He glanced around, to make sure that none of his Met colleagues were in the bowlplex, before nodding gravely.
The group of teenagers stared at him, the tall boy hanging his head, one of the girls – a very pretty blonde with a nose stud, crop top and double-denim – punching the tall one on the shoulder and hissing, ‘You twat.’
‘So – were any of you here the night it happened, last Saturday?’ Patrick asked. ‘This is Wendy. Ever seen her in here?’ He took out his wallet and showed them a photo he’d printed off from Wendy’s Facebook page that morning – Wendy astride a pony, looking about twelve even though the photograph’s caption had been ‘On Holiday in the New Forest 2013’.
‘Ahhhh,’ sympathised an overweight girl whose bare muffin-top oozed over the waistband of her tight stonewash jeans, a silver belly bar almost completely hidden in the overhang. ‘She was ever so pretty.’
‘It didn’t happen in here, did it?’ the girl who’d punched the fed-hater asked. ‘My mum and dad won’t ever let me come here again if it did.’
‘No. It was round the back, opposite the bus station. But she was in here first to meet someone, so I want to know if she went there with them, or someone followed her?’
Blank faces all round.
‘Did any of you see her?’
They all shook their heads.
‘OK. If you weren’t here on Saturday, then you probably wouldn’t have. I don’t think she’d been here before. How about anyone else, your mates, who might have been? That guy’ – he pointed at the guard, who had drifted back to his vantage point halfway up the stairs – ‘says that you all hang out here every weekend. Why weren’t you here on Saturday?’
‘We were,’ chimed the prettier girl. ‘But the cops told us she – your sister – come in about 9.15 and we’ve usually gone home by then. Hardly any buses after half nine out towards Molesey.’
This was where Patrick and Gill lived, and he knew this to be true. ‘Do you all live on the 411 route, though? What about people who don’t – do they ever stay longer?’
The group all looked at one another, then the mixed-race boy said, ‘Well, yeah – the Feltham kids do, ’cos they can get the train back.’
‘Who are the Feltham kids?’ Patrick was dying to get his Moleskine out of his pocket.
The boy made a face. ‘We don’t like them. They only come here ’cos they got barred from Cineworld in Feltham.’
‘Really? Were any of them here when you left on Saturday?’
The blonde girl shook her head, making her poker-straight hair whip across into the eyes of her tubby mate, who jerked back.
‘Emily! That went in my eye!’ The two giggled self-consciously, then rearranged their faces back into sympathetic expressions.
Emily nudged her friend. ‘Wait – didn’t Foxy pull on Saturday? She was snogging the face off that chav from the Kennedy, remember?’
‘She left at the same time as we did, with him, didn’t she, so she wouldn’t have seen anything.’
The boys had started to lose interest and drift away back to their table in the café area, but it was the two girls that Patrick felt a spark of hope from.
‘Foxy? Who’s she?’
Emily shrugged. ‘Dunno. She’s always here, but we don’t know her real name. She knows all the Feltham boys, so I reckon she lives over that way, or goes to their school. I only know her ’cos she lent me her mascara in the bogs once.’
‘And she left with a boy around the same time as you did? I don’t suppose you’ve got her number, do you?’
To Pat’s disappointment they both shook their heads again. Anyway, he thought, it was probably nothing. There must have been loads of kids who were around that night and hadn’t seen anything.
‘Can I give you my number? Just in case you think of anyone else, or if Foxy shows up.’
Emily looked puzzled, as if something had just occurred to her. ‘Yeah, that’s weird actually.’ She pointed at the poster advertising the part-time jobs. ‘I thought she had an interview here today for one of them jobs. I’m sure that’s what she told me.’
Hope flared again in Patrick’s chest, stronger this time. He scribbled his number on the back of a sandwich receipt he found in his pocket and handed it to Emily. ‘Please? I’m counting on you. I’ve got to find the scum who did this to Wen— my kid sister.’ He made his eyes go round and watery, and was rewarded by the two girls’ own eyes filling up. ‘You’ve been really kind. Thanks so much for your time.’
Right, he thought, as he strode away, thanking the security guard on his way out. Next stop: Tenpin Bowling’s HR department.
Chapter 39
Day 12 – Winkler
Winkler was parked outside a coffee shop on Goswell Road, with a view of the cul-de-sac on which Mervyn Hammond’s office was based. He had sent Gareth to check that Hammond’s Jag was there and to confirm there was only one way out of the little street. Winkler wasn’t going to risk getting stuck in traffic again – he had woken up in a cold sweat last night, remembering the moment he’d stalled and everyone had started beeping at him – much smarter to wait here. Unless Hammond had a car that could transform into a helicopter, or access to a secret network of subterranean tunnels, he would have to drive past this spot.
Gareth opened the door and squeezed through the gap, being careful not to spill the coffee. Winkler took his cup and sniffed it.
‘It’s organic, right? Did you ask?’
‘Yes. Specially imported from Guatemala. Grown by peasants. Fair trade, organic and decaffeinated.’
‘Good.’ This area was full of hipsters. Usually, the hairy bastards made Winkler wish they’d bring back National Service, but he could just about forgive them if it meant he could get a decent cup of something that wasn’t going to poison his perfect body.
‘I don’t see the point of decaf coffee,’ Gareth said. ‘It’s like—’
‘A woman without a vagina?’ Winkler suggested.
Gareth spat out his caramel macchiato and Winkler laughed. Over the last few days he’d found something he enjoyed even more than winding Lennon up: making outrageous statements that made politically correct DS Batey shudder and squirm.
‘You know the old joke about why a woman has legs?’ Winkler began. ‘So she can get—’
‘There he is,’ Gareth said, clearly relieved that he wasn’t going to have to suffer the punchline.
Hammond’s silver Jag glided out of the side street and Winkler could almost hear the engine purr as it crossed the road and joined the slow-moving traffic, heading towards the crossroad.
‘Right. Here we go.’
Hammond headed past the Barbican towards the Museum of London. Winkler stayed two cars back, and could see that, again, Hammond wasn’t driving. It was his bodyguard, Kerry Mangan. Winkler had run a background check on Mangan already – he was thirty-eight; born and bred in Tottenham; joined the army in 1992 when he was sixteen, serving in Bosnia. He was discharged from the army after five years, though Winkler hadn’t been able to find out the reason for this discharge. After leaving the army he’d worked as a nightclub bouncer for a few years before getting a job as a bodyguard – or personal security, to give the role its proper title. Mangan had left the security company that employed him five years ago to work for Mervyn Hammond’s PR agency. Since then he’d been like Mervyn’s shadow, and could be seen beside the PR man in most photographs of Hammond in the press, standing beside or just behind him.
Winkler wondered why Hammond felt the need to have a bodyguard. Had he received threats? Was he paranoid because of the number of people he upset with the stories he fed to the press? Or was there a more shadowy reason? Whatever, Winkler bet that Mangan knew all of Hammond’s dirty little secrets.