Dead Alone (14 page)

Mark pushed open the door of the pub in Victoria. Neville Gray was sitting in a corner. He was the assistant director of the child and family unit that covered Bethnal Green. He’d worked in social services as long as Mark had been in the police force, they went back years. They’d worked a case together in the late seventies. Mark had put a man away who had abused his daughter, his granddaughter and niece. Incest. Neville got the girls out before the police went in. It had been a good joint effort. They’d been drinking buddies ever since. After the first pint and the habitual pleasantries, Mark got down to business. Neville remembered the Raymond Giles case but was unaware Ray had got himself on television.

‘That’s a fine way to repay a con, give him a fucking chat show.’

‘The mind boggles,’ said Mark. ‘The man he shot had two kids, Clare and Frank. Both came to you, but someone over there thought it best to change their names. The paper trail on Frank dries up, there and then. Thought you could do some digging around for me. See where he went. All we have is a date of birth.’

‘Was he a protection witness against St Giles?’

‘Nope. The kid was three. Go figure.’

‘Interesting. What about the dad, Trevor? What was his game?’

Mark tore open a packet of crisps and lay them out on the table. ‘Normal bloke, by all accounts. I’ve got a DS going over their lives with a toothcomb. You know what the East End is like. Parts of it haven’t changed. Memories go way back; if he was up to no good, we’ll find out.’

‘Okay, I’ll see what I can do.’

‘Do you think it will be classified?’

‘No doubt about it. I can’t think of one good reason why those kids had to be split up or have their names changed.’

‘I know it’s a lot to ask, but will you let me know, even if it’s classified?’

Neville smiled. ‘I’ll do more than that.’

‘How?’

The grey-haired man tapped his nose with nicotine-stained fingers. ‘We have ways and means. Give me a week.’

‘Good man yourself,’ said Mark, standing up to get his round in. Old ways. Old rules. They worked for him.

The woman paid the driver of the black taxi and, close to tears, pulled two heavy suitcases out of the back. Her kids were crying. It felt like they’d been crying since they left the villa in the Canaries
to get a last-minute flight at three in the morning. The kids were tired. It wasn’t their fault. She was shattered.

‘No tip?’ asked the burly driver.

The woman burst into tears as she crouched back inside the cab to retrieve her children. The sight of their mother crying shocked them into silence. She slammed the door shut and received a throat full of black diesel fumes in response. She looked up and down the street nervously.

‘Come on, kids, quietly, not a word.’

She pulled the suitcases up the old stone steps of the house. Her husband loved this house. She hated it, it was too old, unmanageable and had too many stairs. But she didn’t live there, so what did it matter? The front door was not double-locked. This worried her more than the endless unanswered phone calls she’d made from Tenerife. She hurried the kids inside and closed the door. She was safe. No one had seen her. Only a few lights were on in the street. Most people were still asleep.

‘Where are we?’ asked her son.

‘Stay here,’ she said. ‘Don’t make a sound and don’t touch anything.’

She’d been worried about an alarm, but there didn’t seem to be one. She walked to the bottom of the narrow staircase and looked up the uneven, displaced treads.

‘Cary?’ she called quietly.

‘Is Dad here?’ asked her son.

She turned on him. ‘Shh. We don’t know who
is here. He’s Cary, remember, when we’re not at home.’

The boy frowned. He was angry and he didn’t understand. Nor did she any more.

‘Cary! It’s me, Lorna! Are you here?’

She took a step up. It creaked solemnly in the silence. She truly hated this house. It smelled funny. The kids watched her walk up the first flight of stairs, move across the landing and take the next flight. The girl started to cry.

‘Mummy!’

‘Shh, sweetheart, I’m right here.’

Lorna pushed each door to each small, pokey room. None of the fires was lit, but dusty ash sat in the grates of some of them. Cary had been here. Living like a camp Edwardian gentleman with his leather-bound books and prompt serving of tea. It was all an act, he said. The viewers liked it. It paid for the lovely new house in Leeds. But at what cost, thought Lorna, staring at her husband’s unmade bed. He hadn’t called her for three days. He hadn’t joined them in Tenerife for their secret holiday,
en famille
. So she had broken one of the golden rules and called him. But there had been no answer from his mobile or this house. She’d even called work, only to be told he was away on holiday with friends. Friends! Friends! His wife and children, you mean, she wanted to shout at the pious receptionist. It was a stupid cover story. Now she had no one to turn to.

‘Mummy!’ screamed her daughter.

‘Coming, love, coming.’

They sat in the kitchen of the empty house, their tanned faces suddenly pale and worried.

‘It smells funny in here,’ said her son.

Lorna looked at the cellar door. Cary had told her it was unsafe. The ancient foundations needed underpinning or something. She’d never been down there. She’d never wanted to.

‘It’s coming from there,’ said her son, pointing to the door. He was right. She knew he was right. But she simply couldn’t move.

Lorna wedged the door open with a pan and felt along the damp wall for a switch. She couldn’t find one. She pointed the torch down the steps and gingerly began to descend into the darkness. The smell became more pronounced the deeper she went. She had given the kids colouring books, but she could hear from the silence that they weren’t playing.

‘You all right, Mum?’ asked her son.

‘Yes sweetheart, I’m fine.’

She was far from fine. She was terrified. Had Cary fallen down the stairs? Would she find him dead, with a broken neck? She aimed the torch at the floor and millimetre by millimetre the beam of light etched into the darkness. She was afraid of what the shadows held in store for her, but the fear of what that slow-moving puddle of light might illuminate was somehow even worse. That smell did not signal good news. The stone became
wood. Boards. An open trap door. A hole in the ground. Rope. Ropes descending into the fetid pit. She knew immediately it was a septic tank; there had been one on her parents’ farm. She shone the beam of light downwards and examined the rough, warm surface of the tank’s contents. She saw the underside of a shoe. She screamed and dropped the torch. It fell into the human faeces and sank, right next to her husband.

Jessie slowed the bike down over Putney Bridge and watched the mist rise off the water and eddy like a jet engine’s exhaust. A few boats were already on the river, pulling hard in unison, fighting the river’s strength. She turned the bike on to the slip road and glided to a stop. She parked the bike, pulled her helmet off, ruffled her flattened hair and went in search of some oarsmen.

The digger had made holes all over the lawn of the smuggler’s house in Barnes; the drill had done the same in the cement to the foundations. They had found nothing. There had once been tunnels, but they had long been blocked up. Jessie had pored over sewage maps, utility maps, telecommunications maps and water board maps, but had found nothing. The secret tunnels had remained just that. She had also sent a team to follow the tunnel that emerged near where Verity’s bones had been found. It looped into a maze of underground
systems, but so far nothing that led to the house in Barnes.

She was beginning to think there was another route, a more direct but dangerous route: the river itself. Had someone left the jetty at the bottom of the garden and braved the water to float with the tide downstream, hidden by the canopy of branches along the river’s edge, to place Verity’s bones in the stinking mud? Jessie had returned to the river today to find out. The first two boathouses she came to were locked up. Securely. The third was open. Jessie peered inside; as her eyes became accustomed to the darkness, she could see the outline of sleek rowing boats floating up each wall. She ran her hand down an expensive fibreglass hull and felt its potential force ripping through the Thames. A rowing boat. A mode of transport that made no noise and left no imprint.

‘Can I help you?’

A man stood in the doorway, his legs splayed, holding a dripping hose in his left hand. Despite the cold, he wore only a pair of lycra rowing shorts and black Wellington boots. Jessie tilted her head to one side. His muscles were so well defined she began to list them in her head: triceps, biceps, pectorals, abdominal, periformas, adductors, quads … She exhaled softly, and lifted her head. The appraisal had taken less than a second.

‘Detective Inspector Driver – may I ask you some questions?’

‘Sure.’ His manner was easy. He dropped the
hose and grabbed a DURC sweatshirt from inside one of the boats cantilevered to the wall.

‘Nick Elliot,’ he said, extending a hand. Jessie shook it. Hard. He wasn’t the only one with biceps.

‘Coffee?’ She nodded. ‘You want to know if a boat has been stolen?’

‘Has one?’

‘No.’ He pierced the foil on a new jar of instant coffee with a spoon.

‘Borrowed?’

‘No. This is expensive equipment, we keep it under tight security. But by all means ask around, though I doubt anyone would use the kind of boats we have here.’

‘For what?’

‘Dumping a body.’ He looked over his shoulder at her. ‘Sugar?’

Very cute. ‘And milk, if you have it.’

He passed her a cup then stood alongside her, looking back out to the river. ‘You couldn’t safely transport something like that in one of these.’ She could smell the sweat on his skin. ‘Much more likely they’d use a Zodiac.’

‘Too noisy.’

‘Maybe. But we’re under the flight path here. Wouldn’t the sound of a two-litre engine be drowned out by the jets?’

‘Not at night.’

‘What about a punt, the type you see at regattas?’

‘Sorry, I’m not a regatta kind of girl,’ said Jessie.

Nick looked at Jessie’s leather trousers and helmet. ‘Pity …’

She waited.

‘… then you’d know that they’re wide, not like the sculling boats. They have a flat end to stand on, and the underside slopes. It would be perfect.’

‘You seem to have given this a great deal of thought.’

‘Major topic of conversation since the girls found it. It’s a small community down here, we all know each other very well.’

Two more equally well-defined men in tracksuits appeared. One tall, one shorter.

‘Not again, Nick. How many times do we have to tell you? No pulling in the boathouse.’

‘Leave those undergraduates alone. They’re supposed to be training.’

‘Least she’s human,’ said the shorter one.

They guffawed at their own comic genius.

‘Well, partly,’ said Jessie. She held out her badge. ‘I’m a police officer.’

‘A detective inspector,’ added Nick.

‘Shit. I mean, sorry.’

‘She came about the body,’ said Nick.

The boys laughed again. Jessie could only hope it was out of nervousness.

‘Are you really a copper? You don’t look like one.’ The shorter one was trying to flirt. He wasn’t as good at it as Nick.

She stepped closer to them. ‘Why, you worried
about the lump of black you’ve got stashed away in your locker?’

The shorter rower choked. The taller one shrank. Jessie turned back to Nick. ‘Is there some kind of association the boat clubs belong to that would have listings of boatyards and sales?’

‘Sure, I’ll get you the number.’

Jessie followed him through to the back.

‘Sorry about the lads.’

‘Don’t worry about it. I’ve got three brothers, all older. There isn’t a great deal I haven’t heard or seen.’ She took the piece of paper from him. ‘If you remember anything else, call this number. You’ve been really helpful, thanks.’

‘Why don’t you stay for another cup of coffee? It’s a beautiful morning.’

It was tempting. She hadn’t sat down and talked to a normal person for days. Weeks. She downed the rest of her coffee and held out the empty mug. ‘Okay.’ He was returning to the kettle when her pager buzzed. She pulled it out and read the text message:
CARY CONRAD
.
GAMES SHOW HOST
.
FOUND DEAD AT HOME
.
PLS RESPOND ASAP
. She picked up her helmet and started to run.

‘Sorry,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘Occupational hazard.’

‘Well, you know where I am if …’

The three boys watched her go.

‘Lara Croft,’ said Nick.

‘Meets the Terminator.’

‘Meets the Wicked Witch of the West.’

‘She wasn’t a witch,’ said Nick.

‘Oh yeah, then how the hell did she know about my hash?’