I’ve never subscribed to the cult of New Year’s Eve. Never grasped the fascination. All that reflecting on the past and hoping for the future always strikes me as a profoundly bad idea when you’ve been poisoning your body for seven days straight, and your nervous system’s shot to pieces by marathon-style boozing and energy-sapping grub.
It’s especially a bad idea at five a.m., when you’re alone and lying in the pitch-black silence, waiting for the orange glow of the streetlamps to bring another dark night of the soul to a close.
Good old five a.m., though.
There’s comfort to be found in consistency.
Unsurprisingly, sleep was fractured last night. Just the odd twenty-minute snatch dreaming of shadowed, wailing women emerging from dark corners to plead with me about something?
Mary Shelley had Frankenstein haunting her ‘midnight pillow’. Basically, I’d had Jacqui.
Around three a.m., I’d switched the light on and pounded out a text out to my sister. An incoherent essay full of pseudo-apologies and rambling justifications. The worst kind of grovel – ‘I’m really sorry, but .?.?.’
Thankfully I hadn’t sent it.
I hadn’t sent the one I’d written to Aiden Doyle either.
Thanks for the drink. Don’t think we should meet up again. Sorry. Cat x.
SMS 3.32 a.m.
I stir myself and drift zombie-like into the shower. The water’s warm but sparse, another thing in this house that needs fixing. Still in my towel, I mainline carbs and caffeine for half an hour, sitting on the stair where my relationship with Jacqui ended last night until I realise I’m shivering. Proper cartoon shivering. I crank the heating up and go back upstairs. Fill my room with the tinny, mindless sounds of breakfast TV.
A shower. Carbs. Caffeine. Vacuous noise. Usually a winning combination for shaking off the worst of the bad-night blues but I can’t seem to find solace today. My heart’s too heavy and my chest’s too tight and for the first time ever I think about phoning in sick.
That is, until Parnell calls.
‘Boss,’ I croak, giving myself the option depending on what he has to say. ‘You’re up early, you all right?’
His voice sounds odd, softer. ‘Better to be a lark than an owl, Kinsella, and in answer to your question, no, I’m not all right.’
I mute the TV, silencing a far-too-chipper brunette preaching about how to get a flat stomach in twelve hours. For the ‘big night’ as she calls it.
‘Why? What’s happened? You sound weird?’
What’s happened to Parnell is a tooth abscess, ‘more painful than labour’ he insists as Maggie shouts obscenities in the background. What’s happened to our case is a call from Parnell’s ‘snout’, Mrs Stevens, to say that ‘a dark woman with a suitcase’ turned up at Saskia French’s flat last night and was heard saying to someone on her phone that she’d come back the next morning when she’d found her spare key.
Which leaves me sitting outside Ophelia Mansions for nearly four hours, cursing this woman and her loose definition of the word ‘morning’, and Parnell sitting in the emergency dentist’s chair, cursing himself for not taking better care of his teeth.
Just after noon she turns up. As we climb the six flights of stairs, I give the woman with the mellow-brown skin and the cut-glass accent a two-minute version of our two-week-old case.
She doesn’t seem too moved by it.
‘Maryanne’s dead?’ She pats the pockets of her Afghan coat, shoving her handbag into my arms so she can rummage for the key. ‘Sorry, I had no idea. I’ve been in the Seychelles for the past three weeks with a client.’
Her name is Naomi Berry. She’s been working ‘with, not for’ Saskia French for several years and she has a key because when Saskia’s away, she likes Naomi to keep half an eye on things. She explains that she called by the flat last night as Saskia lets her keep her work ‘things’ here – it saves her carting them backwards and forwards between here and her respectable life as a trainee acupuncturist in Crouch End – and she was very surprised to find Saskia gone as the week between Christmas and New Year is usually highly lucrative. Clients who’ve been cooped up with their families are desperate to ‘relax’, apparently, and a wintery woodland walk or a quiet pint in the local doesn’t quite cut it.
All this before we’ve got through the bloody front door.
‘So you met Maryanne?’ I finally get a word in.
‘Briefly.’ She jangles the key triumphantly then twists it in the lock. ‘She was here for about a week before I left.’
There’s a mound of literature on the doormat, mainly junk – pizza flyers, taxi cards, letters addressed ‘to the occupier’, and there’s a sweet rank smell stifling the air. Naomi eyes me warily in the dim light – she’s clearly watched her fair share of cop shows – however it’s definitely not the sweet stench of death. Decaying fruit, I reckon. Or an unemptied bin. Naomi puts her case down and goes into the kitchen to investigate. I walk into the living room and start opening windows.
‘So what can you can tell me about Maryanne?’ I say, keeping my question nice and open.
She stands in the doorway holding the offending bin-bag out in front of her like a dead rat. Sundown in the Seychelles must seem like a very distant dream right now.
‘Nothing. Like I said, our paths didn’t cross for long. We barely spoke other than to say hello.’
I nod, leave it at that. ‘Naomi, we really need to speak with Saskia and we haven’t been able to contact her for nearly a week. Have you heard from her at all?’
‘No, but then she knows not to call when I’m holidaying with a client. They tend to want the full “girlfriend experience” and they don’t appreciate your phone going off every two seconds. It rather reminds them of what you are.’ She pauses, pouting. ‘Saskia could be away with a client I suppose?’
I shake my head. ‘She said she was going to her parents. I don’t suppose you know their address, or have a contact number?’
Her lip curls slightly. I’m not sure if it’s the bin-bag or the question. ‘Her parents? As far as I’m aware she never knew her father and her mother died well over a year ago. She was very distressed about it even though they hadn’t spoken in years.’
OK.
I relieve her of the bin-bag, offer to ferry it down the six flights. There’s no thank you, just a tight smile that suggests I’m probably better suited to the chore anyway. On my way down, I put a call in to HQ and get a message to Steele, through Renée, that it looks like there’s no parents in Somerset, or any other rural cider-drinking county for that matter, and therefore we have the very real possibility that Saskia French has done a bunk. Then I call Parnell who I tell the exact same thing.
Parnell tells me, as best he can in his semi-anaesthetised state, that he’s just jumping in the car and he’ll be as quick as he can.
*
When I walk back into the flat, the hall light’s now on and Naomi’s bent over a small puddle of water, holding a dustpan and brush awkwardly, like she’s not quite sure how to use it. A cylindrical vase lies on its side and small shards of broken glass are scattered around a few limp gerberas – once a cheerful yellow, now heading towards a murky light brown.
I address the top of her head. ‘Accident?’
‘No, I only just noticed it when I switched the light on. That table’s a bit crooked as well.’ She looks up. ‘This is odd. Saskia’s usually quite tidy. I’m surprised she’d leave behind a mess like this.’
So she left in a hurry, of her own accord or someone else’s.
‘Look, leave that, Naomi. Don’t touch anything.’ I gesture towards the living room. ‘Can we sit down? I need to ask you a few more questions.’
She thinks about this for a minute and I play along, allowing the pretence that she actually has a choice. Eventually she shrugs, pushes past me. ‘OK, I can’t imagine how I’ll help but if you must.’
I take the sofa – chic, angular, uncomfortable, like the sofa in Dr Allen’s waiting room. Naomi stays standing, leaning lightly against the windowsill. The low midday sun frames her beautifully and if it wasn’t for her jetlag eye-bags and completely flat expression, I’d say she almost looks celestial.
‘Did you ever hear Maryanne or Saskia say they were scared of anyone?’