The Killing Habit Page 13

  ‘We had something on the train,’ Kitson said.

  A bacon roll for Kitson and a skinny muffin for Chall, grabbed from a bakery at Liverpool Street station, just before they boarded.

  ‘So, come on then, tell me about Nicola,’ Kitson had said, once their breakfasts were finished.

  ‘Tell you what?’

  ‘Dish the dirt. Come on, you’ve worked with her long enough.’

  ‘There really isn’t any,’ Chall said.

  ‘You’re loyal.’ Kitson sat back and nodded. ‘That’s good.’

  ‘So what about Thorne? You’ve worked with him a long time.’

  Kitson said nothing.

  ‘That makes two of us then,’ Chall said. ‘Loyal.’

  ‘Nothing to do with being loyal,’ Kitson said. ‘Just that there’s nothing to tell you he wouldn’t tell you himself. Plenty to tell, mind you, but we haven’t got enough time.’

  ‘It’s the best part of two hours to Norwich.’

  Kitson shrugged. ‘Like I said…’

  ‘So.’ Barin Fadel shuffled forward on the sofa and reached for his wife’s hand. ‘Why have you come such a long way? Is there any news?’

  ‘We’re looking at the case again,’ Kitson said. ‘Which is not to say that other officers ever stopped looking at it.’

  ‘Just coming at it from a slightly different angle,’ Chall said.

  Mina shook her head. ‘We already said everything to the police afterwards. We said it lots of times.’

  ‘I know,’ Kitson said. ‘But that was four months ago and we were hoping that you might have remembered something. Anything.’

  The husband and wife looked at each other. He had a full head of silver hair and, though retired, was still dressed as though he would be going to work. A shirt and tie, a brown cardigan. If the man’s clothes were perhaps a little drab, his wife’s were anything but. She wore a red trouser suit over a white blouse, the jacket decorated with an enormous brooch which complemented the gold bangles around both thin wrists. Her highlighted hair was perfectly coiffured, Dynasty-style, and her pink fingernails looked recently manicured. A woman who clearly took pride in her appearance and was unaware, or unconcerned, that she looked somewhat overdressed in her suburban sitting room.

  ‘Too busy to have friends, you said?’ Kitson looked from one to the other.

  Leila’s father shook his head. ‘No, no… of course she had friends, because people liked her.’

  ‘She was the most popular doctor at the surgery,’ Mina reminded them.

  ‘Too busy to socialise, I meant. Not the same thing at all.’

  Both still had strong Iranian accents, despite the fact that they had moved to the UK in the mid-eighties. They had lived in the same house for the best part of thirty years, no more than a mile from the surgery at which their daughter had worked and only a little further from the flat in which she had died.

  It had all been in the case notes, which Chall and Kitson had studied on the train. Both looking out every few minutes at the dirty browns and greens of the flat farmland rushing past, before dragging their eyes back to the pictures of a strangled woman: froth at the corners of her mouth, a black and bloated tongue that was virtually severed, clenched between perfect white teeth.

  ‘Leila was smartly dressed when she was… found.’

  ‘Of course,’ Mina said. She spun one of the delicate gold bangles around her wrist.

  Chall nodded. It was possible that Mina Fadel’s commitment to a highly polished appearance had simply rubbed off on – or been drummed into – her daughter. But he doubted it. He glanced across at the framed photographs arranged on a cupboard near the television: Leila posing proudly with her degree certificate; sitting somewhat formally between her parents; arms wrapped around her younger brother. ‘Could she have been going somewhere, perhaps? Or do you think she might have been somewhere?’

  ‘The police asked us this before,’ Mina said.

  ‘Yes, I know —’

  ‘We can only tell you what we told them.’ Still clutching his wife’s hand, Barin Fadel thumped both into the sofa cushion for emphasis. ‘Leila was a professional person and she took her appearance very seriously. These were the sort of clothes she would have worn to work every day.’

  ‘This was a Saturday, though,’ Kitson said.

  ‘Yes, I know that.’

  ‘Leila hadn’t been at the surgery that day.’

  The old man could not mask the twitch of irritation. ‘My daughter was always smartly dressed.’

  A hundred and sixty miles away, Tom Thorne sat in the kitchen of a shared house in Canterbury, watching a young woman drink tea that was green and smelled like fish.

  Fish that had been recently shampooed.

  Herbal tea aside, his expectations of the student house in which Zoe McCausland lived had been largely confounded. Based purely on old episodes of The Young Ones, Thorne had prepared himself for multicoloured bikes in the hall, mushrooms blooming in a freezing toilet and a sign on the fridge saying DON’T EAT MY CHEESE! As it was, the kitchen, like everywhere else he had seen, was spotless, with washing folded neatly into a wicker basket by the door and a dishwasher chuntering behind him. It certainly appeared to be a far cry from the heady student lifestyle Phil Hendricks and others claimed to have enjoyed; one Thorne often regretted having missed out on himself.

  The university of life was all very well, but there were early starts and taxes to pay and not nearly as much sex.

  The girl, who had been a friend of Annette Mangan before she was strangled to death six months earlier, was not what Thorne had been expecting either.

  She was rosy-cheeked, with small, bright eyes and a mop of curly hair. It did her credit, Thorne thought, that she had not tried to disguise the fact that she was every bit as middle-class as her voice revealed her to be, that she was happy with who she was. She was not quite a young Ann Widdecombe, but take away the diamond stud in her nose and she was nobody’s idea of a third-year drama student.

  ‘I didn’t actually know Annette that well,’ Zoe said. ‘I told the police that at the time. I mean, as well as anyone else, probably…’

  ‘Well enough to know if she was seeing someone?’

  ‘I think so. I don’t know.’

  ‘There was no regular boyfriend?’

  ‘No.’ She sipped her fishy tea, and smiled. ‘I mean, not unless she kept him hidden away somewhere.’

  ‘You never saw her with anyone?’

  Zoe shook her head. ‘No… but she said something once that made me think there might have been a bloke. Just a throwaway comment or whatever, I can’t remember exactly. Sorry.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Thorne said.

  The girl put down her mug and looked at him. ‘So, you don’t think Annette was killed by a stranger?’

  Unlike the murder in Bristol, there were no signs of forced entry at the small flat in which Annette Mangan had lived alone and the original SIO had speculated, quite reasonably, that she may well have known the man who had killed her. Like Leila Fadel and Patricia Somersby, she had not been dressed anywhere near as casually as one might have expected late in the evening. A black dress, stockings and heels. There had been no jewellery found on her body, but abrasions on several fingers had led the original investigation to believe that this was probably taken by her killer, along with her phone and laptop computer and the cash in her handbag.

  Before Thorne could answer, a young man ambled into the kitchen and stood watching them. Now, this one was more like it. Bare feet and barely awake, in tracksuit bottoms and a faded Star Wars T-shirt; a beard that made him look as if someone had pasted glue on to his chin and then thrown pubic hair at it.

  ‘This is Detective Inspector Thorne,’ Zoe said. ‘He’s here to talk about Annette.’

  The boy nodded and made a face, then turned and padded out again.

  ‘What was all that about?’ Thorne asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That look, just then.�
� Thorne knew the ‘oh, police’ look very well and it had not been what he’d seen on the boy’s face. The expression had changed at the mention of Annette Mangan’s name.

  Zoe suddenly looked a little awkward. ‘Well, if I’m honest, Annette was a little bit… strange.’

  ‘I still think it was about drugs,’ Barin Fadel said. ‘They had break-ins at the surgery once or twice; you know, people looking for drugs.’ His wife nodded, next to him. ‘Perhaps whoever killed Leila thought she kept some at home. Got angry when they couldn’t find any and our daughter simply got in the way.’

  Kitson nodded as though she were considering it, but she knew such a possibility had been quickly dismissed first time round. Yes, if the man responsible for her murder had been a junkie he would certainly have stolen Leila’s phone and any cash he could find, as the killer had done, but if he was looking for drugs, why wasn’t the place ransacked and why leave without taking her laptop computer?

  Why kill her at all?

  ‘I know you said Leila had friends.’ Chall looked at Mina. ‘Could any of them have been men who were… more than just friends?’

  Leila’s father shook his head immediately. ‘We would have known. She was always far too busy with her job, but if there had been anyone she would have told us.’ He looked to his wife for confirmation, but her eyes dropped to her hands, now folded in her lap.

  ‘What?’ Kitson asked.

  The woman seemed a little smaller suddenly, shrinking back into the sofa cushion. Her voice was smaller too, when she said, ‘I did wonder sometimes.’

  Her husband was staring at her. ‘Wonder what?’

  ‘If she was seeing someone, or at least trying to meet someone. At first I thought it was just wishful thinking, you know, because I wanted her to be happy, but then I got a feeling about it.’

  ‘Why on earth didn’t you say something four months ago?’

  Kitson and Chall watched, and listened.

  ‘Because it was just a feeling, but I think about Leila all the time, every minute of the day —’

  ‘So do I —’

  ‘And recently I’ve started to think that perhaps I was right. Some days she seemed… brighter, you know?’ She reached across and patted her husband’s leg. ‘Maybe only a mother would notice these things, but when she called me to talk or came round for a chat there was something in her voice… a spring in her step.’

  ‘We all have good days and bad days,’ her husband said.

  ‘No, it was more than that. She was buying new clothes, too, and sometimes she talked about eating at nice restaurants.’

  ‘It could have been with one of the other doctors.’ Barin turned to look at Chall. ‘A colleague.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Mina said.

  ‘Did she ever mention a name?’ Kitson asked. ‘Just in passing, maybe?’

  Mina shook her head, then turned as her husband stood up suddenly and walked across to the cupboard near the television. He picked up one of the photographs, wiped the frame with his sleeve and put it down again.

  ‘Bloody photographs,’ he said. ‘We should have more than photographs.’

  Several times, in similar situations, Kitson had trotted out something about happy memories, but, seeing the look on Barin Fadel’s face, she knew how trite and meaningless it would have sounded. It was…

  ‘I keep a few things upstairs,’ Mina said, leaning towards Kitson. ‘Old baby things mostly, but there is nothing of her.’

  ‘We had to clean out her flat afterwards.’ Her husband had picked up another photograph. He placed his hand across his chest and looked at Kitson and Chall. ‘God forbid you should ever have to do such a thing. Clothes to a charity shop, all her books.’

  ‘I kept her medical books.’ It was almost as if Mina was speaking to herself, then she looked up at her husband. ‘And we gave her computer to Hassan, remember.’

  Barin nodded, put the photo back. ‘Leila’s younger brother was about to go to university, so that was… something.’ He walked back down and sat on the arm of the sofa. ‘He was never quite as bright as his sister.’

  ‘That’s not fair —’

  He raised a hand to indicate that he had not finished. ‘But give him his due, he did very well in his exams and Leeds is a very good university.’ He looked at Chall. ‘Don’t you think?’

  While Chall was nodding and saying something about what a great city Leeds was, Kitson was thinking about everything Leila Fadel’s parents had said about their daughter. Looking at the newly polished photographs on top of the cupboard and wondering why there didn’t seem to be a single one in which the young woman was smiling.

  The same three words in her head that had sprung to mind when she had first walked into the Fadels’ front room and seen them.

  Smart. Overweight. Lonely.

  ‘Annette liked to keep herself to herself,’ Zoe said. ‘Obviously there’s nothing wrong with that, but it just meant some people thought she was a bit stand-offish. Weird, even. Remember, she was a few years older than the rest of us, so it’s not really a surprise that we didn’t have that much in common. Annette just didn’t really fit in, I suppose. She didn’t want to smoke weed or watch bands.’ Zoe rolled her eyes. ‘She didn’t go out and get hammered every night.’

  Thorne watched the girl, happy enough for her to talk but finding it hard to imagine that these were her favourite leisure activities either.

  ‘It wasn’t like she was secretive, or deliberately trying to be all mysterious. She didn’t give much away, that’s all. I mean, she might have been sitting there on her own in her flat every night working, but nobody ever knew what she got up to, not really.’

  ‘Up to her,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Yeah, right… but if there was a group of us together and Annette wasn’t there, which she never really was, people would talk about her and start to suggest things she might be doing. Just having a laugh, you know. I bet she’s doing this or that… just banter. Watching animal porn or hanging around in the local graveyard. Stupid stuff, and I know it sounds horrible, because of what happened to her, but nobody really meant it like that. It wasn’t what anyone actually thought.’

  ‘What did you think?’

  ‘You want me to tell you?’

  ‘I asked, didn’t I?’

  Zoe’s grin was wicked. ‘I think she had a whole other side to her. I think she was secretly a bit of a nympho.’ She thrust herself back in the chair and shook her head. ‘Bloody hell, listen to me. What a stupid word. I sound like I’m writing headlines in the Sun or something. No… I think she just really liked sex, and why the hell shouldn’t she?’

  ‘Right,’ Thorne said.

  ‘If you want to know what I think happened, I reckon Annette used to go out to clubs and bars and try to pull strange men. I think she picked them up, took them home and shagged their brains out… and I think, that night, she just picked the wrong man. Maybe she could tell there was something off about him, or maybe he couldn’t get it up, but either way he lost it and… you know. He killed her, nicked a bunch of her stuff for good measure and that was it.’ She folded her arms and sat back, pleased with herself. ‘I mean, it’s possible, isn’t it? It’s as good a theory as any, right?’

  Since it was the first real theory of any kind he’d heard, Thorne couldn’t argue. He said, ‘You ever thought about becoming a detective?’

  The girl laughed. ‘Sorry. I want to be an actress.’

  ‘No worries,’ Thorne said. ‘That’s a very good skill for a detective to have.’

  Thorne was walking back to his car, wondering how much NCP were going to sting him for, when Tanner called.

  ‘How did it go with your mechanic?’ he asked. ‘Did he sort your big end out?’

  ‘We might have another victim,’ Tanner said. ‘A new one.’

  Thorne stopped, listened.

  ‘I set up an alert on the system for sudden deaths matching our key criteria, and one came in late this morning from a Thames Valley team
in Amersham. A bit closer to home, this time. Victim’s name is Alice Matthews and it looks like she was killed some time on Friday night.’

  ‘Friday? So how come —’

  ‘She only worked part time and wasn’t in on Friday, so nobody missed her and the body wasn’t discovered until yesterday morning.’

  Thorne started walking again. The phone felt hot against his ear.

  ‘Tom…?’

  ‘Sorry… I should be back in about ninety minutes.’

  ‘Looks like he’s started another workout.’

  Thorne said something that was just noise coming out of his mouth. He picked up his pace and swerved to avoid a pushchair; reaching hard into his inside pocket for his wallet, digging out change for the stupid fucking machine.

  Thinking: Nobody missed her.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Tanner stood in her kitchen and watched Thorne spooning out the food he’d picked up from a Thai place on his way over: red prawn curry and stir-fried lamb; salt and pepper chicken wings. The smell was fantastic.

  ‘I could have cooked something, you know.’

  ‘Really?’ Thorne said.

  ‘I could have… knocked something up.’

  Thorne leaned away from the worktop and opened the fridge. He looked inside then closed the door again. ‘Yeah, thought so.’

  ‘Thought what?’ Tanner stepped across huffily and looked inside the fridge herself, as though a sumptuous array of fine foods might suddenly have materialised.

  ‘I remember after Susan died, you said something about living on cheese on toast. I guessed she did most of the cooking.’

  ‘I’m better than I was.’ Tanner closed the fridge door.

  ‘Anyway, I’m starving and those ready-meals are never big enough.’ He handed her the plates on a tray and opened the two cans of Tiger he’d brought along. ‘And who’s got any energy left to cook? The day we’ve had.’

  They took the food through to the sitting room and after Tanner had gone back to the kitchen to collect paper towels, they began to eat.

  ‘I never told you about my conversation with Kyle Mason,’ Tanner said. ‘I meant to fill you in, but with everything else…’