Love Story, With Murders Read online

  The SOCO pulls out of the freezer. He has a mask on, which I don’t, but even so it must have stunk in there.

  ‘Can’t see ’em all, and I won’t move anything till we’re done with the imaging. But what I can see – oldest is ’96, newest maybe 2002. Possibly 2003, because the ink has run and . . .’ He shrugs. ‘We’ll know once we can start moving them and get a proper look.’

  I take some pictures of the dead girl’s shoe with my phone, and the SOCO promises to email some better-quality shots through to me when he’s got to that stage.

  I give him the thumbs-up and head back to Condon, ready for my ride.

  4

  Home.

  I asked Condon to bring me here, not Cathays. If it’s going to be a long weekend, I might as well get ready. Swap skirt for jeans, shoes for my most comfortable pair of boots. Jumper. Put a toothbrush and toothpaste into my bag, along with a change of knickers and tights. I think about eating, but I’m not hungry, so I don’t. Think about taking a shower, but can’t be bothered.

  I don’t put any lights on. Just let the house grow dark around me, seeing what I need to from the streetlamps outside.

  Somebody cut a young woman into pieces and put her left leg into a suburban freezer in Cyncoed.

  Up by the reservoir, it’s as dark as it is here. The voles and the snakes and the toads and the bats are either going to bed or coming out to hunt. And we’re coming out to hunt too. Me, Watkins the Badge, and the might of South Wales’s finest.

  For me, these things aren’t only about finding the killers, but about giving peace to the dead. It’s not primarily a question of justice. The dead don’t care about that. The murder investigation, arrest, and conviction are just part of the funeral rite, the final acts of completion. Gifts I bring the dead in exchange for the peace they bring me.

  The peace of the dead, which passeth all understanding.

  I’m moving slowly now. No reason. Just waiting for my energies to gather. When they do, I find a cereal bar in my dark and silent kitchen and start chomping it on the way to my car.

  I should drive straight to Cathays. I do drive straight to Cathays, only when I get there, I find myself driving straight on through, over the river to Pontcanna.

  Big Victorian houses. Over-ornamented. High-ceilinged and respectable. I stop at a house in Plasturton Gardens. Home of Piers Ivor Harris, MP. One of his homes, I should say. He also has a house in Chelsea in London and a place in France.

  I’m in luck. His car is here, a silver Jag. His wife’s car too, a cream and black Mini. Lights on inside the house, curtains drawn.

  I wander up and down the road, noting down numberplates. Most of them I recognise – this isn’t exactly the first time I’ve done this, to put it mildly – but some of which are new. Of the new ones, none look immediately interesting. The cars either not posh enough or not parked close enough to the house to suggest that they’re connected with the Harrises. I note the registrations anyway.

  Then back to my car. Then up to Whitchurch. Same thing again. The object of my interest: Galton Evans, an agricultural insurance guy, who made a packet of money ten years ago when he sold his business to a private equity buyer, then decided to devote the rest of his life to becoming a major-league arsehole.

  That’s my theory anyway. Maybe Evans is a nice guy. I wouldn’t know. I’ve never met him.

  I don’t think I’ve got anything useful from the trip, but that’s why you have to do these things as often as you can. Fishing takes patience. One of my fortes.

  I wonder about hitting some of my other targets, but my mood has changed and Cathays is calling me now. I send a text to DS David Brydon, David ‘Buzz’ Brydon, my official-as-anything boyfriend, to let him know where I am and what I’m up to. Truth is, he’ll already have heard about the case and will know that I’ve probably been sucked into it, but I’m working hard to be Girlfriend of the Year and good girlfriends text their boyfriends to tell them about changes of plan, so that’s what I do too. It’s how we behave on Planet Normal.

  I zoom back into Cathays, ready for a long night hunting corpses.

  5

  At four in the morning, I get my corpse.

  Mary Jane Langton. Disappeared August 2005. A student at Swansea University, twenty-two years old. Reported missing. Media hoohah. Investigated as well as these things can be. No leads of consequence. The case never closed. Rhiannon Watkins the officer in charge of that one too.

  I know Langton’s our girl because one of the photos we have of her shows her at some kind of party. Slightly plump, short dress, reasonably good looks, blonde hair. And the shoes. Pink suede things with round toes and narrow wedge heels. She probably bought them two or three years before her death. Liked them so much, she wore them through the passing fashions. Is wearing them still, in death and beyond. In a stinking freezer by an empty reservoir.

  I’m the last person in the office. The other people researching went home around midnight. Late enough that even Watkins couldn’t reprimand them for slacking. The ceiling lights are off, so it’s just me and a desk light and the tiny rectangular LEDs of phones and printers, glimmering like fireflies in the dark.

  I should tell someone about Langton, but I flip rapidly through the file first. An MA in English literature. She was working on a dissertation on Dylan Thomas. A good Welsh choice for an English girl. Parents lived in Bath. Him, a solicitor. Her, a charity worker. Two siblings, a brother and a sister.

  Langton’s files showed nothing strange. A bit of dope found in her student room. An ordinary number of boyfriends. Okay grades as a student. Not brilliant, but good enough. Thinking about maybe a career in publishing, but nothing definite. Just a girl who liked shoes.

  Except for one thing.

  The press reports we have on file, and the notes from our own investigation, state that Langton supported herself as a student through ‘exotic’ dancing.

  A stupid phrase, that. For one thing, you can hardly get less exotic than a slightly plump English girl cavorting round a scaffolding pole. For another, it’s not about dancing. It’s about flesh, men and money. The files includes photos of Langton as a dancer. A tiny spangled mini-skirt in one picture. A sequinned bikini in another. A grin on her face in both, cow-toothed, more schoolgirlish than sexy.

  Fuck.

  This is the nightmare scenario, the one thing I hoped would never happen in my policing career. Something I stupidly thought wouldn’t ever happen and consequently don’t know how to handle now that it has.

  Fuck.

  I want to get up, leave, go for a drive, give myself room to think, but I don’t have the time. If I were at home, I’d go for a quick smoke in the garden to clear my head, but that’s not an option here.

  There probably isn’t a problem, I tell myself. And I’m right. There probably isn’t. Trouble is, there possibly is, and if so the problem is of a magnitude that’s off-the-scale bad. So, even though I told myself I would never do this, I find myself picking up a phone and calling home.

  I get Mam. Sleepy-voiced, worried.

  ‘Mam, it’s me. Everything’s okay, so don’t worry. But is Dad there?’

  He is. The phone is passed over.

  ‘Hello, Fi, love.’

  ‘Dad, something’s come up, it’s probably fine, but can you give me a call back from a private number?’

  A moment’s hesitation, or not even. Half a moment. A nanosecond. Then, ‘Course I can, love, just give me a moment.’

  Two minutes later my mobile bleats. Caller details withheld.

  ‘Dad.’

  ‘Fi, love?’

  ‘Look, I expect this doesn’t matter, but I don’t know if you’ve heard the news about the discovery of human remains up by Llanishen.’

  ‘Up by the reservoir, love? No. Sounds horrible, though. You never really think of Cyncoed as being that sort of place.’

  I digest that a moment, then say, ‘The dead girl was Mary Langton.’ I leave a pause in case Dad wants to say anyt
hing, then, before he can fill it with his usual white noise, continue. ‘Disappeared August 2005. She was a pole dancer. Well, a student really, but did some pole dancing to make a little extra cash. Mary Langton.’

  Dad listens without interrupting, then says, ‘Poor girl. Awful, that sort of thing, isn’t it? At that age, I mean, her whole life in front of her. And then – bang, gone. Just think of her poor parents. Lord, if anything ever happened to you or the other girls, your mam and I –’

  ‘Dad, was she a–? Did she dance at one of your clubs?’

  ‘Gosh, love, you do ask questions. You know how it is, though. Middle of the night. Some poor lass that vanished five years ago now. And, you know, we’ve had so many dancers over the years. I couldn’t possibly remember each one. Course, there’ll be records, we could look at them. If it’s helpful, I could get Emrys to take a look. Me, I’m not really the man for paper. But Emrys, he’ll find anything. Do you want me to call him? I mean, if it’s important, I can get him out of bed, no problem at all. And after all, if it’s a police matter, he can afford to lose a little sleep. We’re both up, aren’t we, love?’

  He’s all set to go wittering on, but I interrupt. I tell him it’s fine. I just wanted to check. I tell him to go back to bed, sorry for waking him, sorry for worrying Mam. He tells me to look after myself, tells me to come over tomorrow for dinner, ‘and bring your young man, we’d love to see more of him’.

  We ring off.

  Back to the silence. Desks stretching out into the darkness. Small rectangular fireflies. The hum of dormant electronics. Four twenty-five.

  He’s good, Dad is. Very good. That’s something I’ve only recently started to understand and the knowledge frightens me. Things you thought you know changing shape the more you look at them.

  Part of his trick is that torrent of patter. His readiness to talk, that total unstrategised openness. Anyone listening to the call would have sworn that my dad was the ultimate WYSIWYG man: what you see is what you get. Friendly, concerned, open, helpful.

  Except then you start to look at the whole thing differently. Picking up on tiny clues. I said we’d discovered human remains up by Llanishen. That doesn’t necessarily mean the reservoir, but even if that’s how you understand it, the reservoir has two sides. The Cyncoed side and the side which is Llanishen proper.

  Dad changed my word ‘Llanishen’ to ‘Cyncoed’. That could just be an assumption. A middle-of-the-night thing, said by someone thinking blurrily. Or it could be a signal that he knew everything already, that things were under control. And if he was signalling like that, is that because he had nothing to hide? Or because everything was already sufficiently hidden? Or because, although something dangerous had been exposed, he was already working to neutralise the threat?

  I don’t know.

  I don’t need to know, except that I am a serving police officer and I made a phone call which alerted, what, a possible informant? a possible suspect? I’d always told myself that I wouldn’t use my position to shelter my father, and now the very first time there’s a possible collision between my role as daughter and my role as detective, I choose the former with no more than a few minutes’ hesitation. Does that mean that if push came to shove, I’d make the same choice? Or that the point of my phone call was to make as sure as dammit that push never would come to shove?

  I don’t know. Problems for another day. Fireflies and dead girls’ shoes.

  I spend a moment tuning in to my heartbeat, my breathing. Finding my body. Feeling myself. I press my knuckles down on the wooden desk until I feel the pain. I can’t quite feel my feet fully, but that’s not unusual for me, and I have, after all, been awake for almost twenty-four hours. I realise I’m feeling tired. A good feeling. Appropriate, normal.

  I take my boots off and bundle my papers together. Rhiannon Watkins’s office is on the floor above me, and I take the lift in silence from my floor to hers. Swipe my card through the security door. Find the right office. Open the door, ready to leave everything on her desk with a note.

  I haven’t put any lights on, because at this stage of the night, I prefer the dark. But inside Watkins’s office there’s a pool of light from her desk lamp. A small, intense pool because the lamp has been bent right down over the desk. And behind the desk, Watkins the badge, looking more like a grandmother than the ferocious Queen Bitch of the Cardiff CID, asleep in her chair.

  I’m wondering how best to wake her when she wakes up of her own accord. Focuses her gaze. Takes some time to remember where she is, who I am, why we’re here. Her short grey hair is messed up and her suit is rumpled. Not really the kind of clothing item to look good after being worn all day and slept in half the night.

  I hold up the file.

  ‘Mary Jane Langton,’ I say. ‘Our victim. I’ve matched the shoes.’

  I give her the file, pulling out the shoe photo and showing her that first, matching it against my own photos of the murder scene.

  Watkins looks carefully at the photos, then very briefly at the file, then says, ‘Good. Look, just give me a moment.’

  She rubs her face, and gropes around under her desk for her shoes, which aren’t there but set neatly beside each other to her right. She finds them, yawns, stands up, grimaces at me – a kind of ‘good job, stick around’ face – then leaves the room.

  I can’t help but contrast the slowness with which she gathers herself with the speed of my father’s own process. I wonder whether Watkins and my father are on opposite sides of this investigation or whether, as I hope, they have nothing at all to do with each other.

  Some minutes go by. I practise my breathing. In-two-three-four-five. Out-two-three-four-five. A habit now. A good one. I can feel my toes, my heels. I feel one of those moments of gratitude. A moment of thankfulness for it all: a boyfriend who loves me, a family, a job. Bodily sensations that I can feel, emotions that often now approach me normally, leave me safe when they leave. Thankfulness, with a thin splash of alarm at how precarious it still is. How easily I could lose it.

  I hear Watkins outside and turn to the door with my office face on. She sticks her head inside.

  ‘I need some coffee. You?’

  Watkins the Badge in Junior Detective Coffee Offer Shock.

  I nod in surprise, then hastily amend my acceptance. ‘Yes, please, only not coffee. Tea? If that’s okay. Milk, no sugar.’

  Her head vanishes, leaving something grumpy in the air. Was I meant to have offered to go instead? I wonder about that for a moment, then stop. If someone offers me a drink, they can bloody well get it without grumping at me.

  I sit down. Make myself at home. Shift the chairs around. Change the lighting. Massage my feet.

  When Watkins comes back, she isn’t grumpy. Gives me my tea in a mug that I think belongs to DCI Jackson. I don’t usually trust myself with caffeine, but these days I sometimes go crazy and risk life on the edge. Live fast, die young.

  Watkins studies the file silently for a few moments, then calls the lab.

  The lab doesn’t normally work through the night, but it does when it has to. Most murders are solved within forty-eight hours or not solved at all, and that means we push the lab for very quick results in cases like this. Watkins tells whoever she’s talking to that we think we’ve identified the murder victim, and gives the necessary details. We have Langton’s DNA on record from the previous investigation, so it’ll be a swift business making the match. Watkins ends the call with her normal curtness.

  ‘They’ll have something by eight this morning.’

  I nod. Truth is, the lab would have got there anyway. My truffling through the night has saved us a few hours, nothing more. Probably irrelevant, but Watkins has a lose-not-a-minute philosophy, which I like. I’m the same.

  Watkins: ‘When did you come on duty, Constable?’

  ‘Yesterday. In the morning.’

  ‘Right. You need to sleep. Get yourself home. I want you to –’

  ‘You’ll be seeing the parents?’
I interrupt.

  A pause. I’m not sure if that’s because she’s angry at my interruption or because she hasn’t yet thought ahead to the business of informing next of kin. Most DIs don’t do the next-of-kin bit themselves, but some do.

  Watkins nods and says, ‘Yes.’

  ‘If possible, I’d like to come.’

  ‘You’ve been working all week? Monday to Friday?’

  I nod.

  Another pause, then, ‘Okay. We’ll leave as soon as the lab comes back with confirmation.’ She digs around in a cupboard and comes out with something that looks like a tartan picnic blanket. ‘Dennis Jackson has a sofa in his office. You can use that.’ She scrutinises me a moment or two longer, then nods again.

  I’m dismissed.

  If I was a good little officer, I’d say something like ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ but if anyone should thank anyone, she should thank me, because she went to sleep without a victim ID and woke up with one. So I just take the blanket, the tea, and myself off to DCI Jackson’s sofa. It’s fake black leather. Sticky and synthetic.

  Through the thin office walls, I can hear Watkins starting to make calls. Alerting people to come in early, starting to hand out assignments, checking back with the lab. Getting the machinery of investigation ready for its next clanking advance.

  It takes me twenty minutes or more, but then sleep comes to me like night over the reservoir. Swift, silent, and total. A snake vanishing under rocks.

  I dream of nothing.

  6

  Dream of nothing and wake with nice Bev Rowland bringing me a cup of peppermint tea and a look of anxiety.

  I unstick myself from the sofa. My mouth feels like someone’s been using it to boil up connective tissue for glue.

  I take the tea. ‘Thanks, Bev. You’re a gem.’

  ‘Were you here all night?’