Cleanskin (2 page)

T
HE FIRST TEAM BACK
were the ones I’d sent to talk to Martina in the plush white flat with the high ceilings and the river view. I knew as soon as they walked in it hadn’t gone well. Heads down, shoulders hunched, they’d lost all the bounce they’d walked out the door with a few hours before.

They plodded up to the desk I’d taken over. ‘Well?’ I asked, eyebrows raised.

‘No, not well,’ the woman DC said. ‘She’s off her face.’

‘She’s off the planet,’ her partner said. ‘On drugs. Not the kind you take when you go out clubbing on a weekend. More the kind that tame doctors feed you when they want to keep you from thinking about your kid being dead.’

‘The doctor’s got her dosed up to the eyeballs on tranks,’ the woman said. ‘We’re not going to get any sense out of her. Probably not in this lifetime, anyway.’

‘You think the doctor’s under Farrell’s orders?’ I asked. I was interested in how it seemed to people who were out of the loop on Farrell’s track record.

The woman shrugged. ‘You lose a kid like that, you’re going to want to be well out of it. I think the doctor’s giving her what she wants.’

‘Yeah, and when she comes back from her space walk, who knows what she’ll remember,’ her buddy added gloomily.

I had to agree with him. It didn’t look like Martina was going to be much use. In that state, she couldn’t tell us anything useful about who might want to burn her daughter to death or why. Even more importantly, from Farrell’s point of view, she couldn’t tell us where he was or what he was up to.

It got worse when the second team drifted back towards lunchtime. They’d gone out looking keen and sharp, the way young CID lads get when they have something to prove. Now they looked shifty, rather than pissed off like the earlier pair. My heart sank.
That’s what
you get when you send boys on a man’s errand
, I thought to myself.
They’ve been blown out
.

Turned out, it was worse than that. ‘She’s
done a runner,’ the shorter, skinnier one said; Laurel to the other one’s Hardy. Not that there was much to laugh about.

Hardy nodded miserably. ‘Not a Scooby-Doo where she is. The hospital treated her for the effects of the smoke, then discharged her. We had a couple of uniforms waiting to talk to her, but she said she was too upset. She said Farrell had told her to check into a local hotel, so our lads dropped her off at the door. But she never checked in.’ He looked at his shoes. It seemed like he was as impressed with his co-workers as I was.

‘Wonderful,’ I said bitterly. ‘I don’t suppose you checked any other local hotels? Just on the off-chance?’

‘That’s what took us so long,’ the skinny one said. ‘Nobody locally has her registered.’

I sighed and shook my head. ‘OK. We’re probably too late now, but get on to the airports and the airlines. Let’s see if Manuela has already skipped off back to Spain. And if she hasn’t, put out an alert at all points of exit.’ I waved them away and swung round to face Ben Wilson.

‘I’m beginning to wonder if I was right about Farrell sticking to his usual routine,’ I said.

Ben gave his nicotine gum a vigorous chew, a look of disgust on his bulldog face. ‘We’ll find out soon enough,’ he said, nodding towards the door. ‘They’re back. And it looks like they’re empty-handed.’

I swung round in the direction of his gaze. The two lads I’d sent out to bring me Jack Farrell had just come in. There was an empty space between them where Farrell should have been. ‘He never showed, guv,’ the ginger one said as soon as he was close enough to tell me without shouting.

‘I’m not your guv,’ I said sharply. ‘Which I regard as a result, frankly. You’re telling me Jack Farrell hasn’t been near Smithson’s today?’

They both nodded.

‘What about Danny Chu and Fancy Riley? Did they turn up?’ I asked.

The red-haired lad flashed a quick glance at his oppo. A glance that said,
Oh, shit
. They both shifted from one foot to the other.

‘Never mind,’ I sighed. ‘OK, here’s what I want you to do. Phone Farrell’s lawyer and set up a meeting down here. Tell him we need to take a formal statement from Farrell about the fire. Tell him it needs to be sooner rather than later.’

They slunk off, leaving me with Ben. ‘What do you think?’ I said.

Ben spat his gum into the bin and shrugged. ‘Katie was his only kid. Maybe he really is beside himself with grief.’

I wasn’t won over by the argument. Even less so when the fat lad I’d put on Manuela’s tail came back to me later on.

‘She was on the first flight from Heathrow to Malaga. She was on the ground there three hours ago, but she hasn’t shown up at the family home,’ he said. ‘The Spanish cops checked it out. Her mum and dad only live an hour from the airport. They claim they had no idea she was on her way back to Spain. And they haven’t a clue where she might be holed up.’

Like most English gangsters, Farrell had connections in Spain. That’s probably how he’d got Manuela in the first place. It’s still easy to disappear there. So many tourists, so many short-term workers. I remember once meeting a Spanish cop who said there were some parts of his country where there were no locals any more. Somewhere like that would be the perfect place to stash a young Spanish woman you
wanted to stay hidden for a while. For whatever reason.

I looked at Ben. ‘Farrell had enough wits about him to get the nanny out of the picture,’ I said, grim-faced. ‘Still think he’s so upset he’s lost it?’

T
HE LAWYER GOT BACK
to us towards the end of the afternoon. His name was Max Carter and his voice irritated the hell out of me, never mind what he had to say. He made Prince Charles sound common as muck. The upshot was, Jack Farrell was willing to meet us the next morning at the lawyer’s office.

‘I’d rather Mr Farrell came down to the police station,’ I said. ‘I’m going to be a bit pushed for time tomorrow morning and I want to take a formal statement.’

‘We’re all busy men,’ Carter said in a lofty way that made me long to slap him. ‘However, neither of us has lost a child in the last twenty-four hours. Mr Farrell deserves our compassion and our consideration. A police station is not equipped to provide either of those, Detective Chief Inspector. Shall we say ten thirty at my office?’

I didn’t have much choice, so I agreed. As I
put the phone down, I turned to Ben and told him about the meeting. ‘Carter’s office is in one of those Canary Wharf towers. I want a pair of officers on all the ground-level exits and two cars in the underground car park. See if we can chase up the building plans from the council, just to be on the safe side. Farrell doesn’t get out of there without a tail.’

Ben nodded. ‘OK, boss. Do you want me to get a tap on the lawyer’s phone?’

‘He’ll assume we’ve already got one. Besides, there’s no point. Every move we make just shows us how canny Farrell is. Even now the arse has dropped out of his world, the firewalls are still holding firm. You might want to tap up some of the usual sources and see if we can track down Danny and Fancy, though.’ I shut up sharpish as a tall woman stopped by my desk. Her thick dark hair had a distinctive silver streak falling from the centre parting over one ear. I grinned at the sight of her.

‘You’re a bit off your patch, aren’t you?’ I said.

‘I could say the same to you,’ she replied. She pointed to Ben’s chair and he stood up with a twisted little smile. She swung round the desk
and settled down, propping her feet on the bin with a sigh of pleasure.

I’ve always admired a woman who can stand up for herself. Dr Stella Marino had enough bottle to stand up for her entire sex. For the last five years, she’d been cutting up bodies for me. Unlike the ones that Farrell carved up, the ones Stella worked on were already dead.

‘I’m not your personal pathologist, you know,’ she said now. ‘You’re not the only bunch of cops who need to call on the best.’

‘You’re here for Katie Farrell?’ I knew the answer, but you have to go through the motions, even when you work as closely together as Stella and I do.

Stella nodded. ‘Though only because of your interest in her father, I suspect. There was nothing about the body to suggest anything other than what you all assumed at the time. She was in her bed. The smoke and fumes killed her. The body was badly burned, but that happened post mortem. I suppose that may offer some comfort to her parents.’ She tried not to sound bored but failed. Poor Stella gets bored very quickly when a body offers no surprises.

‘You’re saying the person who did this didn’t want her to suffer?’ Ben chipped in.

Stella pushed her hair back from her face in a familiar gesture. ‘Motive’s your thing, Ben. I just read what’s written on the body.’ She yawned then got to her feet. ‘You’ll get the formal report in a day or two.’

‘Let me walk you out,’ I said, falling into step beside her. When we’d got beyond the reach of Ben’s flapping ears, I spoke. ‘It’s been a while, I know, but it looks like I might have some free time this evening. I could bring a takeaway round to yours?’

Stella bit her lip. ‘It’s a nice thought, Andy. But here’s the thing. I’m off to the States at the end of the week and I’ve got a million things to do before I leave.’

‘The States?’ I tried not to slide straight into a huff, but it was a struggle. OK, we’re not exactly what you’d call an item, Stella and me. But getting together three or four times a month for dinner and a session between the sheets isn’t nothing either. ‘It’s the first I’ve heard about the States.’

We were out in the hall by now, shoulder to shoulder in the narrow passage. Stella didn’t
slow down, just kept heading for the lifts with her long stride. ‘I got the chance to spend a month at the Body Farm,’ she said. ‘You know, where they –’

‘I know what they do there,’ I cut in. ‘Hard to resist. A month watching bodies rot. A pathologist’s wet dream.’ I shook my head and let my mouth curl into a sneer. ‘Beats hanging out with me and a Chinese.’

Stella stabbed the lift button and swung round to face me. ‘Listen to yourself. I’ve heard five-year-olds sounding more adult.’ Stella laughed and leaned forward to plant a soft kiss on my cheek. She smelled, as she always did at the end of a working day, of the lavender gel she scrubbed her face and hands with. ‘Silly boy,’ she said. She patted my arm as the lift doors opened. ‘I’ll see you when I get back. Try not to find any really interesting bodies between now and then.’

I faked a glare. ‘I’ll see what I can come up with. Just to spite you.’

T
HE STAKE-OUT HAD BEEN
in place for a full hour before the meeting at Max Carter’s office. Even though we do this sort of thing all the time, I think we were all a bit edgy that morning. The game had changed somehow and it felt like we didn’t quite know the new rules yet.

We picked up Farrell as soon as he was dropped off outside the building by Fancy Riley just after ten. The apparent change in him was striking. He walked the short distance to the main door like an old man, his shoulders hunched and his walk hesitant. His head was bowed, his eyes fixed on the pavement. To be honest, I might have walked past him in the street without recognizing him if I hadn’t been keeping an eye out for him.

‘He looks like shit,’ Ben said.

‘No wonder.’

‘You think it’s for real?’ he asked.

‘You’re the one with kids,’ I said. ‘How would
you be feeling if that was Owen or Bethan on the slab?’

Ben took a moment to think. ‘Angry,’ he said at last, rubbing a hand over the blond stubble that covered his cannonball head. ‘Angry is what I’d be feeling. I’d be raging to get my hands on the person that killed my kid. I’d be storming in there with my fists at the ready. But Farrell just looks beaten. He looks like a man who’s thrown in the towel. Only goes to show, you can never tell the thing that will truly cut somebody off at the knees. Before this, I would not have believed Jack Farrell would take this lying down.’

As often happened, Ben had put his finger right on the very thing that was bothering me. Jack Farrell was a man of action. We’d seen it time and time again. Someone would try to inflict some serious damage on part of his empire, and Farrell would swing into action. There would be a morning meeting as per usual. Then Danny Chu and Fancy Riley would spend the rest of the day running round like somebody had lit a bonfire under their arses. Within a matter of days, Farrell would be back on top, often stronger than before. And who
ever had been dumb enough to try it on was never going to do that again.

Of course, nobody had ever hit on the idea of doing something this personal before. And yet the very idea of Farrell taking this lying down was something we were both struggling with.

But when we walked into Max Carter’s office, it looked like that was just what we were going to get. Farrell barely looked up when we were shown in. He was slumped in an armchair, hair greasy and lank, suit crumpled and his eyes dull as pebbles. It was hard to square this hollow shell with the man who ran one of the toughest criminal empires in the country.

When we introduced ourselves, posing as members of the Hampshire force, Farrell made no sign of knowing me from the night of the fire. Carter kept up a steady flow of plummy nothings as he settled us all round a low coffee table, but he couldn’t put off our questions for ever.

I took Farrell through the evening leading up to the fire. ‘I wasn’t home when Katie went to bed,’ he said, his voice slow and dull. ‘I was late getting back from a meeting in London. But I
looked in on her when I got in.’

‘What time was that?’ Ben asked.

‘About half past nine,’ Farrell said. ‘Then I went in to give her a kiss on my way to bed. Just like I always did.’

And so on. The alarm had been set. At least, he was ninety-nine per cent sure he’d set it like he always did. He’d taped a football match earlier in the evening so he’d gone to bed around half past ten to watch it there. Martina had joined him some time during the second half, before the Arsenal goal. They’d turned out the light just after midnight and gone to sleep.

The smell of smoke had woken Martina first. She had shaken him awake and he’d jumped out of bed. ‘No, I didn’t look at the clock,’ he said, his voice weary and sad. ‘I ran out of the bedroom and I could see smoke in the hall.’

I stopped him there and Ben took out a floor plan of the house. It was laid out like three sides of a square. The middle section contained public rooms the size of hotel ballrooms. The right-hand side held Farrell’s office, Martina’s private sitting room, and their bedroom. On
the left, there was Katie’s playroom, her bedroom and Manuela’s two rooms. ‘Show me where you saw the smoke,’ I said.

He pointed to the hallway that led from his bedroom to the living area. He seemed almost listless and bored, as if his mind was somewhere far away. ‘I ran towards the smoke. By the time I got halfway across the main hall, the smoke was so thick I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see any flames, the smoke was too heavy. But I could feel the heat.’

Farrell had struggled back to his bedroom, coughing and gagging. Martina had already called the fire brigade. Together, they’d left the building by the garden door at the far end of the hall. Farrell had run across to the other wing, where Katie slept. He’d been yards away when he realized he was too late. Her bedroom window was a wall of flame. He’d been on his knees facing it, tears running down his face, when the firemen had found him.

The firemen had also found Manuela collapsed on the ground next to the chair she’d used to smash her own bedroom window. Like all the other rooms in that wing of the house, her room had been gutted by the fire. She was
lucky to be alive, according to the chief fire officer.

‘Is that what you think?’ I said to Farrell.

For the first time that morning, his eyes showed some of his old spark. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Do you think she’s lucky to be alive? Or do you think she’s alive because that’s how she planned it?’

He flicked his wrist like a man batting at a fly. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he said. ‘Manuela loved Katie. They were like sisters.’

‘But they weren’t sisters. And even sisters have their price,’ I said. ‘Something like this, is always easier if it’s an inside job. Could somebody have got to Manuela?’

For a fleeting moment, I could see Farrell consider the odds. Then he shook his head. ‘No way,’ he said.

I believed him. And I thought I understood the reason for his faith. Getting her out of the country so fast hadn’t just been to protect her. It had also been to protect him. He knew Manuela hadn’t killed his daughter because he also knew she was in love with him. Whether he loved her in return, I had no way of
knowing. But I’d have staked my pension on the fact that he was making the most of Manuela’s feelings.

And that Martina knew nothing about the affair.