by Sabina Manea
Lucia stood up, and her lips curled into a triumphant little smile, the kind that always came out when she made an interesting discovery. ‘I can’t reach that glass.’
‘Yes, I can see that, but I’m none the wiser.’
‘If I’m sitting in the same position as she was, and I can’t reach the glass, even when I stretch out as far as possible, that means there’s no way she could have sat in the bath and put it where we’ve found it.’
‘She could have put it down before she got into the bath,’ suggested Trinh.
‘But why would she put it on the floor, in that case? Why not on this wide windowsill, next to the bottle, or on top of this chest of drawers?’ Lucia motioned to a small piece of furniture on the left-hand side of the sink that housed a generous selection of cosmetic products by upmarket brands.
‘OK, I’m still a bit confused. But, moving on, what do you think about the body? It looks like a bad rash to me,’ said Trinh.
‘That I’ve got no clue about, but I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough from the PM. Let’s see what’s in these drawers.’ Lucia rummaged around gingerly with her gloved hands, setting aside face creams, standard over-the-counter painkillers, condoms, tampons and suchlike. ‘Antihistamines. So, she must have been allergic to something. Maybe that accounts for the rash then; it looks like a skin reaction. The medicine is on prescription, according to this label, so whatever she had can’t have been negligible. Her GP will be able to fill us in.’
Lucia replaced the packet where she had found it and gently closed the drawer. ‘I reckon we’re done in here, for now at least. Shall we take a look around the house then?’
Trinh nodded instantly in agreement. Having left Ana in the capable hands of a kindly constable who had been promptly dispatched from the station, the two detectives proceeded to inspect the rest of the place. The closed door on the same floor as the bathroom turned out to be the bedroom, as predicted. It was simply furnished with a double bed, whose curling black metal frame indicated with reasonable certainty that it originated from a well-known Scandinavian purveyor of affordable furniture. There was a tall, spindly floor light that served as a bedside lamp, and a dog-eared, mass-produced paperback on the floor. Two metal clothes rails and three neat rows of shoes, ranging from glitzy party heels to scruffy trainers, completed the rest of the décor. There had been no personalisation of the bedroom – no pictures on the walls, no photos anywhere to be seen. The clothes were much like the shoes: office wear, jeans, casual tops, a couple of short dresses. Most were high street, and a few were pricier designer items. On the floor sat two soft leather handbags that looked expensive, though not ostentatiously so. All in all, Trinh and Lucia were faced with the unsurprising wardrobe of a young, professional urban female.
‘What’s this?’ Trinh picked up a crumpled piece of paper off the floor and stretched it out on her left palm so that she could smooth it back into shape.
‘What does it say?’
‘I can’t really read it,’ said Trinh as she peered quizzically at the spindly writing.
Lucia came closer and looked at the sheet. ‘Aurora Borealis.’
‘What’s “Aurora Borealis”?’ asked Trinh as she struggled somewhat to pronounce the unfamiliar words.
‘It’s the Latin phrase for the Northern Lights. That’s odd, isn’t it? Why would someone jot that down, I wonder?’
Lucia looked around the room hoping in vain that she would be enlightened, but nothing jumped out at her. ‘We can bag it and come back to it later.’
Chapter 5
Lucia followed Trinh down the stairs and into the claustrophobic kitchen. In line with the rest of the house, the fittings were functional but unremarkable. There was a small window above the sink letting in some natural light. Next to it there was a thick, floor-length curtain. Lucia swept it gently to one side. It covered a door. She tried it, but it was locked. Through the window it was apparent that the door led onto a minuscule patch of garden directly adjacent to the street behind the house.
DS Trinh scanned the room and opened a few cupboards, while Lucia looked in the fridge and the bin.
‘Nothing here that you wouldn’t expect,’ said Lucia as she tried to ignore the tingly itch of the sweat that was forming on her palms under the disposable gloves. ‘A few empty bottles of booze for recycling, not much in the fridge. Looks like she keeps on top of the washing up. Nothing left out to dry.’
‘There’s no dishwasher either, so she was clearly very tidy. Not like my kitchen; that place is a warzone, no matter how many times I’ve scrubbed it. Discarded dishes and food everywhere. That’s kids for you. Let’s talk to the cleaner then. I hope she’s recovered enough to give us a statement,’ concluded Trinh.
As they walked through the door of the sitting room, Lucia made a mental note of the set-up. The supposed fireplace she had seen through the window was indeed there: a plain, cast iron insert with fake lumps of coal that had been dressed up with decorative tealights. The picture above it was a framed poster showing a black and white variation on one of Matisse’s Blue Nudes. The frame alone must have been significantly pricier than the print. A narrow, uncomfortable-looking grey sofa and matching armchair crowded the room and were suitably complemented by a metal coffee table strewn with aging fashion magazines. The corner was occupied by a chair and a small desk housing a sleek, high-end laptop and a hastily discarded cloth carrier bag from a modish local deli, seemingly filled with folders and assorted paperwork. Lucia surmised that the victim took her work home. Judging by her personal experience working at Creasy & Gotts, there would have been plenty to get on with.
Ana sat in the armchair with her bare feet curled up under her and her fingers wrapped around a steaming mug. DS Trinh motioned to the constable, who discreetly saw herself out of the room.
The two detectives sat on the sofa opposite, with the most kindly look on their faces that they could possibly muster.
‘Ana. May I call you Ana?’ Trinh began. ‘Miss Dineva sounds so formal, doesn’t it?’ She smiled encouragingly at the poor girl, who still looked shell-shocked after her ordeal.
‘Yes. Yes, Ana is OK.’
‘Thank you, Ana. Now, I know you’ve had a pretty big scare this morning, but do you think you can talk to us, tell us a bit about what happened?’ continued Trinh as she opened her notebook gently at a blank page. ‘Let’s start at the beginning. What time did you get here?’
Lucia was glad that she and Trinh had happened to be first on the scene. The girl looked like she could do with a sympathetic chat rather than a surly interrogation from some of the less skilled officers at the station. DS Harding in particular came to mind. The man was about as subtle as a brick through a window when it came to obtaining information.
Ana breathed in deeply, as if to steel herself for the task at hand. ‘I was here just before ten. Maybe quarter to ten. I unlocked the door and went in. I went to the kitchen and made a coffee.’ She looked up expectantly, waiting to be helped along.
‘And then what happened?’ asked Lucia with a soft, encouraging smile, trying desperately to disguise her mounting impatience.
Trinh shot her colleague a sideways glance which suggested that the feeling was mutual. It was looking like a long morning ahead of them if this was the pace at which the girl was going.
Oblivious to the unintentionally comical effect of her slow rendition, the cleaner continued, ‘I went and got the cleaning products and started. I did the downstairs and then opened the window in the kitchen for some fresh air. Genevieve doesn’t like strong chemical smells. She says cleaning products are bad for your skin. She always buys this expensive natural stuff.’ Now in her element, Ana graced the two detectives with a sardonic grin. ‘They’re rubbish. It takes me twice as long to get the dirt off, so sometimes I cheat a bit and get the bleach out.’
‘Did you notice anything out of place downstairs?’ asked Lucia, keen not to lose the meandering witness.
The girl scrunched up
her nose and shrugged. ‘Out of place? No, nothing. This place is like a hotel. She’s barely here. Was…’ Ana’s eyes welled up.
At least she looks like she’s genuinely grieving, assessed Lucia. Out loud, she said, by way of a test, ‘Did you get a chance to go into the sitting room?’
‘Yes, to dust.’ A flicker lit across the girl’s face. ‘There was something different. Her things, laptop, bag. They were there, on the table. Normally she leaves early, before I get here. I always come around ten. Easier to clean when nobody is at home. I thought maybe she had the day off and didn’t tell me. I thought she was upstairs.’
‘But you didn’t go to check straightaway?’ interrupted Trinh.
‘No, not until I finished dusting and wiping downstairs. About ten thirty. I didn’t hear anything, so I thought maybe she was asleep. I didn’t want to disturb her.’
‘And what happened when you went upstairs?’ continued Trinh.
Ana curled up even tighter. When she spoke, her voice was croaky and barely audible. ‘The bathroom door was open, so I went straight in. And she was just lying there. I jumped and said “Sorry”. I thought for a second that she had just put her head under the water, you know, to wash her hair. When I realised she wasn’t moving, I nearly vomited. I’ve never seen a dead body before. And that redness on her skin… She looked like something out of a horror movie. What is that?’
‘We don’t know yet. It looks like an allergic reaction. Do you know if she was allergic to anything?’ asked Lucia.
‘Sorry, no idea. She never mentioned anything to me.’
‘You didn’t try to get her out of the bath?’ Lucia said. ‘Don’t worry, there’s no reason why you should have done,’ she reassured the girl, who suddenly looked very defensive. ‘We’re just trying to ascertain if the body has been touched. For our report, you see.’
‘No. Maybe I should have done. But she was so still. I panicked. Then I ran outside,’ replied Ana.
Lucia decided a change of tack was in order and so she glanced over at Trinh, who nodded slightly in approval. ‘OK, thank you for that. I know it’s not easy. Tell me a bit about Genevieve. What was she like?’
‘Nice. Very beautiful girl. She – how do you say it – kept to herself. I don’t know much about her, to be honest. I’ve only been cleaning here a month. I know she was a lawyer. She talked about it a bit and said she worked long hours. I don’t think she was British. She sounded different, but my English isn’t good enough to tell accents.’
‘Did she have visitors?’ continued Lucia.
‘I don’t know. I’m only here once a week in the morning.’
‘No partner?’ interjected Trinh.
‘No idea. There’s no sign of anyone else around the house, as far as I can tell.’
Trinh produced a small plastic bag containing the crumpled note they had found in the bedroom. She got up and showed it to Ana. ‘Do you recognise this?’
‘No. What does it say?’ The cleaner narrowed her eyes as she tried to read the text.
‘Aurora Borealis,’ said Trinh. ‘Any idea what it means?’
‘No. Sorry.’
The blankness of the girl’s expression strongly suggested this was likely to be the case. There was little else to be gained from the encounter, and Lucia hoped that the DS would wrap up the interview so they could go back to the station and mull over their findings.
Much to Lucia’s relief, Trinh smiled broadly and said, ‘Thank you, Ana. You’ve been a great help. You’ve had quite a morning, so I suggest you go home and have a rest. The police officer who was with you earlier took your details, so we’ll call you if we need anything else.’
With considerably more feeling than she had shown thus far, Ana sat up straight and gave Trinh a searching look. ‘She killed herself, didn’t she? Don’t lie to me, please. I saw the glass in the bathroom, and that medicine for sleep. I’m not stupid, you know. She must have been drunk and then drowned. You just don’t know what people are capable of, or what’s going on inside them. She always seemed so… calm. But you just never know, do you?’
Trinh was eager to put an end to any further febrile speculation, so she cut the girl short. ‘As with all sudden deaths, there will be a post-mortem. We’ll be in touch, Ana. Now, do you want to get your things together? We’re happy to wait.’
As they gently ushered the girl out of the door and locked the house behind them, Lucia knew that the scene had to be cleared until it had been conclusively determined whether the death had been accidental or self-inflicted. The third possibility that was gnawing away in her mind was hardly preferable.
Chapter 6
The following week started uneventfully, with the usual reams of paperwork to process and desktop research to be carried out while awaiting the results of the post-mortem for Genevieve Taylor. Now they had a death on their hands, DCI Carliss’s specialist CID team were fully immersed in the ongoing investigation. The Unusual Deaths Team did what it said on the tin: it was responsible for handling unexplained deaths that couldn’t immediately be categorized as natural events, accidents or suspected homicides. The rest of the demises that routinely occurred in the borough of Camden were left to the headquarters at Holborn, which consequently commanded most of the budget.
The Kentish Town CID team was, to use a real estate euphemism, ‘bijou’. It consisted of DCI David Carliss, DS Cam Trinh, DC George Harding and civilian investigator Lucia Steer. Additional help from the rest of the station could be roped in as circumstances required. The arrangement wasn’t exactly run of the mill, but it worked. It certainly kept Detective Superintendent Linda Perretti happy, since Carliss was a safe pair of hands, and his team closed cases at a remarkably efficient rate. The inspector was even willing to admit to himself that their rate of success had noticeably improved since the hiring of Lucia, whose sharp eyes had helped wrap up investigations that might have otherwise been left hanging.
On the Tuesday morning, just as they had all settled down with a cuppa ready for another day’s work, Trinh knocked excitedly on the door of the office that Lucia and DCI Carliss shared.
‘Come in, Cam. What is it?’ said Lucia as she looked up from her computer screen where she had been engrossed in some serious ferreting around.
‘Have you seen the PM? It’s just come through.’
Lucia had been so busy with her task that she’d totally missed the tell-tale notification that signalled the arrival of an email in her inbox. She glanced over at her superior’s desk, which had an empty wrapper on it. Judging by the smell, it must have recently housed a pungent bacon roll. The inspector was nowhere to be seen.
‘You’re the absolute star of getting them processed in record time, Cam,’ Lucia said, referring to DS Trinh’s uncanny ability to get the post-mortems fast-tracked, which probably had something to do with the fact that the pathologist had a soft spot for the attractive sergeant. Trinh was perfectly willing to milk this advantage as fully as possible without ever providing anything but a delicate flutter of the old eyelashes in return. She was more than happily married, and, in any case, she wasn’t the straying sort.
‘Let’s have a look then. Grab a chair,’ said Lucia, and the two women huddled around the screen. ‘Blah blah, description of victim and so on – oh, here it is. Estimated time of death is between nine and eleven, possibly midnight at a stretch, on the Thursday night. Then the cleaner found the body on the following Friday morning.’
Trinh ran her finger across the screen, taking in the information as quickly as she could. ‘She had temazepam in her system, as we suspected. That and the booze are a dangerous combination.’
‘The conclusion is that she first lost consciousness from the pills and alcohol, and then slipped underwater and drowned,’ said Lucia with a sigh. ‘What a waste of a life, eh? She was so young.’
‘I remember reading somewhere that accidental drowning in the bath is pretty rare in adults,’ said Trinh. ‘Especially with the alcohol and pills that she’d ing
ested.’
‘So, you reckon it’s intentional? Suicide?’ asked Lucia with a raised eyebrow.
‘That would seem the most logical explanation, wouldn’t you say?’ replied Trinh. ‘I wonder what the boss thinks. Where is he, anyway? It’s not like him to be away from the desk for so long.’
Lucia was about to open her mouth to ask about the rash on the dead body when DCI Carliss stomped in. ‘Speak of the devil. Long time no see, boss,’ she called out playfully.
The inspector’s hair was ruffled as if he’d been dragged through a hedge backwards, and he looked in dire need of a fag. He certainly didn’t look like he was in the mood for banter. ‘I’ve been here since seven o’clock this morning, I’ll have you know. The Super’s in a filthy mood for some reason and she’s just taken it out on me, so you can cut the sarcasm.’
‘I thought the Super liked you,’ replied Lucia, opting to ignore the monumental huff that Carliss was clearly in.
‘Yeah, well, her love seems to have run out. Where are we with this new death? Have you had the PM yet?’
‘Yes,’ replied Lucia laconically, as she suddenly felt a childish urge to wind up her boss and immediately admonished herself for it.
‘Well, spit it out then. What does it say?’ asked the inspector impatiently.
‘Looks like suicide, boss,’ replied Trinh in a conciliatory tone.
Lucia knew she couldn’t let this one slip away that easily, so she butted in. ‘Technically, the PM says she passed out from a combination of sleeping pills and alcohol and then drowned.’
‘So, it’s suicide. Everyone knows people don’t accidentally drown in the bath. Right then, this box is ticked. That should cheer up the Super a bit. She might not have my guts for garters after all.’ DCI Carliss rummaged around in his jacket pocket and pulled out a crumpled packet of cigarettes. ‘Time for a break. What a bloody day this has been, and it’s not even elevenses yet. I want the report on my desk by close of play.’