by John Harvey
‘There wasn’t a relationship.’
‘Lesley, we need to know.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we’re trying to find out what happened. Who did that to him. I thought you’d want to help us.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Anything, anything you might tell us, it could help. Even if you don’t see how.’
‘But I told you …’
‘He wasn’t your boyfriend, yes, I know.’
‘So?’
‘So what was he?’
‘Oh, God …’ Swinging away.
‘Lesley, he phoned you, three times, the night he was killed.’
She started to walk, angling back towards the school, and he walked with her.
‘Why did he call so many times?’
‘Because he wanted to talk to her, that’s why.’
‘Her? Who’s her?’
She stopped again, faced him. ‘I can’t tell you.’
‘Just let me try to understand. He wanted to talk to somebody else, really wanted to talk to them, it was important — so why not call them, why call you?’
‘Because it was how …’ She bit down on an already jagged nail. ‘He wasn’t allowed to call her, right? Not any more. Not without … He’d call me first and I’d text her and then she’d call him. That was how it worked.’
Why? Costello asked himself and slipped the question to one side.
‘That night, then, that’s what you did? His girl? Sent a text?’
‘Yes.’
‘And did she contact him?’
‘No. That’s why he kept on. Where is she? Where is she? Tell her she’s got to ring me.’
‘And after the last time? The last time he called?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so, no.’
‘Do you know why? Had they fallen out? What?’
A ragged breath. ‘She was scared, wasn’t she?’
‘Of him?’
‘No, not of him.’
‘Then who?’
‘Her father, of course. Her sodding father.’
Muffled, inside the main building a bell was ringing; the rising distant sound of voices, people moving.
‘Lesley …’
‘What?’
‘Sooner or later, you’re going to have to tell me her name. You know that, don’t you?’
9
While Tim Costello was making himself familiar with the Borough of Lewisham, Karen’s destination was more upmarket: Kensington within spitting distance of Harrods, a small block of purpose-built flats away from the main road. The exterior was outfaced in off-white stone, curved windows with square panes that brought to Karen’s mind the deck of a ship, a liner, the kind that cruised people with too much money and time around the world’s oceans. Her uncle would talk of watching them come past the long sand spit of the Palisadoes and into Kingston harbour, all those white faces crowded along the rail, eager for the sanitised taste of another culture, the quick whiff of ganja and a frisson of danger.
The name Milescu was clear beside the entryphone.
Karen identified herself and was buzzed through.
Clare Milescu met her as she stepped out of the lift with a firm handshake and a ready, open smile. Close to fifty, Karen thought, and not disguising it, little need: trim, neat, and next to Karen herself, almost petite; short dark hair well cut, laced with grey. She was wearing a dark skirt and pale lavender blouse, black tights, red shoes. Her only accessory, watch aside, a wedding ring.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘Please come in.’
The door to the flat was open behind her.
There were photographs, black-and-white, arranged along both sides of the hall: family portraits, Karen thought, formal, informal, children in their best Sunday clothes, a picnic, an elderly man in a hospital bed.
The room they went into was like something from a magazine Karen might have thumbed through at the hairdresser’s. Low settees in muted colours at right angles to one another; blonde wood, glass and chrome; a lamp like an oversized pebble on the parquet floor. More photographs, mounted and framed. The paintwork the palest of violets, barely a colour at all. Someone with money and a certain taste.
A large window led out on to a balcony busy with plants that had survived, somehow, the winter frosts. A wide mirror reflected pale winter light back into the room.
‘So, Detective Chief Inspector, is that what I call you?’
‘Karen.’
‘Then, Clare.’ The smile was more genuine this time, less professional. ‘Please, sit down. I’ve made some coffee.’
‘I don’t want to take too much of your time.’
‘Time, for the moment, is the one thing I have plenty of. And besides, Ion isn’t here yet.’
‘I thought you said …’
‘He would be here, I know.’ A quick glance towards her wrist. ‘He stayed with his father last night. But don’t worry, he knows you’re expecting him.’ Another smile. ‘For a teenage boy, he’s quite reliable.’
Adding that she wouldn’t be a moment, she left the room.
Swivelling round, Karen looked towards the photographs on the rear wall. Some, again, in black-and-white, but most in colour. More recent. Young men in T-shirts, some with tattoos, posing; older men in suits, dark haired, stubble, what she thought of as Eastern European faces. A few were staring at the camera, as if on request; others caught unawares, halfturning, as if angry, at the soft click of the camera.
‘They’re all Ion’s,’ Clare Milescu said, tray in hand, returning. ‘A project he’s been working on. My Country Across Borders. He’s in his first year at the London College of Communication. A degree course in Photography.’
‘They’re good,’ Karen said. ‘Accomplished. Not that I’d really know.’
‘His father gave him a camera for his twelfth birthday, a really good digital SLR. For the first couple of years after that he almost never let it out of his hands.’
‘You and Ion’s father …?’
‘Ah.’ She eased a small cup of espresso in Karen’s direction. ‘There’s milk if you wish.’
‘No, this is fine.’
‘When you phoned,’ businesslike now, ‘you said you wanted to talk to Ion about some calls to his mobile.’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘They’re important, then?’
‘An investigation that’s ongoing …’
‘But important?’
‘Yes.’
‘Otherwise, I mean, a detective chief inspector — I hardly think …’
‘You know what?’ Karen leaned forward, a change of tone, more friendly, taking the other woman into her confidence. ‘One thing about rank, being in charge, all the good bits go to somebody else. And all you get, most of the time — excuse the expression — is everyone else’s shit.’
Clare Milescu put up a hand and laughed. ‘I know exactly what you mean.’
‘So, once in a while, instead of detailing a job like this to somebody else, I’ll do it myself.’ She glanced towards one of the windows. ‘Sometimes it pays off. Nice day, what passes for sunshine. Beautiful flat …’ She held up her cup. ‘Good coffee. What could be better?’
Clare Milescu smiled.
‘I was wondering,’ Karen said. ‘Your name. Milescu.’
‘My husband’s.’
‘But you’re English?’
‘Born and bred.’
‘Then how come …?’
‘You really want to know?’
‘Just interested. Other people’s lives.’ A small, self-deprecating laugh. ‘You always think — you look around, see somewhere like this — you always think, I don’t know, how …’
The older woman laughed. ‘How did they get so lucky?’
‘Something like that.’
‘And since, for once, you’re away from your desk …’
‘Exactly.’
‘Very well. But it was chance, I’m afraid. Nothing worked out in advance, not part of some gr
and plan.’ Clare Milescu stirred a tiny amount of sugar into her cup, so little you could almost count the granules. ‘I went out to Moldova with the United Nations Development Programme in ’92, not so long after it gained recognition as an independent country. I’d started working for them soon after leaving university. In Moldova we were working with the new government to help improve standards of living — socially, as well as economically. Engage in a dialogue with key government figures, that was our directive. Where my husband, where Paul was concerned I took that perhaps a little too literally.’
Something was alive, a memory, in her eyes.
‘He was working for the Ministry of Justice in Chisnau. We began a relationship — it was difficult, he was already married — all the usual — what would you say? — all the usual shit that comes with people’s lives. I mean, we weren’t that old, but we weren’t children.
‘Anyway …’ A sip of espresso. ‘We sorted it all out and thank heaven we did because by that time I was pregnant with Ion. We knew enough, both of us — and I feel guilty just saying this — but we felt that, if we were able, we could offer our child a better life here in the UK. So, I got a job at the UN’s office in London, my husband had business connections.’ She leaned back. ‘Here we still are.’
‘But not together?’
‘No.’
‘And you’re still with the UN?’
‘Unfortunately not. In ’03 they relocated their European offices to Brussels. But Ion was already in school, had made friends, so we decided to stay. Besides, my husband’s business was doing well. As you can see. For a while I was content to sit around, have long lunches with friends. Play tennis. Go to the gym. But it didn’t really suit me at all. Now I’m working with an advice centre for refugees, those from Eastern Europe especially.’
Both heads turned at the sound of a key turning in the front door.
Ion Milescu was slender, almost willowy, his slenderness making him seem taller than he actually was; he had dark hair that fell forward across his forehead, his mother’s blue eyes. He was wearing trainers, blue jeans ripped over one knee, a check shirt beneath a jeans jacket which he shucked off as he entered the room and tossed over the back of a chair.
Bending, he kissed his mother’s raised cheek and glanced across towards where Karen was sitting.
When his mother made the introductions, he nodded briefly and flopped down on one of the settees. Karen waited to see if he would look again in her direction, instead of staring at the floor, the lace that was working its way loose from his shoe.
‘Petru Andronic,’ she said eventually. ‘I believe you knew him?’
‘Who?’
She repeated the name.
‘No. Sorry.’
‘He’s the young man whose body was found on Hampstead Heath just before Christmas. He’d been murdered.’
‘Oh, him.’ A shuffling of feet. ‘Yes, I remember now. But he wasn’t anyone I knew.’
‘You’re sure of that?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Because it seems he knew you.’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘On the night of December 20th, 21st, there were three calls made to your mobile by someone we believe to have been him.’
‘Then it must have been a wrong number.’
‘Three times?’
‘Sure. You put the number into your phone, you put it in wrong, each time you try it comes up the same.’
Until then, he’d scarcely looked her in the eye. Perhaps it was a teenage boy thing, Karen thought, perhaps not.
‘The first call was at a quarter to eleven,’ she said, ‘the second roughly forty minutes later, the last at ten minutes past midnight.’
‘If you say so.’
‘On the first occasion you accepted the call. Why would you do that if you didn’t recognise the number?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose I didn’t pay too much attention. You don’t, do you? Not always. You hear the ring tone, you answer.’
‘And have a conversation?’
‘I’ve told you, there wasn’t any conversation. I can’t even remember any of this happening. But if it did, I suppose I just said something about wrong number and that was that. Finish. The end. What does it matter, anyway?’
The merest hint of an accent aside, his English was perfect.
‘Three minutes,’ Karen said.
‘What?’
‘The first call, three minutes and seven seconds. A long time to say sorry, wrong number.’
‘Look, I’ve told you …’ He was on his feet quickly, all signs of his previous lassitude disappeared. ‘All I know about Petru Andronic is what I read in the paper and whatever bits of gossip I’ve heard from friends. Okay? If he called my number like you say, I’ve no idea how or why, and I’ve no recollection of talking to him at all. So …’
Stepping past his mother’s outstretched hand, he stormed out of the room. In the kitchen, the fridge door opened and bottles rattled before it was slammed shut.
Clare Milescu closed her eyes, sighed, looked towards Karen with a rueful smile.
‘Karen, I’m sorry. I’m not sure why he’s like this. Let me talk to him.’
‘Of course.’
The kitchen door opened and closed and after a moment Karen could hear the rise and fall of voices without being able to decipher the words. Then the voices stopped and mother and son returned, Ion with his hands in his jeans pockets, head bowed.
‘Ion,’ his mother said, measuring her words, ‘would like the opportunity to reconsider some of the remarks he’s previously made.’
Clare Milescu made more coffee; her son fetched a bottle of Lucozade Sport from the fridge and, at his mother’s insistence, grudgingly poured it into a glass. One of the windows out on to the balcony had been opened slightly, allowing a residue of breeze and traffic noise into the room.
The truth was, Ion said, he did know Petru Andronic, but by sight, little more. He’d bumped into him a few times at a cafe down in Chiswick where some of the Moldovan lads hung out, along with others from Romania and the Ukraine; they’d been involved, all of them, in a handful of scratch soccer games over in Brondesbury Park. He couldn’t remember ever having given Andronic his mobile number, but he supposed it was possible. A lot of that went on, mobiles out all the time, the cafe especially, numbers being exchanged.
‘So,’ Karen asked, ‘when Andronic called just before Christmas, what was all that about?’
He’d been in a bit of a state, excited about something, Ion told her, he’d never really been able to establish what. Something about someone who was supposed to meet him.
‘A girlfriend?’
Ion didn’t know. Maybe. Yes, probably. But if it was a girl he didn’t know her name. Calm down, he’d told him. Give me a call tomorrow. Tomorrow morning.
By tomorrow morning, he was dead.
‘Why didn’t you come forward with any of this before?’ Karen asked. ‘When it was all over the news and we were appealing for help? Information?’
A quick glance towards his mother. ‘I didn’t want to get involved.’
‘He was your friend.’
‘He was not my fucking friend.’
‘Ion!’ His mother’s reaction was automatic, instantaneous.
‘I’m sorry, but how many times do I have to say it? He was not my friend.’
The burr of traffic from outside was more audible than before.
‘I really think,’ Clare Milescu said, rising, ‘Ion has helped you all he can.’
Karen set her cup down evenly in its saucer. ‘Thank you. Thank you both.’
Clare Milescu walked her to the door.
‘You realise,’ Karen said, ‘it’s possible we may want to speak to your son again.’
‘I don’t think that should be really necessary, do you?’ The smile was there, then gone, the door closing with a firm click. Karen paused, then turned away. Stairs rather than lift.
10
Sasha
Martin. Sixteen years and seven months. Sixth form student at the same school as her friend, Lesley Tabor. Only not today.
The house was a stone’s throw from Mountsfield Park. More Hither Green than Catford, truth be told. Suburbia, Karen thought, but not quite as we know it. A Range Rover and a customised Mini were parked outside. The hedge had been trimmed to within an inch of its life.
No hawkers, no circulars, no unsolicited mail.
Costello reached past Karen, rang the bell and stepped back.
The woman who came to the door was in her forties, slim, well-toned, fingernails that would have done justice to a bird of prey. Three mornings a week down the gym, Karen reckoned. That, at least. No obvious resort yet to plastic surgery, but it would come.
‘Mrs Martin?’
‘Yes?’
‘Fay Martin?’
‘Yes.’
Karen showed her warrant card, Tim Costello likewise.
‘We’d like to speak to your daughter, Sasha. They told us at the school she was here at home.’
‘You’ve not come about that, surely?’
‘No. No, not at all.’
‘Well, then …’ Her eyes flickered from one to the other, lingering on Costello a fraction longer. ‘You’d best come in. Sasha’s upstairs in her room.’
Someone, perhaps even Fay Martin herself, had been overworking the Pledge in the hall, shining the occasional table, buffing up the parquet.
‘Sasha! Sash! Come on down, there’s a love.’
A pause, a door opening, then the usual bored, resentful teenage voice, ‘What for now?’
‘It’s the police, Sash. Just a couple of questions, that’s all.’
‘What about?’
‘Come down and you’ll see.’
She raised an eyebrow to signify, kids, you know what they’re like, and led them into a living room that was a testament to World of Leather. French windows leading out to a conservatory. A large flat-screen television was tuned to some confessional chat show, sound barely above a whisper — I slept with my girlfriend’s sister, my mum’s best friend. Faces anxiously searching for the camera as they sought their moment in the mire.
‘She’ll be down in a minute.’ With a flick of the remote she switched off the TV. ‘Maybe you’d like to tell me what all this is about?’