The first arrangement Lynn had made to see Andreea clashed with a meeting Daines was due to attend at New Scotland Yard.
"How about the day after?" Daines suggested. "Morning. I'll be down in London, anyway. Staying over."
They met at Leyton underground station, a false promise of sun behind flat grey cloud as Lynn stepped out on to the High Road, Daines already there and waiting, cup of takeout coffee in his hand.
"Here." He handed it towards her. "I've had mine."
Lynn shook her head. "No, thanks."
"Wise," he said. "Poor as piss." And dumped it in the first bin they passed.
The main street was a mixture of newsagents and convenience stores, fish bars and Internet cafes, hairdressers, fashion shops and saunas; butchers advertising halal meat and four small chickens for?4.99, chemists and dry cleaners; Pound Plus discount centres and motor factors, cash-and-carry wholesalers and secondhand furniture stores; the offices of the African and Caribbean Disablement Association and the Somali Bravenese Action Group, the Refugee Advice Centre and the Leyton Conservative Club.
Signs in shop windows were written in Urdu or Farsi, Bosnian or Serbian, Greek or Polish or poorly spelt English. A poster featuring a smiling, scantily dressed girl promised a Polish Party at one of the local pubs each and every Saturday, ten till late.
They walked for fifteen, twenty minutes, barely talking, following the route Lynn had Multimapped before leaving, until, just past Leyton Midland Road overground station, they turned into the first of several tightly packed parallel roads of small terraced houses. Two more turnings, right and left, and they stopped outside a house with a pebble-dash exterior which, some years ago, had been painted a shade of bilious acid yellow, grimy patterned net at the downstairs windows, mismatched curtains higher up. A bicycle with a flat rear tyre was chained to what remained of the iron railing alongside the front door.
After a brief hesitation, Lynn rang the uppermost of two bells.
A pause, and then the sound of feet approaching.
Alexander Bucur was tall, willowy, fair-haired, handsome-cautious until Lynn showed him identification and Daines did the same. He smiled then as, introducing himself, he stepped back to invite them in. Free newspapers, fliers and unwanted mail leaned in ramshackle piles against the side wall. Vinyl floor covering petered out short of the stairs, which were bare save for the overlapping stains of spilt food and drink and dust which had collected at the edges in grey whorls.
The room he led them into was crowded and smalclass="underline" a settee which was obviously used as a bed, an improvised desk that held a computer, screen and printer, a table that was busy with books and papers and leftover breakfast things, several chairs, more books on makeshift shelves, clothes drying in front of an oil heater in the corner, a poster for a forthcoming Romanian film festival pinned to the wall above a small colour photograph of a child that Lynn had seen before-Andreea's daughter, Monica.
"If you like, I can make tea," Bucur offered.
"Don't bother," Daines said.
"Thank you," Lynn said, "that would be nice."
"Very well," Bucur said. The door to the small, narrow kitchen was open at his back.
"Andreea," Daines said. "Is she here?"
Bucur gestured towards the other, closed, door. "She is in the bedroom. She has been sleeping. She will not be long." His English, not strongly accented, was clipped but clear.
Lynn sat on one of the chairs; Daines went across to the window and looked down onto the street. The only sounds, those from the kitchen aside, were of a plane passing quite low overhead, on its way perhaps to London City Airport, and, closer to, a Silverlink train pulling into Midland Road station.
"So what are we going to do?" Daines asked testily, looking towards the bedroom door. "Let her sleep all bloody day?"
"Be patient," Lynn said.
Daines mouthed something she didn't catch.
Bucur brought in mugs of tea, milk in a carton, and an old metal container marked SUGAR.
"She's not joining us?" Daines said.
"I'll see."
Bucur went into the bedroom and closed the door behind him.
"Some pantomime," Daines said, stirring sugar into his tea.
They could hear voices, hushed but urgent, from behind the door.
"I think she is afraid to come out," Bucur said when he returned.
"Afraid of what, for God's sake?" Daines said, letting his exasperation show. He was jittery-unusually so, Lynn thought-and she wondered if this was really just about the simple question-and-answer he'd suggested.
"Let me talk to her." Lynn got to her feet. "See what I can do."
She knocked, said her name, and went in.
Andreea was sitting on the unmade bed, her back towards the door, her face turned away. She had cut her hair short and dyed it a strange shade of almost bluish black. Each time Lynn had seen her since she had witnessed the murder, she had been less and less attractive and, Lynn thought, deliberately so.
She wondered if she and Alexander were a couple and decided they were not. Speaking Andreea's name, she touched her gently on the shoulder.
"What's the matter?"
There were dark shadows around Andreea's eyes, the skin across her cheekbones stretched tight; her pallor was that of paper left too long in a drawer.
"I don't know," Andreea said. "I am tired. This job, cleaning, at night. I have only been home a few hours. And always it is difficult to sleep."
"I'm sorry," Lynn said.
"Before," Andreea said with a weak smile, "it was easier before."
Lynn said nothing.
"This other man, I have to talk to him?"
"There's nothing to be frightened of. He just wants to ask a few questions, get you to look at some photographs. That's all. And I'll be there. Come on." She took her hand. "Come on, let's get it over and done."
"Wait. Please. A moment." She looked at the mirror resting on an old chest of drawers against the wall. "You can go now. A few minutes, I will come."
"Okay," Lynn said, and smiled.
"She'll be right in," she said, going back into the room.
"Good of her," Daines said.
"She's tired," Lynn explained. "Exhausted, by the look of her."
"She works nights at a big hotel," Bucur said. "In the West End. Near Park Lane. Twelve hours, six nights a week."
"When she comes in," Lynn said, speaking to Daines, "be nice."
With a small rattle of the handle, the bedroom door opened and Andreea stepped into the room. She had brushed her hair as best she could and put makeup on her face, the lipstick too bright, the lines around her downcast eyes too dark.
When she looked up and saw Stuart Daines by the window, she gave a small jump of recognition and, for a moment, her whole body seemed to tense.
"Andreea," Lynn said, moving quickly, "why don't you sit over here, at the table?"
If Daines himself had noticed, he gave no sign. Taking a seat alongside Andreea, he was charm itself. He was sorry she was tired, understood how hard she'd been working; it was good of her to make the time to help. He was interested, he told her, in any men she might have seen with Viktor Zoukas at the sauna in Nottingham and proceeded to show her a series of photographs.
Bucur went into the kitchen to make fresh tea.
At the tenth photograph, Andreea told him to stop.
"This man here," she said.
"You know him?"
"Yes."
In the picture, black-and-white, grainy, he was standing in a club doorway, the light from the neon sign illuminating his face, the scar that ran from close by his left eye down into the dark shadow of his beard. He seemed quite tall, though it was difficult to tell for sure, strong-looking, with a broad, thick neck and large, broad hands. He was dark-haired, wearing a dark suit with a pale shirt and dark tie.
"You saw him with Zoukas?" Daines said.