‘Sorry, Bob,’ he says. ‘Cheryl, this is DI Cheyne. She’s from Scotland Yard.’
The same bovine unresponsiveness. Cheryl pouts and rolls her eyes again.
‘The Metropolitan Police Headquarters?’
‘Organised Crime Squad,’ interjects DI Cheyne. ‘You can call me Merri, if you like.’
Usually, announcing this will produce some signs of interest, but the girl just gives a don’t-care shrug of her good shoulder.
‘DI Cheyne’s not working on this case,’ he says, ‘but we think there might be a connection with something else she’s working on.’
‘Right,’ says Cheryl, suspiciously.
DI Cheyne smiles at him and takes the folder. Lays it on the table in front of the girl. ‘Cheryl,’ she asks, ‘does the name Lisa Dunne mean anything to you?’
Cheryl shakes her head, her face a mask. Cheyne opens the folder and slides the picture across the table so she can see it. ‘Well, can I ask you, Cheryl? Do you recognise this woman?’
The girl slides the photo towards her, mouth turned down. Looks up, her spidery eyebrows arched. ‘That’s Collette!’ she says. ‘I thought you said Lisa something.’
DI Cheyne and DI Burke exchange a look. Damn, it says. It really was her, then. ‘Collette?’
‘She lived in number two. Didn’t look like this when she was there, but it’s her. Where did you get this?’
‘Collette?’
‘Collette. She moved in in, ooh, early June. After Nikki went…’ she suddenly looks sick again, and her eyes fill with tears, ‘… went missing.’
‘And have you seen her lately?’
‘No.’
‘What sort of no? Can you be a bit more specific?’
The girl looks blank. DI Cheyne simplifies. ‘Can you remember when you last saw her?’
‘Not for a few days,’ says Cheryl. ‘But I didn’t really think about it. She was never going to be here long, though. I think she only took the flat for a bit, while she did some… business or something. Something to do with her mum. I don’t know, really. She wasn’t friendly, exactly. Sort of person who wouldn’t recognise you if you passed her in the street, if you see what I mean. We said hello on the stairs a few times, that sort of thing. Why?’
Chris Burke puts his prepare-yourself face on. ‘Cheryl, I’m afraid that there were some body parts in the flat that didn’t match up with the known victims. The ones in the flat, I mean. There was more in the surrounding area. Down on the railway embankment. In the old bonfire at the end of the garden.’
Cheryl looks as if she’s been socked in the face. Grips the table as though she’s about to faint.
‘Are you okay, Cheryl?’ asks the social worker. ‘We can take another break, if you need.’
‘Are you saying there were more?’
‘Um… We’ve not established it as fact. But yes. Things are pointing that way, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh, God,’ she says.
‘And there were… among the remains… you know he was keeping stuff in the freezer compartment of his fridge, right? Well, there were a couple of fingers in there. So we took prints, and ran them, and, well, they matched up with this woman. Lisa Dunne. She’s been missing for a while. Three years, as a matter of fact. We’ve been looking for her.’
‘Why? What’s she done?’
‘Doesn’t matter, now. She was a witness to something – you don’t need to know the details. But… well, we just need to confirm if this is her.’
‘Oh, God,’ she says again. She’s visibly shaken, her brown skin gone grey and her eyes as big as soup plates. ‘Oh, no. He can’t have. She was in Nikki’s room. It’s like he was…’
The police wait while the news sinks in. Well, thinks DI Cheyne. That’s one avenue shut off, and we were days off tracking her down. All that work, and Tony Stott’s still scot-free.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I know it’s a shock. But we need you to tell us what you remember about her.’
‘What do you want to know? Oh, God. I can’t take this in.’
‘I’m sure,’ says DI Cheyne gently. ‘It must be a terrible shock. But we need you to concentrate, Cheryl. For Lisa’s sake.’
Cher Farrell swipes an arm across her eyes and clears her nose. Glares at the police, the lawyer, the social worker. ‘Collette,’ she insists. ‘Her name was Collette.’
Chapter One
Three Years Ago
She wakes up with a stiff neck, slumped across her desk. The heating’s gone off and her circulation has slowed, and the cold has woken her. If it hadn’t, she’d probably have slept through until lunchtime. Wouldn’t be the first time…
She sits up, her head fogged and her mouth dry. Checks her watch and sees that it’s very nearly six. She’s tired. She’s always tired, these days. Night work really only suits the very young, and Lisa’s thirty-four – no spring chicken, in clubland. As of her last birthday, some of the girls who work here are literally young enough to be her daughter, and she’s feeling it. She used to get through the cashing-up by four-thirty on a Saturday morning, but tonight even the quadruple espresso she took up to the office hasn’t kept her awake.
She pushes herself up from the chair and stretches. At least she’s finished. She remembers, now, deciding that maybe she’d take ten minutes just to close her eyes before she took the cash to the safe, to try and ensure she wouldn’t crash the car on the way home. I’ve got to leave this job, she thinks. I don’t want to spend my nights seeing men at their worst, all slavering with lust and googly-eyed from whatever they’ve been at in the toilets, and I’m too old for these hours. These hours and the stress and the worrying I might end up in jail.
None of it adds up. It never does. She knows how many bottles of champagne are left in the cellar, and how many there would be if they’d sold them in the numbers the bar tabs add up to. It’s the same every week. Two hundred people in the club on a good night, and though sometimes they’re footballers or the modern robber barons of the City, slumming it among the tarts and the yobs, or silly young actors who think their stint in the soap they’re in will last for ever, £998 for a bottle of champagne is still steep enough to make them think about the choice between drink and dance; and most of them opt for a bottle of Absolut at four hundred and fifty pounds and a bunch of private dances at fifty pounds (plus tip) a pop. But every Saturday, according to the bar tabs, they sell a hundred, hundred and fifty bottles of fizz. And all of it paid for in cash.
She slaps herself about the face a couple of times to try to wake herself up. Come on, Lisa. Sooner you get this finished, the sooner your day off begins. You can think about this when you’ve slept. Think about handing in your notice before there’s police swarming all over this place. The Adidas bag is back by the desk, where Malik always drops it after he’s been to the bank in the morning. She picks it up and starts counting the bundles of notes into it, one by one. For God’s sake, she thinks – some of them are still in their wrappers. He’s not even trying to make the notes look used any more.
Of course she knows what Tony’s up to. Basildon lads with no obvious source of capital don’t end up owning nightclubs by twenty-six, with no investors. But a place like Nefertiti’s – yeah, get the pun; great name for a lap-dancing establishment, all flash and splash and paps on the door – is a licence to print money. Or if not print it, at least wash it greyish clean. That’s why he makes sure they’re always in the papers, why he bribes the grabby whoremongers of sport and pop and TV to come here with free drinks and girls all night in the VIP lounge. Get a reputation for being where the high rollers go, and nobody will question what you claim they spend, because everyone reads about such crazy profligacy every day in The Sun and everybody knows that footballers are stupid. Those clubs in town, the big ones, can take half a million easy on a Saturday night, on maybe twenty grand’s worth of booze, though they probably actually hand over some goods in exchange for the money, of course.