Salt Lane

by William Shaw

  She crawled though Poplar, drivers inching into the narrow spaces between vehicles, cursing each other all around her. Her phone buzzed. It was a text from Ferriter. She had called the constable from South Mimms services, over a double espresso that she had gulped down to keep her awake, washing down some sweet millionaire’s shortbread for the added sugar boost.

  Now she had replied. ‘Freya Brindley. 1995. Sought for arson and murder.’

  Ah, she thought. Ah.

  That nerviness on Daniel Kay’s face as he had told her the name. Those parts of the past he was not so keen to share with the adoring, pliable ladies.

  At the duplex, Julian buzzed her in. ‘And?’ he said, at the door.

  ‘Please don’t get your hopes up,’ she said, ‘but I now know for sure that the woman who died in Kent was not your mother.’

  ‘Oh. It’s you again,’ said a voice from the top of the stairs. Lulu peered over the child gate, pale and tired.

  ‘Really?’ Julian grinned.

  ‘I believe she was a woman called Freya Brindley. Does the name mean anything to you?’

  ‘The dead woman’s definitely not my mother?’

  ‘Yes.’

  His face lit up. ‘I knew it. I bloody knew it.’

  ‘What about the name Freya Brindley?’

  ‘No, I’ve never heard of her.’ He led her up the stairs and opened the small gate.

  ‘Brindley appears to have been living under your mother’s identity for several years. I need to know why.’

  ‘You come back here stirring this stuff up,’ said Lulu. ‘Do you know what you’re doing to my husband?’

  Cupidi blinked. ‘I am not doing anything to him. He is helping me find a murderer.’ Last night she had been tramping over Romney Marsh searching for her daughter. He had been doing the same, in a way: looking for his mother.

  ‘He barely sleeps now. He’s getting into trouble at work. It’s affecting Teo too.’

  ‘Is he?’

  ‘I’ve taken a couple of days off, that’s all,’ explained Julian. ‘It’s not necessarily convenient. There’s a lot going on just now at work. They’ll understand, though.’

  His wife snorted. ‘You’re on a warning. He’s spending his time with alcoholics and drug addicts. He comes home smelling like a sewer. He’s leaving work most days to meet people who claim they’ve seen her.’

  ‘I’m sure she’s living somewhere near. There’s a woman who could be her who’s been seen a little north of here.’

  ‘I don’t actually want this policewoman in my house, Julian,’ Lulu said.

  ‘I invited her in.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t.’

  Lulu reached down and picked up a pile of printed sheets. ‘Look at this,’ she said. ‘Look at it. His mental health is being affected.’ She held them in front of Cupidi’s face: Missing: Woman who may answere to the name Hilary Keen. Age: 50+. Reward paid for information. ‘He’s paying people to come to our house with stories they’ve made up.’

  ‘I’m just asking for help.’

  ‘They’re conning you. All of them.’

  ‘The one who saw her in Brick Lane wouldn’t take money. He was sure it was her.’

  ‘He’s as stupid as you are, then. She’s a mentally ill homeless woman,’ said Lulu. ‘If she’s his mother… he needs protecting from himself.’

  ‘She’s ill. Which is why I should help her,’ said her husband.

  ‘He’s disappeared off looking for her. Every day, he’s going out in the evenings after work, tramping around. He has a son to look after. He has a wife.’

  ‘I have a mother,’ he said. ‘She’s really my mother. I knew she was.’

  ‘You have a family of your own.’ Lulu looked close to tears.

  ‘I just came to tell you. I thought you ought to know,’ said Cupidi. ‘I’ll leave you two. I should go.’

  ‘Good,’ said Lulu, hands on hips.

  And, though she was tired, Cupidi herself drove around the streets for half an hour looking for elderly white homeless women.

  She saw none. Too many young homeless men; a few women. She could not be hard to find, surely?

  Her own mother was standing on a stepladder, painting wood preservative on the planks of the small cottage.

  ‘It’s not yours, you know. He’ll be coming back some time.’

  ‘Should be done every year,’ she said.

  At the bottom of the ladder there was a jar lid full of stubbed-out cigarettes.

  ‘How’s Zoë?’

  ‘Still upset. She’s inside, sleeping.’

  ‘I should wake her. Take her back to the house.’

  ‘I’ll look after her. It’s OK.’ And she turned back to her painting. ‘Do you think last night was some kind of psychodrama about David coming here?’ She drew the brush back and forwards over the wood, pushing the hairs into the dry crevices. ‘She doesn’t trust you about him, you know.’

  ‘She really saw someone in trouble.’

  ‘But you didn’t find anybody. Who would have been walking around in the middle of the night?’

  ‘I think the girl she saw was real. It’s not like when you were my age. The country is full of people we don’t know about any more. They live in the cracks. We don’t even know how many of them there are.’

  ‘Maybe she did see someone. But she was upset, too. And behaving strangely. That’s real, too.’

  Cupidi lay in bed alone in her house that night and waited for sleep to come. Instead of narrowing, the distance between herself and her daughter was getting bigger.

  She thought about the woman who might be Hilary Keen. She would be sleeping in some shelter, or squat, somewhere hidden. The weather would be colder soon.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  When she opened her email first thing the next morning there was another request from the IPCC team for a follow-up interview.

  Ferriter came in backwards through the door. She was down to a single crutch now; in her free hand she held a cup of coffee from Starbucks. ‘I thought you didn’t drink that,’ said Cupidi.

  ‘Decaf.’

  ‘Anything from Najiba?’

  Ferriter shook her head. ‘She’s not at the flat either. Nothing.’

  ‘Damn.’ Cupidi closed the email from the IPCC without answering it. ‘Show me what you found on Freya Brindley.’

  Ferriter sat at her computer and entered her password. ‘The case was never closed. It’s pretty grim, I warn you. Come and see.’

  She double-clicked on a folder, then on a JPEG. The file must have been digitised some time ago. The grainy picture of Freya Brindley was an arrest shot from one of her drug convictions in the early 1990s. ‘I printed one out, too.’ She pulled one from a pile of paper on her desk.

  Cupidi took it, walked across the room and held it up next to the picture of the dead woman that was on the board. Though there were twenty-five years between the photographs, they were unmistakably the same woman. There was no doubt about it this time.

  ‘Listen to this, Sarge,’ Ferriter said. ‘In 1995 there was a fire at a traveller camp just outside of Evesham. It was in a small clearing in woodland. Six vehicles were destroyed. Two young boys, aged five and seven, were in one of them. Both dead. And another man was seriously injured, though he survived.’

  ‘Daniel Kay,’ she said.

  Ferriter peered at the screen. ‘How did you know?’

  That would explain the scarred face. It had been burns. ‘He’s the one who gave me Freya’s name.’

  ‘Bloody hell. I just spoke to someone at West Mercia Police about it, someone who worked on the case twenty-something years ago. It was arson. Someone deliberately poured petrol around a bus and set light to it, possibly intending to murder the owner.’

  ‘The owner was Daniel Kay.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘However, it went wrong. It was a windy night apparently. There were other accelerants present on the site and the flames spread through the place. The two boys were in a
nearby caravan which caught fire before anyone could rescue them. They both died. From interviews with the surviving mother, and other people from the community, it became clear that the fire was a result of an ongoing dispute on the site.’

  ‘Between Freya Brindley and Daniel Kay.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘Because I’m very clever. Carry on.’

  ‘They believe it was an argument—’

  ‘Over drugs and money.’

  ‘Give me a chance,’ she said, frowning. ‘That’s what they said. Two boys, aged five and seven. Jacob and Finn Olsson.’

  ‘And that’s them,’ Cupidi said, pointing to the photograph she had recovered from the remains of the caravan. Two smiling urchins in a sunlit field. They had names now: Jacob and Finn.

  The awful meaning of the photograph and why it had been kept sunk in. ‘Freya Brindley killed them by mistake when she was trying to get revenge on Daniel Kay.’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Ferriter, looking at the picture.

  ‘If it’s them, and I bet you it is, then Freya Brindley kept the photo of the two boys with her for the rest of her life. She had it above her bed.’

  Ferriter shook her head. ‘Why would you do that? To wake up every morning and see them. And to know what happened. That’s gruesome.’

  Cupidi looked at the photograph and imagined Freya Brindley. ‘Maybe. Maybe not. She had done a terrible thing. I think she wanted to remind herself. Punish herself, maybe.’

  Officers were starting to stream into the incident room for the morning’s meeting, clutching mugs of tea and sheets of paper.

  ‘So they are convinced it was her that set the fire?’

  ‘Yep. Definitely her. The mother of the dead boys gave a full statement to the police. She knew who had killed her children, for sure.’

  ‘What about Daniel Kay? Was he arrested?’

  ‘They charged him with possession of a controlled substance but the case was dropped because of his injuries. He was pretty badly burned, apparently. He refused to say that Freya Brindley was trying to kill him, but there was enough evidence from the others. But the thing was, nobody’s ever found Ms Brindley. She seems to have vanished completely from sight.’

  ‘Until she turned up in our ditch. Because she was living under the assumed identity of Hilary Keen. The real Hilary Keen had left the country and was living in Spain off her head on drugs.’

  ‘Jesus. What a miserable story,’ said Ferriter. She picked up her coffee, took a sip and made a face. It had gone cold.

  Cupidi let Constable Ferriter tell the whole story again when the room was full.

  The young woman stood at the front of the room, explaining the whole thing in detail, pointing to the photographs, one by one.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Sergeant Moon. ‘What about the children?’

  ‘Apparently they were just innocent bystanders. Their mother had pulled onto the site a couple of days before. As far as the West Mercia Police could figure, their mother knew nothing about the conflict, poor woman.’

  ‘Poor kids,’ said a detective constable. ‘At least Freya Brindley got what she bloody deserved.’

  ‘Good job,’ said McAdam. ‘Very good job.’

  ‘Only we still don’t know who killed her,’ said Cupidi, finally.

  ‘Stanley Eason,’ somebody said.

  ‘No. We still don’t know that. Don’t you see? We have to consider whether Freya Brindley was murdered because of her involvement in the incident in Evesham in 1995. Or whether she was still involved in dealing drugs.’

  ‘We’ve tried that avenue,’ someone said. ‘There’s nothing to suggest that she was dealing.’

  ‘But we do know that she was guilty of identity theft, manslaughter and/or attempted murder,’ said Cupidi ‘She was not a nice woman. I’d say it’s odds on she wasn’t simply the victim of a robbery and murder by an unscrupulous landlord – a man with no previous record. She was involved in something, but we just don’t know what yet. And obviously, it’s a good thing Inspector McAdam here took the decision to keep the case open, otherwise we’d never have known any of this.’

  McAdam nodded his head. Out of the corner of her eye, Cupidi saw Ferriter rolling her eyes. When she turned to look, she was mouthing, ‘Creep.’

  Cupidi smiled back at her and winked.

  Cupidi’s phone rang. Sergeant Moon was sitting next to her, taking notes about Brindley’s record. Ferriter was next to him, tapping on an open laptop.

  ‘Can you get it?’ Cupidi asked Moon. ‘If it’s Dolores Umbridge from the IPCC, tell her I’m busy.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Didn’t you read Harry Potter?’ said Ferriter. She leaned across Moon and picked up the handset.

  ‘I’ll ask,’ she said, cupping her hand over the receiver. ‘It’s a Superintendent David Colquhoun.’

  ‘Tell him I’m not available.’

  ‘She’s not available, sorry.’ She put down the phone. ‘Oooh.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Is that who I think it was?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Cupidi.

  She leaned past Moon. ‘Your ex. From London.’

  ‘How did you know about him?’

  ‘Just goss,’ she said.

  ‘Gossip? So everyone knows.’ Cupidi looked around the office angrily. People concentrated on their screens or phones.

  Ferriter looked down at her laptop. ‘Not everyone.’ The phone rang again. They both looked at Moon, who picked up the handset a second time.

  Moon listened for a second, then said, ‘It’s him again.’

  ‘Christ’s sake.’

  ‘He says it’s important.’ And handed the handset to Cupidi.

  And David’s voice was saying, ‘Don’t cut me off, please. I have something important to say.’

  ‘This is my work number,’ said Cupidi.

  ‘No, listen. Please. You think this is all about you,’ he mimicked. ‘We’ve found her.’

  ‘What?’

  The office around her was silent, and she was conscious of everyone in the room straining to hear the conversation.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  ‘We’ve found Hilary Keen. She is in the Royal London Hospital right now. She was pulled off the street half an hour ago by one of the officers from Whitechapel. She had been sleeping in Victoria Park, apparently.’

  ‘And where are you?’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m nowhere near Dungeness. I’m back at our house in London clearing out my belongings. Cathy said I have to be out by the time she’s back from Dungeness.’

  She took a slow breath. ‘I’m sorry to hear that, David.’

  There was a long silence. ‘Right. I‘d better let you get on with it.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘OK,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ said Ferriter, eyes wide as she ended the call.

  ‘He’s found the real Hilary Keen. She’s in London.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  Cupidi was used to having to tell members of the public that a relation was dead. This time it would be different. She lifted the phone again, to tell Julian Keen that his mother was alive.

  As Cupidi walked in, they were sitting together on the grey metal benches at the entrance to the A & E unit of the Royal London on Whitechapel Road.

  Julian, with his arm around Hilary, his eyes red from crying.

  ‘I want you to meet my mother,’ he said, as if they were at a garden party. ‘She’s been a little unwell.’

  She was bird-like, thin and wizened from the sun. Her grey hair was matted and greasy, and her trousers were filthy. She reeked of the thick acid smell of people who have slept in their own clothes for days on end. Yet Julian held his arm around her and smiled.

  ‘Hello, Hilary,’ said Cupidi. ‘Your son has been looking for you. So have I.’

  The woman nodded.

  ‘They found her in the park. A local copper noticed her. She was unconscious. She had been sleeping und
er the bandstand. I think they got to you just in time, didn’t they?’ He ran his hand over her head.

  He stood and walked a few yards away, leaving the woman blinking in the brightly lit atrium. She looked worn out, ready to fall asleep at any second.

  ‘Are you trying to find her accommodation?’ asked Cupidi. ‘I don’t suppose you can take her home.’

  ‘I’ve been trying to get her a bed here. They say they don’t have room. I was thinking of renting her a place in a hotel. I’d have to get her cleaned up first, though.’

  Cupidi looked at her. ‘She doesn’t look well.’

  ‘They think she’s been using heroin again. Or taking something. I will take her home. But not yet. Lulu is not ready.’

  ‘Does she know where you are?’

  ‘I think she’s going to divorce me.’

  The second one today, Cupidi thought. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  Julian nodded. ‘I can’t choose between them. It’s not fair to ask.’

  In A & E, rows of people sat, waiting to be attended to. A nurse was speaking loudly on the phone.

  ‘Give me a minute,’ said Cupidi. ‘I need to make a call.’

  She stepped out of the doors, pulled out her phone and called her mother. ‘I need you to move back to the house, back with us. Only for a few days.’

  Her mother sounded annoyed. ‘I suppose so,’ she said.

  When she ended the call, she turned back to Julian. ‘I have a place she can stay. It’s near me, in Kent. I know it’s not very convenient for you, but she’ll be safe there. Come down, get her settled, then go back to your wife and child until they’re ready.’

  They led her out of the hospital towards the police car, one at each elbow. There was not much to her at all.

  ‘Do you know anywhere we can get a good coffee?’ Cupidi asked. ‘I’m going to need it.’

  She drove until she reached the A2, then travelled down it until the city started to thin out. When she looked in the rear-view mirror, they were both awake, saying nothing.

  ‘So, Hilary,’ she said eventually. ‘Tell me about Freya.’

  Hilary Keen’s pale eyes looked directly back at her. Cupidi suddenly saw her as the young woman she had been over twenty years earlier. Stunningly pretty, Daniel Kay had said. I mean, really, really beautiful.