‘You like them young too?’
‘She was sixteen. That’s legal where I come from.’
‘So you don’t mind raping the legal ones?’
He didn’t say anything.
I could hardly bear to look at him now. ‘What about Sam?’
‘I told you. I had some money, I wanted the business to look kosher. We were earning a lot of cash and it was getting hard to hide it under the floorboards.’
‘You went to see him.’
‘Like I said.’
‘And what happened?’
‘What do you think happened? I gave him some money and he invested it. Three weeks later, he’d made me a small profit. So I gave him more, and he invested it, and so on and so forth.’ He sniffed. Rolled his face against his shoulder, trying to dislodge a chip of glass stuck to his cheekbone. ‘What, you don’t think I can carry that off? You got a good look at my house earlier, but you missed my wardrobes. In my wardrobes I’ve got expensive clothes. Good suits. Good shoes. That’s where my money goes. Not on the house, or a car, or holidays in the Bahamas. In my business, none of that shit matters. It’s all about appearances. If you look good, people will believe anything.’
‘And you had Sam fooled?’
A movement in his face. But no reply.
‘Wellis?’
He glanced at me and then away. ‘He did due diligence on me and that was fine. I’d put everything into place in the months before I went to him, so I sailed through that. I’ve been doing this a long time, so I know what to hide, and what to keep on show.’ He pursed his lips. Dispassionate. Detached. ‘But Wren was a clever boy. He had this natural suspicion. I could see that from the start.’
‘He found out about you?’
‘He found a hole in my story. A payment I’d made. He traced it forward to the recipient, and then he found out who the recipient was. And then it all fell apart.’
‘Who was the recipient?’
‘One of the guys that brings people in for me.’
‘How did Sam know who he was?’
‘He used a CRB check, I imagine.’
‘The guy had a record?’
‘Correct.’
A noise outside.
I got down off the desk and walked to the doors of the warehouse. At the far end, a homeless man was trying to get to his feet inside one of the tunnels. An oil drum had tipped over, spilling dirt and ash all over the floor. When I got back, Wellis hadn’t moved, but Gaishe was looking over his shoulder towards us. I told him to turn around, then seated myself on the desk again.
‘What are you gonna do with us, Ben?’ Wellis said.
‘Do?’
‘You gonna kill us? You don’t seem the murdering type to me.’
I looked down at him, his eyes like mirrors, reflecting back all the pain and suffering he’d caused during his life. ‘You don’t know what I am.’
He smirked. ‘You’re not a killer.’
‘I guess we’ll see.’
The expression fell from his face.
‘So what happened after he found out about you?’
‘I told him I’d gut him if he ever breathed a word to anyone, and I’d slice up his wife while I was at it.’ He shrugged. ‘Looking back now, maybe I should have done that. But at the time, Wren was useful to me. He legitimized my cashflow.’
‘So he just carried on?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘How often did you speak?’
‘Three or four times a week.’
But there had only been one, eight-second call on Sam’s phone in the entire time he’d been dealing with Wellis. ‘You used pre-paid mobiles.’
‘Correct.’
That was why the calls never appeared on the phone records. All except one. ‘So why did you call him that one time?’
‘When?’
‘There’s a single entry on his phone records for your number.’
He looked nonplussed. ‘It was a mistake. I had his real number, in case I needed him in an emergency and I couldn’t get hold of him on the pre-paids. That day, he was pissing me off: he wasn’t answering his phone, I needed to speak to him, and the longer he was AWOL, the angrier I got. I did it without thinking.’
One tiny mistake – but enough to lead me to him.
‘Did you meet in person?’
‘Once a week in a hotel close to his work. I always liked to look him in the eyes and make sure he wasn’t screwing me.’
The hotel was the Hilton on the South Quay that Ursula had described. He just sat there in the bar by himself. Like he was deep in thought.
‘So how did he disappear?’
‘How the fuck should I know?’
‘You didn’t have anything to do with it?’
Wellis grinned. ‘What do you think? The guy was making me a shitload of cash – why would I vanish him into thin air then, when I could have done it months before when he first found out about me? If I wanted him dead, he would have been dead already.’
‘Did he take any of your money with him?’
‘No.’
‘You’ve no idea where he went?’
‘No.’
I studied him. There was nothing in his face. No hint of a lie. I looked across the room at Gaishe. He was no liar – or at least not one who could lie with any competence. ‘What about you?’ I asked, and he turned in his chair, eyes wide. ‘Do you know where he went?’
He shook his head.
I looked at my watch: 8 a.m. It was time to close this down. ‘What was the name of the girl?’
He frowned. ‘What girl?’
‘What girl do you think? The girl in your loft.’
‘What do you care?’
‘I want to find out what happened to her.’
‘What are you, her guardian angel?’
‘Just tell me her name.’
Wellis stared at me. ‘Don’t know,’ he said finally, his tone flat and even. ‘Don’t know what her real name is. Don’t know what any of the men and women we get in are called. They’re not here so I can get to know them. They’re here to make me money. They’re here for people like you and people like your boy.’
‘My boy?’
‘Wren.’
‘What about him?’
He studied me for a moment, seeing if I was playing him. Then he broke out into a smile. He glanced towards Gaishe. ‘He doesn’t know!’ he shouted across the room.
‘Don’t know what?’
He shook his head. ‘What kind of a detective are you?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Wren. He used our service once. Must have been a month before he left. Asked me if I could set him up with someone. As long as he paid the going rate, I couldn’t have given less of a shit. A customer’s a customer, after all.’
‘Who did you set him up with?’
‘Can’t remember.’
‘What was her name?’
‘Her?’ Wellis smiled. ‘It wasn’t a her, dickhead. It was a him.’
30
Finally it made sense: Wellis was the reason Sam lost all the weight. He’d come into Sam’s life, ruined it, turned it upside down and Sam was dragged under with him. He couldn’t eat. He couldn’t sleep. I knew as well why Sam never wanted to talk about his work to Julia, and why – even after the affair with Ursula Gray ended – he was working so late. Wellis was turning the screw, demanding more and more. And if Sam refused, he’d put his wife in danger.
I imagined that was also part of the reason for ending the affair. He couldn’t carry on with Ursula while he knew Julia was in the firing line. Sam was many things – a liar, a cheat, an accomplice – but he wasn’t cruel. He was never apathetic. He was conflicted, unable to articulate his feelings or admit to the world what he really was, but he loved his wife deeply. Maybe not as a wife – maybe only as a friend – but he loved her all the same.