Cassie still felt out of it, insulated within her bubble when she opened her front door around an hour later.
‘I came as soon as I could,’ said DCI Capaldi, looking genuinely worried.
‘I really appreciate you coming over,’ she said, ushering him into the kitchen-diner to put the kettle on. ‘Given what I need to tell you, I just didn’t feel comfortable coming to your office.’ On the phone, Cassie had mentioned only that she had some information about police corruption at Camden nick. She’d been surprised but grateful when he hadn’t even asked for further details, agreeing without hesitation to drop in on his way home from work.
Macavity was lapping milk from his bowl but on seeing they had a visitor, he shot out of the kitchen like a firework. ‘Don’t mind him,’ she told Capaldi as she made coffee. ‘I had a break-in last week and he’s still spooked by strangers.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Did you lose anything valuable?’
‘Only my favourite mug.’
He didn’t comment on that, saying only, ‘A young woman living alone, maybe you should think about moving somewhere . . . more secure’ – his raised eyebrows making it clear what he thought of her block.
‘Oh, I’m already on borrowed time here – there’s only me and the guy next door on the whole floor. The council are redeveloping the place.’
Sitting at the kitchen table she told him the whole story – this time including the missing swab result and her conviction that Gerry Hobbs had something to hide. Luckily, he didn’t ask how she’d managed to view her mother’s PM report – no doubt assuming that her job had allowed her some kind of back-door access to records.
‘I can certainly take a look at Hobbs’ and Neville’s handling of the case, and this swab you think went missing.’ His indigo-blue eyes met hers for a moment before looking away. ‘But as I said before, even if your mother was seeing somebody it wouldn’t automatically make them a suspect.’
There was something different about the way Capaldi was acting but her brain was too fogged for her to put her finger on it.
‘As for your friend Kieran’s death, it’s possible that his interest in your mother’s murder is relevant,’ he went on. ‘But I can’t interfere in a current investigation without a very clear connection to one of my cases – that would be way beyond my remit.’
He fell silent, the fingers of his right hand playing a silent sonata on the tabletop. ‘So are the police looking into this theory of yours about your mother having a lover?’
He seemed preoccupied. No, more than that. She sensed an undercurrent of something else in his body language – something out of place.
Excitement.
Feeling suddenly cold, she pictured the blood leaving her extremities like a fast-retreating tide. The body’s reaction to perceived danger.
Capaldi got up and went to put his mug in the sink. He stood there for a moment before turning to look at her. Behind him in the window the winter sun had sunk behind the roofline but there was still enough light in the sky to throw his face into shadow.
‘You’re the image of her at the same age, you know.’
She didn’t need to ask who he was talking about.
‘I’ve had an alert set up for anyone checking into Kath’s case for ever, well, ever since the system allowed it, anyway,’ he went on. ‘So you can imagine how it felt when I saw the notification ping into my inbox after more than twenty years. After that it was easy enough to establish that this DS Flyte had a previous connection to the Raven family – through you. You and she must have spent a lot of time together on the case of your murdered teacher?’
Had Capaldi been involved in the investigation of her mother’s murder back in ’97? Was that it? Then she remembered the last time they’d met, the familiar way he’d called her ‘Kath’.
‘You were the boyfriend.’ It was out before she could consider the wisdom of putting him on the spot. Her brain conducted an instant sweep of the surrounding geography: on Mondays Desmond went to his mum’s in Haringey, which meant the entire floor was empty apart from her and her visitor.
‘Yes and no.’
A curious sensation engulfed Cassie. It was like her whole self had swung up and out of her body on a hinge and hung overhead, seeing the scene as if from above. She wondered dispassionately if this was what people called an out-of-body experience. The dislocation numbed any fear she might have felt, alone with the man who’d probably killed her mother.
‘It was you I saw arguing with her in Woolies, wasn’t it?’
‘I was surprised when you said you remembered that. Kath and I weren’t an item by then, hadn’t been for years, although I confess I was trying to change her mind. Not that I got anywhere.’
Cassie’s brain whirred. ‘I don’t understand. You dated her before she met Callum? How on earth did a girl like her meet a cop?’
‘I wasn’t born a cop, you know.’ This with a return of his old grin.
He came over and sat down opposite her again. ‘I met Kath five years before I joined the Met, when I was twenty-seven. After doing psychology at uni I’d spent the next few years . . . drifting. My dad was a builder and I worked for him off and on, but I wasn’t exactly a reliable employee and we fell out’ – his expression rueful. ‘I moved into a squat off Camden Road and scraped a living busking on a guitar outside the Tube. That was when I got involved in the anti-roads campaign.’
‘You were at Oakwood Common?’ Click. It was like a photo she’d once seen shot on a vintage Polaroid, the outline of an image starting to emerge dimly out of grey.
He chuckled at the look on her face. ‘It’s probably hard now, to imagine me with long hair and a Kurt Cobain fixation. Right after I arrived at Oakwood Kath got me to help her organise a benefit gig, and we fell for each other hard. And in case you’re wondering, I make no apology for what we did down there – the politicians were destroying the countryside to build roads. Still are.’
So Capaldi had been Kath’s previous boyfriend at Oakwood, the one Callum had mentioned. The one he’d called a bastard.
‘Anyway, I’m ashamed to say I blew it with Kath.’ He stared gloomily at the tabletop. ‘I stupidly got involved with one of the other girls. Biggest mistake of my life. It didn’t last long because I never really got over Kath.’
‘So how did you meet up with her all those years later?’
‘After Oakwood I spent a few years working on farms in the West Country – fruit picking, that kind of thing – but finally drifted back to Camden. Still carrying a torch for Kath. One day, I was busking by the Stables Market when I saw her.’ He stared over Cassie’s shoulder as if replaying the moment. ‘She was more beautiful, if anything, and she had you in tow – a mini-Kath but with dark hair and a button nose. I was smitten all over again. Started trying to rekindle things. I found out where she lived and I’d follow her when she went out.’
‘You stalked her, in other words.’
His face hardened for a split second. ‘You call it stalking, I call it romantic. I was crazy about her. She agreed to have coffee with me once or twice, and it was obvious she was miserable, stuck at home with Callum out gigging all the time.’
Cassie felt so angry she wanted to punch him. ‘She was married with a kid! My dad should have knocked your block off. They were happy together and then you . . . you turn up and fuck with her head and send her into a depressive spiral.’
He shook his head dismissively. ‘Kath was always up and down like that.’ Frowning, he put both hands on the table. Shapely but big. Hands she could imagine wrapped round a half-brick.
Her protective glaze had melted away. Now she was just a woman alone in a flat as night fell outside, not a soul within earshot, with a six-foot-something guy who had stalked and, in all likelihood, murdered her mother.
‘It’s getting dark,’ she said, getting up. ‘I’ll just put the light on.’ But on reaching the doorway she made a break for the front door. Turned the latch. The door wouldn’t open. What the fuck? Rattled it stupidly. Nothing.
She turned to find the figure of Capaldi behind her, blocking the light. ‘I double locked it.’ He nodded down to the new lock she’d had fitted after the break-in. ‘I was glad to see you’ve improved your security.’
Oh, sweet Jesus. It was Capaldi who’d broken into the flat. That was why Macavity had bolted on seeing him.
She lashed out at him with fists and feet, trying to hit any part of him, to hurt him enough to get time to unlock the door and escape. But he captured both her wrists easily and used his upper body to pin her against the door. He was just too strong.
‘It was you,’ she hissed. ‘You killed her!’
‘Shhh. Cassie, Cassie.’ His lips were so close to her ear she could feel the moisture in his breath. ‘I didn’t kill her. I could never have killed the mother of my child.’