Fell Purpose

FOUR

Bedlam Sans Mercy

‘So, what’s the griff with this one, guv?’ Hart asked, deeply gratified to have been chosen to accompany the boss. She glanced sideways at his profile as he drove. He still gave her a flutter, though she accepted he was off limits now. She liked older men, and there was just something about him . . . Sexy, she thought with an inward, wistful sigh. Definitely a hottie.

‘That’s what we’re going to find out,’ he said.

‘No, but I mean did she go putting herself about to get one over her dad, and get picked up by a low-life, raped and murdered?’

‘She wasn’t raped.’

‘Oh, yeah, I was forgetting.’ She frowned. ‘Well, how does that work, then?’

‘It complicates things,’ Slider admitted.

‘Why strangle the cow when you’ve drunk the milk?’

‘What a dainty turn of phrase you have. Anyway, it’s useless to speculate with so few facts.’

‘Yeah, but it passes the time.’ He didn’t look at her, but she saw his lips twitch in response.

The house was big, handsome, well proportioned; probably built in the 1820s, Slider thought, of solid London stock and slate, with the tall sash windows beloved of people who had enough servants to clean them. There were wide steps up to the front door over a semi-basement, and what had been a large front garden was now mostly gravelled parking, but with a shrubbery softening the edges, and a couple of lofty ancient trees for beauty. Parked on the gravel were a black sports-model Golf, a red Mazda X5 and a big Mercedes station wagon.

‘Bet the Golf’s the birthday present,’ Hart said as they pulled in alongside. ‘Lucky girl.’ She climbed out and looked up at the house. ‘Well, obviously they’ve got money, a house this big in this part of the world.’

Slider got out at the other side and pointed upwards. ‘That’s the other side of the coin,’ he said, as a 747 roared slowly over on its way to Heathrow. ‘All these lovely houses are under the flight path.’

Hart shrugged. ‘Wouldn’t bother me. I grew up with two bruvvers who loved reggae. A jumbo’s a breeze compared to that.’

They walked up the steps. There was the sound of slamming music from somewhere inside. Slider rang the bell, waited a moment, and rang it again. A dog’s barking came closer, retreated, advanced again until it was just behind the door. Slider rang again, then knocked for good measure, and the dog exploded with urgency.

At last there was movement inside, and the door was opened by a girl with wet eyelashes and a towel wrapped in a turban round her head. Beside her a golden retriever was woofing madly. Behind her an elderly mongrel of largely Labrador descent was scenting the air and wagging its tail, and further back still a grey whippet and a black toy poodle lurked, poised for flight. The music sounded louder now, but was still distant, upstairs somewhere.

‘I’m sorry, did you ring more than once?’ she said with the instant, confiding friendliness that Slider thought her generation’s nicest trait. ‘I was washing my hair, I couldn’t hear for the water.’

‘Are you Sophy Cooper-Hutchinson?’

‘Good God, no!’ she said, as if it was out of the question. ‘She’s my little sister.’

‘You must be Abigail, then,’ Slider said, produced his brief, and introduced himself and Hart.

Abigail looked alarmed. ‘Oh God, what’s she done now? If she’s got into trouble my parents will kill me. But I don’t see how I’m supposed to control her,’ she complained, her pretty face turning sulky. ‘She never listens to me. I’ve got a life of my own, anyway. Why should I have to hang around taking care of her like a nanny? It’s not fair. What’s she done, anyway?’

‘Nothing, as far as I know,’ Slider said. ‘She isn’t in trouble. We just want to ask her a few questions.’

‘God, that sounds ominous! That’s what they say on the TV, and the next thing there’s a chase and a gun battle.’

‘Well, this is real life, and believe me, it’s nuffing like TV,’ Hart said. ‘Is that her upstairs? Can we go up, then?’

‘I suppose so,’ Abigail said with a shrug, stepping back and abandoning all responsibility.

The retriever had long exchanged barking for sniffing Slider’s trousers with every intention of becoming his lifelong companion, and it frisked beside him as he stepped in. He had that effect on dogs, Hart noted.

‘Second floor, on the left,’ Abigail said. ‘Follow the noise. She’s supposed to be doing her practice but I wouldn’t bet on that.’

Slider climbed the stairs with the dogs surging about him, perhaps in the hope that he could be persuaded to take them out for a walk. Hart followed. The music grew louder, until the banisters trembled. At a turn of the stairs, when Slider was facing her for a moment, he raised his eyebrow enquiringly and she said, ‘It’s Foxxy Roxx. Wiv two exes.’

‘Where?’

‘Everywhere. It’s metal.’

‘Heavy metal?’ he said, to show he knew what she was talking about.

‘No, it’s more like Glam Metal,’ Hart said. ‘Still a bit crusty for a kid, though.’

‘You think she ought to be listening to Perry Como?’

She looked blank for a beat, and then said helpfully, ‘There’s a band called Epic Coma, but they’re more Gothic.’

‘How do you know all this metal stuff?’

‘Me bruvvers grew out of reggae.’

On the second floor the door to the left was open. Through it the music pounded, and they could see a slim young girl dancing about. She was wearing a black leotard and pink footless tights and a grey sweatband round her head, but above it her short coal-black hair stood up in waxed spikes, and she wore heavy black make-up about the eyes and near-purple lipstick. There was a heap of clothes on the bed, and her dance, all in time to the music, involved picking up garments, taking them to a full-length cheval mirror to hold them up against herself, and rejecting them on to a pile on a chair. She moved very well, Slider thought, and had obviously trained in dance, but ballet practice this was not. The contrast between the girlish occupation and the savage music was slightly disturbing.

The room was a cornucopia of possessions, electronic goods, sports equipment, hobby paraphernalia – evidence of past fads requiring considerable financial investment, before interest waned and a newer, shinier preoccupation took over. There were outgrown toys, ornaments, souvenirs, and clothes not only on the bed and chair but bulging out of the wardrobe and hanging on the back of the door. William Whiteley opened a department store with less stock, Slider thought.

He banged on the door, but she didn’t hear him through the music, which was beginning to give him a neck ache. But the dogs had surged past him and attracted her attention, and then she caught sight of him in the mirror and whipped round so hard it was practically a fouetté en tournant. In a gesture of unexpected modesty she clutched the garment she was holding to her front, high up at the neck. Her lips moved to say who are you, but their sound could not compete with Foxxy Roxx.

Slider held up his badge while Hart beside him lifted her hands in a placating, we-won’t-harm-you gesture, and then pointed to the CD player that was pumping out the decibels. The girl went to it crabwise, keeping her eyes on the intruders, and a moment later a blissful silence fell, surprising the dogs so much that one of them barked involuntarily, and then looked embarrassed.

‘Sophy Cooper-Hutchinson?’ Slider said with comfortable formality. ‘I’m sorry if we startled you. Your sister let us in and told us to come up. I’m Detective Inspector Slider from Shepherd’s Bush police station, and this is Detective Constable Hart.’

‘But I haven’t done anything!’ she cried, dropping the dress she had been holding. She had a tattoo like a pattern of thorns growing up around her neck from under her leotard, unpleasantly violent-looking against her young skin. She saw Slider notice it and said impatiently, defensively, ‘It’s just a transfer. It washes off. I’ll take it off before my parents get back. It’s just a bit of fun.’

‘Was that what you were doing with Zellah Sunday night – giving each other transfers?’ Hart said.

‘Oh, she’s so lame, she wouldn’t even do that, in case it wouldn’t all come off,’ she said contemptuously, and then with an instant change of tone and sentiment, ‘But it’s cool, she’s my mate, she can do what she likes. It’s a free country.’ Slider was still blinking at this volte-face when her face changed again. She scowled and demanded, ‘What is this? What do you want, anyway?’

‘So you haven’t heard about Zellah, then?’ Hart asked.

‘Heard what? What are you talking about?’

She was no more than averagely pretty, Slider thought, so perhaps her extreme make-up was her way of giving herself distinction; but under it he saw no fear or consciousness in her expression. She genuinely didn’t know – and was probably not interested to know, either, which was that generation’s least attractive feature.

‘When did you see her last?’ he asked.

‘See her last? Oh fuck, she’s not run away, has she?’

‘Just answer the question, please.’

‘Yeah, and can the language, babe,’ Hart added for him.

She looked wary now. ‘Well, she came over for a couple of days. Her mum and dad knew about it. She stayed Sunday night and last night and went home this morning.’

Slider shook his head. ‘Don’t you know it’s a very serious matter to lie to the police?’

‘I’m not lying,’ she said, her eyes flitting from Slider to Hart and back.

‘We know you are, love,’ Hart said, ‘so don’t make it worse for yourself. We know Zellah wasn’t here this morning. She was found dead yesterday.’

‘Dead?’ Sophy received the word with absolute blankness. ‘You’re joking.’

Hart winced on Slider’s behalf. ‘It’s nuffing to joke about, is it, girl? She was murdered. Somebody strangled her. Got it? Now are you going to sit down and answer our questions and try and help your mate, or d’you wanna get nicked for obstruction? It’s up to you.’

‘She can’t be dead,’ Sophy said, but she sat down on the bed, her demeanour compliant now. ‘She’s younger than me.’

A glance at Slider told Hart he wanted her to ask the questions, so she sat on the chair, pushing the clothes to one side, while he remained standing by the door. The poodle and whippet took the excuse to jump up on the bed, but the two bigger dogs remained on faithful-hound duty at Slider’s feet.

‘Never mind that,’ Hart said. ‘Just tell us about Zellah’s visit. We know what her mum and dad thought was happening, but what did you really plan on doing?’

‘It’s not as if it was anything bad,’ Sophy said in wounded tones. ‘We just wanted to go to the Notting Hill Carnival yesterday, but Zellah’s dad won’t let her do anything. Every time she wants to do something it’s “no, you’re too young”. I mean, she’s nearly seventeen! But he says not the Carnival, it’s too dangerous.’ She exaggerated ludicrously. ‘“You might meet nasty, rough people, you can’t go.” So we made this thing up about the Southbank Fair.’

‘You weren’t actually going to the Southbank, then?’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Duh! Of course we weren’t. Lame or what? Mimes and jugglers and roundabouts? What am I, nine? No, that was just the cover, to get him to let her come over. About the only time she gets off the leash is when she comes to see me, or stays late at school, like for a club or an extra class or something, or Saturdays when we have a ballet class and we can go somewhere afterwards. Or sometimes she says there’s a class when there isn’t, and I cover for her. I mean, it’s pathetic that she has to pretend like that, but what can you do, with dinosaurs like them?’

‘So you were actually going to the Notting Hill Carnival?’

‘Oh yeah, we were going all day, then in the evening, if we didn’t get invited to a party or anything, we were going clubbing. That’s why she was staying last night as well, so we could stay out late. Her dad would’ve wanted her home by ten.’

‘Who was going – just you and Zellah?’

‘And Chloë. Chloë Paulson. She’s at school with us. She came over Sunday night and we were just going to hang out here.’ She blushed at a memory.

‘What?’ Hart said.

Sophy looked defiant. ‘Chloë had this book of cocktails she found in a drawer at home, and we were going to work our way through them. My dad’s got all the ingredients in the drinks cupboard.’

‘What did your sister have to say about that?’

‘Abi wasn’t here. She was staying with her boyfriend. Anyway, she’s cool, as long I don’t bug her.’

‘And your parents are away?’

‘They’re skiing in the Andes. Abi’s got a contact address for them, but we’re not supposed to bother them unless it’s an emergency.’

‘Any other brothers and sisters?’

‘Hector and Theo are at camp in Colorado. They’re younger than me. And Oscar’s hiking in Chamonix with his girlfriend. He’s at Durham, so he’s hardly ever here anyway.’

She sounded sulky, and Hart said sympathetically, ‘So everyone gets away except you?’

‘Yeah, I get left to look after the dogs!’ She rolled her eyes in a martyred way, but quickly lost the attitude and said, ‘I don’t care, though. I like being on my own. I could have gone to Chile but I hate skiing. It’s more fun here. And I thought it’d be nice for Zellah to have a bit of fun too. Only she had other ideas,’ she added morosely. ‘As it happens.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Well, it turns out she was never planning on going to the Carnival anyway. She came over Sunday about six, the way we arranged. Chloë was already here. We’d been out in the afternoon – Zellah’s dad wouldn’t let her come earlier, said Sunday was a family day or some such shit.’ Another eye roll. ‘Anyway, she turns up, and Chloë says, “OK, girl, let’s get wrecked,” and then Zellah calmly tells us she’s got a date.’

‘A date? With a boy?’

‘Of course with a boy! But she wouldn’t tell us who. We kept asking but she just shrugged and said nobody we knew.’

‘Was it Mike Carmichael, do you think?’

The question didn’t surprise her, but she shook her head. ‘Why wouldn’t she have told us if it was him? But she wasn’t still seeing him. She did for a bit, after her dad told her not to – well, you’ve got to, haven’t you? – but I razzed her about him because he was such a dork and she dropped him’

‘Was he a dork? I heard he was cool.’

‘Per-leese! He comes from a council estate. He’s got a motorbike. He’s, like, some old greaseball rocker. I wouldn’t go out with anyone that doesn’t have his own car,’ she added proudly.

‘So she didn’t give you any hint about who it was?’

‘No, like I said, she was being all mysterious and wouldn’t-you-like-to-know, as if it was someone really good.’

‘Was she excited?’

She frowned. ‘I wouldn’t say excited, exactly. More sort of tense. Well, if it was the first date she would be nervous. Anyway, I said, “you can’t go dressed like that.” All her clothes were terrible, like a kid’s clothes, and she had hardly any make-up. Her dad wouldn’t allow it. She said it didn’t matter, but I said she couldn’t go on a date looking like that, not from my house. So we had a bit of fun, dressing her and making her up with our stuff, and Chloë made a few cocktails while we were doing it, so it was all right, we still had a good time. Then she went off.’

‘This date didn’t call for her?’

‘We’d have seen him if he did, wouldn’t we?’ she said, with a sigh at Hart’s stupidity. ‘She said he was meeting her outside the Black Lion, in the car park.’

‘And you were expecting her back that night, were you?’

‘Yeah. She was still coming to the Carnival with us. She said she might be late back, so I gave her a spare key, in case we were asleep.’

‘And you were in the whole evening?’

‘Yeah. We did think about going to the pub, but in the end we just stayed in, talking, having a laugh, a few drinks. Just hanging out.’

‘What time did you go to bed?’

‘I dunno. About one o’clock, I suppose. Zellah wasn’t back, and when we got up she still wasn’t. Chloë said, “She’s doing all right for herself.” We just thought she was staying over with him.’

‘Did she phone you at any point?’

‘No.’

‘And the next day you went to the Carnival without her?’

‘Well, yes.’ She looked as if she was being accused of something. ‘We hung around a bit, but she didn’t turn up, so we just reckoned she was spending the day with the bloke, whoever he was. And why wouldn’t she? She doesn’t get many chances like that. We reckoned it was up to us to cover for her, with her parents. I was scared they’d ring to check up on her, so I was glad we were out all day, but there was nothing on the answer-machine when we got back. So we did a quick change and went out clubbing. Chloë went home from the club and I got back here about four this morning, and there was still nothing on the machine, so I went to bed. Unless I heard from her I was going to say she left here this morning, the way we planned, and after that it was up to her. I mean, you can only do so much.’ She shrugged. ‘But she never rang or anything, so I reckoned she must have gone home.’

‘So the last time you saw her was when she left for her date at . . . what time?’ Slider asked.

She looked at him as if she’d forgotten he was there. His presence reminded her that this was serious, and her voice shed its attitude as she answered. ‘It was about half-seven, quarter to eight, I suppose.’

‘Was your sister here yesterday?’

‘Abi? No, she came home this morning, about half-eleven. She woke me up coming in.’

‘So, once more, to be quite clear,’ Slider said, ‘you have no idea where she went on Sunday night, or who she was with? Think very carefully. It’s very important you tell us everything you know.’

‘Yeah, love,’ Hart said, ‘if you’ve got an idea, it’s not dropping anyone in it to tell us. We don’t know it was the bloke she went out with that did it. She might have gone somewhere else afterwards, and he might know where.’

Sophy’s eyes grew round for once, and she looked younger than her years. ‘I don’t know, honest. If I knew, I’d tell you. I swear. I want to help. She was my mate.’ Suddenly enormous, childlike tears welled up in her eyes and rolled over, through the black stuff. ‘I can’t believe it. Who would do that? Who would do that to her?’

‘That’s what we’re trying to find out,’ Hart said.

Outside, she saw that Slider was preoccupied and took a chance on it, went round to the driver’s side, and when he automatically went to the passenger side, held out her hand across the roof and said, ‘Keys, guv?’

He tossed them to her without seeming to notice he had done it, and she unlocked the car and got in with a small, satisfied smile. In the absence of any orders, she headed back towards the factory. ‘Well, wasn’t she a little sweetheart?’ she said after a while. ‘Little rich princess pretending to be street – as long as it’s in the safety of daddy’s big house. Ballet class and Goth tattoos! Pur-leese!’

‘That’s a very unattractive expression, Detective Constable.’

‘It was ironic, that time,’ she explained. ‘But I’m crushed we gotta start again. I was really fancying Biker Boy for it.’

‘We’ve only got Sophy’s word for it that Zellah wasn’t seeing him. She may not have told Sophy everything. Would you?’

‘No, you’re right. And Sophy did say she razzed her about him. Maybe that’s why she was being secretive. After all, why would she want to keep a new man secret? She’d want to boast about it, if she had a new boyfriend, wouldn’t she?’

‘Unless he was also someone Sophy would disapprove of. A nerd or a lamo.’

‘Guv, where’d you get language like that?’ Hart said, shocked.

‘I don’t think we need to eliminate Mike Carmichael yet. While bearing in mind she may have had another boyfriend altogether. Maybe her other friends would know.’ And he sighed at the thought of having to interview another bunch of Sophys. What a depressingly trashy girl she was. Despite all her advantages of money and education, blokes, clothes and getting wasted seemed to be the summit of her ambition. And where did they learn this contempt of grown-ups? Every generation had always thought its parents ‘didn’t understand’, but they hadn’t despised them for it. It was unsettling.

‘I just wish I knew what she was doing there – on the Scrubs,’ Hart was saying. ‘I mean, it’s such a weird place to go.’

‘Hmm,’ said Slider, thinking. They did now have Zellah’s own clothes, in a bag in the back – not that they would tell them anything, but the Wildings would want them back – and a description of Zellah’s handbag (pink fabric with Lurex threads and a thin pink shoulder strap) which had not been found yet.

Damn – he’d remembered something. ‘Give me your phone, would you?’ he said. Hart passed it over and he phoned Atherton. ‘Have you done the Wildings yet?’

‘They’re here now. I was just going down.’

‘Ask one of them for the number of Zellah’s mobile, will you? Assuming she had one. I meant to ask the Sophy girl and forgot.’

‘OK. Anything else?’

‘Not that I can think of. We’re on our way back.’

Wilding was reading over his short statement. Zellah had left at about five. He went to his shed and did accounts and paperwork for the parish council and Neighbourhood Watch, while Pam watched the television. He had fetched his own supper at about nine o’clock and took it back to his shed, where he had worked on the wooden loco. He liked to work at night – it was quiet and he didn’t get disturbed. He didn’t sleep very well at nights anyway. He worked until about two, and then went to bed. Pam had been already asleep when he went up.

‘By the way,’ Atherton said, as he reached the end, ‘did Zellah have a mobile phone?’

Wilding looked up. ‘Yes, I did buy one for her. I wasn’t wholly in favour at first, having seen how much time they waste with that silly texting. But I hope and believe Zellah was a bit more sensible than that. And her mother felt that these days a girl ought to have one, in case she gets stranded somewhere. You can’t depend on finding a phone box any more. Not that she’s out very often, and never late at night, but Pam said she’d feel happier if she knew Zellah could get in touch any time. So I agreed.’

‘Have you got a recent bill we could see?’

‘It was a pay-as-you-go one. You don’t get a bill.’

‘Then can you give me the number, please?’

Wilding looked surprised. ‘Why do you want that?’

‘Well, it may help us locate her handbag, which we still haven’t found.’

‘How can it do that?’

‘Every mobile phone gives out a radio signal that can be tracked,’ Atherton said, recollecting patiently that Wilding probably didn’t read much popular fiction or watch cop shows on the telly. He probably thought The Vicar of Dibley was cutting-edge.

‘I didn’t know that,’ Wilding said.

‘So if the phone is in her bag we’ll be able to pinpoint it. And there may be something in her bag that will help us as to where she went on Sunday night – a cinema stub, say, or a receipt from a café,’ he added to forestall the next question. ‘So if you can tell me the number . . .?’

‘Hmm? Oh, yes.’ He seemed utterly distracted, and Atherton, who had accompanied them to the morgue earlier, was not at all surprised. What a rotten business it was. As Slider had said during another case, parents weren’t supposed to outlive their children. It was something from which you could never wholly recover.

‘Right,’ said Porson, ‘you’ve identified the body and the family’s been informed. So we can release the name, get the photos out, do the appeal. What’s happening now?’

‘Everyone’s still out doing the fingertip search and canvassing the neighbours,’ Slider said. It was eerily quiet in the CID room.

‘Anything from that?’

‘Not yet, sir, but it’s early days.’

‘It’s the early day that catches the worm. What else?’

‘We think the boyfriend, even if he is an ex-boyfriend, is worth pursuing.’

‘Oh, always,’ Porson agreed. ‘Has he got form?’

‘Nothing much, but he is known. Joy-riding when he was a juvenile. A couple of tugs for possession. The local police have suspected him of dealing, but they never got anything on him, and apparently he’s not been much in evidence lately – they think he’s operating somewhere else.’

‘But nothing for violence – affray, carrying a knife, anything on that side of the septum?’

‘Nothing like that, and no sexual assaults, either. But Doc Cameron says she wasn’t raped, so it’s not strictly speaking a sexual assault anyway.’

Porson stopped his pacing to look at Slider sharply. ‘Strangling’s always a sexual assault,’ he said. ‘And sexual assault’s never about sex; it’s about domination and destruction.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Slider said. The old man came out ’orrible sensible sometimes.

‘There’s more than one way to butter a parsnip. Whoever was having sex with her, strangled her; that’s my view. Pity there isn’t any semen to get the DNA from. Let’s hope Cameron finds a hair or something. Anyway, follow up the boyfriend. What else?’

‘We have to check at the Black Lion if anyone saw the girl, or saw who picked her up. Bearing in mind, of course, that she may have met somewhere else entirely, and just used the Black Lion to throw Sophy off the scent. She seems to have been quite mysterious about it all.’

‘Right.’

‘And we ought to make questioning the fairground people a priority.’

‘You think someone there might be involved?’

‘It’s not that; it’s the question of why she was on the Scrubs at all. It’s only a mile across the grass from the fair to where she was found. Maybe she was at the fair that evening, and maybe someone saw her, that’s all.’

‘All right, go for it. Anything else?’

Slider sighed. ‘I think we have to interview her school friends and find out if she said anything to any of them about a new boyfriend, or about her plans for that weekend.’

Porson eyed him sympathetically. Interviewing young girls was nobody’s favourite job. Boys were much easier. They gave you lip but, as with horses, after the wild bucking generally came submission. But with girls you never got to the end of the attitude, and if you tried to press them they took refuge in tears, hysteria or, worst case, accusations of mental or physical assault.

‘Well, don’t get hung up about it. It’s a rotten job but somebody’s got to do it. Just make sure you don’t get left alone with any of ’em. I can do without any of my officers being suspended on the say-so of some little madam with more mummy than sense.’