Blood Red City

by Rod Reynolds

  Wheldon took notes while Singh nodded his encouragement to her. At the end, it was Wheldon who asked the first question. ‘You didn’t happen to get a look at the car’s number plate?’

  She shook her head. ‘I didn’t get a chance. I just wanted to get away.’

  ‘I can understand that. What about the make? Or colour?’

  ‘It was black but I couldn’t tell you the make. Sorry.’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘The woman I met said she was taking me to a red Kia parked up the street, but I’m guessing that was a lie.’

  ‘Well, it’s a useful detail to know. We’ll review the CCTV around the area.’

  ‘Can you describe the woman?’ Singh asked. ‘You said you spoke to her.’

  ‘Only as we were walking. She was ahead of me most of the time.’

  ‘Just tell us what you can.’

  ‘She was about my height, five-six, dyed blonde hair. She had a hoodie on – sort of blue-green. Light-blue jeans.’

  ‘How would you describe her face?’

  She untangled her hands on the table, at a loss. ‘She had thin eyebrows, that’s about all I remember. Just normal-looking.’

  ‘Eye colour?’

  ‘It was dark, I’m not sure.’

  ‘How old would you say?’

  ‘Late thirties?’

  ‘And she never gave a name?’

  ‘No. Sorry. She said she was Paulina Dobriska’s cousin, but…’

  Wheldon offered a reassuring smile. ‘That’s fine. What about the man that attacked you?’

  She looked at her hands, even the memory raising her heartbeat. ‘He came from the side and grabbed me from behind, I never really saw him. He was big – stocky.’

  ‘Anything at all about him?’

  ‘He smelled of cigarettes.’ She meant his clothes, but as she said it, she remembered it on his breath as well, the stench on her face.

  ‘And you said the second man managed to get him off you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did he go about that?’

  ‘I don’t know, they were both behind me.’

  ‘Did he have a weapon of any kind?’

  She looked from one to the other. ‘I don’t know, maybe.’

  ‘Did he say anything to you?’

  ‘I can’t remember. He tried to help me up.’

  Wheldon looked at his notes. ‘But that was the point you ran off?’

  She nodded.

  ‘And you didn’t recognise him at all?’

  ‘No.’ She held his eyes, feeling a rush as she said it.

  ‘How would you describe him?’

  ‘He was tall, quite thin. Brown hair, slim face. He was in a suit.’ In her mind, she pictured his face. Haunted, angular, a sadness about him. Deceptive, secretive.

  Wheldon looked at his partner and then back at Lydia. ‘Talk us through why you were meeting this woman again.’

  ‘I thought I was meeting Paulina Dobriska – the woman who shot the video. I think.’

  ‘And this pair were seemingly communicating with you through her Facebook account?’

  She nodded again. ‘Mostly messages but once on the phone. At the time I thought it was Paulina I was speaking to, but I’m pretty sure it was the woman who met me.’

  ‘Have you still got the written messages?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’ll need to have a look at them.’

  A small panic rose up as she thought about the emails to Michael. ‘It’s a work phone, I need it. I can show you them.’

  ‘Okay.’

  She opened Facebook Messenger and found the conversation. She put the phone down and turned it around for them to see. Wheldon scrolled down as he read, and Lydia got up to refill her water – anything to break the silence.

  Wheldon slid the phone back to her when she sat down again. ‘Thanks. We’ll definitely need to take a download of these, but we can arrange for you to come into the office to do that. Don’t delete anything.’

  Singh put his hands together on the table. ‘The obvious implication here is that these two were involved somehow with the video you’ve talked about. You said you reported it?’

  ‘My colleague did, to the transport police. They were looking into it.’

  The two men shared a look that said bloody clowns. ‘We’ll speak to them, see how far they’ve got. They might have a line on who these two are. We’ll need a copy of the footage too, obviously.’

  ‘Course. I can send that to you.’ She locked her phone and put it on the seat next to her. ‘What about Paulina Dobriska? I tried to report her as a missing person, but I didn’t have any details at the time.’

  ‘Do you have reason to suspect she’s missing? The Facebook aspect is very troubling, but we can’t rule out the possibility she’s been hacked.’

  ‘She hadn’t shown up for work and her neighbours hadn’t seen her, as of a few days ago.’

  ‘Have you checked since?’

  There was no accusation in his voice, but she flushed anyway. ‘I haven’t had a chance.’

  ‘Okay. Give me her details and we’ll look into it.’

  Lydia recited Paulina’s address. ‘There’s a neighbour across the road, Mr Siddons. He saw two men watching her house.’

  Wheldon glanced at Singh.

  ‘I know how it sounds,’ Lydia said. ‘Neighbour with too much time on his hands and all that. But speak to him. Please?’

  ‘What number is he at?’ Singh said.

  ‘I’m … I don’t know. He came up to me in the street.’

  Wheldon looked up from his pocketbook as if she was talking about fairies. ‘No problem, we’ll find him and have a word. Have you been to hospital, Miss Wright? It’s always worth getting checked over.’

  ‘I’m fine, honestly.’

  Singh pinched his lips and looked away.

  ‘Are you still planning to cover this story, Miss Wright?’ Wheldon said.

  ‘I don’t know. I’m still trying to deal with it all.’

  ‘Of course. What I wanted to say was that these are clearly dangerous individuals. I’d caution you to leave this with us from here on. I don’t want to worry you unnecessarily, but what you’ve described is a very serious situation.’

  Singh was watching her and she couldn’t read his expression.

  ‘I’d also advise you take extra care for the next few days at least, especially at night. If you see them again, or anything at all that makes you suspicious, dial 999. I’ll ask one of the local PCs to check in on you too.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The two men stood up, Wheldon taking his business card from his pocket. ‘I’ll be in touch to arrange a follow-up, but if anyone tries to contact you through the same Facebook account, call me soon as you can. The same if you think of anything else that might be pertinent, even if it seems like nothing.’

  ‘I will.’

  Wheldon moved to the door but Singh rested a knuckle on the tabletop. ‘One thing: you said the man that helped you was wearing a suit?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  Wheldon turned to him before he could answer. ‘You thinking he passed through the Tube?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s worth a look. Another CCTV job. We’ll probably need you to review the footage.’ He nodded at Lydia. ‘Thanks again.’

  CHAPTER 33

  Stringer woke up to a message from Milos. He was disorientated; the living room, sunlight streaming in. He couldn’t remember lying down on the couch and he was still in a shirt and trousers. He looked at the wall clock and saw it was only 6.30 a.m. The curtains were wide open, the reason it felt later in the day.

  He thought of his mum. Abi had messaged to say they’d moved her, but she was still unconscious. He’d seen her unwell over the years, but never like this. At seventy-nine and with a litany of chronic problems, he had no expectation she’d go on forever, but her deterioration in the last couple of months had been steep. As much as he wanted her to pull through, if this wa
s her time, then maybe it was better if she didn’t wake up. No good could come from a prolonged end, especially if it meant her being aware and having to face it.

  Or maybe that was just selfishness talking. He’d spent decades avoiding a reckoning – in the flesh and in his own mind; if she died now, the chance died with her.

  He opened his phone and read the message from Milos: Job done, nothing much – phone me.

  It’d been sent in the middle of the night. He hit the call button, expecting his mobile to be off, but it started ringing.

  ‘Yeah,’ Milos answered.

  ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Yo. So yeah, it’s done but it ain’t a lot for your money.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘First one you give me, that’s a false plate. It don’t exist.’

  The Saab at Brent Cross – as expected. ‘No record at all?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘And the other one?’

  ‘That one’s been reported stolen.’

  No big shock, but a let-down nonetheless. ‘From where?’

  ‘Somewhere out of town. One sec.’ Milos murmured something while he searched. ‘Yeah, Surrey. I’ll send you the details.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Pay me the usual way, yeah?’ He hung up.

  He put the phone on the table but it buzzed again immediately – an email from one of Milos’s dummy accounts showing screenshots of the Honda SUV’s entry on the DVLA system. It noted that the vehicle had been reported stolen to the police on the morning of the attack on Jamie Tan. The car was owned by a company, and the registered keeper was one Andrew Pitt. The address it was listed to was a place he’d never heard of, East Molesey – the same as where the vehicle was stolen from. He looked it up but it was miles out, almost to the M25 in southwest London. He tried Andrew Pitt as well, and got pictures of hundreds of men who carried that name.

  One step forward and five steps back. If the killers had taken the precaution of stealing a car, chances were they’d have ditched it at the first opportunity. Probably torched it or similar. He thought about what the differences in approach told him: false plates in one instance, a stolen car in the other. The former was harder to set up and took more time, the latter more opportunist. Seemed to confirm his impression that the attack on Tan was a rush job – but then why go all the way to Surrey to steal the car?

  He thought about ANPR, the licence-plate tracking system used by the police. There were scores of cameras in central London, but how many would there be as far out as Woodside Park? The notion became more fragile; even if they’d pinged a camera somewhere – and even if he could access that data – it wasn’t the same as knowing where they’d ended up.

  He went to the fridge and opened it. The only things inside were a tub of margarine and a half-full bottle of orange juice. He went to pour a glass but noticed the use-by on the bottle – three weeks out of date. He tipped its contents into the sink.

  He leaned on the counter, his thoughts fracturing. His mum, the old man, Abi, Ellie.

  Jamie Tan.

  He started combing through it all again in his mind, mining for leads he’d missed, but he found Lydia Wright creeping into his thoughts instead. He couldn’t pin it down at first – his protective instinct kicking in maybe; a transference of his feelings of helplessness elsewhere in his life. But as he stared at her last email on his phone, it dawned on him it was simpler than that: she was the only person with as much invested as him.

  Lydia came out of the Tube at Kentish Town and broke into a fast walk. She’d been to Tammy’s flat enough times to get there on autopilot. She still wasn’t settled on what she’d say. Part of her wanted to tear into her, get it all out of her system so they could try and get past it. Another part told her to let sleeping dogs lie. As angry as she was, it felt like she’d never needed Tammy more than now.

  She walked along Kentish Town Road, past the bus stop where she’d caught the N273 home after all the nights they ended up at Tammy’s for after-hours drinks. She turned off the main road, flanked by Victorian terraces on one side and a row of council blocks on the other. She carried on to the junction of Tammy’s street, picturing herself coming from the other direction, dead of night, drunken invincibility pierced by the isolation she used to feel approaching the estate. She took the turning, the big house the flat was attached to just in sight. She pressed on, coming to the side street with the entrance to Tammy’s—

  Police tape across the gate, a white tent covering the path and the front door. Lydia ran towards it. A community support officer wrapped her up in his arms, pulling her away, frantically saying something into her ear that wouldn’t register.

  CHAPTER 34

  Lydia went straight to the office when the police were finished with her. It’d taken forty minutes for a patrol car to show up and take her to the station to speak to the DS in charge of the case. She’d called Wheldon while she was waiting, but got his voicemail.

  A DS Littleton had taken her statement, his focus naturally falling on the attack at Brent Cross and Tammy’s appointment with the money-laundering guru in the City. Lydia told him what she could, her despair made deeper by the fact she hadn’t even got the man’s name from Tammy before she’d gone to meet him. Littleton was conciliatory, assuring her they’d find a way to identify him. After that she showed him Wheldon’s card and explained about her involvement with him and Singh, and Littleton promised he’d speak to them as soon as possible.

  Now she sat at her desk at the Examiner feeling numb. She couldn’t stop thinking about Tammy. The local paper reported the story online and the BBC website had picked it up. Neither article offered any speculation beyond the official police line. Neighbours spouted the usual platitudes, expressing shock that something like this could happen.

  The news hit the office like a missile strike: a suspicious death so close to home something the paper would always go big on. The two journos assigned to work it up were desperate to talk to her, along with a third who was writing the paper’s obituary. She gave them ten minutes, tearing up as soon as they sat down at her desk.

  Stephen called when he heard, apologising that he couldn’t be there because he was stuck at an outside meeting. He pleaded with her to go home, offering to send a car to pick her up. She told him she’d think about it, but for now the paper felt like the right place to be.

  Guilt and fear. Guilt and fear. Her anger at Tammy now a stick to flog herself with. Wondering if she could’ve done something to stop it. If it was something she’d done that triggered it. Maybe because they hadn’t got her at Brent Cross, they’d gone after Tammy instead. Maybe now they’d come for her again.

  It was pointless and self-destructive. Trying to divine motivation through the filter of her own grief and shock.

  Eventually she set about reading every word she could find on Jamie and Alicia Tan. It was the closest thing she could think of to a penance.

  The two of them remained enigmatic. She found nothing new on Jamie, and even reading the links she hadn’t had time to check that morning didn’t shed any additional light. As far as the Internet was concerned, he was a high-flying trader and nothing more. His Facebook was the only social-media footprint she could find. If he had much of a personal life, he didn’t splash it online.

  Information on Alicia was even harder to come by. She didn’t seem to have a Facebook account, nor Twitter nor Instagram. She had a LinkedIn profile that looked defunct – the latest entry had her in a position that ended in 2014. Until then she’d worked in various analyst roles, but in different banks to Jamie.

  But then she struck gold: an entry on the Companies House website showed Alicia was a director of Tan Financial – listed as a financial consulting business. The registered address was in Arkley – a small town it turned out was near High Barnet. Her fingers tingled over the keyboard as she glanced around the office, as if she was sitting on a secret. She looked up the address on Street View and saw it was a large house – not an of
fice, definitely residential. Not that much of it was visible; the driveway was gated and the house was concealed from the road behind a dense hedge. The kind of place where two successful bankers might live.

  The Tans’ house in Arkley was more imposing in the flesh. The tall pines lining the left-hand side kept half of it in shade, and the electronic gates at the front only added to the sense the place was off-limits.

  There was a video intercom mounted in the wall next to her and Lydia pressed it again. There was a Lexus parked on the far side of the driveway from where she stood, but no sign of movement from inside.

  Still no one answered. She looked along the road, deciding what to do. The place reminded her of the house near Hampton Court – Withshaw. Another empty mansion that hummed with a menace that made her want to walk away. The reminder brought a connection into view: she’d gone there to track the Audi that’d been seen watching Paulina Dobriska’s address; what if they were the same people at Brent Cross? It was a hard truth to consider – especially if the only difference was that she’d got away. She made a mental note to tell the police to check for an unfamiliar Audi Q7 seen in proximity to Tammy’s flat.

  The neighbouring house to Alicia Tan’s had a similar setup – gated drive, video intercom. She pressed the button and a woman’s voice answered. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Hi, I’m looking for your neighbour. Alicia Tan – have you seen her?’

  ‘I don’t know our neighbours.’ Click.

  It was abrupt enough to make her step back from the speaker. She looked along the street again, leafy enough to ensure privacy for all the houses. It felt like she was wasting her time. She crossed the road and tried one more – a smaller place than the others, diagonally opposite the Tans’. Unlike most of the houses, the driveway wasn’t gated so she walked right up to the front door. She rang the bell and waited, a dog barking inside.

  A woman opened it on a chain. ‘Hello?’

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, I’m looking for Alicia Tan. She lives over the road?’