Chelsea Mansions

by Barry Maitland

  ‘Do you know why she wanted to stay there?’

  ‘Good location for the Chelsea Flower Show, I imagine. So tell me, how did you come to be a detective?’

  ‘Oh . . .’ She didn’t feel like going into it, but made an effort. ‘One day I was having a cup of coffee in a café. Across the street was a police station. I watched the people come and go through the doors—uniformed men, shirt-sleeved for the summer, chatting in pairs as they returned from their beat; people in civilian clothes looking like any other office workers, running down the steps to catch their buses; and, most of all, the uniformed women. I watched the way they moved through the evening crowds, and the way they spoke to each other. When I finished my coffee I crossed the street, followed three women constables up the steps, and asked the desk sergeant for information on joining up.’

  ‘Just like that? No regrets?’

  ‘No. I felt like I’d come home.’

  He gave a puzzled smile. ‘I guess I’d have to know the back story to understand that.’

  But Kathy didn’t want to say any more about herself. ‘You’d make a pretty good detective. You seem to be good at getting information.’

  ‘Oh, don’t say that. My mother would kill me. She told me I could be anything I wanted, except a cop.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘She was married to one once—my dad.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Yeah. So I became an academic, but still, I’ve always been curious about the police. I guess it must be the sense of comradeship that made you feel at home, the people you work closely with.’

  She laughed. ‘Not all of them.’

  ‘No, but, well there’s that guy you were on TV with. Brock? Was that his name?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve been on his team for a long time now. He’s the best.’

  ‘Right. You must get pretty close, emotionally.’

  She stared at him, eyebrows going up, and he blushed. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to pry.’

  ‘Yes you did. Brock and I are colleagues.’

  ‘Right, right.’

  ‘So what would your Lieutenant Ledoux have told me if I’d got around to ringing him?’

  ‘Ah, well, I’ve done some work for him.’

  ‘What, tutoring his kids, fixing his car?’

  ‘No, no. Police work.’

  Kathy gave him a sceptical look and he hurried on. ‘My academic field is linguistics, studying texts, mainly from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. One of things I’ve specialised in is establishing authorship of unattributed fragments of writing. A couple of years ago they did an article about it in the Montreal Gazette and Paul Ledoux contacted me. He was working on a suicide that he suspected might be a murder, and wondered if I could tell if the suicide note left on the guy’s computer was genuine. Looking at other things he’d done, I decided he hadn’t written this, and appeared as an expert witness in court. It turned out I was right. Since then I’ve given advice in over a dozen cases in Canada.’

  ‘Forensic linguistics,’ Kathy said.

  ‘Right. There aren’t many of us about. The thing is, I heard about the Russian’s letter to The Times this morning, and it occurred to me that you might need to authenticate it.’

  ‘We’ve done that.’

  ‘Oh.’ His face dropped.

  ‘The notepaper, the signature appear to be genuine. It was typed on his computer.’

  ‘That’s not what I look at. People can steal a piece of notepaper and copy a signature, but they can’t impersonate another person’s form of words, not perfectly. That’s what I study: the text, its construction, vocabulary, use of idiom and so on.’

  ‘Yes, I understand that, but—’

  ‘It just seemed to me a good idea—no, vital, that you check that too. After all, if Moszynski didn’t write that letter it changes everything, doesn’t it?’

  Kathy considered his bright, intelligent eyes. There was something quite disarming about his enthusiasm, like an eager border collie that knows exactly what needs to be done. She could have used a few more border collies on the job today. ‘It certainly does.’

  ‘And you don’t really think the FSB is behind this, do you?’

  ‘Don’t I? Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because Brock’s in Scotland, isn’t he?’

  She blinked. ‘What?’

  ‘On your phone in the hotel. Sorry, I couldn’t help overhearing. You were talking about someone being in Scotland. It’s Brock, isn’t it, following up a completely different line of investigation? I had exactly the same idea myself.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Yes. Emerson told me about Nancy’s plans to contact long-lost relatives up there, and I wondered if there might be something in her past that led to her death. I guess it’s my work that makes me think like that. I need to place the texts I deal with in the context of their past, because everything about them—language, ideas, themes—is shaped by that. You have to understand the past in order to interpret the present, like why you became a cop and I didn’t. So anyway, what do you think? Will Brock agree?’

  ‘Agree to what?’

  ‘To me taking a look at Moszynski’s letter. Or maybe he doesn’t have to, if he’s away in Scotland. You could commission me. I’m not expensive.’

  Kathy laughed.

  ‘And it would look good on my CV. What we would need is similar samples—ideally other letters to newspapers. Do you know if he was in the habit of writing to the papers?’

  A good question. ‘We can find out.’

  She felt weary by the time she got to Brock’s place. Apprehensive, too—she had never seen Brock ill before, and it had been like a sudden revelation of his mortality. It had shaken her more than she’d realised, and as she raised the key to his front door she hesitated, remembering that first glimpse of him in bed the day before, and wondering how she would react if she went in and really did find him dead. Part of her would die too, she was sure of that.

  ‘That you, Kathy?’ The voice was hoarse.

  She grinned, said, ‘Yep, it’s me,’ and ran up the stairs.

  He was sitting on the sofa in the living room, looking somewhat diminished in his old tartan dressing-gown, but with a little colour in his cheeks.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Bit better. Come in, sit down.’

  ‘What are those?’ Kathy pointed to the files and crime scene photographs scattered around him.

  ‘I got Dot to courier them over.’ He nodded towards the whisky bottle on the side table. ‘Pour us a snifter, will you?’

  ‘How about food?’

  ‘Had some soup. Now, tell me what’s been going on.’

  ‘Everyone’s desperate for you to come back from Scotland.’

  ‘I’m planning on flying back tonight.’

  ‘Really? Are you up to it?’

  ‘Sadly the bracing Scottish weather didn’t agree with me, and I shall have a bit of a cold and look somewhat the worse for wear. But you’ve been covering for me long enough, Kathy. Tell me about today.’

  So she did, everything except her drink with John Greenslade.

  ‘Zack’s right,’ Brock said. ‘Soon we won’t need to leave our screens to do our job. We’ll be able to see what’s going on inside every room and every car. But we still won’t be able to see what’s going on inside people’s heads. And you’re worried about what’s going on inside Vadim Kuzmin’s head, am I right?’

  Kathy nodded. ‘He’s a hard case, doesn’t give much away.’

  ‘And Five can’t give us any leads to Russian visitors we should be talking to?’

  ‘Apparently not. We’re running our own checks through the Border Agency, but so far nothing promising.’

  ‘So we’re thinking of a domestic killer hired by someone like Vadim to do the dirty work while he’s out of the country.’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘What about Captain Marvel?’

  ‘Danny Yilmaz? We haven’t got any further
with him. The CPS are worried about going for the aid and abet charge on the basis of what we have so far, and the court granted him bail.’

  ‘And yet he’s pretty much all we’ve got.’ Brock scratched his beard thoughtfully. ‘Tottenham have been looking into that cousin of his, Barbaros Kaya, but they haven’t come up with anything.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think we should speak to Danny again. And Vadim, a formal interview. Let’s work on both ends to find out who’s in the middle.’

  THIRTEEN

  Everyone seemed immensely pleased to see Brock back, Dot especially so. Brock shrugged off her solicitations with a grunt and a request for strong coffee. The truth was that he still felt half dead, and the effort involved in pretending to be normal seemed to sap what little energy he had. He sat alone for a while in his office, gathering his strength for the team meeting, then took a deep breath and put a call through to Commander Sharpe’s office. He too was delighted to hear from Brock.

  ‘You sound a bit ropey, Brock. Catch a bug on the plane? So how was the castle?’

  Brock blinked, wondering what he was talking about. ‘Could still bear fruit, sir. But not as productive as I’d hoped. We’re becoming quite interested in Vadim Kuzmin.’

  ‘The son-in-law, yes of course. The FSB connection. Is there a problem?’

  ‘I wonder if a high-level request could be made for Five and Six to open their files on the man.’

  ‘We can but try. Leave it with me. There’s been a hell of a lot of speculation while you’ve been away—TV, papers, blogs, questions in the House. Well, you’ll know of course. Marilyn says we need to give them something. Maybe something on the Scottish angle? What do you think?’

  ‘Not yet, sir. Could prejudice our inquiries.’

  Sharpe gave a growl like a pit bull with toothache. ‘Twenty-four hours, Brock. Give me something.’

  The enthusiastic mood in the team meeting quickly went flat as Brock’s unhappiness with progress became apparent. He listened with a frown to the reports from each of the groups and finally pointed at Emerson Merckle’s photograph of the man at the Chelsea Flower Show, enlarged and enhanced until the pale scar down the left cheek of his brooding face was apparent.

  ‘What happened to this man after he got off the motorbike at Camden Town tube station? We’ll have to go over it all again, every station on the Northern Line, every camera, every eyewitness. Where does a man go after he commits a murder? Church, brothel, pub, betting shop, Turkish bath? There’s got to be a trace of him somewhere. Kathy, I want you to take charge of this. Bren, you and I will go up to Tottenham and interview Danny Yilmaz again. Come on everyone, twenty-four hours. Give me something.’

  He felt bad afterwards, repeating Sharpe’s demand without any clear hope of a result, and he felt worse when they finally had Danny Yilmaz sitting hunched in front of them in an interview room, waiting for his brief to arrive. There was something about the glare of the fluorescent lights, the indefinable smell in the stale air, the scrape of metal chairs on plastic floor tiles, that seemed deliberately calculated to make him feel nauseous.

  ‘Danny,’ he said softly, ‘the tape’s not running yet, nothing’s going on the record, but before we begin I want to do you a good turn.’

  ‘Oh yeah, sure.’

  ‘We know you were lying to us. And we know why. It was a favour for your cousin Barbaros, wasn’t it? And we know that it was Barbaros that you picked up on your bike after he killed that woman in Sloane Street.’

  Danny was eyeing him with a glassy, unfocused look and Brock felt his heart sink. This was absurd, a wild stab in the dark, and Danny knew it. But he had to press on.

  ‘We can’t prove it, not yet, but we know it’s true. So we are going to make Barbaros’s life hell until we do. We are going to rip his house apart and his car and that TV repair shop he owns, and his mother’s house and your mother’s house and everything they own until we find what we’re looking for. So make it easy for us. Tell us where to look.’

  He sat back and waited. He sensed Bren beside him shift in his seat, probably thinking the old man had lost it. He was right, it had been a truly terrible impersonation of a cheap cop show interrogation, and when Danny told his brief there’d be trouble. Brock felt ashamed.

  Danny lifted his head and stared at Brock, who thought he saw a flicker of panic in his eyes. ‘It was nothing to do with Barbaros,’ he said finally. ‘I swear. He was a Scotchman.’

  ‘The man on the phone or on the bike?’ Brock said calmly.

  Danny bowed his head. ‘The guy I picked up on Sloane Street.’

  ‘A Scotsman, you say?’

  ‘Yeah. Well hard. Listen, it was nothing to do with Barbaros. You’ve got that totally wrong, I swear.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ Brock said. ‘So where did he go when you dropped him at Camden Town?’

  ‘I dunno. Back to Scotland for all I know.’

  ‘You think he came from there?’

  ‘Well, he came from somewhere. That’s what the bloke on the phone said.’

  ‘And you’re sure the one on the phone wasn’t the same man?’

  ‘Oh yeah. The one on the phone sounded like a Londoner.’ He paused and slumped lower in his seat. ‘The one on the bike had flash shoes, Nike Air Jordans, blue with orange trim. Listen, I feel sick . . .’ And then he turned his head and threw up on the floor.

  They called the duty sergeant to look after Danny. ‘We’ll leave it for now,’ Brock said. ‘Tell his lawyer he doesn’t need to bother.’

  On the way out Brock phoned Kathy, passing on the information about the shoes and the Scottish accent. ‘It’s possible he got the Northern Line from Camden Town to Euston, to catch a train back up north.’

  When they got into the car Bren said, ‘Smart work, Chief.’

  ‘It may be nothing. Anyway, I didn’t deserve it.’

  Bren laughed, but didn’t disagree.

  ‘Scotland?’ Zack shook his head. ‘Is he having us on?’

  ‘Apparently not,’ Kathy said, although the same thought had occurred to her. She began contacting the teams with the new information, moving some to Euston, Kings Cross and St Pancras rail stations to check CCTV records. But it was Zack who first spotted the shoes, coming out of Camden Town tube station a few minutes after the killer had gone in, but this time on the feet of a man wearing a pale cream jacket and a cap.

  ‘Got him,’ Zack said. ‘He must have put on the jacket and cap inside the station, and now he’s heading north up Camden Road.’

  They picked him up again going into Camden Road rail station on the London Overground network, a couple of hundred yards away, buying a ticket and catching a train heading east.

  Again Kathy called up the teams to check the stations along the North London Line—Caledonian Road and Barnsbury, Highbury and Islington, Canonbury, Dalston Kingsland, and then Hackney Central, where they retrieved images of him leaving the station and disappearing into the streets leading south.

  Meanwhile the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency had got back to them with an identification of the man at the flower show. His name was Harold Michael Peebles, thirty-six years old, known as Hard Harry Peebles, and his last known address was HM Prison Barlinnie, Glasgow, from which he had recently been released after completing a six-year sentence for manslaughter. A check confirmed that Peebles had been a passenger on a British Midland Airways flight from Glasgow to London on the morning of Wednesday 26 May. There was no record of him taking a return flight.

  Everyone converged on the Hackney police station, where the CCTV coordinator began the search through local sources for the afternoon of 27 May. After an hour they had found one brief sighting on a bank security camera of the man in the blue and orange shoes, then nothing more. They moved their search to the following day, the mood of frustration growing among those who waited. Bren and the borough detectives were impatient to get out and canvass shops, pubs and betting shops with pictures of the wanted man, but Bro
ck held them back, not wanting to spook him if he was still in the area. The trawl through camera footage continued through the twenty-eighth, the twenty-ninth, but in the end it was Glasgow that provided the answer. The office at Barlinnie Prison had run the word ‘Hackney’ through their computer and come up with a next-of-kin address for one of the inmates in C Hall, where Harry Peebles had been housed. The address was for the man’s sister, a Mrs Angela Storey of 13 Ferncroft Close, Hackney. A check soon established that Mrs Storey was divorced, childless and currently serving time in nearby Holloway Prison.

  A helicopter from the Air Support Unit at Lippitts Hill was called in, giving them aerial surveillance. Ferncroft Close was a quiet residential cul-de-sac of just twenty houses in two terraces facing each other across a roadway jammed with parked cars. One end was blocked by a railway embankment and there was a rear access laneway running behind the back gardens of the terrace in which number thirteen was located. Brock called for an armed response unit and made his plans.

  After his experience at Danny Yilmaz’s flat, Brock didn’t go in with the team, but instead watched from Queen Anne’s Gate, through the helicopter’s camera, the unmarked car and two white vans arriving at Ferncroft Close. There was a sense of unreality in seeing it unfold like this, like a computer game, with sound effects, a sudden burst of dogs barking coming through the headphones. Brock remembered other such raids in years gone by, when communications meant a shout and a dodgy radio.

  There was nothing unreal about the raid as far as Kathy was concerned, sitting squashed up in the white van with a gang of uniforms. One of them was the operator for a device new to the Met, the Black Hornet, currently on operational field trials from its Norwegian manufacturer. Looking over the operator’s shoulder, Kathy watched him open the small aluminium case that he was carrying and take out one of three tiny black helicopters, as small as a child’s toy. They opened the rear doors of the van and the man released the device, which rose with a soft purr into the air. He settled back down with a control panel and screen, guiding the Hornet down the street to hover silently outside the windows of number thirteen, sending pictures back to the van. A neat toy, Kathy thought, but nothing could shield you from the reality of a forcible arrest, the shock of violent contact, the spontaneous decision that could take a life or ruin a career in a millisecond.