Shed No Tears

by Caz Frear

  Parnell’s voice is a squeak. “I should bloody well think he was worried! Hadn’t he seen the news?”

  “I don’t think he was ‘the news’ type, Lu. Anyway, her friends proved to be more help than him. It was her friends who told us about Holly’s plans to go to Clapham that Thursday. And the CCTV snatch of her coming out of the Tube proved she got there.”

  “Her friends knew she was flat-hunting?” I ask.

  “No. She wouldn’t say why she was going. She was being very elusive, all ‘watch this space.’ Apparently that was typical of her. She was a bit of a drama queen.”

  “A nicer way of saying ‘a mad bitch.’”

  “Yes, well, Spencer Shaw—the boyfriend—wasn’t exactly a nice guy. He’d served six months for conspiracy to commit burglary not long before he met Holly. He’d been working as an estate agent, casing houses, getting the layout, selling the information on for a tiny cut.”

  A “tsk” from Parnell while Steele mutters “the little shitbag.” It doesn’t matter how often we deal with death and devastation, there’s still something about this type of chickenshit delinquency that never fails to make you fume. It’s the barefaced cheek of it. The mindless entitlement. It’s the family left feeling scared in their own home, all because some faceless coward fancied a new pair of Nikes.

  “He must have been a suspect?” I say. “For Holly, I mean. Anyone who takes three days to report their partner missing might as well slap the cuffs on themselves.”

  Dyer nods. “Oh, definitely. It was a huge red flag. And just because she’d gone missing from Clapham, that didn’t prove a connection to Masters. There was no pay-as-you-go number in her phone records, for a start, although Spencer Shaw had a theory about that. He said Holly was always misplacing her phone, borrowing someone else’s. But we checked her nearest and dearest’s phones, didn’t find anything . . .” She drags a finger across her lips, wrestling with something. “You know, even after Serena Bailey, I still wasn’t comfortable closing Spencer Shaw off, but I . . . well . . . I was told to close him off. Masters was our man. Serena Bailey proved it.” Her chin lifts, confidence swiftly restored. “And she did. I was being overzealous about Shaw, I can see that now. Serena Bailey changed everything.”

  Serena Bailey, or as immortalized in folklore: The Witness.

  This bit I am familiar with.

  On Monday 27th February, hours after Holly’s photo appeared in the Evening Standard, Serena Bailey, a primary school teacher, contacted police to say she’d seen Holly walking up the path of 6 Valentine Street on the day she went missing. She’d later ID Christopher Masters as the man who opened the door and beckoned Holly in.

  Bailey’s account was explosive. One hundred percent dynamite. It didn’t matter now what Masters confirmed or denied: CCTV footage put Holly in Clapham and an independent eyewitness put her quite literally on his doorstep. It was obvious to any right mind that Holly was Masters’ fourth victim.

  Any right mind except the Crown Prosecution Service.

  “I still can’t believe Bailey’s sighting wasn’t enough,” says Parnell.

  “Oh, don’t get me started.” Dyer’s mouth is a tight line. “Forget that a young woman is seen entering the house of a killer and then never seen again—if you can’t make the forensic link, jog on, as far as the CPS are concerned. Don’t muddy the waters for the other three. Come back when you’ve found her body. Which we obviously tried to do—all of Masters’ haunts, every house he ever worked on, every wooded area inside the M25 . . .”

  “Well, don’t hold your breath for a forensic link now, not after all this time.” Steele delivers a dose of gloomy realism. “Although a matching cause of death would be something. If we get a cause of death, that is.”

  I blurt it out. “Holly wasn’t naked, you know? They found remnants of fabric, a trainer.”

  “It’s different, I’ll give you that,” Dyer concedes. “Although I’d be wary of reading too much into it. Masters’ crimes were obviously planned and he used an identical method of killing, but he’s not what we’d call a classic ‘organized offender.’ They go to great lengths to conceal their crimes, whereas Masters didn’t seem to care. He invited them to his house, handed out his address. He left DNA on the bodies, there was blood in the house. All this suggests an element of disorganization and that makes him much harder to read. Disorganized offenders don’t always follow patterns.”

  “Doesn’t the different body dump site niggle at you, though?” In for a penny, in for a pound. Like the boss said, while we’ve got an audience with Dyer, we might as well milk it.

  “Seth and Emily are on that,” says Steele. “They’re heading up to Newcastle first thing tomorrow. That’s where the ex-wife lives now. Maybe she’ll be able to give us a link to Caxton, or even Cambridgeshire would do.”

  Dyer observes me across Steele’s desk. “What niggles at me, Cat, is that the bastard’s dead, and even if we get something to prove Holly’s case once and for all, he’s never going to be punished.”

  Ah yes, that small detail. Christopher Masters was murdered in HMP Frankland last year. One less monster in the “Monster Mansion,” as it’s unaffectionately known.

  “You could argue Jacob Pope did the job when he plunged that metal shank into Masters’ lung.”

  I’m briefly shocked by Parnell, usually our straight-shooting purveyor of fair criminal justice. It’s not that he never thinks these things, of course. We all think them. We just don’t say them. And the reason we don’t say them is that we don’t actually believe them. It’s just our inner animal rearing up. Our angry child kicking out.

  But I know what Parnell’s doing. He’s testing Dyer. Getting the measure of her.

  He gets bugger all.

  “Shall I pass on your thanks, Lu?” Dyer aims her coffee cup at the bin; a perfectly executed lob. “I’m visiting him later.”

  “And Cat’s going with her.” Steele turns to me, grinning. “Sorry, I told you your day was about to get longer.”

  “What’s that in aid of?” asks Parnell, his eyes shuttling between Steele and Dyer.

  “Jacob Pope always said he killed Masters because he couldn’t bear his bragging,” explains Steele. “Well, let’s see if he bragged about any day trips to Cambridgeshire.”

  “So we’re going all the way to Frankland? Two hundred and fifty plus miles?” I frame it as a question rather than the plaintive whine it genuinely is. “That’s me in the bad books, then. I’m supposed to be at Victoria Park by seven p.m. A picnic.”

  Steele laughs and stands up, quickly followed by Dyer. Side by side, Dyer’s practically Queen Kong to Steele’s Tinkerbell, but then fooling people with her size has been Steele’s stock-in-trade for years. If push came to shove, my money would be on the warrior pixie, every time.

  “You’re in luck, Kinsella,” she says. “Pope was moved to Belmarsh after the Masters ‘incident.’ You’ll be there and back in a few hours.” She opens her door, casting another look over me. “Although you could do with going home and getting changed first. Your clothes are damp. I can smell them from here.”

  “Go home? I live South-West, boss. Belmarsh is South-East. It’s a massive detour.”

  I push myself off the wall, my limbs like bags of cement. I’m lacking the energy for a picnic, never mind a playdate with a killer.

  “Borrow something of Emily’s then. God knows, she’s got half of Topshop under her desk. And you’re roughly the same size.”

  Roughly. In the way a square can be roughly the same size of a circle.

  “Sod that, I’m not risking Emily’s wrath.” Or one of her bandage-wrap dresses.

  “I thought the ice had thawed between you pair?”

  “There was never any ice, for God’s sake,” I say, not quite truthfully. “We’re just different people, that’s all.” I could add, “In the sense that she’s lazy and I’m not,” but Dyer’s presence stops me. I wouldn’t snipe about a colleague in front of a stranger and, more i
mportantly, I don’t want Dyer thinking I’m difficult. Her opinion matters, almost instinctively. “Honestly, I’ll pop out and buy something. Easier all round.”

  Steele’s hand’s on my back, ushering me out the door. “Your choice, but one way or the other, tidy yourself up. The only reason you’re going is that you’re female and you’re nearer Pope’s age, so he might take a shine to you, might speak a bit more freely. There’s less chance of that happening if you smell like a wet dog.”

  Parnell won’t be happy. It hasn’t been a year since I was last used as bait to draw a confession from a woman-hating narcissist—a woman-hating narcissist who, rather unfortunately, decided against confessing in favor of spitting in my face. To hear Parnell tell it, and he is fond of telling it, it was the worst atrocity ever to sully our fine station. A despicable act that still turns him purple from the collar up.

  He’s a good man, Parnell. A protector. A real rock.

  And in a turn of events I still can’t get my head around, this good man now knows the other good man in my life.

  Whether this is a good thing?

  The jury’s still out.

  Parnell stays silent until we’re back at our desks, facing each other across the partition that stops my mess becoming his mess. It’s obvious he’s itching to say something, though. It’s in the twitch of his jowl and the clicking of his tongue. Those familiar little tics that signal he’s about to pour forth.

  Assuming today’s Sermon at the Desk will be on the perils of making yourself pretty for Category A killers, I cut him off at the pass with a short, sharp request.

  “Look, take it up with her, OK? I just follow orders.”

  He makes a noise I take to mean “since when?” but he’s smiling. I’ve read him wrong.

  “Hey, hold your horses, touchy. I wasn’t going to say a word about that. One: nobody listens, and two: there’s a very big difference this time. You won’t be on your own. You’ll have Dyer and a guard in the room.”

  “She’s impressive, huh?” I say. “Dyer.”

  “You’re telling me. Did you see the way she aimed that coffee cup in the bin? She wasn’t even looking. She practices, I bet.”

  “The boss said you knew each other?” I’m trying to play it cool but I admit, I’m hungry for scraps—cases, commendations, career trajectory, even previous hairstyles will do.

  Parnell disappoints. “We sat on the same HR org chart once upon a time, but I wouldn’t say I know her. I know the name, the face. I know she took down some major players pretty early in her career.” He slaps his hands together gleefully. “Anyway, forget her, I’m more interested in this picnic. You’re not usually one for the great outdoors. You must have it reeeeeal bad, is all I can say.” I ignore him, busying myself with online banking, checking I’ve got enough spends for an emergency clothes spree. “I mean, clearly Aiden’s got it bad, the poor sod. I could see that the second he plaited your hair in the pub.”

  “God, not this again!” I keep my eyes on the screen, but even my bank balance can’t stop me smiling. “It was too hot to wear my hair down and I’d sprained my wrist playing frisbee. Who else was going to do it for me? You?”

  “Would if I could, kiddo. But, you know, four boys; I haven’t had the training. I can no more plait hair than I can lick my own elbow.”

  I laugh, which is a miracle in itself given the state of my overdraft. “Yeah, well, neither can Aiden. It fell out after two minutes, remember?”

  “Ah, but he tried, and that’s the whole point. It’s a sign. It’s a bright sign.”

  Picnics. Plaits. The perfectly brewed tea I wake up to most mornings. So many bright signs blackened by one very bad thing.

  The thing Aiden can never know.

  The thing he could never, ever forgive.

  “So have you told her yet?” Parnell’s lowered his voice, although there’s really no need. Renée’s still on the phone and Flowers is swooning over a travel website—booking a flight to Antarctica, if he’s got any sense.

  “Told who what?” I fan myself with a stack of overtime forms. “Jesus, it’s hotter than the sun in here now. Has our air-con got any other settings than North Pole and Club Tropicana?”

  “Don’t change the subject. You know who I mean. Have you told Steele about Aiden? I thought when you mentioned the picnic . . . about being in the bad books . . .”

  “Well, you thought wrong.” I fan myself quicker, stress relief as much as anything. “Look, I haven’t decided when—if—I’m going to tell her. It’s still early days, there might be no point.” I used to find lying difficult—every childhood fib, every teenage bluff would feel wrong and inedible, like soil in my mouth. These days, the lies come easy. One after the other, word after honeyed word. “I only told you because you’re a nosy bugger.”

  And because it was time. Time to give Aiden something. Time to give him a small window into who I am, beyond his lover and his mate and the girl who’d lasso the moon to make him smile.

  But in place of the moon, I gave him Parnell. I gave him laughs over pints with the only father figure in my life.

  Except my own father, of course. Persona non grata again since the beginning of this year.

  “That’s not fair, you know? I’m not nosy. Aiden’s a really nice bloke, one of the good ones as far as I can tell, and I’m happy for you, that’s all.”

  Bless him, he looks it too. All puffed up and proud, the archetypal Papa Bear. God knows how he’ll make it through his eldest son’s wedding next month. He got teary enough showing me photos of the cake.

  Still, I opt for the windup. “Oh, do me a favor. You’ve met Aiden twice, for a total of three hours.” Two televised football matches, to be precise. “You’ve no idea if he’s one of the good ones. He could be a prick of the highest order for all you know. For all I know, for that matter.”

  Parnell leans in, the tip of his finger pointing over—infiltrating—my side of the partition. “You take it from me, Kinsella, if a man’s prepared to plait your hair in public—or try to—then he’s one of the good ones. And what’s more, if he’ll plait your hair in public, then he’ll lay on a bloody good picnic, I’m telling you. Oh yeah, I can see it now. It’ll be all canapés and petit fours.” He smiles, misty-eyed and amused. “Ah, to be in the first throes again . . .”

  Not quite the first throes. Not even our first picnic. It’s been over eighteen months since Aiden first sat across from me in this very station, handsome and heartsick, trying to make sense of the news that his long-disappeared big sister, Maryanne, was dead.

  And Parnell knows this, of course. Parnell worked Maryanne’s case too. But what Parnell doesn’t know is that we’ve barely been apart since. That we swapped numbers within days, fluids within weeks, house keys within months. Parnell thinks we’ve been together for the grand sum of eight weeks. And the convoluted lie I told—because convoluted is king, I learned that from Dad—about me and Aiden bumping into each other on the bus, and the bus breaking down, and the rain forcing us into the pub, and the chat flowing until dawn, blah-di-blah-di-blah, is frankly the least of the lies I’ve told to my sergeant-cum-father-figure. And it doesn’t come close to the lies I’ve told Aiden about my dad or Maryanne.

  About Dad and Maryanne.

  3

  London has its own velocity. A pulsing rhythm best played at high tempo.

  Unless you’re trying to get somewhere, of course.

  “Two miles in twenty-five minutes. Ridiculous. Another thing I miss about Lyon.”

  Dyer’s scowling at the traffic but I’m not missing anything right now. Not Parnell’s burger-scented Citroën, with its kid paraphernalia strewn across the back seat, nor the hurly-burly of the office, where we left Flowers arguing with everyone about whether “Roommate” should be one word or two. No, for me the crawl toward Belmarsh is a welcome afternoon respite, and quite a deluxe respite too, due to the swankiness of Dyer’s car. Sleek and elegant, like the woman herself. Although away from the office—aw
ay from Steele, at a guess—she’s not quite so refined.

  “I hate this fucking heat,” she says, one willowy arm jutting out the driver-side window. “You can’t sleep. You’re not hungry.”

  “Everyone’s got their feet out.”

  “Exactly.” She drags her eyes from the road ahead, landing them squarely on me. “Nice suit, by the way. Although not the best color for a heat wave, I wouldn’t have thought.”

  Black, as most of my work wardrobe tends to be, which means I’m being slowly cremated as we inch through Woolwich, past the cheap high street stores and their displays of flimsy summer rags. In fact, the contrast of the black fabric and the signature pinkness of my skin immediately brings to mind the image of a burned sausage, and I must be starting to smell like one too. I reach into my bag and then spritz myself with something unpronounceable, a word conjured up by marketeers.

  Dyer flaps her hand, diffusing the sickly sweet scent. “Jesus, I know Steele said to tidy yourself up, but I hope that isn’t for Jacob Pope’s benefit.”

  “Christ, no,” I say, mortified. “I’m just trying to get through it. It’s my boyfriend, you see. He travels a lot for work and spends half his life in Duty Free, buying me perfume I don’t need.”

  “Tough life you’ve got there. Does he have an older brother, by any chance?”

  I glance at her left hand, at the narrow gold wedding band. “He does, actually, but he’s in Canada.”

  “Even better. I like Canadians. They’re laid-back, uncomplicated.”

  “You’re out of luck. He’s Irish, not Canadian.”

  “That’ll do. The Irish are the same.”