Burns was drinking tea in his office at the station. He looked smug, as if he had been given the promotion of his dreams.
‘We’ve caught him,’ he announced proudly.
‘Who?’
‘Morris Cley.’
My heart rate slowed to normal. All the way to the station I had been picturing Will, screaming at the walls of an empty room.
‘Where’s he been?’
‘Ramsgate, staying with his auntie. So he says.’
‘What’s he been arrested for?’
‘Assault. He knocked you out cold, remember?’ Burns appraised me through his pebble-thick glasses. ‘And he travelled back the same night Suzanne Wilkes’s body was dumped. The CCTV at London Bridge Station picked him up.’
‘I didn’t press charges.’
‘But you will.’ Burns’s eyes had the fixed, obsessive look football fans get a minute before victory. ‘He killed a prostitute right here in Southwark, Alice. We can’t exactly rule him out.’
‘He can’t even drive. How could he dump a body? And Suzanne was taken six weeks before he got out of Wandsworth.’
‘He’s not acting alone, obviously.’ Burns’s smile had evaporated, as if I had missed the punchline. ‘All you have to do is watch the interview, see what you can gather.’
The room Burns led me to was no bigger than a broom cupboard.
‘Can we keep the door open?’ I asked. ‘I’m not great with confined spaces.’
For a second he looked at me like I was mad, then his expression softened. ‘My wife’s got a thing about tall buildings. Anything over six floors is beyond her, and one sign of a spider’s web and she’s frothing at the mouth.’
I thought Burns might give me the full list of his wife’s phobias, but he was distracted by a light flicking on in front of us. Through the smoked glass panel there was an empty room that looked like a film set, waiting for the cameras to roll. Alvarez entered first. It was a relief that there was a one-way window between us, so I could observe him without being seen. He looked like the lead man in a Spanish melodrama, thickset with untidy hair and a permanently serious expression. Maybe he was nursing a secret so grave, no one could prise it out of him.
After a few seconds a middle-aged blonde escorted Cley into the room. I hoped she was ex-directory, otherwise Cley would be paying her one of his midnight visits. He looked exactly as I remembered him: thin and wiry, with protruding teeth and a storm cloud of frizzy grey hair. The colour had drained from his face, and he spoke to his solicitor in an anxious whisper. She gave him a reassuring smile before Alvarez leaned over and flicked on the tape recorder.
‘We talked to your aunt, Morris. She says you left Ramsgate around six o’clock. Where did you go when you got back to London Bridge?’
Cley stared down at his knees. ‘The park on Druid Street.’
‘I know the one, right by Tower Bridge.’ Alvarez leaned back in his chair. His body language was relaxed, as if he was chatting to a friend. ‘Poor old you, that place is always full of
druggies and winos. Why did you come back, Morris? You could have stayed by the sea with your aunt, couldn’t you?’
Cley was silent for so long that his solicitor leaned across and whispered something to him. ‘She’s too old to look after me, she says.’ His eyes were fixed on his clenched hands.
Alvarez shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Clearly he would have preferred an equal to spar with. There was no pleasure in attacking a weakling, like a playground bully. He gave Cley a few minutes to collect himself, and when the questions began again, his tone had softened.
‘What did you get up to in Ramsgate, Morris?’
Cley looked puzzled. ‘Watched TV most days.’
‘Indoors with the old lady, the whole time.’ Alvarez raised his eyebrows. ‘But you called your friends. You used a phone box, didn’t you? Where did you go to ring your mates, Morris?’
Cley shook his head solemnly, like a child denying truancy to the headmaster. ‘I never went out.’
Alvarez spent another half-hour trying to coax information from him, but it was an uphill struggle. Eventually he looked up at us, as though he could see through the mirrored glass. He looked exhausted, like a boxer whose championship days are over.
‘He’s got to be concealing something,’ Burns said under his breath.
‘I doubt it.’ I held his gaze. ‘Cley hasn’t got the intellect to lure a woman into a trap, let alone torture her to death.’
‘But his mates have. Don’t be fooled by the village idiot act. He knew the Bensons, remember? This guy’s hung out with the scum of the earth.’
‘So why aren’t you chasing up all the people who stayed at the Bensons’ hostel?’
‘We are.’ Burns jabbed his glasses back on to the bridge of his nose. ‘Except most of them gave false names. Keeping records wasn’t Ray’s number one priority.’
‘I still think you’re barking up the wrong tree. You can tell from his body language. He’s got nothing to conceal.’
‘We’ll have to agree to differ.’ Burns folded his arms tightly. ‘I reckon he’s in it up to his neck.’
‘How long can you hold him?’
‘Thirty-six hours,’ he replied. ‘We’ll be pushing our luck if we can keep him for another night.’
I thought about telling Burns that he was exhibiting classic signs of obsessionality, imagining things that couldn’t be real, but his expression was tense with conviction. There’s no way he would have heard me.
‘What are you doing for the next few hours, Alice?’ he asked.
I glanced at my watch. ‘Getting a takeaway, then going home to a big glass of Muscadet.’
Somehow Burns persuaded me to put my relaxation plan on hold. As usual his car smelled of cigarettes and fast food; an empty McDonald’s bag and half a dozen cans of Coke were littered across the back seat.
‘You don’t actually drink that stuff, do you?’ I asked.
‘Not guilty. I just haven’t got round to binning the kids’ rubbish.’
‘So you’re a healthy eating freak, are you?’
‘No way.’ He kept his eyes fixed on the road. ‘But you can’t beat a triple bypass to get you on a diet. I’ve lost two stone in the last three months.’
‘That’s amazing.’ I glanced at him. He probably had five or six more to lose before he stopped being morbidly obese. His long-suffering wife must have spent weeks weaning him on to salads and couscous. I wondered how she would react if she knew he was sneaking the odd smoke when her back was turned. ‘So who are you taking me to see anyway?’
‘Cheryl Martin. The only surviving victim of the Bensons.’
‘How did she escape?’
Burns concentrated on crossing Bishopsgate. Crowds of rain-soaked commuters were shivering on the kerb outside Liverpool Street, waiting for the lights to change.
‘Pure luck. She was in the cellar when we picked Ray Benson up. We kept hearing this tapping, but it took hours to figure it out. The entrance was through a trapdoor in his shed, five combination locks on the door. It was like those stupid horror films you don’t let the kids watch. He’d built a cell, six feet long, three feet high. Not big enough to stand up in, freezing cold.’
‘How long was she down there?’ I asked.
‘Fifteen days.’ Burns sucked air through his teeth. ‘She spent six months in hospital after what those bastards did to her.’
He parked in Wilmer Gardens, a narrow cul-de-sac lined with low blocks of 1970s council flats. They looked out on well-kept communal gardens, cherry trees, balconies for every flat.
‘Not bad,’ I commented. ‘And she’s got herself a trendy postcode.’
‘We asked the housing association to give her something decent. The playschool she works at isn’t far from here.’
I followed Burns up two pristine flights of stairs. It made perfect sense why someone like Cheryl Martin would want to look after children. No one had looked after her, so she had turned the tables, decided to nurture everyone else.
Burns paused on the landing, drawing in huge breaths as though he’d just swum the Channel. The door sprang open before he had time to knock. A young woman with a cloud of dark curls framing her face threw her arms around Burns. She was dressed in paint-spattered jeans and a sweatshirt.
‘Been paintballing, Cheryl?’ he smiled.
‘I’m doing my bedroom. The colour’s a bit sickly though.’
So far she hadn’t acknowledged me, too busy welcoming Burns like a long-lost father.
‘This is Alice.’ Burns nodded at me. ‘She’s working for me.’
The girl held out her hand. She must have been in her mid-twenties but the dimples in her cheeks made her look about eighteen.
‘Are you any good at colour schemes?’ she asked hopefully.
‘Not great, I’m afraid. I always go for white, so things don’t clash.’
‘Come and take a look anyway. I think I could be making a big mistake.’
Cheryl led the way along a pale pink corridor. Stylised pictures of flowers and kittens hung on both walls. It looked like a ten-year-old girl had been given free rein to decorate the place exactly as she pleased. She showed us into a small bedroom, where a patch of vivid lilac paint was beginning to spread across a grubby beige wall.
‘What do you reckon?’ Cheryl waited anxiously, as though she expected to be given a low mark.
‘Good choice,’ I replied. ‘Really clean and fresh.’
Burns inspected her handiwork carefully. ‘You’re doing a grand job, Cheryl, not a smear in sight.’
She gave him another impulsive hug.
‘Give over.’ Burns patted her back gingerly, his expression a mixture of pleasure and embarrassment.
We sat in Cheryl’s lounge while she made us a cup of tea. It was obvious she had no money, but she was still trying hard to improve things. A large coffee table took pride of place in the centre of the room. She must have decorated it herself, with stencilled silver leaves curling across the white surface.
‘Is this a social call then?’ Cheryl placed a tea tray in front of us.
‘Not quite,’ Burns admitted.
She let out a long sigh. ‘It was six years ago, Don. I’ve stopped thinking about it.’ Her expression had changed from eager to please to anxious in the space of a second.
‘The thing is, Cheryl, two girls have been killed, and we reckon there’s a connection with the hostel. The people involved must have lived there, or been mates of the Bensons.’
‘You’re kidding.’ She twisted a brown curl between her fingers, staring at him in disbelief. ‘They were psychos, Don. They didn’t have friends.’
‘You must have been very young when you stayed there,’ I said quietly.
She turned to face me. ‘I was seventeen. Mum had just chucked me out. She had a new boyfriend, and I’d been smoking too much dope. I was a pain in the arse, probably.’
‘But you’ve done well in the last few years, haven’t you?’
‘I got myself to college, thanks to Don. He phoned every week, helped with the application forms, nagged me to get my coursework done.’
Burns looked mortified, as if compassion was a sacking offence.
‘What was it like at the hostel?’ I asked.
Cheryl studied the contents of her cup. ‘Okay to begin with. I’d been sleeping in squats, so it was a relief to be somewhere warm. Ray and Marie seemed pretty normal at first. I just thought they were trying to do their bit.’ Her eyes went out of focus, as if she was looking at something a long distance away. ‘I must have been so fucking naive.’
‘You don’t have to talk about this now, love,’ Burns interrupted. ‘We can come back.’
‘No, Don,’ she snapped. ‘I’d rather get it over with.’
‘Did Ray and Marie employ anyone to help them?’ I asked.
‘God no, they were cheapskates.’ Cheryl screwed up her face in disgust. ‘Marie made us do all the work round the place. Cooking or washing up, cleaning the loos. Anyone who didn’t got chucked out.’
‘The thing is, someone’s got insider information. Someone very disturbed,’ Burns frowned.
‘Everyone was fucked up in that place, Don.’ Cheryl sounded exhausted. ‘I mean, it was a doss house. You only go to places like that if you’re desperate. One girl just sat in the corner of the day room, rocking. They picked the most vulnerable people they could find.’
‘You don’t seem vulnerable,’ I commented.
‘I was back then. The youngest kid in the hostel, no one looking out for me.’ She passed her hand across her eyes like she was trying to clear her vision. ‘There was one bloke they had a soft spot for. I can’t remember his name. He used to hang about in the garden. I just thought he went out there for a fag, but he was their doorman, I’m sure of it. They must have paid him to stop people poking about.’
‘Or escaping?’ I asked.
‘Fat chance.’ Cheryl shivered. ‘I used to hear Ray coming for me, undoing all the locks.’