The Blood Whisperer (22 page)

The lift in the block wasn’t working but even if it had been Kelly would have walked. After working so many cleanups for Ray McCarron she knew that she couldn’t stand being enclosed with the stink of old urine for more than a couple of floors without a face mask.

Not that the stairwell was much better. She climbed the rancid concrete steps with care but encountered nobody lurking besides a couple of rats. They eyed her boldly and without alarm as she passed.

The flat she was after was on the seventh floor in the south-west corner which meant it was unbearably hot in the summer months. Kelly had never been there but it seemed familiar nevertheless. She’d heard all about it many times—there hadn’t been much else to talk about.

The door opened a chain’s-length to her knock and a single unknown eye in a white face peered at her warily through the gap. There was a TV or a stereo playing loudly in the background, raised voices. Kelly felt defeat wash over her.

“I’m looking for Tina—” she began, and heard commotion somewhere deep inside the flat.

The door slammed but before she could turn away it was thrust open again—fully this time—and Tina Olowayo towered in the aperture.

“Kel!” she yelped and the next moment Kelly found herself lifted off her feet and spun around, engulfed in a mammoth bear hug that threatened to crack half her ribs.

Tina was six foot in flat shoes with blue-black skin and the sinewy muscled build of an athlete. When Kelly had first met her, in a winter-cold exercise yard up in the North East, the woman had seemed a bitter angry giantess railing at the injustices of the world.

She’d been even more angry at anybody who was—or had been—remotely connected to the police and she’d sought out Kelly as a means of retribution.

Fortunately Kelly had been forewarned of this impending confrontation far enough in advance to do a little homework. So when Tina had stepped forward from the crowd cover provided by other inmates, flexing, and thrown down her challenge, Kelly was ready for her.

She’d simply stood her ground and told Tina outright that her lawyer had been a bloody fool to have missed the obvious forensics cock-up in the case that had sent Tina down.

Tina could easily have ignored this as bravado but she didn’t. Uneasily, warily, the two of them sat and talked until their hour outside was up. They talked again every chance they got. Six months later Tina’s ten-year sentence was overturned on appeal and she was free.

She left Kelly behind still serving time but Tina told her she wouldn’t forget that she owed her big time. She told Kelly that she was always welcome in the dirty little corner of Brixton Tina called home—if Kelly was ever desperate enough to venture there.

It was nice to discover, Kelly thought as she struggled for breath, that some people remembered their promises.

At last Tina put her down and whirled her inside all in the same effortless move. She was wearing a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. Her hair was shoulder length and in braids. The white kid who’d answered the door silently clipped the security chain across again and sloped past them into the kitchen.

“Hey Elvis—make yourself useful and put the kettle on,” Tina called after him. “My friend, she like tea. Try not to bugger it up.”

Elvis gave a mumbled reply that Kelly took to be assent.

Tina dropped an arm across her shoulders and steered her into the living room, pressing her down onto the squashy sofa as she muted the TV. Then she stared down at Kelly for a couple of beats, flipping at the brim of the baseball cap and trailing along the blossoming bruise across her cheekbone with one finger. Her grin fell away.

“You in trouble
deep,
girl,” she said.

“I swear to you I didn’t kill him.”

Tina put her hands on her hips. “We talking years ago?” she asked. “Or yesterday?”

“Either,” Kelly said with a bloodless smile. “Both.”

“Yeah but can you prove it?” Tina asked. “’Cause we both know—bottom line—that’s what counts. Everything else is just blowing smoke up your arse.”

“I don’t know,” Kelly said wearily. She waved at the dressing still covering the cut on her forearm. “I think I was drugged. I’ve put a sample in to a private lab so I’ll know in a couple of days. Until then—” she shrugged “—I need to stay out of the way of the police.”

“And you only just coming to me now?” Tina sounded offended.

Kelly chose something close to the truth. “I wanted to keep trouble away from you,” she said. She glanced up at the woman standing over her, caught something in her face that made her pause. “What?” she asked suddenly tense. “What have you heard?”

“That the filth is the least of your problems right now,” Tina said grimly. “There’s a price on your head, girl. A big one. And they’re not hanging the payout on getting a conviction, if you know what I mean.”

“A
price
?” Kelly repeated, shocked. “Who the hell has put a price on my head? Not the police surely?”

Tina shook her head. “Ain’t you listening?” she asked. “This is not a reward—it’s a bounty. All nice and unofficial. And somebody
much
worse than the cops. What you done to upset a honky gangster called Harry Grogan?”

DI O’Neill stuck his head round the door to the CSI’s office and rapped his knuckles lightly on the wood panel.

At his desk by the window Bob Tate glanced up from a report.

“Ah Vince. Good, good,” he said beckoning. “Come in laddie and close the door behind you.”

O’Neill was briefly reminded of Chief Superintendent Quinlan. Tate was already heading for the vending machine in the corner of the room asking over his shoulder, “Moo and two?”

“Excuse me?”

“Ah sorry—milk and a couple of sugars?”

“Is it tea or coffee?”

“Hmm, that’s a debatable point. Nominally coffee I would have said but without further analysis it’s hard to be sure.”

“In that case, yes to both.” O’Neill perched himself on the edge of the desk and waited, trying to curb his impatience until Tate returned carefully balancing a paper cup of steaming dark brown liquid. “So what do you have for me?”

“You’ll have seen the pathologist’s report on young Douet, I assume?”

O’Neill took an experimental sip and regretted it instantly on grounds of both taste and temperature. He managed to swallow before shaking his head. “I think it’s waiting on my desk. I was just on my way back to the office when I got your message.”

“Well the gist of it is much as we expected. A nasty wee tap on the back of the skull followed by a few sharp stabs for good measure. Any one of half-a-dozen of them would have been fatal given time.”

O’Neill was aware of a sudden deflation, his shoulders weighing heavy beneath his jacket. “Nothing of note then.”

Tate regarded him sternly. “Do you think I’d drag you in here just to tell you that?” he demanded.

“Oh?”

The CSI reached across and picked up a single page from the top of his in-tray. “You recall the bag of blood which we suspected might have come from Ms Jacks?”

“Of course,” O’Neill said knowing Tate liked to spin things out and trying to hurry him along.

“I called in a favour or two at the lab for a bit of queue-jumping and a comprehensive range of tests,” Tate said. He paused, allowed himself a thin smile. “You owe me a bottle of single malt for that by the way.”

“You know I’m good for it,” O’Neill said tightly. “What did they find? Was the blood from Jacks?”

Tate gave a pained frown at this prompting but nodded. “Her DNA is on file so that part was an easy match but my pal ran a full tox screen as well.”

“Thorough.” O’Neill risked another sip and found the faux-coffee had dropped to a slightly less molten level.

The CSI briefly showed his teeth. “Did I mention it was a very
good
single malt?”

“You didn’t,” O’Neill said with a resigned note in his voice. “So what do I get for it? She claimed Rohypnol or something similar last time I believe. Any sign of that?”

Tate shook his head but before O’Neill could gloat he added bluntly, “It was ketamine.”

“What?”

“Special K, Kit-Kat, Super K—call it what you will. Ketamine is mostly used as a veterinary anaesthetic but it’s popular on the club scene, so I understand.”

“Would it induce a psychotic episode?”

Tate pursed his lips. “It’s a known hallucinogenic if that’s what you mean. Might induce a certain level of amnesia depending on the dose. People take it because they reckon it can give them ‘out of body experiences’ or some such nonsense.” He drew little quotes in the air with his fingers to mark his disdain. “But in this case she had enough in her system to fell an elephant. I’m no expert but I would have said she’d be unconscious pretty quickly after administration.”

“
Self
-administration?”

“Possible I suppose. Depends how she ingested it. In pill or powder form it would take maybe half an hour to have any effect. Injecting’s a lot faster. Looking at the concentration I’d plump for the latter. It would have incapacitated her almost immediately.” He frowned. “There was no syringe found at the scene.”

“There was no Kelly Jacks either,” O’Neill said dryly. “She could have taken the works with her when she scarpered.”

Despite his years of experience Tate looked almost shocked. “You’re suggesting this wee lassie cold-bloodedly murdered someone she claimed was a friend—I heard the tape of the phone call she made to Douet’s mother by the way—and then calmly gave herself a massive dose of ketamine in an attempt to cover it up?” The rising incredulity in his voice made it a question. “For God’s sake man, why?”

“Why did she wake up next to Callum Perry’s body six years ago?” O’Neill countered. “Who knows what was going on with her back then?”

The CSI paused a moment then said reluctantly, “Her prints were all over the place I admit, although she did have a legitimate reason to be there.”

O’Neill heard the catch, raised an eyebrow. “But?”

“We found a bloody handprint on a pillar. The handprint was Jacks’s—the blood was Douet’s. And the only blood and prints on the knife belonged to the lassie too.”

O’Neill rose, put down the last of his coffee undrunk on the desktop. “Well then,” he said, “she has some kind of brainstorm—
again—
realises she can’t hope to sanitise the scene before we get there so she goes through this pantomime trying to avert suspicion. How else would she know to leave us a convenient blood sample just in case we didn’t catch up with her before it was gone from her system?”

Tate let him get halfway to the door. “The blood was unnecessary,” he said. And when the detective stopped, turned, he went on, “Ketamine would be present in hair samples—much less painful to extract. These days we can test for it months afterwards. It’s a relatively new process of course—one Ms Jacks may or may not have been aware of. Perhaps she wanted to leave us something that was harder to ignore than a few strands of hair, hmm?”

“What’s this—old CSIs sticking together?” O’Neill asked softly.

Tate made a gesture of annoyance. “It’s called giving the lassie a fair crack of the whip,” he shot back. “Besides, how did she get hold of the ketamine?”

“She’s an ex-con,” O’Neill said, his voice flat. “Trust me there’ll be any number of dodgy people she could turn to.”

Kelly woke with a jerk and found herself propped at the chipped Formica dining table in Tina’s flat. Her head was pillowed on her folded arms and she had violent pins and needles in her hands. In front of her, in hibernation, was the borrowed laptop she’d been using to run internet searches on Harry Grogan.

She straightened up cautiously, flexing her fingers. She was suddenly aware that it was daylight outside when the last time she’d checked it was still sodium-lit darkness.

Tina stuck her head round the living room door wearing jogging pants and a skinny top both drenched in sweat. She carried a half-empty bottle of water and a plastic carrier bag. Kelly realised she must have heard Tina returning from her morning run.

“You back in the land of the living?” Tina asked, taking a long swallow of the remaining water. “You was spark out when I left. Didn’t want to wake you.”

“Maybe you should have done,” Kelly said ruefully rubbing a hand round the back of her stiff neck.

Tina bounced over, dumped the carrier on the table next to the laptop. “Cheap pay-as-you-go mobile,” she said. “Got it off the market. My treat.”

“Thank you,” Kelly said, heartfelt. “For everything.”

“No sweat.” Tina nodded to the pile of obviously unused blankets and pillow on the sofa. “You been at it all night?”

“Yeah,” Kelly said. “Thanks for the loan of the computer too.”

“Don’t thank me—it’s Elvis’s and I don’t ask where
he
got it,” Tina said flashing a quick grin. “And thank the dumb fool a couple of floors down who put in wireless without no password. Half the building jumps on the back of it.”

“Don’t tell me,” Kelly said holding up a hand. “I don’t want to know.”

Tina laughed. “I’m gonna hit the shower,” she said. “Then you can tell me what you found out about this guy who’s after you.” She disappeared, thumping on the second bedroom door as she passed. “Elvis! Get your arse out of bed and down the Job Centre. You know they said they was gonna cut your benefits you idle git!”

Kelly sat back and pressed her fingers against her gritty eyes. The move reminded her painfully of the livid bruise across her cheek. Still, round here half the women went about with black eyes and she’d wanted to blend . . .

It was a far cry from waking up in Matthew Lytton’s beautiful apartment on the river. She blinked suddenly. Waking up there reminded her of falling asleep there. Of being held close and feeling so safe.

She couldn’t believe she’d trusted him. After what happened yesterday—and what she’d found out last night—that wasn’t a mistake she’d be making again.