‘Okay, back to Saturday,’ Gillard said, hoping to follow an easier path to the evidence. ‘How did your mother seem, that day?’
Kiara shrugged. ‘Busy, I suppose. She had the phone clamped to her ear almost the whole time as she was making a fruit salad when I was in the kitchen.’
‘Did she seem worried? Had she mentioned any threats against her? Anything like that?’
‘No. She was pissed off about being tired, she hated her hair, which seem to be disappearing by the day. I mean she used to have such luxuriant tresses that would blow your socks off. There’s nothing I can really tell you. I think she went out before five, I don’t know where, but I’m sure her PA can tell you. As you probably have gathered by now, every day was a working day.’
‘So the last time you saw her was at five?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what were your movements after that?’
She eyed him suspiciously. ‘Well, I went clubbing in central London that evening, but before that I went to see my friend Sasha, and a group of us got ready at her flat. We were there for a few hours.’
‘I’m sorry to have to ask this, it’s just a formality. But your friends would presumably back up your story?’
She rested her hand delicately on his wrist. ‘Mr Gillard, I can emphatically assure you that I had nothing whatever to do with my mother’s murder. But if you don’t believe me, I will give you the addresses of my friends. I did not leave the club until just before six a.m. on the Sunday.’
‘And where did you go then?’
‘You’re determined to dig, aren’t you?’
‘No, Ms Roy, it’s just that your mother was not killed until 7.20 a.m. so we need to fill out your movements completely.’
‘And presumably also to check that I’m not capable of temporary gender reassignment?’
Gillard blinked at her. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘The news reports talked about a male cyclist. I’m not male, and I don’t think I can even ride a bike.’
‘As I said, this is purely a formality. Now if I could take down some names and addresses.’
Kiara stood up and made her way towards a small desk, where an ultra-thin Mac laptop sat open. ‘I’ll email you them all,’ she said. ‘Just for the record, I returned to Sasha’s flat for a snooze after the nightclub, then we all went out for breakfast.’ She tapped on the keyboard.
Gillard stood up, and gazed at the artworks. ‘How was your relationship with your mother?’
‘Variable, I suppose. My mother could be a hard-driving bitch,’ Kiara said. ‘She didn’t listen. The business came before everything and, thanks to my father, she was in the grip of this Gujarati acche din idea, the belief that good days are coming. But despite everything, I loved her. She was my mother. And I am mature enough to admit that in some ways I’m quite like her.’
‘Didn’t she fund your fashion business?’ he asked.
‘Reluctantly, when it became obvious that I had talent in that direction. Sure. But not until she had tried to screw up my life earlier by going along with my father’s scheme for this arranged marriage. She stood against him when he said things for the business that were crazy. But in other things she was a doormat. Like when she agreed with his plan to get me, a seventeen-year-old brought up in West London, to marry this old guy back in India in 2005.’
‘So they took you to India by force?’
‘Not exactly. They got me there by subterfuge, saying that we were meeting family. But these people who met us at the airport weren’t family. I soon realised. I wasn’t having it. I told them they would have to carry me kicking and screaming into the wedding tent. I never forgave my father for that.’
‘Why would they want you to marry against your will?’
She looked Gillard as if he was stupid. ‘What I wanted wasn’t even considered. I was an economic pawn to cement a financial relationship. I was supposed to marry this ugly forty-five-year-old guy, who just happened to own some big spice plantations on the Malabar coast. It was outrageous.’
‘So how did you sabotage it?’
‘I cut off all my hair and dressed like a punk, with torn clothes, a man’s boots, and then went to see the other family. That soon did the trick. My father was incandescent. He had put together a big dowry, and had worked for years to get this business alliance off the ground. He was particularly keen on them, because they were not only in his jati, but his sub-jati.’
‘You’re going to have to explain that.’
‘Gujarati Hindus like us are expected to marry within the caste, or jati. Well, these people were exactly the same sub-caste as us, and so it was perfect right down to the horoscopes. Except for one thing. I was not going to be raped by some aged man, however rich he was. I never, ever forgave my father. And I was angry with her, for not standing up for me. She had turned a blind eye to Harry having a British girlfriend for years, even having sex. Yet if I even looked at a boy! It was so hypocritical. Anyway, after the wedding collapsed my father and his cousin, that bastard L. P. Gosht, took me into a shed, and thrashed me. They called me a whore and a harlot, and said that in some families I could be burned alive for what I’d done. I screamed and I cried, but I was not defeated.’
‘And I understand you know firsthand about the pains of burns.’ He nodded at her hands.
‘Who told you about that?’ She folded her arms, her gloved hands in her armpits as if her burns were visible.
‘Someone who saw your selfless action.’
She waved the compliment away. ‘I didn’t think, I just went for it. Always impetuous, that’s me. I had five skin grafts, but luckily the movement isn’t too bad. My sewing got a lot less neat, which didn’t help my fashion business.’ She laughed, and then paused. ‘I still get nightmares though.’
‘I’m not surprised. Is that when you started using cocaine?’
‘What?’
‘Come on, I’m trained to spot these things. When I first came to Richmond, your pupils were dilated, you made several trips to the loo and were sniffing. A swab from the cistern came back positive.’
‘Oh God.’ She stared up at the ceiling.
‘I can look the other way on personal use, given the circumstances. But I want to know who your dealer is. Okay?’
‘I can’t.’ She teared up, her face dissolving into sobs. ‘I mean I never meant to use it. But I couldn’t cope. I kept seeing that little boy, in his child seat at the far side of the car. I just couldn’t extricate him. His two older sisters I could reach. But not him. The plastic buckle on the car seat had already fused.’ She looked at Gillard. ‘Do you know what my father said?’
Gillard shook his head.
‘He said: “Typical of you to choose life for the girls and let the boy die.” Can you believe that? At least that time Mum challenged him.’
Gillard could see that her eyes were filling up. She apologised, reached for her handkerchief and blew her nose. ‘It’s crazy, I keep forgetting that Mum’s dead.’
‘Did your mother have any enemies?’
‘Maybe in business, I’m not sure. There were rivals who wanted to buy the firm; she was steadfastly against that. But we’re not talking the kind of enemies who would like to kill her. Even when things were at their worst between us, I still loved her. My father had put impossible pressure on her, and she did what she had to do. That really only changed after he had a stroke in 2008. Things got easier for everybody then, except him I suppose. He could no longer force his will on the family.’
She looked Gillard in the eye. ‘There were times when I might have killed him if I’d had the chance. It’s not a crime to think about murder, is it?’
‘Thankfully, no. We’d all be guilty from time to time.’
‘I’ll let you in on a secret. When my father died, I asked if I could have some of his ashes. You know how you can have ashes of your loved ones made into jewellery? Well, I got my father made into a clit ring. He had called me a whore. So I wanted him to witness
up close and personal all the activity that I chose for myself in that department.’
Gillard had quite an image in his head. ‘You clearly had the last laugh.’
* * *
Fresh back from London, Gillard headed straight to the Mount Browne refectory for a quick bite. It was 2.30 p.m. and he was famished. Having made his order, he turned to see the young CSI trainee, Kirsty Mockett, sitting at a table with two fresh-faced male recruits.
‘Hello Kirsty, mind if I join you?’
‘Not at all,’ she said. She made the introductions, and Gillard sat down, with a coffee in hand.
‘Monday is induction training, right?’ he asked.
‘Yes. We’ve got Detective Superintendent Dobbs later this afternoon.’
‘Ah, Radar Dobbs. Well I hope you will try to stay awake. He does know his stuff.’
‘Are you not eating?’ Kirsty asked.
‘Yes, it’s coming. So have you told your colleagues yet about your crash course in crime scene management?’
‘No. It seemed a bit boastful,’ she said, her face colouring slightly.
Her two colleagues looked slightly puzzled, so Gillard said: ‘This young woman did a fantastic job yesterday securing a difficult crime scene, and has given us a real head start in the case.’
At this, Kirsty really flushed and looked down at her plate. The two young men stared at her, and at the detective chief inspector who had just given her such praise.
‘Poached egg on toast for Mr Craig,’ sang a lilting voice. Gillard watched with bemusement as the woman he knew only as Mrs Iris, resident queen of the kitchen, waddled from behind the crowded counter and placed a steaming hot plate in front of him. ‘Dat is only a tiny little morsel, so I gave you a bit o’ bacon.’ She tapped him on the shoulder affectionately.
‘So police corruption extends right through to the kitchen,’ said Ryan, one of the two young men.
‘Favouritism perhaps,’ Gillard replied. ‘She’s quite a character. But there’s not a hint of corruption about her. She just wants to feed everybody up.’
Mrs Iris had been at Mount Browne for as long as anyone could remember, and knew most of the cops by name. She seemed to view the officers as weakling children in need of sustenance, whatever their actual size. Every slice of toast came with a huge gobbet of melted butter, every breakfast sausage ordered came with an extra half link, and her infectious tinkling laugh, punctuated by the percussion of cutlery and the clatter of plates was the soundtrack of the restaurant. For police officers returning from the scene of a crime or some harrowing road accident, the warmth, friendliness and steam of the kitchen gave a hearth-like reassurance.
He’d barely eaten half the breakfast when a call came through. It was Yaz Quoroshi inviting him to inspect the murder weapon at close hand. Gillard stood and made his excuses to the CSI trainees, and after crossing the internal courtyard made his way to the specialist forensic centre. With more than thirty employees, Mount Browne’s forensic unit was able to process many of the simple forensic tests which detected the presence of DNA, saliva, blood or semen. Only the more complex comparisons, of DNA against the national database for example, needed to be undertaken by an external lab. The detective pressed his pass against the entry panel, and after the door opened, walked down the wood-lined corridor towards the lab.
Quoroshi welcomed him. The silvery gym weight, one end encrusted with dried blood and hair, was sitting on a sheet of plastic. ‘It’s a hefty weapon at one kilo just for the bar, with those two screw-ons doubling its weight,’ he said, pointing a latex glove. ‘I can see that it had a fair bit of use during its life, and I’m hopeful some of the sweat and oil residue will have become trapped in the thread ridges. But first of all I have to check for prints.’ From a drawer he took out a thick roll of tape, and easing out a foot-long piece, pressed it carefully around the shaft of the metal. ‘This is gel lift tape. Absolutely magic for this kind of uneven surface.’ He set the tape aside carefully, then pulled out some cotton buds and ran them carefully up and down the thread and knurls of the hand weight. ‘I just want to see if there’s enough DNA for a match. Potentially it could survive on a surface like this for up to six weeks, which could mean that if anybody else had previously used the weights, their own markers could be present too. So even if the assailant used gloves in the actual attack, we might get him or an associate from a previous contact with the item.’
* * *
The late Mrs Tanvi Roy may have owned a grand house in Richmond, but her PA Philippa Boswell had mentioned that she spent as much time in a modest and anonymous two-bedroom ground floor flat on the edges of Leatherhead, just a few miles from Ashtead Common. It was within easy reach of the company’s Redhill factory, where a new range of snacks was being launched, and Mrs Boswell said Mrs Roy had on the final night before her death rung her from there to say she would be staying there the next two evenings.
Gillard had obtained the keys to the flat from the family, and with a local uniformed constable outside to keep watch, he put on a Tyvek suit, gloves and booties, and let himself in. He picked up a stack of mail and put it to one side as he stepped into the modern hallway. The kitchen/diner to the right was neat, with just a single teaspoon in the drainer, and tea towels neatly hung in a row. He opened the fridge and peered within. There was a considerable array of gin and tonic, some fruit yoghurts and some other health food that he couldn’t readily identify. But the biggest surprise was a collection of six jam jars, with handwritten date labels on, all within the last two weeks. It looked like they contained apple juice or something similar. He unscrewed one and took a sniff.
He winced at the pungent smell. There was no mistaking it.
Urine.
What on earth was she doing with urine in the fridge? Six jars of it, no less. His first thought was athletic drug testing, but no one had mentioned Mrs Roy as any kind of athlete, certainly not one of the level who might require urine tests. Perhaps there was a health-related reason. He would keep an open mind.
The bathroom was extremely neat and tidy. There were fewer toiletries than he would normally expect in the home of a middle-aged woman. A couple of toothbrushes, toothpaste, roll-on deodorant, an expensive looking shampoo, and liquid soap in a hand dispenser. From this and the equally minimalist kitchen, it certainly seemed that Mrs Roy didn’t spend much time here.
Gillard slipped the toothbrushes into an evidence envelope and marked it up and sealed it. He then flipped up the bathroom pedal bin, and saw there were just a few tissues and make-up removal pads in a drawstring liner. He took the liner, and a similar one from the kitchen, and marked them up as evidence.
One bedroom was used as an office, with a MacBook Pro laptop and an answer machine with three messages. He listened to them, and from subject matter and the breezy first-name familiarity concluded they were all purely work-related. He marked up and bagged the Mac for evidence, and then went into the second bedroom, which was where Mrs Roy seemed to have slept. There was a small neatly-made double bed with a reading lamp and a stack of management magazines. Gillard lifted the covers and concluded from the one or two hairs within that the bed had been occupied since the last change of sheets. He turned to the wardrobe, in which three dry-cleaning bags contained jackets and skirts.
The rest of the flat revealed nothing of much interest. The lounge had a modest-sized TV and a settee, one side of it thick with dog hairs. Though he had seen a dog basket in the kitchen it was clear that Bertie spent a fair amount of time sitting side-by-side with his mistress on the sofa. No doubt he would already be missing her. The loyal animal had done everything to defend her.
* * *
Mount Browne’s dog kennel, originally built in 1952 solely for the use of police dogs, had expanded in an ad hoc way over the years. Each year thousands of dogs throughout the country end up in police custody, either because they are dangerous breeds, are owned by incarcerated criminals, or because they have been involved in an attack. Surrey is no exc
eption, although limited space means impounded animals can only stay for a few days before being sent to a private kennel.
Claire Mulholland had been looking forward to meeting Bertie, and had agreed to bring Kirsty Mockett along at her request. His detention, for forensic purposes, was unusual and the detective inspector anticipated that the animal could be reunited with the family fairly quickly.
Their arrival at the wire mesh enclosure was met by a cacophony of barking. Dozens of dogs leaped up towards the gates of their enclosures hoping, with the optimism that all dogs have in abundance, that this visitor would be there to release them. Kirsty seemed excited too. She had described in detail how the dog had defended Mrs Roy’s body.
‘It was a wonderful act, but it made my job quite a bit harder,’ Kirsty said.
‘From what I heard you did all right,’ Claire responded.
The police vet, Pauline Jones, a good friend of Claire’s, was there to meet them, and led the way along a brick corridor. ‘He’s quite a character, you’ll enjoy meeting him,’ she said.
‘I got my own dog through Pauline,’ Claire confided to Kirsty. ‘An insane Irish wolfhound called Dexter. Used to belong to a drug dealer. He’s quite imposing, but as soft as butter really.’
‘There he is,’ Pauline said, pointing down the corridor. The boxer was pressing his face to the bars and barking.
‘Ooh, who’s a good boy then?’ said Pauline as she unlocked the gate. The dog whined, skittering around in the cage, constantly trying to peer around the guests, in case there was an unseen visitor behind them. ‘You’re going back to your family tomorrow, aren’t you? Yes, you are.’
‘Ah, bless. He’s looking for his owner,’ Claire said. They both entered the cage and knelt down to stroke him. He accepted the treatment, his head swivelling left and right, still searching.
‘Boxers are the loyalist of all dogs,’ Kirsty said. ‘We had one when I was a little girl.’
The Body in the Snow Page 5
