by LJ Ross
“I saw it on the news,” she said, dazedly. “I said to my mum, ‘Who would do such a thing?’ But I never thought…I never even thought—”
“Don’t blame yourself,” MacKenzie told her. “The only person to blame is the one who set the explosives.”
“What was he doing there?” she burst out, turning to them with wild eyes. “I don’t understand why Pritesh would be on that bridge, at all.”
“He didn’t work around there?”
“He goes from place to place,” she muttered. “He’s an IT consultant, so he works in various offices. On Mondays, he’s supposed to be in Ashington.”
“Long way from there,” Yates murmured, and made a note on her pad.
But MacKenzie had years of experience and, sometimes, the truth wasn’t so hard to find.
“Did your husband have any financial difficulties, Mrs Joshi? I realise, it’s a difficult question to answer, but take your time.”
Mrs Joshi looked at her mother and then spoke in a low tone.
“He—yes, we’re in some credit card debt,” she said, shortly. “Why? You think—you think he was in court today and never told me?”
MacKenzie nodded and made a mental note to check the court list that morning, for any civil proceedings brought against the late Pritesh Joshi.
“We’ll look into it,” she murmured. “I have one final question to ask you, Mrs Joshi. Was your husband in trouble with anyone? Did he tell you about anyone he feared or was worried about?”
The other woman simply shook her head.
“He was my life,” she said, in a slurred voice as her body went into shock. “We didn’t move in those kinds of circles. All we ever did was spend too much on a credit card. Is that enough to be punished like this?”
MacKenzie and Yates had no answer to give her, and soon afterwards they took their leave.
When they returned to the confines of MacKenzie’s car, they sat quietly for a few minutes thinking about a man they had never known.
“In the normal course of things, Pritesh Joshi wouldn’t have been on the bridge,” MacKenzie said, uncapping a bottle of lukewarm water she found in the side compartment. “I think Ryan’s right that we should focus on the victims who regularly passed over the bridge, rather than the one-offs like Pritesh but, all the same, let’s not forget about him.”
Yates nodded.
“If he never told his wife he was due in court today, what else did he keep from her?”
MacKenzie offered her a swig of water.
“My thoughts exactly. People who get up to their eyeballs in debt tend to get desperate, too. And with a family and kids to support, maybe our man started to get desperate and went to the wrong people for help.”
She started the car.
“Come on, Mel. One last stop before we call it a day.”
“It’s been a bloody long one.”
“You’re tellin’ me, kid.”
CHAPTER 31
Anouk “Nookie” Paradis had lived in a flat share on the south side of the river, just beside the Baltic Art Gallery. It was an expensive part of town for a young woman of twenty-one, but she’d chosen her career wisely and was putting her linguistic skills to good use as a court translator. She earned a tidy living and was able to afford a few of the finer things in life. Her parents still resided in Lyon and had been informed by local French police, but MacKenzie and Yates had decided to pay her flatmate a visit in lieu of close family.
They pressed the illuminated intercom buzzer for the secure apartment block and, when nobody answered straight away, they were on the verge of turning around again when a young woman with a fall of platinum blonde hair and eyebrows deserving of their own postcode walked up to the front entrance with a bag of grocery shopping in each hand.
“You forget your key?” she asked, setting the bags down at her feet while she rooted around in her voluminous designer bag for the entrance fob.
“No, we’re from the police,” MacKenzie told her, producing her warrant card. “We were hoping to speak to the lady in 4B.”
The girl paused and scrutinized the badge closely, eyes widening at the title of detective.
“I live in 4B,” she said. “Are you looking for Nookie?”
MacKenzie’s eyebrows raised, before she realised the double entendre was not deliberate.
“You’re Maisie?” Yates enquired.
The girl nodded. “You said you were from the police. Has something happened? Look, if this is about me clipping the corner of that car the other day, I left a note and everything—”
“We’re not here about that,” MacKenzie was quick to nip any parking dramas in the bud, and casually leaned down to pick up one of the woman’s shopping bags. “Let’s go inside, out of the cold, and we’ll talk.”
“Okay,” the girl said, worriedly.
They made their way through a gleaming foyer and up to the fourth floor, where there were only two apartments on each level.
“Very nice,” Yates couldn’t resist commenting, and earned herself a swift frown from MacKenzie. It was not their place to comment on anyone’s living arrangements, nice or otherwise, especially given the purpose of their visit.
It did beg the question of how two young girls could afford to live somewhere so glamorous, but they’d get around to that.
Once they’d deposited the bags in the kitchen, Maisie turned to them.
“It’s your flatmate, Anouk,” MacKenzie said. “I’m sorry to tell you she was killed earlier today in the explosion on the Millennium Bridge. I’m very sorry.”
Maisie raised both hands to her mouth and sank onto the armrest of a nearby sofa.
“But—I saw it, I saw it happen this morning,” she whispered. “You can see the bridge from that window,” she said, raising a trembling finger to the large floor-to-ceiling windows in their living area. “I watched it happen and thought of all the poor people who were hurt. I never thought Nouk would be one of them.”
“But didn’t she use the bridge every day?”
Maisie nodded.
“I texted her twice to see if she was okay.”
“She never replied?” Yates pressed her.
“No, but she never did when she was at work. They’re not allowed to use their phones in court and she was due to be doing some case or other. I just—I assumed she was tied up.”
Two tears ran down her face in perfect white tracks.
“Have you told her parents? I can probably find their number, if you need it…”
“It’s alright, Anouk’s parents have already been informed but thank you for the offer,” MacKenzie said, with a smile to put the girl at her ease.
It was an interesting phenomenon that, sometimes, the most innocent of witnesses displayed the most suspicious of behaviours because they were nervous or upset. It didn’t help them for Maisie Smith to be too intimidated to tell them what they needed to know.
“Do you mind if we sit down?” MacKenzie asked, and the girl shook her head.
“Go ahead.”
“We’d like to ask you some questions about Anouk, if you don’t mind. I know this must have come as a dreadful shock but the sooner we find out as much as we can about her, the quicker we can find whoever killed her.”
Maisie nodded, using the sleeve of an expensive-looking cashmere jumper to dry her eyes.
“What do you want to know?”
“When did you first meet Anouk?”
Maisie seemed flummoxed, even by such a simple question, and the two detectives looked at each other in mild confusion.
“I just mean, when was it and how did you meet,” MacKenzie repeated herself, using slightly different language to see if it would help.
“Um, a friend introduced us at a party,” Maisie said, carefully. “They knew I was looking for a flatmate after my old one moved out.”
MacKenzie smiled again.
“Can I ask what you do for a living, Maisie?”
The girl flushed deeply and cross
ed her legs, defensively.
“I—ah, I’m a student.”
Yates made an obvious show of looking around the room with an expression that seemed to reek of disbelief.
“Great! What do you study?”
“Geography,” the girl muttered.
“Good for you,” MacKenzie said, and summed the situation up immediately. “Does the escort work pay well?”
Maisie’s eyes flew up to hers and filled with tears again.
“I only did it once—”
“I’m not here to judge, Maisie, so don’t start telling me any lies. Was Anouk an escort, too?”
Maisie nodded.
“She really did work as a translator as well, though. She had a degree in Modern Languages from some place in France and got a job working for the Courts Service when she came over here. She did a bit of escort work in the evenings to pay for extras.”
“Thank you for being so honest,” MacKenzie said, and meant it. “Now, I need you to tell me if Anouk was ever worried about someone, a client maybe, who bothered her? Or perhaps an old boyfriend?”
Maisie re-crossed her legs and was momentarily distracted from her grief by the prospect of being useful.
“You always get a couple of perves,” she said, frankly. “Every girl gets them, after a while. She had her regulars who liked to take her to dinner but there was this one bloke who found out where we live and kept turning up at all hours, demanding to come up. It was scary, actually.”
“Do you know his name?”
“I don’t think he gave his real name. Not many do,” she said. “This one called himself Kevin. I can’t remember his last name.”
MacKenzie took down some further details, including the name of the escort agency both girls were registered with.
“Had she seen this man lately?”
“No, not after, ah…”
“After the agency had him roughed up a bit?”
Maisie nodded again.
They stayed a while longer to see if there was anything else they could learn from Anouk’s former flatmate, but the two women had not been close and, for the most part, had lived separate lives.
As they stepped back outside into the cold evening air, both women shivered and walked briskly back towards MacKenzie’s car, pausing briefly beneath the shadow of the Baltic Gallery to exchange a word with the constable posted on the south side of the police cordon which remained in place to protect the Millennium Bridge.
“Anouk had a semi-regular routine, but she wasn’t at court every day,” Yates remarked. “If somebody wanted to target her, they’d have to be sure she was due in court on that day.”
“I agree,” MacKenzie said. “It would mean ringing around the court, which is risky in itself. If somebody wanted to follow her routine, it would most likely be from her escort work. And then, I have to ask myself, why would your garden variety stalker go to all the trouble of blowing up a bridge? It’s not their usual style.”
Yates sighed.
“So, I guess we keep looking?”
“Tomorrow’s a new day,” MacKenzie said. “Let’s hope it doesn’t bring any more nasty surprises.”
* * *
It was just before eight when Ryan and Phillips made their last stop of the evening, this time to the village of Heddon-on-the-Wall, west of the city. It stood on high ground overlooking the valley and consisted of a few streets of old stone houses, a couple of village shops and a petrol station, which made it larger than most villages of its kind.
Rosehip Cottage was a tiny, two-up, two-down affair which, despite its name, had seen better days.
“This is the one,” Ryan said, bringing the car to a stop on the road outside.
“I could murder a pint,” Phillips muttered, and Ryan wouldn’t have turned one down himself. It had been an unprecedented three days and informing close relatives that their loved ones had died in a freak terror attack did not rank highly on their list of ‘fun things to do.’
But this was the job they’d signed up for, and it required a steady pair of hands.
“After all this is over,” Ryan said. “It’ll taste all the sweeter.”
“Promises, promises,” Phillips replied.
In the light of the single downstairs window, they could see the door had once been a cheerful pillar box red but was now peeling badly and in need of repair. It was accessed straight from the pavement and, on the other side, they could hear a television blaring. Ryan raised his hand to the iron knocker, which had been fashioned in the shape of a rabbit.
Within seconds, the television was turned down and they heard a lock being unbolted. The door opened to reveal a woman of around fifty.
“Mrs Dobson?”
Phillips happened to know that Kayleigh-Ann’s mother was not married but he was of the old school and had been brought up to address any lady of a certain age as ‘Mrs.’
“Yes?”
“My name is Detective Sergeant Phillips, and this is Detective Chief Inspector Ryan,” he said, and both men produced their warrant cards for her to check. “We’re sorry to intrude on you at this time of night but I’m afraid we have some very bad news. I regret to inform you that your daughter, Kayleigh-Ann, was killed this morning in an explosion on the Millennium Bridge in Newcastle. We’re very sorry.”
Cilla Dobson just stared at them, her tired brown eyes not seeming to have registered the meaning of the words he’d just spoken.
“Kayleigh-Ann?”
“Yes,” Ryan said. “I’m so sorry.”
She raised a trembling hand to her head, but the tears did not come. Not yet.
“C-come in, for a minute,” she said, and stepped aside to allow them to pass.
“Thank you,” Ryan murmured, taking care to wipe his feet on the small mat just inside the doorway which read, ‘IT’S ALWAYS GIN O’CLOCK!’
The front door opened directly into the living room, which was very small but rammed with furniture of all kinds. An extensive collection of porcelain animals had been arranged inside a small glass cabinet and an empty birdcage had been stuffed into the corner of the room.
They stood politely while she cleared away several stacks of glossy magazines from the tiny sofa and offered them a seat, which they accepted.
“I’m trying to—I can’t believe what you’ve told me,” she said, sinking into the single armchair. “Kayleigh’s dead?”
“Yes, I’m afraid she is,” Ryan said, trying not to notice when Phillips took a seat beside him and the two men found themselves crammed onto the miniature sofa like a couple of sardines.
“I saw the news today, so I knew another bridge had gone up and that people had died,” she said, numbly. “I rang the emergency number because I was worried Kayleigh might have been hurt. I knew. I just…knew.”
She rested her head on her hand and stared at the television screen while she thought of her little girl, and the first tears started to fall.
“She’s all I have,” Cilla whispered. “She was all I had left.”
Ryan got up briefly to fetch some tissue from a bathroom down the hall and then chose to remain standing, rather than sit on his sergeant’s knee.
“Was it the Muslims?” she asked, and they sighed inwardly. Grief did little to dispel the wrongheaded opinions some people held.
“No, Mrs Dobson. As far as we know, there was no religious motivation of any kind,” Ryan told her, firmly. The last thing they needed was a grieving mother giving interviews to the press inciting racial hatred; they had enough to deal with already, and minority communities in the area had seen more than their share of violence and vandalism fuelled by their small-minded neighbours.
“Who was it then?” she said, angrily. “Have you found them yet?”
“No, not yet. That’s why we need your help, Mrs Dobson,” Ryan said, keeping an even tone to counteract her rising anger. “We need you to tell us everything you can about your daughter’s general life and routine. We understand she lived alone?”
“She has a flat down on the Gateshead side,” Cilla said. “It was one of those repossession auctions, that’s how she got it. Somebody overextending themselves on credit, no doubt.”
They made a polite sound of agreement.
“Did she share it with anyone?”
Cilla let out a tearful snort and blew her nose.
“She had her new bloke around all the time,” she said. “I told her that he was no good for her, but she wouldn’t listen to me. Never listened to me,” she added, to herself.
“Do you remember his name?”
But Cilla shook her head.
“I only found out she’d met somebody when I happened to see them over at the Black Bull in Matfen,” she said, referring to another picturesque village a bit further west. “Looked very cosy together, too. You should have seen her face, when she saw me.”
“She wasn’t happy?” Phillips asked.
Cilla’s lip curled.
“I told her afterwards, she was making a mistake. She had guilt written all over her face and it’s no wonder she never told anybody about him. She was too ashamed.”
“He was married, then?” Ryan surmised.
“You can spot them a mile off,” Cilla said, forgetting for a moment that her daughter was dead as she moved onto a pet topic of hers. “I told Kayleigh she should’ve had more self-respect, especially after her dad left us for that slut from the docks in North Shields.”
Both men remained diplomatically silent. Sometimes, it was for the best.
“You’d think, after she’d seen how heartbroken I was, after she’d seen how we struggled for years after that, she’d never want to be the one to do that to someone else. I told her, straight out, I told her, ‘Kayleigh, I never thought I’d raise any child of mine to be a grubby little bitch like you.’ ”
Ryan and Phillips exchanged an awkward glance. Clearly, mother and daughter had not been especially close.
Phillips cleared his throat.
“So—”
“I told her something else as well, mind. I told her, ‘Kayleigh, that man will never leave his wife.’ If she thought he’d marry her instead, she was more of a fool than I thought,” Cilla carried on, her voice growing more and more heated.