Die With Me (24 page)

‘You clearly know these boats and canals like the back of your hand, Mr Sullivan. Can’t you hazard a guess where she went in?’

Sullivan smiled, as if flattered to be consulted. ‘My guess, and it’s only a guess, mind, is that she fell in close to where we picked her up. It seems the most probable but don’t hang me if you find out she fell in at Limehouse.’

‘Can’t you be more precise? I promise I won’t hang you if you’re wrong. It’s very important we find out where she went in.’

Sullivan nodded thoughtfully and drained his mug, putting it down with a satisfied sigh. ‘OK. Allowing time for her to get caught up under the boat and possibly moved along just a little way before she hit the propeller, that would put it on the stretch just before the Maida Tunnel. On the eastern side, around Lisson Grove.’

Donovan found the Everett family’s address without a problem. They lived in a maisonette in a huge terraced house near Paddington Station, only ten minutes away from Little Venice. The call had been logged just after midnight and Judy Everett didn’t seem in the least surprised when Donovan explained that a girl’s body had been found, matching the description given of Yolanda.

‘Of course it’s a shock,’ Judy Everett said, attempting to spoon the pink, mushy contents of a small jar into the mouth of a toddler, who was sitting in a high chair looking unenthusiastic. Seeing what was inside the jar, Donovan didn’t blame him.

Tall and gawky, with a mass of unruly brown hair and a healthy, scrubbed complexion, Judy seemed to be taking things in her stride. Although the large, airy kitchen was in a state of chaos with paper and colouring pens littering the floor, the sink and draining board groaning with unwashed dishes and pans and plates of half-eaten food lying discarded on the counter.

‘I knew right away that something had happened when Yolanda didn’t come home,’ Judy said, turning to Donovan hand on hip. ‘She was always back well before midnight. It’s one of our house rules and she’d never broken it before.’

‘How long had she been living with you, Mrs Everett?’

‘Oh, about five months.’

‘So you know her quite well.’

‘Not really. In fact, she was a complete mystery to me. I normally have some sort of a rapport going with the girls while they’re here. They never stay long but I’ve become quite fond of many of them. They’ve really become like members of the family and we keep in touch.’

‘But not Yolanda?’

Judy shook her head. ‘I can’t pretend, can I?’ She sighed heavily. ‘God, it’s awful, if it is Yolanda. I feel really guilty now, not liking her. I mean, there was nothing wrong with her and she actually seemed to be quite bright. I never had to tell her anything twice. But she wasn’t the sort of girl you immediately warm to. She was good with my two boys, though, which was all that really mattered.’ She sighed again, rubbing her face with her hand and frowned. ‘If it’s her, I don’t know what I’m going to tell Alex. He’s my elder son and he’s five. He was really fond of her.’

‘Was she unhappy, do you think?’

Judy shrugged. ‘To be honest, I don’t know. She was such a serious little thing and she didn’t have much of a sense of humour, although her English wasn’t fantastic, so perhaps that’s unfair. As I said, she did her job OK, so I had no complaints. I just have no idea what went on underneath.’

Red-faced, nose streaming, the child spat out the last spoonful of food and banged the side of his chair with a fat, grubby fist. Judy wiped his mouth and the tray in front of him quickly with some kitchen paper and offered him a child’s beaker of what looked like juice, which he sucked for a moment then brandished in the air triumphantly as if it was the FA Cup.

‘Had she worked somewhere else before coming to you?’

‘No. This was her first time in this country and she didn’t seem to know anybody. She didn’t go out much, apart from her English classes. I felt sorry for her, but what can you do? I’m not her mother. I work four days a week and I haven’t got time to look after the girls, as well as everybody else. They have to learn to fend for themselves.’

Her tone was a little defensive and Donovan wondered if maybe she was also feeling guilty after all for not having taken more of an interest. For a moment, thinking back to what people had said about Marion Spear, Donovan felt for Yolanda. Donovan had been born and grown up in the leafy suburbs of St Margaret’s, Twickenham, on the outskirts of London. She had a sense of belonging, a network of family and close friends, yet even she found London a cold and lonely place at times. How must it be for someone coming to it for the first time, trying to carve out a life for themselves on their own, with little or no support? It would make anyone vulnerable.

‘Did Yolanda have access to the internet from here?’ she asked.

The child threw the beaker onto the floor and Judy stooped to pick it up, handing it back to him without a glance. ‘She wasn’t allowed on our computer but I remember her going off to the local library sometimes to send emails home.’

‘When did you last see her?’ Donovan said, making a mental note to check the library computers if the body turned out to be Yolanda’s.

‘She gave the boys their tea yesterday, that would be about five-thirty. Alex is having tea at a friend’s at the moment.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Which reminds me, I ought to go and pick him up soon.’

‘I won’t take up much more of your time, Mrs Everett. But I need a rough idea of when Yolanda went out.’

Judy thought for a moment. ‘That’s a bit tricky. I came home from work and took over at about six, as it was her evening off. I didn’t see her after that. She usually stays in her room and watches TV, even on her evenings off. We put one in the au pair’s bedroom to keep them occupied. That way, we don’t have them hanging around with us in the evening.’

‘So, you didn’t hear her go out?’

‘No. But she creeps around like a mouse. I suppose it might have been when I was giving the boys a bath, but I can’t be sure. The walls in these houses are so thick.’

‘What time was that?’

‘About seven. But it could have been any time after that. I didn’t notice she’d gone out until Johnny came home, which was just before eight.’ The toddler had thrown the cup onto the floor again and started to cry. Judy picked him up, balancing him on her hip and wiping his nose with a crumpled tissue, which she retrieved from the sleeve of her cardigan. ‘So, what happens now?’

‘We obviously need to make sure that this girl is Yolanda. Do you know if she has any family in this country?’

Judy shook her head. ‘They’re all in Spain. She came from somewhere in the north by the sea. I don’t remember where, I’m afraid, but I can probably dig out an address or phone number somewhere if you want it.’ Her eyes flitted briefly towards a small desk in the corner of the room, its surface covered in a sea of papers and books.

‘I’ll need that if it turns out to be her. Do you think your husband would be able to come and identify her?’

Judy gave a rasping laugh. ‘I’m afraid it will have to be me. Johnny would pass out at the sight of a dead body. But I’m a GP so I’m used to these things. I’ll make a phone call so that Alex can stay where he is, then I’ll see if my mum can come and mind Toby. I imagine you want it done straight away.’

Donovan nodded. ‘The sooner the better. If it is her, we’ll also need to go through her things.’

With Toby happily perched on her hip, Judy walked Donovan to the front door of the flat. ‘Assuming it is Yolanda, can you tell me what happened? Did she fall in?’

‘We’re not sure yet what happened,’ Donovan said noncommittally. ‘I don’t suppose you found any sort of note?’

‘You mean a suicide note?’ Judy looked shocked. ‘I can check her bedroom again but I didn’t see anything when I went in there last night. She didn’t even say goodbye when she went out. You really think she might have killed herself?’

‘We don’t know, Mrs Everett. The first step is to identify her.’

Tartaglia left Wightman beside the canal, waiting for backup from Barnes and some local uniforms to arrive in order to start the search for witnesses along the canal. Based on what Sullivan had said, they had decided to work their way east from the Maida Tunnel. He just hoped Sullivan’s guess was a good one.

The course of a murder investigation rarely ran straight. Even with what looked superficially to be the simplest of cases, there were always ups and downs, twists and turns and, with the more complicated ones, often long periods when nothing seemed to give. He felt completely baffled by what he had seen at the canal. The missing lock of hair meant that it had to be Tom. But why had he attacked the girl? Why risk leaving his DNA at the scene? The more he thought about it, the less sense he was able to make of it.

He consoled himself with the thought that Steele would do no better. He was sure her first action, on hearing about what he had learned, would be to call in Kennedy. He gave her a minute, or five at the outside, from the moment he had spoken to her on his mobile beside the canal before she would be punching in Kennedy’s number. Whatever was going on between them, they seemed to be joined at the hip. Kennedy would have a field day with all of this. Tartaglia could already picture him swaggering up and down her office, spouting his shit as if he were God. Just to save himself from the experience of having to hear it all, Tartaglia was tempted again to tell Steele what he had seen outside her flat. But what was the point? He’d been through all the pros and cons already and he knew she wouldn’t believe him.

He found her a little intimidating, he had to admit. She was so bloody cold and unreadable. Cornish wasn’t exactly cuddly either, but at least he was transparent and totally predictable, with all his silly little foibles and vanities. By comparison he was almost endearing. Whereas Steele had all the charm of an automaton. Fearing what she would say, Tartaglia still hadn’t found the right moment to tell her what Donovan had learned from Nicola Slade about Marion Spear’s secret lover. As far as he was concerned, even if there was nothing but a whisper of suspicion to link Harry Angel to any of the others, he was still in the frame for what Tartaglia was sure was Spear’s murder. But he wanted Kennedy’s cloud of heat and light to pass before he attempted to convince Steele to let him have another go with Angel. And there was no point in even attempting that, until they found out where the forensic trail would lead from the canal body. Hopefully, there would be news from Fiona Blake within the next forty-eight hours.

What worried him most was that he no longer trusted his instincts – almost felt as though he hadn’t got any any more. Everything was obscure and he wished again that Clarke was still around. He would know what to make of it all, if anyone would. St Mary’s Hospital wasn’t more than a stone’s throw from Maida Vale and he decided to chance it and see if Clarke would be up to seeing him. It would also be a good idea to give Barnes a miss, at least until the morning. Hopefully, by then Kennedy would have been and gone.

‘I thought if I was hypnotised I’d become a robot or do something stupid or embarrassing, you know, like you see in stage shows,’ Donovan said.

Adam Zaleski grinned. ‘That’s just theatre. Those people you see taking their clothes off, or pretending to be chickens, do it because they want to. I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.’

They were sitting at a table in the ground floor bar of the Polish Club, just up the road from Zaleski’s practice in South Kensington. After Donovan’s second hypnotherapy session early that evening, he had suggested going for a quick drink afterwards. He intrigued her and she had found it impossible to say no. After all, who could blame her for wanting a life outside work and how else was she ever going to meet anyone new who wasn’t in the police?

With a twenty foot ceiling and huge windows overlooking Exhibition Road and part of Imperial College opposite, the room was an extraordinary mix of styles, with bits of sixties and seventies décor, together with chandeliers, large carved mirrors and faded gilt. The atmosphere evoked an earlier, grander era, somehow not entirely English. There were also elements of seediness, the carpet and curtains reminiscent of a cheap hotel, as if there hadn’t been enough money around in recent years to maintain standards. Some sort of elevator jazz was playing in the background and the room was nearly full, everybody talking Polish. If it hadn’t been for the view out the front, Donovan could have easily imagined herself in a foreign country.

Zaleski had insisted that they drink vodka and had ordered some special variety flavoured with rowanberries. He had also refused to let her pay for her drink, saying that this was his territory. Although he was not much older than she was, he had an old-fashioned charm that she found very appealing.

‘The first time I was very conscious of what you were saying,’ she said. ‘But this time I found myself drifting off, as if I was asleep. I feel so incredibly relaxed now, it’s amazing.’

‘It’s a bit like being in a trance,’ he replied, as the waiter brought over two small shot glasses of clear liquid on a silver tray. ‘But you’re actually in a heightened state of awareness. Your conscious mind is suppressed and I’m talking to your inner-conscious mind.’ He picked up his glass and clinked hers. ‘
Na zdrowie
. It means cheers.’

‘Cheers.’ She had never drunk neat vodka before and she took a sip warily. It was icy cold and viscous. Not unpleasant at all, in fact.

He downed his in one gulp. ‘That’s how you’re supposed to drink it,’ he said, smiling. ‘But I’ll let you off this time, as you’re new to it.’

She took another sip, swilling it round on her tongue to get the full taste. It had much more flavour than the stuff you bought at the supermarket and she could now understand why it was drunk on its own. ‘Why do I have to wear those headphones when you’re hypnotising me?’

‘I use a technique called Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP, as we call it. You don’t want all the science stuff, but basically wearing headphones maximises concentration, so all you hear is my voice and what I’m saying.’

‘I still find it unbelievable that I’m sitting here having a drink and I don’t even fancy a cigarette.’

‘The most important thing is that you really want to make the change. It won’t work otherwise.’

She took another, larger sip of vodka, feeling pleased with herself. If she finally cracked the smoking thing, it would be one in the eye for that sceptic, Tartaglia. ‘Tell me about the club,’ she said after a moment. ‘Has it been here for long?’

‘Donkey’s years. It goes back at least to the Second World War, when the Polish government in exile used to meet upstairs. But it was dying on its feet until Poland joined the EU. It’s still caught in a bit of a time warp but at least the average age of the members has come down by about four decades. You know, there are now more Poles living in the UK than in Warsaw.’

It was amazing how the EU had changed London, with the huge migration of immigrants from Eastern Europe and other countries. The Brits had at last become a bit more diluted, which was so much for the better in her opinion, the huge cultural mix being one of the many reasons she liked living and working in London.

She drained her glass with a final sip. ‘Do you come here a lot?’

He nodded. ‘It’s a funny old place, but I’m rather fond of it. It’s got a terrace out at the back, which is quite nice in summer, and I do like a shot or two of vodka after a hard day at work. Speaking of which, would you like another?’ he said, noticing her empty glass. ‘They’re very small, after all, and one barely touches the sides, I find.’

‘Please.’ It was already giving her a deliciously warm feeling but she was sure she could handle one more. ‘Are we supposed to throw our empty glasses into the fireplace?’

He laughed. ‘Only in the movies or in Russia. I think if you tried it here, you’d give one of the older members a heart attack. It’s safer to let the waiter take them.’ He gestured for the waiter who appeared almost immediately.

‘Who are they?’ she asked, looking up at the many portraits on the walls, after the waiter had removed the glasses and taken their order.

‘They’re pretty hideous, aren’t they? I suppose they’re all Poles. But apart from Rula Lenska, I don’t recognise any of them, although the blokes in the berets over the bar must be war heroes. However, I don’t think there’s much logic to it, as there’s a huge picture of the Duke of Kent over the fireplace in the dining room and I doubt whether he even has a Polish maid.’

She laughed and, still looking around, said: ‘It’s quite a collection. But I’m not sure if I’d give any of them wall space, myself.’

‘I imagine somebody bequeathed them to the club – I’d put good money on it being the artist – and I expect the old biddies on the committee were too polite to refuse.’

‘What about that gold eagle over there, with the crown?’

‘It’s the national emblem and it’s supposed to be a white eagle. The communists removed the crown from the emblem when they came to power. But of course this one here still has his.’

Their drinks arrived. ‘How do you say “cheers” again in Polish?’ she said, raising her glass.

‘
Na zdrowie
.’

It sounded so lovely when he said it and she tried to copy him. She had never had much of an ear for languages at school but it seemed to trip off the tongue quite easily. ‘It sounds so much nicer than cheers.’

‘Let alone “down the hatch” or “bottoms up”,’ he said, smiling. ‘English vocabulary can be very functional and un-poetic, particularly when it comes to drinking or romance.’

She felt her cheeks turn pink. She wasn’t sure if it was the vodka or the way he was looking at her.

‘Do you speak Polish fluently?’ she asked.

‘I was born and brought up over here but we always spoke it at home.’ He downed his vodka and smiled at her. ‘Now, it’s your turn.’

‘In one, you mean? OK. Here goes.’

He watched as she knocked it back. It was ice cold and made the back of her throat burn. But it tasted even better than the first.

‘That one’s called Jebrowska,’ he said. ‘It means Bison Grass. Are you up for trying another one? They have a lemon vodka which is quite delicious. Or maybe you’ve had enough. It can be quite powerful when you’re not used to it.’

She hesitated. She was supposed to be cooking supper for Claire, although she hadn’t even got around to buying it yet. Luckily there was a Tesco just round the corner from their house which was open late. It wouldn’t do to arrive home pissed. But what the hell. She felt so relaxed, sitting there with him, that she wanted to postpone the inevitable moment of departure. ‘OK. Just one more and then I really must go.’

The waiter was nowhere to be seen and Zaleski went up to the bar to order the final round.

‘You know, you’re not at all what I imagine a policewoman to be like,’ he said, sitting down again a few minutes later with their drinks.

She laughed. ‘Really?’

‘I hasten to add that I haven’t met any. Not up close, anyway, apart from some bloke who did me for speeding once.’

‘The murder squad’s a bit different to traffic,’ she said, hoping he wasn’t going to ask her about the case.

‘I can imagine. What’s your background? I mean, why did you join the police in the first place? You don’t seem the type.’

She shrugged. ‘There’s no type, really, particularly these days. I’ve got a degree in English but that’s not much use for anything, unless you want to teach, like my parents did. My father’s a card-carrying
New
Statesman
reader and joining the police was probably the only way I could shock him, other than becoming a Young Conservative.’

He smiled. ‘What I really meant when I said you didn’t look the type was that you’re very feminine and petite.’

‘Short, you mean?’

‘No, petite. I chose the word carefully.’

‘Don’t worry, it doesn’t bother me. I’m very happy the way I am and luckily these days there’s no minimum height requirement. Anyway, for what I do, I don’t need to be physically strong.’

‘No. I suppose detecting is all about brain power.’ They clinked glasses. ‘Here’s to you, Sam, and good detecting.’ He smiled and downed his vodka. Then he said something in Polish.

‘What does that mean?’

He grinned. ‘I said you have beautiful eyes.’

She felt herself colour again. Why did such things always sound so much nicer in a foreign language? She thought of Jamie Lee Curtis being turned on by Russian in
A Fish Called Wanda
. But Polish was just as sexy, particularly when spoken by Adam. He had the quiet sort of looks that grew on you. If he took off his nerdy glasses and wore his hair a little longer, he’d almost give Tartaglia a run for his money. He could also do with sharpening up his clothes. But she liked the fact that he didn’t bother or didn’t seem to be aware that he was attractive.

‘Sorry. I should be behaving more professionally,’ he said, still smiling. ‘You are my client but at least you’ve only one more session to go.’

‘Do you really think I won’t ever want a cigarette again?’

‘We’ll see. But that’s usually all that’s needed. Your last session’s on Friday, isn’t it?’

She nodded.

‘I’m pretty sure you’re my last appointment, like today. Why don’t I take you out to dinner afterwards to celebrate?’

She didn’t want to appear too keen but there was nothing she wanted to do more. ‘That would be lovely. Shall we come here again?’

He shook his head with a smile. ‘All Poles eat is pig, cabbage and potatoes. I think we can do a little better than this funny old place. Leave it to me.’