Cold in Hand

by John Harvey

  ‘You know damn well there isn’t,’ Lynn said. ‘And if there were, you’d’ve probably heard before me.’

  Daines was chuckling as he walked away.

  Back at her desk, Lynn found herself wondering exactly who Daines’s contacts were, how high they ran, whom he might have spoken to in order to find out about the twist in the Bestwood investigation so soon. And why so interested in her and what she was doing? Was it because she was his conduit to Andreea and he had a vested interest in knowing where the witnesses in the Zoukas case were? Or was there something else? Some other link in the chain, another brick in the tower he was constantly building and rebuilding? And to what effect, what cause?

  After only a little hesitation, she looked up the number she had for Andreea’s friend, Alexander Bucur, and began to dial.

  18

  Two more days. The temperature rose, then fell back down. There were portents of storms, banks of cloud shouldering in from the Atlantic. Background checks into Howard Brent’s business affairs led nowhere, and when his car was pulled over for the second time in three days, he made an official complaint about police intimidation. Kelvin Pearce seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth. Brought in for questioning, Dan Schofield retreated behind a series of denials, braced by several terse no-comments and an increasing reliance on his solicitor to intervene. Staff at the hotel where he’d stayed, friends and relatives were all being questioned again. Billy Alston’s low-level drug dealing had indeed, it transpired, depended on an arrangement with a Derby-based dealer named Richie – Richie not Ritchie – and there had been words exchanged between them, Richie telling Alston he’d put a bullet in his brain if he held out on him again. Telling him in front of half a dozen witnesses, three of whom, surprisingly, were apparently willing to say so under oath. Richie himself, however, was proving difficult to find. According to one report he was in Glasgow, visiting an old girlfriend, according to another he was in the Chapeltown area of Leeds.

  Investigations continued.

  Pearce. Schofield. Richie.

  The first arrangement Lynn had made to see Andreea clashed with a meeting Daines was due to attend at New Scotland Yard.

  ‘How about the day after?’ Daines suggested. ‘Morning. I’ll be down in London anyway. Staying over.’

  They met at Leyton underground station, a false promise of sun behind flat grey cloud as Lynn stepped out on to the High Road, Daines already there and waiting, cup of takeout coffee in his hand.

  ‘Here,’ he said, handing it towards her. ‘I’ve had mine.’

  Lynn shook her head. ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Wise,’ he said. ‘Poor as piss.’ And dumped it in the first bin they passed.

  The main street was a mixture of newsagents and convenience stores, fish bars and Internet cafés, hairdressers, fashion shops and saunas; butchers advertising halal meat and four small chickens for £4.99, chemists and dry cleaners; Pound Plus discount centres and motor factors, cash-and-carry wholesalers and second-hand furniture stores; the offices of the African and Caribbean Disablement Association and the Somali Bravenese Action Group, the Refugee Advice Centre and the Leyton Conservative Club.

  Signs in shop windows were written in Urdu or Farsi, Bosnian or Serbian, Greek or Polish or poorly spelt English. A poster featuring a smiling, scantily dressed girl promised a Polish Party at one of the local pubs each and every Saturday, ten till late.

  They walked for fifteen, twenty minutes, barely talking, following the route Lynn had Multimapped before leaving, until, just past Leyton Midland Road overground station, they turned into the first of several tightly packed parallel roads of small terraced houses. Two more turnings, right and left, and they stopped outside a house with a pebble-dash exterior which, some years ago, had been painted a shade of bilious, acid yellow, grimy patterned net at the downstairs windows, mismatched curtains higher up. A bicycle with a flat rear tyre was chained to what remained of the iron railing alongside the front door.

  After a brief hesitation, Lynn rang the uppermost of two bells.

  A pause, and then the sound of feet approaching.

  Alexander Bucur was tall, willowy, fair-haired, handsome – cautious until Lynn showed him identification and Daines did the same. He smiled then as, introducing himself, he stepped back to invite them in. Free newspapers, fliers and unwanted mail leaned in ramshackle piles against the side wall. Vinyl floor covering petered out short of the stairs, which were bare save for the overlapping stains of spilt food and drink and dust which had collected at the edges in grey whorls.

  The room he led them into was crowded and small: a settee which was obviously used as a bed, an improvised desk that held a computer, screen and printer, a table that was busy with books and papers and leftover breakfast things, several chairs, more books on makeshift shelves, clothes drying in front of an oil heater in the corner, a poster for a forthcoming Romanian film festival pinned to the wall above a small colour photograph of a child that Lynn had seen before – Andreea’s daughter, Monica.

  ‘If you like,’ Bucur said, ‘I can make tea.’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ Daines said.

  ‘Thank you,’ Lynn said, ‘that would be nice.’

  ‘Very well,’ Bucur said. ‘I shall not be long.’ The door to the small, narrow kitchen was open at his back.

  ‘Andreea,’ Daines said. ‘Is she here?’

  Bucur gestured towards the other, closed, door. ‘She is in the bedroom. She has been sleeping. She will not be long.’ His English, not strongly accented, was clipped but clear.

  Lynn sat on one of the chairs; Daines went across to the window and looked down on to the street. The only sounds, those from the kitchen aside, were of a plane passing quite low overhead, on its way perhaps to London City airport, and, closer to, a Silverlink train pulling into Midland Road station.

  ‘So what are we going to do?’ Daines asked testily, looking towards the bedroom door. ‘Let her sleep all bloody day?’

  ‘Be patient,’ Lynn said.

  Daines mouthed something she didn’t catch.

  Bucur brought in mugs of tea, milk in a carton, and an old metal container marked SUGAR.

  ‘She’s not joining us?’ Daines said.

  ‘I’ll see.’

  Bucur went into the bedroom and closed the door behind him.

  ‘Some pantomime,’ Daines said, stirring sugar into his tea.

  They could hear voices, hushed but urgent, from behind the door.

  ‘I think she is afraid to come out,’ Bucur said when he returned.

  ‘Afraid of what, for God’s sake?’ Daines said, letting his exasperation show. He was jittery, unusually so Lynn thought, and she wondered if this was really just about the simple question and answer he’d suggested.

  ‘Let me talk to her,’ Lynn said, getting to her feet. ‘See what I can do.’

  She knocked, said who it was, and went in.

  Andreea was sitting on the unmade bed, her back towards the door, her face turned away. She had cut her hair short and dyed it a strange shade of almost blueish black. Each time Lynn had seen her since she had witnessed the murder, she had been less and less attractive and, Lynn thought, deliberately so.

  She wondered if she and Alexander were a couple and decided they were not. Speaking Andreea’s name, she touched her gently on the shoulder.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  There were dark shadows around Andreea’s eyes, the skin across her cheekbones stretched tight; her pallor was that of paper left too long in a drawer.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Andreea said. ‘I am tired. This job, cleaning, at night . . . I have only been home a few hours. And always it is difficult to sleep.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Lynn said.

  ‘Before,’ Andreea said with a weak smile, ‘it was easier before.’

  Lynn said nothing.

  ‘This other man,’ Andreea said. ‘I have to talk to him?’

  ‘There’s nothing to be frightened of
. He just wants to ask a few questions, get you to look at some photographs. That’s all. And I’ll be there. Come on.’ She took hold of her hand. ‘Come on, let’s get it over and done.’

  ‘Wait. Please. A moment.’ She looked at the mirror resting on an old chest of drawers against the wall. ‘You can go now. A few minutes, I will come.’

  ‘Okay,’ Lynn said, and smiled.

  ‘She’ll be right in,’ she said, going back into the room.

  ‘Good of her,’ Daines said.

  ‘She’s tired,’ Lynn said. ‘Exhausted, by the look of her.’

  ‘She works nights at a big hotel,’ Bucur said. ‘In the West End. Near Park Lane. Twelve hours, six nights a week.’

  ‘When she comes in,’ Lynn said, speaking to Daines, ‘be nice.’

  With a small rattle of the handle, the bedroom door opened and Andreea stepped into the room. She had brushed her hair as best she could and put make-up on her face, the lipstick too bright, the lines around her downcast eyes too dark.

  When she looked up and saw Stuart Daines by the window, she gave a small jump of recognition and, for a moment, her whole body seemed to tense.

  ‘Andreea,’ Lynn said, moving quickly, ‘why don’t you sit over here, at the table?’

  If Daines himself had noticed, he gave no sign. Taking a seat alongside Andreea, he was charm itself. He was sorry she was tired, understood how hard she’d been working, it was good of her to make the time to help. He was interested, he told her, in any men she might have seen with Viktor Zoukas at the sauna in Nottingham and proceeded to show her a series of photographs.

  Bucur went into the kitchen to make fresh tea.

  At the tenth photograph, Andreea told him to stop.

  ‘This man here . . .’ she said.

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  In the picture, black and white, grainy, he was standing in a club doorway, the light from the neon sign illuminating his face, the scar that ran from close by his left eye down into the dark shadow of his beard. He seemed quite tall, though it was difficult to tell for sure, strong looking, with a broad, thick neck and large, broad hands. He was dark haired, wearing a dark suit with a pale shirt and dark tie.

  ‘You saw him with Zoukas?’ Daines said.

  Andreea shook her head.

  ‘I thought you just said . . .’

  ‘My house. Where I lived in Nottingham. Before. He came there.’ She looked at Lynn. ‘I told you about him.’

  ‘The man with the knife.’

  ‘Yes. He make me get into his car, drive me somewhere, make me tell him what I have told the police about Nina. And Viktor. He tell me he will kill me if I say anything bad about Viktor. Anything more than I tell police already . . .’ She looked towards Lynn again. ‘Now he will know. He will know . . .’

  ‘Andreea,’ Lynn said. ‘I keep telling you, it’s all right. You’re safe here.’

  ‘This man,’ Daines said, ‘did you see him with Viktor Zoukas?’

  ‘No. No, never.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Not at the sauna or anywhere?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And when he threatened you, was he on his own?’

  ‘No. There was someone else. In the car, driving the car.’

  ‘Describe him. What did he look like?’

  ‘I didn’t see.’

  ‘You must have seen something.’

  ‘No. He was in the car. Driving the car. It was dark.’

  ‘Okay. All right. Let’s look at the rest of these.’

  There was nobody else that Andreea recognised; not definitely. One or two about whom she was uncertain, but so much so as to be of little use. Daines asked her more questions about Zoukas, but there was little she could tell him. Little that she knew.

  After just over half an hour, he was through. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you for your cooperation. It’s appreciated.’

  A few minutes more, words of thanks to Alexander Bucur for the tea, a quick exchange of glances between Lynn and Andreea, an assurance from Daines that the man in the photograph wouldn’t be troubling her again and they were back out on the street.

  ‘Worth the time and trouble?’ Lynn asked, as they walked towards the High Road.

  ‘Depends. Not as fruitful as I’d have hoped, but interesting nonetheless.’

  ‘The man she recognised, what’s his name?’

  ‘Ivan Lazic. He’s a Serb. He was a member of the Serbian security forces between ’96 and ’98, when he was captured by the KLA, the Kosovo Liberation Army. Instead of standing him up against a wall and shooting him they seem to have cut him some kind of deal. He turned up on our radar in ’99, Customs and Excise, that is. Seems to have been in cahoots with the Albanians ever since.’

  ‘But now he’s back out of the country, like you said?’

  Daines gave her a look. ‘I’ve no idea. But I didn’t want your pal Andreea throwing another wobbly.’

  Lynn gave it a few seconds. ‘Andreea,’ she said, ‘had you seen her before?’

  ‘No. Never. Why d’you ask?’

  She didn’t reply.

  They both took the Central line as far as Bank and changed; Daines was taking the train from St Pancras, Lynn catching the other branch of the Northern line as far as Kentish Town. She had a friend, she told him, a detective inspector stationed at Holmes Road, and they were going to have lunch before Lynn, herself, took the train back to Nottingham.

  ‘Thanks for all your help,’ Daines said, as passengers pushed round them on the Bank platform.

  ‘No problem,’ Lynn said, and moved off into the crowd.

  At Camden Town, she switched platforms and reversed her journey; Tottenham Court Road to Leyton, less than ten stops. She’d called her friend, Jackie Ferris, feeling paranoid for doing so, but wanting to cover her tracks, and then Alexander Bucur also, needing to make certain Andreea would still be there.

  Bucur was outside when she arrived, one leg cocked over his bicycle. ‘I have to go. Andreea is upstairs.’

  A smile and he was away.

  Andreea had changed into a different top and reapplied her make-up; anxiously, she looked past Lynn to make sure no one was following.

  ‘Daines,’ Lynn said, ‘the man I was with earlier. You knew him, didn’t you? You’d seen him before.’

  Andreea hesitated. ‘Yes,’ she said eventually. ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘Okay.’ Lynn took a seat beside her on the settee. ‘Tell me where.’

  ‘Wait, please.’ Andreea reached for a pack of cigarettes, went across to the window and opened it quite wide. ‘Alexander, he does not like me to smoke here,’ she explained, taking a lighter from the pocket of her jeans.

  ‘It was in London,’ she said, after the first drag. ‘Two, yes, two years ago.’

  ‘But how?’

  ‘When I came to this country first, I was staying with some friends in Wembley. That was when I first met Viktor. One of the girls, she was working at a club that was run by one of Viktor’s friends. Lap dancing, you know? She said she would see if she could get me a job there too. The owner, he told me I had to dance for his friend, Viktor. He said it was my . . . the word is audition?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Afterwards, he laugh in my face and tell me there is no job, but Viktor say if I do not want to stay in London, I can work for him. First I have to show him what I can do. I said I thought I had done this, but he said no, this was something different.’ Andreea blew smoke in the vague direction of the open window. ‘It was sauna, massage parlour, belong to his brother, Valdemar. I was . . . I was not shocked, I know these things go on, and I did not want to do this. But Viktor, he tells me if I work for his brother a short time and learn business he will make me manager of place he has somewhere else, all I have to do look after girls, clients, take money.’ She shook her head. ‘This is not what happens.’

  ‘And that was when you saw Daines,’ Lynn s
aid, ‘when you were working for Viktor’s brother?’

  ‘At Valdemar’s, yes.’

  ‘And Daines was there in what connection?’

  Andreea looked at her as if she didn’t quite understand the question.

  ‘Daines. What was he doing there?’

  ‘Oh, at first I thought, him and Valdemar, it was business between them. But then I think, no, they are friends. They drink together and Valdemar takes him round, shows him girls. There is one, Marta, she is no younger than me, but small, you know? Small features, small bones. She can look like schoolgirl. Your friend . . .’

  ‘Daines.’

  ‘Yes, Daines, he goes with her. More than one time while I am there.’

  ‘He comes back?’

  ‘Yes. I think, twice more. I see him twice more. He does not see me, I am nothing to him. Just Marta.’ She paused, as if uncertain whether to continue. ‘Once, I think he hurt her. I hear her cry out, scream, and later Valdemar is angry. He and your Daines they shout a lot and I think they will fight, but later I hear them laugh and Valdemar say next time it will cost him more and they laugh again.’

  Lynn looked away, towards the window.

  Andreea drew hard on her cigarette and held the smoke inside. ‘I did not see him again until today.’

  ‘Never in Nottingham, with Viktor?’

  ‘No. Never. Not till today.’

  Lynn patted her hand. ‘Thank you, Andreea. Thank you very much.’

  ‘What does it mean? That this has happened?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I expect he was working undercover. You know? Pretending to be someone else. Sometimes it’s the only way.’

  ‘Then there is nothing wrong?’

  ‘No. No, I don’t think so.’

  Back out on the street, Lynn called Jackie Ferris on her mobile. ‘Look, Jackie, I’m sorry I had to put you off earlier, but you couldn’t manage a quick drink early evening, could you? Say around six. Six thirty. Something I want to ask. You can? Fantastic. Great. Just tell me where.’

  19

  It was Resnick who’d known Jackie Ferris first, when she was a young sergeant in the Yard’s Arts and Antiques Squad, Resnick on the track of a burglar with a nicely developed taste for the works of the lesser British Impressionists. They had met again in the search for a serial seducer who specialised in picking up lonely women, bedding them and then stripping them bare of everything they possessed; somehow – and Lynn couldn’t remember the exact circumstances – Resnick’s arcane and near-encyclopedic knowledge of jazzmen of the forties and fifties had helped find the suspect. Difficult to believe, but true.