The Cold Calling

‘I’m fine. Piss off.’

‘Could take you a while to chop up the whole pad,’ Maiden said.

‘Are you going, or do I have to call-’

He took a chance. Call it intuition; there was something interesting here. He pulled out his wallet. It felt strange flashing the warrant card. Something the other bloke used to do before he died.

‘Police,’ he said.

She stared at him. This time the fear was real, but soon controlled. She was younger than he’d thought. Early thirties. She had a wide mouth, green eyes, the kind of take-it-for-granted, careless beauty that said breeding and then yawned.

He said, ‘And you are?’

‘Magda Ring. I work here.’

‘As?’

‘Admin manager. Controller.’

‘And the professor’s just taken off in his helicopter, and you’re fixing it so he can’t get back, right?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. I … I was …’

Maiden smiled. She really couldn’t think of an adequate explanation of why she was hacking up Falconer’s helipad.

‘Look.’ Magda Ring rose up. ‘You might be police, but this is still private land. You can either tell me what you want or bugger off.’

He overturned a slab of concrete with his shoe. Underneath, there was red soil, stone, grit.

‘It’s not very deep, is it?’

‘Why should it be?’

‘I don’t know.’ He borrowed the pick, shifted another lump. ‘I don’t know anything about helicopters. Are they very heavy?’

The pick snagged. He pulled it. It ripped through fabric. He bent and pulled out what appeared to be a sleeve; it was nylon, quilted. It smelled bad.

‘Christ,’ Magda Ring said softly. ‘How did you know? How the fuck did you know?’

He bent and lifted out a weighty concrete cube. There was most of a nylon coat down there. When he pulled more of it away, a rich, putridly familiar stench started to pulse and wriggle out of the hole. The smell was a living thing.

As always, it was Islington, two heads fallen together on a sofa, flies and kiddy porn.

Maiden turned his face to the sky, swallowed a long breath, looked down.

What you could see of the body was partly liquefied. It lay in a soupy, brown sludge. Half the face was visible, features darkened, puffed, blistering.

Magda Ring cried out once, turned and stumbled away. Maiden gagged and bit hard on the sleeve of his jacket. When he found he was starting to shake, he, too, walked away.

From the edge of the wood, like some comical, gulping birdcall, came the sound of someone vomiting. Magda on her hands and knees among the autumn mulch: burnt sienna, yellow ochre and sour pink.

XL

He was hardly what you expected.

But come on, hen, what did you expect — black suit, slicked-back hair, white skin, Ronnie Kray rosebud lips?

Well, the black suit was right, very classy, but there wasn’t enough hair to slick back and the skin was closer to yellow. He wore thick glasses, had the manner of an old-fashioned accountant. Distant.

Distant you could understand, today. The black suit, too.

‘Sister Anderson?’ His hand felt like the inside of a banana skin. ‘You some variety of nun?’

Andy smiled. ‘Nursing sister.’

‘Oh. Right.’

He didn’t look too well. Signs of high blood pressure, could be liver trouble, too. He was older than she’d figured, seventy maybe. How could a guy this old still be doing what they said he was doing? Young men, she could just about get her head around it — the lure of easy money, plus the illusion that you were invincible. This guy was well beyond all that.

‘Thank you for seeing me, Mr Parker. Time like this.’

‘Yeah, well.’ Tony Parker motioned to a hard chair on Andy’s side of the desk. ‘You told them downstairs it was about my …’ An eye twitched, dragging down loose skin.

‘Daughter. Aye.’ Like, how else would she have got in to see him?

‘So, go on.’ He nodded at the two black phones on his desk. ‘I’ve told them to hold all calls. ‘Cept for the wife.’

‘If it rings, I’ll go out.’

‘No need. We ain’t that close any more. She lives down in Essex. Got her sister wiv her.’

His voice was dry, his London accent trimmed. He looked like a man who didn’t cry much but spent a lot of time thinking. In Andy’s experience, crying was simpler, and much more therapeutic.

‘I’m more sorry than I can say. I’d got to know her a little. Great girl.’

‘Yeah.’ He was slumped in a high-backed swivel chair. It was the only sign of luxury in the room. The desk was scuffed, old rather than antique. Looked like it had come out of one of the old Feeny Park solicitors’ offices. There were no pictures on the walls. This was really Emma’s old man?

This office was over Parker’s town-centre nightspot, the Biarritz. Who the hell had clubs called the Biarritz and the St Moritz any more?

Only fading guys like this, in towns like Elham.

It had gone quiet. Tony Parker gazed past her, out of the window at the beauteous Elham skyline, the old parish church, the new tech-college building. He looked like he was already forgetting she was here.

Of course, Riggs would know, by now, that she’d come. Whatever she said here would get back to him, every word of it, and quickly.

‘I also know Bobby Maiden,’ Andy said.

‘Really.’

‘When he had his accident, I was with the team that brought him round.’

Parker looked at her. ‘You’ll pardon me if I don’t recommend you for a medal.’

‘What I wanted to say was, he’s no the kind of guy would do this … thing.’

‘That’s it? You come here to say that?’

No, what she came to say was, If anything should happen to Bobby Maiden there’s me here, this big-mouthed Glaswegian harpy, who knows who it’s down to. And, by coming here, parking out front, also indirectly conveying this information to Mr Riggs.

‘You come here,’ Parker said, ‘to try and tell me that piece of fucking shit did not kill my daughter. Get out. Get the fuck out of my office, Sister Anderson.’

Andy didn’t move. ‘You’re makin’ a mistake, Tony.’ Could feel her accent thickening like phlegm in her throat. Somebody came on aggressive, it usually happened.

Tony Parker didn’t speak. Clearly couldn’t believe she hadn’t gone.

‘Your friend Mr Riggs was round just now. Figured I might know where Bobby was hidin’ out.’

‘And you didn’t, I expect.’

‘No. I didn’t.’

‘You’re a stupid cow. How many times the police name the man they’re after? Not often, Sister, and if they fink it’s a copper they’ll sit on it till they can’t sit on it no more. Martin Riggs, however, he’s too straight for that.’