‘This way, Ellen. There’s a little bar across the road that stays open late. I’m a bit of a regular. They serve decent food as well if you’re hungry?’
And that’s how life was, she realised. One day you’re one person, the next, you’re forced to reinvent yourself. Just because Monica was gone for now, didn’t mean she’d be gone forever.
Her suitcase was getting heavy so when Leonard offered to take it, she let him. As she handed it over, she thought of the photo inside. Her ex-husband’s face. Ellen Kelly had accused her of breaking into her house. Stupid Kelly. Monica almost felt sorry for her. The detective really had no idea. Monica would never take a risk like that. She was far too clever.
* * *
Ellen bought a pack of cigarettes from the machine in the canteen and took them out front. She planned to smoke her way through the pack until she felt calm enough to drive home. She’d deliberately avoided the car park, where her colleagues gathered to inhale nicotine and catch up on the latest gossip. She had a feeling she would be the main topic of conversation in the smoking area tonight.
At the back end of the weekend, Lewisham station felt like the gathering point for every thug, drunk and petty criminal in South-East London. Outside wasn’t much better. Ellen chain-smoked and watched the gangs of drunks marauding the south London streets, squeezing out every final moment of the weekend.
She was trying not to think about Jim. He’d been released – for now – but he remained a suspect. He’d finally admitted being at Monica’s house on Tuesday night. Said he’d only gone there to ask Monica to leave Ellen alone. It was obvious Ger didn’t believe him. Ellen told herself she didn’t care one way or the other.
But there was one certainty and she clung onto this, focussing on it, knowing it was the only way forward. Monica Telford was a killer. Proving that was the only thing that mattered now.
At the bus stop nearby, a group of young people had gathered. They all looked too young to be out at this time of night and certainly too young to be that drunk. The girls were all underdressed for October. Short skirts revealed skinny white legs that made Ellen cold just looking at them.
One of the girls swung away from the rest of the group, staggered to the kerb and vomited. The sound of puke hitting concrete mingled with the girl’s retching and the raucous laughter of her friends, cheering her on. When she finished, the girl straightened up and used the back of her hand to wipe her mouth. Her friends applauded and she gave a wobbly bow before tottering back to join them.
Ellen threw her cigarette to the ground, stubbed it out with the toe of her boot and moved away. The smell of vomit followed her as she made her way around the back of the station to the car park.
They’d been doing just fine, the three of them. It hadn’t been easy, but they were coping. And the longer they did it, the longer they got through each day and week without Vinny, the easier it got. Didn’t it? The last thing they needed in their lives was anyone else disrupting the delicate balance they’d found for themselves. Ellen, Pat and Eilish. A self-contained unit. The children were her life. She was so lucky to have them. To even begin to want anything else was just plain greedy.
Before she could stop it, a memory she didn’t want. A night with Jim. One of their first dates. He’d asked her about Vinny. Not about how he died, but how he’d lived. What had he been like, Jim wanted to know. What was it about him that was so special?
It wasn’t something she’d been asked before. While Vinny was alive, no one questioned why they were together. You were a couple and people accepted you as that. Afterwards, all she ever got asked was the stuff she didn’t like talking about – how do you cope? How do the kids cope? Does it get any easier? Different questions, each one offering up the same answer: I don’t know.
Surprised by the question, Ellen answered without filtering her response the way she normally would. The words tumbled out as she tried to capture the essence of her husband in words. She described how he loved to dance, even though he was the least co-ordinated person she’d ever met. She spoke about his taste in music – a Nick Cave and Johnny Cash obsessive. Dark music for a man full of light. A man who laughed more than anyone else she’d ever met. A man who understood her neurotic need to give her children the security her own early life had lacked.
It was only with Vinny, she explained, that the world made sense. Ever since her sister’s death, Ellen had felt disconnected from the world, as if nothing that happened around her could touch her or get through to her. Then Vinny came along and that changed. They married, had the children and, for the first time, her life made sense.
At some point, as she was talking, Ellen started crying. She should have felt embarrassed. Should have apologised and walked away until she could pull herself together. But Jim put his arms around her and held her, telling her it was okay to cry. The way he said it, the way he held her so gently as he whispered to her, Ellen was able to believe him.
She should have known then that Jim O’Dwyer was full of shit.
Seventy-Four
Ellen should never have picked up the call. She’d come in early to get some work done before taking Pat and Eilish on the cable cars. Pat was cross because Jim wasn’t coming, but Ellen couldn’t let herself feel too bad about that. She drew the line at letting a murder suspect anywhere near her children.
Apart from herself, Alastair was the only other person in the office. Alastair was always in the office. Once, Ellen had asked him what he did in his spare time.
‘What do you mean?’ he’d said.
‘When you’re not working,’ she’d replied. ‘What do you like to do?’
He frowned. ‘Eat. Sleep. What else is there to do?’
She ended the conversation at that point and didn’t raise the topic again.
She went back over every angle of Chloe Dunbar’s murder, trying to find a connection to Monica. Two hours later, she still hadn’t found anything. Frustrated, she slammed shut her laptop and stood up, ready to leave.
She was about to say goodbye to Alastair when his phone started to ring. She waited. He answered, listened for a moment, then told the caller to hold on.
‘DCI Keane,’ Alastair said. ‘Canterbury. Looking for the boss. Want to take it?’
Ellen took the phone, listened as DCI Billy Keane told her why he was calling.
* * *
‘I hate you!’
‘Pat, don’t be like this,’ Ellen begged. ‘Please. We’ll do the cable cars next weekend. What difference does it make?’
‘Because you promised.’
Ellen knelt in front of him. ‘Listen to me. Something very important has happened. A woman has been killed and I may know who did it. It’s very important I help find that person. It can’t wait until tomorrow.’
Pat scowled. ‘Bullshit.’
‘Pat! Don’t you dare speak to me like that.’
He didn’t hear her. He’d already turned away and was walking out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
‘You can’t blame him,’ Ellen’s mother said. ‘It was the same last weekend. Could you not have put it off until tomorrow? That way you could take Pat to the cable cars like you promised and then drop them back here later if you want some time to yourself.’
Ellen sighed. ‘It’s not about having some time to myself, Mum. I haven’t got a choice about this, I’m afraid.’
‘Go on then,’ her mother said. ‘Off you go. We’ll be fine. I’ll take them back to the park later and then back to mine. Give a ring and let me know what time you’ll be back. And you’ll stay for tea, all of you?’
Ellen knew better than to say no.
* * *
Ellen drove fast, blue light flashing the whole way to Brighton. Everything she’d suspected about Monica suddenly had substance. Earlier this morning, police in Brighton had identified the body of a woman found murdered in her home. Killed by a series of blows to her head and torso. Post-mortem confirmed the woman had been dead for some time. Stat
e pathologist estimated she’d been murdered in the last week of August. Two and a half months ago.
The dead woman was Annie Telford, Monica’s mother. Brighton and Hove made the connection with Adam Telford and contacted Canterbury police, who called Lewisham. Ellen was lucky. She’d been in the right place at the right time.
Brighton station was a huge, post-war concrete building in an area of the city that reminded Ellen of Lewisham. Inside the station, she was met at the front desk by a young detective called Victor Rowney.
‘Canterbury have tracked down Telford’s girlfriend,’ he said. ‘They’re interviewing her at the moment. Annie’s landlord has just contacted us. Says he knew her pretty well. I’m on my way to visit him. Thought maybe you’d like to tag along?’
Ellen smiled. ‘I’d love to.’
* * *
Carl Jenkins lay on his bed, watching the news. All about a woman’s body found in a house in Brighton. Turned out she was the wife of some bloke found murdered in Whitstable the day before. He lifted the remote, pointed it at the TV, about to flick if off when the screen changed. A photo of an attractive, dark-skinned woman with huge eyes and a lots of hair. According to the newsreader, the woman’s name was Monica Telford. The police needed to speak to her urgently. At the end of the report, a phone number flashed across the screen.
His phone was on the ground somewhere, beneath the pile of clothes he’d worn last night. When he’d gone out and got so drunk he couldn’t even remember coming home. By the time he found the phone, the number on the screen had disappeared. Frustrated, he tried to rewind, but the TV was a basic Freeview box with no rewind function for live TV. He considered dialling 999 – thinking if this wasn’t an emergency, what the hell was? – when he remembered something else. The card he’d been given by that Asian bloke who’d kicked the shit out of him.
He ran downstairs into the kitchen. His mother was in there, preparing lunch. She smiled and said something but he ignored her, going to the drawer where he’d put the card, rummaging through it, throwing things out of his way onto the floor, until – finally – there it was.
‘Carl?’ His mother was shouting at him. She’d had enough. Couldn’t say he blamed her, but now wasn’t the time to have that conversation. ‘What do you think you’re doing? Come back here and tidy that mess!’
He wasn’t listening. Was already through the kitchen and standing in the small back garden, dialling the number. It rang for a long time and he was getting ready to leave a message when a man answered.
‘Hello?’
‘Detective Patel? It’s Carl Jenkins here. I think I might have something for you. Something important. Are you free to meet?’
Silence. Maybe he’d done the wrong thing. Should have known better than to trust someone who’d broken his nose the last time they’d met.
‘Yes, I’m free,’ Patel said. ‘Just name a time and a place. I’ll be there.’
Seventy-Five
‘Flat belongs to a local bloke called Pete Dahne,’ Rowney explained in the car. ‘It’s one of several properties he owns in and around Brighton.’
‘How do we know she was living there?’ Ellen asked.
‘Clothes in the wardrobe, make-up in the bathroom,’ Rowney said. ‘There was definitely a woman living there. Two pairs of men’s trousers in the wardrobe the only sign there’d ever been a bloke living there. Took us a few days to track him down. Which is why we couldn’t ID the victim at first. No one knew who she was.’
‘How’d you find him?’ Ellen asked.
‘He found us,’ Rowney said. ‘Saw the news, recognised the house and came forward.’
‘So where’s he been for the last two months?’ Ellen asked.
Rowney smiled. Again.
‘I thought you might like to ask him that yourself,’ he said.
Pete Dahne’s house was a large, detached Victorian property on a long, tree-lined road in a pretty part of the city. Dahne himself was a short, skinny man in his sixties with slicked back, dyed black hair and prominent yellow teeth. Introductions out of the way, Dahne led Ellen and Rowney through a big hallway carpeted with a thick, pale pink carpet, into a large sitting room dominated by a grotesque green marble fireplace.
‘Take a seat.’ Dahne gestured vaguely at some of the overstuffed armchairs in the room. ‘Can I get you both something to drink?’
‘No thanks,’ Ellen said, sitting down on one of the armchairs.
‘Nor me,’ Rowney said. ‘Good of you to see us on a Sunday, Mr Dahne. We appreciate it.’
Dahne shrugged. ‘Just doing my duty. Like I told you earlier, Detective.’ He smiled, revealing more crooked, yellow teeth. ‘How can I help you?’
Somewhere outside the room, in another part of the house, a young child was crying. A woman’s voice, soft and soothing, trying to calm the child.
‘My sister,’ Dahne said. ‘Been living here since her husband buggered off. That’s her boy crying. Pete Junior. Poor little fella’s teething at the moment. Just two years old and his father fucks off with another woman. Not a word from him since he left. Too scared to show his face. Knows what I’ll do to him when he does. That’s not why you’re here, though, is it? You want to know about Annie.’
‘She was a tenant of yours,’ Ellen said. ‘Is that right?’
‘Not exactly,’ Dahne said. ‘Well she lived there, yes. But she didn’t pay any rent.’
‘Why not?’
‘I didn’t ask for any,’ Dahne said. ‘I was in love with her, see? Thought I could save her. Stupid. She was beyond saving. Beyond everything.’
Ellen looked at this little man, tears in his eyes as he spoke about Annie. A wave of revulsion made her lightheaded. Another Nathan Collier. Another pathetic man turning some poor woman into a piece of property to be owned and ogled at and Christ only knew what else. Times like this, she pretty much hated all men.
‘How did you meet?’ she asked.
‘A Wetherspoon’s pub,’ Dahne said. He gave a watery smile. ‘Hardly the most romantic of meeting places, is it? Maybe I should have taken it as an omen. At the time, I was so flattered a woman like that could be interested in someone like me.’
‘A woman like what, exactly?’ Ellen asked.
‘Beautiful,’ Dahne said. ‘She was, I mean even in a shitty pub like that, she was luminous. All dressed up, looking like something from the movies, you know? I saw her the moment I walked in. Course I did. Every man in the place was watching her. She was in her fifties. You’d never think it to look at her.’
‘You saw her,’ Ellen said. ‘Then what?’
‘Then nothing,’ Dahne replied. ‘At first. I’d only gone in for a pint. Don’t normally do that, even. But I’d just come from Marley’s place. My sister. Things there were tense and it had rubbed off. I needed a pint to calm myself down.
‘I’d barely sat down when Annie came over, asked if she could join me. I thought she was taking the piss. I remember looking around, checking to see if anyone was laughing. There wasn’t. She sat down, we started talking and that was it. Three drinks later, if she’d asked me to walk to the end of Brighton pier and jump off, I’d have done it. Without even asking why. That’s just how it was with me and her.’
‘So why put her in a flat?’ Victor asked. ‘Why not let her move in here with you?’
‘She did move in here,’ Dahne said. ‘At first. But then Marley’s husband buggered off and she couldn’t cope, so I told her she could come stay here. Annie couldn’t stand it. She went sort of mental about it, if I’m honest. The flat at Calvert Lane was meant to be a temporary measure.’
‘Not exactly an ideal love nest,’ Ellen said. ‘But I’m guessing things didn’t work out the way you wanted them to?’
‘She acted like she hated me,’ Dahne said. ‘From the moment she moved out, she seemed to blame me. I did my best. I loved her, you see. So even when she was really nasty, I kept going back. It became like an illness. She started seeing other blokes. Taunting me with
them. I went over there one afternoon and she had two of them with her. Two young blokes pawing her while she lay on the bed, letting them do whatever they wanted to her. And when I walked in and found her with them, she laughed. Kept laughing when I tried to throw them out and they turned on me. I could hear her, the sound of it breaking my heart while those two bastards laid into me.
‘I never went back again. That was four months ago.’
He looked directly at Ellen the whole time he spoke. She felt he was telling the truth but knew that he was possibly just a very good liar. Knew also that Brighton and Hove had already confirmed that Peter Dahne had taken his sister and young nephew to Spain for a two-week holiday during the period Annie Telford was thought to have been killed.
She glanced at Victor, who nodded. They’d got as much as they needed to. At the front door, Ellen thought of something else.
‘You said Annie couldn’t bear having your sister here. Why was that?’
‘It wasn’t Marley,’ Dahne said. ‘It was Kayne, her little boy. He cried a lot, still does as you can hear. Annie couldn’t stand it. I found her one afternoon, sitting in the bedroom, with her hands over her ears. When I asked her what was wrong, she got really upset, started crying herself, weeping like a little girl. It’s strange, you know, in all the time I knew her, it was the only time I ever saw her cry. What was it about the kid that got to her, do you think?’
A memory came to Ellen. Fragile, half-forgotten. Her baby sister. Crying while Ellen’s mother held her, singing softly to her baby, the words lost in the sound of Eilish’s wailing. A sound that cut through everything in the small flat they shared, so that no matter where you went, there was no escaping her sister’s crying. And then, after Eilish died, the sound of a baby crying would forever be associated with her dead sister.
Back at Brighton station, Ellen called Alastair.
‘I need you to do something for me,’ she said. ‘And I don’t want anyone else to know about it. Is that okay?’
The Waiting Game Page 30