The Heights

by Parker Bilal

  ‘Hello, hello?’

  ‘Nothing to worry about,’ Drake sang out. There was a muttering and then a shuffling of feet, followed eventually by a closing door.

  By the time he reached the second floor he had his tool kit out and was getting ready to pick the lock. Then his eye fell on the door and saw it was ajar. He listened, his ear to the opening, but he could hear nothing from within. Nudging the door gently with his toe, Drake stepped into the gloom of an unlit hallway.

  A faint light hummed from a small table light by the door. A coat rack along the wall displayed a couple of raincoats and an expensive oilskin jacket. The light shone on the varnished floorboards. He paused for a moment to pull on the pair of disposable latex gloves he had brought with him. Then he walked to the end of the short entrance hall. The living room facing the street was lit partially by the glow coming from outside. Drake felt glass crunching beneath his boot and stopped. There was a smell of alcohol in the air. He crouched down. A bottle had smashed on the ground. A heavy bottle. If he were to have hazarded a guess, he would have said Scotch, single malt, the expensive kind. Drake stepped onto the rug and moved to the windows ahead of him. There were two of them, high and wide French windows that gave onto a narrow balcony. Drake lifted the curtains aside cautiously. The street was quiet. He could see his car. Staying out of sight, he looked left and right, tried the doors on both sides and stepped away again.

  Turning his back to the windows, he looked around him. He switched on his flashlight. On his right an old fold-up bureau was pushed up against the wall. Above it hung a large oil painting of a rather stern-looking woman in white. A family heirloom of some kind, no doubt. The flat had been modernised, with a kitchenette installed beside the entrance hall. This was neat and simple, with wooden cupboards and a large refrigerator that hummed to itself contentedly. Low backlighting along the wall illuminated a counter of black stone that glistened with chips of mica. It looked clean and untouched, the kind of space you used to eat breakfast and unpack your takeaways. A plastic carrier bag sat on the counter. Water was dripping onto the floor. The bag was leaking. Drake went over to take a look. Inside were gently melting packages of lasagne, Black Forest gateau and burnt cinnamon ice cream. A bottle of wine had smashed. Glass splinters glittered darkly in a ruby red stain on the white tiles. The rest of the bottle lay on the floor. A small trickle of wine led towards the edge of the counter and drops fell to the floor.

  Drake was beginning to get a bad feeling. Moving away from the kitchen he went right, crossing the entrance hall and passing from the living room to a darkened dining area with a long table made of glass and steel. The chairs were some kind of modern design. Behind the dining area two wide steps led up to an office. Sliding glass doors stood open. He saw heavy bookcases and a shiny, antique desk. A window looked out onto the side street. Everything had been turned upside down. The drawers had been pulled out of the desk, books and papers littered the floor.

  Retracing his steps, Drake found a bedroom at the end of a hallway. It was empty. The drawers had been tipped onto the floor. Bedclothes lay strewn about and someone had taken a knife to the mattress, cutting deep slashes and digging around inside. Nathanson was in the adjoining bathroom.

  It looked as though the solicitor had tried to barricade himself inside. The doorframe was splintered around the lock. There were grubby marks left by the rubber soles of a large boot. Drake was careful not to touch anything. He leaned in through the doorway to take a closer look. There was a lot of blood on the walls and floor. A bloody smear on the mirror. The solicitor was in the bathtub. Crimson water had slopped over the sides, leaving a sticky mess on the floor. Nathanson was underneath the surface. His eyes were open and he was still dressed. One of his legs hung over the side. Drake estimated that he had been dead for at least a few hours.

  Backing away, Drake followed the trail of blood spots that led towards the far end of the flat. Over the years, Drake had learned to pick up on the essentials of what a murder scene could tell you. There were stupid killers, there were killers who were numbed by what they had just done, still high on the thrill, on the horror of what they were capable of, and there were panicky killers. Murderers were caught because they made mistakes, and the reasons for those mistakes varied. Despite the commonly held belief in the prevalence of serial killers, most murderers were amateurs, experiencing their own capacity for homicide for the first and usually last time. Repeat offenders also made mistakes but that was often down to stupidity, or overconfidence, which was a form of stupidity. Here there was a certain arrogance to the way in which the killer had wiped their hands along the wall, smearing blood over the paisley motifs. As if they didn’t care to be identified, daring the police to find them.

  Someone had come here looking for something. They had confronted Nathanson, tried to get the information out of him, dunked him underwater and eventually drowned him. Drake guessed that they had not been successful. Which explained why they had then turned over the office and the bathroom.

  He found a partial bloody footprint on the wooden floor in the hall, leading back towards the office. In a few hours, every inch of this place would be under the scrutiny of a team of SOCOs, with all their boxes of tricks. He stood for a moment in the doorway and surveyed the scene. Facing the bookshelves on the left-hand wall was another large painting, this time a still life, showing a table on which there lay a brace of dead pheasants, a withered vine with grapes on it and a glass of wine in which the light gleamed, even in the dimly lit room.

  Now he saw that the painting was slightly off kilter. It stood at an angle to the wall. Moving round it, Drake could see that the frame was hinged. There was something that prevented it from closing properly. He pulled it gently open to find a safe embedded in the wall. It was the old-fashioned kind, with a circular dial. The reason the picture wouldn’t fit against the wall was that there was a broken drill bit sticking out of the safe door. Somebody had tried to drill a hole just under the dial, rather clumsily by the look of things, and then abandoned the job. Amateurs. A killer trying his hand at safe cracking? Or a safe cracker who was hard at work and then surprised by the owner coming home? Drake stared at the safe for a long time and realised that neither of these things offered a full explanation.

  He went back through the house, searching for Nathanson’s phone but found no trace of it. It was gone. Presumably that meant the killers hadn’t found the combination on the phone. He went through the desk, running his hands around the insides of the drawers. Bending down, he examined the underside of each one. He moved aside the blotter, turning it over. Nothing. In his experience safe dials were a nice idea but most people had trouble remembering a combination that was ten or more numbers in a sequence that had to be loaded precisely, moving left and right. Usually they kept a note somewhere handy, nowadays on a telephone but failing that somewhere obvious.

  In the kitchen Drake opened every door he could see. Eventually he found what he was looking for. A yellowed sheet of paper taped to the inside of a cupboard, with a long list of telephone numbers. The kind of thing nobody kept any more, all the details you needed being stored inside your phone. Although there was an old socket on the wall from the days when there was a landline here, this list still served another function. Drake went through it slowly. It looked legitimate, with contacts for plumbers and sisters and parents, a GP. Then he spotted it. Hidden close to the bottom was a number with several angle brackets inserted between the digits. The brackets indicated which way to turn the dial, left and right. Drake stripped the paper off and went back to the safe.

  It still took him three tries, not being familiar with a lot of safes, but eventually he heard a satisfying click. When he turned the handle the door opened. He waited for a moment, listening for an alarm. That he couldn’t hear anything didn’t, of course, mean there wasn’t one. It could be a silent alert sent to a secur-ity company. Either way, he’d already overstayed his welcome.

  It was a small safe. The c
ontents could all have fitted easily into a normal briefcase. Only there were no contents. It was completely empty.

  He closed the safe again and spun the dial, leaving the broken drill bit in place. He returned the paper to the kitchen cupboard. In the distance he picked up the sound of a police siren that was getting closer. The woman upstairs must have decided it was better to be safe than sorry. It was time to move. He walked softly down the hall and pulled open the front door. Then he stopped in his tracks.

  ‘Either you’re moonlighting as a burglar or you’ve been holding out on me,’ said Crane. ‘I think you owe me an explanation.’

  41

  Crane’s motorcycle was parked behind Drake’s car. They were on the side street facing the building, far enough back from the corner to be shielded by the row of cars ahead of them. They had only just made it out in time. Through the windscreen they watched the action unfolding ahead of them. First there was a lone patrol car, but soon squad cars were coming in fast and furious from both sides.

  ‘The full five-star parade,’ murmured Drake.

  ‘Sounds like you miss it.’

  ‘Nah, truth is I was never really comfortable being inside a uniform.’

  ‘You don’t need to tell me that. You’re uncomfortable with authority.’

  ‘You read me like a book.’

  Ahead of them the flashing lights played across the walls of the building. There were uniformed officers going in and out. Drake hunched down in his seat. A van from the coroner’s office drove past them to park alongside a forensic unit crime scene van. A SOCO team could be seen suiting up and getting their equipment ready. Curtains were twitching up above and faces could be seen peering out, as the neighbours tried to gauge what was going on.

  ‘I have a bad feeling about this,’ said Drake.

  ‘How come?’

  He felt an odd craving for a cigarette. It had been months since he had last given up, but this time the craving was strong.

  ‘Whoever did this was trying to tidy up loose ends.’

  ‘You’re saying that the answer was in the safe?’

  ‘That’s my feeling.’

  ‘And this guy …’

  ‘Spider? Yes, I’ll have to have words with him.’

  Drake spotted Kelly and Pryce talking outside the front of the building. The familiar lanky figure of the chief forensics officer, Fast Eddie, was there too, walking purposefully with long, slow strides.

  ‘I’m having trouble seeing the big picture here,’ said Crane. ‘Why would anyone kill Nathanson?’

  ‘The way I see it,’ Drake began, ‘Barnaby Nathanson was up to his neck in some scheme involving clearing money through property deals and the shell companies he was managing.’

  Crane nodded. ‘One in particular. They all trace back to Novo Elysium.’

  Drake glanced over at her. ‘And you got this from?’

  ‘Guy I met. He’s something in the City. Finance.’

  ‘Interesting. Is it serious?’

  Crane sighed deeply. ‘It’s a long story.’

  ‘You can give me the details later. Okay. So, as I see it, Nathanson’s office in Dalston was a front.’

  Crane agreed. ‘Wealthy clients get tossed into the mix with poor unknowns, people in genuine need of legal help. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was receiving subsidies for providing legal aid.’

  ‘Whoever killed him wanted what was in that safe.’

  ‘Which brings us to why we are here.’

  ‘Why are we here?’

  ‘The reason we took an interest in Nathanson was his relationship with Foulkes.’

  ‘Agreed, only I think this goes a lot deeper than we thought.’

  ‘It would help if we had whatever was in that safe.’

  ‘Agreed. Leave that to me,’ said Drake. ‘Explain how you got here.’

  ‘Howeida’s flatmate. Our Southern belle from Virginia. She’s gone. Taken all her things and flown home. One of the other girls said it was connected with her family, but I think she got cold feet.’

  ‘You think she was in on all of this?’

  Crane leaned her head back. ‘Let me think out loud here for a moment.’

  ‘Let it rip.’

  ‘Okay.’ Crane closed her eyes. ‘Let’s say Foulkes is in trouble financially. The books brought him up to a certain lifestyle, but he’s been having trouble lately. So he talks to an old friend and starts to go into some rather dodgy investments.’

  ‘All of this is speculation.’

  Crane opened her eyes and looked over at him. ‘It’s imaginative thinking.’

  ‘Funny you should say that. They have a term for it now.’

  ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘Sorry, please, go ahead. Where does Howeida fit into this?’

  ‘I think Foulkes was after her to invest in one of the schemes he was running with Nathanson. I’m willing to bet that his interest in her was not entirely disconnected from the fact she has a family with oil wells in their back garden. I wanted to see what Nathanson had to say for himself.’ Crane sat up. ‘Okay, your turn. What made you come up with the surveillance tactics?’

  ‘I thought about approaching Nathanson, but I was afraid that might scare him off. I thought this might give us some leverage.’

  ‘It might have done at that.’ Crane was silent for a moment. ‘What did you mean, when you said this goes a lot deeper?’

  ‘Something I saw a long time ago,’ said Drake quietly. ‘Something I thought I had completely forgotten, until I saw it again.’

  ‘What was it?’ Crane asked.

  ‘A tattoo.’ Drake shifted in his seat. ‘Years ago, I drove Zelda to a hotel to meet a private client. She didn’t do that kind of work often, but sometimes a man saw her in one of the clubs and took a shine to her. So she went. She didn’t have much choice. This man abused her. She wouldn’t tell me the details, but it was bad. I could see that.’

  ‘Who was the client?’

  ‘I never saw him. What I did see was his minder, waiting, like me, in the lobby of the hotel.’

  ‘The one with the tattoo,’ said Crane.

  ‘Khan.’

  ‘Can you describe it?’

  Drake reached into his pocket for the sketch he had made.

  ‘Something like that.’

  Crane held the paper up to the glow coming from the streetlamp behind them. ‘Could be Khan-e-Qalat. A tattoo is unusual on a Muslim but common in gangsters. They don’t care too much for tradition. This is calligraphy. It’s the name of the old rulers of Balochistan.’

  ‘That’s western Pakistan, where Hamid Balushi comes from.’

  ‘Who is Hamid Balushi?’

  ‘Small-time Karachi gangster,’ said Drake. ‘Violent, and ambitious.’

  ‘And you think he was the client who abused Zelda?’

  ‘I think it’s possible.’ Drake’s phone began to buzz. ‘It’s Kelly.’

  Through the windscreen he could see her standing outside the building. She was looking up and down the street. ‘Hey, Kelly, what’s up?’

  ‘What’s up indeed. Where are you exactly?’

  ‘Right now?’

  ‘Right now.’

  ‘Babysitting.’ Drake and Crane exchanged glances. ‘My neighbour. It’s a long story. Why?’

  ‘You’ll have to tell me sometime. The lawyer you were asking about, Nathanson?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He’s just turned up dead. Drowned in a bathtub.’

  ‘Accident or intent?’

  ‘Looks like a break-in that went sour.’ Marsh was walking up and down, out burning off nervous energy. ‘I’ve got Pryce breathing down my neck. I’m going to have to tell him everything I know, Cal.’

  ‘Do what you have to do, Kelly.’

  ‘I’m warning you. This is going to get his juices running. Nice neighbourhood. Lawyer with money. It’s right up his street. If he finds out you’re involved he’s going to tie it to Zelda.’

  ‘I
hear you.’

  ‘Just tell me you didn’t have anything to do with this.’

  ‘You think I had something to do with Nathanson’s death? Why?’

  ‘I don’t know, maybe because you didn’t ask where this happened, or when.’ Marsh paused.

  ‘Sometimes I’m a little slow off the mark.’

  ‘Plus you have your hands full.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Babysitting, remember?’

  ‘Listen, Kelly, while I’ve got you, I wonder if you could run a check on something.’

  He saw her cover the mouthpiece of her phone and swear. She came back on the line. ‘Last time I checked, we’re not part of your private enterprise.’

  ‘It could be important. Zelda had a child. A boy, I think. Is it possible we can check with immigration if they have anything on that?’

  ‘You think he might be in this country?’

  ‘I think it’s worth checking. The only thing we have to go on is his mother’s surname, Danin.’

  ‘That’s really not a lot.’

  ‘He would be in his twenties now.’

  Marsh was silent for a moment. ‘I’ll think about it.’

  The line went dead. Through the windscreen, Drake saw her staring at her phone for a moment. She tucked it away as a uniform came up to her. She followed him back into the building.

  ‘Are they going to find you were in there?’

  ‘I was careful,’ said Drake. ‘But you never know. Hopefully it won’t matter.’

  ‘How do you work that out?’

  ‘By the time the lab gets through with its work, this thing will be over.’

  ‘There’s something else that’s bothering me. This doesn’t look good for Howeida. If she was involved in whatever killed Nathanson, she could be in danger too.’

  Drake agreed. ‘Perhaps it’s time to have a talk with our client.’

  They both fell silent as they watched the body being brought out from the building opposite. Upstairs, the scene of crime officers were visible moving around behind the windows on the second floor. They had set up powerful lights in the flat and intermittent flashes indicated they were still busy taking pictures.