by Sabina Manea
‘Do you know Alec? Only we were supposed to see him today, but his PA called first thing this morning to cancel. Said he’d come down with something, but I couldn’t get more out of her or reschedule.’
Carliss crossed his hands awkwardly in his lap. This was highly irregular. He obviously didn’t know how to best break the news to the Rowlands. Lucia was relieved when he went for the direct, honest approach.
‘I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but Alec has passed away. We were called to his office this morning.’
Chapter 9
‘That was a bit of a wasted journey,’ said DCI Carliss as they strapped themselves into the car seats. ‘Still, that Mrs Rowlands is pretty easy on the eye, isn’t she?’
Lucia scowled. She wasn’t in the mood for banter.
Carliss seemed to take the hint and changed the subject.
‘Anyway, better get back to the station and set the wheels in motion on Alec Penney now that he’s ours.’
‘Can you drop me off on Grove Place? I’ve got a quick errand to run. Won’t take longer than my lunch break.’ Lucia was impatient, distracted and keen to step away from work for a brief while. She had an important matter to attend to.
The red and yellow brick building on Grove Place where Lucia had grown up stood as proudly as it had when it was built as model housing for artisans in the early twentieth century. The key creaked in the door, and the rusted, long-neglected latch finally gave way. Lucia was worried it would snap for lack of use. The staircase up to the flat was clean but airless, with a faint institutional smell that hadn’t changed since she had been old enough to be conscious of it.
She stepped in gingerly, as if her presence would break a spell or make the whole place crumble into dust. As for dust, there was plenty of it. The place had barely been touched since her mother’s death five years previously – a sad but not entirely unexpected event, the consequence of a congenital heart defect. The only thing Lucia had got round to doing was throw out her clothes. The knick-knacks and books were still there, as were the contents of the kitchen. Not that Denise Steer had ever been one for many knick-knacks. By contrast, the bookshelves were groaning under the weight of their inhabitants. Lucia’s mother had been a voracious reader, a passion that she had passed on to her daughter, but only of what she loosely termed ‘proper literature’. Wallace Stegner was at the top of the list, but a special concession had been made for Agatha Christie, on account of her being a successful career woman to look up to. Leaving school at sixteen wasn’t ever going to stop Denise from gaining an education on her own terms and making sure her daughter did the same.
Lucia took a deep breath and sat on one of the white Formica chairs in the tiny kitchen. Together with the matching table, they would now be a treasured vintage find, but she had no appetite for selling the stuff. Nor did she want to ever use it again, which posed a conundrum. Perhaps the flat could be rented out as it was. No, that wouldn’t work. It hadn’t been touched since her mother moved there, an eighteen-year-old barely out of childhood herself, with her precious new-born in the early 1980s. Perhaps it could be sold with the contents. Lucia didn’t have the heart to throw everything out, but she knew she would have to do something about it. She had avoided the matter for too long.
She stood staring out of the window in her old bedroom, long converted into a guest room. The walls were still covered in the unusual black and white safari animals wallpaper that she and her mum had chosen and put up together when she was a child. Even the bed was the same – a white metal frame bought in the closing down sale at the local hardware shop. They had been poor, but Denise had always had a keen eye for beauty in the most unlikely places. If she put her mind to it, she could make a home out of furniture from the skip, which had been exactly where she’d found the Formica set.
Lucia was grateful to have inherited this gift; it was what had drawn her to interior design. It was clichéd really, though no less genuine for it – when her mum died, it occurred to Lucia that life was too short to be spent in a dull office.
Rachel, her mum’s sister, and the only family Lucia had left, had been the most frequent visitor to the flat, especially after Lucia moved out. Rachel liked having time to herself, she always said, away from her husband and demanding grown-up children that kept pestering her to babysit. When she married, she followed her husband to the rural Midlands, a life of such polar opposites to urban North London that Lucia and her mother had barely ever visited. And now Rachel had only days left to live. A late diagnosis of breast cancer, entirely out of the blue.
Lucia wasn’t one for sentimentalities, which is why she stood in her old family home ready to make a clean break and move on. She brushed away a strand of hair that had been darkened to dull ash by the absence of sunlight. Today wasn’t the day to get everything done and dusted, but she was determined to make a firm start and get a couple of local estate agents to value the flat. With property prices being what they were in the area, it shouldn’t take too long to shift. Ex-council properties were like gold dust in Hampstead. She surveyed the tidy but neglected place one last time and locked the door behind her. There was plenty of urgent business to get on with down at the station, and the inspector was probably starting to wonder what was keeping her so long.
* * *
When Lucia walked into the office at the station, she found DCI Carliss sitting at his desk, impatiently tapping his fingers.
‘Where have you been? I’ve got the post-mortem results for Alec Penney. I’ve been itching to read them, but thought I’d wait for you first.’
‘Sorry about that. Some urgent business to take care of.’
‘Let’s have a look then. Get yourself a chair, Lucia.’
She hurried over to his side of the room, and they huddled in front of the screen, absorbed in the details. Carliss started reading out loud.
‘Estimated time of death is between six and eight the previous evening. Lucky us – you don’t always get something as precise as that.’
As he went slowly, methodically through the report, Lucia’s eyes darted ahead. ‘Look, what’s this? Two faint dark marks on his chest, in the heart area. Assumed to be birthmarks.’
‘OK.’ Carliss nodded with some irritation, evidently not seeing the relevance of the interruption. ‘Burn on palm of right hand – most likely an electrocution burn. Pre-dates window of death and appears to have been incurred some hours previously.’ He turned to Lucia, looking particularly satisfied. ‘Probable cause of death is delayed lethal arrhythmia. He electrocuted himself earlier in the day – that girl Elsa said as much – but didn’t collapse until later. His heart finally gave up. Not common, but entirely plausible. He had a history of palpitations anyway. Sounds like pure bad luck to me.’
Lucia scrunched up her nose. ‘Hmm,’ was all she said, laconically. The neatness of it all bothered her, although, to her frustration, she still couldn’t pinpoint why. She would have to come up with something persuasive. She could tell from the DCI’s raised eyebrow that her reluctance to agree with him wasn’t going down very well.
‘So, he electrocuted himself on the coffee maker and collapsed from a dicky heart later that day. Does that actually happen?’
‘Apparently so.’
‘Hmm,’ Lucia said again, all of a sudden uncharacteristically tongue-tied.
‘Come on, put me out of my misery. I can hear those cogs turning.’
Lucia walked back to her desk and peered into her mug. The dregs had been sitting there all day and looked unpleasantly congealed.
‘How come a man with a history of palpitations is so attached to his coffee machine?’
Carliss smiled triumphantly – he had obviously seen this one coming. ‘Decaf. That’s all he drank.’
‘Fair point. What about that hook we found on the floor?’
The policeman stared at her blankly. ‘What hook? Oh, that thing. I wouldn’t lose sleep over it. Just one of those things you find lying about, I suppose.’
<
br /> Lucia was about to say ‘Hmm’ again but stopped herself. ‘Do you want me to tell you what I think really happened with our accidental electrocutee?’
‘Just go ahead and make up words, why don’t you? Go on then, regale me with your zany theory.’
Lucia leaned back in her chair and put her index finger to her temple, a gesture that meant she was about to launch into a very serious discourse.
‘He was tasered.’
‘Come again?’
‘The holes in the sweatshirt, the tiny marks on the skin. The so-called “fishing hook”.’ She was getting gradually more annoyed that Carliss wasn’t seeing it. ‘You’re a policeman, for God’s sake. Don’t you know how these things work?’
‘Of course I do,’ the detective replied indignantly. ‘But what’s it got to do with our accidental electrocution, which has been confirmed by a medical professional?’
‘I’m not denying that Alec electrocuted himself sometime during the day. What I’m saying is that it wasn’t the electrical injury that killed him. It was the taser,’ insisted Lucia.
‘So he was tasered sometime before the window of his death and he died of it hours later? I’ll be damned if I get what you’re on about. The PM’s pretty clear. Delayed lethal arrhythmia. Are you querying that?’
‘No. Well, maybe I am. As I understand it, lethal arrhythmia just means an irregular heartbeat that leads to death. They’ve opined it was delayed because the most obvious cause of the arrhythmia was the burn on the hand that occurred earlier in the day. But if he was tasered within the 6 to 8 pm window, that could have caused arrhythmia and consequently death. Do you follow me?’
The detective scratched his chin, deep in thought. ‘Yes, I suppose I do. So, you think the earlier electrical injury is unconnected?’
‘Yes, that’s what I’m saying. It’s coincidental, but it isn’t the cause of death.’
‘So, let me check if I’ve got this. Someone tasers the bloke. The taser barbs go through his sweatshirt – hence the punctures in the material and the corresponding marks on the skin. The killer pulls out the barbs but accidentally leaves one behind, which on its own happens to look a bit like a hook. Have I got the right end of the stick?’
‘Yes, that’s how I see it playing out.’ She was as sure of herself as ever. ‘And another thing. He was most likely tasered in the study and dragged into the kitchenette.’
‘And how did you work that one out?’
‘That splinter on the heel of his trainer, the one that came off the threshold between the study and the kitchenette, remember? Alec collapsed in the study, and whoever killed him dragged him by the armpits into the kitchenette, so the feet would have been last. The trainer scraped against the threshold and took with it a small splinter.’
‘You’ve got it all figured out, haven’t you?’ DCI Carliss spun in his chair, and by the look on his face Lucia could see he was tending to believe her. ‘I suppose I’ll have to get the CSIs in, or I’ll never get you off my back.’
Chapter 10
Days later, as she sipped ice-cold white Burgundy out of an enormous glass, Lucia felt satisfyingly vindicated. The forensic report had confirmed that the mysterious hook was a taser barb. There were no prints on it, which wasn’t as helpful as she’d hoped. Nonetheless, she reasoned it would be pretty stupid not to wear gloves when sneaking around committing murder. She smiled to herself as she recalled the impressed though defeated look on DCI Carliss’s face. The prospect of a challenging new case thrilled her. She had already pieced together the first section of the puzzle – the manner of death – and now the bigger questions loomed: who and why? Lucia was certain that the answers lay with the true identity of the victim. What kind of man was Alec Penney, and why would someone wish him ill?
That evening Lucia was propping up the bar at her favourite local. The Red Lion was the haunt of local builders and their hangers-on, and she had become a regular during her stint as an interior designer. The clientele was predominantly male, loud and beer-drinking. She had never shied away from mucking in with the decorating work herself, and so they all knew her – most of them even grudgingly respected her. They certainly had the good sense not to wolf-whistle or make an unsolicited pass at her, and any newbies were swiftly put in their place.
Becky, the spirited young barmaid that ran the roost, leaned conspiratorially towards her customer.
‘See that one in the corner? Not a bad looker. If I hadn’t been spoken for, I wouldn’t turn him down.’ She grinned, fluttering her implausibly long eyelashes and tapping two pink fingernails on the bar.
Lucia turned around very unsubtly and stared. The table in the said corner was occupied by three men somewhere in their twenties – closer to late twenties, she estimated, given they weren’t acting like nutty teenagers, unlike the group next to them. Becky’s potential victim sat closest to the window. He was a looker, Lucia had to admit. He reminded her a little of Jim Rowlands. Not her usual type, but there was something in his demeanour that distinguished him from the other clean-cut, unremarkable men populating the boozer on a weekend night. It was most likely the piercing eyes and the laughter lines around them. He looked like he had a personality that was worth getting to know.
‘Do you want to make it any more obvious that we’re both drooling over him?’ hissed Becky. ‘God, woman, you’re terrible.’
Lucia grinned. She couldn’t care less if she was being very obvious. She was on her home turf and besides, she wouldn’t have minded getting a look back. She wasn’t, strictly speaking, on the pull tonight, but she was definitely open to possibilities.
Becky read her mind, not that it would have been difficult. ‘Better go and put some lippy on, babe. It might be your lucky night.’
‘I’m fine as I am.’
Lucia slid a firm thumb along her lips. She was positive her outfit fell on the side of alluring, as was her customary style. She wore tight black jeans that showed off her figure, a pair of elegant ankle boots she had picked up at one of the boutiques on the high street, and a black silk blouse with a tie waist. The trademark red lipstick that she always wore for an evening out completed the ensemble.
‘Oh, look. Think you’ve got yourself an admirer,’ whispered Becky, flicking her long blonde hair to one side.
Mr Nice Eyes was definitely looking in their direction or, to be precise, straight at Lucia. His features relaxed into a very attractive smile that stretched to the eyes. He held her gaze for a good few seconds before returning to the conversation with his two companions.
‘Got the Burgundy on ice if he wants to buy you another,’ said Becky. ‘It’s not often that you get a new face in here. Wonder who he is.’
Just as Lucia was about to give up on the newcomer and ask Becky about the gossip instead, she saw out of the corner of her eye that the man had got up and was heading for the bar. He sat on the stool directly next to Lucia and gave her another winning smile.
‘Hi. Hope you don’t mind me sitting here. I’m about to get myself a drink. Would you like another?’ He pointed to her nearly empty glass.
Without waiting to be told, Becky fetched the bottle and then poured the man another pint of locally brewed lager.
‘Why not? I’m Lucia.’ She stretched out a determined hand.
‘Will. A pleasure to meet you. You look like you’re at home here.’
‘You make me sound like a right alcoholic.’ She laughed and licked her lips with just a hint of suggestiveness.
Will blushed, which made him look even more attractive. ‘Sorry, that came out wrong. You look comfortable, that’s what I meant. Me and my mates, we normally drink at the Hampstead Belle once we’ve finished work on a Friday. This place is a lot better though. Far better views too,’ he added playfully.
‘Good recovery. The Hampstead Belle is pretty dull. This is a real boozer, and there aren’t many of those left around here, unfortunately. So, what is it you do, Will?’
‘I’m a builder. Extensions, parti
tions, remodelling – whatever you want done, I’m your man. Not that I’m talking to you to get work, you know.’
He was a little flustered, she could tell. She often had that effect on men. It was the easy confidence, the directness with which she spoke and the way she looked straight into their eyes.
‘What about you? Do you live around here?’
‘Yeah, not far. I’m a decorator, actually, so we’re not that dissimilar,’ lied Lucia. She didn’t want to bring up her work with the police. In any case, her old job would give them a lot more common ground.
‘Decorator? I’m impressed. Don’t tell me you drive a Transit Custom Sport. It would be too obvious.’ Will fixed her with his very green eyes. He was wearing Levi’s classic cut jeans, scuffed Chelsea boots and a fitted white T-shirt. Not bad at all, Lucia thought to herself.
‘Busted.’ She raised her hands in mock surrender.
And so it carried on. It was obvious to anyone with eyes that there was serious chemistry between the two. It had been a while since Lucia had spent such an easy evening in the company of a man – no awkward flirting or clunky conversation. They fed off each other and exchanged pleasant banter. They did have a lot in common, after all, given their respective lines of work. Lucia tried very hard to forget that the last time she had felt this comfortable with someone of the opposite sex had been the impromptu dinner with David Carliss all that time back, when they were investigating Professor Kiseleva’s death. She brushed off the creeping guilt. Why should she feel guilty, anyway? There was nothing between them, and he had no claim to her. Nobody did. And yet there was an undercurrent of unease that ran through every word that came out of her mouth, as if the policeman were watching her, tutting disapprovingly in the corner.
As Becky forcefully called out last orders, the pub was nearly empty. Lucia had no appetite for following the crowd down the hill to the closest late-opening bar. She was more than a little tipsy, but sufficiently in control to know what she was doing.
She and Will stepped out tentatively into the crisp late autumn night. The damp had all but dried off, and the smell of burning wood hung in the air. The street was eerily quiet, with only the occasional taxi cutting through the silence. Lucia shivered involuntarily through her leather jacket.