Chelsea Mansions

NINETEEN

I t was Sunday afternoon before she got the call from Bren that all of the laboratory tests had been completed, and everyone except Brock, Yilmaz and Namono was in the clear.

‘I’m going home for a long hot bath and bit of home cooking, Kath,’ he said. ‘You’ve no idea how wonderful that sounds.’

‘You should take tomorrow off.’

‘No way,’ he said. ‘I want to be there when Gloria gets the call from Mr X. I’ve told everyone to be there for a morning briefing.’

‘Okay, see you then.’

She put the phone down and set off for the hospital again, but still there was no change in Brock’s condition; he was feverish and looped up to a drip, oxygen and monitors.

At the Monday morning meeting Kathy had a long list of actions that she wanted taken to cover gaps that she’d identified in their investigation so far. She wanted the complete phone records of all the main players for the past two weeks re-examined, cross-referenced and analysed. She also wanted the CCTV footage from Hackney, Tottenham and Chelsea searched once again for any third-party contacts that Harry Peebles and Danny Yilmaz may have had. There were a number of people to be reinterviewed, including the head of Shere Security, who had told her on the night of Mikhail’s murder that they would be carrying out an internal review of what had happened. There were also family members to talk to again, but she wanted this left until after Mikhail’s funeral, the arrangements for which they discussed.

‘Oh and Pip,’ she added, ‘see if you can get some more samples of letters composed by Moszynski. Not necessarily to newspapers.’

All of this was routine and background to the main event that they were all anticipating that afternoon. Bren confirmed that the tap on Gloria’s phone had been authorised and established, and that they had been monitoring a stream of conversations from her business address in a small house in a quiet Chelsea mews.

‘As far as we can gather, there are no girls at that address,’ Bren said. ‘It all seems to be done by phones and the internet. Gloria is the point of contact between the punters, who get to hear of her by word of mouth or through her website, and the stable of girls that she contacts and sends out to mutually acceptable addresses. She handles all the financial transactions electronically, and keeps tabs on the girls while they’re working to make sure they’re okay. She also handles their HRM issues.’

‘HRM?’ Kathy queried. ‘What, pension plan, insurance?’

‘Yes, exactly; their private health cover, gym, hair and beauty treatments, transport, security. She’s got it all covered. We were working on building up a profile last week. It’s an expensive operation, catering mainly to wealthy foreigners visiting or temporarily resident in London.’

‘How does Harry Peebles qualify?’

‘He doesn’t,’ Bren said. ‘I can only assume he was a favour for a friend.’

‘Well, let’s hope we find out who this friend is this afternoon.’

Despite the multitude of tasks, the time dragged until two fifteen, when the sound of an incoming call came over the speakers. A small crowd had gathered in the incident room to listen in, including a phonetics expert, Dr Jenny Doyle, whom Kathy had arranged to be present.

‘Hello, this is Gloria’s Parlour.’ Gloria’s voice was warm and seductive, just this side of a pastiche of a sexy callgirl.

‘Hello, Gloria.’

Bren and Kathy exchanged a frown, trying to identify the wolfish growl.

Gloria chuckled. ‘Hello, darling. Thought it might be you. Same as usual?’

‘Four, if you please. Chloe free?’

‘Let me check… Yes, that’ll be fine.’

‘Excellent.’

‘Bye, darling.’

The line went dead.

There was an expectant hush, then Zack spoke. ‘Yes, that was the mobile number all right.’

‘Where was he calling from?’ Kathy asked.

Another long pause, then Zack said, ‘SW7 or SW3.’

‘Kensington and Chelsea,’ Kathy said. ‘Can you get a closer fix?’

‘Give us a moment.’

‘Okay.’ Kathy looked up. ‘Back to work everyone. Bren, Mickey, Pip, Jenny, gather round. Let’s see what we’ve got.’

They sat around a table and listened several times to the recording of the telephone conversation, each making notes. Then Kathy said, ‘What do you think, Jenny? What can you tell us about him?’

‘Hm, nine words, that’s all. Not much to go on.’

‘Best guess.’

‘Well, on the face of it it’s Standard English RP-Received Pronunciation. Probably what we’d call Conservative RP, associated with older speakers of certain backgrounds, such as Home Counties, upper middle class. But it sounded to me like he wasn’t using his usual voice. Did you get that impression? Like he was playing the part of a roguish Don Juan, for her benefit, as if this was a game they’d played before.’

‘Yes.’ Kathy nodded. ‘She seemed to respond in the same way once she recognised him. But you think he’s a native English speaker?’

‘Rather than Russian, you mean? The trouble is, RP is what’s usually taught to people learning British English, and there’s so little to go on with accent and register. That phrase “if you please” sounds to me like a native speaker. But he may just be a good mimic.’

Zack at his screens called back over his shoulder. ‘Within a hundred yards of South Kensington tube station.’

‘Can you track it?’

‘Sorry. He’s switched it off.’

‘Damn.’ Kathy looked at Bren, who was tapping his pen impatiently on the table. ‘What do you think?’

‘What does “four” mean?’ he said. ‘Is he asking for four girls? Or is that code for the kind of service he wants? Or is the meet at four o’clock?’ He checked his watch.

Kathy looked over to Zack. ‘Check Gloria’s website, Zack. Does she advertise a Chloe?’

Bren shook his head in frustration. ‘I thought they’d confirm the meeting place, at least. They gave nothing away. It’s as if he knew the line was tapped.’

‘Yeah, he’s careful, isn’t he?’ Mickey said. ‘A phone he uses only to talk to Gloria, and then says as little as possible in a made-up voice.’

‘Yes, there’s a Chloe,’ Zack said, and they went over to look at the images on his screen of a pretty, wide-eyed blonde girl. ‘Looks young, doesn’t she?’

‘Let’s hope we’ve heard of her,’ Kathy said, and ordered everyone available to drop what they were doing and join in a search of the PNC database.

It was almost three thirty p.m. when they came upon Abigail Courtney Tierney, age twenty, charged three years before with four counts of shoplifting from stores in Saffron Walden. The woman in the police photograph lacked the make-up and hair styling of Chloe on Gloria’s website, but the similarities were nevertheless striking. A check of her driver’s licence and phone records gave an address in a modern waterfront apartment block, just across the Thames from Chelsea, in Battersea.

They took two unmarked cars, arriving at the riverside development at three minutes to four. Kathy went to the entrance door and spoke on the intercom to a resident caretaker, who let her into the lobby, a place of glass and marble that might have served as an upmarket art gallery.

‘We’ve had reports of a serial rapist operating in the area,’ Kathy said. ‘Targeting young women living alone. We’re checking possible people at risk.’

He took her into his office and gave her the names of three single women residents of the block, one of whom was a Ms Abi Tierney.

‘Do you know if any of them are at home at the moment?’ Kathy asked.

A check of the security system showed that the alarms in two of the apartments were activated, whereas that in Ms Tierney’s apartment was switched off.

‘I saw her come in half an hour ago,’ the caretaker said.

‘Alone?’

‘That’s right. Lovely young lady. She’s a model. You want to speak to her?’

‘No, we don’t want to cause panic. This may be nothing. Do any of these women bring men back here, do you know?’

‘Well, I don’t spy on them, but no, not really. Even Ms Tierney, attractive as she is, doesn’t have a boyfriend to my knowledge.’

‘Right. I noticed you’ve got a camera at the front door. I’d like to check your recordings if that’s okay. Say the last couple of weeks?’

‘Not a problem.’

Kathy returned to the car with the disks and they settled down to wait. By five p.m. the only people to enter or leave the building were a young woman with two small children.

When they got back to Queen Anne’s Gate they ran the CCTV images for the previous Monday afternoon. Once again, Abi Tierney had returned to the block mid-afternoon and not left again until seven that evening. But on the following day she had done the opposite, leaving her apartment at three thirty and returning at eight.

‘That makes sense, doesn’t it?’ Kathy said. ‘If he wants a particular girl, it would be a bit late to phone up that same afternoon and hope she’d be free. Maybe he phones the day before the meeting. We’d better go through all of this footage and get a timetable of her movements last week. The appointment could be for four o’clock two days later, or three.’

‘If that’s what “four” means,’ Bren grumbled. ‘And if Abi Tierney is Chloe.’

‘Come on, Bren,’ Kathy urged. ‘Abi didn’t get herself a luxury Thames-side apartment by shoplifting.’

After an hour they had established that, as far as they could tell from the CCTV records, Abi could have kept a four p.m. appointment elsewhere on any day of the previous week apart from the Monday.

‘Then we put a tail on her,’ Kathy said, ‘and identify all of her clients until we find something.’