by Clare Curzon
Lights came on in the single storey building, visible through its skylights, as the four men went in. From then on Ramón had observed no activity until the arrival of a small closed van some twenty minutes later. This drew up in the darker, nearer end of the yard and doused its lights.
Anxious to see whether anyone should get out and investigate the near corner where the body had fallen, Ramón stayed on to watch, but there was no further movement. Some five minutes later a long, dark-coloured saloon arrived, to be greeted by a single flash of headlights from the van. It reversed before smoothly drawing up opposite, so that both drivers faced each other. Its lights too were extinguished.
He guessed the windows between must have been lowered, because an arm reached out from each and it looked as though an exchange of packages was made. The two vehicles remained together while some kind of conversation took place. Then the dark saloon drew away, switching on its lights as it reached the exit. Another few minutes passed before the van followed, turning left where the other had gone right.
This had been risky enough. Ramón recognized a drug delivery. He knew he must get the body away. Despite the frost, slow decomposition would already have begun. The meetings could be repeated. It took only one of the men needing to relieve himself in the darkest corner and the corpse could be discovered. The police would be called in. They would look upward to the penthouse. In the ensuing investigation he could come under suspicion himself.
Once the cold spell broke, however well hidden among the rubbish, the body would swiftly become evident. Sudden nausea overcame him at memory of bodies’ stench decomposing in tropical heat. He had thought he was free of all that, but, unbelievably, the ghosts of the dead had followed him here to this quiet place with the two vulnerable women.
He knew what he must do, for the safety of them all. There was an old tan Nissan parked below which had been there since Sunday and seemed abandoned. He could use that to transport the body, wrapped in one of the plastic sheets they used for Emily’s bedbaths. He would find some safer place of disposal. He had only to wait until Nurse Orme came home after eight and relieved him.
Chapter Seventeen
The Kanes’ house at Wimbledon was much as Z had imagined it: a detached Edwardian villa with a double garage, gravelled parking space and a front garden mostly given up to glossy evergreens. Its paintwork was a startling white which mocked the grubby remnants of snow shovelled off the driveway. Inside it was all decorum and conventional taste of the Eighties. There were no fresh flowers. The only scent was from furniture polish and floor wax.
Micky’s bedroom showed that he’d inherited, or at least bowed to, the domestic outlook of his parents. Books, used but in good condition, stood in formal rows on the shelves, ranged according to subject. No magazines. Above the workstation with computer, screen, printer and modem, hung the only indication that the room’s occupant wasn’t adult. This was a 3x4-foot print of trial-bike racing. Inside the floor-to-ceiling cupboards hung a second set of school uniform and two formal suits. Underwear, T-shirts and jeans were neatly folded, as laundered, on labelled shelves. Three pairs of well-polished, laced shoes lined up like guardsmen below them. Bundled on the floor in a back corner, but clean, was his sports gear.
His schoolma’m mother must have blessed her stars that she’d a son with none of the obviously laddish predilections which she would surely condemn elsewhere. Instead, there’d been a compliant half-child, half-adult, making no outrageous demands, but who could also, secretly, be a small, compacted volcano ready to blow. His death, and the manner of it, was something she had yet to face in full.
Z felt it was a house not to linger in. ‘Is there anyone who could come and stay with you for a while?’ she asked the woman.
It seemed there wasn’t. As a family they’d been self-sufficient. Or thought they were. Their plight was familiar, but still unimaginably sad.
All the way back to Thames Valley, with the boy’s computer in the car boot, Zyczynski tried to throw off her unease about what she must find when she logged on. There would surely be some clue to whatever had lured the boy away. She took the equipment home with her, put coffee on to perk and started right in. It took some half hour to hit on the password, Explorer, which concealed his obvious interests, and that only after she considered the only title on the bookshelves that hadn’t some connection with school. It had been a paperback, Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The link was tenuous but it did give access to his emails.
She admitted she ranked as little more than an IT lamebrain, so it was time to hand over the computer to the nerds at Area HQ. But she’d found a connection.
On line Micky had chatted with only three other boys, two of his own age, but one, Hutch, claiming to be seventeen, who had corresponded over a matter of weeks. Their correspondence had been increasingly slangy and personal, while the others trailed off. This survivor was almost certainly the Pied Piper whom Micky Kane had skived off school to meet. But no musician, this one. His instrument of seduction had been a Harley-Davidson bike. The enticing details of its power and performance, eagerly lapped up by Micky, had been followed by an invitation for Explorer to come and try it out. Hutch would guarantee him a ride home by pillion, if they could arrange a meeting over land line. That final message was dated twelve days back.
The change to an open invitation should have warned the boy, but it seemed Micky hadn’t heeded. Nothing new there. Chat lines were proved an increasing danger, a channel for seduction where the predator was invisible, allowing the victim no means of checking claims on screen. Anonymity could tempt the most innocent to describe themselves as something they fell short of. Children, once abducted, were abused and murdered by older men posing as teenagers. This overprotected boy had gone that way, dazzled by the Harley-Davidson vision.
Which must mean a sure lead to their suspect, Allbright.
She thought of the boy as she’d seen him in hospital, although sick and injured, attempting to play it cool. But, underneath, surely desperate and ashamed at how he’d been betrayed.
So why, when he escaped, had he gone back to his abuser?
He’d had no choice. All his gear was left at the house, stuff he’d need to get him home.
Perhaps he’d supposed that in day time Allbright would be away. Maybe he’d lost account of time and forgotten it was a weekend. Had he imagined he could simply retrieve his bag, go home in his school uniform, pick up life where he’d left off there, and no one be the wiser? How could he hope to account for the days he’d been gone?
Allbright had to be the abuser. But the search of his home had turned up no computer. It must exist at some place he had frequent access to. Which pointed first to the stationery warehouse where he was night stock-controller. Every piece of equipment there must be examined to pick up his connection with the boy.
She left her coffee to cool where she’d poured it, returned the boy’s computer to her car and drove straight back to the Area nick.
By Wednesday morning Oliver Markham was getting wised up to the job. Because it involved so much hanging about in the open he’d invested in a couple of heavy fleeces and a black leather trench coat that not only kept the wind out but suggested here was a toughie to deal with.
He’d taken some pride in his new (or new to him) 4x4, but on the second day of sporting it in a low-life area he’d picked up a double line of scratches along one side which could not have arrived by accident. He still owned the tan Nissan, at present dumped in Elston’s warehouse yard, because buying the 4x4 had been a private deal with no part-exchange on offer. Now he decided to use the old car for when he didn’t accompany Tam Godfrey on repossession visits, or at least until he could find a buyer.
Having hopefully placed his traffic cone in a temporary space near his front door and cursed any scrote who might dare remove it, he walked to pick up the Nissan after an abortive visit to a council-tax defaulter near the warehouse yard. He’d happened on a moment when several
vans were picking up bulk orders of stationery and little notice was taken as he drove out of the yard, having removed a note from under the windscreen wipers threatening wheel-clamping on any second unauthorised overnight stay.
A decorator’s pick-up which had received a similar note had stalled on pulling out in front as he tried to leave. Markham hooted for him to get clear. The driver gestured back through his wing mirror, revved up and drove straight into the radiator of one of Elston’s own covered trucks coming in.
It was Laurel and Hardy to perfection. The heavier vehicle rammed back the pickup, springing the catches on the tailgate as it struck into Markham’s front bumper. As Elston’s van reversed, the pickup sprang forward, the tailgate dropped and a five-litre can of putty-coloured matt paint toppled out on the tarmac.
Markham roared and dived out to examine damage to the Nissan. The bumper looked only scuffed, but he’d lost a sidelight and there was no way he could avoid the puddle of wet paint in front. At that moment, as grinning faces from the warehouse began to gather to enjoy the general discomfort, his mobile phone trilled inside the car.
He climbed in to take the call, his face like thunder. Ernest Baldrey was demanding why the hell he hadn’t reported in on his morning’s progress. Markham started to grind out an answer, then, as the Elston’s lorry gave way ahead, he reversed a couple of yards, seized his chance and swept round the stranded pickup before the space could be filled. All the way out to Mardham village for his next call he was growling curses under his breath.
The approach road past the watermill had no speed cameras, but it was a built-up area lined by cottages and street lights. It so happened that a probationer constable named Higgins had fallen foul of his sergeant and been sent to familiarize himself over the required distance with a hand-held speed-check apparatus and a rather untidy-looking WPC. After observing seemly streams of traffic droning past, the speeding Nissan could make his day. He strode out into its path, held up a forbidding hand and was almost struck as Markham stood on his less-than-perfect brakes.
Hiding his satisfaction under a mask of stolid officialdom, Constable Higgins called the driver out, examined the loosened front bumper, enumerated the car’s failings and added to them the offence of driving at 61 mph in a 30 mph area. Markham slightly moderated his language, but his face was flushed and the PC fancied he discerned the effects of a liquid lunch. The breathalyser was produced, which confirmed that alcohol was present, although just inside the permissible limit.
After this minor disappointment Higgins insisted on his right to throw the whole book at this wanker. He again recited the list of road offences already committed: speeding, faulty front light, a bumper now hanging dejectedly just short of the road and failure to stop within the required distance. He peered in through the misted windows, then proceeded aft, demanding that Markham should open the boot.
Who knew what illegal treasures might be concealed inside? Stories circulated among old hands back at the nick included a long-dragged-out murder hunt solved by a routine traffic check on a motorway. True, it had included the examining copper being shot dead on the job, but then maybe that was the sort of exaggeration legends acquired. And anyway the likes of PC Higgins could hardly expect the dizzy heights of bodies in the boot, Class A drugs, or even terrorist guns.
Scowling, Markham did as he was told, looming as formidably as his black leather allowed. Young Higgins peered in the boot, poked about, suddenly froze, then straightened stiffly.
‘What’s this, then?’ The fine hairs on his neck went rigid and an icicle seemed to drop down inside his back collar. Slowly he drew out a tartan travel rug caked at one corner with dark brown deposit. His eyes widened as the man in the black leather trench coat suddenly moved in on him.
Shopping on her way to afternoon duty, Alyson Orme passed the police station as Z was driving in at the electronic gate. The DS lowered her window and cheerfully wagged her fingers. ‘How are things with you?’
‘Not so hot,’ the nurse admitted. ‘My assistant’s gone AWOL and I’ve taken on an unknown in her place. To live in. I thought he was an EU citizen, but now he tells me he’s a Filipino. I should have picked up on the oriental looks. How can I check he’s not an illegal immigrant?’
‘Can’t stop to talk now,’ Z warned her. ‘Give me a buzz in twenty minutes and I’ll have all the details for you.’ She put the car in gear, waved again and entered the police yard.
A lucky meeting, Alyson decided. That takes one load off my mind.
As soon as she’d sorted things in ITU she would put through a call to the number Z had left with her.
Yeadings waylaid Zyczynski as she hurried past his open door carrying Micky’s desktop computer. ‘Where did you disappear to yesterday?’ he demanded.
‘Wimbledon, with the Kanes,’ she told him. ‘I brought this back. Mr Kane wouldn’t allow the Met access to it. And it’s come up trumps.’ She treated him to a Cheshire Cat grin, which he matched with a grim smile of his own.
‘Can’t be a bad thing. Let’s take it to the CID office and get a printout.’
Only Beaumont was in there, poking at a keyboard with deadly concentration. He broke off as they came in and booted up alongside.
‘Micky Kane’s chat line,’ Yeadings promised. All three bent to the screen as Z brought it up. They watched in tense silence. At last, ‘Harley-Davidson,’ Yeadings breathed with religious awe.
‘It has to be Allbright,’ Beaumont accused. ‘All we need now is to find his record of the conversations.’
The internal phone rang. Beaumont reached for it and held a hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Zyczynski, it’s for you.’
The woman DS waved it away. ‘I’m out.’
‘No,’ Yeadings said. ‘Take it.’ He listened as Z excused herself to Alyson for not having the needed information to hand. ‘Can I ring you back?’ she asked.
Alyson seemed doubtful, but finally agreed.
‘Germane to our present inquiry?’ Yeadings suggested, and Z was compelled to explain the difficulty over Ramón.
‘She’ll need to check his work permit and contact immigration. Better let her have their details at once, before any harm’s done. And what’s this about a missing carer? How long has she been gone?’
‘I’ll get the full story when I talk to her. It may be nothing. The woman seemed pretty lackadaisical anyway. She may have decided to take a job elsewhere.’
Beaumont was now busily gathering the chat line details from the printer. Yeadings grimaced at its harsh chattering. He quickly scanned the first page. ‘I think I’ll leave you both to it.’
Rather than risk disturbing work in the ITU, Zyczynski copied out the information Alyson required, slid it into an envelope and decided to walk across the town centre to deliver it herself.
Just as well. A phoned interruption would have been the last straw. Bernice, normally cool and competent, was rattled by the latest readings for a heart-lung bypass recovery, and Alyson was doubling for everything else in their end of the unit. ‘Take a seat,’ she hissed in passing. ‘Be with you when I can.’
Z waited, dropping the sheepskin coat at her feet. With the high temperature required here and the sheer exercise of intensive nursing, small wonder the staff were lean as whippets. Eventually Alyson was free to take her through to the kitchen and switch on the kettle for tea.
‘It’s all in here,’ Z told her, handing over the envelope, ‘but my boss overheard and wants to know about the missing carer.’
‘Oh, Sheena!’ Alyson sounded disgusted. ‘Her mother thinks she’s gone off with some man friend. Not that she has a name for him.’
‘So when did she disappear?’
‘It must have been Sunday night. I haven’t seen her since I handed over to her that afternoon. And Ramón was to follow her, taking on the first half of my night duty with Emily, from eight. I had a dinner date.’
‘And nobody has any idea who the man friend is?’
Alyson hesitated. ‘It
’s possible Ramón may know something. It was Sheena who introduced him here in the first place. Otherwise I’ve no contact. Actually, as far as I’m concerned Sheena’s no great loss – if Ramón turns out to be legit. That’s my main concern. I must have someone reliable for Emily.’
‘And for yourself, if he’s to live in. Mind if I have a word with him? Just about Sheena.’
‘Go ahead. He’s with Emily right now. Only don’t scare him off, or I’ll really be in a hole.’
‘I needn’t mention I’m police. Thanks, Alyson. Maybe we can meet up for a drink sometime?’
‘I’d like that. I’m not sure I should ask, but have you got anywhere about Micky?’
‘It’s early days yet, but we’re hopeful.’ She would have liked to say more, but real proof was still lacking. It depended now on what IT experts could extract from computers at the warehouse.
Ramón had not been warned to expect visitors. He frowned at the monitor that showed a young woman looking up directly at the entrance camera. She appeared respectable, bare-headed, with a cap of soft brown curls; dark eyes; really pretty. She stood hugging a silver-grey sheepskin coat to her against the cold wind. ‘Who, please?’ he demanded through the intercom.
‘I’m Rosemary, a friend of Nurse Alyson Orme’s. She said I could ask you about Sheena.’
‘Sheena not here. I not knowing where.’
‘Look, we’re a bit worried about her. Can I come up and talk?’
‘I suppose.’ He sounded doubtful, but she heard the lock click as it was released. When she took the lift up to the penthouse she found him already waiting at the apartment door. He waved her through to the lounge where she found Emily in her wheelchair, seated by the huge window and watching cloud shadows racing over the distant hills.
