What Remains (27 page)

7 August 2010

POLICE CALL FOR WITNESSES IN ‘ROBBERY GONE WRONG’

Police have appealed for witnesses to come forward after a woman died from injuries sustained in what detectives are describing as a ‘bungled robbery’.

Carla Davis, 46, was attacked after reportedly trying to fight off a thief who’d attempted to snatch her handbag. Police said CCTV footage showed Mrs Davis refusing to let go of her bag, before her attacker produced a knife and stabbed her once in the stomach. ‘Although doctors initially managed to stabilize her,’ said Detective Inspector Oliver Cowley, ‘Mrs Davis later died from her injuries. We don’t believe that her attacker intended to kill her, but clearly this is now a murder investigation.’

Mrs Davis, a writer and lecturer, lived on Chalk Farm Road and had only been back in the country twenty-four hours after spending a month with her sister in Australia. According to police, her attacker confronted her as she was leaving Stables Market …

I stopped reading.

Stables Market
.

She’d died in the same place Healy had had his heart attack.

37

As soon as I was back at the car, I grabbed my phone and searched for Stables Market. In a former life, as its name suggested, it had been a stables and horse hospital, its intricate design unravelling through a series of passages, stairwells and viaducts, alleys criss-crossing like veins, its spaces now occupied by both single-trader stalls and businesses big enough to fill the site’s converted railway arches.

I quickly found a list of four hundred proprietors at the market, a column of names I felt certain hid the reason Carla Stourcroft, and then Healy, had been drawn there. They’d gone separately, years apart, but in the end they’d suffered the same fate, Stourcroft losing her life in an apparent robbery – just outside the market walls – in August 2010; Healy suffering a heart attack three and a half years later, which he’d survived – but only physically. Seven months after that, I’d found him under the foundations at Highdale – a man alone, a man who’d given up his fight long ago. Increasingly, I was starting to wonder how much of the blame lay here.

In this list.

In these names.

What had drawn Stourcroft and Healy to the market? Was it Calvin East? Someone else? Whichever it was, the long list of antiques shops seemed like a good place to start. I worked my way through them, cross-checking the name of the business and the proprietor with my notes.
There was nothing. I moved on to antique furniture shops, businesses dealing in clothing and jewellery, in homeware, even toy shops and shoe shops, and still got nothing. When I returned to the antiques shops for a second time, to ensure I hadn’t missed anything, I was more methodical: I used the name of the business as a jumping-off point, and went searching beyond the trading name, using Google in the worst way possible, to trawl social media for the accounts of the men and women who rented space there; their Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn profiles.

But it was the same as before.

A dead end.

Copying and pasting the list of business names and proprietors into an email, I sent it to myself, so I’d have easy access to it, checked it had come through, and then backed out of my inbox. Almost immediately, the phone started buzzing in my hand again.

It was Ewan Tasker.

I remembered then that I’d messaged him pictures of the Citroën belonging to the man I’d seen earlier at the house, removing one of East’s penny arcade machines. I’d asked Task to put the car reg and the owner through the Police National Computer.

‘How you doing, Task?’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Is it too late for you?’

‘No. Your timing’s perfect. How did you get on?’

‘That Citroën,’ he said, ‘is registered to a Victor Grankin.’

‘Okay,’ I said, grabbing my notepad. ‘Who is he?’

‘Born 25 January 1967 in Pärnu, Estonia. His parents emigrated to the UK in 1974, but were killed in a car accident in April 1975, so he grew up in care. No information on him as a minor, and certainly no record –
if
there even
was one. Until 2006, police weren’t obliged to keep juvenile records on the system, so a lot of guys Grankin’s age who might have history as a minor won’t raise any flags.’

‘What about as an adult?’

‘No, he’s clean.’

‘Has he got a home address?’

‘Yeah. 3 Poland Gardens, Whitehall Woods.’

‘I don’t even know where that is.’

‘I think it’s up near the Essex county line. He’s been there since October 2010. Before that, he lived in a flat down in Beckton, near the airport. He runs a company called VG Security and Protection Ltd from his home address, but he’s the only employee. I dug around a bit for you and it looks like he hires security grunts from an agency on an ad hoc basis, as and when he needs them. Anyway, VGSP’s been going since January 2001. It’s some sort of private security firm.’

‘Okay. What about known associates?’

‘No.’

‘No black spots in his history at all?’

‘Only thing I could find was an incident four years back, when Grankin was wheeled into the station at Bethnal Green after being accused of stealing.’

‘Stealing from who?’

‘Someone called, uh … Gary Cabot.’

That stopped me. ‘Really? What did he steal?’

‘Uh … “a thirty-six-tin box of Hoberman’s”.’

‘Which is?’

‘Wood varnish.’

‘Honestly?’

‘That’s what it says down here. “Thirty-six 250ml tins”.’

‘Wood varnish?’

Task sighed. ‘Crime’s clearly not what it used to be.’

‘What else have you got there?’

‘Hold on,’ Task replied, and I could hear him muttering under his breath, as he read back the paperwork. ‘The entry’s vague because no charges were ever brought, but it looks like this Cabot guy ran some sort of tourist attraction in Wapping – “Wapping Wonderland and Museum” – and he claims that during a summer fair they had there, Grankin stole these pots of varnish. Part of the reason Cabot was so upset was probably because this Hoberman’s stuff is expensive.’

‘How expensive?’

‘It’s about forty-five quid per tin, so sixteen hundred quid in total for a box, plus the cost of transporting it down to London. It’s made by some company up in Blackpool.’

‘So the investigation never went anywhere?’

‘Cabot said he hired Grankin in 2002 to look after security at the museum, and never had any problems with him until 2010, when Cabot says he went into Grankin’s office at the museum, the day after the summer fair, and found traces of this varnish on the floor, next to Grankin’s desk. Cabot went to wherever they stored these tins of Hoberman’s at the museum – and there was a box missing.’

‘So why were no charges brought?’

‘The police looked into it, interviewed Grankin but never found the tins. They narrowed down the theft to the evening of Sunday 11 July.’

‘Wait, what was the date?’

‘Sunday 11 July 2010.’

The night the Clark family were murdered.

I felt myself tense.

‘Anyway,’ Task went on, ‘Grankin had hired four guys from a recruitment agency to help cover the fair, and the time slot of the theft – 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. – immediately put all four in the clear. Long story short: most of the museum was shut off to the general public, including where these tins of varnish were stored, and a whole bunch of eyewitnesses saw these four blokes outside at the fair, on and off, all night. The police were more interested in this Grankin guy – but he had an alibi. He’d popped out for a few hours to meet another potential client at a pub on St Katharine Docks, about seven forty-five. When interviewed, this client confirmed that they’d met in the pub that night, and footage pulled from a CCTV camera on the docks showed Grankin heading in that direction just after eight o’clock.’

‘Was he caught on film returning to the fair?’

‘No.’

‘So no one saw him come back that night?’

‘One of Cabot’s employees said he saw Grankin return at about half past ten. No footage to back that up, just the word of this guy. Uh … Calvin East.’

East
. He was Grankin’s alibi.

I grabbed my pad and flicked back to the notes I’d made from the official casework on the Clark murders. It took me a couple of moments to find it:
Murders carried out between approx. 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. Sunday 11 July 2010
.

‘Who was the client Grankin met at the pub?’

‘Uh … some guy called Paul Korman.’

‘Korman?’

‘K-O-R-M-A-N. Police interviewed him and he vouched for Grankin being with him, at the pub, between approximately eight o’clock and quarter past ten.’

I started to align my thoughts. Grankin was running security at the museum fair on Sunday 11 July. In the evening, he left to meet a client at 7.45 p.m. According to East, Grankin then returned at 10.30 p.m. At the same time, four miles south, a family were slain in a New Cross tower block.

The only person who could vouch for Grankin still being at the pub on St Katharine Docks, at 10.15 p.m., was whoever Paul Korman was. The only person who could vouch for his return to the fair was Calvin East. Police had two clean alibis from two separate people, enough to cast doubt on Gary Cabot’s suspicions about Grankin stealing that varnish. But what if both men were lying to police?

What if Grankin was actually in New Cross?

What if Korman was too?

I thought of the CCTV stills I’d studied from the night of the murders.

Grankin wasn’t the blond man, I knew that for sure. That man had been too well built, too different from Grankin’s skinny physique; he had distinctive features too: the dark eyes, the damaged nose. But Grankin could have been the driver.

Sitting, watching, waiting.

‘Is there an address for this Korman guy?’ I asked.

‘Back then?’ A pause. ‘Paul Benjamin Korman, 145 Bell Park Road. He told police he was renting it, which he was. But he hasn’t lived there since April 2011, and I can’t find another address for him anywhere.’

I felt my stomach tighten. ‘No photo or physical description, right?’

‘No.’

I thanked Task and hung up. I was starting to think I had found the man who drove the car to the family’s flat that night.

Now I was wondering whether I had found the man who murdered them too.

Therapy

4 days, 3 hours, 40 minutes
after

‘Don’t hurt them. Please don’t hurt them.’

‘You’re nothing to them.’

‘Please …’

‘You’re nothing to anyone, Healy.’

He woke.

For a moment, he was disorientated, unsure of where he was, sweat in his eyes, twisted bed-sheets pinning him down like the roots of a tree. Then, slowly, things started shifting back into focus: the bleached white of the hospital room; a saline drip swinging gently from the UV stand; nurses out in the corridor, doctors in coats, patients passing in wheelchairs. He rolled his head across the pillow, in the direction of the window. All he could see from here was a square of daylight.

There was no detail outside.

No shapes. No definition.

Just sky.

The view, these dreams, waking up soaked through and out of breath, this was his life now. In the days before his heart stopped, he’d stared at the walls of the hostel he’d been staying in, at his possessions – paltry and unimportant – in a backpack next to his bunk, and he remembered thinking he’d hit rock bottom.

But that wasn’t rock bottom.

Healy knew that now.

There was still much further to fall.

He was sent to the psychologist at lunchtime on Friday 16 May. It had been four days since he’d woken up, and a succession of staff had tried to get him to talk.

Now someone else was going to have a go.

The nurses hauled him out of bed and into a wheelchair, his bones aching, creaking, like the hull of a wooden ship. As he shuffled his toes across the foot plates of the chair, he watched them wheel the UV stand around behind him and check his drip and catheter were still attached. His chest felt bruised, his breath catching in his throat, but he didn’t say anything. Healy cared more about the fact that his gown was open, his penis on show.

‘It’s fine,’ he said, his words slurred.

One of the nurses looked up. ‘We’re just making sure.’

He didn’t say anything. Maybe he would have done once, but he couldn’t summon the energy now. The nurse covered him up, put a dressing gown on him and asked him if he was ready. He shrugged, and the nurse wheeled him out.

The psychologist was on the third floor of the hospital, in an office at the far end of a long corridor of closed doors. Hers was partly open. On a name plate halfway up, it said
CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY
. Beneath that was a small whiteboard, the remains of other names – wiped away, but not entirely – at its edges.

Written there now was
MEREDITH BLAINE
.

The room was compact, airless, and had a single vertical
window that looked out over the car park. She was seated at a small desk, with a computer on it and a desk tidy. There was an in tray, but there was no paper in it. Next to it was a red sofa, worn along the seams. The nurse wheeled Healy inside, then hauled him out of the chair and on to the sofa. Once the UV stand was in place, the nurse left the room, closing the door behind him.

‘My name’s Meredith Blaine,’ the psychologist said.

Healy just looked at her.

‘What can I call you?’ she asked.

She was in her early forties, dark-haired, small and bookish, but she was confident and unyielding. He tried staring her out, but she faced him down and eventually he had to look away, out to the car park, where the sun was shining.

‘You suffered a serious heart attack,’ she went on. ‘You were in a coma for a long time. There are unique psychological pressures associated with that, with coming out of it like you did. But there’s a medical issue too. Without you telling us who you are, we have no history, and we can’t prescribe the best treatment.’