I could see through the plastic well enough to see whether something was looming behind me but it was going to be difficult to know if I was being followed from a distance. Plus it was only a matter of time before either I got stopped by the police or it started leaking.
It flapped noisily when I got up to speed, driving to Sandra’s. I parked a few streets away and took a little walk to make sure I wasn’t being followed. I didn’t trust Galbraith’s assurance about Badem; he didn’t strike me as the sort of person who would laugh off what had happened last night. His men had been humiliated, which he would no doubt take personally.
Sandra answered the door in an apron, something I’d never seen her wear before. Aurora was shouting in Tagalog to someone in the living room.
“What’s going on?” I asked, alarmed that perhaps Joshua had turned up.
Sandra smiled and any tension lingering between us from yesterday was gone in an instant. “She’s on Skype with her daughter,” Sandra said. “From the few English words being thrown in I think she’s got leukaemia.” So much for Kristina telling me Aurora was lying about it. Sandra grabbed my arm and led me to the small but now spotless and sparkling kitchen. “When can you get her passport? It doesn’t sound like her daughter has that long, to be honest.”
“Tonight, hopefully. But I want to have a look in the briefcase beforehand if she’ll let me.”
“While she’s busy, let me tell you about Mr Badem.” She lifted a sheet of paper from the table. “He’s Turkish but with German nationality. He’s a property tycoon, owns nearly two hundred properties. Rents them out and doesn’t maintain them. Kicks people out if they complain about damp or rats.”
“A good old-fashioned slum landlord.”
“Exactly; there seem to be a lot more of them about nowadays. He’s strong-armed people into dropping legal cases against him. Nothing proven, of course.”
“And he has properties in Cambridge?”
“A few. Mostly London and Cologne. Apparently he has a house and family just outside Cambridge. A wife and daughter.”
Aurora had gone quiet so we went into the living room which was dominated by a large flat-screen TV fixed to the wall on which some daytime soap was playing with the sound muted. Aurora was on the sofa, hunched over a laptop on the coffee table, her face in her hands and her small shoulders shuddering as she tried to cry quietly. Sandra sat next to her and put her arm around her.
“It’s OK, sweetheart. It’s OK,” she said. Aurora looked like a child next to Sandra, who pulled her gently to her chest.
Rather than be a useless voyeur I went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. Making tea during emotional situations is always a good idea; it provides a useful displacement activity and everyone needs tea at a time like this.
22
I TURNED THE TV OFF AND SAT WITH AURORA IN SANDRA’S living room to examine Galbraith’s briefcase which she had just brought in. It was more of an attaché case, really, something a pilot might be expected to carry. This was not a case you could pick up on the high street. An oil-coloured soft leather affair reinforced with brass corners (which must have given Derin a nice bruise), it was pleasingly scuffed with use. Monogrammed with the initials W.H.G. (Henry? Horatio? Harpo?) it had two heavy-duty four-digit combination locks on the top. I tried them, just in case I got lucky.
“Why you want to open, Mr George?”
I had to think about that. I didn’t really have a good reason to open it, except inherent curiosity about its contents, the desperation Galbraith was exhibiting about getting it back and the malign effect it was having on my life. The trouble is, although I can pick locks, there’s nothing to pick with a combination lock, just four wheels with numbers on, which meant over ten thousand different combinations and I didn’t have the time. And Aurora, bless her, was adamant that it shouldn’t be damaged. She was right. I didn’t really want to hand it over obviously tampered with. I picked it up by the sides. It was heavy, and lifting it triggered a sharp pain in my shoulder. I tilted it from side to side and listened. Something, more than one thing, slid from one end to the other. I repeated the motion, listening for clues. Something travelling more quickly than the other, heavier thing, which didn’t make a sound when it hit the side. When the lighter thing hit the side it made a sort of clunking sound. Aurora looked at me curiously and shrugged, as did I. I went through the outside zippered pockets and found some corporate branded tat, cheap pens and notepads, with what I took to be pharmaceutical logos on them, which I put back. There was a week-old receipt for the dry cleaner’s on the concourse at Addenbrooke’s, which I also put back. Short of prising the case open, that would have to do for now.
“I’ll come back tonight at nine, Aurora, so we can go and meet Galbraith.”
“We go together, yes?”
“Of course. We leave from here together. No standing on the street this time.”
She looked at her hands. “Those men. They worked for Mr Galbraith?”
“Indirectly.”
She looked blank.
“They work for somebody who knows Mr Galbraith,” I said. This provided a good segue into my next question.
“Why do you think they wanted you to go with them, Aurora?”
She shrugged. “Maybe work somewhere else? Dolores say sometimes foreign girls sold to new boss.”
Jesus, that hadn’t even crossed my mind. Was it possible Badem was taking Aurora off Galbraith’s hands, for something a lot worse than cleaning?
“Did Joshua tell them where I was?” she asked.
“Yes, you worked it out.”
“He works in operating room. Mr Galbraith works in operating room. Maybe they friends?”
I shook my head. “Unlikely. I think he did it for money. Or for a better job at the hospital.”
“Yes, he send money home to family,” she said, looking at her hands, prematurely wrinkled from cleaning. “Everybody send money home.”
* * *
As Sandra was staying at home I decided to head to the office, to check the post and any messages; I had a business to run, after all. There was no Ford Focus, no Range Rover and no Porsche outside, much to my relief. Maggie was standing by the bike rack, smoking. An act she obviously wasn’t used to.
“That can’t send a positive message to clients,” I said, pointing at her awkwardly held cigarette.
“I’m done for the day. Anyway, fuck ’em, the whiny entitled lot of them.”
“Oh dear. Bad morning?”
“You could say that.”
“You want to talk about it?”
She ground out the half-smoked cigarette and smiled. “You going to counsel me, George?” she asked, putting on her cycle helmet.
“Maybe. How does that make you feel?”
“Ha ha. Very funny.”
“What I can do is provide coffee and listen. If there’s anything I’ve learnt how to do it’s listen.”
“That’s sweet of you. I’ll bear that in mind.”
I trudged up to the top floor, through the pleasant smell of aromatherapy oils lingering on the stairs. I bumped into Stubbing in her cheap work suit coming down the other way. We stopped; the stairs in this old house are narrow and someone has to give way.
“Been having your chakras realigned, Stubbing?”
“I doubt I have any chakras left. You got a minute?”
“Lead the way.”
* * *
Upstairs in my office she looked around, appraising the tired paintwork and grimy windows. I kept trying to get Jason to clean them but he thought the task beneath him.
“Last time I was in here you’d been burgled. Remember that?” She sat in the chair opposite my desk.
“How could I forget? You didn’t want me to report it to the police. Remember that?”
Disappointingly, she didn’t rise to the bait but looked pensive, retightening her ponytail.
“How well do you know Linda?” she asked, finally looking at me, wearing her cop’s face.
“Is this a police business question, or personal?”
She thought about it. “A little of both, I guess.”
The landline rang but I pressed a button that sent the caller to voicemail.
“Judging by how you two were getting on at my place I’d say you know her better than I do,” I said. “So you’re either trying to tell me something or there’s a real question lurking beneath your non-question.” The mobile vibrated in my jacket. I reached in, silenced it and put it in my desk drawer.
She gave me her thin-lipped smile. “Someone’s in demand.”
“What can I say, I’m a popular guy.”
“That’s what I want to talk to you about. How popular you are – with certain ladies.”
“What the hell are you on about?”
Stubbing glowered at me, not a look many people can take without being psychologically scarred. It was a scar I already bore, so it didn’t affect me like it once had. It was more like an old wound that played up in cold weather.
“Linda’s a big girl and can take care of herself, obviously,” Stubbing said. “But I’m fond of her and, as you know, she’s been put through the ringer once already.”
“You don’t need to tell me her history.”
She smirked. “You two wouldn’t be together if it weren’t for me, did you know that?” She sat back and crossed her legs, enjoying my surprised reaction. “Linda and I went to sixth form together in Cambridge, she went on to uni, we lost touch for a few years then reconnected after she ended up back here. I told her to contact you when she was having that problem with her prick of a husband who hired you to do his stalking for him.”
“She told me she got my name through her husband.”
“She did, but she came to me for help when she found out he’d hired you. I couldn’t really do anything, no actual crime had been committed, but I suggested she come and see you. I told her you weren’t such a terrible person and might be able to help.”
“I’m welling up here.”
She responded with a withering look. “So what’s the situation with you two?”
“What business is it of yours?”
“Just fuck buddies then?” There she was, the old Stubbing I knew and loathed.
“What do you want, Stubbing? Come out with it or piss off.”
She hesitated, thinking about how to put whatever it was she was trying to say.
“I’m here as a courtesy to her, because I like her. Otherwise you’d be down at the station.”
“Yes, I get it, you like her. Just spit it out, already.”
“OK. Someone reported that a woman was forced… ‘bundled’ is the term they used, into a car yesterday evening. Outside the Catholic church in Cherry Hinton,” she said, studying my face for a reaction. “Know anything about it?”
I put my elbows on the desk and winced with pain. Since Aurora hadn’t been anywhere near Bill and Ben’s Ford Fucking Focus, which had been on the other side of the road, whoever had reported it must have seen her get into my car, which after all had been parked illegally on double-yellows. I suppose it might have looked like she was being bundled into the car if someone had just caught a quick glimpse of what had happened; Bill and Ben had been taking her towards their FFF before I intervened and it had all happened quite quickly. I remember shouting at her to get in the car.
I kept my counsel, however, while considering the implications of saying something in front of a police detective. Another basic rule I like to follow.
“Even you…” Stubbing continued when I didn’t speak, “…with your limited deductive capacity, have probably already worked out that the concerned citizen took down a number plate. Guess whose name should pop up when we did a check?”
“And it gets flagged to you, why? Aren’t you busy solving the murder of a young girl?”
“Because, Kocky, someone has the hots for you at the station.” I couldn’t tell if she was pulling my leg or not. She leant forward over my desk and fixed me with a gaze of steel. “So, why don’t you tell me what happened, in a nice, friendly off-the-record heart-to-heart manner, just a guy talking to his main squeeze’s girlfriend?”
I stared at her, thinking about how much to tell her.
“Or,” she said, flicking something off my desk, “we can do this on my turf at the factory, using my rules.”
23
SO I CAME UP WITH A NARRATIVE TO GET STUBBING OUT OF MY office: I’d arranged to meet a client – for the purposes of my story this was an unnamed Aurora – and arrived to find her being harassed by two men in the street, outside a church of all places. I mean what was Cambridge coming to? I then “bundled” her into my car and we drove off.
“So she’s not a prostitute, or some woman you were just picking up?”
I stared at Stubbing like she was demented, which in truth she may well be. I cringed at the sudden thought that she might be sex-starved and all this was just her way of releasing tension.
“And these two men,” she said. “Assuming they weren’t her pimps and you weren’t arguing over the price, what did they want?”
“They were trying to steal my client’s briefcase,” I said, on the off-chance that Aurora had been described with one by the concerned citizen.
She took out a notebook and flipped through it until she reached a page that she read impassively.
“Can anyone corroborate this, like your so-called client?”
I shook my head slowly. “Stubbing, Stubbing, Stubbing.” I made a show of pulling out my own notebook. “Ye of little faith. I don’t believe that even you really believe that I’m the sort of person you like to think I am.”
“I don’t believe things, Kocky. I’m just interested in the facts.”
I found the licence plate number of the Ford Fucking Focus and wrote it down on a scrap. “Here’s a fact for you,” I said, handing it to her.
She took it, looking displeased at my co-operation.
I remembered something more she could use. “Oh, and if there’s a video camera on the Cherry Hinton railway crossing that comes on when the warning lights do, you might even get confirmation that the car in question was there at the time of the report. Maybe there’s even a nice clear mugshot of the two of them sneaking under the barrier in the car.”
With Stubbing gone I felt rather pleased with myself. If it happened – and it wasn’t guaranteed, given recent cuts to police resources – a little visit by the plod wouldn’t do Leonard and Derin any harm. Despite what assurances Galbraith might make, even if I believed them, I was pretty sure they hadn’t forgotten our little run-in last night and would come a-calling on their own initiative when they had the chance.
Thinking about them prompted me to go and have a look out the window at the road below. No sign of their car, but Kristina’s Range Rover was there. I could see her sitting in the driver’s seat, her phone in her hands, either texting or Facebooking or whatever. Her face wasn’t visible at this angle but little Misha was scampering around on the dashboard, yapping at passers-by. I noticed that the roof of her car had been scraped and I could see where the antenna had come off at the back, which would explain why she was having trouble with reception. I waited for her to get out, but she didn’t, so I went back to my desk to check the voicemail for whoever’s call I had diverted when Stubbing was here.
It was Kristina; she’d called both numbers. She wanted to see me “as soon as”. I hung up and went back to the window only to catch her pulling away.
“Afternoon, boss.”
I jumped, turning to see Jason sitting at his mother’s desk.
“Shit. You almost gave me a heart attack.”
“I guess that’s a worry at your age,” he said, switching on the computer. There was a time when the young respected their elders, even though that respect was often misplaced and undeserved. Still, a pretence of it would be nice.
“You were going to tell me what you had on the Galbraiths, boy,” I said.
“Ca
n’t remember, but I can bring it up on the computer.”
“Let me just make a call.” I picked up the office mobile from the desk drawer and selected the last incoming number. It went through to Kristina’s voicemail. I decided not to leave a message, thinking I might wander down to her salon later. I turned to Jason who was finishing combing his hair.
“So, whatcha got?” I put my feet up on the desk and leaned back, my hands behind my head.
“OK, William Hamish Galbraith first.” Hamish, of course. “He’s not personally active online. He has a Twitter account relating to his TV programme but it’s just PR fluff about it, probably posted by an intern. He’s got a fan base, believe it or not, mostly women but also a bit of a gay following. There’s a Facebook page that looks genuine, rather than PR-created, where people post selfies of their encounters with him, which he seems game enough to go along with.” We live in a doomed culture, I thought, but let him continue. “Nothing unusual there, nothing negative, just testimonials on forums from ex-patients who he operated on. But I’m guessing they’re the ones who lived, the others don’t get to post on forums.”
“What sort of forums are these?”
“Like for people with heart disease, or failing lungs, who are waiting for surgery. There are forums for everyone, whatever their interest or problem, boss. Even you might find something out there.”
I tried a Stubbing-like glower on him but, judging by his concerned look, I’m guessing he thought I was having a stroke.
“Shall I carry on?” he asked.
I nodded.
“As far as I can tell, he doesn’t do any private surgery, which is unusual for a consultant, but I’m guessing his TV stuff takes up all his non-surgery time and is just as lucrative.”
“Nice work if you can get it. He told me he was off to the US tomorrow to do some filming.”
“Yep. They’ve sold the series to a US network. They’ll love him over there; the looks, the hair, the British accent.”
The Runaway Maid Page 11