On Eden Street Read online

  Freeman said, ‘Has anyone else moved into the room? I don’t imagine it’ll be empty for very long.’

  Waters had asked but April didn’t know. They’d stood in the road outside the house but there was no light on in the window she was sure had belonged to the murdered man. He’d been tempted, of course, but caution prevailed; this could conceivably require forensics and blundering about wouldn’t help at all. None of this was many minutes ago. He’d called Freeman as soon as April went into a house in the adjacent street.

  ‘OK, Chris. I’m not leaving this until Monday. Text me the address and I’ll look into it tomorrow morning. I’m stuck at home until ten but as soon as Daria shows up, I’ll drive into Lake.’

  He said, ‘I’ve got a ten o’clock appointment myself but I can show you where it is around eleven. It’ll be quicker than you trying to find it, ma’am. Fairhills is a rabbit warren.’

  That was what Freeman had expected. Good detectives hate handing things over, and they find it impossible to switch their curiosity on and off like air-conditioning.

  She said, ‘All right. I’ll aim to be on Eden Street around eleven. I want to do the walk between the scene and this place you’ve found, so meet me there. And if your luck’s really in, you’ll get to buy me lunch.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Waters arrived first. He waited at the Kingsgate entrance and this gave him the full view of Eden Street at its busiest, late on a Saturday morning. He could have gone further down and stood near the Flower Power shop but it would look bad, wouldn’t it, as if he was stalking them? He could see customers going in and out though, and there were more of them than one might have expected. He’d assumed the business was scraping by but he might have been wrong about that.

  The estate agent had brought a young couple to the flat. They were not married as far as Waters could tell, but the girl was in charge and she disapproved of the property from the moment she came through the door, and probably long before that. The windows were small, the lounge was rather small and the kitchen was very small; Waters had caught the agent’s eye and wondered whether she was going to say anything. The details of the property could not have made it any clearer that this was an ideal purchase for a young professional who wanted to live close to the town centre. A young professional – just the one. The girl’s partner looked uncomfortable and didn’t have much to say at all, and the viewing was over in less than a quarter of an hour. As they left, the agent said to Waters, ‘I’ll be in touch,’ and he had considered saying, ‘Don’t bother, I’d rather not sell it to her.’ He wasn’t as sure as he had been that he wanted to live a long way from Kings Lake.

  When he refocused his attention on the street, he realised he had just seen Miriam Josephs come out of her shop. She had Ben’s harness in her right hand and appeared to be checking for something in her shoulder bag. Then she turned right and headed straight towards where Waters was standing – she would pass within a few feet of him. Should he stay silent? What’s the proper etiquette when meeting a blind acquaintance? Does it make life more awkward if people keep calling out to you?

  The dog had caught the scent of someone he recognised and had his head raised as he came along. She was close now, and Waters heard her say ‘Who is it, Ben?’ If he hadn’t seen and heard this for himself, he might not have believed it.

  He found himself saying, ‘Good morning, Ms Josephs.’

  She stopped three or four yards short of him and Ben sat immediately, tail wagging. She was trying to remember the voice. He went to help but before he could get out his own name, she said. ‘Detective Waters? Sorry – Detective Sergeant Waters?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry if I’ve distracted Ben. I wasn’t going to say anything but…’

  She smiled and asked him why not – he was quite unable to answer. Sometimes the eyes of the blind give away their own disability but Miriam’s were perfect, a light hazel colour in the daylight, the first time he had seen them properly. She hadn’t located his face yet and her gaze was fixed a foot or two to his left.

  People were passing around and between them. He stepped closer and somehow she sensed that too. She said, ‘Is Patsy correct, sergeant? Are you keeping us under observation?’

  He said no – and could have said, well, not both of you, but it would have been a little obvious, and he didn’t want to be that. He told her he was meeting someone, to which she replied, ‘Oh, I see. Sorry, when I say that I always mean, I understand. I won’t detain you!’

  Waters went to put out an arm to stop her from leaving, and this was a mistake. The dog’s ears came forward and the tail stopped wagging. He withdrew in time and said, ‘It’s a colleague. We’re working this morning.’

  Miriam paused – ‘Is it the even taller detective?’

  ‘No. My boss, Detective Chief Inspector Freeman. We’re following up on a development in the investigation.’

  ‘A lead? You have a very interesting job, don’t you?’

  ‘It has its moments.’

  She seemed to be in no hurry again, happy to chat to him.

  ‘Oh, so does floristry. You’d be surprised!’

  Once again he could look only at her face, unwilling to study the rest of her because it would be taking advantage in some odd way – he was vaguely aware of a knee-length skirt and dark brown suede boots, of a casual jacket with a high collar and something ethnic in its approach to life – casual and yet, Waters thought, carefully chosen. Did she choose by touch? Was there an invisible someone guiding her choices?

  She said, ‘For example, every Saturday morning about now Patsy and I have caramel lattes with cream cakes. I’m just off to fetch them – the shop does a special container for me to carry. If you’re here for a while, I could bring you something…’

  He’d caught sight of Freeman, walking towards them from the wrong end of Eden Street. How she had contrived to arrive from the Fairhills direction he had no idea. Waters rarely cursed but found himself on the point of doing so.

  He said, ‘It looks as if I’m on my way now. Sorry. Another time, maybe.’

  Her expression seemed to say, oh well, it’s your loss, but then, after a couple of steps she turned and said, ‘I did give you my number, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  Every word he spoke to her seemed to sound ridiculous, but asking him whether he still had her number – she couldn’t have been any clearer, could she?

  Cara Freeman arrived seconds after Miriam had left him. She watched the blind girl and her dog walk into Kingsgate, then looked up at Waters and said, ‘The woman from the florist’s shop?’

  Yes, he said, and then he asked whether she’d got lost this morning.

  Freeman admitted she had cheerfully enough, and then, taking another look at the entrance doors through which Miriam Josephs had disappeared, she said, ‘Hm. Are you a bit of a dark horse, DS Waters?’

  ‘Everything is very legal, and all above the board, I can assure you. Health and safety is my paramount thing in all my properties. Nothing to concern the authorities here. Always I have-’

  ‘I’m sorry? You have other properties, Mr Huq? How many?’

  The landlord was very round and very short, shorter than Freeman. His eyes went between the two detectives as if looking for a way out of the latest predicament, which appeared to stem from his unwillingness to answer direct questions despite his having a great willingness to talk. He shrugged and upturned his palms – ‘A few?’

  Freeman said, ‘And I’m sure they’ve all been recently inspected by the local authorities, haven’t they?’

  Mr Huq narrowed his gaze as he studied the DCI’s face, and concluded that the safest answer was probably yes. But he gave it warily, as if he was turning over a stone and something unpleasant might crawl out from underneath.

  ‘That’s all right, then. It’s also none of my business, unless you make it my business, Mr Huq. All I’m interested in is what’s on the other side of this door, so please unlock it now.
As long as you’re not growing cannabis in there, we shouldn’t have a problem.’

  Perhaps it was simply the mention of the word but Mr Huq seemed taken aback by such a suggestion. Freeman sighed, glanced at Waters and said, ‘Mr Huq? Tell me you’re not growing cannabis in this room. That’s absolutely the last thing I need to find this morning.’

  Mr Huq concluded from this that as long as the detective chief inspector did not find cannabis, all would be well. He located the key among many others on a large metal ring and inserted it into the lock.

  These rooms, the landlord had already explained, offered a special service to the people of Fairhills; they could have very short-term lets, sometimes even just for a night or two. The money was paid to him in cash in advance and all facilities were included except for the electricity and gas which were on pre-paid meters, and the water, for which Mr Huq made another small charge, in advance, of course. And the use of any linen… Waters hadn’t exchanged looks with his boss but he knew well enough what this was – a dosshouse, an unregulated hostel for the destitute and the homeless, a means of exploiting their misfortune.

  Freeman asked the landlord to wait at the door, and then she and Waters stepped inside. She looked slowly around, the full three hundred and sixty degrees, and sniffed; Waters could smell it too, nicotine and stale urine. There was a small table made of cheap red plastic and tubular metal, and two chairs from a garden patio set, all items salvaged from the recycling centre or a roadside skip. The table-top had a sprinkling of grey ash, suggesting the room hadn’t been cleaned – the very idea was a joke, of course – since its last occupant, which was, Mr Huq promised, the man called Michael. He had said when they arrived and first questioned him, ‘All paid for until Sunday. I do not intrude on my customers’ lives, madam, I have great respect for privacy. When I come on Monday, he is not here. I hold the room for him as a kindness but he is not contacting me anymore. Only this morning do I find out what has happened. A terrible thing.’

  Freeman looked at Mr Huq from the centre of this desolate little space and said, ‘You said you haven’t re-let the room. Do you know if anyone else has been in here? Does anyone else have a key?’

  The landlord jingled his key ring and was then struck by a thought. He said, ‘I am sorry to ask but you have the key? You found it on the… On his person? When can I claim this back?’

  The detective chief inspector ignored Mr Huq, saying instead to Waters, ‘Let’s assume no one else has been in. I don’t think we’re going to find much here, and I don’t think it’s a forensics job but gloves on anyway. Was there a key?’

  ‘I think so. I’ll check when we get back on Monday.’

  Freeman muttered, ‘Don’t be in too much of a hurry. I’ll take the drawers and the wardrobe. You start with the bed. Sorry – one of the perks of being in charge.’

  There was a quilt which had once been a pale sky blue, but it was darkened and stained with sweat and heaven knows what else. Waters lifted it away from the bed, folded it in half and placed it on the bare wooden floor. Once, staying in youth hostel in Odessa while on a university history trip, he had been bitten by bed bugs, and he had no wish to repeat the experience – straight home after this, shower and get all his clothing into the wash.

  The pillow case was in worse condition than the quilt, stained by the grease of unwashed hair. Huq charged extra for linen and laundry, and so naturally no one ever paid to have it done. You would pay for this room, and put your head down on a pillow that a stranger had used the night before, and soon you would be the stranger whose pillow someone else was using. Waters felt inside the pillow case but found nothing. Murfitt hadn’t seemed to have all his earthly possessions with him in the doorway where he died, so somewhere in this room there might be something to prove he had stayed here.

  Kneeling, Waters pushed up the edge of the mattress and there was a green cardboard wallet file. It was old and dog-eared; twisting his head to one side, he could read the words “Purchase Orders” handwritten in capital letters.

  ‘Ma’am?’

  She came across, took out her mobile – the latest iPhone, he noticed – and photographed the folder in situ. Then Waters pulled it out and looked inside. What would we like to find? A birth certificate, a driving licence, bank statements, a communication from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs with the National Insurance number, a utilities bill with a past address, maybe some family photos… Usually, of course, it’s none of the above. Waters ran his thumb across the edge of the bundle of papers; thin, tissue-like papers of assorted pastel colours – pink, yellow, green and white. These were purchasing orders and stocklists for a business of some sort. He pulled one out and studied it: delivered to Manchester, the Axholme industrial estate, fifteen sofas in the Imperial range, five of Royal Blue, five of Sovereign Silver, five of Sherwood Green, on May the 19th, 2011. At the bottom, indecipherable signatures of the delivery driver and the warehouse manager. Another sheet had lists of furniture stock held in various stores across the north of England. At the bottom of the third sheet, a purchase order for orthopaedic chairs to be imported from Denmark, Waters found what he was looking for; another illegible signature but underneath it was typed “N J Murfitt”.

  Checking the dates on some other sheets, he could find nothing later than early in 2012, more than six years ago. He handed the folder to Freeman, who gave it a cursory inspection of her own.

  She said, ‘He had a life before this. They all do. Could be you or me one day. Maybe both of us if the squad doesn’t work out… Anyway, we’ll take it and have a read. I doubt whether he was murdered because of some connection to the trade in Danish orthopaedic furniture. Give Mr Huq one of the forms that says we’ve removed items from the scene as evidence. There’s nothing else that I can see. What I don’t understand is why he wasn’t here on Sunday night if he’d paid cash up front. The landlord said up to Sunday, didn’t he? Why sleep in the doorway?’

  The question was perhaps half-rhetorical but Waters said, ‘Maybe he thought the doorway preferable to this.’

  Freeman looked around at the dismal little room, shrugged and said, ‘Still, a good find, sergeant. We’ve coloured in another square. We never get to colour in every single one.’

  Outside, Mr Huq could hear that they were almost done here. He stepped a short pace into the room and said, ‘I hope my cooperation has been useful to you.’

  Freeman said, ‘Yes. Thank you. Sergeant Waters will give you a receipt for what we are removing.’

  ‘Good, a receipt, yes. And the key? I was wondering… Changing the locks is a very costly business, you see.’

  Turning her back on the man again, Freeman said, ‘I’m going outside to call Tom Greene and get his thoughts on this place. Tell Mr Huq that the room isn’t to be re-let until he hears from us, which could be some time. Tell him we auction off spare keys for charity. If he asks me about it again, I might tell him to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine.’

  ‘So,’ Freeman said, ‘What do you recommend? The proprietor obviously knows you. You don’t have lunch here every day, do you?’

  They were sitting in Micky Lemon’s café, at a table for two right next to the window. The place was full and the street outside was obscured by condensation on the glass, but Micky had said to wait just a couple of minutes and there would be a table for them.

  Waters said, ‘DC thought the bacon sandwiches are the best on the planet, closely followed by the sausage sandwiches. It wouldn’t be healthy to eat here every day.’

  He had dropped the “ma’am” for now. To the outside world, they were just a couple having lunch together on a Saturday but Micky Lemon had asked, when Waters fetched the coffees to save him the bother of bringing them over, whether this was the new boss and Waters had told him. Information is a two-way process, and Micky didn’t miss much anyway.

  ‘Bacon sandwich it is then – I wouldn’t want to go against the recommendation of the one and only. Do you keep in touch with him?’
>
  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And I understand from Alison Reeve that he’s made a full recovery.’

  With Freeman, it was difficult to escape the feeling you were being interviewed. There was something intense about her manner, as if her intelligence could never rest. She couldn’t park it and take her hands off the wheel; she was always driving forward, eyes on the rolling road. And yet, this morning, Waters had had the sense she didn’t want to go home or do whatever she would usually be doing on a Saturday. The earlier offhand remark about him buying her lunch hadn’t been offhand at all, and as they walked away from Fairhills she had mentioned it again, which was why they were sitting here now.

  Waters said, ‘DC thinks the rest did him good. He says he’s in better shape than ever.’

  Freeman frowned and said, ‘A pity he decided to go when he did, then. I said at the time getting stabbed in the heart isn’t such a big deal these days. We could use his input. What would he have made of this case? More to the point, what do you make of it?’

  The two questions were one, really. Smith had taught Waters everything that he, Waters, knew about detective work. There had been times in the last year of working together when Waters had made conscious efforts to see and do things differently, as students must, but with Smith now gone from the force, what was the point?

  Waters said, ‘I’m pretty sure he would be thinking the case is more about the man who wasn’t murdered than the man who was.’

  Micky Lemon put up a hand with three fingers showing – that would be how much longer they had to wait for the best bacon sandwiches on the planet. Waters nodded his thanks.

  Freeman said, ‘And you?’

  ‘The same. It wasn’t casual street violence, it was targeted. We’ve found nothing to suggest Murfitt would have been a target. The CCTV shows us someone checking him out twenty-four hours before he was killed. He would have kept up the pretence he was Michael Wortley. My instinct, at the moment, is that’s who they thought they were killing.’