Hope flared again in Patrick’s chest, stronger this time. He scribbled his number on the back of a sandwich receipt he found in his pocket and handed it to Emily. ‘Please? I’m counting on you. I’ve got to find the scum who did this to Wen— my kid sister.’ He made his eyes go round and watery, and was rewarded by the two girls’ own eyes filling up. ‘You’ve been really kind. Thanks so much for your time.’
Right, he thought, as he strode away, thanking the security guard on his way out. Next stop: Tenpin Bowling’s HR department.
Chapter 39
Day 12 – Winkler
Winkler was parked outside a coffee shop on Goswell Road, with a view of the cul-de-sac on which Mervyn Hammond’s office was based. He had sent Gareth to check that Hammond’s Jag was there and to confirm there was only one way out of the little street. Winkler wasn’t going to risk getting stuck in traffic again – he had woken up in a cold sweat last night, remembering the moment he’d stalled and everyone had started beeping at him – much smarter to wait here. Unless Hammond had a car that could transform into a helicopter, or access to a secret network of subterranean tunnels, he would have to drive past this spot.
Gareth opened the door and squeezed through the gap, being careful not to spill the coffee. Winkler took his cup and sniffed it.
‘It’s organic, right? Did you ask?’
‘Yes. Specially imported from Guatemala. Grown by peasants. Fair trade, organic and decaffeinated.’
‘Good.’ This area was full of hipsters. Usually, the hairy bastards made Winkler wish they’d bring back National Service, but he could just about forgive them if it meant he could get a decent cup of something that wasn’t going to poison his perfect body.
‘I don’t see the point of decaf coffee,’ Gareth said. ‘It’s like—’
‘A woman without a vagina?’ Winkler suggested.
Gareth spat out his caramel macchiato and Winkler laughed. Over the last few days he’d found something he enjoyed even more than winding Lennon up: making outrageous statements that made politically correct DS Batey shudder and squirm.
‘You know the old joke about why a woman has legs?’ Winkler began. ‘So she can get—’
‘There he is,’ Gareth said, clearly relieved that he wasn’t going to have to suffer the punchline.
Hammond’s silver Jag glided out of the side street and Winkler could almost hear the engine purr as it crossed the road and joined the slow-moving traffic, heading towards the crossroad.
‘Right. Here we go.’
Hammond headed past the Barbican towards the Museum of London. Winkler stayed two cars back, and could see that, again, Hammond wasn’t driving. It was his bodyguard, Kerry Mangan. Winkler had run a background check on Mangan already – he was thirty-eight; born and bred in Tottenham; joined the army in 1992 when he was sixteen, serving in Bosnia. He was discharged from the army after five years, though Winkler hadn’t been able to find out the reason for this discharge. After leaving the army he’d worked as a nightclub bouncer for a few years before getting a job as a bodyguard – or personal security, to give the role its proper title. Mangan had left the security company that employed him five years ago to work for Mervyn Hammond’s PR agency. Since then he’d been like Mervyn’s shadow, and could be seen beside the PR man in most photographs of Hammond in the press, standing beside or just behind him.
Winkler wondered why Hammond felt the need to have a bodyguard. Had he received threats? Was he paranoid because of the number of people he upset with the stories he fed to the press? Or was there a more shadowy reason? Whatever, Winkler bet that Mangan knew all of Hammond’s dirty little secrets.
The Jag reached the river and turned right, driving west through town. Once they got to Hammersmith, Winkler realised they were heading towards his and Gareth’s patch, past Chiswick and out on the A316.
By the time they reached Richmond it was growing dark and rush hour was beginning, the roads becoming more choked with traffic, Hammond’s Jag just visible ahead, though a bus had pushed in between it and Winkler’s Audi.
‘Where the fuck are they going?’ Winkler asked.
A few minutes later Mangan took a right at a roundabout signposted Isleworth, almost catching Winkler off guard. He turned left and saw the Jag just up ahead, following it through a series of left and right turns until, suddenly, the Jag pulled up and drove between two pillars onto the forecourt of a large white building.
Winkler pulled up in a parking space on the street and turned the car lights off.
It was a shabby-looking street, comprising mostly terraces, apart from this building. The streetlamp outside was broken, so he couldn’t make out the lettering on the sign attached to the white building’s front wall. He cracked the window a little, letting in freezing air, and waited till he heard Hammond’s car doors shut. This was followed by men’s voices, and the faint thud of a front door closing.
He got out of his car and examined the sign: ‘St Mary’s Children’s Home.’
He lifted his head slowly to look up at the building, most of the windows illuminated, a dark figure drawing a pair of curtains as Winkler watched. Ice and heat – horror and anger – competed for supremacy in his veins. Only last week Winkler had watched a documentary about the systematic abuse of hundreds of kids in children’s homes in North Wales. And many of the girls forced into prostitution, raped and abused by gangs of men in Rochdale and Rotherham, two other big news stories, had been in the care system.
Winkler thought back to his own childhood. There had been a children’s home near his primary school – Winkler’s mum was always telling him she’d send him to live there if he didn’t behave – and several of the kids from the home had been in Winkler’s class. One of the boys, a kid called Michael, had gone berserk one day, shitting his pants and wiping it on the walls, sticking a turd underneath a girl’s desk. Michael always had brown stuff caked on his fingers and the other kids, including Winkler, would tease him mercilessly, though Michael was a fighter, could handle himself. Winkler’s mum told him he should stay away from the boy. Thinking back now, it seemed highly likely that Michael must have been a victim of abuse.
He stalked back to the car and jumped into his seat.
‘It’s a children’s home,’ he said.
Gareth’s eyes widened. ‘What’s Hammond doing here?’
Winkler picked up the coffee they’d bought back on Goswell Road. It was almost completely cold, but he needed something to take the bad taste out of his mouth.
‘These places are like honeypots for paedophiles and child abusers,’ he said.
Gareth’s eyes grew even wider. ‘I don’t think—’
‘Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m sure most of them are run by well-meaning do-gooders. But you watch the news, don’t you? Every other story in the papers over the last few years has been about some child abuse scandal, from Jimmy Savile to Rochdale. They’re nearly always centred on some place where kids are easy to get at: hospitals, youth clubs, care homes. Places like this.’
‘But the two victims – Rose and Jess – lived at home with their families,’ Gareth said, wincing. ‘They didn’t have any connection to the kind of places you just listed.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Winkler insisted. ‘Hammond is the only link between the murders of Rose, Jess and Nancy Marr. He has access to teenage girls through his work. He’s never married, never had any kids of his own. He drives around with some shifty bloke who got kicked out of the army for some reason we don’t know about. And now we see him visiting a children’s home miles away from where he lives and works, after dark. I bet he treats this place like a drive-through McDonald’s.’