‘You were right the first time. Maurice Blandford. Suck his cock, did you?’
‘No. If he exists, if he has a suckable cock, then no—I didn’t.’
‘All cocks are suckable,’ said Kerry. ‘Trust me, as the proud owner of a fine specimen.’
‘I assume you’re referring to a spare you keep in a jar somewhere, for special occasions?’
‘You said it.’
Damn.
She should have thought ahead. She’d asked for that one.
‘Did Aidan Seed hire you to follow Ruth Bussey? To find out about her background?’
‘It’s the same rule for you as for Neil Dunning esquire.’ Kerry took a sip of a drink that looked like port before smiling sympathetically at Charlie. ‘Worse for you, since you’re in no position to come back in the morning with a warrant. Face it: you’re out in the cold. This’ll tickle you: Dunning asked me if I thought you and Waterhouse could be trusted.’ He grinned, genuinely pleased to be delivering the news. ‘Don’t worry, I stuck up for you. If it makes you feel any better, Dunning’ll get nothing from me, warrant or no warrant, so you can’t accuse me of not playing fair.’
He looked serious for the first time since Charlie had arrived. ‘I’m not the Salvation Army, sweetheart. I help people only after money’s changed hands. Outside of that, I don’t tell and I don’t ask. I’m not curious, see. That’s the most important asset someone in my delicate position can have, let me tell you. Have I asked you who Maurice Blandford is?’ He licked his finger and tapped the air, awarding a point to himself.
‘Did you meet Blanford?’ Charlie asked. ‘Or did he send a courier for the picture, and transfer the money directly into your bank account? He did, didn’t he? Did that strike you as odd at the time?’
‘The only thing striking me as odd are your questions. And Dunning’s. Putting it all together, I’d say Aidan Seed’s mixed up in the suspicious death Dunning’s fretting about, and maybe Maurice Blandford is too, but I don’t know how, and I don’t care. Like I say, money has to change hands.’
‘I don’t suppose you’ve still got the bank statement with the account name and number on it? From the transfer?’
Kerry snickered. ‘This is what I love about you: that faint whiff of desperation—your signature scent.’
Charlie persisted. ‘How much did Blandford give you for the picture? Was it something in the region of eight thousand pounds?’
‘If you’re waiting for me to ask how you know all this, you’re in for a long wait,’ said Kerry. ‘I don’t pry, in case it leads to a conflict of interests.’ He raised his glass, clinked it against Charlie’s. ‘I’ve got my sponsor to think of, my early retirement. My name in lights outside comedy clubs . . .’
‘Sponsor?’
He patted her hand. ‘It all comes down, in life, to whose side you’re on. You’re on Simon Waterhouse’s side—that’s why your career and love life are going down the pan. Me? I’m on the side of my clients, because, at the end of the day, they pay the bills.’
‘You said “sponsor” singular.’ Kerry looked put out. Charlie licked her finger and notched up a point to herself. ‘Money seems to like you, Kerry. First you buy a painting by a guy you can’t stand for—what, a grand? Two? And a stranger offers you eight for it when you’ve had it less than a month.’
‘I talked him up to ten, actually,’ he corrected her. ‘And it was less than a week.’
Charlie believed him about his lack of curiosity. She also knew that, like most men, he had to prove he knew more, had to be the one steering things. ‘Then you get yourself a client who pays over the odds,’ she went on, hoping she’d guessed right. ‘She pays you so much, you can think about giving up work and wasting the rest of your life antagonising tiny audiences in dingy pubs and clubs all over the country. Your sponsor. Not Aidan Seed. You said you didn’t like him, so it can’t be him who’s bought your loyalty. It’s Mary Trelease, isn’t it? She’s the one who paid you to tail Ruth Bussey.’
Mary, with her refined accent and her Villiers education, so out of place on the Winstanley estate. Who else could it be? ‘Or Gemma Crowther,’ Charlie added, just in case. ‘Which one’s funding your comedy comeback? Mary or Gemma?’
‘Neither.’ Kerry looked smug. ‘Unless one of them left a will I’ve yet to hear about.’
‘What did you say?’
‘You’re barking up the wrong tree.’ He pronounced each word slowly and carefully as if he was talking to an imbecile.
Pretend you know already. Pretend you know what he knows, or thinks he knows.
‘Did Aidan Seed kill Gemma Crowther? Did he kill Mary Trelease?’
Kerry’s eyes narrowed. He looked like a smug cat. ‘I’ll give you this much: you’re one step ahead of your Cockney counterpart. ’
‘Dunning didn’t know Mary Trelease was dead,’ said Charlie, aware of her pulse charging beneath her skin.
‘He seemed a mite confused,’ Kerry agreed.
‘He talked about her as if she was still alive. Asked you if you knew her.’ Charlie didn’t know where she was going with this, but it felt right. She wished Simon was with her. ‘Did you tell him she was dead?’
Kerry held up his hands. ‘Not my responsibility to set him straight. If he comes back with his warrant tomorrow as promised, he’ll get no illumination from me, nor from my pristine office. I don’t tell anyone anything.’
‘Unless cash changes hands. I know,’ said Charlie impatiently. ‘All right, then—how much? Name your price for telling me everything you know that relates to Aidan Seed, Mary Trelease . . .’
‘Charlie, sweetheart, don’t demean yourself. You’re not going to be able to claim it back on expenses, you know.’
‘. . . and Martha Wyers.’
That wiped the smile off his face.
‘Dunning didn’t ask you about her, did he? Come on, name your price.’
‘I’m out of your league,’ said Kerry. ‘Financially speaking. Unless you’re offering payment in kind.’ He stared at Charlie’s chest and ran his tongue along his bottom lip. ‘I might be persuaded. ’
‘Yeah, right. Is your bedroom still covered in fake leopard skins?’
‘Leopard skins are sexy, señorita.’
‘Not when they’re covered in spilled Weetabix, they’re not.’ Saying this reminded Charlie of who she was talking to.
He’ll get no illumination from my pristine office.
Nothing about Kerry Gatti was pristine. He was the same self-satisfied slob he’d always been. There was an open briefcase at his feet. He’d wedged it between his legs.
Charlie pushed her lime cordial and soda over to him. ‘I’m going to get a real drink,’ she said. Kerry opened his book as she stood up. Maybe he really did want to read about black holes. If only he would fall into one.
At the bar, Charlie showed her police ID to two young men standing beside her. ‘For twenty quid each, I need you to start giving me a hard time,’ she told them. ‘Loud enough for the whole pub to hear. Accuse me of pushing in.’
‘’Ey?’ said one, slow on the uptake.
‘Let’s see the money, then,’ said his friend. Checking Kerry was busy with Stephen Hawking, Charlie gave them each a £20 note. They started laughing.
‘Is that the best you can do?’ she said. She didn’t need Oscar-winning performances from them, only a bit of high-volume aggression. They looked the sort who ought to be able to manage it. In the end, Charlie had to threaten to nick them for theft—taking her money under false pretences. Finally, one of them—the marginally brighter one—started yelling at her. Too loud, really hamming it up, but it didn’t matter. Charlie let him insult her and threaten her for about half a minute, then backed away from the bar, saying, ‘Look, forget it. I don’t want any trouble.’ As she walked back to the table, he shouted obscenities after her.
Earning every penny, the fucker.
Charlie heard the barman threaten to bar him if he didn’t pack it in.
‘What was that about?’ Kerry looked amused. ‘Where’s your drink?’
‘Not worth it,’ she said tersely.
‘Liver going by the name of Lily these days, is it? I’d heard as much. Come on, give us your money, I’ll go for you.’
‘I’m not giving you fuck all.’ Charlie restrained herself from asking what he’d heard. Was he referring to her transferring out of CID? Did people think that was down to fear? ‘If you want, you and your sponsor can buy me a vodka and orange.’
As soon as he’d gone to the bar, she put both her feet around his open briefcase and pulled it over to her. Inside, there was a copy of a book called
Voice and the Actor
, season two of
The Wire
on DVD, an iPod, some CDs—Rush, Pink Floyd and Genesis—and two thin blue envelope files. Charlie opened one and saw the name Aidan Seed. She froze for a second, unused to having things happen the way she wanted them to.
She slipped both files under her shirt and folded her arms over them as she walked to the stairs that led to the ladies. Instead of following the drunk girl with the chunky calves and mud-dipped stiletto heels up to the next floor, Charlie carried on to the end of the passageway. Beside the door of the gents’ there was another one marked ‘emergency exit’. She pushed the silver bar and it opened on to a yard full of empty crates and recycling skips.
She ran round the side of the pub, through the car park at the front and on to the road. Her Audi was parked half on the pavement, under a street light. Pulling the files out from under her shirt, Charlie pointed her key-fob at the car and pressed the unlock button. Nothing happened. ‘Come
on
,’ she breathed through gritted teeth. She pressed again. Nothing. And again. And again.
Shit.
She looked over her shoulder. No sign of Kerry. Yet.
She unlocked the car manually and set off the alarm. The noise, an ee-aw-ee-aw screech, sounded like an amplified saw cutting through metal. People on the street were giving her dirty looks, mouthing things at her that she couldn’t hear and wasn’t sorry to miss.
Sweating in spite of the cold, Charlie jabbed the unlock button several more times with her thumb. Useless. She tried the lock button, also to no effect. The battery was beyond resuscitation. Without a new one, she assumed there was no way of turning off the alarm.
She looked behind her again and this time she saw Kerry. He was in the car park, looking left and right. She ducked down behind the wall that separated the pub from the street, then raised her head in time to see him run round the back of the Swan. She knew he’d be back soon, having failed to find her there.
With no time to think, Charlie abandoned her wailing car and ran across the car park, up the front steps of the pub and back inside, clutching the files tight so that nothing fell out. He wouldn’t look inside. Knowing what she’d done, he wouldn’t think she’d be stupid enough to come back.
Charlie ran up the stairs to the ladies’, pushed a couple of indignant drunk teenagers out of her way, and locked herself in a cubicle.
She didn’t open the files straight away. She was too busy breathing, which felt like something she hadn’t done for a while. She could still hear the sodding car. Once her head had stopped throbbing and she could see an immobile, much-graffitied toilet cubicle rather than one that pulsated and warped in front of her eyes, she was ready to read what she’d taken from Kerry’s briefcase.
There was a file on Aidan Seed and one on Ruth Bussey. Ruth’s told Charlie nothing much that she didn’t already know: evangelical Christian parents, garden design business, three BALI awards. Most of the information Kerry had gathered had to do with Gemma Crowther and Stephen Elton. There was a lot about the court case. Charlie imagined how he must have congratulated himself on sniffing out that juicy morsel.
She opened the other file. Here were things she didn’t know about Aidan Seed: details of his education, his father’s death from lung cancer. She skimmed the pages, looking for anything that stood out. Aidan’s mother’s cancer—also in the lungs. His stepfather . . .
Charlie cried out in shock.
Aidan Seed’s stepfather.
This was it. She pulled her phone out of her bag and rang Simon. Voicemail.
Shit.
Where was he? He never ignored his phone; he was too neurotic. To him, each missed call was an opportunity for ever lost. It was one of the things Charlie took the piss out of him for, along with getting more calls from his mother than from anyone else.
Someone flushed the toilet in the next cubicle. Charlie waited until the gurgling of the cistern had stopped, then rang Simon again. This time she left a message. ‘Seed’s stepfather—his name’s Len Smith. He’s in an open prison, Long Leighton in Wiltshire, serving a life sentence for a murder he committed in 1982. He strangled a woman.’ Kerry had written nothing in his report about whether the woman was naked or in bed when she died, but Charlie knew. She did a quick calculation in her head. Aidan Seed had been thirty-two when
The Times
feature was published in 1999, which made him . . . fifteen in 1982.
‘Smith murdered his partner in their home,’ she told Simon. ‘I don’t need to tell you the address: 15 Megson Crescent. They lived there with Smith’s three stepkids, Aidan and his brother and sister.’ In case Simon was as full of disbelief as she was, Charlie added, ‘I’m not making this up. Aidan lived in that house until he left home. The woman Len Smith’s inside for killing—her name was Mary Trelease.’
There were photocopies of photographs from newspapers: grainy, but distinct enough for Charlie to be able to see that the Mary Trelease Len Smith had killed looked nothing like the Mary Trelease Charlie had met.
Met in the same house the first Mary Trelease had lived and died in.
She held the clearest of the pictures close to her face. She’d seen this woman before, but where? It wasn’t possible. The first Mary Trelease had been dead for twenty-six years. Smith was seventy-eight now, Kerry had noted. He’d been denied parole on several occasions.
Charlie was about to put her phone back in her bag when she noticed a small envelope symbol on its screen. A message. How long had it been there? How long since she’d checked? She pressed ‘1’ to play it, expecting to hear Simon’s voice, and heard, with a jolt of surprise, Ruth Bussey’s instead.