скачать книгу бесплатно
Ray politely motioned that she should sit on one of the big couches, and he sat down opposite her, at a discreet distance.
Annie got straight to the point. ‘You were on duty the night Aretha Brown was murdered,’ she said.
This seemed to jolt him, but he must have been expecting it. There was a sudden wariness in his eyes. He looked down at the carpet, then up at her again. Nodded.
‘She was here, visiting a friend,’ said Annie carefully.
He nodded again, but he half smiled and his eyes said: A friend? Is that what prossies are calling their clients now?
‘Did you see her arrive?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Did you see her leave?’
‘Yes. I did. Look, I went through all this with the police. What’s your interest here? You a reporter?’
‘Do I look like a reporter?’
Ray gave her a quick once-over. ‘No, you don’t.’
‘You’re an East Ender, Ray. Which part?’
‘Bethnal Green.’
‘Then you’ll know my husband’s friends and business acquaintances, the twins.’ Annie watched as Ray’s expression froze. ‘You know the twins, Ray?’
Everyone from that area knew the twins. Reggie and Ronnie. The Krays.
Ray swallowed nervously and Annie could see that he’d made an important connection.
‘You’re Max Carter’s wife,’ said Ray.
Widow, thought Annie, but she let it go.
Ray looked at her. ‘The Krays are a spent force now,’ he said. ‘They’ve been banged up for over a year for doing Jack the Hat and Cornell.’
‘You think so?’ Annie asked him.
Annie knew different. Even behind bars the Krays were making a fortune off their firm. They had legitimate sponsorship arrangements going with many businesses—debt collection agencies were a favourite—and these businesses set up deals from which the twins got a cut of the profit in return for use of the Kray name. She was doing something very similar with her own firm now, using Max’s and Jonjo’s considerable clout in the business world to make a legitimate living in security.
‘Aretha—the girl who died—was a friend of mine,’ she told him.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘It was a horrible thing that happened to her. And her husband Chris is a friend too. He’s in the frame for this. I don’t like people doing bad things to my friends. And I don’t believe Chris would harm Aretha. So I need to find out anything I can about what happened that night, so that I can do something about it, okay?’
Ray nodded.
‘So,’ said Annie. ‘You saw her leave, but you didn’t see her arrive?’
He looked down, nodded again.
‘So, when she left. She left alone?’
‘Yes, she was alone.’
‘Did she seem all right?’
He shrugged. ‘She seemed fine. Happy. It was tipping down with rain and I said she ought to take a taxi, and she said she wasn’t made of money.’
Annie’s heart clenched with pain. If Aretha had taken that taxi straight home, and not walked the short distance to the corner around which Chris was parked up, waiting for her, then she would probably be alive right now.
‘Has she come here before?’
‘No, she was a new one here.’
Annie looked at him. ‘Room two hundred and six. Mr Smith. I’m assuming that’s not his real name.’
Again the shrug. ‘Lots of men sign in anonymously and pay cash when they check out. Wouldn’t you, if you were going to use a brass? He might be a man of some importance—probably is; this is a classy place, the prices we charge, I’m telling you. He might have a reputation to consider. He might be married. He wouldn’t want to draw attention to himself.’
‘Did you see this “Mr Smith”?’
Ray shook his head.
‘Did anyone?’
‘The police asked that too. But we see hundreds of people in a day here. No one remembers him.’
Anonymous and invisible.
‘He checked in and the time was recorded, yes? So someone spoke to him then, face to face,’ Annie persisted. ‘Who? Claire? Pippa? The other one, Gareth?’
‘I’ll find out,’ said Ray.
Annie sat back, waiting.
‘You want me to do it now?’ asked Ray.
Annie gave him the look. ‘You got anything else pressing?’
Ray got up and left the lounge. Through the half-open door Annie saw him in a huddle with Pippa at the reception desk. Watched him come back into the lounge, sit down again.
‘Yeah, that would have been Gareth,’ he said. ‘Mr Smith checked in at eight thirty-three in the morning three days ago. He booked in—with Gareth—for the one day and overnight, but no one saw him leave the next morning.’
‘Hold on,’ Annie told him. ‘No one saw him leave? He paid his bill, yes? Spoke to whoever was on reception? But no one saw him?’
‘No one remembers seeing him. As I say, we—’
‘—see hundreds of people in a day. What about the doorman?’
Ray shook his head. ‘People come in and out all day. Whoever’s on the door don’t know their names and barely even notices their faces unless they give a good tip, and you don’t get too many of those. And if this guy wanted to remain incognito, he wouldn’t be doing that, for sure.’
Annie stood up. ‘Gareth Fuller, wasn’t it?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘And he’s here when?’
‘Actually he’s not,’ said Ray. ‘He left yesterday.’
‘Left?’
‘Manager fired him. Bit of a slacker.’
‘His address then?’
Ray went to get Gareth’s address.
Annie looked around the lounge and wondered what had really been going down between Redmond Delaney and Constantine that they had to meet here. Constantine slipped the Carters three grand a month to keep troublesome elements out of his clubs up West, save him the bother of importing his own muscle from across the pond. Maybe Redmond was undercutting the Carters, and Constantine’s true intention was to work out a better deal with him, or start a lucrative bidding war between the two rival gangs.
Damn, she had thought he was on her side. It hurt to discover that he might not be. And now this. She had to help Chris. She couldn’t just let him take the rap: she knew he was innocent. She wandered back out into reception.
Trouble, every way she looked. Nothing new there, though. She was used to digging deep, standing alone. If truth be told, she was getting tired of it, but it was what she usually had to do.
Ray came over and handed her a piece of paper with Gareth Fuller’s address on it. She thanked him and slipped him a fiver.
‘If anything else occurs to you, anything at all, you call me, okay?’ she told him.
‘Sure,’ he said, and smiled.
He wouldn’t call. She knew it. But she was more interested right now in Gareth Fuller, who had checked Mr Smith in, and checked him out—and who probably wouldn’t even remember what he looked like.
Chapter 10 (#ulink_27cf6a4f-be74-59b2-bc56-c83cb5fc1957)
Next morning at eight there was a knock at the Palermo’s main door. Annie was up and dressed. She went down the stairs and opened up. The club was quiet for once, peaceful. Too early for the builders.
The bald, portly man standing there peered at her with watery blue eyes, squinting past a curl of cigarette smoke. He threw the stub on the pavement and ground it out with his heel.
‘Detective Sergeant Lane,’ said Annie, looking up and down the street. There was nobody about, but still…
‘We’ve charged him,’ said Lane.
Shit, thought Annie.
‘Can I have a few words?’ he asked.
‘Sure,’ said Annie, and ushered him in, up the stairs, into the flat. She closed the door, indicated that he should take a seat. He did. He looked an utter bloody mess, corpulent and red in the face, his stubby fingers stained with nicotine, his white nylon shirt yellowish and sweat-stained and straining over his belly. He didn’t smell exactly fresh. Annie sat as far away as she could get and thought about Chris, charged now. Poor bastard.
‘I thought the rule was that we were never seen together,’ she said irritably.
He shrugged. ‘You’re helping the police with their inquiries,’ he said.
‘Fair enough. What’s the new DI like?’
‘Like a bear with a sore arse. Just got divorced and transferred in and now I’m stuck with the picky bastard. I’m telling you, that sod’s suspicious by nature.’
‘But he’s got no reason to be suspicious of you, has he?’
‘None at all. I’m squeaky clean.’
Which was ironic, since DS Lane always smelled like he hadn’t bathed in a month. If we have to have bent coppers on the firm, can’t we at least have clean ones? she thought. But the boys had assured her that Lane was a very useful contact. She’d have to open a window the minute he’d gone. Either that or fumigate the fucking place.
‘What have you got?’ she asked.
‘She was at the Vista Hotel visiting a Mr Smith in room two-oh-six,’ said Lane.
‘I know that.’
‘But it fits the MO of the other two that got done.’
‘Not the same hotel?’
‘No, different hotels every time. This is the poshest one yet; our boy’s stepped up a notch on the social ladder. The other two got done outside three-star places in the East End. But same meat, different gravy. Prostitutes calling and getting killed for their trouble. Same pattern, same method. You really think Chris Brown didn’t do these?’
Annie swallowed a sharp stab of revulsion at his casual tone, his relaxed manner. He didn’t care that Aretha was dead. Or the other two. He didn’t care that Chris was innocent. He just had a curiosity about the case, an interest in the puzzle it represented. And he thought they’d already solved it.
‘Did you find any trace of him on the other women? Any reason to believe he did those two as well as Aretha?’ asked Annie coolly.
‘No. None.’
‘But he’s been charged for doing Aretha.’
‘Yeah. Look, I got to admire your loyalty, but let’s face it, the man’s going down.’
‘The wire could get lost,’ said Annie.
‘What?’
‘The cheese wire. Could go missing.’ Annie was staring at him.
‘And what difference would that make? There’re still the cuts on his hands, there’s still his blood on the vic. Hunter’s on it and trust me he won’t let it go. You could lose the fucking suspect on this one, and everyone would still be one hundred per cent convinced that Chris Brown did it.’
‘He couldn’t kill Aretha,’ said Annie.
‘No?’ Lane gave an unpleasant smile. ‘If my old lady was out tomming—hell, even I could do it. Think you’ll find men don’t like that sort of thing.’
‘He knew Aretha was on the game before he married her.’
