by Sabina Manea
‘We haven’t read the rest of the PM yet,’ said Lucia stubbornly.
The inspector had barely made it to the doorway. He turned around and let out a forlorn sigh as he thought better of it and walked slowly back towards Lucia’s desk. ‘I knew it. There’s always something with you, isn’t it? Regale me with the details then. I can see I’m never going to hear the end of it otherwise.’
‘The rash on the woman’s body.’ Lucia scanned the pages until she found the section she was looking for. ‘Look. Allergic reaction. But it doesn’t say what to. Cam, we requested her medical records, didn’t we?’
Trinh scrolled through her phone. ‘We did. Haven’t heard anything back though. I’ll chase them up now.’ She walked out of the room, looking less than pleased as she gave out curt instructions.
‘It’s odd that the allergic reaction would still show up so many hours after death, don’t you think?’ said Lucia, turning to the inspector, who was hovering above her impatiently, waiting to be released.
‘I suppose. But what does that mean?’
‘I don’t know. We need to see those records,’ continued Lucia, like a spaniel on the track of a stinky sock.
Before Carliss had a chance to voice his usual half-hearted protest, DS Trinh returned with a triumphant look on her face. ‘Typical. They ignore my request, but all it takes is one angry phone call and they deliver. You should be getting the medical paperwork in your inbox right about… now.’
The much-awaited ping confirmed that this was indeed the case. Lucia opened the message with undisguised anticipation. ‘Name, address, OK, all good, it’s definitely her. Vaccinations all up to date. Allergies. Bingo.’ She turned around to her colleagues with a self-satisfied grin. ‘She’s allergic to water.’
‘Come again?’ was as much as DCI Carliss could get out. Both he and DS Trinh were uncharacteristically lost for words.
‘Aquagenic urticaria, if you want the fancy name for it. It’s an extremely rare condition.’ Lucia read out the brief explanation that prefaced Genevieve Taylor’s GP notes. ‘In extreme cases, even drinking water causes a reaction. Because the condition is so rare, its causes haven’t been conclusively determined. It may be a reaction to the chemicals in water, rather than the water itself, but that’s as far as the knowledge goes. The doctor prescribed strong antihistamines, the ones we found in Genevieve’s bathroom. So long as she took them regularly, she only reported a reaction to water touching her skin for a prolonged period of time. Here, see? The record quotes her as saying that she’s able to have very quick showers – a few minutes maximum – and wash her hands. Any more than that, and she comes out in a burning red rash, just like the one she exhibited when we found her.’
‘Wow. You learn something new every day, don’t you?’ said Trinh, looking bowled over as she read the page for herself. ‘Allergic to water, that’s bonkers. Poor girl. What kind of a life is that, not being able to go swimming, or to the beach? Maybe she was even afraid of being caught in the rain?’
Lucia clasped her hands together and fell silent for a few seconds. When she spoke, her voice was deadly serious. ‘So how does a woman who’s allergic to water end up in a bath full of the stuff?’
The three detectives looked at one another, and Lucia sensed that the others were waiting for a clarification.
‘If you’re going to top yourself,’ she said, ‘and you happen to be allergic to water of all things, would you seriously get into a bath?’
‘She was probably drunk by the time she got in. And don’t forget she’d taken sleeping pills. It’s likely those two things would have numbed the pain,’ offered Carliss, though he was sounding a touch unconvinced.
‘But since she’s allergic to something as essential as water, she would have had a deep-seated phobia of it. She knew that any more than brief contact would cause horrendous pain,’ insisted Lucia. ‘And there’s more that doesn’t make sense,’ she added.
‘I suppose I’ve got no choice but to listen,’ muttered Carliss. ‘Trust you to overcomplicate things when they’re clear as day.’
‘The glass was placed on the bathroom floor too far from where she was sat in the bath. She couldn’t have reached out to leave it in that spot. I tested it out. Ask Cam if you don’t believe me.’
‘I can vouch for that, boss. You know what Lucia’s like. She got down on the floor and everything. Even I thought she’d lost the plot, and I’ve been around her long enough to get used to her quirks,’ replied Trinh.
‘And another thing,’ interrupted Lucia impatiently. ‘The sleeping pills are prescription only, but there were no details on the box. So how did she get hold of them then?’
‘So what? Maybe she got them illicitly,’ ventured the inspector. ‘Stressed corporate lawyer needs downers. Wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened,’ he remarked, slightly too pointedly for Lucia’s liking. He couldn’t have possibly known about her occasional extracurricular indulgences, could he?
‘Maybe. But if she’s already taking prescription antihistamines, would she really be taking sleeping pills that strong as well? Those two together would have knocked her out a long time ago,’ continued Lucia, determined to hold her own against her boss’s reticence to believe her.
‘Maybe she stopped taking the sleeping pills. Oh, I don’t know, but I think you’re making things a lot woollier than they need to be,’ burst out Carliss gruffly. ‘We’re wasting our time. You’re going to have to do a lot better than that to persuade me to keep this investigation open.’
The inspector’s tone clearly signalled that this was the end of the exchange, just as he made a run for it out of the office. By now, that fag was desperately needed.
Chapter 7
Later that day, after work, as she sat in her pub of choice with a glass of ice-cold white Burgundy parked in front of her, Lucia mulled over the events of the day. She was far from satisfied. In fact, she was absolutely determined that the death of Genevieve Taylor was a hell of a lot murkier than DCI Carliss would have liked to believe.
The Red Lion was decently populated for a weekday night. The place was the preferred haunt of local builders, who were always available to prop up the bar for a few restorative pints and some football-related banter after work. Most of them were regulars, and they knew Lucia from her decorating days. She liked the place. It was a proper boozer rather than a tarted-up gastropub. The latter status had been the unfortunate fate of most watering holes in Hampstead, but there were still some old stalwarts left, if you knew where to look.
Becky, the bartender, a no-nonsense local girl who acted older than she was and ran the place as if it were her own fiefdom, made herself a flavoured gin and tonic and fixed her favourite customer with a pair of expertly made-up eyes.
‘What’s up with you tonight, babe? Crap day at work?’
‘Oh, you know, just the usual. I feel like I’m talking to a brick wall sometimes. My boss, he just doesn’t want to listen.’ Lucia stopped herself from going any further. The wine had relaxed her a little too much, and she had to be careful not to divulge any confidential police information. It could cost her the job.
‘Happens to us all. At least you haven’t got batshit crazy Leila to deal with,’ said Becky thoughtfully as she took a long sip from the pink drink, tapping the long, matching pink fingernails of the other hand on the bar.
‘Yeah, well, I should count my blessings then,’ replied Lucia without a hint of sarcasm.
Leila, the pub landlady, had to be seen to be believed. A flamboyant dipsomaniac, she was rumoured to have escaped a brutal Middle Eastern regime in the 1980s, which plausibly accounted for her mental state. She was barely ever out in public and generally left Becky in charge, which was just as well. On the rare occasions that Leila did make an appearance, it was only to drink the bar dry, scare the customers and then retreat upstairs to her lair.
Lucia downed the rest of her glass, which seemed to have gone down rather too well. She looked at her watch. It was o
nly eight o’clock, and she decided another drink wouldn’t do any harm. So long as she was in bed by midnight, she’d be back at the grindstone the following day, fresh as a daisy.
‘If I had a boss as hot as yours, I wouldn’t be complaining,’ said Becky with a cheeky wink. ‘How’s that going, by the way?’
‘How’s what going?’ replied Lucia, feigning ignorance whilst fully knowing she wouldn’t get away with it.
‘How did the date go?’
‘It wasn’t a date. Just theatre and dinner.’
‘Hmm. If that isn’t a date, I don’t know what is,’ continued Becky, clearly unconvinced by the feeble explanation. ‘You two need to get it on, you know. All that pent-up sexual frustration. It’s not good for you.’
‘There’s no pent-up anything, thank you very much, Becky. I’m doing just fine in that regard,’ retorted Lucia, more than a little peeved and by now keen to divert the conversation towards less controversial subjects.
‘Oh yeah? When was the last time you didn’t go to bed on your own?’ mouthed Becky with a naughty grin.
‘Alright, you’ve had your fun. Maybe I do need to do something about it. And before you start again, I mean find a boyfriend, not make inappropriate advances to my boss. Besides, I don’t want to lose a friend, and people can’t be your friends anymore once you’ve slept with them.’
Becky mused for a few moments and eventually acknowledged the statement with a nod. ‘Point taken.’
The rest of the evening flowed by uneventfully as the groups of young men came and went. The two women chatted about this and that, the way people do when they’re relaxed and haven’t got anything to prove. Just as Lucia was about to gather her things and call it a night, her phone rang shrilly in her handbag.
‘Christ, what does he want at this time?’ It was gone ten o’clock, and the phone screen showed Carliss’s number in bright, angry characters. ‘Hi, boss. What’s up?’
‘Sorry to call so late, but I’ve got some news I need to share with you. Are you at home? I can drive over.’ The inspector sounded tired but at peace with himself, as if a weight had recently lifted.
‘No, I’m just about to leave the Red Lion. Meet me halfway to yours? We can have a quick one at the Bell.’
‘Alright. See you in a bit.’
The capriciousness of the March weather was in full swing, and the unexpected warmth that had graced this corner of North London for the past few days had turned into a damp chill. Lucia shivered as she walked into the nippy night air, and she stood for a moment on the street in the neighbourhood that had been so familiar all her life. The walk towards Kentish Town, where DCI Carliss lived, soon sobered her up. The streets were empty save for pockets of human activity clustered around the various drinking establishments. The traffic was light, mainly sluggish buses and taxis hoping for custom.
Lucia wondered what it was that the inspector had to tell her and couldn’t wait until the morning. The peculiar case of Genevieve Taylor was bothering her, despite her best efforts that evening to get some headspace and leave work behind. But Lucia knew full well she wasn’t wired that way. Far from her to let go when something played on her mind, and this supposed suicide was turning into a source of chronic frustration. Maybe the DCI was right; it looked simple enough, if you squinted and ignored the finer details that only Lucia seemed to think were important. But she couldn’t ignore them. A woman dead from sleeping pills she couldn’t possibly have been taking, drinking from a glass she couldn’t possibly have reached, lying in a bath full of water which would have caused her absolute agony. Genevieve Taylor may well have been at her wits’ end, but this wouldn’t conceivably be the chosen way to go. Unless someone else chose it for her.
Lucia bit the inside of her cheek and wrapped her scarf more tightly to keep out the cold. She had to get to the bottom of this conundrum, but for that she needed to persuade Carliss to keep the case open for just a little while longer. Maybe a drink tonight would put him in a more amenable mood. It was worth a try anyway.
The Bell was tiny, no more than a single room with a narrow, tiled bar lined with a few ratty-looking high stools next to a couple of tables. The main attraction was the mummified cat haughtily lording it over the place from a glass cabinet. It had been found behind the walls during renovations in the Victorian era and had instantly been adopted as the pub mascot. It acted as a natural selection mechanism for the clientele. If you didn’t get freaked out on the spot, you were in. The only other customer, a red-faced man somewhere in his seventies or eighties, barely graced the newcomers with a glance as he sipped on what looked like a quadruple whisky, engrossed in a greasy, well-thumbed tabloid. The bloke behind the bar was nearly as desiccated as the cat. He glared at Lucia and Carliss with reddened eyes, as if they had turned up uninvited.
‘Ignore him. He always looks like that,’ whispered Lucia reassuringly. She and the inspector had bumped into each other at the pub entrance and were now ensconced at one of the tables with their respective orders in front of them. Carliss looked around furtively.
‘I don’t think they care what we’re talking about,’ Lucia said. ‘They look pretty far gone.’
Carliss shuffled in his chair and folded his long legs under the low table in a fruitless attempt to make himself comfortable. ‘You’re right.’ He took a long, thirsty sip of his pint. He looked like a man who really needed a drink.
Predictably, the Bell didn’t serve white Burgundy, so Lucia had settled for the next best thing instead, Guinness. ‘What was so urgent then?’ she asked.
‘I think I’ve cracked the suicide case once and for all, and I’m pretty confident I can persuade you that we can close it,’ replied Carliss with a self-satisfied smile. His features had started to relax as the alcohol kicked in.
‘Oh, yes? Go on then,’ said Lucia, sounding more than a little unconvinced. In all honesty, she was also a bit concerned he might have got one up on her.
‘I’ve been going over what you said. You know, the things you spotted at the death scene. Unmarked sleeping pills, glass out of reach.’
‘Don’t forget the fact that she was found in water,’ cut in Lucia.
‘Yes, and that,’ the policeman replied with some irritation. ‘Just listen for a minute without interrupting, will you? I know what you’re like when you’ve got a bee in your bonnet, so I thought I’d get the glass analysed. I had a word, called in some favours, and I got the results just before I called you earlier. Forensics confirmed it contained that cocktail she was drinking, mixed with temazepam. There was residue at the bottom of the glass that was easy enough to analyse since the drug isn’t fully dissolvable in alcohol. So that’s that. We can put a lid on it and move on. She drank the stuff, passed out and drowned. End of. You know what the Super’s like. She wants results, and she wants them fast, if we’re to keep our jobs.’
DCI Carliss looked particularly pleased with himself after delivering his little speech, but Lucia was certainly not buying it. She turned over in her mind what she’d just heard, conscious that the inspector was watching her, waiting for a comeback.
‘Well? Dried cat got your tongue?’ he finally said grumpily, clearly expecting her to have been more impressed.
‘I’m afraid what you’ve just told me only reinforces my suspicion that there’s something very fishy going on,’ she replied, crossing her arms defiantly on her chest.
‘Oh, you’ve got to be joking. How can that be?’ he groaned as he downed most of his drink in one go.
Lucia quickly thought to herself: the dark-coloured glass, that’s why Genevieve didn’t see the pills dissolving at the bottom. ‘Why would she have mixed the pills into the glass?’ she said to Carliss. ‘Why not simply wash them down with the booze?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe they tasted bad?’ offered Carliss.
‘Temazepam is tasteless.’
‘So, what are you saying?’
‘Seriously, do you want me to spell it out, or do you want to have a go?�
�� Lucia had by now reached the point of frustration.
‘God, you’re like a dog with a bone, aren’t you?’ moaned the inspector. ‘So let me see if I’ve got the right end of the stick here. You’re saying it’s foul play? Someone fed her a drink laced with temazepam?’
‘Not just a pretty face, are you, DCI Carliss?’ said Lucia in a deliberately patronising tone, as if she were congratulating a toddler on having successfully completed a menial task. ‘My money’s on the following scenario. Someone gave her that drink, waited till she passed out, put her in the bath and left her to drown. Then they put the glass down on the floor to make it look like she left it there. It’s the only plausible explanation for what we’ve seen in that room.’
She knew her boss wouldn’t take offence. Over the time they had been working together, they had developed a convivial sparring relationship, part competition, part banter, which took the edge off the tragic aspects of human existence that they were faced with day in, day out.
‘You need to persuade the Super to let us loose on this case for a little while longer. At the very least, we’ve got a highly suspicious death on our hands,’ Lucia added firmly as she polished off the dregs of her Guinness. She deliberately refrained from using the word ‘murder’.
‘This is why we’re all going to get demoted to traffic before you know it,’ muttered the policeman as he got up to fetch another round.
Despite his apparent reluctance, Lucia knew she’d won him over. For the time being at least, they were in business.
Chapter 8
‘Right, I want the place sealed up and forensics all over it. If this is dodgy, we need to get to the bottom of it pronto,’ bellowed DCI Carliss as he drained his fourth coffee of the morning. He had called a team meeting and was pulling no punches.
True to form, DC George Harding was stifling a yawn in a not particularly subtle manner, while DS Cam Trinh was conscientiously scribbling in her notebook. Lucia suppressed a sardonic smile as she listened to the inspector and discreetly observed her colleagues at the same time. Harding wasn’t going anywhere at this rate, but at least he might be useful for some donkey work on the case, sifting through witness statements and the like, when the time came. Trinh, on the other hand, was an asset to their small team. Sharp, thorough and hard-working, she was most likely heading for DI at breakneck speed. There wasn’t anyone who deserved the promotion more, mused Lucia with an admiring glance.