Ash and Bone

27

Wednesday morning. A fine fall of rain. Elder had driven Karen's car to Hendon early, left it parked, and passed time in the canteen. In the queue, tray in hand, his stomach had rebelled at the sight and smell of sausages and bacon and he'd settled for two slices of toast. There was a copy of the Mirror left lying around and he thumbed through it, not really paying attention. After a while he saw Mike Ramsden come in and he raised a hand in greeting.

Ramsden carried over a breakfast plate full to overflowing. 'Best meal of the day.'

'Your boss in yet?' Elder asked.

'Just arrived.' Ramsden grinned. 'Like a bear with a sore head this morning. Don't know what she was up to last night, but it's left its mark, I'll tell you that.'

'See you in a while,' Elder said.

Ramsden mumbled something through a mouthful of egg and beans.

Karen was sitting at her desk, a large carton of orange juice close at hand. Elder said good morning and gave her back her car keys.

'What are you looking so smug about?' she said.

'I didn't know I was.'

'The girlfriend,' Karen said, 'she's called McLaughlin. Jennifer McLaughlin. Twenty-seven. Works in a chemist's, Muswell Hill Broadway. But not every day.'

'Today?'

'That's what I'm waiting to find out.'

Another fifteen minutes and they were on their way.

Jennifer McLaughlin was smart in her white uniform, buttoned and belted, reddish hair pulled back in a barrette, pale freckles across her face. If Kennet had a type it wasn't easy to discern what it was.

Karen showed her warrant card as discreetly as she could.

The manager agreed to let them use his office.

'What's this about?' Jennifer McLaughlin said, but the way, even in that enclosed space, she contrived to look neither of them in the eye, suggested that she knew.

'November just gone,' Karen said, 'you went to Spain.'

'Malaga, yes. Winter break.'

'You and Steve. Steve Kennet.'

'Yes, why? What's wrong?'

'When did you come back?'

'Twenty-eighth. End of the week.'

'Jennifer.'

'What?'

'This might be important.'

She slid both hands up along her neck, fingertips against the roots of her hair. 'We had a row. Stupid, really. About nothing. Where we were going to eat, which cafe. Steve, he lost his temper. Really lost it, you know?'

'He hit you?'

She looked at the floor, guilty; as if she had something to be guilty about. 'I said I didn't want to stay, not any more. He could stay if he liked, but I was coming home. He said if I was going, we both were. I phoned the airline to change the flights. Cost a fortune. We didn't talk all the way back, sat in separate rows. Soon as we got back to Stansted that was that.'

'You've not seen him again?'

'No.'

'Which day did you fly back, Jennifer?'

'The Tuesday. Tuesday morning. The twenty-fifth.'

'All right. Thanks.' Karen doing her best to keep any excitement from her voice.

'Steve,' Jennifer McLaughlin said. 'He hasn't done anything, has he?'

'Not necessarily.' Karen opened the office door. 'Thanks for your time.'

Out on the street, the rain had just ceased, leaving the paving stones slippery and dark.

'Didn't waste any time, did he?' Karen said. 'Flies back on the twenty-fifth and a day later Maddy Birch is dead.'

'We still don't have proof.'

'We've got enough to bring him in for questioning.'

Elder nodded.

With a broad smile, Karen hit Ramsden's number on her phone. 'Okay, Mike. Bring him in.'

Kennet had finished in Dartmouth Park and moved on. One wing of the Whittington Hospital was slowly being transformed into prestige apartments with views over London, Waterlow Park on their doorstep, a ten-minute stroll to Highgate Village, five more to the Heath. Kennet was sitting on a platform two-thirds of the way up the scaffolding, time out for a smoke and a drop of tea from a thermos. One of his colleagues alongside him, stretched out, the Sun open across his face.

Situations like that, people panicked, even innocent people, tried to do a runner, but Kennet, Ramsden thought, where could he go? Besides, he'd seen them coming, sure enough, and not made a move.

'Steve,' Ramsden called up, keeping it friendly. 'A word, eh?'

Kennet shook out what remained in his cup, screwed it back on top of the flask, put the flask in his rucksack, said something to his mate, who was sitting up now, wondering what was going on, and began to climb down.

'DS Ramsden. This is DC Furness.'

'Yes, I remember.'

'Not altogether defective then.'

'What?'

'Your memory.'

'Sorry, you'll have to explain.'

'At the station.'

'What? Oh, come on.'

'No, you come on.'

Kennet's body tensed and his eyes narrowed just a little and Ramsden readied himself in case, but then Kennet relaxed and said, nodding back towards where he'd been working, 'Give me a few minutes,' and Ramsden said, 'Go ahead,' and then, to Furness, 'Go with him.'

Ramsden lighting a cigarette and pacing easily up and down, wanting to believe they had him, but not letting himself, not quite, preferring to believe in what they said about when the fat lady sings.

They kept him waiting the best part of an hour, trying his patience, the young uniformed constable as inscrutable as one of the Guardsmen on sentry duty on Horse Guards Parade. When Karen Shields entered, Ramsden and Elder close behind her, the PC stepped outside.

'You know you can have a solicitor present if you wish?' Karen said, sitting down.

Kennet smiled. 'No need for that.'

'And you realise you can leave at any time?'

Kennet made a play of getting up, then sat back down.

'You don't mind if I tape this interview?'

'Be my guest.' Leaning back now, enjoying it.

We'll see, Karen thought. 'I'd like to ask you some questions,' she said, 'about your recent holiday in Spain.'

'Great food, lovely weather, iffy hotel.'

'You stated previously that you and Ms McLaughlin returned to this country on Friday the twenty-eighth.'

'That's right.'

'According to Ms McLaughlin, you came back early on the twenty-fifth.'

Kennet drummed his fingers on the table. Broad fingers, nails cut short. Karen was remembering Maddy Birch's former husband. Working man's hands.

'Mr Kennet, is that the case?'

'Sorry, what?'

'That you flew back to this country on the twenty-fifth?'

A slight movement of the shoulders. 'If she says so.'

'What do you say?'

'All right, yes. Yes, the twenty-fifth.'

'Then why, when you were asked before, did you claim it was the twenty-eighth?'

Kennet threw up his hands, rocked back his chair. 'God, woman! Why d'you think?'

Karen leaned, almost imperceptibly, towards him. 'Tell me.'

'It's obvious, isn't it? She was killed on the Wednesday, wasn't she? Maddy. And you were going to be going round, all the blokes she'd been out with. Friends. Anyone who knew her. Asking questions, poking into their lives. Easier to stay out of it, right? No harm done either way.'

'Unless you've got something to hide.'

'Who hasn't?'

'Where were you on the evening of Wednesday, twenty-sixth?'

'See. There you go, right there.'

'Where were you?'

'Went to see this film. The Medallion. Jackie Chan. Holloway Odeon. Absolute bloody rubbish. Don't often go and see stuff like that, but sometimes that's what you want, right? Rubbish. Give your brain a rest. But can I prove it? No. Who keeps cinema tickets? No one. Afterwards I went to the pub up the road, set back, past the traffic lights towards the Archway. I don't even know what it's called. Had a couple of pints, went home.'

'And then what?'

'Then nothing. Up at six thirty next morning. Off to work, same as usual.'

'You didn't go out again?'

'No.'

'You're sure?'

'Course I'm sure.'

'Like you were sure you flew back to England on the twenty-eighth?'

'I've explained that.'

'This pub you say you were in, did you talk to anyone?'

Bloke behind the bar.'

'Think he'd remember you?'

'I doubt it.'

'No witnesses to support what you say you did or where you were.'

'That's right.'

'As an alibi, it doesn't begin to stand up, does it?'

Kennet smiled. 'Now you know why I lied.'

'So what do you think?' Karen asked.

They were in her office, herself, Elder and Ramsden. Late afternoon, early evening. Furness was babysitting Kennet in the interview room.

'I'd like to smack him in the face,' Ramsden said.

'Frank?'

'Would he be that sure of himself if he were guilty? I don't know.'

'You don't think he's covering up something?'

'Probably.'

'Well?'

'I don't know if it's what we want it to be.'

'Half an hour alone with him,' Ramsden said, 'I'd bloody find out.'

Karen laughed despite herself. 'Mike, you're such a sweet old-fashioned thing.'

'Bollocks,' Ramsden said. Adding a mock-deferential, 'Ma'am.'

'Well, I'd like to have another go at him, ask him about his relationship with Maddy. See if there isn't something we can shake him on there.'

Elder was just about to say something when his mobile started to ring. Turning away, he listened briefly. 'Five minutes. I'll call you back.'

'I'm sorry,' he said to Karen, 'something I have to deal with. You carry on.'

As he turned away, she wondered what could have brought the concern so clearly to his eyes.