‘Yes.’ Mrs Grunwell was twisting the handkerchief between her gnarled fingers. ‘How can someone do something like that, Mr Banks? Kill a poor, defenceless young man and put his body in a rubbish bin. I’m frightened. What if they come back? What if it’s a drug gang? What if they think I might have seen something?’
‘I wouldn’t worry about that, Mrs Grunwell. Half the street might have seen or heard something. The gears screeching or the noise from the bin. They can’t come back and eliminate everyone.’ He realised before he finished that he never should have opened his mouth.
Mrs Grunwell put her hand to her chest. ‘Eliminate? Do you think it could come to that?’
‘Of course not. And there’s no evidence of gang involvement. I can understand why you might be frightened, but really there’s nothing to worry about. Perhaps it would make you feel more at ease if there’s someone you can call. Your children, perhaps?’
‘They flew the coop years ago. One lives in Inverness and the other in Toronto. Couldn’t get far enough away. Besides, they’re all grown up with families and responsibilities of their own. I’m a great-grandmother, you know. But there’s Eunice. Eunice Kelly. She’s my best friend. She used to live right next door but now she’s in sheltered housing out Saltburn way, by the sea.’
‘Do you think she would come and stay with you if you explained the situation? Would it make you feel better to have a friend nearby?’
‘Oh, yes. I think so. But I’d rather go and stay with her until you catch whoever did this. She’s not got a lot of room, but I’m sure she would clear a little corner for me. I don’t need much. And a few days at the seaside would do my nerves the world of good.’
Banks nodded. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘We can handle that. Will you ring her and make the arrangements, and I’ll make sure we get a car to drive you to Saltburn. Until then, there’ll be a police officer posted by your door.’
‘Really? You can do that?’
‘Of course I can,’ said Banks. Edith Grunwell didn’t need to know that they didn’t have a budget yet. Hadn’t even got the green light for a full investigation. But they would, Banks felt certain. There was no doubt that it was murder, and a nasty one at that. And the victim was so young, not to mention Middle Eastern. Besides, if Area Commander Gervaise didn’t approve the budget, then he would bloody-well drive Edith Grunwell to Saltburn himself.
Trevor. Zelda realised she had never known Hawkins’s first name until now. ‘Dead?’ she repeated. ‘I can’t believe it. How? What happened?’
Danvers arranged a row of coloured paperclips and rubber bands on Hawkins’s blotter. The gesture annoyed Zelda, perhaps as much for its prissiness as for its presumption. To her, it was still Hawkins’s desk. His paperclips. His rubber bands.
‘That’s a matter for the coroner to decide,’ Danvers said. ‘What we’re interested in is any information his staff feel might relate to his death.’
‘Are you saying he was murdered?’
‘Why would you assume that?’ Deborah Fletcher butted in from the sidelines.
‘Because you said there were suspicious circumstances.’
Deborah shrugged. ‘That could mean anything.’
Zelda could see her co-workers, pale and worried, at the far end of the office. It had never been a joyous place to work, and she hadn’t really felt that she had got to know any of the others at all well. She hadn’t been fully accepted by them, had always been regarded as some kind of freak, an outsider. But now Zelda felt the beginnings of a strange bond with the people behind the glass. She turned to face Deborah Fletcher. ‘Perhaps my assumption has something to do with the way you’re questioning me,’ she said.
‘Been questioned in a murder investigation before, have you?’ Danvers asked.
Zelda froze. The department knew quite a lot about her and her past, naturally, but she was sure they didn’t know everything. Not about Darius, surely. ‘That’s absurd,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think it was an unreasonable question.’
‘Well, seeing as you ask,’ Danvers went on, ‘no, we don’t think Mr Hawkins was murdered. We don’t think anything yet. But I’m sure you understand that, given his position, given the work you all do here, questions have to be asked. So I’ll repeat my question: do you know anything that might relate to his death?’
‘How would I know anything about his death? I’ve only just heard about it from you and, quite frankly, I’m a bit upset.’
‘I’m sorry we were so abrupt.’ Danvers gave Deborah a sharp glance. ‘It’s been a long day already, and not even noon. Is there anything at all you can tell us? Did you never socialise as a group? It would be perfectly natural.’
‘No. At least, I never did. There was a sort of department mixer at his house a while ago, but that’s all.’ Zelda gestured towards the partition. ‘I can’t speak for them because I am only part-time. Very part-time. I only work here for two or three days each month, usually.’
Danvers raised a bushy grey eyebrow. ‘Yes, that’s clear from your file. A civilian employee. And the rest of your time?’
‘Is really nobody’s business but mine.’
‘Ms Melnic,’ said Danvers, ‘believe me, in these matters, everything I want to be my business is my business.’
‘In what matters?’
‘I think it would be best if you just answered our questions. We already know, for example, that you’re an artist, going by the name of “Zelda”, and that you live in North Yorkshire with another artist called Raymond Cabbot, who is more than forty years your senior. You say you were abducted some years ago and forced into the sex trade. We know you met Mr Cabbot in London three years ago, then lived with him in an artists’ colony in St Ives for some time before moving north about a year ago.’ Danvers smirked and tapped the folder. ‘See. It’s all in there. At my fingertips.’
How little you really know, thought Zelda. Even so, she felt a surge of anger at the way Danvers laid out his facts as if they were accusations, or evidence of moral lapses on her part, at the very least. ‘You say you were abducted.’ An artist ‘going by the name of Zelda’. Like the artist previously known as Prince, she thought. ‘More than forty years your senior.’ She never thought of Raymond in that way. He was Raymond — bright, solid, brilliant, bubbling over with enthusiasm for life. Raymond. She said nothing. She was certainly not going to fill Danvers in on the details missing from his files. She folded her arms. ‘I don’t see what any of this has to do with you,’ she said.
‘Why are you so hostile?’ Deborah asked.
‘Hostile? How would you feel if you arrived at work to find strangers in your boss’s office who tell you he’s dead and start interrogating you about your past?’
‘I’d feel I was only doing my duty by answering their questions.’
Zelda paused, then said, ‘Well, I suppose that is one difference between you and me.’
‘Nelia Melnic,’ Danvers said. Deliberately pronouncing the final ‘ic’ as ‘itch’ again. ‘You’re not British, are you? That’s not a British name, is it? And, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think I detect a slight accent.’
‘I’m a French citizen. I have a French passport.’
Danvers frowned and turned to his folder again. ‘Ah, yes, for “services to the French government”.’
Zelda smiled. ‘You could call it that.’
‘What else? How did you really get French citizenship? They don’t give it out with the garlic, you know.’
‘The French value their whores, Mr Danvers. Didn’t you know that? They offered me the Légion d’honneur, too, but I turned it down. I thought that would be going a bit too far.’