The House of Fame

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The House of Fame Page 16

by Oliver Harris


  He checked the street, swung himself up onto the scaffolding, followed it round to the back of the building. He climbed up to the second floor, found a window looking into a small bedroom with a single bed. The window was locked. Beyond the room he could see a corridor, then a kitchen with what looked like a one-hob portable electric stove. Not much else. No books anywhere. No photos or ornaments.

  He climbed back down to the pub and walked in. It was mostly carpet, with fluorescent stars stuck to the laminate walls advertising house spirits. There was a double act behind the bar, both in their sixties. The landlord was pulling taps, red-faced, stained suit jacket over his vest. A woman with the same years of pub management worn into her complexion moved stiffly around him, hair backcombed so that it stood up and framed her face.

  ‘Not open yet, love,’ she said.

  ‘I’m looking for Katja – the girl who lives upstairs.’

  ‘Not seen her. Not for a while.’

  ‘Know her?’

  ‘Not well. She’s not been around, the last few days. We’d been wondering where she’s got to. Hadn’t we?’

  The man nodded.

  ‘I’m from her university. We’re concerned about her. Did she rent the room off you?’

  ‘No. It’s the same landlord owns the whole building. Not us.’

  ‘She’s not been at lectures. Have you seen her with anyone recently? Any signs of trouble?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I heard she was a bit of a party animal. Had a bit of a lifestyle.’

  ‘Living up there? No. She’d be in by seven most nights.’

  Belsey considered this.

  ‘You never saw her dressed up – anything like that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘With a man?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you have a number for the landlord?’

  She hobbled into a back room, returned with a name and number in shaky blue biro on a piece of notepaper: Mashru & Co Property Investments. Belsey stepped out of the pub and called.

  ‘Viraj Mashru.’

  ‘Are you the landlord for Katja Dabrowska? 236a Turnpike Lane.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘This is Detective Constable Nick Belsey. We’re concerned about Katja’s whereabouts. It seems she’s gone missing.’

  ‘Katja Dabrowska?’

  ‘That’s right. How much does she pay for the flat, Mr Mashru?’

  ‘One hundred and twenty a week.’

  ‘And how did she pay that?’

  ‘Cash.’

  ‘No standing order set up?’

  ‘No.

  ‘What about the deposit?’

  ‘Same.’

  ‘Was she working, Mr Mashru?’ Belsey asked.

  ‘She was a student.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘University of Westminster, I think.’

  ‘Did she say why she was paying in cash?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Any idea where she was getting the money?’

  ‘Her dad or something. I spoke to him once, on the phone. He gave me his name and number in case there were any problems. I can find it.’

  ‘What kind of problems?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s just dads, isn’t it. Worried about their little princess.’

  ‘And you think the money came from him?’

  ‘He said the money came from him.’

  ‘Can I have those details, please?’

  ‘Hold on.’ The landlord changed rooms. A moment later he said: ‘Andreas Majorana.’ He read out a mobile number. Belsey thanked him and hung up.

  A. Majorana: he’d heard that name, but in another voice – Shannen at the hotel. The name on the card used to book Mark and Amber’s three hours of Comfort.

  A man shuffled past, checked his watch, headed into the off-licence next door. Belsey dialled the number for Majorana. Dead. A pay-asyou-go SIM with no address connected to it, he suspected. Probably long-destroyed.

  He called Westminster Uni. He was eventually passed to a woman in the registrar’s office. She ran a check.

  ‘No. A Katja Dabrowska has never been a student here. Are you sure it was Westminster?’

  Belsey went back into the pub.

  ‘Did you get through to him?’ the landlady asked.

  ‘Yes. It looks like Katja had money coming from somewhere.’

  ‘Money? She didn’t have a TV, for god’s sake. Did she?’ she asked her husband. He shook his head.

  ‘You’ve been in her flat?’ Belsey asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘How do you know she didn’t have a TV?’

  ‘Because she came down here. To watch the news.’

  ‘I thought she wasn’t down here that much.’

  ‘It was just the once. Wednesday. We had the match on and she asked to change channels. There was no one watching anyway.’

  ‘Wednesday last week.’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘Was there something in particular she wanted to see?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just the news. She tore a page out of the paper as well.’ The woman shuffled into the back again. He saw her riffling through a pile of old newspapers. ‘Will you look at that,’ she said, returning with a copy of the Mail, a torn strip where page 7 had been. ‘Not affording a TV I can understand, but she could have bought her own paper, no?’

  23

  BELSEY CUT THROUGH RESIDENTIAL STREETS to Wood Green, north along the busy High Road to the tarmacked square crowned by Wood Green Central Library. He went in, asked to see the last week’s papers and was directed to a large grey filing cabinet in the reference section.

  He leafed through the stack of dog-eared Mails from last week until he had Wednesday’s edition. Page 7, a half-page advert for conservatories and one story: ‘DUTCH POLICE PLEA FOR MYSTERY WOMAN. Dutch police have appealed for help in identifying a 40–50 year old woman found in a disorientated state near the town of Spier on Monday. The woman, who has not spoken, is believed to have travelled to the Netherlands from the UK . . .’ The ‘mystery woman’ had been picked up by Dutch police wandering outside Spier, in the north of the country, just above Hoogeveen. She didn’t have any money or ID on her, hadn’t eaten for several days as far as they could tell. She had curly greying hair, was wearing a blue North Face jacket, blue jeans, black Adidas trainers with grey stripes. She didn’t appear to speak Dutch and hadn’t responded to any of the interpreters they tried, but the labels on her clothes suggested she’d recently been living in the UK. It was possible she was suffering from trauma-induced amnesia. Possible she wasn’t.

  The woman had been treated for mild hypothermia at Bethesda Hospital in Hoogeveen before being transferred to the University Medical Center Utrecht.

  UK police were heading over to help identify her, along with officials from the British embassy.

  The Mail mentioned injuries to her hands. And there were inset pictures the police had released of both hands, front and back. The palms had been lacerated. There were scratches up the wrists and forearms.

  To Belsey’s eyes they looked like someone gripping on to things not meant to be gripped. Barbed wire. Fence-climbing injuries. There were red markings around her wrists – they hadn’t mentioned this in the article. They looked like old restraint marks.

  He was staring at the article when his phone rang. A fellow library-user tutted as he answered.

  ‘Meet me in an hour,’ Gary Livermore said.

  Belsey walked out to the corridor.

  ‘You’ve got a result?’

  ‘If you’ve got five hundred quid.’

  ‘What’s the name?’

  ‘Back of the Elm Grove Trading Estate, half-ten. Off the Old Kent Road. It’s the turn-off after Chicken Cottage. And don’t fuck me about.’

  Belsey returned the paper to the cabinet. He found the number for Andy Price at AP Total Media Management and dialled as he left the library. If Price was going to appoint himself manager he could sort some cash
flow.

  ‘Nick, my man.’ Price sounded delighted. ‘I was worried you’d gone reclusive.’

  ‘I hear my career’s going well.’ There was a nervous laugh. ‘I need some money.’

  ‘Of course. Did you look at the contract?’

  ‘I’ve got it in front of me. I’m looking forward to working together. But I need five hundred pounds in the next hour.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Wood Green library.’

  ‘I’m in Barnet, heading into town. I can swing by.’

  Price drove by fifteen minutes later in a worn-looking maroon Bentley. There was an iced coffee in the drinks holder. The back seat was covered in signed prints of a woman Belsey didn’t recognise.

  Price wound the window down, eyed the butterfly stitches, a little disappointed.

  ‘So is this your neighbourhood?’ he said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Jump in. I’m on my way to the office. We can finalise things there.’

  ‘Do you have some cash at the office?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Belsey climbed in. They began to drive. Price checked an incoming call – ‘The intern’ – killed it. ‘I saw that photo of you bleeding,’ he said.

  ‘What did you think?’

  ‘I think we need a strategy. First thing, have a look at this, give me your thoughts.’ He passed Belsey a brochure from a company offering celebrities for openings, club nights, promotions. Discreetly tucked in was a flyer about teeth-whitening services. ‘It’s no one’s dream come true, but it gives us something to build on. Gets your face out there.’ Belsey read about teeth whitening. Price’s phone rang again. ‘She struggles to open the post,’ he said, answering the call. Then his face fell. ‘Don’t do anything. We’re ten minutes away.’

  The office was a small room above a tanning salon behind Tottenham Court Road. It had one desk, one leather sofa, the contents of its drawers and cupboards across the floor. The place had been turned over. Copies of Entertainment Weekly lay scattered amongst old invoices. The intern was a shaken eighteen-year-old in thick-framed glasses.

  Price went straight to the desk. He dropped his laptop and car keys, opened a cash box, checked it.

  ‘What happened?’ Belsey asked the girl.

  ‘It was the police.’

  ‘What did they want?’

  ‘Anything about you. They said they’d be back.’

  ‘Were they in uniform?’

  ‘One was.’

  ‘Show a warrant?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘How many officers?’

  ‘Four. Three men and a woman.’

  ‘Did you get any of their names?’

  ‘No. They asked me if I’d spoken to you. When you started working with us. If we had bank details. If we had a record of where you’ve been.’

  ‘How long were they here?’

  ‘I don’t know. Ages. Twenty minutes.’

  Belsey thought of Livermore’s words: Only you’re so fucked yourself he thinks he can shut you down before you get the chance. Soon you’re going to be out of action. Out of credibility once and for all. Bullseye. A man who always had his minions. Who knew how to shut someone down.

  ‘It’s bullshit,’ Belsey said to no one in particular.

  He went to the window. Someone was opening up the tanning salon. A couple of months before Hampstead station closed they found needles on a fifteen-year-old girl, brought her in. There was a minor panic over drugs, before someone pointed out the orange hue of her skin. She and her friends had been injecting melatonin. It seemed a long time ago now.

  Across the road was a young man with a goatee, wearing shades, a black jacket, fingerless driving gloves, ear-piece in. He looked up at the window, met Belsey’s eyes, looked away. Then he turned his back and browsed the menu of an Italian restaurant.

  Belsey checked his watch. 10.05 a.m. Livermore would be on his way to the Old Kent Road. He went to the cash box, counted out five hundred in twenties, then another eighty for expenses. Took Price’s car keys.

  ‘I need to borrow your car for a couple of hours.’

  ‘My car?’ Price smiled, disbelievingly.

  ‘I’ll bring it straight back.’

  24

  THE BENTLEY DROVE LIKE NEW. He crossed London in half an hour. Old Kent Road was flashback territory, south of the river, a high street that had been a ragged, bustling handful when he was patrolling it, but had become sullen, emptier by the year. Belsey passed the turnings for Rotherhithe and Surrey Quays, saw the Chicken Cottage, cut left.

  Industrial estates and builders’ warehouses filled the no-man’s-land north of the main road. Livermore’s chosen rendezvous was a gutter behind the windowless backs of kitchens and launderettes, blocked at one end by an avalanche of abandoned mattresses. Belsey parked, alone amongst the waste. He realised he’d been here before – a furtive moment with a young lady. With a woman he’d loved, in fact. Every corner of London seemed to hold associations these days, streets overlaid with scar tissue. He spent a moment thinking about that woman and the possibility that drug-fuelled back-seat sex might not have been what she needed. Then a red Mazda pulled up beside him and cut the nostalgia.

  Livermore kept the engine running. Belsey climbed out, got into the Mazda, kept the passenger door open.

  Livermore was lanky, cramped in his sports car, eyes cynical and alert. He wore a navy suit, hair slicked and side-parted. It had been a couple of years since Belsey had seen him and he’d kept in shape. There was a retractable truncheon in the door pocket, police radio on the back seat.

  ‘What did you get?’ Belsey said.

  ‘Money first.’ Livermore checked the mirrors. Nothing had changed. Belsey envied him that. While others had fled the toxic mess of Borough CID into various forms of cover, Livermore had blithely maintained his corruption. Whatever native wit kept him employed it didn’t extend to ethical self-reflection. Belsey gave him the cash. He counted it and dropped it into his jacket.

  ‘So you’re famous now.’

  ‘What did you get?’

  Livermore checked the mirrors again. He reached between his legs, retrieved an envelope from under the seat and handed it over. It contained two folded sheaths, five photocopied pages each. First was a police report dated 12 March 2010, from Notting Hill CID. Officers attended what they termed a ‘domestic disturbance’ at Westbourne Park Road. Called in by an Angela Harper – wife, at that time, of Ian Harper. Paper-clipped to this, a file courtesy of Kensington and Chelsea social services concerning their son, Jack Harper, born 30 May 2003: medical stats, psychological surveys, educational assessments.

  The second sheath consisted of five sheets from the Child Support Agency: correspondence from last August detailing Child Maintenance Enforcement Charges. This dossier included Ian Harper’s supporting evidence of financial hardship. Now there were two addresses listed: Angela and Jack in Ladbroke Grove, Ian in Ravenscourt Park.

  ‘Ian Harper on any of our lists?’ Belsey asked.

  ‘No.’ Livermore revved his engine. Belsey got out. Livermore leaned across.

  ‘Is this something to do with Amber Knight?’

  ‘This is someone Amber killed.’

  Livermore laughed. ‘Have you shagged her?’

  ‘I appreciate your help, Gary,’ Belsey said. ‘If you speak to Geoff again, tell him to give me my passport back or I will tear his life apart.’

  Livermore grinned, gunned the engine and splashed muddy water, reversing at 30mph back into the past.

  25

  BELSEY CLIMBED INTO THE BENTLEY and looked through the paperwork again. The most recent document, the CSA file, described Ian Harper as having been director of two companies, Digital Ad Solutions and Regent’s Property. Both had gone into administration last year. He’d moved out of the family home and appeared to have drifted around the less salubrious parts of west London before turning up with the foxes and skipper flies of Epping Forest. His most recent address w
as 9 Waterside Heights, Ravenscourt Park.

  Belsey cut back across London through late-morning traffic. This felt like the strongest lead he had. Someone worth killing. Someone police were yet to ID. Caught up in a very odd circle of individuals.

  Waterside Heights was a new tower block, part of Thames Village, a development that involved six high-rise residential towers constructed out of yellow, machine-hewn bricks. The development was barely out of the box, ground-floor commercial units obscured with builders’ sheets and the promise of a Tesco coming soon. There was a startled air to the place, as if it had gone up too fast and was trying to catch up with its own existence. Flats on the upper floors still had manufacturers’ stickers on their windows. Grey sacking showed around the bases of trees. An arrow attached to one of those trees pointed to the show flat: ‘Waterside Living Starts Here.’ Belsey couldn’t see much water or living. Eventually a group of Chinese students walked towards Harper’s block carrying shopping. Belsey followed them in.

  Inside it smelt of fresh plastering. Belsey climbed dusty concrete stairs three floors to number 9. The door was open a crack. Undamaged. No scratches around the lock suggesting a more sophisticated break-in. His guess was that whoever last entered the flat had the key – but they weren’t Ian Harper, and weren’t too worried about Harper returning.

  Belsey knocked, walked in.

  The flat was clean, compact, with all the curtains drawn. Appliances were new; some still sat amidst polystyrene and instruction booklets. But the place had been searched: drawers were out, papers and files on the floor and table. Ring-binders lay open. A Slazenger bag had been upturned on the sofa. In each room, receipts and crumpled paperwork sat at the top of the bin, as if someone had fished sheets out before returning them. A framed photograph of a man, woman and small boy lay on its back on the coffee table. No sign of struggle. Furniture remained aligned. The bedroom was tidy to the point of impersonality.

  The bulk of Harper’s paperwork was fanned across the kitchen table: copies of polite letters about financial ruin: from NatWest to Harper, Harper to NatWest; to utilities companies and Ealing Borough Council. Then an HMRC Statutory Notice of Bankruptcy. Belsey was familiar with that one. It was dutifully hole-punched like all the rest.

 

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