‘If this was about your marriage, I’d leave you to it. We believe a vulnerable young woman’s mixed up in it all, though. That she might have seen something to put her in danger. There was evidence of violence at her home, so I’ll keep asking until I get an answer.’
She looked away again. ‘I began to receive notes.’ I caught Aneesa’s eye. Her face told me that this was news to her too. ‘Anonymous notes.’
‘Can I ask what the substance of these notes was?’
‘The same substance as all such notes, I expect. That my husband was walking out on me. That he was having an affair.’
‘Do you still have them?’
‘No. And they were hand-delivered. No envelopes or postmarks or anything like that.’
‘Did you report them to the police?’
‘The police? My husband’s sex life is a little out of your jurisdiction, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Whoever sent them obviously did so with malicious intent. Was there any sense of blackmail involved?’
‘No threats or anything like that. Just details. Times. Places.’
‘Did you speak to Freddie about them?’
‘I ignored them, for a time. Then the notes became pictures. Photographs. I couldn’t ignore them any more. The final letter was an address, a day and date in the future. A few days from when I received it. There was a key taped to the paper. Freddie was acting so elusively, so strangely. I genuinely was worried for him. So I went.’ She spoke as though it was the central humiliation of her life and I’d excavated it. Aneesa gave me a dirty look and turned away. ‘Some absurd loft place on Sackville Street.’ The same address where I’d visited Freddie earlier that day. ‘I waited outside the building until someone came out, then I caught the door and went inside. I found the room and heard raised voices. So I used the key that had been sent to me … He was with another man.’ I looked out into the street to make sure the surprise didn’t show on my face. None of us spoke for a moment. ‘I don’t think we’ve ever been in a room together since.’
‘Did you know this other man?’
‘Ask Freddie.’
‘I will. Do you have any idea who might have sent you those notes?’
She looked at me. ‘Isn’t it obvious? His lover, of course. No doubt he’s having a good laugh with my husband about it even now.’
Unless he was murdered in the Palace Hotel on Saturday night, I thought.
‘You don’t really think they had something to do with all this?’
Aneesa and I were walking in the same direction, me to pick up with Sutty at the site of Cherry’s apparent abduction, Aneesa to catch a cab home.
‘It’s pretty interesting how much they have to hide,’ I said. ‘I take it all that was news to you?’
‘It was, actually. And it was also none of my business.’
‘Do you think Blick knew about it?’
‘You’d have to ask him that.’
‘I will. He’s back next week?’
‘Next week.’
‘Why this sudden urge to find himself?’
‘It was one of those things that built up for a long time. Anthony’s compulsive, a workaholic. It’s the first break I’ve known him take in years.’
‘The timing seems—’
‘No,’ said Aneesa. ‘You don’t get to just throw shit at people and see what sticks. Anthony went away for health reasons, if you really want to know.’
I stopped, looked at her.
‘He had a heart attack,’ she said. ‘His break’s on doctor’s orders.’ I thought of the pictures I’d seen of Blick, surrounded by young Thai women. I wondered if that was medical advice as well.
‘Coyle’s cash-flow situation,’ I said, changing the subject.
She gave a small laugh. ‘He’d have to be wiping his arse with it to be running out.’ She could see me edging towards the question and saved me the trouble. ‘Annually? Comfortably six figures,’ she said. ‘Very comfortably. Anyway, you’ve said it yourself. This death in the Palace hurts them both financially.’
So who’d want to do that, I thought.
8
I’d been gone for the best part of an hour when I got back to China Town and SOCO still hadn’t arrived. Sutty and I waited, listlessly, with the doors wide open, trying to stay cool.
The acrimonious split of Natasha Reeve and Frederick Coyle ran through the case like a fault line. But Freddie’s affair, and the anonymous notes revealing it, were a sudden turn into darker territory. Someone meant them harm. There was nothing so out of the ordinary about Freddie’s affair being with another man, except in what it said about his state of mind. Natasha said he’d changed, even before she knew about his infidelity. Now he was a party animal, a drinker and gay. A man with no kids enjoying a mid-life crisis after a lifetime in the closet? Something to look forward to.
I knew that this side of the case was becoming too unwieldy to keep from Sutty for much longer, whatever Superintendent Parrs thought. My partner was no fool, and if he found out for himself who knew what he’d do?
I turned to him. ‘Shouldn’t SOCO be here by now?’
‘The Pusher’s struck again so they’re running late.’
‘You’re joking?’
He shook his head. ‘Someone saw a floater from the bridge on Albion Street. They’re fishing him out now.’
I thought of the violent scene we’d encountered inside the China Town flat.
The missing girl.
‘It’s definitely a man?’ I said. He shrugged and I looked at him. ‘If it’s a woman, it could be Cherry …’
‘Shit,’ he said, flatly. ‘You’d better get over there.’
I got out of the car and slammed the door before I said anything that might get me fired. It was a ten-minute walk and another welcome break from Sutty. The Pusher was just an urban myth. The heart of the city courses with aqueducts, dockyards, quays and locks, and in less than a decade almost a hundred young men have died in them, usually drowning in canals between the hours of midnight and 6 a.m. This has given rise to press speculation of a serial killer at work, The Pusher. It sells more papers than the truth. A massive student population, vibrant nightlife and open waterways. A sad statistical inevitability.
But every crime scene has a kind of power and I felt this one before I saw it. Then I heard the sirens and saw pulsing blue lights. Uniforms in high-vis jackets had closed the bridge and were diverting traffic from both sides. I carded my way on to it and looked over the edge, down on to the waterside of the canal. The scene was confused but I could see that something had already been recovered. I waited as large lighting rigs were positioned on the pathway. When they were switched on, the light seemed to slam down on to the ground, illuminating a single black vinyl sheet.
It was about the size of a human body.
I gripped the brickwork of the bridge and felt the pulse passing through my hands. SOCO had finished videotaping the path but the scene itself was a nightmare of contamination. They wouldn’t be making it to Cherry’s flat any time soon. That hardly mattered if it was her body beneath that sheet, though. From the lack of activity, I guessed the pathologist hadn’t examined it yet. I looked down for a moment. The water was a still, liquid-black beneath the lights.
I went to the waterside, approached the nearest officer and showed him my card. ‘Did you get a look?’ I said, nodding towards the body.
‘First on scene,’ he said, sullenly. ‘Second in two years.’
‘Anything you can tell me?’
‘Was pretty fresh, comparatively. Last one we pulled out looked like corned beef hash.’ He looked over my shoulder and took a step back.
‘Aidan Waits.’
I turned to see Karen Stromer descending the bank towards us. She was already wearing the white plastic coveralls that she’d examine the body in. She set her case down and stared at me.
‘Let me guess,’ she said. ‘You were first on the scene again …’
I felt the officer I’d been speaking to evaporate into the background.
‘I only just arrived.’
‘To check his pockets, too?’
I didn’t say anything and she took a step closer, lowering her voice. ‘You’re giving me a very bad feeling, Detective Constable. Have you lost something, is that it?’
‘No.’
‘Are you here to plant something? You’ve got a reputation in that direction, after all …’