Ash & Bone (36 page)

Reaching for the handle and not finding it, he wondered for the umpteenth time why, when the place had had a new front door fitted a year or so back, they'd hung it the wrong way round, the handle on the wrong fucking side.

Fuck!

When finally he'd pushed it open, it sprang back too fast and he almost collided with the facing wall. Hallway the size of a kazi for fucking dwarves.

Immediately to his right, a curtain of coloured beads hung down from the ceiling almost to the floor, and he parted this with both hands and stepped into the room. Rosie, as usual, was seated at a stool behind her desk, peroxide hair black at the roots, make-up half an inch or more thick sandblasted into place. Hundred and thirty years old, God bless her, and as ugly as the day she was born. Nothing else to do, twelve hours a day, other than fill in her puzzle books, watch her pocket-sized black-and-white TV, drink cup after cup of instant coffee and smoke endless cigarettes.

'Maurice, how's tricks?'

The times he'd told the stupid cow not to use his name.

There were three girls occupying the chairs opposite the desk, two he vaguely recognised, one that was new, not one of his favourites in sight. Busy, maybe. Each of the girls in button-through white overalls and bare legs, two of them flicking lazily through magazines.
Now
or
Hello!
or some such bollocks, scarcely bothering to glance up when he came in.

The third girl, the one he didn't recognise, was leaning back, legs pulled up, bottom two buttons of her overall undone, one high-heeled shoe on the floor, the other dangling from her toes. Nails painted alternately red and blue.

'This all there is, Rosie?' His voice sounded slightly blurred to him, but who was going to give a shit? No one there.

'Veronica's upstairs.'

'That fat cow!'

'That's Edie over there. She's new.'

Edie, Repton thought, what kind of a name was that? Not that they used their real names anyway, most of them. He'd always reckoned Rosie picked them out of a hat.

'Knows what she's about, does she?'

Repton stared at the girl as he spoke and she looked back at him, holding his gaze, mouth opening in a smile. New, right enough, he thought, out to make an impression.

'Edie's from Slovenia,' Rosie said.

Heaven fucking help us, Repton thought.

He followed her up the stairs, a nice enough arse on her, the last door along the corridor standing ajar and in they went.

Repton removed his jacket as Edie closed the door behind them, reaching out to take it from him and laying it folded across the foot of the bed. Repton waving his hands and saying, 'Not like that. Not like that. Put it on a fucking hanger, for fuck's sake, you soft Slovenian cow. No offence.'

The girl taking a thin metal hanger from inside the rickety MDF wardrobe and fitting Repton's suit jacket on it, even smoothing down the shoulders — he liked to see that — before hanging it from the double hook behind the door.

It was going to be okay, Repton thought, as he took a handkerchief from his pocket and spread it over the pillow — well, you never knew — and lay down with Edie standing alongside him and bending to unbuckle his belt, slip it through the loops, and then attend to the buttons on his fly. Buttons, that was what he'd always insisted on, none of your fucking zips. Disaster waiting to fucking happen.

He felt himself hardening and closed his eyes.

Concentrated on the slip slip slap of massage oil on Edie's hands.

First time he'd done this, he remembered, had this done, he'd been a young DC, green round the gills, the other lads putting him up to it, pulling a freebie on his behalf, some scrubber from Swansea with more than a touch of the tarbrush about her and dirt under her fingernails. The minute she'd touched him, he'd shot his load. Caught himself in the fucking eye.

Laughing at the memory, he glanced at Edie, solemn-faced, concentrating, he thought, chuckling, at the job in hand.

'Come here,' he said. 'Here, closer, here.'

Reaching up, propping himself on one elbow, he unfastened the remaining buttons of her overall. Bit of lace round the top of the bra, nipples standing firm. White knickers not much larger than your average postage stamp. No pierced navel for a change. Well, thank God for that.

Feeling himself close, he lay back and closed his eyes once more.

First thing tomorrow he'd find Framlingham and tell him to go fuck himself up the arse.

Breath accelerating, he arched his back as the girl's hand moved faster. Firmer. Faster.

He failed to hear the door open, then close.

'Maurice.' The voice was soft, almost a caress.

Repton's eyes opened in time to see Mallory's face; the ugly bulge of the silencer at the end of the gun.

'Come again, Maurice,' Mallory said and fired.

The girl screamed and, without moving his feet, Mallory slapped her with his free hand, slamming her, mouth bleeding, heavily against the wall.

Raising the gun, Mallory fired again.

Bone and tissue littered Maurice Repton's Irish linen handkerchief and the cheap pink polyester pillowcase beneath it, stained unremovably by a hundred heads and now darkening pink to red.

Elder was talking to Karen Shields, still a few minutes short of eight o'clock, the day not really under way, when Framlingham phoned, more of an urgency in his voice than Elder was used to.

'It's Repton. He's been shot.'

'How bad?'

'Bad as it gets.'

Karen read the concern on his face.

'How did it happen?' Elder asked. 'Where?'

'Green Lanes. Early hours of the morning. Someone walked into a massage parlour and shot him twice. Why don't you get yourself down here now? Midway between Manor House and Turnpike Lane.'

'Okay, I'll be there.'

'Serious?' Karen said.

Elder nodded. 'Good luck with Kennet. I'll phone in when I can.'

The traffic was the usual a.m. nightmare, especially after he'd taken what looked, on paper, to be the most direct route, through the middle of Wood Green. He promised himself, once this was over, never to curse the ten-minute wait to get down into the centre of Truro on Saturdays again.

Police vehicles were parked near the scene, half on the road, half off, loops of tape keeping the pavement closed for forty metres on either side of the building where the incident had occurred.

Elder left his car illegally parked on a double yellow line, a hastily scribbled note under the windscreen. Framlingham was inside talking to a DCI from Homicide and the DI from the local Wood Green nick. He continued his conversation for several moments more, introduced Elder and then drew him off to one side.

'Worst nightmare, Frank.'

'What do we know?'

Framlingham steered him outside. There were knots of people staring from the far side of the street, men in bright African-style robes or with their hair cut according to the Hasidic style; women encased almost entirely, head to toe, in black. Produce outside the various Greek and Turkish shops shone purple, red and green in the winter sun.

Framlingham lit a cigarette. 'We know Repton was shot twice, once in the head, once in the chest. Nine-millimetre rounds.' He breathed smoke out on to the air. 'Trousers round his ankles, poor bastard. What an inglorious bloody way to go.'

'Anything on the shooter?'

Framlingham nodded. 'Made no attempt to disguise himself. The woman running the place gave us a pretty good description.'

Elder read the look on Framlingham's face.

'Mallory,' he said.

'Yes.'

'No room for doubt?'

Framlingham shook his head. 'The girl who was with Repton when he bought it — here illegally, terrified out of her life she's going to be sent back to whatever Godforsaken place she comes from — she swears he called him Maurice. Before he shot him. Maurice.'

'You've got a call out for him? Mallory?'

'Oh, yes.'

'Any sign?'

'Not as yet. Not a trace. This aside, no one seems to have seen him since around nine last night. Making his travel arrangements, I shouldn't wonder. Passport's missing. Description's gone out to all the airports, ferries, Eurostar terminal, but I'm not holding my breath. He had a good two hours clear, maybe more. By this time he's probably checking into his hotel on the Costa del Sol, looking forward to his first tapas of the day.'

Or Cyprus, Elder thought. Or Cyprus.

* * *

In the interview room, Kennet looked even more tired, anxiety evident in his eyes and the way his hands were rarely still.

'This knife,' Karen said, holding up the evidence bag, 'it was found in the roof space of the house in Dartmouth Park Road where you were working.'

Kennet looked back at her and said nothing.

'You were working in that building?'

'You know I was.'

'At the time of Maddy Birch's murder.'

'No.'

'Think again.'

'No, I told you. I was on holiday.'

'You came home early. We've already established that.'

'That doesn't mean I went back to work. I was still on holiday.'

'But you did go back, didn't you? On the Thursday morning. The morning after Maddy was killed.'

'Did I? Who says I did?'

'The man you work with.'

'He could be mistaken.'

'I think not. I think you went to work that morning at eight o'clock sharp. Scarcely gave anyone the time of day. Straight up the scaffolding and into the roof, taking your tool bag with you.'

'I'd hardly leave it behind.'

'Then you were there?'

'Sometime, yes. If you say so, yes.'

'Thursday, twenty-seventh of November.'

'I don't know.'

Karen leaned closer. She could smell the sweat seeping through his pores. 'Come on, Steve, you've had a bust-up with your girlfriend, you're back early from Spain, no need to go into work, you could sit at home with your feet up, watch TV, wander down the bookies, out a few quid on the three-thirty, but instead there you go, first chance you get.'

'There was a job wanting finishing, we were way behind. It's called having a sense of responsibility, maybe you've heard of it?'

'Big on responsibility, are you?'

'I like to think so, yes.'

'Taking responsibility.'

'Yes.'

'Then why don't you take responsibility for this?' Karen had picked up the knife again and was holding it in front of Kennet's face.

'I tell you what,' Kennet said. 'You show me some proof that says conclusively that knife is mine, I'll take responsibility for it? Fair enough?'

Without taking her eyes from him, Karen leaned back against her chair.

* * *

Nearing four in the afternoon, not so far off dark, Elder had two brief telephone conversations with Katherine, both interrupted, neither satisfactory. Except that she was okay. Rob Summers was okay. He was still with the police, talking, sorting things out. She didn't know what was happening to Bland and his mate, except that she hoped they'd be put away for a very long time.

'I'll come up and see you,' Elder said at the end of the second call.

'When?'

'I don't know. As soon as I can.'

How many times had he said that when she was growing up? Not now, Katherine. Not now, okay. But soon.

Framlingham had been in and out of a string of meetings, in some of which Elder had also been involved, while during others he had been left to kick his heels. There had been sightings of Mallory, unconfirmed, on the ferry from Folkestone to Calais, boarding a flight at Heathrow bound for Miami, buying a Frappuccino in Starbucks on the Avenue de l'Opera in Paris.

'Go home, Frank,' Framlingham said eventually. 'Go home and get some rest. We've done all we can for today.'

It was a grey end-of-January day: one of those days that promises nothing save that, sooner or later, it will be over. Elder had lain awake since five, thinking, trying not to think. By six-thirty he was showered, dressed, had drunk orange juice and two cups of coffee, walked down the street to buy a paper and bought three; he read slightly differing versions of Repton's murder, more wishful thinking than factual statement, the few known certainties spun together with fantasies involving gangland executions and Turkish drug barons exacting revenge. Only one report, as an aside, mentioned that Repton had been one of the officers involved in the police operation, three months before, in which a high-profile criminal, James William Grant, had been shot and killed. Enough to leave a taint of retribution hanging in the breeze.

Head and heart, Elder thought, as he shrugged on his coat.

Head and heart.

He was at Framlingham's office well before eight and Framlingham was there before him, silver thermos on his desk. Elder suspected he had been there all night.

'Take a look at this, Frank,' he said, handing Elder a fax.

The blurred image of two girls stared back up at him: school uniform, white blouses, striped ties not quite tight to the neck, faked smiles.

'Jill and Judy Tremlett. Disappeared from home, May seventeenth, '96. Last seen at a nightclub in Colchester, friend's eighteenth birthday. Some reports have them leaving with an older woman, never been identified. According to others, one of the girls, Judy, complained of feeling sick and went outside for some fresh air. Jill went after her. When their father arrived to pick them up, just before midnight as arranged, they were nowhere to be seen.

'Usual procedure followed. Everyone at the club was questioned, the route home searched in case they'd started walking, thumbing a lift; drivers checked. It seems as if for a time the father was in the frame, but it came to nothing. No personal belongings were ever found, no shoes, no clothing, nothing. No sight or sign. They were seventeen.'

Elder was seeing again the grainy video images, remembering Lynette Drury's words.
Boys and girls, all hand-picked, paid for. And George, he was in the thick of it, wasn't he? Lapping it up. Girls, especially; he liked girls, did George. Two or three at a time. Young girls.
An older woman, Framlingham had said, never been identified.