by Nicci French
‘Brilliant.’
‘What about Louise Weller?’ asked Yvette. ‘She was on the scene pretty quickly.’
‘On the scene?’ Karlsson shook his head. ‘She came round to help.’
‘It’s a common expression of guilt,’ Bradshaw explained comfortably. ‘Perpetrators like to involve themselves in the inquiry.’
‘What? Mother of three kills sister?’
‘You can’t rule it out,’ said Bradshaw.
‘I’m the one who rules people in or out.’ Karlsson spoke quickly. ‘But you’re right. We’ll talk to her again. And the Kerrigan boys. Anything else?’
‘Samantha Kemp,’ said Riley.
‘What?’
‘The woman Kerrigan had his affair with.’
‘Yes, I know who she is, but …’ Karlsson paused. ‘You’ve got to talk to her anyway, to check Kerrigan’s claim he was with her that afternoon. Maybe it’ll turn out she has a jealous boyfriend.’ He slammed the file shut. ‘Right, that’s it. Yvette, check that alibi. Chris, you talk to this Samantha Kemp. Now, for God’s sake, one of you go out and get me something.’
FORTY-THREE
Yvette was still smarting as she left the room. She could feel Chris Munster looking at her sympathetically, which made it worse. She snapped at him when he asked her if she wanted a coffee and slammed herself down at her desk.
First, she rang Zach at his workplace in Shoreditch, but the woman who answered the phone said he wasn’t in that day – he didn’t work full time and as a matter of fact he wasn’t the most reliable of employees. So she rang his mobile and went straight to voicemail, then his landline, which rang and rang. She sighed and pulled on her jacket.
On her way out, she met Munster once more.
‘Where are you going?’ she asked.
‘To see Samantha Kemp. You?’
‘To see bloody Zach Greene.’
‘Would you like me to –’
‘No, I would not.’
Samantha Kemp was doing some work for a digital-camera company just off Marble Arch. She met Munster in the small room set aside for visitors on the first floor; its window overlooked a sari shop.
When she came into the room, Munster was surprised by how young she was. Paul Kerrigan was a plump, greying, middle-aged man, but Samantha Kemp was in her twenties, neatly dressed in a black skirt and a crisply ironed white shirt. A ladder ran up her tights, from her ankle to her shapely knee. She had fluffy silver-blonde hair that framed her round pale face.
‘Thank you for seeing me. This won’t take long.’
‘What’s it about?’
Munster saw she was nervous: she kept sliding her palms down her skirt.
‘Is it true that you know Paul Kerrigan?’
‘Yes. I do work for his company sometimes. Why?’ A flush spread over her fair skin, and even when the colour receded it left faint blotches on her cheeks. ‘What’s this about?’
‘Can you remember what you were doing on Wednesday, the sixth of April?’ She didn’t answer. ‘Well?’
‘I heard you. I just don’t know what you’re getting at. Why should I tell you anything about my private life?’
‘Mr Kerrigan says that you were with him on the afternoon and evening of Wednesday, the sixth of April.’
‘With him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is that a problem?’
‘You tell me.’
‘He might be married, but that’s his look-out, not mine.’
‘Wednesday, the sixth of April.’
‘He’s not happy, you know.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘He’s not.’ To his horror, Munster saw that she was about to start crying: tears stood in her grey-blue eyes. ‘And I comfort him. I’m not going to be made to feel bad about that.’
‘The point is, did you comfort him on Wednesday, the sixth of April?’
‘Is he in trouble?’
‘Do you have a diary?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes. I was with him on that Wednesday.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Yes. It was the day after my birthday. He bought me a bottle of champagne.’
‘What time?’
‘He arrived in the afternoon, about four. And we drank some champagne and then …’ Her face was flaming again. ‘He left at about seven or eight. He said he had to go back for his dinner.’
‘Is there anyone who can confirm this?’
‘My flatmate, Lynn. She came back at about six and had a bit of the champagne. I suppose you need her details as well.’
‘Please.’
‘Does she know about us? His wife, I mean? Is he in trouble?’
Munster looked at her. Surely she must know about Ruth Lennox. But it was impossible to tell, and he didn’t want to be the one to break it to her. Paul Kerrigan should do his own dirty work.
Zach Greene lived near Waterloo, a few roads south of the station on a road that was clogged with midday traffic: cabs and cars and vans and buses. Cyclists wove in and out of the queues, heads down against a strengthening wind. An ambulance blared past.
Number 232 was a small terraced house set slightly back from the road, with steps leading up to a cracked green door. Yvette rang the bell, then knocked hard as well. She already knew he wouldn’t be in, so she was surprised when she heard footsteps and the rattling of a chain. A woman stood in front of her, clutching a baby in a striped all-in-one.
‘Yes?’
‘I’m looking for Zach Greene,’ said Yvette. ‘Does he live here?’
‘He’s our tenant. He lives in the flat. You have to go through the garden.’ She came out in her slippers and took Yvette down the steps, pointing. ‘That little road takes you round the back and there’s a small garden with a gate that doesn’t shut properly. If you go through there, his flat’s to the side.’
‘Thank you.’ Yvette smiled at the baby, who stared at her in terror, then started to bawl. She’d never been good with babies.
‘Tell him to keep the noise down, will you? He was making a hell of a racket last night, just after I’d got this one off to sleep at last.’
Yvette found her way in through the rickety back gate. Wooden stairs led from the house she’d just been in, down to the small garden, where a child’s plastic tricycle lay tipped on its side. Tucked under the stairs was the door to the flat. Yvette rang the bell and waited. Then she knocked on the door and it creaked open a few inches.
For a moment, Yvette stood quite still, listening intently. Outside, she could hear the clamour of traffic. From within, there was nothing.
‘Hello,’ she called. ‘Zach? Mr Greene? It’s Detective Long here.’
Nothing. The wind blew a flurry of white blossom down on her where she stood. For a moment she thought it was snow. Snow in April: but stranger things happen. She pushed the door wider and stepped inside, onto a balding doormat. Zach Greene was not a tidy man. There were shoes on the floor, piles of junk mail, a couple of empty pizza boxes, a tangle of phone chargers and computer cords, a cotton scarf with tassels.
She took a few more cautious steps.
‘Zach? Are you here?’ Her voice rang out in the small space. To her right, a tiny kitchen, a hob encrusted with ancient food, an army of mugs, granules of instant coffee. Two shirts hanging to dry on the radiator. A smell of something going off somewhere.
It’s odd, she thought. How you know when there’s something wrong. You get a feel for it. Not just the open door, the smell. Something about the silence, as if it hummed with the aftermath of violence. Her skin prickled.
Another shoe, a brown canvas one with y
ellow laces, on the floor, in the barely opened door that presumably led to Zach’s bedroom. She pushed the door with the tips of her fingers. The shoe was on a foot. The beginnings of the leg could be seen, encased in dark trousers and riding up to expose a striped sock, but everything else was covered with a patterned quilt. She took in the pattern: birds and swirling flowers; it looked Oriental, brightening up the grey and brown pokiness of the dingy flat.
She looked at her watch and noted the time, then squatted down and very carefully drew off the quilt, feeling how damply sticky it was, seeing now that she was close up to it how its vivid pattern had obscured the stains.
It must be Zach lying in front of her at the foot of his bed, but the narrow face, the golden eyes, the rosebud lips that had given her the creeps were all gone – smashed into a pulp. Yvette made herself look properly, not squint in a reflex of horror. She could still make out the delicate ear lobes in his wrecked face. There was blood everywhere. People didn’t know how much blood they had flowing through them, warm and fast – only when you saw it pooled around a body did you realize. Puddles of dark, sweet-smelling blood, thickening now. She laid one finger against his back, under his purple shirt; the skin was white and hard and cold.
She stood up, hearing her knees creak, and thought of Karlsson when he arrived at a crime scene: she tried to make herself into a camera. The muddy streaks in the passageway, the tipped picture above the bed, the thickening blood, the rigid flesh, the way his arms were flung out as if he was falling through the air. She remembered the noise the woman upstairs had said she’d heard last night.
And then she took out her phone. From upstairs, she could make out the sounds of the baby, still howling. They arrived so quickly, the ambulances and the police cars. It seemed only minutes before the flat had been transformed into a makeshift laboratory, bright lights shining, with Zach’s body at the centre. Paper shoes, plastic gloves, brushes to dust for the fingerprints, bottles of chemicals, tweezers and evidence bags, tape measures, thermometers. Riley was talking to the woman upstairs. Munster, standing by the door and taking gulps of air, was talking into his phone. Zach was just an object now, a specimen.
Above the hubbub, Karlsson said to her: ‘Chris is speaking to Greene’s parents. Do you think you could be the one to tell Judith Lennox?’
She felt beads of sweat on her forehead as she thought of the fierce, desolate daughter. ‘Sure.’
‘Thanks. As soon as possible, I think.’
Yvette knew it would be bad and it was. She stood and listened to herself say the words and watched Judith Lennox’s very young, very vulnerable face crumple. She spun round the small room, her slender figure twitching, all the separate parts of her apparently disconnected – hands fluttering, face tweaked in strange grimaces, head bobbing on thin neck, feet slipping in her frantic urge to move. They were in a room that the head teacher had put aside for them. There was a desk by the plate-glass window and shelves full of folders in different colours. Outside, two teenagers – a boy and a girl – walked past and glanced without obvious interest into the large window.
Yvette felt helpless. Should she go and wrap her arms round the girl’s fragile bones, hold her still for an instant? This time it was a shriek that must surely fill the whole school, empty classrooms and bring teachers running. She banged against the desk and was sent in another direction. Yvette was reminded of a moth bruising its soft powdery wings against harsh surfaces.
She put out a hand and caught Judith by the hem of her shirt, heard it rip slightly. The girl stopped and stared wildly at her. She was still wearing dark orange lipstick, but the rest of her face was like a small child’s. Suddenly, she sat, not on the chair, but in a heap on the uncarpeted floor.
‘What happened?’ she whispered.
‘We’re trying to find out exactly. All I can tell you at present is that he has been killed.’ She thought of the mashed face and swallowed hard. ‘In his flat.’
‘When? When?’
‘We haven’t established the time of his death.’ Stiff, pompous, she was embarrassed by her own awkwardness.
‘Recently, though?’
‘Yes. I’m sorry to have to ask but I’m sure you’ll understand. Can you tell me when you last saw him?’
‘Go away.’ Judith covered her ears with her hands and rocked back and forwards on the floor. ‘Just go away now.’
‘I know it’s very painful.’
‘Go away. Go away. Go away. Leave me alone. Leave all of us alone. Get out. Why is this happening? Why? Please please please please.’
Yvette had only once been to Frieda’s house and never to her consulting rooms until now. She tried not to seem curious; she didn’t want to look too intently at Frieda herself, partly because Frieda’s steady gaze had always made her uncomfortable and partly because she was shocked by Frieda’s appearance. Perhaps she was thinner, Yvette couldn’t tell, but she was certainly tauter. She seemed stretched tight. There were dark smudges under her eyes, almost violet. Her skin was pale and her eyes very dark, with a smokiness to them that was different from their usual glitter. She didn’t look well, Yvette decided.
She watched Frieda walk towards her red armchair with a limp that she tried to disguise but couldn’t, and thought: This is my fault. For a moment, she let herself remember Frieda lying in Mary Orton’s house, unmoving, the sight of the blood. Then she saw young Judith Lennox flying around the schoolroom, like a broken moth, shouting at her to get out, to leave. Perhaps the simple truth is that I’m a hopeless detective, she thought. She hadn’t even been able to get an alibi from Zach Greene.
Frieda gestured to the chair opposite and Yvette sat down. So this was where Frieda’s patients sat. She imagined closing her eyes and saying: Please help me. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Please tell me what’s wrong with me …
‘Thank you for agreeing to see me,’ she said.
‘I owe you a favour.’ Frieda was smiling at her.
‘Oh, no! It’s me …’
‘You made the complaint against me go away.’
‘That was nothing. Idiots.’
‘Still, I’m grateful.’
‘I didn’t want to meet at the station. I thought this would be better. I don’t know if you’ve heard. Zach Greene was murdered. He was Judith Lennox’s boyfriend.’
Frieda seemed to become even more still. She shook her head slightly. ‘No. I hadn’t heard. I’m sorry,’ she said softly, as though to herself.
‘She’s in a dreadful state,’ Yvette continued. ‘I’ve just left her. The school counsellor was there and the head. I’m worried for her.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘You’ve met her. I know about your behind-the-scenes dealings with the Lennox family.’ She held up a hand. ‘That sounded wrong. I didn’t mean it grumpily.’
‘Go on.’
‘I wondered if you could go and see her. Call on her. Just to see how she is.’
‘She’s not my patient.’
‘I understand that.’
‘I hardly know her. Her brother is a friend of my niece. That’s the only connection. I’ve met the poor girl a few times.’
‘I didn’t know how to deal with her. There are things they don’t teach you. I could call up one of our people, I suppose.’ She wrinkled her nose dubiously at the thought. ‘Hal fucking Bradshaw would be only too pleased to tell her what she was feeling and why. But I – well, I guess I thought you could help.’
‘For old times’ sake?’ Frieda asked ironically.
‘You mean you won’t?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
OK. I won’t fly ove
r and hammer at your door and I will trust you. But you make it very hard, Frieda. Sandy
FORTY-FOUR
In the morning Jim Fearby called on the family of Philippa Lewis. They lived on a new estate in a village a few miles south of Oxford. A middle-aged woman – she must have been Philippa’s mother, Sue – slammed the door as soon as he identified himself. He had read about the case in the local paper, the usual story of walking home after staying late at school and not arriving; he had seen the blurry photo. She had seemed a plausible candidate. He put a tick after her name, followed by a question mark.
Up towards Warwick, Cathy Birkin’s mother made him tea and cake, and before the first mouthful he knew that this was a name he’d be crossing off the list. She’d run away twice before. The cake was quite nice, though. Ginger. Slightly spicy. Fearby had started to notice another sort of pattern. The mothers of the runaway girls were the ones who would invite him in and give him tea and cake. He could almost remember the houses and the girls by the cake he’d been served. The one up near Crewe, Claire Boyle, had been carrot cake. High Wycombe, Maria Horsley: chocolate. Was it as if they were still trying to prove that they had done their best, that they weren’t bad parents? The ginger cake was slightly dry and stuck to the roof of his mouth. He had to wash it down with his cooling tea. As he chewed, he felt his own pang of conscience. He’d been putting it off and putting it off. It was on the way and would only be a small diversion.
He almost hoped that George Conley would be out, but he wasn’t. The small block where he had moved to was neat enough. When Conley opened the door, he gave only the smallest flicker of recognition, but Fearby was used to that. When Conley had talked to him over the years, he had never seemed comfortable looking at him directly. Even when he talked, it was as if he was addressing someone slightly to the side of Fearby and behind him. As soon as Fearby stepped inside he was hit by the warmth and the smell, which seemed part of each other. It wasn’t really identifiable and Fearby didn’t want to identify it: there was sweat, dampness. He suddenly thought of the sour smell you get behind garbage vans in summer.