The Heights

by Parker Bilal

  ‘Very poetic, but about as credible as little green men in spacecraft.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong. I’m all about the facts. You know why, because I go by the book. It’s called police work, Cal. Or have you already forgotten?’

  ‘Then why are we standing here talking?’

  ‘Because this is your chance to set the record straight. Forget all that other stuff. We can work it out, just the two of us.’

  ‘Sure,’ nodded Drake. ‘That would make your job a lot easier.’

  Pryce tossed his cigarette aside and stuck his hands into his coat pockets. ‘You wouldn’t be the first undercover officer to get his emotions tangled up with a witness. Maybe you were jealous. Maybe there was another man. Who knows? The point is that she vanished on your watch. That’s down to you and you alone.’

  ‘The only reason you’ve taken an interest in this is because you think you can tie me to this lawyer of yours.’

  ‘Nathanson.’

  ‘Right, Nathanson. In other words, you’ve got nothing. I was trying to help her. I had no reason to kill her. More importantly, even if I had, why would I keep her head for all this time and then leave it on a train?’

  ‘It’s human nature. People make mistakes. We see it all the time.’

  ‘It makes no sense and the CPS will throw it out. She was my witness. I kept her location secret because I didn’t trust anyone on the case and that includes you.’

  ‘Tell it to the judge. I could never prove that it was Donny who paid you off, but I will.’ Pryce crossed one foot over the other and folded his arms. ‘I always assumed it was Goran who was paying you off. Then Goran died and your pal Donny stepped into the picture. Suddenly Goran is lying in a pool of blood and Donny is taking over his operation. That tells us everything.’

  ‘That tells us nothing. There was an official inquiry, remember? You couldn’t get any of it to stick.’

  Drake watched a black cormorant sweep down in a low arc across the water. It was remarkably peaceful here, considering there were a million kinds of mayhem happening on either side of the river.

  ‘I still don’t see why you’re telling me all this.’

  ‘I’m giving you an opportunity. We’ve been going at this for so long it’s hard to think straight. But maybe now’s the time.’

  ‘Yeah, well, maybe it would help if you stopped trying to implicate me in Zelda’s death.’

  ‘Don’t overrate your importance. I have evidence, and I admit I will get a certain degree of personal satisfaction watching you go down for this, but the truth is you’re nobody. I’m more interested in your pal, Donny Apostolis.’

  Drake laughed. ‘That’s what this is all about? Even if I had evidence on Donny, what makes you think I would share it with you?’

  ‘I don’t know. How about civic responsibility? You know, the problem with you is no one ever knows if you’re on our side or on theirs. I think you hate us so much you’re happy to see the whole thing go up in flames.’

  ‘Maybe that’s always been your problem.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Not trusting me.’

  ‘Believe me, you want to get out from underneath this thing while you still have a chance.’ Pryce turned to go back to his car. ‘Your choice, Cal.’

  When he was gone, Drake stood for a while. He breathed in the air and wished he was far away. But wishing wasn’t going to change anything. After a time he went back to his car and sat. Actually, he thought, it wasn’t so much that the river was a peaceful place, more like it was too damn quiet.

  46

  The sun was doing its best to shine over Borough Market. Drake wasn’t quite sure why Crane had suggested meeting here. To his mind, it was a place to be avoided at all costs. Too many people. Most of them wandering about in that mindless zombie state of all tourists. The rest were urban professionals, rushing from one latté fix to another, eyes glued to their phones. Hard to decide which was worse.

  Crane was seated on a bench in the middle of a square at the back. She had her shades propped on the top of her head and her eyes closed, her face tilted back to absorb as much as possible of the sun’s faint rays. She squinted out of one eye as he sat down.

  ‘I got us duck sandwiches.’

  ‘The more time I spend with you the classier I get.’

  ‘It’s just a sandwich,’ she said, handing him the brown paper bag and a cup of coffee.

  ‘I always had you tagged as the sushi and beanshoots type.’

  ‘Is there such a thing?’ she frowned.

  ‘I’m really not the person to ask,’ he said, sinking his teeth into the sandwich and chewing away. He hadn’t realised he was hungry.

  Crane sat up and reached for her own lunch. ‘I’ve always had a healthy appetite and not much patience for dietary fads. I basically eat anything.’

  ‘Amen to that.’

  The wind whipped her sleek hair across her face and she pushed the strands away from her mouth as she ate.

  ‘So, where do we stand?’

  ‘I just had an interesting conversation with DCI Pryce.’

  ‘Interesting, as in he threatened to throw you in prison?’

  ‘Interesting, as in he wants me to help him land Donny Apostolis.’

  ‘And this means he’s no longer interested in you?’

  ‘In my dreams. No, he thinks he’s got me bang to rights.’ Drake explained the bloody T-shirt.

  ‘You’ve been keeping that to yourself.’

  ‘I didn’t see a reason to start panicking.’

  ‘And now you do?’

  ‘It looks like Archie is still covering for me. It’ll be game over when Pryce discovers that my blood matches a sample from the crime scene. Until then, everything is in play.’

  ‘So what is he proposing?’

  Drake sighed. ‘He wants me to help him land Donny.’

  ‘Then he’ll let you off the hook? You don’t believe that?’

  ‘Not for a second, I’m just running out of options.’

  ‘I hear you.’ Crane nodded to herself, trying to let everything settle. ‘I talked to Donny.’

  ‘Really?’ It was news to Drake. ‘When was this?’

  Crane explained meeting Donny at the Ithaka. ‘He’s hiding something, but I believe him when he says he’s trying to clean up his act.’

  ‘Donny has two sides to him. On the one hand, he’s smart enough to know that he’s never going to get away forever.’

  ‘And on the other?’

  ‘He has a reckless side to him. Crazy Donny. The one who doesn’t care what happens or how much it hurts. He just has to do it.’

  ‘You think that’s the side that killed Zelda?’

  ‘It’s possible. She was an inconvenience. Once she revealed all she knew about Goran’s operations, Donny would be compromised.’ Drake had lost interest in lunch. He set his sandwich on the bench beside him. A pigeon paced up and down in front of him, watching with a beady eye. ‘I’ve been doing some reading.’

  Crane sat up. ‘You got the files from Nathanson’s place?’

  ‘My man, Spider, did a runner with the money but he was kind enough to leave behind the rest of what he took from the safe.’ Drake set the Waitrose carrier bag on the bench. ‘According to this, Nathanson had a shitload of dodgy clients. I mean, I’ve just been skimming through but these are a real mixed bag. Small businesses, drug dealers – Nathanson had a habit – and some bigger clients. It’s hard to follow. A lot of the names look like fakes.’

  ‘Cleverly Dixon, Maid Merrione, Eddie Smurfy …’ Crane ran a finger down the list of account holders. ‘Very imaginative, in a spotty teenage boy kind of way. My father must be in here somewhere. Anonymous drug dealers, Russian oligarchs, property tycoons. Howard Thwaite is here too.’

  ‘The mix helps to muddy the waters. So where does Donny Apostolis come into this?’

  ‘He’s in there somewhere, no doubt under a number of names.’

  ‘So, Nathanson was
running a money-laundering scheme with some very dubious clients.’

  ‘And that gave someone a reason to kill him. You think that could be Donny?’

  Drake shook his head. He still wasn’t entirely convinced. ‘I think Donny’s in trouble. He thinks someone’s making a move on him.’

  ‘The same person who killed Zelda?’

  ‘It all goes back to Zelda.’

  Crane was still working her way through the files. ‘So, through Nathanson, Donny’s pumping his dirty money into construction projects all over London, as well as abroad in places like Dubai. He’s shifting it about, turning it around from all kinds of sources.’

  ‘A lot of cash flow in the building industry.’

  ‘It’s very fluid. People are paid off in cash, no questions asked. And then there are overheads, expenses, dodgy-looking receipts.’ Crane tapped her hand on the pile of folders. ‘Money is funnelled out of the country through a string of shell companies and then pumped back into this country as property investments under the control of a company called Novo Elysium.’

  ‘So the money goes to Dubai and comes back clean.’

  Crane nodded. ‘Ready to be invested in property here. All over England, the South East and London mostly. The key is a handful of companies in the construction business.’

  Drake stretched out his legs. ‘Okay, but how does this relate to Marco Foulkes?’

  ‘I’m willing to bet that once we dig through this more thoroughly we’ll find plenty to tie him to all this. Foulkes was working with Nathanson. Finding him clients and taking a cut of the profits.’

  ‘You think that’s why he was interested in Howeida?’

  Crane nodded. ‘It’s beginning to sound more reasonable by the minute.’

  ‘And how does that connect to her disappearance?’

  ‘That’s the part that worries me.’ Crane recalled her visit to the Foulkes’ family home. ‘His mother said something that struck me. She said, why else would he come to you?’

  ‘You think he was using you. A cover story?’

  ‘It had crossed my mind.’

  Drake picked up his sandwich again. The duck was tasty, if hard-going. ‘He made it sound as though he was doing us a favour, remember?’

  ‘That was your gut reaction.’

  ‘Never fails. Or maybe I just don’t like writers.’

  ‘You’re a philistine. Admit it.’

  ‘You say that as though it’s a bad thing.’

  ‘I’ll get Heather to do some more digging on Donny. Maybe we’ll find out who’s after him.’

  ‘And Howeida’s flatmate, Savannah?’

  ‘Not as wealthy as she made out. I think Foulkes tried to bring her in and she freaked out.’

  ‘How about your father, how’s he taking it?’

  ‘I don’t care about him.’ Crane crushed up the napkin she was holding. ‘When you’re a kid you want your parents to be perfect.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  Crane glanced at him and nodded. ‘They never are.’

  ‘So, if you don’t mind me asking, what actually happened to your mother?’

  ‘They were both working at the university in Tehran. Or so it seemed. In actual fact, I now know my father was an intelligence agent.’

  ‘He was spying on your mother?’

  ‘She wasn’t a spy, she was just opinionated. Everything was political. Anyone opposed to the Islamist revolution was routed out. She loved the country, but she hated what it had become.’

  ‘She was arrested?’

  ‘More than once. She managed for several years to carry on the deception. Outside the home she behaved herself, wore the chador and all the rest of it. They couldn’t prove she was against the revolution but many people knew of her opinions. Eventually she was told she could no longer carry on teaching. After that she was at home. Students would gather at the house, where they could talk openly about the things they cared about – literature, art, things that were forbidden.’ Crane crouched forwards, her hands cupped around the coffee she was holding. ‘Eventually, the inevitable happened and someone denounced her to the Gashte Ershad, the morality police. She was taken away.’

  ‘That must have been hard for you.’

  Crane slumped back on the bench. ‘It was devastating. Like the whole world had caved in on top of me. Things were never the same after that.’

  ‘When did you realise your father was a spy?’

  ‘Not until years later. The whole marriage was a front. He used her to contact dissidents.’

  ‘You mean he used her to infiltrate opposition groups?’

  ‘He was a spy. All the time I thought they were this perfect couple.’

  ‘She never got out?’

  Crane shook her head. ‘She died in prison. We had left by then. My father brought me back here. He said it was for my own good. Later, I realised it was to save his own neck. She died alone.’ Crane stared into her coffee cup. ‘I never believed it. I always used to dream of her struggling across the mountains in thick snow, trying to get to me.’

  ‘Must have been tough.’

  ‘It’s what it is.’ Crane snapped her shades back into place. ‘Do you ever wonder why someone is trying to frame you for Zelda’s murder?’

  Drake understood that the subject of her family was closed. ‘Someone has a personal thing for me.’

  ‘Someone from the old days. Someone you knew.’

  ‘That’s my thinking.’

  ‘But you have no idea who it could be?’

  ‘I keep going back over it, trying to fill in the blanks. Somebody who was there back then, someone who wanted me out of the way.’

  ‘A rival for her affections?’

  ‘I don’t know. One thing I did find out is that Zelda might have had a child.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Before she came here,’ said Drake. ‘She was abused by an uncle apparently.’

  ‘How old was she at the time?’

  ‘Young. A teenager.’

  ‘So the child could be in their twenties by now.’

  ‘I asked Kelly to see if she can find any trace. He could be the missing link,’ said Drake. ‘He could be off the grid.’

  ‘The way a homeless person might be?’

  ‘Exactly the way a homeless person might be. They could have used him to get to her.’

  ‘He could have led them to her unwittingly.’

  The two of them fell silent as they followed through this scenario in their heads. Both seemed to arrive at the same conclusion.

  ‘Could he have killed her?’ Drake asked finally, speaking their thoughts aloud.

  ‘If he did it knowingly, that would imply a hugely disturbed person.’

  ‘If Fender is the son, then he left his mother’s head on a train. Could that possibly be interpreted as some kind of act of love?’

  ‘There have been cases. People living with the body of a loved one. Traumatised mothers in Germany during the war holding on to a dead baby, for example. Or a son keeping his mother’s body in the house for years.’

  ‘And there was me thinking Psycho was just a film.’

  ‘It’s not so bizarre. We try to hold on to the dead. It’s quite common to keep the ashes of a parent who has passed away. You could even argue that cemeteries are ways of preserving the remains of loved ones.’

  ‘Remind me to make my own funeral arrangements.’

  ‘A small minority doesn’t see the distinction.’

  Another thought occurred to Drake. ‘Would she even have known about the boy? I mean, she hadn’t seen him since he was born.’

  ‘Maybe he just turned up out of the blue.’

  ‘Or maybe he came here to find her.’

  ‘Either way, I still need to find our mystery man from the Tube. I have a feeling I need to try another approach.’ Drake watched a group of tourists going by. A man holding up a Korean flag on an umbrella was speaking into a microphone. The people behind him all had headphones.
They looked left and right in unison. ‘What’s your next move?’

  ‘Marco’s mother. I think she knows something.’

  ‘Zelda is the wild card in all of this.’ Drake scratched his chin and realised he had not shaved for two days. ‘Whoever killed her was sending a message. He kept the head for a reason.’

  ‘Something must have changed. In this person’s circumstances, or his surroundings, which have made it imperative to act now,’ Crane said. ‘Whoever it is, they have decided that the time has come for you to pay for your part in Zelda’s death. They want to confront you with the evidence.’

  ‘Zelda never told me everything.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, supposing someone else offered her something, something I could never give her.’

  ‘Such as her son back?’

  ‘That,’ nodded Drake. ‘And maybe enough money to live happily ever after.’

  ‘Is there such a person?’

  ‘All I have is a vague impression. A memory of someone Zelda was meeting. A man who was willing to hurt her.’ Drake threw up his hands. ‘I need to get into her mind, to see what she saw. It feels like I’m asking for a miracle.’

  ‘That’s how miracles work, isn’t it?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  47

  The address for Green Gardens Halal Meat Packing was a warehouse off Garrett Lane in Southall. Drake could read the sign along the front through the chain link fence. It was an unremarkable shed of white aluminium siding that was in need of a new coat of paint. The green letters across it were faded.

  ‘Is this it?’ asked Crane.

  They were in Drake’s Astra, which was unusual. Crane normally would not consent to getting into the car. In fact, she had complained so often that Drake was seriously thinking that perhaps it might be time to trade it in.

  ‘Looks like it.’ Drake pointed to the row of vans.

  The place looked run-down. The front gate was open and unmanned, so there was nothing to prevent them driving straight onto the forecourt of broken concrete. As they drew nearer they could make out the little logo at the end of the lettering. A faded green crescent within which was a square black cube that looked like a blurred version of the Ka’aba in Mecca. The same logo could be seen on the side of the vehicles parked to one side: vans and box trucks similar to the one Drake had seen on tape being towed away from Clapham Common station.