Jigsaw Man (11 page)

‘He was paroled just over six months ago and hasn't been seen or heard of since,'
Chang continued.

‘Who are the next of kin?'

‘According to the file, there's a wife in White City. The local station is sending
someone round to break the news, as we speak. Her address is on the back page.'

‘Thanks. I'll go and see her now. Any news on the other body parts?'

‘Dave is still chasing.' Chang jerked his head in the direction of Dave Wightman,
phone cradled under his ear.

‘I'll be back for the meeting later on. Any news on the Dillon case?'

‘Haven't heard anything, they're all out.' Chang hesitated before adding, ‘How's
Sam?'

Tartaglia stared at Chang, knowing that it was a loaded question, but Chang's broad
face gave nothing away. ‘She's not good, as you can imagine. You should go and see
her.'

Chang nodded vaguely. ‘I'll leave it a few days, let her have some space. Send her
my love.' He swung back to his computer.

It was well known that Chang and Sam Donovan had had some sort of relationship before
she left the Met, and it had possibly continued for a while after, although he had
also heard via the grapevine that she had broken it off and that Chang had been upset
about it. He had no idea why Donovan hadn't stuck with Chang. He was tall, nice-looking
and bright, and had the settled air of someone comfortable in his own skin with nothing
to prove. From a male perspective, he came across as a decent sort and interesting
to talk to, although Tartaglia
had long since given up thinking he could anticipate
what a woman, and particularly Sam Donovan, would find attractive in another man.
As far as he could tell, Chang was a much better bet for a long-term relationship
than most, himself included, but Donovan had never seen sense on that score. He remembered
a time when she had been edging towards some sort of involvement with another policeman,
Simon Turner, a dysfunctional, difficult man and a serial adulterer. He had been
totally unable to fathom what had attracted Donovan to Turner. At least Turner was
well out of the picture, but it was a shame that things hadn't worked out with Chang.
He wondered how Chang felt about it, and if Chang minded Donovan staying in his flat.
No doubt Chang wasn't happy with the idea; he himself wouldn't have been, in Chang's
place.

‘Call her,' he said firmly to Chang, before turning to go. ‘She needs her friends
around her.' He knew it was a disingenuous remark, but what else could he say? The
more people who went to visit Sam the better, and he was sure Chang was man enough
to cope.

Eleven

‘I still can't believe it,' Nicola Dawson said, her swollen eyes focussed on Sam
Donovan. ‘It doesn't seem real. I mean, I only saw her two days ago and she . . .'
Tears began again.

Sam Donovan nodded, biting her lip as she reached out to Nicola and clasped her hand
across the table, squeezing it for a moment. The bare contact gave her more comfort
than anything that anybody had said or done in the past twenty-four hours. But what
could she say? Nothing could make it any better for either of them.

They were sitting by the window of a Starbucks near Baker Street tube. Large patches
of condensation obscured the glass, providing a welcome screen from the people hurrying
past in the dark street on their way home. Nobody would probably give a damn about
two women crying together in a café, but Donovan was happy to have some privacy.
Small and plump, with shoulder-length wavy brown hair, Nicola had been Claire's
assistant for over ten years and knew her better than most. She was a single parent
and Claire had been godmother to her six-year-old daughter. They lived in Neasden
and Nicola had agreed to meet Donovan on her way home from the office in Chancery
Lane. She had said she needed to be home by seven but, like Donovan herself, she
didn't appear to be in a hurry, welcoming the opportunity to talk about Claire.
Donovan wondered whether they would have been better to go to the pub and have a
few drinks, but in her current state she knew coffee was a more sensible option,
particularly as she was going to see Steele afterwards.

‘Did they say anything this morning about what had happened?' she asked Nicola after
a moment. Detectives – people she knew and had once worked with – had been into Claire's
office to speak to everybody there who had worked directly with her sister. It felt
odd referring to them so impersonally, to think of it all in motion while she was
on the outside, out of the loop when it mattered more than ever before. But it was
something she was going to have to get used to.

Nicola blew her nose loudly. ‘They said very little. There was more in the
Evening
Standard
than what they told us.'

‘I haven't seen a paper but I know she went to meet a man in a hotel,' Donovan said,
not caring if it was supposed to be generally known. She was still struggling to
remember the few things Tartaglia had told her the night before, some of the details
temporarily lost in the fog left over from sleep and pills. ‘Do you have any idea
who it might be? Last I remember, she was complaining about never meeting anyone
she fancied, but that was back in the summer.'

Nicola shook her head. ‘They asked that. I haven't a clue who he is, but I knew there
was someone that she'd started seeing. I took a message from him a couple of times.
His name was Robert.'

‘It's a false name. Do you have any idea where she met him?'

Nicola looked down at her cold, un-drunk mug of coffee for a moment. ‘It wasn't the
Internet or speed-dating, or anything like that. He sent her flowers – a huge bunch
of lilies and roses, with lots of shiny paper and red ribbon. I remember thinking
he must've spent a fortune when I went to collect them from reception.'

‘Do you remember the name of the company they came from?'

‘The police asked me that, but I don't remember, just the colour of the ribbon. I
gave them to her when she got back from a meeting and she looked so surprised. Really
bowled over. I asked her what was the special occasion and at first she seemed a
bit embarrassed. But then she told me she had met some bloke, and that it had been
something really funny, like in the movies; he'd bumped into her in the street –
walked straight into her while he was talking on his phone. He was carrying a takeaway
cup of coffee and he spilled some on her sleeve. It burned her arm and made her drop
what she was carrying.'

‘Where was this?'

‘Right in front of the office.'

‘So he works nearby?'

Nicola stared at her blankly. ‘Why do you say that?'

She had probably had more than enough for one day and Donovan was sorry to have to
keep probing, but she needed to find out everything Nicola knew. ‘If you're carrying
a cup of coffee you can't be going far,' Donovan said. ‘I mean, you wouldn't go on
the tube or get into a taxi with a cup of coffee, would you? And it's double yellows
for miles around there so he couldn't have been in a car or a van, unless he had
a driver.'

‘I suppose you're right, but she never said.'

Nicola still looked dazed and Donovan made a mental note to keep her thoughts to
herself. ‘Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. Please go on with what happened.'

Nicola took a deep breath. ‘Well, as I said, when he knocked into her, she dropped
some things and he helped her pick them up. He was really apologetic and asked her
where she worked and then he sent her the flowers.'

‘She must have told him her name?'

‘I guess so. She said she knew it was all a bit of a cliché but it was actually really
romantic. Cliché or not, who does that sort of thing these days?'

Who indeed, Donovan thought. It was all sounding like some cheesy rom-com starring
Jennifer Aniston. Like most City lawyers, Claire's working day was a long one and
she often used to take papers home at the weekend. There was little room for a personal
life, something she had complained about, although she had loved her job too much
to make a change. As Donovan knew all too well from her own experience, the lack
of a personal life could drive even the sanest and most independent of women to
take risks and do some very stupid things. If nothing else, it would have made Claire
so much more susceptible to somebody peddling a bit of old-fashioned romance. Had
the coffee incident been a set-up? If so, what was it about Claire that had made
him target her? Or was she being too cynical; had it, in fact, just been a genuine
accident, with a fatal conclusion? Whichever the case, he had to have had charm and,
knowing Claire, to have been decent-looking, to have succeeded in developing things
further.

‘Did she say what he looked like?'

‘No. But I could tell she found him very attractive, although she didn't really speak
of him much after that.'

‘Did you say all of this to the detective you saw this morning?'

Nicola nodded and dabbed at her eyes with a clean tissue. ‘I'm sorry, but I'd best
be going now,' she said after a moment. ‘I'd love to stay and talk all night but
Olivia's going to be wondering if I'm ever coming home. It's the last thing I want
to do after what's happened, but I said I'd take her to this fireworks party. My
mum's looking after her but she can't cope with all the bangs.'

* * *

Tartaglia walked along the Uxbridge Road until he came to The Dog 'n' Bone. He had
just been to see Finnigan's ex-wife, Tasha, who seemed very pleased to learn of his
death. Parallels with Lisa English sprang easily to mind. According to Tasha, the
last time she had seen Finnigan was just after he got out of jail six months before.
He had appeared on her doorstep out of the blue asking for money, but she had sent
him away and threatened to call the police if he didn't leave her alone. She said
she had no idea what had happened to him after that, but suggested Tartaglia talk
to an old friend of Finnigan's, a man named Mick Chapman, who lived not far away.
She said she thought her ex had been staying with him when he came out of prison,
and that at that hour, Chapman was usually to be found in his local pub.

It was one of a dying breed of old-fashioned boozers, with patterned carpet, dark
furniture and mirrors plastering the green walls. A large, middle-aged woman stood
behind the counter, polishing glasses. Tartaglia asked for Chapman and she gestured
towards a man in a far corner of the room, seated at a table beside a couple of slot
machines. His eyes were fixed on a TV on the opposite wall, which was showing a Premier
League match, and he didn't seem to notice Tartaglia approach.

‘Are you Mick Chapman?' Tartaglia asked.

‘Yes,' the man said flatly, eyes still on the screen. ‘Who wants to know?' He was
thin and wiry, with short mousy brown hair, and wore paint-stained jeans, a red polo-neck
and an old denim jacket.

‘I'm Detective Inspector Mark Tartaglia.' Chapman looked round and he held out his
warrant card. ‘I'm afraid I've got some bad news. Your friend Jake—'

Alarm filled his large blue eyes and he got to his feet, hands hovering at his sides.
‘Have you found him?' He looked to be roughly the same age as Jake Finnigan, although
based on what
Tartaglia had seen of Finnigan's file, he was a good ten inches shorter
and half his weight.

‘Please sit down, Mr. Chapman,' Tartaglia said, pulling up a chair. ‘I'm afraid Jake
Finnigan's dead.' He waited for the words to sink in, watching Chapman's reaction
closely.

Chapman sank back down into his chair, but said nothing, glancing away again towards
the TV. After a moment, his face turned red and his lips puckered as though he was
about to cry, but no tears came. He gave a heavy, broken sigh and took a large gulp
of beer. ‘I knew it. I knew something were wrong,' he muttered, then looked up at
Tartaglia. ‘What happened?'

‘He was murdered,' Tartaglia said, still watching him. Chapman seemed unaffected
by the words, as though he had assumed from the start that it wasn't an accident.
He had the greyish, papery skin of a heavy smoker and Tartaglia noticed his fingers
were heavily stained and twitching with nervous energy. He recognised the signs.
‘Would you like to go outside for a smoke?'

Chapman nodded. He picked up his glass and followed Tartaglia outside to the street.

‘I'm sorry but I need to ask you some questions,' Tartaglia said, as Chapman took
a tobacco tin out of his pocket and set about rolling a cigarette. ‘When did you
last see him?'

‘Months ago. He were waiting for me when I come home. He were just out of the nick
that day and needed a place to stay. Tasha wouldn't have him back home, so I said
he could kip on my sofa 'til he got himself sorted.'

‘You say you knew something must have happened. What do you mean?'

Chapman shrugged and lit the cigarette, taking a long, deep drag before answering.
‘He went out one evening and he never come home.'

‘Where was he going?'

‘To meet some bird.'

‘You mean his wife?'

‘Tasha? No bloody way. No, it was someone new.'

‘You're sure of that?'

Chapman scratched his head. ‘Yeah, I think so. Anyways, he left his stuff in my flat
and when he didn't come back, I knew something was up.'

‘Did he mention the woman's name?'

He looked up at Tartaglia surprised, as though the thought had only just occurred
to him. ‘No. Don't think he did.'

‘What else do you remember?'

‘We was sat watching the telly and having a beer. Then he gets a text from this bird
– now I think about it, I'm sure he said she's Russian – there's these texts going
back and forwards for about half an hour, and he's laughing and stuff at whatever
she's saying.'