Ash and Bone

35

Elder read bad news in Karen's face before hearing the words.

'Shit,' he said. And then, 'Poor woman.'

'Yes.'

'How are you feeling?'

'How am I? What difference does that make? She's dead, for Christ's sake.'

'You went to see her yesterday? Spoke to her?'

A laugh choked from Karen's throat. 'Yes, I spoke to her.'

'How was she?'

She looked at him as if he were some kind of fool. 'How do you think she was? I cosied up to her and calmed her down and made her tell me about that arsehole Kennet raping her.'

'He raped her?'

'He raped her. Sometimes in some kind of sick game she went along with and sometimes for real.'

'She told you this?'

'She told me this and then I left her alone, alone in that house with her gardening gloves and her fancy fucking teacups and her fake fucking chandelier.' There were tears running freely down Karen's face. 'And yesterday afternoon when I wanted that bastard brought back in, he'd fucking disappeared.'

Elder eased her chair away from the desk. 'Sit down a minute.'

'I don't want to sit down.'

'Sit down, have some coffee, let's talk this through.'

'I don't want any fucking coffee either.'

'Karen.'

'What?'

'Sit down. Come on.' Firmly but gently, he took hold of her arm. 'Let's sit.'

Karen sighed and did as she was told; she found a tissue in her bag, wiped her eyes and blew her nose. Elder pulled another chair round from the other side of the desk and sat opposite her, close enough to have held her hand.

'It's not your fault, you know.'

'Oh, no. Yes, it is. Of course it is.'

'You didn't do any of those things to her.'

'I made her talk about them, think about them.'

'You were doing your job.'

'My fucking job.'

'Besides, you think they weren't on her mind, all the time? You think she could forget? Ever?' He was thinking of Katherine, standing in Rob Summers's house, back before Christmas. Dad, I'm never going to be like I was before. 'It's Kennet,' Elder said. 'That's who's to blame. What we've got to do is make sure he doesn't do it again. Make sure he pays.'

Jennifer McLaughlin was serving a customer with something for a sore throat and sympathising: a lot of it about this time of the year. Elder went in and begged ten minutes of her time. Together with Karen they walked along the Broadway, Jennifer taking the opportunity for a cigarette; Karen doing her best to inhale but getting only petrol fumes instead. Starbucks was full so they went on past the circle to Pizza Express.

Karen began her questions as delicately as she could, but Jennifer, a good decade and a half younger than Estelle Cooper by age, and several generations by attitude and experience, was largely unfazed.

'We quarrelled about it, yes, course we did. All that play-acting stuff. Don't know now why I went along with it as long as I did.' Pausing, she looked Karen in the eye. 'Except, well, it was exciting at first. You know? You know what I mean? It's only afterwards you think, God, what was going on there at all?'

'And when you fell out on holiday,' Karen said, 'is that really what it was about? More of the same?'

Averting her face, Jennifer slowly released a wavering line of smoke. 'Yes,' she said.

'We'd like you to come in and make a statement,' Karen said. 'I presume that's okay?'

'Now? You don't mean now?'

'Later this afternoon would be fine. When you finish work. We can give you a lift both ways if that would help.'

'All right.' She looked at them again, first one and then the other. 'He has done something this time, hasn't he? Something serious.'

'It's possible,' Elder said.

'Dear God,' Jennifer whispered and crossed herself.

'If it were necessary,' Karen said, 'you'd be prepared to give evidence in court?'

'Oh, yes.'

'You don't know the names of anyone Steven went out with before, do you?' Elder asked. 'We'd like to talk to as many as we can.'

Jennifer reached for her pack of cigarettes. 'I don't know, I might. If I think about it, you know. Names he's mentioned. Not above a bit of bragging, as you might imagine. But offhand there's only that -' The cigarettes slipped from her hand. 'Only that policewoman, the one who was killed. Oh, God. Oh, my good God!' A sudden shiver running through her, every vestige of colour bleached from her face.

In the end, Jennifer McLaughlin came up with three names, going back, she thought, a good few years. One might have been working in Waitrose, another a nurse. All were – or had been – north London-based.

'You and me then, Frank,' Karen said. 'Bit of old-fashioned legwork. What do you say?'