The Stranger You Know (Maeve Kerrigan Novels)

by Jane Casey

  “Dads don’t harm their children. They love them.” For once, Derwent’s ultra-sarcasm had a decent target.

  “What bullshit.”

  “You don’t think fathers have rights?” Derwent’s eyebrows were hovering around his hairline. “I thought you were a liberal, Kerrigan. If I said feminism was wank, you’d report me.”

  “You say that frequently, and I haven’t yet. Anyway, it’s not the same thing. The courts make their decisions on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes the mothers get full custody because the dads aren’t fit to be involved with their families. These men are just sore losers.”

  “Doesn’t mean they’re not dangerous. You know they’ve been sharing tactics with extremist anti-abortion activists in the States, don’t you?”

  “I didn’t, actually.” I was amazed that Derwent did. He generally didn’t bother with reading briefings. In fact, I wasn’t aware of him having read anything properly since we’d been working together.

  “Pace was over in Washington recently, trying to get a US branch up and running. He appeared on a platform with the pro-lifers at a massive rally, though he doesn’t want that to get out in this country in case it puts people off. They’ve got a lot in common, though. It’s all about the sanctity of the family, isn’t it? Two-parent happy families with hundreds of smiling, cheerful children. Fucking fantasyland. If you didn’t read the briefing notes you’ll have missed this too: they found a Dads Matter-affiliated messageboard on the Internet with a list of names and addresses for family court judges and their staff. Everyone is very jumpy about it. They’re expecting parcel bombs and anthrax and God knows what.”

  “How did I miss all of this?” I felt as if I hadn’t done my homework and I’d been caught by my least favorite teacher—which was basically what had happened.

  “Dunno. Maybe you’re too busy concentrating on what’s right in front of you to get a decent idea of the big picture. That’s why you’re a DC. You do all right at the small stuff, but you need a bit of a flair for strategy at my level.”

  Maybe if you didn’t leave all the paperwork and form filling to me I’d have time to read about the big picture. “Thanks for the advice.”

  “Freely given,” he said. “Listen and learn.”

  “I do. Every day.” It was true. If I wanted to know about misogyny, right-wing conspiracy theories or competition-grade swearing, working with Derwent was roughly equivalent to a third-level education.

  Our route took us close to where the protesters stood, rain-blasted and pathetic, huddled in their anoraks like penguins in nylon hoods. Most were middle-aged and a touch overweight. They didn’t look dangerous.

  “They can’t all be evil, and they must miss their children,” I said.

  “Pack of whingers. If they loved their kids so much they wouldn’t have left them in the first place.” He glowered at them. “Anyone who’s got the nerve to sit under the statue of the greatest Englishman who ever lived and make it look like a gypsy camp has got no principles and no soul.”

  “Winston Churchill?”

  “Who else?” He looked at me as if he was waiting for me to argue, but I knew better than to try. Derwent needed a fight occasionally, to do something with the aggression he seemed to generate just by breathing. But I was not going to be his punchbag today.

  I could have sworn his ears drooped.

  Chapter Two

  Back at the office, Derwent threw himself into his chair and waved at me imperiously.

  “Go and find the boss and tell him where we are with the case.”

  I felt a thud of dismay. “Don’t you want to do it?”

  “I’ve got things to do.”

  “So have I.”

  “Mine are more important.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I’m senior to you so whatever I have to do is bound to be more important.” As he said it he was reaching over to pick up a copy of the Standard that someone had left on a nearby desk.

  “Look, I’d really rather not—” I started to say.

  “Not interested. Tell someone who cares.” He glanced up at me. “Why are you still here?”

  I turned on my heel and stalked across the room toward the only enclosed office, where Chief Superintendent Charles Godley was usually to be found. I rapped on the door and it opened as I did so, Godley stepping toward me so that we almost collided. I apologized at the same time as he did. My face had been flaming already because I was livid with Derwent, but embarrassment added an extra touch of heat to my cheeks. I was aware of Derwent grinning at his desk on the other side of the room, and the speculative glances from my other colleagues across the tops of their monitors. I knew, even if Godley didn’t, that there was frequent, ribald speculation he had brought me on to his team because he wanted to sleep with me. I knew that Godley attracted rumors of that sort like roses attract greenflies; he was head-turningly handsome with ice-blue eyes and prematurely silver hair, and I was the first woman he had recruited in a long time, though not the last. I also knew that people had picked up on the fact that I was extremely awkward around him all of a sudden. The general theory was that we had had an affair and I had ended it, or he had ended it, or his wife had found out and she had ended it.

  They couldn’t have been more wrong.

  “Did you want something, Maeve?”

  “DI Derwent asked me to update you about the Somers Town murder—Princess Gordon. We’ve got one in custody.”

  “Her husband?”

  “Partner.”

  “Give me the details.” Instead of inviting me into his office he stayed where he was, standing in the doorway, in plain sight of everyone on the team. Maybe he did know about the rumors after all.

  Briefly, I explained what we had found out. Godley listened, his blue eyes trained on my face. He had a gift for total concentration on whatever was in front of him, and it was a large part of his charm that he made you feel as if you were the only person in the world when he was listening to you. I could have done without the rapt attention, all the same. It made me too aware of my voice, my face, my tendency to wave my hands around while I was explaining things, my suspicion that my hair had gone frizzy in the damp evening air.

  Not that he cared about any of that. He cared about the fact that I had worked out, beyond any doubt, that he was utterly, totally corrupt. He was paid by one of London’s biggest drug dealers, a ruthless gangster with an appalling record of violence, and I wasn’t sure exactly what Godley did for him in return. I didn’t want to know. I had worshipped the superintendent, blindly, and finding out that he was a fake made me more sad than angry. And for all that he was on the take, he was still a supremely gifted police officer.

  I’d promised him I wouldn’t give him away, because it was none of my business and I couldn’t throw him to the wolves. He’d promised me it made no difference to how he did his job, and he’d also promised not to treat me any differently. But he had lied about that, and I was starting to change my mind about interfering. I still couldn’t reconcile the two facts: he was a boss who inspired total loyalty in everyone who worked with him, and he gave away inside information for money. He’d said it was more complicated than I knew, and I wanted to believe him, I really did.

  I just couldn’t trust him.

  “And the sister?” Godley asked.

  “DI Derwent wants to interview her again, but he doesn’t think she was involved.”

  “Unless she’s a fuckwit.” Derwent crossed the room, folding his stolen newspaper as he approached, and sat down at a desk that was currently unoccupied. He started casually, carelessly ransacking the desk, opening and closing drawers. “Who sits here?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I did know, in fact, but I didn’t want to tell him. The desk belonged to DCI Una Burt, his superior and emphatically not a member of the very select group of colleagues that Derwent could stand. Nor was she one of the even smaller group who liked him. “I know they don’t want you to go through their
things.”

  “That’s a nice stapler.” He clicked it a couple of times, very fast. “That’s better than the one I’ve got.”

  “Josh. Concentrate.” Godley’s tone was mild but Derwent dropped the stapler and turned around to face the boss.

  “The CPS were happy for us to charge Olesugwe but they agreed with me that we need to know more about Blessed before we decide what to do about her. I think Olesugwe will plead eventually but at the moment he’s still hoping for a miracle. Which he’s not going to get, because he’s fucked. Did Kerrigan tell you about the keys?”

  “What about them?”

  “Kerrigan had a look through his personal effects before we interviewed him. She spotted that he had the key to the shed and the car, and she just happened to ask him if there was a spare set of car keys anywhere.”

  “The car was fifteen years old,” I explained. “I thought it was probably secondhand or third-hand and there was a good chance it was down to one set of keys.”

  “Well done,” Godley said, without enthusiasm, and I blushed, wishing that Derwent had just said nothing.

  Apparently oblivious, he grinned at me. “You see, you look vague, but you’re actually not all that stupid when you try.”

  “Thanks.” For nothing, I added silently.

  “Makes me wonder why you’re being left out of the big investigation.”

  “What investigation?” I looked at Godley, whose face was like stone.

  “Josh. That’s enough.”

  “It just doesn’t seem fair of you to shut out Kerrigan. She hasn’t done anything wrong.”

  “That’s not what’s going on and you know it.” Godley stepped back into his office. “Come in here and shut the door, Josh.”

  Derwent was flipping through the newspaper again. He flattened it out on a double-page spread near the center and with a flick of his wrist sent it spinning toward me. It landed by my feet. “Have a read of that, Kerrigan. It’s as close as you’re going to get.”

  I picked it up. The headline screamed: SERIAL KILLER TARGETING LONDON’S SINGLES. Most of the space below was taken up with pictures of two young women. One had red hair to her shoulders; the other was dark and had short hair. She was huge-eyed and delicate, while the redhead was a stunner with a full mouth and slanting green eyes. Both were slim, both attractive. And dead. My eye fell on a pull quote in bold type: “They lived alone. No one heard their cries for help.” And then, on the opposite page: “Mutilated and murdered.”

  “It’s not our case,” Godley said, to me. “I’ve been asked to put together a task force in case they turn out to be connected, but I’m working with the local murder teams and they’re still officially investigating them. The victims didn’t know one another. They lived in different areas. The first woman died in January. The second was two months ago. This article is just speculation.”

  I appreciated the explanation but it wasn’t really aimed at me. Nor was Derwent really complaining about me being left out. He wasn’t the type to care. He was absolutely the type to make use of a subordinate to get at his boss, though, and he wasn’t finished.

  “Oh, come on. Of course they’re connected.” Derwent leaned over and snatched the paper back, flattening it out so he could read aloud: “‘Both Kirsty Campbell and Maxine Willoughby lived alone. They worked within two miles of one another in central London. Friends describe both of them as bubbly and outgoing, but unlucky in love—Maxine had never found the right person, while Kirsty had recently broken off her engagement to her fiancé, Stephen Reeves (28). He describes himself as “heartbroken” on the Facebook page set up in memory of Kirsty, but declined to comment for this article. Police have cleared Mr. Reeves of any involvement in Kirsty’s death.’”

  “He declined to comment but they scavenged a quote from him anyway,” I said. “I bet the lawyers made them put in the bit about him not being a suspect.”

  Derwent read on, this time with more emphasis.

  “‘And the similarities don’t end with how they lived. Kirsty and Maxine were strangled in their homes. There was no sign of a break-in at either address, suggesting that in each case they may have known their killer. Most shocking of all is the anonymous tip-off we received that both women were horribly mutilated, their bodies desecrated, their eyes gouged out. Police had not revealed this grisly detail to the public, but more than anything else it seems to suggest that Kirsty and Maxine were killed by the same person.’”

  I shuddered. “That’s horrible. I’m not surprised they didn’t want that detail revealed. But if no one knew, it can’t be a copycat.”

  “It’s not proof of any connection between the two deaths,” Godley said. Derwent slammed his hands down on the desk.

  “Like fuck it isn’t.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about that article, but not out here, Josh.”

  “Nothing to do with me.”

  “Someone tipped them off. Someone who wants there to be a connection between the murders. Someone not particularly well informed. I don’t have to look too far to find someone who fits the bill.” I’d never heard Godley sound so stern. He turned and walked around his desk. Derwent jumped up and followed him. He didn’t even glance in my direction as he went past, his face set and pale, his hands clenched. He slammed the door after him, to make it absolutely clear, as if I hadn’t known it already, that my presence wasn’t required. The newspaper had fallen to the floor, forgotten, and I picked it up. Back at my desk, with one eye on Godley’s door to watch for Derwent’s return, I read through the rest of the article, and discovered two things. One: I knew the senior investigating officer in the Maxine Willoughby investigation all too well. Two: I had no idea whatsoever why Derwent was so angry.

  But I would make it my business to find out.

  Chapter Three

  “What are you doing tonight?”

  I didn’t even look up. “Going home early.”

  “Wrong answer.” Liv began tidying my desk around me, humming under her breath.

  “Can you stop doing that?”

  “It’s so untidy.” Liv was the only other female detective constable on Godley’s team. She was as elegant and lovely as a Japanese ink drawing; I had never seen a strand of her long dark hair out of place. Her own desk was arranged as neatly as if she’d used a ruler to organize it.

  I was basically her exact opposite in every way.

  “It’s creative mess. I work best like this.” I slammed my hand down on a pile of papers that was beginning to slide sideways. “That was fine before you started messing with it.”

  “If they ever bring in a clean-desk policy—”

  “I’ll change jobs.” I took the file she was holding and stuck it back in the middle of the muddle.

  “It hurts me,” she said.

  “Don’t look, then.”

  “I can’t stop myself.”

  “It’s not that bad.” I rolled back a few inches so I could see what she was talking about. “Okay. It looks like an explosion in an origami exhibition.”

  “Worse than that.” She picked up my pen pot and tipped the contents out over the desk. “There. I think that’s how it was when I found it.”

  I brushed paperclips off the page I had been reading. “Thanks, that’s much better. Why were you asking me about my plans?”

  “Come for a drink.”

  “I shouldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Rob’s going away tomorrow morning. Two weeks in the good old US of A.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “Holiday?”

  “An FBI course in Virginia. His boss arranged it.” His predatory, female boss, who had almost caused me to break up with him over the summer, so heavily had she been leaning on him to sleep with her. I’d known he was hiding something and assumed the worst. I’d been absolutely sure he was cheating on me, when the opposite was true. It was like that, with Rob. I kept waiting for everything to go wrong because no one was that perfect, and I couldn’t believe he felt
the way he said he did about me. To my constant surprise, we were far beyond my usual cut-off for relationships. Most of mine had lasted weeks, not months, but here we were, still together after almost a year.

  The course was too good an opportunity for him to turn down, as I’d told him when I encouraged him to go. But I hated that he was going to be gone for so long, and so far away. And I hated that DI Deborah Ormond was going too.

  “Two weeks in the States. Nice work if you can get it.” Liv settled down on the chair next to mine, getting comfortable. “And how do you feel about that?”

  “Stop using your relationship-counselor voice. I’m looking forward to it.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “No, I am. I’ll be able to do whatever I want, when I want. It’ll be like being on my own again. Being free.”

  Liv raised an eyebrow. “Still working on the commitment issues?”

  “No, because I don’t see them as a problem.” I shuffled pages, trying to look busy. “I just like having options, that’s all.”

  “How does Rob feel about it?”

  “Oh, who knows. He acts as if we’ve mated for life.”

  “What a bastard.”

  I glared at her. “We can’t all settle down and get a dog on the second date.”

  “It was our fourth,” Liv said, ultra-dignified. “And not a dog. Goldie is a goldfish.”

  “Well, that’s totally different.”

  She grinned. “Seriously, though. Is two weeks the longest the two of you have spent apart?”

  “Yes, but I haven’t seen all that much of him since he left the team.” That was another sore point. He’d had to leave a job he loved because of me. Godley had a rule about relationships within the team and we’d been found out. One of us had had to go. Being Rob, he’d netted a promotion and a slot on the Flying Squad, but it had complicated his life and I knew he missed the old team. I sighed. “We just never seem to be on the same schedule.”

  “It gets a bit like that, doesn’t it? Especially in the job.”

  “So it seems. If they’re not job, they don’t understand the hours and stress and bad pay. If they are, you don’t get to see them. What’s the point?”