Authors: Chris Simms
Iona stared at the super. Were they talking about the tribal areas that bordered Afghanistan? Because if they were, it was a region so hostile to America and its allies, any Westerner risked death by going there.
I
ona pulled on to the drive, coming to a halt behind a white Range Rover with personalised number plates. Turning the engine off, she reflected glumly on the latest shuffle of cards.
Gone was her leading role tracing the remaining laptop owners through the university. That had been handed to a uniformed team who’d been hastily seconded from Trafford Division.
Now she’d been tasked with interviewing some of the clients whose details had been found in Eamon Heslin’s apartment. The details had been hand-written in a small ledger and the sums of money detailed had all been cash. Probably jobs he was keeping from the taxman’s attention – a fact to be overlooked because of the slim possibility that someone at one of the companies could have purchased the two missing Dell laptops. It was a very slim possibility, in Iona’s opinion. The names were of corporate clients, mainly small businesses whose IT systems Heslin probably repaired or maintained. They wouldn’t be interested in knock-off laptops.
Worse, she thought, is who I’ve been paired with to make enquiries.
‘Impressive-looking property,’ Martin Everington said from the passenger seat beside her.
From what she could see of the house between a cluster of rhododendron bushes and squat fir trees, it stank of poor taste. New build, but with a mass of faux-classical touches. Twin pillars either side of a huge front door. A frieze of semi-nude statues set into the brickwork below the gutter. Five bedrooms, at least. ‘Depends on your taste.’
She glanced at the Range Rover’s personalised number plates. The things really got on her nerves. It didn’t bother her if vehicle owners went against DVLA regulations by manipulating the spacing between numbers and letters; for her, memorising a plate that actually spelled a word was far easier than a random sequence of letters and numbers. It was more the sheer vanity and self-importance of it all. It was a car, for crying out loud. A metal compartment with seats and a wheel at each corner. To Iona, the need to try and stand out from the crowd indicated pompousness on the owner’s part. That, or some strange form of insecurity. She wondered which one would apply to the person who drove the Range Rover.
‘Well,’ Martin announced, opening his door. ‘The sooner we get these crossed off, the sooner we can join the lot looking into Jade Cummings.’
They took the path’s left-hand fork and followed it away from the house and towards a long, thin, single-storey building. Converted stables, from the look of it, Iona thought. Through the row of windows that had been put in place of the stable doors, she could see a few women sitting at desks and talking on phones. The far wall was lined with box-laden shelves. They reached the door at the far end. Office, read the brass plaque. Before she could reach up, Martin rang the buzzer.
A second later, it opened.
‘Miss Dubianko? Detective Sergeant Everington. I called before?’ His warrant card was raised; the standard Greater Manchester Police one giving no indication of the unit he was part of. ‘This is my colleague, Detective Constable Iona Khan.’
The woman was, Iona guessed as she held up her own card, in her early thirties. Tall, pale blonde hair, gym slender and, Iona couldn’t help noticing, very large breasts. Fake? She certainly had that well-groomed sheen shared by people with the time and money for such things as personal trainers and regular beauty appointments. Iona would have written her off as typical Cheshire set if it wasn’t for the woman’s angular cheekbones, wide mouth and glacial eyes. Iona had never seen eyes such a pale shade of blue.
She glanced over their identities, eyes settling back on Martin. ‘Come in, please.’
Her warm smile revealed a perfect row of teeth. They were so white that, if they’d been in the mouth of someone thirty years older, Iona would have suspected they weren’t real.
‘Thank you,’ Iona said, stepping in before Martin. ‘We appreciate you seeing us at such short notice.’
‘That is not a problem, honestly. Can I get you both a tea or coffee?’
‘No thanks,’ Martin said from behind Iona. ‘This really won’t take long.’
Her eyes went to Iona. ‘And you?’
I think he already decided that, Iona thought. ‘Not for me, thanks anyway.’
‘Very well.’ The woman had an elegant way of moving as she walked round the desk and took the leather chair on the other side. She gestured to the chairs opposite and looked expectantly across at them.
‘The name of your company has come up as part of a wider investigation,’ Martin explained, sitting down.
‘Would you mind if I smoke?
The request took Iona by surprise. You couldn’t wait until we’re gone?
‘No, not at all,’ Martin replied.
Iona watched as she extracted a cigarette from a packet by her phone. Was this, Iona thought, some kind of displacement activity? The tactic of a nervous person? But the well-manicured fingers that lifted the lighter showed no sign of any tremors. The cigarette itself was brown and thin and with a gold filter. Foreign. A cultural thing, Iona concluded. The woman had probably come from a part of the world where smoking was as unremarkable as blinking your eyes.
‘So, this investigation?’ she said, eyes firmly on Martin.
‘Yes,’ Martin replied in a languid voice, crossing one leg. ‘We’re looking into a small IT business. Recently, it was destroyed in a fire. Some records were recovered that mentioned here.’
‘What?’ she said. ‘My business?’
Martin wiped the air with a hand. ‘Miss Dubianko, we’re really not concerned if you had the odd dealing with this company on a cash-in-hand basis.’
Iona watched as the woman gazed at Martin. Her eyes were so pale they seemed to almost act as mirrors. Iona could get nothing from them.
‘Do you know the company I’m talking about?’ Martin asked.
As she pulled on her cigarette, the bones beneath her cheeks became even more pronounced. For a second, it was easy to picture her skull beneath that flawless skin. Iona waited for the woman to reply, but she remained silent. There was a flintiness about her that spoke to Iona of a life not always shrouded in luxury.
‘Miss Dubianko,’ Martin said, ‘the owner of the IT company, unfortunately, is dead.’
Now she blinked. ‘You’re not talking about Eamon Heslin, are you?’ Smoke trickled from her mouth and nostrils as she spoke.
Martin nodded.
‘Oh my God.’ She leaned forward and ground her cigarette out. ‘In the fire?’
‘Sorry, I cannot give you any more detail than that,’ Martin replied.
‘That’s terrible.’ Her eyes moved slowly to the side. ‘He was only here the other day …’
‘He was?’ Iona asked.
‘Yes,’ she replied in a small voice. ‘When I set up the business, he did the networking for me in the main office. Whenever there’s a glitch, he fixes it. Usually remotely. But a cable needed to be replaced, so he popped over in person. I can’t believe he’s dead.’
Iona jotted the information down. ‘There was some kind of monthly contract?’
‘Not really. I sometimes bought items from him, when he had them for sale. Printers, a couple of computers.’
Iona studied the set-up on the lady’s desk. The monitor sat on a desktop PC from which a mass of wires and cables hung. ‘Did he recently sell you a laptop?’
‘A laptop? No – I just use this computer. And I can pick up email on my Blackberry. That works fine for me.’
Martin looked about. ‘What do you do here, Miss Dubianko?’
‘I sell hair.’
‘Sorry?’
‘For extensions. I supply most of the best salons round Manchester.’
‘Synthetic hair?’
‘No, human.’
Iona thought of the thin boxes piled up in the main room.
‘Really?’ Martin asked, sounding intrigued. ‘There’s a big … obviously, there is a big demand.’
‘There certainly is. Thank you Cheryl Cole, Lady Gaga and the rest.’
For the first time, the woman’s eyes sparked with feeling. When she’d said the names, the faintest trace of an accent had shown through.
Martin smiled. ‘Sorry to be nosey – this has nothing to do with why we’re here – but where do you get your hair?’
‘That would depend on the colour.’ She reached into a drawer and placed three of the boxes Iona had seen in the main office on the desk. They looked like the type a florist might use for packaging a single red rose. ‘This is black – most of my black hair is sourced from India or the Philippines. Of course, you can buy it dyed, but I think it lacks a truly natural appearance when it is dyed.’ She opened the lid and there inside, like a severed horse’s tail, was a lustrous length of ebony hair. ‘Brown is trickier, there are so many shades. I get some from Venezuela, Colombia, Nicaragua. Countries where the Spanish blood has mingled with the local. Blonde – that’s much, much easier. Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia – those are my main countries for blonde.’ She removed another cigarette from her packet, lit it and gestured at Iona with the glowing tip. ‘Your hair, that is wonderful. It would command a good price if you grew it long.’
Suddenly self-conscious, Iona couldn’t help reaching behind one ear and making a little raking movement with her fingertips. ‘I think you’d have a long wait! It must take years for the women to—’
‘Yes. But so many people in these countries are poor. The money can be a great blessing.’
Martin was peering into the box. ‘Do you pay a lot, then?’
‘Not nearly as much as I sell it for.’ She laughed for the first time.
It was a hard, ugly sound. Iona’s smile faltered as she registered the woman’s mercenary smile. The purpose of the visit came back to her; along with the certainty it was futile. ‘So Eamon Heslin didn’t offer to sell you a laptop when he was last in?’
The woman tapped ash from her cigarette. ‘No. He had some new monitors he’d picked up somewhere, with bigger screens. But the ones I have are fine.’
‘When was this?’
‘Five, six days ago? Shall I check?’
‘If you don’t mind. We’re trying to piece together all of Mr Heslin’s movements in the run-up to his death.’
She opened a red diary with her cigarette hand, wisps of smoke snaking about as she tracked across the columns. ‘Yes. On Tuesday the twenty-first. A morning visit: eleven o’clock.’
She rotated the large book round. Iona sat forward and could see the entry written there. Eamon, eleven o’clock, just as she’d said. Eamon Heslin only started attempting to sell the stolen laptops from CityPads the day after that, she thought, glancing at Martin. From his face, she could tell he’d come to the same conclusion. Heslin had targeted the student union for getting rid of the stolen Dells, not clients. Iona closed her notebook.
‘OK, that’s us done,’ announced Martin.
‘Why is the laptop so important?’ Dubianko asked, flicking the cover of her diary shut and pushing it to one side.
Martin was readying himself to stand. ‘Eamon Heslin had several for sale. We’re trying to locate anyone who may have purchased one.’
‘There is something important about these laptops, then? There must be if you are …’ She lapsed into silence, a worried look on her face. ‘He wasn’t killed because of it, was he?’
Martin’s hands were still clutching his knees. ‘There’s really no reason for alarm, Miss Dubianko. It’s just some material was recovered from the carry case of one handed in to us. Material that has given us cause for concern. Listen, if you remember anything else – or are just feeling worried – you can get me on this number.’ He checked his pocket and looked at Iona. ‘You don’t have a card, do you?’
Iona produced one and Martin took it a little too eagerly from her fingers. ‘Here,’ he said, writing on it. ‘Ask for me by name, OK?’
Nina’s smile was tentative. ‘Thank you. But I still do not follow.’
‘As I said, I really wouldn’t worry. But we’d like to locate the other laptops Heslin had sold. They may provide us with vital information.’
Uneasy about how much Martin was divulging in his desire to reassure the woman, Iona stood. ‘Did Eamon Heslin mention any other clients to you? Someone else who may have been interested in buying a laptop?’
‘No.’
‘How did you come to use him for your computer needs?’
‘A Google search. His website came near the top and he was fairly close by.’ She also rose to her feet, swiftly followed by Martin. ‘So odd to think that he’s dead. I had better find a new company to maintain my system.’
That coldness again, Iona thought, starting for the door. Or is she just being pragmatic, like a business person should be? ‘I love your name, by the way,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Where is it from?’
‘Kyrgyzstan. It is a—’
‘Small country in Central Asia, bordering China to one side,’ Iona replied, thinking of the bridenapping statistics. Around eighty per cent in some parts of the country.
The woman seemed genuinely taken aback. ‘You know it?’
‘It was mentioned in relation to something, that’s all,’ Iona replied. ‘You were born there?’
‘No, I’m British. My parents were from there. They never really spoke English at home when I was growing up.’
‘Well,’ Martin piped up. ‘You speak it beautifully.’
‘Thank you.’ She stepped closer to Iona. ‘And your name? Iona Khan?’
Iona had to look up to maintain eye contact. The woman was comfortably over six foot tall. ‘Scottish mother and Pakistani father.’
‘Pakistani father?’ Her eyes touched briefly on Iona’s hair. ‘Are you not permitted to cover your head while at work?’
Iona needed a second to process the question. ‘I’m not Muslim.’ She smiled quickly.
‘I’m sorry. I should not have presumed about your religion.’
‘It’s fine. I get asked all sorts of questions. Thanks again for your time.’
‘Yes. Thank you,’ Martin said.
‘My pleasure,’ the woman smiled, holding one hand out.
Martin took it, and for a second, Iona thought he was going to stoop forward and kiss it. But after a quick shake, he let it go. ‘We’ll find our own way back.’