January Window (39 page)

‘True. Most of the time I’m okay with these things. And I absolutely adore working in the police. It’s just now and then that something makes me feel a bit dodgy. I’ve got several strategies for dealing with it. Bodies, I mean. What about you? Will you be all right with this? With seeing Mr Zarco’s body?’

‘I’ll let you know when I see him.’

‘What, you mean you’ve never seen a body before?’

‘You make it sound like I should have done. I’m only forty, for Christ’s sake. My parents are still alive and so are my grandparents.’

‘Oh, I see. I thought when you volunteered it had to be because you were cool with this kind of thing.’

‘I volunteered because I hoped to spare his wife, and because I’ve known him longer than she has. But I’m not in the least bit cool about it, Miss Considine. In fact, you might tell me one of your strategies for dealing with your squeamishness, just in case I go wobbly on you.’

‘It’s just a bottle of smelling salts.
Sal volatile
. I keep some in my handbag. I know it sounds a bit old-fashioned of me but it’s actually quite scientific, you know. They give it to weightlifters before they compete in the Olympics because the ammonia triggers an inhalation reflex and activates the sympathetic nervous system; and this elevates the heart rate, blood pressure and brain activity, thus counteracting the faint. Before I see a body I just take a whiff of the stuff and I’m usually fine. Now it’s just another tool in my forensic kit.’

‘Well, if I keel over don’t forget to loosen my clothing, will you? I’m a bit old-fashioned myself. Besides, I like to wake up with a smile on my face.

‘You’re very funny, do you know that?’

‘I’m glad you think so.’

When we got nearer the East Ham Mortuary, she pointed left and said, ‘I think West Ham Football Ground is about half a mile that way, on the Barking Road.’

‘With all the stiffs in their team it’s certainly handy for the mortuary.’

‘You’re playing them tomorrow night, aren’t you?’

‘Yes. It’s the second leg of our semi-final match in the Capital Cup. Would you like to come as my guest? We can have dinner afterwards in the director’s box.’

‘I can hardly say no if I’m to be your guest, can I? But what if you lose – won’t you be in a filthy temper? Throwing football boots at people and that kind of thing? You might throw a boot at me. I wouldn’t be at all surprised after yesterday.’

‘That’s Sir Alex Ferguson you’re thinking of, Inspector. Besides, we’re not going to lose. We’re going to win. And I promise not to be in a filthy temper. But bring your smelling salts, just in case.’

‘Are you planning another inspiring team talk, is that it? Like the one on YouTube.’

‘When they win it won’t be for me, it will be for João Zarco.’

‘That might work for the team. But it won’t work for me. I think if I come to the match it had better be because I’d like to see you smile some time. And only if you promise not to tell anyone that I’m coming. I’d hate the news that I was at your game to get as far as Stanford Bridge.’

‘It’s Stamford Bridge. And I don’t believe you’ve ever been to a game of football in your life, Miss Considine.’

Just beyond a park she pulled up on a double yellow line in front of a small sixties-style building that most resembled a public library, with what looked like a little chapel on the end. There was a fence and a hedge and a large oak tree in the garden. She smiled a disarming smile.

‘All right, it’s a fair cop. I haven’t. And I lied about supporting Chelsea. But it cannot be denied that José Mourinho is a very handsome man. Very handsome indeed.’

‘I can deny it, Miss Considine. I can deny it on a stack of Bibles.’

‘It’s Louise. If I’m going to switch allegiance from José to you, I think we’d better be on first-name terms, don’t you?’

‘Agreed. Louise.’ I smiled. ‘Is this just to make me feel better before we go in there?’

‘You’ll have to wait until tomorrow night to know for sure,’ she said.

She got out of the car, opened the gate and then pulled onto a short driveway.

Inside the door of the mortuary she handed me a little glass ampoule covered in cloth.

‘Ammonia gonna say this once,’ she said. ‘Just break it under your nose if you feel faint.’

A mortuary official greeted us. He was small and balding with a gold tooth, and had an Arsenal pin in his lapel, which struck me as brave so close to Upton Park. He showed us into a room with a curtained window.

‘You ready?’ asked Louise.

I nodded.

She broke one of the little white ampoules under her nose and inhaled sharply. The atmosphere in the room was suddenly filled with a strong smell of ammonia and then she was gasping and blinking like she was in bright sunshine and knocking on the window glass.

The grey curtains parted to reveal Zarco’s body lying on a trolley. Most of him was under a green sheet but I could have wished his head had been covered, too. He had been such a handsome man – every bit as handsome as José Mourinho, whom he had known well, of course, since they were both Portuguese. His habitually unshaven face was badly bruised and his skull bashed in like a discarded plastic water bottle. It was the only part of his face that had any colour; the grey hue of the remaining part made him look like an extra in a zombie movie. But it was Zarco all right – I recognised the grey Brillo-pad hair, the sulky mouth and the broad nose; I’d have recognised that nose anywhere. I’d seen it hovering over a glass of good red wine often enough, savouring the bouquet like a true connoisseur. I remembered the dinner we’d had at 181 First, a restaurant in Munich, when he’d come to offer me the job at London City, and the two-hundred-euro bottle of Spätburgunder he’d ordered to cement the deal, and how much he’d enjoyed that particular red wine. I remembered how the restaurant was in the Olympic Tower and that it had been a revolving room, and the fantastic 360-degree view of Munich it had afforded us, and how even now I could remember our table and the way that it, and the whole restaurant, had turned, and how I’d drunk too much that night – we both had – and then the whole world was spinning until the moment when Louise, bless her, had something under my nose and I was reeling away from the ammoniac smell and her hand and the next world’s window.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked as I staggered through the mortuary door.

Outside in the fresh air I wiped a tear from my eye and nodded. ‘It’s him,’ I said. ‘It’s Zarco. Sorry about that.’

‘Don’t be.’ She took my hand and kissed it quickly. ‘Come on. I’ll take you back to Silvertown Dock.’

On my way home from the dock to Chelsea I dropped in to see Zarco’s widow again. It wasn’t as if I had anything particular I wanted to tell her but after not taking Toyah’s call that morning I’d called her back, several times, without success. I’m not sure who else she had to rely on, apart from Jerusa the housekeeper, but I was determined not to abandon my friend’s widow just because I didn’t like her that much. Like a lot of Australians in London she was a little too contemptuous of Britain and its awful weather for my taste, which begged the question: if you don’t like it, then what the fuck are you doing here? The one time I’d been to Australia I’d enjoyed myself a lot; at the same time, however, when you were there it was easy to see why so many Australians came to live in London. The weather was actually the least important part of why anyone chose to live in London. Apart from the weather everything was better than in Australia. Especially the football.

I rang the bell without success. The copper guarding Toyah’s door recognised me from before and told me she was still at home but that he hadn’t seen her all day, which worried us both, a little, so he allowed me to shout through her letterbox; and when eventually she came downstairs and let me into the house, I found her wearing a long silk dressing gown and it was obvious that she’d been in bed.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I was starting to get a bit concerned. So was the copper outside.’

‘I’m not the type to do myself in, Scott. Not for any man. And certainly not for one who was cheating on me with some little bitch at Hangman’s Wood.’

‘Did the cops tell you that?’

‘They didn’t need to. I knew what he was up to. I knew and I learned to look the other way because I figured it wasn’t going anywhere, okay? Don’t get me wrong. I loved Zarco. But there were times when he couldn’t keep it zipped. And to have an affair at work? That was just stupid.’ She lit a cigarette. ‘Would you like some tea?’

I took off my coat and we went down to the spaceship of a kitchen, which gave me a welcome opportunity to change the subject.

‘I’m sorry I woke you up, Toyah.’

‘That’s all right. I took a pill after I called you this morning and I’ve been asleep ever since. Really, it’s lucky you woke me up. I’ve got so much to do.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘And apparently very little time in which to do it. Jesus, I had no idea it was so late. I must have slept for eight hours.’

‘That’s good,’ I said. ‘It’s probably the best thing there is for grief.’

I was looking forward to going to bed myself; Sonja had sent me a neutral sort of text, saying that she hoped I was all right and I replied that I was, but thoughts of Louise Considine notwithstanding, I knew I would feel a lot better as soon as I was fast asleep.

‘I identified his body,’ I said. ‘About an hour ago. I thought perhaps you should know.’

‘Thank you. I appreciate you doing that. I know it must have been very upsetting for you.’

I shrugged that off.

‘Have the police got any ideas yet?’ she asked. ‘About who killed Zarco, and why?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What about you?’

‘No,’ I lied. ‘Nothing yet. But it’s early days.’

She poured the tea and we sat down at the long wooden table.

‘You asked me to tell you about anything unusual that happened,’ she said. ‘Something that might fill in a few blanks, you said. Well, there was something. My builder came round, Tristram Lambton. He’s been handling the work on number twelve. He said he’d come to pay his respects, but it wasn’t long before he mentioned the real reason he was here. He asked me if Zarco had left an envelope for him.’

‘An envelope?’

‘I hate to mention this right now, Mrs Zarco, he says when he’s finished being sympathetic, but your late husband had agreed to pay me in cash for some of the building work. Did he leave something for me, perhaps? An envelope?’

‘How much cash?’

‘Twenty thousand pounds, he said.’

‘That’s pushing any normal envelope,’ I said. ‘I know builders like cash in hand, but twenty grand needs two hands. Maybe three or four.’

‘Tell me about it. But I can’t honestly say I was entirely surprised. Zarco had all sorts of fiddles going, as you probably know. He was a typical Portuguese. Always making bloody deals, he was. It was meat and drink to the man. A right Del Boy.’ She took an angry puff of her cigarette. ‘Anyway, I told him that Zarco hadn’t mentioned any cash to me but I went and checked the safe, just in case. But there wasn’t any envelope. At least not one containing thousands of pounds. And Tristram said something like, well, if you do come across it, then please let me know. And I said that twenty grand wasn’t exactly the kind of sum that I was likely to find in Zarco’s sock drawer. And that’s how we left it.’

I nodded. ‘What kind of guy is this Tristram?’

‘Posh boy. Nice-looking. Plenty of money and a Bentley. Good builder, though. Our architect seems to rate him very highly. And so did Zarco.’

‘I’ll speak to him,’ I said. ‘I’ll speak to him after I’ve had my tea.’

‘Thanks, Scott. I appreciate it.’

I stayed another fifteen minutes for appearance’s sake. The house felt odd without Zarco’s loud voice and his laughter. Even the cat was looking a little bewildered. I used Toyah’s lavatory, put my coat back on, went outside and walked around to the other side of the square.

It was dark and well past the usual going-home time for builders, but from the lights and noise behind the Lambton Construction mural that hid the façade of number twelve it was plain that they were still working hard. I could hear what sounded like a carpenter at work, hammering one nail after another into some wood. I went through a wooden gate in the side of the mural and down the side of the house, which had been largely transformed by the addition of a huge modern window. I walked down a flight of stone stairs and found myself facing a man wearing a hoodie under a hard hat with a roll-up in his mouth and a plank on his shoulder.

‘Here,’ he said in a thick foreign accent, ‘what you up to, sunshine? You nicking tools or something?’

‘No, I wasn’t nicking tools.’

‘’Cos people nick our tools and the boss he say it’s us. Threaten to take it from our wages.’

‘No, that’s not what I want.’

‘What do you want? You here to complain? Because I just work here, see?’

‘I’m looking for Mr Lambton. I’m a friend of Mrs Zarco.’

The man’s dark eyes narrowed. ‘Sure, I know you,’ he said. ‘You’re the football guy. Scott Manson. Used to play for Arsenal – I remember. Now you manager of City. Me, I like Arsenal. They good team. Better than City, I think. Arsenal is cake your mother makes. Home-made. Good cake. City is cake you buy in shop. Not as good. More expensive, too.’ He took a last puff on the roll-up and then threw it into the house. ‘Hey, you got any tickets?’

‘No, I don’t. And I’m still looking for Mr Lambton.’

‘There’s two Mr Lambtons. Brothers, see? Tristram and Gareth. Which one you want?’

‘Tristram.’

‘Okay, you wait here and I find him.’

He put down the plank and walked into a maze of scaffolding that was lit by a bare bulb, leaving me alone with my thoughts, which were a knot of this and that. If I’d had a little more time I might have been able to think things out, to perceive what was significant, and to separate what was important from what was not. Being a cop on the Zarco inquiry might have presented them with a few more challenges if they’d been facing a full-strength West Ham on Tuesday night. There was no doubt about it, I was feeling under pressure. In Toyah’s loo I’d glanced at a newspaper article about the fun of being a fantasy football manager, and I’d thought, if only football was all you had to deal with then the job might seem as fun as that; it’s all the other shit that life throws at you – your girlfriend dumping you, the Inland Revenue telling your accountants that they think you owe them more tax, fucking reporters camped outside your house, gay players taking drugs, one of your oldest pals hanging himself – that makes the job so fucking difficult.