Perfect Girls: An absolutely gripping page-turning crime thriller Read online

  Chapter Seven

  After the car has been returned, it’s back to the apartment, to finally enjoy it, properly alone.

  ‘What’s mine is yours…’

  But first, the cleaning has to be done. Gloves on, the floor where the body has lain disinfected and re-polished. Then every surface bleached and scrubbed. Every item of clothing and linen is boil-washed and handled with gloves. There will be no tie-in, no connection possible: the only person who lived here is Phoebe Stiles.

  Then, eventually, it’s time to move on to the next one. There are plenty more of them online, waiting to play host. You just need to get your research right.

  To find the perfect girl.

  Chapter Eight

  Rachel and Brading headed back to the patrol car in silence.

  ‘I need to go to Phoebe’s apartment,’ Rachel told him as she opened the door. ‘Can you take me there?’

  He hesitated.

  ‘It’s all right Officer, I okayed it with Lieutenant Gonzales.’

  He held open the car door for her. ‘Yes ma’am.’

  The apartment was only a few blocks away, but the landscape changed as they drove, becoming greener and more undulating than the dusty valley floor. Phoebe’s rented apartment was in an attractive development built into a slope just off Ventura Boulevard. It was compact and anonymous, comfortable and functional. And cordoned off with crime scene tape.

  Brading had pulled latex gloves and shoe covers from the glove box when they parked, and they both put them on without speaking: a solemn little ritual. He knew to double glove, Rachel noted. A single pair would start transmitting the wearer’s sweat after twenty minutes, causing DNA cross-contamination.

  The apartment’s spacious hallway was lined on one wall with louvered storage cupboards. In the bedroom, the mattress had been stripped and the all bedclothes and any clothes from the wardrobes and drawers bagged and removed. The marble bathroom contained only cleaning materials in the vanity; the laundry area only detergents and a gallon bottle of bleach. The kitchen cupboards were bare of food, the inside of the fridge and oven like surfaces in an operating theatre. Everywhere was spotless; any discernible traces of Phoebe gone.

  Rachel looked over the sofa in the living area; a large L-shaped unit made from pale grey tweedy fabric and dotted with grey and white scatter cushions.

  ‘Did they test the sofa?’

  ‘I believe the forensic people removed fibre samples, ma’am.’

  ‘They need to take these cushions. And –’ Rachel opened the doors of the hall cupboards to reveal a vacuum cleaner – ‘the contents of the vacuum bag should be analysed too. And the washing machine and dryer.’

  ‘Yes ma’am. I’ll get on it.’

  Rachel looked at the young man’s face. ‘What do you think, Brading?’

  ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘About this case. About Phoebe, and how she died.’

  ‘To clean up like this… it seems cold.’ He hesitated. ‘And it makes me think she died here.’

  ‘Go on.’

  He gestured around the apartment. ‘It’s as if the victim didn’t exist. Like she’s been made to disappear. But I think the perp must have known her. It wasn’t just a random killing, or opportunistic. That’s what my gut tells me.’

  ‘You know what, Officer Brading: I agree.’

  ‘And they didn’t do this on impulse. They thought about it.’

  ‘Planned it, too.’ Rachel took one more look round. ‘But why? Why could they possibly want Phoebe gone. What had she done?’

  ‘She definitely pissed someone off.’ Brading tugged off his shoe covers once they were on the communal landing.

  Rachel nodded, bending to pull off her own. ‘Even if she didn’t mean to.’

  * * *

  Back in her room in the Ventana Vista Suites, Rachel sat down with her laptop and searched for Marion Miller. It didn’t take her long to find the website for MM Creative Management. A heavily filtered head shot showed an angular woman with big hair and professional make-up. It was hard to guess the age of the face, which had been lifted, injected and plumped. She could have been anywhere between forty and sixty-five.

  She dialled the contact number on the web page.

  ‘You’ve reached MMCM. I’m afraid we can’t take your call right now, but please leave your message after the tone.’

  Rachel left a voicemail explaining who she was, and asked for her call to be returned as a matter of urgency. It was Sunday, so she wasn’t optimistic that she’d hear back before tomorrow. She changed into her bikini, put on the bathrobe provided by the motel and headed out to the pool area. Although the sun was setting, ten hours of its rays had left a pleasant lingering warmth, and the cloudless sky was streaked with apricot and rose. No one else was brave enough to take on the unheated water in February, so she could breast-stroke her way to twenty lengths in solitude.

  As she ploughed through the chilly water, her mind ran over and over what Phoebe’s parents had said, and what she and Brading had seen – or not seen – at the apartment. If the forensic analysis threw up nothing at all, then it was difficult to see how the investigation could move beyond ground zero. But her experience told her there would have to be something, however fragmentary, however apparently insignificant. If you looked hard enough there was always something.

  After her swim, Rachel looked through the papers Gonzales had given her. The photos of Phoebe’s remains were not an ideal accompaniment to a meal, but it was the series taken at the deposition site that interested her. The plastic-wrapped corpse had been left in a warehousing area at the rear of the store, where the discarded shop mannequins were put to be recycled. Propped in a large dumpster amongst rows of rejected blank-faced dummies, their limbs contorted in a bizarre approximation of human life. This could not have been accidental. In placing Phoebe here, the killer was making a statement. Throwing her away. Cutting her down to size. Rendering her merely one of many.

  She put the photos down and picked up her phone, noticing an earlier text from Brickall.

  Enjoying your holiday, Prince?

  She messaged him back.

  Walk in the park compared to sitting next to you all day.

  He replied immediately, despite the fact it was after midnight at home.

  Seriously you idle cow: when are you coming back? Work’s piling up here,

  Rachel looked at her phone for a few seconds, trying to decide how to answer. Even at this early stage, it was obvious there was more to this case than a random homicide. She was supposed to be preparing for her promotion board back in London, and then there was Joe. Like most teenagers he was engrossed in his own life, but he would still notice her absence. Sighing, she started to type.

  Seriously: it’s going to be a while. Longer than we thought.

  ‘Hello.’ Rachel spoke into the intercom. Silence ensued, accompanied by a faint buzzing.

  She raised her voice. ‘Hello?’

  Marion Miller’s offices were on the second floor of a building on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood. She had waited all morning for a response to her voicemail of the evening before, and when, past midday, there was still nothing, she had availed herself of Officer Brading and his patrol car and paid an impromptu visit, warrant card in her back pocket, notebook in her shoulder bag and irritation in her demeanour.

  The intercom crackled, making her jump. ‘Do you have an appointment?’

  ‘Police.’ The lock clicked.

  She was met by a fresh-faced girl who introduced herself as Marion’s assistant and told her Marion preferred people to make an appointment.

  ‘This is a murder investigation, I don’t need an appointment,’ Rachel told her briskly, refusing a seat in the plush dove-grey reception area and holding up her warrant card.

  ‘May I tell Marion what this is regarding?’

  ‘Phoebe Stiles.’

  ‘One moment please.’

  The girl returned after a few seconds and ushered R
achel into a gaudily decorated corner office, all gilt and glass and faux leopard skin cushions. Like a throwback to the TV show Dynasty, Rachel thought. Portrait photos of the talent lined the wall. She scanned them for Phoebe’s image, but couldn’t find her.

  ‘Marion Miller.’ The woman behind the desk extended her hand. She was dressed in a blonde cashmere sweater and her hair was freshly blown out. In the flesh she was a lot older than her flattering online picture, the face unlined but so waxy, so stretched and pillowed with collagen that it had an oddly cat-like appearance. And the hands gave her away – there was no hiding the veins and the liver spots, no matter how much gold jewellery she wore. Rachel’s age estimate rose to somewhere nearer seventy.

  ‘I’m so devastated about Phoebe,’ Marion told Rachel, her rigid features unable to mirror the emotion she was laying claim to. ‘Anything I can do to help, of course I’m happy to.’

  ‘You could have returned my phone call first thing this morning, then I wouldn’t have had to turn up unannounced like this.’

  Marion pushed out her lips in a pout: the only part of her face that could move. ‘My assistant – she’s new. What can you do?’

  Rachel ignored this. ‘I understand you’d recently found Phoebe some work?’

  Marion waggled her wrists, making her bracelets jangle. ‘You know, what she really wanted was an acting job, on a daytime drama or a comedy. I sent her out to some casting calls, but…’ She appeared to be trying for a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger face, ‘let’s just say the feedback wasn’t the best. Sweet girl, pretty girl, but she couldn’t master a believable Stateside accent.’

  Rachel thought back to Phoebe’s parents’ broad West Midlands inflection.

  ‘But she was photogenic and had a great body, and I got her a TV commercial with Lovely Locks. I don’t think you have it in the UK, but it’s a big hair brand out here. It was a one-day shoot and they used someone else for the voiceover, but it was great money for her. She was really lucky to get it. And the client was pleased,’ she added, as if this mattered now.

  ‘And the date of that shoot?’

  ‘It was around three weeks ago.’ Marion checked a spreadsheet of bookings on her desk. ‘February 2nd.’

  Rachel stared at her.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Marion rummaged in the client file in front of her. ‘I’m one hundred per cent sure. I have a copy of the call sheet here, and the invoice for her fee, which has the date of the shoot.’

  Rachel checked the date on the paperwork. It would give them a timeline that established the date of Phoebe’s death as 2nd February or later. That was less than three weeks ago. Which could only mean the medical examiner must have estimated the date of death wrongly. The remains must have been stored in a way that accelerated decomposition. It would also explain why Mr and Mrs Stiles had still been receiving messages.

  ‘The investigating officer at North Hollywood PD will need to take a formal statement from you, and to see the records that you have. For now, I’ll need a copy of these job details. And we’ll need to see the commercial footage, if you could organise for that to be sent to where I’m staying.’

  ‘Of course. I’ll get the production company to bike over what they have on a disc right away.’ Marion barked at her assistant to make photocopies, then sat down heavily at her desk, pressing her hands to her forehead. ‘Honest to God, I don’t know why anyone would want to hurt the girl. Could it not have been a burglary that went wrong?’

  ‘We don’t think so. We think the killer must have known her.’

  ‘But that’s insane.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ said Rachel drily.

  * * *

  Brading was waiting outside, eyes front, one hand on the steering wheel, the other on his holster.

  ‘Where to, Ma’am?’

  ‘Back to my motel, please.’

  Rachel had decided she would use what was left of the afternoon to write up her notes and answer some of the emails that Brickall was forwarding to her.

  Brading nodded and pulled out of the parking lot. ‘Ma’am, while you were in there I had a call from Lieutenant Gonzales. Preliminary forensics are back. Trace samples from the luminol used on the floor suggest that Ms Stiles was killed there in the apartment.’

  ‘You called it right, Officer,’ Rachel said, as he started the ignition. ‘We’ll make a detective of you yet.’

  Chapter Nine

  The temperature had shot up to the mid-seventies, causing Frank Gonzales to sweat even more profusely. He had called Rachel into his office the following morning to discuss the forensics results from Phoebe’s apartment.

  ‘Checking the vacuum cleaner was a smart idea,’ he conceded. ‘Someone emptied it, but there were a few long blonde hairs still in there. Preliminary results show some were Phoebe’s; some were not. We’ve requested further analysis on those.’

  ‘Any other results back?’

  Gonzales shook his head. ‘Everywhere had been scrubbed down with bleach and ammonia. Same with the linens and Phoebe’s clothes: every single item had been washed at high temperatures and steam pressed. Every dish, plate and fork had been put through the dishwasher; the garbage pail was empty, and bleached. Never seen a crime scene like it; not in thirty years.’

  ‘Wow.’ Rachel leaned back in her chair.

  ‘So I talked with Mr and Mrs Stiles and they said this wasn’t like Phoebe at all. She was messy, kind of sloppy. Left dirty clothes where they fell, never cleaned the kitchen.’

  ‘Could a maid have cleaned it?’

  Gonzales shook his head, which made the beads of sweat on his forehead trickle towards his nose. ‘I don’t think so. The real estate company that Phoebe rented the place from didn’t provide any sort of maid service, nor did the building’s management. And it’s unlikely that Phoebe could afford that kind of additional service.’

  ‘Officer Brading said forensics found something on the floor?’

  ‘That’s the good news. In the hallway there were traces of materials associated with body decomposition. They contain Phoebe’s DNA.’

  ‘So… it’s likely she died there and was kept there for a while.’

  ‘It looks that way.’

  Rachel fixed her gaze on Gonzales’ face. ‘The person who cleaned up is our killer.’

  He shrugged. ‘Or an accomplice to the killer. There were some skin cells that weren’t Phoebe’s found on the cushions: another good call. I’ll update you when we have those results.’

  ‘Lieutenant, I think we may have to review the timeline; specifically, time of death. Phoebe shot a commercial on the second of February.’ Rachel pulled a package out of her bag. ‘This was delivered to my motel, just as I was leaving. It’s a disc of the footage, but I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet. Can we do it now? We probably ought to view it together.’

  Gonzales looked uncomfortable. ‘Mr and Mrs Stiles are on their way here to sign the paperwork for the release of their daughter’s remains. They viewed them yesterday, against my advice. It was pretty rough on them.’

  ‘They might like the chance to watch this,’ suggested Rachel. ‘In fact, seeing her alive might be helpful.’

  Rachel fought back a vivid mental image of Trevor and Pamela looking down at their daughter’s skeletal remains, sodden, half-dissolved shards of flesh still clinging to the bones. She cleared her throat, ‘Listen, I’m sorry I didn’t tell them how badly… how far gone she was. I should have done. I wimped out.’

  Gonzales gave her a steady look. ‘I appreciate your honesty, Detective. There’s just no kind way to tell relatives something like that. I prepared them as best I could. Even so,’ he exhaled hard, ‘they still insisted on seeing her. I only hope it gave them some closure.’

  ‘Believing in closure’s a bit like believing in unicorns,’ observed Rachel, ‘It’s a nice idea, but that’s about all.’

  * * *

  The Stiles’ arrived ten minutes later, and the four of them went to a mee
ting room where there was a large computer monitor and space for four chairs. After a certain amount of wrestling with the technology, and calling for assistance, Gonzales played the CD.

  ‘Lovely Locks…’ breathed the voiceover.

  The opening shot was of a girl running along a rain-streaked street. She was dressed in a flimsy red silk dress, stark against grey sky, dark brick and slick cobblestones. Within the five seconds or so of the shot’s duration she was drenched: her hair slicked around her face and neck. Cut to the head and naked shoulders of the girl, shampooing her hair with improbably lush suds (Nobody uses that much shampoo in real life, thought Rachel). Then a hairdryer was blowing through her gleaming blonde locks, fanning them. The final shot was the girl, impeccably coiffed with bouncing waves, looking back over her shoulder with a smug smile.

  ‘… makes long hair lovely again.’

  There was the obligatory pack shot, then the footage came to an abrupt end.

  Absolute silence.

  ‘She looks very pretty,’ Pamela Stiles said tentatively, clutching her handkerchief to her mouth. ‘Could we see it again – d’you mind?’

  They watched it again. And again. Rachel had looked through many images and video clips of Phoebe, but never seen her as close up as this. Conventionally pretty, heart-shaped face with regular features and the dazzling blue-white, people-pleaser smile.

  ‘She looks different somehow,’ Pamela observed after the disc was finally ejected. ‘There’s something… I can’t put my finger on it. I suppose it’s her hair being wet. And all that make-up they use.’

  ‘Well, we know she’d changed her appearance,’ Rachel reminded her, putting the disc back in her bag. ‘Her hair colour, and getting her teeth done. And then there’s the professional lighting, and the footage may have been digitally altered in post-production. It’s quite common practice.’