by Vicky Newham
I unpinned the photo and passed it to her. ‘This is the guy we think may have killed Patrick.’
Nicola studied the image and I wondered how she felt, staring into the face of the person who’d killed the man she clearly loved deeply. ‘I have no idea who he is.’
‘Are you sure?’
She peered again. Squinted.
‘Does he look familiar?’
She shrugged. ‘No.’ She put her hand out to steady herself. ‘This man killed Patrick?’
‘We think so. Who took this photograph? Where was it taken?’
‘I must have taken it. Amanda never came to Saturday Soup. I wouldn’t let her. It’s the charity hot food thing at Waterloo every week for the homeless. Volunteers cook food and bring it down. I help them. It was a way of making sure that Patrick got a hot meal at least once a week and I could keep tabs on him. The volunteers talk to the men and women, trying to help them get fixed up with hostels, GP services, dentists, showers. I still help out because I know how tough the streets are.’
‘Did the same people come every week?’
‘A lot of them were regulars, yeah.’
‘Can you get me the contact number of the Saturday Soup coordinators? I need to call them. One of them may know where this guy lives.’
*
Ten minutes later, I’d got through to Phil Harmond, one of the Project Coordinators at Saturday Soup. I’d taken a copy of Nicola’s image on my phone and emailed it to him.
‘Yeah. I do recognise him,’ Phil told me over the phone. ‘Can’t miss that ugly scar down his neck, can you? Seen him recently too and gave him short shrift. His hair’s shaven now and I don’t think he’s still staying in hostels. I think he’s living in someone’s flat. Name’s . . . hang on . . . oh shit, what is it now? Kyle. That’s it. One of the guys kept calling him “Kylie” to wind him up, and he went apeshit. A whisker away from head-butting the chap. What’s he done, by the way?’
I explained. ‘Does anyone know where this flat is?’
‘No. But one of the women mentioned that he wasn’t homeless. She was petrified of him. Said something about drugs and the Ocean Estate. That any help?’
‘Definitely. Thank you.’ Hopefully Alexej had got an exact address from New City College by now.
‘I’ll get this picture out to as many services and people as I can then. See if anyone can help you with a proper address.’
I rang off. The team would be relieved. After years evading custody and justice, Kenny Hayes’ days were numbered. In the short time since Friday, he’d been behind four deaths. I was sure of it. Not to mention Indra’s unborn child, and little Abbie, who we were still desperately trying to find. I couldn’t wait to get him into an interview room and court.
And a prison cell.
Maya, 10.30 a.m.
‘You’re through to the incident room at Limehouse Police Station. DI Rahman speaking.’ I gestured to Alexej to record the call. ‘How can I help?’ The caller had insisted on speaking to me.
‘Hello, yes.’ It was a man’s voice. ‘My daughter saw something in a mums’ Facebook group about that missing girl? Abbie Turner?’
I waved my arm in the air to attract Dan.
‘The thing is, I think I’ve heard a child crying in the flat next to mine. I didn’t say anything at first because I thought it was a cat, but I’m sure it isn’t and Julie, that’s my daughter, she said that the girl’s been without water since Friday and that if I thought it was a girl I had to tell the police . . . ’ The words came flooding through the receiver. ‘And if it is that little girl, I’ve heard the noise since Friday and—’
‘Slow down a minute.’ I had to make sure he didn’t hang up before I got the address. ‘You did the right thing, calling in. Thank you. Let’s start at the beginning. Where are you ringing from?’
‘One of them new blocks on the Ocean Estate in Stepney. Coley House.’
It was one of the posh blocks I’d seen with Dan. I checked on the telephone system that the man’s phone number had come up.
‘Not sure who the flat belongs to but two fellas have been staying there for the last six months. Brothers, I think. Right dodgy and all. One of them’s got an ugly tattoo down his neck.’
It had to be Kenny and John. But what was Abbie Turner doing with Kenny Hayes?
The man took a gulp. ‘Look, you need to get a wriggle on. If it’s her in there, I can’t hear her anymore. I haven’t heard a peep since yesterday. For all I know, she might already be dead.’
Maya, 11.30 a.m.
The helicopter was hovering over the recently developed part of the Ocean Estate. It was a rare sight these days, making the buildings shudder. The drone of the engine was deafening, and weighed down on the sprawling mass below. We had to move quickly before Kenny did a runner from the flat he’d been living in.
Firearms officers had the battering ram in position. ‘Three, two, one, go,’ the voice ordered. At the exact moment they rammed the door of the flat, the helicopter switched its siren and lights on. The door crashed open.
‘Armed police!’ The team leader was in front. ‘The building is surrounded. We are armed and ready to fire.’ They swarmed in, a parade of blue and black.
From inside the flat, a startled dog let out a series of rapid-fire barks.
I’d been told to wait for the all clear, so I stood back, with the paramedics, holding my breath, praying Abbie was still alive.
‘Get the dog. Someone get the bloody dog,’ the ARU team-leader yelled.
I strained my ears for shots inside the flat. Please may Abbie be safe. And we needed Kenny Hayes and his brother alive too.
‘I repeat. You’re surrounded. Stay where you are, both of you. Hands on your head. Against the wall.’
I held my breath.
Shouting.
A girl screamed.
‘Get off her. Taking your filthy hands off my daughter.’
His daughter?
The dog’s bark was like a machine gun.
‘Put your hands on your head, Mr Hayes. It’s all over. You are surrounded. Keep your hands where I can see them and send the girl over to me. NOW.’
There was a loud crash.
More screaming.
Then, ‘All clear. Over.’ The voice came through my earpiece. ‘Suspects apprehended. One minor, and we’ve got the girl. Repeat. The girl is alive, but she needs emergency treatment now. Send the paramedics in. Over.’
Thank goodness. We could finally bring Kenny and his brother to justice. We just had to hope that Abbie Turner wasn’t too far gone.
Maya, 12.30 p.m.
Back at the station, the atmosphere in the incident room was jubilant. Abbie Turner was alive – although critically ill in hospital – and we’d finally got Kenny Hayes and his brother in custody. But I couldn’t shift the feeling that several pieces of the jigsaw were missing. A succession of ideas paraded through my mind. We were fairly certain that Ali had meant to torch Rosa Feldman’s newsagent’s but set the soup shop on fire instead. We also believed that Kenny and his brother had killed Patrick Ryan and Ali Kousa. But we didn’t have a handle on what any of their motives were to complete the picture and assist with charging. Ali wasn’t alive to tell us, and Kenny Hayes was hardly going to cough unless it meant him worming out of culpability or reducing his likely sentence.
Jackie was waiting at my desk, looking elated. ‘We’ve got the van that Ryan was transported in.’
‘You’re kidding?’ I took my coat off and deposited my phone and keys on the desk.
‘A couple of planning officers from the council were there to assess the development of the block where the squat is. They’d seen the media coverage of the raid on the flat, so when they stumbled on Kenny’s van, they called in. As we suspected, it was dumped where the CCTV isn’t working.’
‘Bloody typical. They’ve let the place rot for years and now a kid’s been killed there, they decide to develop it.’ I swore under my breath. ‘Let’s hope th
ey find some blood and dog hair in the van.’
‘Your wish has just come true. Dougie’s team are doing the forensic tests now. He says it’s a blood-bath in the back so I think that’s a given. The chassis number is registered to Hayes, so there’s no doubt it’s his.’
As I absorbed the news, my thoughts kept sliding back to motives. ‘Something’s not right, Jackie. We’ve missed something, I can feel it. Why would Kenny care about torching Rosa’s shop? Sure, they’re involved with LfA, but it’s hardly a high-profile property – even if the fire grabbed headlines, why start with the shop? What was in it for them?’ I began logging into HOLMES. Until— ‘Wait a minute. We’ve been looking at this wrong.’ I grabbed up my car keys and phone, and pulled my coat off the back of my chair.
Jackie was staring at me.
‘I’ve had an idea. If I’m right, it fills in the missing pieces.’ I checked the office clock. ‘I won’t be long.’
Curiosity was written all over Jackie’s face.
I was out of the incident room before she had time to ask where I was going or mutter about procedures.
*
Twenty-five minutes later, I was in the rear garden of Rosa Feldman’s newsagent’s. I watched the person I’d known since I was four tug handfuls of bindweed and brambles from the ground. The midday sun slanted on the panes of the shop’s first-floor windows.
Tomasz had his back to me and must’ve heard me approach as he spun round. ‘Hi,’ he said, and he lobbed the weeds onto a growing pile by the fence. ‘She needs a gardener. The constant up-keep is too much for her.’
For a moment, I caught a boyish look on his kind features.
‘D’you remember when we were kids, and I’d order stock for the shop when Dad was out? Mum would cover for me and tell Dad that she’d put the order through.’
‘The Black Jacks?’
‘It drove me nuts that Dad didn’t give a shit about the shop. He’d sit around with his mates, playing cards, drinking, smoking, chewing the fat, while Mum worked her butt off behind the counter.’ He picked up a damp Rizla packet and a rusty can. ‘I wanted to help because the old man wouldn’t, but he couldn’t stand me “interfering”, as he called it.’
Even then Tomasz had identified a problem and taken matters into his own hands.
‘I saw the news.’ He was pulling at brambles again, wrenching at the tangles of thorny branches, using his foot as leverage to snap their lengths. ‘That boy set fire to the soup shop.’
‘Yes. It’s very sad. He made a dreadful mistake – we don’t quite know how yet – and ended up killing Simas and his female friend.’ I studied his tells. ‘What we don’t understand is why a ten-year-old kid would torch a shop.’
‘Is that why he was killed? For torching the shop?’ Tomasz’s voice was casual, as though he was having a chat with a pal in the pub. He suspended his handful of weeds mid-air while he waited for me to answer.
‘We believe so.’ Was I imagining it or had he flinched?
He knew that his mother’s shop was the intended arson target, and that we’d ruled him out as a suspect because, unlike his sister and brother-in-law, he wasn’t short of money. I shouldn’t have given him the information about Ali’s murder, but I’d planned what I needed to say, and my gut instinct told me that the human angle was key. The next bit wasn’t going to be easy. ‘Do you know someone called “Kenny Hayes” by any chance?’
‘I should imagine the whole country does. He’s been plastered over the news for the last few days.’ He carried on pulling up weeds. ‘Has he really been recruiting kids to crime?’
‘Yes.’ He’d taken the hook. ‘We’re fairly sure he’s responsible for the death of Patrick Ryan and Ali Kousa, the young boy, and we know he was involved in the arson at the soup shop.’
‘Really?’ Tomasz dropped the weeds on the pile and leaned against the fence.
I nodded. ‘Except, a bit like Ali, I can’t figure out what his motive could be.’
‘No idea, I’m afraid.’ He tried to make his voice sound detached. It was the sort of thing you might say if someone asked your opinion.
‘I expect it was financial. Money’s the only thing that matters to Hayes, and Ali was sadly in the same situation. If Hayes said he’d pay Ali to start the fire, I’m sure it was a pittance and he probably never handed all the cash over.’ I paused, not taking my eyes off Tomasz. ‘But Kenny Hayes wouldn’t come cheap. And it got me thinking about who would have that sort of money.’
‘Yes, I see.’ He was kicking at the dirt with the tip of his shoe, and moving the soil around in a circular motion with the sole.
‘And it reminded me of a few things that you and Agnieszka said about your mum.’
‘Oh?’ His face drained of colour, and he spoke with a hint of a stammer. ‘Like what?’
I kept my voice steady. Calm. ‘It’s obvious how much you care about her and—’
‘Of course. She’s my mother. She’s seventy-five and she’s on her own now.’ Business-like was back again. ‘She adored Dad but her life with him wasn’t easy. She made excuses for him all the time, and rarely complained, and she’s struggling even more now because Dad let the shop go.’ He took out his phone and checked the time.
‘When you said you’d tried everything to help her, and had given up, I wondered whether that was true.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Are there things you ruled out, things you considered?’
His brow crunched into a deep frown. ‘Lots of things. I bought her a house, for God’s sake. I’ve given tenants notice to quit, so she had somewhere warm and dry to move to. She wouldn’t agree to any of it. Her GP told her she was jeopardising her health, continuing to live at the shop, and she even ignored him.’ He was shaking his head. ‘It was as if she gave up when Dad died. Like she didn’t care if she dropped down dead in that bloody place.’ He coughed. ‘It’s not easy watching someone you love suffer.’
‘Like I say, no-one doubts how much you care about her. And you’re hardly short of money so you’d have nothing to gain by forcing her out of the shop . . . ’ I let my words sink in. ‘And I’m sure you wouldn’t have intended her to get hurt in the fire . . . ’
I felt Tomasz’s eyes searching mine for clues as to whether I was being serious.
‘Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?’ he finally asked.
‘I’m wondering whether you paid Kenny Hayes to set fire to your mother’s shop, to force her into moving out without having to make a decision or feel bad.’ If I’d known, all those years ago, that I was going to have this conversation with Tomasz . . .
He used his foot to turn a plastic bottle crate on its head and sank onto it.
‘Did you know Kenny was going to recruit Ali for the job?’
He was silent.
‘And somehow Ali set fire to the wrong shop, and then Kenny killed him.’
Silence.
‘Tomasz, please tell me I’m wrong.’
‘Is that what you’d like to hear?’ His words were so quiet I barely caught them.
‘Of course.’
He was leaning forward, his head in his hands. ‘I wish I could say that.’ He rubbed the stubble on his chin and seemed to be considering what to say. ‘It was a stupid idea. I told him to make sure that Mum was not in the shop. She was never meant to get hurt. I don’t know how that kid got the wrong shop. I can only think that Kenny gave him the wrong information and—’
‘That kid had a name. His name was Ali Kousa, and he probably misunderstood the message because he didn’t speak good English.’
‘Maya—’ He let out the sigh of someone deeply burdened. ‘I told Kenny to make sure that he did exactly what I asked. He was to do it himself. No-one was to be in the building or near it. It was to be a small fire, in a contained area, enough to force her to move out, but it wasn’t to put anyone in danger or destroy the upstairs where her belongings were.’ He was shaking his head, bewildered.
&nb
sp; ‘Surely you knew that Kenny never does anything himself?’
‘No. I’ve realised I don’t really know him at all. I was stupid to trust him. Simas, the woman and Ali? They’re all dead because of me, and all because I thought this would help Mum.’ With that, Tomasz put his head in his hands.
I was looking at a truly broken man.
Maya, 2.30 p.m.
An hour later, I entered the custody suite with Jackie. Samples, prints and swabs had been taken from Kenny Hayes, and he’d been escorted into an interview room with his solicitor, Mike Taylor.
Hayes was sitting across the table from us. He was leaning over, scraping grease out of a join in the wood with his thumbnail and tracing the movements with his gaze. From the top of his head, scalp-flakes drifted onto his hands and the table.
‘That’s the caution over with.’ I took a deep breath and swallowed down the anger which had been welling up for days. It wasn’t just Simas, Kelly, Patrick and Ali. It was Indra, Abbie, Amanda and Nicola. And in many ways Ali’s murder upset me the most. ‘Tell us about this man.’ I slid a photograph across the table. ‘For the benefit of the tape, I’m showing the suspect exhibit number 3725.’
Hayes sneaked a look at the image. Curled his lip and sniffed. ‘No comment.’
‘You see, several eyewitnesses have testified that you’ve been living in a flat belonging to him on the Ocean Estate for around a year. The new, luxury ones, where we arrested you. So, would you like to try that question again? Do you recognise him?’
‘No comment.’
‘Mr Taylor, could you make sure your client knows that it may harm his defence if he later relies on something which he hasn’t mentioned during questioning. I’m sure you understand the middle part of the police caution, but does he?’
The solicitor leant towards Hayes and delivered a few curt sentences to him.
‘Yeah, I know him,’ Hayes snarled.
‘By what name?’
‘Tomasz Feldman.’
‘Have you been paying to live in his flat?’
Hayes scoffed. ‘You from the Housing Benefit Office or something?’
