Ash & Bone (19 page)

'You don't have to tell me, you know.'

'No, it's okay.' She took another taste from her glass. 'When I was younger, not long out of school, doing some part-time college thing, I started going with this guy. Older than me. Quite a bit. He was a musician. Well, not even that. More a hanger-on, you know. Scarcely played at all. Did a bit of DJing, nothing special. But me, I was just a kid. What did I know? There's all my mates, you know, want to watch out, he's just out for what he can get. Well, he had that, didn't he, and we still carried on seeing one another. I'd go round, sleep over, stay weekends. My parents — I was still living at home — they were going ballistic, but I didn't care. Get your nose out of my business, let me live my own life, all that bullshit. Course, they were right. I turned up late one night, somewhere I was supposed to be meeting him, this club. All right, I was fifty minutes, nearly an hour late. He smacked me round the mouth, right there in front of everyone. Smacked me round the mouth and made it bleed. Next day he came round, all apologies, bought me this bracelet, expensive, you know, not cheap. Talked about moving in together, getting engaged.'

A wan smiled crossed Karen's face. 'Was a whole month before he hit me again. At a party this time. In front of all these people we knew. As if he needed to show he could.'

'You stopped seeing him,' Elder said. 'After that.'

'Not soon enough.'

'I'm sorry.'

Karen shook her head. 'That poor woman, in that huge great bloody house.'

'She got away,' Elder said. 'Started a new life.'

'Did she?'

'People do,' Elder said, knowing, even as he spoke, he was wishing that, for Katherine, it was true.

'I'd better phone for a taxi,' Karen said. 'Pick up my car tomorrow.'

'I could drive it in for you.'

'Okay.'

Neither of them moved.

His arm was not quite touching hers. And then it was.

Leaning forward, she kissed softly him on the mouth, then stepped away, 'This isn't going to happen, Frank. I'm sorry.'

A slow release of breath. 'Okay.'

Fishing her mobile from her bag, she punched in a number, spoke and listened, broke the connection. 'Twenty minutes.'

'I'll make coffee.'

'Good.'

Twenty minutes was fifteen. 'Kennet,' Karen said at the door. 'Tomorrow morning we'll see his girlfriend. The one he went with to Spain.'

For some time after she had gone, Elder could smell her scent in the room, recall the warmth of her arm, the slight pressure of her lips, barely opening. Foolish to pour himself a nightcap before turning in, but who was to know?

Vanessa had been thinking about Maddy. Oh, not constantly, far from it: too busy for that. A gang of twelve- and thirteen-year-olds, bored by the school holiday, had been entertaining themselves by chucking stones from the pedestrian bridge between Churchill and Ingestre Roads down on to the trains below. On the last occasion they had shattered the windscreen, injuring the driver seriously, twenty-seven fragments of glass having to be removed from his face and neck. Then there were the two fifteen-year-olds who, three times in a week, had robbed a local newsagent of the contents of his till, once making their getaway on stolen bikes, twice on skateboards. To say nothing of a plethora of burglaries that needed checking into and logging, crime numbers to be assigned, anxious or angry people to reassure, the whole tedious and largely pointless business set in some kind of motion.

Still, through it all, there were moments, unbidden, when she would remember Maddy's laugh, Maddy's smile, Maddy's fear.
It's not funny. It's not some bloody joke.
No joke at all in the end, no joke at all. A statistic, a tragedy, a headline for as long as it was news; the object of an inquiry going nowhere, an absence, a pall of blue-grey smoke rising into the winter air.

Even at that time of the evening, too late for the last stragglers returning home from work, too early for the raucous and the semi-drunk on their way back from the pub or off for a night's clubbing, she had to push her way through to the doors when the Tube pulled into the Archway. An elbow at her back. A face along the platform she half-recognised. Nobody.

Coming up out of the station, uncomfortably aware of the waft of her own sweat, she walked through the usual congregation of beggars and
Big Issue
sellers colonising the pavement, and joined the small crowd of people waiting at the lights. Sometimes she took her life in her hands and crossed against the red, traffic bearing down from several directions, but tonight, after a split shift and a couple of hours of unpaid overtime catching up on paperwork, the energy was lacking.

On the opposite corner, someone pushed out of the pub just in front of her, and for a moment she jumped, startled, and then, music and voices spilling through the door, considered a quick half before going home, maybe a rum and Coke. But the moment passed and she walked on, crossing the road again, lower down, much the same path, much the same steps Maddy would have taken so many evenings before.

A chill moved inexorably along Vanessa's arms.

You're not getting weird on me, are you? Freaking out?

Turning past the bollards at the top of her own street, away from the noise and the traffic, she laughed. Stupid mare! Silly tart! For God's sake, get a grip!

Lights showed behind a good few of the windows, blinds on the upper floors left open. The overlapping sounds of TV sets and stereos, indistinct and comforting. A dozen houses shy of her own she started feeling around in her bag for her keys. Stopped to disentangle them from her notebook and the charger for her mobile phone, something made her look across the street.

Someone was standing in the half-shadow a short distance down the street. A silhouette and little more. Broad and tall against the overhanging hedge. A shape. A man. Though she couldn't make out his face she knew his eyes were focused on her. Watching her.

Fear froze her, her legs, her voice, and then she hurried, half-ran the short distance to her door; key in the lock, she swung her head round and there was nothing there.

An empty road, an empty street.

Dark on dark.

Inside, she slammed the door closed and leaned back against it, catching her breath, her thoughts, slow, slow, slow, before climbing the stairs towards her flat on the second floor.

Without switching on the light, she crossed to the window and looked out. A couple were walking along now, arms round one another's shoulders, heads close; further along, a man, smaller, not the one she'd seen, was watching his dog defecating at the side of the road. Her breathing was almost back to normal, her blood ceasing to race. Already she was thinking of what she should have done, how she should have stood her ground, challenged him. She was a police officer, for God's sake. But police officers, she knew all too well, could be victims too.

It was some while before she left the window, drew the curtains, switched on the light. What had she said to Maddy? Report it, why don't you? You should.

There was a bottle of white wine half-empty in the fridge.

Half-empty or half-full?

Tomorrow, she would report it to the local station, even though she could see already the bored officer, hear his questions. This man, what exactly did he do? Maybe she would even phone Frank Elder, mention it to him? Or Karen Shields?

She could see the expression on the other woman's face, sympathetic but matter-of-fact: after what happened to Maddy, you're bound to be jumpy for a while. Apprehensive. Imagination in overdrive. Wouldn't be natural otherwise.

The wine tasted thin and bitter in her mouth and she poured the remainder down the sink. In bed, she moved the small reading lamp down on to the floor to lessen the glare, but left it switched on through the night.

Wednesday morning. A fine fall of rain. Elder had driven Karen's car to Hendon early, left it parked, and passed time in the canteen. In the queue, tray in hand, his stomach had rebelled at the sight and smell of sausages and bacon and he'd settled for two slices of toast. There was a copy of the
Mirror
left lying around and he thumbed through it, not really paying attention. After a while he saw Mike Ramsden come in and he raised a hand in greeting.

Ramsden carried over a breakfast plate full to overflowing. 'Best meal of the day.'

'Your boss in yet?' Elder asked.

'Just arrived.' Ramsden grinned. 'Like a bear with a sore head this morning. Don't know what she was up to last night, but it's left its mark, I'll tell you that.'

'See you in a while,' Elder said.

Ramsden mumbled something through a mouthful of egg and beans.

Karen was sitting at her desk, a large carton of orange juice close at hand. Elder said good morning and gave her back her car keys.

'What are you looking so smug about?' she said.

'I didn't know I was.'

'The girlfriend,' Karen said, 'she's called McLaughlin. Jennifer McLaughlin. Twenty-seven. Works in a chemist's, Muswell Hill Broadway. But not every day.'

'Today?'

'That's what I'm waiting to find out.'

Another fifteen minutes and they were on their way.

Jennifer McLaughlin was smart in her white uniform, buttoned and belted, reddish hair pulled back in a barrette, pale freckles across her face. If Kennet had a type it wasn't easy to discern what it was.

Karen showed her warrant card as discreetly as she could.

The manager agreed to let them use his office.

'What's this about?' Jennifer McLaughlin said, but the way, even in that enclosed space, she contrived to look neither of them in the eye, suggested that she knew.

'November just gone,' Karen said, 'you went to Spain.'

'Malaga, yes. Winter break.'

'You and Steve. Steve Kennet.'

'Yes, why? What's wrong?'

'When did you come back?'

'Twenty-eighth. End of the week.'

'Jennifer.'

'What?'

'This might be important.'

She slid both hands up along her neck, fingertips against the roots of her hair. 'We had a row. Stupid, really. About nothing. Where we were going to eat, which cafe. Steve, he lost his temper. Really lost it, you know?'

'He hit you?'

She looked at the floor, guilty; as if she had something to be guilty about. 'I said I didn't want to stay, not any more. He could stay if he liked, but I was coming home. He said if I was going, we both were. I phoned the airline to change the flights. Cost a fortune. We didn't talk all the way back, sat in separate rows. Soon as we got back to Stansted that was that.'

'You've not seen him again?'

'No.'

'Which day did you fly back, Jennifer?'

'The Tuesday. Tuesday morning. The twenty-fifth.'

'All right. Thanks.' Karen doing her best to keep any excitement from her voice.

'Steve,' Jennifer McLaughlin said. 'He hasn't done anything, has he?'

'Not necessarily.' Karen opened the office door. 'Thanks for your time.'

Out on the street, the rain had just ceased, leaving the paving stones slippery and dark.

'Didn't waste any time, did he?' Karen said. 'Flies back on the twenty-fifth and a day later Maddy Birch is dead.'

'We still don't have proof.'

'We've got enough to bring him in for questioning.'

Elder nodded.

With a broad smile, Karen hit Ramsden's number on her phone. 'Okay, Mike. Bring him in.'

* * *

Kennet had finished in Dartmouth Park and moved on. One wing of the Whittington Hospital was slowly being transformed into prestige apartments with views over London, Waterlow Park on their doorstep, a ten-minute stroll to Highgate Village, five more to the Heath. Kennet was sitting on a platform two-thirds of the way up the scaffolding, time out for a smoke and a drop of tea from a thermos. One of his colleagues alongside him, stretched out, the
Sun
open across his face.

Situations like that, people panicked, even innocent people, tried to do a runner, but Kennet, Ramsden thought, where could he go? Besides, he'd seen them coming, sure enough, and not made a move.

'Steve,' Ramsden called up, keeping it friendly. 'A word, eh?'

Kennet shook out what remained in his cup, screwed it back on top of the flask, put the flask in his rucksack, said something to his mate, who was sitting up now, wondering what was going on, and began to climb down.

'DS Ramsden. This is DC Furness.'

'Yes, I remember.'

'Not altogether defective then.'

'What?'

'Your memory.'

'Sorry, you'll have to explain.'

'At the station.'

'What? Oh, come on.'

'No, you come on.'

Kennet's body tensed and his eyes narrowed just a little and Ramsden readied himself in case, but then Kennet relaxed and said, nodding back towards where he'd been working, 'Give me a few minutes,' and Ramsden said, 'Go ahead,' and then, to Furness, 'Go with him.'

Ramsden lighting a cigarette and pacing easily up and down, wanting to believe they had him, but not letting himself, not quite, preferring to believe in what they said about when the fat lady sings.

* * *

They kept him waiting the best part of an hour, trying his patience, the young uniformed constable as inscrutable as one of the Guardsmen on sentry duty on Horse Guards Parade. When Karen Shields entered, Ramsden and Elder close behind her, the PC stepped outside.

'You know you can have a solicitor present if you wish?' Karen said, sitting down.

Kennet smiled. 'No need for that.'

'And you realise you can leave at any time?'

Kennet made a play of getting up, then sat back down.

'You don't mind if I tape this interview?'

'Be my guest.' Leaning back now, enjoying it.

We'll see, Karen thought. 'I'd like to ask you some questions,' she said, 'about your recent holiday in Spain.'

'Great food, lovely weather, iffy hotel.'

'You stated previously that you and Ms McLaughlin returned to this country on Friday the twenty-eighth.'