I See You(63)

‘Not to her,’ Kelly said quietly.

They drove in silence. Gradually Nick stopped gripping the wheel as though it were about to fly off, and the pulse Kelly had seen throbbing in the side of his temple began to subside. She wondered if she’d made her point in such a way that Nick was actually reconsidering his decision to keep Zoe in the dark, or whether he was mulling over how best to take her off the investigation and send her back to BTP.

Instead, he simply changed the subject.

‘How come you joined BTP and not the Met?’ he said, when they were on the A40.

‘They weren’t recruiting, and I wanted to stay in London. I’ve got family close by.’

‘A sister, right?’

‘Yes. My twin.’

‘There are two of you? Heaven help us.’ Nick glanced at her and Kelly grinned, less at the joke itself than the olive branch it represented.

‘How about you? Are you a Londoner?’

‘Born and bred. Although I’m second generation Italian. Mum and Dad are Sicilian; they came over when Mum was pregnant with my older brother, and opened a restaurant in Clerkenwell.’

‘Rampello’s,’ Kelly said, remembering the conversation with Melissa.

‘Di preciso.’

‘Do you speak Italian?’

‘No more than your average tourist, much to Mum’s eternal shame.’ Held at green lights while the driver in front worked out which way to turn, Nick gave two short beeps on the horn. ‘My brothers and I had to work in the restaurant at weekends and after school, and she used to yell instructions at us in Italian. I refused point-blank to answer.’

‘Why?’

‘Stubborn, I guess. Plus I knew even then that one of us would have to take over the restaurant when Mum and Dad retired, and I didn’t want to encourage them. Joining the police was all I ever wanted to do.’

‘Your parents weren’t keen?’

‘They cried at my passing out parade. And not with happiness.’

They turned on to Old Gloucester Road, and Kelly brought up Google Maps on her phone to see which end of the road they would find number 27. ‘There’s not much residential housing down here – it must be converted flats.’

‘Or it’s a wild goose chase,’ Nick said grimly, pulling up on double-yellow lines outside a Chinese restaurant. Number 27 was sandwiched between a laundrette and a boarded-up bookies. ‘I think our chances of finding Mr James Stanford here are slim.’

Nick took the car’s logbook from the glovebox and left it prominently on the dashboard, the police crest on the cover usually sufficient to deter traffic wardens.

The door to number 27 was grimy with exhaust fumes. It opened into an empty lobby, its tiled floor cracked and dirty. There was no reception desk, and no internal door or lift, only rows of locked mailboxes covering three of the walls.

‘Are you sure we’ve got the right place?’ Kelly asked.

‘It’s the right place, all right,’ Nick said grimly. ‘We’re just not going to find James Stanford here.’ He pointed to a poster on the door, its edges peeling away from the grubby paintwork.

Sick of picking up your mail? Upgrade your account and we’ll forward it to your door!





‘It’s a mail centre. A posh PO box number – nothing more.’ He pulled out his phone and took a photograph of the poster, then scanned the rows of mailboxes, which seemed to be in no discernible order.

‘Here it is.’ Kelly had started at the opposite side of the lobby. ‘James Stanford.’ She tugged the handle hopefully. ‘Locked.’

‘The credit card used to pay for the adverts is registered to this address, too,’ Nick said. ‘Get a data protection waiver to them as soon as we get back, and find out who put the mail forwarding in place. We’re being given the runaround, and I don’t like it.’

The company behind the Old Gloucester Road postal address was surprisingly helpful. Keen to avoid any accusation of wrongdoing and – Kelly suspected – aware they had been less than robust with their own checks, they handed over everything they had on James Stanford without waiting for a data protection waiver.

Stanford had provided copies of a credit card bill and a utility statement, as well as his driving licence, showing him to be a white male born in 1959. All three documents gave an address in Amersham, a town in Buckinghamshire at the end of the Metropolitan line.

‘Bet house prices are steep round here,’ Nick commented, as they drove past a series of huge detached houses, each set behind imposing metal gates.

‘Do you want me to let local CID know?’ Kelly said, picking up her phone to find the number.

Nick shook his head. ‘We’ll be in and out before they know it. Let’s check out the house and make a few discreet enquiries with the neighbours if no one’s home.’

Tudor House, Candlin Street, was not Tudor at all, despite the black-painted beams criss-crossing the exterior. A large, modern build, the house was set in what Kelly estimated to be an acre or so of garden. Nick pulled up in front of the gates and looked for a buzzer, but they swung open automatically.

‘What’s the point of those, then?’ Kelly said.

‘Just for show, aren’t they?’ Nick said. ‘More money than sense.’