The Promised Land

by Barry Maitland

  ‘I used to be. I’m retired now. I’m just doing this to help Mr Pettigrew’s lawyer find out who the woman was that you found in his house. It’s sad that no one knows, don’t you think?’

  She shrugged, indifferent. ‘She said you would pay for my time.’

  ‘Yes.’ Brock took out his wallet and placed it on the table between them. ‘Tell me about Mr Pettigrew.’

  She made a face. ‘I didn’t really know him. For eighteen months I was working for Hannibal Lecter and I had no idea. I only met him a couple of times, when I arrived before he left for work. I was very lucky to escape, yes? All I knew was his house.’

  ‘Yes, but an experienced cleaner like you can tell a lot from your clients’ houses. How many clients do you have at the moment?’

  ‘Fifteen.’

  ‘And I bet you know all about them—their drug habits, their infidelities, their problem children—without ever meeting them, just from cleaning their houses.’

  Nadia granted him a little smile. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘So what about Charlie Pettigrew? Off the record.’

  ‘Like I say, I didn’t know him. I thought he was a bit sad. He didn’t seem to have many friends. The only drugs I saw were medicines from the doctor. He drank quite a lot, that’s all I can say, but so do most of my clients. They have parties and leave piles of bottles. But Mr Pettigrew had plenty of bottles on his own, no parties. No visitors. He made no trouble for me, and he left me a nice tip in an envelope last Christmas. I was hoping for the same this year too. Bad luck for me.’

  ‘Did he have many lady visitors?’

  ‘No. That’s why I was surprised when I saw two wineglasses that morning, one with lipstick.’

  ‘No condoms in the house?’

  ‘No.’

  Brock frowned, toyed with his wallet, Nadia’s eyes following.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘But what can I tell you? No pornography, no whips or handcuffs, nothing. He was just … nothing.’

  ‘So who was the lady in the bedroom?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  Brock’s eyes were still on his wallet, but his ears picked up something, a change of tone, a note of defiance.

  She drained her glass. ‘Thanks for the drink. I’ll go now, if you can give me my fee.’

  Brock opened the wallet and slid out two twenty-pound notes, which she quickly picked up and stuffed into her coat pocket.

  Then he slid out two more notes. ‘Yes, you do know, Nadia. You know something about her. Something you didn’t mention to the police.’

  She was motionless for a moment, then said quietly, ‘When I came to London, I cleaned hospital toilets for two years before the agency decided to trust me to clean for private clients. They won’t like it if I’m involved with police. I don’t want to be a witness or appear in court. When I found the body, I very nearly ran away without calling the police, but I knew they would find out I’d been there and then I’d be in worse trouble.’

  ‘I understand. I’ll speak to Mr Pettigrew’s lawyer to see if she can agree with the police for you not to appear in court.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He pushed the notes towards her. ‘So what do you know about her?’

  ‘The week before the murder, I was taking the recycling wheelie bin—the one with all the bottles—out to the street and I noticed a young woman standing there, looking at the house. She looked like an Indian or a Pakistani. I said hello and she asked if I lived there. I said I cleaned for the owner and she asked if he was a nice man. I said, “He’s okay. Why, you looking for a job?” She laughed and said the last thing she wanted was to be a cleaner. That made me annoyed, like she thought she was too good to soil her hands. I said, “We all got to work,” and she told me about her friend, a Romanian girl, who was a cleaner too, vacuuming the offices in the Shard all night. She said her friend came home each morning worn out with just a few pounds in her hand after the agency took their cut. The Indian said she wanted better. So I asked her how she was going to do that—marry a rich man or something? And she laughed and said she’d already tried that and it didn’t work. Then she left.

  ‘The thing is, I don’t know that she was the woman in the bedroom. The woman in the street’s clothes were shabby, and she wasn’t wearing glasses like the woman in the police picture. She looked Indian, that’s the only connection, so I decided they weren’t the same and I didn’t mention it to the police. I didn’t want more complications.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Brock said. ‘What about her build?’

  ‘I don’t know what the woman on the bed was like. She was mostly covered up.’

  ‘She weighed fifty-six kilograms, slim build, one hundred and sixty centimetres tall.’

  Nadia nodded. ‘Yes, that’s the same.’

  ‘Did she mention the name of her Romanian friend?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But it was a woman?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And they were living together?’

  Nadia thought about it. ‘Yes, I think so. At least, she talked about her coming home tired each morning, so I assumed they lived together.’

  ‘Do you know the name of the agency she was working for?’

  ‘No.’

  When he was sure she had nothing more to tell him, Brock let her go, watching her disappear into the streaming rain. He wondered if her family in Katowice knew she was here, cleaning houses in London.

  He phoned Maggie Ferguson and asked her to find out whether the police had checked the lenses of the glasses found with the murdered woman’s body. ‘And I may have a lead on the victim. It’s possible that she was living with a Romanian woman who has a night job cleaning offices in the Shard.’

  Maggie said she’d get her detective to look into it.

  ‘Let me know if he gets anywhere,’ Brock said. ‘I’d like to speak to her myself.’

  ‘You sure, Brock?’

  ‘I’m intrigued, Maggie. I admit it. Humour me.’

  When he got home, Suzanne was already in her dressing-gown, ready for bed. Feeling tired he sank onto a chair in the kitchen and told her the story of the Polish girl while she heated up some soup for him. Finally she said, ‘It was a scam gone horribly wrong, wasn’t it? That Indian girl trying to sell him a fake manuscript, not realising she was talking to the Hampstead Ripper. That poor girl—imagine, when she finally realised what she’d got herself into.’

  ‘Yes, you’re probably right.’

  ‘You don’t sound convinced.’

  ‘Oh … it’s just that I’ve met him, and I find it hard to picture.’ He shrugged. ‘But human nature never ceases to amaze.’

  ‘There’s one way to find out. Send that page to John. He’ll tell you if it’s a fake.’

  ‘Yes, I thought of that.’ In fact, he’d been thinking about John Greenslade quite a lot recently—the son he didn’t know he had until the Chelsea Mansions case a few years before. He was an Associate Professor of Renaissance Philology of all things, at McGill University in Montreal, an expert in authenticating texts, and had worked as a consultant in forensic linguistics for the Montreal police on several cases—and once, on the Chelsea murders, for himself and the Met. ‘It probably wouldn’t do any harm to ask him if he’d take a look.’

  ‘Well, go on, give him a ring.’ And Suzanne handed him the phone.

  Kathy was finally put through to a Detective Inspector O’Hare at West End Central. When she explained why she was calling, he suggested they meet to talk it over. She was pushed for time but agreed anyway, so here she was, back in the neighbourhood of Golden Square, drinking coffee.

  ‘Have you discussed this with anyone else?’ O’Hare asked. ‘Your boss?’

  ‘Commander Torrens? No. Should I?’

  ‘Might be wise.’

  ‘I just want to be able to reassure Judge Jarvis and his mates that Walcott’s death was thoroughly investigated and suspicious circumstances ruled out.’

  ‘Jarvis, eh? Interesting.
Yeah, they stick together, these bloody judges. Thick as thieves. I’ll be glad when I’ve seen the last of them.’ He sounded bitter. ‘Anyway, you can reassure him all right. Sir Roger Walcott, High Court judge? ’Course it was thoroughly investigated.’

  ‘It’s just that these other judges are bothered because they say it was so out of character.’

  ‘Well, let’s say they maybe didn’t know him as well as they thought.’

  ‘Oh? What does that mean? Come on, why are you being so cagey? Why do I need to discuss this with my boss?’

  O’Hare made a face as if he’d tasted something sour. He glanced around at the other people in the café then leaned across the table to Kathy, spoke in a low growl. ‘Just between you and me, right?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘He was found in the bathroom of his hotel suite, throttled by his dressing-gown cord tied to the shower head, naked and lying next to a teddy bear.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A teddy bear. And on the floor nearby was his laptop. There was stuff on it that shouldn’t have been there.’

  ‘What kind of stuff?’ She stared at his blank face. ‘What … children?’

  ‘You said it, I didn’t. Really disgusting filth. Turn your stomach. It’s assumed that he didn’t mean to kill himself, but slipped on the tile floor and choked to death. There was bruising consistent with a fall and a struggle to release himself.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘So what do you do? The bastard had tried several paedophile cases … well, you can imagine.’

  ‘Unsafe verdicts, retrials.’

  ‘Yeah. It went to the top, the Lord Chief Justice, the Home Secretary, and they decided to close the book on it. We weren’t able to identify the children in the pictures and there was no evidence he’d committed any offence other than possession of illicit material. He was dead and beyond prosecution. He had a lovely wife and a perfect family—two children, both surgeons. What good would it do to go public?’

  Kathy nodded. ‘You think my boss would know about it?’

  ‘Maybe not, but if he talks to his boss he’ll soon be told to back off.’

  ‘Right, thanks. I’ll tell Jarvis that no stones were left unturned.’

  ‘Good idea. Just don’t tell him what slithered out from underneath them.’

  She waited twenty-four hours before contacting Jarvis, just to let him think that her inquiries had been exhaustive.

  ‘I’m afraid there’s no doubt,’ she said. ‘Sir Roger must have been under tremendous stress. It was very thoroughly investigated and we’re satisfied there was no third party involved.’

  ‘But … it just doesn’t make sense, Kathy. I saw him the evening before and he was in the best of spirits, talking about his plans for Christmas. His wife Amelia was expecting him to come over to Geneva to see his new grandson. She’d spoken on the phone to him less than two hours before he must have died. It makes no sense.’

  ‘Yes, that does make it hard for everyone,’ she said, hearing the treacherous hollowness in her voice. ‘But we never really know what’s going on inside another person’s head, do we?’

  ‘Bollocks. I always knew exactly what was going on inside Roger’s head—ambition and the pursuit of the good life. He’d as soon have topped himself as farted in front of the Queen.’

  ‘It went as high as the Lord Chief Justice, sir. He was satisfied.’

  ‘Lord Chief Justice The Right Honourable The Lord Wilfred Prendergast of Southend on Sea is always satisfied, Kathy. He’s bloated with satisfaction. It means nothing.’

  ‘Sir, I can only tell you what I’ve discovered.’

  ‘Was there something seamy, Kathy? Is that what they’re covering up? Was there a woman in that hotel room with him? Or a man? Was he being blackmailed? Is that it? You can tell me. Amelia will never know. I’ll put a quiet word out to the others and they’ll understand. They’ll keep shtum.’

  Kathy took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry, sir, all I can say is—’ she thought desperately, What the hell can I say? ‘—there’s nothing untoward.’

  After she put the phone down those weasel words echoed in her head. Nothing untoward. Like hell there wasn’t.

  9

  Brock parked his car in the multi-storey and made his way onto St Thomas Street. Above him glowed the ninety-five-storey glass pinnacle of the Shard, erupting like a vast luminous icicle out of the jumble of the London Bridge neighbourhood. A gust of cold wind caught him as he turned the corner and propelled him under the legs of the tower and into the shelter of the reception foyer. He looked around for a green cap, and caught sight of a woman standing checking her phone. Maggie Ferguson’s PI was a slight, unobtrusive figure whom he could imagine melting into a crowd.

  ‘You’re looking for a haystack in a needle.’ She grinned. ‘Who knows how many Romanians there are working in here? Half the cleaners are employed through third-party agencies who pay cash and don’t know and don’t care what their clients’ nationalities or immigration status really are.’

  ‘But you think you’ve found someone?’

  ‘I spent last night up at the office reception area on level two, talking to the girls. There are twenty-six floors of offices above that with seventy-three tenants of varying size, serviced by half-a-dozen cleaning contractors, who come and go during the night. I spoke to all the supervisors I could find, and some of the cleaners. Only one admitted he knew of a Romanian girl. This was a driver for a company called CCC Services, an Aussie. I managed to have a few words with him on his way out. He goes around in a van and collects his cleaners from various locations in East and South London, brings them here, where they work till about midnight, then he takes them on to other locations, sometimes in the City, sometimes at Canary Wharf, before driving them back to the drop-off points at about seven am—all round a twelve-hour-plus shift.

  ‘When he’s driving the girls—they’re all women—he listens to their chatter: Africans, Jamaicans, Pakis, various Europeans. No English, of course. One night he overheard two black girls getting into the van talking about “that Roma bitch”, then they shut up sharp when a girl in a red anorak got in. When the newcomer took a seat at the other end of the van, the two girls carried on whispering and glancing back at her. He checked her name on his list—Elena Vasile. Tall, thin, black hair, pale complexion, mean look on her face, probably mid-twenties.

  ‘She wasn’t on last night, but I was waiting for the van this evening. They drop the girls off and pick them up on the other side of the block, London Bridge Street, and I watched them arrive half an hour ago.’

  She pulled out her phone and showed Brock a sequence of photos she’d taken of a young woman in a red anorak. ‘I’ll send these to your phone.’

  ‘I’ve just missed her then,’ Brock said.

  ‘Yes. If it’s like last night, they’ll be coming back down around midnight for the next place. Thing is, they don’t dawdle. I don’t think you’ll get a chance to talk to her in transit, and unless you’ve got a police ID I doubt they’ll let you into the office areas to try to find her there.’

  ‘Any ideas?’

  ‘You got wheels?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, if it was me, I’d be waiting on London Bridge Street for the van—it’s got the red CCC Services logo on the side—and I’d follow it to its next destination and try there.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Of course, it could all be a complete waste of time. I tried to track her down—driver’s licence, national insurance, social media. Nothing, couldn’t find a match. Even if Elena Vasile really is Romanian, there could be a dozen other Romanians up there right now. But then, that’s what this is all about, yeah? You must have had that all the time when you were a copper, sitting around in cars, waiting for a break. I’ll leave you to it. Good hunting.’

  He watched her go, thinking, Yes, that is what I used to do, but it was a long time ago, and I had backup and resources.

  He set off to explore. At
one time he knew every brick and doorway of this crowded district of Southwark, but now he found himself experiencing sudden disorienting shifts and displacements where new developments around the London Bridge underground and overground stations shouldered into the old familiar fabric along with crisp new buildings on the Guy’s Hospital site next door. Glass was gradually displacing soot-stained London brick. He drank several cups of coffee and rang Suzanne and told her he probably wouldn’t be home that night.

  Soon after midnight Brock’s car, parked on London Bridge Street, was passed by a white van with the CCC logo on its side. It pulled in up ahead on the edge of the plaza in front of the Shard, its exhaust misting in the cold night air. After a few minutes eight women came hurrying out of the building and climbed in, one wearing a red anorak. Brock put his car into gear and eased out as the van drove off fast, circling back around the block and under the railway bridge. They passed Southwark Cathedral on the left then crossed over the Thames on London Bridge and into the City of London financial district on the far side. Traffic was light, and Brock stayed close as they turned into the narrow canyon of Fenchurch Street, heading towards the strange bulk of the 20 Fenchurch Street tower, dubbed the Walkie-Talkie, and Brock wondered if they were going to do a tour of London’s new towers. But then the van pulled to an abrupt stop outside an older block, and as he drove slowly past he watched the women pile out and disappear inside. He came to a stop further down the street, waited, then followed the van again as it drove past and on into the maze of city streets.

  It found a park near Liverpool Street station and Brock did likewise, watching the driver get out, lock his van and stride away. Brock followed, glad to stretch his legs, and watched the man cross Bishopsgate and go into an all-night café. Brock returned to the station, bought a packet of sandwiches and a coffee, and returned to his car to wait.

  At three am he woke from a light doze to the sound of the door slamming on the van. He saw its lights come on and they moved off again, back to Fenchurch Street to pick up the cleaners and then out through the East End towards the towers of the Isle of Dogs and Canary Wharf. The same routine was repeated, Brock finding a parking spot within sight of the CCC van and settling down to wait. Perhaps he was overtired, mildly febrile, but he felt unexpectedly elated at being back on the job again, like in the old days. He told himself that he could still do this, and would soon have to bring it to a positive conclusion.