‘So you’re saying that now Bronte’s death is a murder case, DI Bacon is the lead investigator running the show day to day?’
‘That’s right. He will be deputy SIO to Malcolm Bellwether’s SIO.’
‘So where does that leave me?’ Trying to repress her irrational fury.
‘You will continue to shadow the murder inquiry since it is inevitably entangled with the original IOPC investigation. You’ll be kept informed of all developments but DI Bacon will be in the driving seat. Your role from here on in is as an observer.’
‘Right,’ she said. ‘I’m going to be kept out of the loop, aren’t I?’
‘Phyllida, now that it’s a criminal matter clearly the police must take primacy,’ said William, sounding testy.
‘After they made a total hash of the initial investigation.’
‘That was down to a uniformed sergeant from Camden. DI Bacon is a murder detective with a solid record at Canning Town and the incident room will be staffed with a team of detectives from outside the borough.’ He paused to clear his throat. ‘There has been a suggestion that you haven’t been entirely .?.?. candid about your contacts with the mortuary technician in the case?’
What the .?.?. ? So Bacon had been squealing. How appropriate.
‘It’s imperative that you share anything with any bearing on the ongoing investigation with DI Bacon. That would be the best way to ensure you stay in the loop.’
Flyte hung up fuming. She was already sensing a shift in the dynamic between her and Bacon: she would be tolerated, but would have little to no influence over the direction of the murder investigation.
It was Saturday, and she had the weekend off, but at 5 p.m. she opened the BBC News app to watch the live coverage of the Camden police press conference. It was fronted by Bellwether and Bacon, her old boss displaying the comms savvy that had seen him reach DCI rank by his mid-forties. He revealed what he would only describe as ‘newly discovered’ injuries to Sophia Angelopoulos’s body which had emerged during the forensic PM. A journalist asked – reasonably enough – why a forensic PM hadn’t been requested earlier. Bellwether said ‘in this case, we should have done a better job exploring all possible scenarios’ before pointing out that the IOPC investigation was ongoing and that ‘their representative’ would be given ‘full access’ to the murder inquiry.
Flyte made a scornful sound. It couldn’t be clearer: from now on she’d be playing the role of fig leaf, a human shield to help deflect further criticism of the Met’s screw-ups.
Bellwether finished by adopting his ‘concerned’ face: ‘I want to assure the family and the public that we will not rest until the truth about Bronte’s death is uncovered and any perpetrator brought to justice.’
Cut-and-paste corporate pap. Flyte knew that the chances of that happening were vanishingly small. The ‘golden hour’ at the start of any investigation was the critical moment in which evidence was found and leads established, and it had now been ten days since Bronte’s broken body was discovered on the towpath. Ten days in which any useful forensics at the scene had been lost and potential witnesses’ memories had long faded.
Opening the dating app which she’d recently signed up to she scrolled through her latest likes with a feeling of gloom. The experience of coming out – to everyone except her mother, that is – and dating women hadn’t been the liberation she’d imagined it might be. She had already exhausted the possibilities of the only surviving bar in supposedly alternative Camden frequented by gay women. She didn’t like the newly ubiquitous term ‘queer’ which, like the word ‘lesbian’, had only ever been used as an insult at her all-girls boarding school.
Clicking on the face of a freckled, red-haired woman, she skimmed her profile. KikiZee described herself as ‘creative, passionate’, but then ruined it with a flurry of cretinous emojis, hobbies that included ‘climate activism, self-care, reiki, veganism’, and a stern list of NOes – ‘NO Tories, NO Brexiteers, NO meat-eaters, NO Terfs’ .?.?. What would KikiZee make of a former police officer? Fascist pig, probably. It had come as a shock, discovering how judgemental a long-marginalised minority could be.
Prejudice came in all shapes and sizes.
The next ‘like’ came from .?.?. A leap of excitement. Was it .?.?.?
Clicking on the image she realised her mistake: the Mediterranean colouring, the undercut and soot-black hair was similar to Cassie Raven’s but without Cassie’s heart-shaped face and generous lips.
She berated herself: that ship had sailed – or never even been launched – so why the hell couldn’t she stop thinking about the morgue girl?
Chapter Twenty-Four
The next day Cassie pushed open the door of Honest Bob’s vinyl store, and felt her stomach swoop. Her mother Kath had worked for Bob, the guy who owned the place, when she’d been just nineteen, before she’d met Callum and long before Cassie was born. Seven years later she was dead – murdered. The last time Cassie had been here she’d been trying to find out the truth about her mum’s death; at least this time she was only here to get intel about the music industry.
In the café area she found Bob standing behind the coffee machine. ‘Hello, stranger,’ he said, giving her a lingering up-and-down look that made her feel like a prize cow getting sized up at market. Creep.
Anyone else would’ve got her death stare on full beam but since she was here to pick his brains, she pasted on a girly smile.
‘I’m just making an espresso,’ he said. ‘Want one?’
‘Thanks.’ She smiled, going over to the corner table he indicated.
Guys of that generation seemed to think that women spent their lives craving the attentions of any male – even a fossilised old rocker like Bob, with his greasy-looking steel-grey hair scraped back in a ponytail. She’d read once that the euphemism for this unwanted attention was gallantry. It creeped her out.
In Camden’s musical heyday, Bob’s shop had been legendary: a magnet for punks, post-punks and goths, on the hunt for some rare import from New York, or even a glimpse of some famous musician. Her dad, who had once played in a band himself, never stopped boasting how he’d once chatted to Joe Strummer here in the nineties. The place had somehow survived the area’s gentrification long enough to benefit from the resurgence of vinyl among a new generation.
Since she was last here a graffiti-style neon mural of Amy Winehouse had been painted on the wall – instantly recognisable from her trademark beehive and batwing eyeliner. As Cassie watched, a blonde-haired girl stepped in front of it with her boyfriend to snap a selfie – Scandinavians, going by their overheard chat. She understood the impulse to pay homage to a talent – but it was hard to escape the feeling that Amy the person was gone, leaving behind Amy the brand. A fate that no doubt awaited Bronte too.