You Will Never Find Me (26 page)

El Osito's big left hand came up again.

‘Two months it is,' he said. ‘Send in
mis compañeros
.'

The surgeon was used to being dismissed like this, especially by private clients who didn't have any insurance and wanted to pay in cash. He left the room, glad to get out. He nodded at the two men sitting in the corridor. He'd just treated the one with the ponytail for cracked ribs. He knew, by the look of them, the types he was dealing with, which was why he hadn't bothered offering to send the police to the victim's bedside to take a statement. They went into the room without acknowledging him.

This was the first time they'd spoken to El Osito since they'd cut him free from the chair and, in total agony, he'd ordered them to take him down in the lift and put him in the back seat of the BMW they'd arrived in. Jesús knew better than to make any fuss about this or to whinge about his own cracked ribs. He could tell from the sweat standing out on El Osito's forehead in the cold night air that this was a man in serious pain. Jesús had elected to stand guard over the apartment until someone else came to relieve him. Jaime drove El Osito to the clinic.

They stood at the end of the bed, one on either side, faces arranged to mask both dismay and concern that their boss was in such a state. They were glad to see he was no longer in pain and hoped that the self-administered morphine would take the edge off his rage.

‘So, who was he?' asked Jaime. ‘We've got everybody on full alert here, including up in Galicia and down on the
costas
. Was he Russian?'

‘The Russians haven't forgiven us,' said Jesús. ‘They still think we tipped off the police before Operation Scorpion.'

‘He was English.'

‘English?'

‘He was the guy in the bar.'

‘What guy?'

‘When I came into that bar where we first met last night, there was a foreigner standing at your table, drinking a beer,' said El Osito. ‘Him.'

Jesús and Jaime looked at each other as if they might have been in some way responsible for this.

‘The man thinks I killed his daughter, cut her up and threw her pieces into the River Manzanares.'

Silence. Jesús and Jaime barely dared to breathe. They knew this was distinctly possible. Their boss, Vicente, had warned them about El Osito and his odd habits before the Colombian had arrived in Madrid. He liked to live in downbeat neighbourhoods, he lifted superhuman weights, he used his own product and he didn't like black girls or
mulatas
, liked to beat them up.

‘You mean this English guy is some crazy person,' said Jesús, remembering that they shouldn't show too much knowledge about El Osito's foibles. They also knew about guys who used too much of their own product and its tendency to short the wiring in their paranoid brains, resulting in blowouts of uncontrollable rage.

‘You're going to do two things for me and you're going to do them fast,' said El Osito, calm with the morphine in his system. ‘You're going to talk to our friends in the police and you're going to find out the name of the girl who was killed last Saturday, or maybe Sunday, and whose body was found cut up in bags in the river. I want as much information as possible. He said the police found her passport, so I want a photocopy of that passport. If it costs money, you pay. That investigative journalist you spoke to, giving him the dirt on the Russians in Marbella, what was his name?'

‘Raul Brito.'

‘Tell him you want the favour returned. You want to know the inside story about this girl. Everything. You understand?'

‘Is that it?'

‘I said there were two things.'

‘The police and the journalist,' said Jesús.

‘That's two people but about the same thing,' said El Osito. ‘You're going to find out
why
the Englishman thought it was me who killed his daughter.'

‘How do we do that?' asked Jesús.

‘You have to use your head
. No
, Jesús, sorry, my mistake; you have to use the brain inside your head,' said El Osito. ‘The other thing the Englishman told me was that his daughter stayed in the Hotel Moderno and that she was seen leaving Kapital with me. There was a photo of her wearing a red dress. He sent it to my phone.'

‘Where's your phone?'

‘I don't know. Maybe the Englishman took it. Use the tracker software, see if you can find it. If you find it, you might find the Englishman. Why d'you need me to tell you these things?'

‘I don't . . . ' started Jesús.

‘Start using your brain, Jesús, or you'll end up with more than a few cracked ribs. You understand me?'

‘We know the people on the door at Kapital,' said Jaime, saving his brother from El Osito's attention.

‘Maybe it was the people on the door who
told
the Englishman . . . '

‘No, no, no. They don't talk to anybody. They know you're connected to us. They wouldn't tell anybody you left with any girl. They need their blow as much as the people inside.'

‘And the Charada,' said El Osito. ‘You ask around there too. Maybe Joy. You know the clubs. Somebody's got to have seen something.'

‘And if we find the guy—' started Jesús.

‘Not if.
When
you find the guy you take him to La Escuela and I will go down there and do the talking. You know what I mean, Jesús?'

They knew what La Escuela was: an old warehouse in the middle of the country, distant from any villages. The walls were still standing and about half the roof. It was called the School because it was where they took people to learn hard lessons about money, debt and interest payments, and in the event that they found these lessons too difficult to take in, they were given the hardest lesson of all.

 

‘I'm very sorry about Amy,' said Papadopoulos, brown eyes concerned under his heavy black eyebrows. ‘I couldn't believe it when the DCS told me. You must be devastated, Mercy. I mean . . . are you really O.K. to deal with this sort of crap? Wouldn't you rather—'

‘Sit at home?' said Mercy. ‘No thanks.'

She was glad that Papadopoulos wasn't one of the touchy-feely coppers who'd become more prevalent in the force in the age of New Sentimentalism. He didn't try to put an arm around her shoulder when he was somebody who'd normally salute her. He kept a respectful distance, said his piece, maintained eye contact but was still slightly awkward. Technically they were partners, but she was his superior and he the understudy, which meant that they were not equals and he shouldn't seek to comfort too much. Mercy didn't want any of that from her colleagues. She'd never liked the enfolding kind, the ones she suspected used the tragedy of others as an excuse to find out what it was like to hold someone in their arms.

‘But thanks anyway, George,' she said. ‘I'm all right. The DCS told you to report me if you thought I wasn't up to the task.'

Papadopoulos nodded.

‘As long as you don't do that we're going to be fine,' said Mercy. ‘What's going on here?'

They both looked at the door to the office building they were standing outside.

‘No answer,' said George, who was now certain that Mercy didn't know what he'd been involved with last night and wasn't sure how he should play it.

‘Still early,' said Mercy. ‘What's the matter with you, George? You're looking . . . stricken. I don't need you to look like that. No kid gloves, O.K.? Just act normal, or as normal as you can.'

‘I checked with Chris Sexton to see if they'd heard anything from the gang,' said Papadopoulos. ‘You could smell the sweat coming down the line. Thirty-six hours and still nothing.'

‘That wasn't it.'

‘What?'

‘That look,' said Mercy. ‘Don't ever hide stuff from me, George.'

‘I was on Hampstead Heath last night, looking for Charles Boxer's mother,' he said, looking across the traffic. ‘We found her unconscious with the best part of a bottle of vodka inside her and plenty of temazepam. I got her to the Royal Free as fast as I could. She's on life support.'

Mercy stared into the gutter. He was surprised to see her frowning, her lips tight over her teeth, muttering, ‘Fucking typical.'

A young blonde woman fiddling with a set of keys passed between them. She opened the door to the DLT Consultants building. She was in a grey pencil skirt and very high black patent-leather heels.

‘You with DLT?' asked Papadopoulos.

‘What's it to you?' she asked, checking him out head to toe, unimpressed.

‘We're police,' said Mercy.

They flipped out their warrant cards. The blonde shifted her blue eyes to Mercy, parted her chilli-red lips. Mercy was still furious. Typical of Esme to make a scene, for it to be all about herself, and irritating as well to be outdone on the emotional stakes. There was more to this. Esme had to have been involved in Amy's plans and now felt responsible.

The blonde turned back to Papadopoulos, who was more restful to the eye.

‘We'd like to talk to Messrs Dudko, Luski and Tipalov and Irina Demidova,' said Mercy, putting away her card.

The blonde shouldered through the door, didn't hold it for Papadopoulos, who had to lunge forward to stop it closing. She picked up the post, dropping to her haunches while Papadopoulos held the door.

‘Mr. Luski is in Tashkent, Mr. Tipalov is in Siberia.'

‘Then it looks like we'll have to settle for Mr. Dudko,' said Papadopoulos.

The blonde gave him a ‘think you're clever' look as she slowly came back up to his height.

‘He'll be here soon.'

‘And Irina Demidova?'

‘Now there we have a problem,' said the blonde. ‘I don't have the first idea who you're talking about.'

‘You don't?' said Mercy, producing a photo of Demidova. ‘We're talking about this woman?'

‘Then you'll be referring to Zlata Yankov,' said the blonde.

‘Will we?' said Mercy, intrigued now.

‘Yep, and Ms. Yankov is a law unto herself.'

‘What does that mean?'

‘It means I don't always know where she is or what she's doing.'

‘Why's that?'

‘Ask Mr. Dudko when he gets here. He hired her.'

They followed her upstairs, Papadopoulos behind the swinging hips, the taut material of the pencil skirt practically creaking under the strain of containment. She took it slowly as if she might be enjoying the induced mesmerisation behind her.

She unlocked the office, keyed in the alarm code, turned on her computer and the Nespresso machine. She put on a headset and listened to the messages. As she listened she took notes and sent emails. After five minutes she tore off the headset.

‘Coffee?' she said. ‘We don't do Greek, I'm afraid.'

‘Espresso?' said Papadopoulos.

‘With milk for me,' said Mercy.

‘Strong,' they said in unison.

‘Quite a double act,' said the blonde, assembling the coffees. ‘Apparently Ms. Yankov won't be coming in today. She left a message last night saying, “Gone to Moscow.”'

‘For ever?'

‘That would make my life a lot easier,' said the blonde. ‘Sugar?'

She handed out the coffees. Papadopoulos poured two full sachets of sugar into his cup and stirred it slowly while he thought up his next question.

‘DLT Consultants own a Mercedes CLS registration LG 61 FKR,' he said.

‘Is that you showing me your homework?' said the blonde, crossing her legs, managing not to split a seam. ‘You get five out of ten for being half right. We've also got a BMW 5 series, LG 61 PRK. Fucker and Prick we call them. They're pool cars. Whoever's in town can use them. There's a booking system which nobody bothers with because, as you've just realised, they're hardly ever in town at the same time.'

‘Do you know who was using the Mercedes CLS on the morning of Tuesday 20th March . . . early?'

She turned to the computer, opened up a file.

‘Nobody, according to the booking system, but, as I said, that doesn't mean anything.'

‘Can we assume it would either have been Mr. Dudko or Ms. Demidova, or rather Yankov?' asked Mercy. ‘Or was somebody else in town on Tuesday?'

‘I think you can assume that . . . if it was being used, that is,' said the blonde. ‘What's with the Demidova business, by the way?'

‘It's her more commonly used name,' said Mercy. ‘Do you know her son, Valery?'

‘Yes, he comes here after school sometimes.'

‘Well, his present school and the one he went to before know his mother as Irina Demidova.'

‘No shit?' said the blonde, delighted by this revelation.

‘Do the cars have drivers?' asked Papadopoulos.

‘What?' said the blonde, irritated by the distraction from the scandal. ‘They can come with or without. If we're picking up a client from the airport we'll send a driver. If Mr. Dudko is going home for the weekend he'll drive himself.'

‘Who is the driver for the CLS?'

‘We'd normally use Big Mal,' said the blonde. ‘Malcolm Lavender. A surprisingly fragrant name for a man of his size.'

She gave him a mobile number.

‘Where do you keep the cars?'

‘What's with the cars?'

‘We need to know, that's all.'

‘The underground car park in Cavendish Square. Bays seventy-four and -five.'

A dark-haired man in his mid-forties wearing a navy-blue wool coat and carrying a briefcase came in. He spoke Russian to the blonde, whom he called Olga and who replied in kind. He hung up his coat. She talked him through his messages and other business. Olga introduced Mercy and Papadopoulos, using their ranks and full names, which she'd memorised from glancing at their warrant cards. Mr. Dudko shook hands, asked for a few minutes and disappeared into his office.