Deadland

by William Shaw

  ‘Oh shit.’ She broke into a run.

  A police car parked outside the wine bar; everyone out on the street around it. An officer was holding a bandage to Peter Moon’s face. There was blood on his shirt.

  ‘What happened?’ she demanded, panting as she arrived, still clutching the unopened card.

  ‘She punched him in the face, didn’t she?’

  And now an ambulance pulling up. A paramedic jumping down from the cab. Peter Moon was saying, ‘I’m fine. It’s nothing.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Jill. She just went batshit.’

  ‘How’s Peter?’ someone was asking.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She stormed off home.’

  ‘He’ll live.’

  The party was over. People were drifting home.

  ‘Going to have to report it, aren’t they?’ someone was saying.

  She walked back to her car clutching the big pink envelope. As she buckled her seatbelt her phone buzzed. A text message: Fuck them all.

  PART THREE

  The Rattle of the Bones

  THIRTY-NINE

  At first Tap thought the shaking was just nerves. Frank had been stabbed, after all. To see the knife rise so smoothly into the depths of a man’s body; to see the blood creep into the white of his shirt . . .

  Tap felt so old. When he’d been younger, thirteen, fourteen, he’d seen a guy stuck with a knife. It had meant nothing to him back then. Now he was seventeen, it made him sick. Literally sick. He felt so cold. Everything was wrong. His whole body was starting to hurt; his eyeballs and his fingernails, everything. Walking from the flat, back towards their secret HQ, had felt like he was dragging a pallet of bricks behind him. The joints in his legs ached, Sloth pulling him on as he glanced over his shoulder for coppers.

  Tumour. Paralysed.

  Stumbling across the rough ground of the marsh was such an effort he felt like just lying on the damp earth and sleeping. And when he finally lay down, back in their hut by the old fireworks factory, teeth chattering, Sloth laid his hand on his head. ‘You’re burning up, bro.’

  ‘Feel bloody freezing. He stabbed him in the gut, bro.’

  ‘Frank may have been a creep but . . .’

  ‘He tried to save us, Slo. Told us to run. Jesus. I’m scared, Slo. Why didn’t you just tell him where we left the phone?’

  ‘Your uncle Mikey gave him the other one and he still killed him. Weird stuff happening, bro.’

  ‘Real scared.’

  There was something curiously comforting about being back in their secret place. ‘Don’t be afraid, Tap. I’ll mess that frickin’ guy up if we see him again. Guy won’t stand a chance.’

  Playground threats, thought Tap.

  ‘Comfy?’ Sloth looked at him, anxiously.

  ‘Kind of. OK if I rest a bit?’

  ‘Want me to read you a bedtime story?’

  ‘Bog off.’

  ‘I’ll keep a lookout, mate. Scout around.’

  Sloth disappeared; Tap lay on the hard ground, trembling, drifting in and out of sleep.

  At one point he thought he heard voices; men laughing. Was it the same day or the next? He wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure either whether he had dreamed them, or whether it was the noise of fishermen from the riverbank. It was so flat around here, sound travelled. What was far away sounded close. There was a big old guy they’d seen a couple of times, tramping up the path by the creek.

  Next time he woke, he tried to open his eyes, but couldn’t. They were crusted in weird gunk. He prised them apart, blinking in brightness, looking for Sloth.

  How long had he been gone? Hours? It was impossible to tell.

  It was practically dark when Sloth returned. ‘Get in that.’

  He threw something dark at Tap. Tap tried to focus on it, to ask what it was, but his throat had swollen. His neck felt huge. Sloth was untying his trainers, gently tugging them from his feet.

  ‘Jesus. Your socks,’ he complained. ‘They’re bad.’

  Then he was yanking whatever he had brought back with him over Tap’s trousers. A sleeping bag, Tap realised. Right then, it felt like luxury. Where had he got that from? Nicked it, most certainly. Where from?

  There were jumpers and shirts too; they smelt fresh and clean. Must have been filched from someone’s washing line. He bundled them up and lifted Tap’s head, wedged them underneath.

  *

  When he woke it was morning. He tugged crust from his eyelids and tried to focus.

  ‘Eat this.’ Sloth was holding out a chocolate digestive. Where had he got that?

  ‘Not hungry.’ His voice croaked.

  ‘You got to eat something, bro.’ Sloth lifted a water bottle to his lips and he drank. The water soothed his aching throat.

  ‘What’s that about your mum?’ asked Sloth. He had asked the question now several times, Tap realised. ‘You were talking about her in your sleep.’

  ‘He was at my house, the man. That’s how he found Frank. I called her, left a message. He’ll have done last-number-redial. Frank told him where he lived.’

  ‘Shit. So what about your mum?’

  And whether it was because he was ill, he didn’t know, but something inside him started to break. His chest was suddenly so heavy he could barely breathe.

  ‘Tap?’

  ‘Sorry, mate. I’ll be OK in a sec.’ He lifted his forearm and wiped his eyes.

  Sloth pushed Tap’s trainers to one side, making space on the concrete floor. He lay down alongside him and put his arm across Tap’s heaving frame. It only made Tap’s crying worse.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Sloth said quietly. ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘What if she’s dead? He must have been in our house. That’s how he found us.’

  Sloth tightened his arm around him.

  ‘We’re going to go back there, soon as you’re better. Promise. And we’ll get him. We’ll mess him up good. You and me, bro.’

  They lay together on the hard floor as the evening darkened again. It must have been low tide on the big river. He had got used to the pulse of life here, the times when the mud was exposed and the birds landed to feed. The noises they made were primitive and sorrowful.

  FORTY

  The Saturday after her birthday was always going to be a day off for Ferriter. Cupidi was grateful for it now. Chances were, Ferriter would be facing a misconduct hearing. If Peter Moon added a formal complaint to that, there was the danger that people would start to ask why Ferriter had punched him on the nose. Ferriter’s brilliant career with Serious Crime would be over.

  Cupidi drove alone to London and emerged out of the Blackwall Tunnel onto the dusty dual carriageway that led up to Victoria Park.

  The cafe by the boating lake was full of families with young children running and screaming. When Zoë had been four or five, she had brought her to places like this. Other parents had told her, ‘You have to remember this time. It goes so quickly.’

  When they had said that, Cupidi had felt guilty; she had longed to be able to hold a decent conversation with her child. And now there were days when she couldn’t have any conversation at all.

  ‘Alexandra Cupidi?’ said a voice.

  She looked round. ‘Devon?’

  He was tall and good-looking, dressed in running gear with a small backpack over one shoulder and, holding on to his hand, a serious-looking boy of about five who clutched a Star Wars lightsaber. ‘This is my son, Malik.’

  Malik nodded warily.

  She stood, but he still towered over her. ‘Coffee?’ she said. ‘Something for Malik?’

  ‘Just water please.’

  Malik said, ‘I want juice.’

  ‘Please,’ scolded Devon.

  Cupidi returned with a plastic bottle and a carton. ‘You live near here?’

  ‘All my life. Council flat up there.’ He pointed to the north edge of the park. ‘Imagine how popular I was when I told them I was joining the force. We still live up there with my mum.’<
br />
  While Malik sat at the small table sucking at the juice straw, Devon put his backpack down on the ground and pulled out a typewritten sheet.

  ‘Is that what you have?’

  ‘Not much,’ he said. ‘But two things stand out. Over the last twelve months alone, the Foundation paid approximately six million into Abir Stein’s account.’

  Cupidi whistled.

  ‘Just over four of that was shelled out to galleries and art dealers, right? Perfectly bona fide, that looks like.’

  ‘So this is the account he used to purchase artworks for the Foundation?’

  ‘Apparently so. So the first thing I would want to see is the paperwork from the Foundation. On paper, how much do they think they’re spending on the art from the galleries?’

  ‘I thought you said . . .’

  ‘What these accounts show is how much the gallery actually received. But it doesn’t tell you how much Abir Stein tells the Foundation they’re going for.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t understand what you’re saying.’

  ‘Because I said about four million had gone out to galleries and dealers. The remaining two million was paid out of this account to another that belongs to a company called River Deep. What’s going on gets clearer once you drill down into each transaction. On the eighteenth of December, 2018, the Foundation pays £867,000 into Stein’s account, see?’ Devon pointed to a column on his sheet, then moved his finger down the page. ‘Third of January, 2019, £653,000 is paid to PPLAR. That’s a gallery in Rio. All fine and good. And the same day, £214,000 is deposited into River Deep.’

  ‘The exact difference between what the Foundation paid and the gallery paid. Is that Stein’s commission?’

  ‘That would be a bloody substantial commission.’

  Malik paused from sucking at his juice and frowned at his father. ‘You shouldn’t say “bloody”.’

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ apologised Devon. ‘You’re absolutely right.’

  ‘So he’s skimming money off the top?’

  ‘I can’t say for sure, but that’s what it looks like to me. To River Deep. Kind of a deliberate joke name. Muddy Waters. Because River Deep are registered in St Lucia.’

  ‘Not for the sunshine, I suppose,’ said Cupidi.

  ‘My great-grandmother was from there, as it happens.’

  ‘Was she a banker?’

  Devon’s laugh was high-pitched and loud. ‘I wish. She was a nurse.’

  ‘So he set up River Deep to squirrel the money away?’

  ‘I tried to find out a little about River Deep, but there’s not much there. People who choose places like St Lucia do so because there’s a lot of corporate secrecy allowed there. On paper they have a single named officer, a director called Ernesto Baines, but if he’s even real he probably doesn’t even know what his name is being used for. River Deep is a shell company, designed to conceal the beneficial owner.’

  ‘Which is Abir Stein?’

  ‘Honestly? Hard to know for sure. To me it looks like what’s been going on here is a simple transfer-pricing scam. Charge one price, declare another. It would not be the first time this has happened in the art market, believe me. Stein may be the beneficiary but you’ll only find out when you discover who’s taking out the cash at the other end. That would be the harder part to track down. Presumably they’re taking cash out of St Lucia, but that’s easier said than done. I can see how they’re putting it in, but there’s no trace of how they’d be taking it out.’

  ‘Could he have been doing backhander deals with the galleries?’

  ‘Unlikely. The Foundation has bought from all sorts of sources. No chance of them all being in on it, I’d say, but each transaction comes with a sum set aside for River Deep. I bet Stein will be making a tidy sum from it, even if it’s just commission.’

  ‘Not any more. He’s dead.’

  ‘Oh.’

  A girl on a pink bike lost control, falling sideways onto the thin mud at the edge of the lake. As she stood, she let out an enormous wail. Malik looked up from his juice, concerned, as the girl’s mother ran from a nearby table to comfort her.

  ‘This is just twelve months’ data,’ said Devon. ‘How long has the Foundation been running?’

  ‘Five years.’

  ‘If they’re taking two million a year out of that, that would be a hell of a lot of money. Like I said, what you’ll need is to get the paperwork from the Foundation, but I guess Stein’s been invoicing them for one sum and paying the galleries another.’

  ‘And nobody noticed?’

  ‘It’s a business that relies on trust, and I presume the Foundation trusted him. Though by the sound of it, somebody didn’t.’

  Cupidi thought for a while, looking at the serious little boy at the table next to her. He finished his juice. ‘I want to go home now.’

  ‘As you see, I have to go,’ said the policeman.

  ‘Thank you so much.’

  ‘Like I said, I enjoy it.’

  Standing, she shook Devon’s hand with a kind of awkward formality, and then, with greater solemnity, Malik’s, and watched the two of them walk away together across the park.

  *

  From there, Cupidi drove south, to the big grey cube of a warehouse in East London; the Crime Scene Investigator was already there, waiting at the reception; a young man, heavy for his age, who sweated at his armpits, even though the day was cool.

  ‘We have to wait for the representative of the Foundation to arrive,’ Cupidi explained.

  The coffee they were offered was surprisingly good.

  ‘You any idea where the rest of the body is yet?’ asked the officer. ‘Not going to be in here, is it?’

  ‘It would be nice if it was, wouldn’t it? There’s CCTV of our suspect, carrying a holdall. He must have had the arm in there, but you’d have to be ambitious to bring a whole body in here.’

  ‘So where do you think it is?’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  Cupidi picked up her handbag and pulled out an envelope. There were three images. A man in a long overcoat with a large hat, with a dark canvas holdall in one hand, walking across the tarmac outside the facility and two fuzzier photographs of the same man inside the building. Only on one of the screenshots was the bottom of his face visible.

  ‘A homburg, not a hoodie,’ said Cupidi, thinking of the two boys.

  ‘What?’

  ‘By keeping his head fixed on the floor in front of him, the man effectively used the hat to obscure any sight of his face. He must have parked on the road outside or caught the train. There’s an overground station just beyond the gates –’ she pointed to the east – ‘so we’ve no number plate to go on.’

  ‘It’s a funny thing to do.’

  ‘Isn’t it? He was sending someone a message, but I have no idea what the message was, or who he was sending it to.’

  They both looked round as Zoya Gubenko swept into the room in a plain pale turquoise dress and white heels. ‘Shall we get this done?’ the woman said tetchily. ‘It’s my day off.’

  ‘Whereas as public servants, we don’t get days off, obviously,’ muttered the CSI. Cupidi decided she liked him after all.

  She watched the security man check her details. The man who had impersonated Abir Stein would have gone through the same process, though the man on the desk was making a show of doing it with particular care today.

  Entering the heart of the facility, their footsteps resounded as they were led down grey metal-walled corridors, turning a corner, mounting a staircase, until they reached the Foundation’s private vault.

  ‘It’s all climate-controlled in here to one degree Celsius,’ explained the young man from EastArt.

  ‘And nobody has been to this room since the visit of Abir Stein at the start of April?’ asked Cupidi.

  ‘Not according to our manifest. Nothing has left or entered the room.’

  He unlocked the door with a key and pushed it open. Like the corridors, the room was a uniform g
rey. Paintings were stored on rows of wire racks that slid out on runners. Sculptures and other objects were crated and arranged around the room. The CSI was putting on gloves, stepping into the protective suit.

  ‘Do you see anything unusual?’ Cupidi asked Gubenko as they peered around the door frame.

  Gubenko looked into the private vault. ‘No.’

  ‘Where would the jar have been kept?’

  ‘With the other pieces. There.’ She pointed to the corner where several large wooden boxes were stacked, each carefully labelled.

  The CSI was already at work, spraying the floor with some chemical.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it then,’ Cupidi said.

  ‘How long’s he going to take?’ asked Gubenko pulling out her phone.

  ‘Long enough for you and I to have a chat.’

  Gubenko turned to Cupidi. ‘What would you want to talk to me about?’

  Cupidi strode ahead, not waiting for Gubenko to follow her.

  ‘Can’t you tell me now?’ she called.

  ‘I think it would be better to converse in private, don’t you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said, less certainly, trotting to catch up.

  Cupidi had a rough idea of the geography around here from when she’d been a copper in London. After standing in this enclosed box, she hankered for open space.

  Gubenko caught up with her at the lobby. ‘I have a lunch appointment. In Pimlico.’

  ‘This way,’ said Cupidi, heading outside. A few hundred metres away she could see a concrete bridge. That would be the River Lea, she guessed, the old waterway that flowed through East London to the Thames. Gubenko caught up with her again.

  ‘How long has Evert Miller’s marriage been in trouble?’

  Gubenko stopped walking. ‘What?’ she said.

  Cupidi turned to look at her, repeated the question.

  ‘Where on earth did you get that one from?’

  Cupidi said, ‘How long?’

  ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this from a policewoman. You’ll understand that there are always rumours that swirl around Evert and Astrid. But it’s a lie, obviously.’

  Cupidi turned and walked on. She could let it simmer. Ross Clough had come back from Long Hill full of himself. He had seen something there, she was sure. Only a guess though.