by Jane Casey
‘Sorry. I didn’t realise you were in a rush. You took long enough about getting changed.’ His voice was soft but I didn’t make the mistake of thinking that meant he wasn’t angry.
‘It took me five minutes.’
‘More than that.’
‘No.’
‘Are you arguing with me?’
I didn’t answer.
The car park was almost deserted, with just a few cars dotted here and there. Derwent parked in the space beside the one reserved for police cars, right in front of the main building, making a point that he could have used the dedicated space but he chose not to. I’d already opened my door before he turned off the engine, desperate to get out and stretch my legs. When Derwent got out, he didn’t even look at me. He locked the car and walked away, into the building, and I had no idea if he was planning on leaving immediately or if he needed a longer break. I followed, leaving him plenty of space.
The services were always bleak, but especially so at that time in the morning. Most of the shops and catering concessions were closed but one of the coffee shops was open.
Derwent was in and out of the gents in record time. He headed for the counter and I came to stand next to him while a yawning teenager sold him coffee.
‘And a chicken sandwich.’
‘Is that breakfast?’ I asked, and got no answer. He paid and took it to one of the tables, sitting down, which I took as a clue that we’d be there for a while. I got coffee for myself. I had no appetite for food. My stomach ached and so did my jaw. I had been clenching it, I realised.
I sat down and watched Derwent picking the meat out of his sandwich. ‘No bread?’
‘Carbs,’ he said, as if it was a complete answer. He drank some coffee and swore, then picked it up and strode back to the counter.
‘If I wanted to wait fifteen fucking minutes to be able to drink my coffee, I’d ask for it to be extra-hot.’
‘Sorry,’ the teenager mumbled. His fingers trembled slightly as he took the cup and poured a little away, then filled it up with cold water.
‘That’s better.’ Derwent came back and sat down. ‘How’s yours?’
Too hot. Undrinkable. ‘Fine.’ I glanced across at the counter, where the teenager was wiping down the coffee machine with his back to us. His ears were red. ‘Was that necessary?’
‘What?’
‘Did you have to be so unpleasant? I know you’re in a bad mood, but—’
‘You’re in a bad mood.’
‘I’m not the one who just swore at a poor kid doing a shitty, badly paid job in the middle of the night.’
‘What the fuck is your problem, Kerrigan?’
‘You should apologise.’
Derwent’s eyebrows went up. ‘To him?’
‘Of course.’
‘Not to you.’
‘Why would you need to apologise to me?’
‘I have no idea but I know when I’m getting the silent treatment.’
I shook my head. ‘I’m not talking to you because you’re in the kind of mood where you’re going to use anything I say as target practice.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘It’s true.’ I sipped my coffee, managing not to wince as it scorched my mouth.
‘You’re the one who’s pissed off with me,’ Derwent said.
‘And why would that be?’ I traced a pattern on the lid of my cup. The coffee was cold compared to the rage that was making it hard for me to see straight. My voice was level, though. ‘Maybe because I work very hard to be seen as more than a token female on the team, and I’ve proved myself time and time again. And despite all of that, you thought it was okay to feel me up in front of all our colleagues.’
‘Oh, buy a sense of humour. It was a joke.’
‘To you, maybe.’
‘It was nothing. It was a couple of minutes of dancing.
No one was watching.’
‘Everyone was watching.’
He waved a hand, brushing the objection aside since he knew it was true. ‘It was just friendly.’
‘We are not friends.’ It was a statement of fact but the words fell between us like a challenge.
Derwent shifted his chair back a couple of inches and I thought he was going to walk off, but he stayed where he was. After a moment, he said, ‘Anyway. It was your fault for wearing that dress.’
That made me look at him. ‘What did you say?’
‘There wasn’t much of it, was there?’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realise that gave you a licence to grope me. What should I have been wearing? A suit like this, so you didn’t accidentally forget I was your colleague?’ I dropped the sugar-sweet sarcasm. ‘It was a wedding. A party. I wore a party dress. Maybe I should have got hold of a burqa since you find it so hard to control yourself when confronted by a fucking frock.’
I had actually, genuinely, lost my temper. Before Derwent could answer me I stood up and stalked to the ladies, using it as a refuge for the second time that night. It took a full two minutes for my hands to stop shaking. I shook my head at my reflection as I ran water into the sink, annoyed with myself for letting Derwent get to me. There was a better than evens chance he would punish me by leaving without me, and then I’d be stuck at this soulless, depressing rest stop for hours.
When I came out of the loo to find the teenager wiping the table we had used, my heart sank. Derwent had gone.
‘Where is he?’
‘He left.’ The teenager folded the cloth a couple of times. In a rush, as if he had to tell someone, he said, ‘He gave me twenty quid.’
‘Really?’
‘Just now.’
‘Guilt,’ I explained. ‘Did he apologise for being rude?’
‘He asked me if I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I said yeah, and he said if it didn’t involve selling coffee I should quit and get a real job.’
Of course he did. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘No, he’s right. This is shit. The pay is shit. I’m going to do it.’ He grinned at me. ‘Tell him I said thanks.’
Instant Stockholm Syndrome. Derwent’s magic touch struck again. Of course he couldn’t do anything as straightforward as apologise for being an arse. And of course it worked.
I thanked the teenager and headed for the car park. I saw Derwent through the glass doors, sitting in the driver’s seat, waiting. He was scrolling through messages on his phone when I got to the car, his expression forbidding.
‘If you think you can buy me off with twenty quid and some career advice, you’ve got another think coming,’ I said. ‘I want a proper apology.’
‘Get stuffed.’ Derwent was still focused on his inbox.
‘Right.’ I was looking at the cup holder by the handbrake. He’d rescued the coffee I hadn’t been able to drink. A paper bag was propped against the cup. ‘What’s this?’
He reversed out of the space and cut through the car park, ignoring the arrows for the one-way system. ‘Your usual. Bacon sandwich, extra lard.’
‘Why?’
‘You need to eat something. You might not feel like it now, but you’ll be hungry later.’
I was really trying to stay angry, but I couldn’t quite manage it. ‘Thank you.’
He glanced across at me. ‘I think it’s stale. The kid gave it to me for free.’
‘Yeah, yeah.’ I shook my head. ‘You really are annoying, you know.’
‘If anyone is pissed off, it should be me. I was two inches away from getting into the bridesmaid’s knickers when you did your coitus interruptus bit.’
‘Godley told me to find you.’
‘And little miss nosy knew just where to look.’
‘You’re predictable. But I’m sorry. How long did you need? Two, three minutes maybe?’
‘Oh, ha ha.’ It was his I’ve-had-enough tone and I took the hint.
‘Look, she’s a friend of Christine’s. You can get her number. I’m sure you can charm your way back into her pants in no time.’
‘No way.’
‘Why not?’
‘We’d have to date, and that means talking to her. Listening to her talk, I should say. I can’t be fucked with it. If I’d done her tonight, we could have met up again. You can always pretend you’re too horny to eat, and then you can just shag. But if you haven’t done the deed you have to start again and make small talk. And I hate small talk.’
‘Yes, I imagine there’s nothing worse than getting to know the person you’re about to stick your penis in.’ The sarcasm was, inevitably, lost on Derwent.
‘It’s so boring I would rather wank.’ A sidelong look. ‘I mean that.’
‘Can we go back to not talking?’ I asked in a small voice.
‘If you want.’ Derwent turned up the radio. He’d found the only station in the UK that still played Whitesnake, and it blasted through the car at a volume that vibrated in my bones. I wasn’t all that familiar with the Whitesnake back catalogue, but given the alternative, I was willing to be enlightened.
Chapter 3
The white gates of Richmond Park loomed out of the darkness and not a second too soon. We had survived the stop–go suburban roads and made it through the dark heart of Kingston’s one-way system but it had tested Derwent’s patience to the point of failure. He was on edge anyway, as he always seemed to be at the start of a case. I recognised it as fear of failure. In Derwent, that fear was sublimated into aggression. Most of his emotions were.
‘At last.’ He drove through the gates and stopped. ‘Which way?’
‘Left.’ I’d been saving one nugget of information. Now, I judged, was the right time to use it to take the edge off Derwent’s mood. ‘The GPS reference is near a place called Spankers Hill Wood.’
Derwent’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Is it, indeed?’
‘Could I make up something like that?’
He laughed. ‘Spankers Hill. I wonder how it got that name.’
‘And I wonder why Terence Hammond decided to stop nearby.’
Derwent’s smile faded and he was silent for the next few minutes as I told him which of the winding roads to take, and watched for the small signposts that confirmed we were on the right track. The drive seemed endless and I was nervous, knowing that Derwent would lose his temper if I sent him the wrong way.
‘There they are,’ I said, managing not to sound relieved.
A couple of police cars marked the checkpoint where we showed our ID to a square, red-faced PC in a high-visibility jacket. His breath misted as he directed Derwent to carry on and park on the left. ‘When you stop, don’t try to pull off the road,’ he said. ‘There are posts in the grass to stop people parking along the verge and they’ll do for your car. That’s why we’re leaving the right side of the road free for access.’
Tail-light reflectors gleamed red in our headlights as Derwent pulled in behind the last car in the line. He was out of the car quickly, leaving me to realise that the verge was too high to let me open the passenger door more than a couple of inches. I was damned if I’d ask him to move the car to let me get out. I climbed across into his seat, glad I was wearing trousers and grateful for long legs that made short work of clambering over the handbrake. Derwent, typically, didn’t comment when I emerged from his side of the car. He was busy scanning the line of vehicles.
‘The boss is here already,’ I said. The shiny black bodywork of the Mercedes gleamed a few cars ahead of us.
‘He probably didn’t stop. But we’ll have beaten Chris and Tiny Dancer.’ Derwent was looking pleased with himself.
‘His name is Dave, and he’s nice.’
‘If you say so. I didn’t think you went for the choirboy type.’
‘I don’t have to go for his type to think he’s nice. He’s perfectly fine. He just looks young, that’s all.’ I slid my jacket on, shivering. ‘I wonder how far it is to the scene.’
‘Come on. You’ll feel better once you see the body. Get the smell of blood in your nostrils.’ He started walking. I really didn’t want to walk down that dark road after him. It wasn’t just that my stomach had clenched at the thought of a crime scene soaked in fresh blood. It wasn’t just that I’d had more than enough of Derwent’s company for one evening, or that I had better things to do with my time. It was simply that I didn’t want to start investigating Terence Hammond’s death. I had a strong urge to get back into the car and refuse to come out. I didn’t believe in premonitions or fate, but I had a bad feeling I couldn’t shake despite all of my faith in rational thought. And once or twice before, that bad feeling had saved my neck.
But since I could imagine how well that would go down with my inspector, I pulled my jacket tightly around me and hurried to catch up with him, walking fast until we got to a place where we could pause to take in the view.
The place where Terence Hammond had met his sudden end was on a side road that snaked up a hill and ended in a clump of trees. Impossible to imagine it without the scrum of police and forensic investigators, without the white tent screening the actual crime scene from view. Bright lights shone on whatever was inside the tent, and I thought it looked fake, as if it was staged. The figures around the tent moved like puppets in a show that was very definitely not suitable for children. Too much caffeine, too little sleep. That was why I couldn’t shake the stifling feeling that I’d been here before. In a way, I had. There was a procedure in murder investigations, a well-worn path from body to interview room, from police cell to the dock. The familiarity of it all should have been comforting.
It felt suffocating.
‘Kerrigan.’
I turned and saw Derwent watching me. His face was shadowed, unreadable. ‘Sorry,’ I said.
‘Why would you need to apologise?’
‘I don’t know. I thought you were annoyed.’
‘Why would I be annoyed? Feeling guilty about something?’ He spoke softly, inviting me to trust him. Never.
‘Of course not.’
He tilted his head back, plainly not believing a word of it. I’d seen him do it to suspects time and again, and it worked more often than not. It almost worked on me.
‘I’m just tired.’
‘No. That’s not it.’ He took a step closer. ‘Lost your nerve, Kerrigan? Lost your edge?’
‘Is this your version of mentoring? Because really, don’t bother. You did your good deed for the night on the way here. That kid might have needed your advice but I don’t need any help from you.’
‘Your heart isn’t in this one.’
It was like a punch to my stomach. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘You were quiet at the briefing. You didn’t talk about it in the car. You’re not exactly hurrying to get up there.’
All true. ‘I feel a bit off, that’s all.’
Derwent tucked an imaginary violin under his chin and played a few moping notes. ‘Stop sulking, Kerrigan. You don’t want to be here. You’d rather be having fun. You and everyone else on this hill, including Terence Hammond, would rather be somewhere else. And his wife will wish things were different too, in about an hour, when Hammond’s boss turns up at her front door. She’ll know straightaway. Cops’ wives always know. It’s the thing she’s dreaded since the first time he put on his uniform and went out on the street. And now it’s happened. That’s bad enough. Then she’ll find out how it happened, and where, and the questions will start.’ He jabbed a finger in my direction. ‘You can help find some answers for her, or you can consider yourself too special to bother, and go back to neighbourhoods. Spend your time on dog shit and parking. See how you like it.’
My face was burning. ‘I never said I was too special for this.’
‘No, but you thought it.’ He leaned forward and tapped my forehead. ‘Turn this on, Kerrigan. Get interested or get a transfer, because I’m not dragging you around with a face like a smacked arse for however long it takes to find out who killed Terence Hammond.’
He walked away, up the hill. Godley had emerged from behind the screens and Der
went made towards him. I hurried to follow him, trying to pull myself together. Every time I thought I was used to working with Derwent – every time I started to relax around him – he found some way of making me feel ill at ease. And it made it so much worse that I’d handed him the opportunity to make me prove myself yet again.
Godley came to meet us. ‘You made good time, Josh. Get caught by any speed cameras?’
‘Not that I noticed. You?’
‘Not this time.’
Derwent was trying to smile but he obviously hated that he’d come second. ‘What was your average speed? One twenty? Did the wheels actually touch the ground?’
‘The car likes to go fast,’ Godley said calmly. ‘And so do I.’
‘What’s behind the screen?’ I asked.
‘The victim’s car. He’s still in it.’
I tried to think of an appropriate response. ‘Oh good’ didn’t seem right. I settled for nodding.
‘Why haven’t they moved him?’ Derwent asked. ‘Waiting for us?’
‘Waiting for the forensics team to finish with the area around the car and the outside of the car itself. He was locked in. No keys in the ignition. No keys visible in the car.’ Godley shrugged. ‘They may be in his pocket or under him, but at the moment we can assume someone locked him in and took the keys away with them.’
‘Why would they do that?’ I said, puzzled.
‘To annoy us.’ Derwent’s voice was dust-dry and I couldn’t tell if he was joking or if he meant it. ‘It slows us down. Gives the killer more of a head start.’
‘Maybe. It’s his car, but it looks as if he wasn’t driving. He’s in the passenger seat.’ Godley checked the time. ‘No sign of Chris and Dave. You two might as well have a look at Mr Hammond while he’s still in the car. Pete Belcott is around there already with Colin. They’ve been working with the forensics team.’
I bit back the swear word that I was thinking. I’d forgotten about Belcott, one of the other detective constables on the team. He’d been invited to the wedding like everyone else, but stayed in London, claiming to be too busy. Too lazy to travel to Somerset, I’d thought, and had been glad he wasn’t there, with his damp hands and small, hostile eyes.