Jigsaw Man (10 page)

‘But still, you'd think he'd say something about it to you, even if he didn't want
the police involved.'

‘I can't disagree with that.'

Tartaglia sipped his coffee. As thorough as McCann appeared to have been, had he
missed something? Maybe the pair weren't as squeaky clean as they appeared. Maybe
there was something Armstrong couldn't risk anybody knowing about, particularly an
ex-cop like McCann. But if so, why hire him in the first place . . . He looked searchingly
at McCann. ‘If somebody was blackmailing English, who else would have known, apart
from Armstrong?'

‘I can't think of anyone. I got the impression they kept most things pretty tight
between themselves.'

‘OK. Leaving that to one side for the moment, what about
the wife, Lisa? Could she
have either helped English disappear – or had him done away with?'

‘I don't see her helping him, after the way he treated her. Nor do I think she's
capable of acting on her own.'

‘That's what Ian Armstrong said.'

‘It was one of the first things he had me look into, but I found no trace at all
of anyone else being involved, at least not during the time we had her under surveillance.'

‘OK. So, if we rule out Armstrong and the wife, is there anyone else close to English
who might want him dead?'

‘His sons both seem pretty indifferent to him and his first wife hasn't got a kind
word to say, although she's very happy to take his money. He had a few mates he kept
in touch with, mainly people he'd worked with over the years, but other than the
odd business dinner and such, he didn't have much of a personal life. Except for
Ian Armstrong, he wasn't close to anybody.'

‘From what you're saying, if something nasty happened to him it's more likely to
be to do with the business?'

‘That's the line of inquiry I'd have prioritised, but Armstrong didn't like it one
bit when I suggested it. He insisted I was on the wrong track, and because he was
paying for my time I couldn't push it. In the end he told me I'd done enough. He
settled my bill and that was that. I've often wondered when it would all resurface.
I was sure it was only a matter of time.'

Tartaglia finished his coffee and put the cup down. ‘As I said, we're not sure it's
English we've found, but his wallet and a set of keys belonging to him turned up
at a crime scene a couple of weeks ago. There was no cash in the wallet, but it contained
all the missing credit cards.'

‘You're talking about a murder, obviously.'

‘Yes. A car was doused in petrol and set on fire in a car park in South West London.'
He chose his words carefully. He didn't want to lie, but for the moment he felt it
necessary to conceal the full details of what had been found in the car. The fewer
people that knew the truth, the better. ‘What looks like the body of an adult male
was lying curled up on the back seat, burnt to a crisp,' he went on. ‘The only thing
we have to go on at the moment are the wallet and keys, which were found on the ground
near the car, presumably either dropped or planted there by the killer for some reason.'

‘No DNA match, then?'

‘The first sample came up negative, but it may not be relevant. We're now waiting
for another sample for confirmation. In the meantime, is there anyone else you think
I should talk to?'

McCann pursed his lips thoughtfully. ‘There's a man called Colin Price. He's the
former manager of one of the hotels and his name popped up several times when I talked
to other people. He and English didn't see eye to eye and I think he was sacked,
although there was some sort of threatened legal action and he was paid off before
it got to court. I thought it sounded worth looking into, if only to get a different
perspective, but I never got to talk to him. Armstrong put the brakes on, which I
found interesting.'

‘You think there was something dodgy?'

‘I don't know, but he was quite insistent I was wasting my time going in that direction.
I was still planning on going to see Price when Armstrong suddenly told me I'd gone
far enough with the investigation and to send in my report. End of. I'll dig out
Price's details when I get back to the office. Last I heard he was running some fancy
hotel near Oxford, and . . .'

Just then, Tartaglia's phone started to ring and he saw DC Justin Chang's name on
the screen. With an ‘I must take this,' gesture to his companion, he answered it.

‘We've got a DNA match for victim B, Sir,' Chang said. ‘The torso belongs to an ex-con,
name of Jake Finnigan. I'm pulling his CRO file now. When will you be back?'

Tartaglia looked at his watch. ‘About four, if I'm lucky. I need to find out where
Nick's got to.' He hung up and got to his feet. ‘Sorry, Mike. Something's come up.'

McCann stood up. ‘No problem. I'll email you a copy of the report I did for Ian Armstrong,
plus Colin Price's details. If there's anything else that comes to mind, let me know.'

Ten

Sam Donovan opened her eyes and stared up at the ceiling. The fading light cast faint
ripples of shadow across it. She had slept fitfully the previous night and most of
that day, drifting in and out of sleep, the nightmares that flowed no worse than
the nightmare of being awake. The drugs had helped temporarily, dulling the pain.
But they couldn't make it go away entirely and she hated the unfocussed feeling they
gave her, her mind like glue. Beneath it all, the pain was still there, every tiny
thought and memory a trigger, but somehow, she had to get through it, put the horror
of what had happened to one side so that she could help find Claire's killer. Nothing
else mattered.

She put a couple of pillows behind her head and sat up in bed. She had opened the
shutters earlier in the vain hope that the daylight might keep her awake; now she
stared out at the dark grey sky, watched little bursts of rain spattering against
the window like handfuls of fine gravel. Soon it would be dark. She reached across
and turned on the bedside light. It was a nice room, with a high ceiling and a large
window overlooking the back garden. It was painted white like the rest of the flat,
with bare, scrubbed wooden boards and minimal furniture. As a bedroom, it was clean
and functional and tidy, the way Tartaglia liked his things. But she found it impersonal.
She missed her own room with its mixture of colours and all her bits and pieces,
although she was glad to be away from her house for the moment.

She wondered if Tartaglia minded her staying with him and if he had thought it odd
her asking. After everything that had happened between them or – more importantly
– not happened, it did seem a bit strange, almost surreal, to be lying here now in
his bed. Their relationship had never been straightforward: there was a closeness
on both sides that went beyond friendship, or at least that was what she had always
thought. But things that should have been said, had been left unsaid for too long
and eventually it had felt as though an insurmountable gulf had opened up between
them. It was just not meant to be, and she had decided that she needed to move on.
Since she had last seen him a few months before, she had left the Met and moved part-time
to Bristol. Her world had changed and she thought she had too. The change of routine
and physical distance had been useful to mark the boundary between the old and the
new; it had also been good to forget what Tartaglia looked like for a while. But
deep down, whatever their differences, whatever awkwardness had crept between them,
coupled with the few months of ensuing silence, she still trusted him more than anyone
else. When put on the spot by Steele the previous night, told to move out of her
home, his flat was the only place she had wanted to go to.

She glanced at the small digital clock on the bedside table. It was just after three
in the afternoon. The day was slipping away and she must force herself to get up.
The first forty-eight hours in a murder investigation were crucial and she was wasting
precious time. There were things she could be doing, people she should see. She had
decided to go and talk to Steele. She had nothing to lose and she needed to find
out as much as she could about what had happened. Perhaps there was a role for her
to play in the investigation . . . She stretched her arms up above her head, then
swung her legs out of bed. As she got to
her feet, she felt suddenly giddy and sank
back down on the edge of the bed. She noticed that she was still dressed in the T-shirt
and jeans from the night before. The combination of wine and pills had knocked her
out quickly and she had no recollection of going to bed at all; her last memory was
of sitting on the sofa with Tartaglia's arm around her, her head against his chest.
The previous few months of distance between them had melted away and it had felt
almost like old times. He must have carried her into the bedroom and taken off her
boots, which she now spotted neatly placed in a corner, with her cardigan hung over
the back of a chair. He had been caring in every detail and she was pleased again
that she had insisted on coming to him. Yawning, she stood up again, took a few moments
to steady herself, then went into the kitchen. She put on the kettle and rummaged
around in the cupboards until she found an unopened pack of English Breakfast tea.
Tartaglia was a habitual coffee drinker, and she wondered how it had got there. Maybe
it was left over from someone else who had come to stay, although she couldn't imagine
who. She certainly hadn't seen any signs of female occupation in the flat so far.
Not that she cared about that any longer.

Once the tea had brewed, she added a little milk and went into the sitting room to
find Claire's satchel. It had been sitting in the hall at their house, underneath
the small table, and she had spotted the mini iPad she had given Claire for Christmas
slotted between a newspaper and a couple of women's magazines. In all the commotion
of their house being searched and of her leaving to go to Tartaglia's, she had managed
to pick it up and bring it with her without it being noticed. They had Claire's phone
and personal laptop to work on, after all, and at least she had Claire's iPad. The
code was probably her sister's birthday, which she used for almost everything. The
iPad was
synched with Claire's laptop and phone and would have a copy of her calendar
and contacts.

But before seeing Steele, there was somebody else she needed to talk to; somebody
who knew a lot more than she did about the day-to-day minutiae of Claire's life.

On the drive back to their offices in Barnes, Minderedes gave Tartaglia the gist
of his interview with Richard English's first wife. Although she had added nothing
new to their knowledge of her former husband, she had at least confirmed the picture
of him painted by Lisa English, as well as corroborating the fact that English was
definitely intending to divorce Lisa and that they were not on speaking terms. The
clocks had gone back just over a week before and it was already dark as they crossed
the Thames at Hammersmith Bridge. Nestled in a sharp loop in the river, Barnes was
an absurdly rural pocket of London, more village than city, populated by professionals
and media types, and with a remarkably low crime rate compared to most other London
boroughs. Their offices were located half way along Station Road, in between the
Green and the Common. The long, low brick building belonging to the Met dated from
the Seventies and was considered a bit of an eyesore amongst the traditional, late
Victorian housing that surrounded it. The building was closed off to the public from
the road, with the main entrance through a car park at the rear, protected from the
street by solid and anonymous high wooden gates. Few of the locals even knew the
police worked there. There had been talk of the building being sold for redevelopment
and the squads being relocated to more modern premises, but that had been going on
for as long as Tartaglia could remember. In the meantime, they had to put up with
the cramped and basic working conditions, the temperamental
heating system that left
a pervasive smell of damp in the winter, and the lack of decent air conditioning
in the summer to cool the dusty, dirty, oven-like conditions. He counted himself
lucky to spend more time out of the office than in it.

Once inside the gates, he left Minderedes to worry about where to put his car – somebody
having taken what he considered to be his parking space – and walked across the
yard to the main entrance door. The air was damp and it was threatening to rain again,
a few warning drops falling on his face as he headed for the entrance. He heard a
series of explosions coming from somewhere close to the road and caught the sulphurous
whiff of gunpowder, along with wood smoke, carried by the wind. It was Guy Fawkes
Night, he suddenly remembered. Although only late afternoon, fireworks parties were
already starting and he wondered for a moment what his young nephew and niece had
planned.

He went inside and up the main stairs to the first floor where the two murder squads,
part of Homicide West Command, were based. The small, open-plan office at the front
of the building was half full and he found DC Justin Chang sitting at his desk, leafing
through some papers. Chang, in his early thirties, was originally from Hong Kong
but had gone to school and university in the UK and had travelled the world before
joining the Met.

Chang looked up. ‘This is the man,' he said, handing Tartaglia some printouts.

Tartaglia leafed through them quickly. The mug shots showed the acne-scarred face
and shaved head of forty-two-year-old ex-con Jake Patrick Finnigan; the record outlined
a career in burglary and theft. It was a familiar story of a man who had spent more
time in jail than out of it since his late teenage years, and there was nothing remarkable
about it apart
from the contrast with Richard English. Both came from humble backgrounds,
but that was where any similarity stopped. What could possibly be the connection
between them – if, indeed, there was one?