Bombing in Belgravia Read online

  “You cannot prevent me from investigating anything. The two of us both know I am better at this job than your entire police force, so if you do not want to both humiliate your entire department and alienate the Taiwanese when you fail to find a killer, you will let me do what it is I do.”

  Violet’s deep brown eyes were as hard as steel. When she wanted to work a case, she did not take no for an answer, no matter how much the police disliked having her around.

  “Fine, but if you find the killer, you don’t get any credit.”

  “When have I ever asked for credit when I do your job?” Violet replied. “Let the morgue know I will be there in the morning.”

  With that, Violet turned on her heel and headed back toward the house. I followed her as she crouched down, looking at every little thing.

  “You know, you could just leave this case alone,” I told her. “The cops usually do manage to find the guilty party eventually.”

  “It is not about finding the guilty party,” Violet told me. “It is more about the intrigue of the crime. And this crime, it has the intrigue. I believe that both of the Lin twins were targets of the crime. The way the perpetrator managed to kill them both took a lot of creativity, although the execution was not perfect.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “Only the girl was killed before the explosion.”

  “Yes, but how was the explosion supposed to happen?” Violet asked. “The person responsible leaked the gas, but they did not put a newspaper in the toaster and leave. They did not throw a Molotov cocktail into the home from afar. No, they leaked the gas, and then they waited for the brother to come home and turn on the light when he entered the home. They would have only done that if they knew the brother was coming home, and therefore, he was also a target of the crime.”

  “And so the goal was to make it look like the girl was on the couch, didn’t notice the gas leak, and that when the brother came home he accidentally blew up the house?”

  “Exactement,” Violet replied, nodding. “It was all supposed to look accidental. However, the explosion was not as large as the murderer must have hoped; we are able to tell that the girl was poisoned, and that the leak was done on purpose. Although the execution was not perfect, the idea behind the crime was inspired. Yes, this is a crime that I am very interested in solving. I do not believe the police will find it simple to solve. There is an intelligent mind at work behind this crime.”

  We spent a few more minutes at the crime scene before Violet hailed a cab and we headed back home.

  Chapter 3

  Violet lived down the street from me; she had been the one to introduce me to my new landlady, Mrs. Michaels. The cab took us back to Violet’s place, but before I could head back to my basement apartment under Mrs. Michaels’ home, Violet motioned for me to follow her to her place.

  It looked like that was all the sleep I was going to get tonight.

  “Come and help me,” Violet told me. “The last time, I worked well when I—how do you say— bounced ideas off you. I think with this case, it will be necessary for me to do that again.”

  “Ok,” I replied, following her to her home. I had to admit, there was something thrilling about watching Violet try and solve crimes. And now that I’d seen the bodies, I was curious as to who had killed the ambassador’s children.

  We made our way into her study, right off the side of the front door. The whole room was lined with books, but Violet immediately made her way to the far corner, where she had a computer sitting on a desk. Violet sat in front of it as I pulled up a straight-backed chair that was surprisingly comfortable and watched as she typed in the name Leo Lin into Google.

  Lee Yang Lin, who went by Leo most of the time, was born in London to parents who had emigrated from Taiwan in the late 1950s. They ran a dry cleaning business in central London, and when Leo graduated from high school at the top of his class, he was accepted into Oxford University, where he studied Law. He married a woman from Yorkshire and they had two children; a pair of fraternal twins named Jenny and Kevin. Going by the pictures we saw online, those were in fact the two victims of the explosion. Both were students at the London School of Economics—Jenny was working on her law degree while Kevin worked on his Master’s degree in economics.

  “Those were definitely our two victims,” Violet said when we saw a picture of the twins together.

  “Absolutely,” I replied. “I wouldn’t want to have to be the person to tell the parents that their only two children were killed tonight.”

  Wordlessly, Violet opened the Facebook pages for both victims. Jenny Lin’s profile was filled with selfies, pictures with other students, business class plane trips to and from Taiwan and luxury handbags. She was well and truly living the dream life of the rich university student.

  Kevin Lin, on the other hand, used his social media far less often. His posts were much more reserved; often sharing not much more than economics articles written by various experts in his field. His profile picture was a shot of him in a business suit in Hyde Park, obviously posed. Despite the fact that they were twins, going by their social media they could not possibly have been more different.

  Violet switched over to their Instagram accounts. Kevin Lin’s was private, but Jenny Lin’s wasn’t. Most of the pictures were the same as on her Facebook feed; Jenny Lin certainly lived a life of luxury and travel. It looked like she’d already been to Asia three times this year, and it was only May! I wondered how good her grades were; I certainly could have never taken multiple days off every month and kept up even a remotely decent GPA.

  As Violet continued to look up our victims online, I felt my eyelids getting heavy. The adrenaline from the crime scene was wearing off, and I was still working on just a few hours of sleep. I struggled to keep my eyes open; I knew I needed to stay awake.

  * * *

  When I woke up on Violet’s couch, with a blanket on top of me, I realized I must have fallen asleep after all.

  “Oh good, you are awake,” I heard Violet say. I groaned and looked up to see her, still dressed, drinking a smoothie that was a shade of green that humans just weren’t designed to drink. Knowing Violet, however, I knew whatever she had planned for us didn’t involve a pit stop at McDonalds. That smoothie probably even had kale in it.

  “I guess I fell asleep,” I said. “Thanks for putting me on the couch. How did you even manage that?” I asked, looking at her frame. Violet had to weigh a hundred and fifteen pounds, at best. I had at least thirty pounds on her. She just shrugged.

  “You’re not that heavy.”

  I eyed her up and down before realizing the futility of my attempts at getting any information out of Violet that she didn’t want to give.

  “Now, you have to get up. We are going to see some of Kevin and Jenny’s friends. First, we’ll be meeting some of Jenny’s friends in thirty minutes.”

  I groaned as I rolled off the couch and hoped against all hope that wherever we were going, there was a Starbucks.

  Twenty-five minutes later Violet and I were sitting outside the London School of Economics library. We were on a long concrete bench that doubled as a car barrier, next to an adorable statue of a little baby elephant. I gazed up at the gorgeous brick building with its white windows that just screamed classy academics, when three girls came up to us.

  “Are you Violet?” one of them asked. She had just a hint of a Chinese accent.

  “I am,” Violet answered. “And this is Cassie.”

  “I am Cee-Cee,” the girl replied.

  “Sue,” the brunette next to her said, holding out a hand. Her eyes were red; it was obvious she had been crying recently.

  “And I’m Laurenne,” the last one told us, as Violet motioned for them all to sit on the bench next to us. I let the three girls sit near Violet, and I sat on the far end, on the other side of Cee-Cee.

  “I am sorry about your friend, first of all,” Violet said, and the three girls muttered thank you.

  “It’s just so
out of the blue,” Laurenne burst in. “When I heard this morning, I just couldn’t believe it. Jenny wasn’t the type to get herself murdered.”

  “So you think there is a type?” Violet asked.

  “Well, yeah. I mean, she didn’t do drugs. She wasn’t the kind of girl to get into fights at a bar. She didn’t have a creepy ex-boyfriend stalking her. She lived a totally normal life.”

  “There is nobody in Jenny’s life that you can think of who may have wanted her dead?” Violet asked.

  “That’s the weird thing,” Sue said. “There really isn’t. There was nothing strange about Jenny at all recently. She was supposed to go to Taiwan a few days ago, but then cancelled the trip at the last minute, but she said that was because she was too busy studying for exams. I don’t blame her, I would have cancelled that trip too.”

  “There is one thing,” Cee-Cee interrupted. “I do not know what it means. It may be nothing. But I need to say it, because if it helps catch the person who did this to Jenny, I want you to know. A few days ago, I saw Jenny on the street. I went up to say hi to her, but didn’t realize she was on the phone. She was not the type to use her phone much, she almost always texted. So I thought it was strange that she was phoning someone. And then, I heard a little bit of the conversation. She told the person on the other end that she knew what she was doing, that everything was going to work out in the end and that no one would ever know.”

  “Do you know what she was talking about?” Violet asked, but Cee-Cee shook her head.

  “No. She sounded… upset. Upset, and a little bit angry. I just left, and she never knew I saw her. I kept it to myself, but then when I found out about what happened, I couldn’t help but wonder…” Sue trailed off.

  “Don’t worry,” I told her. “There’s nothing you could have done to prevent this.” I didn’t know if she was feeling guilty or not, but I was pretty sure that if she was, Violet certainly wasn’t going to assuage those feelings.

  Sue gave me a grateful smile in return.

  “So none of you know what Jenny might have been talking about in that conversation?” The other two girls shook their heads at Violet’s question.

  “All right, thanks,” Violet told them, and the three girls left.

  “I wonder who Jenny was talking to,” I mused, and Violet shrugged her shoulders.

  “I am more interested in what she was talking about, personally. But we cannot know. Not yet, anyway. We do not have enough information about the girl. Her friends were sadly not as helpful as I would have hoped. But no matter; we can get our information from other sources. For example, if I am not mistaken, here comes Ken Chu, a friend of Kevin Lin’s.”

  Ken was a friendly looking guy in his early twenties, the kind that you just knew had an easy smile, despite his sombre face today as he made his way up to Violet.

  “You’re the woman investigating Kevin’s death?”

  “I am,” she replied.

  “Good. The more people that try and find who murdered his sister, the better. I’m not sure how I can help you though; I barely knew Jenny at all. Really just to say hi.”

  “Ah, but you misunderstand. Kevin was an intended victim in the blast,” Violet told him. Kevin’s eyebrows rose slightly.

  “Kevin was murdered as well? I thought it was just bad luck that he came home when he did.”

  “The police likely think that. But the police are idiots. I strongly believe the person who blew up that house knew that Kevin was going to be coming home, and that they set off the gas expecting him to turn on the light as soon as he entered the house.”

  “No way,” Ken muttered, almost to himself, chewing on his lower lip. “I can’t believe anyone would murder Kevin.”

  “Ah, but you have your suspicions about something,” Violet said, her eyes beginning to gleam as she leaned forward. “It is obvious.”

  Ken shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t have anything solid, anyway.”

  “What do you think? Tell me everything; you never know what could be important later on.”

  “Well, it’s just that for the last few weeks, Kevin’s been a lot more stressed out than usual. He’s been a little bit more distant, too. Forgetting about plans we’ve made, skipping classes, that sort of thing. He never used to do that before, it’s totally out of the ordinary for him.”

  “Do you have your suspicions as to why?”

  “Honestly, I thought he might have got himself a girl. Maybe someone his parents wouldn’t approve of, hence the extra stress. I’m not sure, really. With exams and stuff, I was kind of caught up in my own stuff right now, you know?”

  “Yes, of course,” Violet said. “How close was Kevin with his sister?”

  “They weren’t extremely close,” Ken replied. “Not the kind to tell each other everything. But they shared that house on Bourne Road. It wasn’t like they fought or anything like that, they just kind of lived like housemates. They each had their own lives, but they got along well enough all the same.”

  “All right, thank you,” Violet told him, and Ken shook her hand.

  “Please find the person who did this,” he implored. “Kevin was a good guy. If someone killed him on purpose… I just can’t believe someone out there could do that to a guy like Kev.”

  Violet watched Ken Chu’s retreating back as he walked back in the direction of the library entrance.

  “Well, I think what we have learned from Ken tells us that my theory that they were both murdered is even more likely to be correct.”

  “Because he was acting weird? Maybe he just had a girlfriend, like Ken said.”

  “From the research I did last night, I can practically guarantee he did not. A person beginning to act in a stressed manner only weeks before they are killed? I am very inclined to believe that whatever Kevin Lin was stressed about, it led to his death.”

  My phone suddenly buzzed in my purse. I pulled it out and found a text from my friend, Brianne.

  Just finished a day at the hospital and I am knackered. Meet for a drink?

  “Do you have anything else planned for us today?” I asked Violet, and she shook her head.

  “No. I want to see the medical examiner to see the body, but he will not have had the time to do the autopsy yet. I will come by later and we will go together, all right?”

  “Uh, yeah, sure,” I replied, my heart dropping as I texted Brianne to tell her I could meet her straight away. I didn’t really want to go to the morgue—I knew with my luck, Jake would be there.

  Jake was one of the pathologists who worked at the morgue. He also happened to be hot as hell. I met him when I helped Violet solve four murders just after I arrived in London, and one day we ended up going on a date. It was really nice, he was amazing, but I hadn’t seen him since.

  Now enough time had passed that I was sure it was going to be awkward. I had always been the studious, nerdy type. I wasn’t very good at dealing with members of the opposite sex. So, my totally rational plan had been to never go near the morgue again, and hope that I never came across Jake again, because then there wouldn’t be any awkwardness. I knew that my plan was ridiculous, but I still didn’t want to go see him later today.

  “Ok, text me when you want to go,” I told Violet. Maybe I could pretend to be violently ill, or something like that. For now, I was going to drown my woes in a beer with my one friend in England who was halfway normal.

  Chapter 4

  Brianne was short, with red hair, an infectious smile and a strong Australian accent. She was working her way through medical school here in London by working part time at Chipotle, which is where we’d met. As soon as I walked into The White Hart, which was mere steps away from the Royal London Hospital where Brianne did most of her studies these days, I saw her waving to me from a table in the corner.

  I made my way through the slightly modern English pub interior, with its white walls and wooden accents, along the dark hardwood floor, past a mishmash of mismatched chairs and tables and the l
ight brown bar, where the bartender was busy pouring ales to a group of doctors who had evidently come here to relax after their shift as well.

  The smell of a traditional English roast wafted through the place as I gave Brianne a quick hug and slipped into the rigid-backed—yet still oddly comfortable—chair across from her, resting my arms on the dark wood table.

  “I’m so glad you came,” Brianne said. “I could totally use a drink after today, and I always feel like such a loser when I sit here on my own.”

  “You could always go and hang out with them,” I said, motioning to the crowd of male doctors who were getting rowdier and rowdier. Evidently they were a few drinks ahead of us. Brianne scrunched up her face.

  “That’s the kind of people I’m trying to avoid by inviting you here,” she said.

  “Oh, so really you didn’t want to hang out with your friend, you just wanted a warm body to sit across from you and ward off the jocks,” I teased, and Brianne stuck her tongue out at me.

  “You also have to listen to me complain about my day,” she replied, and I laughed as a waitress came by and handed us a couple menus with a smile.

  “I’m going straight for the vodka orange double,” Brianne said as she perused the menu.

  “You have had a rough day,” I said when the waitress left. “Going for the double straight away.”

  “And I’m going to down it before I eat any food so I can forget everything that happened today,” Brianne added, leaning her head back. “What do you want to eat, I’ll go up to the bar and order.”

  I told Brianne I wanted a Camden Hells beer and some fish and chips, and she got up, ignoring the catcalls from the doctors as she made her way to the bar.

  “Man, I remember those days,” I told her when she finally got back, thinking of my own days as a resident when I felt exactly the same way. “The feeling that everything is crazy and nothing is normal and everything is on fire. Tell me the war stories, I need to know.”

  “So first, just after nine last night, we get this guy in his twenties brought into accident and emergency. I don’t even know what he was on, but it was some crazy stuff. First he tried ripping his IV out, screaming that we were from the Men in Black and trying to erase his memory. So it took four of us to hold him down and convince him that no, we were not in fact going to erase his memory. We sedated him, and that was the end of that, but man. Hallucinogens are getting weird these days.”