Behind Closed Doors (22 page)

‘You keep clean,’ he said to her, by way of a translation.

Scarlett nodded.

As they walked back through the waiting room, Scarlett saw the next woman waiting for attention with her minder. She was a girl, young, with bruises colouring her left eye and nose. She was visibly shaking, and Scarlett wondered what was wrong with her. She raised her head and Scarlett met her eyes. There was a brief connection between them. Nothing was said. Scarlett smiled at her, trying to give her some encouragement.

It will be okay. This isn’t the worst thing you’re going to have to face. It will get better.
 

Two lies, sandwiching a truth.

Lewis McDonnell’s business premises were on the ground floor of a former printworks in the town centre. Other offices surrounded a courtyard that doubled as a haphazard car park, full of signs promising imminent clamping and towing at vast expense to the unwary.

All the way across town, Sam had been thinking of the digging equipment in the back garden of McDonnell’s house, and what it was for. She had worked on a job once, years ago when she’d been with the Met. A piece of land behind an industrial complex was being redeveloped; the excavators had hit something metal, uncovered the doors of what looked like a whole shipping container buried at an almost vertical angle. The doors, at ground level, were covered over with rubble, rubbish and overgrown with brambles. The construction workers had managed to force open the door and then had shut it again quickly and called the police. Sam had been right there when they’d opened it all up again. Three bodies at the bottom of the container, badly decomposed. When the pathologist had finally worked through the remains she had reported that the three individuals – two adult men, and a young woman – had been left in there at separate times, probably years apart. The woman had been the last. It was impossible to tell if any of them had been alive when they’d gone in, but marks on the steep inside slope of the container suggested that at least one of them had made several attempts to climb their way out.

At the point when Sam had moved to Eden the case had remained unsolved, the bodies unidentified.

McDonnell himself welcomed them in, offering them a seat and a coffee to go with it. He was shorter than Sam and stocky, with gelled, silver hair cut short on a square head, intelligent blue eyes, and a smile which showed his teeth.

‘Kim told me you might stop by,’ he called from the small kitchen. The sound of a kettle could be heard, rumbling to a boil. ‘You were lucky to catch me.’

‘Do you usually work weekends?’ Sam asked.

‘You can’t keep regular hours when you own your own business,’ McDonnell said. ‘You know how it is.’

Aside from the kitchen, the office was open-plan – two big desks covered in piles of paper, boxes and computer equipment, and a little coffee table with three easy chairs under the window.

‘Now,’ he said, bringing through a tray with three small mugs and some sachets of sugar on it, ‘what can I do for you?’

‘Sorry to hear about Carl McVey,’ Sam said. ‘Friend of yours, wasn’t he?’

McDonnell looked uncomfortable for a second, ran his thumb over his eyebrow. ‘Well, not a friend exactly. But yeah, bad news. You lot found who killed him?’

‘We’re working on a number of leads,’ Sam said. ‘Is there anything you can tell us that might help?’

‘I heard it was a robbery? Could’ve been anyone.’

‘That’s one possible motive. Do you know of anyone who might have argued with him recently?’

He barked a laugh. ‘Come on, officer. I don’t do gossip. Now, is that it? You just came to offer your condolences because someone I met a few times got himself killed?’

‘Carisbrooke Court,’ Caro said, leaning forward. ‘You own some flats there. It’s number four we’re interested in, on the ground floor.’

Legs casually crossed at the knee, one canvas deck shoe shaking out a rhythm, Lewis McDonnell looked upwards as if searching for the memory. ‘Can’t say I know off the top of my head. The company has lots of properties, as I’m sure you’re aware.’

‘This might help: four Carisbrooke Court was being used as a brothel until last week. Nobody in it right now. So it’ll be the one without any tenants – ringing bells?’

The blue gaze became sharper. ‘Can’t say for sure it’s one of ours. You’ll have to talk to Rich or Dan; they do the day-to-day management for me.’

‘You’d think they would have told you, wouldn’t you?’ Sam said.

‘I’ve been busy. But you know I trust them to get on with things. I’m sure they’ve got it all in hand.’

‘When we executed the warrant at the address, Gavin Petrie was outside watching what was going on. Another of your associates, I believe?’

‘I know him. And?’

‘Didn’t he let you know about your property being searched? I’d have thought he would have had the courtesy to tell you.’

McDonnell shrugged. ‘Haven’t seen him in months.’

Caro looked at the desk, the computers. ‘I’m sure you have all the information we need, Mr McDonnell. Can you tell us who the tenants were at that property?’

He maintained eye contact for a long moment, a muscle working in his jaw. Then abruptly he stood up, hands on his knees, and went to one of the desks. Hammering on the keyboard of the computer with both of his thick index fingers. ‘Carisbrooke Court?’

‘That’s right. Number four.’

More hammering. One finger at a time.

‘Here we go. It’s not showing an income. Yeah, right, I remember now. Katie Smith.’

‘Katie Smith is the tenant?’ Sam asked. She had read the intelligence reports relating to the Op Pentameter raid – Katie Smith, alias Scarlett Rainsford.

McDonnell got up from the desk and came back to where they were sitting, drank from his mug of coffee before sitting down again. ‘Not a tenant exactly. More of a squatter.’

Sam said, ‘I can’t imagine your company having a problem with squatters, Mr McDonnell. Don’t you have a system for organising evictions when you need them?’

He laughed out loud. ‘You must be mistaking me for some kind of thug. I’m far from it, I can assure you. In fact, I have more of a generous nature than anyone gives me credit for. Poor girl had fallen on hard times, so I was letting her live there rent-free. Been there a while, mind you, probably should have asked her to move on by now, but there you go. And she was on the game? Goes to show, don’t it? I had no idea.’

Caro raised an eyebrow slightly. Even her sunny nature was finding it hard to believe that McDonnell was that altruistic. ‘So what can you tell us about Katie Smith?’

Once again, McDonnell paused and considered, as if racking his brains for the memory. ‘She was introduced to me by a friend of a friend. Said she’d been having some trouble and needed somewhere to stay for a bit. That flat had just come available, and I was waiting for my renovations guys to finish a big project over in Charlmere, so I couldn’t let it. I said she could stay until she found her feet.’

‘That’s very generous of you,’ Sam said. ‘When was this?’

‘God, a while ago. Months.’

‘What sort of trouble was she in?’

‘I didn’t ask. Look, she reminded me of my daughter, all right? Felt sorry for the poor cow.’

‘I didn’t know you had a daughter,’ Caro said brightly.

‘Yeah, don’t see her much. Lives in Spain. Her mother’s a bitch.’

Sam cleared her throat. She’d drunk most of the coffee, which was quite good.

‘It’s a three-bedroomed flat,’ Caro said. ‘Big old place, to let a youngster live in all on her own. You didn’t have anyone else living there?’

‘Look,’ McDonnell said, ‘far as the books are concerned, the place is empty still. We didn’t put her on a tenancy agreement or any of that shit. It was only supposed to be a couple of weeks until I could get the place decorated and re-let.’

‘And this person who introduced you. Friend of a friend, you said. Who’s that?’

McDonnell stared. ‘Can’t remember.’

‘Really?’

He looked at his watch. ‘Is there anything else I can help you with, officers? Only I’ve got things to do.’

Sam and Caro got to their feet. McDonnell showed them out, following them down the narrow corridor. Sam felt him close behind her. He wasn’t someone she was comfortable turning her back on. He had to squeeze past both women to open the door, which was deadlocked. The thought of having been locked in with him all this time was alarming.

He held the door open and watched them as Caro unlocked the car door. ‘One other thing,’ he said.

‘What’s that?’ Caro said.

‘You can tell your boys I’m teeing off at twelve. You know, just in case they can’t find me again. Tell your Mr Waterhouse they’re a bunch of idiots, need better training.’

They let her have the rest of the night off.

The next morning, whether the antibiotics were kicking in or a good night’s sleep had helped, Scarlett was feeling better. She was feeling focused. Good things had happened, which she was taking as a sign. Firstly, they hadn’t found that extra money that the vampire had given her. It was still in her shoe. When they had asked her how she got the wound on her shoulder, she’d told them it was a customer, and they hadn’t pressed it further than that. The vampire – Nosferatu or whatever the bastard’s name was – might have given her an infection, but if he came back again Scarlett had already decided to let him do it again. This time she would clean the wound herself afterwards, keep swabbing it until it healed. It had only been a small cut, less than a half-inch long, but it was deep and the strap of her bra kept opening it up again. She would tell him exactly where to cut, too.

If she was going to get away, ever, she would need money. Maybe then she could find someone to bribe, someone she could trust just enough to help her get away. And once she’d done that she’d need money to get a cab to a safe place. Enough for a room for a few nights, enough to travel far away from this shithole. She hadn’t decided where the safe place was, nor how she was ever going to escape since surely she could never trust anyone to help her – they were all bastards, and watching her all the time – but one thing was certain: if she didn’t do something soon, she would die here.

The room was cold when she got into it, so for a while she could see her own breath in the window as she watched the shoppers and the tourists – the few that there were – passing by. Four Japanese men stopped by her window and stood staring for a while, talking and laughing among themselves. She smiled at them and beckoned them with her finger, sat astride her chair and tried to look appealing. Then one of them made the mistake of trying to take her picture with the camera around her neck. She turned her face away in time, but in any case a few seconds later one of her minders had come across to have a word with the offending photographer. ‘Having a word’ meant removing the memory card and stamping on it. There was a brief argument – the guy was a foot taller and twice as wide – but really the tourist didn’t have any grounds for complaint. Everyone should know that taking pictures wasn’t allowed. It was in all the guide books – in every language.

The man watching out for her didn’t so much as glance in Scarlett’s direction as the tourists walked off, arguing among themselves and gesticulating. Such a commotion wasn’t a good thing. Scarlett rubbed the chill out of her upper arms and, because no one was looking, blew into her cupped hands.

The smashed pieces of the little memory card lay on the cobbles in front of the window. All those pictures, hundreds no doubt, of the glorious sights of the city that Scarlett had lived in all this time and scarcely knew – holiday snaps destroyed in a moment. The tourist would have to get copies from his friends. Scarlett thought about the picture the man had taken of her, framed by her window – a girl in nylon underwear, turning her face away. No matter. No one would ever see that picture now.

So much for a day off. So much for spending the day with the man of your dreams. Lou got dressed and went into work.

Sam Hollands was the only one in the office, and she was on the phone. When Lou walked in, Sam looked up at her questioningly. Lou mouthed the word, ‘Coffee?’ by way of a reply, and when Sam nodded Lou postponed the inevitable questions by going on ahead to the canteen with her purse. The servery was closed at weekends, but the vending machines still permitted refreshments of a sort, and it was mercifully quiet.

Sam joined her within moments and found them a table. ‘So, you were supposed to be having today off,’ she said before Lou had even sat down.

‘Yeah, I know, I know.’

‘And?’

Oh, Sam
, Lou thought. She just had a knack of spotting trouble. ‘Got bored.’

Lou had bought a bag of crisps, a KitKat and a Snickers from the vending machine. All of a sudden she was ravenously hungry. That always happened when she was miserable. Never mind: if she didn’t get too distracted she would stop by at the gym on the way home – for the first time in about four months. She always carried her gym kit in the back of the car just in case the urge took her. It didn’t very often. She kept thinking it would be a good idea to cancel her membership, it was such a massive waste of money, but somehow merely having gym membership made her feel that she wasn’t a complete lard-arse.

There was nothing like a dose of sugar and carbs at a time of crisis, Lou thought, feeling much better already.

‘What have I missed?’ she said, between mouthfuls.

‘Ian is still no change,’ Sam said. ‘I went with Ali to the hospital first thing. His mum has barely left his side. I really feel for her, you know. Whatever happens to him, his life has pretty much gone forever. Even if he regains consciousness, which seems pretty unlikely, he’ll end up needing round-the-clock care.’