‘How did Ross even have the boy’s number?’ Harriet asks.
‘We’ll need to find that out,’ Stanton says. He pulls out his chair and sits at his desk. With the movement, Davy catches a whiff of chlorine mingled with shower gel. Stanton’s started exercising. Rumour has it he’s been spending a fortune on hair loss treatments from some Harley Street trichologist.
Harriet says, ‘I just don’t think Fly … It doesn’t seem possible. I know him. He’s a good lad.’
‘If you ask me,’ Stanton says, ‘the Dent boy’s good for it.’
Why does he keep referring to Fly as the Dent boy? He hadn’t been the Dent boy a year ago, offering Stanton peanuts at the Christmas drinks.
Davy says, ‘To be fair, there are a lot of avenues which need exploring. Ross’s ￡9million shell company might also go to motive. Or the blonde – the photo on the body – who might be another ex. And Ellie Bradshaw: there’s a seven-hour hole in her alibi which hasn’t been interrogated and she’s a key witness. There’s an array of potential motives.’
‘Hardly think Ellie Bradshaw is a danger to the public,’ Stanton says. ‘I just don’t buy it, do you? A nurse stabbing her ex?’
What the hell is this, an episode of Guess That Perp? They’re not supposed to go on hunches; the HOLMES database was invented to prevent all that. Trace, interview, eliminate. Every single line. Why isn’t he telling them to be all over Ellie Bradshaw’s alibi? Is there an instruction coming from above Stanton, or does he know something about Ellie and is leaving Davy out of the loop? He didn’t even realise there was a loop. Is there a loop?
Stanton says, ‘Look, Derry’s PM shows Ross was stabbed where he fell. We’ve got a lad on camera at the crime scene, at the time of death as good as dammit – a lad from a not great background. I’m telling you, the Dent boy’s good for it. There’s been an additional statement from Giles Carruthers describing animosity between Ross and the Dent boy. Ross told him the boy was menacing.’
‘Menacing? Fly?’ says Harriet, and Davy feels similarly incredulous. They have both been around the boy. He’s a good kid.
‘When did this come in, this additional statement?’ Davy asks.
‘Phoned it in, yesterday,’ says Stanton.
This is not right, something’s not right. There are forces in the room that are not being talked about, invisible as magnetic fields, pulling the investigation in a direction it doesn’t want to go.
‘Apparently,’ Stanton continues, ‘Ross told Carruthers that he didn’t want a boy like him around his son.’
‘A boy like him?’ says Harriet.
‘Well, him being …’ Stanton says.
‘Black?’ asks Harriet.
‘Not just that, is it? The boy’s had a hard life. Would it seriously surprise you if a boy like him went down for something like this? Whatever, we need to see those texts. There might be threats, abuse. Motive. You need to arrest Fly Dent.’
A boy like him. Davy doesn’t like it. His blood is swirling, stirring up nausea like ocean sand.
‘Couldn’t we just ask to see his phone?’ Davy says. ‘The effect of an arrest on him, on Manon …’
‘Arrest gives us power to search and seize,’ Stanton says. ‘I think it’s time to go through the house, too. We don’t know where that knife is. Longer we leave it, the more evidence’ll be lost.’
‘I don’t think that’s necessary,’ Harriet says, quietly, but her voice is wavering. She raises herself from perching position to standing, and Davy can see she is braced. ‘I don’t think there’s evidence to justify an arrest. I think there are other avenues—’
‘DCI Harper,’ Stanton says, ‘I don’t want you to lose sight of this investigation because of personal feelings of loyalty. You really have to try to remain impartial. If you can’t, I will have to reassign this case to a team without close ties to Manon Bradshaw.’
‘I’m not losing sight of the case. But I am not turfing a pregnant woman out of her home three days before Christmas and arresting her son,’ Harriet says.
‘She shouldn’t get special treatment,’ Stanton says.
‘She’s my friend and one of our own.’
Manon
‘Flyyyyy! Turn the tap off!’ she bellows up the stairwell.
No response, as per.
The winter days have been over-warm, building to a crescendo of humidity and as she stands there, she feels the air around her thick as wool. It needs to rain.
She’s not about to allow another infinity pool to leak through her kitchen ceiling, so she takes a firm hold of the banister and attempts to haul her body up the stairs.
When she has reached approximately step five, the doorbell rings. Manon calls to Ellie – ‘You get that!’ – while continuing her huff-puffery up the stairs. She has only mastered another three steps when Harriet appears in her hallway. ‘Hello, this is a surprise. Have you come for dinner? I’ll be down in a minute. Just have to smother a couple of children with some pillows.’
She turns the taps in the bathroom off, glances into Fly’s room where he is predictably lying on his bed reading, while Sol squats doing his dinosaur puzzle on the floor.
Panting, Manon walks back down the stairs. ‘To what do we owe this honour? Something to do with Jon-Oliver?’
Harriet is wearing a pale rain mac, on which are spatters of darkness at the shoulders. Rain. At last. Good, Manon thinks, as if it might wash away the congestion around her organs.
Harriet looks strained.
‘I need to talk to Fly,’ Harriet says.
‘Fly? Why on earth would you want to talk to Fly?’ Manon looks behind her and yells up the stairs again. ‘Fly? Fly! Can you come down?’ Then she smiles at Harriet. ‘He should be down in a day or two. Glass of wine?’
‘No thanks.’
‘Crikey, you’re a bit serious.’
‘It is serious. I need to take him in.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I need to take Fly in. Question him at the station.’
‘No you fucking don’t.’
‘Yes, I do, Manon.’
‘He’s a minor.’
‘I know he’s a minor and I’ll make sure he has an appropriate adult.’
‘Why can’t you ask him stuff here, with me and Ellie?’
‘Because there’s evidence I need to show him and because I need it on tape.’
Fly has descended the stairs and is standing on the bottom step behind Manon, who is at ground level, eyeballing Harriet. The bottom stair is making him seem taller than he is and Manon curses her hormones, which are causing a swell of feeling.
He is only little. He is only little though he looks big. He’s a baby, and she bobs up onto his step. ‘Don’t look so grown up,’ she whispers, her cheek against his, in an effort to hide her tears, and he gives her a confused look.
‘Do you mind coming to the station with me, Fly?’ Harriet says.
‘I don’t understand …’ he says.
‘I just want to ask you a bit about your movements, in relation to the death of Jon-Oliver Ross,’ says Harriet.
Manon gives Harriet her most withering look because this is why she left Kilburn. This is why she took Fly out of London; because he was getting stopped every five minutes by coppers who couldn’t see past the colour of his skin.