‘I’m looking for Barbara Early,’ Anna said pleasantly, blocking the end of the stairs.

  ‘She’s not here no more,’ the girl said.

  ‘Okay, how about Jinny Moorcroft?’

  The girl hesitated. ‘What for?’

  ‘Nothing to worry about; we just need to have a chat to her about someone.’

  ‘Two floors up at the end of the corridor.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Anna stepped back to allow the girl to pass, just as a scruffy white boy with his hair in dreads yelled down, ‘Hey, Jinny! Will you get some milk?’

  Brandon moved fast; he gripped her arms. ‘Now that wasn’t nice, was it, Jinny?’

  She wriggled and tried to get away from him.

  ‘Okay, Jinny, we can have a chat here, or I can take you into the police station. You are not under arrest, nothing like that; we just need to know a few things about a friend of yours.’

  ‘If it’s Barbara, we dunno where she is. She OD’d weeks ago and they took her away.’

  ‘This is not about Barbara; it’s about Carly Ann North.’

  Jinny seemed to deflate; she almost toppled off her shoes.

  ‘Is there somewhere we can talk in private?’ Anna kept her voice calm and steady.

  Jinny hesitated, and then looked back up the stairs. ‘Here’s good enough.’

  Anna sat beside Jinny on the filthy stairs as Brandon hovered. ‘You knew Carly Ann, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘She lived here for a while. She gave this address when she was arrested.’

  ‘Yeah, top room with me and Barbara, but Barbara’s gone now.’

  ‘How long did Carly Ann live here?’

  ‘Dunno. She was here when I got my room; that was over a year ago.’

  ‘Did you share a room with her?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Jinny scratched at her hands and rubbed at her arms beneath the jacket. Her eyes were glazed and her nose had a red crust around it. Her fingernails were bitten down to the quick. She was probably on heroin, Anna thought.

  ‘Did you work with Carly Ann?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Did she have anyone special? A special client?’

  ‘No–well, not at first. She was just one of us, you know.’

  ‘So you worked the streets together, right?’

  ‘Sometimes.’ Jinny looked up the stairs and then bent her head. ‘He takes care of us, Mark upstairs.’

  ‘So Mark also took care of Carly Ann?’

  ‘Yeah, for a while, but she got into a row with him.’

  ‘About money?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Did he kick her out?’

  ‘No, he got kicked in the head.’

  ‘Who–Mark upstairs?’

  ‘Yeah. This bloke come round and said he wanted to take Carly Ann. Mark said he could go fuck himself and then this bastard beat up on him.’

  ‘Can you describe him?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t here.’

  ‘So did Carly Ann leave?’

  ‘Yeah. Well, after what happened, Mark didn’t want to get into any more aggro from them.’

  ‘Them?’

  ‘Yeah, there was a few of them come round. I dunno who they were, but they drove up and one man come in to get her.’

  ‘But you weren’t here?’

  ‘No, Mark was. They went up to our room and took her stuff. She was outside; she didn’t even come in.’

  ‘Do you know what kind of car they were in?’

  ‘Yeah, a white one. Big thing with black windows; it had been outside before, couple of times. Carly Ann came back home in it a few times.’

  ‘Did you ever see anyone in the car?’

  ‘No, the windows was black.’

  ‘Did you see anyone at all that came in with Carly Ann?’

  ‘No. She got very secretive, ’cos he was paying her a lot of dough; then she said she wasn’t gonna do any drugs nor nothing, and was gonna live with this guy. We reckoned it was bullshit, ’cos she could tell big lies. She said he was gonna look after her.’

  Brandon asked quietly, ‘Was this the white car you saw outside?’ He showed her a photograph of a white Range Rover.

  ‘Yeah, it was like that.’

  Anna looked to Brandon, then eased her body closer to Jinny.

  ‘We will need to speak to Mark,’ she said in a low voice.

  ‘Oh Christ, don’t have a go at him ’cos he’ll take it out on me.’

  ‘We just want to talk to him.’ Brandon headed up the stairs and Jinny watched him go, fearfully.

  ‘Did Carly Ann get some jewellery from this man she was seeing?’ Anna asked.

  ‘I dunno. If she had anything of value, she’d hide it. Mark would have it off her otherwise. He takes care of us, you see.’

  Anna looked at the young drug-fuelled girl, no more than seventeen, and ripped a page from her notebook.

  ‘Jinny, if you decided to get away from this, call this lady. Her name is Dora. You can get help to get you off drugs–you know, to get yourself straightened out.’

  Jinny looked at the piece of paper, and folded it over and over into a small square. ‘She’s dead, ain’t she?’

  ‘Carly Ann?’

  ‘Yeah. I read about it. They come here asking about her, but we didn’t know nothing. I suppose Barbara’s dead an’ all; she was shooting up meths mixed with Christ knows what. She was a nice kid.’ Jinny shut her eyes.

  ‘Carly Ann was brutally murdered, Jinny, so if there is anything you can think of that could help us, anything at all…’

  ‘They got the one that done it, didn’t they?’

  ‘Yes, but we think there are more people involved, and they got away.’

  Jinny pointed with her foot in the stack-heeled shoe. ‘She left these, and some other gear; said she wouldn’t need it any more as she was gonna be looked after. Well, she was lying again, wasn’t she? Nobody looked after her. They done her in.’

  ‘So you liked her?’

  Jinny nodded; her eyes filled with tears. ‘I know she told lies and stuff, but she was sort of different from us all–you know, clean, always washing herself, afraid she’d pick up something.’

  There was a lot of banging coming from the floor above. Jinny looked up fearfully.

  ‘I gotta go an’ get some milk.’

  ‘Thank you for talking to me, Jinny. Please, if you want to get out of this, call that number. Dora seems a really nice woman and I’m sure she’d want to help you.’

  Jinny teetered to her feet. ‘Yeah, I’ll call. Can I go now?’

  Anna stood up, watching the fragile figure wearing the dead girl’s shoes totter out of the front door. The two guys sitting on the steps laughed; one put his hand up her skirt but she swiped it away.

  Brandon came down the stairs; he was sucking his right hand.

  ‘Fucking piece of shit. He threw a punch at me, so I got one back at him and he tried to kick me in the nuts! He missed–but I didn’t.’

  Anna walked out of the door, passing the two lounging boys; she looked at them, almost daring them to touch her, but they cowered away.

  Back in the patrol car, they headed out of the rundown street, Anna at the wheel.

  ‘Okay, Mark identified the bloke from the white Range Rover: six feet four, black, two gold teeth, missing tooth in the front.’

  ‘Sounds like Rashid Burry,’ she said.

  ‘He told Mark to put Carly Ann’s gear into a bag, said she wouldn’t be coming round any more, and that if he tried to find her, he would wind up with his throat slit. This, I reckon, was about a year before she ended up dead. Mark was scared rigid, he said. After the bloke had gone, he looked out of the window. He said there were maybe two other men in the car, but he didn’t see clearly; she wasn’t there with them though. There was someone dressed in maybe a white tracksuit, ’cos the car door was left open, and then clothes and stuff got thrown onto the pavement, like they weren’t worth keeping. He seemed to think that Carly Ann had found some rich punter, ’cos the bloke gave him two hundred quid after kicking him around; threw it at him, and warned him not to try to look for her.’

  ‘So he never saw her again?’

  ‘Nope.’

  Anna sighed, trying to calculate how long Carly Ann had to have been with the so-called rich punter before moving to Dora’s; it could only have been a matter of months. In that time, she was given a lot of jewellery and fine clothes, too much for someone just using her as a whore–unless the clients he was able to pass her on to paid big money. It made sense that if Carly Ann walked away from this person, they wouldn’t like it.

  Langton had not only shipped in Frank Brandon to swell the murder team, but they now also had a mass of clerical workers and uniformed officers attached to the station. The manpower was costing a fortune. Langton’s budget was severely depleted; he had put in numerous requests for further finances. When he eventually joined the team, he looked exhausted.

  He stood staring at the board, his eyes roaming over the mass of information, as everyone quietly gathered. Drawing up chairs to sit in a semicircle around him, they waited.

  He gave a long sigh.

  ‘Okay, I tried to contact your Professor Starling about the voodoo connection, Anna, but he’s gone to Luxor on some dig or other, so Grace and I have been to various quacks, trying to get something that might help us. It seems to me that our only possible hope is to break this Idris Krasiniqe and see if he does have some information that can assist us. As you can all see, we need it. It beggars belief that, after this length of time, we are still at square one. I am not aiming fault at any one of us; we’ve all been working our butts off, but it seems we just can’t get a break. The last report in we have about the medical condition of Eamon Krasiniqe is he’s fading fast, so time is against us.’

  He was about to continue when Harry Blunt raced in. Langton turned, irritated.

  ‘Call’s just come in from a crusher’s yard: they’ve got the Range Rover. They’ve not touched it more than to sit behind the steering wheel.’ Harry had to heave to get his breath. ‘I’ve had the squad at Scotland Yard send it over to their guys; I said to start on it straight away.’

  Langton gestured to Harry for him to calm down. ‘How did it get there?’

  ‘Guy walked in, paid over the money, said someone had put sand in the ignition and it was screwed. He said he wanted to watch it going up the ramp to make sure they didn’t fuck around with it. They agreed and went through the deal, then had one of ’em remove the plates–got to have everything recorded. The bloke was getting real uptight, but when he sees it heading up to the crusher, he pisses off, leaving the plates behind. The boss smells something isn’t kosher, stops the machine and calls in the locals. Gov, it’s the missing Range Rover! White body, black-tinted windows and the licence plates tally!’

  The buzz went round the incident room: just as they felt they were going nowhere, at last they had a break. Harry gave the description of the driver as a tall, black guy, well-dressed. He had someone waiting for him outside the yard in a red four-door Mercedes, but they didn’t see who.

  No sooner had the buzz died down, when a second call came in. This time, it was Brandon who took it.

  ‘Scotland Yard: they’ve opened the Range Rover. There’s something in the back of it.’

  The naked body was wrapped in black bin-liners. It was that of a black male, around six feet four, with cropped hair, minus a front tooth but with two gold teeth. The body had been virtually folded in half to make it fit inside the boot.

  The patrol car with Langton and Anna sped up to London, followed by Harry Blunt and Brandon. The crusher’s yard was already awash with spotlights when they arrived and a team of experts was preparing to strip the car down. The boot remained open; the body had not as yet been removed.

  Langton took Anna’s elbow and led her to the back of the Range Rover. The black plastic had been slit to enable them to see the dead man’s face. A scientist wearing gloves and a mask gently eased the head round for Anna to get a better view. She moved closer and, from behind her mask, asked if they could use a spatula to lift his lips, so she could clearly see his teeth.

  ‘Yes, it’s Rashid Burry,’ she said.

  Langton nodded for them to continue working; the police would be able to confirm the man’s identity from fingerprints on record. There was little else for them to do until the scientists and pathologist were ready for them. The mortuary van pulled in, ready to transfer Rashid to the mortuary, as Langton spoke briefly to the head forensic officer. He confided quietly that they were desperate: they needed anything they could get from the car that would help their investigation. He was reassured that forensics would remove the seats and the wheels to check the vehicle inch by inch, inside and out.

  Mike and Brandon remained at the yard, but Langton wanted to get back to the incident room. Returning to the car, he seemed very subdued.

  Anna gave him a small smile. ‘We just got lucky. I’m sure this is a major step forwards.’

  Langton wasn’t that confident. He sat in the front seat, eyes closed, as Anna contacted the station to tell everyone that Langton wanted a press blanket on the new development.

  By now it was after nine. Anna was tired, but needed to collect her own car from the Hampshire station. She couldn’t think of anything more to say to him, as he remained with his eyes closed, so she gently reached out and touched his shoulder.

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘Yes.’ He rubbed his eyes.

  ‘You want some water? I have a bottle with me.’

  ‘No.’

  She looked out of the window, and watched as the night traffic passed. She wanted to ask Langton about his sessions with the voodoo doctors, or cranks as he called them, but he seemed not to want any interruption. The driver drove in silence, never glancing back to her in the rear seat. She closed her eyes, then opened them quickly when she heard a soft low moan; she leaned forwards to look at Langton, but he appeared to be asleep.

  Langton could feel the blade cutting into his flesh, the flash of agony erupting through his entire body. He fell forwards as the blood spurted; the slash to his thigh cut it wide open, slicing through his clothes as if they were made of butter. Then he fell backwards down the stairs. His heart pumped so ferociously he truly felt it had been hacked apart. His brain was splitting in two with the searing pain.

  He wasn’t sleeping: he was wide awake.

  The man grinning, as Langton’s blood sprayed over him, was the man whose face he had just seen through the slit in the black bin-liner–a face he had been unable to recall in any detail until now. But Rashid was not the man who had slashed him; he was the man standing behind his attacker. Rashid Burry had been there. Rashid Burry had witnessed the attack–and he had laughed.

  Langton kept his eyes closed; he would keep this to himself. It was imperative that no one knew. If it was made public, he would be replaced–and the case was what was keeping him going through the persistent pain he had to deal with every day and night. Langton knew he was getting closer to tracking down the man who had wielded the machete. He didn’t want to find Camorra dead; he wanted him very much alive.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Rashid Burry’s photograph, pinned on the board, now had a red cross over his face. He had been garrotted, the thin cord still left around his neck, and had been dead for around forty-eight hours. They would have to wait for further information until the post mortem and the forensic examination of the Range Rover were complete but, as everyone gathered for an update, there was a much more positive feel.

  Langton appeared, refreshed and energized, as he gave the details of the discovery. He then discussed his interaction with the voodoo doctors; he made them laugh, with some funny stories about the cranks and timewasters he’d had to interview. He then moved on to the one meeting he felt might have been beneficial.

  ‘Okay, we have a doctor calling himself Elmore Salaam–whether that’s his real name or not, who knows? He has a pretty substantial practice in the East End, with certificates plastered all over the waiting room. He has worked in Haiti and Jamaica, and is originally from New Orleans. He’s married to a woman called Esme, who acts as his receptionist and nurse; she is the one who shepherds his patients in to see him. He works on what appears to be a mostly cash basis, but it looked legit; he assured me that he pays his taxes, and I believe him. He looks the business: long white robe, heavy crucifix and a lot of gold rings, but I noticed he had pretty expensive loafers on underneath! He was very eloquent and gave me a long diatribe about his work as a healer. His patients are often suffering from anxiety and simple afflictions, for which he prescribes herbal remedies.’

  Langton paused to sip his coffee before he continued. ‘To get him on to voodoo took some time, as he was at pains to explain that it was not his practice; that said, he is an authority on its rituals and has written a number of paperbacks.’

  Langton held up a few thin volumes that looked as if they had been printed off his own computer.

  ‘He was very serious, explaining that some of his patients have been scared rigid. Many of the people who come to him are illiterate, and it takes many sessions using his knowledge of psychology–in which he has a degree–to calm them into understanding that whatever curses or hexes have been put on them can be eradicated.’

  Harry Blunt stifled a yawn. Anna knew that he didn’t believe in any of that crap and would be impatient to know where it was all leading, but just then, Grace Ballagio joined Langton.

  ‘Okay, whilst the Gov was getting the info from the doctor, I spent some time with Esme. She was not very forthcoming to start with, but opened up when I did a bit of Pinocchio, saying my aunt lived in New Orleans and that, unlike my boss,’ she grinned at Langton, ‘I was a believer.’

  Grace continued, explaining that they were interrupted every so often by patients with their so-called prescriptions, so Esme was kept busy, measuring out powders and counting out pills by hand in a small anteroom, which gave Grace the opportunity to have a quiet look around. There was a desk with a diary and a chart, with a list of names. When Esme returned, Grace asked her about this, as she would be very interested in learning about her husband’s work. Esme told her that she would have to talk to the doctor himself, as this was a private practice.