by Jane Casey
‘Did he find it?’
She thought about it. ‘No. He didn’t.’
‘Okay. Thank you.’ I started to turn away, then stopped. The look on his face. The crumpled, dirty suit. Looking for something but abandoning the search once he was interrupted. Leaving Una Burt unattended in his office. Secrets. Lies. Red flags. Did you notice anything different about his behaviour? Did he seem to be himself? I’d asked those questions too many times in the aftermath of a tragedy.
I bent down and started peering under the desk.
Burt was watching me with frank disgust. ‘Is this really what you do for him? Pick up after him?’
‘It’s just one of the things I do for him.’ Without straightening up, I gave Burt a look that implied all of her worst fears about Godley and me were true. She threw the report down on his desk and walked out, muttering to herself.
Which was exactly what I had wanted. I pushed the door closed and lay down on the floor, checking under every item of furniture in the room. It wasn’t a big space but it was cluttered with things: a small round table with three chairs, the desk, Godley’s chair, filing cabinets, a leaning rubber plant that had seen better days, a ton of cabling. I was looking for something small, I thought. Something he had been desperate to find, but something he had to lie about. Una Burt was a good police officer but she hadn’t spotted, as I had, the distinctive white top of Godley’s Mont Blanc pen under a hastily flipped stack of papers.
I was lucky that what I was hunting turned out to be shiny. It was a gleam from the metal that caught my attention, between the desk leg and the bin. I reached it with the end of a pencil and knocked it out into the open, where I could see it.
‘Oh shit.’
I picked it up and darted out of the room in search of Burt. She was standing in front of the board, staring at it.
‘Did the boss say what he was going to do in the basement?’
There must have been something in my voice that persuaded her not to make me wait. ‘He wanted to check something in the property store.’ The property store, where we kept evidence for upcoming trials.
‘Right. Of course. Thank you.’ I walked away quickly, not running, a little fake smile on my face as if I was really enjoying today, thanks, but just a bit busy and not able to chat.
I cannoned into Derwent in the doorway and pushed him back into the hall.
‘Watch it, lady,’ he said, annoyed.
‘Come with me.’
‘What’s wrong?’
Instead of answering I opened my hand and showed him the bullet on my palm.
‘Where did you get that?’
‘The boss’s office.’
‘What—’
‘I don’t have time to explain. Just come.’ I didn’t wait to see if he was following me as I hurled myself down the stairs. I was trying to think how big a head start Godley had on us. Too long. But he wouldn’t be in a hurry. He’d be thinking it through, one last time.
The property store was a big room in the basement of the building, accessed via a gate beside a desk. You had to sign in; you couldn’t just walk in and start opening evidence bags.
Derwent was right behind me as I came off the last step of the stairs. I managed a smile for the civilian who manned the desk, who was fiftyish and fleshy. I was breathless from running, my chest heaving. I leaned on the desk, squeezing my elbows in for maximum cleavage and said, very softly, ‘Hi, Neil. Did my boss come down here?’
‘Signed in a few minutes ago.’
‘Can I pop in and see him?’
He turned the clipboard round and pointed at the line below Godley’s signature. ‘You know the rules, Maeve.’
I took the pen and signed, leaving the rest of the columns blank. My attention was on the details Godley had filled in, which might of course have been fake. But I knew the case name he had written down, and the details of the case were consistent with what he needed. ‘I’ll fill the rest in later, is that okay? It’s just I really have to speak to him. It’s very important. Please, just bend the rules for me. I’m not breaking them, I promise. You won’t get in trouble.’ I was gabbling.
He shook his head. ‘How can I say no to a request made so beautifully?’
Now is not the time for speeches, creep. Write it in a Valentine’s card I can throw away. I smiled at him as if he had made my day. ‘Let me in?’
‘Go on.’ He buzzed me through. Derwent tried to crowd after me. ‘Ah-ah. Not you, sir. Come back and do it properly please.’
Derwent had never been nice to him, ever, not once, I guessed, hurrying through the shelves. This was Neil’s chance to give a little of it back. Knowing that Derwent deserved it didn’t make me feel any better.
I couldn’t hear anything except my heart hammering and the hum of the air-conditioning. I was holding my breath so I didn’t make too much noise. If Godley had been telling the truth, he’d be near the back on the right. I jogged down the central aisle, checking left and right in case I went past him. It was a small storage facility for current cases only. The main Met storage places were vast warehouses on anonymous sites around London, filled with the evidence from cases long solved or still open. We kept what we needed in our building, no more. And the case Godley had mentioned was coming up for trial.
I was almost on top of him before I heard him, and even then it was just a small click, but it had a terrifying implication. I flung myself around the corner, all thought of finesse or stealth gone.
‘Stop. Don’t.’
He was standing at the very end of the bay, as far away from the central aisle as he could get, which put him about twelve feet from me. His suit was buttoned, his tie straight. The gun in his right hand was pointing at the floor, his finger pointing down instead of curled around the trigger. That gun was a Glock 9mm. It had been recovered from a loft in Poplar, where it had been hidden, wrapped in the T-shirt worn by the owner when he shot his ex-girlfriend dead on her doorstep. The thing that had caused him to snap, I recalled, was that she had put a picture on Facebook of her with another man. The guy hadn’t recognised that the ‘George’ of ‘Me and George!!!’ in the caption was the singer George Michael, lightly disguised with a full beard, a flat cap and sunglasses. Stupid and tragic, my least favourite kind of murder.
‘Maeve.’ Godley tried to smile. The light shining above him caught his cheekbones and made hollows of his eyes. He was a death’s head already. ‘How did you know?’
I showed him the bullet I had retrieved from his floor.
‘I was looking for that. I decided three would do.’
‘Una Burt told me.’
He shook his head, very slightly. ‘She didn’t know.’
‘No, but I did.’
‘Yes. You always see more than you should. You were one of my mistakes.’
I would like to say that I was far more concerned with Godley’s personal safety than bothered by any criticism of my work or of me personally, but I flinched and he saw it.
‘I mean that I underestimated you, Maeve. You were better than I ever expected. You’ll go far, if you want to.’
He raised his left hand in a kind of benediction that was actually intended to distract me from what he was doing with his right hand. It worked; I didn’t notice him nudge the safety catch off until he had done it. He pointed the gun at the underside of his chin and I cried out.
‘Please, don’t. This isn’t the way to deal with it. It’s not the answer.’
‘Tell them it was an accident. Tell them I didn’t know it was loaded. For me, Maeve.’
It would have to be an accident, I understood. An accident would mean no big enquiry into why a superintendent with a glorious career would kill himself. No demolition of Godley’s reputation. No rewriting of all the records of his undoubted achievements to take away the shining brilliance and replace it with the tarnished gilt of a bent copper.
‘Wait! What do you want me to tell Serena? And Isobel?’
His finger was around the tr
igger now, but loosely. ‘What?’
‘You won’t have written to them. If it’s an accident, no suicide note, am I right? So they won’t know what you want to say to them. I know you wouldn’t want to leave them without saying goodbye.’
‘That’ll do. Tell them I love them. Tell Isobel I’m proud of the woman she’s becoming. I know she’ll achieve her dreams.’ In the dark wells of his eye sockets the tears caught the light, glittering. He was trembling, I noticed.
‘And Serena?’ I took a couple of steps towards him as if I was just desperate to hear every word. He was still too far away. I could maybe get a bit closer if I kept him talking, but …
‘Tell her I never stopped loving her. Not being with her is the hardest thing in all of this. I promised her, you see. I promised she’d get me back when I retired.’
‘That’s not for ages,’ I said, as if he wasn’t preparing to put an end to his life. ‘She must be very patient.’
‘She’s … extraordinary.’ He took a deep breath and braced himself.
‘But you can’t leave her like this,’ I said, edging closer. ‘It’s not fair. She’ll know this wasn’t an accident.’
‘She hates me anyway.’
‘Because you were divorcing her.’
‘I just wanted to keep her safe.’
‘You should tell her that. Now, I mean. Explain. Call her.’ Better yet, go and see her. And leave the gun behind.
‘I can’t.’ He looked thoroughly wretched. ‘I can’t tell her I’m not who she thought I was.’
‘The man she knows you are would never kill himself.’
‘I don’t have any choice. It’s the only way to stop this.’
‘You’re wrong,’ I said. ‘Please. No one has to know about this. I promise you, I won’t say anything. Come out of here with me and we’ll talk it out. We’ll work something out.’
‘I have thought about it quite a lot,’ Godley said with a gleam of his usual understated irony. ‘I think if there was an alternative solution I would have found it.’
‘People keep telling me I can’t do things on my own,’ I said, slightly desperately. ‘You don’t even know what you haven’t thought of.’
He lowered the gun. ‘I know you want to help, Maeve, but you can’t. I’m far beyond that point.’
‘Just don’t do this now. Give me a couple of days, sir, please.’ Anything.
‘A couple of days. That seems like too long to me, when every minute another innocent police officer could die. Have you been playing the game too, Maeve? Who’s it going to be this time? A diplomatic protection officer? A dog handler? A soft target or the bloody commissioner?’ He laughed but I could see it was tearing him apart. ‘They’ve proved they can reach anyone. They can kill anyone they like and we can’t stop them.’ He paused. ‘Well, I can.’
I took another step towards him.
‘Stop.’
I did, obedient to the note of command in his voice.
‘You’re not going to get there in time, you know. Even if you run.’ He managed a smile. ‘Come on, Maeve. You don’t want to see this. Just go. You don’t have to watch.’
He was right. I didn’t want to see it. But I couldn’t walk away either. ‘I can’t just leave you.’
‘Then don’t. But you can’t stop me.’
I had tried everything – every appeal. Every way I could think to reach him. All that I had left was anger and it came rushing to the surface.
‘This is a coward’s way out, sir, and you have never been a coward. You made mistakes and you have to deal with that, but you can’t just run away now, after everything. Die the way you lived. Not like this.’
‘I can’t—’
‘Yes, you can. You said it was easy for me. Right is right and wrong is wrong, you said. Is this right or wrong?’
He closed his eyes. His whole body was trembling.
‘If you can honestly tell me you think it’s the right thing to do,’ I said, ‘I’ll walk away and leave you here and tell everyone who asks it was an accident, nothing more.’
He shook his head.
‘Put the gun down,’ I said. ‘You don’t deserve this. If you do this, Skinner wins. If you live, you have a chance to make things right.’
‘I don’t see how.’
‘No. That’s why you’re standing in an property store preparing to shoot yourself.’ I was close to tears myself. ‘Please, be the person I always admired. Be the real you. Hasn’t Skinner taken enough from you already? Do you have to give him your life as well?’
Slowly – infinitely slowly – Godley lowered the gun. He put the safety catch back on and stood there, his head hanging down. He looked defeated.
And Derwent strolled around the corner, his hands in his pockets. He went straight past me and stood right in front of Godley, looking down at the gun. ‘You want to unload that and put it back in the evidence container where you found it.’
‘It’s not what you think,’ Godley said.
‘You don’t know what I think. Now stop wasting time. That tool on the desk is going to wonder what he’s missing and I don’t want him coming down here and getting the wrong idea.’
Derwent’s bracing practicality seemed to get through to Godley. He shook the bullets out into Derwent’s palm. Without looking, Derwent held his hand out to me.
‘Stick them in your bra, Kerrigan. Bringing ammo in here is a big no-no. We could all get in trouble.’
There were four bullets including the one I’d found. I ignored Derwent’s suggestion and dropped them into my boot instead. If Neil ran true to his usual practice he’d be staring at my bra and its contents with X-ray intensity.
‘Come on. Put the gun away,’ Derwent said.
Godley did as he was told. He was sweating, a world away from the icy calm he’d maintained when he was set on suicide.
Derwent dropped an arm around his shoulders. ‘Time to go home.’
He started to walk out, supporting Godley. The superintendent was clearly struggling to put one foot in front of the other. Derwent looked back to make sure I was following.
‘Talk us out of here, Kerrigan.’
I went past them and out to the desk, where I chatted inanely and brightly to Neil as I filled in the form properly. Everything he said was hilarious. I enjoyed talking to him so much, I hadn’t even noticed that two of the buttons on my shirt had come undone. Neil did notice since he looked nowhere else the entire time, but he didn’t mention it.
I was aware of the other two coming out and going past, heading for the stairs. I leaned forward, dropping my voice.
‘That’s so typical of Derwent. Just leaving me to sign them out. Like I’m his secretary or something.’
‘He probably imagines you are. A sexy secretary. Take some dictation, please.’ Neil was wheezing with excitement.
‘Cheeky,’ I said, wondering if I should wink. A wink was probably going too far.
As if to settle the question, Neil winked at me. Definitely going too far.
‘Thank you for everything. You’re a sweetheart.’ I fled before he had time to think of a reply, taking the stairs two at a time. The bullets were digging into me, which was reassuring rather than annoying. I got to the foyer and found it deserted, then saw Derwent standing beside a black cab in the street. I ran out.
‘What took you so long?’ he demanded.
‘You can’t rush these things.’
‘Get in.’
‘I don’t have my coat – my bag—’ I patted my pockets and found my phone but no wallet.
‘In,’ Derwent said firmly, more or less pushing me into the cab. He got in after me and slammed the door. He must have given the address already because the driver started immediately. I collapsed on to the bench seat, fumbling for a seatbelt as I eyed Godley. He was huddled on the other side of the cab, not talking or making eye contact. I looked back to Derwent, who had taken the fold-down seat opposite me.
‘Is he all right?’
�
�Not really.’
We were three streets away from the office, moving fast. I shivered. ‘I don’t even have my suit jacket. It would have taken two minutes to go and get my things.’
‘Two minutes was too long,’ Derwent said. ‘I didn’t want anyone to see us.’ Then a long, slow grin spread across his face. ‘You might not be so cold if you do up all your buttons.’
Too late I remembered the Neil-distracting view I had created. I did as he suggested, my face flaming. Derwent watched, of course, but then he looked back to Godley and his smile faded. He looked worried, because he was.
He had every reason to be.
Chapter 25
I’d never been to Godley’s house before. It was big, a classic Victorian terraced property with a tiled porch and elaborate stained glass in the front door. Everything about it, from the light above the door to the bay trees flanking the steps, showed good taste and money.
Derwent had frisked Godley for his keys and unlocked the door. He was more or less holding Godley up at the same time. ‘Upstairs,’ he said over his shoulder, and started to haul the superintendent up one step at a time.
I followed, as I was supposed to, but looked around as I went. Unopened post and junk mail lay in a drift behind the door. The beautiful furniture was dim with dust, the mirrors smeary. No one was looking after the house. The air was bone-chilling, as if no one was living there. I wondered if Godley had been sleeping in the office. He’d done it before.
The two men had made it to the first floor. Derwent manhandled Godley along to the bedroom at the front of the house. The curtains were drawn already and I switched on a lamp so we could see. It was a big room, with pretty bow-fronted chests of drawers flanking the fireplace and a small sofa at the end of the antique bed, which was unmade and rumpled. A silver-framed picture of Serena and a girl who could only be Isobel stood on one bedside table.
‘Sit down.’ Derwent pushed Godley on to the bed and knelt to take off his shoes. ‘Jacket off. Tie too.’
Godley did as he was told. He looked exhausted, I thought, as if he was beyond making any decisions. He just needed sleep.
Derwent collected up the shoes, jacket and tie and thrust them at me. ‘Take them downstairs.’