by Jane Casey
Maybe that was what the victims had in common, I thought, walking on down the street as a double-decker bus tore past, swaying as it went, apparently seconds from overturning. They were the kind of women who could be overlooked, despite being conventionally attractive and reasonably successful. They were introverts and being singled out for attention was such a change for them it made them drop their guard. Because they had to have done that to let their killer in. I couldn’t escape the conclusion that he’d made them trust him.
Or they were too scared to do anything but follow his orders. I shivered, imagining myself in their shoes. I couldn’t fool myself that they had been anything other than terrified at the end, when they knew they had no way out. I’d have bargained, and fought, and begged, and done anything at all to save my life, but maybe they had done all that and more. Or maybe they had abandoned hope in the face of implacable evil. Only the killer knew now.
At some level I had decided I would find what I was looking for at the library, so it was a disappointment to discover that there wasn’t a book group there, at least not for young women. They had a group for the pensioners, and a club for schoolchildren.
“We’ve been forced to reduce our opening hours to save money so we can’t offer any evening sessions,” the librarian explained. “That means we’re not really able to reach the younger professionals who might be interested in that sort of thing.”
“Do you know if there is a book group locally? The sort of place Kirsty might have wanted to go?”
The librarian tilted his head to one side. He seemed fearsomely competent, and had been brisk in dealing with the large queue. I was holding things up. There were about twenty people standing behind me, and it was five minutes to closing time. The library was intensely hot, too, and I wished I’d taken off my coat when I went in.
“I’m not aware of a book group. Leave me your contact details though, and I’ll check with my colleagues.”
“What about a support group? For bereavement, or eating disorders, or—”
He was shaking his head.
I gave him my card and went to stand outside, the cool air a pleasant shock after the tropical heat. They could save on some costs if they turned the thermostat down, I thought. I was tired, and frustrated. This whole trip had been a huge waste of time.
“Excuse me. Sorry. I was in the queue behind you and I couldn’t help overhearing…” The girl was standing about two feet away from me and I hadn’t noticed her at all. She was wearing a hand-knitted scarf with long tassels, and a matching hat that she had pulled down over her eyebrows. “You’re the police, aren’t you?”
“That’s right.”
“Investigating Kirsty Campbell’s death?”
“Among others.”
“I heard about the others. That one in Tottenham, today.” She plaited the tassels and undid them again, her fingers flying. She was tall and slender, slightly ungainly, and young in a way that had nothing to do with her actual age.
“Can I help you with something?” I didn’t sound encouraging. She would want advice on staying safe, reassurance that there was no reason to be afraid. My patience for that sort of thing was not infinite, and I was tired.
“I knew her. Kirsty.”
“Really?”
She nodded. “From church.”
I tried to remember if we’d known Kirsty was religious. “I didn’t know Kirsty went to church.”
“She didn’t. Not really. Neither do I. But the vicar at St. Mary’s did a series of lectures that we both went to.”
“What were the lectures about?”
“Personal empowerment.” She flushed a little. “It was about taking control of your life. Not depending on anyone else for fulfillment. I think the idea was that we were supposed to start depending on Jesus or something, but that didn’t really happen.”
She’d just gone from potential nuisance to potential lead, and I felt my heart rate pick up. “What did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t. I’m Ruth Johnson. But everyone calls me Jonty.”
“Has anyone spoken to you about your friendship with Kirsty since she died? Anyone from the police, I mean?”
“No.” She squirmed. “I didn’t think anyone would be interested. We weren’t friends really. I mean, I only met her three times.”
“It all helps. Especially if there’s something that’s been bothering you.”
“Well. Maybe. I don’t know. It’s probably not important.”
I’ll be the judge of that. “Look, is there anywhere around here that we could talk?”
“Bon Café is nice.”
I didn’t care about nice. I cared about whatever Jonty Johnson had been suppressing for nine months because she didn’t have the nerve or the notion to go into the police station and ask to speak to whoever was handling Kirsty Campbell’s murder investigation. I wasn’t going to let her out of my sight until I’d found out what it was.
* * *
Bon Café turned out to be devoted to ultra-organic vegetarian food—pulses and quinoa—and was painted green in a fairly literal-minded way. I sat on a bench that was just the wrong height for me and backless so I couldn’t even slouch. The muddy liquid they called coffee came in a thick earthenware mug that was rough to the touch and quite startlingly unpleasant to drink out of.
Jonty had chosen a herbal tea that came in a glass, which was an improvement on what I had. It smelled, however, like tomcats’ bottoms. That didn’t seem to put her off. If it was the reason her skin glowed, it would almost be worth drinking it, because she had the radiance of someone who habitually washed in melted snow. Under the hat she had thick fair hair that she’d plaited and twisted and attached to her head somehow. She had narrow eyes that she’d made smaller with black liner, and her eyebrows were straight and thick. Her teeth were very white, and small, and spaced out like milk teeth. I was aware of the guy behind the counter staring across at her, admiring the effect. Jonty herself seemed oblivious. She was looking everywhere but at me, fidgeting in her seat, checking her phone and her watch. Now that we were indoors and face to face, her confessional urge had sputtered and died. I started with an easy one.
“Tell me about the lectures.”
“Um—it was a three-week program. Once a week, fifty minutes long. Non-denominational, but I think you were supposed to want to go on to do the Alpha Course and become a fully fledged Christian.”
“When was it?”
“January. It started right after Christmas. For everyone who’d resolved to get their lives in order, I suppose.” She sounded ironic.
“Was that why you did it?”
“Oh yeah. Time to stand on my own two feet and stop depending on other people. My parents, specifically. I needed to cut the apron strings.”
I thought of my own parents with a qualm. My life choices were so clearly not what they had wanted for me, from my job to my unmarried status. I went my own way and I made my own decisions, but basically I was still trying to make it up to them that I hadn’t done what they expected. I was still hoping that they might one day be proud of me. Most of my friends didn’t seem to have this problem. I had a feeling it was an Irish thing.
“Did you manage it?”
“Not really. My parents are very controlling. They’re rich. They bought my flat. I just can’t afford to walk away from them yet.”
“What job do you do?”
“I’m a singer. I write songs for other people too.” She sipped her tea, then anticipated my next question. “I don’t make a living out of it or anything. I keep going because it’s what I want to do.”
“How did you find out about the lectures?”
“I saw the course advertised outside the church and it just seemed like it might be interesting, you know? It was one of those ‘Keep Calm’ posters, like the wartime information ones.” She laughed a little. “Typical—they’re not exactly trendsetting at that church. Like, those posters are so overplayed. But this one was ‘Keep Ca
lm and Find Happiness.’ And then underneath it said, ‘You can be everything you need.’ It just spoke to me. I was feeling really frazzled and stressed out and down and like I should just give up, and all I wanted was to take a moment for myself. I wanted to find myself without having to go off and travel the Far East for a year.” The tea slopped over the side of her glass as she turned it on the saucer. “Again, I mean. Anyway, it was free.”
“How many people signed up?”
“About fifteen. There was this little circle of chairs and I was just so embarrassed to even be there that I sat down in the first one I got to and it happened to be beside Kirsty.”
“And the two of you got talking?”
“Not then. Afterward. We came out and I didn’t feel like going home straight away, because all these ideas were just buzzing around in my head and I didn’t want to be on my own staring at the walls, you know? And I suppose Kirsty felt the same way because she came over and asked if I wanted to get a drink and talk about why we were there and what we wanted to get out of it.”
“What did Kirsty want?”
“She was trying to put her life back together after breaking up with her fiancé.” Jonty sighed. “It was really hard on her. She was so brave to break it off. They were all involved in planning the wedding and inside she was just like…” She dragged her fingers down her cheeks, her mouth open in a silent scream.
“Why?”
“She didn’t love him enough, she said. She felt smothered. She felt like he was going to run her life for her, or try to. It made her uncomfortable. She wanted to be on her own for a while to work out what she actually wanted to do.”
I’d had that smothering sensation myself. I knew exactly the chord of guilt, frustration and resentment that it struck, and it was the death knell for relationships. Rob was very careful to back off when he noticed I was getting claustrophobic. He was almost too good at backing off. Hence the paranoia.
I dragged my mind back to Kirsty. “So, she wanted to be on her own. She wasn’t trying to meet men.”
“No. Well, not then.” Jonty looked down at her tea. “This is disgusting. I wonder if it would be better with sugar.”
She reached to take a packet from the jar on the table and I put out my hand and stopped her. “Okay, firstly, no, it wouldn’t help. Secondly, what do you mean by ‘not then?’”
“Because of the guy.”
“What guy?” I was leaning forward.
“The guy she said she was meeting the last time I saw her.” Jonty drew one leg up onto the chair and retied the laces on her Doc Marten. I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood, fighting the urge to tell her to hurry up. “The third week she couldn’t come for a drink. She said she had to meet someone afterward, and she was really sorry but it was the only day he could do.”
“A date?”
“I don’t think so. I said ‘ooooh,’ you know, as you do, when she said she had to meet someone and she was really short with me. She just said, ‘Not like that’ and then she gave me her number and told me to give her a call if I was at a loose end and wanted to meet up. Look.” She flicked through her contacts until she came to Kirsty’s name and showed it to me, like a child proud of her homework.
“When was this?”
“Toward the end of January. The twenty-sixth.”
“And she died—”
“On the thirtieth.” Jonty nodded. “I saw it in the paper. I couldn’t get my head around it. I almost texted her—can you believe that? Even though I knew she was dead? Crazy.”
“It’s not that unusual. People call their loved ones’ phones after they’re gone. They leave messages for them to say the things they didn’t get the chance to say.”
“That makes me feel a bit better. I thought I was mental.” She gave me a rueful grin.
“Can we get back to the man? Had she mentioned him before?”
“Definitely not.”
“Did you see him? Did she tell you anything about him? A name? How they met?” I made myself stop. I could see the barrage of questions was confusing her.
“I didn’t see him. She was meeting him somewhere else. She didn’t tell me why they were meeting but it seemed more like something she had to do than something she was excited by. Like he was a chimney sweep or a plumber or something and she had to let him in.”
“To her flat?”
“I don’t know.” Jonty frowned. “That was just the impression I had. When she said he couldn’t do any other night she sounded a bit irritated but business-like.”
The flats’ management company was supposed to sort out tradesmen for the tenants. I made a note to check with them to see if she had made any complaints in the couple of months before her death.
“And you’re sure she didn’t use a name.”
“She might have, but I’m crap with names.” Jonty gave a tiny, panicky laugh, knowing that it was a terrible name to have forgotten. “It was something short and simple. Not a foreign name. Geoff or John or something. But it wasn’t Geoff or John.”
I wrote them down anyway. Not foreign, one syllable, possibly with a “J” sound. “Jack. James. Jim.”
“None of those.” She shook her head. “I can’t remember. I’ve tried and tried.”
“It doesn’t matter.” I succeeded in keeping the frustration out of my voice. Mostly. “One of those things. Just let me know if it comes back to you. You’ve been really helpful.”
“Have I?” She looked piteous. “I wanted to help but I thought it would just be a waste of everyone’s time.”
“Far from it,” I said. “Would you be willing to give a statement to the local detectives who investigated Kirsty’s death?”
“I don’t mind.” She looked terrified.
“They’re nice. Nothing to be frightened of. Let me call and check when they’d like to see you.” I rang Groves, who was pleased to hear from me but went quiet when I explained what I’d found out. He wanted to speak to Jonty immediately, he said. At the police station, if she could present herself there. He’d try not to keep her too long.
I passed it on to Jonty who agreed without any difficulty, being the good girl she was. Her eyes were troubled, though, and she drained her glass of tea without apparently remembering it was disgusting.
She was winding her scarf around her neck again in long, misshapen loops when she asked the question I’d been dreading.
“Do you think the man she mentioned was the one who—you know.”
“Killed her?”
A nod.
Yes. “I don’t know.”
She swallowed. “Do you think I should have come forward earlier? When they were appealing for witnesses?”
“You’re not responsible,” I said, seeing where this was going. “You didn’t make him kill anyone else. You could have come forward earlier, but I don’t think it would have made any difference.”
In the overall scheme of things, a small lie sometimes made more sense than the truth. It might have made a huge difference, but she didn’t need to know that.
Chapter Eleven
It was late by the time I got back to my desk, getting on for nine. The office was emptying out after a busy day. It smelled stale, despite the air conditioning, and the large windows were filled with dark skies and bright lights like sequins on velvet. Nightfall changed the atmosphere in the office. The desk lamps—so much better than fluorescent overhead lighting—marooned each of us who remained on our own individual island, and the noise level had dropped to a murmur of a few phone conversations, most of them winding up.
The door to Godley’s office stood open. His desk was vacant, but his coat still hung on its hook and his computer was on. Una Burt’s desk was similarly unoccupied, and she wasn’t answering her mobile. I hoped I would see them before I left for the day, so I could share what I’d found out in Lewisham. There was no reason to dash home, anyway. I had had the best of intentions about how I would live while Rob was away: eating properly, going
to bed early, painting my nails and writing e-mails to friends I hadn’t seen in ages, catching up on reading books that had sat beside my bed for months. It was the first day and already I could tell my intentions were going to fall by the wayside. I would eat when I could and work as much as was humanly possible and the books would remain unread.
Too bad. There were more important things than manicures.
Being out of the office all day meant that I had to deal with what seemed like thousands of e-mails. I skimmed through them, trying to keep track of cases that had no press attention, no clamor for a result. Princess Gordon’s death had passed almost unnoticed, and not just because it had been solved so quickly. There was no media interest in a young black woman being beaten to death by her partner, even if she had been pregnant. But she was just as dead as the Gentleman Killer’s victims.
DS Burns had come up trumps with the number for Method Management, the company that looked after Kirsty Campbell’s apartment building. I was gratified to discover that they had an emergency hotline number and I rang them straight away, even as I was reading through the rest of my e-mails, to ask about Kirsty’s property. I explained who I was to the bored-sounding man who answered the phone.
“Is it possible to check if Kirsty had any issues with her flat, or the building? Any complaints?”
“In what period?”
“Let’s start with December and January.”
“I’ll have to look it up. Do you want me to call you back?”
“I’ll hold on.”
He put the phone down beside his keyboard and I listened to the tapping, hoping he was doing what I’d asked rather than updating his Facebook status.
“I’ve just got to go and check something.” He didn’t wait for me to reply, dropping the phone again with a clatter. His chair squeaked as he pushed it away from his desk and I imagined him walking across the office, giving him a crumpled white shirt that was pulling out of the waistband of wrinkled trousers and scuffed shoes. My version of him needed a haircut and had a weakness for pies. He was probably whippet thin and bandbox neat in real life.