‘Does your brother live with you?’
He smiled proudly. ‘Nah, he’s the brains of the family, he’s at uni up in London.’
‘Yeah? Which one? I used to work in London.’
‘Richmond.’
‘I remember my first car. A little Fiesta. I miss that car. It wasn’t particularly fast, and it only had a cassette player so I had to copy all my favourite CDs onto tapes, but… I don’t know, there was something about it. You know what I mean? It was mine, and it was my first.’
He smiled as his shoulders relaxed. ‘Mine’s got a banging stereo system.’
Kate smiled. ‘I’ll bet it has.’ A pause. ‘Was Daisy your first girlfriend?’
The smile vanished from his face. ‘No.’
‘So, you’d been out with other girls before Daisy?’
‘A couple. Nothing serious.’
‘Was it serious with Daisy?’
His shoulders were tensing again. ‘I suppose.’
‘She thought it was serious, didn’t she? Her Facebook page showed her “in a relationship”. That was with you, wasn’t it?’
‘I guess. I don’t do Facebook.’
‘Where did the two of you meet for coffee?’
‘What?’
‘On Friday afternoon. You said the two of you met in Portswood for a coffee?’
He frowned, trying to determine whether she was aiming to somehow trick him. ‘We was at that place that sells ice cream. Can’t remember its name.’
‘The gelato place, right? The one with the pink neon lights?’
‘Yeah, that’s the one.’
‘We know which one you were in, Alfie, because a witness says they saw you and Daisy in there. But what I don’t understand, is why that witness says they saw you and Daisy arguing about something. Why would they say that?’
He shrugged his shoulders, attempting nonchalance, but coming across as defensive. ‘Depends who says they thought we was arguing.’
‘Oh, so you’re saying you weren’t arguing?’
Alfie glanced nervously at Patel, who had been scribbling notes since the conversation had started. ‘No, that’s not what I’m saying… What I mean is, we was talking, but not arguing.’
Kate didn’t miss a beat. ‘That’s not what our witness says. They said Daisy ran out of the place in tears.’
‘No, that’s not what happened. Sh-she was upset, but that has nothing to do with this.’
‘Why was she upset then?’
‘She just was—’
‘Did you upset her?’
‘No, I mean, yeah, I mean… I don’t know. I can’t remember. It was just a silly disagreement.’
‘What were you disagreeing about?’
‘I can’t even remember.’
‘Did you go after her when she left?’
‘No.’
‘That’s what our witness said, too. They stated you just sat there while your girlfriend ran off in tears. Why didn’t you go after her?’
His hand shot up to his mouth as he chewed on a nail. ‘She was upset… she was angry—’
‘Why was she angry?’
‘She was angry with me… I thought she just needed a bit of time to cool down.’
‘Why, Alfie? What had you said that made her angry and upset? What aren’t you telling me?’
‘It was nothing.’
‘What wasn’t?’
‘I just… I-I-I told her I couldn’t see her at the weekend because I was going to my brother’s.’
Kate wasn’t buying it. The phone vibrated in her pocket. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me, Alfie, and I will get to the bottom of it. You saw Daisy that night too, didn’t you?’
‘What? No.’
Kate monitored his reactions closely. ‘Yeah, you did. You’d been together for months, and there’s no way you would have left things like that. Did you go to her place? Is that what happened?’
‘No.’
‘No, of course, because she wasn’t at home, was she? She was over at Georgie Barclay’s house. Did you meet with her there?’
‘No, I didn’t see her. I swear to you: I haven’t seen Daisy since the ice cream place. I swear to God!’
The phone vibrated again. Kate nodded at Patel to continue as she excused herself and left the room.
14
Freeborn was waiting in the corridor, holding a printed image. ‘Dr Temple just sent this over.’
Kate accepted the page and studied the image. ‘This is what he managed to recover from the tattoo on the foot?’
Freeborn nodded. ‘It’s difficult to tell what it is. Claws, maybe? Or the bottom of letters? Do you think it spells something?’
Kate twisted the page in her hand. The scarring was white against the black of the skin where Ben had inverted the colours. She continued to try and decipher the image as they returned to the incident room. ‘That definitely looks like the lower edge of a capital “L” or maybe a “B”,’ Kate suggested, ‘then maybe a lowercase “e” or “c”, or maybe an “o”. Keep playing with possible letter combinations.’
Freeborn pointed at the far area of the image. ‘I definitely think these are claws of some type. A crab or scorpion?’
Kate passed the image back. ‘Keep checking the local parlours and find out who removed it.’
‘Would you ever have a tattoo, ma’am?’
Kate gave him a curious glance. ‘What makes you think I haven’t already got one?’
Freeborn’s cheeks reddened instantly. ‘Oh, ma’am, I-I just didn’t…’
Kate’s lips curled into a smile.
* * *
Situated between a takeaway kebab shop and a bookies, the windows of the tattoo studio were blacked out, but the studio’s name hung above, emblazoned in white lettering.
Freeborn locked the car and hurried along the street after Kate. ‘The girl I spoke to on the phone said her boss had removed a scorpion tattoo from a young woman’s leg on Tuesday afternoon.’
A bell sounded as Kate opened the door, followed by a warm blast of air from the overhead heating system.
‘Be with you in a minute,’ a gruff voice shouted from somewhere out the back.
Images of available artwork hung from three of the walls, with the remaining wall covered in floor to ceiling mirrors, with two large barber-style chairs facing them. There were normal chairs against the wall opposite the mirrors, presumably for prospective punters to queue, not that there were any other customers in the shop. Spotting binders with more artwork in a bookcase by one of the mirrors, Kate nodded for Freeborn to grab a couple so they could compare the images with what Ben had produced.
Taking a seat in the waiting-room chairs, they began to flick through the two binders Freeborn had chosen. Kate flipped through page after page of colourful Disney cartoon characters, but nothing came close to resembling the scorpion or any possible letter combinations. Freeborn didn’t appear to be having any better luck either, as his pages were adorned with oriental symbols with English translations scrawled in hand beneath each one.
The sound of metal scraping on metal greeted them as a curtain out the back was pulled open and a guy with a large skull tattooed on his shaved head appeared and looked them up and down. ‘You want your collar number tattooed on your arm, officer? We offer a ten per cent discount to public servants.’
Kate raised her ID and stood. ‘Are you the owner?’
‘Yeah.’ Distrust and loathing dripped from his expression.
Kate passed him the negative image. ‘You recognise this?’
He gave it one look. ‘Nope. Doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever inked.’
The curtain hooks rattled as a thin girl, barely old enough to vote, shuffled through, avoiding eye contact, and began to wipe down the three chairs by the mirrors with a cloth.
‘Actually,’ Kate said, returning her attention to the owner, ‘we believe it was recently removed. Do you remember the woman who asked you to remove it?’
He gave the image a second vague look. ‘It wasn’t removed in here, love. Sorry.’
‘But you do remove tattoos as well as create them, right? That’s what the poster on the wall behind me says.’
He glanced up with a slight shake of his head. ‘We do, but not very often. Most people who come here want more ink, not less.’