8
4/3/08
Simon knew something was wrong as soon as he walked into Proust’s office. Wronger than usual: sub-zero already, and he hadn’t opened his mouth yet. A man he didn’t recognise stood behind the inspector, leaning against the wall, holding a manila folder. Neither he nor Proust said anything. Both seemed to be waiting for Simon to take the initiative, which he could hardly do, having no idea why he’d been summoned. He thought he’d wait it out.
Unless the Snowman had ditched one of the many tenets he often boasted had served him well for fifty-odd years—which struck Simon as unlikely—then it had to be the other man who smelled as if he’d fallen into a bath full of aftershave. Proust disapproved of scented males. Simon guessed he wouldn’t make an exception for one who reeked of seaweed mixed with acid.
The man wore a toffee-coloured suit with a white shirt and a green tie that was silk or some other shiny material. He looked to be in his late thirties, and had the eyes of a jaded Las Vegas croupier, out of place in his pink, unblemished face. Human Resources? The Snowman didn’t introduce him. ‘Where were you yesterday afternoon and evening?’ he asked Simon.
No way he can know.
‘I went up to Newcastle, made a start on the Beddoes—’
‘I’ll ask you again: where were you?’
The croupier looked nearly as angry as Proust. Simon tensed. Was this trouble of a different order of magnitude? It was hard to tell; around the Snowman, he always had the impression that his marching orders were imminent. Was he about to make the biggest mistake of his career? Had he already made it? ‘I followed Aidan Seed to London, sir.’
The inspector nodded. ‘Carry on.’
‘Sergeant Zailer and I spoke to Seed and Ruth Bussey yesterday afternoon, sir. The exchange left us both feeling even more concerned . . .’
‘Skip the justifications. I want your movements, from when you got into your car to follow Seed until you arrived home.’
Wishing he knew who the croupier was and why he was there, Simon did as instructed. When he got to the part about following Seed to Friends House, the Snowman and his anonymous guest exchanged a look. When he told them he’d eavesdropped on the Quaker Quest meeting, the croupier asked him to report exactly what he’d heard. He had a Cockney accent. Simon waited for Proust to say, ‘I’ll ask the questions,’ and was disconcerted when he didn’t.
He told the two men everything he remembered: Olive Oyl, the fat, sweaty bald man, Frank Zappa, the Immense Something Other, the quote about cutlery not being eternal. ‘How many of the people in that room do you think you could describe with any degree of accuracy?’ asked the croupier.
‘The two speakers, no problem,’ Simon told him.
Was he job?
‘There were three tramps there too. I think they went for the free grub. I could probably describe them, though not as precisely. ’
‘You left Friends House before the meeting ended?’ said Proust.
‘Yeah.’
‘What time was that?’
‘I don’t know—eight-ish.’
‘And you went where?’
‘Back to Ruskington Road, where I’d left my car.’
‘Was Mr Seed’s car still there, outside number 23?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Did you drive straight home?’
‘No, sir. I approached the house—number 23—and looked in through the ground-floor windows, and the window of the basement flat.’
‘What did you see?’
‘Nothing much. Empty rooms.’
‘Empty of people, or entirely empty?’
‘No, they had furniture and stuff in them.’
‘I trust you’ll be able to give DC Dunning a thorough description of each room you peered into, complete with all the
stuff
you saw.’
DC Dunning.
From London? ‘Yes, sir. I’ll do my best.’
The croupier moved forward, opened the file he was holding and placed a blown-up colour photograph on the table: the front of 23 Ruskington Road. With a biro, he pointed at the bay window on the right. ‘Did you look through this window?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did you see?’
‘A dining table and chairs. The table had a glass top. A sideboard against one wall.’ Although it was only last night, Simon found it hard to be certain. He’d taken a quick look and decided there was nothing of any interest: no bookshelves stuffed with books about Quakerism, nor anything else to link the house to Seed. ‘Maybe a rug and . . . a tall plant in a pot? Yeah, I think a plant.’
Dunning and Proust exchanged another look. ‘Anything else?’ Dunning asked.
‘No. Not that I can remember.’
‘What about on the walls?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Was there anything up on the walls?’
Simon struggled to bring to mind an image of the room. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t notice.’
‘Pictures? Photographs?’
‘It was darker inside than out. If there were pictures, I didn’t see . . .’ He stopped. Now would be a bad time to get something wrong.
Think.
‘There must have been something on the walls,’ he said eventually.
‘Why must there?’ asked Proust.
‘Like I said, I didn’t notice. I’d more likely have noticed if the walls were bare than if they weren’t. People usually put something up, don’t they? Put it this way: nothing about the room struck me as odd. It looked . . . lived in. Normal.’
‘Did you see anything leaning against a wall?’ asked Dunning.
Simon hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Like what?’
‘You say the room looked lived in?’
‘That’s right.’
‘So nothing you saw suggested to you that people might recently have moved in?’
‘No. Such as?’
‘Packing crates, maybe pictures leaning against the wall, waiting to be put up? Picture hooks, a hammer? Cardboard boxes with “dining room” written on them?’
‘No. Nothing like that.’
Dunning retrieved the photograph, replaced it in his file. ‘What next?’ Proust asked.
The bad feeling Simon had about all this intensified with each question. ‘I went to get a kebab from a takeaway I’d passed on the way in—don’t ask me where or what it was called. Junction of Ruskington Road and Muswell Hill Road, turn right, keep going for about four hundred yards or so. I got my kebab, then I drove back to Ruskington Road, sat in my car and ate it, waiting for Seed to come back.’
‘In effect, you staked out Mr Seed’s car, and 23 Ruskington Road,’ said Proust.
‘Yes.’
‘Did Mr Seed return?’
‘Yes, sir. At about half past nine. He and the woman I’d seen at the meeting, the speaker with the tied-back brown hair, they walked up the road together towards the house—number 23.’
‘Were they speaking as they walked?’ asked Dunning.
‘She was.’
‘Did you hear any of what she said?’
‘No.’
‘Her tone? Could you gauge her mood?’
‘Good,’ said Simon without hesitation. ‘She was prattling on, like people do when they’re happy or excited. They stopped by Seed’s car and he opened the boot, took something out . . .’
‘What?’ Dunning pounced.
‘I couldn’t see—there was a van in the way. Whatever it was, he carried it into number 23. The woman unlocked the door and opened it for him, and they both went in. A light went on in that window, the one you were asking about. I moved my car, drew level with the house to try and see in, but I had to move after a few seconds—there were cars coming up behind me. There’s traffic parked along both sides of Ruskington Road, so overtaking’s impossible. All I saw before I had to move was the woman drawing the curtains, still talking, and Seed standing behind her.’ Simon looked at Dunning. ‘After that, I called it a night, drove back home.’ He cleared his throat, realising he’d inadvertently lied. ‘Actually, I . . . I drove to Sergeant Zailer’s house.’
‘Does the name Len Smith mean anything to you?’ asked Dunning.
‘No.’ Simon had had enough. This man was a detective, like him. Cooperation ought to work both ways. ‘What’s going on? Did something happen at the house after I left?’
Dunning produced another photograph from his file and thrust it in front of Simon’s face. ‘Have you seen this person before? ’
Simon found himself staring at a heavily made-up woman with short hair that seemed to sweep back from her face in waves. It was a completely different look, but he recognised her all the same. ‘Yeah. It’s her, the speaker from Quaker Quest.’
Olive Oyl.
‘The woman you saw enter 23 Ruskington Road in the company of Aidan Seed?’ Dunning clarified.
Simon nodded.
‘Her name’s Gemma Crowther. She was killed last night,’ said Dunning. From his tone, he might have been filling Simon in on the football results. ‘Shot. In her dining room, some time before midnight—that’s when her partner, Stephen Elton, came home and found her. He’d been at Quaker Quest too, but he stayed to clear up after the meeting.’
‘The fat bald guy?’ Simon asked.
‘No.’ Dunning dropped Olive Oyl’s picture on Proust’s desk and pulled out one of a young man—perhaps as young as early twenties, or else the photo was an old one—with prominent cheekbones and shoulder-length dark blond hair. All he needed was some of his girlfriend’s make-up and he could have been the front man of a glam rock band. ‘Did you see him?’
‘No.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Positive.’
Dunning continued to hold the photograph aloft as he said, ‘So you saw Gemma Crowther alive and well at half past nine . . .’
‘Seed killed her,’ said Simon. As he was saying it, it occurred to him that he ought to wait, oughtn’t to give Dunning the impression that he was someone who leaped to conclusions in advance of having all the facts.
Too late.
‘Have you got him?’
‘You’re not hearing me, DC Waterhouse. As things stand, I’ve got you, by your own account, as the last person to see Gemma alive.’
‘You mean apart from Aidan Seed?’
Dunning carried on as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘I’ve got two witnesses telling me you were behaving suspiciously near her home—looking through windows, hanging around in your car, watching the house. They made a note of your car registration, thought you were a would-be burglar, picking your moment to break in.’
‘I’ve explained what I was doing there.’
‘I’ve got no one’s word but yours that Aidan Seed was at Quaker Quest or at 23 Ruskington Road yesterday, and I know you think nothing of lying. I just heard you lie to your guvnor when he asked where you were yesterday. I’ve also heard you’ve got a history of, among other things, violent outbursts and obsessive behaviour. You’ve been a detective for longer than I have—you put all that together and tell me what you come up with.’
Simon had trained himself, over the years, to see keeping his temper in check as a feat of strength. Dunning was trying to get a rise out of him; he needed to pour the full force of his anger into resisting. These days he knew how to turn himself into a rock—impermeable. It didn’t feel like weakness any more, not hammering people to the ground with his fists when they pissed him off.
‘I don’t understand why you’d care enough to tail Aidan Seed to London instead of making your and everyone else’s life easier by following through on the action you’d been assigned,’ said Dunning. ‘That’s something you’ll have to explain to me. A man who’s committed no crime . . .’
‘Hasn’t he? If Gemma Crowther’s dead at midnight and I saw Seed with her at half past nine . . .?’
‘There were thirty-seven people at the meeting at Friends House,’ said Dunning. ‘Unless they’re all lying, not one of them knows the name Aidan Seed. According to them, and to Stephen Elton, Gemma’s partner, she left the meeting with a Len Smith, a social worker from Maida Vale who’d become a good friend of hers.’
‘Does the physical description match Seed’s?’ Simon asked. ‘A social worker from Maida Vale? I take it you’ve had no luck finding him.’
‘I’m told Smith has been attending regularly for several weeks.’
‘There is no Len Smith! It was Seed—he’s your killer. I saw him go into that house with her. Unless one of your witnesses saw him drive away while she was still alive . . .’
‘Neither of them saw
you
drive away when you say you did,’ Dunning announced with a smug smile—his first. ‘Shortly after half past nine.’
‘I didn’t leave then or they weren’t looking then?’ said Simon angrily. ‘There’s a difference. Ask your witnesses if they saw Seed’s car outside the house. Get a photo of Seed and show it to the Quaker lot—they’ll tell you he’s the man they know as Len Smith.’
Dunning gave him a look he’d used himself many times, on scrotes who wouldn’t talk.
‘You’re not serious?’ said Simon. ‘Me? I’m on your side of the fence. I lock up the killers.’ Proust sat hunched over his desk like a stone effigy, saying nothing.
‘I’m part of a team of twelve,’ said Dunning matter-of-factly. ‘In my team, we stick to our tasking briefs. Different detectives are handling different aspects of the investigation into Gemma Crowther’s death, and guess what? I got you, babe. Which means you and I are going on a little trip to the Big Smoke, and you’re going to elaborate on the story I’ve just heard from your DI about you and Sergeant Charlotte Zailer—who’s also your fiancée, I believe?’
Simon hated the way he said it as if it were somehow questionable, as if his and Charlie’s engagement meant neither of them could be trusted.
Babe?
Had Dunning called him that, or had he imagined it?
‘. . . your and Sergeant Zailer’s fixation on Aidan Seed, his girlfriend Ruth Bussey and a woman called Mary Trelease.’
‘All people you should be speaking to,’ Simon told him. ‘Are you?’
‘You’re going to make me understand why you care so much about all these people, and let’s hope the story makes more sense than it did the first time I heard it. At the moment, the way I see it, I’ve got one in the bag: someone in the right place at the right time, behaving irrationally and suspiciously—that someone being you.’ Not giving Simon a chance to respond, Dunning asked, ‘Where’s Sergeant Zailer?’