Willing Flesh (13 page)

The woman had been stabbed six times.

Josie bides her time and when she gets an opportunity to bring up the Kennel murder, the usual gallows humour percolates – fast as morning coffee.

‘Mixing business with pleasure, hey Chancellor,’ quips one DS.

‘You should check it out,’ retorts Josie. ‘Everyone should try straight sex at least once.’ This draws a bigger laugh, followed by a bellow from Pennington, who looks across at Rimmer as if to say, ‘You should be controlling this lot.’

‘There’ll be none of this,’ shouts Rimmer. He goes red in the face and leans back against the desk at the front of the room, steadies himself. ‘Now, Chancellor, what are you saying? That this poor girl might be connected to the Elena Danya murder?’ He looks at Pennington who gives him the mildest encouragement in the form of a rueful nod.

Josie says, ‘The body is fresh and according to the coroner there’s plenty of dental and medical history – two gold teeth, appendix scar and a metal plate in her left leg. We should get an ID later today. There’s no harm checking her out and West Essex CID have said they’d be happy to share.’

‘But is she a prostitute?’ says Rimmer.

‘It’s unusual for prostitutes to frequent the Kennel. But she might have been there out of hours and she had miniscule traces of semen in her mouth. Nothing in the stomach. No signs of recent vaginal penetration, but there is junkie scarring to the arms and thighs. Janine hasn’t seen her yet but the local pathologist says if we pushed him on it, he’d hazard she was on the game.’

With another look towards Pennington, which receives nothing more than a flat smile, Rimmer says, ‘Follow it up, then. But don’t get sucked in.’ A tempered trickle of testosterone seeps.

‘That’s enough!’ snaps Pennington, standing, signifying the meeting is over and as the room empties, he catches Josie. ‘You make sure Rimmer goes with you to interview Blears. This fella’s probably going to be a sex pest, you know, if he’s been going down the Kennel.’

‘Of course, sir.’

‘Where’s Staffe? I take it he’s taken Pulford with him.’

‘He’s following a lead, is all I know, sir.’

Pennington takes a half step towards her. ‘You know, Chancellor, this could be a chance for you.’ He looks up at her, smiles his thin smile. ‘You’re doing well.’ He touches her elbow with his fingers.

*

Graham Blears wishes he had never told the police about the dead slut from the Forest. Now they are coming to his house. How could that be normal procedure? Surely the one visit up to Ilford Police Station – to give his statement, receive his recognition – was sufficient. They were ever so impressed with him up in Ilford and thanked him profusely. His head was spinning so much he can’t remember if they commended him for his citizenship. They said something akin to that. But why are they coming down from the City? What the hell did it have to do with them?

He can’t be too careful, so he has disconnected his computer and put it in the bottom of the wardrobe, covered in blankets. ‘It’s a good job we’re one step ahead,’ he says to Useless as he passes the door to the dog’s room. He looks back into his bedroom, double-checks that the wardrobe doesn’t draw attention to itself. His suit is laid out, alongside his brushes and comb. All these years, he has kept his head down, gone about his business, tended his secrets, unseen. It doesn’t pay to involve yourself with the law.

*

Rimmer fidgets all the way from Leadengate out to Snares brook, scribbling in his notebook and checking the notes from West Essex CID.

‘You spoke to Profiling?’ she says.

‘Yes. I don’t see why we have to come all the way out here. We should have got him into the station.’

‘Staffe always interviews
in situ
. It gives a fuller picture.’

‘And where the hell is he, if this is so crucial?’

‘What did Profiling say?’

‘That killers often try to involve themselves in an investigation. As many as one in four.’

‘But the killer wouldn’t report the body, surely?’

Rimmer looks at her as if she can’t quite be trusted. ‘Have you met Tara Fleet? Very impressive.’ Rimmer looks into the middle distance, dreamily. ‘Very impressive indeed.’

Josie knows Tara Fleet – a criminal psychologist who knows exactly how to play senior police officers. Especially the male of the species. Rimmer would be a suitable stepping stone for enhancing her own profile.

‘Did she say anything about the cases being linked?’

‘We need to know more about the victims. But a swanky hotel and a dogging site? Ten miles apart. It’s a difficult one.’

Josie goes quiet, slows the car a tad and as they turn into Marigold Gardens – a cul de sac of interwar semis on the south side of the High Street – she calms herself. All day, since she found the Kennel killing on the ACL, she has been buzzing. Of course it would be better if the cases were not linked; that would mean there wasn’t a maniac out there; not a third or fourth woman going about her business with some pervert preying, biding.

*

Blears can’t believe they have sent a woman.

He returns the net curtain in his front room and regards himself in the art deco mirror, damping down his parting and tightening his tie, makes his way to the front door, waits for the second knock, so as not to appear unduly anxious, and smiles as he welcomes Leadengate CID into his house.

Over tea, he recounts to Inspector Rimmer his precise movements yesterday evening; how he broke from his routine and had never been to that place before. The inspector seems to be a man after his own heart, but the girl, she seems a different kettle of fish. She drinks her tea in one, gulping it down, scribbling away constantly, giving him only the occasional, sidelong glance.

After quarter of an hour, in which Graham has totally confirmed every last detail of the statement he gave at Ilford, the inspector closes his notebook and thanks him for his co-operation.

‘Just one more thing, Mr Blears,’ says the girl, looking up at him, her pen hovering. ‘You will appreciate how keen we are to eliminate you from our inquiries.’

‘Eliminate?’ His heart skips, sinks down to his stomach and his head blurs.

‘It’s how we work back to the truth. Sometimes we have to prove innocence in order to expose guilt.’ She stares at him as she says, ‘Where exactly were you between sixteen hundred and eighteen hundred hours on the seventh of December?’

‘How can I be expected to know that?’ He looks down into his teacup. ‘I work in the City. You know that. I would have been at work, or on my way home.’

‘Can anyone vouch for when you got home?’

‘I live alone.’

‘Anything you can come up with will help us.’ She smiles at him, a thick smear of condescension in the corners of her mouth. ‘And help you, too. Of course.’

‘I don’t like what you are saying,’ he says, looking at the inspector, but the inspector is opening his notebook back up, appears to bestow a look of encouragement upon the stupid girl.

‘And anybody who can verify your evening habits. You know, to prove this visit to
that place
was a one-off.’

‘An aberration,’ says the inspector.

The girl looks at her superior, nodding earnestly. She flicks through some notes she has brought, says, ‘Why did you wait two hours before you called? And why cover the body up again? She was covered with leaves when the local force got to the scene.’

Graham feels his kitchen floor warp. He looks up at Our Lady but the walls seem to shift inwards on him and he feels dizzy. He reaches out to grip the table, thinks he might be sick. He hears Prince Albert shattering on the floor. Then the crackle of a radio. When he looks up, the girl is talking into her handset.

Yooce curls up in her basket. She lets out a long, low whine.

Thirteen

The pastel villages of thatched Suffolk soon give way to the suburbs and as they pass through into larger conurbations, Pulford says, ‘The Aldesworth Country Town. That’s an odd one, isn’t it?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I was talking to the night porter. He says the whole thing’s gone sour. None of the locals have been involved in the construction. It struck me …’ He passes Staffe some brochures for the new model market town. ‘… as kind of similar to Elena Danya’s game. I wonder how much of the cash gets down as far as the girls? Five hundred houses. What does that look like?’

‘A whole pile of paper,’ says Staffe.

‘Money?’

‘That too.’ Staffe goes into his pocket, hands Pulford a cheque, to cover his room and share of dinner.

The sergeant looks hurt.

‘Take it. I insist,’ says Staffe.

Pulford shakes his head, says, ‘It’s only money.’

*

Josie Chancellor watches the Scene of Crime team emerge from Blears’ house in Marigold Close with bag after bag of numbered evidence. His computer is to be fast-tracked at Data Discernment. Graham Blears was taken in to Leadengate Station for questioning over an hour ago.

As she gets into the car with Rimmer, the police dog team are parking up. They have come to take Useless into care. When Rimmer told Blears this would happen, Blears had burst into tears.

‘That was quite a morning’s work, Chancellor. You can come along with me any time,’ says Rimmer. He slaps her on the thigh and removes his hand quickly. They look at each other awkwardly.

‘Thank you, sir.’

Josie feels peculiar, today; not entirely a part of her own body. She has emerged from a shadow. But the sight of Graham Blears, looking for all the world a guilty man, had given her no pleasure. The processing of the evidence and the rigour of all the lawyers and the judge and jury will determine whether they have got their man, but she feels a heavy hand of consequence upon her.

Josie doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Instead, she calls in Data Pooling and asks them to merge all the cells from this case with that of Elena Danya.

As soon as she clicks off,
Forensics
flashes up as an incoming call. The second dead woman is, according to her dental records and the prints from three soliciting charges and an arrest for possession of heroin, a twenty-two-year-old known prostitute called Rebeccah Stone, of 21D Arlington Road, Hackney. She was murdered by six stab wounds. A more savage end than Elena Danya suffered; the same Elena Danya whom a Rebeccah had called, talking, in fact, of ‘tender petting’. Josie realises she was one of the last people ever to talk to Rebeccah Stone.

How might Blears connect with Elena Danya?

Or – as Staffe will probably see it – how does Rebeccah Stone connect with Taki Markary?

*

They call this Little Chelsea and it’s the part of Barnes the Victorians built for their railway workers. Staffe watches the accountants who live opposite Sylvie. They are putting up their Christmas tree. It should resemble something from Frank Capra, but she throws her arms about, red-faced; he stands, head bowed.

He turns the key, feels awkward using it this first time. The front door gives straight into the lounge and, as usual, she has clothes drying on hangers, drooping from the curtain poles. Books are scattered on the sofa and floor. He picks one up.
Holmes’s Intermediate Guide to the Anatomy of the
Mind
. She had told him she had given up on her MA. He could swear she had. He sniffs the air. Lacquer is thick, as if one lit cigarette would send the whole place up in flames.

‘Who’s that?’ She calls from upstairs, sounding concerned. ‘Is anybody there?’

At the bottom of the stairs she has a photograph of her mother, taken long ago and since they last saw each other. Mont Ventoux is in the background and the woman seems without a care in all the world. Staffe doesn’t understand why Sylvie has this photograph.

‘It’s me!’ he calls.

‘Don’t look at the mess!’

He imagines what it would be like if they were married. She would improve. He would relax.

He takes the steps two at a time, and goes up again, into the studio she’s had done in the loft. He ducks his head as he rounds the top of the stairs, certain now that he will not do what he came for. He will have to concoct an excuse for dropping by. What has possessed him?