Simon Kernick - The Crime Trade

I asked her if she was sure.

‘Ain’t you got a photo of Pretty Boy?’

‘Who?’

‘Panner. That’s his street name. Pretty Boy. I think someone was taking the piss.’

‘I think you’re right. Yes, I have seen a photo of him. I was just double-checking.’

It had been the answer we’d been anticipating. On the way over here we’d checked with the incident room to see if Panner’s name appeared on the list of Desmarches suit owners, and it hadn’t. It still wasn’t conclusive proof that Panner and our killer weren’t one and the same, but it was getting close to it.

Malik took back the e-fit, and now it was his turn to speak again. ‘You said just now that you thought he might have gone too far by coming here and firing a gun. Was that the first time you’d ever seen him with a firearm, then?’

She gave a barely perceptible nod. ‘Yeah, it was.’

‘But he’d hit you before?’

‘Oh yeah,’ she said matter-of-factly, as if this was par for the course in her life. ‘He used to knock me about quite a lot, especially if I wasn’t making enough money for him, or I was threatening to quit. But this was different.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘No, not like that. It’s just that normally he works himself up before he does it. You know, shouts about, smashes a couple of things. But this time he was only in here two minutes before he pulled the gun. He waved it in my face, then fired it into the ceiling.’ She shuddered. ‘I couldn’t believe it. And in front of Jack as well, poor kid. Scared him shitless. He was crying all night.’

‘What happened at that point?’ asked Malik. ‘After he’d fired the gun.’

‘Well, that was it. He told me not to say anything to anyone about what he’d just done, then he turned round and walked out. Didn’t say another word. It was weird.’

Malik and I glanced at each other. She was right. It was weird, and just more confirmation that Panner wasn’t our man. He was just too much of an amateur. But then, if he wasn’t, who the hell was?

‘He didn’t say anything about you going back to work for him, then?’ I asked.

Jack was shouting again — something unintelligible but loud, in a futile bid to get attention — and I had to repeat the question. She told him to be quiet, then turned back to me.

‘He did when he first came in, yeah. Told me that he was sick of me pissing him about, but he didn’t go on about it like he normally did.’

Malik changed the line of questioning. ‘Do you know if he ever did anything else for money?’

She said he dealt crack and blow now and again, and occasionally smack, but that was all, as far as she knew.

‘Does he, or did he, carry round large sums of money?’

‘He always had a few quid on him, yeah, but then he took money off me, and the other girls he had working for him, plus he made money on the gear, so it ain’t really surprising, is it?’

Malik then asked whether there were any occasions when Panner had suddenly come into very large sums of cash, but she said she wasn’t sure, didn’t think so. He looked at me again, and his expression mirrored my thoughts. He wasn’t the O’Brien shooter.

‘It’s important we find Mr Panner,’ I said.

‘You’ve found him already, but you let him go. Even though he pulled a gun on me and Jack, and fired it. It don’t exactly make us feel safe, does it?’

‘I can’t comment on that, Miss Ragdale. It wasn’t our inquiry. But if we find him this time, it’s very unlikely he’ll be seeing anything but prison walls for a good few years to come.’

She managed a cynical smile. ‘What’s he done this time, then?’

‘We can’t tell you that at the moment, I’m afraid.’

‘Thought not.’

‘Can you tell us where you think he might be? We’ve got his bail address.’ I reeled it off to her. ‘Any other ideas?’

‘I ain’t had much to do with him these past couple of months, thank God. I know there were another couple of girls working for him. One was called Nicki, and I think another one was Dora. I dunno where they live, though.’ She must have seen the disappointment in our expressions, because she tried to justify herself. ‘Honest, I’m not trying to protect him. I hate the bastard. If you do ever get hold of him, I hope you throw away the key, but I honestly can’t think where he’ll be. He moves around a lot. He’s got a lot of enemies, people he owes money to, so he’s pretty slippery when he wants to be.’

And that was it really. I stood up, and Malik followed suit.

‘Thanks for your time, Miss Ragdale. Bye, Jack.’

Jack shouted a very long ‘bye’ back, and gave me a wide grin.

Malik pulled a card from the pocket of his suit. ‘If you do hear from Mr Panner at any point in the future. .’

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’ll be on the blower like a shot. I don’t want that bastard coming anywhere near us.’

She saw us to the door, and as it shut behind us I suddenly felt very depressed. Ever since childhood, I’ve always wanted justice for people, and by that I mean seeing that they get the fate they deserve. If another kid at school was bullied for no reason, I’d intervene, because it wasn’t fair, and I knew that I couldn’t just stand by and do nothing. As a copper, I’d spent the last twenty years intervening in the world around me, trying to create an illusion of fairness, but what depressed me now was that I could see no justice here and, worse, I could do nothing about it either. I was leaving behind a young woman and her son to live their lonely existence in a cramped little flat high above the ground, forgotten by the world around them, except when it came calling with threats and violence, and I couldn’t help wondering how long it would be before Fiona Ragdale ended up hawking herself for another pimp and escaping reality by sinking back into the dope. And what, then, would happen to Jack? A pimp and a thug in the making? A care-home kid? A street runaway dead by fifteen? Or maybe it would be a story with a happy ending. Such things are always possible, I suppose, but somehow I didn’t think so. The thing with me is that I’m a pessimist who’s constantly trying to be optimistic, but can’t quite manage it. Experience gained through years of policework doesn’t allow for that sort of naivety.

I thought about saying something to Malik about how I was feeling, but decided against it. Sometimes these things are best kept to yourself. Perhaps I could buy Jack something, or send them some money. But I knew I was deluding myself. I’d forget about the two of them soon enough, when the next crisis or tragedy came calling.

When we were back on street level, Malik pulled his mobile from his pocket and called the DCS while we made our way through the subway that led under the main road outside the Warwick estate in the direction of Royal Oak Underground station. A watery, early-spring sun fought its way out from behind the clouds as we crossed the wrought-iron bridge that passed over the train tracks heading into Paddington, and I suddenly got that uplifting feeling that the worst of the winter was over and that summer was coming.

We got back to where the car we’d brought was parked at a meter in the somewhat grander ambience of Porchester Square, a few hundred yards and a million miles away from the tower block where we’d just been, and Malik finished talking to Flanagan and hung up. ‘He’s very pleased with the Panner lead,’ he said, as we got in and I started the engine. ‘The pressure’s beginning to get too much on this one. He’s doing a press conference down at Scotland Yard in half an hour, just to keep everyone in the media up to date with our progress. I think he was getting a bit worried about it. Now with this, he’s going to tell them that we’re following up on several significant leads, which should keep them quiet for a day or two.’