by Jane Casey
‘What’s easy?’ Megan frowned at him.
I cut in quickly so Derwent didn’t get a chance to explain what he’d meant. It would not have gone down well, I suspected. ‘What time did you get here?’
‘He picked me up at my flat and drove to the car park near here. I suppose it must have been half past ten when we got here. Then we walked over to the place where he said the badgers were likely to be.’ She pointed to the hillside behind her, to the left of the road where Hammond’s car had been parked. ‘That took another twenty minutes. Maybe longer.’
‘So would you say you were there at eleven p.m.?’ I asked.
‘Yes. Around then.’
‘And you were being pretty quiet, I assume.’
‘We couldn’t move. Couldn’t talk. Couldn’t eat or drink anything.’ She shivered. ‘I was freezing. I got bored after half an hour when nothing happened but I didn’t want be rude so I just stayed put.’
‘Did you see anything strange?’ I asked. ‘Or hear anything?’
‘Not until I heard the shots,’ Megan said. ‘There was nothing to hear. I was trying to stay awake so I was trying to find anything to distract myself from how sleepy and cold I was.’
‘Is it possible that you fell asleep?’ Derwent asked.
‘No.’ She didn’t sound sure, though, and I wasn’t surprised when she qualified it. ‘Not for more than a second or two, if that. And Hugh didn’t sleep at all. He didn’t seem to mind the cold or how late it was or how long it took for something to happen. I suppose he’s used to it. Anyway, he’d just seen a badger when we heard the shots, so we were both wide awake.’
‘How long was the gap between the shots?’
‘Not long. A couple of seconds.’
‘First shot.’ Derwent mimed feeding a bullet into a rifle and held the imaginary weapon up to his cheek. ‘Second shot. That long?’
‘About that long.’
Derwent looked thoughtful. I took the lead again. ‘What about after the shots?
‘Nothing for a bit. We argued about whether we’d heard shots and if it meant we were in danger. Hugh thought we should stay where we were and hide.’ Her voice dripped with disdain. ‘We didn’t have mobile reception so we couldn’t call the police. I wanted to move so we could call for help but Hugh was terrified.’
‘Why do I think he’s unlikely to admit that when we interview him?’ Derwent was grinning.
‘He can say what he likes, but I know the truth. We’d still be up there if he’d got his way.’ She folded her arms, hugging herself. ‘Then a car drove by. It had the lights off, which was weird.’
‘What kind of car?’ Derwent asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Anything at all. We don’t need the make and model. Was it a saloon, hatchback, estate, sports car, people carrier—’
‘I said I don’t know.’ She could see from the looks on our faces that it was the wrong answer. ‘I’m sorry. It was dark and they didn’t have the lights on. I thought it was medium-sized. Not a Mini or anything like that. Not a big car either. And the engine sounded rough. That’s all I can tell you. I’ve tried to remember anything useful. I really have.’
‘I’m sure you have,’ I said soothingly. ‘Memory is a funny thing, though. We’ll leave you our cards. If anything else comes back to you, you can let us know.’
‘I want to know his name.’
‘Who?’ I asked, genuinely confused.
‘The man who died.’
‘Oh.’ I glanced at Derwent, who shrugged, leaving it up to me to decide. I couldn’t work out if I should tell her or not. If Derwent felt like it, I’d get in trouble for breaking the rules. ‘His name hasn’t been released yet.’
‘I won’t tell anyone.’ Tension was reverberating through her. ‘I just want to know who he was. Did he deserve to be shot?’
‘No one deserves to be shot.’ Derwent looked at her for a moment, judging her. He looked severe, and no one was more surprised than me when he spoke again. ‘His name was Terence Hammond. He was a police officer. He had two kids and he used the park as a shortcut after his shifts. And none of that is to end up in the press.’
‘I won’t say anything. I’m not doing any interviews. I don’t care about that kind of stuff.’
‘What about your flatmate? She might fancy earning a couple of quid. Or your parents might tell their friends and neighbours. Things get out. So say nothing.’
‘Okay.’
Someone behind us called, ‘Josh!’
It was the curly haired scene-of-crime officer, now liberated from her protective gear. Her top was tight, showing off some eye-catching curves, and she’d managed to get hold of some lip gloss before finding us.
‘What can I do for you, Chloe?’ Derwent asked. Chloe. So he’d made up for his earlier faux pas.
‘We’ve released the scene. If you want to revisit it, go ahead. It’s all yours.’
‘Thanks for letting me know.’
‘You’re welcome.’ Chloe gave me a look that seemed to imply she’d noticed every single flaw in my physical appearance and wasn’t impressed, then did the same in Megan’s direction. To Derwent, she said, ‘I’ll be here for another ten or fifteen minutes. If you have any questions, you know where to find me.’
He moved across to get closer to her. ‘Did the dog find anything?’
‘A squirrel.’
‘I told you,’ Derwent said to me, and I got another cool look from Chloe.
Derwent turned back to her and said something else that I couldn’t catch. She lowered her voice to reply and the two of them talked for a couple of minutes before she walked away. He forgot himself enough to watch her go, staring for just a little bit too long. I cleared my throat.
‘Was there anything else you wanted to ask Miss O’Kane, sir?’
‘What? No. Not at the moment.’ He turned to Megan. ‘But we’ll need you to give us a formal statement about what you saw and heard. My colleague here will write something up and you can amend it if necessary.’ He produced a business card at the same time. ‘Thanks again.’
I handed her my card too and we left her gathering her things.
Derwent waited until we were more or less out of earshot.
‘Fuck my luck. I’m not getting any breakfast, am I?’
‘Not immediately. Let’s have a quick look and then we can grab something to eat.’
He made a noise deep in his throat that might even have been a growl. ‘The crime scene isn’t going anywhere.’
‘You know better than that. We’ve been lucky so far with holding the press off. The minute we lose the cordon, they’ll be in. I don’t want to have to work around photographers and reporters, thanks.’
‘You look all right, actually.’ Derwent was regarding me critically. ‘Today might be a good day to be on camera.’
‘Oh, shut up. Sir,’ I added as an afterthought, just in case I got in trouble for not respecting his rank. ‘What did you think about Megan?’
‘Not my type. Too intense.’
Count to a million … ‘I meant about what she had to say.’
‘I thought Hugh needed to work on his game. “Come and lie completely still on a cold hillside for a couple of hours while we wait to catch TB from some highly infectious badgers.” No thanks.’
‘Apart from dating tips, what else got your attention?’
He frowned. ‘She made me think we might not be dealing with a pro after all.’
‘Why not?’
‘The second shot bothers me. There was no need for it. He should have known he’d got a kill with the first. And it was too quick. More like he wanted to shoot him than that he had to do it.’
‘Maybe he thought one shot wasn’t enough to kill him.’
Derwent shook his head, slowly. ‘Maybe one shot wasn’t enough because he wanted him to die twice.’
Chapter 6
It was darker under the trees. I followed Derwent, who seemed to know where he was going. T
here was a path now, of sorts – a trail of trampled undergrowth and bent branches, where the forensics officers had carried equipment through the trees to the sniper’s hideout. I wasn’t sure that I’d have been able to follow it on my own.
‘Look out,’ Derwent said over his shoulder. ‘This bit is muddy.’
‘Thanks.’ I picked a route through an area of black ooze. ‘Any good for footprints?’
‘The SOCOs said it was too soft. Nothing identifiable.’ He paused to hold up a branch so I could duck under it.
‘Is it much further?’
‘Not much.’ A flash of teeth. ‘This isn’t your natural habitat, is it? You’re a proper little Londoner. You probably can’t imagine a green space bigger than Richmond Park. You probably can’t imagine anything bigger than Richmond Park.’ He answered himself in a high-pitched voice that was nothing like mine. ‘But sir, Richmond Park is infinite.’
‘Don’t try to pretend you spend your free time hiking through forests.’
‘True.’ Derwent sidestepped me so he was in front again. ‘But I did a shitload of training in the Brecon Beacons when I was in the army.’
‘I can’t help noticing that you left the army.’
‘Best decision I ever made.’ He went silent, then, and there was something expressive about the line of his shoulders that told me not to push for any further details.
I wouldn’t have admitted it to Derwent, but my sense of direction worked better on the street than in the trees, and I was struggling to work out where we were. I had a vague idea we had circled around from where we’d entered the woods. After I tripped on a root and almost fell I stopped thinking about where we were going and concentrated on where I was putting my feet, so much so that I collided with Derwent when he stopped.
‘Steady.’
‘Sorry.’
‘This is it.’
I looked over his shoulder and saw we had reached the edge of the trees. The area in front of us was taped off but I couldn’t see much difference between it and the surrounding woods.
‘How did you know this was the place?’
‘Knowledge, Kerrigan.’ He pulled something out of his pocket and held it up. ‘This helped.’
‘What’s that? A rifle sight?’
‘Correct.’
‘Where did you get that?’
‘I had it in the car.’
‘Why?’
‘Essential bit of kit. You never know when it will come in handy. Like today.’
‘I’ve worked with you for what – two years? You’ve never used it before.’
‘Not that you noticed.’ He stepped over the tape and strolled into the middle of the area, looking around. ‘Probably wouldn’t occur to you that it would be a good thing to carry around.’
‘Probably not.’ Because the majority of the cases we investigated didn’t involve high-powered rifles, I managed not to point out. ‘I still don’t know how you worked out this was the place.’
‘Experience and angles. Same as good sex.’ He turned to check my reaction, which was a waste of time because I’d worked with him for long enough not to betray any emotion at all.
‘So why here?’
‘This is the best place to see the front of the car. Have a look.’ He handed me the sight. ‘You’ll need to lie down, obviously, to see it as the shooter saw it. Just over here where the ground is lower. I’m not going to lie, it’s a bit soft.’
‘That’s fine.’ I knew Derwent was watching me for signs of reluctance to lie down in the dirt. I ignored him. I was actually too interested in seeing the sniper’s line of sight to care about my clothes. I knelt, feeling the ground give slightly as moisture seeped through the fabric of my trousers. I stretched out so I was resting on my elbows and held the sight up to one eye. ‘Oh, I see.’
‘Do you?’ He lay down beside me, his shoulder nudging mine. ‘What do you see?’
‘Because of the way the earth is built up in front of here and the bushes around either side there’s no way anyone would see him, but he has a good line on where the car was.’ The SOCOs had marked its location with white tape before the car was recovered and I had a clear view towards it.
‘Know much about rifles, Kerrigan?’
‘Not a thing.’
‘Well, the gun we’re looking for will be an illegally held firearm. The only long-barrelled guns that are legal in this country are shotguns and .22 rifles. There’s no way that was .22 ammunition. Terence Hammond was blown apart.’
‘So we’re not going to be able to check the register of firearms licences to find this weapon.’
‘Not as such. But it’s not a bad place to start, and neither are the gun clubs. The thing is that people who like guns like all kinds of guns, legal and otherwise. They like other people who like guns. They like spending time with them at places like gun clubs, and they like to talk about their collections.’ Derwent took the sight out of my hand and peered through it. ‘Someone will know who owns the gun we’re looking for. If we appeal for information, we’ll get a call or two, I promise you.’
‘I didn’t think people who liked guns necessarily liked us.’
‘They don’t. But there are some who like to pretend they could be police, and there are others who don’t like rule-breakers. It spoils the fun for everyone.’
‘Fun?’
Derwent shrugged. ‘It’s not your thing, but don’t judge them. A lot of them take it seriously. There’ve been two big incidents that had legal repercussion for the firearms fans in this country. There was Hungerford in 1987, when sixteen people were shot dead in the streets, and Dunblane in 1996. Eighteen people died here, including the gunman.’
Dunblane. The name made me shiver. Sixteen small children and their teacher had died at the hands of a middle-aged man armed with a collection of handguns, for no apparent reason. ‘I know handguns were made illegal after Dunblane.’
‘You’re right. And Hungerford did for semi-automatic rifles. Every weapon Michael Ryan used in Hungerford was licensed and legally held by him. Thomas Hamilton was the same in Dunblane. The law-abiding gun lovers are scared of another incident, not that they have much left to lose. You know the politicians don’t care about shooting as a sport. It’s up there with hunting. They’re happy to swap the chance of a few Olympic shooting medals for a public perception they’ve done something about mass murder.’
‘So bitter,’ I said.
‘I’d ban the lot of them. I hate guns.’
‘But you liked shooting.’
‘I did.’ He slid the sight into his jacket pocket. ‘A bit too much.’
Derwent never, ever talked about the army, or shooting, or anything else about his past unless he had no choice. I hesitated, wondering if I should ask him to explain what he’d meant, but before I could he had moved on.
‘We think he had a groundsheet or something similar to lie on, from the way the mud is flattened.’
‘That seems sensible.’ I didn’t want to think about how my clothes would look once we were finished in the woods.
‘Makes me think he’d been here before to find this place, and that he was prepared to wait for a long time.’ Derwent rolled over and sat up, looking around. ‘I asked Chloe. The SOCOs weren’t able to find a latrine, even with the dog. Either he buried it a long way down or he took it with him. No way he wasn’t crapping himself with nerves.’
‘Lovely.’
‘It’s all DNA. The cops in Perugia got Rudy Guede for Meredith Kercher’s murder because he shat his guts out after killing her.’
‘I’m not sure that case is the best example of good forensic work,’ I said, standing up.
‘Good point. You have to wonder if it would have turned out differently with someone like Chloe collecting the evidence.’
‘Yes, about her. When did the two of you make friends?’
‘While you were off with the boss.’ He got to his feet, grinning. ‘I knew she wouldn’t be able to resist me for long.’
&nb
sp; ‘For God’s sake, are you on heat or something?’
‘This is what it’s like to be single, Kerrigan. You see opportunities and you take them.’
‘That’s what it’s like when you’re single,’ I said. ‘Normal people can control themselves a bit better than that.’
‘You just don’t remember what it’s like. You’re the type who goes from one big relationship to another. I bet you and the male model got together before you’d finished splitting up with your last bloke.’
The male model being Rob, I guessed. Derwent had a million nicknames for him, mostly rude.
‘I got together with Rob just after I broke up with Ian, but there was a gap.’ Of about five minutes. ‘I have been single in the past, though, and I don’t remember trying to pull everyone that crossed my path.’
‘Then you were doing it wrong. If you ever need a few pointers, let me know.’ He winked. I knew it was designed to bother me but I couldn’t let that go.
‘I can’t believe you just winked at me. Don’t ever do that again.’
‘Protesting too much, Kerrigan.’
‘No, just the right amount.’ A glint in Derwent’s eye could have been anger or amusement. Either way, I had probably said too much. ‘How far did you get with Chloe?’
‘I got her number.’ He shrugged. ‘Don’t know if I’ll use it or not, but it’s one for the shag bank.’
‘You’d have to take her out first. I thought you didn’t believe in dating.’
‘Might be worth it, for her.’
There was something in his voice that made me look at him, surprised. ‘Don’t tell me you’re smitten.’
‘Not smitten.’ The grin. ‘She looks properly dirty, though. Something about the way she walks. That look in her eye. You can’t fake it.’
I shook my head. ‘No matter how low I set my expectations, you always manage to get under them.’
‘And no matter how tight the knickers, I always get into them in the end.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s a gift.’
I checked the time. ‘We’d better get going if you want to get something to eat. We still have to talk to Romeo himself, Hugh Johnson. Are you going to the post-mortem?’