Candleland (11 page)

“This would be Mr Moir?”

“Yeah. We're looking for his daughter. Finders had been checking on her. With no success, I'm afraid.”

Kennedy nodded, as if confirming what he already knew. “And how did Jackie Fairley seem to you?”

“Fine. It was the first time I'd met her, so I had nothing to compare it to.”

“Not agitated? Nervous?”

Larkin shook his head. “No.”

Kennedy shook his head sadly. “A good woman, Jackie Fairley. The force served her badly. But she had a passion for her work. Best thing she could have done, setting up that agency. Did it all by herself.”

“Yeah,” said Larkin, “I didn't have a chance to know her but she seemed like she was on the right side.”

The tea arrived. Kennedy poured, nodded and sat back, knowing that was all he was going to get. He looked tired, as if the investigation was a burden of personal sadness to him, as if, no matter how many times he investigated violent death, he would never quite understand what would drive a person to do such an act. His sympathies would always be with the victim.

“Can I ask you a question?” said Larkin.

“Go ahead.”

“How did she die?”

Kennedy gave a sardonic smile. “Is this for publication?”

“No. Just for me.”

“Old curiosities die hard, eh? Well, she didn't go easily. Her office was ransacked, stuff all over the floor, ripped apart, the works. Judging by the state of the office, that's where they did what they did to her, too. Dumped the body afterwards.” Kennedy shook his head, his mind on what must have been a horrific sight, his imagination filling in the rest. “Whoever they were, they knew what they were doing. They made sure she suffered before she died. It was a methodical, professional job. I think they wanted her to tell them something.”

“Why her?” asked Larkin. “Would this have anything to do with who I'm looking for?”

Kennedy shook his head. “We just don't know. The line of work she was in she could have trodden on anyone's toes. A vindictive pimp, angry at having one of his girls taken away, some equally annoyed drug dealers, anyone. The people she mixed with weren't pleasant.” He sighed heavily. “I knew her a little, admired her. Her work made a difference. She gave a voice to the victims. Unfortunately, that's what she became in the end.”

Larkin said nothing, just nodded in silent agreement.

Kennedy stood up suddenly. “Well, thank you for coming in, Mr Larkin.”

“That's it? I can go?” asked Larkin rather incredulously.

“Certainly.” Kennedy smiled. “Did you think we were going to arrest you?”

Larkin gestured around the room. “Stuck in here for what felt like hours on end …”

Kennedy looked sheepish. “I must apologise for that. D S Irvine doesn't have the keys to my office, and the canteen was closed.” He smiled. “It wasn't intentional.” He stuck out his hand and Larkin took it.

Another first, thought Larkin.

Larkin reached the main security door and said goodbye to Kennedy, asking to be kept in touch about any further developments. As he walked through to the front desk, relieved at actually being able to leave, He was surprised to find Moir sitting on one of the chairs, overcoat bundled around him, looking like he'd settled in for the night.

“What are you doing here?” asked Larkin, surprised.

Moir stood up. “Waiting for you.” As he spoke, Larkin detected a gleam, almost a rekindled fire, in the man's eyes that he hadn't seen there for a while.

“You OK, Henry?” he asked.

“Fine. Get in the car and I'll tell you on the way home,” Moir replied, almost smiling.

Larkin, wondering how much more confusing the night could get, did as he was told.

They drove through Camden, Moir in the passenger seat, Larkin driving. The area was a huge bohemian melting pot, a libertarian village within a city, buzzing and vibrant. The pavements teemed with midweek revellers alive to the beats of several different drummers. They made their way dressed in oversize utilitarian clothes, not a million miles different from the oversized uniform of their homeless counterparts, but the vibrant, sudden flashes of colour gave away their monied status. Cars, pubs and clubs all thumping out tarmac-shaking, ribcage-rattling rhythms. Music, energy, creation, disposable income. It was a positive, life-affirming vibe and Camden thrived on it.

“So,” said Larkin, negotiating his way through a throng of people unaware of where the pavement ended and the road started, “what have you got to tell me?”

Moir, trying, and failing, to suppress his excitement, told him.

He had decided to follow Larkin to the police station, just to make sure he got home all right. Andy had reluctantly agreed to drive the Saab and on arrival been told to wait by the desk. Irvine had emerged and invited them in.

“That was when Andy said he'd find his own way home,” Moir said.

Larkin smiled. Andy hated police stations even more than he did. Besides which, Larkin knew for a fact that Andy would have been carrying at least two different kinds of illegal substances about his person. Andy had left Moir with Irvine and disappeared into the night.

“So, over a cup of tea, your man and me got talkin',” said Moir. They had talked in general of their lives in the police, their upbringing in Scotland. All in the light tone of equals discussing work. Eventually, the conversation reached specifics, namely Moir's reason for visiting London.

“I told him about Karen, how we were no nearer to findin' her.”

Larkin said nothing.

“Oh, I know today was a dead end,” Moir said looking at Larkin. “Andy told me. But thanks for tryin' though.”

Larkin nodded, keeping his eyes on the road.

Moir had told Irvine something similar. Irvine asked if there was anything he could do to help. “I said no, we'd tried everything. She was only on record the once, and that was a dead end.” Irvine asked if she could be using an alias.

“And that,” said Moir, barely able to contain his excitement, “is when the penny dropped. All this time I've been lookin' for Karen Moir. But she had another name. A name she would only use out of spite.” Moir smiled. “Her stepfather's name. Shapp.”

So they had punched the name Karen Shapp into the computer and come up with a match straight away. “Thank fuck she wasn't called Jones,” Moir said, almost laughing.

“Good work, Henry,” Larkin said smiling. The name might have been another dead end, but Larkin didn't mention that. For now, Moir had hope. And, although it might have just been false, to Moir it seemed better than no hope at all.

“I've got an address in Kentish Town,” Moir said, his features clouding slightly. “We can check it out tomorrow.”

“OK, then,” replied Larkin.

They drove on in silence after that, until a question formed in Larkin's mind.

“Why did they have her on file? What was the charge?”

The cloud that had been moving over Moir's features darkened and spread. “Soliciting. The place is a well-known knockin' shop.” He sighed. “You never know, it might not be …” His voice trailed off, unable or unwilling to complete his thought.

“We'll see tomorrow, Henry.”

Moir nodded. His earlier good mood seemed to be dissipating fast. “Aye.”

Larkin stole a glance at Moir as he drove. He didn't want him to sink back into depression. “You look different, Henry. I can't put my finger on it, but you look different.”

Moir reddened slightly. “New clothes,” he said. “Faye took me shopping today. Said I looked disgraceful.”

That was it, thought Larkin. New clothes. Moir still had on the same old overcoat, but underneath was a new sports jacket, polo shirt in what looked to be wool, dark trousers and shoes. The wardrobe, alongside Moir's continuing reacquaintance with the bathroom, made him seem almost presentable.

“I'm astonished,” said Larkin. “I've never seen you look so good.”

“It's Faye,” Moir mumbled, tongue tripping over his embarrassment, “she made me.”

“She's a good woman.”

“Aye,” said Moir. “She is.”

Larkin didn't reply. The heartfelt tone of Moir's voice had surprised him. He thought it best if he didn't say anything more about her. He tried to change the subject, but was all out of diversionary topics of conversation. He just wanted to get home, have a shower and let his head hit the pillow. It had been a long, draining, day and he was tired. But the night was bringing on his old, familiar hollow feeling, an emptiness that was still gnawing at him. He would have to ignore it, live with it. There was nothing he could do about it at the moment.

He thought of Jackie Fairley. Although he'd only met her once, he had taken to her, admired her, as Kennedy had said. Her death was a loss. If he'd still had some faith, he would have offered up a prayer for her, as it was he just wished she was well, wherever she was. Thinking of her led him back to Faye. Would she still be up when he got back? And if she was, what, if anything, would happen? What did he want to happen? Would she, however temporarily, be able to banish the emptiness, the loneliness?

He didn't know the answer to any of those questions, so he drove in silence. Moir didn't seem to want to talk either, so they sat, each one lost in his own private, but tangentially intersecting, thoughts, all the way back to Clapham.

Back in the house, Moir went straight to bed. Larkin had his shower. Being tired but unable to sleep, he went into the kitchen to make himself a coffee. As he waited for the kettle to boil, he noticed what was on the draining board. The wine bottle Faye and Andy had been drinking from earlier was there, along with another one. Next to that sat a drained gin bottle. Faye's way of coping with her own emptiness, her own loneliness, thought Larkin. It made him want to hold her all the more.

Coffee in hand, he made his way up the stairs to his room. As he did so, he paused on the landing outside Faye's room. He could just make out the faint sounds of her deep breathing. She was asleep, alone.

With no option, he decided to do the same, and walked slowly up the stairs to the attic. His feet hit the bare boards as he went, and each time left a small, hollow slap in his wake. The sound didn't reverberate, didn't echo, and it wasn't long before the house returned to darkness, and stillness, for the rest of the night.

Larkin walked along the pavement, alert the whole time, yet trying not to look it, not to look conspicuous. A north London street just off Kentish Town Road, it consisted of old, terraced Victorian and Edwardian houses, some undergoing, or having undergone, renovation, some in a state of misplaced modernism, having gone the pebbledash and UPVC windows route, and the others allowing, or even actively encouraging, entropy to take its course. It was an ordinary street, quiet enough not to attract attention.

The address he wanted was about halfway along, next to a house that sat firmly in the precinct of the gentrification police: UPVC windows were being torn out and replaced with wooden sash ones, pebbledash was being ripped off, brickwork restored. The work was being done with care and pride and it made the house Larkin was after look even shabbier.

37 Priory End Lane had discoloured red brick, old rotting window frames that looked like they hadn't been painted since the Suez crisis, and a replacement front door; solid, well-secured, windowless. No light could enter. Yellowed net curtains hung at the windows and they, along with an inch-thick coating of urban grime, obscured the view inside.

Larkin reached the house, paused to check it was the right one, and clocked an old, dowdy-looking pub on the next corner. He made his way across the road, and entered.

The pub, called ironically enough The Hope, was the kind of place where career alcoholics took their dreams to die. The decor obligingly reflected that. It had just gone eleven and there were only a handful of drinkers in the place: a few old men with ravaged faces and wasted bodies, close to celebrating their Golden Weddings, fifty years of being locked into a loveless marriage with alcohol – and a decidedly uncomfortable-looking Andy Brennan. Larkin bought a pint at the bar, withstood the landlord's openly hostile stare, and went to join Andy.

“Nice place,” said Larkin, pulling up a stool so uncomfortable it could have been used as a form of punishment in a Catholic monastery. “Earthy ambience.”

“Fuckin' dive,” Andy grumbled. “You see the look you got off that landlord? You'd think he'd be glad of the business. I mean, when his regulars peg it, he'll be out of a job, won't he?”

“Not like you to be so fussy.”

“Yeah, well I've got my pride.”

Larkin laughed. “No you haven't.”

Andy was about to answer back but Larkin silenced him.

“Never mind that. We've got work to do. What's been happening?”

“I've been watchin' that place. Number thirty-seven. I've watched them come, an I've watched them go. An' yeah, you're right. It's a knockin' shop.” He took a swig of beer, sighed. “Fuck, Henry must want her back pretty bad to put himself through this.”

Larkin nodded. He had phoned Andy on his mobile first thing in the morning and asked if he was still around Camden. Andy had started to make excuses for the disappearing act he'd pulled the night before – “Got talk in' to this stunnin' bird an' before you know it I was back at her place givin' it the old heave ho” – but Larkin waved them aside. He told Andy to stay where he was, gave him the address Irvine had provided them with and set him to work on surveillance. Andy had phoned back with his location and Larkin had arranged to meet him.

“How d'you reckon we should play this, then?” asked Andy.

“I think it's best if only one of us goes in. I'll do it.”

“And what'll I do?” asked Andy in not so mock aggrievement.