Deep Cover (5 page)

The body on the bed was that of a young female. Naked. Eyes open, arms and legs raised in rigor. Body fluid had drained from the eye sockets and had solidified at the side of her head. She was Northern European and had short blonde hair. She was thin and wasted in terms of her appearance. She was bruised about the throat.

Ainsclough and Brunnie glanced at each other.

‘So what do you think?' Ainsclough reached for his mobile phone. ‘Strangled her and then went for a walk in the snow? Murder/suicide . . . the alternative being a life stretch?'

‘Possibly,' Brunnie murmured. ‘Certainly looks that way. We'll need to speak to everyone in the house. I'll round them up.'

Ainsclough nodded. ‘I'll ask for assistance . . .'

Brunnie walked out of the room as Ainsclough requested the attendance of a senior officer, SOCO, pathologist and a vehicle to ‘remove persons to custody'. He went up the stairs, which creaked under his weight, and knocked on the bedroom door at the back of the house, opening it before the occupant could ask him to enter. The youth stood in the middle of the floor looking lost and helpless. ‘Who else is in the house?' Brunnie demanded.

‘Just the women. Front room.'

‘What about the top floor?'

‘Empty. Three rooms up there but the landlord doesn't let them out. Go and look if you don't believe me.'

‘Oh, I will, don't worry. A landlord that doesn't let rooms out . . .'

‘Used for storage. He's got other properties. The upstairs rooms are full of furniture and stuff.'

‘I see. Well, get some clothes on and some shoes, you're going for a ride.'

‘I'm working this evening.'

‘Possibly. Possibly not. Get ready, and go and wait in the kitchen. So, the two women share one room?'

‘Yes, but that's their business . . . if you see what I mean.'

‘So what about the girl, the girl in the front downstairs room?'

‘Oh, her?'

‘Yes, her.'

‘She doesn't really live here . . . she stays now and again. Mickey brought her home a few weeks ago. She comes and goes. Didn't know she was in the house to be honest.'

‘What do you know about her?'

‘Not a lot. Welsh girl . . . Gaynor . . . she's dead young, teenage runaway.'

‘You're right there . . . about her being dead young. Now, get some more clothes on and go to the kitchen.'

‘Why?'

‘Because the house is now a crime scene and we're going to search it.'

‘Search . . .' The youth's face paled even further.

‘Why? You got something we might be interested in?'

‘Just a bit of blow, sir.'

‘Thought you'd flushed it.'

‘That was those two women. Me, I took a chance.'

‘How much have you got?'

‘Just enough for two spliffs, sir.'

‘So not supplying?'

‘Oh . . . no . . . no, sir.'

‘So why are you shaking like a leaf?'

‘I'm under a two year suspended sentence . . . for possession. So any conviction, even a minor one, will have me in the big house for two years.'

Brunnie paused. ‘OK, I'm going to talk to those two women you mentioned. Better flush what you've got, but mind our dogs can detect the slightest, and I mean the slightest, trace . . . so for this I want cooperation.'

‘Yes, sir . . . about what?'

‘The murder of the Welsh runaway.'

The youth made a strangled cry, ‘Murder! I saw nothing.'

‘You'll have seen something . . . you'll know something . . . so flush it and get down below.'

Brunnie walked along the landing and knocked on the door of the upstairs front room.

Five minutes later the three tenants of the house were mustered in the kitchen, which had newspapers for floor covering and a pile of unwashed plates and pans in the sink. It seemed to be the rule that if you wanted to cook a meal in the house, you first had to wash whatever it was you might need, and upon cooking and eating said meal, you left anything you had used to be washed by the next hungry tenant. The youth gave his name as William ‘Billy' Kemp. The larger of the two women, who wore jeans and boots, gave her name as Sonya Clements, and the slighter of the two, who wore an ankle-length dress and heels, gave her name as Josie Pinder. They said they were ‘girlfriends'.

‘Here's how it works,' Brunnie addressed the three tenants who stood in attentive silence. ‘You cooperate with us and we'll cooperate with you. The girl who lived in the front room with Mickey Dalkeith . . . she's been murdered.'

The two women looked at each other. Billy Kemp remained expressionless. Brunnie thought their reactions to be genuine. No one displayed any sign of guilt, none overacted in feigned shock or surprise. ‘So work with us and we'll work with you.' He paused as he glanced down the hallway and out into the street as a dark-blue police minibus halted at the kerb. ‘OK, here's your transport. Non-cooperation from you and we'll turn your rooms over until we find something we can use against you. Give us mucho info and we'll turn a blind eye to little things like a few spliffs. Is that right, Billy?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘See, I let Billy flush a few things . . . in an act of good faith . . . and you ladies flushed something when we knocked on the door; there'll be more to find and we'll find it if we have to. OK, out into the street and into the van.'

The three residents filed out of the building and Brunnie noted that not one could resist a sideways glance into the gloom of the front downstairs room, and then they stepped out of the house and climbed meekly into the police vehicle and were driven away.

Harry Vicary turned into Claremont Road just as the police minibus drew away from the kerb. He drove his car slowly and parked it at the kerb in the space vacated by the police van. Ignoring the members of the public who stood on the pavement, having noticed the activity at the house, he walked into the hallway and, directed by a constable, into the front room of the house. He encountered a dimly lit room and a musty atmosphere. DS Ainsclough and a slightly built man stood in the room. Vicary noticed the corpse lying on the bed. He also noticed the cluttered and untidy nature of the room, and was unable to tell if there had been a struggle; the room, he thought, could best be described as chaotic.

‘Dr Rothwell –' Ainsclough indicated the slightly built young man – ‘the duty police surgeon.'

‘Ah.' Vicary extended his hand. ‘DS Vicary.'

‘Nice to meet you, sir.' Rothwell shook Vicary's hand warmly. ‘Well, I have confirmed life extinct.' He spoke with a distinct West Country accent. ‘And I think it is suspicious. Contusions to the neck, open eyes . . . petechial haemorrhaging . . . but that is for the next box, so to speak.'

‘Understood.' Vicary glanced at Ainsclough. ‘SOCO? Home Office pathologist?'

‘Both requested, sir.'

‘Well, no need for me to remain.' Rothwell closed his Gladstone bag. ‘I have another call to make. It's going to be one of those nights. No rest for the wicked.' Rothwell stepped lightly out of the room and exited the house.

‘Brunnie?' Vicary asked.

‘Here, sir.' Brunnie entered the room. ‘Just taken a quick sweep of the house – all the attic rooms seem to have been used for storage . . . furniture in the main. So, just three other residents, all taken in for questioning. Detailed search has not yet been done.'

‘I see.'

‘The deceased is believed to be called Gaynor Davies, from Wales. One resident said she was a teenage runaway.'

‘Teenage?' Vicary glanced at the slight figure. ‘She'd pass for eleven or twelve.'

‘Yes, sir.' Brunnie spoke softly. ‘I know what you mean.'

‘She was brought back by Michael Dalkeith and she lived here, coming and going as she pleased when he was away, which was for days at a time.'

‘He had a family in Palmers Green, sir,' Ainsclough said. ‘Wife and two stepchildren . . . but kept the rental on this place . . . in which he also lived with the deceased.'

‘Sounds like he would have had some explaining to do if he hadn't lain down in the snow. Two addresses, a female in each address, one of whom is now deceased, and deceased in suspicious circumstances.'

There came a knock on the front door. They stopped talking and glanced towards the door of the room as the constable stepped to one side and said, ‘In here, sir.'

Moments later the squat figure of John Shaftoe bumbled into the room. He smiled and said, ‘Hello, boys.'

‘Sir,' Vicary replied.

Shaftoe smiled at Vicary. ‘Didn't think I'd see thee again today, Mr Vicary. No rest for the wicked, eh?'

‘Funny you should say that,' Vicary said with a wry grin.

‘Oh?'

‘Nothing . . . nothing, sir.' Vicary replied. ‘It just struck a private chord . . . The deceased . . . female . . . life was pronounced extinct.'

Ainsclough checked his notepad, ‘At seventeen fifty-eight hours, sir.'

‘Seventeen fifty-eight,' Vicary repeated.

‘I see.' Shaftoe looked at the body. ‘You're too young to be a customer of mine, pet, far too young. She doesn't look much older than twelve.'

‘We're told she is a teenager, sir.'

‘Yes, she could be a finely built thirteen or fourteen, but I'd be surprised if she was much older than that.' He paused. ‘Strangulation, it seems.'

‘Yes, sir. The police surgeon who has just left said much the same thing.'

‘Have you photographed the corpse?'

‘Not yet, sir.'

‘I see . . . so can't be moved yet?'

‘No, sir, not overmuch.'

‘If you can turn her over, I can take a rectal temperature. It might help determine the time of death, although time of death is an inexact science at best, really no more accurate than sometime between when she was last seen alive and when the corpse was discovered, but the Home Office like thoroughness. So, I'll take a rectal temperature and a room temperature, then, frankly, nothing I can do until I get her to the London Hospital. So I'll do that, undertake the post-mortem tomorrow. Leave you to await the scene of crime officers, and their cameras and fingerprinting kit and whatever.'

‘Very good, sir.'

Vicary despatched Ainsclough and Brunnie to New Scotland Yard. They had reports to write and statements to take from Billy Kemp, Sonya Clements and Josie Pinder. He remained at the scene with three constables and a sergeant.

John Shaftoe, who did not drive, was conveyed to the London Hospital by his driver in a small black car. He went to his office and opened a medical file on the as yet unnamed female found deceased, possibly strangled, in the house on Claremont Road, Kilburn. He locked his medical bag in a secure cabinet and then, pulling on a donkey jacket and a flat cap, he left the hospital by an obscure side entrance and walked into the enveloping darkness of London's East End. An observer would have seen a low-skilled manual worker, short and stocky, ambling homeward after a good day's graft, which was exactly the image that John Shaftoe, MD, MRCP, FRCPath, wanted to portray.

He walked by the walls of the buildings, this being a practice he had acquired during his youth in south Yorkshire, where ‘hard' men who wanted a fight walked close to the kerb, and feeling disinclined to battle his way through what he always thought to be the oddly ill-named rush hour, he called in at a pub and stood at the bar with his foot on the brass rail, enjoying a pint of IPA. Eventually, as often happened, one of the locals came and stood alongside him. The two men nodded at each other. Shaftoe read the man as being an East End villain and even though, at just 5' 4" tall, Shaftoe was as least cop-like as can be, he still had to be checked out.

‘Doing OK, mate?' the East End villain asked with a smile.

‘So, so,' Shaftoe replied, avoiding eye contact.

‘Not seen you in here before?'

‘Not been in here before.' Shaftoe pronounced here as ‘ere' and before as ‘a-for'.

‘North country?' the villain explored, pronouncing north as ‘nawf' and country as ‘can-ry'.

‘Sheffield.'

‘Holiday?'

‘This time of year?' Shaftoe smiled and allowed himself brief eye contact with his interrogator. He glanced at the TV screen above the bar which showed a cartoon film with the sound blessedly turned off. What sound there was in the pub came from piped music and conversation. It was, observed Shaftoe, already crowded for an early midweek evening. ‘No, visiting me sister, she's been taken badly . . . but she'll be alright. Just came in for a wander, to have a look at London,' pronouncing have as ‘av' and London as ‘Lundun'.

‘Alright,' the wide-boy replied, pronouncing it as ‘or-white'. He then walked back to his mates and said loudly. ‘He's alright, down from the north,' and then added pointedly, ‘He won't be staying long.' And John Shaftoe, taking the hint, finished his drink and left the pub. Sometimes it was like that. He felt he had to avoid becoming a regular in one particular pub near the London Hospital, because if he did so, his occupation would eventually be discovered and he would no longer be allowed to blend with the other patrons, which was all he wanted to do. He and his wife sometimes just needed to be ‘working class'. So it was that sometimes he walked into a welcoming pub and sometimes he stumbled into a thieves' den, which was hostile to anyone they did not know. That night he had clearly entered the latter type of pub. He would take note and avoid it in future.