David Trevellyan 03 -More Harm Than Good (31 page)

       
“I’ll go, if you like.”

       
“No. You better stay
put. What if he is there? We don’t want him taking to his heels.”

       
“Why do you keep saying
things like that?”

       
“Oh, I don’t know. What
happened with Tim Jones, the first time you met him, maybe.
Or
the kids in the hospital garden.
Or the city boys, outside the Frog and
Turtle.”

       
“I was very restrained,
with all of those.”

       
“You’re like the iron
fist in the velvet glove, aren’t you?”

       
I allowed myself a hint
of a smile.

       
“Only sometimes, it
seems like you forget to bring the glove.”

I watched Melissa saunter across the road and pick her way along the
path through Sole’s narrow front garden, and had to agree she could make
herself look pretty non-threatening. I couldn’t help wondering what would
happen if he opened the door and showed any of the smarminess he’s apparently
employed on
Amany
, though.

       
Melissa rang the
doorbell, then stepped back and started to subtly peek through the two
downstairs windows. She waited a couple of minutes,
then
rang again. There must have been no answer, because she moved to her right and
tried the gate that blocked the passage between Sole’s house and the next pair
of semis. I could see that the handle wouldn’t turn. She glanced around behind
her, then put her right foot up on the wall, pushed herself up, pivoted around,
and disappeared feet first from view.

       
She was out of sight for
just over three minutes, then the gate opened and she strolled back out, moving
calmly as if she owned the place. Two minutes after that she was behind the
wheel, next to me.

       
“It’s a very modest
place,” she said. “There’s no sign of a sudden influx of ill-gotten cash.”

       
“Maybe they don’t live
there anymore,” I said. “Maybe they’ve rented the place out.”

       
“It’s possible. We’ll
just have to see when someone gets home. At least we know the place is
occupied. There were dirty breakfast things still on the kitchen table.”

Over the next four hours and ten minutes we talked about many things.
We started with the first records we’d bought. Then the first concerts we’d
been to. The first person we’d kissed.
Our
favourite
books.
And movies. And paintings. And
buildings. And countries. For two hundred and fifty minutes we sounded like
normal members of society, with no place in our conversation for violence or
deception or death. The only subject Melissa stayed resolutely away from was
her family. And before I could change that, her phone rang.

       
“They say dead men tell
no tales,” she said, looking several shades paler. “What do you think? And what
about dead men’s houses? Or dead men’s dead mistresses?”

       
“Sole’s dead?” I said.

       
“Yes. He is.
And
so’s
Amany
Shakram
.
That was the desk sergeant at the police
station round the corner from St Joseph’s. The guy knew I still have an eye on
the place, so when two hospital employees turned up dead tonight, he had the
nouse
to call me.”

       
“Were they murdered?”

       
“Oh, yes. It sounds like
they were very much murdered.”

       
“Where?”

       
“Woolwich. In a
half-abandoned council estate about thirty-five minutes from here.”

       
“OK. So what would you
rather do?
Head to the murder scene?
Or see what we
can turn up inside the house?”

       
“It’s six of one, half a
dozen of the other.”

       
“I agree. But if I had
to pick one, I’d go for the murder scene. Recent violence is much more fertile
ground than somewhere someone’s had years to hide and conceal everything. And
judging by the outside, at least, this guy was pretty careful not to give
anything away.”

       
“That works for me,” she
said, reaching out and turning the key.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Melissa drove much more aggressively on our way out of
Morden
than she had done on our way in. The chunky SUV
wasn’t exactly nimble, but what it lacked in precision she made up for with
power as she zigzagged through Colliers Wood and Tooting and
Streatham
, before turning right onto the A205 and blazing
west through
Dulwich
and Forest Hill and
Catford
. She slowed right down when she turned left,
heading north again, and then my heart sank when I
realised
what was happening. We were nearly at our destination. Melissa was looking for
somewhere to park. I just hoped she had plenty of taxi money with her, because
one look out of the window was enough to tell you the Land Rover wasn’t likely
to be there when we came back for it.

       
“What just happened?” I
said, as Melissa pulled the Land Rover into a layby next to a burnt out bus
shelter. “Did you drive so fast that we went back in time, and somehow ended up
in Soviet era East Germany? What is this place?”

       
“Welcome to the Queen’s
Grove Estate,” she said, opening her door. “Some say it’s the closest you can
get to hell without being dead.”

       
“It looks like they’re
right,” I said, following her out on to the pavement.

       
“Last year, two guys
were stabbed to death here on a Friday night. Their bodies were left lying in
one of the gardens - and I say gardens in the loosest sense of the word - for a
whole weekend before anyone bothered to call the police.”

       
“Charming. And this is
where Sole ended up?
Amany
, too?”

       
“Yes. That’s what I’m
told.”

       
“Where, exactly? This
place is huge.”

       
“I have the name of the
block.”

       
“Well, good luck finding
it,” I said, pointing to what used to be a map of the estate. It was still
standing, attached to a pair of stout metal girders, but its surface was
entirely obliterated with dozens of layers of paint.

       
“We should be able to
find it,” she said. “Half the place has been demolished already.”

       
“Why only half?”

       
“You might not believe
it, but a handful of the residents have refused to leave. They can’t knock down
any more till they get them to move out.”

       
“Why won’t they go?”

       
“These are people who’ve
been here for years. Since it was built. It’s their home. They like it.”

       
“But just look at the
place,” I said, scanning the acres of stained concrete and smashed glass.

       
“They think there wasn’t
a problem with the buildings,” she said. “The problem was with the people. The
ones who chose to use the walkways for muggings or selling drugs.
To piss in the stairwells.
Or to set fire to the lifts, just
for fun.”

       
“I can see how that
wouldn’t add to the sense of community,” I said, thinking about the friends
who’d died, alone and away from home, protecting people who did things like
this. “Maybe we could have a nose around, later. I wouldn’t mind meeting some
of these muggers and drug dealers and
incontinents
. I
could pass on the regards from some of my absent friends.”

       
“Don’t start with that,
again,” she said. “Let’s see what we need to see, then just get out of here.”

       
I followed her through a
kind of rectangular courtyard, boxed in on all sides by the decaying husks of
square, soulless excuses for buildings. We passed through a gap in the far
corner where the whole sidewall of one of the blocks was missing, and found
ourselves at the entrance to another, identical courtyard.

       
“How many of these are
there?” I said.

       
“I don’t know,” she
said. “Thirty? Forty?”

       
“Heaven help us. We’ll
be here all night.”

       
“No, we won’t. Look,
back there.”

       
Melissa had turned
round, and was pointing to the empty space where a window had been, ten floors
above us. It was glowing with harsh, white light while all the others around it
were dark and derelict.

       
We made our way to the
nearest entrance and pulled aside the remnants of the twisted metal screen that
was supposed to have kept the place secure.

       
“Take a deep breath,”
Melissa said, and disappeared inside.

       
I followed her, and we
started up the filthy concrete stairs. Even with both hands clamped over my
mouth and nose, it was impossible to escape the stench. We climbed steadily,
and after seven flights I began to make out the sound of voices above us.

       
“
Oy
!”
a male voice said, after we’d reached the ninth landing and started on the
final set of steps. “Where do you think you’re going?”

       
We kept on climbing, and
in another moment I saw a nineteen or twenty-year-old in a police constable’s
uniform blocking our path. Melissa and didn’t say anything, but she showed him
her ID and he stepped back without question.

       
The landing stretched
away into the darkness. One side was open to the elements. The other was harsh,
textured concrete, interrupted by random panels of black tiles which extended
up from the floor, and a regular series of doorways. Only now,
the openings were covered by more metal grills
.
All of them, except for the one closest to us.
I took a
reluctant step towards it.

       
“You might not want to
go in there, sir,” the young constable said.

       
I stepped past him,
looked inside, and saw a large rectangular space. It would probably have been
the living room, when the flat was habitable. It was a decent size, and it
looked like the wide window would have made the place pleasantly bright to live
in. But it was far from pleasant now. Strips of garish, almost psychedelic
wallpaper were hanging from the walls. Clods of paint were dangling from the
ceiling. The floor was covered with broken glass and mouse droppings. It stank
even worse than the stairwell, and the two men who were already in the room had
breathing masks over their faces. They were police technicians. Both were
wearing white overalls. One was standing between a pair of tripod-mounted
floodlights, and the other was crouching down, fiddling with the portable
generator that powered them.

       
“Evening,” the standing
technician said. “You took your time. We need to get wrapped up. Where’s your
stuff?”

       
“What stuff?” Melissa
said. “Oh, I see. No. We’re not with the coroner. It looks like you’ll have to
hang on a little longer, for them. Have you been here for a while? Can you tell
us what happened?”

       
Two bodies were lying in
the middle of the floor.
A man - presumably Stewart Sole -
and
Amany
Shakran
.
Both were naked. Both had their wrists and ankles bound with plastic ties.
Sole’s hands were behind his back.
Amany’s
were in
front of her abdomen, which was grossly swollen and distended. It hadn’t been
that way, earlier when we’d spoken to her. A double ring of continuous, deep,
jagged, cuts ran round her belly, like a dark belt. Blood had seeped out from
the wounds and stained the floor on either side of her, stranding a swarm of
wriggling insects in a slowly congealing slick. They looked like some kind of
huge ants, and more were caught in the bigger, darker puddles that surrounded
the victims’ heads.

       
Both of them had been
shot, twice. I could see where the bullets had entered, but there were no
visible exit wounds. It looked like someone who knew what they were doing had
been to work with a .22. There was no sign of any shell casings, either. But four
other items were on the floor, lined up tidily next to
Amany’s
body.
Two pale-blue twenty-
litre
NATO
jerrycans
.
A
galvanised
steel funnel.
And a length of red, sticky
barbed wire, about five feet long.