You Will Never Find Me (16 page)

‘So why did you come here?' she asked.

Silence.

‘To say goodbye,' he said, which he knew wasn't quite the truth of it, but it would have to do in the absence of any willingness on his part to face up.

She rolled away from him, could feel his eyes on her back, but no hand reached out to draw her back in. He stood and pulled up his training tights, slipped his top back on. She sat up, drew her heel up onto the bed and rested her chin on her knee.

‘You know it really is best you say nothing if you want to keep your job,' she said. ‘Because you won't get another one if you talk . . . ever.'

‘I know,' he said, ‘but you should see this detective. She has a way of looking at me, listening to what I'm saying. Not believing me.'

She got up, walked straight past him and retrieved her dressing gown from the top of the stairs, wrapped herself in it. She could see that his rucksack had been moved. They went downstairs. Spencer didn't notice a thing, too involved in himself. He shrugged into the rucksack, picked up his bike.

‘It's been good,' he said and kissed her on the cheek, let himself out, shut the door behind him.

She shook her head sadly and went downstairs to the basement. Valery was sitting in front of a computer with three-dimensional shots of Spencer's house keys on the screen.

‘Everything O.K.?' she asked.

‘I've just sent them through,' said Valery.

‘He heard you,' said Irina. ‘I told you to be quiet.'

‘I heard you too.'

 

Mercy drove to the school in Hampstead wondering where Demidova's son might be during these trysts, and waited in her car for the teacher. She had no chance of following him through town in traffic. He arrived at 8:35 and weaved his way between the Range Rover Evoques, Porsche Cayennes and BMW X5s. He was still dressed for rowing with his rucksack on his back. She waited five minutes and went in to see the caretaker. She showed him the last shot of Irina Demidova closing the door. He confirmed it was her.

On the way up Netherhall Gardens she saw George Papadopoulos on the pavement and pulled over, told him about Spencer and Demidova.

‘Interesting,' said Papadopoulos. ‘Have we got a shot of Demidova's son?'

‘That might be pushing it a bit, to have him as the bait,' said Mercy. ‘Too risky, don't you think?'

‘Worth a try.'

‘I haven't checked to see if the boy enrolled at the Westminster school,' said Mercy. ‘If he did, he might find it tough getting all the way from Hampstead to Westminster in time for registration in the mornings.'

‘There's also the fact that Sasha would know him, which is a good and a bad thing,' said Papadopoulos. ‘As a kidnapper you would never release Sasha if you knew he could identify the Demidova boy.'

‘Something ugly for us to think about,' said Mercy.

‘I'll see you up at the house,' said Papadopoulos.

Bobkov and Kidd were playing chess, sipping small cups of tarry coffee, leaning forward, elbows on knees, the tension between their shoulder blades palpable. There'd been no further calls from the kidnappers. They broke off to listen to Mercy's report. No sign of Butler, the lawyer. Sexton listened in.

‘I've checked out Jeremy Spencer and he's clean,' said Kidd. ‘Demidova's a bit more complicated.'

‘Is she legal?'

‘Oh yes, she's legal. She has a son called Valery. She was married but split up with her husband before she came to the UK.'

‘Why did she come to London?'

‘She answered one of those Russian girl ads, you know—sad, lonely guy in London seeks gorgeous blonde, totally out of his league, to be a part of his fascinating life in Lewisham,' said Kidd. ‘She got here, enrolled in a language school and after a year got a job. Then she rented a flat in Cannon Place and brought her son over.'

‘That must be some job,' said Mercy. ‘Thousand pounds a week rental, boy at an international school. I mean the place I've just seen in Ryecroft Street down in Fulham has got to be a couple of grand a week. What does she do?'

‘That's where it gets complicated. Originally she was self-employed and paid by several different Russian companies as a freelance consultant.'

‘That sounds entirely above board,' said Mercy, easing her foot off the irony brake.

‘I'd appreciate it if you didn't bring her in for questioning just yet. We've got people working on the Russian end of things,' said Kidd. ‘As far as the UK is concerned, her self-employed status finished last June and HMRC haven't been able to track her down since.'

‘So she might have become a consultant kidnapper or reverted to being a member of the FSB,' said Mercy.

‘Or both,' said Bobkov.

‘I don't expect you to tell me anything specific about your investigation into your friend Tereshchenko's poisoning, but could you indicate whether your enquiries had started annoying powerful people?'

‘That's not any easy question to answer,' said Bobkov. ‘Let's put it this way. I haven't been walking around Moscow asking my old FSB pals openly about what they know, but I have been working with people and we've been talking to sympathetic scientists to try to find the provenance of the polonium 210. We know, from the contamination of BA flights, that it came in from Moscow. What we're trying to prove is that it came from a specific nuclear facility to which only certain people have access and from which, we imagine, very few people have the right or power to remove something as deadly as polonium 210.'

‘And have people started to feel . . . uncomfortable?'

‘We've had no luck, yet.'

‘Has there been a change of approach as a result?'

‘Yes.'

‘Has that involved more open talk?'

‘Not by me. I'm too obvious. But I have carefully selected people working in Russia, making visits to nuclear facilities.'

‘You heard who won the presidential election on March 4th?' said Kidd.

‘Plenty of people were unhappy with the way the vote was . . . manipulated, if that's the right word,' said Mercy.

‘And here we are two weeks later,' said Bobkov, taking a call on his mobile.

They watched unmoving as he listened. Sexton got to his feet. Bobkov held up a hand.

‘Tracey had a stroke,' he said, closing down the call. ‘They've moved her into intensive care.'

 

At 7:30
A.M.
Juan Martín, still unemployed and now twenty-one, was walking his parents' dog by the River Manzanares on the outskirts of Madrid not far from Perales del Rio, close to his parents' flat. He was just going under the bridge of the M50 orbital motorway when the dog scrambled down the bank to the river's edge to inspect a black plastic bin liner. As Martín drew near he coughed against the horrific stench of bodily putrefaction. He shouted at the dog, who became more frantic in his scratchings. As he slid down the bank trying to control his gagging reflex, Martín saw a swollen human foot sticking out of the bag. He grabbed the dog's collar, hauled him back up onto the path and connected the lead. The dog lunged and barked. Martín dragged him away back to the motorway bridge. He tried to call his parents. No signal. He walked back to the flat.

At 8:00
A.M.
Juan Martín's father called the police, told them what his son had seen and gave his address. As it was the most exciting thing the local police had heard of in the last five years they turned up in their Citroën Picasso within minutes. Juan got into the car and directed them over the railway and under the M50 to Perales del Rio, where they parked and walked down to the river.

As soon as they saw the human foot one stayed with Martín at the site while the other went back to the car to radio it in. Ten minutes later the cop was back with rods and tape and they cordoned off the area.

Over the next hour a team of forensics turned up, a homicide team led by Inspector Jefe Luís Zorrita, a prosecutor and a team of four divers. Zorrita interviewed Martín with the prosecutor and one of the forensics listening in. By 9:15
A.M.
Martín had been sent home and the forensics were suited up and the divers had walked upstream as far as the railway line and eased themselves into the water.

At 9:20 the photographs had been taken of the crime scene and the bin liner had been moved to a tent set up under the M50 motorway. From the bag the forensics extracted a lower leg, cut at the knee, foot attached. Balled up and sodden at the bottom of the bin bag was some clothing which did not appear to be stained with anything darker than the river water in which it had been found. From this ball they unfolded a minidress which originally had been red in colour and a black jacket.

At 9:35 one of the forensics called the
inspector jefe
into the tent. On the table was a red European Union passport with a British cover.

‘It was found buttoned up in the inside pocket of the jacket,' said the forensic.

Wearing latex gloves the
inspector jefe
opened the pages to reveal a photo of a mixed-race girl with long, thick dark ringlets and the name Amy Akuba Boxer. He took a note of the passport details and handed them over to his sub-inspector to take to the next stage. He walked down to the bank where the diving team were working. Two divers' heads came up out of the green river. He held up a questioning hand. They signalled back. Nothing.

 

Boxer was having toast with olive oil, tomato and
jamón
in a bar with the unambiguous name of Casa de las Tostas, which was not far from his hotel. He'd already had a
café con leche
with his toast and had just ordered a
café solo
when David Álvarez called.

‘I have El Osito's number,' he said. ‘But look, I'm told by the guy who gave it to me that he won't talk to you and he certainly won't meet you. He has to know you. You have to be vouched for, vetted or whatever, if you want direct talks. He also said a kilo won't be enough. To talk to El Osito directly you have to be interested in at least two hundred kilos a month, which means you're already a player before you've even met and he'll know more about you than you do yourself. All he did say was that the Spanish market was now dead and they're looking to expand into northern Europe.'

‘At least I come from the right area,' said Boxer.

‘London is a place he particularly has in mind for expansion.'

‘O.K. Just give me the number. I'll work out an approach.'

‘My friend knows an intermediary who can make contact for you, but you'd have to be in the business.'

‘That won't be necessary,' said Boxer. ‘The important thing now is that you forget you ever met me. You wipe my name and number from your phone.'

Silence.

‘Did you hear me, David?'

‘I can't tell you how dangerous this guy is . . . '

‘You don't do his line of work without being dangerous,' said Boxer. ‘You've been a great help, David. I can't thank you enough.'

‘Hey, look,
hombre
, it was nothing. I'm just sorry I wasn't able to stop her from getting involved in the first place.'

‘You did the best you could and more than most people would have done. She's young, headstrong and, by the sound of it, high.' He entered El Osito's number in his Spanish mobile, sat back with his beer.

Another call. The Hotel Moderno.

‘We have an Inspector Jefe Luís Zorrita here. He would like to talk to you.'

 

‘It's very important that Irina Demidova does not know anything about this enquiry into the activities of her son Valery,' said Mercy.

The headmaster of the Westminster branch of Northwest International School, Piers Campbell, a grey man in his late forties who didn't seem to be getting enough sunlight, nodded his agreement. The woman was making him nervous with her pacing. He wished she would just sit down and tell him what it was all about.

Mercy looked out of Campbell's office window across Portland Place to the Institute of Physics on the other side of the road. On the way up it had been unsettling to see apparently balanced sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds piling in and out of their classrooms like normal children while her own had lost herself in Madrid. She asked her questions, keen to get out of there.

Campbell said he hadn't been told of any late registrations, that the boy Valery was a conscientious student who was doing well in his studies, especially the sciences and maths. He showed Mercy a photograph of a bespectacled boy with narrow shoulders and a crumpled mouth which couldn't quite decide on laughter or tears. His blond hair and blue eyes were the only positives as far as Sasha's footballing friend was concerned.

‘Does he have any football skills?' asked Mercy hopefully.

‘If he does he hasn't revealed them to us,' said Campbell. ‘He's definitely on the studious rather than sportif side.'

‘And his mother? Does his mother have any friends here, among the other parents or the teachers?'

‘I've seen her at PTA meetings, but she's not a great one for picking Valery up and all the school-gate socialising that goes with it. I think she works in an office not far from here, which I believe is where Valery goes after school.'

‘Would you say she's close to any of Valery's teachers?'

‘Close?'

‘I mean intimate . . . sleeping with.'

‘Good God, we wouldn't allow anything like that here.'

‘What about in the Hampstead school?'

‘Of course not,' said Campbell. ‘Are you implying—'

‘Forget it,' said Mercy, not quite sure where she was going with this line of questioning. ‘What about that photo? Would you mind if I took a snap of that? We need to check some things out.'

‘I'd really prefer to know what this was all about,' said Campbell.