Die With Me (5 page)

‘It’ll be in her diary.’

‘May I see it?’

He shrugged and got slowly to his feet. ‘It’s one of them electronic things. It’s upstairs in her desk.’

‘What about a phone?’ she said, following him out the door, interested to see Gemma’s room. A search team would have to go over it properly but she wanted to take a look for herself.

Kramer shook his head. ‘No point. Mary walked her to and from school and she didn’t have many friends to call.’

Most girls Gemma’s age were allowed to walk to school on their own. They also had cell phones; it was odd that her parents hadn’t given her one and Donovan wondered if Gemma had minded, if she had felt the odd one out in her peer group.

‘What about a computer? Did Gemma have access to the internet?’

He nodded. ‘Used it for her schoolwork. It’s all in her room upstairs.’

‘You’d better show me.’

The stairs were narrow and Kramer seemed out of scale as he lumbered up them, holding on so tight to the thin banister that it creaked and wobbled beneath his grasp. Following behind, Donovan passed a half-open door on the first floor landing, glimpsing through it the dark shape of Gemma’s mother in bed, deeply asleep judging by the sound of heavy breathing coming from the room. Thank God she didn’t have to go through all this with her.

Gemma’s bedroom was on the top floor at the front of the house. Kramer hesitated on the landing, staring down at the floor as if he couldn’t bring himself even to look at the door.

‘Do you mind going in by yourself? I can’t bear seeing her things.’

‘Of course, Mr Kramer,’ she said. ‘I’ll come and find you downstairs, shall I? I won’t be long.’

She waited until he disappeared from view then she pushed open the door and walked in.

Light streamed in from the street outside, casting long shadows across the floor. Thinking that someone in one of the houses opposite might be looking out, she moved to close the curtains before switching on the light at the wall. The bed was made, not even a wrinkle in the duvet or pillows, which were patterned with tiny rosebuds and bows. A purple cardigan hung over the back of a chair and a pair of flat black shoes peeped out from under the bed next to a pair of pink slippers. It was as if she had walked into a bubble, separate from the real world, and it brought a knot to her throat. The room was frozen in time, the clock stopped on the day Gemma died, the child never coming home. Having your child die before you must be one of the most terrible things in the world, she had often thought, a scar that would never heal which tainted everything and poisoned the future. She wondered what Kramer and his wife would do with Gemma’s room. Would they leave it just as it was or would they change it? Perhaps they would find it impossible to continue living in the house with all its memories.

Looking around, almost everything in the room was pink: walls, curtains, carpet, bed covers, even the string of fairy lights in the shape of little angels hanging in an arc over the bed. It was a little girl’s bedroom. Donovan wouldn’t have been caught dead with a room like that at the age of fourteen. Six, maybe, when you had no choice in the matter, but never fourteen. Her walls had been papered with posters and photos, but apart from a gilt-framed print of a girl jumping a fence on a pony, Gemma’s were totally blank.

Although Gemma’s development seemed to be arrested, no expense had been spared in kitting out the room. Along with a new-looking laptop, Gemma had her own TV and mini hi-fi system. The small collection of CDs, mainly boy bands and similar, were anodyne, nothing to give her parents cause for worry. She remembered Kramer’s words: ‘We didn’t want her growing up too fast’, wondering what it was that they were trying to protect her from. On the surface at least, the poor kid had had no choice but to remain a child, wrapped in this pastel-pink cocoon. She wondered how Gemma had felt about it, whether she had resented it at all. Maybe what she had been doing in that church had been an attempt to escape.

A small desk stood in a corner of the room, inside the single drawer a collection of coloured pens and pencils, stationery, a mini iPod and a PDA, with a Barbie logo on the front. But there were no letters or cards, no journal or any other personal items of interest. Putting the iPod and PDA in her bag to examine later, she tried the chest of drawers, feeling around amongst the neat piles of clothing. But there was nothing hidden there.

The bookshelf above the desk was packed with a mixture of children’s classics, what looked like a full set of Harry Potters and Georgette Heyers, as well as
The Hobbit
, a gift set of the Narnia books and
Artemis
Fowl
. Apart from a child’s encyclopaedia and a few factual books on horses and riding, fantasy seemed to be the predominant theme. Donovan was surprised to see that Gemma was a reader, given the lack of books in her parents’ sitting room downstairs.

A copy of
Wuthering
Heights
lay on the low table next to the bed. The paperback was well thumbed and fell open as she picked it up. Flicking through, she noticed several passages heavily underlined in purple, some with a star inscribed in the margin. Wondering if perhaps Gemma was studying it at school, she skimmed through some of the highlighted chunks. They all seemed to be about Heathcliff, a physical description of him on one page accompanied by several exclamation marks and a small inked heart. It instantly struck a chord. For a moment Donovan remembered the acute feeling of teenage longing, the wanting to belong to another world, far removed from family and friends. Heathcliff, the dark and dangerous lover who had filled her dreams too. He had seemed so real for a while. How could the smelly, spotty, greasy-haired youths she had known at school ever measure up? Heathcliff had blighted any opportunities for adolescent romance and she was forced to admit that a part of her still hankered after him even now.

Glancing at her watch, she realised that it was past seven o’clock. She went over to the desk, unplugged the laptop and tucked it under her arm. Checking the room one last time to make sure she hadn’t missed anything obvious, she switched off the light and went downstairs. She would send a team over in the morning to go through the rest of Gemma’s things more thoroughly.

Downstairs, Kramer walked her to her car, putting the laptop onto the back seat while she wrote out a receipt for the items she was taking. He held the door open for her as she climbed behind the wheel, then handed her a folded piece of paper.

‘That’s the list you wanted,’ he said. ‘I’ve written down a couple of names but I can’t believe any of them would…’ He shook his head, clenching his lips, unable to finish the sentence.

She gave him a reassuring smile. ‘Thank you, Mr Kramer. We just have to check every angle you know. We wouldn’t be doing our job properly otherwise.’

He nodded slowly as if he accepted this, resting his arm heavily on the edge of the door as if he wanted to keep her there. ‘So, Sergeant. What do you think happened to our Gemma? It was an accident, right?’

‘It’s too early to tell, Mr Kramer,’ she said, noncommittally, hoping he’d let her leave without probing any further. Kramer was still a suspect, even though in her heart she didn’t believe he had had anything to do with it. She started the engine but he was still holding on to the door as if he wasn’t finished.

‘You know, they thought it was suicide,’ he said leaning towards her and speaking in a whisper, as if he was worried that someone might overhear. ‘But I told them it can’t be. Gemma would never do that. It would break her mum’s heart, it would.’

‘It’s not suicide, Mr Kramer. You can be sure of that,’ she replied, surprised again that he seemed unable to understand that Gemma’s death was suspicious.

He nodded once more, looking strangely relieved, and stepped back from the car. Something about his reaction didn’t feel right and she was aware of him watching her as she closed the door. Turning to reach for her seatbelt, she glanced over at him again and caught a glimmer of something on his face that puzzled her. He looked like someone who had just pulled off a trick, although for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out what it was.

It was evening and the investigation into Gemma Kramer’s death was well under way. Tartaglia yawned and locked his fingers in front of him, cracking his knuckles and stretching his neck forward to ease the tiredness that had suddenly overwhelmed him. There had been the team to assemble from various other on-going cases, actions to be assigned and a further debriefing and file handover with the DI at Ealing CID. Until he heard back from Donovan, the priority was St Sebastian’s. Everyone who was available had gone over to Ealing to conduct interviews, starting with the vicar and the people who used the church regularly, and going on to knock on doors in the area. Local CCTV footage was being checked, although in such a residential district, cameras were few and far between, and the tube station was their main hope. Somehow, they had to try and come up with more witnesses and get a better description of the man seen with Gemma.

As acting SIO, Tartaglia had decided to move out of the cramped quarters he normally shared with Gary Jones, the other DI on Clarke’s team. It wasn’t an issue of his new seniority. He needed a quiet place where he could gather his thoughts and think through things clearly without interruption.

Standing in the doorway of Clarke’s office, he wondered how long it would take him to sort out the mess of papers, files and miscellaneous possessions Clarke had left behind. He felt a pang of sadness as he thought about Clarke lying motionless in his hospital bed but he couldn’t work in such chaos. How Clarke had ever managed so effortlessly was beyond him.

The room was little more than a shoebox at the front of the building, the single grimy window facing onto the road that led from Barnes Pond to the common, opposite the backs of a row of expensive period houses, with neat gardens; suburban Barnes in all its glory. Judging by the icy temperature, the heating was on the blink again. Nothing in the bloody building ever worked properly. But at least he didn’t have to put up with Jones’s BO any longer, the lovey-dovey phone calls to the wife and the smell of the home-made tuna and onion sandwiches which Jones seemed to eat at all hours of the day.

Barnes Green wasn’t supposed to be a permanent location for the two murder squads it currently housed. When Tartaglia had joined Team Five of Homicide West, Clarke had jokingly told him not to bother unpacking his things. The low-built early seventies block was past its sell-by date and they’d all be relocating soon. But nearly three years on, there was no sign of a move and they had learned to live with the cramped and shabby working conditions, sandwiched on the first floor between part of the Flying Squad above and a child protection unit on the ground floor below. It was a far cry from the offices up in Hendon, at the Peel Centre, where five of the other murder teams worked in relative luxury.

Feeling hungry, he decided to make some coffee to fill the gap while he sorted out somewhere to put his things in Clarke’s office. There was no canteen in the building and he’d have to go out later for something to eat. He walked down the corridor to a tiny internal room, once used for storage, which served as the kitchen for the entire first floor. Functional was the only positive word to describe it; a health hazard was probably more accurate and he used it as little as possible, preferring to get his coffee and food from one of the many fancy delis that peppered the area. He opened the door of the fridge but couldn’t see any milk, just an ancient looking tub of margarine and an already opened tin of tomato soup. However, he didn’t have time to go out so he boiled the kettle and made a strong brew of instant black coffee. Disgusted at the predictable state of things, he carried the mug back into Clarke’s office where he struggled to find a safe place to put it down. He swept a variety of papers and files into a couple of rough piles and helped himself to an unopened Kit-Kat which he found marking a place inside a folder.

He pulled up the saggy brown corduroy chair that Clarke had brought in from somewhere and sat down at the desk to go through the papers. As he stretched out his legs, he kicked against something hard at the back. Digging around underneath, he pulled out a large cardboard box containing two pairs of ancient, mud-encrusted trainers, a humane mousetrap and a blow heater. Wedged behind the box was a rolled-up sleeping bag, which he remembered Clarke using for all-night sessions. At least Tartaglia wouldn’t be needing that. His flat in Shepherd’s Bush was only a fifteen-minute motorbike ride away. After trying the blow heater, which seemed to be broken, he put everything back in the box, stuffing the sleeping bag on top and dumped it all in the corridor to take away later.

He was about to sit down again at the desk when his mobile rang: it was Donovan.

‘I’m on my way back. I’ve just seen Gemma’s stepdad, Dennis Kramer.’

‘Stepfather?’

‘Don’t get excited. He doesn’t fit the witness description and if his alibi checks out, he’s in the clear. I’ve got Gemma’s computer with me. Is Dave around?’

DC Dave Wightman had a degree in something to do with computers and was regarded as the in-house expert on most things technical.

‘He’s just come back from Ealing.’

‘Tell him I’ll drop it off in about ten minutes. It needs to go over to Newlands Park for analysis but he’s so good with computers. I was hoping he could have a quick look at it first. There was nothing else in her room of any interest. In the meantime, a couple of friends of Kramer’s want checking out.’ She gave him the names and addresses, which he noted down. ‘I’m going to see a girl called Rosie Chapple later on. She seems to be Gemma’s only friend.’

‘Did you see Gemma’s mother?’

She gave a long, wheezy sigh. ‘No. She was out for the count in bed. Can I tell you the rest once I get a bite to eat? I missed lunch and I’ll pass out if I don’t get something now.’

He looked at his watch, realising that he had also had little to eat that day. It would be a while before everyone was back from Ealing and there should be time to nip out for a quick bite. It would probably be the only break he’d get for a while. ‘I’ll see you in the Bull’s Head in twenty minutes. I’ll order for you. What do you fancy?’

‘Don’t mind. Just make it large.’

Stopping off in the main office outside to tell DC Dave Wightman about the computer, Tartaglia grabbed his jacket from his old office and went downstairs. He walked through the car park at the back of the building and out of the main gate onto the street. It was close to freezing and a mist was rolling up in thick drifts from the Thames. The air was wet on his face and smelled of rotting leaves mixed with wood smoke, someone burning a proper fire nearby. As he turned down Station Road, he could just make out the black wilderness of Barnes Common in the distance, a long string of orange streetlights marking the perimeter.

When he’d first come down to London from Edinburgh shortly after graduating from university, he had felt swamped by its size, lack of cohesion and frenetic pace of life. He remembered having an argument in a pub with some jolly Londoner who had tried to persuade him that the city was really only a friendly series of villages joined together. Having lived in Edinburgh all his life, it was something he failed to see, there being no village-like qualities about Hendon, where he’d done his training as a police cadet, or Oxford Street and its environs, where he had walked his first beat. London seemed just a grey, filthy, sprawling, unfriendly mass and he wondered whether he had made a mistake leaving home. Gradually, as he got to know the city better, he started to realise that most areas had their own distinct personality and community, which made life more tolerable. Nowhere was this more true than in Barnes, picture-postcard pretty and so rural that it could almost be in the country, even though it was only a few miles from the centre of town.

He passed the village green with its pond, barely visible in the mist, a couple of ducks quacking from somewhere near the edge of the water, and followed the road around into the narrow, brightly-lit high street. Unusually for London, it was free of chain stores and retained an old-fashioned feel, offering instead an exotic range of small shops, expensive boutiques and restaurants, along with the myriad of estate agents, reflecting the fact that it was a popular, if expensive, place to live. Cut off from central London by the river Thames, Barnes seemed to be in a world of its own. If the wealthy local clientele, which included several well-known faces from theatre and television, wanted something functional like a pair of socks or underpants, they had to make the trip over Hammersmith Bridge into the smoke.

Approaching the river, the fog became dense and he could barely see in front of him. Swathed in a veil of white, The Bull’s Head sat at the end of the High Street, overlooking the river embankment, next door to what had once been Barnes Police Station, the old building now converted into expensive flats.

Walking into the large, open-plan bar, Tartaglia was greeted as usual by loud music coming from the back room. The pub was famous for its daily sessions of live jazz, occasionally boasting musicians even he had heard of, such as Humphrey Lyttelton and George Melly. Jazz wasn’t his cup of tea in any shape or form and often the music was so loud it was difficult to hold a conversation. But tonight the sounds drifting into the bar were half decent, someone with a voice like John Lee Hooker singing the blues, accompanied by a guitar. There were worse places to drink and it was certainly a lot better than the watering holes around Hendon.

He bought a pint of Youngs Special for himself and a half of their ordinary bitter for Donovan, who tended to prefer something a little less strong. They might still be officially on duty but he didn’t give a damn. It had been a long day and he had the feeling that it wasn’t anywhere near over yet. He was supposed to have been seeing his cousin Gianni for beer and pizza in front of the TV with the DVD of
Downfall
, but that plan had had to be shelved and, as far as the weekend was concerned, he could kiss goodbye to that too. He ordered two large helpings of lasagne and salad and settled himself at a table in the far corner by one of the windows. He had just started on his pint when Donovan appeared through the main door, pink-faced and out of breath, her hair damp from the air outside. She swung her satchel onto the floor and stripped off several layers of clothing, down to a pair of baggy black trousers, held up with braces, and a red and black striped T-shirt that reminded him amusingly of Dennis the Menace. He liked the way she dressed; it suited her, even if it was rarely ever feminine. She could usually pass for a pretty young boy.

Donovan quickly rubbed her hair with the edge of her scarf, making it stand up in short tufts, then flopped down in the chair opposite him. ‘That’s better. Cheers,’ she said, taking a gulp of bitter and wiping her top lip with the back of her hand. ‘God, I needed that.’

‘We’re checking on Kramer’s two mates. They both live close together, which makes it easy.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Should hear back soon. What time are you seeing the girl?’

‘Not for a while. Her mother said she wouldn’t be home before ten at the earliest, as it’s Friday night.’ She took another large sip, then leaned back in her chair, legs stretched out in front of her. ‘This isn’t going to be easy,’ she said, thoughtfully. ‘I think Gemma was leading a secret life and I don’t think her parents had a clue.’ She told him about her conversation with Kramer and her initial impressions of Gemma.

He listened carefully, asking the odd question here and there. When she’d finished, he sipped his pint in silence for a moment. Although there had been a few famous cases over the years, stranger killings were rare in London. Usually the killer was to be found within the victim’s close circle of family, friends and colleagues and the majority of murders were relatively straightforward to solve, with the main challenge being to get sufficient proof for a conviction. From what Mrs Brooke had said, Gemma had seemed to know the man she met outside the church, so hopefully it was only a matter of time before they’d find out who he was.

‘What do you make of Kramer?’ he asked, after a minute. ‘I know you say he doesn’t fit the description but…’

‘He’s an odd bloke and really overprotective. But unless he’s a brilliant actor, I think he genuinely cared about Gemma. What’s strange is that he seemed unable to grasp the fact that her death is suspicious. It’s as if he’d already made up his mind about what had happened.’

‘Or knew what had happened?’

‘No. I don’t think he would have harmed her, or knowingly let any of his friends mess about with her.’

He gave her a searching look. He could tell from her expression that there was something else. ‘What is it?’

She cradled her nearly empty glass in her hands, swilling the brown liquid around the sides before taking a last gulp of bitter. ‘I’m pretty sure he’s holding something back. I just don’t have a clue what it is. I’ve been over and over in my mind what we talked about but there’s nothing I can pin it on, nothing in particular that he said or did that struck a wrong note. Until, that is, just after we’d said goodbye. I was about to drive off and he’d relaxed, thinking I was going. I saw something, just a glimmer in his expression, nothing more than that. He looked as though he’d gotten away with something.’ She drained her glass and grimaced. ‘Maybe I’m reading too much into it.’

He shook his head. Her instincts were usually spot on. ‘I doubt it. Let’s get him in. Make it formal and turn up the temperature.’

‘He sees himself as a tough guy, real hardboiled on the surface. Maybe he thought, because I’m a woman, he could pull the wool over my eyes. I just don’t see why, if he loved Gemma, he would want to protect someone who had harmed her.’ She gave a weary sigh and stood up. ‘Another pint?’

Tartaglia shook his head and watched her move towards the bar. Kramer wouldn’t have been the first to underestimate her. Her physical size and looks gave a misleading impression of innocence and fragility. But what was she to do? High heels and red lipstick were hardly the answer. He respected her for getting on with things as if none of it mattered, even though he knew she found it irritating at times. Apart from what had happened with Kramer, she seemed a little on edge, although he couldn’t pinpoint why. He wondered if she had picked up the vibes between him and Blake earlier on. The last thing he needed was to be the centre of office gossip, particularly when there was nothing going on anyway. At least Donovan wasn’t one to gossip, unlike some. He knew little about her personal life other than that there’d been some man called Richard around for a while. But she had stopped mentioning him and Tartaglia hadn’t wanted to appear nosey by asking. Perhaps giving up smoking was making her feel on edge.