He stood up and grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair.
'I don't think that's coincidence.'
2
Martin Stamey's home was a new build on an upmarket housing estate for the aspiring criminal classes on the outskirts of Purfleet in Essex. Each house appeared identical, surrounded by large well-manicured lawns and adorned with more mock Tudor fixings than a medieval banquet. As they tried to find the right house in a warren of homogeneous streets, Foster couldn't resist a sneer. It was the sort of place where the residents put up so many lights at Christmas you could probably see them from space.
The silhouette of a flag, presumably a Union Jack, flapped in the wind on top of the house. The earlier rain had stopped but the air was still damp. Heather knocked on the door, inducing some manic barking from a dog inside the house.
'Shut the fack up!' a gruff voice barked back. The light in the hall went on and through the frosted glass a large figure in a white T-shirt approached, unlocked several bolts and opened the door on a safety chain. The face that peered through was unshaven, handsome and sullen, the features carved and lean. There was no pretence at friendliness.
He knew them instantly as police.
'What?' The voice oozed contempt.
'Martin Stamey?'
'Who wants to know?'
Foster flashed his ID, then introduced himself and Heather. The dog barked riotously as if on cue. A female voice told it to shut up and a door slammed, muffling the dog's excitement.
'The Met? What you doing out here?' Stamey said.
Harris would ask the same, Foster thought. Sod the action plan. 'It's in relation to a current investigation,' he replied. 'We'd like a word. Any chance we can come in?'
The man smiled bitterly. 'Yeah, cos I'm always inviting police into my house, aren't I? Tell me what it's all about and then we'll talk about whether you can come inside.'
'It's about Leonie,' Heather said.
The man's face froze. 'You found her, have you?' He sounded eager, expectant.
'No, but we have a case that shares some similarities with hers,' Foster explained. He felt a few spots of rain.
'Look, we've told you what it's about. Can we come in?'
Stamey looked at them for a few seconds impassively, then drew back and unhooked the chain. 'Come on,' he said, walking off in front of them. He was wearing blue jeans and an incongruous pair of navy-blue carpet slippers.
Foster and Heather followed him down a long hall.
'Nice place,' he lied.
'Yeah, well, it's home,' Stamey said, failing to conceal his pride.
'What's your game again?' Foster asked as they arrived at a large sitting room. Everything in it was cream - the leather sofas, the walls, the thick shagpile carpet and the rug by the cream fireplace, even the lampshade. With the overhead light, the cumulative effect was so bright Foster almost felt his retinas detach.
The only colour emanated from a huge wall-mounted plasma TV screen showing a loud action film. A boy and a girl, who Foster guessed to be around ten or eleven years old, sat entranced.
'Fuck off upstairs and watch this shit in your rooms,'
Stamey said to them, picking up a remote control from the coffee table and turning it off.
The two kids trudged away.
'What was your question again?' he said to Foster, irritably.
Foster could see the contempt wasn't reserved for him. It was a default setting. 'I asked what you did for a living.'
'Carpenter,' Stamey answered, and sniffed. 'Some other stuff, too.'
I bet, Foster thought. Houses as big as this weren't bought on the wages of your average chippy.
A slim, attractive woman in her mid-thirties with blonde hair appeared in the doorway, waiting for the children to sidle past her before she spoke.
'Who are these two, Mart?' she asked, saving her most unsavoury look for Heather.
'Detectives,' he said, sitting on one of the sofas and spreading his legs and arms wide. 'They say they're here about Leon
'Have they found her?' she asked, contempt giving way to agitation.
Heather shook her head. 'I'm afraid not.'
Foster sat down on the other sofa, trying to suppress a wince. More than an hour in his car had seized him up, and his leg and collarbone were beginning to ache, as they always did at the end of the day. He was a long way from his red wine and painkillers.
'Can I get you a tea or a coffee?' the woman asked.
Both Foster and Heather shook their heads.
'A glass of water would be nice, though,' Heather said.
Foster marvelled at how much water she drank. Apart from wine, it was the only thing he saw her drink.
'Grab me a can of lager, sweetheart,' Stamey said, and the woman Foster presumed to be the mother of his children padded away. Stamey turned his saturnine face on them but said nothing. Foster had taken an instant dislike to him but reined it in. He sat forward.
'I'll be up front with you, Mr Stamey. We have nothing new about Leonie's whereabouts. But in the course of our investigation into the recent disappearance of a fourteenyear-old girl in London we noticed a few similarities.'
'Is this the one that's been in the news and plastered all over the papers?'
Foster nodded. 'It is, yes.'
A look of bewilderment spread across Stamey's face.
'Her mother was offed, wasn't she? Nasty bit of business.
Some fucking nonce, I expect. You lot are too lenient on them. Let them out in the community and all that shit.
Best thing to do is put them down like dogs. If you're gonna let 'em go, then you wanna cut the balls off 'em first.' He sniffed once more.
Foster didn't like being harangued on law and order by someone he suspected to be a small-time crook but he let it slide.
'I don't see the connection with Leonie,' Stamey added.
'Hang on, are you saying that Leonie's mum was murdered?'
'I
was wondering if we could go through the details of your niece's disappearance one more time?' Foster asked.
'Details? I don't know what you mean. As far as we knew, her mother OD'd on smack. Stupid bitch. She'd had all sorts of problems with it. The place was a fucking dump. She was opening her legs to anything with a cock.
She took a hit one night and that was it. Leonie saw the writing on the wall. Her and Gary were going to be taken into care. I was . . . away at the time, so I couldn't take her in. My brother Davey was working away and he don't have a clue anyway, so he'd have been no good. My other brother, Christopher, passed away a few years back so there was nowhere for the poor little mite to go. So she had it away on her toes and I don't blame her. Gary's gone into care and he's up to no good all the fucking time from what little we hear.'
'How old is Gary now?' Heather asked.
'He'd be about eleven. The same number of foster families he's been through probably.'
