Ash & Bone (15 page)

On his way back down the hill, Elder stopped outside one of several charity shops and browsed through two boxes of books. Tom Clancy. Jeffrey Archer. Several women called Maeve. No matter, he still had another hundred or so pages of his Patrick O'Brian to go.

There was a photograph of Maddy Birch on the wall, staring back at the camera, unsmiling; recent, Elder assumed, lines on her face she'd not have liked, the odd grey hair.

Neither Karen Shields nor Mike Ramsden was on the premises; the message Karen had left was vague, they might be back, they might not.

A detailed map showed where Maddy's body had lain, where her clothing, her possessions had been found. Elder remembered standing there that morning, the relative quiet in the midst of so much inner-city activity and noise; imagined it again as it would have been that night, that evening. Maddy waiting, shifting her sports bag from one shoulder to the other, glancing again at her watch, the hands luminous in the half-dark.

Elder looked at the photographs once more, Polaroids taken at the scene. Maddy's arms were bare. No watch.

DS Sheridan was ensconced behind several hundred megabytes of PC.

'Sherry,' Elder said, 'disturb you for a minute?'

Sheridan pressed 'save', removed his glasses and blinked. 'Go ahead.'

'Her watch. Maddy's watch. Was she wearing one that evening? Do we know?'

Sheridan shook his head. 'Nothing listed as far as I can remember. I can check, but no, I'm pretty certain.'

'How many officers do you know,' Elder said, 'who don't wear a watch?'

'Not to say she wore one off duty.'

'In which case she'd have left it at home. The stuff that was in her flat, where's it all now?'

'As far as I know, everything was packed up and sent to her mother.'

'But there'll be an inventory?'

Sheridan nodded towards the computer. 'On here somewhere.'

'Check it out for me, would you? And maybe you could pass a message to double-check with the mother?'

'Will do.'

'Oh, and Sherry, one other thing. Maddy's arrest record. Anyone who's been inside and recently released. That's been checked, I suppose?'

Sheridan nodded. 'One of the first things we did. Not sure offhand how far back we went, though. I can get you a list.'

'Thanks. Let's make sure we looked at Lincoln as well. Someone she put down for a long stretch, maybe, who might have had reason to feel aggrieved, bear a grudge.'

'Okay.'

'Thanks, Sherry.' Elder rested a hand briefly on his shoulder. Get the wrong side of the office manager, he knew, and you were pushing a boulder uphill from day one.

* * *

Steve Kennet was four storeys up, sitting astride a roof beam atop one of those late-Victorian semi-detached houses that, in Dartmouth Park, fetched upwards of a million and a quarter pounds, a million and a half. Elder shouted upwards, raising his voice above the distortions of a small transistor radio that was dangling from the scaffolding. After several moments of misunderstanding, Kennet came down cheerfully enough, wiping his hands on a piece of towel hanging from his belt.

'How's it going?' Elder asked, nodding back up.

Kennet's smile was honest and open. 'Should've been finished well before Christmas. Would have been if not for the weather. Two blokes I work with've already started on another place up Highgate Hill. Part of the old hospital. Turning it into flats.'

'You don't mind if I ask you a few questions about Maddy?'

'Still got nobody, huh?'

'Not yet.'

Kennet cleared his throat of dust and spat neatly into the side of the road. 'Go ahead.'

Before sitting on the low wall outside the house, Kennet took a slender pouch of tobacco from the back pocket of his jeans, a packet of papers from the top pocket of his plaid shirt. His face and the backs of his hands were streaked with dirt and dust.

Elder sat down alongside him.

On the opposite side of the street, a young au pair went by pushing a small child in a buggy, talking excitedly into her mobile phone in a language Elder didn't understand.

Methodically, Kennet began to roll a cigarette.

'Maddy, how did you meet her?' Elder asked.

'Usual way, in a pub. Holloway. She was there with that pal of hers. Vanessa. To be honest, that's who I was interested in first off. Vanessa. You've met her?'

Elder nodded.

'Then you'll know what I mean.' Kennet wet the edge of the paper with his tongue. 'Up front, I s'pose that's what you'd say. Not shy about coming forward.' When his lighter didn't work first time, he gave it a quick shake. 'I was with a mate. We went over and sat with them. His idea, really. After a bit, my mate drifted off. Vanessa, she was dead lively - she'd had a few, I dare say — whereas Maddy, mostly she was just sitting there, smiling a little, you know, not unfriendly, but not — what could I say? — obvious. What she was after.'

'And you liked that?' Elder said.

Kennet grinned. 'S'pose I did. What bloke wouldn't? End of the evening I got both their numbers, but it was Maddy I called. She seemed surprised, I remember that. Thought I'd made a mistake, got the numbers mixed up.'

'And you went out with her for how long?'

'Few months. Three. Couldn't've been more.' He clicked his lighter again with no response. 'Haven't got a light, have you?'

"Fraid not.'

Kennet crossed the pavement to the car parked at the kerb, unlocked it and reached inside the dash for a box of matches.

'You didn't get on as well as you'd thought,' Elder said.

Kennet dropped the spent match towards the gutter and drew deep on his cigarette. 'No, it wasn't that. We got on fine. Least I thought we did. It was just — oh, I don't know, what would you call it? — circumstances, I suppose. And, to be honest, I think she lost interest. We were supposed to meet a few times and she called up, more or less last-minute, and cancelled. Got so every time the phone rang I knew that's what it was going to be.'

He looked at Elder and then off down the street.

'So you broke it off?' Elder said.

'Yes.'

'You did?'

'Yes.' More emphatically this time.

'Not Maddy?'

'No. Look —'

'It's okay. I'm just trying to get a clear picture of what happened.'

'Why?'

'What do you mean?'

'Why is it so important? Why d'you need to know? I've been through all this before, you know.'

'I know. It's just right now I don't know what's important and what's not.'

'And you think this might be?'

'It's possible, like I say.'

Kennet shook his head in disbelief. 'Glenn Close, right?'

'I'm sorry?'

'Glenn Close in
Fatal Attraction.
Can't stand being dumped. Attacks Michael Douglas with a knife. You think that's me.'

'Michael Douglas?'

'Glenn Close.'

'Is it?'

'Did I go after Maddy with a knife?'

'Did you?'

'No, I did not.'

'Of course not.'

Kennet's roll-up had gone out and he lit it again at the second attempt.

'Do you know if Maddy was seeing anyone else?' Elder asked.

'While she was seeing me, you mean?'

'Then or later.'

'Then I don't think so, later I wouldn't know.'

'You didn't keep in touch?'

Kennet shook his head. 'Clean break. Besides, once I'd said, you know, I thought we should stop seeing one another, she agreed it was for the best. I certainly didn't want to mess her around.'

He got to his feet and glanced towards the roof.

'I really should be getting back to work.'

Elder held out a hand. 'Thanks for your time.'

Kennet's grasp was firm. 'Catch him, right?'

'Right.'

'And hey!'

'Yes?'

'Happy New Year.'

Elder watched as Kennet climbed back up the scaffolding without putting a foot wrong, without missing a beat.

The first Friday of the new year, a grey cold day, the sky the colour of ageing slate, ice slick on the surface of untreated roads. Maddy Birch's funeral: Hendon Crematorium, eleven thirty sharp. The flower-beds a picture of turned earth and once-green leaves blackened by frost, spindly rose bushes cut back almost to the root. Maddy's mother sat hunched in the long black car as it followed the coffin around the slow curves of Nether Street and Dollis Road, her sister, whom she'd scarcely seen in twenty years, sitting pinch-faced by her side. Crowded in the car behind, disparate uncles and cousins sat with their hands clenched in their laps. Those who'd thought her mother would want the funeral near the family home in Lincolnshire had been swiftly disabused. 'She'd turned her back on all that,' Mrs Birch had said, 'on us, a long time since.' Blame, at that moment, easier than regret.

Elder had arrived early and stood a little to one side. As befitted the last rites of a fellow officer killed on duty, the police presence was sombre, manifest. Near the entrance, a surveillance team, unobtrusively as possible, videoed the assembled company, in case the hoary myth that murderers were drawn to the last rites of their victims bore any truth. Lawns, sparse and dry, stretched away towards a high boundary hedge and the municipal golf course beyond.

Alighting from the car, Mrs Birch lost her footing and only the outstretched hand of Detective Superintendent Mallory, ever alert, preventing her falling to the ground.

Inside the chapel a CD of uplifting music played, courtesy of Classic FM. Karen Shields, wearing a black trouser suit, hair pulled sternly back, slid, long-legged, into a pew across the aisle from Elder and began leafing through the small hymn book resting behind the seat in front.

The coffin stood in full view: solid, real.

The minister cleared his throat.

Elder was remembering standing at the foot of the cobbled street leading down from Lincoln Cathedral, watching Maddy as she walked away. 'Goodnight, Frank. Take care.' Waiting for her to turn and smile. She never did.

The hymn was mumbled tunelessly, voices falling silent till only the echo of the pre-recorded organ wheezed out the last few lines.

'Let us pray.'

Clad in a black corduroy coat, black skirt, black boots, Vanessa Taylor began to cry and, turning, Karen pushed a tissue into her hand.

Given the occasion, the assistant commissioner was in full dress uniform. He spoke of Maddy as a model officer, a dedicated servant of the public, a brave young woman whose life had cruelly been snuffed out. George Mallory, a pale carnation somewhat incongruous in the buttonhole of his grey wool suit, testified to the honour it had been to have such a resourceful officer as Maddy under his command, if only for so sadly short a time. Referring back to the operation to arrest James Grant, he recalled with pride the moments of extreme danger when she had stood, unflinching, at his side.

Maddy's mother sat, bent forward, at the front, head down.

Vanessa Taylor continued to cry.

The congregation stood reluctantly and laboured through another hymn.

With a slight jerk, the mechanism that would carry the coffin forward clanked to life.

As the coffin passed through the heavy curtains and disappeared from sight, Elder felt Maddy's breath pass, cold, across his face.

* * *

Desperate for a cigarette, Karen Shields stepped between the wreaths and floral tributes which had been spread out on display at the rear of the building. Feeling for the roll of mints at the bottom of her bag, she pulled out with it an old shopping list and two ragged tissues. New Year's Eve just gone. Drink don't drive. She had spent the evening with three old school friends, a tradition stretching back more years than any of them liked to remember. Two of them were married now with growing kids; one, finally out, was living with her female partner in leafy Letchworth Garden City and enjoying the frisson they caused whenever they elected to walk the length of the main street, hand in hand. Karen had got used to turning up and leaving alone.

Seeing Elder standing alone, she walked across to join him.

'I used to think I preferred this to burial,' Karen said. 'Now I'm not so sure.'

'When it comes down to it, I doubt there's much to choose.'

'Soulless though, isn't it?'

Elder didn't see how it could be anything else.

'You went to see Kennet,' Karen said, changing tack.

'That's right.'

'What did you think?'

'Seemed straightforward enough.'

'That's pretty much what Mike said. Besides, his alibi seems to hold up. On holiday in Spain with his girlfriend. Didn't get back till the day Maddy's body was found.' Despite her best efforts, the mint had fragmented between her teeth. 'Sherry said something about a watch?'

Elder nodded. 'Maddy's watch. Yes. Seems to be missing.'

Over Karen's shoulder he could see Mallory and a shorter, sharp-faced man in earnest conversation.

'Who's that? With Mallory?'

'Maurice Repton, his DCI.'

As if realising they were being watched, both men turned their heads and Mallory, smiling, raised a hand in cheery greeting.

'This Grant business Mallory mentioned,' Elder said. 'No mileage in it for us?'

'I don't think so.'

'Might be worth taking another look, just the same. In the absence of anything else.' Seeing Maddy's mother leaning on her sister's arm as she bent towards one of the wreaths, Elder excused himself and walked over to express his regrets.

* * *

Vanessa stubbed out her cigarette beneath the low heel of her shoe and began to walk towards the main gate.. She hadn't reckoned on the service affecting her so badly, embarrassed almost by the fuss she'd made, the way she'd drawn attention to herself. But all the way through she'd been unable to suppress the images of Maddy that had played out across her mind: Maddy laughing, listening, pretending to be shocked by Vanessa's ribaldry, her good humour laced, towards the end, with traces of fear Vanessa had failed to take seriously.
You're not getting weird on me, are you? Freaking out?
Hearing the car approaching behind her, Vanessa moved closer to the side.