by John Harvey
‘Where did you go?’
Sweat was beading Bucur’s forehead. ‘To stay with some friends first, in North London. Kilburn. But then I went to Cornwall. Andreea has a friend there, you see, from our country, Nadia. She works in a hotel. Andreea had spoken of working there also. I thought that was where she might have gone.’
‘And had she?’
‘No. Nadia had heard from her, though. A phone call. The same day she left here. Saying she was coming to see her.’
‘When? Did she say when?’
‘Soon. She said soon. In a day or two. But she never arrived. And when Nadia tried her mobile there was no reply.’
He shrugged. ‘With me it is the same ever since she left. No signal. Nothing.’
‘And you’ve no idea where else she might have gone? No other friends?’
Bucur shook his head. ‘I have asked – people at the hotel where she worked, a few others. No one knows anything.’
‘Could she have gone home?’
‘Home to Romania?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t think so. Her mother telephoned here three, no, four days ago. Her little girl – she has a daughter, Monica – she wanted to speak to her. I said Andreea had gone away for a short while with a friend. A holiday. I did not know what else to say.’
‘Her mother hadn’t heard from her either?’
‘Not for some time.’ Bucur pushed back his chair. ‘I am worried something terrible has happened to her. One of the men who came looking for her, the Serb, he had threatened to kill her. That’s why she was so afraid.’
‘You said the Serb?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why do you call him that? How do you know that’s what he was?’
Bucur leaned forward. ‘When I was describing him to Inspector Kellogg, she knew him. I don’t know where from, of course, but she knew him. I think she said he was Serbian. Lazic. Ivan Lazic. I’m sure that was the name.’
‘Lazic? L-A-Z-I-C?’
‘Yes. He has a beard. Dark. And a scar on his face. Here.’ With his finger, Bucur drew a line slowly down the left side of his face.
Khan made a quick sketch in his book.
‘If we want to get in touch with you again . . . ?’
‘I shall be here.’ He smiled. ‘Running, it is no good.’
Let’s hope you’re right, Khan thought. He offered Bucur his hand. ‘Thank you for all your help. If Andreea does get in touch, or if you hear anything, you’ll let us know?’
‘Of course.’
Khan gave him a card. ‘Good luck with the model.’
Bucur smiled, more readily this time. ‘Yes, thank you.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m afraid I am not very good with my hands. All – what do you say? – thumbs and fingers?’
‘Fingers and thumbs.’
Khan was barely back on the street before he was talking to the incident room on his mobile.
39
Outside, the wind was whistling tunelessly around street corners, whipping up last night’s debris and throwing it into the faces of passers-by. Karen sat in her office, Mike Ramsden and Anil Khan standing at either side of her chair, all three of them looking at the computer screen on Karen’s desk. The South Yorkshire force had just put out a description of someone they wanted to interview in connection with the murder of Kelvin Pearce. No name, but it fitted what they now knew of Ivan Lazic to a T.
‘Get in touch with Euan Guest, Anil,’ Karen said. ‘He’s the SIO up there. Tell him we think we know his suspect’s identity. Fill him in as best you can. And while you’re on to him, find out if anything more’s come through on the gun that killed Pearce.’
‘This Lazic,’ Ramsden asked when Khan had gone. ‘He’s what? Czech? Russian?’
‘Serbian, apparently.’
‘Tough bastards, the Serbs.’
Karen raised an eyebrow. ‘You’d know, I suppose.’
‘Saw this programme the other night, the History Channel. Fall of Berlin.’
‘Your trouble, Mike, one of many, too much television.’
‘What else’m I going to do, two in the morning?’
Karen didn’t want to go there.
‘If the Zoukas crew are using Lazic as an enforcer, as looks likely,’ Ramsden said, perching on the edge of Karen’s desk, ‘keeping Viktor Zoukas’s sorry arse out of jail, it’s got to be a good bet his finger was on the trigger when Kellogg was gunned down.’
Karen swung round in her chair, rose swiftly to her feet and pushed open the door to the incident room. Michaelson was just on the way back to his desk from the coffee machine.
‘Frank . . .’
‘Yes, boss?’
‘The sauna Viktor Zoukas used to manage, somewhere in the city centre . . .’
‘Hockley. Closed down for a time and then reopened. Fresh coat of paint, same business.’
‘Get yourself down there, ask about an Ivan Lazic. Mike’ll fill you in.’
‘Right, boss.’
If it turned out Lazic was in Nottingham at the time of Lynn Kellogg’s death, the odds on Ramsden’s wager would be shortened considerably.
Michaelson had never been into a sauna before; at least, not the kind that were more generally found on seedier streets and offered sensual and relaxing full-body massage, though he knew of several colleagues who were not above paying unofficial visits and availing themselves of the occasional freebie. Neither had he been in the sex shop that occupied the ground floor of the building, offering sex toys and marital aids, adult videos and DVDs, saucy T-shirts and, as the poster put it, dildos to fit every purse. But then, as his sometime girlfriend had pointed out when he’d expressed distaste at the prominence of 35p-a-minute chat lines on which young women promised to help you unzip and unload, in some situations he could be a prude of the first magnitude – especially when he was in training for a big race. Conservation of bodily fluids, as he had tried to explain.
How much this had to do with her breaking off their relationship, he had never been sure.
He pressed the bell and, walking in, climbed the stairs.
Neither of the two young women sitting on a dilapidated settee in the first room paid him more than scant attention. To the left, seated behind an L-shaped counter, an older woman with a head of brittle curls and the reddest lipstick Michaelson could recall seeing outside of an advertisement hoarding, treated him to a professional smile.
A word from her and the couple on the settee livened themselves up and showed interest: one, darker skinned, had longish hair held back with a broad red band; her companion was petite and blonde and showed ragged teeth when she smiled. They were both wearing slightly grubby button-through tunics with, as best as Michaelson could judge, little else underneath. Without wishing it, he could feel himself becoming aroused.
Turning quickly back to the counter, he took out his warrant card.
‘I’m Sally,’ the lipsticked woman said. ‘Can I help?’
‘It’s just a few questions,’ Michaelson said.
The young women sat back down and resumed thumbing through old copies of Grazia and Hello!.
Sally lit a cigarette and offered one to Michaelson, who shook his head.
‘Ivan, yes,’ she said, in answer to his question. ‘He comes up once in a while. From London. Ever since Viktor . . . you know. Hangs around for a day or so. Checking I’m not fiddling the books.’ She shivered involuntarily. ‘Nasty bastard. I don’t like him. Gives me the creeps.’
‘He’s not here now? Nottingham, I mean?’
‘Not as far as I know. No, haven’t seen him in a while, tell the truth. Good couple of weeks it must be.’
‘You remember when? I mean when exactly?’
Sally gave it some thought. ‘No, but two weeks is about right. That was when Amira arrived.’ She gestured towards one of the women on the settee. ‘Brought her up with him in the car. Two weeks, can’t be more. I tell you what, around the time that policewoman was shot, that’s when. All over the news, we
ren’t it?’
‘You’re positive that’s when he was here?’ Khan asked.
‘Yes, pretty much.’ Sally flicked ash from the end of her cigarette. ‘You ever catch anyone for that?’
‘Not yet.’
Sally leaned back in her chair. ‘She was in here, you know. The night that Nina was killed. Sat talking to her, just like I am to you now. Terrible, something happening like that. Only young, weren’t she?’
Michaelson placed his card on the counter. ‘If you do see him, Lazic, if he comes back, I’d like you to phone me.’
Sally glanced down at the card. ‘All right,’ she said.
Michaelson told himself not to look over towards the settee on his way out and almost succeeded.
‘He’ll be back,’ Sally said with a grin and taking his card she pushed it down into the top of her bra.
As soon as Karen heard that Lazic had probably been in the city at the time of Lynn Kellogg’s murder, she phoned Euan Guest in Doncaster to pass on the news. Guest sounded somewhat hassled, a rough throaty voice that lost some of its impatience when he heard what Karen had to offer.
‘I was talking to Rachel Vine earlier,’ Guest said, ‘Notts CPS. She told me there was another witness . . .’
‘Andreea Florescu. She was in London. No one’s seen hide nor hair of her for a couple of weeks now.’
‘Not good.’
‘No.’
‘We’ll keep in touch, yes?’
‘Absolutely.’
It was no more than an hour after her conversation with Guest that Karen’s phone rang again. Not Doncaster this time, but Leyton . . . news she’d anticipated but didn’t want to hear.
40
It was not the police who found her, but kids playing chase, a couple of eleven-year-old boys running from six or seven more, mostly older – something that had started off as a game and was on the verge of becoming altogether more vicious, less controlled. They’d raced full pelt down the main street, weaving in and out between adults as best they could, barging into others and forcing them from the pavement, ricocheting off shop windows and doors, swerving away into the entrance to the overground station and running hard up the narrow stairs towards the platform, only to realise once they were there that they were trapped, and, turning fast, bounding down again three steps at a time, knocking an old lady almost off her feet, spinning her round, and jumping, one of them, at the last moment, over the head of a startled toddler clinging to his mother’s hand.
At the bottom of the steps they hesitated, caught their breath, no more than seconds when they heard, above the squall and grind of traffic on the main road, the sounds of their pursuers, raised voices chanting, angry and shrill, and they doubled back, clambering over on to a piece of fenced-off open land beside the railway that had long since become a dumping ground, a favourite place for fly-tippers to disgorge their load.
One boy gripped the iron railings and bent his back, making a platform for the other to climb on to, then clamber over, catching his jeans on one of the blunted spikes and swearing as they tore. Once there, he balanced less than safely and grabbed his companion’s hands as he scaled upwards, then hauling him precariously over, the pair of them rolling and stumbling over an accumulation of garden waste and broken furniture, stained mattresses and shattered glass, diving finally down between a long-discarded washing machine, the front ripped off, and an old chest freezer angled sharply down into the compressed debris.
Their hearts were racing.
Just out of sight, two or more of the gang ran sticks in a clanging carillon along the railings.
Others shouted their names.
Shouts that drew closer, then faded only to come closer again. They were up on the platform now, some of them, looking down.
The boys flattened themselves as best they could, burrowing down alongside washing machine and freezer into what was dank and festering.
‘It stinks,’ one boy whispered.
‘Shut up,’ hissed the other.
‘It does, it stinks.’
‘Shut the fuck up!’
A rat, curious, showed itself in the space between them then sprang sideways, its feet taking purchase for a moment on one boy’s shoulder, before scuttling from sight.
The shouting seemed to have stopped. Cautiously raising their heads, they could see the backs of people strung along the platform above them, waiting for the next train. The heads and shoulders of others, in silhouette, were visible inside the small covered shelter. No boys, save for a solitary primary-school kid astride the low wall.
‘Come on,’ one said. ‘They’ve gone.’
‘No, wait.’
‘It stinks here.’
‘You said.’
‘Well, I’m not stoppin’. You comin’ or what?’
The second boy had pushed his body so far down beside the freezer that it was almost resting on top of him and in his effort to free himself it leaned even further against him, so that he had to ask for help, and it took the pair of them to lever it back and send it rolling over, the door at the top swinging open.
‘Fuck!’ the first boy cried. ‘What the fuck is that?’
But they knew, they both knew and they ran, heedless, scrambling over the mounds of waste, scrambling and falling, losing their footing, so desperate to get away that once they’d vaulted the railings they ran, blind, regardless of one another, just running, until the first of them collided with an ambulance driver, going off duty, still wearing his uniform, who seized the lad by the collar and held fast on to him and asked him what the hell he thought he was doing and the boy pointed back towards the railway, wide eyed, and stumbled out the words, ‘A body. There’s a body.’
Andreea Florescu had been folded, concertina-like, into three, before her dead body had been jammed into the freezer, head pushed down hard between her knees. She was still wearing the same clothes she had on when she had left Alexander Bucur’s flat sixteen days before. Her skin, where it was visible, had taken on the aspect of greenish marble; the veins in the backs of her hands and at the side of her neck stood out like dark twists of thickish wire. Blood had congealed in a black treacly film across her chest and along her thighs, sealing those parts of her together.
The smell was close to overpowering.
The area was cordoned off and ladders brought in to give easier access to the site, boards being laid across the surface of the waste, creating a single route for the crime scene manager and his team and for the Home Office pathologist to make his initial examination. Photographs were taken, measurements noted, detailed sketches drawn.
Scores of people, travellers and non-travellers both, stood on the railway platform above, gazing down.
The two boys were taken to the local police station, their parents raised, social workers summoned. Chris Butcher, one of the more experienced detectives in Homicide and Serious Crime Command, was designated senior investigating officer and an incident room was established at the Francis Road police station.
It was from there that one of the officers thought to phone Karen Shields. ‘That woman you were enquiring about, I think maybe we’ve found her.’
Alexander Bucur was summoned for the purposes of identification.
It was nine o’clock that night before Karen got to talk to Butcher, a detective she knew by more than reputation, having worked with him on a previous investigation. Decisive, thorough, given to occasional flashes of temper, twice divorced and somehow, with the help of grandparents and a succession of European au pairs, bringing up two teenage daughters in Tufnell Park.
‘Karen,’ he said, the vestiges of a Scottish accent that came out more strongly after a drink or three now barely noticeable, ‘apologies for not getting back to you sooner.’
‘No problem.’
‘What exactly’s your interest here?’
Succinctly as she could, she told him.
‘Maybe you, me and what’s-his-name up in Yorkshire . . .’
‘Guest.’
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‘Aye, Guest. Maybe the three of us should get together, see what there is, if anything, by way of common ground.’
Karen agreed. ‘One thing,’ she said, ‘the victim, Andreea, how did she die?’
‘Her throat was cut,’ Butcher said, ‘practically from ear to ear.’
Resnick was sitting in semi-darkness when Karen called, listening to some recordings Thelonious Monk had made for Prestige in the fifties, his piano accompanied by bass and drums; Monk as ever going his own way, sounding, Resnick thought, like a cantankerous old man who, every now and then, surprised himself and those around him with flashes of good humour.
Would he mind, Karen had asked, if she popped round? She wouldn’t disturb him for long.
He would not.
Earlier in the day, he read again the few cards and letters he’d had from members of Lynn’s family, stilted most of them, tripping over themselves not to give offence, to find the right words. Taking a pad, he had begun to draft replies but time and again he had been overcome and, finally, he had pushed pad and pen aside, another task left for another day.
He had promised Lynn’s mother that he would go through her things, some bits and pieces of jewellery Lynn had had since a teenager, a watch her father had given her for her twenty-first, a box she kept crammed with old photographs: Lynn as a chubby thirteen-year-old in school uniform, smiling self-consciously at the camera; Lynn, a little younger, on the bike she’d been given when she started secondary school; younger still, with her parents on holiday in Cornwall – one especially he remembered her showing him with pride, a girl of no more than eight or nine, hair in bunches, triumphantly holding up a pair of crabs she had caught off the quay, one in each hand.
Some of these her mother wanted, others he would keep.
Karen Shields was at the door, a bottle of whisky wrapped in white tissue in her hand.
‘I didn’t know what you liked,’ she said, pulling away the tissue and holding up the bottle.
Resnick found a smile. ‘That’s fine.’
Johnny Walker Black Label: not Springbank, but good enough. He found a pair of glasses and she followed him through into the front room. Monk was still playing: ‘Bemsha Swing’.
