by Caz Frear
“Because of the gospel according to Serena Bailey.”
“Which, as far as we know, we have no reason to doubt.”
“We do now. She wasn’t marked absent from school that afternoon and her old boss said it’s unlikely it wouldn’t have been recorded.” I could leave it at that, but Susie Grainger’s words are itching my ears: Say what’s on your mind. “Just hear me out, OK? Serena says she saw Holly at around four p.m. outside Masters’ house. She’d waited in The Northcote for Mr. No-Show for around forty minutes before heading back, so that means she must have got there not long after three p.m.” I pause, taking a quick breath. “Edgware, where her old school is, to Clapham, is the best part of an hour’s travel, so that’s her leaving school around two p.m. that afternoon. But Mrs. Gopal, the head teacher, said that would be unusual unless an emergency came up, and she also said Serena was an exemplary teacher, completely devoted. So would an exemplary teacher really have bunked off early just to collect concert tickets?” Steele’s face is stony but she’s taking it all in. Her eyes haven’t left mine for a second. “I’m not saying she’s lying about seeing Holly. I don’t know what I’m saying exactly. But something smells off—not a stink, just a whiff.” I bring my hands together in prayer. “Can we at least request her bank records? Pretty please. If something puts her in Clapham that afternoon, you won’t hear another peep out of me, I promise.”
“I should be so lucky.” Steele wrinkles her nose, thinking about it. “Yeah, why not? Benny-boy, get on it.”
While she’s feeling generous, I keep pressing. “You know, she left Riverdale just before Easter that year. I’d need to check the dates but I guess that makes it late March, early April—a month, month and a half tops after her Holly ID. Presuming she had a notice period, she must have pretty much resigned straightaway.”
Parnell shrugs. “Something like that could trigger a ‘life’s too short’ mentality. Maybe she wasn’t happy there? Just because Mrs. Gopal loved her doesn’t mean she loved Mrs. Gopal.”
“True. But also, I don’t think Mrs. Gopal had the first clue why I was there. She certainly didn’t mention Holly or Masters, and it’d be the obvious leap to make if Serena had told her about it. Or told anyone in the school, for that matter. Don’t you think that’s odd?”
Steele rubs both cheeks. “This whole bloody case is odd. This accomplice business, for one thing.”
“Oh, Brandon Keefe has an aunt in Cambridgeshire,” says Swaines, suddenly animated. “I’ve just been looking at him; good old Facebook again. It was his birthday last month and he got a message with a load of birthday cake emojis from an Auntie Mel in Yaxley, which is about twenty-five miles north of Caxton. It’s a link.”
“That’s not a link, it’s a coincidence.” I check myself quickly. “OK, OK, it’s a notable coincidence. But come on, if you look at anyone’s Facebook . . .”
“Except yours,” interrupts Emily. “I mean, Cat K? What’s that all about? And you don’t even have a profile picture. How’s anyone supposed to find you?”
They aren’t, that’s the point. I spend enough of my life trying to keep my secrets secret without putting it all out there for the whole universe to see. I only really have the account for work—it’s staggering how open some suspects are on social media—and to gaze at the occasional photo of Finn.
“My point is twenty-five miles isn’t a solid link. It doesn’t mean anything. We’re a small island. Name any place in the UK and I bet I’ll know someone who lives within twenty-five miles of it.”
Steele swoops. “Or maybe don’t. This isn’t a geography lesson.” She stares at me, head cocked. “You’re not convinced by this accomplice theory, I take it?”
Truth is, after today—after Church Guy, after Holly’s friends, after the saga of Riverdale’s absence records, and the wholly unsanctioned meeting with DI Susie Grainger—I’d kind of forgotten about Accomplice Theory. Which, I suppose, suggests I’m not entirely convinced by it. While I can conceive it in my head, I don’t feel it in my gut.
“I don’t know, boss.” I grasp around for something more constructive. “Where’s this accomplice now? Why hasn’t he carried on killing? I mean, isn’t that the only reason Masters would keep quiet about him? For the pleasure of knowing his good work was being carried on? And have you read my report from the Jacob Pope meet? He said Masters was an independent kind of guy. Fiercely independent. That doesn’t exactly scream ‘accomplice.’”
“First, how do we know the supposed accomplice hasn’t continued? We sure as hell don’t have a consistent method of killing to work with—Holly’s cause of death has blown that well out of the water. And second, would that be Dr. Jacob Pope, PhD psychology, you’re referring to? Or Jacob Pope, the piece of shit who killed his girlfriend?”
“Point taken. But I’m not sure about Keefe, though. The Mail interview—why would he turn the spotlight on himself if he was involved?”
“He wouldn’t be the first,” Renée says. “Some killers can’t help making themselves part of the story.”
“OK, another point taken. But at the risk of sounding like a shrink, he doesn’t quite fit the profile for me.” I look at Parnell, now slumped against the incident board. Not a great sign given he’s got a long night ahead. “Remember all the family photos, Sarge? Keefe’s got a solid family unit. Older brothers he’s close to. A mum and dad he spoke fondly of. Masters’ ex-wife said he’d always wanted a son, but Keefe had no need for a surrogate father, or any type of male role model. I just can’t see how Masters would have got that sort of hold over him.”
Steele says to Parnell, “Didn’t you say he’d been miffed about some girl he had the hots for shagging someone else? Masters might have got in his ear about that? ‘All women are slags.’ The usual tripe.”
“He didn’t actually know she was shagging him until much later,” I tell her. “Not until after he’d been paid for the Mail interview. Masters was locked up by then.”
Emily’s hand shoots up. “Boss, remember Masters’ ex-wife told me and Seth that he had a second cousin in Cambridgeshire?” Steele nods. We all nod. “Well, I ran him through the PNC and he has two convictions—one from 1987, the other 2001. Both for assaulting his wife.”
“An associate of Masters’ with convictions for violence against women,” says Seth. “Add him to the accomplice roll call.”
“But he’s dead, isn’t he?” says Parnell. “I’m sure you said he was dead?”
“Jesus Christ! Who isn’t dead on this case?” Steele lifts her hands to rail at the gods as the rest of us exchange glances. After a moment, she regains composure, letting out a deep breath and dazzling us all with a slightly manic ear-to-ear smile.
“Right, my lovelies, who has plans this evening? I need to pay a visit and one of you lucky folk is coming with me.”
Parnell’s already out on account of his Church Guy crusade. Renée and Emily shout “Yoga” and “Mate’s 30th” simultaneously, and Flowers’ face makes it clear he’d rather nail his scrotum to the table.
Leaving me and Seth. And Steele isn’t going anywhere with a recently dumped Seth.
“Bad luck, Cat. You’re it.”
“I’ve got to be in Soho for nine p.m. at the latest. A dinner reservation.”
“Ooooooh!” Steele pulls an impressed face. “Check this one out. Picnics on a Tuesday night. Dinner reservations on a Thursday. Quite the socialite these days, aren’t we?”
I don’t rise to it. “So where are we off to?”
“Wait a minute, I’ll tell you exactly.” She checks her phone. “Langley Villa, number four Montrose Grove, South Kensington.”
“Sounds posh.”
Parnell whistles. “Sounds pricey. Who are you off to see? The Aga Khan?”
Steele laughs. “Not far off. Olly Cairns. I want to get this accomplice thing ruled in or ruled out, one way or the other, once and for all.”
12
Dad’s dirty money, his gold-plated membership to The
Bad Life Inc., meant that I had A Good Life growing up, if by “good” you mean posh schools I never felt I belonged in, fancy holidays I never wanted to go on, and in later years, a £250 monthly allowance that I’d invariably blow on other people—mainly cool girls and bad boys—in a soulless attempt to buy friends.
It also means I’ve never been that wowed by nice houses, having lived in a fairly decent one myself from the age of ten. Ripped from the decade-long security of the only place I’d ever called home—the cramped flat above McAuley’s Old Ale House—Mum and Dad had shipped us up to Hertfordshire at the turn of the millennium to live a middle-class life on a middle-class street in a middle-class village, so we could start the process of pretending to be something we weren’t.
Dining room people. Conservatory people. Two en suites and an oak-paneled study–type people.
Oliver Cairns’ picture-book house makes ours look like a peasant’s shack.
“Fuck me,” I say, not managing to phrase my awe more eloquently. “Cairns must have racked up the overtime.”
Langley Villa is a detached, five-story, stucco-fronted townhouse, almost as wide as it is high, and set back from a dreamy cherry-blossom street. It could be Georgian. Could be Victorian. It could be the real deal or a new build. All I know is that it’s expensive. Crazy, laughably, lunatic expensive.
Steele turns, halfway up the steps to the grand pillared entrance. “That Merc didn’t come cheap either.” She points behind me to the cobalt-blue status symbol. “I bet the number plate alone cost more than my car.”
OL18 VER.
I scrape my jaw off the pavement and follow her to the door. “Seriously, is this the same guy? He didn’t strike me as a personalized number-plate wanker.”
“That’s what having too much money does to you. What else is he going to spend it on?” She rings the bell, talking quickly. “His wife made a killing in plastic coat hangers—or could be coat hooks? Something deathly dull, anyway. But she sold the business for £50 million.”
“I could live with deathly dull.”
The door clicks open and there he is, the coat-hanger king, framed in late-evening sun and wearing his slippers and a tired smile. He’d clearly scrubbed up for drinks with Dyer last night, as it’s a different Oliver Cairns who welcomes us into his hotel-lobby hall with its gleaming checkerboard tiles. In his brown slacks and brown cardigan, an errant eyebrow stuck out like an indicator, he looks more like a classics professor than a retired crime fighter.
We follow him into a sitting room the size of a small aircraft hangar. Four elegantly mismatched sofas form a perfect square around what I suppose you’d call a coffee table, even though it could easily host a state banquet. The high walls are full of high art: lines, shapes, colors, splodges, frenzied brushstrokes I can’t make head nor tail of.
“Sit down, sit down. God knows I’m not short on seating.” He leaves the room for a second, returning with a dining chair. “My back’s playing hell at the moment and those bloody sofas are way too low,” he explains. “I curse the day we ever bought them—and why we needed four is anyone’s guess. Anyways, make yourselves at home. What is it they say in Spain? Mi casa, su casa.”
“Bloody hell, I wish your home was my home,” I say, sinking, almost merging, with a leather sofa made for ten.
“A tip for you, Cat.” Cairns’ eyes twinkle. “Marry well, but divorce better.”
“You and Moira broke up?” says Steele, looking shocked. “I’m sorry, Olly. I didn’t realize.”
He lowers himself onto the chair, a slow, labored effort. “Ah, ’twas no big deal. No drama.”
“I just thought, the house, you know . . . it’s very . . .”
“Tasteful?”
“Tidy, I was going to say. Christ, the state of your office at Chiswick.”
“Ah well, that’ll be Gracie, God love her. She comes in twice a week, keeps the place looking half-respectable.”
We smile at the understatement. Steele sits down next to me.
“So when did you and Moira call time?” she asks.
“Oh, a while back, 2014. You hit that age when you realize you’ve only a limited amount of time left, and you start thinking, Is this what I want for the rest of my life? Are you what I want? Moira decided no.” He scratches his jaw. “We’d had twenty happy-enough years, but sure, with no kids, no grandkids, no family to keep it together for, we’d drifted apart. Anyways, I got the house, even though it’d been Moira’s big project. She got everything else and less of a guilty conscience in return. She’s living in Toronto now. We speak occasionally. I wish her well.” He might be braving it out but there’s a hollow, forlorn look about him. Not so much a fish out of water as a pig up a tree, a man completely at odds with the surroundings he’s found himself in. He eases himself to the edge of the chair. “So, enough about my woes, what’ll you both drink? I’ve a lovely Barolo out there, although you won’t mind if I don’t join you. I’ve felt like boiled shite all day.” A sheepish grin. “I may have had a bad pint last night.”
I laugh. “Was it the sixth one or the seventh, you reckon?”
“Ah now, will you stop?” Shtop, the Irish “h.” He reminds me of my grandad Pat, and come to think of it, he looks a bit like him. “Blame that lush, Tess Dyer. I told her I’m not able for it these days, but sure, you might as well talk to the wall. She has hollow legs, that one.”
Steele turns to me. “You’d never think this man used to drink ten pints in the evening, then run 10K in the morning. Isn’t age a sickener?”
“You’re telling me, Katie, love.” I can’t help it—the Katie kills me. Cairns clocks my grin and raises his voice, pretending to scold. “And I don’t know what you’re smiling at, young one. It’ll happen to you, you can be sure of that. One minute it’s all discos and twelve-hour shifts on two hours’ sleep, the next you’re eyeing up shoehorns and taking naps in the day.”
Steele smiles. “And how are you, besides the bad pint? I heard you hadn’t been well?”
“Rheumatoid arthritis.” Not one ounce of self-pity. “’Twasn’t too bad at first. I mean, sometimes I’d hardly recognize me own feet, toes pointing off in all directions, and the bunions—Christ, don’t get me started. But like I said, ’twas manageable, anyhow.” He sighs, pulling at the crook of his neck. “Then a few years ago, they tell me my immune system’s attacking the joints in my spine, and that’s a whole different ball game. I packed up the job soon afterward. Always thought I’d make it to sixty-five, but sure, like a lot of things, ’twasn’t meant to be.”
“Do you miss it?” I ask.
“Do I miss it?” he echoes, as though he’s never actually considered it. “I miss the routine. Having a reason to set the alarm, you know? But I don’t miss the job, not really. The Met runs on caffeine and goodwill these days, Cat. Good people, overworked people, doing difficult jobs for not much more than you’d pay a postman—no disrespect to them o’course, grand job they do. And I’d felt removed from it for years, truth be told. I wasn’t a police officer anymore, I was a yes-man, a well-paid administrator. Do you know what made me call it a day in the end? ’Twasn’t really my back.” He shakes his head at the memory. “This young lad, a young DC, hands me his resignation, and as God is my witness, I’d never laid eyes on the fella. He was part of my team on a fecking wall chart somewhere, and yet I could have walked past him in the street, wouldn’t have known him from Adam.” He shoots Steele a reproachful look. “Christ, I should watch my mouth in front of the young one. The Met’s short enough on detectives as it is. Don’t want another one walking.”
“Ah, don’t worry. She’d never leave me, would you, Cat?”
“Stockholm syndrome,” I confirm.
Cairns laughs, attempting to heave himself out of the chair. “Right, will I pour you a glass of that Barolo?”
Steele’s hand’s up, stopping him. “No, no, we’re fine, Olly. Sit down, honestly. We can’t be too long, anyway—the young one has a date.”
He flashes me a crooked grin. “I’d say she’s not short of them.”
“And I’ve no idea what Barolo is,” I admit. “It’d be wasted on me.”
“Me too, until a few years ago, but I’m quite the wine connoisseur, these days. Sure, you have to fill the time somehow.” He settles back down again, crossing his stiff long legs at the ankle, his shrewd gaze shifting from me to Steele. “So if you don’t want my wine, and I doubt you want my company, what is it you ladies want, may I ask?”
For possibly the first time ever, Steele looks nervous, properly so.
“OK, so I could have picked her up wrong, Olly, and even if I’ve picked her up right, I’m not questioning your judgment, I want to be clear about that. I’m just picking your brains, that’s all.”
“Well now, that’s quite an opener, Katie, love. I might need that glass of wine yet.” His eyes are narrow. “But be my guest—you know me, I’m an open book.”
“It’s just that Tess said, implied, that certain avenues she wanted to explore during the Roommate case were shut down by the powers that be.” Her voice is steady but she’s scratching at a nail, defiling her gel manicure. “Holly Kemp’s boyfriend for one, but in particular . . .”
“The boyfriend had an alibi, Kate. And look, I know we’re hardwired to always suspect the partner, but Holly was seen entering the house of a convicted serial killer and never seen again. I think that gets the boyfriend off the hook, don’t you?”
“Possibly. But Tess also implied that you shut down the idea of Masters having an accomplice. Obviously it’s something we’re now open to considering, but I want to know why you didn’t buy it. I assume you’re the powers that be she’s referring to?”
“I suppose I must be, although she flatters me, bless her. I was a middle-management cog in a very big wheel.”
“Are you saying you were told to forget about an accomplice?”
“Well, no . . .” He straightens up a little, fingers drumming both knees. “I wasn’t told to do anything because I didn’t discuss it with anyone.”