Sweet Little Lies (Cat Kinsella #1)(102)

So Saskia tells all. The Hickses go down. One of the UK’s most wanted villains is back under our jurisdiction and Maryanne gets justice.

And I get to keep my job, or at least have a wild, gutsy, come-what-may stab at keeping it.

Everyone’s a winner, right?

I slowly nod my head but I feel laden with loss.





27

I picture us in the pub when this is all over. Flowers is getting the round in. Ben and Seth are monopolising the jukebox as usual. Me and Parnell have bagged our regular table – the oak-panelled booth, big and round enough to house a mid-size Murder team and Renée’s swearing she’s only staying for one – later claiming she meant one bottle, not one glass. Emily’s being chatted up by someone – could be one of the old boys who drink in here because the beer’s fairly cheap and they show the Channel 4 racing, or maybe one of the young suits, who pour out of local offices, professing their love for a ‘proper old boozer’ before loading up on low-strength bottled lager and bags of vegetable crisps.

As ever, the busiest woman in Christendom – DCI Kate Steele – ‘will be there in a minute’.

Then once the booze has been bought and the tunes have been chosen, conversation will inevitably turn to the moment this case cracked open. Our breakthrough. Everyone will stake a claim in it, of course. Exaggerate their part in its unravelling. But the fact of the matter is nobody swung this case one way or the other. No one gets the bragging rights. Because as far as anyone except me is concerned, at nine fifty-two p.m. on December 31st 2016, Saskia French walked into the reception of Holborn police station and voluntarily, and of her own volition, asked to speak with whoever was in charge of the Maryanne Doyle investigation.

Parnell was out at the time, having a quick walk around the block – his ‘evening constitutional’ to quote the great man himself, so Seth got the gist down while Parnell hot-footed it back to HQ, read Saskia her rights.

She refused a solicitor.

This is how it happened, no matter how it’s romanticised and re-configured in the annals of MIT4 history.

This is how it’s happening right now, in fact.

Present in the interview are Acting Detective Inspector Luigi Parnell and DC Renée Akwa. Parnell and Renée are a good combination. More nuanced than good cop/bad cop, they aim for friendly cop/formal cop with Parnell doing the empathy, Renée, the direct questions.

Slumped in the observation room watching everything on TV is me.

I haven’t worked out what I’ll say to Parnell about why I’m back here. Why I’m not tucked up in bed nursing my sudden mystery illness. All I know right now is that I need to be here. There’s no way I can let Saskia out of my sight, not now she a significant witness.

A significant witness with an incendiary energy you can never quite trust.

A significant witness who’s wearing a jumper of mine, nicked from the wardrobe of my old teenage bedroom.

*

‘OK, Saskia, let’s start at the beginning.’ Parnell leans back, getting comfy – a signal for her to do the same. ‘It is Saskia? Not Sarah?’

A slow smirk as she trails a finger along the edge of the table. ‘Saskia.’

‘Why did you change it?’ asks Parnell, as though just curious.

‘There’s no big story. I just wanted something more exotic for work. Sarah seemed a bit conventional, a bit wifey. That’s not what clients want.’

‘Fair enough.’

Renée takes over, masking her innate warmth with a cool, factual tone. ‘When did you first meet Maryanne Doyle, Saskia?’

She stretches out her hands, examines her chipped nails.

Arrogance personified but I know it’s all front.

‘In 1999. I was having a fag at the back of the clinic and it was fucking freezing so it can’t have been any later than say, February. She bummed a light off me, said she worked in an office across the road, and then every fag break for a few days after, there she was. Anyway, we got talking, just about bands and that, and then one day she produces these tickets – Faithless, Brixton Academy. I thought it was sold out but she just laughs, says she knows people, and then she says none of her mates are that into them, so do I fancy it? I mean, I thought it was a bit weird but I really wanted to see them so I thought “fuck it”. And then we sort of became mates. She always had loads of money, she was always paying for things – more gigs, swanky bars, the best clubs .?.?.’ She draws her hands back, sits on them. ‘Anyway, this went on for a couple of months and then she asked me. I knew she’d been building up to it then, this “new best friend” act had just been a load of bollocks.’

‘Asked you what?’ asks Renée.

She looks downwards. ‘If I’d be up for passing on the details of any girls booked in for abortions, or consultations, who I thought might be wobbling, especially Irish girls. She said she knew some guy who’d pay big for that kind of information. I worked on reception, you see – booked the girls in, watched them. You get to know the signs.’

‘And you agreed to do this?’

She rolls her eyes. ‘Well, I didn’t exactly say “yeah, no problem” the first time she asked, but I was skint, OK. Minimum wage had just come in, literally that week, and I was getting a pay rise to three pounds sixty an hour – when I told Maryanne, she burst out laughing. That kinda sealed it.’