We picked up Joy Adams from West End Central and drove out to Harry Flowers’ home.
The last time I had seen it, the house was full of wedding guests and there was a marquee on the lawn. Now the house was shuttered and the marquee was gone and the only sign of life was Mo the driver cleaning the black Bentley on the gravel drive.
Whitestone and Adams stayed in the BMW when I got out to talk to Mo, and he paused from his cleaning to watch me coming. He looked at me and then up at the house.
‘They’ve gone away,’ he said. ‘There’s nobody home.’
That wasn’t strictly true. I could see a group of men in loungers by the swimming pool, staring at their phones, billowing clouds of smoke coming from their vapers.
More of Mo’s cousins. New help to replace the old help now that Ruben Shavers and Derek Bumpus were off the payroll.
‘That’s OK, Mo,’ I said. ‘Because it’s you I want to talk to.’
He placed his wash mitt on the edge of his bucket.
‘You always got on well with Ruben Shavers, didn’t you?’ I said.
He nodded cautiously, running the palm of his hand over his shaven head, leaving a few soapy suds on his gleaming scalp.
‘Because Ruben treated you like a human being,’ I said. ‘So you liked him. That’s human nature, Mo. We like the people who like us. But Derek Bumpus bullied you and made fun of you and was rude to you.’
‘I try to get on with everyone,’ Mo said.
‘But I saw it myself,’ I said. ‘Bumpus – Big Del – called you Osama bin Laden. He called you a Paki.’
I indicated the men by the swimming pool, who were all watching us. ‘When Snezia was moving out and Meadow was moving in, I heard him say that he never knew al-Qaeda did removals.’
‘Bin Laden was a Saudi,’ Mo said. ‘They were all Saudis, those men on that day. It was nothing to do with my people. I tried telling him that. But he was an uneducated person and he did not listen. None of them ever listen. Saudis attack America and Bush and Blair send their armies to Iraq. But Iraqis didn’t cause 9/11.’
He picked up his wash mitt and nervously wrung it out.
‘But Ruben wasn’t like Big Del,’ I said. ‘When he was alive.’
‘No,’ he said, and his eyes shone with a stab of pain. ‘Ruben was a good man. Under it all.’
‘Ruben liked you too,’ I said. ‘He spoke to me about you once.’
‘He did?’
I nodded. ‘When I went to the yard. Auto Waste Solutions. That’s where Ruben talked to me about you.’
Mo lifted his head, waiting.
I nodded at the Bentley. ‘Ruben told me you let him use the car on special occasions,’ I said.
The driver glanced anxiously at the empty house.
‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell anyone,’ I said. ‘But it’s true, isn’t it?’
‘He took good care of the car. And he was my friend.’
‘And Ruben Shavers liked women, didn’t he?’
‘Many women!’ Mo said, grinning with admiration.
‘And what I think is, on these special occasions that you let him have this beautiful car, he wanted to impress some woman.’
‘It didn’t happen very often. Only with a special lady.’
‘But it happened?’
‘Yes.’
‘And Ruben couldn’t bring the car back to you, could he? He could never return it to you. Because then the boss would have known that he borrowed it. And then both of you would have been in big trouble, right?’
He nodded.
‘So I am guessing that, if Ruben couldn’t bring the car back to you, then you had to go and collect it from him.’
‘Yes.’
‘And I think – just like Harry Flowers – Ruben had a place where he would see his women without his wife knowing.’
He was guarded now.
‘And do you know what, Mo? I think I’ve got the keys to this place.’
We stared at each other.
‘And you’re going to take me there,’ I said. ‘Ruben Shavers’ secret flat.’
Mo looked at Whitestone and Adams watching from the BMW.
‘And if you don’t, Mo, then what I am going to do is arrest you as an accessory for murder.’
‘I didn’t hurt anyone!’
‘Doesn’t matter, Mo. Doesn’t matter a damn. If the law thinks you aided and abetted someone guilty of murder, then it’s as if you committed the murder yourself.’
I let him think about it for a while.
He didn’t have to think about it for very long.
‘I’ll follow you,’ I said, heading back to the BMW. ‘You take the Bentley.’
We drove from that leafy little corner of the suburbs to the Broadwater Farm estate, Tottenham.
The Bentley idled at the foot of a monstrous tower block that had begun to rot from the moment they put it up. Ten years after it was erected, back in the Seventies, the authorities decided that the only thing to do with it was demolish it. But somehow, they never did. So it had stood here rotting for the last forty years.
A flock of young kids on bikes checked us out. They were unimpressed.
Because they had seen this car before.
And although they were unimpressed they still lingered, waiting for something to happen.
The tower block was within walking distance of the home that Ruben Shavers shared with his family. It could not have been more convenient for a secret life.
Mo buzzed down the window of the Bentley and it didn’t make a sound.
‘Top floor,’ he said. ‘The last flat at the end of the corridor.’
The keys were in my hand now.
‘Did you ever go up there?’ I said.
He shook his head.
‘No, but Ruben told me. He was proud that he had the top flat. Good view. He called it the penthouse.’
We all looked up at the concrete block of flats stabbing itself towards the sky.
Joy Adams almost smiled. ‘Penthouse,’ she said. ‘Nobody has a penthouse in this neck of the woods.’
‘You can go now, Mo,’ I said. ‘We’ll be in touch.’
The Bentley drove away, escorted by the flock of small boys on bikes.
‘Do we want back-up?’ Adams said.
I shook my head.
The keys to the secret life of Ruben Shavers were in my hand.
‘Nobody up there is going to hurt us,’ I said.
We came out of the lift on the top floor.
The wind whistled down those walkways, as it had for a lifetime, and as it would until they finally tore this place down.
We walked to the end of the corridor.
I took out Ruben’s keys and slipped them into their locks.
First the Chubb.
Then the Yale.
We pushed open the door and went inside.
A long, lithe woman was looking out of the window, the palms of her hands pressed into her back, trying to relieve the aches and pains of a dancer.
For a moment I could not speak. I was suddenly aware of my heart in my chest and the only sound was the distant buzz of the traffic far below and the blood in my veins.
‘Jessica,’ I said, and the young woman turned. ‘We’re police officers.’
She stared at us as if she might be dreaming. I saw the blue and white packets of prescription medicine scattered across the coffee table. Xanax.
‘Where’s Ruben?’ she said.
Whitestone looked at me.
Ruben.
‘Shavers can’t hurt you,’ Whitestone said.
‘Ruben was never going to hurt me,’ Jessica said.
‘Ruben Shavers is dead,’ I said. ‘But you’re safe now. Nobody can hurt you now.’
‘No,’ she said.
It was not a denial of his death. It was a denial of her safety.
We stared at Jessica Lyle, still not quite believing it was her, and yet somehow having no doubt, and she looked at us and then past us, as if Ruben Shavers might walk through the door to his secret flat.
I took a breath and let it out.
‘The night they took you,’ I said. ‘What happened?’
‘They drove to some graveyard,’ she said. ‘But there was a police car parked outside. So they kept driving. And took me to the fat man’s flat.’
It must have seemed like the perfect crime.
A grave beneath a grave that had been freshly dug and would never be found after the weeping mourners had gone home. A grave beneath a grave that nobody would even know about.
And like most perfect crimes, the plan fell to pieces almost immediately.
Because a squad car was routinely parked outside Highgate Cemetery, there to watch for speeding cars on Swains Lane and put off kids who fancied partying in the graveyard. And that one parked squad car meant the kidnappers suddenly had to improvise.
‘They were arguing,’ Jessica said. ‘Ruben and the fat man. Ruben wanted to call it off – to let me out of the car. I was trying to talk to him. I told him I had a little boy. He seemed – he seemed like he was listening to me. He was looking after me.’
And I took her in for the first time. Yes, she was a woman that people would look at. They would look at her twice, and they would look at her for far too long. Because you can never quite believe it, that rare beauty. She had the bluest eyes I had ever seen in my life – eyes like frozen fire. But is that what all this grief and death had been for? A pair of blue eyes?
‘The fat man was calling Ruben all sorts of names. They were hitting each other. It was horrible. We went to the fat man’s flat, and I was trying to talk to Ruben and the fat man was telling me to shut my mouth, and calling me names, and there was a woman there. The fat man’s girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend. I don’t know. She had a key and she had let herself in. She wasn’t meant to be there. She was collecting some things – these awful cheap, tarty clothes. And she saw me and she lost her temper with the fat man.’
In my mind I saw Minky attacking Derek Bumpus, her fists flying.
‘The fat man hit her. She went down and she wasn’t moving. I don’t know what happened to her after that because then Ruben took me away. And brought me here.’
Whitestone exhaled.
Because we knew what happened after that.
Minky had died.
Either Minky died when her head hit the floor or Derek Bumpus killed her before she could leave. The actual cause of death had dissolved long before Elsa had a chance to examine the body at the Horseferry Road mortuary. But either way, Minky had seen Jessica Lyle and it was her death sentence.
The freshly dug grave had been meant for Jessica Lyle.
And then there had to be a change of plan.
‘Ruben brought me here,’ she said. ‘And he said he had children too. And then he went away and when he came back he said he had told his boss and the fat man that it was all taken care of.’
She was wearing a man’s white shirt.
I remembered three evidence bags in West End Central and what they contained. A sweatshirt, a pair of yoga trousers and a pair of pants. All black apart from the slogan in lurid pink on the sweatshirt.
Last Chance to Dance.
‘Your clothes,’ I said. ‘Someone sent us your clothes.’
‘Ruben’s idea,’ she said. ‘To make them believe that it had been done. That I was gone.’
Whitestone touched her arm.
‘Did Ruben Shavers assault you, Jessica?’
‘Oh, no.’ She shook her head, appalled at the idea. ‘He would never hurt me that way. He would never try to touch me. I think … I know he liked me.’
She looked at us with her blues eyes.
Everyone loves Jessica.
‘And now he’s dead?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘An armed policeman shot him.’
There was sadness in those huge blue eyes. But she had no tears for Ruben Shavers.
‘But, Jessica,’ Whitestone said. ‘Why didn’t you try to escape? Why didn’t you smash the door down, break the windows, scream the roof off? Why didn’t you come home? What about your baby? What about Michael?’
‘Because Ruben told me that the person who hired him and the fat man would hurt my family,’ she said. ‘Ruben said that if they knew that I was alive, then my family would all be hurt. Even Michael. Even my baby boy.’ There were tears in her eyes now. ‘He said my family would all be burned.’
‘The pills,’ I said, indicating the coffee table. ‘Did Shavers make you take them?’
‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘He didn’t make me. He said they were good for my panic attacks. Because at the start – it was very hard.’
A regular supply of Xanax and terror, I thought.
That would make anyone a willing prisoner.
‘My little boy,’ Jessica said, her voice racked with sorrow. ‘My parents. They must have thought …’
The tears came now and Whitestone went to her, wrapping Jessica Lyle in her arms. They stood like that for a while. I waited until the two women broke their embrace and then I smiled at that perfect face.
‘Let’s take you home to your family,’ I said.