Murder in Kentish Town: an elegant mystery set in Bohemian London

by Sabina Manea

  ‘I don’t really know what to say, other that it doesn’t seem right.’

  ‘What do you mean, it doesn’t seem right?’ Carliss asked, confused.

  ‘Darius Major was infatuated with Genevieve Taylor. Marie Cassel was infatuated with Darius Major and jealous of Genevieve Taylor. So how does it follow that Darius kills Marie and then himself?’

  ‘He was obviously impulsive, you can’t deny that,’ replied the inspector. ‘He had an illegal gun and a track record of violence. In my experience, it’s only a matter of time before someone like that lashes out and does something awful. And, true to form, he did. They must have argued, worse than usual. He gets the gun out, threatens her, and one thing leads to another. Maybe he didn’t even mean to pull the trigger. Maybe he just wanted to scare her. But he fires the gun, and bang, she’s dead. He’s looking at a long time inside, so he panics and turns the gun on himself. God knows what he could have been on: drink, drugs. Both, most likely. They led that sort of life, didn’t they? I wouldn’t be surprised if the PM confirms he was under the influence.’

  ‘It sounds very plausible, I’ll give you that,’ said Lucia as she rubbed her temple with her index finger.

  ‘And still you’re not buying it,’ said Carliss. ‘You know I’m always happy to be persuaded otherwise, but you’re going to have to bring me something more concrete than a head scratch.’

  ‘I know. I’m working on it.’

  Lucia headed out of the bedroom. She’d seen enough for now. The death scene wasn’t going to elicit any more information that she could make any sense of, for now anyway. A walk around the rest of the place might be more helpful. She headed back to the sitting room, which was in a similar messy state as it had been the first time the detectives had turned up. Off the top of her head, nothing looked remarkable. At the back of the flat, the kitchen was only a little bigger than a cupboard. There was a pile of dirty dishes stacked next to the sink, and the floor looked like it could have done with a thorough scrub. It was as far removed as could be from Genevieve Taylor’s immaculate home.

  ‘What’s this?’ Lucia peered at the windowsill. The kitchen had a single window that led out to the back of the building. The view was onto the street.

  ‘What am I looking at?’ asked Carliss, slightly bemused.

  ‘This.’ She pointed to a long, thin brown streak.

  ‘Dirt? Not exactly out of place. Plenty of it here.’ Carliss didn’t approve of the cleaning standards, since his own home in Kentish Town was neat as a pin.

  ‘Looks like dried up mud to me,’ replied Lucia, registering the seemingly useless fact.

  ‘Did you find anything else?’ asked the inspector.

  ‘No. Not yet, anyway. I’m going back to the bedroom.’

  Doing her best not to get distracted by the bed of horrors, Lucia proceeded to examine the rest of the room. It was sparsely furnished: a cheap, mass-produced chest of drawers and matching wardrobe, two bedside tables and a load of clothes, presumably both dirty and clean, if any difference existed between the two categories, thrown liberally on the floor. She bent over and looked under the bed.

  ‘Have you got a bag for this?’ she asked Carliss, who was standing in the doorway watching her.

  ‘Here. What is it?’

  ‘A napkin. It’s got a funny logo on it. Funny, as in unusual, not comic. See?’

  The inspector picked up the dark brown napkin. ‘What do you think it is?’

  ‘Some sort of flower?’ Lucia turned it over in her hand. ‘Or a crown? But they’ve got tongues sticking out. Snakes?’

  ‘We’ll bag it up, if it makes you happy.’ Carliss sighed. ‘Let’s scram. This place is getting into your head, I can see it, and it’s not doing anyone any good.’

  Chapter 28

  DS Cam Trinh took a deep breath and walked into the greasy spoon where she had arranged to meet Lang, one of the girls that worked for Trish in the nail bar. After much coaxing and mollycoddling from Trish, Lang had finally agreed to speak to Trinh. It seemed that Lang knew something about the disappearing girls, but she wouldn’t let anything on to Trish herself. Quite why Lang would open up to a police detective was beyond Trinh, but Trish had insisted that the sergeant capitalise on her shared cultural heritage and on the fact that Trinh’s mother had been well liked and trusted by the rest of the employees when she worked in the salon.

  The place – Lang’s choice – was an absolute dump. Trinh wasn’t the fussy type, but she did think of herself as having some standards, and this gaff fell significantly short of them. The lino floor, long undisturbed by mop or hoover, was so greasy that it gleamed and was dotted with scraps of food that looked decidedly fossilized. The counter was steamed up, or most likely so clogged up with a thick oily mess that it was opaque. Behind it stood a squat, middle-aged woman with a lugubrious mien that could give the head harpy a run for her money. The only upside of the place was that it was on a quiet side street. The only other customer was an elderly man who looked like he hadn’t shifted from the table in a few decades. Lang was evidently worried about being seen in public with Trinh, and the latter was happy to indulge the girl so long as she could get something out of her. The mystery of the disappearing nail bar workers hadn’t yet been solved. Quite the opposite, another one had recently gone missing, her whereabouts unknown and untraceable.

  Trinh looked at her watch. Lang was ten minutes late. Trinh wondered whether she would turn up at all, or whether she’d got cold feet at the last minute. The caff matron glowered in Trinh’s direction, and the detective sergeant thought it prudent to order another mug of tea, lest she’d get unceremoniously turfed out.

  The door creaked, and in walked a girl who could have been in her teens had Trinh not known that she was in fact twenty-four. She was wrapped in a shiny silver puffer jacket that swamped her petite frame.

  Trinh gave Lang a small friendly smile and waved. She desperately hoped she wouldn’t spook the girl, so she did her best to wipe any trace of the copper off her face. Two young women having a quiet chat, that’s how she needed to market the encounter.

  The girl stood still for a moment as she let the door swing shut behind her, like a rabbit caught in the headlights. Trinh’s sympathetic expression eventually did the trick, and Lang approached cautiously and sat opposite the DS.

  ‘Hi, Lang,’ Trinh said gently. ‘I’m Cam. It’s really nice to meet you. Would you like a drink?’

  Lang nodded furiously. She hadn’t taken off her jacket, so Trinh surmised she must have been freezing. Her hands looked like they’d been drained of all the blood. The weather that day was regrettably inclement: icy April showers all morning, with a biting wind to top it all up.

  ‘Tea, please,’ whispered Lang as she rubbed her small cold hands together for warmth.

  Having settled the girl with a steaming drink in front of her, Trinh proceeded as delicately as she could. ‘Lang, thank you for coming to meet me. And I know Trish is really grateful too. She’s been worried sick about you girls. Another week, another one gone. She said you might know something that could help us find them.’

  Lang shifted side to side in her chair and bit her lower lip. Her hands were gradually turning a livelier colour, and eventually she shuffled out of her jacket and draped it on the back of her chair. Underneath, she wore a fluffy, Barbie-pink jumper that made her childlike air even more unsettling. She said tersely and not without suspicion in her voice, ‘You’re a policewoman.’

  ‘Yes, I’m a detective with Kentish Town CID. But that’s not why I’m here. First and foremost, I’m Trish’s friend. And you know my mum, Mai. She used to work with Trish.’

  ‘Yes, Mai. She is like a mother to all of us.’ Lang smiled more broadly and stroked her own arm absently.

  ‘Mai is really worried about the girls too. She asked me to help. Nobody’s in any trouble, don’t worry. It’s just that we all want to know they’re OK. They’re not picking up their phones, and Trish can’t track them down in any
way.’

  Lang sat in complete silence, as if nothing of what Trinh said had registered. She sipped her tea with a blank look on her face, rocking backwards and forwards slightly as if in a trance.

  Trinh waited. There was no point in rushing Lang. The detective’s instinct told her that the girl was on the cusp of taking Trinh into her confidence, but at her own pace. She would open up when she was ready, and Trinh sensed that it would be sooner rather than later.

  Finally, in a totally deadpan tone, Lang said, ‘They have gone away.’

  Trinh waited again, but it didn’t seem that any other information was forthcoming. ‘What do you mean, they’ve gone away?’

  ‘They don’t want to work for Trish anymore.’

  ‘Why? Do they not get on with her?’ Trinh uttered this in disbelief. She couldn’t imagine Trish would have done anything to mistreat her employees. Quite the opposite, she’d always gone out of her way to help them with whatever she could.

  ‘No, it’s not about Trish. They have found something better.’

  ‘Better, in what way?’ The thought that flashed through Trinh’s mind wasn’t one she particularly wished to have confirmed.

  ‘They work in a bar.’

  ‘What sort of bar?’

  ‘The kind of bar that pays them good money.’

  This is worse than pulling teeth, Trinh thought with considerable frustration that she hoped wasn’t showing outwardly. She took a breath and decided that easy would more likely do it. ‘What’s the name of the bar, Lang?’

  ‘Medusa.’

  ‘Medusa,’ repeated Trinh. The name didn’t ring any bells. She was good friends with a Holborn DS in what was still informally – and somewhat controversially in this day and age – referred to as Vice, but she’d never heard him mention this particular place. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Soho. Brewer Street.’

  Brewer Street had been gentrified within an inch of its life in recent years, so Trinh couldn’t picture where precisely an insalubrious establishment would be located. She suspected that Medusa wasn’t peddling cocktails in a jar to the local media types.

  ‘And what do the girls do? Serve drinks, that kind of thing?’

  Lang smiled sarcastically, with a coldness in her eyes that made it clear the question was the dumbest she’d ever heard. ‘Yeah. Drinks.’

  Unfazed by the snub, Trinh asked, ‘How did they get the work? Did they know someone who recommended them?’

  ‘Word gets around. It’s good work. Pays well,’ Lang repeated. She placed the mug on the table and flicked it to one side with a dismissive forefinger. ‘I have to go.’

  Trinh knew there was no use trying to keep the girl any longer. She thanked her lucky stars that Lang had accepted to open up to her at all. As far as revelations went, this one was about as bad as the detective had feared.

  Chapter 29

  The following day, late in the afternoon, Trinh sat in the office that Lucia and Carliss shared and waited patiently. They were due back any second now.

  Carliss strode in, followed by Lucia. ‘DS Trinh. Sorry to keep you waiting. What have you got for us?’

  ‘First, we’ve interviewed all the Aurora Borealis lot again. I roped in some help, and we got them all processed by lunchtime. Nothing interesting, but not much that’s verifiable either. All three that are left, Rosie Venter, Edoardo da Carrara and Miles Donovan, were at home on their own all evening. And they all knew about Darius’s gun and that he kept it in his bedside drawer. He bragged about it during one of their sessions, said it made him more of a man. Like a true Southern hero or some nonsense like that.’

  ‘OK. I suppose it doesn’t matter much for now. Anything else?’ said Carliss.

  ‘You’ll want to sit down for this one, boss,’ said Trinh excitedly. She could barely conceal the self-satisfied look on her face, so Lucia knew she must have dug up something good.

  ‘Alright, let’s see it,’ replied Carliss as he and Lucia sat down at the table.

  Trinh produced a large notebook filled with her neat handwriting and a pile of paper in support. ‘I tracked down the details of Genevieve Taylor’s old cases, just like you asked me to, Lucia. Took a while, it did. Some of them are publicly available, some less so, and her old firm in Hamilton wasn’t exactly forthcoming. Still, I managed to fish out enough information to report back. In fact, I hit the jackpot, even though I do say so myself,’ she added proudly.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ said the inspector, curiosity etched into his face. ‘Go on then.’

  ‘Genevieve Taylor defended a lot of financial fraud cases. They were by far the most interesting ones and, you were right, Lucia, they were the ones where the stakes were pretty high. So, I went through every single judgment I could find, until I came across this.’ Trinh pushed a piece of paper towards Lucia and Carliss.

  ‘Douglas Cranston,’ Lucia read out. ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘The question is not who he is, but who he has become,’ replied Trinh with a purposeful air of mystery. She was clearly enjoying keeping her colleagues in suspense.

  ‘So, who has he become?’ asked Lucia with a smile, so as not to deny her friend her moment in the limelight.

  ‘Miles Donovan.’ Trinh delivered the shocking information so deadpan that you could have missed it.

  After a few seconds of stunned silence, Lucia spoke first. ‘Miles Donovan, as in the guy who’s from New Zealand and a member of Aurora Borealis?’

  ‘That’s him. Same guy. He arrived in the UK two years ago. Passport states he’s called Miles Donovan, born in Auckland. That’s technically true. What it doesn’t say, though, is that before leaving New Zealand he changed his name from Douglas Cranston. He was one of Genevieve’s clients. His case concluded not long before he applied to emigrate. Financial fraud, of course. He was an accountant back in New Zealand and he got charged with fiddling balance sheets to evade tax for a client. The New Zealand Inland Revenue didn’t take too kindly to it. Amazingly, Genevieve Taylor managed to get him off the charges. He was acquitted, but sins – or alleged sins, in this case – cast long shadows. He got sacked by his firm, and it doesn’t look like he would have got another job in that line of work, not in New Zealand anyway, not after all the publicity.’

  ‘It seems unfair, somehow. Maybe he didn’t do it,’ interrupted Lucia.

  ‘Unfair, perhaps. What came out in the newspaper reports is that he was furious with Genevieve. He thought she didn’t cross-examine the witnesses properly. More precisely, she let them tear down his character in open court, which is why he was unemployable.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s her fault. Everything you’ve done, good and bad, is likely to come out in a situation like that,’ said Lucia.

  ‘I’m sure you’re right, but that’s not how he saw it,’ replied Trinh. ‘The next part of the story you know already. He met this Brit in New Zealand. Some sort of whirlwind romance, and they got married and moved to the UK. He got himself a job as an office caretaker, but they got divorced before too long. He stayed in this country. Fresh start, I guess, another shot at a normal life. After all, on paper he hadn’t actually done anything wrong. He didn’t have a criminal record or anything.’

  DCI Carliss stepped in. ‘You know what this all means. He’s got motive.’

  ‘And plenty of it. Now it makes sense, doesn’t it? Walter Chanler said that Miles wasn’t too enamoured of Genevieve. “Maybe she had it coming.” That statement adds up now. He’s held a grudge against her all these years, and suddenly here she is,’ said Lucia.

  ‘Do you think their meeting at Aurora Borealis was accidental? Or do you think it’s more sinister than that? Had he been tracking her all these years? Waiting for the right moment to strike?’ asked Trinh.

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Lucia. ‘We need to pay the man another visit and see.’

  Chapter 30

  Standing outside the building that contained Miles Donovan’s flat, Lucia felt slightly nauseous at the prospect of spending an
y more time than strictly necessary in his presence. She had instinctively recoiled when she and Carliss had first interviewed him. It was maybe the dinginess of his digs, or something about him that unsettled her. He looked like someone who had given up, and she wondered if that also meant he had been prepared to drag another down with him. Genevieve Taylor, the object of his dislike – or perhaps even hatred – all these years had turned up dead, and, incidentally, a ghost from her past was around when it happened.

  The doorbell was eventually answered, and the detectives headed for the flat. Their visit was unannounced. Quite rightly in Lucia’s view, DCI Carliss had decided that it was best to spring a surprise on Miles Donovan so he wouldn’t have time to cook up some tall tale or excuse. He had sounded mildly taken aback at the police turning up on his doorstep out of the blue, but his voice sounded more apathetic than anything else.

  The flat was as grotty and cramped as Lucia had recalled, and perhaps even filthier. Miles Donovan himself definitely looked worse than before. He had to have been sitting at home in a mess for days, judging by the state of his personal appearance and that of the place, especially the kitchen, which was unspeakably horrific. No luck jobhunting, surmised Lucia, not looking like that.

  DCI Carliss was doing his best to ignore the squalor they had found themselves in and focus on the questioning instead. He sat down carefully on one of the two kitchen chairs that he had the good sense to draft in for himself and Lucia. Miles Donovan plonked himself on the nasty little sofa that the detectives had been crammed on last time they visited. He stared at them with vacant eyes, neither defensive nor responsive.

  ‘Mr Donovan, sorry to drop in on you like this, but information has come to light that requires further investigation,’ began Carliss. ‘Last time we spoke, you stated that you weren’t acquainted with Miss Taylor before you joined Aurora Borealis. Do you stand by that statement?’

  Miles Donovan looked confused. ‘Well, yes… I didn’t know her, that’s correct. But why are you asking all this again?’