Stephen Leather - Once bitten

I put on a clean shirt and suit and slipped the envelope and Terry's photograph into the inside pocket and drove to the precinct. On the way I had a sudden urge to see Terry so I took a detour past North Alta-Vista. I parked outside the building and rang the bell for her apartment but she wasn't there, or if she was she wasn't answering. A young woman with two children came out of the main entrance and smiled as she walked by.

"I don't suppose you know Terry Ferriman?" I asked.

She shook her head. I described her and the woman said yes, she knew who I meant, and that yes she was probably in because wasn't that her car I'd parked behind. It was a black top-of-therange Porsche squatting at the kerb like a huge metal beetle.

"That's Terry's car?" I said, surprised.

"Are you a friend?" she said suspiciously.

"Yes, but I never realised she drove a Porsche," I said. The woman still didn't look convinced and the last thing I wanted was for her to phone the cops and report me as a suspicious character so I showed her my LAPD identification and she relaxed.

"I'm not getting any answer," I said, pushing the bell again.

She looked at the console of buttons and squinted,. "I thought she lived in the basement," she said. One of her children, a young girl, three years old at most, began crying. I reached down and tousled her hair. She cried all the louder. Children don't seem to like me much these days. Maybe they know something.

"Oh no, she's got a small apartment. Upstairs. I've been there."

"I'm sure she lives in the basement," the woman insisted.

I wondered if perhaps we were talking about different girls so I showed her the black and white photograph. "That's her, for sure," she said. "And I've seen her going into the basement flat." She pointed at the console on the wall. "Try that bell," she said and watched as I did. I guess she was convinced by now that I was planning to break in.

There was still no answer so I told her that I'd give up and get her on the phone. As I turned to go I had another thought and I asked her for the name of the firm who looked after the block, handled lettings and that sort of thing. She gave me the name and a telephone number and I wrote them down on the back of the envelope containing the strands of her hair. I could feel her eyes on me as I walked back to the car so I didn't look through the windows of the black Porsche, much as I wanted to. Terry and I hadn't discussed cars to any great extent, just a few passing remarks about my love affair with the Alpine, but I would have expected her to have told me that she had a Porsche. Porsche owners aren't exactly renowned for modesty, if you know what I mean. I wondered too how a young girl who lived in a cramped one-bedroomed apartment in a not particularly affluent part of the city could afford a car like that and the sky-high insurance premiums that went with it.

When I got to the office it was deserted. On my desk was a message from Rivron saying that Chuck Harrison had called so I rang the lawyer first. He wanted to tell me that he'd drawn up the settlement papers and that I could go to his office anytime and sign them. He sounded disappointed that I was so willing to settle, but Deborah had taken all the fight out of me.

My next call was to the firm who managed the block where Terry lived. I got the boss on the line and told him who I was, checked that the North Alta-Vista address was one of his properties, and asked him which apartment she rented.

The man, a slow-talking guy with a baritone voice, coughed and said that actually Ms Ferriman didn't rent any of the apartments in the building. I interrupted him before he'd finished speaking and told him that I'd already been there along with a couple of Homicide detectives so I knew that she lived there.

He coughed again. "What I mean to say, Dr Beaverbrook," he said patiently, "is that Ms Ferriman doesn't rent any of the apartments there, she owns them."

"Owns which?" I asked.

"Ms Ferriman owns them all," he said. "The whole block. We act as her agent, finding suitable tenants and such like, collecting rents, carrying out repairs."

I was staggered. At a conservative estimate the building must have been worth about $10 million. How on earth did a young girl come to own a piece of expensive real estate like that?

Thoughts of the car flashed into my mind again.

"For how long have you been acting for Ms Ferriman?" I said.

Another dry cough. "For the last six years, to the best of my knowledge."

Since she was a teenager. That didn't make sense.

"And are all the apartments occupied?" I asked.

"They are."

"But the one-bedroom apartment is used by Ms Ferriman?"

"That is correct. And she also uses the basement. For storage, I understand. It is a substantial size, taking up as it does virtually all the basement area with the exception of the laundry facilities and the furnace."

"I don't want to sound as if I don't believe you, but I'm sure that I got the impression that she rented the apartment. The one bedroom apartment."

"Oh no, I can assure you most definitely that she owns it. What makes you think she rented?"

For a moment I wasn't sure, then suddenly it came back to me. "There was a list," I said. "In the apartment. There was an inventory, a list of what the apartment contained, the sort of thing that a landlord would have, so that when the tenant moves out he can check if there was anything missing." Like a knife, I thought.

"Ah, I see your confusion, Mr Beaverbrook. Yes, we ran an inventory on all the apartments some time ago at the request of Ms Ferriman. And we did the one bedroom apartment at the time, I remember, as she suggested that at some time in the future she might decide to rent it."

"And the basement?"

"No, no, the basement was to be kept for storage, I seem to remember. No, I don't think anyone from our office has ever been there. No need to, you see."

"Yes, I see. One more thing, when were you asked to do the inventory."

There was a hesitation and an intake of breath as he thought. "I would think it would have been about six months ago," he said. "Several tenants had moved out and Ms Ferriman had redecorated, so she thought it would be an opportune moment to compile new inventories for the various apartments in the building."

I thanked him for his help, and asked him for one more piece of information. The name of the bank to which his company passed on the rent from the various tenants in the building. He said he was always happy to assist the LAPD in its inquiries. He seemed like a nice guy. I wondered about the knife. De'Ath thought it wasn't an issue any more because the landlord's inventory showed that there was no knife missing. I wondered how he'd react when he found that Terry was effectively her own landlord and that the inventory had been her idea.

Rivron came back as I was replacing the receiver and he dropped his computer onto his desk hard enough to rattle its disc drives. "You're back, then?" he said, and you didn't have to be psychic to tell that he was mightily pissed off at me.

"Yeah, I'm sorry about that," I said. "Are we busy?"

"Are we ever!" he said. He threw himself into his chair and scooted it backwards so that he could swing his feet on top the desk. "A loony with a grudge against women who's been spraying acid onto the legs of women with long blonde hair. A teenage girl who's been crucifying cats in her bedroom. Two armed robbers who claim to be hearing voices from beyond the grave. And a Bible salesman who said God spoke to him through his car radio and told him to drive through a crowd of tourists on Hollywood Boulevard. How's your day been?"

Yeah, he was definitely pissed off at me.

"I'm sorry about last night," I said. "I was on a case, and it took me longer than I thought to get there. How's it been so far this afternoon?"