January Window

49

I pulled up outside Toyah Zarco’s big white house in Warwick Square and turned off the ignition. The car’s engine pinged like a pinball machine and the trees in the communal gardens shifted uneasily in the breeze. The policeman still on duty outside Toyah’s front door eyed us patiently. In his thick coat and protective vest his body looked too big for his legs; he might have made a good goalkeeper. The press had cleared off; somewhere else there was probably another widow in tears they wanted to film and harass with questions. A man walking his dog hauled the animal away from the tyres of my car before it could piss on them. The light from the full moon shone on a neat row of Boris bikes in front of the nearby church; it looked like a series of fitness machines in some weird, twenty-four-hour gym, as if the stained-glass window of Saint whatever-it-was might at any moment turn into a giant television set. But the church reminded me that I was going to Drenno’s funeral on Friday and that I was dreading it.

‘Do Drenno’s family know what Mackie did?’ I asked. ‘And that Drenno helped cover it up?’

‘No,’ said Louise. ‘Not yet.’

‘Let’s leave it that way, can we?’ I asked. ‘At least until after the funeral.’

She nodded.

‘Thanks.’

‘This feels weird,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘It feels weird that it’s you who’s going to try to get a confession and not me.’

‘Relax. I already got a result tonight. I’m in the groove. Besides, I’m hoping I won’t have to say very much at all. That copper standing behind us should give us all the leverage I’m looking for.’

‘Just be careful. That’s all I want to say. This isn’t a game.’

‘What, and you think football is? After a match like the one you just saw you should know better than that.’

‘Maybe you’re right. What do you want me to do?’

‘You’ve got your ID?’

‘Of course.’

‘Just flash that copper your badge and put him under your command. I’m hoping you’ll do the same when you come to my flat. I like dominant women.’

We got out of the car and walked up to the policeman. Frankly, he looked pleased to see us, like a dog that has been left for too long outside a supermarket.

‘Evening, sir,’ he said. ‘Good result tonight. Mr Zarco would have been very proud.’

I’d forgotten the copper was a City fan. That was handy. ‘Thanks, Constable,’ I said. ‘I think he would.’

‘5–3. I just hope my Sky Plus was working.’

‘Let me know if it doesn’t and I’ll send you a DVD.’ I gave him my card; I was softening in my old age. I figured it was the effect that Louise Considine was having on me; she was living proof that not all coppers were bastards. Maybe there was still hope for me to become a decent, law-abiding member of society.

She showed him her ID. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Considine,’ she said, ‘from Brent CID. What’s your name?’

‘Constable Harrison, ma’am. From Belgravia Police Station.’

‘You wouldn’t have thought they needed one in Belgravia,’ I said.

‘I need your help, Constable,’ said Louise. ‘Will you come with us, please?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said, smartly. ‘What’s it all about?’

‘I’d rather not say yet,’ she replied.

I led the way down the street, to the opposite side of the square.

The mural of a house in front of number twelve rippled in the January wind as if a seismic event was about to take place in the quiet streets of Pimlico; and in a sense it was, at least for the inhabitants of the house next door. All of the lights were switched on. After the twenty grand I’d handed over they probably figured they didn’t need to worry about the electricity bill. As I mounted the front steps I glanced through a chink in the curtains drawn in front of the big window and saw Mrs Van de Merwe and her daughter reading while, sitting on the sofa, was a man watching television. But it wasn’t Mr Van de Merwe; it was another, younger, fitter man and he was watching the edited highlights of the match from Silvertown Dock on ITV. It’s odd how different a match you’ve seen live looks when you see it on television.

I rang the ancient bell and we waited a while before the bolts were drawn and the door opened to reveal Mr Van de Merwe. As he caught sight of the policeman standing behind me his Adam’s apple shifted under his collar like a small, sleepless man.

‘Oh,’ he said, in a tone of quiet resignation. ‘You’d better come in.’

The three of us trooped into the hall. Constable Harrison closed the door behind us and immediately made the house seem small. There were several suitcases on the floor, as if the Van de Merwes were going somewhere — South Africa, probably — but if I was right, a passport to Pimlico was all they were going to need for the present.

We went into the sitting room, where the sight of Constable Harrison brought everyone to their feet. Mariella folded her arms and turned away immediately, while her mother stifled a short wail with the back of her hand, and sat down again; she took out a dainty embroidered handkerchief and started to cry.

‘This is Detective Inspector Considine, from Brent CID.,’ I explained. ‘And Constable Harrison. Detective Inspector Considine has been investigating the death of João Zarco at Silvertown Dock on Saturday.’

I didn’t call it murder; I figured we had more chance of securing a full confession now if I tried to play down the gravity of what had happened.

‘Which I think you know about, Mr Cruikshank.’ I was speaking to the man who had been watching the television. He was about thirty-five years old, six feet tall, stocky, with light brown hair and green eyes, and he was wearing jeans and a thick blue woollen pullover that looked as if it had been knitted by his mother-in-law.

‘It is Mr Cruikshank, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ he said dully. He sighed and then closed his eyes for several seconds. ‘It was an accident,’ he added. ‘Please believe me when I say that I didn’t mean it to happen.’

‘I think you’d better tell us exactly what did happen,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘Yes, I think I had,’ he said.

‘Do you mind if we sit down?’ I asked.

‘No, please, go ahead.’

He pointed at the vacant sofa on which Louise, Constable Harrison and I now arranged ourselves, and then turned off the television.

‘Would you like something to drink?’ he asked.

We shook our heads.

‘Do you mind if I do?’ he said. ‘I think I need one.’

‘Go ahead,’ I said.

He helped himself to a large whisky from a bottle of Laphroaig, emptied the glass and poured himself another.

‘Dutch courage,’ he said, sitting down in front of us.

‘It’s a pity you didn’t have some of that on Saturday,’ I said.

‘Yes, isn’t it? By the way, how did you—?’

‘You were on Mr Zarco’s guest list of complimentary tickets, Mr Cruikshank,’ I said. ‘On its own, of course, that wouldn’t have been evidence that you killed him. But the piece of ceiling moulding you gave him when you met was still in his pocket when his body was recovered.’

I glanced up at the ceiling, and then from my coat pocket took out a photograph of the chunk of ceiling moulding photographed by someone at the East Ham Mortuary.

‘It matches the piece missing from this ceiling. The piece that you gave him when you were complaining about his builders next door. It was them who caused the damage, wasn’t it?’

Cruikshank nodded. ‘You’ve no idea the distress this building work has caused my wife’s parents,’ he said. ‘Day in, day out. They’re old. They’ve a right to the quiet enjoyment of their retirement.’

Mr Van de Merwe went and sat beside his wife on another sofa, and together they gave every impression of two old people who were trying to enjoy their retirement, quietly.

‘I can understand that,’ I said.

‘Can you?’ said Mariella, bitterly. ‘I doubt that very much. This whole sorry saga has driven us bloody mad, I don’t mind telling you.’

‘Please, Mariella,’ said her husband. ‘Let me handle this. By myself. The way I should have handled it before.’

‘So, Zarco gave you tickets,’ I said. ‘For Saturday’s match and tonight’s match, too. As a sign of good faith, perhaps. A little token to help continue the dialogue you’d already had in the hope of resolving your dispute.’

‘Something like that,’ said Cruikshank.

‘As if,’ snorted Mariella. ‘Trying to fob us off with some tickets, more like.’

‘That’s not fair,’ said her husband.

‘Isn’t it?’

‘Please, Mariella. You’re not helping. I liked him, Mr Manson. Well, most of the time, I did. He knew I was a City fan — have been for a while, actually — and, well, as you say, he thought that if we kept on talking we could sort out our differences. Hence the tickets. And perhaps we would have sorted something out, I don’t know. Anyway, he told me to come along to one of the hospitality suites on Saturday, before the match, so that we could talk. Number 123. It belonged to some Qatari businessmen who weren’t using it, he said. He also said that he was going to make an improved offer — for my parents-in-law to get away from the square until the building work was complete. So I went along. And we talked. We were in the kitchen, having a coffee. At first it was all very amicable. Then I mentioned that this house was going to need redecorating after his builders had finished. As you can see for yourselves, the place is covered with dust, because of the vibrations from the constant drilling. I gave him a piece of ceiling moulding that had fallen on my mother-in-law’s head last week as evidence of that. I mentioned a price — an estimate we’d had from a painter and decorator. Twenty thousand pounds. This was on top of the ten he’d already offered us. That was when he accused me of trying to cheat him. He said that he thought we were talking about a sum to enable Marius and Ingrid — that’s Mr and Mrs Van de Merwe — to get away on holiday. And now here I was asking for three times as much to include redecorating as well.

‘Anyway, I’m afraid things got a bit heated. He swore at me in Portuguese. Well, I can speak a bit of Portuguese — I used to work in Brazil. He called me a cadela. And a cona. I won’t translate that but I think you can imagine the sort of thing it means. Anyway I got angry and so I shoved him. Just shoved him, that’s all. I didn’t even hit him. He fell against the window and the whole window just pivoted open behind him for no good reason that I could see, and he went straight out, head first. I mean the window just bloody opened as he fell against it. I tried to grab him — I think I got hold of his tie — and maybe he grabbed me, I’m not sure. As his tie slipped out of my hand I lost my footing and then he was gone.

‘I heard an almighty clang as he hit something on his way down, but when I looked out of the window I couldn’t even see him. But it had to be near enough sixty or seventy feet to the ground. And it was immediately obvious that he couldn’t have survived a fall like that. At the time that’s what I told myself, anyway. Because I panicked and ran away. I got home and thought about it and I was on the point of calling the police to explain what had happened when it said on the news that he’d been murdered. And then I lost my nerve to say anything. But for that I think I would have handed myself in. Really I would. I’m not a murderer, Mr Manson. As I said before, I liked the man. I’m so, so sorry.’

‘I understand that, Mr Cruikshank.’

‘What’s going to happen to me?’ he asked Louise.

‘That’s not for me to say, sir,’ she said.

‘But what I find a little harder to understand,’ I said, ‘is why you broke into Silvertown Dock and dug a grave for Zarco in the centre of my pitch and left his photograph in it. That really wasn’t very nice at all; and hardly an accident. You want me to tell you how I know about that as well? Unfortunately you left some tools behind, Mr Cruikshank. One of them had the initials LCC on the handle. For a while I thought that meant London County Council, the forerunner of the Greater London Council. But that all seems a long time ago, even for a spade. Then I saw the name of Mr Zarco’s builders on the mural next door: the Lambton Construction Company. I was actually speaking to one of the workmen the other day and he told me they’d had some tools stolen. That was you as well, wasn’t it?’

Cruikshank nodded. ‘It was meant to be a sort of poetic justice, if you like,’ he said. ‘I just wanted him to know what it was like to suffer the kind of disruption we’d suffered here: to have someone turn your whole life upside down. Frankly I was amazed when you managed to repair the pitch as quickly as you did.’

‘Was that your idea?’ I asked. ‘Digging a hole in the pitch? Or was it your wife’s?’

I looked at the woman with folded arms who was now staring so angrily at the curtains her eyes might have set them on fire. For the first time since meeting her I had a clear sense of the hatred that lay within this woman.

‘How about it, Mrs Cruikshank? You helped him, didn’t you? I can’t think of any other reason your husband would have bothered nicking two spades from next door. For all I know you may have meant the blame to fall on some of those poor Romanian guys.’

She said nothing.

‘I mean, don’t get me wrong, Mr Cruikshank,’ I said. ‘I think it’s very noble of you to try to shoulder the whole blame for all of this. You have my sympathy; I did something rather similar myself once. But it doesn’t do any good, you know. Speaking for myself now I think it just made things worse.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr Manson,’ he said.

‘Yes you do. You see, according to the turnstile computers at Silvertown Dock, the two tickets Zarco gave you for Saturday’s match were both used. Somehow I don’t see Mr Van de Merwe walking all the way to the match. Not with that leg of his. Or somehow Mrs Van de Merwe. Which means you were there, too, weren’t you, Mariella? You were in suite 123 with Zarco and your husband. To help with the negotiations.’

At this point in the proceedings her silence was eloquent enough.

‘Yes, I thought so. You know, I’ll bet it was you who had the presence of mind to close the window and put the three coffee cups in the dishwasher. A woman’s touch? Or was it just to make sure it looked like neither of you were ever there?’

The woman turned from the curtains and looked at me with distaste. She wasn’t bad-looking at all, I thought; fit-looking, too. As if she went to the gym a lot. The thin cotton singlet she was wearing afforded me a good impression of what her upper body looked like: strong shoulders, powerful biceps and well-defined nipples. But it wasn’t until the moment when she leaned across the sofa to pick up her cardigan and put it on that I guessed what must have really happened in suite 123 at Silvertown Dock.

‘You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?’ she sneered. ‘But you can’t actually prove any of this.’

‘Can’t I?’

‘You’re flying by the seat of your pants, Mr Manson.’

‘In fact,’ I continued, ‘I don’t think it was you who pushed João Zarco out of the window at all, Mr Cruikshank.’

‘As if we haven’t endured enough already with all this fucking building work next door. What gives you the right to come here and ruin our lives like this?’

‘I think it was your wife who pushed Zarco out of the window, Mr Cruikshank. Wasn’t it, Mrs Cruikshank? Probably when Zarco called you a bitch.’

‘John? Don’t say another word. Not without a lawyer present. Do you hear?’

‘That’s what cadela means, isn’t it? You see, I speak a little bit of Portuguese, too. And while I can easily see why he would have called you a cunt, Mr Cruikshank, I really can’t see that he would have called you a bitch as well. Not when Mariella here was in the room.’

‘Get out.’

‘I haven’t known you very long but it’s my impression that it’s not you who’s got the temper; it’s your wife here. It was you who pushed Zarco out of the window, wasn’t it, Mrs Cruikshank? It was your husband who grabbed him, I reckon, and tried to prevent his fall; but it was you who pushed him in the first place.’

‘Get out of this house, do you hear me?’

‘Of course, I can’t prove any of that. Then again, I don’t have to. I’ll leave it to the forensics team to match that little scratch on your neck to the tiny amount of skin and blood they found underneath Zarco’s fingernails. But you know something? I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you really meant to push him out of the window, Mariella. This, after all, is a much better explanation of why you didn’t try to help him after he fell. Because you hoped he was dead and that all of this dreadful inconvenience you’ve experienced because of a little bit of building work would just go away forever. Isn’t that it?’

I’ve never heard a banshee and to be honest I wouldn’t know what one looked like, but I rather imagine that Mariella Cruikshank gave a pretty good imitation of one as, screaming something in Afrikaans, she threw herself across the room with hands that were reaching for my neck.

It was fortunate for me that I wasn’t standing in front of an open window.