Jigsaw Man (31 page)

‘Is it just us?' he asked a little warily. Nicoletta often tried to set him up with
one of her single friends when he went for dinner. She would give her eye teeth to
have him settled and married, preferably to someone she knew, as though she couldn't
picture happiness in any other form. He often wondered how things would have been
if he had been born first and she was his little sister.

‘Yes. Just us. I thought we needed a catch-up. It's been ages.'

‘About six weeks, you mean.'

She waved him away with her hand as though the details were unimportant. John handed
him his drink and he sat down with it at the table.

‘Where are Carlo and Anna?' he asked, seeing that she had only set three places.

‘Anna's on a sleepover and Carlo's upstairs doing his homework. He had an early
supper. So, tell me about Gianni. How is he? Feeling any remorse?'

The ringing of his phone saved him from having to reply.

‘Hang on a sec,' Tartaglia said to his sister, seeing Minderedes's name on the screen.
He got up from the table and took the phone into the hall. ‘What's up, Nick?'

‘Dave has found the lab samples from the Peckham fire,' Minderedes replied. ‘They
were lurking at the back of one of the hospital freezers. It's real lucky they hadn't
cleared them out yet. They're about to do a full refurb.'

‘Get them over to the lab immediately. Tell them it's urgent. I don't mind what it
costs. What about the suitcase?'

‘No record of what happened to it. Most of the stuff recovered from the basement
was skipped by the council. I've been over to Tatyana's flat but her roommate says
she's scooted back to Russia all of a sudden. I've just been to the restaurant where
she worked and the manager said the same. Apparently, a man came in last night and
asked for her. The manager was pretty vague, but the basic description sort of tallies
with the way she described Chris, although his hair was brown, not red. The manager
also said he'd seen her with him a couple of times before, that he'd come into the
restaurant for a bite to eat and she'd been all over him.'

‘So, what happened?'

‘Well, she goes outside to talk to him and when she comes back, she tells the manager
she's off. She says her mother's sick
and she's got to go home right away. The manager
didn't believe her. He said she didn't even bother to look sad. She just takes off
her apron, grabs her coat and bag and she's out the door. He's mighty pissed off,
as you can imagine. She told her flatmate later that night that a friend had given
her a ticket and some money to fly home. I've checked with the airports and she was
on a Lufthansa flight to Moscow, via Frankfurt, this morning.'

Tartaglia sighed. Had everything she said been a lie? Was the identikit picture deliberately
designed to mislead? He thought back to the interview. She had been genuinely shaken,
he was sure. His instincts were generally good and he had found her convincing enough.
There must have been a vein of truth, he reassured himself. It was a lot easier when
put on the spot, and usually more believable too, to distort the truth than make
up something totally from scratch. Maybe she had given them a mixture of just enough
reality to make it fit with other people's descriptions, coupled with a large dose
of imagination to put them off the scent. All, no doubt, in return for a nice fat
payoff.

‘Go back and talk to the roommate,' he said. ‘See if she knows anything at all about
Chris or Spike, or whatever his name is. It sounds as though Tatyana must have gotten
in touch with him somehow after we saw her. Either that or he knew we would come
looking for her.'

‘What about her phone?'

‘Check all calls to and from her number. But he's clever. I'll bet he either gave
her another phone to call him or she got in touch with him some other way.'

He hung up and went back into the room.

‘Sorry about that,' he said, returning to the table. John was already seated and
Nicoletta came over to join them, carrying
a large platter of
saltimbocca alla romana
.
The aroma of cooked meat, sage and Marsala filled the air. He sat down and unfolded
his napkin.

‘What are you working on?' she asked, helping him to a couple of escalopes wrapped
in prosciutto and passing him his plate.

‘Something major. You've probably seen it in the papers . . .'

‘You mean the Jigsaw murders?' John asked, passing him a dish of grilled polenta.

‘Yes.' He added a couple of slices, along with some mounds of steaming, garlicky
spinach from a large painted bowl.

John was a criminal barrister and took a great deal of interest in Tartaglia's work.
Two sides of the same coin, he always said. ‘How are you getting on?'

‘Snakes and ladders as usual. The phone call I just took: another largish snake.'

John smiled. ‘Where've you just come from? You said you were out of London.'

‘I've just been to interview somebody who used to work at Stoneleigh Park. Am I right
in thinking you stayed there a few years back?'

‘That's right. It was near Dartmoor. Beautiful place, although I can't remember why
we were there.'

‘It was our tenth wedding anniversary,' Nicoletta said, passing John his
saltimbocca
.
‘You must remember.'

‘Not really, apart from you spending the whole time in the spa.'

‘You were working all weekend, what else was there to do?'

John nodded vaguely and helped himself to polenta. ‘Well, it was certainly very comfortable.
But it rained all weekend. I don't think we went out once.'

‘And there was that terrible row with the chef,' Nicoletta continued. John gave her
a blank look. ‘There was a lot of
screaming and shouting and smashing of crockery.
Then there were sirens. It was all very dramatic. I think it was our first night
there.'

‘That's right. I'd completely forgotten.'

‘What was it about?' Tartaglia asked, wondering if Richard English was involved.

‘I've no idea. But the cook – the head chef – came storming out of the kitchen while
we were having dinner.' She turned to John. ‘He was crying, don't you remember? He
told everybody to go home. I've never seen anything like it. He said some things,
all pretty garbled.'

‘He was drunk, that's all.'

‘Maybe, but he had blood all over him. Then he took off his hat and jacket and threw
them on the floor. It was all very
Fawlty Towers
.'

‘It wasn't funny.'

‘You're right. It wasn't. It was a bit sad. Then he walked out. I remember seeing
his clothes sitting there in a little pile on the carpet, wondering whether I should
go and pick them up. Then someone in a suit appeared and apologised to everyone in
the room and offered us all champagne on the house. He said the chef had had some
sort of family crisis.'

‘That's a new euphemism for having too much to drink.'

‘And that he'd been working too hard, or something like that. But I don't think he
came back. The food wasn't half as good the next day. Hadn't they just won a Michelin
star? Then there was a thing in the Sunday papers a few weeks later about the pressures
of being a successful chef and how they often crash and burn. They mentioned him.
I think I cut the piece out for you, don't you remember, John?'

‘No.'

‘When was this?' Tartaglia asked.

‘Our tenth anniversary. I told you,' Nicoletta said.

‘Four years ago last September,' John added.

‘I still enjoyed it. I'd quite like to go back . . .'

Tartaglia let the conversation between John and Nicoletta wash over him, gazing at
the huge, laden dresser that stood floor to ceiling up against the opposite wall.
It had once belonged to his grandmother and, before that, had been removed from his
family's first grocery shop in Edinburgh when the business expanded to bigger premises.
Like many Italian immigrants coming to the UK in the late nineteenth century, they
had done very well. Richard English was another self-made man, who had come from
nowhere. He was the first victim, as far as they knew, followed by John Smart, then
Jake Finnigan. He wondered if the order was important, if English was the lynchpin.
Or if it was just the way the cards fell. As Colin Price had said, there must have
been a queue of people wishing English dead. But where to start? He kept coming back
to the fact that the two people who stood most to gain from English's death were
his wife Lisa, and business partner Ian Armstrong. Either of them could have hired
somebody to take care of English. But the way he had been killed – lured to a basement
squat, drugged and probably force-fed alcohol and pills – it wasn't a professional
job. Far too high risk. It also felt personal. Maybe it wasn't about money after
all . . .

‘Penny for them?' Nicoletta said, waving her hand in front of his face.

He looked up at her. ‘Sorry. I'm a bit distracted, that's all. I need to make a call.
I'll be back in a minute.'

He got up from the table, went out into the hall again and dialled Colin Price's
number. He got through to the reception
desk and left a message for Price to call
him back. As he walked back into the kitchen, his phone rang. He heard Chang's voice
at the other end.

‘We've found the tramp. His name's Roger Massey and he's in hospital. He was admitted
on the day of the fire.'

‘Where is he?'

‘St Thomas's. He had a fall and broke his leg. Apparently he's also got TB.'

‘OK, I'll be there as soon as I can,' Tartaglia replied. He was sorry to leave the
dinner table so soon. John would understand, but Nicoletta would not be pleased.

Half an hour later, he stood with Chang beside Massey's bed. He had been given a
room of his own and lay propped up on pillows, watching
Top Gear
on the wall-mounted
TV.

‘You know why I'm here, Mr Massey?' Tartaglia asked, as Massey removed his headphones.

Massey nodded. ‘It's about the fire. They told me you was coming.'

He spoke with a northern twang. Although a tall man, judging by the length of him
stretched out in the bed, he looked frail, his face bony and hollow-cheeked, the
skin leathery and deeply lined. His greyish beard was thick and trimmed short, and
he looked older than Tartaglia had been expecting, maybe in his early sixties, although
illness and years on the street had a rapid aging effect.

‘That's right. Someone set fire to a car on the waste ground next to Sainsbury's
car park. I understand you used to go there quite a lot.'

‘Yeah. It were warm outside the bakery. They'd bring me out bread and stuff to eat.'
He spoke quietly, as though it were an effort.

‘The fire happened at night, the same day you were brought in here.'

‘I'm not a suspect, then?'

‘No. I just need your help. There was a body in the car.'

‘I read about it in the papers.'

‘OK. Do you remember anything at all odd in the days before?'

‘What do you mean by odd?'

‘Someone hanging around, perhaps? Someone who wasn't normally there?'

Massey yawned, showing a mouth of tobacco-stained teeth. ‘There was a bloke nosing
around a few nights before, having a really good scout about. He came over to talk
to me. Asked me for a light. I gave him one and he gave me a couple of fags.'

‘What sort of time would this be?' Tartaglia asked.

‘I don't carry a watch no more.'

‘Sainsbury's shuts at midnight,' Chang said. ‘Was it long after that?'

‘Maybe a couple of hours.'

‘What else did he say?' Tartaglia asked.

‘He asked if it was always this quiet. It varies, I told him.'

‘How did he arrive? Was he on foot?'

‘Must've been. They lock the barrier when they close for the night.'

‘Do you remember any cars left overnight, either in the Sainsbury's lot or on the
waste ground next to it?'

Massey paused for a moment. ‘There was a Fiat Panda, dark-coloured, parked up on
the waste ground by the fence.'

‘When did you first see it?'

‘Couple of days before I come in here, maybe. No more than that.'

‘You didn't see anybody drive it in?'

‘No. Must've been during opening hours.'

‘Going back to this man. Can you describe him?'

‘My memory's not what it was.'

‘But you spoke to him . . .'

Massey sighed. ‘Tallish, though he stooped a bit, like he wanted to seem smaller.
Thin, early thirties at the most, I'd say. He was wearing a woolly hat. His face
was real dirty, but he wasn't dark skinned. He had a bit of a beard on 'im.'

‘How was he dressed?'

Massey shrugged. ‘Trainers, jeans, and a socking great big overcoat. It was way too
big for 'im and he looked pretty rough.'

‘Was he homeless, do you think?'

‘Maybe he wants people to think he is. But he was smoking Marlboro Lights, a brand
new pack. He had to take off the cellophane.'

‘Someone might have given it to him.'

‘There was something not right about him, that's all I can say.'

‘Anything else you remember?'

Massey shook his head.

‘Would you recognise him again if you saw him?'

‘Most definitely.'

‘For someone who says his memory's not what it was, you seem to have pretty good
recall.'

Massey gave a weak smile. ‘I was in the military police, once upon a time.'

‘I heard you were a soldier.'

‘I dropped the “police” bit. Lost me too many friends.'