The Killer

by Susan Wilkins

  He followed Stoneham through the oak-beamed interior of the pub to the bar.

  She turned and smiled at him. ‘Don’t get upset, Tom. You can’t expect to always second-guess how people are going to react. But I wouldn’t mind betting that Nicci Armstrong knows more about Kaz Phelps and the Kemals than she’s letting on. Wouldn’t you agree?’

  As usual, the DCI had put her finger on it. ‘Maybe that’s why she got so arsey with me?’

  ‘We’re the lucky ones. We’ve got the rules to guide us and procedures to follow. She got hung out to dry. How do you hold on to your moral compass in the world she finds herself in?’ Stoneham rested one elbow on the bar, reached down and pulled off her left shoe. ‘Ouch! I hate these bloody things.’

  ‘I was only trying to make her like me. And trust me.’ His brow was furrowed. He hated having to make excuses, to explain, especially to Stoneham. But she should’ve briefed him properly. A dead kid, no wonder she was so reactive. Okay, he’d played Nicci all wrong but it wasn’t entirely his fault. He realized Stoneham was scanning him.

  ‘I’ll have a G and T, a large one.’

  He gave her a curt nod and concentrated on getting the barman’s attention.

  Cheryl Stoneham rubbed her sore foot. Rivlin was clever and analytical in his approach, which was good. But he also had a tendency to bulldoze everything in his path. Stoneham had nothing against his aspirations; he was her protégé and she genuinely wanted him to succeed. But he had an emotional blind spot and sometimes a little tug on the reins was required to get him to take stock and think things through.

  Nicci Armstrong had sussed him out all too easily. But if she’d gone off in a huff that suggested she wasn’t totally immune to his charms. Stoneham had no wish to exploit the poor woman’s vulnerabilities, but on the other hand she was SIO on a multiple homicide. Nicci was their route, probably their only route, to Karen Phelps. Stoneham knew she couldn’t afford to be soft.

  Rivlin plonked a fizzing highball glass of gin, ice and tonic on the bar in front of her. She lifted it to her lips and took a refreshing draught. The first sip was always the best. ‘So . . .’ she smiled at him. ‘Just call her. And apologize.’

  14

  Walking briskly through Covent Garden, Nicci’s temper had cooled; she’d hopped on a bus in High Holborn and returned to the office. She often worked late. The peace and quiet of the deserted building soothed her, while the evidence of other people – the abandoned coffee cups, the drift of sweet wrappers on Eddie’s desk – made it somehow more homely than her empty flat.

  She’d tried to contact Karen Phelps but her texts had been ignored and her calls had gone to voicemail. If the hit really was the work of the Kemals, Phelps needed to know. Thanks to Nicci’s intervention, she’d been released from police custody and was probably lying low, afraid that Pudovkin would have another crack at her. Trouble was, Nicci had no idea where she might be hiding.

  Nicci had spent upwards of an hour dealing with emails and the neat line of Post-its that Pascale had left across the bottom of her computer screen. None of it was urgent and most of it wasn’t even interesting. The meeting with Rivlin had left her dispirited and dissatisfied. Life as a DS in the Met hadn’t been a bowl of cherries, but she’d been out of it long enough for memory to start playing its tricks. If things had been different, she mused, maybe she’d have been promoted to DI herself by this time. Rivlin was smart but she knew deep down she was a better copper. It was all too easy to slip into reverie and regret about what might have been.

  Outside, twilight had turned to darkness with an orange glow leeching up from the streets to the rooftops. Nicci’s stomach was telling her she needed to eat. She clicked her computer into sleep mode and started to pack up her things.

  A movement across the other side of the room alerted her to a presence. She assumed it was the security guard doing his rounds. When she took a second look she saw it was Simon Blake. He raised a hand in salute and Nicci watched him weave around the desks towards her. He was obviously drunk.

  ‘Still here, Nic? Reckon you’re my most hardworking employee.’ His words weren’t exactly slurred but the slow delivery suggested a man holding on to himself – just. He plonked down in an adjacent chair.

  ‘You look like you’ve had a skinful.’

  He gave his head a vehement shake. ‘I hate getting drunk.’

  ‘Yeah, looks like it.’

  ‘S’true. But sometimes the occasion calls for it. It’s all part of the game.’

  ‘What game?’ Nicci was reflecting that in all the years she’d known him, she’d never seen him pissed, not even slightly. Simon Blake liked to be in control, always.

  He frowned with concern. ‘Why are you still here, Nic? It’s no life. I worry about you.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘We are going to sort this out. I promise.’

  ‘Sort what out?’

  Reaching over impulsively, he grabbed her hand. ‘I do worry about you. If I lost one of my three, don’t know what I’d do.’

  She eased herself from his grasp. ‘You need to go home, Simon.’

  He flopped back in the chair. ‘Sorry. I’m pissed.’

  ‘How about I call you a cab?’

  His alcohol-fuddled brain seemed to be skittering between random thoughts. ‘That Russian, he’s a canny bastard.’

  ‘What Russian?’

  ‘Thinks he can play us.’

  ‘Who’re you talking about? Pudovkin?’

  ‘They’re all the same.’

  ‘The same as Pudovkin?’

  ‘Think they can just buy their way in. That it’s all for sale.’ He gave a sour laugh. ‘And I’ll tell you a secret, Nic – it is. Welcome to London, money-laundering capital of the world. Let’s all bow our knee and tug our forelock to our new masters.’

  ‘Who the hell have you been talking to?’

  ‘Hush hush, can’t possibly say. It’s all bollocks, of course. I don’t know who the fuck we think we’re protecting.’

  ‘Someone’s been talking to you about Viktor Pudovkin? So what’s that bastard up to now?’

  ‘Should’ve nicked him for the murder of Helen Warner.’ He wagged his finger at her. ‘They should’ve done it.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I was still in the job, I’d’ve done it. Lean on Hollister and his barmy wife hard enough, they’d’ve coughed.’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘Now look where we are.’ His chin quivered. He seemed close to tears.

  ‘Where are we, Simon?’

  ‘Fucked. It was bad enough before. Now we’re well and truly, every which way, fucked!’

  She knew the booze was talking. Even so, she found his drunken despair hard to witness. Simon Blake was one of the few men she truly respected and admired.

  He wiped his nose with his fingers and shot her an anxious glance. ‘I go home like this, Heather’ll kill me. I could sleep in my office, couldn’t I?’

  ‘Have you called her? She’ll be worried.’

  ‘Sent a text. Earlier.’

  Nicci held out her hand. ‘Give me your phone.’

  He rummaged in his jacket pocket and handed it over. ‘Tell her I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to let her down. I didn’t mean to let you down.’

  ‘You haven’t. You’re just drunk.’

  His head rolled sideways. ‘Probably not drunk enough.’

  Nicci scrolled through his contacts until she found Heather’s name. She sighed then pressed the call button. It rang twice before a fretful voice came on the line. ‘Where the hell are you? I waited at the station for an hour.’

  ‘It’s Nicci Armstrong, Heather. He’s okay. We’re at the office and he’s drunk.’

  ‘Nicci – oh.’ If she was surprised, she hardly showed it. ‘He sent a text that was complete nonsense.’

  ‘That figures. I don’t know where he’s been. But I was working late and he turned up here.’

  ‘Oh.’ Now embarrassment had crept
into her voice. ‘I’m sorry you’ve been bothered with all this.’

  ‘It’s not a bother.’ Nicci reflected that Heather and her husband were very similar: both polite and contained people, who gave nothing away. It made Blake’s drunken ramblings all the more shocking. There was an awkward pause.

  ‘I’ll get a sitter for the boys then I’ll drive in and collect him.’

  ‘Okay. Listen, Heather, I know he’s been under a lot of pressure lately. Only today we discovered Hugo’s gone AWOL, so it’s hardly surprising that—’

  ‘He was going to have a drink with Colin. Do you know if that’s what he did?’ Her tone was brusque.

  ‘Colin?’

  ‘Colin McCain. He and Colin were at Hendon together.’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’ Nicci had never heard of any Colin McCain. A former colleague in the Met? She glanced across at Blake; his eyes were closed, chin slumped on his chest. ‘Want me to ask him?’

  ‘No, no. It’s probably going to take me over an hour to get there. Is that all right?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll keep an eye on him.’

  ‘Thanks, Nicci. I’m sure we both appreciate it.’

  Nicci had no chance to respond; Heather Blake was gone. Clicking the phone off she stared at her slumbering boss. So what had this former colleague been telling him? And what the hell was going on?

  15

  Settling down to sleep once again in her childhood bedroom produced uncomfortable feelings in Kaz. The room had been redecorated by Ellie, in various shades of pink, to celebrate Kaz’s release from prison two years earlier. It was girly and frilly, a pre-teen boudoir stuffed with cuddly toys and odd-looking gonks; only now did it dawn on Kaz that maybe this was her mother’s attempt to airbrush the past.

  Throughout the evening they’d hardly spoken. Kaz had turned on the television and they’d watched a property show in which a smug couple with more money than sense argued about whether they wanted a penthouse overlooking the Thames or a renovated farmhouse in the Cotswolds. All concerned seemed very pleased with themselves. Kaz let the succession of luxurious images wash over her while Ellie dozed.

  Was she being too hard on her mother? Could shame and regret have brought on a change of heart? Kaz doubted it. Ellie’s neediness ruled her actions, it always had. She was not so much selfish as incapable of recognizing anyone else’s needs but her own.

  As a small boy, Joey had dubbed her ‘the old bat’; he knew how to play her even then. He and Kaz would giggle together over his latest ruse to wangle even more cash out of her. But once he’d grown up, Joey morphed into the dutiful son who took care of everything. The house was stuffed to the gunnels with sumptuous soft furnishings and furniture, every kitchen gadget on the market, the electronic wizardry to play music in every room and watch telly in the bath. Joey had provided all this together with a generous monthly allowance. Her husband had certainly disappointed her, but Ellie got all the trappings of luxury she’d ever desired from her loving son. It left Kaz wondering who had really been manipulating who in the end.

  Having lined up the gonks on the windowsill, Kaz slipped under the soft fat duvet. What she needed more than anything was rest. The days running up to the funeral, the bloody gun battle and the police grilling had left her shattered. On top of all this had come Ellie’s pathetic attempt at contrition, which had brought to the surface a slew of memories and feelings she’d been trying for so many years to ignore. Her lacerated ear was throbbing, her body felt heavy and her mind leaden with a weight she could hardly bear.

  Somehow she’d found the energy to tuck Ellie up in her own room with more painkillers and a hot drink. All she wanted now was sleep. As she closed her eyes an image swam through her brain of the gonks staring at her, a definite malevolence in their black felt eyes. But she was bone-weary and within moments she was fast asleep.

  When she came to the first thing to hit her was the smell. She sat up abruptly; the room was dark but filled with an acrid fug that immediately made her cough. As she took a breath a sharp pain pierced her lungs and she gasped. Her next breath only made it worse. She clasped her palm reflexively over her mouth and half jumped, half tumbled out of bed.

  Struggling to see, eyes stinging and watering, she felt a deep rumbling quivering up through the whole house.

  The smoke seeping under the door swirled around the room and every breath she was forced to take disorientated her more.

  Grasping the handle, she managed to wrench open the door and that was when the heat smacked into her in a savage whooshing wave. The stairs were ablaze, a crackling inferno with flames leaping from the ground floor up the stairwell and licking the walls and ceiling. Her mother’s room was along the landing, closer to the fire, and its door was already blazing.

  With the last ounce of her strength Kaz put her shoulder against her own door and forced it shut. She stumbled towards the window, but her face was scorched, her lungs paralysed. Falling to her knees, she tried to crawl. It was too dark to see the gonks up on the windowsill yet she knew they were laughing at her. It was her last thought. As she reached up to grab the sill, her head spun and a searing blackness rose up to engulf her.

  16

  Although it was late, Robert Hollister was buzzing and it wasn’t just the whisky. The morning’s meeting with his new lawyer had brought a sense of purpose back into his life. Isabel Merrow QC was a frosty bitch but she was respected and connected. Turning hopeless defence briefs into acquittals was her speciality. She could find the weak spot in any case, deftly prise it open and in would flood the magic elixir known in legal parlance as ‘reasonable doubt’.

  The police had failed to get a coherent statement out of Paige Hollister and that was the flaw in their case. Fifteen minutes into the interview she’d started to scream and rant, saying she’d been set up and lashing out at anyone who came near her. She’d had to be restrained, sedated and sectioned.

  But Hollister knew his wife; it was all an act. Behind her flips into hysterics there was always calculation. It was Paige who’d got him into this mess. She’d miscalculated badly when she went to Pudovkin and told him about Helen Warner; the old Russian spook didn’t hesitate. He’d spent years in the KGB and was a senior officer in the FSB, which replaced it. He knew the information Paige had given him was gold dust and that once he’d helped Hollister, by removing Helen from the scene, the politician would be in his pocket forever.

  Once Paige realized the seriousness of her blunder she panicked and made a rather melodramatic suicide attempt, after which she was transferred to an exclusive private clinic for which Viktor Pudovkin, as a concerned friend, was footing the bill. This had succeeded in shutting her up, which was everyone’s priority at the time.

  Hollister himself, released on police bail, had gone to ground in a rented mansion-block flat near Hammersmith Bridge. The location was supposed to be secret but one of his former policy advisors ratted him out and for the first couple of weeks the place had been besieged by paps. But gradually things had quietened down, his fall from grace was no longer a hot item on the news agenda and he was able to get out for walks. He’d wander along the towpath, mostly after dark. The rest of the time he spent on social media. He never posted, he simply watched enviously as the Westminster circus rolled along on its merry way, leaving him behind.

  To say he was bitter was an understatement. Suppressed fury was devouring him. He was the victim of malign fate; he’d done nothing wrong yet his life had been ripped apart. The accusations concerning Helen Warner were simply ridiculous. She may have been around fourteen when he’d first fucked her, but he could hardly be blamed. As a girl she’d been a precocious little minx who’d had a complete crush on him. When he and Paige had invited her to join them in a threesome, she didn’t say no. She was an adventurous kid, up for anything. No one forced her.

  In his view, society had become far too prissy about these things. In many cultures around the world girls were married with their first kid at fourteen. Unfortunately, the
Jimmy Savile case had caused political correctness to go into overdrive. The man was obviously a creep; Hollister had met him at a fundraiser for some charity or other, and he’d thought so at the time. Interfering with kids in hospital was clearly beyond the pale. But as a result all kinds of perfectly normal sexual behaviour had become suspect.

  When he was at Oxford, more than twenty years ago, he’d had plenty of mates who were having sex with teenage girls. With their thigh-high skirts and their boobs in your face, they were broadcasting an unambiguous message and no one asked to see their birth certificates. Maybe, as a good-looking bloke with his pick of the pack, he’d shagged more than most. But you got your leg over whenever you could, everyone did, and no one was expecting to be prosecuted all these years later for what even the girls accepted was part of the culture.

  Hollister sat brooding over his whisky. Most evenings he got through at least half a bottle. He’d spent a frustrating afternoon trying to get Viktor Pudovkin on the phone. The billionaire finally returned his call explaining he was airborne, returning from a business lunch in Munich. Hollister imagined himself sitting beside the Russian in one of the plush leather armchairs in his Gulfstream jet. Private air travel had always appealed to him. In his darker moments, mourning the loss of his political career, he’d comforted himself with the notion that there was a silver lining. Once criminal charges had been dropped, he could forget about the voters and the unions and all the left-wing bleeding hearts he’d spent years wooing, and turn his attention to making some serious money.

  Pudovkin spoke German and English fluently, in addition to his native tongue, and his tone had been brisk. ‘So, Robert, what can I do for you?’

  ‘The lawyer says I need Paige to make a statement.’

  ‘Then ask her. She’s your wife.’

  Hollister wondered if Pudovkin was being deliberately obtuse. Several days before his arrest he’d informed Paige that he intended to divorce her. After what she’d done, what did the stupid bitch expect? True to form she’d freaked and since then had refused to speak to him.