Ash & Bone (35 page)

'Then make your calls,' Repton said. 'Firm it up. You know what I need.' He got to his feet. 'And don't try fobbing me off with any Witness Protection Scheme bollocks, either. I don't want to spend the rest of my life looking over my fucking shoulder, waiting to see who's going to come through the fucking door. You handle this differently. Handle this yourself. Close to your chest.'

Framlingham sighed. 'All right, Maurice. I'll do what I can.'

'This time tomorrow,' Repton said. 'And not here. I'll contact you. Okay?'

'Okay.'

'My mobile,' Repton said to Elder, holding out his hand.

Elder gave him back his phone.

'How do we know,' Framlingham said, after Repton had left the room, 'he isn't calling Mallory right now?'

'We don't.'

'In which case, let's hope self-preservation beats in his heart a shade more strongly than loyalty.'

Nayim had worked with Steve Kennet for five years, on and off, himself and Victor, sort of a team. Turn their hand to anything, building-wise, save for real specialist stuff. Simple electrics, plumbing, all that was fine, but something like installing underfloor heating, anything more specialised, they'd call in the experts, stand aside. Renovation though, new flooring, windows, stairs, outside work, repointing, replacing tiles, new roofs, there wasn't much they couldn't handle. Put in a loft not so long back, West Hampstead, architect designed. Some woman writer. Photos in the local paper. Signed one of her books for him, nice that. Not that he'd read it, mind.

Nayim sat next to Karen Shields on a bench in Waterlow Park, crows making a racket in the trees. A small boy being pushed on the swings. The former hospital building Nayim and Victor were working on was clearly visible, a short way down the hill.

It was cold; too cold to sit comfortably for long.

When Nayim took out his cigarettes and offered one to Karen, she shook her head. He was what, she thought, Spanish, maybe? Portuguese? Something of an accent, olive skin.

'Back in December,' Karen said, 'close to New Year. One of my officers came to that place you and Steve Kennet were working on in Dartmouth Park Road.'

Nayim nodded.

'You must have been quite a while on that job.'

'Too long. Landlord going crazy, but it's not our fault. Weather, you know? Rain. Always rain;'

Karen smiled. 'Winter in England. That's what it does. It rains.'

Nayim grinned.

'And you were what?' Karen said. 'Fixing the roof, stuff like that?'

'New roof, yes. Brickwork, guttering. Wood round the window frames, rotted away.'

'So you must have started when? Back in November some time?'

'Earlier. October, must have been.'

'Steve Kennet going off on holiday in the middle of it, that couldn't have helped.'

Nayim hunched his shoulders. 'Steve cut short his holiday, come back to work early.'

'And this was when?'

'November. Last week.'

Karen willed herself to slow down. 'When he came back,' she said, 'how did he seem?'

'Sorry, I don't….'

'His mood, I mean. Was he chatty, friendly, glad to be back?'

Nayim shook his head. 'At first, he hardly say a word. I go, hey Steve, good you're back, but he just grunt and go straight up to the roof, start work.'

'You didn't happen to notice if he had anything with him? Out of the usual, I mean?' Karen hoping against hope.

But Nayim was shaking his head. 'Just his bag of tools. Like always.'

Karen stood and brushed the seat of her trousers. 'If we wanted to take a look up there, where he was working — would that be difficult, do you think?'

Nayim looked up at her, uneasy without knowing why. 'Easy enough, I think. You can get into the roof space through the top-floor flat if you wish. If owner give permission.'

Karen nodded, smiled. 'Thanks for your time.'

As she turned, something quick and greyish brown scuttled through the leaves that had gathered between path and pond; either a squirrel which had emerged early from hibernation or a rat. On balance, Karen thought, a rat.

* * *

The leaseholder was away and not answering his mobile. Karen wasted the best part of an hour being shunted between the landlord and the management company, much of it either being asked to choose from the following options or being left on hold listening to Vivaldi's 'Four Seasons'. Finally, out of frustration, she slammed down the phone, jumped in her car and drove the few miles to the company's offices in Edgware. Once there, dark suit, stacked heels, taller than all of the women and most of the men, she got the attention she needed. The right permissions, the right keys. No more delay.

Forty minutes later, she and Ramsden, Furness and Denison in attendance, were passing the reservoir on Dartmouth Park Hill, turning right across the traffic and looking for a place to park.

The entrance hall and stairs had recently been recarpeted; the usual plethora of unsolicited mail and restaurant flyers sat neatly piled on a small table just inside the front door. Someone in the first-floor flat was practising the violin. On the floor above, the washing machine lurched into its spin cycle as they passed. A bicycle, presumably belonging to the owner of the upper flat, was on the landing outside his door.

Karen exchanged a quick glance with Ramsden before turning the key in the lock.

The entrance to the roof space was easy to find, through a drop-down door set into the ceiling between kitchen and bathroom.

'Mike?' Karen said, looking at Ramsden.

'Paul,' Ramsden said, 'up you go.'

Furness fetched a chair and held it steady. Denison pushed at the wood and slid it aside, hauling himself up and out of sight.

'What's it like up there?' Ramsden called.

'Dark.'

Furness handed him up a torch.

'You know what you're looking for?' Karen called.

'I think so.'

Not so many minutes later, he'd found it, taped to the side of one of the beams, snug against the angle and the roof itself. Thick dark tape and, Denison guessed, plastic or paper underneath.

It was both.

He passed it down and, using gloves, Karen prised away the tape, folded back the plastic and then unwound several pages from the late night edition of the
Standard,
dated 26 November 2003.

It was a butcher's knife with a twenty-centimetre stainless-steel blade firmly bolted all the way down the handle. Black haft, shiny blade, the tip not broken but bent very slightly to one side, as if it had been driven against something hard, like bone.

'Let's get this off to Forensics, first thing,' Karen said. 'Almost certainly he'll have wiped away any prints, but we need to check. Then compare it to the photographs of the wounds to Maddy Birch's body.'

Ramsden grinned a wolfish grin. 'That'll be sharpish, then.'

Under as high security as he could muster, Framlingham had set the technicians to work on the video tape: after enhancing the picture as much as they could, they had transferred it on to disk. From this they printed off a number of digital images, and it was these that Elder carried with him as he walked across Blackheath. Past six and the sky had already taken on that luminous orange glow; there were stars faintly visible above, though compared to Cornwall, precious few. One of them, he remembered reading somewhere, was some kind of satellite station and not a star at all.

Anton's T-shirt was white today instead of black, otherwise he looked exactly the same. The same sardonic, slightly camp look in his eye.

'She's in what we laughingly call the breakfast room, watching the snooker. Can't be doing with it myself. All that hushed commentary, as if they were in church. He's just kissed the ball up against the baulk pocket. Well…'

If Lynette Drury were indeed watching the snooker, she was doing so with her good eye closed.

The room smelt fetid and warm.

'Don't tire her,' Anton said.

Elder brought over another chair and sat at an angle between the wheelchair and the screen. He sat there silently while one of the players made a break of forty-seven.

'I didn't think you'd be back so soon,' Lynette said.

'Even after you sent the video?'

'What video's that?'

'Singin' in the Rain.'

'I never took to Gene Kelly much. More of a Fred Astaire fan, myself. Lighter on his feet I always thought. More debonair.'

'Something missing in the credits,' Elder said. 'My copy, at least. Nothing about the locations. The party scene in particular.'

Lynette watched as a balding man with a cummerbund barely holding in his beer gut skewed the cue ball in off the black and looked heavenwards for forbearance. 'Manningtree,' she said, still staring at the screen. 'Ben had a place out there. Not just him. Him and a few others. Country club, that's what they liked to call it. Gone now.'

'Gone?'

'Sold to some foundation. Don't know what they're called.'

'How long ago was that?'

'Three or four years, must be. Around the time Ben bought the place in Kyrenia.'

Elder took the photographs from the envelope and spread them across her lap. The pace of her breathing quickened and then slowed. They showed, in bare bones, the story of what had happened in the bedroom. It didn't take any great imagination to fill the gaps.

'I assume,' Elder said, 'there was a camera hidden in the room.'

'In every room. Whenever there was a party, Ben had them on all the time. Some years he'd make a Christmas tape, you know, highlights. Send 'em round to his friends.'

'Not this particular year,' Elder said, indicating the photographs.

'No, not that year.' Then, 'Watch what you're bloody doin'!' as the bald man's opponent clipped the yellow while attempting to pot the green.

'The two girls,' Elder said. 'Do you know what happened to them?'

She took her time answering. 'I know there was a problem. It got sorted.'

'Sorted?'

'Yes. I don't know how. Didn't want to know.'

Elder leaned forward and tapped one of the photographs, showing the girl on the floor beside the bed. 'This girl, she's dead. Neck broken, that would be my guess.'

'If you say so.'

'And this girl?' He was pointing at a young, dark-haired girl cowering, terrified, in the far corner of the room. 'What happened to her?'

Lynette's good eye flickered between the photograph and Elder's face, and then back to the screen in time to see one of the reds slide gracefully into the top pocket, the cue ball skewing back to cover the black.

'I said, they got it sorted. Ben and George between them. Made it go away.'

'Between them?'

'Fucking yes! Have I got to repeat every fucking thing I say?'

The anger in her voice brought on a fit of coughing, raising spittle to her lips.

Elder waited until the coughing had subsided. 'How exactly did they make it go away? Pay her off? What?'

'I'm trying to watch this,' Lynette said. 'And you're doing sod all for my concentration.'

'Who were they? The two girls? What were their names?'

Lynette started to cough again. 'Call Anton for me, will you? I need a fuckin' drink.'

'You used to get him girls, Mallory. Young girls. You must know who they were.'

'I need a fuckin' drink!'

Anton showed his face around the door.

'Out,' Elder said.

A drink.'

Anton hesitated, uncertain.

'Get out,' Elder said.

He went.

'You've helped us so far,' Elder said. 'Help us with this.'

'I've done nothing.'

He touched her hand and she pulled it away, turning her face towards the wall. Only gradually did he realise that she was speaking, the same sounds over and over, low, barely audible, the same names. 'Judy. Jill. Judy and Jill. Judy and Jill.'

He took hold of her arm, gently, not hard, and felt skin slip loose across bone.

'Judy and Jill,' he repeated. 'That was their names.'

She looked into his face.

'They were twins.'

* * *

Long after Elder had gone, long after one frame of the snooker had finished and another begun, Lynette propelled her chair out of that room and into another, guilt and uncertainty jostling up against one another in her brain. She thought she might still have Mallory's number somewhere. Perhaps she owed him that much at least.

Repton saw the police vehicle approaching from the opposite direction and checked his speed, lifting his foot from the accelerator and easing it down on the brake. Being stopped for driving under the influence was just what he didn't need. Not that he'd drunk a lot, not by some standards.

Checking the mirror to make sure the police car had continued on its way, he grinned. Not by some fucking standards! Christ! Times he and George had laid one on! Practically paralytic at five in the morning and still they'd turned in at their desk three hours later, ready for a day's graft, a day's hard sodding work. Not like today's bunch of puerile wankers! Binge drinking! They didn't know what a fucking binge was, didn't know how to fucking drink!

Shit! He'd only gone too far, hadn't he?

Too far down the fucking road.

Catching sight of his reflection as he readied to make a U-turn, he laughed out loud. Metaphors, Maurice? Fucking metaphors. Who the fuck d'you think you are? Too far down the fucking road, all right, and no mistake.

He nudged into a space between a clapped-out Escort and a white van, front wheel striking the kerb and maybe shaving the van's paint with the rear end, but good enough all the same.

Twenty past fucking two.

There was a half-bottle of Scotch in the glove compartment and he unscrewed the top and took a quick belt.

His breath came back at him off the inside of the windscreen like something out of a dog's arse.

Poetic, Maurice, he thought as he got out of the car. Fucking poetic.

'Green Lanes Sauna and Massage' was picked out in electric light above the curtained glass. Except close to half the letters were missing, bulbs gone or bust, and you had to be a regular or one of those sad shits who did the
Times
fucking crossword in five fucking minutes to know what it said.