The Last Girl

by Casey, Jane

  ‘What about the vegetables?’

  ‘Those he can take or leave.’

  ‘Old school.’

  ‘You don’t know the half of it.’ And I wasn’t going to start telling him. I had a feeling Derwent’s interest in my family extended only to what he could mock.

  ‘I’d be the same about my greens if I didn’t have to watch what I eat.’

  ‘Worried about your spare tyre?’

  ‘I don’t have a fucking spare tyre.’ He fingered his stomach. ‘I run, remember? It’s part of my training to keep an eye on my nutritional intake.’

  ‘Right. It’s just that I’ve heard your metabolism changes as you reach middle age. That’s why I thought you might be on a diet.’

  I left him fizzing with inarticulate rage and slid out into the garden. It was landscaped with immaculately trimmed shrubs and tall trees that blocked the neighbours’ view. No flowers. Not much space besides the pool, which was ice-blue and well maintained. Lights shone under the water, answering a question I hadn’t voiced about how Kennford and his daughter were able to swim late into the night. I skirted the pool and crossed the grass to a wooden bench under a beech tree. It took me a few minutes to scan the ground with my Maglite but I found the spot where Kennford hid his cigarette butts behind a piece of sculpture that reminded me of a melted snail shell. It didn’t prove he’d been there earlier that evening, but at least I’d confirmed he was telling the truth about something. I sat on the bench and checked the view of the house. The kitchen stuck out, blocking the line of sight to the sitting-room windows. Even if the attack had taken place while he was outside, he wouldn’t have seen anything.

  ‘Having a rest?’ Derwent was silhouetted against the light from the kitchen. I crossed the garden towards him.

  ‘Seeing what Mr Kennford could see from here.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He couldn’t.’

  ‘Let’s put one tick in the truth column, then. What’s next?’

  ‘Follow his route into the house, I suppose.’

  He stood back. ‘Lead on.’

  I was glad I got to go first. It meant I was able to pick a path that avoided the worst of the bloody footprints. The SOCOs had measured and photographed them so there was no pressing reason to tread carefully, but I was superstitious about it. Death had walked through those hallways not long before and I wasn’t all that keen to match him stride for stride. If Derwent noticed, he didn’t say anything about it. He might even have felt the same way, but there was no point in asking him. He’d never admit it.

  The footprints had all but disappeared by the time we reached the upper hallway, absorbed by the thick carpet pile, but there were still traces. Enough that you could see the killer had gone to each room in turn.

  ‘He didn’t know the house,’ I said softly. ‘He didn’t know which room to try.’

  ‘We don’t know what he was looking for. He didn’t kill Kennford when he had the chance, did he? God knows, I’d have had a crack at it if I’d had the time and the tools to hand.’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t have time. Maybe he was worried about Lydia interrupting him.’

  ‘Doing what? A spot of burglary? Kennford said there was nothing missing as far as he could see.’ Derwent pulled open the nearest door and looked in, flicking on the light. ‘It all looks neat.’

  ‘Especially for a teenager’s room.’ I moved past him to stand beside the bed. There was nothing on the walls except for a full-length mirror and none of the usual clutter of make-up, clothes and jewellery that I would have expected. The desk by the window was strictly for books and papers with an Apple laptop in the centre, a top-of-the-range MacBook Pro. The room felt sparse, somehow, and not quite permanent – as if the person who slept there was only using the space for a day or two. ‘Do you think this is Laura’s or Lydia’s?’

  ‘Lydia’s.’ Derwent was checking the books on the desk and turned one around to show me her name inside the front cover, written in tiny, neat letters.

  I bent to look under the bed. ‘She seems like a cheery soul. Maybe she just keeps the fun hidden.’ There was a stack of fashion magazines under the bed and I hooked them out to flick through the pages, looking for nothing in particular and finding just that.

  ‘Working hard to get Daddy’s approval. No frivolity here. Just hard work and exercise. She’s fifteen, for God’s sake. She should be trying to get served in pubs and staying out late.’

  ‘And he’d probably respect that more.’

  ‘That’s what I’ve heard.’

  ‘So you said earlier.’ I shook my head at him. ‘That was just troublemaking.’

  ‘Shake the tree – see what falls out. Sometimes you get the coconut. Sometimes you get the monkey.’

  ‘And sometimes you get damn all.’

  ‘True.’ He opened a door to reveal a bathroom. ‘Oh, perfect. Of course the teenager needs an en-suite room.’

  Every surface in the bathroom bristled with bottles and cosmetics, and the cabinet on the wall hung open. It didn’t seem in keeping with the sterile order in the room behind me.

  ‘There’s another door on the other side. Maybe it’s shared with her sister.’

  I was right, as it turned out, and Laura’s room more than made up for the lack of mess in the other bedroom. Clothes spilled out of her wardrobe and chest of drawers so doors and drawers couldn’t shut, and more were piled high on her chair. It was the first place I’d seen photographs – formal, framed ones on the top of the bookcase, candid shots tucked into the corners of the mirror, family and friends framed in montages on the wall, a selection marching across the windowsill, clipped to tiny wire stalks. Most of the pictures had Laura herself in them – fair hair like her mother, blue eyes like her father, extraordinary prettiness that she had made the most of with make-up, but she was equally stunning without. She looked popular and outgoing, the sun to her twin sister’s shadow. Lydia appeared in a few but only just, often with her head half-turned away or her hair hanging down around her face.

  ‘Identical,’ Derwent observed, looking over my shoulder. ‘But only one of them got the looks, even so.’

  ‘It’s all about attitude, isn’t it? Maybe Lydia has the brains.’

  ‘You’d hope she got something.’

  Laura had a profusion of electronic equipment – music decks, a Bang & Olufsen iPod dock, an iPad and a laptop that was open on her bed, on standby.

  ‘If you wanted to burgle somewhere, you’d start here,’ Derwent commented. ‘Lots of disposable consumer goods.’ He poked the computer and it whirred, then came on. ‘Log-out screen for her Gmail account. Shame she hadn’t left herself connected. We could have had a snoop.’

  ‘Do you think this was about her?’

  ‘I’m not ruling anything out at this stage and nor should you.’

  I acknowledged the sense in that, but I couldn’t imagine a teenage girl inspiring the kind of murderous hatred that had ended her life. I picked up a big digital camera that was wedged onto the bedside table. It was a massive, expensive Canon with a professional lens. It took me a second or two to work out how to turn it on so I could review the images on the memory card.

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Laura had a boyfriend.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Laura had sex with her boyfriend.’

  ‘How can you tell?’ Derwent was rummaging through her chest of drawers. He held up a packet. ‘Because she was on the pill?’

  ‘Because she took extremely detailed pictures of herself engaging in sexual acts.’ I handed the camera to him. ‘There are forty-two pictures on that memory card and you can’t see his face in any of them.’

  He scrolled through at top speed, a look of distaste on his face. He was pretty far from being a prude but he had a real problem with underage sex, even if it was consensual. Something in his past, I presumed, but I’d never got very far with finding out what.

  ‘Do you think he’s
the same age?’

  ‘Give or take a couple of years.’ The boy’s body was pale and lean, not heavily muscled, almost hairless. Laura had focused more on herself, or allowed him to. The images were close-ups mostly, both sharp and graphic. I felt we had intruded on something she had a right to keep private, and hated that it was our job.

  Derwent put the camera down on the bed and sighed. ‘Big job to do here going through her belongings. Any sign of a phone?’

  I shook my head. ‘It could have been downstairs, I suppose.’

  ‘Didn’t see it there either.’ He looked around, visibly flagging at the thought of starting to go through Laura’s room at that late hour. I wasn’t exactly disappointed that the next words out of his mouth were ‘Where next?’

  The next one turned out to be a guest room, bland and luxurious in equal measure, with a bathroom off it.

  ‘Bigger than my flat.’ Derwent didn’t sound impressed. ‘Where do you think Vita got her money?’

  ‘Not the gallery, from what Kennford said. Family, I suppose.’

  ‘Daddy worked hard so you don’t have to.’

  ‘You can’t criticise her for inheriting money, if that’s where it came from. What was she supposed to do? Hand it back?’

  ‘It’s not the having that bothers me. It’s how she threw it around. Look at this place. It’s halfway between a museum of modern art and a show home. Whatever happened to living modestly? You can’t tell me they needed all this crap.’

  ‘They could afford it and they liked it. They were entitled to live here undisturbed and enjoy their money.’

  ‘They might as well have been sitting in a shop window counting their cash. It’s just stupid to draw attention to yourself, especially if you are loaded. And especially, you’d have thought, if you routinely work with big-time criminals.’

  We filed out into the hallway. The next room was where Kennford had been attacked; we had visited it earlier with Godley. It had as much character as a five-star hotel room. An Eames recliner stood by the window and a Damien Hirst spot painting hung over the bed, both shorthand for ‘I have money and taste but no imagination’. The mirror on the wall had been wide and full-length, positioned just where Kennford would have seen himself coming out of the bathroom. Derwent moved soundlessly on the thick carpet, sliding around the corner of the bathroom wall to lie in wait within arm’s reach of me. He mimed hitting my head.

  ‘Could you see me?’

  ‘Hard to tell.’ Almost none of the mirror glass had survived in the frame. ‘Depends on whether the lights were on in here. And if he was looking.’

  ‘He was probably staring at himself. The body beautiful.’

  ‘Think he’s vain?’

  ‘Don’t you?’ Derwent had found a wardrobe and stood back to reveal a row of immaculate dark suits. ‘All handmade. Shoes too. Shirts and jumpers on this side, on the shelves.’

  ‘Where are Vita’s clothes?’

  ‘Not in here. But didn’t you hear him say this was his room? Maybe Vita sleeps elsewhere.’

  Looking around, I had to agree. There was something masculine about it, and something that suggested only one person used the room. The headboard of the bed was upholstered in grey velvet, probably the perfect fabric to show wear and tear. There was a scuffed area on the left side of the bed: the right was pristine. A biography of Marx lay on the bedside table on the left, along with some loose change. The other table was empty. I went into the bathroom.

  ‘No women’s cosmetics in here. Quite a bit of stuff for men, though.’

  ‘See? Vain.’ Derwent poked around, not finding what he was looking for. ‘He must have it somewhere else.’

  ‘Dare I ask?’

  ‘Viagra.’

  ‘Surely not.’

  ‘Magic little blue pill. Essential accessory for the pork swordsman. Especially at his age.’

  ‘He’s not old.’

  ‘Probably starting to give a bit, though. Not quite as firm as he used to be. Not able to keep going as long.’

  ‘I’m not having this conversation,’ I said flatly, heading out to the hall followed by Derwent’s laughter. ‘Anyway, he probably keeps it in his shag pad, as you so elegantly put it.’

  ‘Not much reason to have it in this house.’ He sauntered out after me, looking over my shoulder as I opened the next door, which led to the largest of the bedrooms. Grey walls, cream carpet, a geometric patterned throw on the bed. More of the same aseptic neatness and puritan style, but enough personal items on the dressing table and by the bed for me to be fairly sure it was Vita’s room. ‘Separate bedrooms don’t exactly say hot sex, do they?’

  ‘Maybe he snores. Maybe he can’t keep his hands off her and she had to banish him to another room to get some rest.’

  ‘Speaking from experience, Kerrigan?’

  ‘Don’t try to make this about me. I’m thinking about Vita.’ Vita, who had no mirrors in her room at all. At least, none on show. There had to be one somewhere. She was too much of a perfectionist not to have a way of checking how she looked, even if she needed to prepare herself for it. I opened the wardrobe door and found a full-length one inside the door, along with rows of ironed and folded clothes in neutral colours, slate grey to ice white via every possible shade of beige. ‘Disciplined, wasn’t she?’

  ‘And into exercise.’ Derwent had stepped onto the running machine that lurked in one corner of the room and was poking buttons. ‘This is bigger than the one at my gym.’

  ‘Don’t break it.’

  ‘You sound like my mum.’ The belt began to move and Derwent straddled it, watching the screen. The machine was quieter than I would have expected. ‘She has it set to a six-mile run. Fast, too. Incline and everything, so she must have been fit. I can’t see the point of it, though. Plenty of hills around here.’

  ‘Control. She could measure her progress. Count the calories.’

  Derwent hit the stop button and the machine whirred to silence. ‘So she did her exercising in here, in private. Away from the family. What else did she do?’

  ‘Groomed herself.’ I was looking through the collection of pots and lotions on the dressing table. ‘Crème de la Mer doesn’t come cheap. Nor does Shiseido. Nothing but the best for Vita.’

  ‘Trying to keep Mother Nature at bay. She was older than Kennford and he had a wandering eye.’ Derwent opened one of the pots and sniffed suspiciously at the contents. ‘Worth slapping a bit of goo on now and then. If she wanted to keep him, that is.’

  ‘It seems she did.’ I shook my head. ‘I can’t really see what he brought to the marriage. No money, according to him. He wasn’t even here when he was working.’

  ‘And that would be most of the time. He’s in demand. Chances are he uses his flat during the weeks.’ He lay on the floor to peer under the bed. ‘What’s this?’

  I knelt beside him as he stretched to retrieve a wooden box, rectangular, about eighteen inches by twelve. ‘Jewellery?’

  ‘I bet they have a safe.’ He flipped the lid up. Three silver objects sat in the box, cradled in purple silk. Derwent lifted one out, a long curved shape covered with apparently random bumps. ‘Sculpture.’

  ‘Not quite.’ I was having trouble stopping myself from laughing. I reached out and pressed a button on the base and it hummed into life. Derwent held it for a second, uncomprehending, and then dropped it with a shudder.

  ‘Don’t tell me that’s some sort of dildo.’

  ‘That’s exactly what it is. These are high-end sex toys.’

  Derwent stripped off his gloves and took a fresh pair out of his pocket, pulling a disgusted face. ‘You could have warned me.’

  ‘I wasn’t sure. I’m not exactly in the market for things like that. They cost a fortune. And I don’t need that sort of thing, obviously,’ I added, heading off an off-colour remark before he could begin to form it.

  He pointed suspiciously at a pebble-shaped one. ‘How does that work?’

  ‘No idea.’

 
‘That one looks like a whisk. Where do you think it’s supposed to go?’

  ‘Wherever you fancy, I should think. Isn’t that the point?’

  ‘Perverted,’ Derwent announced.

  ‘That’s a bit harsh.’ There were ribbon tabs at either end of the purple silk tray. I lifted it out and discovered a collection of books, DVDs and some more toys. ‘Fanny Hill. The Marquis de Sade. At Her Master’s Pleasure. This one seems to be all about spanking.’

  Derwent had picked up a book with a vast Viking on the cover, holding a scantily dressed redhead who seemed to have swooned. ‘“Drogo forced her thighs apart with one cruel knee, his desire for her unstoppable, his manhood as hard as the iron hilt of his sword. She fought to free herself even as she ached for him to ravage her. As he plunged his whole length into her, violating her most secret places, she shuddered with ecstasy, her body betraying her at the moment of her greatest shame.” Fucking hell. Drogo needs arresting.’

  ‘You’d never get a conviction. Look at what she’s wearing. She was asking for it.’

  ‘I will never understand women. How could you get excited about being raped?’

  ‘Well, it’s not all women, is it? And it’s a fantasy. Not everyone wants to live out their fantasies.’

  ‘What if Vita did and Kennford wasn’t into it?’

  ‘Well, that would explain the sex toys.’

  ‘Nothing to say she was using them on her own.’ He moved on to the DVDs. ‘Anal Attraction IV. Well, that is the standout from the series. Everyone knows the first three are a bit samey.’

  ‘Do you think she had someone on the side?’

  ‘Safe assumption, if you believe the rumours about Kennford. I doubt he’d have the energy to violate her with his iron manhood after spending all week shagging. And it looks as if Vita wasn’t undersexed. So what if she found someone who was happy to play the rapist? Someone who liked it rough, who liked to slap her around?’

  ‘And what if this mythical person got carried away and decided to murder her and her daughter?’ I shook my head. ‘I’m not seeing it. Why kill Laura? If he was excited by the thought of killing Vita, you’d think it would have happened while they were having sex, not in the living room on a Sunday evening. And then the attack on Kennford. That’s not in keeping with a sex murder.’