‘Better than that, an address. And a name.’
Sometimes it just happens like that. Days and days of thankless, arduous nothing and then, boom. All the tenuous leads and the tortuous trips up endless garden paths seem a lifetime ago, and you can never quite remember why you ever questioned the purpose of your wonderful, life-affirming job.
My coat’s on and fully fastened before Parnell can even think not to invite me.
14
I’ve lived in London long enough to know that the suffix ‘mansion’ often lends a false glamour to the most humble of dwellings. However, with a name like Ophelia Mansions, I’m at least expecting to find the odd willow tree or wild flower. What we actually find is a dilapidated six-storey eyesore just off the Gray’s Inn Road, less than a mile from where Alice Lapaine’s body was found.
Predictably, Saskia French lives on the top floor.
We’re let in the main door by a man rushing out. His wool overcoat and deposit-for-a-flat-watch mark him out as a ‘gentleman caller’ rather than an occupant and it’s obvious Parnell’s thinking the same. I see it in his smirk as he flashes his ID, assuring the guy that we’re not Jehovah’s Witnesses. I hear it in the wicked laugh that echoes all the way up the stairs, in between our puffs and pants.
When we get to the top, the door to 12C flies open and a girl in a nurse’s uniform – a real one, that is, not a kinky one – flies out, buckling under the weight of a large kit bag. Her face is blotchy, like it’s been freshly scrubbed raw of make-up.
Parnell whips out his ID again. ‘Saskia French.’
‘No, I .?.?. I .?.?.’ She glances back into the flat, looking nervy. ‘Are you here about Maryanne?’
Maryanne.
So whatever she was doing in London, she’d reverted to her old name.
‘I saw it in the paper. I would have called. Honest, I would have but .?.?.’
‘But what? You were too busy to care?’
‘No!’ she howls. ‘I just didn’t .?.?. it’s just I don’t know anything about, you know .?.?. and I’m about to qualify, and I just do this to keep my head above water.’ She looks to us both, backwards and forwards. ‘You see, they talk about bursaries but they’re not enough to live on. I’ll stop when I’m qualified, when I’m salaried, I will .?.?.’
We’re almost as thrown as she is. If she didn’t expect to be doorstepped by two puffed-out police officers, we certainly didn’t expect to be lectured on the state of NHS student funding.
‘And I thought Saskia would have called. I mean, it’s nothing to do with me.’ A quick glance at her watch. ‘Oh shit, I’m going to be late for my shift.’
A disembodied voice comes from inside the flat – loud, husky and impatient. ‘Just leave it, Petra. Go. I’ll talk to them.’
It’s an order. An instruction that sends Petra hurtling down the stairs.
She’ll keep.
‘Yes?’
The voice now has a body, and a knock-out body at that. Saskia French stands in the doorway pulling a bulky jumper over a red PVC dress, hopping from foot to foot and blowing her cheeks out at the cold. If it was possible to take your eyes off her legs, which finish somewhere around my shoulders, you’d notice that she’s got wide set eyes, heavily kohl’d and a little starey. A razor-sharp black bob with a spirit-level fringe. While she’s not quite exactly your full-on fetish-queen, there’s definitely something of the alternative about her. A certain edginess that propels her from attractive to arresting.
Put another way, she’s stop-traffic sexy.
‘Saskia, we’d like to ask you a few questions about Alice Lapaine. It sounds like you knew her as Maryanne Doyle.’
Several expressions collide but hostility overrides them all. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t think I can help, and I’m expecting someone shortly. A friend,’ she adds, with a smile more beatific than the Virgin Mary.
Parnell smiles. ‘No need to be sorry, you can definitely help us. We know Maryanne Doyle – a murder victim – made a number of calls to your phone, and thanks to your colleague just now, it’s clear Maryanne was known to you so let’s not do this pointless little dance, eh? Just a few questions?’
I stick my foot in the door, a pre-emptive strike that doesn’t go to waste when she tries to slam it shut. My foot throbs but I hold her stare. And it’s not the easiest stare to hold. Fervent, almost tipping into crazy. The kind of crazy that drives men wild as long as it’s at a distance – preferably a one-hour-once-a-week kind of distance.
‘Five minutes.’ She turns and sweeps down a narrow hallway, all five feet eleven of her, pulling doors closed as she passes. ‘We can talk in here.’
We follow her into a small cramped kitchen, the kind of adjunct they build on to an office so people can make tea and microwave porridge but that’s about it. There’s no washing machine as far as I can see – unless Saskia French’s whole wardrobe is of the wipe-clean PVC kind – and even the cooker, a free-standing hob sitting on top of the worktop, looks like something you’d take on a camping trip. The fridge is as dinky a child’s toy.
Still, someone’s feeling festive, at least – there’s a snowflake sprayed on the window and a sprig of mistletoe dangling from the door.
Saskia busies herself throwing fresh mint into a mug. She doesn’t ask if we want anything. While her back’s turned, I channel ‘what-the-fuck?’ frequencies across the lino to Parnell.
Why the hell was Maryanne/Alice calling a prostitute?
Parnell cracks on. ‘How did you know Maryanne Doyle?’
She sighs. Hops up on the worktop and stretches out her legs – bare, unashamedly pale and elegant like a dancer’s. ‘I didn’t know Maryanne. We shared the same space for a few weeks but I barely saw her. She saw most of her clients off the premises.’
I sense the bomb go off in Parnell’s head but it’s me that reacts. ‘Clients? You’re saying Maryanne was working here.’
She looks me up and down, finds me wanting on just about every level and turns back to Parnell. ‘I’ve just said, she didn’t see a lot of clients here. She was using it more as a base. She left her stuff here.’
‘Maryanne’s stuff is here? She has a room here?’ I’m struggling to keep my professional cool, but in the space of half an hour we’ve gone from laborious grunt work to the revelation that might just light a fire under this case and it’s taking me a moment to adjust. To reset my skillset from phone-answerer-cum-form-filler to actual detective
Parnell doesn’t need any time. ‘Which room?’
‘The second on the right, she didn’t have much though.’ Another sigh. ‘What exactly are you looking for?’
Parnell walks out. I hear a door open and it takes every last piece of my resolve not to burst in behind him.
‘Why didn’t you contact the police about Maryanne? It’s been all over the papers for almost a week.’
‘Has it?’ she says, vaguely. ‘I don’t really read the papers, or watch TV. I’m more of a muso. Anyway, the less I have to do with the police, the better.’
‘Your colleague, Petra, seemed to be aware of it. She implied you were too – she was surprised you hadn’t contacted us.’
‘I only found out a day or two ago when I picked up a paper on the tube.’
‘And you didn’t think to call us?’
A shrug. ‘I had nothing to tell. I have nothing to tell.’
‘Maryanne was staying here and you think that’s nothing?’
She bends forward, clasps her hands together like a teacher talking to an imbecile. ‘Do. You. Understand. English? I hardly ever saw her. I really can’t help you.’
I change gear, try to ruffle her. ‘Why do you have two phones, Saskia?’
Her voice takes on a bored, sing-song tone. ‘It’s fairly standard practice. I like to keep my life and work separate. The pay-as-you-go is for work.’
‘It’s been switched off for a week, maybe longer. Why?’
She whispers something I assume to be derogatory, then, ‘I wanted some R&R, even tarts need a week off now and again and when I’m not working, I switch it off. I don’t want to be pestered.’