‘No, I don’t think so. Nice looking girl, weren’t she? Classy, I mean. Had one of those fancy brown coats. We used to call them flasher macs back in the day but they’re all the rage now apparently.’
I hoover up another forkful, dutifully faking a cake orgasm. ‘Any chance of the other dates she came in, ladies? Apart from Friday. I appreciate it’s not easy.’
‘Well, we don’t sell many of those Ristretto things,’ offers June. ‘I could go through the till roll for the past few weeks, see if I can find another.’
‘We do actually,’ says Bernie, all superior. ‘That fat man with the cap, he always has one. And that lady with the Down’s syndrome lad, not that she gets a minute’s peace to drink it, the poor creature.’
June looks smug. ‘Ah, but the police can cross-reference to see if they were here on a particular day, and if they weren’t then it must have been this dead girl. It’s called “process of elimination”, Bern.’
‘It’s called watching too much bloody Morse.’
‘Did you ever talk to her about anything?’ I interrupt, breaking up the spat.
Bernie frowns. ‘Such as?’
‘Well, where she’d been? Where she was going? Why she was in the area?’
Baffled expressions. Customer engagement clearly isn’t their forte.
It’s June who pipes up again. ‘I think I saw her over there once, if that’s any help.’ She points across the street. ‘Some time last week. That gated road where the posh houses are. It might have been her, anyway. Same sort of hair, same browny coat.’ She adds a hint of warning to her voice. ‘But I was going past on the bus and he doesn’t take any prisoners when he’s behind schedule so I didn’t exactly get a good look, and I wasn’t wearing the right glasses. I’d had to borrow our Eileen’s because I’d left mine at the Harvester.’ A small shrug. ‘Anyway, whoever it was was bending down talking into that walkie-talkie thing.’
‘The intercom, you fool,’ snaps Bernie.
I hand my card across the counter, give another thumbs-up for the cake. ‘That’s very helpful, June, thank you. And anything the till roll throws up would be great.’
‘Waste of time,’ says Emily as we stand outside, shuddering against the shock of the cold, our shoulders huddled up around our ears.
Most investigative work is, I should tell her. However I’m taking a surprising amount of pride in my prefect role so I do my best to strike a positive tone.
‘Not necessarily. Let’s check out this gated road. If it was Alice Lapaine, someone must know her.’
Emily curls her lip. ‘Yeah, if it even was her? I’m not sure anything those two said would stand up in court.’
‘True. But if you want your murders sewn up in the space of two hours, go and binge-watch Morse with the lovely June over there. Otherwise, get your arse over the road with me.’
*
Keeper’s Close is a pronounced curve of nine houses, the kind of street a child would scrawl with gravelly paths meandering between perfectly manicured lawns, primary-coloured front doors decorated with pine cones and Christmas wreaths, and white picket fences sectioning off the Haves from the Have-Mores. At the top of the close, a Waitrose van is parked outside what is clearly the best house – a three-storey period property that makes the other million-pound drums look a bit pedestrian and naff. Like plain and frumpy bridesmaids forming a guard of honour for the far more elegant bride.
Emily tries not to look impressed but when ￡50,000 of Range Rover pulls up to the gates she practically goes cross-eyed with envy.
‘You’re in the wrong job,’ I say to her, signalling to the driver to wind down his window. ‘If it’s fancy cars you’re after, you’re going to have to make damn sure you marry well. And you’re definitely barking up the wrong tree with Ben Swaines.’
She feigns outrage. ‘Get lost, I don’t fancy Ben. It’s just flirting, livening up the .?.?.’
I’m spared the girly chat by a frail old man leaning out of the car window, waif-like in his behemoth of a car. ‘Can I help?’ he says in a quiet, raspy voice.
I flash my ID. ‘Do you live here, sir?’
‘Yes. Well, no. I do at the moment, most of the time anyway. What’s this about?’ His face clouds. ‘God, it’s not that arsehole, Bingham, again, is it? She’ll go mad.’
I file Bingham for later and pull Alice’s photo out of my pocket. ‘Do you recognise this woman?
A quick but curious glance. ‘No, sorry. But you’d be better off talking to my daughter.’ He points towards Keeper’s Close’s very own Taj Mahal. ‘The house at the top.’
He pulls off and we follow behind slowly. By the time we reach the barn, the elderly man isn’t looking so fragile, berating the Waitrose driver for some barely noticeable scratch on a pillar while behind him, a good-looking woman wearing skinny jeans and a poncho-cum-granny blanket-type-thing, looks ready to commit murder. We wait a few seconds for her to acknowledge us but she’s too busy pacifying her father and pleading with a small child to stop tormenting the cat.
‘Hello,’ I shout, over the racket of alpha men and cranky kids.
The elderly man looks round, momentarily confused, like he’s completely forgotten his encounter with the Law in the time it took to drive up the pathway. ‘Oh sorry. Gina, these officers want a word.’
Gina looks at us unmoved, as if somehow resigned to yet another drama. ‘Oh, OK.’ She scoops up the cat-tormenting child. ‘Can you bring the shopping through, please? I’ve rather got my hands full.’
I figure the instruction’s aimed at the Waitrose man but I make myself useful anyway, hauling a case of Pouilly-Fumé off the van and following her into a cavernous hall – all stone floors and timber beams and a Christmas tree to rival Rockefeller’s.
‘So what’s this about?’ she says, craning her neck round, trying not to be strangled by the clinging toddler.
‘We’re investigating a murder, Mrs? Sorry, I didn’t catch your name?’
‘Hicks. Murder?’ The usual blend of alarm mixed with macabre delight.
We follow her into the kitchen where an identical toddler is slumped on a beanbag in front of Paw Patrol, and a neighbour, who introduces herself as Tash Marwood, is wrapping ham around figs. I lean against the Aga and blow Tash Marwood’s mind with the ‘M’ word while we wait for Gina to bribe the toddlers out of the room with Fruit-Shoots and Pom-Bears. Eventually negotiations cease and she closes the door.
‘Murder, you said? Good God! Who? Where?’ She looks towards Tash Marwood. ‘God, it’s not someone on the close, is it?’
‘No. Central London. The victim went by two names, Alice Lapaine and Maryanne Doyle.’ I wait a beat to see if there’s a flicker of recognition from either of them. Nothing. ‘We’re following a line of enquiry that she was seen at your main gates recently, talking into the intercom. We’ll need to speak to all the residents.’
Gina lets out a long breath. ‘Well, the names mean nothing, I’m afraid. Tash?’
Tash shakes her head, eyes full of appalled excitement. ‘Do you have a picture?’
Emily offers the photo. Tash offers an instant ‘No, sorry’. Gina’s just about to say something when her father staggers into the room, legs buckling under the weight of two cases of wine. She bolts towards him, furious.
‘Dad, I told you not to lift those. Go and get Leo to help. Jesus!’ She hoists the wine onto the marble island and sighs deeply. ‘I’m sorry, my father’s not well so he’s staying with us, and I’m trying to get ready for a party and all in all, it’s a bit of a mad-house today. Christmas drinks with the neighbours,’ she explains with all the enthusiasm of someone facing the firing squad. ‘We did it the first year we moved in. It was my husband’s idea – basically, he extends the invite and I put in all the effort. Anyway, unfortunately it seems to have become rather a tradition.’