‘You’d be better off asking Renée,’ says Steele. ‘Or even the super-stud over there.’ Parnell, proud father of four, grins at the moniker. ‘But more likely than not, I suppose. Then again, you hear the stories – women who didn’t realise until they were five, six months gone, sometimes more. And most symptoms can be passed off as something else. Can’t do your jeans up – one too many pizzas. Feeling a bit tired – well, frankly, aren’t we all?’
‘Your period, though?’
‘You can still get light bleeding,’ explains Parnell. ‘Maggie did with the twins.’
‘OK, but if you’re working as a prostitute, you’re in tune with your body. You’ve got a vested interest in keeping it looking a certain way, especially if you’re a £500-an-hour kind of prostitute, and at four months, she’d have had a bump, even just a small one. So would you really sell your body if you were fairly sure you were pregnant?’
I’m looking at Steele, but Parnell’s always up for testing out a theory.
‘I might if I was desperate,’ he says. ‘Serena’s fella – he’s not the daughter’s dad, is he?’
‘No, she met him a few years later.’
‘Was there any dad on the scene?’
‘I’ve no idea, although if I were to hazard a guess, I’d say no. She said her life was a bit of a mess back then.’
Parnell nods, conclusion reached. ‘Then, yeah, I might sell my body if I was facing single motherhood and already struggling on a low wage. Especially if I’d done it before.’
‘But she’s got “Special People”,’ I say, earning me a strange look from Steele. ‘Oh, it’s just this thing she had up in her classroom: MISS BAILEY’S SPECIAL PEOPLE TREE. All the kids had them. My point is, she seems to have a decent support network, so surely someone would have helped her? Selling your pregnant body smacks of some drug-addled street girl needing to pay for her next fix, not a woman with a job, friends, family.’ I pause, letting them digest what I’ve said before going for the bull’s-eye. ‘And I suppose with what we now know about Masters, it just makes me wonder if she was ever in Clapham at all?’
Steele flops back heavily, her eyes boring into mine. ‘Why though, Kinsella? Why would she lie? Is she a crazy?’
A crazy. A fruitloop. A cop-botherer. A loon. They’re not nice, the labels we give to those sad, rejected creatures who insert themselves into police investigations for attention and nothing more.
But Serena Bailey isn’t one of them, I’m sure of it.
‘If anything, boss, she’s always shied away from attention. Her partner doesn’t even know about the case, and I’m pretty sure she didn’t mention it to anyone at her old school.’
‘So I’ll ask you again, if she’s not a crazy and she’s not mistaken, then what is she?’ I hold Steele’s stare but I don’t have an easy answer. ‘I mean, are you saying she shot Holly and decided to blame the nearest available serial killer?’ I twitch my shoulders, saying nothing. ‘I’m being serious, Kinsella. Are you?’
I don’t think I am?
‘No, of course not.’
‘Good. Thank Christ for that! ’Cos now Masters is out of the frame – however godawful that fallout is going to be – I say we focus solely on Simon Fellows.’ She thumps her reasons out on the desk. ‘He has access to guns. He was named by the victim as someone she knew and was scared of. And finally, you guys are telling me that Spencer Shaw pretty much cacked his pants when you mentioned Fellows’ name, which speaks volumes.’
But proves nothing.
‘So what are we doing about Bailey?’ I ask, intent on seeing my pet project through.
‘You interview her again, of course. You tell her we have proof she’s lying and throw in Perverting the Course of Justice for fun. I’d say we’d have a hard time proving it, but we can see what it shakes up, at least.’
‘And Dyer?’ asks Parnell.
‘And Dyer,’ she repeats with a world-beating sigh. ‘How do you solve a problem like Tess Dyer?’ Steele’s words might be straight out of a musical, but her face is a gritty drama. So grave and stricken, it almost pains me to look. ‘Right, this is what we’re going to do. Nothing. We sit tight for now – for today, maybe even half a day. I just need some time with this, m’dears. I need to work out what this means, who I need to talk to first. So top secret, you remember?’
‘JFK,’ I say.
‘Watergate,’ adds Parnell.
‘Bloody weapons of mass destruction,’ we chime in unison.
*
Unfortunately for Serena Bailey, it’s hometime when I rock up at St Joseph of Whatever-it’s-called, and I strongly suspect my presence, notably my warrant card and my request that Miss Bailey comes with me immediately, is going to be the talk of many a WhatsApp parents’ group tonight. Fortunately for me, once we’re back at the station, Serena says she doesn’t want a solicitor. Or more specifically, that she doesn’t have time to wait for one, as if she isn’t home before Robbie at six, he’ll start asking questions and that’s the last thing she wants.
Apart from me asking questions. I’m fairly sure she wants that less.
‘This is ridiculous,’ she asserts; she’s been asserting all over the place since we got back. ‘It was him, Masters. He was standing at the door, smiling, wearing that red lumberjack shirt, welcoming her in.’
‘I don’t believe you, Serena.’
My tone is blithe, sing-song: Jacqui warning Finn that she knows for sure he hasn’t brushed his teeth. In contrast, Serena Bailey’s like the star of a YouTube Tutorial – How to Tell When Someone’s Lying. Wild, whirling hand gestures. Feet shuffling under the table. And those eyes, those wide green eyes, darting left, right, anywhere but on mine.
‘Because you can’t have seen him, Serena. We’ve now got proof, you see. Bank records prove Christopher Masters was nowhere near London, let alone Clapham, that day.’
She blushes, her skin matching with her rose-pink shirt. ‘Then I must have been mistaken.’
‘Just like that?’ I half-laugh, keeping it light for now. ‘Six years of certainty and now “whoops, I made a boo-boo”.’
She pulls her ponytail over her shoulder, tugging at the ends, circling it round her finger. ‘Look, a man opened the door. He was wearing a check shirt. He was around fifty. They showed me a photo of Masters and there really was a strong similarity.’ A shrug. ‘But if you’ve got proof that I got it wrong, then I’ll have to accept that I got it wrong. And I’m sorry. But it doesn’t change the fact that I saw Holly go into that house.’
‘Describe her to me again.’
‘Holly?’ She drops her ponytail, bringing her hands to her lap. Still, almost rigid. ‘Salon-flicky blonde hair, really glamorous. She was wearing this gorgeous white coat – well, off-white; cream, I suppose.’ She makes a sweeping motion with both hands. ‘Huge fur collar, belted, gorgeous. I half-thought about asking her where she got it.’
Verbatim. A computer throwing out a programmed statement.