The Reckoning (39 page)

‘It is worth asking, but I don’t think it’s likely. She hadn’t eaten anything in the days before her death. There was nothing in her stomach but some brownish liquid.’

‘Sounds as if he was withholding food to keep her weak and make her biddable,’ Derwent said. ‘What does Hanshaw think?’

‘He thinks the asthma attack was brought on by stress. Fear, pain – that sort of thing would do it. Her symptoms could have worsened over time if she was panicking about not being able to breathe properly, so it needn’t have happened in front of her kidnapper. It’s possible that her kidnapper didn’t know or care that she was ill and was surprised by her death.’

‘You go to all that trouble to kidnap a girl and then they go and die on you.’

‘Shut up, Peter.’ Godley looked irritated and Derwent turned around to glare at Belcott.

‘I’m just trying to lighten the mood.’ He didn’t seem to be particularly abashed.

‘When you’re in a hole, stop digging,’ Maitland advised.

‘If I can interrupt, I’d like to bring your attention back to the report.’ Godley’s voice was cold. ‘The cause of death is not the only unusual thing. Glen swabbed Cheyenne’s hands and nails. There was a large amount of another individual’s saliva present on the swabs. When they were run through the DNA database, they got a match, but it was to a woman.’

‘So he’s working with a partner,’ Belcott suggested. ‘A Hindley and Brady for the twenty-first century.’

‘Who’s the woman?’

‘That’s where it gets interesting. Patricia Farinelli is twenty-nine. She was arrested for taking part in an illegal demonstration against animal testing in Cambridgeshire in 2003. Her DNA was recorded on the database, but in fact she was released without charge.’

‘An animal rights nut,’ Maitland said. ‘Doesn’t mean she’s not cruel to kids.’

‘She worked as the manager of a nursery until eighteen months ago, when she didn’t turn up for work one day. She hasn’t been seen since.’

For a moment, there was silence. I broke it with, ‘She’s a missing person?’

‘It wasn’t his first kidnap,’ Derwent said softly.

‘So it seems. Patricia lived in Stoke Newington. She was very close to her parents, so when she didn’t get in touch with them for a couple of days, they raised the alarm. There was an investigation, but it didn’t get very far. The officer in the case, a DS Rai, is working today but he wasn’t in the nick when I called. Without talking to him I can’t be sure, but I don’t get the impression it was a priority. Miss Farinelli wasn’t viewed as high risk.’ He leaned over and handed me a sheet of paper. ‘Maeve, can you try and track the OIC down? Find out what happened?’

‘Will do.’

‘Wait a second. She disappeared eighteen months ago, hasn’t been heard from since, and her saliva is all over a dead teenager’s hands. What the hell?’ Derwent shook his head, frustrated. ‘Nothing about this case makes sense.’

‘Not at the moment.’ Godley gave a small, grim smile. ‘I did say you wouldn’t believe it. And there’s something else you might like to know. Rob?’

‘We met Ken Goldsworthy at Mrs Skinner’s home yesterday.’

‘What the fuck was he doing there?’ Derwent sounded genuinely shocked.

‘Making a pass at Gayle. While John’s away, Ken thinks she should play.’

‘Bloody hell.’

‘Who’s Ken Goldsworthy?’ Liv sounded plaintive.

‘He’s a John Skinner wannabe,’ Rob said.

Derwent sucked air through his teeth. ‘You wouldn’t want him to hear you say that. He’s not as successful as Skinner, but he’s a very bad lad indeed.’

‘They don’t get on,’ Godley explained, in the understatement of the century. ‘They had a dispute over territory a few years ago. It was … unpleasant.’

Derwent laughed suddenly. ‘Do you remember Goldsworthy’s granny?’ He looked around. ‘Anyone not know the story?’

‘Me,’ Liv said promptly, and there were other shaking heads.

‘It’s a good one. John and Ken had been knocking lumps out of each other for a while – nicking drugs, getting in first to do jobs the other one had been setting up, throwing their weight around. Things hadn’t got serious yet, by which I mean no one had died. That came later. But one of John’s boys got beaten up by a few of Ken’s lot, and he ended up in a coma in intensive care. John was furious. He wanted to send Ken a message, to get him to back off. And he happened to know Ken’s granny had just died a month before. So he dug her up.’

‘Oh my God.’ Liv put her hand to her mouth.

‘He didn’t stop there. He broke into Ken’s house and tucked the corpse up in his bed. Remote control in one hand, unlit fag in the other, propped up watching a porno film with the electric blanket on high. He said he only regretted not being there to see Ken’s face when he found his nan waiting for him.’

There was a ripple of laughter around the room.

‘What I say is, if you’re going to have a feud, make sure it’s with someone who’s got a sense of humour.’

‘Unfortunately, Ken doesn’t.’ Godley’s face was sombre. ‘Things went downhill from that point on. I don’t imagine Ken would dream of forgiving him for that, even if they got over their territorial difficulties. So turning up at his house—’

‘—is pretty much an act of war,’ Derwent finished.

‘So that’s where we are.’ Godley scanned the room. ‘Those of you who are working on tracing and interviewing potential witnesses from the warehouse, please carry on. Josh, can you concentrate on finding out what Ken’s up to? I find it hard to believe he’s involved in Cheyenne’s death but I can’t be sure yet, and I really don’t want to miss something obvious. It’s also worth warning the county forces and the Task Force if this row is going to kick off again. Now that John is looking at a serious sentence, you have to assume Ken thinks there’s nothing between him and a takeover.’

‘I don’t actually know what John would resent more – losing his missus or his empire.’

‘What about both?’ Rob suggested.

The little group that had gathered around the superintendent began to dissolve. I went back to my desk to make a start on finding out more about Patricia, pleasantly aware that I would be free of Derwent for a while now that he had something more interesting to do.

‘Rob, do you want to fill me in on what Ken said yesterday?’ Derwent asked.

‘No problem.’ The two of them headed for the small meeting room and Derwent closed the door firmly behind them. I wished them the joy of each other’s company. As far as I could tell, Rob hadn’t even looked at me.

Glad to have something to occupy me, I rang the police station in Stoke Newington and asked for DS Rai.

‘He’s just walked in the door.’ A tiny pause. I imagined DS Rai glowering at the woman I was speaking to. When she spoke again, she sounded as if she was trying not to laugh. ‘Can I get him to give you a call back?’

I agreed and left my name and number, adding that I was ringing about Patricia Farinelli’s disappearance and that it was quite urgent. I would give him fifteen minutes, I thought, poking my computer into life. Fifteen minutes was long enough to take off your coat and get a coffee, or whatever it was Rai needed to kick-start his shift.

I filled in the time by looking up the Bancroft brothers on the PNC. Nothing came up on either of them. Purely as a formality, I rang the DVLA to check that the date of birth Drew had given me matched their names.

‘No match to either one,’ said the pleasant Welsh voice on the other end of the line.

‘Really?’ I wondered if I should add driving without a licence to the brothers’ tally of offences. ‘Drew might be short for Andrew.’

‘I’ve got an Andrew Bancroft but the DOB is wrong. Four, six, eighty-three.’ He read out the address and it was the one Drew had given me.

‘Lying about his age. Tut tut.’ I wrote it down. ‘What about Lee Bancroft?’ I gave the address of the Hampstead flat and his date of birth.

‘I’ve got an Alexander Bancroft.’ I would have taken a million years to realise Lee was an abbreviation of Alexander. ‘The year is wrong, though. Eighty-one.’

‘Naughty boys, telling porkies about their ages.’ It fitted in with the cult of youth they were devoted to, and their disdain for authority. I shouldn’t have been surprised. ‘Thanks for that.’

As soon as I replaced the receiver my phone rang.

‘DS Rai, Stoke Newington. You were looking for me.’

He sounded bored and a touch hostile. I poured as much honey into my voice as I could. ‘Thanks so much for calling me back. It’s just in connection with Patricia Farinelli’s disappearance.’ I explained why I was asking about her.

‘I don’t think I can help you much. I didn’t spend that much time on the case, to be honest.’ The boredom had cranked up a notch, if anything. I tried to control my irritation.

‘Why was that?’

‘Because there was nothing to investigate. She was a grown woman, single, and she had nothing to keep her in London. Her parents threw a fit because she went away without telling them. They assumed she’d been kidnapped and murdered. I think she just did a runner. We looked at her flat. Her passport was gone, and a suitcase, and a whole lot of clothes. Nothing strange about deciding to start a new life somewhere else.’

‘It’s a bit drastic, though, isn’t it? Leaving work and never formally resigning? Never even saying goodbye even though you know your family will be worried about you?’

The shrug travelled down the line. ‘Depends on what you’re leaving behind. Maybe she didn’t care.’

‘Did you find anything to suggest where she might have been going? Emails or Internet contacts?’

‘She took her laptop.’

‘Holiday brochures?’ I was getting desperate.

‘Nothing like that. But it wasn’t a big mystery. She emptied her current account over the next few days – took out the maximum each time until it was all gone. So she had enough cash to see her on her way, and enough sense not to leave us any clues about where she’d gone so she couldn’t be traced. I know you’re excited about it because her DNA was found on your victim, but it could be a false result for all you know. There’s nothing to say it connects.’

‘Yes, it could be a false result. Or, which seems more likely, it could be that Patricia was kidnapped by the person who took Cheyenne. We’ve got two missing females, after all. That looks like a pattern.’

‘Might be.’ He sounded dubious.

‘Now that her DNA has popped up again, do you want to revisit the case?’

There was a pause; I could practically hear his brain ticking over. ‘It sounds as if you’ve got it covered.’

‘I’m going to need to talk to the Farinellis.’

‘You’ll have to do it over the phone. They live in Tuscany now.’

‘Are they actually Italian?’

‘Born and bred. Patricia was born here, though. She’s their only child,’ Rai said casually, not seeming to appreciate how much worse that made her disappearance. ‘I’ll give you contact details for the parents. I’m sure they’d appreciate a call.’

‘I’m sure they would,’ I said thinly, dropping the sweetness as it was patently having zero effect. I wrote down a couple of telephone numbers for the Farinellis, mobile and landline, hoping that they had decent enough English to be able to understand what I would need to ask them. ‘Have you got any paperwork you could send over?’

‘I’ll have a look.’
If I can be bothered
.

I put the phone down with a sigh and braced myself to call Patricia’s parents. I wasn’t sure what was worse – giving them hope that she might still be alive, or letting them know their worst fears for her might be true.

‘What’s the matter?’

I was leaning on the work surface in the dingy office kitchen, my head in my hands. I looked up to see Liv in the doorway.

‘I was looking for something to kick and I ended up in here.’ I put my head back down, knowing that my eyes had been red and that she’d noticed.

‘Find anything?’

‘I made that dent in the fridge.’ Her shoes tapped on the tiles as she went to look.

‘Wow. Toes hurt much?’

‘Much.’

‘Can I ask why you needed to kick the fridge?’

‘It was standing in for smug, supercilious wankers who think a woman’s life isn’t worth worrying about.’

‘Uh-oh.’ Liv picked up the kettle and filled it. ‘I’m going to need a cup of tea for this one.’

‘Can you make two?’ I straightened up and tried to sort out my hair, which was not the better for having my fingers knotted in it. ‘Although I think I really need something a bit stronger than tea, and I wouldn’t usually say that.’

‘I take it you’re upset about Patricia Farinelli.’

‘I’m upset about the waste of skin in Stoke Newington who decided there was no need to investigate her disappearance in spite of the fact her parents were absolutely sure something bad had happened to her. But of course DS Rai knew better than the people who loved her. He looked into his crystal ball and decided she was perfectly safe and well, so he didn’t need to do any work at all. He could just close the file and get on with forgetting she’d ever existed.’

‘So he wasn’t able to help.’

‘No. Not me, and not the Farinellis.’ I handed Liv two teabags and watched her drop them into mugs. ‘When I rang up, I got Patricia’s mum. She burst into tears as soon as I said who I was. She assumed I was ringing to say we’d found Patricia’s body. And then, once I said we hadn’t, she thought we’d found her. She went from despair to delight and straight back again in a couple of minutes.’

‘It’s always tough on the families when there’s a disappearance.’

‘Especially when they’re left completely uninformed, assuming that someone is trying to find their beloved daughter when actually no one has bothered to lift a finger.’

‘What was his excuse for not taking their worries seriously?’

‘The fact that they came across as “clingy”, mainly, and the fact that she was an adult capable of making her own decisions. But there were a few other things that muddied the water.’ I told Liv what DS Rai had told me about the missing woman’s belongings. She looked thoughtful.

‘I’m not trying to defend Rai, but that sounds pretty reasonable to me. I mean, if there were things gone from her flat and her bank account was cleared out, it does sort of suggest she decided to leave and just went about it in a messy way. I’m not sure I could justify spending a lot of police time on trying to find a grown woman who doesn’t seem to want to be found.’