Cut to the Bone (8 page)

Dan didn’t make a move to show them out.

‘You literally just make your own videos, filming yourself?’ said Zain.

‘Used to, that’s how we all started. Now it’s different. We have them produced for us.’

‘Who by?’ said Zain.

‘It’s a company we signed to,’ said Dan. ‘MINDNET.’

‘MINDNET?’ repeated Zain. ‘What is that?’

‘Just a media company. In Soho. They produce our videos, so they look professional, better quality editing and all that.’

‘And what do they get from it?’ said Kate.

‘A cut of our money,’ said Dan.

‘Your money? People pay to subscribe to you?’ said Kate.

‘No, from ads. We put ads on our stuff, and we get paid. Rubes gets paid in goods, but sometimes she gets money too for advertising shit. And games companies pay me. I got nearly two million regular viewers. And any ads I run, MINDNET take a cut.’

‘Why would you let them? If you can make your own videos at home, why do you need them?’ said Zain.

‘Better quality product. And they use their tools. They have weird software and shit, helps raise our profiles. I only had half a million people last year, and within months they got me up to two million. They think I’ll be hitting five or eight million in another year.’

Kate felt her head filling with information, new and odd, parallel to reality. She had to separate the bits that mattered, that would be useful to her investigation.

‘Ruby has a contract with MINDNET?’ she said. ‘You said a moment ago she didn’t have a contract with anyone.’

Dan opened his eyes wide, child-like, feigning innocence. Trapped and nowhere to go.

‘I thought you meant something else,’ he said. ‘Like sponsorship, branding. L’Oréal, that sort of stuff.’

‘What’s in her contract with MINDNET?’

Dan shrugged.

‘We never discuss it. It’s personal. Like asking someone how much they earn – not my business. We all get different cuts.’

‘You must have a general idea?’

‘No, we all get different deals,’ he said.

‘What do they do? Just manage her videos, then? Her online profile?’

‘Yeah,’ said Dan. ‘Sort of. They help with the clothes and make-up ones. Rubes still does diary-style stuff by herself.’

‘Do they script the videos they produce?’

Something Harris had said . . . Was this a stunt? Would MINDNET set something like this up?

‘No, we are real, they don’t script us. Sometimes though, just the odd phrase maybe. We’ve got to be what our fans want – the MINDNET guys just remind us.’

‘Ruby OK with them?’ said Zain. ‘She happy with the way they were treating her?’

‘She is having some issues with them,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what, but she isn’t feeling them as much anymore. She’s talked about ending with them, but she wouldn’t spill. Said it didn’t concern me.’

‘Was she afraid at all?’ said Kate.

‘Seriously, I don’t know what’s going on, she never said. Might just be money. I know one of my YouTube buds is going through the same with someone else. Not happy with the cut they’re giving him. I don’t know if it’s the same. Ruby’s never said.’

‘Keep your phone on. We might need to speak to you again,’ said Zain.

Kate smiled thinly at Dan as they left his apartment.

Chapter Twenty-one

‘Drop me back at HQ,’ said Kate. ‘I’m going to find out where MINDNET are, and what their issues with Ruby might be. Can you go and find Millie, the girl Dan pushed from the hotel balcony?’

‘Sure. He was weird, my instincts are telling me he’s all wrong.’

‘He was lying throughout that interview, or hiding something,’ said Kate. ‘He knows a lot more than he told us.’

Zain checked his phone. ‘Ruby’s last tweet: “
Every man/woman is guilty of all the good he/she did not do.
” It’s a quote from Voltaire, according to her.’

‘Very profound,’ said Kate.

‘Typical teenagers, full of their own self-importance.’

‘She isn’t a teenager,’ said Kate.

Zain swiped his phone, opening an email from Dan Grant. List of Ruby’s friends, he told Kate.

‘Send it back to HQ,’ she said. ‘Get Stevie to call them. Find out Ruby’s movements yesterday, any concerns she may have mentioned recently.’

Detective Sergeant Stevie Brennan would love that, thought Zain. She was part of Kate’s team, with DS Rob Pelt and Zain, and already seemed to hate him. Making her do legwork would piss her off further no doubt.

‘Got another email. Rob’s done a search on CCTV,’ he said. ‘He has Ruby walking home from Warwick Avenue station, approximately 4 p.m. yesterday. She wasn’t hurried, just calm. The last image is her coming through the main doors to Windsor Court. Nothing after that.’

‘And he’s sure she didn’t leave through either of the exit points to Windsor Court?’

‘Yes.’

‘How else could she get out? Have someone examine the building, see if it’s possible to get in and out any other way.’

‘I’ll get someone to do a walk-through, every scenario,’ said Zain. ‘See if Tech want to stretch their legs.’

‘Where did Stevie find them? Tech and FLO?’

‘Paddington Green station,’ said Zain.

Justin Hope didn’t have his own police force, just a handful of small teams like Kate’s. Any case requiring specialist skills like forensics meant borrowing manpower from the Met Police themselves. Their commissioner, Sonya Varley, was less than reticent about how unhappy she was. She had openly clashed with Justin Hope many times. Hope had the Home Office and Ministry of Justice backing him, and the Met were currently undergoing a trial by fire with parliament. While Varley was being forced to police smarter with less money, Hope was being given her budget, splurging on designer cars and their HQ in Victoria.

Kate felt uneasy thinking about it. A turf war was a danger. And she had a feeling she was on the wrong side.

‘Ruby must have left that building somehow,’ she said to Zain.

Kate didn’t believe in the impossible. There had to be an explanation.

The pentagrams flashed into her mind. She pushed them aside. The day was bright, hitting its stride. No room for the shadows for that type of irrationality to hide in.

Chapter Twenty-two

Fifth Avenue. Zain smiled as he walked down it, images of New York reeling through his mind. Images of Kate Riley, her voice, her history. An American girl in London. Sounded like a movie.

This Fifth Avenue was in north-west London, near Queen’s Park tube station. It was a street of Victorian terraces, each identical in build, with slate roofs, brown brick walls. He found the one he wanted and buzzed.

‘I’ll be, down in a minute, came a woman’s voice.

The woman who opened the door made Zain catch himself. She was stunning at first glance. Brown hair, hazel eyes, sharp cheekbones. She was wearing a thin nightgown, orange, the shape of her body visible beneath.

‘Detective Sergeant Harris?’ she said.

‘Call me Zain,’ he said.

‘As in Malik?’

‘As in Harris, and I had the name first,’ he said.

She smiled, revealing dimples in her cheeks. Zain looked away, mentally pulling himself together.

‘Please come in,’ she said.

Millie Porter looked out onto her street, her head tilting right and left, scanning to see who had witnessed Zain’s arrival.

The house was split into four flats. Hers was on the top floor. Standard wooden floors throughout. Millie asked him to remove his shoes, and left Zain in the lounge while she finished dressing. There were white and cream rugs placed on the floor, an assortment of chairs around them. Replica prints on the walls. Monet, Picasso. A picture of a Buddha with his head turned away on one wall, three golden circles falling in a pattern on another.

Millie returned dressed in black trousers and turtleneck jumper. She’d made them flavoured tea. His was lemon and mint; hers was vanilla with cinnamon. His smelled better than it tasted.

Millie took her place in a rocking chair; Zain opted for a beanbag. He sat cross-legged on it.

‘Thank you for seeing me,’ he said. ‘I know you were hesitant.’

She looked into her tea, then at him. ‘It’s still very raw. I didn’t want to rake it all up,’ she said. Her accent was clipped, as though she came from a finishing school somewhere.

‘I’m sorry if that happens,’ said Zain. ‘I wouldn’t have insisted unless I thought it was important. And that you could help.’

Millie moistened her lips with her tongue, drank her tea. ‘You promised none of this would re open anything. I don’t want our conversation to get back to . . . certain people.’

‘You have my word, on my honour as a member of Her Majesty’s finest,’ he said, smiling. She laughed lightly. ‘The file summary was so clinical. It said you were thrown from the tenth floor, into a swimming pool. The Days said it was empty. The report didn’t mention how full it was.’

‘I doubt I would be alive if it had been empty.’

‘The Days were embellishing, then?’ said Zain. Millie shrugged. ‘I interviewed Dan today, about Ruby. He denied ever having pushed you.’

Millie’s eyes flared and her nostrils did, too. It was brief, her expression neutralising quickly, her temper drawn in. Is that why she was interested in Buddhism? Was she learning to tame that anger?

Zain understood. Maybe he should try meditation. Might be better than the pills. The ones that might contain alligator testicles. Why was he fixated on that concept?

‘Why would Dan lie so blatantly? To the police, as well?’ said Zain.

‘In his head it’s over, a closed case. He thinks because he didn’t end up in prison, it’s not real. He’s damaged, detective.’

‘Please: Zain.’

‘Zain, he’s damaged,’ she said.

Zain ran the sentence over his tongue, in his head. Someone might say that about him. ‘And for you? Is it real?’ he said.

‘I have metal splints in my legs; I fractured my ribs, my collarbone. It will be real for years, maybe even my whole life.’

‘I thought the swimming pool wasn’t empty? I don’t understand?’

‘Falling at the speed I did, hitting the water the way I did . . . it was like hitting an ice sheet,’ she said. ‘Luckily, I had some sense. I managed to shield my head, turn to my side. In those seconds, hundredths of a second, even, a survival instinct kicked in.’

She held her mug to her chest, the hot tea comforting her no doubt.

‘I’m sorry, that sounds horrendous,’ he said. ‘I don’t understand – why did you drop the charges?’

Millie looked away from him, staring at the Monet replica he had noticed on arrival. It was above his head. She seemed to feel the art, looked lost for a few moments. Then she turned her eyes to his.

‘It’s complicated,’ she said.

‘These things always are. Try me.’

Millie lowered her eyes, recalling what had happened? Zain tried to lighten the atmosphere.

‘How did your parents feel about it? When they saw you in that state.’

‘Let’s just say we aren’t the closest of families. They kept me in a boarding school most of my formative years. They visited me in hospital, of course, played the role of concerned parents. But even then it felt as though I was an inconvenience.’

Zain thought about Ruby’s parents. Were they playing a role?

‘Surely even more reason to sue him for everything he has? If you are alone, in a sense, I mean.’

‘And dredge the entire incident up in court, relive the horror of my injuries and face him again? It sounds so easy, suing people.’

‘I suppose it does to me. I still don’t understand why you didn’t.’

Millie stared through him, then directly at him.

‘Your honour, Zain, is it intact? This conversation won’t end up on a record somewhere? Can I trust you?’

‘Yes,’ he said, knowing it was a lie. If anything she said could be used to help their case, of course it would be used. ‘You can trust me. Anything you say, it won’t come back to hurt you. I can promise you that, at least.’

She mulled over his words as she swilled tea in her mouth. He watched her swallow, imagining the liquid moving down her jumper-covered throat.

Zain arched his back, stretching his neck from side to side. The tea was beginning to taste sour, so he put his cup down gently on the wooden floor, lacing his fingers as he watched Millie.

‘You probably should start at the beginning,’ he said. ‘What were you doing at the party in the first place?’

Chapter Twenty-three

Millie looked into the distance, pulling together her story. Zain thought the process of recollection was like inserting a DVD and watching it in your head.

‘Young man, has some cash, hormones raging. Invites his friends to occupy a hotel suite. It was an executive room on the tenth floor, the sort corporations book for meetings. He had the penthouse suite booked, too – that’s where the real party was, on the fifteenth floor.’

‘What was happening on the tenth floor, then?’

‘Food, cake. He even had jelly. They were casts – medieval – of forts and castles, but still just coloured jelly.’

‘And on floor fifteen?’

‘Open bar, champagne. An alphabet of drugs. A DJ. And to finish it all off . . .’

‘Escorts?’ said Zain.

‘Escorts,’ confirmed Millie.

He smiled, kept his eyes on her, didn’t want her to think he was judging her, looking down on her in any way.

‘There were half a dozen of us, hired for the occasion. Dan had invited his YouTube friends, some specially selected fans. And the weirdest ones were old school friends of his. You should have seen him. He was lording it over them – the school friends, I mean – really showing off. I got the feeling he invited them as a form of revenge.’

‘I get that,’ said Zain.

‘He was manic. One minute he would be hugging them, kissing them, plying them with drinks. The next he would berate them, tell them how this was his party, they were somehow diminished because they were there. It was a strange night.’

‘How did you end up back on the tenth floor?’

‘I was getting a headache,’ she said. ‘We weren’t there to sleep with anyone – I have to be clear about that. We were there just to help them enjoy themselves.’

‘The headache, did something trigger it? Something you took?’