‘I heard it was because you were on a case.’
‘I was, but winding down — I could have moved over. Mind you, schlepping out to the New Forest every day must be a pain.’
‘It is.’
Barolli munched on a sausage roll. She saw that he had indeed put on a considerable amount of weight, as Langton had jotted down in his notebook.
‘You got any further in ID-ing the owner of the leg?’ she asked.
‘Yeah. We also know he was heavily into drugs — crack cocaine. We reckon he may have been a dealer, but why he was bumped off, we’re no closer to finding out. DNA gave us nothing from records. Young kid was tipping in bottles when he saw it; that was at eight-thirty. The skip gets emptied at eight forty-five, so it was a stroke of luck we found it. We’ve found no other body parts, so we were making enquiries with known drug dealers, then we got a call in from a woman reporting her bloke missing. Poor cow had to come into the morgue to see if she recognized his sock!’ he chortled. ‘What she did okay was a scar on his knee, as her boyfriend had recently had keyhole surgery.’
‘So do you have a name?’
‘Yeah, Murray White. We’re still checking, but nobody has seen him for a couple of days; I reckon they’d spot him if they saw him, hopping along minus his right leg.’
‘What about his drug contacts?’
‘What about them? We’re not going to get much out of any of them. As for the rest of him, he could have been sliced up and chucked in God knows how many skips around the area, been crushed and on the tips by now.’ Barolli suddenly went quiet. ‘How’s Langton doing?’
Anna hesitated. ‘Well, he’s still in a lot of pain.’
Barolli shook his head. ‘I honestly thought he’d never pull through. I had a couple of weeks’ leave afterwards, you know. I just sort of folded. It all happened so fast, and seeing him covered in blood…’ He sniffed. ‘Keep on thinking, could I have done more? But I was behind him; when he got cut he fell against me, almost knocking me down the stairs.’
‘I know Mike Lewis feels the same way,’ she said.
‘Yeah, but I sort of felt that maybe he reckoned I should have done more, you know? Reason why he didn’t want me working alongside him again.’
‘I doubt that.’
‘When I talked to him, he sounded… Well, not like himself.’
‘When was this?’
‘Last night. I gave him all the details we’d got to date.’ He cocked his head to one side. ‘That why you’re here?’
‘Yes, just checking it all out.’
‘Well, I don’t see how it’s connected to your case.’
‘Did Langton think it was?’
‘I guess so — reason he called.’
‘But you don’t think it has any connection to the attack on him?’
Barolli shook his head. ‘Nah — well, apart from the guy being black — but he’s not, as far as we know, connected to the murder of Carly Ann North.’
Anna sipped her coffee, aware she had to play the interview carefully. The last thing she wanted was for Barolli to be suspicious and contact Langton.
‘This guy you sent down for Carly Ann’s murder?’ she began.
‘Idris Krasiniqe? Is he connected to our dismembered limb? I can’t see it; we’ve not come up with any links to illegal immigrants. Our bloke — if it is him, and we think it’s pretty positive — was born in Bradford.’
‘What was he like?’
‘Who?’
‘Krasiniqe.’
Barolli took a deep breath. ‘Crazy son of a bitch. We don’t know if that’s his real name, since all his documents were fake — but he admitted the murder; couldn’t not, as he was found with the fucking meat cleaver in his hand trying to hack off her head. I tell you, this world is getting sickening.’
‘He’s in Wakefield, isn’t he?’
‘Yeah, down for fifteen, then they’ll probably want him deported, but if you read the papers, that’s a joke. All we really knew about him was that he was probably Somali — but even that could be a lie. He took all the blame, but there were two other blokes with him; after he gave us their names, he withdrew the statement and said it was a lie, but we acted on his information, and you obviously know the fucking result. We reckoned that even though the names were fake, the address wasn’t, because of what happened to Jimmy, so someone had to have got to Krasiniqe whilst he was held at the nick. Suddenly he knew nothing? Bastard.’
‘You know there was a murder of a prisoner?’
‘Yeah, I know, and by another Krasiniqe; maybe they just take someone’s legitimate name and keep on using it.’
‘What about Camorra — you know anything about him?’
Barolli shook his head. ‘No. Jimmy asked me, but I’ve never come across him.’ He sighed. ‘I know it must really tear him up. He almost dies, and it’s like these bastards just run into the sewers like rats and disappear. I tried to track them down, but just hit a dead end.’
Anna looked at his fat round face, sweat already standing out on his forehead. ‘You feel bad about it, don’t you?’
‘Not as much as he must do, but like I said, I had to take two weeks off, it affected me so badly. He’s a great guy, a one-off. I really did feel bad about him not using me.’ He took another deep breath then changed the subject. ‘Those two kids — you found the missing boyfriend yet?’
‘No.’
‘Been enough press, but like I said, there must be some kind of network that lets them scurry into the sewers.’
‘Hard with two kids though.’
Barolli nodded. ‘They still looking for other body parts at the piggery?’
‘I believe so; the pens have all been torn apart, but there were a lot of outhouses, so I don’t know if they have given it the all-clear yet.’
‘Pigs eat anything.’
She picked up her briefcase; things were depressing enough, without Barolli adding to it. ‘Thanks for your time.’
‘My pleasure, and do me a favour? Put in a good word for me, would you? ’Cos this’ll be wound up soon, and if… Well, I leave it to you.’
She patted his arm. ‘I’ll do that, and don’t say anything about my being here — you know the way he is. I’d hate him to think I was double-checking.’
He cocked his head to one side. ‘Are you?’
‘Just keeping the records straight.’
His dark eyes bore into her. ‘Is he okay?’
‘Yes. Like I said, he’s doing really well — just has some pain.’
‘Don’t we all,’ he said softly.
Anna’s next port of call was Wakefield prison, to visit Idris Krasiniqe. Instead of driving, to save time, she took the train. Sitting at an empty table, she made a call to the incident room to say she had taken herself off to a doctor for some antibiotics. Harry Blunt took the message. She asked if there had been any developments and he said that there had been no result on the search for Sickert and the children. They had also as yet not discovered the whereabouts of Camorra, but were working on it. He suddenly paused. ‘Hang on.’
Anna waited for some time before he came back to her.
‘Jesus Christ, you won’t believe it; just as the forensic team were packing up, they’ve found more remains.’
‘The children?’ Anna asked immediately.
Harry was having a muffled conversation with someone and had obviously covered the phone with his hand.
‘Hello?’ Anna waited.
‘Anna?’ It was Langton.
‘Yes, I was just calling in.’
‘You sick?’
‘It’s just a sore throat. I should be back tomorrow.’
‘Well, take as much time as you need,’ he said.
‘What’s happened?’
Langton said they had unearthed part of a skeleton buried beneath the henhouse. ‘The area had already been searched, but it was in a pretty shambolic state. That pest of a landlord was hovering around, making sure everything was back to better than it was before — he was virtually asking the blokes to rebuild the bloody thing! Anyway, they removed some planks from the floor and there it was, under a thick layer of manure. It looks as if it’s a grown man, not a child, thank Christ.’