Lee Potter nodded, clearly flustered by my rapid-fire questions. ‘As far as I know, yes. That’s right.’
‘Where did the money come from?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Did he pay you directly or did it come from someone else?’
‘His company paid. They used to send a cheque here every month, and they were always on time. That’s why I never bothered too much. Is there something wrong?’
I ignored the question. ‘Did he leave a forwarding address when he moved out?’
‘No, no he didn’t. In fact he never actually came round at all. I got a phone call from his brother saying that he’d gone, and asking what was owed. I was concerned because obviously it was all a bit sudden, so he suggested I go round and check that everything was OK. I did, the house all looked very clean, and then he phoned back a couple of days later, we divvied everything up, and the company sent another cheque for the balance.’
‘Did his brother leave a phone number you could reach him on?’
He shook his head. ‘No, he didn’t. He-’
‘So you couldn’t actually say for certain that it was his brother?’
‘Well, no, but there was no reason to believe otherwise. Why should there have been?’
‘The reason I’m asking is that we want to talk to Mr Franks about some very serious matters, and I’m particularly interested in details of any of his associates.’
‘As I said, Mr Gallan, I only ever met him a couple of times, and that was alone. He was a model tenant in pretty much every way. He never called me out, never complained, nothing. Just paid his rent and that was it.’
I paused for a moment and took several sips from my coffee before speaking again. ‘Was there ever any suspicion on your part that the house was being used for anything other than simply being lived in?’
Lee Potter tried to look like he was thinking hard about the question. It didn’t really work. ‘No, not really,’ he said eventually.
‘Are you absolutely sure? It’s very important we know about it if there was.’
He sighed. ‘I once went round there, I don’t know, about a year or so ago, mainly because I hadn’t even seen the place for God knows how long, and I was in the area anyway.’
‘Go on.’
‘It was nothing really, but all the curtains were closed, which I thought was a bit odd as it was the middle of the day, and there were also a couple of cars there. Anyway, I rang on the doorbell a couple of times, but no one answered.’ He paused before continuing. ‘Only, I was sure there were people there, because there was a tiny gap in the sitting-room curtains and I was certain I saw the shadow of someone moving around in there. It was probably nothing, almost certainly nothing, but I phoned Mr Franks up a couple of days later and he made out that he’d been away, which was odd.’ He shrugged expansively. ‘But that’s about it. I can’t think of anything else. What do you think was happening there, then?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, but I had my ideas.
I finished the coffee, got the name of the company that paid Franks’s bills from Lee Potter, and then left.
Outside, the sky was darkening and it was already raining, but I hardly noticed as I started off in the direction of the Tube station. I was too busy thinking.
* * *
Twelve hours later my thoughts had turned to very different matters. Like why wasn’t the chief super traipsing round the rain-drenched midnight streets of Islington if he was so bloody keen to ‘foster a continued and ever deeper spirit of co-operation’ between those pounding the beat and those who’d hoped it was all behind them? It was ten past twelve and we’d just been called to the ground-floor council maisonette currently occupied by Brian and Katrina Driscoll.
The smell hit me in the face as soon as I followed Berrin and the two uniforms in through the open front door. Shit and BO and stale rubbish. Food that had gone off, trapped stagnant air; the standard, all-pervading odour of decay. A kid of about eight dressed in filthy pyjama bottoms, his ribs sticking out like they were going to burst through the skin, stood watching us impassively at the bottom of the stairs. It was dark in the hallway but there were lights on further in.
A hysterical wailing came from one of the rooms down the hall. The voice was female. She sounded drunk. ‘I can’t believe you fucking did that to me, you fucking cunt!’
‘Fuck off you old slag or you’ll fucking get some more!’
She screamed again. ‘Fuck off!’
Then him. ‘Do you want some, then? Do you fucking want some?’
There was a sound of glass or crockery breaking and the first uniform, PC Ramsay, called out that it was the police responding to a call. We walked down the hall in a long line to the kitchen, past the boy who continued to stare at us blankly.
‘I fucking called you! Look what he did to me!’ She came into view, a big, misshapen woman in jeans and a white vest that rode up over her ample belly. A thick trail of blood ran down her face and onto her neck. Its source was a large cut on her forehead where she’d clearly been struck by something. She grabbed hold of Ramsay and pulled him to her like a sexually aggressive bear. ‘Look what the cunt did to me! Look!’
The WPC with Ramsay, Farnes, shepherded the victim into the lounge away from her partner, who now appeared, bare-footed, in the kitchen doorway. ‘I ain’t done fucking nothing,’ he said, shaking his head, the words oozing drink. He was tall with a thick head of messy brown hair and an out-of-proportion beer belly. Aged about thirty-five, and dressed in jeans and a checked shirt. We’d been warned he was violent, particularly when drunk. Apparently, the police had been called here plenty of times before.
‘Come on now, Brian,’ said Ramsay, who seemed to know him. ‘I think it’s best you come with us.’ The words were spoken calmly, almost soothingly. Ramsay was understandably eager to avoid a scene. I was too, since I’d have to get involved if he didn’t come quietly.
His response, however, was predictable. ‘Fuck off. I’m all right. I didn’t touch her. She’s fucking lying again.’
Brian came forward, trying to get into the room where his partner was. Ramsay stood in the way and put his hands up to stop him. ‘She’s made a complaint, Brian. Now we’ve got to follow up on it. You understand that, don’t you?’
‘Fuck off. Get out my way.’
‘Look, don’t make this hard on everyone, Brian. Let’s just go nice and quiet now.’
Brian lunged forward and I did my best to grab him in a bearhug from behind while Berrin managed to get him round the neck. Ramsay produced some handcuffs from out of nowhere and the three of us wrestled him towards the front door. Two more recently arrived uniforms came in and helped with what was no easy extraction. Brian cursed and screamed, then fell over, trying to lash out with his arms. I grabbed one, one of the uniforms grabbed another, and Ramsay forced on the cuffs.
‘What are you fucking doing to me, you cunts! Leave me alone! Bastards!’
I looked up and saw the kid on the stairs still watching the whole thing, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to see your dad wrestling with a load of police officers. The man reeked of sweat and his hair was greasy. I had my knee in his back and I felt this sudden urge to grab him by the back of his greasy mane and slam his head into the floor.
‘I’ll fucking kill you, you bastards! You’re dead! You know that? Dead!’
We pulled him to his feet and he snorted loudly, filling his mouth with phlegm.
‘All right, get rid of that spit,’ demanded one of the uniforms in his line of fire. ‘Get rid of it now.’
‘Come on now, Brian, let’s be having you,’ continued Ramsay, persisting with his softly-softly approach.
Brian gobbed something thick and horrible onto his carpet, deciding against sending it into one of the arresting officers’ faces and risking a charge of assault, and continued with his pointless invective. We got him outside on the pavement and, while one of the uniforms got the doors of the van open, he had a final angry struggle, just to show he wasn’t coming quietly, and tried to kick Berrin who dodged out of the way. I grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him back.
‘Fuck off, you fucking wanker!’ he shouted, and lashed out again with a bare foot, this time in my direction.
I stepped aside, then stepped back and stamped hard on his other foot, grinding the heel of my shoe in. Brian
