He spent the next three hours trying to track down the absent father of Shanker’s common-law stepdaughter. The man had had multiple addresses over the past five years, but Strike’s research finally led him to conclude the man was now going by his middle name, probably to avoid being tracked down for child maintenance, and living in Hackney. If he was indeed the right person, he was working as a long-distance haulage driver, which doubtless suited a man keen to evade his parental responsibilities.
Having sent subcontractor Dev Shah an email asking him to put the Hackney address under surveillance and take pictures of whoever entered or left it, Strike set off for dinner with Eric Wardle.
Strike had decided a standard, cheap curry house wouldn’t be sufficient to soften up his policeman friend, from whom he intended to ask a census-related favour. He’d therefore booked a table at the Cinnamon Club, which lay a short taxi ride away.
The restaurant had once been the Westminster Library, so its many white-tableclothed tables stood in a large, airy room with book-lined walls. Strike, who was first to arrive, removed his suit jacket, loosened his tie, ordered a pint and sat down to read the day’s news off his phone. He realised Wardle had arrived only when the policeman’s shadow fell over the table.
‘Bit of a step up from the Bombay Balti,’ commented the policeman, as he sat down opposite Strike.
‘Yeah, well, business has been good lately,’ said the latter, slipping his phone back into his pocket. ‘How’re you doing?’
‘Can’t complain,’ said Wardle.
When they’d first met, Strike’s friend Eric Wardle had been boyishly handsome. Though still good looking, his once full head of hair was receding, and he looked as though he’d aged by more than the six years that had actually passed. Strike knew it wasn’t only hard work that had etched those grooves around Wardle’s mouth and eyes; he’d lost a brother, and his wife, April, had left him six months previously, taking their three-month-old baby with her.
Talk ran along conventional lines while both perused the menu, and only once the waiter had brought Wardle a pint and taken their order did the policeman hand a folder across the table.
‘That’s everything I could get on the Kevin Pirbright shooting.’
‘Cheers,’ said Strike. ‘How’s our counterfeiting friend doing?’
‘Arrested,’ said Wardle, raising his pint in a toast, ‘and I think he’s going to be persuadable into dobbing in the higher-ups, as well. You might well have secured me a long-overdue promotion, so dinner’s on me.’
‘I’d rather you paid me in kind,’ Strike replied.
‘Knew you hadn’t booked this place on a whim,’ sighed Wardle.
‘Let’s order and I’ll explain.’
Once they had their starters, Strike asked the favour he’d come for: Wardle’s assistance in accessing census records the general public couldn’t.
‘Why the interest in this Chapman Farm?’
‘It’s the headquarters of the Universal Humanitarian Church.’
‘Oh,’ said Wardle. ‘That place. April went to one of their meetings a few years ago. A friend of hers from yoga class got interested in it and took her along. The friend ended up joining. April only went the once, though.’
Wardle chewed and swallowed before adding,
‘She was a bit weird about it, afterwards. I took the piss and she didn’t like it, but I was only saying it because I never had any time for the woman who took her. She was into crystals and meditation and all that shit. You know the type.’
Strike, who well remembered Leda’s intermittent phases of chanting cross-legged in front of a jade Buddha, said he did, and asked,
‘April thought there was something in it, then, did she?’
‘I think she got defensive because she knew how much her yoga friends got on my tits… probably shouldn’t’ve been an arsehole about it,’ Wardle admitted, chewing morosely. ‘So, which census records d’you want?’
‘All from ’91 onwards.’
‘Bloody hell, Strike.’
‘I’m trying to trace ex-members.’
Wardle raised his eyebrows.
‘You want to watch yourself.’
‘Meaning?’
‘They’ve got a reputation for going hard after people who try and discredit them.’
‘So I’ve heard.’
‘What trumped-up reason do I give the census office? They don’t give out information easily.’
‘So far I’ve got coercive control, physical assaults, one allegation of rape and a good bit of child abuse.’
‘Christ almighty. Why not chuck in murder and get the full set?’
‘Give me time, I’ve only been on the case two days. Speaking of which: this shooting of Pirbright—’
‘Same gun used in two previous drug-related shootings. I wasn’t on the case, never heard of the bloke until you rang me, but I’ve looked over the stuff,’ said Wardle, nodding at the file. ‘Looks pretty clear cut. He’d have to have been out of his head, the state of his room. Have a look at the photo on the top.’
Strike pushed away his empty plate, opened the folder and took out the picture.
‘Shit.’
‘Yeah, there’s probably some in there, underneath the rest of the crap.’
The pictures showed a small and squalid room, clothes and rubbish lying everywhere. Pirbright’s body lay covered in a plastic sheet in the middle of the floor. Somebody – Strike assumed Pirbright – had scribbled words all over the walls.
‘Nice example of junkie décor,’ said Wardle, as the waiter returned to remove their plates.
‘Anything stolen? He was supposed to have been writing a book on the UHC.’
‘Looks like he was writing it on the walls,’ said Wardle. ‘That’s the room exactly as his landlord found it. They found a bag of hash and a roll of twenties in the bottom of the wardrobe.’
‘They think he was killed over a bag of hash?’
‘That might’ve been all they left behind. He’d probably nicked gear from someone he shouldn’t have, or pissed off the wrong punter.’
‘Where’s this place?’
‘Canning Town.’
‘Prints?’
‘Only Pirbright’s.’
‘How did the killer get in and out, any idea?’
‘We think they used a skeleton key to get in the front door.’
‘Organised of them,’ said Strike, taking out his notebook and starting to write.
‘Yeah, it was fairly slick. Guy on the same floor claimed he heard Pirbright talking to someone before he let them in. Probably thought he was about to make a sale. The neighbour heard a muffled bang and Pirbright’s music stopped playing. The killer must’ve used a silencer because otherwise half the street would’ve heard a shot, but it’s credible the neighbour heard it, because the dividing walls in the building weren’t much more than plywood. The music ending fits, too, because the bullet passed right through Pirbright and hit that old radio you can see in pieces.’
Strike scrutinised the picture of Pirbright’s room again. The shattered radio lay in fragments on a very small desk in the corner. Two leads were plugged into the socket beside it.
‘Something else was there.’
‘Yeah, looks like a laptop lead. Laptop was probably the only thing in the room worth nicking. Don’t know what he was bothering with a radio for, if he had a laptop.’
‘He was skint and he might not have been familiar with downloading music,’ said Strike. ‘From what I’ve learned about Chapman Farm, he might as well have grown up in the late eighteen hundreds, for all the experience he had with technology.’
Their curries now arrived. Strike pushed the police file aside, but kept his notebook open beside him.
‘So the neighbour hears the shot and the music stopping. What then?’
‘Neighbour goes and knocks on the door,’ said Wardle thickly, through a mouthful of lamb pasanda, ‘but gets no answer. We think the knocking spooked the killer into leaving via the window, which was found open with marks consistent with gloved hands on the outer sill.’
‘How high was the window?’
‘First floor, but there was an easy landing on a big communal bin directly below.’
‘Nobody saw them coming out of the window?’ asked Strike, who was still making notes.
‘The tenants whose windows faced out back were all out or busy inside.’
‘CCTV any help?’
‘They got a small bit of footage of a stocky bloke in black walking away from the area, who could possibly have been carrying a laptop in a reusable shopping bag, but no clear view of the face. And that’s literally all I know,’ said Wardle.
Strike replaced the photograph in the police file as Wardle asked,
‘Robin still seeing Ryan Murphy?’
‘Yeah,’ said Strike.
‘You know he’s an alcoholic?’
‘Is he?’ said Strike, masking his expression by drinking more beer. Robin told him so little about her relationship that he hadn’t previously known this. Perhaps, he thought (with a leap of something strongly resembling hope), Robin didn’t know, either.
‘Yeah. On the wagon now, though. But he was a mean drunk. Real arsehole.’
‘In what way?’
‘Aggressive. Made a pass at anyone in a skirt. Tried it on with April one night. I nearly fucking punched him.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Oh yeah,’ repeated Wardle. ‘No surprise his wife walked out.’
But his expression saddened after he’d said it, remembering, perhaps, that Murphy wasn’t the only person whose wife had left him.
‘He’s dried out now, though, has he?’ asked Strike.
‘Yeah,’ said Wardle. ‘Where are the bogs in here?’
After Wardle had left the table, Strike set down his knife and flipped open the police file again, still forking beef Madras into his mouth. He extracted the post-mortem findings on Kevin Pirbright’s corpse, skipping the fatal injury to the head, and concentrating on the lines concerning toxicology. The pathologist had found a low level of alcohol in the body, but no trace of illegal drugs.
9
But in abolishing abuses one must not be too hasty. This would turn out badly because the abuses have been in existence so long.