You Will Never Find Me (43 page)

‘Up until five minutes ago I could have persuaded them that the GHB had taken out your whole memory of last night.'

‘It has. I don't remember a thing.'

‘But now you've seen my face, and because of the business I'm in, I've got to tell them that. And you know what that means for you?'

 

The shops were opening as Boxer walked back from the Royal Free to his flat. He'd bought some Jiffy bags. In his flat he lifted the painting of the Italian businessman off the wall and opened the safe. He counted out thirty thousand pounds and left the remainder of the currency in the safe, relocked it. He took the handgun out of the holdall and put it in its usual place under the floorboards in the kitchen.

He sat down and wrote two letters, one to Mercy, the other to Amy. He was surprised at how emotional he became as he set down words to the woman he'd known best in his life and the daughter he'd wished he'd known better. At one point he had to sit back from the table, take a break from it.

It had been a long time since he'd consciously examined himself to find true and unsentimental words. Before, he'd only ever become aware of his inner state as a result of some subconscious welling. When he'd thought that Amy was dead, the dark hole widened inside him, incomprehensible and beyond his control. He was driven by it. And yet now it had gone. No black hole. No hurt. In fact the opposite: a fullness. These two women were a part of him. Even that last conversation with his mother had contributed to this state. His self-sacrifice was bringing him back to the world. He was puzzled by it.

 

A preliminary examination of the head and neck by the coroner late last night had shown that Chantrelle Grant had probably not died from a blow to the skull nor been strangled; he would need to see the torso to give a definitive cause of death.

Zorrita was up early with the two diving teams. He'd had the sudden inspiration during the night to search north-east of the site where they'd found the girl's head, where the A3 motorway crossed the river before heading to Valencia.

In the light rain that was falling he re-examined the road map and reasoned that the bag would have been dumped on the west side of the motorway bridge. The bag, like all the others, would be weighted, so he had the two diving teams working their way towards each other.

Within the first hour they'd found the bin liner and brought it to the surface. It was big. Zorrita knew that the killer had decided to keep the torso intact to save himself from the horrific mess of innards everywhere. It was too big for any of their boxes, so they wrapped it in a plastic sheet and took it straight to the lab.

 

Mercy had assigned three people to help George Papadopoulos work the list of estate agents he'd been given by Olga. She couldn't resist following up Boxer's text request for Alice Grant's address from last night because it was their best chance of finding Amy. She'd asked the IT department to run a check on Alice Grant from the Andover Estate and they'd come back with a full address and a messy record of petty crime, drug possession and a marriage with a renowned crack dealer called Jevaughn Grant which had resulted in a daughter, Chantrelle Taleisha, born 22 January 1991.

It was 10:30
A.M.
by the time she parked on the Andover Estate. It took some time to find Alice Grant's flat. She rang the doorbell, which did not appear to work. She hammered on the woodwork. No answer. She tried the neighbour, who came to the door in her dressing gown, bleached-blonde hair all over the place, and looked at her warrant card.

‘Detective inspector?' she said, arms crossed under her bosom. ‘A police constable was round here earlier asking after her. I told him, I know she's in there because she was having herself a little party last night. Music and stuff. And knowing her as I do, she doesn't get out of bed much before midday, so what with a bit of booze inside her—'

‘What did the constable want?'

‘I don't know. He said it was important, that he had to talk to her as soon as possible. I told him to go down to the estate office.'

‘What will they do in there?'

‘They've got her mobile number and, failing that, a master key.' A mobile phone started ringing in the flat. It rang out and started ringing again.

‘Dead to the world,' said the neighbour, eyebrows raised.

‘How many people were at this party?'

‘Just a few,' said the woman. ‘Her front door was knocked on three times. I heard a male voice and a couple of women's voices. Bit of Amy Winehouse on the sound system. That's all I can tell you.'

A young police constable came from the lifts and stairwell area, followed by an older guy with a tagged set of keys. Mercy showed her warrant card, told them her business and that they'd heard the mobile ringing in the flat.

‘We got a fax this morning from the British consulate in Madrid,' said the constable. ‘It's not good news for her, I'm afraid.'

The door was open by now. The constable went in, calling Alice Grant's name. Mercy followed.

The kitchen was empty, as was the darkened living room. The standby light glowed on the sound system. The bedroom door was ajar but dark with light only at the edges of the blackout blinds.

The policeman continued to call her name and rapped at the bedroom door. He turned on the light.

‘Oh Christ,' he said.

Mercy looked past him, saw Alice Grant lying on her back. Not far from her outflung arm was a green crack pipe. There were flecks of vomit on her face and down her front. The pallor of her face and stiffness of her body gave no doubt that Alice Grant was dead and had been for a number of hours.

‘Don't touch anything,' said Mercy, backing away, pulling the constable with her. ‘We need a homicide squad for this.'

 

Dennis and Darren Chilcott travelled on an easyJet flight out of Madrid to Gatwick, while Jaime and El Osito took British Airways business class to Heathrow. Jesús had stayed behind to clear El Osito's flat and scour the bathroom floor and the shower with hydrochloric acid before spraying bleach on everything to destroy any possibility of DNA testing.

El Osito was taken to the plane in a wheelchair. It wasn't a pain-free flight as business-class seats were no different to economy, but they were given a meal. He was in an ugly frame of mind when he arrived in London. A limousine took them to the Pestana Chelsea Bridge Hotel and Jaime arranged for a private doctor to visit with a shot of morphine. By midday El Osito was installed and asleep. Jaime fingered his mobile as he looked out over the railway tracks towards Battersea Power Station and sent a cryptic message to Vicente letting him know they'd arrived. The reply gave him a phone number to call. Soon after he left the hotel heading for a Colombian restaurant in the Elephant and Castle shopping centre.

The Chilcotts arrived at Gatwick a little after one o'clock. They took the train to Clapham Junction and from there a cab to Dennis's six-bedroomed house in Camberwell Grove. They dropped off their bags, picked up Dennis's Range Rover and drove to the warehouse on Neckinger.

‘I can't believe the shit we're going through for this guy,' said Darren. ‘Since we've met him we've spent about forty minutes discussing business and the rest of the time arm-wrestling, clubbing and now sorting out his girl problem. Are you sure Vicente's the right person to be doing business with?'

‘He's the one supplier who's really taken on the problem of UK delivery,' said Dennis. ‘You don't remember what it was like before. Going over to Mexico and buying half a ton here and half a ton there and then relying on some hare-brained public schoolboy to bring it over in Daddy's yacht. Those days are over and thank Christ for that. But now we're in the hands of an organisation there's politics and relationships to consider. Vicente needs the Colombians to supply him. They can switch to El Chapo in a blink. He has to keep them sweet. And that means you can't tell El Osito to get lost. We're just playing our part in maintaining the relationship and Vicente will remember us for that. This is how they work. Loyalty still counts for something in this world.'

 

‘So what are you going to do?' asked Amy, now that they'd calmed down, taken a break from each other. ‘You ever been in this position before?'

‘What position?' said Lomax, irritable.

‘Holding someone's life in the palm of your hand,' said Amy, who still couldn't quite believe what was happening.

Lomax looked at her. Blind and trussed, she'd become animal to him. He was distancing himself.

‘It happens,' he said. ‘Drug runners try to fuck me over. I spend my day weighing and checking purity so that they know not to take the piss. But there's always one. If the measures are out or the purity's dropped, I isolate the bastard. He gets dealt with. The boss sends a hitter round with a baseball bat. Bones get broken. Interfering fingers get crushed. You can't be seen as a soft touch in this game.'

‘So how did you run up a twenty-eight-grand debt?'

‘You know something?' said Lomax. ‘You got to think before you speak. Kids and old people are the same. No filters. Something occurs to them and comes straight out with no thought attached.'

‘But it's true, isn't it?'

‘There you go again,' said Lomax. ‘It's more important for you to be right than anything else. You have to prove your superiority. Well, here's your first lesson.'

He lashed her across the face with the back of his hand. The pain ricocheted around her head; tears sprang into her sleeping mask.

‘What did you do that for?'

‘Think about it.'

For the first time in years she thought, I want my mother.

‘I know kids like you,' said Lomax. ‘I used to be one myself until I had some sense knocked into me. Want me to talk you through it?'

Her mouth was crumpling. She was scared. She nodded.

‘Why is it a bad idea to remind people of their mistakes?' he said.

‘Because it makes them annoyed.'

‘Yes, but why's that?'

‘People don't want to be thought of as dumb.'

‘Nearly,' said Lomax. ‘You've just got to get the other half.'

‘The other half?'

‘You. You're the other half,' said Lomax. ‘What gives you the right to tell me I'm stupid when you haven't got the first idea of the circumstances. So this is your first lesson in life: you haven't got a clue. Say it.'

‘I haven't got a clue.'

‘How do you get a clue?' asked Lomax. ‘I'll tell you, because you'll never guess. You shut the fuck up. You find people who know what they're on about and listen to them. Shit. I don't know why I'm bothering.'

‘Why are you?'

He knew the truth of it and it made him sad. He'd told her already, but she hadn't listened or maybe she had and hadn't believed it. He wasn't going to tell her again. She was a danger to him. She wasn't going to come out of this alive now. But Lomax, unlike Amy, had learned a few things in his time: don't tell anyone a truth they won't be able to take.

‘I've never known anybody under the age of twenty able to listen,' said Lomax.

There was a knock at the door outside. Amy's body stiffened.

‘What's that?'

‘Your new blind date.'

T
here are only two glasses here,' said Mercy, pointing to the living-room table with a latex-gloved hand. ‘Her next-door neighbour said there was a party and she heard three voices—two female, one male. There's a glass missing.'

‘Unless one wasn't drinking,' said DI Max Hope from the homicide squad.

‘There's no alcohol in the flat. There's no Coca-Cola in the flat. There are no Coke tins in the rubbish,' said Mercy, ignoring his comment. ‘I think you'll find there's alcohol in the half-finished glass and something else.'

‘Like what?'

‘I don't think she would vomit from just smoking crack. She's ingested something with alcohol that's made her sick,' said Mercy. ‘She had the music on, her neighbour said. You might want to check the remote for fingerprints, because I don't think it was Alice who turned it off.'

The forensics were in the room now that the police photographer had left. They were nodding along with her. The remote went into an evidence bag. The liquid from the glass went into a bottle, the dregs from the other glass too. The glasses found their way into bags as well.

‘And what were you and the constable doing here?' asked Hope.

‘I was hoping to trace my daughter, Amy, who's gone missing,' said Mercy. ‘The constable was going to tell Alice that her daughter, Chantrelle, had been killed in Madrid. Amy and Chantrelle were friends. It's a long story, but I'd like you to compare any fingerprints you find in this flat to these.'

She gave Hope the card with Amy's prints on that she'd lifted from the mirror in her room the night she'd disappeared.

‘You keep your daughter's prints with you?' asked Hope.

‘It was the only thing left of hers in the house when she ran away. She'd tried to erase herself from my life. I had an old fingerprint kit with me from a course.'

‘That's not going to stand up in court.'

‘It doesn't have to. I just want to know if she was here.'

‘Somebody's wiped half this table down,' said the forensic. ‘The other half where the two glasses were hasn't been touched. You can still see the circles of Coke where the two cans were.'

‘The neighbour says the party ended abruptly just after midnight,' said Mercy. ‘The first person turned up at about eleven. Someone left and came back a few minutes later around ten past. There was another knock a little after eleven thirty.'