45
It had to be said, they weren’t feeling the love. Chantelle Fox had refused them entry at first, until Gormley used his own gentle powers of persuasion, pushing past her into the house while she demanded to see his non-existent search warrant. There was a nauseating smell in the room, an odour Daniels couldn’t easily identify. It was sweet, like baby sick. Surreptitiously, she popped a mint in her mouth to mask the stench.
Chantelle rounded on them. ‘I called the ambo, yeah. But that’s all!’ The girl’s eyes shifted back and forth between the two detectives and then she restated her innocence. ‘There was no one near him when he went down, I swear! So it was either the copper or the medics that robbed the old bastard. Don’t try pinnin’ it on me! I might be shite but I’m honest shite.’
‘Oh yeah?’ Gormley questioned. ‘Like father like daughter, I heard.’
His comments only served to wind her up. ‘You’ve got the cuffs on me already, haven’t you?’ The girl’s voice grated on her visitors’ ears, like chalk across a blackboard. ‘Well you’re not putting me in the cells. No way, José! If my arsehole of a father taught me one thing it was to be sure you can get out the back when you got a knock at the front door. Only I didn’t run, did I? Know why?’
‘Because I stuck my size ten in the door before you slammed it in our faces?’ It was a rhetorical question from Gormley. ‘We could get a warrant, if you insist.’
‘No! I didn’t run ’cause I’ve nowt to hide!’
Daniels ran her eyes over the girl. Not only did she sound like her old man but there was a physical resemblance too. The same pale complexion and gap in her front teeth. The same big mouth, both literally and figuratively. Arthur Fox was a well-known villain, a prolific thief, philanderer, an all-round waste of space she’d locked up on numerous occasions. He died in a fatal car accident when he was forty-nine years old. Tampering was suspected but never proved, because of the poor condition of the car, which had worn tyres and dodgy brakes. He certainly had enemies though.
Daniels glanced at the seahorse tattoo on Chantelle’s arm.
‘Take a good look, why don’t ya?’ The girl stopped chewing the skin around her right thumb and wiped her hand on her tight-fitting dress. She checked her watch. ‘Fuck! I’m going to miss my bus now!’
‘They run every ten minutes,’ Gormley said. ‘We’re not finished with you yet.’
‘Oh, I get it. I don’t stand a hope in hell, do I? Your lot always close ranks when someone gets caught with their fingers in the till . . .’ Chantelle picked up a thick black patent-leather belt from a side table. Clipping it round her waist, she slipped on shoes to match, a woeful attempt at the ‘wow’ factor. The five-inch heels gave the impression that she’d have to work really hard to avoid toppling over. Keen to hit the party city, she looked in the mirror, checking her appearance, teasing out dull, lifeless hair which she covered in a foul-smelling spray until every last strand was glued to the next. Then she turned to face them. ‘It’s my word against his, right? Yeah, that’ll work. Tell you what, you bring the thieving git here and I’ll get the truth out of him.’
Daniels tried not to get angry: bent coppers were scum as far as she was concerned. They gave decent officers a bad name and turned the public against them. If Dixon had done wrong, she’d take great pleasure in stripping him of his pristine uniform and putting him before a court of law. No ifs, buts or maybes – he’d get what was coming to him.
‘You listening to me?’ Chantelle carped. ‘I’m not having it, OK? So you can fuck off and find yourselves another patsy. Anyway, do I look like I’ve got money?’
Daniels scanned the room. Despite the odious smell, which she still couldn’t identify, it was a tidy house filled with bright-coloured fabrics and no clutter. Ikea influence, she thought. Apart from the carpet, which was old and worn, everything in the living room looked new, perhaps a little too new. The furniture seemed odd and it took her a moment to figure out why. There was a definite symmetry to it all, as if it had been deliberately staged. Cushions plumped up on a sofa that had never been sat on. Celebrity magazines scattered across a coffee table artificially, as if a tape measure had been used to align them just so – Hello, OK, Grazia and Look among them.
‘You are some nosy cow!’ Chantelle bellowed, lifting a sparkly bag off the floor. ‘I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong. I won a few quid on the lottery, that’s all.’
Daniels and Gormley exchanged a look, mention of the lottery worrying them both.
‘How much is a few quid?’ Gormley said.
‘Two-fifty, not that it’s any business of yours.’
‘Thousand?’ Daniels asked.
‘Yeah, right!’ Chantelle cracked up. ‘Call yourselves coppers? People round here would kill for less.’
Gormley glared at her. ‘That’s an unfortunate choice of words.’
‘Didn’t mean nothin’ by it,’ the girl said. ‘Hey! What you accusing me of now?’
‘Calm down, Chantelle.’ Daniels tucked her hair behind her ear, logging the girl’s anxiety. She would hardly have mentioned the lottery if she’d had anything to do with Ivy’s death. She might be from a long line of wasters but the one thing she wasn’t was stupid. ‘I take it you meant two hundred and fifty?’
Cocking a sneer at Gormley, Chantelle nodded.
‘Any proof?’ he pushed.
‘You never give up, do you?’ Chantelle applied her lippy in the mirror, glowering at Gormley’s reflection as she did so. Then she swung round to face him. ‘Ask at the Paki shop, the one on the corner . . .’ She thumbed to the right. ‘It’s their biggest win this year. I’m a bit of a celeb round here, as it happens. Now if you don’t mind, sling your hook!’
Daniels walked into the hallway, her eyes seizing on a dark baseball cap hanging on a peg near the door. It had no motif and was similar to the one worn by the shy man or woman Maxwell had drawn her attention to, the one buying petrol from a garage nearby. She turned towards Chantelle, sizing her up, wondering if she could have been that figure.
‘Where d’you buy your petrol?’ she asked.
‘There’s only one place you buy petrol round here. Down the road at the Shell garage.’
Shell, eh? Daniels opened the front door. ‘Cheers. We might need to see you again.’
‘Not if I see you first.’
Daniels smiled and stepped outside.
Gormley followed her out, flinching as the door slammed behind them. ‘That was a lowballer,’ he said.
‘Just thought I’d throw it in . . .’ Daniels looked across the street where crime-scene tape flapped in the breeze outside Maggie Reid’s house, the windows all boarded up to keep the local kids out. Then she glanced at Chantelle’s front door. ‘She’s hiding something, Hank. I don’t know what it is, but I can spot a liar when I see one. That mark there . . .’ She pointed at a black smudge on the wall. ‘That’s where I got the cigarette butt I sent off for forensic testing.’
‘You think she’s the arsonist?’
Daniels’ expression was impenetrable. ‘I think we need that result.’