It had been three days since Joey McGhee, the rough sleeper who had been living in the alleyway behind the massage parlour, had given his interview. He hadn’t been seen since.
‘I’ve spoken to the rough sleeper unit, and they know Joey, but he hasn’t been spotted in any of his usual haunts for the past few days,’ said Ruskin. ‘I also took a wander down to the Sikh Community Centre to see if he attended langar the night he left here. They can’t remember seeing him that evening and reckon that if he left as late as you said he did, he probably didn’t make it in time.’
‘Damn, that’s frustrating,’ said Bergen. ‘I’ll bet that this Northern Man joker is buried somewhere in our files. I was going to get McGhee to do an e-fit and run it through our system.’
Warren frowned in concern. Joey McGhee was their only confirmed sighting of the man that they were calling Northern Man. If he was right about what he saw, the man could be a key player in Stevie Cullen’s murder. He might also lead them to the missing nail technicians, potential witnesses to the stabbing.
Warren knew that members of the homeless community often led disordered, chaotic lives, but McGhee had been organized enough to turn up at the station to offer information. It seemed strange that he wouldn’t follow up on his deal, especially when there was potentially a substantial reward.
Another thought struck Warren. What if McGhee had been lying? Giving the police some fabricated evidence, in the hope that they paid him? He could then have got cold feet.
Yet he had given them details that matched what they had already seen on the CCTV footage. Had he then embellished his story to make it more attractive?
If Joey McGhee had disappeared, or had been lying, then a promising lead had just gone up in smoke.
‘The cell-tower data is in for the phone that we think Silvija Wilson called to arrange the pick-up of Annie,’ said Pymm, squinting at the screen. ‘The phone spends most of its time in a suburb of Manchester called “Chorlton”. Wasn’t there a kids’ TV program called that?’
‘Chorlton and the Wheelies,’ supplied Warren.
‘The phone travelled to within a few hundred metres of Piccadilly train station, arriving just before Annie’s train was due to arrive. It then sat there, for about twenty-five minutes because her train was late, before moving off a little over five minutes after Annie was spotted walking along the concourse. The phone then returned to its starting place.’
‘Lucky he or she didn’t get a ticket,’ said Grimshaw, who’d wandered over, eating a packet of cheesy Doritos; Pymm wrinkled her nose at the smell. ‘The buggers are really cracking down on parking around there,’ he continued.
Martinez joined him, biting into an apple.
‘What do you two know about Chorlton?’ asked Warren.
‘It’s a nice area, with some quite posh houses,’ said Grimshaw.
‘There are some really good restaurants and pubs,’ added Martinez.
‘So not a den of criminality, then?’ asked Warren.
‘Not really, you’d have to go to where Shaun was brought up for that.’
Grimshaw shrugged. ‘Don’t knock it, there might have been drug dealers and pimps hanging around near the school, but at least we didn’t have any Man United players as next-door neighbours.’
Martinez rolled his eyes. ‘One player, and he moved out of his mum and dad’s house when he got signed.’
‘I’ll bet the house prices shot up when he left,’ said Grimshaw.
‘When you two have finished …’ said Warren.
Pymm had opened Google Maps on one of her screens, switching to satellite view. ‘Most of the houses in that area are large and detached, with big gardens. I think we can narrow the phone’s usual location down to a single property, or at least their neighbours either side. Number 42 is the most likely candidate.’
Grimshaw let out a low whistle. ‘Somebody is doing all right for themselves.’
The red location icon was hovering over a large house, surrounded by generous gardens. At the time the photograph had been taken, the driveway had three cars parked on it, with enough room for at least another two. Even from above, it was clear from the image that the house probably had at least four generous-sized bedrooms.
‘See if you can find out who owns the house, and if the occupants are in our system. Look at the neighbours either side as well in case the resolution of the cell-tower data is poor,’ said Warren.
Pymm opened another browser window, navigating to a website listing the electoral records. She entered the address and postcode for number 42.
‘No need to look at the neighbours,’ she said when the results popped up.
‘I’ll contact Greater Manchester Police,’ said Warren, ‘and get them to raid the house. There’s no way that’s a coincidence. Let’s just hope she hasn’t already left the country.’
The call from Greater Manchester Police came through to Warren’s desk later that afternoon.
‘Smooth as a baby’s bottom,’ Warren’s opposite number, DCI Omara, said. ‘We have Mr Aleksej and Mrs Zorana Dragić sitting in custody as we speak, along with a young woman, who currently only answers to “Annie”.’
‘Fantastic work,’ said Warren.
‘Nothing to it – they were sitting in front of the TV when we rang the doorbell.’
‘Have they said anything, yet?’
‘Not a lot. Mr and Mrs Dragić speak perfect English and are clearly very pissed off at being dragged into this affair by Mr Dragić’s cousin, Silvija. Annie speaks good enough English to say “no comment”, but refuses to say another word.’ Omara cleared his throat. ‘You’ll have to decide what to do with them sooner rather than later, DCI Jones; we can’t hold them indefinitely.’
Warren smiled at the none-too-subtle hint. GMP had done them a big favour, picking up the suspects, but the three individuals would each require a solicitor, not to mention space in a cell. The sooner Hertfordshire Constabulary took them off the hands of their northern colleagues the better.
‘I’ll send a team up to fetch them back here,’ he promised.
DSI Grayson agreed with Warren’s suggestion that a little local knowledge wouldn’t hurt, and happily authorized the cost of sending Shaun Grimshaw and Jorge Martinez up to Manchester that evening, with the aim of questioning the three suspects, and then returning Annie to Middlesbury the following day.
Warren suspected that he also fancied getting rid of the Brownnose Brothers for a bit. With the date of their Inspector exams fast approaching, the two men had been competing harder than ever to look good in front of their Superintendent.
Warren had spoken to Silvija Wilson already, telling her that they had Annie in custody. The news had placed the woman in a very difficult position. After speaking to her solicitor, she had given a carefully worded statement admitting that she had lied about not knowing where Annie had travelled to, and that she had arranged her travel plans. Nevertheless, she had insisted that her cousin, Aleksej, and his wife Zorana, knew nothing about the identity of Annie, or her role in the murder in the massage parlour.
For their part, the Dragićs had maintained since their arrest that the call from Wilson had been entirely unexpected. They claimed that Wilson had made no mention of why she wanted somebody to offer a bed to help out a young Serbian woman who had suddenly decided to move to Manchester for a fresh start. They had both refused to comment when asked about why they thought Annie needed Silvija’s assistance, or what their thoughts were when the news broke about the stabbing at Wilson’s massage parlour.
Warren had instructed Grimshaw and Martinez to question them when they arrived to pick up Annie, but with little evidence of their active collusion, he expected them to be bailed pending further inquiries.
Grimshaw had been delighted at the prospect of a brief, overnight trip to Manchester, and had urged Martinez to hurry up, so they’d have time for a few pints after interviewing the Dragićs that night.
As the two of them made their way to the car park, Grimshaw could be heard excitedly telling Martinez how much he was looking forward to supper from the best fish and chip shop in the country.
‘What’s a “barm cake”?’ asked Pymm when the two men had left.
‘What you call a bread roll in these parts,’ said Bergen.
‘And “Manchester caviar”?’ asked Ruskin.
‘Mushy peas, I think,’ answered Hutchinson.
‘And you’d have that with gravy as well?’ said Ruskin.
‘I wouldn’t, but it sounds like Shaun would,’ said Bergen.
‘The Canadians put cheese curds and gravy on their chips,’ piped up Pymm, ‘and yes, it’s as bad as it sounds.’
‘Give me a chip batch and a scallop any day,’ said Warren.
‘I didn’t think you liked seafood,’ said Richardson.
‘And what’s a “batch”?’ asked Ruskin.
‘It’s the proper name for a bread roll, and in Coventry, a scallop is a slice of potato, covered in batter and then deep-fried,’ replied Warren.
The Scotsman thought about it for a moment. ‘To be fair, that’s not the strangest thing I’ve heard of being deep-fried.’