Fair play to him. It’s more than I do. You see, policing is generally a conveyer belt of firsts. You walk your first beat, make your first arrest. You brace yourself for the first time you shatter a heart with the words, ‘I’m so sorry to have to tell you . . .’ And despite what the old guard say – the know-it-alls, the thirty-year-service brigade, the retired peacocks propping up the bar at so-and-so’s leaving do, regaling anyone naïve enough to listen about the time they met the Kray twins – you never ever stop learning. There’s no finite number of head-fucks this job can serve up. Today, for example, despite it being four years since I first joined Murder, since I crouched over my very first corpse at my very first crime scene, this – Holly Kemp – is my first set of bones.
No blood. No wounds. No gag reflex smell.
No small but poignant detail to connect you to your victim.
I admit it. I’m finding it hard to connect with just bones. With a skeleton laid out like a science project, or a cheap thrill on the ghost train. Holly Kemp’s photo is all I’ve got to gauge the essence of who she was. The ‘famous’ photo. The classic news feed fodder. The one of the bottle-job blonde with the duck-pout lips. Tan straight out of a bottle. Teeth straight out of a Colgate advert.
And ‘tits straight out of a catalogue’, according to Navarro. They found implants among the bones. Silicone’s a hardy bugger to break down.
As are rubber soles.
‘Did I see something about footwear?’ I rifle through my file, looking for the relevant print-out.
‘You did,’ confirms Navarro. ‘There was a trainer – pretty distinctive, actually. Possibly custom-made. A photo’s been sent to her mates – they should be able to ID it, hopefully.’ There’s a spark in his eyes; morbid curiosity. ‘Odd though, isn’t it? The trainer.’
‘Yeah. No. Maybe.’ I let him read what he wants into my airy non-answer.
‘Thing is,’ he goes on, the mints click-clacking against his teeth, ‘there were a few scraps of fabric too, sticky patches melded with the bone. Jeans, probably, as they found copper rivets – you know, the tiny bits of metal you get on the pockets?’
I shoot a fidgety glance towards Parnell, who quickly looks away.
Navarro spots it. ‘Oh, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking the same as me. I mean, it’s hard not to think it.’ He pauses, and for a moment there’s only the dripping-tap trickle of the weakening summer rain and the soft, tidal rush of motorway, God knows how far away. ‘The others . . . they were naked.’
The others.
Strangers in life, bound together in death.
Names on a Wikipedia page.
The Victims.
2
I let the door slam hard and stomp through the heart of MIT4 base camp, Parnell hard on my heels, whistling a radio jingle that had plagued us the whole way back to Holborn HQ. Detective Sergeant Pete Flowers visibly jolts at the reverberation, dropping his soup spoon and splattering fiery red liquid onto his starched white shirt.
‘Jesus, Kinsella!’ He lurches for a tissue. ‘Close the door, why don’t you?’
‘Oh, shut up, Sarge, I’m cranky.’ I’m also tired, straggly-haired, and surprisingly still damp, despite a two-hour journey that should have been less had Parnell – who has the thirst of an elephant but the bladder of a pygmy shrew – not needed to stop at every motorway services from Caxton to eternity. ‘Send me the dry-cleaning bill,’ I add – I may be cranky but fair’s fair. ‘Although not that one by the station. Eighteen quid for a suit! We should be arresting those crooks, not giving them our money.’
The main benefit of having worked with the same crew for four years, bar everyone knowing how you like your tea, is that rank often goes out the window. In a day-to-day sense, anyway. In the sense that you can tell a sergeant to ‘shut up’ without them frothing at the mouth. Around eighteen months ago, I’d been seconded to City Hall to work on policy and planning in the Mayor’s office – great for my CV, not so great for my boredom threshold – and I’d missed the freedom to be tetchy. The safety to be myself.
Or at least the disinfected version I let others see.
The room’s quiet, the only energy coming from a flickering strip light that Facilities promised to fix back when Noah built the ark. Apart from Flowers, our resident slab of testosterone, there’s only two other people here: DC Renée Akwa, currently curling her lip into the receiver of her phone, and DC Ben Swaines.
I can’t actually see Ben Swaines, but as the air-con’s set to Baltic, it’s a dead cert he’s here.
‘I swear that man’s part polar bear.’ I adjust the thermostat to something more considerate then fling my bag on my desk. ‘Hey, Ren, where is everyone?’
Renée lowers her phone. ‘Don’t know. Out making more use of the taxpayer’s money than me, with any luck. Twenty minutes, I’ve been on hold. Twice to the wrong department. Haringey Council, who else?’
‘Ahhh, Haringey on hold . . .’ I’ve had my own share of mind-numbing stints. ‘Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G Minor. Am I right?’
‘Spot on.’
Steele’s office door flies open. Her petite, pristine presence gives the room some instant zing.
‘Well, well, well, the wanderers return.’ Her scarlet mouth dips as she looks us up and down. ‘Bloody hell, guys. Here I was, bragging to Tess about my Cat-and-Lu dream team, and then in you trot, looking like you’ve been camping for a week.’
Tess? I glance through the blinds, spy a platinum-blonde bob and a Grande Starbucks Something.
‘We got soaked.’ I walk in and perch against a filing cabinet, offering ‘Tess’ a generic smile. She’s in her mid-forties at a guess, and in her prime for damn sure. Sleek and elegant in a cream tailored shift dress. And not one you’d throw in the spin wash either.
‘Soaked?’ Steele grins as Parnell troops in behind me. ‘What happened, Lu? Did you leave the sun-roof down in the car wash again?’
He laughs, nodding at ‘Tess’ in a way that suggests a faint history. ‘Rain, would you believe? Do you remember it? The wet stuff.’
‘Well, I hope you brought it back with you,’ says Steele. ‘My hydrangeas are knackered.’
‘Tess’ stretches forward, wrapping her French manicure around her Starbucks. ‘You still like your garden then, Kate?’
I reach across Steele’s desk, snatching up a magazine blotted with coffee cup rings. ‘She still likes buying Gardeners’ World and using it as a coaster, if that’s what you mean.’
Steele grabs it off me, clouts me on the shoulder. ‘Tess, meet DC Cat Kinsella. Cat, meet Detective Chief Inspector Tessa Dyer. You and Lu know each other, right?’ A nod from Dyer. A ‘vaguely’ from Parnell. ‘Tess headed up “The Roommate” case. She’s popped in to give us the scoop – or “the skinny” as the kids say – on Holly Kemp.’
The Roommate’s last victim.
‘So how’d you get on in the sticks?’ she carries on, introductions complete. ‘You must have ruffled someone’s feathers. I got a call just now – the post-mortem’s happening this evening.’