The Lost Victim, page 4
Kate nodded. ‘Yes, he needs excitement. He likes to manipulate. He’s writing this letter and openly acknowledging that the guards read the letters. It would be interesting to see the kind of letter he writes to someone else. Which could tell us what his relationship was to Judith.’
‘The most important thing is that he says he saw Peter Conway at The Jug buying Janey a drink.’
‘That’s Black’s assumption, but it could have been another girl – he didn’t positively identify her as Janey in the letter.’
‘Sorry, yes. That’s his assumption. But can we trust what he’s written to Judith? Peter Conway and Thomas Black were both hanging around in the same area of London around that time. Thomas Black was part of a paedophile ring. Two of the young girls Peter Conway killed were under the age of consent. Maybe their paths crossed in other ways.’
Kate looked around at the busy coffee shop. A group of young girls chatted in one corner, and another group waited to collect their orders from the barista. They were all oblivious to the history of where they stood, which was a good thing.
‘We’re really close to Victoria House, where Janey lived. Do you want to check it out?’ asked Tristan.
Kate finished the last of her coffee, and as they left the Starbucks, she saw the sign for The Jug lit up far down the road. A cold breeze shifted the hair on the back of her neck, and despite the bright Christmas lights and people on the streets, she had the same feeling of fear and revulsion she remembered from the seedy, dangerous side of the King’s Cross of her early years in the Met Police.
6
‘It feels . . . intimidating,’ said Tristan.
‘It’s called brutalist architecture,’ said Kate.
They stood on the street in front of Victoria House, a ten-storey concrete block of flats five minutes from the Starbucks. The flats were set back from the road with a large courtyard lined with a low concrete wall, similar to the central reservation of a motorway. Grass and dead weeds peeped up through the cracks in the concrete slabs of the courtyard.
‘Brutal is a good description.’
In a few of the windows, Christmas lights twinkled and flashed, adding a splash of colour. As they crossed the courtyard, a fake Santa on a small roped ladder hung out of a second-floor window. Kate wondered if Santa was trying to get in or trying to escape.
‘What’s that supposed to be?’ asked Tristan as they passed a giant ugly statue, again in concrete, sitting on a low plinth. ‘It looks like an eight-sided dice, or a weird Rubik’s cube.’
As they passed, they saw someone had sprayed ‘FUCK OSTERITY’ high up on one of the sides of the dice facing the front entrance.
‘Interesting spelling of austerity,’ said Tristan. Dusk seemed to be clinging on, along with a faint mist in the air. The concrete surfaces of the building were stained with watermarks and mould. It all felt very damp and miserable.
A curtain of glass panels had been built across the main entrance. On the other side, a concrete staircase was open to the air. Kate wondered whether the entrance had been open when they built Victoria House in the 1950s and if the glass panels were put in later as a security measure. There was an entry intercom panel, and the numbered buttons listed the surnames of some of the residents. There were fifty flats, and a neat square with MACKLIN printed on it was under the number 50.
Kate was just working out what to say when they rang the bell, when a young man walked up in a hurry with two bags of shopping. He placed a card on a sensor, and the door popped open. He wasn’t interested to see Kate and Tristan enter behind him, and he took the stairs.
A urine-stinking lift creaked and groaned its way up to the tenth floor. When they got out, a long corridor, open to the air, ran alongside a neat row of front doors painted with a rather garish pillar-box red. All but one of the windows to the right of each door had blinds or net curtains.
They walked along the corridor. Orange sodium lights were stationed between each door, casting their faces and the concrete in a sickly pallor. The view from the tenth floor was panoramic. Kate could see the full extent of the development around King’s Cross, with glittering high-rise flats and two parks, and the gas towers by the canal had been repurposed into a square illuminated with floodlights.
‘What do we say to Doreen if she’s in?’ asked Tristan. ‘I feel like we’re stumbling in a bit blind here.’
‘The truth. We’ve been asked to look into her daughter’s disappearance. Her reaction will be worth noting, and what if she talks?’ Kate felt a little overwhelmed by being back in London, which she hadn’t expected.
They passed a window where they could see into a small kitchen where pans boiled on a stove, and another where they heard shouting from behind a set of glowing blinds.
When they reached the last door, Tristan rang the bell. They heard it jangle deep inside the flat. The blinds in the window were down, and it looked dark inside. He rang it again. They heard a door open, and a white-haired older lady stepped out from the flat next door. She folded her arms over a cosy green woollen cardigan and wore a pleated skirt with a tartan check, thick leggings, and a rather moth-eaten pair of fluffy slippers.
‘Are you from Bellingham’s?’ she asked hopefully.
‘No,’ said Kate. She rang the bell again.
The older lady went to the concrete wall, peered down to the ground, and then looked back at them. ‘She’s not in.’
‘Doreen Macklin?’ asked Tristan.
‘Yes. Are you debt collectors?’
Kate wondered what about them made the older lady think they were debt collectors.
‘No. We’re actually private investigators.’
A yell came from inside: ‘Close the door!’
Kate took out their business card and handed it to her.
‘Ashdean . . . That’s up in Scotland, isn’t it?’ she said, peering at it.
‘No, other direction. Down south,’ said Tristan.
‘What’s Doreen done to warrant two private detectives?’
‘We’re investigating her daughter’s disappearance,’ said Kate. There was a small silence and a shift in her attitude.
‘Oh. Yes. Janey.’
‘Did you live here when Janey went missing?’
‘Yes. We’ve been here fifty years. We knew Janey and her sister, Maxine. It’s terrible what happened. I saw her on the morning of the day she vanished. She was looking forward to Christmas.’
‘Do you know when Doreen will be home?’ asked Kate.
‘No. She just won the lottery, would you believe it. Won a hundred and fifty grand on a scratch card a month before Christmas. We haven’t seen her since . . .’
There was another yell from inside the woman’s flat. She sighed.
‘I thought you were the carers for my husband, Stan . . . They seem to show up whenever they want.’ The woman looked Tristan up and down keenly. ‘You’re strong. Could you lift my husband out of his chair and onto the bed?’
‘Er,’ said Tristan.
‘He’s not nude or nothing. He broke his hip before Christmas and is having to sleep downstairs until it all heals. I’m Betty Cohen. I could tell you more about Doreen and Janey.’
‘Okay,’ said Tristan, looking at Kate, who nodded. They followed her inside. The entrance led past a small kitchen into a big, high-ceilinged living room with lots of bookshelves and cheese plants, and a balcony looking out over the London skyline. An older man, dressed smartly in tan slacks and a roll-neck jumper, sat in a high-backed chair. He had a shock of white hair and giant glasses with thick lenses, which made him look rather mad and kind at the same time. Next to him were a single bed, a walking frame, and a tall, scrawny Christmas tree, which had now shed most of its needles onto the carpet.
‘Stan. This is Tristan and Kate. They’re private detectives, and they’ve come to help you into bed,’ said Betty.
‘Is The Corporation sending private detectives now!’ Stan grinned.
‘No. They’re here about her next door . . .’ Betty tilted her head.
Stan’s enormous eyes widened. ‘Doreen the Dreadful.’
‘Stanley. No!’ she said sharply. ‘Janey.’
‘Ah. Yes. Terrible business,’ Stanley said, shaking his head.
‘Tristan, if you can help Stan onto the bed.’
Kate stood back as Tristan, under Betty’s guidance, hooked his arms under Stan’s, lifted him from the chair, and deposited him gently on the single bed.
‘Thank you, dear boy,’ boomed Stan. ‘I lost my balance on the crossing out in front of the Midland Hotel, of all places. Bloody embarrassing, it was, with ambulances and “well-wishers” who thought I was some clapped-out old duffer . . . I still work, you know!’
‘What do you do?’ asked Tristan.
‘I’m in antiquarian books. Betty, would you?’ he said, indicating a sideboard covered in books and china figurines.
‘Why can’t the carers lift you like that?’ said Betty, opening an old cigar-box and taking out a business card. She handed it to Stan and put two pillows behind his back. ‘Last week, they sent this tiny little woman. Why send someone so feeble? She could barely knock the skin off a rice pudding, let alone lift my Stan. Here, sit down; you’ve earned a cuppa.’
Kate and Tristan sat on a large sofa opposite, and Betty went to the kitchen, leaving them with Stan.
‘Who’s hired you to find Janey Macklin? Is it Doreen, now she’s flush?’ he asked keenly. Kate hesitated. They hadn’t technically been hired, and without a contract, they didn’t know the level of confidentiality. Stan raised an eyebrow. ‘Or is it Robert Driscoll wishing to prove his innocence?’
Betty came gliding back into the living room with a tray of tea things. ‘What have I missed?’
‘I’m trying to wheedle it out of them who they’re working for, but they don’t want to tell me. Come on, who is it?’
7
‘Our client is a writer who wants us to research Janey Macklin’s disappearance for a potential book,’ said Tristan, glancing at Kate. Good one, Tris, she thought.
‘He’s not related to the Macklin family, and it’s envisaged as a respectful piece of journalism,’ Kate added, bending the truth even more.
‘Ah. Right. A journalistic endeavour,’ said Stan. Betty set down the tray with a lovely pale-blue china tea-set. She poured them each a cup. When Kate took a sip of her tea, it was deliciously strong.
‘Is it okay if I take notes?’ asked Tristan, pulling out his notebook and pen.
‘Of course,’ said Stan. He looked quite excited at the prospect of someone making a record of their conversation.
‘Our starting point has been this article in Real Crime,’ said Tristan, taking it out of his bag and turning to the correct page. Stan took the magazine and peered at the article through his giant spectacles.
‘Good Lord,’ he said, looking up at them. ‘It says here that Janey could have been an early victim of the Nine Elms Cannibal.’
‘A cannibal? What cannibal?’ shrilled Betty.
‘You know. That case, years ago – South London, wasn’t it? It was a police officer who bit chunks of flesh out of those girls, killed them, and dumped their bodies.’
Betty got up and moved over to peer at the magazine. They were silent as they studied the article. Kate noted that Betty’s lips moved slightly as she read.
‘Doreen used to clean at The Jug and told some stories about the kind of men who used to go there. Men who liked young girls, if you know what I mean. There were also a lot of drug dealers. Dodgy types. But not serial killers,’ she finished, tapping the magazine.
‘Doreen was at The Jug with her daughters on the night Janey went missing in 1988?’ said Kate.
‘Yes. The girls used to go and meet her there after school on a Friday. Doreen used to like a few jars after work. She was the one who sent Janey off that night to buy her some cigarettes. I don’t think she ever forgave herself.’
‘Why did Doreen let her young girls come to The Jug?’
Betty shook her head. ‘I don’t know. It was a different time, and you never think the bad stuff is going to happen to you, I suppose, do you?’
‘Are you friends with Doreen?’
Stan looked over at Betty with a raised eyebrow. She came back to sit in her chair.
‘Let’s just say we have a healthy respect for each other. We’ve been neighbours for a long time. This place was built after the war. This whole area around King’s Cross was bombed in the blitz. My mum got herself on the list for a council flat, which is what these were. We bought ours. Doreen moved in next door with her mother in the same year. Hers is still a council flat.’
‘What does Doreen’s other daughter, Maxine, do?’ asked Kate.
‘She managed to escape,’ said Betty. ‘Maxine was twelve when Janey went missing. It must have been a terrible time. Watching Doreen lose herself in the drink. Social services almost took Maxine away from her. Doreen would go off on one of her benders and go missing for days. We looked out for Maxine. She used to come here and sleep on our sofa.’
‘Did Maxine ever talk about what happened the night Janey went missing?’
‘Not really. And we never wanted to question the poor girl.’
‘She had enough to contend with in life without things being dragged up,’ said Stan, sadly.
‘She finished school, got her GCEs and her A levels or whatever they’re called, then got a summer job working at a kids’ camp in America and fell in love with a bloke. Troy, his name is. They got married, and she’s been in the States for twenty-three years. Maxine sends us a Christmas card every year with a letter.’ Betty got up and went to a set of shelves by the entrance to the hall. She picked up a card and brought it back to Kate and Tristan. It was a personalised Christmas card with a picture of a family on the front dressed in identical reindeer pullovers and Santa hats, posing around a Christmas tree. HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM THE DAWSON FAMILY was written in sparkly letters above. ‘She’s Maxine Dawson now.’
‘And she has five kids?’ asked Tristan.
Maxine’s husband was a large man, but Maxine was very slight, and their five children, four boys and a girl, were tall and athletic and looked to be in their twenties and late teens. Kate glanced at the photo of the smiling mother with a short, glossy bob of brown hair. She had the same eyes and heart-shaped face with a slightly pointed chin as Janey. The address was in San Luis Obispo, California.
‘Do you mind if I take a photo of this on my phone?’
‘Take it. I’ve got enough photos of them all; they send one every year,’ said Betty.
Stan looked at them keenly. ‘How long have you been conducting your investigation?’ he asked.
‘We just started,’ said Kate.
‘Most of the people around here think Robert Driscoll was responsible for Janey’s disappearance, but of course, the body has never been found. There are . . . rumours. Theories of what happened.’
‘What are they?’ asked Kate.
‘One of the last people to see Janey alive, apart from Robert Driscoll, was Jack Reynolds. He owned Reynolds newsagent over on Pancras Road.’
‘Which is now a Starbucks?’
‘Yes. Driscoll was Jack’s newspaper boy, and he was working that evening when Janey showed up to buy cigarettes for Doreen. The rumour is that Driscoll took Janey off down by the canal in his van and killed her, or did all kinds of other things before he killed her.’
‘Did you know the police found Janey’s red scarf in Robert Driscoll’s flat? And it had her blood on it,’ said Betty.
Stan looked irritated at the interruption.
‘Yes, of course they do, it’s in the article . . . What’s not in the article is that, apparently, after Robert killed Janey, he hid her body in the drain in the yard behind Reynolds newsagent.’
‘How do you know this?’ asked Tristan.
‘The police! They searched the area a few days later, with scent dogs, and they traced Janey’s scent into Reynolds and into the drainpipe in the yard out back. The theory is that her body was put there and then moved a few days after she died.’
‘How soon after Janey went missing did the police search Reynolds?’ asked Kate.
‘I couldn’t tell you exactly—’
‘A few days?’ finished Betty. ‘It was all we could talk about here on the Estate. We have a social club downstairs, and the gossip was rife.’
‘Did the police arrest anyone else?’
Stan put down his empty teacup and leaned forward, his eyes relishing the gossip. ‘I know they spoke to Jack Reynolds, and the two lads Robert Driscoll hung around with, Roland Hacker and . . . what was his name?’
‘Fred Parker,’ said Betty.
Stan nodded. ‘Both lads were elsewhere that night, they had alibis, so Robert Driscoll was on his own. The rumour is that Driscoll managed to find somewhere more permanent for Janey’s body and he moved it the night before the police brought in the dogs.’
‘Where did he move it to?’ asked Kate. There was something a little too theatrical about how Stan told the story, and there was that word again, rumour. Stan sat back and raised an eyebrow.
‘If we knew that, she’d no longer be missing! One theory is under the concrete in the huge underground garages in the Golden Lane Estate, where Robert Driscoll lives. They were being dug up and fixed around the same time. Another theory is that her body was buried on the wasteland around Regent’s Canal or in one of the warehouses that were all around here, lying empty and filled with squatters in the 1980s.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Betty, shaking her head. ‘The police dug around there when they did the massive regeneration project in King’s Cross and found nothing.’
‘Ah, but they could have buried her deep,’ said Stanley, holding up his gnarled index finger.
Tristan frowned and rubbed at his eyes. ‘Did the police question Jack Reynolds?’ he asked.
‘Yes, but he had an alibi. He closed up the newsagents shortly after Janey bought the cigarettes, and ten minutes later he was here ordering a pint in the social club downstairs. He stayed there until closing drinking with a load of his mates. They arrested Driscoll, based on the red scarf and his past conviction of violence towards another woman, charged him, and then he went to trial and was found guilty,’ said Stanley.
