by Nicci French
‘I’ve never heard that name.’
‘Did your husband have any dealings with the police in the last month or so?’
‘I hadn’t heard anything. Do you think he was in some kind of trouble?’
‘There’s no record of that. Could he have witnessed something?’
‘I don’t know. He didn’t always tell me things.’
‘But if your husband did the online search, he had to have known Karlsson’s name. And he had to have had a reason.’
‘All I can say is that I never heard the name. Maybe he was a client.’
Dugdale didn’t think a senior detective was likely to be involved in the purchase of toilet supplies. ‘Could he have had something he wanted to tell Karlsson?’
‘I don’t know, I don’t know anything. Wouldn’t he just have called the local police station? Or dialled nine nine nine?’
Something else occurred to Dugdale. ‘Did your husband take the laptop with him on jobs?’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t know much about my husband … my late husband’s …’ She gave a stifled sob.
‘I’m sorry. This must be very difficult for you. If you want to do this another time …’
There was a cough and snuffling. Dugdale suddenly wished he’d asked some female officer to make this call. Women were better at this sort of thing. Empathetic. Tolerant. Patient.
‘No, I want to help.’
‘Did he share his computer with anybody?’
‘I’ve got my own computer. And Ned’s been away at university until this happened.’
Dugdale heard the sound of nose-blowing. ‘But the computer was lying around, people could have used it,’ he continued.
‘He kept it up in his den. Nobody goes there.’
‘With the door locked?’
‘No. But nobody comes here. Just a friend of mine for tea sometimes. And my sister.’
Dugdale knew when he had hit a wall, when there was nowhere else to go. He asked her to ring him if she remembered anything. She probably wouldn’t. He put down the phone and frowned, drummed his fingers on the desk. He knew there was something, but he hadn’t got it.
While Dugdale was finishing his call to Sarah Kernan, Quarry was walking along Lincoln’s Inn Fields. He’d been told that Karlsson was having a meeting in a pub called the Admiral Hood. It was early evening and the bar was crowded with escaped office workers. A large bald man in a grey suit was sitting alone at a table with a pint of beer reading the evening paper.
‘Are you Malcolm Karlsson?’ Quarry asked.
The man looked up with an irritated expression.
‘Over here,’ said a voice from behind him.
Quarry turned round. A man was gesturing towards him. He had short dark hair, an alert, slightly ironic expression. Despite the suit and the tie, he didn’t quite look like a detective. More like a teacher, perhaps. He was sitting with two women. One was younger, with a stern jaw, her brown hair tied austerely back, her eyes regarding him suspiciously, almost with hostility. She was wearing dark, loose-fitting trousers and a brown jersey. The other was more expensively dressed, her hair falling round her face, bangles on her wrists and earrings in her lobes, her lips glossy; even from where Quarry stood he could smell her perfume. They made an awkward-looking group, obviously not friends but not business either. Even within a few seconds, Quarry could sense a tension between them.
‘This is my colleague, Yvette Long,’ said Karlsson. ‘And this is Liz Barron. A journalist. Is this about work?’
‘Yes.’
Karlsson looked at Liz Barron. ‘Could you give us a moment?’
Barron pulled a face, almost a pout, got up and moved across the room and stepped out of the saloon door.
‘There aren’t many crime correspondents left,’ said Karlsson, ‘but Liz Barron is a crime correspondent. She has a nose for the job. And,’ he added, ‘she always seems to know where to find us.’
‘You make that sound like a bad thing.’
‘Well, what is it they say about news? It’s something that someone doesn’t want you to print. So what do you need me for?’
‘Did you hear about the car crash in Hampstead?’
Karlsson looked puzzled, but then Quarry described it in more detail and Karlsson nodded. ‘I read something about it.’
‘It’s now a murder case.’
‘And?’
‘Do you mind if I get a drink?’ asked Quarry.
‘I’ll get it for you,’ said Long, abruptly, and on Quarry’s instructions went to the bar for a gin and tonic and a packet of salt and vinegar crisps. When she returned, he drank half of the gin straight away.
‘The victim was a salesman called Geoffrey Kernan. Did you know him?’
Both Karlsson and Long looked surprised.
‘What do you mean?’ said Karlsson.
‘There are some strange things about the case. He was in a car, alone, when it ran into some people. But he was already dead. The car was stolen. And there’s another thing. A few days before, he was searching for you on his computer.’
‘There could be another Malcolm Karlsson.’
Quarry took a piece of paper from his pocket, unfolded it and laid it on the table. Karlsson put on reading glasses, picked it up and looked at it.
‘That’s a list of what he found. It’s basically what you’ve been up to in the last year or two.’
‘What was the name again?’ said Karlsson.
‘Kernan. Geoffrey Kernan.’
Karlsson looked at Yvette Long. ‘Mean anything to you?’
She shook her head. ‘I’ll check in the office,’ she said. ‘Ask around. But I don’t remember the name.’
Quarry took a photo from his pocket and handed it to Karlsson. He and Long scrutinized it.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ said Karlsson. ‘I’d like to help in some way but I can’t think of anything.’
Quarry gave Karlsson his card. ‘If you do,’ he said, and stood up.
‘If you pass Liz Barron,’ Karlsson said, ‘you can send her back in so we can politely tell her we’ve nothing to tell her.’
Quarry made his way out of the bar. Out on the pavement he saw Liz Barron smoking a cigarette. He nodded at her. ‘They’re ready for you inside,’ he said.
She seemed in no hurry to finish her cigarette. ‘What did they say about me?’ she said. ‘Nothing good, I trust.’
‘We had other things to discuss.’
‘Anything interesting?’
‘Just an ongoing inquiry.’
‘His inquiry or yours?’
Quarry frowned. ‘I can refer you to the press office, if you want.’
Barron opened her purse and took out a card. Quarry couldn’t suppress a smile.
‘Is something funny?’ Barron said.
‘We’re all exchanging cards,’ said Quarry. ‘I just gave mine to Karlsson.’
‘So we’re all getting to know each other.’
He looked down at the card. ‘What’s this for?’
‘I’m always interested in …’ She paused. ‘Well, in interesting things. I’m very discreet. And my arrangements are strictly professional.’
‘Professional?’
‘I’m always willing to pay for people’s time.’ She waited again, but Quarry didn’t reply. ‘To cover expenses.’
‘I guessed that was what you meant.’
‘We should meet for a drink some time. We can probably help each other.’
Before he could reply, she had tossed her cigarette on to the pavement and walked back inside. He heard a message ping on his mobile: that would be Maggie again, he thought.
NINE
Quarry got into his car and plugged in Geoffrey Kernan’s satnav. There was a delay as the device booted up and then there was an assertive female voice: ‘As soon as possible, make a U-turn.’ He smiled grimly. Another disapproving woman telling him what to do. Following the instructions, she took him north and out of London to a large bathroom shop
on the outskirts of Maldon, a primary school in Ingatestone, a Travelodge near Stansted airport, two pubs, the garden centre where Kernan’s wife worked, a new estate under construction, a furniture store and an optician’s. Almost everyone recognized Geoffrey Kernan, and knew that he had been murdered; they said he had been there in the week leading up to his disappearance. Sometimes Quarry had to knock on several doors, holding up his ID and Kernan’s photograph, before he found the right place: a woman who was having a new bathroom installed, or a couple who had sold him an almost-new microwave on eBay.
A number of the addresses were much further away, up near Coventry or Bristol or Norwich. Kernan had been covering a lot of miles. Quarry made a note to check these with the man’s employer. There was a house in West Ham, near the football ground, where nobody answered the door. He made a note to come back later. There was the park over at Beckton: probably Kernan had gone for a walk. Did he have a dog? Quarry was sure he didn’t. The most recent destination was the closest to Kernan’s house. He drove over the bypass on to a road leading into an industrial area. The screen of the satnav showed that he was near the river but he would never have known it. He drove past builders’ yards, a bus depot, a timber yard, a recovery centre piled high with cars that were far beyond recovery. There was a café operating out of a caravan, a heavy-equipment depot and a vast waste-management centre. The voice announced that they were reaching their destination. He pulled the car off the road onto the rough verge. Improbably there was a terrace of three houses. One was boarded up. It looked like a forgotten remnant, perhaps a survivor of the Blitz that had set this whole area on fire.
When Quarry got out of the car he became aware of the noise of the lorries and the diggers. And then there was the smell, which he could almost feel, the sour reek of the garbage. It wasn’t just one bad smell but layers of them, industrial and organic, sour and sweet, bitter and acrid.
He walked over to the strange fragment of a housing terrace. The first house was clearly empty. He walked up the steps to the middle one. There was no bell or knocker, so he rapped on the door with his fist. It was opened by a man who looked barely awake. He wore dusty, stained jeans, a grubby T-shirt, and all of his exposed skin below his head was covered with tattoos. He had piercings in his ears, nose and lips. Quarry held up his identification. ‘Do you know a man called Geoffrey Kernan?’
‘No.’
‘You said that very quickly. Have a think. Geoffrey Kernan. Geoff, maybe.’
‘Never heard of him.’
He took a picture from his pocket and showed it to the man. ‘That’s Kernan.’
The man shook his head.
‘Do any other people live here?’
‘A few. People stay here when they’re working.’
‘Can I talk to them?’
‘They’re out.’
‘Do you know when they’ll be back?’
‘I don’t know. An hour maybe.’
Quarry went to the little caravan and bought a tea. The woman behind the counter was dark-haired, pale. Her accent was eastern European, probably Czech, Quarry thought. They chatted casually, but when Quarry asked about the people in the house opposite, who they were, what they did, she went quiet. He was used to that. People were worried now about whether you were from the council or immigration or the police. He thought of telling her that he didn’t care whether they were here legally or not, but he didn’t bother. She wouldn’t believe him.
After he had finished the tea, he walked around aimlessly. He found a path leading towards the river and looked across at Thamesmead and at the huge flood barrier across the creek on his right. He had lived in London all his life and all of it was new to him. Finally he walked back to the house. Two men had arrived from work, dusty and sweaty in their yellow high-visibility jackets. Suspiciously and reluctantly, they looked at Kernan’s photograph and said they didn’t recognize him. He didn’t know whether they really hadn’t seen him, whether they had seen him and were lying, or whether they just had a policy of pleading ignorance to everything as a way of staying out of trouble.
Back in the car, he went through his notes and felt dissatisfied with his day. Sometimes finding nothing was as useful as finding something. Not this time.
TEN
Twelve years ago, Neil Morrell had been a solicitor, in a small practice, with a pension, a fiancée who worked in the City, a house in Camden and a drug habit. Now he was no longer a solicitor; he had no pension, no fiancée, no house – and no drug habit. He didn’t even drink caffeine. Instead he worked as a park warden on Hampstead Heath for four days a week; the other three days he spent as a yoga instructor. His hair was long, tied back in a silver ponytail; he had a thick beard and on his upper left arm was a tattoo of a tree. He said that trees had saved his life. He sometimes spoke to them, stopping by the old oak tree that had been split by lightning many years ago but had survived, or the willows down by the ponds, patting their trunks, squinting up to make sure that none of the branches were dead, or leaves showing signs of blight.
He knew the Heath like the back of his hand. When it was being dug up by those terrible machines to stop the flooding, he almost felt physical pain. He loved it in all seasons, but autumn was his favourite: the soft, rich colours, the smell of decay, the leaves making a rustling sound as he walked slowly through them.
On this particular morning a thin drizzle hung over the landscape, like a mist. There weren’t many people around, just a few runners and the odd dog-walker. Neil Morrell made his way up the hill towards Whitestone Pond, doing his rounds. He hadn’t been there for a few days. Before he reached the top, he stopped and gave a sniff. There was a smell of smoke: probably a bonfire in someone’s garden, and sure enough, when he came out of the trees he could see a thick plume of smoke curling up into the sky.
As he made his way up the slope, the hollow came into view, a place that used to be a pond and was still damp underfoot even during the driest summer. This year, the council had designated it as the site for the 5 November bonfire, though Neil thought it daft to have a bonfire on such a spot: people would trample it into a muddy bog and it would take months to heal. They had been collecting the wood for weeks, building a wigwam of branches that was already a good size. But now, a month before its time, someone had obviously set fire to it.
‘Scamps,’ Neil said, his brows creased in disapproval. It was probably a group of teenagers playing a prank and ruining the fun for everyone else.
Flames were licking up one side and billowing out. In spite of the drizzle, the fire was taking and he could hear a crackling sound. He sighed and pulled out his phone to call the office, then went down into the hollow to see if there was anything he could do.
He saw as he approached that they had even made a Guy. A figure in thick pale-blue clothes, like a uniform, was propped up against the branches, flames curling round it so that its outline wavered although it wasn’t yet alight. A whooshing sound made him start as a rocket suddenly exploded out of the fire, scattering petals of brightness as it went. Then another. He went nearer, his feet sinking into the soft ground. The Guy slipped as a branch it was leaning against caught and crumbled into flame and ash.
Nearer still. And then he was running, slipping on the wet grass, breath catching in his throat. The effigy had a face, melting in the heat, whose eyes were wide open and staring at him.
Ten minutes later the hollow was filled with police officers and paramedics. The fire had been put out, the body pulled from it. Constable Darren Symons was there again. He still had a cold, and had developed a nasty chesty cough. His eyes watered as he gazed around the scene. A smoking bonfire, a body lying on the grass where the park warden had dragged it, its arms and legs trussed. Constable Symons could see tufts of singed hair on a pale skull. It was dressed in a kind of canvas that had blackened but not caught fire. He couldn’t tell if the figure was a man or a woman. He remembered in school history lessons learning about people who had been burned to death as heretics: he
had always thought it would be the worst way to die. Even worse than drowning.
On the road above him, behind the police officers who had been stationed there, several figures were peering down at the scene. He was supposed to be putting tapes up, while the drizzle hardened into rain and the ground turned to sludgy mud. He looked across to the man, a couple of feet from him, who had found the body. He was talking to one of Symons’s colleagues but he wasn’t looking at her; instead he kept his eyes fixed on the wooded horizon. Every so often he would blink rapidly, his eyes a curious mottled grey. He had burned his hands getting the body out of the fire and they were wrapped in bandages, so that he looked like an old boxer.
‘Here comes Eeyore,’ said a voice behind him.
Symons turned to see DCI Dugdale and DC Quarry making their way down the slope. Dugdale wasn’t hurrying, but his head twisted this way and that, taking everything in. As he came on to the level, a last firework that must have been smouldering in the ruins of the fire exploded in a shower of colour.
Dugdale looked around. ‘People have been walking all over my crime scene.’
‘They thought it was just a fire, sir.’
‘I don’t care what they thought. I care what you do. Find some tape, seal off the area.’
He walked across to the body and bent over it, his expression impassive. The corpse’s eyes were open. They seemed to be staring at something beyond them.
‘Any chance it could be an accident?’ said Quarry. Dugdale looked round at him sharply but he continued. ‘On drugs, make a fire, fall into it, die. I’ve read about it.’
‘The victim’s legs and arms are tied. We’re five minutes’ walk from the Kernan scene. But if you want to show it’s an accident, please go ahead. Anything to get it off our plate.’
Simon Tearle was listening to a Bach cantata on headphones when his door opened and a head poked round.
‘Yes?’ he said.
‘I knocked,’ said the young woman. ‘You probably didn’t hear.’
He pulled off the headphones.