There’s no Donatella to be found at the Donatella Caffé, just two squawking pensioners called June and Bernie who can only seem to agree on two things. The first being that we really must try the stollen cake, the second being that I have lovely hair. The issue of Maryanne Doyle is proving a little more contentious though, with June insisting she’d only been in a few times, while Bernie’s adamant they could near enough erect a plaque to her.
I honestly don’t know where to hedge my bets as they’re both as dotty as each other and equally ancient. Not that old means unreliable, of course. Far from it. Give me an eagle-eyed OAP over a self-absorbed Gen Y any day of the week. Nosiness trumps narcissism every time
These pair are breaking the mould though.
‘Well, she was definitely here Friday morning,’ says Bernie, pointing at the receipt, stating the obvious.
‘But do you actually remember seeing her?’ It comes out a bit snotty so I quickly make amends. ‘Go on then, give me a bit of that stollen. I’m useless. I’ve no willpower at all.’
Bernie looks appeased and hands me a slice the size of a car battery. ‘Well, I’m not sure,’ she says. ‘I had a lot on my mind on Friday. I’ve got to have an operation, you know.’
June looks up from a tub of tuna mix and mouths ‘Gallstones’.
‘And it’s chockablock on a Friday, always is. There’s a Zumba class up the road who come in here afterwards. Sit for hours, they do.’ I offer her money for the cake but she shakes her head. ‘No, no, it’s on the house, I insist. I’ve always been a big fan of the police, haven’t I, June? Dangerous job, specially for young girls like you pair. Call it repayment.’
I smile. ‘Repayment comes out of your council tax, Bernie, but thanks all the same. I’ll be needing a few Zumba classes myself after this.’
Emily takes over as I tuck in. ‘Did you ever see her with anyone?’
They eye each other nervously, like the wrong answer could get them life without parole. It’s June who eventually braves it.
‘No, I don’t think so. Nice looking girl, weren’t she? Classy, I mean. Had one of those fancy brown coats. We used to call them flasher macs back in the day but they’re all the rage now apparently.’
I hoover up another forkful, dutifully faking a cake orgasm. ‘Any chance of the other dates she came in, ladies? Apart from Friday. I appreciate it’s not easy.’
‘Well, we don’t sell many of those Ristretto things,’ offers June. ‘I could go through the till roll for the past few weeks, see if I can find another.’
‘We do actually,’ says Bernie, all superior. ‘That fat man with the cap, he always has one. And that lady with the Down’s syndrome lad, not that she gets a minute’s peace to drink it, the poor creature.’
June looks smug. ‘Ah, but the police can cross-reference to see if they were here on a particular day, and if they weren’t then it must have been this dead girl. It’s called “process of elimination”, Bern.’
‘It’s called watching too much bloody Morse.’
‘Did you ever talk to her about anything?’ I interrupt, breaking up the spat.
Bernie frowns. ‘Such as?’
‘Well, where she’d been? Where she was going? Why she was in the area?’
Baffled expressions. Customer engagement clearly isn’t their forte.
It’s June who pipes up again. ‘I think I saw her over there once, if that’s any help.’ She points across the street. ‘Some time last week. That gated road where the posh houses are. It might have been her, anyway. Same sort of hair, same browny coat.’ She adds a hint of warning to her voice. ‘But I was going past on the bus and he doesn’t take any prisoners when he’s behind schedule so I didn’t exactly get a good look, and I wasn’t wearing the right glasses. I’d had to borrow our Eileen’s because I’d left mine at the Harvester.’ A small shrug. ‘Anyway, whoever it was was bending down talking into that walkie-talkie thing.’
‘The intercom, you fool,’ snaps Bernie.
I hand my card across the counter, give another thumbs-up for the cake. ‘That’s very helpful, June, thank you. And anything the till roll throws up would be great.’
‘Waste of time,’ says Emily as we stand outside, shuddering against the shock of the cold, our shoulders huddled up around our ears.
Most investigative work is, I should tell her. However I’m taking a surprising amount of pride in my prefect role so I do my best to strike a positive tone.
‘Not necessarily. Let’s check out this gated road. If it was Alice Lapaine, someone must know her.’
Emily curls her lip. ‘Yeah, if it even was her? I’m not sure anything those two said would stand up in court.’
‘True. But if you want your murders sewn up in the space of two hours, go and binge-watch Morse with the lovely June over there. Otherwise, get your arse over the road with me.’
*
Keeper’s Close is a pronounced curve of nine houses, the kind of street a child would scrawl with gravelly paths meandering between perfectly manicured lawns, primary-coloured front doors decorated with pine cones and Christmas wreaths, and white picket fences sectioning off the Haves from the Have-Mores. At the top of the close, a Waitrose van is parked outside what is clearly the best house – a three-storey period property that makes the other million-pound drums look a bit pedestrian and naff. Like plain and frumpy bridesmaids forming a guard of honour for the far more elegant bride.
Emily tries not to look impressed but when £50,000 of Range Rover pulls up to the gates she practically goes cross-eyed with envy.
‘You’re in the wrong job,’ I say to her, signalling to the driver to wind down his window. ‘If it’s fancy cars you’re after, you’re going to have to make damn sure you marry well. And you’re definitely barking up the wrong tree with Ben Swaines.’
She feigns outrage. ‘Get lost, I don’t fancy Ben. It’s just flirting, livening up the . . .’
I’m spared the girly chat by a frail old man leaning out of the car window, waif-like in his behemoth of a car. ‘Can I help?’ he says in a quiet, raspy voice.
I flash my ID. ‘Do you live here, sir?’
‘Yes. Well, no. I do at the moment, most of the time anyway. What’s this about?’ His face clouds. ‘God, it’s not that arsehole, Bingham, again, is it? She’ll go mad.’
I file Bingham for later and pull Alice’s photo out of my pocket. ‘Do you recognise this woman?
A quick but curious glance. ‘No, sorry. But you’d be better off talking to my daughter.’ He points towards Keeper’s Close’s very own Taj Mahal. ‘The house at the top.’
He pulls off and we follow behind slowly. By the time we reach the barn, the elderly man isn’t looking so fragile, berating the Waitrose driver for some barely noticeable scratch on a pillar while behind him, a good-looking woman wearing skinny jeans and a poncho-cum-granny blanket-type-thing, looks ready to commit murder. We wait a few seconds for her to acknowledge us but she’s too busy pacifying her father and pleading with a small child to stop tormenting the cat.
‘Hello,’ I shout, over the racket of alpha men and cranky kids.
The elderly man looks round, momentarily confused, like he’s completely forgotten his encounter with the Law in the time it took to drive up the pathway. ‘Oh sorry. Gina, these officers want a word.’
Gina looks at us unmoved, as if somehow resigned to yet another drama. ‘Oh, OK.’ She scoops up the cat-tormenting child. ‘Can you bring the shopping through, please? I’ve rather got my hands full.’
I figure the instruction’s aimed at the Waitrose man but I make myself useful anyway, hauling a case of Pouilly-Fumé off the van and following her into a cavernous hall – all stone floors and timber beams and a Christmas tree to rival Rockefeller’s.
‘So what’s this about?’ she says, craning her neck round, trying not to be strangled by the clinging toddler.
‘We’re investigating a murder, Mrs? Sorry, I didn’t catch your name?’
‘Hicks. Murder?’ The usual blend of alarm mixed with macabre delight.
We follow her into the kitchen where an identical toddler is slumped on a beanbag in front of Paw Patrol, and a neighbour, who introduces herself as Tash Marwood, is wrapping ham around figs. I lean against the Aga and blow Tash Marwood’s mind with the ‘M’ word while we wait for Gina to bribe the toddlers out of the room with Fruit-Shoots and Pom-Bears. Eventually negotiations cease and she closes the door.
‘Murder, you said? Good God! Who? Where?’ She looks towards Tash Marwood. ‘God, it’s not someone on the close, is it?’
‘No. Central London. The victim went by two names, Alice Lapaine and Maryanne Doyle.’ I wait a beat to see if there’s a flicker of recognition from either of them. Nothing. ‘We’re following a line of enquiry that she was seen at your main gates recently, talking into the intercom. We’ll need to speak to all the residents.’
Gina lets out a long breath. ‘Well, the names mean nothing, I’m afraid. Tash?’
Tash shakes her head, eyes full of appalled excitement. ‘Do you have a picture?’
Emily offers the photo. Tash offers an instant ‘No, sorry’. Gina’s just about to say something when her father staggers into the room, legs buckling under the weight of two cases of wine. She bolts towards him, furious.
‘Dad, I told you not to lift those. Go and get Leo to help. Jesus!’ She hoists the wine onto the marble island and sighs deeply. ‘I’m sorry, my father’s not well so he’s staying with us, and I’m trying to get ready for a party and all in all, it’s a bit of a mad-house today. Christmas drinks with the neighbours,’ she explains with all the enthusiasm of someone facing the firing squad. ‘We did it the first year we moved in. It was my husband’s idea – basically, he extends the invite and I put in all the effort. Anyway, unfortunately it seems to have become rather a tradition.’
‘I’ll bet it has. People love a tradition that involves drinking someone else’s booze.’
She smiles – perfect straight teeth, well-cared for, not synthesised. ‘Anyway, what I was about to say was that the Chapmans at number four have an au pair who looks a bit like this woman. The au pair’s younger, of course, and well, she’s not exactly her double, but there’s definitely a similarity. It could have been her at the gate? What do you reckon, Tash?’
Tash looks up from her canapés. ‘Wouldn’t surprise me. Mine’s always forgetting her keys, forgetting the gate-code, expecting to be buzzed in at all hours. It’s like having another child to look after half the time. Absolute nightmare.’
Emily shoots me a look. ‘Can-you-believe-this-broad?’
Gina smiles again, embarrassed by her friend. ‘I know, I know, first-world-problems and all that.’
I smile. ‘Hey look, you deserve a medal as far as I’m concerned. Twins, right? My sister has one and she’s permanently on the edge of a breakdown.’
‘Try four. Twins and two teenagers.’
‘Blimey,’ is all I can think to say, then, ‘At least you have babysitters on tap, I suppose.’
‘There is that. My eldest Leo is good with them. I wouldn’t leave them with Amber though. She’d be too busy Instagramming to notice they were drinking bleach.’
I pull a face that says, ‘Teenage girls, eh.’ ‘You mentioned your husband before, Mrs Hicks. Is he in? Only it’d be good to show him the photo too, just to see if it rings any bells.’
She sighs the sigh of the put-upon-but-well-compensated wife. ‘Detective, my husband would struggle to recognise me in a photo, that’s how often he’s here.’ A snort of ‘tell me about it’ from Tash Marwood. ‘How long will you be around though? He did say he’d try and get home earlyish to help out – if you can call shouting at the children and criticising my wine choices “helping” – I can’t imagine he’ll shed any light though.’
I smile blandly and hand her my card. ‘If we don’t manage to see him, could you ask him to call the station and an officer will return with the photo.’ She nods, compliant but bewildered. ‘Mrs Marwood, is there anyone in at your home?’
Tash Marwood doesn’t look up this time, too busy doing something intricate with pears. ‘Not really. Tim’s been in Singapore for the past week, he doesn’t get back until tomorrow. There’s Maria, my au pair, I suppose. Feel free. Although if you get more than five words out of her, I’ll be shocked.’
‘There is another thing, Mrs Hicks, your father mentioned an “arsehole” called Bingham earlier. He thought that’s why we were here. Anything we need to be aware of when we knock his door?’
‘Bingham?’ she says, with a twitch of a smile. ‘You mean our resident Victor Meldrew? Oh it’s nothing, really. Leo had a bit of a party while we were away a few months back and Bingham’s convinced that someone well, defecated, on his lawn.’
‘Charming. I take it he’s not invited tonight?’
She laughs, ‘Er, no.’
I have to ask. ‘And did someone defecate on his lawn?’
She nudges me off the Aga, slides a tray of something almondy onto a shelf. ‘I wouldn’t put anything past teenage boys, Detective. Some of them are filthy pigs. But I know Leo didn’t and I also know he won’t be having any more parties. Not after his father finished with him.’
As if called to the stage, the kitchen door crashes open and a handsome man-boy swaggers in with a case of wine under his left arm and his little sister on his right hip. At first glance, he doesn’t look like the type to ‘defecate’ on a lawn but then I don’t have much to compare him to. The only teenage male I’ve endured at close proximity is Noel and this lad seems like a different species with his confident, easy ‘hellos’ and trendy, sculpted hair.
‘Mum, the cat scratched Mia again. We should drown that little runt.’
Maybe not so different, after all.
‘Do you recognise this woman?’ Emily doesn’t waste any time pulling the photo out again. The man-boy stares for a couple of seconds, biting a fleshy bottom lip before giving a listless shake of the head. He doesn’t ask who we are, doesn’t ask who the woman in the photo is. Teenage apathy at its best.
The apathy’s catching and I suddenly feel bored and under-utilised standing in this kitchen. I give Emily the nod, say, ‘OK, well, thanks very much for your time. And if you do think of anything . . .’
‘You know, you haven’t picked a great time to come calling,’ says Tash Marwood. ‘Most people on the close are at work during the day.’
Gina nods. ‘Shame you didn’t come later. You’d have got all the neighbours under one roof. Around the fireplace. Like that programme, Poirot!’
I laugh because they seem to think it’s a great gag and also because I want a favour.
‘Actually, it’d be great if you could mention it to your guests. If they’re not in, we’ll obviously leave details, but if you could encourage them to call us ASAP, it’d be much appreciated.’
They both look delighted by this, Tash Marwood especially. ‘Oh, consider it done, Detective. Anything but the strangled small-talk. I mean, who wants to discuss school fees and Brexit when you can discuss murder!’
It’s distasteful but it’s the truth.
I let it slide.
*
Tash Marwood’s not wrong. We haven’t picked a great time to go knocking and all I manage is one harassed-looking au pair with patchy English and the much-maligned Bingham – or Bingham-Waites as he corrects me – a Grade-A cretin wearing a too-short dressing gown and the gait of the perpetually pissed-off.
Bingham-Waites doesn’t recognise Alice but suggests she might be a whore visiting one John Hardwich at number six. He’s always ‘at it,’ he informs me, in a way that makes me want to go home and scrub my skin raw. Next, he suggests she could be one of Lady Muck’s skivvies – Gina Hicks can’t wipe her arse without bringing in help, apparently. In a nutshell, he has nothing to offer except cheap insults and perceived slights, and I leave his hovel of a lair hoping that someone did defecate on his front lawn. It seems like quite a fitting tribute to this hateful little man.
Emily doesn’t fare any better. There’s no answer at the Chapmans’ so no doppelganger au pair to check out, and the only interaction she has at all is with a deranged Jack Russell, scrabbling at the door of number two, desperate to get out and tear her limb from limb.
So all in all, a fairly futile playdate for the two of us. Alice Lapaine may have talked into the intercom at the gates of Keeper’s Close if we’re to take the word of a pensioner on a speeding bus as sacrosanct, or we could have just wasted the best part of two hours.
At the moment, I’m prepared to keep an open mind. I just need to stay involved in this case.
As we walk the quarter mile back to the car, Emily stresses about the team’s Secret Santa while I zone out and think about Leo Hicks, or more specifically, I think back to a party I once threw like him. It was 2006 and I was sixteen. Mum and Dad were in Cyprus and before the party I’d made sure that anything Dad held dear was conveniently displayed for the worst of the delinquents I’d invited to the house. I’d even sold his signed West Ham shirt to some scary-looking dude with ACAB – ‘All Cops Are Bastards’ – tattooed across his knuckles.
I asked for a fiver. We settled on two pounds fifty.
‘Not when his father had finished with him,’ Gina Hicks had said about Leo, and I wonder what punishment he’d faced on their return. Chores? Curfews? Confiscations?
Dad did nothing, initially – discipline was always very much Mum’s domain whereas dereliction of all parental responsibility was very much his. It was only days later, when I offered him the two pounds fifty and he realised his precious football shirt hadn’t been nicked after all, but sold, by his daughter, for roughly the same price as a Big Mac, that he showed his true colours, slamming me against the kitchen wall and whispering, ‘One day you’ll push me too far, sweetheart, and it won’t end well. That’s not a threat, it’s a promise.’
Of course, my sister says watered-down versions of this to my nephew all the time.
‘If I have to come up there, Finn Hadley, you’ll regret it . . .’
‘I won’t warn you again, young man . . .’
And only the other day, I overheard Flowers telling his wife, ‘She doesn’t need new Nike Air Zooms, Gill. What she needs is a boot up the fucking arse.’
So as a rule, parenthood seems to be a never-ending issuing of cheap shots, veiled threats and frayed tempers, but still I know – as sure as I knew then – that Dad was only one deep breath away from hurting me that night. And who knows, maybe I’d have deserved it? Everyone has their breaking point and I’d been pushing Dad for a long, long time.
I don’t want to think about this anymore so I tell Emily I like her bag just to make conversation. It’s black, functional and totally nondescript in every way but the five-minute anecdote about where she bought it (Zara, Cambridge, they didn’t take the security tag off and she got stopped on the way out) brings my heart-rate back to normal and chases away any residual thoughts about my dad.
Further salvation comes in the form of my ringtone. Parnell.
‘Hey Sarge?’ I fumble for the keys to the pool car.
‘All right, kiddo, how’d you get on?’
‘Nothing that helpful. Emily’s going to write it up when we get back.’
Which is news to a scowling Emily.
‘How far away are you?’
I throw the keys to Emily, signal for her to drive. ‘We’re just leaving Wandsworth now. Why? Where’s the fire?’
‘Thomas Lapaine’s coming back in. I want you with me.’
I pause – to my credit, I pause. It’s never my intention to antagonise Steele, far from it.
‘So has the Boss OK’d it? I mean, what about Renée? Or Flowers?’
‘I am the boss. Acting DI, remember? No, I want me, you and Seth to take turns with him. You heard Renée before, she’s not exactly flavour of the month with Tom Lapaine, and Flowers hasn’t got the finesse for this one. So get your skates on, I need you back here for a quick brief.’
If I knew what was good for me, I’d ’fess up to Parnell that Steele doesn’t want me too involved in this investigation. Too active at its core. She’s fine for me to lean up against Agas asking routine questions to peripheral witnesses. She didn’t even mind me being in on the first Thomas Lapaine interview when my role was simply to ‘um-hum’ sympathetically and take notes. But now he’s a proper suspect? I’m not so sure. And I run everything by her, she said. She couldn’t have been any clearer.
I consider this for all of two seconds.
‘No problem, Sarge. See you in half an hour.’