worthwhile, if he thought it would be useful, to check it out.
‘Not a bad idea. Good work, Maeve.’ Civility restored. I grinned as I disconnected. I wasn’t home free with Godley, but I was in a far better position than I had been before I called. I might even risk approaching the boss directly once I’d finished my trawl through Rebecca Haworth’s life. DI Judd would never forgive me for bypassing him, but then DI Judd was never likely to clamour for membership of my fan club. Why put myself in the way of shovelling shit for him if I didn’t absolutely have to?
No reason at all, Maeve .
I looked at the clock on the dashboard. Sam had four more minutes. Then I’d hit the road. Try to track down Gil Maddick. Find out if he had been with Rebecca. Find out what he thought of the lovely Louise. She had been right: there would be no privacy for Rebecca, but what she hadn’t realised was that she would be scrutinised too. Rebecca’s murder was a heavy stone dropped in the pool of her family and friends’ lives. None of them would be unaffected by the ripples that spread out from it. And nothing would ever be the same again.
L OUISE
I went home once I was sure the police were finished with me for the time being, and when I walked in through the front door of my little house in Fulham, I couldn’t remember a step of the journey back. The house was cold, the central heating off, but instead of going to the kitchen to poke the boiler into life I pushed open the sitting-room door and sat on the sofa, staring into space. After a few minutes, I roused myself to switch on the lamp beside me and slipped off my shoes. The objects in the room, dimly illuminated by the orange streetlight that shone through the window, now leapt into detail. The grey sofa I was sitting on, with its brown cushions. The coffee table, plain and wooden, completely empty. A television I never switched on. An armchair, rarely if ever used by any guest. No ornaments. It was a bland room, a blank waiting for a personality to be stamped on it.
Except for one thing. The picture above the mantelpiece. It was a glorious abstract, a whirl of blues and greys and white in choppy strokes that made me think of rushing water. It was an original, bought from the artist for an eye-watering amount of money, worth every penny and more. I had looked at it and loved it the first moment I saw it, at an art fair in Brick Lane, but I hadn’t paid for it. I wouldn’t have dared. Besides, I could never have convinced myself it wasn’t a waste of money to spend thousands on a painting when posters were cheap.
Rebecca, who had dragged me to the art fair in the first place, had seen things differently.
‘You’ll love it when it’s up on the wall. You’ll have it for ever,’ she had predicted. ‘Let me get it for you, as a house-warming present.’
I had demurred. Even for Rebecca, it was an extravagant gift. I had pulled her away and distracted her with some wrought-iron sculpture that neither of us liked.
And yet I hadn’t been surprised when the parcel was delivered the following Saturday morning, an unframed canvas wrapped in layer upon layer of brown paper and bubble wrap, with a note from the artist that it was called Untitled: Blue XIX and he hoped I enjoyed owning it.
I had done more than that. I had fallen in love with it. But, in a strange way, I had never felt it was really mine. In my mind, it was always Rebecca’s, an extension of her personality in canvas and oil. The sense of fast movement that it gave me; the sense, above all, of joy. That was her, not me.
I opened my bag and unzipped the inside pocket, slowly setting out on the table in front of me a number of objects.
A gold bangle, narrow and delicate.
A Chanel lipstick, rose pink.
A flat make-up mirror in a hard gunmetal-grey case.
A pen, sleek and black, with GKM engraved on one side.
A bottle of perfume, two-thirds full.
A bright pink diary.
A few old-fashioned
‘Not a bad idea. Good work, Maeve.’ Civility restored. I grinned as I disconnected. I wasn’t home free with Godley, but I was in a far better position than I had been before I called. I might even risk approaching the boss directly once I’d finished my trawl through Rebecca Haworth’s life. DI Judd would never forgive me for bypassing him, but then DI Judd was never likely to clamour for membership of my fan club. Why put myself in the way of shovelling shit for him if I didn’t absolutely have to?
No reason at all, Maeve .
I looked at the clock on the dashboard. Sam had four more minutes. Then I’d hit the road. Try to track down Gil Maddick. Find out if he had been with Rebecca. Find out what he thought of the lovely Louise. She had been right: there would be no privacy for Rebecca, but what she hadn’t realised was that she would be scrutinised too. Rebecca’s murder was a heavy stone dropped in the pool of her family and friends’ lives. None of them would be unaffected by the ripples that spread out from it. And nothing would ever be the same again.
L OUISE
I went home once I was sure the police were finished with me for the time being, and when I walked in through the front door of my little house in Fulham, I couldn’t remember a step of the journey back. The house was cold, the central heating off, but instead of going to the kitchen to poke the boiler into life I pushed open the sitting-room door and sat on the sofa, staring into space. After a few minutes, I roused myself to switch on the lamp beside me and slipped off my shoes. The objects in the room, dimly illuminated by the orange streetlight that shone through the window, now leapt into detail. The grey sofa I was sitting on, with its brown cushions. The coffee table, plain and wooden, completely empty. A television I never switched on. An armchair, rarely if ever used by any guest. No ornaments. It was a bland room, a blank waiting for a personality to be stamped on it.
Except for one thing. The picture above the mantelpiece. It was a glorious abstract, a whirl of blues and greys and white in choppy strokes that made me think of rushing water. It was an original, bought from the artist for an eye-watering amount of money, worth every penny and more. I had looked at it and loved it the first moment I saw it, at an art fair in Brick Lane, but I hadn’t paid for it. I wouldn’t have dared. Besides, I could never have convinced myself it wasn’t a waste of money to spend thousands on a painting when posters were cheap.
Rebecca, who had dragged me to the art fair in the first place, had seen things differently.
‘You’ll love it when it’s up on the wall. You’ll have it for ever,’ she had predicted. ‘Let me get it for you, as a house-warming present.’
I had demurred. Even for Rebecca, it was an extravagant gift. I had pulled her away and distracted her with some wrought-iron sculpture that neither of us liked.
And yet I hadn’t been surprised when the parcel was delivered the following Saturday morning, an unframed canvas wrapped in layer upon layer of brown paper and bubble wrap, with a note from the artist that it was called Untitled: Blue XIX and he hoped I enjoyed owning it.
I had done more than that. I had fallen in love with it. But, in a strange way, I had never felt it was really mine. In my mind, it was always Rebecca’s, an extension of her personality in canvas and oil. The sense of fast movement that it gave me; the sense, above all, of joy. That was her, not me.
I opened my bag and unzipped the inside pocket, slowly setting out on the table in front of me a number of objects.
A gold bangle, narrow and delicate.
A Chanel lipstick, rose pink.
A flat make-up mirror in a hard gunmetal-grey case.
A pen, sleek and black, with GKM engraved on one side.
A bottle of perfume, two-thirds full.
A bright pink diary.
A few old-fashioned
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