Searches under drug crime, London. Three suspects whose whereabouts are unknown: Mark Liscott, Daniel Bowes, Dave Hargreaves, known as The Badger.
She takes a slug of cold tea, whirring through probation officers of the past, drug squad contacts from her CID days in her mind. She really doesn’t want to call Dan Ashton (known to everyone as Ash) and not just because she used to sleep with him. Well, mostly because she used to sleep with him. She sees his shortcomings so clearly now; he is almost 100 per cent shortcomings. Why couldn’t she see it then? Professional charmer, flirt in uniform, the vibe he gave off strongly was You Want Me But You Can’t Have Me. He clothed himself in sensitivity, with a hint of the vulnerable, very good listener, laughed at all her jokes, but in reality he was a narcissist who scrolled through his phone every time he fancied being unfaithful to the person he was seeing and often came up trumps with Manon. She probably wasn’t even the first he tried.
No, she’s not in the humour to flaunt her swollen ankles in his direction, but for Fly she will do anything.
‘Ash,’ she says, at the end of a deep breath.
‘Hello stranger.’
‘Fancy a drink?’
Day 27
10 January
Davy
The Lotus Blossom takeaway in Islington is a broad oblong of window, bright yellow against the evening sky. Buses, cars and taxis thunder past. Roadworks nearby are jackhammering away. Horns toot, engines rev, people shout, some music blares from a passing car. London is a pair of boxing gloves beating Davy about the head via the ears and he feels glad he lives in unfashionable Sapley, with its deathly quiet new builds.
Inside the Lotus Blossom, there are just a couple of feet of linoleum and then a counter running the full width. Davy can hear the splash of wok frying and Chinese being shouted, and wondrous smells fill his nostrils. Sweetness and meat and vinegar. A couple of worn tabloids at one end of the counter, a menu laminated onto the counter surface, a pen on a chain. He wonders if, as he’s here, and the smells are making his stomach coil snake-like … there is anything unprofessional about carrying a white paper bag, warm at the base, back to the Premier Inn?
He waits. Looks in his wallet to see if he has enough cash for a quarter crispy duck with pancakes. Waits some more.
Soon, his hunger becomes irritation.
‘Excuse me,’ he says, raising his badge.
A black-haired girl looks up, says nothing.
‘I need to ask you some questions about a customer who came in before Christmas,’ he says. As he says it, he’s wishing he’d pursued this line earlier, on the day of the Dunlop & Finch interviews for example. Then he might have been in with a chance. Instead, he’s asking them to remember a customer who picked up a takeaway four weeks ago. ‘Do you recognise this man?’
He holds up a picture of Carruthers, a print-off from the Dunlop & Finch website. If Carruthers was a cat, he’d lick himself.
She shrugs at him, perhaps hasn’t understood. She barks something in Chinese very fast over her shoulder towards the kitchen. A man comes out.
‘Can I help you?’
‘Yes, I was wondering if you remembered serving this man. It’s a while back now, December the fourteenth. He says he came in for a takeaway.’ Davy hands over the image of Carruthers.
The Chinese man nods. ‘He regular customer, yeah.’ Then he waits, looking at Carruthers’ face. Looks up at Davy. ‘He came taxi.’
‘Taxi?’
‘Taxi, yeah,’ he says, nodding fast. ‘He very stress. Make big fight in here. Say we no quick enough.’
Davy looks up at the camera, which points at the door. ‘Any film in that?’
From Davy’s purple-branded budget hotel room, he calls Kim and tells her to ANPR the number plate of the car carrying Giles Carruthers to the Lotus Blossom not on 14 December, but on 13 December. Carruthers did not go to the takeaway on 14 December.
He’s watched the film of Carruthers pacing the linoleum of the Lotus Blossom, checking his phone, looking anxiously through to the kitchen to see where his food was, complaining to the girl behind the counter. Davy watched an argument break out, rather like watching an old silent movie. Even without sound, Davy could see Carruthers was being rude – patrician towards the staff. None of his usual sleek confidence. Why was he so jumpy?
Lying on the bed, Davy pops the mini pot of Pringles he purchased at the bar. Pringles for one, sour cream flavour. The little pot of Pringles and the cool beer on his bedside unit are creating in him a firmament of pleasure in his solar plexus.
Of course Davy went straight to Carruthers with this rather significant hole in his alibi.
‘You weren’t at the Lotus Blossom on December the fourteenth. You were there the night before. The thirteenth.’
‘Really?’ Carruthers said. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Quite sure. Any thoughts about where you were on the fourteenth?’
They both behaved as if this was an easy mistake to make, and it was, except Davy had a hunch it wasn’t a mistake. And yes, his training told him there should be no hunches in police work, but sometimes hunches went to the very heart. He knew Manon would agree with him. ‘Nuance,’ she once said to him. ‘And no, Davy, that’s not another word for paedophile.’
Carruthers turned the corners of his mouth down, hands in his trouser pockets. ‘Home, I guess.’
‘Anyone who can confirm you were at home?’
‘Not that I can think of. I live by myself.’
Davy pops a Pringle into his mouth, with his phone to his ear, listening to Kim say, ‘Why’re you pursuing a not-significant witness on not the night of the murder? Carruthers didn’t travel to Huntingdon to stab Ross. He would’ve been picked up.’
‘I still want to know,’ Davy says. ‘Want the name and location of the taxi rank. Harriet’ll back me up.’
Sometimes, he wants to tell Kim, life takes you down tributaries and it’s important to go with it – to allow the journey to an unknown destination. But Kim’s not the sort to deal in abstracts.
‘Can’t see where it’ll get you,’ she says.
‘No, well, there we are.’
‘How’s the Premier Inn?’
‘Y’know, purple.’
Manon
She’s caught the train to London, and in a gastropub over an early-evening drink, she says to Dan Ashton, ‘I need to find someone, a dealer on your patch. Paddy Driscoe.’
‘You look really beautiful,’ Ash says, gently, quietly, as if it is an eternal truth that he can’t help iterating. He looks really great with his shaved head and blue eyes. Shirt sleeves rolled up so she can see a hint of bicep. He has that police officer gym-bulk about him.
‘Thanks,’ she says, crisply. She wants to get on with it, get it over with. Return to Fly and the matter in hand.