Unlucky For Some (20 page)

Ladysmith Avenue intersected with Kimberley Court, the cul-de-sac onto which the buildings on Mafeking Road backed, where the other down-and-outs slept, then carried on, taking traffic to the ring road that skirted Barton, and out of the city. The chief attraction of Kimberley Court was the refuse bins and the food scraps they contained. As they closed for the night, one or two of the restaurant owners even brought out their surplus food for the human flotsam that fetched up on their doorsteps, despite being asked not to do so by those who seemed to think that living on the street was a soft option.

No one knew why Davy had remained aloof from the others; he was the only one who chose to sleep round the corner on Ladysmith Avenue, and this had proved to be his undoing, because it had made him the softest target of all. But he slept on the pavement between Kimberley Court and Mafeking Road, so it did mean that two of the buildings across Mafeking Road had a clear view of him. These were the Queen Bee, a gay club, and Chopsticks, a Chinese restaurant. People must have been coming and going from both these establishments, and they were optimistic of getting something positive from one of them.

Judy heard Freddie’s car take off, and after a moment, Lloyd joined her, shielding his eyes against the morning sun that promised another warm day.

“He died some time after nine o’clock last night, according to Freddie. He’s doing the postmortem this afternoon. Toss you for it.”

“He who speaks to pathologist attends autopsy,” she said. “Old Chinese proverb—ask the people in Chopsticks, if you don’t believe me.”

“That’s not fair. I got Lewis’s.”

“Life isn’t fair.” She passed on Yardley’s message as they walked down Ladysmith Avenue toward Mafeking Road, where the incident room was already being furnished. When Yardley arranged for something to be done, it obviously
got
done, Judy thought. That was refreshing, and presumably meant that if they did need more people, they would get them.

“I’m a bit surprised that Davy had any money on him at all,” Lloyd said. “I’d have thought he would spend the day’s takings before going to sleep.”

“Does it constitute a little puzzle?”

“Probably not.”

They crossed the busy road, and Judy looked down toward the casino as they walked to the incident room. “Another Waterman establishment just five minutes’ walk away from the crime scene,” she said. “Or am I just getting paranoid?”

“It is beginning to seem relevant,” said Lloyd. “But the last two victims had nothing to do with Waterman that we know of. We might find out that Davy is his long-lost cousin, but I doubt it.” He looked at her. “Since Scopes has been crossed off, am I right in assuming that it’s Waterman himself you’re wondering about?”

“Frankly, I’m beginning to wonder about you. Anyone. Someone’s killing these people. Why don’t we have a single lead?”

“Because whoever it is knows what he’s doing.” He shook his head. “And what are we to make of the murder weapon being neatly parcelled up in a padded bag?”

“God knows. Tom thought they’d stumbled on a blackmail drop—the last thing they expected to find in the envelope was the murder weapon. Yardley thinks the murderer’s just getting cocky.” Judy looked at her watch. “I’ve got the owner of the restaurant coming to let us see his CCTV footage, because that seems to be the only camera that takes in Ladysmith Avenue. And I’d better get back over there. I got the poor man out of bed, so the least I can do is be there when he arrives.”

“That’s the problem with this area being active at night,” said Lloyd. “People who are working or playing until two and three in the morning aren’t around much during the day. I think the incident room should be manned until about eleven o’clock at night if we’re going to get anything useful. Do you think Yardley will go for that?”

“I think he’d go for twenty-four-hour manning if he thought it might get a result.”

Judy hurried back across the street, and was waiting outside the restaurant just in time to see the owner’s car pull up.

“I’m sorry to have to put you to this inconvenience,” she said.

“No problem,” he said, unlocking the door. “Just go straight on through to the back,” he said, waving her ahead of him as he cancelled the burglar alarm. “I have to warn you that the camera isn’t set up to take in Ladysmith Avenue—I mean, it does, but that’s not what it’s for, really. It’s there so that we can keep an eye on the back court—that’s where we’re vulnerable to break-ins or whatever. And we can watch deliveries being made, and keep an eye on our cars. Most of the staff park in Kimberley Court.”

There was just one camera, and Judy found to her disappointment, but not to her surprise, that it took in the wrong part of Ladysmith Avenue, the part that carried on away from Mafeking Road after it had passed Kimberley Court. That had seemed likely to be the case when she had looked at its position, but it had been high enough up on the old building to make her believe that it might get the near corner of Kimberley Court and Ladysmith Avenue in the shot. And it would have, but for the sloping roof of an open porch affair that the restaurant had had built onto the exterior of the building. It also obscured the view of the bin in which the weapon had been found. Now, why didn’t that surprise her?

“Is it possible for customers to see the output from your security camera?” she asked.

“Yes—they pay at the kiosk, and there’s a screen in there.”

If he’d said no, they could have looked with some degree of enthusiasm at his staff, but it could just as easily have been a customer who worked out exactly which of Barton’s homeless he could most easily and efficiently eliminate without the camera seeing anything. But the murderer might have walked along that part of Ladysmith Avenue that the camera did pick up, so she asked for the tape.

“Were you out of the restaurant at all last night?”

“Not me, no, but some of the staff would be—taking out the wastebins, and probably nipping out for a smoke. But they would stay in the yard, I expect. They wouldn’t actually go out onto the street unless they had to get something from a car.”

“Someone will probably be here this evening to have a word with them,” said Judy. “If you could let me know who was working last night, that would be a help.”

“Sure.”

“And maybe a list of customers?”

“Well, we do a lot of passing trade, but a few people booked. I can give you their names and telephone numbers.”

Oh, well, she thought. Her day might have begun with an early morning call from Yardley, but at least it was warm and sunny, and the first member of the public with whom she had had dealings had proved to be friendly and helpful. She couldn’t ask for much more than that.

Grace had told Stephen about their altered status, and Tony was now having lunch with both of them, in Grace’s dining room, as proof.

She had been so frightened, so suspicious, so ready to call the police, that Tony hadn’t known what else to do. He had waited for what seemed like an age in the sitting room while she and Jack doubtless held a conference about how to proceed before coming down and joining him. After he’d offered his explanation to them, and suggested the midnight celebration of Stephen’s birthday, she had seemed to become slightly less wary. But when Stephen had gone up to his room, she had asked him again to explain to her how he could pinpoint where a murder was going to take place when it was obvious that the police couldn’t.

He was tempted to say that it was because he was considerably brighter than anyone on the police force, but thought that wouldn’t go down too well. Instead he pointed out that unlike the police he had only one problem to think about, and that he was perfectly capable of thinking about it and working on it to the exclusion of everything else, including, in the case of the South Coast murders, his marriage.

He had told her then about that single-minded, obsessive investigation into the South Coast murders, and how his behavior had been so suspicious that Challenger had managed to get a court order stopping him going anywhere near him, basically on the grounds that he was barking mad. He had explained exactly how he had worked out who Challenger’s next victim would be, and how he had stalked her instead, thereby saving her life. He had done the same thing then, he’d said. He had put himself in Challenger’s mind.

He had talked for hours, and sometimes it seemed that he was winning, but then the suspicion would come back into her eyes, and he would get nervous again. The lowish profile that he had enjoyed for the last decade, doing TV series shown on minority channels, had suddenly become a high profile; he was still not someone that people recognized in the street, but the papers certainly knew who he was, and his name was one that everyone now knew. Being asked to leave his temporary lodgings would be something that his fellow journalists would find highly diverting, and his landlady calling the police and accusing him of being the Anonymous Assassin—an epithet chosen by his very own newspaper, and used by all the other tabloids—was something that didn’t bear thinking about. Desperate measures were required.

It wasn’t as if he had never betrayed his intellect before; he had betrayed it when he had accepted the huge sum of money offered to him by the paper for his story. He had betrayed it again when he had agreed to write the column, using the overheated prose and shameless hyperbole favored by its owner, and therefore by its editor. He had never betrayed his principles, but that was mainly because he wasn’t at all sure he had any, so the fact that Grace’s only son was someone he believed to be a murderer with whom he was engaged in a duel was no stumbling block to what he intended doing.

He had gradually raised the charm level to maximum, the anecdote rate to high, the self-mockery to full volume, and with the single-mindedness that had got him where he was, had worked on her until the suspicion had turned to mere doubt, and the doubt to a smiling acceptance of her overreaction.

The smiles had turned to kisses, and the kisses to a night of passion—albeit a short one, given how long the overture had taken, and the fact that they both had things to do in the morning. And he had to admit that as sacrifices went, having sex with Grace was one of the more enjoyable ones.

Having lunch with her son in his current mood was not, especially since there was now no doubt at all in Tony’s mind that he had witnessed Stephen Halliday murdering Wilma Fenton.

They had come into the incident room in dribs and drabs throughout the morning, but the trickle seemed to have dried up, and of the ones who had come in, two had asked what they were selling, and one had asked for directions. So far, none of them seemed to have had any useful information, but at this stage you never really knew what would turn out to be useful.

Gary was looking idly out of the plate-glass window at the casino opposite, wondering if Stephen Halliday really was the Anonymous Assassin. Apparently, he’d been working in Barton last night, and DI Finch had gone over to Stoke Weston to interview him yet again.

“Do you think anyone’s thought of relieving us for lunch, Sarge?” he asked.

“I doubt it,” said Hitchin. “I think it’ll be thee and me until further notice. That’s why I’ve brought sandwiches. See? Experience tells.”

“Do you mind if I go and—” Gary broke off as he saw a familiar figure passing the front of the building. She wore a man’s raincoat, two sizes too big, over a tweed skirt and a cotton shirt. She wore socks and boots. Her gray hair was swept back from her face, and fell straight to her shoulders. It was Dirty Gertie. She pushed a pram that contained her other clothes; unlike some, Gertie washed both herself and her clothes whenever and wherever she could, which made her nickname a little cruel, but Gary thought it had perhaps referred to her morals rather than her cleanliness. Not anymore—Gertie was too old to earn any money that way. But she didn’t beg; she lived on her old age pension. And she wasn’t, technically, homeless; she had an address to which she had occasionally been taken, but from which she always fled at the first opportunity.

“Gertie!” he called, getting up from the desk, and going out to catch her before she walked briskly past. Gertie always walked briskly, as though she had somewhere to go and despite being permanently sozzled. Drinking was so much a way of life that she needed alcohol to function.

She frowned, and pulled her head back slightly to look at him. “I know you,” she said.

“It’s Gary.”

“Gary,” she said, the frown deepening. “Gary.”

“Yeah—don’t you remember? PC49, you called me, but I think maybe you called everyone that. I used to give you your wake-up call. About two years ago?”

“Years,” she repeated, in a faraway tone. “Years mean nothing to me, Gary.”

She spoke like a dame of the British theater, with perfect vowels and no dropped consonants, and only the faintest slurring of speech, except now and then, when a word proved to be too difficult.

Her address was a posh one, Gary knew; she came from a long line of wealthy aristocrats. Apparently, when she had first appeared in Barton about ten years ago and had told stories of her father being the younger son of an earl, everyone had assumed that she was fantasizing, but she wasn’t. And the family, regardless of its makeup at any given time, always took her in if she was taken back to them. But she wouldn’t take their money, and she wouldn’t accept any help for her alcoholism or her other problems. No doctors or priests for Gertie.

“Do you still sleep round the back of the restaurant?”

“I do.” She swayed slightly.

“Will you come in and talk to me and my sergeant for a little while?”

She looked in the open door at DS Hitchin. “A sergeant? That’s good. That’s very good.”

“What is?”

“He’s black. That’s good.”

“Is it?”

“Once, you know, Gary, once they wouldn’t have made a black man sergeant.”

“No? It makes no difference these days.”

She smiled. “Good. I never held with it myself. Skin comes in different colors—like hair. And eyes. And cats.”

“So does that mean you’ll come in and talk to us?”