Flyte

FLYTE

While Cassie and Chrysanthi were at the mortuary, Phyllida Flyte's boss and mentor William called her, apologising for disturbing her weekend.

The parents of singer-songwriter Bronte – whose suicide had been all over the media for the last few days – had brought a complaint against Camden police regarding their investigation of the death. They claimed it had been cursory and sloppy, and that foul play had been ruled out too quickly. The official complaint via a solicitor had been signed by both parents, but it was the mother who had sent all the emails, clearly taking the lead.

‘You've heard of the case?' asked William.

‘It's impossible to avoid,' said drily. The press were running non-stop ‘updates', many cut and pasted from social media sleuths who were claiming ‘new evidence' in what they called the singer's ‘mysterious death'. From what she'd seen, her dear old pops would have called it ‘thin gruel', but the media's hunger for clickbait seemed insatiable.

‘I must say the investigation does appear to have been somewhat .?.?. basic,' he went on. ‘The young woman's mother is also questioning the veracity of the suicide note sent from her daughter's phone.' He sent her a meaningful look. ‘This was the unexpected and violent death of a young female celebrity.'

‘Did they not anticipate the attention her death would attract?' didn't seek to hide her exasperation.

William gave a rueful shake of his head. ‘The attending officer was a uniformed sergeant in his fifties. He didn't connect the name Sophia Angelopoulos with her performing name, Bronte, and to be honest, I'm not sure he – or I for that matter – are in the demographic that would have heard of her.'

took that on board – until a few days earlier she'd only vaguely heard of Bronte herself – and that was just from seeing the odd story in the Evening Standard . ‘So you want me to go in to Camden CID and decide if any of their officers have a case to answer?'

‘If you feel able to, yes. Starting Monday. The fact that you know your way round the set-up there and the borough politics would be an asset, although I would completely understand if you were to say no, given your history in the borough.'

She suppressed a shiver. It was bad enough that she still had to live in Camden, the lease on her flat having months to run. But working with the police there? Her last posting, at the borough's Major Crimes unit, had dramatically imploded, ending with her leaving the force, and the entire unit being disbanded. All the same, more than three months into her new career as an IOPC investigator she had to admit she was finding the processes slow and frustrating. And although there was some satisfaction to be had in bringing maverick officers to book, she did miss putting villains behind bars.

So the thought of a fall from height which might just turn out to be fishy set her pulse beating a little faster.

‘OK,' she said. ‘I'll do it.'

*

pushed open the door of the church and felt the cool air of the centuries envelop her. One of her reasons for accepting the IOPC job had been the proximity of their Holborn offices to St Pancras Old Church which allowed her to visit most days. It was here that her only child, Poppy, the baby daughter who had arrived stillborn, had recently been named in a ceremony performed by the vicar.

traced her fingers over the little brass plaque on the back of the pew which said simply Poppy Flyte-Howard, beloved daughter and the single date that marked both her birth and death. She should be three and half years old by now, going to nursery, making friends – her personality flourishing. had such a vivid inner picture of how Poppy would look as the months and years passed that she found it difficult glimpsing children of the same age in the street or supermarket.

‘Hello, Poppy darling,' she murmured. ‘Am I doing the right thing, do you think? Going back to Camden?' She pictured Poppy's wise little face, captured on her iPhone before the nurses had taken her away. Odd that she thought of a baby who hadn't even lived to draw breath as her touchstone – or perhaps she was really more of an internal sounding board. My better self. Whatever it was, the feeling that she got back was that all would be well.

The last few months had been the most dramatic of her life. She had narrowly escaped getting shot, left the police force in which she'd spent her adult working life, got her first tattoo – a poppy to commemorate her daughter – and after a lifetime of lying to herself, had come out as gay. She was making up for lost time on the last front: thinking about the newly opened club she was going to in Camden later brought a secret smile to her lips.

Seeing Toby, the reverend, emerge from the vestry, she felt a guilty pang. Was it bad form, thinking about sex in a church?

With a welcoming smile, he came and sat down next to her in the pew, and after a moment's silence, said, ‘Matt was here last week. He sat here for nearly an hour.'

‘Did you speak to him?'

Toby shook his head. ‘He didn't invite that, if you know what I mean. I'd been wondering whether to mention it to you but, knowing how disappointed you were that he didn't come to Poppy's naming ceremony, I thought you should know.'

made a sceptical face. ‘Even my mother came!' she said bitterly. That had been something of a miracle. A ceasefire in mother–daughter hostilities that had seen Sylvia fly in from her retirement bolthole in the Med, where she lived with her new husband, to honour her granddaughter. And relations had stayed, if not exactly warm, then certainly more cordial.

She and Matt had married just before she'd turned thirty – her mental deadline – getting wed in a picture-postcard church in the Hampshire countryside. Since boarding school days had been aware she was attracted to women but she'd shut those feelings down – totally focused on the goal of a ‘traditional' family life: mummy, daddy, and children.

They were a good fit in many ways, and when fell pregnant nearly four years into the marriage, Matt was as delighted as she had been. But unbeknown to them, a rare defect in the umbilical cord lay undiscovered – like an unexploded bomb . When went into labour prematurely, the cord had ruptured and their little girl had bled to death.

With half mad with grief and sedated to the eyeballs, it had fallen to Matt to handle the official business. By the time she'd resurfaced, her little girl had already been cremated and her ashes scattered in the hospital memorial garden, and it had been too late officially to name her on the stillborn birth certificate.

experienced a hot surge of fury against Matt. ‘He couldn't be bothered to recognise his daughter's existence in the world,' she said through thinned lips.

Toby left a pause. ‘Perhaps he still needs more time to come to terms with it.'

The gaze she turned on the priest was unbending. ‘Don't ask me to forgive him, Father. It's beyond me.'