‘So you’ve got a better sense of what she was like, you think she was pregnant when she left Ireland, and you remembered how to say “hot chocolate” in French, but that’s about it?’
It’s a fair summation. Steele’s not being snarky either, she just never has the patience for the nuances of the long version.
‘Yup. Report on the back of a fag packet OK for you?’
She raises her hand. ‘Er, quit with the negativity Kinsella. How sure are we she was pregnant?’
‘She had all the early symptoms, and it works as a theory – Irish girl comes to England for an abortion on the QT.’
Steele nods. ‘But obviously something changed her mind as we know she gave birth.’
‘Again, on the QT,’ says Renée, packing up for the day. ‘It’s not registered anywhere, it’s not in her medical records.’
‘Illegal surrogacy?’ I chip in. They both nod like they’ve been discussing it. ‘It’d explain the IVF desperation, anyway. Gina Hicks said that even when she first met “Alice” a few years ago, she was already strung out about the IVF not working, which seemed a bit odd as they hadn’t been trying that long.’
Renée sees where I’m going. ‘Yep, that’s definitely going to sting. Struggling to conceive a child when you already gave a perfectly good one away.’
‘It doesn’t explain why she’d put the brakes on the IVF though,’ says Steele.
It does to me – ‘Maryanne was fierce resourceful.’
‘They’d been through so many rounds already, I think she was giving Thomas Lapaine up as a lost cause, looking elsewhere.’
‘So she came to London to seek a new sperm donor?’ Steele weighs it up. ‘It’s a bit Dick Whittington but I’ll go with it.’
‘Well, it wasn’t just that, remember. She told Gina Hicks that she was sure Thomas Lapaine was having an affair, so I think it was more a case of “you’re cheating on me, and you can’t give me what I want most in the world anyway – a child – so why am I putting up with it? I’m off.’’’
‘Makes sense,’ says Steele. ‘Of course it contradicts his version – the loving note she supposedly left which we only have his word for, but to be honest I think I’d struggle to believe the sky was blue if it came out of Thomas Lapaine’s mouth.’
‘But we’ve definitely ruled him out, right?’
Steele hands me a marker pen. ‘Well and truly as of a few hours ago. Emily took a statement from Abigail Shawcroft’s nosy neighbour and she confirmed seeing him at the house that night and leaving again the next morning.’
I walk over to the incident board, draw a thick black cross through Thomas Lapaine’s name, then change markers and write ‘Illegal surrogacy??’ across the top in red.
It feels like a red kind of theory.
Nate Hicks’ name has already been crossed out. ‘Definitely schmoozing in Cardiff then?’ I ask.
‘Looks that way,’ replies Steele. ‘Hotel confirms him checking in and out. CCTV has him going up to his room at twelve ten a.m. and he doesn’t appear to leave again until breakfast. His car didn’t move from the car park all night.’
‘Bollocks.’
The door opens and Parnell walks in, instantly making a beeline for me.
‘Well, look who it is, the international jetsetter. Glad to be back, are we?’
The answer’s a definite no. Right now, I’d give anything to be back in Mulderrin, strolling up the Long Road, burning off the last of my raspberry mille-feuille. In fact, I want to be Bill Swords. I want to cruise around the county in my rust-bucket of a car, singing along to Dusty Springfield songs and making ‘tosser’ signs at other drivers. Or I’d settle for running a B&B like Manda Moran. Hell, I’d settle for running a B&B with Manda Moran – she looked like she could do with the help.
Basically, I want to be anything other than back here, in this room, soul-deep in this wretched case.
Steele’s feeling the same. ‘How bad is this, folks? There was a woman murdered in Wimbledon on Sunday night, a strangulation, and I was almost relieved thinking it could be linked to our case. I was actually hoping for a serial killer, can you believe that?’ I can, wholeheartedly. ‘Turns out it was some scumbag she’d given the brush-off after a few dates. He walked into Mitcham nick last night, confessed the whole thing.’ She pulls her hair back off her face. ‘We can dream, eh?’
I look at Parnell. ‘Still no Saskia, I take it?’
There’s a rising worry in his eyes. ‘No. Phone’s still off and there’s no sign of life at the flat. I’ve got a Mrs Stevens across the hall doing covert surveillance’ – a quick smirk at me – ‘so as soon as Saskia or anyone else turns up, we’ll be on it.’
‘Facebook?’ I say. The solution to everything.
‘Can’t find her,’ says Renée. ‘She’s obviously got tight privacy settings.’
I sigh, throw my pen down, agitated. ‘It just feels like we should be doing more. Saskia’s got motive, she lied to us, she’s gone AWOL for God’s sake and . . .’
Steele halts my tailspin with one point of a finger. ‘OK, OK, OK, she possibly has motive – if she thought Maryanne was planning to grass her up to Gina Hicks for either shagging her husband, or shagging other people’s husbands for money, then absolutely, that’s reason to shut her up. But we don’t know Maryanne was planning to do that.’
I take a breath. ‘Gina Hicks specifically told her to make any contact through Saskia, but we know she was in the café down the road on the Friday before she died, so she obviously wanted to speak to Gina without Saskia knowing. What other conclusions can we draw?’
Steele throws her hands up. ‘That she thought the Donatella Caffé did the meanest espresso ristretto this side of the equator? That she was dropping off a Christmas card? That she was lunching with Lord Lucan? We don’t know!’
I bite my cheeks but Steele’s wise to my little angry ticks.
‘Look, we’re all on the same side here, Kinsella, and I agree there’s motive to be explored, but Saskia French hasn’t lied to us any more than anyone else, including Gina Hicks, and at this point we don’t have any reason to believe she’s even gone AWOL. She’s gone to her parents, that’s what she said, isn’t it, Lu?’ Parnell nods. ‘Which is entirely normal at this time of year and given the fact she wasn’t under arrest or even a formal suspect, we had absolutely no right to stop her. No right to even ask for the address.’
Renée asks Parnell, ‘Where do her folks live?’
‘Somerset, apparently.’
‘If it’s rural Somerset, mobile reception’s not great,’ says Renée.
‘Or she’s switched her phone off because she doesn’t want punters calling her at her parents?’ adds Steele.
I’ve got no choice but to nod along. Steele calls the shots and she invariably calls them with a combination of searing logic and calm reason. She’s virtually impossible to argue with.
‘And another thing,’ she continues, ‘I’ve been looking at the CCTV again and yes, I’m going to keep an open mind, of course, but honestly . . . I don’t think it’s a woman. I don’t think a woman could have lifted the body that leisurely. Maryanne, Alice, whatever we’re calling her, she wasn’t exactly tiny, was she?’
‘Five feet six, just under ten stone,’ I say, keen to show I have concrete facts as well as unsubstantiated theories.
‘Saskia French’s a unit, Boss, I wouldn’t rule it out,’ says Parnell.
Steele puts her palms flat on the table. ‘I’m not, Lu. I’m just not prepared to start panicking and canvassing the Somerset countryside just yet.’ She nods towards Renée, who’s packed up, wrapped up, and ready for the off. ‘Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to follow my learned friend’s lead and bugger off home. Tomorrow, we go again.’
But I’m not ready to go home yet. I’m not ready to be alone.
Parnell reads my mind with a resounding, ‘No, Kinsella! No pub today. I’m in the doghouse enough already. Turns out that buying your wife and your mother the same perfume for Christmas is a bit of a no-no.’ He looks to us for sympathy, finds none. ‘I don’t know . . . women . . . it’s a bloody minefield . . .’
*
Aiden Doyle doesn’t knock me back, though. He says he has an appointment with Sky but if I give him ten minutes, he’ll try to change it. Then he asks me if I enjoyed Mulderrin. Did I get a chance to do the open-top bus tour? Have a ride on the Mulderrin Eye?
The joker.
As promised – well, fourteen minutes later, but who’s counting? – he calls me back to say we’re on. An hour later, we’re sitting in the upstairs window of the Chandos, sipping cheap ale while overlooking the relative calm of Trafalgar Square as it braces itself for tomorrow’s New Year’s Eve onslaught. He’s looking even more handsome than I remember. The same distressed jeans but with a white long-sleeved top that shows off a chest that manages to stay on both the right side of toned and the right side of vanity.
‘So you cancelled your Sky Engineer, I’m honoured,’ I say.
It’s tragic but I actually mean it.
‘Ah sure, I hardly watch the bloody thing anyway. What is there to watch? Baking shows and bad news, that’s about it.’ His accent seems stronger, richer, from his flying visit back to Mulderrin – more of a pulse than a lilt. ‘I reckon you’ve saved me forty pounds a month and you’ve introduced me to London’s cheapest pint. You’re like my financial guardian angel.’
I catch myself in the window, wish I’d put my hair up. ‘God, don’t let my boss hear you say that. She’s threatening to second me onto Financial Intelligence as it is.’
‘Don’t fancy it?’ he asks, trying and failing to open a bag of peanuts.
I take over, tear the corner with my teeth and hand them back. ‘Would you? Spending eight hours a day analysing SARs.’
‘SARs?’
‘Sorry, Suspicious Activity Reports.’
‘Sounds like heaven to me, but then I am a bit of a numbers freak.’
I pick up my bag, pretend to leave. ‘Look, if I’d known you were such a nerd, I’d have never called . . .’
‘I am,’ he says, laughing. ‘A proper nerd. I’ve even got a T-shirt that says “I Heart Sums”.’
‘You sure know how to impress a lady.’ I sit back down. ‘So what is it you do then? You don’t look like a banker, or an accountant.’
‘You don’t look like a detective.’
‘What’s a detective look like?’
He struggles to answer. ‘Oh, I don’t know? Long brown mac, dishevelled hair, a big fat cigar.’
A deadpan stare. ‘Columbo, basically.’
‘That’s yer man. You don’t look anything like him.’
‘They’re not wrong about that slick Celtic charm, are they?’ He smiles. We smile. ‘Seriously though, what is it you do?’
‘I work for an online betting company. I’m a risk analyst, well’ – he doffs an imaginary cap – ‘a senior risk analyst, if you please.’
I look impressed even though I have no idea what this means. ‘My dad always used to back a horse for me on the Grand National, that’s about my experience of betting, I’m afraid.’
‘Any luck?’
‘I won thirty pounds once. I was only six, it seemed like a windfall.’
‘I hope you invested it wisely, you being so financially intelligent ’n all.’
‘Very. I bought my dad a West Ham keyring, myself a Barbie Porsche and I gave ten pounds to the PDSA.’ He doesn’t recognise the acronym. ‘Poorly animals, I add’
‘Sweet kid. I send my nephews in Canada fifty dollars every Christmas. All they buy are computer games where you slaughter people.’
‘Well, I don’t know about “sweet”.’ I put my hand out for peanuts and he holds it steady as he pours. It’s nice. ‘As my brother never stopped pointing out, I won the money on a sport that’s cruel to animals and then made myself look good by giving some of it back to animals. Bit Machiavellian, don’t you think?’
He sups his pint. ‘I think that’s a shitty thing to say to a six-year-old, to be honest, but hey, I’m trying to impress you – you know, after getting off to a great start with the whole “I Heart Sums” thing – so I won’t start slagging your brother off as well.’
‘Oh please do, slagging him off will impress me big-time.’
His eyes narrow. ‘Mmmm, I’m not sure, I’m feel like I’m being walked into something I’ll regret later. Can I not just send massive bouquet of flowers to your work with a balloon and a “I Wuv You” teddy?’ Eyes twinkling now. ‘That always impresses, right?’
I twinkle back. ‘Oh every time – flowers, cuddly toys and equal pay, that’s all us women want in life.’
He laughs. ‘For that dig, I might just do it, you know. Send you the biggest, tackiest bunch I can find.’ He starts Googling florists on his phone. ‘Are you based at Holborn all the time?’
‘No I’m not and don’t you fucking dare.’ I snatch his phone. ‘My boss would have a fit if I got flowers from you. She’d have a fit if she knew I was here.’
‘Why?’ He looks momentarily confused before remembering that we aren’t just two ordinary people enjoying an ordinary pint. ‘Christ, I’m not still a suspect, am I?’ Panic with a tiny hint of boyish excitement. ‘Seriously, was I ever really a suspect? Or do you have to go through all that, “On the night in question” stuff with everyone.’
I’m not prepared to answer that. I may be two pints down, and more than a little smitten, but I haven’t completely lost the run of myself.
I do have a question for him though. A serious one.
‘Can I say something?’ He looks ominous, which is the only way you can look when someone utters that statement. ‘You don’t seem that cut up about Maryanne.’
He turns his head and looks out of the window. His Ready-Brek glow extinguished. I instantly wish I could claw my words out of the ether and ram them straight back down my stupid fucking throat where they should have fucking stayed.
I try to make amends. ‘That’s not a judgement, Aiden, honest, it’s just an observation.’
God, that’s worse. Condescending.
He stays gazing towards Nelson’s Column. ‘I don’t know how I feel is the honest truth, Cat. I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel. You know, I met her husband in the end.’ He smiles apologetically, warding off a lecture. ‘He’s a strange guy, isn’t he? An awful dry shite, as we say back home.’ Agreed. ‘Anyways, I was pleased, you know, when he said he’d meet me. I thought maybe it’d make me feel closer to her.’
‘I can understand that. I’m sensing it didn’t, though?’
He swills the foam around at the bottom of his pint. ‘It was just plain weird, hearing him talk about “Alice”. And the way he described her too – quiet, passive. I nearly said, “Who? Motormouth Maryanne?” a few times.’ He takes a sad little breath. ‘I dunno, I just came away feeling further away from her – Maryanne, that is. I mean, this Alice woman, I don’t know her at all, and I can’t grieve for someone I didn’t even know.’ He rubs at his face. ‘God, I’m talking some existential shite this evening, aren’t I?’
He’s talking sweet, perfect sense to me. I hope my face shows it.
‘He’s going back to Sydney,’ he adds.
My investigative ears prick up. ‘He is? When? Soon?’
‘Soon-ish. Well, that’s what he reckons, anyway. Said he wishes they’d never left, they were happy there apparently. I said he shouldn’t rush into anything. I said it’s easy to make the wrong decision when you’re raw, but he just looked at me as if to say, “Who are you to tell me what I should do?” And he’s right. Who am I? I don’t know him. I didn’t know “Alice”. We’re all just strangers to each other.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t be. There is one reason I’m glad I met him, you know. He told me about all the places they lived overseas, and how he’d met her in Brighton.’ I smile encouragingly although I don’t know where he’s headed. ‘And it made me think – she always wanted to be by the coast, didn’t she? And he said that himself – that this Thames Ditton place was a massive compromise for her, but at least she was by the river. So I’m thinking that must mean she’d been happy growing up in Mulderrin, right? I mean, we were only a mile’s walk from the Atlantic fucking ocean. Just made me feel better to think she hadn’t completely forgotten where she came from, even if life at home was shite a lot of the time.’
Speaking of. ‘How is your dad?’
‘Ah sure, not good, Cat, not good.’ He looks out the window again. I follow his gaze but I’m not looking at Nelson’s Column or the skeletal, rider-less horse standing on top of the Fourth Plinth. I’m looking at his reflection. His faraway, sad expression.
‘If there’s anything I can do?’ It’s woefully inadequate but it’s all I can think to say.
He brightens quickly. ‘You could let me take you out for dinner sometime. Sometime soon,’ he adds, quickly. ‘Or I could cook you dinner? If you’ve got a particular fondness for cheese and ham toasties or microwaved pizza, I’m your man.’
‘How about cheese and beans toasties?’
He rolls his eyes. ‘Fuck’s sake. There’s always one who goes off-menu, isn’t there?’
I like him. I really like him.
*
My moonstruck spell is broken by the hypothermic heap waiting on my doorstep when I get home. I didn’t even know she knew my address. I’ve always kept things deliberately vague.
Lesson sorely learned. This is what happens when you don’t answer your phone.
‘Jacqs, what are doing here, it’s freezing? How long have you been there?’
She doesn’t answer but the colour of her nose tells me it’s been a while. I open the front door, half-hoping to hear noise, but realistically, it’s good that the Dawsons still aren’t back.
They really don’t need to see this.
I walk inside, slip off my coat and hang it at the bottom of the bannister. Jacqui doesn’t follow. ‘Are you coming in then?’ Her eyes bore into me. ‘Look, I’m shutting the door, Jacqs, so make up your mind.’
She steps into the hall and looks around, baffled by the framed artwork and expensive Turkish rugs. I’m about to ask what her problem is but then it dawns on me. She thinks this is all mine. That I’m renting this whole place. It doesn’t occur to her that some people live in ten by eight attic rooms and have two shelves assigned for their food.
‘Tea?’ I say, heading towards the kitchen. ‘You look like you could do with a hot drink.’
‘Fucking tea?’
They’re only two words, not even a coherent statement, let alone a sentence, but these two words sound truer than anything Jacqui’s said in a long time. She’s hardly sworn in years.
‘OK, do you want some fucking tea?’ I know it’s a mistake as soon as I say it.
She steps towards me. ‘Why do you do it, Cat?’ Under the hall light I see it’s not just her nose that’s red, she’s been crying. ‘Why do you have to make everything so unbearable? Can’t you accept people for what they are?’
I drop heavily onto the bottom stair. This isn’t going to be a cosy kitchen type of chat. ‘By people, I take it you mean Dad. What’s he been saying?’
Her face twists in indignation. ‘Nothing! That’s the whole point. He won’t answer my calls. He won’t answer the door. I even asked for him in the pub on Sunday night but they said he wasn’t around, even though I could clearly see the lights on upstairs.’
‘Maybe he . . .’
‘Maybe he what, Cat? Maybe he’s decided daughters are too much hassle and he’s cut me off too. What exactly did you say to him on Christmas night?’
I’m too tired for this, too unprepared. I’ve dreamed of having this conversation with Jacqui – for her to spar with me, face things head-on – but just this once I wish she’d stick her head right back in the sand.
‘We had a disagreement, that’s all, nothing for you to . . .’
‘Fuck off, Cat. You and Dad don’t “disagree”, you destroy each other.’ So she does notice. ‘I knew you were both in the kitchen, on Christmas night. I said to Ash, “oh here we go,” but when I didn’t hear any shouting, I thought maybe you were talking – you know, talking like normal people. Next thing I know, the door slams and Dad’s walking into the living room and ordering us to leave.’ She pounds her chest with a gloved fist. ‘Us! Me, Ash and Finn. So Ash says he’s drunk too much to drive and that a taxi back to Edgware will cost a fortune on Christmas night and Dad just whips out two twenties and says, “Now get out of my house please, I’ve already asked you nicely.”’
I can hardly believe it. ‘He kicked out Finn?’
‘Well, not exactly,’ she admits. ‘He did say we could leave Finn where he was, but I was livid, Cat. I said, if we’re not welcome nor’s Finn, so then I had to wake Finn up, put him in the taxi in his PJs.’
There isn’t an affirmation self-congratulatory enough, or a vat of wine big enough, to stop me feeling awful about this until the day I die. I push my fingers deep into my sockets to try to blur the image of a confused and sleepy Finn, shivering in his dinosaur PJs.
‘I’m so sorry. Really, I am.’ I want to take her hand but I know she’ll swipe it away. ‘He shouldn’t have taken it out on you. I don’t understand why he did. Can you see now that he’s an arsehole?’
Her voice is firm. ‘I can see that he must have been massively upset about something.’
‘Oh for God’s sake, stop sugar-coating him.’
She kneels down, eye-to-eye. ‘What, like how you sugar-coat Mum? Canonise her, even. I loved her too, Cat, but she wasn’t perfect.’
‘So? Who is?’ I snap back.
Jacqui cranes her neck closer. ‘Have you ever wondered why an angel like Mum would stay with such a supposed “arsehole” as Dad?’
Yes, many times. I’ve come up with, in no particular order – love, money, stability, religion, habit, fear of the unknown and low self-esteem. But I’m not about to share these.
Instead I say, ‘Your point is?’
‘Well, just that Dad can’t be all bad. Not if the holier-than-thou Ellen McBride loved him.’
I catch fire. ‘Show some fucking respect, Jacqs, that’s Mum you’re talking about.’
‘And she had her faults, Cat. She could be so moody sometimes, remember? Nothing was ever good enough. Even the way she drew the curtains could make you feel like you’d somehow disappointed her when she was in one of her sulks.’
‘At least she made us feel safe.’
She jerks her head back, bewildered. ‘I literally don’t know what you mean by that? Dad’s always made me feel safe. God, I don’t know where we’d be if . . .’
‘You’re talking about money, Jacqs.’
A nasty expression. ‘Oh, and you’re not?’
This sideswipes me. Money?
Jacqui takes my silence as confirmation of something, she almost looks pleased. ‘I had a feeling it was about that,’ she says, nodding to herself, ‘But I wanted to hear it from you. I told Dad not to mention it, I said you’d kick off, I told him, but obviously he wanted to be straight with you.’ She looks around again, gives a haughty little sniff. ‘I mean, you’re obviously doing OK, and we’re going to need that loft-conversion if we have another baby. And we said it should be a loan but Dad insisted . . .’
A loan.
A fucking loft conversion.
That’s what she thinks this is about?
Rage rips through me like a forest fire. I try counting to ten, focusing on my breathing, thinking about Aiden Doyle and the shards of possibility there.
But, of course, there are no possibilities. There never can be. Because he is Maryanne Doyle’s brother and my father is . . .
What?
‘Do you really want to know, Jacqs?’ I stand up. ‘Do you really want to know what this is about, and what I think Dad’s capable of?’ The flat look on her face says ‘we’ve been here before’ and it only serves to pour petrol on the ravaging blaze. ‘Wait there.’
I fly up the stairs before reason sets in and pull the shoebox out from under my bed.
Underneath the family photos that Mum took in Mulderrin and the red fluffy notepad where I write the unspeakable things, something glitters, as good as new.
I haven’t taken it out for years. A stupid, supernatural fear of what it could unleash, maybe? But then hell was unleashed the minute that desk clerk walked into our squad room and said, ‘A body. A woman. Leamington Square.’
I fly back down the stairs, resolute.
‘This.’ I hold the Tinkerbell pendant between my thumb and my forefinger. Jacqui doesn’t blink. ‘Do you remember this?’
Her head moves up and down, then side to side, as if to say, ‘Yes, I remember. No, I don’t have the faintest idea why you’re showing it to me.’
‘I found this in the boot of Dad’s car in Mulderrin. It was the day we were leaving and I was helping him clear all the crap out.’ Jacqui’s chin retreats into her neck – she knows this is bad but she doesn’t know why. ‘I gave this to Maryanne Doyle the day before she went missing. She said it was gorgeous and that it matched her belly-button ring, and because she was so bloody pretty and I was so bloody gormless, I said she could have it.’
She starts backing down the hall, more wary of me than of what this could mean about Dad. I can hear her later;
‘Seriously, Ash, she’s not well. She’s finally flipped. I was frightened.’
Her hand is on the door-catch and I realise she’s going to leave without saying a single solitary word, leaving me with no choice but to spell it out it out to her. No sugar-coating. No filtering.
No-holds-barred.
‘Do you understand what I’m saying? I gave it to Maryanne Doyle, Jacqs. She put it in her pocket and I didn’t see it again. So how did it end up in the boot of Dad’s car? What was Maryanne Doyle doing in the boot of Dad’s car?’