Cold Cuts

by Douglas Lindsay

  She hesitated a moment as she entered, Bain pausing behind her, not quite with a view of what Pereira could see, and then Pereira walked in and he followed, both of them with their eyes fixed on the knife embedded in Rowena Abernethy’s forehead.

  She was slumped over the island in the middle of the kitchen, face squashed uncomfortably against it, blood pooled around her head. They walked over beside her, Bain reaching out to feel her neck. An automatic but pointless movement, as her death was obvious.

  “Dead?” asked Pereira.

  “Funny,” said Bain. “Been a while.”

  “The small light in the hall suggests since yesterday evening.”

  “Yep.”

  “One by one they fall,” said Pereira, taking a step away, turning her back on Bain and the corpse, giving herself space to think.

  “You want me to call it in?” said Bain.

  She walked to the window. With the snow outside, the day was bright, the kitchen was bright. A beautiful day, even if the sun wasn’t shining. The kind of fresh-snow day wasted at work. A day for getting out in the garden with the kids, throwing snowballs and building snowmen, then finding a hill to sledge down, before coming home to hot chocolate and a warm fire.

  In your dreams, Inspector.

  Bain watched her, waiting, then realised he was still holding his fingers against the cold, dead neck of Rowena Abernethy, and walked over to the sink and washed his hands.

  “Yes,” said Pereira. “But we shouldn’t wait around for anyone to arrive. We’ll do a quick search of the house, then head back to the station.”

  “Looks like we’ve got something else to pin on Chantelle.”

  “Hmm,” said Pereira. “I’m not so sure just yet. Let’s see.”

  *

  “Nothing to do with me.”

  Chantelle sat behind the desk, her handcuffed wrists resting on the edge.

  “I don’t believe you,” said Pereira.

  As it happened, she did believe her, but it was much too early to say that.

  “Never met the woman. I mean, I’m like, I met two kinds of people in this business, right? I met Kev and Dirk, the two guys who made the films, and, like, I met the blokes and women I fucked. I never met the wives.”

  She laughed, then added, “I mean, seriously. Like I was going to be hanging out with Dirk’s wife.”

  “Was she involved with the business?” asked Bain.

  “How should I know? I mean, d’you know who actually runs the Police Service?”

  “Yes,” said Pereira.

  “Whatever. Maybe Dirk killed her. I mean, it was the kind of thing he’d do.”

  “When did you kill Dirk?

  “Who says I killed Dirk?”

  “Did you kill Dirk?”

  She didn’t answer, though she never dropped her gaze. Held Pereira’s throughout.

  “Did you kill Kevin Moyes?”

  “Am I getting a lawyer any time soon?” asked Chantelle.

  “We can interview you for thirty-six hours before that happens.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Been to lawyer college, have you?”

  “Piss off.”

  “When your lawyer arrives tomorrow evening you can get them to confirm it. Did you kill Dirk Abernethy and Kevin Moyes?”

  “Well, I don’t think I’ll be saying anything until tomorrow evening,” said Chantelle. “Can I get an Xbox?”

  “What?”

  “You hear all this stuff about prisoners getting comfy cells and TVs and Playstations and stuff. I’m not telling you shit until I get a lawyer, so why don’t you just give us an Xbox, keep us occupied? And can I get my phone back, by the way?”

  “No.”

  “Speak to you tomorrow evening, Detective,” said Chantelle.

  “We can see about the Playstation,” said Pereira.

  “What d’you mean, ‘see about’?”

  “There’s a Playstation here at the station. We can set it up for you, but you need to tell us what you know, right now.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Which part d’you think is bullshit?”

  “What do you lot have a Playstation here for?”

  “To check contraband games.”

  That was answered with a snort. Pereira didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to, however. She knew Chantelle had the scent of a screen.

  “What games have you got?”

  “Literally everything.”

  “And you’re just, like, going to let me play it for nothing? I’m supposed to believe that?”

  “It’s not for nothing, Chantelle, it’s a quid pro quo.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “It means you get to use the Playstation in return for speaking to us today.”

  “So, wait, what? I’m just supposed to give up everything, and all I get in return is a game of GTA? How long do I get to play for? I mean, like, don’t people usually get like ten years taken off their sentence, shit like that, and you’re offering twenty minutes on a games console? Give us a break.”

  She shook her head.

  Pereira stood up. Bain followed immediately. Didn’t even wait to see the look of surprise on Chantelle’s face. No acknowledgement directed at her, they turned away, Pereira nodding at the officer on the door.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Wait.”

  Pereira glanced at Bain, an eye movement, nothing that Chantelle could see, and then they turned back together. Pereira still didn’t say anything, staring down at Chantelle, waiting.

  “Fine,” said Chantelle. “Give us it in writing that I get to play the Playstation for ten hours, and I’ll tell you … I don’t know, I’ll tell you some stuff.”

  “Just a moment,” said Pereira, then she opened the door and stepped outside with Bain.

  Door closed, they walked a few yards down the corridor.

  “Well, that was odd,” said Bain. “She’s really willing to talk in exchange for ten hours on a games console?”

  “Don’t you see it, Sergeant, all the time now? These people, that generation, their eyes never leave a screen. She just stared down the barrel of thirty-six hours of silently looking at a wall, and she couldn’t face the horror. She’s not thinking about what happens in ten years. No one that age thinks about what happens in ten years anymore. She’s thinking ahead about ten minutes, maybe ten hours. Ten days is long term planning. She can’t face the solitude. I noticed in a couple of those films, she was looking at her phone. I mean, it was supposed to be that she was watching porn, but her phone slipped in one, and it was apparent she was playing Tetris.”

  Bain laughed. “Jesus.”

  “Yes. I’m going back in there. Can you go and get paperwork done for some sort of deal? I doubt we’ll need it, she’s going to talk anyway, but just in case. Oh, and find out if they have a Playstation. Thanks.”

  Bain shook his head, still laughing, and walked away, Pereira opened the door back into the room.

  CHAPTER 12

  Early evening, back at the station, back at their desks. A spell spent whirring quickly through e-mails, the usual routine, serving only to make them realise how much they’d missed, the things they’d forgotten, and the fact that if ever there was a quiet hour or two in the office, they’d have about fifteen hundred hours worth of work to fill it.

  She was getting to the end of writing up the report on her discussion with Chantelle when Cooper appeared beside their desks, having been out of the office the entire time since they’d returned.

  He hovered for a moment, not speaking until she looked up.

  “Sir?” she said.

  “Aliya, Marc,” he said, nodding at them. “Got a moment?” He looked tired.

  “Of course.”

  He grabbed a seat from the next desk, pulled it round and sat adjacent to the two desks. Rubbed his hand across his face, then smiled ruefully, head shaking.

  “Don’t know how long I’ll survive in this job if the last f
ive hours is anything to go by,” he said, looking from one to the other.

  “Sir?” asked Pereira.

  Wary. She’d seen it often enough before. The discourteous boss who thought his rudeness could be offset by occasional displays of civility, even chumminess.

  “Budgets,” said Cooper. “Budgets, for five hours. And honestly, that’s a weekly budget meeting. Weekly. Like we have nothing better to do. Anyway, nice to get out, finally get some air. Where are we on the cold cuts case? You got this girl?”

  “Yes,” said Pereira. “I’m just writing it up now. Once we got her talking …”

  “We’ve got everything, case wrapped?” he asked.

  “She’s adamant she had nothing to do with Mrs. Abernethy’s murder.”

  A moment, and then Cooper nodded. “Right, sorry, of course. Mind full of figures, head ready to explode. Just … you know, I’ll read the report later, but I need to get something to eat. Give me the two-minute version.”

  Bain had switched off, gone back to work. He was never going to be part of this conversation anyway.

  “Moyes and Abernethy made porn movies. Low budget, barely paid anyone involved, but somehow they began to make money. Then they started seriously making money, and decided to legitimise and expand. Started an entertainment company, signed up to pay actual taxes, the whole thing, though they were still making this low-level grime porn.”

  “Grime porn,” said Cooper, head shaking.

  “That’s what they called it. Everything has to have a name. It was just porn, made for pennies, yet selling.”

  “And?”

  “And Chantelle was appearing in most of their videos and not getting paid much. Started out enjoying herself — free sex, she called it, as though she couldn’t have got it any other way — then at some point it occurred to her that they were just using, and abusing, her. They argued. She tried to leave. She said they threatened her, and she came up with this idea to take her revenge. Human meat. She got the idea from watching Hannibal.”

  “No one else involved?”

  “Not so she’s saying.”

  “But she didn’t kill Mrs. Abernethy?”

  “Not according to her.”

  “So there must be someone else involved.”

  “Exactly. There’s definitely someone else,” said Pereira. “At the moment we have the basic setup. We have men making porn movies that had graduated from underground to mainstream, and were making decent money. We have revenge. Just because we caught Chantelle red-handed cutting up Dirk Abernethy doesn’t mean she killed him, or Kevin Moyes. Plus, we’re going to have to find all the other actors in the movies to see if any of them shared Chantelle’s anger enough to be involved. Plus, there’s the matter of who was actually in charge of the business, because we don’t think it was these two slimebags. There was someone, well, at least one person, higher up. So that person could also now be lying dead, or they could be ultimately responsible.”

  “And are there any suspects?”

  Pereira glanced over at Bain, and they shared a shrug.

  “We’re barely getting started. It could be someone at the factory, as we already have Chantelle and Dirk, and we’ve identified one of the workers …” and she looked over to Bain, who said, “Mimi Craddock.”

  “Mimi Craddock,” said Pereira, “who also appeared in the films. We’ll speak to her tomorrow.”

  “Really? Is that just her porn star name?” asked Cooper, but he didn’t smile as he said it.

  “So, it might just be a loose connection which goes no further than that. However, if we’re looking for someone with authority and influence at the meat packing company, well, there’s really only one place to look.”

  “Whittaker,” said Cooper, “right. Does that seem likely?”

  “We don’t know enough about her. She was chippy, but then, her company was going down the stank as a result of this, so she had every right to be. And she drives an Aston Martin, but she’s head of a company, the financial workings of which we know very little, so it might be entirely reasonable. We’ve got some digging to do, and for all we know, this third party could just be an actual large entertainment company that puts money in small enterprises, distributes their stuff, and takes most of the cash.”

  “Yep,” said Cooper, “lot of work to do,” and he let out a long sigh, then rubbed his hands across his face.

  “We’ve got Jacqueline Hannity, Moyes’s partner, coming in shortly. Maybe she doesn’t know any more than she’s already said, but she’s hardly been forthcoming up until now. We’ll see.”

  Cooper held her gaze for a moment, then looked at the clock, high on the wall of the open-plan.

  “OK, well write it up, speak to Hannity when she comes, then go home for the night. Plenty more to do, as you said, but don’t work too late, you two.”

  He pushed the chair back along the floor and walked through to his own office.

  Bain finally looked up and he and Pereira stared at each other across the desk.

  A moment, while they wondered if either of them could possibly put the last few moments into any perspective, and then with a rueful eye movement and shake of the head, they returned to work.

  *

  “You’re pulling my chain,” said Jacqueline Hannity, head shaking.

  Kingdom was sitting in a seat beside his mother, holding a small action figure.

  Pereira had tried to leave the boy behind in a room with an officer to watch him, but his mother had said it was out of the question. He didn’t like to be alone with strangers. “You realise we’ll be discussing the porn business?” Pereira had said, to which Hannity had shrugged, and said, “I don’t know why, but whatever.”

  “No, I’m not pulling your chain, Jacqueline. We’re still compiling the evidence and putting the story together, but Kevin was running a porn movie business, a legitimate one at that, with Dirk Abernethy, and at least one other person. Maybe more.”

  Hannity lifted her eyes and shook her head, as though Pereira had told her that Moyes had had a few too many to drink.

  “Classic,” she said.

  “Have you ever heard of Blue Horizon Media?”

  Hannity stared disdainfully across the desk. They were sitting in small side office, impersonal and cold in its way, but not the bleak room where they interviewed suspects.

  “Naw,” she said.

  “Packaged Meat Ltd.?”

  “Really?”

  “Entertainment Corps?”

  Nothing.

  “State Funds Incorporated?”

  Hannity laughed, then she looked at Kingdom. Kingdom was staring at Pereira, his gaze unwavering, unblinking. His jaw was moving slowly, like he might have been chewing gum.

  “Those are what?” said Hannity, giving up on getting any feedback from her child.

  “Companies in which Kevin Moyes and Dirk Abernethy were involved.”

  “No way.”

  “You said Kevin had a supply of money that you didn’t understand.”

  “Aye, but he was probably gambling, some shite like that. Or some other dodgy racket, but it wasn’t … I mean, it wasn’t some big thing like Entertainment Corps, for fuck’s sake. Think you’re mixing him up with that bastard, Murdoch.”

  She glanced at Kingdom. Kingdom was looking at Pereira. Pereira, despite her best efforts, was beginning to feel the weight of the stare. She’d had plenty of kids stare at her in her time — indeed, in her job, she’d had plenty of adults do it too — but this particular child definitely crossed the border from uncomfortable into disturbing.

  She glanced at him, wondering if that might break the look. He stared back. Dammit, she thought, and turned back to his mum.

  “Why did you come up here, Jacqueline?” asked Pereira.

  “Youse lot asked, and youse said youse’d put us up in a hotel for the night.”

  Well, thought Pereira, there’s no arguing that. She hadn’t had the time to drive back down to Millport, and she didn’t want t
he second hand report from Constable Williams. Given the time saved, it was worth the forty-five pound hotel bill, and Hannity hadn’t had the wit to ask for travel expenses.

  “Best holiday we’ve had in the past three month, that no right, Dom? Magic.”

  This time she didn’t look at him, as they stared across the desk at Pereira in unison.

  “You never heard Kevin on the phone talking about anything you didn’t quite understand?”

  “What? You don’t think I’d understand the porn business?” said Hannity, and she laughed.

  “He had no conversations that seemed peculiar? No one came to the house? You sure he went fishing all those times he said he was going fishing?”

  “Well he brought fish home, if that means anything.”

  “He couldn’t have bought it at the fishmonger?”

  “You think there’s a still a fishmonger in Millport, hen?”

  “If he was away a long time,” said Pereira, “and he was certainly away long enough for you to have sex with Big Del from the Newton, he could have gone to the mainland. You have no idea where he was.”

  Her face darkened at the mention of Big Del from the Newton, offended that Pereira had dared say it in front of Kingdom, even though she herself had done so the previous day.

  “Far as I know, he was fishing.”

  Lips pursed, the look held across the table.

  “Now,” Hannity continued, “are we finished, “’cause I want to go and check out my hotel room. It better be nice, eh, Dom?”

  CHAPTER 13

  Nine fifty-seven. Kids in bed and, unusually, both asleep. Still excited about the Cold Cuts Killer, Anais’s interest had been raised higher by the fact that they’d arrested a killer who was barely ten years older than she was, although her, “Wow! We’re practically the same age,” had been a bit of an exaggeration.