by Celina Grace
“So,” said Olbeck. “Don’t keep me in suspense. Who’s the daddy?”
*
When Kate arrived home that night, she found two waifs and strays on her doorstep—Courtney and Jay. They were sat side by side, huddled in their coats and smoking cigarettes. The area around their feet was littered with cigarette butts.
“You must be freezing,” exclaimed Kate. She opened up the door and ushered them both in. How long had they been sitting out there? “How long have you been sitting out there?”
“Fucking ages,” muttered Courtney. She was hunched over by the kitchen counter, her hands in her armpits. Her beautiful, sulky face was pinched, her nose and cheeks reddened by the cold.
Jay stood silently. Kate gave him a quick hug, feeling the sharp bones of his ribcage under her hands. She stood back and took him by the arms, looking into his face.
“It’ll be all right, Jay,” she said gently. “They haven’t charged you with anything. It’ll be all right.”
He looked at her quickly and then away. For a moment she thought he was going to say something, and then he shook his head, gently detached her hands and walked away.
“There’s just one thing,” Kate said awkwardly. “You can’t stay here. I’m really sorry, but I don’t think it would be appropriate.” She paused, hating the sound of her voice and her mealy-mouthed words. “I think you’d be better off somewhere where people don’t know where to find you.”
Jay laughed harshly.
“That’s my digs out then. I’m not going back there anyway. I don’t want everyone looking at me and thinking I did it.”
Kate put both hands to her head and rubbed her temples. She was so tired: her eyes ached, her back ached, her feet ached.
“How about I drop you at Mum’s? You can stay there for a while.”
Courtney looked as though she was about to protest. Kate looked over at her sister. “Is that a bad idea? What about your dad?”
Courtney shook her head. “He’s up in Scotland. Has been for ages.”
“Oh. It’ll have to be Mum’s place, then. She won’t mind.” Kate hoped fervently that this were true. “Stay here tonight—both of you stay—and I’ll run you both back tomorrow before work.”
She ran a bath for Jay, found something to watch on television for Courtney, and put a couple of frozen pizzas in the oven. They ate the pizzas in a fairly companionable silence, and then the two youngsters disappeared out the back to smoke a last cigarette before bed. Kate bundled herself up in her coat and swept up all the butts from outside her front door. She put aside the uncharitable thought that if they had money for cigarettes, why on Earth did they always plead such poverty?
When she came back inside, Jay had already gone to bed. Courtney was glued to her phone screen with the television playing unheeded in the background.
“Well, I’m off to bed,” said Kate. “Do you want to bunk in with me or would you rather have the sofa?”
“Sofa, sis, ta.”
Kate fetched the remaining spare duvet and a pillow. Courtney stood up while Kate made up the sofa with the bedding. While she was smoothing out the pillow case, she could feel Courtney fidgeting behind her. She turned and raised her eyebrows.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” said Courtney. She seemed about to say more, but then her mobile pinged and she turned her attention back to the screen.
Kate hesitated for a moment. She had a feeling that Courtney had wanted to ask her something or tell her something.
“Courtney? Are you—is there something wrong?”
Courtney actually looked up from her phone. She looked frightened for a moment. Then she shook her head.
Kate stood, irresolute. Then she yawned and gave up. She was just too tired to get to the bottom of whatever it was—and it probably wasn’t even important.
She yawned again and said goodnight.
Chapter Sixteen
It was a silent drive on the way to Mary Redman’s house the next morning. As Kate drove past her mother’s place, looking for a parking space, she saw a bright yellow Mini parked on the scrubby front lawn.
“Is Peter living here now?”
“Yeah,” said Courtney.
Kate pulled the car into the kerb.
“Must be a bit crowded. With you two girls here as well.” Courtney had been living with her father but clearly had decided a room at her mother’s place was preferable to moving to Scotland.
Courtney shrugged. She looked at Kate, opened her mouth and then shut it again.
“What—” Kate was interrupted by Jay getting out of the car and slamming the door shut.
As they walked up the front path, past the Mini, the dirty net curtains at the front window flickered. Peter’s face peered out, and momentarily, a frown crossed his face. The curtains were pulled across again, hiding his face from view. By that time, though, Kate had already processed that look.
When Kate had been a ‘bobby on the beat,’ very early on in her career, she’d been out with her Sergeant, a bluff Northerner called Wittock. He’d told her about what he’d termed ‘coppers’ senses’: something almost indefinable that every good police officer developed. It was almost a sixth sense: the ability to deduct that something was awry from the smallest of gestures or inconsequential details.
“It takes time,” Wittock had said. “But you’ll get it. If you’re any good at your job. You’ll start to notice things, without even realising you’re noticing them, if you see what I mean.”
Kate had found he was right. And now, just on that one look from Peter, a momentary expression on his face seen in the fraction of a second, her copper’s senses were screaming.
When he opened the door, he was all smiles and solicitous attention for Jay, ushering them all inside with warm greetings.
“Mary’s out shopping,” he said, gesturing for them to go through into the living room. It was much cleaner and tidier than it had been last time Kate had been here, although the stink of old cigarettes had not noticeably lessened. “Jade’s at school, obviously. How are you, Kate?”
“Fine, thanks,” said Kate, keeping a smile on her face. Jay sloped past them and she heard him walking heavily up the stairs. Courtney followed him a moment later.
“How about a cup of tea?”
“Lovely,” said Kate, automatically. She’d noticed a laptop on the coffee table, the screen facing away from the room.
Peter followed her gaze.
“Just doing my accounts,” he said. “Worst thing about being self-employed, the bloomin’ paperwork!”
“I can imagine.”
“I’ll get you that tea. Sit down love, and I won’t be long.”
“Thanks,” said Kate, her cheeks beginning to ache from smiling. Peter went off to the galley kitchen at the end of the hallway, leaving the door open behind him.
“Milk and sugar?” he shouted from the kitchen.
“Just milk, please,” Kate shouted back. Quickly and quietly, she walked to the laptop so she could see the screen and gently tapped the spacebar to take off the screensaver. She was expecting a password request to come up, but there was nothing. There was nothing on the screen except the usual Outlook interface, emails and a little calendar. Nothing untoward.
Kate quickly ran her eye down the list of emails. Only one caught her attention and that was because the subject matter was a girl’s name: Alice. She opened it, glancing towards the open door. What on earth was she going to say if Peter came back and caught her? The email opened. Kate scanned it quickly.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Alice
Message: got those files you were looking for. Check new website https://www.nys1016.com.
Nothing untoward there either. Kate tried to memorise the address and then whipped out her mobile and took a photograph of the screen. She could hear the kettle in the kitchen come to the boil. Quickly, she closed the email to bring back the original scre
en, tiptoed back to the sofa and sat down, checking the photograph had saved correctly. Then she put her phone away, just as Peter appeared in the doorway with two steaming mugs.
They made chit-chat while Kate tried to drink her hot tea as quickly as she decently could. Then she said goodbye to Peter, hugged Courtney and Jay who were listening to music and smoking cigarettes in Courtney’s bedroom, and told them both to give her love to her Mum.
“Where’ve you bloody been?” said Olbeck as Kate dropped into her chair at the office. “We’ve pulled Nathan Vertz in again, under caution this time.”
“Good,” said Kate. “Are we questioning him?”
“Nope, Anderton’s doing it. We’ve been sent over to Vertz’s place to pull it apart. We’ll take Jane and Rav as well if they’re free.”
The four of them drove in two separate cars to Arbuthon Green. It was intensely cold: the first real frost of the season. The grubby terraces were almost transformed, glittering under a powdery dusting of ice.
Nathan Vertz’s house was warm and clean and quiet.
“Wow, nice,” said Jane, looking around with eyebrows raised. “You’d never think he had a place like this.”
“I know,” said Kate. She rubbed a finger along her jaw, wondering whether to say what she wanted to say. “I think—”
“Hey, look at this,” said Rav, who was opening cupboards. “Awards. Not for the Butterkins, surely?”
“Don’t be such a snob,” said Olbeck. “They were really popular once. Made millions for the British film industry.”
“Well, what happened to it all? Vertz’s share, I mean.” Rav took an award out of the cupboard, turning it over in his gloved hands. “People’s Choice.” He glanced at Olbeck. “See, it’s hardly an Oscar, is it?”
Kate and Jane took the upstairs rooms, leaving the men to cover the ground floor. Nathan Vertz’s bedroom was as beautifully decorated as the rest of the house; the walls were painted a pale, chalky green, the large bed made up with white linen. The duvet and pillows were rumpled and dragged half onto the floor. There was a small, delicate little wooden table by the bed, a lamp with a fawn silk shade still switched on. Kate turned it off. She pulled out the drawer of the bedside table. Inside was a collection of letters and postcards. Kate drew them out and sat on the edge of the messy bed to read through them. Beneath her feet was the scrape of something heavy being moved as the men began to shift the furniture.
“Look,” she said to Jane after a moment. The other woman came over and Kate handed her the topmost letter.
“It’s from Elodie.”
Jane read silently for a moment. Then she looked at Kate.
“A love letter.”
Kate fanned out the rest of the papers in her hands. “Lots of love letters. I didn’t think anyone wrote love letters any more.”
Jane took another one, a postcard of a Turner landscape. She read the inscription on the back out loud.
“‘Remembering that afternoon in the cornfields. I love you.’” She turned it over and looked at the picture of the front, flipped it back again. “It’s dated…August this year.”
Kate pulled the drawer completely out and looked through it.
“There’s nothing there from him to her,” said Jane, sorting through the stack of correspondence.
“Well, would there be?”
“I guess not. Were there any letters from Vertz at Elodie’s house when you searched it?”
Kate sat back on her haunches and stared at Jane. “No. No, there wasn’t. Not a single thing.”
“Well,” said Jane, hesitatingly. “That’s odd—isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” said Kate. She pulled herself to her feet with a groan. “I mean, he could be the sort of guy who doesn’t ever write letters but…it’s a bit odd.”
She scanned the letters. “Look, here. She says, ‘Thanks for your beautiful letter.’ So he must have written at least one.”
Jane opened her mouth to reply but before she could say anything, there was a shout from downstairs.
Kate and Jane arrived in the living room to see the sofa pushed back against the wall, the rug rolled up and a section of the floorboards upended.
Rav was grinning like a child who had just discovered a playmate during a game of hide and seek.
“The motherlode.”
Kate looked down into the space beneath the floorboards revealed by the upended wood. Several plastic-wrapped packages, a scuffed black rucksack, a half-empty sack of glucose powder, a set of scales.
“Well, well,” said Olbeck. “At least one part of the mystery is cleared up.” He carefully opened the rucksack with gloved hands without moving it from its original position. “Look here. Must be...” He riffled through the wads of neatly bound bank notes in the bag. “Must be thousands here.”
Jane was already on the radio arranging for crime scene photographers. Kate, who was nearest the front window, noticed several cars drawing up outside the house. For a second, she thought it was some of their own officers before the cameras appearing put paid to that idea.
“Press are here,” she said.
Jane rolled her eyes. “That didn’t take long.”
“We’d better get some uniforms here, cordon it off.”
Kate drew the curtains across the windows. Rav was already phoning for reinforcements.
Olbeck drew Kate aside.
“Let’s get back to Anderton, let him have the latest. This could be the trigger he’s been waiting for.”
Chapter Seventeen
Anderton was questioning Vertz in one of the interview rooms when Olbeck and Kate arrived back at the station. Nathan Vertz looked even more dishevelled than he had done the day before, eyes ringed by shadow, his face pale and pouchy. Kate and Olbeck waited outside while Anderton paused the interview and left the room, joining them in the corridor.
“What have you got for me?”
They told him. Kate was thankful she was able to be calm and professional. It meant the embarrassment of being in Anderton’s company after their last disastrous meeting was somewhat mitigated.
All three went back into the interview room and Kate was sure that, this time, Anderton would take no prisoners. She kept the folder containing Elodie’s letters on her lap, ready to hand it over at the right time.
Vertz flicked a single glance at her as she sat down before lapsing back into blankness. Again, she had the impression that there was something there under the surface, something hidden but dangerous. She’d felt it before, with someone else, someone quite different to this unshaven, slouched man before her. Who had it been?
She thought back and realised it was Mrs Duncan, Elodie’s mother. Some other feeling had been there under the grief, barely glimpsed, like the tiniest tip of an iceberg poking out from chilly, black waters.
“So, Nathan,” said Anderton quietly. “You maintain that the extent of your relationship with Elodie Duncan is that ‘you went on a few dates.’ Do you wish to amend that statement?”
Vertz said nothing but kept staring at the table top.
“I put it to you that you had a longstanding and deep romantic and sexual relationship with Elodie Duncan.”
Silence from Vertz.
“Can you confirm if that is the case?”
Vertz continued to stare at the table top.
No one spoke for a few moments. Then Anderton took up the gauntlet again.
“A large quantity of cocaine was found in Elodie Duncan’s possession after she died. My officers have just informed me that an even larger quantity of cocaine and other assorted illegal substances was found hidden away at your house today. Do you have anything to say about that?”
Nothing. Kate suppressed an irritated sigh. Stonewalling during an interview was an effective technique but surely there was something they could do to break him down… She pressed the side of her foot against Anderton’s under the table and passed him the folder of love letters.
He didn’t break stride in what he
was saying but took the folder from her, continuing to ask Nathan Vertz his questions.
“Did you give that cocaine to Elodie Duncan for her to sell for you?”
“No comment,” muttered Vertz. The solicitor beside him shifted uneasily.
“Did Elodie try to rip you off? Did you kill her?”
“No she didn’t. And no I didn’t.”
“Who do you think killed her?”
There was a sudden stillness in Vertz. Kate was reminded of an animal that had just scented its prey. Or was it an animal who had just heard the hunter stalking it?
“I don’t know,” he said in a quiet voice. There was something hidden in his statement that made Kate want to shiver.
Anderton let the silence after his remark continue for an uncomfortably long time. Then he slowly held up one of Elodie’s letters and began to read from it aloud.
“’My darling Nathan, can’t wait to see you again tonight. I know we only said goodbye a few days ago but it just seems too long before we can be together again. It’s only when I’m with you that I really feel like myself—’”
Vertz went pale.
“Where did you get that?”
Anderton ignored him. He let the letter fall to his lap and picked up a postcard.
“‘Hey, my sexy Nat, saw this and thought of you—’”
Vertz snatched for it, and Anderton pulled his hand back.
“That’s mine!”
Vertz was on his feet. Kate and Olbeck leapt to theirs, and the uniformed officer in the corner did likewise. The solicitor, a grey-haired man in his sixties, looked as though he was ready to run out of the door.
Anderton hadn’t moved. Without taking his eyes from Vertz’s face, he slowly drew another postcard and held it, preparing to read from it.
“Stop.”
Vertz’s voice broke in a sob. Suddenly, he flopped back onto his chair, burying his face in his hands.
After a moment, Anderton spoke quietly.
“You loved Elodie Duncan, didn’t you Nathan?”