“You know who killed your husband?” Phil asked while I was still working on closing my suddenly slack jaw.
Lilah nodded. “That bloke of his, he’s the one. Couldn’t stand the thought of my Jonny-boy coming back to me, could he?”
“He came back to you?” I blurted out, having finally got my mouth in gear.
Luckily, Lilah didn’t seem miffed at my surprised tone. “Course he did. I mean, I hadn’t seen him or nothing, but why else would he be around here? He was on his way home, bless him, and that bastard came running after him. Shoved my poor boy in the canal rather than give him up again.”
Phil and me exchanged looks. Dave’s brief report on the state of the investigation had conspicuously failed to include the words It was the boyfriend what done it and we got him bang to rights. Phil coughed. “Can you tell us about the man you suspect?”
“Already told you all I know, didn’t I? If you found my Jonny, you must have found him and all.”
I blinked. “Wait, do you mean Kelvin, uh . . .”
“Reid,” Phil put in. “The stallholder?”
“That’s him. Nasty piece of work.” She shivered.
“What did the police think of your theory?” Phil went on.
For a moment I thought Lilah was actually going to spit. “Told me they’d keep it in mind. Bunch of useless tossers. Bet he slipped ’em a bung. They’re all on the take. Always have been.”
I could sense Phil holding himself in check after this slur on his former profession. Time I took the initiative. “What you want, love, is an impartial investigator. Someone who’ll see justice done.”
She looked up sharply. “Offering your services, are you? I can’t say you didn’t deliver on finding him for me, but you ain’t gonna solve this one by angling your little dangle and communing with the spirits. No offence.”
Ouch. She’d changed her tune on my so-called talents. But then I supposed it’d all been good fun before the killing started. Now, if I could commune with the spirits, that’d be a pretty surefire way of solving most murders, but since I couldn’t, it didn’t seem worth arguing the point. “Not my services. Phil’s. He’s a private investigator, isn’t he? This sort of job’s his bread and butter.”
Well, to be honest, it was more like the posh crackers and whisky-laced marmalade they sell in John Lewis around Christmas as gifts for people who don’t need anything. But the point was, it wasn’t like he’d never done it before.
Lilah turned to face Phil and gave him a hard stare. “You telling me you can prove he done it?”
“If he did it. You want to make sure the right person gets punished, don’t you?” Phil gave her a hard stare back. It was just as well they were sitting at opposite sides of a table. Anything that might have inadvertently strayed between them—like me, for instance—would have been fried in the laser beam of their combined glares.
“Course he done it.” Lilah was wavering. Then she steeled herself. “What have you got that the coppers haven’t, anyway?”
Phil didn’t give an inch. “People will talk to a private investigator who won’t talk to the police.”
She wasn’t buying it—or at least, not without checking its dental records. “You reckon.”
“I know. I was on the force for six years. I’ve seen it from both sides.”
I’d always thought, technically speaking, the police and Phil were on the same side, with the criminals on the other, but it didn’t seem like a helpful thing to say right now.
Lilah fixed my beloved with a speculative eye. “Why did you leave?”
“Creative differences,” I put in quickly. Phil could get touchy about that particular time in his life. Shame, though. Explaining how he’d been suspended for losing it with a wife-beating arse-wipe who’d intimidated his victim into dropping the charges might have given him some extra cred with Lilah. “Tell you what, you hire Phil to get the bastard who killed your husband, and I’ll waive my fee for finding him, how about that?”
Lilah frowned, then nodded slowly. “You got a deal. But you dig stuff up, you tell me first, you got that?”
“Course, love.” I darted a glance over at Phil in case I’d gone too far, but he was nodding.
Lilah flashed us a tiny smile. “Then we’re good. So you’re going to have words with Kelvin What’s-his-arse now?”
Phil stood up. “It’ll make sense to talk to people locally first, while we’re here. Visit his place of work. And I’d like to have a look at his personal effects.”
“His stuff? I can show you the things he left here, but anything that meant anything went back to Camden with him.” For a moment she slumped, her face sad and tired, and I could believe Darren and her were the same age. “Didn’t have much, did he? Travelled light, my boy did. Come on, then.”
She got down from her chair. I cast a regretful glance back at the biscuit tin and followed her and Phil upstairs.
It was a lot roomier up there than I’d expected, and even Phil didn’t have to watch his step so as not to bang his head. Lilah and Jonny-boy’s bedroom resembled a film set, and I don’t mean a low-budget porno. More like one of those not-very-historical (if you believe Cherry, anyhow) dramas about medieval kings and queens shagging their way through the court. There was the biggest four-poster bed I’d ever seen, and everything was draped in deep-red velvet. A proper old-fashioned fireplace on the opposite wall, which definitely hadn’t started its life in this room, had a top-of-the-range electric fire installed, and what was probably a genuine bearskin hearthrug. Lilah’s skimpy silk nightie lay draped across the unmade bed. I looked away quickly, feeling like a peeping Tom.
She opened up one end of a vast built-in wardrobe. “This is Jonny’s end.” Then she clammed up. Maybe it’d occurred to her too that should have been in past tense.
We poked our noses in. The rails were sagging in the middle under the weight of expensive, barely worn suits and crisply starched shirts, with a strong whiff of the dry-cleaners. It didn’t seem like what you’d wear to sell antiques, but then again, most of what I knew about the trade came from dozing off in front of Antiques Roadshow when there was nothing else on the telly. There was a collection of soberly coloured ties hanging on the door, which I gave a quick once-over—and then peered at more closely. Huh. Not as boring as I’d thought: one had a moustache motif, another was covered in little airships, and yet another had discreet little Jolly Rogers.
“He loved his ties,” Lilah put in sadly.
At the bottom of the wardrobe, next to half a dozen pairs of the sort of shoes that come in a little bag and with wooden feet in to keep them nice—amazing what I’d learned, peeking in Phil’s side of our wardrobe back home—there was a crumpled stack of faded jeans and T-shirts.
I was starting to get a picture of our Mr. Parrot, and it didn’t look at all like the image Lilah seemed to have of him. Or, probably more accurately, had tried to mould him into. I wondered why he’d let her. Money? Or had he really loved her and wanted to be the bloke she thought he could be?
Phil coughed, reminding me to get on with things. I did my best to block out everything else, focus whatever part of my mind was responsible for the old spidey-senses, and listen.
Nothing.
Or rather, there was plenty—but none of it was coming either from or to this little collection of orphaned clothes. There was a heavy background buzz that, as I concentrated, separated into different trails—
“What you looking for, then?” Lilah demanded, thrusting her head next to mine in the wardrobe and totally derailing my efforts.
I managed not to yelp in surprise, or swear as I straightened up. “Clues,” I said shortly. Phil quirked an eyebrow at me, and I shook my head a fraction of an inch in reply.
“What about his other belongings?” Phil asked. “Did he have hobbies?”
“There’s his golf clubs in the garage. But you might as well finish up in the house first, right?” Lilah didn’t leave us for a second, and she didn’t stop talking for more than a minute at a time, either. Mostly about how much she missed her Jonny-boy, she couldn’t believe he was really gone, and Oi, where do you think you’re going now?
That was when Phil tried to take a peek into a room near the end of the landing. He got as far as opening the door a crack and letting out a strong whiff of stale air and staler socks, before she stopped him. “That’s Axel’s room. You won’t find nothing in there.”
“Axel?”
“My little boy. He’s been devastated by all this. You leave him in peace.”
He’d been in the room? I sent Phil a questioning glance, and he nodded. I wondered what little Axel had been up to not to add his own protests about being barged in on. Sleeping, maybe? It wasn’t noon yet, so it was still practically the middle of the night for your average teenager.
“How many kids have you got?” I asked to try to lighten the suddenly frosty mood.
“Just the two. That’s Lola’s room, so you don’t need to go in there, neither.” She nodded towards the next door along.
Lola? Christ, I hoped it wasn’t short for Lolita, poor kid. “Is she very upset by her stepdad’s death?”
I said it sympathetically, but Lilah still gave me a dark look. “Course she is. Just ’cos he wasn’t her real dad don’t mean she didn’t love him.”
Phil coughed. “I understand this is a difficult time for all of you, but it might help us to have a word with her and your son. Sometimes children pick up on things.”
Lilah frowned, her mouth pinched. “I don’t want ’em upset. Lola’s not home, anyhow,” she added, sounding pleased about it.
So, not so upset about Jonny-boy’s death she hadn’t nipped off out with her mates—or at least, presumably that was where she was.
“Perhaps we could start with Axel, then,” Phil suggested.
“I suppose. But no upsetting him, right?” Lilah had a determined set to her jaw. “You go and sit in the living room, and I’ll bring him down.”
We went. “You don’t reckon she’s coaching him on what to say, do you?” I muttered as low as I could in Phil’s shell-like once we’d reached the sofa.
“Who knows?” He glanced around the room with a suspicious gleam in his eye, although to be fair, that was pretty much a default expression for my beloved, especially when he was on a case.
“My guess is they’re covering up for little Lola. She bashed Jonny-boy on the head to get back at her mum for the godawful name—I mean, seriously, Lilah and Lola? She might as well have called her Mini-Me.” And now I had that Kinks song stuck in my head. Cheers, love.
Phil huffed. “You think? She’s probably a foot taller than her mum, remember. Dwarf parents usually have kids of normal height.”
“Yeah, but ‘mini’ doesn’t have to mean height, does it?”
“Not unless you’re going by the actual dictionary—”
He broke off at the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs.