by Caz Frear
I should go.
‘Look, do you know whether he’ll be here soon or not?’
‘Haven’t a fucking clue. I’m not his keeper.’ Noel pushes his plate away – two thousand calories in two minutes flat. ‘I think he’s shagging that sweet-ass with the lip-stud though, the one who comes in here, so as soon as he’s bored doing that he’ll surface, no doubt. Can’t give you an exact time though, sorry.’
My insides scream. Lip-stud suggests young, and young suggests nothing ever fucking changes with my father.
I head towards the door. ‘Just tell him I called, OK?’
‘Sure.’ Noel opens the dishwasher, tosses the pan in. ‘Any message I can pass on?’
I almost laugh at this. Truth is, I’ve no idea what I came to say.
Yeah, tell him I know he lied about Maryanne Doyle.
Tell him it’s OK though, I was too scared to ever squeal.
But tell him I’ve been punishing him for it for the past eighteen years.
Instead, I say, ‘Yeah, tell him not to put non-stick pans in the dishwasher. It strips away the coating.’
Noel laughs and trails me down the hallway. The morning’s changed in the short time I’ve been inside and a low wintry sun dazzles my face as I walk back down the fire escape.
‘Don’t be a stranger, sis,’ he calls after me. ‘We’ll have a drink sometime, yeah? Bring a colleague. Preferably one in uniform.’
I stick my middle finger up then instantly wish I hadn’t. It seems too flippant a gesture to be aimed at Noel, too matey; the kind of thing I reserve for Parnell when he’s whingeing about my driving or the weakness of my tea.
The door slams shut and I take out my phone. Ten fifteen a.m. Hardly worth going home now. However, in the interests of not getting bollocked, I wander down to Exmouth Market to buy toothpaste, a hair bobble, a lemony-stripe top from one of the many cutesy-kitsch boutiques and some cod liver oil, and then I head straight to the public loos to transform myself into someone who looks like they’ve had a quick power-nap and a change of clothes. Afterwards, to kill more time, I amble slowly towards Spa Fields, drawn to the sounds of shrieking children hurling themselves around the adventure playground – part of the regeneration of Exmouth Market, or the gentrification, if you’re being snide. When I was a child, Spa Fields had been known for much darker adventures and I’d never been allowed to play here. Noel used to frequent it though.
Drink, smoke, fight, repeat.
Once when I was six years old, the police brought Noel home from Spa Fields. Something about a girl and a smashed bottle. I sat on the stairs listening to Dad raising hell about Noel bringing coppers to his door. Screaming that ‘Uncle’ Frank would do his nut, and had he even thought about the effect on takings if ‘certain people’ got wind that the Old Bill had been seen sniffing around McAuley’s. Mum had just wanted to get to the bottom of it. To understand if there was another side to the story, or if she really had given birth to such a nasty piece of vermin.
I don’t know if she ever got her answer. It was certainly never mentioned again. Like so many things within our family, it was glossed over or blocked out. Dad managed to smooth things with ‘Uncle’ Frank, who incidentally isn’t our real uncle – he’s Dad’s ‘blood brother’. His ‘brother from another mother’ he insists when he’s drunk too much Bushmills.
Dad has two brothers. Real ones, those of the shared DNA kind. Uncle Jim and Uncle Kenny. I haven’t seen them in a long time and I don’t know too much about them, but what I do know is that, unlike ‘Uncle’ Frank, neither of them ever beat Dad up with a pool cue for talking out of turn to a rival outfit. Neither of them ever remarked that Jacqui had ‘a bankable body’ or offered her a job in their nightclub the night before she sat her A-levels.
Sitting on a bench beside the winter remnants of a foxglove tree, I wrap my coat tight around me and watch the children for a while, giddy with excitement that it’s only a week until Santa comes. Then I fiddle with my phone for a bit, fire off a few emails. Obsess about who this ‘sweet-ass with the lip-stud’ could be.
*
There was a Latvian girl who worked in our pub one Christmas. A student. She’d had a lip-stud too. Her name was Alina and she was supposed to be making her English better but she ended up making my Latvian better.
‘Mans vārds ir Cat un es esmu septiņas.’ (My name is Cat and I am seven.)
‘Man ir brālis sauc Noel un viņš smaržo maziņš.’ (My brother Noel smells of wee.)
I liked Alina. She used to make me laugh by saying that her other job was dancing to pop music in her pants in ‘Uncle’ Frank’s nightclub. I don’t know what happened to her though. She was there one day and gone the next.
A bit like the Snowman in that sappy cartoon me and Dad used to watch.
Dad had liked Alina too.
4
I slip back into the station just before one p.m., the chill in my marrow fending off punch-drunk tiredness for the time being. Violent death makes restful sleep seem like a rather shallow privilege of the living anyway, and it’s not as if the Sandman and I are great pals at the best of times.
It occurs to me that I could ask Dr Allen for something to help me sleep. To date, I’ve generally relied on wine, weed and a whole ton of emotional eating to numb me into eventual slumber but maybe a chemical crutch might be nice, although I’m not sure of the protocol.
Do you wait to be offered?
Does asking for something sound the ‘not-coping’ klaxon?
More importantly, do I even care?
Right this second, probably not. With Leamington Square and my encounter with Noel trawling up long-buried memories and black tarry thoughts, the idea of some state-sanctioned oblivion buoys me more than it should.
‘DCI Steele?’ Parnell’s just ahead of me, slumped against the front-desk, interrupting the custody sergeant’s flow as he checks the dietary needs of some goon in a ‘Gangzta’ hat about to be booked in.
The Sergeant glowers at Parnell. ‘Third floor. Door with the broken handle.’
In reality, we don’t need directions as the gravitational pull of an incident room is Herculean in strength. Stepping out onto the third floor, we instinctively turn left and follow the corridor to the end, straight and purposeful like darts, ignoring all the early-afternoon hustle of a central London station. From a few steps away, I clock Steele through the doorway looking sharp and match-fit, bouncing on her stockinged feet, all five feet three of her – shoes indiscriminately discarded somewhere, no doubt. ‘I can’t think straight with sore feet.’
Prepping the incident board are man-mountain DS Pete Flowers and blade-thin DC Craig Cooke – aka the Feast and the Famine. Both are solid coppers, without question. Diligent types. Flowers could probably make inspector if he wasn’t so charmless, while Craig’s a good guy to have around, a one-man-band of dad jokes and contagious optimism. I give a thumbs-up to Seth, still beavering away thanks to three cans of Red Bull and the lure of a gold star from Steele, and I smile vaguely at a stunning girl in a mustard duffle who I’ve worked with before – although when I say ‘worked with’, I don’t mean in the Cagney-and-Lacey sense – just that we shared the same kettle, copped the same flak.
But I’d know that duffle coat anywhere.
Given my job, I should feel blessed to have a good memory for pointless prosaic detail. Truth is, it’s more of a curse and it’s one of the reasons I find it hard to sleep. In a matter of seconds, my dead-of-night thoughts can sway from the consuming, feral agony of Mum’s final days to the saltiness of the pork at Jacqui’s wedding, while images as banal as driftwood and duffle coats rub shoulders with suspicions about my dad that are so black and unmentionable that I have to keep them locked in a box at the centre of my frontal lobe.
In my mind, this box has always been purple. A deep Catholic purple with a heavy black lock. Despite the lock there’s no key to open the box, to do so would be catastrophic, but occasionally a thought seeps out through the tiny
space where the base meets the lid. It’s already happened several times today.
‘Righto folks, let’s make a start.’ Steele hushes the room in two seconds flat. ‘Now contrary to popular belief, I’m not completely in love with the sound of my own voice so here’s the drill. I’ll go through the basics, answer any questions, get everyone up to speed, and then I’m throwing it out to the floor for a bit of audience participation, all right?’
A horseshoe of fresh-faced DCs sit up, synchronised in gutsy ambition. For a second I long to throw myself into the heart of their competitive clique and leave Parnell to his quiz shows and arthritic knees. But it’s a quick spark of sentiment, gone before it can take root. I never seem to shine with people of my own age. I just never feel that relevant.
‘So, quickly, let’s talk about me, shall we?’ Steele hops onto a desk, shuffling to make herself comfortable. Her legs don’t quite touch the floor and with her ditsy print dress and swaying feet, she looks like a child about to recite a nursery rhyme. ‘For those who don’t know, my name’s DCI Kate Steele and I’m the SIO leading this investigation. You can call me Boss, Guv, whatever you like. You can call me Kate if you sense I’m in a good mood, but you run that risk at your own peril, m’dears. Behind my back, you’ll no doubt call me Cardigan Kate, on account of the fact that my upper arms haven’t been seen since 1989 but that’s fine, I’m used to it. Christ knows, I’ve been called worse. Just don’t let me hear you or you’ll wish your mother had had a headache the night you were conceived.’
A smile spreads across the faces of those who’ve worked with Steele before. We know this script verbatim.
‘Now, there’s a few of you I don’t know so if you have something to say, put your hand up and state your name. I probably won’t remember it but don’t take offence. It doesn’t mean you’re not a remarkable human being, it just means I’m a batty old woman who can’t remember where she parked the car half the time, never mind a load of new names every time I head up a case, so if you can just play along if I get your name half-right, I reckon we’ll all get along fine. OK? Everyone happy?’
The horseshoe constricts, one or two allow themselves a cautious smile.
‘Wonderful.’ Steele turns to face the incident board. ‘So, victim’s name is Alice Lapaine. Thirty-five years old. A married, part-time pub chef from Thames Ditton in Surrey.’
A point to her bloodied corpse followed by a quick reverent pause. Just enough time for us to contrast the normality of her life with the savagery of her death. There but for the grace of God go I . . .
‘Vickery’s in court this afternoon, maybe tomorrow, so there’s a delay on the post-mortem, but in layman’s terms – possible strangulation, a blow to the front of the head, slashes across the throat – not fatal. Other bumps and scrapes, mainly to the legs and chest. She was fully clothed, no obvious signs of sexual assault. No obvious defence wounds either. Vickery estimates she’d only been dead a few hours, four to five hours max. She was found on Leamington Square at approximately four forty-five a.m., however Leamington Square is not the primary crime scene. We have her on CCTV being dumped there at four-o-five a.m. Benny-boy, you’re up.’
DC Ben Swaines, boyband-handsome in a tedious, steam-cleaned kind of way, steadies himself for the spotlight with one last run of his hand through his sandy-blond hair, but unfortunately not even his sterile loveliness can detract from the fact that it’s a pretty depressing tale of stolen cars, poor-quality CCTV, tinted windows and balaclavas.
Basically, nothing a good brief couldn’t make mincemeat of.
Parnell visibly sags with each blow, however Steele looks on, totally at peace with Ben’s litany of disappointments. All part of the game, she reminds us, especially at the start of the case before the grunt-work kicks in.
‘The car, a Vauxhall Zafira, belongs to a Richard Little.’ Ben looks relieved to have at least one tangible thing to offer. ‘A piano teacher from Tulse Hill. He’s been in Malta visiting his parents since the eighteenth so he’s in the clear. Didn’t even realise his car had been stolen. He parks it outside his flat – it’s off-street residents’ parking but it’s easily accessible. It’ll be a lump of ash by now, no doubt.’
‘We’re talking to the neighbours, right?’ says Steele.
Ben nods. ‘The car was definitely outside at nine thirty p.m. A neighbour, Mr Spicks, got home around then, remembers being narked that “Liberace” had parked it in his usual space before buggering off to Malta. Seemed happy it’d got nicked, to be honest.’
‘Run the CCTV again.’ Steele balls her hands into fists and leans hard on the table, knuckles taut and pearly white. ‘Watch this and store it, folks,’ she says, tapping her temple. ‘Brazen is not the word.’
We sit in grisly silence and watch a figure get out of the driver’s seat, stretching their back slowly, almost luxuriantly, as if they’ve just finished a long, arduous drive. There’s a quick glance away from the car, a last look up to Farringdon Road, perhaps – the only realistic source of interruption at that time of the morning – and then they open up the back seat and haul Alice Lapaine out by the shoulders, tossing her onto the tarmac and making every one of us flinch as her head smacks the road. The figure stands over her briefly, composed and stock-still, before getting back in the car and driving off. Nothing at all to suggest a crime of panic.
I’ve seen more signs of stress on a fly-tipper dumping a mattress.
‘Judging by build’ – Steele brings us back into the room – ‘I’d say we’re looking for a man, but we can’t completely rule out a strapping sort of woman.’
Craig smiles nervously, ‘Here, it’s not my Karen, is it?’
There’s a murmur of a laugh but it doesn’t take flight.
‘Cameras have the car heading east for a few miles but they lose it when it turns off the Romford Road,’ says Ben, looking apologetic, as if the fallibility of CCTV is his own personal failing. ‘I’ve alerted relevant CID – Barking, Dagenham, Hornchurch, Stratford, a few others. They’re going to keep their eyes out, but you know . . .’
‘Kids or dog-walkers. It’ll turn up somewhere. What’s left of it,’ says Parnell.
Steele hops back on the desk and flicks through her notebook which is pink, leather-bound and embossed with Keep Calm and Nick Villains. A present from me for her fiftieth last year.
‘So, we don’t have the car and we also don’t have her bag, her purse or her phone. No surprises there. POLSA are down on their hands and knees combing the area but let’s just say I’m not holding my breath.’ POLSA – Police Search Advisers, or in other words, Hardy All-Weather Heroes. ‘However, and I’ll have a drum roll for this please, we did find a receipt stuffed in one of her pockets. It’s for an espresso ristretto, whatever the hell that is. Bought at a café in Wandsworth on Friday, paid for by credit card, and thanks to the wonderful Seth Wakeman’s persistent stalking – and OK, maybe the small matter of Chief Superintendent Blake’s early morning intervention – VISA coughed up the details quickly.’ Seth takes a small bow. ‘The bad news is, and can you believe the utter sods-lawfulness of this, the café’s closed until Thursday. The two owners are on some Christmas market jolly in bloody Dusseldorf, so bang goes our chance of finding out if Alice met with anyone until then. It’s a bit off the beaten track so no CCTV either.’
A chinless DC rises up but I get there first. ‘A receipt’s hardly foolproof ID. How do we know it’s definitely her? She could have picked it up randomly, stuffed it in her pocket.’
‘It’s her. We need formal ID, of course, but Renée’s at the Thames Ditton address with the husband now and they’ve scanned through a photo and it’s definitely our girl. Actually, we need to get that up on the board, pronto. Kinsella, it’s on my desk. Do the honours.’
I walk into Steele’s office, a kaleidoscopic blur of box-files and dry cleaning, and quickly start moving papers around, tidying as I go. Under a coffee-stained memo from the Borough Commander, Alice Lapaine stares up at
me through a clear plastic folder. Unbloodied and intact, she looks familiar somehow, although it’s more of a feeling, a vibration, than cast-iron recognition.
It’s an odd photo, I think, to sum up a life. Off-guard and out-of-focus. The kind of throwaway snap you’d take to use up the last of a film. Sitting on a garden chair, Alice’s lips curve upwards in an attempt at a smile, but something about her body language, the hunched shoulders and the crossed arms, looks off. Like she’s shrinking from the lens, trying to make herself small.
She doesn’t feel small to me, though. This blue-eyed, blonde-bobbed vision of complete-and-utter ordinariness is making my skin itch and my skull pulse.
I give myself a shake and walk out.
Steele’s still holding court.
‘So, the husband’s being driven in for formal ID in the next couple of hours. Once we have that, I’ll decide what exactly gets released to the media.’
‘The proper media, you mean,’ grunts Flowers, ‘It’s all over social media, thanks to the numpty who found her.’
I bristle at this, contemplate saying, ‘You mean the numpty whose life has been irrevocably tainted? The numpty who’ll have to relive this horror over and over in exchange for nothing more than a cup of tea and a Victim Support number?’ But Flowers has a prickly ego sometimes so I stay schtum, focusing intently on the floor instead until I’m sure the last remnants of pissed-offness have left my face.
Steele shrugs, crosses one dinky leg over another. ‘Not a lot we can do about that now, Pete. So, the husband, Thomas Lapaine.’ She holds up a finger. ‘One: he claims he hasn’t seen his wife in four weeks – she took off, not an unusual occurrence, apparently. Two: there was no one in when Renée got there around ten thirty a.m., so she had a quick chat with a neighbour, and she hadn’t seen him for days. Which doesn’t mean he’d gone AWOL, of course, just that their paths hadn’t crossed . . .’
‘His car?’ asks Parnell.