When the Music's Over (40 page)

Sunny sat down and folded his arms. “You can't make me.”

Banks took Sunny by the arm and cautioned him: “‘You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you do not mention, when questioned, something you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.'” Do you understand, Sunny?”

Sunny grunted.

“I take it that's a yes?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent. Now we know where we stand.” Banks led Sunny slowly into the bedroom, which was dominated by a queen-sized bed covered with black silk sheets and a black sateen duvet. Even the pillowcases were black. Sunny didn't resist, but he complained all the way, mostly about everything being due to the color of his skin.

“Just get dressed and stop bellyaching, Sunny.”

Sunny changed into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. As he did so, Banks poked around the drawers in a desultory way, but found nothing of interest, just a box of condoms and some lubricating jelly in the bedside table. In the wardrobe, however, he found a rack of women's clothing—dresses, tops, skirts. Mimsy's, he guessed. The stuff she wouldn't dare take home. Some of them bore expensive designer labels. On a shoe rack at the bottom were Nike trainers and high heels
beside a box of expensive tights and sleek sexy underwear. Agent Provocateur stuff. The search team could do a more thorough job later, when they had a warrant and when Sunny was in custody.

“What's all this, Sunny?” Banks asked. “Either you get off on wearing women's clothing or this belongs to someone else.”

Sunny said nothing.

“Expecting Mimsy back, are you? Or are they for the next one?”

Sunny fastened the belt on his jeans, still silent.

“They look expensive. I suppose that's why you couldn't bear to part with them, is it? If it had been me, I'd have got rid of them right after I killed the girl.”

“I didn't kill anyone!” said Sunny. “I want a solicitor. I'm entitled to a solicitor.”

They went back into the living room.

“A solicitor will be assigned to you when we get to the station. Don't worry, Sunny. We'll be doing everything by the book. We don't want you slipping out of our grasp on a technicality over all this, do we? In the meantime, I've already told you that you don't have to say anything. Your solicitor will probably advise you to cooperate with us.”

“How long is this going to take? I have a business to run.”

“We can't guarantee you'll be back in time to open up, especially if you want the lunchtime trade. I'd put a note on the door, if I were you. And make sure you lock up behind you and take your keys and wallet.” He held his hand out. “We'll be taking the mobile for forensic examination. We'll take good care of all your stuff for you while you're in the cell.”

“Cell?” said Sunny, handing over his mobile.

“That's what usually happens when we take people into custody. Annie?” Banks had noticed that Annie was standing by the wall studying the drawings. He knew her father was an artist and that she had grown up in an artists' colony in Cornwall—she even painted herself—but this was hardly the time. “Come on. We have to go.”

“Just a minute,” she said, pointing to a drawing of two elderly Asian men standing on a street corner talking. “What do you think of this?”

“Very nice. Now, come on.”

“It's one of Mimsy's.”

“What?”

“Mimosa Moffat. She happened to be a very accomplished artist—at drawings and sketches, anyway. I had a good look at her work in her room on Southam Terrace, and I'm telling you, this is hers.”

Banks turned to Sunny, who just shrugged. Annie took out her mobile and took photographs of all the artwork. “I'll let the search team know we'd like them all bagged,” she said. “They'll probably have her prints on them somewhere. I'm not an expert, I admit, but anyone who'd seen her work before would recognize it immediately.”

“I'll take your word for it,” said Banks. “Now, come on, Sunny, hurry up, your car's waiting.”

Sunny hurriedly wrote out a notice to stick on the door of the takeaway, then picked up his jacket and checked the pockets for his essentials. Annie put the handcuffs on him, and she and Banks sandwiched him on the way down the stairs. Out in the street, the neons and sodium lights looked fuzzy in the heat haze. Next door, Banks saw two uniformed officers putting Ismail and Faisal in a patrol car to deliver them to Eastvale. A small crowd had gathered across the street, even at such a late hour. The police had been as discreet as they could, but there was no doubt word was getting around. The feeling of tension in the air was as palpable as the heat, and Banks was glad to get in the back of the car with Sunny and let Annie drive to Eastvale.

O
NE BY ONE, THE TEAM STRAGGLED INTO THE
boardroom on Thursday morning. It had been a long night for all concerned, and Annie had managed only about two hours' sleep between leaving Wytherton with Banks and Sunny and coming in to Eastvale HQ for the meeting. Gerry was still in the infirmary, resting. The police doctor had been right: a nasty crack but not an outright break. They'd probably let her out later today, the doctor had told Annie when she phoned earlier, but she would have to remain on light duties for a while until her clavicle healed.

The Wytherton police had done their job and swooped in on all the other suspects while Banks and Annie were bringing in Sunny. Now Sunny, Faisal, Ismail and Hassan were in custody, waiting to be interviewed. DNA samples had been taken and Jazz Singh had promised as quick a result as possible. The scientific process of extracting DNA didn't take long, and any wait was usually due to long queues at the labs. With Jazz on the job already they wouldn't have to worry in this case. Samples had also been taken from the cousins in Dewsbury to match against those removed from Mimosa's body. Annie was raring to have a go at Sunny, who was already in an interview room under guard, stewing until the team meeting was over. Things had been moving very fast that morning. Two of the other girls groomed by Sunny and his gang—Kirsty McVie and Rebecca Bramley—had already
been identified by the school secretary, whom the locals had roused from her bed, and briefly questioned. They were scared, but they knew what had happened to Mimsy, and when they were told that Jade had told her story to the police and disappeared, it didn't take them long to talk. They all named the same crew and said Sunny had told them to lie low until things calmed down.

Today, search teams would go through all the flats and houses concerned, and plainclothes officers from both Wytherton and Eastvale would try to find the other girls and persuade them to talk. They were dealing with victims, Banks had reminded the assembled officers, and the girls may have been convinced to see themselves as society's rejects, but they were to be treated with the utmost respect and sensitivity. If at all possible, he had added, each should be assigned a personal female liaison officer.

Superintendent Carver had grudgingly looked into Reg's and Bill's alibis for the Tuesday of Mimsy's murder and found that Reg was at home with his family and Bill was moonlighting on a film set in Stockton, along with plenty of witnesses. It seemed to let them off the hook, though Annie had let it be known that she thought they were involved in some way, if only for willful ignorance.

The three cousins of Sunny from Dewsbury had been quickly identified and taken into custody by the West Yorkshire Police, to whom they were already well known. A white van belonging to one of them was being sent up to the police forensics garage in Eastvale for testing. According to the local police, there was a dirty, stained mattress in the back, and several of Mimosa's personal items, including her mobile and her shoulder bag were soon found hidden in the house of one of the suspects.

The search was still going on for Jade who, according to the school secretary, was really called Carol Fisher, but nothing had been seen of her so far. At least they had now managed to get a photograph from her foster parents. Gerry had tipped them off about the brother in Leicester, and the police down there said they'd keep an eye on his place.

Already, according to a phone call from Superintendent Carver in Wytherton, mobs were gathering on the estate, at the shopping center
and along the Strip. Bricks had been thrown, shop windows smashed, a few scuffles had taken place. One young white youth had already been taken off to the hospital with blood streaming down his face after he and several cronies had mounted an assault on the mosque. The riot police were trying to keep a lid on it rather than exacerbate things, but it was getting more and more out of control as more people joined the various mobs, and he wanted reinforcements. The tabloid headlines showed a grieving Moffat family on the doorstep of their Southam Terrace house under the bold headline:
THEY MURDERED OUR LITTLE ANGEL MIMOSA
. Beside the story were three small head-and-shoulders photographs of Middle Eastern men, looking like police mug shots but connected with a different story entirely. It was just a clever juxtaposition, a journalistic ploy. Adrian Moss would be over the moon, Annie thought.

Winsome and Doug Wilson were about the only ones who appeared well rested, and even Wilson had probably been up half the night going through CCTV footage with the rest of his team. Though they shouldn't call it footage, Annie thought, as it was mostly digital.
Byteage
, perhaps? Jazz Singh and Stefan Nowak were fresh, too, though they had also been working unusually long hours and had started early that morning. AC Gervaise had managed to go home for a quick shower and change, but Annie could see the dark shadows under her eyes, and her lipstick was smeared a little unevenly over her Cupid's bow lips. ACC McLaughlin, having authorized the whole business and set things in motion, had gone home to bed. Banks had also gone home to get some sleep, but he had promised to partner Annie on the interview with Sunny later that morning.

Everyone took their seats. Before they could even get started, Annie's mobile buzzed. She apologized and went outside and answered the call. It was DC Masterson in the hospital.

“What is it, Gerry?” she said. “You should be resting.”

“I am,” Gerry said. “They gave me some more pills for the pain along with a sedative to help me sleep. It's really quite pleasant. Now I know why junkies do what they do.”

“What's so important?”

“It might not be important, but I've remembered something. From last night.”

“Hurry up. We're just about to get started with the meeting.”

“Can you put me on speakerphone so I can participate?”

“Gerry, you're trying my patience.”

“Yes, guv. Well, as I said, it may not be important, but just before they hit me and started chasing me, one of the gang, the one who shouted out to Tariq, called me ‘Ginger,' among other things.”

“Without meaning anything negative, Gerry, that's a perfectly natural thing to call you, under the circumstances.”

“I'm not denying the color of my hair, guv, but I am wondering how he knew. It was dark out there on the street, where we were, and as far as I know he'd never seen me before. It was like a derelict edge of the estate, opposite an abandoned factory, and most of the streetlights were broken. You'd have to have superhuman vision to see the color of a person's hair.”

“We didn't imagine it was a random attack on a lone female,” Annie said. “But if he couldn't see your hair in the dark, how did he know to call you Ginger?”

“I think Sunny must have told him about us, our visit to the takeaway, maybe told them to keep an eye out for us. Jade mentioned that Sunny and the others had some young lads on the estate who'd do legwork for them. Maybe they do a bit of enforcing, too.”

“That still doesn't explain how they knew it was you.”

“I would imagine Sunny described us both, told them I was the tall, skinny one with long ginger hair.”

“And what does that make me?” asked Annie. “The short dumpy one with curly brown hair?”

“No, ma'am . . . I . . . I didn't . . .”

“Sorry, Gerry. It's OK. Go on. How did they know where you were?”

“I don't think they did, or they'd have probably come into the house after Jade. They could see my hair was long and that I was tall and thin. They were waiting by the car. It was the only one on the street. Maybe they were planning on boosting it when I came along,
or maybe Sunny had seen it and described it to them. I suppose it's pretty conspicuous. I don't know. But don't you see? If Sunny had them on the lookout for us, that makes it even less likely that Jade set me up. She'd never even seen me, as far as I know—we'd only talked on the phone—and it was pitch-black in the house, even when my eyes adjusted to the dark. All I could see was outlines, silhouettes. It's my theory that they were on patrol, maybe looking for Jade under Sunny's instructions, looking for anything out of the ordinary.”

“Excellent,” said Annie. “If that's true, it gives us a stronger possible connection between Sunny and Tariq and the rest. I'll bring it up in the interview. Now get some rest, Gerry.”

“But, guv, can't I be in on inter—”

“No. Rest, DC Masterson. It's an order.” Annie ended the call and turned to the assembled team. “Another link in the chain,” she said. “This one possibly connecting Sunny to the attack on DC Masterson.”

Jazz and Stefan had nothing new to report yet, so Annie stood by the whiteboard, making the occasional notation, and went on to fill everyone in about the events of the previous night, making it as succinct as possible but trying not to omit any of the essential points. “That means there'll be plenty of TIEs and actions flying around after this meeting, so catch what you can. It's going to be another long day. Doug, have you got anything for us on the second car on Bradham Lane that night?”

“Nothing we can confirm, guv,” said DC Doug Wilson, rubbing his hand over his unruly hair. “Mostly it's been a process of elimination. As I said before, I think we've got the first van, but we can't get a license plate number from it, and there are no markings. It's a dirty white van, that's all, and we think it could be the one that the girl was thrown from.”

“Mimosa,” said Annie. “And the van's been found. It's on its way. Is that all?”

“Not quite. We did find a VW Transporter that more or less matched the time parameters and the directions we were looking at.”

“And?”

“It belongs to a bloke called Jim Nuttall. Lives out Stockton way.”

“And what has Mr. Nuttall been up to?”

“Nothing, it seems. Honest businessman. No form.”

“So what is it about Jim Nuttall that gives you pause for thought?”

“It seems he lied, guv.”

“Lied about what?”

“What he was doing. When I talked to him a couple of days ago, he admitted he'd been out in the van that night. He runs a spare-parts service. Specialist bits and pieces for old bangers, antiques and so on, and he makes the deliveries himself to save on overheads. Admits it's nothing that'll ever make him rich, but he enjoys his work. He said he had a delivery to make to a regular customer in Southampton, and he was used to night driving, actually liked it, so whenever he went down there he drove by night. Less traffic.”

“And?”

“Only I remembered to check with the customer in Southampton, and it was actually two days earlier that Mr. Nuttall made the delivery. He'd got the dates wrong.”

“So, on the night in question, a week last Tuesday, his van was captured on CCTV traveling the route we're interested in, but he had no reason to be there?”

“That's about the long and the short of it, guv.”

“Then either he's lying or he got muddled up and made a mistake. Well done, Doug. Good catch.”

Wilson adjusted his glasses. “Thanks, guv.”

“We'll pay him a visit later this morning.”

There was nothing else new, so Annie started issuing actions and TIEs, and when the room emptied, leaving her alone with the gilt-framed photos of the wool barons who made Eastvale, she allowed herself to slump in her chair, close her eyes for a moment and cover them with her hands. But her mind was still humming with the adrenaline of the night. There was no way it was going to allow her a nap. Instead, she headed for the canteen to get a large mug of coffee before heading for the squad room to prepare the interview and wait for Banks.

Excerpt from Linda Palmer's Memoir

Let me tell you about my best friend, Melanie. Her full name was Melanie Vernon, and she died of breast cancer two years ago. I know I'm jumping way ahead now, and maybe it's nothing to do with what you want to know, but her early death hit me hard and brought back a lot of memories from that Blackpool holiday, the only holiday we ever shared. And it tells you something of the cost to me of what happened. We hadn't been in touch often over the years, but we had met up on a few occasions for drinks and dinner and we always had a good laugh. She was flabbergasted that I had become a “poet” and confessed that poetry was like a foreign language to her. In turn, I was surprised to find that she had married a local electrician's apprentice while I was at university and had two children in quick succession, then two more, never pursuing a career of her own. Secretly, I had always expected Melanie to become a model or an actress. She was attractive, no doubt about it. People said we both were, and we made quite a contrast. Back then she had wavy dark hair and looked a bit Italian, with almond brown eyes and the smoothest olive complexion I had ever seen. Chemo took care of the hair, eventually, her skin turned into cracked parchment and her beautiful eyes became red-rimmed, hollowed and frightened, underlined with shadows like bruises. The last time I got seriously drunk and cried was at her funeral. Her husband read Christina Rossetti's “Remember” and that just did me in like a gut punch. Do you know it? You probably haven't got to the late nineteenth century yet unless you've cheated. It ends:

For if the darkness and corruption leave

A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than that you should remember and be sad.

But we do remember, and we are sad. As another poet said, “Every man's death diminishes me.” Sorry about that flight of fancy, but it's what I do.

After Melanie died, I wished so much that I had told her what happened to me on that holiday right then and there. Not telling her meant the end of something. The secret stood between us from then on like a wall. After that holiday, we were never as close as we used to be, and we drifted apart. I regret that. It was only later, when we were grown-ups, that we could tentatively breach the wall, but we were never as close as we had been that summer. We were never so innocent again, either.