Someone must go. I think it’s going to be me.
58
Sam
The Present
The run-up to Miranda’s award ceremony wasn’t easy to navigate. CCAP were given complimentary tickets and it was Emily who went out of her way to make sure I was given one, not my sister. Not surprisingly, ever since I’d tried to warn her to steer clear of Ralph, Miranda had been totally off with me. She was ignoring my calls and messages. It wouldn’t normally have bothered me; it wasn’t exactly unusual, but my concern for her had roots in very murky water. I wasn’t going to be backtracking.
Fortunately, I got regular reports about Miranda’s well-being through Emily, who saw more of her than I did and seemed to have become a regular at the project between shifts of gym work.
She had no idea my casual questions about my sister had any ulterior motive. By her account, Miranda was sparky and brimming with exuberance, looking forward to her big day on the red carpet. She was on an even keel. That was all that mattered. I didn’t know for how long that was going to last.
During the days before the event, Emily and I went out running every evening except for the weekend. That time was ring-fenced for Terry. He and I spent from Friday evening to Monday morning at his place, barely getting out of bed.
When we did peel ourselves away from our love nest, we went for coffee or brunch in local spots, holding hands like we were having a holiday romance. We walked arm in arm across Regent’s Park and took the train further out, over to the water gardens and Tudor deer park near Hampton Court. I spotted a kingfisher, glistening fluorescent blue through the branches, but Terry claimed I was daydreaming.
After dark, he cooked sumptuous suppers while I sipped wine and read. Every so often between stirring sizzling dishes in the kitchen, he’d come up behind me and kiss the back of my neck. It was the most relaxed I’d felt in years.
I should have returned by then to St Luke’s, but I had a call from my clinic to say the original two-week ‘sabbatical’ had been extended. Someone – I couldn’t imagine it being either Claussen or Fenway – had decided I was doing a worthwhile job and the Met didn’t want to lose me just yet.
It was tempting to think I was on vacation. With everything so new and delectable with Terry (and not only the food), it would have been easy to continue walking on air, but regular updates on the murder cases pulled me back to stone-cold reality.
A couple of hours before Miranda’s ceremony was due to start, I was back at my flat, meant to be choosing an outfit, but instead I decided to take another look at Lorna’s crime report.
Sitting cross-legged in my bathrobe, I rested the laptop on my knees. I already knew Lorna had been found on a mainline train track near Barnes Bridge station. It was some distance from her flat in Parson’s Green. The report explained how she’d gone to meet someone to look at a litter of puppies. I’d remembered from the tapes that she’d mentioned she might get a dog.
Texts found on Lorna’s phone showed she’d been intending to meet a young man called Alistair Madeley at Barnes Bridge station. His mother was meant to be there too. They had both been interviewed in 2010, but claimed they knew nothing about the arrangement.
It was Alistair’s phone that had been used to send the texts, but he insisted he hadn’t sent them. He told police he’d lost his mobile that same day. Aged twenty at the time, he’d been working at Pepe’s Pizza in Brixton. He thought a customer must have pinched it. His mother said she’d been constantly nagging him about tucking it in his back pocket. ‘It was too easy for someone to nick it in a crowd,’ she’d explained to police.
In 2010, the police didn’t appear to have anyone else in the frame for Lorna’s death. But Neville Larch, the man she’d mistakenly accused in the line-up, had been dismissed too easily for my liking. While it looked like Chris Pitlock was out of the frame for Charlotte’s murder, Larch was a definite link between both cases.
I got up to stretch my legs and wandered over to my wardrobe. There hadn’t been a spare invite to Miranda’s do for Terry and he had to work that evening anyway, so I