Team Spirit (Special Crime Unit Book 1) (5 page)

Her
own room was different, smaller, homely and untidy; east-facing and stuffy now
from its warming in the morning sun. The paintwork was chipped, dirty, the
wallpaper pitted and torn from a transient population of old posters and
stickers, torn down and replaced over time to mark each stage in a young girl’s
maturing. The walls were almost bare now, apart from the framed certificate and
medal from the Humane Society and the accompanying Met commendation. One purple
velour curtain hung loose from several of its rings. On top of her tatty,
both-back-legs-missing green wardrobe, the soft toys and dolls of childhood
spilled out of black plastic sacks; she could never bring herself to throw them
away. The carpet, threadbare in places, was covered in unwashed socks, books,
magazines and pieces of paper. Periodically her mother would nag her to tidy
the place up, but by and large she respected her daughter’s need for a
bolthole. This room held no awe or thrill for Larissa; it was her own,
comfortable, safe, to do as she liked in.

There
was no room for a dressing table. What passed as one was a freestanding table
mirror balanced on the window sill over her bed, surrounded by old shoeboxes
full of cosmetics. On the sill, too, half-hidden behind the curtain, was
Weezle.

At
school she’d been hopeless at anything creative, until Mrs Langton, her art
teacher, had introduced her to pottery. No-one, least of all Lucky, could have
said she had a flair for it, but it attracted her, the busy rumbling of the
wheel, the warm clammy feel of clay under her fingers. Most of the grotesque
distorted vessels that were the fruits of her labour had long since been consigned
to oblivion, but Weezle survived. He’d been made one winter afternoon when
Lucky, fed up because her foot kept slipping off the pedal, had scooped up the
wet clay and stomped off to a workbench to see what could be done with it. The
result was ragged, but it had four legs and a pointy nose and a slim body that
bulged in the middle. Mrs Langton had thought it was a badger; her sister, a
hedgehog; others, a stoat. Lucky had settled for Weezle.

She
smiled hello to him and clambered onto the bed, wondering whether to touch up
her warpaint now or go and have something to eat first. She didn’t see the face
until she tilted the mirror up to catch the light.

‘I understand
you’re holding my wife.’ Andrew Clarke had leapt up the moment he’d seen the
door open, and Kim Oliver emerge into the front office waiting area. Now he
loomed over her, feet apart, fists clenched by his sides, face and voice those
of a man against whom an unforgiveable outrage, an odious crime, has been
committed. Kim was not impressed.

‘She’s
here of her own free will, Mr Clarke.’

His
gaze wavered, as if he realised they’d stolen his thunder, allowing his wife to
phone him knowing full well he’d come straight here. But he recovered quickly.
‘With the tapes running, eh? I’m not stupid, you know.’

‘It’s
completely informal, sir,’ Kim said. ‘We’re in an interview room. If you’d like
to come through.’

‘Informal,
indeed,’ he grumbled, following her. ‘“Helping with your enquiries”, more like.
We all know what that means.’ This got no response so he changed tack. With a
mirthless chuckle he said, ‘It’s all a joke, isn’t it?’

Politeness
demanded a reply. Kim said, ‘What is?’

‘This.’
He indicated her with a nod. ‘I know the police are image-conscious now, but
this wheeling you in as the token black officer - it doesn’t fool anyone.’

Yeah,
but one thing about us token black officers, Kim thought with fire in her
heart, you can’t tell when you’ve pissed us off. See we don’t blush.

‘Hi,
Kim.’

With
exquisite timing Jasmin Winter, who was blacker than she was, came round a
corner and disappeared into a lift before Andrew Clarke’s jaw had completed its
downward arc.

‘Sorry,
sir,’ Kim said, with a blink. ‘What did you say?’

Sophia Beadle
ushered him to a chair beside his wife and said, ‘I apologise for keeping you
waiting so long. I’m glad you’ve both come in.’ A stern glance nipped in the
bud any retort he might have made. ‘Some new evidence has come to light which
drastically increases Debbie’s importance to us.’

‘What
evidence?’ Andrew Clarke burst out.

‘I’ll
come to that.’ Sophia stirred. ‘We thought it might be best to talk here, away
from distractions at home. So you can think more clearly, as it were.’

Kim,
sitting down beside her, thought you had to admire the guv’nor’s talent for
bare-arsed bullshit.

‘Is it
all of us you suspect, inspector,’ Andrew Clarke said, ‘or just Debbie?’

‘You’re
here because you, as her parents, should know her better than anyone,’ Sophia
answered, unruffled.

‘And
what gives you that idea?’

‘Well,
for one thing she’s an only child. In my experience that often leads to a
closer bond between parent and daughter. How well do you get on, would you
say?’ The query was put effortlessly, yet stingingly, like flicking an elastic
band.

‘I
don’t see how that has anything to do with the fire,’ Andrew Clarke said,
‘unless you think we
all
had a hand in it.’

Sophia
stared at him for a moment, weighing up her choices. ‘Let me tell you what I do
think,’ she said. ‘We found this in Debbie’s bedroom.’ The tin was on the table
and she pushed it towards the Clarkes.

‘You
searched my house
again
?’ Andrew Clarke’s pupils contracted.

‘I
said they could,’ Charlotte Clarke told him. He glanced at her and made a short
sound of disgust.

‘Have
a look.’ Sophia stirred her tea. ‘It’s all right,’ she added, seeing them
hesitate, ‘we’ve checked for fingerprints.’

‘Whose
did you find?’ Andrew Clarke said, but a vicious nudge from his wife diverted
his attention to the contents of the tin. Sophia and Kim watched as they took
out objects and scowled at them. Andrew Clarke said, finally, ‘Where did she
get this filth?’

‘Did
either of you know about any of this?’ Sophia asked.

‘Evidently
not, as she seems to have gone to inordinate lengths to hide it from us.’

Kim
blinked.

Deliberately,
Sophia folded her arms. She said, ‘Inordinate lengths, Mr Clarke?’

He
wilted under the unwavering blue stare. ‘Well...’

‘I
merely told you these things were found in her room.’

Charlotte
Clarke said, ‘Andrew?’

‘Well,
they’d hardly have been in plain view, would they?’ he snapped.

‘Really?
Do you make a habit of searching your daughter’s room?’

‘Not
as much as you seem to.’

‘Mr
Clarke,’ Sophia said warningly.

‘If
you must know,’ Andrew Clarke said after a moment’s hesitation, ‘my wife told
me what you’d found when she rang me. So I’m sorry, but there’s nothing
nefarious about my knowing.’ Sophia glanced at Charlotte Clarke, who nodded,
eyes downcast. Her husband added, ‘And if things are going to continue in this
tone, I really don’t think we want to say anything further without our solicitor
present.’

‘Sorry, guv.’ Kim,
despondent, joined Sophia at the office window, to watch the cab containing the
Clarkes pull away and merge with the traffic on Park Lane. ‘I did let Mrs
Clarke know where we’d found the tin. She asked what the noise was. We had to
tell her about the floorboards.’

‘Not
to worry,’ the DCI shrugged. ‘Would have been nice to have an ace up our
sleeves, that’s all.’ She smiled at Kim in a way that seemed to convey
underlying disappointment. ‘So what do you think?’

‘My
opinion ain’t changed.’

‘Active
involvement? Him and the daughter?’

‘No
way to tell, at this stage.’

‘Well,’
Sophia said, ‘you’ve spent plenty of time with them by now. What do you
suggest?’

Kim
screwed up her face in thought. ‘Might sound a bit extravagant,’ she said, ‘but
would it be possible to set up an obbo? Not round the clock, just low-level,
part-time. See if any interesting faces come to visit.’

Sophia
turned to her desk, pulled up an expenses spreadsheet on her computer and
studied it for a long moment. ‘I can probably justify a couple of hours a day,’
she said, in tones that suggested she’d really rather not. ‘During the evening,
when he’s at home. You and Marie. Take turns.’

‘Thanks,
guv,’ Kim said. She hesitated. ‘I dunno about Marie, though. Her being a single
mum and that.’

‘She’s
also a copper,’ Sophia said. ‘She knows the score.’

‘Yeah,
she
does,’
Kim said. ‘But childminders don’t work nights. Also the Clarkes might make
her.’

‘But
not you?’

‘Guv,
I might as well be invisible.’

The
DCI stared at her.

‘I know
how people like them think,’ Kim said bluntly. ‘Far as they’re concerned, we
all look alike.’

Dubious,
Sophia conceded the point. ‘All right, get someone else. If no-one’s up for it
I’ll try and borrow a body from CID, but if
that
fails,’ she levelled her clear
blue stare at Kim, ‘you’re on your own.’

Her colleague and
best friend Sandra Jones had once said of Detective Constable Nina Tyminski
that it was as if she’d been standing in the right queue when God was handing
out the parts, but had then lost the assembly diagram. Sandra had got away
without being thumped because she was Sandra, but the remark had nonetheless
hurt. Nina was under no illusion that her best point had always been her face:
snow-pale, elegantly fashioned like fine, angular china with its close-set,
arresting violet eyes; carefully fringed with darkest brown hair. But from the
neck down something had gone wrong. Stooped shoulders, small breasts over a
deep ribcage, a high waist, narrow hips, knock knees and an odd, scampering
walk on tiny feet that had to make an outward turn in order to keep her
balanced. She was painfully aware of all this, and dressed accordingly. An
enforced mistress of disguise, she’d turned her choice of wardrobe into an
artform. The things Nina could do with black defied even Sandra Jones’s powers
of description.

Her
mother had long insisted that Nina’s corporeal state was a question of bad
posture, and had campaigned long and hard to get her daughter to deportment or
drama or dance classes, or
anything
. Partly to annoy her, Nina had joined the police
instead, and they’d taught her to stand sufficiently to attention and march in
a straight enough line to pass out of Hendon. Sod balancing books on her head;
she’d worry about arthritis and back trouble when she was fifty.

She
felt uncomfortable about her current journey, and at the same time silly. For
all her physical shortcomings she knew she was still a looker. But so, even
more so, was Larissa Stephenson. Nina was needled by the charm, the ingenuous
enthusiasm, the elegance and above all, the Mediterranean beauty and flawless
figure she had always coveted. Here, her primeval instinct said, was
competition.

Also
mildly disconcerting was the question of where everybody was. Unemployment was
high in New Addington, but even though it was the middle of the day the place
seemed deserted. The only human being she’d seen was a bony-looking youth who’d
been jogging across the roundabout as she turned into King Henry’s Drive,
presumably using it as a short cut to the tram stop. She glanced at the inside
of her wrist where she’d written the house number in biro; it wasn’t a given
that this was going to help. New Addington was a town planner’s laboratory and
a postman’s nightmare. Numbers could run alternately, or concurrently, or not
at all where a tower block leapt up from the concrete with its own
floor-by-floor scheme, or they could even start again from scratch where the
developers had built terraces with bucolic-sounding names, Oak Bank, Brierley,
Applegarth, trying to make the place sound like paradise, as if they were
fooling anyone. But she found her destination without too much difficulty and
parked outside, a malicious impulse keeping her in the car. Like its
surroundings, the house displayed no sign of life. She tooted the horn.
Presumably Larissa had been told to expect her, and would be out soon enough.

After
a minute nothing had happened. Blank, shut windows stared back at her. Sighing,
she unclipped her seatbelt and got out, in her baggy black cardigan and long black
skirt looking like a demented rook scurrying up the path.

She’d
got halfway when she heard a wooden clatter, and Larissa appeared from the side
of the house, pushing a gate to behind her. She’d changed since the morning,
and now wore a plain white sweatshirt, stonewashed blue jeans, desert boots and
a grey fleece.

‘Hiya,’
she said.

‘I
was just going to knock,’ Nina said.

‘Yeah,
I heard you beeping.’ Larissa had stepped onto the lawn and was peering up at
the house. Nina felt annoyed.

‘Nina
Tyminski,’ she said.