Sweet Little Lies: The most gripping suspense thriller you’ll read this year

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Sweet Little Lies: The most gripping suspense thriller you’ll read this year Page 16

by Caz Frear


  She sounded like Cynthia, Uncle Frank’s skinny wife (we didn’t call her Auntie Cynthia, Mum put her foot down about that). Dad always said Cynthia had a laugh like a crow with a machine gun and Maryanne did a little bit too. It was a nasty noise. The sound of someone being mean, not funny.

  ‘That sounds like blackmail to me.’ I heard Dad say.

  ‘Fuck sake, you’re dramatic.’

  ‘And you’re deluded if you think it’s going to happen.’ Dad sounded angry now.

  ‘You’re deluded if you think you have a choice.’

  How to be a Spy, Rule 5: Store gathered information in a safe and secure place!

  I took out my diary and wrote the words down:

  black mail. delooded.

  I didn’t have to write ‘dramatic’ down because I knew what that meant. Mum always told Jacqui she was ‘dramatic’ when she was moaning about having to be home by a certain time or whining that a boy hadn’t told her she looked pretty. I didn’t know the other two words though. I thought about asking Mum later but the bats in my tummy told me I shouldn’t.

  I found Gran’s dictionary and took it up to bed instead.

  13

  The next day isn’t great.

  ‘That which does not kill us makes us stronger,’ claimed Nietzsche, or Kanye West, depending on your cultural frame of reference, but exorbitant wine consumption must be the one exception because I certainly don’t feel strengthened by last night’s two-bottle bender. I feel annihilated.

  Which I suppose was my full intention.

  Stave off emotional blitzkrieg by destroying myself physically.

  I wake on Parnell’s sofa with a piece of Lego burrowed deep into my right hip and the memory of me calling him ‘a boring bastard’ when he stopped me going clubbing with a group of bond traders. Issuing him a silent thanks and a more audible ‘thank god’ when I find a pint of water and a packet of Nurofen on the floor beside me, I sit up and take in my surroundings. Sure enough, his living room is everything I’d imagined it to be. Styled by his wife, wrecked by his kids. Like a Lord of the Flies stage-set, only taupe and with scatter cushions. I’m not quite sure what to make of the spare toothbrush and the, God-strike-me-down-dead, clean pair of knickers on the side of the sofa, but I assume they’re Parnell’s way of telling me that we’re running late already and I don’t have time to go home for a spruce-up.

  In lighter moments that day, I can just about laugh at the fact I’m wearing my boss’s wife knickers. In darker depths, I pray for death to come quickly.

  I work hard though for ten sweaty, nauseous hours. I work especially hard at avoiding Parnell, picking up my phone every time he heads my way or diving headfirst into my bag, scavenging for some unnecessary item. Luckily, I’m not short of reasons to pick up the phone as the public are feeling chatty today following Steele’s spot on the news.

  The crackpots don’t bother me as they’re easy enough to spot. Any mention of aliens or Judgement Day, or anyone referencing the decline in Britain’s moral fibre can usually be shut down quite quickly. No, it’s the genuine do-gooders that take the time. The people who think that they ‘might’ have seen something. The people who want a small slither of the action to take back to the school gates.

  I do take one promising call from a man who thinks he saw Alice talking to an ‘older guy’ in the Rugged Cross – an odious blot on the otherwise lively landscape of Spitalfields Market – on the Sunday evening before she died.

  ‘Older guy’ unsettles me, but half an hour later I’m leaning up against the bar, breathing in booze and BO – and finding the BO more appealing – only to find my man’s not quite as sure as he’d sounded on the phone and the barman’s only interested in if I’ve got a fella and what I’m doing Saturday night. I take a description of ‘older guy’ anyway – ‘between fifty to seventy, average build, average height, lightish hair, wasn’t really paying attention, tell you the truth – Man U had just equalised . . .’ For a millisecond I consider texting Jacqui for a recent photo of Dad but I’m not sharp enough to deal with all her questions, not today, and if I’m honest, I’m not brave enough to deal with the fall-out if . . .

  If.

  I get back to the news that Lapaine’s alibi checks out. Abigail Shawcroft is a carbon copy of Alice, apparently – blondish, prettyish in a drab sort of way. We chat this through for a while, come to the conclusion that she doesn’t have a lot to gain by lying for him, not with a bitter ex-husband looking for any reason to hammer her through the family courts and an application for deputy head still outstanding. After lunch, Emily and I turn our attention back to the Donatella Caffé and the residents of Keeper’s Close – the former sparking a frantic discussion about discarded till rolls and HMRC obligations, for which I’m woefully unqualified to give advice on but give advice on nonetheless. The latter simply spurs more variations of the ‘No, sorry I can’t help’ shutdown which is fast becoming the catchphrase of this investigation.

  Aiden Doyle checks out too. He was indeed Sleepless in Mile End having a text exchange with an Aussie mate from one forty a.m. until nearly two fifteen a.m. While it clearly doesn’t cover him for the four-hour time period between the murder and the body being dumped, it certainly makes it less likely that he’s our guy.

  And as the dark gathers at the window for one more day, Renée adds to our cauldron of nothing.

  ‘There’s no birth, adoption or death records pertaining to a baby born to either a Maryanne Doyle or an Alice Lapaine,’ she announces, soberly. ‘So that adds in the extra complication of a possible missing infant. Or a dead infant, of course.’

  Dead infants. Dead leads. Deadbeat barmen in dead-end pubs.

  Dead on my feet, I head home.

  *

  The next few days follow a similar pattern.

  Work like Trojans. Feel like losers.

  And another trip to see Dr Allen for me.

  At least the ‘Lost Years’ article provides us with light relief, as judging by some of the calls trickling in, the woman formerly known as Maryanne Doyle was one conflicted lady – the kind of lady who sold speed to schoolkids in Hackney while at the same time giving out communion in a church in Porthmadog over 200 miles away.

  A couple of callers suggest the same thing – which gets our attention, not to mention our hopes up – that Maryanne was an occasional face on the London dance scene, frequenting the likes of the Cross, the End, Fabric, Turnmills etc., at the end of the Nineties, into the Noughties. However, after a short flurry of excitement we have to ask, how does this even help us? No one ever recalls actually speaking to her. Not one person remembers ever seeing her with anyone. By all accounts she was just another anonymous face, bouncing away within the heaving, ecstasy-fuelled throng that moved from club to club, looking for the best tunes at the end of another monotonous working week.

  Although the idea of her dancing on a podium in the late 1990s, off her face on pills, does give some credence to Sergeant Bill Swords ‘likely a runaway’ theory.

  A theory I’d be only too happy to believe.

  ‘And that’s it?’ asks Parnell one morning, pained by the knowledge that he’s ‘acting up’ on a case that seems to be going nowhere. ‘I honestly thought we’d get more than this.’

  ‘It’s Christmas,’ says Steele, currently gracing us with a few hours face-time, free from the demands of Chief Superintendent Blake who’d hold a meeting about holding a meeting. ‘This time of year, Lu, it’s enough to remember where you’ve left the bloody Sellotape, without trying to think where you were eighteen bloody years ago.’

  ‘Anything on the car?’ I ask Ben, starting to bore of my own tasks and needing to revel in someone else’s failings.

  ‘Absolutely nothing,’ he says, matter-of-fact. He could do with joining me on ‘The Art of Positive Spin’ course.

  ‘Something on her vagina though,’ shouts Flowers, putting his phone down. It’s tasteless but it gets our attention. ‘That was the lab. No trace of
condom lubricant.’

  And then with the arrival of Seth bounding into the room, Eureka.

  ‘Ha-ha, I’ll see your vagina, and raise you a phone. We’ve just got a hit on one of the pay-as-you-gos’

  ‘It’s been switched on?’ asks Parnell, his arm already in one coat-sleeve.

  ‘Not exactly. Silly fool took out the SIM and put it in their regular phone.’

  ‘So we’ve got a location.’ I say, my heart pounding.

  ‘Better than that, an address. And a name.’

  Sometimes it just happens like that. Days and days of thankless, arduous nothing and then, boom. All the tenuous leads and the tortuous trips up endless garden paths seem a lifetime ago, and you can never quite remember why you ever questioned the purpose of your wonderful, life-affirming job.

  My coat’s on and fully fastened before Parnell can even think not to invite me.

  14

  I’ve lived in London long enough to know that the suffix ‘mansion’ often lends a false glamour to the most humble of dwellings. However, with a name like Ophelia Mansions, I’m at least expecting to find the odd willow tree or wild flower. What we actually find is a dilapidated six-storey eyesore just off the Gray’s Inn Road, less than a mile from where Alice Lapaine’s body was found.

  Predictably, Saskia French lives on the top floor.

  We’re let in the main door by a man rushing out. His wool overcoat and deposit-for-a-flat-watch mark him out as a ‘gentleman caller’ rather than an occupant and it’s obvious Parnell’s thinking the same. I see it in his smirk as he flashes his ID, assuring the guy that we’re not Jehovah’s Witnesses. I hear it in the wicked laugh that echoes all the way up the stairs, in between our puffs and pants.

  When we get to the top, the door to 12C flies open and a girl in a nurse’s uniform – a real one, that is, not a kinky one – flies out, buckling under the weight of a large kit bag. Her face is blotchy, like it’s been freshly scrubbed raw of make-up.

  Parnell whips out his ID again. ‘Saskia French.’

  ‘No, I . . . I . . .’ She glances back into the flat, looking nervy. ‘Are you here about Maryanne?’

  Maryanne.

  So whatever she was doing in London, she’d reverted to her old name.

  ‘I saw it in the paper. I would have called. Honest, I would have but . . .’

  ‘But what? You were too busy to care?’

  ‘No!’ she howls. ‘I just didn’t . . . it’s just I don’t know anything about, you know . . . and I’m about to qualify, and I just do this to keep my head above water.’ She looks to us both, backwards and forwards. ‘You see, they talk about bursaries but they’re not enough to live on. I’ll stop when I’m qualified, when I’m salaried, I will . . .’

  We’re almost as thrown as she is. If she didn’t expect to be doorstepped by two puffed-out police officers, we certainly didn’t expect to be lectured on the state of NHS student funding.

  ‘And I thought Saskia would have called. I mean, it’s nothing to do with me.’ A quick glance at her watch. ‘Oh shit, I’m going to be late for my shift.’

  A disembodied voice comes from inside the flat – loud, husky and impatient. ‘Just leave it, Petra. Go. I’ll talk to them.’

  It’s an order. An instruction that sends Petra hurtling down the stairs.

  She’ll keep.

  ‘Yes?’

  The voice now has a body, and a knock-out body at that. Saskia French stands in the doorway pulling a bulky jumper over a red PVC dress, hopping from foot to foot and blowing her cheeks out at the cold. If it was possible to take your eyes off her legs, which finish somewhere around my shoulders, you’d notice that she’s got wide set eyes, heavily kohl’d and a little starey. A razor-sharp black bob with a spirit-level fringe. While she’s not quite exactly your full-on fetish-queen, there’s definitely something of the alternative about her. A certain edginess that propels her from attractive to arresting.

  Put another way, she’s stop-traffic sexy.

  ‘Saskia, we’d like to ask you a few questions about Alice Lapaine. It sounds like you knew her as Maryanne Doyle.’

  Several expressions collide but hostility overrides them all. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t think I can help, and I’m expecting someone shortly. A friend,’ she adds, with a smile more beatific than the Virgin Mary.

  Parnell smiles. ‘No need to be sorry, you can definitely help us. We know Maryanne Doyle – a murder victim – made a number of calls to your phone, and thanks to your colleague just now, it’s clear Maryanne was known to you so let’s not do this pointless little dance, eh? Just a few questions?’

  I stick my foot in the door, a pre-emptive strike that doesn’t go to waste when she tries to slam it shut. My foot throbs but I hold her stare. And it’s not the easiest stare to hold. Fervent, almost tipping into crazy. The kind of crazy that drives men wild as long as it’s at a distance – preferably a one-hour-once-a-week kind of distance.

  ‘Five minutes.’ She turns and sweeps down a narrow hallway, all five feet eleven of her, pulling doors closed as she passes. ‘We can talk in here.’

  We follow her into a small cramped kitchen, the kind of adjunct they build on to an office so people can make tea and microwave porridge but that’s about it. There’s no washing machine as far as I can see – unless Saskia French’s whole wardrobe is of the wipe-clean PVC kind – and even the cooker, a free-standing hob sitting on top of the worktop, looks like something you’d take on a camping trip. The fridge is as dinky a child’s toy.

  Still, someone’s feeling festive, at least – there’s a snowflake sprayed on the window and a sprig of mistletoe dangling from the door.

  Saskia busies herself throwing fresh mint into a mug. She doesn’t ask if we want anything. While her back’s turned, I channel ‘what-the-fuck?’ frequencies across the lino to Parnell.

  Why the hell was Maryanne/Alice calling a prostitute?

  Parnell cracks on. ‘How did you know Maryanne Doyle?’

  She sighs. Hops up on the worktop and stretches out her legs – bare, unashamedly pale and elegant like a dancer’s. ‘I didn’t know Maryanne. We shared the same space for a few weeks but I barely saw her. She saw most of her clients off the premises.’

  I sense the bomb go off in Parnell’s head but it’s me that reacts. ‘Clients? You’re saying Maryanne was working here.’

  She looks me up and down, finds me wanting on just about every level and turns back to Parnell. ‘I’ve just said, she didn’t see a lot of clients here. She was using it more as a base. She left her stuff here.’

  ‘Maryanne’s stuff is here? She has a room here?’ I’m struggling to keep my professional cool, but in the space of half an hour we’ve gone from laborious grunt work to the revelation that might just light a fire under this case and it’s taking me a moment to adjust. To reset my skillset from phone-answerer-cum-form-filler to actual detective

  Parnell doesn’t need any time. ‘Which room?’

  ‘The second on the right, she didn’t have much though.’ Another sigh. ‘What exactly are you looking for?’

  Parnell walks out. I hear a door open and it takes every last piece of my resolve not to burst in behind him.

  ‘Why didn’t you contact the police about Maryanne? It’s been all over the papers for almost a week.’

  ‘Has it?’ she says, vaguely. ‘I don’t really read the papers, or watch TV. I’m more of a muso. Anyway, the less I have to do with the police, the better.’

  ‘Your colleague, Petra, seemed to be aware of it. She implied you were too – she was surprised you hadn’t contacted us.’

  ‘I only found out a day or two ago when I picked up a paper on the tube.’

  ‘And you didn’t think to call us?’

  A shrug. ‘I had nothing to tell. I have nothing to tell.’

  ‘Maryanne was staying here and you think that’s nothing?’

  She bends forward, clasps her hands together like a teacher talki
ng to an imbecile. ‘Do. You. Understand. English? I hardly ever saw her. I really can’t help you.’

  I change gear, try to ruffle her. ‘Why do you have two phones, Saskia?’

  Her voice takes on a bored, sing-song tone. ‘It’s fairly standard practice. I like to keep my life and work separate. The pay-as-you-go is for work.’

  ‘It’s been switched off for a week, maybe longer. Why?’

  She whispers something I assume to be derogatory, then, ‘I wanted some R&R, even tarts need a week off now and again and when I’m not working, I switch it off. I don’t want to be pestered.’

  I gesture to her dress. ‘Well, I assume you’re working today and it’s still switched off?’

  ‘Is it?’ A false gracious smile. ‘Thanks for reminding me.’

  ‘You know it is. You took the SIM out and put it in your other phone.’

  ‘Look, I needed to check a client’s number, OK? The handset had been playing up so I put the SIM in my other phone to save time.’ She fixes me with a glare. ‘You know, this really is fucking tedious. How much longer are you going to be?’

  I don’t respond. ‘What was Maryanne calling you about, on these dates?’ I show her the piece of paper with the calls highlighted but she pushes it away.

  ‘Just house things. Do we need loo roll? Leave the hall light on. That sort of thing.’

  Annoyingly feasible.

  ‘Obviously I need to ask you where you were on the night of Monday fifteenth, into the early hours of Tuesday sixteenth.’

  She doesn’t seem fazed by the question. ‘I was here, alone. I told you, I wanted a few days off to get some proper rest, catch up on some admin, spring clean the flat – you know, normal stuff. I have the same old boring crap to deal with as anyone else, you know. I’m a human being, not just a whore.’

  I think I’m supposed to be moved by this plaintive cry but there’s something about this woman that inspires minimal sympathy.

  ‘So where exactly did you meet Maryanne?’ I say, face completely blank.

  ‘I can’t remember.’

 

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