by Ed James
‘Take a right here.’ Loftus was waving his hand like he was trying to get an auctioneer’s attention.
Fenchurch followed his direction up a narrow one-way street. Bingo — a small square of brick mews houses, with eight parking spaces, and only two of them not occupied by a convertible Audi or BMW, and one of them was filled with an old-school Land Rover, the kind that was better suited to navigating a Cotswold stream than the backstreets of north London. Fenchurch claimed the free space and killed the engine. ‘Nice knowledge there, sir.’
Loftus finally let go of the handle above the door. ‘My wife’s family live round here.’
Different strokes for different folks.
‘Well, that saved about twenty minutes and fifty quid in the swear jar.’ Fenchurch got out into the downpour that seemed a lot heavier than back at the heath, and set off back down to the main road. Some Decembers had the loveliest weather the UK had to offer, bright days with no wind and a fresh chill to the air, but this year it was just pissing down. All the time. And just when Fenchurch was finally in the state of mind where he could enjoy nice weather with his expanded family.
He lifted his collar up and hurried down the lane before a taxi could cut up, waving at the cabbie chewing gum as he passed the front. The kind who wouldn’t put up with any nonsense from pedestrians, especially when they wore superintendent uniforms.
Fenchurch stopped at the railing and checked for a break in the tide of traffic on the main road.
Loftus darted across, cap on, his black uniform somehow looking that shade darker with the rain.
Fenchurch had to wait a few seconds for his chance, then he shot across the road, cutting between a car and a slow-moving bus. He walked up to the entrycom, a jolt of pain in his knee, and found the buzzer. Taylor, flat six. Top floor, presumably. He hit it and looked up, couldn’t tell if anyone was in or not.
Loftus tapped his cap, and grinned. ‘You know why Supers have shiny stripes on their hats?’
‘So you can actually see each other when you’re outside?’
‘Correct.’ Loftus smiled, but there was no humour in it. ‘We suffer from a lack of daylight. Stuck in offices all day long. Sometimes it’s like you’re on the mushroom diet. Kept in the dark and fed crap.’
Fenchurch gave him a polite smile, but really, there was something a bit fishy going on with him. All the way over from the park, Fenchurch had got this feeling of unease about Loftus taking a big interest in him rooting around in the old case. If there was something hooky going on, then he needed to find it, but he didn’t see any way other than to play along. ‘Do you honestly think there could be a connection, sir?’
‘I don’t know.’ Loftus looked at Fenchurch with sad eyes. ‘But what I do know is that I’ve developed a tight personal bond with Clive Taylor. As Senior Investigating Officer, I led my team in putting away his daughter’s murderer for life. I sat in those horrendous press conferences with him. I visited here to give him updates. I sat with him in court when Kent was sent down. If anyone’s to come here and ask him questions, it should be me.’
‘Just so long as this isn’t you covering over your tracks.’
‘Simon, you are right not to trust. Sure, I could have made errors throughout my career, and if that proves to be the case I will hold up my hands. But please prove it first, and lynch me later. And if our work here can show that James Kent killed Micah Wiley? Great. Nobody will be more pleased than I. Well, maybe his poor mother. And father. If he’s still alive.’
Fenchurch hit the buzzer again. Yeah, something fishy going on here.
The entrycom rattled with static. ‘Hello?’
Loftus barged Fenchurch out of the way. ‘Clive? It’s Julian Loftus. We need a word.’
‘Hermione’s mother died when she was young, so I had to raise her and her little sister on my own.’ Sitting on the leather sofa, Clive Taylor looked every inch the Hampstead man. Faded rugby shirt in disgusting colours, frayed jeans, moccasins. A chin not so much weak as submerged, and spiky grey hair that he kept running a hand through. ‘It was really tough going, if I’m brutally honest. And then… She… Well… And Lara’s just finished university, and lives up near York, so…’
Fenchurch sat on the armchair opposite him. ‘My deepest sympathies, sir.’
Taylor sniffed. ‘It’s happened, hasn’t it?’ Whatever tricks and techniques he’d used over the last five years to cope, he was clearly a man struggling with two cops in his living room, opening up matters again. ‘I mean, I’d give everything just to be able to go back and keep her in her room that night. But you try keeping a teenage girl under lock and key, it’s…’ He stared off into the distance, as if he was recalling that from his other daughter, some horrific extension of once bitten, twice shy. ‘I’m a writer. I write crime novels, and that was… I couldn’t have conceived of anything so… I mean… Why are you here, Julian?’
‘One thing I need to ask you, sir.’ Fenchurch glanced at Loftus, not least to check that he was still approving this line of questioning, but to just keep an eye on the shifty sod. ‘Did Hermione ever—’
‘Minnie.’
‘Minnie?’
‘That’s what we called her. Her mother was a scholar of Shakespeare and Hermione was the queen of Sicily in The Winter’s Tale. She loved the name.’
‘I didn’t know that, sir. But I read the Harry Potter books to my daughter.’
Taylor winced. ‘Well, yes. She was teased something rotten at school, hence Minnie.’
‘Did your daughter ever mention the name Micah Wiley?’
‘This again.’ Taylor looked over at Loftus. ‘Julian, we went over this five years ago.’
‘Clive, as much as I can tell you’re frustrated with—’
‘Why are you digging up the past?’ Taylor stared at them with damp eyes for a few seconds. He charged over to the window, staring out and shaking his head.
Loftus got up to join him. ‘Clive, we’re not—’
‘Julian, I don’t know what’s going on with you, but my life has been hell the last five years. I’m finally at peace with Minnie’s death and now you’re here. Asking all these questions. Why?’
‘Clive, we’re not here to try and upset you.’
‘No, but you’re making a bloody good job of it.’ Taylor smacked his fist off the window, the glass thudding. ‘Do you have any idea what I’ve been through?’
Fenchurch nodded, but while Fenchurch knew about eighty percent of what Taylor had endured, he wasn’t going to play that card again. ‘I do, sir.’ He stayed sitting, but splayed his palms on his lap. ‘We’re here because Tom Wiley isn’t at peace. And Francine Wiley isn’t either.’
Taylor’s mouth hung open.
‘Sir, are you acquainted with either of them?’
‘No.’
‘Is it possible—’
‘What’s going on here, Julian?’
‘Clive, this is part of a murder investigation. We think that Tom might have—’
‘You think I killed him?’
‘Of course not. Clive, we don’t think you’re in any way involved. Okay?’ Loftus sniffed. ‘We’ve had some intel suggesting James Kent might be involved in Micah’s murder as well.’
‘I see.’ Taylor leaned back against the window, folding his bulky arms over his chest. ‘Well, it’s news to me.’
‘You are aware of the case, sir?’
‘I mean, I remember it, sure. A family going through the same shit as me, but… Minnie was at that age where I was the enemy. Lara was exactly the same a couple of years later. Everything I did was wrong. And Minnie kept so many secrets.’
‘We know your daughter used Schoolbook, but—’
‘The social network?’
‘Right.’
‘That was in the news a while back, wasn’t it? Someone doing something funny there.’
‘Correct. Did she talk about it?’
‘Not to me.’ Taylor blew air up his face. ‘Well, I’ve no idea, s
orry.’ He ran his hand through his hair again. ‘You might want to speak to Barney.’
Loftus frowned, then nodded. ‘Bernard Richardson.’ He looked over at Fenchurch. ‘Hermione’s boyfriend.’
Someone who might know her inner workings, then. Any secrets she was hiding.
‘We’re, uh, still in touch.’ Taylor walked over to a side table and picked up a smartphone. ‘It’s a shared grief thing, helps us both deal with our loss. He lives down in Hackney, or did last I heard. Do you want his number?’
15
Schneider Consulting’s offices were a damn sight fancier than the Met’s in Scotland Yard, even though Edwards House dated back to the mid-nineties, versus the Yard’s much-more recent renovation.
Rows and rows of desks sat in the middle of the room, surrounded by glass-walled partner’s offices and meeting rooms like this one. Fenchurch felt like he was on one of the ships on Star Trek compared with Leman Street.
If you stretched your neck, you could just about see the Tower over the Thames. While Tower Bridge was obscured by a neighbouring building, the white-painted external walls were covered with arty photos of the famous landmark in the fog and mist.
Ashkani checked her watch again. ‘Shall I go and see if I can find him?’
‘Will that speed anything up?’ Fenchurch sipped from his paper cup. Tasted like high-end mineral water, rather than coppery stuff out of a tap. ‘How were Damon Lombardi’s parents?’
‘As you’d expect. Grieving. Asking about the body, all the usual stuff. They seem like nice people, though I’m glad I don’t have to head out to Ramsgate again any time soon.’
‘You get anything useful?’
‘They didn’t know much about his life, if that’s what you mean. Certainly not about the debts, anyway. Thought he was doing well. Good job, hobbies, friends.’
Fenchurch held her gaze for a few seconds. ‘But no mention of his love life?’
‘Correct.’
‘Think there’s anything in that?’
‘Not really. I mean, I didn’t tell my folks about Dean until we got engaged.’
‘True, but I introduced Abi to mine after our third date.’
‘I guess everyone’s different, sir. I bumped into Loftus back at the station.’
‘Oh, and?’
‘Don’t know, sir. He said you were speaking to Dawn?’
‘We had to visit her. To ask her about Micah Wiley’s case.’
‘I worked it too.’
‘She said. Was Loftus asking you about that?’
‘No. I think he was there to see DCI Bell.’ Which made sense. Maybe too much sense. ‘But he said you were up in Hampstead?’
‘We were. Was he asking if I’ve been delegating anything?’
‘No, but he asked if we’d dug anything up about the Hermione Taylor case.’
‘Okay, so next time he asks you, tell him to call me.’
‘Will do.’
‘Dawn told me you worked the Micah Wiley case?’
‘I did. What—’
The door clattered open and a kid in a pinstriped suit powered in, all smiles and eye contact and fizzing with energy. Young enough that he would abuse caffeine to get stuff done, rather than using it to just about cope with whatever life threw at him. But he was stacked and everything bulged, like when a rugby union player wore a suit. He thrust out a hand to Fenchurch. ‘Barney Richardson, pleased to meet you.’
‘DCI Simon Fenchurch.’ He felt like he’d placed his hand under a steamroller. ‘And this is DI Uzma Ashkani.’
The kid was barely out of university, but he’d picked up all the mannerisms of a forty-something golf club member. He eased off his jacket and hung it carefully on the coat rack by the window, then slumped into the chair at the end, swivelling his phone around in his fingers. That kind of casual habit he’d likely acquired from a partner, the kind of behaviour that passed for alpha male territory staking in this industry. ‘So, what can I do you for?’ Not just the mannerisms, but the stock phrases too.
Fenchurch leaned forward on his elbows. ‘Sorry to do this here, sir, but we’re doing some digging into what happened five years ago to Hermione Taylor.’
The energy snapped out of Barney. ‘Oh.’
‘It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it.’
‘No, it’s…’ Barney pinched his nose. ‘It feels like a lifetime ago, you know?’ He looked over at Fenchurch and the old-before-his-years management consultant reduced down to just being a kid again. He must be twenty-one, maybe twenty-two. This environment was sink or swim, and needed a lot of front, but also a lot of denying your thoughts and emotions. ‘Sorry, it’s just… Hermione was… I’m…’
Fenchurch let him take his time.
Barney shook his head, like he was shaking free some cobwebs. ‘Sometimes it hits me. Sorry.’
‘It’s perfectly natural.’
‘I mean, I graduated from university last July. Started here like a month later and… Can’t believe it’s been a year, feels like a decade. I was in Singapore for four months over Christmas last year and now I’m on the bench.’
‘What university was that?’
‘Southwark.’
Fenchurch nodded. ‘My daughter went there. Graduated a year ago.’
‘Right, right. We would’ve been the same year, but I don’t remember any Fenchurches?
‘It’s a big place.’
‘You know, the thing is, I’m sort of over the grief now. In a way. I’ve had a ton of counselling and I can sort of get my head around it, but the thing is I’m just really sad about what happened to her. I can’t imagine how different my life would be if she hadn’t… If…’ Barney snapped out a sigh. ‘We were both going to go to Southwark, you know? Me and Minnie… I… We’d planned a life together and people thought we were mad, but we were just kids who loved each other. So much. I still do. Haven’t been able to even kiss anyone since, it’s… And then, she was taken from me, and…’
‘Did Hermione ever mention the name Micah to you?’
‘No she didn’t. Why?’
‘It’s a murder case in Limehouse the week before hers.’
‘Sorry, no. She talked to me all the time, and… No she… I… Uh… She never mentioned a Micah.’
‘Did she use Schoolbook, do you know?’
‘Everyone did back then. Now it’s all Instagram and WhatsApp and Facebook and Snapchat, but yeah. I mean, her profile’s still there, and I… I used to check it every day. I could recite any of her posts off by heart. Now it’s once a month or so. And…’
The management consultant facade slipped away fully now, leaving Fenchurch and Ashkani in the room with a teenage boy, the best years of his life lost to an incident he had nothing to do with. Losing the love of his life to a predatory schoolteacher.
How the hell could anyone cope with that?
Ashkani stood up and flashed him a curt smile. ‘We’ll leave you alone, sir.’
But Fenchurch sat there, waiting for Barney to look at him. He gestured for Ashkani to take her seat again.
If there was a thin possibility that James Kent killed Micah as well as Hermione — Minnie — then Fenchurch owed it to his parents to investigate.
And if it was at all connected with whatever the hell Tom Wiley had been playing at with that clown Liam Sharpe, well… All the better.
Barney dug the heels of his hands into his eye sockets and sucked in a deep breath through his nostrils. ‘Sorry, it still bubbles to the surface, you know?’
‘I know, sir. It’s the same for Clive Taylor.’
‘Right…’ Barney looked over at Fenchurch with damp eyes. ‘Did he tell you how we meet up every year on Minnie’s birthday?’
‘He mentioned something about that.’
‘It was my counsellor’s idea. If we celebrate her life every year on her birthday, then it helps to process things and put it in the past.’ But it didn’t look like Barney had processed much and was still living a good chun
k of his life back as a seventeen-year-old. ‘But on the… the eighth of August, one of us will phone the other. The date she died. It’s much tougher than I expected. And gets worse every year. Clive… He’s… He had a drink problem, how he thought he was coping with her death, but Lara, his other daughter, she… she got him to stop. But when we met, he had a litre of bourbon with him. I told him to ditch it. Don’t lose all that sobriety.’
‘That’s a good thing for you to do.’
‘It’s weird. It’s like I’m the parent? But I know if I’m thinking about Minnie on that day, that Clive will be too. And he took it even harder than I did. Who wants to bury their own child?’
Fenchurch nodded, maybe a bit too vigorously. ‘Have you ever spoken to Tom Wiley?’
Barney frowned.
‘Micah’s father.’
Barney shut his eyes and swallowed hard. ‘I didn’t know that was his name, that he was… I’d kind of forgotten that… That Micah was mixed heritage, so…’
‘So you do know him?’
‘Right. And he’s been hassling me.’
Ashkani frowned. ‘Hassling you? How?’
‘He… I don’t know how, but he found out where I lived. One night after work, he was waiting outside my flat.’
‘What was he asking?’
‘About his son’s death. He seems to think that… that scumbag killed Micah as well. I listened to him, but I couldn’t help him. And it was all in the past… God, I feel so selfish.’
‘It’s understandable. You’ve got a life to live.’
Barney nodded along with that. ‘But that made him really angry. And he started turning up at the client I worked at, asking to speak to me.’
‘Did you call the police?’
‘Right. Well, I tried. Nobody followed up, so I had to move flats at the weekend just to get away from him. And he’s still chasing me here. I mean, I’m on the bench now.’ He raised his hands. ‘It means I don’t have a client. I’ll be on one soon, but I’ve got a lot of personal development stuff to catch up on and…’
‘Did Mr Wiley think you might know what happened to Micah?’
‘Basically, yes. But I have no idea. Why would I?’