Tuesday, 3 October, 2017
Erika knocked softly on the door of Detective Inspector James Peterson’s flat. The communal hallway was empty, and when there was no answer, she put her key in the lock and opened the door, heaving two shopping bags inside. The hallway was in darkness and bathed in the light of the TV, blaring out the evening weather report. She moved through to the small open-plan kitchen living room. On the TV, the weather map was showing that heavy rain would continue over the next few days. She put the shopping bags on the counter, and went over to the sofa. Peterson was fast asleep under an old blue blanket. The blue and green light cast by the television played over his skinny face. His high cheekbones jutted out, and she could see the outline of the bones under his forehead. She put out a hand to wake him, when her phone began to ring in her pocket. Peterson shifted under the blanket, but slept on. Erika moved quickly into the hall and answered. It was Nils Åkerman.
‘Sorry to call so late,’ he said.
‘No problem.’
‘I’m afraid there’s no match on the DNA samples we took from the male and female victims. They’re not in the national crime database.’
‘Shit,’ she said.
‘I’ll keep you informed about the superglue fingerprint fuming, I’m hoping to schedule it in the next few days.’
‘Any chance you can do it earlier?’
He sighed. ‘I’m sorry, no, we have a huge caseload and I’m working through as fast as I can, but I have you as a priority.’
‘Okay, thanks, Nils. I really appreciate it.’
Just as she hung up her mobile, Peterson’s landline began to trill beside her on the hall table. She grabbed it and answered, not wanting to wake him up.
‘Is that you, Erika?’ said a voice. It was Peterson’s mother, Eunice. She spoke with a very faint West Indian accent, which gave her voice warmth. But it was a commanding warmth.
‘Yes. Hi, it’s me…’ There was a pause, and Erika could almost hear the sound of the old woman’s lips pursing.
‘Can I speak to James, please?’
‘He’s asleep, alone. On the sofa.’
‘Has he eaten the beef stew I made him?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve just got here.’
‘Erika. It’s nine thirty!’
‘I had a long day at work.’
‘He needs his rest. You being there means he’s not sleeping.’
‘I stopped by at Tesco to get him some food—’
‘What did you buy?’
‘Potatoes. I got him skimmed milk, and Ready Brek. The doctor said cereals and milk are good for his stomach.’ Erika could hear her voice getting flustered. How was it that she could hold her own with serial killers and violent offenders, but 75-year-old Eunice Peterson scared the crap out of her?
‘Erika, he needs vitamins, lots of vitamin C. You see I have oranges there for him?’ Erika could see a fresh towering pile in the fruit bowl on the counter. Eunice went on. ‘And Erika, when you visit, get there a bit earlier, please. James needs to be sleeping at this time…’
Erika was about to tell Eunice that phoning James at this hour would wake him up, but he suddenly appeared at her side, wrapped in the blue blanket.
‘Who’s that?’ he mouthed.
‘Oh, James has just woken up, Eunice, here he is,’ said Erika, handing him the phone.
She started to put away the shopping and saw yet more oranges were piled in the salad drawer in the fridge. She could hear Eunice’s loud voice on the other end of the phone.
‘You need to tell that girl to let you sleep… Does she still have a key?’
‘Yeah,’ he replied awkwardly.
‘It’s very easy to give out your door key to another woman, but much harder to get it back.’
‘Erika has been good to me,’ he said.
‘Eight hours, James. You need to sleep eight hours. People these days think you can get by on less, but I swear by eight hours and I never have to see the doctor. And I eat lots of vitamin C. Are you running low on oranges?’
‘No, Mum,’ he said, looking at the huge pile in the fruit bowl.
‘Be sure to offer Erika some of my stew; there’s plenty in the pot and she’s so pale and skinny.’
‘Yeah. I will.’
‘Now you get to bed, and God bless.’
‘Night, love you,’ said Peterson, putting the phone back in its cradle on the counter.
‘Your mother doesn’t really need to use the phone, does she? She could just shout across London.’
‘Sorry about that,’ he said.
‘You hungry?’ she asked, taking the lid off an earthenware pot on the stove and seeing the beef stew, rich with a spicy tomato sauce. ‘What about some stew, washed down with orange juice? Or perhaps I can whip you up a nice bedtime drink of hydrogen peroxide?’
‘Very funny,’ he said, tipping out some Ready Brek into a bowl and adding milk. He put it in the microwave and pressed start.
‘Why don’t you just tell your mum you can’t eat acidic food like spicy pot roasts and oranges?’
‘I don’t want to hurt her feelings.’
‘That’s very British of you.’
The microwave beeped. She chucked him a tea towel to take the bowl out, and he gingerly carried it back to the sofa. Erika heated herself a bowl of the pot roast and joined him. Newsnight began on the TV.
‘Do you want my key back?’
He shook his head and blew on his cereal.
‘Moss was asking about you today… is there any more news from the doctor?’
‘They need to get my metabolism sorted; I’m still losing weight,’ he said, not taking his eyes off the TV. They ate in silence for a few minutes, then Erika started to tell him about the bodies in the suitcases, and the cocaine found in the male victim. He shook his head, his thin face reflected in the light from the TV.
‘There’s this girl who sees my gastroenterologist,’ he said. ‘She had a cocaine wrap burst and leak inside her. She’s had to have the same operation as me, partial removal of the stomach.’
‘She was a drug smuggler?’
‘Yeah.’
‘British?’
‘Yeah. Smuggled between here and Curaçao.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Zada.’
‘What does she look like?’
He shrugged. ‘She’s normal. Pretty.’
‘Is she now?’
Peterson’s eyes left the television and he turned to face her.
‘You really think I’m cruising the gastroenterology clinic for chicks?’ he deadpanned.
Erika laughed. ‘No.’
‘It’s not a very sexy place.’
‘So, this Zada. How long was she smuggling?’
‘I dunno.’
‘Was she charged?’
Peterson shook his head. ‘She’d already dropped off the stash, if you know what I mean. But one of the packets burst and left her with poisoning. So, technically, she was classed as an overdose.’ He saw the gleam in Erika’s eyes. ‘And let me guess, you want to speak to her?’
‘Does she know you’re a copper?’
‘Yes. Are you ever not at work, Erika?’
‘I’m only asking about this Zada because it’s relevant to my case. I don’t usually talk about work when I visit you.’
‘Oh, you visit?’
‘You know what I mean.’
He got up off the sofa and threw the bowl in the sink. Erika followed.
‘You’ve hardly touched that. And one thing your mother is right about is that you need to eat.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘You have to make yourself eat, James, or you’re not going to get better!’
‘I feel sick the whole time, constant nausea. I could cope with actually throwing up, and everything I eat tastes wrong and makes me want to heave. That cereal tastes like onions, onions that’ve been cooked and are on the turn. So give me a break about not wanting to eat it!’ he shouted.<
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He went back to the sofa and lay down. Erika took the bowl from the sink and scraped the contents out into the bin. He spent a few minutes shifting under the blanket, and then he was still. She quietly tiptoed around, washing up and tidying. She checked his medication was ready in its little daily dispenser. She boiled some eggs, and peeled them, leaving them in the fridge with a pack of plain cooked chicken, and a loaf of wholemeal bread.
When she went back to the sofa she could see he was asleep, and she knelt beside him. When they first met during a murder investigation, five years before, he had seemed so tall and vital and full of life. He was six feet tall, but he looked so small under the blanket, his legs tapering away to nothing. She leaned over and gave him a kiss on the forehead, but he didn’t stir.
‘Please God, help him to get back to the person he was,’ she said to herself. Then she tiptoed away, and let herself out of the flat.
The air was clear and cold when Erika arrived home, and the car park outside her block of flats was empty. She took a long hot shower, and then wrapped herself in a towel and came through to the living room to pour herself a glass of wine, filling a small tumbler. She pulled open a drawer, where a framed photo lay on top of a sheaf of utility bills. A handsome blond man grinned back at her. In the picture he was sitting in an easy chair by a window. Sun streamed behind and caught in his fair hair. It was her husband, Mark, who had died six years before. She had been his senior officer when they had taken part in a drug raid in outer Manchester. The intel had been bad and Mark, along with four other members of Erika’s team, had lost their lives. Feelings of guilt and remorse threatened to overwhelm her, and she took a long drink of her wine. The photo of Mark had been on the dresser in her bedroom, and when Peterson started to stay over, she had moved it into the kitchen drawer.
Peterson, another man who had followed me into danger.
Erika closed the drawer. She picked up her tumbler and went over to the sofa. The living room was neat and functional; a sofa and coffee table both faced a small television. She went to pick up one of the case files when her phone rang on the coffee table. She saw it was a withheld number. When she answered, it was a young woman's voice with a cockney accent.
‘Is this Erika Foster?’
‘This is she.’ Erika could hear a television in the background.
‘James just rung me up. He said you wanted to talk to me, to help with a case you’re working on… Oh, I’m Zada Romero, by the way.’
‘What did he tell you about the case?’
‘Not much. You’ve found a body with a stash of coke in its belly. Look, I don’t want to talk on the phone. I can meet you tomorrow morning, at nine thirty, in the Caffè Nero in Beckenham.’
‘Yes, that would be very good.’
‘James said you usually pay people to talk off the record?’
‘Did he?’
‘Yeah, he said I’d get two hundred quid. Plus, coffee and a bit of cake.’
‘Yes.’
‘Great. See you then.’
When Erika came off the phone she couldn’t help but smile.
Chapter Eleven
The next morning, as agreed, Erika met Zada Romero in the Caffè Nero in Beckenham. She was a small, delicate woman in her late twenties, with a poker-straight bob of dark hair.
‘You don’t look much like a copper. More like one of them foreign tennis players,’ she said when Erika returned to their table with coffee and cake. She spoke precisely, with a strong cockney accent.
‘I was born in Slovakia, but I’ve lived in the UK for twenty-five years.’
Zada blew on her coffee and took a sip. They were sitting beside a large picture window, looking out onto Beckenham High Street where people hurried past in the rain.
‘And this is all, you know, informal and off the record?’ she asked.
‘Of course,’ said Erika. It was busy inside the coffee shop, and a group of well-dressed women at the next table were cooing over a Birkin bag.
‘Four grand they cost,’ said Zada enviously.
‘I know. My sister, Lenka, called me last week from Slovakia, in a complete lather. Her husband had just bought her one.’
Zada raised an eyebrow. ‘Lucky sister. What does her husband do?’
‘He runs an ice cream parlour.’
‘He must have had to sell a lot of Mr Whippys to get her that.’
Erika shook her head. ‘The ice cream parlour is a front. He works for the mafia.’
‘But you’re a copper?’ she said, scooping up some of the milk froth from her cappuccino with a spoon.
‘Not in Slovakia.’
Zada sucked the froth off the spoon, tilted her head at Erika, and seemed to decide she could trust her. ‘James filled me in on your case, as much as he could. There’s gonna be someone looking for that amount of coke.’
‘I figured that part,’ said Erika. ‘I worked in narcotics in Greater Manchester Police for six years.’
‘Yeah? I think they should just legalise drugs. You’re never gonna win the war.’
‘Really?’ bristled Erika. ‘If ordinary freight vans delivered legal merchandise then people like you wouldn’t make a living.’
Zada leaned in and tapped the spoon on the table. ‘It’s not my “living”, Erika. It was survival. My beauty salon went under in 2009 and I lost my house and all my savings. I managed to get a small flat and claim benefits, but it had a tiny extra bedroom, so they threatened to cut my money. I then found a lodger, one desperate enough to rent a tiny airing cupboard, but she would bring men back at all hours. One of whom tried to rape me in my bed. So that was the end of lodgers for me, and I lost that flat and ended up in bed and breakfast. The only reason I smuggled that gear is because I was desperate. It was either that or prostitution, and something told me that it was the lesser of two evils. So don’t you judge me. We’re all a few pieces of bad luck away from having to make horrible choices to survive.’
She sat back, silent, and carefully wiped a tear from her eye. Erika pulled out a tissue. ‘I don’t want it,’ she shot back, taking the small serviette from the saucer of her coffee and dabbing her eyes.
‘Okay. I hear you,’ said Erika. She let Zada compose herself, then asked: ‘How many times did you do it?’
‘Three. Swallowing the gear, boarding a plane, delivering at the other end.’
‘Where did you smuggle it to?’
‘I took stuff out to Spain, twice. And Curaçao. It’s the devil’s work. I’ve never felt fear like it. You fear being caught; you fear the time bomb you having ticking inside you. And them packets are so huge, I practised swallowing using chunks of carrot. I thought to myself, I’m a drug mule, but at least I’ll be able to see better in the dark.’ She smiled and shook her head. ‘The first time I did it, it all went like clockwork. The second time, I got ill from the food I ate at the airport before the flight.’
‘What did you do when that happened?’
Zada shifted uncomfortably. ‘I had to wash them all in the toilet on the plane, and swallow them again.’ She forced herself to look Erika in the eye, but she looked ashamed.
Erika put her coffee down, feeling queasy. ‘How did you get into it?’
‘I bumped into this bloke outside the jobcentre in Catford. He could tell by the look of me that the wolf was at the door. He took me out to lunch. Mind you, it was at the Wetherspoon’s, but it was a free lunch, an extra meal before I had to break into my giro. He told me all about smuggling gear and said I could earn ten grand in cash each time.’
‘Our victim was found with a belly full of drug wraps. How soon would he swallow those before leaving? That’s what I need to establish: if he was leaving the UK or if he had just arrived back.’
‘You would do it as close to leaving as possible. He could have been straight off a flight, but he would usually have to deposit what he’d swallowed pretty fast.’
‘What happens when you get to the other end, to your destination?’
‘You meet with whoever it is you have as a contact. They take you to a place where you can pass the merchandise. And they check it’s all there; they check through the packaging to make sure it’s all intact. When I made my last delivery, they discovered one of the wraps had burst in my stomach.’
‘What did they do?’
‘They took the drugs and they left me,’ she said, matter-of-fact.
‘They left you. Where was this?’ asked Erika.
‘At this office block, an old office block near Heathrow. I was found unconscious by a cleaner in the corridor outside.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘The police took the second part of what they’d paid me. Five grand. What do they do with the money?’
‘The police have it.’
‘I know, but what happens to that money?’
‘It will be held until the case is closed, and then the police force could go through civil proceedings to have it used for public projects, to pay down public debt.’
Zada shook her head. ‘No one gives you a break in this world.’
‘What can you tell me about the people you worked for?’
‘First names, that’s all I know, and even then I don’t know if they were real. But they know me. They have my passport details.’
‘I promise you, no one will know we met. How did they contact you?’
‘They phoned, always withheld numbers. One guy called himself Zoot, he sounded quite hippyish, another guy was Gary.’
‘Would you be willing to work with an e-fit artist, to give us likenesses of the people in this smuggling gang?’
‘I thought this was off the record?’
‘It is. But I’m looking for a murderer. And you might have information that can help the investigation. You can come into the station, or we can send someone to your flat. Again, it’s confidential.’
‘No, sorry, I don’t want to take the risk. I’ve just got myself settled in a good place.’
Erika nodded and took a sip of her coffee. ‘Did they get the guy who tried to rape you?’
‘No.’
‘This person has killed two people that we know of.’
Zada wiped another tear with the little serviette, and nodded.
Cold Blood: A gripping serial killer thriller that will take your breath away (Detective Erika Foster Book 5) Page 5