Dead Alone

by Gay Longworth

  ‘They’ll never air it,’ said Tarek. ‘Never.’

  Ray grinned at him. ‘Course they won’t – if they know. But we aren’t going to tell them. Are we?’

  ‘What are you going to show them then? What are you going to say you recorded?’

  ‘Don’t you worry your little turban about that. Oh, don’t look at me that way. Think like a Portakabin, you’ll stay in a Portakabin. I’m coming up in the world. You want to stick with me son, or I might not take you with me to the big fat world of Four. Right, where’s that make-up girl? By the way, Tarek, everyone else is on for this. Everyone. Aren’t they, Alistair?’ Alistair nodded. ‘All paid-up members. Anyone blabs, and I’ll know it was you, Tarek. Now, I like you, we’ve come quite far together and I wouldn’t want any harm to come to you. So keep your head down, and stay safe.’ Ray grinned maniacally. ‘This is it. What a bit of luck that bint turned up on the bank of the Thames, eh, Alistair?’

  Alistair grunted his agreement.

  ‘I’ve always said it: One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.’ Ray patted Alistair’s shoulder. ‘Eh, Alistair?’

  This time Alistair didn’t respond.

  CHAPTER 26

  Jessie re-read the plaque on the wall as she tugged the plastic suit over her leathers and zipped it up. Craig and P. J. Dean had been removed from the site and she had called in the experts. The house in Barnes had already earned its place in history long before Verity Shore inhabited it. It had been used back in the late 1700s by smugglers who would bring barrels of newly taxed brandy from the Thames via a network of tunnels that emerged right under the house. There were several of these houses, their secret history long concreted over and forgotten. But not by everyone.

  Someone handed her a mask and she followed the forensic scientist into the building. She could smell the decay through the furry white cardboard. It wasn’t the now familiar smell of decomposition, of rotten flesh; it was the smell of corruption. Rotten life.

  Craig had told her on the way to the house that Verity had become deeply paranoid. She wouldn’t open the windows, she wouldn’t let anyone in to tidy the place and when she was there she was in no fit state to do it herself. She was terrified that someone would go through her rubbish, check when she flushed the loo, just like at home. So she had piled bursting black bin liners one on top of the other in a corner of the room. The mountain of silage now took up a third of the floor space. The smell was as thick as treacle. In the empty adjacent corner the walls were stained with a high brown watermark and the carpet was filthy. Jessie looked from the black bin liners to the empty corner. In a house where no one bothered to stub out a cigarette, someone had taken the trouble to move the pile of rubbish from one corner to another.

  ‘Start shifting those bin liners,’ said Jessie to a policeman nearby.

  ‘You interested in what’s in them?’

  ‘Yes, but I’m more interested in what’s underneath them.’

  Jessie looked in the downstairs loo. As Craig had hinted, it hadn’t been flushed for months. That explained the urine stains and piles of dry human faeces dotted around the house. This was not the same old story of a star sinking into drugs and depression; this was no average cocaine binge in a hotel suite. This had gone further, deeper, darker than that. Cigarettes had been left to burn where they fell. It looked like black slugs were consuming what was left of the carpet. It was only thanks to the damp that the house hadn’t burnt down. Evidence of a miserable existence lay all around her. Vomit stains. Bent, blackened spoons. Rust-coloured syringes. Eve Wirrel could not have portrayed the underbelly of modern celebrity better.

  Jessie followed the man upstairs. Drugs’ bedfellows: sadistic sex, self-loathing. The tools were displayed and tagged, waiting to be taken away by the SOCOs. Jessie was beginning to wonder if P. J. Dean knew his wife at all.

  The Thames sidled up to the wall at the bottom of the garden every few moments, then coyly retreated into itself. A floating jetty clacked and bounced with the tide, rising and falling twice a day, every day. There was a chair in the middle of the lawn. Like the grass below it, it was stained brown-black with dried blood. Verity Shore’s blood, Jessie was sure. The pattern on the ground was in keeping with massive blood loss from a major artery. Looking at the position of the chair and that of the stain, she could determine which artery. The femoral. Sliced open like the artist’s. Eve Wirrel did not die for art. Verity Shore was not killed by her husband. More eerie than the empty chair was the iron bath, denuded of almost all its enamel. She could still smell the sulphuric acid and ammonia. It had been drained on to the ground, leaving a patch of scorched earth. These were Verity’s remains.

  ‘Dig up that turf,’ said Jessie. ‘In the end it can be buried with the bones.’ She left the garden wondering if anyone other than Craig would mourn Verity Shore when and if that day arrived. ‘Tell the team at Dean’s place that they can stop looking for her remains in the pool house. Verity died here.’

  The bin bags were being passed down the line to a waiting truck. Jessie watched the diminishing pile of waste and waited. And waited. The first truck filled, the second arrived. The bags at the bottom had almost all split under the weight. Half-eaten cans of food spilled out. Fat, slow flies crawled over the warm, rotting rubbish. Eventually they had to clear it with spades. The smell was poisonous.

  ‘Pull it up,’ said Jessie, pointing to the carpet. It ripped away easily from the metal teeth. The SOCOs folded it back. Jessie walked over and stared at the ground beneath. Concrete. Solid concrete.

  ‘Get a drill in here. Dig up this whole floor and the garden if you have to, but find the old tunnel entrance.’

  CHAPTER 27

  Jessie straightened her skirt, and ran her fingers through her dark hair. She looked fine. She pulled her jacket on and buttoned it. It was fitted. Very fitted. It would make a change from the paunchy, red-faced officers who usually took press calls. She left the ladies loo and walked towards the conference room. The press were waiting. She took the notes from Trudi. Burrows joined them.

  ‘We found Eve Wirrel’s parents. Sir Edward and Lady Fitz-Williams.’ Jessie was surprised. ‘Wirrel was a pseudonym,’ continued Burrows. ‘She wasn’t in contact with them.’

  ‘So they wouldn’t have heard from her anyway.’

  ‘No, but she still hasn’t turned up at home.’

  ‘The listed church she converted – thanks, Burrows, I read your preliminary notes.’

  ‘Her parents are flying back to London as we speak.’

  Jessie deflated. ‘We’ll go straight to the morgue after this, then.’

  Burrows nodded. ‘They’ll meet us there.’

  ‘It is her, isn’t it?’ said Jessie.

  Burrows nodded.

  ‘They’re waiting,’ said Trudi, pushing her gently towards the door. Jessie entered the stuffy room accompanied by Burrows and a couple of other officers. They were just there for show.

  ‘Thank you all for coming.’ Her throat suddenly felt very dry. It was hot under the TV lights. ‘As you know, a body was found by the Thames on Tuesday. It was confirmed to be Verity Shore, who disappeared from her house the previous Thursday. We would ask you to respect the privacy of her husband and children at this difficult time.’ She paused. ‘I know you have a lot of questions, so please, one by one …’

  ‘Why has it taken you so long to identify the body if she’d been alive a few days before?’

  ‘Yes, I read that interview with Danny Knight. Very fast work, I’m sure Mr Dean appreciated that.’ She looked away from the Daily Mail journalist. ‘To answer the question, the body was not in a good condition, making visual identification impossible.’

  ‘What about dental records?’

  Jessie knew they had heard about the missing head.

  ‘They wouldn’t have helped.’

  ‘Can you confirm the rumours that the body was headless?’

  ‘Please understand, for the sake of her children, we want detail
s to be kept to a minimum. I can say that she did not die of natural causes and that the body had been tampered with.’

  ‘Sexually?’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  ‘How did she die?’

  ‘A compression in the upper vertebrae implies she was hit over the head.’

  ‘So you are looking for a murderer?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And a head?’

  She ignored that.

  ‘Any leads?’

  ‘We are following a number of avenues at this time.’

  ‘How did you find the house in Barnes?’

  She paused. ‘We found relevant paperwork at her lawyer’s.’ It was a half-truth. Verity’s solicitors had confirmed the ownership of the house. It belonged to Ty and Paul; Verity’s mother had put it into trust for them, a trust Verity – knowing how much it was worth and needing the money – had been in the process of trying to break. But all this information had come after Craig had led them to the house. P.J. had begged her to keep Bernie and Craig out of the press. It was a big favour. And she wasn’t quite sure why she was granting it.

  ‘The house is currently being examined for forensic evidence,’ she continued. ‘I have to say it was in a mess, so don’t expect miracles.’ Thankfully, she had prevented P.J. or Craig from following her in.

  ‘What about P.J.? Did he know about her den of iniquity?’

  ‘It is nothing more than an old cottage, and no, he didn’t. He has been questioned and eliminated from our enquiries at this time. I would like to make that absolutely clear. P. J. Dean was at home all weekend with Verity’s children; numerous witnesses have come forward to confirm this. He was with his new band in the recording studio both nights. He didn’t leave the house. Security-camera footage backs this up.’

  ‘Is he going to keep the kids?’

  ‘I have no idea. That does not concern the police.’

  ‘Why would someone kill Verity Shore?’

  There was a brief ripple of laughter from the journalists. Sympathy was not running high for the ‘actress’.

  ‘I don’t know. We’d like to make an appeal to anyone who uses the footpath along the river in the early hours of the morning. I’m especially interested in hearing from people who visit the nature reserve adjacent to the bank where the remains were found, and any members of an art class that have been seen setting up their easels at that spot during the two weeks prior to the discovery of the body. Any more questions?’

  A woman journalist put up her hand. ‘Has Verity Shore’s death got anything to do with the disappearance of Eve Wirrel?’

  Jessie put her pen down. They bloody knew. A blackout meant nothing these days. It was stupid of her not to have prepared a convincing response.

  ‘You are investigating that as well, aren’t you, Detective Inspector Driver?’

  ‘We are making no connection between those cases at the moment.’ Jessie thought about the discoloured grass. The severed artery. The ‘Average Week’.

  ‘Why not? They were rumoured to be …’ the journalist smiled suggestively’… close. Why don’t you ask Mr Dean about that?’

  ‘That’ll be all, thank you.’ Jessie held up her hand, then lowered it. She was shaking.

  ‘What evidence did you find in the house?’

  ‘Was Verity on drugs?’

  She was losing control. Jessie remembered Burrows’ words. Throw them titbits. Keep the animals happy. ‘Could you turn any recording machinery off, please. I’d like to say a few words, off the record.’

  That shut them up. There was a shift in the atmosphere. Jessie waited.

  ‘The reason identification was so difficult, as I’m sure you all know, is because there was no skull. What you may not know is that the body had been submerged in an acid compound that dissolved most of her flesh, soft tissue and vital organs. It did not attack the bones and therefore would not have attacked the teeth. After numerous searches of the bank at low tide we have found no skull. Personally, I don’t believe it is there. We were never meant to find the head. Her silicone implants, however, did survive the acid and it was the coding on these that led to her identification. If I tell you that peroxide was a component of the acid, you may begin to see that whoever did this seems to have been making a point. Which leads me to conclude that whoever did this had a plan. This wasn’t an accident, a sex game gone wrong, a tragic end to a domestic with a lover. This was as premeditated as murder gets. And, yes, this is doubly pertinent since the disappearance of Eve Wirrel. We do have a body in the morgue and I am going presently to find out whether it is in fact the artist. Her parents are meeting me there. This is real, this is about real people. Verity had sons. Eve has parents. I need you to be particularly careful with what is printed. I don’t want panic on my hands. It is going to be hard enough to find the culprit without you lot setting off a witch-hunt that could later be used as part of someone’s defence. Equally, if you discover anything or know anything about Verity Shore’s other life – and Eve Wirrel’s, if it turns out like that – please, in confidence obviously, come and see me or DCI Jones when he is back, which I hope will be very shortly.’

  ‘Like lesbian smut?’ said a journalist.

  She ignored the comment. ‘Thank you for your co-operation.’ Jessie got up and left the room. She had to meet Eve Wirrel’s parents and watch them identify a rotten corpse as their flesh and blood.

  CHAPTER 28

  Mark Ward pulled up outside Elmfield House and stopped the car. He locked and alarmed it, before setting off to find stairwell C. He could hear the television before he reached the door. He could hear something else. Crying. Mark sighed heavily and knocked on the door. Great, he thought, Jones had given him a hysterical young woman to deal with, while Jessie got lights, camera, action. The joys of age. He knocked again. The door opened a crack. A large, red-rimmed eye looked out.

  ‘Detective Inspector Ward – I’m here as DI Driver’s replacement.’

  ‘I just saw her on the telly,’ said Clare.

  ‘Yeah, well, she seems to have got herself a bit busy. So here I am.’

  ‘Where’s Jones?’

  ‘Hospital. Did no one tell you?’

  She stared at him blankly. ‘So what, you’re not going to help me? I wait all this time and now you turn up and tell me you’re not going to help –’

  ‘We are, it’s only …’

  Clare started to cry.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ said Mark. ‘I didn’t mean to bring more bad news.’

  ‘Fuck off then. I don’t need your pity.’

  Mark could feel the frustration radiating off her and it made his antagonism melt away. ‘Why don’t you let me come in? We’ll have a chat – I remember Raymond Giles going down, you know.’

  She looked at him. Enormous brown eyes.

  ‘Right bastard, he was. It was a sad day when that man got let out.’

  Clare unchained the door. ‘Come in. You should watch this.’ Clare almost ran back down the short corridor, picked up the remote control and pressed ‘play’. ‘I recorded it this afternoon.’ She barely looked at Mark.

  Ray St Giles stared at Clare and Mark from the television set. Mark saw Clare shiver.

  ‘Verity Shore is dead. The celebrity world is in shock. Many have come forward to talk about Verity, what a great friend and person she was. Another side to Verity was provided by Danny Knight, who gave an interview to the Daily Mail. He is with us today.’ The camera panned out to include a bald-headed man sitting on a chair. ‘Welcome, Danny. Tell me, were you surprised to find out about Verity’s death?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Mark and Clare both sat down. Glued to the set. The spectacular.

  ‘She had been living an increasingly bizarre life. She was bedridden at home, only getting it together to do press calls – she was on the phone to her publicist day and night, demanding more and more. But interest in her was waning. She looked pretty terrible. Over-exposu
re, I think they call it. She hated that.’

  ‘What do you think killed her?’

  He pretended to pause. Act unscripted. ‘Celebrity. Celebrity killed her.’

  ‘P. J. Dean’s celebrity?’

  ‘I can’t talk about him. Confidentiality agreement.’

  ‘Okay. Was Verity happily married?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why didn’t she leave?’

  ‘Then she’d have had nothing.’

  ‘Alimony?’

  ‘Nope. P.J. and Verity had no kids together. Without a baby, she gets diddly squat. What was she going to do? Get a job?’ The audience laughed. ‘I doubt anyone would fall for her tricks and marry her a fourth time. Let’s face it, she was beginning to look a bit lived-in.’

  Pictures appeared on the screen.

  ‘Airbrushed,’ said Danny. ‘I have a recent one of her here –’ He pulled a photo out of his pocket.

  ‘Can we get a camera on this?’

  The audience gasped. Verity looked like a hag. ‘That was after another of her disappearing acts.’

  ‘Wow.’ Ray was acting out the startled presenter bit to perfection. He turned to the camera. ‘She certainly doesn’t look like she used to.’ A giant picture of him filled the screen for a moment before breaking up into hundreds of squares and fading away to reveal a dark-haired, fresh-faced girl in a cereal advert. It vaguely resembled Verity Shore. Then came ‘glamour’ pictures, then topless and finally nude. Doctored for daytime television. Somewhere along the way, Verity turned blonde. Now the footage of the marriages began to roll:

  ‘I have found my soul mate. Tommy and I are one, aren’t we, babe?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So how long have you two actually known each other?’

  ‘Two months in this life. But we were married to each other in a former life, so really we’ve known each other for ages.’

  ‘Literally,’ says the presenter.