Kate cleared her throat. ‘Why? What’s the problem?’
Yates washed her hands in the sink, looking at Kate via the reflection in the mirror. ‘The solicitor called, he’s been with Steve Morgan again and it looks like he’s prepared to cop to the attempted rape. But the attack?’ She shook her head. ‘He says he’s got nothing to do with it. Says he was nowhere near the common. And he’s got evidence to prove it.’
‘What?’
Yates rested her bum on the sink and faced Kate. ‘Something about a speeding ticket. Somewhere miles away from The Avenue.’
‘Fuck,’ Kate muttered. ‘Check it out, see what the hell they’re talking about. I’ll be back in a moment.’
Yates swung out of the toilets and Kate heard the door slam behind her.
She looked at herself in the mirror. She looked like shit. Kate dug in her bag and pulled out her hairbrush, running it through her hair, then tying it up neatly in a ponytail. She slicked some lipstick on, and looked again. Better. If she was going to be fired – and it was probably going to be today – she’d better get this case solved. And quick.
She frowned. ‘Get your shit together, Munro,’ she muttered to herself. ‘You’ve got work to do.’
‘Fuck.’
An hour later, Kate stared at the photo in her hand.
‘We’ve still got him for the attempted rape,’ Yates said, tentatively.
Kate sighed. ‘Fuck,’ she said again.
In her hand was a grainy black and white photo. On it was Steve Morgan’s Jaguar, his scowling face in the front seat, captured by the speed cameras on the M27. The photo was stamped with the time 3.40 a.m.
Dave Fletcher had put his mugging at about quarter past three. The 999 call was made at 3.53 a.m. Roughly at the time Thea Patterson was being attacked, their prime suspect was nine miles away, doing a hundred and two on the motorway.
There was no doubt about it: Steve Morgan was not going to be charged with attempted murder.
Kate looked at the dejected faces of her colleagues. Briggs and Yates were sitting at their desks, swivel chairs pointed towards her, waiting for a way forward. Waiting for some indication of what to do next. Kate didn’t have a clue.
‘You’ve both done some amazing work this week,’ she began. ‘Okay, so we don’t know who attacked Thea Patterson, but at least we’ve taken one sexual predator off the street.’
‘And closed a dodgy Southampton nightclub,’ Briggs added.
Kate pointed at Briggs. ‘That too. And I’m sure if we pass the CCTV footage to the drugs squad, they’ll nail a few others on narcotics and prostitution charges. So go home. Have a nice weekend and we’ll pick up again on Monday. See what else we can find, see what we’ve missed.’
Briggs and Yates started gathering papers together, tidying up files and notes left from their week putting together the case against Steve Morgan.
‘Leave it,’ Kate said. ‘I’ll sort it all out.’
As soon as they were gone, Kate pulled the beige file from the double murder in front of her. She hadn’t mentioned it to them, not wanting to put her team in the firing line too, but she’d been desperate to take a look at the post-mortem report. Was this the key? What did Gabriella Patterson know?
Kate sat back in her chair and started to read, quickly growing frustrated in the face of the medical jargon. She looked down to the name on the bottom of the report and smiled – Dr Albert Adams.
Kate picked up the phone and dialled the morgue at Southampton General Hospital. She imagined Albie cursing at the intrusion, looking up from whatever body he was working on and ignoring the call. Sure enough, the call rang out, so she dialled again. This time someone answered.
‘What?’ came the voice at the end of the line.
‘Albie? It’s Kate Munro. I’m sorry to disturb you.’
‘Ah, Katherine. Forgiven, because it’s you. Why have I not seen you lately?’
Kate smiled, imagining her friend at the other end of the line. Years ago, when she was a fresh new recruit, the tutors decided to take all the probies down to the morgue to view a post-mortem being carried out – get them used to the grim side of the job. Kate had been the only one to hold onto her lunch. Albie had been the pathologist, and a grudging friendship had been forged.
‘I know, and I’m sorry. But I have a case you could help with. Do you remember the Patterson double homicide back in 2004?’
‘I don’t remember what I had for breakfast this morning – what makes you think I could remember some dead bodies from the last decade?’ His voice was gruff but Kate could hear tapping on the other end of the phone. ‘What’s the case number?’ he asked and Kate reeled it off. ‘Yes, here it is. But wasn’t this one convicted?’
‘Yes, but we don’t think it was as straightforward as it seemed. Could you talk me through what you found?’
‘Of course, but I’m up to the armpits in offal right now,’ he said and Kate grimaced at his black turn of phrase. ‘Come by tomorrow, I’ll be here from eight.’
‘But …’ Kate tried, but the line was dead.
She sighed and slumped back in her chair. Tomorrow it had to be, even though it was Saturday. She’d find out more then.
She pulled herself up and moved back to the whiteboard, perching on the table in front, looking at the photos. Harry Becker, Gabriella Patterson, Steve Morgan, Mortimer Breslin. She picked up a pen and drew a big red cross through the face of Steve. Alibied out. That left Harry, Gabriella and Mortimer. Or maybe someone completely different.
‘What have you all been up to?’ Kate muttered to herself. ‘What the hell am I missing?’
59
Gabi stopped in the doorway, watching him. It was the end of the day and Mortimer looked tired. He had a shadow of stubble, his shirt was uncharacteristically creased, his feet bare. She watched him as he made the coffee: taking a mug out of the cupboard, assembling the different pieces of the machine, ready to go. Any time of day, always coffee; caffeine didn’t keep him up at night as it did other people. She took in the smell of freshly ground beans, and liked the way his hair touched the collar of his shirt at the back. She felt something warm in her. A strange sense of belonging, of contentment.
Mortimer looked over and jumped.
‘There you are!’ he said, smiling. He loosened his tie with one hand, then undid his shirt cuffs, rolling the sleeves up to mid-forearm. ‘Where have you been?’
She’d been wandering for hours. After meeting Kate, her mind had been racing so she’d started walking to calm it down. She’d talked about family, yet there she was, helping the police incriminate the people she loved. She hated herself, but she couldn’t deny she’d felt something lift. She didn’t have to decide any more, to think or to worry – that was it. She knew that detective wouldn’t stop now.
As Gabi had walked, she’d thought about all those years ago. Her parents’ funeral, once the police had deigned to release their bodies, had been in October in a deluge of cold rain. She remembered the three of them standing there, hand in hand. She’d sensed Harry’s stoicism; he’d seemed so immovable that day, determined to stay resilient for her and Thea. She remembered how she’d felt. The guilt, the concern. She’d been barely holding it together. In contrast to her own grief, Thea had seemed almost absent, an empty shell where some emotion should have been. It had scared her then, and it worried her now.
And the one person she wanted to talk to was Mortimer. Right now, watching him in the kitchen, all she wanted was to sit down and tell him everything, but something was stopping her. The detective’s words haunted her. Kate had described Mortimer as obsessively stalking her and true, she knew he’d been following her when she’d pretended to be Thea. And he’d been there that night, so the police said. So why hadn’t he said anything? What did he know?
‘Where were you?’ she asked, standing in the doorway to the kitchen. ‘When Thea was attacked?’
He turned away from her, still fiddling with the coffee machine. ‘I wa
s here, at home,’ he replied.
‘Why are you lying to me?’ she said slowly.
Mortimer turned back quickly. ‘What do you mean?’ He was uncomfortable, turning the mug round in his hand.
‘I know you were there that night, the police told me, so why are you lying?’ Gabi asked again. She felt herself get louder, a trace of hysteria creep into her voice. ‘What are you not telling me, Mortimer?’
He paused, his hands going up to his face, covering his mouth. ‘I was at the club, but I went home, I swear,’ he muttered. He walked over to where Gabi stood in the doorway, but she raised her hands in front of her, forcing a barrier between them. ‘Please, Gabi,’ Mortimer said again. ‘I promise, I had nothing to do with what happened to Thea.’
She pulled away from him, backing into the hallway. ‘So why were you following me? Why did you have to do that? Why couldn’t you have let me be?’ she pleaded.
Mortimer shook his head. ‘Ever since I met you, I knew I had to be with you. I couldn’t just let you go. It was selfish and weird and scary, I know, and it’s not a side of me I’m proud of. I’m so sorry, Gabriella.’
He reached out to her and for a moment, she let him take her hands in his. She felt the warmth, and looked up at him, meeting his gaze. He was worried: about her, about what she might do.
‘Please, Gabi, don’t push me away,’ he said quietly. ‘Tell me what’s going on.’
But she couldn’t trust him. She couldn’t let go of the thought that one day he would betray her, too, and then he’d be gone and she’d be alone again. If she left now, she could stop the heartbreak before it got really bad, before she let her guard down and properly fell in love. Because she couldn’t do that again, she couldn’t. She couldn’t lose another family.
She pulled away from him and ran to the front door, one hand on the latch, pulling it open.
‘Stay, Gabriella,’ Mortimer said calmly and she turned. She took in the look on his face: the desolation, the concern.
‘Don’t run. Not this time. If you always do the same thing, if you always let your anger get the better of you, push people away, you’ll never know what good might happen if you stay.’
She knew he was right but her reaction was too ingrained. She felt that fear, and every part of her body told her to run.
‘Stay, Gabriella.’
She felt the cold wind rush in through the open door, the night sky dark, the day nearly over. She looked at the open door, at the wedding ring on her finger.
And she paused.
60
Harry lay on the sofa, one leg hanging off the end, the other resting on the coffee table. He had the television on, football blaring out and a beer in front of him, but he couldn’t concentrate. All he’d wanted was a distraction, something to take his mind off the visit with his father, the prison cell, Gabriella, the mistakes he’d made with Kate.
‘Fuck,’ Harry muttered under his breath as another goal trickled into the English net. These guys weren’t even fucking trying any more. He hadn’t been able to watch television properly for years, needing to avoid the gunfire and loud bangs omnipresent in any drama. So sport was the only safe zone for him, but this was just depressing.
He picked up his beer from the coffee table, and put it back down again. He looked over at the pile of work accumulated from too much time off, abandoned when his mind couldn’t focus.
The doorbell rang and he looked up. Harry debated ignoring it. After all, who was it going to be? Kate? Maybe. And that wouldn’t be a good thing.
At any time while he’d been arrested, he knew he could have told all to his solicitor and he’d have been out of there. At the very least he wouldn’t have had Kate coming at him like a possessed woman on a mission. But as much as he’d thought about it, he couldn’t do that to her. He’d liked her. Seeing her alone in the bar had been coincidence but, if he was being honest, everything after that point had been him taking advantage of her emotional state. Maybe not cold, hard calculation as such, but he had seen she was vulnerable, and it wasn’t something he was proud of. Confessing all to his solicitor would have been an admission of his own complicit actions, and he wanted that second chance to be a better person, as much as he wanted it for her.
The doorbell rang again and he sighed.
He could see a figure through the glass. Far too short to be Kate. He opened the door, and took in the sight of her.
Gabi was wearing a short black skirt and knee-high boots, with a turtle neck jumper. A long purple coat was thrown over the top. Her hair was poker-straight, her eyes dark. She had never looked so beautiful.
Harry cleared his throat. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.
She stepped into his flat, closing the door behind her. Without a word, she put one hand on his chest and pushed him against the wall in his hallway. She stood on her tiptoes and pulled his face towards her, kissing him hard.
Harry was taken by surprise at first, then swept along by the strength of his lust. This was different to anything he had experienced with Gabi before; she was demanding, forceful, rough even. She pulled him into the living room and pushed him down onto the sofa, straddling him and kissing him again. He pushed his hands up her jumper, feeling soft, warm skin, surprised by her lack of bra. She pulled her jumper off in one quick move, then did the same with his T-shirt, kissing him in a mess of bumped teeth and lips.
As much as Harry was enjoying it – and he really was enjoying it – he took her face gently in his hands and moved her away from him.
‘What’s brought this on?’ he asked.
‘Why does that matter?’ she replied, and went to kiss him again.
‘What about your husband?’
‘I don’t care about him.’ She sat up, her hair falling around her face, glaring at him. ‘He means nothing to me.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘But what? Your whole life you’ve wanted me, and now you finally get a chance to have me, you’re hesitating?’
He looked at her sitting on top of him, topless, her hair ruffled, her skirt pushed up around her waist. She was right: what the fuck was he thinking?
He reached up and grabbed her, flipping her over and kissing her, hard. She responded, her hands on his face, in his hair, moving down his back, pushing them into his jeans.
They fumbled over belts and zips, pulling clothes off, desperate to get rid of anything between them. Harry wanted to feel her skin on his again; he wanted to touch every part of her, kissing her breasts, her belly button, and she seemed to want the same, not holding back.
She was right. It was everything he’d wanted, and more.
‘Fuck, Gabriella.’ Harry lay on the carpet of his living room, out of breath, staring at the ceiling. She lay resting on his chest, her arm draped across him, her cheek against his collarbone. ‘I can’t feel my toes.’
He ran a finger from the nape of her neck down the middle of her spine. He took in the curve at the base of her back, then looked into her eyes, pushing her hair away from her face.
She met his eyes for a moment, her cheeks flushed, then pulled herself forward and kissed him. ‘That’s a pity,’ she said, a small smile playing on her lips. ‘I was hoping we could do that again. But you know,’ she shrugged, ‘if you’re not able …’
In one quick move he stood up, pulling her up with him, and carried her into the bedroom, her laughter filling the air.
Saturday
61
The morning was arctic as Kate locked her car and walked to the morgue at Southampton General Hospital, two large takeaway cups of coffee in her hands. She took the lift to the bottom floor, then awkwardly pressed the doorbell, the buzz sounding to let her in without question.
She walked down the corridor, the smell of disinfectant getting stronger with every step, and pushed her way through the double doors into the laboratory where she knew Albie would be waiting.
Dr Albie Adams was as tall as he was wide, with an accent honed from a lifetime of publ
ic school and redbrick universities. He was precariously balanced on a stool in front of a computer screen, his spindly legs dangling, giving him a somewhat froggy appearance. He pointed at the monitor.
‘What do you see?’ he asked, taking one of the coffees out of her hand.
Kate squinted at the photo. It was a shot of a closed eye, marked with red spots on the pallid skin around it. ‘Petechial haemorrhage,’ she said confidently and he smiled. ‘Is this the Patterson case?’ she asked.
Albie nodded, taking a sip. ‘I started reading last night, it was quite a fascinating one.’ He pointed to the stool opposite him and Kate sat down, cradling her coffee. It was cold in the lab, and her hands needed the warmth. Behind her she could see the stainless-steel tables used for autopsies, and the rows of small metal doors. Kate imagined the bodies lurking behind, preserved in their refrigerated purgatory.
‘Robert Patterson was straightforward.’ He pulled the notes up on the screen and ran a finger along the text. ‘Gunshot injury to chest, with the round transecting his descending aorta, resulting in exsanguination.’ He looked up at Kate. ‘He would have bled out in a matter of minutes.’
‘And Madeleine Patterson?’ Kate asked.
‘Well, that’s where it gets interesting. She was shot in the abdomen and her injuries were less catastrophic. The bullet caused damage to her stomach, colon and liver, but she had other pathological features that gave me pause for thought.’ He scratched his head, making his grey hair stand up on end. ‘She had petechial haemorrhages on her face, as you correctly said, but also in her conjunctiva and oral mucous membranes.’
Kate frowned. ‘Which means?’
Albie waggled his head from side to side, debating. ‘Unfortunately, there’s no specific diagnostic marker at autopsy, but my guess at the time was that as well as being shot, she’d also been asphyxiated.’
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