Snarl (6 page)

Chapter Seven

Kate had had a clear picture of the cleaner in her head, especially after she learned her name was Mary Smith. Middle-aged, working class, overweight and homely – Kate chastised herself for the stereotype, but somehow, the mental picture persisted. It was something of a shock to find that Mary Smith was in her very early twenties, blonde, slim and with an impeccable accent. She was dressed casually, in a pink T-shirt and tight blue jeans, with her long hair pulled back into a low pony tail. Her good looks were apparent at a second glance, but at first sight were subsumed beneath the utter shock and terror distorting her face. Mary’s pink T-shirt had a jarring pattern of red dots and jagged stripes, which Kate realised, after a moment, were blood stains.

The officers sat down. The WPC, Mandy – Kate knew her very
vaguely – kept a comforting hand on Mary’s trembling shoulder and handed her another mug of tea. Enough sugar in it to make the spoon stand up straight, Kate had no doubt. She had a sudden vivid flash of her grandmother saying exactly that, as an eight-year-old Kate handed her an afternoon cuppa. What was Nana’s other tea-related phrase? Strong enough to trot a mouse on. Kate blinked and dismissed the memory, bringing herself back to the present and the interview at hand.

“Now, Miss Smith,” began Anderton. “I’d like to thank you for talking to us. I appreciate what a dreadful shock this must all have been.”

Mary Smith said nothing but her shuddering increased. A little tea splashed over the edge of the mug clamped in her hands. Mandy bent over and gently removed it, keeping her hand on Mary’s shoulder.

“I’d just like to hear what happened when you arrived at the house,” said Anderton. “Can you take us through what happened?”

Mary Smith had been holding herself rigid. At Anderton’s gentle request, she gave a small nod and winced, as if that tiny movement hurt her. “It all looked totally normal from the outside,” she said after a moment, in a tone so low she was almost whispering.

“You have a key?” Anderton
asked, after it became clear that she wasn’t going to say any more.

Mary swallowed and made a visible effort to pull herself together.
“Yes, I’ve got keys to the front door and the alarm codes. I got here – I think it was about ten thirty, normal time. It all looked so normal.”

“And then what happened?” Anderton prompted.

Mary swallowed again. “I unlocked the front door—”

“Wait,” Olbeck interrupted. “The front door was locked?”

Mary nodded. “That’s why I didn’t realise – I didn’t think anything was wrong… it would normally be locked.”

“Right. Sorry – go on.”

Mary pinched either side of her nose, shutting her eyes momentarily. “I unlocked the door and went into the hallway and I saw – I saw Darryl—”

She drew in her breath in a great sobbing gasp. For a moment, Kate was sure she would collapse again
, but after a moment she went on, her voice shaking.

“The lights were off and it was dark – it’s always quite dark in there
, as there aren’t any outside windows, so I put on the light and – Darryl was there,
dead
, in all that blood… I thought – I thought I was dreaming for a moment. It was like… like something from a nightmare. I stepped in the blood, I didn’t even realise I had – I was frozen for a moment—”

Her voice failed and she drew in another whooping breath. Mandy patted her arm encouragingly.

“Go on, Miss Smith,” said Anderton.

“I ran towards him, I – I could see he was dead, logically I could see he was dead
, but I couldn’t help it – I was going to feel his pulse but then I saw the cut in his neck and I couldn’t touch him—” She looked pleadingly at the officers, as if they would take her to task for it. “I’m sorry but I couldn’t, I was hysterical – I didn’t know what to do…”

“You’re doing really well, Miss Smith – Mary. What happened then?”

Another shuddering breath. Mary’s eyes were closed, her chest rising and falling fast. “I was going to go on, go through the house to see if Jack and Madeline were there – I thought – well, I wasn’t really thinking anything, I just was kind of blindly going forward – and then I thought ‘suppose whoever did this is still here,’ and that was it… I just ran, ran out the house and down the driveway. I – I don’t remember much else.”

As Anderton told them later, a woman from the village
, walking her dog along the main road, had seen Mary come screaming out of the driveway, blood-streaked and hysterical, and caught her in her arms. She was the witness who’d called the emergency services.

“So, let me just check that we’ve got everything,” Anderton
said, very soothingly. “You arrived, as normal, at about ten o’clock this morning. You unlocked the door, which is what you would normally do, and you walked in and found Darryl on the floor.”

Mary nodded.

“Would Jack Dorsey and his wife normally be at home during the day on a Friday?”

Mary took
in another deep, shaky breath. “Jack definitely wouldn’t be. He’s always at work. Madeline’s sometimes in, but just as often she’s out. That’s why I had the key and the codes.”

“I see. How did you get the job here?”

Mary looked confused for a moment before her face cleared. “Through the university. I’m a student at Bath Spa.”

“How long have you been working here, Mary?”

“Um… not long. About six months.”

“That’s great. Could I just ask you to hold on one moment? I’m sure Mandy will make you anot
her cup of tea.”

Anderton drew his offi
cers to one side for a moment. “Theo, can you take over here? I don’t think there’s much more she can tell us, other than what she’s already said, but you never know. Kate, Mark, can you get on and see if you can find the CCTV? Quick as you can.”

They all nodded. Theo sat back down next to Mary. Olbeck inclined his head towards Kate. “After you.”

“No, I insist,” said Kate, standing back. “After you, DI Olbeck.”

“Just get on with it,” said Anderton, half smiling. “I’m off.”

“Where are you off to, sir?” Kate asked as they let the kitchen.

And
erton’s face became grim again. “Hospital,” he said, briefly. “To see if Madeline Dorsey’s alive or dead.”

Chapter Eight

“So where’s this party, then?” Stuart asked as he helped the others dismantle the table and load it into the back of the dirty white van that they’d parked just outside the gates of MedGen. Stuart, along with James and Rosie, had been manning the leaflet table since he arrived at ten thirty that morning. The leaflets had a variety of gruesome pictures displayed beneath shouting black headlines. Stuart had seen several people, obviously out walking their dogs, stop, looking interested in what they were doing, catch sight of the pictures of bunnies clamped to tables and puppies punctured with needles, and recoil, walking on with a nervous glance back. He wondered whether to point out that these leaflets seemed to be totally counterproductive to their cause and decided not to.

“We’re heading there now. Want a lift?” asked Rosie. She was struggling to lift a heavy box into the back of the van. Stuart lifted it from her arms and slotted it into place. “Oh, thanks. Why don’t you come with us?”

“Sure, will do. It’s not like I even know who’s throwing it,” said Stuart. “Whose house is it?”

Rosie had turned away to gather more boxes. James was already climbing into the front seat of the van. Seeing he wasn’t going to get an answer, Stuart shrugged and went to help Rosie collect the last of the boxes. He wasn’t dressed for a
party, but what the hell – he doubted very much it would be a black-tie affair.

They drove for about twenty minutes, Stuart crouched uncomfortably in the back of the rattling, clanking van
, with boxes of leaflets sliding into him as they drove around corners. He wiped some of the dirt off the back window to see if he could see where they were going. James was following the dual carriageway out of the town, heading for the outskirts on the north side, where the village of Armford had long been swallowed up by the creeping boundaries of Abbeyford. Stuart pushed a box away from him and noted the road sign that flashed past. They were driving into a housing estate built around the nineteen thirties, by the look of the houses, travelling along progressively narrower roads until they drew into a cul-de-sac where the gardens of the houses backed onto a scrubby piece of woodland. The van stopped with a jerk. Stuart opened the back doors and clambered out, wincing at the bruises on his thighs inflicted by the sliding boxes.

It was about six o’clock, not yet quite dark. They had parked outside a run-down detached house, the front garden paved with concrete. Stuart followed James through the open door of the house and was immediately met by a wall of heat and a fug of cigarette and spliff smoke so thick it felt like a physical barrier. Trying not to inhale, he followed James’s denim-clad back through to what turned out to be the kitchen, although Stuart was fucked if he would dare eat anything produced in
the fetid little room. There wasn’t any food anyway, merely a sink full of beer and a table crowded with wine bottles and cans. People were everywhere; smoking, talking, shouting, waving to one another. Most were young, most were clearly activists – there were a lot of piercings and tattoos and interesting hairstyles. Stuart had tied his dreadlocks back this evening. One thing he was looking forward to, after this assignment finished, was getting the whole bloody lot cut off. That would be first on his list of things to do once he was back in the real world.

He
, James and Rosie grabbed beers and made their way out through the crowds to the garden beyond the kitchen door. It was just a square of lawn and a tumbledown fence, but the evening air was beautiful; soft and warm in a way that English spring nights so rarely were. There was an outside light which, despite the dingy shade, had attracted a fluttering cloud of moths and insects forming a moving corona.

“Whose house is this?” asked Stuart.

“Dunno who it
belongs
to,” said James, “But we know a few of the guys who live here. It’s a squat.”

Stuart should have guessed. He thought longingly for a second of his own flat back in London; minim
al furniture, many gadgets. “Who’s that, then?”

Rosie was crouched awkwardly on a low brick wall that ran partway along the length of the garden boundary, rolling a joint. She gave the papers a final, expert twist.

“Angie lives here, doesn’t she?” she asked, of no one in particular. “And Rizzo. I don’t know really, people just seem to drift in and out. I stayed here for a bit myself, when I first came down.”

“Before you met me,” said James.

“Right.”

She lit the joint, took a deep drag and handed it to Stuart. He lifted it to his lips. As he could spend the evening seemingly doing so
me serious drinking while actually remaining as sober as a teetotal judge, he could also do a credible impression of a man toking hard without actually doing so. The Bill Clinton Method, he thought, with an inner grin.

Quickly as he decently could, he passed the joint on
to James. He needed to know more about the loosely knit group he’d infiltrated, and this party was the perfect opportunity to do some tentative preparatory digging. He’d tried, subtly, to find out a little more about James and Rosie’s immediate friends and fellow activists but, for people single minded about a certain cause, they were frustratingly vague about their colleagues and mates. Perhaps here at this party, he could start to ascertain his next move, who he should be taking a deeper interest in.

He went back inside to fetch more beers, an exercise designed to continue the good impression he was making on James and Rosie and to give him the opportunity to stake out a few of the fellow partygoers.

He walked slowly; it was impossible to do otherwise, given the crowded space, but he wanted to keep his ears open to the possibility of overhearing something interesting. He reached the kitchen. For a moment, the press of bodies in front of him opened up a little and that was when he saw her.

She was standing under the harsh
strip light, bathed in a strident white light that would have been utterly unforgiving to nine out of ten women. She was the tenth. The brilliant white light turned her face to a beautiful blank mask, bleaching out all the little imperfections that you saw in normal skin. Her hair was jet black and very short, almost a sculpted cap that hugged the contours of her perfectly shaped head. All Stuart could see for a moment was a sulky red mouth and two huge dark eyes, as her gaze met his.  A challenging stare. For a second, he was aware of a surge of anger, almost as strong as the opposing one of desire.

The challenging, almost aggressive look was gone in the blink of an eye. Stuart wondered whether he’d imagined it. Now she was looking over at him with the tiniest trace of a smile, her face softened and open. He made up his mind.

“Hi.”

She looked up at him from under her long lashes.
“Hello.”

“I’m Mike.”

“Hi Mike. I’m Angie.”

His ears pricked up a little at that.
“This is your gaff, isn’t it?”

She nodded. Up close, he could see faint freckles on her pale skin, the merest dusting of them
, like gold glitter spread over her little nose. She wore a slash of black eyeliner and that red lipstick, but no other make-up.

“It doesn’t belong to us. We’re squatting here. It was empty and unloved so – we took it on.”

Stuart looked around at the squalid room surrounding them. Angie followed his gaze and laughed. The laugh transformed her face, from beautiful but chilly sculpture to a more appealing, boyish gamine. Stuart could feel the faint warmth of her body from a few inches away, they were standing so close.

“Yeah, I know,” she said. “It’s pretty shitty. But beggars can’t be choosers.”

She had an unexpectedly deep voice for such a delicate looking girl, rather husky, as if she were just getting over a bad cold. She confirmed the reason why after a moment of silence between them. “Coming for a smoke?”

“Lead on,” said Stuart, who sighed inwardly at the thought of another fake toking session. Still, if that was what it took…

They passed James and Rosie on their way through the garden and Angie stopped when she saw them. She and Rosie greeted one another with a kiss on the lips, which inwardly raised Stuart’s eyebrows. James didn’t seem to mind, looking on with a slightly lecherous smile. The four of them stood and smoked and talked. Stuart tried to quell his impatience. He wanted to talk to Angie on her own.

“Who’s ‘we’?” he asked Angie, in a break in conversation.

She looked at him with those large dark eyes, eyelids made heavy with dope. “What?”

“You said ‘we’ took it on. The house.”

“Oh, yes,” she said. She passed the joint to Rosie and hoisted herself onto the brick wall, kicking her heels against the bricks. “There’s a few of us here. Rizzo and Charlie, mostly. People come and go.”

“Seen Kitten lately?” asked James.

Stuart had his eyes fixed on Angie’s face and he saw the tiny ripple of some kind of emotion go over her face, gone in an instant. She pushed her hair back from her forehead.

“Not lately,” she said, a trifle coolly.

There was a moment’s silence. Then Rosie started talking about the protest, how she was sure it was having an effect,
they must be getting pissed off with us by now
… Stuart kept his eyes on Angie. The mask had come back down over her face and, after a moment, she slid off the wall.

“Getting a drink,” she said. She gave Stuart a look he couldn’t quite decipher and after a moment, she walked away.

Stuart hesitated. He wanted to follow Angie and he wanted to know more about this Kitten…. He made up his mind in a split second, no time to dither and walked off after Angie, miming a ‘getting a beer’ motion to James and Rosie. He heard Rosie’s derisive snort behind him and took a moment to wink at her before quickening his pace to keep Angie in view.

She walked straight past the table of drinks in the kitchen, through to the hallway and turned up the stairs. He saw people, men mostly, turning to stare at her as she passed. He followed her up the stairs, looking at the smooth white skin at the nape of her neck where her hair grew in twin dark points. There was a second, smaller staircase on the landing and Angie climbed that, Stuart following her. The stairs ended in a blue-painted door at the top and beyond the door was what was obviously Angie’s bedroom.

Stuart paused for a moment in the doorway, getting his bearings. It was difficult because, as he quickly realised, the walls and ceiling were covered in tiny, glittering shards of mirror glass, hundreds of them; a mosaic of reflections, lit only by the candles that stood in the tiny iron heath in the chimney breast. Stuart turned slowly, watching an infinite number of tiny Stuarts turn with him, moving in the mirror pieces. There was hardly any furniture in the room, just a small chest of drawers, a bookcase stuffed with books and a double mattress on the floor, covered with a patchwork quilt. There was a large amount of computer equipment arranged on a desk against the wall, the oversized screen dominating the room. Several video cameras were arranged neatly next to the keyboard. Angie sat cross-legged on the quilt, a small wooden box in her lap, watching him with a small, amused smile.

“Far out,” said Stuart. He put a finger out to the nearest wall, feeling the individual edges of the mirror pieces. “How long did it take to do?”

“About ten years,” said Angie absently, occupied in a hunt for something within the wooden box. “No, not really. About three weeks. I was almost blind by the end of it, fiddling with all those tiny little pieces.”

“Amazing.” Stuart realised what she’d been hunting for as she withdrew it from the box – a small plastic bag half filled with white powder. She looked up and saw him watching.

“Want some?”

Stuart didn’t hesitate.
“If you can spare it.”

“Wouldn’t have offered if I couldn’t’.” Angie patted the mattress beside her and Stuart sat down carefully.

He watched as she shaped the powder into two lines, neat snowy drifts on the top of a CD case. Even after years in the field, he still felt that tremor of anxiety at the thought that he, a police officer, was about to do something illegal. He would still do it, of course, as small a line as he could. The last thing he needed now was to arouse Angie’s suspicion.

She offered him the
CD case and he shook his head. “Ladies first.”

She grinned and ducked her head and while she was still head down and rubbing her nose, he took the case, whisked the majority of one line off of the surface with his thumb and quickly inhaled the miniscule amount that was left.

He was hoping that the coke would make Angie open up a little, but when she turned to him with glittering eyes and parted lips, he could see that she had a more wordless activity in mind. He had a second of hesitation, training too strong in him to be able to ditch it without a qualm, but then her lips were on his and her hands on him, and all his thoughts of ethics and morals were swept away in an instant of reckless abandonment.