It was seven days since Kim Weldon had found Paige Hargreaves’ hand by the Thames and I was no nearer to finding out who had put it there. The fair wind that had given me one lead after another at the start of the investigation seemed to have dropped, and it had left me marooned. The Thames had given up two more pieces of the dead woman – a foot and part of a thigh – but the fragments had told us nothing we didn’t know already and the Marine Unit were muttering discouragingly about the likelihood of finding anything else. I had no suspects, no real motives and no ideas.
The Chiron Club had seemed like a promising place to start looking for a killer, but I’d uncovered nothing there. I was beginning to think there was nothing to find, despite Paige’s excitement over her story. My interview with Sir Marcus Gley gave me the impression it was nothing more than a collection of over-privileged men making opportunities for one another, which wasn’t exactly a scandal. That was how the world worked, after all. Maybe it had come as a shock to Paige. I was all too used to it.
The analysts had pored over Paige’s bank statements and phone records, but what they’d given me didn’t look suspicious in any way. There were no large payments in or out of her account, she hadn’t used cash to hide any purchases that I could see and her spending had matched what I’d expect from a reasonably frugal single woman in one of the most expensive cities in the world.
I sat at my desk staring into space, waiting for inspiration to strike. The office was quiet, the early buzz dwindling mid-morning as detectives went out to crime scenes and interviews and court. I noticed familiar footsteps approaching without expecting them to stop by my desk, so it wasn’t until Derwent cleared his throat that I looked up.
‘Oh, it’s you.’
‘Obviously.’ He had adopted his usual wide stance, looming over me with his hands in his pockets, but the arrogance was a reflex, I thought. He looked wary – almost apologetic, if he was capable of that. It was the first time we’d spoken since the confrontation with Seth. I’d been avoiding him and he had been ignoring me, because we were both grown-ups.
‘What can I do for you?’ I couldn’t quite manage to sound enthusiastic about it but I was civil.
‘I was an idiot the other night.’
Not what I had expected. I blinked. ‘I’m aware of that.’
‘Yeah. Well. It was a bad day.’
‘I’m aware of that too. You shouldn’t have taken it out on Seth.’
Derwent made a noise in the back of his throat that definitely didn’t sound as if he was agreeing with me, but he couldn’t meet my eyes. ‘It upset you.’
‘Yeah, it did.’ I folded my arms. ‘Just to be clear, are you actually going to apologise or is this your way of making sure your recollection of events matches mine?’
He looked at me as if I was insane. ‘I’m not here to apologise.’
‘Of course not. Why would you?’ So far, so normal. ‘What do you want?’
‘Do you like him?’ The question was abrupt.
‘Yes. Of course I do. He’s my boyfriend.’
‘I don’t trust him.’
My face was hot. ‘I don’t remember asking for your opinion.’
‘You’re getting it anyway. I think he’s trying too hard.’
‘Trying too hard,’ I repeated. ‘You’re right, I should dump him.’
‘Dump him or don’t. I don’t care. But pay attention to what he’s doing.’
‘And what’s that exactly?’
‘He’s taken over your life. You had decided what you were going to do the other night but as soon as he turned up, you changed your plans. You left your friends to spend the evening with him.’
‘The reason that happened was because your behaviour was inexcusable. It was nothing to do with Seth.’
‘No?’ he said unpleasantly. ‘That’s how you saw it, is it?’
‘That’s how it was.’
‘When was the last time you went out without him? Or with friends?’
I opened my mouth to tell him, then shut it again. I couldn’t remember, off-hand. He pressed home his advantage.
‘You’ve changed since you’ve been seeing him. Everyone’s noticed it. The way you eat. The things you do in your spare time. The way you are.’
‘You’ve been talking to Liv,’ I said accusingly.
‘So what? We both noticed it.’
‘You’re being ridiculous. This is what happens when you’re in a relationship – you spend time with your boyfriend and you start doing things differently. You make room for the other person in your life and your friends and family may have to shuffle over too. I’m sure I have changed, and I’m glad about it. Let’s face it, the main difference between how I was before Seth and how I am now is that I’m happy.’
He dropped the hostility from one second to the next, his eyes softening in that way I found so disarming. ‘If you’re happy, that’s all that matters.’
‘Well, I am,’ I said, still suspicious because I knew him too well to relax.
‘It’s just that he’s making you into a different person.’
‘So?’
‘I liked the old one.’ He walked off without waiting for me to respond and I sat at my desk stewing, thinking of a hundred different things I could have replied if I’d been quick enough to keep him from having the last word.
It was Liv’s turn to stop beside my desk a few minutes later. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Absolutely fine,’ I said, deciding on the spot that I could do without another conversation about my current relationship. ‘I’m trying to work out where I’ve gone wrong with the Paige Hargreaves case.’
She borrowed a chair from the next desk and sat down with a wince, leaning back to make space for her bump. ‘What makes you think you’ve gone wrong? You’ve been doing a great job.’
‘I’ve done such a great job that I have no leads and no ideas.’
‘What about the Chiron Club?’
I shook my head. ‘Dead end, as far as I can see. Just because she was working on a story about them that doesn’t mean it connects with her murder. And I have no idea what the story is. I still haven’t found her phone or her laptop. We haven’t identified the fake police officer. We don’t even know how she got into the river.’
‘The club is right on the riverfront, isn’t it? Doesn’t that seem suspicious to you?’
‘Sort of, but it doesn’t help. The Marine Unit officers told me there’s no way to tell where her body was dumped from where the pieces turned up, and we still don’t know when they put her in the river. I need a clue, a witness – something to narrow down the time of her death and the window for her body to be disposed of. Then I can call in CCTV from the right area and the right time. If I guess, we’ll find ourselves with hundreds and hundreds of hours of footage to review and no guarantee of spotting anything useful.’
‘We could start with the cameras around Blackfriars Bridge. Given that we have to start somewhere,’ Liv said hesitantly.
‘Covering what period of time?’
‘Before she was reported missing, up to the day before the mudlarker found her hand.’
I sighed. ‘Even if we only have a few cameras, that’ll be a lot of CCTV to review.’
‘Get Colin to do it. He loves a challenge.’ She was right, Colin Vale lived for the kind of tedious CCTV reviewing that made me want to lie on the floor and howl.
‘What we really need is to find out where her body was cut up. It must have been messy. Think what Kev Cox could do with a scene like that.’ Kev was my favourite crime scene manager, a gifted and intuitive scientist with a perpetually cheerful approach to life despite spending most days up to his elbows in death.
‘If we find something on CCTV that suggests suspicious activity near Blackfriars Bridge, we might be able to turn that into a search warrant for the club.’
‘Sir Marcus Gley promised me they weren’t hiding anything, but he wouldn’t let me get beyond the hall,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘In an ideal world I’d search that place from the attic to the cellars. All I need is a reason.’
‘It would really help if we knew what Paige’s story was about, wouldn’t it? I didn’t find anything useful in her flat.’
I hesitated, wary of offending her. ‘I thought I might take another look in case we missed something.’
‘In case I missed something, you mean.’ She was grinning, though. ‘I knew you couldn’t stand to leave it up to me. There’s nothing there, I promise. But be my guest.’