The Stranger You Know (11 page)

I walked towards the Monument, thinking about Anna Melville and how she had journeyed to work, and the other women and how they had lived. Kirsty had been a planning officer with Westminster Council. Maxine was in an insurance company just off Long Acre. It wasn’t surprising that they worked near one another given that central London was quite compact and, during the working day, densely populated. It was a truism to say Londoners tended to know small areas in minute detail but have the haziest idea of the rest of the city. My frequent changes of address made me more conscious than most that London was still a collection of villages, as it had been in the dim and distant past, and you could live in your village quite happily without ever needing to go much further afield. Covent Garden was within walking distance of the City and Westminster, but it would be unusual for someone to be familiar with all three areas, unless they were a taxi driver.

He could be a taxi driver. I made a note to mention it to Godley. Assuming, of course, that the superintendent was willing to listen to anything I had to say. I’d been determined to do my job, regardless of what I knew about him. I knew he was a good police officer and I loved working on his team. But I hadn’t allowed for how awkward it was going to be.

Kirsty Campbell had loved her job too. Maxine Willoughby had lived for hers. If Anna Melville had been dedicated to her work too, that was practically the first and only thing I’d found they had in common. The more I looked, the less I found that they shared.

Except for being dead, of course.

I found Anna’s office and asked for Vanessa Knight. The receptionist stared at me covertly while I waited for Anna’s boss to meet me.

The lift doors opened and a blonde woman shot out, her heels skidding a little on the polished floor. She rushed over to me.

‘You’re the policewoman. Come with me.’

When the lift doors closed, she looked at me. ‘I’m sorry. I’m nervous. I’ve never spoken to the police before about anything.’

‘I just have a few questions about Anna.’

‘How did it happen?’

‘I’d rather not talk about it in the lift.’

‘No. Of course not. Of course.’ She jabbed at the buttons. ‘Oh God.’

‘Are you all right?’

She leaned against the side of the lift with one hand pressed against her chest. Her rings sparkled in the lights as she took deep, quivery breaths. ‘I just get very nervous. I’m being so rude. Oh help.’

‘Mrs Knight, there’s nothing to be nervous about. Just try to calm down.’

‘Okay. Yes. You’re right.’ She looked at me piteously. ‘I’m going to be lost without her, you know. Anna. I don’t know how I’m going to cope.’

Which was very different from, ‘I’m going to miss her.’

When the lift doors opened she hurled herself out. ‘This way.’

She led me to a small conference room and spent ages fiddling with the blinds, trying to block out the low sun that was shining across the table and making me screw up my eyes. I clenched my jaw to stop myself from telling her to hurry up, waiting until she was seated opposite me to start asking questions.

‘Did you know Anna well? Had she worked here for long?’

‘About five years.’ She tilted her head from side to side, thinking. ‘Yes. Five.’

‘Would you say you were friends?’

‘Close colleagues. We had a good working relationship.’ Vanessa laid a slight emphasis on the word ‘working’.

‘Would you know what was happening in her personal life? Any boyfriends?’

She shook her head. ‘She went on a couple of dates but nothing serious. She wanted to get married, not have a boyfriend, and it was a bit hard to have one without the other. She was quite well off, you know, and someone had told her she’d be a target for gold-diggers.’

‘What about her social life? Friends? Classes or groups that she went to after work?’

Vanessa’s face was blank. ‘I really don’t think so. She watched television a lot. And she shopped.’

I’d looked through Anna’s wardrobe before leaving the flat and it was all colour-coded and neat and dry-clean only. None of it was showy, though. If anything, she’d dressed so subtly as to be almost invisible, and the clothes seemed to be made for someone older than she was. Looking at Vanessa, languid in grey cashmere with a pencil skirt, I thought Anna had been dressing to impress her boss.

‘How did she travel to work?’

‘No idea.’

‘Was she popular at work?’

‘Of course.’

‘Did she ever make people redundant?’

‘She helped to process redundancies, but it wasn’t her responsibility to do it alone.’

‘Was she involved in disciplinary proceedings?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Did she have any enemies that you know of?’

‘Of course not.’

‘What sort of person was she?’

‘Efficient. Competent. Dedicated.’ The words came without prior thought and I realised I was getting the short form of the eulogy that would be emailed around the office along with confirmation that the rumours were true, it really was Anna Melville from the sixth floor who had been murdered … ‘She was liked by everyone who knew her,’ Vanessa finished, as if that was the last word on the subject.

‘Would you describe her as attractive?’

‘Yes. Of course. I mean, I never thought about it.’

‘Did she ever have meetings with anyone from outside the company?’

‘Not that I can recall.’

‘What was her speaking voice like?’

Vanessa stared at me, floored.

‘Did she have a regional accent?’

‘No. She sounded normal. Totally normal.’ Vanessa herself sounded extremely posh, nay for no and yah for yeah. I was getting more nays than yahs, I thought.

‘There were two other murders in London in the last twelve months that we’re looking into. There may be a connection with Anna’s – it’s one of our lines of inquiry. Did Anna ever mention knowing anyone who’d been murdered? Did she ever mention the names Kirsty Campbell or Maxine Willoughby?’

A slow headshake.

‘Did she ever spend time south of the river, or in the East End?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Did she ever say she was scared of anyone?’

‘No.’

‘When was the last time you saw her?’

‘Yesterday, around four. I had to leave early. I’m supposed to be going on holiday tomorrow. Anna was going to look after things while I was gone. I just don’t know how I’m going to manage to get away now.’

I wrapped things up pretty quickly, asking if I could have a look at Anna’s desk. Without enthusiasm, Vanessa led me through a corridor of glass-walled offices to an area filled with cubicles, where every head was bent over a desk and every single person was aware of every move I made. Vanessa stood beside the cubicle, watching me, which didn’t really help my concentration either. I thanked her for her time and told her I would be in touch if I had any other questions.

‘You need a widget to make the lift work and I don’t have a spare one I can give you. When you want to leave, just mention it to …’ She looked down at the cubicle on her right.

‘Penny,’ a voice supplied from within the cubicle.

‘Yes. Penny. Of course. She’ll show you out.’

I nodded my thanks and waited until she was out of sight before starting to go through Anna’s work station. She had decorated the wall of her cubicle like a hermit crab, sticking random bits and pieces on it as they took her fancy. A sample of Chanel Mademoiselle from a magazine. A pair of dangly pearl earrings – costume jewellery, but pretty. A postcard from the Maldives seemed to be from a friend and I pocketed it so I could pass it on to Harry Maitland. He was working through her address book and email contacts. I hoped he was having more luck than me.

I sat in her chair to go through the drawers of the desk, finding neat stationery, an empty notebook, a zipped make-up bag and hairbrush, dry shampoo, a toothbrush, high heels, flat shoes … all the essentials for someone who spent long hours at work. Or someone who went out after work on dates. I swivelled on the chair, swinging from side to side. It wasn’t completely professional, but it always helped me to think. I spun around 180 degrees and looked straight at an interested face that was peering over the side of the cubicle. She was young and fair-haired and had a wide mouth that made her look sulky and a little bit cheeky.

‘Penny?’

‘Just checking you didn’t need anything.’

‘Not at the moment.’

‘Okay. Let me know if you do.’

I watched her disappear. ‘Penny.’

‘Yep.’ She bounced back as if she was on a spring.

‘Do you know the password Anna used for her computer?’

Instead of answering, she disappeared again and I heard scuffling before she arrived beside me, holding out a crumpled Post-it. ‘I had this stuck to my monitor. She gave it to me the last time she was on leave in case I needed to look at her files. I don’t know if she’s changed it since, but the IT department creates them and we’re not supposed to change them.’

I took it from her. ‘Thanks.’

‘Do you need anything else?’

‘I don’t think so.’ Lowering my voice, I added, ‘Unless there’s anything you know that you think might be useful for us to know.’

‘About who killed her?’

‘Ideally. Or about her life. Anything strange or out of character she did.’

Penny shook her head regretfully. ‘She was so straight it was unbelievable. She never did anything strange or unexpected.’

‘Did you know her well?’

‘Yeah, I suppose. I worked with her for two and a half years.’

‘Did you like her?’

Penny had been speaking quietly too, but now her voice dropped to something close to a whisper. ‘I couldn’t stand her. She was so self-centred. Really precious and self-absorbed. She used to suck up to Vanessa but she’d never even talk to anyone else. She never so much as asked me if I’d had a nice weekend.’

That was the base level of in-office communication; it was what you said to the receptionist, the post-boy, your boss, the managing director when you bumped into them on a Monday morning. Even Derwent had been known to ask me that question, though I always felt it was in the hope of getting some salacious details about what Rob and I had been up to. Not saying it was pretty much a mortal sin.

‘What about her love life? Do you know if she was seeing anyone recently?’

‘I presume so.’

‘Why?’

‘Because she made enough of a fuss about the flowers he sent her last week. White lilies.’ Penny wrinkled her nose. ‘That’s a funeral flower, I always think. And the smell. They stank the office out.’

‘I quite like them,’ I said.

She shuddered. ‘Not for me, thanks. But Anna was delighted.’

‘When did the flowers arrive?’

‘Umm … Thursday?’

‘Was there a card with them?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Did she know who they were from?’

‘I think so. She wouldn’t say, though. Someone said—’ Penny laughed, then looked guilty and a little scared.

‘What did someone say?’

‘That she might have sent them to herself.’ She looked edgy. ‘Sorry. That was mean.’

‘Well, she might have. But I think she probably didn’t.’
I think they were a prop disguised as a gift. I think they were window-dressing for her corpse, a present from her killer
. ‘What sort of a person was she? What words would you use to describe her?’

‘Cold. Manipulative.’ Penny thought some more. ‘But sweet too, in a fake way. Needy.’

I asked Penny a few more questions but got no further and let her go, clutching one of my business cards. She might remember something, or she might not. I hoped she would try, even though she hadn’t liked Anna.

I turned to the computer and looked at the Post-it Penny had supplied. A_Melville, with Xanna0Melv underneath. I put them in the required fields and lo, my brilliant detective work was rewarded with access to all of Anna’s files. I worked through folder after folder looking for anything personal and finding nothing remarkable. In some cases, finding literally nothing. The Internet history had been wiped, which made me curious. Everyone used the Internet for something, whether it was work-related or personal. I checked with Penny, who confirmed that it was Anna’s habit to wipe her history every day ‘in case her identity was stolen or something’. On a hunch I checked the preferences and found that she had forgotten or not known about the cookies that tracked visits to websites. I scrolled through at speed, seeing lots of shopping websites and fashion blogs. Internet banking. A couple of newspapers featured. YouTube. Amazon. Ebay. It was like a greatest hits of the Internet, and nothing I saw was remarkable.

Except.

I had scrolled past it before I registered that I’d seen it, because it was so familiar to me. Familiar to me, but I didn’t know why it would be on Anna’s computer. Without the Internet history I was missing the whole story and I didn’t know enough to be able to track it back any further, but alarm bells were ringing loud enough to deafen me.

Three days before she died, starting at 5.53 p.m., Anna Melville had spent twelve minutes looking at the website for the Metropolitan Police.

Chapter 10

I didn’t go back to the office after my trip to the City, though I’d planned to. I called Una Burt first.

‘I don’t think she was all that popular in the office. A bit self-absorbed and cold. She was more focused on work than interested in her colleagues.’ Too late I realised I could have been describing DCI Burt herself, who was legendary for her lack of interest in other people’s lives, unless they were dead. If she noticed, she didn’t mention it.

‘Sounds quite different to the others, then. Kirsty was gentle and sociable. Maxine was reclusive and immature.’

‘Anna was stuck-up and self-centred. Mind you, none of them was having much luck with men.’

‘Don’t assume that’s why they let him in,’ she said sharply. ‘Everyone in that room this morning thought they were desperate old maids, but it’s got us nowhere with this investigation so far. Think of the other things they had in common.’

Desperate old maids
… I wondered if this was all a bit too close to home for the chief inspector, who was single and had apparently been so for ever. I felt I was letting her down even by just thinking that. There were plenty of police officers her age who were unmarried but it wasn’t worthy of comment if they were men.