The Waiting Game (17 page)

Carl Jenkins was showing a prospective tenant around an apartment in Blackheath. The apartment was in a tall, Georgian building midway between The Clarendon Hotel and The Princess of Wales pub.

When Raj pulled up outside the house, Carl was standing outside the building, smiling and shaking hands with a man wearing a pinstripe suit who didn’t look young enough to be living alone. The smile slid from Carl’s face when he saw Raj and Abby walking towards him.

‘Sorry,’ he said to the boy in the suit. ‘I’ve got to deal with this.’ Then, to Raj: ‘Something’s happened. I knew it. She hasn’t answered my calls. I thought she was still angry but it’s not that, is it?’

‘Haven’t you been at the office this morning?’ Raj asked.

Carl shook his head. ‘Monday mornings are always busy. Why? Is that where she is?’

Raj remembered what Ger said about being gentle but his head was too full of Chloe’s ruined face.

‘Chloe’s dead.’

He heard Abby’s sharp intake of breath, knew she’d have something to say later about doing it this way. That was Abby, though. She would take the boss’s line, no matter what that line was. Abby’s number one priority was herself. If the boss said jump, Abby would be the first to ask where and how high.

‘Can we go inside?’ Abby was holding Jenkins by the arm. With her free hand, she’d taken the bunch of keys he’d been holding.

‘This one?’

Jenkins nodded and Abby put the key in the lock, turned it and opened the door. Gently, she led Jenkins into the house, treating him like he was the bloody victim. Raj understood. Or thought he did. Abby hadn’t seen the body. And she didn’t know Chloe.

He remembered the first time Chloe came in. She’d been upset, but held it together well. There was a sort of fragile strength about her he’d admired. He asked about her ex, Ricky Lezard, wanting to understand their relationship, thinking it would help him work out whether she was telling the truth or not.

‘We met in a Soho bar,’ Chloe said. ‘I was a waitress.’ She
laughed. He could hear it now. A soft, breathy Marilyn Monroe laugh. ‘Just like that Human League song. You know the one?’ She started to sing. ‘
I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar, when he found me-e-e-e-e. He picked me up, he shook me up, he turned me around. He turned me into someone ne-e-e-ew.’

He’d held his hand up, unable to take anymore. He shouldn’t have done that. Should have let her sing for as long as she wanted and applauded her when she’d finished.

The apartment was on the top floor with huge windows, high ceilings and sweeping views across the heath to Lewisham. Raj thought again about the young man in the pinstripe suit and wondered what sort of job you’d need to be able to afford rent on a place like this.

‘How did it happen?’ Carl was crying. Tears rolling down his cheeks. ‘Sorry.’ He wiped his face with the sleeve of his jacket and took a deep, shaky breath. ‘Can I sit down?’

‘You said something about Chloe being angry,’ Abby said.

Carl shook his head, frowning. ‘Yeah, but… please, can you tell me what happened? She was scared.’ He looked at Raj. ‘You know how scared she was. We argued, see. I wanted her to stay with me for a few days. Cleared it with my mum and everything. I thought she’d be happy. But when I said it to her, she went off on one. Started accusing me of trying to control her and that’s not what I was doing. I told her that, but she wouldn’t listen. Said I was just like her ex and that’s when I lost it.’

‘Lost it how, exactly?’ Raj said.

‘Nah,’ Carl said. ‘Not like that. I mean, I told her it was over. Said if that’s what she thought of me, I didn’t want nothing to do with her.’

‘So you had a row,’ Raj said. He saw Abby’s face and shifted slightly, so she was out of his line of vision. ‘Can’t say I blame you for losing it. I’m not sure how I’d react if someone compared me to an animal like that. And all you were doing was trying to do what was right. What anyone would do under the circumstances.’

Carl shrugged. ‘I was stupid. Soon as I calmed down, I knew that. I called her, wanted to tell her how sorry I was, but she wouldn’t answer my calls.’

‘You went over there?’ Raj said.

‘Yeah, just to see if she was okay, you know. Didn’t like to think of her in there alone being all scared.’

This time he did look at Abby. Saw she felt it too. The sudden buzz when you knew you were on to something. The boss’s words in his head again.
We go where the evidence takes us
. Well right now the evidence was taking them straight to Carl Jenkins.

‘Is that what happened?’ Raj said. ‘You got there, all ready to give it a second chance and she started on at you again. Comparing you to her ex and making all sorts of crazy accusations. I’m right, aren’t I?’

When Carl shook his head, Raj wanted to slap him. Why drag it out? They all knew where this was leading. Raj rubbed his hands along the tops of his legs, taking slow, deep breaths.

‘Must have been a shock,’ Raj said. ‘You turn up, all good
intentioned, hoping for a happy reunion, a bit of thanks even. I mean, here you were, giving up your Sunday night for her. Driving across to Hither Green when you’d much rather be down the pub with your mates. And when you get there, all that good intention, she just throws it right back in your face. I wouldn’t blame you for losing it, mate, seriously. Putting up with that shit? Give me a break.’

And then something he hadn’t expected. Carl was on his feet and running at him, screaming at Raj to shut up. Shut his fucking face because he didn’t know what he was talking about. Other stuff too that got lost as Raj lunged, Chloe’s breathy little laugh, her out-of-tune voice and her poor, swollen face all whirling around inside his head as he shoved his fist into Carl Jenkins’s stomach and drove him to the ground. Lashing out a second time, ignoring Abby’s voice shouting at him to stop. The crunch of bone, warm blood splashing onto his hand and arm, little drops of it landing on his face as his fist connected with Carl Jenkins’s nose, breaking it a second time.

‘It must have been during the night,’ Ellen’s father said. ‘Or I suppose it could have been done yesterday afternoon when we were out. It was dark by the time we got home and I never went outside. Why, Ellen? Who would do such a thing?’

All sorts of people, unfortunately, Ellen thought. She’d already got a constable across to take a statement. For all the good it would do. The chances of catching the little bastards were slim to zero.

‘I’m so sorry, Dad.’

He patted her arm.

‘Would you stop saying that, Ellen. It’s not your fault.’

She knew that and that’s not why she was apologising. She was saying sorry for being part of a police force so understaffed
and overstretched that crimes like this barely got a look-in. The constable who’d taken her parents’ statement would feed it into the system, her parents would be assigned a crime number and after that, not much else would happen. It made her depressed and angry.

The garden was her father’s pride and joy. He spent so much time out here, planting and weeding and cleaning and doing whatever people did with their gardens. Ellen’s mother joked that her father cared more about his garden than he did about her. Now some low-life had destroyed it. For what?

Ellen was in the kitchen with her father, standing at the window looking out at the devastation. Every single flower had been pulled from the bed and ripped apart. The work of a psycho. A psycho who was clever enough not to do the same out front in case anyone saw them. Who had waited until her parents were out of the house or in bed asleep before going out there and wreaking havoc.

It didn’t make sense, but neither did so much of what she saw in her job. Something about this felt personal, though. In a way she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Not yet.

‘It’s only a garden,’ her father said. ‘I know that. So why do I feel so upset? They were my autumn blooms, Ellen. Crocuses, sternbergias and nerines. What a waste of time, hey?’

He was leaning on the worktop, back bent slightly, the way it had got in recent years. Sometimes, it was like she didn’t see him properly, she thought. Like when she looked at him, all
she saw was a younger, more vibrant version of the man he’d become. She saw him as she remembered him. Or as she wished him to be.

Not today. Now she saw the curve in his back, the shake in his hands, the sagging in the skin at his jaws. When had he become so old?

‘It’s natural to be upset,’ Ellen said. ‘Any mindless act like that, it upsets us because we don’t understand it. It’s worse because they’ve destroyed something you really care about. But you can replant it, can’t you? Get it back to the way it was?’

He shook his head, still looking out the window.

‘We’ll all help,’ she said. ‘Me and the kids. Sean and Terry, too. We’ll come over and have a planting party. Set aside a Saturday and get stuck in. What do you think?’

Her father didn’t answer. She was about to say something else, but he put his hand on her arm.

‘Shh,’ he said. ‘Not now, Ellen. I need a moment alone. Do you mind, love?’

She didn’t mind, but in her entire life she didn’t ever recall a time where he’d shut her out.

‘Please,’ he said. ‘Go and find your mother. She’s upstairs putting clothes away. Give her a hand with that. I’d be better off on my own.’

She left quietly, closing the door behind her. She knew it was natural for him to be upset and natural he might want to deal with that alone. But knowing didn’t make it any easier. As she
went upstairs to find her mother, she couldn’t help thinking it felt like the end of something.

Nathan was sweating. Streams of it running down his back, pooling in the seat of his boxer shorts, tickling his buttocks and the bit between them. The woman in front of him was firing questions at him, trying to catch him off-guard, get him to say something he shouldn’t. He was too clever for that, though.

‘Mr Collier,’ she said. ‘How long had Chloe worked at Happy Homes?’

‘Six months,’ he said. ‘Thereabouts. Maybe closer to seven. I’m not sure.’

Six months, five days to be exact. Not that he was about to tell
her
that. She had spikey blonde hair that reminded him of Chloe’s. Except Chloe’s was longer and not as thick. Chloe had fine, silky hair. Like a princess in a fairytale.

The shock of it kept hitting him. He’d start to think he was getting used to it and then –
wham!
– it whacked him again and he was right back there in the flat, kneeling on the floor and holding her little body.

He’d prayed for her, begged God to treat her kindly. Take her soul and make her happy. Even though he wasn’t sure she deserved happiness. Not the way she’d behaved this past week. The pain of it had almost been too much to bear. Or so he’d thought. It was nothing compared to this.

‘Mr Collier? Nathan?’

The detective’s voice jerked him back. Asking more questions. How they’d met, why he’d offered Chloe a job, what their relationship was like. On and on. All questions she’d already asked and he’d already answered. Telling her everything and nothing.

‘We met when she was looking to rent a flat,’ Nathan said.

The detective checked something on the piece of paper in front of her, frowning. ‘I thought you looked after the sales side of the business and your colleague…’

‘Employee,’ Nathan said. ‘Carl works
for
me, not
with
me.’

And not for much longer. Judas wasn’t a patch on Carl Jenkins when it came to betrayal. He still found it hard to believe. The way she’d opened her arms and let him… Like some sort of cheap prostitute.

He hadn’t been able to think of anything else. Picturing them together. Like that. How could she? The thought of it – Chloe and Carl – it disgusted him. Literally made him want to get sick. He tried so hard not to think about it but it filled his mind, until he couldn’t think about else. Image after filthy image. Worse at nights, when he lay in bed trying to sleep. Closing his eyes and seeing it all play out. Chloe taking her clothes off, stripping naked for Carl, lying on the bed and opening her legs. Letting him do that. Making the pure impure. Ruining her.

‘Go on.’

Focus. He couldn’t mess this up.

‘Carl was out of the office,’ he said. They were still there, in
his head, Carl on top of her, grunting as he shoved himself inside her.

‘I knew the place on Nightingale Grove had just come on the market, so I offered to drive her across.’

Standing in the doorway, framed in sunlight that turned her hair golden, like a halo. Mesmerising him. He’d never seen anything so beautiful in his entire life. He hadn’t done it to scare her. That had never been his intention.

He’d never meant to hurt her, either. The night he’d hit her, he hadn’t planned that. It was only to stop her seeing it was him. He’d only ever wanted to take care of her. Was that so hard to understand?

‘You let her have the house at a very reduced rent,’ the detective said.

His bottom was itchy. He shifted in the chair, clenching and unclenching his buttocks. It didn’t help.

‘I felt sorry for her,’ he said. ‘She told me a little about what she’d been through. Enough for me to know she needed help.’

The detective nodded. Hard face. He didn’t like her one bit. Women didn’t suit certain jobs. A detective’s job wasn’t easy. You had to be hard to do that and women weren’t naturally hard. Women were soft and pure and beautiful. It was men who ruined them. Men with their disgusting urges that they couldn’t control no matter how hard they tried.

It was difficult. He knew that as well as anyone. But just because something was difficult, it didn’t mean you shouldn’t try.
Look at Father John. Forty-three years a priest. A life of prayer and celibacy and
not
giving in to those base instincts that made us no better than any other animal.

‘So,’ the detective said.

A sudden flash of what he’d like to do to her. Blocked out almost as quickly as he thought it. Focus. He couldn’t let that side of himself take over.

‘You gave Chloe a home and a job. It makes me wonder what you expected in return, Mr Collier?’

Bitch.

Stop it! No call for that.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I expected nothing in return. You don’t understand, do you? I just wanted to help. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?’

She wouldn’t understand. He wasn’t like other men. He’d never have asked for that. Wouldn’t have wanted it for her. All he wanted, everything he’d done, it was all for her.