by Jane Casey
‘I can’t.’
‘I know she was fifteen. I know she had problems with depression and alcohol abuse and that she’d attempted suicide twice. I know she’d gone missing from her home and you and Hammond were supposed to find her.’
‘We did find her. We had a hunch she might be hiding out in an abandoned factory because it was raining and that was where the local kids tended to go.’
‘What happened?’
Gregory took a moment to answer, reliving it. ‘Nothing. We found her. Terence found her, actually. We took her home.’
‘What happened before you took her home?’
‘Nothing happened. But that’s not what she said.’
‘She said you sexually assaulted her.’
‘Not me. I didn’t do anything.’
‘But Terence?’ I let the question hang in the air as Gregory struggled with his conscience.
‘He was exonerated by the DPS. Annabel Strake was using us to get out of trouble with her parents. They were older, very strict, thought she was the devil incarnate for getting into a bit of trouble here and there. And she was an old fifteen, let me tell you. You’d never have guessed she was a child.’
‘No one believed Annabel, did they? You gave evidence that contradicted her statement. Were you telling the truth or was she?’
He didn’t answer.
‘Terence is dead,’ I said. ‘Tell me what really happened in the factory.’
‘We split up. Terence went up to the top floor where there were offices. I stayed down on the ground floor. It was dark, and cold. The place was condemned. Full of rubble and pigeon shit.’ He shivered, remembering. ‘I wandered around for a bit. I thought Terence was taking ages to search the place. Then I heard them coming back. He’d found her on the top floor.’
‘And?’
‘He’d had sex with her. It was her idea.’
‘Is that what he told you?’
Gregory shrugged. ‘It’s what I believed. Terence was having real trouble at home. He and his wife weren’t sleeping together – she wouldn’t, after the car accident that injured Ben. Terence was frustrated, and Annabel was a little slut. She told him to shag her and he went for it.’
‘Do you really believe that?’
‘She was laughing when she came down. I mean, she was off her face. We found a couple of joints on her, and some pills, and she’d been drinking.’
‘And she was fifteen.’
‘Like I said, you’d never have known.’ Gregory glared at me. ‘Don’t make this my fault. I didn’t know anything. I wasn’t even involved in what happened. I got in trouble then but I’m not going to get in trouble now.’
‘Even though you lied to the DPS.’
Gregory put a hand down, dropping it casually on to the crutch that was under his chair. He was tense, the adrenalin running high. I watched him.
‘I don’t know what you’re planning to do with that, but people know where I am and why.’
‘I wasn’t planning anything.’ He drew his hand away, though, and let his head fall back against the chair, defeated.
‘So Annabel complained about Terence Hammond’s conduct and you protected him. What happened to her?’
‘She died. She went back to the factory about three weeks later and jumped off the roof. It was nothing to do with Terence though. She was a very mixed-up kid.’
Anger was making my hands shake but you would never have known I was anything but detached. My voice was calm. I was all-seeing, all-knowing. He needed to think that he couldn’t lie to me, that there was no point in trying.
‘Has someone been threatening you?’
‘Why would you think that anyone would threaten me?’
‘Because you stopped working with Terence, changed jobs and lost touch with him soon after all this happened, even though you were friends. Because you deliberately misled the police investigating an attempt on your life, as if you didn’t want anyone to find out why you might be a target. Because you came to his memorial service and you spent your time looking over your shoulder for anyone you recognised. Because you have serious locks on your front door and a video-based intercom for a flat which, let’s be honest, is not a burglar’s dream. You live like you’re scared. Why are you scared?’
Gregory closed his eyes. ‘Leave it alone. It was a long time ago.’
‘I need to know. And you need to tell me. Did you think the attack on you was related to Annabel?’
‘Of course. I’ve been waiting for it for a long time. Always looking over my shoulder. Always being afraid someone would catch up with me. Keeping a low profile, not looking for promotion.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I made a mistake a long time ago. I trusted Terence and he fucked up. It wasn’t my idea, and it wasn’t my plan, but I take responsibility for not admitting what had happened. We should have told the truth.’ He gestured to his leg. ‘And then this happened and I was scared it was the beginning of the end. I lied to the detectives who interviewed me, just in case there was a connection. Either it was random or it was aimed at me. I couldn’t tell which until Terence died. Then it seemed even more important not to talk about Annabel.’
I stood up and gave him a notebook and a pen. ‘Write me a statement. Start with Annabel and make it the real story, please, not the invention that you’ve stuck with for twelve years. And give me a proper description of the car that hit you. We’re probably too late to recover most of the CCTV but we might be lucky.’
‘Are you going to look for them?’
I looked down at him. ‘They tried to kill you and shot Terence Hammond. I think I should try, don’t you?’
Chapter 27
Mindful of Derwent’s dislike of being left out, I rang him as soon as I left Philip Gregory’s flat. No answer. I called the office instead and left a message on his voicemail. I was heading back there anyway, but I wanted him to get a head start on explaining to Una Burt why we were reopening a bit of the nightmare case we’d just resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.
He wasn’t at his desk, though, when I walked in, and his coat was missing from the back of his chair.
‘Where did Derwent go?’ I asked Colin Vale, who frowned.
‘I’m not sure. He left about an hour ago.’
I checked the time: a quarter to three. Still too early for the strip club, probably. ‘Did he look as if he was going out drinking or for work?’
‘Work. He made a call, got his things together and went.’
‘Thanks, Colin.’ He started to walk away and I called him back. ‘Mobile or landline, did you happen to notice?’
‘The call? Landline.’
‘Thank you. I’m going to have some CCTV for you to look at in a while, by the way.’
‘Can’t wait,’ he said, which would have been sarcasm from anyone else, but not from him. He genuinely loved it.
I tried Derwent’s mobile again. This time it was switched off. I frowned at my own phone, wondering what was going on. It was beyond unusual for him to switch his phone off. In fact, I couldn’t remember him ever doing it before. I always felt slightly nervous when I called him in case he was in the middle of having sex or in the bathroom or something. I had listened to him weeing countless times while he issued me with new instructions and it never got any less revolting.
I went and sat down in Derwent’s chair, resisting the urge to spin round. It was strange, seeing the room from his perspective. He had an altogether too good a view of my computer screen, I thought, making a mental note to change my desk around when I got the chance. I picked up the desk phone and hit redial.
‘Uplands School, Pamela speaking, how may I help you?’
I remembered the receptionist instantly: fifties, glamorous. ‘Oh, Pamela, it’s Detective Constable Maeve Kerrigan here. I’m hunting my colleague, DI Derwent. I just wondered if he’d been in touch.’
‘He rang to speak to Miss Maynard,’ she said. ‘He’s got a lovely manner, hasn’t he?’
‘Mm,’ I said,
not actually able to agree even for the sake of being polite. ‘Is Miss Maynard there?’
‘No, she doesn’t work on Wednesday afternoons.’ The receptionist said it as if it was a basic truth like water is wet and fire is hot and I should really have known better than to ask. ‘Shall I tell her you rang?’
‘No, there’s no need. Unless – you couldn’t let me have a number for her, could you? And a home address?’
‘I can’t give out any information about staff or students, I’m afraid.’
‘Even to a police officer?’
‘Sorry.’ She sounded implacable. ‘I can give her your number but not the other way round. That’s what I did with DI Derwent.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said. ‘I’ll catch up with her somehow.’
I had an idea about how, too. I had just noticed Derwent’s jotter was still on his desk. He was fastidious about writing on a new sheet of paper every time, so I hooked out the bin and checked through it. Telephone numbers, notes, a doodle that looked vaguely, disturbingly sexual. Not the thing I was looking for.
I sat back in Derwent’s chair, staring at his desk. The light from his desk lamp slanted across the jotter, across the white, uninformative page. I could imagine him getting the details of where Amy Maynard lived, arranging to meet her there. He would have written it down – in the correct place, not on a scrap of paper, because his orderly mind wouldn’t allow for scraps of paper – and then he would have removed the top sheet of the jotter, folding it into his pocket so he could consult it when he needed the address.
Which meant that I was looking at the next sheet down, more than likely. A SOCO would have used an electrostatic detection device to reveal the indentations. I had a pencil. I picked it up and ran the side of the lead, very lightly, over the page. White lines jumped out of the grey straightaway: Derwent’s writing. He pressed down hard when he wrote, like a small boy, and the words were more or less legible: 24 Braemar Road, Norbiton. I stared at it for a second, amazed that it had worked. Sometimes the old tricks were the best.
It was the work of moments to ring the DVLA and check if there were any driving licences registered to that address. Amy Maynard. Bingo. It wasn’t far from Hammond’s address, and I wanted to go back and speak to Julie, to find out whether Terence had ever told her anything about Annabel Strake. I just didn’t want to go on my own. I would swing by Amy’s house and check for Derwent’s car, and if I still couldn’t find him I would get someone to meet me at the Hammonds’ place. I found Julie difficult to like, and a little intimidating, though I would never have admitted it. She had the cold blue gaze of a zealot. I tried to imagine her commissioning someone to kill her unfaithful, careless husband, dressing it up as vengeance for Annabel Strake’s death, and found it believable. Worth putting to her? Not yet, I thought, but I wanted to see her face when I said Annabel’s name.
Burt was shut in Godley’s office, having a meeting with a senior officer I didn’t know. I wasn’t going to barge in there to tell her I was going out in search of Derwent – I wouldn’t have anyway, but the senior officer was a decent excuse. If she minded, I’d apologise when I got back. I grabbed my coat and went.
Naturally, there was no sign of the Subaru on Braemar Road. I cruised up and down it and did a little tour of the streets that ran parallel to it, but there was nothing. Derwent was in the wind. I rang his mobile again.
‘The mobile phone you are trying to contact has been switched off,’ the voice said brightly. ‘Please try again later.’
I stopped outside number 24, looking up at it. Pebble-dashed, painted beams, bay windows: 1930s semi-detached living with a wooden garage to one side and a small garden in front. It was a big family home, a strange place for a twenty-something professional woman to live. The curtains in the windows looked old-fashioned and fussy, as if it had been redecorated in the 1980s and never since. If she was in, it occurred to me, Amy would at least be able to tell me whether Derwent had been there already, and if he had mentioned where he was going next. I could wait for him if he hadn’t arrived there yet. I rang the bell and waited, for ages, until a shape appeared behind the glass and started unlocking the door.
Subconsciously I had been convinced I might have the wrong address, but no, there Amy was. An ankle-length tartan skirt, a mustard-coloured jumper, a little frilled collar. She had to be shopping in charity shops, I thought. I couldn’t imagine where else you would find clothes like that.
She gave me a beatific smile. ‘Detective Constable Kerrigan.’
‘Call me Maeve,’ I said. ‘I’m just looking for Inspector Derwent. I had some idea he was coming here but there’s no sign of him.’
‘He’s coming tomorrow,’ she said, looking a little nervous at the thought. ‘I’m not really sure why. He rang me and asked if he could speak to me about Mr Hammond. I did say on the phone I didn’t think I knew anything helpful, but he wouldn’t really take no for an answer.’
‘I know how he can be,’ I said, distracted by the smell of smoke. A blue haze was filling the back of the hall. ‘Is something burning?’
‘Oh!’ She ran down to the kitchen. I stepped into the hall and shut the door after me. It wasn’t just nosiness. If I spoke to her Derwent wouldn’t need to call on her and I could save her from his attentions. I wasn’t a huge fan of the student counsellor but she didn’t deserve whatever test of her modesty Derwent was planning, to prove she had to be a freak if she wasn’t attracted to him.
The house was stuffy, as if the windows were never opened. I glanced into the living room, seeing elaborately ugly ornaments, pearlised wallpaper, a grey carpet with puffy pile that looked like clouds. It was decorated exactly as I’d expected it would be from the outside of the house. The next room was a dining room, pristine but unwelcoming, with a shiny mahogany table and matching chairs. It looked as if no one ever ate in there, or used it for any purpose at all.
I found her in the kitchen, mourning over a heavy cast-iron saucepan. ‘It was supposed to be soup. Now I’ve burnt the onions.’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever made soup.’
She dumped the saucepan in the sink and turned on the tap. ‘I’ll start again. At least I hadn’t got too far.’
The kitchen was painted green and yellow. The Aga in the corner made it warm, and the room was noisy, with the dryer and the washing machine both churning and the radio blasting out an opera that was heavy on shrieking. It was cluttered, the walls hung with ornamental bits of earthenware and wooden hearts and copper moulds for making jellies. She switched off the tap and the sound of running water continued, thundering through the pipes.
‘Where’s that coming from?’ I asked, pitching my voice a lot louder than I usually did.
‘Oh, it’s the washing machine, I think. The plumbing in this house is very strange. Every time I get someone to look at it, they just say it’s a big job and too much for them. I think they don’t want the work.’
‘Maybe not.’ I was looking around, in vain, for signs of anyone else living there. ‘Are you the only one who lives here?’
‘It was my parents’ house.’
‘And they gave it to you?’
‘They died.’
‘I’m sorry.’
She tilted her head to one side, looking, if anything, amused by my sympathy. ‘Don’t worry. It was a while ago. And it was expected in both cases. I miss them but they were glad when it was their time to go.’
There were no bowls on the floor. ‘No pets.’
A laugh. ‘Nope. Just the mice.’
‘Don’t you get lonely in such a big house by yourself?’
‘Everyone asks that. I like my own company. I get a lot of people talking to me at school – parents, teachers, the students, of course. Then I come home and just want silence. Well, music. But not talking.’
I nodded. ‘I can understand that.’
‘Can you? I think most people think I’m strange. That’s why I like the students so much. They don’t really
know what to make of me so they’ve just allowed me to be myself.’
‘I don’t think you’re strange.’ Not very, anyway. ‘I’m sure your friends don’t think you’re strange either.’
‘I don’t have many friends.’
I tried to look surprised. ‘Well, you must have some. Terence Hammond was a friend, wasn’t he?’
‘I thought of him that way. I don’t think he really knew I existed.’ Amy gave a little breathless laugh, as if she was embarrassed to recall it.
‘You must have seen a lot of him, though. Ben knew you, at the memorial service. He waved.’
‘I’d met him a couple of times.’
‘You obviously made a big impression on him.’
For some reason, that struck her as enormously funny. She had taken out a chopping board and started working through a bag of onions, half-laughing, half-crying. The smell made my nose tingle. All at once I was tired of talking to her. Derwent could have a crack if he liked, but all I got from her was crazy. I made a mental note to warn him about flirting with her, just in case.
‘I suppose I’d better be going. Good luck with the soup.’
‘Thank you.’ She picked up a tea towel to wipe her hands. ‘I’ll let you out.’
I followed her through the hall, relieved to be out of the noisy kitchen. There was a board hung with keys near the door.
‘You should be careful about that,’ I said.
She turned, fast. ‘What?’
‘The keys. Having them out in the open like that. You’d be surprised how many burglaries begin with a fishing expedition through the letter box.’ I was scanning the board as I spoke, out of habit.
‘You’re right. I should put them away.’
‘Especially the car keys.’
She laughed. ‘No one would want my car.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘It’s ancient. A little Nissan. I don’t care. I love it and I’m not a great driver. There’s no point in buying an expensive car for myself. I’d just wreck it.’ She had come to stand close behind me, looking over my shoulder.