by John Harvey
“I think so, yes.” A pause, and then: “I think she felt sorry for her.”
“Sorry?”
“In a way, yes. That and some sense of obligation.”
Prior nodded. “She’d got on in the world, I suppose—good job, smart clothes, snazzy little car—and there’s her sister, living out in never-never land, no husband, no friends, old before her time.”
“Something like that, yes.”
“Except, from what you’ve said, that wasn’t true.” Prior gave the coffee one more sip, wound down the window, and poured the remainder out onto the ground. “Jennie might not have known it, but it wasn’t true. Claire was out meeting people, making contact, going off for weekends, enjoying herself. Concerts, exhibitions, who knows what else? Having sex. And why not? Why shouldn’t she? She wasn’t the quiet little mouse her sister thought she was, waiting around to shrivel up. She had a life.”
“And it killed her.”
“We don’t know that.”
“We can assume...”
“Assume, Frank? Is that what we do?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Right now, I don’t think we’re in a position to assume anything very much. There’s a fifty-five-year-old woman in there, most likely dead from strangulation, but we don’t even know that yet for a fact. Until this afternoon, none of us has the least idea what happened to her in the last what? Two weeks? We don’t know who she’s seen, where she’s been, where and when she died. As the poet said, we know little more than bugger all.”
“A secret life.”
“Her prerogative, Frank. Her choice. Keeping herself to herself. It’s what some people do.”
Yes, Maureen, Elder thought. Isn’t it just?
“Those e-mail addresses,” Prior said.
“First thing tomorrow.”
“Whatever we need to do to find out more—it may need a court order—I’ll let the computer guys loose as soon as I can.”
“People I’ve spoken to,” Elder said, “I’ll write it all up. You’ll want to talk to them again.”
“The man you went to see in London...”
“Singer.”
“How did he strike you?”
Elder grinned. “You’re asking me to assume?”
“I’m asking your opinion.”
“I’m sorry, Maureen, but without a few more facts...”
She punched the fleshy part of his arm with her fist. “Come on, Frank. On a scale of one to five, guilty or not guilty?”
“Did he kill her?”
“Did he kill her?”
“Gut feeling, I’d say no. But could he have killed her, that’s a different question. Time, opportunity, occasion, we could all of us kill anyone.”
“Get out of the car, Frank, before I put your theory to the test.”
Elder took his half-finished cup of coffee with him. “Your office still where it used to be?”
“Last time I looked.”
He took a pace away. “Tomorrow, then.”
“Tomorrow.”
Elder’s own car was on another level, the only space he’d been able to find.
“Oh, and Frank...” He turned his head at the sound of her voice. “You’re not really walking away from this. You know that, don’t you?”
On a scale of one to five, Elder thought, right or wrong?
Chapter 12
1997
“KATHERINE!”
No reply.
With a slow shake of her head, Joanne raised her voice and tried again. “Katherine!”
“What?”
“Have you got your eye on the time?”
No answer other than a dulled thump, Katherine throwing down a book or banging her heels on the bedroom floor. Joanne rolled her eyes and unleashed a sigh.
“I’ll go,” Elder said.
Katherine was sitting cross-legged on her bed, new school skirt stretched wide across her knees, white shirt unbuttoned at the neck, the tie that she’d been wearing when Elder had seen her last, tugged off and hurled across the room.
“Kate,” Elder said quietly.
“What?” An angry flash of her eyes that he recognized all too well.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“What’s it look like?”
Elder reached back and closed the bedroom door.
“Oh, God!” Katherine said.
“What?”
“Lecture number one. Katherine, you’re not a baby any more. A little girl. You’re a young person, a young adult. It’s time you behaved like one.”
“Exactly.”
“Started taking responsibility for yourself.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, that’s what I’m doing, yeah?”
“Sitting on your bed and throwing a sulk instead of getting ready for school?”
“I’m not in a sulk. And I’m not going to school.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?”
“Of course it is.”
“You’ve seen the place, it’s horrible.”
“It didn’t seem too bad.”
They had come up from London to meet the head teacher, the three of them, toward the end of the last school term. The other kids, those who didn’t ignore them totally, staring at Katherine with what she’d obviously seen as hostility. The head teacher breathing platitudes, mission statements, and test scores; Katherine staring at her shoes, not looking him in the eye when he asked her a question, scarcely answering at all. Elder hadn’t been able to get out of there fast enough.
“It’s the same for me, you know,” he said.
“What is?”
“Going into a new place, meeting new people, people you’ve got to work with—it’s not easy, I know that.”
“Then why do it? Why couldn’t we have stayed in London?”
“You know why.”
“Because she didn’t want to.”
“We agreed.”
“That’s rubbish.”
“It’s not. We sat down and talked about it, all three of us, and we agreed.”
“I didn’t agree to anything. And neither did you, not really. You only went along with it to please her.”
“Your mother thought...”
“My mother got her own way, like always.”
Like mother, like daughter then, Elder thought.
“Well, we’re here now,” he said, “and we’ll have to make the best of it, won’t we?”
Katherine’s face was set in stone.
“Won’t we?”
He leaned over and slid his arm round hers, kissed her on top of the head.
“Okay?”
“I suppose so.”
“Good.” Elder stepped back, crossed the room and picked up her tie. “Why don’t you put this on and come back down? Still time for a bit of breakfast if you hurry. Don’t want to be late, your first day.”
“Dad?”
He was outside on the landing when she called.
“So’s I’m not late, give me a lift, will you? Just this once.”
When Katherine came into the small dining room, some few minutes later, her tie was back in place, worn at grudging half-mast, new school shoes on her feet.
“Is there any toast?”
“If you want toast,” Joanne said, “you need to get up earlier. There’s cereal in the kitchen, you know where it is.”
“It’s okay. I’m not hungry.”
“Suit yourself.”
“How about a banana?” Elder said. “Half? Have half with me.”
Joanne clunked her spoon down against her empty bowl and left the room.
“What’s got into her?” Katherine asked.
Elder kept his opinions to himself.
When he got back from taking Katherine to school, Joanne was upstairs, fixing her face. There was a light drizzle outside, the sky the same omnipresent slate gray it seemed to have been since they’d moved.
“I thought we were
n’t going to do that. I thought she was going to walk.”
“It’s just today. Besides, no sense in her getting there soaked.”
She smiled at him in the mirror. “Be giving me a lift into town, then, will you?”
“If you like.”
He sat on the bed, watching her apply one colour to another around her eyes. The same careful ritual ever since he’d first known her. “My line of work, people expect you to look your best.” Joanne had been a hairstylist in a small Lincolnshire salon, models wanted, senior citizens half price Tuesdays.
“You must be getting bored,” she said to his reflection.
“Not really. There’s still quite a bit to do.”
Elder had some leave coming and had opted to use it getting the place they were renting into shape: all right, it had only been a flat back in Chiswick, but a large one, stuffed to the gills, and here in this matchbox house it was hard to find a home for all they’d collected through fifteen years of marriage, especially the eleven years since Katherine had been born. Much of the last few days, Elder’s time had been divided between carrying stuff to the nearest charity shop or ferrying it to the tip. Once things were settled, the salon Joanne was to manage open and running, they’d start looking for a house of their own, no rush, take their time, find somewhere nice.
“Want a cup of coffee before you go?” Elder said.
“Best not.”
What passed for a rush hour tailing to an end, it was an easy enough drive into the city.
“Bit hard on her this morning, weren’t you?” Elder said.
“She’ll get away with murder if she can, you know that as well as me.”
Hardly murder, Elder thought. Eleven, rising twelve, on the edge of her teens, if some of the kids he’d run into contact with in London had been anything to go by, they were lucky Katherine was as amenable as was generally the case.
“It’s not easy for her, you know,” Elder said, “moving round like this.”
“It’s not exactly easy for any of us.”
“More difficult for her.”
“Never mind, Frank,” her hand resting on his knee, “at least she’s always got your shoulder to cry on.”
“And you haven’t?”
“It’s not your shoulder I’m interested in.” Smiling, she let her hand slide up his leg.
“Careful, I’ll have an accident.”
Joanne laughed. “One kind or another.”
Grinning, Elder glanced in his wing mirror and accelerated into the outside lane. With any luck, Joanne would be in the same frame of mind after Katherine had gone to bed.
He parked on Fletcher Gate and walked, holding Joanne’s hand, down to the tiled passageway—an alleyway, he supposed—where the new branch of Cut & Dried was to be found. Joanne had worked for them in London, and Martyn Miles, the owner, had offered her the chance to manage the new salon they were opening in Nottingham.
“It’s a fantastic opportunity, Frank,” Joanne had said. “Starting from scratch. Everything from the colour of the walls to hiring on, it’ll be down to me. And it won’t be like London, Martyn in and out all the time, his hands in everything: I’ll have it all to myself.”
They’d made their first visit, the three of them, earlier in the year; the premises empty and pasted over with signs saying “Post No Bills.” Weeks of accumulated mail inside the door.
“You know I want this, don’t you?” Joanne had said, slipping her hands into his pockets as she pulled him back against the glass.
“I know.”
“So?” Pulling him closer, her face had moved over his and, as he closed his eyes, she had kissed him slowly on the mouth.
“God!” Katherine had exclaimed, and thumped her father on the back.
Elder swung round, more amused than annoyed. “What?”
“Making a bloody exhibition of yourselves, that’s what.”
That was months ago and now they were here, Joanne reaching into her bag for the keys, the shop front shining and new, and there was Martyn Miles stepping out of the door to greet them, smooth suited, hair just so, a ready smile.
“Martyn, what are you doing here?” Joanne said.
“Thought I’d surprise you, see how things were getting on.”
Kissing her lightly on the cheek, he offered Elder his hand.
“Good to see you, Frank. Settling in?”
“Just about.”
“Nice city, you’ll like it.”
“Maybe.”
“Mind you, you’ll only see the seamy side, I guess. Your line of work. Not like Joanne here. Eh, Jo? The smartest and the best.”
Joanne smiled an awkward smile.
“How about a coffee, Frank?” Miles said. “Time before Jo and I get down to business.”
If he calls her Jo once more, Elder thought, I’ll thump him.
“No, it’s okay,” he said. “Best be getting back.”
“See you tonight then, Frank,” Joanne said. “Around five. If I’m going to be any later, I’ll ring.”
No kiss.
Elder’s footsteps hollow on the tiled floor.
Later that day, he called the Major Crime Unit and told the office manager he’d be coming in sooner than planned.
HIS DESK WAS SOMEHOW BACKED INTO A CORNER, AFfording Elder a fractured view of a car park and little else. Little respect for rank, not that Elder was the only DI in Major Crimes, far from it, and he’d have to prove himself before pushing for a change of scenery. He’d met the superintendent when he came for an interview and briefly again this morning, a chance encounter on the stairs; the detective chief superintendent had shaken his hand and introduced him to the half-dozen other officers who’d been around—names Elder had largely forgotten already. There would be time.
“DS Prior will see you get settled in, show you around. Meantime, that’s you over there.”
A hand on the shoulder and he was gone.
The chair Elder sat in had a definite tilt to one side. The surface of the desk was scored with assorted scratches and scribblings, its front edge marked with small burn marks from cigarettes left smouldering—testimony to how long it had been in use. Days Elder welcomed the end of, when smoking in the office was the norm.
A bunch of files, mostly out of date, seemed to have been dumped at his station for no reason; most entries on the Rolodex were heavily scored through, replacement details hastily scribbled into corners; the screen of his PC was cracked and the hard drive had no power cord attached. The top drawer of the desk was jammed full of manilla envelopes and blank paper; below that, several local directories and a phone book dated 1994; among the folders in the bottom drawer he found a half-eaten pork pie, still in its wrapper, mould clinging to the pastry, the meat a virulent shade of green.
“I see you’ve already found your way to the canteen.”
Elder dropped the pie onto the desk and swivelled in his chair.
“Maureen Prior,” the detective sergeant said, holding out her hand.
She was medium height, medium-brown hair neither too short nor too long, light brown eyes; she was wearing black cord trousers and a black cotton sweater, her only adornment the leather-strapped watch on her wrist. Midthirties, Elder thought, give or take. The joke with which she’d introduced herself, if that’s what it was, was the only one he would hear her make for the next several years.
“Why don’t we get a cup of tea, anyway?” Prior said. “You can ask me whatever you need to know.”
THE FIRST TWO DAYS PASSED QUICKLY ENOUGH, ELDER familiarizing himself with the system, the routine. The Major Crime Unit for the county was divided between two bases: Carlton, here toward the eastern edge of the city; and Mansfield, a tough former mining town some fourteen miles north. Murder, serious assault, arson, high-end robbery: cooperation, sometimes edgy, with the Drug Squad and Vice. At present, the unit was involved in a joint operation with the Leicestershire Force, looking into the Unsolved murders of four women, all strangled, two in Leiceste
rshire, one in Keyworth, one in Grantham. Close to overstretched.
Elder’s second day, one of the other DIs invited him to join a bunch of them for a drink, early evening. As was often the case, early turned to late. By the time he got back home, Joanne was in bed and asleep, and when he woke her, half-accidentally, half-hopeful, she rolled away from him with, “Christ, Frank! You stink!” on her lips.
Day three, a little past eleven, that was when he got the call. “Sounds like it might be one for you,” said the 999 operator, before putting it through. After listening, Elder thought she was probably right.
Maureen Prior was at her desk, using all but her little fingers on the keyboard of her computer.
“Royal Palm Hotel,” Elder said, “you know where it is?”
Prior pressed SAVE, moved the cursor to EXIT and reached round for her bag.
Twenty minutes later they were in reception and being directed toward the manager. “This is unbelievable,” he said. “Unbelievable in this hotel.” His tie was a bilious shade of yellow, his accent middle eastern, his fingernails buffed like ivory. “Please, please, follow me.”
The lift glided upward without seeming to move.
“The chambermaid,” the manager explained, as they stepped out into the corridor, “Lottie, a good girl. She let herself into the room to clean, change bed linen, and so on. There was nothing, no ‘Do Not Disturb’ outside. The room should have been empty. At first she thought it was just the way the duvet had been left. Then she saw a face...”
He used his key to open the door and stepped aside, following the two officers into the room then closing the door again firmly at their backs.
“Someone sleeping, that’s what she thought, a heavy night perhaps, and then...”
But neither Elder nor Prior was really listening. Their attention fixed elsewhere.
The woman’s face was angled slightly to the left, a wedge of dark, almost black hair falling across her cheek, both eyes open, staring out. The collar of some kind of shirt or blouse was visible above the cover’s edge, and behind that a faint but definite reddening, like chafing, of the skin. The skin itself was cold: no pulse beating at the temple, no life.
Not young, not old.
Elder looked across at Prior, nodded, and, between them, they lowered back the quilt.
