Collusion

14

Lennon watched Marie McKenna’s flat for an hour, his mind working over the documents Hewitt had let him see. The windows were still boarded up, no outward sign that anything had changed since May. He often scolded himself as he sat there, parked wherever the best vantage point lay. This was stalker behaviour, plain and simple, and he hated himself for it.

Worst of all, the one night he could have done any good, he hadn’t been there. Just a day before Marie disappeared, Lennon sat in this very parking space and watched a tall thin man call at her door. When she welcomed the stranger in, Lennon had sped off, almost clipping another car. The next day he found out the man was Gerry Fegan, a known killer. Fegan had been arrested for brawling with another thug outside the flat.

Lennon asked CI Uprichard what was going on. Uprichard made a call while Lennon waited, nodded his head and grunted agreement. When Uprichard hung up, he paused, smiled and said, ‘Best just leave it.’

But Lennon didn’t leave it, at least not for a while. He asked around, begged favours, and leaned on lowlifes. All he could get was that she’d moved away in a hurry, taking the little girl with her.

His little girl.

He had put it to the back of his mind, convinced himself his daughter was lost to him, but still once every week or two he would take a detour by Eglantine Avenue. Like this evening.

The window above Marie’s flat lit up. A young man with a rollup cigarette between his lips appeared for just a moment as he lowered the shabby blinds. An idea presented itself. Lennon pushed it away. The idea resisted. He gave in, knowing it was a mistake.

Lennon climbed out of his Audi, locked it, and walked towards the flat. There were three doorbell buttons. The bottom one, the button for Marie’s flat, had no name tag. The middle one said ‘Hutchence’. Lennon held his thumb on it for five seconds, then took a step back.

The middle blind on the bay window shot up, followed by the sash pane. The young man leaned out. ‘Yeah?’

‘Police,’ Lennon said. ‘I need a word.’

The young man banged his head on the window frame as he ducked back inside. Lennon heard the frantic muttering of at least three voices from above. He guessed it wasn’t tobacco the young man was smoking.

The young man’s head appeared again. ‘Can I see some identification please?’ he asked, his voice breaking like a twelve-year-old’s.

‘If you like,’ Lennon said. He pulled his wallet from his hip pocket, opened it, and held it up. ‘I doubt if you’ll be able to read it from up there, though.’

‘I’ll be down in a minute,’ the young man said, the last word at least an octave higher than the rest.

Lennon scanned the tiny garden as he waited. Marie used to keep it pretty neat. Now litter and dead leaves gathered in the corners, and a summer’s worth of weeds had grown up through the cracks in the concrete.

A light appeared in the glass above the front door. Lennon put on his best scary cop face, ready to put the wind up the youngster. The door opened. He held his identification up at the kid’s eye level. There was no sound but the flushing of a toilet somewhere upstairs.

Eventually the kid smirked and said, ‘John Lennon? Was Ringo busy?’

Lennon gave the boy his hardest stare. ‘Detective Inspector John Lennon. My friends call me Jack. You can call me Inspector Lennon. Understood?’

The kid’s smirk dropped. ‘Understood.’

‘Is your name Hutchence?’

Yes.’

‘First name?’

‘David.’

‘What are you, a student?’

‘Yes.’

‘At Queen’s?’

‘Yes.’

‘You having a party, David?’

‘No!’ The young man held his hands up. ‘It’s just me and my flatmates. We weren’t making any noise. We’ve no music going or anything.’

Lennon leaned forward and sniffed the air between him and the kid. ‘You been smoking anything?’

‘Just fags.’ The young man forced his shaking hands together as the toilet flushed again.

Lennon stepped into the hall. ‘How long have you been here?’

‘Just a couple of weeks,’ the kid said as shuffled backwards. ‘Term only starts on Monday.’

Lennon walked past the young man and peered up the stairwell. Another kid’s head ducked out of sight on the landing above. A flatmate, presumably. ‘Who lives on the top floor?’ Lennon asked.

‘No one yet. The landlord said there’s more students moving in next week.’

Lennon pointed to the door in the hallway beyond. It had been six years since he’d left the ground floor flat, and that life, behind. ‘What about in there?’ he asked.

‘It’s empty too,’ the kid said. ‘The landlord said someone rents it, but they’re away travelling or something.’

Lennon tried the door handle. It was locked, of course. ‘Is there ever anyone around?’

‘No, there’s… oh, wait!’ The young man’s face lit up like he’d won a prize. ‘Someone picked up the post last week. There was a pile sitting there.’ He indicated the shelf above the radiator. ‘We went out one night, and when we came back, it was gone. Do you want the landlord’s number?’

No,’ Lennon said. He’d tackled the landlord not long after the flat had been boarded up and come away with nothing. He handed the kid a card. ‘If anyone ever comes around, goes in there, takes anything away, anything at all, you give me a call, all right? And I’ll pretend I didn’t smell anything funny coming from upstairs.’

The young man gave a weak smile and nodded.

‘I’ll see myself out,’ Lennon said.