by James Oswald
‘In a manner of speaking. Why?’
‘Saw a bunch of them coming out of that old club a fortnight ago, din’t I. You know. Used to be Ritzy’s only it got closed down. All boarded up now.’
‘This whole area’s due to be demolished soon. Local housing association’s going to be putting up a couple of blocks of flats, but mostly it’s executive homes for a million quid a pop.’
Our police constable driver double parks at the end of a quiet street, not even bothering to undo his seat belt, let alone get out of the car and give us a tour.
‘In this part of town?’ I peer out of the window at the dereliction, before opening the door to climb out.
‘Yeah, well. That’s what I heard. Been a while since anything’s happened, so there’s probably some action group or something holding it all up.’
I think I might have been into Ritzy’s nightclub. Just the once, mind you, and many years ago. It was one of those places that even students would find hard to love. If memory serves, the owner lost his licence and the place was shut down by health and safety after it was found that the fire escape doors had been screwed shut to stop people sneaking in without paying. Either that or there were too many rats in the toilets.
The windows are all boarded up, front door locked with a heavy-duty vandal-proof hasp and padlock of the kind you’d expect to see on building sites. Around the back it’s much the same. No way in without a key, or possibly several. Judging by the posters pasted to the boards, advertising gigs from years ago, nobody’s been here in a while, so I guess the information my young thespian friend gave me was dud.
‘Nothing happening here,’ I say to Karen as we stand on the pavement and stare at the lifeless building.
‘Nothing happening anywhere. This place is dead.’
She has a point. The road used to be busy, but now all of the local shops are boarded up much the same as Ritzy’s. There’s a pub a few hundred metres away at the other end of the street, a couple of hardy smokers leaning against the wall outside its front entrance. Past it, I can see the towers of the Danes Estate rising into the afternoon sky, their grey concrete cladding merging almost seamlessly with the cloud.
Even the church next door to the nightclub looks disused. It claims to be St Martin’s but if that’s the case then Martin’s forgotten all about it. The gate at the bottom of the steps leading up to its entrance is locked with a rusty padlock and chain. There’s no light from the stained-glass windows, and one panel is missing a lot of its glass. The paint has mostly peeled from the noticeboard just behind the railings, but I can make out a phone number with too few digits to be less than ten years out of date. Like Ritzy’s and the shops, it’s abandoned, and as I look around the area it’s clear that nobody even lives here any more. I’d expect there to be temporary fencing up, security patrols and a site office for what is obviously soon to become another development. The lack of anything here, including people, suggests our driver is right about the development having stalled.
‘This is a dead end. She’s not here, and neither are those creeps from the Church of the Golden Shower. Let’s get back to the station.’ Karen strides back to our waiting patrol car, but I pause a moment, looking at the church again. There’s something about it that doesn’t quite sit straight, something that bothers me, but I can’t put my finger on what.
‘You coming? Only it’s a long walk.’
Not to my flat it isn’t. I could be there in five minutes from here, taking the shortcuts and back lanes. Just a pity the station is on the opposite side of London. One last look at the church, the nightclub and the surrounding abandoned buildings. Still whatever it is my subconscious is trying to tell me hasn’t broken through. It’ll come to me in time, I guess. Probably wake me up in the middle of the night and I’ll wonder why I couldn’t see something so patently obvious.
‘Least we tried to find her,’ I say as I climb into the car. ‘Just hope she finds us before it’s too late.’
41
It’s late by the time I let myself in the front door to Charlotte’s house. Heat washes over me, a sharp contrast to the evening chill outside. More wonderful still is the smell of cooking, and I follow it through to the kitchen at the back of the house. I can’t see anyone about, but a pot is simmering on the hob, little gusts of steam escaping from the lid with a clatter. When I peer inside, the smell intensifies. Someone’s cooking a curry that, while probably not as good as Mrs Feltham’s, is certainly better than the takeaway pizza I’d been contemplating.
‘It’s not ready yet.’
I turn to see Izzy standing in the doorway, a look of irritation on her face that is so like my father’s standard expression I almost laugh. She’s dressed in baggy jogging bottoms and a hoodie, bare feet showing nails painted in a variety of different colours. The scared, abused and frightened teenage girl is still in there, but she’s grown up over the past few months.
‘Sorry. Smells good though.’
‘Didn’t know what time you’d be back, so I cooked something that could just sit and wait. There’s naan to go with it, and the rice is in the steamer.’ Izzy points at a stainless steel machine with glowing LED lights over on one of the polished stone counters. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a rice steamer before, but this one looks like it could mine bitcoins in its spare time.
‘You don’t need to feed me, Izzy. Not that I’m complaining, mind.’
‘I know.’ She heads over to the fridge, an enormous thing you could hide several bodies in. ‘Beer?’
It’s very tempting, but I need to sort some stuff out first. Not the least of which is fetching clothes from my flat. I’ve got the things I bought in Edinburgh, but if I’m going to stay here for any length of time I’ll need clean underwear at the very least. There’s a week’s worth of post piling up, too. I’d have picked it up earlier, but I daren’t run the risk of bumping into Chet Wentworth or any of his pals. Not with Stokes still in hospital.
‘Maybe later.’ I glance at my watch, aware that there’s not a lot of ‘later’ left. ‘I need a shower, and then I’ll have to be Jennifer Golightly for a while.’
By the time I find a parking space within reasonable distance of the apartment block, I realise I’d have been quicker walking from Charlotte’s place to my flat. But I didn’t fancy carrying everything I need all the way back. And my stomach’s full of incredibly good curry, too, which makes the thought of walking a mile or so each way less than appealing. I’ll have to ask Izzy where she learned to cook; it’s not something they covered much beyond basic baking skills when I was at St Humbert’s.
There’s always a risk that any paparazzi lurking around my place will recognise my car, of course. It had been parked in Charlotte’s garage alongside her rather more elegant Tesla, and I almost contemplated borrowing that instead. I’d have been spotted for sure though, and driving something that cost more than the chief commissioner’s annual salary wouldn’t help to dampen the posh cop image.
Jennifer Golightly, with her frumpy clothes and mouse-brown shoulder-length hair flecked with grey doesn’t attract the attention of the bored-looking pair of ne’er-do-wells lurking on the pavement near the stairs up to my level. I catch a snippet of their conversation as I walk past them though, and it doesn’t inspire me with confidence.
‘. . . Stokes in the hospital. Heart attack, they reckon. Massive one.’
‘Stokesey? Bloody hell. Thought he was fit.’
‘Yeah, well. Word is she was there, right?’
‘Who?’
‘Her. The posh cop. Fairchild. Way I heard it she just stared at him like she wanted him to die. Maybe even slipped something in his coffee, right?’
‘Why was he even with . . .’
I move on as swiftly as I can without drawing attention to myself, even though I’m desperate to find out more. Too much to hope that my role in saving Stokes’s life mi
ght be the news. I guess it doesn’t fit the narrative of spoiled little rich kid just playing at being poor.
It still leaves me rattled, which is probably why I don’t notice the figure lurking just beyond my front door until it’s too late. I’ve already got the key in the lock when it steps out of the shadows.
‘Nice wig. Might have to get me one of those.’
I almost jump out of my skin, even as my brain parses the voice, recognises it, and damps down the adrenaline rush.
‘Anna?’ I look at the short, young woman, her face mostly shadow, goth-black clothes perfectly suited to lurking. ‘Or should I say Polly?’
‘Just not Pollyanna, OK? Fucking hate that name.’
‘What are you doing here?’ It’s a stupid question, really, but it’s out of my mouth before I can stop myself.
‘Heard you was looking for me, right? Well, here I am. Now can we go inside? It’s fucking freezing out here.’
If Anna thought getting inside was going to help warm her up, she’s sorely disappointed. If anything, the temperature in my flat feels colder than outside. It’s damp, too, which makes it even worse.
‘Jeez. You forget to pay the gas bill or something?’ She stomps her feet, hugs herself tight, then walks past me into the narrow hall. She peers first through the door to the kitchen, then to the lounge.
‘I’ve not been home. Hounded by the press, remember?’ I point at my wig.
‘Where you staying then?’
It’s an innocent enough question, but I’m not about to invite her back to Charlotte’s. ‘Could ask the same of you. Your mum’s not seen you in weeks. Drama club miss you too.’
‘Drama club? Jesus. You have been doing your homework.’
‘I’m a detective. It’s my job. At least, it would be if I could persuade the tabloids to leave me alone.’
‘Got anything to eat?’ Anna walks into my kitchen as if it’s her own, over to the fridge. Light spills out of it onto her face, showing a puffy eye, badly concealed with make-up. The faint whiff of decay spills out too, taking a little longer to make itself known.
‘Eww. What died in here?’ She slams the door shut with a little more force than strictly necessary, then starts going through the cupboards until she finds a packet of biscuits.
‘Help yourself. You want a cup of tea to go with that?’
‘Got anything stronger?’
‘No. And I’ve no milk for tea either. Sorry.’ I pull out a chair from the narrow table, sit down and watch as she munches through the biscuits. They’ve got to be past their sell-by date, but at least the packet hadn’t been opened. Until now. After a while she pulls out the other chair and sits down too.
‘So what you wanna see me about?’
Direct and to the point, I guess. I might as well respond in kind. ‘Dan Jones.’
Anna stops chewing, and puts down the half biscuit still in her hand. ‘What about him?’
‘How do you know him?’
‘He was nice. Didn’t stare at us girls like we was asking for it, like? Think he was a bit scared of us, you know.’
‘Is that why you helped him?’ I study her face as I ask the question, looking for any tell. She’s so heavily made-up it’s not easy to see anything, except for her swollen cheek and bloodshot eyeball. ‘That why someone hit you?’
‘Fell down the stairs, din’t I.’
I’d laugh were the situation not so serious. ‘Look, Anna. You were seen the night we found Dan round the back there.’ I chuck a thumb in the general direction of the bin store. ‘You and another bloke who I’m fairly sure shoved a leaflet into my hand at Euston station just a few days later. Bringing us the gospel courtesy of the Church of the Coming Light. You got anything to do with that? The Reverend Doctor Edward Masters?’
She’s good, I’ll give her that much. The flinch when I name the church is almost imperceptible. But when I mention Masters she twitches, covering it up by snatching the half-eaten biscuit from the table and shoving it in her mouth. She grabs the rest of the packet with the other hand and is on her feet before I can react.
‘Shouldn’t’ve come here,’ she says through a spray of crumbs. She’s quick, too, halfway to the door before I’m on my feet. If my flat were any bigger, I’d probably not be able to catch her, but I get a hand on her arm and hold on tight.
‘I’m trying to help you, Anna. Stop running away, OK?’
The life goes out of her, but I’m too seasoned a copper to fall for that old trick. I keep my grip as tight as ever. ‘Look, I know you’ve got yourself into something bigger than you thought. I mean it when I say I can help.’
She stares at me with that venom only teenagers can truly muster. At that moment I’m sure she hates me more than anything in the world. It doesn’t last though, and this time when she shakes my hand away, I let go.
‘The young man you were with that night, asking questions in the shops and the kebab place. What’s his name?’
‘I dunno. Reverend calls him Tim. Not seen him around for a few days now.’
Something about the way she says it tells me she knows exactly why Tim’s not around any more. ‘You’re part of the church, aren’t you. That’s where you’ve been staying, right?’
The nod is barely there, but it’s enough to open the floodgates. ‘I was sleeping rough when they found me. Proper messed up. You any idea what it’s like growing up on the Danes looking like me? And no dad either?’
I shake my head. It’s as far from my own upbringing as it’s possible to get. And my father might be a prize arsehole, but at least he was there throughout my childhood years.
‘Bad enough being called chinky and slit-eyes in Primary. It only gets worse when you get older. But the Reverend, he don’t stand for none of that shit. We’re all the same on the inside, that’s what he says. God’s beautiful creatures.’
It sounds idyllic, but I can’t quite square that with the dead man in a dirty close in Newhaven; the body thrown out in the square not a mile from here; Dan Jones with his tongue ripped out and bollocks cut off. ‘There’s another side to it though, isn’t there. Something you didn’t find out until it was too late, right?’
There’s a long pause before she speaks again, and I can see the emotions playing across her face despite her heavy white concealer. ‘I can’t say. You don’t know him. What he can do.’
I think of Tim in an Edinburgh back lane, the nameless young man in the park, Dan Jones hiding under the garbage. ‘I’ve a good enough idea.’
‘No. You really don’t.’ Anna takes a deep breath, as if trying to focus herself. ‘He has this power. He . . . controls people. Makes them do things. Terrible things.’ She looks at her hands as if she is one of those people and can remember all the terrible things she has done.
‘Hey, it’s OK.’ I reach out and lay my fingers gently on her shoulder. She shudders at the touch. Where before she’d avoided my gaze, now she looks straight at me.
‘It’s not OK. You can’t help. It’s too late for me.’ She shakes my hand away. ‘I shouldn’t have come here. Shouldn’t even have followed you that day. It hurts just to talk to you. You know that? He has that power.’
As if to illustrate her point, a great spasming cough shakes her to the core. I have a sudden vision of Jonathan Stokes choking, collapsing to the floor, unable to breathe. Anna has that same look of fear in her eyes just now, her face beginning to redden even underneath her heavy make-up.
‘Please. Don’t make me stay.’ Her words are barely a whisper, her breath catching as she tries to speak. I lean in the better to hear, and she shoves me, hard. Caught off guard and off-balance, I flail for the doorframe, miss and land on my arse in the kitchen. By the time I’ve clambered back up onto my feet, she’s out of the front door and away into the night.
42
‘I’d like to go and speak to them. The Ch
urch of the Coming Light.’
Wednesday morning and I’m in early, another video conference with DCI Bain. This time Diane Shepherd is in on it too, although where she’s called in from I’ve no idea. I’ve brought them up to speed about Anna, AKA Pollyanna Cho, and all the things she told me last night. I’d expected to get a telling-off for not bringing her in, but Shepherd cut Bain off before he could get started on that.
‘D’you not think we’d be better off getting a warrant, raiding the place? Do we even know where they’re based?’ DS Latham’s sneering face looms into the camera feed from Edinburgh. I don’t want to think why the two of them are still up there.
‘A little groundwork wouldn’t hurt first, would it? We go in heavy handed and shut down an outfit with their public profile, it could blow up in our faces very quickly.’
‘Public profile?’ Shepherd asks.
‘They run soup kitchens and homeless shelters all over north London, ma’am. Their drug intervention work has the support of several local MPs. The Reverend Doctor Masters is well connected, and he’s a favourite talking head on some of the late-night news programmes. I think I’d be happier checking that all out before accusing him of murdering and butchering young men.’
There’s a pause while they all digest this information. Eventually Bain speaks. ‘How are you planning on talking to him?’
‘I don’t know where he is, currently. But there’s a shelter not far from my flat. That’s pretty close to where we found Dan Jones, and where the body was left in the park. I figured I could just go and talk to whoever’s there about what they do, maybe try to get a tour of the facilities. If I can speak to some of the homeless folk too, so much the better. That’s not going to happen if the place is swarming with uniforms.’
‘What do you think, Karen?’ Shepherd asks. Beside me, the detective constable startles, surprised to be involved in the conversation.
‘I . . . I think it makes sense, ma’am. We’ve got a good relationship with the local police up there. Get a couple of community support officers to come with us. People who know the church – who the church know, more importantly. We don’t want to alarm anyone, just put out a few feelers.’
