‘So how long have you been going out with him?’ Slider slipped it in.
‘Seven and a half weeks,’ she said proudly, which told Slider everything. The affair was so important to her, she still counted half weeks. She was humbled and grateful for the attention of such a god-like creature. Probably besotted by him. But besottedness could easily turn – especially in an intellectually unregulated person – to rage.
‘Really!’ he said in an impressed way, and then added, with a little concerned-for-you frown, ‘But you had a fight last night.’
‘No,’ she protested – not alarmed yet, but not wanting to admit to a rift in the lute.
‘A quarrel, then. You were heard having words with him at the door of the flat.’
Her mouth turned down and her eyes filled alarmingly quickly with tears. How did she do it? She ought to have been all out of them by now.
Slider glanced at Gascoyne, thinking a new distraction was needed. He had a boyish, favourite-nephew look about him that was as far as possible from intimidating. He took his cue, leaned forward slightly, and said gently, ‘What did you quarrel about? Was he being mean to you?’
She nodded, then said in a burst, ‘So mean! I couldn’t believe it! I thought we were … you know … all right. I was happy. We were happy. And then he said … he said … he was breaking up with me.’
‘And you had no idea?’
She gave a sob, and mashed the tears away angrily with one hand. ‘Not a clue. I was supposed to be going over there last night, when he got back from work, about half-six. Then he texted me to say not to come, he didn’t want to see me any more. And when I texted back he didn’t answer. So I go over anyway, when I was supposed to, and he doesn’t even let me in. Just stands at the door and says it’s not working for him and he’s finished with me.’
‘That is mean,’ Gascoyne said. ‘No wonder you were upset.’ She nodded gratefully. ‘So what did you do?’ A shrug.
Slider took it back. ‘You ran off when he slammed the door on you. Where did you go?’
‘I went home,’ she said simply.
‘Where’s that?’
‘Lena Gardens. I share a flat with Jerrika – you know, from Harmonies.’
‘Was she there when you got home?’
‘No, she came in later. She wasn’t very nice to me. She said she could’ve told me how it would end up. As if I wasn’t good enough for Erik! And then she went out again.’
‘And what did you do? Did you go out again?’
‘No, I stopped in. I was crying – like, a lot,’ she said defensively. ‘I couldn’t believe he’d, like, do that to me! I loved him so much! And I thought he loved me! And then – just like that, he dumps me. Who does that?’
‘So you sat and cried,’ Slider said temptingly. ‘All evening?’
‘I watched a movie. Sleepless in Seattle. It’s like my favourite.’
The bathos almost made him smile. ‘And what time did Jerrika come back home?’
‘I don’t know. I was in my bedroom.’
‘You’ve got a TV in your room?’
She looked blank for a moment, then understood the question. ‘I was watching on Netflix. On my phone. It made me cry some more and then I must have fallen asleep because it was morning and I was lying on top of my bed.’
This was not what Slider wanted to hear – an alibi that was no alibi. He wanted it settled one way or the other. ‘So when did you go back to the flat?’ he asked carefully.
Now she looked shifty for the first time. ‘I—’ she began, and broke off, as if she was about to say, ‘I didn’t,’ and then realized that was not a tenable position. ‘I … I went back—’
‘I know you did. What time?’
‘I dunno. It was in the morning. When I woke up. I thought if I saw him, talked to him, he’d realize it was a mistake and it’d be all right. I … I never had a chance to talk to him last night, it was all so quick. I thought …’
‘So you went back to plead with him.’ She looked down at her hands, and said nothing. ‘What time was that?’
‘It was about seven-ish, I think. I knew he’d be at home – he never left till half-eightish. I thought if I went round …’ Her eyes slid away from Slider, and sought out Gascoyne. Away from Dad and towards nice cousin Phil. ‘See – Erik, he liked to have sex first thing. He always said morning sex was the best. So I thought – well, he’d let me in, and we’d do it, and he’d realize he really did – love me …’
Her voice trailed off.
‘How did you get in?’ Slider asked quietly. If her story was that he buzzed her in, he had her. By any calculation, Lingoss was dead by that hour.
‘With my keys.’
‘He gave you keys? Surely he’d ask for them back when he broke up with you.’
‘He didn’t know I had them. He didn’t want me to have a key. He was a very private person. I wanted us to live together – I thought it was time – but he said he had to have his space, and maybe one day, but for now …’
‘So how did you get the keys?’
She turned her eyes away. ‘It was – like, one day, he was having a new mattress delivered, and he couldn’t wait in for it, so I said I’d do it. He dropped me off a set of keys in the morning and I was to give them back when I saw him in the evening. But after they’d delivered it, I …’ She actually blushed. ‘I nipped across and had them copied at the Kwik-Fix across the road.’
‘Now why would you do that?’ Slider asked.
She met his eyes, still red, but wordless. He understood – she just wanted a bit of control, to feel she had some hold on the slippery demi-god who held all the power. ‘I never used them,’ she said defiantly. ‘Not till this morning. But I thought – I thought if I rang the bell he mightn’t let me in. I thought, if I could just see him, if I could just talk to him …’
He remembered suddenly, from history lessons, that Catherine Howard had run through the corridors of the palace, trying to get to King Henry VIII, convinced if she could only speak to him he wouldn’t have the heart to have her beheaded.
It was a depressing image, and rang unfortunately true. He passed it back to Gascoyne while he thought.
‘Tell me exactly what you did,’ Gascoyne said, ‘when you got to the flats. It’s important, Kelly-Ann. Everything you did.’
She looked impressed. ‘I let myself in downstairs,’ she said carefully. ‘I went up to the flat. I couldn’t decide at first whether to knock or not – I thought he might be angry when he found out I had keys, but then I thought once we’d made love he’d forget about it. And if I knocked he might not let me in. So I let myself in. I called out, “It’s only me,” but he didn’t answer. I hoped he was still in bed, then I could just get in with him. So I went to the bedroom, and – and there he was.’ She stopped with a shudder.
‘I’m sorry,’ Gascoyne said. ‘Tell me exactly what you saw.’
‘He was laying there. I could see blood on his face and on the floor. And his head was all … all bashed in. I didn’t believe it at first. I didn’t think it was real.’
‘Not real?’
‘You know, like people have those Halloween masks with all, like, horrible big wounds and eyeballs falling out and everything, and they’re, like, so realistic. I thought he was, like, playing a trick. I thought he’d jump up and scare me. So I said, “Erik, stop messing around,” but he never moved. And then I went up and touched him and it was—’ She stopped. Then she added, in a low voice like a moan, ‘I could smell the blood. It was horrible.’
‘Is that when you knelt down beside him?’ Gascoyne asked.
‘You what?’ She sounded bewildered.
Swilley spoke, a little impatiently. ‘You had blood on the knees of your jeans.’
‘I suppose – I must have knelt in it,’ she said vaguely. ‘I touched – where it was all bashed in. I thought it wasn’t real. But it was.’
‘And where was the dumb-bell?’ Gascoyne asked.
‘What du
mb-bell?’
‘You know what dumb-bell,’ Swilley said relentlessly.
Her eyes dilated a little as she looked at Swilley. Perhaps she was beginning to realize she was in trouble. ‘It was laying just there, beside him. I–I must’ve picked it up. I couldn’t work out – I thought it wasn’t real. But I saw there was all like blood and … and … brain stuff on it, and I like threw it away from me.’ Unconsciously she wiped her hands on her knees as if reliving the feeling. ‘Then I knew he was really dead and I didn’t know what to do. So I rung nine-nine-nine.’
She stopped, and looked from Swilley to Gascoyne and finally, pleadingly, at Slider. ‘I did the right thing, didn’t I? I called the police. I didn’t know what else to do.’
Det Sup Porson, Slider’s immediate boss, was surging restlessly around his office like a storm in a teacup. He rarely sat down; and indeed, stillness in Porson could be a phenomenon to alarm. Either he was sick, or you were in very deep trouble.
‘Clear-up rates? Have you done the figures?’ he barked as Slider appeared.
‘I was going to start them today,’ Slider said mildly. ‘Until this came up.’
‘Right. Right.’ Porson nodded his massive head. Outside the window the grey day had sunk into twilight, and under the cruel strip lighting he looked old and bumpy. His tie had the tight and greasy look about the knot that comes from taking it off over your head every evening rather than untying it. He had lived alone since his dear wife had died. She would never have allowed that. ‘What have you got so far?’
Slider summarized the facts. ‘We’ve got a team out doing the canvass,’ he concluded. ‘We’ve got his laptop but no mobile phone. No sign of break-in or theft.’
‘And the girlfriend was standing over the body covered in blood?’ Porson always knew things before he was told. ‘So what’s the problem?’
‘No mobile phone, for one thing. I thought maybe the girlfriend had pocketed it, but no. He must have had one, so why didn’t we find it?’
‘He could have left it somewhere – at work maybe – or lost it.’
‘I know. It’s just odd – and I don’t like odd.’
Porson nodded without agreement. ‘What else?’
‘Seven hundred pounds under the pillow. That’s a mystery. And then there’s the girl – she’s only nineteen.’
‘So you don’t want it to be her,’ Porson said impatiently. ‘Let’s keep feelings out of it.’
‘It was a violent attack, sir. Would a young girl like that—’
Porson shoved his hands down on his desk and leaned on them, the better to present his stern face for Slider’s education. ‘It’s not a matter of young. At nineteen they don’t think about consequences. And they all think they’re starring in some film. None of it’s really real.’ He straightened up and paced again. ‘What’s her family?’
‘We haven’t got it out of her yet. She’s refusing to say.’
‘Doesn’t want her parents to know,’ Porson conjectured. ‘That’s good. If she was innocent she’d be calling for her mum. Right. Keep it up. Be nice if you could sort it out before Friday.’
‘It would indeed, sir,’ Slider said, and trudged away.
In the CID room, most of the team were back. When Slider entered, Swilley was saying, ‘She’s got the motive, the keys, the bloodstains, and no alibi.’
‘We haven’t looked into alibi,’ Gascoyne pointed out.
Swilley snorted like an impatient horse. ‘If she had anything like an alibi she’d have trotted it out. Her fingerprints are on the murder weapon. That’s material.’
‘All right, that’s the pros. Any cons?’ Slider asked.
‘Well, she did call nine-nine-nine,’ said LaSalle. Tall and skinny, with stiff ginger hair, he looked like an upturned yard brush. ‘That looks like innocence. She could have just run away.’
‘She knew she’d left too many traces of herself,’ said Swilley. ‘She had to have a covering story.’
‘Would she think of that?’ Slider asked.
‘They all watch the cop shows on TV,’ said Swilley. ‘They know all the forensic stuff.’
That was true. ‘Still,’ said Slider, ‘she didn’t strike me as being very bright. Could somebody a bit thick work out a plan, and act so convincingly?’
‘An intelligent person can act thick,’ said Lœssop. ‘A thick person can’t act intelligent.’
Swilley looked at him impatiently. ‘So what does that mean? She’s thick or she isn’t?’
He wasn’t committing. ‘Just saying.’
‘Look, we know he wasn’t killed in the morning,’ Swilley said. ‘And we know she ran off at half-sixish. So, she comes back later, maybe around eleven or midnight, when it’s all quiet. She lets herself in – or maybe she rang and he buzzed her in. He had no reason to fear her. She asks him to think again, take her back.’
‘What are they doing in the bedroom?’ LaSalle asked.
‘Why would he even bother talking to her?’ Lœssop objected. ‘He could get another girlfriend. He wouldn’t want another row. I wouldn’t.’
‘He lets her in so she doesn’t make a racket out in the street,’ Swilley said. ‘And maybe he thinks he might as well have one last shag since she’s there, and invites her into the bedroom.’
‘Ouch,’ said Hart. ‘That’s cold, girl.’
‘Narcissism is cold,’ Atherton said.
‘Who says he’s a narcissist?’
‘You haven’t seen his toiletries. A show pony at Wembley gets less grooming.’
‘When you’ve quite finished,’ said Swilley. Atherton made a ‘carry on’ gesture with his hands. ‘She finally cottons on that he’s just using her, loses her temper, grabs the dumb-bell and whacks him. Then she runs away – immediate reaction. Back home she’s churning it over the rest of the night, and realizes she’s left traces of herself all over the scene. So she goes back. Maybe she was meaning to clean up, but when she sees it, she realizes she’ll never manage it, so she concocts the story that she came in and found him like that, and got the blood on her from touching him, and rings the police to make herself look innocent.’
‘All that sobbing looked genuine,’ Hart objected.
‘It was genuine,’ said Swilley. ‘She was in love with him. And she was scared shitless. Plenty of reasons for tears.’
Gascoyne nodded slowly. ‘That holds together. It all makes sense, guv,’ he added to Slider.
‘Yes,’ said Slider, ‘I know it does. I wish it didn’t.’
‘Why, just out of interest?’ said Atherton.
‘Because there are bits of the story that I think it would take a brighter girl than her to invent. Thinking it was a Halloween rubber wound on the back of his head, for instance. That rang horribly true.’
‘In a dopey sort of way,’ LaSalle agreed reluctantly.
‘Also she’s – what? – five foot five?’ Slider went on.
‘Five-six,’ said Swilley.
‘And he was five-ten. Could she really hit him on the side of the head, hard enough to knock him down. Could she even reach?’
‘If she was angry enough, she’d hit him hard enough,’ said Swilley.
McLaren swallowed a mouthful of the Ginsters beef and onion slice that had been keeping him out of the conversation. ‘Remember that old lady last month, Mrs Cobbold? Pasted her old man with a poker. She was five-foot nothing and made of spit and cobwebs.’
‘He was sitting down, though, wasn’t he?’ said LaSalle.
‘Maybe Lingoss was sitting down,’ said McLaren. ‘Sat on the bed to take his kecks off.’
‘He’d have seen her coming in the mirror,’ Atherton objected.
‘Not if he was sitting on the side of the bed facing the door,’ said Lœssop.
‘But she’d have had to go past him to pick up the weight. Wouldn’t he have wondered what she was doing?’
‘Yeah, but even if he saw her pick it up, there’s no reason he’d be scared of her, not until she actually whacke
d him. Who would expect that?’
‘True, I suppose,’ said Atherton. ‘What about the seven hundred pounds?’
‘I don’t believe Kelly-Ann’s ever had seven hundred pounds at one time,’ said Swilley. ‘It’s probably nothing to do with her.’
‘It suggests there was someone else there,’ said Slider.
‘But not necessarily at that time,’ said Swilley. ‘He had cash in the box in the wardrobe. Maybe he was heading to put it in and the phone rang or something, and he shoved it under the pillow while he answered it and then forgot about it.’
‘That’s dopey,’ Atherton said.
‘We don’t know that he wasn’t,’ Swilley pointed out.
‘Well, the case against Kelly-Ann Hayes looks plausible, and we’ve got nothing else. Let’s start getting it together. Nothing from the canvass, I suppose?’
‘No, guv. Three wise monkeys,’ said Hart.
He nodded. ‘We’ll need more background on Hayes and Lingoss. Find out who their next of kin are. We’ll need a proper timeline – some evidence of her journeys to and from the flat. Check any security cameras en route for that. Search her room.’
‘I’ll do that,’ Swilley volunteered. ‘I’m on late tonight.’
‘All right. And speak to her flatmate while you’re about it. She might at least be able to confirm the absence of an alibi.’
‘Got you,’ said Swilley.
THREE
Kelly-Ann of Green Fables
Lena Gardens, off Shepherd’s Bush Road, was lined either side with terraces of Victorian three-storey houses that might have been designed for the very purpose of being divided into flats. They were solid, yellow-brick buildings with white coping stones and a bay window on the ground and first floor. Kelly-Ann lived in a ground-floor flat, and her flatmate Jerrika Chamberlain met Swilley at the door. She was a tall, lean, mixed-race woman in her late twenties, with her afro combed up onto the top of her head and tied into a huge puffball. She was wearing black leggings and a baggy T-shirt, her feet were bare, and her finger and toenails were painted in matching burgundy glitter polish. Her black eyeliner gave her eyes an upward slant, which, with her rangey movements, gave her a cat-like air. She looked … prowly, Swilley decided. If that wasn’t a word, it ought to be.
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