You Will Never Find Me (40 page)

‘Is that her name? Chanterelle? Like the mushroom?'

‘Like the mushroom?' said Tony.

Education, thought Boxer. Kids know everything and nothing these days. He asked Tony to spell the name out.

‘And a surname?'

‘No surname. That's not how people introduce themselves. It's not a job interview.'

‘I need a surname and an address, Tony.'

‘They said she lived in social housing somewhere off the Holloway Road. Her mother was a crackhead and her father a crack dealer, and Chantrelle had been in and out of care before the council set her up in her own flat.'

‘That's great, Tony, but I need you to keep working at it,' said Boxer. ‘Those girls must know other people who knew Amy and Chantrelle. I have to have a surname and an address. It's critical now. I have to move as fast as possible.'

 

There was no signal in the basement so every half-hour Lomax had to go outside to check his messages. The last one had been from Darren: ‘We need her dad's mobile number like
now
!'

Lomax called him.‘She's still out,' he said. ‘Will be for another hour or more. I gave her GHB, tried not to give her too much, but you know how it is, not an exact science when you're trying to spike a girl's drink before she comes through the door.'

‘She got a phone with her?'

‘Sure.'

‘Go through the contacts list and see if there's a Charles Boxer.'

‘You think I'm an idiot, Darren?' said Lomax. ‘I've been through it already. There's no Charles and no Dad. The only Boxer in her list is called Esme. Two numbers—one mobile, one fixed.'

‘Esme?' said Darren. ‘Does that sound like a black woman's name?'

‘Could be. It sounds old-fashioned,' said Lomax.

‘Do you think Esme is the girl's mother?'

‘Well, Darren, she's got the same surname so she'll have a better chance of knowing where Charles Boxer is than anybody else you know.'

‘Thanks for pointing that out, Miles,' said Darren. ‘How are you getting on finding that twenty-eight grand you owe me? Now text me the fucking numbers.'

‘You might want a photo of the girl too. Show that we've got her.'

‘Yeah, do that 'n' all.'

‘The only problem is I don't have today's newspaper.'

‘What the fuck?'

‘Traditionally, Darren, you show a photo of the hostage with the day's newspaper, so they know it's not some shot taken after a party three years ago.'

‘You always knew too much for your own good, Miles.'

 

Tony again.

‘Now I
have
got lucky,' he said. ‘I went back into Sy-Lo and those two girls had tracked down someone who actually knows Chantrelle. From school. Her name is Chantrelle Taleisha Grant. She lives at 10 Hornsey Street, not far from the Emirates Stadium. Flat 203. Her mother, Alice, is the crackhead. This girl's never met her but she knows she doesn't live far away on the Andover Estate, but no address.'

‘Good work, Tony.'

‘She's even sent me a photo of Chantrelle with Amy taken about three weeks ago.'

‘She knew Amy as well?'

‘They spent a couple of evenings together, that's all.'

‘Send me the shot.'

Boxer hung up, waited for the message, looked at the shot of the two girls. They weren't so similar that he couldn't tell which was Amy, but he could see, smiling as they were under their great swags of hair, how they could be confused in a quick passport check late at night at Barajas Airport.

He sent a text to Mercy with all the information Tony had gathered. Told her this was urgent, first-thing-in-the-morning stuff, that he'd go to Chantrelle's flat, but it would be a good idea to have her mother's address too. Amy would probably know them both, and when Chantrelle didn't return with her passport, would have started to get worried. He sent the photo too, and the other shot the girls had taken on Saturday night of Amy with all her hair cut off and sown in corn rows.

 

Mercy bought some beer and wine to drink with the goat curry and jerk chicken she'd just picked up from the Blessed West Indian Takeaway on Coldharbour Lane, which in her mind no longer seemed to be a place of last resort.

They'd eaten the meal, and Alleyne had started to roll a joint, and she'd asked him to hold back while she told him the full story. He sat with his hands resting on his thighs listening, not saying a word. She could tell her story was having a profound effect on him, not only because of its disturbing content but also because, for the first time, she was being intimate with him. At the end of it he reached across the table and held her hand and for the first time she was drawn to him, not physically, but for his silent empathy.

He didn't roll the joint. They drank the wine, went to bed and made love. It was different. He was tender. He held her to his chest as they fell asleep. The messaging signal woke her.

She rolled over and read the message from Boxer, looked at the photo. She rubbed her thumb over Amy's face. She'd been missing her so badly since this afternoon's news. She needed to hold her, wanted to show Amy how much she was loved. Then she could go off and do what the hell she liked.

The murdered girl also smiled from the screen. What a waste. Mercy couldn't help but feel angry at her daughter's stupid determination to prove herself.

‘What's up?' asked Alleyne, still drugged with sleep.

Mercy showed him the picture.

‘This the other girl?' he asked.

‘Chantrelle Grant,' said Mercy.

‘That's a very sad thing,' said Alleyne, ‘which is why you shouldn't pick up messages in the night.'

He dropped it on the floor, pulled Mercy to him.

 

Boxer hadn't moved. He was still on the sofa in Esme's darkened sitting room. All he'd done was shift himself into the lying position with a couple of cushions under his head, his mobile on his chest. He'd gone looking for whisky, but Esme was a Grey Goose girl. So he was lying there, sober, and thinking that only two things needed to happen to put his world back into kilter. He needed Amy here, with him, in the room. And he wanted to know what had happened to David Álvarez. If they had got to Álvarez it would tell him something. It would tell him that El Osito was hard at work closing down all possible openings. It would put pressure on the London end of things.

He started as his mobile let out a message signal. He tilted the screen towards his face. David Álvarez: ‘I got out. It was close. Am in a cheap hotel. I leave on the first bus in the morning. Thanks.' ‘It was close' did not make him rest any easier. He toyed with the idea of asking Álvarez to do one more thing for him: talk to Inspector Jefe Luís Zorrita. Tell him, anonymously, everything he knew about El Osito. Forensics would go into that flat, and even if they'd cleared out all the weights they would never be able to totally remove the evidence of the dismemberment. Was that too much to ask of him? That tweet Álvarez had answered must have been the biggest regret of his life.

The fixed-line phone rang in the other room. He rolled off the sofa and lurched into his mother's office, threw himself into the chair, picked up the phone.

‘Hello,' he said.

Silence. He knew someone was there.

‘Talk to me,' he said.

‘I want to speak to Charles Boxer,' said the voice, a Londoner.

‘That's me. Who are you?'

‘We'll get to that in a minute. How do I know you're Charles Boxer?'

‘You were the one who called this number.'

‘I was expecting to speak to Esme.'

‘That's my mother—she lives here, but she's in hospital.'

‘I'm going to ask you some questions just to make sure I'm talking to the right person.'

‘You're going to have to tell me who you are first or I don't answer anything.'

‘If you answer the questions correctly you'll know who I am,' said the voice. ‘Where were you on Tuesday night?'

‘Madrid.'

‘Which room did you take at the Hotel Moderno?'

That question made him go very still.

‘Room 407.'

‘You took 407 because your daughter, Amy, had used that same room,' said the voice. ‘What were you doing in Madrid?'

‘I was trying to find her. She'd run away from home.'

‘You were contacted by a homicide detective called Luís Zorrita. What did he tell you?'

‘That a body part had been found with some clothes and my daughter's passport.'

‘And you assumed she'd been murdered.'

‘That's right.'

‘And you thought you knew who'd killed her,' said the voice. ‘How was that?'

‘Because somebody told me.'

‘Was that somebody called David Álvarez?'

Boxer hesitated. But Álvarez was safe now.

‘Yes. He told me he'd seen her on Saturday night with a man who had a reputation for violence against women.'

‘And what was his name?'

‘I only know him as El Osito.'

‘You've done very well, Mr. Boxer, and I think you know who we are now.'

‘Not really.'

‘But you know you're talking to the right people.'

‘If that's how you want to put it.'

‘So how did you find out your daughter wasn't dead?'

‘The DNA from the body part didn't match mine or her mother's.'

‘So whose body was it?'

‘I don't know,' said Boxer, thinking carefully now. ‘The last time I spoke to the detective was about the DNA results. We haven't spoken since then. No reason to.'

‘Keep it like that,' said the Londoner. ‘You'd better give us your mobile number.'

‘Why?'

‘We're going to be in touch.'

‘About what?'

‘You're going to tell David Álvarez not to go to the police,' said the voice. ‘That if he goes anywhere near the police we will hunt him down, but only after we've dealt with his mum and dad and two sisters. You got that?'

‘I understand what you're saying. I'm just not quite sure what's in it for me?'

‘The other thing is
you
don't talk to the police either. Not in Madrid and not in London. Right?'

‘Like I said, I've got a good understanding of English. I'm just not quite sure why the
fuck
I should listen to you.'

‘I was waiting for that,' said the voice. ‘See a bit of your anger. El Osito said you were the angriest man he'd ever seen outside Mexico.'

‘Angry?'

‘Yeah. I think that's what he must have seen before you smashed his legs to pieces.'

‘I'm sure, in my place, you'd have done exactly the same thing to your daughter's murderer.'

‘Because you couldn't fuck her any more?'

‘What?' said Boxer, incredulous. ‘Now that's the first thing you've said that doesn't make any sense. Did El Osito feed you that line?'

Silence.

‘Why did she run away from home?' asked the Londoner.

‘She lives with her mother. It hasn't been going well between them for quite some time.'

‘All right. You know what we're going to do?' said the voice. ‘We're going to ask Amy . . . just as soon as she comes round.'

The fear sliced through him but his professionalism held firm.

‘You'll have to do better than that if you want me to believe you.'

‘That's why we need your mobile number,' said the voice. ‘Can't send pictures down these lines, can you?'

He gave it to him. A few moments later he heard the message signal and opened the photo of Amy. Her hair in corn rows confirmed that it was recent. He couldn't believe they'd got to her so quickly.

‘How did you find her?' he said, thinking out loud, rather than asking a serious question.

‘Superior intelligence,' said the Londoner, back on the phone again. ‘Now you understand why you're going to contact David Álvarez and tell him to keep his mouth shut. And why you're going to promise, on your daughter's life, that you are not going to go to the Met in any way, shape or form. Not even to the girl's mother. Right? If you do go to the Met and they track us down, the one thing I can assure you is that, whatever happens, if we're all surrounded and there's no way out, your daughter will not survive.'

‘So what do you want for her safe return?'

‘You.'

Amy came to. A strange awakening into the dark. The first thing was the smell. Whatever she was lying on had the stink of rancid human about it, a sharp penetrating odour that touched off some atavistic alarm. The next thing was that she couldn't move her arms or feet. She was lying on her back. Her wrists and ankles had been secured to the four corners of the bed. Panic fluttered in her throat. Her head felt as if it had been split in two and inexpertly put back together with low-grade glue. She felt nauseous and dizzy. She couldn't seem to think straight for longer than two seconds and had no memory, certainly no memory of how she'd ended up in this strange state. And she had to go to the toilet.

‘Morning. Thought you were never going to come round.'

The voice made her start, which had a terrible effect on her head, a blinding light followed by searing pain, as if someone had driven a screwdriver into her left eye socket and out through the back of her skull. She moaned against it, thought she was going to be sick. She squeezed her muscles together to stop from peeing herself.

‘Best thing is you lie still. If you have to move, move very slowly as if your whole body is made from the finest Chinese porcelain. All right?'

‘O.K.'

‘There's no need to be frightened.'