Deep Cover hv-2

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘Or his goons will. He’s frightened of the police.’

  ‘That’s interesting.’ Ainsclough stood.

  ‘Very, very interesting indeed.’ Brunnie also stood. ‘We’ll be back, but in the interests of your safety, we’ll go for now.’

  Cold caring. That was the expression. Cold caring. He looked at his wife, so attractive when she cared to be, but now lying on the carpet with her hair matted with her own vomit — she was snoring loudly and so was safe. She would wake soon, feeling frail and cold, and would have such a mess to clean, but all the learned advice said that this was the correct approach. She will not fight the drink unless she wakes up lying in the mess she, and she alone, has created. He walked out of the house, locking the door behind him.

  Cold caring. Very cold. Very caring.

  Ainsclough and Brunnie walked into the offices of WLM Rents on Fernhead Road, Kilburn. The premises were exactly as Brunnie recalled them from the previous day, but the helpful and, in Brunnie’s eyes, slightly sycophantic J.J. Dunwoodie was absent. Instead, a hard-faced blonde of about twenty-five summers sat in the chair he had occupied. She was dressed in black, was very slender, and had eyes of such steel-cold blue that Ainsclough felt a chill run down his spine. Brunnie, alarmed and worried, glanced at the top of the filing cabinets and saw a green, not a red, watering can beside the row of potted plants. He experienced a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  ‘Mr Dunwoodie,’ Brunnie asked, ‘is he here?’

  ‘Who wants him?’ The woman, immaculately dressed, sat back in her chair, filing her brightly varnished fingernails. Her thin fingers were bedecked with rings; her wrists were encircled by expensive looking bracelets which rattled softly as she worked the file over her nails, occasionally stopping to admire her work. A strong cloud of scent rose from her and reached the officers. She didn’t look up as she replied to Brunnie’s question.

  ‘Police.’

  ‘You have ID?’ Again, she didn’t take her eyes off her fingernails.

  Ainsclough and Brunnie showed their ID cards and, still without looking up, the woman said, ‘OK.’ Then she added, ‘Mr Dunwoodie don’t work here no more, do he?’

  ‘We don’t know. Doesn’t he?’ Brunnie snarled.

  ‘No, he don’t. Not since last night he don’t. I’m in charge here now. . well, until Mr Pilcher can get a new office manager. I just answer the phone and take messages and if someone comes in looking for a place to rent. I take their name and contact details, and tell them someone will be in touch, but that’s only if they’re kosher, like all respectable and that, ’cos if they’re not kosher they don’t rent, not from here anyway. It’s a very responsible job. We don’t rent to no toerags, though.’

  ‘Seems so,’ Ainsclough replied drily. ‘So who are you?’

  ‘Felicity Skidmore.’

  ‘So why don’t you tell us your real name?’

  The young woman glanced up and glared at Brunnie, though she said nothing.

  ‘We need to speak to Mr Dunwoodie.’

  The woman admired her nails once again. ‘Well, I can’t help you, because he’s not here, is he?’

  ‘Home address?’

  ‘Don’t ask me, darling.’

  ‘You might not know it, but it’ll be filed away. Every employer has his workers’ home addresses on file.’

  ‘Maybe, but I wouldn’t know where it is. . have a look.’ She inclined her head towards the bank of filing cabinets.

  Ainsclough glanced at the cabinets. He knew it would be a waste of time to look through their contents.

  Felicity Skidmore, clearly satisfied, placed her nail file in a large black handbag. ‘Look, darling, I just got receptionist skills, nothing more. I got no office skills; don’t know nothing about filing or word-processing, nothing. I usually work in another office for Mr Pilcher, don’t I, and this morning he hands me the keys and tells me to drive over here and open up for him, and tells me what to do. . answer the phone, take details of the kosher ones and turn the toerags away — but diplomatic like, he don’t want his windows put through at night. Just say to them there ain’t nowhere to rent.’

  ‘A responsible job, as you say.’

  Brunnie asked, ‘Where do you normally work?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with you?’ Felicity Skidmore flushed with indignation. ‘Bang out of order is that question. Bang out of order.’

  Ainsclough smiled to himself. The legendary East End dislike of the police was emerging from Felicity Skidmore. Blagger, he thought. If Felicity Skidmore is not a blagger herself, then she’s a blagger’s tart or the daughter of a blagger. Definitely on the other side of the fence.

  ‘It’s got a lot to do with us,’ Brunnie replied. ‘It’s got so much to do with us that you could be looking at porridge for obstruction. This is a murder investigation.’ Brunnie paused. ‘And pretty girls like you are very popular in Holloway. You get traded between the butch dykes for an ounce of tobacco, and you don’t get any say in the matter.’

  ‘No say at all,’ added Ainsclough. ‘If we run you in, we’ll do an automatic check for any outstanding warrants and take your dabs to see if we know you under another name. We have plenty of room in the cells. You can even have one to yourself, but you won’t get that luxury in Holloway. Mind you, you probably already know that.’

  ‘I’ve never been inside!’

  ‘Yet,’ Brunnie replied calmly, ‘but obstruction in a murder investigation will guarantee the clanging of the door behind little you.’

  Felicity Skidmore sighed and folded her arms. ‘Continental Imports and Exports.’

  ‘Continental Imports and Exports?’ Brunnie repeated.

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘What does that outfit import and export?’

  ‘Furniture.’

  ‘Furniture?’

  ‘Yeah, like beds and wardrobes, and tables and chairs, and chests of drawers and that. . furniture. What with the European Community, people are buying houses in Frogland and islands in the old Med. . even in Eastern Europe, and they want their furniture with them. . And the foreigners, they buy in the UK, and they bring their old furniture with them. So Mr Pilcher, he provides a removal service.’

  Brunnie and Ainsclough glanced at each other and smiled. ‘Furniture,’ Brunnie said.

  ‘Furniture,’Ainsclough echoed.

  ‘Well, I ain’t seen nothing but furniture going in and out. It’s not my fault I’m a looker. I just answer the old dog and bone and set the place off right. I do that at Continental and Mr Pilcher sent me here today to do the same thing.’

  ‘And turning the toerags away.’

  ‘Yeah, that too, but nicely with it. I get that responsibility.’

  ‘So where is Continental Imports and Exports based?’

  ‘Down the Mile End Road. Can’t miss it. Near the old junction with Cambridge Heath Road. Big sign. Black letters on yellow background.’

  ‘Did you know Mr Dunwoodie?’

  ‘Nope. It’s just the name of the geezer who sat here until yesterday; I don’t know no more than that, so help me. I don’t know nothing about him or why he isn’t here today, but I get a change of scenery and that’s as good as a rest, so they say.’

  ‘So what’s in the back room?’

  ‘Dunno. Wasn’t told and I didn’t ask. Them that’s asks no questions, gets told no lies.’ She smiled at Brunnie. ‘It’s safer that way, me old china, a lot safer. I wasn’t given the key anyway. So if you want to know what’s in there, and if you want to know where J.J. Dunwoodie is, you’ll have to ask Mr Pilcher, won’t you? If he phones, I’ll tell him the Old Bill was here. He’ll want to know.’

  ‘You do that.’

  Walking away from the offices of WLM Rents, Ainsclough said, ‘“Me old china”? Never did work that one out.’

  Brunnie fished in his coat pocket for his car keys. ‘China plate — mate. Me old china plate — mate.’

  Joseph Halkier seemed to Vicary to shrink i
nto his armchair. He nodded slowly and gently, and then said, ‘Thank you for calling on me and telling me in person. It’s good of you, I appreciate it. I thought you might send a uniformed constable, you see, so thank you. The DNA was a match. I knew it would be.’

  ‘No thanks are necessary, I assure you.’

  ‘But still. . you know, I knew it would be our Rose. I am not really one for all that other-worldly mumbo-jumbo — never have been one for the paranormal — but I went up to the Heath last night. . I followed your directions and was able to make out the police tape in the dark, well the white bits anyway, and when I got to the tape I felt a link, a bond. I don’t have the words, but I felt she was there.’

  ‘A connection?’ Vicary suggested.

  Halkier smiled ‘Yes, that’s a good way of putting it. . a connection. I felt a strong connection with that location. I felt that I knew it had been our Rosemary who had lain there all those years. I picked up a bit of soil and took it home with me. That might be a bit morbid but I wanted to do it. . Quite near the road for a shallow grave?’

  ‘Yes. It would have been dug at night, in the summer when the soil would not be frozen.’

  ‘Sorry about the soil but Rose had touched it and I wanted some. I hope I wasn’t disturbing a crime scene.’

  ‘No, you did no harm and I don’t think it was a morbid act.’

  ‘Thank you. I was worried on those two counts.’

  The conversation halted as that day’s post clattered though Joseph Halkier’s letterbox and fell on to the hallway floor. ‘Bills and junk mail, it’s all I get these days.’

  ‘Early?’

  ‘Yes, we still get our mail early in the morning, well, mid-morning, not like the six a.m. or seven a.m. deliveries as it was in the old days, but still reasonably early. So how can I help you? I’ll help in any way I can. She was my only daughter.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Vicary inclined his head to one side. ‘Well, we really need to know as much about your daughter’s private life as we can, as much as you can tell us. . her friends, associates; any light that you can shed on her day-to-day comings and goings. Was she employed?’

  ‘Yes, in a call centre, phoning folk and trying to make them buy things they don’t need. She hated it — modern day version of door-to-door salesmen. Phone sales. . it’s. . don’t know. . get right into people’s houses.’

  ‘I feel the same way,’ Vicary replied. ‘My wife and I have an answering machine; we keep it on all the time, even when we are at home. The telesales people hang up immediately they hear a recorded voice.’

  ‘That’s a good idea. You know, I might buy one. . in fact, I think I will. Well, the call centre. . this was ten years ago now.’

  ‘Appreciate that, but it’s a start.’

  ‘It was on the edge of the City, by which I mean the Square Mile.’

  ‘Yes. Understood.’

  ‘I still have the details upstairs.’ Joseph Halkier stood with what Vicary thought was impressive effortlessness and suppleness for a man of his years and left the room. Vicary heard him scoop up the post from the floor of the hallway and then listened as he skipped up the stairs. He returned a few moments later with one of Rosemary Halkier’s pay advices and a child’s exercise book, which had a smiley face sticker on the front. He handed both to Vicary.

  ‘The pay advice will give you the details of her last employer. You’re welcome to hang on to it.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘The exercise book is her address book. . that stays here.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Halkier resumed his seat. ‘But you are welcome to copy down the addresses of her friends.’

  ‘Excellent.’ Vicary leafed through the book. It had, he thought, few entries.

  ‘You mentioned her male friend, the businessman who lived south of the river? Is he in here?’ Vicary leafed through the exercise book.

  ‘No. I looked. It was one of the first things I did when she was missing, but it all seemed to be the folk I knew; people in this area and that waster of a husband of hers, her children’s school and other addresses like the doctors and dentist. . one or two people she got pally with when she was in Clacton. But no businessmen, though she’d be well impressed with money.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Yes, she never had none once she left home. She grew up here. . Leyton. It’s alright, we had a roof, we had a full larder, but she really scratched pennies in Clacton trying to survive on whatever he brought home in the summer, then making the dole stretch in the winter, and when she came back here. . well, the money in the call centre wasn’t great — long hours, low pay. So after ten years of scrimping and saving, yes, a guy with money would have an appeal for her. I can see that.’

  ‘But you have no idea who he was?’

  ‘Or still is. . no. . no idea at all.’

  ‘Did she have a particular friend who she was close to?’

  Halkier paused. ‘You could try Pauline North.’

  ‘Pauline North?’

  ‘Yes, she’ll be in the address book somewhere.’

  Ainsclough leafed through the book. ‘Nothing under “P” or “N”,’ he said.

  ‘She probably kept her address in here — ’ Halkier tapped the side of his head — ‘but her mother still lives in the street. Opposite side of the road, very end of the street. . five or six doors from the end of the street that way — ’ Halkier pointed to his left — ‘bright yellow door.’

  ‘Yellow door. Who is Pauline North?’

  ‘School friend. They were pretty well inseparable when they were children, drifted apart a little when they discovered boys, but picked up with each other again when Rosemary returned from Clacton. I reckon she’d be worth calling on. She’d likely tell Pauline things she wouldn’t tell her old man, and I didn’t pry.’

  ‘I fully understand.’ Vicary paused. ‘Did she seem worried at about the time she disappeared?’

  ‘Not that I recall.’ Halkier pursed his lips. ‘No. . I can’t say that she seemed worried, and I think I’d have been able to tell if she was. She wasn’t a girl to bottle things up. . so I can say she wasn’t worried.’

  ‘Alright.’ Vicary glanced round the room. It seemed to him to be marginally less tidy than it was when he had first visited Joseph Halkier, as if he was losing interest in his surroundings, which, Vicary conceded, would be fully understandable. ‘So, how long was it before you reported Rosemary as a missing person? That is to say, how long after you last saw her?’

  ‘Nearly a week, as I recall.’

  ‘That’s quite a long time. . I mean, if she was living with you.’

  ‘It was the Thursday before the Easter weekend. She left that morning to go to work. I heard her leave, so the last time I actually saw her was the previous evening. She had packed a weekend bag. She was going away with her man that weekend — leaving from work on Thursday to travel to his house, then returning here on the Tuesday after work. We only started to worry when we got a phone call from the call centre on the Tuesday at about midday; they were asking if Rose was coming into work, because she hadn’t phoned in saying she was sick.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘So we waited and then reported her missing that evening.’

  ‘Yes. .’

  ‘A police constable visited and took some details.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then we had no contact from the police from that day until your visit, sir, by which time Mrs Halkier had passed on.’

  ‘A very long time. .’

  ‘A very long time. You’ll do all you can, sir?’

  ‘All we can. You have my word.’

  Tom Ainsclough entered the name ‘Felicity Skidmore’ into the computer and her approximate age as ‘mid-twenties’. There was no trace of her. ‘Not known,’ he said.

  ‘There’s a surprise,’ Brunnie replied. ‘I bet you it’s an alias.’ He continued to run his fingertip down the list of J. Dunwoodies in the London telephone directory. ‘I never
knew there were so many, and for each entry there will be two or three ex-directory J. Dunwoodies. I once talked to a telephone operator and she told me that if all the domestic numbers were listed, the book would be twice the size it already is. . Lot of these are in the prestigious suburbs; a lot are too far to make travelling to work in Kilburn practical. . oh. . wait. .’

  ‘A hit?’ Ainsclough glanced up from the computer screen.

  ‘Possibly.’ Brunnie picked up his phone, pressed nine for an outside line and then dialled a number. The call was quickly answered by a tearful sounding woman with a shaky voice. Brunnie said, ‘Hello, madam, sorry to bother you. This is the Metropolitan Police at Scotland Yard; I am trying to trace a Mr J.J. Dunwoodie who is employed at WLM Rents in Kilburn.’

  ‘Oh. . he’s in hospital. .’

  ‘Hospital!’ Brunnie repeated for the benefit of Ainsclough who began to listen, keenly so.

  ‘The Westminster Hospital,’ the woman explained. ‘He got set on last night, after work. . two thugs and they hurt him bad. . really bad. And you’re the police?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well you should know about it. There’s a copper with him in case he wakes up.’

  ‘I am sorry to bother you. I hope all is well. We clearly had a communication breakdown here. Sorry.’ Brunnie replaced the phone. ‘Westminster Hospital. . got worked over last night.’ He sat back in his chair. ‘What have I done?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Brunnie told Ainsclough about the watering can.

  ‘You believed Pilcher’s prints would be on it?’

  ‘Yes. . whatever his name is. . his prints would be on the can. I told Dunwoodie to get an identical one from the local shop, but I noticed a green one there this morning, not a red one.’

  ‘That’s a bit of an offside thing to do, especially for you.’

  ‘I know, we can’t use it to arrest him for anything but at least we’ll know who he is.’

  ‘Yes, I know. It’s one thing to take fingerprints after a break-in. . even from the staff. . we can tell them it’s so they can be eliminated, but it gets names and prints on file for future reference. If all the totally innocent citizens whose prints are on file knew about it, there’d be riots in London.’