You Will Never Find Me

  The man had released his arms and Sasha’s fingers gripped the wooden slats. He whimpered as he tried to pull himself together for a last monumental effort, knew he would only have one chance. The man stood back. Sasha heard the unbuckling of a belt, turned and kicked out with both feet, and made perfect contact with the man’s groin. He went down with a low, guttural groan and slumped against the wall.

  Sasha rolled away, scrabbled across the floor holding his trousers around his waist as the door flew open and savage Russian shouting exploded into the room. There was a fight, tremendous blows were exchanged, and Sasha sensed that his attacker had taken the worst of it. He heard him being dragged out of the room. There was a furious argument in the doorway. Sasha tried to get his face mask off, desperate to see what was going on. He couldn’t work out the clasp at the back and he felt the material cutting into his nose as tried to yank it off. He was hit hard on the side of the head and knocked into the panelled wall.

  ‘Stop it,’ roared the Russian. ‘Leave it alone.’

  Sasha lay stunned on the floor. He recognised this voice and the hand that had hit him. It was the bad loser at chess. The two Russians continued their argument, then the door shut and there was silence in the insulated room, just the panting of his own breath in his ears and his heart banging around in his chest. He did his trousers up as best he could.

  Somebody came in. Sasha winced, expecting another blow, but all he did was lift him up onto the bench, cuff his hands behind his back and leave.

  The adrenaline backed down and Sasha started to assemble the Russian he’d heard exchanged between the two men.

  The fear was racing through him and he trembled uncontrollably as he pieced together the line from the man who’d assaulted him. He was hoping he’d got it wrong, but somehow he didn’t think so.

  Boxer left Mercy, walked to his flat nearby in Belsize Park. He called Isabel on the way, gave her the almost unbelievable news about Amy. They laughed at the absurdity of having to confirm the butterfly tattoo with Karen. Isabel was desperate to see him. He said there was still a lot to do and he’d call later. They hung up as he reached his flat.

  Boxer took the gun out of the safe, put it in the false bottom of a holdall with some cash and packed clothes on top. He dropped the bag off at his mother’s flat. He’d decided he’d be better off away from his own place from now on if El Osito was hunting him down.

  As he walked to the Royal Free he put in a call to Glider, the small-time gang boss who Amy had slept with on the cigarette jaunt to the Canaries.

  ‘I haven’t heard from you,’ said Boxer.

  ‘That’s cos I got nothing to report,’ said Glider, as if that would be obvious to anybody but a moron.

  ‘All right. Tell me what you’ve done so far.’

  ‘Like you said, I put out all my feelers and I got nothing back,’ he said. ‘Mind you, the club scene doesn’t really take off until tonight and over the weekend.’

  ‘Do you know anybody who looks like Amy? Same size, same height, same skin colour, same hair. Bit of a cokehead?’

  ‘What sort of a question is that?’ said Glider, incredulous. ‘Do I know anybody who looks like Amy? What the fuck is this? You one crazy mofo, you know that?’

  ‘Mofo?’ said Boxer. ‘That’s the kind of word that really annoys me, Glider. Maybe you and I need a bit more face to face.’

  ‘Look,’ said Glider, backing down. ‘I’m just saying that’s a weird thing to ask. I didn’t know Amy at all until ten days ago. I spent a weekend with her and now I wish I bloody hadn’t—the grief I’m getting. And you start asking—’

  ‘She used a double to fool us, to make it look like she’d gone abroad. If I can find out who that is then I might be able to find her.’

  ‘A name would help.’

  ‘I haven’t got one,’ said Boxer. ‘I’m asking you because I know you like black girls. You know where they hang out. If you liked Amy maybe it was because she reminded you of someone else—I don’t know. Would you like me to send you a photo of her?’

  ‘That would help,’ said Glider. ‘So, now I’m not sure who I’m looking for. Amy or her double?’

  ‘You’re not looking for her double because that girl was murdered in Madrid on Saturday night,’ said Boxer.

  ‘Fuck me,’ said Glider. ‘I can’t believe th—’

  ‘Shut up and listen,’ said Boxer. ‘You’re still looking for Amy and, failing that, you’re trying to find the name and address of someone who looks like her and who’s now gone missing.’

  He hung up, sent him the photo of Amy. He called Roy Chapel of the LOST Foundation, realising he hadn’t been keeping him in the loop. He told him the full story. Chapel was appalled.

  ‘I’m sending you the photo of how Amy looked on Saturday night,’ said Boxer. ‘I want you to look through the latest crop of missing persons and see if you can find a match—someone she could have used as a double and who’s now been reported missing.’

  ‘If she’s a drug user . . . people like that don’t get reported missing unless she had someone close.’

  ‘Like Amy, you mean?’

  ‘It’s a thought,’ said Chapel. ‘Depends how far out of the woodwork she’s prepared to come.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Roy. I know I should have kept you better informed, asked you to stand down when I thought she’d been murdered, but as it turns out you’ve been doing the right thing. How’s it been going digging up leads on Amy?’

  ‘I interviewed her friend Karen and a couple of other girls they hang out with. I’ve got all the names of the clubs they went to. I’ve also got a timeline of those nights they went out with each other and looked at the times when Amy split from the group and how long they were apart. And there was one occasion when Amy disappeared completely, never came home.’

  ‘That came out when we first reported her missing to the police,’ said Boxer.

  ‘There’s not much I’ve been able to find out about that night,’ said Chapel. ‘What I have done is drawn up a maximum radius of operation given the timings. I’ve also analysed musical tastes, see if Amy differed from the others. She was more into electronic trance music. Take a few pills, disappear into the sound. Don’t come out of it for hours. Absorb the music rather than listen to it.’

  ‘I didn’t know that. Mercy’s never mentioned it,’ said Boxer. ‘You might want to look at comedy clubs doing stand-up, too. Open-mike nights when newcomers can get an airing.’

  ‘All right, that’s good. Interesting to know she was into that.’

  ‘She did a schools’ night at the Comedy Store and it went down well apparently. Once you’ve felt that kind of attention as a kid, it can be addictive. This is the first weekend since she disappeared.’

  ‘She’s thought this out, Charlie. If she’s sensible she’ll keep a low profile for longer than a week.’

  ‘Unless she thinks we’re still looking for her in Madrid.’

  ‘By the way, I’m not going to go round these clubs myself. No one’s going to talk to a fifty-five-year-old ex-copper.’

  ‘So who’ve you got in mind?’

  ‘My son, Tony. He’s twenty-four. Unemployed. Needs the money. And he knows the scene. You met him the other day helping me pack up the office.’

  ‘What do you want to pay him?’

  ‘He’ll be happy with fifty quid a night plus expenses,’ said Chapel. ‘It’s not like he won’t be enjoying himself.’

  Boxer hung up as he arrived at the Royal Free Hospital, found his way to ICU.

  Through the glass he could see that Esme was breathing on her own. The nurse came alongside and explained that the brain scan had gone well and they’d taken her off the ventilator at around two o’clock, a couple of hours after the dialysis finished. From now on she was under observation. It was just a question of getting her to regain consciousness.

/>   Boxer went into the unit, sat by her bedside, took her hand. He told her the whole story in all its detail. As he drew near to the end he bent down and put his lips close to her ear.

  ‘I know you love her, Esme. I know it’s been your little secret, that you’ve hidden from me just how much you love her. She’s part of you, isn’t she, Esme? So I just want you to know I’ve had the results of the DNA test on the tissue samples that were taken from the body part. They couldn’t match her to me or to Mercy. You know what that means? It means that Amy is not dead. The body found with her clothes and passport did not belong to her. She’s alive. Did you get that, Esme? Amy is alive.’

  There was a fluttering as of an insect on Boxer’s cheek. A little wetness. He pulled back to see that her eyes were open. He looked into them. The same green as his own.

  ‘Welcome back,’ he said.

  20

  6:00 P.M., THURSDAY 22ND MARCH 2012

  Puerta del Sol, Madrid

  It’s going to cost a little more,’ said the concierge from the Hotel Moderno, sitting opposite Raul Brito, beers between them.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘A hundred.’

  ‘This crisis, you know, it’s getting me down,’ said Brito. ‘It’s like every word costs money these days.’

  ‘They’re taxing gossip now,’ said the concierge, ‘on advice from the Troika. They know the Spanish can’t live without it.’

  ‘You know, if I wasn’t such an arsehole I’d believe you.’

  Raul Brito was not like the young journalists at Interviú; he was an old-fashioned newshound. He used his computer only to file his stories and read match reports about his beloved Real Madrid, although he actually preferred to sit in a café with his copy of Marca and join in the endless speculation.

  ‘So what’s the extra I’m paying for?’

  ‘The father stayed at the hotel too. I got copies of both their passports.’

  Inside the envelope the concierge had photocopies of Amy and Charles Boxer’s passports, their registration forms, their home addresses and signatures. Brito handed over two fifties, no further questions.

  ‘We’ve got something,’ shouted the diver, breaking the surface, tearing out his mouthpiece.

  Inspector Jefe Luís Zorrita raised his arms, saluted the teams. It had been a long, hard and fruitless day. After yesterday’s gruesome find of a bag containing the girl’s thighs and buttocks under a bridge north of Perales del Rio near Villaverde, they’d gone further north to a major junction with four crossing points, where a team of divers had spent most of the day and found nothing. The other team went south of Perales del Rio on the M301 with instructions to search the river wherever the road crossed water. Four separate dives failed to produce anything. The two teams reached San Martín de la Vega in the late afternoon with nothing to show.

  It was a long way south to the next crossing point. Zorrita and the divers hovered over the map and decided to head north to Vallequillas Norte, check those two crossing points and call it a day. The first point seemed the most likely dropping zone and they made a dive there. There were no forensic teams with them so they carried large plastic evidence boxes in their vehicles.

  Finally they’d got lucky.

  The diver brought the bag to the riverbank and put it straight into an evidence box. Zorrita put on a pair of latex gloves and undid the knot at the neck of the bin liner. The light was fading and he asked one of the divers to hold a torch.

  ‘This is it,’ he said. ‘The one we’ve been waiting for. The girl’s head and there’s a handbag in here too. Send it back to the lab straight away.’

  His sub-inspector sealed the box and carried it away. From the car he called the forensic team and asked them to wait in the lab.

  It was nearly an hour’s drive to the Unidad Policía Científica on Calle Julián Gonzalez Segador, which meant all members of the forensic team were suited up and ready to go. They opened the box and laid out the contents of the bin liner. A female head with hair roughly chopped off. Two upper arms, elbow to shoulder, a pair of black shoes and a small black handbag.

  ‘There’s something weird about the eyes, don’t you think?’ said Carmen, one of the female technicians. ‘They shouldn’t be as bright as that. The cornea should be cloudy by now.’

  The senior forensic scientist took a closer look with some magnifying specs.

  ‘Coloured contact lenses,’ he said, ‘to make the eyes look light green.’

  ‘Do you mind if we take a quick look at the contents of the handbag?’ said Zorrita.

  The forensics emptied it out. One compact. One lipstick. One fold-up hairbrush. Three condoms.

  ‘What were you hoping for?’ asked the forensic.

  ‘Some form of identity.’

  ‘What about the passport we found on Wednesday morning?’

  ‘The tissue sample from the leg didn’t match either parent’s DNA,’ said Zorrita. ‘She was carrying the girl’s passport, but it wasn’t hers. As you can tell from those contact lenses, she was pretending to be someone else: a girl called Amy Boxer, who had green eyes. Now we’ve got to find out who she really is.’

  ‘There’s probably an internal zip compartment in the handbag,’ said Carmen.

  The forensic scientist went back to the bag, found the zip and retrieved a UK passport.

  ‘Chantrelle Taleisha Grant,’ he said.

  Zorrita asked him to spell it, read out the number and issue date, which he took down in his notebook. He held up a shot of Amy Boxer alongside the undamaged photo of Chantrelle Grant to compare. There was a likeness, not startling but enough.

  ‘Imagine those eyes as light green,’ said Zorrita. ‘Let’s compare Chantrelle’s passport photo to the head we’ve just found.’

  The features of the severed head had not decomposed, but the skin colour and texture was like grey putty. For the passport photo her hair had been tied back away from her face.

  ‘There’s a similarity in face shape,’ said the forensic scientist. ‘The ears match and eyebrow to hairline is the same. No distinguishing marks in the photo, though. I wouldn’t like to commit myself given the history of this case.’

  ‘That damage to her face . . . ?’ said Zorrita.

  ‘The coroner needs to take a look at that, but it doesn’t look like the cause of death to me.’

  ‘Any signs of other damage?’

  ‘Not on the skull. I wouldn’t say the cause of death was a traumatic blow to the head, but you never know.’

  The forensic scientist was turning the head around in his hands. He was experienced, had spent thirty years looking at these sorts of things.

  ‘We’re going to have to wait until morning now, aren’t we?’

  ‘For the coroner to do an autopsy? Yes. He’d probably want to see a torso, too. Internal organs. Look at this on the neck,’ he said, pointing out two nicks on either side over the carotid arteries. ‘Just as we thought: the killer bled the body out before he cut it up and dumped it.’

  Zorrita walked the length of the table looking at the remains of a life. ‘What about the arms?’ he said. ‘Any distinguishing marks on them?’

  ‘There’s a vaccination mark, and we have a tattoo on the outside of the . . . left arm. A red and black five-pointed star. If you can match that to the butterfly we found on the buttock yesterday . . . ’

  ‘In the back of a British passport there’s an emergencies page,’ said the sub-inspector, looking at his smartphone. ‘There should be the names and addresses of two relatives.’

  The forensic flicked through to the back page.

  ‘Alice Grant, and there’s a London address.’

  Any self-respecting journalist had direct contacts in the homicide squad of the Cuerpo Nacional de Policía and Raul Brito was no exception. But he also knew that wasn’t enough, that there were lots of gro
ups handling many different cases, and that to really develop a breaking story he needed to know what was happening before most people knew it had happened. This meant he had a network that spread through communications centres, suburban police stations, forensic teams and coroners, as well as the justice system.

  One of the linchpins of this network was his niece Luz, who worked in the main Madrid police communications centre, which handled requests from all the patrol cars in the city and surroundings. She was one of the first people Brito contacted after his meeting with Jaime and Jesús, while waiting for the concierge from the Hotel Moderno to turn up. Luz knew about the first body part found near Perales del Rio as she’d been on the early shift on Wednesday 21st March, and by the time her uncle called she was even able to tell him about the second bag and the extra team of divers who’d been assigned and where they were working. All Brito had to do was ask her to call him when she heard if any of the diving teams found anything else and where they were going to take it, with as much detail as possible. To Luz and her colleagues this was a harmless game which made them feel a little important—that they were somehow involved in breaking news stories.

  At around seven o’clock Brito got the call from Luz, who was off work and at home but had left instructions with her colleagues to keep her informed. This meant that Raul Brito was the first outsider to know that a third bag had been found, that it contained a girl’s head and a handbag, that it was being taken to the forensic lab on Calle Julián Gonzalez Segador in a car containing Inspector Jefe Luís Zorrita, his sub-inspector, and even who the driver was. Unfortunately he knew none of these officers, but within half an hour he managed to find out all the names of the people on the forensics team. And one of them, Carmen, he did know.