Chapter 35
THIRTY-FIVE
DAN
‘You gonna pay for that damage then or what?’ The landlord at the Bull and Barrow jabs his finger in the direction of the broken door, his eyes bulging, clearly vexed.
The door is off the hinge, the wood split in too many places to ever be salvageable.
It’s the direct result of the ‘element of surprise’. And boy, is he unhappy about it.
‘You lot think you can just steam in here, mob-handed and smash the gaff up, don’t you?’ he spits, angrily. ‘Damaging my property and my reputation?’
‘Well, at least you can restore the door,’ Davis remarks, poker-faced.
He turns to her sharply. ‘Funny.’ He growls. ‘Where’s your warrant, eh?’
Pete Samson, the renowned landlord of the notorious Bull and Barrow public house, isn’t a small man.
Somewhere around six foot four with a thick, heavy-set build, he has a slight stoop from his shoulders and looks like he snacks on small children for breakfast. Lucky for Davis and me, he’s outnumbered today.
And speaking of small children, at some point, I’d really like to get home to see my own.
I’ve been on the go for the past seventy-two hours practically straight.
‘We don’t need one, Pete – I can call you Pete, can I? My name’s Detective Chief…’
‘I don’t give a rat’s arse what your name is, sunshine—’ he booms, ‘get out of my pub, go on, all of you, piss off. You’ve got no business here, no business preventing me from running my business.
’ The veins in his neck are purple and protruding.
‘Everything’s legit, my taxes are up to date, you’ll find nothing you’re looking for here.
And no, you can’t bleedin’ well call me Pete.
’ A fleck of spittle lands on my cheek as he angrily projects.
‘This is persecution, this is, police harassment… it’s criminal damage is what it is… ’
I wipe his spittle off my face with the back of my hand. I could be wrong, but something tells me that the offer of a free drink might be off the table.
‘Do you know the reason we’re here, Mr Samson? We can always talk about it down at the station if you prefer. You can make a complaint there if you like.’ I flash him a rictus grin.
‘Don’t worry,’ he says, teeth clenched, ‘I fully intend to.’ He nudges the broken door with the tip of his boot.
‘That’s going to cost me money, that is.
I can’t rent the room out now, can I? Have you any idea what it’ll cost to replace?
Course you ain’t, don’t bleedin’ well care either, do you?
Next time, try asking nicely before you send the thugs in.
’ He glowers as the last of the SWAT team retreat.
‘Bunch of muppets,’ he grumbles underneath his breath as they make their way downstairs to search the rest of the property.
‘Where is she, Mr Samson?’
‘Where’s who? Seriously, you think I’m a mind-reader on top of everything else, do you?’ His small, dark eyes settle on mine. ‘Whatever – whoever – you’re looking for, they ain’t here, are they? You got eyes, look,’ – he points – ‘the room, it’s empty.’
I can’t argue with him. There’s no sign of Erin inside the grotty single guest room, or of her ever having been there. It’s neat and clean – a bit too clean perhaps, judging by the overall standard of the place, and the overpowering smell of bleach.
‘We have reason to believe that a suspect wanted in connection with a recent murder has been staying here, at this address, in Room 7. Her name is Erin Santos. She’s a former inmate at Larksmere, convicted of manslaughter back in 2019.’
He glances up at me then. I could be mistaken, but I think I see a flicker of surprise in his eyes.
‘Did you check her in, Mr Samson?
‘The blonde, you mean? She wrote her name down in the guest book, paid cash, and I gave her a key, if that’s what you mean by “checked her in”.’
‘Can we see this guest register, Mr Samson?’ Davis asks, with a saccharine smile.
‘No, you can’t. You can piss off!’ He stomps down the stairs, back to the bar. Davis and I follow behind him.
‘The woman staying in Room 7, Mr Samson,’ I continue, ‘I’m right in saying that it was a woman who was staying here?’
He releases a long breath.
‘Man, woman, whatever you want to call yourself these days,’ – he shrugs – ‘I don’t pay too much notice, if you know what I mean, keep myself to myself. I spend most of my time here, behind the bar.’ He stops, pauses, lets out a breath.
‘Look, this is King’s Cross, right? Thousands of visitors come here every day, 365 days a year. I probably wouldn’t recognise any of the guests who’ve ever stayed here if you lined them all up next to each other.’
‘They’d recognise you though, wouldn’t they, Mr Samson?’ Davis raises an eyebrow. She’s on form today.
He smirks. ‘Yeah, well, some things are worth remembering, ain’t they, sweetheart?
’ He rakes his eyes over her, roughly shoves the guest book across the bar towards me.
‘There was this little blonde bird. Can’t remember her name, nor much about her.
She was staying in Room 7, but she checked out last night, and when I say “checked out”, I mean she left the key behind and I ain’t seen her since.
Pity really, I was looking forward to having that scampi and chips… ’
He appears to have a moment of reverie.
‘Scampi and chips?’
He snaps himself out of it as Davis flips open the guest book, which is basically a tatty, thumb-worn, old lined exercise book that you can buy in any newsagent’s.
‘All mod cons here, eh, Mr Samson?’ I remark, nodding at it.
He curls his lip at me. It makes him look even more menacing than his resting face already is.
‘You know, you two ought to do stand-up together,’ he says, ‘something to fall back on if the day jobs don’t work out, or maybe I should say, when they don’t. And I trust technology even less than I trust you feds,’ he sniffs, ‘which is saying something.’
I start flicking through the pages.
‘In case you hadn’t noticed, we ain’t the Dorchester. Here, people come and people go. I don’t ask questions and I stay out of other people’s business, something your lot should try doing once in a while. Anyway, the blonde. I think she said her name was Milly – Milly or Molly maybe.’
Davis and I exchange glances.
‘Ah, yes. Here she is.’ The name and date are roughly scribbled down in almost illegible handwriting. ‘Molly… Malcolm.’
Incidentally, I’d taken a surprise phone call from Malcolm while I was on the way here to the Bull and Barrow. I was hoping he had something useful to tell me, but as it was, he simply wanted to ask me to pass on a message. Like I haven’t got enough to do.
‘Have you found her yet, Mr Riley? Have you found Erin?’ His voice sounded sad and urgent.
I feel as if somehow, in amongst all of this mess, these two people – Malcolm and Erin – genuinely seem to have connected with each other.
I feel a bit choked when I think about it, about what might’ve been if things were different. Maybe I’m going soft in my old age.
‘Not yet, Malcolm, but we’re working on it. Have you heard from Erin? Has she tried to contact you, or Molly perhaps?’
‘No.’ The disappointment hung heavy in his voice. ‘Nothing. And I don’t know about Molly, for some reason she isn’t speaking to me at the moment. I’ve no idea why, or what I’ve done wrong.’
I did. Blatantly, Molly has a crush on Malcolm. The poor girl practically turned to blancmange in his company. And the look on her face when Malcolm said that he and Erin spent the afternoon together, in her apartment! I couldn’t make my mind up who I felt more sorry for in that moment, her or him.
‘Anyway, I’m sure Molly would’ve said something if she had. We’re all really worried about Erin, I’m really worried about Erin.’
He sounded miserable and I felt a pang of empathy for him. I guess you can’t help who you fall in love with, but it’s my duty to warn him.
‘Erin suffers from various mental health issues,’ I say it as gently as possible. ‘She could be a danger, Malcolm, to you and to herself. So if she does contact you, or tries to meet with you or—’
‘Mr Riley… Detective Riley,’ he butts in, ‘if you see Erin, when you see Erin, will you give her a message back from me, please?’
‘OK, Malcolm.’ I let out a small sigh. ‘What’s the message?’
‘Can you tell her I said, “You don’t need to be”?’
Looking here at Mr Samson’s ‘guest book’, ‘Molly Malcolm’ checked in two days ago, but the information on when she checked out is blank.
‘Did you speak to Molly during her stay, Mr Samson? Did you chat together?’
‘Only the basics, when she arrived, like “Hello, please sign in, no smoking in the rooms…”’
‘She didn’t come down to the bar to get a drink, or something to eat?’
‘Maybe. Can’t really remember. I serve dozens of people every day. After a while, their faces seem to blur into one, know what I mean?’ He pours himself a neat Scotch and throws it back in one.
‘I take it you have CCTV on the premises that we can check?’ Davis says. ‘It’s one of the conditions of your licence here, isn’t it, Mr Samson, that you must have working CCTV in operation to retain your licence?’
He gives Davis a hard stare from behind the bar.
‘It got damaged, a few days ago. Stopped working.’ He loudly sniffs back mucus from his nose and throat. ‘I’ve called an engineer out, but they ain’t got no one till next Tuesday.’
‘Great, well, we’ll see you next Tuesday then!’ Davis smiles.
He exhales, laughs as he shakes his head. ‘I quite like you, sister, you got balls,’ he smirks, ‘probably literally.’
Davis flashes him a hard stare in return, unimpressed.
‘Why does the room smell so strongly of bleach, Mr Samson?’
‘It’s a crime to keep the place clean, now is it? Seriously? It smells of bleach because it’s been cleaned, ready for the next guest.’ He rolls his eyes, clearly exasperated.
‘Was this the woman who was staying with you?’ I place Erin’s mugshot in front of him. ‘You may have already seen her picture on the news, on social media.’
‘Don’t watch the news. Life’s miserable enough, ain’t it? And I only use one website – OnlyFans.’ He grins at Davis, displaying two gold teeth.
‘Quite the charmer you, aren’t you, Mr Samson?’
Davis can barely disguise the disgust on her face.
‘How much do they pay you lot to do this shit, eh?’ He gestures around him at the empty bar, most of the guests having made a hasty exit upon our arrival.
‘Not enough, I’ll say. An attractive woman like you could make a good little earner out of OnlyFans as a sideline – you should give it some thought. ’
‘That’s enough, Mr Samson – the photo.’ I tap a hard finger on it, for him to look. ‘Is this the woman who was staying here, is this ‘Molly Malcolm’?’
Reluctantly, he glances down at it.
‘No.’ He shakes his head, and for the first time since we arrived, it seems genuine.
‘You got the wrong girl, mate. All that effort, all that damage for nothing…’ He tuts, shakes his head ruefully.
‘The girl that was here was a blonde, attractive, yeah, she was… really pretty…’ He seems a little contemplative for a moment. ‘Actually, I quite fancied her.’
Blimey, there really must be something in the air tonight.
‘She looked nothing like this minger here.’ He nods at Erin’s photo with a curled lip. ‘Never seen her before in my life.’