Jigsaw Man (2 page)

Tartaglia let himself out of his flat and opened the front door.

Minderedes stood on the doorstep, dressed even at that hour in a sharply-cut suit
and tie, his face shaved, his short black hair still wet and spiky from the shower.
He looked alert, as though he had been awake for hours. It was ironic that he was
usually the one burning the candle at both ends.

‘Sorry for the noise, boss. Didn't want to rouse the whole street but you weren't
answering.' As he spoke, a window was slammed shut immediately above them.

‘What's up?'

‘Suspicious death in the West End. I need to take you over there now.'

‘Couldn't you have phoned first?'

Minderedes's brown eyes narrowed. ‘I tried. Many times. Some cabbie with an attitude
finally picked up. Said you'd left it on the back seat of his cab a few hours ago.
Said it'd been ringing non-stop ever since.' His eyebrows raised a fraction as he
spoke.

Tartaglia gave him a blank stare.
Fuck
. The phone must have fallen out of his jacket
pocket on the way home, but it was none of Minderedes's business where he had been
or what he had been doing.

‘I told him to drop it over to the office later,' Minderedes continued, still looking
at him inquiringly. ‘Meantime, we need to get going.'

Tartaglia stifled a yawn. ‘OK, give me ten. You want to come in and wait?'

Minderedes shook his head. ‘I'll be outside in the car. I'll call the DI from the
local station and let him know we're on our way.'

Tartaglia closed the front door and retreated back inside. The heating was just kicking
in, taking the chill off the air, the pipes were making a distant tapping sound as
they warmed up. He went into the kitchen, put a pot of strong coffee on the stove
and poured out a large glass of water, which he knocked back in one, along with a
couple of Hedex. In the bathroom, he turned on the shower. Waiting while the water
warmed up, he stood at the basin and splashed some cold water on his face, then ran
his fingers through his hair and over the thick black stubble on his chin, studying
himself in the mirror. Not good. Not good at all. He stuck out his tongue and grimaced
in disgust. Dark circles shadowed his eyes like bruises and his skin looked sallow
in the bathroom light, his summer tan having all but faded. Not much he could do
about that, but if nothing else, even if it cost him an extra few minutes, he would
have to shave. There'd be no chance to do so later on and it made all the difference.
Somehow he had to minimise the obvious signs of a night of next to no sleep. At least
he generally kept himself in good physical shape, even to his critical eye. Give
or take a couple of pounds, he weighed the same as he had done ten years before and
outwardly looked much the same. But some things were deceptive. Ten years on, he
knew he was a different man, although he had no desire to examine or define what
had changed. He put his hand under the shower, checked the temperature and stepped
in, closing his eyes again and letting the water run over him.

Fifteen minutes later he was dressed and ready to go. It was still dark outside,
the pavement slick from overnight rain and the air sharp with cold. Apart from the
odd light on here and there, there was little sign of anyone stirring. Minderedes
was waiting for him a few doors down, the shiny black BMW pulled up across someone's
drive. Tartaglia slid into the
passenger seat and slammed the door shut. Capital
Breakfast burbled through the speakers. Minderedes helped himself to a stick of gum
and put the car into gear.

‘Where are we going?' Tartaglia asked, stretching out his legs as they sped off down
the narrow street towards Shepherd's Bush Road.

‘Some posh new hotel called the Dillon. That's all I know.'

Tartaglia frowned, wondering if he had heard correctly and glanced over at Minderedes.
‘The Dillon, you say.'

‘That's right. It's in the West End. Just off Marylebone High Street. We should be
there in fifteen, if we're lucky.'

Tartaglia said nothing. The Dillon was where he had been only a few hours before.
Thinking it must be some sort of a joke, he glanced again at Minderedes, but his
expression was deadpan as he concentrated on the road in front, driving at his usual
breakneck speed. Minderedes was generally a bad poker player, so maybe it was for
real after all.

‘What's happened?' he asked flatly after a moment, having watched the DC carefully
out of the corner of his eye.

‘Woman found dead in one of the rooms in the early hours.'

‘What, a guest?'

‘I don't know. Steele's been trying to get hold of you. Do you want to use my phone?'

‘In a minute.' Tartaglia slid down a little in his seat, folded his arms and studied
the empty road ahead as they accelerated past Olympia. Before he spoke to his boss,
DCI Carolyn Steele, he needed to get things clearer in his mind. He believed in coincidence
about as much as he believed in the tooth fairy. Things happened for a reason, particularly
in his line of work. Like a conjuror's trick, the apparently inexplicable usually
had a simple explanation, if only you knew where to look. But he found it strange
that he should be going back to the same hotel
only a few hours later to investigate
a murder. Still not quite believing it, refusing to give in to alcohol-fuelled paranoia,
he told himself that it couldn't be anything to do with Jannicke. What were the chances?
She wasn't the only woman in the hotel, by any stretch. There must be a good forty
or so rooms and at least as many guests, plus staff. No point jumping to conclusions.

A wave of nausea hit him and he closed his eyes for a moment, massaging his temples
and the bridge of his nose, as he tried to work out what to do. No doubt he had been
captured on camera somewhere in the hotel. He hated having to explain himself to
anybody, but there was no way around it. He would have to come clean, and as soon
as possible. He pictured the inevitable awkward conversation with Steele, a woman
whose private life, if she had one, never impinged on her work. Hopefully, she would
accept a basic explanation of what he had been doing there and that's as far as it
would go, from the work point of view. Other than being in the wrong place at the
wrong time, he had done nothing against the rules. Why, then, did he feel as though
he had?

From nowhere, a conversation from the previous afternoon with his sister, Nicoletta,
bubbled to the surface. He had been sitting at his desk in the office going through
some paperwork when she called. He could still hear the sound of her voice, heavy
with recrimination, reminding him that he was supposed to be going over to her house
for dinner that evening. He had no recollection of it but she insisted that a definite
arrangement had been made. His niece and nephew were dying to see him. She had asked
some other friends too. Done all the shopping and cooking. He had to admit that
she sounded convincing. Maybe he
had
forgotten. It wouldn't have been the first time.
He had been in court for most of the past week,
giving evidence in a murder trial.
It hadn't been going well and it was preoccupying him. He had tried to tell her that
he had made other arrangements, but she wouldn't listen. Finally, when forced, he
had explained that he was seeing their cousin Gianni and couldn't let him down, and
she had let rip. His being at work had made no difference.

‘You're going out to
celebrate
? . . . Celebrate failure, more like, he's hopeless
. . . you're no better . . . bad influence . . . both need to grow up, get a life
. . . selfish . . . midlife crisis . . .'

Blah, blah, blah. Midlife crisis? Jesus! He and Gianni weren't even forty yet. It
was as if he were still fifteen, under the thumb of his older sister, the woman of
the world who thought she had all the answers. He had held the phone away from his
ear – he had heard it all before – but even from a foot away, the gist was clear.
He caught the word ‘commitment' several times. Or maybe it was ‘commitment-phobe'.
What could he say? ‘Marco? Marco?
Are you there
? Listen to me, will you?' He had
been on the point of replying, telling her to get lost, when he had heard a movement
behind him. Someone was in his office. Swinging around, he had found Nick Minderedes
standing right behind him, mouth puckered as he fought back a grin. It wasn't clear
how long he had been standing there, but he must have heard enough.

Tartaglia looked at Minderedes, whose eyes were still focussed ahead on the road.
He could have no idea what was going through Tartaglia's mind. Nicoletta's words
echoed again: ‘You're not thirty any more . . .' He felt a stab of unaccustomed
guilt then felt like slapping her. What was he supposed to do? Live like a monk?
He didn't need to justify himself to anyone but he had the feeling he was still going
to pay for it.

Three

The Dillon Hotel occupied a stretch of large early Victorian terraced houses set
back behind railings, close to Manchester Square, not far from Marylebone High Street.
The area immediately outside had been cordoned off and Tartaglia and Minderedes
were forced to park a little further down the street and walk back. As they checked
in with a uniformed officer, a short, heavy-set man with thinning salt and pepper
hair detached himself from a group standing by the main entrance. He was wearing
a baggy grey suit that had seen better days and had the tired, puffy eyes of somebody
who had been up all night. He greeted them, introducing himself as DI Johnson from
Marylebone CID.

‘I hear it's one of the guests, a woman. Is that right?' Tartaglia asked, as they
walked with Johnson up the wide stone steps and in through the open front door. He
hoped there was no trace in his voice of the irrational anxiety he felt, again telling
himself that it couldn't be Jannicke.

‘Yes, the victim's female,' Johnson replied, leading them past the white, panelled
reception area and down the main corridor, ‘but we're not sure who she is, or if
she was staying in the hotel. She was strangled up in one of the rooms on the second
floor.'

‘What time was this?'

‘Let's go in here and I'll fill you in,' Johnson said, looking around as though worried
somebody might overhear, even though there was nobody within earshot. They followed
him
into a book-lined snug, with a small bar in one corner. Tartaglia hadn't noticed
it the previous evening, although the leafy courtyard where he had met Jannicke while
having a smoke the night before was just beyond the tall pair of French doors. Johnson
appeared to be using the room as a makeshift office. Two small tables had been pushed
together, with a cordless phone, papers, and several half-drunk cups of black coffee
spread out on the surface.

‘So what exactly happened?' Tartaglia said, growing increasingly impatient.

Johnson shrugged. ‘Some sort of romantic tryst gone wrong, possibly, although she
could easily be a pro. The room's booked in a man's name, Robert Herring. She was
lying on the bed, not wearing much. The man called room service from the room and
ordered a bottle of champagne and some food. When it was brought up, they found her.'

‘Yes, but what time?'

Johnson picked up a piece of paper and peered at some notes. ‘The call came from
the room and was logged on the in-house dining system, as they call it, at twelve-fifty-one
a.m. About half an hour later a waiter goes up to the room and knocks on the door.'

‘So, around one-twenty-five?'

‘Thereabouts.'

Tartaglia stared at him for a moment, hoping his relief was well hidden. At one-twenty-five
he had still been in Jannicke's room and she had certainly been alive, so it couldn't
be her. He had left Jannicke's room a few minutes after two. He remembered looking
at his watch.

‘There's no answer so he lets himself in with a passkey,' Johnson continued. ‘He
sees her on the bed, but there's no sign of the man. It's clear something's wrong
so he calls the duty
manager who comes up and takes a look and decides she's dead.
He then dials 999. The call came in at one-thirty-nine and we got here just after
two.'

As Johnson spoke, it struck Tartaglia that he had actually been there, in the hotel,
at the time of the murder. It was something that had never happened to him before
in connection with his work and he felt a little shaken by it. Had the killer stayed
around afterwards to watch the action, maybe waiting downstairs in the bar until
the police came? It wouldn't be the first time.

He thought back, picturing himself leaving Jannicke's room – nobody in the corridor
outside – then coming down the main stairs and turning into the hall. A few people
were still milling around in the lobby and in the large sitting room beyond. Nothing
particularly noteworthy about that and he didn't remember seeing anybody on their
own, let alone acting oddly. The bar had still been open and an Alex Clare song he
particularly liked had been playing. He was half tempted to stay and listen, but
had felt suddenly very tired. Leaving the building, he hadn't been aware of anything
out of the ordinary. Nobody hanging around outside or behaving suspiciously, no commotion,
no sirens, no blue lights or obvious unmarked cars pulled up outside in the street.
He must have left just before CID got there. It had been raining earlier and he recalled
how pleasantly fresh the air had felt. He had paused to light a cigarette then walked
on, eventually hailing a cab along George Street. As far as he was aware, he had
witnessed nothing relevant to the investigation.

‘How long had Robert Herring been staying?' he asked Johnson.

‘He arrived yesterday evening, just after seven p.m., and appeared to be on his own.
He was given a large double on the
second floor, but he only asked for one key. He
gave a home address in Manchester, which we're checking along with his other details.
There's also a mobile number, but the phone's switched off. The credit card that
was used to secure the room is in a different name. Nobody at reception remembers
seeing the woman or anybody asking for Herring and according to the switchboard no
calls were put through to that room all evening. As I said, she could be a pro, or
a girlfriend – or a guest staying in one of the other rooms, but until we speak to
everybody, we won't know. A lot of the guests are still asleep.'