Core of Evil (21 page)

It made sense. It was only a possibility, of course, but it made sense. Which meant that the question was: what evidence might there be confirming or denying it?

Lapslie took his mobile from his jacket and held down the button that allowed him to voice-dial. ‘Emma Bradbury,’ he said, and the phone ransacked its memory for her number. Within a few moments, she answered.

‘Sir? I thought it was your day off?’

‘It is. I got bored. Emma, I need you to do something for me. I’m at the site where the body was found. I want you to check whether any recovery services or mechanics were called out to a broken
down car on this spot between, say, nine and eleven months ago. Check the police as well: they may have a record of something having happened. Give me a ring back when you have it.’

‘Will do. What’s this all—’

He cut her off abruptly, not wanting to talk, concerned somehow that if he was to explain his theory – his
hypothesis
– then it would all crumble to dust and Emma would laugh at him. He would wait until she called back with actual evidence – one way or the other – before he told her what he thought. And while he waited, he decided to take a walk in the woods.

The leaf mulch gave spongily beneath his feet as he walked. All around there was a slight crackle of vegetation drying out after the rain, and the occasional flurry of activity as a bird or a fox moved in the underbrush, but the smell of damp leaves rising from the ground covered any other taste that might have been triggered in Lapslie’s mouth. There were no trails, no paths through the bushes to follow. He found himself having to step carefully over fallen trees and skirt around hawthorn bushes in order to make any progress.

Within a few moments he couldn’t see the road, or his car. He might just as well have been in the middle of the forest as at its edge, and if he wasn’t careful he might just keep walking until he
was
in the middle. There was no way to check direction, and although
he tried to catalogue the shapes of trees that he passed, he found they all ended up looking the same.

People talked about cities having personalities, and in his time stationed in London as a Detective Sergeant he had come to know the comfortable excesses of the capital – a raddled old whore who still managed to attract clients – but there was a different kind of personality here in the woods. Something timeless and dark. Whatever it was, it had seen the murder of Violet Chambers and it didn’t care, just as it hadn’t cared about any of the hundreds, thousands, millions of deaths it had witnessed over the millennia.

Turning back, with some effort, Lapslie retraced his steps as best he could. That tree on the edge of a dip, its roots exposed by storms and animals – he was sure he had seen it before on his way in. That parasitic gall, curled about the trunk of an oak – he surely recognised that. And within ten minutes, he was back at his car again, and it was as if the forest had been a dream.

His mobile rang as he returned to his car: Bruch’s 1st violin concerto, and a burst of chocolate.

‘Sir? Emma. I’ve phoned all the recovery and car mechanics firms covering the area. It’s something of a blackspot, that curve. Quite a few cars end up coming off it in the wet or if it’s icy.’

‘How many?’

‘In the timeframe in question, there were … ’She
paused, consulting whatever notes she had made.

‘… five incidents where someone was called out to repair or recover a car. Three of them involved families, so I think we can rule them out. One was breathalysed at the scene by police and taken into custody. His car was impounded. I guess we can forget that one as well.’ There was something creeping into Emma’s voice that made Lapslie pay attention. It wasn’t quite nutmeg, but there was something definitely odd about it. She was holding something back. ‘The last one was a lady. No age given. Volvo 740, bronze, it says here. Car was repaired, and she went on her way.’

Lapslie thought for a moment. More poisoners turned out to be women than men, and the people living opposite Violet Chambers’ house had mentioned seeing a woman going in and out shortly before she left – or disappeared. It was worth following up. ‘Did they get a name?’ he asked.

‘You’re going to like this, sir. The woman gave her name as Violet Chambers.’

And that was it. His hunch had paid off. ‘Right. It’s too much of a coincidence that the real Violet Chambers broke down here shortly before her body was discovered. It’s much more likely that whoever dumped her body used her name as well. Get copies of their report form, check the registration number of the car and trace the owner. And, just in case, check whether the real Violet Chambers owned a car.’

‘Will do. Anything else?’

‘Yes. Put out a general request for assistance. I want to know where that car is now. I’ll ring you later.’

He rang off, then pressed the redial button as something else occurred to him. Emma answered, sounding surprised. ‘Boss? Something else?’

‘Yes. Phone around as many garages and mechanics as you can find within a fifty-mile radius of this forest. I want to know if anyone else has ever been called out to that car, and where it was at the time. If we get lucky, we might be able to tie it down to wherever our murderer lives. Or lived.’

‘But there must be hundreds of car mechanics in the area, if not thousands. That’s going to take—’

‘A significant slice of your time, I know. Just think of the overtime.’

‘Any chance you can get a constable assigned to this case, sir?’ she said sourly. ‘I could use the help.’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Lapslie said, ringing off.

The sky was getting darker again, and there was a chill in the air that suggested more rain was on its way. He needed to get away: he had an appointment in London to go to. But for the moment, he found he could not leave. There was something about the spot where he was standing. A person had died there, and yet there was no acknowledgement. No sign. Nothing to mark the passing.

Perhaps that was the state of the world, and the
human need to place crosses and markers was just a futile attempt to battle against the tide. The woodlands he was standing in had been there for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. Possibly they had been there before human beings had moved into the area. If every person’s death that had occurred in those woods over the past two thousand years or more was marked by a red spot, would there be any greenery left?

Morbid thoughts. He climbed into his car and drove away, leaving the woodlands and their ghosts behind him.

He left his car at Audley End station, then caught a train to London, grabbing a quick sandwich on the way. The journey took less than an hour, and during the time he looked out of the window at the passing fields and factories and let his thoughts drift. Earplugs cut out the noise of the people talking around him, replacing them with blessed silence. Every time he found his thoughts turning toward Sonia and his children, he stopped and deliberately thought about something else. The pain of that scar throbbed enough; there was no point picking at it any more.

He called DCS Rouse’s office from the train. The DCS wasn’t available, so he left a message with his PA asking for some extra resources to help Emma Bradbury with her inquiries. He didn’t hold out much hope – the top brass didn’t seem to want to
provide any more resources, despite the interest that DCS Rouse was showing in it – but he had to try.

The train left him at Liverpool Street, and he used the Underground to get across the river to Rotherhide. The earplugs were less effective at blocking out the constant rattling and roaring of the train through the tunnels, and he had to keep swallowing to wash the taste of gorgonzola away. Eventually he slipped a mint into his mouth, just to cover it up with something else.

At Rotherhide he left the station and made his way through cobbled back streets to an old, familiar public house perched on the edge of the Thames. The Golden Hind was tall and thin, slightly lopsided, constructed from blackened timbers and white-plastered brickwork. It looked at first glance like any one of a thousand faux-Tudor inns scattered about England, until you realised that it really did date from Tudor days. Things had been added and subtracted since that time, but it gave off an air of permanence at odds with the buildings around it.

He entered through a narrow doorway and looked around. The interior resembled a collision between three or four rooms of different sizes on different levels. Dom McGinley was sitting in a corner, a half-finished pint of Guinness in front of him. He raised his glass to Lapslie and took a swig.

‘A pint of Guinness and a pint of lager,’ Lapslie said to the barman. When he turned back with the
drinks, McGinley was heading away from the door, towards a small exit at the back of the pub. Lapslie followed on, and found himself on a short pier extending out twenty feet or so into the Thames. Wooden benches were scattered around. There was nobody else out there.

McGinley slumped heavily into a seat. Lapslie put the pints down on the table in front of him, sat on the hard wooden bench and took a sip of his lager. It was largely tasteless, which was why he liked it.

‘They found Dave Finnistaire tied to the piles beneath here,’ McGinley said eventually. Lapslie felt his mouth prickle with gherkins, pickled onions and piccalilli, and quickly took another sip of his lager to cover the taste. ‘Fifteen years back. After your time. The tide doesn’t come in too high on a normal day. They reckon he was tied there as a warning. Problem was, there was a surge tide and he drowned. They reckon he might have been hanging there a week before it happened.’

‘Didn’t he call out?’

McGinley shook his head. ‘He probably tried, but after what they did to his tongue he wasn’t going to have much luck. Happy days.’ He took a swig of his Guinness.

‘Happy days.’

Lapslie glanced out into the gathering darkness. The sun was going down, somewhere over the centre of London, and the sky was a glorious set of terraces
laid out in scarlet, orange and maroon. The light reflected off the small gold stud that McGinley had in his left ear lobe. For a moment, Lapslie wondered about other synaesthetes, the ones whose senses were cross-connected in a different way from his and who saw colours instead of tasting flavours. Was this the kind of thing they experienced? Was this what
the ecstasies of the mind and senses
meant?

‘I was surprised when you called,’ McGinley said. ‘After all, it’s been a good few years since you left Kilburn, and we were never really what you’d call mates then.’

‘Strangely, you were the closest thing I had,’ Lapslie murmured.

‘That’s right – you didn’t get on with the blokes in the nick, did you? Never went out drinking with them.’

‘Not like you did. You were always buying drinks for the coppers. And the occasional car. Favours received, I guess.’

To either side of the pier, old warehouses and new apartment blocks jostled uneasily together, silhouetted against the pastel sky. A tug ploughed gracelessly down river, hooting mournfully. Seagulls rode the waves, their beaks hooked and cruel, their eyes glinting.

‘Harsh, Mr Lapslie. Harsh. I’ve still got a reputation up Kilburn way.’

‘But I understand that, what with the Yardies,
then the Turks, then the Albanians moving in, then the Turks and the Yardies working together, then the Albanians getting together with the old Maltese gangs in Soho, things have got a little confused since I left. You might have a bit of a reputation, but you haven’t got much of a manor any more. What is it down to now – two streets and a stretch of waste ground?’

‘Albanians? You’re a little behind the times. There’s over four hundred different gangs in London and the South East now, all fighting for a little bit of turf and a little bit of respect. In the old days there was maybe four or five main groups. Now you need a computer just to keep up.’

‘Makes you nostalgic for the Krays, doesn’t it?’

‘You can laugh. Latest ones are the Muslim Boys – they claim they’re part of Al-Qaeda, but they’re just trading on fear. And they’re dangerous. Time was when you had to work to get some respect. Now all you need is a knife or a gun, and the willingness to kill someone you’ve never met and know nothing about.’

‘I feel for you, McGinley. I really do.’

‘You said you needed a favour. What can I do?’

‘What do I have to do in return?’

McGinley gazed at Lapslie over the top of his glass. ‘I might need a favour back, some day.’

Lapslie nodded. ‘Okay – the PRU. It’s a department in the Department of Justice. Know of it?’

‘Can’t say I do.’

‘There’s a man works there named Geherty. He’s turned up on my patch, and it looks like he might be interfering with a murder case I’ve got on. I want to know more about him.’

McGinley took another long drink from his pint glass. ‘I’ll ask around. Give me a day or two.’

Lapslie sank his pint and stood up. ‘Phone me from a payphone,’ he said. ‘There’s a rumour around that you’re acting as a mediator between some of the main gangs in the capital. Branching out into criminal diplomacy. I wouldn’t be surprised if your mobile is being listened to.’

McGinley nodded. ‘Why are you telling me that now?’

‘Because that,’ Lapslie said, ‘is the favour returned. I don’t like the thought of you holding something over me.’ He walked over to the entrance back into the bar, then turned and gazed out over the Thames. It rolled past like a ribbon of tar in the encroaching darkness. ‘I heard that it was you that tied Dave Finnistaire to the piles beneath this pier,’ he said. ‘Any truth in that?’

‘No, Mr Lapslie,’ said McGinley. ‘But I did carve his tongue into strips beforehand. Safe journey now.’

Over the course of the next week, Daisy and Sylvia met up twice for lunch, and once for a drive out to a garden centre near Frinton so that Sylvia could pick up some plants for her borders. The sun shone down out of a cloudless blue sky as Sylvia drove carefully through the back lanes in her small, but well serviced, Fiat. Daisy gazed out at the fields as they passed. The tall yellow flowers that seemed to be all that was cultivated around here swayed under the breeze. An over-poweringly floral scent seeping in through the windows made Daisy feel dizzy.