by C J Parsons
‘Skelter.’
‘Yeah, that was it. A cold, demanding bitch by all accounts. Proper ballbreaker.’ Then he seemed to catch himself, adding hastily: ‘That’s how DI Wilde described her. I don’t use those terms myself.’ He gave his collar a quick tug, as though it had suddenly become too tight. ‘Anyway. He told them she’d complained about his breath stinking of fags. Said she wouldn’t shag him again until he quit. So he did.’
Juliet frowned. ‘But if he didn’t smoke, whose cigarette started the fire?’
Keane spread his hands. ‘Thank you. That’s exactly what I said. But Wilde acted like it was a stupid question. Said the boyfriend must have fallen off the wagon. Had a few drinks, sneaked a fag, passed out.’
‘How much alcohol was in his system?’
‘We didn’t check.’
Her mouth fell open. ‘What?! Why not!?’
‘Wilde said it was clearly an accident, that the force was on a tight budget, and that he wasn’t going to order a bunch of expensive tests when it was obvious no crime had been committed.’
‘You’re joking. Two people died, and he refused to even look into the possibility of foul play?’
Keane’s smile was more like a sneer. She wondered if it always looked like that, or only when he was thinking about his dead colleague.
‘That was Wilde for you. He told me that when I had as many years’ experience on the force as he did, I’d know an accidental sofa fire when it punched me in the face.’
Juliet ran fingertips along the sides of her head, skimming ripples of tightly pulled hair.
‘OK, so assuming it really was arson . . . any theories as to who was behind it?’
He tugged the Abbotsbury Courier clipping back across the desk, so that it was lying next to the framed Labrador. Tapped a finger on Josh Skelter’s face.
‘Him.’
Juliet’s pulse jumped. ‘Really? Why?’
‘The way he kept saying his mother wasn’t supposed to be home, over and over again. It was weird. Made me think maybe he set the fire to get rid of the boyfriend, not knowing she was there.’
Juliet’s excitement faded.
‘I don’t find that particularly odd. He was shocked, grieving. The realisation that his mother would have lived if she’d stuck to her schedule must have hit him hard.’
‘Well he didn’t give a shit about the boyfriend. Didn’t ask about him once, not even a mention.’
‘His mother had just died,’ Juliet said reasonably. ‘He probably didn’t care much about a man he’d known only a short time.’
‘Not that short. More than a year. Living in the same house.’
‘Still. What motive would he have had?’
The sergeant frowned, sucking in his lips. Juliet got the impression he was starting to have second thoughts about the amount of information he was sharing.
She forged ahead quickly.
‘Did you actually look into possible motives? Or did you not bother, because Wilde told you to leave it – so you ignored your instincts, kept your mouth shut and did as you were told?’ It was a risky strategy – one that could rile him to the point of shutting down. Colour was rising in Sergeant Keane’s face, staining it with purple blotches. She gave him the hint of a smile before continuing. ‘Or did you quietly keep digging, because you knew, even back then, at the very start of your career, that your instincts were already better than Wilde’s would ever be?’
Her words had the desired effect. Keane’s look of badly contained outrage slowly morphed into a self-satisfied smile. He made a show of inspecting his fingernails.
‘I may have gone ahead and interviewed Skelter’s girlfriend.’
Juliet schooled her features into an admiring gaze.
‘Really? Smart! Did she tell you anything useful?’’
‘Oh, yes.’ He locked his fingers behind his head and pumped his eyebrows up and down twice. Seconds passed. Dear God. Was he actually pausing for dramatic effect?!
‘And?’ Juliet prompted, fighting to keep the irritation out of her voice.
‘Apparently the boy was obsessed with winning his mother’s approval.’
Juliet tried not to let her disappointment show.
‘That’s not terribly unusual. A lot of insecure teenagers feel that way, especially when the parent in question is aloof and rejecting.’
‘Yeah, but not like this. The girlfriend said Skelter was way over the top. “Creepy” was the word she used to describe it. He worshipped the woman, saw her as some sort of female Michelangelo. Needless to say, there was no love lost between Skelter and the mother’s boyfriend.’
‘So what are you saying? You think he set the fire to eliminate his rival for her affections?’
‘That’s exactly what I’m saying. But then she had to go and ruin everything by arriving home early,’
Juliet considered this while Keane watched her across the desk. His hands were still locked behind his head, exposing a matching pair of armpit stains.
‘What was their relationship like? Were Josh and Ava . . . Avery Skelter close?’
His head shook against the interlaced fingers.
‘No. But not for lack of trying on his part. The girlfriend said she’d been to his house loads of times without ever seeing the mother crack a smile. Nothing Josh did seemed to impress her. Treated him like the hired help. A proper ice queen. You can tell just by looking at her.’
‘Can you? I haven’t seen her picture.’
‘Here, I’ll show you.’
He began tapping on his computer keyboard.
Juliet’s eyebrows lifted. ‘You still have the case file, after all these years?’
Another sneer-smile. ‘No. Her picture’s online. You just need to key in “architect” and Alton Plaza; that’s a shopping centre she designed. I drive past it on my way to work. Here.’ He turned the screen to face her.
The woman in the photo was pale-skinned and sour-faced, standing in front of a building whose roof was a series of interlocking metal curves, creating the impression of waves. It glittered in the sunlight. Ava Skelter was holding an oval trophy, looking bored and vaguely annoyed. There was a familiar silver zigzag on her finger: the ring from Josh’s chain. Looking at the architect’s image, Juliet was struck by a powerful sense of déjà vu, a conviction that she’d seen this woman somewhere before. Which, of course, was impossible.
‘She won a big prize for that shopping centre,’ Keane was saying. ‘That’s what her face looked like when she was happy. I’d hate to see it when she was fucked off.’
He clicked the mouse and the picture doubled in size, filling the screen. Short, pale hair and pale brows. Strong features and blue eyes.
And, suddenly, Juliet knew why she seemed so familiar.
Ava Skelter looked like Carrie Haversen.
Not an exact match; Ava was better looking – the nose a bit narrower, the lips slightly fuller, eyes that were blue rather than grey. But the similarity was striking.
And that’s when it happened.
Somewhere deep inside her, a flash went off: a hot flare that rose through her consciousness like a bonfire spark.
‘Maybe we’ve been looking at this case through the wrong end of the telescope.’ She said the words aloud to hear how they sounded, testing them for strength, dimly aware of the sergeant’s baffled face on the edge of her vision. ‘Maybe we’ve got everything back to front . . . because this was never about Sofia.’
Thirty-three
‘DCI Campbell. What are you doing here?’ Carrie stood in the doorway of her house, face and voice as expressionless as ever.
Juliet looked past her shoulder. Saw Sofia at the dining table, eating large, messy forkfuls of something orange. But no one else.
‘Is Josh here?’
‘No. He’s working late.’
> They stood facing each other while Juliet paused automatically to give Carrie a chance to invite her in. Which, of course, she didn’t.
‘May I come in?’
A volley of blinks, then Carrie opened the door all the way.
‘Hi, Police Lady Juliet,’ Sofia called out. Her smile was wonky with mismatched teeth: bigger new arrivals crowding out the baby teeth. ‘I’m having spaghetti Os and a bagel, which looks like a ginormous spaghetti O.’
Tomato sauce encircled her mouth like a clown’s makeup.
‘Mmmm, sounds delicious.’
Carrie led Juliet to the sofa and perched at the other end of it, hands clasping her knees.
‘I just dropped by to ask you a couple of background questions,’ Juliet said. ‘About Josh.’
‘Josh?’ She tilted her head, blinking fast. ‘Why?’
‘Can we get to that later? It would be helpful if you could just answer my questions first.’
Blink-blink-blink. ‘OK.’
‘Do you remember the first time the two of you met? Not the day he returned Sofia. Before that. Osman told me he presented you with an architecture award.’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you tell me what he said?’
‘He made a speech about the power of architecture to . . .’
Juliet shook her head impatiently.
‘Not the speech. What he said to you personally. Perhaps as he was handing the prize across? Or at the drinks afterwards?’
‘I didn’t stay for the drinks. However, I recall he did say something—’ Her eyes shifted right. Juliet could hear Sofia slurping milk in the pause that followed. ‘Yes,’ Carrie said, finally. ‘When he handed me the award, he said that he was a big fan of my work. Or perhaps the word was “admirer”?’ She shook her head. ‘I’m not certain which.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Just, “I’d love to talk with you about it some time.”’
Juliet nodded.
‘And what was your response?’
‘Response?’
‘Yes. What did you say in response to his invitation?’
‘Nothing. It wasn’t a real invitation. It’s just one of those things people say, like “It was nice to meet you”.’ Blink-blink. ‘Isn’t it?’
Juliet brushed past the question, forging ahead.
‘So the next time you met him was when he returned Sofia?’
‘Yes.’
‘And after that? How many days later did you see him again?’
‘The morning of the third day.’
‘Mummy,’ Sofia called from the dining table, ‘do you want one of Josh’s bagels?’
Juliet lifted an eyebrow. ‘He bakes his own bagels?’
‘No. The shop next to his office makes them. He often brings them home.’
‘They’re the best!’ Sofia held up a paper carrier bag bearing the logo ‘Solly’s Bagels,’ the ‘o’ represented by a cartoon bagel. ‘Want one, Police Lady Juliet?’
‘Maybe later, thank you.’
She returned her attention to Carrie, who was giving her that blank-faced stare that still, after all this time, made her feel uncomfortable.
‘Why are you asking questions about Josh? The last time we spoke, you were focusing your attention on Tara. Has she now been ruled out?’
‘I hope to be able to provide you with an update on the investigation very soon. Right now I’m just . . . filling in a few gaps in my knowledge.’
‘But why are you interested in Josh when you yourself told me that he was in his office at the time of Sofia’s disappearance?’
And there it was again. The alibi that trumped everything else: Juliet’s hunches and Sergeant Keane’s suspicions and the eerie similarity between Carrie and Josh’s mother – a solid barrier of fact that should have stopped her cold. But she pressed on regardless.
‘I’m just trying to get a fuller picture of Josh and the people associated with him. What has he told you about his mother?’
‘That she was a brilliant architect. That he was her only child. That she died in a house fire when he was a teenager.’
‘Has he ever mentioned what she looked like?’
‘He said she was beautiful.’
‘Nothing else about . . . her appearance?’
‘No.’
Juliet rummaged inside her satchel for the image she’d printed off of Ava Skelter and her trophy. She handed it to Carrie, who looked at it closely for a few moments before passing it back without comment.
‘Notice anything?’
‘No.’
‘You don’t think the two of you look . . . similar?’
‘She is better looking than me.’
Juliet was about to deny this out of reflexive politeness, then stopped herself.
‘Yes, that’s true. But you can’t deny that there’s a strong resemblance.’
A blinking pause. ‘How could my physical similarity to the deceased mother of a man who’s been ruled out as a suspect have any bearing on the case?’
As ever, it was said with no inflection or change of expression, making it impossible to judge whether Carrie was annoyed or merely curious.
Juliet had just enough time to say ‘I’m looking into . . .’ when her mobile rang. She looked at the screen. Alistair.
‘Excuse me for a moment.’ She got up, still holding Ava Skelter’s picture, and walked towards the front door, stopping just short of it with her back to Carrie.
She kept her voice low. ‘Yes?’
‘We’ve got her,’ Alistair declared dramatically.
‘“Her?”’
‘Tara Weldon.’ He sounded surprised she’d had to ask. ‘We’ve discovered a solid piece of evidence linking her directly to the Tudor Park abduction. Plus some new background information that goes directly to motive and proves she lied to us during the interview. Do you want me to talk you through it over the phone, or shall I set up a briefing straight away?’
Juliet glanced over her shoulder at Carrie, stiff-backed on the sofa, waiting to resume their conversation about her resemblance to the mother of a man with an air-tight alibi. A man who’d been labelled ‘a hero’ in the past and a good Samaritan in the present. She felt a hot rush of shame. What had she been thinking, running over here with a half-baked theory and not a shred of proof? Why had she read so much into the fact that Josh Skelter was drawn to women who reminded him of his mother? Lots of men were. This was clearly one of those rare occasions when her instincts had let her down. It did happen. The trick lay in admitting it. In knowing when to let go. She drew in a deep breath, resetting herself. OK. Time to start listening to her brain instead of her gut.
‘Let’s do a briefing. I can be there in’ – she glanced at her watch – ‘twenty minutes.’
‘Great. I’ll set it up.’
She shoved the picture of Ava Skelter into her pocket as she returned to the sofa, not caring whether it got crumpled. Carrie looked up at her, hands still cupped around her knees.
‘Sorry, I need to head back to the station.’
‘OK.’
‘Thank you for your time. Have a good evening.’
As she unlocked the car door, Juliet wondered how many sentences like that she said every day. Automatic words, drained of all significance. Thank you for your time. Have a good evening.
Simon Ryder was right; the only reason Carrie Haversen came across as abrupt and antisocial was because she chose not to say things she didn’t actually mean.
The team was already gathered in the situation room when Juliet rushed in, slinging her bag onto the nearest empty chair with enough force to send it rolling across the floor.
‘So.’ She faced the rows of officers, sensing the charge in the room, the buzz of victory. She picked up a marker pen and looked at the whiteboard,
with its photos, arrows and scribbled notes. Sofia and Zoe were next to each other in the centre, twin suns orbited by adult faces: Carrie Haversen, Simon Ryder, Josh Skelter, Nick Laude. Tara Weldon. ‘I understand there have been some developments in the case. DI Larkin informs me that our prime suspect has been caught in a lie.’ She took the lid off the marker pen and looked around the room. ‘Who’s going to tell me about that?’
‘Me,’ Dutoit said. She stood up, flushing pink, clearly nervous. Juliet gave her a nod of encouragement. ‘I’ve been working my way through Weldon’s known friends and associates. It appears she used to have a very active social life. But, after her daughter’s death, she sank into a pretty deep depression and lost touch with most of them.’
Juliet nodded. ‘Hardly surprising, given the circumstances.’
‘Yes, but here’s the interesting part. Instead of trying to move on, she became so fixated on having another daughter that she tried to adopt one in 2015, a few months after her husband left. No luck, of course. Grieving single mothers don’t exactly get sent to the front of the queue.’
Juliet smiled grimly. ‘So much for “no other child could ever take her place”.’ She turned to Tara’s photo, in its chain of arrows, meeting the blue-green eyes.
You lied to my face, she thought. Why didn’t I pick up on that?
‘I’m assuming you’ve confirmed this with the adoption authorities?’
Dutoit’s head bobbed. ‘Yes.’
She jotted ‘unsuccessful adoption attempt 2015’ under the picture.
‘Nice work. This goes directly to motive and proves she’s been deceiving us from the get-go.’
Dutoit flushed again, but Juliet was fairly sure that this time it was pleasure, rather than nerves.
Juliet scanned the room. ‘So . . . who’s next?’
Hiranand raised his hand but didn’t say anything. She could feel the caged excitement all around her, the sense of a celebration waiting to break out. But as she stood looking at the DS with his arm up, apparently waiting for her to call on him, all Juliet could feel was annoyance. For fuck’s sake. Was this a police briefing or a primary school class?
She ran fingers over her hair. For once, everything was neatly clipped away.
