Last Place You Look Read online

  Is that what we are? he wonders. Friends? But he doesn’t say anything, just takes a swig from his bottle of beer.

  ‘I was asking around for you,’ she continues. ‘About your strangulation guy.’ She takes a sip from the glass, then places it on the floor next to the sofa. She undoes the zip down the side of her boots, pulling them off, then curling her feet up under her, making herself comfortable. ‘I thought he might have tried things before. Made use of some of Frankie’s other services.’

  ‘And?’ Robin asks, curious.

  ‘Nothing. Nobody’s heard of him. One girl did mention a guy into that sort of thing, likes to be choked while she stands on his testicles.’ Robin flinches. ‘But he was into dog leads and butt plugs. That’s not your guy, is it?’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like him, no,’ Robin replies. It just reinforces what Steph was saying – that auto-erotic asphyxiation is usually accompanied by other similar tastes. He takes another swig of beer.

  ‘And you’ve never tried it?’ Liv asks.

  Robin inhales a little too sharply and beer goes down the wrong way. Liv laughs as he coughs. ‘I’ll take that as a no,’ she says. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Why not?’ he repeats, once he’s got his breath back.

  ‘Yeah.’ She smiles across the sofa. ‘You might like it.’

  He shakes his head. ‘I’ll give that one a miss, thanks.’ He goes to drink again, then realises his bottle is empty.

  Liv gets up from the sofa. ‘I’ll get you another,’ she says. ‘Can I use your bathroom?’

  He watches her go. This is odd, he thinks, her turning up out of the blue. He’d never have said they were friends. Apart from that one night last week, they’ve had no contact. And a prostitute being friends with a cop is certainly not a common occurrence. Confidential informant, maybe, but never friends.

  But he’s in no hurry to kick her out. Her company is nice, welcome in the echoing silence of his life.

  He hears the fridge open, then the hiss as she takes the top off the bottle. She comes back into the room and sits down, this time slightly closer. She hands him the beer and as she does so he finds himself looking down her top, catching a glimpse of a lacy cream bra.

  He forces his eyes away. You’re acting like a little schoolboy, he tells himself.

  ‘Anyway, you were saying,’ she says.

  ‘I was?’

  ‘What are you into?’ Her eyes are dark as she meets his gaze. He looks away again quickly.

  ‘What am I into?’ he repeats, caught off guard.

  ‘All men like something,’ she says, quietly. ‘What about you?’

  He frowns. He can’t be talking about this. He feels a stirring in his groin and fidgets. Any more conversation and this is going to get very uncomfortable, very fast.

  But she shows no signs of dropping the topic. ‘That’s assuming you like women, of course.’

  ‘Yes, I like women.’ He takes a large mouthful of beer.

  ‘But what else?’ She leans forward towards him. ‘What’s your fantasy? Threesomes, role play? Maybe you like it rough, handcuffs, a little slap here and there. You are a cop…’

  He shakes his head. She’s on all fours now, coming towards him on the sofa.

  ‘Maybe a little domination,’ she whispers. She takes the beer out of his hand, then pushes it against his mouth. ‘Drink it,’ she says, sternly.

  She holds it up, and he does as he’s told. Swallows once, twice. She’s almost on top of him now, her face close to his, near enough to kiss him. She puts the bottle back to his lips. He takes a gulp, the last dregs gone, and she discards it on the floor where it lies on its side on the carpet.

  She straddles him, her hands either side of his head, nails running through his hair. He wants to kiss her, but he can’t. He can’t. But then he realises it’s not horny he’s feeling now, it’s something else.

  His head feels muddled. He’s tired, his eyes half closing. He forces them open, but he can’t focus. He wonders how much he’s had to drink. It wasn’t a lot, surely. Not enough to feel like this. Not enough to—

  And the last thing he sees before he passes out is her face. Her eyes, watching him. Closely.

  25

  Wednesday

  Robin wakes on the sofa. He pulls himself to a sitting position, stretching out his protesting neck and back. Light filters in from behind the curtains. It must be morning, but he has no idea of the time. His head is pounding, his mouth dry.

  He squints at the empty beer bottles on the floor, one on its side. He didn’t drink that much, did he? He remembers Liv coming round, and glances about for any sign of her. But the house is silent, her coat gone from the back of the chair.

  He’s fully dressed, and for that he’s relieved. So nothing happened, but what on earth… He searches his mind for any recollection of last night, but everything seems muddled and dark.

  His phone rings and he searches around for it. He eventually pulls it out from the side of the sofa cushion and answers the call.

  ‘Sarge? Where are you?’

  ‘Home.’ Robin squints at the time: 9:56. Shit.

  ‘You just woken up?’

  ‘Yeah. I…’ He doesn’t know what to say. This doesn’t feel like a hangover, a level of confusion and memory loss that seems new. Yet… He struggles to articulate how he feels. He stands up, his phone still against his ear, listening as Freya chatters away. Apparently the cameras have been dusted for prints and compared to Jonathan Miller’s. It’s a match.

  ‘Any other prints?’ he asks, standing in his kitchen. He opens the recycling bin and looks inside. Two bottles, plus the two in the living room. Four wouldn’t be enough for this level of hangover, surely? Fuck, he needs to stop drinking.

  ‘All clear,’ Freya replies. ‘So it was Jonathan who planted the cameras.’

  ‘Give me half an hour,’ Robin says, then hangs up.

  He continues to wander through his house. He remembers answering the door to Liv, but not a lot after that. He walks into the hallway, then stops. He stares at his bag, hanging where it always is, on the banister at the bottom of the stairs. But unlike normal, the top is zipped up.

  Slowly, a feeling of dread building in his stomach, he opens it and looks inside. His wallet is there. He pulls it out; the cash is gone, but all the cards are in their usual place. He digs again. And there’s his warrant card, still attached to its lanyard.

  He breathes out a slow sigh of relief. Then looks again, and he realises that he has a problem. His investigator’s notebook, the formal police record of all lines of enquiry and decisions on a case. The one for Jonathan Miller.

  It’s gone.

  26

  ‘What the hell is this?’ Amy asks, holding up the flimsy purple notebook. ‘I thought you were going to get something useful?’

  They’re sitting in Amy’s kitchen, mugs of freshly brewed coffee in front of them.

  ‘What did you expect?’ Liv snaps. ‘He’s hardly going to let me log in to his secret police files, or whatever he uses.’

  Amy sighs, and flicks through the pages. The man has the handwriting of a lobotomised spider, small scribbled black letters running into each other, most of it incoherent.

  ‘It’s going to take me ages to read this.’

  ‘Well, next time get it yourself. He’s going to know it was me; there’s no way I’m going back.’

  ‘I didn’t tell you to drug the guy. I thought you’d just get him pissed.’

  ‘Yeah, well, it was going to take too long.’

  Amy leans back on the sofa. She sees Liv’s face, scowling and angry. She knows she shouldn’t be so harsh. ‘I’m sorry, Livia. I’m sorry.’ Liv’s face softens a little. ‘I’m just scared, that’s all.’

  Liv leans forward and gives her a hug. ‘They know Jonathan’s death had nothing to do with you. They’re just fishing.’

  Amy nods. She’s been telling herself that. What could they possibly know? But they have already worked out more than she an
ticipated.

  Kal told them about the escort agency, stupid prick. And they found Olivia. Now all they need to do is make the connection between Olivia and Amy, and questions will be asked. But Liv is right; it’s going to be okay.

  She looks at the notebook again. She flicks to the last page; she can just make out the writing. Camera? Links to??

  Camera, what camera? She frowns. She flicks back again. A list of names, people from Kal’s party. Jonathan’s social media accounts. Something she can’t make out about a buckle on a belt.

  This is useless, she thinks, frustrated, feeling tears prickle behind her eyes. She knows Liv is watching her, her eyes sympathetic, and allows a few drops to leak out.

  ‘Hey, hey,’ Liv says softly. She leans forward and takes Amy’s hand. ‘You’ll get through this, you’ll be okay.’

  Amy nods, but makes no effort to wipe away the tears. ‘You won’t leave me, will you?’

  ‘Hey, Amy, I’m your sister. Of course I won’t.’ Liv gets up and fetches the tissue box, placing it in front of her.

  ‘It’s just, I’m so sorry about what happened between us. So sorry about pushing you away.’

  Liv smiles, her expression soft. ‘I’m back now, it’s fine. And I’ll do whatever you need. You know that. Do you need help to arrange the memorial? What can I do?’

  Amy pulls a tissue out of the box and dabs at her eyes, suppressing a small smile. Jonathan’s death has its upsides, she thinks. All previous ills forgiven, just like that.

  ‘No, no, it’s fine, that’s all in hand. But you’ll be there on Thursday? Please.’

  ‘Of course.’ Liv nods. Then Amy sees her pause. ‘There was one other thing, Ames.’

  ‘What?’

  Her sister thinks for a moment, then goes to her bag and takes out her purse.

  ‘I couldn’t help but nick his cash, and this was caught up in the back of his wallet.’ She takes out a small piece of paper and smooths it out on the table.

  Amy leans forward to look at it.

  It’s a newspaper clipping, worn where it’s been folded, edges ripped. It looks old, and well thumbed.

  ‘Just some ancient investigation,’ Amy comments, seeing the date. ‘Why might he have this?’

  Liv taps a long red-painted nail on the image. ‘I was going to bin it, but then I recognised the guy in the photo. I knew him.’

  ‘Who?’ Amy reads the name below the black and white picture. ‘Trevor Stevens?’

  ‘Yeah. From AA. Back when I first started going. I heard he’d died. Some accident or something a few years ago.’

  ‘Yeah. And?’

  Liv’s face is grim. She taps again on the photo. ‘Read it.’

  Amy stares at her, puzzled, then picks up the clipping, squinting at the old worn text. ‘Says here he died in an accident – driving when pissed. So what?’

  ‘I remember thinking at the time it didn’t seem right. He wasn’t drinking.’

  ‘He was an alcoholic, alcoholics drink.’ Amy can’t resist the dig at Olivia, still unconvinced by her sobriety. She’s so not interested in this. And all this talk of alcohol is making her thirsty. She glances at the clock – just past ten, that’ll do – then gets up, takes a glass out of the cabinet and a bottle of gin from the cupboard. ‘You want one?’ she asks, deliberately.

  But Liv’s not listening.

  ‘He’d been sober for over a year. And Trevor was one of the good ones. You know, the ones that took it seriously. I remember thinking, if he was drunk, there’d be no hope for the rest of us.’

  Amy pours a large measure of gin, then a smaller one of tonic. She carries the glass back to the table, looking over Liv’s shoulder.

  ‘Says here they found the bits of a bottle of JD in the car.’

  ‘But that’s not right either.’ Liv looks up at Amy. ‘Alcoholics have a drink of choice. They stick to the same ones.’

  Amy waves the G&T in Liv’s face. ‘So you wouldn’t want this, then?’

  ‘Fuck off, Amy. I just mean, ones we prefer. Trev was a vodka guy, maybe white wine if he was desperate. He wouldn’t have gone for a bottle of JD.’

  ‘People change,’ Amy comments as she sits down. ‘But why does this matter to me?’

  Liv points, and Amy starts reading it out loud.

  ‘Trevor Stevens had been released from prison one year before the accident,’ she reads. ‘After killing local mother Georgia Riley and her two-year-old twin boys in a hit-and-run while intoxicated.’ She looks at Liv. ‘Not a nice guy then.’

  Liv gestures to the newspaper article again. ‘Keep reading.’

  Amy rolls her eyes. ‘Georgia Riley is survived by her husband Liam and her brother… oh shit.’ Amy looks at Liv, then back to the paper. ‘And her brother Robin Butler.’

  Liv raises her eyebrows at Amy. Amy feels a smile creep across her face.

  ‘What does this mean?’ Amy asks, but she knows already.

  Liv shrugs wearily. ‘If you want your favourite detective distracted away from his investigation into your husband’s death,’ she says, ‘then I know how we can do it.’

  27

  By the time Robin gets to the station, it’s gone eleven. As usual, the incident room is a hive of activity, and Robin manages to make it in without anyone noticing. But not so Freya. She’s by his side the moment he sits down at his desk, handing him a coffee.

  ‘You were right about the camera,’ she says, without greeting. ‘Digital confirmed it transmits to a remote location – probably a laptop or a phone. And there’s nothing on his phone,’ she adds before he can ask.

  ‘No sign of the laptop?’

  ‘None,’ she replies, but he notices a slight hesitation.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she says.

  He knows what she’s thinking: that he’s hungover, yet again. But he’s not. He knows he’s not. This doesn’t feel like a normal hangover. This… absence, in his head.

  He reaches into his bag and pulls out two beer bottles, sealed separately in clear evidence bags. He passes them to Freya.

  ‘Send these to the lab. Get them to test the contents for drugs. Roofies, sedatives, anything.’

  She looks at the labels. But she doesn’t ask.

  ‘What case shall I say they’re for?’

  ‘Put them against the Miller investigation,’ he mutters, then turns away. He presses the coffee against his lips, the mere smell making him feel better. ‘And thank you for the coffee,’ he adds grudgingly.

  She disappears and Robin tries to enjoy the peace and quiet. He wants to put the events of last night out of his head. Liv turns up, and he ends up blacked out, again. He wonders about that first night in the bar with her, but he remembers the sheer amount he’d put away. That had been alcohol, no doubt, but this time he knows he didn’t drink that much. And she’s stolen his notebook. But why? He keeps on coming back to that. What could the notebook possibly hold of interest to her?

  The continuous bustle is starting to make his head worse, so he picks up his laptop and heads back home, leaving a brief Post-it for Freya. The drive is short but he can barely concentrate, and he feels an almost palpable relief when he gets inside his house.

  He clears the mess off the kitchen table, then reconsiders and spends half an hour loading the dishwasher and doing the washing-up. The effect when it’s done is cheering, and Robin makes a mental note to take better care of himself from now on. Maybe give the drinking a break for a few weeks, too.

  He sets up his laptop on the table and gets to work. A few reports wait in his inbox, work completed since yesterday. There’s not much of interest, but he spends the next few hours catching up on his neglected cases: reports that need writing, paperwork that needs logging. The homeless guy’s post-mortem has been completed – unfortunate, but natural causes. He ties off any loose ends on the system, closing the case. It’s mindless and repetitive, stuff he’s done hundreds of times before.

  His email pings, and he looks at it. Eviden
ce logged, he reads, then a list of items taken from the Miller house the day before. Three bags of recycling, three bags of general rubbish. He notices nobody’s offering to go through it, and he doesn’t blame them.

  Then another file. The body-worn video from PC Wallis, taken the night of Khalid Riaz’s party. He clicks on it, then scrolls through to find the images of Amy and Jonathan at the chippy. Eventually, there it is.

  Body-worn video is always so jumpy it’s vomit-inducing, and this is no exception. But he can clearly make out Amy Miller’s Audi, then her sitting in the front seat as the cop car pulls up alongside. An exchange of words, and he can see why the policemen decided to breathalyse her. Her eyes flicker from them to the fish and chip shop, and when she goes to get out of the car, she staggers slightly, then ends up leaning on the car door. But the result was clear: she wasn’t even close to the legal limit.

  But she’s nervous, that much is obvious. The camera shifts as the police officer turns, looking towards the chippy. Sure enough, there’s a figure standing next to the counter, but the video moves again and the image blurs. Was that Jonathan Miller? Robin rewinds the tape, and squints again. In that fraction of a second it’s impossible to tell.

  His phone buzzes, a text message from Steph.

  Can you meet me? it reads. 4:30pm? Costa?

  He glances at the time. He could, he thinks, but he was late to work this morning as it is.

  Can we do tonight? he replies.

  I need to talk to you, Steph comes back straight away. It’s important.

  What’s so urgent? Robin wonders. Then he feels a flash of guilt. Perhaps she knows about Liv’s visit last night. But how? And nothing happened, he tells himself.

  Robin replies, agreeing to meet her, then picks up his coat. He’ll find out soon enough.

  * * *

  When he arrives at the coffee shop, Steph’s face is serious. He can’t have screwed this up so soon, he thinks. Even by his standards, that’s impressive.

  She stands up when she sees him, kissing him on the cheek. She’s come from work, dressed in simple black trousers and a blue top. She’s bought him a coffee already, a large mug waiting in front of her.