The Stranger You Know (Maeve Kerrigan Novels)

by Jane Casey

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Even so. I can’t take the risk of letting you remain involved with this end of the investigation. You might as well follow up the leads on the cold case, but report back to Harry Maitland. Brief him when you get to the office. I’ll get him to read your notes. He can take over from you.”

  “If you don’t trust me, you shouldn’t have me on your team,” I said, because I had to.

  “If you leave it will be your choice.” He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know why everyone finds it so hard to follow orders, but we’re standing beside proof that it’s important to do so.”

  Una Burt was watching me intently, her expression showing that she agreed with Godley.

  The thing was, I couldn’t say he was wrong. I had done the opposite of what I’d been told. I had let Derwent order me around. And somehow I’d set off the chain of events that had led to Deena’s death.

  My vision blurred as I turned away, stumbling to the door. Crying at work for the second time in twenty-four hours. That was really the sort of thing that shouldn’t become a habit, I thought, trying to distract myself.

  I held myself together while I took off the crime-scene coveralls, even chatting with Pierce about his plans for the weekend. I walked out to a darkening sky as the rain closed in. The wind cut through my clothes, making me shiver. One of the police vans was getting ready to leave and I begged a lift, flipping up my coat collar as I sat in a seat near the back, out of reach of the cameras.

  A young female PC leaned across the aisle. “Aren’t you the detective who was shot at yesterday?”

  I shook my head and sort of smiled at her to take the sting out of it. It was technically true—Lee Grimes hadn’t shot at me. She blushed, knowing that she was right but too polite to persist.

  “Leave her be. She doesn’t want to talk about it.” I could hear the whisper from where I was sitting, but I affected not to. They were right, I didn’t want to talk. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to make sense of the chaotic thoughts that were spiraling around my head. I wanted to work out what was bothering me about what I’d heard in the previous days. I wanted to prove Una Burt wrong and prove Derwent wasn’t involved. I wanted to make Godley eat his words.

  Most of all, I wanted to stop feeling like I’d blundered, time and time again, because I hadn’t the least idea how to make it right.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  By the time I got to the office I was in control of myself. I found Maitland, who looked wary when he saw me. Godley had been in touch, apparently, to tell him to expect me, and to familiarize him with Derwent’s background. I was miserably conscious that he would have warned Maitland I might be emotional. He needn’t have worried. I was icily calm as I ran through the details of the Angela Poole murder and told him what I was planning to do next. He made absolutely no fuss about letting me make follow-up inquiries before I handed the lot over to him, though I was prepared for a fight. He was a good police officer and I trusted him to do his job well, but this was my case and my investigation and I had questions that I needed to ask, by myself.

  “Sure. Of course. That’s fine.” Maitland ran a hand up and down his shirt front, fiddling with the buttons. “Tell me what you find out, obviously, and then maybe we can have a final handover in an hour.” At which time you will be out of this case forever and I will be taking your place, but I don’t have to tell you that’s what’s going on because you know.

  “One hour,” I repeated, and headed for my desk. I could work to a deadline, if I had to. And it didn’t look as if I was being given any choice. So I had an hour to find someone who was not Derwent but seemed to be pretending to be Derwent.

  Or someone who was following Derwent, killing the women he tried to help.

  Or Derwent.

  Which I was not going to think about because it was impossible. I picked up the phone.

  My first calls were to all the care homes I could find in Bromley, working through them in search of a resident named Charles or Charlie Poole. It took five tries before I struck gold at the Tall Pines Care Home. The woman who answered the phone was Eastern European and had a strong accent but her speech was fluent, rapid even.

  “Charlie? Yes, he is here. You are a relative?”

  I explained who I was and that I wanted to come and see him.”

  “Oh dear. This is not a problem, you understand, for us, but for you. Charlie is a long-term sufferer from dementia. He is not capable of conversation. He is not even able to say yes or no.”

  “If I showed him some pictures—”

  “No. The only thing he responds to is music and only sometimes. We do try, but…” The shrug traveled down the telephone line.

  “Does he get many visitors?”

  “His son, sometimes. He comes to sit with him.”

  “Does Charlie still recognize him?”

  “Not for a year or more.”

  Poor Shane. I thanked her for talking to me and she sighed.

  “I have great respect for the residents in our home but I feel sometimes that they are just waiting, waiting, waiting. The ones like Charlie—they are the ones death forgot. It makes me sad.”

  I thanked her and said good-bye. She’d been helpful, but if there was a spate of sudden deaths at Tall Pines, I knew where I’d start the investigation.

  The next person on my list was Claire Naylor, now back at work and not pleased to be phoned. She became even frostier when I asked her why she’d given Shane an alibi for his sister’s death.

  “I don’t remember. We must have been together.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said quietly. “You told me you found out Angela was dead when Shane rang your house at four in the morning and woke everyone up. You were in bed, asleep.”

  She didn’t answer and I wished I could see her face.

  “Shane told me he was out with some mates smoking weed before he came home and found the police were already there. You wouldn’t happen to know who the friends were, would you?”

  “No.”

  “You told me you liked smoking weed, didn’t you? But you weren’t there that night.”

  No answer. I waited, and as so often, silence did my job for me. She sighed, irritated, and I heard a door close, cutting off the background noise from the shop.

  “All right. I said he was with me. What’s the big deal?”

  “It was a murder case and you lied.”

  “Only because he was terrified of the policeman.”

  “Lionel Orpen?”

  “Him. He’d been giving Vinny a shocking time—he’d got it into his head that Vinny might have killed her. Only he absolutely didn’t and there was no evidence. He thought he could get Vinny to confess if he leaned on him hard enough, but there was no way that was going to happen. Vinny had too much spirit.” She sounded proud of her brother, and a little sad.

  “So Shane was scared.”

  “Yes. Especially since he’d been doing drugs that night. I mean, it was nothing. It was just some weed. In ordinary circumstances the police wouldn’t have bothered with it but Orpen was looking for an angle all the time. He was starting to look beyond Vinny and he’d have got to Shane sooner or later. Shane was bricking it.”

  “And you weren’t suspicious when he asked you to provide him with a fake alibi?”

  “Absolutely not. He was a very scary guy, that police officer. None of us trusted him.”

  Fine work, Orpen. It was no wonder the case had never been solved.

  “And you don’t know who Shane was actually with.”

  “You’d have to ask him.”

  “I will.”

  “And don’t call me again, please. I don’t want to be bothered about Angela’s death any more.” Her voice was vibrating with tension.

  “I’m sorry. It’s just—”

  “Just leave me alone.” The phone went dead.

  I frowned. It was a bit of an overreaction to a phone call. Again, I had the feeling that I’d missed somet
hing. Something Claire was trying, quite desperately, to hide.

  Shane was the next person I rang, naturally enough, but his phone went straight to voicemail. I doodled a star next to his name to remind me to call him back and went on to dial Stuart Sinclair’s number. The same impersonal voice instructed me to leave a message and I did, hoping he’d get back to me as quickly as he had the previous time. I added another star beside his name as I left a message. He seemed to be the kind of person who never took the risk of answering his phone, preferring to know who was calling him, and why, before he actually engaged with them.

  I checked the time. Twenty minutes left. Maitland was unlikely to hold me to a strict sixty minutes but there was no doubt I was up against it. No Shane. No Stuart. I dearly wanted to ring Derwent and ask him if he’d ever prowled the streets of Walthamstow looking for women to rescue, but I knew better than to try to contact him. They would be watching everything he did already. They would be checking the calls in and out of his hospital room. It would be useless to say I hadn’t told him anything about the case, and it would have been a lie, because Derwent would have known why I was asking straight away. I put out my hand to the phone and took it back again, irresolute.

  Better to play it safe. Sorry, Derwent.

  I filled in the remaining minutes by going through my notes from the various interviews, making sure there was nothing else I’d meant to follow up. I even checked that Claire’s son really was at Cambridge, scouting around the Internet for references to him. Whatever else she was lying about, it wasn’t that. I found his college, his Twitter account and a Facebook page in seconds. The college was large and prestigious, with extensive grounds and a rowing tradition, and I thought he was lucky. Wondering if Luke had any pictures of Claire, or Vinny, I had a look at Facebook. No privacy settings: perfect. His profile picture was a bottle of beer. I clicked through to his albums and was two pictures in before I’d identified him, and identified a whole new set of problems. I sat and stared at his face, and the sound of things falling into place in my head was deafening.

  Oh, fuck.

  “Your last few words on the subject, then, Kerrigan? Get anywhere with your calls?” Maitland, trying to be amiable and missing by a nervous mile. He started to lean around my computer, looking at what I had in front of me. The only clear thought in my head was that he shouldn’t see it until I’d worked out what I was going to do about it. I closed the window and told him I hadn’t got very far.

  “What about this?” One fat finger descended and pointed at the star beside Shane’s name.

  “A reminder to try him again. There was no answer from his phone.”

  “Who’s he again?”

  “Angela’s brother. He gave a false alibi in the original investigation. The SIO missed it at the time. Apparently he was afraid of getting into trouble for smoking marijuana.”

  “Shocking.”

  “Well, he was only a teenager. And not outstandingly clever.” Unlike Derwent, apparently. The mind boggled. I made myself think about the case again. “You know, he was out that night with some people who’ve never been traced. It would be worth talking to him to find out who they were and whether they might have seen anything.”

  “Fine by me,” Maitland said. “Anything else?”

  “Stuart Sinclair. He was the only witness. Except…”

  “Except what?”

  “He lied.”

  Maitland shrugged. “Didn’t everybody?”

  “Pretty much. But Sinclair lied about what he’d seen. Or maybe he lied about where he was when he saw it. Either way, I think he needs to come clean.”

  “You wouldn’t think, twenty years on, that they’d even remember to lie, would you?”

  “Depends on why they did in the first place, I suppose. If they had a good enough reason—or thought they did—maybe they remember the lie first and the truth second.”

  “Well, it’s time to jog some memories.” Maitland ran a finger along the desk, looking down. “Where can I find this Shane Poole?”

  “He lives above his bar near Brick Lane.” I wrote down the name and contact details on a loose sheet of paper and handed it to him. “Go easy with him. He’s a bit edgy.”

  Instead of going away as I’d expected, Maitland turned my phone around and began to dial. I appreciated the gesture. It meant that I could hear enough of both sides of the conversation to follow it. He was a good DS and he loved Godley but that didn’t mean he thought the boss was right to punish me, and I liked him for that.

  “Can I speak to Shane Poole, please.”

  “… not here.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “… wish I did. He was supposed to open up, but … an hour late … still hasn’t come.”

  “Is that unusual for him?”

  “First time in six years … always reliable.”

  “Have you tried ringing his phone?”

  “… doesn’t have it with him.”

  “How do you know?” Maitland asked.

  “I can hear it ringing upstairs.” The voice had suddenly got a lot louder and more distinct. The fringe benefits of irritating someone.

  “Are you sure he’s not upstairs too?”

  “Well, I haven’t seen him.”

  Maitland put a hand over the mouthpiece of the receiver. “Did you get that?”

  “Not there but his phone is.”

  “That’s odd, isn’t it?”

  “Exceptionally. I’m concerned he may be there and unable to answer his phone. I’m concerned he may be in danger.” I raised my eyebrows. “Aren’t you?”

  “Very much so.” It was our passkey to get into the flat without going to the bother and delay of getting a court order. He returned to the call. “Right. I’ll be with you in half an hour. Do you have a key to get into the flat?”

  A squawk that I interpreted as a “yes.”

  “Well, don’t do it until I get there. And try not to worry.” He hung up. “Looks as if I’m off to Brick Lane.”

  “Good luck.”

  He turned around, then turned back. “You could come. You’ve met him. You know what to ask him when we find him.”

  “I’m not supposed to—”

  “It’s part of the handover. You’d be helping me.”

  “You’re being very kind, but I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

  “What trouble?” Maitland spread his hands wide. “Who could possibly object?”

  I hadn’t the heart to list the names but they started with Charles Godley and ended with Una Burt, and I didn’t feel like getting shouted at any more that day. I was about to say as much when I checked myself. It was pathetic to ignore the old familiar pull of curiosity that made me a good police officer just because I was scared of getting in trouble. Derwent would have wasted no time even considering saying no, and while his career trajectory was levelling out drastically there were still things he could teach me. And one was being single-minded despite the possible consequences.

  “All right. If you insist.”

  “I do insist,” Maitland said firmly, hauling his trousers up to rest just under his paunch and setting off. I shut down my computer and followed, shelving all thoughts of Luke Naylor for the moment. One problem at a time …

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  The bar was open already and a few tables were occupied with people having an early lunch. Behind the bar, a woman was serving drinks. She was a bit older than the rest of the staff—mid-forties, I guessed—and something about the set of her shoulders and the droop of her mouth conveyed that she was upset even before she looked up and spotted us. With a mutter to the barman she came out from behind the bar and hurried toward us.

  “Are you the man who phoned about Shane?”

  Maitland nodded. “And you are?”

  “Ginny Miles. I’m the assistant manager here.”

  “No sign of him, I take it?”

  “Nothing. I called his phone again, just in case.” Her breath
ing was shallow and I wondered if she was asthmatic.

  “It might be a false alarm,” I said. “He might have gone out and forgotten it. But we’d still like to check.”

  “When was the last time you saw him, again?”

  “Yesterday afternoon. He went off for a break before the evening rush. He does lunch and then it goes quiet in the afternoon so he goes upstairs for a lie-down or does some errands then. This place is open until one and he needs to be wide awake.”

  “I’m sure.” Maitland scanned the room, then turned back. “All right, Ginny. Lead the way.”

  She took us out through the kitchen where I dodged a rubber-aproned man lifting a huge tray of glasses out of a dishwasher, enveloped in clouds of steam. Two chefs were working, heads down, barely aware of our presence as we passed through to an alley behind the pub where there was a blue door. Her hands were shaking when she produced the key that unlocked it.

  “He has a separate entrance to his flat because it’s easier when the place is shut up and the alarm is on. And he can come and go as he pleases without getting caught up in work stuff.”

  “But you said it was out of character for him not to be there,” Maitland objected.

  “It is. He still comes and goes a fair bit. It was strange he didn’t come in at all today. I can’t remember him doing that before. Ever.”

  “Go ahead,” I said, and watched her struggle with the lock. “Have you been in the flat before?”

  “A couple of times.”

  “Would you know if anything was missing?”

  “I couldn’t swear to it.” She held the door open for us, revealing a gray-carpeted flight of stairs rising steeply from just inside the door. It was narrow and claustrophobic and I went up as quickly as I could without stepping on Maitland’s heels. In deference to seniority, I let him go first and he checked for signs of life—or death—before coming back to Ginny and me at the top of the stairs.

  “Nothing. I found his phone, though, in the kitchen area.” To Ginny, he said, “I think we should walk through and make sure we’re not missing a clue to where he might be.”