‘God, I love it so much,’ Manon had said, red-faced and swaying. ‘The table lamps!’
‘Someone support her, she’s having a giddy turn,’ said Harriet. Then she’d looked out to the gathered faces, everyone smiling as Manon looks back on it. ‘Manon Bradshaw does not only love a scone in The Place to Eat. She has a passionate hatred for parties where standing is involved. In fact, make that all parties. She owns twelve versions of the same smock top and has never missed an episode of First Dates. Manon Bradshaw is also the best detective I know. She has never shied from the dogged work that solves cases and secures convictions. I wish—’ and here Harriet’s voice had audibly cracked ‘ — I wish Manon wasn’t leaving the team because MCU won’t be the same without her. But the good news is, London is about to become very safe indeed. So let’s loop back offline, go forwards together and sing from the same hymn sheet: to Manon!’
‘DS Harcourt will be down shortly if you’d like to wait,’ says the desk sergeant.
Perhaps she should never have returned to Cambridgeshire; left it on that high note of affection. Perhaps coming back was the professional equivalent of shagging someone you’d binned off six months earlier. Is that why it all went so catastrophically wrong – why they turned on Fly?
‘Manon!’ Melissa Harcourt’s shrill voice bounces off the gloss-painted institutional walls. She is too loud and too effusive. How does she have the energy to fake so much?
Manon notices the exhaustion that is dragging at her like an oceanic undertow. Invisible yet muscular, the pull downwards.
‘Hello, Melissa.’
‘It’s soooo good to see you. Wonderful! How are you? Gosh, look at you! Can I touch it? I know pregnant women are supposed to hate this, but can I touch it?’
‘Um, yes, OK then,’ she says. And Melissa Harcourt bends in her tight navy suit and her nude patent heels and places her hand on Manon’s body.
‘Amaaaaazing!’ she says.
‘Thanks,’ says Manon. ‘I need to talk to you about Jade Canning.’
‘Jade Canning?’ says Melissa. ‘Who’s Jade Canning?’
‘Body we hooked out of the Welsh Harp last summer. You and I. In the heatwave, remember? Really stank. Havers gave it to you, even though you shouldn’t have been SIO on something that serious.’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Melissa, turning her face away. ‘Yeah, vaguely. Why are you interested in that? She was a jumper, wasn’t she? Tons of cocaine in her system, no suspicious circumstances, the usual with girls like her.’
‘Ah, but she wasn’t actually – a jumper, I mean. In fact there were an awful lot of suspicious circumstances. Jade Canning died at the Carlton Hotel in Mayfair while working as an escort. She’d been hired by a private bank to entertain a Chinese business delegation and her death was covered up by persons unknown. Body was taken out of the back of the hotel in a van which then drove it to the Welsh Harp and dumped it in the lake.’
Manon tries out a cloying tilt of her own with the attendant unpleasant smile.
Melissa is looking deeply uncomfortable. ‘Why are you poking about in all this? It’s not your patch any more.’
‘Well, apart from a basic regard for professional standards, Melissa, I have an attractive proposition for you. You could allow me to take this to professional standards with my concerns about the inadequacy of your investigation and face a potential Reg 14 misconduct notice. Or there is another way forward.’
Melissa shifts on her tottery shoes. Manon’s belly creaks in a way that is close to insupportable. Birth is supposed to be three months away. Not now you little fucker. Stay inside.
‘Well,’ Melissa says, ‘just because new evidence has come to light now, doesn’t mean I did a bad job.’
‘Ah, but it does,’ Manon says, ‘because if you had covered the very basics of victimology, the first question you would have asked was: what was my victim doing, where was she doing it and who was she doing it with on the night she died? And the answer would have been, she was being exploited by some excessively rich people at a hotel in Mayfair despite being below the age of consent. And that, if you were a half-decent police officer, would have led you to open a murder investigation. See where I’m heading? So, here’s my idea. You re-open the Jade Canning case stating new evidence has come to light, evidence which I shall furnish you with and which includes ANPR capture of the white van’s journey from the Carlton Mayfair to the Welsh Harp. You mount a search for the Persian rug, which I would hazard is covered in Jade Canning’s DNA. Your investigation spills over into an examination of that night at the hotel and the use of high-class escorts by a private bank for corporate entertainment. I have a file—’
‘You have a file?’
‘Yes, it’s quite an interesting file. You may wish, in the course of your investigation, to share this file with, oooh, the Financial Conduct Authority and MI5—’
‘MI5?’ Melissa’s eyes are wide.
‘Yes and this way, you see, you change a misconduct notice into a rather high-profile investigation which gets you noticed by the top brass and you get your arse out from under that dickwad Havers. Unless you’re shagging him. Are you shagging him? Because if you are, I really can’t help you. This—’ she wags her finger between them ‘—sisterhood only goes so far. Want to have a little think?’
The cramping sends an arrow dart down Manon’s left side and straight into her groin. She buckles at the knees. ‘I might have to sit down …’ she says.
‘Here,’ says Melissa. She supports Manon’s weight, leading her backwards towards the blue plastic chairs that are bolted together against the wall of reception. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Will be,’ says Manon. She pants, waiting for it to pass. It’s taking a long time to pass. It’s as if everything inside her might fall out, as if her pelvis is a broken bridge, bulging and ineffective.
Her phone is going.
‘Mark,’ she says.
‘Hi there. Are you all right?’
‘I’m all right, yes,’ she says.
‘I think you need to come back. Fly’s in hospital.’
Mint green walls. Blue linoleum which squeaks and shines with pools of reflected light. Outside the door is a police officer sitting on a chair.
Fly’s neck has a white support collar around it. He is asleep.
‘He should make a full recovery,’ says Mark.
‘Who found him?’
‘An orderly. Very lucky with the timing. He came in on him only moments after he’d hung himself, which is why he’s still with us. He’d made a noose out of the bed sheet.’
‘Oh God.’ She is holding Fly’s hand against her forehead and her tears are falling onto his sheets. She is so sorry and this sorriness is flowing from her on a ribbon of tears. All she can think is she won’t let go of his hand again. They’ll have to prise her off him. She won’t let another single thing happen to him.
‘Shouldn’t be any long-term damage,’ Mark says. ‘He’s breathing all right and there’s no damage to his spine.’
‘Did he write a note?’