The Cuckoo is a Pretty Bird

by L M Krier

  Even on the ground and in evident pain, he instinctively lashed out with his feet, making her stumble. Virgil was onto her in an instant, grabbing her by the back of the hoody, shoving her, face forwards, none too gently up against the wall as he reached for his handcuffs.

  ‘I’m arresting you for assaulting a police officer,’ he told her, as she screamed back at him, ‘Take your hands off me, you fucking black pig!’

  Virgil ignored her until he had her safely immobilised. Then he asked, ‘Are you all right, sarge?’

  ‘Bloody marvellous, Virgil. Never better. Let’s get her to the nick so we can charge her.’

  He was just on the right side of rough as he took her by an arm, bundled her out of the building and into the back seat of their car.

  Chapter Six

  Mike and Virgil’s passenger refused to give her identity. She refused to say much at all on the short drive back to the station. Most of the words she uttered were of the four-letter, Anglo-Saxon variety.

  She was slightly more talkative when they got to the nick, demanding a solicitor persistently, in a loud voice. They booked her in, asked for one to be called, then left her to stew while they went upstairs, Mike wincing visibly as he did so.

  Ted heard them come in and went out of his office for a catch-up. Jezza was just finishing up a phone call.

  ‘We brought a suspect in, boss,’ Virgil told him. ‘She kneed the sarge in the nuts so we’ve got her on an assault charge, whatever happens. She was knocking and kicking at Abigail’s door, and shouting her name, so she clearly knows her, but she’s not talking now.’

  Ted made a sympathetic face. ‘You all right, Mike? You’ll need to get yourself checked out anyway for the charges against her.’

  It was Mike’s turn to make a face. ‘That should be fun – not.’

  ‘We might as well pool our findings to date while we’re all in. Jezza, any luck with finding out who this Latte might be?’

  ‘A couple of possibles, boss, but one very strong contender. A lad called Giorgio Mantone. Tall and thin. So, with an Italian name to boot, my money’s on him being our tall skinny Latte.

  ‘Originally from the Druid’s Heath area of Birmingham. Seventeen and with a string of juvenile offences to his credit. Nicking cars, often torching them after a joy ride. Lots of theft of all sorts. Some burglary, some drug offences. He was put in care at the age of thirteen and has been a frequent absconder from homes since then.

  ‘Here’s where we get to the part where some bureaucrat somewhere had what they thought was a brilliant idea. Only it wasn’t. Giorgio Mantone was known to be involved with various gangs around Birmingham, mostly on the drugs scene. He was thought to be selling for at least one of the top people. The bright idea consisted of taking youths like Mantone and removing them to children’s homes in remote parts of the country, away from the gang contacts.

  ‘Mantone was never going to be adopted or even fostered. Too difficult, too much baggage, so it was a children’s home for him. And they decided to send him to North Wales to get him away from his contacts. Some remote place in the hills with lots of L’s and W’s in the name.

  ‘Long story short, he legged it from there within a week and the trail went cold. There was a brief trace of him on Merseyside not long after. His fingerprints are on record, of course, and they were found on a burned-out car. But since then, nothing.’

  ‘Good work, Jezza. I don’t know from the state of the body whether his prints will be retrievable. But if he’s got a record, his DNA should be on file too so that might get us confirmation of his ID. That’s a good start.

  ‘And now we have your assailant, Mike. It at least seems she knew Abigail, which is another hopeful lead. Once we charge her, we’ll have her prints, so they can be compared to any found in the flat. She might even be able to tell us something.’

  ‘Doubt it, boss. I’d say she definitely has a record. She seems to know all the ropes. But I’d be surprised if she was the talkative type. We’ll have to make all the running, I’m pretty sure,’ Mike told him.

  ‘With a bit of luck, if she’s local and she is on our books, someone from Uniform will recognise her. Especially if we’ve had her in before.’

  ‘Boss, I spoke to the neighbour. The one who reported the smell. She said there were teenagers coming and going all the time there. Noisy. Playing loud music. Knocking and kicking the door to be let in.’

  Ted frowned. ‘Did she say if that’s been happening all week? I’m wondering if they were still going round since the death. If not, that rather suggests some of them, at least, may have known what happened. They may even have been there at the time of the killing.’

  ‘The immediate neighbour works long hours, she told me, so she’s not at home much and when she’s there, she certainly sleeps through noise. I had to ring and knock quite a bit to get her to open up. But she did mention hearing the same racket this past week.’

  ‘Or they were going round and Abi wasn’t opening up to them,’ Jezza suggested. ‘Although as she doesn’t seem to have registered that Latte was dead, why wouldn’t she let them in? She let Sergeant Morgan and Stuart in with no problem, remember.’

  ‘When I was in the kitchen of her flat I saw that she had one of those video links to the front door. There was a red light, which presumably lets her know when the doorbell rings, then she can look on the screen and see who’s there. Plus there’s the spyhole in the door. She would have seen they were both in uniform.’

  ‘Yet she wasn’t keen to talk to Susan, who was in uniform,’ Jezza pointed out. ‘Although she may simply not have understood her sign language as well as my very basic efforts.’

  ‘So she’s not afraid to let the police in, but she doesn’t want to let any of the teenagers back in,’ Virgil concluded.

  ‘And that might perhaps indicate that it was one of them who killed Latte, not Abigail herself,’ Mike suggested. ‘They’d want to get back in to recover the drugs and remove all traces of their presence. But Abigail might be afraid that she would form part of the clean-up operation. That she might be the next body in the kitchen. Can she reason at that level, Jezza? You seem to know her better than anyone so far.’

  ‘Hard one to call, sarge. She corrected me when I made the sign for man instead of boy. But as for the rest of it? I honestly don’t know how much she understands, but my overall impression is not much at all. Possibly enough to feel afraid in some circumstances, although she was very passive and trusting being examined by the doctor. And that was a very intimate examination, of course, in the circumstances.’

  ‘I think, before we get ahead of ourselves, we need to wait to see what the PM tells us on Monday. And Jezza, since you’ve been in on this one since the start, I think you should come with me for that. I know you say you’re not interested in promotion but a case like this can only look good on your portfolio.’

  Jezza made a face. ‘Boss, I know I shouldn’t let my personal life get in the way of work, but if it’s one of the Prof’s dawn starts and I’ve had another night from hell with Tommy…’

  ‘You’re in luck. She’s got something on first thing so it’s late morning. Are you off tomorrow? Can you catch up on some sleep?’

  ‘I am and I hope so. Nat, bless him, has offered to take Tommy out for the day while I sleep. So I will try to be back to my usual bright and breezy self by then. Or at least to something resembling a functioning human being.’

  ‘Virgil, you’re going to be tied up for a bit now with your assault case, because clearly, Mike, you can’t be involved in that interview. Not as the victim. We can ask for someone from Uniform to interview her for now and Virgil, you keep an eye on it and make sure they cover all bases.

  ‘Mike, you’ll need to get your statement sorted as well as getting yourself examined, of course. I want to go back to the flat later on for a proper look round now CSI have finished. If you’re up to it, perhaps you could come with me. When we’ve done that, we could knock on a few more door
s, to see what else we can find out.

  ‘I’ve managed to get a fair bit of information about the building. It’s owned by a property development company of which, no surprise there, Councillor Buller is a major shareholder. Some of the flats have been bought outright, but at least some of them are rentals, and the rent is a bit eye-watering. Plus there is a full service contract, with a caretaker living on site.’

  ‘Concierge, boss,’ both Mike and Virgil corrected him at the same time, then Mike went on, ‘Nowt so common as a caretaker there. I saw the sign on one of the ground floor flats but no one was in when I knocked. I was planning to go back later.’

  ‘Right, let’s you and I do that. So that’s most of us with plenty to be getting on with for now.’

  ‘Boss, if it’s all right with you, I’d like to dig a bit more into this Giorgio Mantone. I know it could be a false trail, but it’s surely worth me pulling up his file. I thought I’d also ring the home in Wales and see if they can tell me anything, or if they have details of his previous social worker or probation officer or anything. Maybe see if I can turn up any known associates in and around here. It might just lead us to some of the other little charmers who’ve been pitching up at Abi’s place.’

  Ted nodded his agreement. ‘Well worth a shot, I would say. Right, in the meantime, I’ll go and see who’s in downstairs who might know your assailant, Mike.’

  Long-serving local officers like PS Bill Baxter, now retired and in charge of the reception desk for a living, or PS Eric Morgan would no doubt have known the identity of Mike’s attacker. Neither was in on a Saturday. Ted went downstairs to see who else might know.

  He found PC Dick Higgins having a cup of tea while he was busily transcribing notes from his pocket book. Dick had been at the station for as long as anyone could remember. Long enough to have vivid memories of Ted’s arrival as a Detective Sergeant in his first ever post out of uniform. Unsure of himself, covering it by bravado, which had made more than one person mark him down as a ‘cocky little sod’.

  ‘Dick, do you know who the young lass is who assaulted Mike Hallam? He and Virgil brought her in earlier. She won’t give a name but I thought you’d know, if anyone did.’

  ‘Ronnie? Of course I know Ronnie. She’s a regular here. I heard about what happened to Mike, poor bugger. Not sure which he’ll find harder to live down. Getting kicked in the bollocks by a young lass like her, or having to get his tackle photographed for the file.’

  ‘Ronnie? Is that short for Veronica?’

  Dick laughed. ‘No, it’s what everyone calls her. Ronnie, short for Ronseal. She must go to the worst tanning place on the planet. She’s always the colour of something you might put on your decking to keep the rain out. She’s got some sort of a Pola ...’

  He pulled himself up short, remembering what Ted could be like with anything disrespectful, changed the word he was about to say quickly to ‘Polish’ and went on, ‘Polish name, but she never uses it. Zofia, or summat. With a Z. Surname has a Z or two in it somewhere as well, but don’t ask me to spell it from memory. Family’s from up Reddish. Decent enough folks. Dad has a decorating business, I think. Ronnie went right off the rails. No idea where she lives now. A squat somewhere, probably.

  ‘So what’s this suspicious death case you’ve got on, Ted? Cuckooing, did I hear on the grapevine? Maybe that’s where Ronnie’s been living. In the flat where the body was found. I hear she was trying to get in there when Mike and Virgil found her.’

  ‘Could Ronnie be a killer, do you think?’

  Higgins took a thoughtful swallow of his tea, then said, ‘Would I turn my back on her if there was a weapon to hand? No bloody fear! Does she have a record of violence? Well, Mike’s not her first assault, for sure. But I don’t remember her using a knife before and I hear your body is a likely stab victim.’

  Ted had long since ceased to be surprised at how fast word got around within the station. It’s why he often tried to chat to the Uniform officers to bring himself up to speed.

  ‘Thanks, Dick. The surname. Is the Z at the beginning?’

  ‘Starts with a W, I’m pretty sure. The Z’s in the middle somewhere, and it ends in an -eck or something like that.’

  Ted went back upstairs to give Jezza the information he had so far. It would be helpful to have as much background as they could before the solicitor arrived and Virgil briefed a Uniform officer for the initial interview. His mobile phone rang as he headed for his office.

  ‘Hey, you. Did you get arrested for indecent exposure in a police station car park?’

  Ted laughed. ‘If anyone saw anything on the cameras, they’ve not said anything to me yet. And I’ve not had any knowing looks, so I think I got away with it.’

  ‘Good. I was just looking up recipes for suitable cakes in which to conceal a file. But actually, I’ve just dropped your stinking suit off at the cleaners and I’m on my way into town. I fancy having lunch with my husband, if you can make time for me?’

  Ted hesitated. ‘It’s a bit full on. I was going to grab a sandwich to eat at my desk.’

  ‘Take half an hour off and meet me in The Grapes for a sandwich instead. Please, Ted. I’ve not seen much of you all week and I’m practically walking past there on my way to town.’

  ‘You’re walking?’

  ‘I’ve decided to be more virtuously green. And also to spend less money. I’ve still not recovered from having to show you my credit card statements. Nor the knowledge that your ACC has seen them, too. So have we got a date? I promise not to disrobe you in public again.’

  ‘Shame. That was going to be the clincher. All right, give me a bell when you’re nearly there and I’ll come round and join you.’

  ‘We’ll try this caretaker – sorry, the concierge – person first, then go back up to the flat,’ Ted told Mike as he parked his car later and the two of them walked into the building. ‘Given Buller’s connection to the development and what seems to have been happening to his daughter, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s lying low a bit for the time being.’

  It took a couple of rings and a bit of patient but persistent knocking on the door of the concierge’s flat before it opened and a man looked out, his expression wary.

  ‘Mr Boyle?’ Ted asked, photo ID in his hand, held up so the man could see it clearly. ‘DCI Darling, DS Hallam, Stockport Police. Could we come in and ask you a few questions, please?’

  ‘What’s it about? Only I have to do my rounds of the building. There are a few things I need to attend to ...’

  ‘What’s it about?’ Ted echoed, wondering if the man really was trying to claim he knew nothing of the recent goings-on in the building he was paid to maintain. ‘Perhaps we could come inside to talk about that. We shouldn’t keep you long.’

  His reluctance evident, the man stepped back and let them in.

  ‘Go through to the kitchen at the back. We won’t be disturbed in there.’

  The kitchen was empty but there was music coming from behind a closed door nearby. Boyle nodded towards it and made a face.

  ‘Teenage son. My turn to have him at the weekend. The ex always forgets to send him with a functioning volume control. I can’t complain too much because his waking hours are limited. But it’s generally noisy when he is awake. Unless he’s eating.’

  He didn’t invite them to sit down. He simply stood facing them, arms folded across his chest.

  ‘Mr Boyle, as concierge, you surely must know that the police were called here yesterday and recovered a body from a first floor flat?’ Ted began.

  ‘Well, yes. But people do die. Anywhere. Even in a block like this.’ His tone was defensive.

  ‘But this was a suspicious death, Mr Boyle. And if you make regular patrols of the building, you must surely have been aware of a noxious smell coming from the apartment where Abigail Buller lives. I take it you know her; you know who she is.’

  ‘Yes, of course. But that’s part of the problem. Abi’s … well, I don’t know how to put it poli
tically correctly, but she’s not the full shilling. I don’t think she copes on her own, to be honest. The flat’s not always very clean, I don’t think. But she’s an owner-occupier. At least, her father owns it, so it’s very tricky.’

  ‘Was it you who called her father last night, Mr Boyle? To say she was being taken away in a police car?’

  He didn’t reply. His shifty look meant he didn’t need to.

  ‘Were you aware of a lot of young people frequently visiting Abigail’s flat, Mr Boyle? Perhaps staying there? Lots of loud noise and banging? Music being played very loud?’

  Ted had looked round the room as soon as he’d entered it. He’d seen the monitors, covering the main and rear entrances.

  ‘Your flat is right by the stairs and the lift, plus you can see on the screens anyone who comes and goes. We’ve already recovered security footage which is being examined. You must know that. And you must have been aware of the comings and goings too, surely?’

  ‘Like I said, it’s difficult. Abi’s technically an adult, but you wouldn't want her to babysit your kids, if you know what I mean. She’s entitled to her friends and her private life. Just as long as the other residents weren’t complaining.’

  ‘But you were aware of young people coming and going?’ Ted pressed him.

  A shrug. A non-committal, ‘Like I said, owner-occupancy. Nothing to stop her having people to visit or to stay over. I’m the concierge for the block, not her babysitter.’

  Ted was looking out of the kitchen now, towards the source of the noise.

  ‘How old is your son, Mr Boyle? And how often does he stay with you?’

  ‘He’s seventeen. Weekends, and any time the ex fancies taking off somewhere exotic with her new bloke. Then our Ricky gets sent round here.’

  ‘I wonder if you’d mind calling him in so I could ask him just a couple of questions please, Mr Boyle.’