‘And dangerous?’
‘As a group. Individually they’re harmless.’
‘The son?’
‘Samuel Devon is probably ineffectual. He’s a skinny individual, on the tall side. He should be at school, probably isn’t most of the time, or if he is, it’s only to waste time.’
‘And the mother?’
‘According to the son, she worked in the area. Domestic most days of the week.’
‘A cleaner is what you mean. Is she Jamaican?’
‘Trinidadian, according to the son.’
‘The father?’
‘He’s not around, although there’s a couple of other children: a daughter of eighteen, another son of nineteen. We’re trying to find them now.’
‘The other woman?’ Isaac asked.
‘Grant Meston is over there now,’ Gordon Windsor said.
‘I went there first. What can you tell us?’
‘The same type of murder.’
‘How and why?’ Isaac said.
‘You’re the detectives, you tell me,’ Windsor said.
‘It’s not as if you could confuse the two women,’ Larry said.
‘But why? One of the women is well-known and white; the other is black and unknown.’
‘A nobody?’
‘You know what I mean,’ Isaac said.
‘It doesn’t make sense,’ Larry said.
‘That’s why we’re here.’
A young woman walked in through the front door of the flat. ‘I want to see my mother,’ she said to the uniform on the door.
Isaac saw her from the other room; he came out to talk to her. ‘We’ll need to conclude our investigation first,’ he said. The woman, he could see, was well-dressed and attractive.
‘She’s my mother, I have every right to see her,’ Charisa Devon said.
‘That’s understood, but your mother’s been murdered. It’s a criminal matter now. I must do my duty.’
‘I’ll wait.’
‘What can you tell me about your mother?’
‘She was a hard worker, always cared about us.’
‘We’ve met Samuel. He looks as if he’s about to go off the rails.’
‘He is. It’s the gangs around here, you must know that.’
‘I grew up not far from here, so yes, I know.’
A uniform handed her and Isaac a cup of coffee from a café down below. ‘Thanks,’ the daughter said. ‘You’ve turned out alright.’
Isaac could see that she was putting on a brave face; the enormity of the situation not yet hitting her. ‘It’s tough. Not all of my friends made it.’
‘In jail?’
‘Some are dead. Your brother could become a statistic.’
‘Our mother used to lecture him to try harder at school.’
‘Any success?’
‘No. He thinks that petty thieving and hanging out on a street corner offer more. Although, around here, if you’re not a gang member, you’re singled out.’
‘Ganja?’
‘If it stays at that, he may pull through.’
‘Have you ever heard of an Amelia Brice?’ Isaac asked.
‘Not me. Not around here anyway.’
‘She lived in Holland Park.’
‘Lived?’
‘She’s dead. At approximately the same time as your mother.’
‘And you see it as more than a coincidence?’
‘It may be circumstantial, but the odds are not in our favour. Two women murdered at around the same time. We’re assuming there’s a relationship. Would your mother have known the woman?’
‘She used to clean for people in Holland Park, but she never mentioned their names.’
In the other room, Gordon Windsor was wrapping up, although his people would continue to comb the small flat looking for clues as to the perpetrator. The young woman left and went outside to light up a cigarette. Isaac could see her from the window, her hands trembling as she attempted to light it.
‘Not much to tell,’ Windsor said. ‘She put up a fight, but nothing’s been taken, from what we can see.’
The last statement did not surprise Isaac; it was the flat of a family with little money, the same as many others that had been built on the periphery of wealth. His parents had made it to the city with its streets paved with gold, as he remembered it from a nursery rhyme about Dick Whittington. He did not know why it came to him as he stood there in that dreary flat in that drab block of flats. His parents had suffered for following the dream of a better life in London than in Jamaica, and no doubt the dead woman had as well. His parents had eventually prospered, but the dead woman had not, and judging by the daughter’s accent, she had been in England for a long time.
‘Any ideas as to the tie-in with the other body?’ Isaac asked. The two men had stepped away from the body and were standing in the hallway on the fifth floor of the twelve-storey block. There was an air of decay about the place. The lift door opened; a man and his wife, and their four children exited it in close formation. Christine Devon was black and dressed in a white blouse with a knee-length skirt. The woman from the lift was in the all-covering black of an Islamic woman, her eyes the only visible part.
‘I’ve not seen the other body yet. I’m off over there now,’ Windsor said. ‘Are you coming?’
‘I’ll be right behind you.’
Outside on the street, the daughter was lighting up for the second time. ‘They’ll do you no good,’ Isaac said.
‘One or two won’t harm me.’
Isaac realised that his offering advice to the young woman was the same as his parents had done to him when he was her age.
‘You have another brother?’
‘He’s working in a shop. Billy’s a hard worker, the same as Mum.’
‘And you?’
‘Once I’ve finished college, I’m off to university.’
‘Where is Billy?’
‘It’s his day off, I’ve no idea.’
‘But he has a phone?’
‘He doesn’t always answer.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘You’ll need to ask him. He’s not in trouble.’
‘Gangs?’
‘Samuel worried Mum, but not Billy.’
‘And you?’
‘I’ve got a regular boyfriend. He’s studying to be an accountant. We’re thinking of getting engaged.’
‘You’re still young.’
