The Stranger You Know (Maeve Kerrigan Novels)

by Jane Casey

  The euphoria lasted for about as long as it took him to get the power of speech back. Then the fear kicked in.

  “Oh Jesus. Angela. Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”

  “It’s fine.” She wasn’t looking at him. She was staring up at the trees above them, with a strange little smile on her face.

  “Are you sure? Ange, if I hurt you…”

  “Don’t be stupid.” She wrapped an arm around his neck and patted his shoulder. “It’s okay.”

  He was used to being the one in charge, but suddenly he felt as if she was older than him. Decades older. Centuries.

  “Was it not—” Good, he was going to say, but she stopped him with a kiss.

  “It was lovely.”

  “Are you sore?”

  “I’ll survive.” That smile again. Then, “Did you bring any tissues?”

  He hadn’t. It hadn’t occurred to him. He’d thought all the mess would be in a condom, tied up neatly and thrown away. He gave her his socks, in the end, and she did her best to tidy herself up while he turned away, pretending he needed to do something important with the bag, with what was in the bag, until she’d finished and put her knickers back on.

  She stood up and again he had the feeling that things had changed between them. She was in charge now, even though he’d had her. He couldn’t understand it. “It’s time to go.”

  “Sure. Of course. I’ll walk you home.”

  “Thanks.”

  They walked to the place where they’d climbed in. Usually they stopped to snog before they went over the wall again, back to reality. This time, Angela shinned up the brickwork without even waiting for him to help her, let alone a kiss. He followed in silence, his trainers loose on his bare feet. He was on the point of asking what was wrong but he couldn’t, afraid to hear the answer. It hadn’t been good. He hadn’t been good. The buzz from the wine was gone. He felt sober, and tired, and he really wanted to be back at home, in bed, asleep, instead of walking along a pavement on the other side of town beside the girl he adored but somehow didn’t know any more.

  They came to the point where Josh would have turned off if he was going straight home, and Angela stopped.

  “You might as well go. There’s no need to walk me all the way.”

  “I will, though.”

  “Come on. It’s ten minutes.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But that’s twenty minutes for you, there and back.” She was looking away from him, down the street. She hadn’t looked at him since, he realized.

  “Do you want me to go?”

  “I don’t care.” The way she said it made it sound as if he’d asked something so unreasonable, so outrageous, that the only possible response was mockery.

  “Ange…”

  “What?” She looked at him then, with that pitying half-smile. “What is it, Josh?”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I told you, I’m fine.”

  “You’re acting like you’re pissed off.”

  She looked away again and sighed. “I’m not.”

  “I thought it was what you wanted.”

  “It was.” She slid a hand around him, leaning against him, her head under his chin. “I’m tired.”

  “If that’s all.”

  “Of course.”

  “When will I see you again?”

  “I don’t know.” She did sound tired, he thought. “I’ll see you tomorrow, maybe. Are you working?”

  “Breakfast and lunch.” He had to be up at half past five to do the morning rush, the builders and scaffolders and taxi-drivers. They put away vast quantities of food in short order. Clearing away plates, up to his elbows in hot water, the muscles in his arms complaining as he hefted trays of mugs around. “I’ll be finished at two.”

  “I’ll come and find you.”

  “Don’t come to the café. I’ll go home and change.” He was sensitive about the smell of the place, the grease that made his skin and hair reek. He didn’t want her associating it with him.

  “Three o’clock at your house, then.”

  “Yeah.” He turned her face up to his and kissed her, but it was a chaste kiss, no tongues. Her lips were pursed against his. “Look, let me walk you home.”

  She shook her head. “We’ve already said good-bye.”

  “Angela.”

  “Tomorrow, Josh.” She slipped out of his grasp and walked away from him, down the street, moving carefully as if something hurt. But she’d said she was fine, he thought. His own legs were quivering as if he’d just done a fast four miles. Maybe that was the problem.

  He waited until she’d gone out of sight before he turned to lope away. He would never forget that. He would never get over the guilt about the main thing he felt, watching her walk away from him.

  Relief.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was one in the morning when Derwent ran out of words, around the same time Angela had run out of luck in his story. His voice was raw from talking, his eyes red from fatigue. I wouldn’t have dared suggest it was emotion. At some point he had switched from beer to whiskey, pouring a glass for me. Scotch was not my usual drink but I drank it slowly, feeling the warmth spreading down to my toes with every sip. He knocked it back in gulps, not noticeably affected by it. Practice, I presumed, and added that to my list of things to worry about. An alcohol-dependent Derwent was not going to be an easier colleague.

  After he fell silent he stared into space, lost in memories that were two decades old, and I felt my jaw creak with the effort of not yawning. It was a lost cause. My mouth sprang open as if it had been spring-loaded and I covered it with the hand I wasn’t using to take sketchy notes.

  “Tell me if I’m boring you, won’t you.” Heavy on the sarcasm. Back to the Derwent I knew and loved.

  “Sorry. It’s late.”

  “I’m fucking pouring my heart out here and you’re yawning.” He shook his head. “I thought better of you, Kerrigan.”

  “What happened after that?”

  “She was strangled to death.”

  “I know that. To you, I mean.”

  He shrugged. “I went home. I slept. I went to work the next day. Didn’t hear from her and didn’t think anything of it. This was before teenagers had mobile phones, you realize. We’re going that far back. I hoped I’d see her at my house around three, and she never turned up. But two fat detectives did.”

  “And interviewed you?”

  “Arrested me. Took me to the local nick and interviewed me. Gave me a hard time.” He sipped his drink meditatively. “Course, I was lying my arse off at that stage. They said she was dead and I thought it had to be a setup. Her dad’s way of finding out what we’d been up to. One of the coppers was a mate of his, going way back, so I didn’t really believe him. Besides, I was petrified to say what we’d done. She was fifteen so it was statutory rape. Took me a long time to believe what they were telling me was true.”

  “How did they convince you?”

  Another gulp and a wince as he swallowed. “Showed me pictures from the scene.”

  “Her body?”

  He nodded, looking down into his glass, his face bleak.

  “Did they really think you’d killed her?”

  “Definitely. No question about it. Longest twenty-four hours of my life.”

  “But you weren’t charged.”

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “I had an alibi. Someone saw me walking through town on my way home. Again, there wasn’t a lot of CCTV around back then, so I was bloody lucky there was a witness to back up my story.”

  “Whoever saw you must have been absolutely definite about the ID.”

  “He was. Believe me, he’d have liked to say different, but he was a fair man.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Angela’s father.”

  “Wow.”

  “Poor bloke. I was on my way home through the town center. Typical teenager, thinking I was immortal. I walked out
into the road right in front of his bus. He had to stand on the brakes in a hurry. One of the passengers fell over and cut his head. The guy was too pissed to hold on properly but it was still Charlie Poole’s responsibility. He made a note of the time it happened, as he was required to do, and since I’d been that far away from him,”—he held up his hands about two feet apart—“and waved at him, cheeky little fucker that I was, there was no doubt about the ID. It happened at two minutes to midnight and that was right about the time she died.”

  “Don’t tell me the pathologist was prepared to give an exact TOD.”

  “They didn’t need the pathologist for that.” Derwent smiled bitterly. “They had a witness.”

  “Who?”

  “Stuart Sinclair. Fat Stu from next door. A noise woke him at 11:56 p.m., which he noted because his clock radio was beside his bed. He looked out and saw nothing. A few minutes later he got up again to make sure there was nothing wrong, and saw a male walking through the gate of the garden next door and down the road. That was at one minute past midnight.”

  “Did he give a description?”

  “Yeah. Me. Down to the color of my T-shirt.”

  “But it couldn’t have been you.”

  “That’s what I said. And they had to accept it, after a while.”

  “Didn’t Stu retract his statement?”

  A slow headshake.

  “But he had to admit it was nonsense.”

  “He was adamant about it.”

  “Not your biggest fan,” I suggested.

  “No. He had a thing about Angela. Not that she’d have dreamed of looking at him. And he hated me because I was a shit to him.”

  “Poor Stu.”

  “He was a twat,” Derwent said, outraged. “Poor Stu tried to fit me up for murder.”

  “I take it he wasn’t a suspect.”

  “No. His hands were too small to have left the marks on her neck. Mine would have done, but I was already getting toward six foot. He really was just a kid. Still waiting for puberty to kick in.” He laughed. “I think he was even a vegetarian, just like Morrissey. He sang in the school choir. Definitely not murderer material.”

  “Okay. But he was muddying the waters for the investigation.”

  “The waters were muddy enough as it was. They didn’t get much further with it once they ruled me out. I’ve looked it up. In the five years before and after there were plenty of deaths by manual asphyxiation in the greater London area but nothing with those distinctive elements.”

  “The eyes.”

  “Specifically.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “Where were we?”

  “How you went from golden boy to chief suspect to being ruled out.”

  “By the police. Not by public opinion. Everyone knew I’d been picked up and that someone had seen me nearby. They assumed the police had just fucked up. Our house was vandalised. Then a gang of girls thumped my sister on her way home from school because they thought she was sticking up for me too much. That was it. By then I’d come clean about the sex, because they’d found semen in Angela and told me they could match it to me, which would have taken weeks, probably—but by then I was cooperating with everything they asked me. Proper broken by it. So everyone knew what we’d done too. My parents were disgusted with me for it, and scared for my sister. I don’t really blame them for what they did.”

  “Which was kick you out.”

  He nodded. “Vinny’s parents let me stay with them for a bit, but they didn’t have room for me really and I didn’t want to be a nuisance. I was under eighteen so I was entitled to go into care and I ended up in a home.”

  “Not known for being pleasant.”

  “It was all right.” His face was shuttered and I knew he wasn’t going to tell me what it had really been like. I also knew that meant it had been bad. “I was in a bit of a state because of what had happened to Angela. Vinny and Claire were still talking to me but Shane couldn’t stand the sight of me. He threw up when I tried to tell him I was sorry about what had happened—literally chucked up, right in front of me. I stopped going to school. Then someone told me I was old enough to join the army. I didn’t think about it. I just did it. My way out. I rang home to tell them and my dad put the phone down on me and I haven’t spoken to them since.” He drained his glass then refilled it with a practiced swoop. “The army took me in and fed me, housed me, clothed me and paid me for years. It was my family. Better than my family.”

  “But you still left.”

  “I realized what I wanted to do with my life. I quit, studied for A levels, got my exams, got into the Met and the rest is what you know. Brilliant career, inspector by thirty-six. All-round sex symbol and winner of popularity contests.”

  “Sorry, who are we talking about now?”

  He grinned. “Watch it, Kerrigan.”

  “Have you got a picture of her?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Can I see it?”

  He was reluctant to say yes, I could tell, but he knew he would have asked the same thing if he’d been in my place. “Wait there.”

  He disappeared into the room next door and I heard a drawer open and close. He didn’t keep it where he could see it, but not because he didn’t care. I doubted there was a day he didn’t think about Angela.

  When he came back he handed me a framed photograph and stood beside me, looming. “Ange. Me. Vinny. Claire. And that’s Shane. It was his girlfriend who took it.”

  It wasn’t a great picture; the focus was a bit off and the colors muddy. They had been at a barbecue, in a back garden, the background an anonymous fence. An impossibly young Derwent sat on a white plastic garden chair, leaning back so the front legs were off the ground. He looked innocent and cheeky and I stared at him for a long time, trying to match it up with the present-day version. A girl sat on his lap, petite and pretty, her head leaning against his, her arms around his neck. Possessive was the word that sprang to mind. Insecure, maybe. They all wanted him and she had him, even though he was two years older and her brother’s friend. I bet she couldn’t believe her luck, which was a strange thought in connection with Derwent. Her brother was darker than her, and built like a brick shithouse. He stared at the camera as if he was daring it to capture his image. Claire sat beside him on another chair, one leg pulled up, drinking from a can so I could hardly see her face. She was long-limbed and very slender, with short dark hair she had tucked behind her ears. One arm had a collection of leather cuffs on it and she was wearing the Nirvana Nevermind T-shirt.

  Vinny was at the back, standing, his arms spread wide, his mouth open as if he was cheering. He and Shane and Derwent were dressed identically in layered T-shirts, baggy jeans and Vans trainers, and Vinny had the same haircut as Derwent.

  “It wasn’t a good era for fashion, was it?”

  “You can say that again. Seen enough?”

  I nodded, letting him take it out of my hands. “Is that the only one you’ve got?”

  “Do you need to see another?” He glowered at me and I shook my head. The thing with Derwent was to know when you should stop pushing your luck. I got it right some of the time. He left the room and the drawer opened and closed again. Everything in its place. The words from Dr. Chen’s profile repeated in my head in Godley’s voice. He is obsessive about detail and a perfectionist …

  I stuffed the thought to the back of my mind in case Derwent could tell what I was thinking. While he was gone I stood up and put my coat back on. It went down predictably well.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “It’s late.”

  “And?”

  “And I have to be in the office early.”

  “You owe me. Time to start talking, Kerrigan.” He folded his arms. “We had a deal.”

  “And I’m going to honor my part in it.” I pulled my bag onto my shoulder. “Look, I don’t have the file on the murders with me and I’m still getting my head around it myself. I’m meeting up with Bradbury’s DS tomorrow to
hear about what they’ve found out. I can come here after that and give you the whole picture.”

  He stared at me, trying to decide if I meant it. “Do you promise?”

  “I promise. And no need for any kidnapping shenanigans this time.”

  “Do you believe me?”

  “Would I volunteer to come back if I didn’t?”

  He was too clever not to pick up on the fact that I hadn’t answered him. He nodded, as if I’d proved something to him.

  “How are you getting home?”

  “It’s not far,” I said.

  “Where do you live?”

  “Dalston,” I admitted.

  “Seriously? How did I not know that?”

  “I keep it to myself.”

  “What else are you hiding?”

  Not as much as you, I thought. He hadn’t told me everything, not by a long shot.

  He went down the stairs in front of me and took his coat off the hook. I stopped two steps from the bottom.

  “What are you doing?”

  “How are you getting home?”

  “I’ll get a cab. There’s an office near here, isn’t there? I saw it from the taxi.”

  He shrugged his coat on. “Right. I’ll walk you there.”

  “There’s absolutely no need.”

  “Fuck’s sake, Kerrigan. Did you listen to anything I said?”

  “I don’t need you to protect me.”

  “Yes, you do.” He came toward me, the little hallway suddenly feeling very small indeed. “Do you think you’re invincible or something just because you’re a cop? If someone wanted to attack you—a man—what would you do? Fight him off?”

  “I’ve had combat training.”

  “Didn’t do you a lot of good this evening, did it?” He took another step and it was with difficulty that I resisted the urge to flee back up the stairs. “This is why I hate women’s lib. You’re not equal. You’re not independent. The minute you walk out there, you’re prey, pure and simple.”

  “You’re overreacting.”

  “I don’t give a fuck.” Massive in his coat, he was standing between me and the door. His face softened. “Look, Kerrigan, I have to do this.”

  “I’m not Angela.”