‘And he went out again when?’
‘Next night. The Saturday. He wasn’t scared. I know when he’s scared, it wasn’t like he wasn’t in control of whatever it was…’
‘But he didn’t come back…’
She lit a fresh cigarette with the onyx boulder. ‘You could see his office… the police did,’ she said, standing. It was the spare room next to Alice’s. There was a PC, a card file box, and a telephone and fax. He clearly liked to bring his work home. Dryden flicked through the card file. Each one was for a separate job – the client’s details poorly spelt out in childish capital letters.
‘Bob Sutton Security,’ she said, and at last began to cry. ‘The job was the best he could get after the army. He didn’t have much of an education – no certificates. Nothing. It’s tough when you’re his age.’ Alice came in and wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck.
‘In the blue folder,’ she said, leading Alice away.
And they were. The same stud. Different girls, but all in the pillbox. But they weren’t pristine, like Alice’s shots, they were dog-eared, they’d been through many grubby hands.
And police statements, photocopied transcripts of taped interviews. Dryden guessed Sutton’s police contacts had come in useful again. He’d used his contacts in the lorry trade to pick up the trail of the people smugglers who’d traded in the pornography at the same time as illegal immigrants. He’d almost certainly identified the Ritz as a dropping-off point. Then he’d made contact with the police about the man they’d arrested in connection with the pictures of Alice – which in turn had led to other interviews, other raids. In the end he’d had enough information to act. He’d gone out and found something that Saturday night. Was it the pillbox? Had he confronted Johnnie Roe and got a confession? Or had he dragged Johnnie there himself? Whose blood had been on his handkerchief? According to his wife he’d then returned the next night – the Sunday. Did he return to kill Johnnie?
Dryden picked up the blue folder and chose a page at random.
DS John Tucker: I’d like you to describe the picture if you would, Mr Shah. It’s one of those recovered from under your bed at the house in Tomkins St, Nuneaton, on the day of your arrest.
Panjit Shah: There’s a girl, isn’t there?
DS Tucker: Yes. There is, Mr Shah. What age would you say she was, Mr Shah? You have a sister I believe… aged 12. Would you say the girl in these pictures is older or younger than your sister, Mr Shah?’
Mr G. Evans (suspect’s solicitor): Is this really necessary, detective sergeant? We can all see the pictures.
DS Tucker: It would be helpful to me, Mr Evans. I think your client wishes to be helpful, does he not? His passport is a forgery and he’s no right being in the country. If he doesn’t answer the questions he’ll be back on a boat and retracing his journey… He understands that, does he?
Mr Shah: She is the same age, yes?
DS Tucker: Yes. She is – or thereabouts. Does the girl look happy, Mr Shah? Do you think so? Do you think she wanted to have sex with this man, Mr Shah?…
Dryden replaced the pictures in the folder with the statements and washed his hands before going downstairs. The two women were standing at the door, still locked in an embrace: ‘You showed the police the documents?’
‘Yes. Yes,’ said Elizabeth Sutton. ‘They took some. They seemed to be more worried about where Bob had got the stuff,’ she laughed. ‘Bob could teach them a thing or two.’
‘When he went out the second time, Mrs Sutton, what did he take?’
She shrugged. ‘Torch, I think. That’s usually in the car but he changed the batteries. It’s one of the torches they give the Red Caps, it’s got a heavy rubber covering so it can double up as a blackjack… And his nookie kit.’
‘What?’
Alice and her mother laughed. ‘His nookie kit,’ said Alice. ‘He did a lot of private detective work – mainly husbands cheating on their wives. He had to spend a lot of time sitting in the car watching, with his cameras. So he had a nookie kit – chocolate bars, sandwiches, crisps, cake… a bit of a feast.’
Dryden was standing outside now in the sunshine. The temperature was rising. ‘Anything to drink?’
‘He always took a flask of tea. But that night he took water too. Which was odd – he doesn’t even like it in his whisky. Two big bottles, Evian.’
30
Humph pointed the cab south across the Great West Fen. Dryden peered out through a windscreen made greasy with the bodies of eviscerated insects which had begun to multiply alarmingly in the continuing heat. The drought was frying the landscape now, anything left alive in the fields was sizzling on the dry, baked earth. At one crossroads an orderly line of OAPs stood dutifully waiting for the social services to take them off to the civic baths in Ely. The drought had resulted in mains supplies to several villages being cut off indefinitely.
‘Great at queues,’ said Dryden. ‘Old people.’
Humph grunted. ‘Why bother to wash?’
Why indeed? thought Dryden, lowering the window still further. The smell would have embarrassed a skunk.
A text message had been waiting on Dryden’s mobile when he got back in the cab outside Bob Sutton’s home. He’d rung Garry straight back. The Crow’s junior reporter had been monitoring emergency calls and had picked up a violent incident at the City Mortuary, outside Cambridge, where Emmy Kabazo’s body was waiting for an official ID.
They pulled off the main road at a sign which said MORTUARY with brutal simplicity. The building itself was a long, brick two-storey block in 1930s fascist style. It could have been an abattoir, and in an odd way it was. Two ambulances stood silently at a ‘goods in’ entrance. The place reeked of blood, and violence, thought Dryden, like a bull ring.
Jimmy Kabazo was standing outside the plate-glass entrance foyer with a crowbar in his hands. Even from fifty yards Dryden could see that sweat bathed his blue T-shirt. As Humph pulled the Capri up beside a police car Jimmy ran at the plate-glass doors of the main entrance and delivered a shattering blow with the iron bar. The reinforced glass splintered in a complex pattern, like expanding crystals.
Dryden got out of the cab, but carefully left the door open so that he could retreat. He understood Kabazo’s rage. If he’d read the national newspapers or listened to the local radio he’d know about the body found in the van at the container park at the coast. He’d know it was the body of the only sixteen-year-old in the human consignment abandoned by the people smugglers. In other words, he knew, almost certainly, that it was his son.
Kabazo waited for him as Dryden walked the fifty yards between them. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sure they’ll let you see him…’ said Dryden.
Tears bathed Jimmy’s face. ‘They said I had to wait – talk to the policeman.’ The water was pouring out of Kabazo’s eyes like a river over a weir. Dryden knew that anger and despair were a high-octane human emotional cocktail, so he kept a safe distance from the crowbar.
‘I was there when they found him,’ he said.
Kabazo dropped the crowbar, and in the silence they listened to it roll away. Dryden noticed that it left a thin trail of arterial-red blood in its wake.
‘It is him?’ said Kabazo.
‘I think so,’ said Dryden honestly. ‘But you must see him. You will.’
Then they heard a car skid off the main road and head towards them across the tarmac. At the wheel was DS Peter Crabbe, Newman’s sidekick, and pushy enough to be after his job once retirement had claimed a willing victim. Crabbe was insensitive, brusque, and lacked people skills to the same degree that deserts lack water.
Jimmy ignored him. ‘You were there?’
Dryden nodded and held out his arms. ‘We should talk. Inside?’