Chapter 22 Police
The doorbell rings in every corner of the house.
Stephen has anxiety about missing parcels and has plugged in Ring extensions everywhere.
I’m with Nathan in the kitchen, teaching him basic baking skills, but he’s yet to understand the important of neatness.
Whenever I tell him off, however, he hugs me because he thinks I’m sad.
I sometimes find myself telling him off just to get him to throw his arms around my neck.
I pop into the downstairs loo on the way to the door and straighten my hair.
I expect to see a harried delivery guy annoyed because I’ve made him thirty seconds late.
Stephen continues to buy unnecessary items from .
The last thing was a tactical torch with ten thousand lumens of light, which I can say with confidence, he will never use.
It isn’t .
‘Good afternoon, madam. I’m Detective Sergeant Birch and this is Detective Constable Mattoo.’
‘Oh God, what’s she done now?’ I say, instinctively, staring at the two plain-clothed police officers holding out their badges for inspection, although the name Jason Mercer jumps to the front of my mind.
‘Who?’
‘My daughter. I thought she might have run away from school again.’
‘This isn’t about your daughter,’ says DS Birch, an athletic woman of indeterminate age with bleach-blonde hair. ‘Are you Mrs Lalla Rook?’
‘Yes, how can I help?’ I say.
‘May we come in?’ she says assertively. ‘We need to speak to you about a missing person case.’
‘If you must,’ I say, but my mind is trying to work out why they’re back here.
Do they want to ask every adult directly about Mercer or is it something else?
If Cait has broken down and blabbed, I have little sympathy for any repercussions that may occur in a moment of blind rage.
It’s unfortunate because I’ve yet to find someone to sand the floors, and, although I’ve done a deep clean, they only need one tiny speck of blood these days.
I lead them into the living room and they sit on the sofa, their feet on a new Persian rug which Liberty delivered only yesterday. I angle myself towards the detective sergeant and ignore her gangly assistant who seems to have no purpose whatsoever.
‘Now, what’s this about?’ I say, and tilt my head to one side. ‘I’m in the middle of making cupcakes for the school charity bake.’ This is a lie, but I want to inject pace into proceedings.
‘What’s the smell in here?’ says DC Mattoo, sniffing quite rudely.
‘It’s paint,’ I say, with as kind an expression as I can muster.
‘Doesn’t smell like paint,’ he says, doubling down.
‘Well, it’s not Dulux, if that’s what you mean. It’s non-toxic – made from antique horse dung and the ground-up bones of Victorian philanthropists.’
‘Posh paint,’ says the woman, dryly. ‘Mrs Rook, we’re making enquiries about a missing person, you may have heard. His name’s Jason Mercer.’
‘Yes, my husband spoke to the police, but what does this have to do with me?’ I say, scanning their faces and finding nothing revealing.
‘Did you have any visitors here on the morning of the fifteenth of November?’
‘Yes,’ I say, bluntly. ‘All of Nathan’s friends, average age four, and my friends, Sophie, Aisha and Cait.’
She looks at me, unblinking, possibly waiting for me to add another name. If so, she will be waiting a long time.
‘Did Jason Mercer visit you on that day?’ says the detective sergeant, finally.
‘Why would he? I don’t know who he is,’ I say, watching the woman’s face, which expresses disdain and suspicion at once.
While I enjoy the feeling of risk, I do recognize the jeopardy of this situation.
If Detective Sergeant Birch were to glance to her right, she might notice a tiny drop of blood on the velvet cushion.
If she moved the new rug with her foot, she might notice a faint pink blush where blood seeped into the wood.
‘Perhaps this picture might help jog your memory. He might’ve called on another day or used another name.
Any information would be helpful.’ DS Birch hands me a photograph of the man I stabbed to death, wrapped in trampoline packaging and buried in my friend’s concrete footings. I decide not to mention this.
I shake my head, squint as people do in films, hold for a moment, as if I’m searching my memory bank, then shake more emphatically. I’ve always enjoyed pretending more than expressing what I feel, and am happy with my performance.
‘No, I’ve never seen him before in my life. Can I ask why you think he would visit me?’
‘We have information to suggest he was here on the fifteenth of November.’
‘What information?’ I say, trying to prevent my hands forming a fist as I seethe at Cait’s deviousness. Is anyone honest any more?
‘We’re not able to reveal the source at the current time,’ says Birch.
‘An anonymous source,’ says DC Mattoo, helpfully. DS Birch gives him a withering glance.
‘Well, your informant is wrong,’ I say. Anonymous source! I can’t believe Cait’s gall. ‘Look, is this man dangerous, is that what this is about?’
‘Jason Mercer is a police officer,’ says Birch, her stern expression moving from iron to steel. ‘We have no reason to believe he’s a threat to the public.’
‘A police officer?’ I feel my eye twitching and can’t quite understand what I’m being told. ‘My husband said he was a criminal. On the run.’
Birch stares and says nothing. An old interrogation technique, I imagine, to encourage me to fill the silence with a sudden confession. It doesn’t work.
‘Jason Mercer was not on active service. He was due to stand trial on Friday afternoon and didn’t show up. There’s a warrant out for his arrest, but he’s not been found guilty as yet.’
‘On trial for what?’
‘The charges were for intimidation and various alleged criminal activities.’
‘Not a poster boy for the Met, then? Why would a disgraced police officer be here?’ I say, although I marvel at his time-management in fitting in a little bit of burglary on the same day as his trial.
‘We think he’s hiding out with someone, and we found your name and address in his desk drawer.’
I feel a strange sense of disorientation as they are leaking information piece by piece and watching me like hawks. ‘Why did he have my name and address?’ I ask.
‘We were hoping you’d know the answer to that. From mobile phone records, we know his last known location was in this area, and that he’d been here several times in the last month.’
‘So he’s stalking me? Is that it?’
‘His wife believes that he’s having an affair and is likely to be with his latest girlfriend,’ she says, and looks me up and down with the expression that mothers use when their teenage daughters go out for the night.
‘I therefore have to ask – are you or have you ever been in a relationship with Jason Mercer?’
‘You think I’m his lover? Oh, dear me.’ I laugh at the ridiculous assumption that I’m an adulterer indulging in a bit of rough. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but I wouldn’t consider anyone below chief inspector level.’
‘It’s not a laughing matter,’ DS Birch says coldly.
I’m about to assure her that it’s not a joke, but I sense she thinks very poorly of me already, so I smile sweetly.
‘You can look around, if you like. No secret lovers here, I can assure you,’ I say. ‘Just cat, rabbit, children, husband and nanny. If you think I also have time to conceal a fugitive, I fear you underestimate the demands on my time.’
‘Perhaps you can explain why he had your address?’ says DS Birch.
‘I have no idea. Never seen him in my life,’ I say.
‘You found my name and address in his desk, his phone shows he was a regular visitor to Muswell Hill, and some shadowy informant says he was at my house . . . is that it?’ She nods slowly, and I can’t resist adding, ‘I mean, you’re just guessing, Detective. ’
She doesn’t like being patronized and stares at me. DC Mattoo leans forward as if to get up, then clocks his boss and leans back again.
‘Not guesswork, madam, a carefully considered hypothesis based on the available evidence and key assumptions.’
‘Well, your assumptions are faulty. If he failed to turn up to court, I imagine he had good reason to run, dump his phone and drive to darkest Scotland.’
‘His car is still in his driveway, madam, which suggests he may have access to another vehicle. Do you have a car, yourself?’ she says, and takes out her notebook.
‘I do. It’s outside, so no, I haven’t lent it to a runaway policeman.’
DS Birch takes the registration number of my Porsche and tells me, with some glee, that they can track registration numbers.
‘Will that be all?’ I say abruptly. The good news is that they don’t seem to be looking for the blue Toyota, which is full of my DNA, most probably. I can only surmise that it was stolen or borrowed.
‘You understand that it’s a criminal offence to assist an offender and help them evade prosecution?’
‘That’s not relevant,’ I say, just as my son wanders in, face covered in soil he’s been digging. I am, however, concerned by DS Birch’s persistence, and the anonymous tip-off.
‘Nathan, these police officers are looking for someone.’ I take Nathan on my knee. So useful to present oneself as a loving mother, but Nathan disagrees, wriggles away and stands in front of DC Mattoo.
‘You don’t have a police helmet,’ says Nathan.
‘No, we’re detectives,’ says DC Mattoo.
‘Do you want to borrow mine?’
Mattoo smiles at Nathan, who is beyond delighted and runs off. Birch glares at me as if I’m going to break, and we sit in awkward silence. Fortunately, Nathan runs back in with the police helmet, and hands it to Mattoo, who kindly perches it on top of his head to hilarious effect.
‘If you remember anything at all, please get in touch,’ says Birch, rising quickly and handing me a card. She takes the hat off Mattoo’s head, hands it back to Nathan, looks around the room with an air of suspicion and sniffs dismissively.
I close the door as they leave, with Nathan waving wildly and quickly open my Ring app to watch Mattoo and Birch on my screen. I turn up the volume just in time.
‘What did you think?’ says Mattoo.
‘Guilty as hell,’ says Birch and then glances directly at the camera.