You Will Never Find Me (25 page)

‘How did
you
get in?' he asked.

‘The door was on the latch.'

‘Shit. I was so bladdered last night I could have done anything.'

‘How did you get home?'

‘Cab.'

‘From where?'

‘Marylebone High Street.'

‘Where were you?'

‘Sophisticats on Marylebone Lane,' he said. ‘You don't believe me?'

‘Just checking. You told me you were legless.'

‘We always end up in Sophisticats with the Norwegians.'

He whipped round suddenly and stared up the hallway.

‘Thank fuck for that,' he said. ‘At least his bike's still there.'

‘This happened before?'

‘Last year before Christmas, got home late one night, fell through the door, landed on the floor, woke up a few hours later, crawled to bed, left the door open. Jeremy's bike got stolen. I had to buy him a new one,' he said, looking at his watch again. ‘Got to go.'

‘Homicide are going to want to talk to you.'

‘Homicide?' he said, giving her his card.

‘Jeremy's dead.'

‘Because
I
might have left the door open?'

 

Boxer swung the bat. He was going to make sure he took out the man who'd murdered and dismembered his child. He missed. El Osito tipped himself backwards, clipping the table with his foot. Boxer's bat flashed overhead, wheeling him round in the process. The bat smashed into a panel of glass between the living room and the kitchen, shattering it. His swing had been so violent that the bat smacked into the wooden frame, jolting it out of his hands. He was in two minds about going for the gun on the table or the bat on the floor, but saw that the gun had been knocked off. He scrabbled after the bat. Got hold of it again. There was no time now. No time to take another swing at El Osito, no time to search for the gun, no time to get out.

Bodies and feet thundered down the corridor. Boxer lunged forward and swung the baseball bat through the narrow doorway. The end made contact with something and there was a grunt of pain. A man went down, a flash of chrome in his hand and a clattering of metal on the ceramic tiles and fragments of glass.

El Osito shouted something from behind him.

Boxer knew that his only chance to get out was in the chaos and adrenaline surge of the first rush or get cornered in the room with two armed men. He followed the trajectory of the bat into the corridor, kicking out and stamping on the flailing legs of the first man. He kept low. There was no chance of swinging the bat so he thrust it forward, fat point first. El Osito shouted again, something he couldn't decipher, but it sounded like an order.

The bat rammed into an oncoming body. Another grunt and an exhalation of air. The man fell back and Boxer felt the bat wrenched out of his hands. He stumbled over the fallen man, felt his ankle grabbed at and, as he wrenched that away, his trouser leg. He went down, lashing out madly with his free foot, his head thudding into something hard. Another shout from El Osito. A definite command.

Boxer rolled, launched himself forward and came out of the apartment barely off the ground. He scrambled across the floor, hands trailing and flailing for purchase. He bounced off the lift doors. The bat shot past him at knee height and clattered against the far wall. He fell through the stairwell door and down the first flight, grabbing at the handrail. He righted himself, thumped against the wall on the first landing, took the next flight in two leaps. He careered down the six flights of stairs and crashed out into the foyer, ricocheted through the metal-framed door, which was stuck ajar, and out into the cold night. He sprinted diagonally to his left, past the entrance to the Bar Roma, ducked down between parked cars, crossed the
avenida
and let the darkness of the park engulf him, suck him away from the garish street lighting.

He ran without looking back. He ran until his lungs burned and his legs screamed. He ran in a swerving arc as he saw the green light of a taxi flashing between the trees on the wide Avenida de los Poblados. He came out into the ghastly glow of the street lights arm raised. The taxi screeched to a halt and he threw himself across the back seat, told the driver to take him to Puerta del Sol. He lay in the back, staring at the roof pulsing in his vision, heart thumping in his throat, blood crashing between his ears, trying to calculate, with no access to numbers large enough, the extent of the trouble he was now in.

 

Mercy was outside Irina Demidova's house in Ryecroft Street having briefed the homicide squad on Jeremy Spencer's death. She'd rung the doorbell six times and there'd been no answer. On the seventh ring the neighbour's door opened and a furious guy in his fifties, bald, grey and red-faced, came out.

‘Look, she's not there, for Christ's sake,' he said. ‘How many times are you going to ring the bell before you believe it?'

‘I was thinking of taking it to the full rounded ten,' said Mercy, showing him her warrant card. ‘DI Mercy Danquah.'

‘I'm sorry, officer. I'm trying to work. I've got a book to write and I could do without the bell,' he said. ‘The pressure's enough without the bloody bell.'

‘Do you know your neighbour?'

‘I wouldn't say I know her exactly. I know her name's Irina. I say hello to her and her son, Valery. She's asked me to take deliveries for her once or twice. That's about it.'

‘When did you last speak to her?'

‘Yesterday evening she came round and I gave her a box that had been delivered in the morning.'

‘Who delivered it?'

‘Some guy in a Mercedes.'

‘What colour was the car?'

‘Black.'

Mercy tapped away at her phone and brought up a Mercedes CLS.

‘Was this the model?'

He nodded.

‘Registration number?'

‘Give me a break.'

‘I had to ask,' said Mercy. ‘What sort of books do you write?'

‘Crime novels.'

‘Would I know you?'

‘I doubt it. Nobody else seems to.'

‘Maybe you should brush up on your observation skills,' said Mercy.

‘Thanks for the tip.'

‘Glad to be of service. Tell me about the box that was delivered.'

‘It was the size of two reams of A4 and about as heavy.'

‘You're improving already,' said Mercy. ‘And you haven't seenher or her son since?'

‘Not strictly true. Yesterday was the last time I
spoke
to her. The last time I saw her was a bit later. She came out of the house with her son and got into a minicab. I didn't get the registration number of that one either.'

‘Time?'

‘Seven thirty-ish.'

‘Luggage?'

‘None.'

‘Did she come back?'

‘Could have done. I'm in bed by ten.'

‘Did you see her leave for work this morning?'

‘That's true, I didn't. Nor her son.'

‘Can I have your number?'

‘Only if you give me yours and let me call you and ask you technical questions.'

‘It's a deal,' she said. ‘You've been a big help.'

‘It didn't sound like it.'

 

Boxer lay spreadeagled on the hotel bed trying to think. The one thing he knew with absolute certainty was that El Osito would never forget his face. The way the Colombian had stared at him was like an artist clearing away the onion layers of the persona to get down to the real and memorable man. He'd looked at him as if he might learn something about himself from such a face. He knew El Osito would take his visage to the grave with him, would remember him so well that he'd be able to come looking for him in another life. And he wouldn't have to wait that long. Boxer had been stupid. He should have just done what he set out to do. Taken his revenge. Killed him for murdering his child. He had no idea why he'd started questioning him or what he'd hoped to gain from such a ridiculous interrogation.

That was when he got his first glimmer. It shunted him up and off the bed and in front of the full-length mirror. Staring at his reflection, he realised he hadn't been looking for an insight into El Osito's bizarre brain, but hoping to see inside his own. He stood, hands on either side of the mirror, as if he had to steady himself to confront his own presence. What was going on in there?

Nothing came back at him. He pushed against the wall, willing the monster inside to come clean. He shoved himself away.

It was impossible now to stay in this room, the last place in which he knew his daughter had been alive, the place where he'd got uncomfortably close to himself, the place where El Osito knew to come looking. He packed his bag, went down to reception and checked out.

The receptionist gave him a package, which had been personally delivered by Inspector Jefe Luís Zorrita late last night. He had expressly asked for Señor Boxer not to be disturbed and had written an explanatory note. Boxer asked them to call a cab to take him to the airport and read Zorrita's note.

Because of the recent cuts, the police forensic laboratory would not be able to derive DNA from the tissue taken from Amy's body for another three weeks. There was a backlog of DNA samples that stretched to November 2011 and there was nothing Zorrita could do. He knew how important it was for parents to bring their child's body home, but in this particular case, because of lack of facial ID, the authorities would not allow repatriation unless there were matching DNA samples. Zorrita had been able to persuade the lab to prepare tissue slides taken from the leg, which he enclosed in the box attached. He had also persuaded the Spanish authorities to accept a UK lab's analysis of the tissue samples matched to the mother and father's DNA to allow the release of the body.

The cab arrived to take him to Barajas Airport. He sat in the back and tapped out a message to Mercy, asking if the police forensic lab could get a DNA match done in less than three weeks. Then he remembered their last conversation on that issue and saved it as a draft, didn't send it.

He sent a text to Zorrita, thanking him for the attention he'd given to Amy's case. As they headed through the northern outskirts of the city he couldn't help but find the
inspector jefe
's total integrity admirable. He wondered how many murderers Zorrita brought to justice every year. Real justice. A justice that the victims might equate with the terror they'd suffered and whose families could weigh against the grief they'd endured. As he performed this ridiculous balancing act he realised what he was doing. Assuaging his guilt. He'd just caught sight of himself on the integral scale between good and evil, where Zorrita was at one end and El Osito at the other, and he was closer to El Osito's end than he was to Zorrita's.

The cab dropped him off at departures. He went through the tedium of check-in and security and only started thinking last night through more carefully when he had a cup of coffee in front of him in the departure lounge.

What had gone wrong at El Osito's apartment last night? Why had his ‘freaks' turned up? El Osito had split away with the girl. If he'd wanted the others involved he'd have stuck with them. So how did they get to be there? He must have had a way of alerting them, but Boxer had picked up the Colombian's mobile outside his apartment and had taped his hands behind his back as well.

Was there a panic button somewhere in the flat? If El Osito had product there and money it wasn't such a far-fetched idea. He'd been unconscious when Boxer had dragged him in. Then he remembered El Osito kneeing him in the crotch as he'd lifted him onto the chair. It hadn't been a brutal blow that caused any damage and he'd put that down to the Colombian being groggy. Maybe rather than trying to inflict pain he'd been kicking out at a button under the table.

And what had he shouted out? What was the command he roared to his freaks? The first word had been ‘
No
'. He remembered that, and the second had three syllables. He replayed the scene in his head. The swing and the miss. The shattered glass. The bat on the floor. Recovering it. The men bundling down the corridor. Driving the baseball bat through the doorway. The grunt of pain. The flash of chrome. A gun clattering across the floor. El Osito, on his back by then, must have seen it all.

Boxer connected to the Internet and went to a free translation site. On a hunch he entered, ‘Don't shoot,' and asked for the translation in South American Spanish. The answer came back: ‘
No disparar
.' That was it. El Osito was telling them not to shoot, and he hadn't done that through fear of bringing the police to his door.

El Osito wanted him for himself.

Y
our left ankle was broken into a number of pieces, which we have pinned together. Your right ankle was undamaged, but you have sustained a fracture to the lower part of the fibula,' said the surgeon. ‘Your knees? Well, both patellae have been broken: the left in two pieces, the right into four. The end of the femur and fibula on both sides sustained cracks but luckily nothing has broken off. The medial ligaments on both sides have been torn—'

El Osito, lying in a hospital bed, held up his large left hand. He didn't need to hear anything more about the damage.

‘When will I be able to start walking again?'

‘Two to three months if everything—'

‘Two
months
?'

‘Possibly three,' said the surgeon. ‘Look, you've refused to tell me what happened to you, but I can tell that these four joints have sustained severe, directed blows from something hard. This was done to you with the specific aim of causing you maximum pain and making sure that, if you did walk again, it would always be with difficulty and discomfort. You've been lucky that some of the blows weren't as accurate as others. Had they been, you'd probably have had to be in knee braces for the rest of your life and your ankles would have required multiple operations.'