According to Alexis, the burglar who had allegedly been disturbed by Sarah Blackstone hadn’t actually stolen anything. The only thing missing from the scene was the murder weapon, believed to be a kitchen knife. I found it hard to get my head around that. Even if he’d only just broken in when she walked in on him, there should have been some sign that a theft was in progress, even if it was only a gathering together of small, portable valuables. The other thing was the knife. If the murder weapon came from the kitchen, the reasonable burglar’s response would be to drop it or even to leave it in the wound. That’s because a burglar would be gloved up. A proper burglar wouldn’t need to take the knife with him in case he’d left any forensic traces. Even the drug-crazed junkie burglar would have the sense to realize that taking the knife was a hell of a risk. It’s harder to lose good-quality knives than most people think. They’ve got a way of getting themselves found sooner or later.
So if it wasn’t a bona fide burglar, who was it? I shivered as a cold blast of moorland wind caught the back of my neck. I turned my collar up and hunched into the lee of the sphinx. Sarah Blackstone posed a risk to the future of her colleagues, there was no denying that. But the more I thought about it, the less likely it seemed that she’d been killed for that. Even if her secret had been discovered, presumably no one else was directly implicated. In spite of the truism that mud sticks, in my experience it dries pretty quickly and once it’s been whitewashed over, nobody remembers it was ever there in the first place. So I could probably strike the angry/frightened colleagues.
There was no doubt in my mind that some of the babies Sarah Blackstone had made owed more to the doctor than the exercise of her skills. Her eggs had gone into the mix, and I had the evidence of my own eyes that she had cruelly duped some of her patients. Even though I’m a woman who’d rather breed ferrets than babies, I can imagine how devastating it would be to discover that a child you thought came equipped with half your genes was in fact the offspring of an egomaniac. I could imagine how Alexis would react if the child Chris was carrying was the result of so wicked a deception. It would be as well for Sarah Blackstone that she was already dead. So there was a group of women out there who, if they’d managed to put two and two together and unravel Sarah Blackstone’s real identity, had an excellent motive for murder.
And then there was Helen Maitland.
Chapter 21
The hardest part had been getting Tony Tambo to play. Briefing me was as far as he had wanted to go. Tony and his friends didn’t mind pitting me against DI Lovell and his thugs, but they drew the line at taking too many risks themselves. I knew there was no point in simply phoning him and asking him to cooperate in a sting. What I needed was a pressure point. That’s why I’d taken a trip to a certain Italian espresso bar before I’d gone to Bradford.
Every morning between eleven and twelve, Collar di Salvo sits in a booth at the rear of Carpaccio, just round the corner from the Crown Court building. Collar likes to think of himself as the Godfather of Manchester. In reality, the old man’s probably got closer links to the media than the Mafia. Even though he was born in the old Tripe Colony in Miles Platting, Collar affects an Italian accent. He has legitimate businesses, but his real income comes from the wrong side of the law. Nothing heavy duty for Collar; a bit of what Manchester calls taxing and other, less subtle, cities call protection rackets; counterfeit leisurewear, mock auctions and ringing stolen cars are what keeps Mrs di Salvo in genuine Cartier jewellery and Marina Rinaldi clothes. And definitely no drugs.
The story goes that Collar got his nickname from his method of persuading rival taxation teams to find another way of earning a living. He’d put a dog collar round their neck, attach a leash to it and loop the leash over an over head beam in his warehouse. Then a couple of his strong-arm boys would take the dog for a walk…History tells us that the competition took up alternative occupations in droves.
In recent years, with the rise of the drug lords, Collar’s style of management and range of crimes has started to look like pretty small potatoes. But his is still a name that provokes second thoughts for anybody on the fringes of legality in Manchester. Given that young Joey, the heir apparent, was supposedly involved in the flyposting business, Collar seemed the obvious person to talk to. We’d never met and we owed each other no favours; but equally, I couldn’t think of any reason why Collar wouldn’t listen.
I walked confidently down the coffee bar and stopped opposite the old man’s booth. ‘I’d like to buy you a coffee, Mr di Salvo,’ I said. He likes everyone around him to act like they’re in a movie. It made me feel like an idiot, but that’s not an unusual sensation in this job.
His large head was like the ruin of one of those Roman busts you see in museums, right down to the broken nose. Dark, liquid eyes like a spaniel with conjunctivitis looked me up and down. ‘Is-a my pleasure, Signorina Brannigan,’ he said with a stately nod. That he knew who I was simply confirmed everything I’d ever heard about him. The thug sitting opposite him slid out of the booth and moved to a table a few feet away.
I sat down. ‘Life treating you well?’
He shrugged like he was auditioning for Scorsese. ‘Apart from the tax man and the VAT man, I have no complaints.’
‘The family well?’
‘Cosi, cosa.’
Two double espressos arrived on the table, one in front of each of us. Never mind that I’d really wanted a cappuccino and a chunk of panettone. Fuelled by this much caffeine, I’d be flying to Bradford. ‘The matter I wanted to discuss with you concerns Joey,’ I said, reaching for the sugar bowl to compound the felony.
His head tilted to one side, revealing a fold of wrinkled chicken skin between his silk cravat and his shirt collar. ‘Go on,’ he said softly.
Joey was Collar’s grandson and the apple of his beady eye. His father Marco had died in a high-speed car chase a dozen years ago. Now Joey was twenty, trying and failing to live up to the old man’s expectations. The trouble with Joey was that temperamentally he took after his mother, a gentle Irish woman who had never quite recovered from the shock of discovering that the man she had agreed to marry was a gangster rather than a respectable second-hand car salesman. Joey had none of the di Salvo ruthlessness and all the Costello kindness. He was never going to make it as a villain, but his grandfather would have to be six feet under before Joey got the chance to find out what his real métier was. Until then, Collar was going to be faced with people like me bringing him the bad news.
‘His flyposting business is suffering. I won’t insult your intelligence by outlining the problem. I’m sure you know all about Detective Inspector Lovell. I’m sure you also know that conventional means of dealing with the problem are proving ineffective because of Lovell’s access to law enforcement. Joey’s difficulty happens to coincide with that of my client, and I’m offering to provide a solution that will make this whole thing go away.’ I stopped talking and took a sip of the lethal brew in my cup. My mouth felt sulphurous and dark, like the pits of hell.