‘One rabbit of negative contentment,’ agreed Ptolemy.
Stark chuckled. ‘That explains that then.’
‘Was there something else you wanted to talk to us about?’ asked Ptolemy. ‘Pensol said you were looking for us last night.’
Stark sighed. This would not be an easy conversation. He looked about to make sure they weren’t overheard, and explained his secret mission from Groombridge.
Perhaps it was the clandestine conversation, but Stark walked home on edge. Clouds covered the moon, and every dark corner or blind spot seemed menacing. The night closed in around him, oppressive, imagined eyes and footfalls herding him towards his door like a foe to an ambush. His heart beat a paranoid flutter as he forced the key into the lock and hastily closed the door behind him, as if he could shut out the fear.
Training cautioned him to leave the light off again. Instinct told him to take the stairs. Weariness made him give in to both and what little sense remained mocked all three, even as he paused in the darkness to scan out the landing window.
He was about to turn away when something glinted in the darkness of the alley across the street.
A puff of breath caught in the lamplight.
Charging downstairs, Stark ripped open the door and ran across the street …
But the alley was empty. The breath, a boiler flue, nothing more.
More damn tricks! He kicked the wall in frustration, and shame.
A small engine spluttered into life, away through the buildings, revving its scornful laughter at his madness.
27
Fran walked out of the court into the sharp morning air, confused. It wasn’t the first time one of her collars had failed to surrender, but it was unexpected. Pleading guilty to a first offence, Savage was likely to walk – twelve to eighteen months suspended. He should be grinning and slapping arms with his lawyer and family right now. Instead he’d have ‘failure to surrender’ added to his charge sheet, a breach of trust that meant he’d spend time behind bars for certain.
She’d expected to leave with a bitter taste in her mouth. Now she had a nasty feeling in her gut.
‘Sarge?’ Dixon hovered, uncertain as ever of her mood.
‘Get a car around to his. Ask his mum where he is. Get the photo out to all cars. I want to talk to him.’
‘Detective Sergeant?’
Fran turned to find a reporter thrusting a microphone at her. A cameraman hovered, red light on, spotlight glaring in the overcast morning light. ‘Detective Sergeant,’ barked the reporter again. ‘We understand that Carlton Savage has been charged with burglary but not with the murders of Mary and Thomas Chase. Does this mean the killer is still at large?’
Fran took a deep breath. ‘I have no formal statement to make at this time. Enquiries are continuing.’
‘What do you say to accusations that Greenwich Police are fumbling about in the dark?’
‘Whose accusations?’ asked Fran levelly. It took effort not to ask pointedly.
The reporter ignored her anyway. ‘What about the other suspects interviewed last week?’
So it was to be that kind of interview, all about the reporter and not the report. It was the same woman as before. A black coat today but accessorized in red, accentuating the poppy brooch, white teeth smiling through blood-red lipstick, quick, intelligent eyes. ‘Those individuals are helping with our enquiries.’
‘So you have no suspect. You’re at a loss. Where does the investigation go now?’
‘Please don’t put words in my mouth,’ said Fran, knowing it was too late and that her protestations would never make it to air. ‘We’re not at a loss. The investigation is meticulous, vigorous and broad, and will not be rushed.’ Classic Groombridge, dragged from memory she didn’t know she had.
The reporter actually rolled her eyes. ‘In other words, you’re getting nowhere slowly. Are you even aware that one of your non-suspects, Mark White, appears to have little or no past to speak of? My investigations have uncovered evidence suggesting Mark White died as an infant.’
Fran struggled to keep the shock from her face. If this was true someone had dropped a massive clanger. That she had foretold just such a risk was little comfort now. ‘We don’t comment on investigative detail. Now if you will excuse me.’ She stalked away with Dixon in tow. ‘Who did the background check on White?’ she hissed.
‘Not sure, Sarge,’ he replied unhappily.
He was lying. It wasn’t him, but he knew who it was.
‘What the fuck was that?’ barked Harper, jabbing a thick finger at the mute TV as Fran walked in. ‘In my office, Detective Sergeant, now.’
Fran followed him in and shut the door.
Stark looked at Dixon. DC Hammed had done the background on White before leaving to look after his mum. If what the reporter said was true, they were going to have to pick over everything from the beginning. Stark already had White’s file open and was trying to see what the reporter had seen.
Groombridge strode in and looked about. ‘Fran?’
Stark tilted his head towards Harper’s door. It still felt abhorrent to call it that, even worse to see Groombridge knock before entering. The door closed again. The three DCs exchanged a look that confirmed they were heartily glad to remain outside.
Doing his best to ignore the sound of raised voices, Stark pored over the information, but his brain just wasn’t firing on all cylinders. White’s personnel file said he’d worked as a nightclub doorman for two years before joining Chase Security five years ago. His reference from the nightclub manager described him as reliable and hard-working but was typically short on detail. Before that, according to his CV, he’d worked as a landscape gardener for three years. Hammed’s notes said the firm had laid White off in lean times, before going bust anyway. There was no personnel file, but Inland Revenue confirmed that White had paid taxes during that time, and confirmed his employer.
Before that his CV dried up. Chase Security obviously hadn’t cared enough to delve. That was it for his personnel file, and there was nothing else from Inland Revenue. No list of qualifications on his CV. No school named.
He was forty-three. That left a long gap between school age and first known employment. Ten years of that, he said, were his military service. Why had he not just listed it on his CV? Stark guessed the answer: because people still thought of the French Foreign Legion as the last refuge for those no one wanted – or for those who were wanted, for crimes in their own countries. But the days when no questions were asked were long gone. Any fool who rocked up at the Legion with a warrant outstanding would find themselves tossed in the brig and shipped home for trial.
Hammed had satisfied himself that White had no criminal history and, it seemed, left it at that.
Stark called the local register office in hope but they couldn’t find a Mark White fitting the profile. Expanding further would take an age. If the reporter was right, they must have tracked down the birth or death certificate, but whether they’d be willing to share was another thing.
The certificates were key.
The classic method for setting up a false identity … Move into a new property or bedsit/squat. Visit your local family records centre and look up the name of a person who was born around the same time that you were. Order a copy of their birth certificate. The key point here – no proof of identity was required and you could pay cash over the counter. No ‘audit trail’, and you could collect the certificate by hand the following day. Now you had a name to clone, contact a suitable utilities provider, gas, electricity or phone, and inform them you’d just moved into your home and wished to open an account. Twiddle fingers for a while and wait until the first utility bill arrived. You now had the two forms of ID required – a birth certificate and a proof of address. Get a passport application form and ask a fellow conspirator to sign your photos declaring that they were a doctor or solicitor. At most, the only check made against them was a phone call. Since 2008, anyone over the age of eighteen applying fo
r their first passport had to attend an interview, but White probably got his earlier. A couple of weeks later your passport would arrive in the post; apply for a National Insurance number, then move out of the property and vanish along with your new fake identity. There were people who’d provide the whole service for you.
A thought occurred to Stark. He picked up his mobile phone and slipped out of the office.
‘Make it quick, Sergeant,’ answered Pierson curtly, ‘and I’ll see what I can do.’ Conversations with the redoubtable Major began with opening salvos rather than warm greetings. She only ever called him if she wanted something and naturally assumed the reverse. Stark explained what he needed in the fewest words possible, went back to his desk and sent her the email.
When the door finally opened, Groombridge stalked out wordlessly, sparing barely a nod for the three DCs. Fran came out and sat with them as Harper took centre stage. ‘Right,’ he said gruffly. ‘Mistakes have been made. But they didn’t happen on my watch so I’m giving you a pass. No more fuck-ups. Fran, find White and bring him in. Whatever he’s hiding about his past I’ll get to the bottom of it. Williams, go through everything we have on him with a fine-tooth comb. Dixon, recheck everything on Clive Tilly and Carlton Savage. I don’t care if they didn’t do it, I want everything from their first kiss to their inside leg measurement. So where are we on finding Savage?’
‘His mum says he didn’t come home last night,’ said Dixon. ‘Not unusual, apparently.’
‘He doesn’t usually have court in the morning,’ said Harper. ‘So what’s he running from?’
‘His car isn’t there. I’ve put out the licence plate and description.’
Harper nodded, then looked round. ‘Stark, stay on the Longshits. That should keep you from fucking anything else up.’
Stark blinked. Of course, Harper had pinned the slip on him.
Williams raised a hand. ‘Not now,’ Harper cut him off. ‘Get to it. I’ve got to go shovel us out of the shit.’
Stark collated the start he’d made on White and handed it wordlessly to Williams.
‘It’s not fair, Joe,’ Williams said. ‘Hammed’s a big boy, his shoulders are broad enough.’
‘He’s got enough on his plate. Harper can’t hate me any more. Make sure Fran finds the birth certificate and passport, et cetera. I’ve emailed a friend of sorts in the army, to see if she can get White’s military records. The French won’t give them up easily.’
‘The infamous Captain Pierson?’
‘She’s a major now.’
Williams grinned. ‘Rumour has it she’s a hottie.’
‘She certainly burns.’
A double act of burglars had been arrested in Richmond and he’d invited himself to observe the interview, glad to get out of the building. But as he walked out into the car park he heard a raised voice.
‘– two-way street. This wasn’t part of the deal!’ Harper, pacing and gesticulating, spotted Stark and froze, eyes narrowing in anger.
Stark kept his own eyes forward and focused on finding the pool car. As he drove away, there was a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.
28
Fran looked at her watch. Harper had left White to stew for a full hour so far. Fair enough, if he’d told her, instead of leaving her twiddling her bloody thumbs! Through the one-way glass White checked his watch for the thousandth time too, perhaps realizing he’d graduated from unlikely to prime suspect, at least as far as Harper was concerned. Fran wasn’t so sure. He looked nervous enough, more so than the last time, but innocent people often looked the most nervous. An evident loner with a mysterious past, no alibi, shaved scalp, beard, tattoos, he looked every inch the perp, but … there was something wrong with this picture.
The door opened behind her and Harper joined her at the glass. ‘Right, let’s get to it.’
White looked up nervously as they entered, shifting in his seat and licking his lips repeatedly as they ran through the preambles for the record. Fran offered him water but he declined.
‘Please state your name,’ she said.
‘It hasn’t changed,’ replied White flatly.
‘For the record, please.’
‘Mark White.’
Harper leant forward. ‘Prove it.’
White frowned. ‘You’ve got my birth certificate, passport and driver’s licence. What else d’you want?’ Perhaps he hadn’t seen the news yet.
‘Death certificate?’ asked Fran.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Never mind,’ she said, ‘I’ve just been emailed a copy. Says here you died aged three weeks.’
White frowned. ‘It’s wrong.’
‘Perhaps your parents can confirm that?’
White shuffled in his seat. ‘Mum died in childbirth.’
Fran kept her face straight. Both certificates were from just outside Manchester. According to the register office there, the mother’s death certificate was filed next to the son’s. If he’d faked his ID or bought it, the homework had been done.
‘Dad?’
‘Unknown.’ The birth certificate was blank on that side.
‘Siblings? Other family?’
‘No.’
‘There’s no record of you in the care system.’
‘Mum was a gypsy. When she died I went with them. Got passed around. Some of them might be relatives but none would say. I was dirt to them. Something to do with the mystery father, I guess, or the fact I’d killed my mum. No one would talk about it and I learned not to ask. I grew up in caravans, went to school if we settled anywhere for more than a few weeks. I don’t even know where; it wasn’t worth learning the names. Stopped bothering when I was thirteen. No one came looking for me. When I was fifteen I left, did any shitty job I could get, cash-in-hand. I never settled anywhere to speak of.’ He lifted his other sleeve to show the tornado tattoo.
Fran watched hard, but if he was lying he was well rehearsed.
Harper huffed through his nose, unconvinced.
‘Employment records then?’ suggested Fran. ‘Something to show where you’ve been.’
‘Or who,’ added Harper.
White shook his head defiantly. ‘My name is Mark White.’
‘Since when?’ asked Harper.
White stared at Harper with little love.
‘According to the records, a copy of your birth certificate was purchased ten years ago,’ Fran stated. ‘And your passport shortly after.’
‘I’d lost the originals.’
‘Or that’s when you became Mark White,’ Harper put in.
‘According to the passport office, that was your original,’ added Fran. ‘You’d never held a passport before.’
White nodded. ‘I had a French one. Service gets you citizenship.’
‘How did you get to France without a passport?’
‘Fishing boat.’
‘Running away from something?’
White shook his head. ‘Towards.’
Fran tried a change of tack. ‘Tell us about your military service.’
‘Ten years, Légion Étrangère.’
‘Got anything to prove that?’
White yanked up his sleeve to display his other tattoo. ‘You don’t get ink unless you can back it up. Not if you want to keep your teeth.’
‘I meant paperwork. Discharge papers?’
‘Burnt them.’
‘Burnt them?’
‘I’ve been to some of the worst places in the world. It isn’t holiday snaps and souvenirs. I’ve all the memories I want.’
‘Your French passport then?’ asked Fran.
‘Lost. Like I said.’
Harper shook his head. ‘Sounds fishy to me.’
White shrugged, indicating indifference.
They had already tried to get his records, but the French sidled behind their wall of bureaucracy. Something about a ‘declared name’ policy. Stark could probably give her chapter and verse, but the short version was they could only release a
private soldier’s file with that individual’s written permission, or via convoluted official channels. Harper had passed the problem upstairs.
‘Before the army, then. What jobs did you have?’
‘All sorts. Nothing official.’
Harper leant forward again. ‘This all sounds like a massive crock of shit. No one has a past this invisible. I think you’re a liar.’
There … Just the briefest flash. More than frustration, more than irritation. White didn’t like being called a liar.
Harper saw it too. ‘I think Mark White is a sham. And I think you killed Thomas and Mary Chase.’
‘No,’ White stated firmly.
‘You called in sick the next morning – guilty conscience?’
‘I …’ White rubbed his temples, frustrated, but added nothing else.
‘Were you sick or not?’
‘I didn’t do this.’
‘Oh … Why didn’t you say so before?’ asked Harper. ‘Oh wait … because you’re a liar and no one believes you. You had a hard-on for Mary, didn’t you? I think you watched Carlton Savage show up at her door every weekend and wished it was you. I think you watched through the windows like a pervert.’
White ground his teeth, but didn’t answer. Harper was pressing the right buttons.
‘Didn’t she ever flirt with you like she did with everyone else?’ continued the DI, patronizing, scornful. ‘Didn’t she ever invite you inside?’
Nothing.
‘Answer the question,’ said Fran.
More silence.
‘She did, didn’t she?’ scoffed Harper. ‘She got bored one day and beckoned you in to scratch her itch.’
White’s bitter glance was eloquent, but he was smart enough to keep shtum. The fake ID was little better than speculation as yet, so unless he said something incriminating for the tape there was every chance they’d have to let him walk. They had to keep pushing …
‘Just the once, was it?’ said Harper. ‘A passing touch of magic, never repeated. And you’re back out in the cold, nose pressed to the glass, watching. Slogging your guts out all week then shovelling shit for them in all weathers every weekend. And all the while he’s on the golf course while she’s spreading her legs for the likes of Carlton Savage. And when you couldn’t take the humiliation any more you exacted your revenge.’
Between the Crosses (Joseph Stark) Page 12