Hushabye (12 page)

Kate rang the Fullmans’ house and got Mrs Bright on the end of the line.

“Gemma?” said Mrs Bright in answer to Kate’s question. “No, she’s not here today. I don’t know if she’s been in today or not, to be honest.”

Kate asked, fairly hopelessly, to speak to Nick, and to her surprise was speaking with him in a matter of seconds.

“Nick Fullman here.”

What are you doing at home?
She managed not to voice the question with some difficulty. Instead, she asked whether Gemma was expected in the office at all today.

“She’s not been in today,” said Nick, conventionally enough. Then his tone began to change to one of outrage. “She’s been really slack as a matter of fact, asked me for a couple of days holiday, which I could really have done without at this time, but I said yeah, no problem. Then she’s supposed to be back today and she doesn’t turn up, she’s not answering her phone...”

“She hasn’t been in contact?” said Kate. She was conscious of a faint, creeping unease.

Nick Fullman’s hard, angry tones came down the line.

“Not a phone call, not a text or an email. I’d go round to her place myself but I can’t leave Casey. I don’t know what’s the matter with her, She’s not like this usually.”

“I’ll call on Ms Phillips myself,” said Kate. Two memories popped up: Casey’s white face as she said
Don’t tell him, he’ll kill me
and Gemma’s face at the window of her house, looking furtively out at Kate from behind the curtains. That creeping feeling of unease was getting stronger.

“What’s up?” said Olbeck, as she put the phone down. Kate explained in a few sentences and he nodded his head.

“Think we ought to take a look?”

Kate was already gathering up her coat. “I do. Let’s go.”

They didn’t talk much on the drive there. The house looked as normal when they parked outside, a light on in the front room, the closed curtains glowing gently. Kate and Olbeck looked at each other.

“Come on,” said Kate, and they got out of the car and knocked at the door.

There was no answer.

Kate banged the cheap, loose brass knocker once more. Then once more. Then she knelt and shouted through the letterbox.

“Gemma! It’s DS Redman, Kate Redman. Are you there?”

Silence. Olbeck moved to the living room window and knelt, peering through the minute gap between the edge of the curtain and the windowsill. Then he straightened up.

“Let’s get that door open,” he said, and something in his voice made Kate shudder involuntarily.

The two of them got the door open in three shoulder charges. Inside the house was warm and stuffy, a faint breath of something in the air almost too intangible to notice. There was still enough for the two of them to approach the half-open living room door with dread.

Gemma Phillips lay slackly on the sofa, one outflung arm brushing the floor. Pulled tightly around her throat was a silk scarf, its marbled blue and green pattern horribly matched to the cyanotic hue of her dead face. Her mouth hung open and her eyes were closed.

Kate and Olbeck stood and looked for a long moment. Kate could hear her own fast breathing echoed in Olbeck’s but neither of them said anything – they just stood and looked at poor Gemma, lying there dead on the sofa until the silence stretched out interminably and Olbeck finally reached for his phone.

Chapter Thirteen

“She was killed with this,” said Doctor Telling, indicating the silk scarf coiled incongruously in a metal kidney bowl on the autopsy table. “Obviously. But it wouldn’t surprise me if she was drugged first. I’ll have to wait until the stomach contents have been analysed before I can say for certain. But from the posture, the looseness of the limbs...yes, I’d say it was highly possible she was drugged first.”

Anderton nodded. They were all there in the autopsy theatre – Kate, Olbeck and Anderton – watching Doctor Telling perform her work on Gemma Phillips.

“So she wouldn’t have known anything about it?” said Kate. She looked at Gemma’s face, plainer than ever now stripped of life and make-up, and felt a terrible sadness.

Doctor Telling shrugged her thin shoulders.

“I’m not sure. I wouldn’t have thought so.”

“I hope you’re right,” muttered Kate, almost under her breath. Olbeck patted her on the shoulder.

“Poor girl,” he said. Kate thought he was referring to Gemma, but who knew?

Back in the station control room, Anderton regarded the scene of crime photographs from Gemma’s house.

“No sign of a struggle,” he said. “No sign of forced entry. She almost certainly knew her killer.”

“Almost certainly?” said Kate. “I wouldn’t have thought there was any doubt about it.”

Anderton glanced at her.

“No doubt you are right, DS Redman. I never like to make emphatic statements such as yours until I’m absolutely certain of the facts.”

“That’s right,” said Olbeck, and Kate gave him an annoyed glance. “We’re assuming that Gemma’s murder is a direct result of Dita’s murder and Charlie’s kidnapping. But what if it’s not? What it it’s completely unrelated, just a bad coincidence? What if one of her internet dating buddies killed her?”

“Oh, come
on,”
said Kate. “That’s ridiculous. It’s got to be connected.”

“We have to look at every possibility.”

“Mark’s right,” said Anderton, interrupting Kate as she was taking a deep breath, about to launch into a tirade. “But you’re right as well. I want you to have a look at her bank statements. Go through them with a fine-tooth comb if necessary. Go through her
house
with a fine-tooth comb. Get the evidence.”

Kate shook herself, trying to calm down. “Yes, sir.”

“Get on with it then. I’ll swear the warrant for you.”

Kate remained standing. “What about the Fullmans?”

Anderton glanced at her.

“I’ll deal with them. Get on with looking in Gemma’s affairs. Olbeck, you too.”

“Has Nick Fullman got an alibi for the night of Gemma’s murder?” asked Kate, stubbornly.

“Are you trying to tell me how to do my job, DC Redman?”

“No, sir.”
Stop it Kate, you’re antagonising him. Just leave it
. “I’m just anxious to cover all bases, like you said.”
Just shut up
.

“Come on,” said Olbeck, propelling her towards the door. “Bank first. You can drive.”

Out in the corridor, he shook his head. “God, girl, don’t you know when to shut up?”

Kate twitched her shoulders crossly. “Oh, leave it out, will you? It’s just – you know we need to look at the Fullmans. At Nick Fullman particularly.”

Olbeck raised his eyebrows.

“But not Casey?”

Kate shook her head.

“Well,” said Olbeck. “You’re probably right. But you can’t go steaming in and accusing people without evidence, as well you know.”

“Are you telling me I don’t know that?” said Kate. “For fuck’s sake, Mark. That’s why we need to be checking alibis and so forth.”

Olbeck chuckled. “That’s the first time I’ve heard you swear.”

“I can assure you that it won’t be the last.”

“Look, Anderton’s no fool. He’ll dig up anything that necessary.”

They had reached the car. Kate flung herself into the driver’s seat.

“You suspect him, then?” said Olbeck quietly as he got in next to her.

Kate glanced over. “Don’t you?”

“It’s possible,” said Olbeck cautiously.

Kate made a noise indicative of impatience but said nothing else, putting her foot down on the accelerator.

The manager at Gemma’s bank was forthcoming and led them to a private room at the back of the bank with the paperwork all ready for them. Kate spread the statements out on the table and waited for the manager to leave.

“Plain as day,” she said as the door shut. She pointed. “Look, here and here. Large cash sums deposited.”

“Blackmail payments,” said Olbeck.

Kate nodded. “It’s possible. As you might say.”

He gave her a half-grin.

“The dates tally. Look, the first thousand goes in here, two days after Dita’s death. Then another a week later. Big one, that one. She must have used some of the cash to buy that Mulberry bag.”

“Someone didn’t want to pay out any more and killed her instead?”

“It looks like it. She must have known who took Charlie, or killed Dita, or both.” Kate stared across the room at the bank wall, unseeingly. “I
knew
she knew something. Secretaries always know something. I should have pushed her harder to talk.”

“You didn’t know she was going to be killed. Everyone’s always hiding something in a murder case, you know that. It’s finding out what’s important and what’s not that’s difficult.”

“I know. It’s just…” she let the sentence tail off in a sigh.

Olbeck gathered up the papers.

“I know. It’s shit. But let’s get this stuff back to the station and get to her house.”

“It has to be someone in that house,” said Kate as they left the building.

Olbeck looked across at her.

“You’re probably right,” he said. “But we need to–”

“Get the evidence, I know,” said Kate. They got into the car. “What happened with the Costa brothers?”

Olbeck exhaled loudly. “The usual. Superficial charm, then outrage and bombast at the accusation that they had anything to do with this case at all. ‘I’ve got two sons of my own, Detective Sergeant Olbeck’, as if that precluded any parent from doing anything criminal at all at any time. Both with rock-solid alibis for the night of the 14th.”

“What about the night Gemma was killed?”

“How would I know? It hadn’t happened when I interviewed them.”

Kate slapped her forehead. “Duh. Sorry.”

“You buffoon.”

Kate grinned, despite herself. “You’ve got a good vocabulary for a copper.”

“Oh, cheers,” he said sarcastically. “‘For a copper’. Do you mind? I get enough of that at home.”

Gemma’s little house had a forlorn appearance, made worse by the police tape cordon and the little straggle of curious onlookers. Kate wondered whether people would come and tie ribbons to the railings outside to join the few pathetic bunches of flowers that had been laid on the pavement. Pink ones, naturally. She gritted her teeth.

Ravinder Cheetam, Rav to his colleagues, and Jerry Hindley were already there, working methodically through cupboards and drawers. They nodded at Kate and Olbeck.

“There’s more designer stuff here than you shake a stick at,” said Rav. He held up a Prada bag. “Clothes in the bedroom. New iPad. Looks like she was spending for England.”

Kate stirred the tissue paper that had drifted onto the floor with her foot. “Shame she never got to enjoy any of it.”

“Right.”

“Jane and Theo are interviewing the neighbours,” said Jerry, to Olbeck. Kate couldn’t put her finger on it, but she had the impression that Jerry didn’t much like her. It annoyed her, but this wasn’t the time or place to worry about it.

“I’ll look upstairs,” she said.

Gemma’s bedroom was mostly white and pink, the bed unmade, a hot-pink quilted throw half-slipped to the floor. A grubby pair of slippers with the backs trodden down peeked out from under the bed. The sight of them made Kate feel sad again. She began to work through the bedside cupboard, finding the usual stash: condoms, tissues, old pens, broken necklaces, a vibrator shoved right to the back. In the base of the cupboard were several self-help books dealing with relationships. More glossy magazines. An older model mobile phone.

She moved to the wardrobe, which was stuffed with clothes, mostly the formal work suits that Gemma had so often been seen in, but some dresses, shirts, short skirts to show off those long legs. What seemed like hundreds of pairs of shoes. Kate thought of her own pathetic collection of footwear at home, a black pair of heels, work shoes, trainers, Birkenstocks. Sometimes she felt as if she was slightly weird, unfeminine, not in the least like women that the media and society kept trying to tell her were doing it right. Mind you, Gemma had seemed to be very much that type of woman, and where had it got her?

She got down on her knees to search under the bed, pulling out more shoe boxes, dust-covered hair clips, old tissues. The tips of her fingers touched something hard and square. She pulled it out – a photograph album. Leafing through it, she could see that the photographs were reasonably recent. Strange, to have a photo album at all – most people used digital albums. The photos were all of Gemma and Nick.
All
of them, Kate realised. Nothing revealing, just everyday shots of the two of them in the office, at various building sites and properties, a couple of party scenes where they shared the same frame. How strange. Poor Gemma must have had a massive crush on her boss. Had it been reciprocated? Was Casey as ignorant of her husband’s affairs as he was (as far as Casey knew) of hers? Kate made a mental note to talk to Nick herself and to hell with Anderton if he didn’t like it.

There was a photograph near the end of the album that snagged her eye. In it, Gemma and Nick stood side by side, smiling, and on Nick’s other side was a woman that after a moment Kate was able to place as Rebecca D’Arcy-Warner. Nick and Gemma were smiling into the camera, full, beaming smiles but Rebecca was looking out of shot and the expression on her face pulled at Kate, nudged her somewhere. It was a look of – what? Misery? Hunger? Something of the two, perhaps. It was an expression she’d seen somewhere before without being able to place it. It made her uneasy - it had a connection with something unpleasant in her memory. With what? She couldn’t remember. No doubt it would come back to her. She couldn’t tell where the photograph had been taken. The background was blurred – it looked something like a stone wall. She regarded for a moment longer and then shut the album.

Back at the station, Jane and Theo related the findings of their interviews with the neighbours.

“Nothing of great interest,” said Jane. She was short and plump, with glorious red curls of the kind you don’t see much anymore.
Pre-Raphaelite
, said Kate to herself, watching her talk. What a satisfaction it was to be able to find the right word. What a satisfaction it was to know you were at least adequately educated, even if you’d had to educate yourself.