6
STRIKE HAD ONCE TRIED TO count the number of schools he had attended in his youth, and had reached the figure of seventeen with the suspicion that he had forgotten a couple. He did not include the brief period of supposed home schooling which had taken place during the two months he had lived with his mother and half-sister in a squat in Atlantic Road in Brixton. His mother’s then boyfriend, a white Rastafarian musician who had rechristened himself Shumba, felt that the school system reinforced patriarchal and materialistic values with which his common-law stepchildren ought not to be tainted. The principal lesson that Strike had learned during his two months of home-based education was that cannabis, even if administered spiritually, could render the taker both dull and paranoid.
He took an unnecessary detour through Brixton Market on the way to the café where he was meeting Derrick Wilson. The fishy smell of the covered arcades; the colorful open faces of the supermarkets, teeming with unfamiliar fruit and vegetables from Africa and the West Indies; the halal butchers and the hairdressers, with large pictures of ornate braids and curls, and rows and rows of white polystyrene heads bearing wigs in the windows: all of it took Strike back twenty-six years, to the months he had spent wandering the Brixton streets with Lucy, his young half-sister, while his mother and Shumba lay dozily on dirty cushions back at the squat, vaguely discussing the important spiritual concepts in which the children ought to be instructed.
Seven-year-old Lucy had yearned for hair like the West Indian girls. On the long drive back to St. Mawes that had terminated their Brixton life, she had expressed a fervent desire for beaded braids from the back seat of Uncle Ted and Aunt Joan’s Morris Minor. Strike remembered Aunt Joan’s calm agreement that the style was very pretty, a frown line between her eyebrows reflected in the rearview mirror. Joan had tried, with diminishing success through the years, not to disparage their mother in front of the children. Strike had never discovered how Uncle Ted had found out where they were living; all he knew was that he and Lucy had let themselves into the squat one afternoon to find their mother’s enormous brother standing in the middle of the room, threatening Shumba with a bloody nose. Within two days, he and Lucy were back in St. Mawes, at the primary school they attended intermittently for years, taking up with old friends as though they had not left, and swiftly losing the accents they had adopted for camouflage, wherever Leda had last taken them.
He had not needed the directions Derrick Wilson had given Robin, because he knew the Phoenix Café on Coldharbour Lane of old. Occasionally Shumba and his mother had taken them there: a tiny, brown-painted, shed-like place where you could (if not a vegetarian, like Shumba and his mother) eat large and delicious cooked breakfasts, with eggs and bacon piled high, and mugs of tea the color of teak. It was almost exactly as he remembered: cozy, snug and dingy, its mirrored walls reflecting tables of mock-wood Formica, stained floor tiles of dark red and white, and a tapioca-colored ceiling covered in molded wallpaper. The squat middle-aged waitress had short straightened hair and dangling orange plastic earrings; she moved aside to let Strike past the counter.
A heavily built West Indian man was sitting alone at one table, reading a copy of the Sun, under a plastic clock that bore the legend Pukka Pies.
“Derrick?”
“Yeah…you Strike?”
Strike shook Wilson’s big, dry hand, and sat down. He estimated Wilson to be almost as tall as himself when standing. Muscle as well as fat swelled the sleeves of the security guard’s sweatshirt; his hair was close-cropped and he was clean-shaven, with fine almond-shaped eyes. Strike ordered pie and mash off the scrawled menu board on the back wall, pleased to reflect that he could charge the ￡4.75 to expenses.
“Yeah, the pie ’n’ mash is good here,” said Wilson.
A faint Caribbean lilt lifted his London accent. His voice was deep, calm and measured. Strike thought that he would be a reassuring presence in a security guard’s uniform.
“Thanks for meeting me, I appreciate it. John Bristow’s not happy with the results of the inquest on his sister. He’s hired me to take another look at the evidence.”
“Yeah,” said Wilson, “I know.”
“How much did he give you to talk to me?” Strike asked casually.
Wilson blinked, then gave a slightly guilty, deep-throated chuckle.
“Pony,” he said. “But if it makes the man feel better, yuh know? It won’t change nuthin’. She killed huhself. But ask your questions. I don’t mind.”
He closed the Sun. The front page bore a picture of Gordon Brown looking baggy-eyed and exhausted.
“You’ll have gone over everything with the police,” said Strike, opening his notebook and setting it down beside his plate, “but it would be good to hear, first hand, what happened that night.”
“Yeah, no problem. An’ Kieran Kolovas-Jones might be comin’,” Wilson added.
He seemed to expect Strike to know who this was.
“Who?” asked Strike.
“Kieran Kolovas-Jones. He was Lula’s regular driver. He wants to talk to you too.”
“OK, great,” said Strike. “When will he be here?”
“I dunno. He’s on a job. He’ll come if he can.”
The waitress put a mug of tea in front of Strike, who thanked her and clicked out the nib of his pen. Before he could ask anything, Wilson said:
“You’re ex-milit’ry, Mister Bristow said.”
“Yeah,” said Strike.
“Mi nephew’s in Afghanistan,” said Wilson, sipping his tea. “Helmand Province.”
“What regiment?”
“Signals,” said Wilson.
“How long’s he been out there?”
“Four month. His mother’s not sleeping,” said Wilson. “How come you left?”
“Got my leg blown off,” said Strike, with an honesty that was not habitual.
It was only part of the truth, but the easiest part to communicate to a stranger. He could have stayed; they had been keen to keep him; but the loss of his calf and foot had merely precipitated a decision he had felt stealing towards him in the past couple of years. He knew that his personal tipping point was drawing nearer; that moment by which, unless he left, he would find it too onerous to go, to readjust to civilian life. The army shaped you, almost imperceptibly, with the years; wore you into a surface conformity that made it easier to be swept along by the tidal force of military life. Strike had never become entirely submerged, and had chosen to go before that happened. Even so, he remembered the SIB with a fondness that was unaffected by the loss of half a limb. He would have been glad to remember Charlotte with the same uncomplicated affection.
Wilson acknowledged Strike’s explanation with a slow nod of the head.
“Tough,” he said, in his deep voice.
“I got off light compared with some.”
“Yeah. Guy in mi nephew’s platoon got blown up two weeks ago.”
Wilson sipped his tea.
“How did you get on with Lula Landry?” Strike asked, pen poised. “Did you see a lot of her?”
“Just in and out past the desk. She always said hullo and please and thank you, which is more’n a whole lotta these rich fuckers manage,” said Wilson laconically. “Longest chat we ever had was about Jamaica. She was thinking of doing a job over there; asking me where tuh stay, what’s it like. And I got her autograph for mi nephew, Jason, for his birthday. Got her to sign a card, sent it outta Afghanistan. Just three weeks before she died. She asked after Jason by name every time I saw her after that, and I liked the girl for that, y’know? I been knocking around the security game forra long time. There’s people who’d expect you to take a bullet for them and they don’t bother rememb’ring yuh name. Yeah, she was all right.”
Strike’s pie and mash arrived, steaming hot. The two men accorded it a moment’s respectful silence as they contemplated the heaped plate. Mouth watering, Strike picked up his knife and fork and said:
“Can you talk me through what happened the night Lula died? She went out, what time?”
The security guard scratched his forearm thoughtfully, pushing up the sleeve of his sweatshirt; Strike saw tattoos there, crosses and initials.
“Musta bin just gone seven that evening. She was with her friend Ciara Porter. I remember, as they were going out the door, Mr. Bestigui come in. I remember that, because he said something to Lula. I didn’t hear what it was. She didn’t like it, though. I could tell by the look on her face.”
“What kind of look?”
“Offended,” said Wilson, the answer ready. “So then I seen the two of them on the monitor, Lula and Porter, getting in their car. We gotta camera over the door, see. It’s linked to a monitor on the desk, so we can see who’s buzzing to get in.”
“Does it record footage? Can I see a tape?”
Wilson shook his head.
“Mr. Bestigui didn’t want nothing like that on the door. No recording devices. He was the first to buy a flat, before they were all finished, so he had input into the arrangements.”
“The camera’s just a high-tech peephole, then?”
Wilson nodded. There was a fine scar running from just beneath his left eye to the middle of his cheekbone.
“Yeah. So I seen the girls get into their car. Kieran, guy who’s coming to meet us here, wasn’t driving her that night. He was supposedta be picking up Deeby Macc.”
“Who was her chauffeur that night?”
“Guy called Mick, from Execars. She’d had him before. I seen all the photographers crowdin’ round the car as it pulled away. They’d been sniffin’ around all week, because they knew she was back with Evan Duffield.”
“What did Bestigui do, once Lula and Ciara had left?”
“He collected his post from me and went up the stairs to his flat.”
Strike was putting down his fork with every mouthful, to make notes.
“Anyone go in or out after that?”
“Yeah, the caterers—they’d been up at the Bestiguis’ because they were having guests that night. An American couple arrived just after eight and went up to Flat One, and nobody come in or out till they left again, near midnight. Didn’t see no one else till Lula come home, round half past one.
“I heard the paps shouting her name outside. Big crowd by that time. A bunch of them had followed her from the nightclub, and there was a load waiting there already, looking out for Deeby Macc. He was supposedta be getting there round half twelve. Lula pressed the bell and I buzzed her in.”
“She didn’t punch the code into the keypad?”
“Not with them all around her; she wanted to get in quick. They were yelling, pressing in on her.”
“Couldn’t she have gone in through the underground car park and avoided them?”
“Yeah, she did that sometimes when Kieran was with her, ’cause she’d given him a control for the electric doors to the garage. But Mick didn’t have one, so it had to be the front.
“I said good morning, and I asked about the snow, ’cause she had some in her hair; she was shivering, wearin’ a skimpy little dress. She said it was way below freezing, something like that. Then she said, ‘I wish they’d fuck off. Are they gonna stay there all night?’ ’Bout the paps. I told her they were still waiting for Deeby Macc; he was late. She looked pissed off. Then she got in the lift and went up to her flat.”
“She looked pissed off?”
“Yeah, really pissed off.”
“Suicidal pissed off?”
“No,” said Wilson. “Angry pissed off.”
“Then what happened?”
“Then,” said Wilson, “I had to go into the back room. My guts were starting to feel really bad. I needed the bathroom. Urgent, yuh know. I’d caught what Robson had. He was off sick with his belly. I was away maybe fifteen minutes. No choice. Never had the shits like it.
“I was still in the can when the bawling started. No,” he corrected himself, “first thing I heard was a bang. Big bang in the distance. I realized later, that must’ve been the body—Lula, I mean—falling.
“Then the bawlin’ started, getting louder, coming down the stairs. So I pull up my pants and go running out into the lobby, and there’s Mrs. Bestigui, shaking and screaming and acting like one mad bitch in her underwear. She says Lula’s dead, that she’s been pushed off her balcony by a man in her flat.
“I tell her to stay where she is and I run out the front door. And there she was. Lyin’ in the middle of the road, face down in the snow.”
Wilson swigged his tea, and continued to cradle the mug in his large hand as he said:
“Half her head was caved in. Blood in the snow. I could tell her neck was broken. And there was—yeah.”
The sweet and unmistakable smell of human brains seemed to fill Strike’s nostrils. He had smelled it many times. You never forgot.
“I ran back inside,” resumed Wilson. “Both the Bestiguis were in the lobby; he was tryin’ to get her back upstairs, inna some clothes, and she was still bawling. I told them to call the police and to keep an eye on the lift, in case he tried to come down that way.
“I grabbed the master key out the back room and I ran upstairs. No one on the stairwell. I unlocked the door of Lula’s flat—”
“Didn’t you think of taking anything with you, to defend yourself?” Strike interrupted. “If you thought there was someone in there? Someone who’d just killed a woman?”
There was a long pause, the longest so far.
“Didn’t think I’d need nothing,” said Wilson. “Thought I could take him, no problem.”
“Take who?”
“Duffield,” said Wilson quietly. “I thought Duffield was up there.”
“Why?”
“I thought he musta come in while I was in the bathroom. He knew the key code. I thought he musta gone upstairs and she’d let him in. I’d heard them rowing before. I’d heard him angry. Yeah. I thought he’d pushed her.
“But when I got up to the flat, it was empty. I looked in every room and there was no one there. I opened the wardrobes, even, but nothing.
“The windows in the lounge was wide open. It was below freezing that night. I didn’t close them, I didn’t touch nothing. I come out and pressed the button on the lift. The doors opened straight away; it was still at her floor. It was empty.
“I ran back downstairs. The Bestiguis were in their flat when I passed their door; I could hear them; she was still bawling and he was still shouting at her. I didn’t know whether they’d called the police yet. I grabbed my mobile off the security desk and I went back out the front door, back to Lula, because—well, I didn’t like to leave her lying there alone. I was gonna call the police from the street, make sure they were coming. But I heard the siren before I’d even pressed nine. They were there quick.”
“One of the Bestiguis had called them, had they?”
“Yeah. He had. Two uniformed coppers in a panda car.”
“OK,” said Strike. “I want to be clear on this one point: you believed Mrs. Bestigui when she said she’d heard a man up in the top flat?”
“Oh yeah,” said Wilson.
“Why?”
Wilson frowned slightly, thinking, his eyes on the street over Strike’s right shoulder.
“She hadn’t given you any details at this point, had she?” Strike asked. “Nothing about what she’d been doing when she heard this man? Nothing to explain why she was awake at two in the morning?”
“No,” said Wilson. “She never gave me no explanation like that. It was the way she was acting, y’know. Hysterical. Shaking like a wet dog. She kept saying ‘There’s a man up there, he threw her over.’ She was proper scared.
“But there was nobody there; I can swear that to you on the lives of mi kids. The flat was empty, the lift was empty, the stairwell was empty. If he was there, where did he go?”
“The police came,” Strike said, returning mentally to the dark, snowy street, and the broken corpse. “What happened then?”
“When Mrs. Bestigui saw the police car out her window, she came straight back down in her dressing gown, with her husband running after her; she come out into the street, into the snow, and starts bawling at them that there’s a murderer in the building.
“Lights are going on all over the place now. Faces at windows. Half the street’s woken up. People coming out on to the pavements.
“One of the coppers stayed with the body, calling for back-up on his radio, while the other one went with us—me and the Bestiguis—back inside. He told them to go back in their flat and wait, and then he got me to show him the building. We went up to the top floor again; I opened up Lula’s door, showed him the flat, the open window. He checked the place over. I showed him the lift, still on her floor. We went back down the stairs. He asked about the middle flat, so I opened it up with the master key.
“It was dark, and the alarm went off when we went in. Before I could find the light switch or get to the alarm pad, the copper walked straight into the table in the middle of the hall and knocked over this massive vase of roses. Smashed and went everywhere, glass an’ water an’ flowers all over the floor. That caused a loada trouble, later…
“We checked the place. Empty, all the cupboards, every room. The windows were closed and bolted. We went back to the lobby.
“Plainclothes police had arrived by this time. They wanted keys to the basement gym, the pool and the car park. One of ’em went off to take a statement from Mrs. Bestigui, another one was out front, calling for more back-up, because there are more neighbors coming out in the street now, and half of them are talking on the phone while they’re standing there, and some of them are taking pictures. The uniformed coppers are trying to make them go back into their houses. It’s snowing, really heavy snow…
“They got a tent up over the body when forensics arrived. The press arrived round the same time. The police taped off half the street, blocked it off with their cars.”
Strike had cleaned his plate. He shoved it aside, ordered fresh mugs of tea for both of them and took up his pen again.
“How many people work at number eighteen?”
“There’s three guards—me, Colin McLeod an’ Ian Robson. We work in shifts, someone always on duty, round the clock. I shoulda been off that night, but Robson called me roundabout four in the afternoon, said he had this stomach bug, felt really bad with it. So I said I’d stay on, work through the next shift. He’d swapped with me the previous month so I could sort out a bit of fambly business. I owed him.
“So it shouldn’ta been me there,” said Wilson, and for a moment he sat in silence, contemplating the way things should have been.
“The other guards got on OK with Lula, did they?”
“Yeah, they’d tell yuh same as me. Nice girl.”
“Anyone else work there?”
“We gotta couple of Polish cleaners. They both got bad English. You won’t get much outta them.”
Wilson’s testimony, Strike thought, as he scribbled into one of the SIB notebooks he had filched on one of his last visits to Aldershot, was of an unusually high quality: concise, precise and observant. Very few people answered the question they had been posed; even fewer knew how to organize their thoughts so that no follow-up questions were needed to prize information out of them. Strike was used to playing archaeologist among the ruins of people’s traumatized memories; he had made himself the confidant of thugs; he had bullied the terrified, baited the dangerous and laid traps for the cunning. None of these skills were required with Wilson, who seemed almost wasted on a pointless trawl through John Bristow’s paranoia.
Nevertheless, Strike had an incurable habit of thoroughness. It would no more have occurred to him to skimp on the interview than to spend the day lying in his underpants on his camp bed, smoking. Both by inclination and by training, because he owed himself respect quite as much as the client, he proceeded with the meticulousness for which, in the army, he had been both feted and detested.
“Can we back up briefly and go through the day preceding her death? What time did you arrive for work?”
“Nine, same as always. Took over from Colin.”
“Do you keep a log of who goes in and out of the building?”
“Yeah, we sign everyone in and out, ’cept residents. There’s a book at the desk.”
“Can you remember who went in and out that day?”
Wilson hesitated.
“John Bristow came to see his sister early that morning, didn’t he?” prompted Strike. “But she’d told you not to let him up?”
“He’s told you that, has he?” asked Wilson, looking faintly relieved. “Yeah, she did. But I felt sorry for the man, y’know? He had a contrac’ to give back to her; he was worried about it, so I let him go up.”
“Had anyone else come into the building that you know of?”
“Yeah, Lechsinka was already there. She’s one of the cleaners. She always arrives at seven; she was mopping the stairwell when I got in. Nobody else came until the guy from the security comp’ny, to service the alarms. We get it done every six months. He musta come around nine forty; something like that.”
“Was this someone you knew, the man from the security firm?”
“No, he was a new guy. Very young. They always send someone diff’rent. Missus Bestigui and Lula were still at home, so I let him into the middle flat, and showed him where the control panel was an’ got him started. Lula went out while I was still in there, showin’ the guy the fuse box an’ the panic buttons.”
“You saw her go out, did you?”
“Yeah, she passed the open door.”
“Did she say hello?”
“No.”
“You said she usually did?”
“I don’t think she noticed me. She looked like she was in a hurry. She was going to see her sick mother.”
“How d’you know, if she didn’t speak to you?”
“Inquest,” said Wilson succinctly. “After I’d shown the security guy where everything was, I went back downstairs, an’ after Missus Bestigui went out, I let him into their flat to check that system too. He didn’t need me tuh stay with him there; the positions of the fuse boxes and panic buttons are the same in all the flats.”
“Where was Mr. Bestigui?”
“He’d already left for work. Eight he leaves, every day.”
Three men in hard hats and fluorescent yellow jackets entered the café and sat at a neighboring table, newspapers under their arms, work boots clogged with filth.
“How long would you say you were away from the desk each time you were with the security guy?”
“Mebbe five minutes in the middle flat,” said Wilson. “A minute each for the others.”
“When did the security guy leave?”
“Late morning. I can’t remember exactly.”
“But you’re sure he left?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Anyone else visit?”
“There was a few deliveries, but it was quiet compared to how the rest of the week had been.”
“Earlier in the week had been busy, had it?”
“Yeah, we’d had a lot of coming and going, because of Deeby Macc arriving from LA. People from the production company were in and out of Flat Two, checking the place was set up for him, filling up the fridge and that.”
“Can you remember what deliveries there were that day?”
“Packages for Macc an’ Lula. An’ roses—I helped the guy up with them, because they come in a massive,” Wilson placed his large hands apart to show the size, “a huh-uge vase, and we set ’em up on a table in the hallway of Flat Two. That’s the roses that got smashed.”
“You said that caused trouble; what did you mean?”
“Mister Bestigui had sent them to Deeby Macc an’ when he heard they’d been ruined he was pissed off. Shoutin’ like a maniac.”
“When was this?”
“While the police were there. When they were trying to interview his wife.”
“A woman had just fallen to her death past his front windows, and he was upset that someone had wrecked his flowers?”
“Yeah,” said Wilson, with a slight shrug. “He’s like that.”
“Does he know Deeby Macc?”
Wilson shrugged again.
“Did this rapper ever come to the flat?”
Wilson shook his head.
“After we had all this trouble, he went to a hotel.”
“How long were you away from the desk when you helped put the roses in Flat Two?”
“Mebbe five minutes; ten at most. After that, I was on the desk all day.”
“You mentioned packages for Macc and Lula.”
“Yeah, from some designer, but I gave them to Lechsinka to put in the flats. It was clothes for him an’ handbags for her.”
“And as far as you’re aware, everyone who went in that day went out again?”
“Oh yeah,” said Wilson. “All logged in the book at the front desk.”
“How often is the code on the external keypad changed?”
“It’s been changed since she died, because half the Met knew it by the time they were finished,” said Wilson. “But it din change the three months Lula lived there.”
“D’you mind telling me what it was?”
“Nineteen sixty-six,” said Wilson.
“ ‘They think it’s all over’?”
“Yeah,” said Wilson. “McLeod was always bellyaching about it. Wanted it changed.”
“How many people d’you think knew the door code before Lula died?”
“Not that many.”
“Delivery men? Postmen? Bloke who reads the gas meter?”
“People like that are always buzzed in by us, from the desk. The residents don’t normally use the keypad, because we can see them on camera, so we open the door for them. The keypad’s only there in case there’s no one on the desk; sometimes we’d be in the back room, or helping with something upstairs.”
“And the flats all have individual keys?”
“Yeah, and individual alarm systems.”
“Was Lula’s set?”
“No.”
“What about the pool and the gym? Are they alarmed?”
“Jus’ keys. Everyone who lives in the building gets a set of pool and gym keys along with their flat keys. And one key to the door leading to the underground car park. That door’s got an alarm on it.”
“Was it set?”
“Dunno, I wasn’t there when they checked that one. It shoulda been. The guy from the security firm had checked all the alarms that morning.”
“Were all these doors locked that night?”
Wilson hesitated.
“Not all of them. The door to the pool was open.”
“Had anyone used it that day, do you know?”
“I can’t remember anyone using it.”
“So how long had it been open?”
“I dunno. Colin was on the previous night. He shoulda checked it.”
“OK,” said Strike. “You said you thought the man Mrs. Bestigui had heard was Duffield, because you’d heard them arguing previously. When was that?”
“Not long before they split, ’bout two months before she died. She’d thrown him out of her flat and he was hammerin’ on the door and kicking it, trying to break it down, calling her filthy names. I went upstairs to get him out.”
“Did you use force?”
“Didn’t need to. When he saw me coming he picked up his stuff—she’d thrown his jacket and his shoes out after him—and just walked out past me. He was stoned,” said Wilson. “Glassy eyes, y’know. Sweating. Filthy T-shirt with crap all down it. I never knew what the fuck she saw in him.
“And here’s Kieran,” he added, his tone lightening. “Lula’s driver.”