Sweet Little Lies (Cat Kinsella #1)(11)

The door slams shut and I take out my phone. Ten fifteen a.m. Hardly worth going home now. However, in the interests of not getting bollocked, I wander down to Exmouth Market to buy toothpaste, a hair bobble, a lemony-stripe top from one of the many cutesy-kitsch boutiques and some cod liver oil, and then I head straight to the public loos to transform myself into someone who looks like they’ve had a quick power-nap and a change of clothes. Afterwards, to kill more time, I amble slowly towards Spa Fields, drawn to the sounds of shrieking children hurling themselves around the adventure playground – part of the regeneration of Exmouth Market, or the gentrification, if you’re being snide. When I was a child, Spa Fields had been known for much darker adventures and I’d never been allowed to play here. Noel used to frequent it though.

Drink, smoke, fight, repeat.

Once when I was six years old, the police brought Noel home from Spa Fields. Something about a girl and a smashed bottle. I sat on the stairs listening to Dad raising hell about Noel bringing coppers to his door. Screaming that ‘Uncle’ Frank would do his nut, and had he even thought about the effect on takings if ‘certain people’ got wind that the Old Bill had been seen sniffing around McAuley’s. Mum had just wanted to get to the bottom of it. To understand if there was another side to the story, or if she really had given birth to such a nasty piece of vermin.

I don’t know if she ever got her answer. It was certainly never mentioned again. Like so many things within our family, it was glossed over or blocked out. Dad managed to smooth things with ‘Uncle’ Frank, who incidentally isn’t our real uncle – he’s Dad’s ‘blood brother’. His ‘brother from another mother’ he insists when he’s drunk too much Bushmills.

Dad has two brothers. Real ones, those of the shared DNA kind. Uncle Jim and Uncle Kenny. I haven’t seen them in a long time and I don’t know too much about them, but what I do know is that, unlike ‘Uncle’ Frank, neither of them ever beat Dad up with a pool cue for talking out of turn to a rival outfit. Neither of them ever remarked that Jacqui had ‘a bankable body’ or offered her a job in their nightclub the night before she sat her A-levels.

Sitting on a bench beside the winter remnants of a foxglove tree, I wrap my coat tight around me and watch the children for a while, giddy with excitement that it’s only a week until Santa comes. Then I fiddle with my phone for a bit, fire off a few emails. Obsess about who this ‘sweet-ass with the lip-stud’ could be.

*

There was a Latvian girl who worked in our pub one Christmas. A student. She’d had a lip-stud too. Her name was Alina and she was supposed to be making her English better but she ended up making my Latvian better.

‘Mans vārds ir Cat un es esmu septi?as.’ (My name is Cat and I am seven.)

‘Man ir brālis sauc Noel un vi?? smar?o mazi??.’ (My brother Noel smells of wee.)

I liked Alina. She used to make me laugh by saying that her other job was dancing to pop music in her pants in ‘Uncle’ Frank’s nightclub. I don’t know what happened to her though. She was there one day and gone the next.

A bit like the Snowman in that sappy cartoon me and Dad used to watch.

Dad had liked Alina too.





4

I slip back into the station just before one p.m., the chill in my marrow fending off punch-drunk tiredness for the time being. Violent death makes restful sleep seem like a rather shallow privilege of the living anyway, and it’s not as if the Sandman and I are great pals at the best of times.

It occurs to me that I could ask Dr Allen for something to help me sleep. To date, I’ve generally relied on wine, weed and a whole ton of emotional eating to numb me into eventual slumber but maybe a chemical crutch might be nice, although I’m not sure of the protocol.

Do you wait to be offered?

Does asking for something sound the ‘not-coping’ klaxon?

More importantly, do I even care?

Right this second, probably not. With Leamington Square and my encounter with Noel trawling up long-buried memories and black tarry thoughts, the idea of some state-sanctioned oblivion buoys me more than it should.

‘DCI Steele?’ Parnell’s just ahead of me, slumped against the front-desk, interrupting the custody sergeant’s flow as he checks the dietary needs of some goon in a ‘Gangzta’ hat about to be booked in.

The Sergeant glowers at Parnell. ‘Third floor. Door with the broken handle.’

In reality, we don’t need directions as the gravitational pull of an incident room is Herculean in strength. Stepping out onto the third floor, we instinctively turn left and follow the corridor to the end, straight and purposeful like darts, ignoring all the early-afternoon hustle of a central London station. From a few steps away, I clock Steele through the doorway looking sharp and match-fit, bouncing on her stockinged feet, all five feet three of her – shoes indiscriminately discarded somewhere, no doubt. ‘I can’t think straight with sore feet.’

Prepping the incident board are man-mountain DS Pete Flowers and blade-thin DC Craig Cooke – aka the Feast and the Famine. Both are solid coppers, without question. Diligent types. Flowers could probably make inspector if he wasn’t so charmless, while Craig’s a good guy to have around, a one-man-band of dad jokes and contagious optimism. I give a thumbs-up to Seth, still beavering away thanks to three cans of Red Bull and the lure of a gold star from Steele, and I smile vaguely at a stunning girl in a mustard duffle who I’ve worked with before – although when I say ‘worked with’, I don’t mean in the Cagney-and-Lacey sense – just that we shared the same kettle, copped the same flak.