You Will Never Find Me (24 page)

Still nothing from El Osito. The rock-hard stare. The eyes gone to black, no whites visible, two chinks of diamond light in the pupils.

‘You'll remember my daughter,' said Boxer, sealed in, detached. ‘She was probably the last girl you killed. You won't have killed them all. The media would be full of it. And it's hard to get away with killing so many. So what happened? Did you hit her too hard? Did she bang her head? Fall badly on the tiled floor? You can tell me if it was an accident. I'll listen. I won't believe you because of what I saw you do to that girl tonight. But I'll listen. Because I want to know what you did to my daughter and why you had to cut her up and throw bits of her off motorway bridges around Madrid.'

The glint in El Osito's basilisk stare changed a little, but he kept his mouth shut.

‘Things coming back to you now?' asked Boxer. ‘Do you want to put them into words for me?'

Silence.

‘Let's talk about what was found. Maybe that will help you to remember what you did. A young man walking his dog saw a black bag under a motorway bridge that hadn't quite made it into the river. Inside was a girl's lower leg, some clothes and in the jacket, a passport. That was my daughter's passport. Now the police are trying to find the rest of her. So where did you kill her, Osito? In here? How did it happen? Her body had been bled so I suppose you did that and the cutting up in the shower.'

Still nothing.

‘Talk to me, Osito. I know you can speak English, so that's not the problem. I know you're remembering things—I can see it from your face. So, now I'm going to have to get rough with you.'

Boxer tore off a piece of gaffer tape and smoothed it over El Osito's mouth. He laid the chair down on its back, which, given the position of the Colombian's arms, was not comfortable. Boxer took the baseball bat and showed it to him. El Osito was wide-eyed with the horror of it. Tried to speak.

‘Too late,' said Boxer.

He'd never played baseball so he swung the bat along the more formal but accurate line of a cricket shot, a sweep to square leg, which hit El Osito on the point of the ankle. He delivered a matching blow to the other side. There were muffled screams and two streams of snot shot out of El Osito's nostrils onto his chest. His face screwed in agony. Boxer righted the chair, waited for a minute while the Colombian got himself back under control and stripped the tape off his mouth. El Osito still wouldn't speak, but this time it was the agony preventing him. He ducked his chin onto his chest, determined to give Boxer the minimum of satisfaction.

‘Now let's have it,' said Boxer. ‘No more hard-man stares. I can carry this on all night.'

‘You don't know it was me killed your daughter,' said El Osito. ‘You know it was me, you go to the police.'

‘I
do
know it was you,' said Boxer. ‘I've got witnesses. You've got a reputation for beating up women. You were seen leaving Kapital with my daughter. And when they found her leg, clothes and passport they found one of these weighing down the bag so it would sink in the river.'

Boxer hefted the five-kilo weight, brought it down hard on El Osito's toes. The Colombian gasped and growled with the pain, clenched his teeth.

‘I saw you tonight in Kapital with another girl. I followed you here. By the time I arrived you were already beating her up. I had to step in. Maybe you'd have killed her too, by accident. Now tell me what you did to my daughter. What did she say that made you want to kill her? Or didn't she have to say anything at all?'

‘This not for you,
mi amigo
,' said El Osito. ‘You get the police. I talk to the police.'

Another piece of tape across the mouth. The chair once again laid on its back. This time it was the knees. An off drive on one side and an on drive to the other followed by two less stylish shots: hammer blows to both kneecaps.

Boxer sat him back up. The Colombian's head twisted and turned with the agony from his shattered joints. It concerned Boxer that El Osito could have avoided this brutal retribution just by being a bit more talkative. He wondered if he might see this as some necessary punishment for all the wrongs he'd committed in his life. They were deeply Catholic, these Colombian gangsters. They had to be, with what they had coming in the afterlife. Boxer could find no pity for the man. He'd seen the terror in the eyes of the girl he'd rescued that night and had imagined that same terror in Amy's eyes when the monster had turned on her at the end of her first night of freedom.

‘I think you've realised that this is not a case for the police, El Osito,' said Boxer. ‘This is between you and me. Now tell me what you did to my daughter.'

He stripped the tape off El Osito's mouth. The Colombian gulped in air trying to cope with the pain.

‘I don't know what happen to her,' he said finally. ‘I woke up in the bathroom. I came in here. She dead on the floor. We taking a lot of blow and drinking. Maybe she not used to it. Maybe her heart not strong enough. My cocaine very pure. That's it. That's all I can tell you,
mi amigo
.'

‘All right. One more thing,' said Boxer, getting up close, looking into the eyes, which had lost some of their hardness now. ‘What's this all about? This obsession with hurting girls? Tell me that and I'll finish it quick.'

El Osito looked at him out of the corner of his head, eyes, puzzled.

‘What's it to you,
hombre
?'

‘You don't question why you do it?'

‘You know, when I see you that first time in the bar I know you kill people. I see that look before.'

‘Is that why you left?'

‘No, no, I see that look in the mirror every morning,' said El Osito. ‘I leave because I don't like the
way
you look, something like a cop or maybe a judge. But now I see you in the revenge business and I'm asking myself, why you doing that? You look like police and acting like a gangster.'

‘I just don't like people getting away with murder.'

‘Yeah, most people are like that but they don't go killing people, taking revenge. How you get into that business? You tell me yours, I tell you mine.'

They looked at each other for some time.

‘You recognise yourself now?' said El Osito. ‘You don't know the answer any better than me. We just doing what we
have
to do,
mi amigo
.'

‘I am not your
amigo
,' said Boxer.

‘O.K., how about
compañero
?'

Boxer stood up, took the baseball bat in both hands, reached out and touched the fat heavy end to El Osito's ear. He eased the bat back slowly and gave the Colombian's ear another light touch in a slow measured practice swing.

The front doorbell rang.

‘JAIME!' roared El Osito.

There was a splitting crack as the front door was shouldered open.

T
he rowers started turning up at 6:00
A.M.
Even to Mercy's inexpert eye she could see the tide was going out and it would be low water by eight thirty. She counted off the crew as they arrived. Seven men plus the cox and the coach, but no Jeremy Spencer. The crew brought the boat out and set it on the river while the cox hopped onto his bike, swung back up the ramp and pedalled crazily down the Lower Richmond Road. Mercy followed him.

The cox veered left into Roskel Road, stopped near the top, threw the bike against a low wall and went up to the front door of a Victorian semi-detached house. He thumbed the bell hard. Mercy pulled up by the open gate, lowered her window, watched. The cox stood back, went to the front bay window and peered through the curtains, knocked on the window. He kicked the front door with his plimsolled foot and was about to turn away when the door eased open. Mercy got out of the car. The cox was halfway up the hall, where a bike was leaning against the wall.

‘Just wait a sec,' she said and showed him her warrant card.

The door to the house had been on the latch. The flat's front door was by the bottom of the stairs, which went up to the two flats above. She pushed it with a gloved finger. It too opened.

‘Just wait outside while I take a look at this,' she said to the cox.

She put on latex gloves, turned on the torchlight of her mobile phone and went into a narrow hallway with four closed doors. She started with the door to the front room, which was set out as a living room, with a wall-mounted TV over the fireplace. The next door opened into the bedroom with a window looking out onto a small garden. The double bed had a T-shirt cast over the duvet and jeans and a jumper hung over a chair in the corner. She backed out, walked past the most suspicious door in the flat and took a cursory look at the empty kitchen.

Back to the bathroom. The sweat came up on her hands inside the latex gloves. She pushed the door but it only opened a few inches, as it butted up against some wet towels on the floor. She pushed harder, stuck her head around the door. Jeremy Spencer was lying in a full bath, one leg over the side, the other bent awkwardly into the corner. His head and torso were underwater. She crammed herself around the door. The water was stone cold, the window was open, all the towels underfoot were sodden and Jeremy Spencer was long dead.

‘What's going on?' asked the cox from the doorway to the flat.

‘I'm afraid Jeremy's dead,' said Mercy. ‘There's going to be an investigation. Somebody's going to need to speak to all of you. Give me your mobile number and then you can go back to your crew and tell them they won't be going out on the river this morning.'

‘What do I say?' asked the cox, looking overwhelmed.

‘You tell them Jeremy's dead and the police are dealing with it. At this point we know nothing. It could be an accident, suicide or murder.'

‘But what about you? What were you doing here?'

‘Don't let it get complicated in your head,' said Mercy. ‘Stick to what you know.'

‘Jesus Christ.'

Mercy called DCS Makepeace. The cox turned his bike and pedalled off.

‘What are you up to, Mercy?' asked Makepeace.

‘I'm working, sir,' said Mercy. ‘I'm working the Sasha Bobkov case.'

‘You're off that case,' said Makepeace. ‘You're not on duty. I've given you indefinite leave.'

‘I don't want it, sir. I can't do it. I can't sit alone in my house knowing Amy's gone. I
have
to work,' she said. ‘I went down to the river this morning.'

‘The river?'

‘The Thames.'

‘I guessed that.'

‘I was following up on Sasha's teacher, Jeremy Spencer,' said Mercy. ‘He didn't show for rowing practice and I've just found him dead in his bath.'

‘Oh shit,' said Makepeace, the day gone to hell before he'd even got away from the breakfast table. ‘Let's hear it.'

She gave him the details. Makepeace made the call, came back to her.

‘I'd like to go after Irina Demidova now,' said Mercy. ‘Did George get anywhere with the Mercedes?'

‘He hasn't filled in the rest of the numberplate, but he's established that one of the cars owned by DLT Consultants is a black Mercedes CLS with an LG 61 plate.'

‘Do we have any opinion on Messrs Dudko, Luski and Tipalov?'

‘They've been established here for some time, since the mid-1990s. They've filed accounts at Companies House and paid their taxes,' said Makepeace. ‘As for the individuals, none of them has any record, and George ran their names through our organised crime database and didn't come up with any matches.'

‘So, I'll talk to Demidova, and if I'm out of luck there I'll move on to DLT Consultants, if that's all right with you.'

‘Do you really think this is the best thing for you to be doing right now, Mercy? This is more than likely a murder. It'll raise the Bobkov case to a new level.'

‘I want to be involved. Amy got away from me and I couldn't save her. But this boy, Sasha, sounds like a really great kid,' she said, her voice cracking. ‘It would help me if I could do something for him. It would give me a chance to make something right in a world that's gone badly wrong for me. I'm not in the front line. I'm not under the same pressure as the consultant in the case. I'm just investigative. I'm good at it. I'll work with George. If I'm too unstable, he'll tell you and you can take me off the case.'

Mercy hung up, waited for the homicide team to show. One of the occupiers of the upstairs flats came down the stairs, slowed at the open front door, looked around. Mercy showed him her warrant card, told him there was an investigation going on to do with his downstairs neighbour.

‘Are you alone up there?'

‘Last night I was. My girlfriend only stays over at the weekends.'

‘Are you first floor or top?'

‘First. The top-floor guy is away on business in the States. Won't be back until next week.'

‘Were you here last night?'

‘From around one thirty onwards,' he said. ‘I was out on business with some Norwegian ship owners. We went to a club afterwards. It was a heavy night—always is when the Norwegians come to town.'

‘What happened when you got in?'

‘Stripped off, face down, out for the count.'

‘I meant, how did you get through the front door? Was it locked?'

‘Jesus, I'm not sure. That's why I was a bit freaked when I saw the door open. Did I leave it like that?'

‘I'm asking
you
. Did you unlock it, put it on the latch for any reason? Or did you put the key in and find it was already open?'

There followed a long thought process during which he checked his watch.

‘It's important, this. I know it doesn't sound like it, but it'll help us establish some things. A chain of events.'