‘That’s my darkroom,’ said Henrietta, indicating a door beside the chest freezer.
The remaining walls were crowded with beautiful photos depicting textures and bold colours, and incredibly intricate shapes. In one photo Erika saw the uniformed ridges of the sand on a crystal-clear seabed, and in another it looked like an extreme close-up of ice crystals.
‘What’s this?’ asked Moss, who was equally puzzled, along with Peterson, by a photo of a roughly textured silver disc.
‘That is a coin, minted in the Norman era. It’s an extreme magnification of the coin’s edge,’ said Henrietta, coming to join them and peering up at the photo. ‘I have another one here of a snooker ball,’ she said, pointing at a photo which looked like the rocky surface of a cliff face. ‘When magnified to the extreme, there are peaks and troughs which wouldn’t look out of place in a mountain range.’
‘And what’s this?’ asked Peterson, pointing to a photo of a reddish mass which contained various bubbles and feathery fronds.
‘The digestive tract of a horse. I didn’t have the whole horse here in the studio, just the intestine. I’ve been doing a series of photos on the flesh and anatomy of wild animals. Hence, the freezer,’ she said, pointing her stick at the chest freezer humming at the back of the room. A look passed between Erika, Moss and Peterson. Henrietta caught it, and fixed her poached-egg Midas stare on Erika.
‘What is it, officers?’
‘Did any of your photography projects involve cats?’ asked Erika.
‘Yes.’
‘And did you ask Charles to dispose of these cats?’
‘Yes. Yesterday, after we had drinks, I asked him to deposit the bodies of two dead cats, which I had in this freezer, into the communal refuse bins.’
‘Where did you find the dead cats?’ asked Erika, feeling triumph but also a sense of alarm that her instincts about Charles had been wrong.
Henrietta hobbled over to a cluttered desk by the window, and leafed through a pile of papers.
‘Ah, here,’ she said, holding out a piece of paper. Erika moved to the desk and took it. ‘I have to keep official records for the Arts Council, they fund a portion of my work. That’s an invoice, of sorts, from Fogle and Harris Vets in Dulwich. The bodies of two cats, who sadly had to be put to sleep, were donated to me for photographic use.’
Erika scanned the invoice.
‘How long do you keep the animals before you dispose of them?’
‘I freeze them, and then thaw to photograph. I do have to be careful about decay, I only have an hour before things get nasty. I dispose of the smaller remains the night before bin day, so they’re not hanging around and stinking up the communal rubbish bins. It’s all legal.’
‘Why didn’t Charles tell us?’ said Erika. ‘He could have saved us a lot of time.’
‘I’ve asked him not to tell people about this particular project. People can be very sensitive about these things.’
‘But it went so far. We arrested him,’ said Moss.
‘Charles is very loyal. A very good friend, to his own detriment,’ said Henrietta.
‘Did Vicky ever talk to you about the arrangement you had with this local vet?’ asked Erika. Henrietta looked up at her and her thick eyebrows knitted together in confusion.
‘Why in heaven’s name would she?’
Erika briefly detailed Vicky’s podcast, and the episode she recorded about the Croydon Cat Killer.
Henrietta shook her head.
‘No, no. I have no knowledge of this, what do you call it?’
‘Podcast.’
‘What is a podcast?’
‘It’s like a radio programme,’ said Moss.
‘Well, she never spoke to me about that. And as I say, I keep my own work very private. This is a very quiet street. A quiet building. I’m taken aback that this awful thing has happened here.’
‘Why didn’t Charles just tell us the reason he had the dead cats in the bag?’ said Erika when they came back out to the car. She looked down at the invoice from the vet. ‘He was legitimately disposing of them.’
‘He did hit a police officer,’ said Moss.
‘But that’s nothing to do with Vicky Clarke’s murder… Isaac has estimated Vicky’s death between 3pm and 7pm. Charles would have had to murder her between five and six, and clean himself up to go up to Henrietta’s for drinks,’ said Erika. Peterson arrived back at the car from the flats.
‘Charles just gave me his train ticket and receipt from Monday,’ he said, holding them up. ‘He bought his ticket at Blackheath train station just up the road at 1:55pm. And he took the 2:03pm train to London Bridge.’