Eventually they all gathered in the middle of the flat to straighten their backs.
‘Well, I don’t know about you,’ said Atherton, ‘but I’ve enjoyed the experience. It’s been a slice. I feel I know the victim so much better now.’
‘Don’t reckon his taste in books much,’ said LaSalle. The paperbacks scattered among the debris, some with their covers ripped off, were crime novels, mostly American – John Grisham, Michael Connelly and so on – and cowboy stories.
‘I think we have learned something from the magazines,’ Slider said. ‘New Electronics. Electronics World. EPE. Tech Briefs.’
‘Yes, he was fond of gardening,’ Atherton said. ‘How does that help?’
‘You said we were to look for something that hadn’t been disturbed,’ LaSalle put in. ‘About the only thing I can see that hasn’t been moved is the bathroom window. It doesn’t open.’
Slider gave him an arrested look. ‘You may have said something important.’
‘Have I? I didn’t mean to, guv,’ LaSalle apologised.
Slider went in and stared at it. Its immobility was due to many coats of paint which had stuck it closed. The bathroom had an extractor fan for ventilation, so presumably Kimmelman hadn’t needed to open it. It was glazed with heavily frosted glass, presumably because it was right angles to the living-room window, meaning that anyone standing there could have seen in. Slider became very still, absorbed in a train of thought.
‘It obviously hasn’t been opened,’ Atherton said, trying to fathom what was going on in his boss’s mind.
‘Outside, not inside,’ Slider said at last.
‘Eh?’
‘The best place to hide something. I wonder …’
‘Can you wonder a bit louder, so we can all share?’ Atherton said, following him back into the living room.
At the window, Slider examined the locks. ‘They’re all engaged. If they’d opened the window, would they have bothered to re-lock? I don’t think so.’
It was a typical Crittall double casement. He unlocked, opened one side and leaned out. The window sill both on this and the bathroom window was a narrow metal strip about three inches deep, curved at the edge, hardly more than a drip sill.
‘I’ve seen this done before,’ he said.
He felt carefully along underneath the living-room sill, and found nothing. To reach the bathroom sill he had to lean out so far that Atherton was afraid he’d take a header, and grabbed a handful of his jacket. At full stretch, he was putting weight on Atherton’s grip; then he grunted and said, ‘Pull me in, will you?’
Back on terra firma, Slider said, ‘It’s there. On the underside of the window sill. This boy knew his stuff. I could feel something, but I didn’t want to pull at it in case I dropped it. It calls for a taller person. LaSalle, you’re up. But photograph it in situ first.’
LaSalle being much taller and with such long arms his nickname was Rang – short for Rangatang – was able to angle the tablet so as to get a shot of the underside of the sill where the package was taped.
‘I hope he held a fishing-net underneath while he was doing it,’ Atherton said. ‘It’s a long way down to go and fetch it if he’d dropped it.’
‘All right, let’s have it,’ said Slider. ‘Careful, now!’
LaSalle gave Slider the tablet to hold and leaned balletically out of the window, with Atherton acting anchor again, to retrieve the package. He handed it to Slider, who found he had been holding his breath until it was safe, and photographed it again to record the state of the packaging.
‘What is it? Open it! Open it!’ Atherton did the Homer Simpson hop-and-finger-waggle.
‘Can’t you wait for Christmas?’ Slider said sternly. ‘I’ll need a knife, or scissors. There’s a lot of this tape.’
LaSalle produced a penknife.
And as in a game of pass the parcel, the contents proved to be much smaller than the original package. The outside was completely covered in tape, presumably to keep out moisture. Under that was brown paper, and then bubble wrap. Denuded of its protection, it was about the size of Slider’s little finger.
It was a memory stick.
‘Oh-ho,’ said Slider.
‘I was hoping for diamonds,’ Atherton complained.
FIVE
Sausage Roll
They received Hart’s report while McLaren was setting up the memory stick.
‘So now we’re supposed to believe he was a nice ordinary bloke with a regular girlfriend and a craving for a retirement bungalow?’ Atherton said.
‘She wasn’t his girlfriend,’ Swilley objected. ‘He paid her for sex. And he obviously wasn’t intending to take her to the Isle of Wight.’
‘And she didn’t say bungalow. She said big house,’ Hart corrected.
‘Doesn’t matter. It’s just a bungaloid sort of place.’
‘When were you last there?’ Swilley demanded.
‘I’ve never been there,’ Atherton said. ‘Don’t need to. It’s a totally justified irrational prejudice based on subliminal impressions gained over a lifetime.’
‘I wish you came with subtitles,’ Loessop complained.
‘Anyway, why shouldn’t he be a nice ordinary bloke?’ Swilley said. ‘We’re basing the idea he was a villain on … what?’
‘He was murdered and dumped with his pockets emptied, and his gaff was turned over,’ Atherton said kindly, ‘which suggests some kind of criminal connection.’
‘Shanice said he talked about a big job,’ Hart added doubtfully. ‘That sounds criminal.’
‘Not necessarily,’ said Swilley stubbornly. ‘If you were an electrician, rewiring an entire block of flats would be a big job. Or a carpenter fitting out an exhibition centre.’
‘Is anybody interested in this?’ McLaren called from his desk. ‘It’s video footage.’
‘Coming, Mother!’ Atherton trilled.
They all gathered round to watch his monitor.
What appeared had the hallmarks of surveillance film: the fixed camera angle, the muffled sound, the people moving in and out of shot, voices mingling with thuddy background music and speaking across each other.
There were three people, male, and all of them were naked. McLaren jumped up and jokily tried to block the view from Swilley. ‘Don’t look, Norm! You’ll go blind!’
She pushed him aside with easy strength – she was as tall as him and much fitter. ‘Get off! I’ve probably seen more willies than you in my life.’
‘I’m looking at a prick right now,’ Hart said. ‘Sit down, Maurice. I can’t see.’
They settled down, and there was silence as they watched. Two of the men were young, slim and white, and the fact that their pubic area had been waxed suggested they were prostitutes. The head-hair of one was spiky and straw-blonde on top and short and black round the sides and back. He had the high cheekbones and flattened nose of a Rudolf Nureyev, and a Slavic accent to go with them. He had snake tattoos up both forearms.
The other had longish dark hair and was very slender, almost girlish. He had a bit of a look of Keira Knightley about him. His accent was mid-European, and he had a small gold ring through his foreskin and a butterfly tattooed on his shoulder.
At first they couldn’t see much of the third man. He was doing something across the other side of the room, and the two young men, dancing together, obscured the view. Then they parted, one to pick up a glass and drink, the other to light a fat roll-up that was probably a reefer. Now, between them, could be seen the third man, who had been bending over a coffee table and now stood up, grinned, and said cheerily, ‘OK, boys, come and get it!’
He was shorter than them, and a little chubby – not obese, but with a sneaky padding of fat around the waist and chin, and a little telltale roll slumped into a fold above his wedding-tackle. He was white, freckly, with short-cut reddish hair and ginger pubes, and his accent was Scottish. ‘This is good stuff,’ he promised. ‘Come and get it ’fore it gets cold.’
‘Oh
my God,’ Swilley said. ‘You know who that is?’
‘Yeah, and I wish I didn’t,’ Hart answered. ‘That’s more of him than I ever wanted to see.’
‘I’m never going to eat a hot dog again,’ Swilley agreed.
‘Isn’t he an MP?’ McLaren said. ‘I recognise him, anyway. His face,’ he added hastily.
‘He was,’ Atherton said. ‘Then he lost his seat and got elected to the London Assembly instead. He’s Director of Diversity, or some title like that. One of the big players, anyway.’
‘It’s Kevin Rathkeale,’ Slider said, in case anyone hadn’t got it yet.
On the screen, the three men gathered round the coffee table, which had a glass top. They knelt, and the way the two rent boys positioned themselves suggested they knew the camera was there. On the table Rathkeale had chopped out six lines of white powder, and now he rolled up a twenty-pound note, bent and snorted up one line, then another, and passed the note to the boys, who followed suit.
‘And there’s your money-shot,’ said Slider. ‘I’m betting that’s not cornflour or talcum powder.’
Rathkeale was rubbing his nostrils and grinning. For the furtherance of absolute clarity, the Nureyev-looker said, ‘Man, that is good cocaine!’
‘Nothing but the best for ma friends,’ said Rathkeale. ‘Coupla grams of this and you can go all night. Rock on, boys!’
‘Where ever you get such good stuff?’ asked Rudi-looker, enunciating clearly.
‘Oh, I got my contacts,’ Rathkeale said airily, boastfully. ‘I can get you as much as you like. Any time. You just say the word.’
‘Come dance with me,’ said Keira-looker, getting up and holding out a hand to Rathkeale.
They began slow-dancing, arms around each other. Soon they were smooching, and the boy was grinding his pelvis into Rathkeale’s. Rudi came and joined in, and after a bit, action was moved to the sofa and became more graphic. Fortunately, there wasn’t much more of it. The film stopped abruptly, suggesting that this was an edited section of a longer tape.
‘Just the highlights, then,’ Slider said, straightening up.
‘Lowlights,’ Swilley corrected. ‘Oh, so low!’
McLaren had restarted it and frozen the first frame, and was examining it closely. It was a sitting room of some kind, with a sofa, chairs, lamps. A couple of vodka bottles and several lager cans were standing about on various surfaces along with dirty glasses and ashtrays.
‘Where is that place?’ Atherton mused. ‘It looks like a tastelessly expensive and yet curiously small hotel room.’
‘The room may be bigger than it looks,’ Swilley said. ‘You can’t see all of it.’
‘But the ceiling is so low,’ Atherton complained.
‘I like the chandelier,’ Loessop said.
‘That’s what I mean by tasteless,’ said Atherton. ‘And a Regency-stripe sofa? Shoot me now!’
‘The point is,’ Swilley said impatiently, ‘it’s obviously an attempt to frame Rathkeale.’
‘Frame?’ Atherton queried.
‘Well, roll him, then.’
‘Lot of people get up to worse naughties than that,’ said Loessop.
‘He’s married,’ said Hart, who had gone to her own desk and looked up Rathkeale on her computer. ‘Second wife, no kids, but he’s got two by his first wife, young teenagers. That’s four people to be shocked.’
‘And he’s a public figure,’ said Gascoyne. ‘The papers would have a field day.’
‘Yeah,’ said Hart, still reading, ‘especially when he’s in Youth Services.’
‘Really?’ said Swilley.
‘Diversity and Urban Renewal Director,’ Hart said. ‘And chair of the Youth Equalities Taskforce. Very right-on. Very newsworthy.’
‘Ripe for blackmail, then,’ said Swilley.
‘He’s always been a bit holier-than-thou, as I recall,’ said Atherton, who kept up with politics more than the rest of them. ‘Always banging on about inner city deprivation and youth opportunities.’
‘Maybe he was sincere,’ said Swilley, who often took the opposite view to anything Atherton said, on the principle that someone had to rein him in. ‘Don’t be so cynical. Somebody’s got to stand up for the deprived inner-city youth. And oppressed minorities. You can’t pretend there isn’t a problem. At least he was doing something about it.’
‘Yeah, fondling rent boys and snorting white,’ said Hart. ‘Come on, Norm, he might be Mother Teresa as far as his job’s concerned, the point here is if this got out, he’d be ruined.’
‘Quite,’ said Atherton. ‘The thing above all else that the press likes to attack is hypocrisy. Sincere or not, this behaviour lays him right open to blackmail. And you’ve got to admit it’s pretty unsavoury.’
‘Depends on your point of view,’ McLaren said.
‘I always did wonder about you,’ Atherton said politely.
McLaren was unfazed. ‘Nobody’s forcing them boys,’ he pointed out.
‘You don’t know that,’ said Atherton.
‘Well, they look like they’re having a good time.’
Slider intervened. ‘We’re not here to discuss the morality or otherwise of prostitution. This footage was recorded, presumably without Rathkeale’s knowledge, and presumably with the purpose of blackmailing him. We need to know why Kimmelman had this film.’
‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’ said Loessop. ‘This was his big job, the one that was going to make him the big money. So he was a villain.’
‘I should have thought what we need to know more immediately is who was trying to get it back,’ Atherton said.
‘Rathkeale’s heavies,’ Hart said. ‘Who else would care?’
‘Why did Kimmelman care?’ Gascoyne said. ‘Who on earth was he?’
‘Just a crook who needed enough for a bungalow in Worthing,’ Atherton said.
Mr Porson was not pleased. ‘Bloody hell-fire, not another MP! I think you do it on purpose.’
‘He’s not an MP now, sir. He’s a member of the GLA.’
‘And that makes it better how?’ Slider didn’t answer that. ‘Well, we’ll have to put on the gas now. It’s moved into high profile. And for Gawd’s sake don’t let that video get out.’
‘I’ll guard it with my life, sir,’ said Slider stolidly.
Porson gave him a suspicious look. ‘You’ve got a funny sense of humour. Do you realise how unpopular you are with our lords and masters?’ Again, Slider kept schtumm, and Porson jerked restlessly into motion, pacing up and down the strip of carpet between his window and the desk. Slider fully expected him to go through to the floor below one of these days. ‘Right. Top priority now. Get your firm in gear. Who is this geezer Kimmelman?’
‘We know nothing about him. No record, and whoever searched his flat did a good job – no diary, letter, bill or bank statement. Nothing to give us a handle on him.’
Porson threw him a moody glance. ‘Don’t forget, that female – Sharon?’
‘Shanice.’
‘She said he was someone’s right-hand man. So he may not be the primary blackmailer. Find out who he was and who he worked for. But don’t forget it’s the murder we’re interested in. And Rathkeale’s the most obvious suspect, God dammit. You’ll have to look into him.’
‘He’ll have friends in high places,’ Slider observed.
‘They won’t want to be seen protecting him over something like this,’ said Porson. ‘And nobody likes a blackmailer. They’ll think, if him, maybe me next. They’ve all got their little secrets, people in the public eye. Nobody gets that high without standing on someone else’s head.’ Slider was impressed, as he so often was, with Porson’s insight. ‘Has Rathkeale got the akkers? How much was Kimmelman after?’
‘Enough to buy a bungalow,’ Slider said, without thinking.
Porson scowled. ‘What?’
‘If Kimmelman was his real name.’
The scowl cleared. ‘Nobody’d make up a name like that. Don’t get paranoid. He was a crook, not
a secret agent.’
Back in the office, Slider gave out jobs: trying to find out more about Kimmelman, tracing his movements. And getting background on Kevin Rathkeale.
‘Anything about his recent movements, too. I want a full work-up before I go and see him tomorrow.’
‘You’re going to ask him about the blackmail?’ Hart queried.
‘Who would know more about it?’ Slider said.
On record, at first sight Kevin Rathkeale looked white as the driven. Born in Glasgow, he’d studied law in London, and practised it for a while in Leeds. He’d become active in politics, served for a while as a councillor, then stood for Parliament in Leeds but failed to be elected. He’d evidently caught the eye of the party, however, for at the next election he’d been parachuted into a safe seat in North London, which he’d kept for two terms before losing it by a narrow margin. Then he’d got himself elected to the Greater London Assembly and had quickly been given important jobs. During his time as an MP he’d been prominently involved with KidZone, a high-profile charity organisation that aimed to help black and ethnic minority young people in deprived areas. So far so good.
Digging deeper, however, Hart discovered there had been one or two little glitches along the way. In Leeds, there had been some questions about the large postal vote in his favour: suspicions of fraud and vote rigging, though as he’d lost the election anyway it had not been pursued. In London, he had been disciplined by the party and narrowly avoided prosecution for having accepted campaign funds from a foreign national.
He had been one of the MPs named during the Expenses Scandal campaign for ‘flipping’ – changing the designation of his main residence so as to avoid capital gains tax – though he had produced a semi-plausible excuse and had avoided discipline for it.
And on a separate occasion he had been exposed by a newspaper for employing an illegal immigrant as his cleaner, and for improperly using his influence to try to get her and several of her family members passports. However, a House of Commons enquiry had concluded he had done nothing wrong in the latter case; and in the former case deserved nothing more than a mild reprimand. The newspaper had tried hard to keep the story going, but they had not managed to get much traction against him. Few people enquired into the residency status of their cleaners; and when he had discovered she was illegal, it appeared he had tried to remedy the situation in his own way. Public opinion seemed to conclude that he had tried to do a good thing, though cutting a few corners in the process. Verdict: not guilty-ish.
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