A Cold Killing (Rosie Gilmour) (3 page)

‘I’ll probably only stay here for a couple of days, then head up the road. We need to dig around on Mahoney’s background back home. Maybe someone will come out of the woodwork.’

Rosie was already thinking of her friend Mickey Kavanagh, the private-eye ex-cop with contacts everywhere. If anything was worth hiding, Mickey would dig it out. She’d call him later. But first, she had to charm Andy into staying onside, so her back was covered in London if anything blew up.

‘So, Mr Big-time London Hack. Where can an impressionable Glasgow reporter buy you dinner? And, remember, my expenses are only a fraction of yours.’

‘Fear not, my lovely. Dinner is on me.’ Andy drained his glass and stood up, offering his arm. ‘Let’s go.’

Rosie was a little hungover, sitting at a small table in the King’s Cross café, as far away as possible from any activity, but close enough to watch. It looked like business as usual – if you didn’t know that a man had been shot in the head here less than forty-eight hours ago. Scenes of crime officers had been all over it yesterday, dusting for prints, removing anything that might help identify the killers. But there had been so much mayhem when the shooting started, with frantic customers running around, that much of the crime scene would have been contaminated by the time they got there.

It was almost mid-morning when police allowed the owner, a pot-bellied little Greek man, to reopen, after much huffing and puffing from him that he was losing a fortune. He was clearly aware that the café would be even busier now, with punters eager to see the spot where a man was gunned down. Rosie watched him wringing his hands as he described to reporters what had happened, saying how it was just like the movies, and she could see he was relishing the extra trade that the morbid curiosity factor was bringing in. At least he had had the decency to clean the blood off the walls, Rosie noticed, as she watched him point to the table where Tom Mahoney had sat. Christ! There’s money in everything – even cold-blooded murder.

Last night’s dinner with Andy had gone on too long. And too much drink had been taken even before they’d gone on to the Soho bar where celebrities and actors hung out. The paparazzi photographers were lurking outside, hoping that some big shot would fall out of the bar drunk, snogging a woman, or man, who wasn’t their partner. They were seldom disappointed in this neck of the woods. Andy and Rosie had been engrossed in their one-in-the-morning drunken, intense conversation about life and love and ‘where did it all go wrong’, with Andy telling her that his latest live-in lover was leaving him. Rosie had jokingly suggested he should try keeping his trousers on when he was out without his girlfriend. He was flirtatious and affectionate with Rosie all evening, both of them knowing they were not going to end up in bed but enjoying the closeness of being a couple of lonely misfits. Now on her second coffee, Rosie called the waitress over and ordered more water. Rehydration Station – too little too late.

Earlier she’d watched as the waitress protested outside as photographers took pictures of the staff arriving at the café. She was pretending to be coy but was obviously relishing her fifteen minutes of fame, as she declared that police had told her not to talk to the media, then seconds later was blabbing to everyone.

‘I’m a journalist from Scotland.’ Rosie looked up when she came over to her table to take her order. ‘From the
Post
.’

The waitress put her hand up as though she were a celebrity.

‘I’m not giving interviews.’

Rosie managed to keep her face straight.

Of course . . . I was just thinking . . .’ She paused. ‘Sorry, I don’t know your name?’

‘Karen,’ the waitress replied.

‘Karen. I was just thinking, that with this being such a big story and the interest from the papers and television, that someone like yourself will be crucial to the inquiry. I wondered how that makes you feel.’

‘Well,’ Karen said, tossing her blonde ponytail and pouting her pale-pink lips. ‘I’m doing what I can to help the case. All I can say is what I saw.’

‘You were the only waitress here, weren’t you?’

‘Yeah. The other girl, Jen, was at the dentist. So it was just me . . . I saw it all.’

She batted her eyelashes twice, as if she were waiting for a flashbulb to go off.

‘I was wondering,’ Rosie said, ‘did you actually serve those guys? . . . The four men the police are talking about?’

‘I’m not really supposed to say.’

‘I understand that. But what you’re saying to me right now . . . you know . . . it doesn’t have to come from you. I don’t have to put it in a quote. You can be anonymous. I’m just trying to gather information, and you are a very important figure in this whole case.’ Rosie laid on the flattery thick.

Karen examined her fingernails then rolled her eyes at Rosie.

‘Well. As long as you don’t say it came from me.’

‘Of course not.’

She glimpsed over her shoulder to see if her boss was looking. He wasn’t.

‘I did serve them,’ she said softly. ‘They were big, kind of Russian-looking guys. Or Polish. Or something. You never know really. You get all sorts in here, so you do. Locals, office workers . . . and all the passing trade from the street. Loads of people with luggage coming off the Eurostar on their way somewhere, usually going towards Euston Station. You see a lot of foreigners. Loads from Eastern Europe.’

‘So it would be nothing untoward to see four big Russian-looking men.’

‘Not really. They were just customers to me. They ordered the lamb stew and sat there stuffing it down. They weren’t very friendly. Didn’t hardly look at me.’

‘Where were they sitting?’

Rosie watched as Karen pointed to the spot, two tables away from where Mahoney had sat.

‘And who was at the table between them. Anyone?’

‘Yeah.’ She made an indignant face. ‘Some nasty woman. She gave me a hard time for not serving her coffee quick enough. Like, as if I’d nothing better to do. I was rushed off my feet. She was dead edgy.’

‘Was she on her own?’

‘Yeah.’ She paused. ‘Actually, she spoke kind of like you. I think she might have been Scottish. Maybe. Yeah. Probably was, come to think of it.’

‘What did she look like?’

The waitress shrugged:

‘Dark hair, kind of messy. About thirty. Jeans, shabby looking.’

Rosie thought for a moment then asked her to describe what she saw from the second the shooting started. Karen told her she’d just cleared a table at the back of the café and had gone to the counter and put the tray down when she heard the gunshots from behind. She’d turned around in time to see the man slip from his chair and on to the floor beneath the table.

‘It was like watching in slow motion. I was totally stunned. Terrified. Blood everywhere. Poor guy. He’d been really nice to me, and his pal was friendly too. He was kneeling on the floor beside him and he was really crying sore, trying to stop the blood. I felt so sorry for him. The girl was there too. The angry one. She was crouched on the floor beside them.’

‘The girl? What happened then?’

‘I can’t remember much. I was screaming and hiding at the side of the counter. I was terrified they were going to shoot more people. I mean, that’s what happens in the movies, isn’t it? I had my hands over my head, so I only saw the back of the men as they left.’ She paused, licked her lips. ‘Then she left, too.’

‘Who?’

‘That girl. The Scottish one.’

‘What. She left the café?’

‘Yeah. Everyone else was too petrified to move. But she got off her mark.’

‘Really. I wonder why?’

‘I’m guessing she didn’t want to talk to the cops. Maybe she was on the run. Or she was part of it too, maybe, with the men.’

Rosie tried not to smile.

‘That’s a bit of a vivid imagination you’ve got there, Karen. Have you told the police all this?’

‘Yeah. I did. They said they’ve interviewed nearly everyone in the café and the ones they haven’t got full interviews from yet, they’ve given their addresses. But they didn’t say anything about the girl.’

‘So maybe she’s got in touch. They’re not going to tell you that, are they?’

Karen shrugged.

‘She was probably part of it. I told them that.’

‘Based on what, though, Karen?’ Rosie asked, surprised.

‘Just a feeling.’

Rosie nodded. She’d heard more than enough. Whoever the girl was in the café, this daft waitress had condemned her as an accessory to murder. God spare us from amateur sleuths. She drank her coffee and left a fiver tip for Karen.

‘See you again, Karen.’ She slipped her business card into the top pocket of the waitress’s blouse.

*

Rosie made a cursory trip to the address she had for Mahoney’s block of flats but, as she suspected, there was a uniformed Met officer at the entrance, so she couldn’t even knock on the neighbours’ doors. By early afternoon, she was back in her hotel bedroom, putting her story together for tomorrow’s
Post
while trying to negotiate her way through a room-service club sandwich. Why did they do that to a sandwich? Stack it up like a multistorey so that you had to eat it with a knife and fork? By the time she’d given up on it, the plate looked like someone had trampled all over it.

She reread her copy, keeping one eye on Sky News in the corner. They still had Mahoney’s murder high up on their news list, but there were no new lines. Her email pinged with copy from Declan, the young reporter back at the
Post
, assigned as her legman on the Scottish end. He’d already been to the Mahoney house, but the wife was saying nothing, was surrounded by friends and old colleagues of her husband, and too upset to speak. Her sons were on their way back from abroad. From Declan’s copy, it seemed like Mahoney was hugely respected and revered after a lifetime at Glasgow University. Rosie had written a colour piece on the scene inside the murder café based on what she had from the waitress. But she hadn’t decided what to do with Karen’s line about the ‘Scottish’ woman who left the scene before the police arrived. She’d run it past McGuire, let him decide. Her mobile rang.

‘Hey, Andy. If you’ve got a scoop you’re not sharing with me, I hope you’ve got fire insurance – because I’ll hunt you down,’ Rosie joked.

‘Would I ever, sweetheart.’ Andy’s voice was gravelly from last night’s booze and chain-smoking. ‘How you doing, darlin’? That was a great night. I was a bit shagged this morning, though – or, in fact, not shagged, if you get my drift.’

Rosie smiled to herself.

‘I do. What you up to? I’ve been round to Mahoney’s flat, but a cop’s on the door. Couldn’t get near enough to doorstep any neighbours.’ She decided not to tell him about the supposedly Scottish woman who did a runner from the café, though from the way Karen blabbed to everyone, she wouldn’t be surprised if he already knew.

‘Not much to go on. I’ve had a nod that the flat isn’t in Mahoney’s name, so I don’t know if it’s a relative or a friend, or whatever. I’m trying to check it out.’

He told Rosie the name and she wrote it in her notebook.

‘Is there nothing from the police at your end to suggest who would want to bump this guy off? What about his mate – Hawkins? Anything from him?’

‘Too upset to talk. He’s on his way back to Glasgow as we speak.’ He paused. ‘To be honest, Rosie, this won’t run and run here unless it opens up a bit. I’ve got another story to do – a big drug case finishing today, and I’ve been doing the background – so I’m heading down to the Old Bailey now. I’ll keep an eye on the shooting, and we’ve got someone else covering for the day, but we’ve kind of moved on here.’

‘How very London,’ Rosie said with a hint of sarcasm, though she knew how quickly even major stories slipped down the news agenda back home, if something more tantalizing cropped up. But it was more so in London.

‘Yeah,’ Andy said. ‘You know what it’s like. So much going on here. We can’t get bogged down on shootings and murder unless they’re really big. Happens every day in London.’

‘Not to retired university lecturers, Andy. It’s obvious someone wanted him dead.’

‘Yeah. But I’ve told my detective contacts that unless they can throw us a bone, the story will be history.’

‘Maybe that’s what they want,’ she said, knowing she had nothing to back it up, apart from her distrust of authority. ‘Maybe it will suit them for the story to disappear.’

‘Aye, right, Rosie. Conspiracy theories are not fact.’

‘But sometimes they turn out to be, if we keep digging.’

‘Sure, darlin’. Couldn’t agree more. But not for me, not today. What you doing later? Fancy a curry?’

Rosie was already thinking of her next move, and dinner with Andy was nowhere in her plans.

‘Don’t think so. Not tonight. I might be getting pulled back up the road in the morning. Not much really for me down here. I think Mahoney’s background – old students and stuff and former colleagues – might throw a better light on things.’

‘Maybe. Listen. You will give me a shout, though, if you get anything . . . you know, mark my card. I don’t expect you to share any major exclusive – I know what you’re like – but at least mark my card.’

‘’Course I will,’ Rosie said, not convinced that she would.

‘I need to go. The judge was already charging the jury, so they might be out by now.’

‘OK, Andy. Keep in touch if you get anything.’

Rosie hung up. Her next call was to Mickey Kavanagh, and she gave him the name Andy had given her of the owner of the flat, to see if he could dig anything up.

She ordered more coffee from room service and was about to ring McGuire’s office when her mobile rang.

‘Mick. I was just about to ring you. How spooky is that?’

‘It’s nearly two in the afternoon. You should have phoned before this, Gilmour. Have you got anything exciting for me? Anything different from the same old shite that’s running on the telly and the wires?’

‘Maybe. Let me run this past you.’

Rosie told him the waitress’s story about the girl with the Scottish accent.

‘How come the cops haven’t put that out?’

‘Sometimes they don’t straight away. They might be working their way through all the punters in the café, and haven’t acted on the waitress’s statement yet. Or maybe they’re keeping it to themselves for now.’

‘Why?’

‘Don’t know, Mick. Who knows the inner workings of Scotland Yard?’

‘Well, they’re too fucking late. We’re using that tomorrow. We have to. It’s the only thing that’s different. Mystery Scots woman flees bloodbath. Stick a call into the cops and find out if they intend putting it out.’ He paused. ‘In fact, don’t bother. We’ll just run it and see what happens.’

‘They’ll be raging if we do that, especially if they were intending drip-feeding it to the press.’

‘Fuck them. They don’t run the news agenda – we do. Do it up and bung it over so I can have a look. And plenty of colour in the café. I like blood and screams. I’m funny that way.’