Tomek gave her the opportunity to finish up with her customer. In the meantime, he and Oscar were happy to take seats. Tomek watched the process in amazement. The cutting, the washing, the shampooing, the tinfoil, the dyeing. All of it to make their hair look nicer. Tomek never gave much thought to his own. Just keep it short, apply a bit of gel now and then, let nature and the wind take care of the rest. He realised he had it much easier. Not to mention cheaper. He had baulked at the price of a full haircut for Kasia when she’d asked him. Over two hundred quid for a full cut, dye, and the rest, whatever that entailed. For that price, he joked, he would need to take out a mortgage for it. In the end, he had resorted to buying some box dye from the supermarket for a fraction of the price and supervising her while she did it herself. Beyond that, it was all lost on him.
Twenty minutes later, Emilia Solveig was ready. She grabbed her coat from the wall behind the counter and held the door open for them.
‘I’m in desperate need of a coffee,’ she said as they exited the salon. ‘Though for this, I fear I might need something stronger.’
Tomek didn’t tell her otherwise. Fortunately, the coffee shop she took them to was right next door, and after a few minutes of waiting, they found a small bench in a nearby park.
‘Firstly,’ Tomek began, ‘thank you for taking the time to speak with us. We appreciate this is all a bit out of the blue, and you probably have a lot of questions. Hopefully we can answer some of them for you, but we’re hoping you can answer all of ours.’
‘Of course,’ she replied, her voice weak.
‘Last week, Angelica Whitaker, a woman we believe you know intimately, was murdered.’
‘Murdered?’
‘Murdered, yes. How do you know Angelica?’
‘She…’ Emilia sipped on her drink slowly, taking her time to soak it all in. ‘We met at the manor, at one of The Nights.’
‘Can you remember when?’
‘I think it was her first time. Some time back in September, maybe. I… we bumped into one another at the bar. She seemed nervous, a bit shocked by it all. I tried talking to her, but she wasn’t very receptive. I think she was a bit out of her depth.’
‘But the two of you grew closer in following meetings?’
Emilia dipped her head. ‘The second time, I bumped into her again – she always wore the same outfit, so I knew it was her – and then we spent the night together with a man dressed as a donkey.’
Florian.
So far everything checked out; before they’d come to speak with her, Micky Tatton had explained the bare bones of everything he’d seen, picked up, or overheard about Emilia and Angelica’s developing relationship. It was now up to Emilia to apply the meat to the skeleton.
‘The three of us spent the night together. I think… I think it was her first time with a woman, I’m not sure. But she enjoyed it. We were gentle with her. Careful.’
Just as Tomek opened his mouth to ask a question, a teenager on a bike rushed past them, blasting music from a speaker hitched to the back of his bike.
‘Did the two of you ever spend the night together alone?’ he asked.
‘Twice,’ she said. ‘It was… How much detail do you want?’
‘As much as you’re willing to share,’ Tomek answered, then braced himself.
‘It was magical,’ she answered. ‘Some of the best sex I’ve ever had with a woman. I don’t know what it was, but there was something different about Angelica. More experienced, more accomplished, more… experimental. She was completely different from the first time I met her, and all in the space of a few visits. I don’t know if that meant she was experimenting with someone else or what, but…’ She took another sip of coffee as she trailed off. ‘Afterwards, we would sit and talk, you know? Get to know each other on a deeper, personal level. She was… she was special, you know? I know it sounds silly to say, given the context of how we met and everything, but…’
‘You started to develop feelings for her?’ Tomek said, already sensing where this was headed.
‘Yeah. She was just… so charismatic, you know? She just got me, understood me on a deeper level. Like I say, I don’t know if it was the alcohol or the drugs, but things just got deeper for me.’ A long, heavy sigh left her lips, and her gaze fell to her feet. ‘But it didn’t for her,’ she continued. ‘I got her number and tried to meet up a couple of times outside The Nights, but it just… it just didn’t work. She was always too busy, and I was running this place. She ghosted me a couple of times. But I always looked forward to seeing her again, spending the night with her at the manor, you know?’ She hesitated, took another sip. ‘And then I saw her with another woman, some woman dressed in black overalls and a welder’s mask. I don’t know her name or what she looked like underneath her costume, but her and Angelica became inseparable. I didn’t spend another night with her after that. She was gone, had moved on to the next thing.’
Tomek didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t really the sort of thing you consoled someone over. And even if it were, he didn’t have the first idea how to respond. And judging by the bemused and lost look on Oscar’s face, nor did he.
‘How did that make you feel?’ Tomek asked in the end, as the cogs in his brain began to turn. ‘Angry? Upset?’
‘Betrayed,’ Emilia answered.
‘Did you love her?’
‘I… I think so. Even though it sounds silly to say it.’
‘Not if that’s how you felt,’ Tomek remarked. He decided to change course. ‘How long have you been doing hair and make-up for?’
‘All my life. It was all I was ever good at at school, so I got my qualifications and I’ve been running my place for about five years now. Before that I was doing hair and make-up for a couple of the television shows on BBC and ITV.’
‘Nice,’ Tomek said. ‘You must have a lot of patience for that. I hear sometimes it can take hours to do hair and make-up.’
She shrugged, nodding. ‘It can. But once you know what you’re doing, you can shorten that time substantially.’
Now it was Tomek’s turn to nod and take a sip from his drink. For a long moment, nobody said anything. Tomek watched a group of mums wheel their prams across the field. One of them let a dog off the lead, and with the help of a catapult, launched a ball fifty yards across the grass. The dog bounded across the field for it, eventually catching it in its mouth before racing back to its owner.
‘We have to ask,’ Oscar started, breaking the silence. ‘But what were you doing last Friday night? Not the one just gone; the one before.’
Emilia began playing with the cup in her hands, composing herself. Thirty seconds later, she answered the question.
‘I was out with my friends. We were at Memo bar in Southend. I saw Angelica at the bar, dancing with some guys, but I don’t think she recognised me. I was going to go over to speak with her, but to be honest, by that point, I was done with her. I didn’t want anything more to do with her.’
Interesting, Tomek thought. Perhaps Emilia was so done with her, so upset and betrayed by Angelica’s actions, that she’d reacted and killed her.
CHAPTER FIFTY
There were few times in Tomek’s life when he felt genuinely concerned. Like the time he’d come face to face with his brother’s killer, or the time he’d been dangled over a bridge across a train track. But none of them came close to the concern he felt when he saw DC Chey Carter’s face as he returned to the office. The smirk on the constable’s face was wide, leering, creepy. And to make it worse, there was a demonic look in his eyes, as though he’d been possessed by something and Tomek was his next victim.
