To Reggie, Flynn & Lucie
‘The Roommate’ case: 2012
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Contents [hide]
1 Christopher Masters: early and personal life
2 Modus operandi
3 Police Investigation
4 The Victims
4.1 Bryony Trent
4.2 Stephanie König.
4.3 Ling Chen
4.4 The disappearance of Holly Kemp.
5 Arrest, trial and conviction
6 References
7 Further reading.
When the first blow lands, it’s almost a relief.
A karmic debt paid.
A manoeuvre, at least.
She battles at first, of course; kicking and clawing and begging and bargaining all the way from the cold kitchen floor, where they first bounce her skull, through the hall, across the driveway, and into the boot of the waiting car.
A car she knows well.
A car she’s sat in maybe ten, fifteen times – always the passenger, but always firmly in the driving seat. Queen of the world. Top of her game.
Tonight, the gun glinting in the midnight light signals that, for her, the game’s now up.
She had this coming. She accepts this. She knows she created this whole sordid mess herself. And yet she’d prayed that they’d stop at a beating – because a beating she could take; bruises fade, fractures heal, even the worst scars can be covered with make-up. And God knows she’d taken enough beatings in her life and still lived to tell the sorry tale.
She won’t live to tell this one.
She doesn’t deserve to. Even by her standards, this one was cruel.
And she is sorry. She knows they don’t believe her, but maybe if there’s a God upstairs, He will.
Maybe next time around, she’ll come back as a better person.
This time around, there was only ever one way this mess was going to end.
1
We’d prayed for rain for weeks. Or maybe it was months? It’s hard to remember a time when griping about the heat wasn’t a national fetish. When days weren’t spent sighing and swearing and spraying yourself with Magicool, and nights weren’t spent tossing and turning, wondering if sleep was now a pleasure of the past.
And then there were the arguments. Christ, there were the arguments. Civil war over air-con settings. Men carping at women, jealous at the sight of us drifting around in lightweight dresses while they sweated buckets in the same suits that saw them through winter. Old versus young: Steele and Parnell crowing that this was no way near as brutal as the summer of ’76, when the rivers ran dry and the tarmac melted, and using your hosepipe was a crime routinely punishable by social death.
Of course, we – The Young – stated long and loud that, as we weren’t even twinkles in our parents’ eyes in 1976, The Olds’ point was entirely moot and, frankly, not helping. You can only play the hand you’re dealt, we’d endlessly argue, and we’d been dealt this cursed summer. The paralysing heatwave of 2018. We were living through it, sweltering through it, surviving it – just – with the aid of desk fans and ice-packs, and the constant yet sagging hope that it might one day rain again on England’s green and pleasant lands.
And now here, on a grassy dirt track, running alongside a remote field in the molten heart of Cambridgeshire, our prayers are finally answered.
‘Fucking rain,’ I say, scowling at the sky. All our sweaty, parched misery forgotten in an instant.
‘You don’t get rain in London, no?’ DC Ed Navarro – our crime scene guide, and boy, does he resent it – is smirking in a way that makes me want to flick his pale, waxy face, like a boiled potato with a goatee. ‘Because seriously, you’re looking a little frazzled there. Do you want to go and sit in the car for a bit?’
‘Why, is it acid rain?’ I bite back.
He rummages in his pocket, retrieves an opened packet of Polo mints. ‘Not that I’m aware.’
‘Well then, I reckon I’ll survive.’
‘Ah, come on, Kinsella, this is bliss,’ DS Luigi Parnell raises his hands, letting the rain patter off his palms: pennies from heaven. ‘It’s not even that heavy. And remember what the boss says, “It’s good for the garden.” ’
‘I don’t have a garden.’ I lift my plastic file of crime scene photos above my head, a macabre makeshift umbrella. ‘I do have frizzy hair, though.’
Immediately, I regret saying it. Holly Kemp doesn’t have to worry about frizzy hair anymore. Or the fact that her cheap cotton work shirt is getting more see-through by the minute.
Holly Kemp hasn’t worried about anything in a long time.
‘So, yeah, this is where we found her.’
Navarro nods towards the deep ditch at the side of the track, then leads us to a gap in the covering hedgerow, presumably cut away to give Forensics easier access. Just yesterday, a crime scene tent would have stood here, preserving evidence and privacy for the army of white suits going about their crucial black art, but we’re quick to get them down these days. It’s not ‘resource efficient’ – to use the term à la mode – to keep them under guard for a second longer than necessary.
Money. Budgets. PR. Stats.
The four horsemen of modern policing.
‘Well, of course, we didn’t find her. Lady Persephone III did – that’s a dog, before you ask.’ Navarro pops two mints in his mouth, not bothering to offer them round. ‘Honestly, I don’t know what planet some people are on. What’s wrong with Patch or Rex or Rover all of a sudden? Proper dog names.’
‘I like it,’ I say, just to agitate him. In my defence, we’re under strict instructions from DCI Kate Steele to play the agitators today. The standard ‘up from London’ arseholes who think the rest of the force are an el cheapo version of the mighty Metropolitan Police. Steele’s hoping a blast of belligerence might put a rocket up their backsides.
‘So, any danger of a post-mortem?’ asks Parnell, casualness spliced with scorn. ‘It’s been over forty-eight hours – well over forty-eight hours.’
Navarro widens his stance. ‘Hey, hang on a minute. It’s been over forty-eight hours since we contacted you about the locket, but we only got her back to the morgue last night. You can’t rush forensic archaeology – it’s a fiddly business.’ Parnell pulls an unimpressed face. I opt for majorly unimpressed. ‘And, look, we’ve got a backlog, OK? Our pathologist’s run off her feet.’
I fold my arms, giving up on my file-cum-umbrella. ‘Whereas ours just sits around sharpening her rib-cutters, waiting for a body to roll in.’
‘Bodies, actually.’ Navarro looks more sad than defensive. ‘There was a pile-up on the M11 a few hours before this. Two cars, five teens, four dead – two from the same family.’ He raps a knuckle on his forehead, knocking out the thought. ‘I knew one of them – not well, mind. I used to coach him at Soccertots. But I’d see him in the pub sometimes, acting the big guy, getting the pints in. They grow up so quickly and then bang . . . gone.’
And then bang, the ‘up from London’ arseholes feel like bona fide lousy arseholes. We offer quick but sincere condolences, Parnell catching my eye to convey that Operation Arsehole is being immediately stood down.