by CJ Hannon
‘Hussain, when you left the property on Medina Villas, did you lock it? Yeah. You’re positive?’
Melody sees it now: the front door is ajar, wood splintered around the frame. A sickening feeling lodges in her gut.
‘There’s been a break-in, I need a patrol unit here, right away.’
Van Doren hangs up. ‘Stay back.’
But she follows. The detective tries again to usher her back, but Melody refuses. Van Doren places a finger over her lips. Quiet.
The door swings back silently on well-oiled hinges. Her beautiful oak door. She runs her hands over the black rivets and passes into the hallway.
Van Doren holds up a hand, stop. She listens. A seagull cawing. The distant sound of traffic. The house is silent. The detective moves well, like a panther, quiet and purposeful, but at the threshold to the lounge she freezes, her hand darting to her mouth.
‘What is it?’ Melody says.
The colour on the detective’s face drains to the colour of weak tea. ‘Please go outside, Mrs Kitteridge.’
‘What is it?’
‘Please.’
But she pushes the detective out of the way. The whitewashed walls are zigzagged in bright blood. Sick calligraphy.
‘Wha–?’
She steps in.
‘Don’t touch anything,’ Van Doren says.
Red stains on the rug, and a ball of fur, matted with blood.
Melody drops to her knees. ‘Cleopatra…’
22
Astrid
The whole team is assembled for the p.m situation-report. Smithes is rolling off from a meeting of his own with Burrows and catches her for a quiet word beforehand. ‘I heard about the cat. Covering it in sit-rep?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good. About this business with the wife. I’m telling you this for your awareness, Astrid, not as a reprimand, understand?’
She nods, but can already feel her muscles tensing up, her defensive walls being mounted again.
‘For Burrows, arresting and releasing the wife so quickly isn’t the sort of start that they were expecting.’
She thinks back to what Ian said, and listens with a new scrutiny.
‘There are a few grumblings out there that I put you in because you’re a woman, to even up the percentages a bit ahead of the gender equality review.’
The thought hadn’t even occurred to her. Who the fuck was saying that? ‘Tell me that’s not true, sir? Did Burrows say that?’
He waves it away. ‘You’re in because of your potential. But errors, even little ones, reflect badly on my judgement as well as your own. Let’s put it behind us, and move ahead thoroughly, carefully, and diligently. The next time we make an arrest, I want it to be for the killer.’
Maybe Ian was right. ‘As do I, sir.’
‘Good. Then let’s see where we are.’
The room goes quiet when they walk in, Astrid still biting down her annoyance. All these middle-aged white men, drunk on the smell of their own farts, passing judgement on her, based on what? She always knew there was a game to play to move up, but when she got up, oh boy, things were going to change.
To business.
Astrid updates the team about Mrs Kitteridge’s release, and the discovery of the cat.
‘Mrs Kitteridge doesn’t want us involved, and claims she has no idea who did this or why it happened. Clearly, she’s still hiding something.’ She gives Smithes a sideways look, ‘Our slightly ill-advised arrest may yet have borne fruit. When we picked her up what did she have on her?’
‘The five grand,’ Hussain, the Exhibit’s Officer, says.
‘Cash. Next fact. We brought her in, let her out some four hours later and someone’s broken into her house and done a paint job with her cat.’
‘A missed deadline, a warning?’ Collins says.
‘Money trouble?’ says Gardner.
Astrid shrugs. ‘It’s a flag, and could well be connected with the murder. Mrs Kitteridge is closing down the vet practice for good not two days since her husband’s death, and intimated at some financial mismanagement by her husband. Nothing specific.’
Heads are bowed, notes being taken.
‘Multiple lines of enquiry.’ She lists them off on her finger. ‘The money trail to follow ‒ Gardner, Horley ‒ on the e-mails and phone records, Austin Pemberton and the snake trail – me and Collins. What else?’
‘Ma’am?’ Hussain raises a hand.
‘Go ahead.’
‘I’ve been going through some of the business expense receipts this afternoon and found something that might be interesting.’
‘Go.’
‘It’s a receipt from Timpson, the key cutters, six months before the murder. Maybe it’s nothing, but what if someone was getting spare keys cut to Martin Kitteridge’s office?’
‘This is what I mean,’ Smithes says as if to himself, ‘just good fundamental police work.’
‘Gardner, Collins. That receipt will be timed to the minute and Timpson’s is a big chain, pretty sure they’ll have CCTV. Let’s see if it’s anyone we recognise.’
23
Melody
She hates her eyes. The weak pinkish hue. Crybaby.
Can’t help it. Cleopatra… the mangled mess, like that time with the kittens. Worse maybe.
It had happened again. On her watch.
The back yard is overly decked. Martin, unable to exercise any influence on the interior of the house, had overcompensated here, decking over the little square of lawn they’d had. A patch that would have been an ideal spot to bury Cleopatra.
She looks around. Potted plants, raised beds; she couldn’t bury her beloved cat in those. By the little fountain, the outdoor seating surrounds a clay chiminea. Yes.
Melody takes kindling from the fire box, some firelighters and old newspaper and starts a fire. She feeds it dry imported olive wood until the fire crackles and rages. There’s a new problem. By sight, it’s clear that Cleopatra won’t fit in the chiminea’s mouth.
In the house, she retrieves her call-out bag and her emergency surgical tools, the last time she’d used this was to give a cow a Caesarean Both the cow and the calf lived. Now though, a different assignment.
With Cleopatra, her unshakable surgeon’s hands fail her, their dispassion gone.
It takes longer than it should. Cleopatra divides into three parcels, not as neat as she deserved. Melody adds more olive wood to the chiminea until the heat is a being that seethes and coils.
It is time.
Melody feeds her beautiful cat to the flames. A piece at a time. Cremation, seen through swimming eyes.
Enough. She goes inside, and makes herself a dry vodka Martini. A lemon spiral bobs, then sits, suspended in the clear liquid. Helical. Like DNA.
No. Like a snake.
She drags her chair closer to the radiant heat of the chiminea, a pad and pen resting on her lap. On the left side she writes the name of everyone she can think of connected to Martin. Then draws three straight columns and writes: Motive, Alibi, Snake; the logical things that would convince the police that a suspect was worth investigating.
It is like a scientific experiment. Hypotheses on the left, the test criteria on the right. Against the name of Pug/Sheridan she gives a tick for motive. Rests the tip of her pen on the barren columns to the side.
Takes a sip of her Martini.
Barren. Acute. Antarctically cold.
A second sip, then she pours the rest onto the decking. Drip, drip, drip through the gaps. The lemon helix looks springy and vibrant. She stands, crushes it under her boot and goes inside for her car keys.
The Defender growls along the sea front and ghosts past the burnt-out west pier. Outside, normal people walk to their hotels and step into restaurants. A couple on a bench point out at the lights of the fishing and dredging boats.
She has no appetite.
Martin is beside her, an understanding ex
pression on his face.
‘You’ve had better weeks, Moody, old girl. Chin up.’
‘This is all your fault.’ She keeps her eyes on the road. When she next looks over, he is gone.
The Palace Pier. A dog walker, a few tourists. A couple share chips from a paper bag. Her stomach rumbles. She hasn’t eaten since… when?
The lights change to green and she goes on, back down onto Marine Parade for the second time that day. Was it really this morning that she’d been arrested? It feels like ten days lived in one.
This time she passes unheeded and parks up by the Concorde 2. It’s open. Young people hang around outside, smoking.
There’s marihuana in the air and music, but it’s tinny and incomprehensible.
Pug is at the bar, a pint fizzing, his enormous back hunched over a phone. He’s sitting on a folded leather jacket.
Melody slaps the envelope down on the counter next to his glass.
‘There.’
‘Mrs Kitteridge.’ Pug glances left, then right and conveys the envelope into a pocket. He narrows his eyes. ‘Tell me, something’s been bugging me.’ He takes a sip, and twirls his finger. ‘Were you one of those TV vets? You’ve got a familiar face.’
‘No small talk. I’m a bit upset, you see. On account of my cat dying.’
‘Mr Sheridan doesn’t like to be inconvenienced. To business, then. Half the outstanding amount this time next week.’
‘Impossible. I’d have to sell the house. There’s the will, probate, putting the house on the market–’
‘I don’t care how you get it. Only when.’ He turns back to his drink.
‘But–’
He holds a hand up. ‘Not my problem.’
She takes out detective Van Doren’s card and her phone. ‘You leave me no choice but to go to the police.’
He turns to her now, wraps his massive hands around her phone. ‘Now, now, Mrs Kitteridge. We didn’t have anything to do with your husband’s death.’
She yanks the phone away from his grasp, having the sense that she can, only because he permits it. ‘The authorities can be the judge of that.’
‘Sit.’
The word pins her, like she’s a conditioned dog. He is one of those men whose every breath you can hear, struggling through undersized nostrils. He is thinking.
‘There is another way.’
‘How?’
‘Are you aware of some of the work your husband did for us, Mrs Kitteridge?’
‘By work do you mean gambling away our savings?’
He shakes his head. ‘Husbands, eh? No, Martin was our vet. The dark vet we called him. Black market work and that.’
She is totally bewildered. What veterinary work could Martin possibly have been doing for these thugs?
‘Say you were to fill his shoes, we could maybe knock a few points off that debt, give you time to sell the house and clear the rest of what you owe. Walk away from all this, clean break, like.’
‘Veterinary work. But what type?’ Illegal dog breeds? Perhaps a private racehorse?
‘Mostly events. The address is sent out last minute. Best you see for yourself.’
‘I’ll do it.’
‘Keep Saturday evening free. Bring everything you normally would.’ He levels a sausage finger at her, his arm raised in warning. ‘You mention talking to the pigs again, it’ll be the last conversation you ever have.’
On his forearm. A scar, shaped like a rocket.
24
Astrid
Astrid wakes. The bed, the flat, has never felt so empty, so Jenna-less. She’s been gone one night, so why does she feel the absence so acutely now?
It’s early.
Lycra.
High-vis.
Cleats.
Helmet.
The sea breeze slices her cheeks. Keep moving. The lights on her bike reveal the next few metres ahead of her, as if with each turn of the pedal she discovers a few feet of new world. Astrid powers up and freewheels down the undulations of the coastal road, through the port of Newhaven. A huge ferry is docked, one of the regular services to Dieppe in France. A copshop joke pops into her head: this part of the coast was great because you had Newhaven for the continent, and the nearby retirement town of Eastbourne for the incontinent.
She cuts back to the seafront at Seaford. Briny air. The invisible sea sucks and splashes at the stones.
Maybe she should propose to Jenna. She wouldn’t drop to her knee but she could buy a ring, something colourful and vintage from the South Lanes perhaps. Top of the i360? On the Pier. Under the pier?
She stops, plants a foot. Cuckmere Haven, at dawn. A rich green carpet snaked through by the ethereal gold of the Cuckmere river and her tributaries, the pastel blue of the sea. Yes, here, at dawn. She would do it here.
With her phone she takes a couple of pictures, a mark of memory, and carries on two more miles to Beachy Head, one hundred and sixty plus metres high. Beautiful and one of the most notorious suicide spots in the UK, if not the world.
How convenient, she thinks with a smile, she could always come here if Jenna said no.
Not that she would.
By nine, she’s showered, breakfasted and in Kemptown.
Collins is already waiting for her on the street.
‘Hard to miss this place.’
‘Must have walked past it a hundred times and never been inside.’ Astrid appraises the bright chameleon and various reptiles graffitied on the facade. They go in, the air heavy and unusual, damp and woody. The side walls are dominated by tanks. It’s clean and neat, with wood finished frames. Upmarket, ordered, a little at odds with the chaotic graffiti on the storefront.
‘Hello, there. Can I help?’ The man, presumably Mr Lawrence, the owner, holds a blue-flecked chameleon in front of an open tank. A dead insect is balanced on his forearm.
‘Feeding time at the zoo,’ Collins says and sure enough the tongue flicks out, the insect retracts at hyper speed into the jaws of the reptile. It chews awkwardly.
It takes her a moment to recover from the display, and fish for her warrant card. ‘DI Van Doren and DC Collins with Sussex Police, major crimes. Nothing to worry about sir, we’re actually hoping you might be able help us.’
‘Sure thing.’ He has a soft American accent and tattoos on his arms. Gently, he puts the chameleon back in the tank. ‘I’d hate to presume, but is this about the death of that vet?’
The tanks all look like mini rainforests. There are small frogs in one, lizards in another, some sort of tortoise in another and there, finally a snake coiled in one at the bottom.
‘We’d like to ask you about snakes.’
‘In general, or cobras?’
‘Somebody reads the news then.’ Collins grins.
‘A hypothetical. Say I’m someone who wants a venomous snake. How would I go about getting it?’
The owner puffs out his cheeks, ‘You can’t just walk into a pet shop and buy one, you need a license to own a venomous snake.’
Collins has already checked this, and outside of zoos, there are a baker’s dozen of privately kept cobras in the UK, all accounted for.
‘How about, without a licence?’
The owner laughs, ‘Are there unscrupulous people is this world, detective? Of course, big black market for it. There are breeders out there who don’t care a hot damn about snakes or reptiles, just want to make a quick buck. Big problem, and the authorities are asleep at the wheel. Then what happens? Someone gets bitten, someone dies, and suddenly people start to take notice.’
She wants to say it’s not her department, but it would hardly matter, “they” were the establishment all lumped together in public consciousness. The number of times she’d had people refuse to co-operate with the police because they’d got one too many parking tickets was a personal gripe. ‘Do you know any of these breeders, Mr Lawrence?’
‘Hell, no. Not personally anyways. But I’d we
lcome any investigation into their practices. When there’s no accountability, reptiles, any animals really, are liable to be kept in poor conditions.’
‘So, you’ve never kept venomous snakes yourself?’
‘No, never. I held a venomoid mamba once at an event, beautiful thing.’ He sees their incomprehension. ‘A venomoid’s where the snake has its venom-producing glands removed. Me, I’m more of a lizard guy. Snakes are fine, I stock a couple of corn snakes.’ He rubs his beard.
‘How would someone access this black market?’
‘There’s this Icelandic, or Norwegian, guy known in snake circles. I’ve never met him though.’
‘Name?’
‘Olaf Gudmundson.’
Collins scribbles it down. ‘And you know about him how?’
‘Originally, just rumours. But then I had some teenage girl come in with a viper a couple of years ago. Didn’t want it anymore. Said she’d bought it off this Olaf guy but then was scared of getting bitten, didn’t know how to look after it, take your pick. Folks just don’t think!’
‘Did you get this person’s name?’
‘No, she couldn’t wait to get out of here. If we’d been closed, I bet she’d have left the transport tank right outside the store on the street. It happens. We took it in, called the RSPCA.’ He shrugs. ‘I reported it at the time, but who knows if anything was done about it. Probably lost in the machine.’ He twirls his fingers round in their general direction, implying that they were the machine.
Astrid shakes his hand, ‘Mr Lawrence, you’ve been very helpful. We’ll be looking into it, I assure you.’ She hands him her card. ‘You hear anything about a cobra, or a way to contact Mr Gudmundson, then you give me a call, any time day or night.’
He looks at the card, give it a little shake. ‘You can count on it, Detective.’
Astrid makes a call to Sarah Gardner while Collins does the coffee run.
‘Where are we with Timpson’s?’
‘Visited the outlet, they have CCTV but it’s stored centrally. I’ve been dealing with their head office, been bounced around to the IT security department.’ She sighs, weary. ‘I’m expecting a call back within the hour.’
