by Andy Maslen
Cam nodded. She was happy. A road trip. Digging. Interviewing. Investigating. This was what she’d joined for.
41
WEDNESDAY 22ND AUGUST, 11.00 A.M.
The ride from Paddington Green to Jason and Elle Drinkwater’s house in East Sheen took thirty minutes. Stella pulled up outside a pair of electronically controlled gates punctuating a tall laurel hedge just as nearby church bells were striking eleven.
Fife Road was, she felt sure, the sort of address estate agents like her brother-in-law described as ‘desirable’. No, scrub that. ‘Prestigious!’ She didn’t begrudge them their wealth. Elle had explained once that she had inherited family money. One of her grandmothers had made a fortune in the cosmetics business. And Jason ran his own estate agency, so presumably worked hard for every penny.
The heat was stifling inside her leather bike jacket, but even though she envied those bikers she saw in T-shirts and shorts, the thought of what even a slow-speed slide along Tarmac could do to skin and muscles made her stick to her protective gear.
She flipped up the visor on her helmet, press the button on the intercom and waited. Her sister-in-law answered.
‘That you, Stella?’
‘Yep. Please let me in before I melt. It’s boiling out here!’
Elle’s tinny laugh was drowned out by the clack of the latch, then the gates moved inwards on silent hinges.
Stella gentled the bike through the gap and pulled up on the gravel circle that fronted the Victorian rectory the Drinkwaters had made their home. She leaned it over onto the side-stand then pulled off her helmet and stuffed her gloves inside. Yanking the zip down on her jacket, she crunched over the gravel, past Elle’s sunflower-yellow Audi TT convertible.
The front door opened as she stepped into the porch, which was shaded by a swag of heavily perfumed pink roses. And there stood two young girls, one only a head shorter than she was, the other coming up to her ribs.
‘Auntie Stella!’ they screamed in unison, before throwing their skinny little arms around her and squeezing tightly.
‘Oh, my goodness, look at you two young ladies!’ she managed to gasp out, stroking the tops of their heads. ‘Have you been taking special growing medicine?’
Polly, the older girl, had unwittingly saved Stella’s life six years earlier, finding her with her back to the old oak tree on the lawn early one morning and about to blow her own brains out with a stolen Glock pistol.
The younger of the sisters was Georgie, just a babe in arms then but an intense little girl of six now, with dark-brown hair braided into plaits. In place of the pigtails Polly had been wearing the last time Stella had seen her, she sported a sharp little bob.
‘I love your new haircut, Polly,’ Stella said. ‘It’s very grown-up.’
‘Thank you. I’m going to big school next month and this will be so much easier to look after.’
Stella smiled at her niece’s oddly mature turn of phrase. Then the girls dragged her, one hand apiece, down the hallway, which was tiled in an intricate pattern of sky-blue, burgundy and white, and into the kitchen. Elle was filling the kettle, her rounded figure visible beneath a thin cotton sundress in a bright, tropical print.
‘Mummy, Mummy! It’s Auntie Stella. She came on her motorbike,’ Georgie shouted. ‘When I am old enough I am absolutely going to have a motorbike like Auntie Stella’s. Only mine will be pink!’
Smiling, Elle came to Stella and the two women hugged.
‘How are you? Is the case getting to you? We saw you on telly the other night,’ Elle said, holding Stella at arm’s length and looking deep into her eyes.
Stella smiled and felt some of the tension ease out of her shoulders. She had always loved the colour of her sister-in-law’s eyes, a vivid, almost surrealistically bright green.
‘Honestly? I’m knackered, but—’
Georgie gasped.
‘You said,’ then she giggled, covering her mouth with her hand. She split her fingers apart and whispered between them, ‘a naughty word.’
‘Oh, Georgie,’ Polly said, rolling her eyes. ‘Auntie Stella is a grown-up and a police officer. They can say anything they like.’ She turned her face to Stella. ‘That’s true, isn’t it? You could say,’ she dropped her voice to a conspiratorial tone, ‘the F-word, if you liked.’
‘Well, I absolutely would not use that word,’ Stella said, glancing over Polly’s head at Elle, who was trying not to laugh, ‘but sometimes, when I am at work, and I arrest a bad man or lady, some of them say all sorts of naughty words.’
Grinning, Polly asked the obvious question.
‘Which ones?’
Stella shrugged her shoulders and raised her eyebrows.
‘Oh, you know,’ she said in a breezy tone, ‘the usual ones.’
‘But what, Auntie Stella? What ones?’ Georgie asked.
Stella leaned closer.
‘Bum.’
The girls giggled.
‘Farty.’
The giggles turned to laughter.
‘Last week, one even said…’
She looked over her shoulder then back at the two spellbound children.
‘Willy-head!’
They squealed, delighted at her transgression.
Elle put her arms around the girls’ shoulders and ushered them towards the French doors.
‘Right, you two. Go and play in the treehouse for a while and let me and Auntie Stella have a chat.’
‘Oh, chat!’ Georgie said, pouting. ‘That’s just grownups doing talking for ages and ages about really boring things.’
‘Come on, Georgie,’ Polly said, taking her younger sister’s hand. ‘Let’s leave them together for a while.’ She turned to her aunt and mother. ‘I’m sure you two have lots to catch up on.’
The two women sat at one end of the long refectory table. Elle poured tea and pushed a plate of homemade chocolate cookies at Stella, who took one and ate half in a single bite.
‘Mmf. Ruvry,’ she said as the cookie flooded her system with feel-good chemicals.
‘Thanks, Polly helped me make them.’
‘Who’s turned into a very proper young lady since I last saw her. It can’t have been more than a month ago.’
Elle grinned.
‘I know, right? We got back from Spain last week, don’t know why we bothered, given how hot it’s been here, but anyway, it happened sometime on the return flight. At Malaga airport, she was like a bigger version of Georgie, and by the time we landed at Heathrow she was all, “Come on, Georgie, don’t dawdle”. Jason and I had kittens. It was so funny.’
Stella finished her cookie and, despite a pang of guilt, reached for a second.
‘How is Jason?’
Elle passed a hand over her forehead.
‘Oh, you know, busy. He’s thinking of opening a second office, talking to the bank and lawyers, all that. But we don’t see so much of him. He’s always working, even when he’s at home he’s up in his office or out meeting clients for dinner. At least that’s what he says he’s doing.’
Stella had no need for her SIU ‘spider-sense’. Her female intuition was enough. She sipped her tea and looked at Elle over the rim of the cup, seeing if she wanted to continue, be prompted or move away from the topic of Jason. Elle returned her stare.
‘And when you say, that’s what he says he’s doing…’
Giving her sister-in-law, her friend, an opening.
‘I don’t know, Stella. I mean, I’m probably just being paranoid but I’ve just started to wonder recently whether he’s, you know, seeing someone.’
‘Why? Have you found long blonde hairs on his collar? That aren’t yours, I mean?’ she said, smiling in an attempt to keep it light.
Elle shook her head. Her own lips stayed resolutely downturned.
‘No, nothing like that. He just seems a bit secretive. A couple of times recently, I’ve asked him where he was going and he just said, “client dinner”, like that. Or, “bank meeting”. He’s normally so hap
py to tell me every little detail of what’s going on, I’ve started to worry.’
Stella reached across the space that separated them and placed a hand over Elle’s, feeling its coolness despite the warmth of the day.
‘Look, whenever I see you two you seem like the perfect couple. He looks at you like he just met you. Maybe it’s just a business thing he wants to keep close to his chest until he can do the big reveal. You know what men are like.’
Elle managed a small smile, which Stella could tell took some effort.
‘You’re right. I should trust him. It’s just not like him, that’s all.’
‘Do you want me to interrogate him for you? I’m really good at it. I could sweat him for a few hours at Paddington Green. He’d crack in the end.’
Elle laughed properly. A loud, joyous sound in the bright kitchen.
‘Oh, God, you crack me up. Listen, never mind my marital troubles. Or not,’ she added quickly, ‘tell me about your love life. Any handsome, intelligent men in the picture?’
Stella snorted.
‘Sadly not, at this point. I’ve had a few online dates but, let’s just say, I’m still sleeping spread out in the middle of my bed.’
‘That bad, eh?’
‘Oh, God, Elle, you have no idea! This one guy, right? We agreed to meet at the Royal Festival Hall. And I thought, well, this can’t be bad. He’s obviously cultured. He’d said in his email he was a distinctive dresser. So, you know, I’m picturing a handsome bloke in a nice suit or maybe jacket and jeans or something. Only thing is, when he turned up, he was dressed in this sort of scraggy, off-white linen robe belted at the waist, baggy trousers and long boots.’
Elle was grinning as Stella told her story, perhaps sensing where it was going.
‘I couldn’t not say anything so I said, you know, something like, “I like your outfit. Pretty bold”. And he said, I’m not joking.’ She started laughing herself. ‘He said, “As a Jedi knight, I have to be ready at all times.” And then,’ she wheezed, ‘and then he, he sort of flipped his dress to one side and he whips out this thing. I thought it was this monster vibrator and I said, “Easy, tiger, it’s our first date,” and he said, “This is a lightsaber. You’re safe with me.” Oh Jesus, Elle, I nearly peed myself.’
Unable to continue, Stella howled with laughter, Elle joining her, tears running down her cheeks, until the two girls stomped back into the kitchen and stood in matching poses, fists on hips.
‘Auntie Stella, what are you talking about?’ Georgie asked, wide-eyed. ‘What’s a vibrator?’
Unable to get any sense from the two shrieking grownups, Georgie and Polly looked at each other and rolled their eyes, then left mother and aunt to it.
Finally, dabbing her eyes, Stella heaved a great breath and shook her head.
‘Oh, that was priceless. You’re so lucky to have them.’
Elle smiled back.
‘I am. I know that. And they’re lucky to have their Auntie Stella, too. Sometimes I think I’m seriously lacking in the cool department. Georgie is obsessed with your bike and Polly still talks about your police gun.’
A silence blossomed in the space left by Elle’s last remark. Both women were thinking back to the day when Stella had left the house in Callie’s company, destined for a private psychiatric institution and months of intensive psychotherapy. Only one of them knew how close Stella had come to being taken to a different kind of facility altogether.
The talk moved to other, easier subjects for a while.
‘How is work?’ Elle asked eventually, getting up to make more tea.
‘It’s a bastard of a case. This guy, I don’t know how much you’ve seen on the news, but he’s a bad ’un.’
Looking over her shoulder at Stella, Elle frowned.
‘Do I have to be worried? About the girls? Or me?’
‘No. Absolutely not. The girls are certainly not at risk. He’s killed two adult females and that’s enough to tell me he doesn’t look at children as potential victims. And as for you, you should take all the usual precautions, but only the ones any woman living in the city takes. It looks as though he’s going after women with well-known Christian beliefs. Ones who’ve been in the media.’
‘Yes, I saw that Niamh Connolly had been murdered. It was in the English papers in Spain. Can’t say I’m sorry.’
‘Wow, OK, that’s a bit harsh.’
Stella was genuinely shocked at her sister-in-law’s remark, but she tried to soften her words with a smile.
‘Oh no, I didn’t, I mean, nobody deserves to get murdered but, you have to admit, the woman had the fire and brimstone look about her.’
‘I know. But the way I see it, it’s like those stupid old farts on the bench who say if a girl wearing a mini skirt and a tight top gets raped, it was because she was dressing provocatively. Maybe Niamh did rub people up the wrong way, but she was entitled to go about her business without being sliced up for her beliefs.’
‘I suppose so. You’re so annoyingly right sometimes, Stella, d’you know that?’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment. Listen,’ she checked her watch, ‘I’m going to have to head back, but it’s been lovely to tune out of the case even for an hour or so. Can we get together again soon? All of us?’
‘I’d love that. Just let me know when would be a good time. I’m guessing it won’t be until after you catch this murderer.’
‘Probably that’s best.’
Unless Callie was right and this one’s a runner.
The direct route back to Paddington Green would have taken Stella northwest, crossing the Thames at Chiswick Bridge and then through Hammersmith, Shepherd’s Bush and up onto the Westway. Instead, she rode southeast, entering Richmond Park, its normally lush grass burnt an even brown, and pootling along in a queue of cars through the landscaped parkland. She had time to see a herd of deer lying in the shade of a stand of trees before leaving the Park and making her way to Putney Vale Cemetery.
She knelt in front of the two simple stones set beside each other.
Richard Gregory Drinkwater
18 October 1974 - 6 March 2009
Devoted son, husband, father.
Lola Meredith Drinkwater
2 October 2008 - 6 March 2009
A precious blossom, picked too soon.
She caressed the top of Lola’s marker, then let her hands rest in her lap. With her eyes closed, she sat for a few minutes, listening to birdsong and inhaling the smell of flowers from the nearby graves. I miss you both so much. But at least you’re together. Take care of each other, won’t you? I love you very much.
Slowly, she rose to her feet and wandered back to her bike, nodding as an elderly woman carrying a bunch of pink carnations came towards her and offered her a sympathetic smile.
42
WEDNESDAY 22ND AUGUST 1.45 P.M.
Stella snatched a hurried lunch in The Green Man, wolfing down a cheddar and pickle sandwich with a coffee, before rushing back for Sarah Sharpe’s post mortem.
The procedure was the same as for Niamh Connolly’s PM, except that Sarah Sharpe’s body was far further along on its journey back to the elements from which it had been created. The PM suite at the mortuary stank of putrefaction and the oil of camphor was hopelessly outgunned in the battle to overpower everyone’s sense of smell.
Having greeted Dr Craven, Stella, Garry, Lucian and Alec gratefully withdrew to the CCTV viewing room.
As Craven withdrew the arrows from the body, Stella spoke, without taking her eyes off the screen.
‘Surely someone must have seen a bloke taking a bloody great bow and arrows into her house?’
Garry shook his head. He also kept his gaze fixed on the televised dissection of the bloated corpse that had so recently been a committed Christian, a journalist and a badminton-playing best friend.
‘I think they’re from a crossbow, boss. The ends – the non-pointy ends, I mean – don’t have the grooves cut in them for the bow string. I thought it
was odd when I saw the crime scene photos so I looked it up. Crossbow bolts, or quarrels, if you prefer, have blunt ends, like that one,’ he said, pointing at the screen, where Dr Craven’s assistant was withdrawing one of the lethal-looking black shafts from Sarah Sharpe’s abdomen.
‘OK, but they’re still pretty bulky, aren’t they? Or do you get, what, compact models? Foldaways?’
‘Point for the detective in the front row,’ Garry said. ‘I looked them up. You get the ones that look like they came from the War of the Roses or whatever, but nowadays you can get these really high-tech ones, look like something out of Blade Runner. And there are collapsible ones I reckon you could stash under a coat or a jacket.’
Stella furrowed her brow, momentarily distracted from the cutting, ladling and weighing happening on screen.
‘Even then, with the weather as hot as it’s been, maybe someone noticed a bloke in a coat or a bulky jacket, right? I mean most blokes I see are down to a polo shirt and a pair of shorts. There was even a bloke walking down the Edgware Road yesterday with no shirt on at all. I mean, this isn’t Torremolinos, is it?’
Garry laughed, filling the small viewing room with his rich baritone.
‘Standards are slipping, boss. You’re lucky he wasn’t wearing Speedos.’
Stella shuddered. Then she started half out of her chair.
‘Oh, Jesus, look at that! She’s coming apart at the seams.’
On the screen, Dr Craven’s assistant had just removed a large, purplish-black organ – the liver, maybe, Stella wondered, when the torso seemed to split apart, and a couple of dozen feet of blackish-purple intestines squirmed from the body cavity onto the floor, amid a stream of viscous body fluids.
‘Shit! I was going to have spaghetti Bolognese tonight, but that’s put me right off,’ Garry deadpanned.
Stella thumped him on the shoulder.
At four that afternoon, Stella updated Callie on the investigation, concluding with the observation that even though they were mercifully one short of the ‘serial trigger’, she felt it was time to issue a warning to the general public.
