Because I’m feeling weird, I tell Jane that I’m going to step outside and get some air. And as soon as I open the car door, in between pulling the handle and it swinging out to the maximum-open position, I realize where I’ll find Fletcher. Sometimes the best thing to do is also the most obvious.
I call directory inquiries and ask for a number for Rattigan Industrial & Transport. I get put through to a corporate switchboard. I ask for a Mr. Fletcher. I’m told there’s no one at corporate HQ with that name, but which division is he in? I’m prepared for that question. Scrap metal doesn’t seem to have a whole bundle to do with the case. Shipping just might. All those ships coming in from the Baltic could be loaded up with nice Afghan heroin, enough to keep any number of prostitutes hooked. Drugs and sex. One business, not two.
I ask for the shipping division and am put through to a separate switchboard in Newport.
“Mr. Fletcher, please.”
“Just putting you through now … Oh, hold on, would you?” Muffled whispering in the background, then the receptionist’s voice clearer again. “I’m sorry, it was Huw Fletcher you wanted, was it?”
Eeny-meeny-miny-mo. I say “Yes.”
“I’m sorry, Huw Fletcher isn’t with us anymore. Is there someone else who can help you?”
“He’s not with you? I had a meeting arranged for this coming week. I was just calling to confirm arrangements.” I make my voice a little affronted. A what-kind-of-company-are-you? sort of voice.
“Honestly, I’m afraid we have no idea where he is. He’s been away a couple of weeks. But if you want to speak with one of his colleagues in the scheduling department, I’m sure someone there can help.”
There’s probably something clever to say at that point, but if there is I don’t find it. I mutter apologies and hang up.
Bingo! Big bingo! I don’t yet know what I have, except that it’s something special. Something that D.C.I. Jackson really and truly ought to know about, except that I can’t think of a way to tell him. I don’t think the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed D.C. Griffiths would thank me for fessing up to her evil twin, the housebreaking, phone-stealing bad D.C. Griffiths.
I get quietly back into the car and let Jane finish. When she’s done, we drive to Cathays Park, mostly in silence.
For a while, routine takes over. Typing up notes, briefing Ken Hughes because Jackson is out of the office, getting the info on Groove. All this is of the utmost priority, because we now have grounds for arresting Karol Sikorsky for the murders of Stacey Edwards and April Mancini. A huge deal, that is. Now, for the first time, the case feels on the brink of something. We can’t arrest anyone without reasonable grounds for suspicion. A DNA sample and criminal record alone don’t provide those grounds. Those two things plus Balcescu’s evidence do. Once we have an arrest warrant, a search warrant will also be forthcoming. With luck and a following wind, that’ll be all we need to crack the case wide open. The office has a buzz again, with Jane and me as the heroes of the hour.
It’s almost 7:00
P.M.
before I’m done. I want to search out Brydon just to share a few moments with his more-than-friendly face, but I can’t find him. These big investigations, everyone is always somewhere else, or too busy to stop and talk.
In the end, I pack up and go home, only to find I can’t stay there. The prickling feeling that I had for all those days last week is here again, a permanent guest now. I ask it to reveal its identity.
This is fear. This is fear.
I try the statement out in my head, but I can’t tell if it fits or if it doesn’t. What’s worse, I notice that, when I stamp my feet, I can only dimly feel my toes and heels striking the floor. When I rap my hand against a kitchen counter, or press it up against the point of a knife, the physical sensations of hardness or sharpness seem to be coming from a long way away, like old news reports, conveyed in jumpy black and white, or down a crackling phone line. I’m becoming numb to myself, physically and emotionally, and that’s no good at all. It’s how it starts, the bad stuff. This is how it always starts.
I don’t muck about in these situations. I’ve learned not to. I call Mam and tell her I’ll stay over another night, if that’s okay. She says, of course, come right away. I get ready to go.
Last thing before leaving, I pull out those photos of April. Little April, blind and dead. Little April with a sink where her brains should be. A sextuple smile and a secret I’m too dim to grasp. I don’t spend long with her, though. All I need is sleep and sanity. Right now, both things seem precarious.
26
For two blessed days, life goes on. Ordinary life. Lots of work. Canteen lunches, office grumbles. It’s intense, but it’s what I know. I like it.
There’s a strong sense that Lohan is making progress. Known associates of Karol Sikorsky have been found and interviewed. According to Dave Brydon, who did two of these interviews and who’s heard the gossip from those who have done the others, Sikorsky’s buddies aren’t the kind of crew you’d be thrilled to see at your daughter’s birthday parties. The first of Brydon’s two interviews was with a Wojciech Kapuscinski. “He was a piece of work, he was,” Brydon tells me. “A real dangerous sod, if you ask me. Got a couple of ABHs”—that’s Actual Bodily Harm, a fairly mild offense—”on his record, but that won’t be the half of it.”
I believe him. Kapuscinski’s photo and details are up on Groove. Not only does he have a firearms conviction to go with those ABHs but he looks every inch like the dutiful foot soldier of organized crime: tough face, narrow eyes, shaven head, leather jacket. The kind of physique you get from lifting weights and avoiding vegetables: the fat-but-strong bouncer look.
Brydon and Ken Hughes did that interview and got nothing from it. “The bugger wouldn’t tell us a thing. Didn’t expect him to really, except he didn’t come up with an alibi and doesn’t deny knowing Sikorsky.” Brydon doesn’t say it, but he doesn’t need to. These things don’t work because a thug breaks down and confesses something. They work because you apply pressure. A nondenial here. A piece of CCTV evidence there. A phone call there. Perhaps something new from Forensics. You hope to scrape together enough for a charge of some sort, and then the odds start to rebalance. You get little extra disclosures, scraps of information released in return for minor favors. You get search warrants to enter places that had been closed to you before. You ratchet up the pressure, and before too long you get a leak proper, the crack in the dam that will bring the whole thing tumbling down.
And meantime, unexpectedly, another breakthrough. The Serious Organised Crime Agency have—on the third time of asking—provided an address in London where they believe Sikorsky has holed up from time to time. Bev Rowland tells me that Jim Davis (still not speaking to me and, I’m certain, dripping poison about me into the office gossip stream) has been putting it about that SOCA wants to take over the Lohan inquiry. I’d say they’re not likely to get it if they do. We all suspect organized crime involvement, but there’s not enough at this stage for SOCA to make a move on us. Besides, Jackson is a respected D.C.I. His inquiry has been well run. We have some names. We need to get some more tangible evidence soon, but things aren’t stuck, they’re progressing. For the time being, Jackson is arranging for Sikorsky’s London address to be watched in the hope that the guy is dumb enough to turn up there. If that fails, he’ll apply for a search warrant and raid the place anyway.
Jackson is pleased with all this. Just after lunch on Tuesday, he comes to find me and Jane Alexander at her desk. “That Balcescu interview,” he says. “Well done. Good job.”
We do our thank-you-sirs, and Jane glows like someone’s told her she can be team captain.
“Is this one behaving herself?” That’s Jackson asking Jane about me.
“Yes, sir. More than that, actually. I thought she was first class with Balcescu. It was Fiona who—”
Jane is about to say something nice, but Jackson’s Alexander-takes-the-lead slogan is knocking around in my head, and I don’t want him to know that I went off-piste, even if it was in a good cause.
“It was me that made the teas, sir. She’s milk-no-sugar,” I volunteer, indicating Jane. “Balcescu was one sugar, only I gave her two, given the circs.”
“Her tea was okay, was it?” That to Jane.
“It was fine.”
“Good.”
Jackson says “good” again and goes muttering off. Jane swings back to me in surprise. I tell her that I want Jackson to think I know how to follow orders. “It’s not always my strong suit,” I add.
“You don’t say.”
Jane looks for a moment as though she might say something further, but she doesn’t, and we go back to doing what we were doing.
Lovely work. Tedious, necessary, safe.
On Tuesday night, I go home but once again find my house scarily empty and vulnerable, so I bail out and spend a happy evening with my family. Dad and I haven’t had any further conversation about guns, but he asks me if I’ve had my burglar alarm checked recently. I say no. Who checks a burglar alarm? I didn’t know you had to check them. He says he’ll send someone round, and because nothing I say is likely to stop him from doing just that, I say nothing.
Wednesday itself is mostly a paperwork day—I’m not unhappy about that—and the one interview that Jane and I manage is by the book and uninformative. Which is good. I could use a little boredom in my life at the moment.
Apart from Balcescu, Jane and I have found out nothing useful from our interviews, but I’ve enjoyed working with her. Except for that one time, she asks the questions, I take the notes. She does everything by the book. So do I. The comfort of routine. Three of the girls we’ve talked to have been reluctant to say more than the bare minimum. One, Tania, a Welsh girl from the valleys, talked incessantly, mostly about what punters were and were not into, but conveyed nothing much of value. She seemed ditzy to me and muddled, but not a stereotypical victim either. She talked endlessly about sex, and I realized that she really liked it. Enjoyed having lots of it. Some prostitutes, presumably, do.
All told, there have been worse ways to spend time. The write-ups are a pleasant way to spend the morning.
Huw Fletcher bothers me. He matters. I
know
he matters, but I’ve got no way of roping him in to our inquiry. He left work abruptly enough that his colleagues are puzzled, but not puzzled enough to call the police. He sent a possibly suspicious text, which I know about only because I broke into a suspect’s house and stole his phone. And even that text is significant only if you think Penry is significant, and you think he is only if Rattigan is. And Rattigan is dead, which means that—in the eyes of my colleagues—he can’t possibly matter.
I
don’t see it that way, of course. I think the dead matter just as much as anyone else, but then what else could I, of all people, think?
About halfway through the afternoon, these ruminations bother me enough that I call Bryony Williams.
She answers after the third ring. I tell her who I am, then come straight out with it.
“Bryony, I need to ask a favor.”
“Sure, no problem.”
“First off, can I ask if you’ve ever heard of a guy called Huw Fletcher? Some connection with prostitution and/or drugs, but I can’t tell you more than that.”
“Huw Fletcher? No. Never heard of him.”
“Okay, that’s fine. But look, I think this man Fletcher is involved in something nasty. Something nasty to do with the women you try to protect. I can’t tell you why, but I’ve serious reason to think so. Trouble is, I can’t reveal the witness who gave me Fletcher’s name, and I can’t introduce Fletcher into the investigation unless I can supply evidence that connects him to it. I want you to be that evidence.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Just say that you’ve heard rumors from the girls you work with that Huw Fletcher has been involved in sex trafficking and prostitution. You heard the rumors and wanted to pass them on to me.”
“Okay. Yes, I’m happy to say all that.”
“You may one day be asked to say the same thing in court.”
“I understand. That’s fine.”
“You may find yourself being asked the same questions in the course of a missing persons investigation.”
“Okay.”
A drawn-out okay, that one. “Who’s the missing person? Fletcher?”
“Yes.”
“All right. Go on then. In for a penny, in for a pound.”
“Bryony, you’re a star. Whatever’s one step up from a star. A quasar? Something like that.”
“That’s all right. It’s not every day I’m asked to fabricate evidence by a police officer.”
We ring off. I don’t yet do anything, but I feel better for knowing that the possibilities have just widened. Fletcher, Fletcher, missile man.
That evening, operational requirements are such that Brydon and I are in a position to go out together. We agree to meet in a wine bar at seven thirty.
“Gives me a chance to go to the gym and gives you time to get ready. Get changed or whatever.”
Get changed? I hadn’t been intending to. I don’t even know if Brydon was nudging me that I ought to, or whether he was just being male-clumsy. But the awkwardness affects both of us. Are we friends? Colleagues? Potential romantic partners? We’re both unsure but, I suppose, keen to find out.
In any case, I like it that I’ve been told what to do. I leave the office punctually at five and go home. It feels odd to be back. Still not safe, but not as radically threatening as it had been after Penry’s visit. I open my fridge and am surprised to find it full of food. I forgot that I’d restocked it on Sunday. I think about having a smoke and decide against. I go upstairs to try to work out what a girl is meant to wear to a date that might not be a date. Then I hear a van pull up outside.
I’m flooded with fear.
My knife and hammer are downstairs. I should have brought them up. My curtains are open, and I should have closed them.
A man gets out of the van, walks to the front door, and knocks. He looks like an ordinary guy. Could be a plumber. A meter reader. A delivery guy.
But what do killers look like? What did the man who killed Stacey Edwards look like?