Chimera (4 page)

“Are your children still here, Mr. Arlen?” Kate asked. She devoutly hoped they’d already been removed to a safe and familiar place.

“My parents came and got them,” Arlen said, and Kate inwardly sighed with relief. “I don’t know how much they – I mean, I don’t know how much they know. I was in such a state of shock I think I… I think I just said that Mummy was ill and they could see her later—” His voice broke. He put his fist to his mouth, as if his clenched fingers could stop the tears that Kate could sense were just below the surface of his ostensible control. Kyla Mellors reached out a tentative hand and Arlen, after a moment, took his fist down from his face and clutched at her fingers. “I’m sorry,” he said after a few moments. “I know that doesn’t help. I’ll try not to – to break down again.”

Olbeck murmured the usual soothing platitudes and Kate added hers. Kyla Mellors was visibly wincing at the strength of Arlen’s grip on her hand, and after a moment he seemed to realise it, releasing her with a ‘sorry – sorry, Kyla’. She nodded and smiled wanly but Kate saw her slip her hand beneath the table and thought she was probably rubbing away the pain with her other hand.

“If you could just take us through what happened, Mr. Arlen,” Olbeck said. “I understand you were away on business last night?”

Arlen nodded. “Yes, that’s right. I often have client meetings after normal office hours and last night I knew I’d be so late home that it wasn’t worth me travelling back. I booked a hotel and left very early the next morning. This morning, I mean.”

“Your office is in London?”         

Arlen nodded again. “Yes, in the city. On Cheapside.”

“Were you due to go back to work today?” asked Kate. “It seems an awful lot of travelling to be home for a few hours.”

Arlen frowned. “I just wanted to see my children for a few hours, I see them so infrequently during the week that I take the opportunity when I can. My first meeting today wasn’t until eleven am, so I knew I’d be able to be home for an hour or so, to help with the children’s breakfasts and getting them ready for nursery.” A thought seemed to strike him. “My God, I haven’t told the office yet, I didn’t think… I’d better call my assistant.”

“That’s fine, Mr. Arlen,” said Olbeck. “I suggest you do that sooner rather than later. But I would strongly suggest you don’t go into too much detail as to why you’re unable to get to work. Unfortunately there’s going to be considerable press interest and it would be good to head them off for as long as we possibly can.”

Arlen looked shaken, as if that reality had only just occurred to him. “Yes. Yes I can see that.”

Olbeck gave him a moment and then gently prompted him again. “You arrived here very early this morning.”

“Yes, about six o’clock. The traffic can be appalling later on and I wanted to miss it if possible. Thank God I did come back so early…if the children had woken…” Arlen trailed off and there was a moment’s silence.

“And what happened when you arrived home?” Olbeck asked patiently.

Arlen closed his eyes momentarily. “I unlocked the front door and let myself in. I was as quiet as possible – I didn’t want to disturb anyone. I can’t remember exactly what I did first – oh, yes, I put on some coffee. Then I went upstairs to change, and I walked into the bedroom and found – found Trixie. I…I gasped, I think, or made some sort of sound. I could see she was dead straight away. I – I was so shocked. I didn’t really know what to do—”

“Did you touch the body, Mr. Arlen?” asked Kate.

Arlen winced. “Yes. Yes, of course I did. I had to check whether she was – whether I’d made a mistake.” His head dropped forward and his voice lowered. “I knew I hadn’t, though. She was so cold – I knew I was too late.”

“What happened then?” asked Olbeck.

“I think I – yes, I called the police then, or an ambulance. I dialled nine nine nine. After I put the phone down I…I panicked a bit – I remembered the children and I thought for one awful second—” Arlen shut his eyes again and shuddered. “I thought for one awful second they were
all
dead, they’d all been killed or somehow died together.” He shuddered again, leaning forward and Kyla took his hand once more. “I ran to their rooms and they were okay, thank God, thank God. Manon woke up then, and I took her downstairs and put her in her high chair.” Kate blinked a little at the daughter’s name.
Manon?
Arlen continued. “I locked our bedroom door so the boys wouldn’t go in when they woke up. Then I – I just waited for the police to get here. They were the ones who suggested I call a friend.”

“So he called me,” said Kyla, speaking for the first time. She had a low, attractive voice. Kate wondered whose friend she had been; Trixie’s? Arlen’s? Or a true mutual friend? Kate studied her a little more attentively. Kyla looked to be about thirty-five, although she could have possibly been older. She had long, highlighted blonde hair, well-shaped dark eyebrows and good cheekbones – the striking looks of an ex-model. She too wore a wedding ring and a large multi-jewelled engagement ring.

Olbeck jotted down a few notes and looked up. “May I ask how long you’ve been married, Mr. Arlen?”

“Five years. We met a few years after Trixie’s first husband died.”

“Did your wife suffer from any health problems, any medical issues that you were aware of?”

Arlen frowned but after a moment, he answered. “No, nothing that I’m aware of.”

“When was the last time you spoke to her?”

“I called her yesterday, at about five o’clock, to tell her I wasn’t coming home. There’d been some uncertainty as to whether I’d be able to make it home that night or not, and I wanted to let her know that I wouldn’t be able to make it.”

“How did she sound?”

Arlen’s eyes closed again briefly. “She sounded fine. Absolutely normal. I asked her if she had any plans – sometimes she went to the gym or to yoga in the evenings if she had a babysitter – but she just said she was going to have a quiet night and probably go to bed early.”

“So everything seemed absolutely as normal?”

“Yes.”

Kate had thought of something. “Mr. Arlen, your wife is a very famous person. Is she active on social media at all – Facebook, Twitter, that sort of thing?”

Arlen nodded. “She loved Twitter, she was on it all the time. She always used to laugh and read me the tweets that amused her.”

“Thank you. If you could give me the details of all of her social media accounts, that would be very helpful,” Kate said and Arlen nodded.

Olbeck turned to Kyla Mellors. “Mrs. Mellors, you might be able to help us as well. Did you speak to Mrs. Arlen at all yesterday?”

Kyla shook her head. “No, not yesterday. We met up for coffee the day before. Just a quick catch up, you know.”

“Did you often do that?”

Kyla withdrew her hand from Arlen’s once more. Kate watched her fingers twist together. “Quite often,” Kyla said, with a break in her voice. “About once a week or so. I’ve got a daughter the same age as Manon – that’s how we met, at an ante-natal class – and we often used to get the girls together for play dates.” Her voice shook quite badly now, tears trembling on the edge of her eyelids. “I can’t believe this has happened, it doesn’t seem possible.” She fell silent with a gasp and put her trembling fingers up to her mouth.

Feeling cruel but pushing on anyway, Kate asked her a question. “So, you were close friends? Would she confide in you?”

Kyla Mellors struggled for a moment. “I suppose so,” she said eventually, with another gasp. After another moment, she appeared to regain some control. “We used to talk about all sorts of things. She’d had an interesting life.”

“Indeed,” said Kate. “Could you have said whether there was anything worrying her? Did she seem concerned or anxious about anything?”

Kyla appeared to give the question serious thought. “I don’t
think
so,” she said eventually. Her hand went up to her mouth again and she bit her thumbnail.

Kate’s eyes narrowed. Something about Kyla’s last statement didn’t ring true. She sat up a little, wondering whether to push the questioning, but Olbeck was already talking. Kate sat back. She decided that asking more probing questions now would probably be counterproductive. There would be time enough for that later. And besides – maybe this would all be cleared up after the post mortem. Briefly, her thoughts went to Bill Osbourne; she must get in touch with him and find out what the findings of the post mortem on the two young men were.

For a moment, Kate experienced that sudden sense of surrealism again. She couldn’t really be sat in
Trixie Arlen’s
kitchen, could she? She, Kate Redman, couldn’t really be questioning Trixie’s bereaved husband? Her gaze slowly tracked the room as she listened to Olbeck asking Arlen for details of his firm and the hotel he’d stayed in last night. It was a large kitchen, the units obviously made to measure by an expensive firm, the floor slate-tiled, every accoutrement well made, costly and suitable. But for all that it was a homely place, full of family clutter and a refreshing lack of pretension. Kate recalled the first case she’d ever worked in Abbeyford, the kidnapping of the Fullman baby and the murder of his nanny. She remembered that house – that hideous, vulgar, new-money house – with no expense spared but no taste either. This house was very different. There was mess; toys everywhere, paperwork scattered over the kitchen countertops. Kate could see crumbs on the floor, muddy footprints by the back door that were too small to have been made by an adult, an overflowing kitchen bin in the corner. Her eyes went to Jacob Arlen. It was funny; he didn’t look like the kind of man who would relish living in domestic chaos. He was clean-shaven and good-looking in a stern, ascetic way, trim for a man who had to be well into his fifties. Was this his first marriage? What must it be like for a middle-aged man to have a relatively large young family? He was a hedge-fund manager, or something like that, Kate recalled – something deadly dull but extremely lucrative. Had Trixie Arlen out-earned him or was he the breadwinner?

Olbeck wrapped up the questioning. He and Kate handed over their cards and took their leave. They walked back through the hallway and out into the space in front of the house. The sun blazed overhead, bright enough to make both of them screw up their eyes. Kate was amazed afresh at how nature just went on doing what it did, no matter what small, petty human dramas were being played out on the stage it provided The sun would travel slowly across the sky and set in the west, and night would fall and then the sun would rise again, and it would be the day after Trixie Arlen died. The day three children lost their mother would be over and gone, never to come again. She blinked several times and reminded herself to get a grip.

“Come on,” Olbeck said. “Let’s have a look around.”

Kate followed him as he crunched over the gravel, round the side of the farmhouse. A flash of reflected light caught her eye and she looked over the gently rolling fields to the lane where cars were gathering. Figures with cameras were emerging and clustering at the gates. The paparazzi were here. Corpse flies, Kate thought with a scowl as she followed Olbeck around the corner of the house.

Chapter Five

Kate had seen many terrible things at various post-mortems. She’d seen bodies with ragged, gaping knife wounds; bodies with skulls crushed like empty egg shells; bodies burned so badly that they were barely recognisable as the remains of a human being. She’d been sickened and disgusted and angry in turn. But until Doctor Telling looked up from the body of Trixie Arlen and told Kate how she believed the woman had died, Kate realised she’d never been truly shocked. Not until now.

“A
heroin
overdose?” Kate was so flabbergasted for a moment that she couldn’t think of what else to say. “You’re…you’re
kidding
me.”

Doctor Telling, who rarely smiled, flashed her a slightly ironic one. “That surprises you?”

Kate put her hands up to her head and dropped them. “It surprises me? It bloody
stuns
me. Trixie Arlen, a heroin user?”

Doctor Telling stood upright, easing her back from the tension of several hours of stooping over the body. She slowly peeled the rubber gloves from her hands and dropped them into a yellow hazardous waste bin over by the sink. She nodded. “I had an inkling that that was how she died when I first saw her at the scene,” she commented. “I noticed the puncture mark on her inner elbow straight away. Of course, I didn’t want to say anything then and there. It could have been that she was on some other form of injectable medication or that she’d had a recent inoculation.”

“I am absolutely
stunned
,” Kate repeated. She looked at Trixie Arlen’s blank face on the gurney. Doctor Telling was skilled at making a corpse appear as lifelike as possible; it was somewhat uncanny, but Trixie Arlen looked less dead here on the post mortem table than she had done lying on her own bed. For all that though, she didn’t look as if she were sleeping. Whatever it was that had made her human had gone, and this outer shell was all that was left.

“You’re absolutely certain it was heroin?” asked Kate, still without taking her eyes off of the body.

“No. No, not at all. I can’t say that with any certainty – you’ll have to wait for the results of the toxicology tests. But there were old injection marks on the body, between her toes and within the groin area.”

Kate grimaced. “It just seems so incredible. She’s – she
was
a mother of three. I know she was a bit wild in the nineties but…it just seems incredible.”

There was a knock on the glass panel of the theatre door and they both looked up. Olbeck was waving at them, in a ‘can I come in?’ type of gesture. Doctor Telling raised her own hand in acknowledgement and he pushed open the door.

“Morning, ladies. Sorry I’m late.”

Doctor Telling nodded. “Good morning, DI Olbeck. I’ve just been telling DS Redman the findings of the PM.”

“And?” Olbeck adjusted the sleeve of his jacket. “Anything concrete?”

Kate was dying to be the one to tell him but it would be the height of bad manners to override Doctor Telling in her own workplace. She clamped her lips shut, watching Olbeck’s face as Doctor Telling delivered the news, and saw the expression on his face mirror that of her own as she’d been informed.

“Bloody hell,” said Olbeck, which was as close as he ever came to swearing. “I must say I’m surprised.”

“You and me both,” said Kate, unable to keep quiet any longer. “The press will have a field day.”

Olbeck frowned. “Which is precisely why we’re going to inform them that the results were inconclusive. Right, doctor?” Doctor Telling inclined her head in acquiescence. “There’s no point stoking any more wild rumours until we get the results of the tox tests back, right?”

“Right,” said Kate. They all looked at Trixie Arlen in silence.

“Oh,” Doctor Telling said suddenly and the two officers looked at her quickly. “There’s one more thing that struck me. She had some quite serious bruising on her upper right arm, almost as if she’d been gripped very hard. I thought that might be significant.”

Olbeck’s eyebrows rose. “Indeed. You think it was inflicted by someone else?”

“Yes. It’s quite distinct. Have a look for yourselves.” The two officers watched as the doctor lifted the sheet covering the body and indicated the bruising. Kate could see for herself the pattern of purple-blue blotches on Trixie Arlen’s slender arm.

“I see,” said Olbeck. “Well, that’s something to take into consideration.”

It wasn’t until they had said goodbye to the doctor and were walking down the corridor towards the exit that the implications of what Doctor Telling had told them suddenly hit Kate, as if from a great height. She actually gasped under the impact and stopped dead.

“What is it?” asked Olbeck, turning back to her.

Kate looked at him, wide-eyed. “If Trixie Arlen died of a heroin overdose, then why didn’t we find any drugs paraphernalia on or near her body?”

Olbeck’s face looked as though he’d just walked into something. “Bloody hell.” His face flickered again and Kate knew he was just realising that he should have seen that straight away. She couldn’t help a small inner stab of triumph that she’d clocked it before he had. “You’re absolutely right, Kate. I should have seen that.”

Kate began walking again, a little faster than before. Olbeck hurried to keep up. Kate spoke to him over her shoulder. “We’re not mistaken, are we? There was nothing there, nothing at all. Just the body.”

“No, nothing. Well, if there had been it would have been obvious, wouldn’t it? We would have known how she died straight away.”

“I know, I was just wondering if we’d forgotten it.” Kate remembered the two bodies at the house at Arbuthon Green, mirror images of one another, sat there with the syringes still in their arms. She felt, just for a moment, a tremor of something too insubstantial to put a name to – some tiny flicker of comprehension that slipped away almost before she noticed it. She came to a halt at the car, shaking her head in frustration.

“You all right?” Olbeck asked as he drew out his own car keys.

“I’m fine,” Kate said impatiently. “We’ve got to get back and let Anderton know.”

“I’ll let him know,” Olbeck said, and although his tone was neutral, Kate thought she heard something of a warning in it, a reminder that Olbeck was, in fact, her superior officer. She was conscious of a spurt of shame and then something very much like anger. It wasn’t like him to pull rank. She pressed her lips together and got into her car.