The Smiling Man

by Joseph Knox

  ‘How old?’

  ‘I dunno, twenties?’

  ‘Where did you meet her?’

  ‘She came to the door one day …’

  ‘All right, Marcus. Outside.’

  Collier got to his feet, leered over my shoulder at the other men in the bar and turned for the door. I followed him outside to the car park, where uniform were arriving. When he saw them he stopped so suddenly that I almost walked into him.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, turning. ‘Listen …’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Cherry,’ he said. ‘The girl’s name’s Cherry.’

  ‘Where will I find her?’ He didn’t say anything and I looked over his shoulder significantly.

  ‘China Town. Y’know Legs?’

  ‘The topless bar?’

  ‘Yeah, there’s some shithole building next door. She’s in 4B.’

  ‘If she’s got a room, why does she trick out of the Palace?’

  ‘It’s not what you’d call spacious …’

  ‘OK. Well, that’s a big help, thank you.’ He smiled. ‘Marcus Collier, I’m arresting you.’ I read him his rights and placed a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘The fuck?’ he said, as I turned him towards the squad car.

  ‘These gentlemen will look after you from here.’ The two officers climbed out of the car and opened a door for him. I gave the charge I wanted him held on, as well as the fact that he was a material witness in connection with a suspicious death. Then I set out back through the estate for the car I’d arrived in.

  6

  I called Sutty as I drove. The night had fallen like a curtain while I’d been in the bar. Our shift was technically just starting and he agreed to meet me in China Town. If what Collier said was true, Cherry had been in the hotel on the day we’d discovered the smiling man.

  I parked up feeling electric.

  I entered through the Paifang, a twenty-foot archway above Faulkner Street adorned with pixies, dragons and gold-leaf finishes. It felt like stepping out of sync with the world and passing through to another dimension, and as I arrived it was coming vividly to life. All-you-can-eat buffets and karaoke rooms were giving way to shot bars, strip clubs and casinos, with sombre neon lights leading the way inside.

  It was an easy place to get a fix and the walking dead seemed to shuffle by on every street, dissolving in and out of reality. A recession was like boom time for the drugs trade, with people looking for new methods of escape as conventional ones evaporated. Spice was the current favourite. We were seeing eighteen-, nineteen-, twenty-year-olds have shaking fits, psychotic episodes and heart attacks.

  They called it the rattle.

  One man had gone on a rampage here, setting fire to cars, buildings and, finally, to himself. When the police got to him he’d said that he was desperate to get arrested, to get off the drug. It was impossible not to notice them now, coming up or down, shivering in the heat, turning blue. The highs and lows could be harmless, a man or woman, laughing or crying in the street. They could also turn people inside out. Living ghosts, well matched to the haunted, faded splendour of the buildings, the failing romance.

  I found the building, as promised, beside a strip club called Legs. There were three or four dancers standing outside talking, smoking cigarettes, staring blankly into the street. They looked beautiful, invulnerable, immune to love. I suppose that they had to. I interrupted a conversation to ask where the street entrance for the flats was. I was pointed by one long finger towards a shabby doorway. The girls knew what went on in there and looked at me like I was a Spice freak or a john. I went to the entrance and searched for a room 4B on the intercom. There wasn’t a button for it, so I buzzed all the others until someone let me inside.

  The hallway was poorly lit and the air smelt stale, uninterrupted. I could hear Frank Sinatra, ‘Only the Lonely’, from behind one of the doors and it soundtracked my walk up the stairs. When I came to Cherry’s room, 4B, I saw that the door was ajar. Splintered wood littered the floor from where the lock had been forced. I listened for a moment and then gently pushed it open.

  It was a small, airless room. Not a flat. More like a repurposed store cupboard. There was one window, gritted by smog. Its view was crossed out by an external fire escape passing diagonally from one corner to the other. There wasn’t much light, so I clicked on my torch and shone it about. It was neat, in the way that small rooms, small lives, have to be. A multicoloured poster of Marilyn Monroe on the wall. Several pairs of identical red high heels lined up in a row. A roll-mattress on the floor where it looked like Cherry slept. It was an illegal sublet, neither designed, nor fit, for human use.

  Not exactly spacious, as Marcus had said.

  It would be difficult for the girl to bring people back here, and I wanted to believe that she was out working, for her own good, as well as our one lead. But when I moved the torch I saw toiletries, which had been lined up on the windowsill, scattered across the floor. I saw a full-length mirror, lying on its side, fractured from an impact.

  I saw a shock of bright red blood embedded in the glass.

  ‘Shit,’ I said.

  I heard a movement and shone the light in its direction.

  ‘Whoa there, hot stuff,’ said Sutty. ‘I take it we’re one step behind?’

  By way of an answer I lit up the mirror, the bloody shards.

  ‘Seven years’ bad luck,’ he muttered.

  I shone the light about the dismal room. ‘Looks like she got it all in one go.’

  We walked out into the hallway, stepping over the splintered wood. I felt a cold anger on Cherry’s behalf and wondered if she was OK. I wondered what she’d seen. It felt like we hadn’t missed her by much.

  ‘Well?’ said Sutty, leaning on the wall. ‘Think this is who you saw at the Palace?’

  ‘I don’t know, but she was definitely there on Saturday night. Marcus was using a room on the third floor for girls and that’s where I saw someone. He said he’d sent her home before his shift ended, but all it’d take for her to get back in would be an object wedged in a fire door.’

  ‘And what? Smiley Face was a customer?’

  I thought about it. Shook my head. ‘He was on the fourth floor. I think he’s something else. Something separate. But that this girl wandered in on it, whatever it was. There’s no way she’s the one who knocked out Ali, for example.’

  Sutty nodded. ‘If she’d seen a guard coming she’d have talked or screwed her way out of it.’

  ‘What scares me is she couldn’t talk or screw her way out of whatever happened here …’

  We looked at each other for a moment and then parted, each knocking on a door either side of 4B. There was no one in on my side, and the man on Sutty’s hadn’t seen or heard anything. His English was bad, and he was more scared about his legal status in the country than the building. We worked our way along the corridor, encountering hostility, language barriers and similar results.

  I followed Sutty down the stairs.

  On the ground floor a frail, nicotine-stained man was waiting for us beside his room. He had an oxygen mask loose around his neck and dragged an air cylinder behind him.

  ‘Good …’ he said, trying to address Sutty. He walked past the man, to the street entrance, waving at me to stop and talk. The man’s hair was a weak, sickly shade of yellow. ‘Good riddance,’ he hissed, before falling into a hacking fit. His body was wracked with coughs that didn’t quite make it out of his mouth and he shook as they reverberated inside his ribcage. He doubled up and applied his oxygen mask, leaning on the wall to stay upright. When it looked like he was stable again I spoke to him.

  ‘We’re looking for the woman who lives above you.’

  His milky, cataract eyes went wide. ‘Woman?’

  ‘Girl, whatever.’

  He wheezed again and I thought he was going into another coughing fit. It wasn’t until his face contorted that I saw he was laughing. He held on to my arm. His fingers were thin. Cold and hard as
carrots. ‘Some girl,’ he whispered. There were tears in his eyes from the effort.

  ‘Did you see what happened?’

  ‘… Saw the police drag her out of the building …’ I thought about the violence of the scene. The broken door, the blood.

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘… Less than an hour …’

  ‘How did you know they were police?’

  He screwed up his face. ‘… Guy said on his way out …’

  ‘A man?’ He nodded. ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘… Like you … like everyone …’ He used his free hand to point at his thick, milky eyes. ‘… He looked like a blur …’ I peeled his hand off me and followed Sutty out on to the street, crossing through traffic towards him. He was leaning on the roof of the car, watching me.

  ‘That guy on the ground floor says the police took her …’ I said.

  ‘The blind bloke? He probably posts his letters into the dog-shit bin, Aid.’ He exhaled out some malice. ‘Police are unlikely from the busted door and the blood. Your generation haven’t got that kind of get-up-and-go. What’s she look like?’

  ‘In her twenties, according to Marcus. A redhead. Slagged up …’

  ‘Oh,’ said Sutty, looking about us at all the girls matching the security guard’s description. ‘We’ll have her in custody in five minutes, then.’

  I climbed into the car and called in the crime scene, requesting SOCO meet us there. Sutty got in beside me, opened the glove compartment, found his wipes and cleaned down the radio I’d just touched. My phone started to vibrate.

  Aneesa.

  I thought she might be calling on behalf of Natasha Reeve and Freddie Coyle. Neither had given a straightforward account of themselves and, as a rule, money equalled trouble. As per Parrs’ instructions, I still hadn’t told Sutty about these interviews. Pathetically, I was still hoping to get back in the Superintendent’s good books. I got out of the car and moved to a safe distance before answering.

  ‘Waits,’ I said, impatiently.

  ‘I really wish you’d kept me updated about events at the Palace,’ said Aneesa. ‘Specifically the dead body. My clients have both been on the phone, asking why they were blindsided. If I’d known about the man, and that you were putting those kinds of questions to them, I’d have been present.’

  ‘Well, now’s your chance. I’d like to follow up with Natasha, if possible.’ She didn’t say anything. ‘Ms Khan?’

  She sighed. ‘When?

  I looked back at the car. Sutty was standing outside it, wiping down the door handle I’d just touched. ‘What are you doing right now?’

  7

  I told Sutty that I’d been dragged away by a development on the dustbin fires, left him waiting for SOCO, and made the ten-minute walk back in the direction of Natasha Reeve’s flat. Aneesa met me there.

  ‘Thank you for seeing me again at such short notice,’ I said. Natasha Reeve acknowledged both Aneesa and me with a blink then went towards an unoccupied bench, sitting down as though our walk round the block one day before had worn her out. We were back on King Street but she still wasn’t ready to invite me into her home.

  Aneesa sat down beside her. ‘Thanks for doing this,’ she said. I sat on Natasha’s other side, putting her in the middle. They both stared at me and Aneesa went on. ‘Apparently, Detective Constable Waits has some follow-up questions. He’s assured me he’ll be brief.’

  ‘I really just wanted to clarify some things about the Palace.’

  Natasha waited.

  ‘When we spoke before, you told me that you and your ex-husband built up the hotel between you.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mr Coyle claims it was inherited from his side of the family …’

  She smiled, as though at some old adversary. ‘Semantics. His family owned the property but it had stood empty for some years when it came to us. I won’t deny that inheriting a building of that size and stature was an enormous help, but it’s the truth that Freddie and I built the business. It’s also the truth that I was a larger part of the partnership than he.’

  ‘That must have been frustrating.’

  ‘Less so than seeing him flounder in business …’

  ‘He doesn’t have a head for it?’

  ‘That was one of his tired old jokes. He said a brain was useful but it was his fingers that he really counted on.’ I smiled. ‘Unfortunately he was still counting on them when we inherited the Palace,’ she said. ‘I was only too pleased to assume the lead role.’

  ‘He mentioned some tension with his family. Were they disappointed in his lack of business ambition?’

  ‘I don’t think they ever expected much. His parents had an unhappy marriage. On our wedding day, Gloria, Freddie’s mother, took me to one side and gave me some advice: “Always expect the worst from them and you’ll never be disappointed.”’

  ‘Are his parents still alive?’

  ‘Well, we inherited all their money and property, so what does that tell you?’

  ‘I don’t have much experience in that area,’ I said.

  She ignored the provocation. ‘They went one after another, soon after we were married.’

  ‘Money and property,’ I said. ‘There was more to the inheritance than the Palace?’

  ‘There was at first. Freddie made some bad deals. Counting on his fingers for business again.’

  ‘So if he mentioned tensions with his family …’

  ‘He was either living in the past or being glib. I’m all that’s left of his family now, so I suppose he could have been referring to me.’

  ‘Could Freddie’s bad head for business, combined with his separation from you, have left him hard up?’

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘We both draw a handsome salary from the trust …’

  ‘The Palace has been closed for some time.’

  ‘Only out of stubbornness from both sides.’ Aneesa started to interject but Natasha waved her protest away. ‘It’s true. Freddie never cared for the business but I did. It was our baby, as far as I was concerned. But once we were dead and buried, so was the hotel. I let the staff go and stopped going to work mainly as a challenge, to see if he was capable of doing anything about it. If he had any sense at all he’d hire a new manager. He doesn’t, though. Now, I see it as my little gift to myself, not earning him any more money.’ She looked at me again. ‘We could both retire today, though, Detective. Freddie saying he’s hard up is, well, a bit rich.’

  ‘How does the trust work?’

  ‘Like a business. Money goes into a pot from the Palace and leaves for expenses. Those expenses might be upkeep, legal fees, salaries, etcetera. Neither Freddie or I can draw any more than the agreed amount, though.’

  ‘You’re certain of that?’

  ‘When you’re preparing for a divorce you tend to check these things. It’s iron-clad, I’m absolutely certain. Of course his half of the pot will be his to spend once we’ve dissolved the trust. A great deal more than his monthly allowance. Why all this talk of Freddie’s finances?’

  ‘When I told him about the assault, and even about the death, his first concerns were liability and how it might affect the sale. He seemed unusually keen on that side of things for a man with no head for business …’

  ‘The Palace is his last tie to me. That’s what he’s keen to get rid of.’

  ‘May I ask what specifically caused your separation?’

  She shook her head. ‘And besides, what can that have to do with a break-in?’

  I thought for a second and then tried another tack. ‘Was Freddie always a big drinker?’

  ‘I was the drinker. He never quite had the constitution for it. A glass of wine here or there.’

  ‘When I spoke to Mr Coyle at 10 a.m. yesterday it looked like he was ending a long night …’

  ‘Freddie changed so much towards the end of our relationship, I suppose he could be anything now.’

&nb
sp; ‘Changed how, Ms Reeve?’

  ‘Well, at the time I thought there was something wrong. With him, I mean. He became cold, distant. I see now he was preparing to leave our marriage. He changed more in the weeks before we parted than in the preceding ten years. I can’t say how much he’s changed since.’

  ‘Do you think he could have changed enough to be involved in whatever’s happening at the Palace?’

  ‘It’s a ridiculous question. Freddie’s only motivation in life is to sell the Palace. He may be a fool for business but he doesn’t usually throw things away.’ In the silence that followed I saw her wonder why that logic hadn’t applied to their marriage.

  ‘What happened six months ago?’

  ‘You have to keep banging away, don’t you? Is this how you get your kicks? Burrowing into the lives of strangers?’

  ‘If this was about your marriage, I’d leave you to it. We believe a vulnerable young woman’s mixed up in it all, though. That she might have seen something to put her in danger. There was evidence of violence at her home, so I’ll keep asking until I get an answer.’

  She looked away again. ‘I began to receive notes.’ I caught Aneesa’s eye. Her face told me that this was news to her too. ‘Anonymous notes.’

  ‘Can I ask what the substance of these notes was?’

  ‘The same substance as all such notes, I expect. That my husband was walking out on me. That he was having an affair.’

  ‘Do you still have them?’

  ‘No. And they were hand-delivered. No envelopes or postmarks or anything like that.’

  ‘Did you report them to the police?’

  ‘The police? My husband’s sex life is a little out of your jurisdiction, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Whoever sent them obviously did so with malicious intent. Was there any sense of blackmail involved?’

  ‘No threats or anything like that. Just details. Times. Places.’

  ‘Did you speak to Freddie about them?’

  ‘I ignored them, for a time. Then the notes became pictures. Photographs. I couldn’t ignore them any more. The final letter was an address, a day and date in the future. A few days from when I received it. There was a key taped to the paper. Freddie was acting so elusively, so strangely. I genuinely was worried for him. So I went.’ She spoke as though it was the central humiliation of her life and I’d excavated it. Aneesa gave me a dirty look and turned away. ‘Some absurd loft place on Sackville Street.’ The same address where I’d visited Freddie earlier that day. ‘I waited outside the building until someone came out, then I caught the door and went inside. I found the room and heard raised voices. So I used the key that had been sent to me … He was with another man.’ I looked out into the street to make sure the surprise didn’t show on my face. None of us spoke for a moment. ‘I don’t think we’ve ever been in a room together since.’