Suddenly at Home

by Graham Ison

  ‘Not necessarily,’ I said. ‘Given that a lot of those women’s names are foreign, I think we might be able to swing the whole lot on to the Trafficking and Prostitution Unit out at West Brompton.’

  ‘There are also the names you know about,’ Chance continued. ‘Dirk Cuyper and Anna Veeltkamp, who together with Pim de Jonker and a list of others are all marked down as “Opposition”.’

  ‘Yes, we saw that when we opened the laptop,’ said Dave. ‘It looks as though the Belgians were trying to muscle in on Downs’s empire and Cuyper was the first casualty in this turf war. It looks as though our list of suspects is narrowed down to one of Downs’s associates, guv’nor.’

  ‘Yes, but who?’ I asked. ‘If Henry Mortlock is right about the accuracy of the shooter, it could be the same person who killed Cuyper and Downs. It was probably unfortunate for Ram Mookjai, the manservant, that he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

  ‘Perhaps the fingerprint search in Belgium will turn up something,’ said Dave hopefully. ‘In the meantime, guv, I must get these rounds across to the ballistics guys.’

  ‘Tell ’em it’s urgent, Dave.’

  ‘I will … if there’s anyone there, sir.’

  Despite Dave’s pessimism about finding anyone in the ballistics department on a Sunday, I was agreeably surprised to find a report waiting for me when I arrived at Belgravia first thing on Monday morning.

  I walked out to the incident room where my team was waiting for the day’s tasks to be allotted.

  ‘We have good news of a sort from ballistics,’ I began. ‘The rounds taken from the bodies of our three victims were fired from the same weapon.’

  ‘The cause of death was lead poisoning, then, guv?’ said DC Sheila Armitage.

  ‘The examiner at the ballistics lab,’ I continued, once the laughter had subsided, ‘states that the rounds were of 9mm calibre and most likely fired from an automatic handgun.’

  ‘Blimey!’ said Dave. ‘He’s going out on a limb.’ It was a comment that raised another laugh.

  I left DI Len Driscoll to send the team out on the various enquiries that were outstanding. We still needed to locate or get better particulars of some of the names that appeared on the two laptops we’d seized. And Wilberforce had at last located the other three names contained in the report that Pim de Jonker claimed had been sent to him by Dirk Cuyper.

  However, in view of what we now knew of de Jonker and Cuyper, principally from what Nicola Chance had culled from Downs’s laptop, it was possible that those three might be worth looking at after all.

  The most likely suspect was Renée Hollande, apparently also known as ‘the Duchess’. Wilberforce told me that after extensive enquiries from various useful informants he had finally found a West End address for the woman. But Dave was going to be disappointed: when interviewing a woman associated with prostitution it was advisable, nay imperative, to be accompanied by a woman officer.

  ‘We’ll have a trip up to the bright lights of the West End, Kate,’ I said.

  ‘Shall we take a Job car, guv?’

  ‘What? And park it in Soho, where someone can pinch it? No, we’ll take a taxi.’ Given the present state of lawlessness prevailing in Britain thanks to swingeing budget cuts, it had become a new sport to steal police cars or at least let down the tyres.

  It came as no surprise that the address we were seeking was above an establishment that catered for the lewd and licentious and advertised all-day live sex shows.

  Standing in the doorway of this den of perverted taste was a tired-looking forty-something, trying-to-look-younger, female attired in a red basque, black fishnets – now considered passé even in Soho – and very high heels. This ensemble of unsuccessful allure was completed by a top hat and a silver-topped cane. Her job description required her to persuade the passing gullible to venture inside. And she’ll succeed: these naive punters flock to London from the shires in the hope of seeing what they firmly believe to be ‘life’. All that will happen, though, is that they’ll be ripped off and go home poorer in pocket and no richer in anything else save the wickedness that prevails in the West End of London.

  However, whatever other talents this vision of loveliness may have lacked, ability to suss out the Old Bill was not one of them, and she made no attempt to inveigle us into her tawdry establishment.

  The door to the flat we wanted was an unremarkable door with only a house number on it, and from my years of experience I knew that ‘the Duchess’ would be the sort of prostitute whose clients booked her in advance. I also knew that it is a myth to assume that call girls, or however you like to describe them, worked only in the evenings. Some of the women I’ve encountered told me that they always kept office hours, and that daytime business was much more profitable. It all depends on the clientele, I suppose. Not that I knew whether Renée Hollande was a night worker or a day worker.

  Bearing all that in mind, I rang the bell of this unpretentious establishment and waited. Kate stood to one side, where she wouldn’t immediately be seen by whoever answered the door.

  ‘Can I help you?’ The woman who stood in the doorway was a peroxide blonde, probably nearer sixty than fifty. She was squeezed into a short black dress that was clearly a size too small for her overweight figure. She was wearing black tights and teetered on black patent shoes, which I imagined would be painful to walk in.

  ‘I’ve come to see the Duchess,’ I said.

  This announcement evoked no surprise. ‘Have you an appointment?’ she asked in an Estuary accent that seemed to indicate roots in Essex, possibly Billericay, where, it is rumoured, they put ice cubes in their red wine.

  ‘No, I don’t.’ I displayed my warrant card, at which point Kate emerged from beside the door.

  ‘Oh Gawd! I s’pose you’d better come in.’

  Having showed us into a rather tatty sitting room that probably looked much better in the evenings with subdued lighting, the woman went to fetch ‘the Duchess’.

  A few moments later a woman entered the room, her satin robe open to reveal tart’s underwear as she came towards us. Probably the wrong side of thirty, she possessed a good figure, was about five ten in height, with shoulder-length Titian hair, and could’ve fitted the description of the woman Lydia Maxwell had seen entering Cuyper’s apartment on two occasions. Her face betrayed a common allure, and she had already applied cosmetics – a little too much lipstick and eye shadow – which seemed to indicate that she was a day worker. On the other hand, she may have been one of those women who never greet visitors without first ‘putting on a bit of slap and a dash of lippy’, as a friend of my mother used to describe it.

  ‘Dominique said you are from the police, n’est-ce pas?’ The woman spoke with a French accent that was good enough to have been genuine, or it may have been well rehearsed. But I very much doubted that the overweight ‘maid’ who answered the door had been named Dominique at birth.

  ‘Are you Renée Hollande?’ I asked.

  ‘Oui.’ The woman sat down and waved a hand languidly to indicate that Kate and I should take a seat. ‘What is it that you want? I don’t think either of you wants to go to bed with me, so why are you ’ere? You are from the Vice Squad, non?’ She emitted an intolerant sigh, as though she had been visited frequently by its officers and glanced pointedly at her wristwatch. ‘I do ’ave an appointment at a quarter past eleven.’

  ‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Brock of the Murder Investigation Team at Scotland Yard and this is Detective Inspector Ebdon,’ I said.

  ‘Oh Christ!’ Renée Hollande sat up sharply, all pretence at a French accent disappearing instantly. ‘Who’s been topped, then?’

  ‘Richard Cooper. How well did you know him?’

  ‘I’ve never heard of him,’ said Renée, a little too quickly, and looked away.

  ‘Well, he knows you, mate,’ said Kate. ‘What’s your real name, by the way?’

  ‘Irene Higgins.’

  ‘How many times w
ere you nicked for tomming before you got yourself set up here, Irene?’

  ‘A few. Can’t remember the exact number. But you should know. It’ll all be written down at West End Central.’

  It was strange that Colin Wilberforce hadn’t connected Renée Hollande with Irene Higgins when she’d been identified by fingerprints. The only explanation I could think of was that for some reason the name Renée Hollande didn’t appear as an alias on Irene Higgins’s file. Wilberforce must’ve traced her through some of his contacts at West End Central police station. It was a slip that Kate for one wouldn’t let the otherwise highly efficient Wilberforce forget.

  ‘Where were you on Friday the twenty-sixth of July around midday, Irene? That’s a week ago last Friday.’

  ‘Good God, I don’t know.’ She turned her head slightly and screeched, ‘Ma!’

  Moments later, the woman previously known as Dominique appeared in the doorway. ‘What is it, love?’

  ‘Have a look in my appointments book, Ma, and see if I was working on …’ Irene stopped and turned back to Kate. ‘What date was that?’

  ‘Friday the twenty-sixth of July, around midday.’

  ‘See if I had a john that day, Ma. In fact, you’d better bring me the book.’

  ‘Is Dominique your mother, Irene?’ asked Kate.

  ‘Yeah. Pays to keep it in the family. Her real name’s Eileen.’

  When Irene’s mother reappeared she was holding an A4-sized diary, which she handed over to her daughter.

  ‘I was entertaining a Japanese gent by the name of Takahiro Kawano,’ said Irene, stumbling over the pronunciation. ‘He spent a couple of hours getting laid and forked out a grand.’

  ‘I’m in the wrong bloody job,’ muttered Kate. ‘And where is Mister Kawano now? Is he staying in London?’

  ‘Nah,’ said Irene, ‘he’s gone back home to Japan. Told me he lives in a place called Kinki, which comes as no surprise after what he got up to.’

  ‘How very convenient,’ said Kate. ‘And I don’t suppose he gave you his exact address there?’

  ‘No, he never. And before you ask, he paid cash, not credit card. I don’t think that was his real name anyway.’

  ‘Supposing I was to say that I have a witness who claims she saw you letting yourself into Richard Cooper’s apartment with a key, Irene. What would you say to that?’ It was a wild attempt on my part to con an admission out of the woman. Lydia Maxwell said she hadn’t seen the woman’s face, so putting Irene Higgins on an identification parade wouldn’t stand a chance. But it was worth a shot.

  ‘I’ve never been to North Sheen, and I don’t even know—’ Irene stopped suddenly. ‘Oh bugger!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘I think we’d better start again,’ I said.

  ‘All right, so I did know Dick Cooper and we had a fling.’ Irene looked across the room, with what I suspected was a fabricated dreamy expression on her face. ‘He liked dressing me up in some kinky gear what he kept there. Mind you, it cost him.’

  I had great difficulty in believing all this. There was no doubt that Irene Higgins, alias Renée Hollande, was a well-established West End prostitute, and looking at her I should think she was good at what she did. But she had to have had a very good reason for travelling to North Sheen for what she described as ‘a fling’. That would offend her business sense, and these women are very good at business, believe me. To coin an apt phrase, they don’t miss a trick.

  ‘OK, let’s have the real reason now, Irene,’ I said. ‘For a start, who’s your benefactor?’

  ‘How d’you know about him?’ Irene’s eyes opened wide.

  ‘I haven’t always investigated murders,’ I said. ‘A lot of women in your line of business have a backer. Or a pimp.’ I took a wild guess. ‘And Victor Downs was yours, wasn’t he?’

  Irene Higgins remained silent.

  ‘I’ll take that as a yes, then. You see we found your name on a list in Cooper’s possession.’ I had no intention of telling this woman exactly how it came into our possession or mention the fingerprint identification, at least not yet. ‘What was it all about, turf war?’

  ‘Yeah!’ Irene let out a sigh. ‘Cooper was a Belgian, you see. His name was Dirk Cuyper. And Victor was convinced that he was part of a gang of sex slavers bringing girls in from Romania and God knows where else. Well, Victor don’t like people muscling in, especially when they’re foreigners. He asked me to get to know Dirk and see what I could get out of him. Well, I did manage to find out quite a lot before he sussed me out.’

  ‘Did you have a key to his place?’ asked Kate.

  ‘Oh yeah. I’d got me feet well under the table there, or I s’pose I should say in his bed.’

  ‘You know that Victor Downs has been murdered, I suppose, Irene?’ I said.

  ‘What?’ Irene’s face registered shock. ‘When did that go down?’

  ‘The day before yesterday.’

  ‘Who done for him, then?’ she asked, having made a quick recovery.

  ‘We don’t know yet, but we will.’ I turned to Kate. ‘Read out those other names we found on Downs’s laptop, Kate.’

  ‘I know that Anna Veeltkamp was one of Dirk’s lot,’ said Irene, when Kate had finished. ‘But I’ve not heard of any of the others.’

  ‘Finally, what about Bernie Stamper, Sidney Ellis – known as the Caretaker – and Charlie Chatterjee?’

  Irene’s face dissolved in a smile. ‘You’re having me on. Did you make them names up?’

  ‘No. I’ve already interviewed Bernie Stamper in Stone Mill nick.’

  ‘Don’t tell me he knew me.’

  ‘No, he didn’t, but we found your name with those other three on the list that Cuyper had, that I mentioned just now.’

  Irene Higgins shook her head. ‘I’ve never heard of any of ’em,’ she said.

  That tended to reinforce my original view: that Cuyper had made them up to appease Pim de Jonker, or whoever his paymaster was, to justify the expense of living the high life in London.

  We took our leave of Irene Higgins, otherwise known as Renée ‘the Duchess’ Hollande.

  ‘What d’you think, Harry?’ asked Kate as we were waiting to find a cab.

  ‘She could have murdered Cuyper, Kate. In fact, if she was working for Downs, who thought Cuyper’s lot were trying to steal his trade, the motive’s perfect. And I don’t like her alibi. Too convenient to claim she was having it off with a passing Japanese visitor who has now returned to Japan. But we haven’t got enough to nick her. Yet.’

  ‘But they weren’t her dabs on Cuyper’s safe, Harry.’

  ‘It doesn’t mean she didn’t have access to it, Kate. She could have gone into it without leaving prints. After all, she’d have known that her prints were on record and it would have been useful if Wilberforce had found that out before we paid her a visit.’

  FIFTEEN

  It was getting on for lunchtime on Tuesday, and Kate, Dave and I were in my office mulling over what we’d achieved so far, and planning our next moves, when Linda Mitchell arrived with information that would at last move my struggling murder enquiry towards a satisfactory conclusion.

  On most of the occasions when we met, Linda was attired in the unflattering coveralls and sort of mobcap that comprised her working gear. When, however, we had a conference away from a crime scene, she usually wore a smart trouser suit. Today she had excelled herself, by wearing an attractive green dress and high heels and she had disciplined her black hair into a neat ponytail. In fact, it is fair to say that she didn’t look much older than thirty. But down-to-earth Linda destroyed that illusion with her opening sentence.

  ‘If you’re wondering why I’m all tarted up, Harry, it’s because I’ve got the afternoon off. It’s my youngest granddaughter’s engagement party and I daren’t miss it.’

  ‘Engagement! How old is she, Linda?’

  ‘Nineteen.’

  ‘And she’s the youngest?’

  ‘Yes. However, I’m not here to have a homey cha
t about my family. Much more important is that I’ve just received the result of the fingerprint search from Brussels.’

  ‘Is it good news?’ asked Kate.

  ‘That’s for you detectives to decide, Kate,’ said Linda, and glanced sideways at me with one of her impish smiles. ‘The Belgian police have identified the woman whose prints we found inside Cuyper’s safe and elsewhere in his apartment as Chantal Flaubert. She’s a Belgian citizen who was born in Knokke-le-Zoute in Wallonia.’ She handed me the Belgian report. ‘All the details – date of birth and all that sort of thing – are on there.’

  ‘That name’s cropped up already,’ said Dave, thumbing through a docket he had resting on his knee. ‘Chantal Flaubert was one of the names on Cuyper’s laptop.’

  ‘Her prints were also found in Downs’s house,’ continued Linda. ‘And more particularly in his bedroom.’

  ‘I wonder if she was the woman he was having sex with,’ suggested Kate.

  ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, Kate,’ Linda said, ‘but there was nothing in the swabs that Dr Mortlock took or from the bedding that was examined at the lab to indicate that sexual intercourse ever took place between Downs and his killer. But I suppose that having killed Ram Mookjai on the way up to Downs’s bedroom, the murderer probably thought it politic not to hang around for too long.’

  ‘In any event,’ I said, ‘if we amass enough evidence to charge this woman with murder, the question of whether she had sex with Downs is irrelevant.’

  ‘There was one other snippet of information that might explain a lot,’ Linda continued. ‘I was told by my Belgian contact that Chantal Flaubert has a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Antwerp. I think that’s included in there, too.’ She waved a hand at the Belgian police report she’d given me.

  ‘So she could have hacked into Cuyper’s computer,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘But I still don’t understand why she didn’t worry about leaving her fingerprints all over the place.’

  ‘I think I might be able to answer that, Harry,’ said Linda. ‘Recently the Belgian authorities have required applicants for passports to provide a set of their fingerprints. Chantal Flaubert probably thought that those prints would be kept at the passport office and nowhere else. But I suspect what happened is that the Belgian Ministry of Internal Affairs thought it was too good an opportunity to miss, and decided that they should be placed on the national database. It may have had something to do with the Belgian government and the police being criticized fairly heavily of late about sex crimes that were not investigated. They’re probably a bit sensitive about it, and the more information they can amass about their citizens the better they’ll be equipped to deal with crime.’