‘It’s Saturday market!’ Winnie complained. ‘My busiest day.’
‘And this is murder. Let’s go into the shop. It won’t take long.’
She shrugged and had a word to the stallholder next to her, then led them towards the door of the shop behind her stall. The sign over the front window read WELLINGTON’S UTENSILS EST. 1930. Seeing Kathy look up at it Winnie said, ‘I’m not that old. My daddy started the business in Trench Town, in Kingston, and then brought it here, and I took it over from him.’
‘You’ve been here a long time, have you, Winnie?’
‘We came over in 1948 on the Empire Windrush, the first boatload from Jamaica.’
The front shop had every imaginable metal container stacked on the bare wooden floorboards, shelves and counter—shiny saucepans, galvanised laundry tubs, zinc washboards, colanders, hip baths, watering cans. They stood surrounded by them, like grey ghosts, as Winnie closed the door and said, ‘Well, how can we help you?’
Brock handed them photographs of the two murdered girls, taken from their police records. Kathy saw George’s sulky indifference falter for a second.
‘This is dem, is it?’ Winnie said. ‘So young. Ah haven’t seen dem before. You, George?’
‘Dunno. I may have seen ’em around.’
‘Where exactly?’
‘I can’t remember.’
‘You play in a group at the JOS, don’t you, George?’ Kathy asked.
He blinked. ‘Yeah, so what?’
‘George?’ Winnie was peering at his face suspiciously. ‘What do you know about this?’
‘Nothin’. I don’t know nothin’.’
Brock turned to Winnie. ‘Are you two related?’
‘No, George works for me on the stall, and rents a room upstairs. He’s a good boy, Mr Brock.’ She put out a hand to touch George’s arm but he flinched and pulled away.
‘Are you from around here, George?’
‘Kensal Green.’
‘Not far from Harlesden, where these two girls came from. You do know them, don’t you?’
‘I’ve seen ’em down the club, that’s all,’ he protested, ‘but I don’t know nothin’ about them.’
‘They liked your music, didn’t they?’ Kathy said.
‘Yeah, they liked good music.’
‘So who else did they meet there? Who bought their drinks?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve no idea.’
‘George, you tell the truth now!’ Winnie sounded alarmed.
‘It is the truth!’
‘Oh no it’s not. I know when you tell me lies. I can read it on your face.’
Still George refused to say any more, so Brock said, ‘I’d like to have a look at your room, George. Would that be all right with you?’
‘No!’ George yelped. ‘It’s not all right with me.’
‘We can sit here and wait for a search warrant, but it would be a lot better if you did it voluntarily.’
‘George!’ Winnie admonished, and his shoulders sagged. He shook his head resignedly and said, ‘You do what you want.’
‘Thanks,’ Brock said. ‘Will you lead the way, Winnie? I’d like you to be present too.’
‘Don’t you worry,’ the little woman said fiercely, heading around the end of the counter towards a flight of stairs at the back of the shop.
They climbed past the next floor and up to the attic, where George led the way into his room beneath the slope of the roof. A dormer window was cracked open, despite the cold. Winnie switched on an overhead light and Kathy looked around, surprised at the neatness. She thought that anyone conducting a sudden search of her flat would find it a good deal more untidy than this. There was a keyboard and some CDs and sound equipment on a table near the window, and posters and notices stuck to the walls. Some were printed and others handmade with felt pens on coloured paper, like mock-ups for the printer. On one of these she read:
War amongs’ the rebels,
Madness, madness, war.
George saw her studying it and, when she caught his eye, he said truculently, ‘Linton Kwesi Johnson, yeah?’
She turned her attention to other posters with various versions of the name Black Troika. ‘Is that your group?’
He nodded. ‘Yeah.’
Brock, meanwhile, had slipped on latex gloves and was making a rapid search of the corners of the room. At one point he pulled a small pouch of marijuana from behind a pile of CDs, glanced over at George, then put it back again.
‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘We’ll be on our way.’
Winnie said, ‘You see? He’s not a bad boy.’ She seemed to have collected her thoughts as she went up to Brock. ‘You let him go, Mr Brock. It’s Saturday, I need him to run my stall. I’ll tell you who’s behind any trouble around here. Everybody knows.’ She formed a contemptuous curl of her lip. ‘It’s Mister Teddy Vexx, dat’s who it is.’
‘Winnie!’ George said sharply. ‘She don’t know what she’s talkin’ about.’
‘What’s Mr Vexx up to, Winnie?’ Brock asked.
‘Anythin’ and everythin’ crooked. You want to know about drugs?’
‘Winnie!’ George cried again, sounding in pain.
‘You want to know about guns?’
‘I didn’t mention his name, okay?’ George said desperately. ‘You can’t say I did.’
‘Dat’s all I’m goin’ to say.’ Winnie folded her arms. ‘You’ve got the wrong boy here, Mr Brock. Mr Teddy Vexx is the one you want to speak to.’
They made their way back out to the street, and Brock thanked them for their cooperation, which Winnie, at least, graciously acknowledged.
As they tramped back to the car, Kathy’s phone rang. She put it to her ear and heard a familiar voice. ‘Kathy? It’s Tom, Tom Reeves.’
She was startled to hear from him again, and stopped and turned quickly away from Brock, who carried on walking.
‘Tom?’
‘Hi.’ She sensed him registering the caution in her voice. ‘Bad time?’
‘I’m at work. You’re back?’ The banal words seemed absurd.
‘Yes. I’d like to catch up.’
She couldn’t think what to say. Or rather she could think of too many things to say and so said nothing.
‘Can I buy you dinner tonight?’
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Not tonight.’
‘Ah . . . Another time?’
She saw Brock reach their car up ahead. ‘All right. Give me your number and I’ll call you.’ She didn’t think she would, but she wrote it down anyway. ‘Got to go now.’ She hung up and took a deep breath before hurrying on to let Brock into the car, feeling the burn in her cheeks, though he seemed oblivious.
As they drove slowly back through the crowded streets, Kathy gazed out at the drab little brick terraces sliding past and tried to decide how she felt about DI Tom Reeves. How long had it been? Seven weeks, she calculated, since he had disappeared. They had met the previous October when she and Brock were working on the abduction of a child from Northcote Square in an artists’ quarter of the East End. Tom had been on protection duties at that time, escorting a judge whose life had been threatened and who came regularly to a studio in the square to have his portrait painted. Their paths had crossed, and when the case was over Kathy and Tom had gone out a few times together. He knew the detective boyfriend of Kathy’s friend Nicole Palmer, and they had made a foursome to a concert, and gone to Nicole’s birthday party together. Tom was good company, widely read and witty, but Kathy was also aware of how skilled he was at avoiding giving away information about himself, something she put down to his being in Special Branch. She knew he was thirty-six, and divorced, and assumed from his accent that he was a Londoner—and that was almost all.
He had mentioned that he had no plans for Christmas, and Kathy had caught herself actually looking forward to the break for a change. Then one December day she’d found a message on her answering machine. Something had come up and he had to go away for a while.
After a couple of attempts to reach him she’d stopped trying, because she’d been down this road before, with another Special Branch officer who had vanished in the same way. In that case she’d discovered later that they’d changed his name, his address and his phone number, and she’d assumed something similar had happened to Tom. She’d told herself that she should have known better, and got on with her life.
She swung the car through the security gates at the back of the police station and switched off the engine.
three
‘Teddy Vexx is known to us,’ DCI Savage said. ‘He and another local, Jay Crocker, have been in Trident’s sights for some time. I was going to mention him as a possibility.’
They were seated at tables arranged in a square in the centre of the large room they’d been given in the local police station. A couple of computers and phone lines had been rigged on a bench along one wall, and on the opposite side a borough street map and crime scene photographs had been pinned up.
‘You know them, Bob?’ Brock turned to DS McCulloch.
‘Oh yes, we know them,’ McCulloch nodded. ‘They’re both bad boys with plenty of form. Vexx is the big shot. He’s connected with the JOS club in some way—part owner, I think. He owns other businesses, too.’
Savage was interested. ‘What sort of businesses?’
‘A laundrette on Cove Street that his mother runs, and a tyre yard and repair shop in the lane behind. We’ve long suspected him of selling drugs through the laundrette and recycling stolen cars through the repair shop, maybe a crack laboratory somewhere too, but never been able to get the evidence. He scares people. Nobody wants to talk about Teddy Vexx.’
‘Hm.’ Savage tapped his pen on the table in front of him, thinking. ‘Sounds like he needs stirring up. Of course, we could be barking up the wrong tree. It looks as if the girls were on the run from people back in Harlesden, and the odds are those people finally caught up with them down here. Maybe they got Vexx’s help, maybe not. Funny thing is, it doesn’t have the feel of a Yardie killing.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Your classic Yardie murder has a spontaneous feel, all sudden violence in the heat of the moment, even when it’s been pre-planned. A drive-by shooting, a shotgun blast through a car window, a burst of fire in a crowded nightclub . . . This seems more drawn out and deliberate.’
‘Hell,’ McCulloch protested, ‘the crack, the guns . . .’
‘Yeah, I know. Maybe they were trying to get something from the girls before they killed them. Anyway, people are upset, they want to see some response and soon, and if we can use the opportunity to put pressure on some local bad lads, so much the better.’
They were making an effort at team building, Brock knew, getting to know each other, but their interests were very different. McCulloch would be under pressure to put a blanket over the spotlight of publicity that had been turned on their patch, while Savage was more concerned with broader things, networks and connections beyond the borough. And what was his own interest? To get out of here as soon as possible? He had been less than open with Kathy about his feelings for this place. Cockpit Lane. He had been startled by the intensity of the memories it evoked, powerful feelings he’d long ago locked up tight.
The phone rang and McCulloch reached for it. ‘What, now?’ He grimaced and covered the mouthpiece as he turned to Brock. ‘Chief, Michael Grant, local Member of Parliament; he’s downstairs, wants to say hello.’
Savage groaned.
‘All right,’ Brock said. ‘I’ll be interested to meet him. Can they bring him up?’
‘Time for a sermon,’ Savage said.
‘You know him, Keith?’
‘Only too well. He’s a member of our Independent Advisory Group. He tells us how to do our jobs.’
McCulloch hurriedly tidied away the remains of their sandwiches. There was a knock at the door and a woman officer showed in the MP. Kathy recognised him from TV, his face lively and intelligent, dressed casually in jeans and a padded jacket.
‘Keith!’ he cried, advancing on Savage with outstretched hand.
‘Michael, great to see you. Let me introduce you to some of the key people in our team. DCI Brock from Special Operations is our SIO, and his colleague DS Kathy Kolla. You may have met Bob McCulloch from local area command, and some of my colleagues from Trident.’
Grant shook their hands warmly.
‘I was just telling them that you’re an invaluable member of our Trident IAG.’
‘He means I’m a pain in the bum,’ Grant said with a smile. He looked around the room and said, ‘So, where are the battle plans? I expected great charts with arrows and pincer movements, like the Battle of Stalingrad.’
‘Ah, it’s all done on computers now, Michael. Anyway, this is just our local outpost.’
‘But this is a local problem, Keith. This is where the people are dying.’ He turned to Brock, the bantering tone gone from his voice. ‘Not always in as dramatic a fashion as Dana and Dee-Ann, perhaps. Usually it’s an overdose among the dustbins in the back lane, choking on their own vomit, but they’re dying all the same, more quietly, more anonymously, without attracting the attention of Special Operations.’
Kathy wasn’t sure if he was being hostile or just challenging.
Grant went on. ‘That’s why we have to strike while people are focused on this local problem.’
‘We shall strike,’ Brock assured him, ‘when we have the evidence. That’s what we’re concentrating on at present, Mr Grant. Don’t worry, we’ll find it.’
‘I admire your confidence.’ Grant held his gaze for a moment, assessing him.
‘We’ve been discussing that very point,’ Savage broke in. ‘Seizing the moment. And we’re also mindful that the central problem here is the same, whether it’s these two girls or the anonymous body in the alley. It’s drugs.’
‘Actually the central problem isn’t drugs,’ Grant said. ‘The central problem is greed. The drugs are only the means to an end. This is about the exploitation of the weak by the strong, of the poor by the greedy. Don’t you forget that, Keith.’ He held up an admonishing finger. ‘Don’t you come to me at the end of the day with a few miserable black junkies locked up in gaol and tell me you’ve done your job.’
‘Point taken, Michael.’
‘Well, I won’t hold you up. Maybe next time I’ll get to see the battle plans. Glad to meet you all. Good hunting.’
After the door closed behind him, Savage let out a deep sigh and murmured, ‘That’s what I meant about the sermon. We get it all the time.’
McCulloch snorted.
‘Could you interpret for us, Keith?’ Brock asked.
‘Michael Grant believes that the drug trade in this area is controlled not by the Yardies or the home-grown black gangs, but by white organised criminals who use the black locals as cannon fodder. It makes him feel better. It isn’t blacks shamefully fouling their own nest, it’s the old story of whites brutally exploiting helpless blacks for economic gain.’
‘And he’s wrong?’
‘We have found absolutely no basis for his belief.’
‘Does he say who these whites are?’
‘He has made allegations, yes.’
‘Mind telling me?’
‘Principally a family called Roach. They used to operate out of Cockpit Lane in the old days, had a bit of a reputation for hard dealing and long firm fraud. They moved out a long time ago and became respectable, but Grant is convinced they’ve still got their grip on the place. Right, Bob? He must have bent your DCI’s ear.’
‘So I’m told.’
‘It makes no sense,’ Savage went on. ‘What would be in it for the Jamaicans? They’ve got their own network of mules bringing the cocaine in, their own crack factories to process it, and their own dealers. That’s how it works.’
‘I know of the Roach family,’ Brock said. ‘They were very active around here years ago, but I haven’t heard anything recently. You, Bob?’
&n
bsp; McCulloch shook his head.
‘All right,’ Brock went on, ‘let’s deal with immediate things. What were those girls doing around here for the past two or three weeks? They must have left tracks.’
‘The JOS club?’
‘Yes. And if they were there on two consecutive Saturdays then tonight is the best time to talk to its patrons.’
‘And that’s in Cove Street too?’ Savage said.
McCulloch nodded. ‘Just up the street from the laundrette.’
‘Why don’t Bob and I go and take a look?’ Savage suggested. ‘You can give me a tour of the neighbourhood, Bob.’
Brock nodded and watched them go, rubbing the side of his beard thoughtfully, and said to Kathy, ‘Too many speculations, too few facts.’ Then, as if in response, his mobile rang. It was Dr Mehta, the forensic pathologist. Brock listened, then got to his feet. ‘Come on, Sundeep wants to see us.’
Dr Mehta was standing beside the stainless-steel table on which his assistant was working on Dee-Ann’s corpse, swiftly sewing the flaps of skin together again. Behind him, Dana lay on another table.
‘You don’t look happy, Sundeep,’ Brock said.
‘I’ll tell you, Brock, I have a bad feeling about this one.’ He looked down at the girl’s face as the technician eased it back into position over her skull. ‘There are bruises all over her, and look at her knees . . .’
They looked, the skin grazed and torn.
‘I noticed that the knees of their jeans were caked with dust,’ Kathy said.
‘That’s right. It looks as if they were made to crawl around.’
Kathy had never seen Dr Mehta so agitated about one of his ‘clients’, as he sometimes called them. She had never previously seen him show any distress at all.
‘I noticed traces of adhesive around their mouths, and two balled-up pieces of tape were found near them, the same tape as was used to tie their wrists, so I assume they were gagged at first, then at some point the gags were ripped off.’ He went over to a side bench.
‘Adhering to one of the pieces of tape I found this . . .’
He held up a test tube in which lay a single coiled black hair.
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