Until Death (11 page)

Angus was trying to fish a tea bag out of a mug and balance it on a pen to get it to the waste bin somewhere at his feet. He glanced up as she entered and the tea bag plopped on to a pile of paperwork on his desk, splattering at least five forms. Angus swore.

‘Sorry,’ she said, as he picked up the paper and slid the tea bag off, she presumed into the bin. Why she felt the need to apologise for his irrational way of making a cuppa she tried not to dwell on.

‘Yes?’

‘I need to run something past you.’

Angus licked the tea off the end of the pen and nodded.

‘I’ve got a file on Kelly Malamatos here, but there’s hardly any information at all. If you type her into the computer it says access denied. What’s that mean?’

‘Don’t get overexcited. It could mean something or it could mean nothing. The file’s been lost, it’s a computer glitch’ – they both nodded – ‘she’s working secretly for the security services … I have no idea, and unless I’m told otherwise by my boss, I’ve learned to stay away from that sort of thing. Get yourself tangled in that kind of politics and …’ He shuddered. ‘You sure this is a fruitful line of enquiry?’ Angus reached behind him for a pint carton of milk.

Georgie ploughed on. ‘Well, that’s my point really. What I did find is that she lodged a complaint about domestic violence by her husband a year ago but then didn’t want to pursue it. We should talk to her, dig a bit deeper.’

‘Your tip-off theory. So bring her in.’

‘I think it might be better to meet her on her own turf. Mo and I could follow her and make an approach—’

Angus put the carton down fast. ‘Ever hear of budgets? This investigation can’t justify the kind of surveillance you’re suggesting.’

She wasn’t going to be beaten. ‘You said yourself that you suspect what we found in that ship is just a fraction of what Christos might be smuggling. If it’s true then it makes sense to make a proportionate effort. You mention politics, but I bet a high-profile environmental prosecution is just the good news the PRs are looking for. Better than airport queuing times.’

Angus looked up at her, his eyebrows raised.

She felt her spirits soar, he was listening intently. She might have a fantasy about wanting him to fancy her, but even more than that she wanted his respect. ‘A rosewood kingpin.’ She shrugged. ‘It makes a change from a drugs bust.’

She could see him mulling it over. He was part of the new guard in the service; stories that garnered good publicity were catnip to him.

‘No overtime, no night shifts.’

Georgie nodded.

‘And no rocking boats.’

She smiled at him and left him to his tea.

N
ow Georgie and Mo were waiting for Kelly to come out of her apartment. They worked out that she would appear at some point to collect her children from school, or return with them to the house. But a woman who looked so much like Christos she had to be his mother had come back with the children after school.

Georgie was growing frustrated and irritable. She felt cooped up, she was sick of the endless cans of Tango Mo drank and nothing was happening. It looked like they might have missed Kelly altogether.

‘Woman walking a dog, ten points,’ Mo said, pointing at the far pavement. ‘So it’s two hundred and ten plays ninety.’ They were playing the points game as a way to pass the time. ‘White van with writing in the dirt on the back, thirty points! I’m murdering you.’

Georgie drummed her fingers on the steering wheel with irritation.

‘What’s a couple kissing worth?’

Georgie made a face. ‘Let’s take points away for that.’

Mo sipped his fizzy drink. ‘I doubt there’s a romantic bone in your body. Why’s that, eh? You know I could fix you up with one of my brothers if you liked. They drink alcohol and try to fuck beautiful women like you and they’re not “angry”, like me.’ Georgie gave him a withering look but it didn’t stop him. ‘Why don’t you have a boyfriend? I don’t get it, I really don’t. All I’m saying is: you ever feel like company, I’ve got a queue.’

Georgie tried to smile. She could never get beyond two dates. After that they tended to want to come back and see where you lived. Meet the in-laws. Be made to squeeze in between the body-building bulks of Karl, Ryan and Matt on the settee, listening as they lionised the Krays, made bad jokes about the police, talked a little too knowledgeably about institutional visiting hours. The men she fancied would – and should – run a mile. She had a flash of seeing Anguish on her couch at home and shuddered.

‘OK,’ Georgie said. ‘A couple kissing is a hundred points and an instant win. Hugging doesn’t count.’

‘You’re on.’

They were interrupted by the garage door opening and the nose of a black Audi inching out. They both craned their heads to see who was driving. ‘That’s her,’ Georgie said.

They followed as Kelly drove east towards the City and then along the A13, turning off towards the river. Ten minutes later she was turning into Casson Street.

‘Is she going where I think she’s going?’ Georgie looked at Mo in disbelief.

They followed Kelly into the parking lot of the children’s play area. They watched her go in with her son.

Georgie unbuckled her seat belt. ‘You stay here.’

Mo nodded.

The play centre was huge, with a café near the entrance and a second storey that catered for children’s parties. In the after-school rush the noise level could compete with a nightclub. A carpeted area ran under a series of nets of varying heights where children dangled and squealed and colourful slides, some twisting, burped children out on the carpet. There was a pit filled with plastic balls, rope swings and distorting plastic mirrors, and high netted walkways that ran above Georgie’s head and disappeared into tunnels.

Georgie was impressed, wishing she had been taken to something like this when she was a child. Then again, her brothers would have started a fight and they would all have been ordered to leave. She watched Kelly help Yannis off with his shoes and he ran off into a tunnel. The rear of the play centre backed on to the Thames. Through a series of windows Georgie could see the dull flatness of the water and an expanse of dock.

She watched Kelly queue at the café, buy tea and a packet of crisps and sit at a table near the equipment. Georgie picked up a newspaper that had been discarded and watched her. Kelly didn’t move or pull out a phone or read; she sat staring into space. She finished her tea and started chewing through the polystyrene absent-mindedly, leaving bite marks in the cup. All around her, women jiggled babies on their knees, laughed and gossiped with friends or yakked on mobiles, but she looked all alone. Occasionally Kelly caught sight of Yannis and waved at him. Ten minutes passed.

Kelly got up, threw away the cup and walked to the toilets. Georgie followed. The toilets were empty apart from the two of them. Georgie wedged her foot against the exit to stop anyone else coming in and waited for Kelly to finish. The cubicle door opened.

‘Kelly Malamatos?’

Kelly whirled round at her name, knees bent, ready to try to fight off an attacker.

‘Afraid of something?’

Kelly didn’t answer; her eyes were two dark pools watching her. She looked like a cornered animal.

‘It’s Georgie Bell. Can we have a chat?’

She looked nervous. ‘Do I have a choice?’

‘Yes. You can walk out of here at any time, but I hope you won’t. This way I don’t have to make it official.’

‘In here.’ Kelly walked into the disabled toilet and Georgie followed. ‘What do you want?’ She’d calmed down now, was smoothing her hair and adjusting her clothes.

Georgie leaned against the sink. ‘Tell me where the wood goes.’

‘I have no idea.’

‘You’ll have to do better than that.’ Kelly didn’t move. ‘It comes here, Kelly, right next door to here. About twenty yards from where you’ve parked your car. Care to say anything?’ She saw Kelly go pale. ‘Why do you use this play area? There are others much nearer your house.’

‘I’ve got a studio at the docks near my husband’s offices. I need to pick up something from there after I leave here. I was familiar with this play centre because my husband has organised fundraising events here before. His charity offices are across the street.’

‘What’s the charity?’

‘The Lost Souls Foundation. It originally helped children of sailors who’d died at sea.’ She wiped a strand of hair from her face. Georgie saw her hand was shaking.

She was lying. Georgie felt the frustration that Preston was going to be proved right in the end: she was in it with her husband. ‘Someone delivers the wood to that vacant lot over there and someone else picks it up. Who picks it up, Kelly?’

‘I don’t know.’

There was a pause. Georgie crossed her arms. ‘You need to think about what’s more important to you, your kids or your husband. If you’re found to be withholding information or lying, you could be looking at jail. You’ll be separated from your kids. It’s your choice.’

‘Choice.’ Pinks spots appeared on Kelly’s cheeks. She took a step across the toilet cubicle. ‘You don’t have a husband, do you? Or kids? Of course you don’t. You talk like you can separate them, like eggs. They’re all tied up together, one messy, tight little ball.’ She screwed her fingers together, twisting them over and over each other. ‘I don’t know anything.’

Of all the defences, that was the one that riled Georgie the most, the ‘I don’t know’ lie. She had heard her own mother use it more than once when their house had been raided by the police. She’d stand in the cramped hallway, shouting as the police marched through, doing their jobs, doing the right thing, Georgie realised now. As her mother lied. As her dad lied. As Karl and Matt gave each other looks, Ryan bundling out the back door and over the fence into the night. The bonds of family made people lose their moral compasses. ‘I
looked you up, trying to find out about you. But there’s hardly any information on you at all. That always gets me to wonder. Everyone has a trail, but you, you have nothing at all. Where did you grow up? Where did you go to school?’

‘What does it matter to you?’

‘It’s as if you don’t exist. Who are you, Kelly Malamatos? Come on, throw me a titbit. Tell me something about yourself.’

‘There’s nothing to tell,’ Kelly hissed.

Georgie smiled, but there was no warmth in it. ‘You’re just a loving wife and mother, right? Kelly, I’m an East End girl. I grew up near these docks where your husband makes all that money that keeps you in a penthouse and your children at fancy private schools. Don’t think we don’t all want a slice of that. I know all about wanting to get out, Kelly. So don’t give me that helpless woman routine. No woman wins the rich man, actually
gets
the ring on her finger, without a lot of calculation. You’re harder than you look.’

Kelly took another step towards her so that she was very close in the cubicle. ‘One thing’s for sure, you have no idea how hard I am, to survive what I’ve lived through.’ She pulled herself up tall. ‘Ask his PA about the business, she’s fucking him. Ask
her
to share the pillow talk. He tells me nothing.’

‘So all is not well in the Malamatos marriage?’ Georgie saw something shift in Kelly’s face. She had been trying to goad Kelly into a revelation, but she’d gone too far.

‘Stay the fuck away from me and my kids and keep the fuck out of things you know nothing about.’ Kelly was livid, her eyes blazing as she opened the door and it slammed against the wall as she left.

Georgie swore silently. She had wanted to get Kelly onside, and her big mouth and the problems about her own family had got in the way and made it all worse. She walked back to the car and got in.

‘How’d it go?’ Mo asked. ‘I just saw her marching her kid across the car park ahead of you.’

‘I’m afraid I really didn’t do that very well.’

‘You rubbed her up the wrong way?’ Mo shook his head. ‘That’ll be a first.’

Georgie caught his sarcasm and shook her head. ‘Shit. I think she’s lying, but I don’t know about what.’ She sighed in defeat. ‘Come on.’ She nodded across the road to a tired Victorian building. ‘Let’s go.’

Mo began to get out of the car, then pointed across the car park and punched the air. ‘A couple kissing. Instant win!’

G
eorgie and Mo crossed the road to number 1, Casson Street, and walked up the three steps to the dusty front door. Bars covered the lower windows and a succession of broken venetian blinds could just be made out behind the thick dust stuck to the dirty windows. A panel with more than ten doorbells on it faced them. One had ‘Lost Souls’ written on it in a neat hand.

They rang the bell and waited, the door buzzing open after a few moments. The building had probably once been a grand Victorian ballroom but was now cut up with miles of plasterboard into a warren of corridors, with office and fire doors every few metres. They spent the next few moments pulling and pushing and holding open doors that swung hard against shoulders and feet as they battled to the back of the building. They followed a dark corridor round several right angles until Georgie lost her sense of direction completely.

They eventually found a white door with opaque glass in the top third and a bell that was half hanging out of the plasterboard. It worked, though, and the door was opened by a short, middle-aged woman in a shalwar-kameez and a headscarf who introduced herself as Anila. Georgie asked if she and Mo could come in.

Anila didn’t smile but she wasn’t unfriendly either. She beckoned them in to a small office. ‘How can I help you?’ she asked.

‘How many of you work here?’

‘There are just three of us. I’m one of the directors along with my colleague Fazhad and our assistant Julie. Julie’s off sick today and Fazhad is out on a visit.’

‘What does your foundation do?’ asked Georgie.

‘We’re a small charity. We do what we can to improve the lives of families who work the ships or are affected by them.’ She waved an elegant hand out of the window. ‘Ships bring a host of problems, I’m afraid to say – prostitution, drugs and unwanted babies. Part of what we do is adoption. The fathers find the attractions of places like Vietnam and Thailand very compelling. It’s hard to keep them here. We work closely with social services finding families for the unwanted babies of men who’ve “run off”, let’s say. We raise funds locally and through benefactors.’