‘And kill Gemma Crowther, you mean? Why would I want to kill a woman I hadn’t heard of until yesterday afternoon? Oh, and I don’t kill people. Though I endlessly long to.’
‘DC Waterhouse, your fiancé, was seen prowling round Gemma’s house, looking in her window, only hours before she died. Let’s say you
did
drive from Spilling to London on the Monday night . . .’
‘Say it if you want, but I didn’t.’
‘You’d be unable to provide an alibi for DC Waterhouse, wouldn’t you? If you weren’t at home, you don’t know he got back at eleven. If he didn’t get back at eleven, that means he didn’t set off from Muswell Hill at nine thirty. We’ve got a pathologist’s report telling us Gemma Crowther died no earlier than ten p.m. Do you see what I’m saying?’
‘Let me check: I’m lying to protect Simon, because I know he murdered Gemma Crowther. Is that it? Or I left Ruth’s before ten thirty, went to London and murdered Crowther myself?’
‘This is bullshit,’ said Simon. ‘I’ll collate the CCTV footage for you if you like, since I’m exiled from my job indefinitely. I’ll find you lots of black and white pictures to prove we were both where we say we were at all the right times.’
‘Don’t show them the one of me smoking next to the “No Smoking” sign outside Rawndesley station,’ Charlie chipped in. ‘They might tell.’
‘Which art galleries did you go to?’ Milward asked her.
‘I didn’t notice their names. I was just browsing. Oh—one of them might have been called TiqTaq. Apart from that, I don’t remember. Sorry.’
‘Tell them the truth, for God’s sake,’ said Simon, sick of her attitude and her games. ‘She had lunch with a lawyer called Dominic Lund.’
‘My sister’s boyfriend,’ said Charlie quickly, smiling. ‘He’s right. I had lunch with Dommie at Signor Grilli, an Italian on Goodge Street.’
‘And you lied about it why?’ said Milward.
‘It’s complicated. My sister’s boyfriend?’ Charlie gave her a meaningful look. ‘I’m sure I don’t need to spell it out.’
Simon stared at the sprouting carpet at his feet. What the fuck was she playing at?
Dommie?
‘So you didn’t go to any art galleries?’ said Milward.
‘Yes, I did. After lunch.’
‘Mary Trelease is a painter. Aidan Seed is a picture-framer.’
‘I know.’
Milward licked her front teeth. Eventually she said, ‘I don’t believe you felt ill on Tuesday morning. I don’t believe you had lunch with Dominic Lund at Signor Grilli, though he might be seeing your sister and you might know that’s where he was yesterday lunchtime. I don’t believe, frankly, that you spent all of Monday obsessing about Aidan Seed, Ruth Bussey and Mary Trelease when you should have been working, only to decide the next day that you fancied a completely unconnected day-trip to London.’ Milward slapped her hands flat on the table. ‘I know when two people are lying, and you two are those people.’
‘Brilliant,’ Simon muttered. ‘Do we ever get to leave this room?’
‘We ought to take a break,’ Dunning said to Milward.
‘The photo.’ Charlie made a show of yawning.
‘Oh, that. I almost forgot.’ Milward pulled a large photograph out of her file and threw it down on the table.
At first Simon wasn’t sure what the livid mess was that he was looking at. Then he saw, and had to count in his head and make his eyes blur over. It had been a while since he’d had to do that. He’d got used to the ordinary unpleasant sights his job afforded him, but this went way beyond. He felt Charlie stiffen beside him.
The picture was of a mouth. Open. Gemma Crowther’s, Simon guessed. Post-mortem. Her top and bottom lips had been cut on both sides, pulled back and nailed to her face. Symmetrically: five nails along each lip. Most of her teeth were missing, and in their place were picture hooks, nailed in wonky lines into the gums of both her top and bottom jaw. They looked as if they had been arranged as neatly as possible, hanging down into her mouth like thin gold teeth.
Simon heard Charlie say, ‘You told us she was shot.’
‘She was,’ said Milward. ‘He did this after he killed her. Don’t ask me why. Could be he—or she, if the killer’s a woman—wanted to
frame
, if you’ll excuse the pun, a picture-framer.’
‘For God’s sake!’ said Charlie. ‘Have you made any progress? Whoever did this is a sick fuck—you need to catch him, not waste time fucking us around.’
‘Where did they come from?’ asked Simon slowly. ‘The picture hooks and the nails. Did he bring them with him, or . . .’
‘Or?’ Milward waited, eyebrows raised.
‘The pictures on the walls, in Crowther’s flat. Were they still up when you got to the scene?’
‘What pictures, detective? You’ve been asked to describe the room you saw several times. You’ve said you can’t be sure there were any pictures.’
‘Tell us,’ Simon snapped. ‘Were the pictures still on the walls?’
‘No,’ said Milward, after a short pause. ‘The only pictures in the flat were photographs of the happy couple in a range of sizes. In every room, they’d been taken down and leaned against walls and furniture. Leaving only holes. No nails, no hooks.’
‘So, what—he shot her, then knocked her teeth out with . . . what? A hammer?’
‘Why do you say that?’ asked Milward.
‘I’d use a hammer to hang a painting. That’s what he used.’ Simon nodded to himself. ‘How did he cut her lips back like that? A Stanley knife? I saw one at Seed’s workshop.’ He paused for breath. ‘He took down all the pictures, collected the hooks and nails, and hammered them into her lips and gums. Why? What was it about her mouth?’
‘That’s the wrong question,’ said Charlie, standing up. Simon saw that the back of her shirt was dark with sweat. ‘How many pictures were leaning against the walls? How many hooks and nails in Gemma Crowther’s mouth? Did the numbers correspond? ’
Milward looked at Dunning, whose face coloured. ‘It should be in the file,’ he said. She passed it to him and he started to leaf through the pages, his agitation growing more apparent as the silence dragged on.
‘You don’t know how many hooks she used for each picture,’ said Simon.
‘Have you ever hung a painting?’ Charlie asked him. ‘A photograph, anything framed?’
‘Yeah,’ he lied, feeling heat creep up his neck. He’d Blu-tacked a few posters to walls, that was it.
‘You have, I assume?’ Charlie said to Milward.
She nodded. ‘I’m a one-hook woman. I’ve never hung a picture heavy enough to need two.’
‘It’s nothing to do with heavy,’ said Dunning, shooting his skipper a look designed to obliterate. ‘If you use two hooks, the picture’s more likely to stay straight, especially if it’s a big one.’
‘I think there’s a picture missing,’ said Charlie. ‘I think this murder’s about that—that’s why the killer used picture hooks and nails to mutilate Crowther’s face.’
‘Why would anyone want to steal a cheesy photo of—?’ Milward began.
‘Not a photo,’ Charlie cut her off. ‘A painting. It’s called
Abberton
. It’s by Mary Trelease.’
‘So, this is the table you sat at with
Dommie
.’
‘Pure coincidence,’ said Charlie with a bland grin. Her heart wasn’t in it. ‘Either that, or this is my table of lust, and I bring all my rides here.’ They’d been dismissed by Milward three quarters of an hour ago. Charlie had hailed the first free cab that had come their way, told it to drop them on Goodge Street.
The man who had served Charlie and Lund yesterday—Signor Grilli himself? Charlie wondered—approached their table. Instead of asking if he could take their order, he said, ‘Is okay, I see you’re no ready.’ He might as well have said, ‘I can see you’re too busy rowing to think about food.’
‘Is it true?’ Simon asked. ‘Are you seeing Lund?’
‘I’m not going to dignify that with a—’
‘Then why say it? Is it your new hobby, making me look like a twat in front of as many people as possible?’
‘
You?
Oh, they loved you. I was the despicable one.’
‘You encouraged them to despise you! Boasting about something that ought to disgust you, as if you think being a rapist’s girlfriend is something to be proud of.’
‘Ex-girlfriend.’ Charlie pretended to look at the menu. The tables around theirs had fallen silent. Even the music playing in the background sounded as if it was deliberately leaving lots of spaces between the notes. Charlie spoke clearly, for the benefit of any eavesdroppers. ‘Funny—I seem to have gone from one extreme to the other. From a man who has sex with women against their will to one who won’t shag one woman, not even his own fiancée, even if she begs . . .’
‘If you carry on like this, I’m leaving.’ Simon pushed his chair back.
‘The restaurant, or our relationship?’ Charlie asked. ‘Just so as I understand the exact nature of the threat.’
‘Do you want a smack in the face?’
‘At least if you hit me, we’d be touching.’ She was only half joking.
‘When it suits you, you make me the enemy. Whenever you’re feeling shit about something, I get the brunt of it. You knew I’d never hung a picture.’
‘What? You haven’t?’ Charlie laughed. ‘Actually, I didn’t know. Bloody hell, Simon . . .’
‘You knew, and you wanted to show me up, because you’d been shown up: forced to boast about the fuck-up that nearly ruined your life, and still might. You seem to want it to!’
‘Stop.’ Charlie gripped her menu with both hands.
‘Except you weren’t forced at all—it was your choice. You could have said, “Yeah, okay, I made a mistake. But I didn’t know what he was when I got involved with him.” Why couldn’t you have said that?’
‘Why don’t you write me a script next time? The press office did it two years ago. They told me what to say.’
‘There’s no point in us talking.’ Simon picked up his menu, held it between his face and Charlie’s. ‘Let’s get something to eat while we can, before they call us back in.’
‘Do you think they will?’ It was almost a comfort to think about Milward and Dunning; against them, Charlie and Simon were allies.
‘I would. We’re better than they are.’
‘I’m not hungry.’ Charlie sighed.
‘Then why are we here? It was your idea.’
‘I thought Lund might be here. I was hoping to persuade him not to tell Milward that he and I aren’t screwing each other’s brains out, if she asks him. True, I’d have been wasting my time—Lund’d rather chew off his own scrotum than help me, but since I’ve sunk so low already today, I might as well go that bit further and beg a favour from a man who . . . looks like a buzzard.’ She covered her face with her hands. Her own voice was starting to grate on her tattered nerves. It was no fun, being on the wrong side of the table in an interview room. She felt as if she still was. The table and room had changed, but the vibes of condemnation were the same.
‘You should have told them the real reason you met Lund. Why didn’t you?’
‘What, tell them Ruth Bussey’s decided to make an exhibition of me and I ran to a lawyer for help only to hear that there’s fuck all I can do about it? I think I’ve had enough public humiliation for one lifetime, don’t you?’
Simon reached across the table, grabbed her wrist. ‘They’re investigating a murder, one of the sickest. Some things are more important than your pride.’
‘My
what
? You think I’m proud? Some detective you are.’ She didn’t pull her arm away. The angrier he got, the more remote from him she felt, as if his reactions had nothing to do with her.
He stood up. ‘I’m going to order a pizza. Are you sure you don’t want anything?’
‘I’ll have a taste of yours.’
‘Will you fuck. I’m starved.’
She listened as he ordered two pizza funghis. He should have said ‘pizzas funghi’. Simon was no linguist. She pointed out his mistake when he sat back down. ‘I got “two” right,’ he said. ‘That was the important part.’ He was feeling better, she could tell, though they’d resolved nothing. Because he’d ordered some food?
‘So. You’ve really never hung a picture? What else don’t I know about you?’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Simon, we’re engaged!’
‘I know that.’
‘Christ, this is ridiculous! All right, then: where would you live, if you could live anywhere in the world?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it.’
‘Well, think.’
‘Are you serious? At the moment, all I can think about is a disfigured mouth with gold picture hooks for teeth. You think Mary Trelease killed Gemma Crowther, don’t you? Because Crowther had her picture, the one she gave Ruth Bussey. So, what: Bussey gave it to Seed who gave it to Crowther?’
Charlie didn’t want to talk about this, not now. She wanted to tell him that if she could choose anywhere in the world to live, she would choose Torquay. She’d always loved it. She’d had her first and only holiday romance there.
Their pizzas arrived suspiciously quickly, their temperature somewhere in the no man’s land between cold and warm. Charlie didn’t care, and Simon certainly wouldn’t, she thought. That was one thing they had in common, though Simon was more extreme. Food was something he put in his body in order not to die. He didn’t care what it tasted like as long as it filled him up. As recently as last week, he’d have taken pains to avoid eating in front of Charlie. Now he seemed fine about it, as if having a meal together was a natural thing to do. Like the four chaste nights they’d spent together so far, Charlie saw this as progress.
Once the waiter had gone, she said, ‘All I know is, Trelease is protective over her work. Whether she’s protective enough to kill to retrieve one of her paintings, I have no idea, but the picture-hook teeth? That’s a woman’s touch.’
‘I disagree,’ said Simon, ripping strips off his pizza like a savage and stuffing them into his mouth as if he didn’t have a knife and fork in front of him.
‘A man wouldn’t have had the idea. It’s too . . . intricate.’