The Stranger You Know (Maeve Kerrigan Novels)

by Jane Casey

  “Yeah.” He sounded distracted and I knew he wasn’t paying much attention as I said good-bye. For all three of us, the only thing that mattered now was the new victim, and what her death could tell us about the man who killed her.

  Godley set off down the corridor at a blistering pace, leaving me to try to keep up while dodging around patients and trolleys. He was whistling under his breath, though I doubted he was aware of it.

  “What’s her name, guv?”

  “Deena Prescott.”

  I thought hard, but it didn’t ring any bells for me.

  “I can’t believe it’s happened again. And so soon after the last one.” I was doing my best to keep my voice down because the last thing we wanted was an entourage of reporters. “Are we sure it’s the same guy? Is it the same MO?”

  “More or less.” Godley pressed the button for the lift, then changed his mind and headed for the stairs, as if he had to keep moving. I went through the door after him and grabbed his arm. It was something I would never have done normally, but I was tired, and confused, and deeply unsettled.

  “Stop! Just for a second.”

  I waited for a couple of visitors to trudge past us. I could hear footsteps approaching from the floor below, and someone was talking on the floor above, so we didn’t have long. I half-whispered, “I don’t understand. He’s killed again in the space of days, not weeks or months. Why are you pleased?”

  Godley leaned close to me so his words didn’t carry through the echoing, busy stairwell, his mouth almost grazing my ear. “Because this time, we’ve got a lead.”

  It was my turn to feel the adrenalin rush, so intense that it made me dizzy. As I followed Godley down the stairs, I wondered if the killer felt the same thrill when he knew he’d found a victim—if it was as addictive for him as it was for me. There were times I felt almost too close to the criminals I was hunting. He was born to be a killer. I liked to think I was born to catch him.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  There was an element of déjà vu about our arrival at Deena Prescott’s tiny modern townhouse in Walthamstow. As at Anna Melville’s home the street was clogged with police vehicles. The media were pressing against hastily erected barriers a hundred yards in either direction from the house, and as Godley’s car was waved through a hundred camera flashes went off, half-blinding me. I put my hand up to shield my eyes.

  “Jesus. Can you see enough to drive?”

  “I’m used to it.” He parked and headed for the crime scene, not hanging around. I scrambled to follow. Godley started up the steps to the front door, which had already been screened off. Before he reached the top, the canvas screen parted and Una Burt appeared, rotund in a protective boiler suit. She pushed the hood back and her hair was flat against her head, damp with sweat. It was quite amazing to me that she had no personal vanity, but it seemed that she really didn’t care.

  What she did care about was her job. Without preamble, she said, “I think he panicked.”

  “Our killer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are we sure it’s the same guy?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “Explain,” Godley said.

  “Not yet.” She didn’t say it in an argumentative way, but you could tell there was absolutely no chance of persuading her to change her mind. She looked at me and her expression darkened. “I want a word with you.”

  “Not now, Una,” Godley said. “Let her view the crime scene.”

  “That’s not why she’s here. She needs to explain why Josh Derwent was with her yesterday.”

  “I’ve already spoken to her. And Josh, indeed.”

  Burt wasn’t going to be put off so easily. “I suppose we’d never have known about it if you hadn’t run into trouble.”

  “Probably not,” I admitted.

  “You were specifically told not to allow him access to any part of this investigation.”

  “With respect, I wouldn’t have been able to conduct that interview without him. And he’s got an alibi for this murder, so your concerns about him were unfounded anyway.”

  “Some of them may have been unfounded. Not all.” She was still glowering. “Was it useful? The interview?”

  “Oh. I think so.” I struggled to think back to what Orpen had told us. There were things to follow up, if I ever got the chance, but I couldn’t tell yet if they would help.

  Godley was getting impatient. “This isn’t the time or the place, Una. Can you drop it for now?”

  “For now.” She stood aside to let him go past her and then moved to block me. “Don’t think I’m going to forget about it, though. You deliberately disobeyed an order and you were prepared to lie about it. I thought you were better than that.”

  I felt the color rise in my cheeks. “Look, I didn’t have a choice. I—”

  “You did. You chose Josh Derwent. I hope you won’t regret it, but I can’t see how you won’t.”

  “I don’t see that there’s a need to take sides.”

  “Then your judgment is even more unreliable than I thought.”

  I followed her into the house, shaking my head when her back was turned. It was a first for anyone to make me more annoyed than Derwent, but she was getting there.

  “You need a suit, please, Maeve-y, and shoe covers,” said Pierce, Kev Cox’s assistant, who was in charge of supervising access again. He handed me the protective gear I needed. “Kev is pretty twitchy about this scene.”

  I put the suit on, hurrying to catch up with Godley and Burt. I could hear them talking in the first room off the hall on the left, a sitting room, and I strained to hear the conversation. It was about the crime scene, not me, for which I was truly grateful. I couldn’t have endured Godley standing up for me, or—worse—damning me as Burt had.

  “No staging,” Godley said.

  “Not this time.”

  “Any sign of forced entry?”

  “No. She let him in. Or at least she opened the door—he may have forced his way in.”

  “And they came in here. Were the curtains open or closed when the body was found?”

  “Closed. Lights on.”

  “Which explains how he was able to kill her in here without being seen. And suggests she was killed last night, not this morning.”

  I passed Pierce’s inspection and rustled into the sitting room, where the first thing I saw was an overturned table, and the second a body on the floor, Godley crouching by the head. She was lying at an awkward angle, one arm thrown up over her face, and her torso twisted so her hips were flat on the floor but her right shoulder was supporting the weight of her upper body. She was dressed in pajamas but the top was unbuttoned, the bottoms halfway down her hips, exposing most of her torso, which was bruised and scratched, as if he had lost control and ripped at it with his bare hands. It made her look pathetic and I had to resist the urge to pull her clothes back into place. I couldn’t work out if the killer had left her like that to demean her or because he couldn’t be bothered to dress her as he had the others. She was small but busty and her hair was henna-red. He had cut it off, as he had done with the others, but it lay in tangles around her body, scattered all over it. I wondered about that, too.

  Godley was peering at her face, which was bruised and bloodied. “He lost it, didn’t he? He stabbed her in the eyes rather than removing them.”

  “That’s not the only difference.” Burt leaned across to point. “There’s blood all over that wall and the floor. He beat her first. Slammed her against any hard surface he could find.”

  “Angry because just killing them isn’t enough anymore?” I asked.

  “Good question,” Burt said. “But I think I know why Deena’s death was different. When I got here, I had a very interesting conversation with Elaine Bridlow, her best friend. She’s the one who found the body. She’d been trying to get in touch with Deena all morning and was worried enough to dash here during her lunch hour to check on her.”

  “This is the lead you were talking a
bout.”

  She nodded. “She was pretty hysterical, but from what I can gather, Deena rang her last night, quite late. She was sounding confused, but she said she’d just seen the news and she thought someone she knew was in hospital and she didn’t know what to do.”

  “Did she explain?”

  “She’d seen the footage from the playground. Derwent’s little adventure. According to Elaine, she said, ‘I think it’s the same guy, but I’m not sure. I only saw him once.’”

  “What?” Godley and I said it at the same time.

  Burt nodded. “She told Elaine she’d met someone who said they were a Met inspector called Josh, and he’d said he worked on homicide investigations. He followed her home, she said, one night last month, when she came back late from work, and she noticed it and challenged him. He told her there was a dangerous criminal operating in the area and he wanted to make sure she got home all right. He asked her not to tell anyone about him because he could get in trouble for warning her and he wanted to keep it between the two of them.”

  I was recalling what Derwent had said about shadowing women to safety, with or without their knowledge, and a prickle of unease ran down my spine.

  “Did she say anything else?”

  “He’d been in touch with her, calling and e-mailing. He was supposed to be coming around to check her security arrangements. She thought he’d been flirting but she wasn’t sure if he was just being friendly.”

  “Kirsty Campbell made a list for her building’s management company,” I said. “Maybe that’s how he gains their trust. He tells them he’s a police officer and they need to let him into their homes so he can advise them on their safety. But really, he’s just stringing them along while he gets to scope the place out from the inside.”

  “Elaine asked why Deena hadn’t told her about him before and she said she hadn’t had any reason to mention it. It was a chance encounter and so far it hadn’t come to anything. Deena was a real romance addict, according to Elaine. She said she hadn’t wanted to jinx a possible relationship by talking about it.”

  “He has a real gift for finding the right women,” I said.

  “It couldn’t have been our Josh,” Godley said firmly. “He was in hospital when she died.”

  “It could have been someone covering for him,” Burt said.

  “No way,” I said. “It’s not Derwent.”

  She whipped around. “You are hopelessly biased. You won’t admit the evidence in front of your own eyes. There are major, striking differences between this killing and the others, and one explanation is that it was not the same person but it was supposed to look like the same person.”

  “Because it’s so easy to find someone to do your killing for you if you need to establish an alibi.” I didn’t even bother trying to hide my disbelief. “You can’t be serious about this.”

  “I’ve never been more serious. And Andy Bradbury agrees with me.”

  “That should be your first clue that you’re completely wrong,” I said, my voice pure ice. “Bradbury is a moron.”

  “And how does he know about it, anyway?” Godley asked.

  “I told him.”

  “You did what?”

  “He’s put in a lot of time on this investigation and he deserved to have the full picture. It was wrong to keep something back, especially when it could be the most important element in the case.”

  “Does no one listen to me any more?” Godley was livid. “I ordered you to keep it to yourself, Una. You’re as bad as Derwent.”

  “That’s grossly unfair. I felt you were exhibiting an unusual lack of judgment and I stepped in.”

  “Look, keep it down,” I said, noticing that the conversation was attracting some interest from the SOCOs working in the hall. Pierce’s ears were flapping.

  “This discussion is not over,” Godley said. “But I am not going to talk about it over this poor woman’s body.” He glared at Burt. “You need to reconsider your tone, too.”

  “I’m just saying what I think.”

  “I noticed.”

  “What are the differences between this murder and the others?” I asked, partly to keep the peace but also because I really wanted to know. “He cut her hair but threw it on top of her. He didn’t arrange the body. He beat her. He killed her quickly. What else?”

  “He put her clothes in the bath and poured bleach on them.”

  Now that Burt mentioned it, I noticed a strong chemical smell. I looked around at the room. It was smeared with fingerprint powder that had highlighted swirls and sweeps and smears and smudges but no actual fingerprints. “Did he wipe the place down?”

  Kev Cox answered me, leaning in from the hall. “He cleaned up in here, the hall and the kitchen. Didn’t bother with her bedroom upstairs, which suggests he wasn’t in there, except to get her clothes. The bathroom is like an operating theater—spotless.”

  “What does this say to you?” Godley asked, looking at me.

  “Damage control. He must have been scared she was going to give the game away. This one wasn’t about living out his fantasies. He wanted her dead.” I stared at Una Burt. “That doesn’t mean it wasn’t the same killer as for the other three.”

  “This is a pale imitation of the others.”

  “He likes to control the women and the crime scenes,” I pointed out. “He likes to use minimal violence. There’s something almost artistic about the way he leaves the bodies. Now, if Deena challenged him—if she argued, or fought with him, or if he wasn’t prepared as he wanted to be for her death—he might have killed her differently. I think he sees it as an honor to be selected by him. She didn’t deserve the treatment the other victims got. She betrayed his trust.”

  “He probably didn’t know about her phone call to Elaine. He might have thought he could come here and kill her before she spoke to anyone,” Godley said.

  Burt looked stubborn. “It was someone acting on Josh Derwent’s behalf.”

  “Who? Who would?”

  “A friend. Someone he met through work—someone he arrested, maybe.”

  “Because that’s the best way to make friends.” I turned to Godley. “This is insane. Isn’t it?”

  “I respect Una’s opinion,” Godley said slowly. “I don’t agree with her, but I’m not writing it off just yet. I can’t be sure my objectivity isn’t affected by my friendship with Josh.”

  Lack of sleep was making me slow-witted. I felt as if I was lost in a fog. “Derwent was in hospital. How would he arrange for this mythical person to come and kill Deena for him?”

  “He wasn’t unconscious. He had his phone. I’m going to get a list of all the calls from and to that number over the last twenty-four hours, and all the calls to and from his hospital room, and I’m going to prove that Derwent was able to make contact with someone who, for love or money, was prepared to kill at his request. He could have briefed them over the phone—not in detail, maybe, which explains the differences.” She looked at Godley. “You’ve known him for a long time. You know he’s capable of killing. He did it in the army. He shot people—”

  “That’s different,” I objected.

  “Yes, it is.” She didn’t even turn her head. “He doesn’t have a girlfriend. He lives alone. Who knows what’s in his flat? We need to get a search warrant while he’s still in hospital and go through it.”

  I snapped. “Okay, first of all, I’ve been in his flat recently and I doubt there’s anything to find. Do you really think if he was a killer Derwent wouldn’t have the sense to keep everything relating to that in a different location? A storage unit or a lock-up garage? He’s seen enough practical examples of what not to do, hasn’t he? And anyway, he’s not going to be in hospital for long. He might be out already. Do you really want to tell him you think he’s a killer?”

  “Absolutely not,” Godley said. “Una, this needs to stay between us for now. If you’re right, I want Josh to think he’s free and clear. We’ll check his phone and bank accounts and get su
rveillance on him.”

  “What about the other investigators?”

  “We’ll have a conference with them in the next couple of hours. Set it up. I don’t mind talking to them behind closed doors because it’s worth considering every possibility, but I don’t want you talking to Bradbury or anyone else about it when I’m not there. Not a word.” He turned to me. “Maeve, I know you don’t agree with this approach to the investigation. I’m not going to insist you come to the conference. You have other work to do on this case, don’t you? Leads from the Orpen interview to run down.”

  I struggled to think. It all seemed very remote and irrelevant. I knew I was being moved sideways so I didn’t get in the way and I would have resented it if I’d been able to muster enough energy.

  “There were some phone calls I should make,” I said. “But shouldn’t I be at the conference?”

  “Better not.” In a flash I realized that he was thinking the same way as Una Burt: I couldn’t be trusted. “This goes double for you. Not a word about Josh’s potential involvement, to him or anyone else.”

  “I wouldn’t,” I said, wounded.

  “He’s very persuasive. He’s manipulated you quite a bit over the course of this investigation, hasn’t he? You’ve even been in his flat and what you were doing there I don’t want to know, but I hope it was personal rather than relating to this investigation.”

  “I’m not sleeping with him, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time you slept with a colleague.” The words seemed to come out despite his best efforts not to say them.

  “I would never—”

  “It’s none of my business.” He sighed. “I can’t pretend I’m not disappointed in you, Maeve. You’ve done the exact opposite of what you were told to do, because of Josh.”

  “I just wanted to find out the truth,” I whispered. “I did what had to be done.”

  “You did what you wanted. You went against specific orders and the consequences of that have yet to be seen.” Godley looked down at Deena’s body. “If you’d handled things differently, Derwent wouldn’t have been with you yesterday to get his face all over the news. Whether he is responsible for this death or not, it seems clear that his sudden elevation to public notice is likely to be the reason Deena is dead.”