‘Hang on.’ Parnell lifts his hand. ‘You lived a ten-minute walk from Masters’ store but you went to stay with your brother over two miles away?’
‘I wasn’t getting on with my folks, my mum mainly. She was disappointed about me not cracking on with a proper career. I saw it as nagging, but of course she just cared.’ He slumps forward onto the table, the effort of staying upright too much. ‘And my brother had just split up with his fiancée. He was going through a tough time and what with Valentine’s Day coming up, I decided I’d stay with him for a few weeks. Keep him company. We drank beer and ate takeaways every night. He’d moan about Tara, I’d moan about Izzy, the girl I liked. You can check all this with my brother.’
‘We will,’ says Parnell. ‘Although I’m sure you understand beloved big brothers aren’t the best alibis, for obvious reasons.’
Keefe sags. Gaffney’s cautious. I take one last shot before the words ‘take a break’ kill the mood.
‘You know what I’m thinking, Brandon? If you spend a lot of time with Christopher Masters, a man who clearly hates women a great deal and . . .’
‘I never got that impression,’ he interrupts quietly, mumbling more to the table than me. ‘He hated his ex-wife. Always going on about her new life, her fancy car on the drive, her posh house, her new partner. He never said anything else bad about women though, not to me, anyway.’
‘Oh, so you were spicing it for the Mail then?’ I flick through the file in front of me, pull out Keefe’s interview. ‘His eyes darkened. His posture went as rigid as a steel bar. His voice took on a rough, husky tone. Like he’d entered some sort of altered state.’
‘They twist your words.’
‘OK, well, I won’t twist mine. I think you weren’t getting anywhere with – what did you call her – Izzy?’ His head bobs. ‘She was flirting with other people in the pub, not realising she had a good man right under her nose, am I right? Then your brother – who you sound really close to – gets ditched by his fiancée. And on top of that, your mum’s nagging you, making you feel bad about your decisions, your life choices. So I’m thinking you had a lot of reasons to dislike women around that time, Brandon, and then you go into work and there’s Christopher Masters, angry at this ex-wife, bitter. And you make a connection.’
Keefe looks up at me, deadbeat, but with eyes full of focus. ‘I know what you’re getting at and I’m not going to demean myself by answering. You have nothing, so you want me to incriminate myself. Well, I won’t do it. Though they plot evil against you and devise wicked schemes, they cannot succeed. The Book of Psalms, chapter twenty-two, verse eleven. Now I’d like to take a break.’
*
Nearly ten, Friday night.
Brandon Keefe has gone home, bailed to return next week. Nimbus lives to eat another bowl of Whiskas. And all is not right with the world.
‘Nothing more we could do,’ says Parnell, as Steele switches the lights out in her office. ‘Without his fingerprints on any of the bodies, or on a weapon, it’s weak.’
‘Ha! A weapon. Imagine that.’ Steele’s laugh is rueful, desperate even.
‘We should get someone onto this Izzy,’ I slam the last of the sash windows shut. ‘I got the sense the first time we met Keefe that he was still smarting from that rejection. Maybe she can tell us something interesting. Violence, weird behaviour . . .’
‘Is that thorough investigative work or clutching at straws?’ asks Steele.
‘Probably the latter.’ I hold the door open for them both. Steele has her weekly pile of online shopping to contend with. Parnell’s carrying two bags of food – dinner he promised he’d have on the table by eight. ‘Although I do think it’s strange that a grown man like Masters would savage his wife to a young lad like Keefe.’
‘He didn’t have many friends to savage her to,’ says Parnell.
‘I guess.’
Steele puts her hand over the lift button. ‘OK, we’re not going anywhere until you say what you’re thinking.’
I shrug. ‘That maybe Masters saw something in Keefe? That he was testing him, seeing how he’d react.’
Parnell’s with me. ‘It’s possible. It’s classic predatory behaviour – throw out the bait and see who bites.’ A quick glance at Steele. ‘What, you don’t agree?’
Her face is buried in the yellow plastic of a Selfridges parcel. ‘Christ, I don’t know what to think about any of this.’ She looks up. ‘We’ve got a witness who connects our victim to Masters, but Masters has no connection to guns that we can find – and now the witness could be iffy, for all we know.’ She nods at me; Serena Bailey having been designated my weekend project. Tomorrow should have been my first Saturday off in a month, and technic-ally, it still will be, but with this case gathering momentum, I’ve agreed to some unpaid overtime. Serena Bailey, lucky her, is getting a visit. ‘And with Fellows, we’ve got a name that’s very associated with guns, but as of yet, no provable connection to Holly.’ She lets out a noise somewhere between a groan and a yawn. ‘The only thing I’m sure of is that I’m bloody starving and there’s no one worrying about when I was last fed. Remind me to come back as a cat next time around.’
19
I stayed at my own place last night for the first time in weeks. Aiden grumbled, but I had reasons at the ready: post (who gets post?), a desire to ‘air the place’, and a sudden and overwhelming concern that there might be some chicken slowly putrefying in the fridge. Another reason was genuine. The need to check on my neighbour, Jerry, who lives on the ground floor and in La-La land half the time. Jerry’s become increasingly house-bound over the past twelve months, and with not a soul in the world to care, I try to sit with him sometimes, have a cup of tea, listen to his tall tales. Last night’s flight of fancy was an account of the time he caught Jimi Hendrix trying to bed his ex-wife, Beverley. It was a good story, full of detail and drama, and I’d cheerfully played along, even encouraging him to tell me more.
The main reason though, and far less entertaining than Jerry’s nutty reminiscences, was that I needed to call Jacqui, and that’s always easier if Aiden isn’t next to me, looking wounded. Wondering if he’ll ever get a mention. Wondering if they’ll ever meet.
It was a typical Jacqui conversation: me asking questions, her going off at convoluted tangents.
‘So is Dad in pain?’
‘A bit, not really, his meds are pretty good. I tell you who is in pain, though. Do you remember Sarah Phelan? She was in the year above me. She was the first at Lady H’s to get a mobile, lived in tartan mini-skirts, you must remember her . . . Anyway, she had a boob job and it’s gone tits-up, pardon the pun. A capsular contracture, whatever that is. I’ll have to Google it . . .’
And.
‘How’s Finn? Is he excited about soccer camp?’
‘No! He’s made this friend, Callum, and he’d rather be over at his. They’ve got a games room, if you please. A pinball machine, air-hockey, giant jenga, the lot. I mean, he does something in HR and she’s a midwife – how on earth do they afford a games room?’