He never seemed to take on board that he was frittering away the last few reliable years of her own fertility, and that she needed an additional source of sperm. She couldn’t bear the idea of IVF. It was beyond consideration that any stranger’s bodily fluids should be used to create her son. Simon’s suggestion that one of his friends might be willing made her feel sick. Especially as it sounded like Simon had already discussed it with him.
Prisha’s mother had never got on with Simon. It wasn’t just his appalling laziness, but it was his grotesque informality, his lack of deference. The irony was that he was so bloody un-British. And, just like Deepak, he seemed to think Empire of Spice was nothing more than a giant piggy bank. When he’d found Prisha, he’d thought he’d died and gone to heaven. Prisha was now glad that she had respected her mother’s wish not to marry Simon. But for all that, she still couldn’t help liking him. He made her laugh. He made her see that there was more to life than work. But this gambling just had to stop. She checked her Patek Philippe watch, a gift from her ex-husband, before she had exed him. She had not known at the time that he had charged it against expenses for the company. Still, that was Deepak for you.
‘I’ve got to go,’ she told Simon. ‘I’m going to be late for my meeting.’
Simon nodded. ‘Have fun,’ he said absentmindedly, as he reached for his daiquiri.
Sometimes she thought he had guessed what these meetings were for. She closed the door behind her, grabbed her bag, and set off for the Hotel Orion.
* * *
The Orion was as anonymous as any airport hotel could be. The tired 1970s monstrosity crouched so tightly beneath the Heathrow flight path that guests could open their curtains and from their pillows see the lowering of landing gear as an endless stream of Boeings and Airbuses screamed in overhead, from the first Far Eastern arrivals before five a.m. to the last thunderous departure after midnight. Refitted with triple glazing in the 1990s, and aided by noisy air conditioning, most guests managed to sleep, if that’s what they were there to do.
Most of the ground floor was devoted to a succession of small, bland conference rooms rented by the hour for executives flying in from who-knows-where: groggy and jetlagged, they would be welcomed by a large Formica table, ten or so tubular metal chairs, a projector screen, and a Kona coffee machine. The TripAdvisor posts were pretty much to the point: it’s just about okay for quick departmental meetings, but never bring your customers here to impress them.
In the Derwent Suite, number 36, a group of sixteen new graduate trainees were being inducted into a sales and marketing company with a three-letter name, which was aiming to take the technology sector by storm. They would be imprisoned in this hotel for three barely-endurable weeks of stale air and prawn cocktail with Marie Rose sauce. In the Ullswater Suite, number 40, there was a regional sales meeting for a cartridge refill company, hoping to make a mint from selling weight-for-weight the computer industry’s most valuable but archaic input, and the only one that never went down in price: printer ink.
Between these two, in suite 38, Buttermere, an even more precious fluid was being coaxed from its cartridge. Prisha Roy, lying half-naked on a conference room table, was being serviced, her pelvis sliding forward to meet a pair of rapidly thrusting hips. She held her distaste in check for the familiar rhythm of the man standing trouserless at the table edge, in a crisp white shirt and, in good old porn movie style, still wearing socks. Only one part of him, piston-like, was connected to her, because his hands were busy with what they had learned from a previous disastrous experience was a vital task, steadying the cheap and flimsy table, whose legs were wobblier than his own. That meant he could not hold her outspread calves, but instead balanced her ankles on the backs of two carefully placed chairs to either side of him.
Comfortable, it was not.
It had been with the greatest reluctance that she had turned back to her ex. Deepak’s sleek self-regard and arrogance was bad enough when they were married. Her request for a discreet, purely physical dalliance he treated as the ultimate compliment. For her there was logic in it, of course. He had already fathered her daughter, who was now eleven, and any child with him would undoubtedly be dark. She had worried that a child with Simon might be fair-skinned. Beautiful, of course, but he had to be brought up Hindu, and questions would of course be asked. She had sought help casting a Vedic horoscope for an auspicious moment for conception. But now, well, any time would have to do. She just hoped it happened soon, as she wanted minimum contact with Deepak.
Once, seemingly many years ago, such a daring and low-rent coupling would have excited her. Now, even though now Deepak was still pretty good, she would not let him have the satisfaction of knowing it. Mind over matter was the crucial thing. Suppressing her own orgasm was hardly necessary given the circumstances. Meeting him here in the same bland hotel every Monday and Wednesday afternoon for a cheap one-hour conference multi-booking had been awkward enough. Unlike him, she was capable of remaining almost completely silent. As long as he ejaculated, that was the crucial thing. As copiously as possible, millions and millions of possibilities. She had suggested that on the twenty-five-minute drive over he should sit with a bag of ice between his legs to maximise the volume of ejaculate. His response had been unprintable.
From long practice, and knowledge of his vocalisation, she knew her ex-husband was within half a dozen thrusts of coming off. Fortunately, these particular sounds could easily be confused with the last gasps of a coffee percolator, and their neighbours would, hopefully, be none the wiser. The door, of course, was locked.
One thing she had not counted on was his phone, trilling noisily, at the crucial moment.
‘Don’t you dare stop,’ she hissed.
His head moved momentarily leftward, to where the device lay next to her on the table.
She wasn’t having it. She reached between their bodies, seized his scrotum with her sharp fingernails, and at the same time clenched as hard as she could with her pelvic floor. That did the trick.
He groaned, forgot about the phone and emptied himself into her. He collapsed, spent, across her body, and the table on which they were both balanced lurched alarmingly. The phone stopped. From previous experience she knew he would be asleep in under ten seconds, so she began to wriggle out from beneath him, partly because her back was killing her, but also out of curiosity to find out if Deepak’s annoyingly clingy girlfriend Victoria had been calling. This whole hotel arrangement had been designed to keep her in the dark. Before Prisha could execute the manoeuvre, the phone rang again and this time Deepak disengaged himself and woozily reached across to answer it.
‘I told you to turn it off,’ hissed Prisha.
Ignoring her, he picked up his trousers and turned away to disguise his softening member. He let the phone continue to trill as he walked into the kitchenette and closed the door behind him. Prisha slipped off the table, pulled her knickers on and pressed her ear to the kitchenette wall. She could hear him pacing around inside the tiled enclosure.
‘Could you not have waited?’ Deepak whispered, as he answered the call. ‘I can’t talk now. Can I call you later?’ Pause. ‘I’m not going to sell. There’s much more to be made.’ There was a pause. ‘You worry too much. I’m sure it will be fine. We’ve already made millions out of it. Well, she may have run the company, but I think this proves that my judgement is better than hers was.’
* * *
Kirsty Mockett lay on her exercise mat staring at the ceiling. It was seven o’clock in the evening and the flat was finally warm after having the heating on full blast for forty-five minutes. She was comfortable just wearing a T-shirt and underwear for her daily routine. She breathed in slowly, pulling in her diaphragm, and concentrated on clearing her mind through the gentle exhalation. She raised one leg into the air, put a rubber stretch band under her instep, and with both hands pulled her leg until it was almost vertical. Her hamstrings burned with the effort, and she was unable to prevent a grimace. So m
uch for relaxation.
Her first three days as a scenes of crime officer had been an anticlimax after the trauma of Sunday. It had included a tour of Surrey’s Mount Browne police headquarters in Guildford, and a detailed account of CSI’s place in the investigative hierarchy. However, her colleagues and the training officers seemed more interested in getting her to tell them about what she had seen at the Mrs Roy crime scene than in inducting her into the Surrey–Sussex force. When she wasn’t being buttonholed about her experiences, she was subject to a more personal interest. Ryan, a young officer on her course, had on the very first day asked her out on a date. Embarrassed, Kirsty had blurted out a defensive lie about a steady boyfriend outside the force.
Now, unbidden, a vision swam into her mind. A field of fresh snow, a dead body and spatters of blood among the whirling snowflakes. This was the image that she had been trying to banish, but which slipped back into her mind a hundred times a day. In the shower, on the loo, waiting for the bus.
‘Go away,’ she muttered, folding her hands behind her head, and beginning a fast series of sit-ups to drive away the memory. Twenty straight crunches, followed by another twenty left elbow to right knee, and then twenty right elbow to left knee. She carried on working up a sweat for another half an hour, until the muscle burn and breathlessness forced her to stop.
* * *
Kirsty’s phone rang just as she was getting out of the shower. With a large fluffy bath sheet wrapped around her, and a blue hand towel turbaned on her hair, she scampered into the bedroom to find her mobile. She was taken aback by the voice at the other end. All the warmth of the hot water and the relaxation turned to ice.
‘How are you, Kirsty? Are you enjoying life?’
‘I hadn’t expected to hear from you.’ She unconsciously pulled the towel a little more closely around her body, and nestled on the bed closer to the heater.
‘I was just reading that it was you who witnessed that awful attack on Mrs Roy. That’s quite a coincidence that you should be there, don’t you think?’
‘I was just going for a run, that’s all.’
‘From what I read, you did terribly well.’
‘Look, I’ve just got out of the shower and I need—’
‘Well, well. What an enticing image that presents.’ He laughed softly. ‘Quite inflammatory, I would say.’
‘I don’t know why you called after all this time,’ she said. ‘Unless it was to apologise.’
There was a long pause. ‘I was hoping the passage of time may have softened you a little, but it seems not. I was going to offer to take you to dinner, somewhere a bit special.’
‘My boyfriend wouldn’t approve.’
There was soft laughter on the end of the phone. ‘Kirsty, dear Kirsty. That same old mythical boyfriend, who you’ve been seeing for goodness knows how many years.’
‘I’m going to hang up now,’ Kirsty said.
‘Wait. You did such a good job for me, and now you’re in a position to give me even more of the information that I would like.’
‘You’re bloody joking, if you think—’
‘There’s money, Kirsty,’ he said softly. ‘You know how you like money.’
‘Look, I only took the money because—’
‘You don’t have to tell me. We don’t have to go into that again, we have an agreement, and that’s an end to it. We have each kept our side of the bargain.’
‘I don’t want to hear from you again.’
‘Dear Kirsty, don’t be shy. We both know the truth. You know you need money. When you have processed that thought, ring me. I’ll be expecting your call.’ The line clicked dead.
Kirsty swore softly. She was shaking. The wave of stress and anxiety swept through her. There was only one thing that would keep it at bay. She drew the curtains, let the towel fall to the floor, and reached into the bedside drawer. A few minutes later, as the buzzing pleasure came in wave after wave, tears escaped from the outer corners of her tightly closed eyes and rolled down her cheeks and into her ears.
* * *
It was the first evening that Gillard had arrived home at a reasonable time since the case began. Now at nine o’clock they lay entwined on the sofa, each trying to read. Sam was engrossed in 101 Tastes from the Subcontinent: Mrs Roy’s Guide to Indian Cuisine. It was published just a few weeks before her death and was now, according to the papers, flying off the shelves. Gillard had been flicking through a true crime exposé of American serial killers in the 1980s, but when Sam looked up to tell him about a particularly interesting Goan curry, she saw that he had dozed off.
She smiled to herself, and laid her book on the end table. In repose, her husband looked younger than his fifty years, more boyish, less rugged, less capable. She wanted to stroke his face, but it was such a rare and precious moment to see him like this, almost vulnerable. His mouth was slightly open, no sign of his usual bunched jaw muscles. The stress, the professionalism, the cynicism, the gut instinct were all packed away somewhere, in some mental filing cabinet, ready to be retrieved at a moment’s notice.
The gentle tone of his phone indicated a call. The device lay on the dining table ten feet away, but his eyes flicked open immediately. Instant wakefulness, immediate awareness. He stroked her thigh as he untangled his legs from hers and went to pick up the mobile. She continued to watch him, broad shoulders flexing, legs astride as he shifted into work mode.
‘Gillard.’ A slight softening in his stance in the next few seconds indicated to Sam that the caller was a familiar and trusted contact.
‘Okay, Claire. That’s great news.’
After he hung up, he responded to Sam’s quizzical expression by saying: ‘We found a DNA link at the crime scene. Someone who was at the punch-up outside the pub on Saturday night looks to have been present at the Ashtead Common crime scene just a few hours later. He left a single hair on Mrs Roy. And he’s got some previous for affray. Claire has got an address and is going round to make the arrest right now.’
‘Seems like a breakthrough.’
‘Yes. If she gets him in the cells tonight, we will be able to interview him first thing tomorrow.’
Half an hour later, just as they were getting ready for bed, Sam stood at the front bedroom window in her underwear looking through a tiny gap in the curtains. ‘There, she’s at it again! She’s got her binoculars looking up here.’
Craig looked over her shoulder, and could see his aunt, binoculars pressed to her face, peering out of the bungalow opposite. ‘I can’t believe after all we have been through that she is here stalking us like nothing has changed. Those vile baby clothes too.’
‘What about the retrial?’ Sam asked. ‘Surely they must be thinking about that.’
Craig embraced his wife, pulling her back into the room. ‘The CPS says they don’t have any chance of success without fresh evidence.’ The story of Craig’s Aunt Trish was an open wound with both of them. Her involvement in the notorious Exmoor hit-and-run killing eighteen months ago had consumed both their lives at the time. After the collapse of the trial last summer, Trish had left Devon for good, and bought a bungalow right opposite Craig’s house here in Surrey.
‘I didn’t tell you,’ Sam said. ‘This morning when I was up being sick, I went to the downstairs loo not to disturb you. And her bloody cat was sitting outside the kitchen door, clawing at the old cat flap, trying to be let in.’
‘You’re joking!’
‘No, seriously. It was that ginger and white one, Napoleon. It had left some headless bird on the lawn too.’
‘Revolting creature. I glued the flap shut months ago, so it shouldn’t be able to make any headway.’
‘But it was making a horrible scratching sound, like it was bending the plastic.’
‘I’ll check it, but I’m sure it’s fine. Just try to forget about it.’ He gathered her close in his arms. ‘Perhaps we should sell up and move away from her.’
‘Could we?’ Sam looked up into Craig’s face. She hadn�
��t dared raise the subject, thinking he’d never want to move again after the hassle last time. ‘I like the house, but—’
‘No, I’ve got to get you away from here. And for the sake of our child too. Can you speak to the estate agents tomorrow if you get a chance?’
‘Of course.’ Sam remembered to turn off the light before she kissed her husband. That way no shadow would be cast on the curtains, and the baleful gaze of Trish Gibson could be kept at bay.
Chapter 8
Thursday
When the custody sergeant at Epsom police station hauled Jason Waddington out of the cells and brought him up to an interview room, he was already spoiling for a fight.
‘What the fuck is this about?’ Waddington yelled, as he was unceremoniously dumped on a fixed chair opposite DCI Gillard and DI Claire Mulholland. He was a rangy individual, mid-thirties, with a crown of spiky dark hair on top of an otherwise shaven head. He had an incipient beard and trendy tortoiseshell spectacles taped up across the bridge of the nose, returned to him after they had been broken in the pub fight. ‘First off, I get smacked in the mouth while having a pint in the Feathers, which was not my fault at all. Next, you hang on to my specs for three days, so I can hardly see. Next thing I know, I’m arrested at home about some killing. It’s fucking scandalous.’
‘Calm down, Jason,’ Claire said. Behind Waddington, the door of the interview room opened, and the custody sergeant showed in a young pale woman, whom he introduced as the duty solicitor.
Waddington continued to rant while they were preparing the tape recorder and getting their notes in order. The solicitor clarified with Claire that Waddington had not been charged, and established that he had been offered something to eat both soon after arrest and this morning. The formalities completed, Gillard began. ‘Okay, Jason, where were you at seven thirty in the morning on Sunday?’
The Body in the Snow Page 10
