Business of Dying (10 page)

Brave words, too. Whether they'd be matched
by deeds or not, though, remained to be seen.

The remainder of the meeting was spent organizing who was going to be doing what, and took about ten minutes, including questions. Welland was going to be leading the raid on Mark Wells's place as soon as the paperwork came through, which annoyed me a little bit. Since it had been me the bastard had hit, I wanted to be on the team which brought him in, but I suppose at the same time I also wanted to find out more about Molly, and it was going to be difficult to do both.

It was 9.20 when Malik and I left to go round to the Coleman House care home. Times were hard in our division of the Metropolitan Police and budgets tight, so we decided to save the taxpayers some money by taking the bus. In the end, though, it would probably have been quicker to walk. An accident on the Holloway Road had snarled up the traffic and we were stuck in it, stopping and starting, for what seemed like hours.

I told Malik about my dream as we sat there watching the world go by, or not as the case might be. It had genuinely rattled me. 'You know, I know it sounds stupid, but it was almost like some sort of premonition.'

He couldn't resist a grin. 'What? You think Les Dennis might be in danger?'

'I'm serious, Asif. This wasn't like any dream I've ever had. You know me. I'm not superstitious, and
I'm not spiritual or anything like that. I'm not even a Christian. So it's nothing to do with my state of mind. It was just it was so vivid that when I woke up I was absolutely positive this Molly girl was dead.'

'Explain the dream to me again.'

I went through it all with him, missing out the details of the dead customs men, and whispering so that none of the other passengers, a mixture of old grannies and foreign students, could hear what I was saying. I didn't want them thinking I was some sort of nutter.

By the time I'd finished, we'd travelled the sum total of about thirty yards.

Malik shook his head and gave me the sort of look that suggested he thought it was grossly unfair that he should be taking orders from someone with such a tenuous grip on reality. 'Look, Sarge, I wouldn't worry about it. You know, a dream's just a dream. The chances are this girl's all right.'

'I hope so. I didn't like the sound of the fact that she hasn't been seen for a couple of weeks.'

'Only by the local streetwalkers. Maybe she's changed. Maybe she's realized that prostitution and drug addiction is no way to lead a life.'

I laughed. 'Do you really believe that?'

'Well, it's unlikely . . .'

'Dead right it is.'

'But it's possible. And anyway, maybe she's just plying her trade somewhere else. There's got to be
more chance of that than of her being dead in a ditch somewhere.'

Malik said these last few words a bit too loudly and a couple of people turned round and gave us funny looks.

'Yeah, you're right,' I said. 'You've convinced me.'

But he hadn't.

We exited the bus on Junction Road when it became obvious that we weren't getting anywhere and took the tube, which thankfully was still running pretty much as normal. It was 10.20 when we got out of Camden station. It was slowly turning into a sunny winter's day, so we walked the rest of the way.

Coleman House was a large redbrick Victorian building on a road just off the high street. One of the third-floor windows was boarded up, but other than that it looked quite well kept. A couple of kids, a boy and a girl, sat on the wall in front of the entrance, smoking and looking shifty. The girl was wearing a very short skirt and a huge pair of black platform-soled trainers that, set against her spindly legs, made her look mutated. They both looked at us as we approached and the boy sneered. 'Are you coppers?' he said.

'That's right,' I told him, stopping in front of them. 'We're investigating a murder.'

'Oh yeah? Whose, then?' he asked, looking interested. Morbid little bastard.

'Well, why don't we start with you telling me your name?'

'What's it got to do with me? I haven't done nothing.'

'You can't make him give you his name,' said the girl confidently, looking me in the eye. I put her at about thirteen, and she would have been quite pretty except for the angry cluster of whiteheads around her mouth and the excessive use of cheap make-up. Thirteen, and she was already a barrack-room lawyer. I had a feeling they were all going to be like that in a place like this.

'I'm not trying to,' I told her. 'I'm just interested in knowing who I'm talking to.'

'If you want to talk to him, you need an appropriate adult present.'

'So, when did you graduate from law school then, young lady?'

She was about to come up with some other smart-alec answer but we were interrupted before she could get it out.

'Can I help you, gentlemen?'

The speaker was an attractive white female, early forties. Quite tall - about five feet nine - and, from the sound of her voice, someone in authority.

I turned in her direction and smiled, opening fire with the charm. 'I hope so. My name's DS Milne and this is my colleague, DC Malik. We're here as part of an ongoing inquiry.'

She managed a weak smile. 'Really, what now?'

'It's a murder investigation.'

'Oh.' She looked taken aback. 'Was there any reason why you were talking to the children?'

'I was just introducing myself.'

'No you weren't,' said the girl. 'He was trying to find out who we were.'

'Well, I'll take over from here, Anne. Aren't you and John meant to be with Amelia?'

'We're just having a quick smoke,' said the girl, not bothering to look up.

'Perhaps you'd better come inside, gentlemen, and we'll talk in there.'

I nodded. 'Of course. And you are?'

'Carla Graham. I manage Coleman House.'

'Well, then, please lead the way,' I said, and we followed her through the double doors and into the building.

The place had the unwelcoming feel of a hospital: high ceilings; linoleum floors; health-related posters on the walls warning against shared needles, unwanted pregnancy, and a whole host of other obstacles to a happy and fulfilling life. And there was a nasty reek of disinfectant in the air. Dr Barnardo's this wasn't.

Carla Graham had a spacious office at the other end of the building. She ushered us in and we took seats facing her across her sizeable desk. There were more doom-mongering posters in here as
well. One showed a huge photograph of a young child, no more than five, covered in bruises. The caption above it read: Stamp on Child Abuse. Below the photograph it added: Not on Children.

'So, what's happened?' Carla asked. 'I hope none of our clients are involved.'

'Clients, meaning children?' It was Malik asking the question.

'That's right.'

'We don't really know, which is why we're here.' I then told her about the discovery of the body the previous day.

'I didn't hear anything about that,' she said. 'Who was the poor girl?'

'Her name was Miriam Fox.' Carla's expression didn't hint at recognition, so I continued. 'She was an eighteen-year-old prostitute, a runaway.'

She shook her head and sighed. 'What a waste. Not a shock, because the potential for this sort of thing to happen's there all the time. But a terrible waste, all the same.'

Malik leaned forward in his seat and I immediately got the feeling that he didn't much like Carla Graham. 'I assume you didn't know her?'

'I don't know the name, no.'

I took the photo of Miriam posing for the camera out of my suit pocket and passed it over to her. 'This is her. We think it's a recent picture.'

She studied it for a long moment before handing
it back to me. As I took it back I noticed she had graceful hands with well-kept, unvarnished nails.

'She looks vaguely familiar. I may have seen her before with one of the clients, but I couldn't say for sure.'

'We've been talking to some of the other girls who work the same area as Miriam did and they say she was particularly friendly with a girl called Molly Hagger. They said that Molly lived here at Coleman House.'

'Lived is the right word. Molly was a client of ours for some months but she walked out about three weeks ago now and we haven't seen her since.'

'You don't seem too worried about that, Ms Graham,' Malik said, only just about concealing his dismay that she should take the loss of one of her 'clients' so lightly.

'Mr Malik,' she said, turning towards him, 'Coleman House is home to twenty-one children aged between twelve and sixteen, all of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds and all of whom have behavioural problems of varying degrees of seriousness. They are placed here by the council and we try to do our best for them, but the law is not on our side. If they want to go out at night, they go out. If I or any of my staff lay a hand on them to try to stop them leaving, they can have assault charges laid against us just like that, and
believe me they'd do it. Put bluntly, these kids do what they like because they know they can do what they like. Half of them can't write their names, but they all know their rights inside out. And often, I'm afraid, they simply decide they've had enough of us and walk out the door. Sometimes they come back; sometimes they don't.'

'Don't you try to look for them?' Malik persisted.

She looked at him in the way a teacher looks at a particularly foolish pupil. 'We're extremely understaffed. It's hard enough keeping control of the ones who want to be here without worrying about the ones who don't. And where would we look for her? She could be anywhere.'

'Did you report her missing?' I asked.

'I informed Camden Social Services and they will have informed the police, but I didn't report it myself. I didn't see much point.'

'How old is Molly Hagger?'

'Thirteen.'

I shook my head. 'It's a young age to be out on the streets.' It was. Far too young.

She turned to me now. 'Mr . . . ?'

'Milne.'

'Mr Milne, I can understand if you think I'm not taking Molly's leaving seriously enough, I can understand both of your concerns, but try to look at it from my point of view. I've been a careworker for a long time now, and I've tried to help a lot of kids
make a better life for themselves. But the older I get, the harder it becomes. You see, a lot of the time these kids don't want to be helped. They get plenty of offers, I can promise you, but most of them just want to live fast, take drugs, drink. They're independent, but independent in all the wrong ways. They can't stand any form of authority but often they aren't capable of looking after themselves. They're not all like that of course, some do actually want to listen and learn, and they're the ones I find myself gravitating towards. But if I've tried to help someone, and they keep turning their noses up at that help, then eventually I have to stop.'

'And was Molly Hagger like that? Was she one of the ones who turned her nose up?'

'Molly came from a very difficult background. She was sexually abused from the age of four by both her mother and her mother's boyfriend. She was taken into care at the age of eight and she's been in it ever since.'

I thought of the girl in the photograph and felt mildly sick. 'Jesus . . .'

'It's far more common than most people think. You should know that, Mr Milne.'

'It doesn't make it any easier.'

'No, you're right, it doesn't. But, to answer your question, Molly wasn't one of our more difficult girls. She didn't resent her carers in the way some
clients do, but she had a very different outlook on life that was a direct result of the experiences she'd suffered.'

'What do you mean?'

'Well, she had a very casual and very adult view of sex. She had male and female sexual partners from a very young age, and from the age of ten she was charging for her services to certain individuals.'

'Has she run away before?'

'She's walked out on a number of occasions and not been seen for some time. The last time of any significance was about a year ago when she took up with an older man. She ended up living with him for several months before he got tired of her and threw her out. That's when she came back here.'

'So you think that might have happened this time?'

'I would think, knowing Molly, that that's a very likely scenario.'

I nodded, more optimistic now that she was still alive. 'We're going to need to speak to all your other, er, clients, and the rest of the staff to see if anyone else knew Miriam Fox and might be able to give us any relevant information.'

'The majority of the clients aren't here at the moment. Most of them attend local schools, or are supposed to anyway. Those who are in the building now are the ones who have special learning needs,
and require one-to-one tuition. They might not be too helpful.'

They weren't. There were seven of them altogether and we interviewed them one at a time in Carla Graham's office, with her present. Two refused to answer any questions at all with anything more than yes or no, and of the rest only one claimed to have heard of Miriam Fox, and that was Anne Taylor, the youthful legal expert I'd met earlier. She said that she'd known Molly 'a bit' and that Molly and Miriam had been friends, even though Miriam was older. Anne had seen Molly with Miriam a couple of times while out in the evenings (she denied knowing that either of them had been prostitutes), but claimed she'd never really spoken to Miriam beyond the usual pleasantries. 'She seemed a bit stuck up,' she told us. 'She thought she was better than anyone else.'