Clean Cut

Chapter Fourteen

Anna was just entering the incident room back at the Hampshire station to type up her report, when she stopped. Harry Blunt was in full throttle.

‘I don’t effing believe it! How come you get just a bloody limb of a guy and, within weeks, you got an ID and a suspect banged up? We’ve been running around like blue-arsed flies, trying to track down this bloke Sickert plus his two kids, and we’ve got sweet FA!’

Frank Brandon was sitting with his back to Anna, perched on a desk. ‘Well, you can call it exceptional, dedicated policework, pal.’

‘Hello Frank,’ Anna said.

He turned and grinned. ‘Eh, how you doing? I was just telling Harry here we got lucky; seems your team are a bit out on a limb.’ He laughed.

‘Well, we did get a break today,’ she said, crossing to her desk. ‘So, what brings you out here?’

‘Joining your team, of course. From what I’ve gathered, you need all the help you can get.’

Across the room, Harry raised his eyebrow at Anna. ‘What’s the break you’ve got?’

Anna told him they had a registration number for the white Range Rover seen at the site of the murder of Carly Ann; Mike Lewis was running it through the DVLA computers to discover the owner/driver. Starting to type up her report, she asked where Langton was.

‘Gone down the East End to see some voodoo doctor; Grace is with him.’ Harry came and leaned over the back of her chair. ‘What else did you get this morning?’

‘Well, for one, Carly Ann was a stunner; she was clean, off heroin, off the game and living with a community carer called Dora. The white Range Rover seen at the murder site was often parked by her flats; Dora said she thought the driver might have been Carly Ann’s pimp.’ Anna stopped typing. ‘She also had some very good quality jewellery. If it was her pimp, he was paying well, or keeping her in bling.’

‘Did this Dora know anything about who Carly Ann was working for?’

‘No, she never discussed it. My feelings are, whoever was pimping for her would not have wanted her to quit. With her looks, she must have been a gold mine.’

‘You reckon the guy in the Range Rover was her pimp?’

‘If he was, he was also watching them try to hack her head off.’

At that moment, Mike Lewis walked in and flung his hands up in the air. ‘Okay, we got the registered owner of the Range Rover; he lives in Kensington. I spoke to his wife — they sold it a year ago.’ He sat glumly on the edge of Anna’s desk. ‘The geezer bought it for cash; looks like he gave a fake name and address.’

‘Any description of the buyer?’

Lewis took out his notebook. ‘Tall, black guy, well dressed in a suit, spoke good English, appeared very charming, et cetera, et cetera. Because he paid cash, they did a deal on the price.’

‘Well, we’ve got the licence plates so we can put that out — see if we get anything.’

‘Already done.’

Harry ruffled his hair. ‘Not the usual vehicle wheeled around by pimps, is it? Too noticeable. I mean, white Range Rover, black tinted windows.’

‘By the amount of gear Carly Ann had, I’d say he was a bit more than a cheap pimp.’

‘If she worked for him, maybe he didn’t like the fact she was getting cleaned up?’

Anna frowned. ‘Unless.’

Mike and Harry looked at her.

‘What if she was more than just his whore? What if he really cared about her? What we need to do is try and trace anyone who knew her before she went to live with Dora; see if they can give us a clue as to who this guy was.’ She turned to Mike. ‘You have anything on record from your case?’

‘I’ll go and check; I think we did question a couple of girls.’

As Mike walked back to his desk, Harry said heavily, ‘Clutching at straws again. I mean, this is a new line of enquiry. Meanwhile we’re hovering around, looking up our own bumholes, waiting for a break.’

‘You never know, Harry, this might just be it. Do we have any trace on Camorra yet? If he’s living in Peckham, somebody must know where he is.’

‘Maybe they do, but we’ve had no tip-off. We got the locals there still doing a search.’ He turned to look back at Frank Brandon. ‘What’s he been brought in for?’

‘I’d say it was pretty obvious, wouldn’t you?’ Anna joked. ‘Clutching at straws!’

‘Making the place stink like a whore’s bedroom.’

‘You’d know about that, would you?’ Anna teased.

‘No, but he’s still wearing enough cologne to knock you dead at six feet.’

Mike Lewis returned with a report sheet. ‘I got two names. We questioned both the girls; neither had seen Carly Ann for months, but before that, they hung out together.’

‘Did she live with them?’

‘Well, she used their address the second time she was picked up for ducking and diving around Shaftesbury Avenue.’

When Anna asked for their address and said she’d like to interview them, Mike shrugged and said he doubted they would still be there. It was a valid registered squat in Kilburn.

As Langton was not in the station, Anna made sure she did nothing out of order. She told the duty manager that she was trying to contact the girls and that she would take Brandon along with her. She handed in her report of the interaction with Dora about Carly Ann and, after a quick sandwich and coffee, she and Brandon left the station.

They drove in silence for a while, then Brandon asked if she could fill him in on a few areas he had not had time to catch up on.

She told him about the Krasiniqe brothers, and the fact that they hoped to find something to help Eamon in Parkhurst; if they did, they might get some information from his brother Idris at Wakefield.

‘Bloody makes me sick,’ Frank said. ‘I mean, if this bastard is holding out…’

‘He’s terrified of voodoo,’ Anna told him.

‘That’s bullshit.’

‘Maybe it is, but if you’d seen him, then you’d think differently; he was totally freaked, like a zombie. They have been trying to force-feed him to keep him alive.’

‘For what? He killed Murphy, didn’t he?’

‘Yes, but if we can get any information out of his brother, it’s worthwhile at least trying.’

‘Both illegal immigrants?’

‘Yep.’

‘Bloody insane, isn’t it? You read the papers today: never mind the flood of illegal immigrants we’ve all ready got, we’ve got a new wave coming in from Eastern Europe. Under some ridiculous fucking law, so-called human rights, we could get more than six hundred thousand Poles and others coming in. I tell you, I’m thinking of fucking emigrating to Australia. They got the right idea — shut the gates. You know how many this bloody Government estimated would be coming in? Thirteen thousand. Well, they miscalculated, didn’t they? I tell you, the Government are guilty of blatant duplicity in trying to hide the truth: they have totally and utterly failed to control immigration and we are having to bear the brunt of it all. You know what it means: schools, hospitals, housing, welfare and wages are all going to be swamped. Fucking freeloaders! My brother lives in Peterborough and they’ve got two thousand Poles coming there. Unemployment is already high, so what the hell are they all going to be doing?’

Anna stopped the car outside a large rundown house, one side covered in graffiti. ‘This is it.’

Brandon looked out of the window. ‘Pigsty. Fucking legal squat! Would you want to buy a place in this street?’

Anna got out of the car. Brandon was starting to annoy her; he sounded more and more like the bigoted Harry Blunt.

The front door was off its hinges. A couple of guys were sitting on the steps and when Anna asked if Barbara Early lived there, they just looked at her and shrugged.

‘Do you speak English?’ Brandon snapped.

They shrugged again. He pushed his way past them and Anna followed.

The dingy hallway was full of black bin bags, a stray dog sniffing at one of them. Anna knocked on one door and got no answer, while Brandon had the same result from two more. Heading down the stairs was a skinny black girl, with a leather bomber jacket two sizes too big, a pair of tight satin shorts and stacked high heels.

‘I’m looking for Barbara Early,’ Anna said pleasantly, blocking the end of the stairs.

‘She’s not here no more,’ the girl said.

‘Okay, how about Jinny Moorcroft?’

The girl hesitated. ‘What for?’

‘Nothing to worry about; we just need to have a chat to her about someone.’

‘Two floors up at the end of the corridor.’

‘Thank you.’

Anna stepped back to allow the girl to pass, just as a scruffy white boy with his hair in dreads yelled down, ‘Hey, Jinny! Will you get some milk?’

Brandon moved fast; he gripped her arms. ‘Now that wasn’t nice, was it, Jinny?’

She wriggled and tried to get away from him.

‘Okay, Jinny, we can have a chat here, or I can take you into the police station. You are not under arrest, nothing like that; we just need to know a few things about a friend of yours.’

‘If it’s Barbara, we dunno where she is. She OD’d weeks ago and they took her away.’

‘This is not about Barbara; it’s about Carly Ann North.’

Jinny seemed to deflate; she almost toppled off her shoes.

‘Is there somewhere we can talk in private?’ Anna kept her voice calm and steady.

Jinny hesitated, and then looked back up the stairs. ‘Here’s good enough.’

Anna sat beside Jinny on the filthy stairs as Brandon hovered. ‘You knew Carly Ann, didn’t you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘She lived here for a while. She gave this address when she was arrested.’

‘Yeah, top room with me and Barbara, but Barbara’s gone now.’

‘How long did Carly Ann live here?’

‘Dunno. She was here when I got my room; that was over a year ago.’

‘Did you share a room with her?’

‘Yeah.’ Jinny scratched at her hands and rubbed at her arms beneath the jacket. Her eyes were glazed and her nose had a red crust around it. Her fingernails were bitten down to the quick. She was probably on heroin, Anna thought.

‘Did you work with Carly Ann?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Did she have anyone special? A special client?’

‘No — well, not at first. She was just one of us, you know.’

‘So you worked the streets together, right?’

‘Sometimes.’ Jinny looked up the stairs and then bent her head. ‘He takes care of us, Mark upstairs.’

‘So Mark also took care of Carly Ann?’

‘Yeah, for a while, but she got into a row with him.’

‘About money?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Did he kick her out?’

‘No, he got kicked in the head.’

‘Who — Mark upstairs?’

‘Yeah. This bloke come round and said he wanted to take Carly Ann. Mark said he could go fuck himself and then this bastard beat up on him.’

‘Can you describe him?’

‘No, I wasn’t here.’

‘So did Carly Ann leave?’

‘Yeah. Well, after what happened, Mark didn’t want to get into any more aggro from them.’

‘Them?’

‘Yeah, there was a few of them come round. I dunno who they were, but they drove up and one man come in to get her.’

‘But you weren’t here?’

‘No, Mark was. They went up to our room and took her stuff. She was outside; she didn’t even come in.’

‘Do you know what kind of car they were in?’

‘Yeah, a white one. Big thing with black windows; it had been outside before, couple of times. Carly Ann came back home in it a few times.’

‘Did you ever see anyone in the car?’

‘No, the windows was black.’

‘Did you see anyone at all that came in with Carly Ann?’

‘No. She got very secretive, ’cos he was paying her a lot of dough; then she said she wasn’t gonna do any drugs nor nothing, and was gonna live with this guy. We reckoned it was bullshit, ’cos she could tell big lies. She said he was gonna look after her.’

Brandon asked quietly, ‘Was this the white car you saw outside?’ He showed her a photograph of a white Range Rover.

‘Yeah, it was like that.’

Anna looked to Brandon, then eased her body closer to Jinny.

‘We will need to speak to Mark,’ she said in a low voice.

‘Oh Christ, don’t have a go at him ’cos he’ll take it out on me.’

‘We just want to talk to him.’ Brandon headed up the stairs and Jinny watched him go, fearfully.

‘Did Carly Ann get some jewellery from this man she was seeing?’ Anna asked.

‘I dunno. If she had anything of value, she’d hide it. Mark would have it off her otherwise. He takes care of us, you see.’

Anna looked at the young drug-fuelled girl, no more than seventeen, and ripped a page from her notebook.

‘Jinny, if you decided to get away from this, call this lady. Her name is Dora. You can get help to get you off drugs — you know, to get yourself straightened out.’

Jinny looked at the piece of paper, and folded it over and over into a small square. ‘She’s dead, ain’t she?’

‘Carly Ann?’

‘Yeah. I read about it. They come here asking about her, but we didn’t know nothing. I suppose Barbara’s dead an’ all; she was shooting up meths mixed with Christ knows what. She was a nice kid.’ Jinny shut her eyes.

‘Carly Ann was brutally murdered, Jinny, so if there is anything you can think of that could help us, anything at all…’

‘They got the one that done it, didn’t they?’

‘Yes, but we think there are more people involved, and they got away.’

Jinny pointed with her foot in the stack-heeled shoe. ‘She left these, and some other gear; said she wouldn’t need it any more as she was gonna be looked after. Well, she was lying again, wasn’t she? Nobody looked after her. They done her in.’

‘So you liked her?’

Jinny nodded; her eyes filled with tears. ‘I know she told lies and stuff, but she was sort of different from us all — you know, clean, always washing herself, afraid she’d pick up something.’

There was a lot of banging coming from the floor above. Jinny looked up fearfully.

‘I gotta go an’ get some milk.’

‘Thank you for talking to me, Jinny. Please, if you want to get out of this, call that number. Dora seems a really nice woman and I’m sure she’d want to help you.’

Jinny teetered to her feet. ‘Yeah, I’ll call. Can I go now?’

Anna stood up, watching the fragile figure wearing the dead girl’s shoes totter out of the front door. The two guys sitting on the steps laughed; one put his hand up her skirt but she swiped it away.

Brandon came down the stairs; he was sucking his right hand.

‘Fucking piece of shit. He threw a punch at me, so I got one back at him and he tried to kick me in the nuts! He missed — but I didn’t.’

Anna walked out of the door, passing the two lounging boys; she looked at them, almost daring them to touch her, but they cowered away.

Back in the patrol car, they headed out of the rundown street, Anna at the wheel.

‘Okay, Mark identified the bloke from the white Range Rover: six feet four, black, two gold teeth, missing tooth in the front.’

‘Sounds like Rashid Burry,’ she said.

‘He told Mark to put Carly Ann’s gear into a bag, said she wouldn’t be coming round any more, and that if he tried to find her, he would wind up with his throat slit. This, I reckon, was about a year before she ended up dead. Mark was scared rigid, he said. After the bloke had gone, he looked out of the window. He said there were maybe two other men in the car, but he didn’t see clearly; she wasn’t there with them though. There was someone dressed in maybe a white tracksuit, ’cos the car door was left open, and then clothes and stuff got thrown onto the pavement, like they weren’t worth keeping. He seemed to think that Carly Ann had found some rich punter, ’cos the bloke gave him two hundred quid after kicking him around; threw it at him, and warned him not to try to look for her.’

‘So he never saw her again?’

‘Nope.’

Anna sighed, trying to calculate how long Carly Ann had to have been with the so-called rich punter before moving to Dora’s; it could only have been a matter of months. In that time, she was given a lot of jewellery and fine clothes, too much for someone just using her as a whore — unless the clients he was able to pass her on to paid big money. It made sense that if Carly Ann walked away from this person, they wouldn’t like it.

Langton had not only shipped in Frank Brandon to swell the murder team, but they now also had a mass of clerical workers and uniformed officers attached to the station. The manpower was costing a fortune. Langton’s budget was severely depleted; he had put in numerous requests for further finances. When he eventually joined the team, he looked exhausted.

He stood staring at the board, his eyes roaming over the mass of information, as everyone quietly gathered. Drawing up chairs to sit in a semicircle around him, they waited.

He gave a long sigh.

‘Okay, I tried to contact your Professor Starling about the voodoo connection, Anna, but he’s gone to Luxor on some dig or other, so Grace and I have been to various quacks, trying to get something that might help us. It seems to me that our only possible hope is to break this Idris Krasiniqe and see if he does have some information that can assist us. As you can all see, we need it. It beggars belief that, after this length of time, we are still at square one. I am not aiming fault at any one of us; we’ve all been working our butts off, but it seems we just can’t get a break. The last report in we have about the medical condition of Eamon Krasiniqe is he’s fading fast, so time is against us.’

He was about to continue when Harry Blunt raced in. Langton turned, irritated.

‘Call’s just come in from a crusher’s yard: they’ve got the Range Rover. They’ve not touched it more than to sit behind the steering wheel.’ Harry had to heave to get his breath. ‘I’ve had the squad at Scotland Yard send it over to their guys; I said to start on it straight away.’

Langton gestured to Harry for him to calm down. ‘How did it get there?’

‘Guy walked in, paid over the money, said someone had put sand in the ignition and it was screwed. He said he wanted to watch it going up the ramp to make sure they didn’t fuck around with it. They agreed and went through the deal, then had one of ’em remove the plates — got to have everything recorded. The bloke was getting real uptight, but when he sees it heading up to the crusher, he pisses off, leaving the plates behind. The boss smells something isn’t kosher, stops the machine and calls in the locals. Gov, it’s the missing Range Rover! White body, black-tinted windows and the licence plates tally!’

The buzz went round the incident room: just as they felt they were going nowhere, at last they had a break. Harry gave the description of the driver as a tall, black guy, well-dressed. He had someone waiting for him outside the yard in a red four-door Mercedes, but they didn’t see who.

No sooner had the buzz died down, when a second call came in. This time, it was Brandon who took it.

‘Scotland Yard: they’ve opened the Range Rover. There’s something in the back of it.’

The naked body was wrapped in black bin-liners. It was that of a black male, around six feet four, with cropped hair, minus a front tooth but with two gold teeth. The body had been virtually folded in half to make it fit inside the boot.

The patrol car with Langton and Anna sped up to London, followed by Harry Blunt and Brandon. The crusher’s yard was already awash with spotlights when they arrived and a team of experts was preparing to strip the car down. The boot remained open; the body had not as yet been removed.

Langton took Anna’s elbow and led her to the back of the Range Rover. The black plastic had been slit to enable them to see the dead man’s face. A scientist wearing gloves and a mask gently eased the head round for Anna to get a better view. She moved closer and, from behind her mask, asked if they could use a spatula to lift his lips, so she could clearly see his teeth.

‘Yes, it’s Rashid Burry,’ she said.

Langton nodded for them to continue working; the police would be able to confirm the man’s identity from fingerprints on record. There was little else for them to do until the scientists and pathologist were ready for them. The mortuary van pulled in, ready to transfer Rashid to the mortuary, as Langton spoke briefly to the head forensic officer. He confided quietly that they were desperate: they needed anything they could get from the car that would help their investigation. He was reassured that forensics would remove the seats and the wheels to check the vehicle inch by inch, inside and out.

Mike and Brandon remained at the yard, but Langton wanted to get back to the incident room. Returning to the car, he seemed very subdued.

Anna gave him a small smile. ‘We just got lucky. I’m sure this is a major step forwards.’

Langton wasn’t that confident. He sat in the front seat, eyes closed, as Anna contacted the station to tell everyone that Langton wanted a press blanket on the new development.

By now it was after nine. Anna was tired, but needed to collect her own car from the Hampshire station. She couldn’t think of anything more to say to him, as he remained with his eyes closed, so she gently reached out and touched his shoulder.

‘You okay?’

‘Yes.’ He rubbed his eyes.

‘You want some water? I have a bottle with me.’

‘No.’

She looked out of the window, and watched as the night traffic passed. She wanted to ask Langton about his sessions with the voodoo doctors, or cranks as he called them, but he seemed not to want any interruption. The driver drove in silence, never glancing back to her in the rear seat. She closed her eyes, then opened them quickly when she heard a soft low moan; she leaned forwards to look at Langton, but he appeared to be asleep.

Langton could feel the blade cutting into his flesh, the flash of agony erupting through his entire body. He fell forwards as the blood spurted; the slash to his thigh cut it wide open, slicing through his clothes as if they were made of butter. Then he fell backwards down the stairs. His heart pumped so ferociously he truly felt it had been hacked apart. His brain was splitting in two with the searing pain.

He wasn’t sleeping: he was wide awake.

The man grinning, as Langton’s blood sprayed over him, was the man whose face he had just seen through the slit in the black bin-liner — a face he had been unable to recall in any detail until now. But Rashid was not the man who had slashed him; he was the man standing behind his attacker. Rashid Burry had been there. Rashid Burry had witnessed the attack — and he had laughed.

Langton kept his eyes closed; he would keep this to himself. It was imperative that no one knew. If it was made public, he would be replaced — and the case was what was keeping him going through the persistent pain he had to deal with every day and night. Langton knew he was getting closer to tracking down the man who had wielded the machete. He didn’t want to find Camorra dead; he wanted him very much alive.