Breaking Dead: A stylish, edge-of-your-seat crime thriller (The Sophie Kent series) Read online

  My desk was virtually bare. No photos, no novelty desk toys, just a mug with the words Don’t Panic printed on the side and a potted cactus. Not the same cactus Tommy bought – that had died after a month. Contrary to popular belief, cactae aren’t that easy to keep alive. It didn’t stop me replacing one each time it perished. I pressed my finger against a cactus needle until it pierced my skin. I felt nothing, even when a droplet of blood bubbled up.

  Tommy had pricked his thumb on the cactus when he gave it to me. ‘Christ, Sops. Ow!’

  It was one of his more lucid days. He’d been staying with me for a week, ever since he showed up on my doorstep one bitter evening, stinking of the streets. It had been six months but, when the doorbell rang, I knew who it was. I opened the door to find Tommy shivering on the doormat; a beaten-up backpack, crammed full of God knows what, slung over his shoulder and a filthy sleeping bag secured to the top with a rusty bike clip.

  He looked at me warily; his face the colour of chalk and eyes, once so clear and blue like mine, cloudy with toxins. ‘Hi, Sops, any chance I can crash?’

  I wrapped my arms tightly round him, burying my face in his navy parka, inhaling the grime and loneliness of the streets, until a tiny sob escaped; mine or his, I wasn’t sure. It never got any easier. I pushed Tommy towards a hot shower, then laid clothes out for him. I’d taken to keeping men’s clothes in a drawer for whenever Tommy showed up. He always took them gratefully but whenever he next appeared, with the exception of his parka, they were gone.

  Tommy joined me in the kitchen wearing tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt, looking almost himself again. He’d always been a slip of a thing. Five years my junior, he morphed from a child to an adult without really changing. His little freckled-egg face slimmed down, his silvery hair thickened and his voice deepened. But he only grew a couple of inches taller than me, then his body gave up. Our six-foot-one bully of a father took it as a personal slight, as though Tommy had chosen to stay small to spite him. He called Tommy ‘Sparrow’ and sneered that he had to run round the shower to get wet. Once, on holiday, I caught Tommy smearing suntan lotion in lines across his stomach, hoping the sun would darken his skin and create a shadowy six-pack.

  As kids, we huddled under the duvet at our Surrey manor, Redcroft, where I read him Roald Dahl’s tales of plucky children triumphing over wicked adults to gently instil in Tommy an alternative creed, where love and happiness were not defined by size and strength. But the less he grew, the baggier his clothes became, as though he was protecting himself with a fabric suit of armour.

  Then, at thirteen, Tommy was packed off to boarding school and I couldn’t look after him anymore. I begged my parents not to send him. Tommy was too delicate for the lofty dormitories and cruel rituals of boarding school. Even at that age, he woke up in soaked sheets.

  My father warned me not to interfere. ‘I’m doing Sparrow a favour. A ribbing will toughen him up. I learned that from your grandfather. Didn’t do me any harm, did it?’

  My mother didn’t say anything at all. I always suspected that sending Tommy away was her idea. I was about to leave for Oxford University and, with Tommy gone, she could drift from room to room in a vapour of talc, devoting herself to gin-soaked nights playing bridge, before locking herself in her bedroom, turning up the record player and letting Rachmaninoff’s nimble fingers play her to sleep.

  That night, as I slid a mug of hot tea across the kitchen table, I noticed the bruised track marks running up the inside of Tommy’s arm. He caught me staring and hastily reached for his jumper.

  ‘I’m trying, Sops, it was going well . . .’ He cradled the mug between his small hands, looking down at the tea as if he couldn’t believe it was real.

  ‘Tomorrow, Tommy. You need sleep. The bed’s made up.’ His eyes flickered at the mention of bed and I wondered how long it had been since he’d slept in one. When I went to check on him later that evening he was fast asleep still wearing his clothes – old habits, I guessed. I hunkered down in my bedroom, mentally preparing myself for the gruelling days ahead.

  ‘There you are!’ Kate Fingersmith’s chaotic brown curls appeared over the top of the desk divider, snapping me back to the present. ‘God, you look shit.’

  Kate was in her early forties and something of a mentor. She was tenacious, ballsy and her record for breaking news was legendary in the industry. She perched on my desk, enveloping me in a cloud of bergamot. Kate wore men’s cologne; perfume made her feel ‘frilly’.

  She handed me a mug of coffee. ‘Drink this. What have you been doing, Kent? Or should I say “whom”?’

  I forced the memory of Tommy away. ‘The tramp look is very Spring/Summer 2014. Which you would know if you ever bothered to read the fashion pages of our esteemed paper.’ I took a sip, wincing as Kate’s industrial-strength coffee hit my tastebuds. She drank so much of the stuff it was a wonder she didn’t vibrate.

  Kate gestured towards her outfit. ‘Do I look as though I waste my time reading that drivel?’

  She had a point. Kate’s closet staples, baggy shirts and crumpled trousers, made her large frame look like a badly packed rucksack. ‘There’s more important stuff going on in the world. My piece on government corruption, for one. And who you were with last night.’

  She gave me a sly look and I widened my eyes innocently. ‘I have zero idea what you’re referring to.’

  Kate sighed. ‘Where’ve you been anyway? Nutsack’s been hovering around my desk looking for you.’

  She meant Mack. Kate had secretly christened him Nutsack on a slow day in the newsroom, after deciding he walked ‘like a man who’d been kicked in the nuts’.

  I filled Kate in on what had gone down at The Rose. ‘Natalia didn’t want to open up to me in the first place, but I pushed and pushed and look what happened. I mean, fuck, Kate.’

  Kate put her hand on my shoulder. ‘You can’t go down that road, my friend. Natalia knew the risks when she spoke to a reporter.’

  I slammed the mug down on the table and two guys on the sports desk looked round. ‘Bullshit, Kate. We have to protect our sources.’ I squeezed my eyes shut. ‘I should never have let her walk away yesterday.’

  Kate gave me a long look. ‘You know you’re not responsible for everyone all the time.’

  I knew what she was referring to but I refused to engage. ‘I appreciate the concern but I’m fine.’ I swivelled my chair back round to my computer.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ Mack appeared at my shoulder.

  ‘She’s been having a pedicure. Where do you think she’s been?’ Kate couldn’t hide the scorn in her voice. As News Editor, Mack was technically her superior but Kate was far too experienced to take any crap from him.

  ‘Sorry, I was about to fill you in.’ I yawned loudly, then regretted it when I saw the look on Mack’s face. ‘I was on a murder scene at The Rose.’

  ‘As your department head, I need to know where you are at all times.’ He fixed me with a meaningful stare. The subtext wasn’t lost on me. He was angry I bailed on him this morning.

  ‘It all happened so fast,’ I said, mumbling into my coffee mug.

  ‘Oh, give her a break.’ Kate stood up so she was at Mack’s eye level. ‘If there’s a murder, you don’t bugger about with office admin. Sorry, Rowley, I missed that scoop because I was too busy cc’ing everyone in on my precise location.’ She roared with laughter. I glanced at Mack and saw he’d gone very still. ‘Or better still, why don’t you fix Sophie with a tracking device and save yourself the hassle.’

  Mack glared at us, then hissed: ‘I’ll see you in conference.’ He slunk away and I felt the air around me grow momentarily lighter.

  Kate watched him leave, her face flushed with pleasure. ‘Well, that was fun.’

  She turned back to look at me. ‘Speaking of conference, might I suggest you freshen up? You don’t resemble a shining beacon of journalistic talent right now.’

  I walked straight past the mirror, not wanting to see the
evidence of last night etched into my face, and locked myself in a cubicle. This thing with Mack had to stop. Rowley frowned upon office relationships at the best of times (‘Don’t shit where you eat, people’), so God knows what he’d do if he found out about the affair. So far we’d got away with it, but Mack was teetering on the edge of a career nosedive. I couldn’t trust him not to drag me down with him. It took two to tango, but only one would be labelled a ‘slut’. And it wasn’t the one with the penis.

  A splash of water did little to sort my face out. I pinched my cheeks and rubbed the smudge of mascara under my eyes. My hair smelled like a fireman’s armpit. I looked down at my grey Stella McCartney trouser suit. The expensive cut was doing its best but even a fifteen-hundred-pound suit looked as if it came from the clearance bin at Primark if you stopped hanging it up. I ran my fingernail over a small, crusty stain on top of my thigh and rifled through my bag for some gum. Then I stood back and gave myself the once-over. It would have to do.

  ‘Shall we run through yesterday?’

  Austin Lansdowne, The London Herald’s formidable Deputy Editor waved a copy of the previous day’s edition in the air. I leaned against the wall of Conference Room Two, along with all the other second-tier reporters who weren’t senior enough to warrant a seat at the oval table. The heating was on full blast and a few of the men had removed their jackets.

  ‘Fuck’s sake.’ Kate fanned herself with her notebook on the chair in front of me. ‘It’s hotter than two hamsters farting in a sock.’

  Someone near me stank of stale cigarettes and something else unpleasant that I couldn’t put my finger on. I had a worrying thought it could be me. I shifted the weight in my feet as Austin began his daily critique of the news stories that hit the mark, and those that didn’t. The European Union’s plans to cut the speed limit to 60 mph on the M3 garnered the most online reader comments, followed by a sighting of the Kardashian clan on Bond Street. Austin rolled his eyes at the latter and earned a few sniggers from around the room. Rowley, sitting on his left, remained expressionless. He was careful to not scorn outwardly anything or anyone that caused a spike in readership.

  Charlie Swift, the Business Editor, raised his eyebrows at me from across the room and I grinned. We’d been friends since the 2008 Christmas party: Charlie sweating in a Lycra Spiderman costume, me an irritable Tinkerbell. Over several vodka martinis, he confessed that his wife had recently died. Over the years, as the Tommy situation escalated, Charlie and I were often the last two in the office, using work as an excuse to avoid going home with our thoughts. Then Charlie met a pretty wedding planner from the Home Counties and didn’t feel the need to hang around an empty office any longer. I was happy for him.

  Austin finished talking and there was a pause.

  Rowley cleared his throat. ‘Today’s edition. What has Page One potential at this stage?’

  ‘It’s got to be Operation Yew Tree and Dave Lee Travis,’ said Spencer Storey, the City Editor. A murmur went round the room. The former Radio 1 DJ had just been sensationally cleared of assaulting ten women.

  ‘An absolute catastrofuck,’ said Austin, shaking his head.

  Rowley nodded. ‘Travis has another hearing on the 24th. I want someone live-blogging from the courthouse.’

  I switched off as the discussion moved on to the new wave of English footballers who were filling the nation with hope ahead of the World Cup. Suddenly I realised everyone was staring at me.

  ‘Sorry?’

  Austin smirked. ‘Would you care to enlighten us about your morning’s activities? If it’s not too much trouble, of course.’

  I felt the colour rush to my cheeks. ‘Uh, yes. An eighteen-year-old woman was killed last night. At The Rose Hotel.’

  ‘Mmmm.’ Austin was staring at his iPad only half listening.

  I cleared my throat. ‘Early reports suggest she was a model. London Fashion Week kicks off today so it’s bound to bump up the interest level.’

  ‘We’re talking page three, at least. Fit model throttled in glitzy London hotel. It’s sexy, it sells.’ Mack’s eyes shone desperately.

  I stared at him, careful to keep my face neutral. ‘That’s one way of putting it.’

  Rowley tapped his silver pen on his notepad. ‘Any word on who she is?’

  ‘Police haven’t released her name but I know her. Her name is Natalia Kotov. She was my source on a potential story.’

  ‘Which story?’ Austin looked up.

  I explained that Natalia and I had met the day before to discuss how to take the issue of her assault forward.

  Austin snorted. ‘Russian? She’s got to be a hooker. What do we reckon: sex game gone wrong?’

  I let the sniggers die down before responding. ‘I need to find out whether Natalia was killed because of who she was or what she was.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Rowley asked, watching me closely.

  ‘Well, her face was hacked to bits. The killer symbolically destroyed her livelihood.’ An image of the bloodstain on the bed resurfaced in my mind and I faltered. ‘Or the motive could be more personal to Natalia.’

  ‘What do we know about this girl?’ Rowley scanned the room. ‘Where’s the bloody Fashion team?’

  A timid hand went up from an assistant in oversized glasses. ‘They’re at the shows.’

  ‘Well, when they appear, find out what they know about her.’

  ‘Maybe she was killed because someone saw her talking to you.’ Mack’s voice was like ice. He clearly wasn’t letting me get away with this morning’s disappearing act. ‘How hard did you push this girl?’

  ‘That’s enough, Mack.’

  I threw a grateful look at Rowley. ‘It’s possible, yes. It’s one of the avenues I’m investigating.’

  ‘And what are the others?’ Rowley asked.

  ‘My priority is piecing together the hours between when I saw her and when she was murdered. I’ve already made some headway with the hotel staff and I know she’s close to her agent. I’m going to Models International after this.’

  ‘Ooh, do you need someone to hold your Dictaphone?’ Rupert Brewster the Sports Editor batted his eyes at me.

  ‘It’s probably too early for any social media response to her death but I’ll have a dig. Also, she had a flatmate who might let me snoop around their flat.’

  Rowley nodded. ‘Ask Pictures to start pulling off catwalk shots. Get something on the website in the next hour, then flesh it out for the print edition later today. There’s no point peddling the personal angle until you have more to say. And keep her name off your first write-up. I don’t want to do our competitors’ work for them. OK, good.’ He shifted his attention away from me and I exhaled slowly.

  ‘Nice save, Kent,’ Kate muttered. ‘Next time take the nap after conference.’

  Back at my desk, I downed painkillers with a swig of Kate’s cold coffee, then typed out a story for the website. Once I got a thumbs-up from the web editor, I tweeted the link to my followers. Then I searched for Natalia’s Facebook page. She didn’t have one, but she did have a Twitter account. She posted her first tweet in July just after she moved to London.

  @N_Kotovofficial woooo luv London, u my best city!

  I scrolled through Natalia’s feed. It was mostly lame chat-up lines and desperate shout-outs from male admirers. She’d racked up 15,432 followers but never responded to anyone. My eyes stopped on 16 August.

  @N_Kotovofficial Hey, u. Leave me alone. STOP.

  That was the last thing she ever tweeted. I scrolled back up, the black letters dancing in front of my tired eyes. There was nothing overly threatening in the lead up to her final tweet.

  @mr_sound I need you baby, I need you now

  @Cityofbrides Looking for love?

  @LyLaw what up bitch? See you at Givenchy!

  Even I knew that @LyLaw was Lydia Lawson, the notorious Brit model and tabloid darling. I clicked on the other two. The profile picture for @Mr_sound showed a teenage boy on a skateboard, skinny legs p
oking out the bottom of baggy shorts. His feed was full of exclamation marks and abbreviations I didn’t understand but it didn’t look particularly suspicious. And @Cityofbrides posted similar tweets to Natalia most days. I punched it into my search engine and a Russian dating website popped up. The tag line was Beautiful, single Eastern European women looking for love.

  ‘Hey, Kate?’ I stuck my head over the desk divider. ‘When you covered that story about the Ukrainian woman who killed her Irish husband, did you ever come across a website called cityofbrides.rs?’

  Kate stopped typing. ‘Hang on.’ I heard her rifling through her notebook. ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Could be nothing but a Russian dating service has been tweeting Natalia.’

  ‘Yeah, I interviewed a woman who told me that agencies recruit potential brides via social media. They send out messages enticing them with money. You know, like in the olden days when your Hotmail inbox was full of penis enlargement emails.’

  I raised my eyebrows. ‘Yours might have been.’

  ‘Don’t pretend you didn’t get yours enlarged.’

  I snorted and turned back to my screen. Did Natalia join this City of Brides website? I searched for her name but there were no matches.

  I unscrewed a bottle of water and took a swig, then pulled up her most recent photo shoot: a fashion story in W magazine. Natalia was reclining on satin sheets, wearing nothing but a wig the colour of candyfloss and layers of neon chiffon. She gazed at the camera, eyes wide, lips parted, looking very Lolita-on-acid. The caption read: photographs by Liam Crawford.

  A searing heat spread across the back of my neck. Liam was Fashion’s enfant-terrible photographer and on–off boyfriend of Lydia Lawson. But that’s not how I knew him. Liam and I were both at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, before he dropped out to pursue photography, much to the anguish of the female population. I lost count of the conversations cut short by Liam’s cheekbones entering the room. I refused to become one of the simpering masses and kept my distance. Until the night of the Keble Ball, when Liam flicked his eyes in my direction. A flash of that heated night lit up my memory. The bottle slipped out of my hand and clattered onto the desk.