Beautiful Death (31 page)

‘Shit, sorry, Jack. But something’s very wrong.’

He moved to sit on the edge of the bed, frowning as both desire and all signs of it wilted. ‘What’s going on?’

‘I know this is going to sound really odd but I was supposed to be having dinner with Kate tonight.’

‘Dinner? With Kate?’

‘I’m sure I just told you that, Jack,’ Geoff admonished him.

‘Get on with it!’

‘Well, she’s not here.’

‘I don’t know what to say. I’ve not kept anyone particularly late tonight. As far as I know Kate was returning from Hertford … perhaps she was held up or —’

‘No, Jack, listen to me. Her front door is ajar. Inside music is going, the heater’s on, there’s a half drunk glass of something sparkly, chops are marinating in the kitchen and potatoes were about to boil dry on the stove. What’s more, she sent me a text just ten minutes ago suggesting I get over here earlier than arranged because she was already home.’

Jack looked at his watch. It was almost 7.20.

‘What time were you meant to meet?’

‘Seven p.m. but she said come early. I’ve been waiting here since about ten to. I thought she’d dashed out to get something she’d forgotten, but I’m worried now. She would have rung, surely?’

‘Yes, she would have. I’m concerned about the door being ajar. That doesn’t sound right.’

‘And there’s a window open upstairs, although I haven’t taken a proper look. It could be nothing.’

‘No one in London leaves windows open and doors ajar,’ Jack murmured, almost to himself. ‘What are we thinking here?’

‘I don’t know, mate. I thought I ought to check in with you in case something had gone down on the case and she’d just dashed out, hadn’t had a chance to let me know. I’m a bit baffled to know what to do.’

‘I haven’t heard from Kate all day but she’s been in touch with the ops room. I knew she was on her way back from Hertford but that would have been around 5 p.m. or so. And I was told she was going directly home rather than via Westminster.’

‘What do you think?’

‘I think something’s wrong. I’ll get over there right now.’

‘Okay. I’ll try her mobile again.’

‘Give me fifteen minutes. I need to let Dr Brooks know what’s going on.’

Geoff rang off and Jack looked sheepishly at Jane who was now sitting up against some pillows, her legs tucked nimbly beneath her.

‘No explanations needed,’ she said. ‘Just go.’

‘Jane, I’m really sorry —’

‘Don’t you dare. This is the nature of your work. And perhaps it gives us both a chance to take a breath, Jack, consider our positions.’

He moved closer and cupped her face as he kissed her gently. There was nothing to say. He couldn’t tell if he was quietly glad that they’d been interrupted; all he knew was the later recriminations were likely to have been very dark indeed.

She stroked his face as he pulled away, her expression wistful, and still tinged with longing — but he sensed she felt a similar relief. ‘That call sounded urgent.’

‘It is. One of my team might be in trouble.’

‘Go then, Jack. Call me if I can help.’

He buttoned his shirt in moments, grateful that she was so understanding. ‘Jane, your help has already been invaluable.’

‘I’m glad.’ She looked as if she was going to say more, but blew him a breezy kiss instead.

Jack thought she would be an easy person to love.

Outside, a cab was quickly found and an obliging driver had him in front of Kate’s house, where Geoff awaited him, within the promised quarter of an hour.

Jack rushed towards his friend. ‘I’ve already rung Sarah who was running the ops room today,’ he explained, ‘and she confirmed again that Kate was definitely coming straight back home.’

‘I’ve looked around,’ Geoff said, as they walked into the house. ‘All the preparations for dinner were under way, as I told you; she’s not answering her mobile and her bag’s still here, her wallet inside. I don’t think there’s a woman alive who leaves the house without her bag, is there?’

Jack shook his head. He looked where Geoff pointed and picked up the bag he recognised as the one Kate had been carrying that morning. Inside he found her warrant. ‘And there’s absolutely no way she’d leave this behind. Okay, something’s definitely wrong. Can you mobilise a forensics team down here? I think we ought to check for an intruder. I’m going to ring Sarah back and find out exactly what Kate’s movements were today.’

Within twenty minutes men and women were moving around Kate’s house, dusting for fingerprints, searching for signs of intrusion. Cam had arrived and Sarah was on her way, both too worried to remain at home. Other members of the team had been contacted in case Kate had spoken with them, but it seemed no one knew anything.

Jack and Geoff were anxiously waiting to speak with the leader of the forensics team, who finally emerged into the kitchen. Jack had absently picked up a silk scarf of Kate’s that was on the kitchen bench and was twirling it around his fingers. The warmth of his hands released the familiar fragrance of her perfume. It was as though she was with them in the room and he felt a spike of anger cut through his body that anyone might try to harm her.

‘We don’t have everything in yet, DCI Hawksworth, but an educated guess suggests someone has entered the property via the upstairs window. We’ve got some size-12 footprints and can see where the lock was forced. There’s a bit of muck on the stairs matching some marks on the carpet beneath the window and also on the landing. I think we’ll find it to be common or garden dog turd.’

Jack shook his head, pushing Kate’s scarf into his pocket without registering what he was doing. ‘Why? Why would anyone want to take Kate? Her car is gone too, I think. She’s got a small hatchback but I’ve looked up and down the street and it’s nowhere to be seen. Her car keys aren’t in her bag either.’

It was Geoff who asked the most relevant question. ‘In her enquiries at Hertford, who had she most recently spoken with?’

24.

Kate thought about screaming as the boot was hauled open.

‘Don’t even think about making a noise,’ her attacker warned her. ‘You may not be able to see the syringe I have in my hand but you can either walk to our destination nice and quietly, or I can drag you there by your lovely blonde hair with you out cold. So choose.’

‘I can’t imagine screaming will help,’ she said, sounding far braver than she felt. ‘Or why bring me here, wherever we are?’

‘Well done,’ he said, all but dragging her from the boot of the estate Volvo. In the same instant she saw the glisten of the syringe in his gloved hand — he hadn’t been lying — and immediately recognised that she was back in the grounds of the Elysiu. Clinic. Except she was not being manhandled towards the main building but toward the very outbuildings her gut had told her not so long ago to inspect during daylight. How could she have been so
remiss? How could she have persuaded herself that running there in the rain wasn’t worth it? And screaming definitely wouldn’t help. Thunder had begun again and it was windy. Her cries would carry barely a few metres in all this elemental noise.

She fell back on her training and did her utmost not to panic, wondering how she might tap in a blind, blisteringly urgent text to Jack, although the last number on her phone was Geoff Benson’s. He could alert everyone and would surely already be smelling a rat when she wasn’t waiting at home to greet him. While her wrists were secured, though, she wasn’t texting anyone. Please, Geoff, she prayed, please be suspicious of my absence and start looking for me.

‘Over there,’ the huge, ginger-haired man said, pointing, towards the furthest of the buildings from the main clinic.

With her hands tied and ankles bound loosely she couldn’t contemplate making a run for it, and she certainly wanted to face Chan fully alert, not sedated. She wanted to stare him in the eye — and ask him why.

The man must have got tired of her small, hesitant steps because he suddenly clasped the top of her arm painfully and dragged her along to the door of the building. He knocked.

It took a few hideously long moments before anyone answered, during which Kate held her breath as faces she loved tore through her mind — her parents, her sister, even Dan. He was already living with someone else; someone far better suited, she’d gathered from their last painful call. He deserved to find someone to love, who loved him back and shared his life fully. Of course the face that swam
most painfully in her mind’s eye was DCI Jac. Hawksworth’s. It seemed impossible, ridiculous even, that she was about to stare death in the face and have her life taken by the cruel hands of James Chan. This was how Lily must have felt, she suddenly realised — and she probably thought of Jack, too, at this same door. Kate couldn’t even kid herself to feel brave any longer; instead she began to tremble as behind the door a shadow blocked the thin line of light glowing from within.

The door pulled inwards and she braced herself to look angrily, rather than tearily, at Chan, hating herself for her weakness.

‘Hello, Kate,’ the surgeon said, and smiled brightly. ‘I’m sorry we’re reunited in this manner.’ ‘Charles?’ she said, too shocked to do anything but gawp stupidly at him.

He nodded at the man holding her, then immediately returned his attention to Kate. ‘Come in, we have lots of work to do.’

‘Charles, wait!’ she said, stumbling as the henchman shoved her roughly through the doorway. ‘I … this is a mistake, you —’

‘No mistake, Kate, other than you poking around for just a bit too long. I heard that you were asking about these buildings and I simply couldn’t let you investigate them until I’d had a chance to … er, clean up, shall we say. You got too close, too quickly. Such a shame, because I like you, I really do. By tomorrow, this equipment will all be gone and this will once more appear to be a disused medical room, useful for storage purposes.’ He gestured around the room that held a bank of equipment, stainless steel cupboards, and a clean, shiny stainless steel table similar to the one she’d recently seen in the morgue. She remembered
how sad and tiny Lily’s naked body had looked upon it. She was destined to appear the same — perhaps not quite as tiny, but every bit as vulnerable.

Vomit rose in her throat but she fought it back. ‘Why?’ she managed to utter over her nausea.

‘Help me tie her to the chair and then you can go,’ Charles said to her kidnapper.

Kate whipped her head around furiously and began to struggle.

‘There’s no point,’ Charles cautioned her, reaching for a syringe filled with clear liquid. He tapped the glass. ‘I guess we need to help you relax, Kate.’

Before she could protest again she felt the sting of a needle in her arm.

‘There,’ he said, almost kindly. ‘That should help you. I won’t steal your kidneys — that was just to confuse the police. As for your pretty face …’

She stopped listening for a moment. Why hadn’t she resisted? Why hadn’t she fought him? Her thoughts swam and her body began to relax against her wishes.

She heard Maartens’s voice as though it was coming from the bottom of a well.

‘I’ll give her more shortly. She’s compliant now. help me lift her. Ready? Okay, one … two …’

His voice disappeared and Kate felt as though she was in a tunnel. She could still register sounds but they were muffled; no words could be made out and she wanted to sleep. The notion of closing her eyes and letting herself go further into the quiet tunnel was seductive — and yet she rallied, fighting against what she thought were fluttering eyelids.

Jack would come. Jack would find her.

* * *

Malik, Angela and Sarah arrived roughly at the same time, within ten minutes of Cam. Jack was glad of their presence; his mind was swimming with dark possibilities of what might have occurred.

They all gathered in Kate’s postage stamp of a garden, the only place free of scene-of-crime people. Benson spoke up. ‘Sorry, I know it’s freezing out here but SOCO needs the house free and they want us to stay on the grass where we can’t disturb any evidence around the side of the house.’

Sarah looked ghostly white in the murky moonlight. She touched Jack’s arm. ‘Sir, I spoke to her on her way home.’ Her voice was filled with anxiety.

‘I know, I know. There’s no sense to this. Perhaps she was followed?’

Cam shook his head. ‘Kate would know if she was being tailed, surely?’

Sarah held a finger up. ‘There was something she was churning over. She was wondering whether to go back. I’ll just phone the clinic and check.’ She moved away from the group to make the call.

Brodie looked at Sarah and the others, then t. Jack. ‘Who would snatch her, sir? I mean, whose feathers have we had a chance to ruffle so far?’

Jack shook his head as he, too, pondered this. This was the first time he’d acknowledged tha. Kate’s situation was connected to the case. ‘I went in hard at Chan. But if Chan was going to do this, he would be coming at me, not Kate. Kate hardly said a thing in our meeting.’ He turned to Sarah. ‘Anything?’

Sarah shook her head. ‘She didn’t return to the clinic this evening, not according to the security guard or reception.’

Jack frowned. ‘Right. Can you get onto Professo. Chan? Try and establish where he is. Mal, get a couple of squad cars around to his house, the hospital and down to the clinic. They are not to move in until we say so.’

They nodded, and started punching numbers into their phones as they moved away from the group.

Jack continued. ‘The only other person who might be feeling us breathing down his neck is this guy called Schlimey Katz. He’s an Hasidic Jew from the Stamford Hill community. He may have been tipped off and that’s got me baffled. No one but us really knew we were onto him.’

‘Insider?’ Geoff wondered.

‘Seems like it,’ Jack growled. ‘But who? Only myself, Mal and Sarah were aware of him.’

This gave everyone pause for thought.

‘Cam, I think we need to get that kosher café called Milo’s up at Amhurst Park checked out. It’s a haunt of a guy called Moshe Gluck who Katz does some work for. And Sarah was interviewing some of the girls who work Amhurst Parade and they use Milo’s too. One’s seen him around there, I think, hasn’t she?’ he said, as Sarah and Mal returned.

‘Milo’s?’ Sarah asked and Jack nodded. ‘Yes, sir,’ Sarah said. ‘Katz is not exactly a regular but he’s known … probably because he’s so recognisable.’

‘So, Cam if you and Mal … what’s wrong?’ Jack could see Malik digging into his pockets.

‘You said Milo’s sir, right?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘Just a tick,’ the DC begged. He began flicking through receipts in his wallet.

‘I’ll have a latte if you’re wondering,’ Cam remarked sarcastically.

Malik seemed to find what he had been looking for and moved to read one of the small receipts in the light flooding out from Kate’s small sitting room. ‘Yes! I knew it. I fucking knew it!’

They all shared a glance of bafflement.

‘Mal?’ Jack queried.

‘Sir. I think I know who our rat is.’

Jack stepped towards DC Khan. ‘Who?’

Malik shook his head in angry wonder. ‘I reckon it’s Sarju, sir, our interpreter.’

‘What? No, that can’t be —’ Jack exclaimed.

‘Hear me out, sir,’ Malik began. ‘When Sarah’s call came through about Katz, I was taking a leak. Now i. I remember correctly, when I came out he was putting something away in his pocket as he handed me my mobile and told me of Sarah’s message to meet you at Katz’s address. Now that I think about it. I believe it was his own mobile he was putting in his pocket. He had the time to make the call to Katz if he’s involved. Until that point Sarju had stuck pretty close to us all day, sir, but suddenly he was like a cat with a burning tail and eager to be gone. He gave me this note with Katz’s address; he wrote it on the back of an old receipt. A receipt from Milo’s!’

Jack stared at Malik as though he was in pain. A fresh gust of anger was stirring inside.
Sarju
. Could this be right?

‘But Kate told me about Sarju,’ he said, puzzled.

Malik shrugged. ‘He’s on the National Register for Police Service Interpreters — that’s not in question, sir, and that’s how Kate would know of him. Hell, I’ve worked with him before and he’s good. But that’s all coincidence. The interpreters
don’t work exclusively for us — they’ve just got police clearance, that’s all. They do jobs all over the place. In fact … oh shit, oh shit!’

No one said anything as Malik ran his hands through his dark wavy hair.

‘Tell me,’ Jack demanded.

Malik looked at him, haunted. ‘I seem to recall now from the last job we did together a couple of years ago that Sarju told me a lot of his work was at the hospital.’

Jack looked horrified. ‘Not the Royal Londo. Hospital? Please tell me, not Whitechapel.’

Malik swallowed. ‘From memory I think he lives around Brick Lane, sir.’

‘Fuck!’ Jack cursed, punching the air. ‘Fuck him!’

‘Easy, Hawk.’ It was Benson, placing a reassuring hand on Jack’s shoulder. ‘You need proof. As Malik says, this could all be coincidence.’

‘My gut says otherwise,’ Jack groaned.

‘Mine too,’ Cam admitted. ‘Angela didn’t trust him. She said she sensed he didn’t like that she understood Gujarati and that Malik speaks Urdu.’

‘Mal,’ Jack said, straightening, taking a deep breath.

‘Sir?’

‘You know his mobile?’

‘I do.’

‘Get the records scrutinised tonight. Pull whatever strings you have to. I’ll call the superintendent if need be. I want to know who he called after your mobile received that call from Sarah.’

‘Done, sir.’

‘Cam.’ Brodie nodded at Jack. ‘Get down to the hospital and canvass everyone you can. I want to know if they’ve ever seen Sarju with Lily Wu. Pull rank with someone over at Empress and get a photo
of Sarju sent through from NRPSI records to one of the hospital computers. He may use another name at the hospital or when he’s not working for the police. Either way I want a positive ID through facial recognition. I want to know if he can be placed anywhere near Lily on the day of her death. Once the info is in we can question him.’

‘Onto it now, sir,’ Cam said and both he an. Malik were running from the property.

Sarah’s phone rang and she moved away to answer it. Jack turned to his friend. ‘I may need your help.’

‘I wouldn’t let you out of my sight tonight. Don’t lose it now, matey.’

Jack shook his head, still dismayed. ‘He slimed his way down to the canal with us to keep an eye on things, probably. He knows exactly what little progress we’ve made, but he also found out about our breakthrough with Katz. I’m going to break the little fucker’s neck if I find out he gave them Lily.’

‘Sir?’ It was Sarah. She looked sheepish.

‘What news?’

‘A couple of squad cars are at Professor Chan’s house now. He’s on the line. He wants to speak to you.’ She handed over her phone with an apologetic shrug.

Jack took it, vaguely disappointed that Chan had been found with such ease. ‘Hawksworth,’ he said.

‘DCI Hawksworth, it’s James Chan here. I’ve got some policemen lining up outside my house and I was —’

‘Yes, Professor Chan. I sent them.’

‘I gathered. Have they come to arrest me?’

‘They await my instructions, Professor.’

‘Shall I invite them in?’

‘That’s entirely up to you.’

‘What exactly are they watching for, may I ask?’

‘Do you remember my colleague, DI Carter, who came to the hospital with me?’

‘Kate, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘And?’

‘An intruder broke into her house this evening and now she has disappeared.’

‘That’s unfortunate. But why has that anything to do with me?’

Jack was stunned by the man’s cool detatchment, even though he’d already experienced it in person. ‘She was at your clinic today in Hertford. Perhaps she asked too many questions.’

This was met by a silence that lengthened into awkwardness.

Jack, rather than Chan, felt compelled to fill the gap. ‘Did you see her?’

‘DCI Hawksworth, not only did I not see Kat. Carter today, I was not even at Elysium. I have been at the RLH unit most of the day. I visited the Wu family at around five fifteen and I returned home at about six forty.’ Jack opened his mouth to interrupt, but Chan spoke faster. ‘And before you ask, my assistant can vouch for my movements all day. I have been in theatre for much of it working on a child from the Czech Republic with a seriously damaged face. I did not leave the hospital until I drove to th. Wu family home at Hadley Wood. I spent over an hour with Lily’s parents — by all means contact them. Upon returning home I had a word with my neighbour as I was reversing my car into the garage.’