by Caz Frear
I interrupt, not my finest habit, but this is a brainstorm, not a formal brief, and there’s no prizes for diffidence. ‘Two hundred and fifty pounds every four to five days? That’s not enough to live on in London, including accommodation. She must have been staying with someone.’
‘So why’d she stop fleecing the husband?’ says Flowers, his voice thorny with experience.
I shoot him a dirty look. ‘Er, do you want to look up the meaning of the word “joint”?’
Renée rolls her eyes but she’s past arguing with him. ‘She had no choice. I’ve just had it confirmed that Thomas Lapaine cleared out their joint account at the beginning of last week. Left her high and dry, the rotten sod.’
‘Can he really do that?’ I ask, shocked. ‘Empty the account without her knowledge?’
It’s genuinely news to me. And to think Steele’s got me pegged me as Financially Intelligent.
‘Hmm-mm,’ nods Renée. ‘Not a very nice thing to do, but completely his right. Either account holder can clear it out at any time.’
I’m not sure whether to pity or envy couples with this level of faith. It seems absurdly naïve on one hand, but then the whole point of intimacy on the other. Literally putting your money where your mouth is when it comes to the word ‘trust’.
‘Right, get him back under this roof today,’ says Steele to Parnell. ‘Just for another “chat” of course. Try to avoid any tears, or shouting, or glasses hurled at walls, please. In any case, there’s not a whole lot we can hurl at him at this stage, not until we’ve got more forensics, but just get him to quit with all the “we understood each other” bollocks, OK? There’s something rotten at the core of that marriage and we need to know what it is.’
Parnell nods. ‘Ben? Anything come back on the phone records?’
Ben’s edgy. ‘Well, yeah, kind of. We’ve got the call she made to Lapaine on his birthday and then various unanswered calls to her phone – a few from Lapaine and then a couple from someone at the pub the day after she left, probably just seeing why she hadn’t turned up for work, and then there’s your usual PPI stuff etc.’ He takes a breath. ‘But most interestingly, we’ve got six calls from Alice to two different pay-as-you-go numbers over the past few weeks. First one, November 23rd. Last one, December 12th. Problem is, both phones are switched off. We need to wait for them to be switched back on before they ping the mast and we get a location. And if either person is somehow involved, that might never happen, of course.’
‘Can we trace where they bought the top-up?’ I say. ‘Pull the CCTV?’
Ben nods. ‘We’re on it, but if they bought the top-up in a tiny offy in the arse-end of nowhere, forget about it . . .’
‘All fun and games,’ someone grumbles. I think it’s Flowers.
Parnell does his best to rally everyone. ‘Right, good work, folks. We are making progress even if it doesn’t feel like it.’
As everyone starts to disperse back to their desks, Parnell grabs me. ‘I want you to get over to Wandsworth. That café she bought the coffee in on Friday, it re-opens today.’
‘Righto.’
Steele appears. ‘And take Emily with you. Let me know if she’s good for anything other than picking her nails and looking at ASOS.’
Poor Emily Beck. It’s a novelty we all fell for. The freedom to be fashionable again after two years in uniform.
‘Boss, can I have a word.’ Parnell and Steele both turn around. ‘Big Boss?’ I say, and then, to my shame, ‘Lady-Boss?’ – aware I’m making Steele sound like a cheap market-stall perfume.
‘Sure. We’ll have to walk and talk though.’ She holds out two box-files. ‘Here, carry these for me.’
I wait until we’re outside the room and halfway down the corridor. I suspect she’s not even listening properly but at least I can say I told her. ‘Er, I just wanted to let you know, I took the Ireland file off your desk yesterday. Had a quick shuftie.’ A tiny flash of ‘oh, did you now?’ crosses her face but it could just be the dodgy strip lighting messing with me. ‘I knew you were busy and well, after meeting the brother, I was curious. There’s nothing much in there, nothing relevant, I think.’
We get in the lift. ‘What did you make of him then, the brother?’
‘I sent you my report.’ I say, instantly defensive. ‘One for Parnell, one for you. I emailed it to you last night.’
She hits the button for the ground floor. ‘Whoa, Kinsella. I wasn’t checking up on your paperwork, I was just asking. Making conversation.’
My face burns. ‘Oh right, sorry. Well, it’s hard to know what to make of him, really. He’s not exactly grief-stricken but it’s been eighteen years. He’s moved on with his life and then, this. If you’re asking if he’s a serious suspect, my gut says no. He says he hasn’t laid eyes on her since 1998 and we’ve nothing to contradict that. No contact between them on Maryanne’s Facebook or Hotmail, etc.’
She lets this sit as the lift descends. When the doors open into reception, we’re greeted by a teen with a busted eye socket and a woman raising hell over a lost coat.
‘He could still be the mystery pay-as-you-go,’ says Steele, signalling ‘one minute’ to her driver outside.
‘He could. And he was home alone, so yeah, it’s about as reliable as Thomas Lapaine’s alibi, but he did he have a text exchange with a friend at around one a.m. and Tech are looking into it now. If that comes back kosher, and the phone masts bear him out, we’ve got him tucked up in bed in Mile End around the time of death so . . .’
‘So we go again. We dig deeper.’
‘Yup.’
‘You OK?’ she asks, eyes fixed on mine. In her stiletto suede boots, we’re about the same height.
Petty cynic that I am, I wonder why she’s asking.
She’s on to me though. ‘It’s just a question, Kinsella. A fairly common one in polite society. If it helps the most common answers are, “I’m fine thanks”, “Not too bad” and “Can’t complain.”’
‘All those things then,’ I say, smiling.
‘Mmmm.’ She scrutinises me for a few seconds which makes me feel twitchy and exposed. However, just as I’m starting to think about my next move, about what I might have to deflect next, a car-horn sounds and she bolts suddenly for the door. ‘Yes, yes, I’m coming, all right! Keep your knickers on. Jesus!’
I’m waiting for the lift when I feel the draught again. Steele’s standing in the doorway, eyes already watering from the barbaric cold outside.
‘Hey, Kinsella, just to stress again – even though I’m not here, what we talked about still stands, you hear me? You report everything to me. You check everything with me. Everything, OK?’
Everything except the thing I can’t tell you. The thing that’s forced me to pick sides.
And I haven’t picked you.
Not yet, anyway.
10
There’s no Donatella to be found at the Donatella Caffé, just two squawking pensioners called June and Bernie who can only seem to agree on two things. The first being that we really must try the stollen cake, the second being that I have lovely hair. The issue of Maryanne Doyle is proving a little more contentious though, with June insisting she’d only been in a few times, while Bernie’s adamant they could near enough erect a plaque to her.
I honestly don’t know where to hedge my bets as they’re both as dotty as each other and equally ancient. Not that old means unreliable, of course. Far from it. Give me an eagle-eyed OAP over a self-absorbed Gen Y any day of the week. Nosiness trumps narcissism every time
These pair are breaking the mould though.
‘Well, she was definitely here Friday morning,’ says Bernie, pointing at the receipt, stating the obvious.
‘But do you actually remember seeing her?’ It comes out a bit snotty so I quickly make amends. ‘Go on then, give me a bit of that stollen. I’m useless. I’ve no willpower at all.’
Bernie looks appeased and hands me a slice the size of a car battery. ‘Well, I’m
not sure,’ she says. ‘I had a lot on my mind on Friday. I’ve got to have an operation, you know.’
June looks up from a tub of tuna mix and mouths ‘Gallstones’.
‘And it’s chockablock on a Friday, always is. There’s a Zumba class up the road who come in here afterwards. Sit for hours, they do.’ I offer her money for the cake but she shakes her head. ‘No, no, it’s on the house, I insist. I’ve always been a big fan of the police, haven’t I, June? Dangerous job, specially for young girls like you pair. Call it repayment.’
I smile. ‘Repayment comes out of your council tax, Bernie, but thanks all the same. I’ll be needing a few Zumba classes myself after this.’
Emily takes over as I tuck in. ‘Did you ever see her with anyone?’
They eye each other nervously, like the wrong answer could get them life without parole. It’s June who eventually braves it.
‘No, I don’t think so. Nice looking girl, weren’t she? Classy, I mean. Had one of those fancy brown coats. We used to call them flasher macs back in the day but they’re all the rage now apparently.’
I hoover up another forkful, dutifully faking a cake orgasm. ‘Any chance of the other dates she came in, ladies? Apart from Friday. I appreciate it’s not easy.’
‘Well, we don’t sell many of those Ristretto things,’ offers June. ‘I could go through the till roll for the past few weeks, see if I can find another.’
‘We do actually,’ says Bernie, all superior. ‘That fat man with the cap, he always has one. And that lady with the Down’s syndrome lad, not that she gets a minute’s peace to drink it, the poor creature.’
June looks smug. ‘Ah, but the police can cross-reference to see if they were here on a particular day, and if they weren’t then it must have been this dead girl. It’s called “process of elimination”, Bern.’
‘It’s called watching too much bloody Morse.’
‘Did you ever talk to her about anything?’ I interrupt, breaking up the spat.
Bernie frowns. ‘Such as?’
‘Well, where she’d been? Where she was going? Why she was in the area?’
Baffled expressions. Customer engagement clearly isn’t their forte.
It’s June who pipes up again. ‘I think I saw her over there once, if that’s any help.’ She points across the street. ‘Some time last week. That gated road where the posh houses are. It might have been her, anyway. Same sort of hair, same browny coat.’ She adds a hint of warning to her voice. ‘But I was going past on the bus and he doesn’t take any prisoners when he’s behind schedule so I didn’t exactly get a good look, and I wasn’t wearing the right glasses. I’d had to borrow our Eileen’s because I’d left mine at the Harvester.’ A small shrug. ‘Anyway, whoever it was was bending down talking into that walkie-talkie thing.’
‘The intercom, you fool,’ snaps Bernie.
I hand my card across the counter, give another thumbs-up for the cake. ‘That’s very helpful, June, thank you. And anything the till roll throws up would be great.’
‘Waste of time,’ says Emily as we stand outside, shuddering against the shock of the cold, our shoulders huddled up around our ears.
Most investigative work is, I should tell her. However I’m taking a surprising amount of pride in my prefect role so I do my best to strike a positive tone.
‘Not necessarily. Let’s check out this gated road. If it was Alice Lapaine, someone must know her.’
Emily curls her lip. ‘Yeah, if it even was her? I’m not sure anything those two said would stand up in court.’
‘True. But if you want your murders sewn up in the space of two hours, go and binge-watch Morse with the lovely June over there. Otherwise, get your arse over the road with me.’
*
Keeper’s Close is a pronounced curve of nine houses, the kind of street a child would scrawl with gravelly paths meandering between perfectly manicured lawns, primary-coloured front doors decorated with pine cones and Christmas wreaths, and white picket fences sectioning off the Haves from the Have-Mores. At the top of the close, a Waitrose van is parked outside what is clearly the best house – a three-storey period property that makes the other million-pound drums look a bit pedestrian and naff. Like plain and frumpy bridesmaids forming a guard of honour for the far more elegant bride.
Emily tries not to look impressed but when £50,000 of Range Rover pulls up to the gates she practically goes cross-eyed with envy.
‘You’re in the wrong job,’ I say to her, signalling to the driver to wind down his window. ‘If it’s fancy cars you’re after, you’re going to have to make damn sure you marry well. And you’re definitely barking up the wrong tree with Ben Swaines.’
She feigns outrage. ‘Get lost, I don’t fancy Ben. It’s just flirting, livening up the . . .’
I’m spared the girly chat by a frail old man leaning out of the car window, waif-like in his behemoth of a car. ‘Can I help?’ he says in a quiet, raspy voice.
I flash my ID. ‘Do you live here, sir?’
‘Yes. Well, no. I do at the moment, most of the time anyway. What’s this about?’ His face clouds. ‘God, it’s not that arsehole, Bingham, again, is it? She’ll go mad.’
I file Bingham for later and pull Alice’s photo out of my pocket. ‘Do you recognise this woman?
A quick but curious glance. ‘No, sorry. But you’d be better off talking to my daughter.’ He points towards Keeper’s Close’s very own Taj Mahal. ‘The house at the top.’
He pulls off and we follow behind slowly. By the time we reach the barn, the elderly man isn’t looking so fragile, berating the Waitrose driver for some barely noticeable scratch on a pillar while behind him, a good-looking woman wearing skinny jeans and a poncho-cum-granny blanket-type-thing, looks ready to commit murder. We wait a few seconds for her to acknowledge us but she’s too busy pacifying her father and pleading with a small child to stop tormenting the cat.
‘Hello,’ I shout, over the racket of alpha men and cranky kids.
The elderly man looks round, momentarily confused, like he’s completely forgotten his encounter with the Law in the time it took to drive up the pathway. ‘Oh sorry. Gina, these officers want a word.’
Gina looks at us unmoved, as if somehow resigned to yet another drama. ‘Oh, OK.’ She scoops up the cat-tormenting child. ‘Can you bring the shopping through, please? I’ve rather got my hands full.’
I figure the instruction’s aimed at the Waitrose man but I make myself useful anyway, hauling a case of Pouilly-Fumé off the van and following her into a cavernous hall – all stone floors and timber beams and a Christmas tree to rival Rockefeller’s.
‘So what’s this about?’ she says, craning her neck round, trying not to be strangled by the clinging toddler.
‘We’re investigating a murder, Mrs? Sorry, I didn’t catch your name?’
‘Hicks. Murder?’ The usual blend of alarm mixed with macabre delight.
We follow her into the kitchen where an identical toddler is slumped on a beanbag in front of Paw Patrol, and a neighbour, who introduces herself as Tash Marwood, is wrapping ham around figs. I lean against the Aga and blow Tash Marwood’s mind with the ‘M’ word while we wait for Gina to bribe the toddlers out of the room with Fruit-Shoots and Pom-Bears. Eventually negotiations cease and she closes the door.
‘Murder, you said? Good God! Who? Where?’ She looks towards Tash Marwood. ‘God, it’s not someone on the close, is it?’
‘No. Central London. The victim went by two names, Alice Lapaine and Maryanne Doyle.’ I wait a beat to see if there’s a flicker of recognition from either of them. Nothing. ‘We’re following a line of enquiry that she was seen at your main gates recently, talking into the intercom. We’ll need to speak to all the residents.’
Gina lets out a long breath. ‘Well, the names mean nothing, I’m afraid. Tash?’
Tash shakes her head, eyes full of appalled excitement. ‘Do you have a picture?’
Emily offers the photo. Tash
offers an instant ‘No, sorry’. Gina’s just about to say something when her father staggers into the room, legs buckling under the weight of two cases of wine. She bolts towards him, furious.
‘Dad, I told you not to lift those. Go and get Leo to help. Jesus!’ She hoists the wine onto the marble island and sighs deeply. ‘I’m sorry, my father’s not well so he’s staying with us, and I’m trying to get ready for a party and all in all, it’s a bit of a mad-house today. Christmas drinks with the neighbours,’ she explains with all the enthusiasm of someone facing the firing squad. ‘We did it the first year we moved in. It was my husband’s idea – basically, he extends the invite and I put in all the effort. Anyway, unfortunately it seems to have become rather a tradition.’
‘I’ll bet it has. People love a tradition that involves drinking someone else’s booze.’
She smiles – perfect straight teeth, well-cared for, not synthesised. ‘Anyway, what I was about to say was that the Chapmans at number four have an au pair who looks a bit like this woman. The au pair’s younger, of course, and well, she’s not exactly her double, but there’s definitely a similarity. It could have been her at the gate? What do you reckon, Tash?’
Tash looks up from her canapés. ‘Wouldn’t surprise me. Mine’s always forgetting her keys, forgetting the gate-code, expecting to be buzzed in at all hours. It’s like having another child to look after half the time. Absolute nightmare.’
Emily shoots me a look. ‘Can-you-believe-this-broad?’
Gina smiles again, embarrassed by her friend. ‘I know, I know, first-world-problems and all that.’
I smile. ‘Hey look, you deserve a medal as far as I’m concerned. Twins, right? My sister has one and she’s permanently on the edge of a breakdown.’
‘Try four. Twins and two teenagers.’
‘Blimey,’ is all I can think to say, then, ‘At least you have babysitters on tap, I suppose.’
‘There is that. My eldest Leo is good with them. I wouldn’t leave them with Amber though. She’d be too busy Instagramming to notice they were drinking bleach.’