One Under

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  A photograph of Dakota from when she was below age, which Hart acquired from social services, showed that, like Shannon, she was mixed-race, though not as pretty as her younger sister. However, from her address she was doing all right.

  ‘Minford Court,’ Hart said to Slider. ‘That’s private rent, not council or housing association. Her mum says she’s a call girl. Right proud of her, an’ all. You’d’ve laughed, guv. “Does it in the comfort of her own home,” says mummy. Somefing to aspire to.’

  ‘You’ll notice me laughing,’ Slider said gravely. ‘Better get over there straight away, see if you can get hold of Shannon.’

  Hart looked at her watch. ‘Yeah, they ought to be awake by now, just about.’

  Minford Court was a modern, low-rise block, in a well-kept, tree-lined street just off the Shepherd’s Bush Road. Hart had to knock and ring for some time before the door was answered by a slim young woman wrapped in a peach satin dressing gown that went very well with her golden brown skin. Her eyes were gummy and her hair was wild, and she had obviously been woken by the knocking.

  Hart showed her brief before any protest could be spoken, and said, ‘Dakota, is it? I’m looking for Shannon. Your mum says she lives with you.’

  The woman stared for a long moment, presumably catching up with the waking world, before saying, ‘You’re too late. She’s gone.’

  ‘Gone where?’

  ‘Took off. She left a note.’

  Hart gave her a kindly look. ‘Can I come in? Don’t wanna talk like this on the doorstep.’

  Dakota shrugged and stepped back. The flat smelled clean and warm. There was a tiny entrance hall, with the sitting room straight ahead, with a kitchenette at one end of it. The walls were all painted white and the flooring throughout was imitation woodstrip laminate, the furniture modern, cheap but not yet shabby. Dakota led the way into the sitting room, then turned to face Hart, hands in pockets, and stopped, as if uncertainly.

  ‘It’s not trouble for her,’ Hart said. ‘We think she can help us, that’s all. We’re trying to find out about her friend Kaylee.’

  ‘What about Kaylee?’ Dakota asked.

  ‘Don’t you know?’ Hart asked, with a hard look.

  Apprehension began to dawn through the twilight of sleep. ‘What? Has something happened?’

  ‘Kaylee was found dead on Monday morning,’ Hart said.

  Dakota stared. ‘Oh Christ,’ she said. ‘What’s she got herself into now?’ She drew a shaking hand out of her pocket with a pack of cigarettes in it. ‘D’you mind?’

  Hart made an equivocal gesture, and Dakota walked to the end of the sitting room where a glass door gave onto a tiny balcony, just about big enough to hold two upright chairs. She opened the door and stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame, as she lit the cigarette and blew the smoke outwards. Hart observed the routine and Dakota said, as if answering a question, ‘I can’t have the smell of fag smoke in here. My friends wouldn’t like it.’ Friends was obviously a substitute noun.

  ‘S’all right, girl,’ Hart said. ‘I know you’re on the game. That’s not what I’m here about.’

  Dakota looked annoyed. ‘Who told you that? It’s a lie!’

  ‘Your mum,’ said Hart. ‘Ease off, babe. You’re not in trouble. I just wanna talk to Shannon about Kaylee. When did she leave?’

  ‘Sunday morning, some time. She was gone when I woke up.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Around eleven, eleven thirty? She left a note on the kitchen counter.’

  ‘Can I see it?’ She half expected to be told it was destroyed, but after a hesitation Dakota jerked her head towards the kitchen counter.

  ‘Under the phone.’

  The note had obviously come from a square block that stood beside the phone. In a round, childish scrawl was written: ‘Dear Dakota, I got to go away for a bit. Don’t worry Ill be all right. I done nothing wrong babes honest. Ill call you if I can. Love you, Shannon.’

  Hart turned from the note towards Dakota, smoking hard and not looking at her. ‘Where’s she gone?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Come on, love. You must have some idea.’

  ‘I don’t!’ Dakota said, calling on a little annoyance to bolster her. ‘Look, she just crashes here, that’s all. She’s my sister, I had to give her a bed when she wanted to get out. I mean, I love my mum and everything, but you wouldn’t want to live in that place, not if you didn’t have to. And once she started shacking up with that Leroy – well, he’s not nice to know. And Shan’s not a kid any more. You know what I mean …’

  ‘Yeah, I can guess,’ said Hart. ‘But come on, love, two sisters living together, havin’ heart-to-hearts, chattin’ over the cornflakes – you must know what she gets up to.’

  ‘I don’t. She don’t tell me an’ I don’t want to know. Look, she’s a good kid. She wouldn’t get mixed up in anything dodgy.’

  ‘But she is mixed up in something?’ No answer. ‘We reckon Kaylee died some time Saturday night, Sunday morning. And Sunday morning Shannon takes off. Looks like she knows somefing, dunnit?’

  Dakota was smoking too hard, and the glowing end of the cigarette fell off onto the laminate floor, so she had to scuff it out with the toe of her slipper, cursing under her breath. ‘That bloody Kaylee. I knew she was trouble. Stupid little cow.’

  ‘So you knew something’d happened to her.’

  ‘No! I never heard anything, not till you told me. I mean, why should I? She’s not my friend, she’s just a kid. Someone Shannon knows from school, that’s all.’

  ‘But she was round here quite a lot, wasn’t she?’

  She turned now to face Hart, her hands clasping and unclasping nervously in front of her. ‘Look …’ she began, but seemed at a loss how to go on.

  ‘If Shannon’s in trouble, your best bet is to tell me everything you know, so’s we can help her.’

  ‘But I don’t know anything,’ Dakota said, and this time it was not defensive but a wail of frustration.

  Hart softened. ‘All right, girl. Put the kettle on, let’s ’ave a cup a coffee, an’ we’ll have a natter. Just friendly, orright? And you can tell me what you do know, cos it might turn out to be important.’

  ‘Shan’s my sister and all that, and I love her, but, you know, I’m not responsible for her,’ Dakota said over the coffee. ‘I don’t see all that much of her, tell you the truth.’

  The mugs were rather nice, bone china with a dainty pattern of pink wild roses, and they took them outside onto the balcony so that Dakota could continue to smoke. The rate she was going through them, Hart thought, she’d soon have a voice like her mother’s. For now it was pleasant enough.

  Kaylee had come over on Saturday afternoon. It wasn’t unusual. ‘She was often here weekends.’

  ‘Staying over?’

  ‘No, just popping in and out. Mostly of a Saturday. I didn’t like her much. I thought she was a sly piece. I was worried she might get Shan into trouble.’

  ‘What sort of trouble?’

  Dakota frowned into the distance. ‘I dunno. Just something … shoplifting, maybe. She looked the sort. You wouldn’t put anything past her, know what I mean? And I can’t have any trouble of that sort, not here.’

  ‘What time did she arrive?’

  ‘She was here when I got home about six. I’d been shopping up the West End. Her and Shannon were in the bedroom talking. Shan come out and I said, “What’s she doing here?” Because I had people coming.’

  ‘Customers?’

  ‘Clients,’ she corrected firmly. ‘And I couldn’t have a kid here. But Shannon said, “It’s all right, she’s going to a party. She’s just come here to get dressed.”’

  ‘Was Shannon going to the party?’

  ‘I dunno. She said she was going to meet a friend, so maybe not.’

  So it wasn’t Shannon that Kaylee had phoned from Deenie’s house, Hart thought. ‘Was Kaylee keeping some of her stuff here?’

&nb
sp; ‘I dunno about that. There’s loads of clothes and shoes and things, but I thought they were Shannon’s. Maybe they shared them. They were about the same size.’

  ‘What time did Kaylee leave on Saturday?’

  ‘Shan said she was being picked up at half eight from the end of the road. I didn’t see her go – I was busy. I told ’em to keep out of sight, and they did. I think Shannon went out the same time, but I couldn’t swear to it.’

  ‘Do you know where the party was? Did she mention an address, or a name? Did Shannon?’

  ‘No,’ said Dakota. ‘No idea.’

  ‘What time did Shannon come home?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was busy. I never heard anything. Her room door was shut when I went to bed at around three. Then in the morning when I got up, I found the note.’

  ‘Did she pack a bag?’

  ‘I s’pose so. There’s some of her stuff missing.’

  ‘She must have made some noise, moving around, open and shutting drawers – you must have heard something,’ said Hart.

  ‘I didn’t! I sleep heavy, nothing wakes me. Look, when you say Kaylee was found dead – I mean, what, like, happened to her?’

  ‘Looks as though she was knocked down, hit-and-run,’ Hart said, watching her carefully.

  Dakota looked relieved. ‘Thank Christ for that. I mean, I’m sorry and everything, but I thought you meant something worse.’

  ‘Why would you think that?’

  ‘Well …’ A long pause. ‘I thought maybe she’d got mixed up in something, and she’d got Shannon involved.’

  ‘What sort of something?’

  ‘I don’t know. I gotta have another fag.’ She lit up, with shaky hands.

  Hart observed her with narrowed eyes. ‘You do know,’ Hart said.

  ‘I don’t. I swear. I don’t know what that Kaylee was into. She was a bad lot, that one.’

  Hart knew a brick wall when she saw one and let it go. ‘Have you tried ringing Shannon?’

  ‘’Course. It just goes to voicemail. I’ll have to wait till she calls me.’

  ‘You’d better give me the number,’ said Hart, and Dakota gave it with obvious reluctance. ‘I’d like to see her room, please.’

  There was a bedroom on the left side of the passage as you came in, and another plus a bathroom on the right. Hart, walking ahead of Dakota, went into the former. It was about twelve feet square, and contained a double bed covered with a quilted satin counterpane. There was a wardrobe with a full-length mirror on it, a dressing table with a mirror behind it, and a small basin in the corner with a wrapped cake of soap and a neatly folded clean towel hanging below it. The giveaway was that there was no overhead light, just lamps dotted about the room with dark pink tasselled shades. It was the work room.

  Hart gave a quick glance round and turned back to Dakota, who was looking miffed. ‘That’s my room. You got no right to go in there.’

  ‘No worries, girl,’ Hart said cheerfully. ‘We all got to make a living.’

  She crossed the passage to the other room, which was smaller and contained a single bed, a wardrobe and a chest of drawers.

  The wardrobe was crammed with trollopy clothes and shoes and handbags, the chest with ‘sexy’ underwear, cheap jewellery, and in other drawers more serviceable jeans, cut-offs, sweaters and T-shirts. Hair brushes and products and tubes and sticks of make-up crowded the top of the chest. ‘How do you know anything’s gone?’ Hart asked in some amazement.

  ‘There’s usually a lot more than this,’ Dakota said.

  The serviceable drawers did look less bulging than the others, Hart thought. She crouched down and looked under the bed. There was a box under there, pushed right back into the darkest corner, which she pulled out. It was a biscuit tin of the sort that was sold at Christmas containing a teatime variety of old favourites; the lid and sides were patterned with snow scenes, lamp-lit inns and coach-and-sixes.

  ‘Is this Shannon’s?’ she asked.

  ‘I dunno. I’ve never seen it before,’ Dakota said.

  ‘Maybe it’s Kaylee’s, then.’

  ‘Might be.’

  Inside were some packets of condoms and several blister packs of birth control pills; a small tin box containing three foil-wrapped spliffs; and cash – bundles of notes held together with rubber bands and packed in tightly.

  Hart began drawing them out, making a rough calculation as she did so. Nearly seven hundred pounds. ‘You still say it’s not Shannon’s?’ she asked.

  ‘She’d’ve took it with her if it was,’ Dakota said, missing an opportunity in her surprise. ‘She mustn’t’ve known it was there.’

  So what was Kaylee doing with all this money? Hart mused to herself. No wonder she hadn’t wanted to keep it at home within reach of the druggy mother.

  ‘That girl,’ Dakota said, ‘was up to something.’

  If she was, it turned round and bit her, Hart thought.

  ‘But if Shannon ran away because Kaylee was dead, she must have known about it on Sunday morning,’ said Atherton. ‘Which presents the question, how did she know?’

  ‘Maybe she was at the party too,’ said Connolly. ‘Her sister didn’t really know.’

  ‘We don’t know that whatever happened, happened at the party,’ Atherton said. ‘It’s much more likely to have been afterwards, otherwise too many people would have known. Kaylee probably met someone there and left with them.’

  ‘But we still need to know where the party was and who was there, so we can find out who she did leave with,’ Connolly pointed out.

  ‘If she left the party with someone,’ Slider said slowly, ‘it makes it all the more strange that Shannon heard about the death on Sunday morning, when the body hadn’t even been found. She’d have had to have been told by someone who was involved, and why would they do that? If that’s why she’s run away,’ he added discontentedly. They all looked at him. ‘It’s a mess,’ he said. ‘It certainly looks, because of the money, as though Kaylee was mixed up in something. And given that she and Shannon were friends to the exclusion of Deenie, and she kept the money under Shannon’s bed, it looks as though Shannon knew something about it. But further than that we can’t go.’

  ‘And we’ve no link between Kaylee and Tyler other than that they were friends at one time,’ Atherton added.

  ‘Thanks for pointing that out,’ said Slider. ‘Well, we’ll have to get a monitor put on Shannon’s phone so that we can find her when she does make a call.’

  ‘If she makes a call,’ Atherton said.

  ‘Have sense,’ said Connolly. ‘She’s a sixteen-year-old girl. If they go more than six hours without texting someone, they get the bends.’

  ‘If she don’t use her phone,’ Hart said, ‘it’ll tell us somefing – that either she’s dead or scared shitless.’

  ‘Don’t let’s prance to conclusions,’ Slider said. ‘Until we can find Shannon, we’ve nothing to go on to keep this case open. These girls must have had other friends – we must start tracking them down and pumping them. Hart, you’ve got the right sort of street cred. You go after Kaylee and Shannon. Try the school, social services, Shannon’s mother, the neighbours even. Connolly, you get on to Tyler. The home, social services again, and the Westminster team that fielded the inquiry. Get to it.’

  They left. Atherton said, ‘What else?’

  ‘There isn’t much else,’ said Slider discontentedly. ‘Except that parties can be noisy. Check with our uniform chums in Holland Park if there were any complaints.’

  ‘If there was a party, and if she was at it,’ Atherton said. ‘That’s a bit thin.’

  ‘Thin’s what we’ve got. And get McLaren to check if there are any cameras that cover the end of the road where Kaylee was picked up. If we can get an index number for the car …’

  ‘Would that we could ever be that lucky,’ Atherton said.

  They got lucky shortly afterwards. Swilley came to Slider’s door with a printout in her hand. ‘We’ve got Kaylee’s call li
st, boss,’ she said.

  ‘That was quick,’ said Slider. ‘Anything interesting on it?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, there is,’ she said. ‘She didn’t make any calls on Saturday night after five thirty. OK, she was with Shannon, her best friend, until eight thirty, so she didn’t need to call her. But afterwards? In my experience, girls at parties are always calling or texting their friends to tell them what a great time they’re having, sending selfies and so on. What’s the point of being at a really great party unless your friends all envy you for it?’

  ‘I’ll take your word,’ said Slider. ‘But what does that mean?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Swilley. ‘It’s odd, that’s all. Then, moving backwards in time, there’s lunchtime with Deenie. She rang Deenie, presumably to say she was coming over. She rang the pizza place, presumably to order their lunch. And then there’s the call Deenie told us she made, when she rang someone to ask if they would be at the party. The same number rang her at eight o’clock that morning. The number goes to a George Peloponnos.’

  ‘Why does that name sound familiar?’ Slider asked.

  ‘It’s the name of Atherton’s “one under” on Monday,’ said Swilley.

  ‘Now that’s what I call interesting,’ said Slider.

  SEVEN

  From the House of the Dead

  The sun was shining bleakly, but the wind was so bitter, you got no benefit from it. It was the sort of wind that blew straight at you, no matter which direction you were walking. Just crossing the yard, Slider could feel surgically thin slivers of skin being flayed from his face.

  Atherton was quiet for the first few minutes, brooding. ‘So was Peloponnos the older boyfriend?’ he wondered at last. ‘He rang her at eight in the morning to invite her to the party?’

  ‘But then why would she call him back later the same day to ask if he’d be there?’ Slider said, trying to filter right through the late-morning traffic. Addison Way was not far, but one-way systems demanded a circuitous route.

  ‘Deenie thought she was just showing off,’ Atherton reminded him. ‘“I’ve got a boyfriend who takes me to parties and you haven’t.”’