Two Faced
Page 5
Who could she turn to? No matter how deceptive Jonny was in his personal life, he was true to his professional oath. She knew that much. Telling him would force him to choose between her and his career. She was a witness and she had destroyed evidence, so there probably would be charges. And if he were forced to choose between her and his career, he would probably divorce her. If that happened, she would have two more years to find another husband. Minus any jail sentence.
She could visit Aunt Peg at the family pile in the country. Peg was always good for a cup of tea and a sympathetic ear. Fiona could lay herself up and lick her wounds.
She closed her eyes. That’s it. Go to Hampshire, show Peg and Uncle Fritz some love, and, if the weather held, walk the meadows and ride horses until the police showed up. She breathed deeply in satisfaction at the thought.
“That was a huge sigh.”
Jonny’s voice startled her from her reverie. She opened her eyes to see him gazing down at her from the edge of the bed.
“Look, Fee. I don’t know what’s going on, but why did you turn on me? I know I haven’t always been upfront with you, but I’m the same man I was when I left on Sunday. We were fine then. You were busy, looking forward to planning your new exhibition. Now I’m back, and you’re acting like a twelve-year-old with a dead pony. Why don’t…” His face relaxed into resignation. “What did you do, Fee? What happened?”
Fiona rolled over so she wouldn’t have to face him. “No. I don’t want to talk right now. Why don’t you go to the office.”
“Did Jacko hurt you? He’s a sick bastard, sweetheart. I ought to know.”
She sensed him standing still for about ten seconds, then felt his weight on the bed as he leaned over her. She felt his lips brush her hair, scented the citrus in his aftershave. She spoke when she heard his footsteps move towards the door. “Jonny? I may go down to Hampshire this afternoon. I haven’t seen Peg in a couple of months, and I need to check on the house. Maybe visit the kids at school. Ride. Get some fresh air.”
“That sounds nice. You know whatever you need is alright with me. I’m meeting late tonight, but you know you can call any time. If I can get away early Friday, maybe I’ll join you there on the weekend. We can bring the kids up from Winchester. Have a barbecue if the weather stays nice.”
Her bedroom door clicked shut. Meeting late—two code words, along with weekend conference, that years ago had become the encrypted death of her marriage. Two code words that had propelled her—and Jonny too—into the nightmare their marriage had become. Everywhere she turned, she was trapped. When she heard his footsteps recede, she curled in a ball and wept.
Wednesday morning, Fulham
Bull took the small vial of waxy VapoRub out of his pocket and smeared some under his nose. The strong menthol and eucalyptus scent didn’t completely mask the odour, but it certainly helped. The exhibits officer and photographer had done the same. Apparently none of them had gotten used to the smell of death. PC Dixon, who had been first on the scene, stood by to ascertain that, yes, this was the same body he had originally discovered at the house on Selwood Terrace.
Dr. Kumar, the medical examiner, had made his initial observations and begun to remove the victim’s clothes. It wasn’t a straightforward task. The blood had dried, so it was a matter of softening the cloth with water and cutting the still blood-stiffened clothes from the body. Once that was done, they could carefully inspect what was revealed, then wash off yet more blood. The photographer documented the process. The exhibits officer described the items into a recorder as he bagged them.
“Shoes, loafers, black leather, Marks and Spencer label. Soles slightly worn under ball of foot. Heels worn on the outside.”
“Trousers, black, wool blend, Marks and Spencer label.”
Kumar and his assistant disrobed the body, moving from the feet upwards.
“Well, this is impressive.” Kumar’s assistant had peeled the shirt from the victim’s back. He looked at Bull and jerked his head towards the corpse. Bull stepped closer.
As the water sluiced the caked blood away, an eagle with two heads facing in opposite directions emerged. The eagle’s wings extended across the man’s back and over his shoulders. Three distinct words were written in Cyrillic script above a red and yellow shield on the eagle’s breast. Rinsing more blood revealed a tattoo of a tiger wrapped around the man’s upper arm.
Bull pulled out his smartphone and took some pictures. Once he was sure he had good shots of the tattoos, he dialled Novak.
“Sir, something you might want to see. It looks military. I’m sending images to your mobile.”
“Yes.” It was half a minute before Novak mumbled a few unintelligible words.
“Sir? I didn’t receive you.”
Novak cleared his throat. “Serbian Volunteer Guard. Tigrovi. An Arkan Tiger. Crime scene report?”
“Preliminary in about an hour. I’ll send the link.”
“What next?”
“Back to Kensington to check for CCTV cameras.”
“Okay. Good work.” Novak rang off.
Wednesday morning, Hendon
Elaine gazed out the window of her office at the College of Policing. Despite the boredom and busywork, or perhaps because of it, she’d been given a decent playpen. From her south-facing window she could see over the railroad tracks and Colindeep Lane, to the neat rows of semi-detached homes in West Hendon.
Her early morning conversation with Cromarty had been forty-five minutes well spent. When she’d arrived at the office, she’d had no idea how to begin the web search. Cromarty’s tutelage had shown her where to start. He’d also recommended that instead of focusing strictly on Srecko’s Imperial and Republic Group, she expand the search to include a second company and look for connections. She reasoned that Boxe-Berkshire, the company Costello had mentioned, was a decent bet for the second company. She had to start somewhere, if only to get the hang of how to conduct a search. Plus, if she turned up anything, she could share the knowledge with Costello and Bull. Doing that might be one way to show the Met that she was ready to return to murder investigation.
First, the government website for Companies House allowed her to download lists of the two firms’ directors and their numerous subsidiary shell companies, all of which she loaded into a spreadsheet Cromarty had sent her. She sorted the data and used two of the software tools Cromarty had provided—he called them “macros”—to match the various lists against one another and against property ownership rolls from a different address database.
She worked for several hours, and after two more calls to Cromarty for advice, she used a police application to chart the addresses on a map of London. At last her efforts resulted in some interesting correlations. Neither IRG nor Boxe-Berkshire owned many properties outright—both were investors in numerous shell companies. This wasn’t unusual for real estate firms. It was the nature of the business to form investment and development partnerships focused on a single location, then dissolve them once the property was built or sold. However, both firms she was investigating tended to have directors who lived offshore, and a few of those directors overlapped. For the London properties, she’d noted several clusters of locations where subsidiaries of both companies owned adjacent buildings or properties nearby.
Now Elaine held in her lap a sheaf of papers that possibly contained the first actionable information she had found in months. After Tuesday’s presentation, she and Mehta had agreed to meet Thursday morning, but he hadn’t rung her to set the time and place. Joanna Christie had seemed sympathetic when they had parted Monday. Perhaps she would be inclined to help provide information.
Elaine stuffed the papers into her bag. Joanna first, then Mehta.
NINE
Wednesday morning, Kensington
Bull pasted the web link for the crime scene report into his email and sent it directly to Novak, copying Costello for posting with the team’s online files. Then he began the drive back to Selwood Terrace.
Not everyone liked the new borders, especially the ethnic Serbs living in Bosnian territory. In 1992, the Serbs drew a long, crooked line and called everything on their side the “Republika Srpska.” They declared only ethnic Serbs, who were mostly Orthodox Christians, could live there. A lot of Muslim Bosnians and Catholic Croats happened to be living in neighbourhoods on the wrong side of the line. Those areas needed to be “cleansed.” When the Orthodox Christian comrades were finished, tens of thousands of civilian Bosnians and Croats were dead.
Bull’s thoughts shifted back to the matter at hand. Should he tell Liz the victim was a Bosnian Serb? She’d been a wreck after the Srecko investigation. It wasn’t only what had happened to her that caused her emotional trauma, but also what had happened to Elaine. No, he couldn’t keep it from Liz. She was a copper too, and they were as good as married. He wanted to be married, anyway. Sometimes he wasn’t sure how she felt about being together.
And what about Elaine? Should he pass it along to her? If he did, what would she do with it? For all her good traits, she could be impulsive. She might start asking Novak about the investigation. Then the question would be who had broken security, and Novak would look at him.
Loyalty could be such a pain in the arse. Maybe Costello would have some ideas about how to manage it.
Fifteen minutes later, Bull slid his aging Ford Mondeo into a space on Selwood Terrace, a few houses along from the murder scene, and assessed the territory. One block behind him was the Fulham Road intersection, with its small shops and boutiques featuring designer furniture and women’s clothing. Ahead on the left sat the Onslow Arms pub, and two long blocks beyond it roared the busy intersection at Old Brompton Road, with its coffee shops, cafés, and pubs, all of which served the traffic generated by the posh boutique hotels of Queen’s Gate.
Anyone leaving the murder scene likely would pass through one of those two intersections. Bull decided to start at the pub and then interview the businesses on Old Brompton Road. He set a “Police” placard on the dashboard of the Mondeo and walked to the Onslow Arms. Low green walls separated the pavement from the pub’s terrace, which contained several small tables sheltered by green fabric awnings. Hanging baskets overflowed with red and yellow blossoms, similar to those in the display at a flower shop he’d seen on Fulham Road.
The large barman, middle-aged and florid, smiled a greeting as Bull pushed through the door. “Not open yet, mate. Give us ten.” When Bull held up his warrant card and identified himself, the barman’s face took on a serious scowl. “Ben Pleasant, proprietor. The murder up the street, right? Sad business. You’ll want my CCTV.”
Bull nodded. “I noticed the camera on the corner of the building. Would you have the video from Sunday through Tuesday? I’d like to upload it to our site, if you don’t mind, Mr. Pleasant.”
“No worries.” Pleasant leaned into the door to the kitchen. “Kerry? I’m going up to the office. Watch the front, please.”
A stocky, chestnut-haired young woman bounded through the door and took her place next to the proprietor. She studied Bull up and down. “The police about the murder, Dad? Can I listen?” Kerry spoke slowly, as if her mouth were full. Given her almond eyes, Bull considered that she might have Down’s syndrome, but he wasn’t quite sure.
“Not now, luv. Need you to watch the front. I’ll be back in a sec.” Bull followed him up a set of narrow stairs.
On one side of the landing at the top was the entrance to what Bull took to be a small sitting room. Apparently, Pleasant and Kerry lived above the pub. The office on the other side of the landing was barely large enough for the two men at the same time. Pleasant sat at a desk crowded with a tray containing mail, pamphlets, and various invoices, and a flat desktop computer and its accoutrements. He clicked the mouse, and the computer began wheezing and whirring. Once it had started up and the CCTV app was loaded, Pleasant stood and smiled awkwardly as he squeezed past to let Bull sit. “Pardon. They didn’t build as large in the 1820s.”
The video controls were straightforward. Bull clicked the mouse to advance the picture to Sunday evening, started the clip, and fast-forwarded it to noon on Tuesday, which is when the first police arrived at the scene. Once the segment was uploaded to the Met’s cloud site, they returned to the front of the pub and sat at a table. Pleasant offered a pint of hand-pulled cask ale, but Bull declined. He had a busy afternoon ahead of him, so he pulled out his notebook and pencil and got to the point. “Were you open Monday evening?”
Pleasant nodded. “Normal hours. Kerry and I were here, along with Jason, who’s the cook, and Tamara, the server. Closed at eleven. Went upstairs at about midnight.”
Kerry set two glasses of fizzy water on the table and hovered over Pleasant’s shoulder, shifting from one foot to the other. Her grey eyes never left Bull.
Pleasant indicated two men standing at the bar. “Kerry, we’re open now, so it would be helpful if you could see what those gentlemen want.”
“Okay, Dad, but then can I … I mean, we might have…”
“I won’t be a minute, sweetheart. Go take the order, please.”
Kerry slouched back behind the bar. Bull could see her talking with the men, then pulling one of the ales. She knew what she was doing.
Pleasant followed Bull’s eyes. “We lost her mother two years ago. Kerry has mild Down’s syndrome. After she finished school, she stayed to live with me. Said she wants to learn to run a pub. I’m all right with that. She’s been amazing. When something’s on her mind, she has trouble focusing. Still, she can stand on her own feet if people give her a chance.”
“It looked like she wanted to tell me something. If it’s all right, I’ll interview her when we finish.”
“Sure. Mondays are always slow. It hadn’t rained, but it was cold and damp. No one was on the terrace, and I was inside the whole evening. I didn’t hear or see anything out of the ordinary. Not that made me notice. Tamara isn’t here today until four PM. Do you want to talk with Jason?”
Bull shook his head. “We’ll send a uniform around later. I’ll just speak with Kerry now, before I go.” He drained his glass of water in a gulp and immediately realized the mistake. The fizz would want back out shortly.
Bull felt the pressure building at the bottom of his throat as Kerry sat down across the table. He swallowed hard and began. “Your dad says you were at work all Monday evening. Is that right?”
Kerry nodded and studied his face. “I wasn’t working the whole time, though.”
He swallowed hard again. “You took a break? Did you go outside?” The belch erupted as he finished the sentence. He held a napkin to his lips and turned his head away.
Kerry giggled. “Do you like it? My dad calls it Vesuvius water. It does that to me too.”
Bull nodded and smiled self-consciously. “It was sensational. Tell me about your break.”
“The weather is nice today.” She looked at her father, who was taking an order from a customer. “Let’s go outside and sit in the sun. Want some more Vesuvius water?”
Bull laughed and shook his head. “One eruption per day is my limit.”
Kerry led him out the side door of the pub. They sat on one of several rustic benches set against the wall.
“It’s more private out here.” Kerry tilted her head back and closed her eyes, allowing the thin January sunlight to bathe her face. “You asked about my break. I came outside. My friend Wallace was going to meet me after he got off work. He works at the Sainsbury’s grocery, down Fulham Road, and he gets off at nine. It’s not far, so he walks. He gets here in time for my break. But that day he got off late, like five or ten minutes.” She opened her eyes. “Is this too much deta
il?”
When Bull looked up from his notebook, she was leaning over, reading what he had written. “No, Kerry. It’s fine. It does what we call establish context. Helps everything fit together.”
“You have neat handwriting. I try to make mine that neat.”
Bull smiled. “Thank you. I might forget something, so I have to be able to read what I write. What was special about this break? Other than seeing Wallace, I mean.”
Kerry blushed. “That was pretty special. I hadn’t seen him in almost a week.” She appeared lost in thought for a few moments, then continued. “But something different happened. I heard a lady screaming at someone, and then two cars sped off up the street.”
Bull gave her a steady look. “Now, be very careful about being accurate. Could you tell where the lady was?”
Kerry pointed. “That way, towards Fulham Road.”
“And could you make out what she said?”
“She screamed at someone named Jack. I think she called him a coward. Right after that, a big black car squealed its tires and sped off up that way.” She pointed in the opposite direction, towards Old Brompton Road.
“You said there were two cars.”
“I only heard the other one. I didn’t see it.”
“All right. What else can you tell me?”
“Wallace said the big car we saw was an old Jaguar saloon. I think he said ‘XJ’? Does that make sense? He likes cars. He has lots of books about them.”
“What time was this?”
“I take my break at nine thirty. So this must have been at about nine forty-five, just a few minutes before I had to get back in.”
Kerry appeared deep in thought, so Bull hesitated a few seconds before prompting her. “You look like you’re thinking about something. Did you see or hear something else?”
“Well, I don’t know for sure if it was her. The lady who screamed, I mean. But a few minutes later, a lady passed on the far side of the street. She was kind of in the shadows, so I couldn’t see her very well. Wallace had just kissed me goodnight and was hugging me. I saw her over his shoulder.”