The Cutting Crew (27 page)

'Who's working them?' I asked. Lucy worked most of the murder scenes, but obviously she'd been otherwise engaged this morning.

'Jackman did the scene,' Rosh said. 'But she's okay. It's not that I think anyone'll tamper with the evidence. It's that these people are too good.'

'And what do we think more generally?' I said. 'They knock Harris out, stand around the car and wait for him to die?'

'It's possible, but who knows? Maybe he really did kill himself.'

I knew which scenario my money was on - and if someone had topped Harris then it meant that Kemp and his men weren't the end of it. There were still others out there for us to worry about.

Not only that - we'd just lost someone who could have provided us with a lot of very helpful information. Now, we had nothing.

Reading my silence, Rosh said, 'It's depressing, isn't it?'

'For him, too, I guess.'

'I find myself slightly unable to care about that.'

'Yeah - me too.'

Murder is murder, but Harris had given up any right to our concern when he'd turned Sean in. The most that could be said now was this - if we were lucky then the forensics would tell us something and we might be able to take care of the people who'd killed him. Beyond that, his luck was out. We had enough people to worry about.

'What about Lucy?' I said. 'Where's she at?'

'Working in the lab. She's not had chance to do all that much, but she did have time to pull Halloran's file.'

'And?'

'And nothing. Same as we knew. Minor stuff for major people.'

There was a real question hanging over Halloran.

'What about the source?'

'Sean took the tip-off,' Rosh said. 'It was one of his regular guys.

You remember Toby Yeung?'

'Yeah, yeah.'

Toby was a street kid who did a little small-time drugs-running here and there. He was just a gopher, basically: he had a bit of a mouth on him but no real malice, and that meant he got to know people and what they were up to. His information had always been reliable in the past. If he said that Halloran had done the post office then I'd have trusted him to be on the level. It just depended on how he'd found out in the first place and why he'd passed it on.

Rosh said, 'You probably don't know this, but Toby's no longer with us.'

'Shit.'

'He got pulled out of the canal in Fish three months ago. Beaten to death.'

'Well, this fucking stinks, Rosh.'

'You should have been there.'

'Very funny,' I said. 'You know what I mean.'

'I do know what you mean,' he said. 'But Toby was in that kind of business. It doesn't necessarily prove anything.'

He was being optimistic and we both knew it.

'Rosh,' I said. 'We've been set up here. Think about it.'

There was a brief, not-very-Rosh-like pause, and then he said: 'I see where you're coming from - Toby passes it on and then he gets rubbed to keep him quiet. But I can't imagine who or why, or how it fits with what's happened since.'

'I don't know who or why,' I admitted. 'But I can see how it fits.

Someone got us to kill Halloran and take the money, and then someone else came looking for it. Kemp and his guys.'

'Somebody who was concerned about our bank balances?' Rosh said. 'Why would anyone want us to take the money? Why not just kill Halloran and take it themselves?'

'Okay,' I said. 'That part doesn't fit.'

Rosh sounded tired. 'I need to think about it some more.'

'But if that's true then we might have killed an innocent man, Rosh.'

'He wasn't innocent, Martin. Halloran did those murders. But even if he didn't, he wasn't innocent.'

'No,' I said. 'Right.'

I thought Rosh sounded even less sure than me - but then he'd been doing this longer than I had. He had a bigger list to reassess and to worry about, and a lot more invested in what we'd done being the right thing.

He took advantage of my pause and said:

'Lucy also looked at the other kid Jamie mentioned. Damian.'

'And?'

'Again - nothing we wouldn't expect. Record of birth, a few employment hits in the usual sorts of places. No sheet for anything and no Missing Persons Report. He definitely exists, but the only way we'll find out if he's still walking around is by talking to the university. Or every single one of his friends.'

'Fantastic. No matching bodies?'

'Not so far, no.'

But then, the city had lots of dark corners where people could disappear.

I said, 'So what's next?'

'Well, I'm going to be stuck here for a while,' Rosh said. 'And then back at the department writing up and making calls. Lucy's busy as well, so you're on your own for a few hours. We'll regroup after work.'

'I don't know where to go,' I said.

'Well, I don't know what else you can look into out there,' Rosh said. 'There are things to follow up here, but not really anything you can do. Just think about what we know. And be careful. You don't sound right, Martin.'

'I'm just tired.'

'You get hold of Rachel?'

I paused. Once again, I was surprised by how easily Rosh could nail a problem on the head and hammer it through to the feet.

'Yeah,' I said. 'I've just spoken to her.'

'Good. That means she's okay. Where's she at?'

'I don't know,' I said. 'With friends. Not sure who. She didn't say.'

'Okay.' He thought about it and then said, 'Well, we can talk about that later maybe. I'll be in touch as soon as I can, but keep me tabbed on what you're doing.'

'I will.'

I hung up, and then just leaned against the railing. After a moment, I slipped my phone back into my jacket pocket and stared ahead. The road in front of me was full of cars. On the other side, there were a few shops: a video store, a couple of takeaways.

Behind them, the spiked, black tip of a church, and then the looming half-threat of a council block. I looked up at the sky instead.

There are things to follow up here, but not really anything you can do.

All these people driving past, a fair few others walking - all of them full of purpose. I was struck by the same feeling I'd had earlier, except that now they didn't seem like background people men and women with no real lives. Instead, I experienced something like envy. Once, I'd been a lot of things, and because they'd not seemed right I'd removed myself from all of them in search of something better. Now, it didn't feel like I was anything, and it had taken a letter from a dead man to bring that into focus.

I frowned.

Sean.

My first instinct when I'd received the letter had been to try to find him, but I couldn't because I didn't know where to look. His phone records were dead and his house had been taken over by a new tenant; I didn't even know where to begin. But the fact remained that he'd been doing something in the time since he vanished. It was obvious, but I hadn't thought about it in precisely those terms until now. People take up space. He had been somewhere.

Not wanting to scare the thought away, I just carried on looking at the sky, watching a single cloud that was drifting lazily overhead. There was something in my mind that I needed to see. It was like when your fingers are reaching for something under a settee and they brush it: you pause, and then begin to move more delicately so as not to lose it.

Sean had arranged for Jamie to deliver the envelope, but what had the contents amounted to? A photocopy and a printout. It had been enough to set me on the way, but that was all; I was certain that after five months of investigation, however fragmented and disillusioned, he'd uncovered more than that. Originally, I'd assumed that he'd sent so little as insurance - as a way for me to follow his trail only if necessary. But now a more likely possibility occurred to me. Perhaps he hadn't known who to trust or to what extent people were being watched. He hadn't given too much to Jamie in case Jamie got picked up and whatever he'd discovered ended up destroyed. In fact, the students didn't even have a contact address for Sean. But the fact returned to me again: he had stayed somewhere. If I could find out where, I was certain there would be more information for me. Information that he'd kept safe, but would surely have given me the means to find.

I watched the cloud, stark white against the pale blue of the sky, and thought about everything that had happened.

It all came down to this: we had to work on the assumption that Kemp and his team were looking out for the money. But their resources were limited. They couldn't have been watching everyone for six whole months. Alison's parents, with their apparent indifference, seemed to be the least likely people she would have confided in, and so I figured that Kemp or someone might have spoken to them and discounted them. Would the men have wasted any more time on Alison's parents, when they clearly had no relationship with their daughter at all? I didn't think so.

But they were the link that Sean had started me with.

I thought back through the conversation I'd had with Mr Sheldon and after a moment it came to me.

He asked us to get in touch if we heard from her.

How?

My phone had never felt so loved. I scanned through my old dialled numbers, one by one, until I found it: the area code for Bracken. That was the number. I pressed green, held the phone to my ear and waited for the tone to kick in.

After a moment: 'Hello?'

'Hello, Mr Sheldon,' I said. 'It's Detective Weaver here. We spoke the other day about your daughter. You remember?'

'I remember.' If anything, he sounded even more uninterested than before. 'So, what else can I do for you?'

'My colleague,' I said. 'You mentioned he asked you to get in touch if you heard anything from Alison.'

'That's right.'

come to the same

Nobody would be

I was thinking that Sean had perhaps conclusion as I had about Alison's parents paying them any attention. Apart from me.

I said, 'Can I ask what details he gave you, please?'

'Oh, I think I threw those away.'

I closed my eyes and did a quick calculation. How long would it take to drive to the other side of the country, shoot somebody, and then drive back? Too long.

'It's important, Mr Sheldon.'

'I think they were on a post-it by the phone. Hang on.'

I heard Sheldon put the phone down on the table, and then the sound of him shuffling through papers, punctuated by occasional sighs and heavy breathing. He picked up the phone.

'I have them here.'

The concern you have for your daughter is an example to us all, I thought.

'Thanks for looking them out,' I said. 'Did he leave an address or anything?'

Chapter
Seventeen

I knew the guy on the steps was going to talk to me. Even though the streets were crowded, I was still far enough between groups of people to be singled out for attention. Of course, he called out to the two groups as well - it was the nature of the competition round here. These guys called out to anyone and everyone. It was good business sense. Call out to a hundred; lure in maybe ten.

'Hey there, young sir,' he said. 'Looking for company?'

There was always a strange formality to these exchanges. Most of the canvas-men for the brothels and strip clubs in western Wasp were foreigners: immigrants of uncertain origin who spoke perfect and well-mannered English but didn't waste words or strive for friendly conversation. They came over as eager, but polite and respectful.

I stopped. He was a standard example of the kind: blue jeans; white T-shirt; thin, black leather jacket; hair, dark and cropped short. He was sucking on a weedy roll-up and not paying too much attention to the people he was talking to. But when he noticed that I'd actually stopped, he went into the next stage of his banter.

'Hey, young sir, we've got everything inside here. We got the best girls, girls that will love you. We got shows. We got private.'