‘I still can’t believe it,’ Nicola Dawson said, her swollen eyes focussed on Sam Donovan. ‘It doesn’t seem real. I mean, I only saw her two days ago and she . . .’ Tears began again.
Sam Donovan nodded, biting her lip as she reached out to Nicola and clasped her hand across the table, squeezing it for a moment. The bare contact gave her more comfort than anything that anybody had said or done in the past twenty-four hours. But what could she say? Nothing could make it any better for either of them.
They were sitting by the window of a Starbucks near Baker Street tube. Large patches of condensation obscured the glass, providing a welcome screen from the people hurrying past in the dark street on their way home. Nobody would probably give a damn about two women crying together in a café, but Donovan was happy to have some privacy. Small and plump, with shoulder-length wavy brown hair, Nicola had been Claire’s assistant for over ten years and knew her better than most. She was a single parent and Claire had been godmother to her six-year-old daughter. They lived in Neasden and Nicola had agreed to meet Donovan on her way home from the office in Chancery Lane. She had said she needed to be home by seven but, like Donovan herself, she didn’t appear to be in a hurry, welcoming the opportunity to talk about Claire. Donovan wondered whether they would have been better to go to the pub and have a few drinks, but in her current state she knew coffee was a more sensible option, particularly as she was going to see Steele afterwards.
‘Did they say anything this morning about what had happened?’ she asked Nicola after a moment. Detectives – people she knew and had once worked with – had been into Claire’s office to speak to everybody there who had worked directly with her sister. It felt odd referring to them so impersonally, to think of it all in motion while she was on the outside, out of the loop when it mattered more than ever before. But it was something she was going to have to get used to.
Nicola blew her nose loudly. ‘They said very little. There was more in the Evening Standard than what they told us.’
‘I haven’t seen a paper but I know she went to meet a man in a hotel,’ Donovan said, not caring if it was supposed to be generally known. She was still struggling to remember the few things Tartaglia had told her the night before, some of the details temporarily lost in the fog left over from sleep and pills. ‘Do you have any idea who it might be? Last I remember, she was complaining about never meeting anyone she fancied, but that was back in the summer.’
Nicola shook her head. ‘They asked that. I haven’t a clue who he is, but I knew there was someone that she’d started seeing. I took a message from him a couple of times. His name was Robert.’
‘It’s a false name. Do you have any idea where she met him?’
Nicola looked down at her cold, un-drunk mug of coffee for a moment. ‘It wasn’t the Internet or speed-dating, or anything like that. He sent her flowers – a huge bunch of lilies and roses, with lots of shiny paper and red ribbon. I remember thinking he must’ve spent a fortune when I went to collect them from reception.’
‘Do you remember the name of the company they came from?’
‘The police asked me that, but I don’t remember, just the colour of the ribbon. I gave them to her when she got back from a meeting and she looked so surprised. Really bowled over. I asked her what was the special occasion and at first she seemed a bit embarrassed. But then she told me she had met some bloke, and that it had been something really funny, like in the movies; he’d bumped into her in the street – walked straight into her while he was talking on his phone. He was carrying a takeaway cup of coffee and he spilled some on her sleeve. It burned her arm and made her drop what she was carrying.’
‘Where was this?’
‘Right in front of the office.’
‘So he works nearby?’
Nicola stared at her blankly. ‘Why do you say that?’
She had probably had more than enough for one day and Donovan was sorry to have to keep probing, but she needed to find out everything Nicola knew. ‘If you’re carrying a cup of coffee you can’t be going far,’ Donovan said. ‘I mean, you wouldn’t go on the tube or get into a taxi with a cup of coffee, would you? And it’s double yellows for miles around there so he couldn’t have been in a car or a van, unless he had a driver.’
‘I suppose you’re right, but she never said.’
Nicola still looked dazed and Donovan made a mental note to keep her thoughts to herself. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt. Please go on with what happened.’
Nicola took a deep breath. ‘Well, as I said, when he knocked into her, she dropped some things and he helped her pick them up. He was really apologetic and asked her where she worked and then he sent her the flowers.’
‘She must have told him her name?’
‘I guess so. She said she knew it was all a bit of a cliché but it was actually really romantic. Cliché or not, who does that sort of thing these days?’
Who indeed, Donovan thought. It was all sounding like some cheesy rom-com starring Jennifer Aniston. Like most City lawyers, Claire’s working day was a long one and she often used to take papers home at the weekend. There was little room for a personal life, something she had complained about, although she had loved her job too much to make a change. As Donovan knew all too well from her own experience, the lack of a personal life could drive even the sanest and most independent of women to take risks and do some very stupid things. If nothing else, it would have made Claire so much more susceptible to somebody peddling a bit of old-fashioned romance. Had the coffee incident been a set-up? If so, what was it about Claire that had made him target her? Or was she being too cynical; had it, in fact, just been a genuine accident, with a fatal conclusion? Whichever the case, he had to have had charm and, knowing Claire, to have been decent-looking, to have succeeded in developing things further.
‘Did she say what he looked like?’
‘No. But I could tell she found him very attractive, although she didn’t really speak of him much after that.’
‘Did you say all of this to the detective you saw this morning?’
Nicola nodded and dabbed at her eyes with a clean tissue. ‘I’m sorry, but I’d best be going now,’ she said after a moment. ‘I’d love to stay and talk all night but Olivia’s going to be wondering if I’m ever coming home. It’s the last thing I want to do after what’s happened, but I said I’d take her to this fireworks party. My mum’s looking after her but she can’t cope with all the bangs.’
* * *
Tartaglia walked along the Uxbridge Road until he came to The Dog ’n’ Bone. He had just been to see Finnigan’s ex-wife, Tasha, who seemed very pleased to learn of his death. Parallels with Lisa English sprang easily to mind. According to Tasha, the last time she had seen Finnigan was just after he got out of jail six months before. He had appeared on her doorstep out of the blue asking for money, but she had sent him away and threatened to call the police if he didn’t leave her alone. She said she had no idea what had happened to him after that, but suggested Tartaglia talk to an old friend of Finnigan’s, a man named Mick Chapman, who lived not far away. She said she thought her ex had been staying with him when he came out of prison, and that at that hour, Chapman was usually to be found in his local pub.
It was one of a dying breed of old-fashioned boozers, with patterned carpet, dark furniture and mirrors plastering the green walls. A large, middle-aged woman stood behind the counter, polishing glasses. Tartaglia asked for Chapman and she gestured towards a man in a far corner of the room, seated at a table beside a couple of slot machines. His eyes were fixed on a TV on the opposite wall, which was showing a Premier League match, and he didn’t seem to notice Tartaglia approach.
‘Are you Mick Chapman?’ Tartaglia asked.
‘Yes,’ the man said flatly, eyes still on the screen. ‘Who wants to know?’ He was thin and wiry, with short mousy brown hair, and wore paint-stained jeans, a red polo-neck and an old denim jacket.
‘I’m Detective Inspector Mark Tartaglia.’ Chapman looked round and he held out his warrant card. ‘I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news. Your friend Jake—’
Alarm filled his large blue eyes and he got to his feet, hands hovering at his sides. ‘Have you found him?’ He looked to be roughly the same age as Jake Finnigan, although based on what Tartaglia had seen of Finnigan’s file, he was a good ten inches shorter and half his weight.
‘Please sit down, Mr. Chapman,’ Tartaglia said, pulling up a chair. ‘I’m afraid Jake Finnigan’s dead.’ He waited for the words to sink in, watching Chapman’s reaction closely.
Chapman sank back down into his chair, but said nothing, glancing away again towards the TV. After a moment, his face turned red and his lips puckered as though he was about to cry, but no tears came. He gave a heavy, broken sigh and took a large gulp of beer. ‘I knew it. I knew something were wrong,’ he muttered, then looked up at Tartaglia. ‘What happened?’
‘He was murdered,’ Tartaglia said, still watching him. Chapman seemed unaffected by the words, as though he had assumed from the start that it wasn’t an accident. He had the greyish, papery skin of a heavy smoker and Tartaglia noticed his fingers were heavily stained and twitching with nervous energy. He recognised the signs. ‘Would you like to go outside for a smoke?’
Chapman nodded. He picked up his glass and followed Tartaglia outside to the street.
‘I’m sorry but I need to ask you some questions,’ Tartaglia said, as Chapman took a tobacco tin out of his pocket and set about rolling a cigarette. ‘When did you last see him?’
‘Months ago. He were waiting for me when I come home. He were just out of the nick that day and needed a place to stay. Tasha wouldn’t have him back home, so I said he could kip on my sofa ’til he got himself sorted.’
‘You say you knew something must have happened. What do you mean?’
Chapman shrugged and lit the cigarette, taking a long, deep drag before answering. ‘He went out one evening and he never come home.’
‘Where was he going?’
‘To meet some bird.’
‘You mean his wife?’
‘Tasha? No bloody way. No, it was someone new.’
‘You’re sure of that?’
Chapman scratched his head. ‘Yeah, I think so. Anyways, he left his stuff in my flat and when he didn’t come back, I knew something was up.’
‘Did he mention the woman’s name?’
He looked up at Tartaglia surprised, as though the thought had only just occurred to him. ‘No. Don’t think he did.’
‘What else do you remember?’
‘We was sat watching the telly and having a beer. Then he gets a text from this bird – now I think about it, I’m sure he said she’s Russian – there’s these texts going back and forwards for about half an hour, and he’s laughing and stuff at whatever she’s saying.’
‘What was she saying?’
‘Search me. Then he says he’s off out.’
‘He didn’t tell you where he was going?’
‘No. He just said not to wait up for him. He had a big grin all over his face.’
‘He took his mobile with him?’
Chapman nodded. ‘Must’ve done.’
‘Can you give me the number, please?’
‘His phone’s been switched off all this time.’
‘I still need the number.’
Chapman took out his phone and, squinting at it, reeled off the number.
‘When he didn’t come home, were you worried?’
Chapman frowned. ‘No. I wasn’t his effing keeper.’
Tartaglia stared at him for a moment, wondering if he was telling the truth. Chapman struck him as very incurious. Had Finnigan really not said anything about the woman he was going out to meet? Had Chapman not asked him how he knew her and where he was going? If they’d been a pair of close female friends, he wouldn’t have believed it for a second. But thinking of himself and his cousin Gianni, and what his sister described as their appalling communication skills, he supposed it was plausible. There were some things that didn’t need to be said; they were simply understood. Maybe it had been like that between Chapman and Finnigan too.
‘How long had he been staying with you when he disappeared?’
‘About a week, maybe.’
‘Did he use any of the social networking sites?’
Chapman shook his head. ‘He wasn’t into computers.’
‘What about email?’
‘No, far as I know.’
‘What about when he was inside, how did he keep in touch with you?’
‘I’d go and see him, leastways when he was in the Scrubs.’
Tartaglia made a mental note to check where Finnigan had been in prison over the previous few years and what visitors he had had during his last stretch. ‘Did you report his being missing to the police?’ he asked.
Chapman looked at him as though he were mad. ‘You think they’d care about a bloke like Jake?’ He cleared his throat and shook his head. ‘They’d fucking laugh me out of town.’
It was a fair point. With resources scarcer than ever and nearly a thousand people reported missing in the UK every day, the majority in the London area, there had been a recent move to cut back on missing person investigations. Only the disappearance of people thought to be vulnerable or at risk, or where their disappearance was out of character, was fully checked out. Other than logging the call, someone with an itinerant and criminal background like Finnigan would have no doubt been treated as ‘absent’ rather than ‘missing’ and his disappearance would not have been looked into. ‘OK. Do you still have his things?’
‘Yeah. I hung onto them in case he comes back. They’re at home in my room.’
‘Right. Finish your pint, Mr Chapman, and let’s go and get them.’
They walked together in silence for a few blocks, crossed the Uxbridge Road, then Chapman stopped outside a KFC on a corner.
‘The flat’s upstairs. You want to come up or wait out here?’
‘I’ll come up,’ Tartaglia replied. He wanted to make sure Chapman didn’t remove anything from Finnigan’s bag.
The entrance was in the side street, just past the KFC window. Inside, the communal parts were shabby and piles of post lay uncollected on the dirty carpet. The place smelled as though someone had been cooking curry recently. He followed Chapman up the narrow stairs to the first floor and waited while he unlocked the door.
Chapman switched on the light and took Tartaglia along a passageway to the bedroom. There was little furniture, just a mattress on the floor and a wardrobe in one corner, but it was tidy. The bed was made, and a couple of pairs of trainers and a pair of heavy-duty work boots were lined up under the window. Chapman heaved a heavy-looking rucksack down from the top of the wardrobe, almost falling over in the process, and dropped it at Tartaglia’s feet.
‘That’s everything he had with him. When he didn’t come back I put all the things he’d left lying around the flat inside it. Probably smells a bit by now, but it’s all in there.’ He sniffed, put his hands in his pockets and looked at Tartaglia anxiously. ‘What do you think happened to him?’
‘We’re trying to find out. His body was found in the back of a burnt-out car. He was already dead when the car was set on fire.’
Chapman looked puzzled. ‘What, you mean this has only just happened?’
‘Yes. Just over a week ago.’
‘So where’s he been since May?’
Probably cut up in pieces in someone’s freezer, Tartaglia wanted to say. Instead he replied, ‘We’re still trying to put it all together. Thank you for your time, Mr Chapman. You’ve been a great help. If you think of anything else, please give me a call.’