Twenty-five minutes later, Larry and Wendy walked into the office.
Bridget handed folders to the three police officers once they were all in Isaac’s office. ‘Of the credit cards that were used, I’ve eliminated virtually all of them.’
‘How?’ Isaac asked.
‘It’s not conclusive, and we may have to go back over some of them if what I’m giving you isn’t sufficient, but if I have a name, then there is Facebook, as well as the purchases made with cards issued overseas, Chinese, Japanese names, others I can’t pronounce.’
‘Those remaining?’
‘One lives in Hammersmith, probably too far if you hold to the local angle. Another lives south of London, twenty miles.’
‘The others?’
‘Two in Notting Hill, one in Bayswater, another in Paddington, and two close enough to the cemetery to walk to, to even walk through.’
‘Have you tried phoning?’ Larry asked.
‘Not yet. I phoned you as soon as I had something tangible.’
Bridget was right, Isaac knew. She had done her work; now it was over to him and the other two.
‘Tonight?’ Isaac said.
‘The two close to the cemetery,’ Wendy said, not that she wanted to as she was ready to go home, but she had known her DCI for a long time, from when he had been a constable in uniform. She knew he’d not agree to leave it till tomorrow.
‘Larry, you take one; Wendy, you take the other. Keep me updated.’
Isaac opened up his email and read those that needed answering, deleted those that were either unimportant or spurious. Jenny was waiting for him, wanting to tell him about her visit to the gynaecologist, although she would understand, she always did.
He wouldn’t leave the office until Larry and Wendy had phoned in.
Bridget shut her laptop, stood up, said goodbye to Isaac and left the office. She was going home, her work for that day complete.
***
Larry knocked on the door of a house very similar to Brad Robinson’s, only two streets away and built at the same time, monuments to the working class and to successive governments attempting to make society encompassing, not shuffling those less fortunate out to suburbs so far from their places of work that some of them would spend two to three hours a day travelling.
The door was opened by a child of five or six, dressed in pyjamas and with bare feet. ‘No one’s here,’ the boy said.
Larry, not easily deterred, was aware that the child delegated at such a tender age to lying for a parent had been sent to deal with unwelcome visitors.
‘I saw them in the upstairs window,’ Larry said. ‘Tell your mother to come down here now. Tell her it’s the police.’
The child walked away and up the stairs. On the top landing, he shouted out, ‘It’s the police.’
It was a house of crime, although what sort of crime Larry didn’t know. The address and the name on the card weren’t known to him.
‘Tell him to come back with a warrant,’ a woman’s voice said from the front bedroom. ‘We’ve done nothing wrong.’
Larry wasn’t concerned whether they had or not, not that night. Back at the station the next day, he’d ask someone to check out the address where a child was forced to lie, and a mother locked herself in her bedroom. He walked into the house, shouted up the stairwell.
‘Pearl Harris, Detective Inspector Larry Hill, Challis Street Police Station. I’m not here about a crime. One question, that’s all.’
The door upstairs opened, and a woman of African or Caribbean background descended the stairs. ‘I’m Pearl Harris,’ the not unattractive woman said. Larry thought her to be in her late twenties or early thirties. She was dressed in a pair of old jeans and a shirt too large for her, clearly belonging to the man upstairs, put on in a hurry.
‘The child?’ Larry said.
‘Nothing to do with me. He belongs to him upstairs.’
‘Who’s he? Someone special?’
‘Ben, Ben Swinson. He’s my de facto.’
‘Where’s the child’s mother?’
‘She took off, left Ben with him. I do the best I can with him, not a bad kid, not really. Why are you here?’
Apart from finding out that social services would need to visit, which he did not say. ‘Did you purchase a pair of sandals at a store in Knightsbridge?’
‘They weren’t much good, the strap broke after two days, and they won’t give you your money back. There should be a law about it,’ the woman said. ‘Good money for rubbish.’
Larry could have said buyer beware, caveat emptor, as Wendy had said the no return policy was clearly stated in the shop’s window, but did not. ‘Do you have the sandals? Can I see them?’
‘What’s so important, disturbing people at night?’
‘The sandals first.’
Pearl Harris opened a cupboard under the stairs, showed them to Larry. Upstairs a husky voice: ‘Haven’t you got rid of that copper yet? A man’s got needs.’
‘Horny,’ Larry said, judging that crudity wouldn’t be amiss.
‘Always, not that he’s much good.’
‘You’ve had better?’
‘Much better, but I better get back up there. You never know…’
‘He hits you?’
‘Not Ben. He’s a decent man, looks after me, looks after the kid. Do you want me anymore?’
‘Not as long as you’re alive, I don’t.’
‘What’s this about?’
‘Another woman who purchased the same shoe as you was murdered. One door we’ll knock on, and the woman won’t be there. I’m glad it’s not you.’
‘You’re not bad for a policeman,’ Pearl said.
‘All heart, that’s me,’ Larry said.
She was a pleasant woman, he decided, trying her best, although Ben upstairs was probably skirting on the edge of illegal, and Pearl’s history could well be suspect. He’d let others deal
