Shed No Tears

by Caz Frear

  I say, “Sure, whatever that means.”

  She apologizes for the late hour. I tell her it’s fine, we’re still up anyway. We’re watching one of Aiden’s beloved B-movies—some utter nonsense about a vampire motorcycle that runs on blood, not gasoline.

  She says that after what she’s heard this evening, a vampire motorcycle doesn’t sound so unbelievable.

  Her last words are, “Get some sleep.”

  And I do. I get some. A short smudge of uninterrupted blackness, somewhere between the hours of three and five a.m.

  When I wake, the birds are singing, Aiden’s snoring softly, and the lady upstairs is stomping around already. And yet the world still feels off-kilter. Not changed, but charged somehow. There’s a current in the air that warns I’d be better off staying in bed.

  Aiden waking brings normality. A mutual analysis of last night’s sleep—him “like a baby,” me “ah, you know, off and on”—followed by a smooch that teeters on the edge of frisky, and then my morning cuppa, delivered promptly just before he leaves. Usually I fall back to sleep at this juncture, waking twenty minutes later, cursing myself stupid as I guzzle down cold tea. This morning, though, I stare at the ceiling, blocking out Dad and Fellows and the weight of what I’ve unleashed, with fantasies of me and Aiden in a chic Manhattan loft space. Mum choosing curtain fabric. Parnell now a lieutenant with the NYPD.

  27

  Steele gives us the fast version again, but there’s definitely something brewing, something magical up her sleeve. She’s got a look of supreme smugness about her. An air of knowing the gold medal is well and truly in the bag.

  “Seriously though, Kate? Can we really give this much credence to an anonymous phone call?”

  I nod in time with Parnell, mirroring his body language to make sure I’m coming across as suitably dubious.

  “No, Lu, but we can give credence to this.” She pushes a document across her desk. “’Cos I promise you, I didn’t sit on the phone to HMP Frankland for over an hour this morning for the good of my health. No, I wanted this.” She taps the document triumphantly with a ruby red nail. “Jacob Pope’s visitor list in the six weeks leading up to his attack on Masters—his mum, his sister, and his solicitor.” A sneer on the last word.

  “Why was his solicitor visiting?” I manage a good sneer myself. “Don’t tell me the bastard was appealing his murder conviction? He was edging toward ‘loss of control’ when I met him. Crime of passion, he reckoned—his girlfriend ‘disrespected him.’”

  Steele looks down, sorting through a pile of other printouts. “The more important question is, why was a solicitor who has nothing do with criminal law visiting him?”

  She holds up a screenshot, a LinkedIn profile:

  Nicholas Balfour. Funds Lawyer, PRF Asset Management.

  Parnell and I shrug in sync.

  Steele’s eyes flash. “Aha, well, Benny-boy isn’t the only one who can navigate his way around social media. Turns out Nicholas Balfour is married to one Maria Vestergaard.” She waits to see if the penny drops.

  “Vestergaard?” I jump in, the penny clattering to the floor. “Simon Fellows’ other half is a Vestergaard.”

  “Top marks, Kinsella. The very same. Erik Vestergaard is Nicholas Balfour’s father-in-law. Balfour visited Jacob Pope in Frankland on 15th April 2017, ten days before Pope killed Masters.” Another printout. “Pope then made three calls to the same pay-as-you-go number over the following ten days, including the afternoon before the attack. We know the number belongs to Balfour, as Pope had to register him as his legal representative so that the prison didn’t record their conversations.” She sits back, job done. “So the floor’s yours, m’dears. Theories?”

  There can only be one. It’s been ricocheting around my skull all night, and that was before this latest windfall.

  I take a breath, straighten myself up. “OK, Simon Fellows killed Holly Kemp because she either had something on him or a business arrangement had gone sour. But because of Serena Bailey’s ID, Christopher Masters becomes the assumed killer. Masters then does what plenty of manipulators do and refuses to confirm or deny, which is obviously a boon for Fellows, but doesn’t come with any guarantee. So when Fellows hears that his old chum, Jacob Pope, is playing house with Masters in Frankland—and let’s be honest, someone like Fellows would know the roll call of most prisons better than the governor—he decides to send in his honorary son-in-law, Nicholas Balfour, under the guise of Pope’s brief, to get a message to him—kill Masters and you and me are friends again. It’s a total win-win. Having Fellows onside is valuable to Pope in prison—Fellows’ name would hold a lot of sway when it comes to protection, if nothing else. And from Fellows’ point of view, the threat of Masters coming clean and the spotlight coming back on Holly is gone.”

  “Timing though,” says Parnell, scratching his head—not quite Stan Laurel, but not too far off. “Masters was in Belmarsh for nearly a year after he was first sentenced, and being local, Simon Fellows would definitely have had his tentacles in there. Why not have Masters killed then?”

  “Too hot?” suggests Steele. “Masters was still big news.”

  “There’s that,” I agree. “But also something like this, there’s only a certain type of person who’s going to agree to do it. You can’t pick just anyone and say, ‘Hey, fancy adding a long stretch to your sentence?’ You need a lifer. Pope got twenty-eight years for killing his girlfriend. He’d have been over sixty before he was even considered for parole. In those circumstances, I think you’d probably stop thinking about getting out and start focusing on how to make the next twenty-eight years as comfy as possible. Being on Simon Fellows’ Christmas card list is one way.”

  “Explain Arlo Rollins then,” says Steele. “He wasn’t a lifer. No history of violence at all, in fact, until he stuck a knife in Jacob Pope.” She slides another document across, that ruby red fingernail primed to turn this case on its head again. “They found a phone hidden in Rollins’ cell—he won’t say how he got it, who gave it to him. He won’t say anything, basically, but there were three calls to the same number Pope called last year—Nicholas Balfour’s number. The last call was Saturday afternoon. Rollins attacked Pope the next morning.”

  “Got to be old-fashioned intimidation,” says Parnell, sickened. “Kill or be killed—either you or someone you love on the outside.”

  “Fellows wasn’t hanging around,” I say. “Friday afternoon, we interview him and he realizes he’s finally been linked to Holly Kemp, even if we’ve got no proof to throw at him yet. Within two days, Jacob Pope is dead, silenced. He’s not taking any chances.”

  Parnell sighs. “We still don’t have any proof to throw at him. We’ve got a load of circumstantial. We’ve got our victim actually naming him as someone she was scared of. And now, we’ve got this. But it all amounts to zero. Nothing tangible.”

  Steele bites. “Hey, not so gloomy, Eeyore! We’ve got probable cause to turn Nicholas Balfour’s house upside down to find that phone, and if I can convince a judge that Balfour spends a lot of time at his daddy-in-law’s place, we might get a warrant for Fellows’ house too. And that could be a gold mine.”

  “And when do we turn Oliver Cairns’ life upside down?”

  Silence curls around the room.

  I can’t say I take too much pleasure in firing a direct shot at a dying man. But it’s obvious, surely? Oliver Cairns hand in glove with Simon Fellows.

  Predictably, Parnell’s cautious. “Cat, it was an anonymous call. We can’t be sure . . .”

  “Why?” I butt in. “What the caller said about Pope was bang on. So why would they be lying about a senior officer working with Fellows?”

  “Settling an old score, maybe? Either with Fellows or the Met. And as for Cairns, the caller didn’t name the officer, so be careful is all I’m saying.”

  “Oh, come on!” It’s a direct plea to Steele. I take her silence as permission to keep going. “Cairns consistently steered Dyer away from all
lines of inquiry that didn’t point to Masters, not to mention ordering her to get rid of Masters’ bank records. He can say he was trying to protect the case, but he wasn’t; he was derailing it. He played on Dyer’s loyalty and the fact he knew she was needed at home and therefore desperate to get Holly’s case solved too.” An afterthought. “And the caller implied the officer’s no longer ‘on the scene’—well, that fits.”

  “But he has money. His ex-wife was a multi-multimillionaire. Accepting bribes from an organized crime boss? There’s greed, then there’s lunacy.”

  “He and his wife were already on the skids. Maybe he thought it was time to build his own nest egg.” I bite my lip, knowing I might regret my next statement. “Or maybe it wasn’t about money. Maybe Fellows had something on him?”

  There’s a grayish undertone to Steele’s skin; she knows there’s a logic to what I’m saying, at least. “So come on then.” She leans forward, chin in hand. “You’ve obviously thought about this. Talk me through what you think could have happened.”

  The urge to holler “I don’t fucking know” almost overwhelms me. I feel like I don’t know anything anymore. Who I am. What I want. Where to live. What my police oath is even good for.

  Is there any fucking point to it all?

  “As I said before, Holly was involved with Simon Fellows.” My calm voice sticks two fingers up to the clamor in my head. “Something happens and he kills her. Worried she’ll be linked to him somehow, he steals her laptop, dumps her phone, does everything he can, but he’s still vulnerable. He doesn’t want Holly’s complicated life looked into, which he knows it will be—and it would have been if she hadn’t been given the ‘poor Masters’ victim’ tag straight off. So he calls his friendly police officer, Oliver Cairns. Says he has to help him. Holly’s friends, in the meantime, have told Dyer’s team—which is effectively Cairns’ team—that she was headed to Clapham that day and CCTV confirms it. And by that time they have Masters under arrest and he’s maintaining he was at Valentine Street all day on the 23rd—probably because he doesn’t want to admit that he’s just a sad old fuck who regularly drives three hundred miles north to pine over his ex-wife.”

  Parnell’s warming up a little. “I can buy that, actually. People assuming he committed another murder—that’s fine, no skin off his nose, he’s going away for life anyway. But having people think he’s a sad loser, hung up on his ex—there’s shame in that.”

  “Exactly.” I turn back to Steele. “So Cairns realizes they’ve struck lucky. If they can quickly shoehorn Holly into the Masters’ case, he can pull the strings and there’ll be no need to start looking into every corner of Holly’s life. She’s just another Bryony, another Ling, another Stephanie—she answered the wrong advert, pure bad luck. But to make it work, they need a witness. And a bloody good one. A ‘model citizen.’ Someone who’ll be believed even if Masters starts backtracking.” I gather a breath before saying the name that’s become as familiar as my own. “Serena Bailey. She’s always been our stumbling block. No matter how flimsy certain aspects of her story seem, we still can’t ignore the fact that she gave a spot-on description of Holly, far more detailed than anything released in the media. And the only way she could have known these details is if she genuinely did see Holly—which I’ve never been less convinced about—or if they were fed to her by the real killer, or someone close to the real killer.” I shrug. “Oliver Cairns.”

  I expect resistance, rebuttal. To be laughed at, or even kicked straight out the door. Because even to my ears, it sounds fantastical. The overelaborate product of a three a.m. restless mind.

  But it fits.

  With everything we know, with everything we think we know, it makes perfect, abhorrent sense.

  “A model witness is perfect,” says Steele, tapping her cheek. “It’s strong enough to get conclusions drawn, but probably not strong enough to get to court—Olly would have known that.” And with that one admission, Steele’s in. She’s open. She’s up for the discussion. “But why would Bailey agree to be involved?”

  “Money,” Parnell says, in a way that suggests it’s obvious. “She was pregnant, broke, struggling on a low wage.”

  “It seems like such an extreme resort, though,” I argue. “I mean, I’d be wanting a hell of a lot of money—and I’m talking life-changing money—if I was going to tell such a whopper of a lie in a murder investigation. And her bank records didn’t show anything sexy, and even if it was paid in cash, it doesn’t seem to have changed her life particularly. She still has the same career. Her flat is small—homely, I guess—but the estate’s pretty grim. I suppose we need to check if it’s rented or owned—if it’s owned, that could be interesting.” Something occurs to me. “When I interviewed her on Saturday, she did say something that . . .” I pause, trying to quickly work out if I’m reading too much into it.

  Steele’s patience is paper-thin. “Kinsella!”

  “She said she was in a ‘much better place’ by the time she met Robbie. I took it to mean emotionally, but she could have meant financially, I guess . . .” I shake my head. “Oh, I dunno, boss. I’m just not feeling money. People who do things purely for money tend to crack easier—and that woman is uncrackable, I’m telling you. It doesn’t matter how you catch her out, she just comes back to the same point—she saw Holly and that’s the end of it. It’s like she’s personally invested in us believing that. But in here”—I tap my chest—“not in her wallet.”

  Steele takes it all in, looking right, then left, finding no easy answers. “OK, well, we need to find a link between Serena Bailey and either Fellows or Cairns. Until we do that, all of this is just hunches and guesswork.”

  “Do we believe her about the prostitution?” asks Parnell, looking at me. “I know you’re not convinced it was her reason for being in Clapham that day, but she said she started in her early twenties and that must be fifteen years ago, give or take? Simon Fellows might be a bit more respectable now with his restaurant investments and what-have-you, but back then, brothels, clip joints, strip clubs—they were his bread and butter.”

  “And Cairns ran Vice in the midnoughties,” says Steele, eyes flicking between us.

  “But Serena doesn’t have a record,” I remind her.

  “We don’t know that for sure.” Parnell offers a note of warning. “The guidelines have changed now, of course, but it wasn’t so long ago a senior officer could delete a record off the system after a certain period of time, depending on the offense. If Cairns had done that for Serena, back in the day, maybe February 2012 was when he called in that favor.”

  “So you’re on board now?” I give him a weak smile, even though there’s nothing remotely heartening about it.

  “I don’t know, kiddo. God knows, I don’t want to be.” He turns away from me, looking at Steele with dead-eyed focus. “I’ll tell you something though, Kate. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that Fellows was tipped off that we were onto him—that we were coming to interview him last Friday. That merry dance all over London, for a start—that was him buying time, I’d put the house on it. And remember, Cat, he was cool as anything when we questioned him—dates, times, places reeled off, he didn’t even need to think about them. And don’t get me started on all that stuff with his granddaughter and the baking—that was a blatant piss-take. You came for guns, you got cookies. No question about it, he was ready for us, he was winding us up.”

  Steele’s head snaps up. “Well, if he was tipped off, it wasn’t Olly.” One small chink of hope and we’re back to Olly. “I did try to call him. I wanted to sound him out, see what he thought about Fellows’ name being linked. But his phone was switched off—I told Cat all this yesterday.”

  I nod. “Did you leave him a message mentioning Fellows?”

  “No. His phone wasn’t even connecting to voicemail. It was one of those automated messages—‘This phone is switched off. Please try again later.’ And I did keep trying, but he was in the hospital for hours.” She
sticks her thumbnail in her mouth, biting down hard on £50 worth of manicure. “I did speak to Dyer though.”

  “When?” asks Parnell.

  “Straight after I tried Olly. You pair had just left to go to Fellows’ place. I thought she was worth sounding out too.”

  “And what did you say to her?”

  “Exactly what I’d planned to say to Olly—what do you think about Simon Fellows’ name cropping up in connection with Holly Kemp?” She lets out two short breaths. I’m all but holding mine. “She cut me off, pretty sharp, said she was going to have to call me back. Next thing—well, an hour or so later, she turns up here, practically wearing a badge that says, I’M TESS. I’M HERE TO HELP. Remember, she was here when you got back?”

  She was.

  Steering us away from Fellows.

  Berating us about our lack of progress on Masters.

  Then accosting me in the ladies’, telling me, “You have to learn to play the game, Cat. There’s an art to keeping all sides happy.”

  All sides. The goodies and the baddies.

  The cops and the crooks?

  “Have we got this wrong?” I look from Steele to Parnell, waiting to be shot down, but from the looks on their faces, we’re all on the precipice of the same volcanic conclusion. “Because it makes as much sense as Cairns—more, probably. I hate to say it, but a woman with two young kids and a seriously ill husband would be a lot more susceptible to bribery than a man with a millionaire wife.”

  “And she worked Organized Crime,” adds Parnell. “I was there around the same time, remember.” He pauses, tapping the desk. “You know, I did think it was odd in that meeting when she said she’d always been more project-focused in OC. I thought she was just being shy about her achievements—I mean, she brought down some big names while she was there. Terence Slevin. Lee Whittlesea.”