Pop Goes the Weasel

10

‘Where are the others?’

Clutching her case file, Charlie surveyed the Major Incident Team’s office. It felt extremely odd to be back, but the situation was made stranger still by the fact that the office seemed to be completely deserted.

‘Murder on Empress Road. DI Grace has got most of the team down there,’ replied DC Fortune, just about managing to contain his disgruntlement at being left behind. He was a smart, conscientious policeman and one of the few black officers based at Southampton Central. He was tipped for higher things and Charlie knew that he would be deeply pissed off to be stuck here, chaperoning her on her return to action. Charlie had felt shaky as she’d entered the building half an hour earlier and the lack of a welcoming committee was making things worse. Was this a deliberate snub? A way of letting Charlie know she wasn’t wanted?

‘What do we know about this?’ Charlie replied, mustering as much professional poise as she could.

‘Sex worker found in the boot of a car. The killers had gone to town on her, which made the ID a bit tricky initially, but her DNA did the job. She was on the database – you’ll find her charge sheet on page three.’

Charlie flicked through the file. The dead girl – a Polish woman called Alexia Louszko – had been striking in life, with dark auburn hair, multiple piercings and tattoos and plump, pillow lips. If you liked it gothic, then she was the one. Even in her police photo she looked aggressively sexual. Her tattoos were all of mythological beasts, giving her a primal, animalistic quality.

‘Last known address is a flat near Bedford Place,’ DC Fortune offered helpfully.

‘Let’s get going then,’ replied Charlie, ignoring her colleague’s obvious eagerness to get the whole thing over with.

‘Are you going to drive, or am I?’

Most of Southampton’s sex workers lived in St Mary’s or Portswood, mixing in with the students, junkies and illegal immigrants. So the fact that Alexia lived on Bedford Place, near the smarter clubs and bars, was interesting in itself. She had been arrested for streetwalking a year ago, but must have been pulling in good money to live in this desirable area.

The interior of her flat only served to reinforce this feeling. Faced by a police warrant, the block’s concierge reluctantly let the officers inside and whilst DC Fortune questioned him, Charlie ran a rule over the place. It was a recently decorated, open-plan set-up with affordable but fashionable furniture. In addition to the wraparound sofa and large plasma TV, there was a glass table, espresso machine, retro juke box. Hell, it was nicer than Charlie’s house. Was this girl earning enough for all these middle-class trappings or was she being kept by someone? A lover? Her pimp? Someone she was blackmailing?

Ignoring the kitchen, Charlie headed straight for the bedroom. It was exceptionally neat and clean. Donning her latex gloves, she began to search. The wardrobes were full of clothes, the drawers of underwear and bondage gear, and the bed was neatly made. A single paperback – by a Polish author Charlie hadn’t heard of – rested on the bedside table. And that was it. Was that all there was to her?

The bathroom yielded little of any interest, so Charlie headed into the box room, which served as a space for drying laundry and a mini-office. A phone and cheap laptop sat on a battered desk. Charlie pressed the On button on the computer. It buzzed aggressively as if coming to life, but the screen remained resolutely blank. Charlie pressed a few keys. Still nothing.

‘You got your penknife?’ she asked DC Fortune. She knew he would have it (even though he wasn’t supposed to), he was that kind of guy. Nothing pleased him more than fixing a broken machine in front of his female colleagues. He was a modern kind of caveman.

Taking it from him, Charlie flipped out the screwdriver extension and undid the panels on the back of the computer. As she expected, the battery was still in place, but the hard drive had been removed.

So the flat had been swept. From the moment she’d stepped into the place Charlie had had a suspicion that it had been tidied up. Nobody’s life was this ordered. Someone who knew that the police would be coming had trawled the flat, divesting it of any trace of Alexia, either physical or digital. What had she been doing to earn all this money? And why was someone so keen to conceal it?

There was no point in looking for anything in the usual places any more. It was now a question of lifting wardrobes and tables, pulling up mattresses and rifling through pockets. Looking under, behind, above. It felt very much like a wild-goose chase and Charlie had to put up with a lot of unsubtle sighing by her colleague – who was probably imagining himself busting heads on the Empress Road – but finally after two and a half hours of diligent searching the pair got a break.

The kitchen had an island in it with a pull-out bin. The bin had been lifted out and emptied but whoever had done so hadn’t spotted a piece of paper on the floor of the pull-out drawer. It must have slipped between the bin edge and the drawer wall when tossed inside and lain there undetected ever since. Charlie pulled it out.

To her surprise it was a payslip. For a woman called Agneska Suriav, who was employed by a health club in Banister Park. It looked official – with National Insurance deductions, a PAYE Employee number – and was for a healthy monthly wage. But it didn’t make a lot of sense. Who was Agneska? A friend of Alexia’s? An alias of hers? It raised more questions than it answered, but it was a start. For the first time in ages, Charlie felt good about herself. Perhaps there was life after Marianne after all.