Author: Peter Robinson
Category: Other
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‘I thought that’s who it would be about. I wouldn’t say I knew him, but we’d certainly say good morning if we met in the street. He was a gentleman, was Mr Stokes, no matter what they say about him in the papers.’
‘What have they said about him?’
‘You know. The drugs and all. I never saw him take any drugs, and he never did anyone any harm. And where’s the harm, I say, if you choose to spend your days in cloud cuckoo land? Makes a damn sight more sense than spending them in the real world, the way it’s going these days, I can tell you. Or spending your life being a nuisance to others, stabbing people and beating people up. He wasn’t always on the scooter, you know.’
‘How long?’
‘A year. Less. It was mostly the diabetes, see. He told me about it once. Gets into your feet, it does. I think he lost a couple of toes. But before, like, when he used to walk around on his own, I never once saw him stumble or stagger. And he always said hello. Like I said, a gentleman.’
It didn’t take much to be a gentleman in Margery Cunningham’s world, Gerry thought. ‘Was he ever suspected of any crimes in the neighbourhood?’
‘Believe it or not, we didn’t really have much crime, love. Nobody had anything, you see. Not anything worth stealing, at any rate. If thieves wanted good pickings, they’d head off through the park and up the hill.’ She laughed, coughed and patted her chest. ‘But if you’re asking did Mr Stokes cause any trouble around here, then my answer is no. Not that I know of. He didn’t have any visitors except when that grandson of his was staying.’
‘His grandson?’
‘Well, I assume that’s who he was. Young lad, anyway. Looked about the right age.’
‘Did this grandson visit often?’
‘Every week or so. Usually stayed a night or two.’
Gerry brought out her photo of Samir and asked, ‘Was this him?’
Margery Cunningham shook her head. ‘No, dearie. The boy I saw wasn’t dark-skinned. I know who this one is, like, and what happened. Saw his picture in the papers. Terrible. But I’ve never seen him around here.’
Disappointed, Gerry put the photograph away. ‘His name was Samir,’ she said, though she didn’t know why she said it. ‘Can you describe this grandson?’
‘He was a typical teenager, pleasant enough, but a bit shifty, if you know what I mean. Always seemed as if he was hiding something or up to something. But a lot of kids are like that, aren’t they, always looking as if they’ve had their hand in the piggy bank? Didn’t go out much. Rode a bike sometimes. Always wearing a backpack.’
‘What colour hair?’
‘Fair. And cut short, like they have it these days. I must say I preferred it when I was a young lass and all the lads had long hair.’
She got a faraway look in her eye, and Gerry hurried along to avoid a ‘those were the days’ digression. ‘Tall or short?’
‘Medium.’
‘Fat or thin?’
‘Thin.’
‘Clothes?’
‘Jeans and T-shirt when it was warm enough. Usually with something written on it. The T-shirt, that is.’
‘Can you remember what?’
‘No. There were several different ones. Images of the devil or skeletons. That sort of thing.’
‘Like heavy metal images?’
‘Yes. Like Black Sabbath used to wear.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Trainers, mostly. White. I don’t know what brand. Little ticks on them. They all look the same to me.’
Nike, Gerry noted. ‘And when it was cooler?’
‘One of those hoodie jackets. The ones that make everyone look like a criminal.’
‘What kind of a bicycle did he ride?’
‘Now you’re asking me. All I can say is, it wasn’t like those in that Tour de France that came through here a few years ago. It had straight handlebars, for a start, not those bent ones, like goats’ horns.’
‘Do you remember what colour it was?’
‘Red. Bright red.’
‘You’re doing really well, Mrs Cunningham. How long ago was he here?’
‘Margery, please, love. A while ago. I haven’t seen him for two or three weeks now. Maybe longer. Time seems to go by a lot faster these days.’
‘Is it unusual for him not to visit for so long?’
‘I suppose so. Like I said, he used to come up more often than that.’
‘And how long had he been visiting Mr Stokes?’
‘Past year or so. Back and forth.’
‘Do you know where he went when he wasn’t here?’
‘No idea, love. We never talked beyond saying good morning. He didn’t come and kiss me goodbye. Home to his mum and dad, I suppose, for all I know.’
‘Did he have people visiting him?’
‘Yes. Odd that, really. When Mr Stokes was there by himself, you’d never see anyone there from one day to the next. But the lad had quite a few visitors. And he was hardly off that mobile phone of his. I’ve no time for them, myself.’
‘What kind of visitors did the boy have?’
‘Mostly kids his own age, or older. Some of them seemed a bit seedy. All sorts, really. They never caused any trouble, though. Mostly they didn’t stay long.’
‘What did Mr Stokes have to say about it?’
‘Nothing. Not to me, at any rate.’ She paused. ‘Oh, dear. How can I say this without sounding judgemental? I mean, I wouldn’t want to speak ill of the dead, but . . .’
‘Go on, Mrs Cunningham.’
‘Margery, please. Well, it’s just that Mr Stokes was a bit . . . like he wasn’t all there. He was in his own world. I don’t know what you’d call it. We used to say retarded, but I don’t know what the word is now. But it wasn’t his fault.’
‘What wasn’t?’
‘That he hadn’t had much education, though he did like to read a lot. He was a bit childlike, if you know what I mean. I think maybe that young lad took advantage of him, having his friends round and all.’
Gerry was getting the distinct impression that this was a textbook county lines operation. But what had happened to the operation? Perhaps the young man in question would be back. Or perhaps he had been replaced by Samir. But Margery Cunningham said she hadn’t seen Samir around the neighbourhood, and she had no reason to lie.
‘Do you remember the boy’s name?’ Gerry asked.
‘Never knew it.’
‘Would you recognise him if you saw him again?’
‘I think so.’
‘Can you tell me anything more about him?’
‘No, love. I’m sorry.’ She rubbed her eyes. ‘I’m tired,’ she said. ‘Do you know, I’ve been here over twenty-five years, but I shan’t be sad to leave. It used to be a nice estate, the Hollyfield. Good people. Honest. Decent. For the most part. You got the odd bad ’un. You always do, don’t you? But look at it now. Pah. No. Take me to my sheltered flat. That’s what I say. I’ll live out my days quite happily there. The sooner they knock this bloody place to the ground, the better.’
That was the second time today Gerry had heard that sentiment expressed, she realised as she headed back towards the park.
Tadić certainly appeared more presentable than the scruffy, unwashed animal Zelda remembered, as no doubt befit his elevated status in the organisation, but it was him. She was certain. Put an ogre in an expensive suit and it was still an ogre. Though she tried to keep a grip on herself, she couldn’t help but grab her book and her shoulder bag and rush towards the street exit. As she did so, her bag knocked over the empty wine glass, and it shattered on the floor. His head jerked in her direction. She felt a chill run through her, as if she had inadvertently awoken a sleeping snake or crocodile, some sort of reptilian beast that operated on instinct alone. She kept going, ignoring the nasty looks she got from people she bumped into, until she was out in the street. Once there, she merged with the flow of pedestrians heading towards Marylebone Road and Great Portland Street Underground. She had no id
ea where she was going, only that her breath was tight in her chest, her heart was pounding dangerously fast and she had to get away from the Hotel Belgrade.
Every now and then she glanced back to see if Tadić was following her, but she didn’t see him. Why should he be? It was nothing, she tried to tell herself. A woman gets up and knocks her glass over by accident. People react to the sound, that’s all. Besides, the last time he had seen Zelda, she had been just seventeen years old. She looked very different now, and her nose hadn’t been broken then. Besides, context is everything. He wouldn’t recognise her, and he certainly wouldn’t expect to bump into her in a London hotel bar. As far as she knew, they had had no contact after the breaking house in Vršac, and he must have broken in hundreds of girls after her.
Not that he had waited until Vršac to begin the process. They had a twelve- or thirteen-hour drive across Romania first, and Goran Tadić had started as soon as they got on the highway, messing with her clothes, groping her breasts in the back of the car. She had tried to resist but whenever she did, he would hit her again. And though he couldn’t take her valuable virginity, it didn’t stop him from anally raping her. As the car sped through the wild and mountainous countryside of Transylvania, she could do nothing but lie there face down on the car seat and take it. All she could remember now was the pain, the smell of the dreadful cigar his brother was smoking as he drove and the relentless thumping and surging of the American rap music playing in the car. Finally, she had passed out and only came to a while later, when Goran Tadić was in the driver’s seat and his brother Petar in the back with her, ready to take his turn. Again she fought, and again it was to no avail. Even as early as that, she began to learn how they only hurt her more if she fought them, how to find that place outside herself, to watch the actions disinterestedly, as if from a great distance, and to numb all feeling. But she wasn’t quite so skilled at the start as she became later. This was before she learned to live with pain, to float inside it. It hurt. She bled. She cried.
She tried to escape through a cafe’s toilet window when they stopped for burgers somewhere near Brasov, but Goran was waiting, a cruel smile on his face, and she was punished for that. And so they had their way with her all the way from Chi¸sina˘u to Vršac. They crossed two international borders, first into Romania and from there into Serbia, and in neither case did the border guards take the slightest interest in these two men and the clearly distraught young girl they had in the car with them. No questions were asked; they were simply waved through. Often, she wondered later whether money had changed hands – it wouldn’t have surprised her – but she decided it hadn’t. It was just the way things were.
And there he was again, in the flesh, the man who had done all that to her, just walking casually into a trendy London bar in an expensive suit and gaudy shirt, cool as anything, not a care in the world, lord of all he surveyed. She relived that journey through hell as she wandered among the anonymous crowds of the London evening, not knowing where she was going, only that she had to get away, that every good thing she had built for herself since her escape felt as if it was crumbling inside her.
Zelda travelled aimlessly on the tube from line to line, stop to stop. Occasionally, someone would ask her if she was all right, and she would respond with a mechanical nod and a forced smile. What could they do? What did they know, safe in their comfortable middle-class lives with nothing more to worry about than their mortgage payments and the children’s exam results? Finally, she found herself at Waterloo and walked back to her hotel.
The rooftop bar was still open, and by then she felt she needed a drink more than she had in a long time. She ordered a large vodka and tonic instead of wine and lifted the glass to her mouth, hand shaking. She must have looked like a serious alcoholic because people stayed away from her. Then she had another drink and sat there staring out at the night skyline, the way she had stared at the dawn skyline in the morning, just a few days ago, when she woke from the bad dreams. Here, from the height of the roof, she had a different view – the Eye; the Houses of Parliament, lit up all gold; Big Ben covered in scaffolding, but always there was the river, its currents like dark sinews twisting, distorting and knotting the reflections of the city lights the way she felt twisted, distorted and knotted inside.
The music was late evening light jazz, and what few conversations there were around her were hushed. It was seduction time, and the young couples were edging closer together, a light touch of thigh to thigh here, an arm casually brushing a breast there. Zelda knew all about it. She had done the seductive sex as well as suffered the violent kind. It was how she had made her living – their living – in Paris, and how she had finally made her escape from that world.
After the dreadful car journey across Romania, Zelda remembered being left alone in a filthy room for days – she wasn’t sure exactly how many – with her meals delivered, black bread, borscht, gruel . . .
And then, one day, without warning, she was taken into another room, larger, cleaner, with a large bed. After a few minutes a man came in. He was old and fat, and he smelled of fried chicken. He wasn’t rough or violent – he was quite gentle, really – but he took what he wanted and left her crying. That was how she lost her virginity. She learned later that it had been auctioned off, and the fat man had won. Apparently, he always won; he was one of the wealthiest businessmen in town, the owner of a chain of fried chicken restaurants.
By the time Zelda got to bed that night, she knew one thing for certain: now that she had seen Goran Tadić again, she had to kill him.
Chapter 8
The coffee and doughnuts lay spread out on the large oval table in the boardroom on Friday morning. In addition to the core team, also present were DS Stefan Nowak, Crime Scene Manager; Vic Manson, fingerprints expert; and Dr Jasminder ‘Jazz’ Singh, their toxicology, blood and DNA specialist from the lab. Everyone present seemed tired; Thursday had been a long day.
‘You’ve got some good news for us, I hope, Stefan?’ Banks said to DS Nowak.
‘Yes,’ said Nowak. ‘We’ve been able to link the dead boy, Samir, with the Stokes house on the Hollyfield Estate. Naturally, we can’t tell you when he was there, but he definitely was there.’
‘Was he killed there?’
‘Unlikely,’ said the diminutive Jazz Singh. ‘No blood other than Howard Stokes’s turned up. And very little of that. If Samir had been killed there, you’d expect . . . well, you’d expect to see blood.’
‘Unless someone cleaned it up?’ Banks suggested.
‘Of course. That’s where the Luminol came in handy. We were very thorough. Believe me, nobody can do a perfect clean-up.’
‘Thanks, Jazz,’ said Banks, reaching for a doughnut. ‘So what did you find?’
‘Stefan’s team found several hairs with follicles intact on the back of one of the armchairs. They found hairs on the backs of both chairs, actually, but the other ones belonged to Howard Stokes.’
‘What about the mattresses?’
‘Howard Stokes’s hair on one, and someone else’s on the other, though it had been turned over, and the mattress itself had been stripped of sheets. It didn’t look as if it had been used recently. Not Samir’s hair, by the way. Blond and short. There were no follicles, so we couldn’t run DNA.’
‘It must belong to the boy Margery Cunningham told me about yesterday,’ said Gerry. ‘The one she thought was Stokes’s grandson. The one who came and went. He rode around on a red bicycle and had a lot of visitors.’
‘Likely,’ said Banks. ‘And if there were no traces of Samir on the mattress, the odds are that he didn’t spend a night in the house. As he was seen by several people arriving in Eastvale on Sunday evening, we have to assume that he didn’t spend very long there at all.’ He turned back to Jazz. ‘Anything more?’
‘That’s it, really,’ she said. ‘The hairs on the chair back contained DNA that matched that of Samir Boulad.’
‘And only his?’
‘Yes.’<
br />
‘There’s no room for error?’
‘One in 1000 million.’
Banks smiled. ‘I’ll take that as a no. Excellent news, Jazz. And quick work. Thanks a lot. I can’t say I know what this all means yet, but it’s the best lead we’ve had so far. It gives us a solid line on inquiries to pursue around Hollyfield. Have another doughnut.’
Jazz grinned and grabbed a raspberry-centred doughnut and poured herself more coffee. ‘Obviously Samir’s body provided us with an excellent DNA sample,’ she said. ‘And the match from the hair follicle was also a good source. It made my job a lot easier.’
‘So Samir was in the same house as Stokes at some point, and he was there long enough to sit down in the armchair but not to sleep on the mattress. What we don’t know is whether they were both in the house at the same time, or when this was.’
‘I think we can assume they must have been there together at some point,’ said Annie. ‘After all, it was Stokes’s house, and he didn’t seem the type to get out and about that much. And it seems likely Samir was there after he was seen in town with his backpack and jacket.’
‘Stokes did go and sit in the park and read sometimes,’ said Gerry. ‘Apparently, he never bothered anyone, but the Elmet Hill crowd didn’t approve of his presence there. Granville Myers said he scared the kiddies.’
‘Did you talk to the Neighbourhood Watch?’
‘Yes, guv. That was the bloke who runs it: Granville Myers. He’s in charge along with Lisa Bartlett’s dad, Gus.’
‘Anything?’
‘Claims to know nothing about what goes on in the park or on the Hollyfield Estate. He seemed a bit defensive when it came to his son, Chris, so I did a bit of rooting around. Seems Chris Myers is in his final year as a day student at St Botolph’s, sitting his A-levels at the moment, along with Lisa Bartlett’s brother Jason. Chris has his own car to drive himself to school and back each day. Usually gives Jason a lift. He’s bright. Expected to take a place at Oxford. Anyway, I seemed to remember he was involved in something a while ago, so I just checked back through the old incident reports and discovered that last year Chris Myers got caught – along with several of his fellow pupils – at a noisy student party near Eastvale College, where drugs were present, mostly ecstasy and marijuana. They all got off lightly, a slap on the wrist, and for what it’s worth, Myers had no drugs in his possession. Apparently, the quantities were small and they were doing no harm.’