The Killing Habit Page 11

  Tanner nodded. ‘Just a bit of business.’

  ‘These are dangerous people,’ Thorne said. ‘Which is why we need to catch them and why you’re going to help us.’

  For a few seconds it looked as if Evans was ready to jump up and bolt.

  ‘What are they going to think’s going on, though?’ He licked his lips and swallowed hard. ‘That’s what worries me.’

  ‘I’m not with you,’ Tanner said.

  ‘Well, they did a pretty good job of putting me in the frame, laying on plenty of evidence, and they would think I’m too scared to talk, so they’re expecting me to be charged and go to prison, aren’t they? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I am scared of them… but by rights, I should be on remand by now. What if they work out that something’s up?’

  ‘That can’t be helped,’ Thorne said.

  ‘This is still your best chance, Andrew.’ Tanner stared at him. ‘And it’s not like you’ve had any other choice.’

  No choice or not, Evans looked as though he was ready for his hourly appointment with the toilet bowl.

  ‘Look, you could have said nothing and gone to prison for a crime you didn’t commit. Or, knowing full well you didn’t kill Adnan Jandali, we could have stuck you in a remand cell for appearances’ sake, because it’s what they’d be expecting. Either way you’d be in prison, and if the people doing this think there’s even a chance you might have told us something before that happened, we all know they can get to you inside.’

  Evans nodded slowly and pressed both hands against his thigh to control the tremor in his leg.

  ‘Our best bet is to track down the Duchess,’ Tanner said. ‘And that won’t be easy, because with you arrested she’ll have gone to ground or moved away. That number you called her on was a pay as you go and it’s already dead, but we knew it would be. She may know about the plan to frame you and she may not, but either way she’s the only connection we’ve got to them. Obviously we’ll be talking to any other prisons where she might have been doing business, but I’m not holding my breath. From what you told me back at Colindale, she uses different aliases and has various fake IDs.’

  ‘We need names,’ Thorne said. ‘Her other customers.’

  Tanner took out her notebook while Evans thought about it, then wrote the names down when he began to list them.

  ‘Are these people who are still inside?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah, I think so.’

  Thorne shook his head. ‘No good. What about people who are out?’

  ‘What difference does it make?’

  ‘We’ve got to think ahead,’ Tanner said. ‘And juries don’t tend to trust statements made by people who are doing time. Think they’ll say anything to get a few months off their sentence.’

  ‘Which they usually will,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Is there anyone you can think of who’s out and who knew the Duchess?’

  Evans thought again. Thorne looked up as an officer walked slowly past the window and moved close to peer inside. Thorne nodded sharply and the officer walked away.

  ‘There’s a couple… a bloke called Mason, who I’ve talked to on the phone once or twice. Kyle Mason. Lives up near Caledonian Road, I think.’

  ‘We’ll find him,’ Tanner said.

  ‘And Graham French. He’s cut my hair a couple of times since I got out.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘He’s a barber… hairstylist, whatever. He did everyone’s hair inside. In for fraud, I think… something like that.’

  Tanner took down the details and put her notebook away.

  ‘How long do you think all this is going to take?’

  ‘We’ll try and keep you informed.’ Tanner stood up. ‘And we’ll be back if we need anything else.’

  The nosy officer had reappeared outside the window. ‘At least you’ve got a bit of company,’ Thorne said.

  Driving back, Tanner said, ‘You were a bit hard on him.’

  ‘Not easy to think of him as a victim,’ Thorne said. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘I don’t see why.’ Tanner leaned back and turned to look out of the window. ‘He committed an offence and he did his time. Now he’s just someone with an unfortunate drug habit who’s been falsely accused. Seems pretty clear-cut to me.’

  Thorne said nothing, because there was no point. With Tanner, there were very few grey areas. Innocent or guilty. The correct thing to do or… well, as far as Tanner was concerned, there wasn’t usually an alternative.

  When he looked across a few minutes later, her eyes were closed again.

  ‘Put some music on if you want.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t like music,’ Thorne said. ‘You told me once it was just background noise.’

  ‘I’ll probably nod off in a minute anyway.’ She leaned her head against the glass. ‘So, go ahead. What have you got?’

  Thorne flicked through the list of CDs on the multi-changer and listed them for her. George Jones, Patsy Cline, Merle Haggard and Gram Parsons. Margo Price, in case anyone thought he only listened to people who were dead.

  ‘Haven’t you got anything decent? What about Billy Ray Cyrus?’

  ‘What?’ Thorne turned and saw the grin.

  ‘They were right,’ Tanner said. ‘You are so easy to wind up.’

  Thorne knew who they were. Kitson, Brigstocke, Hendricks. Maybe even Helen. He and Tanner might not have been part of the same team very long, but she had already got her feet under the table. He chose Merle Haggard, turned it up nice and loud and put his foot down.

  NINETEEN

  Half an hour’s sleep in the car had not helped a great deal and Tanner was exhausted by the time she finally got home after a fourteen-hour day and locked the front door behind her. She poured some food into the cat’s bowl, showered, and came back downstairs in a dressing gown. She threw away the day’s junk mail and wiped down the kitchen surfaces, then, without quite being able to recall how she’d got there, she stood staring through the glass door of the microwave, watching a ready-meal revolve.

  Two major inquiries to think about, to formulate as they took shape.

  Information to examine and prioritise.

  Actions…

  She had already followed up on the names Andrew Evans had provided and made plans to interview the first of those who might give them a lead to the Duchess. She had spoken to the deputy governor at Pentonville and arranged for visits ID and security information to be sent across, though, as she’d told Evans, that line of inquiry was not one for which she held out a great deal of hope. Whoever this woman was, she was clearly an experienced operator, who had been able to bypass standard security protocols at any number of places. The Duchess could smuggle herself into prisons as easily as the drugs and mobile phones she carried.

  Watching the plastic container turn slowly beneath the orange light, Tanner thought about Andrew Evans, how pleased he would have been to see that woman on the other side of the table, back when he was inside. To take whatever she had brought him. Had he really been naïve enough not to realise that, further down the line, he wouldn’t be quite so happy to see her? Thorne clearly did not think so. Tanner remembered their conversation in the car, her insistence that Evans was as much a victim as anyone else. She was not sure she really believed that deep down, but she was equally convinced that what she believed wasn’t important. Yes, Andrew Evans had threatened someone at gunpoint, but now he was working for them, so it didn’t matter, or at least it mattered less than it had. The bigger picture, all that. Sympathy, or a lack of it, was simply not relevant. Besides, sympathy had never been something Tanner had been overly burdened with.

  Certainly not since Susan, when so much of it had been used up, wasted on herself.

  She had no shred of sympathy for the man at the centre of the other inquiry, however damaged he might be. Was. His issues were for the likes of Melita Perera to worry about.

  Much of the afternoon had been taken up with a full-scale briefing on Operation Felix, focusing a
much-enlarged team on the three unsolved murders she had highlighted. Interviews had been arranged with a friend of Annette Mangan’s and with the parents of Leila Fadel, though making contact with anyone close to the third victim would be a little slower. Patricia Somersby’s nearest relative was a sister in the US, so in the meantime Tanner had made several unsuccessful attempts to connect with the SIO on the case.

  Another case that, as of now, was being run by her and Tom Thorne.

  Dream team. That’s what Hendricks had said the year before. Taking the piss, naturally, but still. That had been something much closer to home, though, and this was a very different test. Now they would both find out exactly what sort of team they were.

  When her food was ready, she carried it through on a tray to the sitting room and turned on the TV. As usual, after a few minutes, whatever programme she had tuned in to had begun to drift over her. She had never watched much television, even before Susan, but these days it was just there as background, and what little she did catch convinced her that was what it was probably designed for. Cookery, antiques, people getting off with each other on islands, whatever. Sitting there, she wondered if she should make the effort to watch one or two of the umpteen property shows on offer, now she was actually looking for somewhere. Homes Under the Hammer. Location, Location, Location. Property Ladder. She quickly decided not to bother. She wasn’t sure there was a programme called Decent Two-Bedroom Flat In London That Wasn’t Going To Bankrupt You…

  An hour later, the cat fast asleep on the sofa next to her and Tanner about to go the same way, the phone rang.

  DC Terry Jackson said, ‘Sorry, pig of a day. Patricia Somersby, that right? Sounds like it might be part of something bigger…’

  Tanner told him exactly why that might be the case and, in as collegiate a manner as she was capable of, why the case was no longer his. Jackson didn’t sound particularly upset about it, or perhaps it was just the soft West Country burr.

  ‘Botched burglary, then,’ Tanner said.

  ‘It looks like it.’

  ‘Looks?’

  ‘Just an expression. There’s nothing to suggest that it’s anything else. We did bear other possibilities in mind, but there’s sod all so far to indicate it’s not exactly what is says on the tin.’ There was a pause. ‘Your team think it might be something else?’

  ‘Was there much of a mess?’

  ‘No, not really,’ Jackson said. ‘Drawers opened, usual stuff… I mean it definitely wasn’t kids. No turds on the bed, nothing like that. All the predictable items taken, the small valuables. Phone, laptop, handbag.’

  ‘Stuff he could carry.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Tell me about the forced entry.’

  ‘A broken window at the back.’

  ‘You think that could have been done afterwards?’

  ‘Well, it could have been —’

  ‘What about prints and forensics?’

  ‘Sod all. Have you not seen the file?’

  ‘Everything’s on its way over,’ Tanner said. ‘But I wanted to get your take on it first, as you know it best.’ She already knew there had been no more forensic evidence found at the Somersby crime scene than there had at any of the others, but she was canny enough to know that a little buttering up would go a long way. Nobody on the homicide team at Avon and Somerset would be very sorry to get an unsolved murder off their books, but there was usually a degree of professional pride, so it didn’t hurt to pay it the appropriate lip service.

  ‘No prints that weren’t hers to get excited about,’ Jackson said. ‘From what we can gather, I don’t think she had a lot of friends round, anything like that. No forensic evidence on the body, either. Looks like he wore gloves, but a professional burglar would have done that anyway. Patricia just came back unexpectedly.’

  ‘Possibly.’ Tanner had already begun to wonder if the victim’s return had been unexpected. Or perhaps she had already been in the house when the killer arrived and had let him in. Had Patricia Somersby been expecting the man who had murdered her?

  ‘This is the cat thing, isn’t it?’ Jackson asked. ‘These unsolved cases you’re looking at. My burglar.’

  The man was clearly not stupid.

  ‘That inquiry has been widened out, yes.’

  The man laughed softly. ‘So… cat burglar, then.’

  Tanner could summon no more than a non-committal hum. She was staring across the room at the four framed prints she and Susan had bought from Camden Market years before. Simple pencil drawings they had both fallen in love with, spent far too much on. Along with almost everything else on the ground floor, the original frames had been damaged in the fire, the glass cracked and blackened, but Tanner had managed to salvage the drawings themselves and have them reframed.

  She remembered Susan making a balls-up of trying to hang them first time around; standing on a chair and swearing. She remembered taking measurements, then drawing a diagram for her, so that she could get the spacing right.

  ‘Listen, I’m sure you’ll be wanting to come down,’ Jackson said. ‘So just let me know and I’ll try and make sure I’m around.’ His voice lowered as he turned on the charm, such as it was. ‘I mean you’ll probably have to stay the night, so I’m more than happy to take you round if you want. Show you what Bristol’s got to offer.’

  Tanner swiftly revised her opinion of the man. ‘Thanks, Terry.’

  Very stupid.

  TWENTY

  ‘Obviously, there’s always one good thing comes out of having a row.’ Thorne inched across the bed towards Helen. ‘The make-up sex afterwards.’

  ‘In your dreams,’ Helen said. ‘Besides which, it wasn’t a row.’

  ‘Wasn’t it?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘OK, so can you still have make-up sex after a healthy and forthright discussion?’

  ‘Not a row with you, anyway. I was only pissed off with you afterwards, because you kept sticking up for Phil.’

  ‘I wasn’t sticking up for him,’ Thorne said. ‘I was trying to tell you he wasn’t being serious, that’s all. He was just winding you up.’

  They had eaten at a Turkish place in Camberwell. Thorne and Helen, Hendricks and Liam. It had all been going well – great food, cold bottles of Efes and idle chat – until Thorne had brought up the Andrew Evans case and they had begun talking about drugs in prison.

  ‘They found three hundred and fifty thousand quid’s worth in two cells at HMP Northumberland,’ Thorne said. ‘And that’s only what it’s worth inside. Worth ten times that on the street.’

  ‘How’s it get in?’ Liam asked.

  Hendricks leaned across and rubbed his partner’s arm. ‘Bless him, he’s so innocent.’

  Liam smacked the hand away. ‘I know how it gets in, obviously.’ His work as a forensic entomologist had brought him into contact with the police often enough to be more aware of such things than the average civilian. ‘But how does that much get into a prison?’

  ‘At least some of the guards must be in on it,’ Thorne said.

  Hendricks nodded. ‘Right, and plenty who aren’t actually making money from it are turning a blind eye.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Liam said.

  ‘They prefer it when the cons are out of their heads,’ Thorne said. ‘Makes their lives a bit easier.’

  ‘These days it’s the cons who run prisons, not the guards.’ Hendricks spooned yoghurt on to his plate. ‘They don’t give a monkey’s.’

  ‘That’s serious money, though,’ Liam said.

  ‘Yeah and these are serious drugs. This new synthetic stuff is properly nasty.’

  ‘Spice, right?’

  ‘You’re so down with the kids,’ Hendricks said.

  ‘I read the news.’

  ‘Yeah, well, Spice, or Genie or Black Mamba or whatever they’re calling it this week is killing more people every year. A good few every month and I know, because I’ve worked on several of them. And that’s not counting the people w
ho die because someone else is off their tits.’

  Thorne and Liam ate and nodded along.

  ‘I’d make it legal again,’ Helen said suddenly. ‘It was much safer when it was just another legal high and people could buy it from head shops or a stall on Camden market or whatever. Same old story, isn’t it? Now it’s controlled by criminals, and surprise surprise, it’s way stronger and way more dangerous. People walking around like zombies, getting robbed or sexually assaulted. I’d do it with all drugs.’ She tore off some bread and popped it into her mouth. ‘I’d legalise the lot of them.’

  Thorne looked at her. ‘Eh?’

  ‘Or at least decriminalise them. It’s a load of bloody nonsense.’

  This was not something Thorne had heard Helen say before. He knew that, like him and most other coppers, she believed that prosecuting weed smokers was a waste of time and money and that it was surely only a matter of time before cannabis became legal. This was an altogether more… radical stance.

  Hendricks turned to her. ‘You seriously saying you’d legalise all drugs? Heroin, acid, whatever?’

  Helen nodded, chewed.

  ‘I think that’s a bit over the top.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yeah, and you probably shouldn’t say it in front of your DCI. Not if you want promotion any time soon.’

  ‘I’m entitled to an opinion.’

  ‘He’s winding you up,’ Thorne said.

  Helen wasn’t listening. ‘They did it in Portugal,’ she said. ‘They decriminalised all drugs over fifteen years ago, and the results were amazing.’

  ‘Yeah, well that’s Portugal, isn’t it?’

  ‘What?’