‘Thought you’d like to know,’ said Hunter. ‘Pete Jones the bar manager didn’t see Dolly that night. She shouted through the door.’
‘So…’ said Annie.
‘So possibly it wasn’t Dolly Farrell who answered. Quite possibly it was another woman in there with her.’
Maybe it was Sarah and now she’s just acting all shook up to throw us off the scent, thought Annie.
But she didn’t think so.
Maybe Caroline?
And then she thought of Nigel, with his high-pitched, almost womanly voice.
100
When they got to the block of flats in Stepney where Caroline lived before she started jumping Gary Tooley’s bones, they went up to the second floor in a piss-stinking lift, then past graffiti-clad concrete walls and along a covered walkway strewn with dead pot-plants and grimy lines of washing. When they reached the flat door, Max hammered on it. Nobody came. Max hammered some more. There was a murky window beside the door, but they couldn’t see in; the curtains were closed.
‘No one here. Was this her parents’ address?’ said Annie.
‘No, she shared it with a flatmate. I remember Gary saying so.’
‘Well, the flatmate ain’t here then.’
‘Let’s see,’ said Max, and stepped back and kicked the door. It juddered back on its hinges, the lock shattered. ‘After you,’ he said, standing aside.
Annie stepped straight into a grubby-looking living room. It wasn’t exactly Ideal Home Exhibition territory in here. There was a cheap sofa, with a dirty red-and-blue woven Indian rug thrown over it. Hectically patterned carpeted floors that had seen much better days. A Bush TV with an inch of dust on top. A scratched and stained teak G-Plan coffee table cluttered with empty cider cans and the remnants of last night’s takeaway meal. Not a lot else.
‘I can hear something,’ said Max, pushing in front of Annie and moving along a dingy hall. He toed open a door and there was a bedroom, thin purple curtains still pulled closed, a crumpled bed and a dark-haired girl half-sitting up, looking in surprise at the two who had just busted their way in here.
‘What the fuck…?’ she wondered, rubbing her eyes and then her sleep-matted brown hair.
Annie looked around at this shit-hole and tried not to inhale. There was a crack pipe on the bedside table, burned-out matches, another cider can. The bedding smelled stale. The girl was blinking at them as if they’d landed from Mars.
‘Hi,’ said Annie. ‘And you are…?’
‘What the fuck…’ demanded the girl again, her tone turning angry.
‘We’re looking for Caroline. Used to be your roomy, right?’ asked Annie, as Max moved off further along the hall. She could hear him opening drawers, looking in cupboards.
‘Yeah, she did, but what the fuck are you doing in my flat? Get the hell out, right now!’
Max came back. ‘The other bedroom’s empty,’ he told Annie. ‘Nothing in there at all. I suppose all Caroline’s stuff was still in the wardrobes over at the Palermo? The police checked that?’ He looked at the girl in the bed. ‘You – did Caroline leave stuff here? Has she been back? Have you seen her in the last couple of days?’
‘I ain’t seen Caroline in months,’ said the girl. ‘She’s too hoity-toity to talk to me now. Moved on up, kicked all her old mates aside. Got herself a nightclub manager, I heard. Too good for the likes of me now. And I ain’t been able to find another girl to share. The landlord’s tearing his hair out for the rent, but what can I do? I ain’t got his money. Is that it? He sent you to get it? Well, good luck with that, because I don’t have it.’
‘We’re not here for the rent. So you haven’t seen Caroline?’ asked Annie.
‘No.’
‘Really?’ asked Annie. She moved closer to the bed. The girl in it leaned back, sensing trouble as she stared into Annie’s eyes. Annie grabbed a hank of dirty hair and shook the girl’s head about. It made her damaged rib shriek, but she didn’t care.
‘Hey! Come on!’ yelled the girl, squirming.
‘Only, if I find out you’re lying, you see that pipe there?’ said Annie. ‘I’m going to get this bloke here to shove it up your arse sideways. And that, I promise you, is going to hurt.’
‘I ain’t lying! Let go of me, you raving nutter.’
‘Sure?’ Annie picked up the pipe and eyed it.
‘Sure!’
‘Damn, that’s a shame,’ said Annie, and moved suddenly. Pain gripped her middle as she pulled the girl’s head over to one side, shoving hard at her shoulder, and flipping her over like a landed fish. The girl let out a piercing yell that was instantly muffled by the pillows. She looked at Max. ‘Stick this thing up here, will you?’
‘Look, just hold on!’
‘For what? Fucking Christmas? I don’t think so.’
Max came over and picked up the pipe.
‘No! Don’t. All right. I saw her today. This afternoon. She came here. Let me up, you cow, I can’t breathe!’ It was a yell of pure terror. ‘Just stop, OK?’ she panted. ‘There’s no need for this, I saw her. Just stop.’
Annie stopped. She released her hold on the girl and the girl pulled her head out of the pillows and scrabbled back against the headboard. She eyed Annie like she was unhinged.
‘You’re both mad,’ said the girl, her voice shaking.
‘Remember that,’ said Annie.
‘All right! She said not to tell, but what the hell, it’s my arse on the line, not hers. Caroline said it had all gone tits-up at the club and she was leaving. She had some clothes here and she took them, she looked scared to death – I mean really, honest-to-God, shit-scared – and she said she was going to her folks’ place and not to say anything and I wouldn’t see her again anytime soon.’
Annie exchanged a look with Max.
‘Where’s her folks’ place?’ he asked.
‘Ibiza,’ said the girl.
101
‘Fuck,’ said Max on a sigh as Annie picked up the payphone.
‘What?’ she asked, dialling. They were squished into the phone box outside the block of flats, it was raining, and Annie was doing something that Max would never, ever do.
‘We don’t call in the Bill,’ he said, for the third time.
But Annie shook her head. ‘In this case? We do. They can get straight through to passport control at Gatwick and stop her. By the time we get there to do it, she’ll be gone.’
‘Something going on, you and this “Hunter” dickhead?’
‘What?’
‘You heard. You seem very pally with him, is all I’m saying.’
Annie stared at him. ‘Oh sure. I’ve been fucking his brains out, him and Constantine.’
Max looked grim. ‘Not funny.’
‘Am I laughing?’ Annie clamped the receiver to her ear. ‘Yeah, hello? I need to get a message to DCI Hunter, it’s urgent. Is he there?’
Hunter was. Annie relayed the information they’d just received to him, put the phone down and looked at Max.
‘They’ll stop her,’ she said.
‘All right. So now what do we do, genius?’ They extracted themselves from the phone box and as they did so a cyclist zipped up and stopped right beside Annie. No pizzino this time. A slim man, dark glasses, helmet. Could be anyone.
‘What’s this?’ asked Max.
‘Constantine’s been asking for me.’ Annie looked at the cyclist. A thin, fit young man, totally anonymous, speeding through the London streets delivering messages on the order of his masters. ‘I can’t come,’ she said to the man. ‘Not yet. Soon. Tell them.’
The cyclist gave the briefest of nods and shot away, weaving through the traffic; almost instantly, he was out of sight.