Cold in Hand cr-11

by John Harvey

  "All relative, isn't it?" a colleague had once argued, a young DC who'd taken a philosophy course as part of his criminology degree. "Your truth, another man's falsehood. A matter of perception. Prisms. Nothing's absolute." He'd left the Force after four years and taken a lecturing post at the University of Hertfordshire.

  Those who can't hack the real world, teach, Lynn thought. The rest of us dig in our heels and get on with it as best we can. But then, when she heard the stories coming out of the local schools and academies, she reckoned that kind of teaching was probably real enough.

  This was real, too.

  Viktor Zoukas, charged with murder.

  Culpable homicide. The arcane language was imprinted on Lynn's mind: where a person of sound memory and discretion unlawfully killeth any reasonable creature in being, under the Queen's peace, with malice aforethought, either express or implied, the death following within a year and a day.

  It had been a Saturday night, nine months before, an emergency call at close to half past two, the Force already stretched by the usual array of running fights and mass brawls and sudden, singular acts of violence, as the clubs started to disgorge their customers and began the arduous task of counting the weekend's profits and swabbing down the floors.

  The call was to a sauna and massage parlour above a sex shop on one of the seedier side streets in the old Lace Market, the caller an alarmed customer who, unsurprisingly, had refused to give his name. When the two uniformed officers arrived only minutes later, despatched from a disturbance they had been attending at an Indian restaurant on the same block, they found several young women sitting on the pavement outside, another slumped, bewildered, against the sex-shop window. A young man in a stained dress shirt and the still-smart black trousers of a dress suit sat on the stairs with his head in his hands. At the top of the stairway, a woman with dyed reddish hair, wearing the same short pink overall as the rest, mascara smeared across her face, was leaning back against the wall, cigarette in her shaking hand.

  As the officers moved past her along the narrow corridor, one of the doors near the far end opened abruptly and a man lurched out, stumbled two paces forward, and stopped. He was a little above medium height, broad-shouldered, solid, muscle turning to fat, a purple shirt unbuttoned almost to the waist, the purple at the left shoulder darkened almost to black. There were splashes of what looked like blood on his face and neck and caught in the dark hairs of his chest. In his eyes, a mixture of anger and surprise. His right hand held a knife, a short, straight blade close against his leg.

  "Drop it," the first officer said. "Drop the knife. Now. On the floor. Put it down."

  The man's muscles tensed, and in the dim light of the single bulb overhead, the officers could see the movement in his eyes as he looked beyond them towards the stairs, as if seeking a possible way out.

  "Down," the first officer said again. "Drop the knife down now."

  The man's fingers tightened further around the handle, then gradually opened and the knife landed with a quick, dull sound on the meagre carpet covering the floor.

  "Kick the knife over here, towards me. Now, with your foot. Not hard. Towards me, that's it. Okay, now clasp your hands behind your head. No, clasp, clasp, fingers together, like this. Good. Now, get down on the floor. Down. Down, that's right. Now don't move. Don't move until you're told."

  The officer nodded to his companion and began to call for backup, and the second officer moved towards the doorway from which the man had emerged.

  The room was narrow, little more than a cubicle, with a high, narrow bed to one side, the kind you find in doctors' surgeries, a thin yellowed sheet hanging half on, half off towards the floor. On a small circular table at the head were several pots and plastic tubes of lotion and a single transparent latex glove, pulled partly inside out. Poking out from beneath the corner of the sheet where it brushed the floor was a woman's foot with a fine-meshed gold chain above the ankle and chipped red polish on the toes.

  The officer squatted down and used finger and thumb to lift away the sheet.

  The woman was on her back, face turned towards the wall, and even in the dim light available, the officer could see that her throat had been cut.

  Vomit hit the back of his throat and he swallowed it away.

  Steadying his breathing, he let the sheet fall back into place.

  Lynn was the first senior detective at the scene, anxious to ensure it was contaminated as little as possible and that vital evidence was preserved intact.

  The body.

  The presumed assailant.

  The knife.

  She could conjure up, even now, the mixture of smells in that narrow trenchlike room: cheap baby lotion and stale sweat, spent jism and fresh blood.

  Before the man who had been holding the knife was taken away under police guard for treatment, Lynn had established his identity. Viktor Zoukas. Originally, he said, from Albania. The premises were licensed in his name.

  Of the five female workers, two were local, two recently from Croatia, their legal status doubtful, one, a student, from Romania. Mostly they were frightened, unwilling to talk, in various stages of shock. One of the local women, Sally, a sometime stripper, some ten or fifteen years older than the rest, was paid extra to take bookings, collect the cash from the customers, keep a weather eye on the girls.

  Lynn quickly separated her off from the rest.

  "There's not much I can tell you," Sally said.

  Lynn waited, patient, while the woman lit a cigarette.

  She had heard voices raised, Sally told her, an argument between the dead girl and one of the customers-not unusual with the dead girl, Nina, especially. She'd been about to go and see what was happening when Viktor had stopped her. He wasn't that often on the premises, not that early, usually only came around to collect at the end of the night, but this time he was. He would go and sort things out, he said. The next thing she knew there was this awful screaming and one of the girls-Andreea Florescu, the Romanian-came running into the reception area, shouting that Nina was dead.

  Pandemonium. Customers not able to get out fast enough. Which of them might have phoned the police, she'd no idea. Surprised, to be honest, that anyone did.

  Viktor, Lynn had asked, Viktor Zoukas, when all this was going on, people leaving, shouting and screaming, where was he?

  Sally didn't know. She hadn't seen him. Still in the room with Nina, perhaps? Who could say?

  Lynn had talked then to the other women who worked there, several, she suspected, feigning a worse command of English than was actually the case, but she had got little from them. Andreea, who had raised the alarm, kept her eyes averted when Lynn spoke to her, head mostly angled away.

  "Just tell me," Lynn said quietly. "Just tell me what you saw."

  Andreea did look at her for a moment then, and the shadow of what she had seen passed across her eyes.

  "It's okay," Lynn said. "Later. Not here." And briefly, she touched the back of the young woman's hand.

  They met next morning in the Old Market Square, Andreea wearing a grey short-sleeved jacket over a yellow vest, blue jeans that bagged at the knees, white sneakers like old-fashioned school gym shoes, makeup heavy around her eyes.

  Lynn took her to one of the few cafes in the city centre the coffee conglomerates had yet to take over. Somewhere anonymous where she thought they were less likely to be noticed or disturbed.

  There were sauce bottles on the tables and small foil containers that had previously held pies and pasties serving as ashtrays: only a few months till the smoking ban came into force, and most of the customers were taking full advantage.

  Lynn ordered tea, asked questions, listened.

  Andreea lit one Marlboro from the butt of another.

  Through the window Lynn could see the usual panoply of men and women walking past, talking into their mobile phones, some smartly, even fashionably dressed, others in the camouflage of cheap sportswear, young women who looked as if they should still be
at school pushing prams or gripping unsteady toddlers by the hand.

  "You?" Andreea said, following Lynn's gaze. "You have children?"

  Lynn shook her head.

  "I have little girl," Andreea said quietly. "Monica. She is three."

  "Here?" Lynn asked, surprised.

  "No, at home with my mother. In Romania. Constanta. It is on the sea. The Black Sea. Very beautiful."

  She took a photograph from her purse and passed it across the table. Lynn saw a girl in a red and white dress with big, dark eyes and ribbons in her hair.

  "She's lovely," Lynn said. "You must miss her a lot."

  "Yes. Of course." Andreea wafted smoke away from her face. "I saw her last time at Christmas. When I went home for holiday. She has grown so big."

  "It must have been hard to leave her," Lynn said.

  "Of course. But there is no life for me there. I am making life here; then I will bring her. Now I am a student."

  "A student?"

  "Yes. I learn Tourism and Hospitality. And English. We have to learn English."

  "Your English is very good."

  "Thank you."

  "And the job at the sauna?"

  Andreea blushed and looked at the floor. "I have to earn money."

  "There must be other ways."

  "Yes, a few. I could work, maybe, at night in factory. Pork farm?"

  "Pork farms, yes."

  "Some of my friends, they do this."

  "But not you."

  "No, not me." She flicked ash from the end of her cigarette. "I try it once." She made a face. "The smell. You cannot get rid of the smell."

  Lynn went to the counter and fetched a packet of biscuits and two more cups of tea. Aside from a few elderly people sitting alone, the cafe was more or less empty. The workmen-plasterers, electricians, labourers-who had been there when Lynn and Andreea had arrived had now gone.

  "Tell me again," Lynn said, "what you saw when you went into the room."

  Andreea stirred one and then a second spoonful of sugar into her tea. "Viktor, he was standing there, his hand like this"-she reached one hand across her chest-"holding his shoulder. He was bleeding."

  "And Nina, where was she?"

  "I think… I said… she was on the floor."

  "You're not sure?"

  "No, I am sure."

  "She was on the floor?"

  "Yes."

  "Whereabouts on the floor?"

  "I don't know, beside the bed. It must have been, yes, beside the bed."

  Was she simply nervous, Lynn wondered, or lying? Something about her eyes, the way they would never focus on Lynn directly when she answered, that and the way she sat, fidgeting, restless. She was lying, Lynn thought, but she didn't know by how much or why.

  "Sally says you came running into the reception area shouting that Nina was dead."

  "I don't remember."

  "You don't remember shouting, or-"

  "I don't remember what I said."

  "But was that what you thought? That she was dead?"

  "Yes."

  "How could you be sure?"

  Andreea's voice was so low, Lynn had to strain to hear. "There was so much blood," she said.

  Lynn leaned back and sipped her tea. She stripped the cellophane from around the biscuits and offered one to Andreea, who shook her head.

  "Before you got to the room," Lynn said, "you didn't see anyone else? Someone running away?"

  "A man, yes."

  "The man who had been with her?"

  "Yes, I think so."

  "Can you describe him?"

  "Yes. He was bald and with tattoos, here." She touched her fingers against the side of her neck.

  "The left side?"

  "Both, I think. I'm not sure, it was so quick."

  "What was he wearing, can you remember?"

  "A shirt, some kind of T-shirt, a football shirt, perhaps. And jeans."

  "No coat? No jacket?"

  Andreea thought. "No, I don't think. No, no."

  "The shirt, can you remember the colour?"

  "White. I think that it was white."

  "An England shirt?"

  "Maybe."

  Andreea stubbed out her cigarette, drank some more tea.

  "When you got to the room," Lynn said, "Viktor apart, was there anybody else there?"

  "Only Nina."

  "And the knife," Lynn said. "Where was the knife?"

  "On the floor. Between them. On the floor."

  "You're sure of that? Absolutely positive?"

  "Oh, yes."

  Lynn sat back and sighed. Earlier that morning, she had heard Viktor Zoukas's version of what happened. When he got to the room, he said, Nina and one of the customers were already fighting. A short man with a bald head, shaven. Viktor didn't think he'd seen him before. They were struggling for control of a knife. He thought Nina was already wounded, bleeding. When he tried to intervene, the man lashed out and stabbed him in the shoulder. He tried to get the knife from him, but fell and knocked his head against the wall. For a short while-seconds, maybe-he must have lost consciousness. When he came to, the man had gone and at first he thought Nina had, too. Then he saw her, underneath the bed, the knife close by. He picked up the knife and went back out into the corridor, and that was when the two policemen arrested him.

  It wasn't only Andreea who was lying, Lynn thought, it was Viktor, too. Somewhere between them lay the truth.

  "Nina," Lynn said, "did you know her well?"

  "I know her a little," Andreea said. "Not well." She had removed her jacket and hung it from the back of the chair. There were bruises on her arms, faded but still distinct.

  "Had she worked there long?"

  "I think, maybe, six, seven months." Andreea lit another cigarette and tilted her head back, letting the first shallow stream of smoke drift up towards the ceiling. "This her first job in this country. Since she came from Croatia. Her English is not very good. She and Viktor, they argue all the time. She won't do this, won't do that. She is always telling me that she will run away, leave." Andreea shook her head. "She is frightened of him, Viktor. She owes him money. I think, for bringing her to this country."

  "She was here illegally?"

  Andreea shrugged, a small, slight movement of her shoulders, barely noticeable.

  "When he argued with her, Viktor, did he ever strike her?"

  "Hit?"

  "Yes."

  "Yes, of course. He call her names and hit her. 'I kill you,' he says, 'I fucking kill you,' and Nina, she cries and says to me she will leave, but next day she is there again."

  "'I'll kill you,' that's what he said?"

  "Yes. But this is because he is angry. He does not mean." She balanced her cigarette on the table's edge. "She make good money for him. The men like her. Why would he kill her?"

  Lynn looked at her watch. "Listen, Andreea, I have to go." She took a card from her bag and placed it in front of her. "If you think of anything else, or if you just want to talk-about Nina-or about anything-give me a call."

  She got to her feet and leaned over. Up close, she could see, beneath the makeup, the dark violet patches of tiredness around Andreea's eyes, the faint patina of a bruise on her cheek.

  "What happened to Nina, it could have happened to any one of you," Lynn said. "It could have happened to you." She rested her hand for a moment on Andreea's shoulder. "Come and talk to me. Don't let it happen again."

  When she looked back through the cafe window, Andreea was still sitting there, smoke rising from her cigarette, staring into space.

  It would be almost two weeks before Lynn heard from her again.

  Eleven

  The autopsy on Nina Simic showed that she had been killed by a single stab wound to the neck, of sufficient depth to suggest that considerable force had been used, a single-edged blade entering below the right ear and severing the common carotid artery as it moved diagonally down and round towards the central hyoid bone beneath the chin. There were defence w
ounds on both the upper and lower arms, as well as a number of small cuts to the hands, which suggested that she had struggled with her killer for the knife. There were also a significant number of other signs of trauma to the body, bruises and contusions, mostly on the arms and upper torso, some recent, others older.

  Forensic examination of the knife found in Zoukas's possession found that it matched in most particulars the weapon used in the attack. Further, there were three sets of fingerprints on the handle of the knife, Viktor Zoukas, Nina Simic and the smudged finger- and thumbprint of a third person, as yet unidentified.

  Zoukas himself was questioned again and again.

  All of the evidence so far could be made to support his story: a struggle between Nina Simic and an unknown assailant in which he had unsuccessfully attempted to intervene. Though inconclusive, medical evidence seemed to support his assertion that he had suffered a blow to the head which could have rendered him unconscious briefly. Nor was there any faking a fourcentimetre-deep stab wound to the shoulder, almost certainly caused by the same blade.

  Meantime, a small number of the men who had patronised the sauna that evening had been contacted, but by no means all. According to Sally, several customers had entered at more or less the same time, ten or fifteen minutes after two, often their busiest time, and she had not been able to keep track of who had gone with whom. She did have a vague memory of seeing someone who approximated to Zoukas's equally vague description of a stocky, shaven-haired man with tattoos, but could not be certain if had been one of Nina's clients or not. "Face it," she said, "short and near bald on top, between thirty and forty, you're talking about most of the blokes come here looking for business."

  The police continued their efforts to find him.

  Perhaps, Lynn thought, her instincts were wrong and Zoukas was telling the truth.

  Perhaps…

  It was nearing the end of the day when Andreea finally phoned, her voice hesitant and indistinct.

  "Andreea," Lynn said. "I'm sorry, I can't hear you."

  There was a pause, and then, more clearly: "What I told you before, it was not all true."