Skeleton Hill (20 page)

‘That’s always possible.’ The speaker had a grey baseball cap pulled well down on his forehead, making his pale blue eyes seem a long way off.

‘You know him?’ Diamond said.

A nod. ‘Two double vodkas would be nice.’

As if by arrangement, a bar girl appeared from nowhere.

‘You heard that?’ Diamond asked her.

She was already filling a glass. ‘And for you, sir?’

He pointed to one of the beer handles. ‘That’ll do. A half.’ He didn’t trust himself drinking vodkas. He paid and turned back to the drinkers. ‘Which of you is Andriy?’

After some hesitation the second man raised a finger and said nothing. His hunched, comfortable position on the bar counter spoke of many hours of practice. A fine head of black curls sagged between broad shoulders.

‘He’s your man,’ his companion said. ‘Knows everyone.’

‘Cheers, then,’ Diamond said, swallowed hard and told them he was from Bath police enquiring into the death of a young woman, apparently Ukrainian, about twenty years ago. ‘She was buried on a hillside a mile or so outside the city. Her skeleton, minus the skull, was dug up last week. It’s possible she was known here in London.’

‘If she was Ukrainian, she probably was,’ the man in the baseball cap said. ‘What do you say, Andriy?’

‘This is all you know?’ Andriy said without looking at Diamond or the other man. ‘A headless skeleton?’

He told them about the zip.

Andriy wasn’t impressed. ‘Hundreds of girls come through London. I don’t know where they all end up.’

‘This one ended up in another city, dead, probably murdered.’

‘So she got in with bad company.’

‘Speaking of which,’ Diamond said, ‘were there any Ukrainian gangs with links to Bath or Bristol twenty years ago?’

Andriy shrugged and looked away.

‘She was from your country,’ Diamond said.

‘He doesn’t have an answer,’ his companion said.

Yet he was supposed to be a gossip, so why so reticent? Diamond dredged deep. ‘Another thought, then. The Cossacks come from the Ukraine, am I right?’

‘Cossacks?’ Andriy locked eyes with him again. ‘What is this talk of Cossacks? Who are you to be speaking about Cossacks?’

‘They have a fierce reputation, don’t they?’

‘What – do you think some Cossack came to Bath and killed this girl?’ He grinned at his friend, then said to Diamond, ‘Do you know anything about history? The time of the Cossacks was nearly four hundred years ago. They revolted against the Polish oppressors. Smashed them. But it was a long time ago.’

‘The 1640s,’ the other man said.

‘Well, how about that?’ Diamond said just to counter the suggestion that he was ignorant about history. ‘We had a civil war of our own going on in the 1640s.’

Andriy wasn’t impressed. ‘I’m telling you the Cossacks are in the past.’

‘What about World War Two? There were Cossack brigades fighting on the German side against the Russians.’

‘Everyone was fighting and everyone suffered,’ Andriy said. ‘Poles, Russians, Jews, Cossacks. There isn’t a family in the Ukraine without painful memories of the war. Don’t lecture me on our history.’

Diamond shook his head. ‘I’m making the point that the Cossacks never went away. You can’t dismiss them as history. Do they sometimes decapitate their enemies?’

There was a moment of silence. He was in dangerous waters here.

‘It’s not unknown,’ Andriy said finally, and added, ‘in past times.’ ‘Ancient times,’ his companion said.

‘Right,’ Andriy said. ‘A long time back. They don’t carry swords any more. If I were you, Mr Policeman, I would forget about Cossacks.’

‘Thanks for that. Any suggestions where I should look, then?’

‘Try the embassy.’

‘We already did – and drew a blank.’

‘Too bad.’

The man with the baseball cap looked at his watch and said something in Ukrainian to Andriy, and then slid off the stool, grinned at Diamond as if to say you’ll be here for ever if you think you’re going to find anything out, and left the pub.

‘
Mafioso
,’ Andriy said.

‘It crossed my mind,’ Diamond said. ‘Difficult to talk freely with someone like that in attendance.’

Andriy showed him an empty glass. Diamond nodded to the bar girl. She poured another double and then returned to the area behind the bar, despatched there by a flap of Andriy’s hand.

‘In the nineties, when your dead woman disappeared,’ he said to Diamond, ‘there were two big groups bringing women to this country. They still operate, and so do others now. He is attached to one such group.’

‘Understood.’

‘At that time, the competition was strong. Deadly. Two pimps were killed. One of the women, too.’

Diamond leaned forward, all ears.

‘But not your woman,’ Andriy said. ‘This one was given a funeral at the Ukrainian Church.’

‘When was this?’

‘The year of independence, 1991.’

‘Was her killer caught?’

‘No. The violence made a strong impression and some of the call girls decided to quit. I’m not sure how many, but they weren’t heard of again. If they had any sense they would have got out of London.’

‘Do you know of any names?’

He shook his head.

‘Surely,’ Diamond said, ‘if they got away, they would have been replaced. We both know there was no shortage of working girls at that time. They were coming here by the hundred.’

‘That is true.’

‘If, as you say, the quitters got out of London, would their pimps have gone to all the trouble of hounding them down? I’m thinking of some vengeful bastard following our woman to Bath and killing her and burying her.’

‘Depends if she was a danger, I guess,’ Andriy said.

‘Knew too much? You could be right.’ His thoughts were interrupted by a piercing sound from somewhere close. ‘What’s that?’ ‘Do you have a phone?’ Andriy said.

‘Christ, yes.’ He took it from his pocket. This could only be Keith Halliwell.

Urgency bordering on panic was in Keith’s voice. ‘Guv, I’m in trouble. Can you get here fast?’

22

O
f all the team, Keith would be the last to panic.

Diamond sprinted along the street, hailed the first taxi he sighted and gave the address Olena had supplied. ‘Put your foot down,’ he added, ignoring his phobia for high speeds.

‘Man, you’ve got to be hot for it,’ the West Indian driver said.

‘What do you mean?’

He got no answer except a throaty laugh. While the taxi rattled through the backstreets, he used the mobile to ask Louis to send a response car.

‘Say that address again,’ Louis said.

‘Marchant Street, Barnes.’

‘The number.’

‘I told you. Sixteen.’

‘We know sixteen Marchant Street. It’s a knocking shop.’

‘Can’t be,’ Diamond said. ‘Olena sent him there. One of her church people lives there with her English husband.’

‘Take it from me, Peter, it’s a brothel.’

Now he understood the cabby’s mirth.

‘Is there another Marchant Street?’ he asked Louis.

The driver shouted from the front, ‘Not in Barnes, my friend.’

‘Get someone there, anyway,’ Diamond said into the phone.

They joined a tailback waiting to cross Hammersmith Bridge. ‘Isn’t there a quicker route?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, you can fly,’ the cabby told him. ‘What are you on – Viagra?’

He subsided into silence.

Across the bridge, a left turn came up soon.

‘Sixteen. Should be on the right,’ he said.

‘You’re not the first I’ve brought here,’ the cabby said. ‘It’s the one with the blinds down. Shall I wait? I reckon you’re gonna be quick.’

‘No need.’ He got out and handed across a ten pound note. The driver turned the taxi and left, still grinning.

The house was part of a shabby Victorian terrace, three storeys high. The age of smog had blackened the brickwork and this wasn’t the class of address that got steam-cleaned. Broken window-boxes spoke of a once-respectable use, but not for some time. Olena the church worker, saviour of vulnerable girls, had been badly misinformed by her protégée, Viktoriya.

The disrepair wasn’t total. His attention was caught by a movement above the door. A small video camera had shifted its angle a fraction. Someone inside had seen him coming.

The door worked on an entry-phone. He pressed the control and a woman’s voice said, ‘Yes?’

‘John Smith. May I come in?’

The door buzzed. He pushed it and got inside.

‘Upstairs,’ called the same female voice.

For all she knew, he was a punter, a new client, and he’d play along with this for as long as it suited. The stairs had a serviceable carpet in brown cord. Presumably Keith had stepped up here, but at what point had he guessed the status of the house?

‘In here.’

He pushed at a partly open door and found himself in a room furnished with cheap sofas. A blonde, sharp-featured woman in a black trouser suit stood behind one of them displaying a set of clawlike fingernails painted blue, with silver streaks added. How would those go down at Sunday mass? he wondered. Maybe they were detachable.

She repeated the bland ‘Yes?’ he’d heard over the intercom.

‘My first time here,’ he said. ‘You were recommended. Would you be Viktoriya?’

‘I’m Vikki, yes. Who sent you, then?’ Her accent had only the slightest trace of East Europe.

‘I didn’t catch her name. A Ukrainian lady.’

‘Where?’

‘Holland Park area.’ He was assessing the room, trying to decide if heavies were waiting nearby to deal with troublemakers. If Vikki was the madam, as it appeared, she’d need some back-up. For the present her hands rested firmly on the chair back. ‘I’ll be straight with you, Vikki. A friend of mine came here an hour or more ago.’

‘Who was that?’ she said and gave an ironic smile. ‘Another John Smith?’

He was through with the play-acting. The response car would be here any minute. ‘He was a police officer, wanting information from you. Where is he now?’

‘I don’t know who you mean,’ she said, dropping all pretence of charm. ‘No one came here saying he was from the police.’

‘He may not have shown you his warrant, but he must have asked you questions about girls who went missing twenty years ago.’

She hesitated. ‘
That
guy? He left some time back.’

‘It won’t do,’ he said. ‘He called me to say he was in trouble.’

Her eyes had turned to the left. He took a step closer and saw the monochrome screen she was staring at. He guessed the police had arrived.

‘Come on, Vikki,’ he said. ‘Do you want cops storming through every room in the building?’

Alarmed, she put a hand to her mouth. ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ she said, playing the innocent through the scary fingernails. ‘He came asking questions. Anyone could tell he wasn’t a punter.’

‘Where is he?’

‘I haven’t a clue.’

Then a shot was fired nearby, followed by another, somewhere outside the building. He knew gunfire. It wasn’t a firework or a car backfiring.

He started down the stairs just as the front door burst open and two uniformed cops from the Met charged in. They were ready to grab him until he pulled out his warrant card and shouted, ‘The garden.’

They carried on past the staircase and through a door at the back. Diamond followed them into a small kitchen where unwashed coffee mugs littered a table. One cop flung open the door to the garden, which was more of a concreted back yard than anything cultivated, a poor place to hide. A toolshed stood against a brick wall at the end. The cops went to look, with Diamond following, and the kitchen door slammed behind them.

He stopped, turned and tried the handle. The wind must have got behind it, not some inmate of the house, as he suspected, because it opened again.

‘No one here,’ shouted the cop who’d opened the shed.

His partner had made a leap at the wall and was hanging on by his arms, looking over. ‘Here!’ he yelled and scrambled up and out of sight. The other cop followed.

For a man of Diamond’s build, that wall was a major barrier, but he wasn’t giving up while Keith was in trouble. He took a wooden fruit box from the shed and stepped up, got a handhold, hauled his bulk to the top and toppled over. The two uniformed cops were already in hot pursuit of a man who had vaulted over a low garden fence into a neighbouring garden. A dog started barking and another responded from higher up. Suburban Barnes had not seen anything like it in years.

This second garden was heavily overgrown. Diamond hadn’t waded far through the sea of grass and weeds when he heard panting to his left. Briefly he thought of the dog and then recognised a human quality in the sound, more like someone gasping for breath. He forced his way through and found Keith lying on his back, his hand to his chest, blood seeping through his fingers.

23

K
eith wasn’t speaking, but there was plenty of voice in his breathing, a rasp with each struggle for air. The signs were bad. A pink bubble formed between his lips and popped. If his lungs were filling with blood he wouldn’t last long.

Diamond took out his mobile and dialled for an ambulance.

He tried giving comforting words without knowing how much Keith understood. He was getting no response from the voice or the eyes.

In all his years in the police, he’d never had one of his team murdered. What could he do? You don’t move someone in a state like this, without knowing what damage the shooting has done, which vital organ the bullet may have pierced. The sense of helplessness was overwhelming. He knew about the so-called grace period from thirty minutes to an hour when the shock to the nervous system means that the victim is, in effect, anaesthetised. When that passes, the pain kicks in and can be fatal.

He looked around him. The garden was overgrown and the house appeared derelict. Really he could expect no help until the paramedics came. The two cops were off and away, chasing the man seen running from the scene. If they caught him they wouldn’t bring him back this way, over garden fences. They’d take him through the nearest house to the street and drive him straight to the police station.

And no one from inside number sixteen was going to venture into the garden and look over the wall. Any of the inmates who knew what was going on would have escaped by way of the street.

So he waited, powerless to act, and the minutes dragged.

Keith’s gasps for breath became shorter and more shallow.

At last came the twin notes of the ambulance approaching Marchant Street. The sound got louder and then stopped, followed by doors slamming. Would the crew find him? He’d tried to explain where he was to the operator who’d taken the emergency call, describing it as the garden backing on to number 16. He had no idea what this parallel street was called.

A voice came from behind the wall: ‘Where are you?’

He stood and shouted back.

A head appeared above the wall. ‘All right, mate. Stay cool.’

They slung a stretcher over first, and then followed.

He stood back to let the two paramedics assess the injury. It seemed Keith had taken a shot to the diaphragm, just inside the ribcage. While one was taking the pulse the other said to Diamond, ‘Why don’t you find the best way out of here? He’s in poor shape and we won’t want to lug him over that wall.’

Relieved to get any kind of activity, he went to check. Every muscle was shaking.

As he suspected, the house on this plot was empty, the lower windows boarded up. But there was a side gate on a rusty latch that he forced open. It gave access to the street. He jammed it open with a brick.

When he got back, the paramedics had transferred Keith to the stretcher and exposed his arm for an injection that he seemed not to feel at all.

‘You’ll have to help us get him to the ambulance,’ one said, when Diamond had pointed the way to the street. ‘Charlie will drive it round.’

So he acted as stretcher-bearer, through the long grass to the gate and outside, where Charlie brought the ambulance in quick time.

‘Shall I come with you?’ Diamond offered when they’d slid the stretcher inside.

‘No point, mate. He’s out to the world now and you won’t get near when he’s in emergency. You’re better off chasing the tosser who shot him.’

‘Which hospital?’

‘Charing Cross. What’s his name, by the way?’

By the way.
As if it was an afterthought that this was an individual, a good cop, the most loyal of colleagues, a husband and a father. Of course the paramedic didn’t mean to sound uncaring. It was just that Diamond was in shock.

He told them. One climbed inside with Keith and the other closed the door and drove off.

The sense of loss was acute.

In the next hour, that neglected mobile was much used. He spoke several times to Louis Voss. He got through to Ingeborg in Bath. He also called Sheila Halliwell and broke the news of the shooting to her, the news every police wife dreads. She said her brother would drive her to the hospital directly. And after her brave acceptance of the emergency came the inevitable question: ‘What was he doing, to get himself shot?’

‘We don’t fully know yet. Probably pursuing a suspect without knowing he was armed.’

‘Weren’t you with him, then? I thought he was with you.’ She may not have intended it to sound like an accusation, but that was how he took it.

‘We split up. He was going to interview someone we both thought was harmless.’

‘Are they ever? I’d better not say any more, Mr Diamond. I don’t trust myself to speak. I’ll hang up and get on the road.’

More police arrived, organised a crime scene and called out a forensic team. He said as much as he knew to the team leader and then called the hospital. He was told they’d already X-rayed the patient to assess the damage and he was receiving treatment. His condition was critical.

Somehow, Diamond had to escape from this passive waiting on events. Again he phoned Louis at Fulham Road nick and updated him. ‘In all this mayhem I’ve lost track of what’s happening. Did the two cops locate the guy on the run?’

‘They nicked him,’ Louis said. ‘He’s here.’

‘Thank God for that. Who is he?’

‘He’s not saying.’

‘Not saying anything, you mean?’

‘That’s right. Silent.’

‘Bloody hell. Has he been searched? Doesn’t he have anything on him saying who he is?’

‘Peter, if he had, I’d have told you, wouldn’t I?’

‘Has he asked for a solicitor?’

‘How do I get this across to you? He’s
shtum
.’

‘I’m not having that. Who’s on the case?’

‘DCI Gledhill. He’ll want a statement from you.’

‘Sod that. We want a statement from the prisoner. Keith is on the critical list. I’m not letting some gun-toting lunatic clam up on us.’

‘We think it may be a language problem.’

‘Get away!’

‘I mean it. He could be a Ukrainian.’

‘Christ, yes. Ukrainian. Why didn’t I think of that? We must get an interpreter.’

‘Don’t worry, Peter. Alex Gledhill has it in hand. Our regular interpreter is on his way back from Manchester. We’ll get him in tomorrow morning.’

‘Like hell you will. I want action. The clock is ticking. I’m sorry, Louis, but I want this pig squealing tonight. I’ll find you an interpreter in the next half-hour.’

He switched off. Right off. He didn’t want Louis or Gledhill or anyone else telling him what he couldn’t do. Mobiles had their merits after all and one was to achieve non-communication.

He knew of a good interpreter. He stopped a taxi at the end of the street and took a ride to the Crimea pub, asking the driver to wait.

True to form, Andriy was at the bar, chatting in Ukrainian to several other drinkers. He grinned at Diamond, recognising him at once. ‘My friend from Bath.’ He drained the glass of vodka he was holding. ‘We were having a nice conversation and you had to leave suddenly. Was everything all right?’

‘It’s under control, I think,’ Diamond said, ‘but I still need your help.’

‘Cheers, then.’ Andriy grinned and pushed the empty glass towards the barmaid.

‘For this kind of help, you get vodka by the bottle, not the glass,’ Diamond told him. ‘I want you to act as my interpreter.’

‘Whatever you want, my friend.’

But it took a few minutes more to get through to Andriy that he was required to leave the bar and take a taxi ride somewhere else. The prospect of vodka by the bottle persuaded him.

They were driven to Fulham Road nick. ‘How’s your head?’ Diamond asked in a moment of concern before they went through the front door to meet the desk sergeant.

‘Okay,’ Andriy said. ‘How’s yours?’

‘Right now it feels like Piccadilly Circus.’

‘Maybe you need a drink. Maybe we both do.’

‘Not here we don’t.’

They went through to the computer room where Louis presided. This evening he was working overtime and most of his team had gone home.

‘Any more news?’ Diamond asked.

‘From the hospital?’ Louis shook his head.

‘This is Andriy.’

‘I know all about Andriy,’ Louis said. ‘I sent you to him in the first place.’ He then asked slowly, to confirm his suspicion, ‘Is he your interpreter?’

‘Fluent in Ukrainian.’

Louis rolled his eyes.

‘And English,’ Diamond added. ‘So careful what you say. Where’s the prisoner?’

Louis hesitated, no doubt thinking what the official line should be on Andriy, and then pointed the way downstairs to the cells. ‘On consideration,’ he said, ‘I’d better come with you.’

Someone must have alerted DCI Gledhill to what was going on, because he rattled down the stairs in pursuit of them, a dapper man with a pencil-thin moustache. ‘Can I help you, gentlemen?’ he asked in a tone that promised more obstruction than help.

Louis turned and explained who the visitors were, stressing Diamond’s senior rank in Bath CID.

‘We’re about to take a look at the man your boys arrested,’ Diamond said, ‘and then we’ll have him out for an interview. Which cell is it?’

‘He’s not speaking,’ Gledhill said.

‘He’ll speak to us. Andriy talks his language.’

‘I don’t think so. I’m the SIO here.’

‘Fine. You’re welcome to sit in when I interview him.’

‘You’re out of order, superintendent. This is the Met, not Bath police. We do our own interviewing.’

‘I hope I didn’t hear right,’ Diamond said in a tone that managed to be both subdued and menacing. ‘One of my officers, DI Halliwell, is in a critical condition in Charing Cross Hospital, apparently shot by this man, and you’re telling me to go to hell.’

‘I didn’t say that,’ Gledhill said. ‘I didn’t say any such thing.’

‘That was the gist of it. You don’t have to tell me about pro-cedures in the Met. I served in this nick for five years. If a brother officer came to me from another force enquiring into the shooting of a colleague I wouldn’t just offer him full co-operation, I’d shake him by the hand and lead him straight to the perpetrator.’

‘It’s not about co-operation.’

‘Yes, it is, my friend. Here in the Met, of all places, you have to be aware of what’s going on across the nation, the inter-force consultation at every level. I’d hate to think Fulham Road has pulled up the drawbridge and refused interviewing facilities to a senior officer in an emergency.’

‘That isn’t the case.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. Which cell?’

Gledhill sighed, defeated. ‘The second on your right.’

Diamond slid aside the cover to the Judas window. The man seated on the bed inside was about forty, sallow, with dark, deep-set eyes. His striped shirt looked expensive and his trousers were tailored, evidently part of a suit. The laces had been removed from his shoes, scuffed and muddy from the chase. A long look didn’t help Diamond recognise him, so he closed the window. ‘Are we to be allowed an interview room?’

‘I’ll have him brought up,’ Gledhill said. ‘This may be a waste of everyone’s time. There’s no guarantee that he’ll talk.’

Diamond grinned faintly and glanced at Louis. In the bad old days, the big man from Bath had more than once been put on report for persuading prisoners to co-operate.

Interview Room 1 was made ready, fresh tapes inserted. ‘You can read him his rights, the caution, all that stuff, when he’s brought in,’ Diamond told Gledhill in a show of altruism. The reality was that he always relied on others to go through the formalities. ‘Andriy, we’ll have you seated opposite us, next to the prisoner, to do your interpreting. Are you still okay?’

‘Thirsty.’

‘There’s water in front of you,’ Gledhill said.

‘I can wait,’ Andriy said, rolling his eyes.

‘We’re in shape, then. Let’s have him in.’

The custody sergeant brought in the unnamed prisoner, a shorter man than he’d appeared in the cell, with some swelling to his face and left eye. Everything about his demeanour suggested he wouldn’t co-operate. He slumped in the chair he was offered and stared at the ceiling.

Gledhill spoke the words for the tape and gave the official caution. Then the focus shifted to Andriy, who appeared as uninterested as the prisoner, probably because he was suffering from alcohol deprivation.

‘Over to you,’ Gledhill said.

‘Andriy,’ Diamond said in a sharp tone. He would have kicked him under the table if the space hadn’t been boarded in.

It dawned on Andriy finally that he was supposed to do something to earn his next drink. He blinked and turned towards the prisoner. Then he started laughing. He shook with amusement. ‘I know this man,’ he said. ‘What, are you playing a trick on me? Very funny. He’s no more Ukrainian than you are. He’s English and his name is Jim Jenkins.’