The Cutting Crew (15 page)

'They'd cooperate with us,' he said, but I was hardly listening.

Harris.

I repeated the name in my head and made it sound hard and angry and full of hate, so that my memory of Sean's murder could finally have a soundtrack. From the email message, it looked as though Harris had been blackmailed and forced to lure Sean into some kind of trap; and we were about to find out what these bastards had on him.

Harris.

For a few seconds the computer had been carefully circling the attachment. Now, a video package opened up, filling the screen, and a grainy movie clip started playing. Like the film of Sean, it was amateur in quality - dark, probably filmed on a hidden camera- but good enough to make out what was happening. It was a stationary shot of a bedroom, with the camera elevated and placed far enough away to fit the whole bed into the shot. Harris was on it, naked, moving on top of a very young boy. You could tell it was Harris because he was looking into the camera; the boy could have been anyone. The clip lasted maybe twenty seconds. Rosh and I watched it without talking. When it had finished, he said: 'We need to find the girl they're talking about in the message.

Before Harris does.'

I agreed completely. 'Let's take the hard drive and get out of here.'

As I started to turn things off and remove wires, Rosh prompted: 'With one problem being that we don't know who the girl is?'

'Not for sure, no,' I said, unclipping the screwdriver on my penknife. 'But I have an idea where we can start.'

Chapter
Ten

Remember I told you that Rabbit was a nice district? Well, that's not strictly true; it's more of a handy generalisation. The districts in our city are a lot like the people that live in them: parts of them are good and parts of them are bad. Rabbit is just rich, and that's not the same thing as nice.

Properties in the areas in west Rabbit are expensive and sought after. That's because Rabbit sits directly north of Elephant, which is the district of commerce. If you walk around the west of Elephant without a suit on then you feel seriously under-dressed.

It's where you find the big businesses. The buildings are all sleek steel and shining windows, and they house insurance companies, brokers, traders, wheelers and fucking dealers. The geographical divides between districts are rigid - set to the street - but socially it's a different story. So, in the west of Rabbit, the big-business side of Elephant gives way to yuppie condos, spreading away north, shrinking a little in height and melting into the plushest suburbs the city has to offer: fine houses, occasional gated communities, the sound of water sprinklers in well-tended gardens.

But as you move east through Elephant, you find yourself moving into the city's main shopping centres and the markets. And the further east you go, the closer you get to Horse, the student district.

To the north, Rabbit follows the same pattern: the further east you go, the more the accommodation goes downhill. Slightly less plush; slightly more affordable. Price-wise, the area degenerates. On the far eastern edge of Rabbit, just before it becomes Bull, it's just like anywhere else. There's a strip of estate where the houses are tightly packed: thin and tall, as though a barely comfortable number had shuffled together to let a few more in: the red-brick buildings had all sucked in their guts and then not been able to breathe out again.

There was litter in the street, gangs of kids playing football against the walls. The usual estate stuff.

Because it was reasonably cheap and relatively close to Horse, it had a large student population. The majority were third years or postgrads, and so it was quieter than Horse and there wasn't much trouble. This is where we were driving to. According to the Missing Persons Report, Alison's friend Keleigh lived here.

'What makes you sure the email was meaning her?' Rosh asked.

'I'm not sure,' I told him. 'But she was the last person we know of to see Alison alive. Maybe she knows more than she said at the time.'

As we were approaching the estate, I glanced out of the van's window. The night was properly black now. It was the kind of serious dark that really means business, coming before midnight and not really drifting away until the mist arrives at dawn.

Witching hours. The city slept through them, but always with an eye half-open. A lot of the time, you could feel the city breathing slowly: waiting for you to put a foot down wrong and irritate it too much.

Rosh took the van over a slight rise and the land dipped in front.

In the distance ahead, Bull spread away downhill. At first, it was a random mess of amber streetlights - some in clusters, some more regular - and a sprinkle of pale house windows with blue and yellow lantern lights glinting amongst them. And then, further away, it was just factories and workshops. Most of that area was in darkness until the horizon, where you could see that something was burning. We slowed a little as we neared the border.

'Here,' I said.

Rosh turned left off the main road onto a smaller street that snaked into the estate. There were speed bumps every twenty metres. The road signs - all proclaiming a slow limit - were decorated with crayon drawings by children from the local school, reprinted endlessly by a council that could afford to spend money on the little things. There were a lot of streetlights, staining the old, red brick of the buildings closer to orange, and the green and blue lanterns and banners were all pretty much intact. The general impression was of an area that didn't welcome crime, wouldn't tolerate it and held regular civic meetings to discuss what to do about it. Official statistics told a different story.

'Quiet tonight,' I said.

'Too quiet,' Rosh deadpanned.

'Don't knock it. Keleigh's street is coming up soon. It's one of these on the right.'

The back streets betrayed the area's true nature. They were tight and narrow: the kind where on maps they give up putting the names and just pencil in a few abbreviations. Autumn Lane, Autumn Street, Autumn Mount, apparently leading to Autumn Court and Autumn Corner. There were endless versions of the same street, all of them identical: houses with windows like big black eyes, security grilles and gardens filled with old appliances and bagged rubbish that had been torn open during the night by foxes and dogs. Keleigh lived at the far end, on Autumn Grove.

'Here.'

Rosh pulled up by a house with no lights on and we got out and approached the gate. It was a dead-looking building if ever I'd seen one. The outside was chipped and pitted and damp; the guttering was cracked; the pipes were flaky with rust. It was badly in need of repair and unlikely ever to receive it. Someone had made an effort with the front garden, at least. The grass was overgrown but there were a few potted plants here and there, and a series of trays that appeared to contain budding vegetables of some kind. And, at first glance, there were no rusting white-goods or scorch marks on the lawn from bonfires.

'Let's knock nicely,' I said as we walked up the path. 'You got your ID handy?'

'I certainly have.'

Rosh pulled out his wallet and I leaned on the doorbell. Like I said, there wasn't much trouble around here, but as it got late it wasn't necessarily advisable to open your door to just anyone. A quick buzz on the bell was probably easier to ignore and pretend to sleep through - especially as the likelihood was that it was just some drunk hitting on the wrong address. Like anywhere else in the world, if there's a genuine emergency that's any of your business then people tend to phone you. So, to make sure we got an answer, I left my finger on the buzzer for a while - listening to the sound vibrate loudly behind the front door - before finally letting go.

A minute later, when there had been no response of any kind, I did it again - only this time I just left it there. I'd give it a bit longer, I thought, and then Rosh could kick the door in. It would be our duty as concerned citizens.

It wasn't necessary. Thirty seconds later, I heard the telltale screech of a window being pulled open on the floor above, and we looked up to see a guy peering out at us. His hair was hanging down a good half-metre below him, and he managed to sound thoroughly pissed off when he said simply:

'What?'

'Police,' Rosh said, holding up his wallet. The guy couldn't possibly see it from that height, but it wouldn't matter. 'Open the door, please.'

'Fucking hell. Just a second.'

The head withdrew and the window closed.

'I guess I must look like a cop,' Rosh said.

'If he opens the door to us based on that display, part of me thinks we should burgle his house on principle.'

'Don't be nasty. And you're meant to say, "You are a cop." '

'Of course, you're a cop,' I said. 'You just don't look like one.'

A minute later, the door opened - but only a few centimetres. The guy had kept the chain on.

'Can I see that badge, please?' he asked.

Rosh handed his wallet through, and after a second or two the kid handed it back, undid the chain and opened the door. It amazed me how trusting people were sometimes. We could have passed him a sheriff's star out of a cereal packet and he probably wouldn't have known the difference. There's not much point asking to see a badge if you don't know what you're looking for. A truth of life: you show somebody an ID with a watermark on it and they automatically assume you're on the level.

'What can I do for you?' He had both the smell and the slightly worried expression of a guy who'd been smoking weed all evening.

Perhaps he imagined we might care.

'Keleigh Groves,' I said. 'We need to speak to her.'

'Oh. Right. Well, she's not here.'

'She lives here?'

'Yeah,' he said. 'She lives here. But she's not here, if you see what I mean.'

'Well, you got any idea where we can find her?'

'No, I don't know.' The kid wasn't meeting our eyes. He rubbed his face a little, and then seemed to remember something. 'Wait.

She said she was going to her boyfriend's.'

'When was this?' Rosh said.

'Hours ago. I don't know when. Maybe about nine?'

'You asking us or telling us?' I said.

'It was nine. Maybe even before nine, but I wasn't paying much attention to be honest. Think he came in, picked her up. So is this about Jamie?'

'Jamie's her boyfriend, right?'

'Yeah.'

'Well, it might be about Jamie,' I said. 'What's Jamie look like?'

'He's got purple hair. I don't know what else apart from that. He turns up and that's all I see.'

The kid was annoying me. For one thing, he wouldn't look at us.

Sometimes that can be a dead giveaway - it's a popular myth that people won't meet your eye when they're feeding you shit - but in reality that's not always the case. Some of the guilty ones look you in the eye all the time, and there are a good number who could tell you that two plus two was two and have you reaching for a calculator. It wasn't that this guy was lying to us; it was just that he was intimidated, which was making him nervous and making him struggle with what he was saying.

I tried to break it down a little for him.

'How old is he? Is he your age?'

'I guess so. He looks it. He's at uni.'

'He's a student?'

'Yeah, yeah. He's on her course.'

'Okay,' I said, trying to think back through the Missing Persons Report for a Jamie. I couldn't remember one. But at least Keleigh hadn't gone off with Harris. 'Do you know where he lives? Or where they went?'

'She'll have gone to his, but I don't know where he lives. Horse somewhere, but I don't know what street.'

'You got his phone number?'

The kid shook his head.

'Keleigh's just a flatmate, you know. I don't even know her that well.'

I started to ask him something else, but we were interrupted by Rosh's phone ringing. He picked it out of his pocket and answered it, moving a little way down the path. It was probably Lucy; I hoped that she'd managed to find something at the lab. Regardless, it was time to pack things up here and leave.

'What's your name, kid?' I asked.

'Simon.'

'Okay, Simon. Listen to me. You're not in trouble, and neither is Keleigh or Jamie. We just need to talk to them real bad and make sure that they're okay.'