The Reckoning

by Jane Casey

  ‘What do you know about the girl who disappeared at the nightclub in Brixton last week?’

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘Did you see her there?’ Derwent showed the picture, but Malton shook his head.

  ‘Definitely not. But I was distracted.’

  ‘Were you drunk?’

  ‘I don’t drink any more.’

  ‘What then? Drugs?’

  ‘Not them either.’ He swallowed. ‘My girlfriend dumped me. In the queue. It was her idea to go. It really wasn’t my thing. I should have gone home – cut my losses. But I went in anyway to try to persuade her to take me back.’

  ‘Didn’t work?’

  ‘Not even a little.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘Not meant to be, I suppose.’

  ‘Do you have a computer here?’

  ‘Just at work.’

  ‘What do you do for a living, Mr Malton?’

  ‘I work for my father’s company.’ He sounded very slightly embarrassed. We knew what he was saying. Daddy had given him a new start when no one else would have hired him.

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Venture capital.’

  ‘Fancy name for gambling,’ Derwent observed.

  ‘Pretty much,’ Malton agreed wryly.

  ‘Ever email people you don’t know because you like the look of them on Facebook?’

  ‘No.’ He looked appalled. ‘What a strange idea.’

  ‘Isn’t it, though?’ Derwent stood up and nodded to me. ‘I think we’re done here.’

  In the car, he said, ‘If Little Lord Fauntleroy is guilty, he’s the best actor I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘We should still check up on him. Talk to his probation officer.’

  ‘Agreed. Hey, which do you think was worse, public school or prison?’

  ‘School. Absolutely.’ It wasn’t a bad impersonation and I laughed. For a fraction of a second, Derwent and I were almost getting along.

  The squad room was busy; almost every desk was occupied and a low hum of conversation filled the air. Derwent ground to a halt behind Harry Maitland’s chair.

  ‘Where did you get those? Is that the nightclub?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He flicked through the images he was viewing onscreen: masked faces caught by the flash against a background of bodies and dark walls. It was the slightly tawdry chaos of a dance floor late at night, where everyone is a little bit too drunk to be completely conscious of how they look. Awkward poses, unfortunate angles, smeared make-up and sweaty hair zipped by as Maitland clicked through at speed. ‘These are images we’ve collected from blogs and social-networking sites. PC Google helped. And the Brothers Grim website has a page where you can upload your pictures. That’s where this lot came from.’

  Looking again, I saw that the images were watermarked with the skulls from their logo.

  ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘The girl. We’re trying to spot her in the background in any of these to give us some idea of when she disappeared. Could have been at the end of the night, for all we know. I’ve found her in a few already. Have a look at the ones on the printer.’

  Derwent headed off to check them out. I looked across the room and saw that Rob had made it into work. He was on the phone, one hand shielding his eyes. He looked pale and, without a twinge of pity, I recalled what Liv had said about him being hung-over. I looked back at the screen and grabbed Maitland’s shoulder.

  ‘Stop! That’s Lee.’ I pointed at a bare-chested man in a white mask, his halo of curls silhouetted against a light.

  ‘What is he wearing?’ Maitland leaned in closer. ‘Black shorts. Is that it? He looks like a stripogram.’

  ‘In fairness, if you had a body like that, you’d wear little shorts all the time.’

  ‘I’ve worked bloody hard to get this body, thanks.’ He patted his belly lovingly. ‘Many pints of Guinness and more than a few kebabs.’

  ‘Your self-discipline does you credit.’

  Derwent came back with a sheaf of printouts and peered at the screen. ‘Which one of them is that?’

  ‘Lee.’

  ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘They look different.’

  ‘Not a lot.’

  ‘No, not a lot.’

  ‘It figures that you can tell them apart.’ Derwent turned to Maitland. ‘Kerrigan was drooling all over one of them.’

  ‘No, I wasn’t.’

  ‘Okay, he was drooling all over her.’

  ‘Sounds messy,’ Maitland commented, keeping his eyes on the screen, which was wise.

  ‘We need to know where Lee and Drew were as well. Can you look for them too?’

  Maitland groaned. ‘Don’t tell me I’ve got to start again, Kerrigan.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’ Derwent weighed in on my side for a change. ‘Look for him, and look for a guy who’s exactly like him.’

  ‘Same clothes? How will I tell them apart?’

  ‘Drew was wearing an earpiece.’ I watched the next few images slide by. ‘That’s Drew. He’s wearing a black mask. That should make things easier.’

  ‘Okay. White mask, black shorts: Lee. Black mask and shorts: Drew. Got it. Are they suspects?’

  Derwent leaned in. ‘Look at this picture, Harry. Everyone in it – everyone – is a suspect. And the next one. Everyone. And the one after that. Do you get the idea? We don’t have a fucking clue who took Cheyenne, so in the absence of anything you might call a lead, let’s just work out where they were and when they were there so we can rule them out or keep them on the board.’

  ‘Don’t get your knob in a knot,’ Harry said calmly. ‘I’ll do my best.’

  ‘That’s my boy.’ Derwent slapped him on the back, then looked at me. ‘What about those PNC searches?’

  ‘I’ll do them now.’

  I sat down at my computer, unfolding the list the Bancrofts had given us while Derwent dragged up a chair and pushed it next to mine. He was a little bit closer than I would have liked, but I had nowhere to go; I was jammed up against the desk as it was.

  ‘Start off with the bouncers, just to make sure,’ he ordered, and I was about to but I didn’t get the chance.

  ‘Josh. Just the person I wanted to see.’ Godley was standing in the doorway, his face oddly blank. ‘I’ve got Glen’s post-mortem report on Cheyenne.’

  ‘And?’ Derwent said.

  ‘And you’re not going to believe this.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  It was unlike Godley to make such a dramatic statement and it turned heads around the room. Derwent pushed back from my desk, rolling his chair over to where the superintendent was standing. Curious about what was in the report, I stood up and moved a few paces in the same direction, aware that I wasn’t the only one. We gathered around Godley in a loose circle. If we weren’t supposed to eavesdrop on what he had to say, we’d be told soon enough.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Derwent asked. ‘What’s the big deal?’

  ‘How she died.’

  Derwent clenched his hands. ‘What did he do to her?’

  ‘Absolutely nothing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She died of natural causes.’

  ‘That’s impossible,’ Derwent said flatly.

  ‘It’s not impossible. She asphyxiated, according to Glen, but it was brought on by a severe asthma attack.’

  ‘She had asthma.’ Rob’s voice came from close behind me and I resisted the urge to turn around. ‘From what the housekeeper said, it wasn’t serious enough for her to remember to carry her inhaler.’

  ‘So she went out without it, got an unexpected attack, died, disappeared for a week and then wrapped herself up in a blanket before lying down stark naked on a sofa in an abandoned warehouse with her hands tied. Yeah, that makes sense.’

  ‘Dial down the sarcasm, Josh. No one is suggesting that the cause of death means there was no foul play. Obviously something bad happened to her. Just as obviously, she was missing for the six days between her dis
appearance and the discovery of her body, and no one has come forward to say they were looking after her. The only thing the cause of death suggests to me is that she wasn’t supposed to die when she did.’

  ‘When did she die?’ Everyone turned to look at me. ‘During the six days. At what point did she die?’

  ‘Between twenty-four and thirty-six hours before she was discovered. Glen says he can’t narrow it down any more than that. It was cold in the warehouse. Her body was well preserved.’

  ‘Was she sexually assaulted?’ Derwent asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  It wasn’t a surprise, but I could feel everyone around me react to that one word – a tiny shift in the atmosphere in the room. The faces I could see were grave.

  ‘Repeatedly?’

  ‘So it would seem. Glen found bruising and abrasions at different stages of healing that had clearly been inflicted over several days.’

  ‘Given that she died of natural causes, is there any possibility that it was consensual? Rough sex that went wrong?’ Maitland looked around as a ripple of disapproval ran through the circle. ‘Sorry, but it’s worth asking. Just because she was under age and it was illegal, it doesn’t mean she wasn’t a keen participant.’

  ‘It is worth asking, but I don’t think it’s likely. She hadn’t eaten anything in the days before her death. There was nothing in her stomach but some brownish liquid.’

  ‘Sounds as if he was withholding food to keep her weak and make her biddable,’ Derwent said. ‘What does Hanshaw think?’

  ‘He thinks the asthma attack was brought on by stress. Fear, pain – that sort of thing would do it. Her symptoms could have worsened over time if she was panicking about not being able to breathe properly, so it needn’t have happened in front of her kidnapper. It’s possible that her kidnapper didn’t know or care that she was ill and was surprised by her death.’

  ‘You go to all that trouble to kidnap a girl and then they go and die on you.’

  ‘Shut up, Peter.’ Godley looked irritated and Derwent turned around to glare at Belcott.

  ‘I’m just trying to lighten the mood.’ He didn’t seem to be particularly abashed.

  ‘When you’re in a hole, stop digging,’ Maitland advised.

  ‘If I can interrupt, I’d like to bring your attention back to the report.’ Godley’s voice was cold. ‘The cause of death is not the only unusual thing. Glen swabbed Cheyenne’s hands and nails. There was a large amount of another individual’s saliva present on the swabs. When they were run through the DNA database, they got a match, but it was to a woman.’

  ‘So he’s working with a partner,’ Belcott suggested. ‘A Hindley and Brady for the twenty-first century.’

  ‘Who’s the woman?’

  ‘That’s where it gets interesting. Patricia Farinelli is twenty-nine. She was arrested for taking part in an illegal demonstration against animal testing in Cambridgeshire in 2003. Her DNA was recorded on the database, but in fact she was released without charge.’

  ‘An animal rights nut,’ Maitland said. ‘Doesn’t mean she’s not cruel to kids.’

  ‘She worked as the manager of a nursery until eighteen months ago, when she didn’t turn up for work one day. She hasn’t been seen since.’

  For a moment, there was silence. I broke it with, ‘She’s a missing person?’

  ‘It wasn’t his first kidnap,’ Derwent said softly.

  ‘So it seems. Patricia lived in Stoke Newington. She was very close to her parents, so when she didn’t get in touch with them for a couple of days, they raised the alarm. There was an investigation, but it didn’t get very far. The officer in the case, a DS Rai, is working today but he wasn’t in the nick when I called. Without talking to him I can’t be sure, but I don’t get the impression it was a priority. Miss Farinelli wasn’t viewed as high risk.’ He leaned over and handed me a sheet of paper. ‘Maeve, can you try and track the OIC down? Find out what happened?’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘Wait a second. She disappeared eighteen months ago, hasn’t been heard from since, and her saliva is all over a dead teenager’s hands. What the hell?’ Derwent shook his head, frustrated. ‘Nothing about this case makes sense.’

  ‘Not at the moment.’ Godley gave a small, grim smile. ‘I did say you wouldn’t believe it. And there’s something else you might like to know. Rob?’

  ‘We met Ken Goldsworthy at Mrs Skinner’s home yesterday.’

  ‘What the fuck was he doing there?’ Derwent sounded genuinely shocked.

  ‘Making a pass at Gayle. While John’s away, Ken thinks she should play.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘Who’s Ken Goldsworthy?’ Liv sounded plaintive.

  ‘He’s a John Skinner wannabe,’ Rob said.

  Derwent sucked air through his teeth. ‘You wouldn’t want him to hear you say that. He’s not as successful as Skinner, but he’s a very bad lad indeed.’

  ‘They don’t get on,’ Godley explained, in the understatement of the century. ‘They had a dispute over territory a few years ago. It was … unpleasant.’

  Derwent laughed suddenly. ‘Do you remember Goldsworthy’s granny?’ He looked around. ‘Anyone not know the story?’

  ‘Me,’ Liv said promptly, and there were other shaking heads.

  ‘It’s a good one. John and Ken had been knocking lumps out of each other for a while – nicking drugs, getting in first to do jobs the other one had been setting up, throwing their weight around. Things hadn’t got serious yet, by which I mean no one had died. That came later. But one of John’s boys got beaten up by a few of Ken’s lot, and he ended up in a coma in intensive care. John was furious. He wanted to send Ken a message, to get him to back off. And he happened to know Ken’s granny had just died a month before. So he dug her up.’

  ‘Oh my God.’ Liv put her hand to her mouth.

  ‘He didn’t stop there. He broke into Ken’s house and tucked the corpse up in his bed. Remote control in one hand, unlit fag in the other, propped up watching a porno film with the electric blanket on high. He said he only regretted not being there to see Ken’s face when he found his nan waiting for him.’

  There was a ripple of laughter around the room.

  ‘What I say is, if you’re going to have a feud, make sure it’s with someone who’s got a sense of humour.’

  ‘Unfortunately, Ken doesn’t.’ Godley’s face was sombre. ‘Things went downhill from that point on. I don’t imagine Ken would dream of forgiving him for that, even if they got over their territorial difficulties. So turning up at his house—’

  ‘—is pretty much an act of war,’ Derwent finished.

  ‘So that’s where we are.’ Godley scanned the room. ‘Those of you who are working on tracing and interviewing potential witnesses from the warehouse, please carry on. Josh, can you concentrate on finding out what Ken’s up to? I find it hard to believe he’s involved in Cheyenne’s death but I can’t be sure yet, and I really don’t want to miss something obvious. It’s also worth warning the county forces and the Task Force if this row is going to kick off again. Now that John is looking at a serious sentence, you have to assume Ken thinks there’s nothing between him and a takeover.’

  ‘I don’t actually know what John would resent more – losing his missus or his empire.’

  ‘What about both?’ Rob suggested.

  The little group that had gathered around the superintendent began to dissolve. I went back to my desk to make a start on finding out more about Patricia, pleasantly aware that I would be free of Derwent for a while now that he had something more interesting to do.

  ‘Rob, do you want to fill me in on what Ken said yesterday?’ Derwent asked.

  ‘No problem.’ The two of them headed for the small meeting room and Derwent closed the door firmly behind them. I wished them the joy of each other’s company. As far as I could tell, Rob hadn’t even looked at me.

  Glad to have something to occupy me, I rang the police station in Stoke New
ington and asked for DS Rai.

  ‘He’s just walked in the door.’ A tiny pause. I imagined DS Rai glowering at the woman I was speaking to. When she spoke again, she sounded as if she was trying not to laugh. ‘Can I get him to give you a call back?’

  I agreed and left my name and number, adding that I was ringing about Patricia Farinelli’s disappearance and that it was quite urgent. I would give him fifteen minutes, I thought, poking my computer into life. Fifteen minutes was long enough to take off your coat and get a coffee, or whatever it was Rai needed to kick-start his shift.

  I filled in the time by looking up the Bancroft brothers on the PNC. Nothing came up on either of them. Purely as a formality, I rang the DVLA to check that the date of birth Drew had given me matched their names.

  ‘No match to either one,’ said the pleasant Welsh voice on the other end of the line.

  ‘Really?’ I wondered if I should add driving without a licence to the brothers’ tally of offences. ‘Drew might be short for Andrew.’

  ‘I’ve got an Andrew Bancroft but the DOB is wrong. Four, six, eighty-three.’ He read out the address and it was the one Drew had given me.

  ‘Lying about his age. Tut tut.’ I wrote it down. ‘What about Lee Bancroft?’ I gave the address of the Hampstead flat and his date of birth.

  ‘I’ve got an Alexander Bancroft.’ I would have taken a million years to realise Lee was an abbreviation of Alexander. ‘The year is wrong, though. Eighty-one.’

  ‘Naughty boys, telling porkies about their ages.’ It fitted in with the cult of youth they were devoted to, and their disdain for authority. I shouldn’t have been surprised. ‘Thanks for that.’

  As soon as I replaced the receiver my phone rang.

  ‘DS Rai, Stoke Newington. You were looking for me.’

  He sounded bored and a touch hostile. I poured as much honey into my voice as I could. ‘Thanks so much for calling me back. It’s just in connection with Patricia Farinelli’s disappearance.’ I explained why I was asking about her.

  ‘I don’t think I can help you much. I didn’t spend that much time on the case, to be honest.’ The boredom had cranked up a notch, if anything. I tried to control my irritation.