‘He knew stuff about Masters though. Handy to have him around.’
Someone obviously didn’t think so.
21
If you didn’t know much about harassed-looking Spencer Shaw – the conspiracy to commit burglary, his labelling of his ex-girlfriend as a ‘mad bitch’ when she’d been missing for three days, his dry-humping of a cowboy-booted ‘blonde chick’ a month after Holly was presumed murdered – you could almost, almost, feel sorry for him this morning. The last thing he needs is us clogging up his living room.
‘We didn’t get home until 2 a.m. I actually felt sorry for my wife going into work this morning, but I think it was me that drew the short straw.’
He’s not wrong. There’s barely a sliver of carpet to be seen under all the half-unpacked suitcases, not to mention the usual miscellanea that comes with travelling with small kids: carriers, wet wipes, devices, snacks, pushchairs, nappies, a whole host of other contraptions. In fact, we’ve been there a few minutes before I realise there’s a child sleeping under a mound of crap on the sofa. A boy, I think, tucked under a blanket, only his sunburned forehead and socked feet on display. Another child isn’t so hard to spot – a baby girl in a playpen, making some sort of cuddly toy protest; bear after bear hurled over the bars and into the mess.
Spencer Shaw stands in the epicentre, staticky dark hair sticking out at odd angles, looking for all the world like he hasn’t got a clue where to start. Like domestic duty isn’t normally part of his job description. And, of course, he hadn’t banked on a visit from the Metropolitan Police this morning, although he knows all about Holly.
‘I didn’t find out until Thursday. We try not to spend too much time on our phones when we’re on holiday with the kids, but I couldn’t resist posting a few photos and there it was, all over Facebook.’
‘Not a good idea to advertise you’re on holiday to the whole of Facebook,’ I say. ‘Attracts burglars. Thought you’d be wise to that.’
It’s cheap but he deserves it.
‘Have you never made a mistake?’ Shaw replies, all sad eyes and dark stubble. Personally, I can’t see what Holly saw in him, although he reminds me of the type a younger Jacqui used to go for: intense and brooding, probably thinks of himself as artistic. A tendency to whisper sweet, poetic nothings while lifting a twenty out of your purse.
‘Too many to count,’ I admit. ‘But we’re not here to talk about me.’
‘Of course not. You’re here to talk about the mistake I made taking up with Holly.’
‘And to see if you can shed light on how she ended up in a Cambridgeshire field with a bullet hole in her skull.’
He should flinch. He doesn’t.
‘Funny,’ says Parnell, offering a pinched smile. ‘Her friends say she made a mistake taking up with you.’
He bends down, doing a quick sweep of the floor for teddy bears. ‘Shona and Josh, I assume?’
‘Mainly.’ I do my bit, picking up a purple penguin. ‘Emma and Kayleigh weren’t your greatest fans either.’
‘Let me guess, Holly was a saint and I’m the devil.’
‘Got it in one, although you’ll be glad to know we generally take these things with a pinch of salt.’ I throw the toy back in the playpen. ‘Smooching with another girl in the street only a month after Holly disappears doesn’t exactly make you look great, though. Was that the same girl who alibi’d you, by any chance?’
A proud stare. ‘Yes. The girl who alibi’d me and the girl who married me two years later.’
There’s a photo by the TV. Blonde-chick-in-cowboy boots is now a redhead in flip-flops, one hand clasping her eldest child’s hand, the other holding a bucket and spade.
Spencer catches me looking. ‘I love that photo. Loz was pregnant with Bonnie at the time, but we didn’t realise.’ I take a glance at the zonked-out child under the blanket. It’s hard to tell his age precisely, but I’d say Loz was expecting him not too long after Holly Kemp took her last breath. ‘Loz saved me, you know? I was a mess before I met Holly and I was an even worse mess when I was with her. Me and Holly, we were volatile, whereas things with Loz have always been brilliant. She’s brilliant. She knows everything about my past but she’s always looked beyond it.’ He taps his chest. ‘She sees me, the real me. Holly was always so wrapped up in herself. We might have been together for two years but it meant nothing.’
His candour is helpful, but Christ, it’s brutal.
‘I’m not sure you meant much to her either,’ I say, feeling the need to offer a comeback on Holly’s behalf. ‘Have you heard of a man called Dale Peters?’
‘That poor sod she screwed for money? Yeah, that was a weird one.’
‘You knew about Peters?’
‘Holly screwed a lot of people for money.’
‘You did OK out of it,’ I point out. ‘Five nights at the Burj Al Arab, we heard.’
Parnell cuts in, saving Shaw his blushes. ‘What are you saying? Holly was a prostitute?’
‘No, not like that. I don’t mean “screwed” as in screwed.’ He stiffens suddenly, staring at us with sharp, officious eyes. ‘Look, as soon as I heard you were revisiting Holly’s case, I spoke to my father-in-law. Loz’s dad is a solicitor, you see, and he knows all about the bad things Holly and I did, but he says I can’t be prosecuted for anything I tell you if there aren’t any complainants. And trust me, there aren’t.’
‘Fine. Talk.’ I wait for Parnell to take issue, but he looks as intrigued as me.
‘OK.’ He walks over to the sofa, quickly checking on the sleeping child. Once he’s happy he’s still dead to the world, he hefts a rucksack off a dining chair and sits down. ‘So I met Holly in 2010, in a club just off Regent Street. We got talking, drinking, and I ended up being upfront about being not long out of prison. She thought it was hilarious. She thought it was genius, actually – getting a job in an estate agency so you could effectively case the joints. I was flattered. I’d had enough of feeling like scum, so when a gorgeous girl – because she was gorgeous – is looking at you like you’re this master criminal, it’s hard not to play along. And then I tell her about my parents. My mum had died a couple of years before; that’s what sent me off the rails, and my dad was nowhere to be seen since my sixth birthday . . .’
A flash of Serena Bailey’s daughter yesterday: ‘When we went to Hobbledown for my birthday last week, the whole of Year One came . . .’ My first instinct is to feel sorry for Spencer Shaw, which surprises me. My second is something else. Something I can’t quite grasp hold of. Not exactly a feeling in my gut but a pebble in my shoe.
Shaw’s voice quickly distracts me.
‘The no-parents thing settles it for Holly. She decides there and then that we’re kindred spirits. Says there’s no one in the world who’s going to give us what we want, so we just have to take it. And then, just like it’s the most natural thing in the world, she walks off and starts chatting up this guy right in front of me. I’m so shocked, I just stand rooted to the spot. But then after about ten minutes I think . . .’ He shoots a look to the sofa, lowering his voice. ‘Fuck this. So I’m just about to leave when she comes flying across, saying we have to leave right now, while the other guy’s in the toilet.’ He smiles, though it’s more of a grimace. ‘She’d stolen his wallet while she’d been chatting him up, brazen as anything. She’s waving £90 at me, saying that’ll buy us a bottle of champagne in Claridge’s. I was smitten.’