Deadland

by William Shaw

  Cupidi pushed out of the doors and sprinted towards the woman, who was by now standing up and trying to collect her spilled fruit.

  ‘What happened?’ Cupidi demanded.

  ‘Stupid man. Ran into me,’ she muttered. ‘Didn’t even apologise.’

  He must have waited for the other lift instead, beating Cupidi to the ground floor. ‘Where did he go?’

  She pointed down the highwalk that headed south. The centre had been designed with a bewildering network of walkways connecting the buildings. She could continue south or continue west towards the Barbican Centre.

  Which route would he choose? To the west? The arts centre would be crowded. It would be easier to lose yourself there.

  Or would he go for the quieter route, with less chance of there being witnesses?

  Pausing, trying to decide which way to go, she didn’t hear anything.

  And then she was flying sideways. He must have been behind the circular concrete pillar, right behind her all the time.

  His shove unbalanced her before she could offer any resistance, toppling her forwards towards the edge of the walkway.

  She grabbed the concrete edge, but he had the momentum. Dropping his hands to her thighs, he lifted her and in that second she realised that he was trying to pitch her face-forward over the walkway wall to the solid ground below.

  Somebody screamed. It might have been her.

  Her hands had managed to grab the rough edge of the wall, but her head was already way out over the drop. Her belly scraped against rough concrete. Two floors below, a gaggle of startled passers-by looked up as he tried to lift her legs so the weight of her own body would pull her over the wall to her death.

  Unable to let go with her hands, which were the only thing that prevented her from plummeting, she kicked blindly, as viciously as she could at her attacker, preventing him from getting a proper grip.

  Blood rushed to her head as her legs tipped further, and though her scissoring limbs were preventing him from getting a decent hold, she couldn’t manage to swing back to safety either.

  Her shoes hit flesh and he grunted. And a second time; this time it had felt like his head. Having failed to tip her over with the rush of his first assault, the width of the walkway wall meant that he was now struggling to lever her weight over it.

  Below, nobody seemed to move. They were paralysed by inaction. They just gaped up, open-mouthed, silent.

  ‘Police!’ A shout. Ferriter’s voice.

  And then, as suddenly as he had attacked her, she realised he had gone, leaving her waving her legs in empty air.

  By the time she had manoeuvred herself back onto the safety of the walkway, gasping for breath, there was no sign of him in any of the three directions he could have run. It was as if he had never been there.

  She slumped down, turned, sat back against the cool concrete wall, feeling her heart thumping hard in her chest as Ferriter ran towards her, chasing the attacker.

  THIRTY-ONE

  ‘Jesus,’ said Ferriter. ‘That must sting.’

  ‘Brutalism,’ said Cupidi, and then laughed at her own joke.

  Ferriter looked at her, puzzled, then back at the mirror and her own wound.

  They were in the Estate Office bathroom. Cupidi had taken off her T-shirt and was dabbing the cuts on her stomach with cotton wool.

  ‘Did you see him at all?’ asked Cupidi.

  ‘I was too far away. No idea which way he went. This place is a nightmare. Think this will scar?’ said Ferriter, peering at her split eyebrow.

  Cupidi looked up at Ferriter’s face. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Wouldn’t mind if it did. Badge of honour.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘What? You think I just spend all my time trying to keep pretty?’

  Cupidi said, ‘I was looking down and seeing people looking back at me and thinking, they’re going to watch me fall. And I was thinking, “Bastards.” They’re just going to stand there and watch my skull crack open on the pavement.’

  ‘I don’t get why he even tried to kill you. Why didn’t he just run for it? That’s seriously psycho.’

  Cupidi winced as she dabbed the longest red scrape with cotton wool.

  ‘He left me alone,’ Ferriter thought aloud, ‘but he deliberately waited and tried to kill you. Why? Because he thought you’d clocked him.’

  That made sense, Cupidi realised.

  ‘He thinks you can identify him? Can you?’

  ‘No. He was never in sight. But he didn’t know that for sure.’ Cupidi looked at herself in the mirror, the scratch on her pale belly. ‘Maybe he thinks I may have seen him running from the flat.’

  ‘But why would he be bothered?’

  ‘Because he thinks we’ll be able to identify him.’

  ‘Christ,’ said Ferriter. ‘What if it’s someone we’ve already met?’

  Cupidi nodded. A Metropolitan Police forensics team would search the flat now it was a crime scene, but the neighbour had said that Stein had many visitors so it was unlikely that they would turn up anything that would help find out who the attacker had been. The CCTV might be more productive. Erich was in the office, recovering the footage recorded in each of the two working lifts.

  ‘So he was there, in the flat, all the time we were searching?’ Ferriter demanded.

  ‘Must have been. I think he must have a key. He’s been letting himself in.’

  ‘Was he waiting for Abir Stein to come back?’

  ‘Frankly, I don’t think Abir Stein is ever going to come back,’ said Cupidi, gingerly pulling down her shirt again. ‘From the food in the fridge, it looks like he’s been missing since the end of March.’

  ‘We’ve got him on record as visiting the EastArt storage unit at the start of April.’

  ‘Assuming it was him.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘I know.’ She turned and looked at Ferriter; saw the blood on her pale shirt. ‘Look at us,’ she said.

  ‘Like out of some horror movie.’

  But when, after a few minutes, Erich found the CCTV footage of the man getting in at the thirtieth floor, it turned out to be useless. He showed it to them on a screen in the building’s security centre. The man had deliberately entered the lift walking backwards into it, the back of his head to the camera.

  ‘He must have been using the lift to get to the flat, though,’ said Erich. ‘There must be more footage of him.’

  Erich replayed the footage. A dark shape, cautiously stepping backwards.

  ‘I bet he does that every time,’ said Cupidi. She looked at the video playing forwards, then backwards, then forwards again, the man stepping in and out without ever showing who he was. ‘This is someone who knew exactly what he was doing.’

  *

  ‘We’re getting somewhere,’ said Ferriter as she drove the car back to Kent. ‘Aren’t we? Else that guy wouldn’t have tried to kill you.’

  ‘You’re happy about that, are you?’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  It was true. In the passenger seat as they drove towards the M20, Cupidi had been making a mental list of everything she had figured out that day. In a few hours they had learned more than they had struggled with in the last four days.

  One. Abir Stein was not just not answering his phone. He was definitely missing, if not dead.

  Two. Zoya Gubenko had said he had answered a couple of emails. If he was missing or dead, someone had presumably been answering on his behalf.

  Three. Another man had been visiting his flat.

  Four. That man was willing to kill. He had attempted to kill Cupidi, at least, presumably because he was worried that she would recognise him.

  Five. So did that mean Cupidi had already met him, as Ferriter had suggested? Or just that he was someone she was likely to come across during the course of the investigation?

  Six. Whoever he was, he wasn’t stupid. He knew how to protect his identity. He was a man who walked into lifts backwards.

/>   Seven. Abir Stein had disappeared not long before someone had signed into East Art using his name.

  This churn of the sudden possibilities wasn’t just a puzzle to be unravelled. Cupidi felt it physically; a kind of anxious thrill, buzzing in the pit of her stomach.

  And eight. This had not been some prank. All along, she had been right.

  *

  ‘Have a word in private?’ asked Peter Moon.

  Cupidi looked up warily from her desk where she was writing her notes.

  ‘What’s up with Jill?’ asked Peter Moon, his voice low, so as not to be overheard by the others in the incident room.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Cupidi answered, evasively.

  ‘She has a bloody great sticking plaster on her forehead. Hadn’t you noticed?’

  ‘Oh. That.’ Relieved, Cupidi explained the day’s events in London.

  ‘Jesus. Is she OK?’

  ‘She says it’s just a cut.’

  Moon frowned. Then he dug in his pocket, pulled out his phone and said, ‘Seen Facebook?’ He navigated until he’d found what he wanted, then held up his phone screen: Serve the pervert right. Who are we coming for next? Above a picture of Frank Khan.

  She peered at the small rectangle. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘England Rising’s only gone and claimed responsibility for the stabbing of Frank Khan. Thought you might be interested. I just got a call from the Communications Team who wanted to know what was going on. Apparently the national press are onto it already.’

  Cupidi frowned, staring at the screen. Had she been completely wrong at this morning’s meeting? ‘Do you think it’s genuine?’

  ‘Well, it might, be, mightn’t it?’ said Moon.

  ‘Or are they just trying to get publicity?’

  ‘You tell me. You’re the one who said it couldn’t have been them.’

  Cupidi digested the information. What if it had been an extremist group, after all?

  ‘You wanted to know why he had opened the door to his attacker. What if he didn’t? What if the two boys did? What if they were just bait?’

  ‘What do you mean, bait?’

  ‘Paedo hunters. They’re vigilantes, aren’t they? They use entrapment to catch paedos all the time, don’t they? Pretend to be little girls online and that stuff. I reckon they put the two boys up to it so they could get access to Khan.’

  He reached towards her and retrieved his phone.

  ‘Yeah. But they wouldn’t use actual children, would they? That would undermine the point.’

  ‘These people are nut jobs, Alex. Extremists.’

  She frowned. ‘Have you been able to interview Frank Khan yet?’ she asked.

  ‘Only for a couple of minutes. He’s conscious, but he’s still pretty weak. Hooked up to all kinds of stuff. It was touch and go last night apparently.’

  ‘And did you ask why he’d made the call to the police?’

  ‘Course.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He said he didn’t know who it was, but said someone kept ringing on his bell so he got scared.’

  ‘He didn’t say he thought it was some vigilante?’

  ‘Well, obviously he wouldn’t, if it had been a trap. Because it would be like he was admitting there had been teenage boys in his flat.’

  ‘You still think it’s a vigilante attack, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m not ruling it out, Alex. That’s what I’m saying. Open mind. I just think we were a bit hasty this morning, given this.’ He held up his phone again.

  ‘What about door-to-doors? Did they see a man?’

  Moon shook his head. ‘Interviewed all the neighbours. Couple of people say they saw the lads, but no one that says they saw the man yet. Why would they? Middle of the day. Weekday. Not a great time for witnesses. And people will always notice teenage boys. They’re not so likely to notice anyone else.’

  That much was true, Cupidi thought.

  ‘One report of a young Afro-Caribbean lad nicking a sleeping bag from a garage off Central Road, not far from Frank Khan’s flat, but that’s all. I chased it up but it didn’t go anywhere.’

  ‘Frank Khan said nothing at all about the boys?’

  ‘Course he didn’t. If he pulls through, he’s going down,’ said Moon. ‘I’m going to make sure of it.’

  ‘But if Khan’s not going to talk, then it’s even more important we find the two boys.’

  Moon nodded.

  Ten minutes later, he appeared at her desk again with a brown envelope and whispered, ‘I’m organising a collection. Buy Jill some flowers on behalf of the whole team.’

  ‘I was injured as well, you know. You buying me flowers too?’

  ‘Were you?’

  ‘Want me to show you?’ She put her hand at the bottom of her shirt, as if preparing to lift it.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘You’re all right.’

  ‘Word to the wise,’ said Cupidi, looking him in the eye again. ‘Forget the flowers. Jill Ferriter wouldn’t like it. I know for a fact she doesn’t like being seen as a victim, you see. Whatever the situation.’

  This time, the slightest flicker of confusion in his gaze before he looked away.

  ‘Wouldn’t mind chocolates myself, though,’ she called as he returned to his desk on the far side of the room.

  *

  When she turned back to her screen there was an email notification from a police officer whose name she didn’t recognise: a Constable Devon King. Cupidi had earlier left a message for the Metropolitan Police’s Art and Antiques Unit. Had they come across an Abir Stein? Now here was a reply and a phone number.

  Cupidi called back.

  ‘Abir Stein. Yes, we’d come across him.’ From the noise in the background, Devon King was somewhere busy; computer keyboards clacked around him.

  Cupidi sat up, interested. ‘Does that mean he was involved in something shady?’

  ‘Not necessarily. He had various clients who were on our radar for one reason or another. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything. We had a long list of people we were keeping any eye on, just in case.’

  ‘In case of what?’

  ‘Do you know much about the fine art market? The high-end market can be like the Wild West, only politer.’

  ‘And is Abir Stein a goodie or a baddie?’

  ‘That’s what we never found out. The difficulty a unit like ours has – used to have . . .’

  ‘Used to?’

  ‘The unit was disbanded months ago. It takes a lot of work to uncover art fraud and it’s difficult to prove. Sometimes results don’t come right away just because you want them to. So we were moved to other, more productive duties. No chance of it being funded after Grenfell.’ The scale of the police investigation into the London fire had sucked resources dry across the force. ‘I just get the occasional message forwarded on still. When I saw the name Abir Stein, I thought it might be worth calling back. But no. There is no Arts and Antiquities Unit any more.’

  ‘Bugger.’

  ‘We’re much more efficient now, obviously,’ said Devon King drily.

  ‘So why was Abir Stein on your radar?’

  ‘In the art market, buyers and sellers are notoriously shy. They’re often wealthy, well-known people who don’t like having their name in the papers. But it’s just accepted in that world. You can buy a painting for ten million dollars and not even know who you’re buying it from. Can you imagine any other business in which that’s OK?’

  ‘The art market is a trade in things that have no price,’ said Cupidi.

  ‘Yes. Exactly.’

  ‘My dad used to say that.’ As a child, Cupidi’s father had loved taking her to galleries. He could stand still for twenty minutes in front of a piece of work, just contemplating it, saying nothing at all. It had driven her mother mad.

  ‘It’s very well put,’ said the constable. ‘Nobody can say what the real value of a work of art is. The price is simply what people pay for it. And in these times, that can be prett
y much anything. They’re just symbols. Like Bitcoins.’

  ‘Except Bitcoins have no meaning.’

  ‘You’re deep for a Wednesday afternoon.’

  ‘Apologies.’

  ‘I like it. Excuse me. I’m going outside. I might lose you. Phone me back if the call drops.’ Cupidi heard him standing, moving away from the noise of a police office. ‘So as far as we know, we have no sensible way of telling what a piece of art ought to sell for, whether someone’s overvaluing it or undervaluing it.’

  ‘So it could be a fraudster’s paradise?’

  ‘That’s why I bloody loved working there. I was gutted when they wound it up. It’s a fascinating world.’ He was outside now. Traffic hummed around him. ‘It’s not just the value. The buyers and sellers are anyone from the great and the good to out-and-out bloody gangsters. Nobody wants to be seen buying and selling stuff. If you’re a billionaire, why would you want people to know your business? So people hide their identity. Even crack dealers know who their sources are, for God’s sake. It’s the least transparent industry in the world. Abir Stein brokers big deals between people, companies, art institutions, whoever. That’s what he lives off. He came to our attention a year ago selling a Rothko.’

  ‘He had a Rothko? They’re worth millions.’

  ‘That’s the point. It was in his name on the sale papers but that set bells ringing, because he’s not rich enough to own a Rothko. Turned out to really belong to some investment fund and he was just handling the paperwork.’

  ‘Not the Evert and Astrid Miller Foundation, by any chance?’

  ‘No. This was some Russian guy who keeps all his funds tucked away in the Cayman Islands. That who you’re looking into, Astrid Miller?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Cupidi.

  The flick of a lighter. The constable was a smoker; that’s why he had gone outside. ‘I never heard a word against Astrid Miller, have to say.’

  ‘But Abir Stein?’

  ‘Put it this way.’ The sound of a breath as he sucked smoke. ‘He was involved in some grey areas. It’s big business, you know.’

  ‘Nice for money laundering too.’

  ‘Exactly, because it’s hard to prove who’s selling what. It’s not just that people don’t want to give their real names. Nobody wants to actually say what they bought such-and-such a piece of work for. The trail can be pretty obscure, to say the least. And if you do get paperwork, who’s to say it’s real? How do you actually check? Just because you’ve got a receipt for ten mill, doesn’t mean that’s what has changed hands.’