Over the past few years, Zelda had become adept at making herself invisible. She hadn’t followed many people in her life, but it had been necessary on occasion, and her skill of invisibility had come in very useful. It was more a state of mind than anything physical. She didn’t need a disguise, but simple, ordinary clothes in dull colors helped: a brown winter coat, woolly hat, a straightforward gait of someone who knows where she’s going but is in no hurry, no signs of a strut or a wiggle.
She loved the anonymity, how she could walk around by herself without being pestered. Every time she went to London, she stayed in a different hotel, a different part of the city—Chelsea, Kensington, Soho, Piccadilly, even Earls Court, Notting Hill or Swiss Cottage. And it seemed there was nothing odd about a woman eating alone in London. At least not in the kinds of restaurants she sought out. She always managed to find some hidden-away treasure, a little backstreet bistro or trattoria of some kind.
Tonight she spotted a tiny French restaurant off Mercer Street which had a few empty tables, and she went inside. A maître d’ seated her without even asking whether she had a reservation, and she ordered a carafe of claret and studied the menu. When she had decided on the steak frites, she took out her e-reader and propped it up on the table. She had bought the kind with the origami cover, as it folded over and made a stand for itself, which was perfect for reading while eating alone. She had found that people were even less inclined to disturb her when she was reading.
Zelda always liked to get to London the night before she started working; it was a kind of buffer between the beautiful but remote and isolated world of Beckerby and the depressing reality of her job. It was useful and necessary work, but she couldn’t deny that it was often dispiriting, recognizing those dreaded faces from her past, from some of the worst times of her life. In this state, tonight, she felt that she floated free of it all, was able to empty her mind of her concerns and concentrate on the words on the screen: Kawabata and the otherworldly Japan.
The waiter brought her meal and poured some more wine for her. She hadn’t thought it was the kind of restaurant where the waiters did that, so she guessed he was a gentleman of the old school. That was the thing about these hidden French restaurants, the waiters were almost always elderly men, much the same as at many of the best restaurants in Paris.
As she ate her steak, sipped her wine and looked up at an antique travel poster showing the Eiffel Tower on the wall, she thought of Paris, where she had spent her last year in servitude. Almost anyone she had known the previous few years would have killed for the life of luxury she had led there. But it was still slavery. She was wined and dined by the rich and powerful. Politicians. Bankers. Oligarchs. Gangsters. But she was still expected to lie on her back and please them. And her enforcers were never far away. They made it clear that she was not free to leave the luxury of the high-priced call girl’s life. Slob and Vitch, she called them. They delivered her to the fancy restaurants and five-star hotels and waited while she did her duty, then they drove her to her flat afterwards. Sometimes they insisted on a piece of the action, too, one after the other, just to put her in her place, before they left her alone for the night. And even then, she knew, they were never far away, always watching.
And Paris was as good as it was ever likely to get.
The only reason she had risen so high in the first place was that someone had seen enough potential in her to know that she was being wasted where she was in the cheap brothels of the Balkans, so he had made an offer for her, which was accepted. She was sold. No more backstreet brothels in Sarajevo or Zagreb, cramped cars off the autobahn or curbside promenading in Prague. Suddenly, it was all expensive perfumes, fine clothes and top-drawer clientele. But Zelda soon learned that the only difference between these men and the ones she had encountered in backstreet brothels was the quality of their suits. The man who bought her, Darius, once made Zelda watch while his minders kicked a rival pimp to death in an alley in the rain. The message was clear and simple: cross us and this will happen to you. She didn’t feel a thing.
No more than she did when she slit Darius’s throat less than a year later.
11
“AS YOU ALL KNOW,” BANKS BEGAN, STANDING BEFORE the whiteboards on Wednesday morning, “things have changed a lot since our last meeting. First of all, I’d like to welcome the officers from West Yorkshire who have joined us on this inquiry.” Banks paused for a moment while the detectives nodded or waved to make themselves known. “You’ve all been allocated your roles and responsibilities, and I know some of you are double-hatting, but none of that should stop you from doing your main job: crime investigator on this team. We don’t want any tunnel vision here. All input is welcome. Not just welcome, but expected. And I won’t say we have all the technical resources of the various experts and specialists constantly at our fingertips, but the experts are here and available, and they will be working with us. There’ll be time for introductions later. What I’d like to start with is a summary of what we’ve got so far and what we need to know. When we’ve finished here, there’ll be actions and TIES aplenty, so make sure you grab a good spot in the queue or you’ll never make it to the Queen’s Arms before closing time.”
A polite ripple of laughter went around the room.
Banks turned to the whiteboards, one of which had a number of points listed beside color photographs of Adrienne Munro, Laurence Hadfield and Sarah Chen. “On Monday,” he went on, “DCI Blackstone from the West Yorkshire Homicide and Major Inquiry team brought to my attention the murder of a Leeds University student called Sarah Chen, found dead of serious head wounds in a ruined shack in open country north of Leeds. The interesting thing about Sarah’s murder as far as we’re concerned is that she had a slip of paper in her room with Adrienne Munro’s name on it. As yet, we can make no other connection between Adrienne and Sarah, except that both were second-year university students, and both were dressed for a party or a night on the town when they were found dead in remote rural locations.
“In a further development, as a result of information from a case DI Cabbot was working on with DC Masterson here in North Yorkshire, a Pandora charm was found by our search team in the bathroom of a house owned by Laurence Hadfield, an international financier who was found dead under mysterious circumstances on Tetchley Moor last week. Adrienne Munro was wearing a Pandora bracelet when her body was found.
“On the instructions of DI Cabbot, the CSIs returned to make a thorough search of Hadfield’s drains and found hair samples that match Adrienne Munro’s, which would place her even more certainly at Hadfield’s house—in his bathroom—recently. I know that a hair match isn’t the most reliable form of identification, but it’ll have to be enough to be going on with. We’ll have DNA on the hair samples soon, I’m assured, as enough of them had follicles attached.
“Pathology indicates that both Laurence Hadfield and Adrienne Munro died within a short time of each other. As yet, we don’t know the exact time of Sarah Chen’s death, since the postmortem won’t be carried out until this afternoon. Estimates at the scene, though, indicate she had been dead about a week when she was found, which could put her in the same time bracket.
“Last night, DC Masterson and I contacted the Exhibits Officer and checked the bracelet Adrienne had been wearing. We were able to ascertain that there was one charm missing. We then reinterviewed Colin Fairfax, Adrienne’s ex-boyfriend, who told us that he had bought her a Pandora charm for her birthday. It was quite distinctive, and expensive, a treble clef of silver encrusted with cubic zircons.
“So we now have definite links between Sarah and Adrienne, and Adrienne and Laurence Hadfield. Also in the picture somewhere is a surgeon, Anthony Randall, a friend of Hadfield’s, who phoned the deceased three times on the day we think Hadfield disappeared. Mr. Randall has offered no reasonable explanation for the frequency or content of these calls. The last one, close to eleven thirty in the evening, went through to voicemail, but Randall left no message. We t
hink Hadfield was dead by then. But we still have no idea how he got to Tetchley Moor. When DI Cabbot and DC Masterson arrived at Hadfield’s house last Friday, they found his mobile on his study desk. According to his cleaning lady, he would normally not go anywhere without it. This also applies to Adrienne Munro, who left her mobile in her bedsit. Sarah Chen was carrying nothing on her person when her body was found, and there was no mobile in her room, though her housemates say she had one. Is everyone with me so far?”
Most of those present nodded; a few made sounds of assent. Many still looked puzzled.
“Good,” said Banks, “because it only gets more complicated. Along with Adrienne Munro’s name on the slip of paper in Sarah’s room, there was what appeared to be a mobile telephone number. It wasn’t Adrienne’s, and so far it doesn’t appear to belong to anyone else. Naturally, we’re assuming it’s a pay-as-you-go phone, a ‘burner,’ as the American cop shows would have it. We have no idea why Adrienne would have a second mobile phone, if indeed she had, as none was found either on her person or in her bedsit. Needless to say, we need more information on this mobile.
“Drugs are certainly a possibility. Both dead girls were known to have been at least casual users, though there is no evidence of hard drug use. Nor do our drugs squads have them on their radar. So if it is drugs, they’re relatively new to the scene. I know I said we have no evidence that Adrienne Munro was murdered, but she didn’t get into that car by herself, and there was no sign of her possessions at the scene. The phones we do have—Adrienne’s and Laurence Hadfield’s personal mobiles—have only innocuous numbers, texts and emails on them, as far as we can gather so far. Just friends and family, doctor, dentist and so on, as you’d expect. Hadfield’s phone, of course, needs extensive investigation, as it was also used for his business purposes, which could be connected with his death.
“There is also a mysterious presence in all this known simply as ‘Mia.’ DS Jackman talked to Sarah Chen’s housemates last night and found out that this Mia had befriended Sarah in the student pub close to the beginning of term and then disappeared from the scene completely. The same happened in the Adrienne Munro case. According to the descriptions DS Jackman elicited, we’re sure it’s the same woman. We have a sketch artist working on this, and we hope to have something ready by end of play today. Any questions?”
A stunned silence greeted Banks’s summary of the investigation, but eventually a detective from West Yorkshire shyly raised her arm.
“Yes?” Banks said.
“DC Musgrave, West Yorkshire, sir. Do I understand correctly that the three deaths are linked?”
“We have links between Sarah and Adrienne—the name and phone number—and between Adrienne and Hadfield—the Pandora charm. We have no specific link between Sarah Chen and Laurence Hadfield. We can also link Randall to Hadfield, but not to either of the girls. Yet.”
“Has Laurence Hadfield ever been involved in the drug trade?” someone else asked.
“Not as far as we know,” said Banks. “I realize there are too many gaps in our knowledge. That’s what I want us to work on. We can start by finding out what the phone number meant, what Anthony Randall talked about to Laurence Hadfield and what their relationship was, why Sarah Chen had Adrienne Munro’s name. We’d also like to know how the Pandora charm ended up in Hadfield’s bathroom.”
“Do we know who wrote the note with the name and phone number?” another West Yorkshire detective asked.
“That’s an interesting point,” Banks answered. “The short answer is no, we don’t. But we have checked, and our handwriting expert has determined through comparison that it wasn’t written by Adrienne Munro, Laurence Hadfield or Sarah Chen.”
“Mia, perhaps?”
“Possibly.”
“There’s been cases of students hooking up with older men for sex and companionship in exchange for money,” said DC Musgrave again. “For the older men, I mean, the sex . . .”
Banks smiled. “I think I know what you mean, DC Musgrave. Sugar daddies.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And it’s a good point. It’s a line of inquiry we’re not going to overlook, along with Hadfield’s business interests. Both girls were dressed up a bit more than your usual student, even for a Saturday night. And the dresses they were wearing weren’t cheap. Adrienne Munro concocted a story about a scholarship to explain her improved financial situation this year, but all the large recent deposits in her bank account were made in cash. Sarah Chen told her housemates she had received an insurance payout on her father’s death, along with money left to her in his will. He died over two years ago, so that seems unlikely, but we’re checking into it. There may be a very good reason for all this, and if it isn’t drug-related, it could involve sex for cash. On the other hand, neither girl had been interfered with in any way, and neither had had sex recently, according to the pathologists, though Sarah Chen’s postmortem might tell a different story. Perhaps they’d been acting as escorts only, something of that nature. Hadfield was a wealthy businessman, so he could no doubt afford a pretty girl or two to hang on his arms if he had clients he wanted to impress, even with a hands-off embargo. Anything else?”
Nobody said anything.
“OK,” said Banks. “Check in with the incident room as often as you can. We’ll be constantly updating HOLMES. Any leads you come across, contact DCI Blackstone or me if you can get hold of us. But use your initiative. Better to get something done and moving than sit around on your arse because I was out of the station at the time. What do they say? ‘It’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.’ Even from me. Now off you go. Pick up your actions on the way, and let’s see some progress before the day’s out.”
THE OFFICES Zelda worked in occupied two floors of a building on Cambridge Circus. The upper floor consisted of work spaces for the six people, though it was rare that they were all occupied at the same time, and the lower floor was given over entirely to archives and records. The decor was typical institutional drab, coats of jaundiced gloss so dense you could see your reflection on the walls. The heaters never worked properly, and the most modern elements of the space were its security system and computer software.
Through the tall sash windows she could look down on the Circus in all its glory, the crowds massing by crossings, traffic nudging and edging for advantage, horns blaring, the lumbering buses disgorging their hordes, and at the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road, the huge HARRY POTTER poster had been outside the Palace Theatre for as long as she had been working there. It always gave her a thrill to look out, not least because it was the Circus, and it was indelibly associated with John le Carré, one of her favorite writers, and George Smiley, one of her favorite fictional characters.
Nobody really knew what anyone else was working on. It wasn’t the kind of office where one shared confidences. Perhaps Hawkins, the supervisor, knew, but sometimes Zelda wasn’t even too sure about him; Hawkins had his own agenda as well as his own office, glassed off and soundproofed, in a corner of the room. He liked to give the impression that he was an ordinary bloke, despite the public-school education (a very minor public school, he always stressed) and a first in Medieval History at Cambridge. He wore M&S suits rather than Hugo Boss or Paul Smith, and his glasses were always slipping down over his nose, giving the impression that his mind was on some abstruse problem of Byzantine military history, but he didn’t miss a trick. He wouldn’t have survived in his job as long as he had if he did.
Of course, Zelda’s job wasn’t entirely the way she had described it to Raymond or Banks, though recognizing people from photos and surveillance was certainly a large part of it. The rest she couldn’t talk about, partly for reasons of secrecy and partly because it would change their ideas about her. But she had been honest in offering to help as regards Phil Keane, and she thought she could do it with minimum trouble.
“Just going to check something in the archives,” she said to the man she knew only as Teddy
at the next desk. He nodded without looking up. She picked up a batch of photographs from her desk to carry with her. There was nothing unusual in visiting the archives. Quite often a new image recalled an old one, and it helped create a new juxtaposition that had to be checked and verified.
If one of Hawkins’s beady eyes followed her as she walked past his office, Zelda was aware of it only in passing and never gave it a second thought.
BANKS MARCHED through the double doors that linked the police station to the scientific support department and made his way down the corridor to Jazz Singh’s office. The department was mostly open plan, and such “offices” as there were consisted of rows of glassed-in cubicles along the walls. Jazz’s was no exception. Banks tapped on the glass and Jazz beckoned him inside. There was hardly enough space for the two of them, but he managed to shoehorn himself into the second chair opposite her. He had to leave the door open in order to do so.
Jazz sat behind a pile of papers, which threatened to obscure her diminutive form if she slouched down in her seat in the slightest. The bookcases that lined three walls were full to overflowing with scientific texts. All around them was a sense of urgent activity, people coming and going, yet a strange hush presided over it all. Voices were muffled, footsteps inaudible.
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