by Sabina Manea
The policeman paused and ran his fingers through his fair hair that had so far been spared the inevitable grey.
‘To be honest, I don’t know why they called us out. I said as much to the PC, but he blamed it on headquarters. Since the bloke hadn’t been found with his fingers in the socket, they couldn’t be sure it was a simple accident, and could we please take over. Lazy bastards,’ he grunted.
Lucia stood in the doorway of the kitchenette. The room was attractively furnished with white gloss kitchen units and brand-new appliances, and it was sufficiently big to count as a full-size kitchen in most London flats. However, it was obvious to Lucia’s expert eye that it hadn’t been done to the same standard as the study. The oversized porcelain floor tiles were attractive but recognisably cheap. No need to waste money, she reasoned – it wasn’t as if clients would have access to it.
The body on the floor had been a good-looking man in life – close-cropped dark hair, a well-groomed, entirely forgettable face, with a well-maintained body attached to it.
‘So far, so good,’ she said out loud. Not being able to resist, she added, ‘Oh, and I think they’re called PAs, not secretaries, these days. It’s not the 1960s.’
She wasn’t as squeamish about dead bodies as she had been when she started working with Kentish Town CID. Carliss liked to remind her at every available opportunity how she had nearly fainted after witnessing the death of Professor Kiseleva.
‘When you’re ready,’ sneered the policeman. It looked like his headache was back with a vengeance, and he was losing his patience.
‘Pack it in. I need to have a good look around before I get on to the body, you know that.’ Lucia cut him off unceremoniously.
‘Nasty burn on the right palm. Plenty of appliances here that could be the culprit.’ The detective beat a hasty retreat and concentrated instead on the worktop. His eyes lingered on the cumbersome, rather old-fashioned coffee machine. ‘That looks like it’s seen better days.’
Lucia nodded half-heartedly. It did add up. An old appliance, in all likelihood not adequately serviced, could be a death trap – anyone with a kitchen and an ounce of common sense knew that. And yet her senses felt suddenly heightened, as if some maleficence lurked just around the corner. There were two possible explanations for it, she deduced clinically. Either the hangover had taken the edge off her wits, or there was something of note in the room. She crouched down and stared closely at the body.
‘Nice clothes. Understated but expensive.’
‘It just looks like boring old sportswear to me. White sweatshirt, jeans and trainers. How much can anyone charge for that?’
‘You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.’ Lucia bent down to get a better look. The immaculate sweatshirt was marred by two tiny holes on the left-hand side of the man’s chest. Before she could point them out to her partner, her attention was drawn away by a glint on the floor. ‘What’s this?’
‘Looks like, I don’t know, a fishing hook?’ ventured the policeman. ‘I hadn’t spotted it myself. In all honesty, I can’t really see anything out of place. It does look a lot like an unfortunate accident with the dodgy coffee maker. And if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, the inevitable conclusion is that…’
‘Maybe.’ Lucia didn’t sound convinced, not that she had any better ideas. ‘And look. One of his shoes is coming off.’ She pointed at one of the neon blue trainers, which had slipped slightly off the heel.
‘Probably when he fell to the ground.’
‘Can you see that tiny splinter? There, stuck to the fabric at the back of the shoe?’ Lucia peered down to show the detective.
Carliss crouched slowly and concurred. ‘OK, so what?’
On all fours now, like a spaniel on the scent, Lucia stretched her head towards the threshold between the kitchenette and the study. ‘There – seems like it’s a fit for this snag.’ The threshold was a thin strip of wood, with a minuscule scrape on it.
‘Come on. What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘I don’t know yet. Isn’t that the point, why we’re here in the first place?’
Lucia stood up and ran her hands down the front of her faded jeans, the ones she always wore when they attended death scenes. Her skin felt suddenly overheated, and not pleasantly so. There was no point sniffing around any longer. She needed some time to regroup, away from this place, and work out if she was imagining things or if she really was on to something interesting.
‘Shall we go back to the PA? We’ve kept her waiting long enough.’
‘Thought you’d never ask.’ Carliss led the way back into the reception area.
Chapter 6
Elsa looked frozen in time. She hadn’t shifted from the sofa where they had left her. It was as if she were in a trance. Classic shock, Lucia surmised. The girl came to as they walked in and stared at them with exhausted, vacant eyes.
‘Sorry to keep you waiting, Miss Whittle. Do you mind if we ask you a few questions? If you’re feeling up to it, that is,’ opened the inspector gently.
‘Sure, ask away.’ The girl straightened herself and attempted a weak smile.
‘Can you tell us what happened this morning, as best you can?’
The PA sighed wearily and nested her small body into the overwhelmingly large cushions. ‘I was here at eight-thirty, as usual.’
‘Is that when you normally get in?’ interjected Lucia, rather less tactfully than Carliss would have done.
Elsa didn’t seem to either mind or notice the tone of the question.
‘Yeah. Alec likes me to get on top of any admin before the clients start arriving. Once we get to nine-thirty, it’s murder and mayhem around here.’ She stopped abruptly with her mouth slightly ajar, like a goldfish struggling for air.
Not unusual for her to be referring to her newly deceased employer in the present tense, but an odd choice of words nonetheless, mused Lucia. For the time being at least, she was prepared to give Elsa the benefit of the doubt. Lucia was hypersensitive to the oscillations in the moods of others, signalled by changes in facial expression or body language that would have been invisible to most, but of which she always found herself acutely aware. It was a crucial skill that had served her well in all lines of work, but it sucked all the energy out of her. At the end of the day, when she crawled back to her quiet, empty flat up on Hampstead High Street, she was exhausted.
‘I assume you’ve cancelled today’s appointments, Miss Whittle,’ added Carliss. The last thing they needed were more distressed civilians to swat off. He wasn’t in the habit of noticing the subtle nuances, the hints that there might be more lurking beneath the surface than was immediately apparent. Lucia knew that was her job.
‘Yes, the other policeman, the one in uniform, said to do it. There weren’t many today, luckily, I suppose.’
‘Carry on, Miss Whittle,’ DCI Carliss said encouragingly.
‘I let myself in – the door was locked. That’s not unusual. I’m normally the first one here. Alec gets in around quarter to nine. He likes to have some quiet time before clients start turning up, you see.’
She said this in an unexpectedly maternal tone that jarred with her young demeanour.
‘I checked today’s appointments and printed out a few things that I knew Alec would need. I… I went into his office to put them on his desk and then… I saw him just lying there in the kitchen…’ Elsa’s breathing was becoming increasingly laboured.
‘Put your head between your knees,’ Lucia ordered. ‘Now.’
The girl complied and rolled herself up in a pathetic ball as Lucia sat next to her and stroked her back.
‘Better now?’ Lucia asked, as she felt the girl’s breathing gradually returning to normal.
‘Yeah. Thank you. Sorry, I get these panic attacks. It’s like I can’t get enough air in my lungs,’ Elsa explained in a weak voice.
‘It’s OK,’ said DCI Carliss. ‘Totally understandable in the circumstances.’
Elsa took of
f her heavy boots and curled up with her legs under her. She looked considerably more at ease, though deathly pale.
‘It’s all a bit of a blur after that. I called 999, and the policeman in uniform came. I think the ambulance came shortly after, but I can’t be sure,’ she added, patently doing her best to be helpful.
Lucia suspected the girl’s stomach must have been totally empty, which couldn’t have helped. Plus, she figured that an all-female one-to-one might be in order, away from the intimidating presence of a certain senior police inspector.
‘DCI Carliss, it might be a good idea to hunt down that sugary tea after all.’
If the policeman was offended by being ordered about, he didn’t show it. He knew better than to question Lucia’s methods and disappeared quietly in the direction of the kitchen.
Lucia smiled and rested her gaze benignly on the girl.
‘Is it OK to call you Elsa? “Miss Whittle” sounds so stuffy, doesn’t it? Only my boss is old-school and likes calling people by their proper titles,’ she added, as if she were taking the girl into her confidence.
Where previously she had looked like a rabbit in the headlights, Elsa’s features relaxed.
‘Sure, Elsa’s fine. Sorry, it’s a bit scary being asked all these questions. Makes you feel like you’ve done something wrong, you know?’
‘I know what you mean. But it’s just a chat, nothing to worry about,’ Lucia put her at ease. She would leave it to the inspector to broach the subject of Alec’s death being investigated further, if and when he thought it appropriate. At this stage, there was no need to spook the witness.
‘How long have you worked for the police then?’ enquired Elsa, her curiosity piqued and her guard gradually lowering.
‘Only a couple of years. I’m a civilian investigator, which in plain English means I’m not a proper copper. I help the police with their work – an extra pair of eyes if you like.’
‘Oh, that makes sense. You don’t look like a copper,’ contributed Elsa with a broad grin, very chuffed to have her deduction proved right. She glanced approvingly at her interviewer, finding solace in their similarities – two relatively young women in their respective male-dominated environments.
As DCI Carliss walked back into the room bearing the tea, Lucia sensed that he felt somewhat left out by their complicity. She hoped he would remember that this is what she did best – lulled people into a false sense of security. It sounded sinister when she put it like that, but in practice it simply meant that they all babbled for England – and made the policeman’s job a hell of a lot easier. It was like playing good cop, bad cop, except that he didn’t even have to go to the trouble of being bad.
It was time for Carliss to take over.
‘Miss Whittle, you said you don’t remember much about the ambulance getting here. It seems like your employer, Mr Penney, has had an accident. He probably got himself electrocuted in the kitchen. You say you were the first to get here this morning, so we can only assume he collapsed some time yesterday. I’d like to go through how that day went, from the start. Please feel free to ask for a break if you need to. I know this isn’t an easy task.’
Under Lucia’s reassuring gaze, Elsa took a deep breath and began.
‘OK, I’ll try. Yesterday I got in at eight-thirty, as usual. The builders were waiting outside, and I let them in. We’re having the offices redone, you see. Alec arrived ten minutes after.’ She was fidgeting, trying not to play with her empty mug. A smoker, perhaps, Lucia wondered. She had seen the same mannerism in the inspector.
‘How did Alec seem that morning?’ continued the policeman gently, in an attempt to alleviate her nervousness.
‘Fine. Normal, I guess. He chatted to me about the day’s appointments.’ She trailed off, as if the volume were being turned down on an electronic device.
‘Anything out of the ordinary that you remember?’ insisted Carliss.
Elsa piped up, as if awakening from a dream.
‘Yeah, there was something. Sorry, I totally forgot it happened. He burned himself on that coffee machine, the old wreck he kept in his kitchen. I’ve been at him for weeks about it – only a matter of time until it would electrocute him, I said. And so it did.’ Her eyes widened with a sudden, horrified realisation. ‘Is that what killed him? The coffee machine?’
‘It would seem likely, but we’re exploring all possibilities at the moment,’ replied the inspector with the standard, purposefully uninformative formula.
Funny she should wait till now to ask what killed him, noted Lucia. ‘You mentioned there were builders around. What sort of work were you having done?’
‘Nothing major, just a revamp, really. New bathroom, a few new windows at the back. They’d done a good job on the kitchen. And the other study – Alec wanted it turned into another consulting room. It’s been empty since Max, Alec’s brother, no longer works here.’
Lucia knew that both she and Carliss were itching to ask more questions about Alec’s brother, but they had to keep the interview on track.
‘So what happened after Alec burned himself on the coffee machine?’
‘Not much. The day went on as normal. Alec saw all his clients. There were no cancellations or anything and his last appointment finished just before five. The builders were flitting in and out all day. Their boss was the last to leave.’
‘What time was that then?’ Carliss asked.
‘He left at five. I know because the client Alec was seeing left just a few minutes before. Alec saw… them out, and then the builder said bye to us both and headed out himself. Sorry, I’m not sure I can mention clients’ names. Confidentiality and all that. Alec was always very keen we shouldn’t publicise who comes to see us,’ added Elsa apologetically.
‘Don’t worry, I understand. We’ll need you to disclose the names and contact details of the clients he saw yesterday, but we’ll jump through those hoops when we get to them,’ said the detective reassuringly.
Elsa didn’t look relieved – if anything, her nervousness visibly increased. ‘So you’re questioning everyone? Does that mean there’s something wrong? Like, do you think Alec didn’t just die from an accident?’
‘As I said, we’re simply exploring all possibilities. It’s standard police procedure,’ replied Carliss emphatically, so as to shut down any further speculation. ‘So the last builder left at five. Were there any other people in the office after that, besides you and Alec Penney?’
‘Yes, as it happens. It’s weird – usually the clients leave and it’s just the two of us working quietly for a few more hours. But that day, there was toing and froing like I’ve never seen before,’ Elsa explained excitedly.
‘Can you clarify?’ asked the policeman as he and Lucia exchanged a cryptic look.
‘Well, at ten past six it was Amanda. Alec’s wife, that is. Not for long though. They’re going through a divorce. Except she’s now his widow, isn’t she?’
It was a seemingly trite realisation, but it clearly upset the girl. Her bottom lip quivered – whether for Amanda or for Alec, Lucia couldn’t be sure – and the fidgeting had turned to shaking.
‘Do you want to have a quick break?’ interrupted Lucia, seeing that Elsa was beginning to get uneasy. ‘You’re welcome to pop outside for a few minutes, if you like.’
Chapter 7
Grateful for the interruption, the girl scuttled off. Lucia and Carliss leaned back into their respective armchairs and breathed a sigh of relief to have a moment to confer.
‘That girl’s desperate for a fag,’ began the inspector. ‘Can’t blame her. I’d kill for one myself. Well, what do you think so far?’
‘Not much to go on. She’s very nervy, isn’t she? That might just be her personality though. Fidgety and neurotic.’
‘Yes, I can’t say I’ve spotted much either. Let’s keep it down, here she is. OK to carry on, Miss Whittle?’
Elsa, smelling of fresh smoke and petrol fumes, settled back into her designated seat. ‘Yes, fin
e, thanks.’
‘So, you were saying that Mr Penney’s wife arrived at ten past six, is that right?’ Carliss consulted his notes and looked up expectantly.
‘Yes. Alec came out and invited her into his study. I stepped out for a smoke and a cup of coffee, and when I got back – six thirty-five it was – Amanda barged out past me. She seemed in a right huff.’ Judging by the dismissive tone of the account there was clearly no love lost between the two women. ‘No good-bye, no nothing.’
‘Was Alec in his office when you got back?’ asked Lucia.
‘Assume so. Didn’t see him though. After that, I barely had time to sit down again when Roberta comes in. She’s a client. I suppose I can tell you her name, can’t I? It’s not like she had an official appointment,’ the girl noted, somewhat acidly. ‘Roberta Musgrave, she’s called. It was quarter to seven, and before I could warn Alec she waltzed straight through. She slammed the door behind her – you know, the one behind my desk – so I couldn’t really hear them. I could just about make out her voice. It was seven when she left. This one was in a bad mood too.’
Elsa was becoming more animated as she spoke. There was a cattiness underlying her account that stood out very noticeably, as if she were taking perverse pleasure in revealing the whereabouts of Alec’s visitors.
‘So Roberta and Alec were in his office?’ asked the inspector.
‘I can’t be sure, but no, I don’t think so. Her voice sounded as if she was in the corridor. I couldn’t hear him, mind you, so it’s hard to tell. And then, you won’t believe it, no sooner does she make herself scarce than Max drops in. At seven, that was, just as Roberta was storming out. I saw Max walk into Alec’s room and shut the door behind him, and it was ten past seven when he left.’
‘Did you see Alec at all during this time?’ interrupted Lucia.
‘No, he must have just been sat in his study, I guess. Didn’t hear him and Max talk either. Those doors are pretty soundproof – to stop anyone overhearing the consultations, you see.’