“Yes, but you've been treating her as the subject. She might have been a witness.”
He doesn't reply. I know he's debating whether to hang up on me. There is no reason to help and a dozen reasons to say no.
“Can it wait till proper morning?”
“No.”
There's another long pause. “Meet me at Otto's at six.”
Otto's is a café between a betting shop and a launderette at the western end of Elgin Avenue. The Sunday-morning clientele are mainly cabbies and delivery drivers, priming themselves with coffee and carbohydrates for the day ahead.
I wait by the window. “New Boy” Dave is on time, dodging the dog shit and puddles, before ducking inside. His shirt is creased and hair uncombed.
He orders a coffee and pulls a scrap of paper from his pocket, holding it out of reach. “First, you can answer some questions for me. Gerry Brandt had a fake passport and driver's license in the name of Peter Brannigan. For the last three years he's been running a bar in Thailand. The guy's a scrote—where did he get that sort of money?”
“Drugs.”
“That's what I figured, but the DEA and Interpol have nothing on him.”
“He came back into the country three months ago. According to his uncle he was looking for investors. Ray Murphy's pub was also struggling.”
“So that explains the ransom demand. It also got them killed. Ballistics has matched the bullet from Brandt with the one found in Ray Murphy's body. Same rifle.”
Dave looks at his watch. “I got to get to the hospital. I want to be there when Ali wakes up.”
He hands over the scrap of paper. “Six years ago Kirsten Fitzroy gave evidence at a soliciting trial at Southwark Crown Court. She was a character witness for a Heather Wilde, who was convicted of running an illegal brothel and living off immoral earnings.”
I remember that case. Heather ran a swinging club from a house in Brixton. She had a Web site, Wilde Times, but claimed that no money changed hands so it wasn't prostitution.
Where in Brixton? Dumbarton Road.
My memory triumphs again. It's a curse.
35
The single door is set in a whitewashed brick wall with no number or mailbox. Rising three floors, the façade has maybe a dozen windows, each divided by vertical bars and gray with dirt.
I don't know if Kirsten is inside. The place looks empty. I want to be sure but this time I won't be calling the police—not after what happened to Gerry Brandt.
Rain has beaded the hoods of cars parked down either side of the street. Walking along the pavement, I pass bicycles chained to the railing fence and trash cans waiting for collection.
I knock and wait. Bolts slide and a barrel lock turns, before the door opens no more than a crack. An unsmiling, fifty-plus face appears looking me up and down.
“Mrs. Wilde?”
“Do you know what time it is?”
“I'm looking for Kirsten Fitzroy.”
“Never heard of her.”
Looking past her I see a narrow entrance hall and dimly lit sitting room. She tries to shut the door but my shoulder strikes it first, forcing her backward into a phone table that topples over.
“I don't want to cause any trouble. Just hear me out.” I help her right the table and pick up the phone books.
A greasy stain of lipstick smears her mouth and she reeks of damp ash and perfume. Her breasts are squeezed into a satin dressing gown, creating a cleavage that brings to mind honeydew melons. Daj always told me that you could tell if a honeydew melon was ripe if they were whitish in color. See how my memory works?
In the sitting room almost every piece of furniture is covered in sheets except for a wicker chair by the fireplace and an ornate lamp on a trestle table. The table also carries an open book, a cigarette box, a full ashtray and a lighter in the shape of the Venus de Milo.
“Have you heard from Kirsten?”
“I told you I never heard of her.”
“Tell her I have her diamonds.”
“What diamonds?”
I've sparked her curiosity. “The ones she almost died for.”
Mrs. Wilde hasn't offered me a seat but I take one anyway, pulling the sheet from an armchair. Her skin is taut and almost translucent except for her neck and the backs of her hands. She reaches for a cigarette and watches me through the flame of the lighter.
“Kirsten is in a lot of trouble,” I explain. “I'm trying to help her. I know she's a friend of yours. I thought she might come looking for you if she needed somewhere to hole up for a while.”
Smoke curls in ribbons from her lips. “I don't know what you're talking about.”
I glance around the room at the deep velvet wallpaper and baroque furnishings. If there's one place more depressing than a brothel it's a former brothel. It's like they soak up the loathing and disappointment until they feel as tired and worn out as the sexual organs of the employees.
“A long while ago Kirsten told me that she would never cross Aleksei Kuznet or if she did she'd be catching the first plane to Patagonia. She missed her flight.”
Aleksei's name has shaken her calmness.
“Didn't Kirsten tell you? She tried to rip him off. You must realize how much danger she's in . . .” I pause, “. . . how much danger you're both in.”
“I haven't done anything.”
“I'm sure Aleksei will understand. He's a reasonable man. I saw him only yesterday. I offered him a deal—two million pounds' worth of diamonds if he left Kirsten alone. He didn't take it. He sees himself as a man of honor. Money doesn't matter and neither do excuses. But if you haven't seen Kirsten, that's fine. I'll let him know.”
Ash falls from her cigarette and smudges her dress. “I might be able to ask around. You mentioned money.”
“I mentioned diamonds.”
“It might help me find her.”
“And I had you pegged as a humanitarian.”
Her top lip curls. “You see a limousine parked outside?”
Her eyelids seem to work on wires attached to the top of her forehead. I've heard it called a Croydon face-lift—pulling back your hair so tightly that everything else lifts.
Drawing out my wallet, I peel off three twenties. She counts with her eyes.
“There's a clinic in Tottenham. It patched her up. Expensive. But discreet.”
I put another two twenties on the stack. She has the money in her hand and it vanishes down her cleavage as if part of a conjuring trick. She tilts her head as though listening to the rain.
“I know all about you. You're a Gypsy.” My surprise pleases her. “They used to say your mother had a gift.”
“How do you know her?”
“Don't you recognize a kindred spirit?” She cackles hoarsely, claiming to be a Gypsy. “Your mother told my fortune once. She said I would always be a great beauty and could have any man I wanted.”
(Somehow I don't think she was talking quantity.)
Daj had a gift all right—a gift for doing cold readings and predicting the bleeding obvious. She took people's money and tapped their spring of eternal hope. And afterward, having ushered them out of the door, she ran to the liquor store and bought her vodka.
There's a sound from upstairs: something falling. Mrs. Wilde looks up quickly.
“It's just one of my old girls. She stays sometimes.”
Her milky blue eyes betray her and her hand shoots out to stop me from rising. “Let me tell you the address of the clinic. They might know where she is.”
I brush her hand aside and move up the stairs, leaning out to peer between the banisters above me. On the first landing there are three doors, two open and one closed. I knock gently and turn the handle. Locked.
“Don't touch me! Leave me alone!”
It sounds like the voice of a child—the same one I heard on the phone during the ransom drop. I step away, bracing my back against the wall, with only my hand protruding past the door frame.
The first bullet hits six inches
to the right of the handle at stomach height. I sit heavily letting my feet hit the opposite wall, letting out a low groan.
Mrs. Wilde yells up the stairs, “Is that my door? If that's my bloody door you'll be paying for it.”
A second bullet rips through the wood a foot above the floor.
Mrs. Wilde again: “Right, that's it! From now on I'm taking a fucking deposit.”
I sit quietly, listening to my own breathing.
“Hey, you out there,” says the voice, just above a whisper. “Are you dead?”
“No.”
“Are you wounded?”
“No.”
She curses.
“It's me, Vincent Ruiz. I'm here to help you.”
A long silence follows.
“Please let me come in. I'm here alone.”
“Stay away. Please go.” I recognize Kirsten's voice, thick with phlegm and fear.
“I can't do that.”
After another long pause: “How's your leg?”
“Half an inch shorter.”
Mrs. Wilde calls up the stairs. “I'm calling the police unless someone pays for my door!”
Sighing heavily, I tell Kirsten, “You can keep the gun if you shoot your landlady.”
Her laugh is cut short by a hacking cough.
“I'm coming in.”
“Then I'll have to shoot you.”
“No, you won't.”
I ease myself up and face the door. “Are you going to unlock it for me?”
After a long wait there are two metallic clicks. Turning the handle, I push the door open.
Heavy drapes are drawn and the bedroom is in semidarkness. The room has high ceilings and mirrors on two walls. A large iron bed occupies the center and Kirsten is marooned amid the covers, with her legs drawn up and the gun resting on her knees. She has cut her hair and dyed it blond. It falls in sweaty ringlets down her forehead.
“I thought you were dead,” she says.
“I could say the same about you.”
She lowers her chin onto the barrel of the gun, staring forlornly into the shadows. The cheap chandelier above her head catches the light leaking from the curtains and the mirrors reflect the same scene, each from a slightly different angle.
I lean against the windowsill letting the curtains sag against my back. I can hear the raindrops hitting the panes of glass.
Kirsten shifts slightly and grimaces in pain. Boxes of painkillers and torn silver foil litter the floor around her bed.
“Can I have a look?”
Without acknowledging me, she raises her shirt high enough to show me the yellowing bandage, crusty with blood and sweat.
“You need to get to a hospital.”
She lowers the shirt but doesn't answer.
“A lot of people are looking for you.”
“And you get the prize.”
“Can I call an ambulance?”
“No.”
“OK, we'll just talk for a while. You want to tell me what happened?”
Kirsten shrugs and lowers the gun, resting it between her thighs. “I saw an opportunity.”
“To play with fire.”
“To make a new life . . .” She doesn't finish the sentence. Dampening her lips, she makes a silent decision and starts again. “It was almost a joke at first; one of those ‘what if' ideas that you toss around among yourselves and laugh about. Ray was good at the technical side. He used to work in the sewers. I kept an eye on the little details. At first I thought Rachel might even play along. We could set the whole thing up and she'd finally get what she deserved from her family or her ex-husband. She was owed.”
“She wouldn't play along?”
“I didn't ask. I knew the answer.”
I look around the room. The wallpaper has a honeycomb design and within each octagon is the outline of a naked woman in a different sexual pose.
“What happened to Mickey?”
Kirsten doesn't seem to hear me. She's telling the story in her own time.
“We would have been fine, you know, if it hadn't been for Gerry Brandt. Mickey would have made it home. Ray would still be alive. Gerry should never have let her go . . . not alone. He was supposed to take her home.”
“I don't understand. What are you talking about?”
A painful smile steals across her face but doesn't part her lips. “Poor Inspector, you haven't worked it out yet, have you?”
The truth grows in me like a tumor with the cells doubling and dividing, invading the empty spaces and the gaps in my memory. Gerry Brandt said he let her go. They were his last words.
“We only had her for a few days,” says Kirsten, gnawing at a fingernail. “Then he paid the ransom.”
“What ransom?”
“The first one.”
“What do you mean, a first ransom?”
“We were never going to hurt her. Once we got the ransom, we told Gerry to take her home. He was supposed to drop her at the end of her street but he panicked and left her at an Underground station. The fucking idiot! He was always a loose cannon. Right from the first day he jeopardized everything. He was supposed to be looking after Mickey but he couldn't resist going back to Randolph Avenue to see the TV crews and police.
“We would never have included him except we needed someone to look after Mickey who she couldn't identify. Like I said, we were always going to let her go. She told Gerry she knew the way home. She said she'd change trains at Piccadilly Circus and catch the Bakerloo line.”
This information seeps into my stomach and joins forces with the tepid nausea. My mind is tallying the details. Mr. and Mrs. Bird saw Mickey at Leicester Square. It's one stop from Piccadilly Circus.
“But if you let her go, what happened?”
Her misery is complete. “Howard Wavell!”
I don't understand.
“Howard happened,” she says again. “Mickey made it home but she ran into Howard.”
God, no! Surely not! It was a Wednesday night. Rachel wasn't home. She was on News at Ten making another appeal. I remember watching her on TV at the station. They used footage of the press conference earlier in the day.
“I tell you we didn't mean to hurt her. We let her go. Then you found her bloodstained towel and arrested Howard. I wanted to die.”
An image presents itself. I picture a small, terrified child with a fear of being outside, crossing a city alone. She almost made it. Only steps away—not even eighty-five of them. Howard found her on the front steps.
My legs go weak and I struggle to stand. It's as though my insides have become liquid and want to flood out, throbbing and glistening on the floor. My God, what have I done? I couldn't have been more wrong. Ali, Rachel, Mickey—I let them all down.
“You don't know how many times I have wanted to change things,” says Kirsten. “I would have brought Mickey home myself. I would have walked her right to her door. Believe me!”
“You were friends with Rachel. How could you do that to her?”
For a fleeting moment her sadness turns to anger, but takes too much energy to sustain. She whispers, “I never meant to hurt them . . . not Mickey or Rachel.”
“Why then?”
“We were stealing from the ultimate thief—taking money from Aleksei Kuznet, a monster. He murdered his own brother, for God's sake.”
“You wanted to take on the biggest bully in the playground.”
“We live in a new feudal age, Inspector. We fight wars over oil and we hand out reconstruction contracts in return for political donations. We have more parking wardens than we do police officers—”
“Oh for pity's sake, spare me the speeches!”
“We didn't want to hurt anyone.”
“Rachel was always going to be hurt.”
She looks at me with wet eyes. I can almost taste the salt in them.
“I didn't mean . . . we let Mickey go. I would never have . . .” She lowers the gun between her knees and her head follows, rocking back and forth. “I'm so
rry . . . I'm so sorry . . .”
Her self-pity irritates me. I keep pressing for the rest of the story. Kirsten doesn't look at me as she describes the cesspit in the basement and the underground river. Ray Murphy inflated a boat below ground and drew a map for Gerry to follow. He only had to travel a few hundred feet before bringing Mickey up through a storm-water drain.
“Ray knew a place to keep her. I never went there. My job was to send the ransom letter.”
“Where did you send it?”
“Directly to Aleksei.”
“What about the bikini?”
“Gerry held on to it.”
“What was she wearing when he let her go?”
“I don't know exactly.”
“Did she have her beach towel?”
“Gerry said it was like her security blanket. She wouldn't let it go.”
I'm struggling now. Of all the scenarios to contemplate I had left Howard out, convinced of his innocence. I had weighed up the evidence and the odds and decided he had been wrongly accused and convicted. Campbell said I was blind to the obvious. I thought he couldn't see anything except his own prejudices.
“Why in God's name did you try for a second ransom? How could you put Rachel through it again? You convinced her Mickey was still alive.”
Her face creases as she sucks back the pain. “I didn't want to. You don't understand.”
“Then explain it to me.”
“When you arrested Howard for Mickey's murder Gerry went off his head. He kept saying we helped kill her. He said he couldn't go back inside—not for killing a child. He knew what they did to child murderers in prison. Right away I knew we had a problem. We either had to silence Gerry or help him disappear.”
“So you got him out of the country.”
“We gave him double what he deserved—four hundred grand. He was supposed to stay away but he poured his money down slot machines or shot it up his arm.”
“He bought a bar in Thailand.”
“Whatever.”
“And then he came back.”
“The first I knew about the second ransom was when Rachel received the postcard. Gerry came up with the idea all by himself. Mickey's body had never been found. He still had her swimsuit and strands of her hair. I went ballistic. His greed and stupidity threatened us all. Ray said he was going to stop Gerry before he gave us away . . .”
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