Sweet Little Lies (Cat Kinsella #1)(13)

‘Run the CCTV again.’ Steele balls her hands into fists and leans hard on the table, knuckles taut and pearly white. ‘Watch this and store it, folks,’ she says, tapping her temple. ‘Brazen is not the word.’

We sit in grisly silence and watch a figure get out of the driver’s seat, stretching their back slowly, almost luxuriantly, as if they’ve just finished a long, arduous drive. There’s a quick glance away from the car, a last look up to Farringdon Road, perhaps – the only realistic source of interruption at that time of the morning – and then they open up the back seat and haul Alice Lapaine out by the shoulders, tossing her onto the tarmac and making every one of us flinch as her head smacks the road. The figure stands over her briefly, composed and stock-still, before getting back in the car and driving off. Nothing at all to suggest a crime of panic.

I’ve seen more signs of stress on a fly-tipper dumping a mattress.

‘Judging by build’ – Steele brings us back into the room – ‘I’d say we’re looking for a man, but we can’t completely rule out a strapping sort of woman.’

Craig smiles nervously, ‘Here, it’s not my Karen, is it?’

There’s a murmur of a laugh but it doesn’t take flight.

‘Cameras have the car heading east for a few miles but they lose it when it turns off the Romford Road,’ says Ben, looking apologetic, as if the fallibility of CCTV is his own personal failing. ‘I’ve alerted relevant CID – Barking, Dagenham, Hornchurch, Stratford, a few others. They’re going to keep their eyes out, but you know .?.?.’

‘Kids or dog-walkers. It’ll turn up somewhere. What’s left of it,’ says Parnell.

Steele hops back on the desk and flicks through her notebook which is pink, leather-bound and embossed with Keep Calm and Nick Villains. A present from me for her fiftieth last year.

‘So, we don’t have the car and we also don’t have her bag, her purse or her phone. No surprises there. POLSA are down on their hands and knees combing the area but let’s just say I’m not holding my breath.’ POLSA – Police Search Advisers, or in other words, Hardy All-Weather Heroes. ‘However, and I’ll have a drum roll for this please, we did find a receipt stuffed in one of her pockets. It’s for an espresso ristretto, whatever the hell that is. Bought at a café in Wandsworth on Friday, paid for by credit card, and thanks to the wonderful Seth Wakeman’s persistent stalking – and OK, maybe the small matter of Chief Superintendent Blake’s early morning intervention – VISA coughed up the details quickly.’ Seth takes a small bow. ‘The bad news is, and can you believe the utter sods-lawfulness of this, the café’s closed until Thursday. The two owners are on some Christmas market jolly in bloody Dusseldorf, so bang goes our chance of finding out if Alice met with anyone until then. It’s a bit off the beaten track so no CCTV either.’

A chinless DC rises up but I get there first. ‘A receipt’s hardly foolproof ID. How do we know it’s definitely her? She could have picked it up randomly, stuffed it in her pocket.’

‘It’s her. We need formal ID, of course, but Renée’s at the Thames Ditton address with the husband now and they’ve scanned through a photo and it’s definitely our girl. Actually, we need to get that up on the board, pronto. Kinsella, it’s on my desk. Do the honours.’

I walk into Steele’s office, a kaleidoscopic blur of box-files and dry cleaning, and quickly start moving papers around, tidying as I go. Under a coffee-stained memo from the Borough Commander, Alice Lapaine stares up at me through a clear plastic folder. Unbloodied and intact, she looks familiar somehow, although it’s more of a feeling, a vibration, than cast-iron recognition.

It’s an odd photo, I think, to sum up a life. Off-guard and out-of-focus. The kind of throwaway snap you’d take to use up the last of a film. Sitting on a garden chair, Alice’s lips curve upwards in an attempt at a smile, but something about her body language, the hunched shoulders and the crossed arms, looks off. Like she’s shrinking from the lens, trying to make herself small.

She doesn’t feel small to me, though. This blue-eyed, blonde-bobbed vision of complete-and-utter ordinariness is making my skin itch and my skull pulse.

I give myself a shake and walk out.

Steele’s still holding court.

‘So, the husband’s being driven in for formal ID in the next couple of hours. Once we have that, I’ll decide what exactly gets released to the media.’

‘The proper media, you mean,’ grunts Flowers, ‘It’s all over social media, thanks to the numpty who found her.’

I bristle at this, contemplate saying, ‘You mean the numpty whose life has been irrevocably tainted? The numpty who’ll have to relive this horror over and over in exchange for nothing more than a cup of tea and a Victim Support number?’ But Flowers has a prickly ego sometimes so I stay schtum, focusing intently on the floor instead until I’m sure the last remnants of pissed-offness have left my face.

Steele shrugs, crosses one dinky leg over another. ‘Not a lot we can do about that now, Pete. So, the husband, Thomas Lapaine.’ She holds up a finger. ‘One: he claims he hasn’t seen his wife in four weeks – she took off, not an unusual occurrence, apparently. Two: there was no one in when Renée got there around ten thirty a.m., so she had a quick chat with a neighbour, and she hadn’t seen him for days. Which doesn’t mean he’d gone AWOL, of course, just that their paths hadn’t crossed .?.?.’