Blood Atonement (10 page)

The silhouette of a flag, presumably a Union Jack, flapped in the wind on top of the house. The earlier rain had stopped but the air was still damp. Heather knocked on the door, inducing some manic barking from a dog inside the house.

‘Shut the fack up!’ a gruff voice barked back. The light in the hall went on and through the frosted glass a large figure in a white T-shirt approached, unlocked several bolts and opened the door on a safety chain. The face that peered through was unshaven, handsome and sullen, the features carved and lean. There was no pretence at friendliness.

He knew them instantly as police.

‘What?’ The voice oozed contempt.

‘Martin Stamey?’

‘Who wants to know?’

Foster flashed his ID, then introduced himself and Heather. The dog barked riotously as if on cue. A female voice told it to shut up and a door slammed, muffling the dog’s excitement.

‘The Met? What you doing out here?’ Stamey said.

Harris would ask the same, Foster thought. Sod the action plan. ‘It’s in relation to a current investigation,’ he replied. ‘We’d like a word. Any chance we can come in?’

The man smiled bitterly. ‘Yeah, cos I’m always inviting police into my house, aren’t I? Tell me what it’s all about and then we’ll talk about whether you can come inside.’

‘It’s about Leonie,’ Heather said.

The man’s face froze. ‘You found her, have you?’ He sounded eager, expectant.

‘No, but we have a case that shares some similarities with hers,’ Foster explained. He felt a few spots of rain.

‘Look, we’ve told you what it’s about. Can we come in?’

Stamey looked at them for a few seconds impassively, then drew back and unhooked the chain. ‘Come on,’ he said, walking off in front of them. He was wearing blue jeans and an incongruous pair of navy-blue carpet slippers.

Foster and Heather followed him down a long hall.

‘Nice place,’ he lied.

‘Yeah, well, it’s home,’ Stamey said, failing to conceal his pride.

‘What’s your game again?’ Foster asked as they arrived at a large sitting room. Everything in it was cream - the leather sofas, the walls, the thick shagpile carpet and the rug by the cream fireplace, even the lampshade. With the overhead light, the cumulative effect was so bright Foster almost felt his retinas detach.

The only colour emanated from a huge wall-mounted plasma TV screen showing a loud action film. A boy and a girl, who Foster guessed to be around ten or eleven years old, sat entranced.

‘Fuck off upstairs and watch this shit in your rooms,’

Stamey said to them, picking up a remote control from the coffee table and turning it off.

The two kids trudged away.

‘What was your question again?’ he said to Foster, irritably.

Foster could see the contempt wasn’t reserved for him. It was a default setting. ‘I asked what you did for a living.’

‘Carpenter,’ Stamey answered, and sniffed. ‘Some other stuff, too.’

I bet, Foster thought. Houses as big as this weren’t bought on the wages of your average chippy.

A slim, attractive woman in her mid-thirties with blonde hair appeared in the doorway, waiting for the children to sidle past her before she spoke.

‘Who are these two, Mart?’ she asked, saving her most unsavoury look for Heather.

‘Detectives,’ he said, sitting on one of the sofas and spreading his legs and arms wide. ‘They say they’re here about Leonie.’

‘Have they found her?’ she asked, contempt giving way to agitation.

Heather shook her head. ‘I’m afraid not.’

Foster sat down on the other sofa, trying to suppress a wince. More than an hour in his car had seized him up, and his leg and collarbone were beginning to ache, as they always did at the end of the day. He was a long way from his red wine and painkillers.

‘Can I get you a tea or a coffee?’ the woman asked.

Both Foster and Heather shook their heads.

‘A glass of water would be nice, though,’ Heather said.

Foster marvelled at how much water she drank. Apart from wine, it was the only thing he saw her drink.

‘Grab me a can of lager, sweetheart,’ Stamey said, and the woman Foster presumed to be the mother of his children padded away. Stamey turned his saturnine face on them but said nothing. Foster had taken an instant dislike to him but reined it in. He sat forward.

‘I’ll be up front with you, Mr Stamey. We have nothing new about Leonie’s whereabouts. But in the course of our investigation into the recent disappearance of a fourteenyear-old girl in London we noticed a few similarities.’

‘Is this the one that’s been in the news and plastered all over the papers?’

Foster nodded. ‘It is, yes.’

A look of bewilderment spread across Stamey’s face.

‘Her mother was offed, wasn’t she? Nasty bit of business.

Some fucking nonce, I expect. You lot are too lenient on them. Let them out in the community and all that shit.

Best thing to do is put them down like dogs. If you’re gonna let ‘em go, then you wanna cut the balls off ‘em first.’ He sniffed once more.

Foster didn’t like being harangued on law and order by someone he suspected to be a small-time crook but he let it slide.

‘I don’t see the connection with Leonie,’ Stamey added.

‘Hang on, are you saying that Leonie’s mum was murdered?’

‘I

was wondering if we could go through the details of your niece’s disappearance one more time?’ Foster asked.

‘Details? I don’t know what you mean. As far as we knew, her mother OD’d on smack. Stupid bitch. She’d had all sorts of problems with it. The place was a fucking dump. She was opening her legs to anything with a cock.

She took a hit one night and that was it. Leonie saw the writing on the wall. Her and Gary were going to be taken into care. I was … away at the time, so I couldn’t take her in. My brother Davey was working away and he don’t have a clue anyway, so he’d have been no good. My other brother, Christopher, passed away a few years back so there was nowhere for the poor little mite to go. So she had it away on her toes and I don’t blame her. Gary’s gone into care and he’s up to no good all the fucking time from what little we hear.’

‘How old is Gary now?’ Heather asked.

‘He’d be about eleven. The same number of foster families he’s been through probably.’

‘You’re sure Leonie ran away?’

‘Well, I was until you showed up. And so were your colleagues when they looked into it. Which wasn’t very much.’

‘No one’s heard anything from her?’

‘Not a peep.’

‘Any idea where she might’ve gone?’

‘London, I presume. She was a bright girl - brighter than her dozy fucking muppet of a mother, at least. But I can’t imagine what she’s got herself involved with on the streets of London. Actually, I can, but I don’t wanna.’

‘There’s no family there she could have gone to?’

‘There’s no real family beyond us, to be honest. You probably know that my brother’s doing time, and I’ve told you the other one’s dead. His wife has shacked up with a new feller. That’s about it really. We’re hardly the fucking Waltons.’

His wife came in with the beer. He leaned forward and sprung it open slowly before taking a hearty swig. ‘These two are here because they reckon that Leonie’s disappearance might’ve something to do with that girl who’s gone missing, the one who’s been all over the news.’

‘The girl whose mum was done in?’ his wife replied.

‘Yeah. Can’t see why. Gilly was a smack addict and she smacked herself up too much and died. Don’t think someone topped her. Can’t see who would want to, for a start.’

‘We’re looking for a girl who went missing on her fourteenth birthday, like Leonie,’ Foster interrupted. ‘Of course it might be, and probably is, just a coincidence, but we felt it was worth seeing if there were any more similarities.

All we have on file are the bare facts of Leonie’s case and we want to know more. Didn’t she have a father?’

Stamey snorted derisively. ‘Take your pick from half of Essex. Let’s just say my sister was not exactly stingy with her favours.’

‘Didn’t Leonie and Gary share the same father?’ Heather asked.

The snort turned to a whooping laugh. His wife joined in. ‘Did you hear that, love?’ he said, shaking his head.

‘She asked if Gary and Leonie had the same dad?’ The mirth continued for some time.

Foster looked at Heather, who was wearing a fixed grin.

Finally Stamey calmed down. He looked at Heather and raised a hand. ‘Sorry, sweetheart. Really sorry. But you’ll realize why that tickled me so much when I tell you that Gary is a half-caste. His dad’s a nigger.’

Foster felt Heather stiffen at his side at the mention of the word. He decided to step in before she arrested him for discrimination.

‘Martin,’ he said, looking Stamey in the eye. ‘We’d appreciate it if you watched what you said in front of us, please.’

‘Whatever,’ Stamey said. He took another slug from the can, watching Heather with amusement.

She was still rigid beside Foster. Time to start wrapping this up, he thought.

‘Were Leonie and her mum close?’

‘Beats me,’ Stamey said.

‘Not really,’ his wife added. ‘Like Mart said, Gillian had a lot of problems with the drugs and everything. She was off her brain half the time. Leonie was one of them girls who had to grow up quick. She had an old head on her, that girl. She basically brought Gary up herself. He was a little bit wild, even back then. Weren’t his fault. He had no dad and his mum was a junkie. What chance did the poor little kid have? It always amazed me that Leonie turned out quite so well. And I don’t blame her for running away, even if meant leaving Gary. Imagine finding your mum dead and thinking you might have to go into care.’

‘She found her mother?’

‘We think so,’ Mrs Stamey said. ‘She went missing the same day. She got back from school because her bag was at home. Her mum was dead in the bed. We reckon she just went downstairs, opened the door and ran.’

Foster and Heather shared a quick glance. He knew she was thinking the same as him.

Where was Gary?’ Heather asked.

‘He was at some behavioural clinic or class or something.

He was the one who got back and raised the alarm.

Well, he got back and watched TV for about half an hour and then started screaming at his mum to get up and make his tea. He didn’t understand. He went and got the neighbour and she called the police.’

Foster stood up. ‘Well, thanks for your time. You’ve been a great help. If we find anything else relating to Leonie, we’ll be sure to get in touch.’

Stamey nodded, a glassy look in his eye. Foster guessed the can of lager he was just emptying might not have been his first. His wife showed them to the door.

‘Where’s Gary now?’ he asked as she opened the door.

‘Last we heard he was in a Council care home,’ she said.

‘Good luck finding that girl,’ she added, and went back inside.

They stepped into the pouring rain and headed for Foster’s car. Once inside he could tell she was still seething.

‘What

do you think now? Black sheep or scumbag?’

Foster said with a smile.

‘What a wanker. I don’t know how some women do it,’

she said, echoing Foster’s thoughts.

‘What do you reckon?’ he asked.

‘Too many similarities. The mother dying on the same day as the daughter going missing. The fact it was her fourteenth birthday … It could still be coincidence, I suppose. And there’s nothing else to link them, other than circumstance and a DNA sample that could be shared with another half a million people. Do you think our charming Mart had anything to do with it?’

‘Who knows,’ Foster said. ‘We’ll come back to him, though.’ He started the engine. ‘Let’s poke around a bit more and see what comes up.’ He put the car in gear and slowly pulled away. ‘But first we need to find sweet little Gary’

Horton and Sarah Rowley appeared to have been erased from the pages of history. At times when Nigel had lost the trail on other cases, he found sleeping on it helped; when he woke up, an idea of how to break the impasse was often there, fully formed. But that morning he remained stymied.

He was unsure what to do with his day. A heap of casework was piling up, but it palled against the prospect of helping Foster and Heather. Then there was the matter of his nascent television career. Since his humiliation in Kensal Green cemetery earlier that week he had heard nothing. He could only think that the programme-makers had seen his screen test and, after they’d finished laughing, started tracking down a presenter with a modicum of aptitude. He should be pleased - after all, he rarely watched television himself, being more of a radio man. Yet part of him was thrilled at the prospect of appearing on television and where it may lead. He imagined himself being recognized in the street. Worse, he imagined himself enjoying being recognized in the street. He, Nigel Barnes, a man who struggled to get recognized in his own sitting room. He fired up his computer and checked his e-mails.

Nothing from the producer.

He went to the kitchen, still in his striped dressing gown and pyjamas. A low pale early winter sun glancing through the window made him squint. He ate toast most mornings and saw no reason to change his routine. He carved the last slices from the brittle, stale sourdough loaf, made a mental note to get to the delicatessen to purchase another, and placed them in his eccentric old toaster. He flicked the kettle on and gazed out of the window, wondering when the house opposite, wreathed in scaffolding, would ever be finished. It had to be a year now and he was bored by the sound of poorly attached tarpaulin flapping in the autumn wind. What were they doing … ?

His thoughts were interrupted by the scent of burning.

When he turned, he could see his toaster billowing plumes of black smoke, forcing him to lunge over and manually evict the contents. Being averse to any form of waste, he grabbed a knife and flipped open his bin, attempting to render the pieces edible by scraping off the bits that were burned beyond repair. It soon became clear they were beyond saving. Nigel cursed to himself. Must get a new toaster, he thought. Or get the grill in the oven fixed so he could make proper toast. Of course Agas made the best toast, but they were hardly compatible with cramped London kitchens. Whatever, there was no point spending his hard-earned cash on freshly baked bread while his toaster was so temperamental. The two blackened shards in his hand could have been two stale pieces of sliced white. Only the gourmet equivalent of a DNA test could have revealed their true identity. He laughed to himself. Then stopped.