by Louisa Scarr
‘We looked. We couldn’t find it.’
‘Try her wardrobe, it’s probably got a false bottom. Mum used to do the same.’
But Robin knows they’re short of time. The SOCOs will be out of the house by now; Amy Miller will have been released.
‘Get it for us,’ he begs.
‘No, Robin.’ She shakes her head, then glances through the doorway. She moves again, in a slow sway, her hair falling over his face. He meets her eyes, noticing the curve of her breast, the feeling of her sitting on his lap, moving closer.
‘Please,’ he whispers.
‘She’s my sister,’ Liv says. Her face is almost next to his, barely centimetres away. ‘She may be nuts, but she’s all I have.’
And then she leans down and kisses him.
‘Oi!’ Loud words are shouted from the doorway, and Robin feels hard hands on his arms. Liv jumps away as a large, meaty bouncer hauls him off the chair. ‘No touching the girls,’ the bouncer shouts.
Robin glances back. Liv’s standing in the room, hands on hips, smiling. It was deliberate, the kiss; she knew he’d get dragged away.
‘Okay, okay,’ he says, his hands raised above his head in surrender.
The bouncer propels him towards a side door. ‘Out!’ he hollers, and Robin goes without protest, the bouncer following close behind. Then he hears a yell from behind them.
‘And he didn’t pay,’ Robin hears Liv shout. He opens his mouth to protest, but the bouncer is on him again, pushing him out into the silent alleyway behind the club, then back against a wall.
The bouncer’s huge. Bulging biceps, white T-shirt stretched across defined abs. He glares at Robin with a roid-raged stare.
‘Hand it over,’ he growls, but then pulls at Robin’s jacket, prodding at his inside pockets. He takes the wad of cash that Robin withdrew from the cashpoint only an hour previously, but then he digs again, pulling out Robin’s warrant card.
The bouncer opens it and looks at the shiny badge, then the ID.
‘You’re a fucking copper,’ he growls.
‘Off duty,’ Robin says.
‘Still a fucking cop, whether you’re in uniform or out.’ And before Robin can speak he sees a blur in front of him, then a shock of pain as the bouncer’s fist connects with his eye. It pushes his head back, bouncing hard against the brick wall behind.
He stands for a second, leaning against the wall. His vision’s blurry, black leaching in from the edges, the bouncer still in front of him.
‘Are you the one that sold her the roofies?’ Robin mutters.
He’s not sure why he says it, except that something feels fitting as the pulse of agony grows across his face. A second blow connects to his stomach, then a third in his side. The punch folds him in two, winded, and his legs crumple, throwing him down to the concrete floor of the alleyway. His eyes are streaming; he’s unable to breathe. Pain everywhere. He tastes blood in his mouth; he must have bitten his tongue.
‘Don’t come back, fucking cop.’
He hears footsteps, then the slam of the metal door closing. Robin stays there for a moment, in a crumpled ball, next to the smell of the bins, the drip of leaking guttering. He listens to men on the street outside and takes a slow, juddering breath in.
‘Shit,’ he manages, at last, with little more than a groan.
He tries to open his eyes, but his left one is refusing to comply. He tentatively raises a hand to touch it, before pulling away as it stings bitterly in response.
Using the rough wall, he raises himself to his feet, then staggers out of the alleyway, back to his car. He passes people walking on the pavement, but nobody even gives him a second glance at this time of night. Just another man, in another fight. Getting what he deserved.
He climbs into his car and starts the engine. Every time he takes a breath he feels a sharp ache in his ribs. He can feel something warm running down his cheek, and pulls down the visor, looking in the tiny mirror at his face. Sure enough, there’s a cut just below his eyebrow. His eye is a mass of purple and red. He finds an old tissue and holds it there for a second, wincing at the fresh sting.
Then he puts the car into gear and drives to the police station.
67
Friday
At two in the morning, the police station runs on a skeleton staff, close to deserted. But it’s a good thing, Robin thinks, as he staggers through the empty corridors, blood running down his face. He walks into the empty incident room and takes the first aid kit from the wall, then carries it into the men’s toilets.
The overhead light is hard and bleaching, but he knows even without it he looks a state. His jeans are muddy from the alleyway, his hands dirty and grazed, black under his fingernails. He washes them, the water turning grey and pink from the blood, then he leans forward and peers at the mess the bouncer has made of his face.
He knows he should register it as a crime, get the guy formally charged. But there’s a whole load of questions he doesn’t want to answer if he does. He can only imagine the look on Baker’s face when he starts to explain why he was in a strip club in the early hours of the morning interviewing the sister of a key murder suspect, while having a lap dance. Oh, and she’s the one that he got the complaint about, the one he’d got drunk with before and she’d stayed the night at his place? And has he mentioned that she’s a hooker, too?
Hell, no. He’s going to stay quiet about this one.
He takes a large handful of toilet paper, soaks it in water, then dabs at his eyebrow. He cleans up the worst of the blood, noting with grim satisfaction that it’ll probably scar. But it’s stopped bleeding, and he doesn’t think it’ll need stitches. He should get some ice for his eye though, the swelling already causing him a problem, and settles for a wad of cold, wet toilet paper. Then he goes along to the rooms where all the rubbish from the Miller house is being kept.
The sooner he gets this lot sorted, the better.
* * *
‘Robin, what the hell?’
Even before he opens his eyes and looks at Freya, he knows the expression on her face. Disbelief, mixed with pure horror at what she’s seeing.
At five a.m., he decided to have a little pause, and took the hood down from his white crime scene suit and settled in a corner of the stinking, rubbish-strewn room. But the short break obviously turned into a nap, and now here she is.
He sits up, wincing as his stomach protests from the bruising last night.
‘What time is it?’ he mutters. He tries to open his eyes but only one is functioning.
‘What on earth happened to your face?’ Freya crouches next to him and tries to touch it. He winces and pulls away.
‘It’s a long story.’
‘So tell me.’
He sighs, then sees the coffee cup in her hand. ‘Is that for me?’ he asks. She passes it to him, then pulls a chair over to his side, waiting.
He slowly tells her the story of the strip club, and Liv. Her tale about teenage Amy and the life insurance. And then the bouncer.
‘So you got a beating for your efforts, but didn’t move the case any further forward,’ she says, and he nods, slowly. ‘Christ.’ She sits back on the chair. She looks nice – she’s had a shower, a good night’s sleep, put on clean clothes. Unlike him. He hates to think what he must smell like, but knows it’s probably masked by the lingering stink of this room.
‘And have you found anything in here?’ she asks.
He shakes his head and finishes his coffee. ‘You done next door?’ he says.
‘Yeah. I’ve bagged up the cling film tubes and boxes as evidence, sent it down to forensics in the hope of fingerprints.’ He looks at her, but she holds her hand up before he can speak. ‘And yeah, I know. If they’re hers then they’ll just say so what, it’s her house. But at least we can show that she put it there.’ She glances round at the rubbish piles. ‘Shall I come and help you with this?’
‘Sure?’ he says.
‘Yeah. But first, let’s get you tidie
d up.’
* * *
Freya ushers Robin up and out of the evidence room, then to the men’s shower room upstairs. She forces him in to get cleaned up, muttering, ‘I’ll find you something to wear,’ as she leaves.
The shower room is empty, its usual occupants – keen commuter cyclists and gym goers – having finished and left hours ago. Luckily there’s some shower gel someone’s left behind, along with a semi-wet towel hanging over a radiator. Robin gets undressed, putting his clothes in a grubby pile, then gets into the shower. He washes his hair, wincing as the shower gel hits the cut on his eye, something also stinging at the back of his head. He gets out, wraps the towel round his middle, then stands in front of the steamed-up mirror, looking with fascination at the red and purple bruise across his stomach. He’s never been a man to get into fights, so this physical damage is new to him. Mentally, the battered, bruised, broken feeling is familiar, but this pain, and the tangible reason for it, makes a nice change.
He leans forward towards the mirror to look at his face, then hears a knock.
‘Can I come in? Are you decent?’
Robin glances down at the towel. ‘Sort of.’
A hand comes round the door holding something grey in a plastic bag. He takes it and rips open the covering, realising she’s collected a standard-issue police tracksuit, normally intended for those in custody.
He puts it on quickly, not wanting to think how appropriate this outfit actually is. One statement from her and he could be in one of these for real.
‘Dressed?’ Freya asks.
‘Done,’ he replies, socks and trainers back on his feet.
She pokes her head round the door, tentatively checking, then comes into the room. She passes him a small parcel wrapped up in a blue and white tea towel.
‘Persuaded the canteen to give me this. For your face.’
‘I think that ship has sailed,’ he says, but he holds the ice pack to his eye anyway. ‘Can you look at the back of my head? I think there’s something there too.’
‘Sit down.’ She gestures to a chair, and he does as she asks, bending forward. He feels gentle fingers exploring his scalp, working their way through his wet hair. It’s a pleasant feeling and he closes his eyes for a second, feeling another swell of tiredness.
‘There’s a bump, and yeah, a scab here too,’ Freya says at last.
Robin opens his eyes, then clamps the tea towel to his eye socket, standing back up. ‘Banged it against the wall when he hit me,’ he says with a wry smile. ‘You should see the other guy.’
Freya snorts. ‘I very much doubt it.’ She steps away from him. ‘I think you’ll live.’
‘Thank you, Freya.’
‘I didn’t do anything.’
‘No, I mean…’ He pauses. ‘For everything. You know.’
He doesn’t need to say any more. She knows what he’s referring to. She just nods, then, to his surprise, steps forward and wraps her arms round him.
He stands there awkwardly for a moment, then does the same, resting his cheek on the top of her head as she stays buried in his chest. Then she pulls away and walks quickly out.
He waits for a second, looking at the closed door. Then he takes a long breath in and follows her out of the room.
68
She’s out of that stinking cell, out of the police station, and home. Last night the only thing Amy had the energy to do was go straight to bed, handful of pills from her emergency supply down her gullet. But this morning she runs a full bubble bath, pours a large glass of wine and slowly lowers herself into the hot water, the scent of lavender filling the steam-filled bathroom.
Her solicitor is right: they have nothing on her. He said Kal had been taken away to the local funny farm, so any testimony he’d given would be subject to doubt. But still, she’s pissed off with herself for relying on a man.
Her whole life she’s known she can only count on one person: herself. Even her own sister showed to be unreliable and useless by the time she was sixteen. Always drunk, always shoving something up her nose or into her arm. No: Amy knows she is alone in this world.
Once, she thought that Jonathan was the exception to that rule. When they first met, she saw something in him. His potential. He was a clever man, with a good job. They would buy a house, a nice new home, and have kids and be a family. But fuck, he never did what he was told.
And then he had the affair. With her. That cop, of all people.
The water’s growing cold, so Amy pulls herself out, wrapping a large fluffy towelling robe around her. She lets the water go, then carries her wine glass down the stairs to the kitchen, pouring another.
Amy got her first job at the age of fifteen. Pot washer in the local pub, but she worked hard and soon she was a waitress, then behind the bar the moment she turned eighteen. She showed some aptitude in the kitchen, and the chef took her under his wing, showing her the basics. More pubs, more restaurants followed; she yearned for the respect, for the kudos of working for the best places in town. She put in the hours, did the graft, but it wasn’t just that: she was prepared to go above and beyond. She would do anything to get the job she wanted. She made that perfectly clear.
And for every restaurant manager, every chef she opened her legs to in a storeroom, there was a wife or girlfriend who couldn’t find out. Favours worked both ways, as Amy would remind the men involved.
But she wasn’t like Liv or her mother. She wasn’t. She didn’t do it for money; she had enough of that. Sex can get you where you want; that’s something neither of them ever understood. Amy thinks of her mother, dying alone on the sticky lino floor of that council flat. Lying there for days, until the smell alerted the neighbour. That will never be her, Amy tells herself, looking round her pristine kitchen.
The crime scene officers have gone now, and Amy resolves to spend the day doing another deep clean. They didn’t leave too much of a mess, but Amy can still sense them in her house. Touching her things, looking for evidence. How ridiculous. As if they would find anything.
They’ve taken her pills, though. That is a pain. She’ll need to go out today, refill the prescription. There is no way she can do without those for long.
Amy stands up and pulls one of the cookbooks from the shelf, turning to the middle page. She takes out the newspaper clipping that she stored there, the one Liv had stolen from that detective. The complaint doesn’t seem to have put him off, but everyone has their weaknesses, and she wonders about his.
She picks up her phone and does a quick search. Trevor Stevens car accident. Multiple results fill the screen and she reads a few of them, topping up her wine as she goes. Liv was right; Stevens was made out to be a virtual saint. A picture of redemption and newly renewed zest for life. She snorts. No such thing.
One of the news reports mentions a sighting at the local petrol station before the crash, and a request for witnesses to come forward. She pulls up the site of the accident on the map.
There’s a petrol station less than a mile away. Amy wonders what the articles aren’t saying, and what more they could tell her. She dials the number.
An old man picks up, his voice full of age and tremor. She says hello, mentions the accident, but before she can go any further, he interrupts.
‘Are you a colleague of DC West’s? I meant to call you.’
So that detective, the blonde one, has been speaking to him. How interesting.
‘I work with Detective West, yes,’ Amy says without missing a beat. ‘Have you found anything new?’
‘Yes, actually. My grandson, well, he managed to track down those witnesses on the CCTV. The ones that were in that day? All digital, you know, nothing I understand.’
‘He did?’
‘Yeah, the couple? I can send a photo of their credit card information across—’
‘Actually, I’ll come to you,’ Amy says quickly. ‘Detective West doesn’t trust email, she says anyone can get access to it.’
The man chuckles. ‘Couldn’t a
gree more.’
‘And if I could have another copy of that tape, while I’m there,’ Amy adds, with a smile. But her hopes quickly fade.
‘I’m sorry, love. DC West took the only copy when she was here. Haven’t you got it?’
‘Yes, yes,’ Amy says quickly. ‘Just that she’s away, and I wanted to have another look. No problem, I’m sure these witnesses will be more than helpful.’
Amy hangs up, and puts her phone down slowly. Why is the blonde looking into a car accident from two years before? One linked to her own boss?
It doesn’t make sense to Amy, but one thing’s certain: she has one hell of an incentive to find out.
69
Freya walks quickly away from the men’s shower room, her heart thumping in her chest. That was stupid. She shouldn’t have bloody hugged him. But he looked so helpless, so pathetic, standing there, his face a mess, his hair wet, actually smelling nice for a change, that she couldn’t resist him.
But, Christ, that’s the last thing she needs. Fancying her boss? And one as screwed up as Robin? Hell, no. But there is no doubting some sort of attraction there, a connection that seems to be reciprocated.
Her phone rings, and she looks at the name on the screen, Steph, then feels an irrational flash of guilt.
‘Freya?’ Steph says, as she answers it. ‘I have the tox results for you. The ones from Trevor Stevens.’
Freya listens, grim-faced, then hangs up and pockets her phone. She debates what to do with the information. Tell him? But she doesn’t want anything to distract Robin right now.
She walks quickly to the rubbish room and pulls on a white suit. The smell is just as bad as it was yesterday, but she feels ready. She slept well last night, her belly full of terrible Chinese food, her body knackered from the long day at work. Her resolve is as strong as ever. She knows – yes, knows – that there’s something odd about Amy Miller. And this room holds the key. It has to.
Robin joins her, and pulls on his own white suit. They work quietly without speaking, a video camera running, wanting to avoid inflicting the stink on the admin staff this time. The rubbish is as disgusting as she knew it would be. Old coffee grounds mix in with everything, a gritty, wet black coating. Leftover food, things she can’t even imagine in their original form. They take photos but it’s impossible to separate the crap into individual lots of evidence, scooping it together into one big mess in the corner of the room.