Deceit is in the Heart (P&R15)

by Tim Ellis

  ‘I can look after those keys for you, if you’d like?’ Bronwyn offered.

  Jerry smiled. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘You don’t trust me, do you?’

  ‘Would you trust you?’

  ‘Mmmm! You have a point.’

  In the car outside the station, Jerry wrote down Mrs Birmingham’s address on a post-it note: 12 The Boulevard, Woodford Green IG8 5GR, and passed it to Bronwyn. ‘Nine o’clock tomorrow morning. Do you need any money?’

  ‘No, I have money.’

  Jerry squeezed Bronwyn’s hand. ‘Thanks for coming to my rescue.’

  Bronwyn leaned over and hugged her. ‘Hey, no problem,’ she said. ‘Thanks for calling me.’ She then opened the door and climbed out of the car.

  ‘See you tomorrow,’ Jerry said, as the passenger door banged shut.

  Bronwyn smiled and stuck her thumb up in reply.

  She pulled away from the station into the rush-hour traffic and saw Bronwyn in her rear-view mirror waving goodbye. She stuck her hand up, but doubted whether Bronwyn saw it.

  So, Bertrand Birmingham had been a paedophile – a very organised and prolific paedophile. His wife had discovered his secret, and murdered him by inducing a heart attack with drugs she stole from the hospital she was working at over forty years ago. Why hadn’t Margaret told the police at the time? Why keep it a secret all these years? Did she have the combination to the safe and the key to the green door? If she did, why hadn’t she put them in the envelope with the other keys? What was in the safe? And what was behind the green door? What did her children have to do with anything? Did they know about their father?

  Her forehead creased into furrows as she imagined how Ray must feel at the beginning of a new murder investigation. So many questions! It was like stepping into the minotaur’s labyrinth without a ball of twine. Should she turn left or right? Forwards or backwards? Would the path chosen take her to freedom? Or, would every step take her deeper into the minotaur’s clutches?

  ‘You’re late,’ Ray said, when she arrived home.

  Her mum was in the kitchen finishing off the evening meal. The children were sitting at the dining table moaning that dinner was late. Ray and Bert were sitting in the living room drinking a pre-meal bottle of beer.

  ‘Sorry. I was at a client’s house drawing up a Last Will and Testament.’ It wasn’t really a lie. And it was certainly where she’d started the morning. The lock-up was merely an extension of her client’s wishes.

  ‘After what you put us through last time, love,’ Bert said. ‘. . . And the time before that, come to think of it. A phone call would have been appreciated.’

  She hugged him round the neck and kissed his cheek. ‘Sorry, dad. I lost track of the time.’

  Ray stood up. ‘Anyway, let’s not dwell on the past. There’s a meal to demolish. And although your mother isn’t the best cook in the world, her beef stew and cobblers is just about edible.’

  ‘I heard that, Raymond Kowalski,’ Matilda called through from the kitchen.

  He grinned.

  ***

  The Hotel Fiumicino La Conchiglia

  Lungomare di Ponente,

  Fregenae, Italy

  The old woman shuffled into the hotel reception. She wore a black headscarf over straggly grey hair, a matching black shawl on her shoulders over an ankle-length black dress with blue, white and yellow flowers on it, and she was stooped low clutching a gnarled walking stick with arthritic hands.

  There was no easy or polite way to say it – she was ugly. Her face had been chiselled from a thousand year-old remnant of sun-bleached pigskin, her teeth had long ago returned to the parched earth, and there were hairs sprouting from her nose, top lip and chin that wouldn’t have looked out of place lower down her body.

  A bellhop blocked her progress to the lifts. ‘Do you need any help, vecchia signora?’

  ‘Old lady! I’ll give you old lady. Vaffanculo, testa di merda.’ She cracked him across the shins with the knobbly part of her walking stick.

  He leapt out of the way. ‘Una brutta!’

  ‘Which floor, Signora?’ a middle aged man asked her as she stepped into the lift.

  ‘Never you mind what floor I’m going to. You go to your floor, and I’ll go to mine. I know what you men want from a beautiful woman. You don’t think I see it in the streets day and night – good girls gone bad. Well, let me tell you young man, you keep your eyes looking at the floor and your hands in your pockets . . .’

  The lift came to a stop, the doors opened and the man got off on the seventh floor.

  ‘. . . And don’t think I don’t know what’s running through your filthy mind,’ she shouted after him.

  She pressed for the floor she wanted.

  The doors closed.

  On the fifteenth floor she turned right, found Room 1512 and gave the door a crack with her walking stick.

  Nobody answered.

  She withdrew a small leather pouch from the pocket of her dress, slid out a pick and torsion wrench, inserted them into the keyhole and opened the door with a twist of her wrist.

  Inside, she straightened her body and stood upright. Even though there was a cool breeze blowing in through the gap in the drapes from the Tyrrhenian Sea, it still felt as though she was being roasted alive beneath the silicon prosthetics and make-up.

  The hotel room was like any other hotel room in a thousand hotels throughout the world. There was an unmade double bed with an oblong abstract print above the headboard, two bedside tables, a wardrobe, a chest of drawers with a television and a kettle sitting on top, an easy chair, a coffee table, a tiled en suite bathroom . . . except there was a tripod with a Nikon D5300 camera and high-powered telescopic lens poking through the gap in the drapes.

  She pressed the power button on top of the camera, looked through the viewfinder and saw her swimming pool. She skipped through the photographs on the memory card in the LCD display screen. They were all of her – some were of her naked. She switched the camera off, prised out the memory card and slipped it into the pocket of her skirt.

  Quickly searching the room, she placed her discoveries on the bed like a thief: A silver laptop; a rolled-up blueprint of her villa, with the locations of the security cameras and movement detectors marked on it, together with the access code into the security system; a Glock 21 with a full magazine and a silencer attached; a combat knife, which she used to prise open the laptop and remove the hard drive . . .

  There was a scraping noise outside the door.

  Grabbing the Glock, she eased the safety catch off and ducked into the dark bathroom.

  The door opened.

  A man walked in carrying a bag of shopping.

  She put a bullet through the back of his left knee.

  He opened his mouth to scream.

  The door closed with a clunk.

  As his knees buckled, she brought the butt of the Glock down on the back of his skull and he crumpled face down onto the marble tiles.

  Blood oozed from his leg wound and began to form an ever-widening pool on the floor.

  She went into the bathroom, grabbed a towel and lay it on top of the puddle of blood. Next, she pulled out a shirt hanging in the wardrobe and ripped it into strips. One strip she double-knotted in the middle and used as a gag by tying it off at the back of his head. She applied two more strips to secure his hands behind his back, and his one good leg to his wrists.

  He wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry.

  She removed the wallet from his back trouser pocket. His name was Will Shepherd, and he held the rank of Detective Chief Inspector with the National Missing Persons Bureau of the British National Crime Agency (NCA), which had its Headquarters at Bramshill in Hampshire, England.

  While she was waiting for him to regain consciousness, she completed her search of the room . . . two mobile phones; a Samsung Tablet; a set of skeleton keys; and four spare memory cards for the Nikon camera. In his wallet she found a piece of paper with the followin
g written on it in ballpoint pen: EPSILON 5 – Zara and Zachary. There was also a photograph of a woman called Sophie with her arms wrapped around two children – Morgan and Marie; and five thousand Euros.

  She saw him looking at her.

  ‘Good evening, Detective Chief Inspector Will Shepherd. It’s a long time since I visited England. Far too cold for a woman who enjoys lounging around a pool in a bikini.’ She saw recognition register on his face. ‘Yes, underneath all this silicone I’m Zara Roche, the person you’ve been drooling over. The question is: Why?’ She picked up the photograph of the woman and two children. ‘I guess this is your family?’ She glanced at him, but he made no move to agree or disagree. ‘I’ll make a deal with you, Will Shepherd. You tell me everything I want to know, and I won’t kill your family. How does that sound to you?’ She stared at him.

  His nod was barely perceptible.

  ‘Very Good. I’m going to take the gag off now. If you make any other noise beyond answering my questions, I’ll make a mess of your other kneecap – Is that clear?’

  A brief nod again.

  She untied the gag.

  ‘Why have you been watching and photographing me?’

  ‘You’re a person of interest to the NCA.’

  ‘I can’t imagine that your superiors would be interested in photographs of me naked.’

  He didn’t respond.

  ‘Why am I a person of interest?’

  ‘We’re trying to trace people who have disappeared. Your name came up during our investigation.’

  ‘And what have you found out so far?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  She picked up the photograph. ‘Your wife is pretty in an old-fashioned poison ivy sort of way, and the two children . . .’

  ‘You’re the sole beneficiary of Israel Voss’ fortune.’

  ‘Yes, that was unfortunate. And you think I have something to do with people disappearing?’

  He nodded. ‘That’s what I’ve been investigating.’

  ‘What does this mean?’ she asked, pointing to the handwritten piece of paper.

  ‘Epsilon was a Top Secret experiment sanctioned by the British Government in the 1980s. The details were leaked and illegally posted onto the internet earlier this year.’

  ‘And who are Zara and Zachary?’

  ‘We think you’re Zara.’

  ‘Me! What would I have to do with a Top Secret British experiment?’

  ‘Read the details of the experiment – you’ll understand.’

  ‘And what about Zachary?’

  ‘We don’t know who he is.’

  She went into the bathroom, grabbed another towel and wrapped it around his head. Then, she put the Glock to the back of his head and pulled the trigger. Once she’d removed the ties at his wrists and ankle, she dragged him to the balcony, unwrapped the towel from around his head, hefted him up and tossed him over the rail. She didn’t bother watching him hit the ground – not even the British police could fly.

  In the bag of shopping Shepherd had brought in with him was a bottle of whisky. She emptied its contents on the bed, drapes and carpet. Using a pillow case, she stuffed her discoveries inside it, tied the pillow around her waist and underneath the skirt with Shepherd’s torn shirt, set light to the bed sheets and headed for the door.

  It would take them a while to discover the identity of the bloody mass of flesh splattered on the concrete in front of the hotel, so she hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door handle and shuffled into the corridor.

  Using the stairs, she descended to the thirteenth floor, and then caught the lift to the lobby.

  Nobody seemed to be interested in a crooked old woman with a walking stick hobbling through reception. They were more interested in a mishmash of blood, flesh and bone splattered on the concrete just outside the hotel.

  Then the fire alarm began screeching and sprinkler system activated.

  Curiosity quickly turned to panic.

  ***

  Bronwyn opened her hand, looked at the three keys on the key ring and said out loud, ‘Now for the green door.’

  What she needed was a good-sized crowbar.

  She used her tablet to find the nearest B&Q, and then jumped into the first taxi in the queue outside the station.

  ‘Where to, love?’

  ‘B&Q, Marshall Road in Homerton.’

  ‘Emergency repairs?’

  ‘Do you want the fare, or not?’

  ‘Just being friendly.’

  ‘I don’t need another nosy friend. What I need is a driver who can drive and keep his mouth shut.’

  He pulled out of the taxi rank and joined the traffic. ‘Your wish is my command, love.’

  ‘And while we’re on the subject – don’t call me, love.’

  ‘Right you are, love.’

  Because of the volume of traffic, it took fifteen minutes to reach B&Q. Apart from her eagerness to see what was behind the green door, she wasn’t really in any kind of rush. B&Q was open until eight o’clock, and it was only quarter past seven. She had all night to get that door open.

  ‘I need to go back to Snaresbrook, do you want to wait?’

  ‘How do I know you’re not going to do a runner?’

  There was nine pounds fifty on the meter. She handed him a twenty pound note. ‘That do you?’

  ‘Shop ‘till you drop, love. I’ll wait right here for you.’

  It didn’t take her long to find the crowbar section, but then she had to decide whether to buy the cheap one, a set of three, or the expensive one. They were all made from carbon steel, they were all a similar size and shape, so the choice came down to price. In the end, she decided to opt for a set of three, which came out at a similar price as the expensive one.

  ‘Got what you wanted, love?’ the driver said when she climbed back into the taxi.

  ‘You have a short memory.’

  ‘That’s what my old teacher used say. When it came to exams, couldn’t remember a damned thing.’

  She let him drivel on about how one of his male ancestors had travelled over from Ireland during the great potato famine and become a highwayman the equal of Dick Turpin . . .

  ‘I hope you’re not making this journey longer than it should be, so that you can finish off your crappy story?’

  ‘Absolutely not. He died anyway, love. They hanged him from an apple tree on Snaresbrook Common.’

  She told him to drop her off outside the cafe she’d first met Jerry in. The meter read twenty-two pounds fifty. She gave him another five pounds. ‘Which makes me wonder how you’re here driving a taxi if he died before continuing his male line.’

  ‘It’s a mystery, that’s for sure, love.’

  ‘Keep the change.’

  ‘I owe myself ten quid.’

  She pulled a face. ‘Is that right?’

  ‘I bet myself that even though you were a miserable cow, you’d still give me a tip.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s another fucking mystery.’ She held out her hand.

  He handed her change over. ‘Which just goes to prove I should keep my big mouth shut.’

  ‘And that you have a short memory, because I told you that up front.’

  ‘So you did.’

  She climbed out of the back seat, grabbed her rucksack and the set of three crowbars, kicked the door closed and slid the change into the pocket of her jeans.

  He beeped the horn as he drove away.

  ‘Arsehole,’ she mumbled, as she headed across the road to the lock-up.

  Checking there was no one hanging about who might be vaguely interested in what she was doing, she unlocked the pedestrian door, slipped inside and shut it behind her. Her heart was beating nineteen to the dozen. She put the plastic gloves on again, reached out and switched on the light.

  Moving straight to the shelving unit on the far wall, she took off her rucksack, split open the packaging covering the three crowbars, unhooked the hinged section of shelves and got to work on the green door.

  It
took her three quarters of an hour of grunting, swearing and sweating, as well as two crowbars wedged between the door and the frame, to get the green door open. But at last the lock twisted and buckled, and the door burst open. She was just glad that there was nobody in the lock-up to witness her flying backwards and falling on her arse.

  Cold damp air whistled through the door and caressed her face. It was pitch black inside. She couldn’t see further than her nose, so she grabbed the torch from her rucksack. Concrete stairs disappeared downwards. There was an old round black light switch hanging on the uneven whitewashed wall just inside the door, and leading from it was a thick black electricity cable, which followed the line of the stairs.

  She flicked the switch.

  A string of bare light bulbs lit up the stairs.

  Turning, she shrugged into her rucksack and then began her descent into the unknown.

  Chapter Nine

  Tuesday, September 2

  ‘And what do you want from me, Kowalski?’ William Orde QPM – the Chief Constable of Essex – asked him.

  He’d received a call from Constable Sarah Simons in Central Dispatch half an hour ago. There’d been a murder in Woodford Green. He didn’t normally put himself on call-out, but the list of available officers had diminished to zero. It was still the holiday period, which should have meant that the majority of murderers were abroad – or at least building sandcastles by the seaside. What were they doing hanging around in Woodford Green?

  ‘A DI?’ he said in his best begging voice.

  He heard a roar of laughter. ‘I’ve always said to my wife and children that out of all the DCIs I have working for me you’ve got the best sense of humour.’

  ‘I didn’t plan this murder, Sir.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it, but I still haven’t got any DIs to give you. I’m not one to rake over old coals, but the last one I gave you out of the goodness of my heart ended up as mincemeat on the A10.’

  ‘That was hardly my fault, Sir. In fact, from what DS Gilbert tells me, it was DI Tubman’s own fault for driving a 1969 Skoda 100L. Nobody in their right mind would drive one of those.’