by Gytha Lodge
* * *
—
IT WASN’T THE most relaxed entrance to a wedding. The cabbie had chosen the wrong route to the venue, deciding for some inexplicable reason to go through the city center. They’d lost another fifteen minutes crawling along the Mall with all the Saturday shoppers. Maeve had apologized continually until Zoe had told her firmly that it wasn’t her fault, and made a decisive conversational change by asking Maeve to give her the full story on her date of the previous night.
“Oh, fine, you know.” Maeve looked away from her, her pale eyes scanning pedestrians as the cab moved torturously slowly past them. “I mean, kind. A little old-fashioned. Nice to talk to.”
Zoe gave a wicked laugh. “What else is going to happen with church dating? You’re basically guaranteed an old-fashioned nice guy.”
Maeve made a dismissive noise. “A good half of them are nothing like, you know. The place breeds as many sexist feckwits as it does nice guys.”
Zoe smiled at her. “Sounds like the non-Christian dating scene.”
“Exactly,” Maeve agreed. And then she sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll see him again. He just wasn’t…interesting enough.”
By which, Zoe knew, she meant that he wasn’t Isaac. And she wished, all over again, that Maeve would get the crush out of her system and find someone who really wanted her. Someone who valued her for herself instead of just liking it when she stroked his ego.
“You can’t force it” was all Zoe said lightly.
“Ah, I’m fine on my own,” Maeve said with a flap of her hand. “I’m happy in my own company, and it’s nice to remember that.”
“Yep,” Zoe agreed. “At least you’re sort of interesting. Sometimes.”
“Sod off,” Maeve said with a smile.
They didn’t manage to keep much conversation going the rest of the way, as it became obvious that they were getting later and later and the two of them descended into a taut silence. The cab eventually arrived at the Vinery at 12:58, two minutes before the official start of the ceremony. They had to pull up a little way back, behind the silver Rolls-Royce that had already arrived and disgorged a cluster of white-lace-and-lavender figures onto the steps.
In spite of the height of her heels, Zoe managed an awkward jog over the pavement.
“Sorry,” she said with a grin at Gina, who looked transformed from her usual practical self in a figure-hugging bridal gown with a high collar and a train.
“Zoe!” she gasped, and then gave a raucous laugh. “We were about to go in!”
“It was Maeve’s fault,” Zoe said, just as Maeve, behind her, chimed in with, “It was me! I’m so sorry!”
They ran ahead over the marble tiles inside and into the large conservatory full of peony-decked pews. At least half the audience looked around at them, expecting the bride in spite of the lack of entrance music. Zoe tried not to laugh as she saw Angeline’s wide-eyed look. She and Victor were sitting halfway down the room with space next to them. Which was a relief.
Angeline shuffled along to let her and Maeve in, and she shook her head.
“We thought you must have been in an accident!” she said in a whisper that carried. “We’ve been here ages.”
Zoe grinned at her and then turned as some recorded string music started for the bride’s entrance. It was hard not to get a little emotional as Gina came in.
Gina, who was technically Zoe’s boss, was the most hardworking person Zoe knew. The success of her fantastic little coffee shop, where Zoe worked on Thursdays and Sundays, was based as much on universal love of the owner as it was on the food and drink. And if the guy she was marrying, Michael, was slightly dull, he was also the kind of man who would be there for her, and who loved to spoil her. It seemed to Zoe like exactly what Gina deserved.
The call came through on Jonah’s Bluetooth when they were ten minutes from Zoe’s flat, and Jonah knew all he needed to from the way the sergeant said “Sir.” This was a death they were investigating now, and he was glad O’Malley had been on hand to come along. Of the three members of the team, he was the most hardened to violence, and it was a scene of violence that Jonah was now expecting.
By the time he brought Lightman and Hanson on-site, it would be easier. Scene of Crime would be there, with their Post-it notes and arrows and labels: paraphernalia that had the effect of sterilizing it all. It would look like myriad pieces of evidence, not quite as much like a person who had suffered and died.
* * *
—
HE PARKED THE Mondeo along Latterworth Road, a suburban-looking residential street that ultimately terminated at the A35 to the north. He and O’Malley had driven past dozens of identikit 1930s houses, all of them white-painted on the top half, with shallow bay windows and a rectangular front garden. Zoe’s block of flats was the only aberrant structure. It looked to Jonah as though it had been built over two sets of semidetached homes, and had been designed with no apparent nod to its respectable surroundings. It was entirely modern, with an angular stepped front that bordered on aggressive.
They were waved past by a PC standing at the door. An incredibly slender woman who must be Angeline Judd was sitting on a window ledge with a female police community support officer, a cup of tea clutched in front of her, and a series of crumpled tissues alongside. There were signs of tears in her eyes, too, and the area underneath them looked raw.
The PCSO nodded to him, and Angeline looked up at him as if he were a predator.
“I’m DCI Sheens,” he said, coming to a stop in front of Angeline. “I’m in charge of investigating what happened to Zoe. I have a few questions for you, if that’s all right?”
“Yes,” Angeline said after a short pause while she stared at him. “Yes, that’s fine.”
Looking at her, bundled into an oversized gray cardigan and leggings, it was hard not to notice how thin she was. Her arms and legs appeared almost skeletal, and the effect of her incredibly thin frame was to make her face look too large, her eyes huge within it like a doll’s. The short, fluffy hair had no more substance to it.
He wondered whether she might be ill, and it created a complex reaction in him. The effect of her appearance was childlike. It brought out a protective instinct.
He spoke gently to her, thanking her for helping them and offering sympathy, until she agreed that she was ready to answer a few questions. Though when she did, it was largely to shake her head at everything he suggested while her eyes oozed tears.
Zoe had no enemies that she knew of. No money troubles. No recent arguments. No strange behavior.
“She was—so kind,” Angeline said thickly, in the end.
He had to wait for her to swallow a few times before she could carry on, and tell him that she’d known Zoe from uni.
“Do you do art, too?” he asked, smiling.
“Oh. No. I’m…on the dance and teaching program.”
The responses to everything were much the same, until Jonah told her they needed to talk to Zoe’s boyfriend. And then Angeline’s eyes focused on him sharply.
“She— You mean Aidan?”
“You might need to tell us,” Jonah said, treading carefully as he wrote the name down. “Her boyfriend told us we needed to check on her, but we don’t have contact details.”
“I’ve got them,” Angeline said, and pulled her phone out. She read off the number, and Jonah scrawled it in his notebook. “I thought they might be back together,” she added, and the way she said it made it sound like it had been a personal injury to her.
“They broke up?”
“Yes, a couple of times.”
“They didn’t live together?”
Angeline shook her head. “Just her. She used to share—with a friend. But she came out here.”
“When was that?”
“I think…June.”
Jonah nodded slowly. “It’d be great if you could come to the station later,” he said. “But in the meantime, you should probably head home and look after yourself. Is there anyone you can call…?”
Angeline nodded, and then suddenly dissolved into tears again. “It’ll have to be my mum. I usually—I usually call Zoe.”
* * *
—
ZOE’S FLAT WAS as modern and as unforgiving as the exterior of the building. It was sparsely furnished, with packing boxes in two corners of the living area. A sleek black kitchen showed signs of use: Smeared marks on the oven. Crumbs on the worktop. A couple of glasses on the side with the remains of red wine at the bottom.
“Maybe she had a visitor last night,” Jonah murmured to O’Malley.
In the corner of the kitchen, a bowl of cat food and one of water, but no sign of the cat itself. Scared into hiding by the police, perhaps.
A desk sat to the right of the door and was dominated by a desktop computer. In the bottom corner of the screen, an orange light slowly brightened and faded, brightened and faded. Hibernating but not switched off. Below it sat a phone that he itched to touch but left for the cyber team.
On the other side of the room, a single sofa looked at empty space. No TV. No paintings. Just two packing boxes beyond it, one of them with the word Sculptures scrawled on it with a Sharpie.
It all struck him as soulless. Stark. Totally unlike what he would have expected from an artist. She’d lived here since June, Angeline had said. But she hadn’t unpacked or decorated during those five months.
He moved over to the far door, which opened into a bedroom. She was in the bathroom, the first responders had said. The door on the left.
He edged through the open door without touching it, and saw Zoe at last, her body leaning back in the bath. The water was flat and absolutely opaque with her blood. Only her shoulders, head, and upper arms showed above the waterline at one end. Farther down the tub, her knees formed two tiny islands. Whatever wounds had done this to her were hidden below the profound red of the water.
A needle-thin trail of dark blood ran down the far side of the bath, following a path from a red-handled knife to the water. A Stanley knife, he thought. An artist’s knife.
His gaze traveled briefly over the curling hair that had been pulled up into a bun on top of her head, and over the face, which was a purplish bronze and slack. The eyes were closed, but there was no suggestion of sleep. Her face had the unmistakable vacancy of death.
He could sense O’Malley over his shoulder, hovering until it was his turn to stand where Jonah was standing.
He backed up, wanting to hear O’Malley voice his thoughts. To tell him that it looked like suicide. Absolutely and perfectly so. That the two crime reports were the only reason he might have had for thinking otherwise, and he wasn’t entirely sure that he trusted them.
His phone rang and he gave a sigh as he read the screen. “It’s Zoe’s father,” he said to O’Malley. “I’ll talk to him while you take a look.”
* * *
—
IT NEVER GOT any easier, that first call with the family. Zoe’s father had barely been able to talk through choking tears, and when he’d handed the phone over to Zoe’s mother, she had asked Jonah over and over why it had happened. He had no answers, of course. He rarely had any on that first call.
He’d done everything he could to soothe them. He’d told them that death would have been quick and painless. He thought about explaining that the warm bathwater would have helped her bleed to death quickly, but those were details he wasn’t yet ready to lay on them. They had enough to deal with.
“Please tell me the truth,” Zoe’s mother had said at one point. “It’s not…She didn’t do it to herself, did she?”
Jonah let out a breath. “I’m afraid we won’t know until we look closely at the scene and try to build a picture of the last few days.”
He’d asked them then if they wanted to come to Southampton. He was thinking of formal identification, and of all the things he would need to tell them in person.
“There’s no requirement to be here now,” he added. “Identification is often done through a video link.” He didn’t add because it’s less distressing.
“No,” Zoe’s mother had said. “We want to come. Now. As soon as possible.”
* * *
—
AS HE WAITED for Scene of Crime, Jonah made an effort to think about the practicalities he now faced. It was likely to be a very long day. He mentally opened his calendar, grateful that he rarely booked anything much on a Friday evening. He generally tried to see his mother on Saturdays, but she was, for the first time in eight years, away.
It had taken him entirely by surprise when his lapsed-Catholic mother had been adopted by the local Anglican church community. The worshippers had decided that she needed help, which Jonah couldn’t really argue with, and had created a rota of activities and company that had drastically reduced the time she had been spending alone with alcohol. It had all been a huge relief to Jonah, despite the slightly accusatory looks the church ladies tended to give him if they crossed paths. He was still waiting for his mother to decide she hated them all, though. Or to swear at them all to the point where they couldn’t forgive. She had a habit of eviscerating any efforts to help her.
So Saturday could easily be spent working. The Saturday-evening stag do for his cycling friend Roy might need to be bumped, though. That particular event he would happily forgo in the name of justice, and even if he finished up the day’s work in time, it was unlikely he’d want to go. Murder investigations and boozy nights out didn’t generally mix well.
His team probably had their own plans, he thought. Plans they would be less enthusiastic about ditching. It was probably time to let Ben and Juliette know what was happening.
* * *
—
HANSON WAS THOROUGHLY immersed in her financial hunt when the chief called. She held off answering it for a good four rings, while she scribbled down the point she’d got to, and then tried not to sound irritated as she answered.
“Chief?”
“Have you got Lightman there? It’d be easier to update you both at once.”
Hanson could hear in his tone what had come of the trip.
“Yeah, he’s here,” Hanson said, catching Lightman’s eye. “I’ll transfer the call to a meeting room.”
Once they’d picked the call up again, the two of them listened in silence as Sheens told them how Zoe had been found.
“It was a classic suicide setup,” the chief said. “Only, we were told she was attacked. Which means the first thing on my list is tracking down the boyfriend. I’ll need one of you on the scene, too, and I’m afraid it’s going to be a late evening for whichever of you that is. Scene of Crime are only just here, the family are on their way, and I’ll be requesting a postmortem.”
“Sorry, sir. Can’t be me,” Lightman said, and Hanson looked at him in surprise. “I have to head off at four.”
Hanson almost protested that he couldn’t have plans. It was Friday. Pub night. They always did pub night. At least, they had for the last four months. Whenever they weren’t madly immersed in something, they headed down the road to the Anchor, and stayed till eight or nine. Lightman never drank more than two beers, and rarely talked much, but he always came.
“No problem,” the chief said. “Juliette?”
“I can do it,” she said.
He read off the address of Zoe Swardadine’s flat, and Hanson scribbled it down.
She found herself watching Lightman carefully as she ended the call. He finished making himself a note and rose. He was as hard to read as ever, but she was fiercely curious about what was going on.
“Typical,” she said, standing, too. “It’s taken me three weeks to get into the blackmail stuff, and now I’m finally making h
eadway and I’m being called off on to something else.”
“Ah, sorry,” Lightman said with a grin. “My fault. I owe you one.”
And then he left the meeting room without further explanation. Hanson looked after him, feeling unaccountably bad-tempered. It wouldn’t have hurt, she thought, to explain.
Though maybe she didn’t need an explanation. It was a Friday night, and Lightman didn’t seem to have any trouble attracting female attention. Someone trying to chat him up had become a regular feature of their pub nights. And she knew he’d dated in the past.
Fine, she thought. Let him go on some date while I do the hard work.
March—twenty months before
The wedding after-party had bloomed into two distinct gatherings: one a warm and noisy crush within the hotel’s long, thin bar and the other a delicately lit conversation piece in the larger dining room across the hall, where there were still seven or eight occupied tables.
Zoe had extracted herself to head to the bar, but had eventually given up on trying to order drinks. The trouble with a free bar was that people over-ordered, and the situation only perpetuated itself as the long wait caused people to stock up further once they finally got there. She returned empty-handed to the dining room, where Angeline was involved in an earnest conversation with Maeve.
Predictably, Maeve was giving Angeline an impassioned speech on positive thinking.
“Look, I mean, I know I go on about this a lot, but it’s not just about telling yourself to cheer up. It’s about choosing to be happy. Telling yourself inwardly and out loud that you’re worth a lot.” Maeve held her hand up in front of her face, her palm toward her. “I will literally say it to myself in the mirror. I will say, ‘I am strong, and I am beautiful, and I am worth loving.’ And it helps.”
