‘We always chatted when she came in. She was nice. We’re friends.’
Grace was struck by how everyone constantly mixed up their tenses when speaking of Polly, unsure whether to think of her as alive or dead. ‘Would you mind telling me what you talked about that Friday morning?’
Danny hung his head. ‘I’d seen her in town with Dr Beeston the night before.’
‘On the Thursday?’ she asked. He nodded, and Grace began to see what had made Roxanne seek him out him again: although the newspapers knew that Matt taught Rachel, so far they hadn’t discovered any direct link between Matt and Polly. Had Danny now supplied Roxanne with it by telling her he’d seen them together in town?
And then it suddenly struck her that Polly wouldn’t necessarily have known that Danny couldn’t drive: why hadn’t she thought of that before! ‘Did Polly ask you for a lift?’ she asked.
‘I don’t have a driving licence,’ he said quickly.
‘No, but she might’ve asked you anyway. Did she?’
He looked perturbed, then nodded. Shit! thought Grace. There goes Lance’s hope of tying Pawel tighter into the mix.
‘I didn’t want her to go home with him,’ Danny said regretfully, making Grace recall what Matt had said about Polly mouthing off at the man she spoke to. ‘She didn’t know what he’s like.’
Grace thought how Matt Beeston must have seen Danny a hundred times around campus over the past couple of years but had recalled merely that the man Polly approached had seemed familiar. ‘I imagine she’d had a bit to drink?’ Grace asked.
Danny nodded. ‘She came in here the next day. She was a bit upset. I don’t think he’d been very nice to her. I told her not to worry, that he was an idiot and she hadn’t done anything wrong.’
‘How upset was she?’
‘I think I managed to cheer her up a bit. She was OK after we chatted.’
‘But you didn’t see her again after that?’
Danny shook his head regretfully. ‘No.’
‘And she wasn’t planning to see Matt Beeston again?’
He shrugged. ‘Doubt it.’
‘So what were you up to in town?’ she asked lightly. ‘When Polly asked you for a lift. Do you drink at the Blue Bar?’
‘Can’t afford it. I’d met up with a couple of my brother’s mates. Paras,’ he added proudly.
‘Your brother’s in the military?’
Danny nodded. ‘Out at Camp Bastion.’
‘In Helmand?’
‘Yes. Not many of them left there now.’
‘Good for him.’
‘Do you think Dr Beeston killed that other one?’ he asked fiercely.
‘Rachel Moston?’
‘Yes. Will he go to prison?’
Grace shook her head firmly. ‘I can’t say. This inquiry is still in its early stages.’
He seemed to accept her evasion. ‘He deserves it.’
Grace could hardly say that she was tempted to agree with him, though for different offences. ‘Well, if anything else occurs to you, or you hear anyone talking about him, or learn any information we ought to have, you will let us know, won’t you?’
‘Sure.’
‘And you can’t remember seeing Polly in town with anyone else on any other night?’
‘No, sorry.’ The tension in Danny’s face had melted away and he gave her the sweet smile she’d seen once before.
Grace’s heart went out to the vulnerable young man and his lonely passions, making her all the more sure that he knew more about Polly than he cared to say. ‘If you do think of anything, you obviously know about the reward for information, don’t you? Fifty thousand pounds. It’s a lot of money.’
She knew she was taking a risk: if police appeared to endorse a reward, witnesses who came forward as a result could be challenged in court as having only come forward for the money. Yet she had to try every route to encourage Danny to give up what he knew, especially if it meant he’d have to be disloyal to Polly by painting her in an unflattering light as drunkenly offensive.
But he shook his head vehemently. ‘We were friends. She came in here specially the next day,’ he said. ‘She wanted to apologise because she was afraid she’d been rude to me. She’s a lovely person. You mustn’t think badly of her.’
‘We want to find her just as much as you do,’ Grace assured him. He gave her the twisted smile of someone trying not to cry, and she hoped – as much for his sake as for the investigation – that he hadn’t described all of this too vividly to Roxanne.
TWENTY-THREE
The house was at the end of a terrace in a back street of Colchester near the old military garrison area. Grace had learned that, as a long-delayed estate sale, it had been empty for nearly a year. Unmodernised for a couple of decades before that, it would need total gutting, which is why Pawel Zawodny had been able to get it cheap. But it was also slightly bigger than its neighbours, with three bedrooms rather than the usual two, which would significantly increase his rental returns. He had only completed on the sale the previous week, gaining possession of the keys the day before Polly’s disappearance.
It had been Grace who had drawn Keith’s attention to Pawel’s passing mention of a new rental property, and at their second interview she had asked him more about it. He had supplied the address and voluntarily instructed his solicitor to surrender the keys; had, indeed, been meticulously helpful throughout, although never offering a word or detail more than necessary. Grace found it increasingly difficult to read him. She guessed his solicitor had told him it was unlikely that he’d be held for more than twenty-four hours, so it was understandable that he’d shown a gritted annoyance when informed that they’d been granted a twelve-hour extension, and that they could apply to hold him for up to four days. But it was impossible to tell whether the clench of his jaw and the glint of steel in his blue eyes was understandable resentment or renewed determination not to give an inch.
When the team had gathered for this morning’s briefing, there’d been a definite sense of resignation in the air. Lance had taken it badly the day before when Grace had confirmed it had been Danny, not Pawel, whom Polly had approached for a lift, almost as if she’d gone out of her way to thwart him, and he had remained detached and distant when they’d gone together to ask Jessica and Amber if either could add to the picture of their landlord. Meanwhile, forensics had not so far come up with anything useful either from his boat – certainly nothing to show that Polly had been recently aboard – or his truck. Uniform had begun canvassing local sex workers, but none had recognised Zawodny as a punter. And so far the worst said of him by any of the other past tenants they’d contacted was that sometimes he’d use his key to enter the house without letting them know in advance.
But then house-to-house had called in to say that their early-morning enquiries around the moorings had brought forward a witness who had seen the owner of the Daisy Chain carrying heavy and well-wrapped bin bags aboard the previous weekend, the day after Polly’s disappearance. Concealing their jubilation, she and Duncan had immediately put this to Pawel. But he had an answer for everything – seemed almost to be enjoying the cat-and-mouse game between them – and had coolly admitted taking rubbish to dump at sea in order to avoid builders’ fees at the recycling centre. But the witness was solid and reliable, just the type that a jury would take note of, and the earlier mood of defeat had lifted.
And now they were here, on the doorstep of Zawodny’s fourth property purchase. Keen not to attract unnecessary attention, Grace and Lance now sheltered each another from twitching Sunday-afternoon net curtains as they pulled on gloves before opening the half-glazed front door with its chipped and faded paintwork. Keith had been unwilling to extend the budget to a full forensic sweep until they’d seen inside, but had – unnecessarily it seemed to her – impressed upon them that they could be entering a crime scene. Grace had taken the SIO’s over-cautious reminder to be a sign of his heightened anxiety.
The Yale lock was ridicu
lously loose, and clearly Pawel’s first priority had been to secure his investment by adding a shiny new deadlock. Inside, she and Lance slipped protective covers over their shoes and she took care to follow in his footsteps across the litter of defunct post and fliers for pizza deliveries. Two doors on the right led first into a small, square front parlour with a lethal-looking gas fire and filthy unlined curtains drooping from a broken rail, and then into a near-identical room with a window overlooking whatever overgrown backyard lay beyond. Both rooms were otherwise empty, and the detectives did not further disturb the thick dust on the uncovered floorboards that bore the evidence of someone, presumably Pawel, walking around in sturdy ridge-soled boots.
The narrow hallway retained its patterned Edwardian floor tiles. They were smeared and grimy, as was the planking of the under-stairs cupboard, and some of the marks looked recent. Not much light reached the back of the hallway, and there was no bulb in the socket of the overhead light. While Lance shone his torch on the dirty paintwork, Grace squeezed past him to open a third door that led into a musty-smelling scullery kitchen at the back. She could see mouse droppings on the floor and reckoned the decaying beige Melamine cupboards must have been put in years before she was born. A battered kettle tarnished with splatters of old paint and plaster sat on a portion of counter that had been cleared and wiped, and two broken chairs were drawn up to an equally clean Formica-topped table.
Grace called to Lance. ‘Look!’ She pointed to the table on which sat an opened economy-size box of tea bags, a bag of sugar, two chipped mugs, a stained teaspoon and an unopened bottle of Fire’n’Ice vodka.
Lance laughed in loud disbelief. ‘And he told us he only drank beer!’
This was the first lie they’d been able to catch Pawel out over, and Grace was happy to let Lance savour the moment, hoping that maybe this small success might encourage him to forget his frostiness.
‘It’s not been opened,’ she pointed out.
‘Could be for future use!’
‘Shall we bag it up or leave it for the CSIs?’ she asked.
‘Leave it. They may want to photograph it. But we ought to get out of here.’
‘Check upstairs first?’
‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘I’ll call Keith, let him know.’
Grace knew it was better if only one of them contaminated the area, but she made her way alone up the steep uncarpeted stairs with trepidation. At the top she called out: ‘Anyone there?’ She did not expect a response, and felt foolish that Lance would have heard her. With her gloved fingertips she pushed open the first door opening off the tiny landing, peered into the front bedroom and only just stopped herself crying out before she realised that what she was looking at was a heap of mouldy carpet that had been clumsily rolled back to expose the floorboards. From the threshold she looked carefully, but could not see how a body could possibly be concealed within its awkward contours.
She cocked her ear, too, for any telltale buzzing: if Polly had been killed here, if she’d been dead for a week, then in this heat there’d be flies – and a really bad smell – but there was nothing.
Swallowing hard, she turned to the next door which opened onto little more than a box room; it was filled with junk, but she’d have to leave that for the CSIs to sift through. The rust-stained bathroom was empty and the door to the back bedroom was locked. Before she could stop herself, Grace tapped gently with a knuckle. Laughing at her nerviness, she tucked her hand into her armpit, then saw that there was a key below the handle, set into an old-fashioned beaten-metal fingerplate. She turned it, pushing open the door, but closed it again instantly when the movement was met with a scary whoosh and flap of wings that sent a waft of warm, stale air into her face.
Letting her heart rate return to normal, she opened the door again more slowly, looked into the room and guessed at once that it had been locked as a reminder that broken sash cords had left a wide gap at the top of the window through which roosting pigeons had entered. The floor was covered in a mess of dirt, dust and feathers. There were no footprints. No one had been in here for months.
As Grace made her way downstairs, she could see through the banisters the beam of Lance’s torch as he inspected the marks on the woodwork and tiled floor of the hallway. He looked up at her happily. ‘Anything upstairs?’
‘Don’t think so. You got anything there?’
‘Hard to tell. Keith says the CSIs are on their way. We’re to wait here and let them in.’
‘OK.’ She didn’t like it here. She felt suddenly bone tired and wanted to sit down and rest, but knew she couldn’t. ‘Shall we wait in the car?’
Lance looked as if she’d taken away his favourite toy, but then nodded. ‘Yeah, I guess so.’
Grace was relieved to shut the front door behind them. In the car, she wished she’d told Lance everything when she’d had the chance that other day, driving back from Wivenhoe. Though whether it would really have made much difference now she had no idea. Someone else had clearly given him the version of events that everyone in Kent had stuck to, so that in his eyes she was a grass, a sneak, not to be trusted, to be kept at arm’s length, and she’d have to live with that.
But it meant that she couldn’t properly explain to him the power of the memories evoked by this little terraced house – the same as in street after street of little terraced houses throughout England, the same as her former home in Maidstone. Up until now, even when the news had come in about Pawel carrying something heavy and well-wrapped aboard his boat, Grace’s deep-down, gut instinct had whispered to her that Pawel was not a murderer. But the sight of the familiar patterns of those Edwardian floor tiles had been a sickening reminder that gut instinct was not reliable. She’d have sworn blind when she married Trev that never in a million years would he lay a finger on her. Staked her life on it. How wrong you could be. She hoped that Polly’s instincts had served her better.
TWENTY-FOUR
The girl was a little cracker! She’d done everything Ivo had asked, and more – delivered a diamond as big as the bloody Ritz. Roxanne, of course, didn’t have a clue what she’d got hold of, but Ivo had lost no time in showing the Young Ferret the rabbit hole. Red in tooth and claw, the nimble little predator shouldn’t take too long to report back – ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies – and then Ivo should be able to see every shining facet of the gem. He might even have to pop back to London tonight, as no doubt the lawyers would be wanting to take a gander at this one.
All the same, he must be going soft: he’d been gratified enough to call his news editor and put Roxanne’s name on the list for weekend shifts, and now she was so excited she could hardly sit still. Little Ms Ants-In-Her-Pants. He’d spelled it out to her that he’d go front-page with her big scoop and take sole credit for it. In return all she’d earn would be a few brownie points with Detective Superintendent Stalgood if she ran an inside spread in her own paper on Keith’s tip about fat-cat university bureaucrats. Hardly a fair trade, but she hadn’t even cared. Oh, to be young!
The room was jam-packed. Even Whatshername from Sky News was here, busy touching up her lipstick while the production assistant with the reflectors got in everyone’s way. Ivo already knew what they’d be running with. They needed more interesting pictures than the stills and talking heads that would satisfy the BBC, so they’d had some specialist ex-SAS tracker out along the creeks all day, plugging his latest action thriller while pretending to search for Polly. Poor old Keith would hate that: it could only make the parents think the police weren’t trying hard enough. A crying shame, really.
Meanwhile his fellow cowboys had opened a book on how long it would take for Whatshername to bonk the ex-SAS tracker. From what Ivo had heard, he’d need every survival skill he could muster to come out walking upright after that little adventure. Good luck to her!
He could imagine that Hilary Burnett, too, was probably sliding off her chair. He bet she’d never faced this kind of full-on buzz in her previous job over the launc
h of some new anti-ageing potion. But if she reckoned this mob were going to queue up nicely for their goodie bags and then be grateful, her lifespan here would prove to be brutal and short.
Ivo was looking forward to seeing the Ice Maiden again, too, now that he knew so much more about her. She wore her travails lightly, he’d say that for her. The Young Ferret had managed to get him a copy of the police surgeon’s report, and her delight of a husband had done a pretty thorough job. Ivo probably wouldn’t use it, but it was dandy back-pocket stuff: always useful to have an angle, something to give a filler a bit of thrust.
Keith, Hilary and the Ice Maiden finally put in an appearance, and the room quickly settled down. Everyone had deadlines and no one wanted to string this out longer than necessary. He caught a quick little smile of greeting from DS Fisher to Roxanne, who sat starry-eyed beside him, but the flash was gone as soon as it came. Ivo waited impatiently for Keith to announce that they had arrested a thirty-four-year-old man on suspicion of murder, then heaved a sigh of relief; with any luck, thanks to Roxanne, the Courier would be the only paper to lead with the man’s identity: Pawel Zawodny, a Polish carpenter and the girls’ landlord.
Ivo loved having the edge over the opposition. He could exclusively reveal not only that Pawel Zawodny would’ve had keys to both Polly and Rachel’s rented houses – and could sneak in and spy on them in the shower whenever he had mind to – but had a boat, too. Ivo had been just in time to organise a shot of the little cabin cruiser before the police got it covered up and sealed off. ‘Watery grave’ might be a bit premature but it had a certain ring to it as a future headline.
Even though Ivo knew the police had been making themselves busy in Wivenhoe all weekend, Keith was giving nothing away, which made it all the more imperative that Ivo seize ownership of this new suspect before anyone else got wise to him. Give him a moniker, that was the trick. And besides, a good nickname always increased circulation. In his own head, Ivo had already dubbed Zawodny ‘the Ferryman’, but he feared the reference might be too classical to play well with his readers. Oh, the perils of a minor public school education.
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