Page 29 of Dead Fall

She’d brought along some acetone and a bottle of nail varnish and once her clothes were lazily churning in a machine, cleaned off her old chipped polish and started to apply a fresh coat with practised strokes. Replaying Flyte’s questions about whether there were any signs of violence on Bronte’s body she wondered whether she was just going through the motions as part of her IOPC remit. Or did she suspect there was something off about the suicide conclusion?

The laundrette was empty, and as Cassie focused on each long stroke of varnish, the only sound the chug-chug of the washer, she drifted into a meditative state. Bored with her go-to black she was trying a new shade called Hades, the darkest red – the colour of long-dried blood. She pictured Bronte’s nails, which had been painted black.

After finishing the second coat she was waving her hands about to speed up the drying process when she caught a movement in her peripheral vision. A face, reflected in the half-open glass porthole of one of the machines. Bronte, one side of her face a livid purple, her lips moving angrily.

What the .?.?.?!

She jumped up, twisting to check behind her. Nothing. Her heart going like a drum machine, she looked back at the glass porthole. The face had gone. But the image was still imprinted on her retina: Bronte had looked furious. Furious with her.

She must have clenched her fists in shock because on her right palm she saw a scatter of dark-red varnish, like the dried blood of a bad graze.

Like the abrasion on Bronte’s palm, which Curzon had dismissed as an injury sustained in the fall.

Cassie knocked on the door of the lady who did the service washes. ‘Sorry, Bella, I need to leave my stuff. There’s something I forgot to do.’

*

It was dusk by the time she reached the mortuary, and making straight for Bronte’s drawer in the body store Cassie unzipped her body bag to the waist. She half expected her to be wearing the expression she’d glimpsed in the glass – not fury, perhaps, but definitely exasperation, like Cassie was being unbelievably stupid. But her still, waxwork features looked neutral above the locket with the filigree cross which Chrysanthi had put around her daughter’s neck.

‘Look, Bronte, I need to check you over again, OK?’ After pulling on some gloves, Cassie took her right hand – cold as sin but pliable again now that rigor had long passed – and turned it over. The black-red abrasion on the right palm and extending up the inside of the fingers was just as she remembered. Reaching for the left hand she turned it palm upwards, and angling it into the harsh fluorescent light, she thought she could make out some lighter grazing there, too.

What had come to her in the laundrette after ‘seeing’ Bronte was the idea that these injuries weren’t as Curzon had suggested – sustained by chance during the fall – but the result of Bronte deliberately grabbing hold of something to save herself, however briefly.

Cassie turned the hand palm down and examined the black-painted fingernails: the varnish had largely survived the fall. Soaking a hank of cotton wool with some nail polish remover, she started to clean the middle fingernail of Bronte’s right hand.

Her breathing grew faster as the layers of black gradually started to surrender, revealing the natural nail beneath.

Thirty seconds later, staring down at the varnish-free nail, she felt suddenly light-headed.

The pear-drop reek of the acetone clawed at her throat, the gurgle of the fridge grew oppressively loud, and she felt herself free-falling into the familiar state that was both dreamy yet hyper-real. She looked down at Bronte’s face.

‘I don’t want to die.’

The words seemed to shimmer off the still, waxen face – sounding plaintive but not desperate. And anything but suicidal.

FLYTE

In his white forensic suit DI ‘Streaky’ Bacon resembled a large and dissolute snowman. At least he wouldn’t be able to access his trouser pockets, thought Flyte sourly.

Dusk was gathering outside by the time Flyte and Streaky reached Bronte’s flat: its previous life as a warehouse still evident in the vintage steel columns, stripped brick walls, and what looked like the original oak floorboards. A baby grand piano sat in the centre of the open-plan living room and framed posters of bands and artists lined the walls, some of whom Flyte had never even heard of. Like the black-and-white image of some moustachioed guy above the name Django Reinhardt in a jaunty retro font.

Seeing her frown, Bacon said, ‘Gypsy jazz musician from the forties.’

Was ‘gypsy’ even an acceptable term these days?

‘The girl had taste,’ he went on admiringly as he browsed the images. ‘Miriam Makeba .?.?. Etta James .?.?. that’s Nina Simone.’

‘I know who Nina Simone is,’ said Flyte tartly, reading the inscription beneath Simone’s uncompromising stare: An artist’s duty is to reflect the times.

Bronte’s place struck her as surprisingly neat and orderly for the home of a druggie music star. Maybe her mother had been right when she said Bronte was staying clean – literally. It always struck Flyte how every home had a unique and distinct smell: here she picked up the scent of recently burned candle or incense – a spruce-like, Christmassy fragrance. Myrrh, at a guess.

‘Who’s been in here since the death?’ she asked.

‘Just her mum and dad, to take some items of sentimental value,’ he said. Then his face lit up. ‘Hello, gorgeous!’ he exclaimed. This was directed at the woman in the forensic suit with dyed blonde hair and lavender ombre rinse who’d just come in from the balcony.

‘Well, look what the cat dragged in!’ she exclaimed on seeing him, her London tones sounding as though they’d been kippered by decades of cigarette smoke.

Bacon introduced the woman, who appeared to be around his vintage, as Tina Verity, the crime scene manager who’d attended right after Bronte’s death. Flyte noted the wary – and increasingly familiar – look that came into her eyes at the dread initials IOPC.

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