by Ford, P. F.
‘Of course,’ replied Chan. ‘Everything she left is here in this storage unit. Please help yourself.’
Slater looked around. There were four wardrobes and three chests of drawers. He felt sure there must be something in here that would help him.’
‘Is this everything?’ he asked.
‘Absolutely.’
‘Does anyone else know it’s here?’
‘I only kept them because I have no address to send them on to. I thought the girl might come back to collect them, or send for them, but she never did.’
‘No other police officers have been here?’
‘No one else has been here to enquire, Sergeant. You are the first.’
‘Thank you, Mr Chan,’ said Slater looking around, trying to decide where to start. ‘I’m sure this won’t take too long.’
‘Do you need me here?’ asked Mr Chan. ‘I will be on site until you finish but I have work to do.’
‘No, no. Please carry on. I’ll find you when I’ve finished if I have any more questions.’
Chan gave another little bow and then left Slater to it.
Wardrobe number one contained a few plain and simple skirts and jackets, and a few pairs of rather dull and boring shoes. This was definitely the property of Ruth Thornhill. The next two wardrobes were packed with very expensive clothes and shoes. Designer labels seemed to adorn just about every item. This certainly wasn’t the wardrobe of a hard up part-time receptionist.
Wardrobe number four was the most interesting from Slater’s point of view, revealing some additional, very interesting, outfits that certainly wouldn’t be found in the average young woman’s wardrobe. Unless, of course, she had a particular sort of client to amuse. This was most definitely the Ruby Rider working wardrobe.
The chests of drawers followed the same pattern, ranging from the sensible underwear he thought should be associated with Ruth, through to the much sexier and much more expensive items that he would have expected to find in the Ruby Rider area.
Two whole drawers were filled with expensive make-up (why would she leave that behind?) but once again, the most interesting items were to be found amongst the Ruby Rider range, with a selection of weird objects and devices in one drawer which could only be described as sex toys.
He stepped back and looked around the room again. Sure, the clothes proved the point that there were two identities. They also proved she was a high-class hooker, but after that it didn’t make sense. There wasn’t a single shred of evidence to even suggest these things really belonged to Ruth/Ruby. Where were all her personal effects? There wasn’t a single scrap of paper to prove she even existed. There was no diary, nothing.
If Mr Chan was right and no one else had been in here, someone had obviously gone to a great deal of trouble going through Ruth/Ruby’s flat before her disappearance had even been noticed. Someone appeared to have removed every single item that might have actually told him something.
Up until now, Slater had kept an open mind about what had happened to Ruth, but now he was beginning to get a bad feeling about this whole thing. Now he felt she hadn’t chosen to run away, but someone else had chosen to make her disappear. And that was a different ball game altogether.
He spent another 20 minutes with Mr Chan, but it didn’t matter how he phrased his questions, Chan remained adamant he knew nothing about the missing personal stuff. He also claimed not to know who had been paying the rent. Slater was tempted to believe him about the first part, but he was equally certain he was being lied to about the rent. He would leave it for now. He could always get a search warrant if necessary.
Promising Chan he would be back, Slater finally made his way through the gates of Mistral Court and back onto the street outside. There was a large Bentley parked opposite. He could see the young Chinese man, Ling, glowering at him from the back seat, and he gave him a cheery wave as he set off. He felt the younger man’s eyes burning into his back as he walked off down the road.
Oh well. It’s true what they say. You can’t please all of the people all of the time.
He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. Scrawled upon it, in his rather spidery handwriting, were the directions to Marshall Street and The Three Crowns. It was time DS Donovan answered a few questions.
Even though it was gone 3pm by the time he made it to The Three Crowns, the pub was still crowded with lunchtime drinkers. Slater hadn’t bargained on the pub being crowded and for a moment he thought it was going to be difficult to find his man. He’d seen a photograph of Donovan so he knew the face he was looking for, and he began to scan the faces. He spotted Donovan straight away. It wasn’t his face that gave him away, so much as his height. DS Declan Donovan would never be lost in a crowd. At 6 feet 6 inches tall, he stood out like a sore thumb.
At 6 feet 1 inch, Dave Slater was tall enough to look most men in the eye, and big enough to be confident in the knowledge he could look after himself if necessary. DS Declan Donovan, on the other hand, was a veritable giant and Slater imagined he was no stranger to the idea of using his size to intimidate. Donovan towered over Slater and gave him a crushing handshake, but Slater didn’t flinch much to the other officer’s disappointment.
Having been subjected to Donovan’s feeble attempts to rile him over the phone, this intimidation was no more than Slater had expected. He knew he was supposed to play the part of the feeble-minded country bobby to Donovan’s superior breed of London copper, but if that’s what Donovan really thought was going to happen, he was in for a surprise.
There were so many holes in Donovan’s investigation, it was already leaking like a sieve, and Slater’s respect for both his opposite detective sergeant, and the Met, was pouring down the drain at the same rate. This attempted intimidation simply cemented his determination to show Donovan that this was now his inquiry, and he intended to make sure it was as thorough as he could make it.
‘Davey boy!’ Donovan greeted him. ‘Let me get you a pint. What’ll you have?’
‘Just an orange juice and lemonade for me,’ answered Slater. Then seeing the look on the other man’s face he added, ‘I don’t drink.’
It was a lie, of course, but he wanted to make sure he kept a clear head.
‘Can’t handle it, eh?’ sneered Donovan.
Slater smiled, nodded, and let the insult fly harmlessly over his head.
Donovan handed him his drink and grabbed his own pint.
‘Cheers!’ He raised his glass and Slater raised his in return.
‘Over here.’ Donovan pointed to an empty table in a corner and led the way over.
The conversation started off in a friendly enough fashion, and Slater learnt that although Donovan’s father was Irish (hence the name) his mother was very much London born and bred (hence the non-Irish accent).
In turn, Slater patiently tried to explain that there was a world outside London, and that Tinton wasn’t on another planet, and in fact was actually just 60 miles from where they were sat at that very moment – but it was obvious Donovan either didn’t believe him, or just wasn’t interested. Slater wasn’t surprised.
Pleasantries over with, Slater thought they might as well get down to business.
‘I guess we ought to start talking about the elephant in the room,’ he suggested.
Donovan looked around the room with a puzzled expression.
‘I can’t see no elephant.’
For a moment, Slater had the sinking feeling he really was dealing with a complete idiot, but then he caught the little smile that was creeping across Donovan’s face.
‘Ah! Right.’ He grinned, sharing the joke.
‘Now, come on, Davey. An elephant in the room is something people don’t wanna talk about or don’t agree about. So, to my way of thinking, just as long as we reach the same conclusion, there ain’t gonna be an elephant. Ain’t that right?’
He slowly, and carefully, placed his pint down on the table. Then he looked hard at Slater.
‘We are reaching the
same conclusion, ain’t we?’ he asked, his tone menacing.
Slater took a slow, deliberate sip of his drink, just to keep Donovan waiting.
‘Well now,’ he began, placing his own drink on the table. ‘To my way of thinking, there might be a bit of a problem with that.’
‘Problem? What problem?’
‘It’s like this.’ Slater smiled. ‘I seem to have uncovered one or two discrepancies. I mean, I’m just a country bumpkin, right? So I’ve not been using fancy interrogation techniques like you clever blokes up here in town use, and yet I seem to have found out lots of stuff that you guys didn’t find.’
‘What stuff? What are you bloody on about?’ snarled Donovan, his face reddening and looking as if he would like to punch Slater in the face.
‘How about Mistral Court?’ asked Slater, quietly.
Just for a second, Donovan’s face paled slightly and a look of panic flashed across it. He quickly regained control, but it had been enough.
‘Mistral Court? What’s Mistral Court?’ he said, clearly attempting a bluff.
‘You knew about it, didn’t you?’ asked Slater, knowing he was right. ‘You knew about it and yet you didn’t mention it in your report.’
He sat back, folded his arms, and watched Donovan squirm.
‘To my way of thinking that’s a cause for concern. So now,’ Slater continued, ‘I have to ask myself what possible reason you could have for doing that.’
‘I told you before,’ explained Donovan. ‘Once we found the text messages there didn’t seem to be any point in looking any further. The flat made no difference.’
‘So you admit you knew about it then?’ Slater said, pressing home his advantage.
‘I admit nothing,’ growled Donovan. ‘You think you’re so bloody clever, don’t you? But I’m telling you this girl’s just a runaway. That’s all there is to it. All you’re doing is poking your nose in where it’s not wanted. You’re going to make a lot of enemies, and for what? Just so you can find out where she went? You might have time to waste on unnecessary investigations where you come from, but up here we don’t, see? Now the best thing you can do is agree with me and close your case.’
‘Or what?’ asked Slater. ‘Are you threatening me?’
‘Just do us both a favour, eh?’ said Donovan, standing and towering over Slater. ‘You really don’t want to cross these people at the Unit. Go back to Toytown or wherever it is you come from, write your report same as mine, and don’t come back.’
He turned on his heel, pushed his way through the crowd and out into the street, and was gone.
Chapter Eleven
Well, well, well, thought Slater as he watched the huge figure ploughing through the other drinkers. Did I rattle his cage, or did I rattle his cage?
He smiled ruefully as he climbed to his feet and slowly made his own way out. One thing was sure now, he thought, as he reached the street – whatever this was, it definitely was not a simple runaway.
He looked up and down the road. He could make out the top of Donovan’s head quite clearly as he strode away into the distance. He was just so easy to spot. Slater turned in the opposite direction and started to make his way towards the nearest tube station.
As he walked, he had the distinct impression someone was following him, but when he turned to look he couldn’t see anyone looking remotely suspicious. Maybe he was just getting paranoid. Perhaps Donovan had managed to intimidate him without him even realising. One thing was for sure – there was no way Donovan could be following him without Slater noticing.
He walked on a bit further, but the feeling he was being followed stayed with him. He looked around again. This time he thought he saw a familiar looking Chinese man dive into a shop, but when he walked back and looked there was no one there. He looked around and realised there were quite a few Chinese people around. In Tinton this would have been a surprise, but this was London. What do you expect?
He suddenly realised he needed to take the next turning on the left. It was just ahead on the other side of the street, so he needed to cross the road now. Unfortunately, he needed to cross right where there was a crowd of people waiting at a bus stop.
As if determined to prove the English don’t always form the perfect queue, the mass of waiting people seemed to want to make it as difficult as possible for him to know where they started and where they ended. Of course, the polite thing to do would be to go around the queue, but as it was impossible to tell exactly where it began and ended, Slater decided it wouldn’t do any harm to go through the middle.
He “excuse me’d”, and elbowed, his way through the crowd to reach the kerb, just as the bus was nearing the stop. He teetered on the edge of the kerb, knowing he couldn’t have timed it any worse if he’d wanted to. Now he would have to stand his ground as all these people swarmed on board the bus. As the bus began to slow, the crowd surged forward, everyone fighting to claim their place the moment it stopped.
For a moment, he had a jocular vision of being carried helplessly onto the bus by this seething wave of humanity, but then something happened that shocked him back to reality. There was a hand in the small of his back pushing him in front of the bus. Instinctively, he leaned back against the hand and for a moment it seemed he was winning and he began to lean back, away from the bus, but then there was a massive two-handed shove and he was hurtling off the kerb.
Fortunately, he had managed to delay his attacker just long enough. As he hurtled forward, he crashed against the side of the bus close to the wheel arch and then, luckily, he bounced back towards the crowd. In that moment he knew he had been spared – he could just as easily have gone under the front wheel.
There seemed to be a brief hush and the heaving crowd momentarily stepped back to give him enough room to land, which he did with a dull thud, and then almost instantly they were swarming all around him again, busy as ants, far more concerned with claiming their place on board the bus than worrying about some guy lying in a crumpled heap on the ground.
The breath had been knocked from him, and his wrist was throbbing, but he was relieved to find he didn’t seem to have suffered any major damage. It could have been so much worse.
‘Are you alright, mate?’ A man had emerged from the crowd at the bus stop and was kneeling down to attend to him.
‘Yes. I think so. Just a bit winded,’ replied.
‘No point trying to get on the bus until it’s stopped and the doors open, you know,’ said the man. ‘Unless, of course, you wanted to end up under the wheels.’
‘What?’ said Slater. ‘I wasn’t trying to get on the bus, and I wasn’t trying to jump under the wheels. Someone pushed me!’
‘Is that right?’ asked the man sceptically, helping Slater to his feet. ‘Look,’ he began in a concerned tone as he brushed Slater down, ‘there are people you can talk to if you’re feeling depressed. Whatever your problem is, it can’t be so bad you need to jump under a bus and end your life.’
He took Slater by the arm and began fussing around him.
‘I’m not trying to end my bloody life,’ snapped Slater. ‘I’ll admit I’m pretty pissed off right now, but that’s because someone has just tried to push me under a double decker bus.’
The man didn’t seem to hear him. Instead he turned Slater around, gripped his other arm and started to brush his back down, much as he might have done with a five-year-old who had just fallen over.
‘Will you let go of me?’ said Slater, shaking the man off, his patience wearing dangerously thin. ‘I don’t need to be treated like a little boy.’
‘Well, pardon me for being the only person who cares about you lying in the street,’ said Slater’s saviour, stepping back and looking at him with distaste. ‘A little bit of gratitude would go a very long way, you know,’
Slater felt just a little embarrassed.
‘I’m sorry,’ he began. ‘You’re right. I owe you an apology, and I owe you a big thank you for helping me up. But, in my defence, I have jus
t been pushed under a bus. It hasn’t exactly put me in the best of moods. I’m sure you can understand that.’
‘Are you sure you were deliberately pushed? I certainly didn’t see anyone push you. These things happen when there’s a crowd fighting to get on the bus. I’m sure if anyone did push you it would have been an accident. You’d be surprised how often it happens.’
There was a big crowd waiting, and these bus stop crowds do tend to surge forward when a bus arrives, so Slater could understand why the guy hadn’t seen anyone push him. He looked at what was left of the crowd, the last four or five now funnelling onto the bus around them. It could have been any one of them. He felt the urge to get on the bus and see if any face seemed familiar, but a stronger urge told him he didn’t need to go looking for trouble right now. Instinct told him he needed to get away from here. He needed to think.
‘Thank you,’ he said, regaining his composure now he was back on his feet and seemingly in one piece. ‘No serious damage done. I’ll be fine now.’ He suspected he may have broken his wrist, but he could worry about that later.
The bus, now tightly packed with passengers, began to wheeze away from the stop, its driver quite unaware of the near-fatal incident that had just occurred. All that was left of the crowd were Dave Slater and the man who had stopped to help him.
‘Are you sure you’re ok? I can call an ambulance.’
‘No thanks. I don’t want to appear ungrateful, but I just need to walk it off. Thank you for stopping to help me, but I’m fine now, honestly.’
‘That’s okay,’ said the man. He pointed to Slater’s left wrist. ‘Just make sure you get that arm checked out.’
‘Sure, I will. And thanks again.’
They went their separate ways, Slater walking a little gingerly at first, but then with more confidence. The throbbing in his wrist told him the man was right, he needed to get it checked out. He placed that hand in his pocket to try to immobilise it a bit. Absently, he wondered about the man. He hadn’t asked the guy his name. He wasn’t even sure he could describe him, although he did seem to have an air of authority about him, almost like he was a police officer or someone similar.