9

The black concierge (Simon, his name badge said) looked too bored to care about anything.

‘Do you know Reginald Allis? Old gentleman, white, balding with grey hair. He lived here.’

‘Allis?’ The concierge wearily consulted a wirebound folder. ‘Yes, Allis, R. H. Allis. He lives here. Flat 59.’

‘Do you know him? Personally, I mean?’

‘Nah. Not really.’

‘Could you let me into his flat?’

‘Huh?’

Cox flashed her badge. It was either that or slap him across the face. It seemed to wake him up a little. He blinked.

‘Mr Allis was found dead today,’ Cox said. ‘We’re treating the death as suspicious. I’m DI Cox. I’m heading up the investigation.’

The concierge nodded.

‘I – I see.’

‘Just the key will do.’

Ten years ago, it would have worked nine times out of ten. Now people tended to be more cautious, and it was more like one in five. If he asked for a warrant, she was ready with the next level of excuses. Do you really want me to get my chief out of bed? Better do this quietly, without upsetting any of the other residents, right? After that it was the strong arm. Can I see your work visa? Not got it with you? That’s a shame …Very occasionally, even that didn’t work, especially if they really were hiding something.

‘Can I see that badge again?’

‘Sure.’ She showed him, and he took a good long look. Cox tried to look relaxed.

If he insisted on a warrant, she’d have been screwed. A warrant would have meant going upstairs; and she was pretty sure someone upstairs didn’t want her chasing up this kind of lead – didn’t want her to join the dots.

But Simon was the one in five, thankfully.

‘Just a second – I’ll fetch the key.’

She waited while he fumbled through another folder. He produced a Yale and handed it to her.

‘Here you go. Flat 59. Third floor.’

‘You’re not coming with me?’

‘Do you need me to?’

‘Um, no.’

‘Then I’ll stay here.’ The concierge dropped into his seat, which wheezed. ‘Just give me a yell if you need anything.’

‘Thanks. You’ve been – really helpful.’

It wasn’t even a lie; being left alone to do her job was exactly the kind of help Cox needed right now.

She took a lift to the third floor; stepped out into a gently lit carpeted corridor. This was a nice place: a block of retirement flats in Pimlico, south-west London, a stone’s throw from the river. Cox guessed the rents way beyond pretty much anyone employed by the Met. Quite a change from Verity Halcombe’s end-terrace. Bill Radley, it seemed, had maintained a pretty varied circle of friends.

If ‘friends’ was the right word.

She found Allis’s flat, let herself in, closed the door quietly behind her. She put on another pair of gloves and flicked on the lights. Took a few seconds to scan the place. She was no design critic, God knew, but the way this flat had been kitted out struck her as wildly overdone. The furniture was ornate and heavy-looking, the carpet deep-piled, the drawn curtains dark and thick. Gaudy modern art prints decorated the walls. Cox found the overall effect suffocating.

The place smelled of expensive air-freshener. It was cold.

She slipped off her shoes and moved through the sitting room into a spacious study. Again, the writing table was a grand piece – eighteenth-century, maybe? – and highly polished. Above the table, in contrast to the modern prints in the other room, was a copy of a Victorian oil in deep reds and browns. A bookcase covered one wall. Cox scanned the titles: mostly pretty technical stuff, ranging across psychology, education, philosophy, sociology …

One shelf, she saw with interest, was given over to books by Allis himself. She picked one at random: The Fundamentals of Child Psychology. The back cover had a black-and-white photo of the author: Allis, in cord jacket and polo-neck, staring intelligently into the lens with a crooked, knowing smile. He looked about forty. She checked the publication date: 1984 – yep, that checked out.

She replaced it on the shelf. Nothing else here seemed out of the ordinary.

There was a laptop computer open on the writing table. It had gone into standby mode. Who knew, Cox thought, what secrets that hard drive might hold? Who knew what she might uncover with a quick riffle through the Documents folder or a glance at Allis’s search history? But she scotched the thought quickly. If she even touched the laptop, she knew, she’d be in way over her head. Oh, for the skills of a DiMacedo!

She was about to return to the sitting room when her phone rang. Its strident buzz startled her; it brought home to her how quiet the flat was.

Glanced at the screen – well, speak of the devil …

‘Don. What have you got for me?’

‘How do you know I’m not just calling for a chat?’

Cox smiled; took a seat in a wicker chair by the bookcase.

‘Something must’ve piqued your interest to drag you away from GTA5,’ she said.

‘GTA5? What do you think this is, 2013? But you’re right. I’ve been looking into the old girl your friend Radley sent flowers to.’

‘For. Not to. She died.’

‘Whatever. What do you know about her?’

‘Not much. Worked with kids, from what I gather. They gave her an OBE for it.’

‘Specifically, underprivileged kids. She worked at Hampton Hall, a big children’s care home, very well thought of.’

‘Is it in the Midlands?’

‘Uh-huh. Good guess. Now, what’s interesting about old Verity’s career –’

‘I knew there had to be something.’

‘– is that, after years of diligent service at Hampton Hall, in 1987, she ups and quits. Just like that. Doesn’t give a reason, just clears off. Leaves Hampton Hall and Walsall behind for ever.’

Walsall. That tripped something in her mind. Didn’t Bill Radley start his career in the Walsall area? She’d have to check the file.

‘Seems out of character.’

‘Yes it does, Spook, well spotted.’

‘Thanks, Don. Now, listen –’

‘I’m going to have to stop you there. I sense you’re about to ask me for another favour, but this is now officially well past knocking-off time.’

‘Don. Come on. This is important.’

‘You’re forgetting I don’t work for the police any more, Cox. No tidy overtime payments for me. Besides, I’m due at a cocktail reception in an hour, big client, three-line whip. And I’m not even dressed yet.’

‘That’s a mental image I could’ve lived without. But c’mon, Don – please? You can’t let this drop now. You want to know why Verity Halcombe left Hampton as much as I do.’

A long pause.

A long sigh.

‘Fu-u-u-u-ck. Cox, you owe me big-time.’

She grinned.

‘I do. I know. I’ll make it up to you.’

‘I really do have to go schmooze at this thing, though. I’ll cry off early and pull a late one on this – there’ll be an email waiting for you in the morning.’

‘Thanks, Don.’

‘Now if we’re all done with the emotional manipulation, I need to go put some trousers on. Later, Spook.’

She put away her phone. Took down another of Allis’s books – after what DiMacedo had just told her, its title had new significance. Outcomes for Children in Care.

On a hunch, she flipped to the index. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for. Radley wasn’t there, of course. Nor was Verity Halcombe. But right there, beside where she would have been: ‘Hampton Hall, Walsall, 152, 168’.

She opened the book. And there is was. A black-and-white picture of an austere Victorian mansion building. Cox snapped the book shut, laid it on the table. Sat for a moment, listening to her heart galloping.

What the fuck was going on? Bill Radley sent flowers for Verity Halcombe; Verity worked in a place that Reginald Allis wrote about; Reginald Allis had a falling-out over dinner with Bill Radley. The details were a mystery, still, but the outline was complete – and Cox didn’t like the way it looked.

A suicide brought on by gambling debts. A death from natural causes, heart failure, maybe a stroke. A botched mugging in a London park.

Or three premeditated and connected murders?

Murder meant motive. The most important question in a murder investigation wasn’t who; it was why.

Cox said it to herself, now, out loud in the stifling silence of Reginald Allis’s study. Three people, respectable, middle-aged, pretty blameless as far as anyone knew, killed in cold blood, within a short space of time.

‘Why?’

The Fifth Day of Christmas, 1986

Christ alive. There’s something up today. They had us out of bed two hours early, for a start, to clean the dorm. Place stinks of carbolic, enough to make your eyes water.

Everywhere’s swept and polished. Staff all in proper uniform, name badges, the lot. Merton’s swanking about the place in a suit; looks like Halcombe’s had her hair done special.

‘Big day,’ she keeps saying.

Eventually word comes down the grapevine: some specialists are coming to Hampton, to do a study, some sort of research. I don’t know what sort of research you’d do here. Look at the bedbugs through a microscope, maybe. Test the food for bubonic bloody plague.

‘Will they be specialists like Dr Merton?’ Stan asks me.

‘I dunno.’ I shrug. ‘I s’pose so.’

Stevie says he’s seen Merton setting up a camera, a big video camera on a tripod, in one of the rooms – for interviews.

‘Be like being back in the nick,’ Judd grunts.

I don’t like the look of it all. Dunno why. Merton’s twanging like a wire. Tense. Halcombe’s not right, neither; excited, frightened, don’t know what. Whole bloody place feels on the brink of a nervous bloody breakdown.

Weather doesn’t help. Gone ten now and we’ve still got the lights on. Dark, proper bloody dark. Clouds all the way across the sky, dark purple like bruises.

They arrive at eleven o’clock. Three cars pull up in the car park.

‘This,’ Dr Merton says, stepping into the rec room with a spindly bloke we’ve not seen before, ‘is Dr Allis.’

We all look at him. Pinstriped suit, cane in his hand. Wire-rimmed glasses. He smiles without showing his teeth. Reminds me of Merton. There must be a bloody factory somewhere, turning out these skinny ‘specialists’.

‘Hello, boys,’ this Allis says. His voice isn’t like Merton’s, it’s deeper and rounder, like an actor’s voice in a film.

Couple of the lads mutter, ‘Hello.’

Merton tells us that Allis is going to be with us for a few days, conducting research for a ‘very important study’. The pair of them seem very pally. Creeps of a feather. Sooner we get shifted to Wolvesley, the better.

I’m one of the first. There’s no camera; just a table and chairs, Allis and Merton sitting opposite with mugs of tea and open notebooks. They don’t offer me a cup of tea. Wouldn’t have had one anyroad, but still.

They ask me a load of questions, stuff I’ve been asked a million times, by coppers, psychologists, social workers. Always the same bloody questions.

About my mum, my dad. About that bastard Malky.

‘Did this Malky ever – touch you?’ Allis asks.

Only to give me a smack in the mouth, I tell him.

They ask about how I am, whether I’m well, whether I’m happy. I tell them I’m all right. What else am I going to say? I am all right.

They ask me about Stan. I don’t like them asking about Stan. I tell them he’s eight, that he’s clever for his age – which is true, he’s a proper good reader – and I don’t tell them anything else. I say he’s all right.

‘But you want to be moved to Wolvesley?’ Merton says with a toothy smile.

I shrug.

‘Yeah. It’s s’posed to be nice.’

When they’re done with me, after about half an hour, although it feels like loads longer, they tell me to send in Stan next.

I do, and I tell him not to be frightened, it’s just a load of questions, same as always.

He says he’s not frightened. What is there to be frightened of? he asks me.

I just tell him to hurry up, or else he’ll be in bother.

He was always dead good at going to the doctor, was Stan. Even when he was little. He could get injected, even, and hardly even cry.

It was because he trusted them, I think. Knew they were there to look after him.

I’m twitchy till he comes out. Try to read a comic but I can’t even concentrate on that. Desperate bloody Dan too much for me. Just lie on my bed instead. Stare at the cracks in the ceiling.

Then he comes out – and he’s grinning and jiggling a paper bag of sweets in his hand.

‘Jelly beans,’ he says.

I didn’t get any sweets.

‘What’re they for?’

‘For being good.’

I give him a scowl.

‘You don’t want to be taking stuff off them,’ I tell him. ‘Next time, don’t take nothing off them.’

He looks confused.

‘Take what you can get, you always said, Rob.’

It’s true. I used to say that.

‘Well, this is different,’ I say. ‘It’s different here.’

‘Different how?’

I tell him to shut up. Shut up and eat his precious bloody jelly beans.

Then he says: ‘I have to go back in, soon.’

I look at him. They didn’t say anything to me about going back. Why the bloody hell does Stan have to go back? He’s eight years old. What is he going to tell them?

‘What for?’

‘Physical examination. Dr Allis’s gone away but Dr Merton needs to give me a physical examination.’

Like at the doctor’s, he thinks. Take your temperature, look down your throat, shine a little torch in your ear.

I’m not sure about this. I’m not bloody sure about this at all.

So when Miss Halcombe comes in and says that Dr Merton would like to see Stanley Trevayne again, I shove Stan down his bed – he spills a handful of jelly beans – and stand up instead.

‘What’s it for, Miss Halcombe? What does he want to see Stan for?’

She looks uncertain. Sometimes I think she’s batty, Miss Halcombe.

‘He just – he just wants to ask Stan some more questions, that’s all.’

‘Physical examination, he said. That’s what Stan told me.’

She gulps. I can see her hand’s shaking. Wonder if she’s been on the gin or something.

‘Well, he just – Dr Merton just needs to see that Stan’s all right. That he’s been looked after properly. A check-up.’

‘He is all right. I told them that.’

Halcombe seems to get cross all of a sudden. Red in the face and stuff. Leans down – doesn’t have to lean very far – to put her face right up close to mine.

‘Dr Merton is a very important, very clever man,’ she hisses. ‘We are very lucky to have him here.’ Straightens up. Tries to get a grip. He might impress you, missus, I think. He don’t impress me.

‘Well, Stan don’t like being examined. He’ll have a fit. Always used to make a proper big fuss when he had to go to the doctor’s.’

She’s looking at me uncertainly.

‘Dr Merton specifically said –’

‘I’ll do it.’ I make the decision just like that. Only it’s not even a decision, I don’t even have to think. The idea comes into my head and straight away I know it’s the only thing I can do. ‘I’ll do it,’ I say again. ‘Whatever he wanted to ask our Stan – well, he can ask me instead.’

She doesn’t like it much, I can see that. Says she’ll have to check with Dr Merton – check that that’s all right.

She goes tottering off, off to the office where Stevie says he saw the camera being set up. The blinds are drawn at the office windows.

After a minute she comes out again.

Very well, she says, you can take Stan’s place on this occasion. I’ve spoken to the doctor, she says. The doctor says it’s fine.