17. Jimmy
Mel Conner’s trail went cold sometime on Thursday evening.
Before that, in the afternoon, she’d gone back to her room at Mr Singh’s, having rebooked it for a further two nights. After depositing her bag she’d gone straight out again, returning a couple of hours later to get dressed up.
A man, I assumed. She seemed... nervous. Taking a lot of trouble, you know?
That’s what Singh had said. The landlord had clearly assumed a date, and that she hadn’t returned because she’d got lucky.
Jimmy had to step back from this, had to be objective.
Singh’s explanation was plausible enough, on the face of it.
Jimmy knew nothing about Mel’s private life. Yes, he’d spent some time with her this week. Spent the night with her. But how much did he really know?
They’d talked about her room in north London. Her studies at UCL. She’d mentioned some friends, a few names, the fact she’d had failed relationships. There didn’t appear to be anyone significant in her life right now, but that could easily be because she was being diplomatic about how much she gave away.
Perhaps the simplest explanation was that last night she’d got dressed up to meet a current boyfriend, and simply hadn’t returned to her rented room.
But that look in her eye... The defiance. The determination not to be swept aside.
She hadn’t come back here by chance.
Jimmy didn’t believe she had ever let go of the investigation into Harriet Rayner’s absence. And if that was the case, then returning and renting that room again, getting dressed up – taking so much trouble, as Singh had put it – were all connected to the investigation into her friend’s disappearance.
So who would she get dressed up for?
Who had she been trying to catch off guard?
Glenn.
Frustrating as this investigation had been, the one common thread was that everything kept returning to Glenn Lazenby.
Without even thinking about it, Jimmy had already set off walking from Mr Singh’s house. Down to the end of the street, across a couple of junctions, until he came to the iron railing that marked the boundary of Jubilee Park.
He remembered that night, seeing Mel sprawled face down on the ground, raising herself, blood smeared across her face. Staggering to her feet as the guy called Wayne closed in, forcing her up against a tree, even as Jimmy stole up silently behind him, his SIG Sauer raised, the safety eased off, his forefinger resting against the trigger guard.
Was he jumping to conclusions?
What would he do if this was any other case, one that did not involve Mel and his brother?
Would he plunge right in, or step back, reassess and reevaluate?
He was already heading along the path that cut through the park.
This wasn’t any other case.
It did involve Mel and Glenn.
And he was going to get to the bottom of it.
§
“Hey, Jimbo! Over here. Come on and join us. Here, shuffle up, Cass, make the kid some room, know what I mean? Hey, Jimbo, I didn’t think you were coming. Thought you’d done your bit at the crem. Shows how wrong I can be, eh? I should know never to underestimate you.”
Glenn had stood, a near-empty pint glass in one hand. He leaned in to Jimmy, chest- bumping, looping his free arm around his brother and clapping him firmly on the back. He stank of booze and cheap scent.
“Drink?” said Glenn. Then, louder, toward the bar: “Hey, darling. Pint of Pride for the kid, would you? And another for me.”
The Flag and Flowers was heaving. When Jimmy had pushed in through the front doors a moment ago he’d been hit by a wall of sound. Voices and music, for once, drowning out the sounds of the games machines.
He’d paused, giving the place the usual automatic once-over, taking in the people, the layout, the entrances and exits. Paying special attention to the people who glanced at him and whose gazes lingered. Their expressions either blank or, as his Gran had always called it, giving him the evils.
Uncle Frank and the woman they’d referred to as Auntie Cyn were sitting in the window table with a couple of the other old-timers. Gordon Walker and Maxine Macrae. Maxine had often looked after Jimmy and Glenn when they were kids, but now there was no fondness in her look.
Jimmy had made his choices when he walked out ten years ago, and it would take more than showing up at a funeral to change people’s minds about him.
Funny to think that in these people’s eyes Jimmy was the one who’d never made the grade. The family disappointment. If his ten years away had been for a stretch in Pentonville or Wandsworth for armed robbery things would have been so different.
He was glad he’d walked out.
No regrets.
He turned away from Frank and his group, threaded a way through the crowd, knowing Glenn would be holding court at the family table at the rear of the back bar.
More faces, turned to him. Hard stares. This was hostile territory, intensified by a combination of the people present, the emotions of the occasion, and the fact the wake had been underway all through the afternoon and a lot of alcohol had been consumed.
Jimmy had been well trained in avoiding confrontation and going unnoticed, and now he used all the tricks. The quick nod and smile to disarm a hostile glare, because even the meanest bastard would at least acknowledge friendliness before remembering why he’s being such a mean bastard. A quickly averted look – let them think he was ducking a challenge. A gaze that slid and moved without ever settling, leaving nothing to latch onto, to confront. Keep moving. Play deaf to any muttered comments.
Just like a wedding, Jimmy knew from experience it wouldn’t be a proper wake without a fight, but there was no reason it had to be him.
And so he’d come to the back bar, the atmosphere a little more subdued and quiet here, Glenn and his cronies sitting at the family table with a few of the dancers from Ryders.
Glenn knew how to throw a classy wake.
Glenn’s bellowed welcome made sure everyone knew Jimmy was present, which was almost certainly what he’d intended.
The group shuffled around, and Jimmy squeezed into the space made for him, his thigh hard up against the bare leg of Glenn’s favorite dancer, the one called Suze. A redhead with tatts and one side of her head shaved down to a fine, velvety stubble pressed in from the other side, resting her hand on Jimmy’s thigh as if they were old lovers.
Others at the table included Ronnie Bosvelt, the Dutch gangster whose name cropped up frequently in the Section’s Lazenby files, Rich Coombes, the downy-faced representative of one of the old London families, and David Viera, one of the key operators in the South American coke gateway in Galicia, northwest Spain.
“So you couldn’t stay away, then? Hey, everyone, this is my kid brother, Jimmy. Dark sheep. Come back to pay his respects to the old man, and all that. Say ‘hello’, girls.”
From either side, Suze and the redhead pressed in, kissing him on the cheeks, the hand on his thigh squeezing way too intimately, another hand squeezing his arm – Suze’s knuckles must have pressed against the holster under his jacket, a move far too slick to be accidental.
“Can I have a word?” Jimmy said to his brother. “Just a couple of minutes.” Maybe he could get Glenn outside, or at least into the back office, away from the noise and press of people.
Glenn just smiled, though, and said, “Sure, Jimbo, what is it? I’m all ears.”
Everything Glenn did right now was exaggerated, a bit too loud, a bit too deliberate. Jimmy couldn’t work out if he was drunk or just enjoying being the center of attention. Probably both.
Glenn turned, sweeping his gaze around the group at the table. “My little bro’s here on a case,” he said. “He’s a – what are you, Jimbo? Secret agent? Do they call them that? Security services. Whatever. Hey, bro’, I’m really sorry I wasn’t able to help you with that thing.” A glance around the table again. “That missing girl case. Tragic. I really wish I could have done more.”
He should leave. Should never have come here this evening.
He knew what Glenn was like.
He hadn’t thought it through though. This wasn’t any other case. This was Mel.
“Where is she, Glenn? Where’s Mel Conner?”
Glenn looked genuinely confused. “Mel?” he said. “What d’you mean, Mel? I thought... Hang on, bro’, what’s going on here?”
“Can we talk, Glenn? It’s important.”
He seemed to have cut through Glenn’s bluster, sobered him. Glenn nodded, shrugged himself free of Suze’s arm across his back, stood.
“Come on, bro’. Let’s get us some fresh air, eh?”
He stepped out, joining Jimmy as he stood, draping an arm across his brother’s shoulders.
“Let’s go out back. Have you seen the beer garden? It’s lovely, and real easy to clear every other fucker out of there so we can talk in peace, okay?”
§
They sat either side of a slatted wooden table.
True to his word, a couple of gestures from Glenn had been enough to encourage the few people out here to gather their drinks and cigarettes and head back into the pub or round to the front where other smokers had gathered.
“Mel, you said? What the fuck’s happened now, bro’?” All of a sudden Glenn was sober, straight. He’d dropped the matey leeriness he’d put on for his friends inside.
“Probably nothing,” said Jimmy, trying to read the situation, work out where his brother’s head was. “Yesterday evening,” he went on. “Where were you? What were you up to?”
Glenn spread his hands, rolling his head back into his shoulders. “What, I’m a suspect now? What’s going on, Jimbo?”
“Mel’s gone quiet. I just want to make sure she’s okay. Hasn’t done anything stupid.” If his brother knew anything, he was doing a good job of playing innocent and confused.
“I had a little gathering at the Barn,” said Glenn. “Thom Sullivan’s over. We got together with a bunch of the old man’s other acquaintances and relived old times, you know what I mean? We had canapés and posh glasses, would you believe it?” He made a show of raising his pint glass with his little finger cocked out daintily, and laughed.
Jimmy didn’t laugh, and Glenn checked himself, put his glass down, more serious now. “She was there, yeah,” he said. “I invited her. Mel. She’s been very friendly lately, you know? She showed up and I thought I was in with a shout. There’s always been a bit of a spark between us, a bit of banter. Sorry, sorry – old sensitivities and all that, but you can’t blame me, can you? She still scrubs up well.”
Jimmy had been right. The show, the taking trouble over her appearance... Mel had come after Glenn again. Did she have any idea what a dangerous game she was playing?
“So what happened?” asked Jimmy. “Were you right? Were you in with a shout?”
Glenn shrugged. “Nah,” he said. “Said she wasn’t in ‘a fancy do kind of place’. That’s how she put it. I offered to get one of the boys to give her a lift back to wherever she was staying, but she said no, said she’d rather walk. Get some fresh air. Not sure what she was implying by that.” He laughed again. “Oh man. Do you really think something’s happened? This is some strange shit: first that girl, and now Mel. Maybe you need to bring the heavy guns in, you know?”
Even now, Glenn couldn’t resist a dig at his younger brother, the implication he was out of his depth.
Jimmy shut it out. Glenn’s ego wasn’t his concern right now, except where it had impact on the case.
“So tell me, then,” said Glenn. “Are you here because you’re just following threads and you think I might be able to contribute something, or do you really think I might be the bad guy here? I’m curious.”
Jimmy let the silence draw out as he studied his brother’s expression. Finally, he said, “So she came to your party, and left early, alone?”
Glenn nodded. “Mid-evening. I don’t know, eightish? She said she just wasn’t in the mood. Listen, is there anything I can do? Other than show you to the place where I keep all my kidnap victims, of course.”
Glenn laughed. He was the only one. He shrugged then, said, “Sorry. Bad taste. I’m a dick, I know. Tough day, and all that.” For a moment, he let his shoulders slump and his expression slide, dropping the false bonhomie. “Do you ever get tired?” he said. “I don’t know how the old man did it. How he kept the front up, kept going under all the pressure.”
“Sucks to be you,” said Jimmy, the first attempt at humor he’d made in... well, days.
Glenn laughed.
“Do you have any idea where she went?” Jimmy asked.
A shake of the head. “She refused the offer of a lift, like I say. I don’t know. You have to worry, though, don’t you? Dressed like that, out on her own in what’s now, to her, an unfamiliar town. I know we’re not allowed to say women are asking for it when they dress like that, but...” Another shrug.
Jimmy stood. He couldn’t work out if that last comment was Glenn trying to get under his skin again, or simply his brother being a dick. Sometimes it was hard to tell.
Glenn remained seated. He looked up at Jimmy, gave a small nod, and said, “If there’s anything I can do.”
Jimmy nodded back. He couldn’t put a name to the feeling he felt then, the mix of frustration and resentment, but also... a weird kind of connection. Family, he guessed. Was that an actual feeling?
“You’re always welcome here,” said Glenn. He gestured toward the pub with a nod of the head, a slight roll of the shoulders. “Ignore them. You’ll always be a part of this. It’s in your blood. You can’t shake it all off that easily.”
Jimmy made to leave, took a step to go, then paused. “If you’re lying to me, you know I’ll fucking kill you, right? Family or not.”
Glenn nodded. “I’d expect no less from a brother of mine,” he said, and raised his glass. “To the old man,” he said, “and family,” and took a long drink.
Jimmy nodded, turned, and walked away.
§
It was after eight now. So more than twenty-four hours since Mel had walked out of Glenn’s party. Since she’d left her last mark on the world.
Or at least, the last Jimmy had been able to find.
Jimmy got into his car and drove. Nowhere in particular. Country lanes, as darkness descended. Twilight. A couple of deer paused to watch him from the edge of a patch of woodland.
Nature. He’d never really got it, but he knew if Mel were here she’d have been so thrilled to see those deer. She’d have made him get it.
That’s what she did. Made him see everything in a new way. What was that? Love? Some other kind of connection, that brought out aspects of you that you didn’t even know were there?
He parked in a gateway, tipped his seat back, tried to think.
Checked his phone again, but there was nothing.
He should call Conner, at least. Let him know Mel was missing. He wasn’t sure what that would achieve right now, though, other than save himself from a hard time when Conner found out he’d been kept in the dark at some future point.
He didn’t like to admit to himself that his reluctance had anything to do with those seeds of doubt Glenn had so successfully scattered. To his decision that he couldn’t rely on any of the usual back-up and infrastructure for now.
Glenn’s comment about the need to call in the big guns still stung, too. Was he choosing to remain solo on this out of some kind of stubborn pride, or was it the correct, pragmatic analysis?
Patil.
Surely he could still rely on Mamta Patil, at least? She’d always been there for him, a constant in the Section’s back-office; one of the smartest people he knew, and one of the few who’d never shown any kind of frustration with Jimmy’s pig-headed ways.
“Hey, Mamta,” he said, when she answered on two. Did she ever go home, even? “Any updates?”
“Nothing to report, sir. What can I do for you?”
“Melissa Conner,” he said. “C-O-N-N-E-R, that’s right. I need to trace her movements and present location. Top priority.”
“On it. I’ll send through details asap.” There had been no hesitation at the surname, other than to confirm the spelling. Patil would know it was Doug Conner’s daughter Jimmy was trying to trace. Would she pass that on to Doug? Maybe, although Jimmy thought not: Patil was solid, and she had always trusted Jimmy to be out there doing the right thing.
“Thanks, Mamta,” he said. “This one matters, okay?”
“Sir.”
The line went dead. Patil was, as she’d said, on it.
A few minutes later, his phone went, Patil returning his call. “Sir? No mobile phone activity – or signal – since Thursday, 8.15pm. Last call received was from your number, unanswered, at 8.12pm. No other online activity of any sort since that time.”
This was sounding starkly like Harriet Rayner’s disappearance, everything going offline around the time she was last seen.
“Movements?”
“She was with you Thursday morning, sir.”
Breakfast. Patil had diplomatically chosen to start the report from that point, rather than the fact he’d spent the night at the same location as Mel.
“Then?”
“Train to King’s Cross. Underground to Dollis Hill. Then... she retraced the journey almost immediately. She headed back.”
Jimmy already knew she’d come back. He could imagine the process: reluctantly accepting she had to step back, going home to London, and then throughout the train journey her head going round and round until she’d convinced herself she couldn’t let go.
“I’ve just sent you GPS coordinates of her last known location before the signal went dead, along with a log of all her activity in the previous twenty-four. Do you need anything else?”
She was asking if she should tell Doug.
“No. Thanks, Mamta. Just... any updates, okay? Get them to me asap.”
“Sir.”
He drove back into town and parked on a side road just off the High Street.
He had the map on his phone’s small screen, showing the triangulation of Mel’s signals as they pinged off surrounding masts. It was enough to narrow it down to a section of the High Street, and one street that ran parallel that was mostly residential. He walked along there first, eyeing the backs of commercial premises on the High Street on his right, and a row of shabby terraced houses on his left.
He couldn’t help flashing back to Glenn’s words, the suggestion she was ‘asking for it’ by being out on her own, dressed as she was. If she’d come back here at this time of night for any reason, she would have been vulnerable. The yards and garages behind the High Street premises presented numerous shady corners. It was easy to imagine any number of unpleasant events taking place here, an easy place to slip away to for anyone who wanted to be out of sight from the town’s main road. Drug dealers, gangs of teenagers hanging out, illicit knee-tremblers up against a wall – she could have stumbled across almost anything here if she’d passed through, perhaps on a shortcut to somewhere else.
This was the kind of place where a chance encounter could easily go tragically wrong.
He studied the houses to his left. Anonymous, run down, neglected. Could she possibly have had any reason to be here?
He was doing little better than trying to second-guess her, he knew. He didn’t know what had been in her head.
He went back out to the High Street. Friday night, and perhaps typically for the center of a small town on a Friday night there were clusters of activity: groups gathered outside pubs and fast food places, the occasional roar and squealing wheels of cars being raced, music spilling out from anywhere still open.
He studied the map on his phone again, narrowing his search down to a section of the street. Most places here were closed – shops and hairdressers, a couple of estate agents’ offices, a bank branch.
What remained were a kebab shop, an Indian restaurant and a pub, the King’s Head.
He tried to think it through. She’d emerged from the Barn, told Glenn she would walk. Her route back to Singh’s bed and breakfast place would bring her to the High Street, right along here. She might well have been hungry, probably wouldn’t have stopped in a pub, though, if what Glenn had said about her not being in the mood for his party had been true.
He went up to the counter in the kebab shop, ignoring the glares of the three people in the queue he had just bypassed. A guy with a stubbly gray beard and a white taqiyah skullcap nodded toward the waiting customers, and said, “Wait your turn, eh, friend? Won’t be long.”
Jimmy shrugged, turned his phone so the guy could see the screen, and said, “Sorry. Really, I just... I’m worried about my friend. She’s been missing since around this time yesterday. Last seen on this stretch of High Street. She wasn’t in here by any chance, was she? Or maybe you saw her outside, maybe getting into someone’s car?”
The guy squinted, then shook his head. “Sorry, friend, but no. I don’t recognize her. I hope she okay, you know?”
Jimmy left. He tried the restaurant next door, but with the same result. Checked the map again. The only other place she might have stopped off was the King’s Head.
He was clutching at straws, he knew. Assuming she’d either stopped somewhere on her way back to Singh’s or at least that someone might have seen her passing here.
He went into the King’s Head, a dark and dingy place that, much like the row of houses on the street behind here, had seen far better days.
At the bar he caught the attention of a woman with a blonde perm straight out of the early 1980s, and went through the questions again. She stared at the screen, but then shook her head.
It was pointless. Mel hadn’t stopped anywhere. If this sector of the High Street was, indeed, where something had happened, it had happened in the street, and from inside this pub they’d have seen nothing.
Again, he questioned his judgment, his willingness to leap in. Mel had been rushing about all over the place over the last few days. Had she put her phone on to charge that night he’d stayed with her? Almost certainly not. In which case it was a miracle the charge had lasted through until the following evening. Her phone must have run out of charge after she left Glenn’s party, and she hadn’t bothered charging it again, perhaps finding she enjoyed a bit of peace.
He was over-reacting. Following his fears instead of the logic of the evidence.
The barmaid with the big hair was talking to an old guy sitting half-slumped over the bar, nursing a near-empty pint, both of them squinting sidelong in Jimmy’s direction.
“’nother look?” said the barmaid now.
Jimmy held the phone so they both could see, watching as the guy squinted, then slowly nodded, and then tipped his glass to make sure they could see how empty it was.
Jimmy reached into his pocket, found a few coins and dropped them on the bar, and the barmaid took the glass to refill it.
“Much obliged,” said the guy. “Yeah, she was here. Last night. I wasn’t watching her or anything. Nothing creepy. I just notice what’s around me, you know?”
Jimmy nodded, and waited for him to go on.
“Noticed she didn’t look too happy, you know? All dressed up and on her own, staring at her phone. Someone stood her up, I reckon.” That last was said in an accusatory tone, as if it was all Jimmy’s fault.
“How long was she here for?”
“I was getting to that,” the man said with the air of someone who didn’t like to be hurried, even though everyone who ever spoke with him must surely wish he would hurry the fuck up. He paused, took a long sup of his replenished beer, smacked his lips, and finally continued. “Then her friend come in, sat with her, and a couple of minutes later they left, got into a car that someone else was driving.”
“Friend?” asked Jimmy. Had Glenn come after her? “What did he look like, this friend?”
The guy laughed. “He? I ain’t never seen a bloke with legs like that! Mind, it takes all sorts these days, I suppose.”
“Legs?”
“Girl, she was. Colored thing. Tiny little skirt and a top that wasn’t much more’n a bra, you know what I mean? A real looker. Had her down as a tart or a dancer.”
The dancer.
The one called Suze who always seemed to be in Glenn’s lap or hanging off his arm.
The one who had so deftly checked out Jimmy’s shoulder holster when she’d pressed her tits and pretty much everything else against him at the wake earlier.
No, Glenn hadn’t come after Mel here at the King’s Head last night. He’d sent one of his people to do the dirty work.