You Will Never Find Me

by Robert Wilson

  Boxer hefted the five-kilo weight, brought it down hard on El Osito’s toes. The Colombian gasped and growled with the pain, clenched his teeth.

  ‘I saw you tonight in Kapital with another girl. I followed you here. By the time I arrived you were already beating her up. I had to step in. Maybe you’d have killed her too, by accident. Now tell me what you did to my daughter. What did she say that made you want to kill her? Or didn’t she have to say anything at all?’

  ‘This not for you, mi amigo,’ said El Osito. ‘You get the police. I talk to the police.’

  Another piece of tape across the mouth. The chair once again laid on its back. This time it was the knees. An off drive on one side and an on drive to the other followed by two less stylish shots: hammer blows to both kneecaps.

  Boxer sat him back up. The Colombian’s head twisted and turned with the agony from his shattered joints. It concerned Boxer that El Osito could have avoided this brutal retribution just by being a bit more talkative. He wondered if he might see this as some necessary punishment for all the wrongs he’d committed in his life. They were deeply Catholic, these Colombian gangsters. They had to be, with what they had coming in the afterlife. Boxer could find no pity for the man. He’d seen the terror in the eyes of the girl he’d rescued that night and had imagined that same terror in Amy’s eyes when the monster had turned on her at the end of her first night of freedom.

  ‘I think you’ve realised that this is not a case for the police, El Osito,’ said Boxer. ‘This is between you and me. Now tell me what you did to my daughter.’

  He stripped the tape off El Osito’s mouth. The Colombian gulped in air trying to cope with the pain.

  ‘I don’t know what happen to her,’ he said finally. ‘I woke up in the bathroom. I came in here. She dead on the floor. We taking a lot of blow and drinking. Maybe she not used to it. Maybe her heart not strong enough. My cocaine very pure. That’s it. That’s all I can tell you, mi amigo.’

  ‘All right. One more thing,’ said Boxer, getting up close, looking into the eyes, which had lost some of their hardness now. ‘What’s this all about? This obsession with hurting girls? Tell me that and I’ll finish it quick.’

  El Osito looked at him out of the corner of his head, eyes, puzzled.

  ‘What’s it to you, hombre?’

  ‘You don’t question why you do it?’

  ‘You know, when I see you that first time in the bar I know you kill people. I see that look before.’

  ‘Is that why you left?’

  ‘No, no, I see that look in the mirror every morning,’ said El Osito. ‘I leave because I don’t like the way you look, something like a cop or maybe a judge. But now I see you in the revenge business and I’m asking myself, why you doing that? You look like police and acting like a gangster.’

  ‘I just don’t like people getting away with murder.’

  ‘Yeah, most people are like that but they don’t go killing people, taking revenge. How you get into that business? You tell me yours, I tell you mine.’

  They looked at each other for some time.

  ‘You recognise yourself now?’ said El Osito. ‘You don’t know the answer any better than me. We just doing what we have to do, mi amigo.’

  ‘I am not your amigo,’ said Boxer.

  ‘O.K., how about compañero?’

  Boxer stood up, took the baseball bat in both hands, reached out and touched the fat heavy end to El Osito’s ear. He eased the bat back slowly and gave the Colombian’s ear another light touch in a slow measured practice swing.

  The front doorbell rang.

  ‘JAIME!’ roared El Osito.

  There was a splitting crack as the front door was shouldered open.

  16

  6:00 A.M., THURSDAY 22ND MARCH 2012

  Putney Bridge, London

  The rowers started turning up at 6:00 A.M. Even to Mercy’s inexpert eye she could see the tide was going out and it would be low water by eight thirty. She counted off the crew as they arrived. Seven men plus the cox and the coach, but no Jeremy Spencer. The crew brought the boat out and set it on the river while the cox hopped onto his bike, swung back up the ramp and pedalled crazily down the Lower Richmond Road. Mercy followed him.

  The cox veered left into Roskel Road, stopped near the top, threw the bike against a low wall and went up to the front door of a Victorian semi-detached house. He thumbed the bell hard. Mercy pulled up by the open gate, lowered her window, watched. The cox stood back, went to the front bay window and peered through the curtains, knocked on the window. He kicked the front door with his plimsolled foot and was about to turn away when the door eased open. Mercy got out of the car. The cox was halfway up the hall, where a bike was leaning against the wall.

  ‘Just wait a sec,’ she said and showed him her warrant card.

  The door to the house had been on the latch. The flat’s front door was by the bottom of the stairs, which went up to the two flats above. She pushed it with a gloved finger. It too opened.

  ‘Just wait outside while I take a look at this,’ she said to the cox.

  She put on latex gloves, turned on the torchlight of her mobile phone and went into a narrow hallway with four closed doors. She started with the door to the front room, which was set out as a living room, with a wall-mounted TV over the fireplace. The next door opened into the bedroom with a window looking out onto a small garden. The double bed had a T-shirt cast over the duvet and jeans and a jumper hung over a chair in the corner. She backed out, walked past the most suspicious door in the flat and took a cursory look at the empty kitchen.

  Back to the bathroom. The sweat came up on her hands inside the latex gloves. She pushed the door but it only opened a few inches, as it butted up against some wet towels on the floor. She pushed harder, stuck her head around the door. Jeremy Spencer was lying in a full bath, one leg over the side, the other bent awkwardly into the corner. His head and torso were underwater. She crammed herself around the door. The water was stone cold, the window was open, all the towels underfoot were sodden and Jeremy Spencer was long dead.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked the cox from the doorway to the flat.

  ‘I’m afraid Jeremy’s dead,’ said Mercy. ‘There’s going to be an investigation. Somebody’s going to need to speak to all of you. Give me your mobile number and then you can go back to your crew and tell them they won’t be going out on the river this morning.’

  ‘What do I say?’ asked the cox, looking overwhelmed.

  ‘You tell them Jeremy’s dead and the police are dealing with it. At this point we know nothing. It could be an accident, suicide or murder.’

  ‘But what about you? What were you doing here?’

  ‘Don’t let it get complicated in your head,’ said Mercy. ‘Stick to what you know.’

  ‘Jesus Christ.’

  Mercy called DCS Makepeace. The cox turned his bike and pedalled off.

  ‘What are you up to, Mercy?’ asked Makepeace.

  ‘I’m working, sir,’ said Mercy. ‘I’m working the Sasha Bobkov case.’

  ‘You’re off that case,’ said Makepeace. ‘You’re not on duty. I’ve given you indefinite leave.’

  ‘I don’t want it, sir. I can’t do it. I can’t sit alone in my house knowing Amy’s gone. I have to work,’ she said. ‘I went down to the river this morning.’

  ‘The river?’

  ‘The Thames.’

  ‘I guessed that.’

  ‘I was following up on Sasha’s teacher, Jeremy Spencer,’ said Mercy. ‘He didn’t show for rowing practice and I’ve just found him dead in his bath.’

  ‘Oh shit,’ said Makepeace, the day gone to hell before he’d even got away from the breakfast table. ‘Let’s hear it.’

  She gave him the details. Makepeace made the call, came back to her.

  ‘I’d like to go aft
er Irina Demidova now,’ said Mercy. ‘Did George get anywhere with the Mercedes?’

  ‘He hasn’t filled in the rest of the numberplate, but he’s established that one of the cars owned by DLT Consultants is a black Mercedes CLS with an LG 61 plate.’

  ‘Do we have any opinion on Messrs Dudko, Luski and Tipalov?’

  ‘They’ve been established here for some time, since the mid-1990s. They’ve filed accounts at Companies House and paid their taxes,’ said Makepeace. ‘As for the individuals, none of them has any record, and George ran their names through our organised crime database and didn’t come up with any matches.’

  ‘So, I’ll talk to Demidova, and if I’m out of luck there I’ll move on to DLT Consultants, if that’s all right with you.’

  ‘Do you really think this is the best thing for you to be doing right now, Mercy? This is more than likely a murder. It’ll raise the Bobkov case to a new level.’

  ‘I want to be involved. Amy got away from me and I couldn’t save her. But this boy, Sasha, sounds like a really great kid,’ she said, her voice cracking. ‘It would help me if I could do something for him. It would give me a chance to make something right in a world that’s gone badly wrong for me. I’m not in the front line. I’m not under the same pressure as the consultant in the case. I’m just investigative. I’m good at it. I’ll work with George. If I’m too unstable, he’ll tell you and you can take me off the case.’

  Mercy hung up, waited for the homicide team to show. One of the occupiers of the upstairs flats came down the stairs, slowed at the open front door, looked around. Mercy showed him her warrant card, told him there was an investigation going on to do with his downstairs neighbour.

  ‘Are you alone up there?’

  ‘Last night I was. My girlfriend only stays over at the weekends.’

  ‘Are you first floor or top?’

  ‘First. The top-floor guy is away on business in the States. Won’t be back until next week.’

  ‘Were you here last night?’

  ‘From around one thirty onwards,’ he said. ‘I was out on business with some Norwegian ship owners. We went to a club afterwards. It was a heavy night—always is when the Norwegians come to town.’

  ‘What happened when you got in?’

  ‘Stripped off, face down, out for the count.’

  ‘I meant, how did you get through the front door? Was it locked?’

  ‘Jesus, I’m not sure. That’s why I was a bit freaked when I saw the door open. Did I leave it like that?’

  ‘I’m asking you. Did you unlock it, put it on the latch for any reason? Or did you put the key in and find it was already open?’

  There followed a long thought process during which he checked his watch.

  ‘It’s important, this. I know it doesn’t sound like it, but it’ll help us establish some things. A chain of events.’

  ‘How did you get in?’ he asked.

  ‘The door was on the latch.’

  ‘Shit. I was so bladdered last night I could have done anything.’

  ‘How did you get home?’

  ‘Cab.’

  ‘From where?’

  ‘Marylebone High Street.’

  ‘Where were you?’

  ‘Sophisticats on Marylebone Lane,’ he said. ‘You don’t believe me?’

  ‘Just checking. You told me you were legless.’

  ‘We always end up in Sophisticats with the Norwegians.’

  He whipped round suddenly and stared up the hallway.

  ‘Thank fuck for that,’ he said. ‘At least his bike’s still there.’

  ‘This happened before?’

  ‘Last year before Christmas, got home late one night, fell through the door, landed on the floor, woke up a few hours later, crawled to bed, left the door open. Jeremy’s bike got stolen. I had to buy him a new one,’ he said, looking at his watch again. ‘Got to go.’

  ‘Homicide are going to want to talk to you.’

  ‘Homicide?’ he said, giving her his card.

  ‘Jeremy’s dead.’

  ‘Because I might have left the door open?’

  Boxer swung the bat. He was going to make sure he took out the man who’d murdered and dismembered his child. He missed. El Osito tipped himself backwards, clipping the table with his foot. Boxer’s bat flashed overhead, wheeling him round in the process. The bat smashed into a panel of glass between the living room and the kitchen, shattering it. His swing had been so violent that the bat smacked into the wooden frame, jolting it out of his hands. He was in two minds about going for the gun on the table or the bat on the floor, but saw that the gun had been knocked off. He scrabbled after the bat. Got hold of it again. There was no time now. No time to take another swing at El Osito, no time to search for the gun, no time to get out.

  Bodies and feet thundered down the corridor. Boxer lunged forward and swung the baseball bat through the narrow doorway. The end made contact with something and there was a grunt of pain. A man went down, a flash of chrome in his hand and a clattering of metal on the ceramic tiles and fragments of glass.

  El Osito shouted something from behind him.

  Boxer knew that his only chance to get out was in the chaos and adrenaline surge of the first rush or get cornered in the room with two armed men. He followed the trajectory of the bat into the corridor, kicking out and stamping on the flailing legs of the first man. He kept low. There was no chance of swinging the bat so he thrust it forward, fat point first. El Osito shouted again, something he couldn’t decipher, but it sounded like an order.

  The bat rammed into an oncoming body. Another grunt and an exhalation of air. The man fell back and Boxer felt the bat wrenched out of his hands. He stumbled over the fallen man, felt his ankle grabbed at and, as he wrenched that away, his trouser leg. He went down, lashing out madly with his free foot, his head thudding into something hard. Another shout from El Osito. A definite command.

  Boxer rolled, launched himself forward and came out of the apartment barely off the ground. He scrambled across the floor, hands trailing and flailing for purchase. He bounced off the lift doors. The bat shot past him at knee height and clattered against the far wall. He fell through the stairwell door and down the first flight, grabbing at the handrail. He righted himself, thumped against the wall on the first landing, took the next flight in two leaps. He careered down the six flights of stairs and crashed out into the foyer, ricocheted through the metal-framed door, which was stuck ajar, and out into the cold night. He sprinted diagonally to his left, past the entrance to the Bar Roma, ducked down between parked cars, crossed the avenida and let the darkness of the park engulf him, suck him away from the garish street lighting.

  He ran without looking back. He ran until his lungs burned and his legs screamed. He ran in a swerving arc as he saw the green light of a taxi flashing between the trees on the wide Avenida de los Poblados. He came out into the ghastly glow of the street lights arm raised. The taxi screeched to a halt and he threw himself across the back seat, told the driver to take him to Puerta del Sol. He lay in the back, staring at the roof pulsing in his vision, heart thumping in his throat, blood crashing between his ears, trying to calculate, with no access to numbers large enough, the extent of the trouble he was now in.

  Mercy was outside Irina Demidova’s house in Ryecroft Street having briefed the homicide squad on Jeremy Spencer’s death. She’d rung the doorbell six times and there’d been no answer. On the seventh ring the neighbour’s door opened and a furious guy in his fifties, bald, grey and red-faced, came out.

  ‘Look, she’s not there, for Christ’s sake,’ he said. ‘How many times are you going to ring the bell before you believe it?’

  ‘I was thinking of taking it to the full rounded ten,’ said Mercy, showing him her warrant card. ‘DI Mercy Danquah.’

  ‘I’m sorry, officer. I’m trying t
o work. I’ve got a book to write and I could do without the bell,’ he said. ‘The pressure’s enough without the bloody bell.’

  ‘Do you know your neighbour?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say I know her exactly. I know her name’s Irina. I say hello to her and her son, Valery. She’s asked me to take deliveries for her once or twice. That’s about it.’

  ‘When did you last speak to her?’

  ‘Yesterday evening she came round and I gave her a box that had been delivered in the morning.’

  ‘Who delivered it?’

  ‘Some guy in a Mercedes.’

  ‘What colour was the car?’

  ‘Black.’

  Mercy tapped away at her phone and brought up a Mercedes CLS.

  ‘Was this the model?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Registration number?’

  ‘Give me a break.’

  ‘I had to ask,’ said Mercy. ‘What sort of books do you write?’

  ‘Crime novels.’

  ‘Would I know you?’

  ‘I doubt it. Nobody else seems to.’

  ‘Maybe you should brush up on your observation skills,’ said Mercy.

  ‘Thanks for the tip.’

  ‘Glad to be of service. Tell me about the box that was delivered.’

  ‘It was the size of two reams of A4 and about as heavy.’

  ‘You’re improving already,’ said Mercy. ‘And you haven’t seenher or her son since?’

  ‘Not strictly true. Yesterday was the last time I spoke to her. The last time I saw her was a bit later. She came out of the house with her son and got into a minicab. I didn’t get the registration number of that one either.’

  ‘Time?’

  ‘Seven thirty-ish.’

  ‘Luggage?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Did she come back?’

  ‘Could have done. I’m in bed by ten.’

  ‘Did you see her leave for work this morning?’