Shadow Play

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘If you’re hiding something from a professional searcher, the best thing is to hide it outside the room, not inside. But the searchers didn’t look up here. Which suggests they’re not quite as professional as they think they are. There’s a chance that Kimmelman was smarter than them, which means …?’

  ‘There’s a chance it might still be here. Whatever it is,’ Atherton concluded. ‘But where do we look?’ And, after a beat, ‘And what are we looking for?’

  ‘We’ll know if we find it,’ said Slider.

  They had to get SOC in, which was frustrating; but the flat had to be properly gone over, in case the murder had been carried out there, and in case the murderer/searcher had left traces. Slider propounded his theory to Bob Bailey, but Bailey was sceptical. ‘Sounds like ordinary vandalism, to me,’ he said. ‘Someone with a grudge just took the place apart. But I’ll keep an eye out. What am I looking for?’

  Slider was forced to say, ‘I really don’t know,’ which did nothing to convince Bailey. He gave Slider a long stare, which stopped short of pity by the amount he respected Slider’s previous record, though as a civilian expert he was not under Slider’s command so didn’t have to take orders from him. Or agree with him.

  ‘Right,’ said Bailey at length, and went away.

  Meanwhile, they could at least get on with the canvassing, and with a name they could search records and put out enquiries. But not tonight. SOC would take as long as they took, but Slider could not authorise overtime for non-urgent activities, not when Mr Porson had instructed them to be frugal. He told Hart and LaSalle to knock off at six thirty, unless they had a hot lead, in which case they could phone him. And he went home himself. Joanna would be back from Sussex. He couldn’t wait to see her.

  FOUR

  Ubi Caritas

  By Wednesday morning the weather had returned to its previous unseasonal warmth. The sky was a hazy blue, the sun shone, and the leaves were hanging on to the trees, a little bedraggled from the rain but determined not to let go. The fact that it was as warm as early summer was vaguely unsettling, as when you see a slim blonde walking ahead of you in the street, and when you pass her she turns out to be in her sixties.

  Kimmelman had no criminal record, did not even appear as a ‘person of interest’. Under that name, at least, he had left no trace in police intelligence. Reports so far from the canvass of neighbours were that no one knew him other than to say hello as they passed. It was thought he lived alone, and the neighbour on the other side from Mrs Greenwood believed that he was not often at the flat at all, though this judgement proved to rest on his quietness rather than any firmer information. The same neighbour confirmed Kimmelman never had parties. He did not think he even had visitors – but again, how would he know?

  The neighbours underneath had not noticed any noise on Sunday night, but acknowledged they were heavy sleepers. A tenant on the ground floor thought she had heard someone going out through the street door in the early hours of Monday morning, but could not say at what time, and had not looked out to see anything.

  Everyone was excited and intrigued, and in some cases disturbed, that Mr Kimmelman had been murdered, either glad or disappointed that it had probably not happened on the premises, and quite sure that they could not help any further. It was, as far as the investigation was concerned, the usual Three Wise Monkeys.

  ‘But if he had had any sort of friendly relationship with anyone in the building, it would have emerged,’ Slider concluded, ‘so I think we can assume he kept himself to himself.’

  ‘Doesn’t help with the next of kin,’ Gascoyne complained.

  ‘Maybe there’ll be something at the flat,’ said Atherton.

  But when Bob Bailey reported halfway through the morning, it was to say that there was little in the way of personal possessions amongst the ruins.

  ‘Clothes, some toiletries, that’s about it. It’s almost like a hotel room. Nothing in the way of personal papers – if there was anything, chummy’s taken ’em with him. Some books and a coupla newspapers and magazines. There’s not even a TV – dunno what he did for pleasure.’

  ‘Read books,’ Slider suggested.

  Bailey snorted as though that could never be regarded as a pleasure. ‘And no mobile phone.’

  ‘He probably had that in his pocket,’ Slider said. ‘No computer?’

  ‘No, but there’s a mouse, keyboard and speakers on a table, and from the space left it looks as though he had a laptop set up there. Suppose chummy took that as well. But like I said, it’s like a hotel room. Not much in the way of food, either – tea, coffee, sugar. Milk in the fridge, half a loaf of bread. Some frozen ready meals – not frozen any more, obviously, since they’ve been taken out of the freezer and slashed open. So, it looks like he had toast for breakfast and ate out most of the time. Or, possibility, he never actually lived here, just dossed down now and then.’

  Thank you, we’ll do the deductions, Slider thought. ‘Any sign of the murder?’

  ‘No blood anywhere or anything that looks like the weapon. But with the flat turned over the way it is, if he was whacked here, we can’t tell. Fingerprints are all deceased’s. There’s quite a few glove smears, so they knew what they were doing.’

  ‘And have you found what I’m looking for?’

  ‘If I knew what it was I could tell you. Haven’t found anything anyone might be looking for, but what do I know?’

  ‘When can I get in?’

  ‘We should be finished about lunchtime. Lucky the place was minimal furnished, or the mess would have really slowed us up.’

  Canvassing with only negative results was pretty boring, and Hart had stepped outside to get a breath of air, and chat to the uniform on the door, which happened to be big, blonde, handsome Eric Renker, whom she quite fancied. It was warmer outside the flats than inside, and she undid some buttons. ‘Ridic’lous weather,’ she said to him.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ he said, looking down at her. ‘At least you don’t have to wear this lot.’ He was in shirtsleeves, but the vest, necessary to carry all the kit, including the Airwave, cancelled much of the benefit. That and the helmet.

  ‘Yeah, we have to wear a jacket, though,’ said Hart. ‘Mr Slider’s hot on that when we’re in public.’

  ‘Well, boo hoo, poor you,’ said Renker.

  ‘Up yours, Eric. I’m just tryna be friendly.’

  ‘Gawd, I’m dying for a fag,’ Renker said, shifting his weight. ‘Ullo, here comes another of ’em,’ he added as someone came up the path from the road. ‘I bet there’s been more people visiting their friends in this block today than the rest of the year put together.’ He made it clear that ‘visiting’ had inverted commas round it. He put on his official, quelling voice as the woman drew near. ‘Yes, madam, can I help you?’

  The nervous eyes flitted from his helmet to Hart’s face, and seemed to find the latter more agreeable. ‘Are you, um, the police – like, a detective or something?’ The doubt in the voice, Hart thought, came more from nervousness than distrust of Hart’s status. It was a thin young woman in a very short black skirt, a tight, white, low-cut top that left everything to be desired, a boxy denim jacket, and ankle boots with tassels. She had very foxy make-up on, under which she seemed to be in her mid-twenties, and rather plain. Her hair was a long straggle of mid brown, but clean and shiny. Surprisingly, it seemed a natural colour.

  ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Hart,’ said Hart. ‘Did you want something?’

  She cast a nervous glance at Renker, and moved away a step. ‘Um, can I talk to you?’ she said in a low voice.

  Some members of the public were intimidated by the uniform, and Renker was in himself an imposing figure. Hart rolled an eye at him, stepped away two paces, and said pleasantly, ‘Yes, love, what can I do for you?’

  The woman writhed a bit, chewing her lip, and then said almost in a whisper, ‘They’re saying – I heard someone say – it’s Mr King? That something’s happened to him?’

  ‘And
what’s your name?’ Hart asked.

  ‘Shanice,’ she replied. Hart waited pointedly, and at length she got it and said, ‘Shanice Harper. I – I live just round the corner. In Sulgrave Road.’

  ‘And what’s Mr King to you?’

  Shanice cast her eyes down, twisting her fingers together. ‘He’s – we’re – friends,’ she managed at last.

  Hart smiled. ‘Oh, right! We’re very anxious to talk to any of his friends. Would you like to come and sit in my car and have a chat?’

  ‘Yeah, all right,’ she said. ‘But – can you tell me – is he in trouble?’

  ‘Let’s get private, and we’ll have a chat,’ Hart said.

  Shanice seemed reassured by the privacy of the car, but she was still anxious about Mr King, and the first thing she said when Hart got in was, ‘They’re saying in Randal’s that he’s dead? That he’s been … murdered?’

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ said Hart.

  Shanice’s eyes widened, and she drew a sharp breath, but she kept it together admirably. ‘That’s what they said. I didn’t believe it. Who would do such a thing? He was such a nice man.’

  ‘Tell me about him,’ Hart invited, knowing it was the one thing Miss Harper wanted to do right then.

  She was, by trade, a freelance masseuse – ‘I’ve got me own portable table and everything,’ she said proudly – but her relationship with Leo King, as she knew him, was of a more intimate nature.

  ‘I’m not a pro,’ she said sharply, ‘so don’t you think it. I don’t do that stuff with anyone. Leo’s special. He comes to my flat – I don’t see anybody else there. And sometimes I give him a massage, if he’s really tense, but mostly we …’ She hesitated.

  ‘You’re lovers?’ Hart suggested kindly.

  Harper seemed to appreciate the upgrade. She almost smiled. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘But he gives you little presents, does he?’ Hart suggested delicately.

  She proved not so delicate as that. ‘He pays me,’ she said bluntly, ‘but that’s not why I do it. I really like him. I wouldn’t take the money now, but he insists. He says he’s got plenty and he wants me to be comfortable. He’s a lovely man. He gives me presents as well,’ she added. ‘He bought me this watch.’ She extended her arm to show a very nice Citizen, probably costing around £100. She wore it with the face on the inside of her wrist, perhaps to conceal its value to the natives in case of theft.

  ‘How did you meet him?’ Hart asked.

  ‘In Randal’s. I was putting a postcard in their window. I go in there for ciggies, anyway, and he was in there, buying ’em as well, and we sort of … got talking. When I said I was a masseuse, he asked if I would come up his flat and do him. Well …’ She blushed at some memory. ‘A lot of people get the wrong idea, especially men, when you say you’re a masseuse, and I said to him pretty sharp that I wasn’t, you know, on the game. And he said, ever so gentle, that he never thought I was, and he really just wanted a massage, ’cos he had neck tension. I was mortified.’

  ‘So you went to his flat – the one across the road?’

  She nodded. ‘Just that once. After that, he said he’d prefer to come to my place. Ever so nice it was, his flat – all wood floors and that low furniture. Like IKEA, but posh. But he said the neighbours were ever so nosy and he didn’t want them seeing him bringing a young lady in, so we’d have to meet at my place after that. I didn’t mind, except his place was nicer.’

  ‘And when did you become lovers?’

  ‘Oh, that first time. I give him a full body massage, and then it – sort of happened.’ She grew frank. ‘Men often get a hard-on with a massage, and sometimes I’ll give ’em a hand job, if I like ’em, but that’s all. But it was different with him. We were just sort of attracted to each other, right from the start. He never asked,’ she added, ‘but when I’d finished, it just sort of happened naturally. He’s ever so nice,’ she added dreamily. Then she gave Hart a minatory look, as if she’d spoken. ‘Nothing kinky – never! Straight and normal every time. Ever so energetic, he is, but gentle. And afterwards we have a smoke and talk. I love that bit. It’s …’

  Just like real life, Hart supplied for herself. Like having a proper boyfriend. She felt terribly sorry for Shanice, who had evidently never managed to bag a man in the normal way, and was making her living as best she could, given what seemed to be her handicap of general haplessness.

  ‘So you talked a lot,’ Hart said. ‘What about?’

  ‘Oh – stuff. I dunno. Just talk.’

  ‘Did he tell you what he did for a living?’

  She frowned in thought. ‘Not exactly. He said he was a right-hand man to somebody. That’s what he called it. I didn’t really understand properly what he did. He said when things needed fixing, he fixed them. Not like a plumber or anything, but, like, with business things.’

  ‘You think maybe he was an enforcer?’ Hart suggested.

  Her eyes widened. ‘You mean like beating people up and shooting them and stuff? No! Leo’s not like that. He’s too nice. I can’t believe he’d ever hit anyone, not unless it was self-defence.’

  Which didn’t fully accord with the old broken knuckles, Hart thought. Of course, if he was an enforcer, he probably wouldn’t tell his dippy date anyway. But perhaps that was in his past and he didn’t need violence any more. Depended a bit on who he was right-hand man to.

  ‘Did he tell you who he was working for?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘We didn’t really talk about his job much. But it must’ve been a good one, because he had plenty of money. Always wore nice clothes, and had cash in his wallet.’

  ‘Was he married?’

  ‘No. He said he’d never had time to find someone. I think that’s why I was important to him. I think he was a lonely man.’

  ‘How often did you see him?’

  ‘Coupla times a week. Not regular days, but he’d phone me when he wanted to see me.’

  ‘And when did you last see him?’

  ‘Thursday night. He rung me really late, apologised for waking me up. Always had lovely manners. I said I wasn’t asleep anyway, which was true. And I was always glad to see him. Well, he come round. He was quite keyed up. I give him a shoulder massage because he was so tight with it, and then we … you know. Like usual. He said he had a big job on, on Friday, and that he’d have big money coming because of it.’

  ‘How big?’

  ‘He didn’t say, but I think it must have been really big, because he’d been saving up to retire, and he reckoned this money would be enough to do it. I was a bit, well, put out – I mean, if he retired, I wouldn’t see him again. I didn’t want to lose him. But I had to be happy for him. It was what he always wanted.’

  ‘To retire?’

  She nodded. ‘That’s why he did the lottery, ’cause if he’d won big, that’s what he was going to do. He was going to buy a big house on the Isle of Wight.’

  It was so unexpected, Hart needed all her professionalism to control her features. The Isle of Wight? How the hell did that fit in with a scarred-knuckle enforcer who ended up dead in a yard with his neck broken? The Isle of Wight?

  ‘He said he’d been there as a kid, and always wanted to go back. It was like his dream.’ Shanice’s eyes filled now, and her lower lip trembled. ‘So I guess he’ll never go there now,’ she said pathetically. ‘What happened to him? Who killed him?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ said Hart. ‘That’s what we’re trying to find out.’

  ‘Was it this big job he had on Friday? Did something go wrong?’

  ‘Did he give you any idea what the job was? Or where?’

  Shake of head. ‘He never told me anything about it. Just that he had big money coming because of it.’

  ‘You’ve got to think, Shanice. You owe it to him. We need to know who he worked for, what he did. Anything you remember, any little detail of what he told you could be important. Doesn’t matter if you think it’s silly, it could be the one thing we need to know.’ Hart laid it on
thick, to penetrate the foggy brain.

  ‘I will, I will think,’ she vowed tearfully, ‘but he never really told me anything about himself. I’d tell you, honest, if I knew. I want to help. I loved him. He was so nice to me.’ A sob broke from her, but she choked it back.

  Hart was impressed. Usually they were only too eager to let go, having seen Extreme Emoting practised so often on TV. She patted her hand. ‘You’re doing great, girl.’

  ‘You’ll find out who did this to him?’

  ‘We will,’ Hart said.

  Shanice looked at her a long time with swimming eyes, and Hart waited, hoping some useful snippet was about to emerge. But what she said in the end was, ‘What’s it like, the Isle of Wight? I’ve never been there.’

  Hart thought for a moment. How to describe it? What could she say about that blessed isle, Kimmelman’s Eldorado, that would make sense to his grieving doxy?

  ‘It’s nice,’ she said at last.

  When Bob Bailey gave the all clear to go back to the flat, Slider took Atherton and LaSalle with him, and realised as they drove over that he had chosen two tall, thin people on the subconscious basis that they wouldn’t take up so much room, or disturb anything. Daft!

  There were small changes in the chaos, caused by the SOC’s activities, but they hadn’t moved anything they didn’t have to move. There was no need for gloves, since everything had been cleared, but they put them on anyway, out of good habit. But in any case, Slider told them, their searching should be done mainly with the eyes. ‘Anything you can touch, the murderer will have touched before you. It’s something that hasn’t been disturbed we’re looking for.’

  There wasn’t much of that. ‘I wish I knew what we’re looking for,’ LaSalle complained.

  Slider didn’t comment. After a long, fruitless period, he was wishing he was still sure there was anything to find. Perhaps he had been wrong, and it had been mere mindless vandalism, a furious retaliation by whoever had killed Kimmelman. Or, if it had been a search, perhaps they had found whatever it was. There was no reason they could not have found it last rather than first. He was beginning to feel foolish, and only his stubborn devotion to thoroughness was keeping him going.