The Last Girl

by Casey, Jane

  ‘No gags on any of them. Whatever about the other two, he must have been screaming,’ I murmured, almost to myself.

  ‘So you know what to ask about on the door-to-door enquiries. Shouts, loud noises or thuds, screams, car engines.’ He ticked them off. ‘Anything else strange they saw or heard.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Here’s your list of streets. Both sides of the road, please, commercial premises as well as residential.’

  ‘This is going to take all day,’ I said.

  ‘It’ll take as long as it takes.’

  ‘I’ve got to do interviews this afternoon with Derwent, on the Kennford case.’

  ‘Then you’d better get a move on.’

  ‘Nice of you to drop in, Kerrigan.’ The voice came from behind me that I instantly recognised as Belcott’s. ‘Whining about doing a bit of work already?’

  I ignored him. To Maitland, I said, ‘What time are we starting to knock people up?’

  ‘Six. Best chance of catching everyone before they leave for the day.’

  ‘What should I do in the meantime?’

  ‘Same as everyone else. Hang around talking shit. Or drinking it, if you fancy a coffee.’

  ‘You’re selling it to me. I should have brought my own.’

  ‘Like you brought your own company.’ Belcott hadn’t taken the hint and now I registered that he was standing beside my elbow, glaring at Rob. ‘What’s he doing here?’

  ‘What does it look like he’s doing? Come on, Belcott. Use your exceptional observational skills.’

  Rob was still deep in conversation with Godley, a conversation that had both of them looking serious.

  ‘I wonder if he thinks you’re worth it.’

  ‘I wonder why you’d care.’ I knew he was a bitter, venomous little man but he had an instinct for playing on your worst fears, no matter how deeply they were hidden.

  ‘We lost out, didn’t we? You got a boyfriend and we had to give up a good copper.’

  ‘I bet you wish I’d gone instead.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. Not how the boss feels, unfortunately. But then Langton can’t do the things you can do.’

  I turned around and glared at him. ‘For the last time, I’m not sleeping with Godley. Rob chose to leave. He got a promotion out of it, and he’s doing really well. Now fuck the fuck off and don’t come back.’

  It was poetic, really, that Maitland chose that very moment to break the news. ‘By the way, Kerrigan, you’re teamed with Belcott on the enquiries. You’ll be spending the day together.’

  ‘And don’t think you’re going to be able to duck out of it,’ Belcott hissed in my ear. ‘You’re going to have to pull your weight for once.’

  I really couldn’t see how my day could get any worse.

  As it turned out, that was just lack of imagination.

  Chapter Thirteen

  IT WAS DURING the fourth straight hour of knocking on people’s doors that I began to despair. As usual, it was heart breaking work – repetitive, time-consuming and frustrating. There was the occasional excitement of being called pigs, or being told to fuck off. There was the young mother who burst into tears because Belcott’s aggressive ringing of her doorbell had woken her baby. There was the middle-aged woman who invited us in to tell us what she’d seen, who made us a cup of coffee with gravy granules and proved to be, in the words of her harassed husband, doolally. And there were the curtain-twitchers who had a good look at us and decided not to answer the door, for which I blamed Belcott and his clipboard.

  ‘You look like a Jehovah’s Witness. It’s no wonder they don’t want to talk to us.’

  ‘They still count as done.’ He forced a hastily printed leaflet through the letterbox (‘MURDER – did you see or hear anything?’) and scribbled something on the clipboard. He was more focused on ticking off addresses than on what we were trying to find out, and to begin with, that annoyed me. By the fourth hour, though, my feet were aching, my face hurt from smiling in an unthreatening way and my notebook was essentially empty. Most of the locals who had actually spoken to us were as helpful as they could be, which wasn’t very helpful at all. It was the curse of murder investigations in London, the deeply ingrained desire not to get involved with one’s neighbours or catch anyone’s eye on the street. I understood the head-down mentality, having seen too many cases where attracting the wrong person’s attention had resulted in death or serious injury. But I still wondered how the hell three men could be shot multiple times at half past one in the morning in an essentially residential area without anyone paying any attention whatsoever.

  And speaking of not paying attention, I had missed the moment when Rob left, looking around to find him gone about half an hour after we’d arrived. I appreciated his delicacy in not coming over to say goodbye – I had told him to keep a low profile, after all, and there would have been comments from the team members who were gathering in the yard, bleary-eyed and rumpled to a man. But I still wanted to know if he’d got what he wanted from Godley, whatever that was. I had sent him a text and got no reply, which wasn’t unusual because he hated texting. Also, it had been getting on for five in the morning and I half-hoped he was asleep. I would have given a lot to be back in my bed myself, and I was far from being the only one who was shivering with fatigue and too much caffeine. The yawning was constant and infectious. Only Godley looked truly awake, galvanised by the scene in front of him, talking to the SOCOs, the pathologist, the first responders and, later, a handful of the reporters who had been besieging us for hours. He needed to look dynamic, Maitland told me in a low voice, because the shit was about to hit the fan. There had been plenty of intelligence to warn us that this shooting was coming and we still hadn’t been able to do a thing to prevent it.

  ‘It’s all right when it’s just shitbags, obviously. But it’s only a matter of time before there’s collateral damage. A stray bullet goes through a window or across the street, hits someone innocent. A kid, even. Someone nice and middle-class and decent is what you’d get in an area like this, and the press would go crazy.’ Maitland shook his head slowly, his lips pursed in a soundless whistle. ‘Wouldn’t want to be the one who’s supposed to be in charge when that happens.’

  ‘He doesn’t look worried.’ I was watching him bending down to listen to what a boilersuit-wearing SOCO who looked exhausted was telling him.

  ‘If he looked panicked we’d all be screwed, wouldn’t we? No hiding that we’re up shit creek then. He’s got to look as if he knows what he’s doing, but believe me, he’s out of ideas. And we’re out of luck.’

  After so many fruitless interviews, I was beginning to feel the same way. Another door, another blank face and shaking head. I came down the short flight of steps and resisted the urge to sit down on them so I could take off my shoes and rub my feet. We were on the shady side of the street at least, so it wasn’t as hot as it might have been. Belcott was still dripping with sweat, his hair standing up in hedgehog spikes.

  ‘How many more do we have to do?’

  ‘The rest of this side. The other side. The next two streets that way. Then we’re done.’

  The Victorians had known how to build high-density housing and that area favoured long streets, so he was talking about hundreds of properties. We were working away from the crime scene, out of the likely area where anyone would have seen anything, and I couldn’t manage to put any enthusiasm at all into it.

  ‘Brilliant.’

  ‘Having fun?’

  ‘More than you can imagine.’ I looked past him, to a silver Mercedes that was cruising towards us. ‘Isn’t that Godley’s car?’

  ‘Look busy.’ Belcott hurried up the steps of the house next door and rang the bell, scanning his clipboard with intense concentration.

  The car was slowing down as it approached us. Instead of following Belcott’s lead, I stepped out to the road and waved. It glided to a stop and the driver’s window slid down. Godley was driving himself
, and he was alone.

  ‘Maeve. Just the person I was looking for. How are you finding it?’

  ‘Not that useful, unfortunately. We haven’t had much luck so far.’

  ‘Nor has anyone else.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s the usual story, isn’t it? Someone probably did notice something that would help us but they won’t tell us about it, or they can’t, or they haven’t realised we need to know it.’

  A van was coming down the street behind the Mercedes, its engine noisy. With cars parked on both sides of the road, Godley’s car was blocking the whole carriageway and there was nowhere to pull in. The van driver blasted a volley on his horn and I acknowledged it with a glare. As soon as I looked away, the horn blared again. Godley glanced in his rear-view mirror and grimaced.

  ‘Better make this quick. I want you to leave Belcott to finish off the house-to-house and come with me.’

  Rescue, at last. ‘Where to?’

  ‘Wandsworth Prison. Tell Belcott and make it snappy, or that van is going to be parked in the back seat.’

  There were more glamorous destinations, but I didn’t truly care. I nodded and hurried up the steps to interrupt Belcott, who was embroiled in a lengthy conversation with an elderly man. He couldn’t hear a word Belcott was saying and Belcott couldn’t understand his answers when he did manage to get a question through to him. Another typically rewarding encounter.

  ‘I’m going. Godley’s got a job for me.’

  ‘What?’ He turned round and glared at the car, then at me. ‘Why am I not surprised?’

  ‘Don’t get any ideas, Belcott. It’s not what you think.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Prison, not that it’s any of your business.’

  ‘Why?’

  If I’d answered, I’d have had to reveal that I didn’t know why we were going to prison, who we were going to see or why I was included. Ignorance was not anything to boast about; it was much better to let Belcott think I was withholding information deliberately. I skipped back down the steps. ‘Good luck with the enquiries.’

  It would take him hours to complete the list of addresses, and he would fill in the time by imagining what I was doing with Godley, in the vilest terms possible. I couldn’t stop him from thinking the worst of me. I couldn’t bring myself to feel bad about leaving him in the lurch either. Godley’s car was air conditioned, and comfortable, and I sat into the passenger seat with a beatific smile.

  ‘So who are we going to see?’

  ‘An old friend.’ Godley revved the engine. ‘A very old friend indeed.’

  It shouldn’t have been that hard to guess who the boss meant. There was, after all, one person who knew exactly what was going on across South London, given that he had set it in motion. One person who I knew, and Godley knew better still. The notorious gangster, murderer and thief John Skinner, detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure for the remainder of his natural life, but not content to go quietly. Especially since it was his arch-rival Ken Goldsworthy who stood to benefit from Skinner’s current whereabouts. If I was slow on the uptake it was because as far as I knew Skinner had been moved out of London a couple of months earlier, once he’d started his sentence. The London prisons struggled to accommodate their share of inmates, between the large numbers of remand prisoners and those who were just starting their sentences. They had to be held close to the courts where they were being tried, but it placed a strain on overcrowded and outdated facilities, and the usual practice was to send as many as possible off to far-flung corners of the country once they had got used to the idea that they weren’t going home. It was something that upset their families and the inmates themselves, but part of their punishment was that they had no control over where they ended up. I felt more sorry for their children and partners, condemned to long, frustrating journeys or no visits at all, through no fault of their own. But as John Skinner had no living children and his estranged wife was unlikely to visit, that really didn’t apply to him. Still, it was useful that he was back, and so close to the current crime scene. Not quite close enough to hear the sirens, probably, and certainly not the shots, but close enough to feel like he was a part of it, maybe. And we could be certain about one thing: he was up to his neck in it.

  Wandsworth Prison was one of London’s Victorian jails and far too useful to be put out of service, even though it was showing its age. It was the largest in the city and one of the biggest in Europe, sprawling over the top of a hill in the otherwise plush area that bordered the green and shady beauty of the nearby common. From the road there was little enough to see, the bulk of the prison extending a long way back. Large containers of flowers were a jaunty addition to an otherwise bleak open courtyard, which was dominated by a double-height panelled gate that led into the prison itself. The walls were grey and almost windowless, sombre even on a glorious summer’s day. I had never visited a prisoner there before, though the procedure was much the same everywhere. I handed over my phone and anything that could be used as a weapon, passed through a security arch, submitted to a further pat down, and eventually followed Godley down a tiled corridor that smelled of school dinners and bleach. The meeting room that awaited us was wholly unremarkable. There was nothing as grand as a glass wall between us and the far side of the table, but there was a guard on duty outside the door, a reminder that Skinner didn’t have much to lose.

  I had stayed quiet for the short car journey once I’d found out who we were to see, thinking about the handful of encounters I’d had with him. Silence seemed to be what Godley preferred anyway. He drove with precision and great concentration while I sat beside him wondering why he had wanted me, why I had been selected to go with him. I doubted the gangster would remember me at all.

  The ticking of the clock on the wall was making me edgy. To break the silence, I said, ‘I thought Skinner was up in Lincolnshire.’

  ‘He was until a week ago. I had him moved down here.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Easier to get to talk to him, for one thing. And I thought it might disrupt communications with his lieutenants. However he’s managing it, he’s got an open channel with his thugs. He’s still telling them what to do, even now.’

  ‘Hard to see how you could stop it, unless you got him put in solitary. He couldn’t stay there forever, anyway. And once he got out––’

  ‘He’d be up to his old tricks,’ Godley finished. ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘So what are we doing here? Appealing to his better nature?’ I said it jokingly, but the expression on the superintendent’s face told me I was right. It also told me that I would be wise to backtrack, and quickly.

  ‘Do you have any better ideas?’

  ‘No. I mean, I think it’s a good idea. It’s definitely worth a try.’ I sounded like the worst kind of sycophant. ‘I’m not sure he has a better nature, that’s all. I think we saw the best of him when his daughter went missing.’

  ‘Around the time he started a campaign of torture and murder. It’s not what most people would characterise as good behaviour.’ Godley shoved his hands into his pockets and paced up and down the room, burning off some nervous energy. ‘I just want him to call a halt, that’s all. It’s so pointless. All of these young men dying, and for what? Dead bodies don’t make money, and John Skinner was always all about money.’

  ‘But he’s out of all that now. He can’t spend money in here. And he’s not supporting his wife, is he?’

  ‘They split up.’

  ‘So he can’t enjoy it, and she’s not going to spend it for him. What does that leave? Pride, I suppose.’

  ‘That’s a good insight.’ Godley stopped pacing. ‘I might be able to use that.’

  I blushed to the roots of my hair, but I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I’d taken the credit for it. ‘Oh, well, actually DS Maitland said it first.’

  ‘Not to me, and not at the right time.’ He smiled, ridiculously handsome even under the horrible prison lighting that seemed designed to emphasise
bags under eyes and jowly chins. ‘I knew there was a reason I brought you.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ I managed, fighting back outrage. I felt like some sort of talisman, a good-luck charm Godley had decided to take with him on a whim. Was that it? The off-chance I might say something useful? I sat down on one of the starkly uncomfortable chairs to wait for Skinner and went back to saying absolutely nothing in the meantime.

  Skinner had changed, in the couple of months since he’d been inside – that was the first thing that occurred to me when he finally appeared. It was hard to tell how much of that was down to the surroundings, to the prison uniform he was wearing instead of a thousand-pound suit, to the loss of his exile’s tan. His hair had been collar-length, thick and iron-grey, but now it was clipped almost to the skull and what was left of it was dirty white. The short hair did nothing for his features, which seemed to have blurred a little, softened from enforced inactivity. His cheeks were puffy, his jawline soft. His eyes were the same, though – hooded and reptilian – and I couldn’t suppress a jolt of nerves as they swept over me, lingered for a second, moved on.

  ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’

  ‘I think you know, John. Have a seat.’ Godley was still standing, but when Skinner sat down he did the same.

  ‘I don’t know, actually. I’m beginning to think I might know why I was moved, though. Your idea, I take it.’

  ‘Sorry about that.’

  ‘Back to London. Back to good old Wandsworth nick.’ He grinned, a crocodile smile. ‘Did me a favour, Charlie. Put me back in touch with a few old pals. Better than being stuck out in the middle of nowhere.’

  ‘Don’t pretend you’re pleased to be here.’

  One shoulder lifted in a shrug. ‘It’s all the same to me, mate. I go where I’m told.’

  ‘Good as gold, that’s you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that. But one place is much like another.’

  ‘How are you doing it, John? How do you communicate with them?’ There was a note in Godley’s voice that I’d never heard before, a kind of desperation that he was cloaking in fake bonhomie. It wasn’t fooling me and it certainly wasn’t working on Skinner, who laughed.