Bleeding heart yard, p.1
Bleeding Heart Yard, page 1
Dedication
In loving memory of John Maxted
Epigraph
Is my friend hearty,
Now I am thin and pine,
And has he found to sleep in
A better bed than mine?
Yes, lad, I lie easy,
I lie as lads would choose;
I cheer a dead man’s sweetheart,
Never ask me whose.
A.E. Housman
Is my team ploughing? From A Shropshire Lad
The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.
Pascal, Pensées
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue: Cassie
1. Harbinder
2. Harbinder
3. Harbinder
4. Harbinder
5. Cassie
6. Anna
7. Anna
8. Anna
9. Anna
10. Cassie
11. Harbinder
12. Harbinder
13. Harbinder
14. Harbinder
15. Harbinder
16. Cassie
17. Anna
18. Anna
19. Anna
20. Anna
21. Cassie
22. Harbinder
23. Harbinder
24. Harbinder
25. Harbinder
26. Cassie
27. Anna
28. Anna
29. Cassie
30. Harbinder
31. Harbinder
32. Cassie
33. Anna
34. Anna
35. Anna
36. Cassie
37. Harbinder
38. Harbinder
39. Anna
40. Harbinder
41. Cassie
42. Anna
43. Anna
44. Harbinder
45. Harbinder
46. Cassie
47. Anna
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by Elly Griffiths
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
Cassie
Is it possible to forget that you’ve committed a murder? Well, I’m here to tell you that it is. Not entirely, obviously. But, day to day, it just doesn’t register. Pete and I even had a phase of going to murder mystery parties. We’d get all dressed up and go to a friend’s house and act out a script. There would be cue cards, props, even background music. The setting was usually a country house or a Mississippi river boat. Something like that. I progressed from playing Miss Ellie, high-spirited daughter of Black Jack Roulette, to Mrs Beacham the cook. We’d start off in character but, as the evening progressed, everyone would get drunk and forget the clues. This rather irritated me. I like following rules.
The kids used to love playing Murder in the Dark. It really was a very easy party game and kept them quiet for ages. They would all shut themselves in the downstairs bathroom, about ten of them. The detective would be left outside, sitting disconsolately on the stairs. After a few minutes of giggling, a blood-curdling scream would ring out and the door would open to reveal someone lying on the floor between the loo and the basin. The law-enforcer would then have to solve the crime, sometimes with a little help from me. ‘That’s not fair, Mum,’ Lucy and Sam used to say.
The actual murder was so long ago that it genuinely seems to have happened to someone else. I suppose we all think of our eighteen-year-old selves as different people, but I could honestly look at pictures of the blonde, smiling girl and not recognise her. What did she think, who did she love, what music did she listen to? I simply couldn’t remember. Dissociation is a word I remember from my psychology degree. I think I once wrote the definition on a cue card. ‘A mental process where a person disconnects from their thoughts and feelings . . . often linked to trauma in childhood.’ But I never thought that it was possible to live so happily with this condition. Who was the girl in the school photos? Nothing to do with me.
But I wasn’t able to forget school completely. Pete went to Manor Park too and he was always going to reunions with members of the football and rugby teams. I even kept in contact with a few old schoolfriends. I didn’t much want to see them; I just wanted to know where they were. Pete sometimes asked me to accompany him to his get-togethers, but I always refused. ‘I don’t want to look back,’ I always said, ‘I want to look forward.’ Because the future was great. It meant the kids growing up, going to university, having families of their own. It meant Pete and me retiring, having more time and going on a round-the-world trip, doing the gap year that we couldn’t afford at the time. I loved the future. I just wasn’t so keen on the past.
‘Cassie deserves to relax,’ Pete’s mother used to say. ‘You shouldn’t nag her to go to the reunions. She’s got enough on her plate. What with her job.’
And that’s another thing you can do to forget. You can become a police officer.
1
Harbinder
Saturday, 21 September 2019
Harbinder Kaur looks out of the window of her rented flat. London, she thinks. The word conjures up a potent cocktail of images. Day trips with school, the smell of plastic and vomit on the coach, colouring in worksheets on the Tower of London, posing with waxworks of TV stars. Weekends with various girlfriends, West End shows and meals in Soho restaurants where neither of them understood the wine list. The occasional visit for work, she and Neil standing in a publisher’s office, bemused by books everywhere and by the existence of adults with names like Jelli. The London Olympics, the last time Harbinder had felt patriotic. The Fire of London. London Calling. Londinium. London Pride.
And now Harbinder lives in this enchanted, accursed place. She has a shared flat and a job as a detective inspector in the Criminal Investigation Department of the Metropolitan Police (Homicide and Serious Crimes Unit). To her not-so-secret delight she’s in charge of a Murder Investigation Team (MIT) based in West Kensington, W10, an area mysteriously called Dalgarno. She still can’t quite believe the speed with which all this has happened. One minute she was living with her parents in Shoreham, West Sussex, complaining about work and her colleagues, especially Neil, watching reruns of Bones every night and playing games on her phone. The next, she had passed her detective exam, applied for a new job, piled her few belongings into Neil’s brother’s van, and moved into the front bedroom of No 45 Barlby Road.
‘You’re a London girl now,’ said her mother when she kissed her goodbye. There was real awe in her voice, spoiled only by her saying, with her next breath, ‘You can always come back if it’s too much for you.’
‘Be careful in the big city,’ said her dad. ‘It’s not cosy like dear old Sussex.’ There was an edge of irony in his voice which wasn’t surprising considering that Harbinder had been involved with several high-profile murder cases in the supposedly safe seaside town.
‘I wouldn’t live in London,’ said Neil, who had kindly offered to drive the van.
‘Why?’ said Harbinder. ‘Too many brown people for you?’
‘No,’ said Neil patiently. ‘Too much crime.’
‘We’re police officers,’ said Harbinder, already terrified by the traffic on the South Circular. ‘We love crime.’
But she knew what he meant. London equals serious crime. Not just murder, which could be disappointingly mundane, but drugs, racketeering, gangs, human trafficking. The very worst of human nature, thought Harbinder, with a not unpleasurable shiver, as the van passed several boarded-up shops and a pub called Dr Crippen’s. Which was why, after a month in her new job, she was rather disappointed that her work had so far mostly involved attending meetings and learning new computer programmes. At least she had her own office, though, with ‘DI Harbinder Kaur’ on the door. She’d tried to take a selfie for Neil but hadn’t been able to get both her face and the sign in the picture. Her DS, Cassie Fitzherbert, sweetly offered to take a proper picture but the moment had passed.
Harbinder likes West London. Her flat is on the top floor of a solid terraced house in a long curving road leading down to Wormwood Scrubs. But there’s a pleasant park nearby and a variety of shops, cafés and restaurants. She likes walking the streets at the weekends, catching sight of herself in shop windows, striding along in her jeans and leather jacket. It’s September, a bright, clear autumn. Pumpkins are appearing in the shops and the tree outside Harbinder’s window is turning from green to amber to red, like a traffic light in reverse.
Harbinder may have been teasing Neil but it’s also nice to be in a multicultural city. The first time she saw Sikh men in turbans she thought that they must be her father or her brothers. It’s refreshing, and rather strange, not to be the only person of colour on the bus to work. She’s not the only woman of colour at the station either. Although she is the only DI.
Her flatmates are about as white as you can get though. Jeanne is Scottish, with red hair and almost translucent skin. Mette is Danish, tall and blonde, fearlessly riding a bicycle around the horror that is the Scrubs Lane Intersection. Jeanne is a teacher and Mette an architect. Harbinder doesn’t know them very well yet but the flatmates have been out for a pizza together and chat whenever they coincide in the kitchen. There’s no sitting room so they spend most of their time in their bedrooms. Harbinder doesn’t mind this but, sometimes, playing Panda Pop by the open window at night and hearing music from th e flats opposite she does catch herself thinking: is this all there is to London?
Now, it’s Saturday evening and Harbinder is at her window again. She feels, not exactly homesick, she tells herself firmly, but slightly wistful. Yesterday, walking along the South Bank, watching the tourist boats going past and looking at the strange pieces of flotsam discarded by the Thames, she surprised herself by missing the sea. Harbinder is not a keen swimmer, or a beachcomber, like her friend Benedict, but she likes the way the sea is different every day, the way it doesn’t care how she is feeling but just carries on with its own elemental ebb and flow. She misses not being able to see the horizon. The Thames is too narrow and London sometimes feels too big.
But, if she were in Shoreham, listening to her parents argue about Britain’s Got Talent, she knows she would have felt trapped and rather pathetic. ‘Harbinder Kaur,’ the sardonic voice-over in her head would have intoned, ‘still lives at home at the age of thirty-eight. She’s gay but, although her parents know in theory, she has yet to introduce them to a girlfriend. Her main hobbies are arguing with her brothers and playing mindless games on her phone.’ Now, at least, the narrative is: ‘Harbinder Kaur, aged thirty-eight, is a detective in the London Met and shares a flat with two other female professionals.’ It doesn’t change the fact that she’s alone on a Saturday night though, listening to Mette’s TV through the wall, wondering whether it’s too soon to change into her pyjamas. Jeanne is out with her boyfriend.
Harbinder has actually had an invitation of her own. Kim, one of her sergeants, mentioned that the team were going out for drinks to celebrate someone’s retirement. ‘You should come, boss. It’ll be a laugh.’ Harbinder should go, she knows. She wants to show her colleagues that she may be a diminutive Sikh woman, but she enjoys a pint as much as the next Met detective. She’s also waiting for the right moment to come out to them. It’s harder than you’d think. She doesn’t want to make a big deal of it but if she leaves it any longer, they’ll definitely assume that she’s straight. The trouble is, she can’t casually mention a girlfriend because she doesn’t have one. The thought of an evening spent being the life and soul of the party whilst looking for an occasion to use the L word makes her feel depressed. She knows she won’t go.
Should she ring her mother? But, if she does, Bibi will only try to persuade her to go home for Sunday lunch tomorrow. Bibi is as obsessed with Sunday as any Catholic and insists on gathering as many of the family in one room as is humanly possible. Harbinder thinks of the flat above the family shop and her heart twists, even though she knows that, after half an hour with her brothers, she’ll be longing for the peace of her West London bedroom. She’ll have an early night and tomorrow she’ll go out and really explore London, go to some markets, eat exotic food, send some pictures to Neil. ‘Arancini are what we Londoners call rice balls.’ Thinking of food reminds her that she hasn’t eaten yet. What’s on her shelf of the larder? She thinks there’s some pasta and a tin of tomatoes. Harbinder is nowhere near as good a cook as her mum and, besides, she can’t face anything that reminds her of home.
After the rather tasteless pasta and several episodes of Bones, Harbinder judges that it’s late enough to go to bed. She considers having a shower and decides against it. The bathroom is freezing and there’s always the chance that she’ll bump into Mette, who doesn’t seem to feel the need to wear clothes much. Harbinder doesn’t know if this is to do with Mette being Scandinavian but it’s rather disconcerting and makes Harbinder feel like a prude in her cosy M&S dressing gown. She’ll just brush her teeth and get into bed. Harbinder is turning off her laptop when her phone rings.
It’s one of her sergeants, DS Jake Barker. Harbinder tries to call him to mind. Shortish, darkish, one of those accents characterised by Sussex-born Harbinder as ‘northern’.
‘Hi, Jake. What is it?’
‘Hi, boss.’ How Harbinder loves this form of address. She wishes she could use it as her ring tone. ‘We’ve had something called in. Unexplained death. I think you’d better come.’
‘Unexplained death?’ Not as good as a suspicious death but her Saturday is definitely looking up.
‘A man killed at a school reunion.’
‘Interesting.’
‘Wait till you hear who it is.’
‘I really don’t like waiting for this sort of thing, Jake.’
‘Garfield Rice. Garfield Rice MP.’
Even Harbinder, who is allergic to politics, has heard of him.
2
Harbinder
‘It’s Manor Park school,’ says Jake. ‘And you know what people who go there are like.’
Harbinder has no idea what they are like. She thinks of her old school in West Sussex, Talgarth High. It was often spoken of with horror by local residents, as if ‘Talgarth kids’ was shorthand for marauding Viking hoards. But it wasn’t such a bad place even though it had once been the centre of a murder investigation. Honestly, thinks Harbinder, what is it with these educational establishments?
‘I’m not from around here,’ Harbinder says now. Jake is driving them through the London streets with the ease of a native, although his accent doesn’t exactly scream ‘cockney’ to Harbinder. Cockneys are apparently people born within the sound of Bow bells. Whatever that is. Harbinder thinks it’s got something to do with a nursery rhyme. ‘Here comes a candle to light you to bed. Here comes a chopper to chop off your head’. Hardly the cosiest lullaby.
‘It’s one of those posh schools,’ says Jake, taking a shortcut through one of the old Peabody Estates, all high walls and sad squares of grass.
‘A public school?’ Harbinder has always thought it strange that, in England, public school means the opposite. It means very private indeed, inaccessible to anyone but the super rich.
‘No, it’s a comprehensive,’ says Jake. ‘But it’s where trendy lefties send their kids. Pop stars and actors. Labour politicians too. It’s free but you have to live in Chelsea, which means you’re probably rich enough to pay anyway. But you’re too mean or too right-on.’
There’s a lot going on here, thinks Harbinder. She knows that Jake is married with one child. Presumably, on a sergeant’s wage, he isn’t living anywhere near Chelsea. Maybe he’s just bitter because his offspring won’t be attending Manor Park and mixing with pop stars’ children.
‘What was Garfield Rice doing at this trendy school?’ she asks.
‘It was a reunion,’ says Jake. ‘I suppose he was a pupil there.’
‘And he was found dead in the loos?’ This much was on the call-out sheet.
‘Suspected drug overdose,’ says Jake. ‘It’ll be all over the papers.’
‘Vultures,’ says Harbinder, as she is expected to. But she is secretly hoping that her parents read about ‘DI Harbinder Kaur, who is in charge of the case . . .’
Manor Park is a disappointment at first. Harbinder had expected either a Gothic pile or a shiny modern building with tinted glass and a roof garden. This school was probably built in the sixties and consists of concrete blocks connected by iron walkways. In the dark the buildings seem to loom in a rather threatening way and the security lights isolate areas of grey grass and exposed brickwork. Two uniformed officers stand by the main entrance. Manor Park School. Headteacher: Sonoma Davies.
Harbinder shows her warrant card.
‘Where’s the deceased?’
‘Still in situ, ma’am.’ If there’s one thing Harbinder likes more than ‘boss’, it’s ‘ma’am’.
‘Have the paramedics been?’
‘Yes, they pronounced life extinct.’
That’s good news – it means Harbinder can get the scene of the crime team on the job at once.
‘We’ve asked everyone to wait in the library,’ says the PC. ‘Some of them are a bit upset.’
Given that their old schoolfriend has dropped down dead, Harbinder thinks this is likely to prove a bit of an understatement. Also, it’s nearly eleven o’clock at night and most of them are probably drunk. Grief-stricken as newts.
‘Lead the way,’ says Harbinder. She is texting SOCO as she walks.
Once again, the word ‘library’ is misleading. Harbinder is expecting a book-lined room, perhaps with oak panelling and window seats. The original library at Talgarth was actually very like this. The room Harbinder enters is simply another modern box with metal bookcases pushed against the walls. There are some fairy lights, though, and record decks, which indicate that the participants have been indulging in that most pathetic of activities – nostalgic disco dancing.
