They’re print-outs of items held in the evidence store, and they’re no bloody use whatsoever. He lifts the top sheet and angles it. It’s exactly as Bob had said: a Victorian, wrought-iron birdcage with fancy filigree and a glossy wooden handle. The only fingerprints are those of Bronwen and her mum and dad. It’s been independently assessed by an auctioneer, who identified it as a relatively mass-market product from the 1930s, selling for upwards of £300 as of 1998. Neilsen can understand why Cox is a beguiling suspect. He’s wealthy. He’s a collector of fine objets d’art. Even in prison he takes pleasure in the merest whiff of the sophisticated; the sublime. He is the kind of man who could woo a young, naïve girl with poetry and antique books. He’s the sort of man who might send a nightingale in a cage: a sweet-sounding emblem, urging her to set herself free.

He scowls. Glances at the book on the passenger seat. RedGreen by Rufus Orton. He’s read the first few pages and reckons that Orton is a good writer, who could probably do with thinking up a more exciting story with which to employ his formidable vocabulary. It’s well written, and he likes the feeling of splashing about in a well-drawn world, but by Christ it’s boring. He feels a momentary pang of jealousy as he flicks to the back of the book and looks at the black-and-white mugshot: staring into the eyes of a rumpled, once-handsome man, with dark eyes and the sort of floppy hair that he associates with cricket and Last Night of the Proms. He wonders, idly, whether Orton might be worth a little chat. Indulges himself in a daydream in which Cox, adrift in a warm sea of creative impulse, admits to his crimes through the medium of a short story. Considers having a chat with him and telling him about the kind of man he’s teaching how to better realize his fantasies, albeit within the relative safety of a notebook. Could he perhaps steer the class in a certain direction? What was the name of the woman who’d organized the course? Annabeth, wasn’t it? Maybe he could get her on board. He’d have to get his thoughts in order – couldn’t risk letting himself getting muddled. He realizes, with a sudden dizzying thump, that he has lost sight of himself. Doesn’t know how to be a police officer when nobody knows what’s right and what’s wrong, and every crime comes with a sackful of explanations and excuses.

Neilsen switches on the radio, pissed off with himself. He doesn’t know if he sees something of significance, or is making one up. He didn’t like Cox, he knows that much. As he told Bob Roberts, there was something about him that made him feel unsettled: as if the air pressure had dropped and the atmosphere was crackling with impending rain.

Agitated, Neilsen flicks through the sheaf of papers, hoping to spot something that matters. He comes to a halt on a print-out of a photograph. Makes a mental note to enquire why the NCA can afford to use coloured printer ink when he and the rest of the CID team at Humberside Police can’t request a new pencil without proving evidence that the last one has been worn down to less than