‘Point taken. But I’m not sure about Keefe, though. The Mail interview – why would he turn the spotlight on himself if he was involved?’
‘He wouldn’t be the first,’ Renée says. ‘Some killers can’t help making themselves part of the story.’
‘OK, another point taken. But at the risk of sounding like a shrink, he doesn’t quite fit the profile for me.’ I look at Parnell, now slumped against the incident board. Not a great sign given he’s got a long night ahead. ‘Remember all the family photos, Sarge? Keefe’s got a solid family unit. Older brothers he’s close to. A mum and dad he spoke fondly of. Masters’ ex-wife said he’d always wanted a son, but Keefe had no need for a surrogate father, or any type of male role model. I just can’t see how Masters would have got that sort of hold over him.’
Steele says to Parnell, ‘Didn’t you say he’d been miffed about some girl he had the hots for shagging someone else? Masters might have got in his ear about that? “All women are slags.” The usual tripe.’
‘He didn’t actually know she was shagging him until much later,’ I tell her. ‘Not until after he’d been paid for the Mail interview. Masters was locked up by then.’
Emily’s hand shoots up. ‘Boss, remember Masters’ ex-wife told me and Seth that he had a second cousin in Cambridgeshire?’ Steele nods. We all nod. ‘Well, I ran him through the PNC and he has two convictions – one from 1987, the other 2001. Both for assaulting his wife.’
‘An associate of Masters’ with convictions for violence against women,’ says Seth. ‘Add him to the accomplice roll call.’
‘But he’s dead, isn’t he?’ says Parnell. ‘I’m sure you said he was dead?’
‘Jesus Christ! Who isn’t dead on this case?’ Steele lifts her hands to rail at the gods as the rest of us exchange glances. After a moment, she regains composure, letting out a deep breath and dazzling us all with a slightly manic ear-to-ear smile.
‘Right, my lovelies, who has plans this evening? I need to pay a visit and one of you lucky folk is coming with me.’
Parnell’s already out on account of his Church Guy crusade. Renée and Emily shout ‘Yoga’ and ‘Mate’s 30th’ simultaneously, and Flowers’ face makes it clear he’d rather nail his scrotum to the table.
Leaving me and Seth. And Steele isn’t going anywhere with a recently dumped Seth.
‘Bad luck, Cat. You’re it.’
‘I’ve got to be in Soho for 9 p.m. at the latest. A dinner reservation.’
‘Ooooooh!’ Steele pulls an impressed face. ‘Check this one out. Picnics on a Tuesday night. Dinner reservations on a Thursday. Quite the socialite these days, aren’t we?’
I don’t rise to it. ‘So where are we off to?’
‘Wait a minute, I’ll tell you exactly.’ She checks her phone. ‘Langley Villa, number four Montrose Grove, South Kensington.’
‘Sounds posh.’
Parnell whistles. ‘Sounds pricey. Who are you off to see? The Aga Khan?’
Steele laughs. ‘Not far off. Olly Cairns. I want to get this accomplice thing ruled in or ruled out, one way or the other, once and for all.’
12
Dad’s dirty money, his gold-plated membership of The Bad Life Inc., meant that I had A Good Life growing up, if by ‘good’ you mean posh schools I never felt I belonged in, fancy holidays I never wanted to go on, and in later years, a £250 monthly allowance that I’d invariably blow on other people – mainly cool girls and bad boys – in a soulless attempt to buy friends.
It also means I’ve never been that wowed by nice houses, having lived in a fairly decent one myself from the age of ten. Ripped from the decade-long security of the only place I’d ever called home – the cramped flat above McAuley’s Old Ale House – Mum and Dad had shipped us up to Hertfordshire at the turn of the millennium, to live a middle-class life on a middle-class street in a middle-class village, so we could start the process of pretending to be something we weren’t.
Dining room people. Conservatory people. Two en suites and an oak-panelled study type people.
Oliver Cairns’ picture-book house makes ours look like a peasant’s shack.
‘Fuck me,’ I say, not managing to phrase my awe more eloquently. ‘Cairns must have racked up the overtime.’
Langley Villa is a detached, five-storey, stucco-fronted townhouse, almost as wide as it is high, and set back from a dreamy cherry blossom street. It could be Georgian. Could be Victorian. It could be the real deal or a new build. All I know is that it’s expensive. Crazy, laughably, lunatic expensive.
Steele turns, halfway up the steps to the grand pillared entrance. ‘That Merc didn’t come cheap either.’ She points behind me to the cobalt-blue status symbol. ‘I bet the number plate alone cost more than my car.’
OL18 VER.
I scrape my jaw off the pavement and follow her to the door. ‘Seriously, is this the same guy? He didn’t strike me as a personalised number-plate wanker.’
‘That’s what having too much money does to you. What else is he going to spend it on?’ She rings the bell, talking quickly. ‘His wife made a killing in plastic coat hangers – or could be coat hooks? Something deathly dull, anyway. But she sold the business for £50 million.’
‘I could live with deathly dull.’
The door clicks open and there he is, the coat-hanger king, framed in late-evening sun and wearing his slippers and a tired smile. He’d clearly scrubbed up for drinks with Dyer last night, as it’s a different Oliver Cairns who welcomes us into his hotel-lobby hall with its gleaming chequerboard tiles. In his brown slacks and brown cardigan, an errant eyebrow stuck out like an indicator, he looks more like a Classics professor than a retired crime fighter.
We follow him into a sitting room the size of a small aircraft hangar. Four elegantly mismatched sofas form a perfect square around what I suppose you’d call a coffee table, even though it could easily host a state banquet. The high walls are full of high art: lines, shapes, colours, splodges, frenzied brushstrokes I can’t make head nor tail of.
‘Sit down, sit down. God knows I’m not short on seating.’ He leaves the room for a second, returning with a dining chair. ‘My back’s playing hell at the moment and those bloody sofas are way too low,’ he explains. ‘I curse the day we ever bought them – and why we needed four is anyone’s guess. Anyways, make yourselves at home. What is it they say in Spain? Mi casa, su casa.’
‘Bloody hell, I wish your home was my home,’ I say, sinking, almost merging, with a leather sofa made for ten.
‘A tip for you, Cat.’ Cairns’ eyes twinkle. ‘Marry well, but divorce better.’
‘You and Moira broke up?’ says Steele, looking shocked. ‘I’m sorry, Olly. I didn’t realise.’
He lowers himself onto the chair, a slow, laboured effort. ‘Ah, t’was no big deal. No drama.’
‘I just thought, the house, you know . . . it’s very . . .’
‘Tasteful?’