No Kiss For The Devil

3

‘I don’t understand.’ Riley was slumped in the passenger seat of Pell’s car, holding a cup of coffee. It was lukewarm and sweet, like stewed caramel. But a welcome distraction from the scene outside. She was still wearing the white SOCO suit, and in spite of the lightweight fabric, she felt hot and constricted, as if swathed in cling-film.

‘It’s never easy,’ Pell replied. His tone was of a man who’d been here too many times, seen this often to be surprised anymore.

The car smelled of dog and damp. Sweet wrappers and wet-wipes were crushed haphazardly into the door pockets, some tumbling out onto the floor around her feet. A pair of men’s ancient trainers lay in the foot-well, faded and curled like dried banana skins. The two available cup holders were jammed with polystyrene mugs, each filled with rubbish. A mobile skip, office and taxi all in one, she thought.

‘You don’t believe in cleaning, do you?’ she said.

‘I don’t have the time.’

Outside, the night and the weather and the dark continued, interspersed with the comings and goings of the forensic and search teams combing the area around the body.

Riley stared through the windscreen, wondering how long it would be before the press showed up. Not long, if their usual contacts were on the ball. Journalists had a nose for a story and Journalist. Her stomach went ice-cold as her thoughts suddenly fixed with glaring precision on the awful realisation that Pell had been unwittingly right; the dead woman had known her.

She kept her eyes to the front in case Pell should interpret her expression. She needed time to think it through.

The dead woman’s face had looked vaguely familiar, yet without that spark of absolute recognition. It was like seeing a celebrity in the street, but not being sure. It hadn’t helped that, down in that hollow and under the glare of the lights, any notable characteristics had been flattened, leaving a uniform blandness like a shop-front mannequin.

Now she knew who she’d been looking at, she felt sick.

Pell had taken a phone call moments after getting into the car. From what little he’d said, she knew he’d been hearing confirmation of the dead woman’s name and details. She got the impression it hadn’t come as a surprise.

‘Turns out she was a journalist,’ Pell muttered finally, half to himself. ‘Name of Helen Bellamy.’ Under the dull glow of the interior light, his face was less angular than she’d first thought, but still with a determined quality, as if hewn from a lump of wood but with the edges softened. He was also smooth-shaven, and his eyes were surprisingly dark, perhaps with Latin origins. With the hood of his slicker down, she saw his medium-crop hair was peppered with grey. Late thirties, she guessed. Stressed.

‘A journalist like you,’ he continued pointedly. He drummed strong fingers on the steering wheel, a tattoo of frustration. ‘You sure you don’t know her?’

‘I… might have met her. But that’s all.’ Riley had to force the words out, aware that deliberate lies now might come back to haunt her. She hoped Pell hadn’t noticed her hesitation.

‘She could have got your name for business purposes, I suppose.’ He didn’t sound convinced, as if randomness simply didn’t happen. His tone was reinforced by the expression in his eyes as he turned to watch her. ‘The thing is, why would she have it on her? Did you have a meeting arranged — maybe to work on something together?’ He let a few beats go by, then said flatly, ‘Did you know her or not?’

‘If I knew her well enough that we were going to work together, I think I’d have remembered by now, don’t you?’ Riley was irritated by his probing, as if he was reluctant to extend his investigation much beyond the close confines of this car. Right now, all that her memory would give her of Helen Bellamy was a vague image of an elegant, willowy woman, friendly and self-assured. A freelance reporter like herself. No more, no less.

‘Do you know anyone else who might know her, then?’ He was clearly trying a different tack. ‘Circle of friends, work colleagues, boyfriends… girlfriends?’

‘No. I’m sorry.’

‘You’re in the same profession.’

‘Pell, I know lots of journalists, but none of them particularly well. Like you and other coppers — you’re not all best buddies, are you?’

He pulled a face in wry acknowledgement. ‘Good point.’

‘Why,’ asked Riley impulsively, ‘do you think her hands were tied?’

‘We don’t know yet,’ he admitted, echoing the forensics man. ‘She’d been restrained and possibly hit, that’s all we can tell right now. The tape on her wrists might have been to subdue her while they were on the move. You didn’t get that from me, by the way.’

‘Of course.’ She focussed on the dashboard, trying to process the image of Helen being alive but restrained, unable to free herself or offer any resistance. The idea was macabre. Awful. ‘You don’t normally drag people out to crime scenes in the middle of the night — especially journalists. Why couldn’t this have waited until the morning?’ She waited, but he didn’t answer. ‘Particularly as you had an idea who she was before I got here.’

Pell opened his mouth, then shut it again. The expression in his eyes was indecipherable. If he had any ulterior motives, he was keeping them to himself. ‘She was discovered just after midnight by a man walking his dogs. He said the car definitely wasn’t there earlier in the evening at ten o’clock, when he last came by, so it must have been dumped after that time. That’s confirmed by a residue of warmth on the engine block. We’re still trying to narrow down the timing.’

‘I see.’

‘I needed quick confirmation of her ID — from you if I could get it — so we could back-trace her movements.’

‘You knew I was a journalist?’

‘One of the SOCO team recognised your name. He’d read your stuff. He’s a fan. I figured it was worth a try calling you. We’ve got a hell of a caseload at the moment and we need all the help we can get.’ He scrubbed at his face with his fingers, suddenly looking bone-weary, as if any energy he’d been harbouring until now was seeping away with the approach of daylight. Riley guessed he had broken with procedure by calling her in at this stage and was now regretting it. His next words confirmed it. ‘I’ll be in deep shit if my boss knows I did this.’

Riley felt a flicker of sympathy, and glanced across to where the man in the forensics suit was stepping carefully around the edge of the ditch, pointing a large flashlight at the ground. ‘Is that why he was so unfriendly?’

‘Yes. I had to lean on him to let you in.’

‘Will he tell anyone?’

‘No. He owed me a favour. Now I owe him a bigger one.’

Pell eventually let her go, with instructions not to publish anything and to call him if she thought of anything relating to the dead woman. In spite of a reluctant smile, which softened his face considerably, the implications behind the first instruction were clear: the presence of her name on a piece of paper at the death scene meant that Riley was far too close to this case to be allowed any leeway as a reporter.

She climbed out of the white suit and returned to her car. As she drove away down the track, she passed other vehicles, some with interior lights on behind misted windows. Crime-scene members snatching a quick break in an attempt to dry off and down some refreshments. As she hit the main road, more cars were arriving and heading up the lane. Probably the press pack, all vying for an exclusive on the story. That was going to make Pell even more unhappy.

She checked the dashboard clock, surprised to see it was already gone five. A pale dawn was nudging through the heavy clouds like a wash. With the arrival of daylight, the investigators would be able to get a clear scan of the surrounding area. She didn’t envy them the hours to come. For once, she was relieved not to be part of the press melee.

She pulled in at the first lay-by and dialled a number. The recipient wouldn’t thank her for waking him this early. But circumstances warranted it.

What she hadn’t told DI Pell was that she was aware of one person who had known Helen Bellamy a lot better than she did. Just a few months ago, Frank Palmer, a former military policeman, now a private investigator, had for a brief while been close to Helen. Work had thrown them together by chance and something had clicked. During that time, Palmer had gone around with a soppy smile on his face. Then circumstances and the pressures of their respective worlds had tugged them apart.

The other thing she had avoided telling Pell was that she had met Helen a couple of times, although both occasions were fleeting, and there had been no time to gain more than the briefest of impressions. Frank Palmer liked Helen, which was good enough for her.

The phone rang four times before switching to Palmer’s voice-mail. She didn’t leave a message; she couldn’t trust herself not to sound like the voice of doom. Instead, she switched off and thought about what to do next. Sooner or later, Pell and his colleagues would unearth something to show that Palmer had known the dead woman. When they did, they would descend on him like vultures on a corpse. Ex-army man, a bit of a loner, private detective and security consultant, for which some would read bodyguard and therefore no stranger to violence; they’d salivate and find plenty of precedents for making all the wrong assumptions.

She wondered what Palmer’s reaction would be when he heard.

She dialled another number. This one was in Finchley, north London. It rang twice and was answered. She said simply: ‘I’ll be with you in forty-five minutes. Can you trace Palmer? It’s urgent. There’s been a murder. He knew the victim.’

The man on the other end sounded not the least bit surprised at being called so early in the morning with such news. ‘Will do,’ he replied, his voice plummy and rich. In the background she heard a high-pitched electronic two-tone and the purr of another phone. ‘I’ll get some croissants and coffee on the go.’

‘Good idea. Make it strong, will you? I need the hit.’

She switched off the phone and headed towards Finchley.