‘We never meet for the best part of a year, and suddenly we keep bumping into each other.’
Kathy jumped at the unexpected sound. ‘Oh yes. Hello again. So you’re “Mary”.’ She nodded at the name on the door he was reaching across to open. ‘Mary’ was a six-foot-two, fair-haired man with a boxer’s face whom she’d passed as he was talking on the pay-phone in the hall that morning.
‘My other name is Patrick. And you are “Eric”, I believe.’
‘Aka … Kathy.’
‘How do you do, Kathy,’ he shook hands formally. ‘You’re the detective, aren’t you? We never meet because we both work odd hours. I’m a rep with Whitbread’s.’
‘I was just realizing how little I know about this place, even though I’ve been living here all this time. I’m probably one of the longest-serving tenants by now.’
He smiled, a pleasant, battered, gentle smile, she thought, the asymmetry of the nose and the larger left ear potentially engaging, if that sort of thing appealed to you. ‘Not quite. You’re a figure of considerable mystery and speculation, though.’
‘Why’s that?’ Kathy asked.
‘Because of what you do, I suppose. And the fact that hardly anybody has spoken to you or seen you, except occasionally being picked up by bulky men in unmarked cars.’
‘I haven’t participated much in the community of number twenty-three, you mean? I honestly didn’t think there was one.’
‘Oh, you might be surprised. It’s helped me out from time to time.’
‘Well, maybe I’ll get the chance to find out. This place is pretty grimy. Maybe I should do something about it.’
‘That would be wonderful. None of us likes cleaning. Want some?’ He offered her some of the instant coffee he was making.
‘Thanks, I’m OK.’
‘Taking some time off?’
‘You could put it like that.’
‘You make it sound pretty bad.’
Kathy got to her feet. ‘Yes.’ She turned and made for the door. When she reached it she stopped to think. ‘Look. If you hear the phone any time over the next few days and it’s for me, would you make sure and bang on my door, no matter what time it is? It’s just that I don’t always hear it, being at the back of the house. My room is — ’
‘I know where it is.’ He smiled again. ‘Yes, I’ll do that, of course.’
‘Thanks.’ She strode off down the threadbare hall carpet, avoiding the pedal and oily chain of the padlocked bike parked at the foot of the stairs.
A couple of hours later Kathy was lying on her bed, hands behind her head, staring at the ceiling, when there was a soft tap at her door. She jumped to her feet and yanked it open.
‘Hi.’ Patrick grinned shyly at her in the gloom of the landing.
‘Is it the phone for me?’
‘No, no. I was just thinking, I have to go out to pay a call on someone. It’s a nice quiet place, not far away. I wondered if a drink might brighten your day.’
‘Thanks, it probably would. But I’d better stay here, just in case.’
‘Jill just got back from work. Her room’s right next to the phone, you know. She says she’s going to be here till her friend picks her up at eight, and she’ll ring the number I give her if any calls come in for you.’
Kathy hesitated. ‘I suppose it would look pretty bad if I refused, in view of my non-participation in the social life of the household so far.’
Patrick shrugged and nodded agreement. ‘Pretty bad.’
The ‘place’ was a drinking club called PDQ, for some reason that Kathy never learned. It was so dark that its actual extent was indeterminate. The darkness also had the welcome effect of suspending real time, so that it became difficult after a while to recall what hour of the day or night it was outside. They sat on stools at the bar and Patrick introduced her to Carl, the blond Swede who owned the place, whose forearms were as massive as the joint of cold beef he proceeded to carve for them for sandwiches with their drinks. After an initial altercation when Kathy tried to order mineral water, they both settled on lager. While Patrick took Carl’s order for the brewery and tried to interest him in a new strong beer, Kathy sipped her lager, munched on her sandwich and stared at the tiny silver stars glued to the midnight-blue ceiling. She thought of Brock, now more than twenty-four hours in Tanner’s hands. She thought of his grey face and the stoop of his shoulders. And she rehearsed once more the responses she would give to their questions, although the longer they took to call her in, the more difficult it was becoming to believe in her replies.
‘Looks to me like a case for a rusty nail, Carl,’ she heard Patrick say.
‘What?’ she said, bringing her attention back to the two of them. Patrick was looking at her with concern. ‘What’s a rusty nail?’
‘A liqueur folded into the spirit that forms its base. I suggest Lochan Ora and Scotch.’
‘Nah.’ Carl was shaking his head. ‘She needs a walkie-talkie, that’s what she needs.’
‘And what’s a walkie-talkie?’
‘You don’t need to know, but after I give you two of them, you can’t walkie and you can’t talkie.’ He roared with laughter.
‘Yes,’ Kathy said, imagining herself attending her interrogation in a state of alcoholic paralysis, ‘that’s all I need.’
The call came the following morning just after eleven. A secretary from administration told her to report to Interview Room 247 immediately. In the taxi, Kathy recalled Tanner’s earlier instructions to Dowling and herself. You will do what you’re told; you will go to counselling; you will keep very, very low; you will be very, very quiet and humble. Because if I see or hear one cheep from either of you again, I am personally going to insert all the paperwork from this case into your private orifices and set fire to it.
She wished she knew what had happened to Dowling. She had tried a number of times to ring him at work and at his home, but without success. By the time the cabbie pulled in to the kerb outside the building, her heart was pounding badly. She fumbled the money and looked closely at the man’s face while he searched for change, as if he was the last normal human being she was ever likely to see.
Tanner kept her waiting another hour, sitting alone in the windowless interview room with her back to the door, facing an empty chair across the table. At least it gave her a chance to bring down her heart rate and stabilize the adrenalin in her bloodstream, although when the door eventually did fly open she nearly leaped to her feet.
A woman detective came in after him, closed the door and took a seat behind Kathy’s right shoulder. Tanner took the chair facing her. He laid down a plain manila file, lit a cigarette and considered her for a moment through the blue smoke. Imagining what she would do in his position, she had decided he would begin with that last interview he had had with them, and his words of warning. Then, having established the threat with that recollection, he would begin the questions.
She was wrong. He had no questions. Instead he opened the file and withdrew a single typed sheet of paper and laid it in front of her. Beside it he placed a ball-point pen.
‘Read and sign,’ he said simply, his tone distant, indifferent.
She blinked with surprise, then leaned forward, not wanting to touch the piece of paper, and read what it had to say.
STATEMENT BY DETECTIVE SERGEANT K. KOLLA
On 16 March last, 1, together with DC G. Dowling, visited the private home of DC! D. Brock in London. The latter was known to me from professional contact during my previous attachment to the Metropolitan Police. My intention was to persuade Detective Chief Inspector Brock to use his influence as a senior officer with the Metropolitan Police to reopen the case of the death of Alex Petrou at the Stanhope Clinic during the night of 27/28 October last. I was fully aware that the police and coroner’s investigations had been completed on the circumstances surrounding the death of Mr Petrou, that the case was closed, and that my superiors had explicitly instructed me to make no further inquiries into the matter. I made these facts known to DCI Brock.