Chelsea Mansions bak-11

by Barry Maitland

  ‘Thanks, Bren, I appreciate it, but I’ll head off home to lick my wounds. See you tomorrow.’

  She didn’t go home to face the press mob. There was a change of shirt and underwear in her locker and a bed in the staffroom, and she just wanted to be alone to confront the reality of it all, to come face to face at last with something that had haunted her from the beginning: the possibility of stuffing things up so badly that her career would be over. No longer viable. Only it was worse than that, because along with her, Brock’s whole outfit was going down. She had destroyed it, all of Brock’s patiently nurtured team broken up, scattered across London. And she had to go and tell him what she’d done. A sudden wave of nausea rose up in her gullet and she got quickly to her feet, went out to the women’s toilets down the corridor, and was sick.

  She rose at five the following morning from the unfamiliar bunk, moist from a couple of hours of sweaty dream-filled sleep, had a shower and got dressed. Then she went to her computer and downloaded all the case files she could access onto a flash drive, and typed out the letter of resignation that she had been composing during the night.

  She could hardly bring herself to look at them during Chivers’ team meeting-Dot, Pip, Mickey, Zack, Phil and the others-as they gasped with disbelief at the news that they were to be moved on. When Chivers called upon her to speak she did force herself to meet their eyes as she accepted full responsibility for the way things had turned out, and commended them on their dedication. She told them the hopeful news of Brock’s recovery and said she would be seeing him later that day to tell him what had happened, if he was well enough. Then she asked them to give Superintendent Chivers and his team every assistance to complete their work.

  Chivers introduced his team, looking subdued, and explained how the debriefing would be organised.

  At lunchtime, when it was all over, Chivers gave Brock’s team the rest of the day off, saying they would receive text messages later as to where to report the following day. Bren suggested they adjourn to the Two Chairmen, and they all filed out, carrying bulging bags and backpacks. Kathy stood the first round, and waited until the moans became repetitive, then said she would have to leave them to go and see Brock.

  When she got to the hospital and caught a first glimpse of him, sitting up against the pillows, sucking juice through a straw, her courage gave out. But he looked up suddenly as if he’d sensed her presence, and smiled and waved her in. That gaunt smile was the worst thing of all, she decided, but she choked back the sick feeling and fixed a smile on her own face and stepped forward.

  ‘You look better today,’ she said brightly. ‘There’s colour in your face.’

  ‘I am feeling a bit more myself. Sorry if I was dozy yesterday. Suzanne’s just popped out to do some shopping. How are you?’

  ‘Umm…’ She wasn’t sure whether she should say anything, but then his eyes probed her and she launched into it. ‘It’s been a bad twenty-four hours, actually.’

  He nodded. ‘Panic stations, eh?’ He indicated the TV on the wall facing the bed. ‘I saw Hadden-Vane’s performance, and Sharpe’s press statement. But we’ve seen it all before.’

  She heard his reassuring, steadying voice, and wondered how she could tell him that it was worse, much worse.

  ‘Sharpe has decided to put Chivers in charge,’ she said.

  He frowned. ‘Well, can’t be helped. In terms of his own accountability, Sharpe probably should have done it a week ago. You’ll get on with old Cheery all right. Just play it by the book. That’s what he likes.’

  ‘I won’t get that chance, Brock. None of us will. He’s brought his own team in. We spent this morning briefing them. We’re being

  … dispersed.’

  ‘Dispersed?’

  ‘Assigned to other commands.’

  A low growl rumbled in Brock’s throat.

  ‘And Chivers has taken over Queen Anne’s Gate.’

  He looked startled, then slowly shook his head.

  She waited, giving him a chance to say something before she broached the final thing. At last, when he said nothing, his expression unreadable, she took the envelope out of her pocket and said, ‘I’ve written my letter of resignation. I’ll post it downstairs when I leave.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing,’ he said quietly. ‘A building’s just a building and the team could benefit from a change for a while, but you’re not going to sacrifice your career for that corrupt windbag. What on earth are you thinking of?’

  ‘The team’s being broken up permanently. Sharpe says it’s no longer viable, and it’s my fault entirely. I’m sorry, I was impatient. I showed my hand before I was ready. I deserved to be crushed. But you and the team don’t. I’ve ruined everything you’ve worked for.’ She took a breath and shook her head. ‘I just feel so bloody stupid and inept. It’s not as if I hadn’t seen it all before. I let him do to me what he did to Tom Reeves-I set him up and then had him pull the rug out from under me, in full public view.’

  ‘This is nothing like what Tom Reeves did. Tom set himself up, getting evidence by breaking the law. I take it you haven’t done that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good.’ He gave a sigh of exasperation. ‘Come on, Kathy, this isn’t like you. You’re tired, aren’t you? But you’re a fighter, and your instincts are spot on. You know as well as I do that that man is bent. I’ll bet a pound to a penny that there’s a ton of stuff about him and Moszynski that he’s desperate to keep hidden.’

  Kathy bowed her head. ‘Yes.’

  Brock was scratching his beard. ‘That last bit about keeping the receipts, remember that? Bit odd, wasn’t it?’

  Kathy nodded. ‘I thought he must have primed the interviewer to ask that question.’

  ‘Exactly! That was his hidden confession. He couldn’t help himself. The cock of the walk, preening himself in front of an audience of millions, he just had to say it. Moszynski paid for my tarts, but you’ll never be able to prove it.’

  Kathy thought about it. ‘He’s probably right.’

  ‘You’d better tell me everything that’s been happening while I’ve been out of it.’

  So for the next couple of hours she did, taking him through the investigation step by step. He said little as she spoke, as if soaking it all in. At times his eyes closed and she thought he’d fallen asleep, but when she paused he’d murmur a question and she’d resume.

  Finally Suzanne came back and put a stop to it.

  ‘Don’t worry, Kathy,’ Brock said as she got up to leave. ‘We’ll sort it out.’ He really sounded eager, as if, having returned from the dead, the prospect of a battle ahead was invigorating. But all Kathy could feel was defeat.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  O ver the following days Kathy withdrew. She occupied herself with swimming, cleaning and repainting her flat, taking long walks and going to the movies. She wanted to avoid analysing what had happened, but the world outside kept intruding, forcing her to confront it. For a start there were the newspapers, and radio and TV coverage, which she could hardly avoid, especially the Sunday papers which were full of the story. There was general respect for the Hadden-Vanes’ confession, which was seen as brave and a welcome change from the hypocrisy that usually surrounded MP sex scandals in the UK. There was also much rehashing of the Russian question, and of the police investigation. There were even a few photographs of Kathy herself.

  Then there was her friend Nicole Palmer, who worked in police records for the National Identification Service and whose partner was an MPS detective, and who told her of the rumours and opinions that were circulating within the force. There was general agreement that the higher echelons had failed to support Kathy as they should, and that breaking up the team was a disgrace. Kathy would have taken more comfort from this if she hadn’t felt that Sharpe and his bosses were justified in the way they’d reacted.

  Kathy also had calls from several team members-Dot, Pip and Bren-all anxious to know how she was coping, and letting her know where they
had been posted. Most surprising was a call from Zack, who told her that they’d decided to keep him on at Queen Anne’s Gate to manage the new computers. He offered to keep her informed of developments.

  John Greenslade also called, several times, before she finally rang him back.

  ‘Kathy! I’m so glad you’ve rung. I’ve been worried about you. Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine, John, thanks. How are you?’

  ‘Terrible. I’m feeling very guilty.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘It was all my fault, wasn’t it? If I hadn’t cast doubt on the letter to The Times, you wouldn’t have turned your attention to the MP, and none of this would have happened.’

  ‘There was a lot more to it than that, John.’

  ‘All the same… I’d feel happier if I could talk it through with you, face to face. Would you do that? For an ex- consultant?’

  She laughed. ‘From an ex-detective.’

  ‘They haven’t kicked you out, have they?’

  ‘Not yet. The resignation letter’s in my bag.’

  ‘You mustn’t do that, Kathy! Please, let’s talk it through.’

  So in the end she agreed to meet him one day for lunch. But not yet. She wasn’t ready for it yet.

  She also met with Brock each day. Suzanne had now been away from her business for almost a month, and was having to spend time in Battle, commuting back up to London each evening to visit him in hospital. Kathy usually called in each morning, and after discussing whatever had come up of interest in the papers they might play a few hands of gin rummy, or a game of chess. But Kathy had brought him his laptop and copied her flash drive case records onto it, and inevitably his attention would stray back to the larger and more interesting puzzle of the murders in Chelsea.

  One day he seemed particularly preoccupied, and finally said, ‘The whole investigation relies on one premise: that Peebles mistook Nancy Haynes for Marta Moszynski. But if that’s not true, nothing else makes sense, does it?’

  ‘No.’ Kathy felt a familiar reluctance to go over it all again, and picked up the pack of cards and began shuffling.

  ‘How did you feel about that idea, when it was first suggested?’

  ‘I didn’t like it. I’d seen photographs of Nancy and I’d met Marta, and I didn’t see much resemblance.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘But we never met Nancy in the flesh. Maybe the photographs were flattering. Maybe she was more stooped in her everyday posture, when she wasn’t posing for the camera.’

  ‘There must be some way to pin that down. Computer simulations? A reconstruction?’

  ‘Well, it’s not our problem now, is it?’

  Brock looked at the cards she’d dealt him and played out the hand, then scratched his chin. ‘I’ve been thinking about Harry Peebles.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. He ordered a pizza delivery on his first night at Ferncroft Close, on the Wednesday, and again on the Thursday, but nothing after that.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Then I had a look at his record. His manslaughter charge was based on a vicious assault with a hammer. He battered the man to a pulp-literally-and claimed self-defence. The year before he’s believed to have thrown a teenager out of the tenth-floor window of a tenement block, but the sole witness disappeared and the police had to drop the case. And before that there was a string of assault incidents, all very violent and bloody.’

  ‘Yes?’ Kathy couldn’t see what he was getting at.

  ‘All his victims have been physically mangled, Kathy. He likes to crush them, like throwing Nancy under a bus.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘But there’s no record of him using a knife, and if he did I’m guessing he’d make a terrible mess with it. He has no finesse. Three precise, surgical stabs to the heart is not his style at all.’

  ‘Maybe he was told to do it that way, by someone who didn’t want Moszynski disfigured.’

  ‘Well, that’s a thought. Then there’s Peebles’ autopsy report. Sundeep is very wary of specifying the exact time of death, isn’t he? That’s when I collapsed, wasn’t it, when we were discussing that with him, and reading between the lines, I’d say he’s still not entirely happy with our later time, of Sunday night, after Moszynski’s murder.’

  ‘He doesn’t rule it out. The room temperature makes it difficult.’

  ‘I know, but still, I’ve always found Sundeep’s instincts to be worth paying attention to.’

  Kathy sighed inwardly. What was he trying to do, take the whole investigation apart from the beginning again? The thought made her feel physically ill. She looked up and saw him regarding her with a faintly worried frown.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Just mulling things over. You’re not still nursing that resignation letter, are you? Yes, you are, I can tell. Well, burn it. I forbid you to send it.’

  She gave a snort of amusement.

  ‘I mean it.’ He picked up the pack of cards. ‘I wonder what Chivers is up to?’

  Kathy said, ‘I could find out if you really want to know,’ and she told him about Zack.

  So when she got home she rang Zack’s number at Queen Anne’s Gate. He sounded cautious, speaking so quietly she could hardly hear. ‘You calling on your own phone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Get yourself a prepaid and ring me tonight after seven. I’ll give you my private number.’

  She did as he asked, and when they spoke that evening she said, ‘You’re being very careful, Zack.’

  ‘Got to be, Kathy. Chivers is very hot on security. We don’t want him going through the phone records and seeing your number on the list again.’

  Then he brought her up to date. Everyone involved in the case was being reinterviewed, every camera re-examined, every phone record cross-matched. A fraud squad was working through Freddie Clarke’s records. Two officers had been sent out to the Bahamas to speak to Shaka and two more to Scotland to track down Peebles’ movements after he got out of prison.

  ‘Sounds thorough,’ Kathy said.

  ‘Oh, it is. The super is nothing if not thorough. He demands a perfect job.’

  Zack didn’t like him, she could tell.

  ‘Why are you telling me this, Zack?’

  ‘Well, let’s say that I trusted your nose for sniffing out something rotten, and that Hadden-Vane is rotten, yeah? And he’s the one person we haven’t spoken to again.’

  Hadden-Vane. When she put the phone down she pictured him again. And the dead-Nancy Haynes, Mikhail Moszynski, and Harry Peebles and Danny Yilmaz too-all dead, while he, improbably, rose above the carnage unscathed. She wondered if she was becoming obsessed.

  The pub had a terrace overlooking the river, and they took a table by the wall looking directly over the water. It was a perfect June day, pale blue sky, sunlight sparkling on the dark Thames current across which a pair of two-man skiffs were skimming.

  ‘Thanks so much for sparing the time,’ John said.

  ‘I’ve got all the time in the world now.’ Kathy took a sip from her glass of wine.

  ‘You haven’t resigned, have you?’

  ‘I’m on leave, stood down, not involved.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. I told you, John, you had nothing to do with it. What about you? Shouldn’t you be at your conference?’ Kathy was aware that her words sounded brittle, and tried to make herself relax and enjoy this. It was a damn sight better than being in Queen Anne’s Gate, she told herself, or moping about at home, but it just felt so unreal to be out and free during a working day.

  ‘It finished last Wednesday, but I didn’t want to go back home with this unresolved.’

  ‘Have you changed your mind about Moszynski’s letter?’

  ‘No, on the contrary. I studied those other documents you gave me and I’m more convinced than ever that he didn’t write the letter to The Times.’

  ‘Has the new team been in touch with you?’

  ‘No. Shou
ld I speak to someone?’

  She shook her head. ‘Probably not. Send in your bill.’

  ‘How about your boss, Brock? Has there been any change?’

  He seemed genuinely pleased when she told him, but then his frown returned. He noticed that her glass was empty, although he had barely touched his, and he poured her another.

  ‘I just couldn’t believe it when I saw that interview with Hadden-Vane on TV,’ he said.

  ‘People seem to think it was honest and courageous.’

  ‘For her, maybe, but not him. I was quite impressed with him at Moszynski’s funeral, but this was different. I thought it was the most devious and calculated performance I’d ever seen. Toby and Deb were outraged too. They’d come across him before, but it was the first time I’d really looked at him. You knew he was guilty, didn’t you?’

  A river cruise ship was passing, its open top deck crowded with people wearing dark glasses and sun hats. Some of them were waving, and Kathy felt a little surge of well-being, the first she’d felt in a while.

  ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that if he was prepared to admit that much, and put his wife in front of the cameras to back him up, that he must have had something much, much worse to hide.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘I also think that he moved so fast that he must have had it in mind all the time, as a contingency plan, if we got too close.’ She shrugged and gave him a smile. ‘But it doesn’t matter what I think now.’

  ‘I like it much better when you’re smiling,’ he said. ‘And it does matter what you think, at least to me, and to Toby and Deb. They’re particularly upset that everyone seems to have forgotten about Nancy’s murder. They think that you’d probably have solved that if Moszynski’s death hadn’t got in the way.’

  ‘I’m sure it hasn’t been forgotten, John. Anyway, what are you doing with yourself, now the conference is over?’

  ‘This and that. I’m helping Toby and Deb upgrade their computer software. They send their best wishes, by the way. They said they’d love to see you if you wanted to drop in for tea or something.’