by Jane Casey
‘Why would you panic? You said he stopped when you told him to. You must have known he would.’
‘Yes, I knew he would, but I still felt like I was depending on him to do what I asked. There was nothing I could do if he didn’t. I just got into a state.’ My heart was thumping as if I’d been running. I only seemed to be able to take shallow, gulping breaths that didn’t give me enough air. Back to feeling trapped. Back to feeling vulnerable and pathetic.
‘That’s not like you, Kerrigan.’
‘I know. I—I had a bad experience.’ Why was this harder to talk about than how my relationship had fallen apart?
‘Recently?’ Derwent suggested.
‘On the Maudling Estate.’
‘I knew it.’ Pure triumph. For Derwent, there was nothing better than the high of being right. He’d waited for this, like the cat by the mouse hole.
‘Of course you knew,’ I snapped. ‘I didn’t want to talk about it then, and I don’t want to talk about it now. I’m just explaining the context, that’s all.’
‘Did some little shitbag try it on with you?’
I shook my head. Then, because he wouldn’t have let it drop, ‘Four of them.’
‘In the stairwell, where I found your button.’
‘Yes.’
Derwent’s face darkened. ‘What happened?’
‘They cornered me and threatened me with various horrible things. I scared them off. The end. I just wanted to forget about it afterwards and I thought I had, but it just – came back.’
‘Trauma is like that.’
‘Let’s not overstate it. I was fine.’
‘Bullshit.’ Just for a second I caught a flash of the blazing anger inside Derwent. ‘You walked out of there looking like a ghost. I should have made you tell me what happened. I should have insisted.’
‘I wouldn’t have told you. It was over. I dealt with it. I got myself into trouble and I got myself out of it.’
‘And now you’re completely fine,’ he said softly. ‘You didn’t think it should be investigated?’
‘I thought it would waste time and divert resources that were needed elsewhere.’
‘You didn’t think you needed counselling?’
I laughed. ‘You think I should have had counselling? Is this the devil quoting scripture? You think it’s bollocks.’
‘It doesn’t work for me. It might work for you. I can arrange it for you, if you like.’
‘No.’
‘Kerrigan, when are you going to learn that it’s okay to ask for help? You can’t always deal with things on your own.’
‘You are a fine one to talk.’
He took a step towards me, jabbing a finger for emphasis. ‘When I was in real trouble, I came to you.’
‘You used me to get the inside track on an investigation you should have known nothing about.’
‘Yeah, all right, but that was still me asking you for help.’ The anger faded out of his face, replaced by something that looked a lot like affection. ‘And you did help me, and I was grateful.’
I was increasingly immune to the shouting and the sarcasm. It was always, always when Derwent was nice to me that it got under my defences. I put my hand over my eyes so I didn’t have to look at him as I cried. They were proper, heaving sobs, the kind you can’t hide, the kind that generate torrents of snot and end up in red-nosed hiccups. I had tissues in my pocket, thankfully, so I wasn’t reduced to wiping my nose on my sleeve. That was as close as I got to keeping my dignity.
When I finally got control of myself and dared to look at Derwent again, he was staring into the middle distance, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet.
‘Sorry, am I boring you?’
‘A bit,’ he admitted. ‘Finished?’
‘For now.’ I blew my nose. ‘If this is you being a shoulder to cry on, I’m not sure you’re all that effective.’
You criticised Derwent at your peril. The result was instant belligerence. ‘What do you want me to do? Do you want a hug?’
The way he said it was awfully close to do you want a fight? I didn’t hesitate. ‘Absolutely not.’
‘Well, what would make you feel better?’
I cleared my throat, afraid to look at him again. At least he would tell me the truth. ‘Do you think – in your view – was it my fault?’
‘You are so thick sometimes,’ Derwent said. ‘Why should you take responsibility for something you didn’t do? Why can’t you admit it’s Rob’s fault?’
‘It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t know about the Maudling Estate. He was confused and drunk and hurt, probably.’
Derwent frowned at me, interested. ‘Why didn’t you tell him?’
I shook my head slightly.
‘The same reason you didn’t tell me? Because you didn’t want a fuss?’
‘I suppose.’
‘It’s a quick way to fuck things up. Keeping secrets,’ he clarified. ‘The trust isn’t there any more, if it ever was.’
‘I trust him,’ I said, needled.
‘Not enough to tell him the truth.’
‘He didn’t need to know.’
‘He absolutely did. If you were my girlfriend I’d dump you for that.’
‘Very comforting. Are you finished?’
‘No, not yet. Why aren’t you angry with him for sleeping with Debbie? Don’t you care?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Well, then.’
I sighed. ‘I could murder him for it but I know why it happened and I know what state he was in. He made a mistake.’
‘It’s a pretty big mistake.’
‘It happens. I’ve been tempted.’
‘Have you?’ Derwent was delighted.
Not by you not by you not by you.
‘Of course. Monogamy is difficult.’ I could feel myself blushing at the memory of Ben Dornton’s wedding and hoped Derwent wouldn’t notice. Even if he was a trained interrogator, I would never tell him about my moment of weakness. I would die first. Or kill him, alternatively. That option had its attractions. I went on, ‘If it had been me, I would want him to forgive me. I’ll forgive him if I ever get the chance.’
‘Do you think he’d forgive you for cheating on him?’ Derwent’s tone made it clear that he wouldn’t.
‘He’s a better person than I am.’
‘If you believe that—’ Derwent broke off, shaking his head. ‘You’ll never have a proper relationship with him if you spend your time being grateful to him for loving you.’
‘But I let him down. I—’
‘Now I am bored.’ The expression on his face was tender, though. ‘Look, you didn’t do anything wrong, except for not telling people what was going on when you should have.’
‘Oh.’ I swallowed. ‘And do you think he’ll come back?’
‘He’s a twat, but he’s not an idiot. He’d be an idiot not to come back to you. Whether you should welcome him back is another question. I wouldn’t, but that’s up to you. Does that make you feel better?’
It actually did. I nodded.
‘Told you it was worth your while to talk to me.’ He grinned, then got serious again. ‘Let’s deal with the practical side. Do you want me to book you in for counselling? No one has to know about it and no one has to know why.’
‘Not at the moment. I’ll ask if I think I need it.’
‘See that you do. Now, according to you, what happened between you and Rob definitely wasn’t a sexual assault, so I don’t have to go and get him picked up.’
‘Oh God, no. Would you?’
‘Of course,’ he said, in a matter-of-fact way. ‘Do you want me to go and beat him up for shagging around with Debbie Ormond?’
‘Definitely not.’
He looked hurt. ‘It’s a genuine offer.’
‘I know,’ I said, trying to keep a straight face. So that was where we were in our relationship. Derwent’s scale ran all the way from wouldn’t piss-on-you-if-you-were-on-fire to would-kill-for-you-no-
need-to-ask-twice. I was quite glad to be somewhere near the middle. ‘I appreciate it. No.’
‘Do you want me to go and find those four cuntbubbles on the estate and deal with them?’
Deal with, not arrest. Derwent was looking incredibly dangerous and not at all as if he was going to do things by the book. I shook my head. ‘You have enough to do. Anyway, you’d never find them.’
‘I’m highly motivated.’
‘I don’t doubt you. But no.’
‘All right. In that case, stop being such a drip. Pull yourself together and let’s get on with the job.’
I stood up, feeling physically lighter for having unburdened myself. I wiped my eyes again. ‘I can’t believe you made me cry.’
‘It wasn’t difficult.’
‘I never cry at work if I can help it.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t want to be that girl – you know, upset about everything. Attention seeking. People would not be nice.’
Derwent shrugged. ‘It’s what birds do, though, isn’t it?’
‘I’m not a bird, I’m a police officer. At work, anyway. You can’t imagine Chris Pettifer sobbing his heart out, can you?’
‘Only every time Arsenal lose.’
We walked back out of the woods together. I stopped when we got to the crime scene.
‘What was the other reason for coming here?’
‘Huh?’
‘You said you had two reasons. One was to talk to me. What was the other?’
‘I thought it might help to come back.’ Derwent looked around, restless again. ‘This is where it all started. After everything that’s happened I thought it might help to go back to the beginning. Get some perspective.’
‘And did it help?’
He pulled a face. ‘One out of two isn’t bad.’
Chapter 24
Derwent and I arrived back into the office in time to intercept a glower from DCI Burt.
‘Where have you been?’ She looked accusingly at the mud on our shoes and the general post-weeping dishevelment I hadn’t been able to fix in the car.
‘The Hammond crime scene for a quick reminder,’ Derwent said. ‘Did we miss anything?’
‘Probably. I’m sure you have work to do.’ She turned her attention to me and I cleared my mind of Rob, and everything to do with him. Concentrate. ‘Maeve, did we ever get an answer from the estate agents about the Leytonstone property?’
‘The killer or an associate of his made a phone call to see if the place was still available and if it was currently unoccupied. A man’s voice – nothing distinctive about it according to the girl who spoke to him. He was polite, she said, but brief, which she was glad about. She was busy.’
‘She didn’t think it was strange he wanted to know if it was empty?’ Una Burt snorted. ‘What if he’d been a squatter? Or a scrap metal thief planning to strip it?’
‘He rang on the Saturday so all the agents were out on showings, which was clever of him. She was just a temp, answering the phones, taking messages and registering new clients. I think she’s about eighteen.’
‘No excuse.’
‘She was a bright girl,’ I protested. ‘He just had a good line. She said he wanted to know if the place was habitable or if it would need building work first to make it safe. He said it didn’t look occupied from the pictures on the website. She’d heard two of the agents saying it was hard to sell it because the place was so cold and unwelcoming, so she just confirmed that it was empty but as far as they knew, sound. Buyer beware, obviously.’
‘Buyer beware of being completely mental. Her first clue that something was off should have been that he sounded normal and wanted to know about that house,’ Derwent said.
‘She was rushed off her feet that day. I don’t think she was thinking about whether there was anything strange about him. She left a message on the relevant agent’s desk saying that there had been an enquiry but the caller hadn’t left a name or a number.’
‘If she noted the time of the call we can pick it up off their phone records and get the number,’ Una Burt said. ‘I know these guys treat mobile phones as if they’re disposable but they’re still unlikely to have dumped it until after the killing. We could get a location for where they were staying and that should help us trace a car, and—’
I was shaking my head.
‘What?’
‘I got the time of the call off the message slip and we pulled up the number. It was a payphone about a quarter of a mile away, near the cemetery. No shops or businesses nearby so it was out of range of CCTV or anything helpful like that.’
Burt regarded me for a moment, her pale eyes bulging slightly as she considered the implications of it: another dead end. ‘Golly, how disappointing.’
‘Isn’t it?’ I said, trying not to look in Derwent’s direction. He was grinning widely. In Burt’s place he would have been howling with rage and punching something – an inanimate object if we were lucky. Una Burt’s mastery of her emotions counted as a sign of weakness to him, which was one of his many illogical prejudices.
Burt had moved on to a different issue: my shortcomings. ‘When did you find out all of this? Why isn’t it on the board?’
‘We only got the confirmation of the phone box this morning. I just haven’t had time to write it up.’ I absolutely refused to be ruffled. Derwent had hauled me away from my work and he was two ranks above me. It wasn’t my fault and I wouldn’t pretend that it was.
‘Well, next time you leave the office when you’re in possession of an important piece of information, I suggest you tell someone first. We could have wasted a lot of time on that.’
‘Colin Vale knew,’ I said, looking across to where he was working, head down in a sea of paper. ‘He’s the one with contacts at BT. He sorted out the phone records and we looked at them together.’
‘Well, I didn’t know that. This is why the board is so important.’ She looked over at it proudly, which seemed strange to me. It was nothing more, currently, than a long stretch of failure. ‘It’s our collective brain, our memory, our understanding of this case. Too often you go on a solo run, Maeve, and you don’t tell anyone what you’re doing. You need to communicate better. Talk to your superior officers. Keep everyone informed.’
‘I was just telling her the same thing,’ Derwent chipped in.
Burt glowered at him. ‘Were you involved in the estate agent enquiry?’
‘Not me.’
‘Then why are you still involved in this conversation?’
‘The same reason you are. I wanted to know what she’d found out. And now I do.’
‘Get on with something useful,’ Burt said scornfully, and turned on her heel. I watched her stump across the room and execute a textbook knock-and-enter on Godley’s office. I heard her laugh loudly as she closed the door.
‘Look at that,’ I said. ‘She didn’t even give him a chance to hide. The blinds were closed and everything. He could have been changing.’
‘He could have been having a wank.’ It was a half-hearted effort for Derwent – automatic, almost.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.
‘Why was she picking on you?’
‘She doesn’t like me.’
‘She loves you. She wants to mould you in her image.’
‘No thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ll stick with my own.’
‘What did you do to piss her off?’
‘I threw in my lot with you and I will never be forgiven. But if you could stop actively annoying her, it would probably make my life a lot easier.’
‘I can’t help it.’
‘You could try harder. You could try at all.’
‘All right, Goody Two-shoes.’ He patted my shoulder. ‘Well done for knowing everything there was to know about the estate agents. I do love to see her disappointed.’
‘I love doing my job.’ I watched him walk off. ‘Where are you going?’
He swiped a newspaper off someone’s desk and kept
going. ‘For a shit.’
It was my own fault for asking, I thought, sitting down and trying to remember where I’d left off. I should get the phone stuff on the board now, while Burt was occupied, and then I could get on with—
The door to Godley’s office opened and he came out. He looked over at my desk in a way that was more than a casual glance, but as soon as he saw me watching him, he looked away again and picked up his pace. He looked dreadful – pale, ill, tired and thin. His suit was roomy on him, the shirt collar too loose and, most unusually, grimy. He disappeared through the double doors to the hall, a set expression on his face.
Strange, I thought. Why had he looked to see if I was there? Checking up on me? Had Una Burt been complaining about me?
But he hadn’t looked as if he was angry with me. I tried to think what it reminded me of. An old black-and-white film on Channel 4 on a dull Saturday afternoon, with the rain streaking the windows and my father entranced before the only television in the house. Declan and I had watched it with him because there was nothing else to do. Dirk Bogarde looking noble in heavy make-up. It is a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done.
I got up without really knowing why and went to the door of Godley’s office. Una Burt was still in there, reading a report and eating a biscuit. She looked up.
‘What is it?’ The question came with a shower of crumbs, and a frown.
‘Where did the boss go?’
‘He said he was going down to the basement.’
The basement was home to a couple of changing rooms with showers. It was possible Godley had been going to freshen up.
Possible, but somehow not likely.
‘This might sound a bit odd, but can I ask what he was doing when you came in here?’
The frown deepened. ‘You’re right, it does sound odd. And impertinent, if I’m honest.’
‘Please,’ I said. ‘It might not matter. But – you laughed. What was he doing?’
‘He had dropped his fountain pen and it rolled under something. He was on the floor looking to see where it had gone. When I came in he popped up from behind his desk like a meerkat.’ She gave a little chuckle, then went serious again. ‘Is that all?’