Last Goodbye_An absolutely gripping murder mystery thriller

by Arlene Hunt

  ‘So, Malloy.’ He leaned against the doorframe and folded his arms across his pigeon chest. ‘You’ve moved up in the world.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Good, always nice to see the department’s gender quota in full effect.’

  Cora squared her shoulders, but Roxy cut across her before she could get fully fired up.

  ‘Do we have an ID on the victim?’

  ‘We ran her prints against her ID card. Her name is Andrea Colgan, twenty-six.’

  ‘Can we access the scene now, Inspector?’

  Johnson straightened up. She could tell he was annoyed that she hadn’t taken his bait. ‘We’ve been over the living room and the kitchen, so you can start there. You know the drill, right? Keep your hands to yourselves and don’t touch anything.’

  ‘Is there anything you can tell us?’

  ‘I’ve already given you some advice: call Detective Quinn.’

  She gave him a look that would sour milk.

  ‘Anything relevant.’

  ‘You’ve been a sergeant now, what, a week?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Roxy took note of the fact that he’d been keeping track.

  ‘Is this your first homicide?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. You want some friendly advice, Malloy?’

  ‘Not really,’ Roxy replied icily.

  ‘Suit yourself.’ Johnson threw his hands up and stepped aside to let them in. ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry.’ Roxy stepped past and shot him a dark look. ‘I won’t say anything about you at all. I never do.’

  Johnson’s cheeks went red and his eyes grew mean, but he wisely kept his mouth shut, and that suited Roxy perfectly.

  Chapter Five

  Andrea Colgan’s apartment was huge. It was also nicer – much nicer, Roxy thought looking around – than anything she herself could ever hope to afford. She wondered how the hell a girl in her mid twenties had been able to pay for a place like this.

  She followed Cora down the hall and stepped into a split-level living room. Polished wooden floors gleamed honey gold in the morning light; French doors led to a balcony overlooking the river and the carefully maintained parkland below. The walls were painted chalky white and covered in the type of artwork Roxy could never make head or tails of, splodges of colour and indistinct shapes that could be anything if you squinted hard enough.

  ‘Nice digs,’ Cora said, pausing to admire a vintage rosewood credenza. ‘I’d love to know how people keep walls white like this. My Joe would have them destroyed with scuffmarks in less than an hour. No matter how many times I tell him, he throws his dirty work bag up against them …’

  Roxy squatted on her haunches and studied the evidence tags on the floor, each one placed next to a droplet of blood. She counted twelve in all, leading back towards the hall. Violence had occurred here, but there was no sign of any other disturbance that she could see, nothing broken, nothing overthrown.

  She got to her feet and skirted the rest of the room, trying to picture the type of person who lived in a home like this; she imagined them as professional, effortlessly chic, the kind of person who could walk in high heels without looking awkward. There were lots of personal touches: framed photos, books, throws and cushions. The furniture was eclectic – some vintage pieces with a smattering of modernity throughout. On the lower level two rose-coloured sofas faced each other over a good-quality rug, a glass-topped coffee table between them. A vase of incredibly bright yellow roses sat on a side table next to the sofa closest to the window. The wall-mounted curved-screen television probably cost more than Roxy’s monthly take-home wages, ditto the integrated sound system. She spied a phone dock on the breakfast bar, but it was empty. No computer or laptop that she could see either.

  She went through to the kitchen. It was modern, high tech, but disappointingly bland after the living room: glossy white cupboards, lots of stainless steel. Integrated shelves on either side of the oven were stuffed with cookbooks. In an ornamental wine rack next to the fridge she found some decent bottles as well as the usual supermarket plonk.

  A block of Parmesan cheese and a half-sliced artisan loaf lay on a chopping board next to a bread knife. Roxy touched her fingers to the bread: it was as hard as rock. An ice bucket containing a bottle of champagne sat next to the chopping board. The label read Bollinger. She made a note of it in her EN, looked around for any sign of champagne glasses and didn’t find any.

  She opened doors and drawers full of cooking utensils, some she recognised and others she had no idea what they could possibly be used for. The cupboards were well stocked, the fridge too. Photos on the fridge door captured scenes from a happy, privileged life: summer holidays, winter trips, dinners, a cute picture of – she assumed – Andrea Colgan standing in this very kitchen wearing a white chef’s hat and a floral apron. She was smiling, beaming actually. There was a lot of love in that smile, Roxy thought. She peered at another photo: same girl, tanned and smiling, leaning back against a bearded man. He was not conventionally handsome, but his face had a certain roguish charm. His arms were wrapped tightly around Andrea’s waist, fingers interlocked. There were boats behind them, a pier somewhere, or a harbour.

  She took the photo of the couple with her and went back to the living room. Cora was squatting by the corner of the coffee table, holding her gloved fingers close to her face.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I thought I caught a whiff of something when I came in, then I noticed this rug was wet.’ She straightened back up, wrinkling her nose. ‘It’s pee.’

  ‘Pee?’

  ‘Urine, then.’ She held out her fingers. Roxy declined the offer of a closer inspection with a brisk shake of her head.

  ‘I believe you. Is there a cat or something?’

  ‘Don’t see any sign of one.’

  ‘Weird. I’ll tell Johnson.’

  ‘Piss?’ Johnson said when she told him. He turned his head a fraction and bellowed, ‘Jimmy!’

  A bespectacled head appeared from a closet further down the hall.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did you find the piss in the living room?’

  ‘What piss?’

  ‘That’s what I was afraid you’d say. Get back up there and collect a sample, and buck bloody up. How did you miss a puddle of piss?’

  ‘To be fair, it was on a rug,’ Roxy said.

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  Looking suitably chastised, Jimmy lumbered past. Roxy showed Johnson the photograph she had taken from the fridge.

  ‘Is this her, is this Andrea Colgan?’

  Johnson glared. ‘I thought I told you not to touch anything.’

  ‘Is it her or not?’

  ‘Hair’s right.’ Johnson lowered his glasses and squinted. ‘Can’t really comment on the face.’

  Roxy returned the photo to her inside pocket.

  ‘I’d like to see the bedroom next.’

  ‘Door on the right.’

  Before she went in, Roxy paused and took a deep breath to steady her nerves. All death carried with it a certain smell, a lingering trace on the air. She didn’t want to think about the life that had been taken; she wanted to concentrate on what had been left behind.

  She wished Johnson would stop staring at her.

  It was a double bedroom, decorated in shades of grey and taupe, feminine but not overpoweringly so, luxurious without being ostentatious. High ceilings, built-in wardrobes on either side of a king-sized bed, a funky-looking dresser with brass handles against the opposite wall and a red velvet love seat wedged into the space under the window. There were several pairs of high-heeled shoes lined up against the skirting board: pretty things, and, to Roxy’s mind, completely impractical.

  A bedside locker contained a box of tissues, hand lotion, half a packet of tablets for a sore throat, a bronze lamp and next to that a framed photo. Roxy bent down to study it.

  It was the same blonde woman from t
he photo in the kitchen, though several years younger. She was wearing a graduation cap and cape, beaming, clearly proud as Punch. A man and woman stood to either side of her. The man was tall, with pale eyes and thick dark brows. His hand rested on the girl’s shoulder in what appeared to Roxy a strangely proprietorial gesture. There was something about him that seemed familiar but she couldn’t work out what it was, so she turned her attention to the woman. There was a clear resemblance between her and Andrea, especially around the mouth, but there was distance here too. The woman stood a little apart, holding a handbag in front of her waist like a shield. She too was smiling, but only with her mouth.

  Roxy opened the wardrobe and flipped through the hangers. Andrea’s clothes were smart, bought from high-end stores. She favoured jewel tones and Roxy imagined she looked good in them with her colouring. Near the back she found a vintage wedding dress, carefully wrapped in tissue paper. It looked beautiful and impossibly fragile. Andrea had probably been saving this, she thought, saving it for her big day.

  A day that would never come.

  With a pang of sadness, she put the dress back and turned her attention at last to the bed.

  The covers were stained with blood, tangled, pulled free from all four corners. A bloodstained pillow lay on the floor between the bed and the window. There were traces of blood splatter on the wall and the headboard, and a pool of blood had seeped through into the mattress, on the side closest to the locker.

  ‘She fought him.’

  ‘Looks that way,’ Johnson said from the doorway, where he was monitoring her movements closely.

  ‘No blood anywhere else apart from those drops in the living room?’

  ‘No.’

  She stared at the bed again.

  ‘What was she wearing when she was found?’

  ‘Satin gown, bra and knickers,’ Johnson said. ‘Lacy, pink. She had one of those frilly things around her leg.’ He indicated midway up his own thigh.

  ‘A garter?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Roxy frowned.

  ‘Her underwear was intact?’

  ‘That’s what I said, Malloy.’

  ‘Was there evidence of a sexual nature?’

  ‘We’ve taken swabs, we’ll know soon enough.’ He glanced over his shoulder when someone called his name. ‘I’ll be back. Don’t bloody touch anything else.’

  Roxy pushed the bathroom door open with her elbow. An automatic sensor triggered the lights to reveal a free-standing bath almost full to the brim with water. She tested it. Cold. Candles lined the tub; all but one had burnt down to nothing. Andrea Colgan had been expecting a romantic encounter, but something had gone wrong; something had gone terribly wrong.

  Using the edge of her gloved finger, Roxy opened the mirrored cabinet over the sink and found the usual bathroom stuff: earbuds, toothpaste, moisturiser, generic painkillers, mouthwash, a box of tampons, unopened; and nearer the back, a small brown bottle of tablets.

  She moved the bottle around to read the label, Citalopram, an antidepressant.

  ‘You done?’ Johnson was back. He stood in the doorway, hemming her in. In the confined space his aftershave was overpowering, something musky with an underlying note she found rather unpleasant. It reminded her a little of blue cheese.

  ‘Yes.’ She squeezed past him. ‘No. I want a sample taken of the vomit on the path outside the building.’

  ‘Outside? Why?’

  She forced herself to make direct eye contact with him.

  ‘Because it’s fresh, Inspector Johnson.’

  ‘It’s probably some drunk or something.’

  ‘And if it isn’t?’

  He stared at her, defiant. She stared back, equally so.

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Jimmy!’

  It was a small victory, Roxy thought, watching him storm out of the room, but it was a victory.

  Chapter Six

  The lone wolf does not operate within a pack. They have rejected him, chased him away, therefore he must look for – and exploit – weakness if he wishes to succeed.

  And the wolf was determined to succeed.

  That morning, with the wind chill on his face, he looked down into the empty communal seating area between the buildings and thought: Estelle Roberts is weak, Estelle Roberts is vulnerable.

  Estelle Roberts is prey.

  She had been married once. He remembered there had been a husband, a brutish-looking beast who scowled and glowered through the windscreen whenever he came to pick her up from work in his boring sedan. Back then Estelle had seldom smiled; she’d dressed in grey and black, worn her blonde hair scraped back from her face in a variety of uninspiring styles.

  But now the brute was gone and Estelle, newly free, had blossomed from a dowdy weed into a beautiful rose.

  For a long time the wolf wasn’t entirely sure what to do about her. Yes, she was blonde and petite, pretty when she smiled, the kind of woman who normally caught his attention.

  He liked the way she played with her hair when she laughed, her eyes darting this way and that, as though afraid to be caught enjoying a joke. Unlike the other women in the office, she was shy, timid, always careful with her manners. She said please and thank you; she didn’t engage in small talk of any kind, and once, when she’d caught him staring at her, she had blushed and looked away.

  He’d considered her right up until the day Lorraine Dell had put her hand on his arm, asked him to do her a favour and called him ‘love’; after that he forgot about Estelle Roberts, for a little while at least.

  Until he saw her with a man he later identified as Hugh Bannon.

  For days he watched Estelle and Hugh walk around the sculpted green next to the main office, moving in step with each other, their bodies barely inches apart. When they touched, he felt a dull ache behind his eyes.

  At night he dreamed of her; he dreamed it was he who walked beside her, he who touched her, he who made her play with her hair when she smiled.

  He considered his options.

  His hatred for Hugh Bannon grew.

  Feeling slightly frantic, he made it his business to cross Estelle’s path, to bump into her at random moments throughout the day. Sometimes he called her phone at the office, just to hear her speak.

  Then it happened.

  Disaster.

  He overheard one of the other women make a crude joke about Estelle’s burgeoning romance. He listened, invisible to them as he always was, choking down his emotions as they discussed Hugh Bannon’s prowess between the sheets.

  It was so disgusting he’d wanted to scream at them.

  After that, the wolf knew it was pointless to even try. Estelle wasn’t interested in him, not in that way.

  At first he had been upset, depressed, down in the dumps. He’d cried twice, once in public, which mortified him, and once at home, which did not. He spent hours online, trying to fill the emptiness, but nothing worked.

  She belonged to another man: she had chosen him.

  After a while, he stopped feeling sad. After a while, a new emotion rose within him.

  Anger.

  The anger felt good, clean.

  Just.

  He studied Hugh too, taking careful note of his mannerisms, the way he walked, and the way he spoke to others. Within days he concluded that Hugh was a loser without ambition. Worse than that, he wasn’t really that good-looking. As soon as his hair fell out and he put on weight, he’d be perfectly ordinary. This knowledge infuriated him. God, why were women so blind? What made them pick losers when there were so many other options in the world?

  Options like him.

  He had wanted Estelle to be different, but she was just like all the rest.

  Weak.

  That cold morning the wolf watched Estelle Roberts smile at Hugh Bannon and felt his guts twist. Hugh was standing with his broad back to him, one hand in his pocket, the other on the wall behind Estelle’s head. The wolf could not see his face, but he knew the exact expression that would be on it
.

  Watching them filled the wolf with rage, but it was important that he wear his other face here. There were too many others who might have noticed his interest in Estelle, too many prying eyes and curious minds. He had learned long ago never to drop his guard around his co-workers. They were nothing but cattle to him, but even cattle could be dangerous when threatened.

  He leaned forward, pressing his stomach against the railing, feeling it give softly under his weight. From this vantage point he fancied he could almost smell Estelle’s perfume. Her hair was down, and under the heavy coat he knew she was wearing a navy dress with polka dots on it. He liked it when she wore dresses; women were supposed to look feminine. It never ceased to disgust him how many women dressed like men and thought they were attractive.

  The fire-escape door clanked open behind him and the platform creaked as someone stepped out.

  ‘Jaysus, it’s Baltic out here.’

  George. The wolf hated George too; the man was loud and obnoxious. He told crude jokes and laughed at them even if nobody else did. He slapped backs, stood too close and belched loudly, roaring, ‘Better out than in!’

  The wolf lifted the cigarette to his lips and forced himself to suck down some of the disgusting smoke. He almost gagged, but managed to keep his reflexes under control. He hated taking part in this charade. He didn’t smoke, and loathed the smell of cigarettes, almost as much as he despised the fake camaraderie between smokers. Us against the nanny state, one of the tobacco-stained freaks had told him recently. He’d wanted to laugh in the man’s face, ram the burning cigarette up his nostril and shove him over the railing. But as always, he’d said nothing. Besides, smoking allowed him cover to observe, to eavesdrop, and to keep a close eye on his enemies and his other interests.

  He glanced over his shoulder.

  ‘All right, big man,’ George said, tipping him a wink. ‘Fuck me, cold, isn’t it?’

  I heard you the first time, the wolf thought. He dropped the cigarette onto the platform and ground it out.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, because that was what people did. They exchanged tedious ‘pleasantries’ countless times a day. They ‘got on’. ‘Very cold.’