An Early Grave Read online

  Now that he’d given his presentation to the three hundred delegates in the Culture and Congress Centre on Europaplatz in Lucerne, he was going to enjoy the remainder of the conference on global food safety, and this evening he looked forward to the conference dinner. This was his first visit to Europe since he’d returned home to Qinhuangdao after his years at Oxford, first as an undergraduate, then a post-grad and finally two years working with his close friend Callum Armour as a post-doc. It all seemed like yesterday. He had hoped to see Callum at the conference, but a former colleague from Oxford had told him that Callum was no longer working in the field. He could understand why, after what happened to his wife, Tilly and their little daughter. It saddened him greatly. Callum had been his closest friend at Latimer College.

  He fancied a walk before going to the dinner, and after a shower and a change of clothes back at his hotel, he quickly checked his emails on his lap-top, replying to a couple and sending one to his wife Lihua, who was six months pregnant. Jian took the lift down to the lobby of the Grand Hotel National and headed for the exit leading to the lakeside, where he hoped to enjoy the cool evening air as he strolled towards the old town. The lobby was busy with new guests checking in and scores of conference attendees who were staying at the hotel.

  ‘Jian,’ a voice called from the lounge which opened onto the lobby. He looked across, smiled and gave a cursory wave to a bright-faced man in his thirties, with untidy blonde hair and wearing a checked shirt and blue jeans.

  ‘Come and join us for a drink.’

  He spoke in English with an accent unmistakably Dutch. Jian came over to the group of five people seated in comfortable, leather armchairs gathered around a coffee table. He smiled his polite smile, with a slight bow of his head. He was an acquaintance of them all: Doctor Koos van Leer, who had called him over and Pieter Schalke, both from a research institute in Wageningen, Dr Clarisse Junot, from Nantes, an attractive forty year-old veterinarian, Philip Weston, from York and Luca Davoli, from Rome, all workers in the field of contamination in food.

  Van Leer dragged another chair across the carpeted floor to their table. Jian sat down and ordered a cool beer from a waiter. The group hadn’t yet consumed sufficient alcohol to cast off the safe inclination to discuss only work, their thoughts centred on the content of today’s conference. Soon though, Jian’s plan to go for a walk disappeared under intense discussions on the detection limits of triple-quad mass spectrometers in analysing mycotoxins in animal feeds, the various views on solid-phase dispersion for sample clean-up and the food safety issues associated with the export of prawns from Bangladesh to Europe. All present were intent upon sharing a few drinks before going directly in to the conference dinner, hosted by the hotel.

  ‘Doctor Zhou Jian?’

  For the second time that evening Jian heard his name called across the lobby. The concierge paraded through the lounge, carrying a silver salver, scanning the room for the intended recipient of the note on the plate.

  ‘A message for you sir,’ he said after Jian raised a hand in the air. The young man, smartly dressed in a grey uniform with red trim on his lapels and on the seams of his trousers, bowed slightly and presented the salver.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Jian. He opened the small white envelope as the others continued with their conversations. No one observed Jian’s reaction to the message typed on the paper within. He got to his feet immediately, smiling weakly, looking nervous yet strangely elated.

  ‘Excuse me, please. I must leave you now.’ The others looked on, but only Dr Clarisse Junot appeared to notice what Jian was saying. ‘See you later at dinner,’ he said, bowing his head then squeezing his way between chairs and the table bedecked in drinks.

  ‘Going for that walk after all?’ said Clarisse Junot.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Jian replied. He hurried across to the reception desk and asked the young girl seated by a computer for directions to the Hotel des Alps.

  ‘It is in the old town, on the Rathausquai,’ the girl explained. Rising from her seat, she lifted a tourist brochure from a pile on the counter, opened it and marked on the map inside the location of the Hotel des Alps.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Jian. He hurried outdoors and soon found his way to the lakeside. Judging by the location of the Hotel des Alps it seemed that he would get his evening stroll after all. Now, however, he was more excited about meeting a friend he hadn’t seen since his student days.

  The evening air was heavy with moisture, a mist engulfing the mountain peaks of the Riga and Stanserhorn beyond the lake. Although relaxed after a nervous day, he walked in a determined stride along the Nationalquai, towards the city centre. He wondered, as he had done so often recently, about returning to Europe, to England or Holland perhaps, securing a research post, or at least another post-doc fellowship. He wanted Lihua and his soon-to-be-born child to experience what he had seen, what he was seeing right now, to taste life away from an overcrowded city stifled by poor air and with an ever-growing presence of fear. He didn’t think he could stand for much longer having to deal with crooks in the food business and self-important government officials on the take. He hurried on, his stomach slowly regaining calmness like the waters of the lake.

  Crossing the busy Schweizerhofquai close to the road bridge, he soon found the Rathausquai on his right, a quayside in the old town ushering the lake into its drain of the River Reuss. There were bars and restaurants with seating outdoors by the railings of the quay. A few people sat with glasses of wine, eating salad, or soup and bread, a prelude perhaps to their main meal of the day. Passing by the Kapellbrucke, an old covered wooden bridge stretching diagonally across the entrance to the Reuss, he soon found the Hotel des Alps, a line of tables along its frontage each with parasols folded for the night. Approaching the hotel entrance he spotted a face he remembered well from his days at Oxford. How strange, he thought, gazing at the piece of paper in his hand, the message he’d received from the concierge. It was not the person written on the note, but a surprise, nonetheless.

  *

  Around seven the following morning, the city stretching for the day, cafés and bars were already open and serving breakfast. Traffic flowed as smoothly on the thoroughfares as the water drained from the lake. Trains departed exactly on time from the station beside the KKL, the conference centre preparing for the final day of the International Symposium on Food Quality and Hygiene in the Global Market. Dr Zhou Jian had presented his paper the day before. Today, he would not show up for the closing address; he would not join his international associates for coffee or for breakfast at the Grand Hotel National on Haldenstrasse.

  A maid working on the second floor of the Hotel Schiff gazed from a room window and spied something floating in the river. She couldn’t be certain; didn’t want to believe it.

  ‘Anna, come here a moment,’ she called to her much younger colleague who had been cleaning the toilet of room two-fifteen. When the teenage girl, with blonde hair raised in a bun, joined the maid by the window, she followed the line of the woman’s pointing finger. ‘Look there; what is that floating in the water?’

  The girl drew a sharp breath, realising straightaway the sight before her.

  ‘I’ll get Nicholaus,’ she called, her slim legs already drumming their way down the stairs.

  Once in the lobby she roused the concierge by the front door and the pair of them rushed onto the quay and down the terracing by the Rathaussteg to the water’s edge.

  ‘Where?’ Said Nicholaus, a slight young man of twenty with black greased hair and a thin nose. ‘I don’t see anything.’

  Anna caught his arm at the elbow and forced him to look closely.

  ‘It’s a body, Nicholaus. I’m sure of it.’

  Something, close to the quayside, lay entangled between the mooring rope and the hull of a small motor boat.

  ‘Wait here,’ he said, and sprinted to a café a few yards along the quay. Once there he grabbed a window pole from a waiter, who was lowering the awning outsid
e his restaurant.

  ‘Come help me, Josef. There’s someone in the river.’

  Nicholaus ran back to the steps, the waiter following but slow on his feet.

  ‘It is a body; I can see a hand,’ said Anna.

  Nicholaus reached with the pole towards the dark object in the water. After two failed attempts, he managed to get some purchase on what seemed to be the collar of a jacket. With the waiter holding him steady by the waist, Nicholaus, stretching beyond the steps, managed to free the body from the mooring rope and haul it toward the quayside. Several bystanders ran to the aid of the concierge and the waiter. When they pulled the body of Zhou Jian onto the steps and turned him over, there was not a mark upon him. Anna cried in horror at the sight of the stone grey face, and Nicholaus put his arms around her. The Chinese scientist, it seemed, had drowned tragically in Lake Lucerne.

  CHAPTER 8

  Nights were the worst times, sleep, dreamless sleep always a blessing. He’d been alone for three years now. Time to think. Time to heal. Time to pass. He didn’t do any of it well. Tilly was there when he lay down; she was there at his waking, when he ate breakfast, walked Midgey, when he read newspapers and bought drink at the mini-market. Mostly she held Emily in her arms beckoning him to join them. Sometimes, especially at night in the darkness of his bedroom, she stood alone urging him to want her, to come for her, to put everything right in their world. Night time he feared as the vampire feared the sunlight. There was nothing in his life that didn’t trigger a worry in him. He was disturbed by his past, frightened by his present and dreaded his future. He’d grown up in this house, and now it was his prison. He was well aware of his fall to drudgery, of the filth he inhabited, the foul smelling air he breathed, and he had no inclination to do anything about it. Nothing mattered. Even now, having met the woman who could help find the killer of Emily and Tilly, he had little enthusiasm for the quest. If only he could sleep without waking, lie down on the once fresh white sheets, now grey and threadbare, close his eyes and diffuse from time to eternity. Then he would have peace.

  Daylight, but early. Banging on the front door. Not the usual time for those bastard kids to call. Why wouldn’t they leave him alone? Some of them, he’d known their older brothers and sisters. Went to school with them. Did they know what their siblings got up to? Did they believe the stories about him?

  He sat on the edge of his bed, the bed he’d had since he was fifteen when his late mother had decided he’d outgrown his childhood bunk and should have a new divan. Pyjamas, these days, were not part of his limited wardrobe. He slept in the T-shirt and boxer shorts he’d worn the previous day and would wear for several days to come. In bare feet, he came to the top of the stairs and peered into the darkened hallway. The banging continued.

  ‘Police, Mr Armour. Can you come to the door please?’ A male voice. Callum returned to the bedroom and gazed from the window, through the metal screen. It was the same car that Inspector Grogan had come in the night before. Maybe she was outside. Did she have something already? Information on Justin Kingsley? He pulled on his jogging trousers, pushed his feet into his brown shoes and hurried downstairs. The male voice continued calling.

  ‘Can you open the door, Mr Armour? It’s the police.’

  Persistent, he thought. As was his habit he left the chain in place, undid the lock and pulled the door as far as the chain allowed. Peering through the crack, he saw the detective who had accompanied Tara Grogan.

  ‘Open the door please, Mr Armour. We’d like a word.’

  ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘Open the door please.’

  ‘First tell me what you want.’

  The door hit him on the head then banged against the inside wall, the chain pitifully useless in protecting him from a stout kick. Callum’s hand shot to his face, to stifle the blurring pain across his nose and eyes. DS Murray and DC Wilson barged into the hall. Wilson pressed Callum to the wall and pulled his hands behind him before he had any chance to recover from the blow. Murray charged into the living room. Midgey barked noisily, and Callum heard the policeman pulling at paper and boxes, tossing things around.

  ‘We’d like to have a word with you at St. Anne Street,’ said Wilson. With a firm grip of Callum’s shoulders, he ushered him outside.

  *

  If only they knew how weak he felt, they wouldn’t have bothered with their show of strength. He hardly had the energy to stay on his feet, never mind walk out to the car. Wilson placed him in the back seat of the un-marked Vauxhall, closed the door and waited for Murray to emerge from the house. A minute later he appeared empty handed, slammed the door and climbed into the front passenger seat of the car.

  ‘We’d like to ask you a few questions about your neighbours, Mr Armour,’ said Murray, when they’d settled into an interview room at the station.

  Callum sat on a blue plastic chair with a padded seat, his hands set one upon the other and resting on a bare laminate table. His eyes, usually gritty with sleep and dirt at this time of the morning, watered still from the blow to his head caused by the bashing-in of the door. He wasn’t brave, hadn’t felt the need to be since the heart of his life had been snatched away, but for some reason he decided to defend himself in the presence of this pair of self-important louts.

  ‘It’s Dr Armour.’

  Murray winced at the reply.

  ‘Or, Dr Stinker?’

  ‘As long as you get the Doctor part right.’

  ‘Tell us about the girl who was killed the other night in the house opposite yours.’

  Callum did not reply.

  ‘It’s a reasonable question Mr…Dr Armour.’

  ‘I’ll speak to Inspector Grogan, but I’m not talking to you wise asses.’

  Murray continued as if he hadn’t heard Callum’s statement of intent.

  ‘Tell me about the porno films being made at the house?’

  Callum glared at Murray, realising of course, that Tara Grogan would have shared this information.

  ‘You must have seen who was involved? Men? Women? Perhaps you, Dr Armour?’

  The pair of detectives got no further. Callum sat impassively, staring at the wall ahead of him. To each question raised he offered nothing but a stale odour of sweat and a breath smelling of cheap lager.

  *

  Tara was late arriving at the station. She’d called at a community centre in Walton to meet some members of a women’s group: a Mum’s & Todd’s operating primarily for the Polish community. Aniele Zagac, a friendly woman of about thirty-five with excellent English, had a couple of energetic kids climbing over her as she tried to hold a conversation.

  ‘I do not know of any Polish girls who have gone missing,’ she said in reply to Tara’s question. ‘If you like I will ask my friends to contact other groups and families.’

  ‘I would appreciate that, thank you. Do you know of a man called Teodor Sokolowski?’

  The woman’s smile weakened, as slowly she moved her head from side to side, her pale blue eyes looking uncertainly at Tara.

  ‘He rents houses around Liverpool to workers from Poland?’

  Aniele Zagac’s attention, fortuitously, it seemed for her, was claimed by her children who had begun pulling at their mother’s long grey cardigan, stretching it out of shape. Now she didn’t have to look Tara in the face.

  ‘I have not heard of this man,’ she said, drawing both her charges close to her body, so that neither one was able to keep hold of the cardigan. Tara reached a card to the woman.

  ‘If you hear of anything relating to Mr Sokolowski, or of a girl who’s gone missing, please let me know.’ The woman inspected the details on the card and gave a single nod.

  Ten minutes’ drive from the community centre and she pulled into St. Anne Street Station, a dull four-storey flat-roofed block. She was grateful for the help, but she didn’t for a second believe that Aniele Zagac had told the truth about Teodor Sokolowski. Was it a case of ex-pats closing ranks? When she reached her desk on the
first floor, she found a post-it stuck on her computer monitor informing her that she was required downstairs at interview room two. She met DC Wilson in the corridor outside the room, his back against the wall, hands busy at his mobile phone.

  ‘Super’s been looking for you, Mam,’ he said, a hint of warning in his voice.

  ‘What about?’

  ‘We have a suspect for the girl’s murder.’

  ‘Really?’ She felt a sudden gush of excitement from the hope that they had already tracked down the vicious killer of the young girl.

  ‘It’s that bloke Armour you were talking to the other day. Super and Murray are with him now.’

  Disbelief and exasperation battled for supremacy. How did they decide that Armour was implicated in the murder? Surely, they hadn’t acted merely on what she had told Murray?

  ‘Tara,’ said Tweedy as he emerged from the interview room. As the door closed behind him she caught sight of Callum Armour sitting rigidly at the table staring into space. ‘I’m glad you’re here. This Dr Armour is proving difficult and insists on talking only to you.’ He looked rather disapprovingly at Tara, like a father inquiring what his teenage daughter had been up to the night before. ‘I’m happy for you to proceed, of course, but perhaps you should point out to your friend that his conversation with you will be recorded.’

  ‘Yes sir.’ He smiled weakly as if he understood the situation, understood the relationship Tara had already established with Armour, but there was a warning in it for her. That this was not the way things were done, not in his squad. He would expect any established rapport, regardless of how tenuous it may be, to be handled most cautiously and professionally. Obviously Murray had told Tweedy about her visit to Armour’s house.