Shed No Tears

by Caz Frear

  I shoot a fidgety glance toward Parnell, who quickly looks away.

  Navarro spots it. “Oh, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking the same as me. I mean, it’s hard not to think it.” He pauses, and for a moment there’s only the dripping-tap trickle of the weakening summer rain and the soft, tidal rush of motorway, God knows how far away. “The others . . . they were naked.”

  The others.

  Strangers in life, bound together in death.

  Names on a Wikipedia page.

  The victims.

  2

  I let the door slam hard and stomp through the heart of MIT4 base camp, Parnell hard on my heels, whistling a radio jingle that had plagued us the whole way back to Holborn HQ. Detective Sergeant Pete Flowers visibly jolts at the reverberation, dropping his soup spoon and splattering fiery red liquid onto his starched white shirt.

  “Jesus, Kinsella!” He lurches for a tissue. “Close the door, why don’t you?”

  “Oh, shut up, Sarge, I’m cranky.” I’m also tired, straggly haired, and surprisingly still damp, despite a two-hour journey that should have been less had Parnell—who has the thirst of an elephant but the bladder of a pygmy shrew—not needed to stop at every motorway services from Caxton to eternity. “Send me the dry-cleaning bill,” I add—I may be cranky but fair’s fair. “Although not that one by the station. Eighteen quid for a suit! We should be arresting those crooks, not giving them our money.”

  The main benefit of having worked with the same crew for four years, bar everyone knowing how you like your tea, is that rank often goes out the window. In a day-to-day sense, anyway. In the sense that you can tell a sergeant to “shut up” without them frothing at the mouth. Around eighteen months ago, I’d been seconded to City Hall to work on policy and planning in the mayor’s office—great for my CV, not so great for my boredom threshold—and I’d missed the freedom to be tetchy. The safety to be myself.

  Or at least the disinfected version I let others see.

  The room’s quiet, the only energy coming from a flickering strip light that Facilities promised to fix back when Noah built the ark. Apart from Flowers, our resident slab of testosterone, there’s only two other people here: DC Renée Akwa, currently curling her lip into the receiver of her phone, and DC Ben Swaines.

  I can’t actually see Ben Swaines, but as the air-con’s set to Baltic, it’s a dead cert he’s here.

  “I swear that man’s part polar bear.” I adjust the thermostat to something more considerate then fling my bag on my desk. “Hey, Ren, where is everyone?”

  Renée lowers her phone. “Don’t know. Out making more use of the taxpayers’ money than me, with any luck. Twenty minutes, I’ve been on hold. Twice to the wrong department. Haringey Council, who else?”

  “Ahhh, Haringey on hold . . .” I’ve had my own share of mind-numbing stints. “Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G Minor. Am I right?”

  “Spot on.”

  Steele’s office door flies open. Her petite, pristine presence gives the room some instant zing.

  “Well, well, well, the wanderers return.” Her scarlet mouth dips as she looks us up and down. “Bloody hell, guys. Here I was, bragging to Tess about my Cat-and-Lu dream team, and then in you trot, looking like you’ve been camping for a week.”

  Tess? I glance through the blinds, spy a platinum-blond bob and a Grande Starbucks Something.

  “We got soaked.” I walk in and perch against a filing cabinet, offering “Tess” a generic smile. She’s in her midforties at a guess, and in her prime for damn sure. Sleek and elegant in a cream tailored shift dress. And not one you’d throw in the spin wash either.

  “Soaked?” Steele grins as Parnell troops in behind me. “What happened, Lu? Did you leave the sunroof down in the car wash again?”

  He laughs, nodding at “Tess” in a way that suggests a faint history. “Rain, would you believe? Do you remember it? The wet stuff.”

  “Well, I hope you brought it back with you,” says Steele. “My hydrangeas are knackered.”

  “Tess” stretches forward, wrapping her French manicure around her Starbucks. “You still like your garden then, Kate?”

  I reach across Steele’s desk, snatching up a magazine blotted with coffee cup rings. “She still likes buying Gardeners’ World and using it as a coaster, if that’s what you mean.”

  Steele grabs it off me, clouts me on the shoulder. “Tess, meet DC Cat Kinsella. Cat, meet Detective Chief Inspector Tessa Dyer. You and Lu know each other, right?” A nod from Dyer. A “vaguely” from Parnell. “Tess headed up the Roommate case. She’s popped in to give us the scoop—or ‘the skinny’ as the kids say—on Holly Kemp.”

  The Roommate’s last victim.

  “So how’d you get on in the sticks?” she carries on, introductions complete. “You must have ruffled someone’s feathers. I got a call just now—the postmortem’s happening this evening.”

  “Only one feather,” I tell her. “A guy called Ed Navarro.” I drawl his name in a dud Texan accent. “Sounds like a gunslinger from an old Western, don’t you think?”

  “You’re thinking of The Guns of Navarone, and that’s a war film, not a Western.”

  Dyer’s laugh fills the room. “God, you haven’t changed a bit, Kate.”

  Steele sits down. “Well, I’ll be honest, Tess. I can’t say the same about you. I hardly recognized you.”

  Dyer shrugs, but there’s a glint of triumph in her powder-blue eyes. “Ah, you know, working in Lyon, you have to up your game. French women are a different breed.”

  Steele explains. “Interpol, no less. Four years.”

  “Wow.”

  “Not as ‘wow’ as you’d think, Cat.” My name trips off her tongue with an easy warmth. “You’re not making arrests. It’s all about information-sharing, greasing wheels, coordination between member countries. You actually have very little power.”

  Meaning it’s high on pomp and protocol, low on kick-ass glory.

  “So when did you get back?” asks Parnell.

  “Late last year. I’m with SO15 now.”

  “Counter-Terrorism, eh? ‘Making the World a Better Place’—isn’t that the latest slogan?”

  Dyer’s eyes flick skyward. “Yeah, although ‘Plugging the Leak with Your Little Finger’ might be closer to the truth.”

  “At least you’re trying to stop bad things happening,” I say. Flashes of our visit this morning: Parnell and I staring uselessly into a scooped-out ditch. Holly Kemp’s bones packed into Tupperware boxes—life at its most extinct. “All we do is mop up the mess.” Steele’s face is a picture—Portrait of a Pissed-off Woman. “Sorry, that sounded worse than I meant, boss. It’s been a long day.”

  “It’s about to get a whole lot longer, m’dear.” She doesn’t elaborate and I don’t ask. I’ll find out soon enough. “So, Tess, any superintendent plans on the horizon?”

  “You never know.” She gives a cryptic smile, then tosses the question right back. “You never fancied it? The way Olly talked about you, I thought you’d be commissioner by now.”

  It might just be me, in fact there’s a very good chance it is—when I’m tired and cranky, I have a high frequency for slights—but I sense something sharp in Dyer’s statement. An acidic little jab. Steele doesn’t look bothered, though, and that’s good enough for me.

  “Oh yeah, so who’s this Olly then?” I say, grinning. “Another paid-up member of the Kate Steele Appreciation Society?”

  Steele likes that, blows me a kiss for my efforts. “Detective Chief Superintendent Oliver Cairns. Actually, Retired Detective Chief Superintendent Oliver Cairns. He was my mentor way back and Tess’s—well, not quite so way back, let’s leave it at that.” She turns back to Dyer. “And in answer to your question, Tess—no, I’ve never fancied it. I’ve thought about it over the years, of course I have, but I like it at the coalface. This lot think I’m bone idle as it is, sitting on my arse planning for divisional budget meetings. And anyway, I think Olly had
higher hopes for you than he ever had for me.”

  “I doubt it.” Dyer frowns over the rim of her coffee. “You scaled the heights quicker. You were thirty-six when you made DCI. I was thirty-eight.” She makes a joke of it, muttering “Dammit” under her breath, while I silently calculate that I’ve got roughly a decade to get my act together. To become the kind of woman who plans budgets while wearing chic bespoke tailoring.

  “Ah, but I didn’t have two small kids,” says Steele, gracious to the last. “You trumped me there. And thirty-six isn’t any great shakes these days, not with all these fast-track schemes. Look at my Lord and Master, Blake. He made superintendent before he could pull his own pants up.”

  It’s unfair but it’s funny and funny wins out. Steele likes Blake, really. And a DCI like Kate Steele needs a DCS like Russell Blake—someone who’ll give her carte blanche as long as she at least pretends that he’s the one in charge.

  “So have you seen Olly lately?” Dyer asks Steele.

  “You must be joking. I haven’t seen my own husband in broad daylight for the past ten days.” Eyes down, she catches a memory. “I suppose it must be around two years, give or take. His retirement party, probably.”

  “Oh, you went? I’m glad. He’d have appreciated that.” Dyer’s voice is soft, a little gloomy. “I really wanted to get back for it, but you know how it is . . .”

  Steele flaps a hand. “I wouldn’t worry, you didn’t miss much. Flat prosecco and DAC Dempsey making jokes about golfing holidays. Did you ever hear anything like it? Olly wouldn’t know which end of the bat to hold.” Parnell opens his mouth. “And yes, I know it’s a club, Lu. It was a joke.” Back to Dyer. “I heard he’d not been well.”

  “Well enough to be meeting me for a drink or five tomorrow. After band practice, of course.”

  Steele leans back, smiling. “God, I’d forgotten about that. Him and his bloody pipe band. So he’s still big in the Emerald Society?” She stretches an arm across, grazing my elbow with the tip of a mauve fingernail. “Here, you could join that, Kinsella. It’d be right up your street, all that Irish stuff.”

  “Oh, here we go. You know, technically, I’m not even half-Irish, boss. My dad was born here, which means . . .”

  But she’s not listening anymore. A quick glance at the time and Steele’s face is wiped clean of smiles and replaced with the kind of focus that gets you DCI rank before your thirty-seventh birthday.

  “Right, mes amis, I’m due at a ‘Policing After Brexit’ workshop in an hour, lucky me, and Tess isn’t going to make superintendent lounging around with the likes of us, so let’s crack on, OK? And you—sit down.” I sit, assuming that’s aimed at me, given the clipped maternal tone. “Now obviously we’re all familiar with the Roommate case, but one thing’s for sure—if I have to go in front of the media once we get Holly Kemp’s PM results back, I want to be more than familiar. I want to be clued-up. And you pair should be too.” She raises a hand to Dyer, effectively offering her the floor. “So clue us up, Tess.”

  In truth, “familiar” is still a slight stretch for me. Sure, I had a skim through the case file last night. I scanned the Wikipedia page, did a quick Google search while my prawn bhuna was cooking—Parnell’s big idea: spicy foods cool you down, allegedly. And, obviously, I was aware of the case back in 2012. But only in the way you’re aware of an interest rate rise or a senior royal wedding. It’s important, yet distant, and you really couldn’t give a fuck.

  Sounds harsh? Well, don’t judge me. It wasn’t long after my mum died. While Holly Kemp and “the others” were living out their final months in blissful ignorance, Mum was on her final straight too. A slow, merciless straight that altered me forever, the grief a cancer of its own. So, by the time the news broke that London had a new monster to revile and four victims to mourn, I was so mired in my own despair—in senseless guilt and ferocious drinking—that the details of the Roommate case slipped me by. In fact, life slipped me by. I cared for nothing except anger and white wine oblivion. Aliens could have landed and I’d have neither noticed nor cared.

  Until I saw the advert.

  MAKE LIFE MORE MEANINGFUL

  MAKE LONDON A SAFER PLACE

  JOIN THE METROPOLITAN POLICE

  The girl on the poster even looked a bit like me. A less grief-haggard version, anyway.

  It was fate.

  And a middle finger to my dad, who’d only ever made London worse.

  “God, where to start?” Dyer says, with the faux modesty of someone who knows exactly where to start, every word, every beat. “The media called Christopher Masters ‘The Roommate’ on account of several adverts he placed on various sites. Roommate wanted—female, age 20–35, for quiet, respectful, friendly house near Clapham Common. Double room. Bills, TV, Wi-Fi included, £600 per calendar month.” All this, right off the bat, the words seared on her brain. “Masters owned a hardware store, had done since the nineties, but he was a keen handyman too—no job too big or too small, that kind of thing—so when he and two cousins inherited 6 Valentine Street from an aunt, he swooped quickly, suggesting he renovate the house in exchange for an increased share of the profits. He started the work in autumn 2011 but it was a big job, the place needed gutting. And what with running the store as well, it was still only half-finished by February 2012, which was when he placed the ad and began luring young women to the house. Torturing them. Strangling them.”

  “Do we know if he actually killed them there?” I ask, mentally sifting through the facts I gleaned last night and coming up blank. “I know the bodies were found in Dulwich Woods. Well, except Holly Kemp’s, obviously.”

  “We know he definitely harmed them there. We found the blood of two of the victims in the house. Apart from that, though, we don’t know much. He led us to the bodies in Dulwich Woods; he gave that up within an hour of arrest, but he wouldn’t say why he did what he did or give us any sequence of events. Just that he’d ‘felt like it.’ There’s a theory his ex-wife’s recent engagement might have sparked something.”

  “And he completely refused to say anything about Holly Kemp?” asks Parnell.

  “At the time, yes. He admitted being at the Valentine Street address on the day she disappeared, but that was it. He got more talkative over the years, though: ‘I killed her. I didn’t. I killed her. I didn’t . . .’” Her face roars with anger. “He killed her.”

  Steele jumps in. “Park Holly for a second. Tell us a bit about the others first, Tess. While we’ve got you here, we might as well get everything from the horse’s mouth.”

  Dyer nods. “Sure, no problem. So Bryony Trent was the first. She was twenty-four, a live-in shift manager at The Cross Keys pub in Clapham North. She was last seen on Friday 10th February, leaving the pub around five p.m. We got one sketchy CCTV sighting around five fifteen p.m., heading in the direction of the Common, but it was lashing rain that day and it wasn’t much use—her umbrella didn’t help either; it made it even harder to pick her out again. According to cell site analysis, her phone was switched off twenty minutes later. We never found her phone or her bag—same with the others. When we got her phone records back, though, we did find a pay-as-you-go number that nobody seemed to recognize, dialed the day before. Problem was, no one knew she was flat-hunting, so we missed that early lead. She hadn’t said anything as she didn’t want her boss to know she wasn’t happy until she was ready to leave—basically, until she’d found a new place to live.”

  She comes up for air, pausing for any questions. I’m swaying between having none and having a barrage. Steele gives Dyer the nod to carry on.

  “OK, next, Steffi König; twenty-nine, German. She’d been in the UK for six years, working for an event management firm in Clapham Old Town.”

  Steffi, not Stephanie. I might have only scanned the internet and taken a cursory flick through the case file, but she’s certainly been Stephanie in every report I’ve read. Steffi implies attachment, a pained affinity, a genuine care. It suggests Christmas cards
exchanged with the family and a DCI who’ll never forget.

  “She was last seen on February 16th, leaving her workplace at around four thirty p.m. It was her break—a late one because they had an event in the evening—and while she usually stayed in the staff canteen, she said she had to pop out that day. Again, CCTV wasn’t much help because of bad weather and bad luck, and cell site analysis was as much use as it ever is in a big city. Her phone pinged off a tower on the west side of Clapham Common just after five p.m., but it was hard to narrow it down to anything helpful; the mast covered a few hundred square meters.” Or a few standard-sized football pitches, to use Parnell’s metric system. “Phone records gave us a vague link, though—she’d dialed a pay-as-you-go number the day before, like Bryony Trent. Different number, but the call was of a similar duration, and it was made a similar length of time before she went missing. And then, of course, we got our break with Ling Chen.”

  Dyer shifts in her chair, her back ramrod straight; the memory of that break still fresh.

  “Ling was the eldest, thirty-three. She was last seen on the morning of Tuesday 21st by her boyfriend. They were having problems. He was pressuring her to get married and she wasn’t keen—in fact, she was planning to leave him, was flat-hunting on the sly. She’d mentioned to a colleague that she was viewing a place in Clapham that afternoon, and sure enough, the same pay-as-you-go number that Steffi called showed up from the day before. To cut a long story short, we eventually found the Valentine Street address scrawled on the back of a pizza flyer in the recycling bin at her friend’s house.”

  “But not soon enough to save Holly Kemp.”

  There’s nothing accusatory in Steele’s statement. We’ve all been there, Steele probably ten times over. The torment of realizing that if you’d only known X, you could have done Y. It’s pointless persecution and yet we can’t help but indulge.

  “Sadly not. It was Friday the 24th before the friend made the connection—that Ling was at her place when she’d made the pay-as-you-go call. Holly was last seen on Thursday the 23rd at around four p.m., so she was almost certainly dead by then. And in any case, she hadn’t even been reported missing by the time we arrested Masters on the Saturday. Her boyfriend waited until Sunday because, and I’m quoting here, ‘she’s a mad bitch, unpredictable.’ He’d assumed she’d gone on a long weekend bender, but when she still hadn’t surfaced by Sunday, he got worried, called us.”