The Business Of Dying

by Simon Kernick

  ‘I’m not trying to,’ I told her. ‘I’m just interested in knowing who I’m talking to.’

  ‘If you want to talk to him, you need an appropriate adult present.’

  ‘So, when did you graduate from law school then, young lady?’

  She was about to come up with some other smart-alec answer but we were interrupted before she could get it out.

  ‘Can I help you, gentlemen?’

  The speaker was an attractive white female, early forties. Quite tall – about five feet nine – and, from the sound of her voice, someone in authority.

  I turned in her direction and smiled, opening fire with the charm. ‘I hope so. My name’s DS Milne and this is my colleague, DC Malik. We’re here as part of an ongoing inquiry.’

  She managed a weak smile. ‘Really, what now?’

  ‘It’s a murder investigation.’

  ‘Oh.’ She looked taken aback. ‘Was there any reason why you were talking to the children?’

  ‘I was just introducing myself.’

  ‘No you weren’t,’ said the girl. ‘He was trying to find out who we were.’

  ‘Well, I’ll take over from here, Anne. Aren’t you and John meant to be with Amelia?’

  ‘We’re just having a quick smoke,’ said the girl, not bothering to look up.

  ‘Perhaps you’d better come inside, gentlemen, and we’ll talk in there.’

  I nodded. ‘Of course. And you are?’

  ‘Carla Graham. I manage Coleman House.’

  ‘Well, then, please lead the way,’ I said, and we followed her through the double doors and into the building.

  The place had the unwelcoming feel of a hospital: high ceilings; linoleum floors; health-related posters on the walls warning against shared needles, unwanted pregnancy, and a whole host of other obstacles to a happy and fulfilling life. And there was a nasty reek of disinfectant in the air. Dr Barnardo’s this wasn’t.

  Carla Graham had a spacious office at the other end of the building. She ushered us in and we took seats facing her across her sizeable desk. There were more doom-mongering posters in here as well. One showed a huge photograph of a young child, no more than five, covered in bruises. The caption above it read: Stamp on Child Abuse. Below the photograph it added: Not on Children.

  ‘So, what’s happened?’ Carla asked. ‘I hope none of our clients are involved.’

  ‘Clients, meaning children?’ It was Malik asking the question.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘We don’t really know, which is why we’re here.’ I then told her about the discovery of the body the previous day.

  ‘I didn’t hear anything about that,’ she said. ‘Who was the poor girl?’

  ‘Her name was Miriam Fox.’ Carla’s expression didn’t hint at recognition, so I continued. ‘She was an eighteen-year-old prostitute, a runaway.’

  She shook her head and sighed. ‘What a waste. Not a shock, because the potential for this sort of thing to happen’s there all the time. But a terrible waste, all the same.’

  Malik leaned forward in his seat and I immediately got the feeling that he didn’t much like Carla Graham. ‘I assume you didn’t know her?’

  ‘I don’t know the name, no.’

  I took the photo of Miriam posing for the camera out of my suit pocket and passed it over to her. ‘This is her. We think it’s a recent picture.’

  She studied it for a long moment before handing it back to me. As I took it back I noticed she had graceful hands with well-kept, unvarnished nails.

  ‘She looks vaguely familiar. I may have seen her before with one of the clients, but I couldn’t say for sure.’

  ‘We’ve been talking to some of the other girls who work the same area as Miriam did and they say she was particularly friendly with a girl called Molly Hagger. They said that Molly lived here at Coleman House.’

  ‘Lived is the right word. Molly was a client of ours for some months but she walked out about three weeks ago now and we haven’t seen her since.’

  ‘You don’t seem too worried about that, Ms Graham,’ Malik said, only just about concealing his dismay that she should take the loss of one of her ‘clients’ so lightly.

  ‘Mr Malik,’ she said, turning towards him, ‘Coleman House is home to twenty-one children aged between twelve and sixteen, all of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds and all of whom have behavioural problems of varying degrees of seriousness. They are placed here by the council and we try to do our best for them, but the law is not on our side. If they want to go out at night, they go out. If I or any of my staff lay a hand on them to try to stop them leaving, they can have assault charges laid against us just like that, and believe me they’d do it. Put bluntly, these kids do what they like because they know they can do what they like. Half of them can’t write their names, but they all know their rights inside out. And often, I’m afraid, they simply decide they’ve had enough of us and walk out the door. Sometimes they come back; sometimes they don’t.’

  ‘Don’t you try to look for them?’ Malik persisted.

  She looked at him in the way a teacher looks at a particularly foolish pupil. ‘We’re extremely understaffed. It’s hard enough keeping control of the ones who want to be here without worrying about the ones who don’t. And where would we look for her? She could be anywhere.’

  ‘Did you report her missing?’ I asked.

  ‘I informed Camden Social Services and they will have informed the police, but I didn’t report it myself. I didn’t see much point.’

  ‘How old is Molly Hagger?’

  ‘Thirteen.’

  I shook my head. ‘It’s a young age to be out on the streets.’ It was. Far too young.

  She turned to me now. ‘Mr . . . ?’

  ‘Milne.’

  ‘Mr Milne, I can understand if you think I’m not taking Molly’s leaving seriously enough, I can understand both of your concerns, but try to look at it from my point of view. I’ve been a careworker for a long time now, and I’ve tried to help a lot of kids make a better life for themselves. But the older I get, the harder it becomes. You see, a lot of the time these kids don’t want to be helped. They get plenty of offers, I can promise you, but most of them just want to live fast, take drugs, drink. They’re independent, but independent in all the wrong ways. They can’t stand any form of authority but often they aren’t capable of looking after themselves. They’re not all like that of course, some do actually want to listen and learn, and they’re the ones I find myself gravitating towards. But if I’ve tried to help someone, and they keep turning their noses up at that help, then eventually I have to stop.’

  ‘And was Molly Hagger like that? Was she one of the ones who turned her nose up?’

  ‘Molly came from a very difficult background. She was sexually abused from the age of four by both her mother and her mother’s boyfriend. She was taken into care at the age of eight and she’s been in it ever since.’

  I thought of the girl in the photograph and felt mildly sick. ‘Jesus . . .’

  ‘It’s far more common than most people think. You should know that, Mr Milne.’

  ‘It doesn’t make it any easier.’

  ‘No, you’re right, it doesn’t. But, to answer your question, Molly wasn’t one of our more difficult girls. She didn’t resent her carers in the way some clients do, but she had a very different outlook on life that was a direct result of the experiences she’d suffered.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, she had a very casual and very adult view of sex. She had male and female sexual partners from a very young age, and from the age of ten she was charging for her services to certain individuals.’

  ‘Has she run away before?’

  ‘She’s walked out on a number of occasions and not been seen for some time. The last time of any significance was about a year ago when she took up with an older man. She ended up living with him for several months before he got tired of her and threw her out. That’s when
she came back here.’

  ‘So you think that might have happened this time?’

  ‘I would think, knowing Molly, that that’s a very likely scenario.’

  I nodded, more optimistic now that she was still alive. ‘We’re going to need to speak to all your other, er, clients, and the rest of the staff to see if anyone else knew Miriam Fox and might be able to give us any relevant information.’

  ‘The majority of the clients aren’t here at the moment. Most of them attend local schools, or are supposed to anyway. Those who are in the building now are the ones who have special learning needs, and require one-to-one tuition. They might not be too helpful.’

  They weren’t. There were seven of them altogether and we interviewed them one at a time in Carla Graham’s office, with her present. Two refused to answer any questions at all with anything more than yes or no, and of the rest only one claimed to have heard of Miriam Fox, and that was Anne Taylor, the youthful legal expert I’d met earlier. She said that she’d known Molly ‘a bit’ and that Molly and Miriam had been friends, even though Miriam was older. Anne had seen Molly with Miriam a couple of times while out in the evenings (she denied knowing that either of them had been prostitutes), but claimed she’d never really spoken to Miriam beyond the usual pleasantries. ‘She seemed a bit stuck up,’ she told us. ‘She thought she was better than anyone else.’

  And that was it. Carla made some effort to get her charges to speak, but it was a losing battle. They weren’t going to tell the police anything, not if they could help it.

  After that we interviewed the other members of staff present, four of them altogether. Two of them recognized the photo of Miriam and identified her as a friend of Molly’s, but once again, neither had had any meaningful contact with her so couldn’t, or wouldn’t, add any further information.

  ‘I don’t know how much help that was,’ said Carla when we were finished.

  ‘It’s difficult to tell,’ I said. ‘That’s the thing with murder inquiries. It can often be a long, slow process and it always involves talking to a lot of people. Most of the time you don’t hear anything significant, but just occasionally you do, even if you don’t notice it at the time.’

  ‘Well, I hope you’re successful. It’s worrying thinking that there’s some maniac out there who could easily kill again.’

  ‘We’ll catch the perpetrator. I’m sure of that.’ I stood up, and Malik followed suit. ‘Anyway, thanks for your assistance this morning. It’s appreciated.’

  ‘I’ll show you out,’ she said, getting to her feet and leading us out of the office.

  At the double doors, I shook hands with her while Malik nodded briefly and walked out. ‘We’ll need to come back and speak to the other clients at some point,’ I told her.

  ‘Of course. It would help if you could phone ahead, though. I’d like to be here when you come.’

  She had nice eyes. They were a deep brown colour, with laughter lines round their edges. I would make sure she was there when I came back. ‘I’ll do that. It’ll probably be sooner rather than later. It’s important to close every avenue of inquiry.’

  There was a sound of hysterical yelling and shouting from one of the rooms down the hall. It sounded like one of the female clients was experiencing a lack of customer satisfaction. In reply, we could just about make out the calm, measured tones of one of the social workers. It was greeted with another blast of abuse. Talk about a hiding to nothing.

  Car la Graham sighed resignedly. ‘I’d better go and see what all that’s about.’

  ‘You certainly have a difficult job to do here,’ I told her.

  ‘We’ve all got difficult jobs to do,’ she answered, a rueful smile playing about her lips, and turned to go.

  ‘I think you had a bit of a thing for her,’ Malik said when I joined him outside.

  I grinned. ‘She’s an attractive woman.’

  ‘A little bit old.’

  ‘For you maybe. Not for me.’

  ‘A social worker, though, Sarge? It would hardly be a match made in heaven, not with your views.’

  ‘Yeah. Somehow I don’t think it’s a goer.’ But in an odd way I wished it could be. I needed some romance in my life.

  It was getting on for one o’clock, so we grabbed some lunch at a nearby McDonald’s. Malik plumped for Chicken McNuggets while I took the traditional route of Big Mac, fries, and a hot apple pie for pudding, washed down with a regular Coke. Not exactly the ideal start to my new diet.

  ‘I didn’t like her,’ Malik said as he slowly chewed on a McNugget.

  ‘I know you didn’t.’

  He swallowed. ‘She was too cynical, you know? Like nothing would faze her.’

  ‘It’s no different to the way it is in our game. You build up a shell so that things don’t affect you. You have to. I mean, let’s face it, how would you like to work with those little fuckers?’

  ‘No discipline. That’s the problem.’ He picked up another McNugget with his fork. ‘Do you think any of them knew anything?’

  ‘Anything of interest? I doubt it. I think we’d have known if any of them were lying through their teeth. They’re not that good actors.’

  ‘So it was a bit of a waste of time going down there, really.’

  I smiled. ‘Well, in some ways maybe.’

  He ignored my comment, and changed the subject. ‘I was surprised this morning by the preliminary findings.’

  ‘That there was no sign of sexual assault?’ He nodded. ‘So was I. It sort of begs the question, what was she killed for?’

  Malik hunted down and pinned his last McNugget. ‘That’s why we need to talk to the pimp.’

  But talking to the pimp had not proved any easier for our colleagues than it had for us the previous day. When we got back to the station we heard that he hadn’t been at home when DS Capper and three others had called there several hours earlier. Apparently, he had a girlfriend who lived in Highbury, and he was supposed to spend quite a lot of his time with her, but he hadn’t been at her place either. Nor was she in residence. Both properties were now under surveillance and all patrols had been advised to bring him in for questioning should they come across him. So far no one had.

  When I left that afternoon at 4.20, citing a nonexistent doctor’s appointment as the reason for my departure (Malik made me feel guilty by looking concerned and asking if it was anything serious), the inquiry was heading towards thirty-six hours old with few substantial leads and a suspect against whom there was pretty much no evidence and who, so far, hadn’t even got a viable motive.

  There was, of course, still a lot of the race left to be run, as a sports commentator might say, but whichever way you looked at it the start hadn’t been particularly inspiring.

  9

  After picking up the suitcase at King’s Cross, I took it home, counted the contents (it was all there), and stuffed a jiffy bag with Danny’s cut. I sealed the bag and placed the rest of the money, bar a couple of hundred spending, in a safe in my bedroom. It wouldn’t stay there for long. I have a personal deposit box at a hotel in Bayswater where I stash my ill-gotten gains. One day I’m going to have a hefty lump sum. It doesn’t pay interest, but it keeps growing.

  I’ve known Danny for about eight years now. He was the brother of a girl I used to go out with. Her name was Jean Ashcroft and she was the only non-Force girl I’ve ever had a relationship with since joining up. We were together about a year, and for a while it looked like it was going to get serious. We’d even started looking at places to rent together, which is the closest I’ve ever been to any sort of real commitment, and I think it’s probably fair to say that I loved her, as much as I’ve loved anybody in the sexual sense. But then Danny fouled things up. Not intentionally, mind, but a foul-up all the same. You see, in those days he was a bit of a rascal. Although he was intelligent and came from a respectable family, he didn’t have a job, nor did he want one. He preferred dope dealing. It was easier, and it was more profitable. Somehow he mana
ged to keep his illicit activities hidden from the rest of his family, including his sister, and so it turned out to be a terrible shock for them when one of his pathetically small-time deals went pear-shaped, and he ended up on the wrong end of a savage beating.

  It was a typical piece of middle-class naivety, really. He was holding half a pound of speed he was meant to be selling to a contact of his, but the contact, deciding it was easier to steal the goods rather than buy them, set him up. On his way over to the contact’s flat, three of the guy’s mates ambushed him in the stairwell. However, since Danny hadn’t yet paid for the stuff, he was loath to give it up. A very one-sided battle ensued and Danny ended up with a fractured jaw, smashed cheekbone, severe concussion, and God knows how many busted ribs. And he still lost the speed, which, by all accounts, had to be prised from between his broken fingers.

  He was in hospital three weeks altogether, which, when you consider it was on the NHS, gives you some idea of the extent of his injuries. It really threw the cat among the pigeons as well. His dad seemed to think that, because it had happened on our patch, I should have known something about his activities and put a stop to them, or at least told him about them. So he turned against me. Danny’s mum followed suit, being one of those people who are incapable of their own opinion. The thing was, I could have lived with that, no problem. I’d never liked either of them much anyway. The problem was Danny. Once he got out of hospital he wanted revenge on the man who’d set him up. He was also worried because the guy he’d bought the stuff from now wanted paying as well. In fact, he wanted a lot of favours and the only person he knew who was in a position to grant him any was me. I’d always got on well with Danny, even though he’d never been able to hide his dope-dealing activities from me, and I genuinely liked him.

  So when he came to me begging for help, I said I’d do what I could. The guy who’d sold him the speed was a pretty low-level player, so a quick threat of prosecution and the possibility of worse got him out of the picture. It was the revenge thing that represented a problem. Danny wanted me to help him take the guy out, though help wasn’t exactly the operative word since it looked like I would be the one doing most of the work. Danny was only five feet six and of proportionate build, so he wasn’t what you’d call a useful ally. He wanted to ambush the guy in the same way he’d been ambushed, and return the kicking, but I talked him out of that one. I don’t even know why I agreed to get involved at all. I could have just told him to cut his losses and be thankful that he no longer owed the other guy money, but I didn’t. Maybe it was a pride thing. Maybe I wanted him to look up to me, I don’t know.