Flyte

FLYTE

The next morning, was making coffee in her flat when the entryphone buzzed and she checked the video feed.

Streaky.

He came in, wearing a rain-soaked overcoat. ‘It's caning it down out there.' He shook himself like a big dog, spraying water everywhere. ‘So I thought I'd call by to give you a lift to the nick.'

‘Where did you park?' she asked with a puzzled look: her flat – part of the first floor of a late-Georgian house – was on Delancey Street, which was end-to-end double yellow lines.

‘Right outside,' he said, frowning, like it was a stupid question. ‘Warrant card on the dash.'

Totally against the rules, of course.

She rolled her eyes. ‘Coffee?'

‘Do you have any herbal tea?' he asked, patting his paunch. ‘I'm still fighting the flab.'

Streaky's smart new dark-blue suit was a major improvement on his vintage brown number even if the overall look was somewhat marred by the scrap of toilet tissue he'd stuck to a razor cut on his upper lip.

When she came back into the living room with his tea, they sat either side of the coffee table. One arm stretched along the back of her sofa, he cast an admiring look around. ‘You got the piano nobile . Nice.'

‘I .?.?. I don't speak Italian.'

‘The literal translation is "noble floor". It's what architects called the first floor of these big townhouses,' he told her, before sipping his tea. ‘The basement was the engine room, manned by the poor old servants, the ground floor was for daily life, but this floor was for entertaining the most important guests. It always had the highest ceiling, the biggest windows, and the grandest fittings' – nodding to the imposing marble fireplace.

‘How do you know all this?' – trying to keep the disbelief out of her voice.

‘Oh, that was my misspent youth in Hong Kong. I was posted there when I was in the forces. It was considered a cushy posting, but you had to have an outside interest or you'd go nuts. So while courting my wife I also studied for a history of art degree at evening classes.'

Blimey O'Reilly , as her father had been fond of saying.

‘Army?' she asked, her gaze drawn to the framed photo of Pops on the mantelpiece, off duty and in his gardening gear, a lifetime ago.

Following her gaze, Streaky stood to look more closely at the picture. ‘That's an entrenching tool he's got there!' he said, sending her a delighted look. ‘Were you an army brat?'

She nodded, amused by his evident delight. ‘Six schools in the space of five years before getting sent to boarding school at twelve.'

‘Same as me,' he said with a grin.

Worried that he might ask about Pops – too personal – she changed the subject. ‘So, we've proved that Ethan lied to us about his whereabouts the day of Bronte's death.'

Streaky nodded. ‘Which is a start, but clearly he could've given her the sodding book any time that evening, hours before she died. We need something to put him at the flat later that night. And we still have no clue what he might have fed her to trigger the anaphylaxis.'

‘Her mother was all over what she ate, so you'd think she would know if she'd had a reaction before,' said Flyte, frowning.

‘Does she strike you as a control freak?' mused Streaky.

‘Maybe. Or maybe just overprotective? She had already lost one child remember.' Picturing Poppy, could absolutely understand how the loss might make her a neurotic mother next time round. If there was ever to be a next time. Which, now she was sliding towards forty, looked less likely with every passing year.

She gathered their cups up. ‘I like the new suit, by the way,' she said. ‘Very smart.'

‘If I commented on your appearance HR would have me up on a charge,' he said, pulling what she now recognised as his wind-up grin.

‘Hardly,' she said, thinking of the hundreds of sexual assaults by male cops on their female colleagues – and even against victims of crime – that were starting to emerge: crimes that had largely gone unpunished. But debating the patriarchal structures of the Met with Streaky would be a hiding to nothing, as her pops would have said.

‘How did you know it was a new suit, anyway?' asked Streaky.

She pointed to his left cuff which bore the remains of the stitch where the label had been attached.

‘Busted,' he sighed. ‘The wife insisted on a trip to M & S last night' – looking mournful.

‘Job interview? Not that it's any of my business.'

He hesitated. ‘Strictly entre nous and not for the ears of the team, I'm being measured up to head the new Major Crimes team that Borough is putting together.'

dropped her gaze. She had no wish to revisit her role in the meltdown of the old Major Crimes unit. Despite spending her entire career in the police service – straight out of university – her profound disillusionment with the Met had made her departure inevitable. But she still missed being a detective every day.

The opening bars of ‘London Calling' by The Clash sounded on Streaky's phone.

‘DI Bacon,' he said into the mic. Then he looked up at her with a smile. ‘We're on our way.'

*

Within ten minutes the two of them, together with DS Craig, were gathered round DC Becca's laptop in the incident room.

‘So here it is,' said Becca, frowning intently at the screen.

The clip she played had been captured at night by a CCTV camera positioned above a petrol station forecourt, presumably in a bid to catch drive-offs. She fast-forwarded through a few cars coming and going, their drivers whizzing back and forward to the window to pay. Then she paused it.

‘There.' There was no one at the payment window but she was pointing at a guy off to the right who had walked up to what appeared to be a cash machine. He was in half profile but from his gait alone there was no mistaking his identity. Ethan Fox.

‘It's definitely him, isn't it?' asked Becca, the young female DC.

‘It's him all right,' told her, smiling at her anxious but excited expression. It was a tedious job, tracking down every possible source of CCTV material in the area around Bronte's flat and it had paid off.

‘The time stamp reads five past eleven,' said Streaky, squinting at the screen. ‘And Bronte's flat is how far from this garage?'

‘About ten minutes' walk,' said Becca. ‘I timed it.'

‘Bang in the right area a couple of hours before Bronte takes a fatal header off her balcony.' Streaky pulled a beatific smile.

‘So Ethan not only lied about seeing her that evening,' said Flyte, ‘but also about his movements that night.'

‘What did his bandmate say again?' Streaky asked Becca.

‘That Ethan was at band practice at his gaff in the Holloway Rd that afternoon and slept on the sofa cos it was late when they finished.'

‘The last bit made up to protect his chum,' said Streaky. ‘In fact, Ethan came back to Camden, and got some cash out a short step from Bronte's.'

‘And who uses cash these days? Other than drug dealers,' this from Craig. ‘Should I go doorstep Ethan's bandmate, boss?'

Streaky turned to Becca. ‘It's your lead, Becca. You should go see the guy, put the fear of God into him for lying. See what else he can tell us about Ethan. You can take Craig here, if you like: it's your shout. Terrific work. Good old-fashioned policing.'

Becca went a fetching shade of pink.

was pleasantly surprised to see the way Streaky bigged up Becca, but something had been niggling away at her about Ethan as a suspect. She could definitely buy him losing his temper with Bronte and tipping her over the balcony, and of course he could easily have known what it was that she was dangerously allergic to. But was he really capable of the calculation and planning that feeding her an allergen involved? And why risk taking her the gift of a book that might advertise his presence at the flat that night?

‘Did you find anything useful in your trawl of Bronte's comms?' she asked Becca.

‘Nothing much,' said Becca, pulling up a file. ‘But you were right about her planning a Cyprus trip. She had a flight booked to Larnaca and car hire for a week.'

‘Just her? When was she supposed to be flying?'

‘Ten days after her death.'

Interesting. So much for Chrysanthi's insistence that Bronte had zero interest in the family's home island: maybe she just hadn't liked the idea.

‘One other thing,' said Becca. ‘Her health problems were ongoing – she had sent an email a few weeks before her death enquiring about an appointment with a gastroenterologist in Harley Street. Using a false name.'

Not that unusual for a celebrity wary that their private info could be leaked .

‘Did the consultation happen?' asked Streaky.

‘The fee quoted was ￡350 plus VAT, but she didn't reply.' Becca shrugged. ‘And there's no payment going out of her bank account so it looks like she didn't get round to it.'

Streaky returned to his desk and followed.

‘I did some Google research on anaphylactic shock,' she told him. ‘Apparently it's pretty rare for the first serious reaction to kill you – there's usually a previous episode. Clearly her murderer knew what she was allergic to. Which suggests they might have been with her when she suffered an earlier reaction?'

‘Hmm.' Streaky nodded thoughtfully. ‘Bad enough to call 999 you mean.'

‘Exactly.'