‘You tell me.’
Her look was a puzzled one. She picked up one of the mixed martial arts DVDs. ‘A man cave. Is this place for when your wife kicks you out?’
‘It’s for when North Korea bombs us. So… I’m going home. You make sure—’
‘What’s all that stuff?’ she asked, pointing to the far brick wall where there was a grid-like shoe rack containing electrical gadgetry. On the bottom of the pointing left hand, running from the wrist to the end of her pinky finger, was a tattoo of tiny paw prints.
He got the feeling she was stalling, probably because she didn’t want to be left alone. He didn’t care. Every minute in this woman’s company was one less in Katie’s. So, it was time to go. ‘Don’t worry about all that stuff. And don’t touch it. Touch nothing, okay? I’m going home. There’s no food, but there’s a water bottle next to the TV. The shutter can be unlocked and raised from the inside. I’m back here to open up at eight in the morning. You’ll be gone by then, right? And remember, we never met.’
He started to climb down the ladder.
Just his head and shoulders were exposed to her when she said: ‘You might be in danger. I don’t think you should go home tonight.’
He froze. ‘What the hell are you talking about? Why am I in danger? They didn’t see me.’
But one of them had, or at least his van. His was unmarked and like a thousand white vans that criss-crossed London every day and night. But each had a registration plate for a reason: to be traced to a person and an address. He’d managed to confine this worry to a bit part, but in light of her warning it took the centre stage.
She shrugged. Paused. ‘Just be careful.’
‘I’m fine,’ he said with false boldness. ‘Just be gone tomorrow morning. Nice knowing you. And don’t answer the phone, okay? We get calls from America, so it might ring early in the morning. I’ll turn off the answering machine so you won’t be woken. Leave it alone. Leave everything alone. Everything.’
‘I’ll wait for you. I want you to take me to my friend Danny’s house tomorrow.’
His mouth fell open. ‘What? There’s someone you can go to after all? Why didn’t you mention him earlier?’
‘I can’t go tonight, if that’s what you’re getting at.’
Exactly what he’d been thinking. An extra half hour out of his life wouldn’t have mattered if it had meant getting rid of her. ‘Why?’
‘Tomorrow. I’ve explained all this. You can take me there tomorrow.’
He literally roared like a lion in frustration. He knew she wouldn’t be convinced, so started down the ladder again. ‘When I get back tomorrow, you make sure you’re gone. I did my good deed for this year. Be thankful you got any help. I had magnificent news six months back, and I don’t think I stopped smiling till you appeared.’
She pulled a scornful face. ‘Lucky for some. But I’ve got nothing to smile about, have I? I need help and you have to help me.’
He jumped the last few feet to the floor. ‘Okay,’ he said, and it was a blatant lie. He wasn’t going to take her home, to this Danny’s house or anyplace else. He figured that the morning would give her a fresh outlook and that she’d leave before he returned. But if not, it was a problem for a new day. Right now all he wanted was to go home to a woman he gave a shit about.
He deactivated the answerphone and went for the door. He flicked the light, crossed the dark room, and slid under the shutter. He could see flickering light from the loft: she had turned on the TV, volume low. For the millionth time he regretted ever having met this woman, then he lowered the shutter, locked it and got into his van.
He hoped he’d seen the last of Liz Smith.
Eight
Mac
The ID tag was military chic, unfortunately, so there was no real name, no religious leaning or medical information embossed on it. Just one word: Bosszilla. But it was enough. The detective who found the dog tag knew the word was urban slang for a rampaging, angry superior, Godzilla-like. He was formerly of Operation Trident, now called the Trident Gang Crime Command, which had been set up following a wave of shootings and killings in Lambeth and Brent, and he was well aware of a guy known as Bosszilla: Dave Ramirez.
Grafton hadn’t yet been confirmed as one of the dead, but he had a concrete connection to the slaughterhouse and now there was a pretty solid clue that one of his biggest and most notorious rivals had been there. It was enough to put two detectives in a speeding car.
* * *
Within fifteen minutes of the find, the two detectives were at an address in Crayford. They knocked and then pushed their way inside past an exhausted-looking and sweaty girl wearing next to nothing. Ramirez’s new girlfriend, probably. He was in the bath, and the detectives liked that. They figured it could mean he was washing blood off his skin.
He was a skinny little Latino guy with a bushy moustache that looked like a cartoon version of a disguise. And wide, shocked eyes. A big shot Bosszilla when he had his minions surrounding him, but not alone and naked in a bath, and he knew it. No match for two tall coppers, so he came quietly. He’d been arrested enough times to know that the place to put up a fight was the police station, with a solicitor as a cornerman. Fuckers like Ramirez usually won on points, but no matter how lucky they got, or what weapons they brought to the fight, the cops always got the first strike. And they took pleasure in it now as they yanked him from the bath, slapped on cuffs and spat the word ‘murder’.
* * *
Mac decided to watch Ramirez’s interview on video-feed from another room. He’d investigated Ramirez five years before, when the kid was just nineteen. A murder outside a Chinese takeaway in Kensington, when Mac, a year into DCI status, had headed their murder squad. There had been suspicions that somehow Ramirez had wielded the knife but convinced one of his cronies to take the rap.
DS Gondal and a lanky DC called Cooper conducted the interview. Ramirez hadn’t yet been told who he was suspected of murdering. A breach of the rules, sure, but normal rules didn’t really apply when dealing with people like Ramirez. They wanted to see how he reacted, and they didn’t think he’d be making an official complaint.
What he did was sit in silence and look nervous. Understandable. They’d sourced intel on this guy from the local CID and had been warned that he was cocky and liked to play games during questioning, but that was around coppers he knew: the ones who nicked him for running prostitutes, or peddling heroin, or breaking the legs of people who didn’t pay for his protection; charges he always beat. But these were new boys and the stakes were higher.
DS Gondal and DC Cooper made small talk without the tape recorder snooping. Now, backed up by a video camera eyeballing everything, Ramirez had lost his nerves. So, he was one hundred per cent attitude. He hadn’t asked for a solicitor yet, and had even admitted why: if his brief got called in, his mum would know it was serious and would hammer him. All three laughed about this. The cops knew Ramirez was trying to get them onside with a bit of larking about, and they pretended to think of him as a regular guy by asking about his hobbies, offering drinks and moaning about the March weather. A nice little party.
And then Mac sent Gondal a text telling him to begin. Gondal started the tape and introduced everyone present. Party over.
‘Do you know of a man called Ronald Grafton?’
‘Teflon Ron?’ Ramirez said, laughing. ‘Who doesn’t? The guy you assholes can’t seem to nail. That fraud thing just gone, fucked you all up on that, didn’t he? You had nothing on the Thames suitcase thing, did you?’
And then he stopped laughing. Very abruptly. He looked at each detective and nodded. ‘I get it. Oh, man, do I get it. I thought that guy had tried to fuck me over, set me up for some murder. But it’s him, isn’t it? Teflon Ron, Mr fucking Invincible, has finally been slotted, hasn’t he?’
Nine
Karl