I’ve lived in London long enough to know that the suffix ‘mansion’ often lends a false glamour to the most humble of dwellings. However, with a name like Ophelia Mansions, I’m at least expecting to find the odd willow tree or wild flower. What we actually find is a dilapidated six-storey eyesore just off the Gray’s Inn Road, less than a mile from where Alice Lapaine’s body was found.
Predictably, Saskia French lives on the top floor.
We’re let in the main door by a man rushing out. His wool overcoat and deposit-for-a-flat-watch mark him out as a ‘gentleman caller’ rather than an occupant and it’s obvious Parnell’s thinking the same. I see it in his smirk as he flashes his ID, assuring the guy that we’re not Jehovah’s Witnesses. I hear it in the wicked laugh that echoes all the way up the stairs, in between our puffs and pants.
When we get to the top, the door to 12C flies open and a girl in a nurse’s uniform – a real one, that is, not a kinky one – flies out, buckling under the weight of a large kit bag. Her face is blotchy, like it’s been freshly scrubbed raw of make-up.
Parnell whips out his ID again. ‘Saskia French.’
‘No, I . . . I . . .’ She glances back into the flat, looking nervy. ‘Are you here about Maryanne?’
Maryanne.
So whatever she was doing in London, she’d reverted to her old name.
‘I saw it in the paper. I would have called. Honest, I would have but . . .’
‘But what? You were too busy to care?’
‘No!’ she howls. ‘I just didn’t . . . it’s just I don’t know anything about, you know . . . and I’m about to qualify, and I just do this to keep my head above water.’ She looks to us both, backwards and forwards. ‘You see, they talk about bursaries but they’re not enough to live on. I’ll stop when I’m qualified, when I’m salaried, I will . . .’
We’re almost as thrown as she is. If she didn’t expect to be doorstepped by two puffed-out police officers, we certainly didn’t expect to be lectured on the state of NHS student funding.
‘And I thought Saskia would have called. I mean, it’s nothing to do with me.’ A quick glance at her watch. ‘Oh shit, I’m going to be late for my shift.’
A disembodied voice comes from inside the flat – loud, husky and impatient. ‘Just leave it, Petra. Go. I’ll talk to them.’
It’s an order. An instruction that sends Petra hurtling down the stairs.
She’ll keep.
‘Yes?’
The voice now has a body, and a knock-out body at that. Saskia French stands in the doorway pulling a bulky jumper over a red PVC dress, hopping from foot to foot and blowing her cheeks out at the cold. If it was possible to take your eyes off her legs, which finish somewhere around my shoulders, you’d notice that she’s got wide set eyes, heavily kohl’d and a little starey. A razor-sharp black bob with a spirit-level fringe. While she’s not quite exactly your full-on fetish-queen, there’s definitely something of the alternative about her. A certain edginess that propels her from attractive to arresting.
Put another way, she’s stop-traffic sexy.
‘Saskia, we’d like to ask you a few questions about Alice Lapaine. It sounds like you knew her as Maryanne Doyle.’
Several expressions collide but hostility overrides them all. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t think I can help, and I’m expecting someone shortly. A friend,’ she adds, with a smile more beatific than the Virgin Mary.
Parnell smiles. ‘No need to be sorry, you can definitely help us. We know Maryanne Doyle – a murder victim – made a number of calls to your phone, and thanks to your colleague just now, it’s clear Maryanne was known to you so let’s not do this pointless little dance, eh? Just a few questions?’
I stick my foot in the door, a pre-emptive strike that doesn’t go to waste when she tries to slam it shut. My foot throbs but I hold her stare. And it’s not the easiest stare to hold. Fervent, almost tipping into crazy. The kind of crazy that drives men wild as long as it’s at a distance – preferably a one-hour-once-a-week kind of distance.
‘Five minutes.’ She turns and sweeps down a narrow hallway, all five feet eleven of her, pulling doors closed as she passes. ‘We can talk in here.’
We follow her into a small cramped kitchen, the kind of adjunct they build on to an office so people can make tea and microwave porridge but that’s about it. There’s no washing machine as far as I can see – unless Saskia French’s whole wardrobe is of the wipe-clean PVC kind – and even the cooker, a free-standing hob sitting on top of the worktop, looks like something you’d take on a camping trip. The fridge is as dinky a child’s toy.
Still, someone’s feeling festive, at least – there’s a snowflake sprayed on the window and a sprig of mistletoe dangling from the door.
Saskia busies herself throwing fresh mint into a mug. She doesn’t ask if we want anything. While her back’s turned, I channel ‘what-the-fuck?’ frequencies across the lino to Parnell.
Why the hell was Maryanne/Alice calling a prostitute?
Parnell cracks on. ‘How did you know Maryanne Doyle?’
She sighs. Hops up on the worktop and stretches out her legs – bare, unashamedly pale and elegant like a dancer’s. ‘I didn’t know Maryanne. We shared the same space for a few weeks but I barely saw her. She saw most of her clients off the premises.’
I sense the bomb go off in Parnell’s head but it’s me that reacts. ‘Clients? You’re saying Maryanne was working here.’
She looks me up and down, finds me wanting on just about every level and turns back to Parnell. ‘I’ve just said, she didn’t see a lot of clients here. She was using it more as a base. She left her stuff here.’
‘Maryanne’s stuff is here? She has a room here?’ I’m struggling to keep my professional cool, but in the space of half an hour we’ve gone from laborious grunt work to the revelation that might just light a fire under this case and it’s taking me a moment to adjust. To reset my skillset from phone-answerer-cum-form-filler to actual detective
Parnell doesn’t need any time. ‘Which room?’
‘The second on the right, she didn’t have much though.’ Another sigh. ‘What exactly are you looking for?’
Parnell walks out. I hear a door open and it takes every last piece of my resolve not to burst in behind him.
‘Why didn’t you contact the police about Maryanne? It’s been all over the papers for almost a week.’
‘Has it?’ she says, vaguely. ‘I don’t really read the papers, or watch TV. I’m more of a muso. Anyway, the less I have to do with the police, the better.’
‘Your colleague, Petra, seemed to be aware of it. She implied you were too – she was surprised you hadn’t contacted us.’
‘I only found out a day or two ago when I picked up a paper on the tube.’
‘And you didn’t think to call us?’
A shrug. ‘I had nothing to tell. I have nothing to tell.’
‘Maryanne was staying here and you think that’s nothing?’
She bends forward, clasps her hands together like a teacher talking to an imbecile. ‘Do. You. Understand. English? I hardly ever saw her. I really can’t help you.’
I change gear, try to ruffle her. ‘Why do you have two phones, Saskia?’
Her voice takes on a bored, sing-song tone. ‘It’s fairly standard practice. I like to keep my life and work separate. The pay-as-you-go is for work.’
‘It’s been switched off for a week, maybe longer. Why?’
She whispers something I assume to be derogatory, then, ‘I wanted some R&R, even tarts need a week off now and again and when I’m not working, I switch it off. I don’t want to be pestered.’
I gesture to her dress. ‘Well, I assume you’re working today and it’s still switched off?’
‘Is it?’ A false gracious smile. ‘Thanks for reminding me.’
‘You know it is. You took the SIM out and put it in your other phone.’
‘Look, I needed to check a client’s number, OK? The handset had been playing up so I put the SIM in my other phone to save time.’ She fixes me with a glare. ‘You know, this really is fucking tedious. How much longer are you going to be?’
I don’t respond. ‘What was Maryanne calling you about, on these dates?’ I show her the piece of paper with the calls highlighted but she pushes it away.
‘Just house things. Do we need loo roll? Leave the hall light on. That sort of thing.’
Annoyingly feasible.
‘Obviously I need to ask you where you were on the night of Monday fifteenth, into the early hours of Tuesday sixteenth.’
She doesn’t seem fazed by the question. ‘I was here, alone. I told you, I wanted a few days off to get some proper rest, catch up on some admin, spring clean the flat – you know, normal stuff. I have the same old boring crap to deal with as anyone else, you know. I’m a human being, not just a whore.’
I think I’m supposed to be moved by this plaintive cry but there’s something about this woman that inspires minimal sympathy.
‘So where exactly did you meet Maryanne?’ I say, face completely blank.
‘I can’t remember.’
‘Not good enough.’
She grips the edge of the worktop and gives me that crazy stare again, eyes wide and threatening. I’m starting to think she might launch herself off at any minute but to my surprise, she starts talking.
‘I think it was the Diamond, oh no, hold on, it was Silks.’ A strip club, basically. ‘I haven’t danced in years but I still go there for a drink, a lot of the girls do. It’s good for business and I know the staff. Anyway, Maryanne was there one evening, we get talking – it was actually nice to meet someone English and a bit more my own age for a change – and she mentions she’s looking for a room and I think, why not? Earn some extra money and have someone a bit older, a bit more sensible, running the show while I’m away. I work abroad occasionally,’ she adds.
‘Running the girls, you mean?’
She lifts her chin. ‘I don’t operate like that.’
‘Look, I’m not from Vice, Saskia, I’m not here for that.’
And even if I was, this is small fry. As long as no one’s trafficked or underage, work away.
She slides down off the worktop, stretches forward for her cigarettes in a long lean pose. ‘How it works is, not every client can afford to stump up for a hotel room every time he wants to get his dick wet, you follow? So I’ve got a few trusted girls who use the spare rooms occasionally, and I take a small percentage. I’m saving up for’ – to my shame I assume she’s going to say ‘bum lift’ or something equally depressing – ‘a camper van. A fully-restored 1960s VW.’ She gazes at her surroundings with not quite disgust, but fatigue. ‘I need to get away from all this for a while.’
‘What did Maryanne tell you about herself?’
She lights the cigarette. ‘Nothing. Just what I told you. That she was looking for somewhere to stay.’
‘And when she was here?’
A deep draw, I recognise it well as the first of the day. ‘Well, it did seem like she was running from something. We didn’t chat much, but we did have a laugh about dodgy clients one day. She mentioned she’d had a few. I got the impression something had happened fairly recently but it was just an impression. I didn’t ask for details.’ A blank look. ‘I wasn’t very interested, to be honest.’
I make a note of this. ‘We’ll need a list of all the people she came into contact with while she was living here. We’ll be as discreet as we can.’
She slams her hand down, raises her voice nought to sixty. ‘Are you fucking deaf, copper? I. Don’t. Know.’
I actually jump. There’s a jerkiness to her mood that’s hard to keep up with. Totally disconcerting.
‘Look,’ she says, a bit nicer, ‘we weren’t “roomies”, OK. We didn’t sit around plaiting each other’s hair and talking about first kisses. She dossed here for around three weeks.’ A thought suddenly occurs to her. ‘And it looks like I won’t get paid for that now, doesn’t it?’
I don’t dignify that. I doubt she expects me to. ‘What about you? Any dodgy clients we need to be aware of. Anyone who could have seen Maryanne and taken a shine?’
That sing-song tone again. ‘No. No one. Contrary to myth, I could count the number of weirdos I’ve had on one hand. Most of what I do is nothing any self-respecting girlfriend wouldn’t do if she could be bothered.’
Nice.
‘Do you own this property?’
Her nose twitches, a nervous tic. ‘No, why?’
‘So you were subletting the room to Maryanne?’
She mutters ‘motherfucker’ and to be fair, I probably deserve it. I only said it to rattle her.
‘I don’t think the owners would mind that much, actually. I’ve lived here for years. I’m a very good tenant.’
‘Why’s that? Because you pay them a percentage of your earnings?’
‘God, no!’ She seems to find this hysterical. ‘They haven’t got a clue what I do. They think I’m a yoga teacher.’
She could be, I think. She’s got the posture if not the temperament.
Parnell comes back into the kitchen, looks straight at Saskia. ‘Miss French, we haven’t been able to recover Maryanne’s bag or phone and it doesn’t look like it’s in her room either. Can you give us a description?’
She purses her lips, pretends to think. ‘Er, her bag might have been black. That help much?’
‘Immeasurably,’ he says drolly. To me, ‘There’s nothing much in there, a few items of clothing, a washbag, some cold and flu tablets.’
‘Yeah, she was a bit under the weather,’ says Saskia, kicking her feet, suddenly all helpful. ‘I told her Ginseng but some people won’t listen.’
Parnell looks at her, slightly baffled, then back to me. ‘Anyway, I’ve requested a Section 8. We’ll need Forensics here ASAP, we need the bedding, her clothes, the lot.’
‘Forensics!’ Saskia flies at Parnell, a whirling dervish of milky-white limbs and red PVC. Parnell steps back just in time which stops her making contact and earning herself a night in the cells, but her eyes are flaming. I think I’d take a punch any day rather than stare down those eyes at close range. ‘Listen, mate,’ she spits, ‘I’ve answered your fucking questions now get out of my fucking flat and take your work experience girl with you.’
Parnell straightens his spine and draws his neck up, just about eye-level. ‘I need to make another phone call, Miss French, so I’m going to leave the work experience girl here to explain to you exactly what’s going on because I don’t think you understand the seriousness of the situation.’
She turns back to me, confidence quickly draining, belligerence giving way to panic. ‘Please. You don’t need a warrant. I’ve given you permission so just take what you want and go. I can’t have my flat crawling with your lot.’
Technically, she’s right. Parnell and I could probably get away with a bit of a treasure hunt without a warrant. But Parnell’s not in the business of getting away with things. He’s a ‘just to be safe’ kind of character.
I try to explain this. ‘It’s not as easy as just taking what we want, Saskia. Forensics will need to go through Maryanne’s room with a fine-tooth comb.’
‘I’d let your “friend” know not to come over,’ shouts Parnell from the hallway. ‘Unless he’s a “friend” you think it’d be worth us talking to.’
She moves to the doorway, hands on hips. ‘Oh, do me a favour and quit the sarcasm, would you? It really doesn’t suit you.’ She draws her eye downwards. ‘Neither does that tie.’
Parnell laughs. ‘Oh, I’ll do you a favour, Miss French. If you say sorry for being rude about my favourite tie, I might just let you get rid of some of the more obvious signs of cocaine use littered around this flat before the cavalry arrives. How’s that sound to you? Fair enough?’
She gives an exaggerated shrug and stalks off into a room, presumably her bedroom, to call her ‘friend.’ I walk into Maryanne’s room, not touching anything, just glancing around at a whole lot of nothing. A small double futon, a cheap-looking nightstand and a clothes rail, that’s it.
I turn back to Parnell.
‘I’m on bloody hold,’ he says, tutting,
‘What are you thinking?’
He trains one ear on what Saskia’s saying, lends the other to me. ‘Something’s definitely off.’
I keep my voice low. ‘Seriously off. I can just about accept that a mousy little pub chef might embark on a double life as a lady-of-the-night. I mean, nothing surprises, right? But there was no semen? No condom lubricant?’ Parnell nods, encouraging me to go on. ‘And this room? I’m not being funny but where’s the racy underwear, the sex toys. There isn’t even a scrap of make-up, just some roll-on and a few face-wipes.’
‘The coke’s not mine.’ Saskia walks back into the hallway, her face illuminated by her phone.
‘Maryanne’s?’ I say, surprised by nothing anymore.
‘No, no, I mean, it’s mine, I suppose. But I don’t use it. I don’t do drugs,’ she adds, proudly. ‘But some clients like it. It, you know, helps . . .’
Parnell raises an eyebrow. ‘I wouldn’t know, actually.’
There’s a voice down the line and he ushers us away, back into the kitchen. We assume our positions again, her on the worktop, me on the chair. There’s so much to ask that I can’t think where to begin. Parnell needs to take the lead from here, anyway.
‘We’re going to need the name of the owners of this flat,’ I say, just to break the silence. ‘I appreciate that’s going to be awkward but we have to speak to them.’
‘I’m sorry?’ The muscles in her neck tense. ‘Why?’
‘They own the property, Saskia. Out of courtesy we need to reassure them that any damage caused by the search will be put right.’
‘I’ll tell them,’ she says, quickly. ‘There’s no need.’
‘It doesn’t work like that, I’m afraid.’ I take out my notepad. ‘Name, please.’
She says nothing. Stares at the back wall. But I don’t think it’s petulance, it’s discomfort.
I let out a long sigh. ‘Saskia, do you know how quickly we can find this out? This isn’t Scooby Doo, we’re the police. It’d just be a whole lot easier if you’d tell me.’
‘Nathaniel Hicks,’ she mumbles eventually, then louder, ‘His name is Nate Hicks.’
*
It takes me ten seconds to place the name. Five minutes to confirm it with HQ. Ten minutes to arrange for two uniforms to preserve the scene and it’ll probably take an hour for us to get over there at this time of day.
Nathaniel Hicks.
Owner of this flat and husband of Gina Hicks.
She of the impossibly perfect life on the impossibly perfect Keeper’s Close, where an imperfectly sighted pensioner thought she might possibly have seen Maryanne talking into the intercom.
God bless lovely June of the Donatella Caffé.