It doesn’t take long to twist Parnell’s arm. A quick call to Superintendent Blake to be told he’s a good boy, then an even quicker call home to get clearance from Mrs P, and we’re leaning up against the quiz machine in the Bell Tavern, Parnell supping a festively named guest ale (Rocking Rudolph!), and me, the house Pinot. One turns into four alarmingly quickly and it’s not long before the photos come out. One hundred and twenty-nine snaps of varying-sized Parnells in varying locations emanating varying degrees of happiness.
One of them pretty handsome, actually, and not too far off my age. A little clean-cut for my hobo tastes but I’m tipsy enough not to care.
‘You never created that fine specimen, surely?’ I snatch Parnell’s phone and hold it close to my face. ‘We could DNA test him, you know, on the QT. It’s not too late to go after the milkman.’
‘Cheeky cow.’ Parnell loads another pound into the quiz machine.
‘Seriously, can you get me a date? I’d make a great daughter-in-law.’ I give him a quick poke. ‘Just think, you could see me all the time then.’
‘I don’t think you’re Dan’s type. No offence.’
‘Plenty taken though. Why? What’s wrong with me?’
‘You’re female, for a start.’
The Pinot’s dulled my brain and it takes me a second to catch on. Parnell rolls his eyes as the penny drops.
‘Boss!’ I say, punching him on the shoulder. ‘I didn’t know you had a gay son. Well done you,’ I add, inexplicably.
He spits his pint. ‘I wasn’t aware it was a personal achievement, but thanks.’ A sideways glance. ‘You know, a pint of water between drinks wouldn’t do you any harm.’
‘Oh bore off, Dad.’
The ‘D’ word pulls me up and I get a surge of affection for Parnell, simply on account of him being just about as far away from my dad as a man could be.
Slightly old-fashioned. Overweight. Decent.
‘Seriously though. Why’ve you never mentioned Dan’s gay?’
‘I’ve never mentioned Adam’s a coeliac either.’
It’s a fair point. I don’t know why I’m getting so giddy about it. In my defence, I’m feeling off-kilter tonight. Twitchier than usual. The thought of a pregnant, teenage Maryanne Doyle is sucking the air out of my lungs and I’ll do anything to block it out, whether that means soaking it with wine or bantering it away with Parnell.
‘I’ve never mentioned the twins are left-handed either.’
I gesture for another round of drinks. ‘Yeah, yeah, point taken.’
I could add it’s about the only thing he’s never mentioned. Parnell talks about six-year-old James and Joe – aka his forty-seventh year birthday presents – a lot, although it’s never quite consistent. They’re either his later-life miracle or his punishment from God, depending on how early they woke him up that morning.
‘So anyway, changing the subject,’ he says, looking curious. ‘Why are you drinking with an old duffer like me on a Thursday night? Are there no nice young men you’re currently interested in? Straight ones,’ he adds.
I laugh. ‘Plenty I’m interested in.’
He steps back, sizes me up like a prize bull. ‘You must do all right?’
‘God you’re a real charmer, Parnell, do you know that?’ He grins. ‘I suppose I do do all right. It’s not much to shout about though, is it? “All right”. I bet Emily does better than “all right”.’
‘I bet Emily’s at home right now wishing she made the team laugh as much as you do. Wishing she had your brains.’
I give Parnell a flat-eyed stare. ‘Christ, you can tell you haven’t raised women. Trust me, she won’t be thinking anything like that. She’ll be thinking, “Oh aren’t I lucky to be so princess-perfect and isn’t Kinsella lucky that she got a good personality to make up for that unfortunate nose.”’
It’s self-pitying and I don’t really believe it but it makes Parnell laugh and that always feels nice.
He pinches my nose between his thumb and his forefinger. ‘There’s nothing wrong with your nose.’
‘You don’t have to be kind, you know. I accept it.’ I put my hands together in prayer. ‘I am at peace with my conk, Parnell. Well, unless I’m around my brother and he starts his “Kinsella by name, Kinsella by nose”routine.’
‘Your brother sounds like a prick.’
‘He is. The prickiest of the pricks. I used to wish he’d die in an accident.’ Parnell looks horrified so I add a quick laugh. ‘OK, maybe not die. Just get mangled up a bit, fed through a tube . . .’
‘You’re bloody dark, Kinsella. I wouldn’t go telling your shrink that, she’ll have a field—’
‘How do you know about that?’
My voice burns with accusation but of course he knows. Of course Steele would have told him. You can’t sell a car without the logbook and you can’t give someone responsibility for me without mentioning the faulty wiring.
I can’t meet his eyes.
‘Look, anything to do with kids is tough. Stop beating yourself up.’
It’s a genuine plea from someone who knows, not a half-meant platitude or a counselling cliché, but I really, really don’t want to go here with Parnell. I rather liked how I thought he saw me – a bit dark, a bit clever and with a perfectly OK nose. It makes me all kinds of miserable that he knows I can’t keep my shit together.
He turns my cheek, forces me to look at him. ‘Hey, you didn’t do anything wrong, Cat.’
Cat. Not ‘kiddo’. Not even ‘Kinsella’.
‘So everyone keeps telling me but I didn’t do anything right either.’ He waits for me to go on. ‘I froze, Boss. I threw up. I cried – hysterically. All in front of a little girl who’d just spent the best part of two days doing jigsaws next to her mum’s corpse.’
‘You have to try . . .’
‘No, listen, hear me out, I’m getting to a more positive bit, honest.’ He doesn’t look convinced so I plough on quickly. ‘Do you know, the only thing I can be, not proud of, just not ashamed of, is that I acted on my gut that day checking on Dafina – that’s the mum – ahead of the court case. I mean, if I hadn’t, God knows how long Alana-Jane would have been stuck there and the body would have been in a much worse state. Don’t get me wrong, she looked horrific – there was so much blood and she’d started to go a bit greenish. But if it’d been a few more days, when the bloating started, and the smell . . .’
Parnell nods. He understands. ‘Focus on that then. Your natural copper’s instinct made an absolutely horrendous situation a bit less horrendous.’
I pinch my thumb and forefinger together. ‘A tiny bit, maybe. I don’t think me vomiting through my nose did though.’
‘I hear the little girl’s quite taken with you.’
I blink away a tear. ‘She drew me a picture. Wanna see it?’
‘Of course.’
I pull it out of my wallet where it’s lived for two months, wedged between a photo of me and Mum in a bumper car and a ticket for a live gig I completely forgot about. It’s a drawing of me in bright orange outline wearing a spotty pink dress and high heels – one clumpy shoe twice the size of the other. I’ve only got one ear and my nose is a messy green splodge but I’ve got a lovely big smile. It bursts out the side of my cheeks and fills the whole width of the page.
It’s the smile that gives me comfort that I must have done something right.
‘It’s uncanny,’ says Parnell. ‘She definitely got the nose right.’
A quick slap to the head and we stand side by side for a few minutes, silently pressing buttons on the quiz machine, answering questions about everything from country music to past Nobel prize winners. Eventually Parnell’s appetite for trivia runs out and talk turns back to the inevitable.
‘So what about Thomas Lapaine?’ Parnell looks frustrated, although it could be the four-pound jackpot we just gambled – and lost. ‘I haven’t got anything personal against the guy but eliminating him puts us one step closer to the “random stranger” nightmare which is the last thing we all need.’
I sip my wine, realise I’ve sunk two thirds without noticing. ‘I’ve got something personal against him. Bloke’s a tosser.’
‘We’ve met worse.’
He’s right but I’m riled. ‘It’s just all that “not getting any warmth at home” crap really winds me up.’
‘Alice didn’t have many friends. Could suggest a cold fish?’
‘Nor does he!’ I reply, a bit too loud. There’s a TV playing in the corner but the sound’s turned down. ‘Tech reckon his social media circle’s pretty minuscule.’
‘Maybe he has real friends. Do they even exist anymore?’
I ignore the question, stay stranded on my own soapbox. ‘I mean, what even is “warmth”? Wasn’t she putting out regularly enough? He kind of implied that. Or didn’t she mollycoddle him enough like Mother?’
Parnell shrugs. His position on the fence annoys me, even though it’s got no right to, and when you’re annoyed and five drinks down, you occasionally say things you regret.
‘My dad had affairs.’
It comes out as a loaded declaration. A defining statement of sorts. And it is to me, I suppose. It’s certainly shaped the person I am and many a counsellor has argued that it’s the reason behind every neurosis, disorder and general vague oddity that I’ve been daft enough to admit to. However, to Parnell, I’m just a melodramatic colleague. An emotional drunk admitting her dad did something that a lot of dads do. Mums too.
I try to explain, put my outburst into context.
‘And he used to sound just like Thomas Lapaine, that’s why I brought it up. Mum didn’t love him enough, apparently. She didn’t give him enough attention. She was always too busy with us. He was just a cash machine . . .’
‘And he said all this to you?’ Parnell lands a size nine on my side of the fence. ‘Not good.’
‘Yeah well, he wasn’t a good husband.’
‘Clearly. Bad husbands can still be good fathers though.’
Bless Parnell, he loves to play the curmudgeon but essentially he’s an optimist.
‘I dare say some can, he can’t.’
Parnell takes a long slug of ale. I’m sure he’s buying time so he can think of how to change the subject and frankly, who could blame him.
‘OK, define a “good father”?’ he says eventually, staying on the same rocky course.
‘Someone who puts his kids first. Someone dependable, consistent. You,’ I add, cringing a bit. ‘At least from what I know anyway.’
‘Me?’ He takes out his phone again, offers it to me. ‘Do you think you could call Mags and repeat that. I haven’t been home for the twins’ bedtime in nearly a fortnight and look at me now, out drinking with you.’
‘I thought Maggie OK’d it?’
‘She did. She’s a good woman. The best.’
I feel bad now. I have this fantasy that me and Maggie become friends at some point. She tells me stories about a younger and slimmer Parnell while I get her wasted on Glitter Bombs.
‘Jesus, you should have gone home, Boss, put your kids to bed. Why didn’t you, for God’s sake?’
‘Because you asked me to come for a drink. And the only reason a young girl like you asks an old duffer like me for a drink is if she’s drowning her sorrows. If she’s lonely or upset about something.’
I say nothing.
‘I’m right, aren’t I? You’re still brooding over the little girl in the bedsit – and, well, it’s obvious this case, Thomas Lapaine’s affair anyway, has brought stuff about your dad to the surface.’
Yeah, just a little.
I don’t know whether to laugh like a drain or cry myself dry.
I opt for more silence.
‘Look, you can’t let it cloud your judgement, kiddo. You’ve got a long career ahead of you, you’re going to meet a lot of cheating slimeballs, I’m afraid. Can’t arrest them all.’
‘S’pose not,’ I say, after a while. ‘Hey, unless you become a private investigator when you retire and I help you out with the cheating spouse cases. Parnell PI. It’s a got a ring to it.’
‘Retirement.’
Parnell exhales the word but it’s not a peaceful exhale. Feeling bad about bringing it up, I draw the conversation back.
‘Anyway, I do have one thing to thank Dad’s affairs for.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Set me on the path to being a detective.’
Parnell settles onto a barstool. ‘Oh, this I have to hear.’
‘Then you shall.’ I take a deep theatrical breath. I’ve never told anyone this before. ‘OK, I’d have been about nine, maybe ten. Jacqui had picked me up from school and she was supposed to be taking me to Irish dancing but I’d hurt my foot playing rounders so we didn’t end up going. Anyway, when we get home I go upstairs to get something and as I walk past Mum and Dad’s door, I can see someone in the bed. Well, two people. And I’m confused because Mum and Dad are both supposed to be out somewhere – that’s why Jacqui had to pick me up – but I can clearly see two people. So I go a bit closer and peer through a crack in the door and I can definitely make out Dad, but I can’t see the other person. All I can see are her feet sticking out the bottom of the bed. And her toenails are this sort of damson colour. So I’m thinking “is that Mum?” and the idea’s obviously grossing me out so I can’t knock the door, but I can’t phone Mum either because a) I don’t have a clue what her number is and b) even at nine years old, I’ve got the measure of my dad and I’m thinking “But what if it’s not Mum?” So I do nothing, but I decide the next chance I get, I’m going to go through all Mum’s nail polishes to see if I can match one to Plum Paws.’
Parnell’s doing a great job of looking transfixed. ‘And you couldn’t?’
‘Nope, all pale pinks and boring nudes. But I decide that’s not conclusive proof anyway, because Mum could have just used the last of the damson polish and thrown it away, or she could have left it at Auntie Carmel’s or something, so I decide I need another plan.’ I tap the side of my head. ‘See, Sherlock Holmes, even then.’ Parnell grins. ‘So for weeks, right, I save my pocket money and I beg Jacqui to let me tag along a few times when she goes up to Oxford Street, and I keep looking and looking and eventually I find this dark purple polish in Boots, just like Plum Paws, and I buy it for Mum in the hope she’ll at least say, “Oh what a lovely colour, thank you sweetheart” but kind of hoping she’ll say – because it’ll be more conclusive, “Oh, what a coincidence, I had one just like this.”’
I pause, but I’m being deliberately melodramatic this time. Parnell’s loving it.
‘But she didn’t,’ he says.
I shake my head. ‘No she didn’t. She’s not exactly rude about it but she says something like “Good God, it’s a bit gothic, poppet” – I didn’t know what “gothic” meant but I could tell it wasn’t a good thing. And then she says, “It’s not the type of colour I’d ever usually wear but maybe I should have an image change, ha ha.”’
‘Oh dear.’
I nod. ‘Indeed. Anyway, I had this friend at the time called Katy Kielty and her mum used to take us swimming at Finchley Lido. She had dark purple toenails this one time.’ Another pause. ‘I’d found Plum Paws.’
Parnell laughs. ‘On one piece of circumstantial evidence! No forensics, no witnesses?’
‘Yeah, but she’d always fancied my dad so I had motive.’
‘Hold up.’ Parnell stops laughing and looks over the top of my head towards the TV. ‘This’ll keep us busy tomorrow. Forget Plum Paws, it looks like we’re on.’ To the barman. ‘Turn that up, mate.’
Steele’s elfin features fill the screen, earnestly appealing for witnesses to come forward to help solve this ‘particularly heinous crime.’ Her face is sombre, unflinching and flawless. Eyebrows perfectly shaped. Lips, a deep raspberry red. If Plum Paws triggered my desire to be a detective, meeting Steele stamped it across my heart and I’m willing to bet that I’m not the only female in the force who dreams of being DCI Kate Steele when they grow up.
‘Never shy of the spotlight, our Kate,’ says Parnell, not unkindly. ‘Do you know what Craig’s taken to calling her?’
I cock an ear but my eyes stay fixed.
‘Kate Kardashian. You know, because she loves the spotlight . . .’
‘Yeah, I get it, Boss.’ I put a finger to my lips. ‘Ssssh, I’m trying to listen.’
It’s a short piece. Just a minute or so of Steele being impressive and of course the two faces of Maryanne Doyle/Alice Lapaine contradicting each other at every turn – carefree and cocksure as an ebony-haired teenager, downcast and diffident by a blonde thirty-five.
But it’s the last ten seconds that floor me. The panoramic sweep across Mulderrin that captures the roof of Gran’s old house, the tilting ash trees lining Duffy’s field, the tip of the crucifix standing proud on top of St Benedict’s, where prayers were said for Maryanne Doyle even though everyone was adamant she was nothing but a feckless trollop who’d gone off to find more of her kind.
It has to be stock footage they’re using. Just some producer’s poetic attempt to contrast the rolling fields of her youth with the urban squalor of her death. Because there’s no way the UK media would have descended on Mulderrin just yet. Not without any clear links between the then and the now to spur headlines.
And we have no links to give them.
There’s no official links anyway.
Because the fact that one man was in the local area for both Maryanne’s disappearance in 1998 and her murder in 2016, is a poisonous seed that’s planted so far deep inside my psyche that I’m not sure I could prise it out, even if I had the guts, or the willingness, to try.