Chapter Thirty-Five #2
‘Wait, no,’ said Stevie. ‘You’re bringing something back to me.
When I was at the hospital, before Nina died, Jordan was speaking to the panicking mum.
Andrea. He was trying to give her information because she was so upset.
He showed her a picture of those tubes – which is why I knew about them – and he said they were for drug use and she said, “Not that”. What did she mean, I wonder?’
‘What do you think she meant?’ asked Kim.
‘At the time I thought it was just a way of saying, “Oh my God, not that as well”.’
‘What else could she have meant?’ Edward asked.
‘It’s rattled around in my bloody head. “Not that”. What if she said “Not that” to mean “No, you’re wrong, it wasn’t that”? Meaning the policeman was wrong about those tubes? They weren’t for drugs but something else?’
‘I wonder what she thought she was seeing,’ Edward said.
‘She’s been through so much, she probably won’t even remember herself,’ Stevie said. ‘Poor lass.’
They ate for a bit, and he said, ‘OK, so this is probably a good moment to tell you why we’re here.
’ He tore a corner off the naan bread, thought better of putting it in his mouth just before trying to speak, and placed it on the edge of his dinner plate.
The orange jalfrezi sauce began to creep into it like a bloodstain on a carpet.
He pulled a sheaf of papers from his briefcase.
‘This is a rental agreement that Jordan sent me. Confidential. I printed it out. The landlord’s name is Cammell-Curzon. See, on the front.’
‘Can I touch it?’ asked Stevie.
‘Sure. Why on earth not?’
‘I was thinking prints.’
‘Fingerpr—?’ Edward began, about to say, ‘Don’t be ridiculous, this came off my home printer,’ but then he saw she was joking. They were playing detective, the other two. But this was not a game. This was about Nina Lopez.
‘What sort of a name is that?’ Stevie asked. ‘Richard Cammell-Cordon?’
‘Cammell-Curzon,’ I think, said Kim, reading over her shoulder.
‘This eye doesn’t see too well.’
‘Yes, Richard Cammell-Curzon is the landlord,’ Edward confirmed.
‘Should just be DICK TOSSER-PRAT.’
‘I don’t think we’ve got time for a class war, Stevie.’
‘Some of them do loads for charity,’ said Kim vaguely.
Edward had already looked at the document in Stevie’s hands.
She held it unnaturally close to her face, a reminder that her eyesight had been damaged by the acid.
The front page said: ASSURED SHORTHOLD TENANCY AGREEMENT; there was an index showing seven different headings for seven sections.
1. Parties Involved, 2. Property Description, 3.
Term of Tenancy, 4. Rules regarding smoking, pets, and guests, 5.
Deposit Information, 6. Termination Procedures, 7. Signatures as to Agreement.
‘It’s all on the front page,’ said Edward. ‘I printed out the whole thing, ten pages. But the name of the tenant and the name of the landlord are on page one.’
‘This is probably printed off ChatGPT or some other AI service,’ Kim said, leaning over Stevie’s shoulder. ‘It’s the most generic tenancy I’ve ever seen.’
‘JC gave me the whole thing, but – as you say – it’s standard.’
‘Richard Cammell-Curzon,’ Kim read, still on page one. The address was in Beer, a pretty spot ten miles east where young families went to a resort called Pecorama and rode a model train at the top of a cliff. On a good day a warm breeze blew in from the sea. ‘So, a Londoner,’ she said.
‘How do you work that out?’ asked Stevie.
‘Look at the house name,’ Kim said, holding up the agreement with her finger against the address: The Old Rectory. ‘Londoners always call things “old this, old that” to show off.’
‘Wanker,’ said Stevie. ‘That’s why I’m living with my mum and dad.’
‘I’m guessing he has a dozen properties,’ said Kim, always the estate agent. ‘He’s never lived in any of them himself.’
‘This sounds like a nice place.’ Edward took the first page and looked at the text below the signature. ‘Why does that trigger you, Stevie? You live in a rectory yourself.’
‘A new one,’ bristled Stevie.
‘Wait. Show me the other pages,’ said Kim when they had all calmed down. She took them from Stevie and leafed through them. ‘These things are always a mess. Meaningless. Non-smoking clauses and anti-dog clauses when the tenant doesn’t smoke and has a pet snake.’
‘Are you seeing something I didn’t see?’ asked Edward. ‘I skimmed the rest of it.’
‘Here.’ Kim slid the paper back across the table so they could all see it. Edward heard his hearing aid whistle and turned it down.
‘What am I looking at?’ asked Stevie, craning her neck.
‘Page eight. You have to list referees. Those signatures, see? May not matter, but useful. The names – they’re always such a mess – not printed, just handwritten. Can you make them out?’
Stevie tried. ‘One is Mettles.’
Kim put in, ‘Nettles. And I think the other one is Hearts.’
‘Victor Nettles?’ Edward peered at the page himself. ‘I missed that. Isn’t one of them supposed to be vouching for the tenant?’
Kim shrugged. ‘The way it works normally is that the landlord does the contract, gets a couple of his mates to sign – Mr Hearts is supposedly signing for Lev, as you can see – but all the landlord wants is his deposit. So he’ll get the whole form ready and he just wants cash, Lev’s signature, and that’s it. ’
‘So we have three people to find – Nettles, Hearts, and the landlord himself.’ Edward gathered up the various pages and shuffled the document into an orderly block.
His phone pinged with a text which he ignored.
He was on the first page of the rental agreement again.
‘Lev Malnyk, Ukrainian address. I thought “Lev” was short for something—’
‘Wouldn’t the Met go and visit his home address?’ asked Kim.
Edward queried, ‘On the eastern side of Ukraine?’
‘Good point. They might not come back.’ Kim continued, ‘Regarding “Lev”, theoretically you always sign your full name.’
Edward blew his nose loudly. The curry had been strong and his eyes were watering. ‘Our Lev has caused total chaos, that’s for sure. I had a call this week from the tourist office saying they’d had forty per cent cancellations on boat trips. That’s the main measure for how busy we are in summer.’
Stevie took the document back. She went to page eight again. ‘Hearts is a doctor. At least, that’s a surgery address. What if he really was Lev’s referee? Bloody shit, he’d be the only one who knew him in this country. Excuse my—’
‘Lots of people have doctors who don’t know them,’ Kim cut in. ‘I heard there was once an era where you could go to see your doctor in person, but I don’t believe that’s true.’
Edward was staring at his phone, eyebrows raised. ‘Wow. I never expected that.’
The other two were silent, waiting for more. Stevie broke the last poppadom with a sound like a gunshot.
‘Go on,’ said Kim. ‘We’re tense here.’
Edward spoke to Stevie, because she didn’t know the story.
‘Late at night, in my garden, the night I did that hours-long broadcast and broke the news that Nina had been killed by a radioactive substance, I got attacked by two massive people. Enormous. Police uniforms, I think, but it was all weird and I couldn’t see properly in the dark. ’
‘Cops?’
‘They wore rubber masks. I thought two men, but now I think maybe a huge man and a huge woman. Both over six feet four and twenty stone.’
‘Forty stone of anger. That’s actually scary. A burglary?’
‘Oh no. Something else. That’s when my phone fell down the cliff.’
‘Better the phone than you.’
‘I thought they were trying to shove me over the edge.’ He shivered, but then remembered something at odds from the description he had just given. When he tried to examine the thought, it vanished.
‘Fuck. Me.’ Stevie’s mouth had frozen on the poppadom. Her jaw hung open.
‘That’s what I said,’ Kim put in. ‘And he didn’t go to the police.’
‘What if they were police? It was something to do with the Toppings case, because they kept shouting “Stop asking questions”, even when they were kicking me on the ground.’
‘So what does the text say?’ asked Kim.
Edward handed her the phone without taking his eyes off Stevie.
‘I thought I saw them in church on the day of the press conference. Massive man and woman, enormous, enormous woman in a wheelchair. We asked in the church and they said they’d let me know. I expected nothing. But—’
Kim said, ‘This text is actually from four days ago. I think you missed it.’ She read from the screen.
Hi, its Beatrice from Giles & Nics. I trust you as someone said youre off the radio. Please return fountain-pen to Les and Lily Boyd, 28 Hope Hill, Barton Ottery. They don’t have phone so won’t be expecting. Thank you. Praise God. Beatrice
‘What’s the pen?’
‘She was clever,’ said Edward, nodding at Kim. ‘The old “I think you might have dropped something” routine.’
Kim stared at Edward. ‘You can’t go, obviously.’
‘I am going. I am definitely going,’ Edward said stoutly.
‘You can’t go alone. They’re violent.’
‘If it’s them! When I saw them at the church, one of them was in a wheelchair!’
Stevie said, ‘People use wheelchairs at airports. It doesn’t mean they’re in them all the time. Maybe she has good days and bad days.’
‘What, bad days when she needs pushing around, and good days when she tries to throw me off a cliff?’ Edward exclaimed.
He changed tack. ‘Okay, squad. To business. We are sleuthing for JC. We are going to make progress on the Toppings case because the police can’t be bothered and a child died.
’ The mood at the table immediately shifted.
‘Kim, can you look up the referees on this rental agreement? Especially Hearts. And Stevie, you go and speak to the landlord. I think I should go see Lev’s flat. ’
‘Hey, why can’t you go and see the Cammell-Curzon guy yourself?’
‘Because I’m too famous,’ Edward said, at which Kim and Stevie laughed so hard that Stevie nearly fell off her chair and Kim had to spit a mouthful of salted yoghurt into her napkin.
‘I guess I’d need to be undercover,’ said Stevie, clearly warming to the idea.
Kim replied with a sigh, ‘I may not have time at the moment, (a) because I have a job, and (b) because I’ve got to stop my favourite property in Sidmouth being filled with crystal meth.’
‘Sorry?’ asked Edward: the words made no sense.
‘That’s what a parachute is,’ said Stevie. ‘Long story. She told me.’
‘Okay, I’ll do the two referees, it’s not a problem,’ said Edward. ‘I’ll go and see the flat. Might help.’
Kim said, ‘Have you got the photo of those tubes? I had an idea of how to find out what they are.’
He pulled out his phone and WhatsApped it to her.
‘If we find out anything, it’ll be more than Devon Police have done,’ said Edward. ‘I don’t think the local cops even spoke to the referees. JC never mentioned them.’
‘And when I meet Lord Bufton-Bottomstead—’
‘Richard Cammell-Curzon,’ Edward corrected Stevie.
‘—can I do a little class war at him?’
‘No V-signs, no effing-and-blinding please. Just get him to give you anything he can on Lev.’
‘You spoil all my fun, Edward.’
The other two swept their plates quietly. A minute later Edward said, ‘Do you want to see my wall?’
‘That sounds dodgy as hell,’ said Stevie. ‘Is that some sort of code between you two?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ said Kim. ‘I’ve never seen his wall.’
‘Let me show you.’