Dead Lucky (27 page)

‘You may remember him. DI Lennox?’

Maybe he imagined it, but Lambert swore he saw a flicker of recognition from Blake. ‘You may also have heard that DI Lennox is now dead.’

‘Is that so?’ said Blake, placing his elbows on the vast desk.

‘His body was discovered six months ago. His wrists slashed horizontally until he bled out. Sound familiar?’

No mistake this time. Blake squinted his eyes, the slightest of twitches in his lips. Lambert waited for Blake to speak but the man held his tongue. His eyes darted across the room, his fingers rattling on the desk.

‘Do you have any idea why someone would want him dead after all these years? The officer called in to investigate child exploitation at the children’s home?’

‘No idea,’ said Blake, his voice barely a whisper.

‘Or why someone would want to kill the wife of a journalist investigating the very same case. A journalist who just happened to be writing a story which mentioned your name?’

Blake reddened, a gnarly green vein appearing on the left side of his forehead. ‘What the hell are you getting at, Lambert? You think I did it? You think I waited thirty years to kill some old copper? And why the hell would I kill Sackville’s wife? It makes no sense.’

Lambert agreed but wasn’t about to say so. ‘You’re the only thing linking the two at the moment, Mr Blake.’

‘Fuck off,’ said Blake, incredulously.

‘You and Laura Dempsey. You know Laura Dempsey, right? Her husband and children were killed in front of her. Her parents killed the same evening.’

Blake shrugged. ‘What-fucking-ever.’

‘I’ll tell you whatever,’ said Lambert, struggling to hold his temper. ‘Laura Dempsey was working at the same home when Lennox paid a visit. She was responsible for the medical care of those children. For those children you were prostituting.’

He knew before he’d said it that he’d gone too far. ‘Get the fuck out,’ said Blake, picking up his phone. ‘Atkinson, get him out of my house.’

Atkinson was there seconds later. He went to reach for Lambert but stopped short. ‘I’m going,’ said Lambert. ‘You might want to consider, Blake, who is responsible for these deaths if it isn’t you.’

‘Get him out.’

Lambert smirked. Walking as slowly as possible out of the office, he said, ‘If I was you, I would be greatly concerned that I was a key person from that time yet to have suffered a… bereavement.’

Lambert heard the screaming and swearing all the way to the steel gates.

Chapter 41

Lambert parked the car in the station’s underground carpark. He was about to enter the lift when he heard someone calling for him. ‘Lambert,’ screamed the voice, full of accusation.

Lambert stood still and allowed the voice to approach. The man it belonged to looked unsteady. He wore a grey suit with mismatching shirt and tie, his brown shoes scuffed and unpolished. His wild eyes bore down on Lambert as he approached, and at the last second Lambert realised he wasn’t about to stop.

DS Harrogate went to shoulder charge him. Lambert managed to twist his body from the full force of the impact, DS Harrogate glancing his shoulder and stumbling two metres forward.

‘What the hell are you playing at, Harrogate?’

Harrogate kept his back to him for a few seconds before turning and attacking him again, his face contorted by his rage.

Lambert had had enough. As Harrogate approached, still too fast and unsteady, Lambert lent forward and jabbed him hard in his throat. Harrogate dropped as if he’d been shot. Lambert hunched down and lifted Harrogate into a sitting position. ‘Don’t panic,’ he said, as Harrogate made desperate attempts to suck in air, a pitiful rasping sound escaping from his throat.

A couple of uniformed officers glanced over, saw Lambert, and pretended they hadn’t seen anything. Lambert held Harrogate as his breath returned. ‘Get up,’ he ordered, pulling the man to his feet.

Harrogate leant over on his knees and dry heaved.

‘You want to tell me what the hell you think you are doing?’ said Lambert.

‘You were ordered not to approach Blake,’ said Harrogate, his voice a dry rasp.

‘Unless it was completely necessary. That doesn’t excuse an assault on a senior officer.’

Harrogate pushed himself up from his knees, his face ashen. He coughed and spat out a lump of blood-coated phlegm onto the pavement. ‘Report it if you want. You’ve fucked it up anyway.’

‘I haven’t fucked up anything. If you stop being so obstinate, there is a chance we can work together.’

Harrogate followed him to the offices.

‘Sit,’ said Lambert, shutting the door to his office.

Harrogate sat, his arms folded in a final show of defiance.

‘I saw your man,’ said Lambert.

Harrogate feigned surprise but Lambert knew he’d won the fight.

‘The driver. Lithe body shape. Weird bald patches on his scalp. Pointed nose.’

Harrogate sat motionless.

‘I could tell by the way he looked at me. How long has he been there?’

Harrogate blinked. ‘Five years.’

Five years undercover. It was no wonder Harrogate was so protective. ‘You’ve been handling him all this time?’

‘Yes. We’ve been trying to gather evidence on Blake’s operation. We’ve made some indirect arrests on the Croatians Blake works with but we can’t go in all guns blazing. They scare off easily, could easily change who they work with. That’s why you may have just fucked up five years’ worth of work.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You don’t think so? You don’t understand how these people work. They’ll have Blake under surveillance twenty-four-seven. They see you go in, again, then alarm bells ring. You could have even put our man in jeopardy. I barely speak to him as it is. Way too risky. No wonder he was pissed at seeing you.’

Lambert didn’t buy it. He decided to give Harrogate another chance. He explained in detail the current situation, what Blake had done to Sackville, what he’d been accused of doing at the children’s home.

‘That doesn’t totally surprise me.’ The encounter had knocked Harrogate. For the first time since meeting him, Lambert sensed a begrudging respect. ‘Where do we go from here?’ he asked, as he stood to leave.

‘We work together. Inform each other of our movements. Something we should have done from the beginning.’

Harrogate hesitated, as if he wanted to share something. ‘Agreed.’

‘And don’t ever pull a move like that on me again, DS Harrogate.’

Lambert found Kennedy and they took separate cars to Dalston. The former children’s home, St Matthew’s, was now a retirement home. Lambert had called the home earlier and requested a meeting with the owner, Joanne Kendrick, who had sounded bemused by the request. Kendrick was there to meet them as they arrived forty minutes later. A small, nervous looking woman, Kendrick carried more authority over the phone and Lambert was surprised that someone with such lack of presence could own such a business. It was possible she was just nervous because of their profession. The sight of a warrant card often did the strangest things to people. It made them act out of character, gave them a sense of guilt.

Kendrick’s office was cluttered and tired looking. ‘May I get you tea or coffee?’ she asked.

Both officers shook their head. Lambert remained silent, exchanging the occasional smile with the woman.

‘Well then. I’m afraid you’ve caught me slightly off guard this morning, DCI Lambert. I was surprised by your call and didn’t fully understand the gist of what you were telling me.’ Kendrick had regained some composure in the minutes they’d been in the office, her initial nervousness evaporating.

Lambert explained the situation again, realising how flimsy the reasons for being there were.

‘Correct me if I’m wrong, DCI Lambert, but your visit is to do with something that may or may not have happened thirty odd years ago?’

Lambert nodded. ‘I realise this takes a leap of imagination but it could be very relevant to a current murder investigation.’

Kendrick studied them each in turn as if it was all some elaborate joke. ‘You realise we bought this building fifteen years ago. And I don’t believe it’s housed children for well over twenty years. When we bought the place it was practically derelict.’

‘We’re trying to find details of the home’s occupants during the period that we mentioned,’ said Kennedy. ‘When you arrived were there any filing systems still here? Any records at all of the home?’

Kendrick rolled her tongue in her mouth and then proceeded to surprise them both.

‘It’s possible this might be your lucky day,’ she said. ‘After you called I spoke to my husband. I told him what you’d said, at least what I’d understood from it.’

Lambert leant forward, a wave of adrenaline filling his bloodstream.

‘Well I’m paraphrasing here but it went something along the lines of “maybe now we can get rid of all that stuff in the attic.”’

They waited in the home’s lobby as one of the staff went to fetch a ladder from the gardens. Kennedy looked like a bundle of energy, her legs bouncing up and down to some unheard rhythm. Lambert dragged his fingers across the cloth armchair, the fabric rough and pitted. He thought of the people who’d sat in the chair before, future residents waiting to be shown the home’s facilities with their children. The residents who’d touched the same fabric and no longer existed.

‘What are you hoping to find?’ he asked Kennedy.

‘A name?’

‘Don’t get your hopes up. I doubt they had great record-keeping and even if they did…’

‘DCI Lambert, we’re ready for you.’ Kendrick appeared out of the shadows, next to her a giant of a man clutched a retractable aluminium ladder as if it was made of air.

No introductions were made. Lambert followed Kendrick and the giant up three flights of stairs, flanked closely by Kennedy. They walked along a narrow corridor, across a threadbare brown carpet, until they stood beneath a small rectangular opening in the ceiling.

‘This could be a bit of a squeeze,’ said the giant, extending the ladder and leaning it against the wall. He climbed up, heaving with each step, and pushed through the opening. He hauled his bulk through the hole and disappeared from sight.

‘Use the place much?’ said Lambert.

Kendrick grunted a laugh. ‘I take no responsibility if you go up there. We haven’t used the place since we moved in. My husband didn’t know what to do with all the files that were left. We should have thrown them out. We called the council. They promised they would come for them but they never showed. We kept them just in case.’

A light appeared from above, followed by the grinning face of the giant. ‘Dusty,’ he said, clambering back down the ladder.

The loft area was bigger than he’d imagined. It was big enough for at least a couple of rooms and was piled high with dust-covered boxes. The boxes nearer the loft’s entrance were dated, the latest one from only two years ago which went against what Kendrick had told them about not using the area.

Lambert made his way to the rear of the space, banging his head on a low beam. Kendrick had warned them about the floor boards, and Lambert trod as lightly as possible. A flower patterned sheet covered a mound of shapes. Lambert lifted the sheet, the cloud of dust rising into the claustrophobic space. He took out a flashlight and examined the boxes below. In crude felt tip writing, someone had scrolled. ‘Files from St Matthew’s Children Home.’

‘Kennedy,’ he whispered, opening the first box. He flicked through the contents, stacks of letters and bills, and handed it to Kennedy, an excitement in his movements. He passed file after file to Kennedy, unsure what was causing his urgency, until he found something that made his heart stop. It was a file marked, ‘Residents’.

He opened the cover. On the first page was a black and white photograph of an unsmiling girl. Next to the photo, in uneven typeface, were the girl’s details. The unsmiling girl was called Janice Raymond. She was seven years old. She had no siblings. She had no parents.

Lambert held the file, fighting a surprising urge to grieve for the girl who would now be many years older than him, and flicked through the rest of the pages, the names of boys and girls, either orphans or from troubled households. It was probably his imagination, but he saw the loneliness, the sense of abandonment in each photo.

He handed the file to Kennedy, and took the next one of out of the box. It was the same again, dated the previous year. The discovery had energised him, and he scanned through the contents of the box, and on to the next one. He didn’t know why, but he was sure he’d made an important discovery.

Trying to keep the excitement out of his voice, he said, ‘Call Devlin. We need to get these back to the station.’

Chapter 42

It took them nearly two hours to retrieve all the files and pack the car, even with the giant’s help. Matilda was covered in a film of sweat, her mouth coated in dust which had a sour metallic taste.

‘I could murder a drink,’ said Devlin, taking her by surprise.

She drove to a drive-in, and ordered two supersized meals. ‘It’s going to be a long afternoon and evening,’ she told Devlin, as they sat eating the burgers and fries, sipping on their oversized iced drinks. All the time, she kept thinking about Janice Raymond, the first unsmiling little girl in the photos.

‘Right, bin that, we’re off.’

It was late afternoon. The good weather had returned, the people of London unsure which set of clothing they should be wearing.

Her phone rang as she parked beneath the station building. ‘Go get some help to carry the files,’ she mouthed to Devlin, before taking the call.

‘Matilda Kennedy,’ said the voice on the other end.

She checked the number on the phone, which was from an unknown caller. ‘Who’s calling?’ she said, maintaining a neutral tone whilst thinking something was off.

‘It’s me. The one your childish press calls, the Watcher.’

She was about to signal to Devlin but stopped. ‘What can I do for you?’ It was probably a hoax. She was surprised someone could obtain her mobile number, but it wasn’t unheard of.

‘You can speak to your boss, DCI Lambert. Reiterate the warning I gave him.’