As she got out of the car the front door opened and Charlotte Curtis stood there, propped up on a walking stick. She’d been quite a big woman when Tina had first met her three months earlier but she’d lost weight and her dark hair had gone grey, making her look older than her forty-seven years.
Tina stopped in front of her and smiled. ‘Charlotte. It’s good to see you.’
Charlotte stepped forward and embraced her. ‘It’s good to see you too. You saved my life. I won’t forget it.’
‘I did what I could, but I honestly thought I’d lost you.’ Tina considered herself a self-contained woman, not used to overt displays of emotion, but she felt a wave of feeling almost overwhelm her as the memories of that brutal afternoon came flooding back.
They held each other for a long moment and it was Charlotte who pulled away first.
‘Come in. Sit down. You must be thirsty. Can I get you a drink?’
Tina composed herself, said she’d love a coffee, and five minutes later they were sitting opposite each other in a cosy living room with thick wooden beams crisscrossing the ceiling. The windows were open, letting in the sounds of birds from outside.
‘So,’ said Tina, her eyes momentarily going to the cane resting by Charlotte’s side. She’d seen how hard it was for her to walk now and knew it could so easily have been her in the same position. ‘How have you been?’
Charlotte sighed. ‘Bored. Tired. In pain.’ She forced a smile. ‘It’s been hard, Tina. I’ve lost part of one lung so I get out of breath quickly. I’ll get better but I’m never going to get back to full fitness. I miss my friends too. And my life back in Roquecor.’
‘Have the French authorities told you when they’re going to let you go back home?’
‘Only when the threat level is considered low enough, and they don’t know when that’s going to be.’
‘And they haven’t arrested anyone involved in the shooting?’
She shook her head. ‘No. They’ve told me that the people who attacked us were working on behalf of a British organized crime gang who are still very active. That’s all I know.’
Tina sipped her coffee. ‘It’s true. The gang are still very active, and the British police think that their leader is one of the people who killed Kitty. They also think that he and several others are involved in the Bone Field killings. I’m assuming you’ve heard about those.’
Charlotte barely suppressed a shudder. ‘Yes, I have. And is Kitty’s cousin, Alastair, one of the others you’re talking about?’
Tina nodded. ‘We believe so, yes.’
‘And I hear the British police haven’t made any arrests yet. So how are these people ever going to be stopped?’
It was, thought Tina, a very good question, and one that frustrated many people, including herself. ‘We build a case against them. It’s taking time but things are happening. And that’s why I’m here. You called me, Charlotte. What did you want to tell me?’
Charlotte took a deep breath. ‘I’ve had a lot of time to think out here. To go back over old conversations I had with Kitty when we were at Brighton poly together. They were good times, and I still remember them well.’
She was silent for a moment as she thought back to a happier, more innocent past.
‘Go on,’ Tina prompted.
‘I remember once talking to Kitty – I think we were out walking in the Seven Sisters National Park at the time, and we were chatting about how mad mothers can be sometimes, and she told me that her mum had been convinced that her sister Janet – that’s Alastair and Lola’s mother – had been murdered by her husband. She said that one day, when she was very young – six or seven – she remembered her mother talking to someone on the phone about it, a private detective like you, and even making an appointment to see him.’
‘And did Kitty think that her aunt had been murdered?’
Charlotte shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. She never said anything more about it.’
There was a pause as she sipped her coffee.
Tina thought that if this was all Charlotte had then it had definitely been a wasted journey.
‘So I looked into it,’ continued Charlotte. ‘After all, it’s not like I don’t have time on my hands. Kitty’s aunt, Janet, died in a car crash in Italy in July 1975. She was on holiday with her husband Robert at the time. The reports said they’d left Alastair and Lola behind with relatives, but I don’t know which ones. One night Janet had been drinking and she drove the car off a ravine not far from the villa, and was killed instantly.’
‘I’m assuming her husband wasn’t in the car.’
‘No. Apparently they’d had an argument over dinner, and Janet had stormed out and got in the car. Robert had tried to stop her. He said she was very drunk. But she’d driven off anyway, and from what I’ve managed to find out she didn’t get very far. One report said it was less than a mile. I looked up the location on Google Maps, and though I don’t know exactly where the villa was, it was a mountainous area, and the roads look treacherous enough now, so God knows what they would have been like forty years ago.’
Tina thought about this. It seemed pretty extreme behaviour to jump into a car and drive off drunk when you were in the mountains in a foreign country. But drunk people aren’t exactly known for their rational behaviour, as Tina could attest to from experience, and there was nothing in what Charlotte told her that suggested obvious foul play, although it was definitely something worth researching further.
But it seemed that Charlotte had already done that for her. ‘I couldn’t find out any more of interest about the car accident,’ she continued, ‘but it made me think that if Kitty’s mum hired a private investigator to look into it, it was maybe an idea to try to track him down. So I did. And I came up with this.’
She opened a folder she had on her lap and flicked through a couple of sheets of paper until she came to the one she wanted, and handed it to Tina.
Tina began reading, and as she did so she realized that what Charlotte Curtis had discovered could be dynamite.
Twelve
We should have been in good cheer. The DNA test was a major breakthrough. Now we had the name of one of the Welsh farmhouse victims. Tracey Burn may have died a long time ago but it was a start, and again, I had to admit I was impressed with Sheryl Trinder. She might not have been a barrel of laughs but Jesus she got things done.
There was no good cheer in Dan, though.
‘Are you trying to get me in shit?’ he asked me when we were in the car en route to Tracey’s half sister’s place. I’d never seen him this pissed off, but then we didn’t really know each other.
I glared at him. ‘Of course I’m not. All I want to do is solve this case. I didn’t have a chance to talk to you about Ugo Amelu before the meeting with Sheryl. Why would I bother trying to get you in shit?’
I was driving and he turned away, looking out of the window.
‘Remember, I was the one who brought you on board, Ray. Because I tell you something, no one else wanted you.’
The comment stung.
‘You brought me on board because you needed all the help you can get,’ I countered. I thought about adding that if he and his colleagues had investigated the Kristo Fisha murder properly then he wouldn’t be so irate now, but I didn’t. There was no point adding more fuel to the fire.
‘Don’t undermine me, all right?’ he said.
‘Whatever you say.’
‘Yeah, exactly. Remember who the senior officer is.’
‘Sure, boss.’
‘Fuck you,’ he said, and we left it at that.
Martine Vincent lived on the ground floor of a 1980s block of Housing Association flats wedged in behind a street of neat Georgian townhouses like an unwanted relative at a family party.
The interview with her was short and chaotic. She was a large, harassed woman with four kids, one of whom, Floyd, a twelve-year-old who was as tall as me and a fair bit wider, was sprawled out on the cramped living room’s on
ly sofa watching Jeremy Kyle, while a toddler we weren’t introduced to ran round in aimless circles at our feet.
Obviously we were there to give Martine bad news, so it would have been easier to have sat her down in a calm environment and gently explain that her half sister was dead, but that wasn’t going to be possible, so the deed was done in the kitchen.
Martine didn’t exhibit a great deal of sadness when she was told that Tracey was one of the Bone Field victims, and that her remains had been found at the farm in Wales. ‘I wondered why those detectives came round for a swab last night,’ she said. ‘How did she get there then?’
‘That’s what we’re trying to find out,’ said Dan, stepping out of the way as the toddler came racing past as if she was on amphetamines. ‘When was the last time you saw her?’
‘Long time back. Years and years. We weren’t close. We never lived together as kids and I only ever saw her in the street, or out in pubs.’
To a man like me who hadn’t experienced a true family since the age of seven, it always surprised me when other people chose not to be close to their siblings, yet it happened all the time.
‘Do you remember Tracey’s boyfriend at the time?’ asked Dan. ‘Paul Moffatt?’
Martine pulled a face. ‘Yeah. He was a real lowlife. He’s still round here.’
‘Do you think he had anything to do with Tracey’s murder?’
‘I thought you said her body was found down at that place in Wales,’ Martine said. ‘I doubt if Paul’s ever even been outside London. He ain’t exactly a criminal mastermind.’
This tallied with what we’d found out about him. Moffatt was a particularly unpleasant individual. At the age of thirteen he’d broken into a primary school with two friends and killed all the pets the children had been keeping. They’d poured bleach in the goldfish bowl, beheaded the hamsters, and drowned the rabbit. Since then he’d had a string of convictions, mainly for drugs offences and domestic violence. He liked to concentrate his ire on children, animals and defenceless women. Looking at his record, it was clear he was a coward and, in criminal terms, strictly small fry.
I looked round the cramped, untidy kitchen, then back at Martine Vincent. ‘So when your sister disappeared all those years ago and didn’t come back, you never thought to report her missing.’
She obviously picked up on the criticism in my voice and glared at me. ‘I told you, we hardly saw each other. And anyway, she rang me once to say she’d left him. Moffatt.’
‘When was this?’
‘God, years ago, I don’t know. She said she’d left him and moved out of London to a shelter where she was really happy, and she wasn’t coming back.’
‘Did she say where this shelter was?’
Martine shook her head. ‘Not that I remember. It was weird really, because she never usually phoned me about anything ever.’
Dan and I exchanged looks, our earlier angry words temporarily forgotten.
‘And did you see Tracey again after that?’ I asked.
Martine thought about it for a moment. ‘No, I don’t think I did. And you know, the years just passed, and I thought she was happy somewhere. You know what it’s like. You just get on with things, don’t you?’
Thirteen
‘Listen,’ I said as we approached the shabby second-floor flat which was Paul Moffatt’s last known address, ‘I can’t keep this up all day. I’m sorry if it seemed like I was undermining you, Dan. I appreciate you sticking your neck out to get me back on board. And you’re right. No one else did want me.’
He gave me a crooked smile. ‘I’m sorry, that was a bit harsh. I think I’m still feeling a little sore about the fact we never did anything with the DVD back then.’
‘Forget it. You weren’t to know. If anyone should feel guilty, it’s the SIO.’
He nodded, though I don’t think he truly believed it. Dan was a good guy and, like me, he let things affect him.
We stopped and shook hands. It was a nice gesture.
Then I knocked hard on Paul Moffatt’s door.
He was definitely inside. I could hear him shouting at someone. He sounded half cut even though it was only eleven a.m. I put my ear to the door and heard the sound of rapid, stumbling footfalls, then the door flew open, revealing a dishevelled, wrinkled guy in a grey tracksuit that matched the colour of his skin. He’d clearly been expecting someone else because he continued to shout and curse for several seconds before he realized that we were officials of some kind. I’d seen Moffatt’s mugshot so I knew it was him, but even so I was taken aback by his appearance. He was supposed to be forty-one, but the man in front of me looked about sixty, and not a healthy-looking sixty either. His face was round and doughy, the skin dry and flaky and covered in deep lines, and his eyes were pale and bloodshot.
‘Not today,’ he said quickly, trying to shut the door, ‘we’re just going out.’
But we weren’t going to let him go that easily. Paul Moffatt was a scumbag, and though as police officers we’re supposed to treat everyone, including suspects, with politeness and courtesy, in reality it isn’t like that. I had no idea whether or not he had something to do with Tracey Burn’s disappearance, but his involvement wouldn’t have surprised me in the least. From what I could make out from his file, he would have sold his mother’s kidneys for the price of a couple of grams of smack.
But it wasn’t any of that which made me force the door open and barge inside. It was the sound of a young child’s persistent crying. One of the conditions of Moffatt’s release from prison for child cruelty was he was not allowed to live with children under the age of sixteen, or have them in his home without prior authority from social services, and this was something I was pretty certain he didn’t have.
‘Oi, what the fuck are you doing?’ he demanded, trying to square up to me as I pushed him backwards.
I pushed him a second time and he fell back into a chair, landing on an open Domino’s box containing a couple of dried-out slices of pizza. Dan came in behind me and closed the door.
‘Jesus Christ,’ I said, looking around. ‘Don’t you ever clean this place?’
We were in the living room. It was filthy, the detritus of takeaway food and booze on every available surface and most of the floor. Dotted around among it all were kids’ toys, dirty nappies, overflowing ashtrays, a skag pipe, even a foot-long black dildo with a piece of tissue stuck on the end. In the corner, a widescreen TV blasted out an old football match from the 1990s. The place stank of shit, fat and stale smoke. From some other room the child’s cries were loud and hysterical.
‘You’re not meant to have a kid here,’ said Dan. ‘Where is he?’
‘It’s my girlfriend’s. She’s just visiting.’
At that moment, the girlfriend came in the room, smoking a cigarette and looking stressed. I’d guess that she was probably only about thirty, but she had the skinny, unwashed look of the smack addict, and her eyes were black and sunken.
‘Who are you?’ she demanded.
Dan ignored her, pushing her out of the way as he went in the direction of where the cries were coming from. She followed him, shouting and yelling, so I turned my attention to Moffatt, who had clambered out of the chair and was removing a pizza slice that had got stuck to his arse, slinging it back in the box.
‘I need to ask you some questions about Tracey Burn,’ I said as he cleared a space on the floor for the pizza box.
‘Are you the Feds? You can’t come in here pushing me around. I’ll have you up for assault, mate.’ He seemed more confident now that he knew we were police and therefore bound by rules of conduct.
I shoved him back down in the chair. ‘Shut up and listen. The quicker you answer my questions, the quicker we leave you in peace.’
At that moment there was another commotion and Dan stalked back into the room, a disgusted expression on his face, the girlfriend coming in behind him, still shouting. ‘We’ve got to call social services,’ he told me. ‘There’s a two-year-old in
there shut in a cot with a nappy that hasn’t been changed for days.’
‘You fucking leave us alone!’ yelled the girlfriend. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about! I’m his mother!’
‘They’re coppers,’ Moffatt called out from the chair. ‘They haven’t got any right to come waltzing in.’
Which was when things happened fast. The girlfriend grabbed Dan by the shoulder, telling him not to ignore her. At the same time I saw a look of pure rage shoot across his face. He swung round in one movement and I thought for a split second he was going to hit her, which, given his background as a boxer, could have been a real disaster. But instead he twisted her arm round behind her back and shoved her against the wall as she yelped in pain.
‘You touch me again and I will arrest you for child neglect, do you understand? Now stay there and shut up.’
I could see that Dan was exercising all his self-control to stop himself from going over the edge. This wasn’t like him at all. He’d always had a reputation for being calm and collected.
The girlfriend grimaced in pain. ‘All right, all right. Let go of my arm.’
‘Leave her alone,’ said Moffatt, but he made no move to help her.
I gave him a cold stare. ‘If you want to avoid going back to prison for breaking the terms of your release, you’d better answer my questions.’
‘Fuck you,’ he said. ‘You’re not even allowed to be in here. You’ve got no warrant. I know my rights.’
Some people just don’t get it, and Paul Moffatt was one of them, which was why after a lifetime of criminality he was still sat in a shitty little flat shooting up skag and looking like the walking dead.
‘Why don’t you look after the young lady in here while Mr Moffatt and I have a chat elsewhere,’ I said to Dan.
He gave me a puzzled look but nodded.
‘What the fuck?’ said Moffatt. ‘I ain’t talking to you.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘you are.’
I reached over, grabbed him by his lank, greasy hair and hauled him to his feet. He yelped in pain and struggled, but years of hard living had weakened him and, like all bullies, he was no good at standing up to aggression.
The Hanged Man Page 8
