by Joseph Knox
‘Who?’ I said, almost to myself. ‘How would he even get a body out of here?’
‘Can’t help ya with the first one, but if you’d like to follow me into the bathroom …’
At first glance the bathroom seemed untouched, aside from a strong smell of paraffin or petrol coming from the bath itself. We’d expected that because of the dustbin fires. When I looked inside the tub it told a different story. Sutty watched me closely. The bath was gleaming clean but scarred along the bottom. Coarse, overlapping nicks and scrapes alongside several deep, straight incisions.
Something big had been cut up inside it, using very sharp objects.
Sutty walked to the toilet and lifted up the lid. I followed him and looked down.
The water was red.
3
We returned to the station to file reports, liaise with forensics for the Midland and arrange identification of the body for the following day. More importantly, to begin the search for the real Ross Browne. Who he was and the life he’d left behind. We’d found records of a man by his name living in Brighton. The years he’d been in town, and his proximity to the coast, matched what Amy Burroughs had told us.
Local authorities had visited Browne’s flat to no response.
The fact of his military past threw up interesting possibilities about the death, while muddying the water of our investigation. We’d requested his military records from the Ministry of Defence and the paperwork was currently inching its way through layers of bureaucracy. I imagined a brown file being passed, endlessly, from desk to desk.
I checked in with Constable Black, who’d been approaching streetwalkers, known sex workers and pimps. If Cherry had been inside the Palace, she had to have been with a client. Black had been spreading the word about the murder but, so far, no one had even admitted to knowing our victim.
I could hear her flicking through her notebook as she spoke to me. ‘Closest thing I’ve had is the nickname of a regular for Cherry’s kind of service.’
‘Run the nickname by me?’
‘Mr Hands …’
I thought for a moment, wondering if it might apply to anyone I’d met in the case so far. ‘Doesn’t mean anything to me,’ I said. ‘But that’s a good start. Keep trying.’
When my phone rang a few minutes later, I hoped it was Black, calling back with a breakthrough.
‘Waits,’ I said, answering. I could hear someone at the other end but they didn’t say anything. I waited for a second and snapped. ‘Listen, I’m fucking sick of this—’
‘Aidan, it’s me, Ricky. We met the other day? Sorry if I’m getting you at a bad time, man …’
‘Ricky.’ Sian’s boyfriend. Her fiancé. I closed my eyes. ‘I thought you were someone else.’
‘Yeah. Well, I got your number from Sian’s phone …’
‘Does she know you’re calling me?’
‘No, and I’d appreciate it if we could keep this between the two of us. We need a word.’
‘Today’s not great.’
‘It’s important, man. It’s really important.’
‘OK,’ I said, slightly taken aback. ‘I was hoping to talk to you, too. It’d have to be later, though.’
‘I can’t do now anyway. Let’s grab a drink tonight.’ He sounded more like he wanted to clear the air than start a fight. I thought it was an unusual move, to get an ex’s number from your partner’s phone, but Sian obviously meant a lot to him and if pushed I was willing to explain the scene he’d walked in on. We agreed to meet at the Rising Sun later that day, when Sian would be working in The Temple.
‘I’ll see you then.’
‘Sick,’ he said. I hung up and looked at Sutty.
‘So, Amy Burroughs,’ he said. ‘What did you think?’
‘She was jumpy, right from the word go. Nervous about her husband coming home and at pains to point out that Browne wasn’t her little boy’s father. But I guess a cop approaching you on the street at five in the morning could do that …’
‘Hm,’ said Sutty. ‘Did she say anything else about the balls and chain?’
‘Only that he worked at St Mary’s with her, that he was due home any minute.’ I shrugged. ‘No one wants their sexual history broadcast to a partner.’
‘Says the expert.’ There was a trace of malice in his voice but it was habitual, half-hearted. We were wiped out from a night spent cramped together in the car. From catching two additional deaths, Cherry and whoever the blood patch belonged to, in as many days. I kept thinking of the splintered door in Cherry’s room. I couldn’t help but wonder how far behind her killer we’d been, and what she’d seen that had put an end to her life so violently.
Now, the blood in the Midland was a piece of the puzzle that didn’t seem to match anything else. It had been confirmed as human, and forensics estimated the quantity soaked into the carpet as four to six pints. Comfortably enough to kill someone. It looked as though the body had been dissected, and disposed of through the drains. Not all of it could have gone that way, though, and it added new frustration to our not fully investigating the first two dustbin fires.
We had to know who died in that room.
We had staggered towards one answer, though. Ross Browne was the smiling man. I wondered what had happened after his relationship with Amy Burroughs disintegrated to make him go so far off the grid, to hide his identity, and what it was that had finally caught up with him now. There was a knock at the door and I got up. Opened it to a young, uniformed officer with neck acne and a large coffee stain on his shirt.
‘Detective Constable Waits?’ he said.
‘Yeah.’
‘You’re wanted on the top floor. Superintendent Parrs …’
Sutty groaned and got to his feet. ‘Yeurgh, yeurgh,’ he said.
‘Not you, sir,’ said the officer, returning his gaze gravely to me. ‘Just him.’ I pulled on my jacket, it felt about as crumpled as I did, and I wondered, tiredly, if this would be another warning. The death threats against me were starting to feel more like a petition.
Either way, I was going to have to talk to him.
There was a strange man in the midst of all this tracing my movements, watching my house and calling my phone. His comment to Sian was the tipping point, though. An oblique threat against my sister was too much of an escalation to ignore. The officer didn’t speak again until he knocked on the Superintendent’s door and took me inside.
‘Detective Constable Waits, sir,’ he said, without looking at either one of us.
His voice was shaking.
‘Very good,’ said Parrs. The officer backed out of the room and drew the door shut. The office itself was uncharacteristically chaotic. Papers had been pushed off the desk on to the floor, and the two chairs which usually sat opposite the Superintendent were tipped on to their sides, looking as though they’d been thrown against the wall. Parrs was sitting, rigid, behind the desk, grey suit, grey hair, grey face. His tie was askew at his neck, and his raw, red eyes flicked about the room, as if inviting me to observe its disarray, before settling on mine. ‘Take a seat,’ he said with his shark’s smile. His Scottish accent was just a low growl. I picked up one of the chairs, set it back on its legs and sat down.
‘At around six o’clock this morning, GMT, the MAN–DXB non-stop to the United Arab Emirates touched down in Dubai International Airport. It’s a seven-hour flight but had the wind at its back, so it landed a little ahead of schedule. Ever been to Dubai, Aidan?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Dry country,’ he said. ‘Not really your style, eh? I’m told it’s the busiest airport in the world operating on just two runways. Needless to say, being ahead of schedule can present a headache in such cramped confines. Ground crews started to process the luggage.’ He smiled again. ‘That can be a bit of a headache there, too. Dubai International has what’s generally acknowledged to be the most state-of-the-art surveillance system for incoming drugs of any airport on the planet. Makes Heathrow look like a fucking hon
esty box. Obviously, the travellers themselves get finger-fucked through security, but it’s behind the scenes where the real magic happens. Those unloaded bags are screened, re-screened, sniffer-dogged, you name it. A girl with half a gram of ketamine only just avoided the firing squad last year on appeal. Big risk to take carry-on. So I was surprised to receive a call this morning from the British embassy, saying that a thirty-six-year-old man from my city had been optimistic enough to think he could take a bag of the good stuff on holiday. I was less surprised when they told me his name. A Mr …’ Parrs pretended to read from the sheet of paper. ‘… Oliver Cartwright. No, it all started to make sense once they told me his name. It started to look almost elegant.’ Somehow, in my plot against Cartwright, I hadn’t quite thought ahead to this confrontation. Parrs lowered his head and looked at me. ‘Does it make sense to you, Aidan? Does it start to look elegant?’
‘No, sir.’
‘No, sir,’ he laughed. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen him laugh before. ‘No, sir. You told me to stay away from him on pain of death and I followed orders, because I’m Aidan Waits and that’s what I do. I wouldn’t take a personal vendetta and turn it into an international incident, would I?’ He paused, breathing through his nose for a few seconds. ‘It will, no doubt, give you great pleasure to hear that Mr Oliver Cartwright will, for the next few years, be engaged in a miasma of legal proceedings, in a second language, which will more than likely see him imprisoned abroad for the rest of his life. The sex-tapes in his future will be of an altogether different variety. Do you think that punishment fits the crime, Detective Constable?’
I didn’t say anything.
‘You’re a cold fish, son, has anyone ever told you that? At this moment in time, a latex-gloved Arab is wearing Ollie Cartwright like a fucking wristwatch. Have you got anything to say to that?’
‘Good,’ I answered.
He stared at me. ‘There was a time when I thought you might be useful to me. I’d turn that chilly disposition loose on to the people who deserved it. You needed to keep your head down a bit after your last disaster, but some time spent with Inspector Sutcliffe could take care of that. Maybe it’d even give you a few lessons in what not to do. I think I made a mistake, though. I think there’s too much missing from you.’ He let that sink in for a minute. ‘Cartwright’s going nowhere. Fuck him. But you and I trusted each other once. Tell me what happened here. And make it good, eh? Make it fucking brilliant.’
‘I don’t know anything about it, sir.’
‘Playing dumb? Well, they say the best lies always have some truth in them. Who’d believe the most amoral man on the force would grow a conscience over some teenage tart spreading them for a guy off TV?’ He looked at me, his red eyes stabbing into mine. ‘I’d believe it, though, wouldn’t I, Aidan? I’d believe you’ve got a soft spot in that direction. I’d believe you can lie through your teeth for months on end and rip off everyone around you. I’d believe anything but you sitting there telling me that you don’t know how a bag of weapons-grade cocaine ended up in Cartwright’s suitcase.’
‘You said it yourself, Superintendent. He’s a guy off TV. Thought the rules didn’t apply to him. He was bound to go under the wheels one day.’
Parrs smiled darkly. ‘In spite of what you may think, I have no time for Oliver Cartwright. He speaks for, and to, human waste. I’m happy he’s out of my hair for good. I hope they lock him up with nothing but his sturdiest leather belt for company. But I assume you know who he’s connected to? The white knight of the alt-right, they call him. For your sake I hope he doesn’t reach the same conclusion I have. Because if he does, he might take that sturdy leather belt from round his neck and put it to a different use. Sell it to some lifer for the mobile phone up his arse, make a few calls while holding his nose. No, I’m prepared to turn a blind eye on this one, let you kids work it out between yourselves. What I really called you here to ask is why your thorough and wide-ranging investigation into the Oxford Road dustbin fires necessitates the MOD’s involvement?’
‘It’s related to the unidentified man from the Palace, sir.’
‘And how’s Smiley Face related to some dustbin fires?’
‘I just filed my report. It seems he was the one setting them.’ Parrs didn’t move and I went on. ‘I have video evidence, sir.’
His jaw tightened. ‘No doubt.’
‘The man was burning objects in the dustbins, including, in at least one instance, a large sum of money. The surrounding objects led us back to the Midland Hotel, where we found the man’s personal effects. They led Detective Inspector Sutcliffe and me to a woman who used to be in a relationship with a Mr Ross Browne. We believe Browne’s the dead man found in the Palace. He’s ex-military. Rotated out with post-traumatic stress disorder.’
Parrs sat back. ‘Good work,’ he said. ‘I mean it, good work. You’ll be pleased to hear I had Stromer on the phone earlier as well. Retracted some of her more vitriolic remarks on your character. You were right about that body-dump in the canal being linked to the smiling man, too. It’s almost as though you’ve got a sixth sense on this one …’
His red eyes burrowed into mine.
‘… She still thinks you’re a car crash, don’t get me wrong. But in this instance you’ve rolled the vehicle and landed back on your wheels. Maybe they’re the same wheels Ollie Cartwright went under. So for the moment you’re three for three. I shouldn’t be wasting your time, should I? In fact, let’s sever ties completely, eh?’
‘Sir, I need to bring Detective Inspector Sutcliffe in on the owners of the Palace. Events are unfolding that—’
‘I think not, Detective Constable. I’d rather not waste two bodies. Sutty’s talents are better deployed elsewhere …’ He saw the look pass across my face. ‘Something to say about that, Detective Constable?’
‘No, sir.’
‘If you’ve got concerns about a serving officer, now’s your chance to air them.’
‘The sound of my own voice doesn’t interest me so much.’
‘Could have fucking fooled me.’
‘Handling the owners alone is too big a job, sir.’
‘Maybe so, but you just do your own thing. Really get stuck in there. Tell you what, I’ll even make you a bargain. You’ve got no time for Sutty, so show me some real detective work. Tell me who this smiling man is, a name, and I’ll find Sutty a new partner …’
Parrs was always making these double-or-nothing bargains.
‘… And if the gangs haven’t got the message about the price on your head, and if Cartwright’s friends have got the message about you planting drugs in his suitcase, and if these smiling man developments take you to unexpected places …’ He smiled darkly. ‘Well, you’ll be on your own, won’t you? That’s how you like it best, after all.’
4
I left my meeting with Parrs trying to think of new angles of enquiry for the Palace. My unanswered questions were mainly about Natasha Reeve and Freddie Coyle. Reeve had been receiving notes about her husband having an affair with Geoff Short. Someone had wanted to hurt them, and they had two people in common that I knew of.
Aneesa Khan and Anthony Blick.
I called Aneesa.
‘Detective Constable Waits, I can’t say I’m thrilled to hear from you.’
‘If your clients had been honest with me at the start of all this I wouldn’t have had to shake the truth out of them.’
‘But we keep returning to the same question. What does an affair have to do with a dead man in the Palace? Have you had any progress on that front at all?’
‘One fact in isolation tells us nothing. That’s why we need them all. Speaking of which, I still need to talk to your boss.’
‘He’s due back from Thailand next week—’
‘That’s too late. This case is changing every day and now it’s putting other people at risk.’
‘Fine,’ she said after a moment’s silence. ‘But it’s the middle of the night there now, and I want to
be there when you speak to him.’ I agreed to meet her at the firm’s office the following day where we’d set up a conference call with Blick. I wanted to ask her about the affair that had been going on under her nose as well. Earlier that day, at a loose end as to who the blood in the Midland could belong to, I’d found Blick’s Facebook profile. I was almost disappointed to see he was still living it up. Topless, surrounded by another group of young Thai women.
5
I walked to the Waterstones on Deansgate looking for a copy of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. After being directed to the poetry section, I found several editions, some with different publishers and translators, even different languages. I bought the one that looked most approachable and left, by now late to meet Ricky, Sian’s fiancé. When I got to the Rising Sun he was hunched over a pint, sitting at a small table facing the door.
His glass was half-empty.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ I said, approaching the table.
‘Don’t worry about it. Get us another of these?’
‘Sure.’ I went to the bar and looked back at him. He’d avoided my eyes and I thought he looked drunk. I realized how I might look to him. A stubbled, perma-scowled detective with a bad history, who was suddenly hanging around the woman he loved. I realized I might look like a bully. His calling me and coming here had obviously taken some courage and I felt faintly ashamed for provoking it. I paid, put our drinks down on the table and took a seat opposite him. He swallowed the remainder of his beer and reached for the fresh one.
‘Listen, Ricky. I’m glad you called.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. Look, I don’t know what you think you walked in on the other day, Sian holding my hand, but it wasn’t anything romantic.’ He made eye contact for the first time. ‘The truth is that some guy had been in the bar earlier that day, talking about me. He told Sian something that contradicted what I’d told her.’
He frowned. ‘I don’t follow …’
I went all-in. ‘I lied to Sian when we were together. If you want to ask her about it, that’s your business. I don’t know how much you know about me …’ His eyes flicked up again. A quick google would have revealed articles about my suspension. Drugs-related corruption charges that had mysteriously vanished. ‘Anyway, Sian was upset with me. When you walked in she’d grabbed my hand, angrily, to make a point. That’s all there is to it.’ He still didn’t say anything and I found myself filling the silence. ‘I hadn’t seen her in over a year until the other night, and the first thing she told me was that she was seeing someone. That she was happy. I’d hate to think I’d affected that in any way.’