Dark Mirror (21 page)

‘I think you do.’ He grinned.

They talked some more about his job with a big international firm of engineers, based near the BT tower. He also began to open up about himself, his family in Esher, mentioning a three-year relationship that had recently ended.

‘How about you?’

Kathy hesitated. ‘It tends to be difficult, with the job. The last two men in my life’—no
three
, she thought,
God
—‘were police officers, and that made it easier in a way . . .’

‘But also like living over the shop?’ he offered. ‘Yeah, I had a girlfriend in the office once and it was a bit claustrophobic. Bloody difficult actually, when things went pear-shaped.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed, remembering.

‘Maybe you need to branch out a bit. Sample some other profession.’

He was right, she thought. Time for a change. The others hadn’t done her much good.

After midnight she began to stifle yawns, and he drove her home. ‘Listen,’ he said as they got out of the car and walked to the glass door, ‘I could show you some of the software we use for creating networks. We could download it onto your laptop and you could work out your own pattern, like Marion’s. If you’re
busy I could just drop a disk into your letterbox . . .’ He stopped and stared at the bank of letterboxes that was built in next to the door. She followed his gaze and saw what looked like a cat’s tail protruding from one of the slots.

‘That’s my box,’ she said.

‘It looks . . .’ They went closer. ‘Isn’t that your manager’s cat? How did she manage to get in there?’ There was no way the cat could have squeezed through the opening.

‘It’s a joke,’ Kathy said. ‘Jock’s always fooling around.’

But she felt uneasy as she opened the door and they went into the hallway, from which the residents had access to the backs of their boxes. She pulled her keys from her bag, but already she’d seen the trickle of dark liquid oozing from the lip of hers. She slipped the key in the lock, swung the small door open, and then jumped back as a cascade of bloody offal spilled out onto the floor.

‘Aww!’ Guy gagged at her side as the sickly smell hit them. ‘What the?’

The bloody mess was all over the floor and the back of the other boxes—and her shoes, Kathy noticed.

‘Is it Halloween or something?’ Guy said. ‘Is it kids? Tell me that’s not the cat.’

As if in answer, something slowly slid forward out of the box and tumbled to the floor. It was the rear end of a cat, its hips and two legs, dragging behind it the ginger tail.

They stared at it in horrified silence for a moment, then Kathy pulled out her phone and rang a number. ‘Jock? It’s Kathy Kolla from 1203. I’m in the front lobby. I think you should come.’

It took several minutes for Jock, muttering and swaying, to appear from his small flat at the back of the block. He swore when he saw the mess, then turned pale as he made out the tail. ‘Is it Trudy?’ he wailed. ‘Is it my baby?’

They worked together to gather up the remains and mop away the blood. Jock went off to call the police, muttering that it would do no good.

‘Oh, Guy, your jacket.’ Kathy looked at the stain on his sleeve. ‘We should sponge it off. You’d better come up to the flat.’

‘Well,’ he said, as the lift rose to the twelfth floor, ‘that was nasty.’ His face clouded. ‘It couldn’t have been meant specifically for you, could it, Kathy? I mean, one of your old customers, or something? Someone who knows where you live?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘No chance of that.’ But Kathy was mentally checking through the people she might have annoyed enough recently to do something like this—the Roach clan, the Fab Five . . .

While she sponged his jacket he roamed around the room, becoming interested in the pictures on the wall. ‘I see what you mean,’ he said. ‘Yes, I’m sure I could find something to help you with this.’

She tried to sound interested, but she couldn’t get the business downstairs out of her head. It was Keith Rafferty’s style, she decided, picturing the ugly leer on his face. Did he try something like this on Marion? After a while she sensed that Guy wanted to stay, but she wasn’t ready for that. Eventually he thanked her and shrugged on his jacket, and she showed him out to the lift. They kissed goodbye, promising to meet again when he came back from his assignment, and she returned to her flat, feeling exhausted. She opened the door to her small bedroom and switched on the light, and saw Trudy’s little head staring up at her from her pillow.

B
rock stood at the window on the sixth floor of the headquarters building and stared impatiently out across the roofs to his own office, two hundred yards away. The door opened behind him and his boss, Commander Sharpe, strode in.

‘Sorry to keep you, Brock. Lot to catch up on. So where were we?’

‘Personnel.’ Brock resumed his seat. ‘I think we’ve just about finished.’

‘One other matter.’ Sharpe drew a document from his file and handed it over. The letterhead was
Metropolitan Police Service: Directorate of Professional Standards
, and the subject title, ‘Complaint against Detective Inspector Katherine Kolla, Homicide and Serious Crime Command’. The complainant was Keith Rafferty, represented by Julian Fenwick.

Brock skimmed the document, then handed it back.

‘That’s your copy, Brock. You’re familiar with the circumstances?’

‘Oh yes. The man’s a thug, both him and his friend Crouch. They were in the army together. Apart from the matters on his police record, it’s highly likely that they raped a woman in Belfast. DI Kolla had grounds for suspecting Rafferty’s involvement in the death of his stepdaughter, Marion Summers.’

‘Yes, but Fenwick makes a strong case that she mishandled the investigation. You see there, where he charges her with provocation, intimidation, entrapment and fabricating evidence.’

Brock was tired of this. He’d spent the past three weeks covering Sharpe’s back. ‘Look, Dominic’—Sharpe looked startled, as if unaware that Brock even knew his first name—‘Kolla is a first-rate officer and we’ve been working under extremely difficult circumstances while you were away, with an acute shortage of manpower. She used her initiative under intense pressure. This . . .’ he waved the document, ‘is crap.’

‘Nevertheless,
David
. . .’ Sharpe gritted his teeth, ‘Fenwick has a habit of making such cases stick, as we know to our cost. He says he will seek an injunction if we don’t immediately prevent Kolla from making further contact with Rafferty or Crouch, pending a full investigation of their complaint. I believe we should comply.’

‘That would be tantamount to an admission of fault.’

‘I don’t agree. I think it would be a prudent precaution, and I want you to see to it.’

Brock sighed. ‘Very well.’

‘There’s no question of her being suspended from duty at this stage,’ Sharpe went on. ‘Just a transfer to other inquiries.’

•

‘A cat’s head in your bed?’ Bren raised his eyebrows. ‘Who’s this, the kitty Godfather?’

‘It’s Keith Rafferty, that’s who it is.’ Kathy glanced at Pip, who was listening with a look of disgust on her face. ‘His style, wouldn’t you say, Pip?’

‘Yeah, absolutely. What a creep. But how did he get into your flat?’

‘Yes, how did he manage that?’ Bren looked concerned.

‘That’s what I’d like to know. I’ve changed all the locks, and tried again to get our manager to install CCTV, but he says he’s too heartbroken to deal with things like that at the moment. You should be careful, Pip. He might have a go at you too.’

‘Are you sure it’s Rafferty?’ Bren said.

Kathy shrugged. ‘Maybe it was just the tooth fairy having a bad day.’ She sighed and ran a hand over her face. ‘Look, I’ve been through it in my mind and I just don’t see who else would want to have a shot at me like this.’

‘Maybe I should pay him a visit,’ Bren offered.

‘No thanks, Bren,’ Kathy said. ‘That’s probably exactly what he wants. Anyway, I’d better go. I’ve got a university laboratory to audit.’

All the same, as she walked away the image of the tiny bloody head on her pillow came back to her, and she suppressed a shudder.

•

The laboratory staff were gathered in the front lobby of the building, whispering together in small clusters, watching the officers in protective clothing going in. Through the glass panels of the doors Kathy caught a glimpse of Sundeep Mehta with a clipboard, issuing instructions.

‘So just how long is this going to take?’ Colin Ringland’s voice had become indignant. ‘It’s extremely disruptive, and
potentially dangerous and costly. We have experiments set up, work in progress.’

‘Have you spoken to Dr Mehta, Dr Ringland?’

‘The Indian chap? He just breezed in and kicked everybody out. I tried to explain that we’d already sealed off the critical area, but he wouldn’t listen.’

Kathy got out her phone and rang Sundeep. Through the glass she saw him reach into his pocket. ‘Sundeep, it’s Kathy. I’m outside with Dr Ringland, the lab director. Can you spare a moment for a quick word?’

‘Very well, Kathy. Give me a minute.’

When Sundeep came out they went together to a small meeting room where Kathy recorded Ringland’s litany of concerns and complaints, coaxing Sundeep to respond patiently. When they were finished, she remained with Ringland.

‘Thanks,’ he said, mollified. ‘I suppose you’ve got a job to do. But I can’t imagine how the Summers woman could have got her hands on any arsenic from our lab, I really can’t.’

Funny thing about language, Kathy thought, how it gives people away—
the Summers woman
. You’d never say,
the Ringland man
.

‘I asked you before if someone else could have got it for her.’

‘Tony da Silva, that’s what you mean, isn’t it? Have you thought that she might have wanted you to think that?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Tony told me that you were thinking she took the stuff deliberately. Maybe she wanted to implicate Tony while she was at it.’

‘Why would she want to do that?’

‘Hah!’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘Because she was a manipulative bitch who was prepared to do anything to get her own way.’

‘Even kill herself?’

‘Maybe she got the dose wrong. I told you before that she wasn’t very good with figures.’

‘Yes you did, didn’t you? But why implicate her supervisor?’

Ringland shrugged—rather evasively, Kathy thought. ‘I don’t know. Out of spite, I suppose. They didn’t always see eye to eye.’

‘I don’t always see eye to eye with my boss, but I don’t try to implicate him in my suicide.’

‘That’s what I mean—she was unstable.’

‘You said manipulative, wanting to get her own way. So how was Dr da Silva stopping her?’

He shook his head dismissively. ‘I’m just saying she gave him a lot of grief. She was a difficult student, okay? She demanded a lot of attention. We all get them from time to time. She was a particularly bad case.’

‘Did he sleep with her, Colin?’

‘Christ!’ Ringland rocked back in his seat. ‘Who told you that?’

Kathy smiled. ‘That’s not really an answer, is it?’

‘Look . . .’ He was flustered now. ‘You’d have to ask Tony. I certainly don’t believe so, and you’d be advised to take student gossip with a grain of salt.’

‘Or a grain of arsenic.’ Kathy got to her feet. ‘Thanks for your help, and for your patience with our audit. We’ll get out of your hair as soon as we can.’

She was stepping out the front door when her phone rang, and once again she heard the excited, slightly breathless voice of the librarian, Gael Rayner.

‘Kathy! Sorry, but we’ve had another incident.’

‘Another one?’

‘Yes, an assault, right here in the library stacks.’

‘What kind of assault? Not another poisoning?’

‘No, much more physical. Someone just attacked Nigel Ogilvie. One of the other readers heard the commotion and found him, unconscious. I rang triple nine for an ambulance, and now you. I thought you’d want to know.’

‘Yes, of course. I’m on my way.’

The ambulance was parked outside the library’s front door on St James’s Square when Kathy arrived, the stretcher being loaded into the back.

She showed her ID. ‘How is he?’

‘Heavy bruising, cuts, probable concussion and fractured ribs and radius. He was conscious when we arrived, said he’d fallen down the stairs, but that’s not how it looks.’

‘Okay.’ Kathy checked the motionless figure in the neck brace, eyes closed. ‘Where are you taking him?’

‘UCH.’

Gael Rayner opened the front door of the library and waved Kathy in. ‘We locked all the doors after I phoned you, just in case the assailant was still here. I wasn’t sure if that was the right thing to do.’ Her eyes were bright with excitement.

‘That’s fine. Tell me what happened.’

Gael led her in through a crowd of chattering readers in the entrance hall. ‘One of our members, Mr Vujkovic, was in the stacks and heard an argument on the floor below. Then there was a cry and a crash. He went down to investigate, although he’s not a very agile man, so it took him a little time. He found Nigel lying among a pile of books that had fallen out of the shelves.’

They hurried back through the library to the book stacks, to where several elderly men were standing in a cluster at the foot of a flight of stairs, beside a tumbled heap of books scattered across the floor. Kathy recognised Mr Vujkovic, and he shuffled forward and repeated the story in broken English.

‘The ambulance officer told me that Nigel said he’d fallen down the stairs,’ Kathy said.

‘No, no,’ Mr Vujkovic said. ‘There was much struggle, much argument. Maybe push down stair, yes, okay, but not fall.’

‘Was he arguing with a man, or a woman?’

‘I think man. I couldn’t see. Nigel scream like pig in slaughterhouse.’

Two uniformed officers had arrived, and Kathy sent them off to search the building, guided by one of the librarians. She looked around at the scene. There was blood on the steel grille floor, and also traces of sand on the bottom step of the staircase.

‘Do the builders come up here, Gael?’

‘No, they shouldn’t.’

‘But if we go down a level we’d come to the door out to the area where they’re working, is that right? Show me.’