Seven a.m.
I wake up late, late for me anyway, twisted and practically mummified in my sheets with a cold sheen of sweat coating my body and a dozen family photos scattered across the bed. I don’t recall dreaming last night, although I must have done. The experts say that you always dream. That your dreams act as safety valves through which you live out unconscious desires, free from the hindrance of consequence or the shame of taboo.
I’ve never actually dreamed of killing my dad, although I did once dream that he’d killed me.
I sit up quickly, grateful for the late hour. Wake at seven a.m. and I’m thrown straight into focusing on real things, safe things – showers, vitamins, off-milk, tube delays – whereas at five a.m., my usual rise and shine, I’ve got two hours of lying in the half-light to grapple with. Two hours of thinking about all the things I could have done better and all the people I never see. Sometimes I use the time more effectively. I read lamebrain magazines by the light of my phone, doping myself with articles like ‘Change Your Face Primer, Change your life!!’ Other times I whisper affirmations into the silence, soothing myself with sad little cheerleads – advice from just about every self-help book I’ve ever been dopey enough to buy.
I am enough.
I am more than enough.
I love and approve of myself.
I am a good person.
It’s the last one that shames me. This notion that good somehow equals protected. Anyone would think I’d spent the past two years jazz-handing my way around Disney, not wading through the relentless grime of MIT, where despicable, unthinkable things happen to good people every day. Just last year I worked a case where a sixty-two-year-old dinner-lady, well known in her local community for her charity fun-runs and history of fostering disabled children, was fatally stabbed in the head four times in broad daylight, all over a piece of dropped litter.
She’d been a good person. One of the best by all accounts. I bet she never felt the need to affirm her goodness into the silence at five in the morning.
Fat lot of good being good did her.
Alice Lapaine had been a good person too.
*
‘Right, I’ve skim-read the report and I’m giving Vickery eight out of ten for crystal ball accuracy.’ At nine thirty, Steele sweeps into the office balancing files, a bucket of coffee, a paper bag containing something greasy and the thing she calls her handbag that most people would take on a citybreak.
Parnell, moving quicker than I’d have given him credit for, grabs the coffee as it threatens to capsize. ‘Cheers, Lu,’ she says, puffing and panting, dropping everything onto the nearest desk with a heavy thwack. ‘Chaps and chapesses, listen. I’ve literally got fifteen minutes for a quick catch-up and then I’m out all day – meetings with Blake, the Press Office, the bloody Dalai Lama for all I know. I’m assuming you’ve all had a chance to read through the PM reports? Well, you better bloody have, put it that way. Benny-boy, be a love and get the photos up on the big screen.’ To Parnell. ‘Lu, you lead. I need to eat.’
Ben busies himself being technical while everyone else dives into last-minute revision in case Parnell decides to play Ask the Audience.
‘So folks, Thomas Lapaine.’ Parnell walks over to the incident board and lands a meaty paw on his picture. ‘We need to get him back under this roof again because the PM threw up something very interesting – Alice had given birth to a child at some point. The shape of the cervix and pelvis confirms it. It’s hard to say when exactly, and I’m not even sure what this means, but it’s something he neglected to mention.’
‘Well, leave me out of that discussion, please,’ says Renée. ‘I think I’ve burned my bridges there – the first time we met I told him his wife was dead, the second time I told him she’d been lying through her teeth about who she really was.’
‘Bad, huh?’ I ask.
‘As bad as you’d expect. A few tears. A lot of shouting. He threw a glass at the wall as well – his mum shooed me out then, told me I was “impudent” and that she didn’t like my tone.’ Renée grins and I know what’s coming. ‘Didn’t like my skin-tone, more like. I don’t think Mother has a very diverse social set, if you know what I mean. It was a big enough shock learning her daughter-in-law was a hundred per cent Irish.’
Emily stops chewing a hangnail, straightens up. ‘Boss, I met the IVF consultant yesterday and I saw the patient registration form they both filled out. There was nothing on there about a prior pregnancy.’
‘Maybe Thomas Lapaine had no idea,’ I suggest. ‘It could have been before they met?’
Ben points to the screen. ‘Come on, stretch-marks across the abdomen, faint ones on the breasts. He must have realised, even if it was from before.’
Our female contingent shares a pained grin. I think about hoiking up my top and parading my silvery lines right in front of his innocent little face but I settle for embarrassing him instead. ‘Ben, have you ever actually seen a naked woman? A real one, I mean, not one that lives in your laptop or on your iPhone. Ever heard of a thing called a growth spurt, or a bit of weight gain?’
‘Maybe they had a stillborn?’ says Renée. ‘You’d kind of understand him not wanting to revisit that, not when he’s only just found out his wife’s dead.’
Parnell considers this but he’s not convinced. ‘Mmmm, I can see him not volunteering the information, but he talked to us a lot about kids. You’d think it would have come up somehow if there had been a child and, well, now there wasn’t.’
Steele steps in. ‘Renée, check records – adoption, birth, deaths, everything for a child born to either Alice Lapaine or Maryanne Doyle, here and in Ireland.’
‘’Course you know what this means,’ says Renée. ‘If she’d given birth in the past, the chances are, Thomas Lapaine was the problem.’
‘Which means what?’ I ask. ‘Last time I looked there wasn’t a direct link between male infertility and homicidal tendencies.’
Renée nods. ‘No, but it’s a very emotive subject, just saying.’
‘Didn’t I say being a jaffa could tip into something nasty. Didn’t I?’ Flowers sounds elated.
Much as I know it’ll pain Parnell, he agrees. ‘Could be that Alice wanting to stop trying tipped him over the edge. Snuffed out any chance of proving to himself that he’s a real man.’ He puts a hand up, bats away my protest. ‘I’m not saying that’s what I think, Kinsella, I’m just trying to put myself in his shoes. Think how he might think.’
Truth is, there aren’t many in this room with any real idea of how an insecure man staring down the barrel of childlessness might think, certainly not Seth and Ben, who’d rather be saddled with colostomy bags than babies at this point in their lives, and definitely not MIT4’s resident stallions – Parnell, Flowers and Craig Cooke – who’ve got about a hundred kids between them.
Steele looks at her watch. ‘OK, can we move on from the contents of Thomas Lapaine’s scrotum and see what else we’ve got. I haven’t got long.’
Parnell continues. ‘Time of death. Vickery’s still being a bit cagey but we’re going to work with somewhere between one and three a.m. Cause of death is manual asphyxia, however there are virtually no signs of struggle so she was almost certainly unconscious when she was strangled, probably from this blow sustained to the front of the head – picture five.’
We’ve all seen the crime scene photos, the worst of which burn onto your brain like asphalt, but post-mortem pics allow for a bit more professional distance. Flowers flicks through the pages like a man choosing a main course – and that’s not a criticism, I can’t wait to get there myself.
‘Now – and pay attention because this is important – her skull wasn’t fractured by the blow. There’s no real damage to the brain so Vickery’s a bit on the fence about this. She says it could be classed as inconsistent with what you’d expect to see in your average beating and so it could mean that rather than being hit on the head with something in a deliberate attack, she might have just hit her head accidentally.’
‘Or a fall?’
Steele points at me, animated. I can feel myself glowing. ‘Yeah, good, Kinsella, a fall’s definitely a possibility. It fits with the mild bruising on her legs – pictures eight and nine.’ She doesn’t even have to look at the report to know the layout. ‘But as we’re dealing in “coulds” for a second, let’s imagine that the wound could have been caused by a deliberate blow. What does that tell us?’
She doesn’t give us time to answer.
‘Well, it tells us it wasn’t particularly frenzied or there’d be more damage to the brain. And then if you add that to the fact that the cuts to the throat were also very tentative, very shallow, what we seem to have is a rather reluctant, albeit, fairly determined killer.’
‘Reluctant but determined?’ says Seth, wistfully, doing that Sherlock thing that either amuses or irritates me depending on my mood. ‘Bit of an oxymoron, don’t you think?’
Parnell jumps in. ‘I think what the Boss means is he meant to kill her . . .’
‘Or she,’ says Flowers, thinking he’s hilarious. ‘Can’t discriminate this days, remember.’
Craig punches the air. ‘Right on, sister!’
Parnell explodes. ‘Shut it, everyone, this isn’t a joke.’ This jolts me, scares me a bit, even. It’s the first time I’ve heard Parnell properly lose his rag and I don’t like it. ‘Anyone finding this the slightest bit funny, I suggest they go down to the morgue and take a look at what’s lying in the fridge, OK? A young woman with her whole life ahead of her, snuffed out, and we have absolutely no idea why.’
I get what he’s doing. You have to shapeshift a little when you’re acting-up in a role, otherwise everyone thinks you’re still their mate. You’re still Papa Parnell who loves a laugh and a joke and an arse-about as much as the rest of us.
Parnell continues, calmer now. ‘What the Boss means is whoever they are, they meant to kill her, all right – the hyoid bone was fractured so we’re talking considerable force – they just seem to have taken a few gos to choose their weapon, as it were.’
‘So they’re inexperienced then rather than reluctant,’ I say.
Steele snaps. ‘Jesus! Can we just forget I said “reluctant”. Wrong choice of word, my bad. Inexperienced, yes, Kinsella. Indecisive. Shitting bricks. How am I doing? Any other oxy-wotsits I need to be aware of?’
Steele, with her first-class degree from Durham and her Masters from LSE isn’t immune to dumbing down if it buoys up the troops.
I do have one more oxymoron though, or a contradiction at least.
‘Sarge,’ I say, turning to Parnell. ‘Or is it Boss, now? Anyway, don’t you think it’s odd that the manner of death’s so jumpy but the manner of disposal’s so, well, brazen? Remember the CCTV? Our guy, or girl’ – a quick nod to Flowers – ‘stretching out their back like they’re doing flipping sun salutations, not dumping a body.’
‘Yoga,’ says Renée before Flowers asks.
‘OK,’ nods Parnell, happy to run with it. ‘So what do you think that could mean?’
‘That it’s less stressful dumping a body than actually killing someone?’
Seth gets in on the action. ‘Maybe the person on the CCTV isn’t our killer? Just someone tasked with dumping the body?’
‘Easy,’ warns Steele. ‘I don’t even want to think about that without evidence.’
Parnell raises a hand. ‘Speaking of which, we don’t have much. Forensics have a few footprints . . .’ This gets a communal groan. Footprints don’t hold a candle to fibres, or blood, or skin, or semen, unless they’re stamped across the victim’s chest and we get to play Cinderella with an actual foot. ‘Yeah, yeah. Don’t shoot the messenger.’
Renée chips in. ‘Sounds like they could be forensically aware then?’
Parnell shrugs. ‘Not necessarily. The primary crime scene could be awash with lots of lovely stuff but until we find it, we’re stuck with footprints, I’m afraid.’
I’ve got other things on my mind. ‘No semen at all then? So definitely no unprotected sex in the past seventy-two hours. Might make the “secret boyfriend” theory a bit less likely? I mean, sure, they could have been using condoms but . . .’
Parnell’s on it. ‘We’ve asked for a vaginal swab, see if they can get traces of condom lubricant. It won’t tell us anything definitive, but it’ll tell us something, at least.’
‘We can’t rule out a boyfriend based just on that,’ says Flowers. ‘Maybe they just hadn’t mattress-danced in a few days. I know, I know, folks, it’s hard to believe that I go without for any length of time, but it happens, kids.’
Parnell nods along. ‘I hear you, Pete, but there’s no other obvious signs of sexual activity, and if there was a boyfriend, I reckon it’d have to have been a red-hot affair to lure Alice Lapaine into London, not the kind that abstains for three days. Anyway, we’ll see. Lab couldn’t give us any timescales, obviously.’
Steele mumbles into the PM report. ‘Not so reluctant to give us costs though.’
‘Talking of money,’ says Parnell. ‘What’ve we got on her transactions so far.’
‘Bank records have her in London from Thursday 19th November,’ Renée confirms.
‘Which backs up Thomas Lapaine’s story,’ I say, not in any way championing him, just stating a fact.
Renée lifts a warning finger. ‘Yeah, but hold your horses, I’m coming back to him in a minute. So she used their joint account to pay for two nights in a hotel – if you can call it a hotel – it’s a grotty little outfit off Gray’s Inn Road. Still managed to relieve her of £250 for two nights’ bed and board though. For a single room that someone on Trip Advisor called, what was it, Ben?’
Ben cranes his neck. ‘“Cold, tired and eminently depressing.”’
I can’t resist it. ‘Sounds like your last girlfriend, Seth.’
‘Cruel, Kinsella,’ he replies with a grin.
Seriously, the shifts I spent counselling Seth over his ice-queen ex – a Finnish vegan with an allergy to everything, a reluctance to give head, and in my opinion, an ill-conceived fringe.
Renée continues, half-smiling – she’d played agony-aunt too. ‘So we’ve talked to reception at the hotel and someone remembered her vaguely. Nothing out of the ordinary though. Never saw her with anyone.’
Parnell rubs his eyes. ‘And then what?’
‘Nothing. From November 19th, there’s no more credit or debit card transactions we can trace. All we’ve got are cash withdrawals from the joint account – all over central London, maxing the limit every time – £250 every four or five days but – and this is the interesting – that stops last week. Last withdrawal was 13th December. She . . .’
I interrupt, not my finest habit, but this is a brainstorm, not a formal brief, and there’s no prizes for diffidence. ‘Two hundred and fifty pounds every four to five days? That’s not enough to live on in London, including accommodation. She must have been staying with someone.’
‘So why’d she stop fleecing the husband?’ says Flowers, his voice thorny with experience.
I shoot him a dirty look. ‘Er, do you want to look up the meaning of the word “joint”?’
Renée rolls her eyes but she’s past arguing with him. ‘She had no choice. I’ve just had it confirmed that Thomas Lapaine cleared out their joint account at the beginning of last week. Left her high and dry, the rotten sod.’
‘Can he really do that?’ I ask, shocked. ‘Empty the account without her knowledge?’
It’s genuinely news to me. And to think Steele’s got me pegged me as Financially Intelligent.
‘Hmm-mm,’ nods Renée. ‘Not a very nice thing to do, but completely his right. Either account holder can clear it out at any time.’
I’m not sure whether to pity or envy couples with this level of faith. It seems absurdly naïve on one hand, but then the whole point of intimacy on the other. Literally putting your money where your mouth is when it comes to the word ‘trust’.
‘Right, get him back under this roof today,’ says Steele to Parnell. ‘Just for another “chat” of course. Try to avoid any tears, or shouting, or glasses hurled at walls, please. In any case, there’s not a whole lot we can hurl at him at this stage, not until we’ve got more forensics, but just get him to quit with all the “we understood each other” bollocks, OK? There’s something rotten at the core of that marriage and we need to know what it is.’
Parnell nods. ‘Ben? Anything come back on the phone records?’
Ben’s edgy. ‘Well, yeah, kind of. We’ve got the call she made to Lapaine on his birthday and then various unanswered calls to her phone – a few from Lapaine and then a couple from someone at the pub the day after she left, probably just seeing why she hadn’t turned up for work, and then there’s your usual PPI stuff etc.’ He takes a breath. ‘But most interestingly, we’ve got six calls from Alice to two different pay-as-you-go numbers over the past few weeks. First one, November 23rd. Last one, December 12th. Problem is, both phones are switched off. We need to wait for them to be switched back on before they ping the mast and we get a location. And if either person is somehow involved, that might never happen, of course.’
‘Can we trace where they bought the top-up?’ I say. ‘Pull the CCTV?’
Ben nods. ‘We’re on it, but if they bought the top-up in a tiny offy in the arse-end of nowhere, forget about it . . .’
‘All fun and games,’ someone grumbles. I think it’s Flowers.
Parnell does his best to rally everyone. ‘Right, good work, folks. We are making progress even if it doesn’t feel like it.’
As everyone starts to disperse back to their desks, Parnell grabs me. ‘I want you to get over to Wandsworth. That café she bought the coffee in on Friday, it re-opens today.’
‘Righto.’
Steele appears. ‘And take Emily with you. Let me know if she’s good for anything other than picking her nails and looking at ASOS.’
Poor Emily Beck. It’s a novelty we all fell for. The freedom to be fashionable again after two years in uniform.
‘Boss, can I have a word.’ Parnell and Steele both turn around. ‘Big Boss?’ I say, and then, to my shame, ‘Lady-Boss?’ – aware I’m making Steele sound like a cheap market-stall perfume.
‘Sure. We’ll have to walk and talk though.’ She holds out two box-files. ‘Here, carry these for me.’
I wait until we’re outside the room and halfway down the corridor. I suspect she’s not even listening properly but at least I can say I told her. ‘Er, I just wanted to let you know, I took the Ireland file off your desk yesterday. Had a quick shuftie.’ A tiny flash of ‘oh, did you now?’ crosses her face but it could just be the dodgy strip lighting messing with me. ‘I knew you were busy and well, after meeting the brother, I was curious. There’s nothing much in there, nothing relevant, I think.’
We get in the lift. ‘What did you make of him then, the brother?’
‘I sent you my report.’ I say, instantly defensive. ‘One for Parnell, one for you. I emailed it to you last night.’
She hits the button for the ground floor. ‘Whoa, Kinsella. I wasn’t checking up on your paperwork, I was just asking. Making conversation.’
My face burns. ‘Oh right, sorry. Well, it’s hard to know what to make of him, really. He’s not exactly grief-stricken but it’s been eighteen years. He’s moved on with his life and then, this. If you’re asking if he’s a serious suspect, my gut says no. He says he hasn’t laid eyes on her since 1998 and we’ve nothing to contradict that. No contact between them on Maryanne’s Facebook or Hotmail, etc.’
She lets this sit as the lift descends. When the doors open into reception, we’re greeted by a teen with a busted eye socket and a woman raising hell over a lost coat.
‘He could still be the mystery pay-as-you-go,’ says Steele, signalling ‘one minute’ to her driver outside.
‘He could. And he was home alone, so yeah, it’s about as reliable as Thomas Lapaine’s alibi, but he did he have a text exchange with a friend at around one a.m. and Tech are looking into it now. If that comes back kosher, and the phone masts bear him out, we’ve got him tucked up in bed in Mile End around the time of death so . . .’
‘So we go again. We dig deeper.’
‘Yup.’
‘You OK?’ she asks, eyes fixed on mine. In her stiletto suede boots, we’re about the same height.
Petty cynic that I am, I wonder why she’s asking.
She’s on to me though. ‘It’s just a question, Kinsella. A fairly common one in polite society. If it helps the most common answers are, “I’m fine thanks”, “Not too bad” and “Can’t complain.”’
‘All those things then,’ I say, smiling.
‘Mmmm.’ She scrutinises me for a few seconds which makes me feel twitchy and exposed. However, just as I’m starting to think about my next move, about what I might have to deflect next, a car-horn sounds and she bolts suddenly for the door. ‘Yes, yes, I’m coming, all right! Keep your knickers on. Jesus!’
I’m waiting for the lift when I feel the draught again. Steele’s standing in the doorway, eyes already watering from the barbaric cold outside.
‘Hey, Kinsella, just to stress again – even though I’m not here, what we talked about still stands, you hear me? You report everything to me. You check everything with me. Everything, OK?’
Everything except the thing I can’t tell you. The thing that’s forced me to pick sides.
And I haven’t picked you.
Not yet, anyway.