‘She was definitely partial to a little snort,’ said Lomax. ‘Yes, we had a very nice time together and she introduced me to some great people. Real snow kings.’
He could see her sneaking looks at him, sizing him up, working out where he was coming from. She had all the slyness of the user who could smell drugs on someone through four lanes of London traffic.
‘Let’s raise a glass to Chantrelle,’ said Lomax, chinking glasses with Alice, looking her in the eye. ‘I was going to leave her a little present, but seeing as you’re being so nice . . . ’
He handed her a little baggie with six rocks in it. She was out of her chair and into the bedroom in a flash. He heard the bubble of her pipe and a huge sigh, as if all her cares had been lifted from her shoulders. Lomax took a plastic phial of liquid GHB from his pocket and gave Alice’s half-finished vodka and Coke a heavy squirt. When she came back in her eyes were bright, she was smiling and there was a little shimmy in her hips.
‘Chantrelle’s not the only one who knows how to dance,’ she said.
The doorbell rang. Alice veered away from Lomax and down the corridor to the front door.
‘Amy!’
‘Hello, Alice.’
‘You’re just in time for the party.’
Lomax squirted a more carefully judged shot of GHB into an empty glass and slammed some ice on top of it. He picked up the glass as Amy walked into the room, held it up and gave her a small measure of vodka, which he topped up with Coca-Cola.
‘Have a drink, Amy,’ he said. ‘I’m Jake, Chantrelle’s friend.’
He handed Alice her glass and picked up his own.
‘Here’s to Chantrelle,’ he said, and they all chinked glasses and drank.
Alice socked back the rest of her drink in one go and slammed the glass down on the table.
‘I’ll have another one of them please, barman,’ she said. ‘Let’s have some music.’
She threw out both arms to Amy, hugged her and let her go.
‘Go on, have a drink, love. Get it down yer,’ she said.
Amy took another inch as Lomax poured Alice a careful measure of vodka. Amy was checking him out. She was young but not completely green.
‘You didn’t see Amy with all her hair,’ said Alice, knocking back half her drink in one go. ‘They could have been sisters, her and Chantrelle, couldn’t you, love?’
Amy smiled. Lomax guessed she’d seen this state before. He gave her an encouraging look, a little shrug.
‘Jake met her in Madrid, didn’t you? They had a lovely time together.’
She swerved away and went to the old CD player, turned it on, hit play and danced away from it without caring what was on. Lomax sent Tel the pre-prepared text as Amy Winehouse’s ‘Rehab’ boomed out. Alice, who’d picked up her drink and knocked back the remainder, wheeled round to give the CD player a murderous look.
‘We’re not having that, are we?’ she said.
Lomax gave Amy a small cheers, sipped his drink; she took another half-inch of hers.
‘Alice said you have a package for me.’
‘It’s in the car,’ he said. ‘We’ll pick it up on the way out. I’ll give you a lift if you want. The Tube’s going to close in a bit. I’ll whip you down to Old Street in no time.’
‘This package . . . ?’
‘Chantrelle didn’t tell me anything about it. She was having a great time, hanging with a crowd. She told me she’d ring you and that I had to give it to you in person. She just forgot to give me your mobile number and address.’
‘That’s because I didn’t give them to her,’ said Amy. ‘She should have been back here on Monday. That was the idea.’
‘You ever been to Madrid?’ asked Lomax. ‘It’s an addictive scene down there. You hit with the right crowd and you could lose two months of your life. That’s a place that knows how to party. What was she doing down there? I mean, I asked her, but she was very coy.’
They were alone in the room now. Alice had used the distraction of the music to slip into the bedroom to smoke another rock.
‘I’m lucky she didn’t sell it,’ said Amy. ‘My passport.’
‘She didn’t need to,’ said Lomax, feeling her starting to trust him now. ‘The guy she was with had plenty. What was she doing with your passport? I wouldn’t give mine to anybody. Fancy a top-up?’
Lomax was pouring himself another, not too generous.
‘I’m O.K. with this,’ she said, taking another inch. He didn’t push it. He wasn’t a creep trying to get her drunk.
‘Smoke?’ he asked, handing her one of Alice’s cigarettes. ‘I’m sure she won’t mind.’
Amy took one. Lit up. She told him why she’d given Chantrelle her passport. Wanted to impress him.
‘That’s a pretty fucking elaborate way to leave home,’ said Lomax. ‘All I did was go to uni and hightail it to London straight after.’
‘My mother’s a cop and my father’s a—’
‘Don’t tell me.’
‘You’ll never guess.’
‘A professional hit man.’
‘No,’ said Amy, ‘although . . . ’
Lomax laughed. Amy did too. Just over ten minutes in and the drug was loosening her off. The inhibitions were falling away.
‘He’s in the firearms unit . . . SCO19?’ said Lomax, deadpan.
‘No, but he does have a gun.’
‘Legal?’
‘No.’
A little sweat came up on Lomax.
‘Your parents still married?’ he asked.
‘Separated. Divorced. Ages ago,’ said Amy, smoking, taking another drink. ‘Where the hell’s Alice gone?’
‘Yes, where has she gone?’ said Lomax. ‘This is supposed to be her party.’
He went to the bedroom door, gave it a little knock, opened it a crack.
‘Alice?’
He opened the door more. Alice was on the bed convulsing, her muscles in spasm. She was unconscious. Shit. Had he been a bit too heavy with the GHB and the first shot of vodka?
‘Is she all right?’ asked Amy.
‘Just crashed out, that’s all,’ he said, going into the room, pushing the door shut behind him. He rolled Alice over, got her into the recovery position.
Amy pushed open the door behind him, saw Alice’s state. ‘Christ,’ she said, pulling out her mobile. ‘We’d better get an ambulance.’
Lomax turned and slapped it out of her hand. She looked at him in shock. He smiled a little sadly and it instantly dawned on her: the strangeness of the situation, the way she’d started to feel. She turned and made a run for the front door but nothing would quite work properly. It all seemed too slow, as if she was in wellies full of water.
She reached the front door, wrenched it open. There was a man standing there. She had to blink to see him straight. She felt dizzy. He put his hand on her sternum and gave her the gentlest of shoves backwards, and she fell on her bum like a toddler. Tel stepped into the flat, closed the door behind him, saw Lomax in the living room in a hyperactive state.
‘What’s up?’ said Tel.
Amy was struggling to get to her feet like a child in a bath full of water.
‘Shut the door, keep an eye on her.’
Lomax was working at maniacal speed. He’d found the rocks of crack in the bedroom, pocketed them. He turned the music off using the remote, tossed it onto the sofa. He had his coat on, the bottle of vodka in one pocket, the Coke cans in the other. The money he’d been going to give to Alice he stuck in an inside pocket. He found some kitchen roll and wiped down the table. The glass he’d been using he emptied in the sink and stuffed that in with the vodka.
‘How’s she doing?’ he asked.
‘She’s out,’ said Tel. ‘What the fuck is this?’
Lomax looked around the room. ‘L
et’s get out of here,’ he said.
‘I don’t know whether this is going to be any use to you, but I’ve found a couple of girls who know Amy,’ said Glider, on the phone to Boxer. ‘That photo you sent me, I put that around all the girls I know and they forwarded it. We’ve had a couple of replies. Girls who saw Amy on Saturday night in Camden at a club called KOKO right next to Mornington Crescent Tube.’
‘That’s a start,’ said Boxer. ‘How do I get in touch with them?’
‘I’ll text you their mobile numbers.’
This was a job for Roy Chapel’s son Tony. Boxer forwarded the text to him, asked him to follow it up. He sat back thinking, if Glider had come up with those girls on Monday he’d have saved us a lot of trouble. It was the photo: everybody looks at a photo; nobody reads words any more.
A text from Tony. He’d made contact. The girls were in a club in Shoreditch called Sy-Lo. He’d be with them in ten. Boxer thought of the club DJ David Álvarez. What had he said when he’d been thinking about how to contact El Osito? The Spanish market was dead. They were looking north and to London in particular. El Osito must have people here ready to act for him.
Two more thoughts came to him as he sat in the darkened room. He must warn David Álvarez. El Osito would know that Boxer had got to him somehow. They’d work it out. His visit to Álvarez in the Joy club had been no secret, what with the doorman and the girl taking him up to the DJ’s zone.
As he sent a text to Álvarez, he worked on his second thought: only what was known in the Jefatura could be leaked to the outside world. It would be in some report or other, filed by the homicide squad: the body wasn’t Amy Boxer’s, the left buttock tattoo wasn’t hers. Only if Zorrita had found another bag with something more revealing could that leak out into the world and expose him to danger. But Boxer was no longer in the loop. Zorrita had no reason to call him now. He was not an interested party any more. He checked his watch, midnight, one in the morning in Madrid. He called Zorrita.
‘I’m sorry, Luís.’
‘No need to be sorry, Charles. Just let me get out of bed. My wife hates to be disturbed by my work.’
The rustle of bedclothes, the pad of feet, the flap of some clothing, the pulling out of a chair.
‘Tell me, Charles.’
‘I just need to know if you found anything else today. I mean, something that would help you identify the dismembered body. If I knew the identity of her double in Madrid it would improve my chances of finding Amy.’
‘We found another bag on the last dive of the day with the girl’s head and passport,’ said Zorrita. ‘But, as I’m sure you’re aware, there’s a procedure. I can’t reveal anything until the next of kin have been informed.’
‘So what’s happened so far?’ asked Boxer. ‘If it was on the last dive have you processed your findings in any way?’
Zorrita told him what they’d found and how the preliminary forensic examination had gone but gave him no detail beyond the head, the passport, the upper arms, the handbag and the weight.
‘We filed a report, and a copy was sent to the British consulate, but not until around 10:30 this evening. The consulate won’t do anything until tomorrow.’
‘And what will they do?’
‘They’ll contact London and send a police officer to visit the next of kin,’ said Zorrita. ‘And, Charles, I can’t reveal that name to you, so don’t ask me. I know you want to find Amy, but you have to put yourself in the other person’s place. Her daughter has died and she must be the first person to be told.’
Boxer knew that Luís Zorrita was not a man who was going to bend, relax or ignore this very specific protocol. It would come back on him too easily. They exchanged some final words and hung up.
He sent his text to David Álvarez, his thumbs flashing over the tiny keys: ‘This is urgent. You are in danger. Do not ignore this message. You must stop what you are doing and leave immediately. Get out of the city and go into hiding. Do not go back to your flat. Do not go to a relative or friend’s house. You must disappear as if you never existed. They know about us. Tell me when you are safe. Un abrazo, Charles.’
By one o’clock Kapital was getting up to full swing. Álvarez had brought the audience to fever pitch. The music was in the floor and walls, shooting up the dancers’ legs, pulsing through their vital organs. He didn’t want it to end. They were all in a state of ecstatic exuberance, with no past and no future, and as Álvarez merged them into his final track of the night, the next DJ tapped him on the shoulder.
He tore off his headphones. They embraced. Álvarez was wired, more alive than he’d been in months. He decided to stay the rest of the night, wouldn’t leave until closing. This was going to be a great, great night.
He went to his changing room, stripped off his sweat-wet shirt, put on a new one, and that was when he received Boxer’s text. He read the terrible message, went cold all over.
The one thing Álvarez had on his side was that he knew Kapital inside out. He went straight to the security office on the third floor where they monitored all the CCTV cameras in and outside the building. The security officer was watching three big screens in front of him and had twenty smaller ones off to the side from which he could draw output.
Kapital was a seven-storey building on the corner of Calle de Atocha and a narrow alley called Calle del Cenicero. All the emergency exits came out into that alley. A car was parked about fifty metres up and, leaning against the driver’s door, smoking, was a Mexican-looking guy keeping an eye on all the exits.
The security officer pulled up the CCTV feeds from the front of the building, which showed the outside area in Calle de Atocha. Two Mexicans in identical black leather jackets were staring at the front doors. One of them had a view down Calle del Cenicero to his companion by the car.
Álvarez asked the security officer to put the internal cameras up onto the big screens. That was when he saw one of El Osito’s freaks, one of the guys who’d been in the Charada that Saturday night.
‘Which floor is this on?’ asked Álvarez.
‘Ours.’
‘But where?’
‘Down the end of the hallway.’
‘Say nothing,’ said Álvarez and stepped back behind the door. They watched the screen. The Mexican looked in all the doors as he worked his way down the corridor. Their door opened. The man saw the screens but not himself, only the empty corridor. The security officer turned in his chair. Álvarez put a trembling finger to his lips.
‘You’re not allowed in here,’ said the security officer.
The Mexican backed out, closed the door.
They watched him on the screen. He went to the end of the corridor, came back past the door, disappeared until he reappeared on another screen going upstairs to the fourth floor.
Álvarez went back down to the changing room on the second floor and fitted everything he could into his trouser pockets. He looked at his coat. He’d need it, but he shouldn’t be seen wearing it, so he left it behind.
He tore up the copy of El País he’d brought with him and dropped it in a metal bin from under the table. He lit two cigarettes, had another thought, picked up his wet shirt, slung it over his shoulder.
He put the two cigarettes under the paper at the bottom of the bin and left the changing room. In the corridor he found the heat sensor and held the bin up to it. In seconds all the music in the club shut down and was replaced by alarm bells.
Álvarez dropped the bin, threw his wet shirt on top and ran down the stairs to the ground floor, where he joined the melee of people pouring towards the emergency exits, which had automatically sprung open.
They ran out into the cold night. Girls screamed. He joined a group of about twenty people who’d all come out dancing together. They crossed to the other side of Calle de Atocha, stood on the pavement and looked back expecting to see flames. Álvarez carried on up the str
eet and slipped down an alleyway past the Madrid Royal Conservatory. Only at that point did he start jogging and then running and finally sprinting with relief into his new life.
25
12:15 A.M., FRIDAY 23RD MARCH 2012
London
They were heading for the disused Rowland Estate in Bermondsey, which Dennis Chilcott had bought from the local council to redevelop into a mixture of luxury flats and affordable housing with his cocaine trafficking profits. Dennis’s little joke was that he was creating his future customer base: cocaine for the luxury flats and crack for the affordable housing.
The housing estate backed on to a disused warehouse, which Chilcott also owned and in which he had installed old shipping containers. Some of these had been used for cocaine transportation and were now let for temporary storage. The warehouse fronted on to Neckinger, but access was from the rear of the building through a pair of padlocked barred gates which gave on to a large yard. Trucks could reverse into the warehouse through massive doors where the containers were then unloaded by forklifts.
Lomax was sitting in the back of his car with Amy’s head in his lap, making sure she was breathing properly. Tel was driving. Vlad, who’d been keen to involve himself in some way, was sitting braced in the passenger seat as if they were about to be side-rammed.
‘Just tell him to relax, Tel?’ asked Lomax. ‘I feel as if we’re about to crash-land.’
‘Vlad?’ said Tel.
‘Da?’ said Vlad.
‘Fucking calm down,’ said Tel viciously.
Vlad unhooked himself from the overhead handle, sat squarely in his seat, his horrible hands folded in his lap. The outline of his head appeared enormous, as if electronic impulses might take days to trek across it.
‘Does he understand any English?’
‘It’s more the tone,’ said Tel.
Lomax sent a cryptic text to Darren: ‘The angel is with us, we seek only to please the Lord.’ He sat back, absent-mindedly stroking Amy’s neck. He appeared calm but was nervous at what he’d left behind in the Andover Estate. Alice convulsing on the bed had brought back some horrors. Now he was replaying the scene in his head, trying to remember what he’d touched.