‘What do you mean?’ Neeraj was still staring morosely out of the car window.
‘Why does Kane talk like Little Lord Fauntleroy?’
There was a momentary pause, during which Neeraj presumably tried to work out what Denning was getting at. ‘Oh yeah, you mean, why’s he sound like a posh boy?’ He gave a dry laugh. ‘His old man sent him to St Joseph’s, you know: the posh school for rich bastards in Islington. But at the end of the day, you can’t polish a turd.’ Neeraj laughed at his own joke.
Denning knew of St Joseph’s: an eight-grand-a-term repository where parents with large wallets sent their offspring to be cushioned from the wilder realities of life. But then his own parents had paid for him and his brother to attend private school, so who was he to judge?
They’d arrived back at the station now, the sun beating down on them as soon as they stepped out the car.
The MIT suite was buzzing with life when they entered. DC Bell looked up from her desk when she saw Denning. She raised her hand in acknowledgement. The Metropolitan Police's Homicide and Serious Crime Command consisted of eighteen Major Investigation Teams, known as MITs. Their team was based in Stoke Newington and covered east London.
Denning headed over to his desk at the far end of the room, next to the water cooler.
Unlike his colleagues’, his desk was clutter free. The only personal touch was a silver-framed photograph of his wife, Sarah, which she’d given to him on his promotion to inspector just over a month ago. Otherwise, he liked to keep his personal life private. He glanced at the photo, which had been taken during their honeymoon in Mauritius. That was four years ago, and he couldn’t believe so much had happened in the past four years. Here he was, now leading a murder inquiry with a team of detectives under him who would be looking to him for leadership and guidance, and a hatchet-faced DCI above, who would be waiting for him to fail…
‘Boss?’
He looked up to see DC Bell standing next to him; a piece of A4 paper in her hand.
‘Sorry, Trudi. What is it?’
She perched on the end of his desk. He could smell her perfume; something familiar, which he couldn’t quite name…
‘I’ve made a list of all Leanne’s friends and work colleagues. I’ve put a tick next to the ones I’ve spoken to. I’ve left messages with the others to call me back ASAP, but I expect it’ll be tomorrow before I hear from them now.’
Denning glanced at the clock on the wall – it had gone four; unless anything major came in now, the team would start winding down for the day. From tomorrow onwards the pace would accelerate significantly. Before they knew it, they be eating, drinking and dreaming about this case.
‘Ryan Cormack and Dave Kinsella have spoken to Leanne’s neighbours, but I don’t think they got much: usual wall-of-silence stuff.’
It sounded depressingly familiar. Everyone wanted a police force who could provide justice: safe streets and bad people locked away to protect the good and the innocent. But when it came to playing their part, the great British public was more than willing to turn a blind eye whenever it suited them.
‘Thanks for this.’ He took the paper and placed it on his desk, briefly scanning the list of names. Trudi was about to return to her own desk when he suddenly asked, ‘Can you do a PNC check on a Daryl Bailey? Specifically, see if there’s anything about a sexual assault claim dating back a few years.’
‘Daryl Bailey?’ Her voice was half an octave higher than normal. ‘The footballer?’
Denning smiled at her. ‘The very same.’
She headed back to her desk. He was sure he’d seen DS Dave Kinsella’s head twitch at the mention of Bailey’s name.
Denning headed over to Kinsella’s desk. It was messy with Post-it notes and scraps of paper littering the desktop. Kinsella had several photos of his children on his desk. Denning knew he was divorced, and probably only saw his kids every other weekend. He sympathised with his plight.
‘Dave. How’s it going?’
Kinsella was pushing fifty and balding, with a bushy moustache and a beer gut that would see him fail any routine medical. Despite his length of service, he had neither the ambition nor the talent to reach beyond the rank of Detective Sergeant. Kinsella was old school; the kind of diehard detective that was all but extinct in the Met these days. The face of British policing was changing and a dinosaur like Dave Kinsella just didn’t belong any more.
Kinsella nodded an acknowledgement. ‘Not bad, boss. How did you get on with that little turd Gregor Kane?’ There was sweat lining the bottom of Kinsella’s thick moustache. Christ thought Denning, he even looks like a seventies throwback…
‘He’s an arrogant little shit, and he’s probably got motive. But he says he’s got an alibi.’ He stood next to Kinsella’s desk, trying to look relaxed and friendly. Denning tried hard to get along with most people, but with Dave Kinsella, it always felt like he was making an effort. ‘You’ve been around a while, Dave. What’s your take on Kane?’
Kinsella sucked air in over his teeth and sat back in his seat. A faint smell of BO came off him. ‘You’ve got the arrogant little shit bit right. He’s been arrested more times than I’ve had hot dinners, but his old man gets him off the hook every time. But murder… It’s a bit of a leap, even for him.’
‘What about his old man, Alfie Kane? Is he capable?’
Kinsella looked blank for a moment. ‘Probably. But this isn’t his style. If he wanted someone out the way, we’d be looking at a missing person inquiry, not a murder. And why would Alfie Kane kill a kid like Leanne Wyatt?’
‘To protect his son, maybe? If she had something on Gregor, threatened to grass him up? Or maybe he was worried she might get her claws into him, saddle his precious boy with a child when he’s little more than a kid himself.’ He threw Kinsella a half smile. ‘Look, it’s all speculation at this stage. Let’s keep an open mind.’ He changed tack. ‘I understand you and DC Cormack had a chat with the neighbours. Anything useful?’
‘Nothing much. An old bag on the next landing said she looked after Leanne’s kid from time to time, but other than that – nada.’
‘Does the “old bag” come with a name?’
Kinsella shuffled through some papers on his desk and unearthed a ringed A5 notepad containing illegible scrawl. ‘A Mrs Nelson. Didn’t give her first name. Lives at 22 Tressell House. Seemed friendly enough, offered us tea and cake. Probably belongs to the generation that still respects the police.’
‘There has to be some of them still out there,’ Denning said with a wry grin. He glanced over at Ryan Cormack’s desk: he was typing away at his computer, probably writing up his notes from today and then putting them onto the shared drive so the whole team could access them. ‘Go on.’
‘She had no idea if Leanne had a boyfriend, but she did say she’d seen Leanne being dropped off by some bloke in a posh car a few times. Didn’t know the make of the car, and couldn’t give me a description of the driver, but she seemed to think he was an older man. Older than Leanne, I mean.’
‘Anything else?’
Kinsella stared blankly at his notes, probably trying to decipher his scribbles. ‘Said she and Leanne hardly spoke, just “please” and “thank you” whenever she dropped the brat off and then picked him up again. ’Fraid that’s all, boss.’
Denning nodded his thanks to Kinsella then returned to his desk. Trudi Bell had pinged an email across to him: **Nothing on Daryl Bailey – clean as a whistle! **
Denning sighed. Things weren’t getting off to a brilliant start. As soon as the body had been confirmed as being Leanne Wyatt, they would go after Kane. They would go after him hard and fast.
Chapter Seven
Jon Cavanagh was lying half asleep on an ancient chaise longue in the cluttered living room at the back of the north London terraced house they shared when Molly Fisher returned home. Radio Four was chattering noisily in the background, and a tangy whiff of dope hung pungent in the air.
He raised a l
azy hand when she entered the room. The wooden floor was littered with folders and papers and dozens of out-of-date copies of the NME. A couple of squashed beer cans poked out the top of the overflowing waste paper basket like crushed tin corpses. Despite the sunny evening, the velvet curtains were drawn over the French windows. Thin shafts of light poked thought the gaps, bathing the room in a muted amber glow.
‘Back already? I didn’t realise it was so late.’
She kissed him on the forehead and sat on the edge of the couch, knocking his feet out the way with her hand. The chaise longue had once belonged to one of the Mitford sisters, or so Jon claimed. A missing leg had been replaced with a couple of bricks, and ancient horsehair spewed out of a gash in the faded upholstery. Molly fantasised about one day chucking it in a skip.
‘Have you done anything today?’ she asked.
He sat up, massaging grit out of tired eyes with his massive fists. ‘Of course I have. I ain’t been lying here all day, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
He arched his back and stretched his muscles, bones noisily clicking into place. ‘It’s this fucking heat.’ he said, rubbing a paw over his unshaven muzzle. ‘How is anyone expected to function in this heat…?’ He padded over to the French windows, threw back the heavy curtains and thrust open the glass doors. Warm air and birdsong filled the room.
‘Why don’t I make us something to eat?’ Molly offered. ‘We can have it in the garden.’
He didn’t answer, just stared out the French windows, hands gripping the frame, breathing in the sultry air.
Molly headed into the kitchen, where a pile of dirty dishes sat defiantly in the sink. She was sure they’d been there when she’d left for work that morning. A fly buzzed noisily around a pot on the stove. She lifted the lid and sniffed two-day-old pasta, instantly screwing up her face and wrinkling her nose. She removed the pot from the stove and carefully scraped its contents into the bin.
It had been almost two years since she’d moved in with Jon, and all attempts to instil domestic order had been met with stubborn resistance. Jon liked mess. He claimed it made the house feel homely.
And it was Jon’s house after all, bought after the breakdown of his second marriage twenty years ago. She had tried to imprint her mark on it, tried to introduce a note of feminine charm into the hard, stale fabric of the place, but mostly without success.
She opened the kitchen window to let in some fresh air and shoo away the buzzing fly, then rummaged in the fridge hoping to find some vegetables that hadn’t yet turned to mush.
She could hear Jon clattering around the living room. Radio Four had been replaced with Aerosmith’s ‘Dream On’, the volume turned up full blast.
Her mind briefly flitted back to the conversation with Trudi Bell earlier in the day. A young woman murdered, her body left in a park… A half-buried nugget of memory flickered like a broken light in the back of her brain… reckon it’s the work of a psycho… It was such a random phrase; cops used it all the time to describe everything from granny bashings to serial murder. And yet it spoke of something more than another run of the mill domestic murder. A psychopathic killer… a young woman… strangled and battered to death… in the middle of summer too… Leaving a body in a park… Images kept dancing in her head and she struggled to blink them away.
She tried to focus on dinner. There wasn’t much in the fridge: some cherry tomatoes, a withered lettuce and half a cucumber sweating in its wrapper. She found some pre-cooked barbeque chicken thighs that were still just the right side of their sell-by date and a bottle of vinaigrette dressing she’d bought the week before last, and a bottle of Pinot Grigio in the fridge door. She placed the food and wine, along with a couple of dusty glasses, onto a tray and took it all outside.
The back garden was dense with untamed shrubbery, brown and parched in the arid heat. A rusting wrought-iron table and two chipped chairs sat on a tiny patch of patio just outside the French windows. Molly placed the tray on the table. The sun was thinking about setting now, throwing up a welcome patch of shade between the side of the kitchen and the neighbour’s wall.
Jon appeared, looming large in the French windows. ‘Looks grand.’ He gave a watery smile. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m not hungry.’
Molly poured out two glasses of wine and took a sip from one of them, enjoying the chill liquid as it washed down her throat.
‘Have you eaten anything today?’
He sat down opposite her and shrugged. ‘I had some crisps and a pasty at lunchtime. At least I think it was lunchtime. I kind of lose track of the hours some days.’
Molly suppressed a sigh. She wanted to light up a cigarette, but she’d already exceeded her quota for the day. ‘Jon, you need to sort yourself out. You’re in danger of wasting your life.’
‘Not another lecture, please.’
She winced. She knew Jon was in a bad place, and had been since he’d lost his job as political editor with the London Echo almost a year ago. His dark moods had struck before, but were usually short-lived. This time, however, it seemed like the black dog was permanently at his heels. She worried that he might go off the rails. But she also worried that her patience was in danger of running thin. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to sound like a nag. I just worry.’ She threw him a conciliatory smile. ‘What about the book? Did you do any more work on it today?’ Since losing his job with the paper, he was supposedly writing a book about the political elite and media corruption. He had yet to get beyond chapter one.
‘Some. Not much. I just can’t seem to focus.’ He placed his hand on hers and held it there for a few moments. ‘Bad day at work, was it?’
She laughed and shook her head. ‘Is there any other kind these days?’
He reached out and touched her arm, stroking it tenderly and giving her a brief glimpse of the old Jon, the one she’d fallen in love with.
They ate in silence for a while. The sun was about to disappear behind the spire of a nearby church, before beginning its lazy descent below the horizon. Although lacking the searing potency of earlier, it was still warm, but pleasantly so rather than uncomfortably.
Molly finished her wine and poured another glass. She took a sip and looked over at Jon. He was toying with a cherry tomato on his plate. She decided to take a punt and pick his brains.
‘Do you remember a series of murders, about twelve years ago?’ she asked. ‘The Bermondsey Ripper? It was all over the papers at the time.’
Jon scratched his bald head. He decided to abandon the tomato and instead poked his fork at a grey slab of chicken. ‘Strange conversation to bring up over dinner.’
She took another sip of Pinot Grigio; it washed away the taste of dry chicken and wet salad. ‘Just… do you remember? The Echo must have covered it.’
He continued to jab at the chicken. ‘Yeah. Vaguely. A guy called Anthony Ferguson. He murdered a load of women. He was a nutter. Why do you ask?’
She wasn’t sure how much to tell him. She wasn’t even sure there was anything to tell beyond some crazy thoughts chewing her brain. ‘No reason. I just wondered if you remembered much about the case.’
Jon laughed. ‘This has got nothing to do with your obsession with murderers, has it? I mean this was all years back. Ferguson was found guilty, sentenced to life. He’s still inside, as far as I know.’ He put his fork down and stared quizzically at Molly. ‘Seriously, Mol, what’s this all about? Has some new evidence come to light or something?’
‘No. I was just… curious.’ She toyed with her wine glass, unconsciously twisting the stem between her thumb and forefinger. ‘A young woman was found murdered in a park earlier today and it got me thinking about those murders.’
Jon wrinkled his brow. ‘It’s a bit random, not to mention morbid. Has this got something to do with your ongoing ambition to join the murder squad?’
She gave a slightly forced laugh. ‘Like I said, it’s just idle curiosity, that’s all. Nothing sinister.’ She drank some more wine. ‘And I
do not have an obsession with murderers. Unless it’s with seeing them locked up.’
He smiled at her and rubbed her leg with his foot. ‘Look, I know you’re a good detective, and I don’t doubt you’d be an asset to any murder squad, but you’ve got to be patient. Your time will come. Let’s forget about Anthony Ferguson; he was a sicko. Let’s just enjoy the evening.’ He clinked his wine glass against hers and took a glug of wine, before turning his face towards the cooling sun.
Molly threw a smile back at him. She tried to chase the thought from her head, but somehow it just wouldn’t disappear. ‘I’ve always wondered if he really did commit those murders,’ she said, almost sotto voce.
‘Sorry?’ Jon looked at her, puzzled.
She smiled at him, not realising she’d said it out loud. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘You’re right. Let’s forget about murder and enjoy the evening.’
Chapter Eight
It was just after seven when Denning arrived home. He and Sarah lived in a large, open-plan warehouse conversion at the point where the fringes of the City of London begin to merge into the East End. Trendy Shoreditch had been her idea and not his, but as it was her income that paid the rent, he wasn’t in much of a position to argue.
Sarah was washing and slicing vegetables in the kitchen area off the main living room. The heady scent of her perfume filled the room. Classic FM was playing an aria from Act Two of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro.
He threw his jacket over one of the linen sofas, headed into the kitchen and took a beer from the fridge, giving Sarah a peck on the cheek as he brushed past her. ‘I thought I said I’d cook tonight?’
She gave a light laugh. ‘I couldn’t wait for you to get back.’ She finished chopping the vegetables and took a fillet of salmon from the fridge, placing it on a wooden board on the worktop. She then added some extra virgin olive oil to a steel wok on the stove, lighting the gas underneath.
‘How was your day?’ he asked.
Know No Evil Page 4