After the Fire (32 page)

‘If anyone tries to hurt you, call 999.’

‘I don’t need the police. I’ve got Rocco.’

‘Do you think he’d take your side against his mother?’ Derwent asked and Louise’s face crumpled.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, we will, I promise you. So if you feel threatened, call us.’

A nod, but I wasn’t sure she meant it. They weren’t the kind of people to want anyone else to interfere in their lives. I recalled that Carl had carried his injured daughter down ten flights of stairs rather than waiting for paramedics or firefighters to help. Louise wouldn’t call us. Our best hope was that Rocco would look after her. I didn’t have a lot of faith that would be the case. So that left making sure no one found out Louise had talked to us. I looked at Derwent.

‘Time to go.’

Outside the house, Derwent knocked on the roof of the Audi. ‘Ruined it for me.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Now it just looks like other people’s misery.’

‘That’s exactly what it is.’ We got into the car and I sighed. ‘You realise what this means, don’t you?’

‘What’s that?’

‘There was a good reason for someone to target the Bellews. That means they have to stay on our list of possible targets.’

‘So?’

‘So now we have no shortage of suspects, most of them living on the estate. We haven’t narrowed anything down. The investigation has just got a lot more complicated.’

‘We’re not dealing the cards,’ Derwent said. ‘We just have to play them.’

‘You, me and as many spare officers as Una Burt will allow us.’

‘If any.’ He groaned. ‘I’d better give her a call. Let her know the good news.’

‘Please be nice.’

‘Me? I’m always nice.’

‘Seriously.’ I put a hand on his arm to stop him from making the call. ‘She’s under a lot of pressure. Go easy.’

Derwent frowned at me. ‘What’s going on? Are you sucking up to her for any particular reason or just to annoy me?’

‘I feel sorry for her.’

‘Why?’

Because she has to try to manage you.
‘She’s finding this investigation hard, I think. No point in making it worse for her.’

‘Very considerate of you.’

‘And I don’t want you to give her a reason to leave all the legwork up to us. Tracking down Nina Bellew’s clients is going to be a pain in the arse.’

‘You heard Louise. Nina has records. We just have to persuade her to cooperate with us.’

‘Let me put it this way. Your chances of getting anything out of Nina Bellew are about the same as your chances of charming Una Burt. So don’t burn any bridges. We don’t have any to spare.’

I WALKED INTO
the office on Monday morning and threw my notebook onto my desk from far enough away that eyebrows went up all around the room.

‘Problem?’ Liv asked.

‘Don’t ask.’

‘Derwent? Una Burt?’

‘Not this time, actually.’ I sat down and swivelled on the chair, too irritated to sit still. ‘The Met’s task force on money lending won’t let us talk to Nina Bellew about her clients.’

‘Seriously?’

‘They’ve been collecting evidence on her but they’re not ready to arrest her yet. They don’t want us to tip her off.’

Liv pulled a face. ‘But if they’ve been collecting evidence …’

‘Oh yes, they have lists of people she’s screwed over, which we are more than welcome to consult. But those people are the ones prepared to talk to the cops. What we’re looking for is someone so angry that they’re taking the law into their own hands. And they wouldn’t own up – not if their actions brought about the deaths of four people.’

‘So what?’

‘Dead end. There’s nothing else I can do about Nina Bellew unless and until some new evidence turns up. I’ve asked the neighbourhoods team who cover the Maudling Estate to see if they can find out if anyone was talking shit about the Bellews – making threats, that kind of thing. Or if anyone is looking especially guilty, I suppose, since Becky died.’

‘You might get a tip-off.’

‘We might indeed. After all, who cares about two prostitutes and a politician? At the end of the day, they’re all whores. But an innocent kid is different.’ Derwent had arrived, without so much as a whiff of sulphur to warn us. He eased himself onto the corner of my desk and began to browse through my in-tray.

Liv’s nose was wrinkled with disgust. ‘Is that what you think? The trafficked women don’t count as victims?’

‘That’s not what I think, no.’ He said it pleasantly – politely, even – which was how I knew he was blazingly angry.

‘Because they didn’t deserve to die that way. None of them did,’ Liv said.

Derwent glanced up, as if he was surprised she was still talking to him. ‘Listen, I couldn’t give a shit about Armstrong but I’d go a long way to find whoever put those girls behind a locked door and left them to burn.’

‘I might be able to help you with that.’ Una Burt stumped across to us, holding a cardboard folder. ‘Today’s the day for test results. They’ve been busy at the labs over the weekend.’

I sat up. ‘Anything useful?’

‘First things first.’ She opened the folder. ‘The blood in your car was not human in origin.’

‘What was it?’ I asked.

‘Pig’s blood.’

‘Very funny,’ Derwent said. ‘Pig’s blood because you’re a cop. Nicely done.’

The memory of that smell in the car suddenly filled my nose, my mouth. I gagged, then turned it into a cough. Derwent shot me a look that was concern mingled with amusement.

‘All right, Kerrigan?’

I nodded, coughing some more, gesturing to Una Burt to go on, for someone to say something, anything that might take the attention off me.

‘Did they get any DNA off the car or the Asp?’ Derwent asked.

‘Nothing. No fingerprints either. He or she wore gloves.’

‘What about CCTV?’

‘The car was parked between two vans.’ Una shook her head at me. ‘Never park in a blind spot. You should know better.’

‘I didn’t know the car was going to be vandalised,’ I protested.

‘Well, you made it easy for them to do it unobserved.’

‘Sorry.’ I knew it was a joke but it still hurt, just a little. I believed with all my heart that it had been Chris Swain’s handiwork, and I hated being his victim. I hated being two steps behind him all the time. I hated falling into his traps, especially when I should have been more careful.

‘I’ve got to say I think it’s unlikely that we’ll find out who did it without DNA or CCTV.’

‘I thought that might be the case,’ I said. ‘What about Melissa Pell’s attacker?’

‘Not great news. Obviously it’s not a straightforward case of swabbing a weapon or something where you’d expect to find a very limited number of DNA profiles. This is a door that was in a public area of a very busy tower block and it’s been in use for days since the fire. They’ve recovered multiple DNA profiles from it so far and it’s taking time to separate out the one we want. They are working on cross-matching the profiles they’ve recovered against people with previous convictions. They’ve promised me it’s a priority.’ Una Burt’s lips thinned slightly. ‘I made it clear that it was our priority too.’

‘Is that it?’ Derwent said. He didn’t bother to keep the disappointment out of his voice.

‘No. The pathologist has been in touch. She swabbed Geoff Armstrong to try to recover useful DNA. She also noticed his eyes were irritated so she asked the lab to check for chemical residue.’

‘And?’

‘Capsaicin. Pepper spray,’ she added.

‘So Armstrong got pepper-sprayed, punched, strangled and then pushed out of a window.’ Derwent whistled. ‘What the hell did he do to deserve that?’

‘That’s what I’d like you to find out from his girlfriend.’ Una Burt licked her finger to leaf through the pages in the folder. ‘The DNA results are back.’

‘Did they get an ID?’ I asked.

‘Yes. Yes, they did.’ She had a strange expression on her face. ‘They queried it, though.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because they weren’t sure the DNA profile was the one we were looking for.’

I frowned at her. ‘Why not?’

Instead of answering me, she handed me the sheet of paper and let me look for myself. I read it through twice. ‘Oh.
Oh
.’ I looked up at Una Burt, who nodded.

‘It explains some things, doesn’t it?’

‘If you’ve quite finished making orgasm noises, maybe you could share the news with the rest of the class,’ Derwent said irritably.

I handed him the sheet of paper and stood up. ‘Time to go and talk to Armstrong’s girlfriend, I think.’

‘But—’

I shrugged my coat on. ‘Exactly.’

Another identical hallway in another identical tower block and I had déjà vu all over again. Visiting the Maudling Estate was like a recurring nightmare I couldn’t shake off, the kind of nightmare where you try something different every time, and it works out just as badly as the time before and the time before that. But at least this time I wasn’t on my own.

I just wasn’t sure yet if that was going to be a help or if it was going to make things much, much worse.

‘Is this it?’

I nodded and stood back as Derwent rang the doorbell.

‘Who is it?’ someone called from inside. A pleasant voice, I thought.

‘Police,’ Derwent shouted back.

A long pause. Then there was the sound of locks being turned, a chain taken off the door, a bolt slid back. The door opened slowly and a dark-skinned woman blinked at us, her manner languid rather than nervous. She was tall and slender, elegant in a dark blue knitted dress that clung to her body, her hair long and straight and silky. She looked Derwent up and down first, then switched her attention to me for a brief moment. She lowered her long eyelashes to hide the expression in her eyes but I caught it anyway: loathing.

‘Justine Rickards?’

‘Yes?’

‘DI Derwent, DC Kerrigan. We’d just like to ask a few questions regarding the fire in Murchison House.’

‘I don’t know anything about that. I’m sorry.’ She started to close the door.

‘Just a few questions.’ Derwent put out a hand and pushed the door back, hard, and for a second she resisted. She stared into his eyes, implacably hostile, and I felt a chill: there was murderous anger, if anyone wondered what it looked like. Then she shrugged and stood back.

‘I was going out. You’ll have to be quick.’

Derwent didn’t say we would be quick. He didn’t say anything, but walked past her into the flat.

‘Are you coming in too?’ she asked me. I was hanging back. I didn’t want her behind me.

‘Please, go ahead. I’ll shut the door.’ If you didn’t know better, you’d think I was just being polite. Justine Rickards knew better. She narrowed her eyes at me again, then went ahead of me to the living room, her carriage as perfect as if she was walking down a catwalk.

‘You can sit down,’ she said to Derwent, who was standing with his hands in his pockets, looking around. The room was neat but not expensively furnished; if I had to guess, I’d say Justine spent her money on clothes and make-up, not her flat. ‘You’re making me nervous, standing there.’

‘Sorry.’ He sat on the small sofa and I decided not to sit beside him. I had too much experience of being squashed into a corner by Derwent and his long legs. I took a seat at a small table, leaving Justine to sit in an armchair in the corner. She sat like a
Vogue
model, her feet drawn back demurely to one side, an elbow propped on the arm of the chair.

‘What can I do for you?’

‘We wanted to ask you about Geoff Armstrong.’

She blinked twice, very fast. ‘Why?’

‘Did you know Mr Armstrong, Ms Rickards?’

‘By reputation.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘I knew who he was. And I knew he wasn’t popular around here. He’s come up in conversation once or twice.’

‘Do you work with Claudine Cole on her campaign?’ I asked.

She didn’t even look in my direction. ‘I know Claudine. I wish her all the best with her work.’

‘That’s not really an answer.’

She sighed. ‘I don’t work with her in an official capacity, if that’s what you mean. I’m not volunteering to go into schools or campaign with her. But I help out if she needs me. I do a little secretarial work for her now and then.’

‘Do you have a job?’ Derwent asked.

‘I temp.’

‘For an agency?’

‘Sometimes.’ She frowned. ‘What has this got to do with Geoff Armstrong?’

‘We’ve been looking for someone who was in a relationship with him. Someone who spent Thursday afternoons with him in a flat in Murchison House.’

‘And?’ She gave a one-shouldered shrug, irritated now. ‘You’re not looking at me, are you? He’s not exactly my usual type.’

‘The lady with him was described as an elegant black woman, about five foot ten, mid-thirties. That description fits you,’ Derwent said.

‘Why thank you.’ She swept the long eyelashes down on to her cheeks, flirting like a film star, Dorothy Dandridge resurrected on a north London estate.

‘Are you saying it wasn’t you?’

‘Of course it wasn’t. I never met the man.’ She stood up. ‘Is that everything?’

‘No, it’s not. Do you know this man?’ Derwent handed her a printout of a custody photograph: an old picture of a young man with a line shaved through one eyebrow and a sneer on his face. ‘Dean Rickards.’

She sat down again, staring at the page. ‘Yes. Yes, I do.’

‘Who is he?’

‘My brother.’ It was a whisper.

‘Does he live here with you?’ I asked.

‘Sometimes.’

‘Where is he now?’

She shrugged, shaking her head. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen him for days.’

‘Is that unusual?’

‘No. Not really. He comes and goes.’ She looked from me to Derwent. ‘Why are you asking me about Dean?’

‘Dean’s DNA is on our system for some drug-related offences he committed in his teens.’

‘Stupid boy.’ She tried to smile. ‘He was an idiot when he was a teenager. But he put all that behind him.’

‘Does he have a job now?’ Derwent asked.

She shook her head. ‘I help him out.’

‘Where does he live when he’s not with you?’

‘With friends,’ she said vaguely. ‘I don’t really know who. We lead separate lives.’ She pulled herself together with a visible effort. ‘Why are you asking about Dean, anyway?’