Jigsaw Man (21 page)

Hannah Bird smiled and shifted awkwardly in her seat. ‘Yes, please.'

It would be her third and this time he would slip in a double. He was dying to ask
her all sorts of questions about the investigation, but he didn't want to rouse
any suspicions. First he needed to get some more drink down her. They were in a pub
on the Hammersmith side of Hammersmith Bridge. The walls were plastered with memorabilia
and photos of the Oxford and Cambridge annual boat race and it was a touristy spot,
with a terrace overlooking the river at the back. It was easy to blend in amongst
the transient crowd and it was also far enough away from her office, he hoped, not
to bump into any of her work colleagues. Although, even if fucking Mark Tartaglia
walked in, he doubted the detective would recognise him. A lot had happened in a
year and he looked nothing like his former self. At the moment he could easily pass
for the old photo of Kit in Kit's battered passport.

He went up to the bar and ordered their drinks, casting a quick glance behind him
at Hannah. Legs crossed, handbag tight to her side as though she was scared somebody
might nick it, she stared blankly ahead of her. He wondered what she was thinking.
She probably couldn't believe her luck. She was wearing a short, patterned velvet
skirt and clumpy heels, which emphasised her thick legs and ankles. Piano legs, as
his grandmother would have called them. Thank God her top half was
relatively well
covered up, but her make-up was crude, as though she was unaccustomed to wearing
it, the heavy foundation only highlighting her bad skin. He assumed she had changed
at work – he couldn't imagine her going about her day job looking like such a tart.
She also reeked of some disgusting perfume. But the thought of her making such an
effort for him made him smile. The plain ones were always the easiest; they were
always so grateful for the attention. It was going to be a doddle.

He had met her only two weeks before, after trawling the handful of pubs close to
the murder squads' offices in Barnes, posing as somebody on his own, new to the west
London area, with a paperback and a pub guidebook to keep him company. He could spot
the police contingent a mile off amongst the locals and after only a couple of false
starts he had got talking to her. That she worked directly for Tartaglia – what were
the odds of there being more than one detective inspector with an Italian name working
out of Barnes? – and was new to the team had been a massive bonus. Lady Luck had
smiled on him again. He was careful to play it cool, not probing her with any direct
questions, and eventually he had asked her out. Two days later, she had phoned him
to say she couldn't make it. ‘They were on call.' When she had explained what this
meant, he could barely contain his elation. It was then simply a matter of timing,
getting all the cards to fall nicely into place.

‘You know, you don't look at all like a policewoman,' he said, sitting down a few
moments later with their drinks.

She smiled awkwardly. ‘What do you mean?'

He almost choked at the obviousness of it all before answering, ‘Well, if I knew
you better, I'd pay you a compliment here, but I don't want you to think I'm cheap.'
Noticing the colour rise to her cheeks, he grinned. ‘I think I'd better shut up.
Here's to you and good detecting.'

Twenty-two

Tartaglia ordered Steele's coke and brought it over with his whisky to where she
was sitting, tucked away in a far corner of the room. He sat down and reported what
Melinda Knight had just said to him.

When he finished, she sighed. ‘God, that's all we need – although with the press
briefing tomorrow first thing, she's only a few hours ahead of the rest of them.
I'll see if I can get someone to lean on her editor and find out exactly how much
she knows. We may have to persuade them to hold back some of the details. You think
she may be onto something with this third fire theory?'

‘I don't know. I really couldn't tell if she actually knew something and wanted
to know if we were on the same track, or if she was just trying to find out if we
had anything. Obviously, we searched for anything similar after the Sainsbury's fire,
but post today's events, maybe we should look again at the search criteria and also
widen the area. I'll get Justin onto it tomorrow. What's the news from Hendon?'

‘The usual horse-trading. Discussions are still going on and I've got to go back
to the office for a conference call in half an hour. But last I heard we're likely
to run the two investigations in tandem, with Alan Marshall taking an overall supervisory
role.'

‘That sounds good,' Tartaglia said, relieved that for the time being he could concentrate
on the London end and let Ramsey and his team get on with their part of the investigation.
Marshall was Steele's direct superior and a man known for cutting through red tape
and bureaucracy. With him in overall charge, it would make for clearer reporting
lines, with the ultimate decision-making kept in London, just in case of a problem.
It was by far the best option. He quickly outlined what Ramsey had just told him.

‘I also spoke to Chapman earlier,' he added. ‘He confirmed that Finnigan definitely
had a thing about Russian women and that he had apparently talked quite freely about
getting a Russian bride off the Internet when he got out. According to Chapman, some
bloke Finnigan had met in jail had done just that, although the woman had then taken
him to the cleaners and run off with somebody else while he was inside.'

She nodded thoughtfully. ‘So it was widely known.'

‘Yes, although Chapman said he thought it was all a bit of a joke, that Finnigan
was just trying to big himself up. He didn't think Finnigan would actually do anything
about it.'

‘But he didn't have to, did he? Somebody else fixed it all up for him, made it nice
and easy, handed it to him on a plate. Somebody who knew exactly what appealed to
his fantasies.'

Tartaglia took a mouthful of whisky and nodded agreement.

‘Whoever's doing this is certainly clever,' Steele said. ‘He knows how to pull people's
strings, yet he had to use Tatyana to get to Finnigan. He couldn't do it himself,
for some reason.'

‘Finnigan was six-foot-four and a real bruiser. Maybe he didn't fancy getting too
close.

It may be as simple as that,' Tartaglia replied. ‘Although why go to so much trouble?
Perhaps he enjoyed the game as much as the killing. Whatever it is, he's known to
Finnigan in some capacity and is somebody Finnigan wouldn't normally trust, otherwise
he could have lured the man to his death himself.
Sharon's following up on Finnigan,
starting with his contacts in jail. Given the sort of man he was, he must have had
quite a few enemies.'

‘But surely they'd be more likely to slit his throat in a dark alley than do something
so subtle and convoluted?' asked Steele.

‘Maybe. We need to find somebody who had the motive, the nous and the patience to
see it through. Somebody must really have hated him.'

‘What about John Smart?'

‘No connection so far between him and Finnigan and no sign he was lured anywhere.
The Missing Person investigation looked at his phone and email records and there
was nothing to suggest any form of a meeting. He just goes out one morning on his
bicycle, to the shops or his allotment, or whatever, and disappears off the face
of the earth. Like Richard English. If English is behind all of this, why bother
to plant his wallet at the scene of the fire? So far, there's nothing to link any
of the other victims to him. He could have stayed quietly out of the picture and
nobody would ever have thought of him.'

‘Perhaps it's a double bluff and that's what he wants us to think,' Steele offered.

That seemed implausible to Tartaglia, but he'd long ago learned that it was a mistake
to look at things too logically where murder was concerned. ‘As of this evening,
we've got access to his accounts, both business and private. A forensic accountant
will be starting in the morning.' He finished his whisky. Pub measures, even doubles,
didn't go far. ‘It still doesn't make sense to me,' he said, after a moment.

‘You mean Richard English being alive?'

‘Yes. I'm trying to see a pattern in all of this, but so far I can't find one. Richard
English disappeared two years ago and is
never heard of again until his wallet turns
up at the scene of the first fire. A year later, John Smart disappears. Part of his
body turns up in said fire. As for the other victims, there's Jake Finnigan, who
went missing six months ago, plus an elderly woman and a youngish man, both so far
unidentified. The lab confirmed that the body parts from the Sainsbury's fire had
been frozen, so whoever's doing this is collecting them for a purpose.'

‘Finnigan was in jail two years ago and only got out a few weeks before he went missing,
so maybe that's why he wasn't killed earlier.'

‘Yes, but was this planned from the beginning, or did the killer improvise as he
went along?'

They were silent for a few moments, pondering the situation, then Steele asked,
‘What about the tramp who used to hang around Sainsbury's?'

‘We've tried all the usual places, but no sign of him. The timing of his disappearance
is odd. I spoke to the manager of Sainsbury's, who told me the man had been kipping
down outside the bakery most nights for about a month once the weather turned cold.
Then, around the time of the fire, he disappears.'

‘He
could
be Richard English . . .'

‘Yes, or possibly the killer, or maybe they're one and the same. But if so, why bother
to hang around Sainsbury's, in character as it were, for a whole month. It's one
of many things that don't add up.'

Donovan emerged from Hammersmith Tube station into the fresh night air and started
to walk along Shepherd's Bush Road. She had gone to meet Sally, a close friend of
Claire's, for a drink and had ended up having supper at her flat. It had been
difficult
talking about Claire and she had learned nothing of any interest in terms of the
investigation. Sally had been as kind and considerate as anybody could be, but it
was all a bit awkward. The last thing Donovan wanted was her pity, but there was
worse to come. Sally's flatmate had come home towards the end of the evening. It
was clear from her reaction on entering the flat that she had assumed Donovan had
already gone, her cheery ‘Hello, I'm back' cut short on seeing her. Mouth still half
open, she stared at Donovan, then quickly looked away, muttered an embarrassed ‘sorry'
and rushed out of the room. Not everybody was so socially inept, but Donovan had
seen what had happened to the families of murder victims, and now Claire's murder
had marked her out too. The tragedy hung over her like an invisible cloud. Going
forward, for heaven knew how long, she could expect hushed tones, averted eyes and
the pity of strangers, along with the inevitable, prurient curiosity. She was no
longer plain Sam Donovan. She was the woman whose sister had been killed. The one
in the papers. At that new hotel. With it came a bizarre and distasteful form of
celebrity. But short of changing her name and moving to a new town, what could she
do?

Shepherd's Bush Road was still relatively busy, cars and the odd bus spraying freezing
muddy water onto the pavement and anybody walking along it. She decided to cut through
the backstreets to Tartaglia's flat and turned off the main road into Brook Green.
It was a relatively peaceful residential area of low-built late Victorian houses.
She had been to Tartaglia's flat more times than she could count and had often walked
back afterwards to her house near the river. It was strange to be going the other
way. Her rubber-soled boots made no noise as she walked and all she could hear was
water dripping from the trees and the buzz of traffic from the main
road. She turned
the corner into Tartaglia's street and was about to cross the road when she caught
a slight movement just ahead of her. She stopped. A man was standing in the shadows
under a tree. He appeared to be looking at his watch; the swing of his arm was what
had caught her eye. He looked back at Tartaglia's house opposite and, as though he
sensed her presence, glanced around towards her. She caught the pale flicker of a
face under his dark hoodie. All she could tell was that he was tall. He turned and
walked quickly away, his feet making no sound. There was something not right about
his reaction and she decided to follow him. It was difficult to keep track of him
in the low light. He turned into a street on the right and a moment later she rounded
the corner, running now, but there was no sign of him. She heard a car start up further
along and the roar of the accelerator as it sped down the road, too far away to make
out either the make or model of car or the licence number. It turned into Shepherd's
Bush Road and was gone.

Tartaglia walked up the path to his front door and let himself in. He collected the
few bits of post from the hall table and went into his flat. The lights were on,
and Sam Donovan sat on the sofa facing him, arms folded, a cup of something in front
of her on the table. He could tell from her expression that something was wrong.

‘There was somebody outside, Mark. About half an hour ago, when I came home. I'm
sure he was watching this house.'

‘Outside? Where?'

‘In the street. I came around the corner and I saw him. He was standing under the
tree opposite, looking up at this house.'

‘I'll go and take a look.'

‘No point. He's gone now.'

‘You're sure it was this house?'