Business of Dying (6 page)

In the armed robbery I was still effectively investigating, the two robbers had held up a post office and, after stabbing the postmaster's wife and one of the customers, had got away with several hundred vehicle tax discs as well as a small sum of cash. I strongly suspected that they were amateurs who wouldn't really know what to do with the discs other than sell them on to other criminals. Professionals don't knife two people for that sort of return. It was a fair assumption then that they'd try someone like Runnion as a possible conduit for the goods, and if they had I wanted to know about it.

Runnion claimed ignorance of any tax discs. 'What would I do with them?' he asked me as he polished some garish-looking costume jewellery. I stated the obvious and he told me that he wouldn't have a clue where to sell such things. I didn't believe him, of course. Men in his line of business always know where to unload contraband. I told him that the perpetrators had stabbed the postmaster's wife and one of the customers during the
course of the robbery, and that the customer had been lucky not to bleed to death. 'He was sixty-one years old, trying to protect the members of staff.'

Runnion shook his head in mock disbelief. 'There's no need for that,' he said. 'Never any need for violence. It's all about forward planning, isn't it? If you use forward planning, no one gets hurt. The kids these days, they just don't have any. It's the education system, you know. They don't teach them anything any more.'

Which was probably true, but you don't need to hear it from a toe-rag like Len Runnion. I told him firmly that if he was approached by anyone offering stolen tax discs he should play them along a bit, get them to come back again, and inform me straight away.

He nodded. 'Yeah, yeah, no problem. Goes without saying. I don't have no truck with bastards like that.' Which, of course, he did. Among other things, Runnion was well known for supplying firearms, usually on a rental basis, to whoever needed them. We might never have caught him for it, but that didn't mean anything. We knew he did it. 'If I hear anything, I'll make sure you're the first to know, Sergeant.'

'You'd better do, Leonard. You'd better do.'

'And will there, shall we say, be a little drink in it for me if I come good?' The eyes darted about like flies in a field of shit.

'I'm sure we'll be able to come up with something,' I told him, knowing that bribery was usually more effective than threats. After all, as a police officer, what could I threaten him with? That we'd look into his business affairs more closely when we had the time? It would hardly have got him quaking in his boots.

It was five to two by the time I got out of Runnion's shop. Rather than continue my journey to the station, I thought I'd phone Malik to see how everything was going.

He picked up after one ring. 'Miriam Fox.'

'Miriam?'

'That's our victim,' he said. 'Eighteen years old, just turned. Ran away from home three years ago. She's been on the streets ever since.'

'Miriam. It seems a funny name for a tom. I assume she was a tom?'

'She was. Six convictions for soliciting. The last was two months ago. Apparently she came from a good home. Parents live out in Oxfordshire, father's something big in computers. Plenty of money.'

'The sort of people who call their kid Miriam.'

'It's a rich girl's name,' he agreed.

'A runaway, then.'

'That's what I can't understand. All over the world you've got people struggling to get out of poverty and make a better life for themselves,
and this girl was trying to do exactly the opposite.'

'Don't ever try to understand people,' I told him. 'You'll just be disappointed. Have the family been informed?'

'The local boys are round there now.'

'Good.'

'I've got her last known address here. A flat in Somers Town, not far from the station.'

I had to hand it to Malik, he didn't hang about. 'Has it been sealed yet?' I asked him.

'Yeah. According to the DI, they've got a uniform down there at the moment.'

'Keys?' It was always worth asking this sort of thing. You'd be amazed how many times simple things like means of entrance to an abode got overlooked.

'I had to pick them up myself. The landlord was one cheap bastard. It turned out she was late with the rent. He asked me what he could do to get hold of the money she owed him.'

'I hope you told him where to get off.'

'I told him he'd have to talk to her pimp. I said as soon as I got his address, I'd give it to him.'

I managed my first smile of the day. 'I bet that pleased him.'

'I don't think there was much that was going to please him today. Anyway, the DI wants us to check out the address. See what we can find.'

I told Malik where I was and he said he'd come
by and pick me up en route. He rang off and I lit a cigarette, sheltering the lighter from the cold November wind.

As I stood there breathing in the polluted city air, it struck me that maybe Malik was right. What the fuck had Miriam Fox been thinking about, coming here?

For me, one of the worst jobs in policing is looking through the possessions of a murder victim. A lot of the time when a murder's an open-and-shut case, which mostly they are, it's not necessary to do it, but sometimes there's no choice, and it's a painful process, the reason being that it puts flesh and bones on people, gives you insights into what made them tick, and this only serves to make them more human. When you're trying to be rational and objective, this is something you could really do without.

Miriam Fox's flat was on the third floor of a tatty-looking townhouse that could have been improved dramatically by a simple lick of paint. The front door was on the latch so we walked right in. Bags of festering rubbish sat just inside the entrance and the interior hallway was cold and smelled of damp.

Thumping techno music blared from behind one of the doors. It annoyed me that people lived like this. I was all for minimalism, but this was just letting things go. It had nothing to do with poverty. It was all about self-respect. You didn't need money to clear away rubbish, and a can of paint didn't cost much. You could get a lot of paint, plus brushes for everyone, for the price of a few extra-strength lagers or a gram of smack. It's all about priorities.

A uniformed officer stood outside the door of flat number 5. Someone in flat number 4, which was just down the hall, was also playing music but thankfully not as loud as the guy downstairs. It also sounded quite a lot better - hippy stuff, with a woman singing earnestly about something or other that was obviously important to her. The uniform looked pleased to be relieved of his guard duty and made a rapid exit.

I checked the lock quickly for signs of tampering and, seeing none, opened the door.

The interior was a mess, which I suppose I expected. At least it was in keeping with the rest of the building. But it wasn't the mess of someone who'd gone completely to pot and no longer cared about her surroundings, which is a lot of people's image of the desperate prostitute. It was teenage girl's mess. An unmade sofa bed took up close to half the floor space of the none too spacious living room. It was liberally sprinkled with clothes, not
the sexy ones a tom wears to attract her customers, but leggings and sweaters, stuff like that. Normal stuff. There were two threadbare chairs on either side of the bed and all three items of furniture faced an old portable TV that sat on a chest of drawers. There were pictures on the wall: a couple of impressionist prints; a colourful fantasy poster of a female warrior on a black stallion, sword in hand, blonde hair waving in the imaginary wind; a moody-looking band I didn't recognize; and a few photographs.

I stopped where I was and gave the place a quick once-over. A door on the left led to a bathroom while one on the right led into a kitchen that didn't look to be much bigger than a standard-sized wardrobe. There was only one window in the whole flat as far as I could see, though thankfully it was large enough to throw a bit of light into the place. The view it offered was of a brick wall.

On the floor in front of me, amid the teen magazines, empty KFC boxes, Rizla packets and other odds and ends, was a huge round ashtray the size of a serving plate. There were maybe ten or fifteen cigarette butts in it, plus the remains of a few joints, but what caught my eye were the pieces of screwed-up tin foil, the small brown pipe, and the dark patches of crystallized liquid, splattered like paint drops inside.

It didn't surprise me that she was a crack addict.

Most of the girls are, especially the young ones. It's either that or heroin. It's what keeps them tied to their pimps, and it's why the money they earn is never quite enough.

I lit a cigarette, figuring it wasn't going to make any difference. Malik gave me the briefest of disapproving glances as he put on his gloves but, like Danny the previous night, he didn't say anything.

We got to work without speaking. Malik started on the chest of drawers on which the TV sat. We both knew what we were looking for: little clues, things that in themselves might seem irrelevant to the untrained eye but which, taken together with what else the investigation threw up, could be used to build up a basic picture of the life and ultimately the death of Ms Miriam Fox.

She must have been quite a pretty girl once. There was a photograph of her pinned to the wall at a slightly uneven angle. In the picture, she was standing in the room we were in now, dressed in a pair of jeans and a sky-blue halter top that exposed a pale midriff. She didn't have any shoes on and her bare feet were long and thin. One hand was on her hip while she ran the other through her thick black hair. She was pouting mockingly at the cameraman. I think the pose was supposed to be sexy, but the overall impression was that of a young girl trying hard to be a woman. I didn't know her, and would never know her, but at that moment I felt sorry for her.

The drugs had taken their toll. Her face was gaunt and bony, the eyes sunken and tired. It looked like it had been months since a decent meal passed her lips, which was probably true. But there was hope in the photograph too, or should have been. The damage didn't look permanent. Given time, some sleep and a healthy diet, she could have turned things around and become pretty again. Youth, if not luck, had been on her side.

There was a mirror shaped like a smiling moon next to the photograph. I saw my reflection in it and I couldn't help feeling that I was also beginning to look ravaged by the wrong sort of living. My cheekbones were protruding too much. So pronounced were they that it looked as if they were trying to escape from the rest of my face. To add to my misery, tiny webs of burst blood vessels I hadn't noticed before had popped up on either side of my nose. They were still pretty small, three of them altogether, the size and shape of money spiders, but they worried me because now they were there, they were going to be there for ever. Youth, unfortunately, was not on my side.

There's nothing worse for a vain man than seeing reality catch up and hit him. I've always thought of myself as quite a good-looking guy and, to be honest, that's what more than a few women have told me over the years. No one looking at the face I was looking at would have said that now.

There were two passport-type photos, still attached to each other, tucked into the mirror between the plastic coating and the glass. I removed them as carefully as I could and took a closer look. They'd obviously been taken one after another in one of those photo-me booths you get in railway stations and the occasional department store, because they were essentially the same picture. Two laughing girls, arms round each other, faces pressed together. One of the girls was Miriam Fox, the other was younger and prettier. The younger girl had blonde curly hair cut into a bob and, in contrast to Miriam, a round cherubic face with a cute smattering of freckles. Only the eyes, nothing like as bright as the rest of her, trying to look happy but not quite making it, told you that maybe she too was a street girl. I put her at about fourteen, but she could have been as young as twelve. They were both dressed in thick coats and the younger girl had a winter scarf round her neck, so I guessed the photo was fairly recent.

They looked like good friends. Maybe this girl, whoever she was, could fill in some of the gaps in Miriam Fox's life. We'd have to try to locate her, if she was still around. I put the photos in my notebook and moved over to a battered-looking wardrobe next to the bathroom door.

We went over everything bit by bit. Malik discovered a wad of notes: eight twenties, a fifty (how
often do you see one of those?) and a ten. He appeared quite pleased with the find, although I wasn't sure why. A prostitute keeping cash in her flat was hardly a revelation.

'It means she definitely planned on coming back here,' he told me.

I told him that that's what I would have assumed anyway. 'If she picked up a punter and he just turned out to be the wrong sort of guy, then there's no question that she went out intending to come back here. Why wouldn't she?'

Malik nodded in agreement. 'But we're still trying to discover a motive, aren't we?' he said evenly. 'And at least this provides evidence that she wasn't running away from something and got caught before she could escape. It gives more credence to our theory of a dodgy punter.'

Credence. That was an interesting word. Malik was right of course. It did help to close off alternative theories, leaving us scope to focus our enquiries on certain areas, but I thought that maybe he was unnecessarily complicating matters. Malik was trying to look at it from the angle of Sherlock Holmes, and you didn't need to do that. If a prostitute gets her throat slashed and her genitalia mutilated, and her body's discovered on the edge of a notorious red light district with the clothing interfered with, it's fairly obvious what's happened.