Flyte spent the rest of the day working the Hugger Mugger case from her desk, calling back potential witnesses who’d phoned into the incident line since it went up online.
‘So you think you saw a drunken man falling out of Underworld. When exactly?’ . . . ‘So was this on the Thursday or Friday night?’. . . ‘Yes, it’s important.’ For crying out loud. ‘You’d have to ask Bez . . . Right. Why don’t you call back when you’ve done that. Thanks.’
She hung up, her face stiff with the effort of dealing with the general public.
Her mobile buzzed and seeing that it was Luke Lawless, the crime reporter from the Gazette, she took it out into the hallway.
‘I’ve got a lead on your floater,’ said Luke, trying, but failing, to sound cool.
‘Oh yes, go ahead?’ She felt her own pulse quicken.
‘A security guard called Ezekiel Drew who works at a wine and spirits warehouse up in Kentish Town just called. He reckons the pic that went live last night is a guy he used to see working out at a local gym.’
‘Hang on,’ she said. ‘Why did he call you and not the police number we gave out?’
A micro-pause.
‘We printed the newspaper number as well, just as backup. As you know, not everyone likes talking to the police round here.’
She emitted a sharp sigh. ‘I hope you haven’t been contaminating our witness?’
‘Not at all! I said he should really to talk to you. Anyway, he didn’t give me a name for the guy or any more details really.’
So Luke had given this Ezekiel guy the third degree . . . ‘I explained that you were struggling to ID the body, and laid it on thick about the poor family, you know.’ His voice had become conspiratorial, as if they were fellow detectives co-working the case.
‘Did he say when he saw him last?’
‘Eight or nine years ago.’
Her heart sank. ‘Not exactly fresh meat, is it? He’s probably an attention-seeker.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Luke defensively, ‘he sounded pretty sure about it.’
‘Well, Luke, if he tells me that aliens dropped our guy into the canal from a spaceship it’ll be the end of a promising collaboration.’
As she hung up, she saw Dean Willets coming out of an interview room down the hall, holding the door open for a young woman, probably only in her late twenties, although impeccably made-up in a way that made her look ten years older. She thanked him, with a little coquettish look up at him, fiddling with her long blonde hair. He grinned down at her, lapping it up.
Yecch.
He nodded to Flyte as they went past, and she heard him saying, ‘Thanks, Ashley. I’ll be in touch.’ Did she detect something more than professional politeness in his tone?
When he came back into the office a few minutes later, he was greeted by catcalls from some of the guys. He did a little swagger and waved his phone. ‘She’s WhatsApped me already.’
‘He shoots . . . and he scores!’ intoned Nathan Cassidy.
Willets caught Flyte’s eye. ‘Of course any contact will remain strictly within the bounds of rules and regs.’
Raising his arms, Willets did a little hip-swivel gesture which brought more jeering. Then she noticed that they’d all fallen silent.
Unseen by Willets, DCI Steadman had come in behind him. He didn’t say anything, just went over to have a word with one of the other detectives.
But on the way out he said, ‘Have you got five minutes, Dean?’
It was all Flyte could do to keep a straight face: Steadman had a famously low tolerance of off-colour banter so Willets was in for a good talking-to. Slipping out of the office, she took the stairs and waited till she was outside before calling the security guard who claimed to recognise Green-Eyes.
*
She had arranged to meet him after her shift. As she approached the Kentish Town greasy spoon that he’d named for their rendezvous, she wondered again what she was doing, taking on the task of ID-ing a non-sus death. Hadn’t she joined Major Crimes to get away from the routine CID work?
From the biblical name, she’d been expecting somebody older but Ezekiel Drew couldn’t be much more than forty, tall and broad-shouldered, although judging by the remains of the fry-up on his plate and the little paunch protruding through his open security guard jacket, he didn’t spend much time at the gym these days. He’d taken a table by the window, and as she sat down opposite him, his gaze flickered past her, doing a quick scan of the place. Since policing Camden, she’d become accustomed to this cagey response, especially from people of colour.
After ordering a tea – the place was run by Turks so the waiter wasn’t fazed by her request for lemon, no milk – she introduced herself with her most winning smile. Ezekiel didn’t respond.
Her only previous posting had been in leafy Winchester – which was more her natural habitat – and she still struggled sometimes to navigate Camden’s various cultures and sub-cultures. As a north London black guy, Ezekiel probably had good reason to be wary of the police, having no doubt been stopped and searched dozens of times by officers like Dean Willets. She found herself wondering how Cassie would approach this.
After the waiter brought her tea, she squeezed the lemon against the side of the cup. ‘Ezekiel. He was an Old Testament prophet, yes?’
Ezekiel pulled a guarded smile. ‘Yeah. My mum’s a big churchgoer. Pentecostal. Church of the Sinner Redeemed. They wear long white robes, there’s healing, speaking in tongues, the whole charismatic thing . . .’ He flapped a tolerant hand.
‘And you, do you go?’
‘No way! My mum’s Nigerian but my dad’s from round here and he thinks it’s all rubbish. So us kids didn’t have to go to church, but we all got names from Scripture.’
Noticing how he’d started physically to loosen up during this exchange, Flyte leaned in and said, ‘Go on.’
Counting on his fingers he said, ‘So there’s my oldest sister, Abiyah, then Bathsheba, then my brothers, Caleb and Daniel . . .’
‘I’m sensing an alphabetical system?’
‘Right. I’m the youngest and I got the “E”s. I swear to God, if my dad hadn’t put his foot down, my mum would have had me christened Enoch.’ He looked at her, seeing if she got the reference.
‘Enoch as in Enoch Powell?!’ She widened her eyes.
He laughed then – a big laugh. ‘Yeah. “Rivers of blood” man. Y’see, in my mum’s book, Enoch was Noah’s great-grand-daddy.’
She tipped her head on one side. ‘Ezekiel suits you.’ It did, too: he was over six foot tall and there was something of the Old Testament prophet about his face – high cheekbones and wide-set eyes – that gave him an austere grace. ‘Got any kids?’ He wore a chunky white-gold wedding band.
He nodded, a proud smile creeping along his lips. ‘Two girls. Eleven and nine.’
‘Did you keep the biblical theme going?’
He chuckled, shaking his head.
‘Did you get grief for the name at school?’
Those wide dark eyes hardened for a moment ‘Nah. I knew how to look after myself. Anyway, everyone calls me Zeke.’
‘May I? Call you Zeke, I mean?’
‘Sure.’ With a graceful tip of his head.
Having prepared the ground, she said, ‘So you think you recognise the picture of the man we found, from a gym that you both attended?’
‘Uh-huh.’ Ezekiel stirred more sugar into his tea. ‘It was near Gospel Oak station.’
‘The name of the place?’ Her pen poised over her notebook.
He screwed up his eyes. ‘It was called Pump something. Like Pump Action, or Pump It. Then it changed its name but I couldn’t tell you what to. Anyway, it shut down a few years back.’
‘And the man’s name?’
‘Shane.’
‘And his last name?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t remember.’ He dropped his eyes.
‘Didn’t ever know or don’t remember now?’ Trying to keep the testiness out of her voice.
‘Never knew it.’ Ezekiel shrugged, frowning into his tea. ‘He was just, like, someone I would nod to in passing. We weren’t mates or nothing.’
Flyte sat back in her seat. ‘So you didn’t know his actual name, you only knew him to nod to, and the last time you laid eyes on him was at least eight years ago. What makes you so sure it’s him in the photo?’ Suppressing a sigh, she started a mental inventory of what she had at home that might provide the makings of an easy supper. A jar of pesto. Some pasta. A few green beans, elderly but not beyond the hope of resurrection. Was there any parmesan left or should she stop off at Sainsbury’s?
‘I’ve got a good head for faces,’ said Ezekiel. ‘When I saw the photo online I was ninety-nine per cent sure it was him. I can’t stop thinking, you know, somebody must be wondering where he’s at? What’s happened to him.’ He sounded quite upset at the idea. ‘And all the time he’s dead. Drowned.’
‘Did he ever talk about family, a wife, girlfriend – or boyfriend?’
He dropped his gaze, shaking his head.
‘Anything else that might help us find out who he is, anybody he hung out with, where he lived, where he worked?’
Raising his eyes to hers, Ezekiel said, ‘I did overhear somebody pass comment on his job once.’
‘And?’
He folded his lips over his teeth, as if making a decision.
It was warm in the cafe but Flyte felt a shiver go through her.
‘From what I heard,’ said Ezekiel, meeting her eye, ‘he was in the Feds.’