‘It was so I could send him a receipt,’ I admitted.
‘Right. Like he fucking cared where that ended up. Anyway, the real Stephen Torrington lived in Maida Vale – and he doesn’t fucking live there any more. I’ve got the address if you want it, but my advice is to stay clear.
‘Place of death was the living room: some of the furniture had been moved to clear a big space – killer with a sense for the theatrical. The entire place had been ransacked. Every drawer, every cupboard, everything hauled out and strewn over the floor. Like there’d been a search, the file notes said, but they were just guessing. With the place being so messed up, they couldn’t even tell if anything was missing. And they couldn’t figure out what had happened to the girl.’
‘Abbie,’ I breathed.
‘Yeah, her. They knew there was a kid even without going through any records on the Torringtons, because there was a room that was obviously a kid’s room. That had been turned over, too, just like the rest of the house.’
Of course it had. And some things had been taken: I knew because except for the doll’s head in my goddamn pocket they were sitting in a big black bag in my office – a gift from the guy who called himself Steve Torrington. I imagined him raking through Abbie’s things with her real parents lying murdered in the room below, and I was filled with an unreasoning rage at my own naivety. No wonder he’d sent the woman back to the car: whoever the fuck he was, he knew his own acting skills were up to the job, but he didn’t want to have to rely on hers. And he was right: he’d got the grief spot-on, mostly – except that grief isn’t usually that articulate. I should have known. I should have smelled something.
But if I had, what would I have done? Refused to take the case? Abbie was dead – that much I knew, because I’d touched her spirit across the London night. And I’d felt the choking well of unhappiness that was all she’d known back when she was alive.
Lies or not, I’d taken on this job because of her: so, fair enough, I’d see it through because of her, too. Right then I hoped that meant that somewhere along the way I’d be running into the soi-disant Steve Torrington again, so that I could salvage some of my self-respect with the judicious application of a tyre iron.
That image made me think about ‘Mel’s’ bruises. They were just there for effect, I was suddenly sure: a stage prop to engage my sympathy and maybe to explain the relative awkwardness and lack of expression in her voice. This bastard didn’t miss a trick – and he didn’t care who he hurt.
‘So what do the cops think happened?’ I asked, pulling my thoughts off that particular track with a twinge of unease.
Nicky gave a one-handed shrug. ‘They don’t know a thing,’ he said. ‘At least, nothing that’s on file as yet. They analysed the bullets six ways from breakfast, so they’ll know the gun when they find it. Guns, sorry – two different weapons. But there’s nothing in their ballistics database to say whether either of them’s ever been used in any other crimes, so that’s a dead end for now. They dusted the place for prints, got nothing apart from the ones that should have been there anyway – not even virtuals. Retrieved a few footprints, which again will only help in nailing the perps once they find them.’
‘Statements from the neighbours?’
‘Nobody saw, nobody heard. Bits of street gossip creeping in here and there, though. Some people thought it was just a matter of time. The Torringtons were lowering the tone of the place, apparently. Lots of undesirables turning up at the house all hours of the day and night. One guy in particular seen going in and out a lot: tall, well built, in a long leather coat, with two goons dancing attendance like he was God. They figured he was either a gangster or a record-company producer. Maybe both. There’s a complaint on file with social services. One of the neighbours was worried enough about all the coming and going to raise a query about whether the Torringtons might be paedophiles, farming Abbie out for abuse.’
I froze with my glass half-raised to my mouth. That would certainly explain the misery.
‘And?’ I prompted, both wanting and not wanting to hear the answer.
‘One follow-up visit, records appended to the file. I couldn’t access everything, but I gather Abbie seemed to be a healthy, normal girl. A little solemn and preoccupied, but well fed, well looked after. Room was nice, clothes were neat and tidy, she checked out okay at interview, you know the drill. “Did not display precocious knowledge of or concern with sexual matters.” No smoking pistol – not even any powder burn. Sorry to bother you, sign off, hit the road.’
‘But there was something going on there,’ I mused, grimly. ‘Lots of visitors. Some of them regulars. Turning up often enough for the neighbours to clock them and take notes. What were the Torringtons up to?’
‘Selling drugs?’ Nicky said. ‘Cosmetic surgery? I deal in data, Castor, not reading fucking fortunes. What I got, you’ve now had. As of now, that’s the entirety of what the Met have managed to nail down since Saturday night. Abbie is officially missing, her parents are indisputably dead. I know you see a lot of ghosts in the way of business. You ever been hired by them before?’
For once, Nicky didn’t even laugh at his own joke. He’d caught the edge of my sombre mood, and of course he was still choked with me for souring his arrangement with Imelda.
I took another slug of whisky, didn’t even taste it.
‘What about Peace?’ I asked. ‘You dig up anything else there?’
Nicky turned coy – the way he always does when he’s got something really eye-popping to tell me. ‘Yeah,’ he admitted, ‘a little. I don’t know how much of it is strictly relevant, though.’
‘Meaning—?’
‘Meaning it’s mostly old. Lifestyle stuff. Not the kind of intel you could use to find out where he is now.’
‘Tell me anyway,’ I suggested.
Nicky flared up, coyness giving way to the irritation that was still slow-burning underneath. ‘Castor, I am not exactly in your fan club right now. It hacks me off when you talk to me like I’m some kind of skivvy you can just—’
‘Please,’ I amended. ‘Pretty please. Pretty please with sugar on the top.’
‘Better. Well, it’s a case of the more you dig, the more you find. That charge sheet I mentioned runs to more than one page – wherever Peace lays his hat, he starts some kind of trouble. After that army tour I told you about he found a way to turn his training to good account. He became a merc – signed up with some private security firm in the Middle East that had a very nasty name for itself, but then half the board got locked up for trying to trigger a coup in Libya and he was out on his ear again.’
There was something in Nicky’s eye that told me he was saving the best till last. Under other circumstances, I might have been short enough on patience to yell him out about that: tonight I decided I’d better humour him.
‘Anything else?’ I asked, playing straight-man.
‘Yeah. Since you ask, there is.’
‘Go on.’
‘Peace filed suit back in 1999, under the jurisdiction of the state of New York. Against Anton Fanke – you remember, the Satanist guy I told you about before? – and a woman whose name appears on the affidavit as Melanie Carla Jeffers, a.k.a. Melanie Carla Silver, a.k.a Melanie Carla Torrington.’
I swore aloud, and Nicky nodded his head in agreement. ‘Yeah, it’s a peach, isn’t it? Only that’s not the part that made me prick up my ears. Get this: it’s a suit for custody. Plaintiff alleged that defendant was unfit to be a parent, and asked the court to award him guardianship rights over . . . well, you can see this coming, so there’s no point drawing it out.’
There was a roaring in my ears: I couldn’t tell how much of it was the fever, how much the adrenalin surge as my mind raced ahead to where Nicky was going.
‘A little girl named Abigail?’ I hazarded, my voice sounding hollow and fuzzy in my own ears.