Death Message

‘I didn’t call anybody.’

‘Harika, you said you knew who had killed Deniz. We have recordings of those phone calls.’

‘Not from me.’

‘I recognised your voice.’

‘You’ve made a mistake.’

‘We can trace the call,’ Stone said.

Kitson could see the dilemma in the girl’s eyes. Could see she wanted to tell Stone that he was talking rubbish, but was unable to. She had withheld her number on both occasions but dare not admit it. Instead, she dropped her gaze to the tabletop; picked at its edge with a plum-coloured fingernail.

‘We can, if we need to,’ Kitson said. ‘It’s a pain in the arse when a number’s been withheld, and obviously we’d like you to save us the trouble, but we can do it.’

Stone turned on the charm, such as it was. ‘Come on, help us out, Harika. If you know something, if you know who was responsible for killing Deniz, don’t you owe it to him to tell us?’

‘It’s a big deal, I know,’ Kitson said. ‘But there’s no need to be scared. We’ll take care of everything.’

When she finally looked up, the girl’s eyes were wide and wet. ‘I thought I knew something, but I didn’t.’ She managed to produce a wobbly smile. ‘That’s all. Stupid…’

‘Fine, but why don’t you let us check it out?’ Kitson said. ‘If you’re wrong, there’s no harm done, is there?’

Harika shook her head: twisted fingers into her hair.

‘There are two types of people who make these kinds of calls,’ Stone said, suddenly harder. ‘Some people really want to help. They tell us what they know, and if we follow it up and it comes to nothing, it doesn’t matter, because that’s part of the job.’ The girl shook her head, held up a hand. ‘But then there’s always a few who like to mess us about. Who send us in the wrong direction, or make out they know stuff when they don’t, and when you’re trying to catch a murderer that can cost lives. So, I really hope you’re not wasting our time.’

Stone’s aggression did nothing but bring out something similar in the girl. She blinked away the tears and stared back at him. ‘Well, why don’t we all stop wasting time, then? I’m under no obligation to stay here, am I?’

She pushed back her chair, but Kitson leaned across and took hold of her arm. ‘It was easier on the end of a phone,’ she said. ‘I can understand that, the anonymity. But this is every bit as confidential, Harika, really. If you know, even if you think you know, just tell us.’ Kitson looked hard, trying to reach whatever it was that had prompted the young woman to pick up the phone in the first place. ‘Just give us a name…’

The only sound for fifteen seconds was the faint hum of the recording equipment, and the creak of the girl’s short leather jacket as she twisted in her chair. She shook her head, kept shaking it. Whispered: ‘I can’t.’

They sat in silence for a minute more, but it was clear they would get nothing else out of the girl for the time being. Stone looked as though he could happily have stared at Harika Kemal for a good deal longer, but Kitson had better things to do.

Cheap flats anywhere in central London were hard to come by, but all the same, Thorne could see why the owner of this particular property would not have been snowed under with prospective tenants. Why he’d have been happy enough to pocket the cash and not ask too many questions.

Within shouting distance of the Talgarth flyover, the house stood at the grimmer end of an undistinguished terrace. The top-floor flat – one room and a toilet wedged into the eaves – looked out over the roof of Charing Cross Hospital from the front, with the green and grey of Hammersmith Cemetery the marginally more appealing view from the Velux window at the back.

‘No wonder Brooks is in a bad mood,’ Holland said.

Pretty much every expense had been spared to create a uniquely desperate atmosphere: three different patterns of carpet in one room; a two-bar electric death-trap mounted on one wall; a shit-streaked lavatory bowl, and a pink plastic shower tray that appeared to match.

‘Jesus.’

‘I’m surprised he didn’t top himself.’

‘When we’ve got a minute, can we come back and nick the thieving fucker that rented this place out…?’

Thorne walked very slowly from the bed to a chest of drawers. He wasn’t in any hurry, of course, was keen to miss nothing, but he couldn’t have moved much quicker if his life depended on it. He’d had no more than three hours’ sleep the night before. Three hours between drifting away on the sofa with one handset clutched to his chest and being woken by the ringing of the other, with news of the sighting in Hammersmith.

Louise had wandered into her living room just before he’d left, bewildered to see him fully dressed. He’d told her about the body being found the night before. About having to rush off again.

‘I’m really not trying to avoid you,’ he’d said, laughing.

She hadn’t seen the fu

As Thorne reached for the handle on the top drawer, he was called across to the far end of the room. A Trainee DC whose name he could never remember had discovered a Tupperware box stuffed with cash underneath a table. As Thorne took the box, he could feel its worn edges through the thin gloves. He flicked through the bundle of notes, then passed it across to the exhibits officer. While he was there, the officer carefully bagged up ballpoint pens, scraps of paper and a wrap of rolling tobacco from the cracked Formica surface of the table. It looked to Thorne as though it had been borrowed from a greasy spoon.

‘There’s a decent amount there,’ the TDC said. ‘All fifties and twenties, by the look of it.’

Thorne called Brigstocke in from the bathroom. They had found clothes scattered about, and personal items on a shelf above the sink. Seeing the cash, though, Brigstocke nodded, as though its discovery had confirmed what he was already thinking. ‘Well, either he left in a hell of a hurry or he’s coming back,’ he said. ‘We should get what we can as quickly as possible and get out. Put some surveillance at either end of the street, just in case.’

A crime scene unit never got out of anywhere quite as quickly as they went in, but Thorne suspected that they would be wasting their time anyway. ‘Yeah, worth a try,’ he said. He walked back to the chest of drawers, took a step past it and spent a few seconds at the dirty window. Remembering what had happened, how he’d felt in the garden at Ski

The drawer refused to slide out easily, and Thorne had to kneel down and wrench it an inch or so at a time. The TDC offered a helping hand and snorted when he looked down and saw what was inside. ‘Bugger me, he could open his own shop.’

There were perhaps a dozen assorted handsets. Spare batteries and chargers. SIM cards lying loose, in blister packs or mounted, unused, on plastic cards.

‘He doesn’t have anything else,’ Thorne said. ‘What he’s doing is everything to him.’ He nudged some of the hardware to one side with a gloved finger. ‘He’s spent time putting it all together.’

‘I hope there isn’t one of those for each message he’s pla

Thorne knew the young TDC was joking, but caught his breath nonetheless; poking around among the Nokias and Samsungs, as if they were knives or handguns. He remembered what Kitson had said in the pub.

‘How much revenge can anyone want?’

He reached for something at the back of the drawer and pulled out a sheaf of papers, bound with several elastic bands. He read the first page, then gently turned back the corner to look at the second.

The TDC was trying his best to read over Thorne’s shoulder. ‘What you got, old love letters?’

‘Not old,’ Thorne said, eventually. Now he knew for certain that Brooks hadn’t gone anywhere; that if they had missed him, it could not have been by very much. He beckoned the exhibits officer over and handed the letters across. ‘I want copies of those as soon as,’ he said.