Chapters 20-29

Chapter Twenty

 

‘So, the question is, who’s pulling the strings?’ asked Whitehead.

      ‘Well, it must be someone on this list,’ said Braithwaite, pushing a wad of A4 across the table. ‘This is everyone from the studios whose exact whereabouts can’t be verified at the time Richard Golding was murdered.’

      She sighed. ‘There must be two hundred names on here.’

      ‘Two hundred and fourteen. But most of them are audience members who were queuing up for the toilets at the time. Obviously, most of them didn’t know each other from Adam, so they’re unable to provide alibis for each other.’

      ‘Can we discount all of them then?’

      He shook his head. ‘Afraid not. Golding was shot at the end of the corridor that leads up the side of the studio. The other end comes out right by the audience toilets where everyone was queuing. There’s a big sign staying, Staff Only, but it wouldn’t have been hard for someone to slip away from the crowd and follow him – provided they’d stashed the gun somewhere beforehand. I found a couple of them wandering around in there when I was searching for Eric. They said they’d got lost, but the security guys say they always have people trying to get backstage for autographs and stuff.’

      ‘They should try locking the doors, then,’ she said irritably.

      ‘They’re not allowed. Fire regulations, apparently.’

      Whitehead shot him a look that suggested she blamed him for every sin that had ever been committed in the name of health and safety, and Braithwaite thought it best to shut up. He watched as she flicked through the pages that Nelson and his colleagues had meticulously prepared for her the day before.

      ‘Why’s there a star next to Kyle Pennington’s name?’ she asked after a minute.

      ‘Because I saw him. He was in the backstage area. He came out of the studio just after I found Golding’s body.’

      ‘What was he doing there?’

      Braithwaite leafed through the folder of typewritten statements he had brought with him. ‘He says he came down to the studio floor to – er, to look for me, ma’am.’ Nelson had faithfully transcribed Pennington’s actual phrase: ‘to bollock that fuckwit policeman who was poking his head out from behind the set and trying to ruin my programme.’

      ‘And how did he get there?’

      He scanned the statement. ‘It doesn’t say. I assume he came down the stairs from the gallery and went through the studio. As long as he stuck to the walkway at the side of the room, he wouldn’t have got in the way of the cameras.’

      ‘It’s a long way round. What about that ladder backstage which leads up to the lighting rig? You can access that from the gallery, can’t you?’

      The woman had a photographic memory, thought Braithwaite. He had spent the best part of eight hours in the studios over the weekend, and he still found the place like a rabbit warren. Whitehead had spent five minutes striding round the building and she could probably have traversed it blindfold. ‘I think so, yes.’

      ‘So if he went straight down the ladder and picked up the gun from where he’d hidden it somewhere behind the set – Christ knows there was enough junk back there – that would have given him enough time to get out into the back corridor and shoot Golding while you were still tussling with Tina on stage, wouldn’t it?’

      He paced the route out in his head. ‘Probably.’

      Whitehead pursed her immaculately glossy lips. ‘Then straight down to Eric’s dressing room to dump the gun, and back to the studio so he could pop out and surprise you as if he’d taken the long way round and never been anywhere near the back corridor.’

      ‘He’d have been very lucky not to bump into anyone on the way,’ commented Braithwaite.

      She shook her head. ‘He would have known there was unlikely to be anyone in the backstage area or in that corridor. He knew the schedule for Fame On. He arranged it! Tina was supposed to interview the judges for the first five minutes of the programme, and the contestants were under instructions to wait in the green room until she came backstage to interview them. Come to think of it, that was probably the point at which he intended the body to be found – live on camera. Doesn’t that sound more like Pennington’s style?’

      He nodded slowly. ‘But then I screwed things up by sticking my nose in.’

      ‘Exactly. Despite the fact that he’d conveniently installed you in a position you shouldn’t have been able to get out of while the cameras were still rolling.’

      ‘Good point,’ said Braithwaite, impressed. ‘It fits, doesn’t it? I mean, he’s used to planning things with split second timing and making sure everyone’s in the right place at the right time. That’s what he does for a living. ‘

      ‘What do you think, Spall?’ Whitehead turned to the redheaded inspector, who had remained silent throughout his colleagues’ Holmesian deduction session.

      ‘I can see what you’re saying,’ he said slowly, scratching at a patch of dry skin on his forehead. ‘And I can see how it could have happened. But there’s one thing I don’t get. I mean, why would Kyle Pennington want to sabotage his own show?’

     

Jacqui O’Riordan obviously did not hold with the tradition of wearing black as a tribute to the recently deceased, and was commemorating the deaths of Samantha Woodside and Richard Golding with an outfit that would have had Zandra Rhodes wondering if perhaps less was sometimes more. Her hair was dyed a vivid orange, which clashed horribly with the pink and yellow silk kimono she had teamed with a pair of jeans and silver trainers.

      ‘Thanks for coming out and meeting me,’ said Nelson, glancing down Westminster Bridge Road towards the Portmanteau offices a few hundred yards away.

      ‘It’s fine. I’m glad to get out of the office, it’s been a hell of a morning. Three contestants have just dropped out of Celebrity Wilderness with the production team already out in Judea, and Gillian McKeith’s agent’s playing hardball over Whose Poo. Oh, and there’s the murders, obviously. Come on, let’s walk and talk. I’ve got to get some lunch anyway.’

      They picked their way through the greasy chip wrappers and bin bags that littered the pavement towards the river. ‘We’re not going to run into Kyle Pennington are we?’ he asked.

      ‘No,’ she said with a smile. ‘He’s locked in his office waiting for a conference call from ITV. I just heard him send out for Sushi.’

      Nelson grimaced. ‘I don’t know how people can eat raw fish.’

      She looked at him curiously. ‘No, Sushi’s his PA. She usually goes to McDonalds for him when he’s stuck in the office.’

      ‘Oh, right. Er, look, it’s Kyle Pennington I want to talk to you about. My boss has just asked me to check a couple of details from your statement. You said he left the gallery before the end of the broadcast.’

      She nodded. ‘Uh-huh. He went down to the studio floor during the phone line rundown, about thirty seconds before the closing titles.’

      ‘Do you know which route he took to get down there?’

      She shrugged. ‘Sorry. When you’re going out live, you’re only concentrating on the monitors in front of you. Richard Golding could have been shot in the gallery right there and probably no one on that desk would have noticed.’

      They had reached the vast stone lions that guarded the old GLC building from the houses of parliament on the other side of the river. ‘I feel the need for something hideously unhealthy,’ O’Riordan announced, and skipped down the steps to one of the mobile hot dog kiosks that roamed the riverbank. Nelson watched her pay for the greasy package and bury it almost entirely in ketchup. ‘You want some?’

      He declined, and they strolled on past the crowds of tourists who thronged the riverside even in December. ‘Could he have used the ladder that leads down from the lighting rig?’ He tried to make the question as casual as possible.

      ‘I guess so. We quite often use that route when we’re setting up in rehearsals. It’s the best way to get backstage in a hurry – otherwise you have to go down the stairs and through about three sets of doors and go in behind the audience.’ They sidestepped a particularly insistent mime artist. ‘Actually, it’s funny you should say that. I did notice that the door to the lighting rig was open when I went for a pee at the end of the show. I just thought we must have left it like that after the rehearsal.’

      ‘It would normally be shut?’

      ‘Oh, yeah. Fire regs. The lighting boys don’t even like us using that route during rehearsals.’

      ‘Right.’ This was better than he had expected. He shot a beaming smile in the direction of the Japanese teenagers gathered on the steps of County Hall aiming their mobile phones at one another.

      She shot him a sidelong glance. ‘So Kyle’s a suspect, is he?’

      So much for subtlety. ‘We have to investigate every possibility,’ he said, as formally as he could manage.

      O’Riordan looked at him appraisingly, her chin smeared with red sauce. She didn’t look shocked by the idea that her boss might be a serial killer, and he decided to risk probing this one a little further. ‘What do you reckon?’

      She swallowed. ‘I don’t know. He’d do almost anything to get ratings, and he stands to make a lot – personally – from Fame Factory. You know he set up the company that runs the phone vote lines? I was thinking about this after the second one died, Gareth Morgan. I actually wouldn’t put it past Kyle to have taken a contract out on one of the contestants in order to get people interested. But I know Kyle pretty well, and if he was going to kill someone, he wouldn’t have done it backstage like that. He’d have made sure it was done on camera, with as much blood as possible and during the main show with ten million viewers, not Fame On.’

      Nelson sucked air in through his teeth. ‘It’s a harsh business you work in, isn’t it?’

      ‘It can be.’ Tiring of her hot dog, O’Riordan slung its remains into a bin and wiped her greasy hands on the front of her kimono. ‘It can do a lot of good, too. You know we’ve had a lot of calls from people saying these murders have helped them come to terms with traumatic events in their own lives? The Prime Minister was on Richard and Judy yesterday promising to tighten gun control legislation because of what happened to Richard Golding. We’re not entirely bad, you know.’

      Nelson had heard a tabloid editor using a similar argument during the news blizzard that followed the death of Princess Diana. It hadn’t been very convincing then, either. ‘Not such a positive experience for the families of Richard Golding and the others, though,’ he commented tersely.

      They had reached the London Eye, where a long queue of holidaymakers patiently waited their turn on the wheel. O’Riordan shielded her eyes with her hand and squinted up at the tiny figures in the pods high above. ‘I was filming with Dawn the day before she died,’ she said quietly. ‘A stupid piece, Kyle’s idea, a Pretty Woman thing where we took her up west and let her choose a posh frock for the live show. We never even used it in the end. But we spent the afternoon laughing and bumming fags off each other and getting excited about shoes, a really girly time. And then twenty-four hours later she was dead.’

      Nelson didn’t know what to say. ‘It must be difficult for you,’ he ventured.

      ‘It is,’ she said briskly, lowering her gaze and looking him straight in the eye. ‘It’s difficult for everyone who works on the programme. Especially now we know one of us is a murderer.’

      Nelson was under strict instructions to let O’Riordan think this was merely a routine inquiry, a follow-up to the statement he had taken from her on Saturday. He couldn’t face cocking this up. ‘Look, I didn’t say it was definitely Pennington,’ he spluttered.

      O’Riordan wrinkled her forehead. ‘I was talking about Eric.’

      ‘Oh. Oh right. OK. Good.’

      ‘But you have just made me really not want to go back to the office.’

      ‘Sorry,’ he said wretchedly.

      ‘I think I’ll walk along to the Tate and try and lose myself in Rothko for a while. See if that helps. That’s assuming we’re all done here?’

      ‘Sure.’ Nelson wished he had the sort of job where you could go out and get pissed at lunchtime. Rothko must be one of those trendy vodkas Chantal was always trying to get him to order, as if they tasted any different from the cheapest one at the bar. He handed O’Riordan one of the business cards he had had made up at his own expense since starting at Scotland Yard. ‘Listen, if you think of anything else, give me a call, won’t you? And do me a favour, would you? Don’t mention what we’ve talked about to anyone.’

      He looked utterly miserable. On impulse, O’Riordan leant forward and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Of course I won’t. It can be our little secret. Bye.’

      Nelson stood on the riverside and watched her skip down the steps and disappear into the skateboard-clattering darkness beneath Waterloo Bridge without a backward glance. A smile played at the corners of his mouth. She might not have much up front, he mused, but her bum was magnificent.

     

‘A motive,’ commented Whitehead approvingly an hour later. ‘We haven’t seen one of those for a while.’

      Nelson sat back and basked in her appreciation.

      ‘Can we get any figures on how much he stands to make?’ asked Braithwaite.

      ‘Already got it,’ said the sergeant with an expression that aimed at modest efficiency but fell on the wrong side of smug. ‘Between six and a half and twelve million people have voted every week, at a cost of twenty-five pee a time. More, if it’s from a mobile. Broadcast magazine estimate profits for the first ten weeks of the show at just over three million quid.’

      Whitehead sucked air through her teeth. ‘Three million?’

      He nodded. ‘And that’s just so far. There’s still another eight weeks to go, and every time there’s been a murder, both the viewing and voting numbers have shot up. With two in the same week, who knows what will happen next?’

     

The open-plan office at Portmanteau HQ was a hive of quiet activity when Jacqui O’Riordan slipped back in just after half past four. The only sounds were the repetitive churning of the computer printer and the whirring of tapes in the edit suite down the corridor. She stopped off at the kitchen on the first floor, stuffed her coat into one of the cupboards and made herself a steaming mug of coffee, carrying it back to her desk with a nonchalant air that suggested she had actually been terribly busy elsewhere in the building rather than skiving off for most of the afternoon.

      A colleague was just bringing her up to date on the latest state of play with Whose Poo – after a brainstorming session, Lisa Riley had replaced Gillian McKeith and the project had been retitled, Kids Pass The Funniest Things – when the door to Kyle Pennington’s inner sanctum burst open and rebounded against the wall with a deafening crack. The senior producer and chief executive reeled out, roaring like an enraged grizzly.

      ‘We’re fucked!’ he bellowed, as a dozen heads turned in his direction. ‘We’re fucked, fucked, fucked, fucked, fucked!’ He seized the printer, the only object in the room not to have ceased what it was doing and given him its undivided attention, and tipped it on to the floor with an impressive crash.

      Jacqui, who was not unused to these outbursts, shifted her coffee mug out of range and stepped in front of one of the work experience girls who looked like she might be about to cry. She crossed her arms and adopted her most schoolmarmish tone. ‘What’s the matter, Kyle?’

      ‘What’s the matter?’ hissed the producer. ‘I’ll tell you what the matter is. That – ’ he flung an imperious finger at the swinging door of his office and the spiderweb of cracks which decorated its glass panel ‘ – was ITV. They are CANCELLING THE FUCKING SHOW!’

 

Chapter Twenty-One

 

‘Cancelled?’

      ‘Yep. Apparently ITV thought that one of the judges shooting a contestant in the head went beyond the boundaries of constructive criticism.’

      ‘Blimey.’ Nelson cradled the phone on his shoulder and turned around to avoid Chantal’s scowling gaze from the sofa.

      ‘There’s going to be an official announcement soon, saying it’s to safeguard the wellbeing of the remaining contestants, all help given to police in their enquiries, blah blah. They’re just sitting on it till the end of the Six O’clock News to annoy the BBC. I thought you’d like a heads-up.’

      ‘Yeah, thanks Jacqui. I appreciate it. How’s Pennington taking it?’

      ‘About as well as Hitler took the Russian entry into Berlin. He trashed half the office before coming up with some crazy plan to sell the rest of the series to Sky and put it out on pay-per-view. When I left, he was screaming down the phone to someone in New York that he was a personal friend of Rupert and Wendy Murdoch and if they didn’t put him through to his office, he’d set the entire Chinese army on them.’

      ‘D’you think there’s any chance they’ll take it up?’

      ‘Not a snowball in hell’s. ITV hold the copyright to the name and the format. Besides, no one would want to take it on at this stage.’

      ‘So does this mean you’re out of a job?’

      ‘No, I’m on staff at Portmanteau. Most of the others should get paid up to the end of their contracts, too, I’ll make sure of that.’

      ‘OK. Well, I’ll probably see you in the next few days. My boss seemed very interested in Pennington and the phone lines, so I should think I’ll be coming in to your office before long.’

      ‘That would be nice.’ For a moment, O’Riordan sounded like a vulnerable little girl.

      ‘OK. Take care of yourself.’ Nelson clicked the phone off and turned around into the basilisk stare of his better half.

      ‘Who was that?’ asked Chantal icily. Her lips were so thin they had almost disappeared. He always thought she was at her most beautiful when she was angry, but he had long since learned it was a very bad idea to tell her so.

      ‘Just… someone who’s been helping us with the investigation.’ Nelson buried the mobile deep in his pocket.

      ‘You didn’t sound like you were working. You sounded like you were talking to a friend. And what’s that on your cheek?’

      He ran a hand across his face and looked at his fingers. ‘Er, ketchup. Look, let’s not talk about work stuff, babe.’ He sat down on the sofa next to her and took her feet in his hands. In situations like this, a foot massage tended to be the only answer.

      ‘Hmm,’ said his girlfriend, whose thawing tended to take place at a glacial rate. ‘Let’s talk about what we’re doing for Christmas then.’

      He winced. ‘Do we have to?’

      ‘It’s only two weeks away!’ she said shrilly.

      ‘All right, all right.’ He began to move his thumbs around the balls of her feet in a circular motion. ‘Well, I guess we could go over to my mother’s for dinner, and then see your family on Boxing Day.’
      ‘Why does my mother have to wait till Boxing Day?’

      ‘Well, all right, the other way round then. I don’t mind.’ He increased the pressure on her soles and began to stroke the sides of her ankles with his fingers. ‘Or couldn’t we just spend Christmas day here, just the two of us, and open our presents together in front of the fire?’

      She squirmed as his index finger traced a path down to the tip of her little toe, but her resolve held firm. ‘Don’t be silly. It’s electric. And anyway, Christmas is a time for family.’

      ‘And we’re certainly not short of them,’ muttered Nelson dispiritedly. Nearly three hours of the big day last year had been spent at an interminable service at his mother’s church, which was so crowded that he and his cousins had had to stand up through the whole thing. And when they got home, she had told him off for not knowing the words to the hymns.

      Chantal finally settled back into the nest of cushions she had made for herself and closed her eyes, leaving Nelson to his train of thought. A minute or two later, something in her toes told her all was not well, and she opened them again.

      ‘What’s up?’

      ‘It’s just my boss,’ sighed Nelson. ‘He’s divorced, and I don’t think he’ll get to spend Christmas with his little girl. It must be hard.’

      ‘How old is she?’

      ‘I don’t know. About tennish?’ Nelson had never actually met Olivia, and based his guess on the photo in the silver frame that her father had carefully transferred from his desk in Battersea to Scotland Yard.

      ‘I’m sure he’ll see her at some point, won’t he?’ She snuggled down further into the deliciously comfortable couch.
      ‘Probably.’ He ran his fingers up her leg beneath the hem of her silk trousers, making her skin tingle. ‘I was wondering if… if maybe I ought to invite him over here at Christmas?’

      ‘What!’ Chantal sat bolt upright, scattering cushions in all directions.

      ‘Not for the whole of it! Just for a drink maybe, in the evening… if we weren’t at your parents. Or on Boxing Day. Or something.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Well, just ‘cos he’s on his own, and I thought…’

      ‘How old is he?’ She looked at him incredulously.

      ‘I don’t know. Fifties?’ Nelson was as inaccurate when working from real life as he was from photos. Braithwaite was 46.

      ‘How long would he have to stay for?’ Her brow was furrowed.

      ‘I don’t know…’ Nelson contemplated the thought of spending Christmas evening home alone with Braithwaite and Chantal. What would they do? Play board games? They had Trivial Pursuit, but on the rare occasions the two of them played, it was for strip-or-dare. Would they have to buy him a present? ‘Look, it’s probably a stupid idea. He might have other plans anyway. He’s got a sister.’

      ‘He’ll probably be spending it with her then.’

      ‘Yeah, I expect so. I’ll, um – we’ll be pretty busy too, won’t we, if we’ve got to get over to your mum and dad’s place and back on Christmas Day. Forget it. I’ll buy him a pint or something. Look, you just lie back and I’ll get the peppermint oil.’

     

Someone had hung a tinsel garland from the smoke detector in the centre of the investigations room ceiling, but otherwise there was little sign of festivity amongst the members of Operation Ringo. The morning of 12^th December brought the news that Eric Lestrade had pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Samantha Woodside and had been bailed on condition that both his shotguns remained in the custody of the two police forces which held them. Whitehead donned an extra layer of lip gloss to spend an hour sitting alongside the Chief Constable of Buckinghamshire at a press conference, at which she assured reporters that Eric Lestrade was no longer a suspect in the Fame Factory killings and Samantha’s death had been the tragic result of a mistaken attempt at self-defence contrived by the real murderer, as a result of which the Daily Express had rechristened him, ‘’Ave a go ‘Ero Eric’ and co-opted him to their ongoing campaign for the absolute right of all homeowners to slaughter anyone they found on their property at night, including, if necessary, houseguests who had slipped their mind.

      She also veered off-message by saying she welcomed the cancellation of Fame Factory, a result she said was ‘long overdue’ and which she maintained had been ‘delayed by greedy television executives more interested in safeguarding their own profits than the lives of their contestants’, a remark which caused a stir amongst the assembled journalists, many of whom had been banking on the show continuing to provide them with easy front page leads until well into the New Year. ‘That should put the wind up Pennington,’ she remarked, as she arrived back in the investigations room.

      ‘It ought to,’ agreed Braithwaite, who had been watching the press conference on News 24 with several of his colleagues and had narrowly lost the sweepstake on how many times Whitehead would interrupt her provincial colleague (she managed 18). ‘That’s if he is the Rock’n’Roll Killer.’

      ‘Oh, even if he isn’t, he deserves it. Have the phone company got back to us?’

      He nodded. ‘The text message to Samantha Woodside was sent from somewhere in central London.’

      ‘And Pennington lives…?’

      ‘In Chelsea. One of the new apartment blocks by the bridge.’

      ‘Bingo. What else have you found on him?’

      ‘He’s a drug user. He had a caution for possession of cocaine five years ago, no intent to supply. But he was, apparently, one of the names that came up after that big bust in Notting Hill last year. You remember, three guys went down for dealing and one got a reduced sentence for handing over a list of his punters? Well, apparently Pennington was a regular, spending more than five hundred a month on coke. A much valued customer.’

      ‘So?’

      ‘So he’s got contacts on the drug scene. He could have got hold of the heroin that killed Dawn Mackenzie without much difficulty.’

      ‘Uh-huh.’

      ‘And he’d visited Eric Lestrade’s home on a number of occasions,’ chipped in Spall from the other side of the table. ‘He wouldn’t have had a problem finding his way round.’

      ‘Right.’

      ‘Paul Waterhouse would have been happy to let him into his hotel room without any questions,’ pointed out Braithwaite.

      ‘And he fits the description of the man seen on Barnes Common and in the Bellemaison,’ added Nelson.

      ‘But best of all is something a friend of mine from West Yorkshire CID told me,’ said Spall, savouring the way all heads turned in his direction. He had kept this bit of information to himself, unwilling to let Braithwaite, the blue-eyed boy, take any credit for something he had learned in a chance phone call the night before from an old mate from his rugby playing days. ‘Pennington’s got form. He was making a documentary on my pal’s patch a couple of years back after the race riots in Bradford. He was following a group of white kids around who said that they were being racially harassed by the local Asians, and it seems that when nothing kicked off after a week or more, he decided to slip a group of Pakistani lads a couple of hundred quid to put balaclavas on and go round and give them a good kicking for the benefit of the cameras.’

      ‘Why haven’t I heard about this before?’ demanded Whitehead.

      ‘Because they never managed to convict him,’ said Spall proudly. ‘Seems Pennington was staying in Leeds – there weren’t any hotels in Bradford good enough for him – and he got stuck in traffic on the way over. The Asian gang turned up with baseball bats, found the camera crew weren’t there, and went ahead anyway. Pennington refused to pay up because he hadn’t got any footage out of it. They got pissed off and squealed on him when the police picked them up, but because no money had changed hands, there was no evidence to link Pennington to the attack. He claimed they were making the whole thing up because they resented their thuggish tactics being exposed, and threatened to sue for defamation if anyone said he had anything to do with it. They had to let him go, but my mate said they made it pretty clear he shouldn’t show his face on their patch again.’

      ‘And he didn’t?’

      Spall shook his head. ‘He wouldn’t dare, not with the mood the locals were in. I don’t think he was keen enough on exposing anti-white violence to become an example of it himself.’

      ‘Right.’ Whitehead chewed her bottom lip. ‘Good work. All of you.’ The men in the room visibly preened themselves. ‘I think it’s time to bring Mr Pennington in and ask him a few questions, don’t you? Spall, why don’t you come with me and do the honours?’

      Inspector Spall shot a triumphant look in Braithwaite’s direction as he headed out of the office in the chief superintendent’s wake.

     

‘Gone away? What do you mean, he’s gone away?’

      ‘To Barbados. I booked the flights for him first thing this morning. He flew out a couple of hours ago.’ Sushi Westerbridge did her best to look apologetic. The woman looked as if she might hit her.

      ‘He just left the country?’

      ‘Yes. One of the big projects we were involved with was cancelled yesterday, and Kyle rang me this morning and said he was going to take the opportunity to go away for Christmas. He hasn’t been away for months. He told me he didn’t care where he went, as long as it was hot and he didn’t need jabs. I managed to get the tickets for him really cheaply.’

      ‘Shit.’ Whitehead aimed such a furious glare at the door of Pennington’s office that the glass would probably have cracked if he hadn’t already done the honours himself. ‘Well, when’s he coming back?’

      ‘Not till the New Year.’ Sushi attempted to look sad about this prospect, which was difficult given that she had spent much of the day so far sending gleeful emails to all her friends arranging long lunches during the next fortnight.

      ‘What day?’ spat Whitehead, in a tone that instantly rendered Sushi’s mood authentically tearful.

      ‘The second of January. Would you like me to take a message and give it to him when the office reopens?’

      ‘Fuck,’ spat Whitehead beneath her breath, and then said more loudly, ‘No. I’ll catch up with him when he gets back.’ She turned on her heel and strode off towards the staircase, Spall scuttling along behind her.

      As soon as they were outside, Whitehead added the fumes of a Marlboro to the cocktail of carbon monoxide and lead that hung over Westminster Bridge Road.

      ‘Well, that’s just brilliant.’

      ‘Sorry,’ said Spall lamely. ‘I had no idea. I’m sure he was told he shouldn’t leave the country while the investigation was ongoing. ‘

      ‘Are you? That would suggest someone on this team was actually capable of getting something right.’ The chief superintendent scowled so furiously at a passing tramp that he suddenly decided he could do without her spare change.

      ‘So what should we do? Can we get an extradition order from Barbados?’

      ‘Not on the evidence we’ve got.’

      Spall looked glumly at his feet. Half an hour ago, she had been delighted with the material they had gathered; how could it be so useless already? And how come it was him that was stood here taking the blame for it, not Braithwaite?

      ‘No, we’ll just have to sit tight and wait for him to come back,’ continued Whitehead bitterly. ‘At least, if he is our man, no one else is going to get killed while he’s sunning himself on the beach. And when he gets back, we’ll be waiting for him. That’s assuming he does, of course. If I find someone’s tipped him off and he’s skipped the country, I’ll…’ She left the sentence unfinished, letting the twin jets of smoke she blew from her nostrils speak for the horrible fate that awaited them.

 

Chapter Twenty-Two

 

The Operation Ringo team had their own special advent calendar pinned to the wall of the investigations room. It was a little more macabre and considerably less festive than most of the ones on sale in the shops, but nothing compared to the comfort and joy they felt when they were able to cross off one of the days.

      ‘That was Simon Trachtenberg. He’s fine,’ said Nelson, putting the phone down on the last of the Fame Factory contestants he had tracked down on the morning of 23^rd December. ‘I’m calling Joe Strummer.’ He crossed to the calendar and scored a thick black line through the name of the Clash front man that filled the box for the 22^nd.

      ‘Excellent.’ Braithwaite rubbed a hand over his weary eyes. ‘Who’s left this month?’

      ‘Er… Johnny Ace on Christmas day, and Dennis Wilson on the twenty-eighth,’ Nelson read out.

      ‘Ace is the one who was playing Russian Roulette, isn’t he?’ Braithwaite had dug out the details of this one himself, the entire team having drawn a blank on the blues singer – something he had sadly failed to do himself, picking the one live chamber of a revolver while indulging in some ill-advised backstage recreation at the Houston City Auditorium in 1955. ‘And Dennis Wilson was Charles Manson’s mate from the Beach Boys?’

      Nelson nodded. ‘I’ve already warned all six of them not to go swimming on th^e twenty-eighth. Not that they’d probably want to at this time of year.’

      ‘Good.’ Braithwaite sipped his coffee – he had started treating himself to Starbucks since moving offices into the centre of the city – and looked out of the window at the crowds milling along Victoria Street. ‘I’m on call over the holiday, so I guess if any of our contestants do decide to play Russian Roulette rather than charades after Christmas dinner, it’ll be me scraping up the leftovers.’

      Nelson looked guilty. ‘Are you not doing anything for Christmas, then?’

      ‘Yes, I am, actually,’ said Braithwaite happily. ‘My ex-wife’s invited me over to theirs to spend the afternoon with Olivia.’ This was not an entirely accurate version of events – the invitation was actually Olivia’s, extended as he dropped her off the previous Sunday and timed to cause maximum embarrassment to both her mother and Rupert if they demurred. But when he had called Cassie the next day and offered to make other arrangements, she had assured him that everything would be absolutely fine. She definitely wanted him to see Olivia on Christmas Day, she said, and she almost sounded as if she had convinced herself. Still, he thought he might not hang around for too long after lunch. It could be very awkward.

      ‘Well, that’s good,’ said the sergeant, beaming with an inappropriate amount of relief. ‘I mean, it’s nice that you all get on so well. I hope she likes her presents.’

      ‘I hope so.’ Olivia had insisted on spending their last weekend together dragging him around the shops on an infernally busy Oxford Street, ostensibly to look for a present for Cassie, but mostly so she could try on and reject every single item in Accessorise and point out a number of expensive and shoddily-made electrical items in different shades of pink that she thought would look good in her bedroom. When he had taken the hint and asked her over hot chocolate in Selfridges café what she would most like for Christmas, she had acted as if the prospect of gifts came as a complete surprise, thought for a while and then surprised both of them by saying, ‘A Swiss army knife.’

      ‘Why do you want one of those?’ he had asked.

      ‘I don’t know. I just think it would be useful. They’ve got all sorts of tools on, like scissors and magnifying glasses. I could use it for detective work, like you do.’

      This had pleased him so much that he had decided to ignore the fact that she was pilfering the sugar cubes and eating them two at a time, a decision he regretted half an hour later when she started complaining that her stomach hurt and subsequently refused to eat any of the tea he had cooked for her. He had, however, headed for Millets on his next free lunch hour and bought a penknife packed with what the salesman insisted were ‘Twenty-five essential everyday tools’, which would ensure that if Olivia got lost in a forest any time soon, she would be perfectly capable of opening a bottle of wine, plucking her eyebrows, or sewing two pieces of leather together in order to survive. Even better, it came in pink.

      Nelson had turned back to the calendar and was studying the pattern of black crosses and red lines, the last of the latter appearing beneath the names of John Lennon and Sam Cooke on the 8^th and 11^th. ‘I’d be surprised if we have any more before January. I reckon Pennington’s our man for sure.’ The red felt-tip had remained capped ever since the producer had flown out of the country ten days previously.

      ‘You do, do you?’ Braithwaite thought the sergeant was probably right, but there was no harm in reminding him of the dangers of taking things for granted.

      ‘The chief super does,’ said Nelson defensively. Having dug out the financial motive all by himself, he now felt rather proprietorial about Pennington.

      ‘Hmm.’ Braithwaite suspected that Whitehead’s insistence on the producer as prime suspect had more to do with pressure from her superiors for a result than any real certainty that he was her man. She had, however, persuaded her immediate boss, the homicide commander, that it was worth putting all other inquiries involving Portmanteau staff on hold until his return, reasoning that if Pennington called in from Barbados and heard that the police had been sniffing round the office, it might frighten him into turning what was hopefully just a holiday into a more permanent arrangement. A series of phone calls to a friendly chief constable in Bridgetown had established that he had so far not strayed far from his hotel and was, on the whole, exhibiting behaviour more in keeping with a man in search of a suntan than a moonlight flit. So, for now, the team were under instructions to sit tight, enjoy Christmas and report to Heathrow on January 2^nd prepared for an arrest, a grilling and, with any luck (Whitehead tended to cross her fingers and touch the top of her desk at this point), a result.

      ‘Do you think he might not be?’

      ‘I don’t know, Nelson. Doctor Pemberton seemed to think our killer might have been aiming to get Fame Factory taken off the air. That could explain the lack of corpses in the last fortnight just as well.’

      ‘I suppose so.’

      ‘Right, come on, we’d better get on with these.’ He picked a box file from a pile on the desk: it was filled with the latest batch of letters to arrive at Scotland Yard, some handwritten, some typed, some erudite and eloquent, some barely literate, all of them claiming to be from the Fame Factory killer. There were hundreds more, dating back to the point when Dawn Mackenzie’s death had been announced back in October. The team had read, considered and investigated the claims made in each and every one. And so far, not one of them had turned out to be anything more than a waste of time.

      He sniffed the uppermost piece of paper suspiciously before folding it out on the tabletop. I am Writing because I am the Cereal Killer who is Killing all of the Peepol who Sing on the TV, it began. The dot of each i had been drawn as a little heart.

      ‘What time does the canteen open?’ he asked Nelson. ‘I think they’re doing a turkey dinner this week, aren’t they?’

      

‘Happy Christmas!’

      ‘Happy Christmas!’ Braithwaite leant in to receive an unexpected kiss from Cassie. She had changed her perfume now, he noticed. Probably a new bottle from Rupert this morning. He pushed the front door closed with his foot, untangled the handles of one of the plastic bags he was carrying and passed it across. ‘I brought a couple of bottles of wine and some beers. Just a contribution. I won’t be drinking because I’m on call, but…’

      ‘Oh, thank you.’ She brushed her hands on the front of the plastic apron she was wearing before taking the bag. ‘You can have one glass of champagne, though, can’t you? Rupert’s going to open some. He’s just on the phone to his mum.’

      ‘I expect I could manage… hello there!’

      Olivia bounced in to him from the sitting room, a paper crown sitting lopsidedly on her head. ‘Happy Christmas, Daddy! I love you!’

      ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ said Cassie, retreating towards the kitchen. ‘We’ve done our presents already.’

      ‘Right then.’ He shuffled awkwardly through to the lounge, hampered by the fact that his daughter did not appear to want to remove her arms from around his waist. An enormous tree stood in a corner, smothered in gaudy tinsel and baubles up to the height that Olivia could reach, and rather more tastefully decorated above that.

      ‘Look what I got,’ she said when she finally broke away, and pushed some brightly coloured pieces of plastic towards him. Dawn Mackenzie stared back at him from a pink mobile phone cover, her smiling face pockmarked with holes for the number keys. Richard Golding was similarly disfigured on a blue one, the Fame Factory logo emblazoned across the ear slits. ‘They were in my stocking. Mummy got me them both because they were half price because of them being dead, but I want to collect the whole set. There are pencil cases as well.’

      ‘Oh, good,’ he said weakly, and reached into his bag to change the subject. ‘Well, look, I think there might be something for you in here as well.’

      Rupert arrived in the room while Olivia was still in raptures over her penknife, and nodded a greeting to Braithwaite. ‘How’s it going?’

      ‘Rupert, look what Daddy bought me!’ She thrust the knife towards him with all its blades extended, and eyed him suspiciously. ‘Has Nanny Baxter gone? I wanted to talk to her.’

      ‘Yeah, she had to… go and cook the dinner. Sorry, honey. Wow, this is good, isn’t it? We’ll have to be very careful with it, won’t we?’

      ‘I think she’ll be fine with it.’ Braithwaite felt himself bristling, and breathed deeply. He had only been in the house five minutes.

      ‘Sure,’ said Rupert, carefully snapping all the blades shut and putting the knife on the top shelf of the video cabinet next to the sofa, well out of the girl’s reach. ‘Have you shown Mike your new Playstation?’

      He spent the requisite ten minutes admiring a racing game over which a team of Japanese designers had obviously sweated for months in order to reproduce exactly the experience of a migraine. During this time, Rupert beat Olivia four times and he failed to do anything other than drive his little man repeatedly into the wall, then Cassie came in and rescued them with a tray of Pringles and dips and a request for Rupert to hurry up and open the champagne like he’d said he would. This was merely the precursor to a meal of such epic proportions that by the time pudding had been and gone and the Queen had done her usual bit about the Commonwealth and the importance of spiritual values, he felt almost spherical, and Cassie assured him that there were still mince pies to come.

      ‘So, you lot aren’t doing very well with these Fame Factory murders, are you?’ said Rupert, leaning back in his seat and twirling his second brandy around the glass in an affected manner. He seemed to have changed his mind about his body being a temple – either that, or the congregation had got so large he was building an extension.

      ‘Well, we… It’s very difficult in a case like this, but I can say an arrest is imminent,’ Braithwaite burbled.

      ‘Come on, you’re not at a press conference now. You haven’t got a clue, have you?’

      ‘Rupert…’ Cassie sounded a note of caution from the other side of the table.

      ‘No, it’s OK. I’ll admit we’ve had some problems. The killer’s been very clever at laying false trails and we have spent some time pursuing leads which turned out not to be fruitful – ’

      ‘Like arresting Evil Eric! God, that was funny. They showed you on the news!’

      ‘Yes.’ Braithwaite felt himself reddening. ‘The point is, we have a suspect in our sights now and although obviously I can’t tell you much about it, we expect to be able to bring charges early in the New Year.’

      ‘Oh yeah?’ Rupert swilled down the last of his brandy and stared down into the glossy slops in the bottom of the glass. ‘And how many more kids’ll be dead before then?’

      Braithwaite was on his feet before he knew it, his fists balled. ‘Don’t you dare say that!’ he bellowed, in a voice he hardly recognised as his own. ‘I’ve spent the last four months talking to parents who’ve been bereaved, trying to pick up the pieces of families who’ve been torn apart, so don’t you sit there and make jokes! I held one of those kids in my arms while he died, and I’m telling you – ’

      ‘All right, Michael!’ Cassie was on her feet, too, a paper napkin screwed up tightly in her hand. Olivia sat at the end of the table, wide eyes gazing up at the shouting adults.

      He sat down. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just… I don’t think people realise what it’s like, is all.’

      ‘Rupert?’

      Her boyfriend looked at her, all affronted innocence. ‘All right, I’m sorry,’ he said. But he said it to Cassie, not Braithwaite.

      The phone rang. All three of the adults jumped. It was Olivia who ran out into the hallway to answer it.

      ‘It’s Nanny Baxter!’ she announced delightedly. ‘Happy Christmas, Nanny, I wanted to speak to you before.’

      Cassie looked at Rupert, who was staring down at the table and fiddling with the contents of his cracker. ‘You’d better talk to her,’ she said quietly, and walked out into the kitchen.

      Braithwaite sat alone at the table for a while, waiting for his temper to subside. He was shocked by his outburst, and was now feeling bitterly disappointed with himself. He had spent the last week congratulating himself on how mature and civilised they all were for deciding to spend Christmas together, and now he had blown next year’s invite for sure. Well, at least he now knew he had been right about one thing: it was a bad idea to talk about work in front of your family.

      When he was sure his hands had stopped shaking, he gathered the plates up and carried a pile through to the kitchen. Cassie was leaning on one of the units, her back to him.

      ‘I’m sorry about that,’ he said, dumping his load on the draining board. ‘Are you OK?’

      She turned to him, wiping her eye with the heel of her hand. ‘Yeah, I’m fine. I’m sorry about Rupert. He’s just a bit pissed, and this is weird for him.’

      She had been studying a pile of Visa bills which were scattered across the work surface. ‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ he asked again.

      ‘Yes, fine. What, this? Oh, don’t worry about it.’ She picked the papers up and started to stuff them back into one of the drawers. ‘It’s just, Christmas, you know. Expensive.’ She smiled unconvincingly.

      ‘If you need… you know, if there’s any problem. I mean, I said I’d provide for Olivia, and if you need a bit extra, then…’

      ‘Oh, Michael!’ She slammed the drawer shut and turned to him, eyes fiery. ‘Stop being so bloody nice!’

      She stalked out, and he listened to her clashing the serving dishes together in the dining room. And Merry Christmas to you, too, he thought, and began running hot water into the kitchen sink.

Chapter Twenty-Three

 

‘Kyle! How you doing? Happy Christmas, mate.’

      ‘No, it wasn’t,’ said Pennington curtly, swapping the phone into his left hand so he could do up his seat belt. ‘Not unless you think idiot tourists, screaming kids and a dose of the trots make for peace on earth. I’ve just paid a fortune to fly back early from a terrible holiday, and I badly need a pick-me-up. Can you sort me out?’

      ‘No can do, mate. I’m in Edinburgh. Spending New Year’s with my lady.’

      ‘But it’s not till tomorrow!’ Pennington nearly howled.

      ‘Yeah, well, we’re making a trip of it. Mixing business with pleasure. Big scene up here at New Year’s. They have a massive street party, you know?’

      ‘Well, I hope it rains.’ He clicked the phone off and stared out of the window at the greyness of the M4. It was quite a contrast to Barbados, and it didn’t help his mood. Neither did the carols that were playing on the taxi’s stereo. ‘Could you turn this racket off, please?’ he barked at the driver, and began to flick through the address book on his mobile phone for the number of another dealer.

      ‘Pete? It’s Kyle Pennington. How you doing?’

      ‘Who?’

      ‘Kyle Pennington. I bought some stuff from you a couple of months ago?’

      ‘Stuff? What sort of stuff?’

      ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. A gram and a half of top-grade Colombian. What have you got in at the moment?’

      ‘Who is this?’

      ‘Kyle. Look, stop wasting my time. What have you got?’

      ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

      ‘Look, you fucking – ’ Pennington glanced at the phone’s screen, yelped and pressed the off button. Wrong Pete. That one was the head of factual programming at Channel 4. He was going to have to avoid the Groucho for a while.

      ‘My taxi is a profanity-free zone,’ announced the driver, pointing to a wooden cross which hung from his rear-view mirror.

      ‘Fuck off,’ said Pennington, and dialled the number of the right Pete. He could do nothing until after New Year. Neither could his third choice, and the fourth wasn’t answering the phone. ‘Jesus!’ yelled Pennington, and hammered the taxi window with his fist.

      ‘Do not take the Lord’s name in vain!’ shrieked the driver, veering between lanes.

      ‘Oh, for Christ’s – no, look, sorry, all right, I’m sorry. Listen I need to go into town instead. Waterloo. I’ll see you right, OK? And sorry about the swearing.’ Pennington balled his fists and sat back in the seat, his lips tightly closed. The last thing he needed was to get thrown out on the hard shoulder of the M4. He was pretty sure he had some charlie at the office – enough for a couple of lines, if those thieving bastards had kept out of his desk while he was away. It should at least be enough to blot out the memory of his disastrous holiday and get him through today. Tomorrow night, he could just gatecrash a few parties, make some new friends and hoover up whatever was on offer. After all, if you couldn’t get high for free on New Year’s Eve, when the hell could you?

      They sat in silence until the cab had reached the Cromwell Road. The sight of evolution rendered in stone across the front of the Natural History Museum seemed to reawaken the driver’s missionary fervour, and he asked brightly, ‘have you heard the good news about the Lord?’

      ‘No,’ sighed Pennington. ‘What’s he done now?’

      A truncated version of the gospel story slipped by along with the sale placards in the windows of the shops along the Brompton Road. By the time they had reached Victoria Embankment and the importance of being a winner, not a sinner, Pennington could bear it no more.

      ‘Listen, you freak,’ he whispered, leaning forward until the driver could feel his breath on the back of his neck. ‘I’ve just had a really shit holiday. I spent most of Christmas day blowing chunks from both ends and trying to block out the sound of the steel band outside playing When A Child Is Born. It didn’t really endear me to the baby Jesus. I know I’ve sinned – a hell of a lot, as it happens, probably more than you can imagine – and I can honestly say that I don’t give a damn. I’ll take what’s coming to me, thanks, and there’s nothing you, God, or anyone else can do about it. So shut up, and drive.’

      ‘Well, I shall pray for you on the judgement day, brother,’ said the driver, shuddering, and proceeded to do so, out loud, for the last ten minutes of the journey. When they pulled up outside the Portmanteau offices, Pennington, who had been going to ask him to wait outside until he had got what he came for, instead sent him off into the night with exactly the right change and the advice that he should go and fuck himself.

      It took him a few moments to locate the key that would let him into the building. The reception lobby was dark, the unaccustomed silence lending the familiar room an oddly alien quality. The only sound was the burbling of the filter on the aquarium, from where the hungry fish watched him hopefully. Pennington ignored them and made his way straight to the staircase, slipping slightly on the pile of unopened mail that had pooled across the laminate floor since the office had closed a week earlier.

      Upstairs, the open plan office was even quieter, the only illumination coming from a computer screen that had been left on and was displaying a screensaver of a flock of black birds flying endlessly across a blue sky. He walked across to his own room – the glass in the door had still not been repaired, he noticed; someone would get a bollocking for that next week – flicked on the Anglepoise lamp that hung over his desk and began to search for the key to the drawer.

      The little paper wrap was still there. He smiled and slumped into the seat behind the vast desk, sliding a credit card from his wallet. Everything was going to be OK. He was back, and he was going to pick up exactly where he left off. Minor details like the cancellation of Fame Factory were not going to put him off. He had a job to do.

      He prepared the line of cocaine with meticulous precision, determined to savour his long-delayed treat. Once he was sure that every last grain of white powder had been scraped into place, he reached into his wallet again and withdrew a crisp 20 BD$ note – it was no good for anything else now – and rolled it tightly before inserting it into his much-exercised right nostril, before leaning over the desk and losing himself in the glorious, desperate rush that took over his mind and body. God, that felt better.

      Fuck, yeah. He was back where he belonged now. Never mind holidays – he was constitutionally unsuited to them, unable to relax without a group of willing underlings around him, hanging on every whim he relayed via his dictaphone, ready to knock up a storyboard or a pitch document at a moment’s notice and then stand by while he demolished it and humiliated them in front of their colleagues. He had tried ringing room service at odd hours of the night and demanding that they knock him up a three-course meal, but it just wasn’t the same. Not only that, but the hotel had flatly refused to eject the family in the suite next door who insisted on letting their kids run round shrieking like banshees first thing on Christmas morning. How unreasonable could you get?

      Here, however, he was master of his own kingdom, able to do whatever he wanted and get away with it. If he wanted to pick up the phone right now and order his staff into the office, he could. He could make them work right over New Year and through the bank holiday if he felt like it. And maybe he would. He licked his finger and dabbed it in the last few grains of white powder that were left on the desktop, rubbing them into his gums, which still felt dry and furry from the flight.

      Yes, the New Year was going to be a good one for Kyle Pennington. The last episode of Fame Factory had pulled in fifteen million viewers, the sort of Saturday night audience ITV hadn’t seen since the days when Cilla Black’s face was still affected by gravity. According to the Guardian Weekly he had managed to track down in Barbados, a clip from Fame On! in which the gunshot that killed Richard Golding could clearly be heard in the background had become the most downloaded video on the internet, beating even Britney Spears’ tit falling out on stage and that bloke getting his head chopped off in Iraq. He had created TV gold, and now he could get away with anything. There were still five Fame Factory finalists left, and they were his to do what he wanted with.

      He racked up another line on the desktop, transferred the note to his left nostril and hoovered it up in one go, savouring the spicy tingle that spread through his sinuses into his eyes and brain and made the blood rush through his veins. He was the king of the world. The killer talent. No one, but no one, could stop him.

      Downstairs, the front door of the building slammed shut. Pennington froze, his wet finger hovering an inch above the desktop. He wasn’t the king of the world. He was a middle-aged bloke in bad shape sitting alone in the dark in a deserted office. And there was a murderer on the loose. And it wasn’t him.

      ‘Hello?’ he called out tremulously, his eyes darting around the office for anything he could defend himself with. He didn’t even have a paper knife. Sushi had opened all his post for him since a nasty incident with a paper cut a couple of years ago. He scanned the handful of dusty trophies which sat on the cabinet on the far wall of his office: the TV Quick Best Reality Award for Burkha v. Bikini, NTS Best Factual for Queen Mother Uncovered and the RTA Silver Scroll for Tramp in the Woods: Secrets of the Homeless Life Coach – flimsy pieces of plastic all of them. Not for the first time in his career, he wished he had won a Bafta. Those were deadly with a bit of weight behind them.

      From below came the sound of stealthy footsteps on the stairs. Pennington sat rooted to the spot, his knuckles white on the arms of his chair. He could feel his heart pumping twenty to the dozen in his chest, and it was only partly down to the cocaine. ‘Who’s that? Who’s there?’ he tried to call out, but the words only emerged as a croaking whisper.

      Outside, the flickering blue light of the unattended computer screen threw a shadow onto the office door. The great cracks that ran through the frosted glass fractured the image, but he saw the shape of a head as it turned and looked around the empty work area. And then it turned again, and looked towards the room where he was sitting.

      Kyle Pennington let out a wet fart of fear which reverberated against the leather of his chair. The shadow grew smaller but no less threatening as the figure approached the door. An arm reached out and turned the handle and as the door swung slowly open, the producer suddenly found the voice to scream.

      Then he stopped abruptly, and a great smile of relief spread across his face.

      ‘It’s you!’ he said. ‘Jesus, you gave me a fright. What are you doing here?’

      He looked down and saw the knife in the visitor’s hand.

      ‘Oh. Oh, I see.’

 

Chapter Twenty-Four

 

‘Well, that’s completely screwed my plans up.’ Whitehead slammed the phone receiver down so hard that it rebounded out of its cradle and skittered across the desk, scattering witness statements as it went.

      ‘Problem?’ Braithwaite had been quietly dozing off over the pathologist’s report on Paul Waterhouse, a document he had already read at least a dozen times. They were the only staff in – Whitehead had given New Year’s Eve off to anyone who asked for it – and she had brought her work through to Spall’s desk so he could keep her company.

      ‘That was my daughter,’ she told him, running her fingers through her fringe. ‘She rang to tell me she’s been invited to a party in Hampstead tonight, and ask if she could go. No, actually, to tell me she was going. We were supposed to be spending the evening together.’

      Braithwaite gave her a sympathetic look. ‘So she’s leaving you on your own tonight, then?’

      ‘Yeah.’ Whitehead gave a sardonic grin. ‘I can’t really blame her. I wouldn’t want to stop in with my mother on New Year’s Eve, either. But this was her idea! I usually have to bribe her with ice cream to persuade her to spend evenings with me, but her boyfriend was supposed to be going skiing with his family and I think she wanted to demonstrate to him what an awful time she’d had without him.’

      He smiled. ‘But she got a better offer?’

      ‘His ski trip got cancelled. So obviously she’s got to go to this party with him, or he might get off with someone else.’

      ‘How old is she?’

      ‘Seventeen. It’s a difficult age. Mind you, I’ve been saying that since she was about three months. What about yours?’ She nodded at Olivia peeping out from her frame behind a mess of papers and old coffee cups.

      ‘Eleven. Not quite old enough for boyfriends and parties yet.’

      ‘You’d be surprised. Are you letting her stay up tonight?’

      ‘Oh, she lives with her mum. I had her over the weekend, but I won’t be seeing her now until the eleventh.’ He felt a lump rise in his throat, and coughed it back down. He hoped he wasn’t getting a cold.

      Whitehead nodded and turned back to her paperwork, finally retrieving the phone receiver, which had begun to chirrup a number unobtainable tone. Just a few seconds later, however, she sighed and pushed the file aside. ‘Oh, look, I’m getting nothing done here and I’m sure you’ve got places you’d rather be. Let’s knock it on the head. We’ll be busy enough on Wednesday when Kyle Pennington flies in.

      ‘OK.’ Braithwaite tidied the most confidential of the papers from his desktop into a drawer and locked it gratefully. He stood up. ‘Look, I, er… I haven’t really. Got better places to be. If you fancy a drink. Or something.’

      Whitehead was already half way into her coat. She smiled at him. ‘God, inspector, you’re as sad as I am. Look at the two of us, New Year’s Eve and nowhere to go. I’d love to. Let me just put on some lippy.’ She disappeared in the direction of the ladies, giving him just enough time to update his voicemail message to say he wouldn’t be in until Wednesday 2^nd January and leave his mobile number in case it was urgent before she returned, wrapping a silk scarf around her neck and looking happier than he had seen her in a long while.

      ‘There’s quite a decent place round the corner in Tothill Street,’ she said, as they emerged onto an almost deserted pavement. ‘Used to be a real old man’s boozer before one of the chains took it over last year and spent a fortune ripping out all the old fixtures and replacing them with brand new antique brass and specially nicotine-stained wallpaper.’

      ‘Sounds good,’ he said, and they walked up past the tube station where an out-of date Evening Standard placard had been taunting them with the promise of a Fame Factory murders: Sensational Arrest for nearly three weeks now. The pub was already busy with a mixture of shoppers sheltering from the sales and youngsters with enough stamina to have started the New Year’s drinking marathon already. Braithwaite went to the bar and ordered a pint of London Pride and (something of a surprise) a port and lemon for Whitehead, and by the time he had been served, she had found the best table in the place, close to the radiator but far enough from the speakers for them to be able to talk and even hear what each other were saying.

      ‘So did you manage to see your daughter over Christmas?’ she asked, after they had chinked their glasses together.

      ‘Yeah. I was invited over for Christmas dinner.’

      ‘Civilised,’ she remarked as she took a long sip.

      ‘Hmm. It wasn’t a great success.’ Rupert had still been decidedly frosty when he had arrived to pick up Olivia on the weekend of the 28^th, and Cassie looked as if she had been crying. ‘How about you? Are you still in touch with – I don’t know her name – her father?’

      ‘Alice. And no, he buggered off years ago and hasn’t wanted much to do with her since. He had an affair with his personal assistant and then moved to Spain with her. He always had a good eye for a cliché.’

      Braithwaite chuckled. He liked the chief superintendent’s sense of humour, even if, after a month working alongside her, he still found her fairly terrifying.

      ‘What about you?’

      ‘Me?’

      ‘You don’t seem the type to have been knocking off your secretary.’

      ‘No. No, I wasn’t.’ Braithwaite had never actually risen to a rank that qualified for administrative assistance, but he was fairly sure that if he had done, their duties would have been confined to office hours. ‘I… I don’t know, really. We grew apart, I suppose. Or so I’m told.’ He downed half his pint in a single gulp, suddenly determined to celebrate New Year in the traditional manner and get properly drunk tonight.

      Whitehead nodded wisely. ‘Change the subject. How are you enjoying working at Scotland Yard?’

      ‘I like it. It’s good to have a change. If I’m honest, I think I’d been plodding along for the last few years at Battersea.’

      ‘Really?’

      He was gratified to see she looked quite surprised by the idea. ‘There was a vacancy for chief inspector a couple of years ago. I didn’t get it.’

      ‘But you didn’t try to move?’

      ‘It wasn’t long after I split up with Cassie. I didn’t want any more upheaval at the time.’ He stared down into his nearly empty pint pot, surprised at his candour. He had never talked to anyone about his disappointment over the promotion before. ‘And I suppose I’m not that ambitious. I mean, I want to get on and everything, but I’m not… like Richardson or something.’

      ‘Thank God for that,’ she grimaced. ‘If you do go back to Battersea, you won’t find him there, by the way.’

      Braithwaite was so surprised that his beer went up his nose. ‘He got the SCD job?’ he spluttered.

      ‘No,’ smirked Whitehead over the rim of her glass. ‘After his interview, we felt his talents would be best employed in the information management division.’

      ‘But that’s…’

      ‘Filing,’ confirmed Whitehead, with a smile, and held up her glass for him to clink it again. ‘Shall we have another of these?’

     

When the barman came round to inform them that entrance to the pub was ticket-only after nine p.m., they were as surprised by the fact that they were still there as they were at the price he quoted to remain. ‘Give us a minute to think about it, mate,’ said Braithwaite, and the barman sighed and retired to the bar with the six glasses he had picked up from their table stacked awkwardly against his chest.

      ‘What do you want to do?’ he asked, stifling a burp.

      Whitehead looked around the pub. The bunting that had been strung up between the bar and the tops of the windows and the party poppers filling the ashtrays did not make the place look any more appealing. ‘I’m not spending twenty quid to stay here.’

      He looked at his watch. ‘If they’re charging here, they’ll be charging to get in anywhere.’ He supposed he would just have to pick up some cans at the off-licence on the way home. Shame though.

      ‘Right.’ Whitehead thumped the table dramatically. ‘We’ll just have to make our own entertainment, then.’ She stood up and started pulling on her coat. ‘Come on. I’ve got a bottle of Laphroaig at home which has been waiting for a special occasion. The tubes are running all night, so you’ll be able to get back.’

      ‘All right.’ He picked up his own jacket and fumbled in the pockets for his Oyster card.

      ‘Oh, there’s just one thing, though.’

      ‘Yes?’

      She leant in and put her face so close to his that for a second he thought she was going to kiss him. Instead, she spoke very quietly and deliberately. ‘If you tell any of the lads at work that I invited you back to mine because I was pissed and desperate, I will have your bollocks for earrings and your scrotum for a shower cap.’

      ‘Of course not.’ His voice came out as a high-pitched squeak. ‘I just need to go to the toilet before we go.’

      She watched him scuttle off to the gents with some satisfaction. Nice arse, she thought.

     

Whitehead lived in the upper three floors of a large Victorian house in Highgate, in a street nice enough for her to have to be vague about what she did for a living when talking to the neighbours. The basement flat was occupied by a young couple with a baby and a tendency to mourn the passing of their nightclubbing days by pumping loud dance music through the floor of her sitting room at weekends, but she was relieved to see as the taxi drew up that they appeared to be out for the evening.

      ‘It’s a lovely place,’ commented Braithwaite, as she showed him into the vast front room where a half-hearted effort to compliment the period features with contemporaneous furniture was all but lost beneath a layer of the standard IKEA-issue modernism.

      ‘It’s the only good thing my husband ever did for me,’ she told him, as she headed through to the open-plan kitchen to collect glasses, decant crisps into a bowl and sniff suspiciously at the remains of some hummus in the fridge. ‘We bought it the year Alice was born and we thought we still might fill the bedrooms with her brothers and sisters. Then, when he buggered off to Alicante with Little Miss Mid-Life Crisis, he agreed to keep the place until she grew up and left home. I can’t afford to buy him out, so it means in a couple of years I’ll either have to move into a place a tenth of the size on the council estate down the road, or hobble Alice and lock her in her room for the rest of her life like Baby Jane.’ She carried a tray through and, much to her relief, managed to get it to the coffee table without spilling anything. ‘I’m assuming you don’t want ice?’

      ‘No, no.’

      ‘Good man.’ She poured generous slugs of the amber liquid into two tumblers and pushed one towards him, along with a plastic measuring jug full of cold water. 

      ‘Right. Cheers, then.’ He held up his glass to her. It was the first time he had drunk whisky since that night at Susan’s. Maybe it would be as inspirational this time.

      ‘Cheers. Here’s to a successful arrest on Wednesday.’ She settled herself at the other end of the sofa, a good three feet of cushion between them. ‘Let’s see what they’ve put on telly for sad gits like us with nowhere to go.’ She flicked through the channels a few times before settling on Jools Holland’s New Year show. Elvis Costello was crooning Alison. ‘That’s more like it.’

      ‘D’you listen to much music?’ he asked her after a while.

      She wrinkled her nose. ‘Not so much these days, unless you count the stuff Alice plays. Or the stuff my neighbours treat me to on a Saturday night.’

      He sipped his whisky. ‘It’s funny, isn’t it? You sort of get out of the habit. I went back to my old LP collection at the beginning of this, after Pemberton came in and talked about the killer being obsessed with old rock musicians from the sixties and seventies. I thought if I listened to some of that stuff, I might be able to get into his mindset – you know, understand what it was about the music that made him so passionate.’

      ‘You’ve been watching too many American films.’ She smirked over the rim of her glass.

      ‘Maybe. But part of it was just me wanting to remember how I felt about this stuff at the time.’ His modest collection of records had been sitting in the corner of his sitting room gathering dust since the divorce. They were one of the few items whose ownership Cassie hadn’t bothered to dispute.

      ‘And did you?’

      He chuckled. ‘I got half way through The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway before I gave up. It was dreadful. Olivia had left one of her chart hits CDs in the stereo. I spent the rest of the evening listening to that.’

      She laughed a little too loudly. The booze was beginning to have an effect. Let it, she thought. ‘God, there was some terrible stuff around, wasn’t there? D’you know, I actually went to see King Arthur on Ice.’

      ‘You didn’t?’ Braithwaite was impressed.

      ‘My boyfriend at the time dragged me along. He was a mad Rick Wakeman fan. It was awful. Two hours of blokes in cardboard armour skating around on hobby horses. They pumped so much smoke on at one point that Lancelot got lost and was skating around for ten minutes on his own, with Guinevere frantically waving at him from the opposite side of the rink.’ She dissolved into giggles.

      ‘God, it was so weird, wasn’t it? And we took it all so seriously. I remember for the first few years I was at Battersea, I couldn’t look at the power station without seeing a giant pig flying above it.’

      She snorted with laughter and reached for his glass to refill it. On screen, Costello had been replaced by an old man in a black suit singing a country and western song about people riding on a train. He glanced at his watch. Less than an hour of the year to go.

      ‘Here you go. Up your flaps.’ She pointed her own glass towards the ceiling and then downed half of it in one go, slipping off her shoes and curling round to face him on the sofa. ‘So, are you going to reveal my terrible secret to the boys at the nick?’

      He eyed her nervously. ‘How d’you mean?’

      ‘Well, I think you’re the first one of them that’s ever seen me pissed. The photos would probably be worth a fortune in the canteen.’

      He looked down bashfully. ‘Not my style.’

      ‘No, I don’t think it is.’ She gave him a long appraising look. ‘Besides, I think Spall would probably have to kill you if he found out I’d invited you round to my house.’

      ‘Why’s that?’

      ‘Oh, he’s been desperate to get into my knickers for years. Either that, or get into my job. I don’t think he’s quite sure himself.’

      ‘Really?’

      ‘You haven’t noticed?’ She arched an eyebrow. ‘No, you probably haven’t. Half that team would like to see me get my comeuppance.’

      ‘Comeuppance for what?’

      ‘Oh, for being a woman and still daring to be a better policeman than they are.’ She gazed down into the amber depths of her glass. ‘It’s not easy being female in the police, you know. You’ve always got to watch your arse, because you can be damn sure someone else is.’

      He wrenched his own eyes upward. ‘It must be hard.’

      ‘Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m not whinging. It’s the best job in the world. And I eat idiots like Spall for breakfast. But sometimes I think it might be good to go to work without having to put on my cold, hard bitch outfit every morning. I thought I’d got out of uniform years ago.’

      He sipped his whisky. ‘I know what you mean.’

      She snorted. ‘I doubt it.’

      ‘Not about the cold, hard bitch stuff,’ he conceded. ‘But about putting on a costume. I tried for years to be a different guy at work to the one I was at home, and it took a hell of a lot for me to realise you can only ever be one person.’

      ‘Your divorce?’

      He nodded, swirling the dregs around in his glass. ‘So now I’m just me.’ He suddenly had the urge to burst into tears. Whisky didn’t normally affect him this way.

      She leant forward and took his glass. ‘Come on. It’s nearly midnight, and we’re not nearly pissed enough. Oh, I like this one.’ A sweaty Tom Jones was belting out Delilah on the TV, accompanied by a full pipe band. He excused himself to use her bathroom, and by the time he came back he was quite composed. She handed him a nearly full tumbler. ‘Down in one.’

      ‘Isn’t it a bit too nice to – ’

      ‘Oh, don’t be such a girl.’ She threw her head back and gulped down her own glass, pulling a face which suggested there was nothing nice about the experience. He felt he had no option but to follow suit, and his eyes were soon watering again.

      ‘Gah. Come on, then. New Year’s Resolutions.’

      ‘Ugh.’ He sat down on the edge of the sofa, shaking his head. ‘Um. Catch the Rock’n’Roll Killer, obviously, and get a successful prosecution.’

      ‘Goes without saying.’ She was pouring out fresh whiskies. He hoped she wasn’t going to make him down this glassful in one as well. ‘What else?’

      ‘Oh, I don’t know. Try and be happy. Stop regretting the past. Try to sort things out so I can see more of Olivia.’

      ‘All good.’ She passed him his glass, sticky with spilled alcohol. ‘I’m going have a proper holiday with Alice, because it’s probably the last chance I’ll have. She’ll probably insist on Australia, or somewhere else horribly expensive, but it’ll be worth it.’

      ‘That sounds like an excellent plan.’ Maybe he should try to make this the year that he took Olivia up north to meet her cousins. She would be a teenager soon, and probably much less impressed by the prospect of entertaining the under-fives.

      ‘Here we go,’ said Whitehead, as Holland’s audience began their pre-recorded countdown. ‘Come on, we’ve got to do this properly. Stand up.’ She made him cross his arms and hold her hands ready for Auld Lang Syne, which they sang with relish, if not absolute lyrical accuracy.

      ‘Happy New Year,’ he told his boss, and pecked her chastely on the cheek.

      ‘Happy New Year,’ she said, returning his kiss on the lips and hugging him for nearly a minute.

      They slumped back on to the sofa. Holland had been replaced on screen by the Archbishop of Canterbury, a much less enticing prospect. She flicked through the channels, but they all seemed to be showing people much younger than them having more fun, so she switched it off and crossed rather unsteadily to the hi fi in the corner. In a few moments, the sound of Nancy Sinatra singing Bang Bang filled the room. ‘Now that’s music,’ she commented triumphantly.

      He watched her shimmy across the room in time to the music. She really did have the most fantastic figure. ‘I should probably think about making a move,’ he said.

      ‘Don’t you dare. This is the most pissed I’ve been in ages, and I’m not going to be the only one embarrassed when we get back to work. Sit down and finish your drink, and that’s an order.’

      ‘Yes, ma’am.’ He gave what was supposed to be an American Air Force salute but ended up somewhere between the cub scouts and Benny Hill. She chuckled and exaggerated her dancing, making swans’ necks above her head with her arms like the women in the Bond film titles. They laughed together.

      ‘Come on. I’m not making a prat of myself on my own. You’ve got to get up and dance with me.’ He made a show of refusal, then stood up and smoothed down the front of his shirt where he had spilled some whisky, before taking the hands she offered him. She guided one of his hands onto her hip and snaked her own round to the small of his back. He was suddenly very aware of her cleavage pressed up against him. She had undone a couple of buttons while he was in the bathroom.

      ‘See? You’re doing fine,’ she told him, as Nancy breathed sultrily about church bells ringing just for her. Braithwaite concentrated hard on the pattern the polished floorboards made as they rotated beneath them, and tried not to step on her feet. After a while, he decided just to relax and enjoy it, and he did.

      ‘That was great,’ she said, breaking away from him as the song ended. ‘I haven’t had a dance in ages. Come on, let’s have a proper boogie.’ She rifled through the CDs which were scattered on the shelf above the stereo. Most of them were Alice’s. She rejected all those with covers that featured either skulls, boys wearing eyeliner or Parental Advisory stickers, and eventually found one at the back that would do.

      ‘Come on!’ she said, reeling away from the stereo as the opening notes of Steps’ Tragedy thumped out across the living room. She kicked off her shoes, the better to bounce up and down. Braithwaite, who by now had given up all pretence of professionalism, unfurled his index fingers and gave it his best John Travolta action, stabbing up and downwards until he whacked the lampshade and almost knocked it off the ceiling. Whitehead nearly collapsed laughing and, emboldened by clumsiness, he staggered over to her, grabbed her hand, and started to spin her round, fifties-style, before waltzing her up and down the narrow space between the fireplace and the coffee table. When they reached the archway that led through to the kitchen, he spun her again, and then again and again as she whooped with laughter. It was 180 degrees through her fifth revolution – just at the point that she was starting to suspect that the feeling really had gone and she couldn’t go on – that she passed the horrified face of her daughter staring at her from the doorway and staggered to a dizzy and horribly embarrassed halt.

      ‘Mum? What the hell are you doing?’ Alice demanded in a scandalised voice. Her boyfriend Brett was standing behind her with two other boys, both wearing hooded tops and nasty smirks.

      ‘I… I was just…’ Whitehead crossed to the stereo and flicked the music off, plunging the room into a deep and awkward silence. ‘You’re back early. I didn’t expect you so soon.’

      ‘Obviously,’ said Alice scornfully. ‘The party was crap, so we left at midnight. I said it would be OK for Brett and Luke and Christian to stay here. Who’s he?’ Braithwaite was standing in the entrance to the kitchen desperately wishing he was somewhere else. He smiled weakly.

      ‘He’s a friend of mine. Michael. This is my daughter, Alice.’

      ‘Whatever. Look, we’re going to go up to my room, OK?’ She turned and walked off towards the staircase, her acolytes shuffling in her wake.

      ‘Hang on.’ Whitehead followed the procession out into the hall. ‘I don’t want the boys staying in your room.’

      ‘GOD, Mum!’ Alice’s protestation was loud enough to make the windows rattle. Braithwaite tactfully withdrew into the kitchen and poured himself a large glass of water. He could still hear the row through the wall.

      ‘Look, they can stay, that’s fine, but in the spare room. Or Luke and Christian can have the spare room and Brett can have a sleeping bag on the sofa down here.’ It sounded as if Whitehead would have preferred to put considerably more distance than the length of the staircase between the young lovers.

      ‘That is so RIDICULOUS!’ bellowed Alice. ‘I can’t BELIEVE you’re embarrassing me like this in front of my friends.’

      ‘I’m sorry, but those are the rules.’ Whitehead’s tone would have been enough to silence most of Scotland Yard, but not, it seemed, her daughter.

      ‘Is he staying over?’ she demanded, in a voice loud enough to be heard in the kitchen. Braithwaite cringed. He had a disconcerting feeling that he was the naughty schoolboy here, not the ones on the stairs.

      ‘No, he is not,’ said Whitehead quietly. ‘Now, I’m sorry if you don’t like the arrangement, but I’m afraid that’s the way things are going to be. Come on, Brett, let’s find you a sleeping bag.’

      Left alone downstairs, Braithwaite hastily cleared away the evidence of the evening’s activities and wiped down the coffee table. The whisky bottle was almost empty. He could feel the first twinges of his hangover kicking in already.

      A taxi company flier was pinned to the cork notice board in the kitchen next to a photo of Whitehead and a much younger Alice in holiday clothes. He dug his mobile out of his jacket pocket and dialled the number. At least an hour, they said. He looked at his watch. Half past midnight. He was damned if he was going to skulk around here. Besides, it occurred to him now that he didn’t actually know the address. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said, and hung up. It would have cost a fortune to get all the way across London anyway. He would have to take a chance on the all-night tube instead, and hope he didn’t fall asleep and end up somewhere in Surrey.

      Whitehead came down the stairs carrying a couple of pillows while he was putting his coat on in the hall. She looked tired. ‘Look, I’m sorry about that. I had a lovely evening,’ he told her.

      She rolled her eyes. ‘I don’t think Alice is ever going to speak to me again.’

      ‘I’m sure she will,’ he protested. ‘She just got a bit of a shock, that’s all.’

      ‘No, it’s not that. I just pointed out in front of Brett that it was her CD we were dancing to.’

      ‘Ah.’ He stood awkwardly by the front door, wondering whether he should kiss her. The pillows were sort of in the way.

      ‘I’ll see you on Wednesday, inspector,’ she told him, once the moment had definitely passed.

      ‘Yeah. And thanks for a lovely evening.’

      ‘Oh, I think the fun’s only just beginning here,’ she said wryly, and shut the front door on him. Braithwaite plunged his hands into his pocket and began to walk up the street in the direction he thought was most likely to lead to the tube station. It was beginning to rain.

Chapter Twenty-Five

 

Sushi Westerbridge was already unlocking the front door of the Portmanteau office when Jacqui O’Riordan arrived bright and early on the morning of 2^nd January. The PA stood aside to let her in, but Jacqui insisted with a smile: ‘No, after you.’

      ‘Good holiday?’ asked Sushi as she bent to gather an armful of the mail that had piled up on the floor of reception.

      ‘Not bad.’ O’Riordan swept a pile of letters up herself. ‘I’ll give you a hand with these. I’ve got some milk, too, for the staff kitchen – save you a trip.’

      ‘Oh, thanks, Jacqui. You’re a star. Blimey, it’s whiffy in here, isn’t it? The place needs a good airing. Come on, let’s get the kettle on, I’m gagging for a coffee. Got out of the habit of getting up this early.’ The two women headed upstairs, dumping the envelopes on the desk nearest to the door and heading for the staff kitchen down the corridor.

      ‘What did you do for New Year?’ asked O’Riordan.

      ‘Oh, we went to this school disco thing at Ministry of Sound. It was brilliant. We all had to dress up in school uniform and they played really bad eighties music all night and refused to serve you at the bar unless you showed them ID. It was fantastic.’

      ‘Cool.’ She tipped the week-old water from the kettle, refilled it and flicked it on. ‘The milk’s in my bag if you want to grab it.’

      ‘Your hair looks nice,’ said Sushi, delving into the shoulder bag, which was decorated with a brightly coloured screen-print of St Francis, his stigmata picked out in red jewels. ‘It suits you a bit longer. What made you decide to go black?’

      ‘I’m relocating my inner goth.’ Jacqui grinned as she poured coffee granules into two mugs.

      Sushi located the milk and turned to the fridge. ‘I don’t expect anyone cleared out the old stuff before Christmas, it’s probably turned into cheese now – oh, gross!’

      ‘Is it bad?’ said Jacqui without much interest.

      ‘Someone’s left some meat in here. It’s gross. Look, it’s got all blood on it and everything.’

      The two women stooped down to stare into the fridge’s interior, the bright white light reflecting on their faces.

      ‘Ugh. Doesn’t look like much of a packed lunch, does it?’

      ‘It looks like a heart, actually,’ said Sushi, who had done A-level biology. ‘Oh, I know what it must be. The rostrum boys were working on the titles for that new series for the food channel. You know, You Are Offal But I Like You. It must be from that. They shouldn’t have put it in here, it’s unhygienic. I’ll have to send a memo round. And I’m buggered if I’m clearing it away, it’s horrible. Look, the blood’s all run down onto the shelf below. We’ll just have to keep the milk on the side for now.’ She straightened up and slammed the fridge door decisively.

      ‘All right. Here you go.’ O’Riordan tinkled a spoon round each of the steaming coffee mugs and passed one across. ‘Looking forward to seeing Kyle again?’

      ‘Am I hell!’ laughed Sushi, as they walked through to the office. ‘His flight was supposed to arrive at eight thirty this morning, but I’m hoping he’ll have jetlag and he won’t bother to come into the office today. I could do with some time to sort everything out.’

      ‘He’s probably already waiting in there just to surprise you,’ commented Jacqui, weaving her way between abandoned swivel chairs to her desk in the far corner.

      ‘What, with the first bollocking of the New Year?’ Sushi laughed. ‘Oh, God, and I haven’t got his door repaired. I wonder if I can get an emergency glazier in this morning?’ She looked doubtfully at the door, then opened it and peered at the other side of the glass.

      Jacqui punched the button on her computer and watched the screen swim into focus. The start-up chime rang out across the office, but it was drowned out by the sound of Sushi screaming.

      ‘What is it?’ O’Riordan jumped up and ran over, sending the chairs reeling across the office in her wake. Sushi was standing in the doorway to Pennington’s room. She had dropped her coffee and was holding both hands over her mouth, trying to hold in the strange whimpering noise that was coming out of it. Jacqui pushed past her.

      Kyle Pennington was splayed out across his desk, his outstretched hands and feet dangling over the edges. His head was lolling back from the nearest end, giving him a perfect upside-down view of them standing in the doorway. Or at least, it would have done, had he not been dead.

      He was wearing blue tracksuit trousers and white trainers, and a T-shirt the colour of which was impossible to make out because it was completely saturated with blood. The blood, the rich dark colour of red wine, had flowed downwards, too, forming a tacky crust on the desktop and a vast brown stain on the cream carpet. The centre of his chest was a ragged black hole: it looked as if he had been carved open, or gored by some kind of wild animal. The look on his face was one of pure horror. The skin was a waxy grey. He had been there for some time.

      O’Riordan spoke in a low, firm voice. ‘Sushi, go and call the police. Dial 999 and tell them exactly what’s happened. Then go to the address book on my computer. There’s a number for Sergeant Vic Nelson in there. I think it’s a mobile. Call him, and tell him exactly what’s happened as well. And don’t touch anything on your way out.’

      She didn’t move. ‘Is he… dead?’ she whimpered.

      She wasn’t the brightest, reflected O’Riordan. ‘Yes, Sushi. I think he might be.’

      ‘Shouldn’t we take his pulse or something?’

      ‘Sushi, his chest’s been cut open and I’m pretty sure that was his heart we were looking at in the fridge in the kitchen. I really don’t think there’s any need.’

      The PA’s mouth made a perfect ‘O’ of horror, but she pulled herself together with an effort. ‘I’ll ask for an ambulance, too, just in case,’ she said in a trembling voice and went off to make the call.

      Left alone with the body, Jacqui O’Riordan picked her way carefully around the edge of the room to the cupboard on the far side of the desk, making sure that her sequinned Italian moccasins – another festive gift to herself – did not go within two feet of the blood on the carpet. She wrapped the cuff of her angora jumper around her hand before opening the cupboard door and sliding out a handheld video camera. Her luck was in. There was a cassette inside. It was about half used and marked OB for Douggie/Tim pilot, but she didn’t care. There could be no footage on the tape that was as valuable as what she was about to record.

      She worked her way around the corpse, making sure to catch it from all angles and zooming in to get a lengthy pan across its ravaged chest. She could see the edges of Kyle’s ribcage, the bone stained a sticky pink, and beneath them a mess of organs she didn’t recognise. By the smell that was rising off him and filling her nostrils, she guessed his stomach or intestines had been punctured.

      ‘Jacqui?’ Sushi’s tremulous voice floated through from the office next door. ‘He wants to speak to you.’

      ‘Hold on.’ She finished her filming with a long shot of Kyle’s exposed eyeballs, which had dried in the heat of the office and acquired a zombie-ish sheen that would work well on film, and switched the camera off. Walking out of the office, she held up a hand to refuse the phone that Sushi was holding out to her and instead, crossed to the large waste-paper basket that stood by the printer, bent double over it and vomited copiously.

      When she was sure she had finished, and even the dry retching had ceased, she straightened up and took the proffered receiver.

      ‘Hello, Sergeant Nelson,’ she said weakly, running a tongue round her teeth and wincing at the acidic taste in her mouth. ‘It’s always a pleasure to speak to you.’

 

‘Shit.’ Nelson flicked his phone off and stood up. ‘Don’t bother taking your coat off,’ he told a bleary-looking Braithwaite, who had just walked in carrying what looked like a bucket of hot chocolate from Starbucks. ‘We’re going to have to go to the Portmanteau offices. That was Jacqui O’Riordan. They’ve just found Kyle Pennington dead in his office.’

     Braithwaite was flabbergasted. ‘But he’s supposed to be in Barbados,’ he spluttered.

     ‘Not now he’s not.’ Nelson glanced his watch. ‘He was supposed to fly in to Heathrow half an hour ago. Whitehead’s waiting for him, with Inspector Spall. D’you want to call her and give her the good news?’

      ‘Oh, er, no.’ Braithwaite flushed and stared down at his cup, transferring a dribble of chocolate that was running down the side onto his finger and then looking around for something to wipe it on. ‘Why don’t you call her? It’s your news, after all.’

      Nelson looked surprised, but he wasn’t going to turn down the chance to break the news of such a major development directly to the chief superintendent. ‘All right, if you say so. I’ll give her a call.’

     

‘Fuck!’ exclaimed Whitehead, in a voice loud enough to turn most of the heads in the arrivals lounge. A passing Saudi shot her a disgusted glance and gestured for his overloaded wives to scurry past more quickly. ‘They’re sure it’s him? Of course they are, it’s a stupid question. Oh, for fuck’s sake. Well, at least it means he hasn’t given us the slip here. Oh, bollocks to it all.’

      Spall eyed her worriedly. He hadn’t been able to gather what the phone call was about, but it obviously wasn’t good news. They had been at Heathrow since seven that morning, watching with increasing anxiety as the passengers on the morning’s flight from Barbados filed through the gates with no sign of Kyle Pennington among them. He had no idea what had happened, but he had a horrible feeling that he was going to get the blame for it.

      ‘Are you going over there?’ she asked.

      ‘Heading across with Inspector Braithwaite now,’ Nelson confirmed at the other end of the phone. ‘D’you want to speak to him?’

      ‘No, no need, it’s fine,’ she said hurriedly. ‘Call me as soon as you’ve seen the body. We’ll join you there as soon as we’ve found out why the hell we weren’t told he was coming back early.’ She slammed her phone shut and glared so fiercely around the arrivals hall that a number of holidaymakers seriously considered turning round and getting back on their planes again.

      ‘What’s happened?’ asked Spall lamely.

      ‘Our prime suspect has turned up on the opposite side of the world to where we were supposed to be keeping an eye on him, which is about par for the course for this investigation,’ she spat, as she began to stride across the terminal, the crowd scattering out of her way.

      ‘Well, that’s OK, isn’t it?’ babbled the inspector as he hurried along in her wake. ‘If we know where he is, we can still arrest him, can’t we?’

      She shot him a thunderous look over her shoulder. ‘Did I not mention it? He’s dead as well.’

     

O’Riordan and Sushi were on the pavement outside Portmanteau with a pair of uniformed constables and a noisy gaggle of their newly arrived colleagues when Braithwaite and Nelson pulled up. O’Riordan spotted the sergeant as he got out of the car. She pushed her way through the crowd, threw her arms around him and rested her head on his shoulder. ‘Oh, Vic, I’m so glad you’ve come,’ she gasped.

     Nelson patted her back awkwardly, aware of Braithwaite watching him with raised eyebrows. When it became obvious that he wasn’t going to be released any time soon, the inspector abandoned him and made his way inside, ignoring the questions that rained on him from the various Portmanteau employees who recognised a familiar face, and slipped beneath the protective tape that had been strung across the front door. He took in the scene in reception in a glance – there was a dead fish floating on the top of the aquarium, its companions nuzzling hungrily at its corpse – and bounded up the stairs two at a time.

      A uniformed constable was standing at the top. ‘DI Braithwaite. I’m with Operation Ringo,’ he told him. ‘Where’s the body?’

      The man grinned, extended both hands and pointed in opposite directions. ‘But mostly that way,’ he said with relish.

      Braithwaite sighed. ‘I don’t suppose there’s the slightest chance he could have committed suicide, is there?’

      The grisly smile widened. ‘Not unless he had a very steady hand and exceptionally good aim.’

      ‘No, I didn’t think so,’ said Braithwaite sadly, as the house of cards he and his colleagues had spent the last month so painstakingly building gave one final totter and slumped back into a messy pile. He pushed past the officer and headed towards the open plan office he had been in on his first visit. The door through to Pennington’s room stood open, and he could clearly see – and smell – the corpse inside.

      ‘Carved him up like a Sunday dinner,’ commented the constable, who had followed him. ‘Someone didn’t like him very much.’

      ‘Obviously not,’ muttered Braithwaite, who was starting to feel the same way about the constable. ‘Have you got any gloves?’ He opened the packet the man handed him and pulled on a single latex glove before gingerly lifting the corpse’s arm a couple of inches away from the desk and letting it fall. It bounced, the fingers bobbing. Rigor mortis had been and gone. That meant Pennington had been dead for at least two days. Holding his breath, he moved forward and squinted into the ravaged chest cavity. Nothing seemed to be moving in there yet. That was good. He didn’t think he could have faced maggots this early in the morning.

      ‘The pathologist’s on his way,’ said the constable worriedly. He had been instructed not to let anyone near the body until the SOCO team got here, and now this weird inspector he had never seen before looked as if he might be about to climb inside it.

      ‘It’s OK, I’m done,’ Braithwaite assured him, snapping off the glove and walking back out into the relatively fresh air of the main office. Nelson was waiting for him.

      ‘It was Jacqui – Miss O’Riordan – and his secretary, Miss Westerbridge that found him, sir. I’ve got them both in the back of the car. Do you want me to do the interviews?’

      Braithwaite looked at him appraisingly. ‘No, I think I’d better take them in, Nelson. Miss O’Riordan seems to have developed a bit of a crush on you. It might cause difficulties.’

      Nelson looked panicked. ‘I’m sure it’s just that she’s upset, sir. You know I’d never let anything like that get in the way of my work.’

      ‘No, I’m sure you’re very professional. But all the same, it’s best not to risk emotional attachments on either side getting in the way of proper procedure.’

      ‘Of course, sir. But shouldn’t you wait here until Chief Superintendent Whitehead arrives?’

      ‘No, no, that won’t be necessary,’ said Braithwaite quickly, blushing a bright scarlet. ‘We’ll need to get statements from everyone downstairs, and then you might as well send them home. The forensic team will need to be in here all day.’ He looked doubtfully at the strip of carpet which led down the corridor to the kitchen. It was disappointingly clean. It looked as if the murderer had managed to carry the bloody heart down there without spilling a drop, but the labs could work miracles these days.

      ‘Right, sir.’ Nelson peered round the door to look at Pennington’s corpse and pulled a face. ‘How did he get here, anyway?’

      ‘I don’t know, Nelson. It looks as if he’s been there since before New Year. How he managed to get back into the country without us knowing about it, I just don’t know.’

 

‘Right. I think I know what’s happened.’ The woman emerged from a door in a partition which appeared to lead into the bowels of the airport, still wearing the infuriating smile that seemed to be airline-issue. Whitehead suspected the rictus was held in place by the inch-thick layer of make-up she was wearing.

      ‘What?’ she demanded, rising from the uncomfortable banquette on which she and Spall had been installed. They had been magicked away to the inner sanctum of the airline’s offices after five minutes of cheery-faced indifference from the girl on the information desk, when Whitehead had announced to the entire queue that they were busy investigating the violent death of a fellow passenger and they should all heed the warning of what to expect from the company. Although this had ensured their swift removal from the public area, it had taken a further 20 minutes for the duty manageress to soak up the worst the chief superintendent could throw at her – smiling all the while – and go off to check the computer for details of Pennington’s booking history. Far from dissipating it, her cheery helpfulness had only increased Whitehead’s fury.

      ‘Well, it looks as if he bought a new one-way ticket from our Bridgetown bureau on the twenty-ninth of December,’ she said brightly, sliding a computer printout across the desk towards them. ‘Paid by personal credit card, and travelled back on the nine-thirty flight the next morning.’

      ‘So why the hell weren’t we told?’ Whitehead’s voice rumbled out like a seismic tremor.

      ‘We were requested to notify you of any changes to the return ticket that Mr Pennington held,’ explained the woman pedantically. ‘Unfortunately, because of high demand we’re unable to allow alterations to tickets during the Christmas peak period. It is stated quite clearly in the terms and conditions of carriage.’

      The explosion arrived. ‘SO YOU DIDN’T THINK IT WAS RELEVANT THAT HE WAS COMING BACK FOUR DAYS EARLY?’

      The woman’s smile faltered, but only for a second. ‘The ticket was issued by one of our staff in Barbados,’ she said in a steely tone. ‘They can only go by what information appears on the computer. A note was made on Mr Pennington’s booking record, but it would not have shown up when he made a fresh booking, with a different credit card. We have to respect our customers’ privacy.’

      ‘Privacy?’ thundered Whitehead. ‘He came back and got murdered, for Christ’s sake!’

      ‘Well I don’t think that’s my fault, is it?’ said the manageress primly. There was hint of flushed redness on her neck which her perfectly-tied scarf did not quite conceal, but she was pleased to see that her point had hit home.

      Whitehead straightened up slowly. ‘Just give me the paperwork,’ she growled. Snatching it, she turned on her kitten heels and strode to the door of the office, an exit which would have been considerably more stylish if it wasn’t security-locked and the manageress hadn’t had to come and punch in the code to let her out. Spall smiled an apologetic thank-you to the woman as he followed. He recognised a kindred spirit when he saw one.

 

Chapter Twenty-Six

 

‘So why were you in before everyone else this morning?’

      ‘New Year’s resolution.’ Jacqui O’Riordan smiled sardonically across the interview room table. ‘I’m going to start getting in earlier so I can go to the gym at lunchtime.’

      ‘Who’s normally first in the office?’

      ‘Not me,’ she smiled. ‘I think Sushi generally gets in early to set things up for Kyle, and to have a bit of peace before he – ’ she tailed off, stumbling into that sudden adjustment of tenses that strikes the recently bereaved.

      ‘But she arrived at the same time as you today?’

      ‘She was on the doorstep when I got there.’

      ‘So you went in together. And you would have been the first people in the office since when? Before Christmas?’

      ‘Well, apart from Kyle, obviously. And…’ She looked suddenly nauseous and pulled herself back to practicalities. ‘Friday the twenty-first was our last working day. We don’t usually close for Christmas, but with Fame Factory being cancelled, there didn’t seem much point in anyone coming in. The way the weekends and bank holidays worked out, it was only a matter of a couple of days, so I gave everyone the time off.’

      ‘You did?’

      ‘Yes. With Kyle away, I was in charge. You didn’t know that? I’m his deputy.’

      ‘I didn’t know.’ Braithwaite filed this interesting nugget away. ‘So presumably you would have been able to get into the office during the holidays, then? You’ve got a key?’

      She looked at him searchingly. ‘Yes, I’ve got a key. As have a whole bunch of other people.’

      ‘Who?’

      She rolled her eyes. ‘Pretty much anyone who wants one. All the staff, a lot of the ex-staff who never bothered to give them back, most of the temps who’ve worked on reception over the last couple of years – that would be about fifty people alone – plus a lot of the freelancers we use. We tend to lend them out to anyone who’s working on late shoots for us in case they need to get back in to store equipment. They don’t always come back. We’ve got a pretty crappy record on security, to be honest. I was nagging Kyle about it before he… Before Christmas. I think he quite liked the odd bit of pilfering, because it gave him an excuse to buy more up-to-date equipment. Our insurance company were less happy with the arrangement.’

      ‘And I don’t suppose you had security cameras installed, either?’

      She shook her head. ‘Not since we did that Secret Life of the Office documentary for Channel Five. One of the researchers’ girlfriends threatened to sue us for showing them shagging on the photocopier. Cheeky cow. It was the only decent bit of footage we got, and we’d had to slip him a hundred quid to go through with it.’

      He looked at her with some distaste, and pushed a pad of paper across the desk towards her. ‘We’ll need to eliminate all the key holders from our inquiries. I’d like you to make a list of everyone you can think of. I’ve asked Miss Westerbridge to do the same.’

      She took the pen he was holding out. ‘I’ll do my best.’

      ‘We might as well start with you, since you’re here. What were your movements over the last week?’

      She nodded, her expression pained. ‘I was at home mostly. On my own.’

      ‘You didn’t spend Christmas with family?’

      ‘No. My father died last August. There isn’t anyone else.’ She met his gaze levelly, as if challenging him to react.

      ‘I’m sorry.’

      She shrugged, indifferent to his feelings on the matter.

      ‘And home is…?’

      ‘Brixton. Well, unless you’re an estate agent. They insist it’s somewhere called Clapham Borders.’

      ‘You didn’t see anyone over the whole period?’

      She shook her head. ‘Not unless you count the man in the corner shop. I’ve never been much of a Christmas fan, anyway. I did a lot of reading. Listened to music. Went for walks.’

      ‘Sounds nice.’ It sounded horribly lonely. ‘All right, well, we’ll need to take an official statement from you, but that can wait for another time. And I’m afraid you’re unlikely to be able to get back into your office for at least the rest of this week.’

      ‘Shit.’ She passed a hand across her brow. ‘I hope I can remember the passwords to get into the network from outside. We’ve got a big project starting up, and I need to get the guys working on it.’

      ‘What is it?’ Braithwaite wasn’t really interested, but he felt sorry for the girl now, and he liked to be polite.

      ‘Oh, we’ve still got all the Fame Factory contestants on contract and Kyle was keen for us to find some projects for them. We’re putting together a pilot for Tim and Douggie – a light entertainment thing for ITV. You know, family stuff, Saturday nights.’

      Olivia would be pleased. Tim Campbell and Douggie McGovern had been her favourite contestants in the latter stages of the show, though he had found their inane double-act, which mostly consisted of mugging to camera and delivering other people’s comedy catchphrases at inopportune moments, deeply irritating. Which probably meant they would be a runaway success and an unavoidable fixture on his television for at least the next decade.

      ‘You say they’re all still on contract?’

      She nodded. ‘It’s part of the deal they sign when they get through. The final five are all ours for at least the next six months.’

      ‘So what are you going to do with the rest of them?’

      ‘Oh, I don’t know yet. I’m sure I’ll think of something.’ She smiled bravely.

     

‘Oh God, what next?’ Whitehead stood, hands on hips, in the doorway of Kyle Pennington’s office, surveying the grim scene inside. It looked much the same as when Braithwaite had been there two hours earlier, save for the addition of several dozen coloured plastic arrows which had been placed at strategic positions on the corpse and its surroundings, indicating all-but-invisible points of interest that were being snapped at close range by a white-clad scene of crime photographer.

      ‘They’ve found what they think is cocaine ground into the carpet in here, and there’s minute traces of blood on the floor between here and the kitchen,’ said Nelson helpfully. ‘That’s where his heart was found.’

      ‘And what do they think was used to cut it out?’ asked Whitehead, wrinkling her nose in an attempt to block out the stench that was coming off the body.

      ‘Some kind of long serrated blade – possibly just an ordinary kitchen carving knife. The path reckons he was still alive when they started the job, but he wouldn’t have remained so for very long.’

      ‘Jesus.’ Whitehead turned away and stepped back out into the main office, where two other white-overalled figures were cutting squares out of the carpet with scalpels. She had never felt more wretched. The commander had radioed her on the way back from Heathrow, and the blistering rage he had expressed over the airwaves with half the control room listening in was nothing compared to what she was expecting to experience in person on her return to the Yard. She had been so certain that Pennington was her man, and that his arrest would bring a triumphant end to the catalogue of cock-ups that Operation Ringo had become – assurances that her boss had wasted no time in quoting back to her. She was still fragile from the after-effects of New Year’s Eve, and right now the only thing she wanted to do was crawl back under the duvet on the sofa where she had spent most of New Year’s Day, trying to keep down cups of herbal tea, watching old movies and surprising Alice by bursting noisily and snottily into tears when the Baroness announced she thought she would not marry Captain Von Trapp after all.

      ‘When in doubt, go on the offensive’ had always been Whitehead’s approach. ‘So why the hell didn’t you tell me this one was coming?’ she demanded, entirely unreasonably, of Nelson.

      ‘Pardon?’ spluttered the sergeant.

      ‘You’re supposed to be my expert on these things. What rock star had their heart ripped out at the end of December, and why didn’t you warn me about it before?’

      ‘Because there wasn’t one!’ protested Nelson, the suave efficiency he had been practising for the past half hour going entirely to pot.

      ‘You’re sure?’

      ‘It’s the sort of thing you tend to remember,’ he said, as sarcastically as he dared.

      She considered this. ‘Fair point. So what the fuck – ’ she jabbed a thumb in the direction of Pennington’s office – ‘is he doing in there?’

      ‘Well, I… I don’t know,’ Nelson said wretchedly. ‘It doesn’t fit anyone that I know about.’

      Whitehead let out a loud ‘tut’ and stared around the office. The blackbirds were still flapping their endless way across the computer screen on the desk nearest to them. She smacked the spacebar with her fist and they disappeared.

      ‘There was the bloke from Def Leppard. I think that was on New Year’s Eve,’ said Nelson in a small voice.

      ‘What happened to him?’

      ‘He had his arm amputated.’

      ‘It’s not quite the same, is it?’

      ‘No.’

      She gritted her teeth. ‘Listen. I’m due with the commander at three-thirty, and the mood he’s in, we’ll be lucky if he doesn’t fire us all. Get back to the Yard and find me some way of fitting this in with the others.’ She had a vague recollection of a magazine article she had read and worried about at the time when Alice had started wearing black lipstick. ‘Look into all those Norwegian heavy metal bands, they’re always saying they’re into Satanism and human sacrifice and stuff. Just find me some kind of explanation, or we’re all fucked. If it turns out you’ve been leading me up the garden path about these anniversaries, I’ll make sure you’re back on the beat in Battersea before you can say dishonourable discharge.’

      A look of such intense distress spread across Nelson’s face that she thought for a second he was going to cry. ‘Yes, ma’am’, he said, all but snapping to attention, and he was back in his car and half way to the office before he realised he had forgotten to take off the white paper shoe covers the Soco team had made him put on.

      Whitehead watched him go and heaved a great sigh. ‘Bugger,’ she said under her breath. That hadn’t made her feel better at all.

      

‘I don’t know. I just don’t know.’ Sushi Westerbridge’s fingers tightened on the ball-point pen, her knuckles as white as the blank sheet of paper in front of her. ‘I can’t think.’

      ‘It’s all right,’ said Braithwaite as reassuringly as possible. ‘We understand you’ve had a terrible shock. We don’t need a full list from you now, and we can add more names on later if you think of anyone you’ve left off. But we do need to investigate everyone who could have got into the office over the Christmas period. The quicker we get the names of everyone with a key, the quicker we’ll be able to eliminate your colleagues from our inquiries.’

      She gulped out a sob and looked at him, wide-eyed. ‘But it couldn’t have been any of them. It just couldn’t.’

      ‘Which is precisely why we need their names so we can rule them out,’ said Braithwaite, knowing as soon as the words left his mouth that he had spoken too sharply. Sushi dropped the pen on the tabletop and burst into renewed tears. WDC Longford silently pushed the box of tissues in her direction, her face stony. Braithwaite took a deep breath. ‘Why don’t we just start with some of the men, Sushi?’ he practically crooned. There was no point in looking into the women, anyway. Unless they had a second, rival murderer on their hands. That would be just their luck.

      Sushi sniffed. ‘OK.’ She wiped her face with the tissue and picked up the biro again. ‘I’ll do my best. But how do you know Kyle didn’t let the person that killed him in himself?’

      She had spotted the flaw in his masterplan. Braithwaite narrowed his eyes. ‘Let’s just concentrate on the list, shall we?’

      Two hours and one and a half boxes of tissues later, he had a list of 48 names, most of which tallied with those Jacqui O’Riordan had previously supplied him with. Leaving Longford to deal with getting the PA safely home – a simple question of whether she had anyone who could come and meet her from the station provoked a further, almost biblical flood of tears – he took the lift to the special investigations floor and was humming a snatch of Colonel Bogey when the doors pinged open and he came face to face with a tired-looking Whitehead waiting outside.

      ‘Eleventh floor. Doors open,’ the lift said, as if trying to break the awkward silence that ensued.

      ‘Hello,’ said Braithwaite weakly. She nodded.

      ‘I, er… I’ve just been interviewing Sushi Westerbridge and Jacqui O’Riordan. They found, er, the body.’ The lift pinged and he shot an arm out to stop the doors from closing. Whitehead flinched away from the sudden movement. ‘Sorry, I… Look, you’d better get in.’

      She shuffled past him awkwardly, both of them taking care not to touch one another as they swapped places. ‘I’ll write up the… you can read them,’ he stuttered once he was outside in the carpeted corridor and she had taken his place in the lift, which suddenly seemed in no hurry to leave at all.

      ‘Look, I – ’ he said awkwardly, just as she opened her mouth and started to speak as well. ‘Sorry. You go on.’

      ‘I’m just – ’ Whitehead began again, but with a further ping, the doors were closing. Braithwaite seized the moment and slammed a finger on to the button and, with a mechanical sigh of exasperation, the metal shutters rolled back once more. She looked at him expectantly.

      ‘Sorry, you were going to say something,’ he said lamely.

      ‘No,’ she said as breezily as possible.

      ‘Oh… right.’

      Somewhere nearby a computer keyboard clattered. A cloud darkened the window at the end of the corridor.

      ‘Do you think you could let me go now, then?’

      ‘Oh. Yes, of course.’ He let go of the button, and the doors began to trundle shut once more. When Whitehead was no more than a sliver, he suddenly realised something else was disappearing along with her, and shot out his finger again.

      ‘What?’ she demanded, as the eleventh floor was once again revealed in all its glory.

      ‘Look, it’s just about New Year’s Eve,’ spluttered Braithwaite, turning scarlet to the roots of his hair. ‘I had… a really nice time with you, and I think we probably both drank a bit too much. I’m sorry if I got you into trouble with your daughter but I just wanted to say that – ’

      ‘Inspector!’ she barked, reducing him to silence in a second. ‘Our prime suspect turned up dead this morning. We’ve got less than bugger all idea why. I’m on my way to the commander’s office for the biggest bollocking of my entire career. I cannot cope with this as well right now.’

      ‘Right. Of course. Sorry.’ They both stared at the floor as he stood back and allowed the doors to close between them. Whitehead was chewing her lip furiously to stop it from trembling.

      ‘Going down,’ said the lift helpfully.

 

Chapter Twenty-Seven

 

It didn’t really help that when he got to the office, Nelson looked in an even worse state than he did.

      ‘What happened?’ he asked the sergeant, as he slumped disconsolately into a chair.

      ‘I’ve been trying to find out what anniversary the Rock’n’Roll Killer might have been commemorating with Kyle Pennington,’ said the sergeant, dropping the doorstop-like Virgin Encyclopaedia of Popular Music onto his desk with a thump.

      ‘No luck?’ asked Braithwaite, who was feeling far too fragile himself to enquire why the sergeant appeared to be shaking.

      ‘It’s all the wrong way round!’ exclaimed Nelson in a sudden burst of frustration. ‘Everything’s alphabetical, or it goes by the names of their bands, or, if there are any dates listed on the internet, it’s their birthdays, not the days they died on. It’s in here somewhere, I know, but it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. And I don’t even know for certain what day I’m looking for until we get the path report back, and she only gave me a few hours, and I just couldn’t do it!’

      ‘All right, all right,’ Braithwaite reassured him, removing a teetering pile of reference tomes which were threatening to topple from the edge of the desktop if the sergeant made any more dramatic movements. ‘You did a good job putting the calendar of deaths together before, the chief super really appreciated that, and I’m sure, given time, you’ll find this one too. Have you got any possibilities?’

      Nelson toyed for a second with bringing up the one-armed drummer again, but decided he could not face any more derision. ‘Not really, no,’ he admitted miserably.

      ‘All right.’ Braithwaite sat down at his own desk and began to leaf through a copy of the Guinness Book of Hit Singles that had obviously been hurled across the office in a moment of frustration. He was glad to have something to occupy his mind. ‘Look, I’ll help you. Go back to the beginning. What do we know about how our man has chosen his victims so far? Why does he think they tally to the famous people he modelled their deaths on?’

      The sergeant considered this. ‘Well, we don’t really know about Gareth Morgan, do we? Didn’t you think it was something to do with the name?’

      ‘Yeah. Maybe.’ Braithwaite had tried to outline a half-baked idea about G-Man echoing T-Rex to Nelson a few weeks previously, but when the sergeant started talking about Karma Chameleon and it emerged that he not only did not know the difference between Marc Bolan and Boy George but was too young to remember either of them, he had given up, feeling too ancient to continue. ‘Move on to the next one.’

      ‘Well, that’s easy. Dawn Mackenzie was a heroin addict like Janis Joplin. Paul Waterhouse was going out with a TV presenter, like Michael Hutchence did with Paula Yates.’

      ‘Uh-huh.’

      ‘Samantha Woodside was a sexual predator like Sam Cooke, or at least he put her in a position where she appeared to be. We don’t really know about Richard Golding, do we?’

      ‘No. I’ve got a hunch he just got unlucky with being the last on the bill and getting sent round through the wrong door. But what have all of them got in common?’

      ‘The victims, or the celebrities?’

      ‘Both.’

      Nelson looked blank. ‘I don’t know sir. Apart from all the victims being on Fame Factory, obviously.’

      ‘Precisely!’ Braithwaite realised he was pointing at the sergeant as if he were Doctor Watson. He retracted his finger with some embarrassment. ‘They were all contestants. Singers. Kyle Pennington wasn’t. He was the producer. Maybe we shouldn’t be looking for a singer at all. Let’s think about record producers instead.’

      ‘Right!’ The smile faded from Nelson’s face as quickly as it had arrived. ‘But they’ll be even more difficult to find,’ he sighed. ‘I don’t know the names of any record producers.’

      ‘Of course you do,’ said Braithwaite encouragingly. ‘What about George Martin, or Phil Spector? No, don’t put them in, they’re both still alive,’ he added hurriedly, as Nelson turned towards his computer and called up the Google homepage. ‘Try from the other end. Put in “producer” and “heart cut out”.’

      Nelson scanned through a page of printed text. ‘Just a load of reviews of horror films.’

      ‘OK. Change it to “record producer”.’

      He tapped it in. ‘Nothing at all.’

      ‘What, nothing?’ Braithwaite was amazed, and mildly chuffed. For some reason he felt like he’d got one over on the internet. ‘OK, maybe we’re being too specific. The heart’s important, though. The killer obviously wanted to make some sort of point. Keep that, and put some dates in. We know he flew in on the thirtieth of December, so start there.’

      They sat in quiet desperation for a few minutes, scrolling through page after page of irrelevant information. Braithwaite glanced at his watch. Whitehead would be in the commander’s office by now. He crossed his fingers under the desk. He wasn’t about to start analysing why, but he knew the last thing he wanted right now was for her to be taken off the case. For want of anything better to do, he picked up one of the reference books and started to flick through it, as if he might stumble across the right corpse completely at random.

      ‘Here’s one.’ Nelson’s voice cut through the silence. ‘Bert Berns. He was a record producer. Died of a heart attack on the thirtieth of December, nineteen-sixty-seven.’

      ‘That strikes me as exactly the sort of joke our killer would enjoy.’ Braithwaite squinted at the thumbnail on the screen. ‘I’ve never heard of him.’

      ‘No, it says here hardly anyone knows his name, but everyone knows his music. He wrote Twist and Shout, the Beatles song. And Under the Boardwalk, and Everybody Needs Somebody to Love. Blimey!’

      ‘So he was a songwriter?’

      ‘No, a producer, mostly. It says he produced records for Gene Pitney, the Isley Brothers, Solomon Burke, and Ben E. King. Are they all famous?’

      ‘Just a bit. Before your time. Before my time, actually.’ A memory stirred. That was exactly what he had thought about the songs on Fame Factory – a repertoire that had presumably been determined by Kyle Pennington as the series’ producer. In fact, he swore most of the songs Nelson had just mentioned had appeared in one guise or another during the series. He certainly remembered Tim and Douggie, dressed as the Blues Brothers, doing Everybody Needs Somebody To Love during the show’s “songs from the movies” episode. They had cocked up the talky bit at the beginning.

      ‘Right.’ He straightened up. ‘We need to tell Claire – the chief superintendent.’

      Nelson gave him a panicked look. ‘It’s too late, sir. She’s in with the commander already.’

      ‘Has she got her phone with her?’

      ‘I don’t know, sir.’

      He whipped his own mobile out of his pocket, suddenly decisive. ‘We can but try.’

      ‘Do you think the commander will appreciate her phone going off the middle of their meeting?’

      ‘Good point.’ He paused for a moment, considering. ‘This is important. It might help her out. She needs to know. I’ll text her.’ He punched a few keys, gazed expectantly at the phone’s screen, and then looked pleadingly across at Nelson.

      ‘I don’t know how to do it, sergeant. Can we use yours?’

     

Four floors below, Whitehead was squirming.

      ‘You’ve had six weeks’ uninterrupted work on this case, chief superintendent. A squad of officers at your disposal, along with priority use of all the facilities the Yard has to offer. And what have you got to show for it?’

      Whitehead shifted awkwardly in the vast leather chair, which let out a farting noise. ‘Things have proved rather more complicated than I initially hoped, sir, but – ’

      ‘Three weeks ago you assured me we were expecting an early arrest!’ the commander bellowed, his bushy eyebrows appearing to swivel independently of one another.

      ‘Yes sir, and at that point I was confident that we had the right man in our sights. It was only this morning that new evidence came to light which – ’

      ‘New evidence! You mean, he turned up dead!’

      ‘Well, yes,’ she admitted weakly.

      ‘It’s going to catapult us right back on to the front pages, you know,’ he clucked fretfully. ‘The only reason the papers have lost interest is because Fame Factory was cancelled. We might have got away with this over Christmas because they’re so short-staffed they can only afford to run quizzes and the New Year’s honours list, but the minute the press find out there’s been another killing, they’ll be all over us. Especially when they find out what he did to the poor bastard. Julian Molloy’s fielding calls already, you know.’

      Since the sins of Fleet Street could hardly be laid at her door, Whitehead thought it best to stay non-committal on this one. She just nodded.

      ‘And I suppose you’re going to tell me that this new corpse somehow fits in with your whole Rock’n’Roll Killer theory, are you?’ He pronounced the name with some distaste.

      She gazed at him across the desk. ‘Er…’ she said weakly.

      ‘You’re not going to tell me it doesn’t?’ he asked incredulously.

      ‘No, no,’ she reassured him. ‘I remain absolutely confident that the killer is using these murders to mark the anniversaries of the deaths of musicians he admires. Absolutely.’

      ‘So what about this latest one?’

      ‘Well, obviously it’s early days yet, but – ’

      ‘Oh, come on!’ the commander exclaimed, his brow darkening.

      ‘Right.’ Whitehead took a very deep breath. ‘Have you heard of a band called Def Leppard, sir?’

      Her right buttock suddenly began to vibrate. She jumped in her chair with a little yelp.

      ‘What on earth’s wrong with you?’

      ‘Nothing, sir. Just need to… check my notes on my Blackberry.’ She pulled her phone out of the pocket of her jacket, which had got caught beneath her, and clicked it open. Who the hell was this? Thank God she had put it on silent.

      The commander squinted across the desktop at her. ‘It must be a different model to mine. All right, then, who are this deaf leopard?’

      ‘Who, sir?’

      ‘The band you were talking about?’

      ‘Oh, no, sir. Bert Berns.’

      ‘Who does?’

      ‘No, sir, it’s a name. A person.’ The phone vibrated again. ‘He’s a record producer. Or he was. He died on the thirtieth of December, nineteen-sixty-seven.’

      ‘Right. He had his heart cut out, did he?’

      The phone stayed obstinately still. She took a chance. ‘Yes.’ It quivered in her hand. ‘Yes, that’s what we thought at first, interestingly enough,’ she continued, a sheen of sweat breaking out on her forehead. ‘But actually it turns out that he had a heart attack.’

      ‘Just a heart attack?’

      ‘Apparently so.’ She stared at the phone, as if willing it to give more details, but it remained inert. ‘Our man doesn’t always echo the manner of death exactly, as you know sir. Gareth Morgan was hanged, whereas Marc Bolan was actually killed in a car crash. That would have presumably have been too difficult to arrange, so he settled for hanging Morgan and arranging his tribute via the clothes he put on the corpse. Similarly, he could hardly have induced a heart attack in Kyle Pennington, so he settled for a rather more… graphic version.’

      ‘Hmm.’ This new information seemed, for the moment, to have subdued the commander’s wrath. ‘And you’re sure it’s this bloke – what’s his name?’

      Whitehead faked a coughing fit as she flicked back through the buttons on her mobile. ‘Bert Berns, sir.’

      ‘Remind me what sort of stuff he produced?’ The commander prided himself on his eclectic taste in music, having bought his wife CDs by both Celine Dion and Coldplay in the last year.

      ‘Pardon?’

      ‘I know the name, but remind me what he worked on?’

      She smiled slightly manically. ‘Oh, you know, all that sixties stuff!’

      ‘Yes, but what specifically?’

      ‘Well, you know what they say about the sixties, sir!’ she said in a high-pitched voice she barely recognised as her own, ‘if you were there, you can’t remember!’ It was only as the words left her mouth that she realised quite what a stupid thing this was to say to a high-ranking police officer.

      He stared at her, wide-eyed. ‘Are you feeling all right, chief superintendent?’

      ‘I’m fine, fine!’ she said shrilly, and as if by some strange telepathic signal sent out by her extreme state of un-fine-ness, just at the moment she thought she was going to have to pretend to faint on the commander’s floor, the phone vibrated once more and the answers she needed came spilling out in one great long spiel of unpunctuated text from Nelson.

      TWISTNSHOUT DOWN IN VALLEY IWNT CANDY UNDR BRDWLK SDAY NITE@MOVIES EVRYBDY NEEDS SMBDY 2© CRYBABY HANGON SLOOPY PECE OF MY© GIRL UB WOMAN SON GDBYE BBY BBY GDBYE BROWN ID GRL.

     

‘Sergeant Nelson, I love you!’

      The shriek came echoing down the corridor as soon as the lift doors pinged open. In the investigations room Braithwaite, Spall, Longford and the object of the chief superintendent’s affection all looked up from behind their desk partitions like startled meerkats.

      ‘Where is he? There you are!’ Whitehead appeared in the doorway and threw her arms wide, beaming like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. ‘You, sergeant, are a bloody genius. I take back everything I said before.’ Nelson took an involuntary step backwards as she advanced on him, but she swept him into her arms anyway and planted a smacking kiss on his cheek, before reeling him round and presenting him to his colleagues, a steely grip around his shoulders. ‘This,’ she told them, ‘is the man who has just saved your jobs. At least for another couple of weeks. He’s only bloody sussed out why Kyle Pennington had his heart ripped out, hasn’t he!’

      ‘Well, it wasn’t just me,’ said Nelson, who was turning as red as the lipstick he was desperately attempting to wipe off his face. ‘It was really Inspector Braithwaite’s idea.’

      ‘Oh.’ Whitehead’s smile faltered a little as she looked in the direction of his co-genius, but it swiftly returned. ‘Well, the least you can do is let me buy you all a drink in return. Shut your mouth, Spall, before something flies into it. Go on, get your coats on before my good mood vanishes for another decade.’

      Detective Constable Longford didn’t need to be told twice. She was already fetching her duffel coat from the hat stand by the door, pulling a woollen hat over her curly hair. ‘Thanks, ma’am. And well done.’ Spall followed her lead, pulling on his mustard-coloured overcoat and shooting a dark scowl in Nelson’s direction.

      ‘Call the others. Tell Benson and Robbins to join us when they’re done over in Waterloo. We’ll be in the White Lion. I’ve just got to pick my stuff up from my office.’ Whitehead turned in the doorway and looked back into the room. Braithwaite hadn’t moved from his desk.

      ‘I think I’ll give it a miss, actually. Not really up for it tonight.’

      ‘You still feeling the effects from New Year’s, mate?’ Spall cuffed him on the shoulder as he passed. Braithwaite smiled weakly.

      ‘Suit yourself,’ said Whitehead with a shrug, and walked off down the corridor with the rest of the team.

     

Chapter Twenty-Eight

 

Sussing the name of the Rock’n’Roll Killer’s latest inspiration was not enough to get Whitehead entirely off the hook. To convince the commander that she and her team deserved to stay on the case, Whitehead had been forced to promise him a breakthrough within the next week.

      The Operation Ringo team were immediately assigned to interviewing every male member of staff at Portmanteau, checking out their alibis for the night of 30^th December and questioning them closely about their musical tastes and whether or not they played an instrument. The latter line of investigation had been suggested by Dr Pemberton, who opined that the killer’s knowledge of such an obscure figure as Berns, as opposed to the household names he had previously been symbolically offing, might demonstrate some kind of professional knowledge of the music industry: he could be a frustrated musician himself, someone whose career had never taken off in the way he had hoped after his preferred style of music fell out of fashion. The psychologist did not think much of Whitehead’s suggestion that they hand a guitar to every suspect and arrest anyone who played the riff from Stairway to Heaven, but he did suggest off the record that they should pay particular attention to drummers, because everyone knew they were always a bit weird.

      By the end of the week, they had rounded up three potential suspects: a 52-year-old camera operator who played bass in a pub band called Forbidden Experience at the weekends, a lighting technician who had worked the follow-spots at the Knebworth festival in 1979 and a hapless 19-year-old from the graphics department, who liked to tell girls he was a DJ despite only owning two white labels and never having used his decks anywhere other than the privacy of his bedroom when his mum and dad weren’t in. All of them had keys to the Portmanteau offices, all of them had brown hair, and all of them could have been described as thin by a witness who was feeling reasonably generous.

      ‘Well, it’s not our boy on the wheels of steel, at any rate,’ said Nelson at six-thirty on Friday as he flopped heavily into his seat in the investigations room after two hours of grilling the wannabe DJ. ‘He’s never heard of Janis Joplin, and he thought Sam Cooke was the foreign secretary.’

      ‘I’ve had exactly the opposite problem,’ sighed Braithwaite, who had been assigned the bassist. ‘Mine gave me a very long and detailed deconstruction of the lyrics of Imagine. Did you know John Lennon owned an entire flat which he just used to store his and Yoko’s fur coats?’

      Nelson raised his eyebrows. ‘D’you think it’s relevant?’

      ‘I should bloody say so! “Imagine no possessions”?’ spluttered Braithwaite. ‘Oh, you mean to the case. Probably not, no.’

      The sergeant yawned copiously. ‘Look, I’m in in the morning, is it all right if I leave writing up his statement till then?’

      ‘Yeah, it’s fine. Get home to your girlfriend. I’ll see you on Monday.’

      He was left alone in the investigations room. It had long since got dark outside, and all he could see in the window was his own reflection. He was looking tired, but not half as tired as he felt.

      ‘Knock, knock. Still working?’

      Whitehead had appeared in the doorway, her coat slung over her arm, looking slightly sheepish. She sidled over and stood behind Nelson’s desk, peering across to see what was on his computer.

      ‘Yeah, I just thought I’d finish off the statements before I called it a day. I’m not in now till Monday.’ He ran a finger round his collar, suddenly nervous. It was the first time they had been alone together since the incident outside the lift three days previously.

      ‘Have you got Olivia this weekend?’

      ‘No, no, she’s at her mum’s.’

      ‘Ah. Good.’ She nodded, still looking at the computer rather than him. ‘That means you’re free to take me out tomorrow night, then.’

      ‘I’m sorry?’ He was so surprised that a little jet of spittle shot from his mouth and clung, shining like a prism, on the monitor screen.

      ‘Look, inspector, I did warn you I put on a cold, hard bitch act at work. But I don’t think even I realised quite how convincing it could be. The least you can do is take me out for dinner tomorrow and let me try and make up for it.’ She gazed at him bashfully from under her fringe.

      ‘OK.’ He grinned, the dull headache that had been lingering behind his eyes for the last couple of days suddenly dissipating. ‘Yes, of course. That would be great.’

      ‘Thank God for that.’ She exhaled heavily, her shoulders drooping. ‘I thought I was going to have to fire you. Pick me up at about eightish, yes?’ He nodded enthusiastic assent as she stalked to the door, swinging her coat over her shoulders. ‘Don’t get too carried away, inspector. I’m working tomorrow even if you’re not, and I want to see that report on my desk first thing. You’re not going anywhere yet.’

     

‘Cos this is LAY-DEE-SNITE-OH WADDAN-ITE!’

      Braithwaite turned the radio up full blast and hollered along to Kool and the Gang at the top of his voice as the power shower blasted the pressures of the working week from his skin, for the first time since he had moved into the thin-walled flat, not giving a toss what the neighbours might think. When he was sure every part of him was clean – even the parts he didn’t usually bother too much about these days – he stepped out dripping on to the mat, gave his stomach muscles an experimental flex in front of the bathroom mirror, and sprayed himself liberally with a new deodorant he had bought specially for the occasion. He was going on a date. A proper, bona fide date, the first since his divorce, and he didn’t even need to worry about making a fool of himself, because there was no way she would dare tell anyone. Could it possibly get any better than this?

      He dried himself off and went into the bedroom – he may even have attempted a brief soft-shoe shuffle as the song on the radio segued neatly into Instant Replay – where he began a lengthy and fruitless search for a pair of underpants he would not mind revealing to the world in the unlikely event that the opportunity arose. When he had first started going out with Cassie, he had had a pair of lucky pants – they were Y-fronts, with a paisley pattern – but when they had sprung the twelfth or thirteenth hole in the gusset a few years into their marriage, she had insisted, much to his chagrin, that he throw them out. He had never felt lucky enough to warrant replacing them since. He settled for a navy blue pair of Marks and Spencers’ boxers which still retained most of their original shape and all of his, and pulled on a pair of chinos before switching on the iron ready for his usual routine of not actually removing the creases from a shirt, but creating some new ones so spectacular that they would distract attention from the rest.

      He had got no further than the collar and the left sleeve when the doorbell rang. He looked at his watch. Six fifty pm. Just time enough to finish getting ready before driving up to Whitehead’s. Whoever it was, they couldn’t have picked a worse time. He decided to ignore it – it would only be someone trying to guilt-trip him into buying either tea towels or spiritual salvation – and carried on ironing, wondering if this might finally be the moment to try the mysterious button with the picture of what appeared to be a cloud on it for the first time. The bell rang again, more insistently and, swearing beneath his breath, he flicked off both iron and radio before stomping his way crossly out to the hall and opening the front door.

      Cassie was standing there in a coat that was too thin for the weather, her face drawn and pale. Olivia was standing behind her holding her pink rucksack. She looked as delighted to see him as her mother looked distressed. ‘Hello, Daddy!’ she chirruped.

      ‘What is it?’ he gabbled, a sudden wave of fear washing over him. ‘I’m not supposed to have her this weekend, it’s next weekend, the eleventh, I’m sure it is.’

      ‘Oh, Mike, I’m sorry, it’s just I – ’ said Cassie, and burst into tears.

      ‘Look, look, come inside,’ he said, bundling her into the hallway and lifting Olivia up into a bear hug. ‘Whatever’s happened? What’s the matter?’

      She spoke thickly through snot and tears as he ushered her up the stairs and into the flat ahead of him. ‘I’m really, really sorry Mike, but we’ve got nowhere else to go. I’ll go and find a hotel, but I think it would be better for Livvy to be somewhere she knows and I couldn’t face my mum’s right now, and I know it’s out of order but I can’t think of anyone else – ’

      ‘It’s all right, don’t worry, calm down, it’s OK,’ he said, manoeuvring her onto the sofa, decanting Olivia and patting her back ineffectually. ‘Look, I’ll put the kettle on. Or would you like a brandy, or something? Only, I don’t think I’ve got any. Livvy, love, why don’t you go and play in your room for a bit? I need to have a chat to your mum.’

      With a sigh of exasperation, his daughter slid off the sofa and headed out, scowling, disappointed to be deprived of this exciting adult drama. Braithwaite fetched a half-finished loo roll for Cassie – he had forgotten to buy any tissues – and pulled on his semi-ironed shirt, suddenly all-too aware that he was half naked. ‘What’s happened?’ he asked.

      She gulped her way back to something approaching her normal rate of breathing and blew her nose loudly. ‘It’s Rupert,’ she said. ‘He’s been having an affair. I thought he was for a long time, but he told me today. It’s some girl at his gym, and she’s only twenty-five.’ She started to sob again.

      ‘Ah.’ He looked down at his bare feet, unsure of what to make of this information. Part of him wanted to beat the hell out of the bastard for upsetting his wife and daughter, and the less noble part – the larger part, if he was honest – couldn’t help feeling he was the last person she should be looking to for sympathy.

      She seemed to feel the same. ‘Oh, Mike, I’m sorry,’ she gulped. ‘It isn’t fair of me to dump it on you after everything that’s happened. It’s just that I couldn’t stay in the house, and I didn’t want to drag Olivia off somewhere unfamiliar on top of everything else. I’ll just make sure she’s OK and then I’ll get out of your way. I’m sorry.’

      ‘No, no, it’s all right,’ he said, almost convincingly. ‘Of course I’ll take her. And if you need somewhere to crash tonight, you should stay here. She’s going to have all sorts of questions, and it’s not my place to answer them. And as it happens, I’ve got plans for – ’

      ‘Oh, Mike, you’re such a good guy,’ said Cassie, overwhelmed by emotion. ‘I knew you’d understand. I got in the car without any idea where I was going, and more than anything I just wanted to see you. I know it’s awful after everything that’s happened, but I knew you’d understand.’

      Well, yes, he thought, biting his lip. I have had some experience in the area. ‘I’ll make you that cup of tea,’ he muttered, and removed himself to the kitchen.

      When he came back, she had got herself under control and was dabbing at her eyes with what remained of the loo roll. ‘So how did you find out about it?’ he asked quietly.

      ‘Oh, I sussed it at Christmas,’ she told him, sipping her tea gratefully. ‘I always do the accounts – just checking receipts and things, you remember I used to… Well, anyway, I noticed a weird payment on the Visa bill and called them up, and it was a jewellers. I wouldn’t have bothered but it was two hundred quid, you know. Well, anyway, I assumed it was a Christmas present and so I didn’t say anything. But then Christmas came, and he’d got me spa tokens. And he said he was phoning his mum, but then she called after dinner, and – ’ she trailed off again, pulling another length from the loo roll.

      ‘I remember,’ he said quietly. He had noticed. He was a detective, for goodness’ sake. ‘So you started checking up on him?’

      She nodded, her mouth pursed. ‘He was doing all these extra classes. And I… it’s stupid but I put Livvy in the car a couple of times and followed him down there, like I was in some film or something, and he was going to the gym like he said he was so I thought everything was all right. But then it turns out she’s one of the instructors there, and they’d been sneaking off together for months and all his colleagues knew all the time!’ Her voice rose to a wail, and he cast an anxious glance towards the door of Olivia’s bedroom.

      ‘I’m sorry, Mike, I’m sorry. I’m not looking for sympathy, not from you, God knows, but I just can’t believe he would… I should have stuck with my classes, but it just got so difficult with Livvy’s play rehearsals and guides and things and I was so tired all the time. He wanted me to carry on, he said I was getting out of shape. And he was right.’ She blew her nose cacophonously. The balance of Braithwaite’s emotions tipped over, and he suddenly wanted more than anything to punch Rupert right in his over-moisturised face.

      ‘Come on,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Things will seem better in the morning. You can both stop here for now. Has Livvy eaten?’

      She shook her head, a mask of misery.

      ‘OK. I’ll make something for you both.’

      ‘Don’t worry about me.’ She tucked the last tear-soaked piece of toilet roll into the tube along with the others, shaking her head.

      ‘No, you should eat something. You’ll feel better after a hot meal and a good night’s sleep. I’ll have the sofa, and you can sleep in my room.’ He had put fresh sheets on his bed that morning, just in case.

      ‘No. No way,’ she shook her head emphatically. ‘I’m fine on the sofa. I’m not going to put you out. And I’ll sort out something else tomorrow, I promise. We can go down to my mum’s.’

      ‘Worry about that in the morning.’ Her mother lived in Lowestoft. It would be too far for Olivia to travel in to school.

      ‘Thanks, Mike. I’m really sorry.’

      ‘Don’t be ridiculous. It’s him who should be sorry. He’s a fucking idiot.’ The vitriol in his voice surprised him, but Cassie only gave a sad nod. He stood up. ‘I’ll go and see what Olivia wants for her tea.’

     

They got Olivia off to bed at eight thirty, and by nine Cassie looked ready to drop. ‘I’ll just get some stuff out of my room, and then you can get your head down,’ he told her, and disappeared before she could summon up the energy to argue.

      He dialled Whitehead’s number from the phone by the bed. She picked up on the first ring.

      ‘Hullo?’

      ‘Claire, it’s Mike Braithwaite. Look, I’m really sorry. Something came up with my daughter, and I’m not going to be able to make it tonight. I’m sorry.’

      ‘Is she all right?’ Her tone was curt, businesslike.

      ‘Yes, she’s fine. It’s just that… she’s had to come and stay with me for the night, maybe longer.’ He didn’t feel the need to burden her with any more details.

      ‘Right. OK.’

      ‘I’m sorry. I was really looking forward to tonight.’

      ‘Mm.’

      ‘Maybe we could do it another time?’

      ‘Right. Maybe.’

      ‘Ok. I’m sorry. I’ll see you on Monday?’

      ‘Bye.’ She put the phone down before he could even reply. He sat for a little while on the bed looking down at his crumpled shirtfront, and then got up and gathered his night things together.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

 

Braithwaite dropped Olivia off at school on Monday, complete with a lunch box crammed with all the bad-for-you goodies she had requested at Sainsbury’s the day before. It felt great.

      They had agreed that both of them would stay another night (‘but just one more’, Cassie warned) partly so that Olivia’s school routine would not be disrupted on top of everything else, and partly because Cassie had agreed to meet up with Rupert on Monday morning and discuss exactly where they stood. Braithwaite had a horrible feeling this meeting would end with Rupert smarming his way back into her affections until such time as he decided to cheat on her again, but it was none of his business. So he ignored that line of thought and instead, gritted his teeth and devoted himself to testing Olivia’s knowledge of the Annie lyrics (first night, she breathlessly reminded him, was now just three weeks away), which ensured that by the time they arrived at the school gates, he would happily have mown down any red-headed orphan unlucky enough to stray into his path.

      He arrived at Scotland Yard with Tomorrow in his head and a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, but the arrival of the pathologist’s report on Kyle Pennington had driven all other concerns out of chief superintendent Whitehead’s mind. It confirmed the time of death as the evening of 30^th December, and that he had been killed as a result of ‘massive internal trauma during the evisceration of the chest cavity by a sharp object and removal of the heart.’ But it contained one other detail that provoked whoops of joy which could be heard from the commander’s office four floors away: the killer had left a fingerprint, or rather, the partial print of a right thumb on the rim of the plate on which Pennington’s heart had been put in the fridge.

      ‘At bloody last!’ the chief superintendent told her hastily-assembled squad. ‘I knew he’d start getting sloppy if we hung on long enough. They always fuck up in the end. I want every bloke with a key to the Portmanteau offices fingerprinted. Prioritise our amateur musicians, then everyone who was present in the studio on the night Richard Golding was killed. Then work your way through the rest of the male staff, and go on to ex-staff, freelancers, contractors and cleaners from the last five years. Then start again at the beginning. I know he’s in there somewhere.’

      ‘Do we know for sure that Pennington didn’t let the killer in himself?’ objected Spall, who could see a week of hard and very tedious work stretching ahead of him.

      ‘Uh-uh.’ Whitehead shook her head, tapping the beige folder in front of her. ‘Pennington’s prints were only on the outside of the front door. He hadn’t touched the latch inside. Whoever killed him definitely left themselves in. You mark my words, our man is on the Portmanteau team. And by the end of this week we’re going to know exactly who he is.’

     

‘That’s him!’ exclaimed Nelson on Friday morning.

      Braithwaite’s eyes, which he was just resting for a moment, flickered open. Through the rain-spattered windscreen, he could see a slim middle-aged man in ripped jeans and a black anorak trudging up the pavement. His back was stooped, several heavy shopping bags weighing down his arms. His hair was cropped short and brown.

      ‘You’re sure?’ he asked the sergeant.

      ‘Yeah. Look!’ The man had stopped outside a nearby house, and was looking at them, inclining his head towards the front door with a hopeful smile. Nelson waved at him and stepped out of the car. ‘Colin Scammell?’

      ‘That’s right.’ Braithwaite clambered out on the other side, picking up the fingerprinting kit that Nelson had forgotten, and Scammell gave him a friendly nod. ‘Sorry to have kept you waiting. I wasn’t sure how long it would take you to get up from London so I just took the chance to pop out to the supermarket while the rain was holding off. I’d shake your hand, but…’ he indicated the bags in his hand. ‘Come on in. You want to talk about Portmanteau, is that right?’

      ‘It’s really just routine,’ said Braithwaite, as he followed the man up a wet concrete pathway through an overgrown garden. ‘You’ll have heard about the murder of Kyle Pennington last week?’

      ‘Mm.’ Scammell nodded. ‘Awful. I can’t pretend I liked the man, but it was a terrible way to go.’

      ‘We’re speaking to everyone who’s worked for Portmanteau during the past few years. Kyle Pennington’s killer appears to have let himself into the office using his own key, and we need to eliminate everyone who might still have a key to the building from our inquiries.’

      ‘Oh, blimey. Have I got one? I suppose I still have.’ He dumped the shopping bags in his left hand on the doorstep and pulled a key fob from his pocket to let them into the house. ‘It’s probably in a drawer somewhere. I certainly haven’t got it on this ring any more.’

      ‘You were employed as a model maker for Portmanteau, is that right?’ asked Nelson, stooping to pick up the bags and carry them inside.

      ‘Yes, amongst others. It was some miniature work about four years ago. They did a programme about ancient Rome, an adaptation of some American book that said the number of arches in the Coliseum was a code that helped you find hidden messages in the bible, or something. They wanted Rome built at one-to-three-hundredths scale. I remember they gave me a ridiculously short deadline. I had to tell them it couldn’t be done.’

      ‘And that was the last time you worked for Portmanteau?’

      ‘It was about the last time I worked for anybody. I had an accident with a fretsaw not long after that ended my modelling career.’ He lugged the shopping bags onto his kitchen table. ‘Sorry, I didn’t catch your names.’

      Braithwaite took the hand that was offered him and began to shake it. ‘I’m inspector Braithwaite. We need to… oh.’

      ‘Is there a problem?’ beamed Scammell.

     

‘Two hundred miles!’ spat Braithwaite as he pulled the car out into the traffic on the A50. ‘We’ve gone to Leicester and back for no bloody reason at all!’

      ‘Well, I wasn’t to know, was I, sir?’ said the sergeant sullenly. ‘I mean, you do sort of assume when you set out to fingerprint someone they’ll actually have a full set, don’t you? It’s not like you can say, “So we’ll see you about three-ish, put the kettle on and oh, just to check, you have got both thumbs, haven’t you?”’

      ‘Don’t be facetious, sergeant,’ muttered Braithwaite, flicking on the window wipers. They sat in silence for a few minutes, watching the rain spatter against the windscreen.

      ‘I suppose we ought to call in, should we?’ asked Nelson as they reached the motorway.

      ‘Go on, then. See if anyone else has had any more luck.’ The team had got right to the bottom of the barrel now – Spall and Benson were in Hastings getting prints from a video editor who had done the grand total of three days work for Portmanteau two years previously, and claimed he had never been given a key in the first place – and the spirit of elation that had filled the whole of the team at the beginning of the week had all but dribbled away. Whitehead had returned from her meeting with the commander that morning – they were now a daily occurrence – tight-lipped and pale. She had not spoken to Braithwaite all week.

      ‘Nothing.’ Nelson dumped the mobile back in its hands-free cradle. ‘And we’ve reached the end of the list. There’s no one else that could have had a key, unless they stole one. Apparently, Whitehead wants us to start printing the male partners or housemates of Portmanteau staff now.’ He sighed. The Fingerprint Bureau in the basement of Scotland Yard were capable of making several hundred print comparisons a day, but their receptionist had been decidedly huffy with him when he had taken down their latest batch the previous evening. And he had been hoping not to have to work over the weekend again. Chantal was being decidedly huffy with him, too.

      Braithwaite did some swift calculations in his head. 150 or so people had worked for the company over the past five years. Say they had all moved house at least once and half of them changed partners in that time, they were looking at questioning… well, getting on for as many people as they had done at the outset of this investigation, when everyone who had attended the auditions was a suspect. Every step forward in this case seemed to take them back two more. Or, if they were really unlucky, all the way to Leicester.

      He watched several miles of motorway slip gloomily by, before a thought struck him. ‘Someone did take Sushi Westerbridge and Jacqui O’Riordan’s prints for elimination, did they?’

      ‘I don’t know.’ With three teams working on the fingerprinting, all Nelson knew for certain was that he hadn’t. ‘I assume so.’

      ‘Do me a favour and check, would you?’

      Nelson picked up the phone with a sigh. Whitehead herself had picked up when he had called a moment ago, barking a brusque ‘hello’ that had frightened the life out of him. She had been unimpressed by his tale of the missing digit then, and she was hardly going to take kindly to him questioning her competence in carrying out such a basic procedure now. He decided to preface his inquiry with ‘Inspector Braithwaite wondered,’ just to be on the safe side. For some reason, he didn’t seem to be in her good books at the moment anyway.

      Luckily for Braithwaite, it was Detective Constable Longford who answered, which meant Nelson could be as officious as he liked, which was very. ‘Cathy, hi, it’s Nelson. I need you to check to see if we’ve got a set of prints for Sushi Westerbridge and Jacqui O’Riordan on file? OK. I’m on my mobile. Quick as you can, love.’ He was oblivious both to his boss’s amused smirk and the V-sign which Longford flicked in his direction from the safety of 100 miles away. She did, however, get back to him within five minutes, and he relayed her news to Braithwaite immediately.

      ‘Just Sushi Westerbridge. She’s the only one who touched the fridge or any of the doors in the office, and they found her prints there all right, but she was certain she hadn’t gone anywhere near the heart. She was quite grossed out by the idea.’

      Braithwaite remembered. The PA had said in her statement that she had initially considered throwing Kyle Pennington’s heart into the bin before deciding it was ‘too gross’ to touch, the memory of which near-miss had provoked a full 15 minutes of sobbing in the interview room before she could tell them anything else useful. ‘It’s probably worth getting a print from Jacqui, too,’ he told Nelson. ‘Just to be sure before we go on to the next batch. She was with Westerbridge, and she might have brushed against the plate without realising. The last thing we need is to spend another week on a wild goose chase, only to find she did touch the thing after all and she’s just forgotten about it.’

      ‘I think that’s unlikely, sir. Handling a blood-soaked human heart is the sort of thing you remember, isn’t it?’

      ‘You’d be surprised by the tricks the human mind can play with things like that, sergeant.’ Braithwaite spoke from experience. That very morning, he had woken in the early hours from a frantic dream in which Richard Golding’s insides were spilling out onto the carpet again and again, only to find it was actually him who had rolled off the sofa and onto the floor in one all-too-solid piece. The memory of it had kept him awake and clammy until daylight had started to peep through the crack in the sitting room curtains. ‘Just make the call, yeah? You can say it’s an order from me if you’re worried about looking stupid.’

      Nelson, who was starting to suspect his boss was telepathic, blushed and dialled the number, leaving Braithwaite alone with his thoughts, which were still lingering on his couch in the pre-dawn. Olivia and Cassie had been with him for nearly a week now, all thoughts of making other plans obliterated by Rupert’s revelation on Monday morning that not only did he not want Cassie back, he was moving the 25-year-old into their home to take her place. Thankfully, Cassie had retained enough of her spirit in the face of this bombshell to pour an entire mug of hot cappuccino into his lap and follow it up, two days later, with an almost equally painful letter from her solicitor detailing just how much equity in the house was hers by rights. But these admirable actions had taken it out of her and she was unable to face flat-hunting as well.

      Olivia was so obviously happy to be spending time with her dad (and Rupert so obviously unhappy about it), that the current arrangement seemed manageable, at least on a short-term basis, to them both, and while Braithwaite knew he ought to object – his friends would tell him he was being taken advantage of, which was precisely the reason he hadn’t told any of them about it – the sight of Olivia sitting at the table doing her homework when he got home every single night that week had been enough to overcome all his qualms about the situation, and even the dull pain he was starting to develop in his lower back as a result of the uncomfortableness of the sofa. The thought had crossed his mind that he might not be entirely unwelcome back in his own bed, but frankly, life was quite complicated enough already.

      ‘Someone’s going over to take a set of prints from Jacqui now,’ said Nelson, cutting into his reverie.

      ‘Right.’ Braithwaite glanced at his watch. Nearly three o’clock. ‘I wonder if they’ll be able to turn them round by the end of the day?’

     

‘You’re lucky to catch me this late. I was just heading home.’

      ‘I’m glad we did.’ Whitehead stepped through the door that Jacqui O’Riordan was holding open for her. No one had bothered to clean off the graphite powder which the fingerprint team had dusted over the lock and door handle, she noticed.

      ‘D’you want to come upstairs? I was telling the constable that came earlier, we’ve got the all-clear to use the main office again, although Kyle’s room’s still out of bounds. And I don’t think anyone’s going to be using the fridge in the staff kitchen again in a hurry.’

      ‘No, we can stay down here.’ The chief superintendent gestured to the egg-shaped sofa, and O’Riordan obediently sat down, pulling the skirt of her sixties-style mini-dress demurely towards her knees. It looked like an original Mary Quant, thought Whitehead, who was old enough to remember such things. The girl certainly had the right figure for it. No hips to speak of and tits like fried eggs. She remained standing, looming over O’Riordan like a stern headmistress. Constable Robbins, who had entered behind her, leant against the front door.

      ‘When you gave your statement nine days ago, you said that neither you or Sushi Westerbridge touched Kyle Pennington’s body, or his heart when you discovered it in the fridge.’

      ‘That’s right.’

      ‘You still stand by what you said in that sworn statement?’

      ‘Yeah.’ She looked nervously between the police officers. ‘What’s this about?’

      ‘In that case, Miss O’Riordan, would you care to explain how your fingerprints came to be on the plate that held Kyle Pennington’s heart, inside the fridge which you claim you never touched?’

      ‘Oh.’ The producer looked down at her hands, which were resting on her bare knees, as if surprised to find them attached to her body. Then she gave a little smile, and looked up at Whitehead.

      ‘All right, chief superintendent. You’ve got me bang to rights.’

      Outside on the Westminster Bridge Road, the rush hour traffic thundered by.

      ‘I beg your pardon?’

      ‘I did move the heart. But not when we first discovered it. So I wasn’t really lying.’ O’Riordan at least had the decency to look abashed by the flimsiness of this defence.

      ‘When, then?’

      She stretched her back like a cat’s, trying to get comfy on the ridiculous piece of furniture. ‘After we’d called you. I decided to do some filming, and I moved the plate just to get a better angle. It was a stupid thing to do, and I realised as soon as I did it. It was just an instinctive thing, I suppose. When you’re looking through the camera, all you think about is how to get the best shot.’

      Whitehead stared at her with a look of undisguised loathing. ‘And you didn’t tell us this – because?’

      She stared up at her from beneath kohled eyelashes. ‘I was afraid I might be in trouble.’

      ‘And you bloody are.’ The chief superintendent’s lips were white with rage. ‘Were you aware that we’ve had officers fingerprinting hundreds of possible suspects for the last week because of your stupidity?’

      O’Riordan shook her head ruefully. ‘I… I thought you might have found some other fingerprints somewhere else.’

      ‘You’ve wasted a full week of police time during a major investigation. Which, I might remind you, is an offence. As is interfering with a crime scene. Both of which I intend to charge you with.’ She watched as O’Riordan’s lower lip began to tremble. ‘And don’t bother with the poor little girl act, because it won’t wash with me, love.’ She stomped across the reception and peered out between the blinds, to give herself time to calm down, as much as O’Riordan. When she was sure she could speak without swearing, she turned around.

      ‘What the hell were you filming it for, anyway?’

      ‘Second nature, I suppose.’ The producer dabbed at her eyes with a tissue, smearing her eye shadow. ‘It was bound to come in useful for something.’

      ‘Like what?’ Whitehead’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.

      ‘Oh, I don’t know. I thought we might pitch something to Channel 4 when this is all over. The Truth About Fame Factory, you know the sort of thing.’

      ‘Listen, you silly bitch,’ said Whitehead, striding over and bending down until her face was just a few inches away from the girl’s. ‘If you know the truth about anything, you don’t go to Channel Bloody Four. You come to me. Is that clear?’

      O’Riordan nodded meekly. Then she glanced over the chief superintendent’s shoulder at the constable behind her, and a sly look came over her face. ‘You know, if we did get a project like that off the ground, we would need a presenter,’ she said softly. ‘You’ve got a real presence – I’ve been really impressed with the bits of TV I’ve seen you do. Once this is all done and dusted, maybe we should have lunch?’

      Whitehead gasped, her eyes wide, her hand fluttering to her chest. ‘Really? My own show? On telly? I can’t believe it!’ She straightened up with a triumphant sneer. ‘God, it’s another world with you people, isn’t it? Add attempting to bribe a police officer to the charge sheet, Constable Robbins. And I think we’re going to need a search warrant, too. Just so we can be sure we’ve got every single bit of footage Miss O’Riordan made.’

      Jacqui shrugged her shoulders and sprawled back on the sofa. ‘Oh well. It was worth a try.’