I’ve never subscribed to the cult of New Year’s Eve. Never grasped the fascination. All that reflecting on the past and hoping for the future always strikes me as a profoundly bad idea when you’ve been poisoning your body for seven days straight, and your nervous system’s shot to pieces by marathon-style boozing and energy-sapping grub.
It’s especially a bad idea at five a.m., when you’re alone and lying in the pitch-black silence, waiting for the orange glow of the streetlamps to bring another dark night of the soul to a close.
Good old five a.m., though.
There’s comfort to be found in consistency.
Unsurprisingly, sleep was fractured last night. Just the odd twenty-minute snatch dreaming of shadowed, wailing women emerging from dark corners to plead with me about something?
Mary Shelley had Frankenstein haunting her ‘midnight pillow’. Basically, I’d had Jacqui.
Around three a.m., I’d switched the light on and pounded out a text out to my sister. An incoherent essay full of pseudo-apologies and rambling justifications. The worst kind of grovel – ‘I’m really sorry, but . . .’
Thankfully I hadn’t sent it.
I hadn’t sent the one I’d written to Aiden Doyle either.
Thanks for the drink. Don’t think we should meet up again. Sorry. Cat x.
SMS 3.32 a.m.
I stir myself and drift zombie-like into the shower. The water’s warm but sparse, another thing in this house that needs fixing. Still in my towel, I mainline carbs and caffeine for half an hour, sitting on the stair where my relationship with Jacqui ended last night until I realise I’m shivering. Proper cartoon shivering. I crank the heating up and go back upstairs. Fill my room with the tinny, mindless sounds of breakfast TV.
A shower. Carbs. Caffeine. Vacuous noise. Usually a winning combination for shaking off the worst of the bad-night blues but I can’t seem to find solace today. My heart’s too heavy and my chest’s too tight and for the first time ever I think about phoning in sick.
That is, until Parnell calls.
‘Boss,’ I croak, giving myself the option depending on what he has to say. ‘You’re up early, you all right?’
His voice sounds odd, softer. ‘Better to be a lark than an owl, Kinsella, and in answer to your question, no, I’m not all right.’
I mute the TV, silencing a far-too-chipper brunette preaching about how to get a flat stomach in twelve hours. For the ‘big night’ as she calls it.
‘Why? What’s happened? You sound weird?’
What’s happened to Parnell is a tooth abscess, ‘more painful than labour’ he insists as Maggie shouts obscenities in the background. What’s happened to our case is a call from Parnell’s ‘snout’, Mrs Stevens, to say that ‘a dark woman with a suitcase’ turned up at Saskia French’s flat last night and was heard saying to someone on her phone that she’d come back the next morning when she’d found her spare key.
Which leaves me sitting outside Ophelia Mansions for nearly four hours, cursing this woman and her loose definition of the word ‘morning’, and Parnell sitting in the emergency dentist’s chair, cursing himself for not taking better care of his teeth.
Just after noon she turns up. As we climb the six flights of stairs, I give the woman with the mellow-brown skin and the cut-glass accent a two-minute version of our two-week-old case.
She doesn’t seem too moved by it.
‘Maryanne’s dead?’ She pats the pockets of her Afghan coat, shoving her handbag into my arms so she can rummage for the key. ‘Sorry, I had no idea. I’ve been in the Seychelles for the past three weeks with a client.’
Her name is Naomi Berry. She’s been working ‘with, not for’ Saskia French for several years and she has a key because when Saskia’s away, she likes Naomi to keep half an eye on things. She explains that she called by the flat last night as Saskia lets her keep her work ‘things’ here – it saves her carting them backwards and forwards between here and her respectable life as a trainee acupuncturist in Crouch End – and she was very surprised to find Saskia gone as the week between Christmas and New Year is usually highly lucrative. Clients who’ve been cooped up with their families are desperate to ‘relax’, apparently, and a wintery woodland walk or a quiet pint in the local doesn’t quite cut it.
All this before we’ve got through the bloody front door.
‘So you met Maryanne?’ I finally get a word in.
‘Briefly.’ She jangles the key triumphantly then twists it in the lock. ‘She was here for about a week before I left.’
There’s a mound of literature on the doormat, mainly junk – pizza flyers, taxi cards, letters addressed ‘to the occupier’, and there’s a sweet rank smell stifling the air. Naomi eyes me warily in the dim light – she’s clearly watched her fair share of cop shows – however it’s definitely not the sweet stench of death. Decaying fruit, I reckon. Or an unemptied bin. Naomi puts her case down and goes into the kitchen to investigate. I walk into the living room and start opening windows.
‘So what can you can tell me about Maryanne?’ I say, keeping my question nice and open.
She stands in the doorway holding the offending bin-bag out in front of her like a dead rat. Sundown in the Seychelles must seem like a very distant dream right now.
‘Nothing. Like I said, our paths didn’t cross for long. We barely spoke other than to say hello.’
I nod, leave it at that. ‘Naomi, we really need to speak with Saskia and we haven’t been able to contact her for nearly a week. Have you heard from her at all?’
‘No, but then she knows not to call when I’m holidaying with a client. They tend to want the full “girlfriend experience” and they don’t appreciate your phone going off every two seconds. It rather reminds them of what you are.’ She pauses, pouting. ‘Saskia could be away with a client I suppose?’
I shake my head. ‘She said she was going to her parents. I don’t suppose you know their address, or have a contact number?’
Her lip curls slightly. I’m not sure if it’s the bin-bag or the question. ‘Her parents? As far as I’m aware she never knew her father and her mother died well over a year ago. She was very distressed about it even though they hadn’t spoken in years.’
OK.
I relieve her of the bin-bag, offer to ferry it down the six flights. There’s no thank you, just a tight smile that suggests I’m probably better suited to the chore anyway. On my way down, I put a call in to HQ and get a message to Steele, through Renée, that it looks like there’s no parents in Somerset, or any other rural cider-drinking county for that matter, and therefore we have the very real possibility that Saskia French has done a bunk. Then I call Parnell who I tell the exact same thing.
Parnell tells me, as best he can in his semi-anaesthetised state, that he’s just jumping in the car and he’ll be as quick as he can.
*
When I walk back into the flat, the hall light’s now on and Naomi’s bent over a small puddle of water, holding a dustpan and brush awkwardly, like she’s not quite sure how to use it. A cylindrical vase lies on its side and small shards of broken glass are scattered around a few limp gerberas – once a cheerful yellow, now heading towards a murky light brown.
I address the top of her head. ‘Accident?’
‘No, I only just noticed it when I switched the light on. That table’s a bit crooked as well.’ She looks up. ‘This is odd. Saskia’s usually quite tidy. I’m surprised she’d leave behind a mess like this.’
So she left in a hurry, of her own accord or someone else’s.
‘Look, leave that, Naomi. Don’t touch anything.’ I gesture towards the living room. ‘Can we sit down? I need to ask you a few more questions.’
She thinks about this for a minute and I play along, allowing the pretence that she actually has a choice. Eventually she shrugs, pushes past me. ‘OK, I can’t imagine how I’ll help but if you must.’
I take the sofa – chic, angular, uncomfortable, like the sofa in Dr Allen’s waiting room. Naomi stays standing, leaning lightly against the windowsill. The low midday sun frames her beautifully and if it wasn’t for her jetlag eye-bags and completely flat expression, I’d say she almost looks celestial.
‘Did you ever hear Maryanne or Saskia say they were scared of anyone?’
‘No. But as I explained, I didn’t hear Maryanne say very much at all.’
I get specific, eyes primed for the slightest reaction. ‘Do you know Nate Hicks?’
The name doesn’t faze her. ‘I know who he is. I don’t know him personally.’
‘Did you ever see him with Maryanne?’
A languid shake of the head. ‘No.’
‘Have you ever seen him here?’
‘Not in a long time, but then I’m only here a few times a week.’
‘What about his wife, Gina Hicks?’
Her face stays blank, unreadable. ‘No.’
‘Did you know Saskia was having a relationship with Nate Hicks?’
Her head tilts. ‘You mean he’s a client?’
‘Well, it was a bit more than that. They were having an affair, a relationship. In Saskia’s mind anyway.’
She seems to find this amusing and lets out a deep gravelly laugh that doesn’t quite match the la-di-da accent she obviously works hard to maintain. ‘That’s an absurd idea,’ she says, recovering quickly. ‘A client maybe, but a lover?’ Her brown eyes sparkle as she says the word. ‘Saskia likes them young, skinny and arty. I don’t think I’ve ever known her date anyone over the age of twenty-five and the Hicks chap must be in his mid-forties at least?’
‘Saskia confirmed it,’ I say.
‘Well, that surprises me.’ She concedes quickly, too disinterested to argue the toss. ‘Why are you asking about him anyway? Has he got something to do with what happened to Maryanne?’
There’s a boredom to her voice that I find refreshing. A complete lack of emotional investment which means she’s less likely to lie, unlike every other person involved in this case.
On this basis, I decide to make her my trusty assistant.
‘I need to make a quick call,’ I say. ‘Can you see if there’s anything obvious missing from Saskia’s room? Do you know where she keeps her passport, for example?’
She looks unsure. ‘Well . . . I . . . I’m not really sure Saskia would be comfortable with me going through her things. I . . .’
‘Naomi, she’s been out of contact for nearly a week and she’s been sharing a flat with a woman who was murdered. We’re extremely worried about her, as I’m sure you are.’
I’m sure she’s nothing of the sort but she has the good grace to pretend at least, nodding solemnly and heading towards Saskia’s bedroom, if not exactly at a worried pace.
Parnell answers instantly on his crackly hands-free. ‘Calm down, kiddo, I’m about fifteen minutes away.’
‘Listen, Boss, I’m not sure Saskia has done a bunk. It looks like there’s been some sort of scuffle here. Nothing major, no blood that I can see, but a table’s been knocked into and there’s a mess on the floor, a broken vase. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.’
Nothing for a second except static and the sound of car horns. ‘All right, I’ll let Steele know and I’ll get the team down to start knocking on doors. See if anyone heard anything, saw anything.’
‘OK, I’m going to have a root around Saskia’s room.’
The crackling intensifies. ‘The previous warrant covered the whole flat,’ he shouts as best he can. ‘Forensics have already gone through Saskia’s room.’
‘Yeah, but they were looking for Maryanne’s bag and phone, things related to her. I’m looking for something that might tell us where Saskia is.’
A pause. ‘OK, fine, there might be something they wouldn’t have considered relevant the first time. I’ll get someone from Forensics over to have a butcher’s at this scuffle, OK.’
He hangs up without a goodbye. I open the door to Saskia’s room.
‘Any joy?’ I say, taken aback by the messy, windowless box. It looks like a modern art installation called ‘Pandemonium.’
‘I’m surprised she’d leave her room like this.’ Naomi’s sitting on the bed, a king-size divan with a brass metal headboard. Clothes, make-up and an arsenal of electrical beauty gadgets that I’d struggle to even identify are strewn across the wooden floor. I have to tiptoe across just to reach a clear patch. ‘Her passport’s still here,’ she says, pointing to a nightstand. ‘But it’s strange she didn’t take this.’ She leans towards the headboard and unscrews a brass knob from the railing, pulling out two bulging rolls of twenty-pound notes. There must be easily £2,000.
‘And she’s definitely not with a client.’ She slides open the fitted wardrobe and presents various swatches to me – red velvets, black silks, a sky-blue lace number similar to the bridesmaid dress I wore at Jacqui’s wedding – the memory slices through me. ‘Because she hasn’t taken any of her good stuff.’
Much as she’s being helpful, I want her out of here now so I can have a proper scout around.
‘Thanks, Naomi. Any danger of a cup of tea?’ I’m used to this being a reasonable request to make of anyone, Naomi Berry looks affronted. ‘Weak, no sugar,’ I add, smiling. ‘Not too much milk.’
She realises I’m being serious and walks out of the room, her posture straight out of finishing school. Spine straight, head high.
I take the wardrobe first, fishing among the clothes and shaking out every shoe, completely clueless as to what I’m looking for. There’s a few handbags flung at the back – designer labels, although I think they’re fake – each one containing nothing more than a few screwed-up receipts and half-used lipsticks. The shelves are full of cosy winter jumpers and throwaway vest tops, apart from the top shelf where a small suitcase sits with the baggage tag still on – London Heathrow to Prague. There’s nothing in the case. I turn my attention to the bed, checking under the mattress and then pulling out the drawers where a suite of sex toys rests on top of neatly folded towels and bed linen. I check the nightstands on both sides and discover nothing more revelatory than the fact Saskia French takes Microgynon for heavy periods and hydrocortisone cream for dry skin.
There’s little else to search as the bed swamps most of the room and I’m just about to start thumbing through a handful of paperbacks on a slightly wonky shelf when my phone rings. It takes me a minute to locate it and when I do, the caller’s voice is impatient and crabby.
‘Are you still there?’ It’s Steele.
‘I am. So you heard? About the parents? Well, the potential lack of parents …’
‘Zip it, Kinsella.’ The line’s echoey – speakerphone? ‘Listen, I’ve got Sonny Shah from SERIS with me. He’s been going over the videos from the search of Saskia’s flat before Christmas.’
SERIS. Specialist Evidence Recovery Imaging Services. Responsible for a smorgasboard of tasks including crime-scene video recording. Essential to all murder investigations as you just never know what innocuous item might become relevant further down the line.
‘Hey there.’ A meek, nervy voice. Brummie, I think.
‘Sonny, you explain,’ says Steele.
He clears his throat. ‘Um, well, as you know, we take panoramic recordings of every room and um, what with Christmas and that, there’s been a bit of a delay in getting through everything but I, um . . .’
Steele cuts in. ‘Basically, Sonny thinks he’s spotted something on the video and I need you to check.’ My heart quickens, she’d have left this to Parnell to sort if it wasn’t critical. ‘There’s a room at the bottom of the hall, across from the kitchen. There’s a single bed in it but it looks like more of a spare room, a dumping ground.’
I’m standing in the doorway before Steele’s finished the sentence.
Sonny Shah comes back on the line. ‘Um, there’s a photo on the wall. Er, well, it’s more of a collage really.’
It’s to my left as I walk in, twenty-plus versions of Saskia French looking back at me. Saskia French and various people – smiling, pouting, smouldering, posing and probably a whole load of other ‘ings’ that I’d be able to identify if I put my glasses on. I fish them out of my pocket, give them a cursory wipe with the sleeve of my coat. ‘OK. Got it.’
Steele again. ‘Towards the top left-hand corner. It’s a bit faded, it’s an old photo.’
I step closer.
‘Um, I’m not a hundred per cent sure, she looks very different,’ says Shah, getting his excuses in early. ‘I’ve blown it up as much as possible. I think it’s her.’
I’m a hundred per cent sure though.
A hundred and ten per cent sure, as annoying people often say.
It most definitely is Maryanne Doyle.
I say the words out loud but I’m not sure if they hear over the sound of my phone crashing to the floor. Almost instantly it rings again but I stay rooted to the spot, fearful that if I crouch down, I might never find the strength to get up again. Eventually it rings off.
Maryanne Doyle and Saskia French. Together. Standing, maybe dancing, on a coffee table. Maryanne with her liquorice-black curls and Saskia with a shaggier bob, a couple of shades lighter than the coal-black hue she currently sports. They can’t be more than eighteen, nineteen, tops, with their bottles of lemon Hooch and their matching denim mini-skirts. Smiles broad and cheeky. Clearly loving life.
But it’s not the girls who chill my blood, it’s the men in the background. The men leering and laughing with their lager cans brandished high like trophies.
The men I remember from Dad’s pub.
The men who’d count money in the back room when Mum was away.
And ‘Uncle’ Frank, sitting on the arm of a sofa wearing a West Ham shirt identical to Dad’s, except Dad’s had ‘Di Canio 10’ printed on the back whereas Frank’s had ‘Frankie 666,’ the crass, egotistical prick.
No sign of Dad though, and it definitely wasn’t taken in the pub which is something. One molecule of mercy in this mountain of dirt.
Although someone had to be taking the photo. The thought that it might have been Dad is so riddled with dirt that I’ve got no choice but to temporarily block it out.
I hear voices in the distance as I try to steady my breathing. Familiar, comforting voices. Parnell pacifying Steele over the phone. Emily whining about the stairs. Seth out-poshing Naomi Berry with his upper-class pronunciation and use of the word ‘splendid’.
Suddenly, a voice gets closer. I hadn’t even registered him walking in.
‘Well?’ says Parnell, breathless from the climb. ‘Is it her?’
I don’t answer, I just point towards the top left-hand corner. There’s a tremor in my hand that I pray is only visible to me. Parnell’s mouth makes a puckered ‘O’ as he clocks the mini-skirted buddies. He confirms to Steele that it’s definitely her and hangs up.
Somewhere outside the room, Naomi Berry shouts, ‘Tea’.
Parnell pokes his head out. ‘No time for tea, I’m afraid. Can you go and see Detective Swaines, please? He’ll take a full statement from you. He’s out on the landing now – tall lad, fair hair, makes Brad Pitt look like a warthog, you can’t miss him.’
Her protest about ‘not knowing anything’ gets fainter as she sashays back up the hall.
Parnell picks up my phone, hands it to me with a funny look. ‘So what does this mean then?’
Usually when Parnell asks me questions like this, it’s some sort of test. It’s Parnell doing his sage, avuncular thing. Today I think he’s genuinely stumped.
‘I don’t know exactly.’ My feet prickle with the urge to run away but my legs feel too heavy. I clear some junk off the bed and sit down. The mattress feels saggy and lumpy, decades old. ‘It means Saskia’s been lying through her teeth which has to mean Gina Hicks is lying too, unless we’re supposed to believe that Maryanne was friends with Saskia from way back but then just happened to turn up on the same IVF forum as Saskia’s landlady four years ago. I mean, I know you believe in coincidences, Boss, but I’d like to see the odds on this one.’
Parnell takes a photo of the photo on his phone then sits down beside me, staring blankly ahead. ‘But who’s covering for who? And why? What are we missing?’ He puts his hand to his jaw. ‘Damn it, my tooth hurts.’
‘My head hurts. We’ve got a victim with two identities, a missing/dead baby, a load of people who couldn’t lie straight in bed but no stand-up-in-court motive for any of them. Saskia French’s missing. Gina Hicks is clearly hiding something. And even though it’s the women who are wrecking our heads the most, we’re fairly sure our killer, or at least the person who dumped the body, is a man!’
Parnell scratches his head. Half-laughs, because you might as well.
‘Aiden Doyle is some big-shot algorithim-analyst-nerd,’ I add. ‘He’d have a better shot at solving this headfuck than us, I reckon.’
Parnell nudges me. ‘Hey, we’re not quite the Keystone Cops, kiddo, we’re getting there. I think we can safely say Saskia French’s now a person of interest so we’ll get an appeal out for information – Her Majesty can get on to the Press Office. We’ – a wiggle of the fingers to confirm he means me and him – ‘need to find out what the Hickses’ make of all this. I’ll run it by Steele but I don’t want to arrest them or bring them in at this point, they’ll only lawyer-up if we do. I say we surprise them at home, and then cross our fingers they decide that a cosy little chat on the sofa, under caution of course, doesn’t warrant getting their brief over. I just want to see how they explain this away before we get heavy. We won’t be able to record it,’ he adds, ‘so make sure you note everything down, OK?’
Emily sticks her head round the door, a giddy look on her face. ‘Sir, I think I might have something. A woman at 12b says she saw Saskia let a guy into the flat on Christmas Eve morning and heard raised voices. She doesn’t usually pay much attention to men coming and going – she seems to know the score – but she remembers this one because he looked pretty young.’
Young. Not in his mid-fifties with salt-and-pepper hair and a smile that could melt granite. I nearly combust with relief.
‘Saskia likes them young.’ I say. ‘According to Naomi, anyway. So maybe she’s got a boyfriend? Maybe she’s with a boyfriend?’
Emily hasn’t finished. ‘You know who the description sounds like, Cat? The eldest Hicks lad. The one who came into the kitchen when we were there. You know, the one with the faux-hawk.’
‘Spiky hair,’ I confirm to a frowning Parnell. ‘She means the violin-playing geezer-boy.’
Emily continues. ‘I found him on Instagram. His profile pic’s not great, he’s used this stupid psychedelic filter which obviously distorts things a bit, but she’s still about eighty per cent sure it was him.’
Parnell stands up abruptly leaving the knackered mattress rippling. ‘Right, come on,’ he says to me. ‘We need to get over there now.’ To Emily, ‘Get this collage bagged up, please. Let what’s-her-name know we’re seizing it on the grounds it could be evidence in relation to an offence.’
I snatch one last look at the photo, wishing with every fibre of my being that we could leave it here, displayed in this safe, unthreatening place, far from the world of evidence bags and incident boards. Because, make no mistake, once it’s up on our board and ‘Uncle’ Frank’s familiar face becomes permanent MIT4 wallpaper, my failure to identify him definitely puts me in losing-my-job-territory.
As if I wasn’t there already.
It possibly puts me in losing-my-freedom territory too – attempting to pervert the course of justice wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for a particularly pumped-up prosecutor and misconduct in a public office would be mere child’s play. A prosecutorial walk in the park.
I trail Parnell back down the hall. His step’s surprisingly sprightly given he’s got nearly thirty years on me and over thirty kilos, but then he’s full of purpose while I’m full of guilt and the guilt is weighing heavy on me. My legs feel like lead. As I pass by the living room, I remember I opened a window earlier. I call out to Parnell to wait a second while I close it.
And that’s when I see it.
‘Boss,’ I shout.
Parnell’s talking to a recently-arrived SOCO and doesn’t come straight away. I walk out into the hall and tug on his arm like an overwrought child wanting attention. ‘Boss.’ He shakes me off, tries to finish his conversation. ‘Parnell, now! Please! You need to come and look at this.’
The SOCO mutters something sour but I couldn’t care less. All I care about is another another pair of eyes confirming what I think I can see.
I literally push Parnell into the living room. ‘Wait there,’ I say, running back to the spare room where I take the collage out of Emily’s hands without explanation. Back in the living room, Parnell’s looking grumpy, jiggling his e-cig in his pocket, and so I bypass all the usual preambles of ‘I can’t be sure’ and ‘Now, I might be wrong’ and cut firmly to the chase.
‘Look.’ I point to the wall then back to the image of Maryanne and Saskia. ‘The paint’s a different colour but the flouncy plasterwork hasn’t changed. Check out that dado rail.’
Words I never thought I’d hear myself say.
Parnell swipes my glasses off my nose and onto his, holding the photo close to his face, looking back and forth, his smile growing wider with each gawp. ‘You know, I think you might be right, kiddo.’
‘Too right, I’m right. It’s unmistakable. It’s unmistakably hideous.’ It’s harsh, but roses and ribbons really aren’t my thing. ‘I’m telling you, Boss, that photo was taken in this flat.’