Songbird Read online

  Bitter chocolate, dark smokiness, a hint of toffee or caramel – that’s the sort of thing that might be written on the packet of beans Smith had ground to make the coffee. Whatever the words, it was strong stuff, and Waters took small sips of it; a couple of these and his ears would be ringing. When he put the cup back onto its tiny saucer, Smith said, ‘So, you two started without me. What’ve you got there?’

  He was indicating the single sheet of paper Waters had put onto the table, A4 and folded twice crossways so that it would have fitted into an envelope.

  ‘Just about everything we have on-’

  ‘Whoa!’

  The hand came up in the familiar traffic-stopping gesture.

  ‘No names, no pack-drill! Is it written on the paper anywhere?’

  ‘Yes. At the top.’

  Smith got up from the table, asked to be excused and went back into the house, reappearing moments later with a pair of kitchen scissors, which he handed to Waters. The intention was plain enough. Waters unfolded the sheet and made a cut across it near to the top, removing the victim’s name. In one sense, of course, it was merely a symbolic gesture but Waters understood why he’d been asked to make it. It was for his own sake. He was, in sharing intelligence collected by the Kings Lake force, committing a disciplinary offence. It was highly unlikely the offence would ever come to light, but should it do so, he could say truthfully, if they were careful now, that the details had only been discussed anonymously, that the victim’s name had never been disclosed.

  Waters folded the narrow strip and put it into the pocket of his jeans before offering the remainder to Smith.

  ‘If it were me,’ Smith said, ‘I’d give it to a profiler first.’

  Jo reached out her hand and Waters gave her the paper. She moved her coffee cup to one side, placed the paper flat on the table and pulled her chair closer before she began to read. Smith asked if Waters would like some more coffee – the answer was maybe later – then poured himself some and picked up the binoculars to look at a solitary seagull hanging high above Drift’s End, in the warm, blue air.

  As far as Waters could tell, Jo Evison went through the information in three different ways. She read it quickly from top to bottom, more as if she were examining a photograph than a page of text. Then she placed a finger by the first bullet point and stared intently at it for some seconds before repeating the process with the next. Halfway down, she looked up at Waters and said, ‘No Facebook page?’

  He said there was one but there had been no new posts on it for some months – it had offered no insights as far as the investigation was concerned. Jo frowned and Smith asked if she needed her laptop. The answer was yes and away he went once more. She continued the point by point examination until Smith returned – when he handed it over to Jo, Waters noticed the screen already showed a Facebook log-on page. This became the focus point as she typed in and waited for the results. Waters exchanged a look with Smith but nothing was said. There was the sound of an outboard engine somewhere beyond the front of the cottage and that must mean the tide was coming in.

  Waters had looked at the Facebook page more than once, and he knew what Jo would see. There was only one photograph, Michelle’s profile picture; it was posed and she looked demure and rather ordinary. It did not convey the woman he had pieced together from the rest of the intelligence they’d gathered about her. Reading back through the older posts, Jo would find mention of Michelle’s singing – she must have sung in a bar or at a party because several people had commented how good she was – and there was the usual chat about clothes and hair and holidays.

  Jo said, ‘She gave up on social media about six months ago. I wonder why? You’d say she was a natural up to that point. Except, no photos. Perhaps there were and she deleted them. She works in hair and beauty but there are no pictures? Odd.’

  Waters could see her clicking back further into Michelle’s digital history. Smith held up the cafetière again and Waters made a gesture that meant just a little, then. Smith refilled the cup and then poured a third one for himself.

  Jo said, ‘When she was posting, I can find no mention of her husband, not one, but it says on the sheet that she was married. Have you met him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A lot of what’s on the sheet comes from the sister. You’ve met her?’

  ‘No.’

  There was a tut of irritation from Smith as if Waters was at fault, but a glance in that direction showed only that the sardonic sense of humour had also survived a week of induced coma unscathed.

  Waters said, ‘The only person of any significance I’ve had direct contact with is’ – he almost said her name – ‘the woman in question. It lasted longer than was strictly necessary, I’m sure, but she didn’t say very much.’

  Jo’s attention was back on the sheet of paper.

  ‘So who did speak to the husband? Someone must have interviewed him at length.’

  Waters told her about the visit made by DCI Reeve and Serena Butler, how they had gone to the home in Luton. Some of this had been summarised into the notes Jo had in front of her, but she clearly wanted to know more. Smith added that those two detectives wouldn’t have missed much unless things had gone downhill even more than he’d expected since he left Kings Lake Central.

  ‘It’s not in there,’ Waters said, ‘but DCI Reeve told us that the sister told her that’ – it was becoming increasingly difficult to work around saying the name – ‘that her sister, the victim, used to call him “the plastic man” sometimes. That’s what he does, works in plastics.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Jo’s gaze returned to the laptop and the Facebook page. There are many thousands of them already and one day there will be millions – the pages of the dead. Social media is becoming a mausoleum, a virtual vault. The artificial intelligence that runs it all is unable to distinguish between our occasional silences and our final one, and so we remain there, caught in the instant of our extinction. For some, a caring relative or a careful attorney will make the announcement but even then, for many the pages will remain as monuments to lives that were once shared with millions.

  Jo said, ‘Well, the fact that he’s missing completely from here is unusual, to say the least.’

  Waters told them what Serena had said about Michelle’s bedroom – how it was separate from the rest of their home in all sorts of ways, and apparently somewhere her husband rarely if ever went. He hadn’t even entered it when the two detectives examined her room, but had waited downstairs.

  Smith said, ‘I take it that someone has had a really good look at him for this?’

  ‘He was at work as he said, that all checks out. Alison and Serena agreed they didn’t have a feeling about him other than feeling a bit sorry for him. That’s the impression I got from them.’

  Smith pursued it further – ‘Because the chances are somewhere between sixty and seventy per cent that she was killed by someone she knew. A frustrated husband fits the bill. Shut out of her Facebook page and her bedroom? I’d want more than one conversation with him.’

  Jo closed the laptop and said, ‘Those statistics don’t distinguish victims by gender. For female victims, the percentage is even higher. Give me ten minutes to look at the rest. You did well to get all this onto one sheet of paper, Chris.’

  ‘Properly trained,’ said Smith.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  ‘OK, then. I’d say she was a complicated and conflicted personality. Probably inclined to be impulsive – I’m sure she didn’t spend months agonising over whether to get that particular tattoo – but also likely to spend time reproaching herself and regretting choices she’d made. That fits in with some of what the sister says about the mood swings and the volatility, the suggestion she was bi-polar. I’d guess from what I have here, by the way, that her sister knew her better than anyone else. That relationship was probably important to her, a safe harbour when things got rough. But even then, there are things her sister didn’t know about such as t
he heavy drinking, which suggests the victim kept a lot to herself. Outwardly sociable, inwardly lonely is more common than we imagine.

  ‘If the hairdressing business is a busy, successful one, then she isn’t without ability. She can organise, and she can handle money. She gets the kind of people who work there and she gets the customers, she understands what they’re really looking for when they book an appointment…’

  Waters and Smith exchanged identical looks – they’re looking to get their hair cut, aren’t they?

  ‘It’s a chatty, sociable environment, and that reflects one side of her personality, but she’s multi-faceted. There are signs she is profoundly dissatisfied with herself and her life. I’d be interested to know how long ago she had the breast implants done, if I was doing a full work-up. It’s the subject of jokes but it’s major surgery, painful and with a long recovery. You don’t do that to yourself voluntarily unless you’ve got genuine problems with self-esteem. And who were the implants for, if not her husband? Women often say it was for themselves, no one else, but that’s only indirectly true. It’s for themselves in the sense that the increased attention from others is what makes them happier. Or at least they think it will.

  ‘The drinking may be another expression of the same thing. We all use alcohol to escape ourselves at times but for some it becomes the preferred version of reality. I’m not a pathologist but I think it takes years of abuse before you have those signs in your liver, so your victim has been conflicted for a long time. Unless she’s out four or five nights a week, she has been drinking steadily at home for a while.

  ‘She craves attention. She is prepared to sing in public but I’ll bet alcohol is needed before she does. She obviously had a good voice.’

  Waters mentioned the couple he’d interviewed in Barnsley who had remarked on the woman’s singing, and Smith asked whether he’d telephoned them or actually gone to South Yorkshire. When Waters told him, Smith asked why, and Waters, in a deliberately offhand way, told him it was to interview a guest at Pinehills who was on the sex offender’s register but it wasn’t important. The look on Smith’s face was priceless.

  Jo said then, ‘But the thing that leaps out at me is the mention of the brochure for a fertility clinic. Where has that come from? And why did you decide to include it in your list of notes, Chris?’

  The question took Waters by surprise. For the past five minutes, he had been simultaneously listening and wondering how Jo Evison could get so much so quickly from words he had typed out between doing other jobs yesterday evening. He glanced at Smith before he said, ‘I could see Serena thought it was odd. She was sure the husband knew nothing about it, from where she found it.’

  Jo said, ‘She was what, thirty-six, thirty-seven? That’s typical enough I’d say… Maybe she hadn’t done anything yet, maybe she was thinking about it. But without her husband’s knowledge or involvement? That’s not typical. Ask your ladies whether the subject of children came up with him.’

  Waters would not have claimed to know Jo well – this was the longest time he had spent in her company – but he could see now why Smith had been taken with her. The look on her face was familiar because it was the same look he had seen many times on Smith’s face; the intent, focused, inward gaze in pursuit of knowledge, understanding and the truth.

  She went on, ‘And think about the cost. If it was a private clinic, any ideas?’

  It wouldn’t be unfair to describe the two detectives as clueless on this one.

  ‘A single, basic cycle would be at least five thousand pounds. After that, depending on how determined or desperate you are, the sky is the limit. Did your victim have those resources? Managing a salon isn’t going to be highly paid. And another thing. If she was involved in fertility treatment, if she’s had a cycle of it, it will probably show in her financial records. I don’t think you can hand over a fistful of used notes. Would your detective constable remember the name of the clinic on the brochure?’

  With perfect timing, they both answered, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, that’s another route into it.’

  Smith said, ‘This is all very interesting,’ – and he seemed to relish the warning look he got in return for that – ‘but if Chris goes back into the office with it, someone is going to ask, what the heck has this got to do with her being strangled in a seaside beauty spot fifty miles from home? I know I’d be asking that.’

  She said, ‘And you should also know that it isn’t the job of your profiler to answer questions but to narrow down the range of questions you need to be asking!’

  Smith acknowledged being passed at the net with a smile, and Waters guessed that matches like these probably went on for hours, much to the satisfaction of both participants. He thought for a moment about Janey Cole.

  Jo said, ‘There are only two possibilities. Either she was an unfortunate random victim or she was not. If it’s the first, everything I’ve pulled out of these notes is irrelevant. If she wasn’t, then something here might not be irrelevant. It’s my conclusion that she was an emotionally unstable and conflicted personality, and that makes her more likely to become a victim of violence within a relationship. Here’s another conflict. If she was having fertility treatment or planning to, why the drinking? It’s something they tell you to stop. Was she actually an alcoholic? That also points to someone becoming a victim, of course.

  ‘So, I’ll shut up soon, but here’s the final reason you might want to explore this, Chris. If she was having or planning fertility treatment, there has to have been a man involved. The sisterhood can dream of the day when there won’t be, but for now… Anyway, either she would opt for an anonymous donor, which isn’t difficult, or it’s the actual flesh-and-blood variety. If it isn’t her husband, who is it? I’m sorry to break it to you both, but for most women, wanting and having the baby is the biggest thing in their life. It’s the emotional Everest. You’re in second place, the means to an end. And now I’ll go and do the washing up and leave you in peace.’

  They watched her depart in silence. Then Smith turned to Waters and said, ‘It makes you wonder what her Monday morning briefings were like, doesn’t it?’

  Waters had put his coffee cup and saucer on the low brick wall surrounding a raised flowerbed so that Smith couldn’t refill it any more. The bed itself was full of colourful, scented plants – Waters was no gardener and couldn’t have named any of them – and it was alive with buzzing, humming insects. As he spent a moment watching, something darted in, out and back again, almost too quick for the eye to follow. But Smith had spotted it and said, ‘Look at that! Did you see it? There it is, at the nicotiana!’

  Which didn’t help a lot, but Waters could see the creature now, hovering yet motionless in front of a white flower, the wings beating so quickly they were nothing more than a blur.

  Smith said, ‘Do you know what it is? A Hummingbird Hawk-moth. When I checked on the internet, there are lots being reported this year because of the hot summer. Can you see it feeding right down inside the flower?’

  Waters nodded – Smith had got out of his chair and moved around the table to get a closer view.

  ‘We’ve been keeping a count. We’ve had up to five at a time which is exceptional. The amazing thing, though, is where they come from. They’re migrants, all the way from Africa and the Mediterranean. That tiny little thing has flown maybe a thousand miles to end up in Drift’s End…’

  The moth was present for another thirty seconds before lifting vertically like a flying saucer and disappearing over the roof of the house. Smith watched it all the way while Waters looked around the rest of the garden, thinking it idyllic and no place to bring stories of misery and murder.

  Smith pushed his hands into his pockets and said, ‘Come down to the end of the garden. There’s a good view to the east, over the marshes.’

  It was a view uninterrupted to the level horizon, a view of saltmarshes and creeks, edged on the left side by the high shingle ridge that kept out all but the highest
of spring tides, and on the right by the low rise of the land where the coast road winds its way from village to village. Two squat Norman church towers, faintly blue in the far distance, looked as if they’d been added for effect by a watercolourist.

  Smith said, ‘Remember when Mark Randall was killed with the shovel, and we went after Gareth Stone? Some of us had him charged, convicted and put away for twenty years as soon as we discovered he’d lied in the first interview. They weren’t going to change their minds until we came up with a more convincing alternative, which we did in the end. I think you’re in the same situation with Oliver. You’ve got to spend some time trying to show that he didn’t do it – couldn’t have done it is even better – but what you really need is to find out who did.

  ‘As Jo said, keep going back to the logical possibilities. If it wasn’t Oliver, then she was either the victim of some other random attacker, or she knew the person who killed her. You’ve got to work both lines, keeping everything open until something begins to gain its own momentum. You know what that feels like by now. If she knew her killer, then the chances are that something on your one side of A4 isn’t only relevant, it’s important. You just have to work out which thing it is.’

  Waters smiled and said, ‘I know that much, but resources are somewhat limited. I’m not the most popular detective sergeant in the building as it is.’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Smith, ‘I cannot imagine for a moment what that feels like.’

  The sense grew, for Waters at least, that this was now about more than the case of Michelle Simms. Neither spoke before Smith turned and walked back to the table and chairs where they’d had lunch. There was still no sign of Jo.

  As he sat down again, Smith said, ‘I can’t remember the exact occasion when I first said this to you, but I know I’ll have said it before. The time will come when you’ll have to choose between being a high-ranking, well-paid and officially respected police detective, and being a good one. This shouldn’t ever happen, but in my experience it always does. I tried to work out why but gave up in the end. There’s some fault in the system which brings a certain sort of copper to that particular fork in the road, and maybe you’ve got there quicker than I did.’