Blood, Salt, Water (23 page)

33

Boyd hadn’t come in until after the lunchtime rush and it was fine. They had done the washing up, taken the deliveries, served lunch and the leftover quiche from last night had sold. He couldn’t have been more pleased. He promised them an extra twenty quid in their wage packets and sent them both home an hour early.

He was wiping the counter top with a cloth, smiling at a four-toothed toddler hanging over his mother’s shoulder, when he heard:

‘Boyd Fraser?’

They looked like debt collectors, the man and woman blocking his exit by standing at the break in the counter.

‘Are you Boyd Fraser?’

‘I am. Can I help you?’

‘We’re from Police Scotland. Can we talk to you through the back for a moment?’

‘Can’t you talk to me here?’

‘It’s quite a serious matter . . .’

Shit shit. The sniff. It was the fucking sniff.

‘Of course, please do come through.’

He took them through the kitchen to the back office but when they got to the door he realised that they wouldn’t fit. They had to shuffle back in single file, to the kitchen.

‘We can sit here.’ He patted the edge of the steel kitchen table, asking the part-time cook, Moira, ‘Will we be in your way?’

He was never that polite but he was trying to come over as a good bloke. Moira went along with it.

‘Oh, you’re lovely there!’ she said warmly, though they never really spoke to each other like that, it was just for the benefit of the strangers.

Boyd dragged the office chair into the kitchen and was asking Moira about the fold-away sents they kept in the lock-up but the blonde woman stopped him. ‘We don’t really need to sit down. This is quite urgent. Could you stop . . .’

Fussing, she’d been going to say. He was fussing.

‘Sorry.’ He stood still, nodding Moira away into the café. She was only waiting for trays of brownies to come out of the oven anyway.

‘OK, Mr Fraser. Do you know a woman called Susan Grierson?’

Shit. Susan! She was a dealer or something. Prostitute dealer or something. Worse than he could have imagined, the way this was going. Lucy would fucking kill him. She would leave him and kill him.

‘You don’t seem sure.’

‘Yeah, no, I do, I do know her, yeah.’

He was holding the edge of the table and noticed, at the same time as the woman cop, that his hand was shaking. He put it in his pocket and gave a ridiculous high-pitched giggle. It sounded suspicious. So suspicious that he began to sweat a bit.

‘How do you know her?’

‘She’s, um, she worked for me last night. At a charity dinner. She’s from here.’

‘Have you known her a long time?’

He nodded.

‘Did you know her in the States?’

‘No! She went there to live when I was young. She came back because her mum died . . .’ But then he remembered that, no, she hadn’t come back because of that. Her mum was dead but that was . . . Lucy said it was a while ago. ‘She . . . No – her mum – ah, she came back.’

‘When did you meet her again?’

‘Two days ago.’

‘Did she say why she was back?’

‘She told me her mum died and I sort of assumed that’s why she was back. But actually, that wasn’t why she was back. But I don’t know if she said that to me.’

‘How did you find out that it wasn’t why she came back? Did she tell you some other reason?’

This was good, they were interested in Susan, not him. God knows what else she’d been up to. ‘No, she didn’t. She said she was back because her mum died, but my wife said that Mrs Grierson, old Mrs Grierson, died a couple of years ago. So, I suppose, that’s not why she was back.’

‘Two days ago. That was the first time you met her again?’

‘Yes.’

‘How did you meet her?’

So he told them the story, about her being in here, them seeing each other by accident . . .

‘Did you recognise her immediately?’

‘Yeah, she said she was Susan and I recognised her.’

‘
She
said she was Susan?’

‘Yeah, and I recognised her.’

‘Did you recognise her before she said her name?’

Odd question. He cast his mind back. ‘No.’

‘Did she approach you?’

‘Um, yes.’

‘Have you been to her house in Sutherland Crescent?’

Lucy didn’t know he had been there. Did it matter? She would have wanted to know about the inside of the house for Sara Haughton. But they were the police and lying to the police was stupid. He hadn’t really done anything. ‘I have. I did. Last night.’

‘What for?’

Boyd licked his lips and looked through to the café. ‘Just, you know, had a drink or something. It was after the charity dinner. We were celebrating. Drink and so on, you know.’

He was pleased with his answer. Honest, but giving nothing away, but the cop wasn’t listening any more. She was looking around the kitchen, nosy and not hiding it the way a polite person would. The man caught his eye and smiled as if this was a normal thing.

‘We’d like to ask you about a photograph, sir.’

The woman carried on nosing around, even bending her knees to look under a shelf of dry goods, for fuck’s sake. The man held a photo up to him.

‘Yeah! Me and Sanjay,’ he said, enjoying seeing him again. ‘What? Is this about Sanjay?’

The woman reached across and her finger landed, gentle as a fly, on Sanjay’s girlfriend’s face. ‘Who’s this?’

‘Sanjay’s girlfriend, at the time.’

The man asked, ‘Who’s Sanjay?’

‘Sanjay Hassan. We worked together in London. He was a trainee solicitor then, he’s qualified now. We worked for a catering company together. Events.’

The woman asked, ‘How well do you know her?’

Relieved, he smiled. ‘Oh, look, I don’t know her. I met her at the end of the marathon with Sanjay. They split up after a few dates. She had two kids.’

The man said, ‘Roxanna Fuentecilla.’

‘Roxanna! That’s right. I remember now. Roxy, he called her. What’s going on?’

The policeman looked at the policewoman, as if he didn’t know what else he should ask. She was staring at the row of plastic tubs on the dry goods shelf. She nudged the man and pointed at one of the tubs. The plastic on the lid was cloudy, scratched from being washed and reused. It had
Baking Soda
written on it in black felt pen.

‘Is Sanjay OK?’

‘Can I open that?’ she asked.

‘Of course!’

She put on latex gloves and peeled the lid back. On the flat white surface sat a bubble of blue. Someone had shoved a blue plastic bag in there.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

The police officers looked at each other and asked if Boyd had any tinfoil.

‘Of course!’ Trying to be helpful, Boyd reached under the sink and hoisted out a big tinfoil roll onto the table. ‘What do you want me to do with it?’

They were quite insistent that they’d do it themselves and the man put on latex gloves as well. Then they rolled out a length of the foil on the table and she pinched the bubble and lifted it out of the baking soda. It was a mobile, a Samsung, quite new.

‘What’s that doing there?’ asked Boyd and then realised it was a stupid question. It was his kitchen in his café.

The cops eyed a conversation at each other. Boyd could tell it wasn’t favourable to him.

‘That’s not my phone.’

The woman flattened the freezer bag against the phone and turned it on. She went into her own pocket, took out a clunky work phone and called a number. The phone in the freezer bag lit up.

‘Whose phone is it?’

The woman cop hung up her own phone. ‘It belongs to the woman in the photograph of you and Sanjay.’

‘Sanjay’s ex-girlfriend?’ He laughed again, not sounding like a dick this time, just incredulous. ‘Sanjay’s
ex
?
What
?’

‘Mr Fraser, I’m afraid we’ll have to ask you to come with us. And we’re shutting the café down for a thorough search.’

‘Why?’

‘This woman has just been found dead. In Susan Grierson’s house.’

They shut the café down. Moira ushered all the customers out with their lunches packed up to go. She took the tray of brownies out and set them on a mesh tray to cool. As a final dutiful gesture she phoned Lucy at the house, told her to come down because the police were here questioning Boyd. Then Moira left, glad to get out but rubbernecking through the window as she passed it.

The cops told him he had the right to remain silent and other things. Boyd didn’t really listen because it was just a mix up.

Minutes later the double buggy came through the door. Boyd saw that William had just woken up and looked cross and startled. He looked up and Lucy caught his eye. She had the same look on her face. The cops wouldn’t let them speak to each other. Then two other cops came, a bald man and snaggle-toothed woman, and they took Boyd away.

34

Morrow and McGrain looked through the café, in the cupboards, in the toilets, behind the counter displays. They stood on a chair to check the high-up shelves. Three yellow olive oil drums were lined up on a shelf. They were empty but brought a splash of vibrant yellow and green to the room. McGrain lifted each one in turn and shook. The third one had something in it. He brought it down and they lifted off the lid. A bag from Waitrose, blue, with white powder inside.

‘Must’ve used a whole bloody roll of freezer bags,’ muttered Morrow.

Lucy Fraser said, ‘That’s not his.’

She was sitting in the café with two small boys, one fighting to get out of the buggy. She had given them a brownie each from the pile on the counter and one of them had fallen asleep with a tiny chocolate bite still on his tongue. Morrow wanted to go home and see her own boys so much she could hardly look at them.

They lifted the tin down from the shelf carefully.

‘I’ll tell you why I know it isn’t his,’ said Lucy Fraser. ‘Because he only got a deal last night and this morning he said that when he got another one he’d get some for me too. So, there’s no way that’s his. We’ve been here for two years and we’ve never had a deal. We’ve just set up a business and we’ve got two kids. Honestly, it’s not his.’

She looked slumped, miserable and sad but Morrow could tell she had no idea that they were investigating a murder. Morrow should tell her. It wasn’t a chore she was relishing.

‘McGrain, go to the car and get one of the big production bags.’

He put the oil drum on the floor and left through the door to the street.

‘Really,’ said Lucy Fraser, staring miserably at the drum, ‘that’s not his.’

Morrow looked sceptical.

‘I know,’ said Lucy. ‘ “Husband lies to wife.” Hardly front page news, is it? But it isn’t. He said he didn’t have any . . .’ Her voice trailed away at the end and when she spoke again it sounded very faint. ‘I know I sound like an idiot – here with my kids, looking absolutely knackered. But I know what sort of shit he is, and he isn’t a hold-out shit.’

Lucy and Morrow smiled at each other, not warmly, just an acknowledgement that they were both there and both human.

‘Lucy, I think I should tell you—’

‘Look,’ Lucy steeled herself, ‘Boyd didn’t come home last night. He didn’t get in until very late. We used to take sniff a lot, in London, just for fun, but we haven’t done it for ages and I know the signs and I know when he has and he hasn’t.’

‘What time did he get in?’

‘About four thirty.’

‘Where was he?’

McGrain was passing by outside the window, reaching for the door.

‘I think he was out fucking some waitress.’ Lucy Fraser’s chin buckled. ‘He’s pretty restless at the moment.’

The door opened, McGrain came in and the moment was gone. Lucy went back to tend to the boys in the buggy.

McGrain opened the production bag and held it wide. Morrow lifted the tin very carefully and put it inside the bag.

‘Fill the label out and put it in the car, would you?’ McGrain took the production bag out and Morrow waited for the door to fall shut.

‘Lucy, you need to know that this investigation isn’t about a deal. Two women have been killed. We don’t think Boyd did it but there are a lot of confusing coincidences. Too many coincidences for it to be chance.’

Lucy’s face had turned grey. She stood up, her mouth slack, eyes open wide. ‘What can I do?’ she murmured.

‘Tell me the truth?’

Lucy nodded at Morrow’s stomach.

‘Which waitress do you think it was?’

‘Susan Grierson, I think. This morning, he flinched when her name came up. He was coming down this morning so he was all sort of twitchy and exaggerated. He was trying to be nice.’ She smiled miserably. ‘Out of character . . .’

Morrow nodded. ‘Other than last night, has he been out late?’

‘No. The most he does alone is go for a run but that’s usually teatime or lunchtime and only for half an hour. Other than that he’s here or home.’

‘Two days ago, Tuesday morning at five thirty, where was he?’

‘Asleep next to me,’ said Lucy.

Morrow believed her.

No one by the name of Susan Grierson had tried to leave the country. Thankless had found a photograph of the woman. He had been asking in a butcher’s shop on the square and a customer behind him volunteered the series of photos of the dinner dance that she had taken on her phone. She’d let him skim through until they found one with a woman in the background that everyone agreed was Susan Grierson. Thankless got her to text it to him.

They stood in Simmons’ office and looked at it. Susan Grierson was tall, she was slim, she had a long nose and grey hair cut in a sharp bob.

‘Print that,’ said Morrow and went off to use the phone.

The fire investigation team had set up camp at one of the desks and were swanning about with great purpose.

Boyd Fraser had given her Sanjay Hassan’s mobile number. He picked up at the third ring. Hassan was walking in a very noisy street. When he heard that his friend Boyd was in custody he did them the favour of not going down into Holborn Tube station but staying on the phone.

Morrow messaged him the photo from the envelope in Iain Fraser’s back pocket and he called her back. That was the day of the London Marathon, he shouted over the noise of buses rumbling past. He had run it for the last three years as well and beat that time. Morrow thought he had been cut off.

‘Sorry, “beat that time . . .”?’

‘My TIME,’ he shouted. ‘My
time
is better now. On the marathon.’

‘Oh, your marathon time?’

‘Yes,
my
time.’

She asked him if he could possibly keep speaking to her but go somewhere quiet so that she could hear him properly. He said he could. An abrupt change in atmosphere and soft background music told her he was in a shop.

‘I’m in a
shop
,’ he shouted.

‘OK, Mr Hassan, the woman in the photo, what can you tell me about her?’

‘That’s an ex of mine, Roxanna Fuentecilla. She had kids.’

‘Where did you meet her?’

‘Oh, God, I don’t know. Brown’s, maybe? I worked as a waiter then, part-time, for money while I was training. I think it was Brown’s. We only went out a couple of times. She was Spanish.’

‘Did Boyd know her?’

‘No.’ He seemed quite sure.

‘Who would be able to get a copy of that photo?’

‘Didn’t Boyd have that on his café’s website or something?’

‘Did he?’

‘Still does, I think, doesn’t he? He asked me what I thought of his website and, well, I don’t really like that picture. He beat me that year and he looks really smug. I’m sure he put it up to piss me off. My time’s better now. I don’t think Boyd even runs any more.’

Morrow could hear a shop assistant whispering to ask if he wanted to try that on?

‘Have you seen her since?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You haven’t bumped into each other or been at the same parties or anything?’

He didn’t know what to say to her. ‘Have you ever been to London? It’s pretty big.’