Dead Alone (13 page)

As the mortuary attendant finished severing what the jogger’s foot had started, Jessie thanked God that they had found Eve Wirrel’s parents so quickly. Upper-class folk. Unprepared for what their daughter had turned into and how she had died. They confirmed the jewellery was hers. Remnants of a tattoo matched. DNA would prove the rest. The bagged hand showed no signs of a struggle. The blood revealed why: Rohypnol.

What was left of the stomach was removed. The contents would tell them when she had last eaten,
hopefully give them an accurate time of death. The mortuary attendant then pierced Eve Wirrel’s bladder and stale urine spurted out. Missed the attendant’s cup and covered his arm. It happened occasionally. As in life … Jessie thought of the artist’s installation, ‘A Particularly Heavy Week’. It had made headline news. Seven pairs of her soiled knickers. Each displayed on a podium. No glass case. This was in your face. Odour was an important aspect, Eve Wirrel had said in interviews. Jessie glanced quickly at Niaz. His cedarwood skin had paled to sycamore, but he was standing firm. Vomit and bleach. The smell of death. She wondered what Eve would have thought of this.

The mortuary attendant began to cut the skin off what was left of the face. This was the worst bit. The skinning …

Jessie dialled P.J.’s mobile number then waited several seconds before pressing the call button. She listened to it ring in her ear.

‘Jessie! I was just about to ring you.’

‘Why?’

‘Just wanted, um, to thank you really, for keeping the boy out of the press, and to see if you wanted to come –’

‘You have an Eve Wirrel installation in your hall at home.’

‘Oh. Yes. Obscene thing. How are you?’

‘Not your taste then?’

‘You think I want reminding how below average I’ve become in my old age?’

P.J. was trying to do that thing again. Reel her in. Speak softly to her. His voice was supposed to make her stretch out on a comfy chair, tuck her hands behind her back, the phone under her chin and have a good old-fashioned gossip. It wasn’t working any more.

‘Where did you get it?’

‘Eve Wirrel gave it to Verity.’

‘You told me you didn’t know her personally.’

‘I didn’t. She isn’t a friend of mine. What’s the big deal?’ He sounded defensive. Too defensive.

‘The big deal, P.J., is that Verity was sleeping with Eve. I would have thought that was personal.’ She was raising her voice.

Silence. Breathing. Silence. A door closed.

‘What the fuck has she been saying?’

‘Who?’

‘Eve, of course.’

‘Is it true?’

‘Fucking hell! Rumours, that’s all.’

‘Spread by Eve Wirrel?’ Jessie asked incredulously.

‘I’m not an idiot, I know Verity courted the press, and Eve had an exhibition on at the time. Call me a cynical bastard, but it was a lot of hot air, no doubt thought up by Verity.’

‘Headline hunting?’

‘Headline whore,’ said P.J. angrily.

‘You shouldn’t say such things about your wife.’

‘You didn’t know her.’

‘And you couldn’t control her.’

‘No?’ he said lightly. ‘Did
you
read anything about their “affair” in the press?’

‘No. But I wouldn’t.’

‘Too smart for that shit, aren’t you, Detective Inspector.’

Jessie wouldn’t rise to the bait.

‘How do you manage to control the press?’

‘I have a certain amount of clout in that department.’

‘And Verity – did you have a certain amount of clout with her?’

‘What’s this all about?’ asked P.J. sharply. ‘Okay, I admit it, I didn’t want the story breaking. Is that so hard to understand?’

‘But it wasn’t true,’ said Jessie. ‘You said they weren’t sleeping with each other.’

‘For a copper, you’re very naive. Since when did the truth matter? Look, Verity was many things, but she wasn’t a lesbian, or bi. She was a missionary girl. She moaned in the right places, groaned in the right places and lit a fag when she was through.’

Only for you, thought Jessie. Verity Shore may have been many things, but not a missionary girl. The evidence in the house in Barnes was enough to make her suspect that P.J. had got his wife wrong; Craig’s statement had clinched it. For Craig, Verity was a siren. A goddess. A dream
come true. He had got the best of Verity because he had given her what she wanted. Unconditional love. All she ever got from her husband was conditions. His and Bernie’s conditions.

‘What about Eve, was she bisexual?’

‘Why don’t you ask her? She got a lot of joy from humiliating men, so it’s possible.’

‘I thought you didn’t know her personally.’

‘Just look at her art,’ said P.J. quickly.

‘Why did you want to control the story?’

‘The boys, of course. Don’t you think they’d had enough bullying in the playground, without “lezzie boy” to add to the litany of insults? Gay is good as long as it stays behind the safety of the TV glass. Don’t be fooled, we still live in a homophobic world. Gay-bashing is sport in many areas, despite the television awards.’

Jessie paced her office. How far would P. J. Dean go to protect those kids? To keep them. Had his crusade to save his errant wife’s children gone too far? And who, she wondered, was saving whom?

‘Will you please tell me what’s going on?’ said P.J.

‘I don’t like control freaks.’

‘What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Come on, Jessie …’

‘Don’t Jessie me.’

‘What has she been saying? She obviously didn’t like me, the “
objet d’art
” is proof of that. Look, I wasn’t a bad husband,’ he said, ‘just the wrong
one. Eve is a nasty piece of self-publicising –’

‘She’s dead.’

No response.

‘Murdered.’

Still no response.

‘P.J. …?’

‘How?’

‘Can’t say at present.’

‘Is it linked? To Verity?’

‘Possibly.’

‘Craig was here, you know. He hasn’t left the house –’

‘I don’t think for one minute that Craig killed Eve. Nor Verity, for that matter.’

‘I’d hate to think what you’d do to a guilty man.’

‘I told you on the bridge what I do to the guilty.’

Jessie heard P.J. breathing down the phone. His breath was getting shorter.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said very quietly. ‘I fucked up.’

‘With Eve?’

‘With Craig. Jesus, I never thought …’

‘Craig is a lovely young man. He needs as much care as the boys. If not more.’

‘You think I don’t care for –’

‘It’s not about what I think, P.J., it’s about what you know. Verity swore him to secrecy about that house. Keeping his word must have nearly killed him.’

‘But he went there, on the Friday night, only he couldn’t get in. If he’d told us before …’

‘He wasn’t to know.’

‘I realise that. I just can’t believe he knew where she was. I can’t believe he was sneaking drink into her room!’ His voice was beginning to crack under the strain. Anger. The control freak had lost control.

‘It isn’t
his
fault,’ said Jessie. It’s yours. For turning a blind eye. It was so obvious that Craig was in love with Verity. In a way that only a seventeen-year-old can be. She was a sex symbol. She drank vodka in the bath with him, danced for him, swam naked with him, made love to him. The boy would have done anything she asked.

P.J. sobbed loudly, suddenly. The sound startled Jessie. ‘I can’t think. I don’t know what to think about. I know Craig won’t get out of bed, I know he won’t eat, I know I feel like shit …’ His voice cracked. ‘I should have kept those letters, I should have taken them seriously. I let her down, I let them all down. You’re right, I’m a useless bastard. No one, Jesus Christ, no one deserves to die like that. I mean, God, what were they thinking? She couldn’t swim, for fuck’s sake. I worry about the boys … Jesus, I think about how she died, and I … Sorry. Pull yourself together.’ He inhaled deeply. ‘Thanks, Jessie – I mean, Inspector. I know you’ve only tried to help. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Eve before, but there was nothing to tell, it wasn’t relevant. I’m sorry, so sorry …’

The line went dead. Jessie wondered whether that little performance had been put on purely for her.

In the open-plan office the enemy were huddled like cattle around a feeder. Mark and his boys.

‘What’s going on?’ asked Jessie.

Silence. A newspaper was spread open on the table. Jessie could see the double Ds from where she stood.

‘What’s going on?’ she said into Fry’s ear.

‘Some ex-con has whipped up a storm about the Verity Shore murder.’

‘Who?’

‘That ex-gangster who’s always parading himself as a crime expert on telly – Ray St Giles. He went for the jugular on this one.’

‘Oh shit.’ Jessie took the feature from her colleague. She speed-read it. ‘Did anyone see it, the programme?’

‘It’s on at three in the afternoon on some shitty cable channel. No one saw it.’

Mark Ward kept quiet.

‘Someone did – this paper is calling for his resignation. And there was I thinking that Verity Shore had fewer fans than us lot. Someone go to the press office and see if it got mentioned anywhere else.’ No one moved. Trudi came in. ‘Thought you might want to know, Ray St Giles is on
AM Today
, now, defending his actions.’ There was a stampede to the TV room.

Ray St Giles was spread over the orange sofa, looking very sure of himself. ‘I wasn’t saying anything, I was not being judgemental, I was simply interviewing the guests.’

‘But Verity Shore isn’t around to defend herself against Danny Knight’s allegations, or the allegations of any of your other guests,’ said the presenter. She looked nervous in her lilac blouse.

‘Look, sweetheart, everyone knows the kind of woman Verity Shore was. You think my guests were wrong,
you
tell me: why was she famous?’

The presenter tried to come back with a diplomatic retort. It fell flat. ‘A very talented actress?’

‘Acting what, though? I used to know a lot of women in the East End who did what Verity Shore did, only less successfully. They’d spend night after night down alleyways, in cars, in the nick. We revile one kind, yet we hero-worship another. Come on, isn’t that a bit hypocritical? If she was an actress, I’m the pope.’

‘He’s not pulling any punches, is he?’ said Fry.

That’s the second time someone has called Verity Shore a whore, thought Jessie. The interviewer looked nervous in front of the compact, energetic man, her Plasticine face shining under the studio lights. ‘Is it true that you’ve been temporarily suspended from your programme?’

St Giles sat back in his chair and grinned, flashing his chipped teeth like a hallmark. Labouring his cockney accent for the mid-morning viewers of England, he said, ‘They were angry immediately
after the show went out, but letters and calls came flooding in, commending our honesty. People are fed up with the endless PR spin, the self-promoting nobodies, people we have wrongly lauded as stars. Look, I’m not getting at anyone who can do their job, who deserves the adoration and the celebrity perks, but everybody from postmen to bank managers gets judged on performance ratings, so why shouldn’t these celebrities be? Due to huge public response, the cable company back-tracked. Now we’re on at six.’ St Giles winked at the camera. ‘Tune in tomorrow night for an intimate look at the late Eve Wirrel.’ The camera angle changed abruptly.

‘Shit! Shit! I don’t believe he said that. Did he just say –’

The door opened. Kay Akosa filled the frame. That was all Jessie needed.

‘You told me you couldn’t confirm it was Miss Wirrel.’

‘I couldn’t when you asked me. Her parents hadn’t got to the hospital, she hadn’t been formally ID’d. Would you have preferred we risk it and have Eve Wirrel calling up from a hotel in Barbados threatening to sue? Not to mention putting her parents, family and friends through unnecessary anguish.’

‘Well, you’d better make a statement and you had better make it good. Are you aware of the battle we have on our hands with the press? Do you realise how incompetent you look?’

‘No, but we do,’ said Mark as he left the room chuckling.

Jessie followed him out.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Kay Akosa shouted after her.

‘Church,’ she replied, turning her minidisk on and drowning out Mark’s snide retort.

Eve Wirrel had converted a church into a house-cum-studio. A council decision that still had the locals smarting. They couldn’t build so much as a rabbit hutch in this over-protected area of suburbia, but Eve Wirrel, she had a licence to do exactly as she pleased.

Allegedly a Catholic, Wirrel had claimed that her work was spiritual. She’d hinted at visions and voices, and insisted that she was merely a vessel for a greater being’s expression. It was a good take, less anarchic than her predecessors. Being the daughter of a baronet, the anarchic take wouldn’t have held much water. Jessie pushed the high arched door open, expecting another den of iniquity. She was surprised when the glossy pages of
Architectural Digest
leapt up and licked her face.

‘Very tasteful,’ said Burrows, walking towards her.

‘I’ve been looking for you. Ray St Giles has nailed Verity and blown the Eve Wirrel story.’

‘I know. Fry called.’

‘He’s fucking loving this.’

‘Don’t be too hard –’

Jessie put up her hand. She didn’t want to hear it.

The kitchen stretched the length of the nave: thirty foot of zinc atop two-foot-deep drawer units. Brushed steel rods lay in regimented lines, making the kitchen seem to stretch on and on, as far as the eye could see. Jessie ran a finger along it. Dust.

‘Not a bad surface to freebase off,’ said Burrows.

‘I didn’t know Wirrel was a druggie.’

Burrows shrugged. ‘She was a media babe, hung out with the flash-bulb faces, went to red-carpet functions and was an experimental artist to boot. I’d say the odds were quite low.’

‘Very poetic,’ said Jessie, looking in the fridge. Cans of Guinness. Cheddar. Uneaten tofu. Half a pack of bacon, going green. Mixed messages. She opened the freezer. Next to an empty ice tray were three plastic phials. The sort of thing the doctor gave you to pee in. They were labelled. Jessie took one out and handed it to Burrows.

Initials. Height in feet. Eye colour and race. ‘Well, well, well – looks like Eve Wirrel has been paying the sperm bank a visit.’

‘They don’t give it to you to take away,’ corrected Jessie.

‘I’ll take your word for it.’

‘Just bag them, Burrows.’

The cupboards were well stocked with unusable items. Fish paste. Date honey. Black-eyed beans, split. Jessie crossed the aisle to the sitting area on the left. She noticed a half-drunk cup of cold tea. ‘Get fingerprints on this. Found any hate mail, death threats?’

‘Nothing like that. In fact, it’s just a typical posh bird’s pad,’ said Burrows. ‘Sofa looks sat in, dog-eared mags, telly page is open. Whatever she was doing in the park, I’d say she was coming back.’

Jessie looked around her. ‘Thought she was, at any rate. Bedroom?’

‘In the crypt.’

‘Should’ve known,’ said Jessie. ‘Anything of interest?’

‘She wasn’t a girl who restricted her experimentation to the canvas. This way.’

Jessie followed Burrows down a curved stone stairwell. The treads had been smoothed to the softness of soapstone by the soles of bat-winged priests. The bed was a four-poster without the canopy. Each post was the thickness of a horse’s leg and engraved with entwined angels rising ever upwards. The swirling pattern tricked the eye into believing they were actually floating up to heaven.

‘She slept with the angels,’ said Jessie.

‘The dead, you mean. Isn’t this where they kept the skeletons? She was certainly into some kinky shit.’ Burrows lifted the lid on a heavy teak chest. ‘A Quality Street assortment of delectable sexual sweets.’

‘Burrows, what has got into you? You’re going all wordy on me.’

‘Dunno, must be all this creative air.’ He pulled out a sharp-toothed clamp. ‘It’s got my juices flowing.’

The bed was neatly made. Egyptian white cotton. Above it was a black-and-white photograph of Eve chained up by her wrists, her arms pulled taut above her head. Her feet dangling inches off the ground. More mixed messages.

‘Strip those sheets and send them to the lab.’ Jessie examined the portrait. ‘Where is the studio?’

‘Upstairs gallery section,’ said Burrows, holding up a cat-o’-nine-tails.

‘Is there a strap-on in there?’

‘You know you can’t be taking evidence away, boss.’

‘Too close to the wind, Burrows. Way too close.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Is there anything in the studio?’

Burrows smiled. ‘A lot of headless naked men.’

Jessie waited for him to explain.

‘In charcoal. Pretty crap, actually, for a million-dollar earner.’

Jessie stood on the thirty-foot landing. The division between the choir balconies had been knocked through, and now they formed a mezzanine above the nave. A regiment of gothic-style leaded windows ran the length of the upper walls, flooding the studio with diffused light. There was plenty of
space to paint and a big cushioned area for the models to display their wares. The back wall was decorated with pictures, postcards, photographs, paint charts, swatches of material, book covers, wallpaper, words. Every inch was covered with images. Jessie looked through the pile of nude drawings. All men. All headless. Handless. Footless. Verity Shore. Verity Shore. Verity Shore.

‘How was I supposed to know that Eve Wirrel didn’t paint heads, hands or feet?’

‘I’m not with you, guv.’

‘I want to find every last one of those men.’

‘How?’

‘I don’t fucking know. Look in her phone book. Ring her agent, gallery – there must be some kind of artist model agency. Do I have to wipe your arse as well?’

Burrows looked hurt.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t like playing catch-up.’

Jessie retraced her steps through the old church and out into the garden. Graveyard. Resting place for bones. Eve, sleeping with skeletons. A skeleton. Verity Shore. That
was
personal. Everything pointed back to Verity. It was a two-way thing. If only she’d known where to look. But she had known. She’d even been offered binoculars to get a clearer view. Someone had details. Intimate details. They were familiar. Or familial?

While the police machinery carried on harvesting Eve Wirrel’s life, Jessie gazed up at the church
tower. Rumours. Secrets. Celebrities were like icebergs. Too much was hidden below the surface. She walked around the circumference of the church. Paced it out. Rumours and secrets. She stared back up at the church. It looked as if the mezzanine inside should be twenty foot longer. There was no access to the bell tower either. Could it be that this exhibitionist also had something to hide?

Jessie returned to the gallery and stared at the heavily decorated wall with its confusion of colour and images. She looked back down at the sleek zinc kitchen, then back to the giant pinboard. Starting at one end, she began tapping the wall; it was stud partition. She lifted a few flaps of paper and material, pressing, feeling, tapping as she went. Three-quarters of the way along, she found what she was looking for. A concealed door. A gentle press to a photograph of a golden Labrador and the hinged entrance popped open. You couldn’t see the join behind the keepsakes. There was no door handle. This was supposed to stay hidden. Kept safe.

She entered the dark room behind the board. The temperature dropped. There were no windows. No filtered sunlight to warm the place up. Jessie reached inside her bag and pulled out the torch. She switched it on and aimed the narrow beam of light straight ahead. A naked man was nailed to a cross, his penis grotesquely engorged. A blank space where his head should have been. His hands and feet were missing too. Jessie found the light
switch. Garish halogen lights beamed down from above. It was a painting, about seven feet by ten, and it wasn’t finished. Around the crucified man, Eve Wirrel had painted writhing naked bodies in various hues of red. Magenta. Ochre. Crimson. Scarlet. Ruby. Burgundy. Cherry. They were all twisted and they were all men. The unfinished ones were initialled in pencil. It looked like a horrific colour-by-letters. Jessie thought of the phials in the freezer. Since Eve Wirrel’s body had been discovered, Jessie had ordered all the artist’s back catalogues. Nothing was as good, or as disturbing as this. Eve had titled it in thick, bleeding letters: ‘All Men Are Rapists’. Jessie’s eye moved back to the well-endowed centrepiece. It too was initialled.

‘Jesus Christ,’ whispered Jessie to herself. She thought about the woman in the morgue; the mortician had used a circular saw to cut through Eve Wirrel’s skull so the pathologist could get to her brain. The epicentre of her creative genius. It would have been weighed with all her other vital organs and, when they were done, the whole lot would have been thrown back in and sewn up. Why did Eve Wirrel hide her work? Was she afraid she would be copied? Or was she afraid she’d be caught? Was this a clue to the next victim? Or not. An ingenious plot, or a wild-goose chase?

P. J. Dean’s number appeared on her mobile. Jessie switched it to answering machine. Too many mixed messages. She needed to step back.

In the pub, she plied her team with whatever they wanted. Gin. Whiskey. Vodka. Lager. Bitter. Mild. It was all blotting paper to her.