by Parker Bilal
‘It doesn’t work like that. I have to prove to them that you are worth it.’
‘What about everything I’ve given you already?’
‘I’m not the one who makes the rules. I just have to play by them.’
She leaned forward, resting a hand on his arm. ‘I thought you believed in me. In us.’
The light from outside drew patterns on the ceiling. The rain had turned to hail. The little granules of ice clattered lightly against the glass.
How many times had Drake thought back to that day? It seemed to be in constant replay in his head. That was the moment when he knew he was losing her, that the CPS would never have enough and that he was going to have to find another way.
When she disappeared the following week he was not completely surprised. Deep down he had known that it could happen at any time. Whatever he saw in her eyes that day, she had seen in his. She had taken the only obvious course; she had taken her chances and gone on the run.
When the body washed up he knew in his heart that it was her. A woman in her early thirties. No identifying marks except the tattoo of a seahorse on her right thigh. He remembered driving down to the morgue in Brighton. He didn’t need to look. She’d been in the water for days, but he knew it was Zelda. There was only one problem. The head was missing.
15
Walking in through the front door of the building on St James’s Street, Crane had to step around a couple of builders who were struggling to put up a heavy brass plaque engraved with the names of the solicitors who worked in the firm. The hallway floor was covered by strips of cardboard and plastic sheeting. There were buckets of paint and men in overalls. Just inside the entrance a door on the right led into a reception area, where a woman wearing a headset was saying, ‘Clayton Navarro, how can I help you?’
Her fingernails were long and curved and painted a shade of magenta with little gold nuggets stuck to them like dead insects. There was something out of place about her, which told Crane she was probably a temp. In between fielding calls she managed to take Crane’s name and push a button on her console. She didn’t have to wait long before she heard her name.
‘Miss Crane?’
The man coming through the doorway from the hall was short with curly blond hair that had been parted and combed down with the use of some kind of wax. The grey-blue suit he wore was too tight. It made him look like an oversized doll come to life. His name, he said, was Dean Mitchell. He began by apologising. ‘I’m sorry. As you can see, we’re having the place redecorated.’
Crane wasn’t interested in the decorating or the charm. She was, however, curious about why Mitchell was so nervous.
‘I’m not exactly sure how I can help you.’
‘It’s simple. I have become a little concerned about my father’s financial situation.’
‘I see.’
‘I understand that he’s made some rather unwise investments recently.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t really help you,’ said Mitchell.
‘Look at it this way.’ Crane smiled. ‘If I find out that your firm misled my father in any way then your lack of cooperation at this point is not going to help your case in any lawsuit.’
There was a moment of silence. Even the receptionist stopped tapping her nails on the phone. Dean Mitchell swallowed.
‘We seem to be at cross purposes. I would very much like to help you, but I am limited in what I can tell you.’
‘Why don’t we start with what you can tell me?’
Mitchell gestured towards the window alcove, where they were at least afforded some privacy. He tapped the file he was holding.
‘I can tell you that your father has remortgaged the estate a couple of times.’
‘That was at least ten years ago,’ said Crane.
‘Something like that.’
‘I’m concerned with something more recent.’
‘There I can’t help you.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because your father is no longer a client at Clayton Navarro.’
‘There must be some mistake. He’s been here for years. His father was a client of yours.’
‘As far as I know your father made it clear he was transferring his interests elsewhere.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘I really can’t say.’
Crane folded her arms. ‘You don’t actually know anything about this, do you?’
Mitchell’s face took on a pained expression.
‘It’s all right, I’m not blaming you. I just want to get to the bottom of this. To be entirely frank with you, I don’t honestly care whether he lives or dies. What I don’t like, what makes me angry, is the idea that someone is taking advantage of him. Does that make sense?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Mitchell nodded. ‘Perfectly.’
‘So, let’s try this again.’
Mitchell looked pained. He pushed a hand over his hair. ‘There has been a lot of change recently.’
Crane nodded at the work going on in the hallway. ‘New management?’
Mitchell glanced over at the receptionist and dropped his voice. ‘The firm was taken over by a large holding company.’
‘What’s the name of this company?’
‘The Kratos Corporation.’
‘Kratos?’
‘It’s Greek. The name of a god, I think, but aren’t they all?’
‘Kratos was the son of Styx, the deity that guarded the river between the earth and the underworld.’
‘Ah, well, there you are.’ Mitchell nodded, as if this was another irrelevant fact he was eager to forget.
Crane was struggling to control her temper. It was like getting blood from a stone.
‘I take it a lot of people have been fired?’
‘Yes, that’s about the size of it.’
‘So who was it, the person who handled his affairs?’
‘I think it was Barnaby Nathanson.’ Mitchell frowned. ‘I would have to check.’
‘I take it he’s no longer here. That’s why I’m talking to you, right?’
‘That would be correct.’
‘Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. So, tell me, Dean, how long ago did Nathanson leave Clayton Navarro?’
‘That would be about a year ago.’
‘Did this have anything to do with the new owners?’
‘Mr Nathanson’s leaving?’ Mitchell’s face darkened. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Do you know where I can find him, Nathanson?’
‘I can find out.’
‘That would be helpful.’ Crane decided she had spent enough time on this. She only had one more question. ‘My father’s health is not good. If he were to pass away what would happen to the estate?’
‘Oh, well, I couldn’t say.’
‘Humour me, just give me a general view based on what’s in the file. You have read the file, at least?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Mitchell hesitated. ‘As far as I can tell the value of the estate is already overstretched by bank loans and such. It’s a big property so there’s a substantial amount there. It all depends on what he has done this last year. You would have to speak to Mr Nathanson.’
‘Let’s say he’s made some bad decisions.’
‘Well, in the worst case scenario he could see the bank forcing him to sell in order to cover his losses incurred. But, like I said …’
‘You don’t want to speculate. Yes, I think I gathered that.’
On her way out, Crane had to step aside to make way as two painters traipsed by carrying rolls of wallpaper and pots and brushes. Her eye fell on the brass plaque that had been removed. Barnaby Nathanson was halfway down.
16
Drake replayed the footage from the CCTV camera in the train carriage on his laptop. He’d already been over it a dozen times. He knew the sequence by heart. Doors opening, people shuffling forwards, doors closing, train departing. New passengers moving, platform filling up, new train arriving. He went through every person, wa
tched the flow of people coming in, jostling about, getting in each other’s way. He watched them stepping aboard and stepping off. He saw young people and old. Carrying suitcases, rucksacks, shopping bags, children. People going about their daily routines. The counter in the top right-hand corner ticked off the minutes. In his email, Milo had conveniently added a timescale that ran down the left-hand side with the times that corresponded to each stop.
17:58 marked the moment when the head rolled out of the bag as the train began to slow, pulling into Clapham Common station. Suddenly everyone was moving at once and it was difficult to keep sight of what was happening, who was moving where. Centre stage was Ruby Brown, mother of Tyler, who appeared somewhat hysterical, understandable under the circumstances, one arm wrapped around her baby grabbing her son and trying to get off the train. Drake watched her actually kick one woman out of her way. The space around the IKEA bag cleared as people tripped over one another in their haste to get away from it and out of the carriage. Most passengers clearly had no idea what it was everyone was fleeing from. They couldn’t see what was on the floor. They simply assumed the worst and fought their way out. A bomb was the most obvious thing running through their minds. The panic could be seen spreading like fire through the carriage and spilling out along the platform.
Drake moved on, scrolling through the files, going from station to station, trying to pin down the precise moment when the bag was brought on board. The train was so crowded at that time it was difficult to see. The spot where the bag had been placed also did not help. Being tucked into the corner behind the seats meant that even when it could be seen, only a triangle of the nylon bag was visible.
Drake rolled the tape back, moving the cursor at the bottom of the screen towards the left. Now he watched the scene at Euston, where there was a sudden surge in the number of people getting on board. Four Asian teenagers huddled together by the door. From their clothes Drake would have said Japanese. A large group of adolescents who looked like they were part of a school trip flooded the central part of the carriage. At that point Ruby Brown and her children were squashed into the corner. The pressure eased slightly at Leicester Square, and then thickened again at Charing Cross. The bag was already in place, just out of sight on the floor. The boy, Tyler, could be seen kicking his leg back and forth, his attention clearly drawn to something tucked into the corner in the luggage area.
Rolling the video back again, Drake tried to pick out individuals getting on and off the train. At a certain point it all began to blur and he was no longer sure what he was seeing. He decided to take a break and went down to the kitchen to make himself a coffee. While he waited for the water to boil he took a couple of swings at Ray’s punchbag. He remembered being surprised when he’d first seen it hanging there. Who keeps a punchbag at the office? In time, he’d come to appreciate the way taking a few swings could help take the edge off. For a while he forgot all about the severed head and indeed the coffee.
Back upstairs he sat down behind the desk and resumed work. At Leicester Square, where the maybe Japanese women got off the train, another passenger close to the doors at the centre of the carriage got off to let other people out and then got on again just before the train departed. Drake moved the tape in increments, trying to get a better look at him. The pixellation made any close identification difficult. He guessed the man was in his twenties. He was wearing a lot of layers. Several jackets hanging off him. A sweatshirt with the hood up over a baseball cap, and still no bag in sight.
Drake worked backwards to the point when there was only a handful of people in the carriage. He went through them one by one. They made up an average assortment of the city’s inhabitants. Middle-aged white woman with a terrier on her lap. The picture of respectability. Glasses, sensible shoes and clothes. He put her age around the sixty mark. No husband. Divorced? Widowed? Next to her was a young black woman. Late thirties. Wearing large spectacles that seemed to have been chosen, like the rest of her outfit, as a form of disguise. The polo neck, baggy trousers and heavy boots, all black. Around her waist she had tied a parka of some kind that flopped around like a dead animal. She had two or three shapeless bags hanging from her shoulders. She could almost have been a homeless person, but her clothes were too clean for that. Across from her was an old man. West Indian, was Drake’s guess. In his sixties, fiddling on his phone with some kind of game, it looked like.
That left the man in the baseball cap. It was hard to see his face beneath the hood and cap, neither of which he ever removed. He shifted around a lot, from one end of the carriage to another. It wasn’t even clear if it was actually a man. The person’s hair was completely hidden. The logo on the cap was all he had to go on. Fender. As in the guitar? Judging by the layers of clothes the person wore they might have been sleeping rough. Baggy, dirty jumpers, a fleece jacket and grey gym pants without markings. Basically, the whole outfit might have been fished out of a charity bin.
Ruby Brown and her children had got onto the Tube at Finsbury Park. They took the Victoria Line to Euston, where they switched to the Northern Line. ‘Fender’, as Drake now dubbed this person, was the one closest to the spot in the carriage where the blue IKEA bag had been left. He or she got off the train at Warren Street. Platform footage showed that Fender remained on the platform, shuffling up and down, peering into bins, before boarding another southbound Northern Line train. This time the subject got off at Kennington, crossing through the connecting tunnel to another southbound train. This took him to Stockwell, one stop before Clapham Common, where southbound services were stopped. The head had by now been discovered.
On his tenth or eleventh sweep, Drake suddenly realised that the moment when the bag appeared, that is when the top corner came into view, might not be the actual time when the bag was brought onto the carriage. It might have been pushed into view by the crowds between Euston and Leicester Square. It could, in other words, have been brought onto the train much further back. But how far back?
Drake reached for his phone and called Milo.
‘Are you busy?’
‘Just tell me what you need.’ Milo sounded half asleep, as if he welcomed anything that might be a distraction from the routine assignments he was dealing with.
‘A couple of things. I’m just looking at footage from inside the carriage. I’m interested in one passenger in particular.’
‘The guy in the Fender hat?’
‘You spotted him too?’
‘Well, he’s the outlier.’
‘He wasn’t carrying the bag when he got on board at Walthamstow.’
‘Hold on,’ said Milo, as he pulled up the footage. There was a delay. Drake could picture him at his work station at Raven Hill. ‘Okay, yes. I’ve got it. No bag.’
‘Right. How about footage of that train before that moment?’
‘Before Walthamstow?’
‘It’s an end station. The trains stop there for a while and then come back southbound.’
Milo took a moment. ‘You think the bag was put on the train before it arrived in Walthamstow?’
‘Why not?’
‘Interesting. Then we’re looking in the wrong place. Let me get hold of the footage and I’ll get back to you.’
Drake put down the phone and sat back. The chair was a big, comfortable leather thing that rocked back. He put his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. How the bag got onto the train was one thing, but what really bothered him, the thing he was getting no closer to finding and answer to, was why? Why would someone leave Zelda’s head on the train? The more he thought about it, the more it seemed to him that it wasn’t a random act. The perpetrator had not panicked and raced for the door. He, or she, had left the bag there on purpose; they had wanted her to be found.
Returning to the files Milo had sent him, Drake clicked through the ones of Walthamstow station. Interior and then exterior. He tried to look for the guy in the Fender hat but he seemed to have evaded the cameras as he entered the station.
Drake clicked open the audio visual file that was sitting in his inbox and then spooled forwards through the new footage.
In the background a small-sized white van was parked. A traffic warden was busy writing out a ticket. In the foreground, passing through the ticket barrier was the man in the hat.
‘You need to scroll back to the first reference I put in the mail.’
Drake found the counter number and moved the cursor back. It didn’t take him long to spot Fender. Head down, he was shuffling along the platform. In his left hand was the blue IKEA bag. The only thing was that he was getting on the train going north. He got off the train at Walthamstow and disappeared from sight inside a connecting tunnel leading off the platform. This time he was not carrying the bag. Milo cleared his throat.
‘There are no cameras in the link tunnel. And he does not appear in the ones in the main hall. That means he had to have concealed the bag on the train and then waited in the tunnel for it to depart, this time heading south.’
‘He was watching the bag,’ said Drake softly. ‘He was standing in the tunnel watching the bag.’
‘It’s almost as if he’s protecting her.’
‘If anyone went near the bag, or tried to remove it, he would have intervened.’
‘But why go to all that trouble?’
‘So that when we see him getting onto the train, he doesn’t have the bag with him.’ Drake let the air out of his lungs slowly. ‘Most people would have left it there.’
Milo was not satisfied. ‘I still don’t get why. Why does he go to all that trouble just to leave the bag on the train?’
Drake didn’t have a ready answer to that. He had been struggling with the idea that the perpetrator had wanted the head to be found, but obviously not to be caught in actual possession of it. Meaning that he was smart enough to try not to implicate himself, but still determined for the head to come to light. Now, though, watching Fender moving back and forth from train to tunnel, he wondered if they were simply dealing with someone who was confused.
