A ‘tsk’ from Parnell while Steele mutters ‘the little shitbag’. It doesn’t matter how often we deal with death and devastation, there’s still something about this type of chicken-shit delinquency that never fails to make you fume. It’s the barefaced cheek of it. The mindless entitlement. It’s the family left feeling scared in their own home, all because some faceless coward fancied a new pair of Nikes.
‘He must have been a suspect?’ I say. ‘For Holly, I mean. Anyone who takes three days to report their partner missing might as well slap the cuffs on themselves.’
Dyer nods. ‘Oh, definitely. It was a huge red flag. And just because she’d gone missing from Clapham, that didn’t prove a connection to Masters. There was no pay-as-you-go number in her phone records, for a start, although Spencer Shaw had a theory about that. He said Holly was always misplacing her phone, borrowing someone else’s. But we checked her nearest and dearests’ phones, didn’t find anything . . .’ She drags a finger across her lips, wrestling with something. ‘You know, even after Serena Bailey, I still wasn’t comfortable closing Spencer Shaw off, but I . . . well . . . I was told to close him off. Masters was our man. Serena Bailey proved it.’ Her chin lifts, confidence swiftly restored. ‘And she did. I was being over-zealous about Shaw, I can see that now. Serena Bailey changed everything.’
Serena Bailey, or as immortalised in folklore: The Witness.
This bit I am familiar with.
On Monday 27th February, hours after Holly’s photo appeared in the Evening Standard, Serena Bailey, a primary school teacher, contacted police to say she’d seen Holly walking up the path of 6 Valentine Street on the day she went missing. She’d later ID Christopher Masters as the man who opened the door and beckoned Holly in.
Bailey’s account was explosive. One hundred per cent dynamite. It didn’t matter now what Masters confirmed or denied: CCTV footage put Holly in Clapham and an independent eyewitness put her quite literally on his doorstep. It was obvious to any right mind that Holly was Masters’ fourth victim.
Any right mind, except the Crown Prosecution Service.
‘I still can’t believe Bailey’s sighting wasn’t enough,’ says Parnell.
‘Oh, don’t get me started.’ Dyer’s mouth is a tight line. ‘Forget that a young woman is seen entering the house of a killer and then never seen again – if you can’t make the forensic link, jog on, as far as the CPS are concerned. Don’t muddy the waters for the other three. Come back when you’ve found her body. Which we obviously tried to do – all of Masters’ haunts, every house he ever worked on, every wooded area inside the M25 . . .’
‘Well, don’t hold your breath for a forensic link now, not after all this time.’ Steele delivers a dose of gloomy realism. ‘Although a matching cause of death would be something. If we get a cause of death, that is.’
I blurt it out. ‘Holly wasn’t naked, you know? They found remnants of fabric, a trainer.’
‘It’s different, I’ll give you that,’ Dyer concedes. ‘Although I’d be wary of reading too much into it. Masters’ crimes were obviously planned and he used an identical method of killing, but he’s not what we’d call a classic “organised offender”. They go to great lengths to conceal their crimes, whereas Masters didn’t seem to care. He invited them to his house, handed out his address. He left DNA on the bodies, there was blood in the house. All this suggests an element of disorganisation and that makes him much harder to read. Disorganised offenders don’t always follow patterns.’
‘Doesn’t the different body dump site niggle at you, though?’ In for a penny, in for a pound. Like the boss said, while we’ve got an audience with Dyer, we might as well milk it.
‘Seth and Emily are on that,’ says Steele. ‘They’re heading up to Newcastle first thing tomorrow. That’s where the ex-wife lives now. Maybe she’ll be able to give us a link to Caxton, or even Cambridgeshire would do.’
Dyer observes me across Steele’s desk. ‘What niggles at me, Cat, is that the bastard’s dead, and even if we get something to prove Holly’s case once and for all, he’s never going to be punished.’
Ah yes, that small detail. Christopher Masters was murdered in HMP Frankland last year. One less monster in the ‘Monster Mansion’, as it’s unaffectionately known.
‘You could argue Jacob Pope did the job when he plunged that metal shank into Masters’ lung.’
I’m briefly shocked by Parnell, usually our straight-shooting purveyor of fair criminal justice. It’s not that he never thinks these things, of course. We all think them. We just don’t say them. And the reason we don’t say them is because we don’t actually believe them. It’s just our inner animal rearing up. Our angry child kicking out.
But I know what Parnell’s doing. He’s testing Dyer. Getting the measure of her.
He gets bugger all.
‘Shall I pass on your thanks, Lu?’ Dyer aims her coffee cup at the bin; a perfectly executed lob. ‘I’m visiting him later.’
‘And Cat’s going with her.’ Steele turns to me, grinning. ‘Sorry, I told you your day was about to get longer.’
‘What’s that in aid of?’ asks Parnell, his eyes shuttling between Steele and Dyer.
‘Jacob Pope always said he killed Masters because he couldn’t bear his bragging,’ explains Steele. ‘Well, let’s see if he bragged about any daytrips to Cambridgeshire.’
‘So we’re going all the way to Frankland? Two hundred and fifty plus miles?’ I frame it as a question rather than the plaintive whine it genuinely is. ‘That’s me in the bad books, then. I’m supposed to be at Victoria Park by 7 p.m. A picnic.’
Steele laughs and stands up, quickly followed by Dyer. Side by side, Dyer’s practically Queen Kong to Steele’s Tinkerbell, but then fooling people with her size has been Steele’s stock-in-trade for years. If push came to shove, my money would be on the warrior pixie, every time.
‘You’re in luck, Kinsella,’ she says. ‘Pope was moved to Belmarsh after the Masters “incident”. You’ll be there and back in a few hours.’ She opens her door, casting another look over me. ‘Although you could do with going home and getting changed first. Your clothes are damp. I can smell them from here.’
‘Go home? I live South-West, boss. Belmarsh is South-East. It’s a massive detour.’
I push myself off the wall, my limbs like bags of cement. I’m lacking the energy for a picnic, never mind a playdate with a killer.
‘Borrow something of Emily’s then. God knows, she’s got half of Topshop under her desk. And you’re roughly the same size.’
Roughly. In the way a square can be roughly the same size of a circle.
‘Sod that, I’m not risking Emily’s wrath.’ Or one of her bandage-wrap dresses.
‘I thought the ice had thawed between you pair?’
‘There was never any ice, for God’s sake,’ I say, not quite truthfully. ‘We’re just different people, that’s all.’ I could add, ‘In the sense that she’s lazy and I’m not,’ but Dyer’s presence stops me. I wouldn’t snipe about a colleague in front of a stranger and, more importantly, I don’t want Dyer thinking I’m difficult. Her opinion matters, almost instinctively. ‘Honestly, I’ll pop out and buy something. Easier all round.’