Clean Cut (23 page)

Dora wore a multi-coloured African wrap over a bright red T-shirt, and rubber flip-flops on her plump little feet.

‘Okay, sit yourselves in here and I’ll bring in some coffee.’

Anna sat on a bright orange sofa which had many stains, as did the carpet, but the room was clean and bright, with children’s paintings on the walls. Dora returned with a tray of mugs of coffee and cookies. She placed it down on a white hand-painted coffee-table.

‘Help yourselves,’ she said, as she plumped herself down in a sort of bean-bag chair. She was at least eighteen stone, with big muscular arms and a wobbly belly, but her hands, like her feet, were small. She wore a row of silver bangles, which she twisted round with her
free hand. ‘So, you come about my little darlin’ Carly Ann?’

‘Yes.’ Anna picked up her coffee; Mike was already munching a cookie and seemed content to sit back and let the women get on with it. ‘I was not on the original enquiry, so I would like to ask if you could tell me as much about Carly Ann as possible.’

Dora nodded. ‘Well, be about nine months before she died that she moved in here with me. I don’t often take kids in, you know; if you start, next minute you got a houseful, then the council will kick you out. Anyways, when I met her, there was just something about her; she came into the centre and said she needed help. She was on heroin and had been for a number of years, and she was selling herself to get the money to pay for it. I think she’d lived rough, you know; she was just a kid that ran away from one foster home after another. They all try to head to London, reckon the streets here are paved with gold, but then it’s too late to turn back, and with Carly Ann being such a looker, the pimps were fast to get a hold of her.’

Dora took a deep breath. ‘My Carly Ann was one of the most perfect creatures I have ever set eyes on. She was part-Jamaican, part-white, and her skin was a flawless soft tawny shade; she had this curly black hair, like silk. When you think of her living rough and pumping that shit into her veins, and still looking gorgeous…’ She shook her head.

Anna nodded, and said that she had only seen one photograph apart from the mortuary shots. Dora got up, opened a drawer and took out a number of snapshots.

‘Here she is. She was trying her best to get clean, and I would give her a few quid to help me out at the centre.
I mostly deal with young kids, so I put her in touch with a drug rehab, and she’d go there in the mornings and work for me afternoons. You know, she wasn’t using when they found her, that’s what makes it all the worse–she wasn’t drugged. I don’t believe that she was back on the game, no way. She swore blind to me that she would never turn another trick; she hated it, and the more she was around me and the kids, the more she realized what she had been doing to herself. I held that girl in my arms when she sobbed and told me that I was her only angel, she’d never had no love, no parents; until we met, my Carly Ann had never known a decent home, and you should have seen how she flowered. I mean, she wasn’t all perfect and she could have troubled times and dark times, but when she laughed, it was sunny.’

Anna looked over the snapshots of the dead girl: bending over a few kids with a birthday cake, blowing out candles; at a theme park, her on a slide roaring with laughter.

‘On the photograph we have at the station, Carly Ann is wearing a very thick gold chain,’ she said. ‘Do you know where she got it from?’

Dora shook her head.

‘After she died, were any of her belongings still here?’

‘Yes, still here–no one else to claim them, I suppose. ’Cos I been so distraught, I just never got round to sorting them and passing them onto some needy girl. I’ll do it eventually.’

‘What about boyfriends?’

‘All the while she was here with me, she was only out late a few times. She went off once or twice for a weekend, disappeared without a word, and when she come back, I give her a dressing-down and a warning.
I said after the last time, if she ever did it again, she was out. She cried and said she was sorry, then it all blew over and she settled down; be about a month later, she didn’t come home again, but this time it was a couple of months. I got worried ’cos she was away for so long. I even went out on the streets looking for her, then I read about the murder.’ Dora wiped her eyes with a tissue.

‘So you never met anyone she was friendly with?’

‘No.’

‘Did you ever see anyone in a white Range Rover?’

Dora nodded. ‘I never saw the driver, seein’ as the windows was blacked out, but I saw that car a few times, waiting down below. Carly Ann never went out when it was there. I think it might have been a pimp, or someone she’d known. I even said to her that if she wanted me to call the police on him, I would–but she wouldn’t let me. Then it just stopped coming round, so we never contacted the cops.’

‘Did she ever mention to you her killer, Idris Krasiniqe?’

‘No.’

Anna stood up. ‘May I see her things, please?’

Dora nodded, and plodded in her flip-flops to the door. ‘It won’t take a minute. I got them all in a suitcase.’

Anna followed Dora along the narrow hallway, Mike just behind her. The box room was very small, with just a single bed and a narrow wardrobe.

‘Like I said, it wasn’t much I could offer her, but she loved this room; said it was her home.’ Dora picked up a cheap brocade suitcase. ‘This was hers, and I just put everything in it. Well, I got my friend to, as I was too upset, but there’s all her things in here. I also got Esther
to list everything, so if you take it away, I know what’s in it.’

Anna smiled. ‘I won’t need to take it, Dora, but I would like to look through it, if you don’t mind.’

‘You go ahead.’

Anna opened the suitcase and started to sift through the neatly folded clothes. Some were cheap market purchases, but others surprised her: they were designer labels. She took out her notebook and began to list everything, including the sexy underwear. The case had a musty, musky smell, perhaps from her old perfume. There was a pink satin bag filled with toiletries, and a square carved box. Anna eased off the lid, and started looking at the jumble of necklaces, rings and bracelets. Like her clothes, some were cheap baubles, but then Anna picked up the heavy gold necklace. It was eighteen carat and weighed a lot; there was a matching bracelet and two diamond rings. There was also a clatter of gold bangles, all heavy African gold.

‘What you got?’ Mike Lewis leaned on the doorframe.

‘There’s a lot of very good jewellery here, solid gold and two big diamonds; I’d say this was worth about ten, fifteen grand.’

He whistled. ‘If she was just a cheap tart hooked on heroin, she had to have some heavy clients; all this is worth money.’

‘Like Dora said, she was a beauty. Maybe she walked away from being a good earner for her pimp? You know what these creeps are like.’

As Anna put the clothes back into the case, she felt around the edges for anything she’d not seen, and patted the lining. There were no handbags or purses, or any sign of anything like letters or address books.

Mike and Anna rejoined Dora, who had made fresh coffee, even though they didn’t want it.

‘No handbag or letters?’ Anna queried.

‘No, that’s what she came with. I don’t even know where she was living before, but I think wherever it was, she got out fast–you know, did a runner.’

‘Maybe from a pimp?’

‘Maybe. She wouldn’t tell me, said she was ashamed of her past life. I dunno, only sixteen and with a past life; makes me sad.’

‘She has some very valuable jewellery.’

Dora looked up, surprised.

‘There are gold bangles and necklaces, diamond rings.’

Dora shook her head. ‘Maybe that’s what they were after.’

Anna leaned forwards, suddenly alert. ‘What was that?’

‘I was broken into just after she died; they made a mess of the place, but nothing was taken. All her things was packed and locked in the case–I had it under my bed. My next-door neighbour disturbed them and called the cops. They’d gone by the time they got here.’

‘Did you also speak to the police?’

‘Yes, ma’am, I did, an’ I also give them the registration number of the car, just in case the guy came back.’

‘I’m sorry, which car?’

‘That white one; the one you asked me about before–the Range Rover. I took his number-plate down when he was hovering around Carly Ann.’

Anna glanced at Mike Lewis, then back to Dora.

‘I think we just got lucky,’ she murmured.

A
nna was just entering the incident room back at the Hampshire station to type up her report, when she stopped. Harry Blunt was in full throttle.

‘I don’t effing believe it! How come you get just a bloody limb of a guy and, within weeks, you got an ID and a suspect banged up? We’ve been running around like blue-arsed flies, trying to track down this bloke Sickert plus his two kids, and we’ve got sweet FA!’

Frank Brandon was sitting with his back to Anna, perched on a desk. ‘Well, you can call it exceptional, dedicated policework, pal.’

‘Hello Frank,’ Anna said.

He turned and grinned. ‘Eh, how you doing? I was just telling Harry here we got lucky; seems your team are a bit out on a limb.’ He laughed.

‘Well, we did get a break today,’ she said, crossing to her desk. ‘So, what brings you out here?’

‘Joining your team, of course. From what I’ve gathered, you need all the help you can get.’

Across the room, Harry raised his eyebrow at Anna. ‘What’s the break you’ve got?’

Anna told him they had a registration number for the white Range Rover seen at the site of the murder of
Carly Ann; Mike Lewis was running it through the DVLA computers to discover the owner/driver. Starting to type up her report, she asked where Langton was.

‘Gone down the East End to see some voodoo doctor; Grace is with him.’ Harry came and leaned over the back of her chair. ‘What else did you get this morning?’

‘Well, for one, Carly Ann was a stunner; she was clean, off heroin, off the game and living with a community carer called Dora. The white Range Rover seen at the murder site was often parked by her flats; Dora said she thought the driver might have been Carly Ann’s pimp.’ Anna stopped typing. ‘She also had some very good quality jewellery. If it was her pimp, he was paying well, or keeping her in bling.’

‘Did this Dora know anything about who Carly Ann was working for?’

‘No, she never discussed it. My feelings are, whoever was pimping for her would not have wanted her to quit. With her looks, she must have been a gold mine.’

‘You reckon the guy in the Range Rover was her pimp?’

‘If he was, he was also watching them try to hack her head off.’

At that moment, Mike Lewis walked in and flung his hands up in the air. ‘Okay, we got the registered owner of the Range Rover; he lives in Kensington. I spoke to his wife–they sold it a year ago.’ He sat glumly on the edge of Anna’s desk. ‘The geezer bought it for cash; looks like he gave a fake name and address.’

‘Any description of the buyer?’

Lewis took out his notebook. ‘Tall, black guy, well
dressed in a suit, spoke good English, appeared very charming, et cetera, et cetera. Because he paid cash, they did a deal on the price.’

‘Well, we’ve got the licence plates so we can put that out–see if we get anything.’

‘Already done.’

Harry ruffled his hair. ‘Not the usual vehicle wheeled around by pimps, is it? Too noticeable. I mean, white Range Rover, black tinted windows.’

‘By the amount of gear Carly Ann had, I’d say he was a bit more than a cheap pimp.’

‘If she worked for him, maybe he didn’t like the fact she was getting cleaned up?’

Anna frowned. ‘Unless.’

Mike and Harry looked at her.

‘What if she was more than just his whore? What if he really cared about her? What we need to do is try and trace anyone who knew her before she went to live with Dora; see if they can give us a clue as to who this guy was.’ She turned to Mike. ‘You have anything on record from your case?’

‘I’ll go and check; I think we did question a couple of girls.’

As Mike walked back to his desk, Harry said heavily, ‘Clutching at straws again. I mean, this is a new line of enquiry. Meanwhile we’re hovering around, looking up our own bumholes, waiting for a break.’

‘You never know, Harry, this might just be it. Do we have any trace on Camorra yet? If he’s living in Peckham, somebody must know where he is.’

‘Maybe they do, but we’ve had no tip-off. We got the locals there still doing a search.’ He turned to look
back at Frank Brandon. ‘What’s
he
been brought in for?’

‘I’d say it was pretty obvious, wouldn’t you?’ Anna joked. ‘Clutching at straws!’

‘Making the place stink like a whore’s bedroom.’

‘You’d know about that, would you?’ Anna teased.

‘No, but he’s still wearing enough cologne to knock you dead at six feet.’

Mike Lewis returned with a report sheet. ‘I got two names. We questioned both the girls; neither had seen Carly Ann for months, but before that, they hung out together.’

‘Did she live with them?’

‘Well, she used their address the second time she was picked up for ducking and diving around Shaftesbury Avenue.’

When Anna asked for their address and said she’d like to interview them, Mike shrugged and said he doubted they would still be there. It was a valid registered squat in Kilburn.

As Langton was not in the station, Anna made sure she did nothing out of order. She told the duty manager that she was trying to contact the girls and that she would take Brandon along with her. She handed in her report of the interaction with Dora about Carly Ann and, after a quick sandwich and coffee, she and Brandon left the station.

They drove in silence for a while, then Brandon asked if she could fill him in on a few areas he had not had time to catch up on.

She told him about the Krasiniqe brothers, and the fact that they hoped to find something to help Eamon in Parkhurst; if they did, they might get some information from his brother Idris at Wakefield.

‘Bloody makes me sick,’ Frank said. ‘I mean, if this bastard is holding out…’

‘He’s terrified of voodoo,’ Anna told him.

‘That’s bullshit.’

‘Maybe it is, but if you’d seen him, then you’d think differently; he was totally freaked, like a zombie. They have been trying to force-feed him to keep him alive.’

‘For what? He killed Murphy, didn’t he?’

‘Yes, but if we can get any information out of his brother, it’s worthwhile at least trying.’

‘Both illegal immigrants?’

‘Yep.’

‘Bloody insane, isn’t it? You read the papers today: never mind the flood of illegal immigrants we’ve all ready got, we’ve got a new wave coming in from Eastern Europe. Under some ridiculous fucking law, so-called human rights, we could get more than six hundred thousand Poles and others coming in. I tell you, I’m thinking of fucking emigrating to Australia. They got the right idea–shut the gates. You know how many this bloody Government estimated would be coming in? Thirteen thousand. Well, they miscalculated, didn’t they? I tell you, the Government are guilty of blatant duplicity in trying to hide the truth: they have totally and utterly failed to control immigration and we are having to bear the brunt of it all. You know what it means: schools, hospitals, housing, welfare and wages are all going to be swamped. Fucking freeloaders! My brother in lives in Peterborough and they’ve got two thousand Poles coming there. Unemployment is already high, so what the hell are they all going to be doing?’

Anna stopped the car outside a large rundown house, one side covered in graffiti. ‘This is it.’

Brandon looked out of the window. ‘Pigsty. Fucking legal squat! Would you want to buy a place in this street?’

Anna got out of the car. Brandon was starting to annoy her; he sounded more and more like the bigoted Harry Blunt.

The front door was off its hinges. A couple of guys were sitting on the steps and when Anna asked if Barbara Early lived there, they just looked at her and shrugged.

‘Do you speak English?’ Brandon snapped.

They shrugged again. He pushed his way past them and Anna followed.

The dingy hallway was full of black bin bags, a stray dog sniffing at one of them. Anna knocked on one door and got no answer, while Brandon had the same result from two more. Heading down the stairs was a skinny black girl, with a leather bomber jacket two sizes too big, a pair of tight satin shorts and stacked high heels.

‘I’m looking for Barbara Early,’ Anna said pleasantly, blocking the end of the stairs.

‘She’s not here no more,’ the girl said.

‘Okay, how about Jinny Moorcroft?’

The girl hesitated. ‘What for?’

‘Nothing to worry about; we just need to have a chat to her about someone.’

‘Two floors up at the end of the corridor.’

‘Thank you.’

Anna stepped back to allow the girl to pass, just as a scruffy white boy with his hair in dreads yelled down, ‘Hey, Jinny! Will you get some milk?’

Brandon moved fast; he gripped her arms. ‘Now that wasn’t nice, was it, Jinny?’

She wriggled and tried to get away from him.

‘Okay, Jinny, we can have a chat here, or I can take you into the police station. You are not under arrest, nothing like that; we just need to know a few things about a friend of yours.’

‘If it’s Barbara, we dunno where she is. She OD’d weeks ago and they took her away.’

‘This is not about Barbara; it’s about Carly Ann North.’

Jinny seemed to deflate; she almost toppled off her shoes.

‘Is there somewhere we can talk in private?’ Anna kept her voice calm and steady.

Jinny hesitated, and then looked back up the stairs. ‘Here’s good enough.’

Anna sat beside Jinny on the filthy stairs as Brandon hovered. ‘You knew Carly Ann, didn’t you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘She lived here for a while. She gave this address when she was arrested.’

‘Yeah, top room with me and Barbara, but Barbara’s gone now.’

‘How long did Carly Ann live here?’

‘Dunno. She was here when I got my room; that was over a year ago.’

‘Did you share a room with her?’

‘Yeah.’ Jinny scratched at her hands and rubbed at her arms beneath the jacket. Her eyes were glazed and her nose had a red crust around it. Her fingernails were bitten down to the quick. She was probably on heroin, Anna thought.

‘Did you work with Carly Ann?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Did she have anyone special? A special client?’

‘No–well, not at first. She was just one of us, you know.’

‘So you worked the streets together, right?’

‘Sometimes.’ Jinny looked up the stairs and then bent her head. ‘He takes care of us, Mark upstairs.’

‘So Mark also took care of Carly Ann?’

‘Yeah, for a while, but she got into a row with him.’

‘About money?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Did he kick her out?’

‘No,
he
got kicked in the head.’

‘Who–Mark upstairs?’

‘Yeah. This bloke come round and said he wanted to take Carly Ann. Mark said he could go fuck himself and then this bastard beat up on him.’

‘Can you describe him?’

‘No, I wasn’t here.’

‘So did Carly Ann leave?’

‘Yeah. Well, after what happened, Mark didn’t want to get into any more aggro from them.’

‘Them?’

‘Yeah, there was a few of them come round. I dunno who they were, but they drove up and one man come in to get her.’

‘But you weren’t here?’

‘No, Mark was. They went up to our room and took her stuff. She was outside; she didn’t even come in.’

‘Do you know what kind of car they were in?’

‘Yeah, a white one. Big thing with black windows; it had been outside before, couple of times. Carly Ann came back home in it a few times.’

‘Did you ever see anyone in the car?’

‘No, the windows was black.’

‘Did you see anyone at all that came in with Carly Ann?’

‘No. She got very secretive, ’cos he was paying her a lot of dough; then she said she wasn’t gonna do any drugs nor nothing, and was gonna live with this guy. We reckoned it was bullshit, ’cos she could tell big lies. She said he was gonna look after her.’

Brandon asked quietly, ‘Was this the white car you saw outside?’ He showed her a photograph of a white Range Rover.

‘Yeah, it was like that.’

Anna looked to Brandon, then eased her body closer to Jinny.

‘We will need to speak to Mark,’ she said in a low voice.

‘Oh Christ, don’t have a go at him ’cos he’ll take it out on me.’

‘We just want to talk to him.’ Brandon headed up the stairs and Jinny watched him go, fearfully.

‘Did Carly Ann get some jewellery from this man she was seeing?’ Anna asked.

‘I dunno. If she had anything of value, she’d hide it. Mark would have it off her otherwise. He takes care of us, you see.’

Anna looked at the young drug-fuelled girl, no more than seventeen, and ripped a page from her notebook.

‘Jinny, if you decided to get away from this, call this lady. Her name is Dora. You can get help to get you off drugs–you know, to get yourself straightened out.’

Jinny looked at the piece of paper, and folded it over and over into a small square. ‘She’s dead, ain’t she?’

‘Carly Ann?’

‘Yeah. I read about it. They come here asking about
her, but we didn’t know nothing. I suppose Barbara’s dead an’ all; she was shooting up meths mixed with Christ knows what. She was a nice kid.’ Jinny shut her eyes.

‘Carly Ann was brutally murdered, Jinny, so if there is anything you can think of that could help us, anything at all…’

‘They got the one that done it, didn’t they?’

‘Yes, but we think there are more people involved, and they got away.’

Jinny pointed with her foot in the stack-heeled shoe. ‘She left these, and some other gear; said she wouldn’t need it any more as she was gonna be looked after. Well, she was lying again, wasn’t she? Nobody looked after her. They done her in.’

‘So you liked her?’

Jinny nodded; her eyes filled with tears. ‘I know she told lies and stuff, but she was sort of different from us all–you know, clean, always washing herself, afraid she’d pick up something.’

There was a lot of banging coming from the floor above. Jinny looked up fearfully.

‘I gotta go an’ get some milk.’

‘Thank you for talking to me, Jinny. Please, if you want to get out of this, call that number. Dora seems a really nice woman and I’m sure she’d want to help you.’

Jinny teetered to her feet. ‘Yeah, I’ll call. Can I go now?’