The Last Girl

by Casey, Jane

  ‘I can handle it.’ The scowl had deepened, if anything. ‘It’s not like you to want the limelight, boss.’

  I winced in spite of myself. The media presence had trebled, if not quadrupled, since we’d been in the house. I had heard them shouting questions at everyone who came and went. I had been unwise enough to return to the car for my notebook. It was now bathed in bright light from the cameras, and my trip had provided at least thirty seconds of footage for the rolling news programmes to use over and over again, for the sake of having something to illustrate the human interest story of the night. It was summer. Nothing much was happening in the rest of the world. A forensic officer arriving after us had told me the Kennford murders were the lead on every bulletin, even though they couldn’t know what had happened inside the house. Not when we weren’t clear on it ourselves.

  ‘Come off it. Attention from the media is certainly not why I’m still here. I’ll be leaving as soon as I can.’ He checked his watch again. ‘It’s my name on the policy log, Josh. I need to see what direction this investigation is taking before I leave you to it. And besides, I know Kennford.’

  ‘Not well.’

  ‘To say hello to.’ Godley sighed. ‘If it was me, I’d want the SIO to take enough of an interest to meet the survivors. It’s the least I can do.’

  Godley was the senior investigating officer, the man at the top, and he took his role seriously – as Derwent knew very well – no matter how many murder files he was currently handling. I stared at the inspector meaningfully. Just drop it. It’s not going to happen.

  ‘Let me interview the girl.’

  ‘I told you, you aren’t the right person for that.’ Godley leaned against the kitchen door, edging it open. ‘We’ll make it quick.’

  He held the door open and I darted through it without meeting Derwent’s glare; it wasn’t my fault and I wasn’t going to allow myself to feel guilty. On edge, perhaps … There would be retribution. I could count on that.

  She was sitting at the kitchen table, a slab of white oak that could have accommodated ten people easily. A female officer was sitting beside her with a box of tissues on her knee. The inevitable cup of tea stood in front of the girl, steam rising from it. It didn’t look as if it had been touched. Her hair hung down in front of her face in narrow rats’ tails and I recalled that she had been swimming even as I noticed the faint tang of chlorine in the air. She hadn’t showered since she’d been in the pool, I thought, but she was dressed, in jeans and a long-sleeved top that hung off her tiny frame. I knew she was fifteen, but she looked no older than twelve.

  ‘Hello, Lydia.’ Godley pulled out a chair on the other side of the table and sat down. ‘I’m Superintendent Godley. I’m leading the investigation.’

  There was no response.

  ‘This is Detective Constable Kerrigan.’

  I sat down too, lacing my fingers in front of me on the table. I had pinned a pleasant smile to my face, a smile that was completely unnecessary because, despite Godley’s best efforts to get her to respond, Lydia didn’t so much as look up.

  After a few unproductive minutes, Godley turned to the uniformed officer and motioned to her to join us on the other side of the room, out of Lydia’s hearing. The officer was in her forties but glamorous with it, made up to the nines and with carefully dyed blonde hair. She wore a wedding ring, and I was willing to bet she was a mother herself and that was how she’d been given the job of minding the girl. ‘Is she all right?’

  ‘Out of it,’ she said quietly. ‘The doctor had to give her something to calm her down. She hasn’t said anything since.’

  Godley nodded. ‘No point in trying to interview her now, then. Did she say anything to you before she was medicated? Did she notice anything?’

  The officer shook her head. ‘She said not. She was swimming. Had her head underwater. Not surprising she didn’t know anything or see anyone.’

  ‘It was worth a try. If she had seen something we’d need to know about it.’ He looked across at her, his lips compressed. ‘It’s frustrating, though. I’d love to know what she thinks about her mother and her sister, and how they died.’

  ‘I imagine she’s trying not to think about it,’ I pointed out. There was something about the girl that made me feel she needed someone to stand up for her, to protect her. She was completely still, except for an occasional shudder that passed through her entire body. I couldn’t imagine what it must have felt like to find her mother like that, and her sister. I couldn’t imagine how she would live with the memory, once the sedatives wore off. She might have been uninjured, but that didn’t mean she was unharmed.

  ‘Shame the doctor couldn’t hold off a bit longer, though.’

  It wasn’t like Godley to be so hard-edged and I knew the expression of shock on the uniformed officer’s face mirrored my own. It was a sign of the stress he was under, but that didn’t make it any more pleasant.

  ‘Well, you didn’t see her earlier. She was completely hysterical. Screaming.’ The officer shuddered. ‘You wouldn’t have got any sense out of her. I only just got her to shake her head when I asked if she’d seen or heard anything, and I had to ask about a million times.’

  Months of practice at Derwent-soothing came to my assistance. ‘It doesn’t matter. We’ll talk to her again. Besides, we’ve still got Philip Kennford to interview.’

  Godley laughed without humour. ‘I hope you’re not pinning your hopes on that.’

  ‘He’ll want to help us, won’t he?’

  ‘I wouldn’t count on it.’ Godley looked down at me but I had a feeling he wasn’t seeing me. ‘There are people who find lying as natural as breathing.’

  ‘And Philip Kennford is one of them,’ I said.

  ‘Philip Kennford is the biggest liar of them all.’

  Philip Kennford looked remarkably composed for a man who had recently lost his wife and daughter and who was still dealing with the after-effects of being knocked unconscious. He had been waiting for us to get around to interviewing him for a couple of hours, but he didn’t seem to be irritated by the delay. The bandage on his forehead couldn’t spoil the patrician elegance of his looks: a strong nose, piercing blue eyes and thick grey-and-black hair that he wore slightly longer than I expected, curling over his collar. A square jaw offset the full mouth, undercutting any suggestion of weakness. He was look-twice handsome, I thought, and seemed younger than his forty-five years. At one time he would have been seriously athletic, and he still evidently kept himself in shape. His polo shirt and jeans were pristine, although his feet were bare. I wondered if it was habit or a sign of being more distressed than he at first appeared.

  He sat in a wing-backed leather armchair that was easily the most traditional thing I’d seen in his house so far, leaning into it as if he was too exhausted to think about standing. He had crossed his legs and the upper foot swung like a pendulum in an unhurried rhythm. One hand held a cigarette that sent a thin blue plume of smoke into the already stuffy study, while the other rested on the head of a black-and-white dog, a collie. It was leaning against him and didn’t move from its post as we trooped in and arranged ourselves in a semi-circle in front of him. The dog craned its head to look at us, showing a good deal of white around its eye as it did so. I liked dogs but collies tended towards the unpredictable, which was another way of saying most of them were borderline psychotic, and I would no more have attempted to pat its head than I would have put my hand in a fire.

  While Godley was doing polite preamble and introductions, I took the opportunity to stare around the room. It looked to me as if it was meant for a different house altogether, one that was closer to the traditional English country estate than the twenty-first century minimalist chic we’d seen up until then. The walls were lined with books, mostly leather-bound hardbacks, and a giant mahogany desk dominated the space. Over the fireplace hung a deeply sentimental Victorian oil painting depicting a ragged boy in the hands of two uniformed policemen while his mother sobbed in the
background. The bread he had stolen lay on the ground in front of him, while a meagre cottage behind the little group suggested extreme poverty. It was called Taken in Charge, I saw, leaning in to read the little gold nameplate, and I seriously doubted the same person would have liked this and the acid-bright geometric abstraction of tapestry that hung in the hall. This was Kennford’s territory. His wife had been allowed to do what she liked up to the door of his study; after that it was his taste that mattered.

  ‘That looks painful.’ Godley was standing closer to Kennford than me and had bent down to look at his feet. Craning to see what he had noticed, I realised there was an untidy collection of cuts on the sole of Kennford’s foot. His skin looked reddish and bruised around the cuts. All at once the lack of footwear made sense.

  ‘They’re unlikely to be fatal. There was glass on the floor of my bedroom and I didn’t realise in time.’ Kennford’s voice was mellow and deep, but to my surprise he didn’t have the public-school vowels that were usual at the top end of the bar. He had a fine Yorkshire accent, and I warmed to him immediately for no good reason except that I liked the sound of it and I respected anyone who hadn’t lost the accent they were brought up with.

  ‘Bad luck,’ Derwent said.

  ‘Not the worst I’ve had lately.’ He smiled very slightly to take the sting out of the words. ‘I can prove how it happened, if you’re concerned. The paramedics were there when I did it. I got to my feet and staggered through it before they could stop me. They can be my witnesses.’

  ‘To be honest, you’d have to have pretty bad aim to cut your foot while you were slashing your daughter’s throat and stabbing your wife to death.’

  Godley and I swung round as one to glare at Derwent. Kennford raised one eyebrow but otherwise didn’t react at all.

  ‘Mr Kennford, we wanted to interview you now but we’ll try not to keep you for very long.’ The superintendent was sounding very solicitous, trying to make up for his inspector’s tact-free remark. ‘I’m sorry we can’t give you more time to yourself, but you know better than anyone how important it is to get the ball rolling with a murder investigation.’

  ‘Of course. You must ask me anything you need to know, though I’m not sure I can be of much assistance.’ He frowned a little, stubbing out his cigarette in an ashtray that was already getting full. ‘I would ask you to make yourselves comfortable, but I’m afraid I don’t have enough chairs for all of you. I don’t usually have visitors in here.’

  A matching armchair stood on the other side of the fireplace but Kennford’s was the only one that looked as if it got any regular use.

  ‘We don’t mind standing,’ Godley said, just as Derwent made a move towards the other armchair. A rising growl came from the dog’s direction. That or the note of warning in the superintendent’s voice was enough to make him stop short. He made a big show of leaning forward to read the spines of the nearest books, as if that had been his intention all along. It wasn’t what you could call a convincing performance.

  ‘The obvious question is the first one to ask. Do you have any enemies, Mr Kennford? Ever received any death threats?’

  ‘Yes.’ He let the word stand for a moment before he gave a wry smile. ‘But none of my enemies would go to these lengths.’

  ‘We’re still going to need names, Mr Kennford.’

  ‘I’ll draw up a list. Not now. I’ll need to check contact details and so forth, so I’ll do it tomorrow in chambers.’ He shifted in his chair. ‘I’m not trying to tell you your business but you’ll be wasting your time following them up. They’re not murderous, most of them. And certainly none would target Vita and Laura if they had the chance to deal with me.’

  ‘You were attacked,’ Derwent pointed out.

  ‘Not seriously. A knock on the head.’ He gestured to the back of his skull, to what I assumed was a bruise, but the damage was invisible because of his thick hair. ‘I’d just come out of the shower and I was towelling myself off. So much for natural instincts – I had no idea anyone was in my room. Then, whack. Something hit me and I fell forward. The last thing I remember is the realisation that I was going to hit the mirror. And I did.’

  ‘Which is where you got the injury on your forehead.’

  ‘Indeed. When I woke up, I was staring into the eyes of a very pretty paramedic named Aileen while lying stark naked in a pool of my own blood and a whole lot of glass.’

  It struck me as odd that he could comment on the paramedic’s looks while his wife’s body was being loaded into a mortuary van outside, but then maybe he hadn’t understood what the noises from the hall meant. Then again, maybe he was just that sort of man.

  ‘Did you hear anything strange before that?’ Godley asked.

  ‘Nothing. But I was in the shower.’

  ‘The dog didn’t bark?’ It was the kind of dog that went into paroxysms of rage at its own shadow. I couldn’t believe it would have sat in silence while members of its family were murdered.

  ‘If she did, I didn’t hear her.’ He looked down at her silky head, pulling an ear. ‘She’s not a guard dog, you know. She’s a pet.’

  ‘Collies aren’t generally placid.’

  ‘I didn’t say she was.’ I caught a glint of steel in the last answer, the edge that made him a top brief. Another smile to rob the words of offence. ‘She hasn’t read any Conan Doyle. She didn’t know it would be suspicious if she didn’t bark.’

  ‘What did you do before your shower? It might help if you could talk us through your evening.’

  ‘I had dinner with Vita – salad and cold salmon. Neither of us was hungry, probably because of the heat. Vita had a glass of wine but I had water because I needed to do some work and I wanted a clear head. The girls were doing their own thing – they rarely eat with us. After that I went out for a swim. Lydia came out later and swam lengths for a while. That’s where she was when it happened, I suppose. I came in from the garden at about nine and she was still in the water. I’d stayed outside for a bit after swimming, enjoying the night air. And smoking. I suppose I’d better admit that now.’ Another wry smile as he picked up his lighter and flipped the lid on his pack of cigarettes, tapping one out. ‘Vita disapproved so I hid out there. I kidded myself that she didn’t know about it, but of course she did. Turning a blind eye is the secret of a happy marriage, isn’t it?’

  Derwent jumped on the opening. ‘Did she have to do that a lot? Turn a blind eye, I mean?’

  Kennford shook his head very slightly as he lit his cigarette. He blew out smoke and said, ‘You know, I don’t think we’ve started off on the right foot, Mr Derwent.’

  ‘And I don’t think you’ve given me an answer.’

  ‘Josh.’ Godley was glaring. Save it for the next interview when we might be trying to make him sweat … ‘Did you notice anything strange while you were outside?’

  ‘No, but you can’t see much of the house from where I was sitting.’ He anticipated the next question. ‘And I wouldn’t have heard the doorbell either.’

  ‘Do you think that’s how the killer gained access?’

  ‘That’s what I’ve been assuming. There was no damage to the front door, was there? Or the windows?’

  ‘None that we’ve found. Would your wife have answered the door at that time of night if she wasn’t expecting a visitor?’

  ‘We have a video entry system. She could have checked who she was letting in before she opened the door.’

  ‘Does it record?’ Derwent was practically quivering with excitement.

  ‘That would make your job easier, wouldn’t it? No, it’s a real-time camera. Just shows who’s there at that time, and not very clearly. They have to stand in exactly the right place or you just see their elbow, which isn’t much help. I never bothered with it. I can’t stand things that don’t work properly.’

  ‘Did Vita usually check it?’

  ‘I didn’t watch her answer the door, Mr Godley.’ He sounded irritated. Not a man who liked to say ‘I don’t know’,
I thought.

  ‘Did you see anything that struck you as unusual when you came in from the garden?’

  ‘Nothing. But I didn’t put the lights on in the kitchen or the hall. I just went straight upstairs.’

  ‘In the dark?’

  ‘I knew the way. And it’s not as if there was much to bump into.’ He raised his eyebrows, inviting us to laugh with him, though none of us took him up on it. It seemed I was right about his taste being very different from his wife’s.

  ‘Did you see Vita or Laura when you came in?’

  ‘No. In fact, I thought Laura was out. She had gone around to a friend’s house and I’d expected her to be there all evening.’

  ‘Which friend?’

  ‘I don’t know. Vita knew.’

  And you didn’t listen when she told you about it.

  ‘Didn’t you hear voices from the sitting room?’ Derwent asked.

  ‘I didn’t stop to listen. I wouldn’t have expected to. As far as I knew, Vita was in there on her own.’

  ‘What was she doing with her evening?’

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’

  ‘Reading? Watching telly? Phoning her friends? Embroidery? Surfing the Internet?’

  There was obvious irritation in Kennford’s voice when he answered. ‘There’s very little point in naming pastimes to see if any of them ring a bell. I didn’t ask her how she planned to occupy herself and she didn’t tell me.’

  ‘Didn’t you care?’

  ‘I respected her privacy.’ He looked at Derwent’s left hand. ‘You’re not married, are you? I wouldn’t expect you to understand, but sometimes you need to give each other space to breathe. Too much interest in each other’s lives can be smothering.’

  ‘Sounds like someone’s been reading the Relate handbook.’

  ‘Let’s move on,’ Godley said hastily. ‘Did you see anyone strange hanging around in the last few weeks? Anyone you didn’t recognise? Anything that made you suspicious?’

  ‘I’ve been racking my brains, but no.’

  ‘You’ve got a very serious alarm system,’ I said. ‘Did you use it when you were in the house?’