Strange Tide (42 page)

‘Let's call it a night,' said Janice, clearing up the meal. ‘When I look away from the screen all I can see is dots. I can't believe you're leaving us for the geek squad. Why did you order minced turnips in dried ginger?' She sniffed the tray and dropped it in the bin.

‘I'll only be up the road in Holloway. And I'm a vegetarian, remember?'

‘Then just order chicken. If I had any sense I'd get out too.' Longbright sighed. ‘I haven't had a holiday in seven years. I thought you liked working here.'

DuCaine sighed. ‘The forensic tech is a game-changer. I can't advance here. Look what happens when the old boys aren't around; the unit falls apart because nobody except you knows how they work. The only reason Darren Link hasn't taken the case away is because it must suit his purpose not to. He was on vice in Dalston, wasn't he?'

‘For a while, yeah. His mates are still there.'

‘What if he knew they were on the take and figured we wouldn't go there? We could have another look at the club.'

‘If there was anything on the premises it'd be long gone by now. I'm not pulling up their carpets with these nails.'

‘You're such a girl,' Fraternity said, grinning. ‘You've still got the contact list, yeah? Everyone who knew Dalladay at the club?'

‘Sure.' She pulled a single page from one of the files, cascading brown rice on to the paperwork. For the next hour DuCaine worked in silence. At the end of it, he turned his screen around.

‘You wanted some answers,' he said. ‘You were just searching in the wrong place.'

‘I tried to track all the addresses, phones and credit cards of members who were known to hang out with Dalladay but came up short,' Longbright admitted.

‘Because the names you were given by the club were phonetically anglicized from the Cyrillic alphabet. The ones you couldn't find are Macedonian, Russian and Ukrainian – I haven't started checking Chinese names yet. I think these three all have criminal records in their native countries, although I can't get access to the Russian files. I figured if they were specifically requesting Dalladay's company they were doing it for a reason, and they had to have paid her.'

‘I tried that,' said Longbright. ‘There was nothing in her account.'

‘No, but there were several international bank transfers made to her via a private bank in Switzerland that according to these dates bypassed the money-laundering checks that are supposed to be in place for overseas transfers.'

‘Surely there's no way you can directly access their statements from here.'

‘Not directly, but I can get hold of the currency-exchange transactions this end because I've got her payments received. You missed them because they went into a separate account.'

‘So how much did they pay her?'

‘In total? I've got six amounts so far totalling one point eight million euros. There could be more.'

‘What was she, the most expensive call girl in the country?' Longbright whistled. ‘Where did it all go?'

‘That's the best part,' said DuCaine. ‘They briefly entered the second account and went straight back out into a business account owned by Bensaud. It looks like she was helping to finance the expansion of his Life Options franchise.'

‘You're saying that Bensaud had both Cooper and Dalladay giving him money?'

‘It seems that way. But looking suspicious isn't a crime, Janice. Sorry, I'm speaking out of turn—'

‘No, go on.'

‘Separate the facts from the speculation and all you've got is some circumstantial stuff that's not enough for a conviction. I mean, is Cassandra North implicated in the death of her own mother? Where does the responsibility lie? There are too many interpretations of what might have happened. If you try to prosecute now, the case is dead.'

‘It's the only break we've had,' said Longbright. ‘There's nothing more we can do tonight. Let's close this up and go home. Tomorrow's going to be a big day.'

Arthur Bryant knocked his pipe out against the embankment balustrade and pocketed it. He looked around. The early morning mist softened the river and its bridges, as if a fine layer of tracing paper had been laid over the scene. The traffic was light, and there were few pedestrians on this stretch of the embankment in front of Lincoln's Inn Fields. After a few minutes a taxi hove into view and pulled up in front of him.

‘You Mr Bryant?' asked the driver, reaching back to open the rear door.

‘Yes, how did you recognize me?' asked Bryant.

‘You're joking, right? Here you go, mate, some bloke at Smithfields asked me to drop this off. It weighs a bloody ton.'

‘Ten stone seven, to be exact,' said Bryant. ‘Can you get Daisy out for me?'

The driver came around and dragged the huge red nylon holdall from the rear seat of the cab. ‘You sure you ain't got a body in here?' he asked jovially, looking for a way to balance it on the pavement.

‘A body, ha ha, very good. Thank you. Clear off.' Bryant tipped the driver and waved him away, then waited for the coast to clear.

Unzipping the holdall, he peered inside. A big pink face smiled back. He removed Daisy and attempted to stand her upright. The eponymous flower was stuck behind the pig's left ear, a joke from the butcher. Her head flopped to one side but she still managed to fix him with a beady black eye.

Bryant thought he had planned everything carefully, but hit a snag. He couldn't hoist Daisy up the wall. After five minutes of useless effort he was panting with the exertion and Daisy was diagonal.

Shortly a group of Spanish students passed, and Bryant was able to enlist their help after convincing them that he was a police officer and not an escaped lunatic. As they hauled the creature upright he wondered if he should have dressed Daisy, but decided that the pull of clothing in water would make little difference to her overall speed. The students took selfies of themselves with the animal. Daisy was now sprawled across the balustrade. After one more push they managed to get all of her to the top, so that her front trotters dangled above the water.

Setting his mobile's camera to video (following instructions from Dan Banbury that had only taken three years to master) Bryant pummelled the carcass and gave it a shove into the river below. Peering over the balustrade, he was surprised to find that Daisy did not touch the embankment wall as he'd expected but fell clear, hitting the water cleanly and immediately submerging. A few moments later she surfaced head first.

The students cheered and went on their way. Bryant rolled up the bag and began walking beside the pig's drifting body, attempting to keep pace with the outgoing tide, but she was now moving too fast.

By the time he reached Blackfriars Bridge and waited for the traffic lights to change so that he could cross, he knew that he had lost her. He decided to call his partner.

‘John, how are you getting on?'

‘I'm going stir-crazy here, Arthur. I can't clean my apartment again. Are you any closer to getting me out?'

‘I'm afraid this might be a bit of a last-minute rescue,' Bryant replied. ‘I'll try not to leave it until your neck's in the noose.'

‘You sound out of breath.'

‘I'm racing a pig.'

‘What's all that noise?'

‘A cyclist just swore at me.'

‘What are you doing? You shouldn't be exerting yourself.'

‘Don't worry, the students helped me push her over the wall.'

‘You're not making any sense.'

‘Listen, you know we talked about the river providing an easy way of getting rid of a body?'

‘Did you say a
pig
?'

‘It's not. An easy way, I mean. Daisy weighed exactly the same as Marion North and I couldn't get her over the parapet by myself. I think we can rule out her daughter.'

‘Her daughter was a suspect? You just threw a pig into the river?'

‘Is there some particular reason why you feel the need to repeat everything I say?' Bryant asked. ‘She was a dead weight; it took several of us to get her over the wall and she didn't hit anything on the way down, so there's no explanation there for Marion's contusion. I'm hoping she'll wash in at Tower Beach but the river's flowing much faster than I can walk. You see, I was thinking . . .'

‘Oh no.'

‘. . . it's not such an easy way to kill someone after all, lifting a dead weight over a wall. But if the victim
wanted
to drown, you could assist them.'

‘If they wanted to drown in order to be reborn. You've already been there and discarded the idea. Are you sure you're better?'

‘I haven't felt this good since Meera ran over the Mayor's foot on her motorbike. I have a theory of sorts but the odd one out is Dimitri Gilyov, obviously. He doesn't seem like someone who would have been susceptible to the power of suggestion, so he had to be killed in a more straightforward manner, one that involved a higher level of risk. He was drowned and hidden under the bridge.'

‘Wait, why did Crooms come for him? Did Crooms kill him?'

‘I think he knew where to stash the body until he could get around to disposing of it. Of course I don't have proof of anything yet. Goodness!'

‘What's happened?'

‘I think my pig just hit the bridge. Excellent, that would explain it! I have to go. If I can get the carcass up on to the foreshore I fancy there'll be chops for supper.'

Bryant's belief that Ali had persuaded the women to kill themselves was now partially restored. But his nemesis seemed impregnable, and so much time had been lost that he feared it might not be possible to regain the lead. He was at least determined to keep the element of surprise. By 9.30 a.m. that morning, the entire PCU team was down at the centre sequestering its documents. Cassie North turned up and furiously demanded to know what was going on.

‘Your partner is an unofficial suspect in the murder of Lynsey Dalladay,' Longbright explained.

‘What do you mean, unofficial?' Cassie asked angrily, checking that none of her clients were within earshot. ‘Either he's a suspect and you have to take him into custody for questioning with a lawyer present, or he's not.'

‘There's an outfit called the Metropolitan Police, you might wish to try them if you'd prefer a milder service,' said Longbright as Colin squeezed past her with a stack of clear plastic boxes. ‘We're more your Take It Away and Smash It to Bits to See if Anything Incriminating Falls Out Brigade.'

Two smartly dressed middle-aged women stopped on their way back from a treatment room and stared at the fracas in the foyer. ‘But you're required to stay within the limits of their laws,' Cassie hissed.

‘That depends on who wrote our laws, which in this case was our Mr Bryant. The wording he settled on isn't very precise. In fact it doesn't even make sense.'

Cassie looked around wildly. Doors were opening everywhere. ‘You are going to drive a stake through the heart of this business.'

‘It's better than somebody killing off your clientele,' said Longbright. ‘I don't understand you. Don't you want your mother's murderer found?'

‘Well, of course I do but—'

‘That's the problem right there,' said Longbright. ‘There can't be any conditions to murder. Now let us do our job.'

In one of the unused treatment rooms that had been commandeered for evidence, Dan Banbury was standing in for John May, sorting through the online records they had printed out from Cassie North's computer.

‘Nothing out of the ordinary so far,' he warned. ‘The bookkeeping's almost too clean; there aren't even any admin errors or spelling mistakes.'

‘I've got an admin error,' said Meera, holding up a pair of pages. ‘The weekly schedule of events repeats itself after one month, yes? These are the courses actually taken by the clients.' She pointed to the second document. ‘I've matched them against the hours billed but the numbers don't tally.'

Banbury read over her shoulder. ‘Why not?'

‘We're a course short. Look, seven classes paid for by Neema Pradesh, six marked on the schedule, eight classes paid for by Amanda Kirkland, seven marked on the schedule. I checked the list of courses offered in the online brochure and the one that's not listed is something called “Sacred Nature: Death & Rebirth”,' Meera said. ‘Why isn't that down here?'

‘Maybe it's not held at the centre,' said Banbury. ‘They also run site-specific classes. According to the spreadsheets—'

‘For God's sake, go out there and ask someone,' said Longbright. ‘You're like kids walking down the street staring at phones instead of looking up. You—' She stuck her head out of the door and grabbed a passing staff member. ‘The sacred nature class, where is it held?'

‘I think it takes place outside,' said the startled manicurist. ‘In another building.'