The Cutting Place. Jane Casey

two burners. I had already noted the sink was piled high with mugs and glasses; impossible to guess whether Paige had had visitors or if she’d been the sort of person who washed up once a month. A clothes horse was draped with bedsheets and clothes that had dried as stiff as cardboard. I could picture her flinging the damp laundry over it with careless haste.

      ‘Did you look at the bathroom? My pet hate is mildew.’ Liv shuddered delicately. ‘And underwear everywhere. I suppose everything was clean, but …’

      I shrugged at the thought of the straggling tights looped over the shower curtain rail and the squadron of knickers hanging on the rusting radiator. ‘No garden. Nowhere else to dry them. Heaven preserve us from being murdered on laundry day.’

      ‘Amen.’ Liv’s eyes were solemn above her mask. ‘What do you think this place cost her?’

      ‘More than it was worth.’ I was looking at the area of black mould that had gathered in one corner of the ceiling, above the fridge. A tongue of it extended down the wall, out of sight, and I didn’t like to think what we might uncover when we pulled the fridge out to check behind it. ‘Presumably the landlord didn’t mind the mess if she didn’t complain about the condition of the place.’

      I moved across so I could look through the open door into the small bedroom, which had a bed and a bedside table and a clothes rail jammed into the corner. Half of the hangers had shed their dresses and jackets so they puddled on the floor, and the drawers hung open, spilling a waterfall of clothes in bright colours. She had worried about her image in public but behind closed doors she hadn’t cared enough to keep her home tidy. Well, everyone had their guilty secrets about which domestic tasks they shirked. Paige had simply chosen to ignore all of them.

      The crime scene manager, bulky and red-haired and short-tempered, was lifting a champagne bottle off the bedside table with exquisite care.

      ‘Found anything, Adrian?’

      He grunted. ‘One set of prints. It’s half empty. Looks as if she was drinking in bed.’

      ‘On her own?’

      ‘You’ll have to wait for DNA and trace on the bedclothes. My crystal ball isn’t working.’ He carried the bottle out of the room, holding it in front of him reverently.

      ‘So maybe she was alone and maybe she wasn’t.’ I rubbed my forehead with the back of my hand, hating the feel of the latex glove against my skin. ‘Too early to say. In fact, it’s too early to say much about her.’

      ‘She had expensive taste in clothes and shoes.’ Liv peered into a knee-high boot. ‘Dior. Very nice.’

      ‘I didn’t think journalists got paid that well any more.’

      ‘Family money?’

      ‘Or she could have been doing something else on the side to make some cash.’

      ‘Like what?’

      ‘Dealing? Prostitution? Stripping?’

      Liv raised her eyebrows. ‘Based on what?’

      ‘Nothing? It’s a possibility, that’s all, and I don’t think we should rule it out straight away. Sex work is something young women get drawn into from time to time, and it’s high risk. They encounter the kind of men who are used to chopping people up. I’m not judging her – I just think it’s worth finding out if she had some extra income to fund her lifestyle.’ The photographs I’d seen of her in the missing person file showed a thin woman, tanned and groomed, her eyes heavy-lidded, her nose long, her face narrow. Her hair had been blonde with the kind of sheen that took regular salon appointments to achieve. She had dropped her chin to her chest in all three pictures, peering up at the camera with insouciant sensuality. It looked like a studied pose, practised.

      ‘No boyfriend to get in the way if she did do sex work,’ Liv mused. ‘Or girlfriend, as far as we know.’

      ‘Which means no main suspect for us to question.’ I flipped my notebook shut. ‘I’d guess she left here in a hurry, maybe to meet someone, possibly for work given that her computer isn’t here.’

      ‘And she never came home.’

      ‘I wonder what she was working on.’

      ‘I’ll have a look to see if I can find any notes.’ Liv flexed her small hands in her gloves. ‘I can’t wait to get this place straightened out.’