Authors: Elena Forbes
10
‘Number twenty-five,’ Chang said, pulling over on a yellow line and peering up at the tall, gloomy, redbrick house. ‘There’s a light on, so someone’s home.’
‘Thanks. I can see.’
‘Shall I come with you?’
‘No. You stay here and keep watch. Be ready to back me up if there’s any trouble.’
‘Whatever you say.’
He took it better than expected. She bit her lip as she got out of the car and walked away down the street. She could handle things on her own but she knew she was being mean-spirited. By rights it should have been Chang’s show. He was the one who had eventually traced the red-haired man that Minderedes had spoken to by the canal. The man had been captured on CCTV footage at Warwick Avenue tube station where, after leaving Minderedes, he had caught a train to Kensal Green. Luckily for them he had used an oyster card, which made things easy. It had been bought online nearly six months before and topped up several times since. It had given them the details of his many journeys over that period, as well as his real name, Alex Fleming, and an address in one of the backstreets of Kilburn. It was all too much like Big Brother, for her liking, but at least it suited their purposes. They assumed he must be the Alex who had called Logan’s phone several times and left a couple of voicemails in the days before he died.
Chang was keen, like anyone in a new job, and Donovan couldn’t blame him for it. She was also never at her most patient when she was tired, but he had been getting on her nerves all day with his eagerness to please, asking questions that, although legitimate, interrupted her train of thought. If she couldn’t have silence, at least some physical space would do for a while. Deep down she knew that her irritation was not really to do with him, just part of a general, creeping sense of dissatisfaction that had been affecting her for a while, although she had no idea what was at the root of it. Chang was just the unlucky recipient.
Like many of the houses in the road, number twenty-five had been divided into flats, with satellite dishes sprouting from every floor. The front garden had been concreted over and an old Fiat Panda and a Triumph motorbike occupied the space, along with a motley collection of rubbish bins. She climbed the steps to the front door. There were no names on any of the bells and she was about to press the bottom one when she heard a loud rap on the glass of the ground floor bay window that overlooked the front door. An elderly lady, half hidden behind a swathe of net curtains, stared out at her suspiciously. Donovan mouthed the word ‘police’ and held up her ID card to the glass. The woman gave it a cursory glance then disappeared back into the room. Moments later the front door opened and she stood proprietorially in the entrance, leaning heavily on a stick, her other hand curled around the doorframe.
‘What do you want?’ she said loudly, as though she was hard of hearing. She was tiny, even shorter than Donovan, with straight, chin-length white hair, clipped back on either side with hairpins, and thick glasses, which magnified a sharp pair of watery eyes.
‘I’m looking for this man.’ Donovan held up the e-fit image that Minderedes had put together. ‘He apparently lives here.’
‘You want upstairs,’ the woman said in a clear, precise voice, pointing. ‘But I haven’t seen him for a while.’
‘Which floor?’
‘First,’ she shouted. ‘But he’s not there now.’
‘There’s someone at home,’ Donovan said, gazing up at the first floor window, where she could see a light. She also heard music coming from above. The woman stared at her as if she didn’t understand the question. ‘Who lives up there?’ Donovan mouthed the words slowly and pointed upwards.
‘There’s three of them and sometimes more, if you get my drift. But I told you he’s not there any longer.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I may be deaf but I’m not blind. Alex left a few months ago.’
‘You knew Alex, then?’
‘As much as you get to know anyone, these days. He was a nice young man, unlike some I could mention. Used to bring the post in for me, help me with my shopping bags.’
‘Do you know where he’s gone?’
The woman shook her head.
‘I need to find him. Any ideas?’
The woman seemed to consider the matter, then said, ‘You’d best ask Kate. She’s the boss up there, from what I can tell, although she’s a rude, unhelpful cow. Hasn’t got time for anyone but herself. I’d like to see how she copes when she’s eighty-five . . .’
‘Is she in now?’
‘That’s her horrible rust bucket out front, blocking my view, so she can’t be far. Doesn’t know what her legs are for, that one.’
‘I’d better go and speak to her. May I come in?’
She shrugged and shuffled aside to let Donovan pass, muttering, ‘She’ll know where he is, mark you me.’
Donovan looked around at her. ‘Are you saying she’s his girlfriend?’
The woman sniffed. ‘Who’s to say. She’d certainly eat him for breakfast given half the chance, although I imagine he has more sense.’
Donovan thanked her and followed the strains of Simply Red up the narrow stairs to the first floor. She knocked on the door several times before she eventually saw a shadow under the crack and heard the rattle of a security chain. The door opened a few inches and a plump-faced young woman in a pink dressing gown peered out at her, her hair wound up in a towel turban.
‘Who are you?’
‘I’m with the police.’ Donovan held up her warrant card to the gap. ‘Are you Kate?’
The woman squinted at the card short-sightedly, then looked back at Donovan. ‘I prefer to be called Katherine. How did you get in? Did someone leave the front door open again?’
‘No. The lady downstairs let me in.’
‘That old cat.’
‘I’d like to talk to you. May I come in for a few minutes?’
There was an audible sigh. ‘Look, I’ve just got home from work and I’m in the middle of washing my hair. What do you want?’
‘I’m trying to find a man called Alex Fleming. I understand you know him.’
Alex walked to Stockwell Tube Station and caught the Victoria Line, heading north. Most people in the carriage seemed to be going into town for the evening. He felt strangely detached, still mulling over in his head everything Tim had said, trying again to remember how the conversation with Joe had gone. They had talked at some length about the emails, but he was sure the word blackmail hadn’t come up at any point. Maybe Tim was right. Perhaps Joe hadn’t wanted to worry him, but there had been no sense that Joe was keeping something unpleasant from him. Maybe it hadn’t dawned on him that blackmail was on the cards, or maybe it had and he had discounted the idea. Like Tim, Joe had been against going to the police, but then he hadn’t foreseen his own murder.
At Oxford Circus he followed a crowd of chattering Japanese students out of the carriage and up the escalator, making his way to the Bakerloo line where he caught a train a few minutes later in the direction of Kensal Green, where he lived. He had been planning on going straight home, getting a takeaway and watching a DVD, hoping that his flatmate, Paddy, was working late as usual. But as the train pulled into Warwick Avenue, he changed his mind, got up from his seat and jumped out, nearly knocking over a woman’s bag of groceries as he dashed for the doors.
Within minutes, he stood on the little bridge, looking down along the canal in the direction of Joe’s boat. No flashing lights, no police, no gawping passers-by. Everything was back to normal. He crossed over and followed the pavement along the canal until he came to Joe’s boat, where he stopped in front of the railings. A thick double streamer of blue and white police tape barred the entrance onto the boat from the towpath. The two small half doors that opened into the cabin were boarded up and padlocked, with an official-looking paper stuck to the front. The curtains were pulled back, but the interior was dark and in the slanting evening light he couldn’t make out anything inside.
The table and chairs were still out on the deck and for a moment he pictured the two of them sitting there, Joe with his eyes half shut, a roll-up between his fingers, bare feet up on the edge of the boat. He remembered the warmth of the air, the quiet, and the colour of the sky as they watched the light fade over the water. They had stayed there for a good hour or so, until the temperature dropped and they went inside. Then Joe had heated up a couple of frozen pizzas and put an old REM CD on the player. They had sat at the little table Joe used as a desk, Joe sweeping the pile of papers onto the floor as if they didn’t matter and lighting a large pink scented candle that belonged to the owner of the boat. It suddenly came to him that Joe had talked about going to Thailand for a few months and had asked him to go with him. He had even offered to pay his air fare. Alex swallowed hard. So much had changed in a matter of days.
‘Hey, you.’
He started. It was a woman’s voice, high-pitched and penetrating. He turned and looked along the canal in the general direction and saw a slim, blonde-haired woman standing on the roof of one of the boats further along. She was waving at him.
‘Yes, you. Can I have a word?’
His first thought was that he had done something wrong, an instinctive reaction that went back to childhood. He looked around but there was nobody else in sight. He squinted hard, trying to see her more clearly, and she waved again. She definitely meant him. Tanned, and wearing a white, short-sleeved T-shirt and faded jeans, she stood in the sun amidst a colourful sea of potted plants and flowers, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. At least she was nothing to do with the police. Wondering what she wanted, he followed the railings until he came to her boat.
‘Sorry to make you jump. You’re a friend of Joe’s, aren’t you?’ She climbed nimbly down onto the deck, with a pair of kitchen scissors and a large bunch of what looked like basil in her hand. ‘Have you heard what’s happened?’
‘You mean about Joe?’
She nodded.
‘Yeah, I know, thank you.’
‘I just wanted to make sure. I thought maybe . . . Well, I saw you with him the other day, and before that, in the garden of The Bargeman’s Rest. It must be a real shock. Have you just found out?’
‘I was here yesterday. I was supposed to be seeing him, but the police had the area sealed off. I sort of panicked. I still can’t quite get my head around it. That’s why I came back.’
She squinted at him, hand shielding her eyes. ‘My name’s Maggie.’
He remembered her now from the other evening. Joe had been quite rude about some of the neighbours who had trailed past his boat – ‘prying, pain in the arse time-wasters’ he had called them – but he had pointed her out as she walked past them on the towpath and waved. He had said something about having had supper with her and that she was OK, which was about the most praise Joe gave anyone new.
‘I’m Alex.’
‘Look, do you fancy a quick drink? I was about to have one myself.’
He hesitated.
‘Do come,’ she said, smiling, her head slightly to one side. ‘I won’t bite. It would be nice to talk to someone who knew Joe. I really liked him, you know.’
Again he hesitated. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to talk about Joe at all, let alone with someone who barely knew him.
But if she and Joe had had dinner recently, she might be able to shed some more light on what had been going on with Joe. If nothing else, she seemed harmless and it wasn’t as if he had anything better to do. ‘OK,’ he said, nodding slowly. ‘Thanks.’
‘The gate’s just along there.’ She gestured along the towpath with the scissors. ‘Although, silly me, you know that already.’
Five minutes later they were sitting at a pretty wrought-iron table on her front deck, surrounded by more plants in brightly painted pots. The tabletop was a weathered piece of greyish white marble, which had seen better days. But the base, which had been painted pea-green, had once been part of an old-fashioned, pedal operated sewing machine, the word Singer still just visible across the front.
‘My granny used to have one of those,’ he said, taking a sip of cold white wine and pointing at the table. ‘Where did you find it?’
‘It came off a skip. It beggars belief what some people throw away. My mum had one too. Made all our clothes on it and taught me and my sister how to sew, but nobody bothers these days, do they? Who has the time? Anyway, it’s cheaper to go to Primark.’
He nodded. Even sewing on a button was a stretch. He hoped she wouldn’t notice the safety pin that was holding his shirt together half way down. ‘Another amazing sunset,’ he said after a moment, feeling awkward.
‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it? The light’s wonderful all year round. Something to do with the water, I think. It’s why I carry on living here, even though the boat’s smaller than most studio flats and the damp and cold’s shocking in winter.’
‘Well, I think it’s great.’ A narrow-boat would do him fine, he thought. Apart from the fussy, feminine décor, he had felt at home in the cramped space of Joe’s boat, with its little deck outside. It was cosy, with everything to hand. Perfect for one person. Many of the boats along the canal looked tatty, but he imagined a berth in such a location must cost an arm and a leg, probably way beyond his means.
‘Have you ever taken a boat trip down the canal?’
He shook his head.
‘I don’t mean one of these.’ She waved her wine glass dismissively in the general direction of the canal and the lines of narrow-boats. ‘Most of them don’t go anywhere. But see there, where the canal opens out? You can pick up a water taxi, just by the floating café. It will take you all the way to Camden Passage, if you want. It’s a great way to see parts of London. Some of it’s really seedy, but you go past these incredible mansions with huge columns and billiard-table lawns. They don’t look as if they belong in central London at all. Then, of course, there’s the Zoo. There’s a special stop if you want to get out. You should try it one day, if you have time, particularly when the weather’s like this. I’ve lived in London most of my life but I love being a tourist when I get the chance.’
He gazed along the canal, watching as a couple of tourists stopped by the railings above to take photographs. The light was beginning to fade and the flash went off several times. He realised the camera was pointed directly at him and Maggie. Not wanting to be part of the view, he shielded his face with his hand. In the distance, silhouetted against the sky, was the little bridge that he had crossed earlier and, beyond it, a large open stretch of pearly water, with an island in the middle. ‘What’s the name of that bit of water past the bridge?’