‘And then, on Tuesday morning, you phoned work and pretended to be ill. Why?’
‘I didn’t pretend. I felt ill, then I felt better.’
‘Better enough to fancy a day-trip to London,’ said Milward caustically.
‘Yes. I thought I’d go shopping. We don’t have real shops in Spilling, only mud huts selling painted masks.’
‘How did you travel?’
‘By train, as I said last night. My answers aren’t going to change.’
‘You caught the slow train-the 9.05 from Rawndesley to King’s Cross?’
‘And got in at 10.55. Yes.’
‘What did you do in London?’
‘For the third time, I looked round art galleries in the morning and went to see my sister in the afternoon. Then Simon rang me and told me about all this shit, and I came here.’
‘All this shit being Gemma Crowther’s murder?’ Milward leaned forward. ‘Are you always this flippant about the deaths of young women?’
‘No. Only on Wednesdays.’
‘The trouble I’m having, Sergeant Zailer, is that I haven’t spoken to Ruth Bussey. You might be lying about what time you left her house. How do I know you didn’t drive to London on Monday evening?’
‘And kill Gemma Crowther, you mean? Why would I want to kill a woman I hadn’t heard of until yesterday afternoon? Oh, and I don’t kill people. Though I endlessly long to.’
‘DC Waterhouse, your fiance, was seen prowling round Gemma’s house, looking in her window, only hours before she died. Let’s say you
‘Say it if you want, but I didn’t.’
‘You’d be unable to provide an alibi for DC Waterhouse, wouldn’t you? If you weren’t at home, you don’t know he got back at eleven. If he didn’t get back at eleven, that means he didn’t set off from Muswell Hill at nine thirty. We’ve got a pathologist’s report telling us Gemma Crowther died no earlier than ten p.m. Do you see what I’m saying?’
‘Let me check: I’m lying to protect Simon, because I know he murdered Gemma Crowther. Is that it? Or I left Ruth’s before ten thirty, went to London and murdered Crowther myself?’
‘This is bullshit,’ said Simon. ‘I’ll collate the CCTV footage for you if you like, since I’m exiled from my job indefinitely. I’ll find you lots of black and white pictures to prove we were both where we say we were at all the right times.’
‘Don’t show them the one of me smoking next to the “No Smoking” sign outside Rawndesley station,’ Charlie chipped in. ‘They might tell.’
‘Which art galleries did you go to?’ Milward asked her.
‘I didn’t notice their names. I was just browsing. Oh-one of them might have been called TiqTaq. Apart from that, I don’t remember. Sorry.’
‘Tell them the truth, for God’s sake,’ said Simon, sick of her attitude and her games. ‘She had lunch with a lawyer called Dominic Lund.’
‘My sister’s boyfriend,’ said Charlie quickly, smiling. ‘He’s right. I had lunch with Dommie at Signor Grilli, an Italian on Goodge Street.’
‘And you lied about it why?’ said Milward.
‘It’s complicated. My sister’s boyfriend?’ Charlie gave her a meaningful look. ‘I’m sure I don’t need to spell it out.’
Simon stared at the sprouting carpet at his feet. What the fuck was she playing at?
‘So you didn’t go to any art galleries?’ said Milward.
‘Yes, I did. After lunch.’
‘Mary Trelease is a painter. Aidan Seed is a picture-framer.’
‘I know.’
Milward licked her front teeth. Eventually she said, ‘I don’t believe you felt ill on Tuesday morning. I don’t believe you had lunch with Dominic Lund at Signor Grilli, though he might be seeing your sister and you might know that’s where he was yesterday lunchtime. I don’t believe, frankly, that you spent all of Monday obsessing about Aidan Seed, Ruth Bussey and Mary Trelease when you should have been working, only to decide the next day that you fancied a completely unconnected day-trip to London.’ Milward slapped her hands flat on the table. ‘I know when two people are lying, and you two are those people.’
‘Brilliant,’ Simon muttered. ‘Do we ever get to leave this room?’
‘We ought to take a break,’ Dunning said to Milward.
‘The photo.’ Charlie made a show of yawning.
‘Oh, that. I almost forgot.’ Milward pulled a large photograph out of her file and threw it down on the table.
At first Simon wasn’t sure what the livid mess was that he was looking at. Then he saw, and had to count in his head and make his eyes blur over. It had been a while since he’d had to do that. He’d got used to the ordinary unpleasant sights his job afforded him, but this went way beyond. He felt Charlie stiffen beside him.
The picture was of a mouth. Open. Gemma Crowther’s, Simon guessed. Post-mortem. Her top and bottom lips had been cut on both sides, pulled back and nailed to her face. Symmetrically: five nails along each lip. Most of her teeth were missing, and in their place were picture hooks, nailed in wonky lines into the gums of both her top and bottom jaw. They looked as if they had been arranged as neatly as possible, hanging down into her mouth like thin gold teeth.
Simon heard Charlie say, ‘You told us she was shot.’
‘She was,’ said Milward. ‘He did this after he killed her. Don’t ask me why. Could be he-or she, if the killer’s a woman-wanted to
‘For God’s sake!’ said Charlie. ‘Have you made any progress? Whoever did this is a sick fuck-you need to catch him, not waste time fucking us around.’
‘Where did they come from?’ asked Simon slowly. ‘The picture hooks and the nails. Did he bring them with him, or…’
‘Or?’ Milward waited, eyebrows raised.
‘The pictures on the walls, in Crowther’s flat. Were they still up when you got to the scene?’
‘What pictures, detective? You’ve been asked to describe the room you saw several times. You’ve said you can’t be sure there were any pictures.’
‘Tell us,’ Simon snapped. ‘Were the pictures still on the walls?’
‘No,’ said Milward, after a short pause. ‘The only pictures in the flat were photographs of the happy couple in a range of sizes. In every room, they’d been taken down and leaned against walls and furniture. Leaving only holes. No nails, no hooks.’
‘So, what-he shot her, then knocked her teeth out with… what? A hammer?’
‘Why do you say that?’ asked Milward.
‘I’d use a hammer to hang a painting. That’s what he used.’ Simon nodded to himself. ‘How did he cut her lips back like that? A Stanley knife? I saw one at Seed’s workshop.’ He paused for breath. ‘He took down all the pictures, collected the hooks and nails, and hammered them into her lips and gums. Why? What was it about her mouth?’
‘That’s the wrong question,’ said Charlie, standing up. Simon saw that the back of her shirt was dark with sweat. ‘How many pictures were leaning against the walls? How many hooks and nails in Gemma Crowther’s mouth? Did the numbers correspond? ’
Milward looked at Dunning, whose face coloured. ‘It should be in the file,’ he said. She passed it to him and he started to leaf through the pages, his agitation growing more apparent as the silence dragged on.
‘You don’t know how many hooks she used for each picture,’ said Simon.
‘Have you ever hung a painting?’ Charlie asked him. ‘A photograph, anything framed?’
‘Yeah,’ he lied, feeling heat creep up his neck. He’d Blu-tacked a few posters to walls, that was it.
‘You have, I assume?’ Charlie said to Milward.
She nodded. ‘I’m a one-hook woman. I’ve never hung a picture heavy enough to need two.’
