Deadland

by William Shaw

  ‘Welcome.’ Cupidi looked at Moon. For Ferriter’s sake she had agreed to pretend she didn’t know anything about what had happened between them. She hated the idea of pretending anything; she was never any good at it.

  ‘You’re looking for those lads, then?’

  ‘Wish the CCTV from the shop was better, though. Been trying to see if Children’s Services have any idea who they are.’

  ‘They’ll be local, I reckon.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He looked like a man who had had the wind knocked out of him.

  ‘Ferriter’s going to stay working with me for a day or two.’ She watched his face.

  ‘Yep,’ he said quietly. ‘Fair enough.’

  She turned. Ferriter was holding up a bit of paper. She called across the room. ‘Apart from those emails he sent to Zoya Gubenko nobody’s seen him for weeks. Complete radio silence. We got an address. He’s in London. He’s got a flat in the Barbican.’

  Cupidi looked at her watch.

  She could contact the Met and request someone go round to knock on his door, but that might take all day. Instead she looked up the Barbican Estate Office and made a call to them.

  Within half an hour a man from the flat’s management office was on the phone. ‘Not answering, just like you said. Neighbour said he hasn’t seen him for several weeks either.’

  ‘You can’t just take a look inside, obviously.’

  ‘Nope,’ said the man whose name was Erich. ‘But I took a peek in his mail locker downstairs. Stuffed.’

  ‘Smart thinking. So it looks like he hasn’t been home in a while?’

  ‘Confidentially, he’s missed a service charge payment too.’

  When she ended the call she spent a minute just staring at the empty surface of the desk. At last, a sense they were getting somewhere. Abir Stein hadn’t just stopped answering the phone. It looked like he had vanished.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Cupidi and Ferriter parked in the car park beneath the great saw-toothed towers of the Barbican, then spent a while following the coloured lines that had been put down on the walkways in an attempt to make the huge estate navigable.

  They found Cromwell Tower, then, standing outside the lobby at the base, the flat number and beside it the name ‘Stein’. Unsurprisingly, there was no answer when they pressed the buzzer, so they called the Estate Office and the man who Cupidi had spoken to earlier, Erich, asked them, ‘Have you got the warrant?’

  ‘Yes.’

  It took him five minutes to get there; a crisp young man, in shoes that shone. Cupidi handed him the envelope and he opened it and looked at it briefly. ‘This way to Mr Stein’s apartment then,’ he said, pressing the button to summon the lift. It seemed to take an age. ‘Sorry. One of the elevators is being serviced.’

  The tower formed a triangle, each floor with three flats on it. They knocked on the door of Stein’s flat, number 383, called out, ‘Police officers, Mr Stein. We have a warrant to enter your premises,’ but as they had expected, there was no answer.

  A middle-aged man emerged from 381, peering round his own door.

  ‘Sorry. Not dressed yet,’ he said with a smile, though it was late afternoon. ‘I work from home.’ He wore red slippers and green paisley pyjamas.

  ‘Do you know Mr Stein, who lives here?’

  ‘I spoke to someone at the estate office earlier who was asking about him. Was that you?’ He addressed Erich. ‘Is he OK?’

  ‘Do you know where he is?’ asked Cupidi.

  ‘Like I said, I’ve not seen him for weeks. Sometimes he travels.’

  Erich cautiously opened the door. ‘Mr Stein?’ he called.

  The flat was empty, of course. Erich watched, frowning as Cupidi and Ferriter pulled on plastic gloves.

  ‘Perhaps you can fetch Mr Stein’s post for us?’ said Cupidi.

  The man hesitated, as if reluctant to leave them alone in a resident’s apartment.

  ‘When we spoke, you said the mailbox downstairs was full? Presumably you have some kind of pass key?’

  ‘Right,’ Erich said, hesitantly. He watched them peer inside into the hallway. ‘I’ll be going then.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Ferriter, mouth wide as she stepped down the hallway and into the living room. ‘This place is bloody gorgeous.’

  A polished dark wood floor bounced light up onto walls that were hung with art. Cupidi’s father had loved contemporary art. She recognised what she thought was a Lucian Freud print; there was another by Keith Haring, surrounded by other paintings and prints she didn’t recognise. A couple of works by people you were likely to know were a subtle way of hinting at the value of the other pieces on display.

  Ferriter stood in the middle of the room and turned, slowly. ‘I so want to live here. This is so classy.’

  Looking out towards the balcony was a spherical white sixties fibreglass chair, upholstered in orange. Beyond the balcony, the window looked out onto the strange geometries of the City’s skyline; the Shard, the Gherkin and the Walkie-Talkie.

  ‘It’s like my dream place.’

  Cupidi went to the kitchen, opened the fridge door, saw the litre of milk which had long turned sour, smelt the stench from a piece of fish and closed the door straight away. Cautiously she looked inside again, one hand at her nose, and began to examine the contents. The fish packet had a use-by date of early April.

  ‘I can smell that from here,’ called out Ferriter from the living room. The flat appeared to have been unoccupied for weeks. So where was Mr Stein?

  Cupidi returned to the living room to find Ferriter sitting in the ball chair, spinning it round. ‘Sorry. Had to try it. No sign of a phone anywhere. No wallet yet. No keys, neither. So do you reckon he’s done a runner?’

  ‘Check the bathroom. See what he’s taken from there,’ said Cupidi.

  There was a delicate French Empire desk, a secretaire. Cupidi pushed back the dark wood of the lid, releasing the hint of old smells it had captured over years, tobacco, paper, and ink. Inside, to the right, there was a neat pile of headed paper: Abir Stein: Curator, Art Dealer.

  An expensive pen. A watch. She pulled open the tiny drawers at the back. More pens, nibs, business cards, odd receipts, clips. A small neat wrap of cocaine. A collection of bank statements sat in the middle of the open desk. Were they waiting to be filed, or had someone gone through them recently? Cupidi noted the account number, then replaced them. And then, in the bottom drawer, lying on its own, a passport.

  Cupidi picked it up and started flicking through it. A man in his late thirties. Not good-looking exactly, and surprisingly serious in his photograph. Thin lips and rather feminine eyes.

  ‘His washbag is here,’ called Ferriter.

  The passport was full of stamps. In the last year alone he had visited Moscow, Abu Dhabi, Kuala Lumpur, Rio, Shanghai, St Petersburg, New York, Cape Town. But wherever he was now, he hadn’t taken it with him. Nor, apparently, his toothbrush.

  ‘We’re going to need DNA,’ she said. ‘Toothbrush, razor. Bag them all.’

  ‘Oh.’ Ferriter’s voice came across the hallway. ‘Do you think he’s . . .’

  ‘It’s a distinct possibility, yes.’

  ‘But I thought you said that Zoya Gubenko had had a couple of emails from him?’

  ‘How do we know they’re actually from him?’

  There was no landline in the flat, so no answerphone. Cupidi looked around. No laptop or mobile phone visible either. Had he taken them with him, wherever he’d gone? But if he had gone, it didn’t look like Stein had intended to be away long. For the first time since being assigned to this case, she was beginning to feel a sense of vindication – the darkly guilty thrill of her work – because perhaps it wasn’t just an arm now. He wasn’t here. And he still wasn’t answering his mobile phone.

  ‘Check the bedroom,’ called Cupidi. ‘I’m going to talk to the neighbour.’

  ‘It doesn’t look good, does it?’ said Ferriter, emerging from the bathroom with a handful of eviden
ce bags. She dropped them onto the table and then sat in the white chair again. Like an adolescent on a playground ride, she pushed with her feet against the dark wood floor and spun around one last time.

  ‘Bedroom,’ ordered Cupidi.

  Reluctantly, Ferriter extracted herself from the chair.

  *

  Cupidi went back out and knocked on 381’s door again. He seemed to take an age opening the door. ‘Sorry. Lock’s jiggered. Been meaning to do something.’

  This time he was in jeans and a pale jumper. ‘Thought I better finally face the day,’ the man said. He was a writer, he explained. ‘Don’t normally get dressed till after the sun goes down.’

  His flat was messier; his living room looked south, towards St Paul’s. In the middle sat a huge desk, an iMac struggling for space in amongst piles of papers, manuscripts and books. An elderly Yorkie slumbered on a chair.

  She asked for his name, and when he gave it, Cupidi half wondered if she recognised it from the covers of one of those books her mother read.

  ‘A couple of people have rung my bell asking if I’d seen him. It’s annoying but the flats are organised so you can tell which numbers the neighbours are. I’m 381, he was 383, next number up is 391 so it’s pretty obvious that I’m on the same landing as him.’

  ‘What kind of people?’

  ‘Foreigners, by the sound of it. Abir moved in very cosmopolitan circles.’

  ‘From where?’

  ‘I don’t know. There were always some Russians, I think. All sorts. When he’s here he always has quite a few visitors.’

  ‘What sort of visitors?’

  ‘Always well-heeled. He was clearly rich himself. Friends. Business. Both, really. He knows a lot of very powerful people.’

  ‘Lovers?’

  ‘No. He was pretty asexual, I think. One guy . . .’ He tailed off.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Before he went I saw one fellow coming out of the flat. Like, early in the morning. Seven o’clock or something. Which was weird, because I always thought of Abir as very self-contained. Maybe just a friend staying over. I don’t know. Sorry. I’m not a very good witness.’

  ‘Can you describe the man?’

  ‘Jesus . . . Sort of medium. Sort of . . . I can’t actually remember.’

  ‘Light complexion. Dark?’

  The man tugged at his ear. ‘Honestly? I couldn’t tell you. It was the time of day I noticed, that’s all. He didn’t say hello or anything. Just kind of turned his back and headed for the lift.’

  Cupidi’s mobile rang. She saw it was the caretaker and excused herself. ‘Funny thing,’ Erich was saying. ‘But somebody’s emptied Mr Stein’s mailbox.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It was full earlier when I checked, I promise you, but . . .’

  She was about to ask how that could have happened when she thought she heard someone shouting. ‘Quiet,’ she snapped.

  The man, watching her silently, looked bewildered.

  It came again, clearer this time. ‘Help!’

  Ferriter’s voice. Cupidi ran back down the hallway and tried to yank the door open, but it wouldn’t give.

  ‘Sorry. Lock,’ said the man. ‘Jiggered. Let me.’

  ‘Police. Help!’

  Twisting the lock, tugging the handle uselessly, Cupidi pressed her eye up to the peephole in the door in time to see that Stein’s door was wide open. And a shadow moving rapidly across the landing floor.

  THIRTY

  The man in 381’s hands replaced hers on the lock and handle, pushing her aside.

  ‘There,’ he said, opening the door.

  ‘Jill?’ yelled Cupidi.

  Just as she approached the door opposite, Ferriter staggered out, a line of blood streaking down the left side of her face, dripping onto her pale shirt. Jesus.

  ‘He was in there, all the bloody time.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sorry, boss. He was hiding in the bedroom. Jumped me. I let him get away.’

  Cupidi looked round. ‘Where is he now?’

  Ferriter looked a little dazed but she was standing. The wound looked superficial. Cupidi spun around, thinking, looking, taking in details. ‘Description,’ she shouted. ‘What does he look like?’

  ‘Didn’t see him. He got me from behind. Knocked me over. Hit my head on the bedstead. Bastard.’ She raised her hand to the cut and winced.

  Cupidi was thinking fast. A triangular lobby; four doors, three lifts. The man had said one of the elevators wasn’t working. All three were stationary. One was at the tenth floor, the other two appeared to be at the ground floor. They were at the thirty-eighth floor, four floors below the top of the building.

  Where would someone have run to?

  The writer emerged from his flat, took one look at Ferriter and said, ‘Oh my God. What’s going on?’

  Cupidi ignored him. To escape, you would not go up, would you? Nor would a fugitive wait for an elevator to arrive; it could take too long. That shadow she had seen crossing the floor.

  Ferriter was thinking exactly the same thing. ‘The stairs,’ she said.

  They both pushed open the door to the stairs and leaned over the metal banister to peer down a triangular concrete stairwell.

  The view was stomach-churningly precipitous, a repetitive pattern of monochrome greys that seemed to continue downwards for the entire height of the building. Cupidi listened, heard nothing, tried to look for motion among the shadows, saw none.

  Quick. Think.

  Thirty-eight floors would take an age to run down. After a few floors – when he was sure he had put a safe distance between himself and anyone who could be chasing him – wouldn’t he have stopped, re-entered the landing area and called a lift? That would be the fastest way to get out of the building, surely?

  Cupidi returned to the landing where the neighbour was still standing. Her eyes flicked back up to the indicator lights above the lift. Sure enough, one of the two on the ground floor had started to move upwards. Only two of the shafts were working. Either someone had called one from the lobby and was now travelling up, or the attacker himself was trying to descend.

  Ferriter reappeared from the stairwell too.

  ‘Do you need a sticking plaster?’ the neighbour asked.

  Cupidi dodged past him and pressed the call button too. The elevator on the tenth floor was still stationary – somebody holding the door open? – but the other was now rising fast. Because she had called the lift, it would pass whoever called it and travel here first and then descend back down. As long as the lift on the tenth floor remained stationary.

  It seemed to take so long to arrive, but finally the doors pinged open. The compartment was empty as Cupidi stepped in. Ferriter followed her. ‘He called the lift?’

  ‘Think so.’

  ‘So whatever floor this stops on . . .’

  ‘Maybe.’

  The lift sped down three floors and then slowed rapidly. It was stopping at the thirty-third floor. Just about as far as a man could have run in the few moments that had passed.

  ‘Ready?’

  They pressed themselves back on either side of the doors to try and make the most of the element of surprise.

  The doors slid open. Lit from behind, they made out the shadow of a figure standing at the door. Cupidi held her breath, ready to spring.

  *

  It was a woman who stepped into the lift, elderly, wearing large white-framed sunglasses and holding a yellow wicker bag, the type you might take to the beach on a day out.

  The woman looked at the bloodied constable, then at Cupidi; her red-lipsticked mouth opened wide in shock.

  ‘Did you call the lift?’ Cupidi demanded.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Was it you who pressed the call button?’

  ‘Obviously,’ she whispered.

  ‘Damn,’ said Cupidi, holding the lift door open, then turned to Ferriter. ‘I’ll go on to the bottom. You do the stairs.’

  Ferriter ran stra
ight out of the lift and was pulling open the door to the emergency stairs when the lift doors slid closed.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked the woman, as the lift started to descend again.

  ‘Did any man pass you while you were waiting?’

  ‘He didn’t pass me.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The man. He was waiting with me. Just now.’

  Cupidi’s eyes widened. ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘Just before the lift arrived, he left. I think he must have forgotten something.’

  Damn. He had figured out what Cupidi was trying to do, and run for it. Maybe he’d waited and called the other lift? Or returned upstairs? But if she took this lift to the bottom, it would at least mean that she would be at the ground floor before him.

  But the lift slowed again and stopped on the third floor, not at the ground floor. The elderly woman got out. Before she realised what was happening, the lift started to rise again.

  Damn, damn, damn. Cupidi cursed her stupidity. She had assumed the woman had been going down to the lobby, but nobody had ever pressed that button and now the lift was rising again, fast. She was wasting valuable time trying to make it to the doors of the building.

  This time it stopped at the eighth floor.

  A woman stood in the doorway with two young children, girls with identical coloured ribbons in their hair. ‘It’s my turn to press the button, Mummy.’

  ‘No, it’s my turn. She did it last time.’

  Cupidi barged her way past them and pressed the CLOSE button, then the LOBBY one. Both girls burst into tears.

  *

  The girls were still crying when the lift finally reached the lobby, the mother still glaring at Cupidi as she tried to calm them.

  ‘Naughty lady.’

  ‘Yes. She is.’

  Cupidi was scanning the lobby. Everything seemed surprisingly quiet and normal. The carpet under her feet was soft. The high ceiling seemed to mute the complaining children’s voices.

  ‘Tell her off, Mummy.’

  ‘I’ve a mind to.’

  Shit. She had lost him. Then, through the glass doors, Cupidi spied a young woman, sitting on the ground, surrounded by bags of shopping, oranges spilling out around her over the walkway.