by Tony Parsons
Snezia Jones had an East European accent. Mrs Lyle squeezed her hand.
‘Has she been dating—’
‘Jess doesn’t date,’ Mr Lyle said. ‘She had a fiancé, OK? Lawrence. And he died, OK? Sweet, sweet boy. An English teacher. Lawrence was killed in a hit-and-run accident six months ago. Some bastard knocked him off his bike. Never stopped. Never caught. You lot couldn’t help us there. OK, Detective?’
I looked at the baby in his arms and I nodded.
‘I can tell you now,’ he said, ‘my daughter doesn’t have bitter ex-boyfriends or lovesick psychos hanging around.’ For the first time, the old man’s voice broke with emotion. ‘Her life is her child. And her work. This makes no sense. This has been done by some stinking pervert—’
‘It’s just as Snezia told you,’ Mrs Lyle said. ‘Everyone loves Jess.’ She stood up and indicated her grandson. ‘We really have to get Michael home. I’m sure you can imagine what we’re going through.’
They went off to another room to collect their grandson’s clothes and I sat down on the sofa next to Snezia.
‘How long have you and Jessica lived together?’
‘Two years. We’re both dancers. We met at an audition in the West End. Neither of us got the job but I saw her again in the shoe shop we all go to. Freed of London. You know it?’
I nodded. ‘Covent Garden. Where they sell dance shoes to the pros.’
‘That’s it. We went for coffee. Her fiancé had just died. I think she was lonely. And I was lonely too.’ She looked around the apartment. ‘And it’s hard to afford a place like this on your own.’
‘We will need some recent photographs.’
For the first time, she smiled.
She reached for her phone. ‘I have many lovely photographs of Jess.’
And Snezia did have a lot of photographs of the pair of them, together and apart. Snezia and Jessica looked like two young women enjoying life in London. At the gym and a dance studio. In restaurants and bars. In the park and on Hampstead Heath. And Jessica Lyle smiling her secret smile on quiet nights at home, curled up with a book and the baby.
‘Everyone loves Jess,’ Snezia said again, dreamy with exhaustion, stunned with shock.
And then there was a different kind of photograph. Snezia in a bikini and high heels, upside down on a silver pole.
‘Oh, that’s just me at work,’ she said, scrolling quickly on.
‘You said you’re both dancers.’
‘We’re different kinds of dancers. Jess was a ballet dancer until she tore her cruciate ligament in her knee. Now she teaches – the little ones, you know. I’m more of an exotic dancer. Or is it erotic?’
I shrugged. It was probably both.
I could hear the parents in the next room. Their voices were raised in argument.
The mother was wrong. I could not imagine what they were enduring. I believed that I would tear my own skin off if someone took my daughter Scout.
But some things you can’t truly imagine until they happen.
‘Anyone threatening Jessica?’ I asked Snezia. ‘Harassing her? An ex-boyfriend who didn’t want to move on? Just some guy in the neighbourhood who took a shine to her?’
‘As Jess’s mum told you, she had a fiancé. Michael’s father. He died. And my friend – well, she is still in mourning.’
I handed back the phone.
‘She borrowed your brand-new car? You must be very good friends.’
‘Her car is in the garage. I lent her my car. That’s nothing. We are more like sisters than flatmates.’
‘Did she send you any message on her way home?’
She showed me.
Coming home. Please wait up xxx
‘Why did she want you to wait up?’ I said.
‘Jess hated entering a quiet house.’
I stared at the message for a long moment, trying to find meaning in the five words and three kisses. But when nothing came I thumbed the button at the bottom, taking the screen to the home page.
And under the time and date at the top of the phone’s screen, there was a photograph of Snezia with a man whose face I knew. A much older man. Perhaps sixty to her thirty. Arm in arm, as if pretending to dance. Grinning for the camera.
Harry Flowers.
What I knew about Harry Flowers was what everyone knew.
He was the Henry Ford of the drug industry, starting out in the Eighties, one of the first career criminals to see that recreational drugs were going to move away from middle-class bohemia – students, musicians, artists – and enter the mainstream, and that the popularity of methylenedioxymethamphetamine – MDMA for short, commonly known as Ecstasy, or E – meant that every kid in every provincial club was going to be getting off their face on a regular basis.
‘Is this you and your boyfriend?’ I said. I could not keep the hardness out of my voice.
She nodded.
‘Harry is a legitimate businessman,’ she said, as if repeating a line that she had been taught, and with just a trace of defiance. ‘Waste management. Recycling old cars.’
And maybe it was even true. Nobody deals drugs for forty years. They get done in or banged up long before then. Perhaps Harry Flowers had made his money and changed his ways. But I struggled to believe it.
The parents came out of the bedroom with bags of clothes and a sleeping baby.
‘Do you have children, Detective?’ Mrs Lyle said.
I stood up to face her.
‘Yes, ma’am. Just the one.’
‘Boy or girl?’
‘I have a little girl, ma’am. Eight years old. Scout.’
‘Like the girl in To Kill a Mockingbird?’
‘That’s where we got her name.’
‘Then you understand how we feel.’
She gave me a hug.
‘Find our daughter for us,’ she whispered. ‘Please.’
The old man looked at me as if I had done nothing yet that deserved a hug.
And as I was walking back to Whitestone I remembered the most famous story about Harry Flowers.
Back in eighties, height of the second summer of love, Harry Flowers had a business partner he fell out with. The friend became a rival. They both saw how big E was going to be, and how it was going to change the drug industry, and the kind of money there was to be made. Harry Flowers went to visit his rival with one man and a can of petrol. The rival was sitting down to Sunday lunch with his extended family. Harry Flowers and his man tied the rival to his chair at the head of the table and then they emptied the can of petrol over the rival’s family.
All of them.
The wife. The grandparents. The four children.
Then Harry Flowers lit a match.
He didn’t burn them. Because he did not have to.
And that was how Harry Flowers became the Henry Ford of the drugs industry.
Whitestone was waiting for me at the top of the hill. The brand-new car was being loaded on to the back of a lorry.
‘Jessica Lyle’s car is in the garage,’ I said. ‘So the flatmate, Snezia Jones, loaned her this one for the night. And Snezia, who is some kind of stripper, is dating Harry Flowers. If dating is the right word.’
She stared at me for a long moment. ‘The Harry Flowers?’ she said.
‘And it seems serious,’ I said. ‘She has Harry Flowers on her phone wallpaper.’
Whitestone’s eyes were wide behind her spectacles. ‘Let’s hope Harry’s wife doesn’t find out how serious they are.’
‘Who hates him?’ I said.
‘That would be a long list built up over many years,’ Whitestone said.
I filled my lungs with that sweet Hampstead air.
And I smelled the vodka again and I understood that I had got it wrong. It was my boss who had been drinking vodka on a work night.
No dogs, said the sign at the entrance to the Eden Hill Park estate, but I could hear the dogs barking beyond the trees, our dogs, the K9 unit; they were out there now and all over the u
nbroken darkness, looking for a body.
‘You know what happened here, don’t you?’ Whitestone said.
I nodded.
‘Someone took the wrong girl,’ I said.
2
In a quiet corner of the Black Museum of New Scotland Yard, an ancient 20-litre petrol can sits rusting inside a glass cabinet.
Thirty years ago, the can’s metal would have been bright red, but passing time has turned it a dark, mottled brown. If you look closely, the words Shell Motor Spirit are still just about visible. Unlike most of the exhibits in the Crime Museum of the Metropolitan Police – to give the Black Museum its proper name – the old petrol can is exhibited without reference to a specific crime. It is displayed with only the briefest of notes.
Shell Petrol Can, recovered from the Kentish Town home of Patrick Mahone, July 1988.
‘No victim, no offender and – officially at least – no crime,’ said Sergeant John Caine, the curator of Room 101, where the Met remembers the capital’s crimes of the last 150 years. ‘No complaint was ever made and no charges were ever brought and no conviction was ever made.’ He smiled at me in the museum’s permanent twilight. ‘It’s like one of those T-shirts they flog to tourists,’ he said. ‘Harry Flowers invented the modern drug industry and all I got was this lousy petrol can.’
‘Then the story they tell about Harry Flowers is true,’ I said.
‘It’s a tale that has grown in the telling,’ John said. ‘There’s no dispute that Harry Flowers and this Patrick Mahone were fighting for control of the Ecstasy market back in the Eighties. They were childhood friends and then they had a falling out. Harry took pride in his quality control, but his old mate was cutting the stuff with baby powder, rat poison, whatever dodgy white powder he could get his greasy paws on. Harry took exception to this deception of the great British drug-taking public. He sold the good stuff and Mahone was spoiling the market by flogging the fake, sub-standard stuff. And we know that Harry Flowers and one of his favourite thugs burst into Mahone’s home one Sunday lunchtime carrying a 20-litre can of petrol. But I’ve heard that after dousing the Mahone family with petrol, Harry was strolling around with a lit cigarette – and I don’t know if that’s true. Whatever his little human flaws, Harry Flowers is not mad. And I’ve also heard that after emptying the can on Granny Mahone, Mrs Mahone and all the little Mahones, Harry and his helper sat down at the table and enjoyed a traditional Sunday roast with Yorkshire pudding and all the trimmings. And I don’t quite buy that.’ John glanced at the old petrol can inside the glass case. ‘As I say – a tale that has grown in the telling. But I do know that Harry Flowers built his fortune by threatening to burn a man’s family alive.’
‘I looked for Flowers on the PNC,’ I said. The Police National Computer is the database used by law enforcement agencies across the country. ‘But I couldn’t find him there.’
‘Flowers has never done time,’ John said. ‘And he doesn’t have a criminal record. Flowers fed off the criminal class because he knew that villains can’t go to the law. So you’re never going to find Harry Flowers on the PNC. And beyond this old petrol can, you’re not going to find much of him in here.’
I followed John to the exhibit on the old family firms who ran London half a century ago.
Eddie and Harry Richardson south of the river.
Paul and Danny Warboys in West London.
And Reggie and Ronnie Kray in the East End.
‘Flowers was the first of the new breed,’ John said. ‘The first generation who didn’t think the Krays were role models for growing gangsters. Flowers knew where all the Kray brothers had died – not just Reggie and Ronnie, but their older brother Charlie, too – and they all died in jail. That wasn’t for Harry Flowers.’
‘But Reggie Kray didn’t die in jail,’ I said. ‘Reggie died in the honeymoon suite of a hotel in Norwich. Some kind-hearted judge granted his last wish not to die inside.’
‘You think Reggie Kray would have been allowed to put one foot outside that hotel in Norwich, Max?’ John grinned. ‘A honeymoon suite can be a jail too.’
‘Snezia Jones called Harry Flowers a businessman,’ I said. ‘The flatmate of Jessica Lyle. The girl who calls Flowers her boyfriend.’
John chuckled. He was a sergeant with three decades of hard service on his face and not a gram of soft flesh on his body, one of those teak-tough old-timers who are the backbone of the Met.
‘Every little scumbag I ever nicked thought he was some kind of businessman,’ he said. ‘Reggie and Ronnie Kray, Paul and Danny Warboys, Eddie and Harry Richardson – they all thought they would have done quite well at the London School of Economics. Given a little bit of social mobility, they all believed that they had the entrepreneurial spirit, even when they were nailing some poor bugger’s earlobes to the carpet. So you think someone abducted the wrong woman? They meant to take this Snezia Jones?’
I nodded. ‘I can’t see it any other way. Jessica Lyle is a single mother who teaches dance. As far as I can tell, she is still grieving for her late fiancé. There’s no reason to abduct her, beyond a random sexual assault. And of course, that’s always a possibility. But it becomes a lot less likely when you learn that Snezia Jones is some old gangster’s bit on the side. And that Jessica Lyle was driving her car.’
There were excited voices in the corridor. A group of young uniformed cadets down from Hendon were waiting for their tour of the Black Museum. As much as a repository of its own history, the Met uses Room 101 as a training facility for future police officers.
‘What happened to Patrick Mahone?’ I said.
‘Mahone had a nervous breakdown after Harry Flowers paid him that visit. He tried to make a comeback ten years later – diversifying into cocaine – and got busted for trying to sell 10 grams to an undercover cop from Scotland Yard. He died of pancreatic cancer in a cell in Parkhurst.’
‘So I’m not looking for Patrick Mahone.’
‘You’re looking for someone big and stupid enough to kidnap Harry Flowers’ mistress,’ John said. ‘It’s either an old grudge – and there are plenty of those where Harry is concerned – or it’s a new rival. And there are always plenty of those, too.’
‘I heard that Harry Flowers was into waste management these days,’ I said, remembering what Snezia had told me. ‘Recycling old cars.’
‘Yes, he’s very green, our Harry,’ John chuckled. ‘Concerned about the planet. Lays awake at night fretting about what plastic bags are doing to the dolphins. And it’s true he’s got some yard in Kentish Town where they mash up old cars and ship them off to a landfill in China.’
‘You think he’s still dealing?’
‘No idea,’ John said. ‘But he is still a big name in the recreational drugs industry – even if he’s retired. That kind of fame doesn’t fade in the criminal class. So the kidnapping could be the work of some young firm who sees Harry Flowers as a dinosaur ready for extinction and fancies his name on their CV. Or it could be some foreign outfit trying to set up shop in London. You can see why some aspiring young gunslinger would want to knock Harry off his perch. Flowers has a very nice life and he has enjoyed it for many years. He sits out there in his Essex mansion with his posh wife Charlotte and his two grown-up kids, and he comes into town to talk to his financial advisers, and to have lunch and to bounce on the bones of his mistress. And I am sure this Snezia Jones is a very attractive young lady. Harry Flowers’ girlfriends always were. So a lot of villains want what he has. But there’s somebody else who hates Harry Flowers …’
I waited. We could hear the excited voices of the young cadets waiting to be let in. The Black Museum is the most difficult room in London to enter. I knew senior detectives who had never been inside these cool, hushed, darkened rooms. And for the young cadets, their time was almost here.
‘We do,’ John said. ‘The law. We hate Harry because he never did the time he has earned. And we hate him for an even better reason. We hate him because back in the day there were cop
pers in this very building who were willing to take Harry Flowers’ shilling – and ended up going down for it. I don’t know what happened to Jessica Lyle. I don’t even know what side of the law butters Harry’s bread these days. But if you have some reason to hate Harry Flowers, then you are standing in a very long queue.’ He paused and rubbed his chin. ‘This Jessica Lyle – is it true she’s Frank Lyle’s daughter?’
I nodded. ‘Did you know him?’
‘Our paths crossed a few times. We have had a few words. Frank Lyle always wants things done his way.’
‘Yes, that’s him. Would he have made the kind of enemies who would want to hurt his family?’
‘Every cop alive makes the kind of enemies who would want to hurt their family. Do you think his daughter is already dead?’
‘The kidnappers must know by now they took the wrong woman,’ I said. ‘From their point of view, it’s probably too dangerous to let her go. They’re in a state of panic. Their plan went wrong. And they want it to be over.’
‘That poor girl,’ John Caine said. ‘And her poor kid.’
We stared in silence at the rusting petrol can. The voices in the corridor were getting more agitated. I glanced at my watch.
‘I know you’ve got a ten o’clock, John,’ I said. ‘But can I just see her for a moment?’
He patted my shoulder. ‘Of course, son. And you take all the time in the world.’
There is a large glass cabinet in those dimly lit rooms, a permanent and ever-changing exhibit that is being added to every year, a display case dedicated to the police officers of the Metropolitan Police who have died in the line of duty. OUR MURDERED COLLEAGUES, it says.
A century and a half of photographs, the oldest grey with age, all of the faces captured in official photographs, some of them smiling with the self-conscious shyness of the reluctant sitter, some of them deadly serious, a few grinning with amusement. All of them blissfully unaware that they would die in the line of duty, yet all of them aware of the risks. Some of them were not yet out of their teens, some of them were at the far end of their career, just one bad break away from retirement. They are all male officers for the first hundred years or so, but then more and more women officers start to appear in the middle of the last century. It is a simple and powerful memorial for the brightest and the best who gave their lives during the course of what they left home thinking was going to be a normal working day. There is not much on them, for their number is far too many. Just rank, name, age and cause of death. And she was there. And there was the smile that I had loved, and I still loved, and I will love for the rest of my days.
