by John Harvey
Most weeks, Tuesdays or Wednesdays, quiet nights, Derek would come round to her and they would order Chinese, watch a DVD in bed; other times, Jennie would go to his place and he would cook. Jennie kept a few things now in his wardrobe, had half of his bathroom cabinet to herself.
“So, Sherlock,” Derek said, greeting her at the door with a generous glass of sauvignon blanc, “how was it?”
“Strange.” Lifting her face toward him, she took the glass from his hand as he kissed her mouth. A moment later she kicked off her shoes.
“Strange how?”
“I don’t know. Just—well, strange. Weird. Sitting there, all civilized, with this man who could know what has happened to my sister.”
“You think he does?”
“I don’t know. He says no, but...” Jennie took a big gulp of wine. “People lie, don’t they? All the time.”
She hoisted herself up on to one of the kitchen stools. Derek was in the middle of making some kind of pasta sauce—mushrooms, anchovies, onions, tomatoes—and was wearing a cook’s apron over a white T-shirt and black linen trousers.
“The copper,” Derek said, “ex-copper, what did he reckon?”
“Thought he was okay, I think. Believed him, or at least he said he did, about seeing Claire...”
“He did fess up to seeing her?”
“Yes. Three times.” Jennie hesitated. “Slept with her, too.”
Derek grinned. “Fast worker.”
“It’s not funny.”
“I know.”
“Said he wanted to see her again, but she said no.”
“Couldn’t have been up to much in the old bed, then.”
Jennie shook her head.
“What?”
“Think that’s the answer to everything, don’t you?”
“No.” He rested his hand on her shoulder and she shrugged it away.
“I’m not in the mood.”
“Okay, okay. Relax. Stick something on the stereo while I see to this. Unless you want to make a dressing for the salad? Only not too much of that walnut oil this time, yeah? Just a touch.”
Jennie set aside her glass and eased down from the stool. She thought she could probably do both, make the dressing and find a CD. That Jill Scott she’d given him for his last birthday...
Chapter 10
AWAKE EARLY AS USUAL, ELDER QUICKLY SHOWERED, shaved, and dressed; a pair of swans was drifting past as he walked outside and down the steps toward the water’s side.
The last thing Jennie had said to him the previous evening, before driving home: “You don’t think it’s hopeless, do you? I mean, wherever she is, you do think she’s all right?”
“Yes,” he’d lied, “I’m sure she is.”
What? Holed up in some country cottage, waking even now to the sound of birds and the promise of fresh coffee and warm bread, newly picked mushrooms, perhaps, and lightly poached eggs?
He walked briskly, lengthening his stride as he passed under the first bridge, taking himself past what had previously been a phalanx of slowly crumbling warehouses and had now become, for the most part, loft apartments or smart bars. An old British Waterways sign was still discernible in fading white, high to his right. When he and Joanne had first moved here, not so many years before, Katherine about to start secondary school and not yet on the cusp of her teens, everything had seemed to Elder full of promise. New jobs for Joanne and himself, in time a new house, new lives.
“Fuck!” he said to nothing and no one. “Fuck and fuck again!”
He kicked a stone out onto the canal and sent a bevy of ducks scattering noisily. Above, the sky had taken on that peculiarly leaden look that presaged snow. Mid-April, for God’s sake. How could it snow?
Hands in pockets, he turned back toward the hotel.
Back in his room, he looked again at the printout he had made of Claire’s inbox; there were ten addresses worth contacting, ten people to be asked about any possible contact with her, ten people to be visited and seen.
He thought again about Jennie’s reaction to Stephen Singer, running over the morning in his mind and trying to see Singer as Jennie had seen him, feeling for the same off-key, slightly threatening atmosphere. Trapped? No, it hadn’t been how he had felt. Maybe you had to be a woman, brought up on Alice in Wonderland, to understand? Or just a woman? Perhaps that was enough.
THE STUDENT HOUSE IN WHICH KATHERINE WAS LIVING had bins out front filled to overflowing, a blanket serving as a curtain draped across one of the upstairs windows, an oversize moose in the front window, coloured streamers dangling from its orange horns.
The young man who eventually came to the door was wearing scabby jeans, a blue woollen hat pulled over his ears, and nothing in between.
“Kate!” he called back up the stairs. “Someone for you.”
He disappeared into the back of the house, leaving Elder on the doorstep. It was fully five minutes before Katherine emerged, a quilt round her shoulders, bare legs.
“It’s not too cold out,” Elder said. “I thought we’d go for a walk.”
She looked at him as if he were truly mad.
BY THE TIME THEY ARRIVED AT THE PARK, THE FIRST FEW flakes of snow had started to drift aimlessly down, feathering in the wind. Katherine vainly protesting, Elder set off at a healthy clip down toward the lake, but by the time he had settled into a more sedate pace, she had hurried past and was urging him on.
From the far side of the water, the baroque towers of Wollaton Hall were only dimly visible through a haze of shifting white.
“Jesus!” Katherine said. “We’re crazy. You know that, don’t you?”
Elder grinned and for twenty or thirty yards he stayed close with her as she started to run. But Katherine had been a county athlete as a girl, and even out of training she had him comprehensively beaten.
When they reached the slope that would take them back to the stable block and its café, Elder was standing, hands on hips, bent double, desperate to catch his breath.
“That,” Katherine said with a note of triumph, “will teach you to hoick me out of bed on a Sunday morning.”
Elder grinned.
Along with large cups of hot chocolate, Katherine had a cheese and ham toastie, Elder a well-stuffed bacon roll. Leaning back against one of the long wooden seats and sheltered from the wind, they relaxed. There were a few families there with kids and dogs; an elderly couple in sensible walking gear; several singles thumbing through the Sunday papers.
They talked easily about Katherine’s course, about some of the other students in the house, most of whom were already at university; skated over the subject of her mother and Martyn Miles. Katherine told Elder when he asked that, yes, she was still in contact with her ex-boyfriend, Rob Summers, who was now studying for an MA in creative writing in North Wales, but just as friends. Nothing serious, okay?
Elder wondered if Summers was still supplementing his income by selling dope, but he forbore asking.
When, a little over an hour later, he dropped Katherine back at the house, she gave him a kiss on the cheek and a hug and promised to call him later in the week.
“Dinner, right?”
“Right.”
Even now, watching her walk away was like watching a part of himself move out of reach.
He was almost back at the hotel, just pulling off the London Road roundabout, the snow now little more than an occasional flurry, when his cell began to ring. It was Jennie.
“Hang on a minute,” Elder said, turning into the car park and coming to a stop in the first available space. “Okay, now I can talk.”
Jennie’s voice was high-pitched, the words tumbling out.
“It’s Claire. Claire. She’s here. I went round to the bungalow. I don’t know why. Like I used to. You know, Sundays. I thought I’d just drive past, but there was a light on inside. I couldn’t believe it. I let myself in and there she was. In the bedroom.”
“Jennie, that’s great news.”
“No, you don
’t understand. She’s dead.”
Chapter 11
SOMEONE WAS GIVING THEIR LAWN THE FIRST GUT OF the season, the sound of the mower distant and low. The day had changed, soft light filtering through a faint straggle of cloud; the earlier snow, where it had settled, was long melted and gone. At intervals along the street, trees were coming slowly into blossom, pink and white. Jennie’s car was parked at the curb, the door to the bungalow ajar.
The blinds in the bedroom had been partly opened, the faded pink of the walls muted and indistinct. Claire Meecham lay at the centre of the bed, eyes cloudy and open, covers pulled up toward her chin. Jennie was sitting, shadowed, at the side of the room, head down, fingers wound into a knot.
“Jennie...”
She raised her face for a moment, then blinked away.
“I’m going to put on the light.”
Jennie shielded her eyes.
Elder stepped around the bed and lifted back the flowered quilt. At first glance, Claire was fully dressed save for her shoes: cream-coloured blouse, black skirt. Her hair seemed to have been brushed neatly into place. Her left arm was angled across her body, the other close by her side. A silver chain was fastened at her neck, the ruby pendant resting against the faintest suggestion of bruising on her skin.
The ancient teddy bear, frayed and worn, was propped against the inside of the crooked arm, its single glass eye reflecting the light.
Elder lowered the cover carefully into place.
Dry and harsh, a sob broke from Jennie’s throat.
“Come on,” Elder said, “let’s go into the other room.”
Jennie shook her head. Makeup was smeared, wet, across her face.
“Come on,” he said again. Reaching down, he raised her from the chair and led her into the living room, helping her down onto the small settee.
“You phoned the police?” he asked.
“No. No. I called you first. I didn’t know... I didn’t know what to do.”
“That’s okay.”
Elder took his cell from his pocket, hoping Maureen Prior’s home number would come to mind. Third time of trying, he got it right. She didn’t seem too pleased at having her Sunday disturbed, but listened all the same. “Give me ten minutes,” she said, and broke the connection.
Elder sat opposite Jennie while, fingers uncertain, she stripped the cellophane from a fresh packet of cigarettes.
“Tell me what happened,” he said, “from when you arrived.”
Her lighter flared.
“The police will ask you, take you back through it, more than once. It might help to go through it with me first.”
Eyes narrowing, Jennie drew smoke into her lungs.
“There’s not much more than I told you already. I’d gone out in the car to get petrol, cigarettes. Then, I don’t know why, I came up here. It’s not as if I was expecting Claire to be here or anything. I couldn’t even get in; you’ve got the key. I just drove past, turned, and stopped outside. Sat there. And then I saw the light. Inside. I couldn’t get out of the car quick enough. She’s here, I thought, she’s back. I raced up to the door, rang the bell, and knocked. Shouted through the letterbox. Claire, Claire, her name over and over again. And when I banged on the door again, harder, it came open. Just a little. It must have been on the latch. I went in and called again, tried here and the kitchen, and then I saw the bedroom door was shut, and so I thought that’s where she must be, in there lying down, one of her migraines.”
Jennie’s fingers were tight on Elder’s arm.
“When I saw her in the bed I thought I’d been right and I tiptoed round, not wanting to wake her, but just so happy that she was back. I looked down at her and thought, yes, she’s peaceful, she’s resting, when she wakes up she’ll be better. And I bent down to kiss her, just on the forehead, and her skin, it was cold. I looked at her eyes and they were... they were...”
Jennie pitched forward and, her face against his shoulder, Elder held her fast.
Minutes later, when he heard the car arrive, he eased Jennie back against the settee and went to the door.
Maureen Prior was wearing a loose cotton jacket and blue jeans, not-so-new trainers on her feet, no makeup, hair pulled back off her face: Elder thought it might be the first time he’d seen her at a crime scene so casually dressed.
“You know how many weekends I’ve had off in the last month, Frank? How many since Christmas?”
“Not many, I guess.”
“Too right.”
Elder grinned sympathetically and got no response.
“This woman,” Prior said, “she’s the one you’ve been looking for?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, let’s take a look.”
Elder turned and followed her into the bungalow. Within a short while, the whole panoply would be following in their wake.
Prior stood a while with Elder at her back, taking in the room. Technicians would record the scene before the pathologist set to work, but photographs and videotape, however accurate, were never the same, one remove always from the real thing.
Stepping forward, she snapped on gloves. “The skin here at the neck, Frank, it’s scarcely bruised.”
Pressure enough to have broken the hyoid bone? They would soon know. Elsewhere, where it was visible, the skin had taken on a marbled appearance, through which the veins close to the surface had become more conspicuous.
“She’s been dead a while, Frank. From the state of the body, six or seven days.”
Elder nodded.
“The person who found her,” Prior said. “The sister—she’s still here?”
“Yes.”
“Holding up?”
“Just about.”
JENNIE HAD BEEN TO THE BATHROOM AND REPAIRED HER face. Smoked another cigarette. She answered Maureen Prior’s questions as straightforwardly as she could, glancing at Elder occasionally for reassurance.
“Is there anything you want to ask me?” Prior said when Jennie had finished.
Behind them, soft-footed, men and women in protective clothing moved patiently from room to room.
“Claire,” Jennie said. “The body... what will happen?”
“She’ll be taken to Queen’s Medical Centre. There’ll be a postmortem.”
“She’ll be cut open,” Jennie said quietly.
“The pathologist will carry out an examination. Do what’s necessary to establish the cause of death. Anything else that might help to clarify what happened.”
“She’ll be cut open,” Jennie said again.
“Under Home Office guidelines...”
“Cut open and stitched back up.” Louder now.
“Yes,” Prior said.
Tears filling her eyes, Jennie fumbled for another cigarette.
“Is there anyone you want us to call?” Prior asked. “Someone you could sit with for a while? Family or...”
“That’s my family, lying dead in there.”
“I’m sorry. I know, it’s just...”
“My family.”
“What about Derek?” Elder said, remembering the name. “You want me to give him a ring?”
“No, not now. Not yet. I don’t want to see him just yet.”
“Hang on here a minute,” Elder said.
Marjorie Parker was at home, watching the to and fro with interest. Of course, she’d be happy to provide Jennie with a cup of tea and a place to sit quietly, out of the way. Elder couldn’t be sure how long it would be before someone from the local press came sniffing round, doubtless eyeing Monday’s front-page headlines. Some officer in the know would already have made a call, earned himself a pint or two. Marjorie Parker, Elder felt, would give any reporter short shrift.
Back in the bungalow, Elder found Maureen Prior taking a last look at Claire Meecham’s body before it was removed. The hair carefully combed and brushed; the body neatly dressed, laid out, at rest: everything similar if not the same.
“You know what this makes me think of?” Elder said.
Elder nodded.
“Irene—what was her name?”
“Fowler. Irene Fowler.”
“Long time ago, Frank.”
“Even so,” Elder said. “Even so.”
EIGHT YEARS BEFORE, 1997, ELDER HAD BEEN NEW TO the city; new to the Major Crime Unit, a detective inspector up from the Smoke. The older officers, some of them, still called it that. London—the Smoke.
Maureen Prior, recently promoted to detective sergeant, had been given the job of showing him the ropes; somewhat grudgingly, Elder had felt. It would be a long time before he would win her trust, even longer her respect.
The call had come through midmorning, Elder’s third day on the job. Irene Fowler, fifty-seven years old and the executive director of a small food distribution company, in the city for a DTI-sponsored conference on expanding trade possibilities beyond the EC, had been found dead, fully dressed, in her hotel bed.
One hundred and forty-seven separate witness statements later, close to three thousand hours of police time, only two suspects had emerged: both were arrested, questioned, and re-leased. No one was ever charged with Irene Fowler’s murder.
Elder’s first murder investigation within Major Crime.
Its failure printed indelibly on his memory.
“If you’re right, Frank,” Prior said, “we need to talk.”
TWENTY MINUTES LATER THEY WERE SITTING IN THE front seat of Prior’s five-year-old Honda, parked by the side of Queen’s Medical Centre, and drinking rancid coffee from the cafeteria; Elder filling her in on what he knew of the background to Claire Meecham’s murder.
Earlier, Jennie had convinced Elder she was all right to drive herself home; she would come in to the police station the next morning and answer more questions. For now what she needed most was rest.
“They were close, then?” Prior said. “Jennie and her sister?”