Die Twice (24 page)

*   *   *

Carla Graham lived on the top floor of an attractive white-brick Edwardian townhouse set in a narrow cul-de-sac that had too many cars parked along it. I paid the sullen-faced cab driver a twenty and wasn't offered any change so, rather than argue, I left it at that and walked up the steps to the front door.

It was five to eight, and the night was cold and clear with an icy wind that found its way right through to the bones. There was a flashy-looking video entry system and I rang the buzzer for number 24C. After a few seconds, Carla's voice came over the intercom.

‘Hello, Dennis,' she said, sounding not too displeased that I'd made it.

I smiled up at the camera and said hello, and she told me to come straight up the stairs to the third floor. The imposing-looking front door clicked open and I stepped gratefully inside. It locked automatically behind me.

She was waiting for me at the top of the stairs with the door open behind her. Although only casually dressed in a black sweatshirt and trackpants, she still looked close to stunning. It was something in the way she carried herself. Hers was a natural beauty, the sort you can tell looks just as good at six a.m. as it does at six p.m. Her hair looked recently washed, and once again I noticed a light aroma of perfume as we shook hands. What she was doing in the grim and worthy world of social work remained as much a mystery as ever.

‘Please come in,' she said with a smile, and led me inside, through the hallway and into the lounge. ‘Take a seat.' She waved her arm, indicating that I could park myself anywhere.

It was a sumptuous room with high ceilings and big bay windows that gave it an airy feel, even on a cold winter's night like this one. The floor was polished wood and partially covered with thick Persian rugs. All the furnishings were obviously expensive yet tasteful, and the walls were painted in a light, pastelly green that shouldn't have suited it but somehow did. Normally I wouldn't have noticed any of this, or very little of it anyway, but this was the type of room that demanded attention.

‘This is very nice,' I said. ‘Maybe you should have been an interior designer.'

‘It's one of my hobbies,' she said. ‘It's a lot of work, and it costs a bit of money, but it's worth it. Now, what do you want to drink?'

There was a half-full glass of red wine on the coffee table next to an expensive-looking bottle. A cigarette burned in the ashtray.

‘Well, if it's not imposing, I wouldn't say no to a drop of that wine.'

‘I'll get you a glass,' she said, and stepped out of the room.

I removed my coat and sat down on a comfortable chair, feeling more than a little awkward. It was an odd situation. On the one hand, I was intensely attracted to Carla Graham, while on the other, I saw her as someone who at the very least was withholding information in a murder inquiry and who, at worst, was a suspect. In the end, I found it difficult to decide whether I'd rather fuck her or nick her. I knew I wanted to do one of the two.

She came back and poured the wine before handing me the glass. Once again I caught the smell of her perfume. I realized, with some horror, that it was giving me the beginnings of a hard-on.

She sat down on the sofa opposite me, picked up her cigarette out of the ashtray, and looked earnestly in my direction, as if she had no idea why I might be there.

‘So, what can I do for you, Dennis? You said there were some things that needed clearing up.'

I cleared my throat. ‘Yeah, there are. Mark Wells, the pimp we've charged, suggested that he once gave one of his shirts – a dark green one with medium-size collars – to Molly Hagger. This would have been a few months ago, and it would have been far too big for her. Did you ever see a shirt like that in Molly's possession?'

She furrowed her brow, thinking about it for a couple of seconds. ‘No, I don't recall anything like that. Why would he have given her a shirt?'

‘I don't know. He just said he gave it to her. I expect he was lying.'

‘Why's it relevant to the case?'

‘It probably isn't. Just something I wanted to check.' She gave me a puzzled look. ‘What might be more relevant, though,' I continued, lighting a cigarette, ‘is why you told me at our first meeting that you didn't know Miriam Fox when I know you do.'

If my statement had shocked her, she didn't show it. She just looked put out that I'd effectively accused her of lying, especially as I was sitting in her comfortable chair enjoying a glass of her good wine. And it was good, too.

‘I don't know what you're talking about, Detective Milne.' No Dennis now. ‘I never knew Miriam Fox.'

I locked eyes with her, trying to stare her down, but she held my gaze. ‘Look, Carla … Miss Graham. There's no point denying it. I've seen Miriam Fox's phone records. There are five calls logged. Three were made by her, two by you.'

Carla shook her head, her face a picture of innocence. ‘There must be some mistake.'

‘There's no mistake. I checked. And I double-checked. You had five conversations with Miriam in the last few weeks of her life, and God knows how many before that. Now, I want to know what those conversations were about, and why you wanted them kept hidden.'

‘Look, I don't have to answer questions like this. I want my lawyer present if you're going to carry on.'

‘Do you? Are you sure about that?'

‘Yes, I'm very sure. Here you are, near enough accusing me of murder in my home—'

‘I'm not accusing you of anything. I'm just trying to tie up any loose ends. At the moment, we're simply two people having a conversation. None of what you say's admissible in a court of law.'

‘So why the hell should I talk about it?'

‘Because if you don't, I'm going to have to go back to my superior and tell him about the phone records. At the moment, I'm the only person who knows anything about them. If your explanation satisfies me that you know nothing about the murder, I'm prepared to keep it that way; if it doesn't, I'm going to tell him anyway. At least this way you get your chance to tell me your side of the story without anyone else being involved.'

‘So you're here unofficially? Like the last time we met?'

‘I'm here in a semi-official capacity. It could go either way. Now, what were those conversations with Miriam Fox about?'

She sighed, as if bowing to the inevitable. ‘I suppose I half thought this was what you were coming round about.'

She finished her cigarette and immediately lit another one, taking a deep drag. I sat watching her impassively, wondering what I was going to hear, and what I was going to do when I'd heard it.

‘Miriam Fox was blackmailing me.'

‘What about?'

‘About an area of my private life.'

‘Go on.'

‘She knew something about me that I would rather have kept secret and she was trying to exploit the situation to her advantage. She was like that.'

‘So I keep hearing. And this area of your private life … what is it exactly?'

She looked me firmly in the eye. ‘I'm what's colloquially called a lady of the night, Detective Milne. I escort middle-aged, usually middle-class, men for money. Sometimes I fuck them.' There was a defiant expression on her face as she spoke, as if she was daring me to criticize her.

I didn't bother rising to the bait. I've heard plenty of worse revelations than that in my time, although I have to say it did catch me off guard. ‘Well, I suppose it stands to reason. You don't get these sorts of furnishings on civil servant's wages.'

‘You're not shocked that a person in my position is involved in something like that?'

I smiled and took a decent-sized sip from my wine, thinking that this was something of a surreal moment. ‘People in positions a lot higher than yours are involved in that type of thing, though usually as customers rather than suppliers, so, no, I'm not shocked. Is this a regular thing, this escort work?'

She nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose it is. I tend to do a couple of nights a week, sometimes more.'

‘Is that what you were doing last night?'

‘None of your business.'

‘So how did some low-level street girl like Miriam Fox find out about your extra-curricular activities? I presume you weren't … moving in the same circles.'

‘Let's just say she found out.'

‘How did she know who you were?'

‘Two or three years ago, when she first ran away, she was arrested for soliciting and ended up at Coleman House. She didn't stop long, a couple of weeks at most. She was a very difficult girl to handle and she seemed to have a hatred of authority. I think there might have been problems at home that had helped to shape her personality, but she never talked about them. In fact, about the only time she did talk was to throw abuse. There were quite a few confrontations with staff, including myself, and then one day she decided she'd had enough and walked out. Like a lot of the girls do.'

‘Wasn't it a bit dangerous to suggest to us when we first interviewed you that you didn't know her?'

She shifted in her seat and put one leg up on the sofa. It was a vaguely provocative pose, although she didn't seem to notice it. ‘Not really. None of the current staff were there, when she was there, and originally she gave a false name when we took her in. It would have been difficult to check up on it, and why would you have bothered?'

Which was fair enough, I suppose. ‘And when was the next time you saw her?'

‘But you said she was blackmailing you.'

‘She was. Look, I'd really rather not go into details, Mr Milne.'

‘I'm sure you wouldn't. But it's important I know.'

‘So you can calculate whether I'm telling the truth or not?'

I nodded. ‘Basically, yes.'

She picked up her wine and took a large drink, as if fortifying herself. ‘Look, I'll be honest with you. I don't actually know how she found out. I can guess, but that's about it.' I waited in silence for her to continue. ‘Let me start with how it works. My clients tend to be businessmen, men with plenty of spare money. The usual procedure is for us to go somewhere for dinner, then back to a hotel, or their place, for the rest. That way, I keep control of the proceedings, and don't get myself into any situation where I'm unnecessarily vulnerable.'

‘That stands to reason.'

‘A few weeks ago, though, one of my regular clients – a high-powered lawyer, and someone I've been seeing for several years – was caught kerbcrawling in King's Cross. You might have heard about it.'

I nodded, remembering the case vaguely, though not the name of the punter concerned. Kerbcrawling wasn't big news these days, even when it involved such a richly deserving case as a wealthy lawyer.

‘Apparently, it was the second time it had happened to him. He'd been caught doing the same thing a few years ago in Paddington.' She shook her head, as if annoyed with herself for getting involved with someone so unreliable. ‘I was worried, I didn't need that sort of hassle, not the sort that could easily compromise me. Afterwards, I went round to his place and confronted him. I asked how often he did it and he swore that both times had been one-offs. He was obviously ashamed about it. He was also obviously lying. No-one's that unlucky. So I asked some of the girls in the home if they knew anything about him, whether he'd ever propositioned any of them, more as a matter of conversation than anything else. It was easy enough to do. The case had made some headlines in the local paper, so people seemed quite happy to talk about it.'

‘And?'

‘And several of the older ones had had some involvement with him. One had even got to go back to his apartment in Hampstead Heath, the same place I'd visited on many occasions. Apparently, he also liked to do it without a condom, which might have been one of the attractions of using street girls. They don't tend to be so fussy. So I ended our arrangement with him straight away. I'm not interested in dealing with people who lie to me and who have such a dubious attitude to the sexual health of both themselves and others.'

‘Then two, maybe three days after I'd confronted him, I got a telephone call at Coleman House. It was Miriam Fox. She told me she knew that I'd been seeing the lawyer, and that I'd been getting paid for my time.' She sighed. ‘As I said, I couldn't honestly say exactly how she found out. I think he must have used her services a number of times, so she'd almost certainly been at his apartment at one time or another. Maybe she found some evidence that I'd been there.'

‘Like what?'

‘I told you, I don't know. Maybe she was leaving one night when I was arriving; maybe she was watching the place and saw me there. You know what some of these street girls are like: they go to a place, then tell their pimp how many valuables the punter's got, then they plan to rob it. She could have been surveying the apartment for her pimp, and saw me.' She shrugged her shoulders hopelessly. ‘The point is, she knew. That's all I can tell you.”

‘What did she want from you?' I asked.

‘The same as most blackmailers. Money. She told me that if I didn't pay her five thousand pounds, she'd expose me to the local authority and the newspapers.'

‘That must have given you a bit of a shock.'

‘It did. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. It just seemed so … unfortunate.'

‘What did you say to her?'

‘There were other people in the room with me at the time so I couldn't really say a lot. I got a number off her and told her I'd phone her back. When I did call her back, she repeated her demand for the money. I told her I didn't have that sort of cash and we had a bit of an argument. Eventually she said she'd settle for two thousand. For the time being. Those were her words. For the time being. I repeated that it was going to take a while. She gave me a week.'